Global Research

One of the major barriers blocking U.S. President Barack Obama’s campaign for his mammoth international trade deals — the TTIP with Europe, and the TPP with Asia — is: other countries want the freedom to make up their own minds about the safety or dangerousness of the foods they allow to be sold within their borders.

The Obama Administration is insisting that no nation have that freedom. In fact, all participating nations would be removed from that responsibility and authority. The Obama trade deals propose to replace that national authority, and basic national sovereignty on these important matters, by decisions that would instead be made by international panels, whose members will be appointed by international corporations, which have their own profits at stake in these matters. Consumers and others will be ignored: they will not be represented in the proposed panels. Nor will any government be represented there. That soverignty will instead be transferred to the billionaire families who control and derive their income from these corporations.

On Friday, April 24th, Agence France Presse headlined “US Stresses Opposition to EU Opt-Out for GMO Imports,” and reported that, “The United States underscored Friday its opposition to a new European Union plan to allow member states to block genetically engineered imports after bilateral talks on a transatlantic free-trade pact.”

President Obama’s Trade Representative, Michael Froman, who is a Wall Street banker and a longtime close personal friend of the President, said on April 22nd that he was “very disappointed” that the EU wants to allow individual EU nations to “opt out” of automatic approval of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) that the international panels will approve to be marketed everywhere. Furthermore, Froman’s assistant said that the U.S. rejects “a proposal to allow EU member states to ban products deemed safe by Europe’s own scientists.” He was referring there to the half of scientific papers that find GMO foods to be safe. However, those papers were produced by companies that manufacture and market GMOs. The other half of the scientific papers on GMOs, the half that were produced independently of the GMO industry, have not found GMO foods to be safe — to the exact contrary. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative ignores those papers.

On 8 July 2009, Agence France Presse headlined “Scientists Warn of Hazards of GMOs,” and reported that an article in the International Journal of Biological Science co-authored by world-leading scientists, reported that, “Agricultural GM companies and evaluation committees systematically overlook the side effects of GMOs and pesticides.” An accompanying study, “How Subchronic and Chronic Health Effects Can Be Neglected for GMOs, Pesticides or Chemicals,” found “a significant underestimation of the initial signs of diseases like cancer and diseases of the hormonal, immune, nervous and reproductive systems.”

The United States does not regulate GMO foods, because the patents are owned mostly by U.S. companies, and the U.S. Government doesn’t want to get in the way of their selling their patented products. Consequently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration takes any given GMO manufacturer’s word for the safety of its GMO products. U.S. President Obama wants to promote U.S. trade by convincing all other countries to sell GMO foods. His TTIP and TPP are supported by the GMO industry, which has approved their GMO foods and allowed their product-labels to not mention that some or all of the ingredients are genetically modified crops.

One of the major advantages of GMO crops is that they can survive the use of herbicides — weed-killers — that kill natural crops. (The GMO-seed manufacturer also markets the pesticide or herbicide; these are chemical companies, and GMOs are a complementary or synergistic product-line for them. For example, the leading herbicide “Roundup” is from Monsanto which produces the GMO seeds that tolerate it.) Another advantage is that the foods can stay longer as looking and smelling fresh, which also lowers the cost of production, and yet the consumer doesn’t even know that the food is actually stale — the food is competing against costlier-to-produce non-GMO foods and so driving them off the market by the lower price, which leaves more and more food-production dependent upon GMO makers such as Monsanto, DuPont, and Dow Chemical. The lower price is obvious; the lower quality is hidden. It’s race-to-the-bottom international ‘competition,’ in which the aristocracy reap all the winnings; the public get the losses.

A recent news report from independent food scientists was bannered “FDA Product Safety Declaration Misleads Nation—Again” and it contains references to many recent scientific papers that find GMO foods to be dangerous, and harmful to human health.

An international analysis, “A Comparative Evaluation of the Regulation of GM Crops” was published in 2013 in the scientific journal Environment International, and it concluded by saying that, “Regulatory bodies are not adequately assessing the risks of dsRNA-producing GM products. As a result, we recommend a process to properly assess the safety of dsRNA-producing GM organisms before they are released or commercialized.” The Obama Administration is trying to prevent that from happening; and their proposed TTIP and TPP international-trade treaties are crucial components of achieving this objective. In the United States, GMO-producers are granted the right to self-regulate, and this practice will become the standard worldwide practice if the TPP and TTIP become passed into law.

The U.S. Government is doing everything it can to spread to other nations the same deregulatory policies that American companies rely upon to market their products inside the United States. On Friday, April 25th, a key U.S. Senate Committee approved a “Trade Promotion Authority” bill to help rush through the U.S. Senate the approval of Mr. Froman’s TPP trade deal with Asian countries. For a summary of the regulatory practices around the world regarding GMO crops, see here. A discussion of the votes in the U.S. Senate on the measure that was proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders to allow individual states to establish their own regulations requiring the labeling or indication of whether or not particular food ingredients are GMOs (since the federal Government refuses to consider such a proposal), is here, and it shows that even some allegedly progressive U.S. Senators voted the GMO industry’s way on that bill to regulate it, which failed, on a vote of 71 to 27. One might call this the Monsanto Congress, because the U.S. House is even more conservative than the Senate. Of the 27 U.S. Senators who voted for the Sanders bill, 24 were Democrats, 2 were Independents, and 1 was Republican. 43 Republicans, and 28 Democrats voted against it. The Obama Administration had lobbied against the bill, in order to continue the GMO industry’s free reign over America’s food-supply.

When Barack Obama campaigned for the Presidency in 2008, he said, “Let folks know when their food is genetically modified, because Americans have a right to know what they’re buying.” But as soon as he won the Presidency “The new president filled key posts with Monsanto people, in federal agencies that wield tremendous force in food issues, the USDA and the FDA.” And whereas Republican news-organizations such as Fox ‘News’ criticized him as being a Muslim Marxist, he was actually implementing policies that continued those of the Republican George W. Bush Administration on this and on many other issues. Yet, no matter how far to the right Mr. Obama actually was, he was portrayed as a ‘leftist’ in Republican ’news’ media. And yet, still, even today, the vast majority of Democratic voters approve of his actions as President. They still believe his rhetoric, even though he has lied to them constantly and even filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that lying in politics must continue to remain unrestricted not only at the national level but also in each and every one of the states. Consequently, in the United States, there is no effective political opposition to the large international U.S. corporations. (And, under the Republican Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, corporations now have virtually unlimited freedom to use stockholders’ money to purchase politicians.)

Hillary Clinton is a big supporter of the GMO industry, and the response of liberals to that is to ask her to give them rhetoric they like on the matter, just as Obama had done when he was running for President in 2008. In other words: they will campaign for her to become President if she will only lie to them as Obama did to them. What liberals are demanding is rhetoric; but if they get it from her, then the industries that are funding her Presidential campaign won’t be worried, because she has a solid record of doing what her financial backers want her to do. As long as Americans don’t care when a politician has lied to them, lying to them will continue to be the way to win public office — especially considering that America’s international corporations now have been granted by the Republican U.S. Supreme Court a ‘free speech’ right to purchase the U.S. Government. And now that the Supreme Court has also ruled that political lies are a Constitutionally proected form of speech, those ads don’t even need to be true. If the American people don’t care about honesty, then they won’t have an honest government, because America’s corporations can then buy any U.S. Government they want — they’ll have total impunity if the U.S. public don’t even care about honesty in their government. There are no legal penalties for political lying; so, if there are also no political penalties for it, then the U.S. can only be ruled by lies and their liars. Should that be called “fascism”?

According to the generally progressive Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio (who, along with Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders is one of the Senate’s three leading opponents of Mr. Obama’s proposed international-trade treaties), President Obama has been lobbying Senators more insistently and more intensely on getting them to grant him “Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority” to ram these treaties through, than on any other single issue since Obama first became President in 2009. No issue, not even Obamacare nor any other, has been as important to Obama as is his getting signed into law the TPP and TTIP. It would certainly be the culmination of his Presidency if he succeeds. It would be his crowning achievement. He and his heirs will be amply rewarded if he succeeds; and that’s apparently what he really cares about. He has shown it by his actions as the President, not by his rhetoric to voters. After all: Americans, it seems, don’t really care about honesty. All they really care about is rhetoric that pleases them. They merely want to be told what they want to hear.

Perhaps this is the reason why no progressive has entered the Democratic Presidential contest against Hillary Clinton. If the only realistic possibilities to become the next President are her and her Republican opponent (whomever he will turn out to be), then America will continue to be a de facto one-party State, and this will be the U.S. international-corporate party, in both of its factions or nominal varieties, controlling the U.S. Government. The only comprehensive scientific study that has yet been done finds that the U.S. has, in fact, already been ruled in this way for some time. (The history of how it came to be this way, starting gradually after the end of World War II, is the subject of my latest book.) Obama is merely implementing it more; he didn’t start it. He is implementing it more than even Republicans were able to do.

Obama wouldn’t have been able to do this if he didn’t come bearing the label ‘Democrat.’ And Hillary Clinton’s husband Bill was the key person to subordinate that Party to Wall Street. Hillary and Obama are following in his footsteps. Obama’s “Change” occured actually when Bill Clinton became President in 1993. It simply hasn’t been much recognized until now. Today’s Democratic Party started when Bill became President. That’s when the one-party State, with the national Democrats playing the role of the ‘Good Cop’ to the national and local Republicans’ role of the ‘Bad Cop,’ in the eyes of the Democratic Party’s electoral base of deceived liberals, actually began to take over the U.S. Government, for the benefit of, and service to, America’s aristocracy.

This is why both Obama and Clinton are big supporters of essentially unregulated GMOs. It’s sort of like unregulated Wall Street: the profits get privatized, while the losses (poor health etc.) get socialized.

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.

On Hardball with Chris Matthews, a U.S. mainstream media program interviewed President Barack Obama and was asked about Russia’s decision on lifting a ban on the sale of S-300 air-defense missile systems to Iran. According to the Jerusalem Post, Obama said “Our defense budget is somewhere just a little under $600 billion. Theirs is a little over $17 billion. Even if they’ve got some air defense systems, if we had to, we could penetrate them.” Obama declares that the U.S. military would penetrate Iran’s defenses while ignoring the fact that the Iranian forces would respond decisively to such an attack. The U.S. military would not be alone in its crusade against Iran. Israel and Saudi Arabia would also join their suicide mission. Let’s talk about facts concerning Iran and how it would defend its territory from an invading force.

First, Iran is at least three times the population than Iraq was before the US invasion in 2003 which at least 1.4 million Iraqi deaths occurred. Iran is twice the size of the Ukraine. There are various estimates that the U.S. military would need at least 2 million troops on the ground to contain Iran which it does not have. The military’s drone and ballistic missile technology along with its Air Force would not come close to dominating Iranian air space because they will use their S-300 air defense missile systems which they will receive from Russia. Russia recently decided to lift its ban from delivering the missile defense system to Iran which can repel any air attack although the Iranian military already has its own defense systems. Iran also has the Khalij-e Fars anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM). The ASBM is a component of its defensive capabilities which is often called the “carrier-killer,” a solid-fuel, supersonic Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile with a range of about 300 km or 186 miles that carries a 1,400 pound warhead that can sink U.S. naval carriers. Something U.S. Naval personnel should fear.

A war against Iran would ignite a regional conflict that would specifically target all U.S. bases and its military personal with Shiite militias leading the charge starting in Iraq. The U.S. Embassy in Bagdad would be targeted regardless of Washington’s enormous amount of money spent (more than $750 million according to various estimates) to fortify it. US troops who remain in Afghanistan would also be targeted by Iran’s allies in the country. According to a 2012 report by RT news:

Gen. Hajizadeh explains in a statement this week that America’s continuing support of Israel is enough to associate them with any attack waged against Iran, even if the US has officially condemned any plans to put boots in the ground to dismantle the rumored nuclear program.

“For this reason, we will enter a confrontation with both parties and will definitely be at war with American bases should a war break out,” Hajizadeh says, according to a post on Iran’s state Al-Alam TV. Hajizadeh adds that among the US facilities that would be targeted are structures in Bahrain, Qatar and Afghanistan. “There will be no neutral country in the region,” Hajizadeh says. “To us, these bases are equal to US soil.”

During an U.S. attack on Iran, Israel would most likely move on Hezbollah targets provoking a reaction that will ignite another war. Hezbollah forces are quite capable of operating unguided and guided missile systems from Southern Lebanon. The total number of missiles and rockets that are in Hezbollah’s arsenal is between 40,000 and 110,000 according to various sources. They have short range Katyusha rockets operated by Hezbollah Special Forces launch teams which was used in 2006 Lebanon war. Katyusha rockets have a 30 Km or a 19 mile range which is capable of delivering at least 60 pounds of warheads right into Israeli territory. Hezbollah also has a number of missiles that can reach deep into Israeli territory. Syria would stay on alert as it continues to battle the U.S, Israeli and Saudi backed-rebels and other terrorist groups including ISIS who are trying to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.

A War with Iran would Bankrupt the United States leading to its Greatest Depression

Russia would sit back for a short time and ready their forces as NATO becomes more aggressive on its borders with its war games. At the same, Putin is strategizing Russia’s economy with its partners by using the sanctions imposed by the West by moving away from the U.S. financial system. It is estimated that the U.S. war in Iraq costs more than $3 trillion with over 4,400 deaths and more than 33,000 wounded military personal. A war with Iran would be at least triple the costs given the size and its defense capabilities with a military force of at least 1.5 million personnel. The cost would amount to $10 trillion which would have to be borrowed and in the long run would bankrupt the U.S. mainland leading to a Great Depression. The total U.S. debt would reach $30 trillion. The war hawks and its cronies in the Military-Industrial Complex would profit as middle class Americans and small businesses would pay the ultimate price of an economic meltdown that will be much worse than the 2008 financial crisis. The U.S. will eventually default on its debt obligations. What would Washington do after they default, ask the world to lend them some money?

How Iranian Citizens would react to an Attack by the U.S. and its Allies

In 1980, Saddam Hussein invaded Iran with U.S. backing. What was the result? The U.S. and Saddam Hussein thought that Iran was weak because of the chaos that followed the 1979 revolution which was proven wrong. After a few weeks of the Iraqi invasion, there were more than 100,000 volunteers rushing to Khuzistan region in order to fight the Iraqi forces. The invasion made Iran stronger. The people will unite; it wasproven in the 1980’s despite its political turmoil. What makes Washington think they can win this war even with Israel and Saudi Arabia’s backing?

It’s Conclusive: the U.S. Military would Lose Again

The U.S. will lose again, just like they did in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. You can add several wars the U.S. fought that ended in a stalemateincluding North Korea and the Seminole Wars in Florida (the second longest war in American History after Afghanistan). You can add Iran to the list of victors. But the biggest loser in all of this madness instigated by Washington D.C. and its patsies is the American, Saudi Arabian and Israeli citizens who pay their taxes. Obama thinks that spending $600 billion on defense would assure a victory over Iran, but it does not matter because the Iranian people would find a way to win against the foreign aggressor.

The U.S. Empire is in decline along with its demoralized military personnel who are used as pawns in wars for profit and geopolitical control of sovereign nations. At the same time, politicians in Washington D.C. and their corporate and banking cronies continue to celebrate their record profits by smoking cigars and drinking Johnnie Walker Blue label scotch while the U.S. economy is heading towards a collapse. That is the reality. And that reality will sink in, if a war with Iran begins. Hopefully, peace will prevail in the end, but the war hawks in Washington will stop at nothing for power and control over the entire planet even if it means putting their military men and women in harm’s way just like they did in their past wars of aggression.

While the US publicly plays Pontius Pilate washing his hands clean, the Saudi-led coalition of Arab police states continue to enjoy US support for their one-sided war. The same Arab dictatorships that continue to wage aggressive war with impunity against a defenseless Yemen have, at the same time, scaled back on fighting the militant Islamic State despite its hold on large parts of two other Arab countries, Syria and Iraq. Seriously, why fight someone who might do you harm in return?

In a rational world, the unprovoked aerial and naval attacks on an impoverished Yemen by Saudi Arabia and its allied monarchies would seem more likely to draw objection than military support from the US and its somewhat-democratic allies. In a comprehending world, the public explanations for criminal aggression by the Saudis and the US would provoke howls of derisive laughter for their preposterous fabrications. In a principled world, a dedicated peace movement and a motivated left would be filling the streets with protest.

But we don’t live in a rational, comprehending, or principled world. In our world, opposition to the criminal bombing of an internationally peaceful, defenseless, collapsing state draws scant objection from the international community except for quiet, pro forma critiques by China, Russia, and Iran. No nation actually threatens to defend the territorial integrity or independence of Yemen. As is traditional, the Yemenis are left to defend themselves, which they haven’t been able to do in the past. Now the Yemenis’ greatest offense is achieving some success in their chaotic search for a more representative government than any of their neighbors will allow.

Seldom has such a clear case of criminal war, of naked aggression, drawn such yawns from the world at large. Describing the current mad consensus of power in the American imperium, with a quiet objectivity to which no reaction is expected or forthcoming, The New York Times of April 22 reports in deadpan prose the irreconcilable contradictions of an insane policy – or if there is no policy, just crazed tactics – in the second paragraph of its lead story, under this headline:

SAUDIS ANNOUNCE HALT TO YEMEN BOMBING CAMPAIGN

… The announcement followed what American officials said was pressure applied by the Obama administration for the Saudis and other Sunni Arab nations to end the airstrikes. The bombing campaign, which has received logistical and intelligence support from the United States, has drawn intense criticism for causing civilian deaths and for appearing to be detached from a broad military strategy.

Written before the world realized that the bombing “halt” was actually only a brief pause in the Saudi terror campaign, the Times’ “explanation” was nevertheless ridiculous. With masterful flat affect, the Times assured us that the US applied pressure to get the Saudis to stop doing what we had helped them do from the beginning and were continuing to help them do. Say what?

Has there ever been a better use of the word “detached” in a piece not openly critical of authority? Not only is the Saudi air attack detached from any broad military strategy, it is detached from any military strategy at all, and it is detached from reality. Detachment from reality is one measure of insanity.

Another measure is one’s insistence on continuing to do what one has been doing while at the same time claiming that what one has done has accomplished all its objectives. Or, as Adel Al-Jubeir, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the US, put it in his official statement on April 22 [with imagined honest annotations]:

“We destroyed their air force.” [Even though Yemen didn’t really have an actual air force, due to corruption and neglect, which is why we were able to bomb the planes they had while they were still on the ground. And, technically, that was the Yemen government air force under the command of President Hadi, who happens to be living in Riyadh these days, but never mind about all that….]

“We destroyed their ballistic missiles, as far as we know.” [Because, after all, we don’t really know if anyone in Yemen actually has any ballistic missiles. We know or we think we know they had some in 1979 and for awhile after that, but we don’t know if they ever used any and by 2010 they had, maybe, 6 launchers and maybe 33 SCUD missiles and maybe 22 other SAMs, which are surface-to-air missiles which could shoot down Saudi F-15s, for example, if they had them, and if they knew how to use them, and we know none of our planes have been shot down, so you figure it out.]

“We destroyed their command and control.” [That sounds impressive, doesn’t it, but I don’t know what it really means either, in Yemen, where there are so many different factions under so many different commands and no perceptible control, except maybe the Houthis, who’ve been fighting for their independence for more than a decade without the need for sophisticated command and control bunkers and electronics and stuff.]

“We destroyed much, if not most, of their heavy equipment.” [Also an impressive accomplishment, until you ask how much heavy equipment they have, besides the handful of tanks we haven’t destroyed. But we’ve destroyed schools and hospitals and food aid depots and other heavy equipment like that, so when you add it all up, it comes to a lot of damage.]

“And we made it very difficult for them to move, from a strategic perspective.” [Nevermind that, strategically, they don’t really need to move, since they’ve held the capital city, Sana’a, for months now and they’ve pretty well got Aden and the eastern part of the country, which is pretty much all they really want. So never mind that part. And never mind the reality that it hasn’t been easy to move around Yemen for years, but that hasn’t stopped the Houthis. What we’ve done, destroying roads and bridges where we could find them, is make it harder for people to move around Yemen when it wasn’t easy in the first place, and that includes refugees and internally displaced people, and, really who cares, we did what we could with what they had.]

“So we’ve degraded their capabilities substantially, and thereby eliminated the threat that they pose to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and, in a process, ensured the safety of our borders, our territory and our citizens.” [That is such a good line, absolutely my best line, and Western media lap it up like limp puppies, they talk about how we’ve ensured the safety of our borders and our territory and our citizens and they never ever even stop to think: Hey, Joe, wait a minute – what was the threat to Saudi Arabia? There was NO threat to Saudi Arabia, and that goes a long way toward making it possible for us to secure our unthreatened safety. And what about their capabilities, you might ask, are they not degraded? And the answer is, of course, they’ve always been degraded and now they’re a little more degraded, which makes them even less of the no threat they posed to Saudi Arabia, and also has the benefit of making the Houthis more vulnerable to Al Qaeda and to the Islamic State, and we’re counting on them to go in and finish off the Houthis, because we certainly don’t want to send Saudi boys to do the job Yemenis boys on one side or another should be doing themselves.]

“That was the objective of Operation Decisive Storm, in addition, of course, to the protection of the legitimate government of Yemen. Those objectives have been achieved.”  [Sounding a little Monty Python here, that was the objective here, protect Saudi Arabia and the Yemen government, those were the two objectives here, but the Yemen government part is tricky because we had to bring it to Riyadh to protect it, those are the three objectives here, even though having the Yemeni government in the Saudi capital rather curtails its ability to run things in Yemen, at least it’s protected and, having installed it undemocratically once, we have every hope of installing it undemocratically again because, after all, nobody expects the Saudi Installation. So those are the objectives that have been achieved by our chief weapons, fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency, except the ones that haven’t been achieved.]

Having accomplished their objectives, the Saudis resume bombing

Having been the poorest country in the Middle East, and one of the poorest in the world when the US-supported Saudi attacks began a month ago, Yemen’s humanitarian condition has deteriorated. According to Robert Mardini of the International Committee of the Red Cross, on April 22, after a three-day visit there: “Nowhere is safe in Yemen. People are really facing a lot of challenges – no electricity, no water, no fuel, no public services, no garbage collection….” The next day in Geneva Mardini emphasized the predictable result of US-supported Saudi war crimes:  “The humanitarian situation is nothing short of catastrophic.”

In a meaningless word game, the Saudis say the short bombing halt marked the end of so-called Operation Decisive Storm, which has decided nothing. The Saudis call their new intensive bombing campaign Operation Renewal of Hope, as if to say that they are continuing to bomb defenseless targets in order to accomplish the same objectives they claim to have already achieved, in hope that achieving them anew will be made easier by already having claimed to have achieved them.

Or, as Saudi ambassador Jubeir said of the Houthis: “The decision to calm matters now rests with them.” At the same time, Saudi prince Al-Waleed bin Talal announced that he would give a $200,000 Bentley luxury car to each of 100 Saudi fighter pilots, in apparent appreciation of their crimes against humanity, although he didn’t put it that way.

An estimate by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, based on Yemeni sources, reports the air war and ground fighting together have displaced some 150,000 people. The UN also estimates that of Yemen’s population of about 25 million, at least 7.5 million require humanitarian assistance, and the number continues to grow.

Asked to sponsor peace talks, the UN has delivered a limited embargo

For their part, the Houthis again called for UN-sponsored peace talks and political negotiations in which they have an equal role. This is a longstanding Houthi position that has yet to be honored by Saudi Arabia or anyone else. When the international cabal comprising the Saudis, the US, and others deposed Yemen’s President Saleh in 2012 and installed President Hadi in an undemocratic process, the Houthis were excluded from the process. Quite reasonably and accurately, the Houthis maintain that there is NO legitimate government of Yemen.

Because the UN did not authorize the Saudi-led war, it is by definition illegal. There is little evidence to suggest that the UN will address the questions of US-supported Saudi-led aggression in violation of the UN Charter any time soon, if ever. The UN Security Council did impose an arms embargo on Yemen, however, by a 14-0 vote, with Russia abstaining. Comparing this international behavior to American frothing over Ukraine illustrates the flexibility of application inherent in international law and the roundly pontificated moral principles supposedly underlying them.

The delusion making all this irrational, criminal, and murderous behavior seem plausible to the perpetrators and their camp followers is the claim that the Houthis are a hand puppet of Iran. President Obama says, with a straight face in public, that “We’ve indicated to the Iranians that they need to be part of the solution, and not part of the problem.”

The big problem with that perspective is that it is detached from reality. There is no credible evidence available to suggest that Iran is anything more than a minor, largely insignificant player in Yemen, where most of the fighting on all sides is heavily supported by American weapons that have been flooding the region for decades.

Reporters at the State Department on April 21 asked what kind of evidence the administration has to support its claims against Iran, including the recent claim that Iran has been supplying the Houthis with weapons. In an evasive non-answer answer to the question, State Department flack Marie Harf effectively revealed that there’s no cat in the bag:

Well, we’ve – this isn’t something new, unfortunately. We’ve long talked about the support when it comes from funding or whether it’s weapons supplies that the Iranians are sending to the Houthi. This has been really an ongoing relationship for a very long time. I’m happy to see if there’s more evidence to share publicly of that, but this has been something we’ve expressed concern about for some time.

In other words, Harf is saying: look, this is something we’ve been saying for a long time, we don’t have evidence and we don’t need evidence because usually when we make the same claim over and over and over you come to accept it as true, that’s the way propaganda works, that’s the way propaganda is supposed to work, why are you giving us a hard time now? You can’t possibly care about a minority cohort of Yemenis like the Houthis, can you?

For objective reporting of propaganda as news, try PBS or the Times

Frontline has a reputation for being about the best thing going in news reporting on PBS, which says more about PBS news reporting than it does about Frontline, none of it good. Here’s Frontline’s lead for an April 22 Yemen story, perfectly recapitulating the false Saudi line:

Late on Tuesday, the Saudi Arabia-led coalition that launched a military campaign – dubbed “Operation Decisive Storm” – against Houthi rebels in Yemen nearly a month ago announced that it was ending the operation. Taking its place would be “Operation Renewal of Hope.”

The story quoted a Saudi general and a Saudi ambassador and went on to create the impression that American involvement consisted only of pressure to end the bombing, not an ongoing month of American logistical and intelligence support to the undeclared war on a neutral country.

Following up on its front-page “Saudis Announce Halt to Bombing” story that became so quickly inoperative, the next day’s Times had a front page headline claiming that:

SAUDI DEFIANCE REFLECTS LIMITS OF US STRATEGY

Later online editions of the story changed “defiance” to “resolve,” adding nuance to the propaganda.  The story began by explaining that this all just goes to show “the difficulty of finding a political solution to the crisis.” Actually it doesn’t show that so much as it shows the intransigence of the US and the Saudis and others in their unwillingness to accept the reality that the “political solutions” they have imposed on Yemen in the past have fallen apart because of the corruption and injustice on which they were built. And it shows how unwilling the US and Saudia and others are to enter into – and abide by – a genuine political solution that treats fairly the interests of all relevant parties.

And then there’s the Saudi ambassador again, invoking the largely imaginary threat from Iran as a reason Iran should have no part in any peace talks relating to Yemen. Echoing President Obama, or cueing him, Ambassador Jubeir is quoted making the same propaganda point, that Iran is “part of the problem, not part of the solution.”

In fact, based on the evidence to date, the US and Saudi Arabia and its allies are the problem, and none of them are interested in what the Yemenis might accept as a solution.

And besides, they’re all betting no one will ever hold them accountable for this package of war crimes and crimes against humanity any more than anyone has been held accountable for such crimes relating to Iraq, or torture, or drone strikes.

William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

There is no let-up in the United States supported Saudi Arabian and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) war against Yemen. As the death toll mounts, Riyadh and its allies representing the ousted government of President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi have rejected efforts aimed at declaring a ceasefire and re-opening political dialogue among the various political forces in the country.

Former President Ali Abdullah Saleh urged the various groups involved in the struggle for political power to accept the United Nations proposals requesting the withdrawal from territories contested in the fighting. Saleh still maintains influence in Yemen through his General People’s Congress which was the subject of massive protests during 2011.

Saleh left office in a transitional agreement that was designed to pave the way for a more inclusive government. However, the problems of the country could not be fully resolved with U.S. and Saudi interventions aimed at maintaining western influence in this underdeveloped state.

An alliance between elements within the military who are still loyal to Saleh and the Ansurallah Movement (Houthis) has taken control of large sections of the country. Saudi-GCC airstrikes have destroyed residential areas resulting in anywhere between 1,000-2,800 deaths.

Despite an announcement on April 21 that it was suspending air strikes against Yemen, the Saudi-GCC alliance has continued to bomb indiscriminately across the central and southern regions of the country. Civilians were killed in numerous airstrikes over the last few days even though the Saudi foreign ministry says that it is “winding down its campaign.”

Saudi foreign ministry statements indicate that they do not want any enhanced authority for the Ansurallah to come out of negotiations for a new political dispensation in Yemen. Such a position will only intensify the war that threatens to spread further throughout the region.

United Nations Envoy Says Deal Was Near Prior to Bombing

Jamal Benomar who recently resigned as the UN envoy to Yemen, noted in a recent statement that a political agreement was being worked out prior to the Saudi-GCC aerial bombardments. Although the adoption of a broad peace plan would be difficult, there was no need other than purely imperialist aims for Saudi Arabia to begin the bombing of the country on March 26.

Benomar said that “When this campaign started, one thing that was significant but went unnoticed is that the Yemenis were close to a deal that would institute power-sharing with all sides, including the Houthis. A very detailed agreement was being worked out, but there was one important issue on which there was no agreement, and that was what to do with the presidency. We were under no illusion that implementation of this would be easy.” (Wall Street Journal, April 26)

The former envoy was scheduled to meet behind closed doors with the Security Council on April 27. Benomar also revealed that the Houthis were prepared to accept a lesser position than the presidency yet this was still not enough for the Saudis.

Qatar and Morocco were prepared to host a new round of peace talks. However, when both countries joined the coalition backing the Saudi-GCC airstrikes, the Ansurallah withdrew from the proposal, rightly noting that neither state could be objective in such negotiations.

Hadi then proposed that talks be held in Riyadh but of course this was rejected by the Ansurallah movement. There could be no real talks while the Saudis continued to bomb the country and to support Sunni elements that were hostile to the Houthis.

Another issue which created consternation was the framework of the new government in Yemen including 30 percent of the cabinet and parliamentary posts being allocated to women. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies still maintain oppressive conditions for women as a matter of state law.

Nonetheless, the further exposure of Saudi Arabia in blocking UN peace initiatives illustrates clearly that the monarchy, backed by Washington, is committed to maintaining imperialist domination in the Persian Gulf, Arabian Peninsula and the waterways between Africa and western Asia. The bombing since late March has not won the desired results by Riyadh.

Iran, which is supporting the Shiite –based Ansurallah movement is a target of Saudi Arabia and the U.S. Tehran’s influence in Yemen is a worrisome development for both the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama as well as the monarchies throughout the GCC region. Reports indicate that Iranian warships have pulled back from potential conflicts with U.S. and allied naval vessels.

On April 25, a new UN envoy to Yemen was appointed from the North African state of Mauritania. This country, like Morocco, maintains close ties with Washington through the so-called Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) coordinated “war on terrorism.”

War Escalates Amid Growing Humanitarian Crisis

The US-supported war has resulted in a massive humanitarian crisis in Yemen. The Saudis have prevented aid from entering the country. The situation in the hospitals is atrocious.

April 26 was marked by some of the most intense bombing since the war began. Air strikes were carried out in at least five locations around the presidential palace in Sanaa.

In the southern port city of Aden, GCC warships pounded areas inland as fighting intensified between supporters of the Houthi and Saleh loyalist forces against Sunni militias that are supported by Saudi Arabia. Reports say that more people were killed and displaced from their homes in both Sanaa and Aden.

One resident of Sanaa named Jamal said “The explosions were so big they shook the house, waking us and our kids up. Life has really become unbearable in this city.”

In pursuit of what they consider a victory over the resistance forces in Yemen, the Saudi-GCC coalition is continuing the bombing. With the war being largely suppressed over the U.S. news networks, most people in America, including the anti-war, peace and left movements, have been virtually silent on developments in Yemen.

Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan traveled to the King Fahd airbase in Saudi Arabia’s Taif on April 26 to reiterate the monarchy’s allegiance to the Saudi-led and Pentagon-CIA supported war in Yemen. “Our only choice is victory in the test of Yemen,” the prince told the international press.

Support inside of Yemen for the Houthis and their allies have accelerated where on April 22 there was a huge demonstration in Sanaa opposing the Saudi-GCC air strikes demanding an end to the hostilities. Saudi-allied militias have blocked humanitarian aid convoys in an effort to force the Ansurallah into submission.

In addition to the heavy fighting in Sanaa and Aden, intense battles are also continuing in the strategically important central city of Taiz. There Saudi-allied Sunni forces and other Islamist militias reportedly attacked several districts where the Houthis have dominated over the last several months.

People in Taiz report that battles were raging street-by-street in the city of some three million inhabitants. Both supporters and opponents of the Ansurallah are utilizing tanks and artillery in residential areas.

“The heaviest street fighting is taking place in Taiz. Airstrikes also continued in Aden,” said the International Committee of the Red Cross representative Sitara Jabeen said.

“Our convoys were blocked from going to Aden and Marib over the weekend and we are in discussions with the Houthis to resolve that,” Jabeen told Reuters press agency. The war being waged in Yemen is strikingly similar to the militarism of the U.S. and Israel.

The war has escalated already existing regional tensions pitting Iran against the GCC states.  The commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, drew an analogy related to Saudi Arabia and Israel. “Saudi Arabia is following in the Zionist regime’s footsteps in the Islamic world,” Jafari told the official IRNA news agency.

President Barack Obama stood behind the podium and apologized for inadvertently killing two Western hostages – including one American – during a drone strike in Pakistan.  Obama said, “one of the things that sets America apart from many other nations, one of the things that makes us exceptional, is our willingness to confront squarely our imperfections and to learn from our mistakes.” In his 2015 state of the union address, Obama described America as “exceptional.” When he spoke to the United Nations General Assembly in 2013, he said, “Some may disagree, but I believe that America is exceptional.”

American exceptionalism reflects the belief that Americans are somehow better than everyone else. This view reared its head after the 2013 leak of a Department of Justice White Paper that describes circumstances under which the President can order the targeted killing of U.S. citizens. There had been little public concern in this country about drone strikes that killed people in other countries. But when it was revealed that U.S. citizens could be targeted, Americans were outraged. This motivated Senator Rand Paul to launch his 13-hour filibuster of John Brennan’s nomination for CIA director.

It is this double standard that moved Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu to write a letter to the editor of the New York Times, in which he asked, “Do the United States and its people really want to tell those of us who live in the rest of the world that our lives are not of the same value as yours?” (When I saw that letter, I immediately invited Archbishop Tutu to write the foreword to my book, “Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.” He graciously agreed and he elaborates on that sentiment in the foreword).

Obama insists that the CIA and the U.S. military are very careful to avoid civilian casualties. In May 2013, he declared in a speech at the National Defense University, “before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured – the highest standard we can set.”

Nevertheless, of the nearly 3,852 people killed by drone strikes, 476 have reportedly been civilians. The Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), which examined nine drone strikes in Yemen, concluded that civilians were killed in every one. Amrit Singh, a senior legal officer at OSJI and primary author of the report, said “We’ve found evidence that President Obama’s standard is not being met on the ground.”

In 2013, the administration released a fact sheet with an additional requirement that “capture is not feasible” before a targeted killing can be carried out. Yet the OSJI also questioned whether this rule is being followed. Suspected terrorist Mohanad Mahmoud Al Farekh, a U.S. citizen, was on the Pentagon’s “kill list” but he was ultimately arrested by Pakistani security forces and will be tried in a U.S. federal court. “This is an example that capturing can be done,” according to Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The fact sheet also specifies that in order to use lethal force, the target must pose a “continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons.” But the leaked Justice Department White Paper says that a U.S. citizen can be killed even when there is no “clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.” This renders the imminency requirement a nullity. Moreover, if there is such a low bar for targeting a citizen, query whether there is any bar at all for killing foreigners.

There must also be “near certainty” that the terrorist target is present. Yet the CIA did not even know who it was slaying when the two hostages were killed. This was a “signature strike,” that targets “suspicious compounds” in areas controlled by “militants.” Zenko says, “most individuals killed are not on a kill list, and the [U.S.] government does not know their names.” So how can one determine with any certainty that a target is present when the CIA is not even targeting individuals?

Contrary to popular opinion, the use of drones does not result in fewer civilian casualties than manned bombers. A study based on classified military data, conducted by the Center for Naval Analyses and the Center for Civilians in Conflict, concluded that the use of drones in Afghanistan caused 10 times more civilian deaths than manned fighter aircraft.

Moreover, a panel with experienced specialists from both the George W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations issued a 77-page report for the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan think tank, which found there was no indication that drone strikes had advanced “long-term U.S. security interests.”

Nevertheless, the Obama administration maintains a double standard for apologies to the families of drone victims. “The White House is setting a dangerous precedent – that if you are western and hit by accident we’ll say we are sorry,” said Reprieve attorney Alka Pradhan, “but we’ll put up a stone wall of silence if you are a Yemeni or Pakistani civilian who lost an innocent loved one. Inconsistencies like this are seen around the world as hypocritical, and do the United States’ image real harm.”

It is not just the U.S. image that is suffering. Drone strikes create more enemies of the United States. While Faisal Shahzad was pleading guilty to trying to detonate a bomb in Times Square, he told the judge, “When the drones hit, they don’t see children.”

Americans are justifiably outraged when we hear about ISIS beheading western journalists. Former CIA lawyer Vicki Divoll, who now teaches at the U.S. Naval Academy, told the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer in 2009, “People are a lot more comfortable with a Predator [drone] strike that kills many people than with a throat-slitting that kills one.” But Americans don’t see the images of the drone victims or hear the stories of their survivors. If we did, we might be more sympathetic to the damage our drone bombs are wreaking in our name.

Drone strikes are illegal when conducted off the battlefield. They should be outlawed. Obama, like Bush before him, opportunistically defines the whole world as a battlefield.

The guarantee of due process in the U.S. Constitution as well as in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights must be honored, not just in its breach. That means arrest and fair trial, not summary execution. What we really need is a complete reassessment of Obama’s continuation of Bush’s “war on terror.” Until we overhaul our foreign policy and stop invading other countries, changing their regimes, occupying, torturing and indefinitely detaining their people, and uncritically supporting other countries that illegally occupy other peoples’ lands, we will never be safe from terrorism.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, past president of the National Lawyers Guild, and deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Her most recent book is “Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.”

In recent years, there has been much shock and stunned reactions among the general public as one after another banker avoided any prison time, despite perpetrating (and benefiting from the subsequent bailout) the biggest financial crisis know to mankind.

But is this shock warranted? The simple answer: no.

Consider the case of countless Nazi financiers and even Hitler’s personal banker, Hjalmar Schacht. What do they all have in common? Aside from (or perhaps due to) practically all having walked through the secretive corridors of the Bank of International Settlements, the one truly disturbing common theme is that virtually all avoided any significant prosecution for their participation in the Third Reich. In fact, as the following excerpt clearly reveals, the basis of Germany’s Fourth Reich, which in Adam LeBor’s words, “would be a financial, rather than a military imperium” was the work almost exclusively of Nazi financiers and bankers. And, of course, America’s backing and support of said Nazi bankers and industrialists.

