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Baiada, one of Australia’s biggest poultry producers, has been accused of using labor contractors that under pay and exploit foreign visitors on temporary work permits. The company sells Steggles and Lilydale Free Range Chickens to supermarket and fast food chains like Aldi, Coles, KFC and Woolworths.

Australia has a temporary “working holiday” visa system designed to help young people from 19 different countries subsidize up to a year of travel in Australia. Today unscrupulous employers have taken advantage of this so-called “subclass 417” visa system to employ an estimated 150,000 low wage migrant workers from Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan as well as from Europe.

“They are lured into a (travel) agency. The agency, for a cost, sets up the trip. They set up the accommodation when they get here. And they set them up with work when they get here on the promise that all is going to be well,” Tony Snelson, National Union of Workers, told Four Corners, an investigative program on Australian Broadcasting Corporation television.

“It’s not an Australia that we would put on the tourism brochures,” Joanna Howe, a senior lecturer at the University of Adelaide law school told the TV station. “There’s a whole lot of working holiday makers performing low-skilled jobs – dirty, demeaning, difficult jobs – for which they get paid very little.”

“(Our food should) say “Picked and packed by exploited labor,” adds Snelson.

Four Corners followed two Taiwanese visitors who were employed by a labor contractor named KC Fresh Choice to work in a Baiada chicken factory in Adelaide. The two workers said that they had to work 18 hours per day, seven days a week, and at a punishing pace. Workers were required to process up to 47 chickens a minute, and rarely permitted to take breaks for water or to go to the toilet.

“Kevin” and “Mo” – the two workers – said that they had been underpaid by $30,000 and $28,000 in unpaid wages respectively.

The company says that it will look into the allegations. “Baiada can confirm it has instigated a review into the issues raised by the program,” the company said in a press statement. “Baiada is committed to the fair treatment of employees as well as any labour hire and contractor employee that works in the supply chain. We confirm that any mistreatment of workers or denial of their proper entitlements is a serious breach of Baiada’s policies and contractual terms and will not be tolerated.”

Yet, this is not the first time that Baiada has been accused of using contract workers who were making less than the legal wage. In 2010, another labor contractor named General Services Company was told to pay $5,000 in back wages to a group of Chinese workers at the Baiada’s Beresford factory, 100 miles north of Sydney. And in 2013, Lateline, another ABC television program, uncovered a company called Pham Poultry that was supplying workers to Baiada’s Beresford plant at half the minimum wage.

By contrast, Baiada is privately owned by the Camilleri family who are worth approximately $500 million.

Local farmers say that the government needs to crack down on rogue employers.

“I think the only way to clean this out, is there has to be legislation put in place by the federal government in regards to licensing these contractors to give some credibility.,” Peter Darley from New South Wales Farmers, an advocacy group, told ABC Television. “That’ll move out some of the ones who are trading with the wind in regards to how they operate.”

Does the habitual use of antidepressants do more harm than good to many patients? Absolutely, says one expert in a new British Medical Journal report. Moreover, he says that the federal Food and Drug Administration might even be hiding the truth about antidepressant lethality.

In his portion of the report, Peter C. Gotzsche, a professor at the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Denmark, said that nearly all psychotropic drug use could be ended today without deleterious effects, adding that such “drugs are responsible for the deaths of more than half a million people aged 65 and older each year in the Western world.”

Gotzsche, author of the 2013 book Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare, further notes in the BMJ that “randomized trials that have been conducted do not properly evaluate the drugs’ effects.” He adds, “Almost all of them are biased because they included patients already taking another psychiatric drug.”

Hiding or fabricating data about harmful side effects

The FDA’s data is incomplete at best and intentionally skewed at worst, he insisted:

Under-reporting of deaths in industry funded trials is another major flaw. Based on some of the randomised trials that were included in a meta-analysis of 100,000 patients by the US Food and Drug Administration, I have estimated that there are likely to have been 15 times more suicides among people taking antidepressants than reported by the FDA – for example, there were 14 suicides in 9,956 patients in trials with fluoxetine and paroxetine, whereas the FDA had only five suicides in 52,960 patients, partly because the FDA only included events up to 24 hours after patients stopped taking the drug.

He said that he was most concerned about three classes of drugs: antipsychotics, benzodiazepines and antidepressants, saying they are responsible for 3,693 deaths a year in Denmark alone. When scaling up that figure in relation to the U.S. and European Union together, he estimated that 539,000 people die every year because of the medications.

“Given their lack of benefit, I estimate we could stop almost all psychotropic drugs without causing harm – by dropping all antidepressants, ADHD drugs, and dementia drugs (as the small effects are probably the result of unblinding bias) and using only a fraction of the antipsychotics and benzodiazepines we currently use,” Gotzsche wrote.

“This would lead to healthier and more long lived populations. Because psychotropic drugs are immensely harmful when used long-term, they should almost exclusively be used in acute situations and always with a firm plan for tapering off, which can be difficult for many patients,” he added.

Gotzsche’s views were disputed in the same BMJ piece by Allan Young, professor of mood disorders at King’s College London, and psychiatric patient John Crace.

“More than a fifth of all health-related disability is caused by mental ill health, studies suggest, and people with poor mental health often have poor physical health and poorer (long-term) outcomes in both aspects of health,” they wrote.

They also insisted that psychiatric drugs are “rigorously examined for efficacy and safety, before and after regulatory approval.”

Pushing kids to suicide

However, as NaturalNews has documented over the years, the ill effects of these very drugs are apparent to anyone with an open mind. Here are just a few of those stories:

In 2011, we reported that the mainstream national psychiatric organizations colluded with Big Pharma to create what had grown to a $20-billion-a-year psychotropic drug empire, a push that began in earnest in 1987.

“The story that people with mental disorders have known chemical imbalances, that’s a lie. We don’t know that at all. It’s just something that they say to help sell the drugs and help sell the biological model of mental disorders,” we quoted veteran investigative reporter and author of Mad in America, Robert Whitaker, as saying in an earlier interview.

In 2013, we reported on a study that suggested higher teen suicide rates were tied to an increase in the prescribing of psychotropic drugs.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s Psychiatry, found that 1 in 25 teens attempts suicide in the U.S., and the suicide attempts were tied to the increased use of psychotropic drugs in many of those cases.

The same year, we also reported that a pair of additional studies found psychotropic drugs increased the risk of diabetes threefold and caused a 20-fold increase in attempted suicides.

“The diabetes study, conducted by researchers from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, TN, between 1996 and 2007, focused on children and young adults between ages 6 and 24 who were enrolled in Tennessee’s Medicaid program,” we reported.

The second statistic came from an historic review, “Lifetime Suicide Rates in Treated Schizophrenia: and 1994-1998 Cohorts Compared.” As the largest study ever to address suicide in schizophrenia patients, it reports disturbing facts about anti-psychotic drugs, which would be better termed “psychotic drugs.”

In a chapter in his 2013 book, Gotzsche revealed how Big Pharma companies like GlaxoSmithKline covered up the harmful effects of their psychotropic and antidepressant medications, such as pushing teens into suicide with “happy pills.”

Sources:

http://www.bmj.com 

http://www.independent.co.uk

http://rt.com 

http://www.arafmi.org

http://www.naturalnews.com

Sanford (Sandy) Weill, the Man Who Put the Serially Charged Citigroup Behemoth Together

In the late 1990s, Salomon Smith Barney’s telecom analyst, Jack Grubman, was viewed by his powerful firm as a “disruptor.” He was throwing out the old rules on how a telecom analyst should interact with a company on which he was delivering research to the public and creating a new, innovative model. Instead of following the old rules and remaining pristinely independent and objective, Grubman was sitting in on board meetings at WorldCom, giving investment advice to its executives, while simultaneously issuing laudatory research to induce the investing public to buy the stock.

When BusinessWeek questioned Grubman on this new analyst model on May 14, 2000, here’s how the disruptor explained his redesign of his job:

 “What used to be a conflict is now a synergy…Someone like me who is banking-intensive would have been looked at disdainfully by the buy side 15 years ago. Now they know that I’m in the flow of what’s going on. That helps me help them think about the industry…Objective? The other word for it is uninformed.”

Grubman was seen by himself and his firm as a disruptor not because his model made any sense, but because it was bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars in deals for Salomon Smith Barney. Grubman, in turn, got his piece of the action. According to the SEC, between 1999 and 2002, Grubman’s compensation exceeded $67.5 million. Grubman was, in fact, a corruptor not a disruptor. Many of the companies he recommended went bust. The SEC barred him from the industry for life and fined him $15 million for issuing fraudulent research.

Around the same time that Grubman was corrupting research practices on Wall Street, his big boss, Sandy Weill, was peddling the idea to the media, Congress and regulators that he was a genius disruptor as well. He wanted to tear down the old regulatory walls separating FDIC-insured banks from their gambling-casino cousins, the Wall Street investment banks, and create a financial supermarket called Citigroup. Behind the scenes, however, it was really just about money – money for Sandy Weill.

According to a Bill Moyers interview on PBS with John Reed, the former CEO of Citibank – the insured-depository bank that Weill had selected as a merger partner – Weill had explained the outcome of the merger thusly: “John, we could be so rich.”

Disruptors are apparently an easy sell – even when saner voices from the public are screaming “corruptor.” On April 8, 1998, the following appeared on the Times editorial page:

“Congress dithers, so John Reed of Citicorp and Sanford Weill of Travelers Group grandly propose to modernize financial markets on their own. They have announced a $70 billion merger — the biggest in history — that would create the largest financial services company in the world, worth more than $140 billion… In one stroke, Mr. Reed and Mr. Weill will have temporarily demolished the increasingly unnecessary walls built during the Depression to separate commercial banks from investment banks and insurance companies.”

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Pointing the finger of blame at Russian President Putin for the Malaysia Airlines shoot-down last July, an Australian news show claims to have found the spot where the Russian BUK missile battery made its getaway, but the images don’t match, raising questions of journalistic fakery, writes Robert Parry.

An Australian television show claims to have solved the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shoot-down mystery – the Russians did it! – but the program appears to have faked a key piece of evidence and there remain many of the same doubts as before, along with the dog-not-barking question of why the U.S. government has withheld its intelligence data.

The basic point of the Australian “60 Minutes” program was that photographs on social media show what some believe to be a BUK anti-aircraft launcher aboard a truck traveling eastward on July 17, 2014, the day of the shoot-down, into what was generally considered rebel-controlled territory of eastern Ukraine, south and east of Donetsk, the capital of one of the ethnic Russian rebellious provinces.

A screen shot from a video of a suspected BUK missile battery traveling on a road in eastern Ukraine after the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. (As shown in Australia’s “60 Minutes” program.)

Citing one image, the program’s narrator says the “launcher is heading east further into rebel territory,” south and east of Donetsk.

However, in mid-July, the ethnic Russian rebels were reeling under a Ukrainian military offensive to the north of Donetsk. Despite shifting their forces into the battle zone, they had lost Sloviansk, Druzhkivka, Kostyantynivka and Kramatorsk. In other words, the lines of control were fluid and chaotic in mid-July 2014 with the possibility that an unmarked Ukrainian government truck, maybe carrying a concealed anti-aircraft battery, could have moved into the titular rebel zone, especially in the lightly defended south.

Another problem with the Australian TV account is that the video and photographic images show the truck heading eastward toward Russia, but there are no earlier images of the truck moving westward from Russia into eastern Ukraine. If the mysterious truck was supposedly so obvious on the day of the shoot-down, why wasn’t it obvious earlier?

For the Australian TV account to be true – blaming the Russians – the launcher would have to have crossed from Russia into Ukraine, traveled somewhere west of Donetsk, before turning around and heading eastward back toward Russia, yet the trail seems to begin only with photos on July 17 showing the truck headed east.

Indeed, I was told shortly after the MH-17 crash, which killed 298 people including Australians, that one of the problems that U.S. intelligence analysts were having in pinning the blame on the Russians was that they could not find evidence that the Russians had delivered a BUK missile system to the rebels who – until then – were known only to have short-range Manpads incapable of reaching MH-17 flying at around 33,000 feet.

Another part of the Australian TV narrative stretched credulity. If the Russians had somehow snuck a BUK missile system into eastern Ukraine without U.S. intelligence knowing and were moving it back toward Russia, why would the crew stop en route to shoot down a civilian airliner before continuing on the way? There was no military value in destroying a civilian airliner and it was obvious – in the Western media hysteria then surrounding Ukraine – that Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, would be blamed.

What I was told by a source briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts was that at least some of them – after reviewing electronic intercepts, overhead satellite images and other intelligence – had reached the conclusion that the shoot-down was a provocation, or a false-flag operation, carried out by a rogue element of the Ukrainian military operating under one of the hard-line oligarchs.

However, it was not clear to me whether that was the opinion of just a few U.S. analysts or whether that had become the consensus. When I sought an updated briefing from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in March, I was told that the U.S. intelligence community had not updated or refined its analysis of the shoot-down since five days after the event, a claim that was not credible given the significance of the MH-17 case to tensions between nuclear powers, United States and Russia.

In reality, Western intelligence services have been hard at work trying to determine who was responsible for the shoot-down. Last October, Der Spiegel reported that the German intelligence service, the BND, had concluded that Russia was not the source of the missile battery – that it had been captured from a Ukrainian military base – but the BND still blamed the rebels for firing it. The BND also concluded that photos supplied by the Ukrainian government about the MH-17 tragedy “have been manipulated,” Der Spiegel reported.

And, the BND disputed Russian government claims that a Ukrainian fighter jet had been flying close to MH-17, the magazine said, reporting on the BND’s briefing to a parliamentary committee on Oct. 8, 2014. But none of the BND’s evidence was made public — and I was subsequently told by a European official that the evidence was not as conclusive as the magazine article depicted. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Germans Clear Russia in MH-17 Case.”]

Possible TV Fakery

There also appears to have been some fakery involved in the Australian documentary. In several instances, as the film crew traveled to eastern Ukraine to seek out scenes from July 17 video showing the truck possibly carrying BUK missiles, images of those sites – then and now – were overlaid to show how closely the scenes matched.

However, for one crucial scene – the image of an alleged “getaway” BUK launcher lacking one missile and supposedly heading back to Russia after the shoot-down – the documentary broke with that pattern. The program showed the earlier video of the truck moving past a billboard and then claiming – based on information from blogger Eliot Higgins – that the TV crew had located the same billboard in Luhansk, a rebel-held city near the Russian border.

This was the documentary’s slam-dunk moment, the final proof that the Russians and particular Vladimir Putin were guilty in the deaths of 298 innocent people. However, in this case, there was no overlay of the two scenes, just Australian correspondent Michael Usher pointing to a billboard and saying it was the same one as in the video.But the scenes look nothing at all alike if you put them side by side. While Usher is standing in an open field, the earlier video shows an overgrown area. Indeed, almost nothing looks the same, which might explain why the film crew didn’t try to do an overlay this time.

A screen shot of the roadway where the suspected BUK missile battery passes after the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, 2014. (Image from Australian “60 Minutes” program)

Correspondent Michael Usher of Australia’s “60 Minutes” claims to have found the billboard visible in a video of a BUK missile launcher after the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, 2014. (Screen shot from Australia’s “60 Minutes”)

This discrepancy is important because the Russian government placed the scene of the “getaway” BUK launcher in the town of Krasnoarmiis’k, northwest of Donetsk and then under Ukrainian government control. Usher dismissed that Russian claim as a lie before asserting that his team had located the scene with the billboard in Luhansk.

The significance of the Australian news show’s sleight of hand is that if the BUK launcher was making its “getaway” through government-controlled territory, not through Luhansk on its way back to Russia, much of the Russia-did-it scenario collapses. It also means the Australian audience was grossly misled.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includesAmerica’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

He’s the most respected journalist in U.S. history, and for decades Seymour Hersh has consistently broken major international stories, winning him the Pulitzer Prize among other prestigious awards of journalism.

But the media establishment that once idealized him now seeks his destruction. Hersh is facing a coordinated attack from his former colleagues, each scrambling to drive in the next knife.

Hersh’s recent report on the killing of Osama Bin Laden and his prior investigation of Obama’s aborted 2013 bombing of Syria have attracted a synchronized media smear campaign.

But Hersh’s attackers are a clumsy bunch. The hysterics and uniformity of the attack says less about the victim than it does the perpetrators, who share a self interest in shredding Hersh’s stellar reputation.

Hersh’s last two investigations exposed major lies of the Obama administration; but they also exposed the complete failure of the U.S. media, who’ve been willing captives to the sloppy narratives spun by the Obama administration.

For example, Hersh’s 2014 articles on Syria were a damning exposure of Obama’s lies to the U.S. public in his attempt to start a fresh war. The media responded to Hersh’s sensational Syria articles with collective silence. They simply ignored them and did no follow up, leaving the lies of the Obama administration unchallenged. The few bold enough to challenge Hersh mocked him as a “conspiracy theorist,” never bothering to address Hersh’s allegations.

One of the biggest “conspiracies” that Hersh uncovered in Syria was that the Turkish government was secretly working with the extremist group al-Nusra Front to topple the Syrian government; this at the same time as the Obama administration was coordinating with Turkey toward the same goal. This “conspiracy” is now openly acknowledged, as Turkey and Saudi Arabia are publicly coordinating with the al Nusra Front and its sister extremist group, Ahrar al-Sham, under the umbrella group “Conquest Army.”

The media’s collective silence over Hersh’s Syria articles has now turned into a coordinated attack, in response to Hersh’s revelations about Obama’s lie-ridden narrative of the death of Bin-Laden.

A pack mentality gripped the media, rabid and snarling; but the bites lacked teeth. They nipped at Hersh’s ankles and he scattered them with a laugh. He’s comfortable being in the cross-hairs of power, having always emerged vindicated.

The sharpest allegation launched against Hersh was itself dull. He was lambasted for using anonymous sources, while other sources just weren’t good enough. Here’s the Wall Street Journal’s version of the most popular attack on Hersh:

“Mr. Hersh’s 10,356-word account is based nearly exclusively on a handful of unnamed sources  — which can’t be fact-checked — and mainly one retired U.S. intelligence official. One of the only named sources is Asad Durrani, a former director of Pakistani intelligence…”

Ironically, this quote — which purposely waters down the extent of the sources — helps Hersh, since It shows that he used more sources than the vast majority of stories written by the U.S. media on matters of foreign policy.

Typically the U.S. media relies on a single source: the Obama administration.

And very often this single source is anonymous, referred to as a “senior government official.” Facts aren’t checked and tough questions are never asked. What Obama says becomes “fact,” and if someone like Hersh challenges the narrative the media skewers the challenger.

Anonymous sources are acceptable when the reporter believes the person they are talking to has access to knowledge about the situation being reported. If the story is especially controversial several sources are helpful to corroborate the report, as Hersh used in his last two major investigations.

A New York Times reporter is allowed to use anonymous sources because the publication is known to have access to those in power. Hersh has likewise earned the benefit of doubt regarding sources. No one has doubted — until now suddenly — that Hersh has access to high-ranking government figures, thanks to his international celebrity and spotless reporting record.

It’s unfortunate that many of Hersh’s sources must remain anonymous, but this is due, in part, to the blanket of fear that Obama used to suffocate truth, having prosecuted more whistle-blowers than all previous administrations combined. The Bin Laden raid remains highly classified, and those who go on record publicly can expect long prison sentences, or possibly worse.

The secondary media attacks used against Hersh were even shallower, amounting to dozens of pathetic attempts to poke holes in his logic.

Asking probing questions is of course a key part of journalism. If only the media had been so eager to ask similar questions of the Obama administration’s version of Bin-Laden’s death.

Even after the Obama administration admitted that its initial versions of the Bin Laden assassination were false, the media immediately settled comfortably into the new version, not wondering about the motive behind the previous false story, nor curious about the flaws of logic in the new version.

Hersh’s version of Bin-Laden’s death is logically superior to that of the Obama administration’s. And it’s this logic that Hersh’s article is grounded in. For example Hersh’s opening paragraph:

“The White House’s story might have been written by Lewis Carroll: would bin Laden, target of a massive international manhunt, really decide that a resort town [with a large military facility] forty miles from Islamabad would be the safest place to live and command al-Qaida’s operations?”

The gaping holes of logic in the official story were there from the beginning. Hersh actually asked questions and explored them while the rest of the media were content with regurgitating White House press releases.

And when the White House’s narrative became an Oscar winning movie — made with help from the CIA — the myth was cemented in popular culture. Until Hersh shattered it.

Interestingly, a longtime Middle East correspondent, Carlotta Gall, said publicly that “my own reporting [on the death of Bin Laden] tracks with Hersh’s.” Reporters from NBC made similar statements. But individuals who spoke up were immediately shouted down by the choir.

The media has a self-interest in maintaining the Bin Laden fiction because they’ve been an important cog in the lie machine. Additionally, the media has a huge stake in maintaining cozy relations with the Obama administration, since the White House rewards the “good media” by leaking selective stories to “good reporters” via anonymous “senior government officials.”

Obama’s motive for lying about the death of Bin Laden is the real story here, hidden under the piles of slander against Hersh. Why would Obama lie about Bin Laden’s assassination?

The motive is obvious: the Bin Laden death narrative protects the tortures of the Bush administration while giving spectacular PR to the lynch pin of U.S. foreign policy — the so-called “war on terror.”

For example, the film Zero Dark Thirty is based on the White House’s narrative. The outcome of the film is essentially an Oscar winning state-sponsored propaganda film: the fictional drama showing how the CIA successfully hunted down Bin Laden with a combination of cunning, technology and torture.

Hersh’s article exploded this lie, humiliating everyone who took part in it.

After Hersh uncovered the tip of the torture iceberg with his Abu Ghraib reporting in 2004, people around the world howled for justice and demanded the torturers be prosecuted. Obama took no action, and the Bin Laden assassination lie has been used to protect the criminals.

More importantly, the White House-Zero Dark Thirty narrative gave a mighty PR boost to the “war on terror,” where the U.S. throws hundreds of billions of dollars into bombs, warplanes, and mass surveillance that has proved to be a miraculous failure. The war on terror has “succeeded” only in further destabilizing the Middle East that then fertilizes the ground for extremist groups like ISIS.

Ultimately, the bi-partisan attack on Hersh shows the complete media conformity on U.S. foreign policy, where Republicans, Democrats, and even “progressive” media have come to accept a governmental policy of never-ending war and mass surveillance. No questions asked.

When Bush was president, there were divisions in the establishment over the Iraq war, and the liberal media were given freedom to attack. But the liberal media have been co-opted under Obama.

And the right-wing media share Obama’s foreign policy vision too. Hersh opened a door for Fox News to attack Obama on Syria and Bin Laden, but Fox slammed it shut and instead attacked Hersh. Yes, the right wing media hates Obama, but they can’t attack him on foreign policy because they agree with him, aside from the occasional quip about Obama not being aggressive enough. This bipartisan agreement on foreign policy has given Obama tremendous freedom to launch drone wars in six countries and lead a proxy war in Syria that Hersh helped expose last year.

When combined with the NSA spying program, Obama’s lies make previous presidential scandals — such as Watergate and Iran-Contra — look incredibly tame, while making the U.S. media look like accomplices instead of news reporters.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at [email protected]

Obama’s trade-deals — especially TPP with Asia, and TTIP with Europe — are so vicious against the American people, the Obama Administration has labeled the documents “Classified,” and is threatening prosecution against any member of Congress who quotes from the texts; it would be “leaking classified information.”

However, empirical economic studies already indicate what would likely be the result from both the TPP and the TTIP: one independent economic analysis has been done for each of these two international-trade deals, and both of them come up with the same conclusion: the publics everywhere will lose wealth because of them, but aristocrats, especially in the United States, will gain wealth because of them. (It’s like what happened with NAFTA, but only far more so.) In other words: the same billionaires who fund congressional and presidential campaigns are the people who will be taking from the general public vastly more money via TPP and TTIP than the paltry billions they’ve invested to fool voters into voting into office the Senators and Representatives who are now rubber-stamping into law Obama’s ‘trade’ deals. (And, of course, the same aristocrats also funded both Obama’s and Romney’s campaigns, just as they did those of both Clintons and of the Bushes. At the national level, they essentially own, not the government, but instead the people who are governing. The people they own, are the ones that are supposed to “represent” us; and the U.S. Supreme Court has said that this is ‘democracy’ in accord with ‘the Constitution’ — because the people who appointed those Republican ‘Justices’ were also owned by the aristocracy.)

Getting ‘our representatives’ to vote for Obama’s trade-deals is, especially for Democrats (who won office with help from labor unions) like herding sheep to slaughter: some Senators and Representatives feel bad about where they’re going, but the system is set up so that they just “go along to get along” anyway; it’s the way to success in any corrupt society. As Huffington Post reported even as early as June of 2013, “The Obama administration has barred any Congressional staffers from reviewing the full negotiation text and prohibited members of Congress from discussing the specific terms of the text with trade experts and reporters.”

Note this phrase “trade experts.” The closeted Republican, President Obama, doesn’t want experts to explain things to members of Congress, these deals are so bad for their voters back home whom they’re being paid by the government to represent. And, since only members of Congress are being allowed to see the documents (under guard in a congressional basement), and even congressional staffers are generally excluded, members of Congress have no one to advise them on the complex details except the lobbyists who represent the people who fund congressional campaigns. Some of these lobbyists might even have managed to see the documents, because hundreds of international corporations helped the Obama team to draft these documents.

Consequently, whereas international corporations have helped to write the documents, the public has been excluded from the process. The Obama Administration says that a few labor leaders and environmentalists were also included on the “advisory panels” that helped to draft the documents. But all of the details are secret; and even a mere attempt by a member of Congress to confirm something could cause the congressperson to be prosecuted. Obama severely prosecutes leakers of information that his Administration has chosen to label ‘Confidential.’

When a member of Congress goes down to the basement room to see these documents, members of the Obama Administration are there to answer the congressperson’s questions. If one of these Obama people might happen to lie when answering, the lie cannot be prosecuted, because the Obama Administration prohibits recording devices, so that no record exists of what is being said there. Consequently, no member of Congress has any reason to trust what he or she is being told in that room.

The progressive congressman, Alan Grayson, a Democrat, told HuffPo: “Having seen what I’ve seen, I would characterize this as a gross abrogation of American sovereignty. And I would further characterize it as a punch in the face to the middle class of America. I think that’s fair to say from what I’ve seen so far. But I’m not allowed to tell you why!”

Here is what has leaked out, from wikileaks and a few other reliable sources, that can explain why he said it’s a “gross abrogation of American sovereignty”:

Under the terms of these trade-deals, national sovereignty over the laws and regulations regarding workers’ rights, consumer protections, environmental protection, and protections of investors against frauds, will be ceded to international corporate panels, each of which will generally consist of three corporate attorneys, whose collective decisions will be final and non-appealable (unlike decisions by courts in democratic countries). Consequently, whereas now in the U.S. and most other nations, governmental laws and regulations come from democratically elected representatives, the new system will override that, and replace it with panel-members who represent instead the controlling stockholders in international corporations — basically a few hundred individuals throughout the world. (And those people can always phone or email one-another if there are any problems to be settled between themselves.)

Some Republicans have spoken out against Obama’s trade-deals, but no Republican Senator has voted against these deals. All Republicans are actually in favor of ceding democratic national sovereignty to fascist-corporate unappealable panels. (If you believe that the wealthiest should rule, then that’s the natural position to hold.) The crucial vote in the U.S. Senate was on 14 May 2015, when the issue was whether to grant these deals “Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority,” which is what Presidents since Nixon’s time have used in order to get Congress to cede to the Executive, the U.S. President, virtually 100% of Congress’s Constitutionally mandated role in treaty drafting and approval — making it effectively an entirely Presidential matter. This “Fast Track” was invented by the Republican President Nixon in 1974, in order to bring about an Executive dictatorship in the passage-into-law of international-trade treaties that would otherwise stand no real chance of becoming law, because too many members of Congress would lose their seats if they voted directly for such horrendous treaties. So, instead, there is now instead, for these super-terrible international-trade deals, “Fast Track,” as constituting the crucial vote. This trick enables a member of Congress to say that he or she had voted for “Fast Track” instead of for the trade-deal itself. (He then has actually voted to eliminate the Constitution’s requirement that any treaty needs two-thirds of the U.S. Senators to vote for it in order for the treaty to become law; that two-thirds is reduced by “Fast Track” to a standard 50%. Though in the U.S. Constitution international treaties were handled as requiring especially high caution in order for them to be able to become law, Nixon created this way around the Constitutional requirement, this “Fast Track” trick that should be thrown out by the U.S. Supreme Court.) The presumption here, in shunting these important things off into a procedural trick, is that voters are stupid enough to be easily fooled, and this is it: “Fast Track.”

Whereas Democrats in Congress tend to be opposed to “Fast Track,” Republicans in Congress have always supported it with near-unanimity. However, some Republicans face such strong resistance from their voters back home, that they lie and say they oppose “Fast Track.” When that congressperson subsequently votes in the Senate or House to pass “Fast Track,” only few of their voters back home even notice. And this increases even more the congressperson’s contempt for his or her voters, that they’re just fools or “suckers.” And this, in turn, reinforces that congressperson’s belief that only his or her rich benefactors should even be of concern at all.

Here are some headlines that feature Republicans speaking out against Obama’s trade deals:

“Sen. Jeff Sessions Blasts Obamatrade”

“Eagle Forum: No Fast Track for Obamatrade”

“TheTeaParty.net: No Fast Track for Obamatrade”

“American Family Association: No Fast Track for Obamatrade”

“Obamatrade: A gift for Sharia regimes”

“Conservatives hate Obamatrade even more than Democrats do”

Then, there’s this:

“Chris Christie comes out against fast track, joins 6 other GOP presidential aspirants”

That last one is dated 18 May 2015, and it says:

“With Chris Christie now coming out against fast track, joining presidential aspirants Bobby Jindal, Carly Fiorina, Rand Paul, Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham and Mike Huckabee, it is clear that Republican voters are dead set opposed to granting trade authority to President Obama. Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are risking seats in 2016 in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to get the legislation passed, jeopardizing any majority in the Senate a new Republican president might enjoy, and making it harder to win the states he or she will need in order to even get to the White House.”

But this was already four days after the key vote in the Senate, in which 52 Republicans voted “Yea,” 2 Republicans failed to vote at all, and no Republican voted “Nay” on “Fast Track — in other words, they actually voted to pass into law all of Obama’s international-trade deals. This included Rand Paul, and Lindsay Graham, who are the only two U.S. Senators on that lying list of alleged opponents of “Fast Track.” Voting along with them for “Fast Track” were 13 Democrats. But of the 33 “Nay” votes (the votes against “Fast Track”), 31 were Democrats, and 2 were Independents. None were Republicans.

So: Republicans were 52 to 0 in favor, with 2 abstentions; and Democrats were 13 to 31 against. Obama had virtually 100% of the Republicans with him, and he had 70% of the Democrats against him. This is normal for cheating the public. Whereas all Republicans are usually bad, only around 30% of Democrats are. It’s easier being a Republican in Congress — you just do what the people who invested in you invested in you to do. For Democrats, it’s not that easy.

Another sign of the phoniness of Republicans who mouth opposition to Obama’s trade deals, is that some of the very same Senators and Congresspersons who have written prominently against these deals, have also helped to pass them into law.

For example, here is Alabama Republican U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions, writing on May 4th, a mere ten days before he voted “Yea” in the Senate, to “Fast Track” Obama’s trade-deals into law:

 CRITICAL ALERT: TOP FIVE CONCERNS WITH TRADE PROMOTION AUTHORITY

Top Five Concerns With Trade Promotion Authority

CRITICAL ALERT: May 04, 2015

Congress has the responsibility to ensure that any international trade agreement entered into by the United States must serve the national interest, not merely the interests of those crafting the proposal in secret. It must improve the quality of life, the earnings, and the per-capita wealth of everyday working Americans. The sustained long-term loss of middle class jobs and incomes should compel all lawmakers to apply added scrutiny to a “fast-track” procedure wherein Congress would yield its legislative powers and allow the White House to implement one of largest global financial agreements in our history—comprising at least 12 nations and nearly 40 percent of the world’s GDP [he’s referring there to only the TPP, but ‘Fast Track’ would also apply to TTIP, with an additional 29 countries and almost all the rest of the world’s GDP]. The request for fast-track also comes at a time when the Administration has established a recurring pattern of sidestepping the law, the Congress, and the Constitution in order to repeal sovereign protections for U.S. workers in deference to favored financial and political allies.

With that in mind, here are the top five concerns about the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) [otherwise called “Fast Track”] that must be fully understood and addressed before passage:

1.  Consolidation Of Power In The Executive Branch. TPA eliminates Congress’ ability to amend or debate trade implementing legislation and guarantees an up-or-down vote on a far-reaching international agreement before that agreement has received any public review. Not only will Congress have given up the 67-vote threshold for a treaty and the 60-vote threshold for important legislation, but will have even given up the opportunity for amendment and the committee review process that both ensure member participation. Crucially, this applies not only to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) but all international trade agreements during the life of the TPA. There is no real check on the expiration of fast-track authority: if Congress does not affirmatively refuse to reauthorize TPA at the end of the defined authorization (2018), the authority is automatically renewed for an additional three years so long as the President requests the extension. And if a trade deal (not just TPP but any trade deal) is submitted to Congress that members believe does not fulfill, or that directly violates, the TPA recommendations—or any laws of the United States—it is exceptionally difficult for lawmakers to seek legislative redress or remove it from the fast track, as the exit ramp is under the exclusive control of the revenue and Rules committees.

Moreover, while the President is required to submit a report to Congress on the terms of a trade agreement at least 60 days before submitting implementing legislation, the President can classify or otherwise redact information from this report, limiting its value to Congress.

Is TPA designed to protect congressional responsibilities, or to limit Congress’ ability to do its duty? 

2.  Increased Trade Deficits. Barclays estimates that during the first quarter of this year, the overall U.S. trade deficit will reduce economic growth by .2 percent. History suggests that trade deals set into motion under the 6-year life of TPA could exacerbate our trade imbalance, acting as an impediment to both GDP and wage growth. Labor economist Clyde Prestowitz attributes 60 percent of the U.S.’ 5.7 million manufacturing jobs lost over the last decade to import-driven trade imbalances. And in a recent column for Reuters, a former chief executive officer at AT&T notes that

“since the [NAFTA and South Korea free trade] pacts were implemented, U.S. trade deficits, which drag down economic growth, have soared more than 430 percent with our free-trade partners. In the same period, they’ve declined 11 percent with countries that are not free-trade partners… Obama’s 2011 trade deal with South Korea, which serves as the template for the new Trans-Pacific Partnership, has resulted in a 50 percent jump in the U.S. trade deficit with South Korea in its first two years. This equates to 50,000 U.S. jobs lost.”

Job loss by U.S. workers means reduced consumer demand, less tax revenue flowing into the Treasury, and greater reliance on government assistance programs. It is important that Congress fully understand the impact of this very large trade agreement and to use caution to ensure the interests of the people are protected.

Furthermore, the lack of protections in TPA against foreign subsidies could accelerate our shrinking domestic manufacturing base. We have been getting out-negotiated by our mercantilist trading partners for years, failing to aggressively advance legitimate U.S. interests, but the proponents of TPA have apparently not sought to rectify this problem.

TPA proponents must answer this simple question: will your plan shrink the trade deficit or will it grow it even wider?

3.  Ceding Sovereign Authority To International Powers. A USTR outline of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (which TPA would expedite) notes in the “Key Features” summary that the TPP is a “living agreement.” This means the President could update the agreement “as appropriate to address trade issues that emerge in the future as well as new issues that arise with the expansion of the agreement to include new countries.” The “living agreement” provision means that participating nations could both add countries to the TPP without Congress’ approval (like China), and could also change any of the terms of the agreement, including in controversial areas such as the entry of foreign workers and foreign employees. Again: these changes would not be subject to congressional approval.

This has far-reaching implications: the Congressional Research Service reports that if the United States signs on to an international trade agreement, the implementing legislation of that trade agreement (as a law passed later in time) would supersede conflicting federal, state, and local laws. When this occurs, U.S. workers may be subject to a sudden change in tariffs, regulations, or dispute resolution proceedings in international tribunals outside the U.S.

Promoters of TPA should explain why the American people ought to trust the Administration and its foreign partners to revise or rewrite international agreements, or add new members to those agreements, without congressional approval. Does this not represent an abdication of congressional authority?

4.  Currency Manipulation. The biggest open secret in the international market is that other countries are devaluing their currencies to artificially lower the price of their exports while artificially raising the price of our exports to them. The result has been a massive bleeding of domestic manufacturing wealth. In fact, currency manipulation can easily dwarf tariffs in its economic impact. A 2014 biannual report from the Treasury Department concluded that the yuan, or renminbi, remained significantly undervalued, yet the Treasury Department failed to designate China as a “currency manipulator.” History suggests this Administration, like those before it, will not stand up to improper currency practices. Currency protections are currently absent from TPA, indicating again that those involved in pushing these trade deals do not wish to see these currency abuses corrected. Therefore, even if currency protections are somehow added into TPA, it is still entirely possible that the Administration could ignore those guidelines and send Congress unamendable trade deals that expose U.S. workers to a surge of underpriced foreign imports. President Obama’s longstanding resistance to meaningful currency legislation is proof he intends to take no action.

The President has repeatedly failed to stand up to currency manipulators. Why should we believe this time will be any different?

5.  Immigration Increases. There are numerous ways TPA could facilitate immigration increases above current law—and precious few ways anyone in Congress could stop its happening. For instance: language could be included or added into the TPP, as well as any future trade deal submitted for fast-track consideration in the next 6 years, with the clear intent to facilitate or enable the movement of foreign workers and employees into the United States (including intracompany transfers), and there would be no capacity for lawmakers to strike the offending provision. The Administration could also simply act on its own to negotiate foreign worker increases with foreign trading partners without ever advertising those plans to Congress. In 2011, the United States entered into an agreement with South Korea—never brought before Congress—to increase the duration of L-1 visas (a visa that affords no protections for U.S. workers).

