Global Research - Centre for Research on Globalization

State Crimes Against Democracy and Canada’s 2011 General Election

March 13th, 2015 by Prof Michael Keefer

[W]e have had the possibility of living in democracies. What does it mean? It means places where the privileged are not the ones to make the decisions, but that the underprivileged are going to rise to a status where they are normal human beings and human citizens with their freedoms and their rights. When that is no longer the case, whatever the circumstance […,] then it is proper for the young generation to listen to the very old ones who tell them, “We have been resisters at a time where there was fascism or Stalinism. You must find the things that you will not accept, that will outrage you. And these things, you must be able to fight against nonviolently, peacefully, but determinedly.” – Stéphane Hessel¹

1. Democracy: a “possibility” we have enjoyed

In October 2010 Stéphane Hessel, a leading exponent of democratic values throughout a long life that included service in the French resistance to Nazi occupation, participation in the drafting of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and a diplomatic career involving contributions to other important instruments of international law as well, produced an essay—one might say a manifesto—that became an international sensation. Published when Hessel was 93, Indignez-vous! sold 2.5 million copies in France within six months.² Translated into many languages, the booklet went on to influence the Indignados and Occupy movements in Spain and the United States.

Hessel based his analysis in Indignez-vous! on what he called the foundation of his political life: his wartime experience in the resistance, and the declaration by the National Council of the Resistance on March 15, 1944 that defeating the Nazis and their French collaborators was only a stage on the way to “a true economic and social democracy.”³

The forces Hessel had opposed in his early years included those on the political right in Vichy France and in Occupied France who approved of the social order imposed by their Nazi conquerors; at 93, he thought it shameful that governing elites in France who are effectively the intellectual heirs of that discredited Ordre nouveau should be discarding the inheritance of the resistance. What prompted his manifesto for a new political resistance was the strong contemporary tendency, in France as in the other democracies of the developed world, toward a revocation of the social and civil rights for which the anti-Fascists of his generation had struggled—which has produced the outrageous spectacle of states declaring the impossibility any longer of funding social, educational, and health-care programs that had been created during the post-war period, while at the same time increasing social inequality through regressive taxation policies, lavishing resources on unjust foreign wars, and rewarding the wildly imprudent and often openly dishonest behaviour of financial institutions with gargantuan bailouts.

The processes involved in the revoking of social and civil rights against which Hessel protested have, for the most part, preserved at least a façade of legality.⁴ But in recent decades there has also been a tendency, most pronounced in the United States, but observable in other countries as well,⁵ toward interventions in democratic processes (including both elections and what would otherwise be normal patterns of public opinion formation) that are at once both openly illegal, or indeed criminal in nature, and also covert. During the past decade—beginning several years prior to the publication of Stéphane Hessel’s manifesto, this tendency has become an object of formal research and inquiry among an active group of social scientists in the United States, Britain, Australia, and Canada. The term that scholars working in this domain have adopted for the primary objects of their attention is “state crimes against democracy.”

2. Defining “state crimes against democracy”

Interventions of the kind that deserve this label, involving flagrant and often violent subversions of legality, are typically aimed at reorienting both public opinion and the structures of power within the state. But they are covert, in that the organizations involved—whether these be the more or less unaccountable security and policing agencies that make up a large part of what some analysts refer to as “deep politics,”⁶ or elite groups within political parties, or some alliance of the two, possibly involving powerful corporate interests as well—make strenuous efforts to conceal their own involvement and to offer to the public deceptive alternative accounts of events for which they are responsible. This deception, obviously enough, is a crucial aspect of the event, the intended impact of which depends upon the public either accepting a false causal explanation, or else understanding something that was in fact carefully planned and executed as a more or less random effect of the actions of isolated, irrational, and hence unpredictable agents.

State crimes against democracy arguably emerge from overlapping contradictions within democratic states. Our economic and political system, as currently constituted, generates increasingly large differences in wealth and power between socio-economic elites and ordinary citizens—and corresponding differences, in many cases, between the priorities and interests of political elites and the vast majority of the population—while yet retaining many elements of the formal structures and the ideology of egalitarian democracy. There is likewise a contradiction within western democracies over the existence within the state security apparatus of agencies and structures that are only to a limited degree, if at all, subject to democratic control.⁷

During periods of intense power-bloc rivalry such as that which followed World War II, an argument can of course be made for the existence of security and intelligence agencies whose job it is to detect and prevent the penetration of state and civil society organizations by the agencies of foreign powers that intend in one way or another to fracture and weaken the nation and the state. But officials in such agencies, whose perceptions and political biases may be shared by powerful corporate interests, and by factions within the upper ranks of the military (in short, by what U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned against in 1961 as “the military-industrial complex”),⁸ may be tempted to act domestically in an illegal and criminal manner when they are unable to secure approval from the governing authorities for their own perhaps extremist policies. Leading figures of political parties—especially those parties whose policies can most easily be recognized as benefitting elites, but not the great majority of ordinary citizens—may succumb to the same temptation.

Although there can be disagreement as to whether this or that particular event in the United States deserves to be categorized as a state crime against democracy, there is no doubt at all that such events, perpetrated by political or state insiders, have occurred. Paradoxically, though, during a period in which events of this type have arguably been increasing in frequency and significance, it has become increasingly difficult to speak of them. Criminal actions organized by drug cartels and terrorist networks are freely discussed, but critical analyses of crimes committed by political elites—even decades ago—are likely to prompt angry and contemptuous dismissals.

Professor Lance deHaven-Smith of Florida State University first expounded the concept of state crimes against democracy in a peer-reviewed essay published in 2006 in the journalAdministrative Theory & Praxis.⁹ The concept has since been further refined, extended, and applied in new contexts in some thirty peer-reviewed essays by American, British, Australian, and Canadian scholars—some of them published in special issues of the journals American Behavioral Scientist¹⁰ and Public Integrity,¹¹ others in several journals in the fields of politics and public administration¹² or in edited books devoted to this and related subjects.¹³ The concept has also been deployed in interesting ways by scholars of the stature of David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott.¹⁴ But for the sake of simplicity, I will rely here on deHaven-Smith’s elaboration of the concept in his 2013 book Conspiracy Theory in America.¹⁵

In this book deHaven-Smith gives an illuminating historical dimension to the paradox remarked on above. He notes that although the notion that political elites can be expected to conspire for their own benefit against the common good formed a central part of the political theory and nation-building practice of the founders of the American republic, during the past four decades claims that such behaviour actually occurs in the present day have become virtually taboo.

As he observes, the Declaration of Independence outlined a “history of repeated injuries and usurpations” on the part of King George III, but stated clearly that the colonists’ right and duty to throw off his government and establish a better one was based, not on these abuses in themselves, but rather on the conspiracy of which they were evidence: the king’s plot to establish “an absolute tyranny over these states,” his “design to reduce them under absolute despotism.”¹⁶ In shaping the institutions of the new republic, the founders articulated a doctrine of separation of powers among the executive, legislative, and judicial functions of the state that was premised upon their conviction that “representative democracy was vulnerable to, in their language, ‘conspiracies against the people’s liberties’ by ‘perfidious public officials,’ and to ‘tyrannical designs’ by ‘oppressive factions.’”¹⁷ But now, in contrast, anyone who is willing to suspect such behaviour on the part of political elites (as opposed, let’s say, to conspiratorial behaviour by mafiosi or by Islamist terrorists) can expect to be labelled a “conspiracy theorist”—a pejorative term that implies both a lapse into paranoia and a departure from evidence-based rationality.

DeHaven-Smith insists, with reference both to the present day and to the writings of the founders of the United States, that the logic of “conspiratorial suspicion, which reconstructs hidden motives from confluent consequences in scattered actions, [….] is not paranoid; it is a laudable effort to make sense of political developments in a degenerating constitutional order.”¹⁸ What is irrational, rather, is the now-current dismissal, on a priori grounds, of the possibility of elite behaviour of the kind that the founders of the American republic attributed to the government of George III, and thought it prudent to anticipate in their own. This dismissal drives political thought into the impoverished domain of what deHaven-Smith calls “coincidence theories,”¹⁹ and encourages an abandonment of the structural and contextual analyses normally practised throughout the human sciences, as well as of the kinds of forensic analysis that are automatically applied in other kinds of criminal investigation.

DeHaven-Smith explains that he deliberately intends the concept of state crime against democracy, or SCAD,

“to displace the term ‘conspiracy theory.’ I say displace rather than replace because SCAD is not another name for conspiracy theory; it is a name for the type of wrong-doing about which the conspiracy-theory label discourages us from speaking.”²⁰

That label, he says,

“is a verbal defense mechanism used by political elites to suppress mass suspicions that inevitably arise when shocking political crimes benefit top leaders or play into their agendas, especially when these same officials are in control of agencies responsible for preventing the events in question or for investigating them after they have occurred.”²¹

In contrast to this defensive labelling, “the SCAD construct does not refer to a type of allegation or suspicion”:

“It refers to a special type of transgression: an attack from within on the political system’s organizing principles. For these extremely grave crimes, America’s Founders used the term ‘high crime’ and included in this category treason and ‘conspiracies against the people’s liberties.’ SCADs, high crimes, and antidemocratic conspiracies can also be called ‘elite political crimes’ and ‘elite political criminality.’”²²

These crimes differ from more routine forms of political criminality, such as bribery, kickbacks, or bid-rigging, which tend to affect “only pockets of government activity.” Unlike those more commonplace crimes, state crimes against democracy “have the potential to subvert political institutions and entire governments or branches of government. Committed at the highest levels of public office, they are crimes that threaten democracy itself.”²³

3. State crimes against democracy in U.S. presidential elections

The most significant events of the past half-century that invite characterization as state crimes against democracy include the Kennedy assassinations in 1963 and 1968 (to which might be added the assassination of Martin Luther King).²⁴ They include Richard Nixon’s secret intervention during the election of 1968 in the negotiations aimed at ending the Vietnam War (which was arguably treasonous, since Nixon, while running for the presidency, was advising the government of South Vietnam to act against the behests of the U.S. government);²⁵ and also the crimes that are remembered together under the name of Watergate.²⁶ They include the 1980 “October Surprise,” in which treasonous contacts with a foreign power (Iran, this time) were again used to influence the outcome of a presidential election; and the linked Iran-Contra scandal.²⁷ They arguably include the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which according to the analysis of a retired U.S. general involved, in addition to Timothy McVeigh’s truck bomb, demolition charges of which McVeigh and his accomplices had no knowledge.²⁸ They include the massive levels of vote suppression and fraud in the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, which were not merely “flawed,” as all commentators acknowledge, but stolen.²⁹ And finally, they include the linked events of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001³⁰ and their sequel in the ensuing anthrax attacks, which have been revealed as coming from within the state’s own military-scientific apparatus.³¹

We can observe three things about this admittedly selective list of events. First, to the degree that they are correctly identified as state crimes against democracy, these actions were carried out or enabled by state insiders.

Secondly, these events have been accompanied and followed, during the past dozen or more years especially, by an accelerating movement domestically away from the rule of law,³² and by a concurrent engagement on the part of the United States and its satellites in a series of foreign wars and interventions undertaken in open defiance of international law.³³

And thirdly, most relevant to my purpose here, all but two of these actual or putative state crimes against democracy amounted to direct interventions in presidential election campaigns. (The two exceptions, the Oklahoma City bombing and the 9/11 attacks and subsequent anthrax attacks, were traumatic events that achieved large-scale reorientations of public opinion.)³⁴

The George W. Bush administration came to office through an election marked by unprecedented levels of Republican-Party-organized vote suppression and fraudulent miscounting of the ballots cast, and culminating in an intervention by the Republican-majority U.S. Supreme Court that put an end to a recount of votes in Florida which, had it been allowed to proceed, would have resulted in the Democratic candidate, Al Gore, being elected as President.³⁵

The 2004 presidential election repeated, in more grotesque form, all the forms of vote suppression and electoral fraud that had characterized the previous one. As Lance deHaven-Smith has remarked,

“The election breakdowns [in 2000 and 2004] are not widely suspected of being repeat offences by the same network of political operatives employing the same tactics and resources, even though both elections were plagued by very similar problems, including inadequately equipped and staffed polling places in heavily Democratic areas, computer anomalies in the tabulation of county and state totals, highly partisan Republicans in charge of election administration, aggregate vote tabulations benefiting George W. Bush, and exit polls indicating that the other candidate had won rather than Bush.”³⁶

But these facts tell us that there are indeed important forensic parallels between the two elections.

The 2004 exit poll data revealed the scale of the fraud required to give George W. Bush his second presidential term. One can calculate from this data that John Kerry, the Democratic candidate, received—or should have received—64 million votes, and Bush just 56.5 million.³⁷ But the official results gave Bush the victory with 62 million votes over Kerry’s 59 million. Bush thus received 5.5 million more votes than he would have from an honest count, and Kerry 5 million too few.

One striking feature of this election was a systematic after-the-fact falsification of the exit poll data. On November 2, 2001, election day, the national exit poll with 13,047 respondents showed Kerry beating Bush by nearly 3 percent. New figures posted shortly after 1:30 in the morning of November 3, based on 13,531 respondents, showed Bush ahead by nearly 1.5 percent: an increase of 3.6 percent in the number of respondents had produced a mathematically impossible swing of 4.5 percent from Kerry to Bush in voters’ reports of their choices.

Similar mathematically impossible swings resulted from alterations made overnight in the state exit poll data for the key swing states of Florida and Ohio. The November 2 data showed Kerry holding a marginal lead over Bush in Florida, but an overnight increase of 0.55 percent in the number of respondents produced a 4 percent swing to Bush. In Ohio, the state that decided the national election, the November 2 data showed Kerry beating Bush by a decisive 4 percent—but an overnight increase of 2.8 percent in the number of respondents produced a swing from Kerry to Bush of fully 6.5 percent.

My own first article on the 2004 election, “Footprints of Electoral Fraud,” which drew attention to these anomalies, was published two days later, on November 5th.³⁸ The metaphor of that title may be a useful one—for it is in fact not easy to commit electoral fraud on a large scale without leaving tracks that forensic analysis can detect.³⁹

In an article entitled “The Strange Death of American Democracy: Endgame in Ohio,” published in late January 2005, I summarized at length the large body of evidence then available which showed that—even setting aside the massive vote-suppression fraud carried out on his behalf—George W. Bush did not come close to winning the state of Ohio; and that, since under the Electoral College system Ohio was the crucial swing state, he therefore did not win the presidency either.⁴⁰ This and further evidence has since been more fully analyzed in a series of important books—none of which, interestingly, has received more than passing mention, if that, in the mainstream media.⁴¹

6. Home truths

Some sixty years ago the distinguished Canadian economic historian Harold Innis wrote of what he called “the Siamese twin relationship between Canada and the United States—a very small twin and a very large one, to be exact.”⁴² One might suspect that some of what I have written here could be coloured by this relationship—by the small twin’s resentment, envy, or perhaps fear of his larger sibling.

It seems only right, then, that having endorsed some trenchant criticisms of the recent behaviour of American elites—having, so to speak, slung pebbles against the windows of my neighbour—I should conclude by slinging some against my own windows as well, and by acknowledging that Canada’s recent national elections have been less clean than we might hope and believe.

Our present government, under Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party, came to power in 2006 in an election marked by two important anomalies. One of these, an illegal shifting of campaign funds between the Conservative central office and local riding associations, made it possible for the Conservatives to spend $1.3 million more on campaign advertising than they were allowed to by law, and may have tipped a close election in their favour.⁴³ The other more serious anomaly was an announcement by the RCMP, our national police force, midway through the election campaign, that it was investigating one of the government’s key figures, Finance Minister Ralph Goodale, for corruption. The Liberal government, for which opinion polls had confidently been predicting another term in office, plunged in popular esteem—“an 18-point lead in Ontario for the Liberals transmute[d] into a six-point lead for the Conservatives within a few days”⁴⁴—and Stephen Harper’s Conservatives won enough seats in Parliament to form a minority government. The Conservatives had been in office for more than a year when the RCMP acknowledged that, after all, it had no evidence against Goodale.

Can we describe these events as state crimes against democracy? There is no doubt as to the illegality of the first and the radical impropriety of the second—and they did result in a change of government that brought about radical reorientations of Canadian domestic and foreign policies. Is it significant that neither event received adequate investigation? The financial fraud was settled out of court five years after the event, with the Conservative Party paying a derisory $50,000 fine;⁴⁵ and a government which had come to office through the RCMP’s impropriety was no more disposed to undertake a serious inquiry into that episode than was the RCMP itself.⁴⁶

Our next national election, in 2008, was marked by piecemeal instances of law-breaking by members of the governing party—one of which is of particular, almost prophetic interest.

Canada has a multi-party system with three main national parties: from right to left, the Conservatives, the Liberals, and the New Democratic Party (or NDP)—as well as two smaller centre-left parties, the Green Party and the Bloc Québécois (which fields candidates only in Québec). In 2008 Gary Lunn, the Environment Minister, was in danger of losing his British Columbia seat when the NDP candidate was forced by an old scandal to withdraw near the end of the campaign—a development that gave Lunn’s Liberal opponent a good prospect of winning most of the centre-left vote.⁴⁷ But taking advantage of the fact that the NDP candidate’s name remained on the ballots, supporters of Lunn’s campaign flooded the riding on the day before the election with fraudulent automated phone calls, supposedly from the NDP’s local headquarters, urging people to vote for their man. Shortly before the election, a poll showed that less than one percent of the electorate still intended to cast a vote for the NDP—but as a result of the robocall fraud, 5.69 percent voted NDP: Lunn was re-elected, it seems, because more than 4.7 percent of the riding’s voters had been persuaded to throw their votes away.⁴⁸ Despite opposition complaints, both the RCMP and Elections Canada, the organization that runs national elections and is charged with enforcing the Elections Act, declared (falsely) that no law had been broken.⁴⁹

Emboldened by this success, people working in the interests of the Conservative Party appear to have decided to repeat the operation on a national scale in the 2011 election.

Midway through that election campaign, which ran from March 26 until May 2, 2011, Liberal Party supporters across Canada began to receive late-night or otherwise inconvenient phone calls—supposedly from their own party—asking for their support. These harassment calls seemed designed to alienate voters from that party, and according to some news reports succeeded in doing so.⁵⁰ Then, in the final days of the campaign, many opposition-party supporters received fraudulent calls giving them false information as to where they were supposed to vote. The clear intention of these calls, which claimed to be providing correct revised information, was to send the recipients to more distant places where they would be unable to vote, and thus to reduce the turnout of voters who supported centre-left parties.⁵¹

We have good estimates, based on polling data and on Elections Canada complaints records, of the numbers of these calls. Harassment calls were made to well over half a million Canadian voters, and vote-suppression calls were received by a nearly equal number of people⁵²—though the total number of recipients was significantly smaller than the total number of calls, since many opposition voters received both kinds of calls. Surprisingly, perhaps, since they made up less than half of the total calls, the vote-suppression calls received nearly all of the media and investigative attention given to this issue.

One obvious feature of this telephone fraud is that it was nationally organized. The same scripts appear to have been used nation-wide in the vote-suppression calls, and Elections Canada recorded complaints about fraudulent calls from 261 of Canada’s 308 ridings or electoral districts—though the calls were concentrated in some thirty ridings, and quite thinly scattered elsewhere. Clear evidence that the two kinds of fraudulent calls were directed by a common intentionality, and also that they were to a considerable degree targeted, appears in the fact that 42 percent of the people whose complaints were recorded by Elections Canada reported having received both harassment and vote-suppression calls.⁵³

We know quite a lot about the provenance of these calls. While most of the vote-suppression calls were automated “robocalls,” the first wave of them was made by live-operator call centres which were also employed by the Conservative Party to make legitimate ‘get-out-the-vote’ calls: in the fraudulent calls, the operators routinely gave out call-back numbers that led to Conservative Party lines.⁵⁴ Investigative reporting by CBC News,⁵⁵ together with a poll conducted by Ekos Research,⁵⁶ raised the probability that the Conservative Party’s central database had been used nation-wide in the targeting of vote-suppression calls.⁵⁷ And in the riding of Guelph, the only one in which Elections Canada conducted anything resembling a serious investigation, several important facts were established:

(1) The call list used in sending out the main wave of vote-suppression robocalls was, very precisely, the most recent update of the Conservative Party’s data-base list of opposition-party supporters in that riding;⁵⁸

(2) The computers used in arranging for those calls to be sent out were located in the Conservative Party’s Guelph campaign office;⁵⁹ and

(3) The person principally responsible for the fraud in Guelph, who concealed his identity under a pseudonym, used the same two Internet Protocol addresses—sometimes in the same log-in sessions—as did Andrew Prescott, the Deputy Manager of the Conservative campaign in Guelph.⁶⁰

The fraud had somewhat paradoxical consequences. In the riding of Guelph, where it was most intense, it was a conspicuous failure, and the Liberal incumbent was re-elected. But this is a university community with a high level of political engagement, with very active Liberal, NDP, and Green Party organizations, and, by the end of the 2011 election campaign, with a hot charge of resentment over other vote-suppression activities by the local Conservatives.⁶¹

Elsewhere, there is evidence to indicate that the harassment and vote-suppression calls may have tipped the balance in enough ridings to make the difference between a minority Conservative government—in which opposition parties could exercise a considerable degree of power in the House of Commons—and a majority government, in which the Prime Minister’s legislative and executive powers are unconstrained.⁶²

I have quoted above Professor deHaven-Smith’s observation that the elite groups responsible for state crimes against democracy are sometimes also “in control of agencies responsible for preventing the events in question or for investigating them after they have occurred.” This may have been the case in the wake of Canada’s 2011 election.

In February 2012, the Conservative Party fingered one of its own junior officials, Michael Sona, who at the age of 22 had been Communications Director in the Guelph campaign, as the sole organizer in Canada of the telephone fraud. Elections Canada went along with this improbable notion, and laid charges against Sona, although the principal evidence against him consisted of conversations conveniently ‘remembered’ by other junior officials at the instigation of the Conservative Party’s chief lawyer. No charges were laid against anyone else. Although Elections Canada had much more substantive evidence against Andrew Prescott, who had been Deputy Manager of the Conservative campaign in Guelph, and the person in charge of information technology, it granted him immunity from prosecution, and Sona, who had been “thrown under the bus” by the Conservative Party, was duly convicted in August 2014, after a trial which had elements of farce, given that the prosecutor and the judge concurred in describing Prescott, the principal prosecution witness, as an untrustworthy confabulator.⁶³

Elections Canada’s investigation of the fraud was marked by a surprising degree of incompetence. Early evidence of this appeared in May 2012, when Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand informed a parliamentary committee that Elections Canada had received 70 complaints from the riding of Guelph about fraudulent phone calls: the actual number of specific and documented complaints from Guelph received by this time by the responsible official, the Commissioner of Canada Elections, was in fact well over 200. This pattern was repeated in a report Mayrand issued on March 26, 2013, according to which Elections Canada had by this time received “just over 1,400” complaints. But figures provided in April 2014 by the Commissioner of Canada Elections reveal that the actual number of complaints received by that time was at least 50 percent higher.⁶⁴

But the incompetence was much more far-reaching than this. Except in the riding of Guelph, no attempt appears to have been made to obtain court orders for telecommunications company records until well over six months or even a year after the election (by which time most companies had discarded the relevant information). In Guelph itself, the investigation conducted by retired RCMP officer Allan Mathews was woefully inadequate. His more salient errors can be briefly itemized.

(1) Mathews had information that Elections Canada’s office in Guelph was “inundated” with complaints from the moment its telephone lines opened at 8:50 a.m. on election day, and that people deceived by fraudulent calls started showing up at a central Guelph polling station as soon as it opened at 9:30 a.m.⁶⁵And yet the only fraud he investigated was a single burst of nearly 7,700 robocalls sent to a list of just over 6,700 Guelph voters by an Edmonton voice broadcasting company under contract to the Conservative Party between 10:03 and 10:14 a.m. on election day.

Mathews made contact with only 18 of the people in Guelph who made a total of 379 complaints recorded by Elections Canada. He got in touch with just five of the 79 complainants on a list provided to him by the Liberal incumbent in Guelph on May 31, 2011: the fact that two of those five informed him of fraudulent calls quite unlike the robocalls he investigated (including late-afternoon calls in which voters were falsely informed that their polling station had closed early) might, one think, have encouraged him to go further. He did not contact any of the complainants on a second list provided to him by the Liberal Party, or follow up information about complaint lists sent to him by the Guelph NDP and Green Party.

(3) Mathews appears to have made no attempt to investigate live-operator fraudulent calls in Guelph, and the court order he obtained for information from the Edmonton voice broadcaster was for records pertaining only to a single day, May 2, 2011—even though he had information about fraudulent calls made before that day. When the Edmonton company provided him with a recording of a harassment call downloaded by the Guelph Conservatives that was to have been sent out with a “spoofed” Liberal Party originating number, he professed not to understand what it was.⁶⁶

(4) Mathews appears also not to have understood that the communications company Rogers recycles the modems it provides to customers. He traced the modem that had been used in arranging fraudulent robocalls to an address none of whose residents had any political interests or contacts—and apparently failed to realize that the same modem had been used during the 2011 election at the Conservative Party headquarters in Guelph. As a result, what the media should have reported as a breakthrough in the case—a discovery that the robocall fraud in Guelph was organized from the Conservative Party’s campaign office—was reported instead as a “blank wall.”⁶⁷

(5) Finally, Mathews obtained material evidence from the Edmonton voice broadcaster, in the form of detailed information about session logs, which showed that Andrew Prescott, the Deputy Manager of the Guelph Conservative campaign, and the person who organized the robocalls Mathews investigated were either one and same person, or else very closely acquainted. Prescott and the so-called “Pierre Jones” (also known as “Pierre Poutine”) used the same two Internet Protocol (IP) addresses; “Pierre Jones” logged in to two of Prescott’s voice-broadcaster sessions; Prescott stored three sessions under the name of “Pierre Jones”; and on two occasions on election day “Jones” and Prescott logged in within minutes of each other from the same IP address.⁶⁸ In an uncorrupted investigation, this information would have justified the laying of charges against Prescott—instead of which, he was granted immunity from prosecution.⁶⁹

One last frustrating detail can be mentioned. In late February 2012 Annette Desgagné, a telephone operator who had been employed at the Thunder Bay, Ontario call centre of Responsive Marketing Group (RMG), a company contracted to the Conservative Party, made national headlines when she claimed that she believed her work during the 2011 election campaign had included giving voters misleading information about their polling stations. She and some co-workers who had likewise experienced reactions of incredulity verging on anger from citizens who recognized the information RMG was providing as obviously incorrect spoke to their supervisor. When she told them to continue making the calls, they contacted the RCMP and Elections Canada—neither of which took any action.⁷⁰

This story made headlines in late February 2012, ten months after the election—and was quickly followed by reports in CBC News and the Toronto Star that the Conservative Party had dispatched senior officials to Thunder Bay to go through all of the audio recordings held by Responsive Marketing Group.⁷¹ It is hard to imagine any innocent explanation for such an act.⁷² Elections Canada announced that it was sending one of its investigators to Thunder Bay, where he would arrive a week later.⁷³ By that time, one must assume, any incriminating details in those records would have been purged.

In April 2014, Yves Côté, the Commissioner of Canada Elections (which is to say the official in Elections Canada responsible for enforcing the Canada Elections Act), brought his national investigation to a close with a report declaring that while some confusing telephone calls had indeed been made across Canada, “the evidence does not establish that calls were made a) with the intention of preventing or attempting to prevent an elector from voting, or b) for the purpose of inducing an elector by some pretence or contrivance to vote or not vote [….] As a result, the Commissioner found insufficient grounds to recommend that any charges be laid.” This report added that “It is useful to note, moreover, that the data gathered in the investigation does not lend support to the existence of a conspiracy or conspiracies to interfere with the voting process […].”⁷⁴

Right-wing journalists were quick to take the hint. “Sorry, Truthers,” John Ivison trumpeted in the National Post, “the robocalls affair is not Canada’s Watergate.” Quoting Christopher Hitchens’ comparison of conspiracy theories to “the exhaust fumes of democracy,” Ivison hoped for a reduction in “similar emissions.”⁷⁵ Tasha Kheiriddin declared in the online news site iPolitics that the “conspiracy theory” around robocalls had indeed imploded—gone “poof,” she said—and proposed that the affair “may yet be filed under ‘History’s Greatest Hysterias’, next to the Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic of 1962 and the Dancing Plague of Strasbourg in 1518.”⁷⁶

I hope we know, by now, what to think of the ad hominem vapourings of journalists who are attempting to enforce a rule of silence around state crimes against democracy. The appropriate response is simply to continue a rigorous critical analysis of the matters from which they would like us to avert our eyes.

Michael Keefer, who holds degrees from the Royal Military College of Canada, the University of Toronto, and Sussex University, is Professor Emeritus in the School of English and Theatre Studies of the University of Guelph, and a former President of the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English. He has held visiting research fellowships at the University of Sussex and at the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt Universität, Greifswald.

Notes

1Stéphane Hessel, “Stéphane Hessel on Occupy Wall Street: Find the Time for Outrage When Your Values Are Not Respected,” Interview with Juan González, Democracy Now!(10 October 2011), http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/10/10/stphane_hessel_on_occupy_wall_street_find_the_time_for_outrage_when_your_values_are_not_respected.

2Stéphane Hessel, Indignez-vous! (Paris: Indigène, 2010). Charles Glass says in his Foreword to the English translation that the booklet had sold over 600,000 copies by the end of December 2010 (Time for Outrage!, trans. Damion Searls and Alba Arrikha [London: Charles Glass Books, 2011], p. 7); I remember reading the 2.5 million figure when I was in France a month later—and also reading, in late February, that the Italian version (Indignatevi!, trans. Maurizia Balmelli [Turin: Add editore, 2011], had sold 25,000 copies within ten days after its publication. Séphane Hessel died in 2013, at the age of 95.

