Global Research

Lawrence Wittner points out that the United States will soon be the only nation on earth that has not ratified theConvention on the Rights of the Child.

And why not? Wittner focuses on general backward stupidness: the treaty would “override” the Constitution or the importance of families or the rights of parents. He points out the treaty’s support for parents and families and the impossibility of overriding the Constitution — which we might note in any case says nothing on the subject.

Then Wittner mentions some more substantive reasons for opposition:

“… in fairness to the critics, it must be acknowledged that some current American laws do clash with the Convention’s child protection features. For example, in the United States, children under the age of 18 can be jailed for life, with no possibility of parole. Also, as Human Rights Watch notes, “exemptions in U.S. child labor laws allow children as young as 12 to be put to work in agriculture for long hours and under dangerous conditions.” Moreover, the treaty prohibits cruel and degrading punishment of children―a possible source of challenge to the one-third of U.S. states that still allow corporal punishment in their schools.”

That’s actually a pretty major in-fairness-to-the-critics point. The United States wants to maintain the ability to lock children in cages for the rest of their lives or to work them in the fields or to physically abuse them in school. In fact, the child prison industry is a major presence in the United States.

And there’s another industry that has a dog in this fight. The U.S. military openly recruits children.

And let’s not forget that there are children on the drone kill list and children who have been killed with drone strikes.

There are other nations that engage in some of these same abuses. Is it better to ratify a basic human rights treaty and violate it or to refuse to ratify it because you intend to act against it as a matter of principle?

I’m inclined to think the latter suggests the further remove from decent tendencies.

Reading the lead stories on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress about Iran in five prominent US papers–the New York Times, Washington Post,LA Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today(all 3/3/15)–what was most striking was what was left out of these articles.

None of them mentioned, for example, that Israel possesses nuclear weapons. Surely this is relevant when a foreign leader says that it needs the United States’ help to stop a rival state from obtaining nuclear weapons: The omission of the obvious phrase “of its own” changes the story entirely.

The Washington Post’s coverage of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress included “Top 10 Applause Lines From Netanyahu’s Speech.”

Another thing largely left out of the story is the fact that Iran has consistently maintained that it has no interest in building a nuclear weapon. There was one direct statement of this in the five stories–the New York Times‘ reference to “Iran’s nuclear program, which [Iranian] officials have insisted is only for civilian uses.” The Washington Post alluded to the fact that Iran denies that it has a nuclear weapons program, referring to “a program the West has long suspected is aimed at building weapons,” Iran’s “stated nuclear energy goals” and “the suspect Iranian program.” Elsewhere the military nature of Iran’s nuclear research was taken for granted, as when the LA Times said that the issue under discussion was “how to deal with the threat of Iran’s nuclear program.”

Entirely absent from these articles was the fact that not only does Iran deny wanting to make a nuclear bomb, the intelligence agencies of the United States (New York Times, 2/24/12) and Israel (Guardian, 2/23/15) also doubt that Iran has an active nuclear weapons program. Surely this is relevant to a report on the Israeli prime minister engaging in a public debate with the US president on how best to stop this quite possibly nonexistent program.

Instead, these articles generally seemed content to cover the subject as a debate between Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama, perhaps with some congressmembers thrown in–as if these were the “both sides” that needed to be covered in order to give a complete picture of the controversy. When Iranian officials were quoted for a few lines in these pieces–which some neglected to do altogether–it seemed an afterthought, despite the fact that Netanyahu’s speech was mainly a long litany of allegations and threats against their country.

(Though I’m confining my analysis to what seemed to be the most prominent and comprehensive article on the speech on each paper’s website, it’s worth mentioning that the New York Times‘ website featured a piece by Iran’s ambassador to the UN, Gholamali Khoshroo, rebutting Netanyahu’s speech. Reading it one is struck by how different the news pieces would read if Iran’s perspective on Iran’s nuclear program were given equal weight with Israel’s and the US’s views.)

None of these news articles mentioned the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, signed by both the United States and Iran but not by Israel, which guarantees“the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.”

One article–the New York Times‘–had a reference to Netanyahu’s decades-long record of making false nuclear predictions about Israel’s enemies. And even that was framed in partisan terms: Netanyahu “did not succeed in mollifying all Democrats, who recalled a history of what they deemed doomsday messages by him.” A reporter, of course, could look up Netayahu’s previous projections to see if they came true or not–as Murtaza Hussain of the Intercept (3/2/15) did–but holding officials accountable for what they have said in the past is not something an “objective” journalist is likely to do.

Another striking omission from these articles, about a speech in which Netanyahu talked about Iran’s “aggression in the region and in the world,” were words like “Palestine,” “Palestinian,” “occupation” or “Gaza”; none of these  came up in any of the five articles. USA Today headlined its piece “Netanyahu: Stop Iran’s ‘March of Conquest'”–as though it were Iran, not Israel, that hasconquered, occupied and in some cases annexed its neighbors’ territory.

A new study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives provides fresh insight into why millions of people living in the developed world today suffer from severe autoimmune disorders that were virtually unheard of before the advent of vaccines.

Researchers from the University of Michigan Medical and Public Health Schools in Ann Arbor found that mercury, like the kind added to vaccines as a preservative, is a major trigger of autoimmunity in women of childbearing age.

Dr. Emily Somers, Ph.D., and her colleagues looked at government data on women between the ages of 16 and 49, comparing their respective levels of mercury exposure to antinuclear antibody positivity, an indicator of autoimmune activity.

Autoimmunity, as you may already know, is essentially an abnormal immune response in which errant antibodies attack the human body, causing systemic inflammation. The result is a variety of illnesses, often debilitating, that leave a person weak and unable to function normally.

In women with high levels of mercury exposure, autoantibodies, or the antibodies responsible for triggering autoimmunity, were found to be more prevalent. A direct correlation between the two was observed, leading researchers to conclude that mercury is a major risk factor in autoimmunity.

Mercury found to be “main risk factor” for autoimmune disease

Based on the team’s findings, Dr. Somers concluded that exposure to mercury is actually the main risk factor for autoimmunity, which would explain why so many children who had been vaccinated according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines now suffer from various autoimmune diseases.

“In our study, exposure to mercury stood out as the main risk factor for autoimmunity,” stated Somers, adding in her study’s conclusion that exposure to mercury “at low levels generally considered safe” can still lead to subclinical autoimmunity among reproductive-age females.

“Autoantibodies may predate clinical disease by years, thus methylmercury exposure may be relevant to future autoimmune disease risk,” the team added.

What this means is that exposure to mercury can cause long-term health problems that may or may not show symptoms in the short term. So a vaccinated child, for instance, could appear healthy and normal in the days, weeks or even months following vaccination, but several years down the road develop an autoimmune condition as a result of the vaccines.

Multi-dose flu shots and other vaccines still contain mercury, which can trigger autoimmunity

The way this critical study is being presented in the media, though (if it’s even being covered at all), only warns childbearing-age women to avoid things like tuna fish that are widely known to contain mercury. Nothing about avoiding vaccines like Novartis’ Fluvirin and Sanofi Pasteur’s Fluzone that still contain added mercury is anywhere to be found in the media reports.

This is perhaps due to the fact that much of the mainstream media is currently in irrational denial of the fact that mercury is still being used in vaccines. The specious claim that “vaccines don’t contain mercury!” is patently false, and yet nearly every major news outlet is right now making this claim to deter free-thinking parents from making an educated decision against vaccines.

“Mercury is a known neuro-toxin which can cross the placenta and blood brain barrier and concentrate in the blood and brain but can also affect the immune system, kidneys and lungs,” explains the National Vaccine Information Center. “Some autistic children have been found to have high levels of mercury in their hair as well as heavy metals, such as aluminum and lead,” that are also in vaccines.

Sources :

http://www.empr.com

http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov^[PDF]

https://www.rheumatology.org

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://www.nvic.org

Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chief of the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a congressional committee Wednesday that US troops may be sent into Syria to fight alongside so-called rebels who are seeking the overthrow of the Damascus government of President Bashar al-Assad.

“If the commander on the ground approaches either me or the secretary of defense and believes that the introduction of special operations forces to accompany Iraqis or the new Syrian forces … if we believe that’s necessary to achieve our objectives, we will make that recommendation,” Dempsey told the House Appropriations Committee’s defense panel.

Dempsey’s testimony was preceded by that of Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, who allowed that Washington’s strategy in relation to the “Syria piece” is to “create a third force that can combat ISIL [the administration’s preferred acronym for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria-ISIS] and set the conditions for the eventual removal of Bashar Assad.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry, who was on Thursday in the midst of a trip to Saudi Arabia to reassure the Sunni potentates of the Persian Gulf that US nuclear negotiations with Shiite Iran would not erode Washington’s counterrevolutionary alliance with these monarchical oil states, spoke along similar lines.

Kerry reiterated Washington’s commitment to regime change in Syria. “Ultimately a combination of diplomacy and pressure will be needed to bring about a political transition,” he told reporters, adding that “military pressure may be needed.”

There is a growing sense that, six months after President Barack Obama announced the new US war in both Iraq and Syria, this intervention has reached a turning point that threatens to unleash yet another massive bloodletting on the peoples of the region.

In Iraq, this threat is imminent with the mounting of a major siege of the city of Tikrit, the former hometown of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who was toppled by the US invasion of 2003 and executed by hanging under the American occupation.

Some 30,000 troops—reportedly two thirds of which are comprised of Iraqi Shia militias operating with Iranian support—have sought to encircle the predominantly Sunni city, which lies approximately 100 miles north of Baghdad on the Tigris River. The siege is preparation for an even bigger onslaught against Iraq’s second city, Mosul.

Roughly 30,000 civilians have reportedly fled Tikrit in fear for their lives, while tens of thousands more remain trapped in the face of mounting artillery bombardment. Shia militia leaders, meanwhile, have openly proclaimed that the assault will be the occasion for revenge for massacres carried out by ISIS.

The US military has stayed out of the Tikrit siege, claiming that the regime in Baghdad had not asked for its aid. In reality, Washington has ruled out any direct military collaboration with Iran, which itself is still a potential target for US intervention.

US officials have warned Iran and the Shia-dominated government of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi not to fuel sectarianism. “That would tear at the fabric of the country, and weaken the ability of the Iraqis to confront this threat to their country,” declared White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

What hypocrisy! The sectarian tensions are the direct product of the US war and occupation, which killed over a million Iraqis, tore the county’s social fabric to shreds and provoked internecine conflicts as part of a deliberate tactic of divide and rule.

ISIS, the purported target of the US intervention, is a Frankenstein’s monster spawned by both the Iraq intervention and US imperialism’s promotion of a war for regime change in neighboring Syria, where it and other Sunni Islamist militias received funding, arms and logistical support from Washington’s regional allies, all under the guiding hand of the CIA.

Washington’s stated policy of fostering, arming and training so-called moderate rebels to both combat ISIS and serve as a proxy force in the war to topple the Assad regime has become an increasingly criminal and cynical operation.

Last weekend, the last of the ostensible Syrian “moderates,” whose members were armed, equipped and even paid by the CIA—the Hazm, or “steadfastness” movement—officially disbanded after being routed in the northern province of Aleppo by the Al-Nusra front, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria. Advanced US weapons, including TOW missiles, were all surrendered to Al Nusra, while many of the surviving Hazm members joined it.

In the wake of this debacle, there are indications that Washington is preparing to seal a pact with Al Nusra, effectively allying with Al Qaeda itself in opposition to ISIS, a split-off from Al Qaeda. The government of Qatar, a key source of funding for Al Nusra, has reportedly been pressuring the group to drop its formal affiliation with Al Qaeda to facilitate this shift.

The sheer cynicism with which the military-intelligence apparatus and its front man, Barack Obama, wage their “war on terror” found the clearest expression in statements made by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper at the Council on Foreign Relations earlier this week.

“Moderate these days is increasingly becoming anyone who is not affiliated to ISIL,” he said. He indicated that US intelligence and military officials had “picked people that not only are moderate, whatever that is, but also we have to be sensitive to complying with the international rules of law, which in this environment is a pretty tough order.”

Of course US imperialism has operated for more than a decade in the Middle East—from Iraq, to Libya to Syria—in naked contempt for the bedrock provisions of international law, which, since the Nazis were tried at Nuremberg, has banned aggressive war as an instrument for pursuing state interests.

What Clapper is referring to is the international prohibition against arming Al Qaeda, a provision that can be evaded by having Al Nusra drop its formal affiliation.

Anyone attempting to deduce the logic of US policy in the Middle East from the claims made by US officials runs into a mind-boggling maze of contradictions. In Iraq, Washington is effectively in alliance with Iran and Shia sectarian militias to defeat ISIS. In Syria, it is forging ties to Sunni Islamist militias to supposedly fight both ISIS and topple the Syrian government, which is backed by Iran. Nearly 14 years into the “war on terror,” the US military-intelligence apparatus is preparing to turn an affiliate of Al Qaeda into its frontline “anti-terror” and “pro-democracy” fighters.

To the extent that any coherent policy emerges, it is one of stoking the fires of war and political instability everywhere, promoting a struggle of each against all with the aim of weakening every country and government so as to facilitate the US drive to assert its hegemony over the energy-rich region. In turn, this regional policy is directed toward the preparation of even more horrific wars against the allies of Damascus—Iran and Russia.

For the people of the Middle East, this translates into another deadly and tragic phase in their drawn-out encounter with US imperialism. For American working people, this policy—developed behind their backs, with no real debate, much less popular support—also holds the threat of catastrophe.

The Chinese government has lowered its official projection for economic growth this year to “approximately 7 percent” following a year that saw the lowest economic expansion in a quarter of a century.

Chinese Premier Li Kequiang announced the target in his opening address to the annual National People’s Congress which began in Beijing yesterday.

Presenting a gloomy outlook for the world’s second largest economy, he said:

“The downward pressure on China’s economy is intensifying. Deep-seated problems in the country’s economic development are becoming more obvious. The difficulties we are facing this year could be bigger than last year. The next year is a crucial year for deepening all-round reforms.”

In a further sign of economic problems, Li said the government planned this year to run its biggest deficit since the global financial crisis. The deficit will rise to 2.3 percent of gross domestic product this year, compared to 2.1 percent last year. Some of the additional money will be spent on railway, water and agricultural projects, but the chairman of the government’s economic planning agency Xu Shaoshi said it should not be seen as a “massive stimulus.”

Li said the new growth target was what was needed and what was possible, adding that China’s growth model was inefficient and that “difficult structural adjustments” were necessary in order to absorb the effects of previous stimulus measures.

As part of “restructuring,” the government is pushing ahead with measures to reduce its control of the giant state-owned enterprises that dominate much of the economy. It also plans to further open the country’s financial system. This is certain to intensify conflicts within the ruling elite. Significant economic and political power brokers, resting on state-owned enterprises, are the target of a corruption purge led by President Xi Jinping.

The new target of just 7 percent growth is considered by many commentators to be inflated, with real growth probably around 2 or 3 percentage points lower. It is politically significant given that the government has stated in the past that growth of at least 8 percent is needed to maintain “social stability.” The government fears that slowing growth and the consequent increase in unemployment will bring about major struggles by the working class.

Li alluded to these fears, at least obliquely, saying that in order to “defuse problems and risks” China relied on development that required an “appropriate growth rate.” However, at the same time, he continued, “China’s economic development has entered a ‘new normal.’”

The new target is also a reflection of major problems in the world economy as a whole. It underscores the fact that the massive quantitative easing programs of the world’s central banks, which will be further extended when the European Central Bank begins a bond-purchasing program next week, have done nothing to boost real growth. They have served only to fuel parasitism, currency wars and speculation.

Furthermore, it shows that far from providing a new platform for economic expansion, the Chinese economy is being afflicted by the same tendencies that have emerged on a global scale, expressed most sharply in deflationary pressures. Li said that the government was lowering its inflation target to around 3 percent from 3.5 percent in 2015.

Last weekend, in announcing a further cut in official interest rates, the second reduction in three months, the People’s Bank of China said that it was responding to a “deflationary risk” as well as to falling property prices. And in a sign of the growing excess capacity in the economy, factory gate prices of commodities showed a year-on-year decline of 4.3 percent in January.

A product of the deepening global malaise, the Chinese slowdown is, in turn, adding to it. This week iron, which comprise a major component of exports for countries such as Brazil and Australia, fell below $60 per tonne, just one third of the peak it reached four years ago. This fall parallels a similar slide in oil prices.

The Chinese economy is also being severely impacted by the fall in the value of the currencies of its major trading partners. Loosely tied to the rising US dollar, the yuan has risen 60 percent against the Japanese yen and 90 percent against Brazil’s real since the middle of 2012. In the past year it has risen 27 percent against the euro.

Any effort by China to push down the value of the yuan will intensify the incipient global currency war as major countries try to lower the value of their currencies to try to improve their competitive position internationally.

In response to the global financial crisis of 2008–2009, the Chinese government initiated a massive expansion of credit—an amount equivalent to the entire US banking system—in order to boost the economy after 23 million jobs were lost in 2009. Since then, Chinese growth has not been fuelled by expanding exports, as it was in the 1990s and in the years leading up to the financial crisis, but by investment in property and infrastructure financed by credit.

However, this road is now closed. Besides creating a potentially dangerous credit bubble, the additional growth generated by each yuan of new loans is estimated to be a ratio of just 0.2 percent, compared to 0.8 percent before 2008. Most of the additional credit is not being used to finance new investment projects, but rather to rollover existing debts owed by banks and local government authorities. They are being hit hard by the fall in inflation, which increases the real value of their debt exposure.

The revenues of both the central government and local authorities are contracting because of the slowdown in real estate developments, with land revenues reported to have fallen by 21 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014.

The ending of the credit-property bubble threatens major economic consequences. The Japanese finance house Nomura has warned investors that relying on the government to always provide a stimulus where needed could prove dangerous.

Nomura financial analyst Rob Subbaraman told the British Daily Telegraph: “We assign a one-in-three chance of a hard landing—growth averaging 5 percent or less over four quarters—starting within the next two years.”

Such a fall would not only have major consequences in China but would send a shock wave through the global economy and could set off a major financial crisis.

 by Colonel Cassad

Translated from Russian.

The following text is in some regards technical.

It requires careful reading. This report should be examined in relation to previous technical reports pertaining to an examination of the fuselage and cockpit (GR Ed. M.Ch.)

*     *     *

Because since the first day after the moment of the crash of the Malaysian “Boeing”

I adhere to the version where the airplane was shot down by the Ukrainian SU-25 attack jet, I simply cannot refrain from publishing a new investigation, which summarizes the arguments on this topic.

A rod from the “air-to-air” missile R-60M was found among the wreckage of MH17 (below)A model was assembled in Holland using of the fragments of the “Boeing” that was shot down in Donetsk. Using the photos of the fragments from the crash site, it is possible to approximately reconstruct the airframe.Among the photos there were at least two that refute the version of the attack against the plane using the “BUK” complex.

On one of the photos we can see the object, which looks like a rod from the AAM missile R-60M. On the other photo — a round hole in the air intake of the right engine. There are at least nine holes in the skin that are characteristic of the effect of an “air-to-air” missile.

Circular, square, rod-shaped — what hit the Boeing

Already by the next week, on the 3rd, 5th, and 6th March of 2015, almost five thousand people — relatives and friends of those who died in the “Boeing” catastrophe in Donbass — will be able to see the model of the Malaysian Airlines Boeing-777 that is made out of wreckage on the air base Gilze-Rijen in Holland. The last major fragments, a whole truck of them, are still located in Petropavlovka – the Dutch journalists managed to reach them only by February 22 of 2015.

UPD
Photo from the hangar, 03.03.15

 
Source, Source

RECONSTRUCTION

The left side of the “Boeing”. 

The right side of the “Boeing”.

The left side of the pilot cabin immediately attracted the most attention, the aircraft had the most damage there. The largest hole in the center of the fragment has ragged edges, bent outside, which is characteristic for an internal explosion or decompression due to a sharp change in pressure.

   

Further on the photo we see more than 20 large round holes, which penetrated among other things the glass framing and the left side of the cabin. The material of the skin in this area has the highest density — it is made of reinforced aluminum (titanium plates are used according to other data), which is laid out in two layers in order to prevent cabin damage in the case of a possible collision with a bird. According to some data, the thickness of the first layer is 1.8 mm and the thickness of the second layer is 0.8 mm.

We also know that the thickness of the most part of the skin of the fuselage of the “Boeing”-777 is only about 2 mm (0.09 inch)

As we zoom in the photos, we can see a huge number of small marks-“pockmarks” and black patches of soot on the external side of the cabin, and also the edges of the external skin that are bent inside. This suggests that the warhead exploded in close vicinity from the plane’s skin. By some estimates, the distance between the pilot cabin and the epicenter of the explosion could be between 50 cm to 4-5m. At the same time the radius of the impact zone of the “BUK” is 17 m, the missile explodes above and ahead of the target, making a climb, and creates a large cloud made of six thousand shards. (source).

Citation from mh17webtalks: Detonation products — it was precisely them which left the numerous number of traces on the cockpit fragments — lose the ability to inflict mechanical damage (lose the kinetic energy) at the distance from the site of explosion equal to 15…20 radii of the explosive block. Correspondingly, given the explosive block radius of 10–15 cm we get 1.5–3.0 m  The blast wave comes first after the start of the explosion, then go the hot gases, and then, due to being more bulky, shrapnel fragments. But gas slows down very quickly, so its traces can be found only next to the site of explosion.

The “BUK” doesn’t match the photo with respect to the distance from the explosion. Well, perhaps it matches size of the holes?

To find out the diameter of the holes in the skin of the cabin we need to know the diameter of the head of the standard aviation rivet. It is equal to 0,488 inch or 11 mm.

By correlating the parameters we get the size of the holes of about 20-30mm. The diameter of the round holes in the skin of the cabin in the size of 2-3 diameters of the hat of the aviation rivet.

 

 

 
The yellow-red outlines of some holes are faintly visible on the first photo — perhaps, this is a trace from the copper casing of the shell that produced these holes.

(As a bullet penetrates an obstacle, it pushes some of the obstacle’s material forward and widens it, leaving the particles present on the bullet on the hole that is being formed. The band of rubbing, which is several millimeters wide, leaves the particles of the soot produced during the shot, the gun grease, metallic particles from the barrel and from the bullet itself).

However, there is no copper on the shrapnel sub-projectiles from the “BUK”, but there is copper on the shells of aircraft cannons.

 
 
The ribbon of armor-piercing and high-explosive shells in an aircraft cannon, the shrapnel elements have cylindrical shape.

This is shown clearly here: How the aircraft cannon GSh-30 shoots

Besides several tens of round and oval holes, in the front part of the “Boeing” there are at least five more holes, which have rectangular and square shape. However, none of them penetrated the skin on the outside, so it is hard to determine their size. But we can speak of the sizes above 1 cm.

 
 

In the description of the R27 missile characteristics, for example (it can be also mounted on Su-25), the presence of prepared cubes above the rods in the warhead of the missile is mentioned. The former service members of the Russia and Ukraine air force write on their forum that R-60 is equipped with ready-made shrapnel elements in addition to the wolfram rods (a similar description of the shrapnel and rod-based warhead is present on other websites). (A magnified image of the warhead of the R-60 training missile.) Besides this, not a single known hole on the airplane skin, which includes the skin of the pilot cabin matches the last shown element. 

The skin on the side of the pilot cabin attracts attention. The charge of a fragmentation warhead may enter various surfaces of the “Boeing” at various angles. The shape of the hole may be different depending on this — for example it may be round  (if a spherical sub-projectile hits at the right angle) or it may be elongated (at acute angle). Here is how this looks like when a regular bullet hits metal.

Perhaps, this is what explains the presence of holes of various sizes on one of the skin pieces to the side of the pilot cabin (Point 4 on the scheme of the left side of the Boeing).
By comparing the holes with the rivet heads we can see that the width of these holes varies between 3 cm and 10 cm The angle of penetration of these shards may be equal to 25-30 degrees.

 
 

HOW “BUK” FIRES

The 9М38М1 missile, which is used in the “BUK-M1” complexes, consists of the fragmentation warhead 9Н314, which weighs 70 kg In its base there are 32 kg of sub-projectiles (4500 sub-projectiles, each weighing 8 g in the shape of an I-section [something between the shape of Н and Х] and of 1500 cubes, each weighing 4 g). The source

On the internet there is a photo of one of the warheads of the missile complex. The I-secton shrapnel –13 mm. The diameter of cubes is below 10 mm. Source and another source

 

If this type of the “ground-to-air” missile was used to attack the “Boeing”, then the majority of the shrapnel holes would leave characteristic rectangular-shaped traces (the I-shaped fragments have better penetration force capabilities than the cubes).

One of the “Livejournal” users conducted an experiment — the “BUK” would have to leave the following type of traces in the skin of the “Boeing” if at least several sub-projectiles out of 4.5 thousands flew into it at an angle close to the right angle.

A detailed description of the experiment HERE.

On the skin of the discovered fragments of the “Boeing” there is not a single hole of this size.

Furthermore, as the author of the experiment states, the sub-projectiles flying at the speed of 1200 m/s would have to leave a more clear trace in the thin material of the fuselage rather than say in the plating of the cabin, where the aluminum layer is reinforced. With the correction for the HE charge and the penetration angle, the “BUK” fragments may leave traces with the diameter of 18-20mm in the skin. One may read about the real sizes left by the fragmentation charges here, here, and here.
Two square fragments that were found in the cabin were exposed — one of them ended up being made of ceramics, the other one didn’t match due to the beveled edge.How an airplane that was shot down using a “BUK” looks likeOn the internet there are photos of the remains of three airplanes that were shot down over the last 15 years presumably using “BUK” SAM complexes. In all three cases the crew remained alive for some time after the missile strike. In all cases the skin of the airplanes looks roughly the same: many small round or cross-shaped holes. More detail here.

The wreckage of An-26 plane, which was shot down in Ukraine on July 14, 2014, at the height of 6500 m. 

It is well-known that on June 29 of 2014 the militia fighters captured the military unit 1402 in Donetsk, where there was one defective “BUK” vehicle. However, at that time the DPR representatives said that they are not going to repair it. It is also known that the “Osa” complexes that are present in Ukraine are also able to hit the targets like An-26 or Su-25 at the height of 6000 m.

Rod-shaped holes. One of the rods was found

We can see at least three cutting holes among the wreckage: on the left wing, in the area of the second left door, on the elements of the tail (see the scheme Left side of “Boeing”). For example, the hole in the skin next to the second left door has the length of about 10 cm.

 
The left wing

 
The cabin floor near to the second left door.

Next to this hole and the frames that are “cut” along it we can see an elongated element, which is externally similar to a fragment of the rod-shaped sub-projectile from the “air-to-air” aviation missile R-60M. The original photo

The skin of the lower part of the fuselage, next to the second door on the left Source 

 
Left – this is approximately how the rod-based warhead that is used on the Ukrainian attack jets looks like (Source). Right – the warhead of the R-60 missile 

The cross-section of the rocket without the striking elements Source

REFERENCE Su-25M1 attack jet, R-60M missile

The material of the warhead rods is the alloy of zirconium and molibdaine / wolfram. The warhead has relatively low power and is maximally effective by penetrating inside the frame of the target airplane. The detonators are the non-contact radio detonator “Kolibri” (developed in 1971) and also the contact backup detonator. The radius of the radio detonator is 5 m. The damage radius is 2.5 m. Source

Here is a description of the R-60M warhead (the 62M model). The rods used in it are a bit different from the classical thin elongated sagittal rods. In the export variant a set of “pseudo-rods” is used. These sub-projectiles are made of wolfram, which is heavier than steel. “The overlapping sub-projectiles made of wolfram, which is twice heavier than alloy steel. The cut the power wing set, airframes, and engines,” — says the description of the R-60M warhead.

Some sources state the mass of the rods: 3 g. The mass of the warhead is 3 kg. The rods are laid out in the case with a triangular framing — the rods probably have triangular section. “The space between the case and the rod-shaped sub-projectiles is filled with TNT, which has pyramidal holes next to each semi-prepared sub-projectile in the casing. The sub-projectiles weigh 3 g and reach the speed of 7.5km/s” (Source)

“The rod-shaped warhead of R-60M (62М) with wolfram rods laid out perpendicularly would result not in linear but rather in huge delta and diamond-shaped holes.

Only R-62 and, starting from the 80s, R-62M were exported. 70% of both missiles had a shrapnel (or “pseudo-rod based”) rather than rod-based warhead.

Source and HERE – http://vkjournal.ru/doc/3501214

We can see large inbound ragged delta-holes, for example, on the right side in the skin of the second compartment. The soot trace can be seen on one of them. Besides, two similar holes can be seen on the floor of the front baggage compartment, not far from the pilot cabin.

Six delta- and diamond-shaped holes and three cutting holes on the left wing and on the lower part of the skin next to the second left door:

  
Source 
 
Source

The shapes of the holes match the damage that would be expected from the warhead of the R-60M, which is mounted on Su-25M1 attack jets.

The missile could target the “Boeing” engine but explode in 5 m to its side, which may include the area next to the left wing and the floor near the L2 exit, where the two holes characteristic to the rods were found. The Ukrainian PO “Arsenal” worked on modernizing the missile. The missiles were equipped with almost full-perspective infrared guidance system OGS-75T “Komar-M”. (It supports magnification of the view up to 2/4 or even 1/4 (the possibility to launch into the front hemisphere of the target given the bearing at a certain angle), it is provided by the cooling of the photo-receiver of the target-seeking head. Serial production was done by NPK “Progress” (city of Kiev, source). The targeting range — sector of 34 degrees. The maximum speed of target displacement – 35 deg/s).

It is also possible that after activating the lifting charge at the closest distance to the “Boeing” the warhead opened and the carrier R-60 hit the skin of the “Boeing” in the area of the landing gear chassis, close to the engines.

“Shrapnel-rod warheads are typically used on the “air-to-air” missiles due to their compact size. At the moment of the closest approach to the target, the lifting charge is exploded and a beam of rods heads towards the target at almost space velocity. If there is a hit, such a rod may be able to fully penetrate the airplane just due to the kinetics in almost every plane, destroying the internal infrastructure of the airplane and ruining the onboard equipment. The kinetics of the rod is such that it may be able to cut even a titanium longherone in two. Such warhead has another advantage: the missile doesn’t need to be perfectly precise — it is blown up before contacting the target and the rods spread towards the airplane in a cone. Even if only 2-3% of these rods hit the target, the plane is doomed.” Source

HOW THE MH17 “BOEING” WAS SHOT DOWN 

Just seven seconds passed after the moment of the last response by the MH17 crew until the loss of the connection with the airplane. The crew didn’t have enough time to tell the dispatchers about any threatening situation (if we believe the authenticity of the “missing” records from the air traffic control office in Dnepropetrovsk). So, the events in the pilot cabin unfolded rapidly.

After the impact the “Boeing” was turned around, it sharply lost airspeed — from 900 km/h down to 400 km/h and later it was gliding from the height of 10 thousand meters down to the height of about 2 thousand meters. The residents of Grabovo and Torez heard two very loud bangs in the sky. After going below the clouds, the “Boeing” started to disintegrate — a large piece of the fuselage landed in a forest plantation the closest to the original place where the plane was hit. This was a part of business-class and of the second compartment of the economy-class. They were found in Petropavlovka. Next to it, in Rassypnoye they found the separated pilot cabin and the bodies of 40 more people. The tail and the central part of the fuselage, along with the landing gear and the wings flew the farthest — in the field of the Grabovo village.

Between July 2014 and February 2015 the majority of the Boeing pieces were found. The right wing and the right side of the business-class, and also the nose of the “Boing” are missing. Up until now three passengers of the plane have not been identified. Overall, there were 298 people onboard. Metallic fragments were found in the body of the pilot, according to the Malaysian press. Overall, 25 metallic objects that triggered investigators’ suspicion were found.

The left side of the cabin, the skin of floor of the cabin received the most damage from the shrapnel elements. Numerous holes are visible in the crew commander chair, and several holes in the chair of the second pilot. At least four holes are visible in the body of the crew commander. All of these holes have round shape.

 
The back of the seat of the second pilot, numerous holes can be seen on the side and in the back.

Considering the remains of the soot and a large number of small black dots — the traces of impact by the detonation products, the missile charge was engaged in exactly this area — outside the pilot cabin at close range.

Considering the height of this flight – 10 thousand meters, the cabin could be reached either by a SAM complex (S-300, “BUK”) or by an “air-to-air” missile.

And because there are no traces of the impact of rod-shaped sub-projectiles in the pilot cabin, but there are many holes with jagged edges — it was a fragmentation charge that exploded there. Such shells with round contact elements are used in the GSh-30 aircraft cannons, they are also characteristic for the S-200 and S-300 SAMs.

Because there are no cross-shaped traces — the dominating sub-projectiles of the BUK missile, and because the actual explosion occurred at the distance of no more than 5 m, we may reject the version of the use of BUK. The S-200 complexes are “not used” in the Ukraine since 2001, nobody recorded a launch of S-300 missiles in this area.

ATTACK ON THE BOEING FROM THE RIGHT, “IN PURSUIT” 

Thus, the version of one or two Su-25M1 attack jets arose. These are modernized attack jets, which are present in Ukraine (by the moment of the tragedy, the Ukrainian air force had five such jets — one of the six Ukrainian Su-25M1 was shot down one day before the “Boeing” catastrophe).

The modernized Su-25M1 has digital gun sights, which improves the targeting precision by 30% compared to the standard analogs. The practical ceiling of a Su-25M1 is 10000m. The maximum velocity is 975 km/h.

“Due to installing a satellite navigation system, the airplane is able to hit the targets even if the pilot is not visually identifying them but when he knows their coordinates. The airplane is able to use its regular weapons agaist ground targets during both day and night, under the conditions of low visibility and without the need to leave clouds. The altitude on which it is possible to use the weapons was increased substantially, by almost a factor of 3″.

Besides the object found among the wreckage, which is similar to the rod-shaped sub-projectile of the R-60M missile, this version is confirmed by the fragment of the air intake of the right engine of the “Boeing”.

 

The fragment faces us upside-down — on the left side we can see a piece of the internal skin that was torn out and the right side is the other side with faint RR letters — if this piece is turned, then this will be a part of the air intake of the RIGHT ENGINE.

This small hole was discovered on the right engine of the “Boeing” — as stated by the respectable sources of the Wall Street Journal. The edges of the hole are torn to the outside, so in this case the piece of shrapnel penetrated the air intake by flowing from the tail side.

There is another piece of the engine — the rim of the turbine with the traces of the inbound holes, however it is impossible to determine which of the engines it belongs to. It is known that this fragment was found in the outskirts of Petropavlovka, where the right air intake was located. However, the left door was found here as well, which is located in front of the left engine.

If this is indeed a fragment of the right engine, then the fire was performed using an aircraft cannon from the right and the back and later from the right side through the broadside and the right engine towards the pilot cabin. Most likely fire was opened at close range (about 500-700m).

The right side of the “Boeing” skin between the cabin and the second door on the right wasn’t found (at least, there are no photos of it in the open access). Wall Street Journal published the photos of the baggage shelves from the right side of the business-class. At the Gilze-Rijen air base the journalists were not allowed to come close to precisely these fragments of business-class by covering them with squares because the objects are of interest to the investigation.

 
Source Source

Su-25 (Rook).

The aircraft is equipped with double-barreled immobile GSh-30 cannon on the left of the airframe in the lower nose part of the fuselage (the caliber is 30 mm, the ammunition load is 250 shells), which is mostly supposed to destroy weakly armored
targets like APCs. Additionally, up to 4 GSh-23L cannons may be mounted, each of which has a mobile barrel that can veer down by 30 degrees (the ammunition load is 260 shells), and also two “air-to-air” missiles R-60 or R-27. In some variants it is possible to mount the R-77 missiles.

Here is how the first attack using the aircraft cannon from the right and the back “in pursuit” — the bullets penetrate the engine skin, the right side of the business-class and hit the pilots in the back. This version is considered in more detail here.

Either the aircraft cannon GSh-30 with armor-piercing or fragmentation ammunition (see above) with the caliber of 30 mm or the four cannons GSh-23 with the ammunition of 23 mm caliber could be used for shooting. Several holes on the discovered piece of skin of the pilot cabin and also the back of seat of the second pilot were most likely damaged by the shrapnel no bigger than 20-30mm, which flew from the side of the tail. This is suggested by several sources at once (link and another link ).

The pilots didn’t see the attack jet in front of them — they were mortally wounded from the back. Already after this the Su-25 attacked the cabin from the front, when the “Boeing” was turned around. This is how the numerous entry and several exit holes on the cockpit plating were formed.

Entry and exit holes in the pilot cabin

 
 

The back seat of the pilot. It is possible to compare how the holes that form due to penetrating the fabric and the metal here and here

The body of the crew commander with holes in the chest.

CONCLUSION: A combined strike from a Su-25 M1 attack jet was performed against the Malaysian Boeing. The first attack from the Su-25M1 was performed on the course of the “Boeing” flight in pursuit — most likely the attack jet was located on the right side of the tail of the Malaysian airplane and fired while moving towards the right engine — in this direction the jet made several shots using its 23 mm or 30 mm aircraft cannon.

The pilots died after the first attack, a large-scale decompression occurred in the cabin, the electronics went out of order, the plane turned right and the “Boeing” was probably attacked by the attack jet again, but this time on the left side, in the cabin area from the side of the crew commander using the aircraft cannon and a R-60M rocket in the area of the left engine and the left door, on which the traces of penetration by rod-shaped sub-projectiles remained.

P.S. The author of the photo — the Dutch correspondent of RTL Jeroen Akkermans – to whom I referred with respect to this fragment, ignored this topic. Unfortunately, we can only judge based on the photo.

http://evanesce-girl.livejournal.com/79977.html (in Russian) — linkOriginal article: http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/2077046.html (in Russian)

On March 3^rd, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued an impassioned plea to the US Congress to protect Israel by opposing diplomacy with Iran. Referring to “the remarkable alliance between Israel and the United States” which includes “generous military assistance and missile defense,” Netanyahu failed to mention that Israel has an arsenal of 100 or 200 nuclear weapons.  

The Six-Day War 

The day before he delivered that controversial address, Netanyahu expressed similar sentiments to AIPAC, Israel’s powerful U.S. lobby. He reiterated the claim that Israel acted in the 1967 Six-Day War “to defend itself.” The narrative that Israel attacked Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in self-defense, seizing the Palestinian territories in the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula in 1967, has remained largely unquestioned in the public discourse. Israel relies on that narrative to continue occupying those Palestinian lands. And the powerful film “Censored Voices,” which premiered at Sundance in February, does not challenge that narrative.

 But declassified high-level documents from Britain, France, Russia and the United States reveal that Egypt, Syria, and Jordan were not going to attack Israel and Israel knew it. In fact, they did not attack Israel. Instead, Israel mounted the first attack in order to decimate the Egyptian army and take the West Bank.

 Censored voices uncensored 

For two weeks following the Six Day War, Amos Oz and Avrahim Shapira visited Israeli kibbutzim and recorded interviews with several Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers who had just returned from that war. Largely censored by the Israeli government for many years, those reels have finally been made public. “Censored Voices” features the taped voices of young IDF soldiers, as the aging, former soldiers sit silently beside the tape recorder, listening to their own voices.

 The testimonies documented in the tapes reveal evidence of targeting civilians and summarily executing prisoners, which constitute war crimes. A soldier asks himself, “They’re civilians – should I kill them or not?” He replies, “I didn’t even think about it. Just kill! Kill everyone you see.” Likewise, one voice notes, “Several times we captured guys, positioned them and just killed them.” Another reveals, “In the war, we all became murderers.” Still another says, “Not only did this war not solve the state’s problems, but it complicated them in a way that’ll be very hard to solve.” One soldier likens evacuating Arab villages to what the Nazis did to Jews in Europe. As a soldier watched an Arab man being taken from his home, the soldier states, “I had an abysmal feeling that I was evil.”

 In what proved to be a prescient question, one soldier asks, “Are we doomed to bomb villages every decade for defensive purposes?” Indeed, Israel justifies all of its assaults on Gaza as self-defense, even though Israel invariably attacks first, and kills overwhelming numbers of Palestinians – mostly civilians.  Each time, many fewer Israelis are killed by Palestinian rockets.

 Israel’s false self-defense claim 

 The film begins by showing a map of Israel surrounded by Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, with arrows from each country aimed at Israel. The IDF soldiers felt those Arab countries posed an existential threat to Israel. “There was a feeling it would be a Holocaust,” one soldier observed. The Israeli media claimed at the time that Egypt had attacked Israel by land and by air on June 5, 1967. According to British journalist Patrick Seale, “Israel’s preparation of opinion” was “brilliantly managed,” a “remarkable exercise in psychological warfare.”

 In his book, “The Six-Day War and Israeli Self-Defense: Questioning the Legal Basis for Preventive War,” published by Cambridge University Press, Ohio State University law professor John Quigley documents conversations by high government officials in Israel, the United States, Egypt, the Soviet Union, France, and Britain leading up to the Six-Day War. He draws on minutes of British cabinet meetings, a French government publication, U.S. documents in “Foreign Relations of the United States,” and Russian national archives. Those conversations make clear that Israel knew Egypt, Syria and Jordan would not and did not attack Israel, and that Israel initiated the attacks.

 Egypt was the only one of the three Arab countries that had a military of any consequence. Israeli General Yitzhak Rabin told the Israeli cabinet that the Egyptian forces maintained a defensive posture, and Israeli General Meir Amit, head of Mossad (Israeli’s intelligence agency), informed U.S.  Defense Secretary Robert McNamara that Egypt was not poised to attack Israel. Both the United States and the Soviet Union urged Israel not to attack. Nevertheless, Israel’s cabinet voted on June 4 to authorize the IDF to invade Egypt.

“After the cabinet vote,” Quigley writes, “informal discussion turned to ways to make it appear that Israel was not starting a war when in fact that was precisely what it was doing.” Moshe Dayan, who would soon become Israel’s Minister of Defense, ordered military censorship, saying, “For the first twenty-four hours, we have to be the victims.” Dayan admitted in his memoirs, “We had taken the first step in the war with Egypt.” Nevertheless, Israel’s UN Ambassador Gideon Rafael reported to the Security Council that Israel had acted in self-defense.