Every year, tens of thousands of foreign guest workers come to the U.S. as part of past trade deals. However, because there is little transparency, estimating an exact figure is difficult. The plain language of TPA provides avenues for the Administration and its trading partners to facilitate the expanded movement of foreign workers into the U.S.—including visitor visas that are used as worker visas. The TPA reads:

“The principal negotiating objective of the United States regarding trade in services is to expand competitive market opportunities for United States services and to obtain fairer and more open conditions of trade, including through utilization of global value chains, by reducing or eliminating barriers to international trade in services… Recognizing that expansion of trade in services generates benefits for all sectors of the economy and facilitates trade.”

This language, and other language in TPA, offers an obvious way for the Administration to expand the number and duration of foreign worker entries under the concept that the movement of foreign workers into U.S. jobs constitutes “trade in services.”

Stating that “TPP contains no change to immigration law” is a semantic rather than a factual argument. Language already present in both TPA and TPP provide the basis for admitting more foreign workers, and for longer periods of time, and language could later be added to TPP or any future trade deal to further increase such admissions.

The President has already subjected American workers to profound wage loss through executive-ordered foreign worker increases on top of existing record immigration levels. Yet, despite these extraordinary actions, the Administration will casually assert that is has merely modernized, clarified, improved, streamlined, and updated immigration rules. Thus, at any point during the 6-year life of TPA, the Administration could send Congress a trade deal—or issue an executive action subsequent to a trade deal as part of its implementation—that increased foreign worker entry into the U.S., all while claiming it has never changed immigration law.

The President has circumvented Congress on immigration with serial regularity. But the TPA would yield new power to the executive to alter admissions while subtracting congressional checks against those actions. This runs contrary to our Founders’ belief, as stated in the Constitution, that immigration should be in the hands of Congress. The Supreme Court has consistently held that the Constitution grants Congress plenary authority over immigration policy. For instance, the Court ruled in Galvan v. Press, 347 U.S. 522, 531 (1954), that “the formulation of policies [pertaining to the entry of immigrants and their right to remain here] is entrusted exclusively to Congress… [This principle] has become about as firmly imbedded in the legislative and judicial issues of our body politic as any aspect of our government.” Granting the President TPA could enable controversial changes or increases to a wide variety of visas—such as the H-1B, B-1, E-1, and L-1—including visas that confer foreign nationals with a pathway to a green card and thus citizenship.

Future trade deals could also have the possible effect of preventing Congress from reforming abuses in our guest worker programs, as countries could complain that limitations on foreign worker travel constituted a trade barrier requiring adjudication by an international body.

The TPP also includes an entire chapter on “Temporary Entry” that applies to all parties and that affects U.S. immigration law. Additionally, the Temporary Entry chapter creates a separate negotiating group, explicitly contemplating that the parties to the TPP will revisit temporary entry at some point in the future for the specific purpose of making changes to this chapter—after Congress would have already approved the TPP. This possibility grows more acute given that TPP is a “living agreement” that can be altered without Congress.

Proponents of TPA should be required to answer this question: if you are confident that TPA would not enable any immigration actions between now and its 2021 expiration, why not include ironclad enforcement language to reverse any such presidential action?

CONCLUSION

Our government must defend the legitimate interests of American workers and American manufacturing on the world stage. The time when this nation can suffer the loss of a single job as a result of a poor trade agreement is over.

The American people want us to slow down a bit. The rapid pace of immigration and globalization has placed enormous pressures on working Americans. Lower-cost labor and lower-cost goods from countries with less per-person wealth have rushed into our marketplace, lowering American wages and employment. The public has grown increasingly skeptical of these elaborate proposals, stitched together in secret, and rushed to passage on the solemn promises of their promoters. Too often, these schemes collapse under their own weight. Our job is to raise our own standard of living here in America, not to lower our standard of living to achieve greater parity with the rest of the world. If we want an international trade deal that advances the interests of our own people, then perhaps we don’t need a “fast-track” but a regular track: where the President sends us any proposal he deems worthy and we review it on its own merits.

And then, he voted, on May 14th, to approve Fast-Track Trade Promotion Authority — he voted for everything that he criticized here. He’s not afraid of what the overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly conservative, voters back home think, the people who elected him; because, they respect the super-rich, like he does, and the super-rich are the people he serves; so, what’s there really for them to complain about? He comes from a plantation culture, and he does what they do. He’s Republican through and through. John Wilkes Booth’s bullet created the Republican Party that we have today, and he’s typical of it, just a normal Republican. Much like Obama himself is. They merely adjust their rhetoric in order to fool their voters. Professor Obama should write the textbook on it.

So: What was Jeff Sessions’s lie? It was the entire article, because the entire article was implicitly a promise that he would vote against “Fast Track.”

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity, and of  Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics.

Watch your thoughts for they become words,

Watch your words for they become actions,

Watch your actions, for they become habits, Watch your habits for they become your character, Watch your character for it becomes your destiny.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

For nations, history plays the role that character

confers on human beings.

—Henry Kissinger

All that I have done was for your own good.

—President William McKinley to Salvador Cisneros,

explaining the U.S. military occupation of Cuba (1900)

***

Expectations soared on December 17: “Sweeping changes,” exulted the New York Times, “ushering in a transformational era.” “A truly historic moment,” pronounced the Huffington Post. Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski of Miami rejoiced over the “game changer” announcements, and the Brookings Institution predicted “seismic change” in the offing. A “bold new policy,” proclaimed the Chicago Tribune.

Maybe . . . .

That the announcements of December 17 in Washington and Havana portended change could hardly be gainsaid, of course. Some things did indeed change. Cubans and Americans at the highest levels of government were speaking to each other—instead of at each other. That’s something. To reopen embassies in Havana and Washington: that’s something, too. All to the good, of course. Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson was most assuredly correct to note that “diplomatic relations and having embassies is incredibly important in a relationship like this where you have so much to overcome and where you have differences.”

But it is also true that some things have not changed, and therein lurks the specter of a past foretold, for much of what has not changed is precisely what has been at the source of the estrangement of the past 55 years.

***

The need for a change of policy was as self-evident as it was self-explanatory. A policy from another historical epoch, fashioned by policymakers three generations ago, bereft of plausible purpose, had assumed a life of its own as something of a policy legacy, as if a “trust”• passed on from one presidential administration to another: eleven presidential administrations, to be precise. The United States, President Obama affirmed correctly, cannot “keep doing the same thing for over five decades and expect a different result.” Hence, the President added, it was time to “end an outdated approach” and “to try something different.” The old policy, the President affirmed “hasn’t worked.” Senator Patrick Leahy agreed, and applauded the end of “53 years of a policy that has not worked.” A view shared, too, by Senator Jeff Flake: “It’s time to try something new.”

But troubling ambiguities lurk in the phrasing of celebratory narratives of the “bold new policy.” To change a “policy that has not worked” for 55 years in order to “try something new” speaks to an eminently rational logic, of course. But it is also true that power tends to assemble logic in accordance with its needs. In fact, the connotations of the phrasing are neither explicit nor explained: “has not worked” at . . . . what?

But we do know what “has not worked”: what “has not worked,” of course, is regime change, which was the overriding purpose to which 55 years of U.S. policy was given. The government long vilified in the United States continues to govern Cuba, and continues to be vilified.

***

The “bold new policy” appears to suggest less a change of ends than one of means, from a punitive policy devised to impoverish the Cuban people into rebellion to a benign policy designed to empower the Cuban people as agents of change. And indeed the operative phrase of the new policy is precisely “to empower the Cuban people.” Not a changed relationship with the government of Cuba, but a changed relationship with the people of Cuba—what Chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana Jeffrey DeLaurentis explained to the Harvard Crimson, “to extend a hand to the Cuban people.” A portentous distinction, to be sure, one that implies more than a semantic detail, and indeed invites the conclusion that “to try something new” implies a new way to try regime change.

The purport of policy was made explicit in the very first sentence of President Obama’s December 17 announcement: “Today the United States is changing its relationship with the people of Cuba.” The President expressed his conviction that “through a policy of engagement we can more effectively stand up for our values and help the Cuban people help themselves as they move into the twenty-first century.” And at another point: “I believe we can do more to support the Cuban people and promote our values through engagement. After all, these 50 years have shown that isolation has not worked. It’s time for a new approach.” Engagement with the Cuban people, the President indicated at his year-end press conference,

“offers the best prospect then of leading to greater freedom, greater self-determination on the part of the Cuban people . . . . Through engagement, we have a better chance of bringing about change than we would have otherwise . . . . And the more the Cuban people see what’s possible, the more interested they are going to be in change.”

The President reiterated the larger purpose of policy to Reuters, indicating that “we need to try something new that encourages and ultimately forces the Cuban government to engage in a modern economy.”

The “bold new policy” contemplates normal diplomatic relations with the Cuban government as a means to obtain wider access to the Cuban people, to enable the United States to “empower” the Cuban people as agents of change. “We strongly believe,” Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson explained to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, “that having an embassy in Havana will enable us to do more things that help us more effectively empower the Cuban people.” And Secretary Jacobson at another point in her testimony: “We want to try and go directly to the Cuban people . . . . I believe that we also will get some things that matter in opening our embassy and hopefully the ability to travel throughout the country and see more people, and support more people.” The United States, Secretary Jacobson emphasized, was “committed to the reestablishment of diplomatic relations, which will allow us to more effectively represent U.S. interests and increase engagement with the Cuban people.” The U.S. purpose was summarized by Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy Tomasz Malinowski: “The empowerment of the Cuban people must be the bedrock of our new policy towards Cuba, and it will be.”

***

Habits of power are not readily relinquished. U.S. relations with Cuba have been conditioned by nearly 200 years of history in which the warrant of entitlement has insinuated itself into the very premise of the policy rationale vis-a-vis Cuba. It presumes U.S. “authority”• to manage Cuban internal affairs, to seek to shape outcomes and to influence the course of events. The practice has historical antecedents in the nineteenth century, and in the course of time has developed into something of a default stance from which the United States has engaged Cuba, to this day. “If we engage,” President Obama explained to CNN’s Candy Crowley, “we have the opportunity to influence the course of events at a time when there’s going to be some generational change in that country. And I think we should seize it and I intend to do so.”

The interventionist disposition obtains moral validation in the guise of righteous motive and noble purpose, the exercise of power represented as the performance of beneficent intent, always in the best interest of the Cuban people and for their own good: deeds of disinterested concern for the wellbeing of the Cuban people. These are the sentiments that today inform the “bold new policy.”

Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme . . . .

The salient facets of U.S. policy initiatives stand in sharp relief as a matter of historical continuity. The policy appears to commit the United States to engage the Cuban people, to provide moral support and material assistance as a means to propel Cubans to act in behalf of change as a matter, presumptively, of their best interest. The “bold new policy” seeks to achieve from within what could not be accomplished from without—the interior meaning of “trying something new.” If not change of regime, exactly, in the short run, then change in the regime, in the long run. “We would hope to bring about change in the regime,” Secretary Jacobson acknowledged. “And simultaneously, we would hope to empower the Cuban people to be able to make that change.” Hints of destabilization abound. Secretary Malinowski was lucid: “Authoritarian regimes don’t just give up their power voluntarily. But change comes by empowering people to demand change. It comes by making the Cuban people less dependent on the Cuban state for their livelihood, for their survival. It comes through information coming from the outside, and less control by the Cuban state. And it comes from international pressure, and we will be able to generate more international pressure on the Cuban government as a result of this policy.”

The policy is designed to drive a wedge between the Cuban people and the Cuban government, to wean the Cuban people off their “dependence” on the State as a means to promote the development of civil society and market economy, whereupon the Cuban people thus “empowered” would be motivated to act in behalf of their own economic interests as agents of political change. “Our hope is,” Assistant Secretary Jacobson suggested,

“that we can empower the small entrepreneurs . . . with the emerging entrepreneurial class separating from the state . . . . The more people who are not reliant on the state for their economic future, [to] make their own economic decisions . . . the more it empowers people.”

The United States, Secretary Malinowski indicated, favored those policies in which “the Cuban people will be less dependent on their government and will have more power to shape their future. That is what we hope will happen.” One of the virtues of the black market in Cuba, Malinowski suggested, was that people “in addition to enriching themselves, become more independent, and less dependent on the state.” Secretary Jacobson reiterated this point to NPR: “The most important thing that we can do now is focus on empowering the Cuban people, to make sure that they have the wherewithal to decide their own future.”

The revision of regulatory policies was designed principally to increase financial support for the emerging private sector. U.S. trade regulations, explained Matthew Borman, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration, have been revised “to empower the nascent Cuban private sector by supporting private economic activity,” as well as “improve [Cubans’] living standards and gain greater economic independence from the state.” Indeed, by authorizing American companies to engage in telecommunications sales, Secretary Jacobson suggested, “and acting to get information into Cuba, to work with entrepreneurs . . . we can begin to increase the pace at which people separate themselves from the state.”

All in all, of course, policies the Americans deem to be in the best interest of the Cubans. The United States, Jacobson explained to Congress, wished to help the Cuban people “to be able to do what they wish. To be able to make their own decisions.” Simply put, Jacobson indicated, to enable “the Cuban people to freely determine their own future,” to “empower the Cuban people” and enable them “to take their lives into their own hands.” Habits of power persist. At some point in the nineteenth century, Americans arrived at the conviction that Cuba’s destiny was the possession of the United States. “We are guardians, self-appointed, to the Cuban people,” the New York Timespronounced in 1899. The sentiment informs the logic of the new policy. Resumption of normal diplomatic relations suggests the U.S. intent to establish an “activist” embassy, with an ambassador and/or embassy assigned to “empower the Cuban people.” They would follow the footsteps of past U.S. ambassadors to Cuba who inserted themselves deeply in Cuban internal affairs, including Enoch Crowder, Sumner Welles, Spruille Braden, and Earl E. T. Smith, among others, all of whom assumed something of a proconsular bearing in Havana. “We have always to consider,” exhorted Enoch Crowder in 1922, “the eternal vigil that must be exercised by America’s representative in Cuba.” The practice defined the role  of the U.S. embassy in Havana. “The United States,” former ambassador Earl E. T. Smith acknowledged in 1960, “until the advent of Castro, was so overwhelmingly influential in Cuba that . . . the American Ambassador was the second most important man in Cuba; sometimes even more important than the President.”

The specter of a new American embassy as site of opposition to the present Cuban government looms large. There is precedent for this, too: in 1933, when Ambassador Sumner Welles arrived to Havana in the name of U.S. “interest in the welfare of the Cuban people”—per his instructions—and thereupon proceeded to remove the government of Gerardo Machado and remained to conspire against the government of Ramón Grau San Martín.

The “bold new policy” toward Cuba emerges out of a tradition—indeed, a legacy—of entitlement, out a history in which the propriety of American power assumed the appearance of the natural order of things: all in all, culturally-determined and historically-conditioned practices from which the prerogative of power was normalized. The degree to which men and women charged with policy make decisions on the basis of historical self-understanding, often unwittingly, can be best understood through an understanding of the past by which they themselves were formed.

Louis A. Pérez, Jr. is the J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of History and director of the Institute for Study of the Americas at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

SOURCE: CENTER FOR LATIN AMERICAN AND LATINO STUDIES, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, D.C. SSRC, April, 2015. AU-SSRC Implications of Normalization: Scholarly Perspectives on U.S.-Cuban Relations April 2015

“It’s time that Pistol and Boo buggered back to the United States.” – Barnaby Joyce, Australian agriculture minister, ABC, May 14, 2015.

One should be able to make light of it, though anything involving introduced species, pet sympathy and a community watery-eyed at thoughts they might be affected is bound to bring frowns and scowls.  Attitudes to the environment in Australia tend to vary between loathing and anthropomorphic bliss.  Rarely does a sensible mind get a word in.

Animal slaughter is sanctioned by scientific-agricultural establishments, armed to the teeth with lethal viruses.  Elaborate techniques of killing the Indian Myna bird, to take but one example, fill city council brochures, some of which come uncomfortably close to historic example of how humankind dealt with their own.  (Take gassing in cars as a form of improvisation, and the general use of carbon monoxide.)  “The World Conservation Union,” notes the City of Lake Macquarie Council in tones of sombre finality, “has declared the Indian Myna as the second greatest threat to native birds after land clearing.”[1]

Tribal rituals characterise the process of hunting fauna that have erred in killing human counterparts.  The native Dingo is demonised as a marauder.  The elusive saltwater crocodile is pursued after consuming its human quarry.  Sharks are deemed to be terrors in need of culling.

Johnny Depp’s pets, who would otherwise only deserve mention in glossy back pages, have moved to centre stage after he did not declare them to Australian quarantine.  Both he and spouse Amber Heard were believed to have carried the dogs off a private jet concealed in a handbag.  “Under section 67 of the Quarantine Act,” stated a stringent senior lecturer in law at the University of Technology in Sydney Talia Anthony, “it is very clear that he should have been charged straight away.”[2]

At its core is a persistent tendency in the Australian approach to external threats.  Here, they are not coming in the form of biped refugees or asylum seekers evading fictional queues of processing.  In this case, they are quadrupeds who might be infected with an assortment of diseases.  The rationales are similar – threats to the sanctity of Australia’s virgo intacta, be it by morals or the dangers of a biohazard.

The country’s Agriculture Minister, the rather colourful if incautious Barnaby Joyce, explained that, “There is a process if you want to bring animals: you get the permits, they go into quarantine and then you can have them.”  Regarding Depp, “if we let movie stars – even though they’ve been the sexiest man alive twice – to come into our nation [and break the laws], then why don’t we just break the laws for everybody?”

The theme of environmental purity was bound to intervene in descriptions from the minister. “The reason you can walk through a park in Brisbane and not have in the back of your mind ‘what happens if a rabid dog comes out and bites me or bites my kid’ is because we’ve kept the disease out.”  No such dogs.  No rabies down under in the land of the pure.  This view, incidentally, is not shared by US customs, which disagrees with Barnaby on the issue of Australia being free of rabies.

For those not in the know, Australia’s policy on the subject of ecological protection is filled with inconsistency and disaster. It is often insensible – lurking behind it seems to be an insistence that the scientific fraternity has a monopoly on getting it wrong.  At the very least, they want first digs at ruining the environment, a sort of merry attempt at curing by killing.  A Hollywood actor, well, would be something else.  Things might have gotten amusing had the actor introduced an invasive species of cactus, something which Australia knows all too well from the introduction of the prickly pear in the 19^th century.

The Australian environment has been subjected to sustained attacks for decades.  Australia’s European settler’s laced Victoria and New South Wales with European varietals, obsessed by ideas of recreating the majesty of the English garden. The rabbit founds its way onto the scene, wreaking staggering havoc.  Foxes were introduced.  As were forms of game.  Animal sympathy came a distant second to agricultural protection.

The scientific industrial complex then went into action attempting to find a “cure” for the Australian environment: the rabbit would be infected with myxomatosis, a condition that sees the animal develop tumours, fatigue and blindness.  Death can follow in a matter of weeks.  True to nature’s wisdom, the species began resisting the introduced virus, which called for a second viral blast – rabbit calicivirus.

There is an eco-war being waged, and Boo and Pistol were destined to become its collateral, if somewhat hyped victims.  Had they been euthanized, as promised by Joyce, they would have joined others in the special, if somewhat manic efforts at keeping Australia safe.  Yet such a discussion would be taking place alongside the daily battle of community inspired “eco-warriors” keen to rid the environment of introduced species.  They are the self-appointed guardians of the green gate, keen to back up native species against vicious invaders. Kill the cane toad.  Kill the myna. Kill, well, everything foreign.

All of this is serious stuff indeed, so much so that the “war on terrier” saga found US-based comedian John Oliver in an unsparing mood on HBO’s Last Week Tonight.  After describing Australia as a land of unforgivably bizarre exotica (the platypus was deemed a “creep”) his targets became clear.  Pistol and Boo, in being told to bugger off, were being given the full rounded political treatment.  “I’ve got to say that’s pretty ballsy.  Elected officials very rarely risk openly telling puppies to go fuck themselves.”[3]

Eco-terrorism, like other forms of terrorism, assumes a variety of forms.  It can come in the form of rampant rabbits, concealed canines, and microbial activity.  But it also manifests itself in the negligent and generally incompetent actions of the scientific environmental front.  Like Joyce, purity is their game.  Catastrophe is often their handiwork.

In its dramatic finale, the dogs were flown home before the “death counter” ticked over.  And Oliver’s program issued an ultimatum to Australians.  “As of this moment you’ve got 50 hours to get everything Australian out of our country, or else.”

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  Email: [email protected]

“It’s time that Pistol and Boo buggered back to the United States.” – Barnaby Joyce, Australian agriculture minister, ABC, May 14, 2015.

One should be able to make light of it, though anything involving introduced species, pet sympathy and a community watery-eyed at thoughts they might be affected is bound to bring frowns and scowls.  Attitudes to the environment in Australia tend to vary between loathing and anthropomorphic bliss.  Rarely does a sensible mind get a word in.

Animal slaughter is sanctioned by scientific-agricultural establishments, armed to the teeth with lethal viruses.  Elaborate techniques of killing the Indian Myna bird, to take but one example, fill city council brochures, some of which come uncomfortably close to historic example of how humankind dealt with their own.  (Take gassing in cars as a form of improvisation, and the general use of carbon monoxide.)  “The World Conservation Union,” notes the City of Lake Macquarie Council in tones of sombre finality, “has declared the Indian Myna as the second greatest threat to native birds after land clearing.”[1]

Tribal rituals characterise the process of hunting fauna that have erred in killing human counterparts.  The native Dingo is demonised as a marauder.  The elusive saltwater crocodile is pursued after consuming its human quarry.  Sharks are deemed to be terrors in need of culling.

Johnny Depp’s pets, who would otherwise only deserve mention in glossy back pages, have moved to centre stage after he did not declare them to Australian quarantine.  Both he and spouse Amber Heard were believed to have carried the dogs off a private jet concealed in a handbag.  “Under section 67 of the Quarantine Act,” stated a stringent senior lecturer in law at the University of Technology in Sydney Talia Anthony, “it is very clear that he should have been charged straight away.”[2]

At its core is a persistent tendency in the Australian approach to external threats.  Here, they are not coming in the form of biped refugees or asylum seekers evading fictional queues of processing.  In this case, they are quadrupeds who might be infected with an assortment of diseases.  The rationales are similar – threats to the sanctity of Australia’s virgo intacta, be it by morals or the dangers of a biohazard.

The country’s Agriculture Minister, the rather colourful if incautious Barnaby Joyce, explained that, “There is a process if you want to bring animals: you get the permits, they go into quarantine and then you can have them.”  Regarding Depp, “if we let movie stars – even though they’ve been the sexiest man alive twice – to come into our nation [and break the laws], then why don’t we just break the laws for everybody?”

The theme of environmental purity was bound to intervene in descriptions from the minister. “The reason you can walk through a park in Brisbane and not have in the back of your mind ‘what happens if a rabid dog comes out and bites me or bites my kid’ is because we’ve kept the disease out.”  No such dogs.  No rabies down under in the land of the pure.  This view, incidentally, is not shared by US customs, which disagrees with Barnaby on the issue of Australia being free of rabies.

For those not in the know, Australia’s policy on the subject of ecological protection is filled with inconsistency and disaster. It is often insensible – lurking behind it seems to be an insistence that the scientific fraternity has a monopoly on getting it wrong.  At the very least, they want first digs at ruining the environment, a sort of merry attempt at curing by killing.  A Hollywood actor, well, would be something else.  Things might have gotten amusing had the actor introduced an invasive species of cactus, something which Australia knows all too well from the introduction of the prickly pear in the 19^th century.

The Australian environment has been subjected to sustained attacks for decades.  Australia’s European settler’s laced Victoria and New South Wales with European varietals, obsessed by ideas of recreating the majesty of the English garden. The rabbit founds its way onto the scene, wreaking staggering havoc.  Foxes were introduced.  As were forms of game.  Animal sympathy came a distant second to agricultural protection.

The scientific industrial complex then went into action attempting to find a “cure” for the Australian environment: the rabbit would be infected with myxomatosis, a condition that sees the animal develop tumours, fatigue and blindness.  Death can follow in a matter of weeks.  True to nature’s wisdom, the species began resisting the introduced virus, which called for a second viral blast – rabbit calicivirus.

There is an eco-war being waged, and Boo and Pistol were destined to become its collateral, if somewhat hyped victims.  Had they been euthanized, as promised by Joyce, they would have joined others in the special, if somewhat manic efforts at keeping Australia safe.  Yet such a discussion would be taking place alongside the daily battle of community inspired “eco-warriors” keen to rid the environment of introduced species.  They are the self-appointed guardians of the green gate, keen to back up native species against vicious invaders. Kill the cane toad.  Kill the myna. Kill, well, everything foreign.

All of this is serious stuff indeed, so much so that the “war on terrier” saga found US-based comedian John Oliver in an unsparing mood on HBO’s Last Week Tonight.  After describing Australia as a land of unforgivably bizarre exotica (the platypus was deemed a “creep”) his targets became clear.  Pistol and Boo, in being told to bugger off, were being given the full rounded political treatment.  “I’ve got to say that’s pretty ballsy.  Elected officials very rarely risk openly telling puppies to go fuck themselves.”[3]

Eco-terrorism, like other forms of terrorism, assumes a variety of forms.  It can come in the form of rampant rabbits, concealed canines, and microbial activity.  But it also manifests itself in the negligent and generally incompetent actions of the scientific environmental front.  Like Joyce, purity is their game.  Catastrophe is often their handiwork.

In its dramatic finale, the dogs were flown home before the “death counter” ticked over.  And Oliver’s program issued an ultimatum to Australians.  “As of this moment you’ve got 50 hours to get everything Australian out of our country, or else.”

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  Email: [email protected]

A total of $56.73 million has been paid over the last three decades, to ensure that the U.S. Congress is populated only by those who accept the agenda of the American Zionist Council.

This, according to the official record, was the amount paid by the American Zionist Council from 1978-2014 to ensure the selection of its approved congressional candidates in order that the House of Representatives and the Senate would support the Political Zionist agenda that includes the illegal colonisation of the Occupied West Bank.

This is to frustrate the will of the UN and the international community, including the European Union. The Netanyahu government objective being to create a ‘Greater Israel’ and the compulsory ‘transfer’ of all indigenous Arabs from out of the former land of Palestine. This goes directly against the provisions of the British Mandate government’s Balfour Declaration – upon which the state of Israel was established, in 1948, under pressure from the AZC (the forerunner of AIPAC) – which explicitly states:

 ‘it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine ….”

Netanyahu’s Plan is not only the Zionisation of all the land from the Jordan to the Mediterranean in order to construct a ‘Greater Israel’ but, ultimately – and dangerously – to hold a nuclear threat over the adjoining countries of Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and the Gulf states – a policy colluded in by a U.S. House of Representatives that is apparently more interested in luxury villa holidays in Tel Aviv’s Herzlia rather than in freedom, justice, civil rights and the American public they are supposed to represent.

For the documented list of individual payments to Members of Congress, go to: http://www.wrmea.org/pdf/2014pac_charts_octobertotal.pdf

At the prospect of the international community’s nuclear deal with Iran, Saudi Arabia has reportedly taken a decision to call in an old favor from Pakistan and get some of its nuclear weapons.

Saudi Arabia is widely believed to have bankrolled the Pakistani nuclear weapons program. In exchange, Riyadh reportedly expects Islamabad to provide missiles in times of trouble to defend the kingdom.

“For the Saudis the moment has come,” a former American defense official told The Sunday Times newspaper. “There has been a longstanding agreement in place with the Pakistanis, and the House of Saud has now made the strategic decision to move forward.”

According to the report, no actual transfer of weapons has taken place yet, but “the Saudis mean what they say and they will do what they say,” the source reportedly said.

The report comes a month ahead of a meeting between Tehran and the P5+1 group to finalize a deal, which would lift sanctions from Iran in exchange for making its nuclear program more transparent and restricted. Key US allies in the Middle East, Israel and Saudi Arabia, are objecting to the deal, saying it would ultimately allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.

Reports of Saudi Arabia getting nukes aren’t new. In November 2013, BBC’s Newsnight reported on the alleged nuclear sharing agreement between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

The program cited Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, telling a conference in Sweden that if Iran got the bomb, “the Saudis will not wait one month. They already paid for the bomb, they will go to Pakistan and bring what they need to bring.”

The speculation came just as nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 were showing progress in Geneva.

Some experts, however, doubted that the supposed nuclear arming by Saudi Arabia was as simple as calling in the debt.

“I doubt that Pakistan is ready to send nuclear weapons to Saudi Arabia,” Mark Fitzpatrick, a non-proliferation expert with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told the Guardian at the time.

“Pakistan’s reputation suffered greatly the last time they assisted other countries with nuclear weapons technology (i.e., the sales by [Pakistani nuclear project chief] A.Q. Khan, with some governmental support or at least acquiescence, to North Korea, Iran and Libya). Pakistan knows that transferring nuclear weapons to Saudi Arabia would also incur huge diplomatic and reputational costs.”

The potential of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East triggered by the Iran deal is one of the argument critics use to denigrate the talks. At the moment there are several countries in the region known or believed to have nuclear weapons.

Pakistan has a stockpile of 80 to 120 warheads designed to counterbalance India’s arsenal, while Turkey hosts NATO nuclear weapons. Israel is said to have a stockpile, although it has never officially confirmed this.

Several other nations have civilian nuclear programs, including Iran, Egypt and UAE.

The dangerous underfunding of US infrastructure was underscored by a fatal train derailment on May 12^th. The tragedy did not deter the House Appropriations Committee from voting to slash Amtrak funding the very next day. There are ways Congress could fund its massive infrastructure bill without raising taxes. But the conservative-controlled Congress seems to have other plans for the nation’s profitable public assets.

The May 12^th train derailment near Philadelphia, which killed eight people and hospitalized 200, was the deadliest Amtrak accident in recent history. The train barreled around a dangerous bend at 106 mph, more than double the 50 mph speed limit for the curve.

Whether this was due to operator error or mechanical issues is not yet known. But experts say the derailment might have been averted by a safety system called positive train control, which can automatically reduce the speed of a train that is going too fast. The system must be installed on both the train and the route. The Amtrak train had it, but on that stretch of track in that direction it was not yet operational.

Why not? The stretch was known to be dangerous. Nearly 80 passengers died near the spot in an earlier derailment in 1943. Absence of positive train control was also cited as a factor in the fatal 2013 crash of a Metro-North train in the Bronx.

The chief problem, as with infrastructure generally, is a woeful lack of funds. Railroads are under a congressional mandate to install the positive train control system on passenger routes and major freight lines by the end of the year, but they are seeking an extension because of the cost and complexity of the work.

In an article titled “Why You Can’t Talk About the Amtrak Derailment Without Talking About Our Infrastructure Crisis,” Aviva Shen observes that the Northeast Corridor is the busiest and most profitable rail route in the US. The line, which runs from Boston through New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore to Washington D.C. , is dealing with more riders now than ever. But Amtrak has been starved of the funds required to keep up with this increased demand. It faces a backlog of repairs on bridges and tunnels that date back to the beginning of the 20th century, obsolete rail interlockings, and trains that rely on 1930s-era components. Repairs for the Northeast Corridor are expected to require $4.3 billion in fiscal years 2015-2019, while federal funding is expected to dwindle to $872 million.

But neither these exigencies nor the May 12th crash was enough to stop the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee from voting on May 13th, only one day after the tragic derailment, to reduce grants to Amtrak by $252 million, or about 15% from last year’s level. The measure still needs to clear the full House and Senate before going into effect in October.

Putting the Squeeze on Amtrak

While transportation infrastructure is short of funds across the board, Amtrak has been pinched more than most. Congress holds the agency to a unique standard by demanding that it turn a profit per passenger. This is not true for highways and airports, which receive about 45 times the subsidies that Amtrak does.

Why the difference in treatment? Perhaps because of Amtrak’s large and growing profit potential. Trains charge by the rider; roads do not. Republicans have long called for the privatization of the Northeast Corridor – this despite the abject failure of the privatization of the British Rail System.

In an editorial titled “How Two Billionaires Are Destroying High Speed Rail in America,” Mike Vainisi observes that the push against public mass transit is being led by a think tank called the Reason Foundation, which is funded by the notorious Koch brothers.The Koch brothers’ $44 billion fortune comes largely from Koch Industries, an oil and gas conglomerate.That means they have a vested interest in those gas-guzzling single-rider vehicles that are mass transit’s competitors, the cars and trucks that use the roads that are heavily subsidized by the federal government.

Congress’s unique treatment of Amtrak parallels that of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), for which privatization has also long been sought. The USPS was successfully self-funded throughout its long history, until it was pushed into insolvency by an onerous 2006 congressional mandate that it prefund healthcare for its workers 75 years into the future. No other entity, public or private, has the burden of funding generations of employees not yet born. The mandate appears so unreasonable as to raise suspicions that the nation’s largest publicly-owned industry has been intentionally targeted for takedown, either because private competitors want the business or because private developers want the valuable postal properties.

Privatization would similarly gut Amtrak’s primary source of revenue and drive it into insolvency. The privatization proposal has never gained much traction outside conservative circles, but lawmakers have proposed massive cuts to Amtrak’s budget virtually every chance they get.

Driven by Debt into the Arms of Investors

The push for cuts is part of the austerity meme of a Congress bent on “balancing the budget” at all costs. Conservatives are determined not to breach the artificially-imposed debt ceiling, which was hit once again in March. Congress again fixed the books by borrowing from federal pension funds and other creative accounting techniques. But the lid has largely been shut on new spending, even for such essential services as infrastructure.

The major federal transportation fund will run out of money by the end of May, and a $478 billion transportation funding bill is facing an uphill battle. Even if it passes, it will be grossly inadequate to service the massive infrastructure needs of the country. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, restoring US infrastructure will require an investment of $3.6 trillion by 2020. If the current level of spending continues, funds will fall short of that by $1.6 trillion.

If Congress won’t provide the money, who will? Infrastructure is the latest investment boom for private funds in search of safe, lucrative returns. Investors are particularly interested in the “plum” projects with significant profit potential. That would include Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor and the US Postal Service.

Infrastructure projects can yield decades of steady, cash-flow-heavy returns of up to 10 to 14 percent –“a return like a stock’s with security like a bond’s” – and they are effectively guaranteed by the government. They are good for investors but not so good for governments. A rule of thumb is that borrowing to fund infrastructure doubles the cost.

Besides loans, infrastructure opportunities attractive to investors include outright privatization – the sale of public assets at fire sale prices to meet government budget constraints – and Public Private Partnerships, which privatize gains while socializing losses, imposing long-term costs and risks on the public.

If the Trans-Pacific Partnership passes, investors will be guaranteed their “expected profits” no matter what. The interests of capital will, finally and unconditionally, have trumped those of government and the people.

Taking a Lesson from the Chinese

While Congress starves US infrastructure of funds, the ultra-modern, efficient and comfortable rail systems of Europe, China and Japan are leaving the US in the dust. The Chinese have built nearly 10,000 miles of high-speed rail in the last decade, while US legislators are still just arguing about it.The Chinese have built nearly 10,000 miles of

Where did the Chinese find the money? About 40% comes from bonds issued by the Ministry of Railway, 10-20% comes from provincial and local governments, and the remaining 40-50% is provided by the national government through lending by state-owned banks and financial institutions. Like private banks, state-owned banks simply create money as credit on their books. The difference is that they return their profits to the government, and the loans can be rolled over indefinitely. In effect, the Chinese government just decides to do the work, issues Chinese currency to finance it, and pays Chinese workers to get it done.

The US could fund its infrastructure in the same way. As financial author Richard Duncan observes, under current market conditions, direct money issuance can be done without causing price inflation. Prices go up when demand (money) exceeds supply (goods and services); and with mechanization and the availability of cheap labor in vast global markets today, supply can keep up with demand for decades to come. Duncan writes:

Quantitative Easing has only been possible because it has occurred at a time when Globalization is driving down the price of labor and industrial goods. The combination of fiat money and Globalization creates a unique moment in history where the governments of the developed economies can print money on an aggressive scale without causing inflation.

They should take advantage of this once-in-history opportunity to borrow more in order to invest in new industries and technologies, to restructure their economies and to retrain and educate their workforce at the post-graduate level.

Rather than issuing money to bail out the largest multinational banks, the Federal Reserve could do a round of quantitative easing directed at developing US infrastructure, creating US jobs using US labor and materials. But Congress seems bent instead on creating an artificial debt crisis to justify the privatization of the nation’s choicest public assets, opening them to exploitation by wealthy investors.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the best-selling Web of Debt. Her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her 300+ blog articles are at EllenBrown.com.