3I am paraphrasing and quoting from an essay by the London publisher of Indignez-vous!: Charles Glass, “Time for Outrage! On the American publication of Stéphane Hessel’sIndignez-vous!, The Nation (7-14 March 2011), http://www.thenation.com/article/158644/time-outrage#.

4Beneath this façade, however, there may be corruption and violations of law by state officials—as is allegedly the case in one arguably symptomatic contemporary instance in France that has large-scale ramifications for the integrity of France’s food supply and the survival of farming communities. See Evan Jones, “France’s 1000 Cow Factory: The Battle for Rural France,” CounterPunch (10-12 October 2014), http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/10/frances-1000-cow-factory/.

5The best-known such incidents occurred in Italy. See Daniele Ganser, NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe (London: Routledge, 2005). Ferdinando Imposimato, Honorary President of the Supreme Court of Italy, and author or co-author of seven books on political corruption and terrorism, has charged that senior politicians were implicated in terrorist atrocities: see “Ferdinando Imposimato: ‘Aldo Moro ucciso dall Br [Brigate rosse] per volere di Giulio Andreotti, Francesco Cossiga e Nicola Lettieri’,” Huffington Post (7 October 2013), http://www.huffingtonpost.it/2013/07/10/ferdinando-imposimato-aldo-moro-ucciso-br-giulio-andreotti-e-francesco-cossiga_n_3571509.html; and also Ferdinando Imposimato and Sandro Provvisionato, Doveve Morire: Chi ha ucciso Aldo Moro (Milan: Chiarelettere, 2008). Judge Imposimato has linked the terror attacks of the “strategy of tension,” which were aimed at persuading the government to declare a state of emergency, to the events of 9/11: “The 9/11 attacks were a global state terror operation permitted by the administration of the USA, which had foreknowledge of the operation yet remained intentionally unresponsive in order to make war against Afghanistan and Iraq. To put it briefly, the 9/11 events were an instance of the strategy of tension enacted by political and economic powers in the USA to seek advantages for the oil and arms industries. Italy too was a victim of the ‘strategia della tensione’ of the CIA, enacted in Italy from the time of the Porta della Ginestra massacre in Sicily in 1947 until 1993.” “Letters,” Journal of 9/11 Studies (September 2012), http://www.journalof911studies.com/resources/2012-September—Imposimato-letter.pdf.

6See Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993; rpt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). Scott writes that “A deep political system or process is one which habitually resorts to decision-making and enforcement procedures outside as well as inside those publicly sanctioned by law and society. In popular terms, collusive secrecy and law-breaking are part of how the deep political system works” (pp. xi-xii). Deep political analysis, Scott argues, extends structural analysis by considering “the institutional and parapolitical arrangements which constitute the way in which we are systematically governed” (p. 11).

7It may be appropriate, a century after the outbreak of World War I, to remember how one such agency set off the chain of events that led to war. The 1903 assassination of the autocratic King Alexander Obrenovic transformed Serbia, under the new King Petar Karadjordjovic, into “a genuinely parliamentary polity” with an “emphatically democratic constitution.” However, the “regicide network” exercised power, beyond the control of any democratic institution, within the state’s military and policing functions—and was devoted to the cause of integrating all Serbs into a Greater Serbia (even if, by their own account, many of these people were Macedonian Bulgarians or Bosnian Croats who had no desire to be re-labeled as Serbian). In 1911, the network formed the so-called “Black Hand,” which three years later organized the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. See Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (2012; rpt. New York: HarperCollins, 2014), pp. 14-15, 17, 38-39, 47-56.

8Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Farewell Address,” available online from the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/.

9Lance deHaven-Smith, “When Political Crimes Are Inside Jobs: Detecting State Crimes Against Democracy,” Administrative Theory & Praxis 28.3 (2006): 330-55.

10Matthew T. Witt and Alexander Kouzmin, eds., Special issue on State Crimes Against Democracy, American Behavioral Scientist 53 (2010): 783-939. This special issue contains an introduction by Witt and Kouzmin, “Sense Making Under ‘Holographic’ Conditions: Framing SCAD Research,” pp. 783-94, and five other articles: Lance deHaven-Smith, “Beyond Conspiracy Theory: Patterns of High Crime in American Government,” pp. 795-825; Christopher L. Hinson, “Negative Informational Action: Danger for Democracy,” pp. 826-47; Laurie A. Maxwell, “In Denial of Democracy: Social Psychological Implications for Public Discourse on State Crimes Against Democracy Post-9/11,” pp. 848-84; Kym Thorne and Alexander Kouzmin, “The USA PATRIOT Acts (et al.): Convergent Legislation and Oligarchic Isomorphism in the ‘Politics of Fear’ and State Crime(s) Against Democracy (SCADs),” pp. 885-920; and Matthew T. Witt, “Pretending Not to See or Hear, Refusing to Signify: The Farce and Tragedy of Geocentric Public Affairs Scholarship,” pp. 921-39.

11Lance deHaven-Smith, ed., Symposium on State Crimes Against Democracy, December 2009, Public Integrity 13 (2011): 197-252. In addition to deHaven-Smith’s and Alexander Kouzmin’s “Introduction,” this symposium contains four essays, among them Lance deHaven-Smith, “Myth and Reality of Whistleblower Protections,” pp. 207-20; Alexander Kouzmin, J. Johnston, and Kym Thorne, “Economic SCADs: The Dark Underbelly of Neo-Liberalism,” pp. 221-38; and Matthew T. Witt, “Exit, Voice, Loyalty Revisited: Contours and Implications for Public Administration in Dark Times,” pp. 239-52.

12Matthew T. Witt and Lance deHaven-Smith, “Conjuring the Holographic State: Scripting Security Doctrine for a (New) World of Disorder,” Administration & Society 40 (2008): 547-85; Mohamad G. Alkadry and Matthew T. Witt, “Abu Graib and the Normalization of Hate and Torture,” Public Integrity 11 (2009): 137-55; Lance deHaven-Smith and Matthew T. Witt, “Preventing State Crimes Against Democracy,” Administration & Society 41 (2009): 527-50; Lance de-Haven-Smith, “State Crimes Against Democracy in the War on Terror: Applying the Nuremberg Principles to the Bush-Cheney Administration,” Contemporary Politics 16 (2010): 403-20; Lance de-Haven-Smith and Matthew T. Witt, “Conspiracy Theory Reconsidered: Responding to Mass Suspicions of Political Criminality in High Office,” Administration & Society 45 (2013): 267-95.

13See Mark Crispin Miller, ed., Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008 (Brooklyn: Ig Publishing, 2008), which includes Lance deHaven-Smith, “Florida 2000: Beginnings of a Lawless Presidency,” pp. 45-57; and Alexander Kouzmin, Matthew Witt, and Andrew Kakabadse, eds., State Crimes Against Democracy: Political Forensics in Public Affairs (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012). This book contains thirteen essays, among them the following: Matthew T. Witt and Andrew Kakabadse, “Introduction: State Crimes Against Democracy—Political Forensics in Public Affairs,” pp. 1-9; John Dixon, Scott Spehr, and John Burke, “State Crimes Against Democracy: A Clarification of Connotations,” pp. 10-26; Chris Hinson, “Normalizing the SCAD Heuristic,” pp. 27-46; Andrew Kakabadse, Alexander Kouzmin, Nada K. Kakabadse, and Nikolai Mouraviev, “Auditing Moral Hazards for the Post-Global Financial Crisis (GFC),” pp. 79-106; Kym Thorne and Alexander Kouzmin, “Ideal Typing: (In)visible Power in the Context of Oligarchic Isomorphisms,” pp. 107-34; Courtney Jensen, “The Social Construction of Race, Inequality, and the Invisible Role of the State,” pp. 135-55; Mohamad G. Alkadry, “Unlimited and Unchecked Power: The Use of Secret Evidence Law,” pp. 156-78; Riste Simnjanovski, “American Military-Education Convergence: Designing the Failure of Public Education,” pp. 179-203; and Nikolaos V. Pappas, “The Determination of Behavioral Patterns in Tourism Through Terrorism: Lessons from Crete, Greece,” pp. 224-45. See also Lance deHaven-Smith, “Seeing 9/11 From Above: A Comparative Analysis of State Crimes Against Democracy,” in James Gourley, ed., The 9/11 Toronto Report: International Hearings on the Events of September 11, 2001 (New York: International Center for 9/11 Studies, 2012), pp. 67-108, 393-400.

14See David Ray Griffin, “Building What? How SCADs Can be Hidden in Plain Sight,” 911 Truth.org (27 May 2010), http://www.911truth.org/building-what-how-scads-can-de-hidden-in-plain-sight/; and Griffin, 9/11 Ten Years Later: When State Crimes Against Democracy Succeed (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2011); and Peter Dale Scott, “Systematic Destabilization in Recent American History: 9/11, the JFK Assassination, and the Oklahoma Bombing as a Strategy of Tension,” Information Clearing House (25 September 2012), http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32552.htm.

15Lance deHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013).

16DeHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America, pp. 7, 56.

17Ibid., p. 55.

18Ibid., p. 57.

19Ibid., p. 20.

20Ibid., p. 9.

21Ibid., p. 9.

22Ibid., p. 11.

23Ibid., p. 12.

24Evidence of “five impulsive sounds that have the acoustic waveform of Dealey Plaza gunfire,” one of which “matches the echo pattern of a test shot fired from the Grassy Knoll,” refutes the conclusions of the Warren Commission Report on the JFK assassination. See D.B. Thomas, “Echo correlation analysis and the acoustic evidence in the Kennedy assassination revisited,” Science & Justice (2001): 21-32. The official account of RFK’s assassination is refuted by similar evidence: a witness’s attestation that 12 to 14 (not 8) shots were fired, from two separate directions, and an audio recording, analysis of which reveals that there were 13 shots, five fired by a weapon with a distinct acoustic signature and from a direction opposite to that from which the convicted assassin fired. See Lisa Pease, “The other Kennedy conspiracy,” Salon.com (21 November 2011),http://www.salon.com/2011/11/21/the_other_kennedy_conspiracy/; and Michael Martinez and Brad Johnson, “RFK assassination witness tells CNN: There was a second shooter,”CNN (30 April 2012), http://www.edition.cnn.com/2012/04/28/justice/california-rfk-second-gun/. On the King assassination, see William F. Pepper, An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King (London: Verso, 2003).

25See Robert Parry, “Admissions on Nixon’s ‘Treason’,” Consortium News (14 June 2012), http://consortiumnews.com/2012/06/14/admission-on-nixons-treason/; and David Taylor, “The Lyndon Johnson tapes: Richard Nixon’s ‘treason’,” BBC News (22 March 2013), http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21768668.

26See John W. Dean, The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (London: Penguin, 2014); Max Holland, Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012); and Watergate.info, http://www.watergate.info.

27See Robert Parry, “How Two Elections Changed America,” Consortium News (4 November 2009), http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/110409.html; and Ross Cheit et al.,Understanding the Iran-Contra Affairs, http://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/. The creators of this website note that the project “evolved from an applied ethics and public policy course at Brown University called Good Government.”

28See David Hoffman, The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror (Venice, CA: Feral House, 1998), pp. 1-3, 15-17, 27-28, 461-85. DeHaven-Smith’s list of state crimes against democracy does not include this event—but see, for a contrasting viewpoint, Peter Dale Scott, “Systemic Destabilization in Recent American History.”

29Key aspects of the electoral fraud involved are mentioned below.

30Since early 2008 it has been known that The 9/11 Commission Report’s narrative of the planning and execution of the attacks is based on torture, and therefore has no evidential value; see my essay “9/11, Torture, and Law,” Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies (2011.1): 141-70, http://www.anarchist-developments.org/index.php/adcs_journal/article/…/34/35. For evidence that the Twin Towers and World Trade Center 7 were destroyed by controlled demolitions, see Graeme MacQueen, “118 Witnesses: The Firefighters’ Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers,” Journal of 9/11 Studies 2 (August 2006): 47-106; Kevin Ryan, “High Velocity Bursts of Debris From Point-Like Sources in the WTC Towers,” Journal of 9/11 Studies 13 (July 2007), http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2007/Ryan_HVBD.pdf; Steven E. Jones at al., “Extremely High Temperatures During the World Trade Center Destruction,” Journal of 9/11 Studies 19 (January 2008), http://wwwjournalof911studies.com/articles/WTCHighTemp2.pdf; Graeme MacQueen and Tony Szamboti, “The Missing Jolt: A Simple Refutation of the NIST-Bazant Collapse Hypothesis,” Journal of 9/11 Studies 24 (January 2009), http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2008/TheMissingJolt7.pdf; and Neils H. Harrit et al., “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe,” Bentham Open Chemistry & Physics Journal 2 (2009): 7-31, http://www.bentham.org/open/tocpj/articles/V002/7TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM.

31See Graeme MacQueen, The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2014).

32See, for example, Barbara Olshansky, Democracy Detained: Secret Unconstitutional Practices in the U.S. War on Terror (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007); Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); and Brian J. Trautman, “Why the NDAA is Unconstitutional,”CounterPunch (18 January 2012), http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/18/why-the-ndaa-is-unconstitutional/.

33For the opinions of some specialists in international law, see Francis Boyle, Destroying World Order: U.S. Imperialism in the Middle East Before and After September 11^th (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2004); Michael Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage, and Crimes Against Humanity (London: Pluto Press, 2004); Alex Conte, Security in the 21^st Century: The United Nations, Afghanistan, and Iraq (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); Marjorie Cohn, Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law (Sausalito, CA: Podipoint Press, 2007); and Myra Williamson,Terrorism, War, and International Law: The Legality of the Use of Force Against Afghanistan in 2001 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009).

34In 1995 a burgeoning far-right-wing militia movement used the FBI’s murderous violence against the Weaver family at Ruby Ridge, Idaho in 1992, and against the Koresh cult at Waco, Texas, in 1993, actions which killed a total of 78 people, to justify taking up arms. The Oklahoma City bombing was represented as revenge (it took place two years to the day after the Waco siege). The bombing killed 168 people (19 of them children) and wounded over 680; this discredited the militia movement and legitimized state repression against far-right-wing anti-state extremists. The 9/11 attacks legitimized a state of emergency and continuity of government measures, and created a surge of support for wars in the Middle East, and the anthrax attacks silenced opposition to the Patriot Act.

35The evidence on this subject seems conclusive. See Daniel Lazare, The Velvet Coup (London: Verso, 2001); Robert Parry, “So Bush Did Steal the White House,” Consortium News (22 November 2001), http://www.consortiumnews.com/2001/112101a.html; Greg Palast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (2nd ed., New York: Plume, 2004), pp. 11-81; Andrew Gumbel, Steal This Vote: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America (New York: Nation Books, 2005), pp. 201-24; and Lance deHaven-Smith, ed., The Battle for Florida: An Annotated Compendium of Materials from the 2000 Presidential Election (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005).

36DeHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America, p. 15, citing Steven F. Freeman and Joel Bleifus, Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2006).

37The following numbers, borrowed from Steven Freeman’s work (and rounded off to the nearest half-million), show the scale of the fraud. 105.5 million votes for president were officially tallied in 2000, and 122.5 million in 2004. Al Gore won 51 million votes in 2000, Bush 50.5 million, and the remaining 4 million went to Ralph Nader and other candidates. In 2004, making allowance for the passage of time, Kerry and Bush had hypothetical bases from 2000 of 49 and 48.5 million voters respectively. The 2004 national exit polls show that 8 percent of Gore 2000 voters swung to Bush in 2004 (and 1 percent to third-party candidates), while 10 percent of Bush 2000 voters went to Kerry: that expands Kerry’s base of returning voters to 49.5 million, while Bush’s shrinks to 47.5 million. 64 percent (2.5 million) of the people who supported a third-party candidate in 2000 voted in 2004 for Kerry, and 17 percent (0.5 million) for Bush. Kerry thus won 52 million of the votes cast in 2004 by returning 2000 voters, and Bush won just 48 million. When we add in the 21 million first-time voters in 2004, Kerry’s lead expands, for 57 percent (12 million) of these people voted for Kerry, 41 percent (8.5 million) voted for Bush, and 2 percent (0.5 million) supported a third-party candidate. This indicates that Kerry received—or should have received—a total of 64 million votes, and that Bush received—or should have been credited with—just 56.5 million votes.

38Michael Keefer, “Footprints of Electoral Fraud: The November 2 Exit Poll Scam,” Centre for Research on Globalization (5 November 2004), http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KEE411A.html; also available at www.globalresearch.ca/footprints-of-electoral-fraud-the-november-2-exit-poll-scam/115. (The figures I have given here incorporate some small corrections to the figures given in that article; these do not affect the substance of the argument.)

39Another much larger anomaly—or one might say absurdity—was pointed out by Michael Collins in 2007. In order to produce the appearance of a Bush victory in the altered November 3rd exit poll data, it was necessary to claim that voter turnout had increased by a massive 66 percent in the country’s 24 large cities, and that given an actual decline in Bush’s support from his rural and small-town base, he had won the election due to a surge in the numbers of conservative white urban voters. But official data is available for 12 of these cities (accounting for 61 percent of the total big city population); in these cities voter turnout increased on average by just 13.1 percent—meaning that a more than 100 percent increase would be required in the other 12 large cities to produce the average increase reported in the falsified data. It is quite clear that this did not in fact happen. See Michael Collins, “Election 2004: The Urban Legend,” Scoop (13 June 2007), http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0706/S00165.htm.

40Michael Keefer, “The Strange Death of American Democracy: Endgame in Ohio,” Centre for Research in Globalization (24 January 2005), http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KEE501.html.

41These include, in addition to Freeman and Bleifus, Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?, Mark Crispin Miller, Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They’ll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them) (New York: Basic Books, 2005); Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, How the GOP Stole America’s 2004 Election & Is Rigging 2008 (Columbus: CICJ Books, 2005); Bob Fitrakis, Steven Rosenfeld, and Harvey Wasserman, eds., Did George W. Bush Steal America’s 2004 Election? Essential Documents (Columbus: CICJ Books, 2005); Fitrakis, Rosenfeld, and Wasserman, eds. What Happened in Ohio? A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election (New York: The New Press, 2006); Greg Palast, Armed Madhouse (2006; rpt. New York: Plume, 2007), pp. 187-263; and Richard Charnin, Proving Election Fraud: Phantom Voters, Uncounted Votes, and the National Exit Poll (Bloomington, Indiana: AuthorHouse, 2010).

42Harold A. Innis, Essays in Canadian Economic History, ed. Mary Q. Innis (1956, rpt. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), p. 238.

43See Briony Penn, “Robocalls and the petrostate,” Focus Online (April 2012), http://www.focusonline.ca/?q=node/355; Scott Reid, “Election charges undermine Harper legacy,” CBC News (25 February 2011),http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/02/25/pol-vp-reid.html; and see also “A ‘Bunch of Turds’: What Really Happened in the In and Out Scheme,” The Sixth Estate (10 March 2011), http://sixthestate.net/?p=932.

44 Reid, “Election charges undermine Harper legacy.”

45See Steven Chase, “Tory Senators Face Elections Charge Over Campaign Spending,” The Globe and Mail (25 February 2011), http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/tory-senators-face-elections-canada-charges-over-campaign-spending/article1920146/; Laura Payton, “Conservative Party Fined Over Breaking Elections Laws,” CBC News (10 November 2011), http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/11/10/pol-conservative-election-in-and-out.html; and Jim Harris, “Harper Conquers Canada, One Robocall at a Time,” Huffington Post (27 February 2012), http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/jim-harris/robocalls-scandal_b_1305397.html.

46See James Travers, “Probe role of RCMP in last vote,” Toronto Star (16 February 2008), http://www.thestar.com/columnists/article/304195; Jack Aubry, “RCMP had ‘negative’ impact on Liberal campaign,”National Post (31 March 2008), http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=412828; Richard Brennan, “Greens seek probe into RCMP action,” Toronto Star (11 April 2008), http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/articke/413524; and Guy Charron, “Canada: Report whitewashes federal police’s intervention,” World Socialist Web Site (22 May 2008), http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/may2008/rcmpm22.shtml. There is additional evidence of RCMP corruption around this time in a scandal involving an alleged looting of the force’s pension fund by senior officers: see Kady O’Malley and Chris Selby, “RCMP scandal deepens: Officers allege highest levels of force involved in coverup of pension fraud,” Maclean’s (29 March 2007), http://www.macleans.ca/canada/national/article.jsp?content=20070329_091523_3204; and David Hutton, “RCMP Pension Scandal: How to Stop the Rot,” The Hill Times (30 April 2007), available online at Fair: Federal Accountability Initiative for Reform, http://fairwhistleblower.ca/news/articles/2007-04-30_rcmp_pension_scandal_how_to_stop_the_rot.html.

47This was indeed a likely outcome. In the 2006 election, Lunn had been re-elected with 37.15 percent of the vote; his NDP and Liberal opponents won 26.54 and 26.08 percent respectively, while the Green Party candidate won 9.94 percent. The 2008 Liberal candidate, Briony Penn, who had a history of social and environmental activism, was in a strong position to attract NDP and Green Party voters, as well as the usual Liberal Party supporters.

48Lunn defeated Penn by 2,621 votes—while more than 3,000 voters were deceived by the robocalls into wasting their votes on a candidate who had resigned from the race. This result is of interest as showing the potential impact of fraudulent automated phone calls among voters with no previous experience of this kind of fraud, and no timely counter-information. See Briony Penn, “Robocalls and the petrostate”; “NDP candidate West quits over skinny-dipping brouhaha,” Vancouver Province (23 September 2008), http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=6d8dca89-db4d-4c37-90ca-03b3f15c2ebc; “Saanich-Gulf Islands election tactics under microscope,” Victoria Times-Colonist (30 October 2008), http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/columnists/story.html?id=f70f8ede-0da9-45ea-a06c-c47817864d55; Will Horter, “Karl Rove Comes to Canada?” BC Conservation Voters (28 March 2009), reproduced at Green Party of Canada(29 February 2012), http://www.greenparty.ca/blogs/7/2012-02-29/more-robocalls; and Lawrence Martin, “The curious case of Saanich-Gulf Islands,” The Globe and Mail (1 March 2012, updated 10 September 2012), http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/the-curious-case-of-saanich-gulf-islands/article550187/.

49See Penn, “Robocalls and the petrostate”; and ‘Alison’, “RoboConjob Disclaimer: No harm, no foul,” Dawg’s Blawg (26 November 2012), http://www.drdawgsblawg.ca/2012/11/roboconjob-disclaimer-no-harm-no-foul.shtml. The robocalls that appear to have ensured Gary Lunn’s re-election very clearly violated sections 281.(g), 282.(b) and 482.(b) of the Canada Elections Act (which forbid attempts to prevent an elector from voting and criminalize the use of “any pretence or contrivance” to induce a person to vote in a particular way or refrain from voting); they also violated sections 372 and 403 of the Criminal Code (which make it an offense to knowingly provide false information over the phone, or to fraudulently impersonate someone else). The Lunn campaign also broke the rules governing third-party advertising, thereby violating section 351 of the Canada Elections Act.

50See Kenyon Wallace, “Liberals say they’re targets of prank campaign calls,” Toronto Star (19 April 2011), http://thestar.com/news/canada/2011/04/19/liberals_say_theyre_targets_of_prank_campaign_calls.html; Dave Seglins and Laura Payton, “Elections agency probes harassing calls,” CBC News (19 April 2011), http://license.icopyright.net/user/viewFreeUse.act?fuid=MT12MjQ5Mzk%3D; “Liberals complain their voters are being harassed,” Macleans.ca (19 April 2011), http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/04/19/liberals-complain-their-voters-are-being-harassed/; and “Project Poutine: Alleged Opposition Harassment Calls,” The Sixth Estate (30 November 2012), http://sixthestate.net/?page_id=7209.

51See Stephen Maher and Glen McGregor, “’Robocalls’ tried to discourage voters: Caller pretending to be Elections Canada told voters their polling stations had been moved,” Vancouver Sun (23 February 2012),http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/news/archives/story.html?id=111e488f-475b-463f-856e-3a77e87bc3d8; Stephen Maher and Glen McGregor, “Elections Canada gets phone records in 56 ridings in vote-suppression probe: Court documents first evidence of widespread investigation,” Ottawa Citizen (29 November 2012), http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Elections+Canada+gets+phone+records+ridings+vote+suppression+probe/7630448/story.html. The standard practice in Canada is for people on the voters’ list to receive cards sent through the mail by Elections Canada, informing them of the location of their polling stations. In cases where changes have to be made, new cards are mailed out; and when the changes are made too late in a campaign for this to be feasible, Elections Canada puts announcements into the local media, and posts its officials at the old locations on election day to redirect any uninformed voters. Elections Canada never contacts voters by telephone, and voters who show up at the wrong polling station are not normally allowed to vote there.

52A poll conducted by Ekos Research in April 2012, sampling voters in more than one hundred ridings, found that an average of 2.3 percent of them reported having received fraudulent phone calls giving false information as to their polling stations. This indicates that about 550,000 such calls were received. The April 2014 Elections Canada Summary Investigation Report on Robocalls cited in note 53 below reveals that 51 percent of the complaints it kept records of were prompted by harassment calls, and 49 percent by polling-station misinformation calls. This would indicate that voters received rather more than 550,000 harassment calls.

53See Commissioner of Canada Elections [Yves Côté], Summary Investigation Report on Robocalls: An Investigation into Complaints of Nuisance Telephone Calls and of Telephone Calls Providing Incorrect Poll Location Information in Electoral Districts Other than Guelph During the 41st General Election of May 2011 (Ottawa: Elections Canada, April 2014), http://www.elections.ca/com/rep/rep2/roboinv_e.pdf, para 28, p. 9. This report provides only the raw data: Elections Canada kept records of 2,448 complaints, 1,241 about harassment calls and 1,207 about misdirection calls, and there were a total of 1,726 complainants. The report claims, bizarrely, that except in the riding of Guelph Elections Canada was unable to find evidence of criminal intention in the telephone fraud.

54See Greg Layson, “Voters receive hoax calls about changes to polling stations,” Guelph Mercury (2 May 2011), http://www.guelphmercury.com/news/story/2767523-voters-receive-hoax-calls-about-changes-to-polling-stations/; Ashley Csanady, “MP Albrecht pledges investigation after ‘crank’ election calls traced to Tory office,” Kitchener-Waterloo Record (20 December 2011), http://www.therecord.com/news/local/article641986–crank-calls-remain-a-fixture-on-political-scene; Tonda MacCharles, “Conservative scripts misdirected voters in 2011 election, say call centre staff,” Toronto Star (27 February 2012),http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2012/02/27/conservative_scripts_misdirected_voters_in_2011_election_say_call_centre_staff.html; Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher, “Emails show Elections Canada raised voter suppression concerns before election,” Ottawa Citizen (16 November 2012), http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Emails+show+Elections+Canada+raised+voter+suppression+concerns+before+election/7562009/story.html; and Laura Payton, “Complaints about Tory calls began 3 days before polls opened,” CBC News (19 November 2012), http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/11/19/pol-elections-canada-emails-show-complaints-robocalls.html.

55Terry Milewski, “Misleading robocalls went to voters ID’d as non-Tories: Pattern of calls points to party’s voter identification database, opposition says,” CBC News (15 March 2012, updated 16 March 2012),http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/03/15/pol-investigation-.html.

56Michael Valpy, “Non-Tory voters targeted in robo-call scandal, pollster finds,” Globe and Mail (23 April 2012, updated 24 April 2012), http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/non-tory-voters-targeted-in-robo-call-scandal-pollster-finds/article4104739/.

57Both the CBC investigation and the Ekos poll found evidence of an apparently nation-wide pattern in which voters who responded during the campaign to Conservative Party voter-identification calls by stating that they did not support that party (meaning that their preferences were entered into the central Conservative Party database, the Constituency Information Management System [CIMS]), subsequently received calls providing them with false information about their polling stations. The CBC investigation revealed recurrences of this pattern reported by voters from Newfoundland to Manitoba; Ekos Research found a strong statistical correlation between people identifying themselves to Conservative callers as non-supporters and receiving subsequent vote-suppression calls.

58“Robocalls Linked to Guelph Tory Campaign Worker’s Computer,” Huffington Post (5 April 2012, updated 7 April 2012), http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/05/04/andrew-prescott-pierre-poutine-robocalls-conservative_n_1478809.html; and Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher, “Robocalls investigators hunt missing Tory records that could identify Pierre Poutine,” National Post (16 April 2012, updated 18 April 2012),http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/04/16/robocalls-probe-reaches-tory-headquarters/.

59See R. v. Sona, 2014 ONCJ 365 (CanLII) (14 August 2014), http://canlii.ca/t/g8m0r, para. [5] v).

60R. v. Sona, 2014 ONCJ 365 (CanLII), para. [5] viii).