“The hostilities were attacks by the Israeli air force on multiple Egyptian airfields, aimed at demolishing Egyptian aircraft on the ground,” according to Quigley. On June 5, the CIA told President Lyndon B. Johnson, “Israel fired the first shots today.”

 Article 51 of the UN Charter authorizes states to act in collective self-defense after another member state suffers an armed attack. Although Jordan and Syria responded to the Israeli attacks on Egypt, they – and Egypt – inflicted little damage to Israel. By the afternoon of June 5, Israel “had virtually destroyed the air war capacity of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria,” Quigley notes. “The IDF achieved the ‘utter defeat’ of the Egyptian army on June 7 and 8.”

 The United States empowers Israel

 U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk said that U.S. officials were “angry as hell, when the Israelis launched their surprise offensive.” Yet, Quigley notes, “Israel’s gamble paid off in that the United States would not challenge Israel’s story about how the fighting started. Even though it quickly saw through the story, the White House kept its analysis to itself.”

 Although Security Council resolution 242, passed in 1967, refers to “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” and calls for “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict,” Israel continues to occupy the Palestinian territories it acquired in the Six-Day War.

 Israel has abandoned its claim that Egypt attacked first. Yet the international community considers that Israel acted in lawful anticipatory self-defense. Quigley explains how the UN Charter only permits the use of armed force after an armed attack on a UN member state; it does not authorize anticipatory, preventive, or preemptive self-defense.

 “The UN did not condemn Israel in 1967 for its attack on Egypt,” Antonio Cassese of the University of Florence explained. Quigley attributes this to Cold War politics, as the USSR supported Egypt. “For the United States in particular, Israel’s success was a Cold War defeat for the USSR. The United States was hardly prepared to condemn Israel after it performed this service.”

The United States continues to support Israel by sending it $3 billion per year in military aid, even when Israel attacks Gaza with overwhelming firepower, as it did in the summer of 2014, killing 2,100Palestinians (mostly civilians). Sixty-six Israeli soldiers and seven civilians were killed.

If Israel were to mount an attack on Iran, the United States would invariably support Israel against Iran and any Arab country that goes to Iran’s defense. Indeed, Netanyahu intoned to Congress, “may Israel and America always stand together.”

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former 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.”

President Bashar al-Assad gave an interview to Portuguese State Television, RTP,  the following is the full text:

Question 1: In a few days, it will be 4 years since the protests began in Syria against the government of Bashar al-Assad. From then on it has been a massacre. More than 220 thousand people have died, and there are 4 million displaced people. The arrival of Daesh (Islamic State) has made the situation more grim. For this reasons, it’s important to speak to a key figure in all this process. Today, he gives his first interview ever to a Portuguese media outlet. The Syrian President, Bashar Al Assad.

How do you describe your country today, Mr. President?

President Assad: Let me start by commenting on the number that you mentioned in your introduction, about the number of victims in Syria, which is 200,000, that’s been mentioned in the Western media recently, 220,000. That number is exaggerated. Always the West has exaggerated the numbers in Syria. Actually, it is not about whether they are hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands. Victims are victims, killing is killing, and terrorism is terrorism. Actually, it’s not about being a mere number represented on a graph, on a chart, like a spreadsheet. It’s about families that lost members, lost dear ones, lost relatives. It’s a human disaster we have in Syria.

This crisis has affected every part of Syria, every Syrian citizen regardless of his affiliation or allegiance. It affected his livelihood, food, medicaments, medical care, basic requirements like education. Hundreds of hospitals were destroyed, thousands of schools were destroyed, tens of thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of students don’t go to school. All that will create the fertile habitat and good incubator for terrorism and extremism to grow. But despite all this hardship, the Syrians are determined to continue fighting terrorism, defending their country, and defying hegemony.

Question 2: Syria is not much of a country nowadays. The Syrian Army does not control all the borders, you have international coalition flying in your skies. On the grounds there are different entities. Is Syria as we have known it lost or finished?

President Assad: You cannot talk about a finished Syria when the people are unified behind their government and their army and fighting terrorism and still have institutions working. We still have subsidies, we still pay salaries, we pay the salaries even in some areas under the control of the terrorists themselves. We still have the-

Question 3: You send money to…?

President Assad: Exactly, we send salaries. Because they are employees, and have their own salaries. We send vaccines to those areas for the children.

Question 4: So you cooperate with the Islamic State?

President Assad: No, no. We don’t. We send them, and we deal with the civilians who are the mediators with the terrorists, or the militants. But at the end, all these basic requirements reach those areas. So, we don’t have “Syria is finished” and we don’t have a failed state, actually. But if you want to talk about something different you mentioned in your question, which is the breaching of our airspace illegally by the alliance airplanes and by terrorists supported or working as proxy to regional countries-

Question 5: And borders.

President Assad: This is a failure of the international system, this international system that’s been represented by the United Nations and the Security Council, and that is supposed to solve the problems and protect the sovereignty of different countries and prevent war. Actually, it has failed in doing so. So, what we have now is a failed United Nations; failed to protect international citizens including in Syria, Libya, Yemen, and in other countries.

Question 6: But you also failed. The Syrian Army also fails, because a lot of Christians have been abducted recently in the north.

The role of the Syrian Army, like any national army, is to protect every single citizen

President Assad: Actually, the role of the Syrian Army, like any national army, is to protect every single citizen, regardless of his affiliation, religion, sect, ethnicities, and so on. If you have mentioned this, I would say yes, we would like to and we wish that the Syrian Army would be able to help every Syrian since the beginning of the crisis. But the main obstacle why the Syrian army couldn’t do so, and as part of this couldn’t help the Christians a few days ago that have been kidnapped by ISIS, is the unlimited support that’s been offered to those terrorists by the Western and regional countries.

Question 7: What we have seen until now is several attempts to have a peace conference that all have failed. What we have until now, it’s talks about talks. What can break this deadlock, Mr. President?

President Assad: Do you mean in Geneva?

Question 8: Geneva 1, Geneva 2, the Russian initiative was a fiasco.

President Assad: The solution is political, but if you want to sit with someone or a party that doesn’t influence the situation on the ground, it’s going to be talk for the sake of talk, that’s correct. We didn’t choose the other party in Geneva. It was chosen by the West, by Turkey, by Saudi Arabia, by Qatar. It wasn’t a Syrian opposition that we made dialogue with. You’re right; if you want to make dialogue, you have to make it with Syrian opposition, Syrian partner, Syrian people who represents Syrians in Syria, not who represent other countries. So, what happened in Geneva wasn’t the model that we have to follow.

Question 9: But, what you are saying, is that an acceptable opposition for you, or…?

President Assad: Of course, any opposition that works for the Syrian, to defend its country, represents Syrians or part of the Syrian population…

Question 10: Within the framework of the Syrian state?

President Assad: No, no. Any opposition who works for the Syrian people. It’s not related to the state, it’s not related to the government.

Question 11: So, you’re excluding the Syrian National Coalition?

President Assad: I don’t exclude anyone as long as he’s Syrian. I’m talking about criteria. Anyone, or any party, who meet with these criteria, we can consider him as opposition. If the coalition is formed in the West or any other country, it’s not considered Syrian. It doesn’t represent the Syrian people. The Syrian people won’t accept him.

Question 12: But are you able to discuss with them or not?

President Assad: Actually, what we have followed since the beginning of the crisis, we didn’t leave any stone unturned. We tried every possible solution in order not to allow anyone to say “if they didn’t do this, that would have happened.” So, we discussed even with the coalition, although we know in advance that it doesn’t represent Syrians, it represents the countries that formed it. And second, it doesn’t have any influence on the ground in Syria, even with the militants, even with the terrorists, even with anyone who is involved in the problem within Syria.

Question 13: So you’re saying that the “Free Syrian Army” doesn’t have influence on the ground? That only al-Nusra and Islamic State have influence on the ground?

President Assad: Even Obama said that, he said that the moderate opposition is a fantasy. Most of the world now knows, what they called moderate opposition, they called it “Free Syrian Army,” they have so many other names, all of them are fantasy. Actually, who is controlling the terrorism arena in Syria are either ISIS or al-Nusra, mainly, and some other smaller factions.

Question 14: So, in the end, the solution for Syria is a military solution, and not a negotiated peace?

President Assad: No, actually, what we have been doing recently, as long as we don’t have a party to make negotiations with who can influence the militants on the ground, we went to make reconciliation with the militants in some areas, and that worked, and this is a very realistic political solution. Actually, that is how you exclude the military solution, by discussing with them making a safe area.

Question 15: About the discussions, you have Geneva 1, Geneva 2, the Russian initiative, in all of that there are not, how shall I say, things in common. Is there anything, any issue that you know it is possible, why not start with them? Is there anything in common between you and them?

President Assad: If you want to talk about what happened in Moscow, it’s different from what happened in Geneva, because they invited some of the opposition, because we can’t talk about one opposition; we have many different oppositions. You don’t put them in one basket. You have some of them represent Syrians, some of them they don’t represent anyone, and so on. So, we have common things with some of the opposition that were invited to Moscow, so this is just the beginning of the dialogue. The dialogue may take a long time. But at the end, if you want to not talk about dialogue, talk about the end results on the ground, the question is, who of those parties that we call opposition, who of them represent Syrian people and can influence the militants on the ground in order to save Syrian blood? That is the question. We don’t have an answer yet, because they have to prove, we don’t have to prove. We know we have our army, the army will obey the government, if the government gives an order, it will follow the order. But what about the others? Who is going to control the terrorists? That is the question.

Question 16: You pointed out that some countries, like France, don’t want a peace conference to succeed. Why is that?

President Assad: Actually, you have two points, or two reasons, let’s say. First one is not related only to the French; it’s related to every official who is complicit and involved in the propaganda and the aggression against Syria during the last four years. It’s about the end of this war will unmask those officials in front of their public opinion, in a country where there is public opinion. I don’t mean Saudi Arabia and Qatar, where there is no public opinion anyway. But generally, they will be unmasked about the question “what is the revolution that you mentioned, that you talked about? How could a revolution collapse or fail if you have the support of the West, the support of regional countries, all this money and armaments and so on, and you supposed that he’s a dictator who is killing his good people, so the people are against him, regional countries are against him, and the West is against him, and he succeeded.It’s one of two options: you’re either lying to us, or you’re talking about a superman. Because you don’t a superman, he’s a regular president, it means he could withstand for four years only because he has the public support. It doesn’t mean full public support, one hundred percent, or absolute public support, but definitely have support from a part, a large amount of the Syrian people.” So, this is a lie that the public opinion in the West and in other countries will ask the officials about. What about the Arab spring that turned out to be – instead of budding flowers – blood and killing and destruction? Is that the spring that you talked about? This is one reason.

The other reason is more specific towards France. Not limited, but more specific, let’s say. It’s about the financial relation between France and the Gulf states. Maybe because they have financial difficulties, I don’t know why. But this financial relations, and I don’t have any proof whether this is about the vested interest of some officials in France or if it’s about public interest, I don’t have any proof, but at the end, these financial interests push those officials in France to exchange their values of liberty and fraternity and democracy, all the things that they used to preach, the exchange those values for petrodollars. So now those French officials and some others in the West, they don’t practice what they preach anymore.

Question 17: But the tide seems to change a little bit. You had French MPs here. It was an organized visit, or it came as a surprise to you?

President Assad: No, no. It wasn’t a surprise, because it wasn’t the first delegation to come to Syria.

Question 18: French delegation?

President Assad: French and from other countries. Different kinds of delegations, activists, mediators, some officials came to deal with us under the table, not-

Question 19: This was organized with your government and…?

President Assad: Yes, it was officially organized, and they had a schedule when they came. It was weeks before, it wasn’t a surprise.

Question 20: With French diplomats as well or not?

President Assad: We had the impression, and it’s a strong impression, that most of the government, the main officials in the government, they know about it in advance, and they didn’t oppose.

Question 21: So, did they send you any message?

President Assad: No, there wasn’t a message, and they came to see the reality on the ground, and I think that’s the reflection – not just this delegation; the delegations that came to Syria recently from different countries, especially from the West, is a reflection of not believing, not taking in with the narrative, the insidious narrative about Syria in the West by their officials. They want to know the truth, I mean it’s a kind of suspicion about the whole propaganda in the West.

Question 22: So, in a sense, the tide is changing because probably there are some people thinking that even though it’s a bad solution, it’s better to deal with Bashar al-Assad than to deal with the worse solution which is going to be the Islamic State.

President Assad: I don’t think the general public thinks about the second part, it’s about the first part, about what’s happening and how everything we said in Syria at the beginning of the crisis they say later. They said it’s peaceful, we said it’s not peaceful, they’ve killing – these demonstrators, that they called them peaceful demonstrators – have killed policemen. Then it became militants. They said yes, it’s militants. We said it’s militants, it’s terrorism. They said no, it’s not terrorism. Then when they say it’s terrorism, we say it’s Al Qaeda, they say no, it’s not Al Qaeda. So, whatever we said, they say later. That created a lot of suspicion in the West. They want to come to understand this part. Why are you saying whatever Syria was saying in the beginning? Of course, in the West, the propagandists, whether officials or media, the added something only to the real story; that ISIS and al-Nusra was created of Assad, or it’s because of his policy, and so on.

Question 23: But you freed a lot of jihadists from the prisons that went to ISIS, to the Islamic State.

President Assad: No, that’s before the crisis. They were sentenced for a few years, and when the sentence ended, they left prison. We didn’t. We never did. So no, we have institutions, we have a judicial system in Syria.

Question 24: Anyway, Europe is facing more and more threats of terrorism linked to jihadist movements, some of them with connections here in Syria, I mean Al Qaeda or the Islamic State. And the question here: is Syria able to help the European countries in fighting these threats of terrorism?

President Assad: This is like a building; you cannot build a building without having the foundation, so what is the foundation that you need in this this case? First, you need officials in Europe to have the will to fight terrorism. This is something that we don’t have to this moment. Second thing, to have prudent policies. We cannot have arrogant, stubborn officials that only adopted egotistical policies. Third, which is very important, fighting terrorism should be a value, should become a value. It cannot be a sort of opportunism, like because now you are suffering in Europe from terrorism, you’re scared, you want to fight terrorism in this region. What about a few years ago? You didn’t suffer.

Question 25: But can you help the…?

President Assad: If they don’t help themselves first, we cannot. If they help themselves, we are ready to help. If you build this foundation, if you have this foundation, you can go to the building. This is where you can talk about how to integrate the community in your country, how to have exchange of information with intelligence, you have many ways. Of course we can, but you need to have the foundation in order to succeed.

Question 26: Mr. President, let me quote, “the Syrian people aspire more freedom, justice, human rights. They aspire to more plurality and democracy.” Your Foreign Minister said this in the Geneva conference. However, the state of Syria is perceived differently in the West. Till now, it’s perceived as brutal, ruthless, dictatorial, and it’s not just a question of image, so how is it possible to convince the people that…?

President Assad: This is illogical and unrealistic, because how can somebody who kills his people and oppresses his people be supported by the same people? How? Tell me about this contradiction. Look at it from the outside. Is it palatable, can you understand? It doesn’t.

Question 27: But, Mr. President, the reality is that if you allow me to go backwards, and try to-

President Assad: Before the crisis.

Question 28: Let me just try to… you started four years ago with peaceful demonstrators that were repressed, then you are blamed, your government is blamed, for a lot of allegations of human rights violations in your own ranks, repression. You have the Cesar reported, defected from the army, with photos of massacres, of torture of the opposition. You have allegations that you have used chemical weapons. You have allegations of using the barrel bombs till now, and so, the human rights reports watcher about Syria, they are not very good for you, your government, and the Syrian Army.

President Assad: You are talking about massive propaganda for four years. We cannot answer every one in one interview, but I will say the demonstrations never were peaceful, because in the first week, we lost many of our policemen. How? How could a peaceful demonstration kill a policeman? It wasn’t peaceful, so, this is the beginning of the lies, it’s the beginning of the propaganda.

Question 29: All lies, all the time? Four years of lies, Mr. President?

President Assad: Exactly, that’s what happened. Because, how do you have ISIS? Suddenly? You don’t have ISIS suddenly, you don’t have armaments suddenly, you don’t have al-Nusra Front suddenly. It’s a long process, you can’t have it just in few weeks. Suddenly, everybody is talking about ISIS. Go back to our statements from the very beginning, and you can see that the evolution of the events was going in that regard from the very beginning, and we said that. They didn’t want to listen; they wanted to listen to their statements.That’s what I say. It’s impossible to only tell lies in the West. How can you tell the truth if you don’t have an embassy in this country? How can you tell the truth if you listen to Qatar and Al-Jazeera that were paying the money to those terrorists?

Question 30: So you blame Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia for being the backbone of the jihadists? You have the proof?

President Assad: Very simple; what is the ideology of ISIS? What is the ideology? It’s the Wahhabi ideology. Do we have it in Syria? Do we have it in Morocco? In the western Arab world? Actually, it existed in Saudi Arabia.

Question 31: It’s the same as in Saudi Arabia.

President Assad: Saudi Arabia and Qatar. This is the Wahhabi ideology. Second, Erdogan is Muslim Brotherhood. He’s a very staunch advocate of the Muslim Brotherhood ideology which was the first organization in the history of Islam, in the beginning of the last century, who promoted violence in implementing political agenda. So, you have those, and that’s enough. Going back to the Western media, in the Western media, and the American media in particular, they say 80% of the terrorists are coming from Turkey. You have another realistic one, what you called in your media Kobani which is called Ayn al-Arab. It took four months to be liberated, in spite of the attack of the alliance. Why? Actually, a similar city, the same size, and the same terrain, it took the Syrian Army two to three weeks. Why? Because it was supported logistically through Turkey on the border. They send them everything, armaments, all kinds of support. The recent event when Turkey-

Question 32: Did you support the Kurds? Did the Syrian Army support the Kurds?

President Assad: Of course.

Question 33: Because they are also fighting the Syrian Army.

President Assad: Before the issue of Kobani. Before that, we did. Before Kobani, we supported the Kurds, because it didn’t start there. It started before, and before the alliance started supporting the Kurds, we did. We sent them armaments. Of course, they’re going to say no, because the Americans said “say no, and we will help you.” If they say yes, the Americans will be angry, just to be cautious, to take precautions about any statement they may say now that we didn’t, we have all the documents about the armaments that’s been sent to them, beside the air raids and so on and the bombardments and everything else.

Question 34: New Syrian troops are being trained in the framework of the “Free Syrian Army” supported by the Americans to fight against the Islamic State. Do you think you will have to fight them as well?

President Assad: You know, and I know, and everybody knows that those 5,000 were announced by the Americans, and this this is my proof that the Western officials don’t have the will to fight terrorism. That is the proof. I told you, the base, the foundation, is to have the will. It means they don’t have the will. If Obama said the moderate opposition is fantasy, so who do you send the money and armaments to? Reality. You don’t send to the fantasy, you send it to the reality, and the reality are the extremists. And those 5,000 are going to be another support to those terrorists, because the same grassroots of the organization that’s been supported by the West, by money and armaments, they joined ISIS with their armaments and with themselves.

Question 35: Two questions to finish this interview. This is your first interview with a journalist from a Portuguese-speaking country. Do you expect anything from these countries?

President Assad: I don’t expect; I hope. I hope the first thing, which is very simple, just for the officials to tell their people the truth, the unbiased truth, without any preconceptions. Just tell your people the truth, and they’ll be able to analyze it. Second, we hope from Portugal as part of the EU to look at the Czech Republic. A small country, ten millions, but it was very wise in dealing with the crisis in Syria. They have their embassy, they can tell what’s going on on the ground, because isolationism is not a policy. When you isolate yourself, when you try to isolate a country by removing your ambassadors or closing your embassies, you isolate yourself from the reality. You shouldn’t isolate yourself, as Europe, from reality. We hope can play that role in the EU to shift this trend that started with the American administration of Bush; when they have a problem with somebody or some area, instead of being more involved, they cut their relation with it. This is not policy.

Question 36: Just one last question, Mr. President. You’re a key player for any possible peace deal. Don’t you feel sometimes doubts, anguish, with this tremendous responsibility? Don’t you feel what history might say about you?

President Assad: Of course, this is the most important thing that any politician or leader must think about, and it’s about, first of all, about having good will and good intention to help your country. Whether you do mistakes or you do right, you do wrong; this is not the issue. People will judge you by your will, by how much you were related to your country, related to your country, how much you are a patriot, not a puppet or a marionette that’s being moved from the outside. This is the most important thing; how much you do, what’s the best you can do to protect your country and protect your people.

Question 37: Thank you, Mr. President, for this interview, and thank you for being with RTP.

President Assad: Thank you.

My name is Paul Kiernan and I am a resident of Tallaght, Dublin, Republic of Ireland. I was politically arrested on Monday 16th February 2015 and face a possible charge of false imprisonment (which has a maximum sentence of 15 years imprisonment) of our Tanaiste Joan Burton (Labour party leader, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Social Protection). I am 1 of 23 people arrested (with a reported 41 due to be arrested) so far which include men and women aged in their 40,s, 50,s and 60,s and children aging from 12-18 years old. There was also 1 TD (MP) and 3 local councilors from the AAA (Anti Austerity Alliance) arrested. At this very moment there are 4 people imprisoned and 1 which will be when he returns from holiday with sentences of 28 days and 56 days for breaching a court injunction which banned them from been within 20 meters from Irish Water Meter Installers. These arrests and imprisonments and others taken place throughout Ireland are taken place against people that are taken part in civil disobedience against a corrupt and inept political system and government.

As you may know there has been a number of national protest marches and many more local marches in the recent months against the water charges which have been attended by hundreds of thousands but what you may not know is that the water charges is the straw that broke the camels back and that although we march under the 1 banner, we march/protest for many reasons. Since the bank collapse and bail out of bond holders (largest fraud in Irish and one of the largest in world history) our nation has endured years of austerity measures that has seen an increase in drug addiction, homicides, tiger kidnappings, aggravated assaults, sexual assaults, aggravated burglaries, armed robberies, serious gang crimes and other serious and minor crimes in cities, towns and rural Ireland.

Despite this we have seen the closure of over 100 Garda (police) stations throughout rural Ireland and a reduction in the force. At the same time this is happening we see Garda been used in high numbers as security for the likes of the Corrab Shell to Sea gas line and civil disobedience protests where they assaulted numerous protesters and at water meter installations throughout the country. They have been used to politically arrest many water protesters with as many as 10 officers at a time dispatched to preform the arrest warrants with dawn raids. They are also used to arrest citizens (quite often mothers) for the likes of non-payment of Television licence (which is a civil matter) who then face days in prison at a far higher cost to the tax payer than the licence itself while corrupt politicians, business people and bankers walk free.

With austerity we have seen a rise in the likes of Income Taxes, D.I.R.T (Deposit Interest Retention Tax) and C.A.T. (Capital Acquisitions Tax, Inheritance) Tax, C.G.T. (Capital Gains Tax), Carbon Tax,  Motor Tax and the introduction of new taxes such as Property Tax, U.S.C. (Universal Social Charge) Tax, Air Travel Tax, Credit Card and Cheques Tax, various Stamp Duties and the introduction and rise of charges such as Banking charges, Bin charges and Plastic Bag Levy. Vehicle owners have also seen an increase in fuel costs, parking fees, parking fines, clamping fees and speeding fines which raise many millions yearly.

Despite the massive rise in taxes and their intake we have seen a sharp decline in Social Services for the most vulnerable in our society suffer with cuts to the likes Children Allowance, Fuel Allowance, Lone Parents Allowance, Live Alone Allowance, Old Age Pension, Job Seekers Benefit/Allowance (with the under 25s taken a 40%+ cut) and Carers Allowance. With all these cuts we have an ever increasing need for charity with a huge increase in families seeking help from the likes of The St Vincent de Paul for food and bill payments. The health system is also in disarray and has seen a sharp rise (record numbers) of patients on hospital trolleys awaiting admission and patients are waiting longer for appointments with consultants and such. The cost of G.P. and hospital admissions for non medical card holders have risen and the number of people eligible for Medical Cards have been slashed and people with long term/fatal illnesses/diseases and people with disabilities have had their cards taken away and find themselves going through an appeals system to have them renewed. We have seen the introduction of Emergency call out charges, Prescription charges and the end of the Funeral grant. While we see a rise in self harm and depression we see the government cut funding to charities like Child Line and the Samaritians.

Rural Ireland has also paid a high price with a rise in violent crime such as home invasions as the many Garda stations close but they have also seen the closures of hospitals (with some also closing for the evening shifts), closures of banks, post offices and the end or reduction of bus services that are vital in linking rural Ireland with the larger towns and cities. Education in Ireland has also suffered with the reduction of school teachers which has lead to an increase in class sizes particularly in the rural areas. Despite Ireland’s large exports of dairy and meat the farmers rely on EU hand outs as they can’t get a fair price for their milk, cattle or poultry and have suffered for many years now with many deaths from accidents which has lead to the introduction of new safety measures which most simply can’t afford. Our fisheries has also suffered under the EU fishing rotas which sees Irish fisher men sail to sea and watch huge foreign trawlers fish in our waters and make billions from them.

Please note that everything above is only a small part of a very large list of hardships our people have suffered over the last 7 years or so. These are all due to the criminal activities of elite bankers and the negligence of a corrupt and inept government in the bank collapse and bail out here. We face decades of poverty and debt that has nothing to do with us as bond holders have their lost bets paid out as winners. These same banks which received billions from the state are now involved in the highest number of repossessions of property, rise in homelessness and emigration since the great famine. At the same time the banks have reduced the number of loans to small businesses, farms and home owners and as businesses go bankrupt, people lose jobs and banks take homes they then sell them to the foreign and domestic elite who then rent them for large amounts that most can’t afford. While the people suffer the politicians (the same politicians that say protesters are the sinister element, the enemy, akin to fascists and I.S.I.S. terrorists in their speeches) and corrupt bankers walk free with huge wages and pensions and bond holders take their riches.

We are in the middle of a campaign that seeks to end all the wrongs on our people and nation and we seek international recognition and media coverage as our own media is mostly owned by Irish Tax exile (shady billionaire business man) Denis O’Brien or the government/public funded RTE which have been constantly bias against our movement. We would be delighted if you could find a way to cover through articles/broadcasts our future marches/ peaceful protests and possibly forward this email to like minded media partners or such as we have few international contacts. If needed we can have freelance film recorders and photographers forward footage directly to whom ever agrees.

My arrest

It was Monday 16th February and my wife, son and I had got up 6 am as we were due to visit the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear hospital for an appointment for my son as he has Glaucoma in his eyes. 1 eye is worse than the other and he had a procedure last year to stop it getting worse and we were told at the time that if it gets worse he could loose his eye in a few years time and require a transplant. Although my son is 21 years old he has A.D.H.D. , O.C.D , has been suffering panic attacks and has been refereed to a specialist for possible diagnoses of Autism or Asperger’s . My sons appointment was at 845 am and we were due to leave at 715 am to drive through rush hour traffic.

At 710 am my wife saw a number of Gardai come into the garden and make their way to the door at which point having been informed I proceeded to get ready for my arrest. I got my wife to record my arrest and as I approached the door I shouted up to my son to inform him I wouldn’t be able to attend his appointment. I opened the door to find a number of Garda  awaiting me. I explained my sons situation to them and was asked if there was someone other than me to bring my son to which I replied my wife was also going but that she also attended a special needs school and had learning disabilities and that it was important for me to be there are certain things they struggle with.

The arresting officer told me this would be taken into account and we proceeded to the local Garda station in Tallaght. While making our way to the station the Garda in the car asked more about my son and I explained and I also talked about myself and the fact that I had been working for over 10 years in my community starting and running children and adult football teams, running a sports club for a local youth club, taken part in my local estate management, volunteering with the local homeless services and running charity events. I explained that I wasn’t the only one arrested that has worked hard in their communities for no personal gain. The Garda treated me very well but believe my circumstances were taken into account and got the feeling that they didn’t want to be arresting us. At one point two of them told me they didn’t agree with water charges either which is something protesters have heard many times.

I was held and questioned and then released 4 hours later and was the quickest of all those arrested to be released, which again I believe was due to my circumstances but others were treated more harshly after their arrest. My wife and son were 45 minutes late for the appointment as they had to travel by bus and foot but my son was seen by the doctors and returned with good news as his eyes haven’t got any worse. I can ask others that were arrested, those that were victims of Garda brutality or those imprisoned to give statements on their situations if needed. I like many others arrested for the Joan Burton protests had spent the entire week before my arrest protesting outside local Garda stations against the Political policing and arrests and had made it known on TV and radio that we were there if they wanted us. We would have expected that maybe an officer would come out and make arrangements for those waiting to be arrested to come down at agreed times so to save man hours for the force. This never happened and as many as 10 officers at a time were sent to arrest us (4 or 5 most mornings) at 6 or 7 am , even the children who missed a day of school.

There is a double march/protest this Saturday 7th March at 1 pm at R.T.E. studios in Donnybrook, Dublin 4 and then a march/car convoy at 4 pm from the G.P.O. O’Connell St to Mount Joy prison where a candlelit vigil will take place for the politically jailed and arrested protesters. With the amount of positive feedback we have received we are confident these marches will have an attendance of over 10,000 with potentially many more and we have arranged for the RTE event to be Streamed live.
https://www.facebook.com/events/800086770083211/

There is a national march on the 21st March run by Right2Water in Dublin at 2 pm, previous marches have been attended by hundreds of thousands and will be expected to have the same or more again.

https://www.facebook.com/events/887346754620142/

There will be many more protests planned in the future.
I can be contacted by email at [email protected] or through phone 00353 (0) 876280835

For the first time in public, though practically the entire world assumed it, an official from The IMF has admitted that the various Greek bailouts were not for The Greeks at all… “They gave money to save German and French banks, not Greece,” Paolo Batista, one of the Executive Directors of International Monetary Fund told Greek private Alpha TV on Tuesday. As KeepTalkingGreece reports, Batista then went on to strongly criticized not only the euro zone and the European Central Bank but also the IMF and the Fund’s managing Director Christine Lagarde for defending Europe much too much…

Oops! “The Greek issues were not the best handled by The IMF… They put too much of a bruden on Greece and not enough of a burden on Greece’s creditors”

Batista thenurged Greece to directly negotiate with the IMF and favored the restructuring of the Greek debt that is been hold by the European partners.

Source: Keep Talking Greece

If ever there was a geo-political bombshell, this is it.

Twelve years after the illegal and inhumane invasion of Iraq based on lies, fabrication and downright arrogance, 6 years after the launch of the Chilcot inquiry, comes today the following allegation. For those who have followed the Iraq story, a must read.

HUMAN RIGHTS LAW RULES CHILCOT INQUIRY INVALID

SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN IS NOT IMPARTIAL

To  Sir Richard Ottaway,

Chair of Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee

House of Commons

SW1A OAA

28 FEB 2015

Dear Sir,

Following the meeting of the Foreign Affairs Committee on  4th Feb 2015 concerning the Chilcot Inquiry, which was unsatisfactory in not establishing a completion date, I shall be grateful if you will investigate a much graver matter concerning the validity of the Inquiry as a whole. That is its failure to be impartial within European Human Rights Law.

At 9 am on  the 18th of January 2010, one hour before Jonathan Powell was due to give evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry, Sir John Chilcot received the following letter from Sir Laurence Freedman,

“Jonathan Powell will be giving evidence today.  I thought it would be helpful to set out, for the record, my involvement in Prime Minister Tony Blair’s speech, delivered to the Economic Club of Chicago on 24 April 1999 on ‘The doctrine of the International Community.

I was asked by Jonathan Powell to submit ideas for this speech on about 12 April 1999 and I submitted the attached memo on April 16th.  I believe I discussed it with Jonathan Powell early the following week, but I made no more submissions.”

Now of these submissions there were, in fact, twelve paragraphs included in Blair’s speech verbatim.

One paragraph of the memo of the suggestions from Professor Freedman was as follows:-

“Many of our problems have been caused by two dangerous and ruthless men – Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevich.  Both have been prepared to wage vicious campaigns against sections of their own community, and Saddam Hussein even occupied a neighboring country.  As a result of these destructive policies both have brought calamity on their own peoples.  Instead of enjoying its oil wealth Iraq has been reduced to poverty, with political life stultified through fear.”

The following are extracts from’THE BLAIR DOCTRINE’ delivered by Blair to the Chicago Economic Club on  April 22 1999,

” Many of our problems have been caused by two dangerous and ruthless men – Saddam Hussein and Slobodan.  Both have been prepared to wage vicious campaigns against sections of their own community, and Saddam Hussein even occupied a neighboring country.  As a result of these destructive policies both have brought calamity on their own peoples.  Instead of enjoying its oil wealth Iraq has been reduced to poverty, with political life stultified through fear.”

The wording, in  turn, is reminiscent of statements two years earlier to be found in  The Project for a New American Century, PNAC, written by Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld, Bolton, and Cheney. ( All committed zionists,  as is Freedman.)  Freedman must have been aware of the PNAC, and may, as a war strategist, have met its authors and even contributed to its ideas, if not the actual words. Recently, in 2010, he did indeed share a conference platform with Richard Perle,  again compromising his role as an impartial member of the Chilcot Inquiry during its progress from 20069 and 2015.

The Blair Doctrine  was delivered by Blair in Chicago two years before Bush was elected as President, and eleven months before 9/11.  Blair had of course been groomed in America as a young, charismatic, potential leader in the late 1980s and early 1990s with Fulbright International Travel Scholarships, along with Karzai and Gordon Brown.( Tony Benn was convinced Blair was a CIA instrument in smashing the Labour party.)   The PNAC  push to deal with Saddam Hussein had come long before Bush  was elected President.  As Sir Christopher Meyer said to the Chilcot Inquiry , Blair was ” a  firm believer” in removing Saddam Hussein long before 9/11.  In Blair’s own words …”I had a vision … greater than Iraq , greater than the American Alliance, greater than the greatness of our history.”   There was no stopping him . ( cf ” A Journey “p 500 – 501).

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who gave evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry on its second day, closed his remarks as he was leaving, ” in our conversations  ( a clever word) I was surprised you did not mention Israel.” Certainly the PNAC authors were very concerned  to stop Saddam paying the families of Palestinian  suicide bombers,  as was Freedman.

The second part of my letter deals with the possible deception by Chilcot himself, and, according to European Human Rights Law, the lack of validity of the Inquiry because it can not be considered  impartial.   This lack of validity will cause extreme distress for Military Families Against War, as it is contrary to the protection given by European Human Rights Law to enable those affected to be confident that they can obtain an unbiased hearing.   Rose Gentle will be staggered that she will never obtain justice for her dead son because the Chilcot Inquiry is rubbish. Nor will all the Iraqis ever be compensated whose relatives and  children have been killed, maimed and psychologically damaged in the wreckage of a country in  civil war. The  fact that the  barbarian acts of Lindsey England with her cigarette pointing at the penises of naked Iraqis  at Abu Ghraib or the sexual torture ( “work them hard”)  in Camp Bread Basket will never be exposed in the International Criminal Court along with The Leaders of the war ( whose actions lead to all others), will be a stimulus to continuous violence in the future, as the Joint Intelligence Committee prophesied in the year  2000.

When in a letter of  of 3 March 2011  I challenged Sir John about the Freedman Letter, his secretary  replied that he had known about this “a long time before”.  “and had full confidence in the balance of his team”.

But how long before ? (Cicero in a speech in praise of Pompey used this same legal ambiguity)   Was it 24 hours before? Was it written in panic ?

Was it  2 months before? or at the commencement of his Inquiry in Nov 2009?

Now if it was at the commencement of the Inquiry how was  Chilcot able to say, with a straight face,   that :- 

“We come to this task with open minds and a commitment to review the evidence objectively. Each member of the committee is independent and non-partisan. We are determined to be thorough, rigorous, fair and frank to enable us to form impartial and evidence-based judgements on all aspects of the issues, including the arguments about the legality of the conflict.”

Sir John also made clear that the Inquiry team would be critical if they felt it necessary.

“The Inquiry is not a court of law and nobody is on trial,” he said. “But I want to make something absolutely clear. This Committee will not shy away from making criticism. If we find that mistakes were made, that there were issues which could have been dealt with better, we will say so frankly.”

“We are all committed to ensuring that our proceedings are as open as possible because we recognise that is one of the ways in which the public can have confidence in the integrity and independence of the inquiry process.

How was he able to allow the official Inquiry Biography of Freedman, (which I quote below) still to omit in 2009,  and still go on omitting in 2015,  without alteration, the fact that Sir Lawrence Freedman  was Foreign Affairs Policy Adviser to Blair between 1997 and 2007.

Official Chilcot Inquiry Biography Freedman

Sir Lawrence Freedman has been Professor of War Studies at King’s College London since 1982. He became head of the School of Social Science and Public Policy at King’s in 2000 and was appointed Vice-Principal in 2003.

He was educated at Whitley Bay Grammar School and the Universities of Manchester, York and Oxford. Before joining King’s he held research appointments at Nuffield College Oxford, IISS and the Royal Institute of International Affairs. He was appointed Official Historian of the Falklands Campaign in 1997.

Professor Freedman has written extensively on nuclear strategy and the cold war, as well as commentating regularly on contemporary security issues. Among his books are Kennedy’s Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam (2000), The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (3rd edition 2004), Deterrence (2005), the two volume Official History of the Falklands Campaign (second edition 2007) and an Adelphi Paper on The Transformation in Strategic Affairs (2004). A Choice of Enemies: America confronts the Middle East, won the 2009 Lionel Gelber Prize and Duke of Westminster Medal for Military Literature. His most recent book is Strategy: A History (2013).

If it was at the commencement in Nov 2009  that Chilcot knew of Freedman’s role in composing Blair’s 1999 speech, why was the Official website Biography not updated   to read more accurately as follows :-

Sir Lawrence Freedman was appointed a Privy Councilor  in 2009 on account of his services

as Foreign Affairs advisor to  PM Tony Blair from 1997 to 2007.  Freedman contributed twelve crucial paragraphs, including removing Saddam Hussein, to “The Blair Doctrine” delivered to The Chicago Economic Club in April 1999, a year and a half before 9/11.

Freedman is closely associated with the authors of the Project for the New American Century of 1998. He has also established a Company with the MOD to train military and businesses in  military strategy

I understand that while the Chilcot Inquiry has been in progress  Freedman has been Professor of War Studies at Kings College London and has  recently supervised a Phd study at Exeter on Israeli counter terrorist strategy  and IDF War strategy.  He has written a number of Papers on Israeli IDF anti terrorist  strategy.  He has written papers on the value of nuclear deterrence. He has set up a private company  Simulstat with close association with the MOD teaching strategy to military and business at Cranfield and Shrivenham.. Such a close association  with the MOD would make it hard for him to be critical of the MOD .

As Professor of War Studies he must know the Nuremberg Protocols of 1946 and the 40 Blue Books produced from Courtroom 600 Nuremberg and that planning and executing an aggressive war was considered “the supreme international crime of all  “punishable by death.

In a public hearing it  would only  be human that Sir Lawrence would wish to distance himself from his master Tony Blair and the strategy of regime change, which as Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said “he had advised the Prime Minister on numerous  occasions was palpably illegal”.

One begins to wonder if, in Sir Lawrence Freedman, one is not dealing with Mephistopheles himself .   He has managed to inveigle himself into the position of being both Judge and Jury of his own actions,  and to manipulate as a puppet a man less clever than himself.   We will never know the truth of the first week of Shock and Awe, how little Ali’s burnt body came to be scarred with with charcoal flash marks like Hiroshima plutonium.  We will never know of the mother in Fallujah staring at her beautiful child with a huge cancer on her face and of mothers, giving birth to babies with one eye,  and their innards carried outside their bodies, whether the MOD knew all along that the munitions used with  depleted uranium and plutonium would cause these tragedies, because Freedman himself was advocating the use of nuclear weapons and was himself negotiating with the MOD to form a company from which he would benefit. We do not know if  Freedman himself copied terms such as Shock and Awe ( Sturm und Drang )  and |Storm Shadow Missiles” (Sturmtruppen ) |from Nazi Germany because the whole Inquiry is rotten to the core .  We will not know if Freedman is in touch with Blair’s lawyers extending the maxwellisation Programe by deceit ad infinitum..

I therefore request that you investigate the impartiality of Sir Lawrence Freedman and whether the Chilcot Inquiry should quickly be brought to a close as not complying with European Human Rights Law. Maxwellisation could clearly go on for a very long time indeed without a conclusion.  I suggest that on the morning of Jonathan Powell’s appearance Freedman must have been very worried indeed that the cat might have come out of the bag. Perhaps the Committee was instructed by Chilcot to steer clear of these speeches when questioning Powell.

I shall be pleased to forward to you copies of the many letters I have received from Sir John’s staff.

While writing this letter to you , Bassim  an Iraqi Sheik, to whom I tried to teach English , lost his nephew and youngest brother who were killed in Baghdad. He has now lost all the male members of his family, since his brother was killed, while hooded, by the Americans , and his brother in law by the Shia Militia. You could never meet a kinder or more intelligent man than Bassim. I dedicate this letter to him.

Yours sincerely.

Nicholas Wood . Secretary to the Submission of 19 Nov 2009

Secretary to the Letter from Privy Councillor Tony Benn to Kofi Anan 2003

\Secretary to The Blair War Crimes Foundation.

cc Mrs Rose Gentle, Military Families Against War .

ccThe Editor Private Eye.

Event Details

Date: Monday March 23^rd, 2015

Time:  2.15pm

Venue: Court 1 Hastings Magistrates Court, Bohemia Rd, Hastings TN34 1ND

Contact Details:  UK AE911Truth   [email protected]

Summary Overview

On 23^rd March Matt Campbell of Sussex, United Kingdom, will go to court against the BBC and will claim that the BBC is in violation of UK anti-terrorist legislation in the way that they have covered up evidence relating to 9/11 and evidence relating to the murder of his brother Geoff.  Geoff Campbell was killed while inside the North Tower of the World Trade Centre on September 11^th, 2001.  Mr Campbell will claim that he has reasonable cause to believe that the BBC has been wilfully complicit in the deliberate cover up of vital and incontrovertible evidence relating to how his brother Geoff was killed and that as such the BBC is guilty of complicity with terrorism.