Journal article by authors from Soma General Hospital and Tohoku University, Apr 7, 2015 (emphasis added):

Change in and Long-Term Investigation of Neuro-Otologic Disorders in Disaster-Stricken Fukushima Prefecture [Neuro-otology: Branch of clinical medicine which treats neurological disorders of the ear]

• Soma City [is] 44 km north of Fukushima Daiichi… almost all patients who require hospitalization for ear, nose, and throat (ENT) care were referred to our department… We thus investigated the influence of the disaster on internal ear diseases.
• Regarding the evacuation area, the total number of patients [in the ENT department] increased 4.64 times [364% in 1st year], 4.24 times [324% in 2nd year], and 4.54 times [354% in 3rd year] compared with the number before the disaster.
• New patients [with vertigo, Meniere’s disease, and acute low-tone sensorineural hearing loss] in Shinchi Town… increased by 64.3%, 114.3%, and 46.4% [in years 1, 2, and 3] respectively… In the case of Minami-Soma City, except the evacuation area… increased by 84.2%, 152.6%, and 142.1%, respectively… Regarding the evacuation area… the numbers of patients with vertigo, MD, or ALHL became 7 times [600% increase in 1st year], 5 times [400% increase in 2nd year], and 7 times [600% increase in 3rd year].
• Although the causes for MD and ALHL are still unknown [the rise] might be due to increased tension and stress… As for the cases [of vertigo] we were unable to establish the neuro-otologic pathogeneses in… 72%  [and] there may have been cases of psychogenic dizziness… administration of an anti-vertigenous drug or advice to keep calm and to have a sound mind did not help… There were some difficult cases where ENT treatment alone did not work, presumably because these cases were complicated with some mental diseases… In some serious cases, we… referred the patients to psychiatric care or prescribed psychosomatic medicine. Some patients refused our advice… or to admit that they had a mental problem.
• The number of reported cases of heart disease and brain infarction have increased in the devastated area… Diabetes, osteoporosis, and psychiatric illnesses were feared to have worsened… There is a great concern that there will be additional health hazards, and we strongly feel the need for administrative support.

Journal of the American Academy of Audiology (pdf), 1995: Ototoxicity and Irradiation — Additional Etiologies of Hearing Loss in Adults…

The article [discusses] the effects of irradiation on hearing [in patients] exposed to excessive radiation as a result of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster… Shidlovckaya of the Kiev Research Institute of Otolaryngology has been studying [cleanup workers from] Chernobyl… her patients have evidenced a number of disorders, including hearing loss…

When Shidlovckaya divided her population into three groups – [those] who worked directly at the disaster site; residents… nearby; and residents… some distance from the disaster site – an interesting pattern in the auditory results emerged… analysis indicated that, in 100 percent of [workers] examined, there are disturbances or abnormalities…

Furthermore, the… lesser radiation exposure… the less likely it was that these deviations would be present… Obviously, this is an important area of further research and could have a significant impact on our reaction to patients who have been exposed to radiation…

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2009: Diseases of Sense Organs — Throughout the more contaminated territories [around Chernobyl,] hearing abnormalities occur with greater frequency… Between 46 and 69% of surveyed liquidators had some hearing disorder.

Watch: St. Louis Children’s Hospital  on radiation-induced hearing loss

A poll released today shows that Americans across the political spectrum hate the Patriot Act and NSA spying.

The bipartisan polling team – made up of Global Strategy Group and G Public Strategies – found (edited for readability):

• By nearly a 2:1 margin (60% modify, 34% preserve), Americans believe the Patriot Act should not be reauthorized in its current form. With broad, bipartisan support across all ages, ideologies and political parties, voters are rejecting the argument that the Patriot Act should be preserved with no changes because of potential terrorist threats. Millennials (65% modify) and Independent men (75% modify), in particular, are driving the push for modification to limit government surveillance.

• By more than 4:1 (82% concerned, 18% not concerned), voters find it concerning that the United States government is collecting and storing the personal information of Americans, including 31% who are extremely concerned and 25% who are very concerned.

• Over three quarters of voters found four different examples of government spying personally concerning to them. The government accessing personal communications, information or records without a judge’s permission (83%) and using that information for things other than stopping terrorist attacks (83%) were the two most concerning examples to voters.

• Specific arguments made in favor of adding more protections for Americans around privacy, also proved to be convincing to voters. 84% of voters said it was a convincing argument that local police and the FBI should have a warrant to search phone and email records, further confirming that Americans believe that individual privacy rights should be more strongly protected. Additionally, 81% of voters were convinced more protections were needed on account of companies providing loopholes in their services to make surveillance easier for the government.

This jibes with previous polls showing that Americans:

• Value privacy over anti-terror protections

• Don’t believe the NSA

• And are now more afraid of our own government than terrorists

Those claims that Monsanto made – that glyphosate was harmless to humans – well, the company is about to pay for that ‘false advertising’ in the form of a class action lawsuit put forth by the offices of T. Matthew Phillips in Los Angeles, California.

In the lawsuit filed in California, Monsanto is accused of:

The deliberate falsification to conceal the fact that glyphosate is harmful to humans and animals.

The class action lawsuit (Case No: BC 578 942) was filed in Los Angeles County, California against biotechnology giant Monsanto. It alleges that Monsanto is guilty of false advertising by claiming that glyphosate, the active ingredient in their best-selling herbicide, Roundup, “targets an enzyme only found in plants and not in humans or animals.” You can see this statement marked clearly on some of Monsanto’s products sold in the state.

The lawsuit attests that the enzyme in question, EPSP synthase, is found in the microbiota that reside in our intestinal tracts, and therefore the enzyme is “found in humans and animals.” Due to the disruption of gut flora by glyphosate, Monsanto’s chemicals do indeed affect humans.

Why is Monsanto being sued? Because their product kills off our healthy gut-flora. Specifically:

“. . . glyphosate is linked to stomach and bowel problems, indigestion, ulcers, colitis, gluten intolerance, sleeplessness, lethargy, depression, Crohn’s Disease, Celiac Disease, allergies, obesity, diabetes, infertility, liver disease, renal failure, autism, Alzheimer’s, endocrine disruption, and the W.H.O. recently announced glyphosate is ‘probably carcinogenic’.”

The International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization (WHO), last month declared that glyphosate is a Group 2A carcinogen. The American Cancer Society quickly followed suit, also listing glyphosate as a Group 2A carcinogen.

Victory: German Retail Giant Removes Glyphosate from 250 Stores

Countries around the world are demanding that Roundup be banned, at least until ‘further research’ on its harmful affects can be completed. But even an Environmental Protection Agency memo classified glyphosate as a possible carcinogen in 1985. Later in 1991, when the agency randomly changed the classification to ‘not carcinogenic,’ three scientists involved in the study refused to sign, and one wrote “do not concur.”

The document which will be presented in court contains data that clearly shows a statistically significant increase in tumors in laboratory animals treated with glyphosate. Monsanto was only able to make the claim that tumors in rats could not be related to glyphosate because there were not more tumors in rats who were given higher doses.

This lawsuit is likely the long-awaited tipping point for millions of people who are tired of being poisoned by Big Ag and biotech greed, irreverence for human life and the environment, and utter disdain for our legal system which is meant to protect the innocent.

Along with this lawsuit is another filed against the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture just weeks ago, by Beijing resident Yang Xiao-lu. It requests disclosure of a toxicology report which was submitted to Chinese officials for the herbicide’s registration in China.

The case has been accepted and the collegiate panel of the court has informed the plaintiff that, considering that Monsanto is a stakeholder to the case, they have added Monsanto as an involved party.

Chinese citizens asked for this toxicology report once before, but the Ministry of Agriculture denied them. The Ministry said that they had to protect “trade secrets” of Monsanto and other biotech bullies.

Likely the only thing that needed to be protected was Monsanto’s reputation when the recipe for their toxic products are already known the world over.

Attorney T. Matthew Phillips says:

“The defendant intentionally misleads consumers by misrepresenting and concealing the true and correct facts concerning glyphosate. We are not trying to prove that Roundup is harmful or carcinogenic, we are merely pointing out that Monsanto is lying about the enzymes that Roundup targets. Roundup kills the weeds in your backyard and the weeds in your stomach.”

Judgment is sought against Monsanto to prohibit the company from continuing to make the claim that glyphosate targets an enzyme not found in humans and for compensation to the plaintiffs, including attorney fees.

Residents of California can become members of the class in this action by contacting T. Matthew Phillips. Phillips has indicated that he hopes other attorneys in other states will follow suit [pun intended].

4/22/2015: Case number was added.

4/23/2015: The lawsuit can be downloaded from http://www.monsantoclassaction.org/

Residents of California can add their names to the class. Plaintiffs are soliciting funds to help cover litigation costs: http://www.gofundme.com/monsantolawsuit

4/25/2015: T. Matthew Phillips will ask the court to compel the Defendant to reimburse donors, with interest.

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Judicial Watch announced on 18 May 2015 that it obtained more than 100 pages of previously classified “Secret” documents from the Department of Defense (DOD)and the Department of State revealing that DOD almost immediately reported that the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was committed by the al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood-linked “Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman” (BCOAR), and had been planned at least 10 days in advance. Rahman is known as the Blind Sheikh, and is serving life in prison for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other terrorist acts.  The new documents also provide the first official confirmation that shows the U.S. government was aware of arms shipments from Benghazi to Syria.  The documents also include an August 2012 analysis warning of the rise of ISIS and the predicted failure of the Obama policy of regime change in Syria.

The documents were released in response to a court order in accordance with a May 15, 2014, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against both the DOD and State Department seeking communications between the two agencies and congressional leaders “on matters related to the activities of any agency or department of the U.S. government at the Special Mission Compound and/or classified annex in Benghazi.”

Spelling and punctuation is duplicated in this release without corrections.

A Defense Department document from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), dated September 12, 2012, the day after the Benghazi attack, details that the attack on the compound had been carefully planned by the BOCAR terrorist group “to kill as many Americans as possible.”  The document was sent to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Obama White House National Security Council.  The heavily redacted Defense Department “information report” says that the attack on the Benghazi facility “was planned and executed by The Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman (BCOAR).”  The group subscribes to “AQ ideologies:”

The attack was planned ten or more days prior on approximately 01 September 2012. The intention was to attack the consulate and to kill as many Americans as possible to seek revenge for U.S. killing of Aboyahiye ((ALALIBY)) in Pakistan and in memorial of the 11 September 2001 atacks on the World Trade Center buildings.

“A violent radical,” the DIA report says, is “the leader of BCOAR is Abdul Baset ((AZUZ)), AZUZ was sent by ((ZAWARI)) to set up Al Qaeda (AQ) bases in Libya.”  The group’s headquarters was set up with the approval of a “member of the Muslim brother hood movement…where they have large caches of weapons.  Some of these caches are disguised by feeding troughs for livestock.  They have SA-7 and SA-23/4 MANPADS…they train almost every day focusing on religious lessons and scriptures including three lessons a day of jihadist ideology.”

The Defense Department reported the group maintained written documents, in “a small rectangular room, approximately 12 meters by 6 meters…that contain information on all of the AQ activity in Libya.”

(Azuz is again blamed for the Benghazi attack in an October 2012 DIA document.)

The DOD documents also contain the first official documentation that the Obama administration knew that weapons were being shipped from the Port of Benghazi to rebel troops in Syria. An October 2012 report confirms:

Weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the Port of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The weapons shipped during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s, and 125 mm and 155mm howitzers missiles.

During the immediate aftermath of, and following the uncertainty caused by, the downfall of the ((Qaddafi)) regime in October 2011 and up until early September of 2012, weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located in Benghazi, Libya were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The Syrian ports were chosen due to the small amount of cargo traffic transiting these two ports. The ships used to transport the weapons were medium-sized and able to hold 10 or less shipping containers of cargo.

The DIA document further details:

The weapons shipped from Syria during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s and 125mm and 155mm howitzers missiles.  The numbers for each weapon were estimated to be: 500 Sniper rifles, 100 RPG launchers with 300 total rounds, and approximately 400 howitzers missiles [200 ea – 125mm and 200ea – 155 mm.]

The heavily redacted document does not disclose who was shipping the weapons.

Another DIA report, written in August 2012 (the same time period the U.S. was monitoring weapons flows from Libya to Syria), said that the opposition in Syria was driven by al Qaeda and other extremist Muslim groups: “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.” The growing sectarian direction of the war was predicted to have dire consequences for Iraq, which included the “grave danger” of the rise of ISIS:

The deterioration of the situation has dire consequences on the Iraqi situation and are as follows:

This creates the ideal atmosphere for AQI [al Qaeda Iraq] to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi, and will provide a renewed momentum under the presumption of unifying the jihad among Sunni Iraq and Syria, and the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world against what it considers one enemy, the dissenters. ISI could also declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory.

Some of the “dire consequences” are blacked out but the DIA presciently warned one such consequence would be the “renewing facilitation of terrorist elements from all over the Arab world entering into Iraqi Arena.”

From a separate lawsuit, the State Department produced a document created the morning after the Benghazi attack by Hillary Clinton’s offices, and the Operations Center in the Office of the Executive Secretariat that was sent widely through the agency, including to Joseph McManus (then-Hillary Clinton’s executive assistant).  At 6:00 am, a few hours after the attack, the top office of the State Department sent a “spot report” on the “Attack on U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi” that makes no mention of videos or demonstrations:

Four COM personnel were killed and three were wounded in an attack by dozens of fighters on the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi beginning approximately 1550 Eastern Time….

The State Department has yet to turn over any documents from the secret email accounts of Hillary Clinton and other top State Department officials.

“These documents are jaw-dropping. No wonder we had to file more FOIA lawsuits and wait over two years for them.  If the American people had known the truth – that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other top administration officials knew that the Benghazi attack was an al-Qaeda terrorist attack from the get-go – and yet lied and covered this fact up – Mitt Romney might very well be president. And why would the Obama administration continue to support the Muslim Brotherhood even after it knew it was tied to the Benghazi terrorist attack and to al Qaeda? These documents also point to connection between the collapse in Libya and the ISIS war – and confirm that the U.S. knew remarkable details about the transfer of arms from Benghazi to Syrian jihadists,” stated Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch president.  “These documents show that the Benghazi cover-up has continued for years and is only unraveling through our independent lawsuits. The Benghazi scandal just got a whole lot worse for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.”

What is the real story? Is it really about how safe Britain’s ‘nuclear deterrent’ is, or is there more to this narrative?

Previously, a 25-year-old British weapons engineer serving on board the HMS Victorious had leaked information  to the public about multiple security lapses and technical faults in Britain’s Trident nuclear missile submarine carrier fleet, stationed at Faslane on the Clyde, Scotland.

According to an 18 page report published on WikiLeaks entitled The Nuclear Secrets, whistleblower William McNeilly described how potential attackers had “the perfect opportunity to send nuclear warheads crashing down on the UK.”

“It’s just a matter of time before we’re infiltrated by a psychopath or a terrorist,” he said. “There were some people that I served with on that patrol who showed clear psychopathic tendencies.”

Is this a genuine case of a whistleblower revealing what he knows, or is there more to this story than meets the eye?

As if by magic, the Wikileaks report was released only 3 days before the General Elections. The timing of this “whistleblower” controversy was uncanny and could be viewed as suspect. Consider the timing of this scandal. Trident featured as one of the main talking points in the run-up to the UK General Election. The Guardian explains:

“Labour and the Conservatives have publicly recommitted themselves to the renewal of Trident, pledging that it is a red line, set in concrete and, as David Cameron told the Commons in March this year, “non-negotiable”.

So that’s that then? Renewal of Britain’s nuclear deterrent a done deal? Only until after the votes have been counted. Trident’s future is still uncertain.”

At the center of this seemingly political struggle is the Scottish National Party (SNP). The campaign to ‘Get Trident nukes out of Scotland’ was one of the SNP’s central planks in their successful general election campaign which saw them sweep into power with 56 of the 59 available parliamentary seats. Writer James Kelly from IB Times explains the political nature of Trident in Scotland:

“Most SNP members want Trident off the Clyde every bit as passionately as they want independence. In fact, many of them support independence partly because it would rid the country of nuclear weapons.”

If it turns out that the objective can be realised within the confines of the UK, the reaction will be one of stunned delight and relief, not of consternation or a sense that a “tactic” for independence has somehow been thwarted.”

This latest installment of Snowden Lite is not just about ‘renewing Trident’. Putting the political gamesmanship and talk of ‘safety fears’ aside, the main object of maintaining a geopolitically useless, multi-billion pound ‘nuclear deterrent’ like Trident, was, is, and always will be: money. So for wealthy defense contractors, the main question would be, is there more money to be made by keeping Trident in Clyde, Scotland, or by moving its home by building a new state-of-the-art facility in England? In this way, the SNP would be booking-in some tremendous future profits of major defense contractors.

Could this latest ‘whistleblower scandal’ also have something to do with the allocation of funding and powerful privatized contracted which the British government has awarded select corporations to take over its nuclear weapons facilities?

As it turns out, back in 2012 the UK Ministry of Defence signed a 15-year contract with AWE, a consortium which already operates the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire, where nuclear warheads are designed and maintained. The Guardian adds here:

“Additional contracts have been signed with Babcock and Lockheed Martin, part of a new consortium to be known as the ABL Alliance.

“In a reference to Aldermaston, it describes the new agreement as “a natural extension of [the companies’] current role in supporting the nuclear warhead carried by our Trident missiles. The AWE at Aldermaston is run by a consortium of Jacobs Engineering Group, Lockheed Martin UK and Serco, which have a 25-year contract to operate it until March 2025.”

Forensic investigative website Abel Danger has also linked private companies like Serco to a number of disturbing security risk situations, and it’s also worth considering that certain elements within the UK military establishment might want to wrestle control of Britain’s nuclear weapons systems away from private firms like Serco, and back into public hands.

It will be interesting to see where this story goes in the end.

Either way, considering the potential hundreds of billions at stake, this latest whistleblowing episode should be viewed with extreme caution…

Trident whistleblower to ‘turn himself in’ amid concerns over UK leaker’s fate

Treatment of whistleblowers by the UK government has been questioned after recent revelations by a British weapons engineer.

The whistleblower went absent after going public with his report on lack of nuclear safety, but says he will surrender on Monday.

William McNeilly, a former Navy officer, went on the run after co-operating with WikiLeaks to post a detailed 18-page report exposing alleged security lapses in the UK’s trident nuclear program. With both the Royal Navy and the police trying to track him down, the whistleblower said he would be handing himself into the police on Monday.

“There’s nothing I can do from prison; whatever happens now is up to you and the government,”the man wrote on Facebook under the name William Lewis. Adding that he has been moving between countries, changing his location “almost every day,” the whistleblower said he now“lacks the resources to remain undetected.”

Both experts and the public are now worried about the fate of the man whose bomb-shell report has not only given rise to concerns over the country’s security, but also questioned the authorities’ attitude towards public service whistleblowers in the UK.

“[If he does hand himself in] I have no doubt he will be questioned by the Ministry of Defense and disciplinary proceedings will be taken,” Rob Edwards, environmental journalist for the Sunday Herald told RT, adding that a petition has been launched in the UK calling for McNeilly’s pardon.

Barbara Nimri Aziz is a New York based anthropologist and journalist. Find her work at www.RadioTahrir.org. She was a longtime producer at Pacifica-WBAI Radio in NY.

Barbara Nimri Aziz is a New York based anthropologist and journalist. Find her work at www.RadioTahrir.org. She was a longtime producer at Pacifica-WBAI Radio in NY.

GR Edtor’s Note

We call upon GR Readers to support independent media in Donbass by making a contribution a documentary team located in the war zone.

Global Research has made an initial contribution to this important endeavor

 CLICK Here to ACCESS the donation page

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/donbass-war-journalism-and-humanitarian-aid

Put yourself in the seat with us as we document the Ukrainian war in Donbass. I was the first western journalist writing about Ukraine from Donbass and the only one that has been here the entire time. I live here.

Over the past year, the one thing that has been made clear is the lack of unbiased western journalism and news coverage in Donbass covering the war. Kiev admits to propagandizing everything it releases to western media.

There have been no efforts to getting dedicated English language news video directly to western news and media from inside the LNR and DNR on a continual basis. Most efforts are geared for Russian speaking audiences first with English versions following as an afterthought.

Together we can change that!

What We Need & What You Get

We need funding for a news quality camera and accessories. With the camera, we will be able to bring substantial English language documentary video to the west and put you right there with us.

Our goal is to bring video footage to good news and alternative media websites that otherwise would not have access to video, documentaries, and commentary from Donbas in English direct to them- Free of Charge.

For the past year that’s where most of our own income has been going and we are not going to change that. We plan to continue helping the humanitarian effort in Donbass and expand on it by selling some of the news footage to news agencies. That will help fund the humanitarian effort locally on a continuous basis.

We have been fortunate enough to be involved in humanitarian aid and distributing medication locally. We are also painfully aware of what happens when aid doesn’t get to where it is needed. Together we can help change this for the better.

For the camera and the needed accessories, we will need $4500. This will cover all the transfer fees and give a complete news camera set up that is ready to go. We don’t need the top of the line options but do require a camera with a lot of versatility to gain war footage and do interviews that has high resolution and is still unobtrusive.

Funding beyond that will go into the humanitarian effort and help fund documentary work directly in between news events.

Documentary work by itself is an expensive endeavor if just transportation costs are added in. We will take you directly to the places that are being affected hardest by the war and let people speak for themselves.

The Impact your Funding will Make

 CLICK Here to ACCESS the donation page

read more, to Donate this endeavor, click

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/donbass-war-journalism-and-humanitarian-aid

Your funding will make a large impact in western media by making quality video footage continuously available to websites you know and trust. Currently its the lack of direct English language news coverage from the war that is the biggest news about it in the west. If a picture is worth a thousand words how much are direct footage and witnesses from the scene worth when the alternative is Ukrainian propaganda?

With your funding it will become very hard to keep the real facts out of mainstream media because they will have to start looking at English language video from someone that has lived and reported from here the entire time. We will be providing quality news websites with interviews and asking their involvement on select interviews as we go. In many cases, this will mean the journalists you currently read will have input on the questions asked to the people shaping both the war and beginning of Novorussia.

Can we make an impact across the world together? The answer is yes, we can!

The Bakery Project

At the beginning of the Ukrainian war, Kiev started to blockade even critical medications like insulin and heart medications. When the fighting started it became a common practice for them to mine the grain fields across Donbass. By mid-summer, this happened in such a widespread pattern that it was easy to forecast a food shortage in Donbass through the winter and increasing until the next harvest happens. The fields had to be demined and thousands of acres remain unplanted today.

Nearby our location is a bread bakery that has been sitting idle for 2 years. The bakery is capable of providing bread for thousands of people continually if opened up again. Our plan to sell video footage to news agencies for resale originated in starting a self -sustaining humanitarian effort supported by news video footage sales.

This way the project may become self sustaining and help build the local economy by purchasing grain locally from farmers in need of cash, using the local grain mill, and hiring local people to work in the bakery itself. We will be able to provide a continuous  supply of bread where it is needed.

This is ultimately what your generosity is funding. Contrary to the Minsk Agreements Kiev is still blockading food and medication from entering Donbass. The aid Russia is giving will never be enough.

Together we can make a difference.

About Us

For the past year, I have been writing breaking news and background articles about the events in Ukraine and Donbass including the earliest articles about the Ukrainian Nationalist coup in Kiev. I’ve provided a lot of background articles so journalists could get their heads around what was really happening here.

When Kiev started mobilizing tanks and soldiers to Donbas I wrote the first articles to appear in the west. Starting with a mid-February article detailing why the war was coming and genocide with it I wrote about the importance of understanding the Ukrainian political program and how the Banderavites could not change.

I broke the news about the beginning of the war from the Good Friday attacks in Odessa through the Easter attacks in Slavyansk. We spoke to people on the ground throughout the region the whole time getting their real opinions out during the build-up to the referendum on May 11th and afterward.

I wrote the first detailed articles about the Odessa massacre to appear in the west and follow-ups as Kiev’s complicity came into focus through evidence.

After that time we were able to provide first hand coverage of what it was like to be in an area under attack and then under the control of Pravy Sektor, the Natz Guardia, Donbass Battalion, etc. We gave first hand accounts of what it was like to be in a zone that was slated to be cleansed and only got a reprieve when the battle that turned the tide of the Ukrainian war happened literally one bus stop away from us.

When I’ve written about any Russian invasion never happening it’s because the great “stealth invasion” of August 2014 would have knocked over the tomato plants in my garden to happen at all. In articles from that battle site, I took photos clearly showing how close the Russian border was to the site and noted my own location was directly in line of sight to it. In other words the invasion didin’t happen.

I was the first western journalist to do invasive passport checks on soldiers in Donbass documenting where they were from. I believe I am the only western journalist to do weapons checks for fabrication dates. These both provide the necessary proofs against a Russian invasion and modern Russian weapons in Donbass.

During this time, my wife has become very involved and helps in research and documentation. Together we’ll be making the documentaries. Together we will do the interviews. Making the humanitarian effort succeed is personal to her. She grew up in Donbass and we have many relatives and friends here.

Risks & Challenges

It’s a war zone. The risks are real. The death and destruction are real and so are the crimes against humanity being perpetrated here. The challenges are multifold. Interviewing people and trying to protect their dignity or demand for privacy is paramount. We won’t victimize our neighbors further any more than you would your own under these circumstances. Getting the truth out will happen but it can be done respectfully with people that have been hurt in this war already.

I think that is another point that separates us from other efforts. We were here before all of this started and we’ll be here after it all ends.

Maintaining our own safety while collecting the documentary stories, war footage, and interviews takes planning and coordination. We already have that support structure in place as well as field helmets and vests. Part of the coordination effort is to know where the front line is at all times so you don’t get caught on the wrong side which is bad, or in between which is worse.

We are planning on documenting the humanitarian aid effort that will stem from this effort after it gets going. Ultimately that is the larger goal for us. We feel that by providing the video proof of delivery on that end and with a little help we can build a close to self sustaining effort quickly. Initially we wanted to do this as a private effort. The situation made that impossible.

With only the camera in hand it will take a little time but we will be able to make a difference on that end. Our goal is to reopen a local bread bakery and bake humanitarian loaves. This was the initial reason behind the fund raising effort.

How fast this part starts is directly dependent on whether or not our initial goal is reached to purchase the camera and how far beyond that donations will go. If we fall short we will work with what we have to start with. This is too important not to get started.

If we go past our goal the total of the funds will determine how they will be allocated. If there is enough to reopen the bakery then we can get started with that project directly. If there is more then we can put more money directly into purchase of medications.

If there is extra funding but not enough to start this effort we will put funds into other existing local aid we are working with. This way the aid reaches the people it needs to.

Other Ways You Can Help

If you want to help but can’t contribute please ask people you know to get the word out. Use the idiegogo share tools. The more people that help the lighter the load will be. Help by putting this throughout your social media.

Remember the closer we get to the goal the harder it is to reach. People get complacent when the finish line’s real close and it looks like we’ ll finish the race a winner. Please remind your friends as the campaign winds down to consider donating.

 CLICK Here to ACCESS the donation page

Do you remember what happened when Cyprus decided to defy the EU?  In the end, the entire banking system of the nation collapsed and money was confiscated from private bank accounts.  Well, the nation of Greece is now approaching a similar endgame.  At this point, the Greek government has not received any money from the EU or the IMF since August 2014.  As you can imagine, that means that Greek government accounts are just about bone dry.  The new Greek government continues to insist that it will never “violate its anti-austerity mandate”, but the screws are tightening.  Right now the unemployment rate in Greece is over 25 percent and the banking system is on the verge of collapse.  It isn’t going to take much to set off a panic, and when it does happen there are already rumors that the EU plans to confiscate money from private bank accounts just like they did in Cyprus.

Throughout this entire multi-year crisis, things have never been this dire for the Greek government.  In fact, Greece came thisclose to defaulting on a loan payment to the IMF back on May 12th.  And with essentially no money remaining at all, the Greek government is supposed to make several large payments in the weeks ahead…

Athens barely made its latest payment (May 12) to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and it managed to do so only when the government discovered that it could use a reserve account it wasn’t aware of, according to the Greek media.

Kathimerini, a Greek daily newspaper, reports that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras wrote to the IMF’s Christine Lagarde warning that Greece would not be able to make that May payment, worth €762 million ($871 million, £554.2 million).

Pension and civil-servant pay packets are due at the end of the month, and based on this news Athens may struggle to pay them. Even if it does manage that, on June 5 the country owes another €305 million to the IMF.

In the two weeks following June 5 there are another three payments, bringing the June total to the IMF to over €1.5 billion.

The Germans and the other financial hawks in the EU are counting on these looming payment deadlines to force Greece into a deal.

Meanwhile, Greek banks also find themselves in very hot water.  Many of them are almost totally out of collateral, and without outside intervention some of them could start collapsing within weeks.  The following comes from Bloomberg…

Greek banks are running short on the collateral they need to stay alive, a crisis that could help force Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s hand after weeks of brinkmanship with creditors.

As deposits flee the financial system, lenders use collateral parked at the Greek central bank to tap more and more emergency liquidity every week. In a worst-case scenario, that lifeline will be maxed out within three weeks, pushing banks toward insolvency, some economists say.

“The point where collateral is exhausted is likely to be near,” JPMorgan Chase Bank analysts Malcolm Barr and David Mackie wrote in a note to clients May 15. “Pressures on central government cash flow, pressures on the banking system, and the political timetable are all converging on late May-early June.”

If no agreement is reached, by this time next month Greece could be plunging into a Cyprus-style crisis or worse.

And if that does happen, there are already rumblings that a “Cyprus-style solution” will be imposed.  Just consider what James Turk recently told King World News…

The troika of the EU, ECB and IMF have not yet pulled the plug on the Greek banks, but the following quote in the Financial Times from this weekend should be a warning to anyone who still has money on deposit in that country: “The idea of a “Cyprus-like” presentation to Greek authorities has gained traction among some eurozone finance ministers, according to one official involved in the talks.”

The ECB is up to its eyeballs swimming in unpayable Greek debt that it holds. The ECB is not going to take a loss on this Greek paper on its books. Because Greece does not have the financial capacity to repay what is now about €112 billion of credit exposure to Greece on the ECB’s books, the ECB has only two alternatives.

It can push the €112 billion of Greek debt it holds to the national central banks of the Eurozone and on to the backs of the taxpayers in those countries, which it politically untenable. Or it can confiscate depositor money in Greek banks, like it did in Cyprus and as the FT has now reported.

Needless to say, such a move would be likely to set off financial panic all over Europe.

Could we actually see such a thing?

Well, let’s recall that back in April we already saw the Greek government forcibly grab “idle” cash from the bank accounts of regional governments and pension funds.  The following is from a Bloomberg report about that event…

Running out of other options, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras ordered local governments and central government entities to move their cash balances to the central bank for investment in short-term state debt.

The decree to confiscate reserves held in commercial banks and transfer them to the Bank of Greece could raise as much as 2 billion euros ($2.15 billion), according to two people familiar with the decision. The money is needed to pay salaries and pensions at the end of the month, the people said.

“It is a politically and institutionally unacceptable decision,” Giorgos Patoulis, mayor of the city of Marousi and president of the Central Union of Municipalities and Communities of Greece, said in a statement on Monday.“No government to date has dared to touch the money of municipalities.”

Grabbing cash from the bank accounts of private citizens is just one step farther.

And what happened in Cyprus just a couple of years ago is still fresh in the minds of most Greeks.  That is why so many of them have been pulling money out of the banks in recent weeks.  The following comes from Wolf Richter…

Greeks remember very well what happened in Cyprus in 2013, when local banks were given a big thumbs-up from Europe to help themselves to their depositors’ accounts. Cyprus and Greece are very closely tied, and many Greeks consider the island a “sister-nation.”

What little trust remained in banks in Greece died that day. People have been nervously looking for signs something similar may happen again in their home country. And they resolved to act at the first sign of danger: banks cannot confiscate money you have under your mattress. Cash can be hidden away.

Let’s certainly hope that what happened in Cyprus does not happen in Greece.

But right now, both sides are counting on the other side to fold.

The Germans believe that at some point the economic and financial pain will become so immense that it will force the new Greek government to give in to their demands.

The Greeks believe that the threat of a full blown European financial crisis will cause the Germans to back down at the last moment.

So what if they are both wrong?

What if both sides are fully prepared to stand their ground and take us over the cliff and into disaster?

For a long time I have been warning that a great financial crisis is coming to Europe.

This could be the spark that sets it off.

by Civilisation 3000

“Is Islam violent? I would say absolutely not,” Steven Fish said in an interview,

Professor M. Steven Fish, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, studies democracy and regime change in developing and post-communist countries, religion and politics, and constitutional systems and national legislatures. He is the author of Are Muslims Distinctive? A Look at the Evidence (Oxford, 2011), which was selected for Choice‘s Outstanding AcademicTitles in 2012: Top 25 Books.

It is the first major scientific effort to assess how Muslims and non-Muslims differ–and do not differ–in the contemporary world.

In this book, he seeks to quantify the correlation between Islam and violence and found that murder rates are substantially lower in Muslim-majority countries and instances of political violence are no more frequent. Using rigorous methods and data drawn from around the globe, it reveals that in some areas Muslims and non-Muslims differ less than is commonly imagined, and shows that Muslims are not unusually religious or inclined to favour the fusion of religious and political authority.

Zack Beauchamp (Brown University and the LSE], pilloried by American rightwingers as an anti-semitic leftist hipster, quotes from the book:

“Predominantly, Muslim countries average 2.4 murders per annum per 100,000 people, compared to 7.5 in non-Muslim countries. The percentage of the society that is made up of Muslims is an extraordinarily good predictor of a country’s murder rate. More authoritarianism in Muslim countries does not account for the difference. I have found that controlling for political regime in statistical analysis does not change the findings. More Muslims, less homicide”.

Fish further fleshed out these findings, for example by re-running the numbers to exclude non-Muslim-majority states with extraordinarily high murder rates (Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Lesotho, South Africa, and Venezuela). Countries with lots of Muslims were still less murder prone by a pretty large margin.

Turning to the Google Books extracts, differences are noted:

• gender inequality is more severe among Muslims,
• Muslims are intolerant of homosexuality
• and democracy is rare in the Muslim world.

Other areas of divergence give Muslims the advantage:

• less violent crime
• lower class-based inequities

Professor Fish’s research findings have vital implications for human welfare, interfaith understanding, and the foreign policies of the United States and other Western countries.

As Seumas Milne in the Guardian put it:

“The perpetrators of one attack after another, from London 2005 to Boston 2013, say they’re carrying them out in retaliation for the vastly larger scale US and British killing in the Muslim world”.

–

Extracts from Are Muslims Distinctive? may be seen here and a more recent article in the Washington Post by Professor Fish here.

Copyright Civilisation 3000, 2015

On Monday, US President Barack Obama travelled to Camden, New Jersey, America’s poorest city, to praise it’s brutal police department and reaffirm his support for federal programs that have transferred billions of dollars in military hardware to local police departments.

Reports of police brutality by Camden cops have nearly doubled since 2011, and last year Camden had substantially more reported brutality complaints than Jersey City, which has four times more people.

“This city is on to something,” Obama declared, referring to Camden.

America’s major news outlets, which function as little more than state propaganda outlets, could be counted on to report the exact opposite of reality. According to the New York Times, Obama used his visit to “crack down on overly aggressive police tactics,” and “limit … military-style equipment for police forces.”

These claims are based on Obama’s announcement that the White House will no longer transfer a small range of highly-specialized military assets to local police departments, including bayonets, .50 caliber rifles and tracked fighting vehicles.

These types of ordnance are, from a military counterinsurgency standpoint, either obsolete or inappropriate. The US Army, for example, has dropped bayonet training for recruits, while .50 caliber rifles are generally not considered anti-personnel weapons. They are used instead to target communications systems, grounded aircraft and radar installations, meaning that no sensible anti-civilian death squad would carry them.

Other restrictions proposed by Obama are almost entirely meaningless. The Times reports that the list of prohibited items includes “camouflage uniforms,” but a quick glance at the White House document outlining the proposals notes that the restriction does not include “woodland or desert patterns or solid color uniforms,” i.e., the great majority of US military combat uniforms.

Obama’s order explicitly permits the provision of wheeled armored combat vehicles known as MRAPs, as well as assault and sniper rifles, belt-fed machine guns and military aircraft and helicopters.

In fact, essentially none of the hardware deployed by militarized police during the crackdown on peaceful protests in Ferguson, Missouri last year falls under the White House’s prohibitions.

Recent deployments of combat weapons by local police forces have been criticized by sections of the military, which chided the unprofessional character with which police handled their weapons while cracking down on mass demonstrations. Monday’s announcement is the administration’s response to such criticisms: the ordinance transferred to local police will now be more closely monitored, and police will be better trained to use it.

In other words, use of combat weapons by the police will be institutionalized, regularized, and made more like the military, not less.

Together with the new police militarization guidelines, Obama announced an additional $163 million in funding for local police forces, with a large share of the funds targeted for training police to use military hardware.

Obama’s announcement was also timed to correspond with the release of a report by his so-called Task Force on 21st Century Policing, which issued a set of non-binding recommendations for local police departments to rebuild “community trust.”

The actual content of these proposals, however, can be seen in Camden, which recently overhauled its police department to implement “community policing” practices, cracking down on minor crimes and responding to opposition with extreme violence. As a result, arrests for minor offenses soared, with citations for broken taillights increasing by more than 300 percent, according to the ACLU. Reports of police brutality also increased sharply.

In his remarks, Obama offered effusive praise for the police, declaring, “The overwhelming number of police officers are good, fair, honest and care deeply about their community, putting their lives on the line every day.”

These remarks were aimed at solidarizing the White House with the police amid a continuing wave of violence directed against the population, giving rise to protests in St. Louis, New York City, Baltimore and other cities. Through the end of April, police killed 392 people in the US, putting them on track to take significantly more lives in 2015 than even 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.

This reign of police murder and violence takes place with the full support of the Obama administration, which has transferred billions of dollars in military armaments to local police, while working behind the scenes with local authorities to acquit killer cops, such as Darren Wilson, who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Daniel Pantaleo, the killer of Eric Garner in Staten Island.

Even while working to shield cops from prosecution, the White House has helped to coordinate the military/police crackdown on peaceful demonstrators in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, and in Baltimore last month.

The ultimate root of the ongoing wave of police violence and the militarization of society is the pervasive growth of social inequality. Camden, with 40 percent of its residents below the poverty line, embodies the disastrous impoverishment of the American working class that has taken place over the past several decades. The fact that Obama chose this city to tout his proposals on more aggressive policing expresses the fundamental reality that the ruling class has no answer to poverty besides ever-greater police repression.