61The Conservatives had hoped to win this riding, which Liberal Frank Valeriote had won in 2008 by just 1,788 votes, with 32.22 percent of the votes to the Conservative candidate’s 29.18 percent. Their campaign was marked by a succession of appearances by prominent Conservatives, including the Prime Minister, who “visited Guelph two weeks before the election writ was dropped, and again during the campaign. Other high-profile visitors included Treasury Board president Stockwell Day, Citizenship Minister Jason Kenney and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty.” See Scott Tracey, “Guelph Conservatives felt national party influence, documents suggest,” Guelph Mercury (2 March 2012),http://www.guelphmercury.com/news/local/article/680217–guelph-conservatives-felt-national-party-influence-documents-suggest. Former Ontario Premier Bill Davis also took part in the Conservative campaign in Guelph. On March 31, 2011, 150 University of Guelph students staged a “vote mob,” a non-partisan event encouraging young people to vote that was imitated at 18 other Canadian universities; a second vote mob of 500 students unfurled a thirty-foot long banner proclaiming, “Surprise! We Are Voting!” outside Stephen Harper’s April 4 Guelph rally. The Conservatives generated negative national publicity by excluding several students (who had previously registered) from this rally, and more of the same when they tried to shut down and then to disqualify a special ballot arranged by Elections Canada on April 13 for university students who, after their final exams, wouldn’t be in Guelph for the advance polls or on election day. Their inept candidate garnered further negative publicity by missing four out of six debates, including an April 12 all-candidates’ debate, moderated by political science professor Tim Mau, that filled one of the university’s largest lecture halls to capacity.

62See Anke S. Kessler and Tom Cornwall, Does misinformation demobilize the electorate? Measuring the impact of alleged “robocalls” in the 2011 Canadian election (Simon Fraser University Department of Economics, 20 April 2012, revised version January 2014), http://www.sfu.ca/~akessler/wp/robocalls.pdf. Kessler and Cornwall found a vote suppression effect averaging about 2%, or approximately 2,000 votes per riding, in the two dozen ridings most affected by calls giving out false information about polling station changes.

63See R. v. Sona, 2014 ONCJ 365 (CanLII) (14 August 2014), para. [169]: “Mr. Prescott presents as a witness whose evidence both counsel agree should be approached with caution. The Crown reasonably acknowledges there are ‘obviously’ issues with respect to the reliability of Mr. Prescott’s evidence. I agree with both counsel”; para. [172]: “He presented as a witness who has the rather unique capability of having his memory regenerated with the passage of time up to and including the date of the trial and making statements that even the Crown agrees were incorrect.”

64See Mayrand, Preventing Deceptive Communications with Electors (March 26, 2013), http://www.elections.ca/res/rep/off/comm/comm_e.pdf, p. 11; and Commissioner of Canada Elections [Yves Côté], Summary Investigation Report on Robocalls (April 2014), https://www.cef-cce.gc.ca/content.asp?section=rep&dir=rep2&document=exesum&lang=e, Section 1.3, Fig. 1.

65See Alan Mathews, “Information To Obtain (ITO)” court document filed on 8 June 2011, paras. 86 and 89.

66See Alan Mathews, ITO filed on 12 December 2011, paras. 117, 124.

67 Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher, “Trail of Pierre Poutine runs into an open Wi-Fi connection,” Ottawa Citizen (10 August 2012), http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/Trail+Pierre+Poutine+runs+into+open+connection/7073441/story.html.

68Alan Mathews, ITO filed on 20 March 2012, paras. 167-69, p. 24.

69An editorial in the Guelph Mercury has raised the question of whether Prescott, who offered “sworn testimony that the court rejected as seemingly non-credible, and/or unreliable,” honoured his undertaking in his immunity agreement to provide “full and credible evidence at trial.” See “Community wants more justice seeking on robocalls,”Guelph Mercury (27 January 2015), http://www.guelphmercury.com/opinion-story/5276545-community-wants-more-justice-seeking-on-robocalls/.

70See Tonda MacCharles, “Conservative scripts misdirected voters in 2011 election, say call centre staff,” Toronto Star (27 February 2012), http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2012/02/27/conservative_scripts_misdirected_voters_in_2011_election_say_call_centre_staff.html; Allison Cross, “I made misleading election calls claiming to be from the Tories: Call Centre Workers Speak Out,” National Post (27 February 2012), http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/27/i-made-misleading-election-calls-for-the-tories-call-centre-workers-speak-out/; CBC Radio: The Current (28 February 2012),http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2012/02/28/robo-calls-voters-misled-during-federal-election/.

71Laura Payton, “Election call tapes under review by Conservatives,” CBC News (1 March 2012, updated 2 March 2012), http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/03/01/pol-robocalls-elections-canada.html. See also Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher, “Tories review tapes at Thunder Bay call centre as questions grow over company’s checkered legal history,” National Post (2 March 2012),http://www.news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/02/tories-review-tapes-at-thunder-bay-call-centre-as-questions-grow-over-companys-checkered-legal-history/. The Toronto Star report is cited by Nancy Leblanc, “About those election call tapes being reviewed,” Impolitical (2 March 2012), http://impolitical.blogspot.ca/search?updated-max=2012-03-09T00:5300-05:00&max-results=20&start=400&by-date=false.

72For several days at the end of the election campaign, RMG callers used a script that involved checking people’s voter information cards against RMG’s own lists. If RMG’s lists did not contain deliberate misinformation, any reasonable observer would expect there to be occasional disagreements between these lists and people’s voter information cards; in some instances, the RMG listings would be correct and the voter information cards in error, while in other cases the reverse would be true. The worst that could be disclosed by the most thorough and suspicious investigation would amount to no more than random noise. Only if Conservative officials knew that fraud had occurred would there any point in going through (and presumably purging) the audio tapes. Laura Payton reported (in “Election call tapes under review”) that a Conservative spokesman, Fred DeLorey, had denied that the party was reviewing audio tapes. In February 2013, this same Mr. DeLorey denied Conservative involvement in what the Saskatoon Star Phoenixcalled an “odious” robocall push-poll in Saskatchewan, and four days later had to retract the denial in the face of forensic evidence of its falsity. See Glen McGregor, “Conservatives deny involvement in Saskatchewan robocall defending ‘Saskatchewan values’,” Regina Leader-Post (1 February 2013), http://www.leader-post.com/news/canada/Conservatives+deny+involvement+Saskatchewan+robocall+defending/7906921/story.html; Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher, “Tories now admit they sent Saskatchewan robocall: Forensic expert links company behind latest push poll to firm behind Pierre Poutine calls,” Ottawa Citizen (5 February 2013), http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Tories+admit+they+sent+Saskatchewan+robocall/7922470/story.html#ixzz2KQmif11t; and “Robocall tactic reprehensible,”Star Phoenix (5 February 2013), http://www.thestarphoenix.com/opinion/editorials/Robocall+tactic+reprehensible/7918192/story.html.

73Payton, “Election call tapes under review by Conservatives.”

74Commissioner of Canada Elections [Yves Côté], Summary Investigation Report on Robocalls (April 2014), “Executive Summary,” paras. 7-8.

75John Ivison, “Sorry, Truthers—the robocalls affair is not Canada’s Watergate,” National Post (24 April 2014), http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/04/24/john-ivison-sorry-truthers-the-robocalls-affair-is-not-canadas-watergate/.

76Tasha Kheiriddin, “Robocalls: The conspiracy theory goes poof,” iPolitics (24 April 2014), http://www.ipolitics.ca/2014/04/24/robocalls-the-conspiracy-theory-goes-poof/.

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Asylum Seekers on Hunger Strike to Protest Private Corporate Management of U.K. Detention Center

March 13th, 2015 by Pratap Chatterjee

Undercover footage from Harmondsworth. Footage: Corporate Watch.

U.K. asylum seekers have gone on hunger strike to protest living conditions at Harmondsworth immigration detention centre, which is run by Mitie, a British outsourcing company. The protests come months after Mitie took over from the Geo Group whose contract was canceled afterprison authorities found repeated problems.

Mitie (which stands for Management Incentive Through Investment Equity) was awarded a £180 million ($270 million) eight year contract by the UK Home Office last year to manage the 615-bed Harmondsworth facility and merge it with the Colnbrook detention centre which is situated next door.

The company won the bid despite the fact that it had almost no previous experience managing such facilities, apart from a 2011 contract to run the Campsfield site in Oxfordshire, where a major fire, multiple suicides and three mass hunger strikes took place under the company’s watch.

Last week Corporate Watch,* a U.K. research organization, released undercover footage shot at Harmondsworth, that illustrated some of the detainee’s complaints. Paul Morrison, the Mitie officer in charge of Harmondsworth, was filmed telling a group of men that they will being locked away for an extra two hours a day. “We’ve only got ‘X’ number of staff”;” Morrison says. “The only way we can realistically (deliver) is a little bit of an earlier lock up.”

The researchers also reported that Mitie staff were being forced to work 13.5 hours a day.

Other footage released by Corporate Watch showed a detainee who had apparently collapsed from epileptic fits twice within a fortnight. The organization also reported that another “very depressed” detainee set fire to his cell.

“It’s just gonna break. There’s only so much people can take,” a Mitie employee was filmed saying on undercover footage.

The company denies that they have problems. “The centre is not at breaking point,” a Mitie spokesperson told the Independent newspaper. “We have implemented new working practices and shift patterns to meet the demands of the new contract. During the six-month mobilisation period prior to the contract transferring to Mitie we undertook extensive on-site consultation with all existing members of staff at the centre.”

Days after Channel Four screened the Corporate Watch footage, an estimated 240 asylum seekers went on hunger strike at Harmondsworth. “The staff tell us that if we don’t stop our strike and disperse, we will end up in jail,” Abbas Haider, a spokesman for the hunger strikers told the Independent. “But all the guys say in one language, in one sound: ‘We are already in prison.’ We don’t have any human rights left here.”

Harmondsworth has often been the site of mass protests over abusive conditions. In 2006, riot police were brought in to quell disturbances. Last May when the center was still under control of the Geo Group, some 300 detainees also went on hunger strike.

“The food is disgusting and our freedom has been taken away. We all feel we are going crazy,” a detainee told Vice magazine at the time. “We feel alone and isolated like we have been left in the middle of the bush.”

And Geo Group and Mitie are not the only controversial companies that have contracts to manage UK detention centers. Serco runs Colnbrook while G4S runs Brook House. Both companies have been subject of complaints regarding the treatment of detainees. (seePrivatizing Asylum Housing: Serco and G4S Get UK Contracts and Family Sues G4S For Killing Angolan Deportee)

Many detainees now say that they would rather be deported than stay at Harmondsworth. “I’m tired, I don’t want to die here,” one detainee was filmed saying to his lawyer. “I beg you. I want freedom, I got detained, three years now I’ve spent my life behind doors. Why?”

“Detention is only ever used as a last resort after all attempts to encourage individuals to leave voluntarily have failed,” a UK Home Office spokesperson told the Independent. “Detention and removal are essential parts of effective immigration controls.”

*Corporate Watch is a UK charity that is not affiliated with CorpWatch, which is based in the U.S. The two organizations were founded independently but share similar missions and visions.

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US Presidential Election Season Begins

March 13th, 2015 by Patrick Martin

More than a year and a half before the 2016 US presidential elections, the political establishment and media are already beginning to shift their focus to the vast exercise in influence-peddling and insider dealing that is the American electoral process.

The WSWS has often noted the stark contradiction between the size and diversity of the United States, a country of 320 million people and 50 states stretching across an entire continent, and a political system that offers only two parties with virtually indistinguishable right-wing programs. Lending the upcoming election an added element of farce is the fact that the contest could well be between a Bush and a Clinton, offering the American people a “choice” of candidates from two families that have occupied the presidency or vice-presidency for 28 of the past 34 years.

On the Democratic Party side, the presumptive nominee is Hillary Clinton, a right-wing and militarist scion of the political establishment. Indeed, the eruption of the media scandal over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email account during her four years as US secretary of state marks the semi-official beginning of the 2016 presidential campaign. Clinton is expected to formally announce her candidacy sometime next month.

Clinton’s press conference Tuesday has left many unanswered questions, both about her conduct at the State Department, and about the performance of her presidential campaign team, which has been assembled over the past several months. Clinton has recruited virtually all available Democratic Party operatives and has monopolized major sources of fundraising.

Growing concerns in the Democratic Party wing of the political establishment found expression in articles Thursday in three leading US daily newspapers, all noting the stumbling character of Clinton’s response to the attacks over her use of private email and the absence of any alternative presidential candidate for the Democrats if her campaign should self-destruct.

The Washington Post, in a news analysis headlined, “Absence of 2016 competition for Clinton raises stakes for Democrats,” observed, “Clinton has been such a dominant front-runner that she has smothered most potential competition. Who rightly thinks they can seriously compete with her for money or institutional support?”

The Wall Street Journal, in a report headlined, “Some Democrats See the Risk of Having Single Candidate,” said the email controversy

“is providing fresh ammunition not just to Republican adversaries but people in her own party who are concerned she could win the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination without being challenged in a primary contest.”

The New York Times, under the headline, “Democrats See No Choice but Hillary Clinton in 2016,” made the most scathing assessment of the condition of a Democratic Party without Clinton heading the ticket. Calling Clinton “too big to fail,” the newspaper noted,

“Her star power … has helped obscure a vexing reality for the post-Obama Democratic Party: As much as it advertises itself as the party of a rising generation, the Democrats’ farm team is severely understaffed, and many of its leading lights are eligible for Social Security.”

The Democrats may call forward some other candidates—the “independent” Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren or the like—with the aim of in some way dressing up the tired and reactionary party with a progressive gloss while giving the various pseudo-left organizations that orbit around it something to sell. Their campaigns are not considered “serious,” least of all by the potential candidates themselves.

While unmentioned in the press critiques of the Democrats, the Republican Party is in no better shape in terms of presidential candidates. Its current frontrunner is former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, brother of the man who left the White House in 2009 as the most hated American president since Herbert Hoover. Vying with Bush are assorted reactionaries, Christian fundamentalist demagogues and semi-fascists.

The potentially dynastic character of the 2016 election only testifies to the extreme narrowness of the existing political system and the emergence of the aristocratic principle as the dominant feature in American society. The enormous growth of economic inequality is the most pervasive social reality of the past three decades. It inevitably finds expression in political life as well.

Candidates become viable, not because of character or political ideas, but because they can raise sufficient amounts of money to be “competitive.” In order to do this, they must ingratiate themselves with the Wall Street financial oligarchy. Just as importantly, they must pass muster with the Pentagon, CIA, NSA and FBI, the vast military-intelligence apparatus that defends the interests of corporate America both at home and abroad—and has what amounts to a veto over who is selected as “Commander-in-Chief.”

In such an environment, the ruling elite seeks to limit political debate to its own circles, and to argue over what tactics will best serve its interests, excluding any political views that would threaten the existing social structure and division of wealth and income. There are sharp tactical divisions within the ruling class, including over foreign policy, but these are generally fought out through backroom methods of scandal-mongering and media leaks.

The extraordinarily insular character of the parties is a reflection of the narrow social foundations upon which they rest. In addition to support from the financial aristocracy and the military intelligence apparatus, the Democrats mobilize sections of the privileged upper middle class, including layers of academia, professionals, Hollywood and the trade union apparatus. Identity politics is a major component of their appeal, although the experience of the Obama administration has dealt a devastating blow to the popular illusions raised by the election of the first African-American president. Nonetheless, the Democrats seek a reprise with a campaign focusing on Clinton becoming the first female president.

The Republicans mobilize openly reactionary sections of the population, on the basis of attacks on the poor and racial minorities and appeals to religious bigotry. They also make an increasingly open appeal to the military apparatus itself, as demonstrated in the suggestion by one potential Republican candidate, Lindsey Graham, that if elected, he would urge the military to force Congress to increase the Pentagon budget.

This protracted political process, extending over many decades, is something of a double-edged sword for the ruling elite. The great majority of the American people have zero influence over the selection of candidates by the two corporate-controlled parties between whom they will be given a “choice” on November 8, 2016.

Bourgeois politics in America has reached a certain point of exhaustion, particularly following the experience of Obama, the “transformative” candidate of “change.” The widespread disillusionment emerged in the last elections, the midterm contest in 2014, which saw a sharp fall in voter turnout. Outside of the top 10 percent or so of the population, the vast majority of the population is hostile and angry.

While this sentiment has not yet found direct political expression, it will—and as it does, it will take on an ever more insurrectionary and revolutionary form.

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Danger of War with Russia Grows as US Sends Military Equipment to Ukraine

March 13th, 2015 by Johannes Stern

Washington has begun delivering military hardware to Ukraine as part of NATO’s ongoing anti-Russian military build-up in eastern Europe, escalating the risk of all-out war between the NATO alliance and Russia, a nuclear-armed power.

The Obama administration announced on Wednesday that it would transfer 30 armored Humvees and 200 unarmored Humvees, as well as $75 million in equipment, including reconnaissance drones, radios and military ambulances. The US Congress has also prepared legislation to arm the Kiev regime with $3 billion in lethal weaponry.

Washington is at the same time deploying 3,000 heavily armed troops to the Baltic republics, near the Russian metropolis of St. Petersburg. Their 750 Abrams main battle tanks, Bradley armored personnel carriers, and other vehicles are slated to remain behind after the US troops leave. This handover is aimed at “showing our determination to stand together” against Russian President Vladimir Putin, US Major General John O’Connor said in the Latvian capital, Riga.

Washington is pressing ahead despite stark warnings from Moscow that it views massive weapons deliveries by NATO to hostile states on its borders as an intolerable threat to Russian national security.

“Without a doubt, if such a decision is reached, it will cause colossal damage to US-Russian relations, especially if residents of the Donbass [east Ukraine] start to be killed by American weapons,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said last month. He called NATO’s plans “very worrying,” adding: “This is about creating additional operational capabilities that would allow the alliance to react near Russia’s borders… Such decisions will naturally be taken into account in our military planning.”

The decision is also sharpening tensions between Washington and Berlin, which backs the current policy of sanctions and financial strangulation of Russia, but opposes moves that threaten all-out war with Russia.

Visiting Washington yesterday, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier urged a continuation of the strategy of “economic and political pressure” on Russia. Arming Ukraine, could “catapult (the conflict) into a new phase,” he warned at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank.

The mood in broad sections of the American ruling elite has turned increasingly hysterical, however, after the Kiev regime’s defeat prior to last month’s ceasefire in Ukraine negotiated by German, French, Russian, and Ukrainian officials in Minsk.

In a comment denounced by the Russian Foreign Ministry, retired Major General and TV pundit Robert Scales declared, “It’s game, set, and match in Ukraine. The only way the United States can have any effect in the region and turn the tide is to start killing Russians.”

This week, Pentagon and Congressional officials called for Washington to arm Kiev, pressing for faster action from the White House. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey are pressing for large-scale weapons deliveries to Kiev, as are leading members of Congress from both big-business parties.

“I applaud President Obama for sending a strong signal both to the people of Ukraine as well as to the Kremlin,” said Democratic Senator Dick Durbin. “But more can and must be done for Ukraine, including defensive weapons as soon as possible.”

“The fact that it appears that the president may have made a commitment to [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel while she was here, or the German ambassador, not to do that certainly has created a lot of concern on both sides of the aisle,” said Republican Senator Bob Corker.

“I don’t buy this argument that, you know, us supplying the Ukrainian army with defensive weapons is going to provoke Putin,” said Democratic Senator Chris Murphy.

With a toxic combination of maniacal aggression and thoughtlessness, the NATO alliance is lurching towards a war with Russia that could destroy the entire planet. Warnings about US policy from Berlin, which itself has led the European imperialist powers in supporting the February 2014 putsch in Kiev and backing the Kiev regime’s bloody war in east Ukraine, have at most a tactical character. The only force that opposes war is the working class, in America and Europe and internationally.

Despite Berlin’s misgivings as to US policy, the NATO alliance is pursuing its escalation against Russia. At a press conference Wednesday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and NATO Supreme Commander of European forces General Philip Breedlove laid out the ongoing military build-up across eastern Europe. They spoke at the Supreme command Headquarters of Allied Personnel in Europe (SHAPE) in Mons, Belgium, which oversees NATO operations in Europe.

Stoltenberg declared that due to the Ukraine crisis, NATO has to

“expand its collective defense, as it has never done since the end of the Cold War… We will double the rapid response force from 13,000 soldiers to 30,000. We will equip the rapid response force with a spearhead of 5,000 men, which will be ready to deploy within 48 hours. And we will establish six command centers in the Baltic states and three other eastern European countries.”

Referring to NATO member states’ pledge to massively increase defense spending at the recent Wales summit, Stoltenberg pledged to “keep up the momentum.” Besides the escalation in the Baltics, naval exercises are taking place in the Black Sea, and NATO is preparing for the largest exercises for many years, with 25,000 men, in southeastern Europe.

Breedlove said he had never seen greater “unity, readiness and determination within NATO to tackle the challenges of the future together.” He was sure that this would continue.

In reality, tensions between Washington and its European allies, above all Germany, have increased in recent weeks. In its latest edition, Der Spiegel reports that Berlin is angry that “Washington’s hardliners are inciting the conflict with Moscow, first and foremost the supreme commander of NATO in Europe.”

The German Chancellor’s office criticized Breedlove for “dangerous propaganda” and making “imprecise, contradictory and even untruthful” statements.

“I wish that in political matters, Breedlove would express himself more cleverly and reluctantly,” commented a foreign-policy specialist of the Social-Democratic Party, Niels Annen. Instead, NATO has “repeatedly spoken out against a Russian offensive in the Ukraine conflict precisely at the point when in our view, the time was right for careful optimism.”

According to Der Spiegel, the US-German dispute is

“fundamentally because the transatlantic partners [have] different objectives… While the German-French initiative [a reference to the Minsk peace agreement] aimed to stabilize the situation in Ukraine, for the hawks in the American administration it is about Russia. They want to push back Russia’s influence in the region and destabilize Putin’s rule. Their dream goal is regime change in Russia.”

German imperialism backed the coup in Ukraine, using the crisis to create political conditions for it to rearm within the framework of NATO and pursue its economic and geostrategic interests in eastern Europe militarily. It fears an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine, however, as it could expand into all-out war between NATO and Russia, for which the German army is not yet ready.

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The Maui GMO Ban and the Monsanto-Dow Criminal Human Experimentation

March 13th, 2015 by Jon Rappoport

I’ve been keeping my mouth shut for a while on this explosive issue, because I was waiting for the results of a March 10 hearing. Now, strangely, the hearing has been postponed at the last minute.

My readers know I was, for a time, covering the Maui-Monsanto-Dow war extensively.

To summarize: in the last election, the voters of Maui, in a ballot measure, decided to place a temporary ban on further Dow/Monsanto GMO/pesticide experiments in Maui County.

Immediately, Monsanto, Dow, and yes, even the County government of Maui (betraying their own voters), lined up against the results of the vote.

Monsanto and Dow, joined by the Maui County government, sued to nullify the results of the vote, claiming the regulation of GMOs comes under the control of the state of Hawaii and the federal government, and can’t be decided at the county level.

That’s where we are now. The voters’ demands are suspended in limbo. Their legal call for an independent commission to investigate the practices of Monsanto and Dow in Maui County, and decide whether they threaten the people and the land—that urgent call has been silenced for the time being.

I submit that a vital fact has been overlooked and shoved into the background. A vital, primary, and overriding fact.

We are not talking, in this specific Maui case, about state or federal laws that govern normal GMO/pesticide farming. Whatever those laws say, whatever practices they cover, the issue on Maui has another dimension.

Maui County is home to ongoing Monsanto and Dow EXPERIMENTATION with new GMO seeds and new pesticides. GMOs and pesticides that are not for sale on the commercial market.

Research and development. Out in the open air.

Experimentation, which naturally affects the humans living there, and the land.

Look at the actual wording of the ballot measure that was passed by Maui voters:

“The Genetically Engineered (GE) Operations and Practices occurring in Maui County (also known as GMO) are different than GE food production farming and therefore pose different circumstances, risks, and concerns. In Maui County, GE Operations and Practices include the cultivation of GE seed crops, experimental GE test crops, and extensive pesticide use including the testing of experimental Pesticides and their combinations in what is effectively an outdoor laboratory.”

Experimental GMO crops. Experimental pesticides. Outdoor laboratory. Get the picture?

The ballot measure clearly focuses on that target when it states its temporary ban “does NOT apply to…[GMO] Organisms that have been [already] incorporated into any food or medicine in any manner already prepared for sale for human or animal consumption…”

In other words, the voter ban applies to those experimental GMOs and experimental pesticides Monsanto and Dow are deploying, with the people of Maui as the guinea pigs.

Bottom line: Experimentation on humans with GMOs and pesticides does not fall under state or federal laws pertaining to agriculture.

Experimentation falls under a whole other set of laws.

For example, laws on informed consent. The people being experimented on have a right to know exactly what is being done to them—before it is done.

This principle has already been violated on Maui thousands of times, by Monsanto and Dow.

The ballot measure which passed calls for knowledge, for investigation to produce knowledge, so the citizens of Maui will know how they are being affected by the EXPERIMENTATION.

That’s what this is all about.

Allowing mass experimentation on humans, with new GMOs and new pesticides, without INFORMED consent…that is the crime. That is an obvious and undeniable crime.

All the jockeying in court hearings with judges do not change that fact one iota. The hearings should be about human experimentation without informed consent, without independent oversight, without independent assessment of harm.

Because that’s what Monsanto and Dow are engaged in, day in and day out.

Of course normal GMO/pesticide farming causes serious health problems. Of course criminals of both the corporate and government variety lied and cheated their way into approval of GMO crops and their attendant toxic pesticides.

But the issue on Maui, right now, as I’m explaining, is about the crime of experimenting on people with DIFFERENT substances, keeping people in the dark, not permitting independent scientists to assess exactly what Monsanto and Dow are letting loose on the population.

Attacking Dow and Monsanto on this basis can win, with enough publicity, with enough relentless activism.

The wording of the ballot measure that was passed reveals that its authors know exactly what they’re talking about: no informed consent, no independent assessment of risk, no prior oversight, no exposure of the details of human experimentation on the whole population of Maui County.

So carry that sword forward.

This is no different, in principle, from, say, the infamous and devastating Edgewood Arsenal programs (1952-1975), in which US soldiers were “treated” with nerve gases (VX, Sarin). The soldiers were assured the experiments were completely safe.

If Monsanto, Dow, the judge in the current Maui case, and the Maui County officials think this is an egregious comparison, let them open up the books and the corporate labs and the canisters and prove it—by allowing many independent researchers to examine exactly what the hell is going on, on Maui.

What’s that? What I’m asking for is “proprietary corporate data?” “Privileged, secret, and protected information?”

With a few tweaks of language, that’s what officers told the soldiers at Edgewood Arsenal. .

The concealment of precious Monsanto/Dow data stops at the line where humans are subjected to corporate whims.

Tell you what. We’ll house Monsanto/Dow scientists and execs in a hermetically sealed dome for a couple of years. Spray them with round after round of “cutting-edge” pesticides, and feed them with crops containing “breakthrough” GMOs. That’ll be a good start. Let’s see what they look like when they emerge from seclusion.

Then we’ll figure out what to do next.

Don’t worry, be happy. It’s just a harmless little experiment.

Neurological damage? Cancers? Reduced sperm counts? Liver and kidney failure? Fetal deformation?

Don’t be silly. Whatever gave you that idea?

Would the scum that has risen to the top, when given a dose of their own medicine, sink to the bottom? Let’s find out. Up close and personal.

Jon Rappoport is the author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails athttp://www.nomorefakenews.com

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US War on ISIS a Trojan Horse

March 13th, 2015 by Ulson Gunnar

In August of 2013, even as the words came out of US President Barack Obama’s mouth regarding an “impending” US military strike against the Syrian state, the impotence of American foreign policy loomed over him and those who wrote his speech for him like an insurmountable wall. So absurd was America’s attempt to once again use the canard of “weapons of mass destruction” to justify yet another military intervention, that many believed America’s proxy war in Syria had finally reached its end.

The counterstroke by Russia included Syria’s immediate and unconditional surrendering of its chemical weapons arsenal, and with that, so evaporated America’s casus belli.

Few would believe if one told them then, that in 2015, that same discredited US would be routinely bombing Syrian territory and poised to justify the raising of an entire army of terrorists to wage war within Syria’s borders, yet that is precisely what is happening. President Obama has announced plans to formally increase military force in Iraq and Syria “against ISIS,” but of course includes building up huge armies of “rebels” who by all other accounts are as bad as ISIS itself (not to mention prone to joining ISIS’ ranks by the thousands).

All it took for this miraculous turn in fortune was the creation of “ISIS,” and serial provocations committed by these Hollywood-style villains seemingly engineered to reinvigorate America’s justification to militarily intervene more directly in a war it itself started in Syria beginning in 2011.

ISIS could not be a more effective part of America’s plans to overthrow the Syrian government and destroy the Syrian state if it had an office at the Pentagon.

Having failed to achieve any of its objectives in Syria, it inexplicably “invaded” Iraq, affording the US military a means of “easing into” the conflict by first confronting ISIS in Iraq, then following them back across the border into Syria. When this scheme began to lose its impact on public perception, ISIS first started executing Western hostages including several Americans. When the US needed the French on board, ISIS executed a Frenchman. When the US needed greater support in Asia, two Japanese were beheaded. And just ahead of President Obama’s recent attempt to formally authorize the use of military force against “ISIS,” a Jordanian pilot was apparently burned to death in a cage in an unprecedented act of barbarity that shocked even the most apathetic.

The theatrics of ISIS parallel those seen in a Hollywood production. This doesn’t mean ISIS didn’t really burn to death a Jordanian pilot or behead scores of hostages. But it does mean that a tremendous amount of resources and planning were put into each murder, except apparently, the effect it would have of rallying the world behind the US and its otherwise hopelessly stalled efforts to overturn the government of Syria.

Could ISIS have built a set specifically to capture dramatic shots like a flame trail passing the camera on its way to the doomed Jordanian pilot, planned crane shots, provided matching uniforms for all the extras on their diabolical movie set, but failed to consider the target audience and how they would react to their production? Could they have, just by coincidence, given exactly what the United States needed to continue its war on Syria in 2015 when it otherwise had effectively failed in 2013?