Because when it comes to political winners and losers, the bankers will gladly support them all, and as such, no matter their prior actions, global financiers – who can and will bring down with them the entire financial system – have a perpetual immunity from the law, even if it means trillions in taxpayer bailouts, or hundreds of millions of casualties.

So the next time anyone is outraged that Lloyd or Jamie or Jon are not only walking free but have hundreds of millions in their bank accounts, advise them that if “all is forgiven” to Hitler’s personal banker, then there is clearly no hope that the judicial system will ever bring those criminals known elsewhere as “bankers” to justice.

The following is an excerpt from TOWER OF BASEL: The Shadowy History of the Secret Bank that Runs the World by Adam LeBor. Reprinted with permission from PublicAffairs.

CHAPTER TEN: ALL IS FORGIVEN

When detained in Dustbin, among a number of references to the financially great he pointed out that the President of the BIS, Mr. McKittrick of the United States, would be able to speak favourably of him.

— British intelligence report on Hermann Schmitz, CEO of IG Farben, while held prisoner at Kransberg Castle, aka “Dustbin,” December 1945

DESPITE THE MARSHALL Plan, postwar Germany was devastated, its population barely scraping a living. A fifth of all housing stocks had been destroyed, food production was about half of its prewar levels, and industrial output in 1947 was one-third of its 1938 level. Basic goods were rationed, and wages and prices were controlled. The black market was thriving, and there was no properly functioning central bank. Officially, the Reichsbank had ceased to exist. The Reichsmark staggered on, still in circulation, although the main unit of currency was American cigarettes.

In 1948, everything changed. The Reichsbank was abolished completely and replaced by the Bank deutscher Länder (BdL). The deutschmark replaced the Reichsmark. The BdL was a national clearinghouse for the banks of the German regional states in the western occupation zone, modeled broadly on the US Federal Reserve. Unlike the Reichsbank, which had been brought under government control, the BdL, which would now represent Germany at the BIS in Basel, had its independence constitutionally guaranteed.

Hjalmar Schacht, president of the Reichsbank, was not impressed with the deutschmark. It was backed neither by gold nor by foreign currency reserves. It was a fiat currency, imposed by the Western authorities. Schacht told Wilhelm Vocke, the president of the new German national bank, that the deutschmark would collapse in six weeks. But Schacht was wrong. The deutschmark was backed, and by assets even more powerful than gold or foreign exchange: public confidence and postwar planning by the Nazi leadership.

At the same time, Ludwig Erhard, the economic director of the British and American occupation zones, lifted price restrictions and controls. The results were spectacular. Employment soared, inflation plummeted, the economy boomed. The deutschmark was stable and enjoyed the public’s full confidence. The western powers and their German subordinates proclaimed the dawn of a new era.

But the new central bank, currency, and Germany’s economic recovery were all deeply rooted in the Third Reich. Because German companies, especially armaments firms, had reinvested their massive profits, despite the Allied bombing campaign and reparations, Germany’s capital stock—its productive equipment, buildings, infrastructure, and other assets—was actually greater in 1948 than in 1936.

The lines of financial continuity between the Third Reich and postwar Germany reached right to the top. The BdL’s first president, Vocke, was a Reichsbank veteran and ally of Hjalmar Schacht. Wilhelm Vocke had sat on the Reichsbank board from 1919 to 1939 and was Germany’s alternate member on the BIS board from 1930 to 1938. He would now return to Basel for the governors’ meetings. Vocke remained loyal to his former boss and testified at Schacht’s trial at Nuremberg. He made the unlikely claim that Schacht had believed Germany’s weapons buildup was intended to support a policy of armed neutrality and to reduce unemployment. Vocke, however, had not joined the Nazi party, unlike many of his colleagues at the BdL. Every state institution in postwar Germany—the police, judiciary, civil servants, teachers, doctors, and the intelligence services—relied on former Nazis to function. But the continuity among the bankers was striking. Between 1948 and 1980, 39 percent of officials on the executive and governing boards of either the BdL, the central banks of the regional states, or the Bündesbank (the BdL’s successor) were former Nazis.

Some, such as Fritz Paersch, had been important figures in Hitler’s economic empire. Paersch was the mastermind of the Nazi plunder and despoliation of Poland. As president of the central bank in German-occupied Poland, he reorganized the currency. Without his work, the Nazi occupation would not have been able to function economically. Hans Frank, the governor general of Poland who oversaw the murder, enslavement, and deportation of millions of Poles and Polish Jews was a great admirer of Paersch. Frank was found guilty of war crimes at Nuremberg and executed. And Paersch should have been put on trial as well, but instead he lived freely and applied for a senior position at the BdL. He was rejected because of his wartime past but was compensated with a position as vice president of the Hesse state central bank, where he worked until 1957. Paersch then found a new sinecure: as official liquidator of the Reichsbank, whose legal affairs still stuttered on.

Like Schacht during the 1930s, Ludwig Erhard, the economic director of the western occupation zones, was hailed as a miracle maker. The truth was more prosaic. Erhard, a future chancellor of West Germany, was an ambiguous figure. He had refused to join any Nazi party organizations and was connected to the German resistance. But Erhard had accepted funds from the Reichsgruppe Industrie, the organization of German industrialists, including IG Farben, that supported Hitler. He was awarded the war service cross for his work on economics. By 1943 Erhard’s work had come to the attention of the German bankers and industrialists who realized that the war was lost. They formed two groups to prepare for the future and ensure their continuing economic power in the postwar world: the Committee for Foreign Economic Affairs, composed of financiers and industrialists, and the Small Working Group, composed solely of industrialists, including Hermann Schmitz, the CEO of IG Farben and BIS director. Erhard was the connection between the two groups.

The members of the Committee for Foreign Economic Affairs included Hermann Abs of Deutsche Bank, the most powerful commercial banker in the Third Reich. The dapper, elegant Abs was an old friend of the BIS. He had been sent there by Schacht during the 1930s to try and stall demands for repayments of the loans that financed Germany after 1918.10 In Basel, Abs frequently met with a British banker called Charles Gunston, who was a protégé of Montagu Norman. Gunston managed the Bank of England’s German desk, which made him immensely important during the 1930s. Gunston was so keen on the new Germany that he spent his 1934 summer holidays at a work camp for enthusiastic Nazi party members. He also admired Abs and later described him as “Very urbane. Always a velvet glove around an iron fist.” Abs did not join the Nazi party, but he was so essential for the functioning of the Third Reich’s economy that he did not need to. As the head of Deutsche Bank’s foreign department during the war, Abs was the lynchpin of the continent-wide plunder, directing the absorption of Aryanized banks and companies across the Third Reich. During the twelve years of the Third Reich, the bank’s wealth quadrupled. Abs sat on the board of dozens of companies, including, naturally, IG Farben.

In 1943 the Nazi industrialists asked Erhard to write a paper on how German industry could be converted back to peacetime production. Erhard argued for a free and competitive market with a gradual elimination of state controls. German industry would be redirected, as quickly as possible, to producing consumer goods. Erhard was taking a substantial risk by put- ting his name to such thoughts: any postwar planning that assumed that Germany might lose the war was enough to send the author to a concentration camp.

But Erhard had protection at the highest levels of the Nazi state: Otto Ohlendorf, the chief of the SS internal security service. The SS was a business as well as a killing machine, the state engine of looting, plunder, and despoliation, from the gold extracted from the teeth of concentration camp victims to the banks, steelworks, factories, and chemical plants of Nazi- occupied countries. Ohlendorf had extensive first-hand experience of the SS’s methods. Between 1941 and 1942, Ohlendorf had commanded Einsatzgruppe D, the extermination squad operating in southern Ukraine, which had murdered ninety thousand men, women, and children. Ohlendorf, an intelligent and educated man, showed great concern for the psychological welfare of his squad’s gunmen. He ordered that they should all fire at the same time at their victims, so as to avoid any feelings of personal responsibility.

Ohlendorf also held a senior position at the Ministry of Economics, supposedly focusing on Nazi Germany’s foreign trade. By 1943, after the Russian victory at Stalingrad, Ohlendorf also understood that the Third Reich would eventually lose the war. His real job was to plan how the SS would keep its financial empire so that Germany would reassert its economic dominance over Europe after the inevitable defeat. The postwar priority was rapid monetary stabilization, to preserve economic stability and avoid Weimar-style hyperinflation. Germany would need a new currency, which would have to be imposed by the occupying powers, as well as a mixed economy of state and private sectors. There was an obvious overlap with Erhard’s ideas. Ohlendorf came to hear of Erhard’s work, and Erhard was persuaded to send him a copy of his memo.

As the Allies advanced on Germany, the Nazis stepped up their plans for the postwar era. On August 10, 1944, an elite group of industrialists gathered at the Maison Rouge Hotel in Strasbourg, including representatives of Krupp, Messerschmitt, Volkswagen, and officials from several ministries. Also in attendance was a French spy, whose report reached the headquarters of the Allied invasion force, from where it was forwarded to the State Department and the Treasury. The account of the meeting is known as the Red House Report.

Germany had lost the war, the Nazi industrialists agreed, but the struggle would continue along new lines. The Fourth Reich would be a financial, rather than a military imperium. The industrialists were to plan for a “postwar commercial campaign.” They should make “contacts and alliances” with foreign firms but ensure this was done without “attracting any suspicion.” Large sums would have to be borrowed from foreign countries. Just as in the prewar era, the US connection and links to chemical firms, such as the American Chemical Foundation, were essential to expanding German interests. The Zeiss lens company, the Leica camera firm, and the Hamburg-American line had been “especially effective in protecting German interests abroad.” The firms’ New York addresses were passed around the meeting.

A smaller group attended a second, select meeting. There the industrialists were instructed to “prepare themselves to finance the Nazi party, which would be forced to go underground.” The prohibition against exporting capital had been lifted, and the government would help the industrialists to send as much money to neutral countries as possible, through two Swiss banks. The Nazi party recognized that after the defeat, its best-known leaders would be “condemned as war criminals,” the intelligence report concluded. However, the party and the industrialists were cooperating in placing the most important figures in positions at German factories as research or technical experts.

US Treasury officials were closely watching this massive export of German capital, much of which was going to South America. Funds were pouring out of Germany and other Nazi-controlled territories, Harry Dexter White—an American economist and senior U.S. Treasury representative—told a meeting of Treasury officials in July 1944 during the Bretton Woods conference. Nazi leaders were preparing to flee the country or have their property confiscated. “They bought estates and industries and corporations, and there is evidence that the German corporations have been buying into South American corporations in the expectation of being able to re-establish themselves there after the war.” The cloaking operation was extremely complex, said White. “They are working through first, second and third fronts, so it is pretty hard to trace it without having all the data available.” The Treasury officials also discussed the BIS at the same meeting, noting that out of twenty-one board members and senior officials, sixteen were “representatives of countries that are either now our enemies, or are occupied,” including Walther Funk—a former journalist, ardent Nazi, and point man on the BIS board for big business and industrialists—and Hermann Schmitz, the CEO of IG Farben, the giant German chemical conglomerate.

Emil Puhl, the vice president of the Reichsbank and BIS director, discussed the Nazi leadership’s postwar strategy with McKittrick at the BIS in March 1945, during the last few weeks of the war. The information he passed to McKittrick echoes that included in the Red House Report and Harry Dexter White’s discussion at Bretton Woods. Military defeat was merely a temporary setback. The Nazis were fanatics and would never give up their ideals, Puhl explained. Instead they would go underground. McKittrick immediately informed Dulles of the conversation. Dulles sent the information on to London, Paris, and Washington on March 21, 1945. His telegram noted that Puhl had “just arrived” in Basel:

He said that the jig was up but that Nazis had made careful plans to go underground, that every essential figure had his designated place, that Nazism would not end with military defeat as Hitler and his fanatical followers would no more change their philosophy than would Socrates or Mohammed, that these men were just as convinced of their cause as ever and carried a great body of people with them. He emphasized that Nazism was like a religion, not merely a political regime.

After the Allied victory, Donald MacLaren, the British intelligence agent who had brought down GAF, IG Farben’s US subsidiary, was sent to Berlin to investigate the chemicals conglomerate. MacLaren wrote an extensive dossier on IG Farben, its history and key personnel, and its central role in preparing and waging war. MacLaren laid out in detail how IG Farben’s trading partners in New York and London, such as Standard Oil, had willingly entered into cartel arrangements with the chemical conglomerate, thus ceding control to Germany and helping it to rearm.

* * * * *

SO WHAT THEN should be the fate of the Nazi industrialists such as Hermann Schmitz? For MacLaren, the answer was clear. Schmitz had murdered, enslaved, and plundered from behind his desk, rather than on the battlefield. He was a war criminal as much as the leaders of the SS and should face the same punishment. But not all Allied officials agreed. When MacLaren asked his superiors if the industrialists were to be included with the Nazi military leadership as war criminals, he was told, “The term ‘industrialists’ raises a point on which no definite line has been laid down.” Schmitz, as MacLaren noted, certainly believed himself to be protected by his connection to the BIS and to Thomas McKittrick.

At one stage it seemed justice might be done. In 1947, twenty-four IG Farben executives, including Schmitz, were put on trial at Nuremberg. Twelve were found guilty. The sentences were derisory. Schmitz was sentenced to four years. Georg von Schnitzler, the commercial chief, who had apparently used the BIS to contact the Allies, received five years. Otto Ambros, a senior manager of IG Auschwitz, received eight years. Ambros testified that the prisoners at IG Auschwitz were fortunate to “have been spared all that which happened” in the main concentration camp. The IG managers had also saved them a commute. The slave laborers could live on-site and no longer had to march fourteen kilometers a day to and from the main camp. “There was no stinting when Monowitz was built. It was heated and hygienic,” Ambros explained, although Rudy Kennedy, who worked as a slave laborer for IG Farben when he was a teenage boy, remembered conditions rather differently. The slave laborers were served soup at lunchtime, soup with a “higher calorific content” than most Germans enjoyed in the immediate postwar years. “I believe that IG Farben and its officials deserve not a reproach, but due recognition,” Ambros later wrote, and they would soon get it.

IG Farben was broken up into four successor companies: BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, and Cassella. The dismantling was no punishment. The shareholders asked the occupation authorities to transfer the conglomerate’s assets to the successor firms, and they agreed. BASF, Bayer and Hoechst immediately reconstituted themselves, with the same staff working in the same offices and factories. A new holding company was created to deal with the legal fallout and consequences of the breakup. The legacy firms said they had no obligations for IG Farben’s sins, as they had not legally existed during the war. It was a shameless and completely successful legal maneuver.

In 1949 John McCloy left the World Bank and started work as US High Commissioner for West Germany. McCloy, the former partner in the Cravath law firm that had represented GAF, the American wing of IG Farben, did not forget his former business partners. Hermann Schmitz was released from prison in 1950, and by February 1951 all of the IG Farben executives were free. Mc- Cloy also freed Alfried Krupp. The Krupp industrial empire had worked about eighty thousand slave laborers to death in a network of fifty-seven labor camps guarded by the SS. Krupp was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment, but he served less than three.

Otto Ohlendorf, the former commander of Einsatzgruppe D and protector of Ludwig Erhard, was an exception. He was hanged. But McCloy ordered that Nazi camp doctors who had conducted experiments on inmates, Nazi judges who had dispensed Gestapo justice, and SS officers who had organized mass killings be freed or have their sentences drastically reduced. Seventy- four of the 104 defendants convicted at Nuremberg had their sentences substantially reduced, and ten death sentences were commuted. Heinz Hermann Schubert, Ohlendorf’s adjutant, who had personally supervised a mass execution of seven hundred people at Simferopol, had his death sentence commuted and was sentenced to ten years in prison.

The IG Farben managers were swiftly welcomed back into the German business community. Hermann Schmitz joined the supervisory board of the Deutsche Bank. Otto Ambros, provider of soup to slave laborers, joined numerous company boards and set up as an economic consultant. His clients included Konrad Adenauer, the federal chancellor. Kurt von Schröder, the banker and BIS director who had brokered Hitler’s rise to power, was found disguised as an SS corporal in a POW camp in France. He was tried by a German court for crimes against humanity and was sentenced to three months in prison.Walther Funk, the dissolute Reichsbank president and BIS director, was found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment. The trial established how Funk had worked with Himmler, the SS chief, to ensure that gold and valuables from camp victims were credited to a special account at the Reichsbank in the name of “Max Heiliger” for the SS. Funk was released from Spandau prison for health reasons in 1957 and died three years later. Emil Puhl, Funk’s deputy, BIS director, and friend of Thomas McKittrick, was also convicted of war crimes. Sentenced to five years, he was released in 1949.

Ironically, it seems the Warburgs were also instrumental in the reconstruction of German industry, thanks to the family’s friendship with McCloy. Freddie Warburg had persuaded McCloy to take the position of president of the World Bank. The two men had known each other since the 1920s when Mc- Cloy had done legal work for Kuhn, Loeb, a branch of the Warburg empire. When Eric Warburg and McCloy dined together in August 1949, Warburg pleaded with McCloy to stop the dismantling and destruction of German industrial plants. Soon after, Warburg gave McCloy a list of ten steel, gas, and synthetic rubber concerns, including the Thyssen steel works and the Krupp gas works, to be saved. All were spared. McCloy occasionally took a moral stand—he repeatedly told Germany to return Jewish property. When he was informed that Germans who served on de-Nazification boards were being shunned as traitors, he ordered state governments to guarantee such people civil service jobs.

As for Schacht, charged with organizing Germany for war, he still had powerful friends in London and Washington. Green Hackworth, the legal adviser to the State Department, was working behind the scenes to help the former Reichsbank president. During the war, Hackworth had repeatedly sabotaged attempts to publicize Nazi war crimes and bring their perpetrators to justice, arguing that such moves would endanger American POWs. Breckinridge Long, the assistant secretary of state, who had once praised Mussolini, supported Hackworth. Long and his aides had prevented Jewish refugees from obtaining visas, suppressed news of the Holocaust, and derailed attempts to document Nazi war crimes. In 1944 Henry Morgenthau’s staff wrote a detailed paper that documented the State Department’s wartime record. Its title was “Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of this Government in the Murder of Jews.”

Once again the Dulles connection came to the fore. In late 1945 Schacht requested that Hans Bernd Gisevius be summoned as a defense witness to testify on his behalf. Gisevius, the wartime German consul in Zürich, was also an officer in the Abwehr, German military intelligence, a member of the anti-Hitler resistance, and one of Allen Dulles’s most important agents, known as OSS source 512. Declassified US intelligence documents show that Gisevius was expected to testify that Schacht had attempted to overthrow Hitler in 1938 and to talk about Schacht’s difficult relationship with the Nazi party, so that Schacht could present himself as a member of the resistance.

The documents reveal how much effort the State Department made to get Gisevius, who was living near Geneva in Switzerland, to Nuremberg to aid Schacht. A telegram from US diplomats in Berlin to the State Department, on December 10, 1945, requests that the “necessary arrangements be made to bring him to Nuremberg on ten days’ notice and that Tribunal be kept fully advised through this office.” Three days later, Leland Harrison, the US ambassador to Switzerland, cabled Washington that Gisevius was willing to appear as a defense witness for Schacht and could depart for Nuremberg any time in January on forty-eight hours’ notice. Harrison asked the State Department to alert him when Gisevius should arrive in Nuremberg. The US government, was, in effect, acting as an aide to Schacht’s defense lawyer, arranging for Gisevius’s transport and logistics, and coordinating his appearance with the Nuremberg Tribunal.

The US team at Nuremberg was split over Schacht. Robert Jackson, the chief US prosecutor, wanted to prosecute him. But his deputy, William Donovan, the former OSS chief, was opposed. Donovan argued that Schacht had been sympathetic to the Allies in the early years of the war. And there was the postwar German economy to consider, always a crucial factor in US pol- icy calculations. A harsh cross-examination of Schacht would alienate the important German businessmen and financiers who favored good relations with the United States. There was consternation in Washington when Schacht’s lawyer told the press that Sam Woods, the US Consul General in Zürich, had offered the Reichsbank president a deal in that—that if he resigned from Hitler’s government, he would be returned to power after the war. Considering all we now know about the secret back channels between the United States and Nazi businessmen, this seems highly plausible.

Woods had long been a conduit between the US government and the Axis powers. After Admiral Horthy, Hungary’s wartime leader who had permitted 430,000 of his own citizens to be deported to Auschwitz, was released from custody in 1946, Woods invited him to his wedding.

The State Department’s efforts on Schacht’s behalf worked. He was initially found guilty but was then acquitted, to the fury of the Soviet judge. There were also suspicions that Montagu Norman, governor of the Bank of England and BIS founding board member, had somehow managed to influence the proceedings through Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, the British judge. The British obsession with class seemed to play a part. Francis Biddle, the American judge, recorded in his diary that Lawrence had claimed Schacht was a “man of character” while other defendants were “ruffians.” Norman was immensely relieved when Schacht was not hanged at Nuremberg, recalled his stepson, the writer Peregrine Worsthorne. “He did not think Schacht was guilty for the crimes of the war, but obviously being on speaking terms with any prominent Nazi made you a pariah after the war. He had made his mind up about Schacht before the war and the horrors.” (In later years Priscilla Norman angrily denied that her husband had tried to influence the outcome of Schacht’s trial.)

Intriguingly, Worsthorne believes that Norman and Schacht managed to stay in communication during the war—if they did, the BIS would have been the natural channel. “Norman kept up this strange relationship that he had with Schacht, even during the war. Both during the First and Second World Wars the capitalist world was not at war. The bankers kept the system in cold storage. I am sure that there would have been absolutely no record of their contacts and that Norman kept in touch with him without the government knowing.”

After several more years of legal travails with the German authorities, Schacht was finally cleared of all charges. He started a lucrative second career as an investment adviser to countries in the developing world and set up his own bank, Schacht & Co. Schacht even visited Israel, albeit inadvertently when his airplane stopped briefly at Lydda airport in 1951. Schacht and his second wife, Manci, wanted to stay on board but were taken to the airport cafeteria to have breakfast. The Schachts handed their passports to the Israeli police and were photographed by reporters. His wife was too nervous to eat, so Schacht ate her breakfast as well. A waiter asked in German how “Herr President” had enjoyed his breakfast, using Schacht’s Reichsbank honorific. The waiter told Schacht that he was from Frankfurt and missed his hometown. He asked for Schacht’s autograph, which Schacht provided. The Schachts left Israel with no problems, although a furor erupted in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, when the news broke that Hitler’s banker had passed through the Jewish state without being arrested.

Neoconservatives claim that History has chosen America. Just as the Nazis proclaimed “Deutschland uber alles,” neoconservatives proclaim “America uber alles.”  In September 2013 President Obama actually stood before the United Nations and declared, “I believe America is exceptional.” 

Germany’s political leaders and those in Great Britain, France, and throughout Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan also believe that America is exceptional, which means better than they are.  That’s why these countries are Washington’s vassals.  They accept their inferiority to the Exceptional Country — the USA — and follow its leadership.

It is unlikely that the Chinese think that a handful of White People are exceptional in anything except their diminutive numbers.  The populations of Asia, Africa, and South America dwarf those that comprise Washington’s Empire.

Neither do the Russians believe that the US is exceptional. Putin’s response to Obama’s claim of American superiority was: “God created us equal.” Putin added: “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.”

If all countries are exceptional, the word loses its meaning. If America is exceptional, it means others are inferior for lacking this designation.  Inferiors have less rights and can be bullied into submission or bombed into oblivion.

The Exceptional Country is above all the others and, therefore, doesn’t have to be concerned about how it treats them.  Obviously, Americans and their vassals think America is exceptional as the millions of people murdered, maimed, and dislocated by Washington’s wars in eight countries in the 21st century has not resulted in condemnation of Washington. Merkel, Hollande, Cameron and the puppets in Canada, Australia, and Japan still suck up, holding tight to Washington.

Instead, Russia and Iran, countries that, unlike the US, are not militarily aggressive, are portrayed in the White People’s Media as threats and are condemned.

The White Media claims, and has claimed since February 2014, that there are Russian tanks and troops in Ukraine.  Putin has pointed out that if this indeed was the case, Kiev and Western Ukraine would have fallen to the Russian invasion early last year. Kiev has been unable to defeat the small breakaway republics in eastern and southern Ukraine and would stand no chance against the Russian military.

Recently a brave news organization made fun of the White Media’s claim that Russian tanks have been pouring into Ukraine for 14 months. The parody pictured Ukraine at a standstill.  All traffic on all roads and residential streets is blocked by Russian tanks. All parking places, including sidewalks and people’s front and rear gardens have tanks piled upon tanks.  The entire country is immobilized in gridlock.

Although a few have fun making fun of the gullible people who believe the White Media, the situation is nevertheless serious as it concerns life on planet Earth.

There is little sign that Washington and its vassals care about life on Earth.  Recently, the largest political group in the European Parliament–the European People’s Party–expressed a cavalier opinion about life on Earth.  We know this, because, if we can trust Euractive, an online EU news source, the majority EU party believes that declaring the EU’s readiness for nuclear war is one of the best steps to deter Russia from further aggression.   http://www.unian.info/politics/1070675-meps-believe-eu-should-be-ready-for-nuclear-war.html  The aggression to be stopped by Europe’s declaration of its readiness for armageddon is the alleged Russian invasion of Ukraine, and  the “further aggression” is Putin’s alleged intention of reestablishing the Soviet Empire.

It must be disappointing to the Russian government to see that leaders of the European Union prefer to endorse nuclear war than to challenge Washington’s propaganda.

When I read that the governing party in the European Parliament thought non-existent aggression had to be stopped by a declaration of readiness for nuclear war,  I realized that money could buy any and every thing, even the life of the planet. The European People’s Party was speaking in behalf of Washington’s propaganda, not in behalf of Europe. Europe’s nuclear war with Russia would end instantly with the destruction of every European capital.

The crazed vice-president of the European People’s Party, Jacek Saryusz-Wolski  revealed who the real aggressor is when he declared: “Time of talk and persuasion with Russia is over. Now it’s time for a tough policy.”

Clearly, the European Parliament is a great danger to life on the planet.  Is it realistic to think that Russia will allow herself to become a concubine of Washington?

For nearly 60 years, the historic city of Nazareth has been living with an unwelcome neighbour.

Upper Nazareth was built on Nazareth’s confiscated lands on the orders of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion. It was part of an official campaign to “Judaise” the only Palestinian city to survive relatively unscathed from the 1948 war.

But if Upper Nazareth and its Jewish residents were supposed to overwhelm the Galilee city that, according to the Bible, was home to Jesus, it has largely failed.

A far greater danger, admit Upper Nazareth’s officials, is that their small city now risks being overrun by the region’s Arab population, especially as residents of Nazareth, many of them Christians, flee major land shortages and a near-bankrupt municipality.

Upper Nazareth’s mayor, Shimon Gapso, recently conceded that the proportion of Arabs in the city – once inhabited almost exclusively by Jews – has risen dramatically over the past 15 years.

One in five residents is now reported to be Arab, members of Israel’s large minority of 1.5 million Palestinian citizens.

According to human rights groups, fears of an Arab takeover stand behind a raft of controversial municipal measures, from banning Christmas trees and blocking the building of a school teaching in Arabic to the latest: refusing to stock books in Arabic at local public libraries.

Unusually, Gapso is tight-lipped at the moment. He was found guilty of bribery in February, but the presiding judge surprised observers by sentencing him to only six months’ community service on 26 April. Although the sentence allows Gapso to return to office, the prosecution is expected to appeal the sentence. Gapso’s suspension is also likely to continue because he is facing another corruption case, due to be heard shortly.

He has refused interviews for the time being, though he told reporters as he left the court in Haifa: “I am a law-abiding citizen. … I haven’t a shadow of a doubt that I will return to the mayoralty of Upper Nazareth.”

Gapso, however, has told MEE that he stands behind earlier public statements about the need to keep the city Jewish, even as the municipality faces being taken to court over what human rights groups describe as the city’s “racist” policies.

Proud to be ‘racist’

In a now-infamous response to what he called “bleeding-heart” critics published in 2013 in the Haaretz newspaper, Gapso wrote: “I’m not afraid to say it out loud … Upper Nazareth is a Jewish city and it’s important that it remains so. If that makes me a racist, then I’m the proud offshoot of a glorious dynasty of ‘racists’.”

According to Mohammed Zeidan, director of the Human Rights Association in Nazareth, Upper Nazareth’s policies are not simply a reflection of the mayor’s personal initiatives, but part of a wider political culture found in both the city and Israel.

“It is bound up with the concepts of a ‘Jewish city’ and Israel’s Judaisation programme in the Galilee,” Zeidan said. “The racism was inherent in Upper Nazareth’s establishment as a way to neutralise the supposed threat posed by a large Arab population the state regarded as the ‘enemy’.”

Speaking to Middle East Eye, Orna Yosef, Upper Nazareth’s spokeswoman, said the city welcomed all Israeli citizens but maintained that it could never have an Arab majority – or an Arab mayor.

“What Ben Gurion wanted for the city, the municipality wants too,” she said. “It was built for the Jewish people.”

Accusations of racism, while embarrassing city officials, appear to be relished by Gapso. In the last municipal election campaign, in 2013, he littered Upper Nazareth with posters denouncing himself in the words of his sternest critics, including a description of himself as “racist scum”.

It proved a winning formula. Even as corruption allegations swirled around him, Jewish residents re-elected him by a landslide majority.

No Arabic books

Upper Nazareth’s officials can therefore hardly be surprised that they are again in the crosshairs of human rights organisations.

In the latest clash, the Tel Aviv-based Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) announced that it was launching a legal challenge over the city’s failure to stock a single book in Arabic in any of its three public libraries.

ACRI noted that those libraries have many books in other languages, including English, Russian, Spanish and French, even though – unlike Arabic – none are classed as an official language in Israel.

Auni Banna, a lawyer with ACRI, told MEE that the organisation has sent a stream of letters over the past three years demanding that Upper Nazareth address the failure to provide library and cultural services to its Palestinian population.

Yosef said the municipality would consider building a separate library for the Arab population next year, but added that it would need “time and money”.

Banna said: “We have yet to receive an answer from Upper Nazareth but what they have discussed previously is creating a small separate library – maybe just a few shelves – hidden away in an Arab neighbourhood.

“That sends an implicit message that Arabs are not welcome in other areas, and especially not in the city’s main public spaces, such as the central library. That is not satisfactory.”

Banna added that city officials also need to create a central database of books in Arabic and provide enrichment services, such as story time, lectures and homework assistance, as it does for the Jewish public.

Hani Salloum, a resident who joined ACRI’s petition, said: “As residents and citizens who pay taxes, it is our right – both for adults and children – to receive budgets and resources that allow us to access books in our mother tongue.”

Christmas trees banned

Tensions over the influx of Palestinian citizens have been growing since 2005, when the Israeli government quietly designated Upper Nazareth for the first time as a “mixed city”.

In most of Israel, residency is strictly segregated on the basis of ethnic belonging. Admissions committees block non-Jews from living in hundreds of rural communities that have jurisdiction over most of Israel’s territory.

However, with successive governments refusing to approve a single new Arab community since Israel’s founding, the Galilee’s Judaisation cities have come under growing pressure from Palestinian citizens living in surrounding towns and villages that have become massively overcrowded.

Elected in 2009, Gapso ran on an overtly anti-Arab platform – later dropped on legal advice – of setting up a municipal fund designed to help Jews buy homes in the city.

He has refused to allow a mosque or church to be built, or to allot a section of the municipal cemetery for non-Jews. In 2010, he banned Christmas trees in public buildings.

His officials were also found in contempt by the supreme court in 2011 for failing to implement a 2002 ruling that road signs include Arabic as well as Hebrew.

After protests in Nazareth against Israel’s attack on Gaza in late 2012, Gapso made headlines calling the neighbouring city “a nest of terror” and demanding the government declare it “a city hostile to the state of Israel.”

But most controversially, he has refused to approve an Arabic-language school for the city’s 2,000 Palestinian children. Instead, given Israel’s segregated education system, pupils have been forced to scramble for places in heavily oversubscribed schools in neighbouring Nazareth.

Letters from ACRI demanding that the mayor honour his legal commitment to the city’s Arab children were characterised by Gapso as “a provocative nationalist statement.” The education ministry has so far declined to intervene.

Giant Israeli flags

In 2013, as Gapso came under mounting pressure on the schools issue, he sent out a pamphlet to residents warning: “This is the time to guard our home!… All requests for foreign characteristics in the city are refused.”

He explained that he had erected giant Israeli flags, bearing the Star of David, at every intersection between Nazareth and Upper Nazareth “so that people will know that [Upper Nazareth] is a Jewish city”.

Gapso’s very public struggle against an “Arab takeover” has resonated more widely in Israel, where there are long-standing fears among Israeli Jews about the faster growth rate of the Palestinian population.

Other Judaisation cities, faced with growing migration from Palestinian citizens living in surrounding communities, have tried to adopt similar policies.

Officials in Karmiel, in the central Galilee, set up a hotline in 2010 for Jewish residents to inform on neighbours planning to sell homes to Arabs. There have also been reports of vigilante-style patrols deterring Palestinian residents of neighbouring villages from entering the city.

Nationalist politicians regularly refer to the country’s Palestinian citizens, a fifth of the population, as a “demographic timebomb”.

The minority, which is increasingly highlighting its historic and emotional links to Palestinians in the occupied territories, has also been characterised as a “cancer” and “fifth column”.

Darling of the right

Gapso rapidly became the darling of rightwing-parties in Benjamin Netanyahu’s two previous governments for his outspoken stance. He found an especially close ally in Uri Ariel, a settler and the housing minister until elections last month.

Together, they devised a plan to quickly restore the city’s Judaisation role. A new neighbourhood of 3,000 homes is being built that will be available only for Jews. It is being marketed exclusively to the ultra-Orthodox population.

The decision to bring fundamentalist religious Jews into a city that is currently dominated by secular immigrants from the former Soviet Union appears to have been guided chiefly by demographic considerations.

Typically, the ultra-Orthodox have large families of up to 10 children. With 3,000 new homes planned for the neighbourhood, this could mean 30,000 new Jews boosting the Jewish majority in a city that currently numbers only 50,000 residents.

Spokeswoman Orna Yosef said the neighbourhood would ensure “Arabs cannot be the majority”.

Raed Ghattas, an Arab councillor in Upper Nazareth, said such policies were part of a “continuum of racism” in the city.

Local Arab residents feared that the municipality’s intention in bringing in religious Jews in such large numbers was to trigger ethnic and religious tensions, he added.

Across Israel, there have been reports of ultra-Orthodox communities clashing with secular populations, stoning cars that drive on the Sabbath and attacking women for being immodestly dressed.

“Looked at objectively, this obsession with demography, planning and classifying everything in terms of ‘Arab’ and ‘Jewish’ is seriously abnormal behaviour,” said Mohammed Zeidan, director of the Human Rights Association in Nazareth.

“But it makes sense in a state whose goal is dominate everything that is not Jewish. Then the smallest features of life, even the books in a library, become part of your national struggle.”

Earlier this year US Retired Non-Commissioned Special Forces Officer Tom Mead addressed the Howard County Texas Board of Supervisors on the Jade Helm 15 military and law enforcement exercises that will be taking place in across the southern United States in Summer 2015.

“What is Jade Helm?” Mead asks those in attendance.

Jade Helm is a challenging eight week exercise. Truly, in the Martin and Howard County area we’re only going to be here for about five-to-five and half weeks. The eight weeks comes in where there is the preparation and planning that happens back in Florida and in the Mississippi area. The exercise is a joint military and inter-agency activity. What this means is that we have units from every military service participating in the exercise with us. And we also have some of our inter-agency partners, such as the FBI and the DEA, and some of the other agencies assisting us and working with us in the exercise. (Emphasis added)

The exercise is going to be throughout seven states,” Mead continues.

“Texas is the main bulk of the activity. We are spread from east to west, north to south, throughout the state of Texas. It is a Special Operations Command, General [Joseph L.] Votel-sponsored exercise to improve Special Operations forces’ ability to conduct unconventional warfare as part of the national security” (emphasis added).

–

In the question and answer portion of the presentation, Mead further explains to board members how Jade Helm, a new exercise he describes as also being developed by US Special Operations General Charles T. Cleveland, will now be conducted within the United States annually.

Further, Mead points out that the FBI and DEA will be involved in “questioning” individuals. It is unclear whether the individuals being interrogated are part of the exercise, or what they will be questioned about. “They will actually do some questioning for us at one of the airports in Arizona.” A military or civilian airport? He doesn’t elaborate.

Mead also provides a conflicted response when asked by the county officials if only US military and law enforcement personnel will be involved in the exercise. “Do you use any personnel from NATO, the UN or DHS?” one board member asks (at 12:56 in the above video). “Currently for Jade Helm it is US only. We, ah, that has been one of the discussions that, uhm, I’m not sure if it has occurred yet.”

A sober observer might conclude (as a portion of the public already has) that Jade Helm is likely a means to acclimate America for eventual martial law. Since September 11, 2001 US citizens have experienced a steady erosion of their civil liberties associated with the dubious rationale of the “war on terror.” The increased militarization of law enforcement and now operations like Jade Helm being carried out on domestic soil further indicate how the Posse Comitatus Act, introduced in 1878 and intended to prevent the federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement, is being steadily eviscerated, though it is important to note that as recently as 2002 the US Congress reaffirmed the significance of the law.

Even the Rand Corporation has suggested that the US military has no clear criteria concerning when and how Posse Comitatus applies to exercises such as Jade Helm. “[I]t is critical,” Rand researchers observe in one study, “that the Army develop doctrine, leadership, and training programs that can provide clear and specific guidance on when and how the Posse Comitatus Act—as well as any other laws that proscribe Army activities in the domestic arena—applies and when it does not.”

The US military also wants to revisit Posse Comitatus, although it appears to regard it as a quaint formality, particulaly in light of its cavalier insistence that Jade Helm go forward unhindered and on an annual basis. “The Posse Comitatus Act is an artifact of a different conflict-between freedom and slavery or between North and South,” one military official argues. “Today’s conflict is also in a sense between freedom and slavery, but this time it is between civilization and terrorism. New problems often need new solutions, and a new set of rules is needed for this issue” (emphasis added). Given Jade Helm’s active collaboration between military and law enforcement such a remark is especially chilling.

Indeed, elected leaders and the federal law enforcement agencies involved in “partnering” with the military in Jade Helm routinely regard the civilian population as if it were a prolific spawning ground for “terrorists” (e.g. here, here, here, here and here).

The confusion over what should be a clear firewall between civil society and military exploits does not bode well for the US citizenry, who will soon be getting a glimpse in the “homeland” of what NATO and its military do on a routine basis to would be terrorists and their loved ones throughout the world.

For those who thought it was only nations “far away of which we know nothing” which the Obama, Clinton and Bush regimes, Tony Blair in Britain and his declared “heir” David Cameron destroyed – in the guise of bringing them the now dreaded “freedom, liberation and democracy” – this political cartoon is a wake up call for “We the people” of the United States and it’s United Kingdom lapdog.

Be very afraid.

(Felicity Arbuthnot)

Copyright, Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Breaking the silence on Israel’s human rights abuse of Palestinians is the best way to help Palestinian women human rights defenders and peacemakers.