Representing Mr Campbell’s case against the BBC is senior litigation solicitor and human rights activist Mahtab Aziz who has represented a number of well-known public figures such as Imran Khan, the former Pakistan cricketer captain turned politician, Herbie Hide the former 2 time World Heavyweight boxing champion and a number of other internationally well-known artists, singers and sportsmen.  Mr Aziz also advised British Film Director Tony Rooke at Horsham Magistrates Court in 2013 for his similar case against the BBC’s alleged cover up of 9/11 evidence.  That particular court case between Mr Rooke and the BBC was attended by several hundred members of the public and by independent journalists from across Europe where they witnessed Mr Rooke achieve a partial victory against the BBC.

Mr Campbell will also be calling on the support of a number of expert witnesses.

See below for further details of this court case.

Legal details of Mr Campbell’s court case

Mr Campbell claims that the BBC is refusing to inform the public of incontrovertible scientific evidence relating to free fall acceleration during the collapse of World Trade Centre Building 7, and the BBC appears to be supporting a cover up of the true events of that day.  He is therefore pleading “Not Guilty” to having an appropriate TV licence as he has ”reasonable cause” to suspect that by funding the BBC through his TV Licence Fees he would be supporting the purposes of terrorism and he would be guilty of breaking the law under Article 15 Section 3 of the Terrorism Act.

He will also claim that the BBC is guilty of an offence under Section 38B of the Terrorism Act 2000 as amended by Section 117 of Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001.  Under Section 38B(2) of the TA 2000 if a person without reasonable excuse, fails to disclose information falling within Section 38B(1).  A person may commit this offence through total inactivity (by not answering police questions or by not volunteering information), through the partial suppression of information, or by relating a false account when the true facts are known.

The cover-up of 9/11 evidence and Geoff Campbell’s murder

Mr Campbell’s brother, Geoff, was on business in the North Tower of the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001 when the tower was struck by an aircraft and later collapsed killing everyone who was still inside.  The official reason provided for the collapse of both the Twin Towers that day was that fire resulting from the crashed airliners caused a weakening of the structure of the buildings which eventually led to their complete collapse.  The official explanation given to Mr Campbell for who was responsible for the aircraft hitting the North Tower was that it was due to Al Qaeda terrorists who hijacked the aircraft and then deliberately flew it into the tower, and that therefore it was the alleged Al Qaeda hijackers who were responsible for the murder of Mr Campbell’s brother.

However, over the last several years Mr Campbell has been conducting a detailed investigation into the death of his brother and has come up with some startling information and evidence which he believes casts huge doubts about the official explanation he has been provided with for his brother’s murder.  Through Mr Campbell’s own investigations, as well as the scientific analysis of dozens of professional physicists, architects, engineers, demolition experts, and other scientists, Mr Campbell, as well as thousands of professional and technical experts, believes that both the Twin Towers and World Trade Centre Building 7 (a 47 storey tower not hit by an aircraft) collapsed as a result of controlled, explosive, demolition, rather than from fires from the crashed aircraft.  If Mr Campbell’s assertion is correct then it creates a very different picture about what really took place on 9/11, who was potentially involved, and who was actually responsible for his brother’s murder.

Mr Campbell’s court case against the BBC is based upon the allegation that he has reasonable cause to believe that the BBC has been deliberately withholding the available evidence which supposedly proves his belief that the three towers were brought down through controlled demolition.  Mr Campbell claims that numerous professional experts from around the world and more than 500 members of the public have provided detailed evidence and written requests to the BBC demanding that they adhere to their Editorial Guidelines and their Royal Charter and show the public what he claims is incontrovertible scientific evidence and eye-witness evidence.  He claims that this evidence proves beyond any doubt that his brother Geoff was murdered in a way that is very different to what he has been told by government officials and by the coroner.  Mr Campbell aims to present to the court in Sussex evidence showing that the BBC has been deliberately covering up this vital information from the public.

Mr Campbell believes that by covering up this evidence the BBC are supporting those terrorists to get away with their crime which included the murder of his brother.  Therefore, according to Mr Campbell, to pay his TV Licence Fee to the BBC would in fact be a criminal act according to Section 15, Article 3 of the Terrorism Act.  Mr Campbell believes that he has a situation of conflict of law whereby he is prepared to continue paying his TV Licence Fee, but not if it goes to the BBC, because to provide funds to the BBC would be to provide funds to an organisation that is supporting an act of terrorism, according to Mr Campbell and his lawyers.

Evidence to support Mr Campbell’s allegation of controlled demolition

The following are some of the points of evidence that Mr Campbell cites as supporting the allegation that the three towers that collapsed on 9/11 collapsed due to controlled, explosive demolition.  This is not a complete list of Mr Campbell’s evidence:

1. Confirmed free fall of WTC Building 7

World Trade Centre Building 7 fell at free-fall acceleration for at least 2.25 seconds (105 feet/8 stories) as confirmed in 2008 by the official investigators NIST (National Institute for Standards & Technology).  This means that at least 8 stories of the building collapsed with absolutely zero structural resistance within them, and that all 80 of the core steel columns, and all of the steel beam cross connections for those 8 stories had to have been completely severed, all within a split second of each other in order to achieve the perfectly symmetrical free fall collapse that is seen in WTC Building 7. The only thing that can achieve this is controlled-demolition using carefully placed explosives and perfectly timed detonation. Controlled Demolition of a high rise tower cannot be prepared within a few hours.  It takes weeks or months to plan and implement

2. BBC foreknowledge of the unprecedented collapse of WTC Building 7

Apart from the three towers that collapsed on 9/11, no steel frame building has ever collapsed from fire in history, either before or since 9/11.  High rise towers are designed specifically so that this cannot happen.  However on that day the BBC reported on live television that WTC Building 7 had collapsed more than 20 minutes before it actually collapsed.  While the buildings collapse was being reported to the world by a BBC journalist, the fully intact building could still be seen standing in the background in what appeared to be a relatively uncompromised state and no obvious fires of any consequence. This footage is still available to see on YouTube.  This would suggest that someone likely knew that the building was going to come down in a controlled manner and that the BBC reporter had inadvertently been given this information a little too early.

How did anyone know that the building was going to collapse as a result of simple office fires, as is NIST’s official explanation, when fire has never caused this to happen to any other building in history, apart from on that day, and it is physically impossible for fires to reach even close to the required temperature to even begin to weaken steel?  Why did the BBC not actively investigate where that foreknowledge of collapse came from and inform the police or investigators, and the public?  How did the source of that information know that the building was going to come down if a symmetrical collapse at free fall acceleration is impossible from office fires and is unprecedented in history?

3. The BBC’s misinformation & refusal to notify the public about critical and incontrovertible evidence

In 2007 the BBC ran a documentary which claimed that despite what hundreds of professional engineers, physicists, demolition experts, and scientists were claiming about free fall of WTC Building 7, they were in fact wrong and there was no free fall of WTC Building 7.  Even after NIST, the official investigators, officially confirmed the existence of free fall in 2008 the BBC has refused to comply with the requirements of their own Editorial Guidelines and publicly correct their error about this absolutely vital issue.  This is despite a number of professional experts and more than 500 members of the public making written requests in 2012 to the BBC for them to do so.  The BBC still has not corrected this error and still has not informed the public of the quite incredible fact that in 2008 NIST officially confirmed the existence of free fall of WTC Building 7, which can only occur through controlled demolition.

In addition to this, a great deal more incontrovertible evidence supporting the controlled demolition of the three towers has been forwarded to the BBC by numerous professional experts and hundreds of the public, but the BBC has refused to show this evidence to the public.  This includes eye witness testimonies from 118 first responder fire fighters on 9/11 who reported hearing or seeing explosions going off in all three towers.  These eye witness reports were originally suppressed by the US government, but were later forced to be released through the Freedom of Information Act.

4. BBC deliberately misleading the public with biased and inaccurate reporting

Despite having hundreds of people demanding that the BBC show the evidence described above, the BBC has refused to do this and have instead shown documentaries which are seemingly designed only to smear and discredit the reputation of the professional individuals and organisations bringing this evidence forward, and the BBC has instead presented information that is based on methodology that runs in direct contradiction to the BBC’s own Editorial Guidelines for providing accurate and impartial information.  This has included such things as removing the sounds of huge explosions going off in WTC Building 7 moments before it collapsed during one of the BBC’s documentaries which was examining the claims of hundreds of professional experts that WTC Building 7 was brought down with explosives in a controlled demolition.  Why would the BBC remove these sounds of explosions going off in a documentary aimed specifically at examining the claims that the collapse of the towers on 9/11 may have been due to explosives?

Mr Campbell and his support team will be asking these questions and more in the upcoming court case.

This short documentary features a number of individuals who have participated in a conference on Syria and the Middle East in Ecuador while the 18th World Festival of Youth and Students was also taking place in Ecuador. The director took the opportunity to talk about the crisis in Syria with participants from both events being held in Ecuador.

TRANSCRIPT

Narration: Ecuador is a country in South America, covered with tropical trees and full of many volcanoes. Its official name, Republica del Ecuador, means the republic of the equator, which is an imaginary line drawn around the middle of the Earth to divide it into two hemispheres. If you stand on it, one side of you is the North and the other is the South.

The inhabitants of this land started their first uprising against Spanish colonialism, when Spain was a superpower and possessed the strongest warships in the world, in order to achieve an original concept called freedom which is not imaginary or does not know directions like the north or the south.

Currently, Ecuador is in peace. It is a bounteous land, which has rain at night and sunlight at day, with happy and loveable people.

In the last days of fall, which does not mean much in the moderate climate of Ecuador, the capital city of Quito hosted the 18th World Festival of Youth and Students. It is ceremony which is held every three or four years in anti-imperialist or anti-capitalist countries. The youths and students from over a hundred countries take part in this festival. The thousands of youths in the festival are from various cultures, races, and languages but they have, of course, one thing in common. They are all anti-imperialists.

Narrator: In their opinion, imperialism is an economic, political, and military system which intends to seize all world resources and gain the most benefits at any cost. They know America as the symbol of this system. And now, Ecuador, which has been under the yoke of America, is hosting more than ten thousand anti-American [anti-imperialist] youths.

I went to Ecuador to participate in the festival and make a program about it. On the first day of the festival, a flag grabbed my attention. The flag of Syria! Since the beginning of the Syrian crisis, a major part of my professional activities has been about Syria. I travelled to Syria several times and played a role in many events there. I had had many interviews with prominent figures. Syrian issues were interesting to me. However, there, on the other corner of the world, I was surprised when I saw the Syrian flag.

Syrian activist: We are here to say to the whole world that Syria will stand in front against the imperialist attack and the Zionist attack against Syria.

Narrator: Ecuador is one of the farthest inlands to Syria. Syrian and Ecuadorian people do not have any common cultural or religious background, or they even don’t have any trade with each other. However, the Syrian groups have been welcomed warmly. All participants took photographs with them and gave good wishes for them. That is why I went among the participants to know more, and this time, to film Syria from the viewpoint of the people on this side of the world.

VOXPOP [English]: “Where are you from?

Russian activist: Russia.

VOXPOP [English]: Can you speak English?

Russian activist:  Yes

VOXPOP [English]: What is you is idea about Syria?

Russian activist: Syria is our friend, we want that our government of our country help to your country [Syria] because we feel that we are brothers, we want peace on your country and we want good relationship between good countries.”

Third Activist: Based on the bad conflict in Syria, I think it is a very hard strategic by Zionism, by United States, by imperialism. And they are trying to destabilize and they are trying to stop the sovereignty of Syria, the president Bashar Al–Assad because they don’t like Bashar Al–Assad. Why? Because he is not a puppet. He is not a friend of Israel, he is not a friend of United States.”

Fourth Activist: I believe that the Syrian people have the right to defend themselves for many any invading force, terrorist force. Obviously we know the fact that that the US is aiding terrorist extremist.

Third Activist: What they trying to do there is getting terrorist people from Qatar, from Saudi Arabia, from Turkey, Al-Qaeda. I mean I can’t understand why United States are fighting against Al-Qaeda but now they are giving them the guns to come to Syria to fight for freedom. Oh my God, [it is] incredible!

Fifth Activist: Al-Qaeda for example is considered by the United States as a terrorist group, but it is kind of funny I could say or kind of contradictory that the United States joins a terrorist group qualified by the same United State as a terrorist group — that is Al-Qaeda, right? —- to fight against a legitimate government in Syria.

Third Activist: I think that it is conflict that they are doing to stop Bashar Al-Assad. They don’t like that Bashar Al-Assad is not a puppet. He is fighting against Zionism. He helps our brothers in Palestine. He helps our brothers in Lebanon. He is a good man I think and they are trying to stop that regime to get a puppet government like every country that they have invaded in the world.

Second Russian Activist: So I am not really well known in international relations, [but] of course when like some other government support the people who killed somebody and eat their inner things, so it is for us, for Russian people and I think for any human being is not understandable thing.

Narration: A conference on Middle East was held on the sideline of the festival by the Institute of [Advanced] Studies affiliated to Ecuador’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I seized the opportunity and talk with some prominent figures about international issues in order to ask them about Syria.

SOUNDBITE [English], Norman Finkelstein: My name is Norman Finkelstein and I am a writer and lecturer.

SOUNDBITE [English], Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya: My name is Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya I am a sociologist from Canada.

SOUNDBITE [English], Nagham Salman: My name is Nagham Salman and I am originally from Syria.

SOUNDBITE [Arabic], Conversation between a prisoner in hand of Al-Qaeda and his Dad: 

Syrian Son: Dad … they are slaughtering me now … you and Mom! Forgive me.

Syrian Dad: May God forgive you! In this world and hereafter …

Syrian Son: Dad! Dad! Don’t wait for me anymore. They are slaughtering me now … they have just taken me here, to this slaughterhouse …

Syrian Dad: Don’t be afraid, my son! God is with you…

Syrian Son: Dad … Dad …

SOUNDBITE [English], Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya: No its not a revolution. Anybody who thinks that it is a revolution right now in the year 2013 is deluded and lying to themselves. That is not a revolution, killing innocent people, destroying market places…

SOUNDBITE [English], Norman Finkelstein: …and so the aspect of a civil war was much smaller and the proxy war was the much bigger picture…

SOUNDBITE [English], Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya: First of all a lot of these revolutionaries supposedly — so-called revolutionaries — that are doing this [revolution] in the name of Islam, I don’t think that they have read the Quran or know anything about the Quran. For starters it says that Muslims are not supposed to have alliances of non-Muslims where the Muslims — it is very specific from Quran, they [Muslims] cannot have an alliance with non-Muslims, if they [Muslims] are subordinate.These guys are subordinate to non-Muslims against Syria. Is this the revolution where people are being paid to fight for foreign interest [against Syria]?

SOUNDBITE [Arabic], Terrorists in Syria speaking.

SOUNDBITE [English], Nagham Salman: Syria as I said has a very important geo-political situation in the Middle East because of the geographical location, because of the political culture of the government or the regime, because of its strong alliance with Iran and Russia.

Narrator: Human rights, democracy, and the right to determine your destiny, from the viewpoint of European officials, are important somewhere, like Syria, and are unimportant somewhere, like Bahrain. They are repetitive terms. I asked experts about the real motives of the West and why Syria has become so important for them.

SOUNDBITE [English], Nagham Salman: Besides that this government supports a lot the resistance in Lebanon and in Palestine, it is the only Arabic government that fights for the Palestinian case until now. So this does not suit United States of America, not even Israel, and some other countries.

SOUNDBITE [English], Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya: Reform in Syria does and democracy in Syria does not mean reform and democracy for the Americans, it means bow down to us [the United States] and listen to us for your foreign policies and cut the Iranians out.

SOUNDBITE [English], Nagham Salman: The role of [the] United States and Israel is to get rid of the only enemy in the Arab governments, the only presidents that says “no” to the United States in the region.

…well, Syria has different situation from the other [Arab] countries. I think that years ago something was getting prepared for Syria years ago…

SOUNDBITE [English], Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya: …of course regime change! The story of regime change starts in 1991, it starts with the Iraq War [Persian Gulf War]. Mr. [Paul] Wolfowitz, when he was undersecretary of defense, said now that the Soviets have collapsed look at what we are doing in Afghanistan, it’s time to war out against the rest of the Middle East. This was a neo-con project which was endorsed by the Likudniks in Israel. The Israelis are very much tide to this. [They] had a long term plan of regime change throughout the entire Greater Middle East, from North Africa to Central Asia, and it just took some time to kick the war machine, to put it into play.

…in 2001, I know you know a hundred percent that General Clark mentioned a list [of countries that would be attacked] … the war in Lebanon in 2006 was really against Syria, it was a demonstration. It was obviously at the end against Iran, but it was against Syria. Even [US Vice-President] Dick Cheney’s Middle East advisor, his wife, who helped write the document A Clean Break [about destroying Syria for Israel], admits that Syria was the main target of the [2006] war. The French general who was in charge of UNIFIL [for the UN in Lebanon] in his book that he printed after he retired  said that the Americans were going to send the Marines into Lebanon, they were planning on fighting Hezbollah and then going into Syria. They just wanted to make sure that Iran would not get involved. They don’t want to fight [the entire Axis of Resistance] at the same time, they want to fight one [member at a time] and then go after the other ones.

SOUNDBITE [English], Nagham Salman: …And I think they had the idea that if they can get rid of this government [in Syria], then they can attack Iran so Iran will not have this big alliance with Syria and in this case Hezbollah will stand alone in Lebanon and it will be easy for Israel to attack Hezbollah.

SOUNDBITE [English], Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya: You know these groups, who are they? You know some of them come from Iraq, they were part of the Awakening Councils. Who were the Awakening Councils? They were groups the Americans started paying basically to be under American control. That is even [acknowledged] in the American media about the Awakening Councils. They were paying them basically to fight for them [the US] in Iraq, and now these guys have become the seeds of what we are seeing in Syria.

…and of course Saudi Arabia had a big hand to play in this and Prince Bandar Bush, who has been pivotal with creating the Taliban, and who was pivotal in creating creating Fatal Al-Islam in Lebanon. Remember after the Israelis lost the war in Lebanon [in 2006], that all of a sudden these groups the are the seeds of what we are seeing in Syria starting coming to Lebanon. They [the US] wanted to use them against Hezbollah and eventually these are the same groups we have seen them using in Syria.

SOUNDBITE [English], Nagham Salman: It is also economic because Syria has petrol, has gas, and this is something very attractive for investment and I think Qatar has future from projects in Syria and that is why they pushed a lot the rebels to destroy more and more in Syria so they can be able to into the market and invest…

Narration: At the heart of South America, at the foothills of Ecuador’s volcanic mountains, and in the middle of rain forests, talking about the Middle East had a strange feeling. It was like looking at a chess board from far away, whose pawns were alive, and whose rooks were real. They talked about Damascus, which is the oldest capital in the world. It has been known as “the Eastern Gate” for two thousand years.

SOUNDBITE [English], Norman Finkelstein: The United States has only one interest and that is Iran. They want to weaken Iran and that is their interest in Syria. Remember the United States got got along quite well with Syria. Syria join the coalition in 1991 to force Iraq to leave Kuwait, they quite along well. Someone was just reminding me in the car today that when Hafez Al-Assad passed away, the United States sent a very large delegation. It was headed by [US Secretary of State] Madeline Albright. It has nothing to do with Syria, it’s Iran. They want to weaken Iran.

SOUNDBITE [English], Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya: … to cut the Iranians out. The road to Damascus is through Beirut, but Damascus is the road to Tehran.

SOUNDBITE [English], Norman Finkelstein: In a civil war each side has a finite amount of resources. So at a certain point, when each side realizes that it can’t win, they decide on some political compromise. The problem now is that it is no longer a civil war [in Syria], it’s  a proxy war [in Syria] and each of the great powers has unlimited resources. They can go on and on and on and on because they have so much power, so much wealth. Will the Saudis stop? No, they will not stop. Will the Americans stop? No. It’s the Syrian people who are paying a terrible, terrible, terrible price.

SOUNDBITE [English], Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya: …they lost. The Americans lost in Syria. They lost the war. They know it. Everyone should know it by now.

There are some stubborn people in Saudi Arabia who are afraid that regime change will happen in Riyadh. They saw that the New York Times in September [2013] published that article saying Saudi Arabia is going to be broken up into several little states. They see the writing on the wall. Saudi Arabia is just a book note, it is a little footnote in a book. It is not an important player. The real players are countries like Iran, China, Russia. These are the ones that matter. Saudi Arabia, it’s time is done. The House of Saud is a fossil. They [the House of Saud] think that if we leave things in Syria that eventually it [our end] will come our way and, of course, the Americans don’t mind them continuing to make Syria bleed and the Israelis don’t mind either. They want a weak Syria. It benefits them to have weak countries in the region.

Narration: Our short days at Ecuador finished, but the war in Syria still continues. The war which has become part of Syrian people’s everyday life… the war, with which Syrian children sleep at dusk, and wake up in the morning… the war in which all world powers are involved and all good and evil are confronting one another… and the war which may alter the world’s destiny and change its order.

Un vec­chio vizio della sini­stra e dei movi­menti è tenere sepa­rate la lotta per il lavoro e quella con­tro la guerra, men­tre invece sono due facce della stessa meda­glia. Emble­ma­tico il fatto che, quando Fin­mec­ca­nica ha annun­ciato la ven­dita alla giap­po­nese Hita­chi di Ansaldo Sts e Ansaldo Breda, l’attenzione poli­tica e sin­da­cale si è con­cen­trata sulla difesa dell’occupazione, lasciando in ombra la por­tata stra­te­gica della deci­sione: ridurre la pro­du­zione civile per accre­scere quella militare.

Nella clas­si­fica delle 100 mag­giori indu­strie pro­dut­trici di armi redatta dal Sipri, Fin­mec­ca­nica si col­loca al nono posto mon­diale, pre­ce­duta da sei sta­tu­ni­tensi (Lockheed-Martin. Boeing, Ray­theon, Nor­th­rop Grum­man, Gene­ral Dyna­mics, Uni­ted Tech­no­lo­gies), una bri­tan­nica (Bae Systems) e una franco-tedesca-spagnola (Air­bus Group, già Eads). Con la ven­dità di armi, Fin­mec­ca­nica rea­lizza il 50% del suo fat­tu­rato: ciò signi­fica che, accre­scendo tale pro­du­zione, salirà di rango tra le mag­giori indu­strie bel­li­che mondiali.

Tale ope­ra­zione viene effet­tuata ven­dendo a Hita­chi l’Ansaldo Sts, azienda lea­der nei sistemi di segna­la­mento per tra­sporto fer­ro­via­rio e urbano, e Ansaldo Breda, lea­der nella pro­du­zione di mate­riale rota­bile per sistemi fer­ro­viari (com­presi treni ad alta velo­cità) e per tra­sporto urbano (già oltre 1000 con­vo­gli per le metro­po­li­tane di Washing­ton, Los Ange­les, San Fran­ci­sco, Miami e altre grandi città, Milano com­presa). Anche se Hita­chi pro­mette di man­te­nere i livelli occu­pa­zio­nali di que­ste indu­strie (le cui atti­vità pro­dut­tive, pro­ba­bil­mente, saranno in futuro delo­ca­liz­zate in paesi dove il costo del lavoro è infe­riore), resta il fatto che l’Italia dovrà acqui­stare dalla giap­po­nese Hita­chi sistemi di segna­la­mento e mate­riale rota­bile, spen­dendo (con denaro pub­blico) molto di più per i trasporti.

In com­penso Fin­mec­ca­nica accre­scerà fat­tu­rato e pro­fitti pun­tando su indu­strie come la Oto Melara, pro­dut­trice di sistemi d’arma ter­re­stri e navali (tra cui il vei­colo blin­dato Cen­tauro, con potenza di fuoco di un car­rar­mato, e can­noni con muni­zioni gui­date Vul­cano ven­duti a più di 55 marine nel mondo); la Wass, lea­der mon­diale nella pro­du­zione di siluri (tra cui il Black Shark a lunga git­tata); la Mbda, lea­der mon­diale nella pro­du­zione di mis­sili (tra cui quello anti-nave Marte e quello aria-aria Meteor); l’Alenia Aer­mac­chi che, oltre a pro­durre aerei da guerra (come il cac­cia da adde­stra­mento avan­zato M-346 for­nito a Israele), gesti­sce l’impianto Faco di Cameri scelto dal Pen­ta­gono quale polo di manu­ten­zione dei cac­cia F-35 schie­rati in Europa.

La ricon­ver­sione di Fin­mec­ca­nica dal civile al mili­tare, che riduce i posti di lavoro dato che le indu­strie bel­li­che high-tech richie­dono meno addetti, è stata inco­rag­giata dall’attuale e dai pre­ce­denti governi: lo scorso otto­bre, la mini­stra della difesa Pinotti ha pre­sen­ziato alla firma dell’accordo di col­la­bo­ra­zione tra Fin­mec­ca­nica e Fin­can­tieri per la costru­zione di navi da guerra con «l’obiettivo di aumen­tare la com­pe­ti­ti­vità sui mer­cati nazio­nali ed esteri».

Sul mer­cato ita­liano ci pensa il governo ad assi­cu­rare la «com­pe­ti­ti­vità»: la «Legge di sta­bi­lità» stan­zia 6 miliardi di euro per la costru­zione di altre navi da guerra e il Mini­stero dello svi­luppo eco­no­mico ha già finan­ziato 8 delle 10 fre­gate lan­cia­mis­sili Fremm. Altro denaro pub­blico che si aggiunge alla spesa mili­tare: 52 milioni di euro al giorno secondo la Nato, 67 secondo il Sipri. Sem­pre il governo pro­muove l’export mili­tare, die­tro il para­vento del «Trat­tato sul com­mer­cio di arma­menti» che l’Italia ha solen­ne­mente firmato.

Manlio Dinucci

Addressing Congress in the style of a State of the Union speech, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won 41 rounds of applause as U.S. lawmakers eagerly enlisted in the Israeli-Saudi conflict against Iran and its allies – an enthusiasm that may well entangle the U.S. military in more wars in the Middle East.

Speaking to a joint session of Congress for the third time – tying British Prime Minister Winston Churchill for the record – Netanyahu went far beyond excoriating President Barack Obama’s negotiations with Iran to restrict but not eliminate its nuclear program. He portrayed Iran as a dangerous enemy whose regional influence must be stopped and reversed, a position shared by Israel’s new ally, Saudi Arabia.

Netanyahu declared:

“In the Middle East, Iran now dominates four Arab capitals, Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Sanaa. And if Iran’s aggression is left unchecked, more will surely follow. So, at a time when many hope that Iran will join the community of nations, Iran is busy gobbling up the nations. We must all stand together to stop Iran’s march of conquest, subjugation and terror.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on March 3, 2015. (Screen shot from CNN broadcast)

Netanyahu’s reference to “Iran’s aggression” was curious since Iran has not invaded another country for centuries. In 1980, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq – at the urging of Saudi Arabia – invaded Iran. During that bloody eight-year war, Israel – far from being an enemy of Iran – became Iran’s principal arms supplier. Israel drew in the Reagan administration, which approved some of the Israeli-brokered arms deals, leading to the Iran-Contra scandal in 1986.

In other words, Israel was aiding Iran after the Islamic revolution overthrew the Shah in 1979 and during the time when Netanyahu blamed Iran for the attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 and various acts of terrorism allegedly committed by Hezbollah, a Shiite militia in Lebanon. Israel only shifted toward hostility against Shiite-ruled Iran in the 1990s as Israel gradually developed a de facto alliance with Sunni-ruled and oil-rich Saudi Arabia, which views Iran as its chief regional rival.

Netanyahu’s choice of Arab cities supposedly conquered by Iran was strange, too. Baghdad is the capital of Iraq where the U.S. military invaded in 2003 to overthrow Saddam Hussein and his Sunni-dominated government — on Netanyahu’s recommendation. After the invasion, President George W. Bush installed a Shiite-dominated government. So, whatever influence Iran has in Baghdad is the result of a U.S. invasion that Netanyahu personally encouraged.

More recently, Iran has supported the embattled Iraqi government in its struggle against the murderous Islamic State militants who seized large swaths of Iraqi territory last summer. Indeed, Iraqi officials have credited Iran with playing a crucial role in blunting the Islamic State, the terrorists whom President Obama has identified as one of the top security threats facing the United States.

Netanyahu cited Damascus, too, where Iran has helped the Syrian government in its struggle against the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front. In other words, Iran is assisting the internationally recognized government of Syria hold off two major terrorist organizations. But Netanyahu portrays that as Iran “gobbling up” a nation.

The Israeli prime minister also mentioned Beirut, Lebanon, and Sanaa, Yemen, but those were rather bizarre references, too, since Lebanon is governed by a multi-ethnic arrangement that includes a number of religious and political factions. Hezbollah is one and it has close ties to Iran, but it is stretching the truth to say that Iran “dominates” Beirut or Lebanon.

Similarly, in Sanaa, the Houthis, a Shiite-related sect, have taken control of Yemen’s capital and have reportedly received some help from Iran, but the Houthis deny those reports and are clearly far from under Iranian control. The Houthis also have vowed to work with the Americans to carry on the fight against Yemen’s Al-Qaeda affiliate.

Leading the Battle

Indeed, Iran and these various Shiite-linked movements have been among the most effective in battling Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, while Israel’s Saudi friends have been repeatedly linked to funding and supporting these Sunni terrorist organizations. In effect, what Netanyahu asked the Congress to do – and apparently successfully – was to join Saudi Arabia and Israel in identifying Iran, not Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, as America’s chief enemy in the Middle East.

That would put the U.S.-Iranian cooperation in combating Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in jeopardy. It could lead to victories by these Sunni terrorists in Syria and possibly even Iraq, a situation that almost surely would force the U.S. military to return in force to the region. No U.S. president could politically accept Damascus or Baghdad in the hands of openly terrorist organizations vowing to carry the fight to Europe and the United States.

Yet, that was the logic — or lack thereof — in Netanyahu’s appeal to Congress. As he put it, “when it comes to Iran and ISIS, the enemy of your enemy is your enemy.” He also argued that Iran was a greater threat than the Islamic State, a position that Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren has expressed, too.

“The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime [in Syria] as the keystone in that arc,” Oren told the Jerusalem Post in a 2013 interview. “We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran” – even if the “bad guys” were affiliated with al-Qaeda.

In June 2014, then speaking as a former ambassador at an Aspen Institute conference, Oren expanded on his position, saying Israel would even prefer a victory by the brutal Islamic State over continuation of the Iranian-backed Assad in Syria. “From Israel’s perspective, if there’s got to be an evil that’s got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail,” Oren said.

Netanyahu made a similar point: “The difference is that ISIS is armed with butcher knives, captured weapons and YouTube, whereas Iran could soon be armed with intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear bombs.”

Of course, Iran has disavowed any interest in developing a nuclear bomb — and both the U.S. and Israeli intelligence communities agree that Iran has not been working on a bomb. Further, the negotiated agreement between Iran and leading world powers would impose strict oversight on Iran’s civilian nuclear program, leaving little opportunity to cheat.

Instead, Netanyahu wants the United States to lead an aggressive campaign to further strangle Iran’s economy with the goal of forcing some future “regime change.” The principal beneficiary of that strategy would likely be Saudi Arabia, which has served as the proselytizing center for the reactionary Wahabbi version of Sunni Islam, which inspired Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.

Elements of the Saudi royal family also have long been known to support Islamist militants, including forces associated with bin Laden. Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that convicted al-Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui identified leading members of the Saudi government as financiers of the terrorist network.

According to the story, Moussaoui said in a prison deposition that he was directed in 1998 or 1999 by Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan to create a digital database of the group’s donors and that the list included Prince Turki al-Faisal, then Saudi intelligence chief; Prince Bandar bin Sultan, longtime Saudi ambassador to the United States; Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, a prominent billionaire investor; and many leading clerics.

Moussaoui also said he discussed a plan to shoot down President George W. Bush’s Air Force One with a Stinger missile with a staff member at the Saudi Embassy in Washington, at a time when Bandar was the ambassador to the United States and considered so close to the Bush family that his nickname was “Bandar Bush.”

Moussaoui claimed, too, that he passed letters between Osama bin Laden and then Crown Prince Salman, who recently became king upon the death of his brother King Abdullah.

While the Saudi government denied Moussaoui’s accusations, Saudi and other Persian Gulf oil sheikdoms have been identified in recent years as financial backers of Sunni militants fighting in Syria to overthrow Assad’s largely secular regime, with al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front the major rebel force benefiting from this support.

Shared Israeli Interests

The Israelis also have found themselves on the side of these Sunni militants in Syria because the Israelis share the Saudi view that Iran and the so-called “Shiite crescent” – reaching from Tehran to Beirut – is the greatest threat to their interests.

That attitude of favoring Sunni militants over Assad has taken a tactical form with Israeli forces launching attacks inside Syria that benefit Nusra Front. For instance, on Jan. 18, 2015, Israel attacked Lebanese-Iranian advisers assisting Assad’s government in Syria, killing several members of Hezbollah and an Iranian general. These military advisers were engaged in operations against Nusra Front.

Meanwhile, Israel has refrained from attacking Nusra militants who have seized Syrian territory near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. One source familiar with U.S. intelligence information on Syria told me that Israel has a “non-aggression pact” with Nusra forces, who have even received medical treatment at Israeli hospitals.

Israel and Saudi Arabia have found themselves on the same side in other regional struggles, including support for the military’s ouster of the elected Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, but most importantly they have joined forces in their hostility toward Shiite-ruled Iran.

I first reported on the growing relationship between Israel and Saudi Arabia in August 2013 in an article entitled “The Saudi-Israeli Superpower,” noting that the complementary strengths of the two countries made their alliance a potentially powerful influence in the world. Israel wields enormous political and media clout — and possesses nuclear weapons — while the Saudis use their oil, money and investments. [For more details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Saudis Said to Aid Israeli Plan to Bomb Iran.”]

What the world saw in Netanyahu’s bravura performance on Tuesday before the wildly applauding members of the U.S. Congress was him proving his value to his Saudi cohorts, demonstrating how he can make some of America’s most powerful politicians behave like trained seals, bouncing up and down to cheer him even when he openly seeks to undermine the sitting U.S. President.

Some of the loudest applause came when Netanyahu told the Congress, “My friends, for over a year, we’ve been told that no deal is better than a bad deal. Well, this is a bad deal. It’s a very bad deal. We’re better off without it.”

Netanyahu’s enthusiastic reception signaled to President Obama that he has little political support for a negotiated agreement with Iran and signaled to Iran that all their concessions are unlikely to lead to any meaningful easing of sanctions from the U.S. Congress.

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.

Former top general and CIA chief David Petraeus passed classified secret information to his lover, including details of ongoing covert operations and names of undercover agents, and subsequently lied about these actions to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday.

Petraeus transferred the notebooks to Paula Broadwell in August 2011 while he was head of the CIA. The books contained a range of state secrets including US war plans, intelligence capabilities, and minutes from National Security Council meetings and private one-on-one discussions between the general and President Barack Obama, according to the Washington Post.

Broadwell requested the information as part of her research for a biography of Petraeus, published as All In: The Education of General David Petraeus. The evidence makes clear that Petraeus knew he was passing extremely sensitive information to his mistress.

“Umm, well, they’re really, I mean they are highly classified,” Petraeus can be heard telling Broadwell on an audio recording from 2011.

Less than a month before his affair with Broadwell became public, Petraeus lied to US government investigators, saying that he never transferred any secret information to her. An FBI team seized the notebooks from Petraeus’ residence in Virginia in April 2013, nearly half a year after the retired general signed an FBI statement declaring that he no longer possessed documents containing classified information.

The FBI had ordered Petraeus questioned after discovering emails between Broadwell and Jill Kelley, a wealthy socialite known for hosting lavish parties for top Pentagon officials at her residence in the Tampa, Florida area.

Senator John McCain, a leading congressional representative of the military-intelligence apparatus, voiced his unshaken solidarity with Petraeus, saying that he had already “expressed deep regret” and that “it is time to consider this matter closed.”

“Petraeus will continue to provide his outstanding service and leadership to our nation, as he has throughout his distinguished career,” McCain said.

While Edward Snowden and numerous other whistleblowers have been threatened with death and subject to extensive vilification in the media for revealing grave crimes by the government, Petraeus will pay a fine of $40,000 and will not face any jail time, according to federal attorneys.

The former general’s treatment is in sharp contrast to the savage penalties imposed on Private Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, who exposed some of the crimes of American imperialism in Afghanistan and Iraq by downloading classified material and sending it to WikiLeaks for publication.

Manning is serving a 35-year prison term, while Julian Assange of WikiLeaks has been locked up in the Ecuadoran embassy in London where he sought asylum three years ago.

Far from being prosecuted for war crimes, for which Manning, Assange and others have provided ample evidence, Petraeus has enjoyed a well-publicized career in the upper echelons of the American military-intelligence apparatus.

Prior to his downfall, Petraeus rose steadily through the military, culminating in the command of multinational forces in Iraq during 2007-08, then command of CENTCOM and of occupation forces in Afghanistan. Petraeus assumed leadership of the CIA in September 2011, and ran the top US intelligence agency for more than a year before the Broadwell relationship became public.

Since leaving the CIA in November 2012, Petraeus has been welcomed with open arms by the financial and academic establishment, working as a globe-trotting consultant for New York investment house Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. LP (KKR) and been appointed to professorships at the City University of New York (CUNY), the University of Southern California, and the University of Exeter.

Petraeus apparently fell afoul of political currents in Washington, under circumstances that remain murky even today. He was kicked upstairs from Afghanistan to the CIA in the summer of 2011, at a time when Republican Party circles were seriously discussing him as a possible presidential or vice presidential candidate against the Obama-Biden reelection ticket.

His ouster from the CIA was also politically timely. Petraeus handed in his resignation within days of Obama’s reelection, paving the way for John Brennan, Obama’s top national security aide and the overseer of the drone missile assassination program, to return to the CIA and become its director.

His resignation came only two months after the events in Benghazi, Libya, when a US diplomatic post and a CIA annex were attacked by Islamists who had been working with the agency as part of its efforts, first to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, then to attack the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Since then, the Republican hue and cry over Benghazi, itself motivated by an effort to discredit then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, has served to divert attention from the primary role of the CIA in the events in Libya, which remain uninvestigated to this day.

The federal trial of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev got under way Wednesday amid extraordinary security surrounding the Boston courtroom, which was packed with reporters and victims of the April 15, 2013 bombings.

Boston police closed off streets that, even during major trials, are normally kept open. Barricades kept the public at a distance, while K-9 units guarded the building, a helicopter hovered overhead, and police boats stood by in Boston Harbor.

Even before the jurors were seated, Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. issued a ruling limiting the ability of lawyers for the 21-year-old defendant to discuss the role of his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, in the planning and execution of the terrorist attack that killed three people and wounded another 264. The judge granted a prosecution motion to largely exclude evidence concerning the relationship between Tamerlan and Dzhokhar until the sentencing phase of the trial.

The ruling indicates the government’s intention to tightly control the information emerging from the proceedings so as to marginalize or exclude questions relating to extensive contacts over a period of years between the FBI and Tamerlan, who is believed to have organized the attack. The older Tsarnaev brother was killed in a shootout with police on April 19, 2013, four days after two pressure cooker bombs packed with nails and shrapnel were detonated near the downtown Boston finish line of the marathon.

In their opening statements to the jury, neither the prosecution nor defense lawyer referred to the still unexplained failure of federal agencies such as the FBI, CIA and Homeland Security Department to prevent the bombings, even though the FBI and CIA had been warned multiple times by the Russian security service of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Islamist terrorist sympathies, the FBI had questioned the older brother and his parents, and Tamerlan had been placed on US terror watch lists.

Last year, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s defense team filed papers with the court alleging that the FBI had attempted to recruit Tamerlan Tsarnaev as an informant. The defense has requested all information relating to the FBI’s investigation of the older brother, but the government has objected to the release of such documents.

The defendant is charged with more than 30 counts relating to the bombings, many of which carry the death penalty. The charges include the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology policeman on the evening of April 18, three days after the bombings.

In 2013, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev pleaded not guilty to all charges.

In her opening statement, however, lead defense counsel Judy Clarke acknowledged that her client was involved in the terror attack. “It was him,” she told the jury. She called the bombings a “series of senseless, horribly misguided acts carried out by the two brothers,” and said Dzhokhar should be held accountable for his crime.

But she argued that her client had been lured and bullied into participating in the attack by his older brother, who was the author and chief protagonist of the crime. Clarke, who has represented defendants in a number of high-profile capital cases, is clearly seeking to convince the jury to spare her client’s life and instead sentence him to life imprisonment, the only alternative sentence if he is found guilty.

Prosecutor William Weinreb focused on the horror of the bombings and the terrible physical and emotional toll they took on innocent bystanders, including an eight-year-old child who was one of the three fatalities. He insisted that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was an independent actor, motivated by an Islamist extremist ideology and outrage over the US government’s treatment of Muslims around the world. His statement made clear that the government intends to seek the death penalty.

The Boston bombings became the occasion for the police-military lockdown of Boston and its environs, an area with over one million residents, on April 19, 2013, following the killing of Tamerlan Tsarnaev and escape of Dzhokhar. Boston and its surrounding communities were flooded with thousands of heavily armed police and National Guard troops. They occupied the streets, supported by machine-gun-mounted armored vehicles, Humvees and Black Hawk helicopters.

Residents were ordered to “shelter in place” while police, with automatic weapons drawn, carried out warrantless house-to-house searches. The mass transit system was shut down, passenger train service was halted, and businesses, schools, universities and other public facilities were closed.

It was an unprecedented police-state operation. As the World Socialist Web Site noted at the time, the scene resembled the American occupation of Baghdad. This massive mobilization of police power was deployed, supposedly, to track down one 19-year-old suspect.

Just as there was virtually no expression of opposition to this dry run for dictatorship by any section of the media or political establishment at the time, the lockdown of Boston has been omitted from current commentary on the opening of the trial. This makes all the more important the posing of some of the unanswered questions regarding the events of April 2013, which are likely to be excluded from the court proceedings as well as the media coverage of the trial.