The answer is obviously no. ISIS’s theatrics were designed specifically to accomplish this. ISIS itself is a fictional creation. In reality the legions of terrorists fighting across the Arab World under the flag of “ISIS” are the same Al Qaeda militants the US, Saudi Arabia and others in an utterly unholy axis have been backing, arming and exploiting in a variety of ways for decades.

Just as the “Islamic State” in Iraq was exposed as a fictional cover for what was also essentially Al Qaeda (as reported by the NYT in their article, “Leader of Al Qaeda group in Iraq was fictional, U.S. military says“), ISIS too is just the latest and greatest re-visioning yet.

The fighters are real. Their atrocities are real. The notion that they’ve sprung out of the dunes of Syria and Iraq, picked their weapons from local date trees and have managed to wage war regionally against several collective armies is entirely fantasy. Required to maintain ISIS’ ranks would be billions in constant support. These are billions ISIS simply cannot account for from hostage ransoms and black market oil alone. The only source that could prop ISIS up for as long as it has allegedly existed and to the extent it allegedly exists, is a state or collection of states intentionally sponsoring the terrorist enterprise.

Those states are of course the chief benefactors of ISIS’ atrocities, and we can clearly see those benefactors are the US and its partners both in Europe and in the Middle East. The US would claim that the threat of ISIS necessitates them to intervene militarily in Syria (when lies about WMDs were flatly rejected by the American and international public). Of course, before the serial headline atrocities ISIS committed, the US attempted to sell this same lie but without affect. Now that sufficient blood has been split and the public sufficiently riled, the US is once again trying to move forward its agenda.

Don’t be surprised, if the US manages to succeed, that everything in Syria is left destroyed except for ISIS. A Hollywood villain this popular and effective is surely destined for a sequel in neighboring Iran or southern Russia, coincidentally where the US would like to create strife and carnage the most.

Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

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Dr. Andrew Wakefield Reveals Shocking News About MMR Vaccine in the Vaccine World Summit

March 13th, 2015 by Jonathan Benson

If you’re a parent (or soon to be), you have a moral obligation to look out for the best interests of your child. And this includes making fully informed medical decisions about vaccinations that are based on science rather than media hype and fear-mongering. But what is the truth about vaccines?

Leading gastroenterologist Dr. Andrew Wakefield has a lot to say on this important subject, particularly as it pertains to the infamous MMR vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella. And he tells all during an exclusive interview with NaturalHealth365.com host Jonathan Landsman, which is available online through the cutting-edge Vaccine World Summit.

In his own words, Dr. Wakefield tells the full story that you won’t hear from the mainstream media about his involvement with MMR, and the study that so powerfully rocked the status quo as to provoke a malicious and completely unwarranted witch hunt against his work and reputation.

“In 1995, parents came to me as a gastroenterologist saying, ‘my child was developing perfectly normally in speech, language, milestones — all that.’ And then they had had, in many cases, the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and had lost their skills and regressed into autism,” explains Dr. Wakefield.

“Not only had they developed autism, but in the few weeks ensuing the vaccine they had suffered neurological complications — high fevers, they had become drowsy, slept for a long time, high-pitched screaming episodes, seizures, and ataxia, incoordination — hard neurological signs of an evolving encephalopathy or brain injury.”

The full interview is available through the Vaccine World Summit:
VaccineWorldSummit.com.

For Dr. Wakefield, it wasn’t about money — it was about helping children and doing the right thing

If you’ve never heard Dr. Wakefield tell the story about his widely cited work (which the mainstream media untruthfully claims was discredited) in his own words, then this interview is a must-listen, especially if you’re on the fence about MMR. Dr. Wakefield’s altruistic work on behalf of child safety was just that — an honest, science-based effort to find truth.

“These parents were not anti-vaccine,” emphasizes Dr. Wakefield about the people who had come to him with concerns about MMR. “They had taken their children along on time to be vaccinated, and they were reporting faithfully what had happened to [them].”

“The gastrointestinal symptoms in these children merited investigation, we investigated them — I did this with a team of some of the best pediatric gastroenterologists in the world, led by Prof. Tom Walker Smith.”

Through this important research, Dr. Wakefield and his top-notch team identified a novel, subtle inflammatory bowel disease associated with MMR that affirmed what the parents of the injured children had suspected all along, but that most doctors had rejected or ignored.

“The parents were right. The doctors were wrong. And when that bowel disease was treated, not only the did gastrointestinal symptoms resolve to a large extent, but the behavioral and autistic symptoms resolved to a large extent as well,” reveals Dr. Wakefield.

Dr. David Lewis provides a much more thorough account of Dr. Wakefield’s research in Science For Sale, which is available here:
SkyhorsePublishing.com.

Contrary to the claims made against him, Dr. Wakefield didn’t do this work because of money, nor did he even recommend against vaccines. All he ever suggested, based on the outcome of his study, was that parents have access to single vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella rather than the combined MMR.

“You cannot take three live viruses and combine them into one and assume that one and one and one equal three,” warns Dr. Wakefield. “And so I made the recommendation that parents should have the option of the single vaccines, spaced out.”

“I’m doing it because this is my duty and my moral obligation to these children to solve this problem. If I earn nothing to my dying day I will still continue to do this work because it is such an important issue.”

You can access the full interview with Dr. Wakefield through the Vaccine World Summit:
VaccineWorldSummit.com.

Sources:

http://vaccineworldsummit.com

http://www.skyhorsepublishing.com

http://www.ageofautism.com

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Venezuela Sounds Alarm after Obama Invokes International Emergency Act

March 13th, 2015 by Z.C. Dutka

Santa Elena, March 10th, 2015. (venezuelanalysis.com)- Venezuelan foreign minister Delcy Rodriguez sent an alert to international solidarity groups this afternoon, indicating that recent actions taken by the US government are meant to justify “intervention,” and do not correspond with international law.

The warning came within 24 hours of an address made by US president Barack Obama, in which Venezuela was labeled an “unusual and extraordinary threat to [US] national security”.

While slapping a new set of sanctions on the South American nation, Obama declared a national emergency, invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) against Venezuela. Other states which currently have the IEEPA invoked against them include; Iran, Myanmar, Sudan, Russia, Zimbabwe, Syria, Belarus and North Korea.

Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro responded to the move yesterday evening by describing it as the most aggressive step the US has taken against Venezuela to date.

The Venezuelan leader branded the declarations as “hypocritical,” asserting that the United States poses a much bigger threat to the world.

“You are the real threat, who trained and created Osama Bin Laden… “ said Maduro, referring to Bin Laden’s CIA training during the late 1970s to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan.

He also remarked upon “double standards” in the White House’s accusations that Venezuela has violated human rights in its treatment of anti-government protestors.

“Defend the human rights of the black U.S. citizens being killed in U.S. cities every day, Mr. Obama,” he said.

“I’ve told Mr. Obama, how do you want to be remembered? Like Richard Nixon, who ousted Salvador Allende in Chile? Like President Bush, responsible for ousting President Chavez? … Well President Obama, you already made your choice … you will be remembered like President Nixon,” Maduro declared during a live television broadcast.

The South American president went on to outline ways in which the United States has already interfered in Venezuelan affairs, pointing to 105 official statements made by that government in the past year- over half of which demonstrate explicit support for Venezuelan opposition leaders.

The Venezuelan government previously accused the United States of playing a direct role in a thwarted coup attempt last month. The president today reminded viewers that the man believed to have financed the coup, Carlos Osuna, is currently “in New York, under the protection of the US government.”

Maduro also requested this morning the use of the Enabling Act to pass “a special law to preserve peace in the country” in the face of US threats.

If the powers are granted by the National Assembly, Maduro plans to draft next Tuesday an “anti-imperialist law to prepare us for all scenarios and to win,” he said today.

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US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt: Architect of the Euromaidan Kiev Coup

March 13th, 2015 by Global Research News

Geoffrey R. Pyatt Skirmisher of Euromaidan

Video by Live Leak

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Debt Default and Today’s Bail-Ins: Recalling the 1931 Austrian Credit Anstalt Financial Domino

March 13th, 2015 by Bill Holter

The revelation over this past weekend by Hypo Alpe-Adria has been called by some as Austria’s “Lehman moment”. This may very well be on a micro scale, I believe it to be the Credit-Anstalt moment on a macro scale. If you recall history, Austrian bank Credit-Anstalt was the first domino to fall in 1931 which spread across the globe and tipped the banking system into default mode.

There are many similarities to the world today as compared to that world of 1931. Debt had become prevalent leading into the stock market panics of 1929. Margin debt had exploded and caught many offside just as it did in 2007-2009. The more recent episode had even more leverage via the use of derivatives, I point this out because the “leverage ratios” are far higher today than they were 80 years ago.

The world was also in the midst of currency wars. Back in the 1930’s, the global economy had slowed (just as it has today) and consumption was not keeping up with production. This same anomaly exists today in the zones (think China and Asia) where production has been moved to lower costs. What happened in the 1930’s was considered a time of “beggar thy neighbor”. Countries purposely weakened their own currencies in order to undercut the sales price of goods produced by other countries. This morphed into trade wars and ultimately WW II. Other similarities were the fact that after 1929, unemployment rose, economic activity slowed and the financial sector was being squeezed with weakening and defaulting loans. Current day by no means is a carbon copy to where it was back in 1931, but there is a definite “rhyme” to it.

So, what exactly does the current “Hypo moment” mean? For one thing, it means that nothing was really fixed from the last episode. If “things” were good and getting better, how could a bank which was recapitalized (at the bottom) …fall even further? The answer of course is the economy and financial systems are not “better”. As I have tried to write all along, the problems were glossed over and dead bodies swept under the rug. Hypo, is simply the tip of the iceberg and a harbinger of more, similar things to come.

I would be remiss if I did not mention one major difference between the 1930’s, the days of Lehman collapsing …and now. The most dangerous “cure” undertaken in 2008 and onward is governments and their central banks putting their own balance sheets on the line. You see, this did not happen in the 1930’s, if a bank went bad …it went under. Yes, captains of industry did make efforts to save things but the federal government largely stayed out of it. Not so today. Almost nothing was allowed to go under up and until Lehman was “allowed” to fail. No one (very few) dreamed how quickly and completely credit dried up after Lehman failed. THIS is the reason nothing else was allowed to fail afterward, fear of a domino effect taking everything with it.

Last year, the U.S., Europe, Britain, Canada and others all figured out they could not go another round of bailouts. It is not that they had a come to Jesus moment and decided to let losers, lose. No, these governments ALL figured out the simple math they could no longer AFFORD to bailout insolvent institutions, especially the behemoths. This is why the legislation of “bail ins” came forth. But, there is still a big problem with governments allowing market forces to cleanse bad debt and bad banks … the size and scope of the losses involved!

I am not just talking about the size of the losses although this is certainly important. No, I am speaking of the “number” of losses and what “investors” will then decide to do. Allowing bail ins to occur will mobilize investors in a hurry. Once people figure out they are creditors of their bank, they will begin to move. Even though the bail in laws were passed last year, publicized and known about …no one cared because it hadn’t happened to anyone. This will now most likely change with Hypo and people will see a real case of real losses!

A move to “safety” is what we should begin to see shortly. The previous moves had been that of moving to yield because very little was available. Safety, or “risk” did not matter because no one was ever allowed to lose. This of course has changed with the Hypo moment. If made to wager, the Hypo moment may be very much like the Lehman moment in that it may be the last insolvency allowed. This is a very hard one to call because both choices lead to the very same “death” though by different means. We can go the route of bail ins where depositors are spooked into bank runs all over the world …or, resume more bailouts and fund them with QE.

In reality, the original questions back in 2008-09 have not been answered nor really even addressed. Nothing has been fixed, nothing has improved and truth is, nothing has changed. The question, or more to the point the reality of “inflate or die” is still there. Though we watched this fade into the background by the “inflations” of the various and global QE undertakings, the choice must be again made …inflate (again) or die… which poison will be chosen?!

This is a very interesting crossroads because given the choice, inflation will be chosen and thus further currency debasement and destruction. The problem is deflation continues to gnaw away at bank “assets”, Hypo being the first admission. If there are losses taken and “creditors” made to pay, masses will decide they do not want to be in “creditor status”. Bank runs will (and the sale of all sorts of financial credits) follow. The global banking system will become unfunded so to speak in very rapid fashion. All this boils down to is one very simple choice, “choosing your poison”. The only question remaining is whether the choice is allowed or do market forces rule and decide for the central bankers?

What does this mean to you? It means you need to decide whether you want to be a creditor, or whether you want to be an asset holder. Currencies, and the institutions that “hold them” for you will be weakened and “run”. Your obvious alternative is to become your own bank …holding real money that cannot default. The key to this game is not to be defaulted upon. The only way to do this is by having no counterparty risk to your account nor your currency. Gold in hand is your obvious solution, this decision will be obvious very soon.

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¿Estamos cerca de un Espacio Económico Común? Berlín y París miran hacia el Este

March 13th, 2015 by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

La Unión Económica Eurasiana es una realidad que puede terminar costándole su “ventajosa posición” a Estados Unidos en la periferia occidental de Eurasia según vaya formándose un espacio económico común.

En 1997, el ex asesor en seguridad nacional Zbigniew Brzezinski aseguró lo que sigue: “Pero si el espacio central rechazara a Occidente, se convertiría en una única entidad firme; así, tanto adquiriría capacidad de control del Sur como crearía una alianza con el principal actor de Oriente. La consecuencia sería que la primacía de EEUU en Eurasia se reduciría dramáticamente. Lo mismo sería si los dos jugadores más importantes del Este se unieran de algún modo”.

Se trataba de una clara advertencia a las elites de Washington y Wall Street. Escondido detrás de una melifluamente velada jerga de apariencia liberal y académica, lo que el doctor Brzezinski estaba diciendo era que si la Federación Rusa y el espacio post-soviético se las arreglaban para rechazar o hacer retroceder la dominación de Occidente –léase, una combinación de tutelaje de EEUU y la Unión Europea (UE)– y tenían éxito reorganizándose en la creación de cierto tipo de confederación o bloque supranacional, que o bien ganara influencia en Oriente Medio y Asia Central o bien se aliara con China, la influencia de Washington en Eurasia se acabaría.

Todo lo que advertía Brzezinski a Washington está sucediendo. La Unión Económica Eurasiana (UEE) –llamada sencillamente Unión Eurasiana– se ha formado con Armenia, Bielorrusia, Kazakhstán y Rusia. Próximamente, Kyrgyzstan accederá a la membresía de la UEE, y Tayikistán está considerando hacer lo propio. El Kremlin y la UEE están activos también en la búsqueda de nuevos socios. Incluso países que están fuera del espacio post-soviético, como Siria, están interesados en unirse a la UEE, y el bloque liderado por Rusia ya ha firmado un importante tratado comercial con el gigante árabe Egipto. En el Sudeste Asiático, se han realizado negociaciones con Hanoi; Vietnam es el siguiente país en el cronograma de firmas de tratados con la UEE en algún momento de 2015.

Está claro que el “Espacio Central” está resurgiendo. Turquía está atenta a la alternativa eurasiana. El tratado entre Ankara y Moscú por el ducto que transportará gas natural a través de Turquía han puesto en alerta a Washington y la Comisión Europea. Después de los acuerdos en materia de energía y comercio, Rusia renovó sus lazos militares con Irán; consecuentemente, ofreció a Teherán el vehiculo lanzamisiles Antey-2500. En 2013, Teherán codo a codo con Moscú fue un actor clave cuando se evitó que el Pentágono lanzara una guerra abierta en Siria. El 20 de enero de 2015, el ministro de defensa ruso, Sergei Shoigu, y su equivalente iraní, brigadier general Dehghan, firmaron públicamente en Irán unos tratados que renuevan la cooperación militar ruso-iraní. Desde Egipto, Líbano y Siria hasta Yemen e Iraq, la influencia de Rusia está aumentando en Oriente Medio (es decir, “el Sur”).

En América latina, desde Argentina y Brasil hasta Nicaragua y Venezuela, la influencia de Rusia también está creciendo. La excursión regional que el año pasado realizó el presidente ruso Vladimir Putin y otra de Shoigu este mismo año han incluido conversaciones sobre cooperación militar y condujeron a especulaciones sobre la construcción de una red de bases de comunicaciones, navales y aéreas en el continente. Por otra parte, el aumento de la influencia rusa y la disminución del peso de Washington en el interior de América latina han sido razones para el acercamiento de EEUU y Cuba. La influencia de Moscú estuvo presente incluso en la víspera de la histórica visita de una delegación del Congreso estadounidense cuando el buque de inteligencia y comunicaciones rusoViktor Leonov amarró en La Habana el 20 de enero de 2015.

Tanto el “Espacio central” como el “Reino central” ( Zhongguo/China) han unido fuerzas hace tiempo. Esto sucedió antes de la formación de la UEE o el golpe del EuroMaidan en Ucrania. Moscú y parte del espacio post-soviético empezaron a construir una alianza con China (esto es, “el más importante actor del Este”). Esto ha comenzado a florecer. La Organización por la Cooperación de Shanghai (SCO, por sus siglas en inglés), constituida en 2001 por Los Cinco de Shanghai, es la prueba de ello. El megacuerdo chino-ruso sobre el gas natural no es más que el fruto de esta alianza y la consolidación d el espacio común integrado por el “Espacio central” y el “Reino central”.

Evitar la integración eurasiana: intentos de cercar el “Espacio central”

Independientemente de cualquier mezquindad o cálculo, sin Rusia, Europa está incompleta. Tanto demográfica como territorialmente, la Federación Rusa es el mayor país europeo. Sin la menor duda, Moscú también es la fuerza primordial en lo político, lo socioeconómico y lo cultural en los asuntos europeos, una fuerza que no puede ser desdeñada desde el mar Báltico a los Balcanes y el mar Negro.

Económicamente, Rusia es un exportador importante y un mercado importador para la UE y sus países miembros. Es por eso que la UE está sufriendo las consecuencias de las sanciones económicas, urdidas por Estados Unidos, impuestas a Rusia como una forma de guerra económica. Es en este contexto, en el de la importancia económica de Rusia para las economías de la UE, que el vicepresidente de EEUU Joseph Biden admitió con todo candor durante una conferencia el 2 de octubre de 2014 en la escuela de gobernanza John F. Kennedy de la Universidad de Harvard que Washington debía presionar a la UE para que aceptara el régimen de sanciones.

En este sentido, la advertencia de Brzezinski tiene otro ángulo que involucra también a los socios de Washington, la UE y la OTAN. “Finalmente, cualquier expulsión de Estados Unidos de su posición privilegiada en la periferia de Occidente por parte de sus socios occidentales significará automáticamente el fin de la participación de EEUU del tablero de juego eurasiático, aunque también signifique la eventual subordinación del extremo occidental de un revivido jugador ocupando el espacio central”, avisó Brzezinski. Lo que quería decir el ex funcionario estadounidense es que si las más importantes potencias europeas alineadas con EEUU (Francia y Alemania, o el conjunto de la UE) rechazaban la influencia de Washington (tal vez incluso con la retirada de la OTAN), EEUU perdería su situación de privilegio en Eurasia. Brzezinski advirtió de que una Rusia afirmativa –probablemente junto con su aliados de la Comunidad de Naciones Independientes (CIS, por sus siglas en inglés)– podría incluso sustituir la influencia estadounidense.

La razón por la cual esta unidad en el espacio post-soviético y cualquier convergencia entre la UE y el “Espacio central” constituyen una amenaza para Washington puede ser analizada mediante la utilización del punto de vista y el léxico del ministro de asuntos exteriores de Rusia. En el marco diseñado en el Nº 32 de la plaza Smolenskaya-Sennaya, Eurasia está dividida en tres zonas o regiones: la región euratlántica (periferia occidental), la eurásica (región central) y la región Asia-Pacífico (periferia oriental). Por lo tanto, la expresión “Espacio central” usada por Brzezinski alude al espacio post-soviético.

En términos orgánicos, la región central –Eurasia– es la que puede unir e integrar a las periferias occidental y oriental. En última instancia, Rusia y la UEE quieren establecer una zona de libre comercio que englobe a toda la UE y la UEE: un “Espacio Económico Común”. En las palabras del ministro ruso de asuntos exteriores, la UEE está diseñada para ser un vínculo efectivo entre Europa y la región Asia-Pacífico”.

Rusia y la UEE, actuando como puente entre las dos periferias eurasianas, son las que amenazan los planes de Washington de integrar las regiones euroatlántica y Asia-Pacífico con Estados Unidos.

Espacio Económico Común vs. TTIP y TPP

Estados Unidos quiere ser el centro de gravedad de Eurasia. Y tiene el temor de que la UE podría eventualmente inclinarse en la dirección del “Espacio central” e integrarse a Rusia y la UEE.

Las tensiones que Washington está acumulando deliberadamente en Europa son un intento de distanciar la UE de Moscú; esto le permitiría continuar con la construcción del imperio estadounidense en Eurasia, la versión washingtoniana de un moderno “Gran Juego”. Incluso la advertencia de Brzezinski sobre el resurgimiento del “Espacio central” (Rusia más el espacio post-soviético) se refiere a la zona unificada que se convertiría en una “entidad afirmativa única” y no precisamente “agresiva”, es decir, una amenaza militar para la paz mundial.

Washington pretende que la periferia occidental (euroatlántica) y la periferia oriental (Asia-Pacífico) se integren mediante el Tratado de Asociación e Inversión Comercial Transatlántico (TTIP, por sus siglas en inglés) y el Tratado de Asociación Transpacífica (TPP, por sus siglas en inglés). La UEE y cualquier pensamiento de un Espacio Económico Común son una amenaza para la fusión de esas regiones con EEUU. Es por eso que Estados Unidos no puede tolerar un “Espacio central” independiente y asertivo, ni, por la misma razón, un “Reino central” independiente y asertivo. De ahí la demonización y el señalamiento mediático de los que son objeto Rusia y China: Moscú está en el centro de atención mediante la desestabilización inducida en Ucrania (también mediante una novedosa ola de rusofobia); al mismo tiempo, los dardos se dirigen contra Pekín mediante el llamado “giro (militar) hacia Asia”. Esto se está dando mientras EEUU continúa desestabilizando Oriente Medio (es decir, “el Sur”).

Mientras Bruselas tenía sus propias razones para acelerar las conversaciones con Washington por el TTIP, los temores de una integración eurasiana avivaron la sensación de urgencia de EEUU para llevar a término las negociaciones por el TTIP de modo de solidificar su influencia sobre la UE. Las sanciones (guerra económica) contra la economía de Rusia, la caída del precio del petróleo y gas, y la depreciación del rublo en Rusia son también otras tantas caras del cubo de Rubik.

El Espacio Económico Común es una aspiración conducente a una zona de comercio de ámbito eurasiano. El interés por el Espacio Económico Común viene dado porque Moscú y sus socios de la UEE lo ven como un marco en el que poco a poco se incorporarían otras regiones eurasianas. El segundo en el ministerio de asuntos Exteriores ruso, Vasily Nebensya, confirmo todo esto a la agencia de noticias Tass en una entrevista publicada el 31 de diciembre de 2014. Nebenzya le dijo a Tass que Moscú tiene en vista el objetivo a largo plazo de una cooperación UE-UEE en Eurasia “sobre la base de un espacio económico común desde el Atlántico hasta el Pacífico”.

Cualquier acuerdo comercial entre la UE y la UEE no solo sería el primer paso hacia un Espacio Económico Común sino también el embrión de una zona comercial de ámbito eurasiano con el potencial de incluir el Acuerdo de Libre Comercio Centro Europeo (CEFTA, por sus siglas en inglés), la Asociación por la Cooperación Regional del Sur de Asia (SAARC, por sus siglas en inglés) y la Asociación de Naciones del Sudeste Asiático (ASEAN, por sus siglas en inglés). La posibilidad es del surgimiento de un bloque supranacional compartimentado.

Desde una perspectiva rusa, en lugar de priorizar el TTIP con EEUU, para la UE tendría más sentido la creación de un marco de cooperación con la UEE. Esta apreciación ha sido reflejada por el embajador ruso ante la UE, Vladimir Chizhov, quien en una entrevista a EU Observer publicada el 2 de enero pasado dijo que Moscú quería iniciar contactos entre la UE y la UEE tan pronto como fuera posible, y que las sanciones de la UE contra Rusia no impedirían el diálogo y el contacto entre ambos bloques. “Podríamos pensar en una zona de libre comercio que abarcaría a todas las partes interesadas de Eurasia”, explicó en la entrevista el embajador Chizhov mientras describía “el bloque liderado por Rusia como un socio mejor para la UE que Estados Unidos”. Tal como preguntaba persuasivamente, la cuestión en la que la UE debe pensar es esta: “¿Creéis acaso que es inteligente gastar tanta energía política en una zona de libre comercio con Estados Unidos mientras tenéis socios más naturales al lado mismo de vuestra casa?”.

¿Está despertando la Unión Europea?

La pregunta del embajador Chizhov no ha caído en oídos sordos. La misma pregunta se están haciendo en varias capitales de la UE. Los líderes de las potencias europeas están dándose cuanta de que EEUU está provocando un conflicto con Rusia, y que Washington pretende que sean los europeos quienes peleen y dilapiden recursos que debilitarán tanto a la UE como a Moscú para beneficio de Washington. Países más pequeños de Europa se han hecho oír sobre esta cuestión mientras que los más grandes han sido más lentos para darse cuenta de ella.

Grecia se negó a alinearse cuando la UE dio a conocer el 24 de enero pasado una declaración de condena a Rusia por el estallido de combates en la ciudad de Mariupol, Ucrania del Este. Atenas rechazó condenar a Moscú y lamentó que la UE actuara antidemocráticamente y no respetara sus propios procedimientos pidiendo el consenso de los estados miembros antes de publicar una declaración en nombre de todos ellos. En lugar de enfrentarse con Rusia, el gobierno griego busca lazos más estrechos con Moscú.

La visita del presidente Putin a Budapest en febrero de 2015 alborotó las plumas de la UE y EEUU. Hungría había alzado la voz para oponerse a las sanciones estadounidenses contra Rusia. Esto había escandalizado a algunos en Washington y la Comisión Europea. Incluso se produjo un conflicto diplomático entre Budapest y Washington cuando el senador estadounidense John McCain llamó “dictador neo-fascista” al primer ministro húngaro Viktor Orban porque en 2014 Hungría se negó a romper sus vínculos con Rusia.

Mientras se conjeturaba sobre la posibilidad de que Hungría fuera utilizada como el “policía bueno” para regatear con Moscú, el 20 de octubre de 2014 Estados Unidos se excedió y prohibió la entrada en territorio estadounidense de miembros del gobierno húngaro. A pesar de que la UE está obligada a reaccionar colectivamente si cualquier país miembro es castigado con sanciones diplomáticas, Bruselas no respondió a Washington.

El presidente de Chipre Nicos Anastasiades se unió a la sublevación contra Bruselas y Washington visitando Moscú el 25 de febrero de 2015. Nicosia y Moscú incluso firmaron un acuerdo que permite el uso de puertos chipriotas a los barcos de la armada rusa.

Alemania y Francia –una vez más llamados sarcásticamente “la vieja Europa” por el jefazo del Pentágono Donald Rumsfeld– también están dudando. Las diferencias franco-alemanas con EEUU aparecieron en la Conferencia de Seguridad de Munich en el hotel Bayerischer Hof cuando la canciller alemana Angela Merkel contradijo a los delegados de EEUU e Inglaterra en relación con una solución militar en Ucrania. En este contexto, París y Berlín hicieron un refrito de la propuesta de paz original del Kremlin e iniciaron conversaciones diplomáticas en Moscú.

Casualmente, Merkel también mencionó su apoyo al Espacio Económico Común: ¿será una señal de los tiempos que se avecinan?

____________________________

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya es sociólogo e investigador asociado del Centre for Research on Glabalization, especializado en geopolítica y estrategia.

Traducido del inglés para Rebelión por Carlos Riba García.

Fuente: RT, 12 de marzo 2015.

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Tags: Angela Merkel, Asia-Pacífico, Bielorrusia, Chipre, Comunidad de Naciones Independientes, Conferencia de Seguridad de Munich, Egipto, Espacio Central, espacio post-soviético, eurásica, euratlántica, Gran Juego, Grecia, Hungría, La Organización por la Cooperación de Shanghai, La Unión Económica Eurasiana, Nicos Anastasiades, Reino central, Rusia, Tratado de Asociación e Inversión Comercial Transatlántico, Tratado de Asociación Transpacífica, Turquía, Vasily Nebensya, Viktor Orban, Vladimir Chizhov, Zbigniew Brzezinski

The IMF Ukraine $17.5 Billion Bailout Linked to “Reform” and the Impoverishment of the Ukrainian Population

March 13th, 2015 by Eric Zuesse

Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten article. Translation and notes by Eric Zuesse,

Scroll down for Eric Zuesse’s analysis of the agreement

SUMMARY:

Ukraine will receive total loans of 40 billion dollars from international tax money. For this purpose, Ukraine will carry out “reforms” especially such demands as that the social system be dismantled and privatization [selloff of government assets in order to repay the loans] be performed. The Kiev government is very pleased with the ‘help’. A native of the US, Ukraine’s Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko wants to buy weapons with the money. European banks are relieved because Kiev, for the time being, is able to meet its debt service

DETAILS:

Angela Merkel and IMF chief Christine Lagarde rejoiced in Berlin on Wednesday, because, in their view, Ukraine is on the right track.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has fully approved its new loan package of 17.5 billion for Ukraine. This approval from the IMF Board of the four-year loan program was announced in Berlin on Wednesday by the IMF’s head Christine Lagarde. She said that the loan will help to stabilize the economic situation in Ukraine as quickly as possible. At the same time Ukraine will launch far-reaching reforms to restore robust growth and improve the living conditions of the population, she promises.