About 10 years ago Doctor Mona El-Farra, one of Palestine’s greatest woman human rights defenders, visited N. Ireland.   Dr. Mona lives in the occupied Gaza Strip, and she came to share with us the story of occupied Gaza and its people.   Many people in the audience were moved to tears on listening to the painful stories of ongoing collective punishment of war and bombardment by the Israeli military upon the civilian population of Gaza. The majority of Gaza’s Palestinians are children and under 21. Collective punishment of a civilian population breaks the Geneva Conventions and is a war crime. What struck me was Dr. Mona’s comment that ‘every single person in Gaza is completely traumatized by so much violence and war.’

Today this collective punishment by Israeli Government policies goes on. Why has it lasted so long? The Palestinians have been most cruelly punished by Israeli policies of occupation, war and destruction.  They say that ‘silence’ is golden, but regarding the plight of Gazans and Palestinians the ‘silence’ of the world, especially concerning their little children, shows a lack of moral and ethical leadership from the international Community. It behoves us to ask, “Why is President Obama not saying: ’70 years of Israeli occupation is enough – it is time for Peace for the Palestinians?’”

I believe that Palestine, as do many people, is a key to peace in the Middle East. Its occupation by Israel is a sore in the body politic of the whole Middle East and affects many people around the world. As long as it remains unresolved there will never be hope for peace for Palestinians, Israelis, or anyone else.   But what can be done to turn this painful situation for all concerned around, where is the Hope?

I believe we must look to the Palestinian Women Human Rights Defenders and Peacemakers, and take their lead and guidance as to how best we can support and help them in their painful and dangerous work for Human Rights and Freedom for Palestinians.

As women living in the midst of an Israeli occupation, built on an Apartheid System, Palestinian women know the high cost emotionally/psychologically/physically and financially of the Israeli Military occupation and aggression.   Their solutions–working for an end to the repression and occupation, the right to self-determination, and a Palestine built on human rights and international law–deserves the support of fair minded people around the world.

Palestinian women HRD and peacemakers in resisting the injustices being perpetrated upon their people deserve our support and we must each do what we can to break the silence. We can applaud and totally support their ‘spirit of resilience and their nonviolent peaceful civil resistance’.   Palestinian women human rights defenders are an example to us all, showing by their lives how human dignity and equality must be won, by replacing fear with courage, hate with love, war with peace, enmity with friendship. Palestinian women know that the Israeli people are not their enemies, but it is the unjust policies of an Israeli government they strenuously and courageous oppose.

Another form of violence faced by Palestinian women is the injustice of patriarchy, within which women’s voices are often silenced not only in Palestine, but in many countries. However, Palestinian women human rights activists know that whilst working for freedom for Palestine. They must also work for individual human rights and freedom for themselves and their children. Freedom includes the civil rights of health care, development, etc. The women of Palestine have a right to freedom of conscience, personal choice, and the right for their choice to be respected both by religious, civic and political authorities, as have all women everywhere. Particularly in the area of health care, it is important to affirm women’s moral autonomy in making healthcare decisions and ensure they will have the means to follow their decisions in their lives.

In spite of so many problems there is hope; and Palestinian Women Human Rights defenders and peacebuilders are the very bearers and channels of the hope and change that is already happening in Palestine.   We global women help the Palestinian women human rights defenders by letting them know that we love them, we hear their voices. And knowing that many Palestinians cannot leave their country, we will be their voices and tell their story to the outside world.  We know their suffering and we take inspiration from their courageous spirit of nonkilling and nonviolent resistance. We know Palestinian women are great peacemakers simply because they give their lives each day, in service of their families and communities; this is the soul of peacemaking. Palestinian Women Human Rights Defenders are the custodians, carriers and transmitters of the moral and ethical values and standards of what it means to be truly human. How difficult, some would say impossible, to teach the values of love, forgiveness, kindness, nonkilling whilst living in the midst of military occupation, siege and war. In my many visits to Palestine, I have witnessed in abundance all these values lived fully by the women of Palestine, and I have been touched and inspired by their lives.

As the Nobel Women’s Initiative meet in the Netherlands to discuss how to protect Women Human Rights Defenders, I hope we can agree that breaking the Silence on Palestine, and insisting that people have a right to know what governments are doing in their name, is a way in which we all, especially journalists, media, can help. We too can support the Palestinian nonviolent movement and respond to Palestinian civil society when they ask us to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign to help end the Israeli military occupation. We can especially pledge to support the ongoing Palestinian and Israeli HR and peace movements for justice believing that genuine diplomacy, dialogue and listening brings us to a new understanding of each other, being the only way to peace.

Let us hope too that the Israeli government will begin to give Leadership for Peace by turning away from occupation, militarism and war, and by opening the door to diplomacy, give hope to the people of Palestine, Israel, the Middle East and the World.

Mairead Corrigan Maguire, co-founder of Peace People, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment. She won the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her work for peace in Northern Ireland. Her book The Vision of Peace (edited by John Dear, with a foreword by Desmond Tutu and a preface by the Dalai Lama) is available fromwww.wipfandstock.com. She lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. See:www.peacepeople.com.

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This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 27 April 2015.

While many pro-nuclear governments regard nuclear power as a clean, low-carbon form of energy, the politicians ignore the carbon footprint of the mines and the consequences for the health of workers. Photo credit: Climate News Network

Uranium mining across the world should cease, nuclear power stations be closed and nuclear weapons be banned, according to a group of scientists, environmentalists and representatives of indigenous peoples.

Three hundred delegates from 20 countries that produce uranium for nuclear power, weapons and medical uses called for an end to all uranium mining in a declaration launched on Earth Day this week at a meeting in Quebec, Canada.

The venue for the World Uranium Symposium was chosen because Quebec state is currently considering whether to continue its moratorium on uranium mining, having already closed down its only nuclear power plant in 2013.

Symbolic choice

The city of Quebec is also symbolic because this is where Canada, the U.S. and the UK made a cooperation agreement in 1943 that led to the building of the world’s first nuclear weapons. Two of the resulting atomic bombs were used to destroy the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

But the symposium was more concerned about the damage that existing uranium mining is doing to the welfare of indigenous peoples, and the “erroneous view” that nuclear power can help solve the problem of climate change.

The declaration applauded the expansion of renewable energy and the significant strides in phasing out nuclear power following the growing awareness that “nuclear power is not a cost-effective, timely, practical or safe response to climate change.”

It called for “a worldwide ban on uranium exploration, mining, milling and processing, as well as the reprocessing of nuclear waste and the irresponsible management of radioactive waste.”

Dr. Eric Notebaert, associate professor of medicine at the University of Montreal, co-president of the Symposium, and member of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, said that the symposium delegates all agreed that “the risks to health, safety and the environment represented by the entire nuclear fuel chain—from uranium mines, to power reactors, to nuclear weapons, to radioactive wastes—greatly exceed the potential benefits for society.”

Dr. Juan Carlos Chrigwin, a physician affiliated with McGill University, and president of Physicians for Global Survival, said: “The issuing of this World Declaration on Uranium is the culmination of essential work carried out over many years by international coalitions who, despite geographical and cultural differences, share common objectives and who desire to shape a common vision of a better world.

“Uranium does not provide a viable or sustainable approach for dealing with climate change, nor for providing isotopes for medical use. Today, there are a number of medical and energy alternatives that are cheaper and safer.”

The declaration is open for organizations and individuals to sign on the internet and is bound to put further pressure on an industry already suffering from falling confidence.

The price of uranium has dropped from $138 a tonne in 2007 to less than $40 a tonne currently as plans to build more nuclear stations have been shelved in several countries.

While the search continues for rich new uranium deposits—particularly by China in Africa and the U.S. in Greenland—it is unlikely to be economically viable to exploit them at current prices.

Carbon footprint

According to the World Nuclear Association, 52 percent of the world’s production comes from 10 mines in six countries. The largest is in Canada, followed by one in Australia, but the largest single producer is Kazakhstan, which has four mines in the top 10 in the world. In Africa, Niger and Namibia are also big producers.

While many pro-nuclear governments—including the UK’s—regard nuclear power as a clean, low-carbon form of energy, the politicians ignore the carbon footprint of the mines and the consequences for the health of workers.

It is in developing countries that the miners and the local environment tend to suffer most because of open cast mines. For example, large areas of Kazakhstan are too dangerous to inhabit as a result of mountains of uranium tailings and mildly radioactive dust.

The Symposium’s co-president, Dr. Dale Dewar—a physician who is associate professor at the University of Saskatchewan and is co-author of the book, From Hiroshima to Fukushima to You—summed up by saying: “We are calling on national and international leaders to protect our planet and our populations from any further nuclear catastrophes. Anything less would be irresponsible.”

Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé have authored a follow-up to Gaza in Crisis. On Palestine is available now (2015, Penguin). The two professors have also contributed original articles to an edited collection, Voices for Peace, available at www.pipr.co.uk/ebooks.

PIPR: Congratulations on the new book. What inspired you and Dr. Chomsky to write a sequel to Gaza in Crisis?

IP: Professor Chomsky’s views on Palestine are important to all of us who are either activists or scholars on Palestine. Despite the solidarity we all show to the cause and to each other there are as you probably know some outstanding issues debated within the solidarity movement which are, I think, are significant for the future activism for, and scholarship of, the case of Palestine. Some of these issues were discussed in our previous book, Gaza in Crisis, but we felt there was a need for more direct conversation on these issues as we have left out quite a few significant aspects of the issue. Among these issues I can mention a conversation on the past, the present and the future. Questions such as whether Zionism is colonialism, the two versus one state solution, the BDS [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions] option and the Palestinian Right of Return are debated in a friendly though unyielding manner.

Murdered solidarity activist, Rachel Corrie.

PIPR: The Israeli Supreme Court recently ruled in favour of the IDF’s killing of solidarity activist, Rachel Corrie. Doesn’t this set a dangerous precedent for activists?

IP: It does indeed. Israel views the young people coming from all over the world as a dangerous development as they can see for themselves the atrocities on the ground, report them back home and galvanize other people to join the solidarity movement. The notion that the courts in Israel are the last remaining bastion of civil and human rights is a travesty. Thus future activists, most of whom probably know it, cannot expect any protection from the menace of the army or security forces on the ground.

PIPR: There appears to be a political shift away from Israel, exemplified by UNESCO’s 2011 recognition of Palestine and Britain’s 2014 symbolic recognition. Does this indicate real change?

IP: The change in world public opinion was already there in the beginning of this century. What was missing is a reflection of this change in main stream media and academia. The votes in the various parliaments and the Palestinian achievements in the UN indicate that some of that impulse is moving bottom up; although the real centres of power have not as yet been affected.

Kent Elbit protest. 

PIPR: One institution at the centre of power is the arms industry. In more positive news, anti-Israeli drone company activists (the Elbit 9) were acquitted for their rooftop protests against an Elbit subsidiary in the UK. How helpful are these kind of targeted BDS activities?

IP: Very useful. They add to the accumulative affect that proves that not only is the BDS a movement that allows people to show their rejection to the Israeli policies in a very active way, but also that more specific and serious projects that sustain the settler colonialist strategists of Israel.

PIPR: The rise of ISIS and their alleged claims about liberating Palestine have led many to reframe the Israel-Palestine issue  as a ‘Clash of Civilizations’, driven by religion, for which there is little evidence in my view; Palestine had always been one of the most secular states in the region. What are your thoughts?

IP: I agree, the struggle in Palestine was and still is one raged between a settler colonialist movement and a native population. The settler colonialist project was secular in its origins and remained so today. The anti-colonialist movement was secular but recently an important part of it subscribes to political Islamic dogmas and ideologies. But the struggle is national and indigenous, not religious. The rise of ISIS is a mixture of American intervention and attempt to crash secular progressive forces, with the despair from secular ideologies in solving the main predicaments of people in the Middle East and a new of despair among Muslim immigrants invited to Europe in the 1960s to be its unskilled workforce and now rejected in the name European purity and racism.

Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé are the authors of On Palestine (2015, Penguin), available now. Both scholars have also contributed original essays to Voices for Peace, an edited collection available at www.pipr.co.uk/ebooks .

Health Journalists: The information below should be mandatory viewing for everybody truly interested in the health of our children, which should, presumably, include investigative journalists.

Below is an important link to a video filmed on April 7, 2015 at a Sacramento, California event opposing California bill SB 277 (mandating forced vaccinations and weakening exemptions).

The video starts with a speech by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr and follows with a Q & A for a panel of experts (including California pediatrician Bob Sears , Brian Hooker, MD, and Eric Gladen, the director of “Trace Amounts”, the powerful film about the toxicity of thimerosal-containing vaccines). (This video followed a screening of  the documentary.)

Mentioned by Kennedy was the fact that 70% of the advertising income received by many major media outlets (during non-election years, that is) receive advertising income from Big Pharma, thus silencing those media groups and preventing their health reporters from reporting about the massive epidemic of vaccine-induced chronic childhood disorders, which include vaccine-induced autoimmune disorders and other illnesses, only one example of which is autism and the autism spectrum disorders (the others include [SIDS] sudden infant death, ADHD, neurodevelopmental delays, gastrointestinal disorders, seizures, tics, asthma, allergies, arthritis, [even parental bankruptcies and divorces], all of which began escalating since the CDC’s new mandated vaccine schedule was issued in 1989 – and enthusiastically promoted by physicians  and their trade organizations (1986 was the year that Reagan signed the Vaccine Exemption Act into law, which exempted Big Pharma from legal liability for vaccine injuries and deaths.)

Mentioned also was the question if the vaccine industry’s executives, etc some day being brought up on charges of crimes against humanity.

Watch several other videos, starting at: http://www.boughtmovie.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr-real-time-with-bill-maher/ that featured Bill Maher actually interviewing Kennedy on HBO, which doesn’t apparently take Big Pharma money.

A list of four important videos about the subject:

“Bought” is an important documentary that highlights the dangers of Big Pharma, especially the vaccine industry.

“Age of Aluminum” is a new documentary about the dangers of aluminum in vaccines (which is present in many more vaccines than mercury).

“Trace Amounts” is the documentary that is mainly about thimerosal (mercury) dangers.

“The Greater Good” is another powerful documentary about Vaccine dangers.

A top Iranian commander has lashed out at the Saudi aggression against Yemen, saying Riyadh is on the verge of collapse.

“Today, Saudi Arabia is brazenly and obnoxiously bombarding and massacring a nation, which is seeking the denial of the hegemonic system,” said commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari on Monday.

“Today, Al Saud is teetering on the edge of collapse,” the top commander said.

The remarks by the IRGC chief come as Saudi Arabia keeps pounding neighboring Yemen.

He called on Iranian officials to pull no punches in hitting out at Saudi Arabia over its aggression against Yemen, saying, “Now that the attacks have been launched [against Yemen], no considerations should be shown” for Riyadh.

He further called Saudi Arabia a “betrayer,” saying, “Today, Saudi Arabia, the betrayer, is following in the footsteps of Israel and the Zionists.”   

Saudi Arabia launched its air campaign against Yemen on March 26 – without a United Nations mandate – in a bid to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement and to restore power to the country’s fugitive former President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh.

The air campaign started amid the gains by Yemeni popular committees, backed by Ansarullah Movement, against al-Qaeda.

On April 21, Riyadh announced the end of the first phase of its military operation, which has left over 4,000 people dead or injured so far, but airstrikes have continued with Saudi bombers targeting different areas across the country in a new phase.

By Philip Mattera

London-based GlaxoSmithKline is the product of the 2000 merger of two drug giants: Glaxo—which had its origins in the infant formula business and then jumped to the top ranks of the pharmaceutical industry on the basis of the extraordinarily popular ulcer drug Zantac—and SmithKline Beecham, which was itself the product of a merger of a U.S. and a British drugmaker and had a broader portfolio of drugs, including the competing ulcer medication Tagamet and the ill-fated diabetes drug Avandia.

In recent years, GlaxoSmithKline has become known as the company that pays massive amounts to resolve wide-ranging charges brought by U.S. regulators and prosecutors. These included a $750 million payment relating to the sale of adulterated products from a facility in Puerto Rico and a record $3 billion in connection with charges relating to illegal marketing, suppression of adverse safety research results and overcharging government customers. The company also set a record for the largest tax avoidance settlement with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.

Product Safety

In 1984 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) brought charges under the little used criminal provisions of federal drug laws against what was then known as SmithKline Beckman, alleging that the company failed to warn regulators and the public about potentially lethal side effects associated with its blood pressure medication Selacryn.  Several company officials were also charged with misdemeanor offenses. The company later pleaded guilty, and three officials pleaded no contest. The judge in the case ordered SmithKline to give $100,000 to an organization working to prevent child abuse; the officials were each sentenced to five years of probation and 200 hours of community service.

In 2003 regulators in Britain warned that use of GlaxoSmithKline’s antidepressant Seroxat (the UK name for Paxil) by children could increase suicidal thoughts and should not be prescribed for them. The FDA followed with a similar recommendation and subsequently ordered that a “black box warning” be added to the drug’s packaging. In 2004 New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer filed suit against the company, accusing it of suppressing research that reached negative conclusions on the efficacy of Paxil. The case was later settled, with GlaxoSmithKlineagreeing to take the unusual step of disclosing the results of its clinical trials for Paxil and other drugs.

The company later came to regret that agreement. In a review of the data posted by the company on clinical trials involving its diabetes drug Avandia, researchers at the Cleveland Clinic concluded that the medication posed a heightened risk of heart attacks. The New York Times discovered that the FDA had been warned of such risks years earlier. Over the following months and years, more and more information came to light questioning the safety of Avandia, prompting actions such as a move by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to sharply curtain use of the drug.

In 2010 an FDA reviewer issued a scathing critique of the clinical trial GlaxoSmithKline had used to argue for the safety of Avandia, concluding that the company had excluded information about numerous instances in which users experienced severe medical complications. It was thenreported that the company had spent more than a decade covering up research results showing that Avandia performed no better a competing medication.

Also in 2010, an FDA advisory panel recommended that Avandia either be withdrawn from the market or severely restricted in its use. A European panel later did the same.  In July 2010 GlaxoSmithKline announced it would take a $2.4 billion charge against earnings to cover legal liabilities related to Avandia. (Six months later, the company took another charge of $3.4 billion.)

In October 2010 GlaxoSmithKline agreed to pay a total of $750 million—$150 million in connection with federal False Claims Act charges and $600 million for state claims—to settle civil and criminal complaints that it knowingly sold adulterated drugs produced at a subsidiary’s troubled plant in Puerto Rico. Among the products were Avandia, Paxil and the baby ointment Bactroban.

In 2011 the U.S. law firm Hagens Berman filed suit against GlaxoSmithKline, charging that its predecessor company Smith, Kline and French conducted a trial of Thalidomide in the 1950s and buried evidence of the dangers of the German drug, which ended up causing thousands of horrific cases of deformities in children.

In July 2012 the U.S. Justice Department announced that GlaxoSmithKline would pay $3 billion to settle various criminal and civil charges, among which were allegations that the company withheld crucial safety data on Avandia from the FDA. Those charges accounted for $899 million of the total: $242 million in criminal fines and $657 million in civil payments ($508 million to the federal government and $149 million to states).

The company’s commitment to Avandia paid off in mid-2013, when an FDA advisory panel called for easing restrictions on the drug.

Pricing and False Claim Controversies

In 1996 SmithKline Beecham was one of 15 drug companies that together agreed to pay more than $408 million to settle a class action lawsuit charging them with conspiring to fix prices they charged to thousands of independent pharmacies. In addition to contributing $30 million to the financial settlement, SmithKline agreed to supply the plaintiffs with a quantity of the generic version of its Tagamet ulcer medication worth $20 million.

In 1997, following an investigation dubbed Operation LabScam by federal investigators, SmithKline Beecham Clinical Laboratories agreed to pay $325 million to settle charges that it had overcharged Medicare by billing for millions of laboratory tests that were not medically necessary, were not ordered by a physician or were not performed. At the time, the amount set a record for a healthcare-related civil settlement.

In 2000, after Maine passed a law allowing price controls on prescription drugs, SmithKline Beecham responded by warning it would no longer ship its products to wholesalers in the state.

In 2001 GlaxoSmithKline and other major pharmaceutical companies dropped a lawsuit they had filed to block a plan by the South African government to import relatively inexpensive drugs to deal with the country’s AIDS epidemic.

In 2003 GlaxoSmithKline agreed to pay $87.6 million to the federal government to resolve charges that it sold its antidepressant Paxil and its allergy spray Flonase to the Medicaid program at inflated prices.

In 2004 GlaxoSmithKline announced that it would pay $175 million to settle a lawsuit brought by drug wholesalers contending that it violated antitrust laws by blocking cheaper generic forms of its Relafen arthritis medication.

In 2005 GlaxoSmithKline agreed to pay $150 million to resolve federal government allegations that the company violated the False Claims Act through fraudulent pricing and marketing of two anti-nausea drugs sold to the Medicare and Medicaid programs for use primarily by cancer patients. The following year, the company agreed to pay $70 million to settle related suits brought by state governments.

In 2006 GlaxoSmithKline agreed to pay $14 million to settle allegations by state governments that it inflated prices for Paxil by engaging in patent fraud, antitrust violations and frivolous litigation to maintain a monopoly and block generic versions of the medication from entering the market.

The $3 billion settlement GlaxoSmithKline reached with the federal government in 2012 included a payment of $300 million to resolve charges that the company reported false drug prices, allowing it to underpay rebates it owed under the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program and to overcharge certain Public Health Entities. Of the $300 million, $161 million was to go to the federal government, $119 million to the states and $20 million to Public Health Service entities.

In April 2013 the UK Office of Fair Trading charged GlaxoSmithKline with violating competition laws by paying other companies to delay the introduction of generic versions of its antidepressant Seroxat (sold in the U.S. as Paxil).

Marketing and Advertising Controversies

In 1993 the FDA ordered Glaxo to stop making what the agency called false and misleading statements about the effectiveness of the company’s best-selling anti-ulcer drug Zantac.

In 2004 the FDA sent a warning letter to GlaxoSmithKline charging that a TV advertisement for Paxil was false and misleading. That same year, the FDA sent a warning letter to the company alleging that promotional materials for three hepatitis drugs contained false or misleading statements.

In 2008 the FDA sent a warning letter to GlaxoSmithKline alleging that materials the company was sending health practitioners to promote its breast cancer drug Tykerb were misleading because they omitted serious risks.

Among the charges covered by the $3 billion settlement that the U.S. Justice Department reached with GlaxoSmithKline in 2012 were criminal and civil allegations relating to the unlawful marketing of Paxil, the antidepressant Wellbutrin and other drugs for unapproved purposes. That marketing allegedly included kickbacks paid to doctors and other health professionals to get them to prescribe and promote the drugs for those unauthorized uses. Payments also went to people such as radio personality Drew Pinsky, who was paid $275,000 by the company to promote Wellbutrin on his program.

The settlement included $757 million in criminal fines and forfeitures as well as $1.04 billion in connection with the civil charges—$832 million to the federal government and $210 million to state governments. GlaxoSmithKline was also compelled to sign a 122-page Corporate Integrity Agreement with the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that lists numerous measures the company had to adopt to make it more likely to comply with federal laws and regulations.

In July 2013 the Chinese government accused Glaxo of using bribes, kickbacks and other fraudulent methods to increase its drug sales in China. The company was said to have laundered the payments through travel agencies. Glaxo was later fined $500 million in the matter.

Human Rights

Before Glaxo’s infant formula business was sold off in the late 1980s, that operation was the subject of controversy. Like many other formula producers, Glaxo had been accused of violating World Health Organization standards for the marketing of formula in poor countries. Religious and public health advocates had pressured the World Health Organization to adopt guidelines to discourage aggressive marketing of the formula in situations where mothers were often compelled to mix the powder with impure water or dilute the formula to the extent that it became much less nutritional than breast milk.

Environmental

In 2008 the U.S. Justice Department announced that GlaxoSmithKline and two other companies would pay a $500,000 civil penalty in connection with the release of trichloroethylene (TCE) into the public drinking water system of Scottsdale, Arizona.

Executive Compensation

In 2003 shareholders in GlaxoSmithKline were the first to make use of a new investor-protection law enacted in Britain that year when they voted to reject a lucrative pay packages proposed for chief executive Jean-Pierre Garnier and other top executives.

Taxes

In 2006 GlaxoSmithKline said it would pay $3.1 billion to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service to resolve a 17-year dispute over the tax treatment of transactions between the company’s U.S. operation and the parent company. The settlement, the largest in IRS history, focused on the issue of transfer pricing—a method by which transnational corporations artificially reduce their tax liabilities.

Employment Issues

In 1999 SmithKline Beecham agreed to pay $19,000 to settle allegations that the company retaliated against an employee who reported to management apparent violations of the anti-discrimination provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Watchdog Groups and Campaign

AIDS Healthcare Foundation

Center for Science in the Public Interest

Community Catalyst

Consumers International

Doctors Without Borders

Families USA

Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility

Oxfam International

Prescription Access Litigation (PAL) Project

Public Citizen Health Research Group

The Paxil Protest

Treatment Action Campaign

Key Books and Reports

A Healthy Business? World Health and the Pharmaceutical Industry by Andrew Chetley (1990).

Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients by Ben Goldacre (2012).

Benchmarking AIDS: Evaluating Pharmaceutical Company Responses to the Public Health Crisis in Emerging Markets (Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2006).

Branding the Cure: A Consumer Perspective on Corporate Social Responsibility, Drug Promotion and the Pharmaceutical Industry in Europe (Consumers International, 2006).

Dare to Lead: Public Health and Company Wealth (Oxfam International, January 2001).

Glaxo: A History to 1962 by R.P.T. Davenport-Hines and Judy Slinn (1993).

GlaxoSmithKline: A Company Profile (Corporate Watch, November 2002).

GlaxoSmithKline Company Profile (SOMO, October 2004).

Investing for Life: Meeting Poor People’s Needs for Access to Medicines through Responsible Business Practices (Oxfam International, 2007).

Merck v Glaxo: The Billion Dollar Battle by Matthew Lynn (1991).

Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right of Everyone to the Enjoyment of the Highest Attainable Standard of Health: Mission to GlaxoSmithKline (United Nations Human Rights Council, May 5, 2009).

Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower, and a Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial by Alison Bass (2008).

Staff Report on GlaxoSmithKline and the Diabetes Drug Avandia (U.S. Senate Finance Committee, January 2010).

Last updated October 13, 2014

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is in the news again making headlines after having to settle another major lawsuit bringing the latest total to over $9.1 billion since 2003. This time, it is due to GSK’s product Pandemrix, which was the swine flu vaccine forced upon the public during the pandemic of 2009 (which is argued by some to have been fake). As the victims are being compensated in the U.K., the same neurological mechanisms that damaged the children in the lawsuit are still potentially at work in the confirmed excitotoxicity that takes place after many vaccine injections.

According to the International Business Times U.K. Edition, each of the victims is “expected to receive £1 million each.” Peter Todd, a lawyer who represented many of the claimants, told the Sunday Times (U.K.):

“There has never been a case like this before. The victims of this vaccine have an incurable and lifelong condition and will require extensive medication.”

Unfortunately for Peter Todd and the countless other victims, there has been cases like this before. Neurological damage from vaccines is not a rare occurrence. In fact, the U.S. government has paid out $3 billion and counting to families of vaccine-injured children. Most of which were due to direct neurological damage or complications arising from such damage.

According to The Corporate Research Project, the GlaxoSmithKline rap sheet states:

“In recent years, GlaxoSmithKline has become known as the company that pays massive amounts to resolve wide-ranging charges brought by U.S. regulators and prosecutors.

These included a $750 million payment relating to the sale of adulterated products from a facility in Puerto Rico and a record $3 billion in connection with charges relating to illegal marketing, suppression of adverse safety research results and overcharging government customers. The company also set a record for the largest tax avoidance settlement with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.”

If GlaxoSmithKline wasn’t afforded legal and financial government protection status, they would have went under years ago. However, this corporate zombie still damages populations with little oversight and deep pockets to pay for any legal or ethical challenges that get in the way.

Currently, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, and other pharmaceutical houses were influential in the attempted passing of California Senate Bill 277 to remove the “parental opposition” that was slowing their product’s revenue stream. What wasn’t disclosed during the senate hearing, or vote following, was that the bill’s author Richard Pan had financial ties to GlaxoSmithKline and Merck.

In a fair legal system, this should immediately disqualify the bill and bring serious moral and ethical challenges to Pan’s legitimacy. Fortunately, due to an onslaught of parents and other citizens, SB277 is currently stalled leaving Richard Pan with lots of explaining and little integrity to fall back on.

Jefferey Jaxen is an independent journalist, writer, and researcher. Focusing on personal empowerment and alternative health, his work reveals a sharp eye to capture the moment in these rapidly changing times. Jaxen is a contributing writer to NaturalSociety.com on a variety of issues. His personal page is located at JeffereyJaxen.com 

A Conferência de Moscou sobre Segurança Internacional, em abril, foi usada como local para comunicar aos EUA e OTAN que outras potências mundiais não os deixarão fazer o que quiserem.

As the humanitarian crisis in Yemen worsens, the Obama administration seems less concerned about the plight of the desperate Yemeni people than the feelings of the Saudi royals who have spent the last month indiscriminately bombing a nearly defenseless Yemen, using high-tech U.S. jets and bombs to reportedly kill hundreds of civilians and damage its ancient cities.

On Friday, the Obama administration took credit for blocking nine Iranian ships from reaching Yemen with relief supplies, claiming that the ships may have carried weapons that the Yemenis could use in their civil war or to defend against Saudi attacks. President Barack Obama had dispatched a U.S. aircraft carrier fleet to the Yemeni coast to enforce an embargo that has helped the Saudis seal off the country from outside help.

A person closely involved with the Yemen crisis told me that the Iranian ships carried food and medicine, not weapons, but turned back to avoid the risk and humiliation of being boarded by the U.S. Navy. Meanwhile, Yemen, already one of the poorest countries in the Arab world, is facing shortages of basic supplies since the Saudis have cut off normal trade routes into Yemen.

Yet, despite the suffering of Yemen, the U.S. government appears more worried about the sensitivities of Saudi Arabia, one of the richest countries in the region. A Defense Department official, speaking anonymously, told the New York Times that it was “important that the Saudis know that we have an arm around their shoulders.”

President and Mrs. Obama disembark from Air Force One at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh on Jan. 27, 2015, for a state visit to Saudi Arabia. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Defense Department officials also acknowledged that they didn’t know what type of cargo was being transported aboard the Iranian ships, the Times reported. Though the Obama administration had touted the possibility that the Iranian ships carried weapons, the decision by Iran to avoid a confrontation may have reflected Tehran’s desire not to worsen relations with the United States and thus disrupt fragile negotiations over international guarantees to ensure that its nuclear program remains peaceful.

But the losers in this military/diplomatic maneuvering appear to be the Yemenis who, in effect, face a Saudi strategy of starving the country into submission with the help of the United States. While U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power built her public image as a “humanitarian interventionist” asserting a “responsibility to protect” vulnerable populations, she has said little about the Saudi role in Yemen’s humanitarian crisis.

In a statement on April 14, at the height of the Saudi bombing campaign, Power made no mention of the Saudi attacks or the hundreds of civilian dead from Saudi bombs supplied by the United States. She instead focused her denunciations on the Houthi rebels and former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh who have joined forces in a civil war that ousted sitting President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who then fled to Saudi Arabia.

Power primarily blamed the Houthis, who “have intensified their military campaign, bombed Aden, and extended their offensive to Yemen’s south. These actions have caused widespread violence and instability that threaten the security and welfare of the Yemeni people, as well as the region’s security.”

Though the Saudi air force has bombed a number of cities including the ancient port city of Aden, Power ignored those attacks in her statement. But Power was not alone in her solicitousness toward the Saudis. On Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry even endorsed the Saudi bombing of Houthi targets in Yemen.

Who Are the Houthis?

The Houthis adhere to the Zaydi sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam but one that is considered relatively close to Sunni Islam and that peacefully co-existed with Sunni Islam for centuries. But the Houthis have been resisting what they regard as government persecution in recent decades.

As revealed in leaked U.S. government cables and documented by Human Rights Watch, Yemen’s government used U.S. military aid to support an all-out assault against the Houthis in 2009. HRW said Yemeni government forces indiscriminately shelled and bombed civilian areas, causing significant civilian casualties and violating the laws of war. This repression of the Houthis led to an escalation last fall which ended with the Houthi rebels, who allied themselves with army forces loyal to ex-President Saleh, capturing Sanaa and other major cities.

After these victories, in private contacts with American officials, the Houthis indicated their readiness to take the fight to Al-Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate. However, since the Saudi airstrikes began a month ago, “Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula” has taken advantage of the limitations on Houthi rebel movements by grabbing more territory in the east and overrunning a prison that held a number of Al-Qaeda militants.

The Saudi royals have a complicated relationship with Al-Qaeda including some princes who are viewed as important financiers of the terror group. The Saudis also promote the same extremist interpretation of Sunni Islam, known as Wahhabism. Now, instead of concentrating on the terror threat from Al-Qaeda, the Saudis have sought to portray the Yemeni civil war as a proxy assault in Saudi Arabia’s backyard by Shiite-ruled Iran.

In that propaganda effort, the Saudis have been helped by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has relied on the powerful Israel Lobby and his own rhetoric to divert the U.S. Congress from a focus on Al-Qaeda and its hyper-brutal spinoff, the Islamic State, to Iran, which both Saudi Arabia and Israel have designated their primary regional enemy.

In his March 3 speech to a joint session of Congress, Netanyahu cited Yemen as one of the Mideast countries that Iran has been “gobbling up.” Many regional experts, however, considered Netanyahu’s assertion ludicrous given the Houthis’ reputation for stubborn independence.

For instance, former CIA official Graham E. Fuller called the notion “that the Houthis represent the cutting edge of Iranian imperialism in Arabia – as trumpeted by the Saudis” a “myth.” He added:

“The Zaydi Shia, including the Houthis, over history have never had a lot to do with Iran. But as internal struggles within Yemen have gone on, some of the Houthis have more recently been happy to take Iranian coin and perhaps some weapons — just as so many others, both Sunni and Shia, are on the Saudi payroll. The Houthis furthermore hate al-Qaeda and hate the Islamic State.”

But the Obama administration remains sensitive to Israeli-Saudi criticism of its efforts to negotiate a peaceful settlement of the Iranian nuclear dispute. So, to demonstrate that the Americans are comforting the Saudi royals with “an arm around their shoulders,” the U.S. government is embracing the Saudi bombardment of a largely defenseless country and is turning back ships carrying relief supplies.

[For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Did Money Seal the Israeli-Saudi Alliance?”]

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 andbarnesandnoble.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 includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

La Isla de Pascua o Rapa Nui (Figura 1), es una Isla remota que se presenta con muchos misterios, con una superficie de 166 kilómetros cuadrados (Figura 2) es un microcosmos de nuestro planeta. Aislada en el sur del Océano Pacífico, como nuestro planeta en el espacio, a 3.700 kilómetros de la costa de Chile y a 2.000 kilómetros de la isla de Pitcairn, la isla habitada más cercana, es convertida en un destino para todos aquellos que temen que la humanidad haya entrado dentro de la sexta extinción y quieren entender cómo los rapanui vivieron este drama debido al agotamiento de los recursos vivos de la isla. La vida  entró en agonía en un contexto de competencia hasta el punto de agotarse.

Los habitantes de la isla, en una era de abundancia esculpieron estatuas gigantes o moai que representan a los personajes de sus antepasados y también pueden ser un signo de prosperidad y poder. Rapa Nui sigue atrayendo mucha atención de arqueólogos y visitantes de todo el mundo debido a la presencia de estos moai (900) cortados en la toba volcánica y con un gran peso (entre 14 y 80 toneladas) que fueron transportados desde el volcán Rano Raraku (Figura 5) e instalados, hace cientos de años en plataformas sagradas (ahû) (Figuras 6 y 7) por los habitantes de la isla, mientras que no tenían medios técnicos modernos para hacerlo. Este ingenio o mejor dicho esta hazaña de los habitantes de la isla ha llamado la atención de los científicos durante mucho tiempo. La isla fue el escenario de una época de apogeo seguido por una disminución de la población de la isla. Tuvimos casi la extinción de todos los habitantes.

En este ensayo, se describe el proceso de extinción en Rapa Nui y se examina el deterioro “lento” de las condiciones de la existencia actual de la humanidad. A la pregunta planteada a menudo “¿Está la especie humana en peligro de extinción?” Vamos a tratar de responder a esta pregunta: “Sin embargo, a pesar de su pequeño tamaño, la historia de la Isla de Pascua es una siniestra advertencia para la humanidad ” (eco-action.org).

Figura 1. Localizacion de la Isla de Pascua o Rapanui

Fuente: http://www.plongeur.com/magazine/2008/07/21/ile-de-paques-rapanui-sejour-et-plongee/4/

Figura 2. Rapa Nui. Vista desde la nave espacial

Fuente: Getaway to The Astronaut Photography of Earth:

http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/SearchPhotos/ShowQueryResults-TextTable.pl?results=142645902343282

Figura 3. Vista de Rapa Nui – En primer plano la caldera Rano Kau. Atrás se ve el pueblo de Hanga Roa.

Figura 4. Acantilados activos – Ladera de la caldera Rano Kau – Littoral de muy difícil acceso

Las primeras cinco extinciones que han afectado a la tierra. Un recordatorio

“90-99% de las especies que han existido en la Tierra se han extinguido. La gran mayoría desapareció en el contexto de un proceso normal de extinción de especies, debido a la duración limitada de la existencia biológica de estas. Este período varía de unos millones de años con los mamíferos y once millones de años en el caso de algunos invertebrados marinos. Además de esta extinción normal de las especies, nuestro planeta ha experimentado muchas extinciones rápidas de la vida: En los últimos 540 millones años (MA), veinte de más o menos intensidad, se han sucedido. La mayoría son causadas por grandes erupciones volcánicas como lo demuestran las trampas (pilas de flujos de lava que forman acantilados en escaleras)”.

“Algunas eran las extinciones en masa, es decir que han llevado a la desaparición de la mayoría de las especies. Sin embargo, cada vez, estas extinciones han permitido la aparición de nuevas formas de vida, cada vez más diversas y florecientes. Por lo tanto, las extinciones masivas juegan un papel clave en la diversificación de las formas de vida “(http://www.notre-planete.info/environnement/biodiversite/extinctions_massives.php).Veamos las mayores extinciones masivas de la biodiversidad que cambiaron para siempre la vida en la Tierra.

1. « La primera extinción masiva se ha producido en el Ordovícico-Silúrico (444 dC). 85% de la vida marina habría muerto. Las causas no están claramente establecidas, pero desde hace décadas, el mismo supuesto habla que una gran glaciación hubiera dado como resultado el descenso de los niveles del mar. De hecho, un equipo de investigadores ha determinado en 2013 que varias glaciaciones han causado la extinción de la vida marina. Otra hipótesis es apoyada por Brian Thomas, astrofísico (Universidad de Washburn): la radiación gamma puede haber llegado a la Tierra ».

2. « La segunda Devónico-Carbonífero (365 dC) (Devónico-Carbonífero) correspondiente a una serie de acontecimientos que han llevado a la pérdida de alrededor del 70% de las especies animales. Una vez más, se trata esencialmente de las especies marinas que han sido afectadas: arrecifes, braquiópodos y organismos bentónicos. Las causas no están claramente establecidas, sino una glaciación importante que pudo convertirse en niveles del mar más bajos ».