These include:

· Why did the FBI and CIA fail to respond to warnings from Russia’s security agency FSB in 2011 and 2012 concerning Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s support for Islamist separatist and terrorist organizations in Russia’s North Caucasian regions of Chechnya and Dagestan? Why did they ignore Russia’s request that Tsarnaev be prevented from traveling to these regions?

· Why did the FBI clear Tamerlan Tsarnaev of harboring terrorist sympathies in 2011 after supposedly carrying out an intensive investigation? Why did the agency claim there was no “derogatory” information against him, even though it suspected him of having participated in the Waltham, Massachusetts murder of three Jewish men, including a “best friend,” on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks?

· Why was he allowed to travel to Dagestan in January of 2012, without even being questioned at the airport? He remained there for six months and reportedly made contact with Islamist groups that have carried out terror attacks against Russian targets. Why was he allowed to return to the US without even being stopped at the airport and questioned on his return?

· Why did the FBI, CIA and Homeland Security Department fail to inform their state and local counterparts on the Boston joint terrorism task force of their contacts with Tamerlan Tsarnaev prior to the Boston Marathon?

These unanswered questions strongly suggest that US intelligence was seeking to use Tamerlan Tsarnaev to further its covert anti-Russian operations among Chechen and Dagestan separatists. These regions also supplied many of the foreign fighters recruited by the CIA for its proxy war for regime change against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

This connection is underscored by another critical fact ignored by the US media—the role of Ruslan Tsarni, the uncle of the Tsarnaev brothers. In the 1990s, Tsarni ran a US group called the Congress of Chechen International Organizations, which helped supply anti-Russian insurgents in Chechnya with military equipment. The organization was registered at the home of his father-in-law, Graham Fuller.

Fuller had been vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA under President Reagan, and had worked for the agency in a number of countries, including serving as CIA station chief in Kabul.

A phone video of a homeless man who goes by the name Africa being shot and killed by the LAPD went viral Sunday night. The video was raw, the outrage on display from those watching the killing unfold in real time, palpable.

On cue, the LAPD and its compliant local media went into damage-control mode. Without irony, the police would insist time and time again the public not pass judgment–while they would do just that. From an initial report in LA Weekly (3/1/15):

The Los Angeles Police Protective League, which represents rank-and-file city officers, tonight urged “everyone to reserve their judgment” until investigations are completed.

In a statement the union said that audio “clearly suggests that the officers felt that they were in life-threatening danger.”

This block quote was not edited for effect, those two statements actually follow on another. Let’s take a closer look:

…urged “everyone to reserve their judgment” until investigations are completed.

…”clearly suggests that the officers felt that they were in life-threatening danger.”

From Nicholas Dahmann on Vimeo.

The LAPD police union urges people not to judge while proceeding to literallydo just that–casually asserting Africa (originally misidentified as Charley Saturmin Robinet) was at fault. In a sane universe, the obvious, glaring hypocrisy of these two statements would be challenged, or at least noted. But to a friendly local media whose default position is to simply repeat “official” accounts, no matter how illogical they may be, this type of spin goes entirely unquestioned.

This cognitive dissonance would be on display again in the LA Times initial report (3/2/15), quoting Police Commission President Steve Soboroff:

Soboroff said a key issue would be whether the man did try to grab the officer’s gun. Otherwise, he said, it’s unclear what might have prompted the use of deadly force.

“To me, that would be the only explanation that something would happen that quickly,” Soboroff said. “It escalated right in front of our eyes.”

Soboroff said the LAPD, the independent inspector general and the district attorney’s office would each investigate the shooting “very, very carefully.”

“Of course, I would encourage people not to rush to judgment. It’s not fair to anybody. It’s not fair to the family of the victim or the victim or the officers,” he said. “We’ll find out what happened.

Once again, let’s isolate these comments:

Soboroff said a key issue would be whether the man did try to grab the officer’s gun….

“To me, that would be the only explanation”

These statements are, in no uncertain terms, a judgment of the events in question.

“Of course, I would encourage people not to rush to judgment.”

But that’s what Soboroff just did. He literally just rushed to judgment. Saying that Africa reaching for an officer’s gun is “the only explanation” is, in every sense of the word, a judgment. And given Soboroff’s total lack of new or exculpatory information, entirely rushed. But again, this PR sleight-of-hand is allowed to be floated without any examination.

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck with photos of a gun that may or may not have been grabbed.

As a reward for its stenography, the LA Times  was allowed a private screening of “enhanced” footage the police insist shows Africa reaching for an officer’s gun:

An enhanced version of a video recording of LA police officers fatally shooting a homeless man on skid row Sunday appears to show the man’s hand reaching in the direction of an officer’s waistband.

A Times review of the video shows the officer quickly pulling away at that moment. Then, three of his colleagues open fire on the man.

It was difficult to determine whether the man’s hand actually touched the officer’s weapon.

Firstly, the Times allows the goal post to move without question. The chief of police is insisting the video shows Africa reaching for the officer’s gun, but now the criteria is “reaching in the direction of an officer’s waistband”? The lead, therefore, should be “Chief Beck’s claim that Africa was reaching for the officer’s gun not supported by new video evidence.” Instead, the goal post is subtly moved to a heretofore unknown criteria of “reaching in the direction of a waistband,” as if this is somehow meaningful. Buried a few paragraphs down, the Times concedes as much:

It was difficult to determine whether the man’s hand actually touched the officer’s weapon.

Secondly, the whole premise is bizarre. The whole practice of treating the press like a clergy class who must interpret video evidence like some inscrutable ancient text, rather than just publishing it online for all to see, is inherently prejudicial. Why is the Times allowed to see this “enhanced footage” while no one else is? If the LAPD is so confident it shows he reached for a gun, then why not just release it to the public?

The boilerplate excuse about an “on-going investigation”–despite not really making any sense–would suffice to the media. And why wouldn’t it? After all, this information asymmetry works entirely to their advantage, and the LAPD knows this. Information, to them, is currency. And since the city–from the LAPD to the mayor’s office to the DA–hold all the information, it knows it can selectively leak it to paint a picture to their liking–working to the advantage of government and media alike, while leaving a grieving public totally in the dark.

This arrangement would become even sleazier yesterday when city authorities–and thus the LA Times–went into full on character assassination mode, withback-to-back smear pieces about Africa’s totally irrelevant criminal past. This screencap of the LA Times‘ Kate Mather’s bio page sums it up nicely:

 

Her jolly face contrasted with the scary, entirely non sequitur mugshot of Africa raises the question: Why? What does whether he robbed a bank 15 years ago have to do with anything? How is it relevant? How can it do anything but serve to posthumously try and convict him on unrelated charges of being poor and mentally ill?

But we’ve seen this before: Michael Brown was “no angel.” Eric Garner was a“career criminal.” We’ve seen before the “leaked” information about a criminal past, the one-sided framing of a person’s entire life, reducing them to someone worthy–if not deserving–of the incidental death they suffered at the hands of police.

Indeed, we know the routine by heart. Police shoot an unarmed black man and the question is not, What drove the cops to do that? What motivated the police to respond with such disproportionate force? Not, What is the criminal past of the police involved or the police department as a whole? The burden, and thus the media’s focus, is on the one person who can’t defend himself.

h/t @Olaasm, who’s been keeping the LAPD honest for years.

Adam Johnson is a freelance journalist; formerly he was a founder of the hardware startup Brightbox. You can follow him on Twitter at@adamjohnsonnyc. A version of this post appeared on his blog Citations Needed (3/4/15).

Oriel Jean and his wife Bettina.

In what many suspect is a political assassination, Oriel Jean, 50, the former security chief of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from 2001 to 2003, was shot to death by gunmen on motorcycles shortly after 3:30 p.m. on Mon., Mar. 2 near Delmas 30, not far from the offices of Claudy Construction in Parc Mirdoré on Delmas 33 where he worked.

According to his assistant Kenny Faustin, Oriel had just finished taking out US$10,800 for payroll from the Sogebank at Delmas 30 and was driving a grey Toyota pick-up with a Dominican co-worker named Maldonado with the money in a bag on the back seat when the car was struck from behind by a motorcycle. When Oriel got out of the vehicle to see what had happened, assailants shot him twice in the stomach and heart, took the money as well as a bag which contained his gun, and fled in the direction of the Simon Pélé neighborhood. Oriel died at the scene, face down on the pavement.

The assailants were six men on two motorcycles, according to witnesses. Mr. Maldonado, who fled the vehicle when the attack began, was not harmed but was apprehended by the police. According to some press reports, the police have stated that no money was stolen from the vehicle.

Oriel, who was known to his friends as “Roro,” had returned to Haiti in September 2013 after spending about seven years working as a parking lot attendant at the Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport following his release from prison in September 2006. He spent two and a half years jailed, with a year on probation, after accepting a plea bargain for “Conspiracy to Commit Money-Laundering,” the same charge and sentence given to other high-ranking Lavalas government officials swept up in a politically-motivated legal campaign by Washington against Aristide following the U.S.-backed Feb. 29, 2004 coup d’état.

“In my first meeting with U.S. prosecutors after I was extradited from Canada [in March 2004], they said I wouldn’t have to spend a day in jail, they’d give me money, a new identity, witness protection and so forth if I would only testify against Aristide,” he told Haïti Liberté in a series of interviews in 2007. “I refused the offer, telling them that Aristide was not involved.” Oriel did however testify against drug trafficker Serge Edouard, alias Sergot Persévérance, who was convicted in U.S. Federal Court in Miami to a life sentence in September 2005.

Although Oriel never testified against Aristide, the Miami Herald ran several articles implying just the opposite, like one on May 25, 2004, that called Oriel “a U.S. government informant” who was providing “information about Aristide’s inner circle.” Oriel only testified to convict kingpin Serge Edouard.

Misinformation and disinformation about Oriel continued in news reports this week about his death. The Miami Herald, for instance, reported on Mar. 2 that “[a]fter running into President Michel Martelly while he was campaigning, Jean decided to move back to Haiti where he had hoped to get a job in the administration,” citing an anonymous “friend.”

“That assertion is a complete lie,” said Alix Sainphor, one of Oriel’s closest friends since childhood, who spoke to him weekly. “Oriel didn’t want anything to do with Martelly. He was a partisan of Aristide. But he wanted to keep a low profile and stay out of politics.”

Another close friend, Harry Guignard, who helped Oriel get his job manning a parking booth at the airport, agreed. “He had progressive views, but he was not at all interested to get back into politics. He wanted to take care of his family and go back to school to finish getting his law degree.”

Oriel was born Jan. 1, 1965 in Port-au-Prince to an Adventist pastor, Odiyel Jean, who now lives in Cazale, and his mother, who was from Port-de-Paix. After the fall of the Duvalier regime in 1986, Oriel became politically involved, militating for three years with the National Popular Assembly (APN) popular organization before moving to Canada for three years from 1989 to 1991. He returned to become a part of President Aristide’s security detail in 1991 and lived through the Sep. 30, 1991 coup d’état, which he described in graphic detail to huge audiences which greeted the Brooklyn premiere of the PBS documentary film “Killing the Dream” at Medgar Evers College in 1992. After getting additional training from Swiss policemen while in exile, Oriel continued to work with Aristide’s security corps in Washington, DC until October 1994, when he returned with Aristide to Haiti.

After President René Préval came to power in 1996, Oriel and his friend Nesly Lucien became respectively the assistant director and director of National Palace security. When Aristide returned to the presidency in 2001, Oriel became chief of Palace security while Nesly became the chief of police.

When the George W. Bush administration launched its destabilization campaign against Aristide in 2001, it began focused its propaganda assault on the various officials around Aristide, including Oriel and Nesly.

“That’s how the political struggle is,” he told Haïti Liberté in a 2007 interview. “You try to corner the enemy as much as you can until you can destroy him. So to weaken Aristide, they began to attack all the people around him. And myself, as security chief, you try to make me look like a scoundrel, a drug-dealer, a criminal, a mob leader, then you take all those things and you throw that on Aristide too, you smear Aristide too.”

With Haiti under intense surveillance, the U.S. began accusing the Aristide government of coddling drug traffickers as a means of political destabilization. “I remember Oriel exclaiming to me how the U.S., with all its satellites, boats, aircraft, and technology, can’t stop the flow of illegal drugs into its borders, but somehow it wants Haiti to act as its border patrol and stop the traffickers,” said Oriel’s friend Harry Guignard. “They were under real pressure. Oriel got a call when he became security chief from someone who told him: ‘your son is getting really big. He looks good going to school.’ The Haitian authorities like Oriel, who were being politically demonized and economically strangled by the U.S., were too weak to confront the traffickers and stop them. It would mean getting killed. So they were forced to accommodate. And then the U.S. pounced on them.”

To be continued

The evidence for the abominable toxicity of Round Up chemicals like glyphosate is already overwhelming, yet there seems to be a never-ending stream of research and evidence pointing toward their dangers. A new study has just been published showing that farmers in Sri Lanka exposed to glyphosate through drinking water are 5 times more likely to develop chronic kidney failure than those who don’t drink herbicide-polluted water.

Farmers in this part of the world often wear scant protection when spraying glyphosate on their rice fields, but it seems that this protection is not enough. The fact that Round Up has contaminated their drinking water is an example of how multi-tiered the problem of herbicidal toxicity truly is.

Big Ag chemicals, more specifically, biotech’s chemicals (since their GM rice, soy, corn, and other genetically altered seeds are meant to withstand copious amounts of spaying) are detrimental to humans and the environment from the moment they are sprayed to years later. In this case, the toxicity is felt when residents of small rural villages drink from wells that have contaminated ground water due to spraying.

The research abstract concludes:

“The current study strongly favors the hypothesis that CKDu epidemic among farmers in dry zone of Sri Lanka is associated with, history of drinking water from a well that was abandoned. In addition, it is associated with spraying glyphosate and other pesticides in paddy fields.”

To summarize the study, Dr. Channa Jayasumana states:

“Drinking well water and occupational exposure to Herbicides is associated with chronic kidney disease, in Padavi-Sripura, Sri Lanka.”

Simply put – but apparently not so simply solved.

Concentrations of glyphosate and metals are much higher in these abandoned wells, increasing the risk of deadly chronic kidney disease (CKDu) by up to 5-fold.

The Center for Public Integrity says fatal chronic kidney disease of unknown origin, or CKDu, has killed more people in El Salvador and Nicaragua than AIDS, diabetes, and leukemia combined over the past five years. This wave of CKDu affecting numerous poor farming countries around the world simply didn’t exist prior to 1990.

Another study published in the Journal of Organic Systems also found a link between glyphosate and the enormous increase in chronic diseases across the United States.

It has already been established, through groundbreaking research that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s broad-spectrum herbicide Round Up, might be “a crucially important factor in the development of multiple chronic diseases and conditions.”

This is just more confirmation that the world should ban GMOs and their chemicals as fast as possible.

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Police Killings Grossly Underreported

We previously reported that Americans are 9 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than a terrorist.

But it turns out that our numbers were incorrect …

This isn’t surprising, given that:

“Reliable estimates of the number of justifiable homicides committed by police officers in the United States do not exist.” A study of killings by police from 1999 to 2002 in the Central Florida region found that the national databases included (in Florida) only one-fourth of the number of persons killed by police as reported in the local news media.

The Guardian reports today:

An average of 545 people killed by local and state law enforcement officers in the US went uncounted in the country’s most authoritative crime statistics every year for almost a decade, according to a report released on Tuesday.

The first-ever attempt by US record-keepers to estimate the number of uncounted “law enforcement homicides” exposed previous official tallies as capturing less than half of the real picture. The new estimate – an average of 928 people killed by police annually over eight recent years, compared to 383 in published FBI data – amounted to a more glaring admission than ever before of the government’s failure to track how many people police kill.

The revelation called into particular question the FBI practice of publishing annual totals of “justifiable homicides by law enforcement” – tallies that are widely cited in the media and elsewhere as the most accurate official count of police homicides.

As shown below, that means that you’re 55 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than a terrorist.

You’re Much More Likely to Be Killed By Brain-Eating Parasites, Texting While Driving, Toddlers, Lightning, Falling Out of Bed, Alcoholism, Food Poisoning, Choking On Food, a Financial Crash, Obesity, Medical Errors or “Autoerotic Asphyxiation” than by Terrorists

Daniel Benjamin – the Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the United States Department of State from 2009 to 2012 – noted last month (at 10:22):

The total number of deaths from terrorism in recent years has been extremely small in the West. And the threat itself has been considerably reduced. Given all the headlines people don’t have that perception; but if you look at the statistics that is the case.

Time Magazine noted in 2013 that the chance of dying in a terrorist attack in the United States from 2007 to 2011, according to Richard Barrett – coordinator of the United Nations al Qaeda/Taliban Monitoring Team – was 1 in 20 million.

Let’s look at specific numbers …

The U.S. Department of State reports that only 17 U.S. citizens were killed worldwide as a result of terrorism in 2011.* That figure includes deaths in Afghanistan, Iraq and all other theaters of war.

In contrast, the American agency which tracks health-related issues – the U.S. Centers for Disease Control – rounds up the most prevalent causes of death in the United States:

Click to enlarge

Comparing the CDC numbers to terrorism deaths means:

– You are 35,079 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack

– You are 33,842 times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist attack

(Keep in mind when reading this entire piece that we are consistently and substantially understating the risk of other causes of death as compared to terrorism, because we are comparing deaths from various causes within the United States against deaths from terrorism worldwide.)

Wikipedia notes that obesity is a a contributing factor in 100,000–400,000 deaths in the United States per year. That makes obesity 5,882 to 23,528 times more likely to kill you than a terrorist.

The annual number of deaths in the U.S. due to avoidable medical errors is as high as 100,000. Indeed, one of the world’s leading medical journals – Lancet – reported in 2011:

A November, 2010, document from the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services reported that, when in hospital, one in seven beneficiaries of Medicare (the government-sponsored health-care programme for those aged 65 years and older) have complications from medical errors, which contribute to about 180 000 deaths of patients per year.

That’s just Medicare beneficiaries, not the entire American public. Scientific American noted in 2009:

Preventable medical mistakes and infections are responsible for about 200,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, according to an investigation by the Hearst media corporation.

And a new study in the current issue of the Journal of Patient Safety says the numbers may be up to 440,000 each year.

But let’s use the lower – 100,000 – figure. That still means that you are 5,882 times more likely to die from medical error than terrorism.

The CDC says that some 80,000 deaths each year are attributable to excessive alcohol use. So you’re 4,706 times more likely to drink yourself to death than die from terrorism.

Wikipedia notes that there were 32,367 automobile accidents in 2011, which means that you are 1,904 times more likely to die from a car accident than from a terrorist attack. As CNN reporter Fareed Zakaria wrote last year:

“Since 9/11, foreign-inspired terrorism has claimed about two dozen lives in the United States. (Meanwhile, more than 100,000 have been killed in gun homicides and more than 400,000 in motor-vehicle accidents.) “

President Obama agreed.

According to a 2011 CDC report, poisoning from prescription drugs is even more likely to kill you than a car crash. Indeed, the CDC stated in 2011 that – in the majority of states – your prescription meds are more likely to kill you than any other source of injury. So your meds are thousands of times more likely to kill you than Al Qaeda.

The financial crisis has also caused quite a few early deaths. The Guardian reported in 2008:

High-income countries such as the UK and US could see a 6.4% surge in deaths from heart disease, while low-income countries could experience a 26% rise in mortality rates.

Since there were 596,339 deaths from heart disease in the U.S. in 2011 (see CDC table above), that means that there are approximately 38, 165 additional deaths a year from the financial crisis … and Americans are 2,245 times more likely to die from a financial crisis that a terrorist attack.

Financial crises cause deaths in other ways, as well. For example, the poverty rate has skyrocketed in the U.S. since the 2008 crash. For example, the poverty rate in 2010 was the highest in 17 years, and more Americans numerically were in poverty as of 2011 than for more than 50 years. Poverty causes increased deaths from hunger, inability to pay for heat and shelter, and other causes. (And – as mentioned below – suicides have skyrocketed recently; many connect the increase in suicides to the downturn in the economy.)

The number of deaths by suicide has also surpassed car crashes. Around 35,000 Americans kill themselves each year (and more American soldiers die by suicide than combat; the number of veterans committing suicide is astronomical and under-reported). So you’re 2,059 times more likely to kill yourself than die at the hand of a terrorist.

The CDC notes that there were 7,638 deaths from HIV and 45 from syphilis, so you’re 452 times more likely to die from risky sexual behavior than terrorism. (That doesn’t include death by autoerotic asphyxiation … discussed below.)

The National Safety Council reports that more than 6,000 Americans die a year from falls … most of them involve people falling off their roof or ladder trying to clean their gutters, put up Christmas lights and the like. That means that you’re 353 times more likely to fall to your death doing something idiotic than die in a terrorist attack.

The same number – 6,000 – die annually from texting or talking on the cellphone while driving. So you’re 353 times more likely to meet your maker while lol’ing than by terrorism.

The agency in charge of workplace safety – the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration – reports that 4,609 workers were killed on the job in 2011 within the U.S. homeland. In other words, you are 271 times more likely to die from a workplace accident than terrorism.

The CDC notes that 3,177 people died of “nutritional deficiencies” in 2011, which means you are 187 times more likely to starve to death in American than be killed by terrorism.

Approximately 1,000 Americans die each year from autoerotic asphyxiation. So you’re 59 times more likely to kill yourself doing weird, kinky things than at the hands of a terrorist.

As noted above, there were an average of 928 Americans killed by police officers in the United States each year in “justifiable homicides”. That means that you were more than 55 times more likely to be killed by a law enforcement officer than by a terrorist. That number does not include unjustifiable homicides.

Nearly 400 Americans die each year due to drug allergies from penicillin. More than 200 deaths occur each year due to food allergies. Nearly 100 Americans die due to insect allergies. And 10 deaths each year are due to severe reactions to latex. See this. There are many other types of allergies, but that totals 710 deaths each year from just those four types of allergies alone … making it 42 times more likely that you’ll die from an allergic reaction than from a terror attack.

Some 450 Americans die each year when they fall out of bed, 26 times more than are killed by terrorists.

Scientific American notes:

You might have toxoplasmosis, an infection caused by the microscopic parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which the CDC estimates has infected about 22.5 percent of Americans older than 12 years old

Toxoplasmosis is a brain-parasite. The CDC reports that more than 375 Americans die annually due to toxoplasmosis. In addition, 3 Americans died in 2011 after being exposed to a brain-eating amoeba. So you’re about 22 times more likely to die from a brain-eating zombie parasite than a terrorist.

Around 34 Americans a year are killed by dog bites … around twice as many as by terrorists.

The 2011 Report on Terrorism from the National Counter Terrorism Center notes that Americans are just as likely to be “crushed to death by their televisions or furniture each year” as they are to be killed by terrorists.

Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control show that Americans are 110 times more likely to die from contaminated food than terrorism. And see this.

The Jewish Daily Forward noted in May that – even including the people killed in the Boston bombing – you are more likely to be killed by a toddler than a terrorist. And see these statistics from CNN.

Reason notes:

[The risk of being killed by terrorism] compares annual risk of dying in a car accident of 1 in 19,000; drowning in a bathtub at 1 in 800,000; dying in a building fire at 1 in 99,000; or being struck by lightning at 1 in 5,500,000. In other words, in the last five years you were four times more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a terrorist.

The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) has just published, Background Report: 9/11, Ten Years Later [PDF]. The report notes, excluding the 9/11 atrocities, that fewer than 500 people died in the U.S. from terrorist attacks between 1970 and 2010.

Scientific American reported in 2011:

John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University, and Mark Stewart, a civil engineer and authority on risk assessment at University of Newcastle in Australia … contended, “a great deal of money appears to have been misspent and would have been far more productive—saved far more lives—if it had been expended in other ways.”

Mueller and Stewart noted that, in general, government regulators around the world view fatality risks—say, from nuclear power, industrial toxins or commercial aviation—above one person per million per year as “acceptable.” Between 1970 and 2007 Mueller and Stewart asserted in a separate paper published last year in Foreign Affairs that a total of 3,292 Americans (not counting those in war zones) were killed by terrorists resulting in an annual risk of one in 3.5 million. Americans were more likely to die in an accident involving a bathtub (one in 950,000), a home appliance (one in 1.5 million), a deer (one in two million) or on a commercial airliner (one in 2.9 million). [Let’s throw a couple more fun facts into the mix … The risk of choking to death on food is 1 in 4,404, and the risk of dying by falling out of furniture (including couches, chairs and beds) is 1 in 4,238. So you’re almost a thousand times more likely to die from one of these rare causes of death than terrorism.]

The global mortality rate of death by terrorism is even lower. Worldwide, terrorism killed 13,971 people between 1975 and 2003, an annual rate of one in 12.5 million. Since 9/11 acts of terrorism carried out by Muslim militants outside of war zones have killed about 300 people per year worldwide. This tally includes attacks not only by al Qaeda but also by “imitators, enthusiasts, look-alikes and wannabes,” according to Mueller and Stewart.

Defenders of U.S. counterterrorism efforts might argue that they have kept casualties low by thwarting attacks. But investigations by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies suggest that 9/11 may have been an outlier—an aberration—rather than a harbinger of future attacks. Muslim terrorists are for the most part “short on know-how, prone to make mistakes, poor at planning” and small in number, Mueller and Stewart stated. Although still potentially dangerous, terrorists hardly represent an “existential” threat on a par with those posed by Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.

In fact, Mueller and Stewart suggested in Homeland Security Affairs, U.S. counterterrorism procedures may indirectly imperil more lives than they preserve: “Increased delays and added costs at U.S. airports due to new security procedures provide incentive for many short-haul passengers to drive to their destination rather than flying, and, since driving is far riskier than air travel, the extra automobile traffic generated has been estimated to result in 500 or more extra road fatalities per year.”

The funds that the U.S. spends on counterterrorism should perhaps be diverted to other more significant perils, such as industrial accidents (one in 53,000), violent crime (one in 22,000), automobile accidents (one in 8,000) and cancer (one in 540). “Overall,” Mueller and Stewart wrote, “vastly more lives could have been saved if counterterrorism funds had instead been spent on combating hazards that present unacceptable risks.” In an e-mail to me, Mueller elaborated:

“The key question, never asked of course, is what would the likelihood be if the added security measures had not been put in place? And, if the chances without the security measures might have been, say, one in 2.5 million per year, were the trillions of dollars in investment (including overseas policing which may have played a major role) worth that gain in security—to move from being unbelievably safe to being unbelievably unbelievably safe? Given that al Qaeda and al Qaeda types have managed to kill some 200 to 400 people throughout the entire world each year outside of war zones since 9/11—including in areas that are far less secure than the U.S.—there is no reason to anticipate that the measures have deterred, foiled or protected against massive casualties in the United States. If the domestic (we leave out overseas) enhanced security measures put into place after 9/11 have saved 100 lives per year in the United States, they would have done so at a cost of $1 billion per saved life. That same money, if invested in a measure that saves lives at a cost of $1 million each—like passive restraints for buses and trucks—would have saved 1,000 times more lives.”

Mueller and Stewart’s analysis is conservative, because it excludes the most lethal and expensive U.S. responses to 9/11. Al Qaeda’s attacks also provoked the U.S. into invading and occupying two countries, at an estimated cost of several trillion dollars. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have resulted in the deaths of more than 6,000 Americans so far—more than twice as many as were killed on September 11, 2001—as well as tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans.

***

In 2007 New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that people are more likely to be killed by lightning than terrorism. “You can’t sit there and worry about everything,” Bloomberg exclaimed. “Get a life.”

Indeed, the Senior Research Scientist for the Space Science Institute (Alan W. Harris) estimates that the odds of being killed by a terrorist attack is about the same as being hit by an asteroid (and see this).

Terrorism pushes our emotional buttons. And politicians and the media tend to blow the risk of terrorism out of proportion. But as the figures above show, terrorism is a very unlikely cause of death.

Indeed, our spending on anti-terrorism measures is way out of whack … especially because most of the money has been wasted. And see this article, and this 3-minute video by professor Mueller:

* Note: Subsequent official reports – published in 2012 and 2013 – show that even fewer Americans were killed by terrorists than in the previous year.

Abdelhakim Belhadj has reportedly joined forces with the Islamic State, according to the journalist Sara Carter. Belhadj is a former al-Qaeda operative who was a key player in the overthrow of Moammar Gaddafi. He worked directly with the U.S. and NATO.

Kyle Shideler writes for The Washington Times:

If Belhadj has gone over to Islamic State, it will represent a major boost to Islamic State’s efforts to co-opt and bring in Libya’s existing jihadist forces under their banner, which now reportedly includes as many as 3,000 fighters. Belhadj’s forces play a significant role in the Islamist “Libyan Dawn” coalition (which includes the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda’s Ansar al-Sharia), which currently holds Tripoli, and which claims to be the rightful government in opposition to the U.N. recognized government of Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni.

@SaraCarterDC Would that be the same Abdelhakim Belhadj that @SenJohnMcCain is so chummy with? Asking for a friend. pic.twitter.com/BoCWocC4Di

— Patrick Poole (@pspoole) March 2, 2015

The Islamic State in Libya is based in Derna, a city in the northeast part of the country. In 2001, it represented “one of the greatest concentrations of jihadi terrorists to be found anywhere in the world, and by some measures can be regarded as the leading source of suicide bombers anywhere on the planet,” according to Webster Tarpley. It was also “the epicenter of the NATO-backed rebellion,” writes Tony Cartalucci. In 2011 Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, a leading figure of the Derna jihadists, told the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Or he had recruited “around 25″ men from the Derna area in eastern Libya to fight against coalition troops in Iraq. The Telegraph reported on March 25, 2011:

Mr al-Hasidi admitted he had earlier fought against “the foreign invasion” in Afghanistan, before being “captured in 2002 in Peshwar, in Pakistan”. He was later handed over to the US, and then held in Libya before being released in 2008.

Abdelhakim Belhadj’s links to key neocons (as the tweet above reveals) and Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi’s connection to the CIA-run and Saudi financed war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan provides further evidence al-Qaeda and its spawn, the Islamic State, formerly ISIS, are intelligence fabrications designed to perpetuate the war on terror and further the geostrategic agenda of the global elite. Belhadj’s CIA rendition (with the help of British intelligence) and al-Hasidi’s capture by the U.S. reveal both to be intelligence assets. The presence of the Islamic State in Iraq, Syria and now Libya is a key element in the next phase in the war on terror. In late February the Islamic State released a video calling for jihadists from Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Egypt to immigrate to Libya. Mohammed al-Dairi, the Libyan foreign minister, is calling for direct military intervention against the Islamic State. “I ask world powers to stand by Libya and launch military strikes against these groups,” he said in February. “This threat will move to European countries, especially Italy.”

The conventional medical system is literally grasping at straws trying to maintain the illusion that vaccines work, with new reports now admitting that flu vaccines are an utter failure while still pushing people to get them. The latest nonsensical narrative, at least from the Canadian government, attributes all the inconsistencies between what authorities have long claimed about the alleged efficacy of the flu shot and its actual dismal success rate to a mysterious “paradox” where previous vaccinations somehow interfere with current ones.

Since health authorities no longer have a leg to stand on — it is now widespread knowledge that the flu shot is minimally effective at best — they are resorting to more confusing pseudoscience that, oddly enough, actually affirms what flu shot skeptics have surmised for many years. Vaccines in general, they now reluctantly admit, affect every person differently. And depending on what previous vaccinations a person has had, flu shots may or may not provide any protection at all–and in some cases, they will make a person more prone to illness.

“People who receive flu vaccines year after year can sometimes show reduced protection, an effect that Canadian infectious disease specialists say muddies public health messages for annual flu vaccine campaigns,” explains Canada’s CBC News about this disturbing phenomenon.

“During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, researchers at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control originally thought seasonal flu shots from 2008 might offer extra protection against the new pandemic strain. They were puzzled to find instead, seasonal flu vaccination almost doubled the risk of infection with pandemic flu.”

Did you read that? An untested vaccine that health authorities all around the world urged everyone to get for their own protection against a novel, pandemic flu strain — and a vaccine that they promised would also protect against seasonal flu — actually made people who got it more prone to contracting the flu. This is now being openly admitted, affirming what independent news outlets like Natural News have been warning the public about for years.

And yet, despite this admission, these same health authorities are still trying to scare the public into rushing out and getting a flu shot. Huh? The vaccine doesn’t work, they now say. And people who get it year after year are more prone to contracting the flu, they also say. But everyone should still rush out and get it, especially if they’re in a high-risk category?

Peer-reviewed study reveals that unvaccinated people are most protected against influenza

At least six separate studies conducted by the same people that are still pushing the flu shot have confirmed that seasonal flu shots make people more prone to contracting the flu. The evidence is now overwhelming that, rather than impart immunity as long claimed, flu shots actually destroy the immune system and increase the risk of infection.

One would think that, now that the cat is out of the bag, these peddlers of quackery would quit while they’re ahead, admit that they lied about flu shot safety and efficacy, and go out and find a real profession. Instead, they’re continuing to push the seasonal flu shot, which as they now put it causes “interference” with people’s immune systems, as they hype the soon unveiling of a “universal” flu shot that will be better than ever (fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, well, you know the rest).

The real kicker here is that, in the same CBC News report, a study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases is referenced, revealing that the people who are most protected from the flu are, wait for it — the unvaccinated. So tell me again, why should anyone get a flu shot?

Sources:

http://www.thedailysheeple.com

http://www.cbc.ca

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://truthwiki.org/Vaccine_Fanaticism

http://truthwiki.org/Medical_Fascism

http://truthwiki.org/Medical_Kidnapping

In an interview with the Palestinian Embassy in South Africa, and the Palestinian delegation participating in the Israeli Apartheid Week, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said that the “west committed the holocaust against the Jews in Europe, while the Palestinians are still paying a historic price for it.

Tutu, a senior religious, intellectual and social figure who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, said that the Palestinians should not be paying the price of what the west did to the Jews in Europe.

In a meeting with the Palestine Embassy in South Africa and the Palestinian media delegation participating in the Israeli Apartheid Week, Tutu said, “We support Israel’s rights to exist, but at the same time we denounce the ongoing Israeli violations, its rejection to recognize the legitimate Palestinian rights, and its repeated wars on the Palestinians, where innocent civilians end up paying a heavy price.”

Archbishop Tutu also denounced Israel’s persistence to force the Palestinians to recognize it as a Jewish State, slammed the attempts to hold Islam and all Muslims responsible for terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS, and said such parallels are not different from trying to hold all Christians responsible for the crimes the Ku Klux Klan committed.

“Those who founded, and maintained, the apartheid regime in South Africa weren’t Muslims,” he added, “The current stage requires us to have more faith, to be wiser – we must be in full solidarity with the Palestinian people, supporting their legitimate struggle for freedom and independence.”

Media officer of the Palestine Embassy, Tamer al-Masry, handed the Archbishop a gift in the name of the Palestinian people, thanking him for his support, wishing him well, and wishing him to be able to visit Bethlehem soon.

The Israeli Apartheid Week started on March 2nd, and will continue through March 8, in more than 250 cities around the world, and in more than 20 South African Campuses and 45 South African cities and towns.

Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is an annual international series of events (including rallies, protests, lectures, cultural performances, concerts, films and workshops) held in over 250 cities, communities and campuses across the globe. It is endorsed in South Africa by more than 75 organizations, trade unions, political parties and other groups.

The aim of IAW is to raise awareness of Israel’s apartheid policies towards the indigenous Palestinians and serves to garner support for the non-violent Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel’s campaign, which seeks to bring an end to Israel’s apartheid policies and violations of international law. http://www.iawsouthafrica.com/

Some 375 civil society organisations from across Europe have today called on EU decision-makers to protect citizens, workers, and the environment from threats the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) it poses.  

The call comes as European Parliament committees are discussing a draft resolution on the TTIP negotiations to be voted upon in May. It will not be legally binding on negotiators but will be a significant political signal, as any final TTIP deal would have to pass a vote in the European Parliament.

In an open letter sent to MEPs today, groups from 25 countries – including trade unions, consumer, environmental, and civil rights organizations – warn that TTIP could strengthen the influence of big business and undermine public services, the protection of public health, the environment, food and workers’ rights.

For a TTIP resolution that puts people and the environment before short-term profit and disproportionate corporate rights, the letter calls on all MEPs to agree on a strong resolution that makes clear that the European Parliament will reject any future trade or investment agreements that will not serve the public interest and threaten important rights acquired by ordinary people in long struggles in the EU, US and the rest of the world.

The letter forwards the following key demands:

1) Transparency now: all documents relating to the TTIP negotiations, including draft consolidated texts, must be made public to allow for an open and critical public debate on the TTIP.

2) A democratic process to allow for the scrutiny and assessment of the negotiation texts and which would ensure that policies are in the public interest.

3) No ISDS: any provision containing Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanisms must be taken permanently out of the negotiations.

4) No regulatory cooperation council: all regulation must be fully in the hands of democratically controlled bodies and processes.

5) No deregulation of standards which safeguard and serve the public interest: EU standards need to be respected and not “harmonised” down to the lowest common denominator.

6) No further deregulation and privatisation of public services.

7) The promotion of humane and environmentally sustainable agricultural practices and protection of small family farming.

8) Public authorities must keep the political power and structures necessary to protect certain sensitive sectors and safeguard standards important to our quality of life. Internationally-agreed labour and environmental standards must be respected and enforced. The continuous violation of labour standards should be addressed by imposing monetary fines.

Go here to access the open letter (in 11 languages) sent to MEPs today and to see the full list of signatories.

A blatant corporate power grab in secret  

Negotiations over the TTIP are happening behind closed doors, without comprehensive and effective public consultation. The lack of transparency makes it impossible for citizens and civil society to monitor the negotiations in order to ensure that public interests are being protected. Business lobby groups are given privileged access to information and opportunities to influence the negotiations.

The proposed investment protection chapter, particularly the inclusion of an Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provision, would give investors exclusive rights to sue states when decisions made by public institutions are considered to have negative impacts on their anticipated profits. These mechanisms rely on rulings by tribunals that operate outside the national court systems and thereby undermine national and EU legal systems and existing structures for formulating laws and policies.

The creation of new governance structures and procedures that aim to ‘harmonise regulations’ like the proposed regulatory cooperation council would make the TTIP and other agreements a moving target, constantly developed in secret by unelected bureaucrats and big businesses. These structures threaten to lower important standards and rules designed for the protection of public interests or prohibit future improvements, regardless of necessity and public mandate.

Evidence from business and industry lobbying documents reveals that the focus on non-tariff barriers and regulatory convergence is being used to push for deregulation, further investment guarantees, intellectual property rights’ monopolies and ultimately a race to the bottom.

Pia Eberhardt of lobby-watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory says:

“TTIP is an attempted corporate coup d’etat where big business on both sides of the Atlantic is trying to achieve in secret negotiations what it could not get in open and democratic processes – from watering down food safety standards to rolling back regulations in the financial sector.”

Paul de Clerk of Europe’s largest grassroots environmental network, Friends of the Earth Europe says:

 “TTIP is like a Trojan horse. In the end we find out that it results in lower food, environmental, labour standards and the sacrificing of democratic rights for corporate interests. MEPs have to clearly reject the dangerous provisions in TTIP, such as giving corporations vast new powers to sue governments in corporate biased tribunals and regulatory cooperation as the ultimate tool for business lobby groups to stop new regulation.”

More than 1.5 million people in Europe have signed a self-organised European Citizens’ Initiative calling on EU decision-makers to stop the TTIP negotiations and to not ratify the EU-Canada trade deal CETA.

Erich Foglar of the Austrian Trade Union Federation (ÖGB) says:

 “Trade unions will not support trade deals that lead to job losses, increase inequalities and undermine democracy. But the negotiation texts and independent studies we see, show that this is exactly what TTIP is about. What we need is a trade policy which respects democracy, helps generate decent jobs and enhances workers’ rights.”

For a thorough outline of the history of the negotiations concerning the TTIP, see ‘A Brief History of an Agenda for Corporate Plunder’.

If you want your food poisoned even further with like likes of chlorinated chicken, hormone-treated beef, GMOs and even lower thresholds for pesticides, do nothing.

If you want Monsanto or Syngenta determining policies (more than they do already) in secretive meetings in Brussels, do nothing.

If you want Unilever, Kraft or Nestle determining what is allowed in your food, do nothing.

If you want governments to be made even more spineless and compelled to further bend to the threats, demands and power of corporations and unscrupulous speculators, do nothing.

In the UK, do not let the main parties sideline TTIP during the general election campaign.

Be informed and take action:

https://stop-ttip.org/

http://corporateeurope.org/

http://www.foeeurope.org/

http://www.s2bnetwork.org/

https://www.lobbycontrol.de/schwerpunkt/ttip/

http://www.alter-eu.org/

http://www.tradejustice.ca/take-action/

For the first time ever, the head of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee has been fired. It happened on Tuesday, March 3rd.

Thorbjorn Jagland, chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, and former Norwegian Prime Minister, said, on the way out the door, that it would be “really nice” if President Barack Obama were to return the prize.

The White House had no immediate comment. (This reporter just now, at 1:47 PM Eastern time, specifically asked the White House whether there yet is a comment, and still there is none. Maybe he will volunteer to return it?)

President Obama received the prize on 9 October 2009 after 9 months in office. There is question whether he had already perpetrated the 28 June 2009 coup that overthrew the progressive democratically elected President in Honduras, Manuel Zelaya and installed the narco-regime that followed after, but Obama and especially his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton certainly were the key people in enabling that regime to remain in power after almost every other government in the Americas and many around the world had declared them illegal. The following year, Honduras became the world’s highest-murder-rate nation, which they have since remained.

Then, President Obama in 2011 bombed Libya into anarchy and turned it into a failed state with rampant tribal and religious wars.

In 2014, President Obama carried out a Ukrainian coup which removed the democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych and replaced him with a racist-fascist anti-Russian regime which is bombing the area of Ukraine that had voted 90% for Yanukovych.

Perhaps nothing in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize has embarrassed that Committee as much as the premature granting of this Prize to the man who is increasingly viewed around the world as George W. Bush II.

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.