The UK has become the most unequal country in Europe in terms of wages and income distribution, according to a newly-published report by the Dublin-based Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound).

Eurofound was established in 1975 to contribute to the planning and design of better living and working conditions. It carries out its role in partnership with governments, employers, trade unions and the European Union institutions.

London (left) and Penrhys, Rhondda

The growing inequality in the UK is the main driver of inequality within the whole of the EU, according to Eurofound.

The report, published last week, says that

“…the level of wage inequality in the EU as a whole is below that of the US. However, wage inequality in the UK, the EU’s most unequal country, is now above that of the US average. The UK, Latvia and Portugal are the three most unequal countries in Europe.

“The Great Recession changed the trend of overall EU wage inequality. Between 2004 and 2008, EU wage inequality decreased; after 2008, it increased.

“The decrease before the crisis was entirely due to a significant reduction in between-country wage differentials (in other words, a process of convergence in pay levels), which came to a halt in 2008 and even started to reverse at the end of the period of this analysis (2011).

“The main driver behind the increase in wage inequality after 2008, nevertheless, was within-country inequality, which until that point had remained more or less stable.

“But such increase was to a large extent driven by developments in the UK, without which the overall EU within-country component of inequality remained more or less stable as a result of rather diverse developments at the country level.”

In addition, the UK now has the worst Gini coefficient in the EU. Gini is the most widely accepted measure of how fairly income is distributed amongst a nation’s residents and is the standard measure of inequality.

With a Tory government committed to punishing the poorest through further austerity measures, and a leaderless Labour Party looking to lurch to the right, it appears that the UK will face growing inequality for at least the next decade.

Copyright Daily Wales, 2015

In the wake of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) overrunning of Ramadi, the US military has stepped up air strikes, while the Iraqi government has taken the highly explosive decision to deploy Shia militias in an attempt to retake the largely Sunni city.

The fall of Ramadi, the provincial capital of the predominantly Sunni Anbar province, represents a debacle for both the Baghdad government and the US war strategy in Iraq.

The routing of government forces that had long kept a tenuous hold on Ramadi recalls the collapse of the US-armed and trained Iraqi security forces during the ISIS sweep through northern Iraq last June, which left Mosul, Iraq’s largest city, in the hands of the Sunni Islamist militia.

The Pentagon, which since late last week had either belittled the significance of Ramadi’s fall or suggested that it was too early to tell the final outcome of the battle, was compelled to admit Monday that the loss of the provincial capital represented a “setback.”

“We’ve said all along that there are going to be ebbs and flows,” Col. Steve Warren told Pentagon reporters. “This is a difficult, complex, bloody fight, and there’s going to be victories and setbacks. And this is a setback.”

Contradicting earlier statements by senior US military officers that the US bombing campaign had put ISIS on the defensive, Warren was forced to acknowledge that the Sunni Islamist militia “is obviously not on the defensive in Ramadi.”

The US strategy for defeating ISIS in Iraq had consisted of the use of US airpower to strike its positions and the sending in of American “trainers” and “advisors” to build up and direct the operations of Iraqi army units. In Ramadi, this strategy has clearly failed.

US warplanes carried out 165 air strikes in and around Ramadi in support of Iraqi government forces just last month, according to Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Thomas D. Weidley, commander of the new US intervention in Iraq—“Operation Inherent Resolve.” Even more intensified bombing has taken place in the last few days. The air war, however, has failed to fundamentally alter the situation on the ground.

Ramadi makes clear that nearly a year after the collapse of the Iraqi army, a force that Washington spent $22 billion to organize, arm and train, nothing has been resolved in terms of building up a credible fighting force under the command of the central government in Baghdad.

The debacle in Ramadi led to demands from Republicans such as Arizona Senator John McCain, the chairman of the Senate armed services panel, for more US “boots on the ground.”

A US official speaking on condition of anonymity told Reuters, however, that the fall of Ramadi was not likely to lead the Obama administration to “change strategy.”

“The full power of Iraq, including the Shiite militias, wasn’t included in this battle. They need to be. I don’t see why the president’s strategy has to change, but clearly something has to change,” the official said.

Clearly, something has already changed. During the campaign last March to drive ISIS out of the city of Tikrit, Washington made a show of insisting that Shiite militias, which had borne the brunt of the fighting, be withdrawn before the US would lend air support. Now participation of these units, most of which are politically aligned with Iran, is seen as indispensable.

The decision to deploy these units represents a major crisis for the government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who was brought to power in August of last year with US backing. He was ostensibly placed in office with a mandate to ease sectarian tensions in Iraq. US officials and the corporate media blamed these tensions on the government of his predecessor, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who was himself installed by Washington. This scapegoating of Maliki’s corrupt and repressive regime served to divert blame from the eight-year US war and occupation in Iraq, which employed a divide-and-rule strategy that fomented a vicious sectarian conflict pitting Shia Iraqis against Sunnis.

Until now, Abadi had ordered Shia militias to stay out of the predominantly Sunni Anbar province, insisting that regular government troops alone be used to impose the rule of the central government. His backing off from this stand has dramatically weakened his position. Critics within his own Islamic Dawa Party, Maliki prominent among them, as well as within other Shia political organizations, had condemned his failure to send the militias into Anbar, charging that he had no strategy to secure the western province.

Now several thousand militiamen, including members of the Badr Corps, Ketaeb Hezbollah and other groups have massed outside Ramadi in preparation for a major battle.

“The government’s insistence on following the American vision made us go into Anbar to defend the people of Anbar and not let the situation drag on any longer,” Jaafar al-Husseini, a spokesman for Ketaeb Hezbollah told AFP.

While these fighters have been deployed under the umbrella of the so-called Popular Mobilization Units, which are formally a non-sectarian force under the command of the government security forces, the reality is that the Shia militias wield the power.

The deployment of these forces to Anbar, with open backing from Washington, poses the threat of a bloody sectarian civil war. The province had been in large part lost to the central government as a result of a Sunni rebellion that erupted well before the offensive launched by ISIS last June, fueled by resentment over repression at the hands of the Shia-dominated security forces.

Earlier campaigns launched by the Shia militia have been accompanied by the ethnic cleansing of Sunnis, who in many cases were treated as suspected ISIS supporters. Tikrit, which was taken back by ISIS last March, has remained largely a ghost town, with Sunni residents afraid to return.

The atrocities and bloodletting that continue to unfold in Iraq are the outcome of the criminal US war begun in 2003, with the aim of imposing US hegemony over the region and its vast oil reserves. ISIS, whose power grew directly as a result of US support for Sunni Islamist proxy armies in the wars for regime change in both Libya and Syria, is Washington’s Frankenstein’s Monster.

Jerusalem Day commemorates Israel’s June 1967 forceful annexation of East Jerusalem and illegal control of the entire city.

On Sunday, an RT International Arabic crew covered a march through the Old City. They had documents permitting them to do so.

It didn’t matter. Israeli security force thugs attacked them. According to reporter Dalia Nammari:

“After a terrible time we had to pass through checkpoints that they erected everywhere along the Old City, they asked us to move away from the Damascus gate point.”

“They didn’t do it gently. They pushed us and broke our camera.” Other journalists covering the event were treated “brutal(ly).”

An RT statement said:

“Representatives of the Israeli army attacked a correspondent and a cameraman of RT Arabic during coverage of Jerusalem Day. Serviceman damaged the camera and forbade to continue the shooting.”

Nammari and her cameraman Muhammad Aishu were filming a settlers march. They continued reporting using a smart phone.

They broadcast live via Skype. Security force thugs attacked them again. “They took away my earpiece,” Nammari said. “They are demanding from everyone, even journalists, to evacuate the area.”

“Even Palestinians who live in the city can’t be present here because of the settlers march.” Thousands participated.

Racist ones carried posters saying “Jerusalem for Israelis.” Security force thugs attacked protesting Palestinians. Some threw stones in response.

RT’s crew filmed some of the clashes before being blocked. Human rights worker Sarit Michaelli said Israeli assaults on peaceful demonstrators are commonplace.

They’re “rare to be filmed, but not rare to happen.” On Saturday, a Palestinian journalist was shot in the eye with a rubber bullet. He was filming a Nakba commemoration.

Palestinian physician, political activist, former presidential candidate, human right champion and Palestinian National Initiative (PNI) co-founder secretary-general Mustafa Barghouti told RT what happened on Sunday is standard Israeli practice “against journalists and against peaceful nonviolent Palestinian demonstrators.”

During summer 2014 Operation Protection Edge “the Israeli army killed 18 journalists including an Italian journalist in their attack on the Palestinian people,” he explained.

“So this violation of the freedom of expression and violation of the right of journalists to cover what happens is a frequent behavior of the Israeli army which respects nobody.”

Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem is “considered illegal by every international law,” Barghouti added.

In 2014, Israeli security thugs raided Ramallah offices of several media organizations – including RT’s Arabic channel.

They “broke down the doors…destroyed some of the equipment and confiscated records,” said RT.

A BBC investigation has found that one of its senior presenters, Sarah Montague, breached the organization’s editorial standards on impartiality in a radio interview she conducted with Israeli defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, in March.

The investigation was carried out following allegations of pro-Israel bias against Montague’s interview by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and a number of concerned individuals who complained to the BBC.

The ruling against Montague is the second time in recent months that the BBC has upheld a complaint initiated by the PSC.

In the first ruling, the BBC’s Editorial Complaints Unit (ECU) agreed with complainants that an online BBC article about Gaza’s tunnels had breached the organization’s accuracy guidelines by presenting its pro-Israel author, Eado Hecht,  as an “independent” defense analyst.

The two ECU rulings highlight just how often the BBC provides an unchallenged platform to Israel’s spokespeople.

Montague’s interview with Yaalon on the current affairs radio program Today was shocking in that a supposedly impartial journalist remained completely silent as the defense minister told lie after lie on air, including the outrageous claim that “the Palestinians enjoy already political independence…And we are happy with it.”

In his first response to complainants, George Mann, assistant editor of Today, wrote via email: “I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy Sarah Montague’s interview with Moshe Yaalon…Having listened back [to the interview], I feel she challenged him well.”

There were, however, no challenges from Montague to Yaalon’s propaganda, so Mann’s statement was deluded at best, an act of complicity in defending the bias at worst.

After being challenged again, Mann continued to defend his presenter and so complaints were made to the ECU, which, in the BBC’s complaints system, is one stage away from the BBC Trust.

Last week, all complainants received an email message from Fraser Steel, the BBC’s head of editorial complaints, on behalf of the ECU.

Steel, announcing that he would be upholding the complaint, wrote: “Mr. Yaalon was allowed to make several controversial statements…without any meaningful challenge, and the program-makers have accepted that the interviewer ought to have interrupted him and questioned him on his assertions.”

Steel then tries to excuse Montague’s appalling silence as Israel’s defense minister took over the BBC airwaves by claiming that Montague was badly briefed by researchers and didn’t have much time to make the recording.

He concludes: “The result was that the output fell below the BBC’s standards of impartiality.”

Damage is done

So, will Montague and other presenters on Today — billed by the BBC as its flagship news and current affairs program — be giving free rein to Israeli spokespeople again?

Steel writes: “The program-makers recognize that more recording time and greater attention to background detail would have ensured that the interview was managed appropriately and the editor has asked the production team to factor this in to future interviews.”

But, of course, the damage caused by the Yaalon interview has already been done.

Once again, the BBC allowed an Israeli spokesperson to completely airbrush the occupation.

The ECU’s ruling will eventually be published online, but only an apology on the Todayprogram, where the interview was aired, could go some way towards mitigating its noxious effects.

In the other positive ECU ruling published this year, Steel upheld complaints against the BBC website’s description of Eado Hecht — a lecturer in the pay of the Israeli army — as an “independent defense analyst.”

Hecht authored an article on BBC Online in July last year headlined “Gaza: How Hamas tunnel network grew.”

The article itself is classic Israeli propaganda, devoted to describing tunnels “booby-trapped with explosives” and repeating the lie that Israel withdrew from Gaza.

It was written and uploaded by the BBC two weeks into Israel’s 2014 attack on Gaza and is an attempt to justify the destruction inflicted on Gaza’s people. The tunnels, Hecht writes, are “almost impossible to detect” and so the Israelis are compelled to “go in and search for them house by house.”

And, because merely “blowing in the entrance or some of the airshafts leave most of the tunnel intact…the entire length of the tunnel and its branches must be located, mapped and then completely destroyed.”

Seven hundred Palestinians had already been killed in Gaza in fifteen days when this article — which completely ignores the Palestinian perspective — was put onto the BBC’s website. By the end of the slaughter towards the end of August, more than 2,200 Palestinians lay dead and whole areas of Gaza were reduced to rubble.

It’s repellent enough that the BBC commissioned and printed an article attempting to justify this destruction, but even more so that its virulently pro-Israel author was presented as a neutral commentator.

Israeli privileges

Once again, the BBC initially rejected complaints that presenting Hecht as independent was inaccurate and therefore misleading to BBC audiences.

Complainants were forced to bring their arguments to the ECU, where Steel agreed that Hecht’s connections with the Israeli military — he lectured at the army’s Command and General Staff College — rendered him a partisan observer of the situation.

In a letter to complainants, Steel added that ”articles published under Dr. Hecht’s name reveal a clear pro-Israel perspective and offer guidance and analysis as to how Israel might better prosecute its dispute [sic] with the Palestinians.”

BBC Online’s description of Hecht was judged by the ECU to have breached the following editorial guideline on accuracy. “We should normally identify on-air and online sources of information and significant contributors, and provide their credentials, so that our audiences can judge their status,” the guidelines state.

Publishing the ruling online in February, the BBC writes: “The editor of BBC News Online has reminded staff that it is important to give sufficiently detailed information to enable readers to calibrate a contributor’s affiliations.”

Which is all well and good, but why are BBC editors commissioning such biased articlesin the first place? And, if they must, why don’t they clearly mark them as opinion pieces?

This is meant to be a news organisation without an agenda, but Hecht’s propaganda piece (minus the word “independent” in his biographical note) remains on the BBC website, alongside other similar articles written by pro-Israel commentators whenever Israel is conducting a full-blown assault on Gaza.

There are no comparable articles commissioned by the BBC from Palestinian or pro-Palestinian commentators, in which they are given carte blanche to set out their stall.

This is a privilege afforded by the BBC only to Israel’s spokespeople and, until now, those spokespeople have taken full advantage of this freedom across the BBC’s output, whether broadcast or online.

It is to be hoped that these two ECU rulings will go some way to pushing back those privileges and introducing something that more resembles professional journalism in the BBC’s coverage of Israel’s occupation.

There have been a number of meetings in the past 2 weeks in response to the increased numbers of refugees – mainly from Syria but also from Afghanistan and Africa – coming to Samos. Sadly but not surprisingly these meetings have been mostly disappointing and are unlikely to lead to any positive action. For the refugees already here and those who will be coming over the summer months the prospects look very bleak. At the time of writing there are around 500 refugees in the Detention Centre including over 20 young children. Last week the number was over 700. This is in a centre which was built to accommodate 250 people. In August 2014 the numbers rose as high as 1,000. We know that this year the numbers will likely climb higher.

The camp, as we call the detention centre, was opened in 2007. The camp was built with funds from the EU. Its design and lay-out says much about its purpose and intent. As is clear in the photographs, the double barbed-wire fence speaks with clarity and eloquence. This is not intended to be a friendly place; a refuge, a haven, a place to rest and recover. It is a prison. It is managed by the police. It looks like Guantanamo Bay. Don’t be taken in by the fact that it has a basket ball court. Nobody plays. Balls are not allowed in the camp. But the court does get used. This is where refugees sleep when all the huts are full. There are no activities for the refugees locked in.

For the refugees this is their first experience of Greece and of Europe.

The world wide refugee crisis embracing over 50 million people is not a catastrophe of nature. It is made by people. We can use any number of words to describe these people whobenefit and profit from this crisis. Probably the best word to describe them is criminal. Their criminal activities not only produce refugees. They manufacture poverty and fear on a global scale which stalks the lives of the majority of humanity. Their extra-ordinary wealth is drenched in the blood of the many. Their mantra of all for themselves and nothing for the rest drives the ruthless exploitation of the world’s resources. It is what connects the tragedies of the refugees to all the other dramas unfolding before us – the plundering of the forests and the seas, the degradation of work, insecure and low paid jobs, the explosion in prisons and mass surveillance, endless war and massive poverty which corrodes well being and shortens life. To see the issue of refugees as somehow an isolated and particular problem misses the point and leads to strategies that will ultimately fail.

The authorities on Samos responsible for the ‘care’ of the refugees on the island are not responsible for the wars and the cruel exploitation of resources and lands which drive people to leave their homes and often their families and friends. They find themselves in situations which are not of their making.

But sadly, these authorities – the coastguards, the port police, the police in general, the public prosecutor, the Mayor of Samos, are part of the problem and are not yet any part of a solution for the refugees coming to the island. They comply with EU and nation state policies which are nothing less than cruel and inhumane. They are active in making the journey to Samos more dangerous than it need be. Our sea here holds nameless and uncounted dead in part due to their activities. Never ever have we heard them advocate safe passage. They know their push backs and patrols will never succeed in stopping the flow of refugees coming to Samos. They know however brutal they make their camps and prisons that it will not discourage the refugees. But still they persist.

We must be relentless in criticising these authorities but it is not sufficient. We must also realise that these authorities are well down the chain when it comes to why the refugees come here in the first place and why these policies have been put in place. The camps, the patrol boats, the activities of Frontex which disfigure the Greek islands close to Turkey are all consequences of an EU strategy to keep the refugees at bay. It is the same logic which drives the externalisation of the European borders. London, Berlin and Paris and the other rich capitals of north Europe want the refugees to be managed at the periphery and further beyond if possible. So millions of Syrian refugees languish in massive tented camps in Turkey and Jordan.

Our focus on Samos and to a lesser extent Athens is because we live here and not because we believe it offers any special or unique opportunities in the struggle for a better and humane world. What is being played out here has been and is being determined by forces well beyond our control. But we dig where we stand. We try to give witness in such ‘far away’ and remote places to the cruelties and inhumanities which flow as sure as night follows day from a global system that favours the few. We hope by shining a light on places that power wants to hide to influence those that read our pieces also to consider their responsibilities and also to dig where they stand. The refugees who suffer, who die, who are robbed and humiliated need you; they desperately need your solidarity and your actions to change this bloody and completely unacceptable system.

So let’s get back to Samos. Last week the Athens based head of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Greece came to Samos to meet with the authorities here both to discuss the current overcrowding in the camp and the anticipated crisis as the numbers increase over the summer months. He wanted to know what preparations were being planned. From what we have learnt he went away disappointed. In terms of resources the island faces big difficulties. There is no money. This is self-evident. Samos like all of Greece is virtually bankrupt.

The police, largely through their union, have publicly proclaimed on a number of occasions that they simply don’t have sufficient staff to manage the camp. Of course, there is no argument from the police that they are inappropriate people to be doing such work in the first place. The Syriza minister responsible for refugee policy, Tasia Christodoulopou only partially grasped this fundamental problem as is demonstrated in the government’s initiative to retrain police officers for ‘humanitarian work’. In any event it seems that this action is unlikely to have any impact for as she announced in a public meeting in Athens at the beginning of May only 20 police officers from the whole of Greece have volunteered for the programme. The reason for wanting more police in the camps is so that they can process the refugees faster and get them out of the camps. This is a deeply flawed approach which will inevitably mean that the refugees will be pushed out of the camps and on to the streets of Athens. But it is a policy which does attract considerable support simply because the camps are currently so obviously awful. It is our opinion that fast tracking the processing will soon become the main approach for handling the anticipated increases in the numbers of refugees coming to the islands. We must not fall into the trap of thinking that this will be a positive development for the refugees. The streets of Athens are not good places for refugees. As we discovered this week the police’s general behaviour to the refugees in Athens has become less brutal since the Syriza victory. But the cheap hotels are now full with refugees who last year were paying 10 euros a night but are now being charged 25 euros. The refugees are being robbed. What is needed are places and camps which are managed and constructed on a completely different footing where refugees can be genuinely helped and can recover a little and be assisted on their onward journeys into Europe.

Given that Samos is in an area of active earthquakes, there are contingency plans for providing up to 400 places for victims of an earthquake. These contingency plans will not be used for the refugees. There is currently some discussion about using an empty military base near to Hora but the municipality is not happy about such a proposal believing that any additional facilities will make Samos an even more attractive destination for refugees, and that neighbouring islands would want to transfer their refugees to Samos. There is not a shred of evidence to support such assertions.

The Mayor and his colleagues are far more interested in preparing a bid to be the European Capital of Culture in 2021. (This is not a joke.) They simply do not want to think about the refugees in any positive fashion. They want them to disappear. And above all they want to keep the camp and its inmates away from the gaze of tourists. We have talked to many tourists this year and not one of them knew that Samos was one of the entry points into Europe for refugees. None knew about the deaths in the sea. None knew anything about the camp – this cancer which is just 2 kilometres from the centre of the island’s capital. This is what the municipality wants and to a considerable degree has achieved for it is not only the tourists who know nothing but also many who live here. Even the students we met last week who ‘want to do something about the refugees’ knew nothing about the camp; none had been to look and visit; they seemed genuinely surprised to hear what we told them especially, as one said, ‘I know this island and its people very well and I had no idea about this’.

The irony is that the municipality would have much to gain from embracing the refugees. The hill villages are slowly dying, more and more of the land is being abandoned, schools close for the lack of young children. This is true for much of Greece. Deaths are outnumbering births, people are leaving the country, and the population is ageing.

Without migrants from the Balkans and Albania over the past 20 years the population of the country would be falling faster than ever. Not withstanding the crisis, which makes life extremely difficult and depresses the birth rate, it is blindingly obvious that Samos and Greece more generally could benefit greatly from such an influx of largely young people. But who in their right mind would want to stay here when their first encounters with the country are so bad. And on the other hand the minds of so many Greeks have been poisoned by state sponsored propaganda that has framed refugees as wholly negative – potential jihadists, carriers of disease, the dregs of alien societies that have nothing in common with the ‘timeless civilisation’ of Greece and so on. Our colleague was on the ferry that links Lesvos, Chios and Samos with Athens. There were many refugees on board when she came to Samos and all she heard from the crew members was that they had to keep them out of the lounge areas as they were dirty and diseased and made the toilets filthy. Hardly the basis for a popular demand to embrace refugees. Yet we have no doubt whatsoever that even a quick audit of the refugees would reveal a multiplicity of talent.

So the Samos municipality hopes and prays that the refugees will stop coming to these shores. They are living in a fool’s paradise. They are not interested in finding more positive and humane options which can and do exist here and involve little expense; no interest at all in mobilising the people of the island to help with clothes, shoes or food; no interest in all in providing social and educational activities for the refugees, and of trying even modest initiatives that would help the refugees come to terms with being in Europe. Instead they want to keep the refugees locked away and out of sight especially from the gaze of tourists and the people of Samos more generally. It has no interest at all in attempting to make Samos a place where humanity means something and to burn a beacon of justice and hope in a Europe that seems to get darker and crueller by the day.

How You Can Help

Write/phone/e mail the Chief of Police and the Mayor of Samos and;

Ask them what the police and the municipality is doing to help the refugees now.

Ask them why the camp remains locked and closed.

Ask them what plans they have in place to help the refugees who will be coming to Samos in ever greater numbers this summer.

At least let them know that they can’t keep the camp and the refugees a secret, hidden away.

Demand that they press for safe passage for refugees coming to Samos from Turkey. Ferries not smugglers.

Tell them that you don’t want to swim in a sea with dead bodies or relax on beaches littered with life jackets.

Press your own governments to change EU policy and to stop funding Frontex the agency which has responsibility for patrolling the borders. This money, should be spent on care and not control.

If you come to any of the border islands of Greece demand that your airlines collect money for the refugees and make provision for you to leave clothes and shoes to be passed on to the refugees.

Go and visit the camps. You won’t get in but at least witness what is going on.

If you travel on the ferries, especially those which travel back to Pireaus from the border islands talk to the refugees who are almost certainly travelling with you.

Be imaginative. Create your own demands!

Contact Details:

Chief of Police, 129 Them Sofouli St, Samos 83100;  e mail [email protected]

Mayor, Michalis Angelopoulos, Town Hall, Samos Town, 83100; e mail [email protected]

On April 22, Reuters reported that the Congolese government is accusing Rwandan troops of crossing into the Democratic Republic of the Congo and wounding a local soldier. Congo spokesman Lambert Mende said, “Congolese troops fired warning shots at Rwandan troops who entered Rutshuru territory in Congo’s eastern province of North Kivu,” and that Rwandan troops responded by firing and wounding a Congolese soldier.

North Kivu Gov. Julien Paluku told Vice News that the Rwandan troops had crossed the border and headed into the Virunga National Park, an oil rich world heritage site protected by park rangers and the Congolese army. Paluku speculated that the Rwandan troops might have intended to distract attention from infiltration by a new incarnation of the Rwandan- and Ugandan-backed militia most recently known as M23.

The Voice of America reported that armed men in Ugandan uniforms have also crossed the Ugandan border into DR Congo.

In themselves, these news reports seem low on the scale of violence in the world today. However, they rise to the top if understood as a continuation of Rwanda and Uganda’s cross border wars of aggression that have left millions of my countrymen dead over nearly 20 years. In 1996, Rwandan and Ugandan troops invaded the Democratic Republic of the Congo, starting the First Congo War (1996-1997), then the Second Congo War (1998-2003) and then the ongoing “Congo conflict” waged by proxy militias supported and commanded by Rwanda and Uganda.

The International Rescue Committee called it “the most lethal conflict since World War II” after concluding, in an epidemiological survey, that it had cost 5.4 million lives between August 1998 and April 2007 alone. The economy and infrastructure of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been destroyed, and many of the dead have perished in refugee camps. Many of them have been children under the age of 5.

Rwanda and Uganda’s cross border wars of aggression have left millions of my countrymen dead over nearly 20 years.

Why has this cross border war of aggression been allowed? President Obama himself, as a senator, said that it was based on pretext in his Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act of 2006, Section (6):

“(6) Despite the conclusion of a peace agreement and subsequent withdrawal of foreign forces in 2003, both the real and perceived presence of armed groups hostile to the Governments of Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi continue to serve as a major source of regional instability and an apparent pretext for continued interference in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by its neighbors [Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi].”

Readers unfamiliar with DR Congo and the region might ask, “Pretext for what?” Those who understand the region know that the pursuit of hostile militias is a pretext for plundering the abundant natural resources of DR Congo. There is abundant evidence of this in 18 years of the U.N. Group of Experts Reports on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, all of which can be read or downloaded on the U.N. website.

When I met with Russ Feingold, former U.S. Envoy to the African Great Lakes Region, he told me that Rwanda’s pretext for sending troops into the Democratic Republic of the Congo – hunting down the FDLR militia – is no longer credible or acceptable.

The pursuit of hostile militias is a pretext for plundering the abundant natural resources of DR Congo.

President Obama’s Congo bill, his greatest legislative accomplishment as a senator, declares that “it is the policy of the United States to hold accountable individuals who illegally exploit the country’s natural resources.”

In accordance with the Obama law, the U.S. should withhold aid to Rwanda and Uganda and impose sanctions on its presidents and other government and military officials, whose culpability for cross border wars of aggression and illegal resource extraction in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have long since been documented.

President Obama is nearing the end of his term in office. His 2006 Obama Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act is almost 10 years old, but it has never been implemented, even though it was passed by unanimous consent in both the Senate and House. It should be implemented now, before many more innocent Congolese lives are lost.

Eric Kamba is a Congolese American social worker with the Boston-based Congolese Development Corp. He can be reached at [email protected].

Comment and captions by Tony Seed

For four years, the US, Canada and NATO together with the monopoly media such as CNN have portrayed the foreign intervention in the Syrian Arab Republic as a “civil war” and championed foreign terrorists as “moderate rebels” – proxy forces that are harboured, trained, armed, and extensively funded by a coalition of NATO and members of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC)  within the borders of Turkey (NATO territory) and Jordan. More recently, media disinformation has advertised the aggression by Saudi Arabia and members of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) against Yemen as a so-called religious conflict (Sunni v Shi’a) and against expansionism by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Keep in mind that the Persian Gulf despotisms are client states of American imperialism. CHRISTOPHER MASSIE* of the Columbia Journalism Review reveals the extensive business ties between CNN International and Qatar and other GCC states, especially sponsored coverage – programming bought and paid for by the feudal petro monarchies and routinely presented as “news” by its celebrity “journalists.”

In June 2014, CNN business reporter Richard Quest interviewed the CEO of the state-owned Qatar Airways about the recently opened Hamad International Airport in Doha. “Opening new airports and terminals is a tricky business,” Quest warned, before introducing Akbar al Bakar, who supervised the airport’s construction.

But, he continued, “When Hamad opened in the last month, things went remarkably smoothly.” The segment suggests that this outcome is largely attributable to what Quest calls “the Chief’s [Bakar’s] eye for detail.” We watch the fastidious al Bakar patrol the airport, caressing walls and saying things like, “Look at the detail here, the match between the plaster and stone” and, “You can see the quality, you can see the touches, you can see the detail, and we will not compromise.”

CNN’s Richard Quest and Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker (L) attend a Qatar Airways gala to celebrate their inaugural flights to New York City, June 28, 2007 at the Lincoln Center. The airline was sponsoring his CNN show Quest. | Evan Agostini/Getty Images Entertainment

This wasn’t Quest’s first homage to the Chief and his airport. In a January 2012 segment on the airport for the CNN International program Future Cities, Quest observed that, “No detail is too trivial for the man known simply as ‘Chief.’” Al Bakar predicted with certainty that the airport would open by the end of that year. This prediction changed dramatically in yet another interview, in January 2013—when his original prediction date had already come and gone. This time, al Bakar gave himself plenty of wiggle room, assuring Quest that the airport would be ready for the 2022 World Cup.

Quest never mentioned the failure of al Bakar’s first prediction. More to the point, over the course of three interviews, the CNN journalist did not address a multitude of important background facts—about the airport as well as about his and his employer’s relationship to it. For instance, he never told viewers that Qatar Airways would be sponsoring special CNN coverage of the history of commercial flight in conjunction with an annual aviation conference, and that Quest would lead the special programming. Nor did Quest disclose that his own relationship with Qatar Airways stretches back to at least 2005, when the airline sponsored his CNN show Quest. That year, he also served as emcee at the “Reach Out to Asia” fundraising drive, initiated by Qatar Airways and the Qatar Foundation, another state-owned firm which has a large (and clearly marked) advertising feature on CNN’s website and which sponsored the CNN International program, Inside the Middle East, until this week.

Most significantly, Quest failed to ask al Bakar about allegations of labor abuse at the airport construction site. In 2012, Human Rights Watch reported that workers said that they had been deceived about their salaries and that their passports had been confiscated, as is the norm under the kafala system of migrant labor, which binds workers to individual employers. And, despite Quest’s assertion that things went “remarkably smoothly,” the airport opened six years late and exceeded its budget by $12 billion. When it did finally open in April, it was amid a legal dispute with Lindner Depa Interiors, the interior-design company presumably responsible for the “quality” and “detail” that al Bakar had so effusively praised.

Quest’s avoidance of grim context in these interviews was not an anomaly. CNN International, the version of CNN that broadcasts outside of the US and operates independently, has an ongoing history of sponsorship ties to an array of entities from the Gulf region, notably Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, most of which are wholly or partly owned by the state and, by extension, the countries’ ruling families. (Furthermore, earlier this year, Time Warner, which owns CNN, sold its headquarters in New York City to a group that included a sovereign wealth fund of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi for $1.3 billion.)

CNN International generally fails to disclose its relationships to these entities, except on the shows, segments, and Web pages that they sponsor. And even there, there is little explanation of the sponsorships. Perhaps worst of all, the network misleads its audience about the nature of the editorial content the sponsorships accompany—which is often extraordinarily favorable to the firms themselves, their partners, or the domestic economies in which they operate. What appears to be news on CNN International is sometimes not supposed to be news.

Mike McCarthy, CNN International’s senior vice president and general manager, declined to comment on the network’s relationships with sponsors. But he insisted that CNN is clear about its sponsored content and that it “maintains the same editorial standards for its sponsored programming as for its news output.”

Behind this distinction between “sponsored programming” and “news output” is a British regulator. As a broadcaster based in the United Kingdom, CNN International is subject to the British Office of Communications (Ofcom) and the UK Broadcasting Code. One of the Code’s stipulations is that “News and current affairs programs must not be sponsored.” The goal of this rule is to “ensure that the principles of editorial independence; distinction between advertising and editorial content; transparency of commercial arrangements; and consumer protection are maintained.”

The Code is rather obviously not meant to encourage networks to broadcast superficial reporting on sponsored programs in order to avoid having those programs classified as news programs and maintain their eligibility for sponsorships.

Yet, that seems to be how CNN has interpreted the regulation. The Broadcasting Code defines a “news” program as one that “contains explanation and/or analysis of current events and issues, including material dealing with political or industrial controversy or with current public policy.” As in the case of Quest’s interviews with Akbar al Bakar, two of which were aired on the sponsored show Business Traveller, CNN International’s sponsored programs present information related to current events in an upbeat fashion, while omitting or dismissing the stories’ controversial aspects.

Examples of this are particularly abundant in the work of John Defterios. Defterios is the host of Marketplace Middle East, which, until recently, contained a segment sponsored by the Emirati firm Gulftainer, and which was included in a partial list of the network’s “feature/lifestyle” shows (as opposed to news shows), provided by CNN International’s McCarthy. Online, however,Marketplace Middle East bills itself as a “weekly business programme featuring in-depth analysis and top newsmakers from across the Middle East.”

Defterios is also the host of One Square Meter, a segment on real-estate development that airs every week on a primetime news show, Connect the World. The segment is sponsored by Emaar Properties, a UAE development company, 30 percent of which is owned by a sovereign wealth fund of the Emirate of Dubai.

An artist’s impression of the Lusail City stadium, designed for the Qatar 2022 World Cup final. Inhuman abuse and exploitation of migrant workers preparing emirate stadia for the 2022 World Cup is rampant. Qatar hosts the huge Al-Udeid Air Base, headquarters for US air operations in the region and the directing centre of the air war against Syria and Iraq. It has been one of the leading funders of the terrorist forces aiming to subvert the sovereign government of Syria.

In a June 2013 piece on Marketplace Middle East, Defterios visited Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island, the site of a vast development project worth tens of billions of dollars, featuring a Louvre museum and a New York University campus. The Tourism Development and Investment Company, which handed out most of the enormous contracts for construction on the island, was created in 2006 by another business partner of CNN’s, the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority. (The tourism authority has since been replaced by another agency, but it once teamed with Turner Commercial Productions, CNN’s producer, to build Iconic Abu Dhabi, “a stand-alone microsite which promotes Abu Dhabi as an international travel destination.”)

The contract to build the Louvre,reportedly worth$653 million, was awarded to Arabtec, a construction company that was 19-percent state-owned as of July. Arabtec has also collaborated with Emaar, the sponsor of One Square Meter, on a variety of high-profile projects, including the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. On top of this tangle of monarchic interests and sponsorship ties, Saadiyat Island has been a cesspool of labor abuse: thousands of workers employed on projects there live in squalor, severely underpaid. Last year, dozens were deported for going on strike—the rest are trapped in the country because their passports have been confiscated.

On Marketplace Middle East, Defterios said nothing about these disturbing facts, or about CNN’s links to firms involved in the Saadiyat project. To his credit, when Defterios revisited Saadiyat Island last January for a segment onOne Square Meter, he observed that Saadiyat is “on the radar of human rights groups” and included a quote from a researcher at Human Rights Watch. But that observation is buried beneath glowing descriptions of the island as “idyllic” and “one of the grandest residential and cultural projects in the world today.” And the last word in the piece is a rebuttal of the Human Rights Watch comment from a representative of the Tourism Development and Investment Company.

As with other sponsored content on the website of CNN International, the material aired on One Square Meter and published online could easily be mistaken for news. The segment publishes and airs reports on property and stock markets, housing, and technological innovations under the brand of one of the world’s preeminent news networks, CNN (an acronym that stands for CableNews Network). And, on One Square Meter, the relevance of Emaar Properties to the content is inscrutable to the reader or viewer. There is an advertisement for the firm on the side of the Web page. In the right corner, a notice reads, “in association with Emaar.” Videos are preceded by a 30-second commercial. There is no description of what Emaar does and even the word “Properties,” which might lend a clue, is conveniently absent.

This is particularly problematic in stories that deal directly with the industry in which Emaar operates. A story from August, co-authored by Defterios, brushes aside concerns of a development bubble in Dubai, emphasizing the measures taken to stabilize the property market and the city’s appeal to the rich. The piece suggests that the influx of wealthy foreigners may render Dubai unaffordable for “those with less cash to splash,” but stops well short of suggesting that this could undercut the city’s “charmingly optimistic,” “build it and they will come” mantra.

The lack of transparency becomes even more acute in stories that include no sponsorship information whatsoever, such as a July 2 piece by Defterios for CNN International about the UAE stock market. In the previous month, the Dubai stock market had plunged, mainly because shares of Arabtec, Dubai’s most heavily traded stock, had dropped by about half after the CEO, who had amassed a 28-percent stake in the company, resigned. Reuters interpreted the revelation about the CEO’s stake and the ensuing plummet in share value as substantiating fears about the insufficiency of regulation and transparency in the region. In September, Bloomberg reported that another fall in Arabtec share prices had sent ripples across the Dubai stock market, precipitating a less dramatic drop in Emaar shares just as the CNN sponsor was preparing for its initial public offering. But in July, Defterios had a different take, noting the assurances of the Arabtec chairman that the company’s internal investigation had found no “impropriety” and emphasizing that it had billions of dollars of building projects lying in wait. “That, as they say, is good business by any global standard,” the story concludes.