“Ukraine has fulfilled all conditions for this loan program, “Lagarde said in Berlin after a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) and the heads of other global financial and economic organizations. The newly approved plan will pay Ukraine ten billion dollars in the first year.

Overall, the international community is now fully committed to provide to Ukraine around $ 40 billion in loans. Specifically, the IMF has converted its previous short-term loans (Stand-By Arrangement) into a long-term loan program (Extended Fund Facility).

Ukraine is virtually bankrupt and can, according to the statement from Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, survive only with the IMF loans. Yatsenyuk says that the amount of the first installment of the new loan program from the IMF will be five billion US dollars. “We managed to show the IMF that we implement reforms,” he said on Wednesday night, according to local media in Kiev – and he pointedly held five fingers in the air.

The EU has recently approved 1.8 billion euros for Ukraine. Germany has bilaterally (with Ukraine) granted an additional credit line of 500 million euros for economic stabilization. In addition, Reuters reports that IMF insiders believe that the creditors of Ukraine will be asked to pay. They are expected to contribute 15.4 billion euros – which could run for example via a waiver [of part of what’s owed]. This could affect Russia as well as the investor George Soros, both of which hold Ukrainian government bonds.

Ukraine will get more funds, more time, more flexibility and better financing terms, Lagarde said. She pointed out that additional funding will be added. Furthermore, the Ukrainian government has initiated talks with lenders to reduce the national debt to a sustainable level in the medium term.

The IMF says that the impact of the reforms, particularly for the poorest part of the population, will be to cushion and enable to be strengthened the social network and enable its measures to be implemented in a more targeted way. But the opposite is actually true. The government has in particular brought in laws by which the situation of pensioners, the sick and children will significantly deteriorate.

“The program is ambitious and involves risks,” said Lagarde. This is particularly true in view of the conflict in the east. Encouragingly, the ceasefire agreed in Minsk seems to be holding, to a large extent.

In addition to the new IMF loans, the loan program to Ukraine also includes money from Western industrialized countries (G7), the EU and other institutions. Germany alone controls so far the additional credit line of 500 million euros for the reconstruction of the country. These are guarantees [insurance] to project funding.

The federal government had earlier stressed the “bailout” is linked to “reform”. “This financial support from the IMF and the European Union can be provided only with the understanding that Ukraine will adopt and implement urgently needed reforms,” said government spokesman Steffen Seibert in Berlin.

US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland vowed on Wednesday in addressing the US Congress, that the reforms in Ukraine, will go beyond all the praise, by cutting pensions and the social system, and by privatizing Ukraine’s agriculture. International seed companies like Monsanto will benefit from the credits from taxpayers because these companies will be able to buy agricultural land from local farmers at low prices [without having to worry about the riskiness of Ukraine’s government debt]. [It should also be noted that until the U.S. took over Ukraine, there were no GMO seeds allowed anywhere in Europe.]

Only recently have oligarchs established an agency for the reconstruction of Ukraine.The agency is endorsed by ex-Commissioners and SPD politicians like Peer Steinbrück. Western politicians will likely help Ukraine’s oligarchs benefit from the tax money coming from Europe and America.

Taxpayers’ money will be controlled by the former employee of the US State Department, the investment banker [and now Ukraine’s Finance Minister] Natalie Jaresko. Jaresko has already announced that the new credit in addition to the debt service will help Ukraine to buy, especially, weapons.

The occupation of the key Ministry of Ukraine [Finance] by an American is describe by criticis critics as a provocation.

Banks in Europe are investing heavily in Ukraine, and therefore also will benefit from the newly approved loans. [Taxpayers take the risks, while those banks reap the benefits.]

Note by Eric Zeusse

The deal that seems to be shaping up is that while Obama’s secondary goal of enabling U.S. and EU corporations to plunder Ukraine will be fulfilled, Obama’s primary goal of Ukraine’s joining NATO will not. Russia has to approve these loans to Ukraine, because Russia is Ukraine’s most-senior debtholder. So, if this plan works out as described, and Russia accepts being treated instead as a junior debtholder, then Russia will have to be getting in return what it wants most, which is that the new, rabidly anti-Russian, Obama-imposed, Ukrainian regime, not be allowed into NATO, and not become a launch-site for NATO missiles. Implicit in this is also that the acceptance and permanency of the existing battle-demarcation-lines, in which Ukraine’s forces occupy Mariupol. This settlement suggests that Russia will somehow have to find a way to build a ten-mile bridge across the Kerch Strait connecting Crimea with the rest of Russia.

When Ukraine invaded Mariupol during 7-9 May 2014 and set afire the police headquarters and shot directly at the residents to terrify and subdue them, this started the bloodiest of the civil war’s battles that Ukraine ended up winning, and Mariupol is now virtually a ghost town except for Ukraine’s occupying troops. Ukraine’s very bloody conquest of Mariupol may be considered to be Ukraine’s revenge for having peacefully — because of Russian troops in Crimea — lost Crimea to Russia on 16 March 2014.

This news-story is basically a first-statement of the proposed and implicitly accepted settlement-terms of Ukraine’s civil war. Western taxpayers will be bearing much of the burden, though they had no role in approving these terms except for their having been fooled by propaganda into voting for politicians whose primarly loyalty is to the individuals who financed their campaigns and their careers — not to the public. The entire Ukrainian gambit of Obama ends up as little more than a pillaging operation. If he accepts it as being that, and if Putin accepts it as being nothing more than that, then the deal will stick, and the residents of Ukraine will become even more impoverished, and will massively migrate into Europe, as prostitutes and other desperate people competing against the existing refugees and other poor there. This will be a major victory for aristocrats, who will not need to pay as much for workers as formerly. However, everyone else will suffer. This is what the aristocracy calls ‘the free market,’ and ‘democracy.’ It’s a massive money-funnel to the super-rich.]

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.

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Israel Supports Syria Terrorists out of Golan Heights: 85 Wounded Al-Qaeda Militants Transported to Israeli and Jordanian Hospitals

March 13th, 2015 by Leith Fadel

On Tuesday, as many as 85 wounded militants from the Syrian Al-Qaeda group “Jabhat Al-Nusra” (Victory Front) and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) were transported to Israeli and Jordanian hospitals after a powerful joint attack by the Syrian Arab Army’s 9th Armored Division and the Syrian Arab Air Force (SAAF).

Among the Jabhat Al-Nusra and FSA fighters transported to Israeli and Jordanian hospitals were their field commanders, “Abu Usama Al-Jolani” and “Abu Hamza Al-Naymi.”

According to a military source, the SAA’s military intelligence received this information from local activists on the ground; specifically, from Syrians living in the Israeli-Occupied Golan Heights town of Majdal Shamis.

Activists in the town of Majdal Shamis have been targeted by Israeli police as of lately, due to their collaboration and support for the Syrian Arab Army; this has resulted in the arrest of a number of activists, including Hisham Fares Sha’alan on charges of conspiring against the state of Israel.

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Dangerous Crossroads, Acts of Provocation: NATO Fighter Jets Scramble to Intercept Russian Fuel Tanker Over Baltic Sea

March 13th, 2015 by Sputnik

Italian fighter jets protecting airspace over the Baltic states were deployed to intercept a Russian refueling aircraft over the Baltic Sea, Latvian National Armed Forces said via Twitter.

The IL-78 (Midas) is an air-to-air refueling tanker and is part of a regiment based in western Russia’s Ryazan Region nearly 200 kilometers (122 miles) southeast of Moscow.

Over the past few months, several NATO members have expressed concern over Russia’s alleged violations of their airspace. The Russian Ministry of Defense retorted, however, that the Russian Air Force’s routine flights are in compliance with international agreements and do not violate foreign airspace.

NATO Baltic Air Policing QRA ITA Typhoon jets on 10 MAR scrambled to intercept RU Armed Forces Il-78 over the Baltic Sea.

— NBS (@Latvijas_armija) March 10, 2015

Moreover, the air force command criticized these allegations as distractions from NATO’s military buildup in the Baltic region along Russia’s western borders.

On Monday, over 120 armored units, including Abrams tanks and Bradley armored vehicles, arrived in Latvia from the United States. Similar equipment, including two groups of US paratroopers, is expected to arrive this week in neighboring Estonia to take part in joint military drills involving 13,000 soldiers.

The nearly year-long conflict in southeast Ukraine has served as justification for NATO’s expansion in Eastern Europe. The military bloc, along with its political and economic counterparts, claims Moscow is involved in the ongoing fighting.

Russia, on the other hand, has maintained that it is not a party to the crisis in Ukraine and has expressed concern over NATO’s growing presence along its borders.

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The Real Reason Walmart U-Turned on Wages

March 13th, 2015 by Curt Hopkins

Originally published by Who What Why

Image: Walmart workers picket for higher pay.

Retail powerhouse Walmart prides itself on providing customers with “everyday low prices.” But labor experts believe the retail giant scored itself a public relations bargain with a much-publicized but less-than-generous pay increase for some of its workers.

For more than half a century, Walmart has paid its 2 million-plus employees such depressed wages that many full-time workers cannot live on them. So many full-time employees are on state and federal welfare programs.

That’s how Walmart ended up becoming the single largest private-sector beneficiary of public assistance. U.S. taxpayers, according to Barry Ritzholtz of Rithholz Wealth Management, “have been subsidizing the wages of this publicly traded, private-sector company to the tune of $2.66 billion in government largesse a year.”

The world’s largest company by revenue has long pushed back against every labor pressure to increase wages, hours, and benefits. So why is Walmart really raising wages for half a million of its associates?

Turnover in Tightening Labor Market?

Walmart has seen a 44% annual turnover rate among its hourly employees—a marked difference from the 6% turnover rate at rival Costco. That’s because Costco pays workers an average of $20.89 an hour, while Walmart pays $12.85.

This practice may cost more than it saves. The Harvard Business Review estimates that for “skilled and semi-skilled jobs, the fully loaded cost of replacing a worker who leaves (excluding lost productivity) is typically 1.5 to 2.5 times the worker’s annual salary.”

Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors, believes that “Wal-Mart’s move to raise their employee pay base is a sign that the labor market has already tightened.” Moreover, Walmart may just be trying to stop its workforce from leaving for better opportunities as the economy improves.

These explanations are largely consistent with Walmart’s messaging. “In recent years we’ve had tough economic environments, a rapidly growing company, and fundamental shifts in how customers are shopping,” Walmart CEO Doug McMillon wrote in a letter to workers announcing the pay hike.

Other retailers, including Trader Joe’s, have long paid even rookie workers above minimum wage. This year, Starbucks raised pay for its baristas and shift supervisors, and last year, The Gap announced its minimum hourly rate would increase to $10.

Evading the Union Threat

Another explanation for the hikes is that Walmart’s wage raise may help stave off the union threat posed by insider protest groups such as the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart).

People unionize when their needs are not being met. They think of unions when— for instance— wages are so low they need food stamps to buy from the place where they work, or when there is a food drivefor them. If Walmart were to change this situation and provide them with what they need, what motivation would there be to unionize?

To date, unions have not found success at Walmart. Unions cost employers money in the short term and Walmart expends substantial effort to fend them off: it went so far as to create an anti-unionization guide.

***

But over the last four years, OUR Walmart publicly criticized Walmart’s labor policies via rallies held at peak shopping times such as Christmas. The goal: achieving a $13.00 minimum wage and stable work schedules.

OUR Walmart member Debi Smith, a 13-year employee from Branson West, Missouri, who earns $8.32 an hour, said the rallies helped force Walmart’s hand.

But that success may have an unintended effect, she said. “They want to show people that they care, but now I’m afraid we’ll see our hours cut. If you get a raise and you don’t get the hours, that balances out to zero. Associates see this as just the same story, but a different page,” she told WhoWhatWhy.

As of now, Walmart has not agreed to provide its employees full-time work with regular hours.

A Raise That Isn’t Such a Raise

Notably, Walmart’s promised salary increases aren’t even close to the minimum wage OUR Walmartwants. According to the retailer’s announced changes, over the next year, new associates will receive $9.00 an hour during training and at least $10.00 after.

The $10 rate is a healthy 12 percent increase from an average of $8.81.

Now compare that with what old-timers receive. They are in line to receive just a 1% increase for their full-time work: a mere 15-cent raise to $13.00 an hour.

So why does Walmart get a win? Because they can say they met the $13-an-hour demand, even though it’s only partially true.. for some. Meanwhile, Smith’s group is battling for a $13-an-hour minimum wage for everyone. For that to happen, new associates would have to be given that rate as well.

Even if Walmart keeps workers’ hours intact, will an increase of 1% really enable its full-time workforce to live without relying on government subsidies funded by taxpayers?

The Real Reason?

Some labor experts simply dismiss all of the above as factors in Walmart giving its workers a small raise. They see a much simpler purpose.

Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration and now senior fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, told WhoWhatWhy:

“Don’t believe what you hear about a tight labor market forcing their hand. At the lower end of the income ladder, the labor market is very loose—very high unemployment and many who have left the jobs market altogether.”

The bottom line, Reich believes: “They did it mainly for PR purposes. They were beginning to feel the heat from all the bad press.”

Outsized publicity for a 1% pay raise for full-time staff—now that’s bang for the buck.

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Hollywood War Films, An Instrument of Military Indoctrination: The “American Sniper” Reviewers’ Consensus

March 13th, 2015 by Dr. T. P. Wilkinson

Since American Sniper has become one of the “top grossing films of all time”, garnering a few Academy Award nominations and at least one, if trivial, award, there have been even more reviews written about this insidious and insipid strip of celluloid. Unsurprisingly all of them contain the same swill. I had to return to my own review just to see if I had perhaps omitted anything essential or if anyone might have thought in an at least similar direction.

The defensive focus of vocal support for the film is equally and unsurprisingly the condition of “veterans”. In fact this is probably the single most abused excuse for US war film production since the US regime withdrew its uniformed forces from Vietnam. To be fair—although by no means generous—some of the reviewers suggested that critical attention be focused on those who initiate and manage the wars that create such neglected veterans. As I have argued elsewhere, this is still the “wrong war thesis” and remains a kind of apology for the centuries of carnage wrought by the regime in Washington.

On the other side of the phony political divide are those who claim that Mr Eastwood does not present the humanity of Iraqis fairly. Of course this begs the question as to why, if Americans were concerned about Iraqi humanity, they would derive such satisfaction from destroying Iraq and maiming or murdering millions of its inhabitants, while plundering and pillaging the country for nearly fifteen years? The fact that the film has generated such high gross receipts is certainly proof that Americans are not at all concerned with the humanity of Iraqis (or anyone else for that matter) but enjoy war and murder as entertainment.

I recently had a long discussion with a good acquaintance whose daughter is engaged to a professional soldier in the German army. I asked him if he (a pacifist) and his daughter were conscious of what this could mean in even the very near future? He said his relationship to his daughter although good, despite the divorce between him and the girl’s mother, was still tenuous– or he perceived it as such. In other words, he did not want to risk breaking the contact to his daughter by pointing out that she intended to marry a professional killer. He retorted that she was aware of the risks involved for a soldier and that this did not diminish her love for the man. I acknowledged that although a 20-something woman is an adult and has her own responsibilities, she could hardly (at least in Germany) be expected to be fully aware of the immediate consequences of marriage to a professional soldier. The conversation revolved around whether one could or could not, as a German soldier, be ordered to kill people. Here it is worth mentioning that when the German government prepared to end universal conscription the airwaves were saturated with McCann Erickson advertising for the German Army—exactly modelled on the US Army’s “be all you can be” campaign from the 1970s and 1980s. Germany was being prepared for integration in the post-Vietnam US killing industry.

Quite aside from the absurdity of debating killing in the military, the issues of obedience and camaraderie as well as patriotic loyalty were raised. His future son-in-law would not intend to kill except to protect his comrades. Moreover the young man was convinced that the German Army defends the values of the old “citizen army” under universal conscription. I said that someone who believes that the German army (even under conscription) was a democratic defence institution is either stupid or crassly ignorant or worse mendacious– since especially in Germany the remilitarisation was forced on the population by the US, by its stooge Konrad Adenauer using parliamentary tricks and police to suppress general– even legislative– opposition to rearmament after WWII. Never mind that more than a few I know who served in the subscription army could recite stories about the vitality of the Wehrmacht tradition in the garrisons even in the 1980s.

Then I asked if there was any sense in a pacifist attitude when one is not even willing to confront one’s own children with the consequences of marrying professional killers or accepting their profession as “just another job”. If one has no great social influence as a pacifist, one might think that at least defence of one’s own family against the trauma and the criminal collusion with the war machine would be a kind of duty. Doesn’t it make sense to protect the physical and mental health of one’s family by discouraging participation in the war machine wherever possible?

The answer given in the American Sniper genre is that even mass murderers need love and understanding. However such love is never the much-trumpeted “tough” kind that says to a partner: “I do not believe love and murder are compatible, you have to make a choice!” Americans are told every day how “tough” their love has to be—as if “tough” equals honest. In practice “tough” love has nothing to do with love—it is all about being “tough”—e.g. neglecting the poor and slaughtering non-whites for fun and conquest.

Military indoctrination also has its impact in the “white branches” even if it is by no means as obvious as in the case of infantrymen. Both the Navy and the Air Force are largely white preserves and their members generally kill from a distance or remotely, at limited risk to their own lives. Much of the military apparatus is clothed in suits rather than uniforms and if white (and middle class) operates by remote control. The pleasure of vigilante films like American Sniper derives from the self-pity cultivated among the poor who kill directly and the vanity of the technologically indoctrinated iPhone classes. Killing Iraqis (or other non-whites) is either a game of supremacy or an exercise in consumer sadism. However, among the covert—and hence chronically unnamed—entrepreneurs and managers of these wars it is both.

When a train hits a person who either accidentally or deliberately falls in front of it, the locomotive driver (at least in Germany) is relieved of duty immediately and given psychological/ psychiatric support to overcome the shock. New Year’s Day this year it took me 12 hours to get to Berlin because someone jumped in front of our train between Hamburg and Berlin. This is how seriously an accident is treated– although jumping in front of trains is no new or particularly rare event. (Imagine if every soldier had to be treated in the same way due to “accidental” defensive discharge of his firearm!) Everyone on the train was full of sympathy (or pretended so) for the poor driver who had to experience driving over a single human being. The same people have no serious problem when it comes to tank drivers crushing women and children in Afghanistan or Iraq or in any unnamed African country. I suggested that locomotive engineers simply be paid “hazardous duty” bonuses like soldiers: everyone was horrified.

But aren’t those women and children simply “suicides”? Their lives are defined by living in the path of merely occasional tank drivers who cannot be expected to stop their line of travel any more than a locomotive engineer surprised by a falling body.

In fact all these reviews support the thesis that it is the fault of Iraqis or other non-whites that they are in the way of routine American train movement. Chris Kyle was just one of those lonely locomotive engineers who ultimately needed treatment for the trauma of driving over too many suicides (those who have the misfortune to live on the same route where the US builds its global railroad tracks). Of course if Americans took the history of their own railroads seriously, they were not only metaphors for conquest. The “iron horse” rolled over the Chinese, African-Americans, and Native Americans, enriching the white elite that still rules the American empire. It was the natural extension of the cavalry and later mechanised infantry that terrorise the world today. The reviewers of American Sniper all accept the tank, APC, and Humvee as public transportation and their drivers as the engineers and conductors. They and the mass public for Mr Eastwood’s film have all willingly paid their fare on the Great Death Railway run by the US empire. All aboard!

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The American Empire is a Threat to Every Nation’s Security

March 13th, 2015 by Joachim Hagopian

President Obama just declared Venezuela a threat to US national security, which is code word for any smaller, less powerful nation possessing balls enough to thumb its nose at the Empire bully America. The lie of accusing another sovereign nation as a threat to US national security like clockwork is the first step toward levying economic sanctions. Cuba, Iran, Syria and Russia come readily to mind. This petty, tit for tat politics game comes only a week after Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro announced a drastic downsizing of US Embassy employees and that tourist visas for any Americans traveling to his country would be required, not exactly actions posing much of a “threat” to America. In fact Maduro is exercising remarkable restraint considering that Canada and the US attempted to overthrow the Venezuelan president on Valentine’s Day last month. But with rejuvenated resolve and concerted focus the United States is once again intent on bringing Maduro down.

Obama has been hypocritically playing the ethics card again, accusing the Maduro government of being corrupt and guilty of egregious human rights violations, everything that the US is guilty of in spades. Again Obama can hardly take any higher moral ground on human rights issues when he leads the nation that imprisons one quarter of the world’s prison population despite comprising only 5% of the total global population. Civil liberties are fast disappearing in the prison-industrial complex of America amidst an increasing hostile police state where US law enforcement’s been steadily arming and militarizing to make war against its own citizens who risk death from police bullets at a rate 55 times greater than from any so called terrorist and 100 times more likely to be killed by police than citizens from any other industrialized nation. Where half the current prison population is of the same race he is, Obama should be the last one to criticize any nation for its human rights record when a stronger case can be argued that it’s the United States that is the worst human rights violator on the planet. No other nation on earth has violated and destroyed more human lives and nations than US Empire’s killing machine. According to a study nearly a decade ago, the USA has accounted for an estimated 30 million deathsaround the globe just since World War II. With thousands more US inflicted casualties since that statistic was released, the murder capital of the world with all its exceptionalism just keeps on killing. And no other nation on earth even remotely comes close to the dubious distinction of being at war 93% of its time in existence.

Every single country in this world that in any way resists the Empire’s relentless onslaught to make it another indebted globalist puppet state is targeted in its crosshairs. While the neocon overthrow in Ukraine was unfolding last year, the double hat trick in-the-making to also remove from power Venezuela’s Maduro was barely being thwarted but successfully averted. All the same subversive US tactics were being simultaneously deployed in both countries with different outcomes – pouring unlimited cash into the nations (per Victoria Neuland $5 billion in Ukraine alone) through CIA and State Department NGO’s, inside false flag snipers murdering street protesters in order to blame government security forces, a steady feed of social media lies and propaganda, and monetary manipulation through high inflation while creating acute food supply shortages. It was close to a coup in Caracas but no cigar for the US neocon criminals last month or last year.

Similar to Syria’s Bashir al Assad, Nicolas Maduro’s post- Chavez government has remained in power much to Empire’s chagrin despite being permanently targeted for regime change. All the more reason a year later to hone in on twisting the screws a little tighter on Venezuela. With civil liberties and human rights declining across the boards globally, Venezuela has been the only nation close to democracy with its own nationalized oil company. Up until his death two years ago, during his 14 years as head of state despite a couple unsuccessful US sponsored coup attempts, Hugo Chavez brought significant economic and social progress to his country. Containing the world’s largest reserves of crude oil and owning the US company Citgo as its subsidiary, the big boys like Exxon and Shell have been locked out of the richest oil nation on earth and for that reason alone, Chavez and Maduro’s Venezuela has long been the biggest hemispheric thorn in America’s side. Under Hugo Chavez, oil profits went to the people of Venezuela to build schools and hospitals and improve their quality of life rather than filling the filthy rich pockets of Big Oil or OPEC allies that finance and sponsor terrorism. And that made war criminals George W. and his pal Dick Cheney hopping mad, especially after Hugo addressing the United Nations General Assembly nearly a decade ago brazenly yet accurately “outed” Bush as “the devil.” And ever since Chavez’ successor replaced him, the United States has been gunning to overthrow Nicolas Maduro.

But then seeking (or more like causing) regime changes at will has long been a United States foreign policy trademark. Even prior to this century, Wesley Clark’s 2007 revelation spilled the beans on that infamous neocon list to take down seven sovereign nations in five years that to this day under Obama is still being faithfully executed. With sole exceptions Syria and Iran still marked as unfinished business, puppet Obama has dutifully followed the same neocon agenda as his Bush-Cheney predecessor. Be it through CIA and/or other government rogue agency insiders, US coups d’état through violent assassination of democratically elected leaders (Iran in 1953, JFK in 1963, Chile’s Allende in 1973) abound. Even more common are the dozens of politically conventional CIA-State Department induced overthrows like Ukraine last year. Whether the 1954 coup in Guatemala or 1964 in Brazil or Ghana in 1966, several more recently in Haiti against democratically elected Aristide or even more recent in 2009 Honduras when the US pushed out yet another democratically elected leader replaced by a corrupt military junta in bed with the drug cartel. No accident last year that 50,000 kids showed up at the US border when US backed murder and mayhem have been allowed to rule in Central America for decades. But then neither the British nor American Empires were ever averse to seizing control and profiting from the multi-billion dollar international drug smuggling trade. For more than a century the US Empire has been steeped in the tradition of regime change all over the world in order to increase and maintain ruthless hegemonic control at all cost. Chalk it up to USA exceptionalism.

Be it Syria, Iran, Russia (though Putin has proven both smarter and stronger than US ever estimated), North Korea or Cuba, all of these nations have shown far more resilience, self-sufficiency and defiant independence than the United States would ever care to admit. Despite years of economic sanctions, countless threats and demonizing propaganda, these stubborn nations have managed to survive and in some cases even thrive despite the relentless brute force tactics displayed by the global village bully turned self-anointed sole global superpower. At enormous risk of collapsing under continued Empire siege, all these nations are still standing tall despite being targeted with nonstop superpower aggression.

Rarely has such open defiance against Empire imperialism survived. Look what happened to onetime US allies Iraq and Libya. After dumping the US petrodollar, both Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi quickly fell victim to Empire wrath that has willfully destroyed those two once stable, prosperous, oil producing giants. Crime partnering with the likes of Israel, Saudi Arabia and al Qaeda-ISIS, the globalist Empire wrecking crew has chewed up and spit out Iraq and Libya onto the heap of its growing failed state graveyard.

But now the geopolitics chessboard is tipping decidedly in favor of the East. With the hording gold run picking up momentum, China and India have accumulated thousands of tons of gold. According to renowned geopolitical expert F. William Engdahl, Russia is experiencing a surprisingly remarkable renaissance. The formidable economic alliance of the emerging powerhouse BRICS nations coalescing behind the renewed partnership strength of Russia and China are leading the way toward global independence from the Western central banking cabal’s US dollar chokehold as standard international currency, and as a result, the global balance of power is dramatically shifting. Upon high command order from western oligarchs, the US Empire is desperately lashing out as it rapidly freefalls towards impending economic collapse.

Despot Netanyahu recently commanded a standing ovation on Capitol Hill from his enraptured captured audience of treasonous pro-Zionist US Congress, threatening and demanding war against Iran (despite it not building or possessing nuclear weapons). Meanwhile, the Kiev government’s being taken over by neo Nazi dual Israeli citizens(like the US already has been) demanding war against Putin over Ukraine. These seemingly suicidal gestures risking nuclear annihilation underscore the psychopathic severity of brain damage these megalomaniacs in control are truly suffering from. With counterterrorism measures in the name of national security exponentially taking tyrannical hold throughout the Western bloc – in North America, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and Europe, globalized NWO totalitarianism is moving in for its kill. With a big bang the United States and Europe as the WWIII warfront appear to be going down as the Western ruling elite’s sacrificial lambs. The Middle Eastern front of course is Iran and Syria where their alliance with Russia and China will bring them into world war in the Gulf.

The sad but very sobering fact that if any sovereign nation on this planet dares to refuse to play this predatory internationalist game bent on obliterating its autonomy actively opposing forced acquisition into Empire fiefdom, then bar none that nation becomes a so called “threat to US national security,” now synonymous with New World Order. That’s how Empiric imperialism operates as the big fish gobbles up the little fish in the increasingly toxic global pond cesspool. The might makes right, “my dick’s bigger than yours” syndrome that’s always characterized violence in human history is nothing but political, economic and military Darwinism at its lowest and most base. In the modern tradition of the British and American Empires, even the propaganda whitewash brainwash that always perfumed the stench of murderous bullies spreading their lies of freedom and democracy no longer can possibly cover up the sheer ugliness and brutality of globalized exploitation, mass genocide and world order slavery that currently has the planet suffocating from a tightening NWO death grip.

With repeated calls for yet more oppression in the name of national security, Obama never fails to justify all his actions by trumpeting America’s exceptionalism. The world’s only superpower is free to commit murder, war crimes, regime changes, invasions, occupations and wars at will simply because it can get away with it. Empire exceptionalism permits it to stand alone in violation of every known international law, treaty, UN Charter and Geneva Convention rule in total defiance of every world court and tribunal only because it can. Obama’s incessantly citing US exceptionalism is always accompanied by his worn-out rhetoric and jingoistic masturbation touting the greatness of America and its blessed people. He never fails to emphasize the urgent need for the United States to take the lead in imparting its brand of democracy to the waiting rest of the world. Of course he must always also pay tribute to our brave young men and women in uniform loyally defending our coveted freedom that the so called terrorists are always so jealous of. This hubris of deception and hypocrisy behind his ad nauseam lies spewing forth is wearing ever so thin to the fast growing crowd of outraged Americans joining the rest of the planet that for a long time have painfully known that it’s the United States of America that’s the real threat to every nation’s security on this earth and that it’s the current criminal syndicate of US Empire posing as the rogue globalist government that urgently needs a complete “regime change” overhaul.

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

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“Gold has never been more Valuable than it is Today!”

March 12th, 2015 by Bill Holter

While doing an interview a few months back with Turd Ferguson at www.tfmetals.com, he made the comment “gold has never been more valuable than it is today”. This is so true and correct, I’d like to break it down into small pieces because from a historical standpoint there is no comparison to where we are today.