3. « La tercera que ocurrió durante el Pérmico-Triásico (252,6 MA) es probablemente la extinción masiva más grave que la Tierra ha conocido. Más de 90% de todas las especies han desaparecido, tanto en la tierra como en los océanos. Esta extinción masiva se ha llevado gradualmente a cabo durante un período de 200.000 años, con una alta mortalidad. Se concentró en 20.000 años. La biosfera fué devastada: Los bosques de coníferas, helechos, anfibios gigantes, escorpiones marinos, trilobites fueron diezmados… … Muchos de los registros sedimentarios y geoquímicos atestiguan una importante perturbación ambiental durante todo el Triásico (los cinco millones años después de la extinción en masa): ciclo del carbono anormal; océanos ácidos, dióxido poco enriquecido en oxígeno de carbono y sulfuros (CNRS, 09/2011) ».

« Durante 20 millones de años, la Tierra permanece casi estéril y tóxica: los océanos están sustancialmente libres de oxígeno como la atmósfera. Algunas especies sobrevivieron con muy pocos reptiles muy resistentes, diapsidos que toman el lugar de terápsidos (reptiles therapsida) y formaron la línea de los dinosaurios famosos. Se tarda 30 millones de años antes de regresar a la biodiversidad comparable a la de antes de la crisis. Si la vida estuvo cerca de la extinción, esta extinción le permite nuevas formas de vida de diversificarse de una manera sin precedentes. Esta crisis marca el fin de la era primaria o paleozoico y mesozoico temprano, o Mesozoica. Dos escenarios se proponen para explicar esta extinción: La caída de un cometa o la proliferación de un microbio metano  ».

4. « La cuarta, el Triásico-Jurásico (200 dC) (Triásico-Jurásico), mata a 20% de las especies marinas, la mayoría de diápsidos (reptiles, aves) y los últimos grandes anfibios. En general, la mitad de la biodiversidad en la Tierra desaparece. Sin embargo, esta crisis permite el auge de los dinosaurios para dominar la Tierra. Las causas aún no están claramente identificadas, y varias hipótesis han sido propuestas ».

“Con la desintegración de la Pangea, erupciones volcánicas masivas que duraron por lo menos 600 000 años se llevaron a cabo en la provincia magmática centro-Atlantica. Este período también corresponde a un aumento de los niveles de dióxido de carbono y a una liberación masiva de metano. De hecho, en la Universidad de Utrecht investigadores han descubierto que al menos 12.000 gigatoneladas de carbono (como el metano) se liberan en la atmósfera durante 20 000-40 000 años. Esto habría llevado un calentamiento global (Bits de Ciencia, 07/2011). Por último, entre otras causas posibles se incluye un meteorito».

5. « La quinta, del Cretácico-Terciario (65 dC). En todos los reinos, cerca de seis a ocho de cada diez especies desaparecieron, los grandes saurios como los dinosaurios famosos incluidos. Los insectos y pequeños mamíferos sin embargo fueron resistentes. Casi todo el plancton marino, un eslabón clave en la cadena alimentaria y de los animales, también desapareció. Parece que no hay animales de más de 20 a 25 kg de masa ha sobrevivido a excepción de los cocodrilos. Se han propuesto varias teorías más o menos cuestionables para explicar esta extinción en masa: lluvia de meteoros, el aumento de actividad volcánica, epidemia explosiva, la intoxicación por las nuevas plantas que contienen alcaloides, reversión del campo magnético de la Tierra, refrigeración, falta de oxígeno… Hoy Dos escenarios son privilegiados: la caída de un meteorito o un vulcanismo importante (notre-planete.info).

Algunos eventos catastróficos han ocurrido durante las primeras cinco extinciones. Se piensa como probable: El impacto de un meteorito, un importante vulcanismo, la liberación masiva de metano y la glaciación.

II.  Lo que ha pasado en Rapa Nui

El proceso de extinción o lenta agonía de una población que se manifestó en muchas ocasiones en la historia humana como un ecocidio se define como la destrucción de los ecosistemas (natural o antropogénico) sistemática y total ¿Qué pasó con los Mayas o Incas? Lo que ha ocurrido en Camboya cuando cayó el Imperio Khmer, desde el noveno hasta el siglo XV? De hecho, muchos imperios (hay 77) se han formado y después descendieron hasta la disolución o desmembramiento (wikipedia.org). Sin embargo, lo que sucedió en la Isla de Pascua parece ser el resultado de una acción deliberada hacia la autodestrucción con la disminución de la capacidad de la isla para sostener la vida de las personas y provocando conflictos muy mortíferos causando la muerte de casi la totalidad de la población. Cuando los primeros europeos llegaron a Rapa Nui no habia más que un centenar de personas en la isla. Así que aquí tenemos dos factores importantes en el proceso de extinción: La pérdida irreversible de los recursos vivos y una sangrienta lucha por los que quedan.

Dos fases pueden distinguirse en el destino de Rapa Nui: El ascenso y la caída: “La cultura floreció alrededor del año 1200 y comenzó a declinar en el siglo XVI” (pulsoslp.com).

Según la versión más entendida de los acontecimientos y reportada una vez más por Terry Hunt, un pequeño grupo de colonos polinesios (apodados los nómadas del viento) habría llegado a la isla entre los años 800 y 900 dC arribando por la playa de Anakena (6). Su población se habría incrementado lentamente al principio. Luego, alrededor del 1200 dC su número habría crecido rápidamente y en esta obsesión para tallar, los moai han ejercido una creciente presión sobre el medio ambiente. A finales del siglo 17 los Rapanuis hubieran totalmente deforestado la isla provocando la guerra que fue seguida por el hambre y la decadencia cultural (pulsoslp.com).

El apogeo cultural

Restos arqueológicos de Rapa Nui tienen un valor universal único en el mundo. Son testigos del apogeo qué vivieron los isleños. Es por esta razón que Rapa Nui pertenece a la Lista del Patrimonio Mundial. Según la UNESCO, «ofrece el testimonio de un fenómeno cultural único en el mundo. Asentada en esta isla hacia el año 300 d.C., una sociedad de origen polinesio creó, al margen de toda influencia externa, grandiosas formas arquitectónicas y esculturales dotadas de una gran fuerza, imaginación y originalidad. Desde el siglo X al XVI, construyó santuarios y esculpió numerosos ”moai“, gigantescos personajes de piedra que forman un paisaje cultural inigualable y fascinan hoy al mundo entero. » (unesco.org).

Figura 5. Vista del Volcán Rano Raraku – Sitio de la carrera de los moai

Según las historias que marcan la llegada de los Polinesios en la Isla por Clive Ponting, los primeros pobladores encontraron allí un entorno con pocos recursos y sobre todo con limitados recursos hídricos. La única agua disponible se encuentra en el interior de cráteres de los tres volcanes extintos de la isla. Lo que es único a Rapa Nui es que la producción agrícola se hizo en los primeros siglos con muy pocos esfuerzos, lo que permitió a los caciques de disfrutar de un montón de tiempo libre, tiempo que podrían dedicar a los rituales y la construcción. Algunas ceremonias se basaron en el culto del pájaro Orongo, donde se encuentran los restos de 47 casas privadas con muchas plataformas y una serie de esculturas de piedra en alto relieve (Figuras 11 y 12). El resultado fue la creación de la sociedad más avanzada de todas las sociedades polinesias y una de las más complejas en el mundo a través de recursos escasos (eco-action.org)

Y Ponting agregó: « Contra todo pronóstico los isleños laboriosamente construyeron durante varios siglos, una de las sociedades más avanzadas de este tipo en el mundo. Durante mil años, han adoptado un estilo de vida de acuerdo con un complejo conjunto de costumbres sociales y religiosas que les permitieron no sólo para sobrevivir, sino para prosperar. Fue en muchos aspectos, un triunfo del ingenio humano y una aparente victoria sobre un entorno difícil. Pero al final el aumento de la población y las ambiciones culturales crecientes de los isleños demostraron ser demasiado grandes para los limitados recursos de la isla. Cuando el medio ambiente fué destruido por la presión demográfica, la sociedad se derrumbó muy rápidamente, lo que incluso llevó a una estado de una casi barbarie » (eco-action.org).

Figura 6. Sector de Tahai. Playa de Anakena

Figura 8. Tongariki

Fuente: Jules Dufour (Octubre 2005)

Figura 8. Moai tallado en basalto del volcán Rano Raraku

Figura 9. Moai en la ladera del volcán Rano Raraku

Fuente: Jules Dufour (Octubre 2005)

Figura 10. Un moai en Tongariki

El descenso hacia la extinción y las lecciones para el Planeta Tierra

Según Terry Hunt, en un análisis de la disminución de la población de Rapa Nui, los datos relativos a Jared Diamond, un geógrafo y fisiólogo de la Universidad de California en Los Ángeles, “En el transcurso de algunos siglos”, escribió en 1995 en un artículo para la revista Discover: “La gente de la Isla de Pascua han destruido su bosque, y luego trajeron las plantas y los animales a la extinción, y vieron su sociedad compleja caer en el caos y el canibalismo …” ¿Estamos a punto de seguir su ejemplo? “En su libro « Collapse », publicado en 2005, Diamond describe Rapa Nui como” el mejor ejemplo de una empresa que se ha destruido a sí misma por la sobreexplotación de sus recursos propios. “(americanscientist.org).

Según el mismo autor, Diamond no es el único en percibir lo que sucedió en Rapa Nui. En su libro de la Isla de Pascua, Isla de la Tierra, los autores John R. Flenley de la Universidad de Massey en Nueva Zelanda y Paul G. Bahn expresan su preocupación por lo que la suerte de Rapa Nui significa para el resto de la civilización humana “el apetito de la humanidad no tiene límites, Su egoísmo parece ser genéticamente innato…. Pero en un ecosistema limitado, el egoísmo conduce a aumentar el desequilibrio demográfico y luego a declinar, y en última instancia conduce a la extinción».

Clive Ponting, en su ensayo sobre las lecciones aprendidas de la experiencia de Rapa Nui “el destino de la Isla de Pascua tiene implicaciones más amplias. Al igual que la isla de Pascua el planeta tierra tiene recursos limitados para apoyar a la sociedad humana y sus necesidades. Al igual que los isleños de Pascua, la población humana de la Tierra no es un medio práctico de escape. Cómo el medio ambiente mundial ha dado forma a la historia humana y cómo las personas han dado forma y han cambiado el mundo en el que viven? ¿Acaso han caído las otras sociedades en la misma trampa que los isleños? Durante los últimos dos millones de años, los humanos han logrado conseguir más comida y la extracción de más recursos para apoyar un aumento cada vez mayor de personas y sociedades cada vez más complejas y tecnológicamente avanzadas. Pero han tenido más éxito que los aldeanos en encontrar un modo de vida que no agota fatalmente los recursos disponibles para ellos y para los daños irreversibles del sistema que sostiene la vida “(eco-action.org).

Según Barzin Pakandan, “los habitantes no se atreviron a salir de la isla y decidieron vivir con las consecuencias de tener un mínimo de recursos. También es posible que en esos momentos los isleños sabían que había sobrepoblación. Muy pocos árboles grandes se mantuvieron y fue imposible construir canoas capaces de hacer largas distancias. El hecho es que la población superó los límites de los recursos disponibles e hizo entrar los isleños en la competencia por los recursos y se empeoró aún más la situación “(lse.ac.uk).

Figura 11. Habitación   en Orongo
Fuente Jules Dufour (Octubre 2005)

Figura 12. El motu Kau Kau – El motu Iti – El motu Nui – Islotes de la leyenda del hombre pájaro

Fuente: Jules Dufour (Octubre 2005)

III.          Planeta Tierra

La superficie de la tierra  está siendo afectada por los desastres, endógenos y exógenos, muchos, destructivos y mortales. Los más espectaculares son emocionantes: Erupciones volcánicas, terremotos, huracanes, tornados, sequías prolongadas, deslizamiento de tierra y explosión de un pozo de petróleo. Estos eventos se producen y afectan en un tiempo limitado sólo en una parte de la superficie de la tierra. Otros desastres, aquellos más insidiosos y menos dramáticos, que afectan a todos los biomas terrestres y marinos: El calentamiento del clima acelerado e incontrolado, la contaminación de las costas y bahías, la disminución de la tasa de fertilidad natural de los suelos, la contaminación de los océanos y mares y la pérdida de biodiversidad.

Se espera que la población mundial seá de  10 mil millones en 2062

La población mundial, el 16 de marzo de 2015, suma el total de 7,301,603,100 habitantes. Su tasa de crecimiento es actualmente de 1.14% por año. Esto corresponde a un aumento de 80 millones de personas por año. En los años 60 la tasa de crecimiento estaba por encima de 2% y alcanzó un máximo de 2,19% en 1963. Hoy en día se divide por dos.

La tasa de crecimiento anual está disminuyendo y debe continuar en esta dirección en los próximos años. Actualmente, se estima que será un 1% menos, respectivamente, y 0,5% en 2020 y 2050. Esto significa que la población mundial seguirá aumentando durante el siglo 21, pero a un ritmo más lento en comparación con las décadas anteriores. La población mundial se ha duplicado en 40 años (1959-1999), desde 3 mil millones hasta 6 mil millones. Ahora se estima que se necesitarán 43 años para que crezca en un 50% hasta alcanzar los 9 mil millones en 2042. Las simulaciones de la ONU indican que la población mundial se estabilizará en poco más de 10 mil millones de personas después de 2062 (worldometers.info).

Los comportamientos de la extinción

El comportamiento general de la sociedad moderna utiliza un flujo continuo de recursos renovables y no renovables. Los primeros, en teoría, pueden estar disponibles hasta el infinito si se asegura la renovación. Los suelos son intensamente cultivados y pierden gradualmente su productividad natural, mientras que pueden regenerarse a través del uso de la rotación de los cultivos. Las poblaciones de peces disminuyen con la práctica de la pesca industrial, pero se pueden estabilizar si se tiene cuidado en respetar su ritmo de crecimiento y renovación. Las talas de arboles son a veces difíciles, pero ellos crecen bien de nuevo cuando el corte es selectivo. Su conquista sin conciencia conduce a una simplificación de los ecosistemas y poco a poco a una pérdida de la biodiversidad y por lo tanto, una disminución en la productividad de los biomas. En la minería lo mínimo que se requiere es de llevar a cabo la rehabilitación de los sitios abandonados. Muy a menudo este proceso se pospone indefinidamente.

En la extracción de recursos se añaden procesamiento y distribución. Una vez más los comportamientos son dictados por la ideología del crecimiento a cualquier precio, de tal manera que no se toman todas las medidas necesarias para salvaguardar, en particular, el aire y el medio hidrico. Estas actividades tienen muy a menudo un impacto negativo sobre la calidad del medio ambiente.

El hiper-consumismo

Ya lo sabemos. Los patrones de consumo de los países ricos ejercen una enorme presión sobre los recursos alimentarios y los recursos de agua dulce. En el primer caso, la demanda de proteína animal requiere la producción intensiva del suelo. En el segundo caso, las necesidades de agua están aumentando, tanto para uso doméstico como para lo industrial y la energía. Estos procesos se encajan dentro de las sociedades de consumo que siempre quieren más y más.

Tomamos aquí las palabras de Richard Werly en Desarrollo y civilizaciones “, al mismo tiempo, se espera que China y Francia, la India y los Estados Unidos los consumidores de todo el mundo estan invitados a consumir más y, si es necesario, a tener préstamos al consumo. La deuda excesiva que llevó a la crisis ahora es defendida como la solución de la crisis. Esta situación no sólo expresa la ceguera de los líderes del mercado y el gobierno, sino que revela los dilemas más fundamentales del capitalismo consumista que parece incapaz de contenerse sin destruirse pero, si mantiene su ritmo de relámpago de hoy en día, no puede sobrevivir “(lebret-irfed.org).

La pérdida de biodiversidad

Según un estudio presentado en 2008 en la novena Conferencia de las Partes en el Convenio sobre la Diversidad Biológica en Bonn, el costo anual de pérdida de biodiversidad a nivel mundial se estima entre 1.350 y 3.100 millones de euros. Además, la tasa de pérdida de biodiversidad actual es 1000 veces la tasa natural conocida desde la historia de la vida en la Tierra (sciencesenviro.com).

Las necesidades crecientes

La mayoría de la población mundial se ve afectada por la angustia, la miseria y la pobreza. Miles de millones de personas en este planeta no pueden satisfacer sus necesidades básicas. Por otra parte, mil millones de ellos padecen de hambre, el hambre endémica, y casi 30 mil de ellos mueren de hambre cada día (Worldometers – Las estadísticas mundiales en tiempo real (worldometers.info) (Figura 12). Esto indica el hecho de que las desigualdades sociales están creciendo. Sabemos que los más ricos (una minoría muy pequeña) tendra casi el 50% de los ingresos globales. Millones de personas trabajan pero siguen siendo pobres. Según el Observatorio de las desigualdades, “caída de la Pobreza A todo el mundo millones de personas (15 millones en los países ricos) aunque todavía viven con menos de 1,25 dólares al día, la línea de pobreza extrema… y un umbral de algo superior a dos dólares fecha, existen cerca de 2,1 millones de personas pobres, un tercio de la población mundial en 2011 … “(inegalites.fr).

El crecimiento económico no significa mejorar las condiciones de vida de la mayoría. En todas partes, tanto en el Norte como el Sur, las desigualdades sociales están creciendo. Los informes oficiales sobre el estado de la economía mundial están mostrando engañoso optimismo. Señalan que la economía crecerá y al mismo tiempo advierten de que será frenada por factores económicos, tales como la aparición de nuevos conflictos armados, desastres o epidemias. Por otra parte, las desigualdades sociales se ven agravadas por las medidas de austeridad en un gran número de países, contribuyendo al enriquecimiento de una minoría que no está afectada, pero hace una  lesión  importante de los ingresos de los más pobres. La desigualdad de ingresos en los países en desarrollo está aumentando año tras año, especialmente en África (afriqueexpansion.com).

En resumen, la situación general es parte de este panorama de extinción porque terminamos con una humanidad sin recursos para sobrevivir.

Figura 12. El hambre en el mundo en 2010

Fuente : http://www.pointsdactu.org/article.php3?id_article=1656

La resolución de conflictos a través de la violencia armada. La humanidad está condenada

La carrera mundial armamentista con la cual seguimos viviendo se presenta también dentro del proceso de extinción de la especie humana. Esta es la mayor amenaza para el futuro de la humanidad. La acumulación de considerables cantidades de armas convencionales y nucleares (El SIPRI estimó el número de ojivas nucleares en el mundo en alrededor de 19 000, 4400 funcionan en enero de 2012), el manteniendo del poder de los Estados poseedores de armas nucleares (los Estados Unidos , Rusia, Reino Unido, Francia y China) constantemente en el proceso de renovación y modernización, brazos prósperos del comercio internacional, lideradas principalmente por los Estados Unidos, China, Rusia y Alemania (globalresearch.ca) y el restablecimiento de todos los países donde los conflictos persisten como todos los países de Oriente Medio o amenazados por países de la OTAN como Rusia, Corea del Norte, Irán y Venezuela. Cuando las bombas vienen del espacio exterior, será demasiado tarde para actuar, que está surgiendo en los planes del Pentágono para 2020 (fas.org).

Conclusion

Este retorno a la Isla de Pascua hace reflexionar sobre el destino de la humanidad. Los rapanuis han encontrado en esta isla comida y otros materiales para vivir de manera aparentemente próspera. Ellos fueron capaces de garantizar la renovación de estos recursos durante siglos. La rápida expansión de la población rompió este equilibrio. El aumento de la presión les llevó a la sobre-explotación de estos recursos e incluso a destruirlos. Esta fue la desaparición lenta de esta cultura única y su agonía a causa de los conflictos sangrientos.

¿Está  la humanidad en peligro de desaparecer? ¿Son tan deterioradas las condiciones de su existencia que veremos una clara ruptura en el comercio de la economía mundial? ¿Es que la pérdida de biodiversidad causará una fuerte disminución de la producción de los recursos vivos? ¿El agotamiento de los recursos energéticos fósiles causará un conflicto armado generalizado? A principios del Tercer milenio las perspectivas no son tan buenas. Muchos de los síntomas de la mala salud del planeta crean ansiedad en todo el mundo. ¿Habíamos entrado en este proceso de decadencia que ha vivido Rapa Nui o lo que se llama la sexta extinción? Según Anne Larigauderie, director ejecutivo del programa DIVERSITAS internacional – cuya secretaría se encuentra en el Museo Nacional de Historia Natural de París, se le preguntó acerca de esto en la Cumbre de Río + 20, « podemos decir que estamos avanzando hacia una potencialmente sexta extinción, pero que la acción aún se puede tomar (esta es la buena noticia!) para influenciar el curso de los acontecimientos. Por lo tanto, debemos seguir siendo optimistas, pero actuar con rapidez! (sciences.blogs.liberation.fr).

Segun notre-planète tomando las palabras del famoso científico australiano Frank Fenner  publicadas en The Australian, la especie humana está en peligro de desaparecer, “Para Fenner, hemos sellado el destino de la humanidad en menos de 100 años, Las sociedades humanas ya no son… “Homo sapiens desaparecerá, tal vez en 100 años”, dijo. “Una gran cantidad de otros animales también. Esta es una situación irreversible. Creo que es demasiado tarde. Trato de no decirlo demasiado porque hay gente tratando de hacer una diferencia. Los esfuerzos de reducción disminuyen un poco las cosas, pero ya hay demasiada gente [en la Tierra] “, añade.” “La explosión de la población y sus corolarios: energía, productivistas y bulimia consumista conducen a la humanidad a su pérdida. Esto, tabú, es, sin embargo cada vez más compartido por algunos científicos y cada vez se menciona, pero sofocado por los escépticos sobre el cambio climático y algunas de las personas religiosas para quienes la reproducción es una recomendación divina dice Frank Fenner ” (notre-planete.info).

Impulsar aún más la genesis de la agonía de la vida debe ser el trabajo de todos. Factores más poderosos, como el “crecimiento a cualquier costo” habilitados por el hiper-consumismo promueven aún más la explotación de los recursos vivos y el deterioro de las condiciones para su renovación. Estos factores deben ser contrarrestados para asegurar la supervivencia de la humanidad.

El concepto de la supervivencia en la tierra significa que los recursos terrestres e hídricos son limitados y que sólo un enfoque que respete la renovación de los ecosistemas podría asegurar la supervivencia de la humanidad. Lo que se debe evitar absolutamente es la pérdida de la biodiversidad. Esto asegura el mantenimiento del equilibrio natural y la renovación de los recursos vivos. Sabiendo que la era industrial y que el consumismo han tenido un impacto considerable en el medio ambiente, la Unión Internacional para la Conservación de la Naturaleza (UICN), junto con el WWF y el PNUMA, lanzaron la estrategia mundial de la Conservación en 1980, y la Estrategia para una Vida Sostenible en 1991. Ambas estrategias y los diversos acuerdos internacionales que siguieron, acompañados de la Carta de la Tierra son los pilares en el centro de los esfuerzos de conservación de los recursos mundiales. A éstos hay que añadir la red mundial de áreas terrestres y marinas protegidas.

Hoy en día, la conquista y el control de las reservas de recursos se hacen por la violencia armada. Los Estados Unidos, por ejemplo, aplican el principio de la “guerra permanente” para garantizar la seguridad del suministro de los recursos estratégicos. Dividieron la superficie de la tierra en seis mandamientos que garantizan sus intereses. Consideran la superficie de la Tierra como un campo de batalla y que la guerra es la mejor manera  que se debe utilizar para mantener su hegemonía sobre el conjunto del planeta (Figura 13). Incluso la Antártida está bajo su control. Otras potencias siguen controlando territorios con la misma intención y con el mismo enfoque.

Figura 13. Los seis mandamientos estadounidense que cubren toda la superficie de la tierra

Source : http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread963236/pg1

Así que tenemos los dos ingredientes de la extinción como lo hemos observado en la Isla de Pascua: La destrucción de los recursos vivos y los conflictos armados para salvaguardar los recursos estratégicos conocidos. Sólo un gobierno mundial con poderes reales podría actuar sobre estos factores. Por desgracia, las grandes potencias trabajan para que el orden establecido se mantenga.

Para terminar citamos la Carta de la Tierra que establece la situación ambiental global del planeta y ofrece 16 principios para la acción ambiental.

El texto de la Carta está estructurado en torno a 4 principios básicos o angulares, desplegados en 16 principios generales, desarrollados y complementados a su vez en 61 principios de detalle o de apoyo. Todos ellos van precedidos de un Preámbulo, y finalizan con un texto de conclusión (earthcharterinaction.org).

Éstos son los 16 principios generales:

“La protección de la vitalidad, la diversidad y la belleza de la Tierra es un deber sagrado” (Preámbulo de la Carta).

I. Respeto y cuidado de la vida

1. Respetar la Tierra y la vida en toda su diversidad.

2. Cuidar la comunidad de la vida con entendimiento, compasión y amor.

3. Construir sociedades democráticas que sean justas, participativas, sostenibles y pacíficas.

4. Asegurar que los frutos y la belleza de la Tierra se preserven para las generaciones presentes y futuras.

II. Integridad ecológica

5. Proteger y restaurar la integridad de los sistemas ecológicos de la Tierra, con especial preocupación por la diversidad biológica y los procesos naturales que sustentan la vida.

6. Evitar dañar como el mejor método de protección ambiental y, cuando el conocimiento sea limitado, proceder con precaución.

7. Adoptar patrones de producción, consumo y reproducción que salvaguarden las capacidades regenerativas de la Tierra, los derechos humanos y el bienestar comunitario.

8. Impulsar el estudio de la sostenibilidad ecológica y promover el intercambio abierto y la extensa aplicación del conocimiento adquirido.III. Justicia social y económica

9. Erradicar la pobreza como un imperativo ético, social y ambiental.

10. Asegurar que las actividades e instituciones económicas, a todo nivel, promuevan el desarrollo humano de forma equitativa y sostenible,

11. Afirmar la igualdad y equidad de género como prerrequisitos para el desarrollo sostenible y asegurar el acceso universal a la educación, el cuidado de la salud y la oportunidad económica.

12. Defender el derecho de todos, sin discriminación, a un entorno natural y social que apoye la dignidad humana, la salud física y el bienestar espiritual, con especial atención a los derechos de los pueblos indígenas y las minorías.IV. Democracia, no violencia y paz.

13. Fortalecer las instituciones democráticas en todos los niveles y brindar transparencia y rendimiento de cuentas en la gobernabilidad, participación inclusiva en la toma de decisiones y acceso a la justicia.

14. Integrar en la educación formal y en el aprendizaje a lo largo de la vida, las habilidades, el conocimiento y los valores necesarios para un modo de vida sostenible.

15. Tratar a todos los seres vivientes con respeto y consideración.

16. Promover una cultura de tolerancia, no violencia y paz.

La Carta finaliza con estas alentadoras palabras:

Que el nuestro sea un tiempo que se recuerde por el despertar de una nueva reverencia ante la vida; por la firme resolución de alcanzar la sostenibilidad; por el aceleramiento en la lucha por la justicia y la paz; y por la alegre celebración de la vida (wikipedia.org).

Jules Dufour

Para el Centro de Investigación sobre la Globalización (CRM), Montreal, Canada

Jules Dufour, PhD, C.Q, geógrafo, profesor emérito, Miembro de la Comisión Mundial de Áreas Protegidas de la Unión Internacional de la Naturaleza (UICN), Gland, Suiza, Miembro del Círculo de Embajadores de la Paz Universal, París y Ginebra.

Referencias

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BRESSAN, David. 2011. Climate, Overpopulation & Environment – The Rapa Nui debate. Blogs. History of Geology. Le 31 octobre 2011: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/history-of-geology/2011/10/31/climate-overpopulation-environment-the-rapa-nui-debate/

CHAROLA, A. Elena. 1997.  Isla de Pascua. El Patrimonio y su Conservacion. World Monument Fund con el Auspicio del Willard and Ruth Sommerville Bequest. 1997. 68 pages.

CHOSSUDOVSKY, Michel. 1998. La mondialisation de la pauvreté. Montréal, Les Éditions écosociété. 248 pages.

CHOSSUDOVSKY, Michel. 2003. Mondialisation de la pauvreté et nouvel ordre mondial. Montréal, Les Éditions écosociété. 383 pages.

CHOSSUDOVSKY, Michel. 2015. Globalization of War : America’s « Long War » against Humanity. Global Research, Montréal, 2015, 240 pages.

CLINE, Eric. H. 2014. 1177 B.C. The Year Civilization Collapsed. Our eBook editions. 264 pages.

COMMISSION CANADIENNE POUR L’UNESCO. 1989. La Déclaration de Vancouver. Actes du colloque de l’Unesco. La science et la culture pour le 21ème siècle : Un programme de survie. Vancouver, Canada, 10-15 septembre 1989. 335 pages.

DANGEFIELD, Withney. 2007. The Mystery of Easter Island. New findings rekindle old debates about when the first people arrived and why their civilization collapsed. Le 31 mars 2007. Smithsonian.com: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/the-mystery-of-easter-island-151285298/#wdIjh54Vi3ydI2jw.

DUFOUR, Jules. 1994. Déséquilibres et périls planétaires. In : Forêt verte, planète bleue. Montréal, Éditions Fides et Musée de la Civilisation, pp. 22-49.

DUFOUR, Jules. 2015. La conjoncture mondiale 2015: le risque d’une conflagration « nucléaire » pointe de nouveau à l’horizon. Montréal, Centre de recherche sur la mondialisation (CRM). Le 18 février 2015: http://www.mondialisation.ca/la-conjoncture-mondiale-2015-le-risque-dune-conflagration-nucleaire-pointe-de-nouveau-a-lhorizon/5431693

DUFOUR, Jules. 2015. La militarisation planétaire s’intensifie. Les drones de combat sèment la terreur et la mort. Montréal, Centre de recherche sur la mondialisation (CRM). Le 3 mars 2015: http://www.mondialisation.ca/la-militarisation-planetaire-sintensifie-les-drones-de-combat-sement-la-terreur-et-la-mort/5434583

HUET, Christophe. 2012. Rio +20, la biodiversité en péril ? Libération. Le 19 juin 2012: http://sciences.blogs.liberation.fr/home/2012/06/rio-20-la-biodiversit%C3%A9-en-p%C3%A9ril-.html

HUNT, Terry. Rethinking the Fall of Easter Island. New evidence points to an alternative explanation for a civilization’s collapse. American Scientist. En ligne : http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/rethinking-the-fall-of-easter-island

LA CHARTE DE LA TERRE. Valeurs et Principes pour un Avenir Durable. Secrétariat International de la Charte de la Terre. Université pour la Paix, Costa Rica: http://www.earthcharterinaction.org/contenu/pages/La-Charte-de-la-Terre.html

LA FAIM DANS LE MONDE. Les causes de la faim dans le monde: http://faimdanslemonde.e-monsite.com/pages/le-probleme-de-la-faim-en-constant-developpement.html#G7lPrvzjjS2i7O4z.99

LEE, Georgia. Texte. Tony Catany. Photographie. 1995. RAPA NUI. HISTOIRE DE L’ÎLE DE PÂQUES. Genève, Éditions Olizane. 222 pages.

LeMonde.fr. Île de Pâques : Les statues qui marchent. Ulysse. Le 5 août 2011: http://www.lemonde.fr/voyage/article/2011/08/05/ile-de-paques-les-statues-qui-marchent_1556451_3546.html

MAZIÈRE, Francis. Fantastique île de Pâques. Paris, Robert Laffont, 1969. 268 pages.

NOTRE-PLANETE-INFO. 2013. “Il est déjà trop tard” : l’espèce humaine devrait s’éteindre ce siècle. Le 23 mars 2013: http://www.notre-planete.info/actualites/actu_2447_extinction_espece_humaine.php

PAKANDAM, Barzin. 2009. Why Easter Island Collapsed: An Answer for an Enduring Question. Working Papers No. 117/09: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/27864/1/WP117.pdf

REUTERS. 2014. Antiguos habitantes de Isla de Pascua no estaban tan aislados. Puso. Diario de San Luis. Le 23 octobre 2014: http://pulsoslp.com.mx/2014/10/23/antiguos-habitantes-de-isla-de-pascua-no-estaban-tan-aislados/

SCIENCEVIRO. 2012. Les frontières à ne pas dépasser. Le 30 octobre 2012. En ligne : http://sciencesenviro.com/2012/10/30/les-frontieres-a-ne-pas-depasser/

UN. 2014. World Economic Situation Prospect. Global economy to improve marginally, but mounting uncertainties and risks could undermine economic growth, says UN. Le 19 janvier 2014: http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/policy/wesp/wesp_archive/2015wesp-pr-gl-en.pdf

WIKIPÉDIA. L’île de Pâques: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%8Ele_de_P%C3%A2ques

Vidéos

HISTORY. Easter Island Videos: http://www.history.com/topics/easter-island/videos/historys-mysteries-easter-island

L’énigme de l’île de Pâques.   Français explorateur: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6BqNH8iqjU

“It is essential to recognize that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapons program, nor does it possess a nuclear weapon. On February 26, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Ayatollah Khomenei, the supreme leader of Iran, ended his country’s nuclear weapons program in 2003 and “as far as we know, he’s not made the decision to go for a nuclear weapon.” This repeats the “high-confidence” judgement of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) that was first made in November 2007.”

Les semences paysannes sont attaquées de toutes parts. Sous la pression des grandes entreprises, les législations de nombreux pays posent des obstacles à ce que les paysans et les paysannes peuvent faire de leurs propres semences et des semences qu’ils achètent. La conservation et la réutilisation des semences, une pratique millénaire à la base de l’agriculture devient une activité criminelle. Que peut on faire ?

Photo : Tineke d’Haese/Oxfam

Introduction

Les semences constituent l’un des piliers majeurs de la production d’aliments. Partout dans le monde et depuis des siècles, les paysans et paysannes en ont pleinement conscience. Il s’agit en effet de l’une des conceptions les plus universelles et fondamentales qu’ils ont toujours partagée, et, à ce titre, toutes les communautés agricoles savent conserver, utiliser et échanger les semences, sauf dans les cas où elles ont subi des agressions externes ou se sont retrouvées dans des circonstances extrêmes. Des millions de familles et de communautés agricoles ont œuvré à donner vie à des centaines de cultures et à des milliers de variétés de ces dernières. L’échange régulier de semences entre les communautés et entre les peuples a permis aux cultures de s’adapter à des conditions, des climats et des topographies représentatifs de la diversité de la nature . C’est ainsi que l’agriculture a pu se développer, croître et nourrir le monde en offrant une alimentation diversifiée.

Les semences sont également à la base de processus productifs, sociaux et culturels qui ont donné à la population rurale une capacité tenace à conserver un certain degré d’autonomie et à refuser une soumission complète aux grandes entreprises et au règne de l’argent. Pour les intérêts commerciaux qui aspirent à prendre le contrôle des terres, de l’agriculture et des aliments – et de l’immense marché que cela représente – cette indépendance représente un obstacle.

Depuis la Révolution verte, les entreprises ont ainsi déployé toute une batterie de stratégies pour concrétiser ce contrôle, qui vont des programmes de recherche agricole et de vulgarisation au développement de filières mondiales, en passant par la promotion de l’expansion massive de l’agriculture destinée à l’exportation et au secteur de l’agro-alimentaire. La plupart des agriculteurs et des peuples autochtones ont résisté et continuent de résister, de diverses manières, à cette mainmise.

Aujourd’hui, les entreprises tentent d’écraser cette rébellion en menant une offensive mondiale sur le plan juridique. Depuis la création de l’Organisation mondiale du commerce (OMC), la quasi-totalité des pays du monde ont adopté des lois octroyant aux entreprises des droits de propriété sur le vivant. Que ce soit par le biais de brevets ou des dénommés droits d’obtenteur ou lois sur la protection des obtentions végétales, il est désormais possible de privatiser des micro-organismes, des gènes, des cellules, des végétaux, des semences et des animaux.

Partout dans le monde, les mouvements sociaux, notamment les organisations de représentation des paysans et paysannes, résistent et se mobilisent pour empêcher l’adoption de ces lois. Dans de nombreuses régions du monde, la résistance continue et enregistre même des victoires. Si l’on entend renforcer ce mouvement, et réagir rapidement et de manière appropriée, il est très important que le plus grand nombre de personnes possible, notamment dans les villages et les communautés rurales les plus affectés, comprennent ces lois, leurs impacts, leurs objectifs et la capacité des mouvements sociaux à les remplacer par des lois de protection des droits des paysans.

Les législations semencières promues par l’industrie se caractérisent comme suit :

a) Elles évoluent en permanence et gagnent chaque jour en agressivité. À la suite de nouvelles vagues de pressions politiques et économiques – exercées notamment par le biais des dénommés accords de libre-échange, des traités d’investissement bilatéraux et des initiatives d’intégration régionale – l’ensemble des types de droits de propriété les plus « indulgents » sur les semences ont été durcis et continuent d’être rendus plus restrictifs, à un rythme croissant. Les législations semencières et les droits sur les variétés végétales ne cessent d’être révisés afin de pouvoir satisfaire les demandes de l’industrie semencière et de biotechnologies.

b) Ces lois octroyant des droits de propriété sur les semences ont été renforcées par d’autres réglementations censées garantir la qualité des semences et la transparence des marchés, prévenir les contrefaçons, etc. Ces autres types de législations portent sur la certification des semences, leur commercialisation et les règles sanitaires. Elles obligent, par exemple, les paysans à n’acheter ou n’utiliser que des semences commerciales spécialement conçues pour l’agriculture industrielle. Elles font aussi de vous un délinquant si vous donnez vos semences à votre fils ou si vous les échangez avec un voisin. Dans ce contexte, les foires aux semences et l’échange – qui constituent une forme de résistance en plein essor – deviennent illégales dans un nombre grandissant de pays.

c) En accentuant la privatisation, ces lois ignorent les principes fondamentaux de justice et de liberté et s’inscrivent en violation directe de la Déclaration universelle des droits de l’Homme. Ces législations semencières imposent que toute personne accusée d’enfreindre les droits de propriété sur les semences soit présumée coupable, bafouant ainsi le principe de la présomption d’innocence. Dans certains cas, des mesures peuvent être prises à l’encontre d’ auteurs présumés de délits sans que ces derniers n’aient été informés des charges qui pèsent contre eux. Ces législations semencières rendent même obligatoire la divulgation de l’identité des complices présumés. Elles légalisent les perquisitions et les saisies de semences (même en l’absence de mandat) en se fondant sur de simples suspicions et autorisent des organismes privés à mener lesdits contrôles.

d) Ces législations sont rédigées en termes vagues, incompréhensibles et contradictoires, qui laissent une grande place à l’interprétation. Dans la plupart des cas, ces lois sont adoptées en catimini ou façonnées par le biais d’accords internationaux ne pouvant pas être débattus à l’échelle nationale ou locale.

L’expérience le démontre: chaque fois que la désinformation et le secret employés pour faire adopter ces lois ont été contrebalancés par des campagnes d’information et une mobilisation des organisations sociales, le public s’est opposé à ces lois. Ce dernier rejette en effet, en grand partie, l’idée qu’une entreprise puisse faire main basse sur une variété végétale et interdire aux agriculteurs de reproduire leurs semences. Ces législations sont de fait complètement absurdes. De plus, le public ne souhaite généralement pas voir le travail réalisé par les paysans pour nourrir le monde être soudainement considéré comme un délit. Partout où la résistance s’est affirmée avec suffisamment de force, la « spoliation légale » visée par ces lois a été stoppée.