In the past, other journalists have pointed out CNN’s connections to firms owned by autocratic states, as well as its inadequate disclosure of these relationships. In 2011, soon after the Malaysian government had cracked down on protesters, Defterios, a former president of the public-relations firm FBC Media,interviewed the prime minister of Malaysia. At the time, Defterios was still listed as a director and shareholder of FBC and Malaysia was one of the firm’s clients, leading critics to speculate that his questions might have been influenced by his business interests.

Then, in 2012, Glenn Greenwald wrote about CNN’s extensive relationship with Bahrain, arguing that it contributed to CNN International’s decision not to air a documentary about the Bahraini government’s suppression of dissent during the Arab Spring. In the same year, Max Fisher, writing on the website of The Atlantic, criticized the opacity of the network’s disclosure of its relationship with the state-owned Kazakh firms sponsoring its coverage of Kazakhstan.

Meanwhile, Habib Battah, whose blog, The Beirut Report, covers media in the region, has noticed that CNN’s reporting from Abu Dhabi, where the network opened a regional headquarters in 2009, is strikingly complementary of the United Arab Emirates. “It didn’t take much to figure out that there were some serious concerns here,” Battah said in an interview. “It was just kind of banging it over your head: this beautiful skyline that they just kept talking about in every broadcast.” (Though he was talking about the skyline of Abu Dhabi, the fact that the Defterios story about the Dubai stock market cited above is adorned with a series of spectacular photos of the Dubai skyline lends credence to his comment.)

Battah emphasizes, however, that the problem of corporate media transcends the Middle East and includes the American press. “I think that the various entanglements of corporate ownership is a global issue,” he says.

It’s true that the corporatization of the US news media is an ongoing concern, exacerbated by declining revenues and, more recently, the phenomenon of native advertising. Yet in at least one fundamental way, being beholden to private American corporations and being beholden to state-owned corporations from Qatar and the UAE is not comparable: The Qatari and Emirati states can and do imprison and exile people who publicly say things they do not like.

Matt Duffy, who teaches communications at Berry College in Georgia, is both a scholar and an exemplar of this fact. In 2012, after teaching for two years at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi, Duffy and his wife werenotified that their contracts had been terminated and their residency visas would be canceled. He was never told exactly why he was kicked out of the country, but he suspects it had to do with his advocacy of journalism and free expression. “There is no freedom of speech in Qatar or the UAE,” he said. State-owned firms in those places, he argued, “have vast powers that they can exercise over the journalists that are reporting on them.”

These states have repeatedly demonstrated their hostility to free speech: The pollster Gallup was forced out of the Emirates in 2012, and the Qatari poetMuhammah Rashid al-Ajami is serving a prison sentence of 15 years (which was reduced from life). But perhaps the most noteworthy recent episode was the jailing of American citizen Shezanne Cassim in the UAE. Cassim, who was released in January 2014, spent nine months locked up for making a YouTube video that mocked Dubai teenagers. Matt Duffy notes that CNN covered the incident heavily—the network even interviewed Cassim after his release—though it is not clear how much of that coverage appeared in the region.

On the other hand, CNN seems to have largely ignored the arrest of activist Obaid Yousef al-Zaabi after CNN reporter Sara Sidner interviewed him in December 2013 about the Cassim case and human rights in the UAE. A search of al-Zaabi’s name returns no relevant resultson CNN’s website and I could not find the interview that precipitated his punishment anywhere online. McCarthy, the CNN International executive, claimed via email that the network “experienced no interference in our extensive coverage of [the Cassim] story.” Sidner, he says, who was stationed in the UAE “on an extended anchoring assignment for CNN International while recovering from a leg injury … is now based in Los Angeles.”

When asked if CNN had any concerns about being in business with firms owned by undemocratic regimes, McCarthy wrote, “We don’t discuss the business arrangements we have with our sponsors/advertisers.” He did, however, stress that “CNN International has been clear with its audience about all of its sponsored material.”

The fact that it required extensive research to learn about who CNN International’s Qatari and Emirati sponsors were, how they were related to each other, and that sponsored shows are not allowed to cover or comment on the news suggests otherwise. The fact that these sponsored “lifestyle” shows routinely present themselves as news programs further obscures this distinction. Indeed, one recent advertisement for Inside Africa, which is broadcast “in association with” the Nigerian bank Zenith, went so far as to tell viewers to “Tune in weekly for the latest stories across the continent.”

As it turns out, the British Office of Communication may also be concerned that CNN International’s sponsored material looks too much like news. An Ofcom spokesman said, “Ofcom is currently conducting an investigation into sponsored material broadcast on CNN International.”

CNN International has violated Ofcom sponsorship rules at least once before. In 2010, the network was warned for airing criticism of Barack Obama by then-chairman of the Republican National Committee Michael Steele in a seven-minute segment sponsored by Skype.

Because the current investigation is ongoing, the Ofcom spokesman would not provide further information. McCarthy said that the network “has cooperated fully” and that the investigation is not exclusively aimed at CNN.

Christopher Massie is a CJR contributing editor.

Amateur photographer Ahmad Nazzal captured Israeli forces spraying ‘skunk water’ at a Palestinian child during the Kafr Qaddum weekly march in the occupied West Bank on Friday. 

Five-year-old Muhammad Riyad appears standing in front of Israeli forces wearing a Palestinian Keffiyeh before the forces begin chasing him with skunk water, the boy eventually falling to the ground.

The foul-smelling liquid has been used by the Israeli military as a form of non-lethal crowd control since at least 2008 and can leave individuals and homes smelling like feces and garbage for weeks.

Skunk water was developed by Israeli company Odortec Ltd. in conjunction with the Israel police and is generally sprayed from specially designed trucks up to a range of 30-40 meters, according to Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem.

Israeli army spokesperson has reported that skunk contains “organic material and has been approved for use by the Israeli Ministry of the Environment and the Chief IDF Medical Officer,” although the exact contents of the rancid liquid have been contested, B’Tselem says.

The rights group documented regular use of skunk water by Israeli forces, and has accused the forces of using the substance for collective punishment, citing instances of Israeli security forces driving skunk trucks down the streets of villages known for active demonstrations and spraying the substance into residents’ homes.

Photographer Nazzal had headed to cover the Kafr Qaddum weekly march, this week commemorating the 67th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, when he witnessed Friday’s incident.

Four Palestinians were also injured with live fire as Israeli forces suppressed the march.

An Israeli army spokeswoman had no immediate comment on the incident.

Three Egyptian judges and their driver were reportedly killed on May 16 just hours after the courts announced preliminary death sentences against the ousted former President Mohamed Morsi along with 105 other people.

These capital sentences have been sent to Egypt’s grand mufti, as stipulated by national law, for legal review. The mufti’s decisions related to the death penalty sentences are non-binding. The Egyptian court will issue a binding verdict on June 2, leaving open some avenues for an appeal.

Another judge in the microbus carrying them was severely wounded. The judges were traveling from Ismailia on the Suez Canal to participate in court sessions at Arish when assailants in three vehicles fired on the victims while they were being transported.

Violence has escalated in North Sinai over the last two years since the military ouster of the Freedom and Justice Party led government of Morsi. An organization called the Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis has been accused of carrying out the attacks against natural gas installations and security personnel.

Nonetheless, high ranking officials within the current Egyptian regime have accused the Muslim Brotherhood of being involved in the attacks in North Sinai, a charge the organization has denied. On May 18, the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Interim Minister of Justice, Ibrahim Al-Heneidy, said that the Muslim Brotherhood was behind the instability in the region.

“We should make a link between the escalation of terrorist activities in North Sinai and all of Egypt, leaving hundreds of police and army men and civilians dead, and the removal of Morsi and his group from power on 3 July,” said Al-Heneidy. “Egypt faced an escalation in the number and ferocity of terrorist attacks after the gang of terrorists that ruled Egypt for one year was removed from power in a popular revolution on 30 June 2013.” (Ahram Online)

Al-Heneidy continued charging that “Not only is this gang of terrorists targeting judges, but they also target civilians, policemen, military personnel, churches, schools, hospitals, police stations, electricity pylons, gas stations, oil pipelines. By perpetrating these crimes, the group and its terrorist allies aim to destabilize Egypt and spread chaos in violation of Islam and its merciful rules.”

Death Penalty Sentences Allege Prison Break and Support for Hamas

Former Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi was given the death penalty along with 105 others for a series of alleged offenses including breaking out of prison during the waning days of the regime of former President Hosni Mubarak. Between January 25 and Feb. 11 the Egyptian people rose up in rebellion against the Mubarak government and this jailbreak by Morsi and his colleagues coincided with the actions that led to the military seizing power after 18 straight days of mass demonstrations.

In addition to the criminal counts related to the escape from detention under Mubarak were charges of supporting Hamas, the Palestinian resistance movement which holds nominal power in Gaza. Tunnels located on the border of Sinai and Gaza has been bombed repeatedly by the Israeli Defense Forces as well as the Egyptian military even during the tenure of President Morsi.

The current Egyptian government under former military leader Gen. Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has designated both the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas as terrorist organizations. Many of the defendants sentenced to death on May 15 were members of Hamas.

According to Ahram Online

“Hamas spokesman Sami Abu-Zuhri said in a statement on Saturday (May 16) that the verdict was based on ‘false information’, saying that some of those Hamas members who were convicted in absentia, including ‘martyrs Tayseer Abu-Senema and Hossam El-Sanea,’ were dead at the time the offences were carried out. Abu-Zuhri said that others convicted have been in the ‘prisons of the occupation (Israel) for years, such as Hassan Salama, who has been imprisoned for 19 years.’” (May 16)

This decision has been condemned by many others throughout the world for lack of due process. Amnesty International said of the death sentences that they represented a “charade based on null and void procedures.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan commented on May 16 that the death sentences imposed by the Egyptian court against former President Mohamed Morsi represented a return to “ancient Egypt”.  Erdogan told a rally in Istanbul that “The popularly-elected president of Egypt… has unfortunately been sentenced to death” and accused the United States government of “turning a blind eye” to events in Egypt. (AFP)

Although the U.S. State Department has said that it does not support the death sentences, the Obama administration is continuing its aid to the Egyptian government to the tune of $1.5 billion directly every year. The Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) coordinates its activities in North Africa and the Middle East with the Egyptian regime.

Egyptian Government Moves Even Closer to the West

Egypt’s government of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has become even more authoritarian and compliant with U.S. foreign policy objectives in the recent period. Egypt’s role in Yemen and Libya has sought to bolster Washington’s foreign policy objectives through Cairo’s alliance and dependence on Saudi Arabia and the GCC.

The El-Sisi administration has extended its involvement in the ongoing Saudi-GCC alliance which has been bombing Yemen since March 26. Several thousand people have been killed and the U.S. government is providing intelligence coordination and refueling of fighter jets, many of which are manufactured by the American defense industry.

In 2011, after the collapse of the Mubarak presidency, Egyptian Special Forces participated in the rebel insurgency against the Jamahiriya under Col. Muammar Gaddafi in neighboring Libya. Over the last few months Egyptian war planes have bombed Libyan territory adding to the destabilization of the country amid the chaos engineered during the last four years by Washington and Brussels.

This role for the North African state was exemplified recently by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s published recommendations for future U.S. policy in the region placing emphasis on Egypt as being a pivotal country for stability in the Middle East.  The report was written by a number of functionaries of the U.S. military and intelligence establishment including  Samuel Berger and Stephen Hadley, both former national security advisors, James Jeffrey, a former ambassador to Turkey and Iraq, Dennis Ross, a former White House special envoy for Middle East peace, and Robert Satloff, the director of the Institute.

The Washington Institute article argues that “There is no state system in the Middle East without Egypt. No strategy designed to bolster the state system in the Middle East is possible without a functioning U.S.-Egypt relationship.”

Acknowledging the violations of human rights in Egypt today, the report suggests that the only way to engage the El-Sisi government on these issues is within “the context of an ongoing U.S.-Egypt relationship”. The authors urge even stronger military ties between Cairo and Washington.

In a separate article related to Egypt’s involvement in the Saudi-GCC war against Yemen, Eric Tager, a Wagner fellow at the Washington Institute, wrote that

“Entering the Yemen conflict also allows President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi to fulfill his oft-stated promise to help protect Egypt’s Gulf allies, who have given Cairo approximately $23 billion since the July 2013 overthrow of Mohamed Morsi. Indeed, shortly after taking office (as president) in June 2014, Sisi declared that Gulf security was an ‘inseparable part of [Egypt’s] national security,’ and he recently called for establishing a joint Arab military force to defend the Gulf from regional threats. While the Saudi-led coalition will flesh out its Yemen strategy during a major conference in Sharm al-Sheikh this weekend, Cairo has already announced preparations for further air operations against Houthi positions, and signaled that it will send ground troops and special units if necessary.”

Although Riyadh backed by the United States State Department announced a pause last week in the bombing of Yemen, the fighting is escalating.

On May 16 dozens were killed in clashes across the southern port city of Aden. Tank shells were fired back and forth in the northern area of the city, while Ansurallah (Houthis) and Saudi-backed Hadi-allied forces continue to fight over territory, particularly a key road providing access to central Aden.

The Obama administration has blamed the Ansurallah Movement (Houthis) for the failure of the purported five day truce. Washington is providing refueling and intelligence coordination for the Saudi Arabia and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) alliance that is waging war against the country of 25 million, one of the most underdeveloped in the region.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry proclaimed on May 18 that the administration supported extending the truce, but that maneuvers by the Houthis were responsible for the Saudi-GCC aerial bombardments.

“We know that the Houthis were engaged in moving some missile-launching capacity to the border (with Saudi Arabia) and, under the rules of engagement, it was always understood that if there were proactive moves by one side or another, then that would be in violation of the ceasefire arrangement,” Washington’s top envoy said.

Saudi Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif echoed the line of the State Department saying Riyadh “regrets that the truce did not achieve its humanitarian goals” claiming that the Houthis prompted the failure of a purported pause in bombing.

In describing the aerial bombardments carried out on May 18, the Business Standard said “Saudi Arabia resumed its offensive on the impoverished Arab country hours after the end of the ceasefire, which expired at 11 p.m. on Sunday, with Saudi warplanes pounding a number of civilian and military centers in the Aden, Hajjah, and Sa’ada provinces, Iran’s Press TV reported on Monday. In Aden, warplanes fired five rockets at the districts of Attawahi, Khormaksar, the Political Security Bureau in Fath, as well as the Ras Marmot barracks belonging to the Yemeni naval forces. The Aden airport and the al-Sawlaban military barracks in the city were also hit with three rockets.”

This same article goes on to note that “Rockets also landed in the Sahar, Zahir and Ghamr districts of Sa’ada province, while the Saudi artillery targeted Dalih and Ghawr mountains in the northern Yemeni border areas…. About 16 million of Yemen’s population of 25 million need assistance and water supplies, and health services are on the verge of collapse, aid organizations have warned.”

The recently-appointed United Nations envoy to Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed of the North African state of Mauritania issued yet another plea for a ceasefire and the beginning of talks aimed at ending the war. “I call on all parties to renew their commitment to this truce for five more days at least,” Mr Ould Cheikh Ahmed told the international media while staying in Riyadh. “This humanitarian truce should turn into a permanent ceasefire,” he said.

Various Yemeni political parties did resume negotiations on May 17 ostensibly to reach a political settlement to the war. These meetings which are sponsored by the Saudi monarchy prompted the Houthis not to attend. Press reports indicate that 400 delegates including President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi attended the meetings.

Hadi, who is very unpopular in Yemen, has taken refuge in Saudi Arabia while the monarchy and its allies are attempting to reinstall him in power.

Hadi repeated accusations that the Ansruallah movement has staged a coup. “We are trying to regain our nation from militias backed by external forces,” apparently claiming that Iran was arming the Ansurallah fighters who have taken large swaths of territory in the country, an assertion that Tehran has continuously denied.

The Islamic Republic of Iran adviser to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Ali Akbar Velayati, said during a trip to Beirut, Lebanon for a meeting with parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri, that the Saudi regime should not be hosting the talks since Riyadh was the aggressor in the war. Tehran’s position is that the talks should be hosted by the UN or in a neutral country.

A representative of the Ansurallah movement Alkarur al-Kuhlani, said of the talks taking place in Saudi Arabia that “This is another dialog conference just like the previous conferences which failed because they do not represent the Yemeni people, they only represent the previous oppressive powers who used to rule over Yemen.” (Press TV, May 18)

Another member of Ansurallah, Muhamed Subri, stressed that “Hadi means nothing to Yemenis. He was once trusted by them, but he decided to forsake the trust and plotted with foreign nations against them. In addition, he has committed many betrayals. Therefore, he is no longer the legitimate president.” (Press TV, May 18)

Humanitarian Crisis Deepens While Aid Shipments Attempt to Deliver Relief

In a statement issued by the Yemeni Freedom House Foundation, the Saudi-GCC air war has resulted in nearly 4,000 deaths while more than 6,887 others have been wounded. Attempts by Iran to deliver humanitarian assistance have been thwarted by Riyadh and its allies.

An Iranian vessel carrying a delegation of people including religious figures and peace activists in an effort to provide assistance to the Yemeni people, crossed into the Gulf of Aden on May 17.  The ship is scheduled to arrive on May 21 at Hodaida Port in Yemen but is facing potential threats from the Saudi-GCC coalition.

The Saudi-GCC alliance has announced that it will seek to board the vessel for an inspection to supposedly guarantee that there are no weapons being transported to Yemen. Passengers on the ship have stated that they will not allow the forces which are bombing Yemen and starving its people to enter for an inspection.

Caleb Maupin of the International Action Center based in New York, a passenger on the Iranian ship sponsored by the Red Crescent Society, issued a statement on May 18 opposing any attempt to stop the ship by the Saudi-GCC forces. Maupin, a longtime organizer against war and capitalist exploitation, is also a journalist whose dispatches have been published by numerous press agencies around the world including the Pan-African News Wire.

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is mercilessly slaughtering people in Yemen, has absolutely no right to inspect this vessel. Neither does the United States of America or Israel,” Maupin said.

He went on to say that “The Iranian government has made that absolutely clear, and all of us in the delegation of peace activists from Germany, France, and the United States absolutely agree with this decision. An inspection from the United Nations or the International Red Cross/Red Crescent Society would absolutely be permitted and welcomed. These are international bodies delegated for such tasks.”

Maupin also stressed by “allowing an inspection of this ship from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would recognize that somehow the people of Yemen are the property of the Saudis, which they are not. Yemenis are fighting and dying to assert this fact each day. The Red Crescent Society of the Islamic Republic of Iran, in agreement with Yemen, is shipping 2,500 tons of medical supplies on this cargo vessel. Both Iran and Yemen are sovereign countries. They have the right to interact peacefully with each other, without interference. Saudi Arabia has no say in the matter.”

The U.S. has announced that the aid shipment should be docked in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa on the Gulf of Aden. Djibouti houses the largest Pentagon base on the African continent at Camp Lemonnier where the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) stages military operations across the region. Passengers on the ship have rejected this proposal by Washington.

The aid shipment is a direct challenge to the U.S.-backed aggression against Yemen. The effort also sheds light on the war which has been largely hidden from the American people by the corporate and government-controlled media which generally provides unconditional support to Saudi Arabia and its allies.

West Aden was also the scene of fighting . Also in southern Dhaleh province, five Ansurallah fighters were reportedly killed last night after a convoy was attacked.

One might think New York was a bastion of abolitionist sentiment before the Civil War.  Hamilton’s Federalists had led a move for gradual emancipation in 1799; the last black person was freed in 1842.

They, too, needed John Brown and mass abolitionism from below. Wall Street had founded the slave trade in 1711. Fernando Wood, mayor in 1860, proposed joining the Confederacy because of the heavy influence of slave-produced cotton/textiles.

Two years ago, construction workers on a new building hit a cemetery for slaves. Over 40% of the skeletons were from people under 15.  Bondage murdered (resulted in the otherwise unnecessary deaths of) many, many people.Last week, the Times editorial page below called Wall Street – at last – to account.  As in Denver with Silas Soule at 16th street, so in New York, a plaque will be put up, honoring those captured and murdered, among the glitter of those who traded in them to found their fortunes (see also Craig Slaughter’s Ebony & Ivy on the founding of major universities).A Museum of Finance on Wall Street;  what I name a Founding Amnesia about slave-owning is corrected partly here.

New York Historical Society: Paperwork on Slaving

Actually blacks were the leading fighters among both Loyalists and Patriots the the pivotal battle of  Yorktown (see my Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War of Independence here).  The Times did not review the book two years ago, though it was the lead book at the University of Chicago Press in history which the Times often reviews.

But this editorial is some movement. It challenges amnesia about bondage.

Nonetheless, that blacks fought for freedom, their own and those of others, is still veiled in commercial commentary…

Consider today’s war complex/militarism (the military-industrial-Congressional-financial-academic-think tank, etc. complex) and the overbearing financial market.  How much money today is being made at the expense – at the refusal even to pay minimal taxes on enormous gains by hedge fund managers and the like – ordinary people?

Keeping blacks, chicanos, native americans, poor whites, immigrants, and many people abroad down, cordoned off by armed police so that Wall Street can flourish – it continues today, despite enormous changes due to struggle from below…

The heritage of slavery will not be banished until there are jobs programs; young blacks are not imprisoned and excluded from the work force, and America politics is forced to be concerned with a public good by protest from below.  Many others would benefit.

A plaque amidst the revels –

it is a long way to go….

Here is “Tracking New York’s Roots in Slavery,” NYT Editorial Board, May 15, 2015

Of all the commodities traded over time on Wall Street, the one that goes discreetly unmentioned in historical markers is human beings — the anxious throngs of kidnapped slaves that the New York City government routinely rented and auctioned off across half a century at the end of Wall Street at the East River.

This omission seems particularly egregious on a street where the excellent Museum of American Finance currently presents all manner of economic history and profit-building commodities, from railroads to cotton [no insight into how cotton was produced as if it flowered from slaveowners’ hands…].

But no spotlight at all on slaves, even though they were pioneer Wall Streeters — their labor built much of the city’s infrastructure, including the early City Hall, stretches of Broadway and the signature wall that first defined Wall Street. The city is finally rectifying this with plans for a 16-by-24-inch memorial sign whose wording has not been set but will acknowledge that the city did indeed run a profitable slave market, rivaled only by Charleston, S.C., as a hub for the American slave traffic.

The sign will be installed near where the open-air slave market was erected in 1711, when the municipal government decided to centralize the traffic in the slave trade. These were years when as many as 20 percent of New Yorkers were slaves, their labor making life so much easier for about 40 percent of the city’s households. “The blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway,” was the way George Washington, the nation’s slaveholding patriarch, described them.

Are modern New Yorkers aware of this inglorious history? “Not at all,” says a city councilman, Jumaane Williams, who proposed the marker at the behest of Christopher Cobb, a historian with a passion for details. “This sort of knowledge is generational,” notes Mr. Cobb, who feared an enormous fact — that a city slave market operated at the geographical birthplace of American capitalism — was slipping from sight.

News of the memorial was first reported by WNYC, which noted how New York profited enormously from slave labor, enriching Northerners who bankrolled Southern plantations, then Civil War military suppliers and some big corporations that are still around, like Aetna, New York Life and JPMorgan Chase. The city was so intertwined with slavery that Mayor Fernando Wood proposed secession as the Civil War approached rather than lose the rich cotton trade with the South.

Charleston preserved its slave market, and tourists can linger there at informative and poignant displays. In contrast, the memorial sign seems like a mere New York minute of infamous history. But by midsummer, at least, confirmation of the city’s forgotten role in slavery will finally go public on Wall Street.

First published in November 2013

Back in the 1990s, security researchers and privacy watchdogs were alarmed by government demands that hardware and software firms build “backdoors” into their products, the millions of personal computers and cell phones propelling communication flows along the now-quaint “information superhighway.”

Never mind that the same factory-installed kit that allowed secret state agencies to troll through private communications also served as a discrete portal for criminal gangs to loot your bank account or steal your identity.

To make matters worse, instead of the accountability promised the American people by Congress in the wake of the Watergate scandal, successive US administrations have worked assiduously to erect an impenetrable secrecy regime backstopped by secret laws overseen by secret courts which operate on the basis of secret administrative subpoenas, latter day lettres de cachet.

But now that all their dirty secrets are popping out of Edward Snowden’s “bottomless briefcase,” we also know the “Crypto Wars” of the 1990s never ended.

Documents published by The Guardian and The New York Times revealed that the National Security Agency “actively engages the US and IT industries” and has “broadly compromised the guarantees that internet companies have given consumers to reassure them that their communications, online banking and medical records would be indecipherable to criminals or governments.”

“Those methods include covert measures to ensure NSA control over setting of international encryption standards,” The Guardian disclosed, along with “the use of supercomputers to break encryption with ‘brute force’, and–the most closely guarded secret of all–collaboration with technology companies and internet service providers themselves.”

According to The New York Times, NSA “had found ways inside some of the encryption chips that scramble information for businesses and governments, either by working with chipmakers to insert back doors or by surreptitiously exploiting existing security flaws, according to the documents.”

In fact, “vulnerabilities” inserted “into commercial encryption systems” would be known to NSA alone. Everyone else, including commercial customers, are referred to in the documents as “adversaries.”

The cover name for this program is Project BULLRUN. An agency classification guide asserts that “Project BULLRUN deals with NSA’s abilities to defeat the encryption used in specific network communication technologies. BULLRUN involves multiple sources, all of which are extremely sensitive. They include CNE [computer network exploitation], interdiction, industry relationships, collaboration with other IC entities, and advanced mathematical techniques.”

In furtherance of those goals, the agency created a “Commercial Solutions Center (NCSC) to leverage sensitive, cooperative relationships with industry partners” that will “further NSA/CSS capabilities against encryption used in network communications technologies,” and already “has some capabilities against the encryption used in TLS/SSL. HTTPS, SSH, VPNs, VoIP, WEBMAIL, and other network communications technologies.”

Time and again, beginning in the 1970s with the publication of perhaps the earliest NSA exposé by Ramparts Magazine, we learned that when agency schemes came to light, if they couldn’t convince they resorted to threats, bribery or the outright subversion of the standard setting process itself, which destroyed trust and rendered all our electronic interactions far less safe.

Tunneling underground, NSA, telcos and corporate tech giants worked hand-in-glove to sabotage what could have been a free and open system of global communications, creating instead the Frankenstein monster which AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein denounced as a “Big Brother machine.”

The Secret State and the Internet

Five years after British engineer Tim Berners-Lee, Belgian computer scientist Robert Cailliau and their team at CERN developed a system for assembling, and sharing, hypertext documents via the internet, which they dubbed the World Wide Web, in 1994 the Clinton administration announced it would compel software and hardware developers to install what came to known as the “Clipper Chip” into their products.

The veritable explosion of networked communication systems spawned by the mass marketing of easy-to-use personal computers equipped with newly-invented internet browsers, set off a panic amongst political elites.

How to control these seemingly anarchic information flows operating outside “normal” channels?

In theory at least, those doing the communicating–academics, dissidents, journalists, economic rivals, even other spies, hackers or “terrorists” (a fungible term generally meaning outsider groups not on board with America’s imperial goals)–were the least amenable users of the new technology and would not look kindly on state efforts to corral them.

As new communication systems spread like wildfire, especially among the great unwashed mass of “little people,” so too came a stream of dire pronouncements that the internet was now a “critical national asset” which required close attention and guidance.

President Clinton’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection released a report that called for a vast increase in funding to protect US infrastructure along with one of the first of many “cyberwar” tropes that would come to dominate the media landscape.

“In the cyber dimension,” the report breathlessly averred, “there are no boundaries. Our infrastructures are exposed to new vulnerabilities–cyber vulnerabilities–and new threats–cyber threats. And perhaps most difficult of all, the defenses that served us so well in the past offer little protection from the cyber threat. Our infrastructures can now be struck directly by a variety of malicious tools.”

And when a commercial market for cheap, accessible encryption software was added to the mix, security mandarins at Ft. Meade and Cheltenham realized the genie would soon be out of the bottle.

After all they reasoned, NSA and GCHQ were the undisputed masters of military-grade cryptography who had cracked secret Soviet codes which helped “win” the Cold War. Were they to be out maneuvered by some geeks in a garage who did not share or were perhaps even hostile to the “post-communist” triumphalism which had decreed America was now the world’s “indispensable nation”?

Technological advances were leveling the playing field, creating new democratic space in the realm of knowledge creation accessible to everyone; a new mode for communicating which threatened to bypass entrenched power centers, especially in government and media circles accustomed to a monopoly over the Official Story.

US spies faced a dilemma. The same technology which created a new business model worth hundreds of billions of dollars for US tech corporations also offered the public and pesky political outliers across the political spectrum, the means to do the same.

How to stay ahead of the curve? Why not control the tempo of product development by crafting regulations, along with steep penalties for noncompliance, that all communications be accessible to our guardians, strictly for “law enforcement” purposes mind you, by including backdoors into commercially available encryption products.

Total Information Awareness 1.0

Who to turn to? Certainly such hush-hush work needed to be in safe hands.

The Clinton administration, in keeping with their goal to “reinvent government” by privatizing everything, turned to Mykotronx, Inc., a California-based company founded in 1983 by former NSA engineers, Robert E. Gottfried and Kikuo Ogawa, mining gold in the emerging information security market.

Indeed, one of the firm’s top players was Ralph O’Connell, was described in a 1993 document published by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) as “the father of COMSEC” and the “Principle NSA Technical Contact” on Clipper and related cryptography projects.

A 1993 Business Wire release quoted the firm’s president, Leonard J. Baker, as saying that Clipper was “a good example of the transfer of military technology to the commercial and general government fields with handsome cost benefits. This technology should now pay big dividends to US taxpayers.”

It would certainly pay “big dividends” to Mykotronx’s owners.

Acquired by Rainbow Technologies in 1995, and eventually by Military-Industrial-Surveillance Complex powerhouse Raytheon in 2012, at the time the Los Angeles Times reported that “Mykotronx had been privately held, and its owners will receive 1.82 million shares of Rainbow stock–making the deal worth $37.9 million.”

The Clipper chip was touted by the administration as a simple device that would protect the private communications of users while also allowing government agents to obtain the keys that unlocked those communications, an early manifestation of what has since become know as law enforcement’s alleged “going dark” problem.

Under color of a vague “legal authorization” that flew in the face of the 1987 Computer Security Act (CSA), which sought to limit the role of the National Security Agency in developing standards for civilian communications systems, the administration tried an end-run around the law through an export ban on Clipper-free encryption devices overseen by the Commerce Department.

This wasn’t the first time that NSA was mired in controversy over the watering down of encryption standards. During the development of the Data Encryption Standard (DES) by IBM in the 1970s, the agency was accused of forcing developers to implement changes in the design of its basic cipher. There were strong suspicions these changes had weakened the algorithm to such a degree that one critical component, the S-box, had been altered and that a backdoor was inserted by NSA.

Early on, the agency grasped CSA’s significance and sought to limit damage to global surveillance and economic espionage programs such as ECHELON, exposed by British and New Zealand investigative journalists Duncan Campbell and Nicky Hager.

Before the 1987 law was passed however, Clinton Brooks, a Special Assistant to NSA Director Lieutenant General William Odom, wrote a Top Secret Memorandum which stated: “In 1984 NSA engineered a National Security Decision Directive, NSDD-145, through the Reagan Administration that gave responsibility for the security of all US information systems to the Director of NSA, removing NBS [National Bureau of Standards] from this.”

Conceived as a follow-on to the Reagan administration’s infamous 1981 Executive Order 12333, which trashed anemic congressional efforts to rein-in America’s out-of-control spy agencies, NSDD-145 handed power back to the National Security Agency and did so to the detriment of civilian communication networks.

Scarcely a decade after Senator Frank Church warned during post-Watergate hearings into government surveillance abuses, that NSA’s “capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter . . . there would be no place to hide,” the agency was at it with a vengeance.

“This [NSDD-145] also stated,” Brooks wrote, “that we would assist the private sector. This was viewed as Big Brother stepping in and generated an adverse reaction” in Congress that helped facilitate passage of the Act.

Engineered by future Iran-Contra felon, Admiral John Poindexter, President Reagan’s National Security Adviser who would later serve as President George W. Bush’s Director of DARPA’s Information Awareness Office, the Pentagon satrapy that brought us the Total Information Awareness program, NSDD-145 stated that the “Director, National Security Agency is designated the National Manager for Telecommunications and Automated Information Systems Security.”

NSA’s new mandate meant that the agency would “act as the government focal point for cryptography, telecommunications systems security, and automated information systems security.”

Additionally, NSA would “conduct, approve, or endorse research and development of techniques and equipment for telecommunications and automated information systems security for national security information.”

But it also authorized the agency to do more than that, granting it exclusive authority to “review and approve all standards, techniques, systems and equipments for telecommunications and automated information systems security.” As well, NSA was directed to “enter into agreements for the procurement of technical security material and other equipment, and their provision to government agencies, where appropriate, to private organizations, including government contractors, and foreign governments.”

In other words, NSA was the final arbiter when it came to setting standards for all government and private information systems; quite a coup for the agency responsible for standing-up Project MINARET, the Cold War-era program that spied on thousands of antiwar protesters, civil rights leaders, journalists and members of Congress, as recently declassified documents published by the National Security Archive disclosed.

NSA Games the System

Although the Computer Security Act passed unanimously by voice vote in both Houses of Congress, NSA immediately set-out to undercut the law and did so by suborning the National Bureau of Standards, now the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The battle over the Clipper Chip would be the template for future incursions by the agency for the control, through covert infiltration, of regulatory bodies overseeing civilian communications.

According to the Clinton White House, Clipper “would provide Americans with secure telecommunications without compromising the ability of law enforcement agencies to carry out legally authorized wiretaps.”

Neither safe nor secure, Clipper instead would have handed government security agencies the means to monitor all communications while giving criminal networks a leg up to do the same.

In fact, as the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) discovered in documents unearthed through the Freedom of Information Act, the underlying algorithm deployed in Clipper, Skipjack, had been developed by NSA.

Cryptography expert Matt Blaze wrote a now famous 1994 paper on the subject before the algorithm was declassified, Protocol Failure in the Escrowed Encryption Standard: “The EES cipher algorithm, called ‘Skipjack’, is itself classified, and implementations of the cipher are available to the private sector only within tamper-resistant modules supplied by government-approved vendors. Software implementations of the cipher will not be possible. Although Skipjack, which was designed by the US National Security Agency (NSA), was reviewed by a small panel of civilian experts who were granted access to the algorithm, the cipher cannot be subjected to the degree of civilian scrutiny ordinarily given to new encryption systems.”

This was precisely as NSA and the Clinton administration intended.

A partially declassified 1993 NSA memo noted that “there will be vocal public doubts expressed about having a classified algorithm in the device we propose for the US law enforcement problem, the CLIPPER chip, we recommend the following to address this.” We don’t know what those agency recommendations were, however; more than 20 years after the memo was written they remain secret.

The memo continued: “If such people agree to this clearance and non disclosure process, we could go over the algorithm with them to let them develop confidence in its security, and we could also let them examine the detail design of the CLIPPER chip made for the US law enforcement problem to assure themselves that there were no trapdoors or other techniques built in. This would likely require crypto-mathematicians for the algorithm examination and microelectronics chip design engineers for the chip examination.”

But the extreme secrecy surrounding Skipjack’s proposed deployment in commercial products was the problem. Even if researchers learned that Clipper was indeed the government-mandated backdoor they feared, non-disclosure of these facts, backed-up by the threat of steep fines or imprisonment would hardly assure anyone of the integrity of this so-called review process.

“By far, the most controversial aspect of the EES system,” Blaze wrote, “is key escrow.”

“As part of the crypto-synchronization process,” Blaze noted, “EES devices generate and exchange a ‘Law Enforcement Access Field’ (LEAF). This field contains a copy of the current session key and is intended to enable a government eavesdropper to recover the cleartext.”

“The LEAF copy of the session key is encrypted with a device-unique key called the ‘unit key,’ assigned at the time the EES device is manufactured. Copies of the unit keys for all EES devices are to be held in ‘escrow’ jointly by two federal agencies that will be charged with releasing the keys to law enforcement under certain conditions.”

What those conditions were however, was far from clear. In fact, as we’ve since learned from Snowden’s cache of secret documents, even when the government seeks surveillance authorization from the FISA court, the court must rely on government assurances that dragnet spying is critical to the nation’s security. Such assurances, FISA court judge Reggie B. Walton noted, were systematically “misrepresented” by secret state agencies.

That’s rather rich considering that Walton presided over the farcical “trial” that upheld Bush administration demands to silence FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds under the state secrets privilege. Edmonds, a former contract linguist with the Bureau charged that top FBI officials had systematically covered-up wrongdoing at its language division and had obstructed agents’ attempts to roll-up terrorist networks before and after the 9/11 provocation, facts attested to by FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley in her 2002 Memo to then-FBI Director Robert Mueller.

In 2009, Walton wrote that “The minimization procedures proposed by the government in each successive application and approved and adopted as binding by the orders of the FISC have been so frequently and systemically violated that it can fairly be said that this critical element of the overall BR regime has never functioned effectively.”

“The Court,” Walton averred, “must have every confidence that the government is doing its utmost to ensure that those responsible for implementation fully comply with the Court’s orders. The Court no longer has such confidence.”

Predating those critical remarks, a heavily-redacted 1993 Memo to then-Special Assistant to the President and future CIA chief, George Tenet, from FBI Director William Sessions noted that NSA “has developed a new encryption methodology and computer chip which affords encryption strength vastly superior to DES [Digital Encryption Standard], yet which allows for real time decryption by law enforcement, acting pursuant to legal process. It is referred to as ‘Clipper’.”