US policy toward Venezuela is a microcosm of its larger strategy toward Latin America.  The intent is to reverse the region’s independent foreign policy and to restore US dominance; to curtail the diversification of trading and investment partners and re-center economic relations to the US; to replace regional integration pacts with US centered economic integration schemes; and to privatize firms partly or wholly nationalized.

The resort to military coups in Venezuela is a strategy designed to impose a client regime.  This is a replay of US strategy during the 1964-1983 period.  In those two decades US strategists successfully collaborated with business-military elites to overthrow nationalist and socialist governments, privatize public enterprises and reverse, social, labor and welfare policies.  The client regimes implemented neo-liberal policies and supported US centered “integration”.  The entire spectrum of representative institutions, political parties, trade unions and civil society organizations were banned and replaced by imperial funded NGO’s, state controlled parties and trade unions.  With this perspective in mind the US has returned to all out “regime change” in Venezuela as the first step to a continent-wide transformation to reassert political, economic and social dominance.

Washington’s resort to political violence, all out media warfare, economic sabotage and military coups in Venezuela  is an attempt to discover the effectiveness of these tactics under favorable conditions, including a deepening  economic recession, double digit inflation, declining living standards and weakening political support, as a dress rehearsal for other countries in the region

Washington’s earlier resort to a “regime change” strategy in Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina and Ecuador failed because objective circumstances were unfavorable.  Between 2003 to 2012 the national-populist or center-left regimes were increasing political support, their economies were growing, incomes and consumption were improving and pro-US regimes and clients had earlier collapsed under the weight of a systemic crises.  Moreover, the negative consequences of military coups were fresh in peoples’ minds.  Today Washington’s strategists believe that Venezuela is the easiest and most important target because of its structural vulnerabilities and because Caracas is the linchpin to Latin American integration and welfare populism.

According to Washington’s domino theory, Cuba will be more susceptible to pressure if it is cut-off from Venezuela’s subsidized oil-for-medical services agreement.  Ecuador and Bolivia will be vulnerable.  Regional integration will be diluted or replaced by US directed trade agreements.  Argentina’s drift to the right will be accelerated.  The US military presence will be enlarged beyond Colombia, Peru, Paraguay and Central America.  Radical anti-imperialist ideology will be replaced by a revised form of “pan-Americanism”, a euphemism for imperial primacy.

 The concentrated and prolonged US war against Venezuela and the resort to extremist tactics and groups can only be accounted for by what US strategists perceive as the large scale (continent-wide) long-term interests at stake.

 We will proceed by discussing and analyzing the US fifteen year war (2000-2015) against Venezuela, now reaching a climax.  We will then turn to examining the past and current strengths and weakness of Venezuela’s democratic, anti-imperialist government.

Prolonged Political Warfare:  Multiple Forms of Attack in Changing Political Conjunctures

 The US war against Venezuela started shortly after President Chavez’s election in 1999.  His convoking of a constitutional assembly and referendum and the subsequent inclusion of a strong component of popular participatory and nationalist clauses “rang bells” in Washington.  The presence of a large contingent of former guerrillas, Marxists and Leftists in the Chavez electoral campaign and regime, was the signal for Washington to develop a strategy of regrouping traditional business and political clients to pressure and limit changes.

 Subsequent to 9/11/01, Washington launched its global military offensive, projecting power via the so-called “war on terror”.  Washington’s quest to reassert dominance in the Americas included demands that Venezuela fall into line and back Washington’s global military offensive.  President Chavez refused and set an example of independent politics for the nationalist-populist movements and emerging center-left regimes in Latin America.  President Chavez told President Bush “you don’t fight terror with terror”.

 In response, by November 2001 Washington strategists shifted from a policy of pressure to contain change to a strategy of all-out warfare to overthrow the Chavez regime via a business-military coup in (April 2002).

 The US backed coup was defeated in less than 72 hours.  Chavez was restored to power by an alliance of loyalist military forces backed by a spontaneous million person march.  Washington lost important assets among the military and business elite, who fled into exile or were jailed.

 From December 2002 to February 2003, The White House backed an executive lockout in the strategic oil industry, supported by corrupt trade union officials aligned with Washington and the AFL-CIO.  After three months the lockout was defeated through an alliance of loyalist trade unionists, mass organizations and overseas petrol producing countries.  The US lost strategic assets in the oil industry as over 15,000 executives, managers and workers were fired and replaced by nationalist loyalists.  The oil industry was renationalized – its earnings were put at the service of social welfare.

Having lost assets essential to violent warfare, Washington promoted a strategy of electoral politics – organizing a referendum in 2004 which was won by Chavez and a boycott of the 2005 congressional elections, which failed and led to an overwhelming majority for the pro Chavez forces.

Having failed to secure regime change via internal violent and electoral warfare, Washington, having suffered a serious loss of internal assets, turned outside by organizing para-military death squads and the Colombian military to engage in cross border conflicts in alliance with the far right regime of Alvaro Uribe.  Colombia’s military incursions led Venezuela to break economic ties, costing influential Colombian agro-business exporters ad manufacturers’ losses exceeding $8 billion dollars . . .  Uribe backed off and signed a non-aggression accord with Chavez, undermining the US “proxy war” strategy.

Washington revised its tactics, returning to electoral and street fighting tactics.  Between 2008-2011/12 Washington channeled millions of dollars to finance electoral party politicians, NGO’s, mass media outlets (newspapers, television and radio) and direct action saboteurs of public energy, electricity and power stations.

The US “internal” political offensive had limited success – a coalition of warring rightwing political groups elected a minority of officials thus regaining an institutional presence.  A Chavez backed overtly socialist referendum was defeated (by less than 1%).  NGO’s gained influence in the universities and in some popular neighborhoods exploiting the corruption and ineptness of local Chavez elected officials.

But the US strategy failed to dislodge or weaken the Chavez led regime for several reasons.  Venezuela’s economy was riding the prolonged commodity boom. Oil prices were soaring above $100 a barrel, financing free health, education, housing, fuel and food subsidy programs, undercutting the so-called “grass-roots” agitation of US funded NGO’s

Government subsidies of imports and lax regulation of dollar reserves secured support even among the capitalists and loosened their support for the violent opposition.  Sectors of the middle class voted for Chavez as a ticket to the consumer society.

Secondly, President Chavez’s charismatic appeal, promotion and support of popular neighborhood groups counter-acted the ill-effects of corrupt and inept local “Chavista” officials who otherwise played into the hands of US backed opposition.

Thirdly, US intervention in Venezuela alienated not only the center-left but the entire political spectrum in Latin America, isolating Washington.  This was especially evident by the universal condemnation of the US backed military coup in Honduras in 2009.

Fourthly, the US could not counter Venezuela’s subsidized oil sales to Caribbean and Central American regimes.  Petrocaribe strengthened Venezuela and weakened US dominance in Washington’s historical “backyard”.

The entire electoral strategy of the US depended on fomenting an economic crises – and given the favorable world prices for oil on the world market (it failed).  As a result Washington depended on non-market strategies to disrupt the socio-economic links between mass consumers and the Chavez government.

Washington encouraged sabotage of the power and electrical grid.  It encouraged hoarding and price gouging by commercial capitalists (supermarket owners).  It encouraged smugglers to purchase thousands of tons of subsidized consumer goods and sell them across the border in Colombia.

In other words, the US combined its electoral strategy with violent sabotage and illegal economic disruption.

This strategy was intensified with the onset of the economic crises following the financial crash of 2009, the decline of commodity prices and the death of President Hugo Chavez.

The US and its mass media megaphones went all-out to defend the protagonists and practioners of illegal violent actions – branding arrested saboteurs, assassins, street fighters, assailants of public institutions as “political prisoners”. Washington and its media branded the government, as “authoritarian” for protecting the constitution.  It accused the independent judiciary as biased. The police and military were labelled as “repressive” for arresting fire bombers of schools, transport and clinics.

No violent crime or criminal behavior by opposition politicos was exempt from Washington’s scrofulous screeds about defending “human rights”.

The crises and collapse of oil prices greatly enhanced the opportunities for the US and its Venezuelan collaborator’s campaign to weaken the government. Venezuela’s dependence on President Chavez, as the singular transformative figure, suffered a serious blow with his death. Personalistic leadership weakened organic mass organization.

The US relaunched a multi-pronged offensive to undermine and overthrow the newly elected Nicolas Maduro regime.  Washington, at first, promoted the ‘via electoral’ as the route to regime change, funding opposition leader Henrique Capriles.

After Capriles’ electoral defeat, Washington resorted to an intense post-electoral propaganda campaign to de-legitimize the voting outcome.  It promoted street violence and sabotage of the electrical grid.  For over a year the Obama regime refused to recognize the electoral outcome, accepted and recognized throughout Latin America and the world.  In the subsequent Congressional, gubernatorial and municipal elections the US backed candidates suffered resounding defeats. President Nicolas Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela won three quarters of the governorships and retained a solid two-thirds majority in Congress.

Beginning in 2013 the US escalated its “extra-parliamentary” offensive – massive hoarding of consumer goods by wholesale distributors and retail supermarkets led to acute shortages, long lines, long waits and empty shelves.

Hoarding, black market speculation of the currency, wholesale smuggling of shipments of consumer goods across the border to Colombia (facilitated by opposition officials governing in border-states and corrupt National Guard commanders) exacerbated shortages.

US strategists sought to drive a political wedge between the consumer driven middle and lower classes and the Maduro government.  Over time they succeeded in fomenting discontent among the lower middle class and directing it against the government and not at the big business elite and US financed opposition politicians, NGO’s and parties.

In February 2014 emboldened by growing discontent the US moved rapidly toward a decisive confrontation… Washington backed the most violent extra parliamentary opposition.  Led by Leopoldo Lopez, it openly called for a coup and launched a nationwide assault on public buildings, authorities and pro-democracy activists.  As a result 43 people were killed and 870 injured – mostly government supporters and military and police officials – and hundreds of millions of dollars of damage was inflicted on schools, hospitals and state supermarkets.

After two months, the uprising was finally put down and the street barricades were dismantled— as even rightwing businesspeople suffered losses as their revenues diminished and there was no chance for victory.

Washington proclaimed the jailed terrorists leaders as “political prisoners”– a line parroted by al the mass media and the bogus Human Rights Watch.  The Obama regime sought to secure the release of its armed thugs to prepare for the next round of violent confrontation.

Washington accelerated the pace of planning, organizing and executing the next coup throughout 2014.  Taking advantage of the Maduro regime’s lax or non-existent enforcement of laws forbidding ‘foreign funding of political organizations, the US via NED and its “front groups” poured tens of millions, into NGOs, political parties , leaders and active and retired military officials willing and able to pursue  “regime change” via a coup.

Exactly one year following the violet uprising of 2014, on February 14, 2015, the US backed a civilian-military coup. The coup was thwarted by military intelligence and denunciations by lower level loyalist soldiers.

Two power grabs in a year is a clear indication that Washington is accelerating its move to establish a client regime.

What makes these policies especially dangerous, is not simply their proximity, but the context in which they occur and the recruits who Washington is targeting.

Unlike the coup of 2002, which occurred at a time of an improving economy, the most recent one takes place in the context of declining economic indicators.  Earlier the masses turned out to support the new constitution, declining inflation, the introduction of new social legislation and improving income.  The most recent coup takes place with incomes declining, a devaluation which reduces purchasing power, rising inflation (62%) and plummeting oil prices.

Moreover, the US has once again gained converts in the military as was the case in the 2002 coup but absent in the 2014.  Three generals, three colonels, 9 lieutenants and a captain signed on to the coup and it can be surmised that they were in contact with others.  The deteriorating loyalties in the military are not simply a product of US bribery. It is also a reflection of the socio-economic decline of sectors of the middle class to which middle level officers belong by family ties and social identification.

Subsequent to the earlier coup (of 2002) then President Chavez called for the formation of popular militias, National Reserve and a rural defense force to ‘complement’ the armed forces.  Some 300,000 militia volunteers were registered.  But like many radical ideas, little came of it.

As the US moves to activate its ‘military option’, Venezuela must consider activating and linking these militias to mass popular community based organizations, trade unions and peasant movements.

The US has developed a strategic concept for seizing power by proxy.  A war of attrition built upon exploiting the social consequences of the fall of oil revenues, shortages of basic commodities and the growing fissures in the military and state institutions.

In 2015 Washington has embraced the strategy of 2002, combining multiple forms of attack including economic destabilization, electoral politics, sabotage and military penetration..All are directed toward a military – civilian coalition seizing power.

Facing the US Offensive:  The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Maduro Government

The basic strength of the Chavista government of President Maduro is the legacy of nearly 15 years of progressive legislation, including rising incomes, grass roots community based democracy, the affirmation of racial, class and national dignity and independence.  Despite the real hardships of the past 3 years, forty percent of the electorate, mostly the urban and rural poor, remains as a solid core of support of the democratic process, the President and his efforts to reverse the decline and return the country to prosperity.

Up to now the Maduro government has successfully rebuffed and defeated the offensive by US proxies.  President Maduro won electorally, and more recently has pacified the coupsters by adopting firmer security measures and more technically efficient intelligence. Equally important he has demanded that the US reduce its embassy operatives from 100 to 17, equal to Venezuela’s staff in Washington. Many embassy personnel were engaged in meetings with Venezuelan organizers of violent activity and in efforts to subvert military officials..

Yet these security measures and administrative improvements, as important and necessary as they are, reflect short-range solutions.  The deeper and more fundamental issues relate to the structural weakness of the Venezuelan economy and state.

First and foremost, Venezuela cannot continue running on a petrol based ‘rentier economy’ especially one that still depends on the US market.

Venezuela’s ‘consumer socialism’ totally depends on oil revenues and high oil prices to finance the importation of foodstuffs and other essential commodities.

A strategy of ‘national defense’ against the imperial offensive requires a far higher level of ‘self-sufficiency’, a greater degree of local production and decentralized control.

Secondly, next to US intervention and destabilization, the greatest threat to the democratic regime is the government’s executive, managerial and elected officials who have misallocated billions in investment funds, failed to effectively carry out programs and who largely improvise according to day to day considerations, It is essential that Maduro advances  the strategic priorities ensuring basic popular interests.

The Chavez and the Maduro governments outlined general guidelines that were passed off as a strategic plan.  But neither financial resources, nor state personnel were systematically ordered to implement them.  Instead the government responded or better still reacted, defensively, to the immediate threats of the opposition induced shortages and oil revenue shortfalls.  They chose the easy route of securing loans from China by mortgaging future oil exports.  They also took out commercial loans – borrowed at the highest rates in the world (18%)!

The post commodity boom requires a decisive break with the petrol economy . . . continuing costly debt financing staves off the day of reckoning, which is fast approaching.

US military coups and political warfare are with us and will not fade away even as Washington loses battles.  The jailing of individual plotters is not enough.  They are expendable …Washington can buy others.

The Maduro government faces a national emergency which requires a society-wide mobilization to launch a war-economy capable of producing and delivering class specific commodities to meet popular needs.

The February 12, 2015, coup dubbed, Plan Jericho, was funded by the US NGO, the National Endowment for Democracy and its subsidiaries, the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House.  The coup organizers led by former Venezuelan Congresswomen Corina Machado, (a White House invitee) was designated to head up the post-coup dictatorship.

As a matter of survival the Maduro government must clamp down and prosecute all self-styled ‘NGO’ which are recipients of overseas funding and serve as conduits for US backed coups and destabilization activity.

No doubt the Obama regime will seek to protect its proxy financing and howl about ‘growing authoritarianism’.  That is predictable.  But the Venezuelan governments’ duty is to protect the constitutional order, and defend the security of its citizens.  It must move decisively to prosecute not only the recipients of US funds but the entire US political network, organizations and collaborators as terrorists.

Venezuela can take a page out of the US legal code which provides for 5 year prison sentences for “nationals” who receive overseas funds and fail to register as foreign agents.  More to the point, the Obama regime has prosecuted organized groups suspected of conspiring to commit violent acts to lifetime prison sentences.  He has justified extra judicial assassinations (via drones) of US “terrorist suspects”.

President Maduro need not go to the extremes of the Obama regime.  But he should recognize that the policy of “denunciation, arrest and release” is totally out of line with international norms regarding the fight against terrorism in Venezuela.

What the US has in mind is not merely a ‘palace coup’ in which the democratic incumbents are ousted and replaced by US clients.  Washington wants to go far beyond a change in personnel, beyond a friendly regime amenable to providing unconditional backing to the US foreign policy agenda…

A coup and post-coup regime is only the first step toward a systematic and comprehensive reversal of the socio-economic and political transformations of the past 16 years!

Heading the list will be the crushing of the mass popular community organizations which will oppose the coup.  This will be accompanied by a mass purge, of all representative institutions, the constitutionalist armed forces, police and nationalist officials in charge of the oil industry and other public enterprises.

All the major public welfare programs in education, health, housing and low cost retail food outlets, will be dismantled or suffer major budget cuts.

The oil industry and dozens of other publically owned enterprises and banks will be privatized and denationalized.  US MNC will be the main beneficiaries.  The agrarian land reform will be reversed:  recipients will be evicted and the land returned to the landed oligarchs.

Given how many of the Venezuelan working class and rural poor will be adversely affected and given the combatative spirit which permeates popular culture, the implementation of the US backed neo-liberal agenda will require prolonged ,large-scale repression.  This means, tens of thousands of killings, arrests and incarceration.

The US coup- masters and their Venezuelan proxies will unleash all their pent-up hostility against what they will deem the blood purge necessary to punish, in Henry Kissinger’s infamous phrase, “an irresponsible people” who dared to affirm their dignity and independence.

The US backing of violence in the run-up to the February 2015 coup will be escalated in the run-up to the inevitable next coup.

Contemporary US imperial wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya and past US backed bloody  military coups installing neo-liberal regimes in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay a few decades past, demonstrate that Washington places no limits on how many tens of thousands of lives are destroyed, how many millions are uprooted, if it is ‘necessary’ to secure imperial dominance.

There is no doubt that the Venezuelan economy is on shaky foundations; that officials have yet to devise and implement a coherent strategy to exit the crises.  But it is of decisive importance to remember that even in these times of intensifying imperial warfare, basic freedoms and social justice inform the framework of government and popular representation.  Now is the time, and time is running short, for the Maduro government to mobilize all the mass organizations, popular militias and loyal military officials to administer a decisive political defeat to the US proxies and then to proceed forward to socializing the economy.  It must take the opportunity of turning the US orchestrated offensives into a historic defeat.  It must convert the drive to restore neo-liberal privilege into the graveyard of rentier capitalism.

Epilogue

Unlike past political confrontations between US imperial regimes and leftwing Latin American governments, in the case of Venezuela the US has suffered numerous major defeats with  regard to domestic and foreign policy, over the past 15 years.

US-Venezuelan Conflicts:  Internal Policies and their Results

In 2001 the US demanded Venezuela support its “war on terrorism, its global quest for domination via war.  President Chavez refused to back it, arguing successfully that “you cannot fight terror with terror”, and winning support worldwide

In April 12, 2002, the US organized and backed a military-business coup which was defeated by a mass uprising backed by constitutionalist armed forces.  US lost key assets in the military, trade union bureaucracy and business sector.

In December 2002 – February 2003, the US backed a CEO directed lockout designed to shut-down the oil industry and overthrow the Chavez government that was defeated, as workers and engineers took charge and overseas oil partners supplied petroleum.  The US lost assets in the oil industry.

In 2004, a referendum to oust Chavez, funded by the US and organized by NED funded NGOs was defeated.  US electoral assets were demoralized.

In 2006 a US backed boycott of Congressional elections was defeated.  The electorate turned out in force.  US congressional assets lost their institutional power base and influence.

In 2006 Chavez is re-elected for a second time.  The US-backed candidate is badly beaten.

In 2007 a US backed coalition squeak out a 1% margin of victory, defeating constitutional amendments, socializing the economy.

In 2009 President Chavez wins a referendum on constitutional amendments including the abolition of term limits.

In 2012 Chavez wins re-election for the fourth time defeating a US financed opposition candidate.

In 2013 Chavez’s selected candidate Maduro wins the Presidency defeating Obama’s anointed candidate.

Pro-Chavez parties win resounding Congressional majorities in all elections between 1999 – 2010.

Repeated electoral defeats convinced Washington’s political strategists to rely on violent, unconstitutional roads to power.

The anti-capitalist domestic social reforms and ideology were one of two key motivating factors in Washington’s prolonged political war against Venezuela.  Equally important was Chavez and Maduro’s foreign policy which included Venezuela’s leading role in opposing US centered regional integration organizations like ALCA, regional political organizations like the OAS and its military missions.

Venezuela promoted Latin American centered integration organizations which excluded the US.  They included Petro-Caribe, a Venezuelan sponsored trade and investment organization that benefited Caribbean and Central America countries.

UNASUR (Union of South American Nations) a regional political organization which displaced the US dominated OAS and included 33 Latin American and Caribbean states.

Venezuela joined MERCOSUR, a “free trade” organization, which included Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.

Venezuela’s leading role in promoting five organizations promoting Latin American and Caribbean integration – excluding the US and Canada – was seen as a mortal threatto Washington’s political dominance of Latin American politics and markets.

Venezuela’s large scale, long-term political and economic ties with Cub undermined the US economic blockade and reinforced Cuba’s links with and support by the rest of Latin America.

Venezuela opposed the US backed coup against Haiti’s reformist President Bertram Aristide.

Its opposition to the US invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and (later) Libya and its increased investment and trade ties with Iran in opposition to US sanctions, set US plans of a global empire on a collision course with Venezuela’s embrace of a global anti-imperialist  policy.

US failure to secure passage of a US centered Latin American Free Trade Treaty and incapacity to secure across the board support in Latin America for its Middle East wars and Iran sanctions was largely the result of Venezuelan foreign policy.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Venezuela’s foreign policy successes in countering US imperialist policies, especially with regard to Latin American integration, is the main reason that Washington has persisted in its long-term, large scale effort to overthrow the Venezuelan government.

The US escalation of its global military interventions under Obama and its increasing belligerency toward the multiplication of independent Latin American regional organizations, coincides with the intensification of its violent destabilization campaign in Venezuela.

Faced with the growth of Latin American trade and investment ties with China – with $250 billion in the pipeline over the next ten years – pioneered by Venezuela, Washington fears the loss of the 600 million Latin American consumer market.

The current US political offensive against Venezuela is a reaction to over 15 years of political defeats including failed coups, resounding electoral defeats, the loss of strategic political assets and above all decisive set-backs in its attempts to impose US centered integration schemes.

More than ever, US imperial strategists today are going all-out to subvert Venezuela’s anti-imperialist government, because they sense with the decline of oil revenue and export earnings, double digit inflation and consumer shortages, they can divide and subvert sectors of the armed forces, mobilize violent street mobs via their mercenary street fighters, secure the backing of elected opposition officials and seize power.  What is at stake in the US –Venezuelan conflict is the future of Latin American independence and the US Empire.

Obamacare Increases Insurance-Rate by 87.7%/85.4%, or 2.7% Since 2008

Obamacare Increases Insureds from 85.4% up to 87.7%

Candidate Obama’s Promise  of “Universal” Meant 100%

Obamacare started being available on 1 October 2013 and has now been available for 16 months. When candiate Obama was running for the Presidency, he promised “universal coverage,” which is what exists in virtually all other developed countries: 100%, everyone insured, no citizen lacking health insurance for ordinary and life-preserving needs. (Medicare-for-everybody would have been this.) Now that his Obamacare has been available for 16 months, is every American citizen health-insured; did he provide what he had promised? Is America no longer the lone outlier that has a lousy system of funding health care — overloading emergency-rooms, which is the costliest way to deal with healthcare (and one reason why all other advanced countries pay far less and yet obtain better results than the U.S. does)?

When Obama ran for the Presidency and started to make this “universal healthcare” promise, the insurance-rate was 85.4% (or 14.6% uninsureds); and, today, according to the Gallup poll released on March 4th, it is 87.7% (or 12.3% uninsureds).

In an article at Huffington Post on 16 June 2014, I headlined “Obama Lied About Obamacare, Now Wants Political Lying To Be Legal,” and there were only 35 reader-comments to it; so, it seems that not many people then thought that either part of the headline was especially interesting. The subheads summarized that report, and there were three:

“Obamacare fails to come close to meeting candidate Obama’s promises:

“Mr. Obama never even tried to fulfill on them; he was opposed to them.

“Obama now openly supports legalizing lying during political campaigns.”

Each one of those three sub-heads was fully documented, but probably few people clicked through to the documentation. Anyway: few commented.

At washingtonsblog on 9 January 2015, I headlined “How Obama Lied About Obamacare,” and provided a different account of his lying, also fully documented, but this time there were only 11 reader-comments. (That site has a smaller audience though it’s perhaps the best American general-news site of all.)

Americans apparently don’t much care about being lied-to by politicians, not even when it concerns the candidate’s most-central campaign promise.

It is common knowledge that at end-January 2015 the global movement Amnesty International published a report, titled “Breaking the conspiracy of silence: USA’s European “partners in crime” must act after Senate torture report”, which throws further light upon the information gathered within the US Senate investigation into torture methods, applied by the Central Intelligence Agency, by referring to media reports on the way CIA-operated secret detention sites were run in Europe – in particular, on the territory of Lithuania, Poland and Romania. As a matter of fact, it was several years ago when it first became known that CIA tortured terror suspects not only in these countries but also on the territory of another EU Member State – namely, Great Britain. According to the Lawrence Wilkinson, former Chief of Staff to the US Secretary of State, after the terror attack of 11th September 2001 the CIA used the US military base on the island of Diego Garcia, located in the British Indian Ocean Territory, to conduct interrogations and torture terror suspects who had been abducted from various countries without any court order whatsoever.

After the US Senate report got published, the European Parliament adopted a special resolution on 11th February 2015 in which it:

“expresses its deep condemnation of the gruesome interrogation practices that characterized these illegal counterterrorism operations; underlines the fundamental conclusion by the US Senate that the violent methods applied by the CIA failed to generate intelligence that prevented further terrorist attacks; recalls its absolute condemnation of torture”.

The resolution also highlights the fact that:

“the climate of impunity regarding the CIA programme has enabled the continuation of fundamental rights violations, as further revealed by the mass surveillance programmes of the US National Security Agency and secret services of various EU Member States”.

In this context, the US Government is called on:

“to investigate and prosecute the multiple human rights violations resulting from the CIA rendition and secret detention programmes, and to cooperate with all requests from EU Member States for information, extradition or effective remedies for victims in connection with the CIA programme”.

The European Parliament also:

“reiterates its calls on Member States to investigate the allegations that there were secret prisons on their territory where people were held under the CIA programme, and to prosecute those involved in these operations, taking into account all the new evidence that has come to light”.

At the same time it:

“expresses concerns regarding the obstacles encountered by national parliamentary and judicial investigations into some Member States’ involvement in the CIA programme, the abuse of state secrecy, and the undue classification of documents resulting in the termination of criminal proceedings and leading to de facto impunity of perpetrators of human rights violations”.

Furthermore, the resolution “calls for the findings of existing inquiries relating to Member States’ involvement in the CIA programme, in particular the Chilcot inquiry, to be published without further delay”.

Considering the above, we are unpleasantly impressed by the fact that the Council of Europe and its Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) have hitherto failed to demonstrate the due will to discuss the refusal of the governmental authorities in Vilnius, Warsaw and Bucharest to investigate the multiple occasions of human rights violations, ensuing from the agreement of these countries to host the establishment of CIA black sites on their territory. Such an attitude erodes the very foundations of the European Union, weakens the belief of European citizens that their fundamental rights are truly guaranteed, divests the EU of its moral authority and discredits its allegiance to the universal human values.

The US Senate report and the one issued by Amnesty International, unequivocally point out that the above three EU Member States, as well as Great Britain, played a key role in the implementation of this CIA “operation” on the territory of the Old Continent. Without the help of these governments the USA would not have been in the position to detain and torture people for so many years, applying such inhumane methods as waterboarding and mock execution, sleep deprivation, use of coffin-sized confinement boxes or sexual threats.

It is high time that Europe became aware of the fact that the time for paying lip service to the condemnation of these crimes or the attempts at their covering up is over for good. The governments of Lithuania , Poland and Romania can no longer hide behind the unconvincing “national security reasons” and “state secret” arguments, thus refusing to bring to light the entire truth about their role for the torture and abduction of people in their countries. Jozef Pinior, one of the legendary leaders of the Polish “Solidarity” trade union, member of the European Parliament in the period 2004 – 2009 and of the Parliamentary committee on secret CIA prisons in Europe, now a Polish senator, points out:

“The information in the Washington Post about the fact that Polish intelligence services received USD 15 million to “host” a secret CIA prison in the country compromises the entire Polish state which should elucidate this issue as quickly as possible. This unquestionably confirmed the grimmest hypothesis that under Leszek Miller Poland turned into a “banana republic” to the USA . Another deplorable fact is that our national services have contributed in no way whatsoever to the disclosure of this conspiracy. This is an extremely disgraceful situation. The Polish state, the judicial system and the Government should publish the investigation findings as soon as possible. Otherwise we are going to become Europe ’s laughing stock. It turns out that we while we give lessons in democracy to countries like the Ukraine , we take money from the US to allow them to practice illicit torture of people on our territory”.

In its turn the Bulgarian Government should state its official support for the appeal of Amnesty International and the European Parliament and urge the authorities in Vilnius , Bucharest and Warsaw to undertake an immediate and full investigation of this case and to prosecute those involved in the tortures. Let us be reminded that most of the victims of these malpractices are Muslims and in the context of surging anti-Islam mood after the terror attacks in Paris and Copenhagen it becomes even more important to find out the truth about the secret CIA “black sites” in Europe.

In recent weeks the Ebola epidemic in West Africa has slowed from a peak of more than 1,000 new cases per week to 99 confirmed cases during the week of February 22, according to the World Health Organization. For two countries that have taken diametrically opposed approaches to combating the disease, the stark difference in the results achieved over the last five months has become evident.

The United States, which sent about 2,800 military troops to the region in October, has announced an end to its relief mission. Most soldiers have already returned. Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby declared the mission a “success.” The criteria for this determination is unclear, as the troops did not treat a single patient, much less save a single life.

President Barack Obama proclaimed the American response to the crisis “an example of American leadership.” As is the case “whenever and wherever a disaster or disease strikes,” according to Obama, “the world looks to us to lead.” The President claimed that the troops contributed not only by their own efforts, but by serving as a “force multiplier” that inspired others.

Obama says the “American values” displayed “matter to the world.” They are an example of “what makes us exceptional.”

By virtue of American supremacy, apparently, these values are superior to those of people from any other nation.

When you look behind the President’s and the Pentagon’s rhetoric, it is difficult to find concrete measures of success. From the beginning, the capacity of American troops to make a difference in containing and eliminating a medical disease was questionable, to say the least.

In October, the Daily Beast reported that soldiers would receive only four hours of training in preparation for their deployment to Africa. That is half of a regular work day for people with no medical background. When they arrived, they did not exactly hit the ground running. “The first 500 soldiers to arrive have been holing up in Liberian hotels and government facilities while the military builds longer-term infrastructure on the ground,” wrote Tim Mak.

The DoD declared on its Website that

“the Defense Department made critical contributions to the fight against the Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa. Chief among these were the deployment of men and women in uniform to Monrovia, Liberia, as part of Operation United Assistance.”

So, the chief contribution of the DoD was sending people in military uniforms to the site of the outbreak.

The DoD lists among its accomplishments training 1,539 health care workers & support staff (presumably non-technical and cursory); creating 10 Ebola treatment units (which you could count on your fingers); and constructing a 25-bed medical unit (for a country that has had 10,000 cases of Ebola).

USAID declares that “the United States has done more than any other country to help West Africa respond to the Ebola crisis.” Like the DoD, they are short on quantitative measurements and long on vague business-speak. USAID says they “worked with UN and NGO partners,” “partnered with the U.S. military,” and “expanded the pipeline of medical equipment and critical supplies to the region.”

USAID and other government personnel have clearly helped facilitate the delivery of equipment and supplies, but claims that the U.S. has done more than any other country are dubious.

By the end of April, all but 100 U.S. troops will have left West Africa. There will then be a transition to what Obama called the “civilian response.” This appears equally as vague as the military response.

The U.S. response did involve many people and several hundred millions of dollars, which is, indeed, more than most countries contributed. But an examination of the facts shows that the U.S. played mostly a supporting role, collaborating with other actors in the tangential aspects of the crisis. U.S. government employees were not directly involved in treating any patients. Their role was rather to help other health workers and officials on the front lines who actually did. To say this is an example of American leadership and exceptionalism seems like a vast embellishment.

The other country who has taken a very public role in the Ebola crisis is Cuba. Unlike the U.S., Cuba sent nearly 500 professional healthcare workers – doctors and nurses – to treat African patients who had contracted Ebola. These included doctors from the Henry Reeve Brigade, which has served over the last decade in response to the most high-profile disasters in the world, including in Haiti and Pakistan. In Haiti, the group was instrumental in detecting and treating cholera, which had been introduced by UN peace keepers. The disease sickened and killed thousands of Haitians.

Before being deployed to West Africa, all the Cuban doctors and nurses completed an “intense training” of a minimum of two weeks, where they “prepared in the form of treating patients without exposing themselves to the deadly virus,” according to CNN.

After Cuba announced its plan to mobilize what Cubans call the “army of white robes,” WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said that “human resources are clearly our most important need.”

“Money and materials are important, but those two things alone cannot stop Ebola virus transmission,” she said. “We need most especially compassionate doctors and nurses” to work under “very demanding conditions.”

Like their American counterparts, Cuban authorities also recently proclaimed success in fighting Ebola. They used a clear definition of what they meant.

“We have managed to save the lives of 260 people who were in a very very bad state, and through our treatment, they were cured and have gotten on with their lives,” said Jorge Delgado, head of the medical brigade, at a conference in Geneva on Foreign Medical Teams involved in fighting the Ebola crisis.

The work of the Henry Reeve Brigade was recognized by Norwegian Trade Unions who nominated the group for the Nobel Peace Prize “for saving lives and helping millions of suffering people around the world.”

The European Commission for humanitarian aid and crisis management last week also “recognized the role Cuba has played in fighting the Ebola epidemic.”

For more than 50 years, Cuba has carried out medical missions across the globe — beginning in Algeria after the revolution in 1961 and taking place in poor countries desperately needing medical care throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America. They have provided 1.2 billion consultations, 2.2 million births, 5 million operations and immunizations for 12 million children and pregnant women, according to Granma.

“In their direct fight against death, the human quality of the members of the Henry Reeve brigade is strengthened, and for those in need around the world, they represent welcome assistance,” writes Nuria Barbosa León.

The mission of the DoD is one of military involvement worldwide. As Nick Turse reports in TomDispatch, U.S. military activity on the African continent is growing at an astounding rate. The military “averages about one and a half missions a day. This represents a 217% increase in operations, programs, and exercises since the command was established in 2008,” Turse writes. He says the DoD is calling “Africa the battlefield of tomorrow, today.”

Turse writes that the U.S. military is quietly replicating its failed counterinsurgency strategy in Africa, under the guise of humanitarian activities.

“If history is any guide, humanitarian efforts by AFRICOM (U.S. Africa Command) and Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa will grow larger and ever more expensive, until they join the long list of projects that have become ‘monuments of U.S. failure’ around the world,”

he writes.

There are some enlightening pieces of information listed by the DoD as part of the “transition to Operation Onward Liberty.” The DoD “will build partnership capacity with the Armed Forces of Liberia” and will “continue military to military engagement in ways that support Liberia’s growth toward enduring peace and security.”

It is unclear what role the U.S. military will help their Liberian counterparts play, unless peace and security is considered from the perspective of multinational corporations who have their eyes on large oil reserves, rather than the perspective of the local population.

The U.S. military, unsurprisingly, seems to be using the Ebola crisis as a pretext to expand its reach inside Africa, consistent with the pattern of the last seven years that Turse describes. The deployment of several thousand troops to West Africa can be understood as a P.R. stunt that is the public face of counterinsurgency.

U.S. troops are used as props. What may sound like a massive effort is little more than propaganda. The idea is to associate troops with humanitarianism, rather than death, destruction and torture. In reality, one doctor can save more lives than hundreds of soldiers. A true humanitarian mission would be conducted by civilian agencies and professionals who are trained and experienced specifically in medicine, construction and administration, not by soldiers trained to kill and pacify war zones.

In Liberia, as in most of Africa, Washington’s IMF and World Bank-imposed neoliberal policies have further savaged a continent devastated by 300 years of European colonialism. Any U.S. military involvement in Liberia and elsewhere is likely to reflect the economic goals of the U.S. government, which is primarily concerned with continuing the implementation of the Washington consensus.

Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law, warned last fall about the dangers of using a “war on terror template” in response to a disease such as Ebola.

“Countering Ebola will require a whole new set of protections and priorities, which should emerge from the medical and public health communities. The now sadly underfunded National Institutes of Health and other such organizations have been looking at possible pandemic situations for years,”

Greenberg writes. “It is imperative that our officials heed the lessons of their research as they have failed to do many times over with their counterparts in public policy in the war on terror years.”

This is the opposite of the strategy the Obama administration elected to take. It would be wise to question the alarming militarization of American foreign assistance. The continued expansion of the national security apparatus occurs at the direct expense of vital civilian agencies. The Cuban model is evidence of what is possible with an alternative approach.

Matt Peppe writes about politics, U.S. foreign policy, and Latin America. You can follow him on twitter. Read other articles by Matt, or visit Matt’s website.

Now that the split vote on the FCC commission has decided to accept their secret plan to turn the internet into a public utility, prepare for all the same rubber stamp decisions that your state run Public Service Commission’s operate in the utility sector.

As anyone who ever interacted with PSC type regulators can attest, the corporatist legal teams that shepherd their clients’ monopolist proposals, almost invariably get their way. So much for a crony system, that seldom protects the interests of the rate payer.

When it comes to government regulation of the internet, the stake dramatically escalates far beyond simply the cost of service. The essay, When Net Neutrality Becomes Programmed Censorship argues the case that inevitably the web will eventually be assimilated into a Chinese styled content restrictive enforcement system.

The video NET NEUTRALITY: THIS IS WHAT CHINESE STYLE NET CENSORSHIP LOOKS LIKE complements the fate in store for surfers who tackle taboo waves going in directions that conflict with the mega corporatism and globalist governmental technocrats.

For the business community who poopoos concern about free speech, gate keeping and suppression of political dissent, the Zacks article FCC Adopts Net Neutrality with Title II, Hard Time for ISPs makes several valid points against this federal takeover.

“The major argument, however, stands that the ISPs have to expend several billion dollars to install and upgrade a high-speed mobile/fixed broadband network. Disallowing discriminatory pricing policy will significantly reduce their revenues and margins, which will in turn result in lower investments in the high-speed broadband sector. Consequently, broadband equipment service providers will suffer (due to lesser investment by ISPs) and lots of jobs will be eliminated from this sector.

Telecom behemoths Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ – Analyst Report) and AT&T Inc. (T – Analyst Report) have decided to challenge the new regulation in court. In Jan 2014, Verizon won a federal court case against the FCC’s previous set of net neutrality rules.

Major cable multi-service operators, namely Comcast Corp. (CMCSA – Analyst Report), Time Warner Cable Inc. (TWC – Analyst Report) and Charter Communications Inc. (CHTR – Analyst Report) also strongly opposed the FCC’s decision and may file legal suits. This group made clear that though they have no objection to the open Internet concept, enforcement of stricter regulations by the government is not acceptable.”

For the millions of addicted internet users who confine their online habits to Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and Twitter, the promise of higher speed connection is so attractive that sacrificing their independence and free speech rights becomes immaterial to their narrow minds.

Look; any fundamental imposition of government regulation on the free flow of information, prohibits the very existence of the miracle that connects the world instantaneously that took off some twenty years ago. With the introduction of MS Windows 95, the PC community, which included most business computers at the time, experienced a true productivity revolution.

Reflecting on the strides achieved from worldwide connectability, the essential functions of the internet is not presently broken. So what is the basic reason to accept Federal management of the most defused and individual liberating tool that has ever been invented? The answer according to Zacks is: “Telecommunications is a necessary utility.”

Well is the internet really a utility or is it a DAPRA project that Al Gore invented? Proponents of more government regulation want the people to accept that the public will benefit under FCC altruistic guidance, which will be superior to the commutative collection of billions of content contributors.

Content is king and the mere threat of consenting to a government filter on political speech is the true risk that is being imposed upon internet users, who overwhelming oppose censorship. The Electronic Freedom Foundation urges that “Internet blacklist legislation—known as PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House—invites Internet security risks, threatens online speech, and hampers Internet innovation”, should be opposed.

Note that such enactments are proposed as actual laws, while the FCC decision to inflict utility status upon the interconnection system is both arbitrary and capricious in the legal jargon of future court litigation, which is sure to come.

Utility designation is not just the preverbal slippery slope; it is the predictable introduction of specious authority to mirror the Chinese model for future command and control over the internet.

Watch the video, CHINA INTERNET CENSORSHIP CRACKDOWN – China To Crack Down on Social Media Accounts, to see what is coming. Share those anti-government Facebook and Twitter posts while you can.

Businesses are obviously intimidated by federal oversight that picks winners and losers. So the manifest question must be asked, if the internet is not broken, why force a fix that is so risky and really unnecessary?

Simply stated, constructive legislation to improve the “so called” bottleneck issues could be enacted that allows and encourages innovation that has been the backbone for growing the success of the internet.

Alas, such an approach does not achieve the actual objective. Reward the insiders of the Corporatocracy and build the authoritarian governance infrastructure that is so necessary to complete the total interdependency of world commerce.

The internet is all about independence, not conformity. That is why allowing free exchange is so dangerous for the oligarchs. FCC grabbing authority over the internet, extensively under the guise of utility denomination, is pure theater.

Matt Walsh writes in Dear Foolish and Gullible Americans, Net Neutrality is Not Your Friend a most proper concern.

“If the FCC can impose rules based on what might occur, can’t we oppose those rules based on what will almost definitely occur and in fact has already occurred? A Fairness Doctrine for the Internet isn’t hard to conceive . Like the television and radio version, it will ensure that not only our “access” is fair and open, but that the content itself lives up to the federal government’s fairness and openness standards.”