Par ailleurs, dans un certains pays, les lois adoptées sont celles qui garantissent les droits des paysans de conserver, de reproduire et d’échanger leurs semences et qui s’opposent aux importations et à la commercialisation de semences industrielles de mauvaise qualité et d’OGM.

On a aussi constaté, par le passé, que ceux qui entendent privatiser, monopoliser et contrôler les semences au nom des grandes entreprises transnationales n’ont aucune limite. Il est impossible de négocier, de transiger ou de parvenir à un accord mutuel sur la question d’une manière qui garantirait la coexistence pacifique des différents intérêts. Le seul but des entreprises est d’empêcher les agriculteurs de conserver leurs semences et de les rendre dépendants des semences de l’industrie.

Mais l’expérience prouve qu’il est possible de résister et de contrecarrer ces attaques. Cela exige de disposer d’outils reposant sur des informations fiables et en mesure d’être partagés. Ce faire permet de dissiper les fausses promesses et les belles paroles, afin que tout un chacun puisse savoir ce que cache la législation semencière. C’est l’objectif que se donne cette publication.

1. Comment les législations semencières transforment les semences paysannes en semences illégales

Ces dernières décennies, le détournement des semences paysannes est un processus qui a gagné du terrain à un rythme croissant. Au XXe siècle, lorsque les activités de sélection et de production de semences ont été dissociées de l’agriculture, les variétés paysannes ont été progressivement remplacées par des variétés industrielles. En Europe et en Amérique du Nord, ce phénomène s’est étendu sur plusieurs décennies, sous l’impulsion de nouvelles technologies telles le développement des hybrides. En Asie, en Afrique et en Amérique latine, il a vu le jour dans les années 60, lorsque les dénommés programmes de développement ont favorisé les cultures « à haut rendement » et l’utilisation d’intrants chimiques (marquant le début de ce que l’on désigne communément sous le nom de Révolution verte). Ces vingt dernières années ont été témoins d’une situation nouvelle, qui a vu déferler une vague agressive de lois semencières, souvent au nom du « libre-échange », avec comme objectif de stopper la quasi-totalité des activités menées par les agriculteurs avec leurs semences.

Les paysans qui reproduisent et échangent leurs semences au sein de leur propre communauté ou avec les communautés voisines n’ont pas besoin de lois. Les droits collectifs d’usage des semences communes, souvent oraux, établis et respectés au sein de chaque communauté, suffisent amplement pour réguler leurs activités. Mais lorsque les semences sont commercialisées à grande échelle par des entreprises qui les ont produites on ne sait où ni comment, souvent au delà des frontières nationales, des règles deviennent nécessaires pour lutter contre les fraudes, les malfaçons, les semences de mauvaises qualités qui ne germent pas ou transportent des maladies, et désormais aussi contre les OGM. Les règles sont aussi nécessaires pour protéger les semences locales et les systèmes sociaux et culturels qui garantissent la survie des systèmes alimentaires choisis par les peuples. Ces lois de « répression des fraudes commerciales » et de protection de la souveraineté alimentaire sont des conquêtes paysannes. Malheureusement, dès que la pression des mobilisations paysannes et populaires faiblit, la plupart d’entre elles sont réécrites par l’industrie pour promouvoir ses propres semences « améliorées » et interdire les semences paysannes.

Par « législation semencière », on entend souvent les règles de propriété intellectuelle telles que les lois sur les brevets ou la législation sur la protection des obtentions végétales. Cependant, il existe de nombreuses autres lois applicables aux semences, notamment celles qui régissent le commerce et l’investissement, les réglementations phytosanitaires, la certification et les dénommées « bonnes pratiques agricoles » liées à la commercialisation ou les règles dites de biosécurité (voir Nouvelles lois sur la commercialisation des semences en Afrique). D’une manière générale, ces lois décrètent souvent les semences paysannes illégales, les qualifient d’inadaptées et les considèrent comme une source de risque à éliminer.

Ces nouvelles lois semencières reflètent le pouvoir croissant de l’industrie agro-alimentaire. Jusqu’aux années 70, de nouveaux types de variétés de cultures ont été développés et distribués par des entreprises publiques, de petites maisons des semences et des stations publiques de recherche. Dès lors, on a assisté à une prise de contrôle massive par les grandes entreprises des plus petites et à l’effacement des programmes publics devant le secteur privé. Aujourd’hui, 10 entreprises, à elles seules, détiennent 55 % du marché mondial des semences. Et le pouvoir de lobbying de ces géants –Monsanto, Dow ou Syngenta, pour n’en citer que quelques-uns – est très important. Ainsi, ces grands groupes sont parvenus à imposer des mesures restrictives leur accordant un monopole.

Les accords de commerce et d’investissement représentent une arme de choix pour imposer ces législations semencières là où il n’en existait pas auparavant ou pour rendre celles existantes encore plus favorables aux entreprises transnationales. L’objectif ultime est clair : empêcher les paysans de conserver leurs semences afin de les obliger à acheter celles de l’industrie. Et, au passage, faire en sorte que les gouvernements se désengagent de la sélection et de la production de semences. En Afrique, les semences paysannes représentent 80 à 90 % des semences plantées chaque saison. En Asie et en Amérique latine, ce pourcentage oscille entre 70 à 80 %. Du point de vue d’un PDG d’entreprise du secteur de l’agro-alimentaire, il y a là un énorme marché à créer et à saisir. Même en Europe, où les semences industrielles dominent déjà l’agriculture, les entreprises continuent d’insister sur le renforcement de l’application des réglementations existantes afin d’éliminer les poches de résistance et de restreindre les possibilités qui s’offrent aux agriculteurs de réutiliser les semences industrielles. S’il est vrai que toutes les lois ne sont pas appliquées, chaque fois qu’elles l’ont été, le résultat s’est avéré très répressif : les semences paysannes ont été confisquées et détruites, les paysans ont été placés sous surveillance et pris pour cible. Certains ont même été exposés à des poursuites pénales et à des peines d’emprisonnement pour le seul fait d’avoir continué leur travail au sein des systèmes paysans et d’avoir utilisé leurs propres semences.

Dans le même temps, presque partout autour de nous, le pouvoir de l’industrie est aussi remis en question. La contestation de ce pouvoir prend des formes différentes, telles que l’organisation de mobilisations de masse, l’opposition à la propagande trompeuse qui tente de faire croire que ces lois semencières sont nécessaires ou servent l’intérêt de la population, l’organisation d’actions médiatiques, d’actions éducatives dans les écoles et les lieux de culte, le théâtre de rue, la désobéissance civile contre les lois injustes.L’acte le plus important reste le travail quotidien qui perpétue le développement des systèmes agricoles paysans, à petite échelle. Ces systèmes englobent non seulement les semences et les races locales ou autochtones, mais aussi les terres, territoires et les cultures et modes de vie des populations rurales. L’expérience montre que, lorsque ce contre-pouvoir qui défend les semences paysannes est puissant, les autres formes de protestation dans l’enceinte des tribunaux ou des parlements peuvent forcer à suspendre les mauvaises lois ou à les remettre en question. Compte tenu du pouvoir et des intérêts en jeu, la lutte contre ces lois semencières ne se livrera pas en une seule bataille. Il s’agit en effet d’une lutte permanente plus globale, devant être menée en défense de l’agriculture paysanne et de la souveraineté alimentaire.

Les pages suivantes présentent un aperçu de cette mosaïque de luttes.

Types de législations semencières promues par l’industrie

Les lois relatives à la commercialisation constituent le type de réglementation le plus ancien et le plus répandu affectant les semences. Elles définissent les critères que ces dernières doivent remplir afin de pouvoir être commercialisées sur le marché. Elles sont ainsi souvent justifiées comme étant un moyen de protéger les producteurs. Ces derniers, en leur qualité de consommateurs de semences, sont ainsi assurés de ne recevoir que des semences satisfaisantes – aussi bien en termes de qualité physique (taux de germination, pureté, etc.) que de variété (potentiel génétique) Mais quels sont les critères utilisés ? Dans les pays qui ont adopté le système du catalogue obligatoire, les semences ne peuvent être commercialisées que si elles appartiennent à une variété définie selon trois exigences fondamentales : elles doivent être « distinctes », « homogènes » et « stables » (DHS). Ceci signifie que toutes les plantes cultivées à partir d’un lot de semences seront différentes de celles appartenant à d’autres variétés, identiques entre elles et que leurs caractéristiques ne seront pas modifiées avec le temps. Les variétés paysannes ne remplissent pas ces critères, car elles sont diverses et instables. Les lois de commercialisation exigent généralement aussi que la variété cultivée présente une « valeur ajoutée » aux variétés déjà existantes, ce qui renvoie généralement au rendement de monocultures dépendant d’une importante utilisation d’engrais chimiques. Un autre problème est lié à la définition du terme « commercialisation ». Dans la législation semencière de nombreux pays, la commercialisation ne se limite pas aux ventes monétaires. Elle peut inclure l’échange, le troc, voire la cession de semences au sein de réseaux, ou tout simplement le don de semences.

Les lois sur la propriété intellectuelle appliquées aux semences sont des réglementations reconnaissant un individu ou une entité – la plupart du temps une entreprise semencière – comme le détenteur exclusif de semences d’une qualité particulière. Le détenteur dispose alors d’un droit légal d’empêcher des tiers d’utiliser, de produire, d’échanger ou de vendre les dites semences. L’objectif visé est d’accorder aux entreprises un monopole temporaire afin de leur permettre d’obtenir un retour sur leur investissement sans être confrontées à la concurrence. Mais cela engendre d’énormes problèmes.

Il existe deux principaux types de systèmes de « propriété intellectuelle » pour les semences : les brevets et la protection des obtentions végétales (POV). Les États-Unis ont commencé à autoriser les brevets sur les plantes dans les années 30, lorsque les obtenteurs de variétés de fleurs commencèrent à exiger une sorte de droit d’auteur sur leurs « créations » – ils entendaient ainsi empêcher des tiers de les « voler » et de faire de l’argent à partir de leurs fleurs. Les brevets sur les plantes constituent des droits très puissants, selon lesquels nul n’est en droit de produire, reproduire, échanger, vendre et même utiliser les plantes brevetées pour la recherche sans l’autorisation du détenteur. Pour pouvoir utiliser des semences brevetées, les agriculteurs doivent rémunérer le détenteur du brevet. Les paysans achetant des semences brevetées sont aussi tenus de satisfaire à une série de conditions : ils s’engagent à ne pas ressemer les semences issues de leurs récoltes lors de la saison suivante, à ne pas réaliser d’essais sur ces semences, à ne pas les vendre et à ne pas les donner. Le géant Monsanto demande même aux paysans d’espionner leurs voisins et de signaler à la police toute personne se prêtant à ces pratiques avec des « semences Monsanto ». À l’heure actuelle, le brevet est la norme pour les OGM.

La protection des obtentions végétales est un type de brevet développé en Europe à l’intention spécifique des obtenteurs. Elle est assortie des mêmes critères DHS que ceux exigés pour le catalogue et octroie des pouvoirs à l’origine moins extrêmes que ceux du brevet. En 1961, les pays européens créèrent l’Union internationale pour la protection des obtentions végétales (UPOV), chargée d’harmoniser les règles existant en la matière par le biais de la Convention de l’UPOV, qui, depuis, a été révisée à plusieurs reprises. L’UPOV permet aux obtenteurs d’empêcher des tiers de produire des semences de leurs variétés destinées à être commercialisées et de les commercialiser eux-mêmes. D’autres obtenteurs peuvent également utiliser le matériel protégé pour des programmes de sélection. Durant les premières décennies de l’existence de la convention, les agriculteurs étaient encore libres de conserver et de ressemer leurs propres semences de variétés protégées. Cependant, avec la révision de la convention, en 1991 (UPOV 91), la protection des obtentions végétales s’étend à la production agricole de la variété, à la récolte et au produit de la récolte. En vertu de l’UPOV 91, les paysans ne sont plus autorisés à réutiliser les semences de variétés privatisées, sauf en de rares exceptions et moyennant paiement. Si les paysans enfreignent ces réglementations ou s’ils sont soupçonnés de les enfreindre, cela peut entraîner la fouille de leur maison sans mandat, la saisie et la destruction de leur récolte et des produits issus de leur récolte et une peine d’emprisonnement de plusieurs années. L’UPOV 91 permet aux entreprises de privatiser les semences paysannes et facilite l’interdiction de l’utilisation des variétés locales.

Les accords de commerce et d’investissement constituent un outil utilisé par les entreprises pour forcer les gouvernements à adopter et à promouvoir les droits des entreprises sur les semences. Par exemple, la quasi-totalité des pays du monde sont membres de l’Organisation mondiale du commerce (OMC), laquelle dispose d’un accord sur les aspects des droits de propriété intellectuelle qui touchent au commerce (ADPIC). Cet accord exige des pays qu’ils assurent, d’une manière ou d’une autre, la protection des obtentions végétales, sous peine de sanctions commerciales. De nombreux pays ont été forcés à adhérer à l’UPOV 91 – par le biais des accords de libre-échange bilatéraux, de l’aide au développement, etc.

Les accords commerciaux tels que ceux entrant dans le cadre de l’OMC ou les ALE ont également défini des règles de marché censées interdire la discrimination, mais qui donnent en réalité aux entreprises de l’agro-alimentaire un accès privilégié à certains marchés. En vertu de ces accords, les gouvernements risquent de ne plus être autorisés à mettre en œuvre des marchés publics prévoyant que les pouvoirs publics se procurent des semences auprès des agriculteurs de la région. La logique derrière cela est que l’exigence d’un approvisionnement local désavantage d’un point de vue commercial les entreprises transnationales et les empêchent d’entrer en concurrence. Ces conditions injustes donnent la préférence aux entreprises, plutôt qu’au bien-être des agriculteurs ou des consommateurs.

Les traités d’investissement bilatéraux, promus par des pays tels les États-Unis et l’Union européenne, sont également assortis d’une règle qualifiant la propriété intellectuelle sur les semences comme une forme d’investissement étranger qui doit être protégé, à l’instar d’un puits de pétrole ou d’une usine de fabrication automobile. Si lesdits investissements font l’objet d’une expropriation ou d’une nationalisation, ou si les bénéfices qui en sont escomptés sont affectés, un semencier des États-Unis ou d’Europe peut alors poursuivre en justice le pays responsable devant un tribunal international (via le mécanisme de règlement des différends entre investisseurs et États).

Les législations phytosanitaire et sur la biosécurité peuvent, elles aussi, limiter la liberté des agriculteurs à utiliser et à disposer de leurs semences. Elles visent toutes deux à prévenir les risques sanitaires ou environnementaux pouvant être liés aux semences, y compris à la contamination par les OGM, et peuvent donc revêtir une utilité. Les règlements phytosanitaires, par exemple, visent à empêcher la propagation de maladies au travers de semences lorsque ces dernières sont produites dans un endroit et exportées vers un autre. Or, le problème est que, dans la pratique, ceci est souvent utilisé pour protéger les intérêts de l’industrie. Par exemple, les échanges de faibles quantités de semences entre paysans sont parfois interdits, ou les semences de ces derniers peuvent être confisquées et détruites car elles sont tenues de respecter les mêmes normes que les entreprises multinationales. Pourtant, l’export de grandes quantités de semences vers des destinations bien plus lointaines fait augmenter la probabilité de propager des maladies. Pourtant, plus les quantités de semences exportées sont importantes et plus lointaine est leur destination, plus le risque de propagation de maladie augmente. En vertu de ces lois, les semences paysannes peuvent finir par être considérées comme représentant un risque ou un danger potentiel, tandis que celles de l’industrie sont encensées comme étant les plus sûres, alors même qu’elles participent grandement à la propagation des maladies et à la contamination.

De la même manière, les législations sur la biosécurité produisent souvent un effet contraire à celui escompté. Au lieu d’ériger des barrières empêchant l’entrée et la propagation des OGM (lesquels, en raison de leur nature même, représentent un danger), elles créent seulement un cadre juridique pour gérer les risques, ce qui facilite l’acceptation et la propagation des semences transgéniques. Ces législations établissent souvent les procédures formelles applicables à la plantation d’OGM, et donnent lieu à des normes rendant ces pratiques légales, bien qu’elles ne soient pas pour autant gages d’une plus grande sécurité. Elles peuvent aussi forcer les paysans qui ne veulent pas d’OGM et produisent leurs propres semences à les analyser pour garantir l’absence d’OGM, ce qu’ils ne peuvent évidemment pas faire et les contraints donc à acheter les semences OGM de l’industrie. Dans d’autres cas, ces législations facilitent l’importation ou l’exportation de cultures génétiquement modifiées vers des pays qui disposent des mécanismes juridiques nécessaires pour surveiller les cultures. Dans d’autres cas encore, comme en Europe, il existe de bonnes lois en matière de biosécurité qui prévoient des mesures de prévention empêchant la culture ou l’importation d’OGM, mais qui sont en butte à des critiques de l’industrie semencière qui y voit des entraves au commerce.

Il convient de noter que les agences onusiennes telles que l’Organisation des Nations Unies pour l’alimentation et l’agriculture, la Conférence des Nations Unies sur le commerce et le développement ou l’Organisation mondiale de la propriété intellectuelle sont aujourd’hui de farouches partisans de toutes ces législations. Elles rédigent des projets types de lois et forment les gouvernements à leur mise en œuvre.

Just one Nuclear Bomb could destroy the United Kingdom – with or without Trident.  Israel has up to 400 such WMD including nuclear-armed SLCMs now submerged under the Mediterrarean.

A vote for Cameron is a vote for the continuance of Israeli aggression and itsthreat to global peace as the world’s only undeclared nuclear weapons state with a stockpile of WMD that is outside the inspection of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of the United Nations.

Without the threat of Israel’s massive nuclear arsenal, there would be no need for an Iranian nuclear program – it would be unnecessary. The only solution now is a UN-declared Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, (NWFZ) to include both states which will require a formal inspection, by the IAEA, of Israel’s underground nuclear arsenal in the Negev desert, together with its total dismantling under UN supervision. Only then will Europe and the world, breathe easier.

In addition, the British government needs to reinstate the law on ‘universal jurisdiction’ that previously allowed for the prosecution of any foreign citizenalleged to have engaged in crimes against humanity – if arrested on British soil. That law was revoked by a foreign secretary of the Cameron government who unashamedly capitulated to the strident demands of the CFI lobby and Binyamin Netanyahu. An act of political cowardice and appeasement by a British Secretary of State that will not be soon forgotten.

Israel, of course, still refuses to be a party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to which nearly the entire world is a signatory nor will it submit its huge Dimona nuclear facility to international controls under IAEA jurisdiction. 

The cause of this uniquely dangerous policy of so-called ‘nuclear ambiguity’ is aclandestine pact between successive U.S. administrations and the powerful Zionist lobby in Washington. This covert arrangement is never discussed in public but has been, and is, instrumental in allowing the State of Israel to exert a military and economic pressure on both the EU and NATO.  This pressure now effectively dominates US foreign policy as can be seen from Mr Netanyahu’s unprecedented recent demonstration of Israeli power over the U.S. House of Representatives.

If you want to be a British bulldog that will bite, then vote Labour but if you want Britain to be just a lobby-controlled American lapdog then vote Cameron and watch as Britain becomes increasingly insignificant both within Europe and around the world – economically, militarily, politically and diplomatically.

That would, of course, be a tragedy for the United Kingdom to be subordinated to an American congress paid by, and beholden to, a powerful, non-elected, political lobby acting for a non-European state. A strong labour government would ensure that Britain is not a submissive party to American political lobbyists of any stripe.

The Conservative-Republican scenario is anathema to the long and proud British tradition of a nation state with an unequalled history of independence,justice and freedom of the individual. It’s called democracy – not, as in the United States Republican congress, in which there is an accepted process whereby votes are openly bought with casino-generated cash.

© EUnewsdesk London April 2015

Israel’s ban on the visit of a South African cabinet minister to the occupied West Bank has stirred up a diplomatic row and given a boost to the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign.

Shortly before higher education minister Blade Nzimande was due to lead a delegation to visit Birzeit University near Ramallah and discuss academic cooperation with the Palestinian Authority, the Israeli embassy in Pretoria denied him a visa.

“The Israeli government is trying by all means to hide their atrocities against the Palestinian people, and minimize the number of people who can actually see what is happening on the ground,” Nzimande told South Africa’s Independent Media on Thursday.

A spokesperson for South Africa’s Ministry of Higher Education said Israel denied Nzimande a visa because he was “one of the most vocal anti-Israeli government ministers.”

The incident was a “serious diplomatic problem,” the spokesperson added.

Academic boycott

In response, Nzimande is urging all South African universities and colleges to cut their ties with Israeli academic institutions, according to Independent Media.

Israel tries “to subvert academic freedom, which cannot be tolerated,” Nzimande added.

 
Over the past few years, the South African government, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and its partner the South African Communist Party (of which Nzimande is secretary-general) have intensified their pressure on Israel.

The ANC adopted the Palestinian call for BDS as official policy in 2012.

The government also decided that products from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are illegal under international law, should be labeled as originating from “Israeli-occupied territories” rather than “Made in Israel.”

Deputy international relations minister Ebrahim Ebrahim has also discouraged South Africans from visiting Israel “because of the treatment and policies of Israel towards the Palestinian people.”

Recently, several government officials, including Nzimande, publicly expressed their support for the campaign against retail giant Woolworths over its sales of products from Israel.

“Worse than South African apartheid”

Nzimande’s support for the Palestinian struggle is not rooted only in the common experiences of Black South Africans and Palestinians resisting colonizers. The minister witnessed the impact of the occupation on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip first hand in 2002, during the second intifada.

“In many respects I felt that Israeli apartheid is worse than South African apartheid,” Nzimande recalled in a public forum last August during Israel’s assault on Gaza that left more than 2,200 Palestinians dead (see video at the top of this post).

Speaking alongside Israeli historian Ilan Pappe and South African anti-apartheid veteranFarid Esack, Nzimande added: “We are outraged as the South African Communist Party and the government in particular at the continuous vicious campaign waged by the State of Israel on the Palestinian people who have clearly been massacred for the crime of demanding the return of their land and self-determination.”

Nzimande also urged that South Africa recall its ambassador from Tel Aviv and expel Israel’s envoy from Pretoria.

Meanwhile, a broad South African coalition for Palestine, uniting political parties, trade unions, solidarity groups, student bodies and faith organizations, continues to advocate for boycott, divestment and sanctions.

The termination of contracts by twenty South African businesses with prison and security profiteer G4S over its role in Israeli prisons and human rights abuses is their latest success.

Nzimande’s call on South African universities to cut their ties with Israeli academic institutions certainly gives the campaign a major boost.

Every once in a while it is good to go back to basics.  We have looked at the topic of whether gold even matters several times in the past.  Charles Hugh Smith undertook the exercise of “re hypothecation” process last week and can be read here, http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-rehypothecation-of-gold-and-why-it.html. He ends this article with a common sense question that asks “if gold is such a useless relic then why don’t they just charge the public for tours to see the gold in Ft. Knox? What’s the danger?”.

Actor after actor has been paraded forth to tell the public, “gold is a useless and barbaric relic.”  We are told daily “it doesn’t pay any interest, it costs money to store it, you can’t eat it and Walmart won’t take it.  It’s pretty for jewelry but that’s about it”.  I ask the questions, why then do central banks bother to hold gold?  Why the secrecy of our own gold holdings?  We are told that no audit can or will take place because it would cost too much?  Why not sell a few of the “useless bars” to pay for the audit?

The answers of course are all so obvious.  Gold is badmouthed because it is the direct competitor of the U.S. dollar.  We haven’t had an audit because the numbers would not match up and it would be discovered we do not have the gold we claim(ed) to have.  Put simply, the “danger” is the U.S. will be discovered as a fraud, a thief and a liar if an audit took place.  This is why we are bombarded daily with negative psyops regarding gold and why for the last couple of years the price suppression has been so openly blatant and fierce.  It is ALL about the dollar and the privilege of issuing the reserve currency, namely the U.S. ability to hang on to this privilege.

The above is “U.S. centric”, the view or perception is far different in the rest of the world.  China and Russia are openly buying gold for their coffers.  They even encourage their citizens to buy gold for themselves.  The Indians even smuggle gold into their country while being discouraged by a pro U.S. government.  My point is this, the rest of the world knows what gold really is, it is money.  I would even say many Western governments understand the game as proven by their requests to repatriate gold from N.Y. vaults, “trust” is waning.

You see, gold is “trust” itself.  Gold is not “issued” by any country,  the reality is, any country who has gold is seen to have “wealth”.  Ask yourself this question, which is more important, whether the U.S. considers gold to be wealth or whether the rest of the world does?  I have been asked the question “what if the U.S. decides to outlaw gold and make it illegal to own”?  THIS is why you should own some or even the majority of your metal OUTSIDE of the U.S..  The rest of the world clearly views gold as valuable, you would have wealth outside where this wealth could either remain or be brought back in the form of another currency.

It should be clear to you by now that power is moving away from the U.S.  “Trust” is also moving away from the U.S., this is evidenced by the various actions of nations over the last several years, an alternative clearing system to SWIFT, currency hubs, the AIIB and other banking systems… AND their buildup of gold reserves.  All of these measures have progressed as the U.S. has lost more and more trust.  The world sees the U.S. in a very poor light for what we do and how we act.  They no longer see us as a “model citizen” who follows the rule of law and will “call us” on this shortly.

As I have said previously, the “we’ll show you our gold and we demand to see yours” moment is close at hand.  What exactly do you think will happen in this event?  Can the U.S. get by with “trust us, the gold is there”?  Can an audit demanded by the rest of the world be denied?  And what if an audit is done and the U.S. turns out to have less than 1,000 tons and a bunch of custodial gold is missing?

Back to the top and the title, does gold really matter?  I guess I can answer this with another question, “does trust really matter”?  “Trust” matters in everything we do, from daily life to financial affairs.  Trade depends entirely on trust and living standards depend on trade.  The endgame of the Bretton Woods agreement is upon us because the leader, the U.S., has done so many dirty deals, twisted so many arms and abrogates the rule of law at will.

I believe the defining moment will be when either China formally applies for inclusion into the SDR  or, when they outright announce what their gold holdings are. If China does apply for SDR inclusion, as I understand it they will need to provide audited figures for their gold holdings.

They are a very polite and proper people but not the third world fools our press would have you believe.  The intelligent move on their part would be to ask for an audit of the others included in the SDR.

By requesting an audit of “all” they would be asking for an audit of Britain and of course the U.S..  They know full well these audits will not add up because they know they have purchased more gold than has been produced, it had to come from “someone’s vault”.  In my opinion, this is the most likely way to “politely” expose the issuer of the world’s reserve currency as fraudulently abusing their power. Gold really does matter to the rest of the world which means when all is said and done, it will also matter in the U.S. whether we like it or not!

Why in the world has JP Morgan accumulated more than 55 millionounces of physical silver?  Since early 2012, JP Morgan’s stockpile has grown from less than 5 millionounces of physical silver to more than 55 million ounces of physical silver.  Clearly, someone over at JP Morgan is convinced that physical silver is a great investment.  But in recent times, the price of silver has actually fallen quite a bit.  As I write this, it is sitting at the ridiculously low price of $15.66 an ounce.  So up to this point, JP Morgan’s investment in silver has definitely not paid off.  But it will pay off in a big way if we will soon be entering a time of great financial turmoil.

During a time of crisis, investors tend to flood into physical gold and silver.  And as I mentioned just recently, JPMorgan Chase chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon recently stated that “there will be another crisis”in a letter to shareholders…

Some things never change — there will be another crisis, and its impact will be felt by the financial market.

The trigger to the next crisis will not be the same as the trigger to the last one – but there will be another crisis. Triggering events could be geopolitical (the 1973 Middle East crisis), a recession where the Fed rapidly increases interest rates (the 1980-1982 recession), a commodities price collapse (oil in the late 1980s), the commercial real estate crisis (in the early 1990s), the Asian crisis (in 1997), so-called “bubbles” (the 2000 Internet bubble and the 2008 mortgage/housing bubble), etc. While the past crises had different roots (you could spend a lot of time arguing the degree to which geopolitical, economic or purely financial factors caused each crisis), they generally had a strong effect across the financial markets

And Dimon is apparently putting his money where his mouth is.

If Dimon believes that another great crisis is coming, then it would make logical sense to stockpile huge amounts of precious metals.  And in particular, silver is a tremendous bargain for a variety of reasons.  Personally, I like gold, but I absolutely love silver – especially at the price it is at right now.

Over the past few years, JP Morgan has been voraciously buying up physical silver.  Nobody has ever seen anything quite like this ever before.  In fact, JP Morgan has added more than 8 million ounces of physical silver during the past couple of weeks alone.  The following is an extended excerpt from a recent article by Mac Slavo…

*****

According to a detailed report from The Wealth Watchman JP Morgan Chase has been amassing a huge stockpile of physical silver, presumably in anticipation of a major liquidity event.

They’re baaaaack. Yes, “old faithful” is back at it again!

Of course, they never really left silver, and have been rigging it non-stop in the futures market, but for awhile there, there were at least no admissions of newly-stacked silver being made in their Comex warehousing facilities.

Yet, after a 16 month period of “dormancy” within their Comex warehouse vaults, these guys have returned with a vengeance.

In fact, our old buddies at JP Morgan Chase, not only see value in silver here, but they’re currently standing for delivery in their own house account in such strong numbers, that it commands our attention.  Let me show you what I mean.

Here’s a breakdown of the Comex’s most recent silver deliveries to JP Morgan:

April 7th: 1,110,000 ounces

April 8th: 1,280,000 ounces

April 9th:  893,037 ounces

April 10th: 1,200,224 ounces

April 14th: 1,073,000 ounces

April 15th: 1,191,275 ounces

April 16th: 1,183,777.295 ounces

This is a huge bout of deliveries in such a short space of time. In fact, within the realm of Comex world, it’s such an exceptionally large amount, that it even creates quite a spike on the long-term chart of JP Morgan’s vault stockpile:

All in all, JP Morgan has added over 8.3 million ounces of additional silver in just the past 2 weeks alone.

 Full report at The Wealth Watchman (via Steve Quayle and Realist News)

*****

So why is JP Morgan doing this?

Do they know something that the rest of us do not?

Meanwhile, JP Morgan Chase has made another very curious move as well.  It is being reported that the bank is “restricting the use of cash” in some markets, and has even gone so far as to “prohibit the storage of cash in safe deposit boxes”…

What is a surprise is how little notice the rollout of Chase’s new policy has received.  As of March, Chase began restricting the use of cash in selected markets, including  Greater Cleveland.  The new policy restricts borrowers from using cash to make payments on credit cards, mortgages, equity lines, and  auto loans.  Chase even goes as far as to prohibit the storage of cash in its safe deposit boxes .  In a letter to its customers dated April 1, 2015 pertaining to its “Updated Safe Deposit Box Lease Agreement,”  one of the highlighted items reads:  “You agree not to store any cash or coins other than those found to have a collectible value.”  Whether or not this pertains to gold and silver coins with no numismatic value is not explained.

What in the world is that all about?

Why is JP Morgan suddenly so negative about cash?

I think that there is a whole lot more going on behind the scenes than we are being told.

JP Morgan Chase is the largest of the six “too big to fail” banks in the United States.  The total amount of assets that JP Morgan Chase controls is roughly equal to the GDP of the entire British economy.  This is an institution that is immensely powerful and that has very deep ties to the U.S. government.

Could it be possible that JP Morgan Chase is anticipating another great economic crisis?

We are definitely due for one.  Just consider the following chart from Zero Hedge.  It postulates that our financial system is ready for another “7.5 year itch”…

JP Morgan certainly seems to be preparing for a worst case scenario.

What about you?

Are you getting ready for what is coming?

The TTIP and TPPA, both sounding like ominous injections of political disaster, continue their march towards belittling, and corroding the democratic content of its participating countries.  The holder of the needle remains US President Barack Obama, while the incentive is that grand fantasy that the more parties cooperate, the merrier will be the international scene when it comes to making money in a “tariff-free world”, a World without borders.  Negotiate, in other words, with “like-minded” partners, and your limited leverage becomes far more significant.

In this regard, the US Congress has proven a funny old thing.  Having made such a fuss about the issue of any nuclear deal with Iran and its necessary involvement, it has proven less enthusiastic about meddling in the matter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, or economic instruments with vast consequence.  This is one of the centrepieces of Obama’s policy, central to his “shift” towards the Asia-Pacific and containing the increasing shine of Chinese development.

Nor is the equivalent agreement covering Europe, known as the Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership, is not proving as big a bother as it should. The GOP members have not been opposed to Obama in one key aspect: that he remains the classic lobbyist on the issue that America’s business has always been business.

Last Thursday saw the Ways and Means Committee pass a bill by 25-13 that would actually accelerate trade deals, effectively curbing Congressional power to amend them.  That vision stemmed largely from the work of such figures as Senate Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).  Debate in the chamber would be restricted, leading, instead, to mere “yes-or-no votes”.[1]  Effects of trade, it seems, is something exclusively reserved to the wisdom of the executive.

The Democrats on the panel expressed considerable disquiet while the GOP Committee chairman Paul Ryan found himself musing about defending the president against his own party’s grumbling.  In a far cry from President Woodrow Wilson’s notion of open covenants expressed near the end of the First World War, the Obama administration has shown that it can do secrecy rather well, thank you very much.

This has been replicated in the entire TPPA process.  As a sample letter from the TPP’s lead negotiator from New Zealand, Mark Sinclair, reveals,

“all participants agree that the negotiating texts, proposals of each Government, accompanying explanatory material, emails relating to the substance of the negotiations, and other information exchanged in the context of the negotiations is provided and will be held in confidence, unless each participant involved in a communication subsequently agrees to its release.”[2]

The club of confidence is small relative to the influence of the agreement.  Only government officials or “persons outside government who participate in the government’s domestic consultation process and who have a need to review or be advised of the information in these governments” can receive the relevant material.

This has provoked a response from Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).

“As a result of your administration’s decision,” argue Senators Warren and Brown in a letter to the President, “it is currently illegal for the press, experts, advocates, or the general public to review the text of the agreement.”

The President has rebuked some members of his party for the stance, suggesting that there is nothing “secret” about the contents of the document, which will advance a sound labour-rights agenda while also protecting the environment.  Members of Congress with security clearance are perfectly entitled to consult it.  They just can’t spill the beans to the press or other parties.

The disgruntled senators also note the contributions to the document – one shaped by the involvement of 28 advisory committees, 85 per cent of whose members hail from industry and corporate lobbies.  “Before Congress votes to facilitate the adoption of the TPP, the American people should be allowed to see for themselves whether it’s a good deal for them.”  The onus here is on the administration to disclose rather than conceal.  “The American people should be allowed to weigh in on the facts of the TPP before Members of Congress are asked to voluntarily reduce our ability to amend, shape or block any trade deal.”

A closer look behind the TPPA does not merely show that the authority of Congress is actually being snipped. It shows a global assault on a host of institutions in other countries, whose political representatives have become the middlemen and women of surrendering sovereignty to the unelected boardroom.

Brown and Warren are incorrect on one point.  The contents of the TPPA are not entirely “secret”. For those caring to read the draft stages, chapters on intellectual property and the environment have been available on the WikiLeaks site.[3]  They show, not merely reservations and concerns about the overreach of the corporate sector, but a diminishing of an assortment of rights in the name of corporate interests.  Medicine and the environment come in for a battering.

The largest bone of contention remains the investor-state-dispute settlement provision.  This overly generous provision gifts foreign companies the means of suing the US government over lost profits for policies against their market interests. This absurd measure has been seen at work in other countries whose governments have been sufficiently daft to insert such a provision into a trade deal – witness Australia and the issue of plain packaging for cigarettes.[4]  The short of it is that there is nothing free at all about such free trade deals.  Hobbled democracy is here to stay.

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

Garry Trudeau, the creator of the Doonesbury comic strip, has come under attack from right-wing editorialists and media pundits for publicly criticizing anti-Muslim cartoons appearing in the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, calling them a form of hate speech.

Trudeau’s brief remarks were delivered at Long Island University April 10, where he received the George Polk Career Award for his more than four decades of work as a cartoonist, in the course of which he has frequently had to battle censorship of his outspoken liberal views. Only three years ago, 50 newspapers refused to carry his strip during a week when he bitingly attacked Republican politicians who oppose abortion rights even in the case of rape or incest.

The central point made by Trudeau is that Charlie Hebdo was engaged, not in satirizing the powerful, but in vilifying the most oppressed section of the French population, Muslim immigrants, who face the highest levels of unemployment, poverty, police harassment and imprisonment.

Trudeau was of course horrified by the bloody massacre in January at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, when an attack by two Islamist gunmen left 12 people dead, include most of the magazine’s senior cartoonists. He contributed to an online tribute to the murdered cartoonists. His refusal to go along with the retrospective glorification of the content of the cartoons, despite the enormous wave of media propaganda that has followed, is an act of intellectual and moral courage.

For that very reason, his statement has been vilified as an attack on the victims of terrorism, in a series of columns by right-wing pundits, including David Frum of The Atlantic, Cathy Young of Reason magazine, and Ross Douthat of the New York Times.

Frum made the most sweeping attack, citing the killings at Charlie Hebdo, the related attack on a kosher bakery in Paris, and a subsequent attack in Copenhagen, Denmark, and declaring, “For this long record of death and destruction—and for many other deaths as well—Garry Trudeau blamed the people who drew and published the offending cartoons.”

The right-wing pundit claims that Trudeau applied “privilege theory” to the Charlie Hebdo massacre, justifying it because the victims were from the white elite, while the gunmen were from the immigrant Muslim underclass. “To fix the blame for the killing on the murdered journalists, rather than the gunmen, Trudeau invoked the underdog status of the latter,” Frum writes.

He goes on to claim that news organizations in the United States that reported on the anti-Islam cartoons in Charlie Hebdo did not reprint them because they were afraid of terrorist attack, drawing the conclusion, “Violence does work.”

Trudeau offered a different explanation for the non-publication of the anti-Muslim cartoons in an interview Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” where he addressed the right-wing attack on his Long Island University remarks. US editors did not reprint the cartoons because they were demeaning and racist, he maintained. If similar cartoons had targeted African-Americans, they would be universally denounced and repudiated.

Douthat and Young both cite Frum’s column approvingly in their own shorter diatribes, echoing his claim that Trudeau had based his remarks on an extreme version of identity politics. These criticisms are baseless slanders, as can be easily demonstrated by looking at what Trudeau actually said. The cartoonist cited the example of the great satirists of the French Enlightenment.

“Traditionally, satire has comforted the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable. Satire punches up, against authority of all kinds, the little guy against the powerful. Great French satirists such as Molière and Daumier always punched up, holding up the self-satisfied and hypocritical to ridicule. Ridiculing the non-privileged is almost never funny—it’s just mean.

“By punching downward, by attacking a powerless, disenfranchised minority with crude, vulgar drawings closer to graffiti than cartoons, Charlie wandered into the realm of hate speech…”

The same issue was raised in a perspective published on the World Socialist Web Site immediately after the attack on Charlie Hebdo. WSWS Chairman David North rejected the claim by British historian Simon Schama that the French magazine was in the tradition of the great satirists of the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, writing:

Schama places Charlie Hebdo in a tradition to which it does not belong. All the great satirists to whom Schama refers were representatives of a democratic Enlightenment who directed their scorn against the powerful and corrupt defenders of aristocratic privilege. In its relentlessly degrading portrayals of Muslims, Charlie Hebdo has mocked the poor and the powerless.