[Two redacted paragraphs] “if the devices are modified to include the ‘Clipper’ chip, they would be of great value to the Federal, state and local law enforcement community, especially in the area of counter narcotics, investigations, where there is a requirement to routinely communicate in a secure fashion.”

But even at the time Sessions’ memo was written, we now know that AT&T provided the Drug Enforcement Administration “routine access” to “an enormous AT&T database that contains the records of decades of Americans’ phone calls,” The New York Times reported, and had done so since 1987 under the auspices of DEA’s Hemisphere Project.

Furthermore, in the wake of Snowden revelations we also learned that listening in on the conversations of drug capos is low on NSA’s list of priorities. However, programs like X-KEYSCORE and TEMPORA, which copies all data flowing along fiber optic cables, encrypted and unencrypted alike, at petabyte scales, is supremely useful when it comes to building profiles of internet users by intelligence agencies.

This was an implicit goal of Clinton administration maneuvers to compel developers to insert Clipper into their product designs.

According to Sessions, “the ‘Clipper’ methodology envisions the participation of three distinct types of parties.” [Redacted] It is proposed that the second party, the two custodians of the ‘split’ key infostructure [sic], be comprised of two disinterested and trustworthy non law enforcement Government agencies or entities. Although, such decision and selection are left for the Administration, a list of reccommended [sic] agencies and entities has been prepared (and included in the text), [redacted]. This party would administer and oversee all facets of the ‘Clipper’ program and methodology.”

Based on NSDD-145’s mandate, one can assume “this party” would be NSA, the agency that designed the underlying algorithm that powered Clipper.

The Sessions memo averred: “The Clipper chip provides law enforcement access by using a special chip key, unique to each device. In the AT&T TSD 3600, a unique session key is generated, external to the Clipper chip for each call.”

“This session key,” the memo explained, “is given to the chip to control the encryption algorithm. A device unique ‘chip key’ is programmed into each Clipper at the time of manufacture. When two TSD 3600s go to secure operation, the device gives out its identification (ID) number and the session key encrypted in its chip key.”

Underlining a key problem with Clipper technology Sessions noted, “Anyone with access to the chip key for that identified device will be able to recover the session key and listen to the transmission simultaneously with the intended receiver. This design means that the list of chip keys associated with the chip ID number provides access to all Clipper secured devices, and thus the list must be carefully generated and protected. Loss of the list would preclude legitmate [sic] access to the encrypted information and compromise of the list could allow unauthorized access.”

In fact, that “anyone” could include fabulously wealthy drug gangs or bent corporations with the wherewithal to buy chip keys from suborned government key escrow agents!

Its ubiquity would be a key selling-point for universal deployment. The memo explained, “the NSA developed chip based ‘Clipper’ solution works with hardware encryption applications, such as those which might be used with regard to certain telecommunications and computers devices,” which of course would allow unlimited spying by “law enforcement.”

Such vulnerabilities built into EES chip keys by design not only enabled widespread government monitoring of internet and voice traffic, but with a few tweaks by encryption-savvy “rogues” could be exploited by criminal organizations.

In his 1994 paper Blaze wrote that “a rogue system can be constructed with little more than a software modification to a legal system. Furthermore, while some expertise may be required to install and operate a rogue version of an existing system, it is likely that little or no special skill would be required to install and operate the modified software.”

“In particular,” Blaze noted, “one can imagine ‘patches’ to defeat key escrow in EES-based systems being distributed over networks such as the Internet in much the same way that other software is distributed today.”

In the intervening years since Blaze observed how easy it would be to compromise key escrow systems by various bad actors, governments or criminals take your pick, the proliferation of malware powered botnets that infect hundreds of thousands of computers and smart phones every day–for blanket surveillance, fraud, or both–is a fact of life.

It didn’t help matters when it emerged that “escrow agents” empowered to unlock encrypted communications would be drawn from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Automated Services Division of the Treasury Department, government outposts riddled with “No Such Agency” moles.

As EPIC pointed out, “Since the enactment of the Computer Security Act, the NSA has sought to undercut NIST’s authority. In 1989, NSA signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which purported to transfer back to NSA the authority given to NIST.”

The MOU required that NIST request NSA’s “assistance” on all matters related to civilian cryptography. In fact, were NIST and NSA representatives on the Technical Working Group to disagree on standards, the ultimate authority for resolving disputes would rest solely with the Executive Branch acting through the President, the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Council, thus undercutting the clear intent of Congress when they passed the 1987 Computer Security Act.

EPIC noted:

“The memorandum effectively returned to NSA many of the powers rejected by the Computer Security Act. The MOU contained several key goals that were to NSA’s benefit, including: NSA providing NIST with ‘technical security guidelines in trusted technology, telecommunications security, and personal identification that may be used in cost-effective systems for protecting sensitive computer data;’ NSA ‘initiating research and development programs in trusted technology, telecommunications security, cryptographic techniques and personal identification methods’; and NSA being responsive to NIST ‘in all matters related to cryptographic algorithms and cryptographic techniques including but not limited to research, development, evaluation, or endorsement’.”

A critique of the Memorandum in 1989 congressional testimony by the General Accounting Office (GAO) emphasized: “At issue is the degree to which responsibilities vested in NIST under the act are being subverted by the role assigned to NSA under the memorandum. The Congress, as a fundamental purpose in passing the act, sought to clearly place responsibility for the computer security of sensitive, unclassified information in a civil agency rather than in the Department of Defense. As we read the MOU, it would appear that NIST has granted NSA more than the consultative role envisioned in the act.”

Five years after the GAO’s critical appraisal, NSA’s coup was complete.

“In 1994,” EPIC noted,

“President Clinton issued Presidential Decision Directive (PDD-29). This directive created the Security Policy Board, which has recommended that all computer security functions for the government be merged under NSA control.”

Since PDD-29 was issued matters have only gotten worse. In fact, NIST is the same outfit exposed in Snowden documents published by The Guardian and The New York Times that allowed NSA to water down encryption and build backdoors into the Dual EC DRBG standard adopted by the Institute in 2006.

“Eventually, NSA became the sole editor.”

Besieged by widespread opposition, the Clinton administration was out maneuvered in the court of public opinion and by 1996 had abandoned Clipper. However, this proved to be a pyrrhic victory for security-minded researchers and civil libertarians as we have since learned from Edward Snowden’s revelations.

Befitting a military-intelligence agency, the dark core of America’s deep state, NSA was fighting a long war–and they were playing for keeps.

Video footage surfaced last week showing the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) treating a wounded anti-Assad Syrian rebel, following a UN report at the end of last year which found that the IDF and the Syrian rebels (including ISIS) were in regular contact. The Times of Israel reported on this latest video in an article titled, IDF posts footage of medics saving Syrian rebel in Golan:

“The IDF on Saturday released rare footage of its medics performing a life-saving procedure on one of the most severely wounded Syrian combatants medical personnel have encountered in the Golan Heights… The man, a Syrian rebel who belongs to an unnamed organization fighting against the Assad regime and its allies, received treatment at the border and then inside Israel, and was ultimately able to return to Syria… Since the start of the civil war in 2011, the IDF has treated an estimated 1,600 non-combatants and anti-Assad rebels… Although Israel’s treatment of militants from Syria — many of whom are believed to belong to Islamist organizations such as the al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front — may seem bizarre given the animosity these types of groups have expressed for the Jewish state in the past, Israel has approached the issue from a humanitarian point of view.”

The Times of Israel tries to spin Israel’s assistance to the Syrian rebels as purely “from a humanitarian point of view”, in reality however, Israel supports the Syrian opposition for its own geopolitical ends. Weakening the Syrian regime has been a geopolitical objective of the Israeli establishment for decades, with strategic papers dating back to the 1980’s detailing this goal. Oded Yinon, an Israeli journalist who had close connections to the Foreign Ministry in Israel, wrote an article in 1982 which was published in a journal of the World Zionist Organisation titled: “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties”. In it, Yinon outlines that the “dissolution of Syria and Iraq” are “Israel’s primary” objectives in the region:

“The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target.” (p.11.)

Israel’s strategic desire to weaken both Syria and Iraq was again reiterated in 1996 when a study group led by neocon Richard Perle prepared a policy document for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu titled: ‘A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm’. The document states:

“Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions.”

More recently, Israeli officials have publically revealed their desire to topple the regime in Damascus and break the alliance between Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. In an interview in 2013, the Israeli Ambassador to the US at the time Michael Oren publically expressed that Israel “always wanted Bashar Assad to go”, adding that“the greatest danger to Israel is the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut.”

Israel has been aiding the Syrian opposition with more than just medical assistance since the start of the Syrian proxy war however, as Tel Aviv has bombed Syrian territory repeatedly in addition to providing anti-Assad forces with arms. In August of last year, Sharif As-Safouri, the commander of the Free Syrian Army’s Al-Haramein Battalion at the time, revealed that he had “entered Israel five times to meet with Israeli officers who later provided him with Soviet anti-tank weapons and light arms”, as The Times of Israel reported.

Tel Aviv has also been accused of creating and facilitating the rise of ISIS itself. The chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi, stated that ISIS was created and supported by Israel, Britain and the US in order to achieve these states own objectives. A report that seemed to emerge from Gulf News in 2014 also asserted that the leader of ISIS and the new so-called caliph, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, was trained by the Mossad, although some have questioned the validity of this report. It should also be noted that some news reports assert that Baghdadi was seriously injured or even killed by a US drone strike in April.

There is no question that Israel is playing a prominent role in the attempted destruction of the Syrian state, and is guilty of destroying the lives of millions of people through their support of anti-Assad mercenaries.  Syrians are now the second largest refugee population on the planet according to a UN report (only second to Palestinians), all thanks to the NATO/Israeli/Saudi axis of evil which has funded and supported rebel armies in Syria.

Steven MacMillan is an independent writer, researcher, geopolitical analyst and editor of  The Analyst Report, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

First published by GR in April 2014

Steve McQueen, director of this year’s Oscar winner for best film “12 Years A Slave,” mentioned in his acceptance speech last month that 21 million people are living in slavery today. That quoted figure comes from the 2012 report issued by the United Nation’s International Labor Organization (ILO) that has been attempting to gather international data for over a decade now. In the Asia-Pacific region where most of the world’s forced laborers come from at 56%, an estimated 11.7 million people, followed by Africa at 18% or 3.7 million people live in bondage. Considering that at the peak of America’s slavery prior to the Civil War that ultimately declared it illegal, the total was four million people, fathoming that over five times that number are currently suffering in slavery here in the twenty-first century, casts some serious doubts on whether us humans are evolving as a species at all.

The following statistics come from the 2012 ILF report. The global economic meltdown in recent years has only given rise to conditions ripe for escalation of modern slavery. A total of 18.7 million people or 90% become forced laborers in the private sector of individual homes or private enterprise as opposed to the 10% or 2.2 million people that suffer state-imposed forms of forced labor. Of those 18.7 million forced to work in private settings, 4.5 million (or 22%) are forced into sexual exploitation while 14.2 million (or 68%) are victims of forced labor such as in agriculture, domestic work, construction or manufacturing.

The most concentrated area of forced labor victimization is in central and southeastern Europe at 4.2 humans out of 1000 followed by 4 out of 1000 in Africa. Slavery is lowest in developed nations and the European Union at 1.5 per 1000 people. The world average is 3 people in every 1000 are forced into labor.

An appalling 26% of all modern slaves or 5.5 million are children under 18, the majority underage girls forced into child prostitution and pornography. Other children are forced into working in sweat shops while young boys 12 and older are frequently recruited and forced to become child soldiers. The majority at 56% (11.8 million) of the world‘s forced laborers remain in their home country. As an example India has been identified as a nation where many of its own poor citizens are forced into slave labor. However, of the 44% (9.1 million) that are forced into labor across borders, the vast majority being women and children are sold into the highly profitable sex trafficking trade often operated by organized crime rings.

Though slaves around the world today may not be legally beaten, shackled or sold as property like African American slaves suffered for over two centuries between 1619-1865, an estimated 32 billion dollars is generated annually in an underground industry classified as a type of slavery – human trafficking. Many sources estimate profits far greater than the United Nations total of 32 billion. Only guns and drugs are more lucrative criminal enterprises.

According to the UN, transporting individuals from their homes to another location against their will into involuntary servitude or forced labor involves at least 2.5 million human trafficking victims worldwide at any given time. Seventy nine percent of victims of the human trafficking trade fall into the slavery category of sexually abused women and underage children. Female victims are both women and girls snatched up from their only familiar environment, forcibly taken across borders, and there all alone in a strange land surrounded by cruel, depraved strangers speaking in foreign tongues, they are forced into prostitution although some become domestic work as nannies, maids, cooks or factory workers. Fifteen percent of human trafficking victims are men most often forced into conditions of hard labor.

Because many nations neither have the will nor the formal mechanism in place to assess how many humans are slaves, actual numbers have been difficult to attain. Plus due to the common perception of slavery being so stigmatized with shame, along with fear of potential immigration problems or violent retribution from slave trade perpetrators, many victims understandably resist going to authorities and reporting this largely invisible crime against humanity. Some are victims of the Stockholm syndrome where they actually identify with their enslavers.

Of course the illicit nature of both slavery as well as prostitution as part of the seedy underbelly of a brutally violent industry covertly run by organized crime, also acts as a formidable barrier resulting in severe underreporting and relatively few cases ever being brought to prosecution. All of these factors have contributed to a growing international problem that has been slow for organizations of both victim advocacy as well as national and transnational law enforcement agencies to effectively come together to tackle its immensity.

Yet since last month’s Oscar winning film delving into this enormously important subject matter, more recent developments just in this last week alone are beginning to shine a sliver of light and modest reason for optimism on this long overlooked and indelible human stain. Last Thursday the pope many believe comes closest to embodying the spirit of the most famous saint Francis of Assisi, Pope Francis himself met privately with four ex-slaves to top off a two-day global conference  bringing much needed attention to the blight of modern slavery. The pope is calling for an orchestrated partnership and two pronged approach between churches around the world offering spiritual guidance and compassion to victims and international law enforcement spearheading the coordinated investigative crackdown necessary to arrest what Francis calls this “scourge” on humanity from spreading beyond its current worldwide operation.

Police chiefs from the continents of North and South America, Africa, Asia and Europe were all in attendance, including countries where the problem of human trafficking has been most severe – Albania, Brazil, Nigeria and Thailand. It was reported that this rather weighty topic of global slavery was discussed in the pope’s meeting last month with President Obama.

This first time conference on slavery in the twenty-first century comes fresh on the heels of the pope’s apology to the world for all the damage his religion has inflicted on the thousands of innocent victims of sexual abuse perpetrated by pedophile Catholic priests and clergymen through the ages. In the US alone from 1985 to 2000 an estimated 1,400 sexual abuse lawsuits were filed against priests resulting in billions of dollars in settlements reached. Papal critics and abuse advocates view the pope’s personal apology as a genuine first big step in the right direction toward bearing some responsibility for the sins of his church. But many still await the pope’s specific concrete plan of action to substantively tackle and begin making further inroads toward resolving this endemic pandemic he inherited.

Benjamin Skinner wrote in his eye-opening landmark book A Crime So Monstrous (Free Press, 2008) that “there are more slaves today than at any point in human history” – six years ago citing 27 million people living in bondage – a full six million more than ILO’s latest 2012 count. The estimated variance of numbers is a testimonial to the enormity of difficulty compiling and accurately tracking slavery’s pervasiveness in the modern world. It seems highly unlikely that at such an early stage of still organizing a global commitment toward its eradication that slavery is actually decreasing in the ensuing years since Skinner’s book was published. If anything, the human trafficking industry has been expanding both its area and scope of operations, particularly in east Asia.

Less than a month ago at the Vatican a new initiative released by multiple faiths represented announced a Memorandum of Agreement and Joint Statement establishing the Global Freedom Network designed to abolish modern slavery and human trafficking by 2020. Its statement on slavery:

“The physical, economic and sexual exploitation of men, women and children condemns 30  million  people to dehumanization and degradation. Every day we let this tragic situation continue is a grievous assault on our common humanity and a shameful affront to the consciences of all peoples.”

In efforts to educate and inform the public about modern slavery and human trafficking, a series of ongoing articles have been covered by such newspapers as the Observer and Guardian, both announced as UK winners of the Anti-Slavery Day Media Awards last week. The Guardian launched a series called “modern day slavery in focus” that depicts the atrocious conditions of Nepalese workers in the Middle Eastern nation Qatar in preparation for the 2022 World Cup.

Similar to the Sochi Olympics, a common pattern has emerged with construction of massive stadium complexes for major international sporting events that under pressured deadlines pre-set the stage for inhumane work conditions with high potential for human trafficking of forced slave laborers. The Guardian tells the tragic story of a sixteen year old boy from Nepal attempting to escape poverty back home arriving in Qatar to work in a cramped forced labor camp exploited by a trafficking broker that produced a forged passport claiming the boy was 20. Instead of receiving the promised pay wage, the 16-year old was forced to sign his life away in indentured servitude but within two months was dead. Nepal’s foreign employment board estimates that 726 Nepalese migrant workers died overseas in 2012, marking an 11% increase from the previous year. More foreign workers abroad especially from Asia are being misled and lured into this world of exploitation, corruption and deception that increasingly results in slavery and death.

In a related matter, the UK Parliament is in the throes of drafting Europe’s first modern anti-slavery bill calling for lifetime sentences for convicted human traffickers. Debate centers around simplifying the law to increase the rate of conviction. Last week Oscar winning director Steve McQueen weighed in his criticism calling for the bill to be rewritten so as to not turn victims of slavery themselves into criminals. A revised reworking is underway.

Even a publicity stunt was just announced of an April 15th Guinness record breaking event of a whirlwind 7-city tour across Europe in just 24 hours emphasizing awareness of human trafficking to raise money for the leading US anti-trafficking policy organization ECPAT-USA. This week also marks the third annual human trafficking awareness week at Chico State University in California. Last weekend a bi-national conference with delegates from El Paso, Texas and across the border city Juarez held a joint conference on modern slavery and human trafficking to reduce its occurrence between Mexico and the US.

It appears that lawmakers and church faiths alike from the local to international level in conjunction with local, national and Interpol policing agencies are mobilizing task forces like never before to generate momentum in addressing the plight of modern slavery. A number of advocacy organizations in recent years have been fighting to make this destructive and sinister human rights violation among the worst kind a global priority and it appears their efforts are finally now just beginning to pay off. But real progress towards eradicating slavery requires a lot more than just an ephemeral, “flavor-of-the-week” cause and mindset.

These recent small steps only highlight humanity’s seminal starting point in the modern era to collectively exercise the political will to prioritize, fund and coordinate a concerted effective global effort and campaign over the long haul to ultimately end slavery on this planet once and for all.

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former Army officer. His written manuscript based on his military experience examines leadership and national security issues and can be consulted at http://www.redredsea.net/westpointhagopian/.
After the military, Joachim earned a masters degree in psychology and became a licensed therapist working in the mental health field for more than a quarter century.

Last week, millions around the world marked the 67^th anniversary of the Nakba – literally “the disaster” or “the catastrophe” in Arabic – commemorating the seizure of Palestinian land and transformation of historic Palestine into modern Israel. Naturally, there is little ambiguity among pro-Palestine activists that the Nakba represents the opening salvo in the ongoing war perpetrated by Israel and Zionism against the people of Palestine; it is the continuing war of gradual (and not so gradual) erasure of Palestinian culture, Palestinian ethnic identity, and Palestinian collective memory. The weapons in this war range from Israeli bombs, to Zionist propaganda that seeks to dehumanize the Palestinian people, robbing them of both their agency and their humanity, their land and their livelihoods.

But these facts are only controversial when facing the barrage of pro-Israeli propaganda either in the media, or as parroted by liberal Zionists whose humanity and compassion somehow does not extend to a tiny strip of land called Gaza, or the disjointed and disfigured territory known as the West Bank. Indeed, most people of conscience have come to see the self-evident injustice of the Nakba and the occupation; they recognize the apartheid and continuing oppression of the Palestinian people, correctly believing this struggle to be one of the great injustices of the contemporary world.

However, there is another Nakba, another catastrophe, that is ongoing today that even many pro-Palestinian voices fail (or choose not) to see – the war on Syria, Iraq, and indeed much of the region. For while 1948 saw the destruction of whole villages, extermination of families, displacement of millions, and the stealing of land throughout Palestine, so too have the last few years seen a similar phenomenon in Syria and Iraq. But while the rape of Palestine is a cause around which millions all over the world can unite, the war on Syria and Iraq has left much of the international movement divided. Many even today refuse to see this continuing war as even a war at all; it is “sectarian conflict,” it is “merely a proxy war,” and many argue that “all sides should be condemned.” But is this really true? Or, are these merely the empty platitudes of intellectual and moral cowards who prefer to stick with just Palestine because Syria and Iraq are “not their issue”?

Hezbollah, Syria, and Historical Memory

While there are many proverbial ostriches with their heads in the sand, there are forces in the region who have taken a stand with their brothers and sisters in Syria, chief among them Hassan Nasrallah and the Hezbollah organization. Hezbollah has been fighting side by side with the Syrian Arab Army on the ground in Syria since at least early 2013, and has won strategically significant military victories countless times in the intervening months. Perhaps even more striking however is the intellectual fervor with which Nasrallah and Hezbollah have defended the very concept of resistance to Saudi/Qatari-sponsored wahhabi (takfiri) extremism espoused by the Al Qaeda-affiliated al Nusra Front, ISIS, and the myriad other foreign-sponsored terror organizations waging war on Syria and Iraq.

In a widely disseminated speech given by Nasrallah marking both the 67^th anniversary of the Nakba and the significant victory by allied Hezbollah and Syrian military forces in the mountains of Qalamoun on the Syria-Lebanon border, Nasrallah noted that:

While we mark the Nakba of the Palestinian people, we are also dealing with a new Nakba and that is the scheme by ISIS and its supporters who are trying to divide the Ummah [nation]…we have to study the causes of [the] Nakba and identify the responsibilities in order for the contemporary generations to learn from the past experience, which included the noble stances of the mujahidin and the martyrs and comprised those who betrayed their Ummah [nation] for the sake of private interests.

Nasrallah, always a powerful and charismatic speaker, here strikes a powerful note in drawing a direct parallel between the Nakba of 67 years ago, and that of today. Not only does his statement imply the similarity of many of the outcomes – displacement of millions, ethnic cleansing, mass killings – it also makes a qualitative comparison between the two, noting both tacitly, and at times overtly, that the Western-backed, Gulf-sponsored war on Syria, Iraq, and the whole region is connected to a powerful, international imperial project designed to remake the region in the interests of colonial powers.

And of course, on a human level, does one really doubt that the Zionist terrorist groups-cum-death squads such as Irgun (led by Ze’ev Jabotinsky) and Lehi (led by Avraham Stern) which massacred men, women and children and drove Palestinians from their ancestral lands were substantively different from the ISIS and Nusra death squads of today which perpetrate similar crimes against Christians, Alawites, Sunnis, and Shia Muslims throughout Syria and Iraq? Certainly the victims of either group would argue that such crimes cannot be seen as anything other than comparable. And so, seen in this way, Nasrallah’s relativism in regards to the Nakba of 1948 and that of today is clearly and undeniably apt.

Nasrallah’s claim that this new war is “trying to divide the Ummah” is critical to understanding both the importance of Hezbollah’s involvement in it, and the significance of the war for the Arab world, particularly in the Syrian theater. Not only does he articulate the fundamental understanding that the sectarian nature of the conflict is not some logical outgrowth, but rather is an integral part of its character and the agenda of those that support it, but he also makes plain both the practical and symbolic importance of Syria to the broader anti-imperialist, anti-colonial project.

For decades, Syria has stood as a model of a multicultural, multiethnic, multi-religious secular nation in a region full of chauvinist, ethnic supremacist regimes such as those in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Israel, and elsewhere. It is a country where sectarian divides, though very real, were almost never problematic, and where national solidarity, patriotism and allegiance to the nation stood above any religious sectarian differences. Syria represented a triumph of what once was called Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, despite the fact that many self-proclaimed socialists today are quick to denigrate its accomplishments in that regard. Syria stands for progress in many ways: respect for the rights of women and minorities, equality under the law, and religious tolerance. Chief among its tremendous accomplishments has been the continued defense of, and legal protections for, Palestinian victims of the Nakba and their descendants.

In this way, Hezbollah and the Syrian government are natural allies. Both have stood defiant against Israel while many of their fellow Arab states (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, etc.) have sought accommodation with Tel Aviv for material benefit. Both Hezbollah and Syria have refused to abandon the Palestinian cause, with the former having taken on and defeated Israel on the battlefield, and the latter providing political, economic, and diplomatic support to Palestine and Palestinians, both within and without its borders.

From this perspective, it is essential to see the current war against US-NATO-GCC-Turkey-Israel sponsored terrorists as both a new Nakba, and a continuation of a decades-long struggle. As Nasrallah correctly pointed out, “We faced a Nakba then, we face a new and more dangerous one now.”

The Politics of Nakbas, New and Old

The inescapable connections between what could be called the historical and contemporary Nakbas are myriad. From the way in which each served the political agenda of the Western imperial establishment, to the impact that each has had on the map and political, social, and cultural character of the region, both events have served to fundamentally transform the Middle East, and the entire Arab world. However, in examining these far reaching impacts, one cannot help but be struck by the politics manifested today by all the interested parties. Indeed, it is the politics of today’s Nakba that, in many ways, complicates any understanding of both the importance of the historical Nakba, and that of the Nakba of today.

An examination of the key players in 1948 reveals that, much to the chagrin of those ostensible allies of the Palestinians and of oppressed peoples, the players are by and large the same, thereby giving credence to Nasrallah’s “Two Nakbas” construction. For in 1948, in the wake of the Holocaust and World War II, it was the United States, France, and Britain who created the State of Israel out of the sands and hills of Palestine, thereby leading to one of recent history’s deepest, and still bleeding, wounds. These same imperial powers have been the main instigators of the contemporary Nakba, providing weapons, training,financial and diplomatic support to terrorist groups in the war on Syria which, along with the criminal US war in Iraq, lead directly to the creation and expansion of ISIS. In this way, the ultimate responsibility for both Nakbas rests at the feet of Washington, London, and Paris (to say nothing of Riyadh, Doha, Ankara, and Tel Aviv).

Perhaps, in this light, one can begin to see that the Nakba narrative is, in effect, a colonial narrative, and that the war raging in Syria and Iraq today is merely a new chapter in the history of Western colonialism – or neo-colonialism, as it were – in the Arab world. With its lucrative energy reserves, strategic location, and historical and politico-religious significance, the Middle East remains one of the shining jewels of the imperial crown.

And yet, despite all these connections, despite the obvious and painfully self-evident continuity of these struggles, many pro-Palestinian elements still choose to see the historical Nakba in a vacuum, opting instead to side with the oppressors and colonial lackeys in the conflict today.

Hamas, despite its reputation (fair or unfair) as a resistance force and bastion of anti-imperialism, has repeatedly sided with the Muslim Brotherhood and its patron Qatar, as well as Saudi Arabia – Hamas having shifted their allegiance away from Syria, Hezbollah and Iran, and toward the US proxy monarchies of the Gulf. As Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh stated in 2012, “I salute the heroic people of Syria who are striving for freedom, democracy and reform.”

Indeed, despite the support for Palestinian liberation provided by Damascus, Hamas opportunistically allied with the satraps of Western imperialism believing, with some justification at the time, that the tide had turned against Assad and Syria, and that they would benefit most from being on the winning end of the war. But of course, that is not what happened, and the steadfastness of Syrian resistance to the international war against them has led many in the Palestinian political establishment to question that decision of a few years ago.

While it may be understandable, Hamas’s betrayal of their Syrian and Hezbollah brothers has not gone unnoticed. As Syrian President Assad defiantly explained in 2013, “This was not the first time they had betrayed us. It happened before in 2007 and 2009. Their history is one of treachery and betrayal… [I wish] someone would persuade them to return to being a resistance movement [but it’s doubtful]…Hamas has sided against Syria from day one. They have made their choice.” Although Iran has recently attempted to restore relations with Hamas for their political interests, it seems that what relationship there may have been between Hamas and Damascus and Tehran is a thing of the past.

And this is precisely the problem. Hamas’s failure to overcome the sectarian allegiances and political opportunism of their ostensible Muslim Brotherhood and Qatari friends has left them, in many ways, politically isolated. For while Riyadh, Doha, and Ankara shed crocodile tears over the plight of the Palestinian people, these are the same countries falling over themselves to do business with Israel and serve the Western imperial system in whatever way they can. Seen from this perspective, the victims of the historical Nakba have, through political miscalculation and betrayal by their political elites, estranged themselves from the victims of the contemporary Nakba. Moreover, they have burned the bridge that linked them with the forces of resistance in the region.

Of course, no analysis of this issue would be complete without an obligatory public denunciation of the “pro-Palestinian” groups that have done yeoman’s service for the Empire in its war on Syria and Iraq. From NGOs and centers of online and grassroots activism, to the allegedly anti-imperialist media outlets, the international campaign against Syria, Hezbollah, Iraq and Iran has been seemingly a force of nature. While no one should be surprised that Al Jazeera, a news outlet bankrolled by the Qatari royal family, would be the leading edge of anti-Syria propaganda, some might be surprised to find that other pseudo-alternative outlets have joined in the imperialist disinformation campaign. These same outlets that claim to stand for truth and justice in Palestine eagerly cheerlead the war on Syria. Such duplicity serves to illustrate the political crisis that has befallen the Resistance movement and those who support Palestinian liberation.

To see the Palestinian victims of the Nakba and its ongoing effects in a political vacuum is to do a disservice to the spirit of the Resistance. To allow the imperialists to divide the movement along sectarian lines – make no mistake, this is true for many who support Palestine but call for Syria’s destruction – is to provide aid and comfort to the enemy. To separate the two Nakbas and deem one legitimate while the other illegitimate is to expose oneself as the greatest of hypocrites.

Naturally, such conclusions will not be met with applause by many. This writer, like others who have made similar comments, will likely receive angry emails and abusive tweets. But this is a small price to pay for speaking the truth when many others seem afraid or unwilling to do so. It is an infinitesimally small price to pay when one considers the countless sons and daughters of Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon who have spilled their blood to save their families, their homes, their people.

This writer believes it essential to place Palestine in the broadest regional and historical context, and to proclaim loudly that there can be no liberation of Palestine without a regional and international alliance and realignment, so that the divide is no longer sectarian but ideological. Either the Palestinian leadership is allied with the forces of anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggle, or they are in league with the forces of reaction and subservience to Empire. In this existential struggle, there can be no middle ground. There can be no separation between the historical and contemporary Nakbas. In this tale of two Nakbas, there is only one acceptable outcome: victory, justice, liberation.

Eric Draitser is the founder of StopImperialism.org and host of Counterpunch Radio. He is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City. You can reach him at [email protected].

President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney receive an Oval Office briefing from CIA Director George Tenet. Also present is Chief of Staff Andy Card (on right). (White House photo)

Jeb Bush’s stumbling start to his presidential bid has refocused attention on Official Washington’s favorite excuse for the illegal, aggressive and disastrous war in Iraq – that it was just a case of “bad intelligence.” But that isn’t what the real history shows.

Presidential aspirant Jeb Bush this week may have damaged his chances by flubbing the answer to an entirely predictable question about his big brother’s decision to attack Iraq.

On Monday, Fox’s Megyn Kelly asked the former Florida governor: “Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion?” Jeb Bush answered, “I would’ve. And so would’ve Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody, and so would’ve almost everybody who was confronted with the intelligence they got.”

Kelly: “You don’t think it was a mistake.”

Bush: “In retrospect, the intelligence that everyone saw — that the world saw, not just the United States — was faulty.”

After some backfilling and additional foundering on Tuesday and Wednesday, Bush apparently memorized the “correct” answer. So on Thursday, he proceeded to ask the question himself: “If we’re all supposed to answer hypothetical questions: Knowing what we now know, what would you have done? I would not have engaged. I would not have gone into Iraq.”

It is a safe bet that, by Thursday, Iraq War champion Paul Wolfowitz, now a senior adviser to Jeb Bush, had taken him to the woodshed, admonishing him along these lines: “Jeb, you remembered to emphasize the mistaken nature of pre-war intelligence; that’s the key point; that’s good. But then you need to say that if you knew how mistaken the intelligence was, you would not have attacked Iraq. Got it?”

It was then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz — together with his boss Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and a string of neocon advisers — who exploited the tragedy of 9/11 to make war on Iraq, which they had been itching for since the 1990s. They tried mightily (and transparently) to link Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks. Following their lead, the fawning corporate media played up this bum rap with such success that, before the attack on Iraq, polls showed that almost 70 percent of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein played some kind of role in 9/11.

Not so, said honest intelligence analysts who, try as they might, could find no persuasive evidence for Hussein’s guilt other than the synthetic kind in Wolfowitz’s purposively twisted imagination. Yet the pressure on the analysts to conform was intense. CIA’s ombudsman commented publicly that never in his 32-year career with the agency had he encountered such “hammering” on CIA analysts to reconsider their judgments and state that there were operational ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda.

The pressure was reflected in pronouncements at the highest levels. A year after 9/11, President Bush was still saying, “You cannot distinguish between al-Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror.” Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was more direct, claiming that the evidence tying Iraq to al-Qaeda was “bulletproof.”

But Brent Scowcroft, national security advisor to President George H.W. Bush and Chairman of George W. Bush’s President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, supported honest analysts in CIA and elsewhere, stating publicly that evidence of any such connection was “scant.”

There was the looming danger of a principled leak, or possibly even an insurrection of some kind on the part of those opposed to creating pretexts for war. And so the administration chose to focus first and foremost on “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD).

It would be an easier – and scarier – sell a claim that Iraq had chemical, biological and perhaps nuclear weapons and that the Iraqis could give them to “terrorists” for another attack on the “homeland” (introducing a term that both the Nazis and the Soviets used to good effect in whipping up nationalistic fervor in wartime).

Brimming with WMD

Unable to get honest intelligence analysts to go along with the carefully nurtured “noble lie” that Iraq played a role in 9/11, or even that operational ties existed between Iraq and al-Qaeda, the administration ordered up a separate but related genre of faux intelligence – WMD. This PR offensive was something of a challenge, for in the months before 9/11, Condoleezza Rice and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell had insisted publicly that Saddam Hussein posed no security threat. You don’t remember?

On Feb. 24, 2001, Powell had said, “Saddam Hussein has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.”

And just six weeks before 9/11, Condoleezza Rice told CNN: “let’s remember that his [Saddam’s] country is divided, in effect. He does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.” Obligingly, the compliant U.S. media pressed the delete button on those telling statements.

How many times have we heard that, after 9/11, “everything changed.” Well, we were soon to observe a major attempt to apply this adage to Saddam’s inventory of WMD that Rice and Powell had said did not exist. The world was being asked to believe that, almost immediately, hundreds of stealth WMD had wafted down like manna from the heavens for a soft landing on the sands of Iraq.

Just days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld began promoting the notion that Iraq might have weapons of mass destruction and that “within a week, or a month, Saddam could give his WMD to al-Qaeda.” This was an early articulation of the bogus “conjunction of terrorism and WMD,” now immortalized in what is the most damning, first-hand, documentary evidence of U.S./U.K. collusion in launching a war of aggression on false pretenses and how it was to be “justified.”

This evidence was contained in the “Downing Street Memorandum,” written on July 23, 2002, though not published until May 1, 2005, by The London Times (discussed in more detail below). The goal was to systematically conflate Iraq’s supposed stockpiles of WMD with al-Qaeda and 9/11, as a kind of subliminal fear/revenge message to the American public.

It was not long before the agile Rice did a demi-pirouette of 180 degrees, claiming that Saddam had suddenly become “a danger in the region where the 9/11 threat emerged.” By the summer of 2002, the basic decision for war having been taken, something persuasive had to be conjured up to get Congress to authorize it. Weapons of mass deception, as one wag called them, together with warnings about “mushroom clouds” were just what the Doctor Rice ordered.

Sadly, CIA’s malleable director George Tenet followed orders to conjure up WMD in a deceitful National Intelligence Estimate issued on Oct. 1, 2002. The NIE’s main purpose was to deceive Congress into authorizing war on Iraq, which Congress did just ten days later.

Amid the media din about WMD, and with Rep. Barbara Lee, D-California, the sole exception, no legislator proved willing to risk being seen as “weak on terrorism” as the mid-term elections approached in November, the disinformation operation was – well, you might say a “cakewalk.” Tenet and his deputy John McLaughlin satisfied President Bush they could fashion the evidence into a “slam dunk,” and then fed the cooked intelligence to Secretary of State Colin Powell to use at the U.N.

Riding High, Wolfowitz Slips

Basking in the glory of “Mission Accomplished” after Baghdad fell in April 2003, Wolfowitz succumbed to a brief bout of hubris-induced honesty. He openly admitted that the Bush administration had focused on weapons of mass destruction to justify war on Iraq “for bureaucratic reasons.” It was, he explained, “the one reason everyone could agree on” – meaning, of course, the one that could successfully sell the war to Congress and the American people.

As for the real reasons, Wolfowitz again let his guard drop at about the same time. When asked in May 2003 why North Korean WMD were being treated differently from those claimed to exist in Iraq, he responded, “Let’s look at it simply. … [Iraq] swims on a sea of oil.”

Other usually circumspect senior officials have had unguarded moments of candor. In another moment of unusual frankness – this one before the war – Philip Zelikow, a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 2001 to 2003, spilled the other key reason.  Discounting any real danger to the U.S. from Iraq, Zelikow pointed rather to the threat he said Iraq posed to Israel as “the unstated threat.” It was a threat, he added, that dared not speak its name – because it was so politically sensitive.