OK, I guess it would be best to first clear the air and address those who will say Turd’s statement is wrong because they paid $1,700 for their gold and are sitting on “losses”. Yes, from the standpoint of what gold will “fetch”, gold is “down”. Were you to sell it today or barter for a piece of real estate, it will take more ounces today than it would have two or three years ago. I get it and am not a stu-nod.

The key word in the statement is “valuable” with the root word being “value”. The other key word is “today”. I bounced writing this piece off my mentor and he said “very good quote but I’m not sure it is true”. He went on to the examples of France just prior to the Revolution and to Germany prior to and during WW II. This is very true if you were French in 1790 or a Jew living in Germany but …like the snotty kid in grade school who likes to correct his teacher, I pointed out the obvious. In these two examples, only were the French and German Jews affected. Today, everyone on the planet will be affected one way or another because the dollar’s global pervasiveness and reach. As for “value”, the key is to retain value. Gold is THE only money all throughout history to have done this. Gold is THE only money on the planet that cannot default and THE only money which cannot be debased (though this has been attempted 24/7 by central banks forever).

Digging into this deeper, even with many countries trying to distance themselves, the U.S. dollar is still a more widespread and all engulfing reserve currency than any before it (with the exception of gold). The dollar is held as “reserves” in central banks and sovereign treasuries all over the world. A “change” in the dollar for better or worse will directly and indirectly affect more countries, more institutions and more people than any previous reserve currency. We live in a world where everyone is “in bed” so to speak with everyone else. We live in a world of instant information made available by computers to any and all locations on the planet so a hiccup anywhere in the world will circle the globe in less than 24 hours. My point is this, how long would it have taken a devaluation in Dutch or Spanish reserve currencies to be known and understood 300 or 400 years ago? The answer is YEARS rather than minutes or even seconds today.

The point Mr. Ferguson was trying to make is the current scenario is fraught with more risk (and not just financial) than any time all throughout history. Dollar (reserve currency) risk? Yes of course, but the truth is, it’s about “risk” in everything. Never before has the entire world been as levered as it is today. Never have central banks been more levered than the grossest and most bloated financial institutions in the world. Never before have scores of sovereign treasuries been collectively insolvent as they are today. Never before have bond prices been so high, yields so low and financial ratios so poor. Collective PE ratios and “rent to price” of real estate have never been where they are today. Derivatives never existed and the “rules” were never changed to the extent they are today. Think about it, have banks ever before in history been allowed to suspend real accounting mark to market or not report losses due to “national security”? Please do not tell me this was common in communist regimes because they no longer even exist, they have already failed and were not the center of anything. The Soviet Union went down the path of falsely reporting economic numbers, bending reality and living under “laws” that applied to some but not others, where did it get them?

If you understand this very basic premise, “risk of everything” has never been greater than it is today then you understand the phrase “gold is more valuable today than ever before”. Think of it this way, if you absolutely knew 100% that an unstoppable forest fire or flood was going to strike your house, how “valuable” would your fire or flood insurance be? Would you be upset if you paid your premium and it took longer than a year for the fire or flood to arrive? Would you ever cancel your insurance policy at the end of the year, (still knowing a disaster was coming) and scoff at it while saying “I’m not ever doing that again, I lost money”?

Do you see? Mathematically, our fiat currency system will fail. Mathematically, the current system of “debt equals growth” will fail. This is not “Bill Holter’s opinion”, this is fact because it is math! In the above hypothetical flood or fire, they can never be known 100% in advance. This is not so with our monetary system. The way our monetary system is set up we CAN know with 100% certainty it will fail, we just don’t know “when”. It is the “when” part that has people so discouraged. I am here to tell you it does not matter “when” this happens, what matters is whether you have your monetary insurance policy in place …or not.

We know the central banks have every motive in the world to suppress the price of gold. We have seen several times where 50% of global gold production has been sold in less than two trading days, it is clear that actions have been taken to suppress the price. Can we do anything about it? Will “regulators” do anything about it? Of course not. However, if you understand this risk of financial collapse has never been higher than it is today then you then you know your insurance has never been more necessary or valuable.

This risk will ultimately be borne out in the failure of what we use as money.

If you are a student of history and understand what has acted as “financial insurance” time and time again throughout recorded history …then you understand what is meant by “GOLD HAS NEVER BEEN MORE VALUABLE THAN IT IS TODAY!” This is not rocket science, chart mumbo jumbo or opinion, this is 2+2=4 logic, defy it or try to time it at your own risk!

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Postcard from the End of America: Washington D.C.

March 12th, 2015 by Linh Dinh

For nearly four years, I lived just 20 miles from Washington, in Annandale, VA, and I worked in D.C. for 9 months. From my home in Philadelphia, I’ve also gone down to Washington at least a hundred times, so this metropolis should not be alien to me, and yet no American city is more off putting, more unwelcome, more impenetrable, and this, in spite of its obvious physical attractiveness, and here, I’m talking mostly about its Northwest quadrant, the only part visitors are familiar with, and where commuters from Virginia and Maryland arrive daily to work.

Even though it’s the world’s foremost generator of mayhem, Washington is supremely tranquil and orderly. With its wide streets, unusually wide sidewalks, many leafy squares and the vast, magnificent Mall, D.C. is the ultimate garden city. It’s greener than Portland, Oregon. It’s also a showcase for culture. All of its publicly owned museums don’t charge admissions, a unique arrangement not just in the United States but likely worldwide, thus the unwashed masses can stream into the National Gallery to admire the only da Vinci in the Americas, 15 Rembrandts, 12 Titians, four Vermeers and two Albert Pinkham Ryders. A laid off factory worker or brain damaged war veteran can stuff his face with Bonnards, Degas, Canalettos and Morandis, then pick his crooked teeth with a Renoir or Cassatt. If still not sated, he can hobble over to the Hirshhorn, Freer or National Museum of American Arts for more artistic nourishment to heft up his mind and bevel down his rough edges.

Washington museums feature almost no local artists, however, for this is a profoundly uncultured place, paradoxically. Nothing germinates here but power. (The only D.C. artists I can think of are Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis, two innocuous painters whose canvases are designed for corporate lobbies.) Unlike in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco or even Philadelphia, there are no first rate galleries of contemporary arts here. The politicians, lawyers, lobbyists, military types and spooks who dominate D.C. have loads of money, but they are all culturally conservative. Elites everywhere tend to be that way, sure, but D.C. is a magnet nonpareil for those who crave power and can think of nothing else. They are here to gain and barter influence, not to be distracted or pestered by arts that haven’t been curated, many times over, to be palatable to the status quo. Even arts from many decades ago can threaten and disturb, and that’s why the caustic social commentaries of Max Beckmann or Otto Dix, for example, are safely kept in storage and rarely dragged out for public contemplation. As this nation normalizes legal sadism, Leon Golub’s images of torture will not be on display. Here, why don’t you ogle these colorful blobs of nothing by some garbage painter!

Other capital cities have rich artistic heritages, but not Washington, for it was conceived only to be a center of power. Built up almost entirely from scratch, it’s the ideal American city, literally, with just about every aspect of it carefully calibrated, and almost nothing that’s organic or spontaneous. Its oldest section, Georgetown, was a major slave trading center, as was Alexandria, just across the Potomac. Providing quaintness, fine dining and shopping, Georgetown and Alexandria give tourists a much needed breather from the oppressive monumentalism of downtown D.C.

After its founding, Washington itself became a major slave trading center, and one must remember that Washington, the president, inherited ten slaves at age eleven, had 50 slaves before he married Martha, and owned 123 slaves when he died. (Martha and her children from another marriage had 195 more slaves.) Ben Franklin, by contrast, never owned more than a handful, so it was much less painful for him to release his two slaves, and he only did this at age 79, three years before his death. For much of his life, Franklin only objected to slavery because it was bad, well, for white people, for it made them arrogant and lazy, he claimed. Plus, it wasn’t too wise an investment, and to bring resentful blacks into your household is a pretty stupid idea, Franklin pointed out, and here he was thinking of the domestic slaves common in the North, not the platoons of field hands that an oligarch like George Washington could whip into inhuman productivity in the South.

In 1987, I worked as a looseleaf filer in Washington. I had just quit college and was sleeping on my aunt’s living room’s floor in Annandale. My daily task was to file thousands of pages into binders in law libraries. With a coworker, I would walk from law firm to law firm, and sometimes take the Metro to go as far out as Bethesda, Maryland. Before this job, I didn’t even know that many of these 13-story buildings in downtown were law offices. Since no building in Washington can be higher than the Capitol, the tallest all have 13 floors. Due to superstition, however, many elevators display a “14” button after “12.” Washington Circle, Dupont Plaza, Logan Circle, Mount Vernon Square and the White House do make an inverted pentagram, but that evilness, if you believe in such things, was part of the original plan, and has long been enshrined by concrete, asphalt and tradition.

My job was very low paying yet exact, and we had to work at breakneck speed. Wearing rubber finger grips, we had to zero in on thousands of tiny numbers to make sure no page was inserted wrongly. Rushing, I ran into a glass partition once, but the secretaries, paralegals and lawyers near me did not laugh. For months, a law librarian kept calling me “Kim,” and I never bothered to correct him. I had no time to lose. It didn’t matter. We were just rushing in and out and not a part of any firm. Though at the very bottom of the legal hierarchy, looseleaf filers still had to look somewhat professional, and so I bought five polyester dress shirts and four pairs of old man’s pants from Sym’s, the discount clothing store.

Hard as I tried, though, mistakes were inevitable, for no man is a machine. After one screw up, my supervisor enunciated to me, “Here at Bartleby Temp, we don’t tolerate mediocrity,” and she said the last word so carefully, drawing out each syllable, one might think she had just learnt it herself. The name of the agency is made up, by the way, for I can no longer remember it. What I do recall, however, is a coworker’s dazed face as he emerged from a book stack. Of course, I had to be equally stultified. Our eyes had to be equally glazed.

After work, I socialized with a couple of guys, but there was no place for us to go, really, not on our budget. Unlike in Philadelphia, there were no corner bars where regular joes in goofy T-shirts and worn baseball caps could whoop it up. In downtown D.C., the only taverns catered to the executive types, and the city has become even more exclusive since. With a more bloated federal government, Washington is even richer now, even as the rest of the country become destitute. Just about every expensive house, car, tie, loafer, call girl, gigolo and martini in D.C. is being paid for, one way or another, by joe sixpacks from across this nation. Elected officials come here to feast on illicit money, for you must be daft to assume American graft is limited to campaign contributions. They legalize some corruption to trick you into thinking that’s all there is. In any case, the only other American oasis that’s similarly thriving is Manhattan, for that’s where our banksters and prestitutes dwell. Everybody else is going to hell.

As a looseleaf filer, I belonged to that servant class in D.C. that helped it to function without knowing hardly anything about it, and there was absolutely no hobnobbing with the higher ups, for with their conservative haircut, perfect teeth, gym finessed body and expensive, carefully coordinated outfits, not to mention a confident, upright bearing and honking voice, I’m not kidding, they knew exactly who they were and who they cared to associate with.

One of my coworkers was a tall, black guy who was having the time of his life, however. During lunch, I asked Bill what he did that weekend, and the mellow, soft spoken man closed his eyes and sighed, “I had sex. Lots of it. There are so many good looking guys here. They must be busing them in. I’ve never had so much sex in my life. I’m getting a little tired of it, actually.” Hearing that, I felt anguished and embarrassed, for I had gotten nothing in months, but looking defeated is no way to hook up with any woman, and I had never felt worse in my life. I was socially displaced. Once, a female coworker, a native of Ethiopia, freaked out at a reception desk because she felt disrespected, but I was right there and saw nothing. I don’t blame her, though, not at all, for it was all too easy to feel intimidated or paranoid. Like much of Northwest D.C., these swank law firms are designed to exude authority.

Earlier this month, I was in D.C. for a day and decided to check out Arlington, just across the Potomac from Georgetown. As a teenager, I had gone there to watch kung fu movies, and during my filing clerk days, I’d eaten at a Vietnamese restaurant near the courthouse. It was a rather seedy, five table affair at the back of a grocery store. Its wallpaper showed a snow-capped mountain and waterfall. Pointing to it, a middle-aged white guy shouted, “Don’t drink the water!” He looked as if he was about to sob. The other eaters ignored him. Smiling, the waiter informed me in Vietnamese, “He comes here all the time. He fought.”

Arlington used to have these rather grim apartment buildings, cheap motels and the businesses that catered to such residents, but now it is all spiffed up and gentrified. All the tacky shops on Wilson Boulevard are gone. Its funk purged away, Arlington has become as sterile as downtown D.C. The same process has been repeated all over the area. The smug bubble has enlarged itself. In downtown, there was Scholl’s Colonial Cafeteria at 20th and K, and in the 80’s I’d go there for its cheap prices and humble atmosphere. Once I even took Bill, the sex machine. At Scholl’s, the emphasis was on comfort food, with meat loafs, breaded fish, overcooked spaghetti, soft green beans, soft carrots and mushy spinach, and an assortment of pies, that kind of stuff. With its many elderly diners, Scholl’s had to be mindful of their false teeth and receding gums, not too mention their mournful and exhausted jaws. Anything too hard, such as fresh piece of celery, might just lay them out on the floor. Scholl’s was so cheap, even the homeless ate there. At each table, there was a prayer card and on the walls, framed photos of the Pope. Most of the servers appeared to be immigrants from Central America. In the 40’s, Scholl’s was one of the first D.C. eateries to serve whites and blacks equally. Alas, Scholl’s is no more, and it was finally put of business by the dip in tourism after September 11th of 2001. Even without that incident, I don’t think it would survive to this day anyway.

Seeing next to nothing in Arlington, I got on the Metro and headed to Southeast Washington. Crossing the Anacostia River, you enter another D.C. altogether. Almost everyone here is black, and Washington itself is still half black. Just a few decades ago, it was 70% black, however. Back then, Washington had the highest murder rate in the entire country, and its basketball team was called, appropriately enough, The Bullets. D.C. hoopsters have been rechristianed The Wizards, but a more appropriate name would be The Missiles or The Drones, methinks.

Frederick Douglass spent 18 years in Anacostia, and this was also where disgruntled WWI veterans and their families set up a shanty town as they demanded to be paid, early, their promised bonuses. This was during the height of the Depression and they were starving. Responding to their pitiful pleas, the federal government sent in General McArthur with troops, cops and six tanks to chase them all out and burn down their encampment. During various clashes around D.C., four protesters were killed and over a thousand wounded. On the government side, 69 cops were hurt.

One must remember that Washington itself was founded after the U.S. government had stiffed its own soldiers even before the War of Independence, its very first war, was over. In 1783, roughly 500 troops besieged Congress, then based in Philadelphia, to demand to be paid. A bunch of weasels even then, the Congressmen delegated youngish Alexander Hamilton to schmooze and jive with the angry soldiers. Just give us some time to hash this out, he begged them, but these Congressmen then tried to arrange for troops to come in to snuff out the mutiny. Had they succeeded, you would have American soldiers firing on American soldiers, which was exactly what happened later in D.C. Leery of more incidents like this, the weasels slithered South to erect their ideal city.

I walked a couple miles through Anacostia and saw a handful of take out eateries selling Chinese, chicken or fried fish. One was named “Chicken, Beans and Bones.” Geez, I wonder how much they charge for a whole skeleton? I poked my head into a Korean-owned dry cleaner and noticed the bulletproof plexiglass had vertical slits just wide enough for articles of clothing to be handed in or out. I passed Union Town Tavern, which looked surprisingly chichi for this rather dismal hood. It turns out they have new owners, for the previous is in the slammer for possessing 65 kilograms of cocaine. That’s enough to coat several Christmas plays! Enterprising Natasha Dasher was just 36 at the time of her arrest. Though Anacostia has more than 50,000 people, Union Town is its only full service restaurant or sit down bar. Folks here just go to the liquor store for a tall can or 40-ounce bottle.

Many of the businesses on Martin Luther King Boulevard, Anacostia’s main drag, had small posters commemorating the late Marion Barry, a popular black mayor who was busted for smoking crack. Jailed for just six months, Barry still managed to make the news when he was charged with having a woman sucking him in the prison waiting room. After release, Barry was elected to City Council, then became mayor again. A folk hero, at least to D.C.’s black community, Barry is the only Washington mayor to serve four terms, or 16 years, doubling his nearest rivals, so he must have done some things right.

Historically, blacks gravitated towards Washington because federal hiring practices were much less discriminatory than in the private sector, then when Affirmative Action kicked in, blacks became favored in getting not just government jobs, but contracts, and there are more of those in D.C. than anywhere else. (A side consequence of such wrong headed racial redress is that a recently arrived tycoon from Nigeria or, hell, even China, can now be certified as a minority contractor, and the requirement that one must be at least 25% non-white also sends many whites to dig up their Cherokee, Sioux or Navajo ancestors.) With number came political power, but local politics or demographics have no influence on what really runs D.C., for here is the dark, evil heart of an empire with an unprecedented global reach. In spite of our current, half-black President, blacks are the tiniest cogs of this sinister machinery, but so are most of us. Blacks may be hired as cops and firemen, but they can’t touch the biggest criminals and pyromaniacs that huddle daily on Capitol Hill.

In any case, the black underclass that perform menial tasks downtown live in neighborhoods like Anacostia. They don’t drink in downtown bars either, and I doubt many of them go to the museums, not unless they work there. In 1990, there was an Albert Pinkham Ryder retrospective at the National Museum of American Arts, which is off the Mall and not often visited. Having all of these galleries practically to myself, I kept studying a magnificent Ryder that had not just one but four cows. Squinting, I kept moving closer, then back, closer, then back, and often I had to tilt my head a certain way to avoid the glint off Ryder’s thickly layered linseed oil. After nearly a century, hairline cracks spider webbed across the canvas. If man could live off minutely modulated ultramarine blue, burnt sienna and olive green, I’d have ballooned to about 600 pounds, but that was then. I’ve stopped going to museums. Everywhere I go now, I simply roam the streets.

“Why are you taking so long to look at that?”

It was the security guard, a smiling black lady of about 32.

“Um, it’s very rare to see all of this guy’s paintings in one place. I may never get a chance to look at this painting again. I came all the way down from Philadelphia to see this.”

“That’s a painting?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said painting. That’s a painting?”

“Uh, yes, it’s an oil painting.”

“I thought is was just some picture.”

“No, no, this is an oil painting, and it’s old too. There’s only one of this.”

“Really?!”

“Yeah, and this guy is good. He’s a very good artist.”

“Listen, come here,”

and she led me to a small fountain that had been set up just for this exhibit. In the small pool were four fish.

“See that one,”

she continued.

“Can you see that his colors are slightly different than the others?”

“Now that you’ve said it, yeah, I do see it. He looks a little bit different than the other three fish.”

“You damn right he does!”

she laughed,

“and those fish know it too, and that’s why they’ve been attacking him all day long.”

“Oh, man.”

“Yeah, I have to do something about this. Soon as my shift is over, I’ll tell them to get that fish out of here. I don’t want to see him dead.”

“It’s great you noticed that.”

“How can I not notice it? I stand right here all day!”

Indifferent to pictures on walls, that lady was sensitive to many other things and realms, and the fish drama she saw was, to her, an all-too-familiar allegory. Most of us, though, can only bend our neck a certain way, so will only notice what we’re determined to see.

It was dark by the time I headed to Union Station, but on the way there, I happened to catch a group of people, mostly Jews, protesting Netanyahu. Bibi was inside the Convention Center to give a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Though he was schedule to address Congress the next day, many of our Senators and Congressmen also showed up for this event to earn extra asskissing points.

Protesters are a regular feature of D.C. and the locals barely see them. In front of the White House, sometimes you see two unrelated protests marching within sight of each other. Oddballs also appear, such as a man who protested supermarket coupons. D.C.’s most unusual protester, however, is Concepcion Picciotto, for she’s been living in a tiny tent, directly across from the White House, for 34 years now. Born in 1945, this diminutive native of Spain’s main targets are the innumerable war crimes of the United States and Israel, which she calls Israhell. Picciotto is the first, last and ultimate Occupier.

A much more recent addition to the streetscape just outside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is Yusef, a beefy, red bearded Muslim with “NO GOD EXCEPT ALLAH MUHAMMED A MESSENGER ALLAH” painted in white on the back of his black polyester coat. In 2011, I had seen him in a sort of flasher’s overcoat and no visible pants, but earlier this day, he had on a beige pair, though with the legs cut off to expose his ankles.

Yusef isn’t objecting to American atrocities against Muslims, but the various deviations, according to him, from true Islam. Thus, his denunciations of vaccines, tunnels (because they block sunlight), movies, television, “picture makers” (which I take to mean painters and photographers) and even electricity. This didn’t prevent him from asking me, in accented English, what time it was. As we talked, a middle-aged, female tourist pushing a stroller glared at him, but when I inquired if people had given him trouble, Yusef merely said, “I’d rather not talk about it.”

Even more than Concepcion Picciotto, Washington’s many homeless are its most damning and enduring protesters against this city’s parasitic affluence, smug criminality and vapid culture of faux refinement. Numbering more than 7,000 as of May 2014, very few beg openly, thanks to D.C.’s severe law against panhandling, but they are visible enough even during the day. To escape the cold wind, some sit or sleep, all wrapped up, in the entrance of the McPherson Square Metro Station, just three blocks from the White House. Keeping reasonably inconspicuous, they rest at the many squares and parks.

At night, though, when the daytripping tourists and commuting workers are all gone, they emerge to claim theirsleeping spots all over downtown, including up and down Pennsylvania Avenue, the capital’s grand boulevard. They lie on church steps, grass strips, in doorways and behind hedges, some with crutches or a wheelchair next to them. Rolled up in whatever will hold body heat, including gray packing blankets, they curl up within sight of the Smithsonian museums and the Capitol. Inside the National Gallery, there’s Hieronymus Bosch. Outside, there’s this!

At Union Station, this nation’s most regal train and bus depot, they lie on the circular stone bench around the handsome fountain outside, while during the day, they wander in to embarrass travelers with their grimy, smelly clothes and sometimes delirious monologs. They don’t pull wheeled luggage but, limping in, cradle trash bags with both arms. Like zombies, hoboes or war refugees, they peer into shops with names like Jois Fragrance, L’Occitante en Provence and Oynce. Signs on Union Station’s large, platform like seats, “THANK YOU FOR NOT RECLINING.”

Wearing a leopard print dress, with much of her face covered by a cappuccino-colored shawl, a slim black woman in her late 40’s rocked back and forth as she unleashed an incontinent stream of invectives against unseen foes. Her hands could not be more beautiful. She reeked of urine.

“You betrayed me, you betrayed God, you betrayed this government. That’s not the right protocol! You can’t treat people like that. Turn in your badge, you’re a threat to national security! I’m going to have a heart attack if you don’t do so by morning. The heart has to be right place for socialism! You think you can just kill everybody but you yourself will be bombed! You’re nothing but a traitorous person. There’s no effort or sincerity, there’s just treason! You’re all bad people here. You ain’t got no evidence. You can’t do that to me! It’s perjury you committed. I command you to turn in your badge. We’re going to meet in court!”

Every five or ten seconds, she punctuated her litany with a five-note riff of scatting, “Toot too too too too.”

Washington was designed to be a perfect square, and it was until Alexandria broke away. When the Interstates were built, “The Beltway” was added to encircle D.C. What you have, then, is a broken square surrounded by a near perfect circle. Flying in, most visitors land at Dulles or Ronald Reagan airports, so from their rented car or hotel shuttle, all they will see coming in is an elegantly manicured, dignified and affluent landscape. In D.C. itself, they will be lavished with magnificent monuments and arts, much of it free of charge, and just about every turn of the neck is rewarded with a grand vista. If this is their only exposure to the United States, then this country is truly a utopia of handsome, well-dressed people who cherish arts, fine dining and well made cocktails. The grit, squalor and menace of Washington are well off the beaten tracks and hardly exist, really, compared to other American cities, and even during its bloodiest years, the bullets didn’t fly in downtown D.C. As for the homeless, they’re shooed away from tourist attractions and don’t really assert their presence until nightfall.

All capitals strive to be showcases, sure, but very few, or perhaps none, is as successful at blocking out its nation’s true ugliness and failures. This sleight of hand, though, also works on many of the residents of this near perfect square inside a near perfect circle. The hell they’ve created keeps seeping in, however, and soon enough, it will overwhelm, if not explode, this Potemkin village of a city. This smug bubble will burst.

Addendum: Returning from D.C. a week ago, I meant to start this Postcard right away, but couldn’t, since my computer was struck by a bunch of very nasty viruses, and this happened as I was in the middle of uploading photos of AIPAC members leaving the Convention Center after Netanyahu’s speech. While wasting five days trying to fix my computer, and it’s only half functional as of this writing, I processed and posted photos from my laptop, but this too was struck with a virus. This second attack was quickly neutralized, however. In all my years of using computers, I’ve never had two infected with viruses within the same week, and I don’t claim to know what happened exactly, but it was surely a reminder that I, like everybody else these days, am completely dependent on various systems that can be cut off at any time, for any reason. Each of us can have our computer, phone, bank card or even car shut down at any moment, and don’t think it won’t happen to at least some of us in the future. What if, suddenly, you won’t be able to withdraw any money, or email or call anyone? Very meekly, we’ve already accepted that we can be prevented from flying without any explanation. As for viruses, these aren’t just used by governments as weapons against each other, but also as a way to punish, or at least warn, individuals.

Linh Dinh is tracking our deteriorating social scape through his frequently updated photo blog, Postcards from the End of America .

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Abu-Jamal on Obama, Ferguson, and How African-Americans ‘Live in Hell’

March 12th, 2015 by Mumia Abu-Jamal

“Oppression abroad gives rise to oppressions at home,” Abu-Jamal tells Sputnik in his first exclusive interview following a stint in solitary confinement. America’s most famous “political prisoner” argues that the plight of African-Americans has only gotten worse under President Obama.

Activist and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal was convicted of the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner and sentenced to death in a trial that many believe was a political prosecution. Supporters of Abu-Jamal point to a racist judge, conflicting testimony about his alleged confession, charges of manufacturing evidence against Philadelphia police officers involved, the concealment of witnesses, and the confession of another suspect.

Before his conviction, Abu-Jamal had been a Black Panther and later an activist with MOVE and a radio journalist. He had been under FBI COINTELPRO and police surveillance which his supporters believe shows he was already a target when he was arrested for the murder.

Sputnik asked Abu-Jamal through written correspondence for his thoughts on the state of race relations in post-Ferguson America, and what impact the the first black president has had on progress and equality.

He took a dim view, saying African-Americans are “living in Hell.”

The American Caste System

“We don’t have ‘equal rights,’” he said. “We have the rhetoric of equal rights used by the elites and the state to camouflage the real situation of Black Americans — one of dire, unremitting hell. Equal rights would not produce the glaringly unequal outcomes that lead to mass incarceration, poverty and death.”

None of this should “surprise” anyone who looks at history, he noted.

“After the Civil War, when the ‘black Republicans’ amended the Constitution to protect Black rights of citizenship (i.e., voting, etc.), the National literally ignored the Constitution’s ‘guarantees’ for a century — until Black southern resistance made it impossible to do (but they continued to do by other means!).”

Referring to legal scholar Michelle Alexander’s book “The New Jim Crow,” Abu-Jamal argued that the United States has a caste system when it comes to “average, everyday working-class and poor Blacks.”

“They are locked out of anything meaningful in life (jobs, education and good housing, etc.),” he said. One culprit: the “bogus war on drugs,” when he argues effectively “criminalized Black life.”

Ferguson, an Icon of Black Life in America

Recent revelations out of Ferguson — ground zero for the recent Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality after police shot and killed unarmed Mike Brown last year — show a judicial system stacked against lower-income, usually black, citizens. A Department of Justice investigation and various news reports revealed that African-Americans were disproportionately stopped for minor violations, given hefty traffic and court fines, and were then sent to jail when they couldn’t pay them.

The DOJ also said that police in Ferguson operated through a prism of racial bias.

“Our findings indicated that the overwhelming majority of force – almost 90 percent – is directed against African Americans,” Attorney General Eric Holder announced after the report was released earlier this month.

However, Abu-Jamal sees what happened in the Missouri town as merely one example of a systemic problem.

“Ferguson tells us everything: that for the Black poor, their lives are a living hell, for the state exploits the poor for their pennies — and still utilizes debtors prisons! — to squeeze money out of the poor,” he said. “Mike Brown showed us, they utilize terror, at the blink of an eye —- to keep the natives in line. Things are hellish today; despite the fable of ‘civil rights’ and its victories.”

Obama’s Election as ‘Political Brilliance’

Things have gotten worse for “Black lives” under Obama, Abu-Jamal argued. He noted that the recession of 2007 and 2008 disproportionately decimated impacted ethnic minorities and the situation has yet to reverse, according to economists.

“Did you know that in the last eight years or so, Black Americans (and Latinos) lost more personal wealth than at any point in Black American history — mostly through mortgage losses?” Abu Jamal asked rhetorically.

Owner-occupied houses make up a disproportionate share of the wealth of black and Hispanic families — at least those who have wealth — while white citizens tend to have a more diversified portfolio consisting of stocks and bonds, the markets for which have largely rebounded. However, the housing market took another turn and rampant foreclosures and underwater mortgages (those in which the amount owed is greater than the value of the home) have forced many lower-income homeowners to lose their homes and, therefore, the vast majority of their accrued wealth.

“Blacks are at the bottom of every social indicia in the nation,” Abu-Jamal said.

Having the first black president, he added, might have only exacerbated the problem.