North explained that the orgy of praise for Charlie Hebdo, summed up in the slogan “I am Charlie,” raised at demonstrations in Paris, was an effort to provide an ideological justification for US and French imperialism:

The killing of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and editors is being proclaimed an assault on the principles of free speech that are, supposedly, held so dear in Europe and the United States. The attack on Charlie Hebdo is, thus, presented as another outrage by Muslims who cannot tolerate Western “freedoms.” From this the conclusion must be drawn that the “war on terror”—i.e., the imperialist onslaught on the Middle East, Central Asia and North and Central Africa—is an unavoidable necessity.

These efforts are doubly hypocritical, given the onslaught on democratic rights, including freedom of the press, in all the Western countries, especially the United States. The Obama administration has targeted more journalists for surveillance and more whistleblowers for prosecution than any other in US history, singling out those who have played major roles in exposing the crimes of the US government, like Bradley (Chelsea) Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange.

Trudeau is not an avowed opponent of imperialism, but rather a liberal who apparently supports the Obama administration, albeit with some disappointment. That does not detract from the principled character of his public repudiation of the right-wing efforts to whip up anti-Muslim prejudice.

Betty McCray was recently elected to the office of Mayor in the St. Louis County city of Kinloch. But in spite of the fact that the St. Louis County Board of Elections have certified the election results, the local police turned out by the dozen to block her from entering City Hall and beginning her work as mayor.

Nearly two dozen police officers greeted McCray on her first day of work, as she tried to enter City Hall.

Political opponents met her at the door and wrongly told her that she had been “impeached” before even taking the job. But that’s simply not true.

Mayor McCray has not been impeached and she won the April 7th election. But police were there in what seems to be a small town coup of sorts, enforcing an illegal bar on the newly-elected mayor and preventing her from taking office.

“I won. The people spoke,” McCray explained. “I was sworn in by St. Louis County. Today I take office. I want them out, I want the keys.”

Local Fox 2 reports that “after election results were certified earlier this week by the St. Louis County Board of Elections, Kinloch’s outgoing administration refused to allow the city clerk to give McCray the oath of office, claiming voter fraud.”

But in spite of these claims, there has been no evidence whatsoever to back it up. Kinloch was elected. The St. Louis County Board of Elections certified the results. But the police are enforcing an illegal “coup” of sorts.

“Today is the first day that that the city hall door has been unlocked. They keep it locked,” McCray continued. “You got to beat and you got to bang [to get in]. They have a police officer sitting right at the door.”

As McCray tried again to begin her job at city hall, one officer tried to prevent media from covering the coup, pushing the camera away.

Kinloch city attorney James Robinson claimed that McCray was impeached, but refused to tell the new mayor the articles of impeachment.

“You have been served with articles of impeachment that were put in the mail,” attorney James Robinson wrongly claimed.

If Kinloch had been impeached, the law states that they cannot even hold an impeachment hearing until 30 days after the papers are served. Whether they had been served or not – which they have not – that would mean that McCray could and should be on the job until an impeachment decision.

This is nothing short of a coup! Read the article, watch the video and SPREAD THE WORD!

Thirty-four people were arrested and six police officers were injured over the weekend after thousands marched against police brutality through downtown Baltimore, Maryland. The protest on Saturday was held nearly a week after Freddie Gray, a young African-American man, died from injuries sustained after being beaten by police in west Baltimore.

The protest, called by a coalition of local activist groups, was largely peaceful. It was the largest in a series of demonstrations against police violence that have swept the city since Gray succumbed to his injuries last week.

On Sunday, thousands of people attended a wake for Gray, who will be buried today.

A group of protesters broke away from the main march on Saturday and carried out minor acts of vandalism to storefronts and police vehicles. Police responded by sending helmeted officers to detain protesters and break up the march. Clashes between protesters and police continued throughout the night in parts of west Baltimore, near the area where Gray was beaten and killed.

The number of police flooding the streets over the weekend approached the number of demonstrators. Baltimore Police Chief Anthony W. Batts mobilized over 1,200 cops. He made the ludicrous claim that deploying police across the city would safeguard the protesters’ right of “peaceful expression.”

The rally outside city hall

On Saturday night, a photographer from the Baltimore City Paper was arrested and beaten by police in front of the Western District Police Station. “They mobilized,” photographer J.M. Giordano said of the ordeal as he and a bystander were swept up by heavily armed police. “They just swarmed over me… I got hit. My head hit the ground. They were hitting me, then someone pulled me out,” he said.

Sait Serkan Gurbuz, a photojournalist for Reuters, was arrested by police at the same time.

Freddie Gray was beaten by Baltimore police April 12 after reportedly making eye contact with an officer and then fleeing. Six policemen gave chase and restrained the youth in a position that severely injured his spine. Gray was then tossed into the back of a police van and driven across town, unrestrained by a safety belt, for over half an hour, before being given medical help. The city has refused to release the names of the police officers involved, while suspending each with pay, pending an investigation.

At the protest on Saturday, representatives of local activist groups tied to the Democratic Party took turns making explicit appeals to leading Democratic politicians. Malik Z. Shabazz, head of one of the event’s organizers, Black Lawyers for Justice, appealed to Barack Obama and US Attorney General Eric Holder, and called on Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee for the 2016 presidential election, to come and address her “black Democratic voters” on the march.

Democratic Party officials, however, took the lead in praising the police. “I think they are doing the best they can under the circumstances,” said US Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, adding that the march had been disturbed by a “few people, mainly from out of town.”

The Baltimore Police Department issued a statement declaring, “While the vast majority of arrests reflect local residency, the total number of arrests does not account for every incident of criminal activity,” adding that the department “believes that outside agitators continue to be the instigators behind acts of violence and destruction.”

The claim that so-called disturbances of the peace are the work of “outside agitators” has been used by authorities against protest movements dating back to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The use of the term by African-American politicians and so-called “civil rights” leaders active within the milieu of the Democratic Party signals that the city’s black political establishment, no less than white officials of a past era, are preparing a wave of repression.

The disconnect between the political line of the organizers and those protesting police violence was clear in discussions held with those at the march. One resident of the west Baltimore district where Freddie Gray was murdered told the World Socialist Web Site that the police were “a gang in blue,” and that any investigation by the federal government into the circumstances of the man’s death would only be a “cover-up.” (See: “Baltimore residents speak out against police killing”).

Another Baltimore resident said, “If you are not totally subservient to them [the police], they will escalate the situation… this is a part of the plan to militarize the country and intimidate the population.”

Last Tuesday, the Justice Department said it would open a federal investigation into Gray’s death, following an open letter from Senators Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin, as well as Cummings and two other congressmen, Dutch Ruppersberger and John Sarbanes. The five Democrats suggested that such a move would “restore public confidence in the Baltimore Police Department.”

This follows the trend of other Justice Department investigations into police violence in places such as Ferguson, Missouri; Cleveland, Ohio; Albuquerque, New Mexico and elsewhere that reveal a record of systemic police corruption and brutality but result in no criminal prosecutions or serious action to halt the abuse.

The Obama administration is fully complicit in the reign of police violence in the United States. The Washington Post noted last week that despite its claims of sympathy for the victims of police violence, “at the Supreme Court… [the Obama administration’s] Justice Department has supported police officers every time an excessive-force case has made its way to arguments.”

The administration has set records in its efforts to militarize law enforcement agencies through programs such as the Department of Defense’s 1033 program, which over the past four years has distributed record amounts of military equipment to local police forces.

Anthony Freda Art

It was evident early on that the US bombing of alleged ISIS targets inside Syria was, in reality, an attempt to support the terrorist organization backed by NATO and the US as opposed to an attempt to defeat it. While such a suggestion has been repeatedly labeled as a “conspiracy theory” by the mainstream media and other gatekeepers in the “independent” media, the fruits of America’s labor in terms of the bombing campaign cannot be ignored. Likewise, neither can the world ignore the results of Saudi Arabia’s bombing of Yemen.

The truth is that the United States, NATO, and the GCC/Arab League are bombing in couched support of ISIS, increasing its gains and hold on power with every sortie fired. With this fact recognized, the NATO/GCC network of national governments can now officially be labeled as the Air Force of Al-Qaeda.

For instance, while the secular government of Bashar al-Assad remained the only force inside Syria actually fighting al-Qaeda and ISIS – terrorist organizations trained, funded, armed, and deployed by the United States, NATO, and the GCC – the brutality of these death squads was used by the Western propaganda machine to justify a bombing campaign that was actually directed at Syrian military and civilian infrastructure.

These strikes were launched against Syrian oil refineries (see here also), bridges, civilian neighborhoods, warehouses, agricultural centers, and grain silos. Others were made strategically against infrastructure that was set to soon be taken back by the Syrian military after long-fought battles with the terrorists.

Likewise, the US bombing campaign in Iraq has had much more to do with protecting Western-owned oil fields and death squad herding than eliminating ISIS. In fact, Iraqi armed forces and government officials have repeatedly revealed that the US military has actually been supplying ISIS during the entire course of the bombing.

Yet while the Western mainstream press has attempted to paint the Iraqi claims of American assistance to ISIS as “conspiracy theories” and the manifestation of jealousy, that same press has been forced to admit that the bombing campaign has resulted in a stronger ISIS presence in Iraq and Syria and that the terrorist group has become stronger in terms of strategic location and military presence.

As the Daily Beast reported in January of 2015,

American jets are pounding Syria. But ISIS is taking key terrain—and putting more and more people under its black banners.

ISIS continues to gain substantial ground in Syria, despite nearly 800 airstrikes in the American-led campaign to break its grip there.

At least one-third of the country’s territory is now under ISIS influence, with recent gains in rural areas that can serve as a conduit to major cities that the so-called Islamic State hopes to eventually claim as part of its caliphate. Meanwhile, the Islamic extremist group does not appear to have suffered any major ground losses since the strikes began. The result is a net ground gain for ISIS, according to information compiled by two groups with on-the-ground sources.

In Syria, ISIS “has not lost any key terrain,” Jennifer Cafarella, a fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War who studies the Syrian conflict, explained to The Daily Beast.

Even U.S. military officials privately conceded to The Daily Beast that ISIS has gained ground in some areas, even as the Pentagon claims its seized territory elsewhere, largely around the northern city of Kobani. That’s been the focus of the U.S.-led campaign, and ISIS has not been able to take the town, despite its best efforts.

The report continued by pointing out that the ISIS gains were not only in terms of land mass but also in terms of “control of people,” meaning populated areas and strategic locations. It reads,

“Assessing the map, ISIS has almost doubled its territorial control in Syria. But more importantly, the number of people who now live under ISIS control has also increased substantially,” CDS political adviser Mouaz Moustafa said.

With the fall of that much territory into ISIS hands, Syrians who once lived in ungoverned or rebel held areas are now under ISIS’s grip. Of course, in an irregular war like this one, control of people is far more important than control of territory. In that regard, too, things appear to be going in the wrong direction.

[…]

Since the U.S. campaign began in August, “there are little buds of ISIS control in eastern Homs, al Qalamoun [which borders northern Lebanon], and southern Damascus that do appear to be growing because of that freedom of operation that can connect those western cells to key ISIS terrains in Raqqa and Deir ez Zour” in northern and eastern Syria.

While the United States and NATO act as al-Qaeda’s Air Force in Iraq and Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Arab League fulfill the same role in Yemen. In addition to bombing the Houthi rebels in a bid to retain ousted President Hadi in power and to prevent the possibility of greater Iranian influence in the region, the Saudis have also provided direct air support for extremists and al-Qaeda jihadis who are currently on the ground in Yemen, themselves taking control of swaths of territory.

For instance, in an interview with NPR, Leila Fadel stated:

Well, al-Qaeda has been growing in Yemen for a while. But it seems to be accelerating in the midst of this bombing campaign. And it [al Qaeda] is not a focus of the Saudi-led airstrikes right now.

[…]

But critics say that actually Saudi’s war is feeding al-Qaeda. One western diplomat says al-Qaeda’s actually growing like a weed right now. And a spokesman for al-Qaeda inside Yemen says they’re really happy with the airstrikes because it’s weakening their enemies, who are the Houthis and the Yemeni army.

In other words, the Saudi airstrikes are enabling al-Qaeda’s influence and territorial gains to spread across the country.

This, of course, should come as no surprise to any informed observer. Saudi Arabia has long been recognized as the largest supporter of terror worldwide, only attempting to slightly veil its support for terrorist organizations like ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Chechen rebels. That support for terror and terrorism comes with the obvious blessing of the United States, Israel, and NATO since that terror is directed at target countries abroad and a dissatisfied but compliant target population at home.

The fact is that al-Qaeda, IS, and the other related terrorist organizations function as the CIA’s Arab legion. They are used to weaken and overthrow governments as well as to act as a constant bogeyman for populations back home so that civil liberties and Constitutional rights will be sacrificed willingly for the perception of security.

If the American people will wise up to this fact, one of the major tools used by the world oligarchy to terrorize the domestic population and the rest of the world will be yanked from their hands.

Brandon Turbeville is an author out of Florence, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Francis Marion University and is the author of six books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1and volume 2, and The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria. Turbeville has published over 500 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV.  He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com. 

A recent article by Jorge Elbaum, the former executive director of DAIA (Delegation for Argentine Jewish Associations), the principle Argentine Jewish umbrella groups, published in the Buenos Aires daily Pagina 12, provides a detailed account of the damaging links between the State of Israel, US Wall Street speculators and local Argentine Zionists in government and out.

Elbaum describes how their efforts have been specifically directed toward destabilizing the incumbent center-left government of President Cristina Fernandez, while securing exorbitant profits for a Zionist Wall Street speculator, Paul Singer of Elliott Management as well as undermining a joint Iranian-Argentine investigation of the 1994 terrorist bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires.

Elbaum’s article was written in response to the death of Alberto Nisman, a Zionist zealot and chief government prosecutor in the terrorist bombing investigation for over 20 years.

The serious issues raised by the political use and gross manipulation of the horrors of the bombing of the Argentine Jewish Community Center shows how Tel Aviv (and its political assets in Argentina and the US) further Israeli power in the Middle East, in particular, by isolating and demonizing Iran. This is important at two critical levels, which this article seeks to highlight.

First of all, Israeli attempted to sidetrack the Argentine investigation, by involving some of its powerful Wall Street assets and influential pro-Israel lobbies (the Anti-Defamation League, AIPAC among others).  Their purpose was to fabricate ‘evidence’ in order to implicate Iran in the crime and to manipulate their influential assets in Argentina, especially in this case, chief prosecutor Nisman and many of the leaders of DAIA, to accuse the Argentine government of complicity in an ‘Iranian cover-up’.

The second issue, raised by Israel’s intervention in Argentina’s investigation into the bombing, has wider and deeper implications: How Israel promotes its foreign policy objectives in various countries by grooming and manipulating local influential Jewish officials and community organizations. This furthers Tel Aviv’s goal of regional hegemony and territorial aggrandizement. In other words, Israeli political reach extends far beyond the Middle East and goes ‘global’, operating without any consideration of the dangers it inflicts on Jews in the ‘target  countries’.   To this end, Israel has been creating a worldwide network of Jews, which calls into question their loyalty to the polity of their home countries where they have resided for generations.

The nefarious impact, which Israel’s intervention has on the sovereignty of its ‘target countries’, presents a danger to innocent and loyal Jewish citizens who are not acting as agents of Tel Aviv.

For these reasons it is important to critically analyze the specific characteristics of Israel’s dangerous meddling in Argentina.

The Crisis of the Argentine Justice System:  Unsolved Terrorist Crimes and Israeli Intervention

After the anti-Sematic bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, the Argentine judicial and legal system seriously bungled the investigation, despite collaboration from the US FBI and Israel’s Mossad.  Argentina’s then President Carlos Menem was an ardent neo-liberal, unconditional backer of US foreign policy and strong supporter of Israel.  His  regime was still heavily infested with high-ranking police, military and intelligence officials deeply implicated in the seven-year bloody military dictatorship (1976-83) during which 30,000 Argentine citizens were murdered.

Among the victims of this ‘dirty war’ were hundreds of Argentine Jews, activists, intellectuals and militants who were tortured and murdered to the anti-Sematic taunts of their military and police assassins.  During this same horrific ‘pogrom’ of Argentina’s committed Jewish activists, the state of Israel managed to sell tens of millions of dollars in arms to the junta, breaking a US-EU boycott.  Notoriously, the conservative leaders of the DAIA and AMIA (Argentine-Israel Mutual Association) failed to defend the lives of Jewish activists and militants.  After attending meetings with the junta, many conservative Jewish leaders would dismiss the concerns of the families of the disappeared and tortured Argentine Jews, saying:  ‘They must have done something…’

The bungled investigation into the 1994 bombing included the arrest of right-wing police officials who were later released and the mysterious loss of vital forensic evidence. Accusations against various foreign regimes and organizations shifted according to the political needs of the US and Israel:  First, the Lebanese group, Hezbollah, Israel’s main military adversary during its bloody occupation of southern Lebanon in 1990’s was touted as the responsible party.

A few years later, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, prior to the Israeli-backed US invasion of Iraq; then the Palestinians were trotted out, followed by Syria’s Baathist intelligence forces.  After the total destruction of Iraq by the US ‘coalition’ and the decline of influential Arab states in the Middle East, the Israelis have settled on Iran as the ‘prime suspect’, coinciding with Teheran’s rise of as a regional power – challenging Israeli and US hegemony.

With the 2001 collapse of Argentina’s version of a kleptocratic neo-liberal, pro-US bootlicking  regime, and in the midst of a dire economic depression, there was a popular upheaval and the subsequent election of President Kirchner bringing a new center-left government to power.

The new government, defaulting on its murderous foreign debt, oversaw Argentina’s economic recovery and a vast increase in social spending which stabilized capitalism.  Kirchner also promoted greater independence in foreign policy and sought to enhance Buenos Aires relations with Israel by re-opening the investigation into the bombing and retaining Alberto Nisman, as chief prosecutor.

Nisman, the Mossad and the US Embassy Connection

In his article, ‘Vultures, Nisman, DAIA: The Money Route’ (Pagina 12, 4/18/15), Jorge Elbaum, points out that chief prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, opened secret bank account in New York.  As Elbaum told prominent figures in Argentina’s Jewish community, Nisman’s campaign to discredit the government’s joint investigatory commission with Iran and demonize the Argentine government was financed, at least in part, by New York’s vulture fund head, Paul Singer, who stood to make hundreds of millions in profit.

According to documents, cited by Elbaum, US embassy personnel and leading US Zionist organizations, including the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, led by Mark Dubowitz, as well as Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, fed Nisman fabricated ‘evidence’ and corrected numerous substantive and grammatical flaws in his report purporting to ‘demonstrate’ Argentine’s cover-up of the Iran’s role in the 1994 bombing.  However, forensic and legal experts in Argentina have determined that Nisman’s claims lack any legal basis or credibility.

The entire ‘Operation Nisman’ appears to have been orchestrated by Israel with the goal of isolating Iran via fabricated evidence supposed to ‘prove’ its role in the 1994 bombing.  The recruitment of Nisman, as a key Israeli operative, was central to Israel’s strategy of using the DAIA and other Argentine – Jewish organizations to attack the Argentine-Iran memo of understanding regarding the investigation of the bombing.  Israel pushed US-Zionist organizations to intensify their intervention into Argentine politics via their networks with Argentine-Jewish organizations.

The vulture-fund speculator, Paul Singer, who had bought defaulted Argentine debt for ‘pennies on the dollar’, was demanding full payment through sympathetic New York courts.  He had funded a special speculators’ task force on Argentina joining forces with Israel, US Zionist organizations and Alberto Nisman in order to manipulate Argentina’s investigation and secure a bountiful return.  Nisman thus became a ‘key tool’ to Israel’s regional military strategy toward Iran, to New York speculator Singer’s strategy to grab a billion dollar windfall and to the Argentine right wing’s campaign to destabilize the center-left government of Kirschner-Fernandez.

By acting mainly in the interest of Israel and US Zionists, Nisman sacrificed the Argentine-Jewish community’s desire for a serious, truthful investigation into the bombing leading to identification and conviction of the perpetrators.  Moreover, Nisman compromised himself by being a tool for Israel’s foreign policy against the interest of the Argentine government, which he was sworn to serve, and endangered the status of the Argentine Jewish community among Argentines in general by raising questions about their loyalty to their home country.

Fortunately, Argentina has sophisticated , prominent Jewish leaders who see themselves as Argentine citizens first and foremost, including leaders like Foreign Secretary Hector Timmerman who proposed the joint investigation with Iran as well as the former DAIA Executive Director Jorge Elbaum who has played a major role in denouncing Israel’s intervention in Argentine politics.  It is citizens, like Elbaum, who have exposed the Israeli government’s role in recruiting and manipulating local leading Argentine-Jews to serve Tel Aviv’s foreign policy interests.

This is in stark contrast to the United States where no major American-Jewish leader has dared to denounce the role of leading Zionist organizations as Israel’s conduit.  Furthermore, unlike Argentina, where a sector of the liberal press (Pagina 12) has published critical accounts of Nisman’s fabrications and Israel’s destabilization campaign, newspapers in the US, like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, have continued to present Nisman’s discredited report as a serious investigation by a courageous, ‘martyred’ prosecutor.

The US media continues to portray the entire Argentine judicial system ascorrupt and argue that Nisman’s death must have been a state-orchestrated crime.  The US public has never been presented with the fact that the leading critics of Nisman’s report and his own behavior were prominent Argentine Jews and that Argentina’s foreign minister, Hector Timmerman, organized the Argentine-Iran commission.

Conclusion

That Israel was willing to derail any serious the investigation into the 1994 bombing, which killed and maimed scores of Argentine Jews, in order to further its campaign against Iran, demonstrates the extent to which the self-styled ‘Jewish State’ is willing to sacrifice the interests and security of world Jewry to further its narrow military agenda.

Equally egregious is the way in which Tel Aviv recruits overseas Jews to serve Israel’s interests against that of their own countries, turning them into a ‘fifth column’, operating inside and outside of their governments.  That Israeli intelligence has been exposed and denounced in the case of Nisman, has not forestalled nor prevented Israel from continuing this long-standing, practice of dangerous meddling.  This is especially evident in the ‘Israel-first behavior’ of leading Jewish American organizations and political leaders who have pledged their total allegiance to Netanyahu’s war agenda against Iran an bought the US Congress to scuttle the peace accord.

It merits repetition:  Israel’s widespread practice of recruiting Jewish citizens and officials of other countries to serve as vehicles of Israeli policies has the potential to foment a new and possibly violent backlash, once the greater population has been made aware of such treasonous activities. In this regard, Israel does not represent a bastion of security for world Jewry, but a cynical, manipulative and deadly threat. Perhaps that is Israel’s ultimate strategy – create a backlash of generalized anger against overseas Jews and precipitate massive flight to Israel from countries like Argentina, while the few who remain can be better manipulated to serve Tel Aviv.

Epilogue

A few days ago, on April 23, a crowd of several hundred Argentine Jews met to repudiate the arrogant claims of the established leaders of the DAIA and the AMIA that they represent ‘all Argentine Jews”.  This overflow crowd in the auditorium of the telephone workers union proposed to create a ‘collective and democratic space, based on links of solidarity over and above commercial connections.’  The Jewish community in the US would be wise to pay close attention to Argentina’s example.

If the millions of regular people who have asked Monsanto to stop selling their toxic chemicals is not enough, more than 30,000 doctors and health professionals are asking that glyphosate be banned.

The doctors are part of FESPROSA, Argentina’s Union of medical professionals. Citing the World Health Organization’s recent declaration that the glyphosate chemicals used in Monsanto’s best-selling herbicide Round Up (formulated to use on Round Up Ready crops) are “likely carcinogenic,” they add an additional disclaimer:

Glyphosate is also associated with:

• Spontaneous abortions
• Birth defects
• Skin disease
• Respiratory illness
• Neurological disease

Where are the American doctors who can tell the WHO, and Monsanto the same thing? Instead of forcing Monsanto’s hand, other doctors have been retaliating against Dr. Oz who recently said that glyphosate was dangerous on world-wide television.

Read: Glyphosate Found in Urine, Blood, Breast Milk

FESPROSA also explained:

“In our country glyphosate is applied on more than 28 million hectares. Each year, the soil is sprayed with more than 320 million litres, which means that 13 million people are at risk of being affected, according to the Physicians Network of Sprayed Peoples (RMPF). Soy is not the only crop addicted to glyphosate: the herbicide is also used for transgenic maize and other crops. Where glyphosate falls, only GMOs can grow. Everything else dies.”

The doctors also talk about vindicating one of their own:

“Our trade union, the Federation of Health Professionals of Argentina (FESPROSA), which represents more than 30,000 doctors and health professionals in our country, includes the Social Health Collective of Andrés Carrasco. Andrés Carrasco was a researcher at [Argentine government research institute] CONICET, who died a year ago, and showed the damage caused by glyphosate to embryos. For disseminating his research, he was attacked by the industry and the authorities at CONICET. Today, WHO vindicates him.”

With evidence like this – how can any biotech shill talk about genetically modified food being ‘safe’ when the primary chemicals sold to grow them are killing the people of entire countries?

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At a recent screening of the powerful new documentary film Trace Amounts, which exposes the scientific connection between mercury in vaccines and autism, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. warned an audience of supportive viewers that vaccines are essentially poison vials causing a “holocaust” in our country.

The nephew of former U.S. president John F. Kennedy, RFK Jr. attended the screening in solidarity with California parents who are fighting to stop Senate Bill 277 from eliminating their freedom as Californians to exempt their children from “mandatory” vaccinations. Speaking to the crowd, Kennedy emphasized the proven dangers of vaccines.

“They can put anything they want in that vaccine and they have no accountability for it,” stated Kennedy about the vaccine industry, which ironically maintains its own exclusive and unconstitutional exemption from legal liability for vaccines that injure and kill children.

Trace Amounts helped kill anti-freedom vaccine exemption elimination bill in Oregon

Both entering and leaving the stage to exuberant standing ovations, Kennedy lauded Trace Amounts for helping persuade lawmakers in Oregon to scrap a bill similar to California’s SB 277 that would have eliminated personal vaccine exemptions in the Beaver State.

He also empathized with parents of vaccine-injured children, who often have no support from the legal system, and sometimes even from their friends and family members, in addressing the damage caused by vaccine quackery.

“They get the shot, that night they have a fever of a hundred and three, they go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone,” lamented Kennedy about how vaccine injuries progress. “This is a holocaust, what this is doing to our country.”

Not a single invited politician shows up to Trace Amounts screening

California lawmakers were reportedly also invited to the Trace Amounts screening where Kennedy spoke, with three rows specially cordoned off for their convenient viewing. But according to The Sacramento Bee, not a single lawmaker showed up except for a handful of random staffers. No bother, though, as the film was still shown, and the crowd invigorated to take a unified stand for medical freedom.

89.3 KPCC is now reporting that the proposed legislation SB 277 would unconstitutionally deprive unvaccinated children from receiving an adequate education by preventing them from attending public school. Its supporters, however, are planning to reintroduce it once again in the coming days.

Vaccines are a scam, and the government’s revolving door with the vaccine industry proves it has no business trying to pass anti-exemption laws

As far as the idea of eliminating vaccine exemptions, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that those trying to push anti-exemption legislation work for or are being paid off by the vaccine industry.

“The former head of the CDC, Julie Gerberding, is now the head of the Merck Vaccine Division,” wrote one commenter at The Sacramento Bee concerning this issue. “The government is having a dirty little affair with the drug industry.”

“They share ownership of patents. They created the unconstitutional ‘Vaccine Court’ that usurps our 7th Amendment and shields drug manufacturers from liability. The phony court has no judge, no jury and no justice for most people. They cherry pick cases to keep liability down and lie about the real number of vaccine injuries, yet they have still paid out about 3 billion dollars for the injuries they will admit to.”

Check out this vaccine debate that aired on PBS Hawaii, in which the show’s producers and hosts failed to mention its sponsorship from Merck, Pfizer and various other vaccine manufacturers:
WaronWeThePeople.com.

Sources:

http://www.sacbee.com

https://vimeo.com

HOME Page for WarOnWeThePeople.com

Homepage

Medical Fascism

Vaccine Fanaticism

Almost 4,000 Saudi forces fled their border bases in anticipation of Riyadh’s order for launching a ground assault on Yemen, European diplomatic sources said on Sunday.

(ANTIMEDIA) French television station Canal+ recently sat down with Dr. Patrick Moore for an upcoming documentary. Dr Moore, who claims to be an ecological expert and is currently the frontman for Ecosense Environmental, stated to the interviewer that Monsanto’s weed killer Roundup was not responsible for skyrocketing cancer rates in Argentina.

This is where the interview took a turn for the surreal.

Dr. Moore insisted that Roundup is safe to drink, at which point the interviewer did the only logical thing one could do in that situation.

He offered the doctor a glass of the weed killer to allow him an opportunity to back up his statement. The following is the text from that exchange.

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Patrick Moore: “You can drink a whole quart of (Roundup) and it won’t hurt you.”

Canal+: “You want to drink some? We have some here.”
Moore: “I’d be happy to, actually…. Uhh…Not.. Not really. But I know it wouldn’t hurt me.”
Canal+: “If you say so, I have some glyphosate, have some.”
Moore: “No. I’m not stupid.”
Canal+: “So, it’s dangerous, right?
Moore: “No, People try to commit suicide with it and fail; fail regularly.”
Canal+: “Tell the truth, it’s dangerous.”
Moore: “It’s not dangerous to humans.”
Canal+: “So, are you ready to drink one glass?”
Moore: “No, I’m not an idiot. Interview me about golden rice, that’s what I’m talking about.”
Canal+: “We did.”
Moore then abruptly ends the interview by calling the host a “complete jerk” and storms off.

Greenpeace, an organization to which the doctor turned lobbyist belonged in the 1970’s, issued this statement in part in 2008 regarding Dr. Patrick Moore.

Patrick Moore often misrepresents himself in the media as an environmental “expert” or even an “environmentalist,” while offering anti-environmental opinions on a wide range of issues and taking a distinctly anti-environmental stance. He also exploits long-gone ties with Greenpeace to sell himself as a speaker and pro-corporate spokesperson, usually taking positions that Greenpeace opposes.

While it is true that Patrick Moore was a member of Greenpeace in the 1970s, in 1986 he abruptly turned his back on the very issues he once passionately defended. He claims he “saw the light” but what Moore really saw was an opportunity for financial gain. Since then he has gone from defender of the planet to a paid representative of corporate polluters.

Patrick Moore promotes such anti-environmental positions as clearcut logging, nuclear power, farmed salmon, PVC (vinyl) production, genetically engineered crops, and mining. Clients for his consulting services are a veritable Who’s Who of companies that Greenpeace has exposed for environmental misdeeds, including Monsanto, Weyerhaeuser, and BHP Minerals.

Watch the video from Canal+

Original Video:
http://theantimedia.org/lobbyist-clai…

This article (Lobbyist Claims Monsanto’s Roundup Is Safe To Drink, Freaks Out When Offered A Glass) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TheAntiMedia.org. Tune in to the Anti-Media radio show Monday through Friday @ 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Help us fix our typos: edits@theantimedia.org.

Vincent Nichols, Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, is spiritual leader of the four million Catholics of England and Wales. He was also elevated to Cardinal on 22nd February 2014, receiving the Cardinal’s red hat from Pope Francis in Rome’s St Peter’s Basilica. He has been cited as a man: “not afraid to speak out when he feels compelled to do so.”

He has indeed railed against “punitive” welfare cuts, calling them a “disgrace”, he has spoken in defence of Catholic masses for gay, lesbian and transgender Catholics and has come under attack for defending Irish priests and nuns who had abused children in their care, saying it took courage to “face the facts from their past.”

On Nichols’ elevation, his predecessor as Archbishop of Westminster, Cormac Murphy-O’Connor commented that it gave him, perhaps, “better media space” and the chance: “to speak out on things that concern the church and society.” (Guardian, 18^th February 2014.)

The Archbishop has just returned from a visit to Erbil in northern Iraq and spoken and written on the plight of the Christians. (Mention of the cataclysmic plight of the vast majority of Iraqis of all faiths or none, is scant – to near invisible.)

Archbishops and Blair

Cormac Murphy-O’Connor  – inexplicably – welcomed Tony Blair in to the Catholic Church in a ceremony at “The Cardinal’s private residence, Archbishop’s House” in spite of Blair’s hand in the mistruths culminating in the Iraq assault, arguably fitting the definition of Nuremberg’s “supreme international crime.” The Archbishop, on welcoming Blair in to the Catholic Church declared he was “very glad” to do so. (BBC 22^nd December 2007.)

One wonders whether he reflected on welcoming a man who had been involved in the destruction of the cradle of all he and his church’s followers professed to believe? The three Abrahamic religions believed risen from Ur in southern Iraq, the Garden of Eden flourished at Qurnah, a little south, Saint Mathew is believed buried in the monastery named for him in Nineveh and belief has it that Jonah and some of the whale that swallowed him rested in his tomb in Mosul – now destroyed by ISIS.

In 2006, the year before Blair’s conversion to Catholicism, the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Iraq mortality survey estimated excess deaths in the three years since the invasion at 650,000. An unrepentant Blair said repeatedly before his conversion and since, that he had no regrets and would do the same again. The excess death toll now, between the twenty plus years of embargo and invasion, is estimated at three million. (1) Genocide.

Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, now 83, is retired, but Blair who has stated he prayed to God when deciding to join illegally invading and decimating Iraq is still seemingly as welcome in the Catholic church and Westminster Cathedral under Archbishop Nichols as his predecessor, where he even attended a mass officiated by the Pope in 2010.

A Unique Case, Will the Archbishop Speak Out?

On confirmation of Archbishop Nichols Cardinal status, he was designated titular Head of a church known for housing the icon of “Our Lady of Perpetual Help.” Now there is something to live up to. There is perhaps a unique cause with which to start to “speak out on things that concern the church” – or should.

Former Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, a courageous Iraqi Chaldean Christian nationalist, passionate in his love for his land, has been abandoned in Iraqi jails for twelve years. He did not flee ahead of the US and British tanks, or from the “Shock and Awe” of their radioactive bombardment, but to stayed in his country. He gave himself up to the American Command – on the condition his family could leave the country in safety.

Saddam Hussein’s entire government could have left Iraq prior to the inevitable invasion and lived in comfort elsewhere, as the Kuwait government did in 1991 – indeed George W. Bush’s regime confirmed that they offered Saddam Hussein forty eight hours to leave Iraq (2.) Iraq’s Administration had vowed not abandon their country. None did.

Iraq in fact offered “unlimited access for 2,000” weapons inspectors with:  “a pledge that US companies would be granted first priority in securing valuable Iraqi oil and mining concessions.” America, however, it seems wanted both blood and oil.

Countless “9/11s” engulfed Iraq, yet the government remained visibly there until, given they had little to nil means of defence, all was lost.

In contrast, on 11^th September 2001, George W. Bush was anything but visible. The “Commander in Chief”, self appointed “Leader of the Free World” was whisked away from his kindergarten reading session in Florida and taken to a secret and secure place on a military base in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Tariq Aziz was held by the Americans until 2007 before being tried in a US arranged kangaroo court. In one session, ill, being taken there in his pyjamas. The savage, shameful, primitive face of the American fashioned “New Iraq” for all to see. Even the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights referred to “the independence (of the Court being) allegedly undermined by political interference” (3) an understatement of enormity.

The charges against Tariq Aziz have thousands of column inches devoted to them, few have been devoted to the outrage of his arraignment, imprisonment, treatment, plight and finally death sentence.

Revenge Not Justice

As his son, Ziad Aziz has said: “This is about revenge, not justice. They’ve implicated my father in everything, in every single case you can imagine. He has been apportioned blame for issues that never even fell   within the realm of his responsibilities.”

This statement would appear to be borne out by George W. Bush shortly after Aziz had given himself in to the occupiers. Bush expressed unshakable confidence that his forces would find banned weapons, implying that Tariq Aziz was key to their discovery. At a press conference in Crawford Texas with then Australian Prime Minister John Howard, he stated: “Tariq Aziz still doesn’t know how to tell the truth, he didn’t know how to tell the truth when in office and he doesn’t know how to tell the truth as a captive.” (AP 4^th May 2003.) The lies of course had come from Washington and Whitehall.

Not to be forgotten is the meticulous near 12,000 pages of Iraq’s accounting for what they did not have, delivered to the UN, in December 2002, as requested – and stolen by the US delegation at the UN.

Aziz has said his responsibility for he or his departmental colleagues escorting UN weapons inspectors round Iraq was largely futile: “I was trying to prove a negative.”

Tareq Aziz will be seventy nine on April 28^th. This is written on the 12^th anniversary of his incarceration, 24^th April.

Situation Critical And The Wedding Ring

Indomitable though he is, his health was poor, even before the invasion. In 2010 he was taken to an American hospital with a blood clot. He also suffers other serious conditions. The Vatican and several European governments have called for his release, but it is a stance which seems not to have been persued with any measure of vigour with the Iraqi government or the US Embassy in Iraq.

Earlier this month his wife, Violet, visited him, now moved from Baghdad to the notorious maximum security prison in Al-Nasiryah in southern Iraq, from where stories of torture and ill treatment abound. Ziad Aziz writes of his plight:

“I would like to write to you and hopefully through you to the rest of the world, to raise attention about my father’s condition.

“My mother went to visit him this week in Al-Nasiryah prison where he had been transferred since August of last year. The guard brought him and his prison mates to the interview area in shackles, chains around their ankles and wrists.

“But she felt worse when she started talking to him. He was incoherent, and could barely form a sentence, and he couldn’t remember his own grandchildren, he asked her about my other son, I have only one son – his namesake, Tariq.

“He has not received any medical attention, he still depends on us to  bring all his medicine to him when my mother visits him. The situation there is so bad that they don’t even provide food for the inmates, let alone medical care.

“At the end, my father gave my mother his wedding ring, telling her that he feels that the end is near, he said he didn’t want it to be stolen. This ring hasn’t left his finger for fifty years, all the time he was married. I cannot tell you how devastated my mother felt at that moment, as am I and the whole family.

“I cannot emphasize enough how dire my father’s condition is, we desperately need to raise attention to his, and his colleagues, conditions. I am afraid that the worse will happen very soon, as does he apparently.

“We would like your help to raise attention to his condition, and hopefully we can secure his release so he can spend his last days with his family.”

An Anniversary And a Second Letter

Today, a further letter arrived:

“I write to you to update you on my father’s situation and kindly remind you of the urgency of his health condition, and through you to all who you think can help us with our cause.

“There are rumours that they moved my father and a few of the other prisoners back to Baghdad. We don’t know whether it is true or not, and we have no way of confirming it.

“He is still has not had any medical attention whatsoever. The prison officials asked us to wire them money in order to provide food and medicine for my father, we have no way of knowing if he is eating or taking the right dose of his medicine – or if he is taking any medicine at all.

“Time is not on our side, I can’t stress enough the urgency of the situation and the need to for an immediate intervention. It has been 12 years today since the Americans took him and since I last saw my father, I don’t know if there is another year to wait. We need to intensify our campaign to deliver this message to all our friends, allies, and the international community, and bring more pressure on the Iraqi government.

“We appreciate all the help we can get and we are very grateful to you for all your efforts.

“Thank you very much

 Ziad Tariq Aziz.”