Are you getting the picture why the Bush administration didn’t want to level with the American people who might have viewed the war very differently if the real motives and the nagging doubts had been expressed frankly and bluntly?

The force with which CIA analysts were pressed to manufacture intelligence to serve the cause of war was unprecedented in CIA history and included personal visits by Vice President Cheney to make sure the intelligence analysts knew what was wanted. That many of my former colleagues in the Analysis Directorate took willing part in this unconscionable charade was hard to believe. But they did.

At about this time, an anonymous White House official – believed to be George W. Bush’s political adviser Karl Rove – reportedly boasted, “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities.”

As exemplified by Jeb Bush’ memorized lines this past week, there continues to be a huge premium among disciples of Rovian historiography, to “create new reality,” blaming “mistaken intelligence” for the debacle in Iraq and the ensuing chaos throughout the region. The intelligence was wrong; but it was not mistaken; it was out-and-out fraud.

This had become so clear, yet so little known, that ten years ago this month I was finishing a draft for a chapter I called “Sham Dunk: Cooking Intelligence for the President” to appear in Neo-CONNED Again! Hypocrisy, Lawlessness, and the Rape of Iraq.

I was just finishing the draft when a deus ex machina arrived in the form of a major leak to the London Times of official minutes of a briefing of then British Prime Minister Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street on July 23, 2002, eight months before the war on Iraq, and three days after visiting CIA Director George Tenet to confirm for Blair exactly what Bush and Cheney were planning. The Downing Street document destroyed the argument, already being promoted in 2005 by those responsible for the fraud, that intelligence mistakes were to blame for the war in Iraq.

The Downing Street Memorandum

I would like to draw from the first couple of paragraphs of the chapter, since, sadly, they seem relevant today as the historical rewrite about “intelligence errors” is recurring now at the start of Campaign 2016. But first, here is the text of the most damaging part of the Downing Street Memo as “C” — Richard Dearlove, the head of British intelligence – reported on recent talks in Washington:

“There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.” (emphasis added)

Following is the introduction to my chapter:

“Let’s review. It was bad intelligence that forced an unwitting president to invade Iraq, right? The sad fact that so many Americans believe this myth is eloquent testimony to the effectiveness of the White House spin machine. The intelligence was indeed bad — shaped that way by an administration determined to find a pretext to effect ‘regime change’ in Iraq.

“Senior administration officials — first and foremost Vice President Dick Cheney — played a strong role in ensuring that the intelligence analysis was corrupt enough to justify, ex post facto, the decision to make war on Iraq. It is not altogether clear how witting President George W. Bush was of all this, but there is strong evidence that he knew chapter and verse. Had he been mousetrapped into this ‘preemptive’ war, one would expect some heads to roll. None have. And where is it, after all, that the buck is supposed to stop?

“The intelligence-made-me-do-it myth has helped the Bush administration attenuate the acute embarrassment it experienced early last year [2004] when the casus belli became a casus belly laugh. When U.S. inspector David Kay, after a painstaking search to which almost a billion dollars and many lives were given, reported that there had been no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq since 1991, someone had to take the fall.

“Elected was CIA director George Tenet, the backslapping fellow from Queens always eager to do whatever might be necessary to play with the bigger kids. For those of you just in from Mars, the grave danger posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was what President Bush cited as thecasus belli for invading Iraq. It was only after Kay had the courage to tell the truth publicly that Bush fell back on the default rationale for the war; namely, the need to export democracy, about which we are hearing so much lately.

“Not surprisingly, the usual suspects in the mainstream media that played cheerleader for the war are now helping the president (and the media) escape blame. Flawed intelligence that led the United States to invade Iraq was the fault of the US intelligence community, explained the Washington Times last July 10 [2004], after regime loyalist Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, released his committee’s findings.

“Nine months later, after publication of similar findings by a commission handpicked by the president, the Washington Post’s lead headline was ‘Data on Iraqi Arms Flawed, Panel Says.’ The date was, appropriately, April Fools Day, 2005. In a word, they are playing us for fools. The remarkable thing is that most folks don’t seem able, or willing, to recognize that – or even to mind.

“On May 1, 2005, a highly sensitive document published by The Sunday Times of London provided the smoking gun showing that President Bush had decided to make war on Iraq long before the National Intelligence Estimate was produced to conjure up ‘weapons of mass destruction’ there and mislead Congress into granting authorization for war.

“The British document is classified ‘SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL – U.K. EYES ONLY.’ And small wonder. It contains an official account of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s meeting with top advisers on July 23, 2002, at which Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6 (the U.K. equivalent to the CIA), simply ‘C’ in the written document, reported on talks he had just held in Washington with top U.S. officials. Blair has now acknowledged the authenticity of the document.

“As related in the document, Dearlove told Blair and the others that President Bush wanted to remove Saddam Hussein through military action, that this ‘was seen as inevitable,’ and that the attack would be ‘justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD.’ He continued: ‘… but the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.’

“Dearlove tacked on yet another telling comment: ‘There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.’ British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw concurred that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, but noted that finding justification would be challenging, for ‘the case was thin.’ Straw pointed out that Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran.

“As head of MI6, Dearlove was CIA Director George Tenet’s British counterpart. We Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been saying since January 2003 that the two intelligence chiefs’ marching orders were to ‘fix’ the intelligence around the policy. It was a no-brainer.

“Seldom, however, does one acquire documentary evidence that this – the unforgivable sin in intelligence analysis – was used by the most senior U.S. government leaders as a way to ‘justify’ a prior decision for war. There is no word to describe our reaction to the fact that the two intelligence chiefs quietly acquiesced in the corruption of our profession on a matter of such consequence. ‘Outrage’ doesn’t even come close.”

Challenging Rumsfeld

A year later in Atlanta, I had an unusual chance to publicly challenge then Defense Secretary Rumsfeld – no stranger to the dissembling about WMD – about his earlier claims saying he knew were the WMD were in Iraq, and knew of ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda. My question grew into a mini-debate of four minutes, during which he lied, demonstrably, on both issues. As luck would have it, May 4, 2006 was a very slow news day, and our mini-debate took place in early afternoon, enabling serious journalists like Keith Olbermann to perform a “fact-check.”

Finally, on June 5, 2008, then-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Jay Rockefeller made some remarkable comments that got sparse attention in U.S. media. Announcing the findings of a bipartisan report of a five-year study on misstatements on prewar intelligence on Iraq, Rockefeller said:

“In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed.”

Anyone know what “non-existent” intelligence looks like?

What has become painfully clear since the trauma of 9/11 is that most of our fellow citizens have felt an overriding need to believe that administration leaders are telling them the truth and to ignore all evidence to the contrary. Many Americans seem impervious to data showing that it was the administration that misled the country into this unprovoked war and that the “intelligence” was conjured up well after the White House decided to effect “regime change” in Iraq (or introduce democracy, if you favor the default rationale) by force of arms.

I have been asking myself why so many Americans find it so painful to delve deeper. Why do they resist letting their judgment be influenced by the abundance of evidence, much of it documentary, exposing how little or no evidence there was to support what was a most consequential fraud? Perhaps it is because they know that responsible citizenship means asking what might seem to be “impertinent” questions, ferreting out plausible answers, and then, when necessary, holding people accountable, rectifying the situation, and ensuring it does not happen again.

Resistance, however, remains strong. At work – in all of us to some degree – is the same convenient denial mechanism that immobilized so many otherwise conscientious German citizens during the 1930s, enabling Germany to launch its own unprovoked wars and curtail civil liberties at home. Taking action, or just finding one’s voice, entails risk; denial is the more instinctive, easier course.

But it is too late for denial. We might take to heart Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s warning: “… there is such a thing as being too late. … Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late.’”

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He served for 27 years in CIA’s Analysis Directorate, coming “out of retirement” when he saw his former profession being corrupted to “justify” a war of aggression.  At that point he joined with others to create Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) in an attempt to hold former colleagues accountable.

Originally published at WhoWhatWhy.org

The recent earthquakes that devastated Nepal highlight the need to find ways to avoid, or at least minimize, these catastrophes when humanly possible. One particular Oklahoma billionaire, engaged in the very activity that may be causing earthquakes in his own backyard, forcefully begs to disagree. And he’s been trying to use his seemingly unlimited resources to get his way.

Fossil fuel partisans in the Sooner State were rattled late last month when the Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS) released a statement that the rapid increase in the state’s seismic activity was very likely caused by humans—specifically the “injection/disposal of water associated with oil and gas production.”

One billionaire oilman decided to take action—not about the message but about the messengers. Emails exposed by Bloomberg News reveal that Harold Hamm, the founder and CEO of Continental Resources, one of America’s ten biggest energy independents, asked the dean of the University of Oklahoma’s College of Earth and Energy to fire scientists involved with the OGS report, an official publication of the university.

“Mr. Hamm is very upset at some of the earthquake reporting to the point that he would like to see select OGS staff dismissed,” Dean Larry Grillot wrote to a couple of colleagues.

OU Stood Strong in Light of Overwhelming Evidence

Billionaire Harold Hamm called for the dismissal of university scientists who had the audacity to claim that human activity was to blame for increased seismic activity in the state.

To the university’s credit, none of the scientists were dismissed. One possible reason is that the findings of OGS were simply too unambiguous.

“The seismicity rate in 2013 was 70 times greater than the background seismicity rate observed in Oklahoma prior to 2008,” the OGS statement said. “While unlikely, this rate could have been potentially explained by natural variations in earthquake rates from naturally occurring swarms. The seismicity rate is now about 600 times greater than the background seismicity rate, and is very unlikely the result of a natural process.”

However, the episode is symptomatic of how science is often treated by the rich and powerful. If research goes counter to what benefits them, they either threaten to close purse strings or take even more drastic steps.

Oil Tycoon also Wanted Seat on Search Panel for New OGS Director

In this case, Hamm, who gives a significant amount of money to the university, apparently felt entitled to demand that some scientists be dismissed because their findings did not align with his business interests. The oil tycoon also lobbied to be part of the search committee that would select the new OGS director, saying that he feels strongly that such a panel should “include a representative from the oil and gas industry.”

While Hamm’s effort seems to have come up short, there is no shortage of billionaires who give lots of money to universities and other research institutions that investigate issues of even larger import than the impact of oil production methods on earthquakes in Oklahoma.

How many of them attach strings to their donations in an attempt to alter the outcome of scientific inquiry?

The undisputed masters of bending science in this way are congressional Republicans, who are currently trying to gut NASA earth science programs. These are the same programs that employ scientists who have concluded that climate change is real and manmade—conclusions that  do not sit well with some of the largest GOP donors.

American universities and research facilities are still the envy of  the world, and government-funded science has helped the US retain a top spot in many areas. However, a sustained attempt to stifle science by politicians and billionaires like Hamm, could jeopardize that position in the near future—and worse.

On 11 May 2015, the United States of America participated in its second Universal Periodic Review (UPR). The Universal Periodic Review is meant to be a mechanism by which all UN Member States are periodically assessed on their human rights record. The process allows countries to present a report of their efforts to promote and improve human rights within their country. It also affords the Working Group of the UPR, comprised of member countries of the Human Rights Council, the opportunity to assess the human rights record, ask questions, and provide recommendations.

The United States of America Presentation

The United States Permanent Representative at the United Nations Office, Ambassador Keith Harper, began the session by introducing the American delegation. He pointed to the strong delegation of senior officials from eight federal agencies and one state government as a testament to the United States’ commitment and respect for the UPR process. Mr. Harper explained that the United States is both proud of its human rights record and mindful of the challenges that remain.

The delegation highlighted the improvements that the country made since the last UPR with regards to Indigenous Peoples, violence against women, and LGBT peoples. They further pointed to ongoing efforts to tackle issues of discrimination and police brutality, spurred by the recent high profile policing killings of African-American youth. The highlighted improvements however stand in contrast with reports of torture, the continued use of the death penalty, and many more lacking areas which were brought forward during the review.

Ratification of Outstanding Human Rights Treaties*

The United States’ continued lack of ratification for several key international human rights treaties drew criticism from many states. Most countries including Luxembourg, Lebanon, and Iran called for the ratification of key documents such as: the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (CAT).

Also mentioned by Egypt, India, and Togo was the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) which is still not ratified by the United States since it signed onto the treaty in 1977. The Indian delegation pointed out that the United States considers itself to be a global leader on human rights, but still does not have a guarantee for all the economic, social and cultural rights outlined in the ICESCR. To truly be a leader on human rights, India urged the U.S. to ratify the ICESCR.

While the United States delegation did not specifically discuss all the outstanding treaties, the delegation did discuss the process of ratification in the United States. Pointing out that the United States’ constitution requires the nation’s legislative bodies to sign onto ratification of the treaties, the delegation appeared to shift the responsibility for ensuring the United States’ engagement with the outstanding treaties. Not mentioned is the lack of political willingness from administrations to push treaties such as the ICESCR which has not been ratified in the over 30 years since it was signed.

Women’s Rights

CEDAW especially was the subject of much discussion as Serbia and Denmark acknowledged that despite progress, women in the United States continue to face challenges with regard to wage levels and sexual assault within the military. Serbia specifically recommended that the U.S. ensure that its legislation guarantees equal pay for equal work. Denmark asked that efforts to prevent sexual assault in the military be doubled, and the channels to prosecute such perpetrators reformed.

Also a point of discussion for several states was the United States’ ban on Official Development Assistance (ODA) funding for safe abortion programs in recipient countries. The Netherlands, Norway, United Kingdom, Belgium, and France all brought up this issue. Each country recommended that the United States remove the restriction, allowing safe abortions in cases of rape, incest or risk to the mother’s health if the ODA recipient country legally allows abortions. As pointed out, removing the ban is an important issue of women’s rights and equality, affording women in the developing world with a right enjoyed by women in many American states.

The American delegation acknowledged the challenges faced by women in the United States, but reassured the concerned states that tackling woman’s issues remains a priority for the United States and the Obama administration. The delegation pointed to upcoming legislation supported by the Obama administration aimed at reducing the wage gap between men and women, as well as between men and Latina/Black women.

Despite their assurances, it is important to question the strength of United States’ commitments if not bound by international obligations. As Luxembourg mentioned in its recommendations, the United States signed onto the CEDAW in 1980. The length of time elapsed without ratification brings into question the genuine willingness of the United States to commit itself to all the obligations outlined in the treaty. While the country may enact national legislation to tackle issues such as the wage gap, not ratifying the CEDAW means it is likely that the United States will continue to fall short of the human rights standards set out the treaty.

Creating a National Human Rights Institution

In accordance with the Paris Principles, the United States is expected to establish a National Human Rights Institution (NHRI). This institution which is to be responsible for the national coordination of human rights issues and values is considered a key element in furthering the protection and promotion of human rights at the national level.

The United States remains without a NHRI or a plan to create one. This drew questions from several countries with many recommending that the United States work on creating an independent National Human Rights Institution in accordance with the Paris Principles.

The American delegation discussed the lack of a NHRI, but failed to acknowledge this as a weakness within their country’s human rights system. Instead, the delegation discussed the various local, state and other complementary mechanisms which work together to implement international human rights obligations.

The delegation mentioned that it continues to strengthen these mechanisms to ensure a high level of impact. However, as pointed out by Nepal, the United States should be working on strengthening the already existing institutions as well as establishing the NHRI. Existing institutions need not be eliminated to create a National Human Rights Institution. Instead, the NHRI would allow cohesion across all of the United States. Unfortunately, creating such an institution did not seem to be a priority for the American delegation at this UPR.

Minority Rights and Continued Discrimination

Recent high profile cases of police killings of African-American youth brought forward renewed concerned over the state of minority relations and discrimination in the United States. This was evident by the number of states who recommended that the United States take steps to combat discrimination, intolerance and police brutality towards minority groups. Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Namibia, China, the Republic of Korea, Cuba, Senegal, Singapore, South Africa, Turkey, Brazil, Azerbaijan, Algeria, Angola, Chile, Croatia, Iran and Morocco all asked the United States to increase its effort to tackle racial discrimination. Namibia, South Africa and Chile went further to recommend that the U.S. implement a National Action Plan against Racial Discrimination, as called for in the Durban Declaration and Plan of Action.

Montenegro and Rwanda recommended programs to improve police-community relations as a way to tackle police brutality against vulnerable groups.  Other states including: Namibia, Pakistan, Serbia, and Egypt called for investigations into the root causes of police brutality and discrimination as well as ways to rectify them. There were also recommendations Bangladesh, Cuba and Argentina that perpetrators of police brutality be punished.

While police brutality towards African-Americans certainly dominated discussions of discrimination, other minority rights who are vulnerable were brought forward by Malaysia, Nicaragua, Angola, Egypt and Pakistan. Nicaragua’s recommendation came with regard to migrant and undocumented people. Malaysia, Egypt and Pakistan specifically brought forward issues of Islamophobia and religious intolerance towards Muslims. They recommended a revision of laws pertaining to minority rights with the purpose of amending them to provide protection. It should also be noted that Egypt also recommended that the United States stop practices that target Muslim people at airports.

The American delegation pointed to its ongoing work to tackle discrimination as evidence of continued progress. The delegation stated that in the last 6 years, the Department of Justice brought criminal charges against more than 400 law enforcement officers. They also mentioned that the department has an updated policy on profiling for all police departments which prevents enforcement officers from using factors such as race, gender, colour, etc. to inform decisions when dealing with communities. With regard to discrimination against Muslims, Sikhs and South Asian people, the delegation pointed to the newly expanded capacity of the Department of Justice to prosecute hate crimes.

The efforts described by the delegation to tackle police brutality and discrimination against minority groups represent a step in the right direction. However, they do not go far enough. It is difficult to ignore the alarming new cases of police brutality against African-Americans that continue to gain news coverage, despite the proclaimed efforts. As well, it must be asked whether or not the expanded ability of the Department of Justice to prosecute hate crimes go far enough. As it stands, information was not provided on what the rate of conviction is for perpetrators of hate crimes.

Torture, Guantanamo Bay and the International Criminal Court

In light of the December 2014 release of the declassified records of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, several countries addressed the use of torture by the United States. These nine countries include: Venezuela, China, Pakistan, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Denmark, Germany, and Iran; they called on the United States to end the use of torture.

The American delegation spoke out against the use of torture in all cases and situations during its report presentation. The delegation acknowledged that the declassified records show that the United States crossed the line with the post 9/11 use of torture on detainees, but assured the UPR Working Group that steps have been taken to ensure that such interrogation techniques are never used again. Despite this assurance, nine countries still recommended that the United States stop the use of torture in all jurisdictions. In line with this, Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Russia, Spain, and the U.K recommended the closing of Guantanamo Bay, a facility that is notoriously known to be the site of torture against detainees.

Pakistan, China, Cuba, and Venezuela called for the prosecution of CIA officials responsible for torture. Iran and Switzerland recommended that an independent investigation be conducted into allegations of torture at Guantanamo and other U.S. detention facilities worldwide. Other countries, such as the Republic of Korea and Germany, asked the United States to grant access to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. Germany specifically recommended that the Special Rapporteur be granted unrestricted access to Guantanamo Bay to conduct unmonitored interviews with detainees. Such access would allow the clarification and unbiased documentation of allegations of torture and other inhumane interrogation techniques.

The U.S delegation maintained that torture is absolutely prohibited in all cases under U.S domestic law and international law and that the harsh interrogation techniques detailed in the declassified documents are a thing of the past. With regard to Guantanamo Bay, the delegation stated that those who remain at the facility are there lawfully under U.S. and international law. The delegation did confirm the United States’ willingness to begin facilitating the visit of the Special Rapporteur on Torture to various detention facilities. Whether or not the full access recommended by Germany will be granted remains to be seen.

Recommendations for the prosecution of CIA officials responsible for torture were not discussed by the American delegation. Furthermore, calls from 12 countries (Latvia, New Zealand, Slovenia, Timor-Leste, Trinidad and Tobago, Austria, Venezuela, Chad, Cyprus, France, Ghana, and Guatemala), for the United States to ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) will not be carried out. The American delegation acknowledged the United States is not currently considering becoming a party to the Rome Statute, but will continue to engage with state parties to the Rome Statute and the ICC. In combating terrorism, they reaffirmed the United States’ continued commitment to remain in alignment with its international obligations.

If the United States remains unbound by the Rome Statute of the ICC, the international community must ask exactly how there will be an assurance that the U.S. abides by international human rights standards. As the U.S. has no plans to become a party to the Rome Statute, American perpetrators of torture and other acts remain outside the jurisdiction of the ICC. It is unlikely that federal prosecution against CIA officials responsible for torture will ever be carried out as per the recommendation of Pakistan, China, Cuba and Venezuela. Without jurisdiction, the ICC cannot prosecute either.

Steps Forward

While the United States claims its human rights record is commendable, we must expect more from a nation that prides itself on being a global leader. There were 348 recommendations in total given during this UPR and under typical procedure the accepted recommendations are announced by the country during the UPR session. The United States however has said that it will take until September to respond and decide which recommendations it will accept and implement and which ones it rejects. Once again, we must call into question the United States’ stated commitment to actual implementation of recommendations if there is already to be such a delay with regard to acceptance. For reference, during the last UPR in 2010, the United States received 228 recommendations and accepted 174 of them of which a large number was accepted only in part. The other 54 recommendations were rejected. Of the 174 accepted recommendations however, only about 31 had been implemented (in part or fully) as shown by an NGO Midterm Implementation Assessment in 2013. Going forward, it will be seen how many of the recommendations given in this UPR cycle will be implemented by the United States, though the delegation says it will consider and review implementation for all recommendations.

The greatest cause for concern continues to be the ongoing lack of willingness to ratify certain human rights treaties such as the CEDAW, CRC, CRPD and the Rome Statute. Even if recommendations are put in place on an individual basis, without ratifying key instruments, no guarantee exists for all the obligations outlined in these documents. This situation, most explicitly seen in the discussion on prosecution of perpetrators of torture, places the United States outside the power of international organizations such as the ICC. This poses an ongoing threat to human rights within the United States of America and its territories.

GICJ would like to call on the international community to closely follow the implementation of the recommendations proposed at this Universal Periodic Review. In particular, steps must be taken to ensure that the United States: ratifies its outstanding human rights treaties, tackles women’s rights issues, establishes a National Human Rights Institution in accordance with Paris Principles, takes practical steps to eliminate racial discrimination and bolster minority rights, and end the use of the death penalty at the federal and state level.

GICJ supports increased pressure on the United States to: allow the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture full access to its detention facilities, prosecute perpetrators of torture, close Guantanamo Bay and other similar detention facilities, and sign the Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court.

The international community must not forget the violations of international law and disregard for human rights which occurred as a result of the U.S.-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq in 2003.

The United States must be held accountable for its key role. The people of Iraq are entitled to satisfaction in the form of an official apology from all states that participated in the so-called “coalition of the willing”. Compensation should include: rebuilding the Iraqi infrastructure, government institutions, schools and private property that were bombed or damaged during war and under occupation, an environmental clean-up, undertaken and financed by the coalition of the willing, that is responsible for the use of depleted uranium and other toxic agents that are susceptible to the worrying increase of cancer and birth defects. It is time for accountability and justice!

* Note: Of the 9 existing human rights treaties (not including the optional protocols and the Rome Statute), the United States- which is a member of the UN Human Rights Council-  has not ratified 6 of these treaties nor the Rome Statute of the ICC.
These treaties are:

• The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) which has 164 ratification

• The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) which has 189 ratifications

• The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) which has 195 ratifications

• The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) which has 154 ratifications

• The Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families which has, so far, 47 ratifications

• The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance which has 46 ratifications

• The Rome Statute of the ICC which has 123 ratifications

According to official reports over the last week, key details concerning the shooting outside the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas – have suddenly changed…

This past May 3rd, it was reported that two gunmen opened fire outside of a cartoon ‘art’ exhibition and “free speech contest” featuring images of the Prophet Muhammad in Garland, Texas.

Incredibly, government scribes have change their official story line this week, with investigators now saying that the two named suspects, Elton Simpson and Nadir Hamid Soofi were shot dead, but not by a single traffic officer as was originally stated by authorities, by by heavily armed SWAT Team officers.

This latest change radically differs from what the Garland Police Department had originally released shortly after the incident occurred.

The crime scene revision adds intrigue to the story surrounding the ‘unnamed officer’ initially believed to have shot both suspects, as he was confidently declared a “hero,” following the incident.

Why would the Garland Police declare such a dramatically different description of the events, after displaying so much adulation for the unnamed officer and his apparent actions?

Initially, Garland police spokesman Joe Harn had stated that the traffic officer who requested not to be identified, was at the event as part of a heavy security detail prior to the drawing contest, as described in this early NBC Dallas affiliate report:

“Harn added that off-duty officers work events at the Culwell Center every weekend, but that organizers paid the department around $10,000 for additional security that included agents with the ATF and FBI, security officers from the school district, off-duty police officers as well as SWAT officers and the bomb squad.”

We see a clearer picture emerging regarding Harn’s account of the heavy security presence and are offered a small window into the financial component related to the highly orchestrated exhibition as mentioned here at 21WIRE:

“Officer Harn then notified the media — “The evacuation of all businesses in the area – just in case.” Notice how teams organized an evacuation, and not “shelter in place” – more evidence that points to a drill.”

‘Secrets in Garland?’ – What really happened during the apparent 15 second incident at the Curtis Culwell Center
in Garland, Texas. (Photo link trbimg.com)

Additionally, as we previously reported at 21WIRE shortly after the story first broke, the main suspect named in the incident, Elton Simpson, had been under the watchful eye of the FBI for nearly a decade and was in close contact with an undercover informant during that time. The following is an excerpt from that report, which also discloses that Simpson served 3 years probation after being arrested by the FBI in 2010 making a ‘false statement’ concerning an alleged attempt to join serving only 15 days in jail:

“Elton Simpson, was already under surveillance by the FBI and was even the subject of a terror investigation. More importantly, we can also confirm Simpson was being handled by an FBI informant. Court papers filed in Arizona name the FBI undercover informant as Mr. Daba Deng, a Kenyan and who, from 2007, was paid $132,000 by the FBI to “become friends with Mr. Simpson”, and who appears to have groomed Simpson through a local mosque, and helped to develop Simpson’s ideas about “jihad”.”

The same report outlined the relationship Nadir Hamid Soofi, the apparent ‘second’ shooter had with Simpson and likely with authorities:

“Elton Simpson’s roommate and that they both shared an apartment in Phoenix, Arizona, and also attended the same mosque – the Islamic Center of North Phoenix. Is it not safe to assume then, that FBI informant Deng also knew and was interacting with Soofi as well?”

In a Reuters clip on YouTube below, Sharon Soofi, the apparent mother of Nadir tearfully describes how her son has never been violent. Strangely, she didn’t appear to know Nadir’s roommate Elton, even calling him by a different name…

“USA Today then inserted this familiar talking point to round-out the basic “Twitter” narrative: “Al-Qaeda and ISIS have shown a deft ability to use the Internet, particularly YouTube and social media, to spread their message and recruit followers around the globe.

According to Garland’s Mayor, Douglas Athas, and other media reports, a ‘SWAT Team’ was put into place BEFORE the event because of “safety concerns”.”

The Story in Garland Takes U-turn

The rearranging of information regarding the Garland’s “ISIS” shooting incident were outlined  by Garland Police Chief Mitch Bates on Monday, May 11th, stating that the FBI had not contacted his department in the hours before the shooting. Continuing, Bates denied having any prior warning about either of the suspected gunmen – a story which directly contradicts what FBI Director James B. Comey stated at a news conference last week.

‘The Watchful Eye’ – FBI director James B. Comey. (Photo link star.com)

In a May 8th report appearing in the NY Times, we see the extent FBI was actively monitoring Simpson prior to the apparent attack outside a small event in Garland:

“The F.B.I., which investigated Mr. Simpson from 2006 to 2014, reopened its investigation in March when he began to post messages on Twitter about the Islamic State.”

Additionally, the report continues by outlining the level at which the FBI was involved before the cartoon contest:

“Law enforcement officials had recognized that the cartoon contest, staged by anti-Muslim activists in what they called a defense of free speech, might be a target for violence. The F.B.I. set up a command center nearby in Dallas and issued a number of intelligence bulletins about the possibility of trouble, Mr. Comey said.”

“As early as April 23, Mr. Simpson had referred on Twitter to the planned cartoon contest. Mr. Comey declined to say whether agents had seen that post or what specifically had prompted the bureau to warn the Garland police 10 days later about Mr. Simpson.”

According to another excerpt from the NY Times  piece from May 11th, the FBI insists it issued a warning prior to the event:

“The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, told reporters in Washington on Thursday that three hours before the attack, the F.B.I. sent a bulletin to the Garland police warning them that Mr. Simpson might show up at the event.”

If the FBI had followed Simpson for sometime, as outlined above, it seems likely they would have known exactly were the suspected gunmen was – why then, would Garland police state on the record they did not receive a warning?

Additionally, what are we to make of the FBI setting up a command center nearby Garland in Dallas?

Watch this Reuters news clip featuring Mitch Bates of the Garland police discussing the new developments in the Garland shooting case. Decide for yourself if the latest claims in the Garland case create more uncertainty about what happened…

While the mainstream media has noted the shift in the story between the Garland police force and that of the FBI as a somewhat insignificant detail, the reality is, there is now a glaring change in the official narrative and the case should be examined more closely for its authenticity.

‘Weird Scene’ – This is an aerial view of the car said to have been used by both suspected gunmen in Garland. All of this damage we’re told  – happened in just a matter of seconds. (Photo link politicomag.com)

Staged Terror?

Shortly after the incident, many media outlets released a flurry of reports early on May 5th, stating that ISIS had claimed responsibility for the Garland attack via a radio broadcast on its Al Bayan radio station, a story which originated from SITE Intelligence Group.

As we’ve noted numerous times here at 21WIRE, the intelligence monitoring group SITE, has ties to both the CIA and Israeli intelligence. The group has also raised ethical concerns over the yearsand according to the group’s founder, Rita Katz – they’ve managed to the release terror related material linked to ISIS prior to the group itself.

The staged events in Copenhagen, Paris, and now Garland, repeat the same script, all with intelligence linked gunmen who are allegedly extremists.

And when you consider SITE’s involvement in the Garland story line, linked with that of anti-Islamic media personality Pamela Geller, who is the president of  the well-funded organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, the organizer of Garland’s Mohammed cartoon event, a polarizing  political narrative emerges.

Additionally, when reports suggested that ISIS had somehow orchestrated the apparent attack on “US soil,” in Garland, Texas without any forensic proof. The claims seemed much like the fake “ISIS in Mexico” story, where authorities and the media had to back away from the fuzzy claims in favor of a new meme – one stating that the suspected gunmen Simpson and Soofi were instead inspired by the terror group.

Here’s a recent interview on the Sunday Wire with host Patrick Henningsen along with whistleblower and legal analyst Kurt Haskell, listen as they dissect the highly orchestrated affair in Garland…

In an Associated Press article by Julie Watson entitled, “Doubts raised about Islamic State claim in Texas attack,” brought to light an important aspect of the story – the fact that there was no credible evidence ISIS was directly involved:

“It was unclear whether the group actually directed Sunday’s shooting in the Dallas suburb of Garland or if the two gunmen were inspired by the group to act on their own before they were shot and killed.

Such lone wolf attacks pose a daunting challenge to law enforcement, and Islamic State has a history of claiming responsibility for attacks in which it played no operational role, counterterrorism experts said.”

Continuing the report outlined possible outside links to the case, but had come up empty:

“Federal investigators were looking for links to overseas terror groups, but as of Tuesday afternoon had not disclosed any connection or evidence to back up the group’s claims.”

‘Confusion in Garland’ – An officer looks on at the apparent crime scene. (Photo link cyprus-mail.com)

Down the ISIS Rabbit Hole

On May 11th, the NY Times reported that Simpson tweeted to an account allegedly linked to Junaid Hussain a 20-year-old British hacker, a person with multiple online identities, who authorities also is believe is the cyber hacker TriCk, connected the group TeaMp0isoN. 

TeaMp0isoN, as it turns out, was a former blackhat hacker crew from 2008, which has now reemerged as a whitehat computer-security team in 2015 that “specializes in penetration testing,” and other testing for security reasons.

In other words, they’re now a legal hacking group…

Hussain has been simultaneously linked to ISIS and mentioned as a key figure behind the apparent hack of CENTCOM’s Twitter account by a group calling themselves the “Cyber Caliphate.”

If we are to believe that Hussain is working with ISIS and TeaMp0isoN a now ‘whitehat’ group which has also been linked to working alongside Anonymous – wouldn’t that expose the CENTCOM hack as a sham, as it reveals the various connections between government entities and hacking groups now associated with ISIS?

For the record, the same NY Times article above mentions the dodgy claims of the events in Garland being linked to ISIS:

“Mr. Simpson posted, promoting a Twitter account believed to belong to Junaid Hussain, a young computer expert from Birmingham, England, who moved to Syria two years ago to join the Islamic State and has become one of the extremist group’s celebrity hackers.”

“This seemingly routine shout-out is an intriguing clue to the question of whether the gunmen, Mr. Simpson and Nadir Soofi, 34, both of Phoenix, were acting in concert with the Islamic State.”

Over the past week, the public was also told that Hussain was behind an apprent plot to attack London with his presumed wife, 45-year-old Sally Jones, an unemployed mother and former rocker via Twitter.

The very same week, the Daily Mail released a report outlining a recent recruitment campaign by British security services:

“MI5 is launching an ambitious campaign to recruit intelligence officers to convince the thousands of Jihadi extremists it is monitoring to spy for them.

A staggering 700 Britons are thought to be fighting alongside ISIS extremists in Iraq and Syria while an estimated 300 have already returned to the UK.

It will be the responsibility of operational intelligence officers – known as ‘handlers’ – to convince them into providing vital information to the security services instead.

Successful candidates will receive £41,900 salary plus benefits if they pass a nine-step qualification process which starts with an online ‘pre-screening’ and ends with an eight-week ‘foundation agent-handling course’.”

The MI5’s recruit program seemingly goes hand in hand with the rise new terror plots.

The symbiotic relationship between British security services, the FBI and terror schemes unfortunately – is nothing new…

image copyright Allriot.com 2015

The Conservative government in Britain is preparing to enact new legislation that, under the guise of the “war on terror,” will vastly expand police-state powers and essentially criminalize speech and other political activity.

Presented officially as an anti-terrorism bill, the proposed measures will be targeted at any popular opposition to the government’s policies of aggressive militarism abroad and austerity measures in Britain.

Following his party’s victory in the May 7 general election, Prime Minister David Cameron announced the proposal at last week’s National Security Council (NSC) meeting. The meeting, chaired by Cameron, brings together leading government officials with the heads of Britain’s security agencies.

The new bill will include a series of measures targeting groups and individuals deemed by the government to be “extremist.” This term is defined so vaguely as to encompass a wide array of political activity.

The new bill will create extremist “disruption orders” for individuals and “banning orders” for groups. The targets for these new police powers will be those who have conducted “harmful” behaviour.

According to the Guardian, the “harmful” behaviour covers activities that pose “a risk of public disorder, a risk of harassment, alarm or distress or creating a ‘threat to the functioning of democracy’.”

This will be used to criminalise campaigns critical of government policy and protests, which are frequently dispersed by the police on precisely the grounds that they disrupt public order. The language also indicates that the government would have the authority to target those merely planning such activity prior to it taking place.

Extremist disruption orders will permit the government to take action against individuals considered to have engaged in such harmful behaviour, or whom the government claims have attempted to “radicalise” youth.

The orders contain bans on individuals broadcasting their views on television, and anyone subject to an order will be compelled to submit any written publication, including social media posts, to the police before it is printed. In addition, the orders will make it illegal for individuals to attend or address public gatherings or protests.

OffCom, the broadcast regulator, is to be given powers to move against channels judged to be broadcasting “extremist” material. The charity commission will be able to take action against charities that “fund terrorism.”

Banning orders will allow the government to outlaw “extremist” organisations. If such a move is taken, anyone found to be a member of the organisation will be guilty of a criminal offence. Authorities will also be able to shut down premises used by groups to promote “extremism.”

Human rights group Privacy International branded the new proposal as an “assault on the rights of ordinary British citizens.”

Islamist groups will not be the main focus of the new law. As the Guardian ’s home affairs editor wrote in an analysis of the proposal, “the official definition of non-violent extremism is already wide-ranging and, as Big Brother Watch has pointed out, the national extremism database already includes the names of people who have done little more than organise meetings on environmental issues.”

The requirement that the government apply to the courts to obtain such orders will do little to prevent their abuse. The government has repeatedly invoked national security considerations to present evidence to the courts in secret. It even intended to hold an entire terrorism trial in secret last year before abandoning it at the last minute. The declaration of a national security threat would thus permit government claims about an individual or group to go unchallenged in the courts by an independent lawyer, since the only individuals allowed access to such information are government-appointed legal representatives.

Together with a sweeping attack on democratic rights and legal norms, the Conservatives’ anti-terror bill will further advance the government’s right-wing agenda of whipping up anti-immigrant sentiment. New powers will be established to deny immigrants entry on the grounds of preaching extremist views.

Cameron’s proposals make clear that the Conservatives are determined to vastly expand the repressive powers of the state, including by reintroducing the controversial “snooper’s charter” which would grant intelligence agencies the power to conduct mass surveillance and store data from emails and other internet data from social networking sites and messaging services. It will also allow authorities to access encrypted messages.

Cameron claimed that the UK has been a “‘passively tolerant society’ for too long, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone.”

This extraordinary declaration is a backhanded acknowledgement that those who Cameron intends to target with the new law have committed no crime under the existing legal system.

“This government will conclusively turn the page on this failed approach. As the party of one nation, we will govern as one nation and bring our country together. That means actively promoting certain values. Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. Democracy. The rule of law. Equal rights regardless of race, gender or sexuality,” Cameron proclaimed.