Is it better to face the facts than to believe in the fantasy that Big Brother will protect your true interests?  How you answer may well determine if you are one of those susceptible surfers eager to give up your rights to unfettered speech.

The officials in charge of the United Nations climate talks say that no deal will be done in Paris in December (COP21) to avoid dangerous global warming. After preparatory negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland, this month, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), confirmed that the target set previously, of limiting warming to 2 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels, would be missed. Figueres had already said, in December, after a round of talks in Lima, Peru, that

“the sum total of efforts [in Paris] will not be able to put us on the path for two degrees. […] We are not going to get there with the Paris agreement … We will get there over time.” This month she reiterated that the Paris talks would only “set the pathway for an orderly planned transition over time to a low-carbon society.”

The EU climate commissioner, Miguel Arias Canete, claimed that “you cannot say it is a failure” if, collectively, the world’s governments abandoned the 2 degrees target, as long as there is “an ongoing process.”

Voluntary Commitments

Diplomats at Geneva put together an 86-page document for political leaders to haggle over in December. But it’s already clear that:

• The approach adopted in Kyoto in 1997 – to require countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by particular amounts, within specified timeframes under international law – has been abandoned. Instead, negotiators are reported to be saying, the new agreement will rely on “peer pressure, national accountability and global cooperation” to “voluntarily” slow down global warming.
• The USA, the European Union and China – who jointly account for more than half of all emissions from burning fossil fuels[1] – have already decided on their commitments. A group of academic researchers analysed the likely effect of countries’ promises, and concluded that if governments stick to them, the atmosphere would probably get 3 or 3.5 degrees warmer – rather than the 4-5 degrees of warming likely in a “business as usual” scenario.

Massimo Tavoni of the Politecnico di Milano, who led the research, acknowledged that “there’s a lot of uncertainty” with the countries’ targets and their exact effects. What is not uncertain is the relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and warming (see “The Global Carbon Budget,” below).

Neither is there any doubt about the terrible human suffering that researchers associate with warming of 3 degrees or more. (You can get an idea from the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Synthesis Report which contains frightful descriptions of the likely consequences of 4 degrees of warming. And don’t forget, there are no exaggerations here: it’s all been signed off by representatives of all countries that have signed the convention, including Saudi Arabia and other oil producers.)

To summarize:

1. The target of keeping global warming to 2 degrees has been repeatedly analysed by scientists, and accepted by politicians and even energy companies as essential to prevent what the UN framework convention calls “dangerous anthropogenic (human induced) interference with the climate system.” (The UNFCCC summary is here, and an excellent summary history is here.)
2. The Paris deal, if it happens, will certainly miss this target by a long way, and will depend on the good will of governments, rather than any international enforcement mechanism.
3. Diplomats and politicians are claiming that this is “not a failure,” as the EU’s Canete put it. But, measured in terms of the welfare of the world population, it clearly is.

This is a collective failure of the world’s large states.

In 2009 at Copenhagen, Denmark, they acknowledged the 2 degrees target – and in 2010 at Cancun, Mexico, wrote it into an international agreement – but failed to make commitments to achieve it. This year in Paris, they will abandon any pretence of concerted action, rubber-stamp voluntary “commitments,” and use the diplomatic-media-NGO circus to try to spread the illusion of progress.

Some leftists portray Copenhagen as the outcome of neoliberalism and market fundamentalism. I see it differently.

The response of the world’s leading capitalist states to the 2008 financial crash – that is, their economic policy since before Copenhagen – cannot be described as market fundamentalism. In 2009-10 the USA invested hundreds of billions of dollars to support the banking system. It deepened its symbiotic relationship with the Chinese dictatorship, that advanced industrialization and urbanization – a counterbalance to the recession in the USA and Europe – with an approach that had little to do with neoliberalism.

Of course neoliberal dogma continued to be used to bolster trade arrangements that favoured the large capitalist states, and to justify “austerity” policies. But the large states continued to intervene in the economy. What they stopped far short of was policies that might have begun to address the threat of global warming.

Plenty has been said about a “green new deal” and “green growth,” by trade union leaders and left parties among others … but measures that might enhance the transition away from fossil fuels – ending subsidies, or state-supported investment in renewable technologies and decentralized energy systems – have been pathetically inadequate or non-existent.

Carbon Tax vs Trading Schemes

Instead of a carbon tax (which, if you believe global warming could or should be addressed without tampering with capitalism, is at least logical), the EU launched the ridiculous emissions trading scheme. It has failed (as predicted) to produce any discernible movement away from fossil fuel burning. There has been some investment in solar and wind power, but only insofar as it fits in to the commercial electricity system dominated by coal, gas and nuclear.

Come December last year, the U.S. and Chinese presidents, Barack Obama and Xi Jinping, agreed that the USA will by 2025 aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28% of the 2005 level, and that China’s emissions will peak in 2030. The EU had previously set a target – which many observers believe it will miss – of cutting emissions levels by 40% of the 1990 level, by 2030. These political leaders – not neoliberals, but maybe market liberals, post-Stalinists, post-social democrats, whatever – have abandoned any effective action on warming.

The moment in the Hollywood movie, when the world’s leaders agree to overlook their differences to combat the shoal of meteors, alien spaceships, or whatever, has not happened.

Copenhagen and Paris are not failures of neoliberalism, but failures of states, and a failure of the UN, the forum for cooperation between those states set up after the second world war.

Liberal writers on international relations have long assumed that in the long run modern capitalist states led by liberals would, and should, work together. This assumption underpinned Francis Fukuyama’s argument that the universalization of western liberal democracy was the culmination of human achievement.[2]

At Paris, universalized western liberal democracy will complete its retreat, not before alien spaceships or shoals of meteors, but in front of a monster produced by capitalist economic growth. It’s a frightening prospect. But it could also refocus the attention of social and labour movements on the need to recreate society ourselves.

Social and Labour Movements

Here are three suggestions for how social and labour movements might react.

First. We should reject the false narratives being promoted around the talks … the stuff about “we” are making “progress.”

It’s worth noting what some big environmental NGOs are saying. After the Geneva talks, Climate Central reported that the Paris meetings “are being viewed [by NGOs] as an opportunity to launch a wholly new approach to global climate action […] that could do far more” than an international diplomatic agreement.

Alex Hanafi of the Environmental Defense Fund said that Paris will “put us not on an emissions trajectory for 2 degrees, but on an institutional trajectory that allows us to try to meet that goal.” For me that is false optimism gone mad.

Another illusion to be avoided is that the politicians are responding substantially to the pressure of civil society. The journalist Rebecca Solnit, commenting on the Obama-Xi deal in December, wrote: “Pressure works. The [U.S.] president is clearly feeling it, and it’s reflected in the recent U.S.-China agreement […] – far from perfect or adequate, but a step forward.” Really? I prefer Ben Adler’s sober judgment that Obama “shies away from using the levers of power” that he has. And I take Obama’s commitment as seriously as I would the promise of any politician about anything.

Second. We should reject the false narratives about technologies that tweak the fossil-fuel-based energy system but cannot produce the necessary fundamental shift away from it.

The latest favourite among politicians is a technology known as BECCS: the attachment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology to power stations burning biomass, instead of fossil fuels. Theoretically, if plants, trees or crops are grown to replace those that are burnt, BECCS could actually reduce the amount of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere.

The latest IPCC report includes many scenarios that make incredibly optimistic assumptions about the spread of BECCS plants – of which there is not yet a single one in operation. (There’s a good explanation by Carbon Brief here.) To me, the whole thing looks like a way of boosting CCS (beloved of power companies who want to keep burning coal or gas on the grounds that at some point in the future they will use CCS to reduce emissions) and of forgetting about deeper-going technological shifts.

Fixes that do not involve progress on renewable and decentralized technologies should be treated with suspicion, in my view.

Third. We should do more to develop discussions on the complex social, economic and technological issues in social and labour movements, and in civil society more broadly.

The implication of the failure of states so evident in the run-up to the Paris talks is that we must broaden and deepen discussion and action independently of and in opposition to those states. In December 2013, for example, the UK’s leading climate change research outfit, the Tyndall Centre, organized a “radical emissions reduction” conference that brought together academics and researchers with activists. Why don’t social and labour movement organizations pick that up and develop it further?

Gabriel Levy edits the blog People and Nature, where this article first appeared.

Here are summaries (translated by me into English) of the latest news-reports on Ukraine, in Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten, or German Economic News. (Click on the following link to see each of these news reports in full. If you use the Chrome browser, it will automatically translate everything into English.)

http://deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de/thema/ukraine-/

ALL ARTICLES ABOUT UKRAINE [past 24 hours]

Bank crash in Ukraine: Delta-Bank reports bankruptcy

The Ukrainian Delta Bank was declared insolvent, by the monetary authorities in Kiev. The fourth largest bank in the country will be gone from the corporate loan market because of repayment failures by its borrowers.

German Economic News  |  03.03.15, 18:25

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Ukrainian oligarchs gain access to European taxpayers’ money

In the course of rapprochement with the EU, three powerful oligarchs are hiring former EU politicians and SPD grandees. The oligarchs want to control reconstruction of the Ukraine – though they are notorious in Ukraine. For oligarchs to control politics and economics is above any political accountability. It should now be called simply doling out European taxpayers’ money, because that’s what it is.

German Economic News  |  03.03.15, 18:10

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Ukrainian oligarchs give Europe’s ex-politicians jobs

Three Ukrainian oligarchs have enlisted prominent former EU politicians, in their “agency for the modernization of Ukraine”: ministers, commissioners and lobbyists. The oligarchs help to generate new business. Among them are the SPD politician Peer Steinbrück and Günter Verheugen.

German Economic News  |  03.03.15, 18:06  |  4 comments

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Ukrainian central bank raises interest rates to 30 percent

The Ukrainian central bank raised its key interest rate by 10.5 percentage points, to stabilize the money market. The country has no access to international financial markets. The central bank chief warns against the negative consequences of the “panic in the foreign exchange market.”

German Economic News  |  03.03.15, 15:01  |  7 comments

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US sends Parachute Battalion into Ukraine

The US is sending a battalion of paratroopers into the Ukraine. The soldiers will first develop Ukrainian artillery units. Later, the Americans could train Ukrainians in the use of US weapons. Russia had announced several months ago to classify the deployment of US soldiers or weapons in Ukraine as a provocation.

German Economic News  |  03.03.15, 13:40  |  39 comments

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Ukraine: Merkel and Putin see progress on ceasefire

Russia, Germany, France and the Ukraine agree to ease the situation in the Donbass. The Minsk Agreement should now be implemented quickly.

German Economic News  |  03.03.15, 00:26  |  11 comments

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Against Putin, Kasparov expects violent uprising in Russia

Living in US political exile, a companion of the murdered opposition politician Boris Nemtsov said that a peaceful change in Russia is not possible. He expects a violent mass uprising against the “brutal dictatorship of Putin”. The sooner “Putin is gone, the greater are the chances that chaos can be avoided.” The German federal government intensifies the tone against Putin — although they still avoid directly blaming Putin for the murder.

German Economic News  |  03.03.15, 10:08  |  75 comments

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Against Russia: Germany delivers battle tanks to Poland

NATO’s new threat against Russia means that Germany will supply battle tanks to Poland and at the same time increase its own troops. The US requests that all NATO countries invest two percent of GDP in weapons. The UK snubbed this rule, must reduce deficit-spending.

German Economic News  |  03.03.15, 08:56  |  80 comments

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Despite EU sanctions: RWE Dea sold to Russian investor

The energy group RWE Dea sold its gas subsidiary for approximately 5.1 billion euros to Russian investors. The deal comes despite the official opposition of the British Government. Apparently, money talks, even after sanctions.

German Economic News  |  03.02.15, 14:34  |  6 comments

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Russia Rubles recovery in February was surprisingly strong

In February, the ruble gained momentum after the dramatic crash last year. Rising oil prices and the negotiations of Minsk brought the ruble good performance in February, despite the sanctions and the tougher tone in a new Cold War.

German Economic News  |  03/02/15 10:10  |  8 comments

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Ukraine’s Steel industry without exports to Russia is in free fall

By corruption, mismanagement and war, Ukraine is bankrupt though one of the world’s most resource-rich countries. The iron and steel industry of Ukraine, which is the industry that builds on these raw materials, is in free fall. The plunge in world prices accelerated this development. The Kiev government has done nothing to counter it.

German Economic News  |  03.02.15, 11:33 am  |  13 comments

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Ukraine, Lithuania and Poland establish UN intervention force

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has ratified a law establishing a common military force with Poland and Lithuania. It will participate in UN missions.The Ukraine has for some time, pursued switching to NATO standards — a development that Russia considers a provocation.

German Economic News  |  03.02.15, 01:00  |  12 comments

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US Senator McCain: No matter who shot Nemtsov, Vladimir Putin is to blame

US Senator John McCain has assigned to Putin the blame for the murder of Boris Nemtsov. But his statement remains remarkably vague. Apparently McCain, one of the most prominent opponents of Russia, wants to make political capital out of a crime that could just as well turn out as a private criminal case.

German Economic News  |  03.02.15, 01:48  |  36 comments

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Against the USA: China supports Russia in Ukraine crisis

China has clearly for the first time come down on the Russian side in Ukraine Crisis: The West must accept Moscow’s legitimate security concerns seriously. The dispute over the Ukraine could otherwise turn into a pointless proxy war. The Americans must take note that their influence is disappearing in international politics.

German Economic News  |  03.03.15, 17:07  |  96 comments

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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.

As a postscript headline to the mid-January article below, America’s most famous general turned CIA Director David Petraeus just worked out a plea bargain deal with the Justice Department. He admitted to leaking classified documents to his biographer turned lover Paula Broadwell. Rather than face the further humiliation of a high profile public trial, the Bilderberg member opted for the easier way out of his latest lowbrow scandal. The New York Times is reporting that Petraeus will plead guilty to a mere misdemeanor charge of “one count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material.”

Justice Department spokesperson Marc Raimondi disclosed:

      The plea agreement and corresponding statement of facts, both signed by the defendant,  indicate that he will plead guilty to the one-count criminal Information.

The fact that the head of the CIA as the one man entrusted to hold US secrets secret, allowed pillow talk to share America’s most classified national secrets with his mistress, Betray-Us Petraeus is guilty of as serious a breach to our national security as there ever was. Yet the most celebrated military commander of his generation could at most possibly serve up to just one year in prison. Of course with buddies in such high places like Senators John McCain and Diane Feinstein, we know how that song ends. While gulag America is busily rounding up and torturing innocent US citizens who suddenly disappear inside secret CIA-like black holes across the nation, having earned his stripes as a card carrying elitist, Petraeus will most likely do no time at all behind bars… another telling blight on the American justice system.

Original article:

In recent days all the most hawkish protectors of US global hegemony and American Empire status quo, prominent politicians like Senators Feinstein and McCain, are circling their wagons in a defensive rush to the rescue of the former military rock star, onetime presidential hopeful General David Petraeus. Last Friday the FBI recommended to the Justice Department that it should proceed with plans to file criminal charges against Petraeus that could turn the most famous so called US war hero of the modern era into a convicted felon. On last Sunday’s CNN’s “State of the Nation, Senator Feinstein stated:

This man has suffered enough in my view. It’s done. It’s over…. David Petraeus is the four-star general of our generation and a very brilliant man.

What the chair of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee is objecting to is the Justice Department announcement that it may charge the former CIA Director Petraeus with passing classified information onto his lover at the time Paula Broadwell. Despite the retired general’s dubious contention claiming he’s an innocent man and never did give his former mistress access to top secret documents, the FBI maintains that it found classified evidence of secret files on her confiscated computer after raiding her North Carolina home in search of potential criminality and intelligence leaks that may have breached national security.

The White House leaks information and mostly disinformation to the press constantly at will whenever it so desires. Then it turns around and hypocritically arrests journalists for unwillingness to breach confidentiality of their sources protected by the First Amendment, or indicts whistleblowers under the Espionage Act for complying with the 1989 Whistleblower Act designed to protect them for their brave acts of public service. Just another double standard by which this administration has become infamous.

Also appearing on Sunday’s CNN news platform, Senator McCain raged against the machine for the Petraeus story to be slipped to the New York Times last Friday. McCain went on to defend his war buddyPetraeus venting, “No American deserves such callous treatment, let alone one of America’s finest military leaders whose selfless service and sacrifice have inspired young Americans in uniform and likely saved many of their lives,” referring to Petraeus’ inflated accolades as “the savior of Iraq War” for his 2009 surge. His constant escort Senator Lindsey Graham chimed in calling the investigation of their war hero “outrageous,” and both senators charged that it has been “grievously mishandled.”

We all recall the media circus of November 2012 when just two days after President Obama won his second term in office, CIA Director Petraeus was forced to resign his post after news of his torrid affair went public. Paula Broadwell was a major in the Army Reserves at the time she was given unlimited private access to the general while he was stationed overseas commanding from the Afghanistan warfront and continued stateside after he resigned from the Army to head the CIA. Idolizing her man while she was all into him writing his All In biography, Paula was eager to share her insider’s secrets with the rest of the world while making the media talk show circuit zealously touting both Petraeus and her book.

At one point just a couple weeks prior to her and her man’s sudden fall from grace, while on her book tour speaking at the University of Denver, Ms. Broadwell enthusiastically shared her privy info that only she could have learned from her intimacy with the CIA director himself. She made the bold claim that the Benghazi attack on 9/11/12 where Libyan Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were murdered came as the result of the CIA’s detainment of several local al Qaeda affiliated leaders. She maintained the attackers of the Benghazi compound were acting on either an attempt to rescue their fellow militiamen or deliver violent retribution to America for adducting their leaders.

Of course as CIA director, Petraeus was working closely with Hillary Clinton using her State Department as cover for the highly illegal arms smuggling operation that was shipping much of deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s rather large arsenal of chemical weapons and surface-to-air missiles from the port of Benghazi through Turkey to aid the US backed al Qaeda fighting the US proxy war in Syria against President Assad’s forces.

Because back in January 2009 upon coming to power Obama signed Executive Order 13491 explicitly prohibiting the detainment of foreign nationals, Broadwell’s need to shine as the darling insider biographer inadvertently revealed that the CIA under Obama had simply continued its widespread practice of rounding up detainees throughout the Middle East and North Africa and engaging in unlawful acts of torture that they’d been ordered by the Bush administration to cease. Of course once confronted with Broadwell’s allegations after their adulterous scandal broke, the CIA as a rogue government agency that lies for a living emphatically denied any violation of Obama’s executive order. But clearly Paula Broadwell both incriminated her lover and his agency while at the same time incriminated Petraeus himself in passing CIA secrets off to his concubine. How else could she have known about the CIA detaining Libyans as that entire illicit Benghazi affair was as top secret as it gets?

That the Obama administration likely authorized the Benghazi detainment against his own order only shows why he is so quick to sweep the CIA torture history under the rug, calling for Americans to look forward rather than backward. CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou is still in prison for blowing the lid off CIA torture for going public exposing the unlawful practice under the Bush regime. Kiriakou maintainsthat torture under Obama’s watch has only submerged deep enough underground to not be noticed but still goes on. This also explains Obama’s recent choice to not hold those guilty criminals in both the Bush-Cheney administration as well as the sadistic perpetrators within the CIA and military accountable for inflicting such inhumane treatment as waterboarding on mostly innocent foreign nationals in our name. On top of all that, torture proved ineffective in producing any results.

In September 2012 at least 35 CIA personnel were reported to be overseeing the gun smuggling shipments in the largest CIA operation in North Africa from their Benghazi annex located just a mile away from the ambassador’s compound. In an August 2013 report CNN interviewed anonymous CIA operatives stationed in Benghazi at the time of the attack. They all admitted that every month they must submit to lie detector tests to ensure they do not spill the beans on what really happened in Benghazi. They also alluded to being under the strictest order to remain silent about their Libyan role or face threats from the Obama administration that they and their families would be harmed if their loose lips dared to sink Obama and Hillary’s deepest, darkest secrets ships. Ships that would forever sink his presidential legacy to the bottom of the heap alongside Nixon’s, and permanently shatter her political aspirations of a presidential future.

Petraeus has kept his silence as well, and swiftly rewarded. Within a week after Petraeus’ CIA resignation, his wife Holly victimized by her husband’s extramarital affair, was suddenly being rewarded a promotion to a newly created job just for her by President Obama himself, earning nearly $200,000 a year to compliment her husband’s $220,000 intact pension (despite his violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice for adultery which by law would preclude him from collecting any pension at all or retiring at his four-star general’s rank). The ever-close time proximity alone between the scandal breaking and his wife’s new cushy job raises questions of it being hush money.

Of course as a bi-coastal professor at City University of New York, Harvard and USC, Petraeus is peddling the environment killer fracking these days with his course syllabus entitled “The Coming North American Decade.” He also holds a prominent position in the elitist New York investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company, and is a faithful annual Bilderberg and Council on Foreign Relations member, so the Petraeus household is still raking in millions as an established elitist family. “Mums” been the word on Petraeus keeping his mouth shut, no spillage of secrets that could have brought down Barack and Hillary, despite his taking the fall for them for his illicit affair, which was definitely not the actual reason he went down.

Petraeus’ penchant for outsourcing CIA to private paramilitary subcontractors similar to how he outsourced the US military largely replaced by the multitude of paramilitary mercenary-type civilian contractors also had lots to do with his downfall. By March 2011 more Americans were employed by private civilian contractors like KBR, Blackwater and DynCorp (155,000) in Iraq and Afghanistan than Americans serving in military uniform (145,000).  By March 2010, 27,000 armed private security contractors were in Iraq and Afghanistan. Largely under the radar this last decade, General Petraeus changed how the US fights its modern wars. Because civilian contractors earn five to ten times or more than US soldiers, resentment and conflict have been a natural outcome. Complete lack of transparency and accountability have led to obscene wasteful misappropriation of taxpayer dollars as well as mercenary war crime atrocities – an all too familiar theme with both our military but especially civilian Department of Defense contractors, Blackwater the most notorious of all.

General Petraeus was in bed with these shady unscrupulous defense contractors, raising a growing concern from critics both inside and outside the beltway. We can in large part thank King David for the myriad of problems arising from blurred roles and boundaries as well as lack of oversight.

A case in point raising a few eyebrows is the cozy embedded relationship Petraeus had while Afghanistan War commander with married think tank couple Fred and Kimberly Kagan. They represent the hawkish power interests of the core Republicans in Congress. The general had them set up with offices in Afghanistan for almost a year at government expense, giving them free access to both him and his field commanders. As influential policymakers, they directly implemented change in how the military was waging war. They had been instrumental in both designing and backing Petraeus’ surges on both fronts, advocating a long term military presence in both nations.

Petraeus stretched the envelope like never before in promoting the corrupt, self-serving merger, blurring and obscuring all boundaries between the US armed forces, private civilian contractors that made $138 billion in Iraq alone, $39.5 going to top earner KBR (the former Halliburton subsidiary that Cheney CEO’d), and private think tanks. The current spreading malignancy that is the Empire’s military industrial complex, characterized by rampant waste, cronyism, fraud and grossest unaccountability, has never been more evident or extreme in its destructive power to destroy the planet. And the most famous general of them all has been its chief ring-leading, cheerleading war architect.

After Betray-us Petraeus was such an instrumental proponent in transforming the US military through outsourcing in addition to how America fights wars with the failed dogma of his authored Counterinsurgency manual (COIN), upon taking command of the CIA, he began arrogantly doing the same thing there and quickly made enemies. His micromanaging military style contrasted with the series of laissez faire CIA directors like Petraeus’ predecessor Leon Panetta. The CIA was used to operating freely.

Retired Navy Seal Brandon Webb and retired Green Beret Jack Murphy in their book Benghazi: The Definitive Report lay bold claim that disloyal deputies and bodyguards serving under General Petraeus leaked his affair to the CIA that then arranged circumstances for the affair to be investigated by the FBI. Jack Murphy told the Daily Mail, “It’s almost like they wanted him not just to resign but they wanted him kicked out of the political game for at least a number of years.”

Though numerous holes and loose ends make their report anything but “definitive,” their contention that professional spies who already did not trust their new boss might learn of his improper sexual liaison is a no-brainer. In fact the spy agency likely knew of his affair while he was still a general in Afghanistan, and that prior to Obama even selecting him as the next CIA chief, Obama knew too. It’s an insult to Americans’ intelligence to buy the official lie that the president never knew about it until after his reelection.

The CIA has a long tradition as an independent rogue element unto itself within the US government, very used to operating under little or no oversight with complete impunity and a bottomless deep pocket engaging in terrorism to wreak havoc all over the earth. Any time an outsider from the rival military is appointed its new director, a backlash amongst powerful senior intelligence officials is to be expected. And when the new boss treats seasoned CIA officers just like military subordinates, cutting them out of their sanctified intelligence gathering domain of control and outsourcing them with paramilitary operations that included prioritizing drone warfare, for every action, especially in the form of unwanted change imposed by a ruthless outsider, there is a counter-reaction. Obama selecting a war commander fresh from fighting two wars to CIA director to fight those and other low intensity wars with drones was also a direct move toward militarization of the CIA.

Ex-CIA officer Philip Giraldi stated that “former military officers are generally not liked at the CIA.” Despite acting as though he was there to learn his first days at Langley, it didn’t take long for Petraeus’ egotistical arrogance to quickly start rubbing the CIA rank and file the wrong way. His response to counterterrorism was to push drones and to utilize paramilitary contractors, replacing the way historic CIA operations of clandestine services were delivered. Ex-CIA officer Giraldi states, “Petraeus was particularly resented because he was perceived as moving forward with the paramilitarization of the agency.” Operating drones took up much of the budget at the expense of job layoffs. Senior staff were being pushed out to make room for younger remote controlled drone pilots and outsourced work to non-CIA contractors. Additionally, the general’s overbearing military style of micromanagement was neither welcomed nor trusted within the CIA halls of Langley, Virginia.

Petraeus would bristle every time others voiced a differing opinion or dare disagree. The megalomaniac had become so full of himself, consumed with his own power, for decades always getting his way no questions asked, his pompous, military brand of toxic leadership grated against the CIA’s bureaucratic culture of autonomy and independence. No longer having his trusted warrior-scholars nor his longtime nurse-maid aides catering to his every narcissistic whim, Petraeus suddenly found himself as a CIA civilian in a very different cultural environment, unsettled and uncomfortable as a fish out of water, outside his old familiar elements he’d grown so accustomed to over the previous 37 years. Observers at the CIA stated that he often ate alone. Reports of those close to him claim that he had changed, growing more distant from both family and friends. His inner crowd dwindled to very few confidantes.

Waging Empire wars for most of the last decade, he and his wife were rarely even together for any length of time. Holly Petraeus lamented how little of it they did have between them. She wished that he’d spent more time with his family, hoping his military retirement would afford him that opportunity. But the intimacy she’d been longing for that they once shared was already long gone.

Because David Petraeus and Paula Broadwell shared so much in common, both as fellow West Pointers (he from the Class of 1974 directly behind me and she from the Class of 1995) and Army officers as well sharing their passion for power and politics, throw in their mutual addiction as fitness fanatics and the familiar cliché scenario of the older gent plowing and sowing his seeds with the younger, attractive, adoring female, and you have the anatomy of their adulterous affair. Their increasing amount of alone time together that began in Afghanistan would only continue stateside. Spending time with his admiring mistress who idolized him helped Petraeus adjust to the culture shock of his new life as a civilian. With his “men-opausal” change of life from general to CIA director accompanied, soothed and stimulated by their romantic trysts, they probably wished she could continue writing his biography forever. But all good things must pass, and once the book was completed and published, their increased time apart had Paula’s radar nets spreading to places like Tampa, honing in on any and all real or imagined threats, specifically another young, attractive social climber similarly enraptured by the aphrodisiac of power – Jill Kelley. And the rest is history.

Just as it was all too obvious to those in the know in Afghanistan, the Petraeus-Broadwell romance had to be supplying both intrigue and fodder for the spy world gossip mill. And since Petraeus was alienating himself from those who thrive on the “information is power” game, a growing army of the CIA rank and file increasingly viewed their new director and his reckless indiscretions as a potential risk and breach of national security, in the end an expendable liability. The CIA could have just as easily tipped off the FBI, but hey, let’s leave it at jealous, catty, threatening anonymous emails from Paula that make for such juicier soap opera plot. Sleeping with his biographer was merely the front used to oust the unwelcomed intruder encroaching and making unwanted changes on unfriendly CIA turf.

Professor, writer and astute geopolitical analyst James Petras presented a convincing argument against the notion that one lone wolf, low level FBI agent in Frederick Humphries Jr., a known Islam-aphobic rogue with pro-Zionist leanings handed over his “evidence” to bring down two of the most powerful figures in US foreign policy. CIA Director Petraeus and CENTCOM and Afghan war commander General John Allen (Annapolis Class of 1976) were Empire militarists who embraced jihadist mercenaries in proxy wars like Libya and Syria and rightwing Islamic regimes in efforts to topple mostly secular Middle Eastern governments. We also know the FBI agent presented the damaging goods to recently voted-out-of-office, pro-Zionist ex-powerful Congressman Eric Cantor, who in turn submitted the dirt to FBI Director Mueller with the express order to act on the investigation or face his own Congressional inquisition.

What we also know is Petraeus saw Israel as a geopolitical liability to Empire aims in the Middle East in dealing with Arab states since the US is merged hip deep in Israeli shit. It slipped out in a Petraeus email a couple years ago that brought all kinds of Zionist heat down on him to have to beg Max Boot from the Council on Foreign Relations to smooth over the ruffled Jewish feathers.  The exclusive power of the Israeli lobby to dictate US global policy to the extent of potentially causing the downfall of America’s most powerful military leaders plausibly falls within the realm of possibilities if not probabilities.

Though an Iraq and Afghanistan war criminal many times over during his near four decade long military career, technically Petraeus never violated any criminal laws indulging in an extramarital affair. Since his extracurricular activity with Broadwell overseas was common knowledge to those around him, it’s virtually impossible for Obama not to have known about Petraeus’ adultery prior to selecting him as CIA director in July 2011. The salacious truth would have certainly been uncovered even without a thorough, comprehensive background check. Obama may well have chosen to cast Petraeus aside into the hidden shroud of CIA secrecy as an effective ploy to keep the war hero out of the limelight long enough for Obama to get reelected. The question then becomes if he already knew about the affair, is the most secretive president in US history cunning and devious enough to purposely set Petraeus up for a later timed public exposure once Obama secured his second term in office? In one fell swoop it would be a win-win for Barack Obama in 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 to eliminate their stiffest, most formidable competition…food for thought. And somebody out there knows the truth.

With Hillary providing the State Department cover in Benghazi for Petraeus’ CIA arms smuggling operation, making King David the CIA chief may have been the perfect masterful stroke to first set him up and then forever eliminate him as a Republican presidential rival. By bringing him on board to participate in their internationally illegal gun running operation from Libya through Turkey to fight against Assad in Syria, in order to protect themselves, all three – Obama, Hillary and Petraeus – would be sworn to secrecy. That’s why Petraeus has kept his mouth shut and Obama and Hillary have gone to such great lengths to silence the truth from ever coming out about Benghazi. As sinister psychopaths, their political lives and legacies depend on it. So with the damaging goods on Petraeus already secured, regardless of their covert Benghazi operation with or without the added complication of the ambassador and three other dead Americans, Obama and Hillary would have Petraeus’ power checkmated by simply exposing his affair at the optimally strategic time right after the November 2012 election as true cloak and dagger politics in twenty-first century America.

From February 2012 when the FBI allegedly began gathering Petraeus’ dirty laundry through intercepted emails, it’s extremely unlikely that the FBI director meeting weekly with Obama would either not know about the affair himself or choose to withhold that information from the president. It’s far more likely that the adultery was uncovered PRIOR to Petraeus even taking his new job. But ironically it was not his actual affair that did him in. It was far more plausible an increasing number of CIA personnel that the general was pissing off were responsible for bringing down King David. Busily outsourcing their work to privatized paramilitary contractors was the likely clincher, causing CIA with or without the CENTCOM groupie from Florida to invite rival FBI to look closer at his personal affairs.

In any event, fortunately for us, Petraeus will never become the third West Pointer to reach the White House. But as America’s most famous living general, as the shrewd opportunist he is, King David has nonetheless been cashing in on his fame, or more fittingly his infamy, earning millions with cushy creampuff university jobs and as a high profile figurehead to an elitist investment firm.

The David Petraeuses of the world are sadly the sycophantic type of leader who invariably ends up at the highest echelons of elitist power in America, be it in the military, politics, academia, legal or corporate world. And that’s because the psychopathic system that reeks of rotten moral decay is one and the same in all these intertwined and twisted worlds… a world where blind ambition means selling your soul to the devil, throwing your own mother under a bus and kissing the ass off those in power above you. Because those in power have played the game so zealously, simple law of attraction has them imbuing power through promotion to those deemed just like them. Few righteous souls with any moral integrity, character or conscience would ever enter this soulless world by choice because they’d refuse to play the game, and refusing to play the game is tantamount to suicide in their psychopathic world. It’s why I as a West Point cadet and officer clashed so much with the system and why people like Petraeus thrive so much in it.

David Petraeus may be the poster boy of our morally bankrupt system gone wrong, be it West Point, the Army or the United States of America, cranking out a methodically trained amoral, blindly ambitious, coldhearted, imperialistic, bureaucratic, ass-kissing politician-general for its leadership that systematically rises to the very pinnacle of this country’s power pyramid. And of course this case in point explains and richly illustrates more than anything else why the state of our world is so sadly and currently in such a heap of shit.

That’s why as a CFR-Bilderberg elitist, the war criminal will never see one day in jail nor ever be brought to trial as a potentially convicted felon. We all know that there exists two systems of justice in the United States, one for the privileged rich who simply buy their get-out-of-jail cards and the other system that will unjustly hang the rest of us for simply looking the wrong way or insisting on the truth be told. Though for sensationalism effect, all the mainstream press are currently reporting that Mr. Petraeus’ future hangs precariously in outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder’s hands, we the little people who know too well how the (in)justice system in America works, and therefore we already know the outcome. So the mainstream press can spare us the drama.

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a masters degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. He now concentrates on his writing.

The Pentagon has announced that depleted uranium (DU) munitions have not, and will not, be used by US aircraft in the conflict against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The policy U-turn contrasts with statements made over previous months, where Pentagon officials claimed that DU would be used if needed; the decision reflects a growing stigmatisation of the controversial weapons.

Since the decision to deploy 12 A-10 Thunderbolt II gunships to the Middle East as part of Operation Inherent Resolve last December, concerns have been raised that the US would once again use DU in Iraq – already the world’s most DU contaminated country. Just months before the deployment was announced, Iraq had called on the United Nations for technical assistance in dealing with the legacy of the 404,000kg DU that was fired by the US and UK in the conflicts in 1991 and 2003. Iraq also argued in favour of a global treaty ban on the weapons.

In spite of Iraq’s clear and highly visible position against DU weapons, in October a Pentagon spokesperson had said that 30mm DU ammunition would be loaded onto the A-10 gunships and used as needed: “If the need is to explode something — for example a tank — [depleted uranium] will be used.” However, in a remarkable change in policy and in response to questioning from Joe Dyke, Middle East editor of IRIN, the Pentagon has now confirmed that: “Combined Joint Task Force can confirm that US and Coalition aircraft have not been, and will not be, using depleted uranium munitions in Iraq or Syria during Operation Inherent Resolve.”

PAX’s Wim Zwijnenburg welcomed the US U-turn, arguing that the conflict is complex enough:

“The further use of these chemically toxic and radioactive munitions would have been yet another burden on the Iraqi population. They are already facing a humanitarian crisis and have grave concerns over the health legacy of historic DU use. The Iraqi government is still struggling with the clean-up of past US DU use, with Iraqi workers and civilians at risk of exposure.”

A-10 being loaded with 30mm PGU-13/B high explosive incendiary (HEI) ammunition in Afghanistan. It can fire either HEI alone, or its standard combat load, which is a mixture of HEI and DU armour piercing incendiary (API) ammunition. It cannot select between ammunition types once airborne, one of the reasons why DU has historically been used against a far wider range of targets than just tanks.

Depleted uranium isn’t becoming any more acceptable

Since last October, campaigners and parliamentarians in Belgium, the Netherlands and UK have urged their governments to challenge the US on the issue. The decision to deploy the A-10s came days before 150 countries backed a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for international assistance to states affected by DU and for greater transparency over past use to allow clean-up.

ICBUW Coordinator Doug Weir said;

“The overwhelming majority of states have grave concerns over the acceptability of DU weapons. ICBUW believes that this U-turn by the US reflects the growing global stigmatisation of DU. Coalition partners are responsible for the actions of their peers and it would have been unthinkable for the US to once again use DU on the territory of a country that has so recently called for a global ban on the weapons.”

Fears that DU would be used in the conflict with IS had recently emerged in the besieged Syrian town of Raqqa, where concern has been expressed over the long-term public health and environmental legacy of Coalition’s use of munitions.

From 2011, and as part of ICBUW, PAX has had a programme in Iraq studying the use and impact of DU. PAX has demonstrated the complexity of identifying, assessing and cleaning-up DU-contaminated military scrap metal: a problem that remains even a decade after the conflict. Iraq’s effort to reduce the risks DU poses to civilians continue to be hampered by the US refusal to hand over firing coordinates, in spite of calls to do so by a US Congressman and US civil rights organisations.

The Pentagon statement referred only to the use of DU by coalition aircraft. In the event that US land forces are employed in the conflict, there remains a risk that DU may be used by US armoured vehicles and tanks.

On 2 March 2015, we  sent a ‘Cease and Desist Order’ to the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (also copied to the Chancery Department, Royal Courts of Justice, London), under Article 15 of her jurisdiction, and in relation to the notification and claim submitted in August 2014 for the prevention of genocide and other grave crimes against humanity against Palestinians, with particular reference to:

1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide in relation to Israelis’ actions and continuing against Palestinians (indigenous population)

General Assembly’s Uniting for Peace Resolution of 1950

Articles 15, 5, 6, 7, 8, 27, 28 and 29 of the Statute of Rome

This claim was accepted on 11 August 2014 with the following reference: OTP-CR-249/14. Should you wish to submit evidence, please do so under this reference, or start your own action under Article 15 (and 15.3, if you have been a victim of Israeli crimes against humanity, including collective punishment).

This ‘Cease and Desist Order’ was also issued in view of Israeli stated policies (for instance “Dahiya Doctrine” to destroy whole neighbourhoods and civilians, as identified in the Goldstone Report of 2009, and for which the Palestinian Authority requested an investigation by the ICC in 2009), and Knesset speakers’ remarks about the containment and extermination of Palestinians.

The letter and text of the Order reads as follows:

Dear Prosecutor at the ICC

Further to our application for urgent relief for continuing crimes against humanity, and our 23-page claim (4 Aug 2014), our 51-page claim (8 Aug 2014), our request for urgent disclosure (17 Aug 2014), and our details and evidence of Zionist leaders’ (declared) genocidal intent and acts against the indigenous population of Palestine before the creation of the State of Israel, and most recently with the ‘Dahiya Doctrine’ (“the application of disproportionate force and causing of great damage and destruction to civilian property and infrastructure, and suffering to civilian populations”: UN Commission for Human Rights, 2009) ordered and carried out on besieged and captive Gazans from 8 July 2014 with damage and destruction not remedied, and the announcement of more US funding to aid and abet such massive, systematic and sustained CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY as have been COMMISSIONED BY ISRAELI OFFICIALS AND COMMANDERS AS HAVE BEEN HAPPENING SINCE 1947, and with preparations once again afoot for another genocidal attack against besieged and captive Palestinians, we seek the following CEASE AND DESIST ORDER with immediate effect:

1.Immediate lifting of the Blockade and siege against captive civilians in Gaza. This blockade constitutes collective punishment and is a prima facie GRAVE crime against humanity.

2.Prevention of all targeted assassinations of Palestinians (the indigenous population), including minors, and of people assisting Palestinians. We further seek accountability, punishment and redresses for such grave crimes against humanity.

3.Prevention of the targeted harassment, injuring and killing of Palestinians, such as fishermen and farmers who are going about their lawful and necessary work. We further seek accountability, punishment and redresses for such grave crimes against humanity.

4.Prevention of the kidnapping of Palestinians including minors and of people assisting Palestinians. In Feb 2015, 285 Palestinians have been kidnapped. We further seek accountability, punishment and redresses for such grave crimes against humanity.

5.Prevention of the extreme targeting, punishment and collective punishment of Palestinians including minors who throw stones as a means of self-defence against an occupying and brutal and fully armed force. We further seek accountability, punishment and redresses for such grave crimes against humanity.

6.Prevention of torture of Palestinians including minors. We further seek accountability, punishment and redresses for such grave crimes against humanity.

7.Prevention of inhumane, degrading and humiliating treatment of Palestinians, including minors, and of people assisting them. We further seek accountability, punishment and redresses for such grave crimes against humanity.

8.Prevention of theft of Palestinian resources, including water. We draw particular attention to the area of Salfit and the way this theft for the 23 illegal settlements surrounding it, has resulted in ethnic cleansing and pollution of this area of fruit plantations and natural beauty. We further seek redresses for such grave crimes against humanity which have deprived Palestinians of their houses, farming lands, and severed centuries’ old communities.

9.Prevention of further construction of the Separation Wall and an Order to demolish it. This Wall was deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004. We further seek accountability, punishment redresses for such grave crimes against humanity which have deprived Palestinians of their houses, farming lands, and severed centuries’ old communities.

10.Prevention of all settlement expansion. Such expansion has long been regarded as illegal under international law. This has accelerated tremendously since the Palestinian Authority agreed to US-brokered peace talks from 2013 onwards, and especially since the “truce” of August 2014. We further seek accountability, punishment redresses for such grave crimes against humanity which have deprived Palestinians of their houses, farming lands, and severed centuries’ old communities.

11.Prevention of all house demolitions against the Palestinians. Such collective punishment is deemed a prima facie crime and also falls within the ICC’s jurisdiction. We further seek accountability, punishment and redresses for such grave crimes against humanity.

12.Prevention of violations of the Aqsa Mosque. There is a declared and commissioned policy to destroy the Mosque. Palestinians are wrongfully prevented from or are severely restricted from worshipping there.