“His election elicited a blowback response among whites that has grown into a challenge to everything he tries to do,” Abu-Jamal explained. “He has been bleeding political power since his election and in two cycles lost his majorities in both houses of Congress. The Republicans — the white nationalist party — is making his days harder and harder.”

That couldn’t have been planned better for those who want to keep a certain order in the country.

“Obama’s election (and re-election!) has been political brilliance,” he said. “But it has no coattails because Black faces in high places are not sufficient to hold, project and utilize power.”

‘False Solutions’

To Abu-Jamal, “equal rights,” the Obama presidency, affirmative action and integration are “chimerae; false pseudo-solutions to the problems of fundamental levels of oppression against Black Americans.”

“None of these ideas address real self-determination or even autonomy for Black people. We are still haggling about crumbs,” he said. “Affirmative action was initially a Republican (ala Nixon) plan to placate the freedom movement with promises of good jobs. Because our economic life has been kept in retrograde our communities are places largely divorced from normal economic ebb and flow — we live in the caste zones (bantustans) where exploitation (as admitted in Ferguson earlier today) is all that matters.”

“When we seriously examine affirmative action, it was a plan designed to construct diverse elites — doctors, lawyers, political leaders. For the ghetto poor, it is largely irrelevant as it’s untouchable. As law professor [Michelle] Alexander makes clear, the average Black American was jettisoned — so that Black elites could have access to affirmative action — and the neo-liberals applauded such a deal.”

“There are cities in America today where 50 percent — 50 percent! — of kids drop out and don’t graduate. There are cities with higher percentages. This is a failed system.”

Oppression Abroad = Oppressions at Home

After a Missouri grand jury decision absolved Darren Wilson — the officer who shot and killed Michael Brown — of any prosecution, the United Nations offered a review of life in the United States for people of color, calling it a human rights issue.

“I am deeply concerned at the disproportionate number of young African Americans who die in encounters with police officers, as well as the disproportionate number of African Americans in US prisons and the disproportionate number of African Americans on Death Row,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said at the time.

Sputnik asked Abu-Jamal what he thought about the fact that the US was being called out for its treatment of African-Americans.

“Malcolm [X] would agree with that basic sentiment, but he’d add that because the US is an empire, it neither cares nor has to care what others think of it,” he explained. “It matters only that others obey. Bow. Scrape. Praise America. If Guantanamo closes (a big “if”), there are still ‘black sites’ all around the world where torture is accepted, practiced and coupled with worse. US citizens may be droned at the executive’s whim; and the entire nation is under surveillance by various alphabet soup agencies. Every phone call, every keystroke, every cellphone conversation.”

The way the US acts in its foreign policy, Abu-Jamal said, is part-and-parcel to how it responds to domestic opposition.

“Malcolm would say that oppression abroad gives rise to oppressions at home, that capitalism running amok outside the country will soon turn its famished eye on opportunities within the ‘nation.’ Because, as Malcolm said, ‘Capitalism’ is a blood sucker.’”

The Legacy of Malcolm X

Sputnik originally planned to publish this interview with Abu-Jamal on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of civil rights leader Malcolm X. However, despite the request being sent more than a month before the anniversary, Abu-Jamal did not receive it in time because he was serving a term in solitary confinement for “not following instructions.”

(Editor’s note: Long-term use of solitary confinement as well as its use as a punishment is considered a breach of international humanitarian law.)

Abu-Jamal did respond to questions about Malcolm X’s legacy and his impact.

“I think, today, honestly, generations grow up into adulthood with no real sense of Malcolm X — except as something he would have hated to have been described as: ‘a civil rights leader.’ His name may be known, but his ideas, his story, largely isn’t, in my view — especially among the broad masses of Black youth.”

Abu-Jamal lamented that Malcolm X has become “a poster, a US postage stamp, because there is no real organization out there to push and project Malcolm’s meaning to Black America. The corporate media cannot — and will not — tell that story. Instead they have Martinized Malcolm, by distorting his history, civilizing him — making him ‘safe’.”

“When he was alive, he was a potent force, as speaker, orator, but also organizational leader, who, as a revolutionary, radiated the seriousness of our struggle, and his commitment to the Freedom of Black people the world over.”

Asked to compare the legacies of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr, Abu-Jamal suggested they were divided, above all, by diverging senses of allegiance to their country of birth.

“Oddly enough, both men were nationalists to a certain extent,” he said. “Martin was an American nationalist who wanted the US to live up to its stated creed; Malcolm was a Black nationalist who wanted Black America to be free to follow its interests — America be damned.”

Abu-Jamal concluded that, despite both men’s efforts, little has changed and little could have been expected to.

“To be black in America today is not a picnic,” he said. “It is, in the words of rapper Young Jeezy, ‘livin’ in hell.”

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Saudi Arabia Funding al Qaeda in Yemen

March 12th, 2015 by 21st Century Wire

21st Century Wire says…

The Saudi Arabian political repertoire continues to extend into the darkest depths.

Saudi Arabia is said to be funding and supporting al Qaeda in Yemen, mainly in an attempt to remove the Shi’ite Houthis who have just gained power.

Former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi was described as a Saudi ‘puppet‘, so this move to fund terrorism is a Saudi Arabian attempt to regain its hegemonic influence over the nation of Yemen.

Author and Lecturer Dr. Colin Cavell gave an interview this week on this developing situation with Press TV:

Follow us here: http://twitter.com/21WIRE

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Qatar/West Says Public Statement by Al-Nusra Will Wipe Away Jihadist Sins

March 12th, 2015 by Brandon Turbeville

Since the beginning of the Syrian crisis in late 2010, I have been writing repeatedly that there are no “moderate rebels” in Syria. Many other credible researchers and even mainstream news organizations, albeit significantly after the fact, havemade similar statements in their own writings. In fact, I have even gone so far as to suggest that, if such a thing as a moderate rebel in Syria actually exists, then he must be brought forward for analysis.

After all, such a rare and mysterious being must be thoroughly studied so as to determine if he is a freak of nature or if there are more than just one of him.

Apparently, however, neither myself nor the other researchers mentioned above ever fully understood the process in which one becomes an alleged “rebel” and/or a moderate one.

Thankfully, that question has been answered by the Obama White House and the mainstream media organizations that work as domestic propaganda outlets.

The process by which one becomes a “moderate rebel” vs. a radical jihadist is not by the common sense messages of radical clerics or by taking a firm stand against a totalitarian government. Nor does one become a moderate rebel by joining al-Qaeda, committing atrocities, and imposing Sharia Law. One becomes a moderate rebel by joining al-Qaeda, committing atrocities, imposing Sharia Law and subsequently stating that you do not belong to al-Qaeda. At that point, you are fit to receive all the funding available from the coffers of the GCC and NATO.

Of course, the logic above is incredibly ridiculous. Yet it is, in fact, this very logic that the State Department, NATO, and its puppet governments in the Gulf expect the American people and the people of the Western world to believe.

This is because Qatar is now attempting to rebrand Jobhat al-Nusra as a “moderate rebel” brigade operating inside Syria and thus openly provide the al-Qaeda branch with relatively sophisticated weaponry and training. That is, even more so than is already being provided and in a much more blatant fashion.

The requirement for receiving such weaponry openly? That Nusra “disavow” its connections with al-Qaeda.

Of course, the suggestion that al-Nusra is actually a separate organization to begin with is an absolute falsehood. After all, Al-Nusra Front is merely the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda in the same way in which al-Qaeda in Iraq functioned as the Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda in that country. Even the CFR’s Foreign Policy was forced to admit that al-Nusra is simply Al-Qaeda in Syria.

There are a few establishment critics of the plan, however. The Soufan Group, a global security NGO, stated,

An Al Nusra removed from Al Qaeda on paper wouldn’t mean an anti-Al Qaeda Al Nusra at heart. The history of attempts to turn extremist groups into non-extremist, well-behaved proxies is riddled with failures and devastating blowbacks.

Al Nusra was formed to spread bin Ladinism into Syria, and its members are true adherents of that ideology.

The truth, of course, is that the GCC (which includes Qatar) as well as the United States and NATO have been supporting al-Nusra all along so there was never any need for al-Nusra to “break away” from al-Qaeda to reap the benefits of Western aid, which it refused to do. After all, al-Qaeda in Iraq and al-Qaeda proper have also been receiving Western funding from the very beginning of the Syrian crisis. Al-Qaeda was created by the US and NATO as far back as the late 1970s.

Thus, al-Nusra has refused to abandon al-Qaeda even on the surface. As AFP reports,

Al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Al-Nusra Front on Monday reaffirmed its allegiance to the global extremist network and denied any plan to break away and become a more internationally acceptable rebel force.

The angry statement followed weeks of speculation on Internet social networks of a split between the jihadist allies.

Al-Nusra “completely denies reports of a break-up with Al-Qaeda,” the group said in a statement released on Twitter.

It said Al-Nusra “remains the backbone of jihadists” in Syria, “the first into battle, dedicated to unifying the ranks around sharia (Islamic law)… righting injustice and defending the disadvantaged”.

Indeed, the idea that a mere verbal denunciation or formal declaration of opposition will change the fact that Nusra and Qaeda are the same organization is fundamentally irrational.

For those who may have been easily confused in regards to events taking place in Syria by the frequent name changes and allegedly shifting alliances, it is important to remember that, not only are there no moderate rebels operating inside the country, but those jihadist forces that are operating in Syria are nothing more than small branches of the same organization which is, itself, a creation of the United States and NATO.

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

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Child Detention and Torture in Australia. Canberra’s Treatment of Refugees

March 12th, 2015 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

Apparently, the Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, is “sick of being lectured to”. One should add that this lecturing is framed in a more collective sense – Australians, he argues, are tired of those soap box enthusiasts who keep reminding them of human rights obligations. The latest figure on the podium of moral unctuousness is the special rapporteur on torture Juan Mendez, whose report on child detention in Australia’s offshore processing centres does not make pretty reading.

The UN report by Mendez, himself a human rights specialist who received a fair share of torture at the hands of the military regime in Argentina during the 1970s, argues that various aspects of Canberra’s treatment of refugees on Manus and Nauru may amount to the breach of the UN Torture Convention. Four specific cases have been cited. “I think it is my duty,” Mendez claims, “to tell Australia that, at least in that respect, and in respect of keeping children in detention, that policy needs to be corrected” (Sydney Morning Herald, Mar 10).

The volatile and violent situation on Manus Island is noted, including the “intimidation and ill-treatment of two asylum seekers” who provided statements on the violent clash at the centre last year. The expansion of Australian powers via the Maritime Powers Act to detain asylum seekers at sea and then render them back also constituted a violation of the convention (Sydney Morning Herald, Mar 10).

The process is typical Abbotian brutishness. Prior to dismissing the UN report on Monday, he attempted to dismiss the entire work of Professor Gillian Triggs’ about the appalling mistreatment of children in Australia’s crude detention network. The Forgotten Children report by the Australian Human Rights Commission will rank in the human rights canon as a primary document of a country’s brutalisation of asylum-seeker children.

Abbott, however, preferred to dismiss its extensive and detailed findings as a “transparent stitch-up” authored in the name of partisanship. The Attorney-General, George Brandis, was also mobilised in the battle, urging Triggs to resign. (We are still trying to ascertain whether he corruptly tried luring her away from her job with an “inducement”.)

Like other documents of its sort before, it is being whisked away – into archives, onto distant inaccessible shelves – and dismissed by the powers that be. Government officials have, as evidenced by statements, not read it. Ditto their supporters. Normalised cruelty incessantly banishes the nasty details. Immigration Minister Peter Dutton resorts to the language of a dull service provider. “Australia is meeting all its international obligations and with other regional nations provides a range of services to people who have attempted to enter Australia illegally.”[1] In its place exists steadfast denial and false appraisals of hope. That is the vision of the gulag coffee and tea set in Canberra.

That Triggs is a public officer, empowered to conduct inquiries into the subject of Australian compliance with its international treaty obligations, did not seem to perturb the undergraduate-styled pugilist. “Bullying is an ugly thing,” writes Australian legal veteran Julian Burnside. “It is regrettable in the schoolyard; it is despicable in a national leader. We have seen it before, in leaders whose names are reviled in history.”[2]

Unsatisfied with levelling his pellets of abuse at Triggs, Abbott has decided to get into that fashionable pastime of UN bashing. He suggests that its representatives would “have a lot more credibility if they were to give some credit to the Australian government” for stopping boat arrivals (read, stopping asylum seekers from arriving in Australia by boat). He even claims that “the UN rapporteur didn’t even bother… getting a proper response from the Australian government” (The Australian, Mar 11). Quite a suggestion, given that the Australian government never deemed it proper to respond to the requests of the rapporteur to cite its versions of the fact.

Fanciful nonsense always accompanies the government mantra that stopping such vessels has led to an end of “the deaths at sea”. “The most humanitarian, the most decent, the most compassionate thing you can do,” claims the indignant Prime Minister, “is stop these boats because hundreds, we think about 1200 in fact, drowned at sea during the flourishing of the people smuggling trade under the former government.”

Two points stand out. The first is that stopping a line of asylum seekers simply displaces it, shuffling the chain of supply to other routes, and other destinations. Indonesian territorial waters have been breached in the efforts of the Australian navy to repel asylum seeker vessels, often by means of life boats. Little is heard about that particular assault on sovereignty.

The second point is fundamental. Supposedly preventing deaths at sea entails savaging the survivors on land, confining them to prison-like quarters with promises that they will never, even when found to be refugees, find a home in Australia. It is precisely the nature of that treatment that is being pointed out in the report – incarceration, notably of children, that violates a slew of international conventions.

The source of humanitarian crisis and the catalyst for such movements of people do not stop because the drawbridge is lifted. The good conscience of Australia’s officials is such that deaths at sea, as long as they don’t happen on route to Australia, is nothing to be worried about. Insulated, with a free conscience, the Abbotophiles can continue to treat international law, not so much as a dead letter as an irrelevant one.

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

Notes:

[1] http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-australians-sick-of-being-lectured-to-by-united-nations-after-report-finds-antitorture-breach-20150309-13z3j0.html
[2] http://www.theage.com.au/comment/tony-abbott-is-a-bully-over-un-convention-against-torture-20150310-13zk4s.html

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Why is Henry Kissinger Walking Around Free?

March 12th, 2015 by Andy Piascik

On September 11, 2013, hundreds of thousands of Chileans solemnly marked the 40th anniversary of their nation’s 9/11 terrorist event. It was on that date in 1973 that the Chilean military, armed with a generous supply of funds and weapons from the United States, and assisted by the CIA and other operatives, overthrew the democratically-elected government of the moderate socialist Salvador Allende. Sixteen years of repression, torture and death followed under the fascist Augusto Pinochet, while the flow of hefty profits to US multinationals – IT&T, Anaconda Copper and the like – resumed. Profits, along with concern that people in other nations might get ideas about independence, were the very reason for the coup and even the partial moves toward nationalization instituted by Allende could not be tolerated by the US business class.

Henry Kissinger was national security advisor and one of the principal architects – perhaps the principal architect – of the coup in Chile. US-instigated coups were nothing new in 1973, certainly not in Latin America, and Kissinger and his boss Richard Nixon were carrying on a violent tradition that spanned the breadth of the 20th century and continues in the 21st – see, for example, Venezuela in 2002 (failed) and Honduras in 2009 (successful). Where possible, such as in Guatemala in 1954 and Brazil in 1964, coups were the preferred method for dealing with popular insurgencies. In other instances, direct invasion by US forces such as happened on numerous occasions in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and many other places, was the fallback option.

The coup in Santiago occurred as US aggression in Indochina was finally winding down after more than a decade. From 1969 through 1973, it was Kissinger again, along with Nixon, who oversaw the slaughter in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. It is impossible to know with precision how many were killed during those four years; all the victims were considered enemies, including the vast majority who were non-combatants, and the US has never been much interested in calculating the deaths of enemies. Estimates of Indochinese killed by the US for the war as a whole start at four million and are likely more, perhaps far more. It can thus be reasonably extrapolated that probably more than a million, and certainly hundreds of thousands, were killed while Kissinger and Nixon were in power.

In addition, countless thousands of Indochinese have died in the years since from the affects of the massive doses of Agent Orange and other Chemical Weapons of Mass Destruction unleashed by the US. Many of us here know (or, sadly, knew) soldiers who suffered from exposure to such chemicals; multiply their numbers by 1,000 or 10,000 or 50,000 – again, it’s impossible to know with accuracy – and we can begin to understand the impact on those who live in and on the land that was so thoroughly poisoned as a matter of US policy.

Studies by a variety of organizations including the United Nations also indicate that at least 25,000 people have died in Indochina since war’s end from unexploded US bombs that pocket the countryside, with an equivalent number maimed. As with Agent Orange, deaths and ruined lives from such explosions continue to this day. So 40 years on, the war quite literally goes on for the people of Indochina, and it is likely it will go on for decades more.

Near the end of his time in office, Kissinger and his new boss Gerald Ford pre-approved the Indonesian dictator Suharto’s invasion of East Timor in 1975, an illegal act of aggression again carried out with weapons made in and furnished by the US. Suharto had a long history as a bagman for US business interests; he ascended to power in a 1965 coup, also with decisive support and weapons from Washington, and undertook a year-long reign of terror in which security forces and the army killed more than a million people (Amnesty International, which rarely has much to say about the crimes of US imperialism, put the number at 1.5 million).

In addition to providing the essential on-the-ground support, Kissinger and Ford blocked efforts by the global community to stop the bloodshed when the terrible scale of Indonesian violence became known, something UN ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan openly bragged about. Again, the guiding principle of empire, one that Kissinger and his kind accept as naturally as breathing, is that independence cannot be allowed. That’s true even in a country as small as East Timor where investment opportunities are slight, for independence is contagious and can spread to places where far more is at stake, like resource-rich Indonesia. By the time the Indonesian occupation finally ended in 1999, 200,000 Timorese – 30 percent of the population – had been wiped out. Such is Kissinger’s legacy and it is a legacy well understood by residents of the global South no matter the denial, ignorance or obfuscation of the intelligentsia here.

If the United States is ever to become a democratic society, and if we are ever to enter the international community as a responsible party willing to wage peace instead of war, to foster cooperation and mutual aid rather than domination, we will have to account for the crimes of those who claim to act in our names like Kissinger. Our outrage at the crimes of murderous thugs who are official enemies like Pol Pot is not enough. A cabal of American mis-leaders from Kennedy on caused for far more Indochinese deaths than the Khmer Rouge, after all, and those responsible should be judged and treated accordingly.

The urgency of the task is underscored as US aggression proliferates at an alarming rate. Millions of people around the world, most notably in an invigorated Latin America, are working to end the “might makes right” ethos the US has lived by since its inception. The 99 percent of us here who have no vested interest in empire would do well to join them.

There are recent encouraging signs along those lines, with the successful prevention of a US attack on Syria particularly noteworthy. In addition, individuals from various levels of empire have had their lives disrupted to varying degrees. David Petraeus, for example, has been hounded by demonstrators since being hired by CUNY earlier this year to teach an honors course; in 2010, Dick Cheney had to cancel a planned trip to Canada because the clamor for his arrest had grown quite loud; long after his reign ended, Pinochet was arrested by order of a Spanish magistrate for human right violations and held in England for 18 months before being released because of health problems; and earlier this year, Efrain Rios Montt, one of Washington’s past henchmen in Guatemala, was convicted of genocide, though accomplices of his still in power have since intervened on his behalf to obstruct justice. And Condoleeza Rice was forced to cancel her commencement appearance at Rutgers this past spring because of student outrage over her involvement in war crimes.

More pressure is needed, and allies of the US engaged in war crimes like Paul Kagame should be dealt with as Pinochet was. More important perhaps for those of in the US is that we hound Rumsfeld, both Clintons, Rice, Albright and Powell, to name a few, for their crimes against humanity every time they show themselves in public just as Petraeus has been. That holds especially for our two most recent War-Criminals-in-Chief, Barack Bush and George W. Obama.

Andy Piascik is a long-time activist and award-winning author who writes for Z, Counterpunch and many other publications and websites. He can be reached at [email protected]

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China’s Gold Strategy: Beijing’s 30,000 Tons of Gold Reserves?

March 12th, 2015 by Lawrence Williams

My attention has just been drawn to a note put out by a very well respected analyst and China follower which postulates that China could actually be holding as much as 30,000 tonnes of gold in various government accounts and that within the next three years the nation will link the yuan to gold. The nation’s official holding is only 1,054.6 tonnes as reported to the IMF, but there is widespread belief that it has been accumulating additional gold over the past several years, perhaps to the tune of around 5,000 tonnes while holding this in separate non-reportable (as China considers them) accounts.

But, of course, this does not include previously high volumes of gold which may also have been bought, and stored, in the past, and again never reported as official holdings.

So what are China’s real gold holdings? The 30,000 tonne figure has come from Simon Hunt of Simon Hunt Strategic Services (Hunt was the Hunt in Brook Hunt, one of the world’s top metals analytical teams now absorbed into Wood Mackenzie) in his latest ‘Thought for the Day’ letter to his clients in which he comments that

“China has much more gold than it is allowing the world to see. As Alasdair Macleod, probably the world’s number one analyst of the gold market, wrote that between 1983 and 2002 China probably accumulated 25,000 tons of gold. Thus, its current gold holdings are probably north of 30,000 tons in contrast to the USA which has either sold or leased most of its gold.”

Now this statement coming from one of the usual gold megabulls might be ignorable, but Hunt does not fall into this category and has a good track record of insights into China’s strategic initiatives as far as metals and minerals are concerned.

Here is a link to Macleod’s original article on this matter – China’s gold strategy – showing how he arrives at his conclusions – and then another link to a subsequent article from Bill Holter, who can admittedly be sometimes a bit ‘off the wall’ in his comments and analyses, supporting Macleod’s assessment and adding further theory as to how and why this might have been achieved. See: China’s Massive Holdings of Gold Bullion. Is the West Financially Bankrupt?

There is also some anecdotal evidence to support some massive gold storage vaults in China containing unreported gold, but then a vault visitor presented with a store of gold bars would have little or no idea of how much is really there.

Hunt notes the following summary points, among others in his ‘Thought for the day’:

China will take strong action in the second half of this year to restructure its financial system, its heavy industry, manufacturing and real estate sectors. It will be what we call a period of ‘’controlled crisis’’ that will not only shock most foreigners but will have global reverberations.
China does not want its currency to be the global reserve currency but to be an accepted unit for the settlement of trade and for central banks and others to retain in their portfolios.
China does not trust Washington’s ability to manage the sole reserve currency unit in the interests of the rest of the world, only in its own interests. Historically, America has used the inflation route to reduce its debts to the rest of the world. In contrast, China is likely to link the Yuan to gold within three years. Before then government must have its economy seen to have been restructured and stable even though the process will be painful.

There has been much talk in the media of ‘currency wars’ and Hunt reckons that China’s strategising recognises this and feels that a stable yuan (linked to gold) is key to any future global power plays to dominate the global financial order – although as Hunt also comments it doesn’t feel the need to set the yuan up specifically as a global reserve currency. Indeed it may well work in conjunction with Russia, which has recently been raising its own gold holdings, and perhaps some of the other BRICS, to offer a gold backed alternative to the dollar as others have suggested.

Some yuan internationalisation is already in hand with, so far, swap agreements having been set up with around 28 countries and the establishment of a yuan trading centre in Zurich through which yuan payments may be facilitated.

If China does have 30,000 tonnes of gold then gold backing for its currency is certainly within the bounds of credibility, but even if not, the amount of gold known to be flowing in to the country – and its likely accumulation of unreported gold reserves by the Central Bank – would place it in a strong position in any future world financial realignment anyway. But 30,000 tonnes is a huge amount to have bought in – although given its massive trade surpluses, and a need to diversify its holdings away from the dollar, is not impossible. The suggestion that the nation holds this amount of gold has to be considered highly speculative, but over the years one should have learnt that China plans strategically very far ahead – one of the benefits of a controlled economy – and plays its cards very close to its chest, so one can’t just laugh the idea off as fantasy.

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Shutting Down AIPAC: Removing Israel from American Politics

March 12th, 2015 by Philip Giraldi

The following is a lightly edited version of a speech I gave on March 1 ^st in Washington during the anti-AIPAC and Netanyahu visit demonstrations.

Two days later Israeli Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan, whom I cite below, was sitting in the House VIP visitors’ gallery beaming as he listened to Netanyahu’s love fest with Congress. It might have been the first time a clandestine agent for a foreign country who spied on the United States was so honored but I would observe that the event was doubly significant in that the speaker Prime Minister Netanyahu was also involved in the same theft of American nuclear technology.

Here is the video of the event, just received:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYXOsBMktWI&feature=youtu.be .

Miko Peled is well worth hearing and many of the questions are very interesting, revealing the depth of revulsion for AIPAC and all its works.

I would like to concentrate on two issues. First is the nature of the special relationship between Israel and the United States and second is the role of the Israel Lobby and most particularly AIPAC in shaping that relationship. I was a foreign policy adviser for Ron Paul in 2008 and consider myself politically conservative. I respect the fact that nations must be responsive to their interests, but because of my personal experience of living and working overseas for many years I have come to recognize that the United States is an anomaly in that it persists in going around the world doing things that just do not make any sense. This has been particularly true during the past fourteen years, with invasions, interventions and targeted assassinations having become the preferred form of international discourse for Washington.

Many would agree with what I have just observed, but few recognize the role of the special relationship with Israel in shaping what the United States has become. Quite frankly, the relationship is both lopsided in terms of favoring perceived Israeli interests as well as being terrible for the long suffering Palestinians, very bad for the United States as it damages the American brand worldwide and even bad for Israel as it enables its governments to act in ways that are ill advised and ultimately self-defeating.

I would first like to address the often repeated mantra that Israel is America’s best friend or closest ally as it is a bedrock issue that is frequently trotted out to excuse behavior that would otherwise be incomprehensible. Apart from being a recipient of more than $3 billion per year from the US taxpayer, Israel is no ally and never has been. There is no alliance of any kind with Israel, in part because Israel has a border that has been moving eastward for the past fifty years as it continues to absorb Palestinian land. Without an internationally recognized border it is impossible to define a relationship between two nations. Israel also has no strategic value to the United States, so to speak of an alliance, which posits reciprocity is ridiculous.

But that is not to say that Israel does not interact with Washington. Indeed, some might say that it is possesses a disproportionate voice relating to some foreign and domestic policies. The penchant to use force as a first option in international interactions is perhaps itself due to Washington imitating Tel Aviv or vice versa as neither the United States nor Israel seems any longer interested in diplomacy.

American protection of Israel in international bodies like the United Nations is a disgrace, making the United States de facto complicit in Israeli violations of international law, to include its settlement expansion, as well as its war crimes. Under Bill Clinton the United States more or less adopted the Israeli model in dealing with terrorism, which consists of overwhelming armed response and no negotiations ever. Washington’s uncritical support for Israel politically and militarily was a major factor in motivating the perpetrators of the 9/11 terror attack.

Deferring to Israel often results in U.S. policies that are absurd and highly damaging to other interests. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described Israel’s devastation of Lebanon in 2006 in which nearly 1,000 civilians were killed and more than $2 billion in infrastructure was destroyed as the “birth pangs of a new Middle East” Rice, who also spoke of fear of a nuclear mushroom cloud rising above Washington to justify invading Iraq, far from being discredited due to her lack of discernment, is currently a professor at Stanford University and is now being spoken of as a possible Senator from California or, alternatively, as the next Commissioner of the National Football League. So much for accountability in the United States.

One might well conclude that Israel is not only not an ally but also not much of a friend. It has run massive spying operations inside the United States to include hundreds of Art Students and celebrations by the employees of an Israeli moving firm located in New Jersey when the twin towers were going down. Israel is regularly named by the FBI as the most active friendly country in terms of running espionage operations against the U.S. but nothing ever happens. Israeli spies are sent home quietly and Americans who spy for Israel are rarely prosecuted. Last year we witnessed Hollywood producer and Israeli citizen Arnon Milchan receiving an Oscar even as stories were circulating about his criminal collusion to obtain restricted American technology to enable Israel to build nuclear weapons. The Justice Department has not seen fit to do anything about him.

Israel also has a hand in what is going on domestically in the United States. Many states now have their own departments of homeland security and many of the companies that obtain contracts to provide security services are Israeli. Airport security is a virtual Israeli monopoly. Increasingly militarized American police officers now use federal government grants to travel to Israel for training based on the Israeli experience with the Palestinians. Israelis have advised CIA and Pentagon torturers and Israeli advisers were also present at Abu Ghraib.

Israel’s influence over Washington policies frequently means war. American officials extremely close to the Israeli government were behind the rush to war with Iraq. If the Washington goes to war with Iran in the near future it will not be because Tehran actually threatens America, it will be because Israel and its powerful lobby in the U.S. have succeeded in creating an essentially false case to mandate such action. Congress is obligingly advancing legislation that would commit the United States to intervene militarily in support of a unilateral Israeli attack, meaning that Israel could easily be empowered to make the decision on whether or not the U.S. goes to war.

Israel interferes in American elections, in 2012 on behalf of Mitt Romney, and also this week by aligning itself with the Republicans against the President of the United States to harden existing policy against Iran. Looking ahead to elections in 2016, two Jewish billionaires have already stated clearly that they will spend whatever they have to to elect the candidate that is best for Israel. As Sheldon Adelson is a Republican and Haim Saban is a Democrat both major parties are covered and I would warn “Watch out for Hillary,” Saban’s candidate of choice.