Cameron’s reference to “one nation” were especially sinister. It suggests that anyone challenging the political interests of the British ruling class and championing the rights and interests of the working class will be targeted for surveillance and repression.

The “values” Cameron talks about promoting are precisely those that have been used by successive governments to wage aggressive wars abroad to uphold British imperialist interests, and carry through an assault on social and democratic rights at home.

These policies have seen British imperialism, alongside American imperialism, aligned with some of the very Islamist forces it now seeks to present as the greatest threat to the country. In the 2011 regime change operation in Libya, Britain participated in the NATO bombing campaign that toppled the Gaddafi regime, while supplying weapons to Islamist groups in the country. Many of these groups had ties to Al Qaida and later moved to Syria with CIA support, where some elements came together to form the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

The assertion that Britain has been “passively tolerant” for too long is a lie. The entire political establishment, including the opposition Labour Party, has been complicit in erecting the framework of a police state in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 and the London bombings in 2005.

The Labour government under Tony Blair brought forward “anti-terror” measures in 2001 that included wide-ranging police powers to detain suspects for crimes committed under an expanded definition of terrorism. In 2006, a further law allowed the prosecution of those “encouraging” terrorism, which saw individuals put on trial purely for making statements or posting videos online that had no connection to a specific terrorist attack.

However, the push to go even further has been growing for some time. In the wake of the attacks on the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo earlier this year, political figures and intelligence operatives criticised Britain’s anti-terror laws for not doing enough to monitor the Internet.

The planned actions in the UK are part of an escalating international assault on democratic rights. Earlier this month, the French National Assembly passed legislation sanctioning mass spying and other police state measures. Also this month, the Canadian House of Commons passed the “Anti-Terror Act,” which gave the state vast new powers, including the ability to target any activities declared a danger to “national security.”

Following weeks of scaremongering by American officials over China’s activities in the South China Sea, US Secretary of State John Kerry used his visit to Beijing last weekend to issue an ultimatum to Chinese leaders to halt land reclamation on islets and shoals. His Chinese counterpart Wang Yi bluntly refused, insisting that China would safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity “as firm as a rock.”

Washington is not going to take no for an answer. In what is already an explosive situation, the question has to be asked: Is the US preparing a “Gulf of Tonkin” incident as the pretext for direct military action against Chinese facilities and armed forces in the South China Sea? Such reckless brinkmanship would risk war between two nuclear armed powers.

The historic parallels are chilling. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson needed a justification for decisions that had already been made to dramatically escalate US military involvement in a civil war in Vietnam and to begin bombing targets in North Vietnam. Pentagon planners had concluded that Washington’s widely reviled puppet regime in Saigon was incapable of defeating the North Vietnamese-backed National Liberation Front on its own.

Preparations for massively expanding US involvement were drawn up well in advance. In the summer of 1964, the US worked with the South Vietnamese to stage a series of provocations—probes by US-supplied patrol boats to expose North Vietnamese radar systems. On August 2, the USS Maddox was monitoring one of these raids in the Gulf of Tonkin, part of the South China Sea, eight miles offshore and well within the North Vietnam’s 12-mile territorial waters, that provoked an exchange of fire with small North Vietnamese boats.

Two days later the USS Maddox, accompanied by the destroyer C. Turner Joy, reported coming under fire. There was, in fact, no attack. The entirely manufactured incident, surrounded by a barrage of media sensationalism and official lies, was exploited to paint North Vietnam as the aggressor. The belligerent response of the United States was presented as justified, defensive actions to maintain “international peace and security in Southeast Asia.”

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed by the US Congress on August 7, 1964, with just two votes against. It provided the quasi-legal cover for a criminal, open-ended war in Vietnam that claimed millions of lives, devastated the country’s economy and left a legacy of destruction that remains to this day.

Far more is at stake today. For decades, the US showed little interest in the festering territorial disputes in the South China Sea between China and its South East Asian neighbours. In 2010, however, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as part of the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” against China, declared that the US had “a national interest” in ensuring “freedom of navigation” in the strategic waters.

Over the past year, Washington has abandoned its pretence of neutrality in the maritime disputes. It has aggressively challenged the legitimacy of China’s claims and thus its administration of various shoals and reefs. Ignoring similar activities by other claimants, such as the Philippines and Vietnam, the US has portrayed land reclamation in the South China Sea as an aggressive threat to US national interests. In late March, Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the US Pacific Fleet, denounced China’s actions as the construction of “a great wall of sand.”

From words, the US is turning to actions. As part of the “pivot” to Asia, the Pentagon is already engaged in a massive military build-up and strengthening of alliances and strategic partnerships throughout Asia directed against China. One of the latest warships, the USS Fort Worth, has just completed a week-long “freedom of navigation” patrol in the South China Sea designed to test and challenge China’s presence.

While the USS Fort Worth remained outside China’s claimed territorial waters, US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter has called on the Pentagon to draw up plans for US warships and warplanes to enter the 12-mile limit and directly challenge Chinese sovereignty. Undoubtedly behind the scenes, far more detailed war plans have been drawn up.

Significantly in the midst of a US Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last week entitled “Safeguarding American Interests in the East and South China Seas,” Assistant Defence Secretary David Shear blurted out that the US was preparing to base B1 bombers in northern Australia as part its military “rebalance” against China. Although later denied, nuclear-capable B-52 bombers are already rotating through Australia air bases.

Layers of the US foreign policy establishment are already braying for more concerted US action in the South China Sea to teach China a lesson. In the course of last week’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Chairman Bob Corker repeatedly expressed the review that the Obama administration was not doing enough.

In an article published in the National Interest entitled “Time to Stand Up To China in the South China Sea,” analyst Michael Mazza from the right-wing American Enterprise Institute praised the Pentagon’s plans for more “freedom of navigation” exercises, then added: “It is important that the president make the decision to act, and soon. The longer he waits, the more entrenched Chinese positions will become, both figuratively and literally.”

This logic is unquestioningly being applied more broadly. What is driving the provocative actions of US imperialism in Asia and around the world is the determination to use its still formidable military force to stem its historic decline. From Washington’s standpoint, the longer it waits, the greater the difficulty and dangers in subordinating Beijing to its interests. Thus the willingness to provoke a confrontation in the South China Sea as a test of strength, regardless of its potentially calamitous consequences.

But in confronting China, Washington faces widespread anti-war opposition at home and around the world, born of two decades of continuous wars including the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. No one should be surprised by a new “Gulf of Tonkin incident” suddenly emerging in order to try to stampede public opinion behind US aggressive military operations against China.

Following weeks of scaremongering by American officials over China’s activities in the South China Sea, US Secretary of State John Kerry used his visit to Beijing last weekend to issue an ultimatum to Chinese leaders to halt land reclamation on islets and shoals. His Chinese counterpart Wang Yi bluntly refused, insisting that China would safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity “as firm as a rock.”

Washington is not going to take no for an answer. In what is already an explosive situation, the question has to be asked: Is the US preparing a “Gulf of Tonkin” incident as the pretext for direct military action against Chinese facilities and armed forces in the South China Sea? Such reckless brinkmanship would risk war between two nuclear armed powers.

The historic parallels are chilling. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson needed a justification for decisions that had already been made to dramatically escalate US military involvement in a civil war in Vietnam and to begin bombing targets in North Vietnam. Pentagon planners had concluded that Washington’s widely reviled puppet regime in Saigon was incapable of defeating the North Vietnamese-backed National Liberation Front on its own.

Preparations for massively expanding US involvement were drawn up well in advance. In the summer of 1964, the US worked with the South Vietnamese to stage a series of provocations—probes by US-supplied patrol boats to expose North Vietnamese radar systems. On August 2, the USS Maddox was monitoring one of these raids in the Gulf of Tonkin, part of the South China Sea, eight miles offshore and well within the North Vietnam’s 12-mile territorial waters, that provoked an exchange of fire with small North Vietnamese boats.

Two days later the USS Maddox, accompanied by the destroyer C. Turner Joy, reported coming under fire. There was, in fact, no attack. The entirely manufactured incident, surrounded by a barrage of media sensationalism and official lies, was exploited to paint North Vietnam as the aggressor. The belligerent response of the United States was presented as justified, defensive actions to maintain “international peace and security in Southeast Asia.”

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed by the US Congress on August 7, 1964, with just two votes against. It provided the quasi-legal cover for a criminal, open-ended war in Vietnam that claimed millions of lives, devastated the country’s economy and left a legacy of destruction that remains to this day.

Far more is at stake today. For decades, the US showed little interest in the festering territorial disputes in the South China Sea between China and its South East Asian neighbours. In 2010, however, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as part of the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” against China, declared that the US had “a national interest” in ensuring “freedom of navigation” in the strategic waters.

Over the past year, Washington has abandoned its pretence of neutrality in the maritime disputes. It has aggressively challenged the legitimacy of China’s claims and thus its administration of various shoals and reefs. Ignoring similar activities by other claimants, such as the Philippines and Vietnam, the US has portrayed land reclamation in the South China Sea as an aggressive threat to US national interests. In late March, Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the US Pacific Fleet, denounced China’s actions as the construction of “a great wall of sand.”

From words, the US is turning to actions. As part of the “pivot” to Asia, the Pentagon is already engaged in a massive military build-up and strengthening of alliances and strategic partnerships throughout Asia directed against China. One of the latest warships, the USS Fort Worth, has just completed a week-long “freedom of navigation” patrol in the South China Sea designed to test and challenge China’s presence.

While the USS Fort Worth remained outside China’s claimed territorial waters, US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter has called on the Pentagon to draw up plans for US warships and warplanes to enter the 12-mile limit and directly challenge Chinese sovereignty. Undoubtedly behind the scenes, far more detailed war plans have been drawn up.

Significantly in the midst of a US Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last week entitled “Safeguarding American Interests in the East and South China Seas,” Assistant Defence Secretary David Shear blurted out that the US was preparing to base B1 bombers in northern Australia as part its military “rebalance” against China. Although later denied, nuclear-capable B-52 bombers are already rotating through Australia air bases.

Layers of the US foreign policy establishment are already braying for more concerted US action in the South China Sea to teach China a lesson. In the course of last week’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Chairman Bob Corker repeatedly expressed the review that the Obama administration was not doing enough.

In an article published in the National Interest entitled “Time to Stand Up To China in the South China Sea,” analyst Michael Mazza from the right-wing American Enterprise Institute praised the Pentagon’s plans for more “freedom of navigation” exercises, then added: “It is important that the president make the decision to act, and soon. The longer he waits, the more entrenched Chinese positions will become, both figuratively and literally.”

This logic is unquestioningly being applied more broadly. What is driving the provocative actions of US imperialism in Asia and around the world is the determination to use its still formidable military force to stem its historic decline. From Washington’s standpoint, the longer it waits, the greater the difficulty and dangers in subordinating Beijing to its interests. Thus the willingness to provoke a confrontation in the South China Sea as a test of strength, regardless of its potentially calamitous consequences.

But in confronting China, Washington faces widespread anti-war opposition at home and around the world, born of two decades of continuous wars including the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. No one should be surprised by a new “Gulf of Tonkin incident” suddenly emerging in order to try to stampede public opinion behind US aggressive military operations against China.

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry meet with GCC delegation at Camp David. (Photo: AP)

When the United States sells billions of dollars in sophisticated arms to Arab nations, they are conditioned on two key factors: no weapons with a qualitative military edge over Israel will ever be sold to the Arabs, nor will they receive any weapons that are not an integral part of the U.S. arsenal.

But against the backdrop of a White House summit meeting of Arab leaders at Camp David this week, the administration of President Barack Obama confessed it has dispensed with rule number two.

According to Colin Kahl, national security advisor to Vice-President Joe Biden, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) flies the most advanced U.S.-made F-16 fighter planes in the world.

“They’re more advanced than the ones our Air Force flies,” he told reporters at a U.S. State Department briefing early this week, without going into specifics.

The six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE and Saudi Arabia – which participated in the summit were, not surprisingly, promised more weapons, increased military training and a pledge to defend them against missile strikes, maritime threats and cyberattacks from Iran.

An equally important reason for beefing up security in the region is to thwart any attacks on GCC countries by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

“I am reaffirming our ironclad commitment to the security of our Gulf partners,” President Obama told reporters at a news conference, following the summit Thursday.

But he left the GCC leaders disappointed primarily because the United States was not willing to sign any mutual defence treaties with the six Arab nations – modeled on the lines of similar treaties U.S. has signed with Japan and South Korea.

Still, Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Kuwait (along with Pakistan) are designated “major non-NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) allies.”

Kahl told reporters: “This administration has worked extraordinarily closely with the Gulf states to make sure they had access to state-of-the-art armaments.”

He said that although the U.S. has not entertained requests for F-35s, described as the most advanced fighter plane with the U.S. Air Force, “but keep in mind under this administration we moved forward on a package for the Saudis that will provide them the most advanced F-15 aircraft in the region.”

Taken as a whole, Kahl said, the GCC last year spent nearly 135 billion dollars on their defence, and the Saudis alone spent more than 80 billion dollars.

In comparison, the Iranians spent something like 15 billion dollars on their defence, said Kahl, trying to allay the fears of GCC countries, which have expressed strong reservations about an impending nuclear deal the U.S. and other big powers are negotiating with Iran.

Still, arms suppliers such as France and Britain have been feverishly competing with the United States for a share of the rising arms market in the Middle East, with continued turmoil in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen.

Pieter Wezeman, senior researcher, Arms and Military Expenditure Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS that GCC countries have long procured weapons from both the U.S. and several European countries.

Qatar is probably the one country in the GCC where U.S. military equipment makes up a low share of its military equipment and instead it has been more dependent on French, British and other European arms, he pointed out.

Last year, Qatar ordered a large amount of new arms from suppliers in Europe, the U.S. and Turkey, in which U.S. equipment was significantly more important than it had been in the decades before in Qatari arms procurement.

“None of the GCC countries has been mainly dependent on a single arms supplier in the past four to five decades. The U.S., UK and France have long been the main suppliers to the GCC, competing against each other,” he added.

In an article last week on the GCC summit, William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and a senior advisor to the Security Assistance Monitor, described it as “an arms fair, not diplomacy.”

He said the Obama administration, in its first five years in office, entered into formal agreements to transfer over 64 billion dollars in arms and defence services to GCC member states, with about three-quarters of that total going to Saudi Arabia.

He said items on offer to GCC states have included fighter aircraft, attack helicopters, radar planes, refueling aircraft, air-to-air missiles, armored vehicles, artillery, small arms and ammunition, cluster bombs, and missile defence systems.

On any given day, Kahl said, the United States has about 35,000 U.S. forces in the Gulf region.

“As I speak, the USS Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group is there. The USS Normandy Guided Missile Cruiser, the USS Milius Aegis ballistic missile defense destroyer, and a number of other naval assets are in the region,” he said.

“And we have 10 Patriot batteries deployed to the Gulf region and Jordan, as well as AN/TPY-2 radar, which is an extraordinarily powerful radar to be able to track missiles fired basically from anywhere in the region.”

The mission of all of these forces, he said, ”is to defend our partners, to deter aggression, to maintain freedom of navigation, and to combat terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.”

Still, in the spreading Middle East arms market, it is business as usual both to the French and the British.

Wezeman told IPS Qatar has acquired the Rafale to replace its Mirage-2000 aircraft which France supplied about 20 years ago.

The UAE has been considering the purchase of Rafale to replace Mirage-2000 aircraft procured about 10 years ago from France.

Similarly Saudi Arabia has in the past decade ordered British Typhoon combat aircraft and U.S. F-15SAs, just like it ordered British Tornado combat aircraft and U.S. F-15Cs in the 1980s and 1990s.

Oman has recently ordered U.S. F-16s and British Typhoon aircraft to replace older U.S. F-16s and replace UK supplied Jaguar aircraft.

“The same arms acquisition patterns can be seen for land and naval military equipment. It would be a real change if the GCC countries would start large-scale procurement of arms from Russia and China. This has, however, not yet happened,” said Wezeman, who scrupulously tracks weapons sales to the Middle East.

He said access to certain technology has occasionally been one of several reasons for the GCC countries turning to Europe, as the United States tried to maintain a so-called ‘Qualitative Military Edge’ for Israel, in which it refused to supply certain military technology to Arab states which was considered particularly threatening to Israel.

He said for a while the U.S. was not willing to supply air launched cruise missiles with ranges of about 300 km to Arab states. Instead Saudi Arabia and the UAE turned to the UK and France for such weapons and the aircraft to integrate them on.

However, the U.S. has now become less restrictive in this regard and has agreed to supply certain types of cruise missiles to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Finally, what is particularly interesting is that U.S. officials once again emphasise the military imbalance in the Gulf region when mentioning that GCC states’ military spending is an estimated nine times higher than that of Iran (figures which are roughly confirmed by SIPRI data).

“This raises some major questions about the seeming lack of arms control in the region and the potential risks of further one-sided procurement of advanced weapons by GCC states,” he added.

Military intelligence of the Donetsk Peoples Republic has uncovered efforts of the Ukrainian Security Service to organize a chain of terrorist acts in Donetsk, Eduard Basurin, the official spokesman of the DPR Defence Ministry told a news briefing on Friday.He said the terrorist acts would most likely be organized in the run-up to an EU summit in Riga. He recalled that Kiev had more than once demonstrated its capability to resort to the most audacious steps and organize terrorist acts against civilians in the areas of Donbas under its control. 

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Activity of volunteer battalions near the village of Shirokino in embattled Donbas hampers the conclusion of an agreement on a local ceasefire, Russias Permanent Representative to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe Andrei Kelin told last Friday.Kelin is doubtful that relevant agreements would be negotiated at a next meeting of the working group in charge of military affairs at the Contact Group on resolving the Ukraine conflict.”All this is not so realistic since Ukrainian forces, especially volunteer battalions, are interfering, and in particular, are hampering the OSCE observers work,” he said.

Artists of the Lviv National Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet have issued an appeal protesting performers’ mass conscription into the Ukrainian army.In an appeal published on their official Facebook page, they have reported that nearly three dozen performers have received draft notices, including members of the orchestra, choir singers, opera and ballet soloists, so-called Honored Artists and even a People’s Artist of Ukraine.This situation clearly showsus the main approach of any kind of Ukrainian patriotism.The louder so-called Ukrainian patriots argue to kill Russian-speaking populationand support Kievs coup, the more they cry when results of their actions have influenced them.

A tank park where civilians can watch and even ride Russian armored vehicles has been opened in the village of Prokhorovka. Its the site of an iconic tank battle in World War II that took place in 1943. The park is part of a massive military museum currently undergoing massive expansion in the village, which is in the Belgorod region in southwestern Russia. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who supervises military programs in the cabinet, attended the opening ceremony on Saturday. The tank park can accommodate up to 1,300 spectators, who can watch tanks, armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles and similar hardware roll across difficult terrain.

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The decision of the Chipotle restaurant chain to make its product lines GMO-free is not most people’s idea of a world-historic event. Especially since Chipotle, by US standards, is not a huge operation. A clear sign that the move is significant, however, is that Chipotle’s decision was met with a tidal-wave of establishment media abuse. Chipotle has been called irresponsible, anti-science, irrational, and much more by the Washington Post, Time Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, and many others. A business deciding to give consumers what they want was surely never so contentious.

The media lynching of Chipotle has an explanation that is important to the future of GMOs. The cause of it is that there has long been an incipient crack in the solid public front that the food industry has presented on the GMO issue. The crack originates from the fact that while agribusiness sees GMOs as central to their business future, the brand-oriented and customer-sensitive ends of the food supply chain do not.

The brands who sell to the public, such as Nestle, Coca-Cola, Kraft, etc., are therefore much less committed to GMOs. They have gone along with their use, probably because they wish to maintain good relations with agribusiness, who are their allies and their suppliers. Possibly also they see a potential for novel products in a GMO future.

However, over the last five years, as the reputation of GMOs has come under increasing pressure in the US, the cost to food brands of ignoring the growing consumer demand for GMO-free products has increased. They might not say so in public, but the sellers of top brands have little incentive to take the flack for selling GMOs.

From this perspective, the significance of the Chipotle move becomes clear. If Chipotle can gain market share and prestige, or charge higher prices, from selling non-GMO products and give (especially young) consumers what they want, it puts traditional vendors of fast and processed food products in an invidious position. Kraft and MacDonalds, and their traditional rivals can hardly be left on the sidelines selling outmoded products to a shrinking market. They will not last long.

MacDonald’s already appears to be in trouble, and it too sees the solution as moving to more up-market and healthier products. For these much bigger players, a race to match Chipotle and get GMOs out of their product lines, is a strong possibility. That may not be so easy, in the short term, but for agribusiness titans who have backed GMOs, like Monsanto, Dupont, Bayer and Syngenta; a race to be GMO-free is the ultimate nightmare scenario.

Until Chipotle’s announcement, such considerations were all behind the scenes. But all of a sudden this split has spilled out into the food media. On May 8th, Hain Celestial told The Food Navigatorthat:

“We sell organic products…gluten-free products and…natural products. [But] where the big, big demand is, is GMO-free.”

According to the article, unlike Heinz, Kraft, and many others, Hain Celestial is actively seeking to meet this demand. Within the food industry, important decisions, for and against GMOs, are taking place.

Why the pressure to remove GMOs will grow

The other factor in all this turmoil is that the GMO technology wheel has not stopped turning. New GMO products are coming on stream that will likely make crop biotechnology even less popular than it is now. This will further ramp up the pressure on brands and stores to go GMO-free. There are several contributory factors.

The first issue follows from the recent US approvals of GMO crops resistant to the herbicides 2,4-D and Dicamba. These traits are billed as replacements for Roundup-resistant traits whose effectiveness has declined due to the spread of weeds resistant to Roundup (Glyphosate).

The causes of the problem, however, lie in the technology itself. The introduction of Roundup-resistant traits in corn and soybeans led to increasing Roundup use by farmers (Benbrook 2012). Increasing Roundup use led to weed resistance, which led to further Roundup use, as farmers increased applications and dosages. This translated into escalated ecological damage and increasing residue levels in food. Roundup is now found in GMO soybeans intended for food use at levels that even Monsanto used to call “extreme” (Bøhn et al. 2014).

The two new herbicide-resistance traits are set to recapitulate this same story of increasing agrochemical use. But they will also amplify it significantly,

PREDICTED HERBICIDE USE TO 2025 (MORTENSEN ET AL 2012)

The specifics are worth considering. First, the spraying of 2,4-D and Dicamba on the newer herbicide-resistant crops will not eliminate the need for Roundup, whose use will not decline (see Figure).

That is because, unlike Roundup, neither 2,4-D nor Dicamba are broad-spectrum herbicides. They will have to be sprayed together with Roundup, or with each other (or all of them together) to kill all weeds. This vital fact has not been widely appreciated.

Confirmation comes from the companies themselves. Monsanto is stacking (i.e. combining) Dicamba resistance with Roundup resistance in its Xtend crops and Dow is stacking 2,4-D resistance with Roundup resistance in its Enlist range. (Notably, resistance to other herbicides, such as glufosinate, are being stacked in all these GMO crops too.)

The second issue is that the combined spraying of 2,4-D and Dicamba and Roundup, will only temporarily ease the weed resistance issues faced by farmers. In the medium and longer terms, they will compound the problems. That is because new herbicide-resistant weeds will surely evolve. In fact, Dicamba-resistant and 2,4-D-resistant weeds already exist. Their spread, and the evolution of new ones, can be guaranteed (Mortensen et al 2012). This will bring greater profits for herbicide manufacturers, but it will also bring greater PR problems for GMOs and the food industry. GMO soybeans and corn will likely soon have “extreme levels” of at least three different herbicides, all of them with dubious safety records (Schinasi and Leon 2014).

The first time round, Monsanto and Syngenta’s PR snow-jobs successfully obscured this, not just from the general public, but even within agronomy. But it is unlikely they will be able to do so a second time. 2,4-D and Dicamba-resistant GMOs are thus a PR disaster waiting to happen.

A pipeline full of problems: risk and perception

The longer term problem for GMOs is that, despite extravagant claims, their product pipeline is not bulging with promising ideas. Mostly, it is more of the same: herbicide resistance and insect resistance.

The most revolutionary and innovative part of that pipeline is a technology and not a trait. Many products in the GMO pipeline are made using RNA interference technologies that rely on double-stranded RNAs (dsRNAs). dsRNA is a technology with two problems. One is that products made with it (such as the “Arctic” Apple, the “Innate” Potato, and Monsanto’s “Vistive Gold” Soybeans) are unproven in the field. Like its vanguard, a Brazilian virus-resistant bean, they may never workunder actual farming conditions.

But if they do work, there is a clear problem with their safety which is explained in detail here (pdf).

In outline, the problem is this: the long dsRNA molecules needed for RNA interference were rejected long ago as being too hazardous for routine medical use (Anonymous, 1969). The scientific literature even calls them “toxins”, as in this paper title from 1969:

Absher M., and Stinebring W. (1969) Toxic properties of a synthetic double-stranded RNA. Nature223: 715-717. (not online)

As further evidence of this, long dsRNAs are now used in medicine to cause autoimmune disorders in mice, in order to study these disorders (Okada et al 2005).

The Absher and Stinebring paper comes from a body of research built up many years ago, but its essential findings have been confirmed and extended by more modern research. We now know why dsRNAs cause harm. They trigger destructive anti-viral defence pathways in mammals and other vertebrates and there is a field of specialist research devoted to showing precisely how this damages individual cells, whole tissues, and results in auto-immune disease in mice (Karpala et al. 2005).

The conclusion therefore, is that dsRNAs that are apparently indistinguishable from those produced in, for example, the Arctic apple and Monsanto’s Vistive Gold Soybean, have strong negative effects on vertebrate animals (but not plants). These vertebrate effects are found even at low doses. Consumers are vertebrate animals. They may not appreciate the thought that their healthy fats and forever apples also contain proven toxins. And on a business front, consumer brands will not relish defending dsRNA technology once they understand the reality. They may not wish to find themselves defending the indefensible.

The bottom line is this. Either dsRNAs will sicken or kill people, or, they will give opponents of biotechnology plenty of ammunition. The scientific evidence, as it currently stands, suggests they will do both. dsRNAs, therefore, are a potentially huge liability.

The last pipeline problem stems from the first two. The agbiotech industry has long held out the prospect of “consumer benefits” from GMOs. Consumer benefits (in the case of food) are most likely to be health benefits (improved nutrition, altered fat composition, etc.). The problem is that the demographic of health-conscious consumers no doubt overlaps significantly with the demographic of those most wary of GMOs. Show a consumer a “healthy GMO” and they are likely to show you an oxymoron. The likely health market in the US for customers willing to pay more for a GMO has probably evaporated in the last few years as GMOs have become a hot public issue.

The end-game for GMOs?


The traditional chemical industry approach to such a problem is a familiar repertoire of intimidation and public relations. Fifty years ago, the chemical industry outwitted and outmanoeuvered environmentalists after the death of Rachel Carson (see the books Toxic Sludge is Good for Youand Trust Us We’re Experts). But that was before email, open access scientific publication, and the internet. Monsanto and its allies have steadily lost ground in a world of peer-to-peer communication. GMOs have become a liability, despite their best efforts.

The historic situation is this: in any country, public acceptance of GMOs has always been based on lack of awareness of their existence. Once that ignorance evaporates and the scientific and social realities start to be discussed, ignorance cannot be reinstated. From then on the situation moves into a different, and much more difficult phase for the defenders of GMOs.

Nevertheless, in the US, those defenders have not yet given up. Anyone who keeps up with GMOs in the media knows that the public is being subjected to an unrelenting and concerted global blitzkrieg.

Pro-GMO advocates and paid-for journalists, presumably financed by the life-science industry, sometimes fronted by non-profits such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are being given acres of prominent space to make their case. Liberal media outlets such as the New York Times, the National Geographic, The New Yorker, Grist magazine, the Observer newspaper, and any others who will have them (which is most) have been deployed to spread its memes. Cornell University has meanwhile received a $5.6 million grant by the Gates Foundation to “depolarize” negative GMO publicity.

But so far there is little sign that the growth of anti-GMO sentiment in Monsanto’s home (US) market can be halted. The decision by Chipotle is certainly not an indication of faith that it can.

For Monsanto and GMOs the situation suddenly looks ominous. Chipotle may well represent the beginnings of a market swing of historic proportions. GMOs may be relegated to cattle-feed status, or even oblivion, in the USA. And if GMOs fail in the US, they are likely to fail elsewhere.

GMO roll-outs in other countries have relied on three things: the deep pockets of agribusinesses based in the United States, their political connections, and the notion that GMOs represent “progress”. If those three disappear in the United States, the power to force open foreign markets will disappear too. The GMO era might suddenly be over.

References

Anonymous (1969) Interferon inducers with side effects. Nature 223: 666-667.
Bøhn, T., Cuhra, M., Traavik, T., Sanden, M., Fagan, J. and Primicerio, R. 2014. Compositional differences in soybeans on the market: Glyphosate accumulates in Roundup Ready GM soybeans. Food Chemistry 153: 207-215.
Okada C., Akbar S.M.F., Horiike N., and Onji M. (2005) Early development of primary biliary cirrhosis in female C57BL/6 mice because of poly I:C administration. Liver International 25: 595-603.
Karpala A.J., Doran T.J., and Bean A.G.D. (2005) Immune responses to dsRNA: Implications for gene silencing technologies. Immunology and cell biology 83: 211–216.
Mortensen, David A., J. Franklin Egan, Bruce D. Maxwell, Matthew R. Ryan and Richard G. Smith (2012) Navigating a Critical Juncture for Sustainable Weed Management. BioScience 62: 75-84.
Schinasi L and Maria E. Leon ME (2014) Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma and Occupational Exposure to Agricultural Pesticide Chemical Groups and Active Ingredients: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 11: 4449-4527.

Writer & Researcher Bil Holter joins me to discuss the latest as we document the collapse. Over just the past week, Bill explains, “all hell has been breaking lose” in the global credit markets.

Bill wants readers of SGT Report to understand that “the stock market(s) are merely a side show to the grand Big Top circus of the credit markets because the credit (bond) markets are so much larger than the equity markets.” And Bill says when the credit markets implode – EVERYTHING will implode.

So how will it all end? Bill explains,

“This is going to be an overnight or over the weekend type of event where you have what you have on a Friday and you wake up on a Monday morning and you can’t trade anything and you’re locked in to your position. So it’s absolutely imperative that you have what you WANT to have, because you won’t have a chance to change it” And Bill asks, “Do realize that gold and silver are THE only monies out there that are not “credit based” or derive their values via the credit markets … markets which will ultimately will be closed?”

Bill Holter writes for Miles Franklin Gold

A week ago, I speculated that we might soon be reading a puff piece from New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren on Naftali Bennett, the new Israeli education minister who is proud of his record of killing Arabs.

My thought was inspired by Rudoren’s December 2013 makeover for Israel’s then foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman in which she claimed that the settler from Moldova had lost his “abrasive” style and turned over a new leaf as a “conciliatory diplomat.”

What’s the ETA for a @rudoren puff piece on how @naftalibennett has become a cheeky, conciliatory statesman?

— Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah) May 7, 2015

As recently as this March, Lieberman called for the beheading of Palestinians.

But Rudoren surprised me. Instead of going for Bennett, she has produced a puff pieceon Israel’s new justice minister Ayelet Shaked, Bennett’s colleague in the Jewish Home (Habayit Hayehudi) party.

Last July, The Electronic Intifada made Shaked world famous by translating her Facebook post calling for genocide of Palestinians.

But Rudoren’s piece takes its time to even get to that issue. First we learn that Shaked “danced ballet, was active in the Scouts and excelled at math.” We learn from admirers that she “is a person not of words, but of hard work.”

“Accusations”

Ayelet Shaked (Wikipedia)

Finally, in paragraph 21, Rudoren gets to the small matter of Ayelet’s call for mass murder:

A flash point came last June, when Ms. Shaked posted on Facebook a never-published article by a settler activist who had died. It described the entire Palestinian people as “the enemy,” called youths who become “martyrs” while attacking Israelis “snakes” and said their mothers should “go to hell” with them.

Bloggers accused her of promoting genocide. She deleted the post and wrote an op-ed article attacking the attackers.

“It was a mistake,” Ms. Shaked said in the interview, a day before her swearing-in. “I’m doing a lot of mistakes, like every human being.”

Although Rudoren does link to The Electronic Intifada’s post, she presents the facts about Shaked’s statements dismissively as a matter of mere accusations from “bloggers” and gives Shaked’s response equal weight.

Apart from a few quoted words, Rudoren did not actually assess what Shaked wrote – or her response, in which the minister suggests falsely that her words were mistranslated by The Electronic Intifada, “a website dedicated to daily and hourly vilification of my country.”

Judge for yourself

Shaked’s June post, in which she reproduced and endorsed the words of late Israeli settler activist Uri Elitzur, is horrific. Almost any sentence stands out for its bloodlust. Here’s just a few of them:

The Palestinian people has declared war on us, and we must respond with war. Not an operation, not a slow-moving one, not low-intensity, not controlled escalation, no destruction of terror infrastructure, no targeted killings. Enough with the oblique references. This is a war. Words have meanings. This is a war. It is not a war against terror, and not a war against extremists, and not even a war against the Palestinian Authority. These too are forms of avoiding reality. This is a war between two people. Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people. Why? Ask them, they started.

Then …

And in our war this is sevenfold more correct, because the enemy soldiers hide out among the population, and it is only through its support that they can fight. Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. Actors in the war are those who incite in mosques, who write the murderous curricula for schools, who give shelter, who provide vehicles, and all those who honor and give them their moral support. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.

This is nothing short of a rationale for exterminating Palestinian civilians by defining them, from cradle to grave, as “enemy combatants.”

Can we imagine Rudoren allowing someone who incited the murder of Israeli Jewish civilians in similar terms to shrug it off as just a human foible, a “mistake”?

This is just another of the ways The New York Times helps whitewash Israel’s state-sponsored violence and racism.

Apologizing to cancer

In the news today: Likud lawmaker Miri Regev has been appointed as Israel’s new culture minister.

In 2012, David Sheen ranked Regev No. 5 on his list of Israel’s “racist ringleaders.”Most notoriously that year, Regev told an Israeli mob that African asylum-seekers were “a cancer in the body” of the nation.

Following outrage at the mob violence – a “pogrom,” Sheen calls it – that Regev helped incite, Regev apologized. But not to Africans for calling them “cancer.” Rather, she apologized to cancer sufferers for comparing them to Africans.

Perhaps another glowing puff piece from Rudoren is already in the works?

As an alternate to the history of the Cold War in relation to its developments and impact on Indonesia – and even further abroad – The Incubus of Intervention is an intriguing and complex review of the historical record.  The title word ‘incubus’ indicates a nightmare, evil spirit, or a person or thing that oppresses like a nightmare. As many other studies have shown, it is an appropriate appellation for the interventions of colonial powers and those trying to usurp the colonial powers.  In this case the colonial power is the Netherlands and the usurper, as in most cases post World War II, the U.S.

Most mainstream histories report the Indonesian story as a conflict between a central power structure becoming dominated by communists, and a rebellion attempting to overthrow the central government for more regional autonomy.  The deceit and webs of intrigue in the background present a different picture.

Allen Dulles plays the dominant role.  As head of the CIA from its inception, and with a history of espionage, under cover maneuverings, and many ties to legal and corporate interests, Dulles became the ‘embodiment’(1) of U.S. foreign policy in Indonesia.

While considered a failure in standard histories, Poulgrain shows how the rebellion itself was manipulated by Dulles in order to have it fail.  The ultimate prize of course was keeping Indonesia away from the clutches of the Communists.  The back story is much more convoluted and intriguing than that simplified scenario.

The story also involves oil and gold (naturally, as with most U.S. interventions looking for corporate control of resources), the royalty of the Netherlands and Germany, the oil companies and mineral explorers of the Netherlands and the U.S., Wilsonian ideals of self determination, especially for the indigenous people of Papua New Guinea, regime change, and last but not least, Dag Hammarskjold and John F. Kennedy.

There are many people who would have wanted Kennedy killed – crime syndicates, political opponents, Cuban expatriates, Russians (least likely scenario), and as per Poulgrain, Allen Dulles is a strong contender for that list.(2)  Kennedy’s relationship with Sukarno and his attempts to find a peaceable course of action to keep Indonesia within the U.S. sphere jeopardized the corporate background interests of Allen Dulles.

Dag Hammarskjold also became a problem as he worked with the ideals of the non-aligned movement.  His efforts in Indonesia are not as well known as his efforts in the former Belgian Congo, but both conflicted with Dulles’ attempts at grabbing resource rich former colonies for U.S. corporate control.  As should be generally known, Hammarskjold was killed in a plane crash in 1961 in the Congo, very likely from Dulles’ CIA and corporate connections aiming for control of the riches of the Congo, nine months after the CIA killed the4 Congo’s Patrice Lumumba, another patron of the post colonial non-aligned movement.

Poulgrain’s analysis begins with the discovery of an enormous source of copper and gold in Western New Guinea (now West Papua and Papua provinces of Indonesia), continues through the Japanese push for resources in South Asia, and on into the establishment of an independent Indonesia and its internal and external conflicts.  A general historical background will help with the understanding of all the different characters and interactions and intrigues.  The Incubus of Intervention  stands alone as a well written, clearly detailed and intriguing reassessment of historical events in and around Indonesia.

Notes:

(1) The Brothers – John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret War.  Stephen Kinzer, St Martin’s Griffin, New York, 2013. (p. 323).

(2) “[President] Johnson told friends in Congress that the Kennedy assassination had “some foreign complications, CIA and other things.” Placing Allen on the Warren Commission ensured that these “complications” would remain secret.”  ibid. p. 305.