Yours Sincerely
Dr Joanne Maria McNally
LAWYER

BRIEF SUMMARY OF GRAVE CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

War crimes

(Please see our evidence submitted from 2 Aug 2014 onwards, and also, below, that of Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and past President of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general for external communications of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, and the U.S. representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists.)

(1) Willful killing: Israeli forces have killed nearly 2,000 Palestinians (more than 400 children and over 80% civilians). Israel used 155-millimeter artillery, which, according to Human Rights Watch, is “utterly inappropriate in a densely populated area, because this kind of artillery is considered accurate if it lands anyplace within a 50-meter radius.”

(2) Willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health: Nearly 10,000 people, 2,500 of them children, have been wounded. Naban Abu Shaar told the Daily Beast that the dead bodies from what appeared to be a “mass execution” in Khuza’a looked like they were “melted” and were piled on top of each other; assault rifle bullet casings found in the house were marked “IMI” (Israel Military Industries). UNICEF said the Israeli offensive has had a “catastrophic and tragic impact” on children in Gaza; about 373,000 children have had traumatic experiences and need psychological help. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said: “There’s a public health catastrophe going on. You know, most of the medical facilities in Gaza are non-operational.”

(3) Unlawful and wanton, extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity: Tens of thousands of Palestinians have lost their homes. More than 1,300 buildings were destroyed and 752 were severely damaged. Damage to sewer and water infrastructure has affected two-thirds of Gazans. On July 20, Israeli forces virtually flattened the small town of Khuza’a; one man counted 360 shell attacks in one hour. Reconstruction of Gaza is estimated to cost $6 billion. Israel shrunk Gaza’s habitable land mass by 44 percent, establishing a 3 km “no-go” zone for Palestinians; 147 square miles of land will be compressed into 82 square miles. Oxfam described the level of destruction as “outrageous … much worse than anything we have seen in previous [Israeli] military operations.”

(4) Willfully depriving a prisoner of war or a civilian the rights of fair and regular trial: Nearly 2,000 Palestinians were arrested by Israeli forces during July 2014, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Center for Studies. Prisoners include 15 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, about 240 children, dozens of women, journalists, activists, academics and 62 former prisoners previously released in a prisoner exchange. Israeli forces executed many prisoners after arrest, either by directly firing on them, refusing to allow treatment or allowing them to bleed to death. More than 445 prisoners are being held without charge or trial under administrative detention.

(5) Intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population, civilian objects, or humanitarian vehicles, installations and personnel: “The civilian population in the Gaza Strip is under direct attack,” reads a joint declaration of over 150 international law experts. Israeli forces violated the principle of “distinction,” which forbids deliberate attacks on civilians or civilian objects. Israeli forces bombed 142 schools (89 run by the UN), including six UN schools in which civilians were taking refuge. Israeli forces shot and killed fleeing civilians (warnings, which must effectively give civilians time to flee before bombing, do not relieve Israel from its legal obligations not to target civilians). Israeli forces repeatedly bombed Gaza’s only power plant and other infrastructure, which are “beyond repair.” Israeli forces bombed one-third of Gaza’s hospitals, 14 primary healthcare clinics and 29 ambulances. At least five medical staff were killed and tens of others were injured.

(6) Intentionally launching attacks with knowledge they will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or long-term severe damage to the natural environment, if they are clearly excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage: The principle of “proportionality” forbids disproportionate and excessive civilian casualties compared to the claimed military advantage gained in the attack. The Dahiye Doctrine directly violates this principle. Responding to Hamas’ rockets with 155-millimeter artillery is disproportionate. Although nearly 2,000 Palestinians (over 80 percent civilians) have been killed, 67 Israelis (all but three of them soldiers) have been killed. The coordinates of all UN facilities were repeatedly communicated to the Israeli forces; they nevertheless bombed them multiple times. Civilians were attacked in Shuja’iyyah market.

(7) Attacking or bombarding undefended towns, villages, dwellings or buildings, or intentionally attacking religious, educational and medical buildings, which are not military objectives: On July 20, Israeli forces virtually flattened the small town of Khuza’a; one man counted 360 shell attacks in one hour. Israeli forces bombed 142 schools (89 run by the UN), one-third of Gaza’s hospitals, 14 primary healthcare clinics, and 29 ambulances. Israeli shelling completely destroyed 41 mosques and partially destroyed 120 mosques.

Genocide

(a) With the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group: Palestinians, including primarily civilians, and Palestinian infrastructure necessary to sustain life were deliberately targeted by Israeli forces.

(b) The commission of any of the following acts

(i) killing members of the group: Israeli forces killed nearly 2,000 Palestinians.
(ii) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group: Israeli forces wounded 10,000 Palestinians.
(iii) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction in whole or in part: Israeli forces devastated Gaza’s infrastructure, knocking out Gaza’s only power plant, and destroying homes, schools, buildings, mosques and hospitals.
Crimes against humanity

(A) The commission of murder as part of a widespread or systematic attack against any civilian population: Israeli forces relentlessly bombed Gaza for one month, killing nearly 2,000 Palestinians, more than 80 percent of whom were civilians. Israeli forces intentionally destroyed Gaza’s infrastructure, knocking out Gaza’s only power plant, and destroying homes, schools, buildings, mosques and hospitals.

(B) Persecution against a group or collectivity based on its political, racial, national, ethnic or religious character, as part of a widespread or systematic attack against any civilian population: Israeli forces killed, wounded, summarily executed, and administratively detained Palestinians, Hamas forces and civilians alike. Israel forces intentionally destroyed the infrastructure of Gaza, populated by Palestinians. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said: “the massive death and destruction in Gaza have shocked and shamed the world.” He added the repeated bombing of UN shelters facilities in Gaza was “outrageous, unacceptable and unjustifiable.”

(C) The crime of apartheid (inhumane acts committed in the context of an institutional regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another racial group, with the intent to maintain that regime): Ali Hayek, head of Gaza’s federation of industries representing 3,900 businesses that employ 35,000 people, said: “After 30 days of war, the economic situation has become, like, dead. It seems the occupation intentionally destroyed these vital factories that constitute the backbone of the society.” Israel maintains an illegal barrier wall that encroaches on Palestinian territory and builds illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands. Israel keeps Gazans caged in what many call “the world’s largest open air prison.” Israel controls all ingress and egress to Gaza, limits Gazans’ access to medicine, subjects Palestinians to arbitrary arrest, expropriates their property, maintains separate areas and roads, segregated housing, different legal and educational systems for Palestinians and Jews and prevents mixed marriages. Only Jews, not Palestinians, have the right to return to Israel-Palestine.

Collective punishment

Although the Rome Statute does not include the crime of collective punishment, it is considered a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which constitutes a war crime. Collective punishment means punishing a civilian for an offense he or she has not personally committed; it forbids reprisals against civilians and their property (civilian objects).

Ostensibly to rout out Hamas fighters, Israel has wreaked unprecedented devastation on the people of Gaza, killing nearly 2,000 people (more than 80 percent of them civilians) and destroying much of the infrastructure of Gaza. This constitutes collective punishment.

On August 5, 2014, veteran Israeli military advisor Giora Eiland advocated collective punishment of Gaza’s civilian population, saying: “In order to guarantee our interests versus the other side’s demands, we must avoid the artificial, wrong and dangerous distinction between the Hamas people, who are ‘the bad guys,’ and Gaza’s residents, which are allegedly ‘the good guys.'” That is precisely the strategy Israel has employed during Operation Protective Edge.

Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands also constitutes collective punishment. Israel maintains effective control over Gaza’s land, airspace, seaport, electricity, water, telecommunications and population registry. Israel deprives Gazans of food, medicine, fuel and basic services.

 Israel is a rogue terror state by any standard. No amount of speechmaking changes reality. 

They want supreme hegemonic regional control. They’re willing to wage genocidal wars to achieve objectives – including use of nuclear, chemical, biological and other banned weapons.

Their Machiavellian extremism threatens world peace and stability. Netanyahu is the tip of the iceberg. 

Netanyahu came to Washington to convince Congress, the US public and his own population about a nonexistent Iranian threat.

He knows Iran threatens no one. Its nuclear program is peaceful. It has no military component. His own Mossad says so. So does US intelligence annually.

Claiming an existential Iranian threat is a ruse – a Big Lie. None exists. Netanyahu is a serial liar. He wants pro-Western stooge governance replacing Iranian sovereign independence.

He’s willing to massacre millions of Iranians to rule the region unchallenged. His madness could launch nuclear war.

At the same time, his goon squads terrorize Palestinians daily.

Every day is Kristallnacht in Palestine. So-called Israeli security forces terrorize Palestinians with impunity. So do radicalized settlers with full state support and encouragement.

Gaza remains lawlessly besieged. An Israeli caused humanitarian disaster worsens daily.

West Bank and East Jerusalem Palestinian communities are virtual war zones – subjected to daily terrorizing incursions.

Fear is pervasive. Collective punishment is official Israeli policy. So is institutionalized racism worse than anything experienced in apartheid South Africa.

Peaceful public demonstrations are brutally attacked. Free expression and movement are prohibited.

Population centers are isolated. Borders are closed. Militarized occupation prohibits normal daily life.

Palestinians face rascist discrimination, land theft, bulldozed homes, regular terror attacks, targeted killings, mass arrests, wrongful imprisonments, torture, punitive taxes, impoverishment, indentured servitude, ethnic cleansing and slow-motion genocide.

Palestinians wanting to live free on their own land in their own country are called terrorists. Fishermen are attacked at sea.

So are farmers working their land. Their crops, livestock and orchards are lawlessly destroyed.

Israeli goon squads shoot Palestinian children for target practice. Fundamental civil and human rights are denied.

Few services are provided. Vital ones are lacking or inadequate. Palestinian lawmakers are imprisoned for belonging to the wrong party.

Israeli democracy is pure fantasy. None whatever exists. When Israelis vote on March 17, embedded power will emerge victorious.

Business as usual will continue.

The whole world knows. Western leaders able to change things sit on their hands and do nothing.

Washington funds Israel’s killing machine with billions of dollars annually, the latest weapons and technology, and bipartisan endorsement of its worst crimes.

Before Netanyahu left for Washington, Israel cut off power for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians twice in the dead of winter.

It warned about further outages if PA officials don’t pay millions of dollars in outstanding debt.

Impossible because Israel won’t release around $250 million in tax revenues belonging to Palestine – collective punishment for joining the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Israel punitively opened dams near Gaza’s border. Flooding caused hundreds of Palestinians to flee water levels more than three meters deep.

Many others were affected – compounding the humanitarian disaster from Israel’s summer war.

Media scoundrels ignore a catastrophe affecting hundreds of thousands of Palestinians on their own with virtually no promised aid delivered.

While Netanyahu ranted to Congress, his goon squads destroyed thousands of acres of wheat, barley and other Bedouin Rakhama village crops.

Tractors protected by killer cops uprooted privately owned Palestinian land. One resident spoke for others saying:

“This is vandalism through which they plan to displace the Bedouins from the Negev so as to create a Jewish state free of Arabs.”

“(M)y message to them is that if you turn over the land a million times, and if you demolish our homes a thousand times we will continue to live on this land and won’t allow anybody to take it from us.”

Area bedouins were given land to compensate for forced 1954 displacement. Israeli agreements aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.

Bedouins live in so-called unrecognized villages – without essential services Israel refuses to provide. It wants Arabs displaced for exclusive Jewish development.

It uses various means to remove them – including declaring privately owned Palestinian land closed military zones.

On Tuesday, radicalized settlers attacked Palestinian MK Hanin Zoabi. She was speaking at Ramat Gan college near Tel Aviv.

Lunatic Israelis attacked her with bottles and milk spilled on her. She sustained moderate injuries.

Reports indicated Israel’s extremist right-wing ordered the attack. Without security intervention, she could have been killed.

On March 17, she’s running for reelection. On February 18, Israel’s High Court overturned a right-wing Knesset ruling disqualifying her from general elections.

She’s condemned for participating in the May 2010 Mavi Marmara humanitarian Gaza mission. Israeli fascists call her a traitor for supporting right over wrong.

On March 2, a B’Tselem press release headlined “Incident in which soldiers set dogs on Palestinian youth was part of official policy.”

Israeli goon squads routinely use vicious attack dogs against unarmed defenseless Palestinian civilians.

B’Tselem published video evidence “of two soldiers from the IDF dog unit filmed by another soldier after they had set dogs on a Palestinian boy.”

“The footage was first posted on former MK Michael Ben Ari’s Facebook page, but has since been removed from there.”

“The military’s official response read: ‘Upon receipt of the footage, the Commander of the Airborne and Special Training Center ordered an immediate internal inquiry into the incident.’ ”

” ‘Upon completion of this inquiry, conclusions will be drawn and the necessary steps will be taken to prevent such incidents from recurring.’ ”

So-called Israeli inquiries are whitewashes by any standard.

B’Tselem “documented and publicized this incident about two months ago,” it said.

Video evidence reveals “standard” IDF practice. Attack dogs are unleashed. They’re ordered against Palestinians. They savagely bite into human flesh until handlers order release.

Sometimes dogs maintain killer grips, said B’Tselem. Handlers have to taser them to release victims.

Previous responses to B’Tselem complaints indicate so-called inquiries focus “only on how the dogs were used, and not on whether they should have been used at all,” the organization said.

It wants all dog attacks stopped. Its only response gotten in 18 months is that this type unacceptable viciousness “is under review.”

Israel continues numerous terror tactics against Palestinians no just society would tolerate. The incident in question occurred on December 23, 2014.

Palestinians threw stones in response to a confrontation Israeli soldiers initiated.

An eyewitness said they unleashed attack dogs on Palestinian youths. One dog savagely bit 16-year-old Hamzeh Abu Hashem.

He required hospitalization. His family said he was arrested, handcuffed, removed from the hospital and taken to Ofer Prison.

B’Tselem said he was sentenced to six months imprisonment. Similar incidents occur often.

Israel uses killer attack dogs as terrorizing weapons against Palestinians for virtually any reason or none at all.

Netanyahu’s congressional rant didn’t explain. Supportive House and Senate members didn’t ask. Or express any outrage against Israeli viciousness.

One rogue state supports another.

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

He has been busy, drunk with that transformation that afflicts Israeli politicians when touring the United States.  Deflecting and parrying while stabbing and thrusting, he should never have given an address to Congress in these circumstances.  Cold water has been poured on it from high above.  There were promises that certain members of Congress would not attend. 

Instead, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu was feted a third time, equal in number with Britain’s Winston Churchill, something which will no doubt be emblazoned on some artefact. While Haaretz (Mar 3) noted that Netanyahu was the “Superman at AIPAC” he was “no Churchill.”  While lacking Churchillian, brandy fuelled gravity, Netanyahu’s puritanical address was certainly grave, a picture of the “Likud/Republican position on negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program”.[1]

The motivation for Netanyahu’s lecturing blast was one-dimensionally simple. At no point should a nuclear deal of any substance be made with Iran, run by deceptive, orientalised savages who so happen to have discovered Twitter. “Iran’s supreme leader… spews the oldest hatred of anti-Semitism with the newest technology. He tweets that Israel… must be destroyed.”

That way lies calamity, a self-boxing suggestion spouting the idea that doom is going to arise, less from the mullahs than the frothing patriots in Israel itself.  “No deal is better than a bad deal.  Well, this is a bad deal.  It’s a very bad deal.  We’re better off without it.”  Such atavistic presumptions are not merely dangerous but undermining in the diplomatic theatre. It is far better to term it anti-diplomacy – “Do what I say, or else.”

Cold shoulders and distance from Iran is also suggested.  Leave the negotiating room with disdain. Abandon talks. Let the Iranians work out that they are unpopular, that they will have to capitulate and dissolve into fit of regime changing ecstasy.  This self-defeating point encourages Iran to go on the vigilante pathway to obtaining a nuclear weapon, and the image of a Freudian death wish comes to the fore.  We dare them, and hope they do not disappoint us.

Then came the conceptual deficiencies in the argument, what Matt Duss, head of the Foundation for Middle East termed an “Islamist Voltron Theory.”[2]  Central to it is conflation, involving the false lumping together of interests.  It follows that constellation of views that all who are against Israel’s own policies are somehow conniving together in a secret boardroom to plot the fall of the Jewish state. “When it comes to Iran and ISIS, the enemy of your enemy is your enemy.”  This is also the simplifying idiocy of Bush-speak: Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda were mortal enemies but accomplices at the same time.

In the opinion of the Washington Post’s Paul Waldman, the speech “may well have done Netanyahu and his American supporters far more harm than good” (Washington Post, Mar 3).  In the views of opposition head Isaac Herzog, who is gunning for Netanyahu’s position as leader of the Zionist Union Party in the elections this month, it was futile nonsense.  While Netanyahu might ventilate, “tonight’s speech will not influence the deal or Iran’s desire for a nuclear weapon.” Cooperation with the White House, he insisted, was vital (Defense News, Mar 3).[3]

Democratic Leader, Nancy Pelosi, had to do the dance of diplomatic distance – acknowledge the ties with Israel while dumping on its belligerent leader.[4]  All could “agree” that “a nuclear armed Iran is unacceptable to both countries.”  Israel stood “as the greatest political achievement of the 20^th century,” with which the US would “always have an unshakable commitment” to.

But the Israeli prime minister’s speech was dripping with “condescension toward our knowledge of the threat posed by Iran and our broader commitment to preventing further nuclear proliferation.”  All bases, in other words, had to be covered.

The other side of this roughly minted coin of non-diplomacy is Netanyahu’s own intelligence services, who continue to provide a different story to rock the boat. It is not one the Prime Minister is keen to accept, since it portrays an Iran that is less barking mad than he would like.  This unfolded in 2012, when he warned members gathered at the UN General Assembly that Iran was some 70 per cent on the pathway to finalising “plans to build a nuclear weapon”.

The language of apocalypse was mandatory fare then, as it is now.

“By next spring, at most by next summer, at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage.  From there, it’s only a few months, possibly a few weeks, before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb.  A red line should be drawn right here, before – before Iran completes the second stage of the nuclear enrichment necessary to make a bomb.”

That same year, former Mossad chief Meir Dagan suggested that his services, and those of the Prime Minister, were not ad idem.  This was hardly surprising – their estimates did not tally with Netanyahu’s doomsday manual.  “An attack on Iran before you are exploring all other approaches is not the right way.”[5]

The release of cables by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit revealed a continuing scepticism towards Tehran’s designs.  A report by Mossad to their South African peers in October 2012 suggested that Iran was “not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons.” Scientists were “working on closing gaps in areas that appear legitimate such as enrichment reactors.”

Mossad’s report did not rule out the prospects that some weapons capability might, from a certain vantage point, be acquired.  (The need to satisfy superiors can be endemic.)  The greatest misunderstanding underlying the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty regime lies precisely in misunderstanding the dual nature of nuclear energy – hence the caution.  Undertaking such activities “will reduce the time required to produce weapons from the time the instruction is actually given.”

Noam Chomsky prefers the geopolitical implication of Netanyahu’s stonewalling behaviour.  “They have a common interest in ensuring there is no regional force that can serve as any kind of deterrent to Israeli and US violence, the major violence in the region.”[6]  Keep the fires with Iran burning, both within Israeli and US Republican camps, and the insurance policy for violence will be assured.  In President Barack Obama’s own words, “The prime minister didn’t offer any viable alternatives.”

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

US-NATO Preparing for War Against Russia: Holding Largest Arctic War Games in Decade; Training and Arming Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine By Stop NATO, March 04, 2015

Despite Russian Warnings, US Will Deploy a Battalion to Ukraine by the End of the Week By Tyler Durden, March 04, 2015

“Before this week is up, we’ll be deploying a battalion… to the Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces for the fight that’s taking place,” stated US 173rd Airborne Brigade Commander Colonel Michael Foster said at the Center for Strategic and International…

Netanyahu, ‘Censored Voices,’ and the False Narrative of Self-Defense By Marjorie Cohn, March 04, 2015

An Israeli tank column moves across the desert in the 1967 War. (Archive photo)

On March 3rd, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued an impassioned plea to Congress to protect Israel by opposing diplomacy with Iran. Referring to “the remarkable…

Benjamin Netanyahu and Iran’s Nonexistent Nuclear Weapon: The Boy Who Cried Wolf By SM Gibson, March 04, 2015

In Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress today, he exclaimed, “Iran could soon be armed with intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear bombs.” This declaration that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon is nothing new for the…

The Ultimate War Crime: America’s “Global War on Terrorism” By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 04, 2015

This text will be presented at the Kuala Lumpur International Conference on The New World Order, A Recipe for War or Peace Perdana Global Peace Foundation Putrajaya Convention Centre, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 9  March 2015 – Introduction The Obama administration…

The Struggle Against the Ebola Pandemic Continues. Triggers Economic and Social Instability in West Africa By Abayomi Azikiwe, March 04, 2015

African leaders, healthcare professionals, international humanitarian organizations and others have praised the work done in battling the latest and most deadly outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). In Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, the epicenters of the latest outbreak of…

Netanyahu’s Speech to the US Congress Really Helps Obama against Iran By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, March 04, 2015

A lot of focus has been made about the tensions between US President Barack Obama’s administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The tensions pivot on Iranian-US nuclear negations and Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of the US Congress…

Berlin and Paris look East: How Close are we to a Common Economic Space? By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, March 04, 2015

The Eurasian Economic Union is a reality that may end up costing the US its “perch” in Eurasia’s western periphery as a Common Economic Space is formed. Former US national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski averred the following in 1997:  “But…

Below is a list of article excerpts from various sources published on Stop NATO.

Global Research does not endorse the points of view presented by these articles, most of which consist of war propaganda portraying Russia as the aggressor. The goal is to provide information on NATO’s ongoing war preparations.

For more information, visit Stop NATO.

Enhanced Partners: Ukraine To Participate In NATO Exercise

“Before this week is up, we’ll be deploying a battalion… to the Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces for the fight that’s taking place,” stated US 173rd Airborne Brigade Commander Colonel Michael Foster said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC on Monday. Despite earlier warnings from Russia (and claims that NATO had not agreed to any such foreign ‘boots on the ground’ action’), Sputnik News reports, Foster added, “what we’ve got laid out is six United States companies that will be training six Ukrainian companies throughout the summer.“

This comes a week after PM David Cameron confirmed Britain will be sending 75 military personnel to help combat Russian military aggression.

Despite earlier reports from Russia’s NATO envoy that, as TASS reports,

NATO has taken no decisions on sending British or any other instructors to Ukraine, Russia’s Ambassador to the North Atlantic Alliance Alexander Grushko said on Monday.

“NATO has taken no decisions on sending instructors,” he told the Rossiya 24 television channel. “NATO is implementing the decisions that were taken at the political level at the Wales summit in September 2014.”

Moscow will take all measures, including military-technical, to neutralize possible threat from NATO presence in Ukraine, he added.

It seems it is happening, as Sputnik News reports,

The United States will deploy personnel by the end of this week to train the Ukrainian national guard, US 173rd Airborne Brigade Commander Colonel Michael Foster said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC on Monday.

“Before this week is up, we’ll be deploying a battalion minus… to the Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces for the fight that’s taking place,” Foster stated. “What we’ve got laid out is six United States companies that will be training six Ukrainian companies throughout the summer.”

…

The current plan is for US forces to stay six months, he said, and noted there have been discussions about how to increase the duration and the scope of the training mission.

The current channels for military training set up between Ukraine and the United States would not be used for transferring defensive lethal aid if the United States decided to provide arms to Ukraine, Foster told Sputnik on Monday.

“It would go through something separate… We would not funnel the lethal aid or arms through that [training] event, we would use a secondary method for that,” Foster said, adding that a completely separate process is preferable.

Here is the full interview with Colonel Foster: “If Russia will invade Ukraine, why would we not think they will invade the US next?”

At 14:45, Colonel Foster discusses the deployment of US troops to Ukraine…

Of course, we already knew American military boots were on the ground in east Ukraine…

But this seems like a direct aim at Putin after the war-mongery rhetoric this morning.

In Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress today, he exclaimed, “Iran could soon be armed with intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear bombs.” This declaration that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon is nothing new for the Prime Minister.

In 1992, Netanyahu, who was then a member of Israeli Parliament, said that Iran was only three to five years away from developing and securing nuclear arms. He also urged the United States to intervene to prevent such an occurrence from transpiring. Netanyahu stated that Iran’s race to obtain nuclear weapons needed to be “uprooted by an international front headed by the US.”

Iran did not acquire nuclear weapons within three to five years.

In his book, Fighting Terrorism — which was released in 1995 — Netanyahu wrote that Iran was “five to seven years at most” from possessing an operational nuclear facility. Seven years has come and gone, and yet Iran has still not accomplished this objective.

Netanyahu solicited the United States to become involved in Iran’s affairs once again in 1996. Speaking to the US Congress, the newly elected Prime Minister said, “the international community must reinvigorate its efforts to isolate [Iran], and prevent them from acquiring atomic power.” He then added, “Only the United States can lead this vital international effort to stop the nuclearization of terrorist states. But the deadline for attaining this goal is getting extremely close.”

It has been 19 years since Netanyahu proclaimed that Iran’s goal of procuring atomic arms was “extremely close.” They still do not have these arms or even the capabilities to produce such weapons.

Netanyahu made this warning again in 2009. While speaking to a Congressional delegation visiting Israel, he complained that Iran’s “tentacles” were choking Israel. He also added, that according to “our experts”, Iran was only 1-2 years away from gaining nuclear devices.

2012’s assertion that Iran was on the cusp of becoming nuclear was possibly Netanyahu’s most hyperbolic and vehement to date. In an address to the United Nations General Assembly, he said “it’s only a few months, possibly a few weeks before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb.” He also went on at great length to paint Iran as the most menacing force on the planet. Phrases such as “world’s most dangerous terrorist regime” and “driven by a lust for violence” were used by Netanyahu to describe the Iranians.

The weeks and months that Netanyahu referred to in his UN oration have passed us by, and yet Iran has still not gained these nuclear armaments.

In opposition to the multitude of claims by the MIT graduate and Israeli Prime Minister, Reuters  reported in 2012 that,

“The United States, European allies and even Israel generally agree on three things about Iran’s nuclear program: Tehran does not have a bomb, has not decided to build one, and is probably years away from having a deliverable nuclear warhead.”

In fact, even the Mossad — Israel’s intelligence agency — contradicted and discredited Netanyahu’s claims in 2012. The intelligence group reported that Iran is “not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons”according to leaked documents.

In today’s speech, the Prime Minister — who also happens to receive over90% of his campaign funding from the United States — also voiced in his address to Congress that Iran was “gobbling up all the nations.” It should be noted that Iran, a nation that is by no means a beacon of freedom, has not actually invaded any nation — unless provoked — in modern times.

Given Netanyahu’s rhetoric over the past 20 years, if Iran were ever actually moments away from “going nuclear,” how could anyone believe him?

You can watch today’s address by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the United States Congress in its entirety below.

As well as killing more than 2,200 Palestinians and causing huge economic and environmental damage, the Israeli military left messages on the walls of Palestinian homes they occupied along Gaza’s boundary with Israel last summer.

On 20 July, at the height of the 51-day assault, Israel launched a ground invasion into Gaza’s boundary areas that lasted fifteen days.

A massive bombing campaign reduced to rubble wide swaths of the Shujaiya district of Gaza City.

Israeli forces occupied Shujaiya homes, transforming bedrooms and kitchens into military outposts from which snipers carried out killings of Palestinian civilians. The slaying of Shujaiya resident Salem Shamaly, gunned down by an Israeli sniper while searching for his family, was caught on video.

Several miles south of Shujaiya, Israeli forces besieged and invaded the village of Khuzaa near Khan Younis. Over a twelve-day period, Israeli forces bombed mosques and homes, wiping out families taking shelter inside, and executed villagers as they fled the attacks.

Among numerous atrocities, Israeli soldiers brutally executed six resistance fighters in a home, slashing them with knives used for slaughtering chickens and firing on them with bullets and grenades, before setting the corpses ablaze.

During subsequent ceasefires, thousands of Palestinians who had fled returned to their bombed-out neighborhoods. Amid the mass destruction, numerous homes that stood after the bombing campaign were littered with evidence of the presence of Israeli soldiers. Discarded food rations, used medical supplies, sandbags and hundreds of bullet casings of various calibers were scattered about.

The following photographs were taken in August 2014.

Hebrew-language translation by Dena Shunra.

Dan Cohen is a journalist and Palestine-based correspondent for Mondoweiss. Follow him on Twitter: @dancohen3000.

Afghan government security forces and affiliated paramilitary units, developed under the US occupation, are engaged in a daily, ongoing campaign of terror against the country’s civilian population, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released this week, “Today We Shall All Die.”

The puppet regime in Kabul, established by the US and NATO powers after the overthrow of the Taliban government in October 2001, presides over a web of criminalized security forces and politicized crime syndicates that oppress and plunder the population, all while drawing on a steady stream of resources from Europe and North America, HRW found.

“The administration of former President Hamid Karzai installed many powerful warlords and failed to confront others, while many others have been funded by and worked alongside international forces, further entrenching them politically into the fabric of Afghan society. In this way impunity in Afghanistan is both a domestic and foreign problem for which the solution resides not only in Kabul but in foreign capitals such as Washington, DC,”

HRW wrote.

Forces aligned with the Kabul government regularly commit a range of criminal violations of the basic rights of the population, including extra-legal killings, disappearances, extortion, robbery, rampant sexual abuse and arbitrary detentions. Money flowing into Afghanistan from US and European governments for security and logistics contracts is channeled by high-ranking Afghan officials to maintain private militias, HRW found.

“The perpetrators of these abuses are persons in positions of authority or persons who operate with their backing … they occupy positions in almost every level of government, from local militia commanders to ministerial rank,”

HRW reports.

To prepare the report, HRW interviewed some 120 members of communities across eight Afghan provinces that have been affected by the violence. Based on these interviews, HRW drew up eight case studies of leaders within the official Afghan security forces and the broader network of semi-formal militant groups that wield power in the hinterland.

One militant leader highlighted by the report, Abdul Shujoyi, was recruited as a fighter for the Afghan Security Guards (ASG) and worked directly with US occupation forces beginning from at least 2009.

Elder villagers interviewed by HRW stated that “everyone has seen [Shujoyi] with the Americans,” with the militant leader paying frequent visitings to a US facility known as Forward Operating Base (FOB) Anaconda.

Shujoyi spends “a good deal of time on the US base at Khas Orugzgan,” according to investigative work published by the Sydney Morning Herald. “Cover by US Special Forces has emboldened and protected Shujoyi,” a reporter for the Herald found on the basis of extensive interviews with local sources.

By 2011, at the instigation of US Special Forces officers who used their connections to the government to override the opposition of the local governor and tribal leaders, Shujoyi rose to command elements of the Afghan Local Police (ALP), a militia network set up by US forces occupying the country in coordination with the government in Kabul.

ALP forces under Shujoyi’s command repeatedly raided villages around Kukhtaba, robbing and murdering inhabitants, including children, in 2011 and in following years, HRW reported. Multiple accounts from villagers state that Shujoyi’s forces killed local children by stoning.

In November 2012, local residents submitted a list of 121 victims they said were killed by Shujoyi’s men since 2009, while also reporting that militants under Shujoyi’s command regularly raped villagers, and stole their motorcycles and wheat yields at gunpoint.

HRW highlighted another figure, Commander Azizullah, who served as a senior officer with the Afghan Security Guard (ASG), while it was involved in joint combat operations with US forces.

A UN report from 2010 found that Azizullah repeatedly engaged in arbitrary detention and execution of children. After joining the ALP in 2011, reports emerged that Azizullah was overseeing similar abuses, including forcible conscription of child soldiers into his militias.

A village teacher told HRW that he was arbitrarily detained and savagely beaten by ALP militiamen led by Azizullah during a 2012 raid. The ALP forces arrived in Ranger trucks accompanied by US military personnel, the teacher said.

Azizullah remained in command of a local ALP detachment as of June 2014, according to HRW.

Kandahar police chief Abdul Razziq, a man with close ties to the US military who received praise from a top US general for establishing “security” in areas under his control, encourages systematic use of torture by forces under his command, a separate UN report found.

Referring to the professional murderers and thugs surveyed in the report, HRW noted that “the Afghan government has empowered rather than apprehended them” and has done so “with the backing of the US and other international supporters.”

Indeed, what the psychopathic criminals depicted in the HRW report all have in common is their close collaboration with the US military and its special operations units. In its drive to reorganize and dominate global politics, US imperialism forges alliances everywhere, with the most depraved forces, as the necessary instruments of its global agenda of subjugation and mass murder.

Before leaving office, in the wake of the US-orchestrated power sharing agreement that placed Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah in power last fall, the Karzai government granted sweeping amnesty to state criminals, HRW reported. As under Karzai, top Afghan military, intelligence and administration officials of the Ghani regime directly carry out and supervise murder, torture and rape, HRW found.

The formal end of US combat operations in Afghanistan on December 31, 2014, has by no means halted the US-directed slaughter. US commandos continue to carry out a “secret war” throughout the country, coordinating and directly executing targeted assassinations against anyone suspected of opposing the government.

The first act of the Ghani regime’s “national unity” government was to sign off on the permanent occupation of the country by some 10,000 US troops, who will continue to enjoy full legal immunity for civilian “collateral damage” produced by their operations.

The combined net worth of the world’s billionaires has reached a new high in 2015 of $7.05 trillion, according to the latest compilation published by Forbes magazine on Monday.

There are a record 1,826 billionaires, each with an average wealth of $3.8 billion. Relative to last year, the world’s billionaires have increased their combined wealth by more than 10 percent, from $6.4 trillion in 2014, while the total number of billionaires has grown by 11 percent.

In introducing its report, Forbes noted the striking disconnect between the continued surge in the wealth of the world’s ultra-rich and the state of the world economy. “Despite plunging oil prices and a weakened euro, the ranks of the world’s wealthiest defied global economic turmoil and expanded once again,” the magazine commented.

This growth in the wealth of billionaires is bound up with the continued rise in global equity markets. The FTSE All-World Index surged to record highs last month, and US markets have continued to break records. Stock ownership is overwhelmingly concentrated in the hands of the wealthy, who have been the prime beneficiaries of “quantitative easing,” record low interest rates and other government policies.

The United States, the home of Wall Street and center of global financial capital, again has far and away the highest number of billionaires—536. Since the beginning of the so-called “economic recovery,” in 2009, some 95 percent of all income gains in the United States have gone to the top 1 percent. Meanwhile, nearly one in four children in the country lives in poverty.

At the top of the list of billionaires in the US are familiar names, including Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, whose individual wealth alone surged by $3.2 billion, to $79.2 billion. Among Americans, Gates was followed by investor Warren Buffet, the list’s biggest gainer for the year, who now has a net worth of $72.7 billion, up $14.5 billion from last year.

Further down the list, one finds individuals like hedge fund manager Steven Cohen, a personification of the essentially criminal character of American capitalism. A year ago, Cohen’s former hedge fund, SAC Capital Advisors, pleaded guilty to insider trading charges. Cohen himself was never charged, and he simply transferred his fortune to a new firm, Point72 Asset Management. Cohen made $1.3 billion last year, bringing his total net worth to $11.4 billion.

If categorized as a separate country, California, with 131 billionaires, would be second on the Forbes list, following only the US as a whole and China. Among the new billionaires in California are Travis Kalanick and Garett Camp, co-founders of Uber, a car-sharing service that specializes in coordinating drivers who are paid low wages, with uncertain and irregular hours. Such labor is increasingly being seen as a model for the American economy as a whole.

Carlos Slim, the Mexican telecommunications magnate, was second on the global list, with $77.1 billion. Half of Mexico’s population of 122 million people lives in poverty, defined as an income of less than about $6 a day (2,329 pesos a month). Slim’s personal fortune is roughly comparable to the combined annual income of these 60 million impoverished Mexican workers.

While Slim is the richest single individual in Latin America, the country with the largest number of billionaires in the region is Brazil, with 54. Half of Brazil’s 60 million children live in poverty.

Overall, the country with the second largest number of billionaires is China, with 213, followed by Germany, India and Russia.

China, which remains a cheap labor platform for world capitalism, is home to 71 of the 290 billionaires on the Forbes list this year, or about a quarter of the total. The richest individual in China is Wang Jianlin ($24.2 billion), a real estate magnate, followed by Jack Ma ($22.7 billion), the founder of Alibaba Group, an Internet trading company.

A surge in equity markets in China last year has benefited not only Chinese billionaires. Forbes commented, “If you invested in the companies run by billionaires on the top 20 China billionaire list, you’re tracking their wealth right into your brokerage account.” The initial public offering of Alibaba last year became an international spectacle of speculation and greed, netting global investors tens of billions in profits.

On India, Forbes commented that the country’s 90 billionaires “are riding high on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promise of ‘good times.’” The right-wing Hindu fundamentalist politician, elected last year, has quickly pushed through a raft of pro-business measures, while promoting the country as the world’s sweat shop.

The richest Indian is Mukesh Ambani (net worth of $21 billion), the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries Limited. About 60 percent of the population in India, or 750 million people, live on less than $2 a day.

Russia has seen a significant decline in the number of billionaires, from 111 to 88, dropping from third to fifth on the overall list of countries. This is one result of the economic crisis that has engulfed the country, due to the sharp drop in oil prices and crippling economic sanctions imposed by the United States and Europe. One of the primary aims of these sanctions is to encourage a section of the Russian oligarchs, fearful of the impact on their wealth, to turn against the government of Vladimir Putin.

Certain broader comparisons are revealing. The debt that Greece owes the banks of Europe, for example, is about $90 billion. The wealth of the world’s billionaires is more than 77 times this amount.

In the United States, the city of Detroit has a debt of $6.9 billion, or one one-thousandth of the collective wealth of the world’s billionaires.

Both Greece and Detroit have been dragged through a disastrous restructuring dictated by the banks and endorsed by the entire political establishment, resulting in mass impoverishment and the decimation of living standards.

The Forbes list gives expression to the parasitic character of world capitalism as a whole. Whatever the particular sector of the economy with which their wealth is associated—finance, manufacturing, telecommunications—the fortunes of the ultra-rich are invariably tied to surging stock markets.

The concentration of such enormous sums in the hands of so few is not simply the product of abstract economic processes, but deliberate government policies, intensified since the financial crash of 2008. As the World Socialist Web Site noted at the time, the crisis was “the form in which a fundamental restructuring of the American and global economy, and the social and class relations upon which it is based, is taking place.”

Since 2009, when the policies of bank bailouts, near-zero interest rates and “quantitative easing” were fully implemented, the wealth of the world’s billionaires has nearly tripled. Led by the Obama administration in the US, the ruling class has funneled trillions of dollars into the financial markets while carrying out a relentless assault on the working class.

The universal character of these processes makes clear that what is at issue is the very nature of the existing economic order. The extraordinary growth of social inequality and the immense transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top are expressions of a bankrupt and diseased social system, capitalism. The decay and crisis of this system are producing the means for its own demise—the eruption of social conflict and class struggle on a world scale.

The petition up on WhiteHouse.gov against mandatory vaccinations — the one the White House tried to bury — has, at the time of writing this, reached well over the 100,000 signatures needed by March 6th in order to supposedly garner a response from our president’s administration.

The petition is short, sweet, and to the point:

No human being should be FORCED to be vaccinated against their will and/or personal/religious beliefs. I petition against making vaccinations of any kind mandatory. This includes forcing children to be vaccinated to attend public schools, activities, and daycare centers. This also includes adults working in the public or private sector.

The fact that this even has to be petitioned in the first place, however — that the people so fear their government would take away their basic sense of medical freedom — is a sure sign of tyranny.

According to the WhiteHouse.gov site, “A minimum number of signatures is necessary in a given amount of time in order for the petition to be reviewed by the White House, distributed to the appropriate policy officials within the Administration and receive an official response.” At the time of writing this, the petition currently has 102,206 signatures and counting with three days left to go to accrue even more. Sign it if you haven’t. Why not.

The real question is, do you think they will officially respond?

If so, what will that response be?

This government is so tyrannical… If this country was still the America founded on the Constitution and Bill of Rights and not a plasticine front for megacorporations like those scurrying under the banner of Big Pharma, it would be ashamed to even have to answer to such a charge of forcing its population to be shot up with unproven chemical cocktails.

Considering that, in the wake of the propagandized measles hysteria, states all across the country including Texas are introducing bills to take away people’s right to object to vaccines on any grounds, we have definitely long ago passed the mark founding father Benjamin Rush warned about if medical freedom was not included in the Constitution like religious freedom was.

Is your doctor on the payroll of the mega pharmaceutical companies? If you want to find out if your doctor’s aggressive push for Viagra could be stemming from financial interests, there’s a government website that can do just that.

The Open Payments Data website presented by the government reveals to you the depths to which your personal care provider could be controlled by Big Pharma’s institutions. From physicians to teaching hospitals, you can even identify the company making payments.

Is your doctor on the payroll? This is a really awesome tool to tell whether or not your current or perspective healthcare providers are hiding their vested interests.

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A motions hearing in Berrien County, Michigan on Feb. 27 resulted in the denial of imprisoned community leader Rev. Edward Pinkney bond pending the outcome of an appeal filed in an attempt to overturn his conviction on five felony forgery charges last year.

Pinkney was convicted by an all-white jury in November and he was sentenced to 30-120 months in prison on Dec. 15. He is currently housed at Marquette Correctional Facility, a 10-12 hour drive from his home in Benton Township.

He was indicted after a group of residents collected enough signatures of registered voters seeking to recall Benton Harbor Mayor James Hightower. Dissatisfaction with Hightower stemmed from the poor economic conditions in the majority African American city where unemployment and poverty are widespread.

Benton Harbor is a city of approximately 10,000 people in southwest Michigan. Nearly 90 percent of the population is African American yet across the bridge in St. Joseph, the seat of the county, the city is nearly all-white and far more affluent.

According to the United States Census data for 2009-2013, over 48 percent of the residents of Benton Harbor live below the poverty line. The median income per household in Benton Harbor is $18,000 annually.

The estimated per capita income for Benton Harbor is $9,500 yearly. Due to the high rate of unemployment and home foreclosures, only 35 percent of the residents live in their own homes.