Back in 2010 I wrote: ‘The silence of the Pope, Archbishops, the Foreign Office (despite Foreign Secretary William Hague claiming to put human rights firmly at the centre of his policies) has been woeful. All have been approached by anti-death-penalty campaigners, including many eminent people. None has even replied to correspondence. Tariq Aziz is a symbol of the “democracy” brought to the new Iraq. His trial was condemned by Human Rights Watch – which had called for it consistently – as “fundamentally flawed” and they said that the “court should overturn the verdict”. ‘ (4)

Letters have again, today, been sent to the relevant bodies at the UN, the EU, to the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury – and to Cardinal and Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichol.

Last year George W. Bush and Tony Blair were “unanimously” found guilty of “crimes against peace” by a distinguished legal panel at the War Crimes Tribunal in Malaysia. (5) “The evidence showed that the drums of wars were being beaten long before the invasion. The accused in their own memoirs have admitted their own intention to invade Iraq regardless of international law”, they concluded. They were found guilty on the same grounds in 2011 and guilty of war crimes in 2012. Weighty files of evidence have been lodged with the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

Perhaps, at this eleventh hour, Vincent Nichols might finally feel “compelled” to “speak out” for his Chaldean Catholic brother-in-the-church, Tariq Aziz, in some measure of atonement for welcoming an accused war criminal mired in the blood of three million Iraqis,  innumerable Afghanis and people of the Balkans. As he said, it takes “courage to face the facts from the past.”

Notes:

1.    http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0707328.htm

2.   http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/unworthy-victims-western-wars-have-killed-four-million-muslims-1990-39149394

3.   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1446152/Saddam-offered-Bush-a-huge-oil-deal-to-avert-war.html

4 https://spdb.ohchr.org/hrdb/22nd/public_-_UA_Irak_28.06.12_(1.2012).pdf

5.http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/29/aziz-faces-execution-in-iraq

6.http://themillenniumreport.com/2014/07/first-george-w-bush-tony-blair-found-guilty-of-war-crimes-in-malaysia-then-malaysia-airliner-missile-strike-was-it-mh-17-or-mh-370/

See also: http://www.globalresearch.ca/iraq-tariq-aziz-they-killed-our-country-we-are-all-victims-of-britain-and-america/28619

Now how do you top this as a geopolitical entrance? Eight JF-17 Thunder fighter jets escorting Chinese President Xi Jinping on board an Air China Boeing as he enters Pakistani air space. And these JF-17s are built as a China-Pakistan joint project.

Silk Road? Better yet; silk skyway.

Just to drive the point home – and into everyone’s homes – a little further, Xi penned a column widely distributed to Pakistani media before his first overseas trip in 2015.

He stressed, “We need to form a ‘1+4′ cooperation structure with the Economic Corridor at the center and the Gwadar Port, energy, infrastructure and industrial cooperation being the four key areas to drive development across Pakistan and deliver tangible benefits to its people.”

Quick translation: China is bringing Pakistan into the massive New Silk Road(s) project with a bang.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry, also on cue, stressed that Pakistan would be in the frontline to benefit from the $40 billion Silk Road Fund, which will help to finance the Silk Road Economic Belt and Maritime Silk Road projects; or, in Chinese jargon, “One Belt, One Road”, that maze of roads, high-speed rail, ports, pipelines and fiber optics networks bound to turbo-charge China’s links to Europe through Russia, Central Asia and the Indian Ocean.

The Silk Road Fund will disburse funds in parallel with the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which has already enticed no less than 57 countries. China’s assistant foreign minister, Liu Jianchao, has not delved into detailed numbers, but he assures China “stands ready to provide financing.”

So no wonder Pakistani media was elated. A consensus is also fast emerging that China is becoming “Pakistan’s most important ally” from either West or East.

Beijing’s carefully calibrated commercial offensive mixing Chinese leadership concepts such as harmonious society and Chinese dream with a “win-win” neighborhood policy seduces by the numbers alone: $46 billion in investment in Pakistan ($11 billion in infrastructure, $35 billion in energy), compared to a U.S. Congress’s $7.5 billion program that’s been in place since 2008.

The meat of the matter is that Washington’s “help” to Islamabad is enveloped in outdated weapons systems, while Beijing is investing in stuff that actually benefits people in Pakistan; think of $15.5 billion in coal, wind, solar and hydro energy projects bound to come online by 2017, or a $44 million optical fiber cable linking China and Pakistan.

According to the Center for Global Development, between 2002 and 2009 no less than 70% of U.S. aid was about “security” –  related to the never-ending GWOT (global war on terror). As a Pakistani analyst wrote me, “just compare Xi’s vision for his neighbors and the history of America in Latin America. It is like the difference between heaven and hell.”

That “X” Factor

At the heart of the action is the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), whose embryo had already been discussed when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited Beijing in the summer of 2013. The economic corridor, across 3,000 km, will link the port of Gwadar, in the Arabian Sea, not far from the Iranian border, with China’s Xinjiang.

China is already in Gwadar; China Overseas Port Holding Company is operating it for two years now, after helping to build the first phase. Gwadar formally opens before the end of the month, but a first-class highway and railway linking it to the rest of Pakistan still need to be built (mostly by Chinese companies), not to mention an international airport, scheduled to open by 2017.

All this action implies a frenzy of Chinese workers building roads, railways – and power plants. Their security must be assured. And that means solving the “X” factor; “X” as in Xinjiang, China’s vast far west, home to only 22 million people including plenty of disgruntled Uyghurs.

Beijing-based analyst Gabriele Battaglia has detailed how Xinjiang has been addressed according to the new guiding principle of President Xi’s ethnic policy. The key idea, says Battaglia, is to manage the ethnic conflict between Han Chinese and Uyghurs by applying the so-called three “J”: jiaowang, jiaoliu, jiaorong, that is, “inter-ethnic contact”, “exchange” and “mixage”.

Yet what is essentially a push towards assimilation coupled with some economic incentives is far from assured success; after all the bulk of Xinjiang’s day-to-day policy is conducted by unprepared Han cadres who tend to view most Uyghurs as “terrorists”.

Many of these cadres identify any separatist stirring in Xinjiang as CIA-provoked, which is not totally true. There is an extreme Uyghur minority which actually entered Wahhabi-driven jihadism (I met some of them in Masoud’s prisons in the Panjshir valley before 9/11) and has gone to fight everywhere from Chechnya to Syria. But what the overwhelming majority really wants is an economic shot at the Chinese dream.

The Pakistani counterpart to Xinjiang is Balochistan, inhabited by a little over 6 million people. There have been at least three different separatist factions/movements in Balochistan fighting Islamabad and what they call “Punjabis” with a vengeance. Former provincial minister Jaffar Khan Mandokhel, for instance, is already warning there will be a “strong reaction” across Balochistan to changes in the corridor’s routes, which, he says, “are meant to give maximum benefit to Punjab, which is already considered the privileged province.” Islamabad denies any changes.

The corridor is also bound to bypass most of the key, northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Opposition political star Imran Khan – whose party is on top in Khyber – has already condemned it as an injustice.

Beijing, for its part, has been very explicit to Islamabad; the Pakistani Taliban must be defeated, or at least appeased. That explains why since June 2014 the Pakistani army has been involved in a huge aerial bombing campaign – Zarb-e Azb – againt the Haqqani network and other hardcore tribals. The Pakistani army has already set up a special division to take care of the corridor, including nine battalions and the proverbial paramilitary forces. None of this though is a guarantee of success.

Karakoram or Bust

It will be absolutely fascinating to watch how China and Pakistan, simultaneously, may be able to keep the peace in both Xinjiang and Balochistan to assure booming trade along the corridor. Geographicaly though, this all makes perfect sense.

Xinjiang is closer to the Arabian Sea than Shanghai. Shanghai is twice more distant from Urumqi than Karachi. So no wonder Beijing thinks of Pakistan as a sort of Hong Kong West, as I examined in some detail here.

This is also a microcosm of East and South Asia integration, and even Greater Asia integration, if we include China, Iran, Afghanistan, and even Myanmar.

The spectacular Karakoram highway, from Kashgar to Islamabad, a feat of engineering completed by the Chinese working alongside the Pakistan Army Corps of engineers, will be upgraded, and extended all the way to Gwadar. A railway will also be built. And in the near future, yet another key Pipelineistan stretch.

Pipelineistan is linked to the corridor also in the form of the Iran-Pakistan (IP) gas pipeline, which Beijing will help Islamabad to finish to the tune of $2 billion, after successive U.S. administrations relentlessly tried to derail it. The geopolitical dividends of China blessing a steel umbilical cord between Iran and Pakistan are of course priceless.

The end result is that early in the 2020s China will be connected in multiple ways practically with the mouth of the Persian Gulf. Large swathes of massive China-Europe trade will be able to avoid the Strait of Malacca. China will be turbo-charging trade with the Middle East and Africa. China-bound Middle East oil will be offloaded at Gwadar and transported to Xinjiang via Balochistan – before a pipeline is finished. And Pakistan will profit from more energy, infrastructure and transit trade.

Talk about a “win-win”. And that’s not even accounting for China’s thirst for gold. Balochistan is awash with gold, and there have been new discoveries in Punjab.

New Silk Road action is nothing short than frantic. The Bank of China is already channeling $62 billion of its immense foreign exchange reserves to three policy banks supporting New Silk Road(s) projects; $32 billion to China Development Bank (CDB) and $30 billion to Export-Import Bank of China (EXIM). The Agricultural Development Bank of China (ADBC) will also get its share.

And it’s not only Pakistan; the five Central Asian “stans” – rich in oil, gas, coal, agricultural land, gold, copper, uranium – are also targeted.

There’s a new highway from Kashgar to Osh, in Kyrgyzstan, and a new railway between Urumqi and Almaty, in Kazakhstan. We may be a long way away from the new high-speed Silk Rail, but trade between, for instance, the megacities of Chongqing or Chengdu in Sichuan with Germany now moves in only 20 days; that’s 15 days less than the sea route.

So it’s no wonder a “special leading group” was set up by Beijing to oversee everything going on in the One Road, One Belt galaxy. The crucial action plan is here. Those who’re about to go silk, we salute you.

La Conferenza di Mosca sulla sicurezza internazionale di aprile è stato il luogo per informare Stati Uniti e NATO che le altre potenze mondiali non gli lasceranno fare ciò che vogliono.

I colloqui sugli sforzi di Cina, India, Russia e Iran contro l’espansione della NATO sono divenuti colloqui sui piani militari tra Pechino, Mosca e Teheran.

Ministri della Difesa e ufficiali si sono riuniti il 16 aprile presso il Radisson Royal o Hotel Ukraina, uno dei migliori esempi di architettura sovietica di Mosca, noto come una delle “Sette Sorelle” costruite in epoca staliniana. L’evento ospitato dal Ministero della Difesa russo era la quarta Conferenza Internazionale sulla Sicurezza di Mosca (MCIS).

Funzionari provenienti da oltre settanta Paesi vi hanno partecipato. Quindici ministri della Difesa vi hanno preso parte. Tuttavia, tranne la Grecia, i ministri della Difesa della NATO non hanno partecipato.

A differenza degli anni precedenti, gli organizzatori del MCIS non hanno inviato l’Ucraina. Secondo il Viceministro della Difesa russo Anatolij Antonov, “In questa fase di brutale antagonismo informativo sulla crisi nel sud-est dell’Ucraina, abbiamo deciso di non infiammare la situazione alla conferenza e di non invitare i nostri colleghi ucraini.”

Personalmente, per interesse ho seguito tali conferenze da anni, perché importanti dichiarazioni sulla politica estera e di sicurezza tendono ad apparirvi. Quest’anno sono entusiasta per l’inaugurazione di questa particolare conferenza sulla sicurezza. A parte che si svolge in un momento in cui il paesaggio geopolitico mondiale muta rapidamente, ero curioso di vedere cosa la conferenza producesse da quando mi fu chiesto, nel 2014 dall’ambasciata russa in Canada, se fossi interessato a partecipare al IV MCIS.

Il resto del mondo parla: Audizione sui problemi della sicurezza non-euro-atlantica

La conferenza di Mosca è l’equivalente russa della Conferenza sulla sicurezza di Monaco presso l’Hotel Bayerischer Hof in Germania. Ma vi sono tuttavia differenze cruciali.

Mentre la Conferenza sulla sicurezza di Monaco riguarda la sicurezza euro-atlantica e considera la sicurezza globale dal punto di vista ‘atlantista’ della NATO, il MCIS rappresenta una prospettiva globale molto più ampia e diversificata. Rappresenta le preoccupazioni sulla sicurezza del mondo non-euro-atlantico, in particolare Medio Oriente e Asia-Pacifico. Dall’Argentina, India, Vietnam ad Egitto e Sud Africa, la conferenza presso l’Hotel Ukraina coinvolge grandi e piccoli attori le cui voci e interessi sulla sicurezza, in un modo o nell’altro, sono minati e ignorati a Monaco di Baviera dai capi di USA e NATO.

Il Ministro della Difesa russo Sergej Shojgu, ufficiale comandante, pari a generale di Corpo d’Armata nella maggior parte dei Paesi della NATO, ha aperto la conferenza. Inoltre, accanto a Shojgu sono intervenuti il Ministro degli Esteri russo Sergej Lavrov e altri alti funzionari. Tutti dedicati sulla guerra multispettro di Washington che utilizza le rivoluzioni colorate, come Euromajdan in Ucraina e la rivoluzione delle rose in Georgia, per un cambio di regime. Shojgu ha citato Venezuela e la regione amministrativa speciale cinese di Hong Kong come rivoluzioni colorate fallite.

Il ministro degli Esteri Lavrov ha ricordato che la possibilità di un conflitto mondiale aumenta pericolosamente per la trascuratezza di Stati Uniti e NATO verso la sicurezza degli altri e assenza di un dialogo costruttivo. Argomentando, Lavrov ha citato il presidente statunitense Franklin Roosevelt dire, “Non ci può essere via di mezzo. Dovremo prenderci la responsabilità della collaborazione mondiale, o di un altro conflitto mondiale. Credo che abbiano formulato una delle principali lezioni del conflitto globale più devastante della storia: è possibile affrontare le sfide e preservare la pace attraverso sforzi collettivi nel rispetto degli interessi legittimi di tutte le parti,” spiegando ciò che i leader mondiali appresero dalla Seconda Guerra Mondiale.

Shojgu ha avuto oltre dieci incontri bilaterali con i vari ministri e capi della Difesa giunti a Mosca per il MCIS. Nel corso di un incontro con il Ministro della Difesa serbo Bratislav Gasic, Shojgu ha detto che Mosca considera Belgrado partner affidabile nella cooperazione militare.

La coalizione sino-russo-iraniana: incubo di Washington

Il mito che la Russia sia isolata internazionalmente è stato abbattuto dalla conferenza, che apporta anche importanti annunci.

Il Ministro della Difesa del Kazakistan Imangali Tasmagambetov e Shojgu annunciavano l’avvio del sistema di difesa aereo congiunto kazako-russo, ciò non solo indica l’integrazione dello spazio aereo dell’Organizzazione del trattato di sicurezza collettiva (CSTO), ma anche una tendenza preannunciando altre comunicazioni contro lo scudo antimissile della NATO.

La dichiarazione più vigorosa, però, era quella del Ministro della Difesa iraniano Hussein Dehghan. Il Generale di Brigata Deghan ha detto che l’Iran vuole che Cina, India, Russia si riuniscano opponendosi all’espansione della NATO e alla minaccia del progettato scudo missilistico alla loro Alleanza per la sicurezza collettiva.

Nel corso di un incontro con il Ministro della Difesa cinese Chang Wanquan, Shojgu sottolineava che i legami militari di Mosca con Pechino sono la “priorità assoluta.” In un altro incontro bilaterale sulla Difesa tra Iran e Russia, ha confermato che la cooperazione sarà pietra angolare del nuovo ordine multipolare e che Mosca e Teheran erano d’accordo sull’approccio strategico verso gli Stati Uniti.

Dopo che Dehghan e la delegazione iraniana s’incontravano con Shojgu e gli omologhi russi, fu annunciato un vertice tripartito tra Pechino, Mosca e Teheran. L’idea è stata successivamente avallata dalla delegazione cinese.

Il contesto geopolitico cambia e non in sintonia con gli interessi degli Stati Uniti Non solo l’Unione economica eurasiatica viene formata da Armenia, Bielorussia, Kazakistan e Russia nel cuore post-sovietico dell’Eurasia, ma Pechino, Mosca e Teheran, la Triplice Intesa Eurasiatica, seguono da tempo un processo di avvicinamento politico, strategico, economico, diplomatico e militare. Armonia e integrazione eurasiatica contestano la posizione degli Stati Uniti come “saliente occidentale” e testa di ponte in Europa, orientando gli alleati ad agire in modo più indipendente. Questo è uno dei temi centrali esplorati dal mio libro La Globalizzazione della NATO.

L’ex-capo della sicurezza degli Stati Uniti Zbigniew Brzezinski ha avvertito le élite contro la formazione di una “coalizione eurasiatica che in futuro potrebbe cercare di sfidare la supremazia americana.” Secondo Brzezinski tale alleanza eurasiatica sorgerebbe come “coalizione sino-russo-iraniana” con Pechino al centro.

“Per gli strateghi cinesi, affrontando la coalizione trilaterale di USA, Europa e Giappone, il contrappeso geopolitico più efficace potrebbe essere creare una propria triplice alleanza collegando la Cina all’Iran nella regione del Golfo Persico/Medio Oriente, e alla Russia nella zona ex-sovieti, avverte Brzezinski. “Nel valutare le opzioni future della Cina, si deve considerare anche la possibilità che una Cina economicamente efficace e politicamente sicura, ma che si sente esclusa dal sistema globale, decida di essere portavoce e leader degli Stati poveri del mondo, decidendo di porre non solo un’articolazione dottrinale, ma anche una potente sfida geopolitica al dominante mondo trilaterale,” spiega.

Più o meno questa è la via che i cinesi seguono. Il Ministro Wanquan ha categoricamente detto al MCIS che un ordine mondiale giusto è necessario.

La minaccia per gli Stati Uniti è che una coalizione sino-russo-iraniana possa, secondo Brzezinski, “essere una potente calamita per gli Stati insoddisfatti dallo status quo.”

Contrastare lo scudo missilistico di Stati Uniti e NATO in Eurasia

La nuova “cortina di ferro” viene eretta da Washington intorno Cina, Iran, Russia e alleati, attraverso l’infrastruttura missilistica di Stati Uniti e NATO. Tale rete missilistica è offensiva e non difensiva per intenti e motivazioni. L’obiettivo del Pentagono è neutralizzare le risposte difensive della Russia e delle altre potenze eurasiatiche a un attacco missilistico statunitense che potrebbe includere un primo colpo nucleare. Washington non vuole permettere alla Russia o altri di avere la capacità di contrattaccare o, in altre parole, di rispondere a un attacco del Pentagono.

Nel 2011 fu indicato che il Viceprimo Ministro russo Dmitrij Rogozin, già inviato di Mosca presso la NATO, si era recato a Teheran per parlare del progetto di scudo missilistico della NATO. Diversi rapporti, anche del Tehran Times, affermavano che i governi di Russia, Iran e Cina progettavano uno scudo missilistico congiunto per contrastare Stati Uniti e NATO. Rogozin, però, smentì dicendo che la difesa missilistica era stata discussa dal Cremlino e dagli alleati dell’Organizzazione del trattato di sicurezza collettiva (CSTO).

L’idea di cooperare nella difesa tra Cina, Iran e Russia contro lo scudo missilistico NATO aleggia dal 2011. Da allora l’Iran diveniva osservatore della CSTO, come Afghanistan e Serbia. Pechino, Mosca e Teheran si sono riavvicinati anche su problemi come Siria, Euromaidan e “Pivot in Asia” del Pentagono. L’appello di Deghan a un approccio collettivo da parte di Cina, India, Iran e Russia contro lo scudo missilistico e l’espansione della NATO, insieme agli annunci al MCIS sui colloqui militari tripartiti tra Cina, Iran e Russia, indicano questa direzione.

I sistemi di difesa aerea russi S-300 e S-400 vengono schierati in Eurasia, dall’Armenia e dalla Bielorussia alla Kamchatka, quale avanzata contromossa alla nuova “cortina di ferro”. Questi sistemi di difesa aerea rendono l’obiettivo di Washington, neutralizzare reazione o secondo colpo, molto più difficile. Anche gli ufficiali di NATO e Pentagono, che chiamano SA-20 il sistema S-300, l’ammettono. “L’abbiamo studiato e ci siamo preparati a contrastalo per anni. Anche se non ne abbiamo paura, rispettiamo l’S-300 per quello che è: un sistema missilistico molto mobile, preciso e letale,” ha scritto il colonnello dell’US Air Force Clint Hinote per il Consiglio delle Relazioni Estere di Washington.

Anche se è stato ipotizzato che la vendita dei sistemi S-300 all’Iran sia un credito nella vendita di armi internazionali a Teheran, dovuto ai colloqui di Losanna, e che Mosca cerca un vantaggio competitivo nella riapertura del mercato iraniano, in realtà situazione e motivazioni sono molto diverse. Anche se Teheran acquista diversi quantitativi di materiali militari dalla Russia e da altre fonti estere, segue una politica di autosufficienza militare e produce la maggior parte delle proprie armi. Tutta una serie di equipaggiamenti militari — carri armati, missili, aerei da combattimento, radar, fucili, droni, elicotteri, siluri, mortai, navi da guerra e sottomarini — sono prodotti nazionalmente in Iran. L’esercito iraniano sostiene anche che il sistema di difesa aerea Bavar-373 è più o meno l’equivalente all’S-300.

L’invio degli S-300 da Mosca a Teheran non è solo un affare dichiarato, ma è destinato a cementare la cooperazione militare russo-iraniana e a migliorare la cooperazione eurasiatica contro l’accerchiamento dello scudo missilistico di Washington. È un passo avanti verso la creazione della rete della difesa aerea eurasiatica contro la minaccia missilistica di Stati Uniti e NATO alle nazioni che osano opporsi a Washington.

Di Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya per RT

Nazemroaya è un sociologo e un autore pluripremiato. È ricercatore associato presso il Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) è membro del Comitato Scientifico di GEOPOLITICA. È specializzato sul Medio Oriente e l’Asia centrale. E’ stato collaboratore e ospite sul più vasto Medio Oriente in numerosi programmi e reti internazionali come Al Jazeera, CCTV, teleSUR e Rossiya-24. Nazemroaya è stato anche testimone della “primavera araba” in azione nel Nord Africa. Mentre era in Libia durante la campagna di bombardamenti della NATO, ha relazionato da Tripoli per diversi media. Ha inviato dispacci dai punti chiave della Libia per Global Research ed è stato inviato speciale per il programma investigativo della Flashpoints, trasmesso da Berkeley, California. I suoi scritti sono stati pubblicati in oltre dieci lingue. Scrive anche per Strategic Culture Foundation (SCF) a Mosca, Russia.

Testo originale in inglese – 23 aprile 2015: Did a Chinese-Russian-Iranian coalition opposing NATO debut in Moscow?

Traduzione di Alessandro Lattanzio – 26 aprile 2015

Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of President Obama’s announcement Thursday that two hostages of Al Qaeda, an American and an Italian, were killed in a US drone missile strike in Pakistan is the lack of any significant reaction from official political circles or the media.

There was a certain amount of tut-tutting in the press and expressions of sympathy for the family of Dr. Warren Weinstein, the longtime aid worker in Pakistan who was kidnapped by Al Qaeda in 2011 and killed by the US government in January 2015.

But there was no challenge to the basic premise of the drone missile program: that the CIA and Pentagon have the right to kill any individual, in any country, on the mere say-so of the president. Drone murder by the US government has become routine and is accepted as normal and legitimate by the official shapers of public opinion.

Obama’s own appearance Thursday was chilling. He made perfunctory expressions of regret, but only because the latest victims of US drone strikes included an American and an Italian who were being held hostage. It was a transparently poor acting performance, convincing no one but the editors of theNew York Times, who praised Obama’s “candor and remorse.”

After blaming the deaths of Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto on “mistakes” made because of “the fog of war,” Obama declared, “But one of the things that sets America apart from many other nations, one of the things that makes us exceptional, is our willingness to confront squarely our imperfections and to learn from our mistakes.” He had decided to admit responsibility for the deaths because “the United States is a democracy, committed to openness, in good times and in bad.”

What a farce! Far from admitting “mistakes,” Obama, the political front man for the military-intelligence apparatus, was making clear that the drone assassination program would continue and no one would be held accountable for the latest atrocity.

Today’s America is “exceptional” only in the degree to which the entire ruling elite has embraced a policy of reckless violence around the globe that includes murder, torture and aggressive war. The United States is run by criminals.

A major test of any American president is readiness to approve state killings in his or her capacity as the political representative, not of the American people, but of a cabal of generals and CIA assassins. How much longer before such actions are carried out not just in remote parts of Afghanistan or Yemen, but in major urban centers of major countries, including, ultimately, the United States itself?

The drone strike in Pakistan’s Shawal Valley that killed Weinstein and Lo Porto is part of an unending campaign of death and destruction. Obama did not even have to sign off on this particular missile strike, since he has given the CIA blanket authority to conduct such operations in the predominately Pashtun-populated Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan.

The claim that drone attacks target individuals designated by the US military-intelligence apparatus as “terrorists” is hardly a limitation, given the indiscriminate application of this term to anyone offering significant resistance to US foreign policy, as well as the cynical practice of posthumously applying the label of “enemy combatant” to any military-age male killed by a US drone-fired missile.

Moreover, as events in Syria and Libya demonstrate, yesterday’s anti-American “terrorist” can become today’s “rebel” or “freedom fighter,” the recipient of US cash, military training and weaponry. Similarly, today’s “freedom fighter” or ally in the “war on terror” can become tomorrow’s target for overthrow or assassination.

The CIA recruited Al Qaeda sympathizers for its overthrow of the Libyan regime and murder of Muammar Gaddafi, formerly an ally, and for the ongoing regime-change operation against President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. The latter effort gave rise to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, in which terrorists turned “rebels” were subsequently branded terrorists, in accordance with the twists and turns of US foreign policy.

Obama administration officials have confirmed that the drone missile attack that killed Weinstein and Lo Porto was a “signature strike,” in which targets are not identified by name, but selected on the basis of a pattern of activities supposedly consistent with those of a terrorist group. The CIA carried out a drone missile attack that killed six people, including Weinstein and Lo Porto, based on aerial observation of the comings and goings at the building targeted, without actually knowing who was there or what their relation, if any, was with Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

Such attacks are in flagrant violation of international law. The US is trampling on the sovereignty of Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and other countries where it carries out such strikes.

Drone missile murders are war crimes under the Geneva Conventions, which forbid deliberate attacks on civilians or military operations that recklessly endanger civilians. According to a study by the human rights group Reprieve, US drone missile strikes targeting 41 supposed terrorists killed a total of 1,147 people, including many women and children.

Not a single significant voice in the US political or media establishment has been raised against the elevation of assassination to a major element of American foreign policy. In the 1970s, when the US Senate’s Church Committee held hearings on CIA assassination plots against a handful of foreign leaders, its revelations had the capacity to shock. There was a reaction even at the highest levels of the political establishment, and the White House was compelled to issue an executive order disavowing murder as a tool of government policy.

Today there is no such reaction. On the contrary, earlier this month the Timesrevealed that congressional leaders had put pressure on the White House and CIA for more acts of drone missile murder. Describing discussions about whether to kill or capture a Texas-born Islamist who had joined Al Qaeda in Pakistan, Mohanad Mahmoud Al Farekh, the Times reported: “During a closed-door hearing of the House Intelligence Committee in July 2013, lawmakers grilled military and intelligence officials about why Mr. Farekh had not been killed.” (See: “US targeted second American citizen for assassination”).

The American media is well aware of the drone missile death toll, but covers it up. An article Friday in the Times noted that the White House refuses point-blank to discuss civilian victims of drone missile attacks when they are Pakistani or Yemeni. “When Americans have been killed, however, the Obama administration has found it necessary to break with its usual practice and eventually acknowledge the deaths, at least in private discussions with reporters,” the newspaper wrote.

The lack of any significant protest of the latest revelations of US war crimes is a warning to the working class, both in the United States and internationally. As the World Socialist Web Site has consistently warned, the war drive of imperialism is inseparably linked to a frontal assault on democratic and social rights.

The struggle against war and in defense of democratic rights requires a turn to the working class, the only social force capable of disarming the ruling elite. That is the purpose of the International May Day Online Rally called by the International Committee of the Fourth International for Sunday, May 3. We urge all readers and supporters of the World Socialist Web Site to register for the rally today.

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan announced Thursday he would dispatch 32 state troopers to Baltimore in advance of what is expected to be a large protest Saturday against the police killing of 25-year-old Freddie Gray. Protests have been held daily since Gray died on April 19, seven days after his spinal cord was nearly severed while he was in police custody.

Gray, who was unarmed, was arrested for the “crime” of making eye contact with a Baltimore cop and, according to the police, running away. A bystander video showed a group of police officers loading Gray, who was obviously injured and screaming in pain, into a small steel cage in the back of a police van.

Eyewitnesses said that, prior to the events captured in the video, the police contorted Gray’s body, forcing his heels onto his back. One bystander said the young man was “folded up like he was… a piece of origami.”

Gray repeatedly asked for medical help but the six cops involved in the arrest refused to heed his pleas. Instead, he was driven around town for 30 minutes before paramedics were called. He was taken to a hospital, fell into a coma and died a week later.

On Thursday, it emerged that the cops, who have been suspended with pay, failed to secure Gray with a seat belt, a violation of the police department’s policy. That policy was put into effect after another arrested man, Dondi Johnson, died of a fractured spine in 2005 after he was arrested and transported without a seat belt while his hands were cuffed behind his back.

The “rough ride” given Gray likely compounded whatever injuries the police had previously inflicted on him.

The response of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a Democrat and African American, has been to feign sympathy for the devastated family of the victim, promise a quick and thorough investigation, and urge demonstrators to remain peaceful. At the same time, repression against demonstrators has increased, with two people taken into custody on Thursday.

Now the governor, a Republican, is sending state troopers to Baltimore in what could be the first step in a larger mobilization of state forces.

With the protests growing in size and moving from the local police precinct to City Hall and the US Courthouse in downtown Baltimore, Democratic officials are beginning to raise the red herring of “outside agitators” to divert attention from the murderous actions of the police and the longstanding cover-up by local and state politicians.

Bernard Young, Baltimore City Council president, said on Thursday that he hoped residents would not let “outside forces come in here and dictate how we act by destroying our infrastructure.” Young speaks for the largely African American Democratic Party establishment in Baltimore that has for many years presided over the deindustrialization of the city and impoverishment of its working class inhabitants, black as well as white, and enrichment of a narrow African American elite.

Last month, Baltimore residents protested the city’s decision to begin shutting off water service to households that are behind on their water bills. The city’s Department of Public Works announced it would begin cutting off water to as many as 25,000 people.

According to a web site that tracks police killings in the US from media reports, 368 people have died so far this year at the hands of cops.

Double standards

A coalition led by Saudi-Arabia and supported by Western leaders has been bombing Yemen for about a month; it’s a clearcut international aggression and an extremely a-symmetric conflict.

But we’ve heard no calls for a ‘humanitarian intervention’ by NATO or a no-fly zone to prevent the now more than 1500 bombing raids from continuing and hitting also civilian targets.

It’s not that international law is blatantly violated; sadly that has been seen before. It is the roaring absence of a clear condemnation by the UN, EU/NATO countries – usually calling themselves ‘the international community’ – and by the Western mainstream media.

Substance plays a minor role. What is right or wrong depends on who is doing what. This war is OK because the Saudi dictatorship and its coalition members are Western allies and armed by NATO countries.

The convenient but wrong narrative

Furthermore, the narrative has twisted this into a proxy war between Saudi-Arabia and the West on one side and Iran, alone, on the other side blaming the latter for its alleged support to the Houthis.

It is no wonder that a group of eminent scholars on Yemen have published an open letter in Washington Post in which, among other things, they condemn the Saudi-led war on Yemen.

They add, diplomatically, that

“A complex, local conflict has been overshadowed by the narrative of a regional proxy war between Saudi and Iranian interests. The Saudi, as well as Hadi, accuse the Houthis of being Iranian puppets. Some analysts say the connection between Tehran and the Houthis has been exaggerated.”

The UN Security Council passes a resolution condemning the Houthis, drafted by Jordan, a bombing coalition country and thereby de facto endorsing the aggression.

It seems that the UN Secretary-General is unaware of Articles 99 and 100 of the Charter. Only a couple of days later, the UN Yemen mediator resigns, conspicuously.

The absence of diversity in mainstream analyses of critical questions and the lack of sense of justice is appalling in that it leaves the world with the perverse “might makes right” philosophy unchallenged. An exaggeration?

Just try to imagine the Western generalised reaction had Iran bombed Yemen or somebody else – including civilian targets – the last three weeks with the support of, say, Russia and China.

TFF Associates’ analyses of the Western-Saudi war on Yemen

TFF – independent of governments and corporate interests – offers you the analyses by our Associates below all of which contradict the woefully inadequate mainstream perspectives that also omit mention of the evident, accumulating double-standards of the West.

These analyses:

– give you the basic internal and international historical conflict dynamics;

– tell of the amazing non-violent struggle in Yemen – that the West didn’t bother to support;

– show the contributions of the U.S. to this new catastrophe because of its continued backing of Saleh’s dictatorship;

– debunk the narrative that this is in essence a war by proxies;

– show the real, complex relations between Iran and the Houthis, actually almost the opposite of what Western media have repeated without any empirical back-up;

– illustrate how arms export profiteering influence foreign policy, cause wars and increase the human suffering;

– make clear which countries have presented constructive proposals in the direction of dialogue and peace-making – while Western allies continue their best to create a new Libya out of Yemen.

Quite a few who have conveyed the Western mainstream narrative ought to be embarrassed.

And after the wars on Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria one must ask: When will they ever learn?

For Further details on TTF coverage click here

Living in the west, one becomes used to media self-censorship when covering geopolitical and current events. 

It’s generally accepted that all mainstream media outlets will stay within the party line’s narrow parameters, so as not to make Washington, London or Europe ‘look bad’ internationally. This was certainly the case before and during most major US-NATO military or covert interventions, likeYugoslavia, Iraq, Syria, the Ukraine and of course, who can forget their most egregious recent military adventure in Libya.

Are US media outlets changing their headline or stories under pressure from foreign governments?

Air strike on supposed army weapons depot on a mountain overlooking Sanaa (Image Source: Channel News Asia).

Saudi Defiance on Yemen Reflects Limits of U.S. Strategy

The sub-header went on to describe how Saudi Arabia’s “insistence on using airstrikes threatens larger goals”, which could easily be translated as ‘US foreign policy goals’. No surprise there. But then we looked for this same article online, only to find that the headline has been changed to:

Saudi Resolve on Yemen Reflects Limits of U.S. Strategy

Some may say that changing a single word in a headline doesn’t amount to very much, but then consider the weight of this word appearing at such a crucial juncture in America’s premier news source, or ‘paper of record’, and how it changes the entire tone of the article – and gives a 180º spin in terms of public relations. The question is not why did the New Times editors make this strategic change (that’s fairly obvious). The bigger question is: who applied pressure to the editors to make such a significant change on a lead story, assuming that the change was made in that order, from ‘Defiance’ to ‘Resolve’, or from negative to positive, in terms of its PR effect on Saudi Arabia, and by extension it’s US ally.

Is this a case of US media engaging in willful war propaganda? One can understand when an editor needs to tone down an inflammatory headline, but if we are indeed truly witnessing a PR power-play by either the Saudi Arabian Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir (via the US State Department?), or by Washington directly, then this is a fairly big problem in terms of press freedom in the US. If indeed, someone is attempting to downplay what is obviously an undeclared, illegal war of aggression against Yemen by a brutal monarchy exerting overwhelming force – theNY Times editors should have to answer who, what, when, why and how this came to be. If the Saudi monarchy is throwing its weight around in order to protect its collapsing image as a “progressive” state in the Middle East, then the nation really needs to know.

Although the US broadcast media pundits and political talking heads are going out of their way to portray Saudi Arabia as acting independently and on its own volition as part of some glorious “Coalition” (yes, they are definitely learning how to do wars of aggression – without saying they are), the fact is the US military and intelligence services are giving full-spectrum support to Riyadh in Yemen. Washington and Riyadh are in lock-step, and one could even go so far as to say that Saudi Arabia has become a wing of the US military overseas now. The US is supplying all of Saudi’s arms, jets, equipment, ammunition, satellite targeting data, logistical support, and even helping to rescue its ejected pilots.

You can tell that the Saudis are new to this ‘empire’ thing by their abysmal PR management surrounding the destruction of their neighbor Yemen. It’s been one snafu after another. Less than 48 hours ago, the US and western media crowed proudly that, “Saudi Arabia has halted airstrikes in Yemen”, and then less than 24 hours later we’re told that, “Saudi Arabia has resumed airstrikes”. Was that some sort of international joke? Is this the new normal?

The Saudis are learning quickly, however. Already they appear to have taken a page out of the‘Israeli manual for international ceasefire negotiations’, declaring that:

“The decision to calm matters now rests with them[the Yemenis],” Saudi ambassador Jubeir told reporters at the Saudi Embassy yesterday.

If harkens back to last summer’s brutal siege of Gaza in Israel-occupied Palestine, where, after weeks of shelling defenseless civilian areas by Israel’s IDF, and killing thousands in the process, Israeli leaders continued to declare that any ceasefire was ‘up to the Palestinians’, and not them – making Israel unaccountable (in their own eyes, anyway).

You could also say that the Saudis have taken a page out of ‘Kiev’s manual of ceasefire negotiations’ too. After leveling whole civilian neighborhoods with indiscriminate shelling designed to cleanse eastern Ukraine of its Russian-speaking populations, the US-backed fascist junta government in Kiev continued to blame all hostilities on the Donbass Rebels, again, making the aggressor totally unaccountable (in their own eyes, anyway).

Is Saudi Arabia being shifty, or is this just another case where the US government-media complex is lying to its public? War is a serious endeavor, and Saudi Arabia – with the full backing of Washington’s war brain-trust – seems to think it’s just an expensive game.

Yes, the Saudis claim that the previous bombing run which has already killed at least 1,000 civilians and displaced some 150,000 people crassly titled Operation Decisive Storm, has since given way to its sequel – a second phase, another cynically titled bombing run, ‘Operation Restoring Hope’. The Saudis claim that they have finished Phase I (death and destruction) and are now moving into Phase II – more death, destruction, deploying and providing continued air support to Saudi’s real boots on the ground in Yemen, namely, al Qaeda and ISIS brigades, with the hopes of ethnically and politically cleansing ‘unfriendly’ areas.

Playing word games in war is not a good idea, and risks triggering some very negative sentiments later down the road. The NY Times continues, describing this debacle as it unfolds:

“Senior Saudi officials made clear on Wednesday that they had not formally declared an end to bombing. Rather, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, said the campaign was shifting to a new phase — one in which Saudi airstrikes would be more limited and come only in response to Houthi attacks, such as the assault against Yemeni troops in Taiz.

“The ambassador did not mention the intensifying international pressure, including from the Obama administration, to stop airstrikes that medical and relief organizations said were killing hundreds of civilians, and to lift an embargo on food, fuel, water and medicines that was contributing to a growing humanitarian catastrophe. But American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats privately acknowledged that this was clearly a factor in the Saudi calculation.”

Jubier can’t help but be shifty in his explanation, because he’s attempting to put lipstick on a pig. Some might even say that he is lying through his teeth about a disaster of his own country’s making. Yes, the Saudis are learning real quick what this ‘empire thing’ is all about.