Political Implications of the Case

Pinkney, who heads the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization (BANCO) in Berrien County, was charged and convicted for allegedly changing the dates on five signatures on the recall petitions. However, during the trial not one witness claimed to have seen the defendant change any dates on the petitions.

As a result of a Michigan appeals court decision the recall election was cancelled and Hightower remains in office although he is facing reelection later this year. Supporters of the recall including BANCO accused Hightower of being a surrogate of Whirlpool Corporation which is based in Benton Harbor.

During the course of the trial, Prosecutor Michael Sepic asked witnesses about their views on Whirlpool as well as questions related to the political outlook of BANCO in relationship to the multi-national firm. These questions were allowed into the court record by the presiding Judge Sterling R. Schrock.

BANCO has opposed numerous policies carried out by Benton Harbor and Berrien County officials. In 2010, a project was undertaken which appropriated the publically-owned Jean Klock Park turning it into the Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course on Lake Michigan.

Two years later in 2012, Pinkney and BANCO organized the “Occupy the PGA” protest demonstrations when the senior golf tournaments were held in Benton Harbor. The recall campaign against Hightower was prompted by his refusal to support a measure that would tax corporations in order to create jobs and rehabilitate the infrastructure of the blighted and economically depressed municipality.

The city has a long and sordid history of racism and police misconduct. In 2003, people rose up in rebellion after an African American motorcyclist was chased down to his death by several law-enforcement agencies in the region.

Motions Filed in Post-Conviction Hearing

At the motions hearing on Feb. 27 the courtroom was packed with supporters of Pinkney. There were at least 30 people who waited outside the proceedings because there was no room inside.

When Pinkney entered the courtroom wearing handcuffs and prison clothes, he was given a standing ovation. A law-enforcement officer then walked over to the crowd and told them they were not allowed to disrupt the courtroom.

One supporter from Ann Arbor wanted to give Pinkney a greeting card which came back in the mail from Marquette prison. He was told by officers in the courtroom that he was not allowed to do so.

Another person, an academic from Lansing, wanted to give the BANCO leader some literature contained in a package but was not allowed to do so either. When he attempted to turn over the materials to Pinkney’s defense lawyer Tat Parish he was told again by the officers that this was not possible.

On at least two occasions, officers in the courtroom chastised members of the audience for supposedly making contact with Pinkney, who sat quietly in a chair next to his defense attorney. In addition to arguments from Atty. Parish, Mark Fancher, representing the Michigan American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was in attendance as well.

The Michigan ACLU has filed an amicus curiae brief in support of Pinkney being released on bond. Parish and Fancher argued that the activist was not a flight risk or a danger to the community, yet Judge Schrock denied the motion ordering Pinkney back to Marquette prison.

Fancher argued on behalf of the Michigan ACLU citing the People v. Hall case noting in all likelihood Pinkney should not have been indicted or convicted on felony charges, but that such an offense if found guilty, would only be a misdemeanor punishable by 93 days in jail. Although the judge set an evidentiary hearing on two of the motions filed, he would not budge on setting an appeal bond for Pinkney.

In his brief Fancher stated on behalf the Michigan ACLU that

“A critical factor in the decision to grant bond is whether the appeal is substantial. In light of the Hall case, Rev. Pinkney’s likelihood of success on appeal in this case is extremely high. It is not unusual for criminal appeals to be decided two or more years after a defendant’s conviction. If bond pending appeal is not granted in this case, Rev. Pinkney will suffer irreparable harm because he will have served much more than a 93 day sentence.”

Fancher recalled how

“The ACLU represented Rev. Pinkney in a successful appeal of an order revoking his probation in People v. Pinkney, 2009…. In that case the Court of Appeals granted Rev. Pinkney’s Motion for Bond Pending Appeal. Rev. Pinkney complied with the bond terms imposed in that case and he never became a flight risk.”

Of the five motions filed, only two will be subjected to evidentiary hearings, but the immediate issue during the Fri. Feb. 27 proceedings was the attempt to have the 66-year-old released until a Michigan appeals court makes a decision on the constitutionality of his conviction. There was also a request from Parish to have Pinkney moved to a correctional facility closer to Berrien County so that his family and legal counsel can consult with him on important matters.

Judge Schrock said that it was his preference that Pinkney be moved to a closer location but that it was up to the discretion of the Michigan Department of Corrections (DOC) and that he would not issue an order to such an effect.

People attended the hearing from throughout the state of Michigan as well as Illinois. Representatives were present from numerous organizations including BANCO, the Moratorium NOW! Coalition, National Lawyers Guild, Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, the People’s Tribune newspaper, and many others.

After the hearing Pinkney was taken by DOC officers back to prison. A demonstration was later held outside the Berrien County Courthouse demanding the release of Pinkney.

The evidentiary hearing on two of the motions filed is scheduled for April 14. Local and national civil rights and human rights activists are urging people to continue to build support for the BANCO leader.

African leaders, healthcare professionals, international humanitarian organizations and others have praised the work done in battling the latest and most deadly outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD).

In Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, the epicenters of the latest outbreak of the deadly pandemic, there has been a dramatic decrease in the number of cases reported. It is estimated by the World Health Organization (WHO) based in Geneva, Switzerland and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States that some 9,500 people died among the 20,000 infected over the last year.

Nonetheless, even though there has been a precipitous decline in reported cases as borders re-open throughout West Africa and life is returning to some form of normalcy, experts and leaders warn that vigilance is still required. An increase in cases in Sierra Leone over the last several weeks has once again prompted concern.

In a recent statement from Geneva, it reports that

“According to WHO’s Feb. 25 Situation Report, the steep decline in case incidence in Sierra Leone from December to the end of January has halted, and transmission remains widespread. Case incidence decreased in Guinea in the week up to February 22 compared with the week before, and cases continue to arise from unknown chains of transmission. In Liberia, transmission continues at very low levels, with only one new case reported in the week up to February 22.” (World Health Organization)

Renewed Alert in Sierra Leone

Since last month there has been a new outbreak of cases in Sierra Leone of unknown origin. It is suspected that the EVD infections are being transmitted by workers in the fishing industry who have traveled inland to the capital of Freetown.

Overall says the WHO, “A total of 99 new confirmed cases of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) were reported in the week to 22 February. Guinea reported 35 new confirmed cases.”

A WHO summary report stresses that

“Transmission remains widespread in Sierra Leone, with 63 new confirmed cases. A spike of 20 new confirmed cases in Bombali is linked to the previously reported cluster of cases in the Aberdeen fishing community of the capital, Freetown.”

There were 14 confirmed new cases in Freetown during the same time frame, with additional infections being discovered from what is described as unknown chains of transmission in the capital and other locations. So serious is the current threat that Vice-President Samuel Sam-Sumana placed himself in quarantine after one of his security guards died from EVD on Feb. 24.

In a statement released by Sam-Sumana’s office on March 1, he says

“This virus has affected thousands of our people and has nearly brought our country to its knees. We all have a collective responsibility to break the chains of transmission by isolating the sick and reporting all known contacts, by not touching the dead … We cannot be complacent. We must work together as a nation to end Ebola now.” (Associated Press)

Liberia Reports Rapid Decline in Cases

At the same time transmissions continue at very low levels in Liberia, with only one new confirmed case reported in the seven days leading up to the week of February 22. Liberia, which has had the highest number of deaths, succeeded in bringing its number of confirmed cases to almost zero while reopening schools as well as the borders with contiguous states.

During the last week of February, Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf visited the U.S. and met with Secretary of State John Kerry along with high-ranking members of Congress. She reported on developments in the fight against EVD and thanked Washington for its support.

Liberia, a longtime ally of the U.S., has served as a major partner with the Pentagon through the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). Thousands of Pentagon troops were deployed to the country at the height of the outbreak many of which have now been withdrawn.

In a press release issued by a Liberian-based news agency it says

“President Johnson-Sirleaf and her delegation on Thursday, February 26 held discussions with House Democratic and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senators Lindsey Graham and Patrick Leahy of the Senate Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs. The Liberian leader also met Senator Jeffery Flake and members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Senator Chris Coons of the Senate Subcommittee on Appropriation; Representative Ed Royce, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee along with ranking members including Representatives Elliott Engel, Chris Smith and Karen Baas.” (The News, March 2)

Ebola vaccine trials are continuing in Liberia

There are EVD vaccine trials also underway in Liberia where some 27,000 people may participate in a study to test the effectiveness of an experimental drug.

Front Page Africa newspaper based in the capital of Monrovia reported that

“The trial process, according to information, is being led by a Liberia-U.S. Clinical Research Partnership sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID). The trial is seeking volunteers from groups at particular risk of Ebola infection, including health care workers, communities with ongoing transmission, contact tracers and members of burial teams.” (Feb. 27)

Clinical trial participants are assigned at random to one of three equally-sized groups.

Participants in one group will receive a placebo (saline), while the others will undergo a single injected dose of either the cAd3-EBOZ or the VSV-ZEBOV vaccines. The drugs were manufactured by pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline and New Link/Merck, which are based in Britain, the U.S. and Canada.

There are efforts underway to assure the public in Liberia that the vaccine trials are safe and voluntary. Last year during the initial phase of the outbreak, there were accusations that the EVD pandemic was caused by a U.S.-sponsored bio-defense research program that went awry. (Article by Dr. Cyril Broderick in the Liberian Daily Observer)

Although several EVD outbreaks have been reported in Africa since 1976, originating in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), then known as Zaire, the 2014-2015 pandemic has been the most virulent, widespread and long lasting. With specific reference to the ongoing trials of the vaccines which was initiated at the Redemption Hospital, a principal investigator of the Partnership for Research on Ebola Vaccine in Liberia (PREVAIL), Dr. Stephen Kennedy, disclosed that he has taken the vaccine claiming the drug is safe and that no one needs to be afraid of the injections.

One issue discussed by President Johnson-Sirleaf with U.S. officials was the need to invest in medical, communications and educational infrastructure in Liberia. The West African state which was founded by former enslaved Africans in the U.S. during the early decades of the 19th century has been largely under the control of Washington for nearly a century through the control of rubber and mineral production.

The legacy of colonialism and neo-colonialism has underdeveloped Africa while European and North American states have grown wealthy as a result of the exploitation of agricultural commodities, mineral resources and labor. At present the Pentagon, the State Department and the Central Intelligence (CIA) are engaging in massive military and surveillance operations across West Africa under the guise of the so-called “war on terrorism.”

Nonetheless, instability is increasing throughout the region and only a resurgence of anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist sentiment can move the people towards genuine independence and sovereignty.

A lot of focus has been made about the tensions between US President Barack Obama’s administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The tensions pivot on Iranian-US nuclear negations and Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of the US Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 3, 2015. Although there are several angels to look at the situation and frank differences do exist, the key point that should not be lost is that through his tough stance Prime Minister Netanyahu is actually providing leverage to President Obama and the US negotiating team against Iran. This is why talk about a war with Iran is beginning again in Washington, DC.

The disagreements between the Obama Administration and Netanyahu do not signal a divide between Israel and the US. The strategic relationship between Israel and the United States is still intact. Nor does the gap between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party over Netanyahu’s March 3 speech reflect divisions between Israel and the US as much as it represents divisions among the US political establishment, specifically between the realists and the neo-conservatives.

Speaking in London to the British think-tank Chatham House, European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini confirmed that internal divisions and «political dynamics» are creating friction on February 24, 2015. In this context, it should not be forgotten that Israel’s parliamentary elections will be held on March17, 2015. Netanyahu is using both fear and the US Congress as a stage to give a performance for Israeli voters to make sure that his Likud Party and its political allies secure enough seats in the Knesset to form the next government with him as its prime minister.

The Argument for Sanctions: Is it About a Hidden Prize?

Although he indirectly took a slap at Benjamin Netanyahu and the Republicans, US Secretary John Kerry even brought up the option of «whacking» Iran—meaning going to war with Tehran—at the US Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs hearing to review the US Department of State’s budget request on February 24, 2015. He did this while answering US Senator Roy Blunt’s question about Iran.

Kerry mentioned «whacking» Iran to calm and mitigate the criticisms against the Obama Administration’s negotiations with the Iranian government. This was clear when Kerry spoke to the warmonger Senator Lindsey Graham at the end of the session when he deliberately reversed the Republican rhetoric about a nuclear-armed Iran telling Senator Graham if negotiations did not continue that what Graham and Israel wanted to prevent would come into fruition.

Partisan politics was visible throughout the hearing. Using a ridiculous cartoon drawing of multiple cartoon bombs to claim that the US government was allowing Iran to fund Hezbollah, the Republican Senator Mark Kirk clearly was using similar rhetoric as Netanyahu by claiming that the interim agreement with Iran was a form of defeatist appeasement. Senator Kirk also tried to undermine the lead US negotiator, US Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, too.

Pausing and choosing his words carefully, Secretary Kerry also made the following statement about Washington’s negotiations with Tehran: «Anybody running around right now jumping in to say, ‘Well we don’t like the deal,’ or this or that, doesn’t know what the deal [with Iran] is and there is no deal yet. And I caution people to wait and see what these negotiations produce.»

The continuation of the anti-Iran sanctions regime is a key feature of the foreign policy divisions in the Washington Beltway about negotiations with Iran. It was during the course of the exchange between Kirk and Kerry on maintaining the sanctions regime on Iran that John Kerry would mention Prime Minister Netanyahu directly. Secretary Kerry would point out to Senator Kirk that Netanyahu was against the Obama Administration’s sanctions approach, but hitherto has been arguing for the sanctions to be kept in place against the Iranian economy.

In part, the temptation to somehow seize the immense amount of Iranian financial assets and funds that have been frozen due to the anti-Iran sanctions might be driving a faction of the opponents of the nuclear negotiations. Kerry told the US Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs that Iran has well over one hundred billion US dollars that have been frozen that Tehran cannot touch and that since 2012 the US has denied Iran access to two hundred billion in lost exports and funds «held abroad in restricted accounts.»

To some extent, Netanyahu could be serving US financial interests more than Israeli interests. He and much of the Republican Party share the same election donors. «More than half the people who gave money to Netanyahu’s re-election campaign are Americans who’ve also donated to the Romney campaign or the Republican Party in the United States,» according to an article published by McClatchey on November 1, 2012. [1] McClatchey also reveals the following important points:

• According to records published by Israel’s State Comptroller office, Netanyahu has received donations from 47 individuals. Only one of them was Israeli, and 42 were American. By cross-checking public records in the United States with Netanyahu’s list, McClatchy found that 28 of the American donors to Netanyahu also gave to Romney, the Republican Party or both. Only two gave to Democrats, one of whom donated to President Barack Obama.

• In interviews, Netanyahu’s representatives have stressed that he isn’t interested in playing partisan politics in the United States. However, his list of donors shows only two families who gave to both the Democratic Party and Netanyahu. [2]

Aside from ideological posturing and a strategy to gain maximum concessions from Tehran, the financial interests that both Netanyahu and the Republicans represent may want to use the anti-Iran sanctions regime to annually siphon about twenty to forty billion dollars (US) from Iran.

Obama’s Authorization for the Use of Military Force Request: For DAESH or Iran?

Although the anti-Iran sanctions may now be viewed as a means of plundering Iranian wealth for Wall Street, they are also a form of pressure or coercion that is being used alongside the military threat of a US and Israeli war against the Iranians.

Netanyahu’s warmongering is psychologically and politically assisting this push to maximize the possible concessions that Tehran makes to Washington. His hawkish posturing gives the Obama Administration leverage to make more demands from the Iranian side. In one way or another, Netanyahu and the Republicans are playing the role of the bad cops while the Obama Administration is paying the role of the good cops with Iran.

At the end of the day, the US and Israel are aligned and threatening Iran. Both the US and Israel are on a war footing and uneasy as they realize that the strategic equation in the Middle East is about to see major changes to the benefit of Iran and its regional allies in the Resistance Bloc or Axis of Resistance. [3] It is in this context that Israel’s Channel 2 has quoted an unnamed European official as saying that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will allow Israel to use it airspace to launch a military attack on Iran—ridiculously in exchange for «progress» in the bogus Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. [4] It is also in this context that Turkey intervened in Syria, using the pretext of relocating the tomb of Suleiman Shah on February 21, 2015, as a means to normalize and reserve a possible military role for Turkey inside Syria should a regional war be ignited. [5]

Obama is silently holding a big stick over Iran. Under the pretext of fighting DAESH, first in Iraq and then in Syria, the Obama Administration has asked the US Congress to give it the authorization for the use of military force in the Middle East. The Pentagon has already marshaled a large military contingent and used the cover of fighting DAESH in Iraq to begin illegal military operations inside Syria. [6] The authorization to use military force from the US Congress will give the Obama Administration flexibility to redirect the Pentagon forces that the US government has amassed in the Middle East and use them to threaten Iran and Syria with war.

NOTES

The Eurasian Economic Union is a reality that may end up costing the US its “perch” in Eurasia’s western periphery as a Common Economic Space is formed.

Former US national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski averred the following in 1997: “But if the middle space rebuffs the West, becomes an assertive single entity, and either gains control over the South or forms an alliance with the major Eastern actor, then America’s primacy in Eurasia shrinks dramatically. The same would be the case if the two major Eastern players were somehow to unite.”

This was a clear warning to the elites in the Washington Beltway and Wall Street. Camouflaged behind thinly veiled liberal and academic jargon, what Dr. Brzezinski was saying is that if the Russian Federation and the post-Soviet space manage to repulse or push back Western domination — meaning some combination of US and European Union tutelage — and manage to reorganize themselves within some type of confederacy or supranational bloc, either gaining influence in the Middle East and Central Asia or form an alliance with China that Washington’s influence in Eurasia would be finished.

Top officials from Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Belarus take part in a meeting of the Eurasian Economic Union in Astana. (Reuters/Mikhail Klimentyev/RIA Novosti/Kremlin)

Everything that Brzezinski warned Washington to prevent is in motion. The Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) — simply called the Eurasian Union — has been formed by Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia. Kyrgyzstan will be acceding into the Eurasian Union as an EEU member, and Tajikistan is considering joining it too. The Kremlin and the EEU are actively looking for new partners too. Countries outside the post-Soviet space, such as Syria, are even interested in joining the EEU and the Russian-led bloc has already signed an important trade agreement with the Arab juggernaut Egypt. In Southeast Asia, negotiations with Hanoi have also been completed and Vietnam is scheduled next to sign an agreement with the EEU sometime in 2015.

Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski (Reuters/Jim Young) 

The “Middle Space” is clearly resurgent. Turkey is looking towards a Eurasian alternative. The Turk Stream natural gas pipeline deal between Ankara and Moscow has put Washington and the European Commission on alert. Following the energy and trade agreements with Turkey, Russia renewed its military ties with Iran and has subsequently offered Tehran the Antey-2500 — Tehran alongside Moscow was a key player that prevented an open Pentagon war from being launched on Syria in 2013. Russia’s Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and his Iranian counterpart, Brigadier-General Dehghan, publicly signed agreements in Iran to renew Russo-Iranian military cooperation on January 20, 2015. From Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria to Yemen and Iraq, Russian influence is growing in the Middle East (i.e. “the South”).

In Latin America, from Argentina and Brazil to Nicaragua and Venezuela, Russian influence also is rising. The Latin American regional tour last year by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the one this year by Shoigu have both included military cooperation talks and led to speculation about the erection of a network of Russian signals, naval, and air bases in the area. Moreover, the increase in Russian influence and Washington’s declining weight inside Latin America have both been factors for Washington’s rapprochement with the Cubans. Moscow’s influence was present even on the eve of a historic visit to Cuba by a delegation from the US Congress when the Russian naval ship Viktor Leonov, an intelligence and signals vessel, docked in Havana on January 20, 2015.

Both the “Middle Space” and the “Middle Kingdom” (Zhongguo/China) joined forces long ago. This happened before the formation of the EEU or the EuroMaidan coup in Ukraine. Moscow and part of the post-Soviet space began building an alliance with China (i.e. “the major Eastern actor”) at the bilateral or multilateral levels in the late-1990s. This has begun blossoming. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which was formed out of the Shanghai Five in 2001, is proof of this. The mega Sino-Russian natural gas deal is merely the fruits of this alliance and the coming together of the “Middle Space” and the “Middle Kingdom.”

Preventing Eurasian integration: Attempts to cordon the “Middle Space”

Without Russia, Europe is incomplete by any means or calculation. The Russian Federation is in both demographic and territorial terms the largest European country. There is no question about it either that Moscow is a major political, socioeconomic and cultural force in European affairs that cannot be overlooked from the Baltic Sea to the Balkans and the Black Sea.

Economically, Russia is an important export and import market for the EU and its members. This is why the EU is suffering from the US-engineered economic sanctions that have been imposed against Russia as a form of economic warfare. It is in the context of Russia’s economic importance to the economies of the EU that US Vice-President Joseph Biden candidly even admitted during a lecture at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University that Washington had to pressure the EU into accepting the anti-Russian sanctions regime on October 2, 2014.

Brzezinski’s warning has another angle to it too, which involves Washington’s EU and NATO partners. “Finally, any ejection of America by its Western partners from its perch on the western periphery would automatically spell the end of America’s participation in the game on the Eurasian chessboard, even though that would probably also mean the eventual subordination of the western extremity to a revived player occupying the middle space,” he warns. What the former US official means is that if the US-aligned major European powers (i.e. France and Germany, or the EU collectively) reject Washington’s influence (maybe even withdraw from NATO), the US would lose its western perch in Eurasia. Brzezinski warns that an assertive Russia — probably alongside its Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) allies — would instead replace US influence.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (2nd R) presents his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro with a book dedicated to late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez during a meeting in Brasilia July 16, 2014. (Reuters/Alexei Nikolskyi/RIA Novosti/Kremlin) 

The reason that unity in the post-Soviet space and any political and economic convergences between the EU and the “Middle Space” are a threat to Washington can be analyzed by using the standpoint and lexicon of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Under 32 Smolenskaya-Sennaya Square’s framework, Eurasia is partitioned into three zones or regions: the Euro-Atlantic (western periphery), Euro-Asia (central area), and the Asia-Pacific (eastern periphery).Hence, the explanation for the term “Middle Space” used by Brzezinski to describe the post-Soviet space.

In organic terms, it is the central Euro-Asia region that can unite and integrate both the western and eastern Eurasian peripheries. Russia and the EEU want to ultimately establish a free trade zone encompassing the entire EU and EEU — a “Common Economic Space.” In the words of the Russian Foreign Ministry, the EEU “is designed to serve as an effective link between Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.”

It is Russia and the EEU acting as a bridge between the two Eurasian peripheries that threatens Washington’s plans to integrate the Euro-Atlantic and Asia-Pacific zones with itself.

The Common Economic space vs. the TTIP and the TPP

The US wants to be the center of gravity in Eurasia. It fears that the EU could eventually gravitate towards the “Middle Space” and integrate with Russia and the EEU.

The tensions that Washington is deliberately stoking in Europe are an attempt to estrange the EU from Moscow as a means of allowing the continuation of US empire-building in Eurasia — this is Washington’s version of a modern “Great Game.” Even Brzezinski’s warning about the resurgence of the “Middle Space” (i.e. Russia and the post-Soviet space) is about the area unifying to become “an assertive single entity” and not even an “aggressive” entity that is a military threat to world peace.

Washington wants the western periphery (Euro-Atlantic) and eastern periphery (Asia-Pacific) to integrate with it through the Trans-Atlantic and Trade Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The EEU and any thoughts of a Common Economic Space are a threat to the consolidation and merger of these regions with the US. This is why the US cannot tolerate an independent and assertive “Middle Space” or, for that matter, an independent and assertive “Middle Kingdom.” This is why both Russia and China are being demonized and targeted: Moscow is being targeted via the instability the US has helped author in Ukraine (as well as through a new wave of Russophobia) whereas Beijing is being targeted through Washington’s so-called military “Pivot to Asia.” This has taken place while the US has destabilized the Middle East (i.e. the South).

While Brussels had its own reasons for accelerating TTIP negotiations with Washington, US fears of Eurasian integration hastened the sense of urgency Washington felt in concluding TTIP negotiations to solidify its influence over the EU. The sanctions (economic warfare) against the Russian economy, the drop in energy prices prompted by the flooding of oil markets, and the drop in the value of the Russian ruble are part of this Rubik’s Cube too.

The Common Economic Space is an aspiration for a Eurasian-wide trade zone. As an ambition Moscow and its EEU partners see the Common Economic Space as a framework to gradually incorporate other Eurasian regions together. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Vasily Nebenzya confirmed all this to the Tass news agency in an interview published on December 31, 2014. Nebenzya told Tass that Moscow views the long-term goal of EU-EEU cooperation “as the basis of a common economic space from the Atlantic to the Pacific” in Eurasia.

Not only would any trade agreement between the EU and the EEU be the basis for the Common Economic Space, it would be the embryo for a broader Eurasian-wide trade zone that has the potential to include the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA), the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). A compartmentalized supranational bloc could emerge.

From a Russian perspective, instead of prioritizing the TTIP with the US, it makes more sense for the EU to look at creating the framework for cooperation with the EEU. This sentiment has been reflected by Moscow’s ambassador to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, who told the EU Observer in an interview published on January 2 that Moscow wanted to start contacts between the EU and EEU as soon as possible and that the EU sanctions on Russia should not prevent dialogue and contact between the two blocs. “We might think of a free trade zone encompassing all of the interested parties in Eurasia,” Ambassador Chizhov explained as he described the “Russia-led bloc as a better partner for the EU than the US” during the interview.

As Chizhov rhetorically asks, the question that the EU needs to think over is thus: “Do you believe it is wise to spend so much political energy on a free trade zone with the USA while you have more natural partners at your side, closer to home?”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel addresses during the 51st Munich Security Conference at the ‘Bayerischer Hof’ hotel in Munich February 7, 2015. (Reuters/Michael Dalder)

Is the EU waking up?

Ambassador Chizov’s question has not fallen on deaf ears. The same questions are being asked in various EU capitals. The leaders of EU powers are realizing that the US is instigating a conflict with the Russians that Washington wants them to fight and waste resources on that would weaken the EU and Moscow to Washington’s benefit. Smaller EU powers have been vocal about this while the larger ones have been slower in realizing it.

Greece refused to fall in line when the EU released a statement blaming Russia for the eruption of the fighting in the East Ukrainian city of Mariupol on January 24, 2015. Athens refused to blame Moscow and complained that the EU acted undemocratically by not even following its own procedures by asking for the consent of all members before releasing a statement on behalf of the collective. Instead of confrontation with Russia, the Greek government wants closer ties with Moscow.

President Putin’s February 2015 visit to Budapest ruffled feathers in the EU and US. Hungary has been vocal in its opposition to the EU sanctions against Russia. This has outraged some in the Washington Beltway and European Commission. A diplomatic row even started between Budapest and Washington when US Senator John McCain called Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a “neo-fascist dictator” because Hungary refused to cut ties with Russia in 2014.

While there has been speculation that Hungary is being used as the “good cop” to bargain with Moscow, the US has even gone as far as banning members of the Hungarian government from entering US territory on October 20, 2014. Although the EU would react collectively if any country slapped diplomatic sanctions on one of its members, Brussels effectively did not respond to Washington.

Cypriot Present Nicos Anastasiades has joined the revolt against Brussels and Washington by visiting Moscow on February 25, 2015. Nicosia and Moscow even signed an agreement allowing the Russian Navy to use Cypriot ports.

Germany and France — once mocked as “old Europe” by Pentagon honcho Donald Rumsfeld — are having second thoughts too. Franco-German differences with the US emerged at the Munich Security Conference at the Bayerischer Hof Hotel when German Chancellor Angela Merkel rebuffed members of the US and British delegations about a military solution for Ukraine. In this context, Paris and Berlin rehashed the Kremlin’s original peace proposal for East Ukraine and began diplomatic talks in Moscow.

Merkel casually also mentioned she supported a Common Economic Space too: a sign of things to come?

What London’s Guardian reported on Tuesday is shocking, disturbing, yet unsurprising given the scourge of neocon fascist governance in America.

Washington’s war on humanity at home and abroad should be a wakeup call for everyone. Wars without end rage against one nation after another.

Independent ones are targeted for regime change. Washington’s goal is total colonization of planet earth, stealing its resources and enslaving its people.

US cities are virtual battlegrounds like never before. America is unsafe to live in.

Washington provides police nationwide with enormous amounts of combat weapons, related equipment and supplies – making them virtual military units.

The line between cop and combat ready soldier is less clear than ever in US history. Militarized police wage war on freedom. It’s a hair’s breadth from disappearing altogether.

When cities become battlegrounds, ordinary people risk being treated like enemies – losing all constitutional protections mattering most.

The alarming state of today’s America should scare everyone. Fundamental rights don’t matter. Anyone can be targeted, arrested and disappeared. Perhaps never heard from again.

This writer’s home city Chicago may be ground zero for some of the most disturbing practices. London’s Guardian broke the story demanding world coverage and outrage.

On February 24, it headlined “The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden ‘black site.’ ”

It’s an “off-the-books (Homan Square) interrogation compound,” said the Guardian – some miles west from where this writer lives.

A “nondescript warehouse (is) the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.” People are lawlessly arrested, detained, denied access to lawyers up to 24 hours, and tortured during secret interrogations.

Detainees are kept off “official booking databases. Some young as 15 are painfully shackled for long periods, beaten and terrorized.

Homan Square is in Chicago’s west side North Lawndale district. It’s home to the original 1905 Sears, Roebuck and Co. property.

Many of its buildings are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Perhaps Gitmo in America will be included one day. More on the Guardian’s report below.

Chicago police have a longstanding reputation for brutality. They have virtual carte blanche authority to operate with impunity.

They take full advantage. From 1972 – 1991, detective Jon Burge got away with torturing over 200 detainees. Instead of dismissal and prosecution, he was promoted.

Dozens of victims complained. Suits followed. Finally, after 21 abusive years, he was fired.

Community outrage stopped a March 1993 Fraternal Order of Police plan to honor him with a float in Chicago’s annual St. Patrick’s Day parade.

On October 21, 2008, he was indicted on two counts of obstructing justice and one count of perjury. On June 28, 2010, he was convicted on all counts. He’s the exception proving  the rule.

It took decades for partial justice. Few police are prosecuted –  almost never one of high rank. Burge rose from street cop to detective commander. Over two decades, he got 13 commendations and a Justice Department letter of praise.

His crimes were well-known. A code of silence hid them. He was honored until his luck ran out. He got off mildly.

He received four and half years in prison. His crimes and similar ones committed by other rogue cops should never have been allowed in the first place.

This writer personally knows a Chicago cop torture victim. He committed no crimes. Yet he was lawlessly arrested, detained and brutalized for being Black in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He remains justifiably outraged. Rogue cops weren’t punished. Nor their superiors. During Chicago’s May 2012 NATO summit, Chicago police viciously assaulted peaceful protesters.

Dozens were hurt. Victims had head injuries, broken bones and teeth knocked out. Many required hospitalization.

In Black and Latino communities, police brutality rages. Cracked skulls, arrests and brutality in detention reflect longstanding practice.

Chicago is a mini-police state. Last year, a Chicago organization called We Charge Genocide produced a report charging city police with “systematic horrific & punitive police violence against Black and Brown youths on a daily basis.”

ACLU human rights program director Jamil Dakwar says

“(i)t’s time for systemic policing reforms and effective oversight that make sure law enforcement agencies treat all citizens with equal respect and hold officers accountable when they cross the line.”

Chicago police lie saying

“CPD abides by all laws, rules and guidelines pertaining to any interviews of suspects or witnesses, at Homan Square or any other CPD facility.”

“If lawyers have a client detained at Homan Square, just like any other facility, they are allowed to speak to and visit them.”

“It also houses CPD’s Evidence Recovered Property Section, where the public is able to claim inventoried property.”

The Guardian report explained systematic abuse of power and denial of fundamental constitutional rights.

“At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square (so-called) ‘interview room’ and later pronounced dead,” it said.

Brian Jacob Church was one of the 2012 NATO Three protesters. He was arrested and held incommunicado at Homan Square for nearly 24 hours before being booked at local police station.

He commented to the Guardian as follows, saying:

“Homan Square is definitely an unusual place. It brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the Middle East.”

“The CIA calls them black sites. It’s a domestic black site. When you go in, no one knows what’s happened to you.”

“…I wasn’t allowed to make any contact with anybody.”

He was painfully shackled for about 17 hours.

“I had essentially figured, ‘All right, well, they disappeared us and so we’re probably never going to see the light of day again.”

Lawyers seeking access to Homan Square are routinely turned away. According to Chicago attorney Julia Bartmes:

“It’s sort of an open secret among attorneys that regularly make police station visits, this place – if you can’t find a client in the system, odds are they’re” at Homan.

Civil rights attorney Flint Taylor accused Chicago police of Fifth and Sixth Amendment violations.

He omitted 8th Amendment prohibitions against “cruel and unusual punishments.”

He said Homan Square reflects

“an institutionalization of the practice that dates back more than 40 years, of violating a suspect or witness’ rights to a lawyer and not to be physically or otherwise coerced into giving a statement.”

When a Guardian reporter tried gaining access to Homan, a guard “refused any entrance and would not answer questions,” the paper said.

“This is a secure facility. You’re not even supposed to be standing here,” the guard said.

Detainees taken there “just disappear,” said criminal defense attorney Anthony Hill.

Their whereabouts is unknown “until they show up at a district for charging or are just released back out on the street.”

Chicago police guidelines prohibit Homan Square practices. A “Processing Persons Under Department Control” directive says the following:

“(I)nvestigation or interrogation of an arrestee will not delay the booking process.”

Anyone arrested must be allowed

“a reasonable number of telephone calls (to attorneys straightaway) after their arrival at the first place of custody.”

“Arrestee and In-Custody Communications (must) allow visitation by attorneys.”

According to the Guardian:

“The combination of holding clients for long periods, while concealing their whereabouts and denying access to a lawyer, struck legal experts as a throwback to the worst excesses of Chicago police abuse, with a post-9/11 feel to it.”

Former Chicago public defender/current Valparaiso University Law School dean Andrea Lyon calls Homan Square “analogous to the CIA’s black sites,”

Chicago Justice Project’s Tracy Siska says

“(t)he real danger in allowing practices like Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib is the fact that they always creep into other aspects.”

“They creep into domestic law enforcement, either with weaponry like with the militarization of police, or interrogation practices.”

“That’s how we ended up with a black site in Chicago.”

A follow-up February 26 Guardian report said city police didn’t respond to its questions.

What’s ongoing in Chicago likely happens elsewhere across America. US jails, detention facilities and prisons are notoriously brutal.

An earlier article discussed a 2005 UK Deborah Davis Channel 4 report titled “Torture, Inc., America’s Brutal Prisons.”

It explained prisoners brutally shocked with cattle prods, burned by toxic chemicals, harmed by stun guns, beaten, stripped naked and abused in various other ways.

Sound familiar, it asked? Welcome to Guantanamo in America..

Videos Britain’s Channel 4 aired made disturbing viewing. They show guards yelling and abusing prisoners.

“(O)rdering them to lie on the ground and crawl. (If not) fast enough, a guard kicks (them) or stomps on (their) back.”

One man screamed when a dog bit his lower leg. Another had his ankle broken, couldn’t crawl fast enough, and was painfully taserred on his buttocks.

Hours later, his body still shook uncontrollably. Images revealed reflected Gitmo or Abu Ghraib practices in US prisons.

Horrifying evidence of America’s brutality. Commonplace abroad and at home at the federal, state and local levels.

Chicago is a microcosm of systemic US ruthlessness. Torture without accountability is the clearest example.

Sadism writ large best explains it. Nothing in prospect suggests change.

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

A much-ignored huge news report from Reuters on Friday, February 27th, was headlined “Chinese diplomat tells West to consider Russia’s security concerns over Ukraine.”

China’s Ambassador to Belgium (which has the capital of the EU) said that the “nature and root cause” of the Ukrainian conflict is “the West,” and that “The West should abandon the zero-sum mentality, and take the real security concerns of Russia into consideration.”

By “real security concerns,” he is clearly referring to NATO’s expansion right up to Russia’s border, and America’s surrounding Russia with U.S. military bases, now inceasingly including the most strategic of Russia’s bordering countries: Ukraine.

In other words, this diplomat says: “the West” has a “zero-sum” attitude toward Russia, instead of seeking to move forward with an approach in which neither side among the nuclear superpowers benefits at the other’s expense — the entire world moves forward together.

This is a direct criticism of Barack Obama, and of all of the pro-Obama, anti-Putin, EU leaders.

It’s also an implicit repudiation of Obama’s having repeatedly referred to the U.S. as “the one indispensable nation.” (Another example of that phrase is here.) Obama keeps saying: every other nation, except the U.S., is “dispensable.” He clearly thinks that Russia is.

That’s not merely an insult: it’s an act of provocation; it is virtually asking for a fight. And all for what? For whose nuclear char?

This criticism of the aggressive nationalist Obama does not come from China’s top leadership, but it would not have come at all if they had not approved of it in advance.

China thus now tells Obama: Stop it. Stop it in word, and in deed.

Implicitly, China is also telling Obama: China is not dispensable, either. In fact, the entire mentality, which Obama embodies, is not just callous and insulting; it’s dangerous.

Like President G.W. Bush, Obama is increasingly an embarassment to his country.

Shortly before Obama’s coup in Ukraine, Gallup International issued, on 30 December 2013, a poll of 65 countries, which found that:

“The US was the overwhelming choice (24% of respondents) for the country that represents the greatest threat to peace in the world today. This was followed by Pakistan (8%), China (6%), North Korea, Israel and Iran (5%). Respondents in Russia (54%), China (49%) and Bosnia (49%) were the most fearful of the US as a threat.”

More details of that poll were reported here.

When the U.S. Government is hankering for a war with the only other nuclear superpower, such findings certainly make sense. And the 54% of Russians who cited the U.S. as the greatest threat to peace would probably be far higher today. But Gallup International didn’t publish any update on that poll-question, perhaps because the original financial backer (which was unnamed) wouldn’t fund it.

Already, the finding was bad enough. But Obama keeps calling the U.S. “the one indispensable nation in the world.” He keeps telling other nations: you are dispensable. He keeps rubbing it in — not the fact, but his own nationalism.

It reminds some people of Mussolini, and of Hitler. But Obama pretends to be a democrat, not a fascist.

Maybe he’s just a bigger liar than they were. Maybe that’s what he is so arrogant about: his terrific ability to deceive.

After all, he won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for it: for lying. For misrepresenting himself as being progressive, instead of regressive.

Well, now: anyone who doesn’t know the reality is deluded by propaganda — and it’s not coming from Russia, nor from China. It’s coming from their own nation’s ‘news’ media.

Which heads-of-state want to be publicly associated with a foreign leader like that, one who tells the given leader’s public: your nation is dispensable. Fools. Only fools.

Obama is encouraging other countries to oppose the United States.

Wow. He’s the black George W. Bush.

A much-ignored huge news report from Reuters on Friday, February 27th, was headlined “Chinese diplomat tells West to consider Russia’s security concerns over Ukraine.”

China’s Ambassador to Belgium (which has the capital of the EU) said that the “nature and root cause” of the Ukrainian conflict is “the West,” and that “The West should abandon the zero-sum mentality, and take the real security concerns of Russia into consideration.”

By “real security concerns,” he is clearly referring to NATO’s expansion right up to Russia’s border, and America’s surrounding Russia with U.S. military bases, now inceasingly including the most strategic of Russia’s bordering countries: Ukraine.

In other words, this diplomat says: “the West” has a “zero-sum” attitude toward Russia, instead of seeking to move forward with an approach in which neither side among the nuclear superpowers benefits at the other’s expense — the entire world moves forward together.

This is a direct criticism of Barack Obama, and of all of the pro-Obama, anti-Putin, EU leaders.

It’s also an implicit repudiation of Obama’s having repeatedly referred to the U.S. as “the one indispensable nation.” (Another example of that phrase is here.) Obama keeps saying: every other nation, except the U.S., is “dispensable.” He clearly thinks that Russia is.

That’s not merely an insult: it’s an act of provocation; it is virtually asking for a fight. And all for what? For whose nuclear char?

This criticism of the aggressive nationalist Obama does not come from China’s top leadership, but it would not have come at all if they had not approved of it in advance.

China thus now tells Obama: Stop it. Stop it in word, and in deed.

Implicitly, China is also telling Obama: China is not dispensable, either. In fact, the entire mentality, which Obama embodies, is not just callous and insulting; it’s dangerous.

Like President G.W. Bush, Obama is increasingly an embarassment to his country.

Shortly before Obama’s coup in Ukraine, Gallup International issued, on 30 December 2013, a poll of 65 countries, which found that:

“The US was the overwhelming choice (24% of respondents) for the country that represents the greatest threat to peace in the world today. This was followed by Pakistan (8%), China (6%), North Korea, Israel and Iran (5%). Respondents in Russia (54%), China (49%) and Bosnia (49%) were the most fearful of the US as a threat.”

More details of that poll were reported here.

When the U.S. Government is hankering for a war with the only other nuclear superpower, such findings certainly make sense. And the 54% of Russians who cited the U.S. as the greatest threat to peace would probably be far higher today. But Gallup International didn’t publish any update on that poll-question, perhaps because the original financial backer (which was unnamed) wouldn’t fund it.

Already, the finding was bad enough. But Obama keeps calling the U.S. “the one indispensable nation in the world.” He keeps telling other nations: you are dispensable. He keeps rubbing it in — not the fact, but his own nationalism.

It reminds some people of Mussolini, and of Hitler. But Obama pretends to be a democrat, not a fascist.

Maybe he’s just a bigger liar than they were. Maybe that’s what he is so arrogant about: his terrific ability to deceive.

After all, he won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for it: for lying. For misrepresenting himself as being progressive, instead of regressive.

Well, now: anyone who doesn’t know the reality is deluded by propaganda — and it’s not coming from Russia, nor from China. It’s coming from their own nation’s ‘news’ media.

Which heads-of-state want to be publicly associated with a foreign leader like that, one who tells the given leader’s public: your nation is dispensable. Fools. Only fools.

Obama is encouraging other countries to oppose the United States.

Wow. He’s the black George W. Bush.