No bother, because as the Saudis and their American managers will tell you – “It’s not our fault, and any ceasefire is up to them, not us.”

Welcome to the new international terrordrome.

Ukrainian anti-fascists are calling on people around the world to mark May 2 as a day of commemoration of those who were killed in the trade union building in Odessa. 

On May 2, 2014 there was a bloody massacre in Odessa where, though data is incomplete, at least 48 people were killed. Some of them were burned alive in the House of Trade Unions.

The organizers of the massacre were radical Ukrainian nationalists and fascists who support the regime established in the Kiev after the coup in February 2014. Their opponents were the participants of the Antimaydan movement opposed to Ukrainian fascism. They belonged to different political tendencies, but opposition to Ukrainian fascism united them. It was they who were the main victims of the massacre on the May 2. Fleeing from the crowd of aggressive and armed fascists which greatly outnumbered them, the Antimaydan activists tried to take refuge in the House of Trade Unions located near their camp. They were largely without weapons, as they consistently preferred peaceful forms of protest. The enemy attacked the House of Trade Unions with Molotov cocktails, igniting a fire that caused many of those inside the building to flee outside. There, angry Ukrainian fascists beat and killed them. Others who observed this remained inside until they either burned to death, suffocated or jumped out of windows to their deaths. Others who remained inside were hunted down and murdered in cold blood. Local fire service deliberately did not go to the assistance of the desperate people and when it finally arrived, the fascists did not let the fire trucks or firefighters approach the burning building.

The ruling government of Ukraine is doing everything to hide and distort the truth about this crime. The official list of dead people has not been published yet. The results of forensic examination of the causes of deaths areclassified and were not disclosed until recently. None of the perpetrators of the massacre has been arrested; the state prosecutor’s office deliberately ignores numerous videos proving their guilt. Instead, people who tried to defend the House of Trade Unions have been arrested and put on trial. Though the investigation found no evidence of their guilt, the court refuses to set them free. Official propaganda since the day of tragedy has spread lies like “the House of Trade Unions was not protected by people from Odessa but by citizens of Transnistria and Russian saboteurs”, calls these people terrorists and separatists even though the leaders of the Odessa’s “Antimaydan” never called for the separation of the Odessa region from Ukraine. But various supporters of this Kiev regime replicate this lie all over the world.

The Odessa tragedy is just one act in the civil war the Kiev fascists launched last spring against its own people that. This is not the only event of its kind. The atrocities of the fascists on May 9, 2014 in Mariupol, massive bloodshed in the Donbass, sadistic treatment of war prisoners, deliberate destruction of vital facilities in the Donbass, the recent excesses of Ukrainian soldiers in Konstantinovka (Kostyantynivka) – all of them are the links of the same chain. This is a manifestation of the bloody totalitarian nature of the regime in Kiev, established in the heart of Europe with the blessing of western political leaders. But the Odessa massacre became a symbol of these atrocities. In Odessa, the Kiev regime’s political opponents asserted their own rights without weapons, by peaceful means and they were ruthlessly suppressed with astonishing cruelty and cynicism. The task of all progressive forces of the world is to demonstrate their condemnation and rejection of such methods.

The Kiev regime wants to forcibly impose on the entire population of Ukraine its system of values which totally rejects the Soviet period in the history of Ukraine. It is based on the traditions of Ukrainian integral nationalism, which is the local Ukrainian variant of fascist ideology. These ideas of integral nationalism inspired such figures as Stepan Bandera. For a significant part of Ukrainian society, such attitudes are unacceptable. That is why opposition appeared. Despite all the repression, people have been fighting against the reactionaries and actively looking for an alternative. But the forces of resistance in Ukraine are split, and some of them are not guided by consistently democratic principles. Some of them receive help from Russian nationalists and therefore think that the alternative to Ukrainian fascism is Russian nationalism. But this is wrong and a dead end road. Therefore, the solidarity of international left forces with the liberation struggle against the Kiev regime will help the people of see they have friends and strengthen the democratic tendencies in the camp of resistance.

Finally, solidarity of leftist and internationalist forces is important not only for Ukraine. Now we see the rise of right-wing reactionary movements around the world. In many European countries, neo-fascists are growing in popularity, the youth are joining their parties, and they are gaining more and more votes. Totalitarianism has intensified everywhere and gone on the offensive. The civil war in Ukraine is just one of many episodes of offensive of international reaction forces. But this episode is very revealing. Ukraine is a European country and it in this European country that for the first time in the 21st century that fascists have entered a government while fascist paramilitaries have received legal status in the army and other state authorities. We can resist this attack on our principles and values together, combining our efforts all round the world.

Therefore, we propose to make May 2 a day of international solidarity in defense of democracy and internationalism in Ukraine. To this end, we urge the leftist forces around the world to hold in early May actions of solidarity with the liberation struggle of the working masses of Ukraine. This can be a picket, a march, a meeting, a round table and any other action which would be considered appropriate by activists not indifferent to the problems of Ukraine. From our side, our initiative group will contribute to the dissemination of information about these actions in the media.

Ivan Melekhov

Jeanne Camus

Yefim Mironov

Stanislav Yushchenko

Contact address [email protected]

New York Contact: [email protected]

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.    — Article IV, Section 4, US Constitution

A republican form of government is one in which power resides in elected officials representing the citizens, and government leaders exercise power according to the rule of law. In The Federalist Papers, James Madison defined a republic as “a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people . . . .”

On April 22, 2015, the Senate Finance Committee approved a bill to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive trade agreement that would override our republican form of government and hand judicial and legislative authority to a foreign three-person panel of corporate lawyers.

The secretive TPP is an agreement with Mexico, Canada, Japan, Singapore and seven other countries that affects 40% of global markets. Fast-track authority could now go to the full Senate for a vote as early as next week. Fast-track means Congress will be prohibited from amending the trade deal, which will be put to a simple up or down majority vote. Negotiating the TPP in secret and fast-tracking it through Congress is considered necessary to secure its passage, since if the public had time to review its onerous provisions, opposition would mount and defeat it.

Abdicating the Judicial Function to Corporate Lawyers

James Madison wrote in The Federalist Papers:

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. . . . “Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for the judge would then be the legislator. . . .”

And that, from what we now know of the TPP’s secret provisions, will be its dire effect.

The most controversial provision of the TPP is the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) section, which strengthens existing ISDS  procedures. ISDS first appeared in a bilateral trade agreement in 1959. According to The Economist, ISDS gives foreign firms a special right to apply to a secretive tribunal of highly paid corporate lawyers for compensation whenever the government passes a law to do things that hurt corporate profits — such things as discouraging smoking, protecting the environment or preventing a nuclear catastrophe.

Arbitrators are paid $600-700 an hour, giving them little incentive to dismiss cases; and the secretive nature of the arbitration process and the lack of any requirement to consider precedent gives wide scope for creative judgments.

To date, the highest ISDS award has been for $2.3 billion to Occidental Oil Company against the government of Ecuador over its termination of an oil-concession contract, this although the termination was apparently legal. Still in arbitration is a demand by Vattenfall, a Swedish utility that operates two nuclear plants in Germany, for compensation of €3.7 billion ($4.7 billion) under the ISDS clause of a treaty on energy investments, after the German government decided to shut down its nuclear power industry following the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011.

Under the TPP, however, even larger judgments can be anticipated, since the sort of “investment” it protects includes not just “the commitment of capital or other resources” but “the expectation of gain or profit.” That means the rights of corporations in other countries extend not just to their factories and other “capital” but to the profits they expect to receive there.

In an article posted by Yves Smith, Joe Firestone poses some interesting hypotheticals:

Under the TPP, could the US government be sued and be held liable if it decided to stop issuing Treasury debt and financed deficit spending in some other way (perhaps by quantitative easing or by issuing trillion dollar coins)? Why not, since some private companies would lose profits as a result?

Under the TPP or the TTIP (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership under negotiation with the European Union), would the Federal Reserve be sued if it failed to bail out banks that were too big to fail?

Firestone notes that under the Netherlands-Czech trade agreement, the Czech Republic was sued in an investor-state dispute for failing to bail out an insolvent bank in which the complainant had an interest. The investor company was awarded $236 million in the dispute settlement. What might the damages be, asks Firestone, if the Fed decided to let the Bank of America fail, and a Saudi-based investment company decided to sue?

Abdicating the Legislative Function to Multinational Corporations

Just the threat of this sort of massive damage award could be enough to block prospective legislation. But the TPP goes further and takes on the legislative function directly, by forbidding specific forms of regulation.

Public Citizen observes that the TPP would provide big banks with a backdoor means of watering down efforts to re-regulate Wall Street, after deregulation triggered the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression:

The TPP would forbid countries from banning particularly risky financial products, such as the toxic derivatives that led to the $183 billion government bailout of AIG. It would prohibit policies to prevent banks from becoming “too big to fail,” and threaten the use of “firewalls” to prevent banks that keep our savings accounts from taking hedge-fund-style bets.

The TPP would also restrict capital controls, an essential policy tool to counter destabilizing flows of speculative money. . . . And the deal would prohibit taxes on Wall Street speculation, such as the proposed Robin Hood Tax that would generate billions of dollars’ worth of revenue for social, health, or environmental causes.

Clauses on dispute settlement in earlier free trade agreements have been invoked to challenge efforts to regulate big business. The fossil fuel industry is seeking to overturn Quebec’s ban on the ecologically destructive practice of fracking. Veolia, the French behemoth known for building a tram network to serve Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem, is contesting increases in Egypt’s minimum wage. The tobacco maker Philip Morris is suing against anti-smoking initiatives in Uruguay and Australia.

The TPP would empower not just foreign manufacturers but foreign financial firms to attack financial policies in foreign tribunals, demanding taxpayer compensation for regulations that they claim frustrate their expectations and inhibit their profits.

Preempting Government Sovereignty

What is the justification for this encroachment on the sovereign rights of government? Allegedly, ISDS is necessary in order to increase foreign investment. But as noted inThe Economist, investors can protect themselves by purchasing political-risk insurance. Moreover, Brazil continues to receive sizable foreign investment despite its long-standing refusal to sign any treaty with an ISDS mechanism. Other countries are beginning to follow Brazil’s lead.

In an April 22nd report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, gains from multilateral trade liberalization were shown to be very small, equal to only about 0.014% of consumption, or about $.43 per person per month. And that assumes that any benefits are distributed uniformly across the economic spectrum. In fact, transnational corporations get the bulk of the benefits, at the expense of most of the world’s population.

Something else besides attracting investment money and encouraging foreign trade seems to be going on. The TPP would destroy our republican form of government under the rule of law, by elevating the rights of investors – also called the rights of “capital” – above the rights of the citizens.

That means that TPP is blatantly unconstitutional. But as Joe Firestone observes, neo-liberalism and corporate contributions seem to have blinded the deal’s proponents so much that they cannot see they are selling out the sovereignty of the United States to foreign and multinational corporations.

For more information and to get involved, visit:

Flush the TPP

The Citizens Trade Campaign

Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch

Eyes on Trade

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.

Asia’s dependency on rice cultivation for both subsidence and income is intuitively understood. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates the agricultural population of lowland rice cultivation in Asia to be over 470 million – larger than the entire population of the United States. Improvements in rice cultivation would stand to lift hundreds of millions from debt and poverty.

Conversely, the disruption of rice cultivation would threaten to mire hundreds of millions in deeper debt, inescapable destitution, and all of the negative socioeconomic implications that follow.

Asia’s rice farmers produce between 1-2 harvests a year depending on the climb and climate of any given region. They do so to sell their rice, generally to mills who in turn sell the final product to exporters or for domestic consumption. Out of each harvest, rice farmers keep a portion for their own consumption, but the vast majority of what they grow is for income.The UK-based Rice Association claims there are up to 40,000 species of rice, with a wide variety of characteristics suitable for different markets and uses.

Rice farmers grow those which local, national and regional markets are best suited to move. In nations where subsidies are offered for rice crops, cheap, easy to grow varieties are chosen. More desirable or exotic species are grown by independent farmers who have developed their own cooperative with millers, marketers and exporters. The rice Asians eat depends on both economic and market realities. The impoverished eat what is cheapest and most easily available, but not necessarily that which is healthiest.

Enter GMO: Problem, Reaction, Solution

Poor diet leads to vitamin deficiencies, a persistent problem among the impoverished. A lack of basic healthcare and education allows the otherwise easily rectified problem to continue unresolved. The World Health Organization (WHO) states on their website, “an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 vitamin A-deficient children become blind every year, half of them dying within 12 months of losing their sight.” This statistic is global, not regionally specific to Asia, but Southeast Asia in particular suffers from such deficiencies.

WHO prescribes cheap vitamin supplements and the promotion of local gardens to produce a variety of fruits and vegetables that can easily solve not only vitamin A deficiency, but other deficiencies as well. WHO states, “for vulnerable rural families, for instance in Africa and South-East Asia, growing fruits and vegetables in home gardens complements dietary diversification and fortification and contributes to better lifelong health.”

Surely then, one would expect both regional governments and international organizations to focus on these recommendations. However, there is a vocal and growing cry to solve this problem with another, more radical solution, the implementation of genetically modified (GM) rice containing beta-carotene to target specifically vitamin A deficiency in Asia. Promoted by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), directly funded by agricultural giants Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer and others, along with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) which is also partnered with big-business agriculture, genetically modified “Golden Rice” containing beta-carotene is promoted as the solution to saving “millions of children.”Golden Rice: Scourge of Asia

In reality Golden Rice will do nothing of the sort. The promotion of Golden Rice is not unlike any given commercial endeavor. IRRI’s website links to articles like, “A senseless fight,” which asks, “how could anyone in good conscience seek to thwart technology that has even a remote chance of tackling the problem of vitamin A blindness?”

The appeal to emotions and sickly children diverts from the real threat Golden Rice poses to the very people it claims to be helping. People who grow rice, grow it to sell to markets. These markets are well-developed, based on indigenous agricultural technology and tradition, and linked to export markets with stringent requirements (many of which restrict or outright ban GMO).

The introduction of GM rice for any reason, would threaten or potentially destroy the livelihood of hundreds of millions of people.Proponents of Golden Rice suggest rice farmers replace their profitable crops with genetically modified rice that will treat only one of many vitamin and mineral deficiencies they may or may not potentially suffer from, deficiencies that could be easily solved through other methods. Clearly illogical in terms of “helping” the malnourished, Golden Rice must serve another purpose.

The author of IRRI’s featured article, “A senseless fight,” suggests that “Golden Rice is being developed by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), which is a not-for-profit institute, and the seeds will be distributed to farmers who can resow them as they wish. In these cases, the argument [against Golden Rice] switches to “Golden Rice is a Trojan horse”. In other words, by sneaking below the barriers of suspicion, it will open the floodgates to GMO technology and from then on to a slippery slope and the takeover of the world’s seed supply.”

The author, in their attempt to defend Golden Rice, reveals the true agenda behind the otherwise useless crop. Governments, international organizations and the private sector (i.e. Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer) will flood Asia with Golden Rice, where it will intermingle and contaminate rice species that have been in use for centuries and form the foundation of Asia’s historical and modern agricultural industry.

The livelihoods of some 470 million people who depend on rice farming in Asia (not to mention those that import and consume Asian rice beyond Asia’s borders) would be jeopardized by the proliferation of Golden Rice disseminated under the dubious guise of humanitarian concerns.The marketing machine behind Golden Rice doesn’t ever seem to address this critical fact. That Golden Rice seeds will be kept and sown each year by prospective cultivators only increases the dangers of cross-contamination with other, economically and culturally valuable species.

It is in all regards a flagrant attempt to infiltrate, corrupt and overtake rice production at its very geographical and socioeconomic heart. It is akin to a plague openly being designed, tested and prepared to be unleashed on a population. The spread of Golden Rice too is a plague that will compound exponentially the challenges already facing millions of farmers across Asia.

When all it takes to solve vitamin A deficiency is what WHO claims is “supplementation” that costs “a couple of cents a dose,” and the growing of gardens that solve not only vitamin A deficiencies Golden Rice claims to target, but a whole host of other deficiencies Golden Rice most certainly does not address, the fact that Golden Rice is not what it is promoted to be is obvious. It is, as IRRI coined it, a “Trojan horse,” that will not only fail to stop malnutrition, but will expand the very destitution, poverty, and helplessness that causes malnutrition in the first place.

Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

In the wake of Thursday’s revelation that the U.S. government, specifically the CIA, killed one American and one Italian hostage held by al-Qaeda in a drone attack in Pakistan earlier this year, will a renewed and possibly elevated debate on the Obama administration’s so-called “kill list” or assassination campaign finally break into the mainstream?

In a televised address, President Obama said he “takes full responsibility,” that a full investigation was being conducted, and that relevant information would be de-classified and released to the public.

“Our hearts go out to the families of Dr. Warren Weinstein, an American held by al-Qaeda since 2011, and Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian national who had been an al-Qaeda hostage since 2012,” read a White House press statement. “Analysis of all available information has led the Intelligence Community to judge with high confidence that the operation accidentally killed both hostages.”

Though long-standing critics of the Obama’s drone war and the existence of a presidential “kill list” have been issuing objections for years over the legality of the program and the  number of innocent people from foreign countries—including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere—who have been killed, maimed, or left traumatized by these bombings, observers noted that when it came to the U.S. media on Thursday, it was the death of two Western hostages that finally caught the attention of the broader public.

As journalist Glenn Greenwald, one of the most consistent and outspoken critics of Obama’s drone policy, wrote on Friday, “In all the years I’ve been writing about Obama’s drone killings, yesterday featured by far the most widespread critical discussion in U.S. establishment journalism circles.”

This dynamic was also noticed by Huffington Post staff writers Ryan Grim and Jason Linkins in a piece titled, A Drone Program That Has Killed Hundreds Of Civilians Finally Killed Some That The White House Regrets. They wrote:

Watching the coverage of these tragic deaths, a viewer would be left with the impression of a drone program that has had a stellar record of accuracy up until it unfortunately killed two innocent people. But, in fact, killing innocent people has been a central part of the drone program from the very beginning, and is in many ways an inescapable consequence. It’s not that a perfect program finally slipped up. Rather, a program that has killed somewhere between 400 and 1000 civilians in Pakistan alone finally killed an American civilian, to whom no wrongdoing can be even tangentially attributed.

Weinstein and Lo Porta won’t be the last innocent people to meet their untimely end in this fashion, but the next innocent people to die probably won’t end up meriting a special press conference and investigation into what went wrong.

Naureen Shah, director of Amnesty International USA’s Security and Human Rights program, called the Obama administration’s admission on what happened with these two hostages a welcome step, but made it clear that “apology and redress should be available for all civilians killed in U.S. drone strikes, not just U.S. citizens and Europeans. The U.S. government could be just as transparent about the hundreds of other drone strikes it has conducted in Pakistan and Yemen.”

And as journalist Ryan Devereaux asked in his Friday headline at The Intercept, “When will Obama apologize for all the other innocent victims of drone strikes?”

Writing for the Guardian on Friday, Trevor Timm, director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, notes that the Obama administration has proven its tightly-held belief, time and again, that “it can kill US citizens overseas without a trial or even a finding by any independent body.” He continues:

The Obama administration claims it tightened its drone strike policy in 2013 after a minor uproar following its admission that it’s drones had killed a US citizen for the first time. Obama said in a speech that for him to approve a drone strike going forward: “there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured – the highest standard we can set”. But now the White House issaying, on the one hand, that the recent strike was “fully consistent” with that policy and on the other hand, that they’re conducting an “internal review” to see if they should improve it.

That’s why an “internal review” will tell us little we don’t already know and will almost certainly fail to bring any real accountability to the use of drones. We need a full independent congressional inquiry and public accounting for all drone strikes, not just the ones in which Americans have died. As multiple experts remarked on Thursday, what about the 3,800 other who have been killed?

Meanwhile, the U.K.-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), which has tracked the deaths and injuries of drone victims closer than any other global outlet, reported on Thursday that though the killing of Westerners is not a new or isolated phenomenon, it represents a miniscule fraction of those who end up killed by such attacks. “Western casualties are a tiny percentage of the total killed by CIA and Pentagon drone operations in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia,” TBIJ stated. “The Bureau has established a country or region of origin for 2,350 people killed by drones. Of that total, the 38 Westerners [we found] comprise just 1.6%.”

Altogether, wrote independent journalist Kevin Gosztola, Thursday’s White House announcement “is a reminder of everything that is wrong about the power the Obama administration has claimed to assassinate people with drones.” And explains:

The government does not know who it is killing but claims they are dangerous and thus pose an automatic ‘imminent threat’ to Americans. It does not know ahead of time if compounds attacked have hostages or innocent civilians until after deaths are reported. And, because the administration claims the extraordinary power to extrajudicially assassinate an American involved with terrorism if it does not want to capture that person, the administration says next to nothing about American terrorists if they happen to be killed in drone strikes.

But why is this? According to Greenwald, the answer is as “clear” as it is “troubling”:

Foreign Muslims are so dehumanized, so invisible, that they are just equatedwith Evil Threats even when nothing is known about them. Indeed, Obamaofficially re-defined the term “combatant” to mean “all military-age males in a strike zone.” In other words, as The New York Times reported in 2011, all males between 18 and (roughly) 54 killed by U.S. drones are presumed to be combatants — terrorists — “unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.” That mentality is the ultimate in dehumanization.

There are so many heinous stories of U.S. drones blowing up children and innocent adults. Obama used cruise missiles and cluster bombs to kill 14 children and 21 women in a Yemeni village (weeks after winning the Nobel Peace Prize), while a 2012 drone strike attacked a Yemeni wedding convoy and “killed 12 passengers in the vehicle, including three children and a pregnant woman.” Except for those who watch shows like Democracy Now or certain Al Jazeera shows, virtually no Americans ever learn the name of any of those victims, or even hear that they exist at all.

It shouldn’t take the drone-killing of an American citizen to enable a mainstream discussion of how much deceit and recklessness drives these killings. But it does. And that fact, by itself, should cause a serious examination of the mindset behind all of this.

And as Devereaux reported on Friday, “When asked by The Intercept if the president’s words meant there would be a policy change in how the U.S. deals with claims of civilian casualties resulting from counterterrorism operations, an administration official declined to comment.”

For his part, Timm holds out little hope—despite the spark of interest following the news of the hostages deaths—that much will change.

“If there’s ever going to be accountability for the CIA and military drone program,” he declared, “we need a fully independent commission, divorced from the intelligence committees. Without it, this controversy will just fade back into the background, where it will stay hidden under the government’s ever-expanding veil of secrecy.”

And as HuffPost‘s Grim and Linkins observed:

Naturally, even though everyone is deeply regretful about the deaths of these two men, there’s no reason to believe that the drone program won’t continue be conducted with the same robustness as it was before this tragedy was disclosed to the American people. As Obama told the New Yorker’s David Remnick last year, he’s “wrestled” for a long time with the fact that “American drones have killed between some four hundred and a thousand civilians–a civilian-to-combatant ratio that could be as high as one to three.”

On Thursday, they concluded, the announced death of two more victims—and yes, Westerners—may have “finally pinned him to the mat.”

Or not.

In March, the BBC’s flagship news program Today broadcast an interview with Moshe Yaalon, Israel’s defense minister.

Yaalon was given free rein to disseminate lies and propaganda with not a single interruption or challenge from Today presenter, Sarah Montague.

In response, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and many individuals complained to the BBC about the substandard level of interviewing. The replies received from the BBC have revealed the extent to which the organization is prepared to make a fool of itself in order to justify and protect its soft interviews with Israeli spokespeople.

Many had complained that Yaalon was allowed to deny the occupation and the siege on Gaza, and had falsely claimed the Palestinians have “political independence” with Israel not wanting to “govern them whatsoever” — and had done so without any challenging interventions from Montague.

In fact, as Yaalon told lie after lie, there was absolute silence from Montague as the minutes ticked on, with not a sound to indicate she was still present.

The BBC complaints department sent this collective response to those who contacted it about the broadcast: “Please note that it’s always going to be difficult in a live environment against time constraints to challenge each and every comment made, given the amount of other questions and points to cover.”

A quick look at some of Today’s interviews with Palestinian spokespeople is enough to demonstrate just how ludicrous this statement from the BBC is.

And a comparison with Today’s interviews with Israelis during the same time period is sufficient to reveal the unswerving nature of the BBC’s pro-Israeli, anti-Palestinian bias.

Patronising and Aggressive

Take, for example, interviews conducted by Today during July and August 2014.

On 3 July, with the occupied West Bank almost totally shut down by Israel following the disappearance of three Israeli teenagers, Today presenter John Humphrys interviewed Abdullah Abdullah, chairperson of the Palestinian Legislative Council’s political committee.

Humphrys ignored the alleged difficulties of a live environment and time constraints and instead challenged “each and every comment” made by Abdullah, to the extent that the senior Palestinian politician was effectively denied the opportunity to comment at all.

This is part of the interview:

Humphrys: “What I’m trying to do is ask you where we go from here.”

Abdullah: “From here? This racist Israel is exposing itself once more…”

Humphrys [interrupting]: “Can you just cut the rhetoric for a moment and try and deal with the practicalities?”

Abdullah: “This is a government of gangsters. It’s got to be exposed…”

Humphrys [interrupting]: “A bit less rhetoric perhaps and a bit more thought to what is actually going to take place in the Middle East.”

Abdullah: “This is the lack of resolution in the international community…”

Humphrys [interrupting]: “To do what?”

Abdullah: “Israel has been created by your country some 66 years ago…”

Humphrys [interrupting]: “Can we talk about now instead of fifty years ago? That’s what I’m trying to do, talk about what should happen now.”

Abdullah: “If we go to the root cause of it, we would be able to solve everything…”

Humphrys [interrupting]: “We’ve been going to the root cause of it for fifty years. It hasn’t got anywhere has it?”

The interview continues in the same vein for another thirty seconds, with a patronising, aggressive Humphrys continually interrupting and refusing to allow Abdullah the time to complete any of the observations he is trying to make.

At one point, he even puts words into Abdullah’s mouth, saying: “If you’re saying this morning that nothing can move forward until Israel is destroyed, well, at least we know what your position is.”

Abdullah has said nothing of the sort and, when he attempts to make his position clear — “What I say is that Israel…has to be held accountable for its violations of international law” — he is interrupted again by the BBC presenter.

Compare this aggression to Montague’s passive encounter with Yaalon, where the Israeli minister decides what he’s going to say and says it uninterrupted, and at no point is asked to “cut the rhetoric” — despite referring to Gaza as “Hamastan.”

Easy Ride for Israel

Immediately after Humphrys spoke to Abdullah on 3 July, he interviewed the Israeli government spokesperson, Mark Regev — Palestinians aren’t interviewed by Todaywithout an Israeli to counter them. The same isn’t true in reverse, and Israelis are continuously interviewed — as Yaalon was — with no Palestinian present to give an alternative viewpoint.

Regev was given his customary easy ride on the BBC. Humphrys was polite and non-challenging, and allowed the Israeli to blame Hamas for all the violence that takes place in the West Bank and Gaza without daring to question him on Israeli army violence against Palestinian civilians.

Six days later, Humphrys interviewed the head of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Raji Sourani, who was on the phone from Gaza.

Gaza, by then, was under day and night attack by Israel.

Sourani explained this, to which Humphrys replied: “Couldn’t you stop it if you stopped firing rockets at Israel?”

Sourani: “I think Israel initiated that for several years before…”

Humphrys [interrupting, and incredulous]: “Israel initiated you firing rockets at them?”

Sourani: “No, I’m talking about before this, Israel was attacking for seven nights, bombing Gaza from south to north, and nobody slept for seven days before that, and they were bombing for seven days before that…”

Humphrys [emphatically]: “Three Israeli teenagers have been murdered.”

Sourani: “Eleven has been killed by Israel, including four Palestinian teenagers, and nobody has mentioned that and that’s a great shame. There is no holier than holy blood. Every blood is holy, even Palestinian one.”

The minute-long interview ends here and Humphrys goes on to interview Daniel Taub, Israel’s ambassador to the UK. The rudeness and hectoring disappears and Taub is given four minutes to tell lies about Gaza, such as this —“It’s an area that’s clearly not under occupation” — unchallenged.

Humphry’s interview with Sourani, as well as demonstrating yet again the hostile atmosphere of the BBC for Palestinians, reveals how deeply ingrained the Israeli narrative is within the minds of BBC presenters.

Humphrys sounded genuinely incredulous at Sourani’s suggestion that Israeli violence may have preceded Palestinian violence, rather than being, as Israel always maintains, a defensive reaction to it.

His attitude is that of the colonial-minded journalist, wedded to the belief that if the natives would only stop firing their rockets the colonizer could live in peace.

The theft of land and freedom by the colonizer doesn’t come into it, and Humphrys even implies that Gaza deserves the fatal collective punishment it is receiving because three Israeli teenagers were killed in the West Bank.

Breathtaking

Such unbalanced, biased interviewing continued through July and August, as Israel was pounding much of Gaza to rubble and wiping out entire Palestinian families.

The lack of impartiality was replicated on BBC television news and BBC Online, where pro-Israeli commentators were presented as “independent” and brought on to defend Israel’s actions.

On the 31 July episode of Today, Sarah Montague, true to form, interviewed two Israelis — and no Palestinians — on whether Israel’s assault on Gaza was legal.

Her guests — a retired colonel from the Israeli army, who greenlighted massacres in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead five years before, and a former spokesperson for the Israeli government —enjoyed nine minutes of gentle conversation in which they were able to assert that Israel had no other option but to attack and did so only with great sorrow.

Today continued to provide a willing platform for Israeli propaganda into August.

On 13 August, former Israeli president, Shimon Peres, was given airtime in an interview with Middle East correspondent, Wyre Davis, for the stated reason than his was “one voice that we haven’t heard much of during this crisis.”

Davis allowed him to tell one astounding lie after another for four minutes.

This was his first lie: “Look, we left Gaza willingly, unilaterally…We handed over to the Palestinians a free, open Gaza, which is a beautiful strip of…a beautiful beach. They could have developed it for tourism, for fishing, for agriculture. We don’t understand, frankly, why are they fighting? What are they shooting? We left. What is the purpose? They want to be free. They are free.”

And this came towards the end: “When we left Gaza, Gaza was open. No restriction, no closure, nothing whatever. We helped them even, to build a new modern agriculture. We would like to see them a normal nation, living in peace, developing their country.”

To which a compliant Davis replied: “Your position is clear. You obviously pursue peace from a position of strength.”

The lies were breathtaking, the fact he was allowed to tell them unchallenged, extraordinary. Compare this to Abdullah’s interview on Today a month earlier, when he wasn’t given the space even to complete a sentence, or Sourani’s interview when he was hectored to justify Gaza’s rockets, the BBC interviewer’s concern, as it always is, being only for Israel, not for the Palestinians under occupation.

The BBC complaints department can fire off as many email messages as it likes, arrogantly declaring the impartiality of the BBC or trying to pretend interviewers don’t have time to “challenge each and every comment made” by an Israeli interviewee.

But an analysis of just one BBC program’s interviews with its Palestinian and Israeli guests shows those claims to be as big a lie as any told by an Israeli spokesperson appearing on Today. And that is truly shameful.

A house of mirrors is an immersive, highly distorted and intentionally confusing version of reality. Those walking its corridors are sometimes amused and sometimes frightened by the disorienting experience, but luckily for them, it is only temporary. There is an exit, and they will walk through it, back to reality.

But what if one existed their entire lives in such a distorted reality and knew of no exits? Would they convince themselves that these distorted images reflected back at them were in fact reality no matter how unnatural they appeared? Could they convince themselves to enjoy and even embrace this distorted reality?

One ponders such questions when looking from the outside-in on American politics. It too is a house of mirrors reflecting back a reality entirely distorted. Also like a house of mirrors, American politics have been intentionally constructed this way, to confuse, disorient and even frighten the American people when necessary to exercise mass persuasion over them. The final result is perpetual impunity granted to the powers that truly be, hiding behind the powers that allegedly were “elected,” and powers whose authority only exists in this house of mirrors and no further.

New Leaders, Old Wars 

Consider US President George Bush Sr. He launched the inaugural war of what he himself called a “New World Order.” Operation Desert Storm included multiple nations comprising of nearly a million soldiers who swept from the map one of the largest conventional armies (4th largest) in the world. Bush Sr., however, paused just ahead of sweeping the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from power. His successor, US President William Jefferson Clinton would keep Iraq subdued with periodic bombing campaigns and the imposition of both crippling sanctions and no-fly zones in the north and south of Iraq.

Clinton would serve 8 years in office and lock horns with Russia in Serbia in a proto-Ukraine-style conflict. In 2000, we should remember that George Bush Jr. ran on a platform opposed to global interventionism. For those trapped in the house of mirrors, this distortion of reality seemed very convincing. For those who understood the hegemonic mission of America’s special interests, those that transcend elections and political parties, they knew Bush Sr.’s desires for a “New World” endured and would manifest themselves in a yet revealed, muscular foreign policy that only needed the right impetus to be justified in the eyes of the American people.

Conveniently, the events of September 11, 2001 delivered just that. So began the 8 year “War on Terror.” So sick of wars were Americans at the end of those 8 years, that anyone promising to end them would likely win the 2008 elections. And so Barack Obama did and thus became “US President.” However, not only did the wars not end, and not only were they in fact expanded, new wars were begun. In fact, these new wars were all the planned wars Bush Sr., Clinton and Bush Jr. never got around to fighting.

Yet, no matter how unnatural this distorted reflection appeared in the American politics house of mirrors, those trapped perpetually within its mirrored walls found it perfectly acceptable for a Democratic president to continue Republican wars and start new wars the Republicans could only have dreamed of starting but couldn’t because of left-wing anti-war movements now silent because “their guy” was in office.

Hillary = Obama = Bush Jr. = Clinton = Bush Sr.  

With Hillary Clinton’s announcement that she is running for office in 2016 with President Obama’s full endorsement, those infected with neo-liberalism and wandering the corridors of this house of mirrors see yet another distorted, ghoulish image staring back, but one they are yet again ready to embrace.

Here is a woman who as US Secretary of State laughed and mocked the Libyan people upon hearing their leader had been murdered by terrorists in what constituted by all accounts a war crime. Before that, she played an active role in selling the war upon Libya in 2011 to the American left (as the American right had already desired such a war for years and needed no convincing). By 2016 we may have yet another Clinton in office, and a Clinton fully dedicated to carrying on the wars of both the Democrats and Republicans that came before her.

To say this is continuity of agenda is a bit of an understatement. American foreign policy has been so singular in purpose and focus for the past several decades that it is clear that behind the distortions of this house of mirrors, something singular and very nasty has been there the entire time. Who or what could it be?

The Real President of the United States Lives on Wall Street, not Pennsylvania Avenue 

How about we look at the people who pay for the political campaigns to put these various spokesmen and women-in-chiefs into office in the first place? Or the immense interests driving lobbying efforts that target and control both sides of the political aisle in American politics? A single Fortune 100 corporation has enough money to buy out every relevant politician on Capital Hill and still finish up the fiscal year bloated with billions in profits. And what happens when these interests converge across various think-tanks they themselves have set up and created to generate the singular foreign and domestic policies we see carried forward from presidency to presidency, from congressional session to session?

We see complete control exerted over American politics as well as across the media, allegedly charged to serve as watchdogs and a check and balance, but instead turned into an echo chamber and instrument of mass persuasion by those who have clearly consolidated the summation of American politics in their pockets.

While policy might be debated over by these special interests, and groups moved in one direction or another to exert influence against competing special interests among this exclusive club, one thing is for sure, the American voter is the last voice considered in this process.

Since the American voter is incapable of seeing that they are in fact in a house of mirrors to begin with, and think they are “outside” in reality making real decisions, their decisions are completely irrelevant to those who really do live outside in reality and are actually making real decisions.

We must understand that for special interests that collectively control trillions of dollars in assets, profits and infrastructure all over the planet, the last thing they are willing to do is allow for the existence of a system that might actually put into power a form of authority above their own, that would set policy predicated upon the interests of the people, rather than their own. They have the money, the power and the ability to ensure policy is set to suit them, and them alone, and they clearly have done just that.

This is why US troops are still in Afghanistan and Iraq, wars are still being waged either directly or indirectly against Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iran and Russia and destabilization targeting China and other targets of Washington and Wall Street’s special interests continues unabated, albeit distorted within the house of mirrors, regardless of who is president.

So Americans may think they are voting for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and those infected with neo-liberalism the world over may think another enlightened champion of their progressive cause has taken the reins of the free world, but they might as well have voted for another Bush. The reality is, that as along as Americans and those who look to America from abroad for leadership dwell in this house of mirrors, the special interests that intentionally built this carnival called “democracy” will have their way back in actual reality.

Instead of fumbling through another four years trapped inside this carnival attraction, let’s find the exits. Let’s leave this house of mirrors and breathe a breath of fresh air. Are we really going to listen to another round of campaign promises, holding our breath hoping that this time they mean it? Or will we begin divesting from this system and building our own, one that might actually truly represent us this time, far from the mirrored walls that held us for so long?

Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

“Geo-engineering changes our soil PH, it toxifies our soils with aluminum.

We’re seeing crop loss and we’re also seeing eco-system collapses around the world. And geo-engineering creates something that’s called ‘abiotic stress’…well Monsanto has developed a new genetically-modified seed that addresses abiotic stress.” – Michael J. Murphy, Producer/Director of “Why in the World are They Spraying”

–

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(Length: 59:26)

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Earth Day is celebrated on April 22 each year. This year marks the 45^th anniversary of the very first Earth Day which took place in the United States of America. Earth Day was founded by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, and coordinated by environmental activist Denis Hayes. [1]

Intended as an environmental teach-in, it attracted the participation of two thousand colleges and universities, about ten thousand primary and secondary schools, and hundreds of communities. [2]

In 2015, multiple stresses on the biosphere have revealed themselves. In addition to the climate crisis which has clearly revealed itself in recent years, the world is witnessing a decline in biodiversity, the increased acidification of our oceans, nuclear contamination from the four year old Fukushima disaster, the expansion of fossil-fuel bearing pipelines, the unknown risks associated with experimentation in genetic modification, and the general toxic atmosphere our twenty-first century life-style has enabled.

The Global Research News Hour pays tribute to Earth Day, and Earth Week with two interviews. One is with Michael J. Murphy. He is the President of The Coalition Against Geoengineering and the award-winning producer and director of the films What in the World are they Spraying? and Why in the World are they Spraying? He discusses the topic of geo-engineering, that is, controlling the weather through artificial means. His website is www.coalitionagainstgeoengineering.org. This interview was recorded in advance of the April 25, 2015 Global March Against Chemtrails and Geoengineering. 

This interview is followed by a conversation with Carrie Saxifrage. Saxifrage was for four years the Sustainability reporter with the Vancouver Observer and has just written a book entitled The Big Swim: Coming Ashore in a World Adrift, a collection of non-fiction stories centred around community in an era of worsening climate change. Saxifrage does her best to live a low carbon lifestyle. She explains in this conversation the difference it can make when you re-frame the climate crisis through stories of personal growth.

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(Length: 59:26)

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

The  show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in every Monday at 3pm ET.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CFUV 101. 9 FM in Victoria. Airing Sundays from 7-8am PT.

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

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

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario – Thursdays at 1pm ET

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border. It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia Canada. – Tune in every Saturday at 6am.

Notes:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day#cite_note-1
2. ibid