Israel has corrupted our congress which we will witness again on Tuesday. Benjamin Netanyahu publicly rebukes and belittles our own head of state, its government ministers insult and ridicule John Kerry, and its intelligence officers have free access to Capitol Hill where they provide alarmist and inaccurate private briefings for American legislators. In short, Israel has no reluctance to use its enormous political and media clout in the US to pressure successive administrations to conform to its own foreign and security policy views.

Beyond the corruption of our political process, I believe many in this room would agree that the depiction and treatment of the Palestinians has been disgraceful. Israel has engaged in land and water theft and is doing its best to make Palestinian life so miserable that they will all decide to leave. Some would describe that as ethnic cleansing. Just last week there were reports of how Israeli authorities cut off water and electricity to parts of the West bank and also won a bogus court case in New York City that will bankrupt the Palestinian authority.

Netanyahu’s policy is to punish the Palestinians incessantly no matter what they do. The United States has certainly embraced a lot of unpleasant policies over the past fourteen years, but I honestly think that most Americans would be appalled if they knew how Palestinians really have been treated. Unfortunately the Israel propaganda machine has been able to maintain a tight grip on the narrative promoted in the mainstream media. Arabs are depicted as terrorists while Israelis are seen as folks just like us.

How does all this happen? Because of money which enables the Israel firsters to control the media and buy the politicians, but unfortunately no one is allowed to say that lest Abe Foxman of the Anti Defamation League accuse one of propagating a stereotype that is an “anti-Semitic myth.” American media corporations and national politics are in fact totally corrupted by money and the control that it buys and not just on behalf of Israel. One would have to be blind not to recognize that fact.

This is where groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee better known as AIPAC come in. AIPAC is only one part of the octopus like Israel Lobby but it might well be regarded as the most effective component. AIPAC has an annual budget of $70 million and 200 full time employees. It has thousands of volunteers and tens of thousands of contributors and supporters, many of whom are in Washington right now. On Tuesday they will descend on Congressional offices to pressure congressmen to agree to conform to AIPAC talking points.

AIPAC, which is an IRS 501(c)4 lobbying organization, is able to keep its donor list secret. It characteristically operates in the shadows. It prepares position papers that are then distributed in congress and many congressmen, largely ignorant of the issues, parrot what AIPAC gives them. AIPAC operative Steve Rosen once boasted that he could have the signatures of seventy Senators on a napkin in twenty-four hours.

Congressmen know that crossing the Israeli Lobby is career damaging. Senators William Fulbright and Chuck Percy were among the first to feel its wrath when they were confronted by well-funded challengers backed by effective media campaigns who defeated them in spite of their own outstanding records as legislators. The founder of my own organization the Council for the National Interest Congressman Paul Findley also suffered the same fate when he fell afoul of the Lobby. Within the government the purge has also been widespread with the traditional Arabists at State Department forced out to be replaced by friends of Israel, many of whom have been political appointees rather than career diplomats.

There is no easy solution to what I have been telling you. Certainly a more honest media would produce American voters who are better informed, but even though AIPAC has long been defending the indefensible the corruption in Congress runs deep and it is difficult to find a constituency anywhere in the United States where it is possible to vote for a candidate who is not openly and enthusiastically supportive of the Israel relationship. In Virginia last year there were several important congressional elections. All the candidates were vetted for their views on Israel well before the voting took place.

But to return to AIPAC there should be demands that it and other similar Israel-advocacy organizations register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938. That would require them to have complete transparency in terms of their funding and it would also tell the American people that the organizations themselves are not necessarily benign and acting on behalf of U.S. interests, which is the subterfuge that they currently engage in. It is certainly past time to push back against an organization that is brazenly promoting the interests of a foreign government at the expense of the American people. Thank you.

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VIDEO: America Will Collapse By 2016

March 12th, 2015 by Global Research News

The US Patriot Act removes many of our liberties.

Nobody made a sound when we lost habeas corpus.

No action on the part of the media.

Now we have a totalitarian government.

We are totally policed.

This is contrary to everything in our Constitution.

–

A Jason A Video Production

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Japanese Officials Lying, Many More Kids Getting Cancer after Fukushima, Nuclear-Related Deaths Up 18%

March 12th, 2015 by Global Research News

News 24 (SAPA), Mar 10, 2015: A total of 1232 deaths in Japan’s Fukushima prefecture over the past year were linked to the nuclear accident four years ago, up 18% from a year earlier, a news report said on Tuesday. A death is considered nuclear-related if is not directly resulting from a nuclear accident but is due from an illness caused by prolonged exposure. Namie town, close to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, had the largest number of deaths at 359, followed by 291 in Tomioka town, which is also near the complex, the Tokyo Shimbun reported.

ABC (Australia), Mar 11, 2014 (emphasis added): Radiation levels posing cancer risks… Before the disaster, there was just one to two cases of thyroid cancers in a million Japanese children but now Fukushima has more than 100 confirmed or suspected cases, having tested about 300,000 children… It is expected that thyroid cancers could turn up about four to five years after a nuclear disaster… [Megumi] Muto said her daughter and son, like many other children, had not been the same since experiencing the Fukushima fallout. “They had rashes on their bodies then nose bleeds. My son’s white cells have decreased and they both have incredible fatigue… both have multiple nodules around their thyroids. I’m really worried.”… Muto wanted to move her family out of Fukushima city but she said she could not afford to.

ABC (Australia) video transcript, Mar 11, 2014:

Headline: Fukushima residents have taken cancer and radiation testing into their own hands, saying authorities are lying to them about the safety of their community.
Matthew Carney, ABC correspondent: It’s a heartbreaking time for Megumi Muto. Her daughter is being tested to see if the lumps in her thyroid gland have grown… Megumi is convinced exposure to high radiation levels after the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns is the cause.
Megumi Muto, Fukushima mother (translated): I feel angry. I think the authorities hide the real dangers, and now many more children are being diagnosed.
Carney: Many residents in Fukushima don’t trust the government or TEPCO.
Muto: Since the disaster my kids have been sick with nosebleeds, rashes and lethargy. Fukushima used to be a safe… area, but not now.

ABC (Australia) audio transcript, Mar 11, 2014:

Michael Brissenden, ABC: the issue of long term health implications like cancer are causing the greatest concern and controversy in Japan…
Matthew Carney, ABC correspondent: [Fukushima residents say the local and central] governments failed to protect the children. And they do not trust what the government or TEPCO… are telling them about radiation levels and safety. They’re conducting their own radiation tests and near this school in Fukushima City, the monitor reads 3 mircosieverts an hour. That’s about 100 times the rate of Tokyo.
Sumio Kunno, nuclear plant engineer: I have to investigate and inform the public of the facts… They’re still not decontaminating areas where children live or play.

TV broadcast here | Radio broadcast here

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How The Guardian Told Me to Steer Clear of Palestine

March 12th, 2015 by David Cronin

Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian’s opinion editor, is an apologist for ethnic cleansing. (Chatham House/Flickr)

When I started out as a journalist in the 1980s, I asked an experienced Irish reporter for advice. “Read The Guardian,” he told me.

The message that there was no better newspaper had a lasting effect. For years, I wanted to write for The Guardian. Eventually, this desire was realized after I emailed the late Georgina Henry, then editor of its Comment is Free section, in 2007. Henry was immediately receptive to my idea of tackling the European Union from a critical, left-wing perspective.

I very much enjoyed contributing to The Guardian. Having previously worked for quite a stuffy publication, it felt liberating to be able to express opinions.

There was one issue, however, on which I felt my freedom curtailed: Palestine. AlthoughThe Guardian did publish a few of my articles denouncing Israeli atrocities, I began to encounter obstacles in 2009.

Sensitive

Early that year, I submitted an exposé of how the pro-Israel lobby operates in Brussels. While waiting to find out if the piece would be used, I phoned Matt Seaton, who had taken over as comment editor. We had a pleasant conversation but Seaton stressed that he regarded the subject as sensitive.

I, then, modified the piece to make its tone less polemical. Still, it was not published. (Seaton has subsequently moved to The New York Times.)

A few months later, I paid a visit to Gaza. From there, I contacted The Guardian to say that I had interviewed Sayed Abu Musameh, a founding member of Hamas.

Abu Musameh had expressed an interest in visiting Belfast to study how the Irish peace process worked. He had already held discussions with Gerry Adams, the Sinn Féinleader who had persuaded the Irish Republican Army to call a ceasefire.

Abu Musameh, I felt, was saying something that jarred with the official view of Hamas presented by Israel and its Western supporters. Far from being addicted to violence, he was eager to learn about what policy wonks call “conflict resolution.”

The Guardian was not keen to have me writing from Gaza. Brian Whitaker, a commissioning editor at the time, told me that its comment section received more submissions about Palestine than any other subject. Whitaker, ironically a Middle East specialist, effectively recommended that I stick to writing about the EU. (The recommendation was bizarre both because Palestine is a key issue for the EU and because I am one of the few journalists to examine the Union’s complicity in Israel’s crimes).

Frustration

I have decided to make my frustrating encounters with The Guardian public after reading the diatribe it published last week by Daniel Taub, Israel’s ambassador to the UK. Taub uses a quote attributed to Golda Meir, Israel’s prime minister from 1969 to 1974, to hit back at aid agencies who accuse Israel of impeding Gaza’s reconstruction: “We will only have peace when our enemies love their children more than they hate ours.”

The inference that Palestinians hate Israelis more than they love their children is a racist caricature brilliantly demolished by Rafeef Ziadah in her poem “We teach life, Sir.” Yet, according to Taub, Meir’s words represent a “bitter truism.”

The Comment is Free section of The Guardian, where Taub’s nasty rant appears, is nowoverseen by Jonathan Freedland, a liberal Zionist. I contacted Freedland to enquire if he approved Taub’s article for publication.

Freedland referred my message to the paper’s “media enquiries” unit. A spokesperson, who did not give his or her name, replied by email that Comment is Free “hosts hundreds of discussions every month on a wide range of topics across the entire political and ideological spectrum.”

“We receive a huge amount of submissions for articles and aim to publish a plurality of voices from all over the world,” the spokesperson added. “Naturally, not all of these voices reflect The Guardian’s own editorial position.”

Apologist for ethnic cleansing

I am not in the least reassured by that response. Taub’s article was the second one published by The Guardian in as many months from a senior Israeli political or diplomatic figure. In February, the paper gave Yair Lapid, until recently Israel’s finance minister, a platform to describe calls for a cultural boycott of Israel as “shallow and lacking in coherence.”

Lapid’s view chimes with The Guardian’s “own editorial position,” to quote its anonymous spokesperson. While Israel was bombing Gaza last August, it ran a leaderaccusing London’s Tricycle Theatre of making a “bad error of judgment” in refusing to host a film festival sponsored by Israel.

As Ben White demonstrated in a trenchant 2014 analysis for Middle East Monitor, Jonathan Freedland is an apologist for ethnic cleansing. Freedland has tried to justify how “400 [Palestinian] villages” were “emptied” by Zionist forces in 1948 on the grounds that “the creation of a Jewish state was a moral necessity.”

If Freedland is prepared to defend Zionist war crimes, I guess it is not surprising that he is reserving space for naked Israeli propaganda in The Guardian’s comment section. While it is difficult to imagine that this bastion of liberalism would welcome openly racist submissions from far-right organizations like the British National Party or English Defence League, it is somehow acceptable for an Israeli diplomat to peddle bigotry against Palestinians.

Freedland has been tipped as a contender for The Guardian’s editor-in-chief, a post that is soon to be vacant.

In a perverse way, it might be a good thing if he gets the job. With Freedland at the helm, it would be easier to show how a supposedly progressive newspaper is in thrall to the toxic ideology of Zionism.

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The Rise and the Fall of the US Dollar? Fiat Currencies are “Terminal”

March 12th, 2015 by Bill Holter

We have watched, even marveled at how the U.S. dollar has strengthened since last September. All sorts of theories have been put forth as to “why”. Some have proffered the dollar is the cleanest dirty shirt of the bunch. Others believe the interest rate differential is kicking in where dollars at least have a positive interest rate versus negative rates elsewhere.

Another theory and one which I have written about in the past and believe to be the main reason for dollar strength is the “margin call” aspect. In other words, the “carry trade” which was used to leverage all sorts of trades is unwinding and dollars are needed to pay back the loans. A synthetic dollar short being covered in other words.

Looking back to my writing yesterday regarding the impossibility in my mind of the Fed actually raising rates, the strong dollar also supports this argument. If the Fed were to raise rates, wouldn’t this exacerbate an already immense currency cross problem with (for) the rest of the world? Wouldn’t higher U.S. rates explode the dollar higher (short term) versus foreign currencies? The answer of course is yes, but with a stronger dollar comes other obvious problems.

The two biggest problems are

A. we still have a trade deficit of close to $500 billion per year, a stronger dollar will only exacerbate this AND destroy what little manufacturing we have left.

B. the very problems we just saw with a soaring Swiss franc will be seen in many multiples throughout the dollar lending market.

I might add, as the dollar moves higher and foreign currencies drop, more and much stronger inflation gets exported to foreign soil. High and rising inflation and its effects on living standards and the human psyche will create massive unrest across Europe and elsewhere.

This last point is an important one, foreigners who have borrowed in dollars have already seen their “loan balance” expand because the dollars cost more to pay back. Higher U.S. interest rates will only make matters worse. The strong dollar has had the effect of slowing the global economy as companies (and individuals) are cutting back (employment and consumption) to make ends meet.

The above is only half of the equation, the other half is described by Alan Greenspan himself. I personally watched Mr. Greenspan speak in New Orleans last October. He used the word “tinder” http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-09/alan-greenspan-warns-explosive-inflation-tinderbox-looking-spark for a coming inflation several times and spoke of the money supply and reserves of dollars that have been created and parked away on bank balance sheets. I could only think back to the Texas wildfire as he spoke of “tinder”. The amount of dollars created is like some nutcase piling dry leaves, branches and dead trees in a huge pile, then pouring gasoline on it …and thinking to himself, “this will keep me warm in winter”. In other words, the “fuel” is there and has already been created for a bonfire of inflation and the financial system blowing up on itself. But don’t worry, it will never catch fire?

Tying these two phenomena together, not enough dollars, yet too many, here is the likely scenario I can see unfolding.

The stronger dollar is putting pressure on the financial system all over the world, something (someone), somewhere is going to “fail”. Our financial system is so interconnected and over levered, it will only take one strategic institution’s failure to break the derivatives daisy chain.

Let’s call this the “spark”. This spark causes further failures which I am convinced will circle the globe in less than two days. The forest (economy and financial system) is very dry (weak, fragile), any spark (failure) will create an out of control forest fire which will not be put out until all the fuel is burned and blackened.

Please remember this, the dollar (and Treasuries) are now “backed” by the full faith and credit of the United States. This was not the case back in the 1930’s, dollars were backed by gold. The Treasury did not have enough gold to back all of the dollars but for a very large percentage of those outstanding. This is not even close to the case today. It remains to be seen if there is any gold at all left but, assuming the gold is left untouched, gold would need to be priced at $100,000+ per ounce to cover our debt and money supply. I bring this up because “gold will still be gold” no matter what happens financially. Hold this thought, it ties in with the final logic.

The stronger dollar is beginning to cause stress both financially and economically. It is not “official” yet but even with bogus reporting, the West is already in recession while the East is markedly slowing down. This brings up a few questions. With a slowing or declining economy, will the Treasury have the tax revenues to pay total interest and support all of the other largesse?

Of course not, we will just borrow whatever is necessary to keep going on down the road.

What about higher interest rates, will this exacerbate the problem?

Of course. Tax revenues will drop, “benefits” or spending will rise as will the deficit…and now the federal debt is almost double what it was last time around in 2008. Do you see where this leads? Is the “issuer” of dollars stronger, or weaker than it was in 2008? It’s OK, you can admit it. Weaker. In this scenario where a higher dollar (the spark) puts so much pressure on financial counterparties who are short the dollar, what will be the Feds reaction to derivatives or other sovereign currency crises? Does the Fed have to quintuple their balance sheet again? Or the federal debt double again? Or will another secret $16 trillion or a multiple thereof be lent out all over the world by necessity?

Looking at this in the real world, there have already been many markets thrown into upheaval. The two most important being the FOREX crosses and the oil market. Oil without a doubt is the largest and most all encompassing market on the planet with the exception of dollars themselves. Oil has crashed well over 50% in less than 6 months, dollars have risen 25% over this time frame.

Do you think that these percentages when applied to $10’s of trillions might add up to a tad more than a tidy sum? Remember, derivatives is a zero sum game so anything “won” is also “lost”. I believe the spark has already created a fire behind the scenes and some have already been consumed and are dead, but hidden. Can I know this for sure? No, but common sense and the amounts involved tell me this is 100% dead on! And there you have it folks, there are too may dollars outstanding …which were created by too much borrowing of dollars … This pushed asset values higher until the world reached debt saturation and led to assets being sold to pay back the debt, asset prices dropped which is causing a global margin call…this synthetic short has created dollar demand to pay these dollars back. In essence creating a dollar shortage. Are you still with me after that long and horrible string of sentences?

If you are, then here we are …facing the global margin call which can ONLY be met by central banks printing more dollars, euros, yen etc. because liquidity is again drying up. The alternative of course is to let the margin call run its course and take all banks, brokers and insurance companies down. Oh yes, don’t forget the sovereign treasuries and central banks themselves. It is the solvency of these institution that will ultimately be challenged.

And no, I didn’t forget I told you to “hold that thought” for the end. What I have described to you is the world running around and fetching as much wood and pouring as much gasoline on the pile as possible. The thought is this, without a spark this is harmless right? Without going into static electricity, spontaneous combustion, a “gun” or even a BIC lighter for that matter, is it even sane? Gold and silver do not and will not burn.

Whether it be a wildfire, a derivatives core meltdown, or even a central bank (like the Fed) or a sovereign treasury going upside down, gold will remain money and remain the benchmark against which currencies are measured. Fiat currencies by definition are “terminal” at their inception. The “deflation/inflation” debate is a moot point unless argued in terms of real money.

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La «saggia leadership» di Petro

March 12th, 2015 by Manlio Dinucci

A Kiev il premier Renzi ha lodato la «leadership saggia» del presidente Poroshenko, da lui confidenzialmente chiamato Petro. E l’amico Petro gli ha assicurato che gli imprenditori italiani potranno partecipare agli ulteriori processi di privatizzazione in Ucraina (delocalizzando così altre attività produttive a scapito dell’occupazione in Italia). Di privatizzazioni Poroshenko se ne intende: negli anni Novanta, con lo smantellamento dell’economia socialista, ottiene a prezzi stracciati o gratis la proprietà di diverse industrie dolciarie già statali, divenendo il «re del cioccolato». Estende quindi il suo impero all’industria automobilistica, alla cantieristica e ai media (è proprietario dell’influente Canale 5). Dopo essere stato il principale sostenitore della «rivoluzione arancione» del 2004, ministro degli esteri con la Tymoshenko e del commercio con Yanukovic, sostiene e finanzia il movimento EuroMaidan, nato nel novembre 2013 come protesta al rifiuto del presidente Yanukovic di firmare gli accordi di associazione con l’Unione europea, e trasformatosi in un vero e proprio putsch che rovescia il presidente nel febbraio 2014. Usando quale forza d’assalto, sotto regia Usa/Nato, militanti neonazisti appositamente armati e addestrati, come prova tra l’altro una documentazione fotografica di giovani di Uno-Unso addestrati nel 2006 in Estonia da istruttori Nato. Subito dopo, nel marzo 2014, le formazioni neonaziste vengono incorporate nella Guardia nazionale. Su questa scia diviene presidente della repubblica, nel maggio 2014, l’oligarca Poroshenko appoggiato da Washington e Bruxelles («saggia scelta», commenta Obama). Sotto la sua presidenza, i battaglioni neonazisti – come l’Azov, l’Aidar, il Dnepr – che costituiscono la forza d’urto della Guardia nazionale, compiono atrocità, ampiamente documentate da video e testimonianze, contro i civili di nazionalità russa nell’Ucraina orientale. Gli stessi battaglioni vengono oggi addestrati da centinaia di istruttori Usa della 173a divisione aviotrasportata, trasferiti da Vicenza in Ucraina dove resteranno almeno sei mesi, affiancati da britannici e altri della Nato. Ben sapendo, a Washington e Bruxelles, che questi battaglioni hanno una chiara ideologia nazista. L’emblema del battaglione Azov, che opera sotto l’egida del ministero dell’interno ucraino, è lo stesso (rappresentato in modo speculare) della divisione delle SS Das Reich della Germania nazista. Mentre in tuta mimetica passa in rassegna i battaglioni che si ispirano all’ideologia nazista, il presidente Poroshenko si muove per mettere fuorilegge l’ideologia comunista. Dal Canale 5 di Poroshenko, il ministro della giustizia Pavel Petrenko ha annunciato il 3 marzo la presentazione di un progetto di legge che proibisce l’ideologia comunista, in linea con leggi analoghe in vigore in Polonia e nella Repubblica Ceca. La legge, che prevede il divieto di qualsiasi simbolo e propaganda comunista, metterebbe automaticamente fuorilegge il Partito comunista di Ucraina. Per la sua messa al bando è già stato avviato un procedimento giudiziario, inceppatosi quando lo scorso febbraio è stato bloccato dai giudici di una corte di Kiev. Nel frattempo, però, è stato imposto lo scioglimento del gruppo comunista in parlamento e oltre 300 membri del partito sono stati incriminati, mentre molti altri vengono sottoposti a violenze e intimidazioni. Sotto la presidenza di Petro, che l’amico Matteo ha invitato a Roma. Dove c’è un giornale, il manifesto, che se fosse a Kiev rischierebbe di sparire non per ragioni economiche, ma perché si definisce «quotidiano comunista».

Manlio Dinucci

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Is ‘Sustainable Beef’ an Oxymoron?

March 12th, 2015 by Lorraine Chow

Walmart, Cargill, Tyson, McDonald’s and other beef industry stakeholders joined a sustainable beef roundtable, but is it all for show? Photo credit: Shutterstock

In the face sagging beef sales, a slew of U.S. beef industry stakeholders have formed the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (USRSB) to figure out how to source beef that’s, well, more “sustainable.”

And although the USRSB’s intentions might be good, Americans can’t have their steak and eat it, too. That’s because the vast amount of resources it takes to produce enough beef for the country on a commercial scale will never be truly be sustainable.

A total of 43 participants make up the roundtable, including McDonald’s, Walmart, Cargill and Tyson Foods Inc., environmental groups World Wildlife Federation (WWF) and The Nature Conservancy, as well as producers, processors, foodservice operators, packers and allied industry in the U.S. beef value chain. According to an announcement made last week, the roundtable’s mission is to “advance, support and communicate continuous improvement in U.S. beef sustainability through leadership, innovation, multi-stakeholder engagement and collaboration.”

Nicole Johnson-Hoffman, vice president of Cargill Value Added Meats and interim chair of USRSB acknowledged, “Research tells us American consumers are increasingly interested in the social, economic and environmental impacts of the beef they purchase.” The diverse groups are coming together to “establish metrics and criteria that will be used to benchmark the present and help measure improvements in the sustainability of American beef going forward,” she added.

The organizations have yet to hammer out concrete policies, but is the USRSB just trying to make Americans (who eat more beef than any other country) feel less guilty about buying Big Macs or supermarket steaks? The USRSB’s release clearly states that the group will follow the same vague definition for “sustainable beef” as set by the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (GRSB), a similar multinational beef industry stakeholder group.

Here’s why that’s a little eyebrow raising. Last November, the GRSB organized a sustainable beef summit in San Paolo and released a large report called the Principles and Criteria for Global Sustainable Beef that put forth their sustainability goals for the global beef chain.

Although it was a step in the right direction, the report was deemed as “greenwashing” in ascathing letter signed by nearly two dozen leading NGOs, including Friends of the Earth,Animal Welfare Approved, Food & Water Watch and more. These organizations (and many others) slammed the GRSB primarily for failing to “address misuse of antibiotics or establish meaningful standards for workers’ rights, animal welfare or environmental performance.” A different letter from the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy called the GRSB report as “nothing more than an attempt to pass off ‘business as usual’ farming as ‘sustainable.’”

At the moment, it looks like the USRSB is headed down a similar path as its global counterpart. Their press release states in lofty language, “the USRSB will develop sustainability indicators relevant to the various beef systems in the United States, as well as a means to verify sustainable progress in a transparent manner that can be shared.” But, it also noted, “similar to GRSB, the USRSB will not mandate standards or verify the performance of individual beef value chain participants.” Although the USRSB is still in its early stages, mandating production standards and verification of its members is critical to sustainable beef production.

It goes without saying that major regulations are needed to reign in commercial beef. The meat is, by far, the worst meat for the environment. We’ve mentioned before that agriculture accounts for about 6 percent of total U.S. global warming emissions, and beef production alone accounts for 2.2 percent of the total, roughly equivalent to the emissions from 33 average-sized coal-fired power plants. Additionally, beef cattle and stored cattle manure also are responsible for 18 percent of U.S. methane emissions, which have nearly 25 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide.

Alongside the health concerns of red meat (including coronary heart disease and breast, colon and prostate cancer), particularly alarming is the practice of feeding antibiotics to prevent disease in healthy animals. In fact, roughly 80 percent of antibiotics purchased in the U.S. are fed to livestock, spawning a superbug crisis, which can spread in the environment, contaminate food supplies and undermine the effectiveness of antibiotics. In fact, superbugs have been linked to 23,000 human deaths and 2 million illnesses annually in the U.S., costing the American health care system $20 billion in direct costs, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Last week, McDonald’s (which already pledged to buy sustainable beef by 2016 before joining the USRSB) announced that they were no longer using human antibiotics in chickens out of superbug fears. However, many critics noticed that the fast food chain did not rule out using the drugs in beef or pork. Perhaps, as Reuters pointed out, the reasoning is that ethically raised or antibiotic-free beef is already in short supply and can be difficult to obtain. Chipotle and CKE Restaurants have to go as far as Australia to find their antibiotic-free beef. Brad Haley, CKE’s chief marketing officer, told the news organization, “I don’t think there’s enough for sizeable chains to move over in the immediate future.” He added, “there simply isn’t enough all-natural beef.”

Besides skimming over environmental and health concerns, the USRSB’s announcement made no indication that they will be examining the cruel and unsustainable methods of factory farming. Unless they are grass-fed and raised on pastures, much of the beef that ends up on our plates come from feedlot cattle that spend their brief lives in crammed into feedlots eating genetically modified corn and soybeans.

This multi-stakeholder roundtable will have input from many of its members, including environmental organizations that will hopefully put the pressure on Big Beef. “By 2050, more than 9 billion people will consume twice as much food as we do today,” said WWF senior program officer Nancy Labbe in the release. “We are excited to be part of this important step toward balancing social, economic and environmental demands to feed a growing world while conserving natural resources, reducing waste and preserving biodiversity.”

Other environmental advocates are eager to see what policies the USRSB will come up with. “First off, it’s great that all these players are coming together and talking about solutions,” Jonathan Gelbard, sustainable livestock specialist with the National Resource Defense Council, told GreenBiz. “But if what they do is not credible and does not effectively address what the science clearly identifies, people are going to be watching.”

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Stop The Fast Track To A Future Of Global Corporate Rule. The Dangers Underlying the TPP and TTIP “Trade Agreements”

March 12th, 2015 by Kevin Zeese

Several major international agreements are under negotiation which would greatly empower multinational corporations and the World Economic Forum is promoting a new model of global governance that creates a hybrid government-corporate structure. Humankind is proceeding on a path to global corporate rule where transnational corporations would not just influence public policy, they would write the policies and vote on them. The power of nation-states and people to determine their futures would be weakened in a system of corporate rule.

The Obama administration has been negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) over the past five years is currently pushing Congress to pass trade promotion authority (known as fast track) which would allow him to sign these agreements before they go to Congress. Then Congress would have a limited time to read thousands of pages of technical legal language, debate the contents and be banned from making amendments.

Fast track would drive us down a dangerous path. The TPP and TTIP have been negotiated with unprecedented secrecy. For the first time texts of international agreements have been classified so that members of Congress have had very limited access and are not able to discuss what they’ve read. These are more than trade agreements. The portions that have been leaked show that they will affect everything that we care about from the food we eat to the jobs we have to the health of the planet. The fast track legislation could last seven years, meaning that more agreements could be rushed through Congress without open consideration of their potential impacts, cementing corporate rule.

Given the harm that has already been done to economies, human rights and the environment by neo-liberal economic systems required by the World Trade Organization and ‘free’ trade agreements such as NAFTA; this is not the time to be rushing into new agreements or to cede our power to write the future of the planet.

We are in the midst of a critical political conflict over the future of global governance. Do we want to be ruled by corporations or ruled democratically? This not the time to fast track , it is the time to step back and re-think how to conduct global trade and manage the global economy to prevent further exploitation and harm.

Twenty Years of Experience: Lost Jobs, Trade Deficits and Increased Inequality

Globalization was initiated in its current form by President Bill Clinton when he signed NAFTA and the World Trade Organization (WTO). NAFTA came into force on January 1, 1994 and the WTO became law on January 1, 1995. Modern trade agreements have had serious negative effects on the US economy. Reuters reports:

“Since the pacts were implemented, U.S. trade deficits, which drag down economic growth, have soared more than 430 percent with our free-trade partners. In the same period, they’ve declined 11 percent with countries that are not free-trade partners. Since fast-track trade authority was used to pass NAFTA and the U.S. entrance into the World Trade Organization, the overall annual U.S. trade deficit in goods has more than quadrupled, from $218 billion to $912 billion.”

Trade agreements have also undermined jobs in the United States. Reuters continues: “Nearly 5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs — one in four — have been lost since NAFTA and the various post-NAFTA expansion deals were enacted through fast track.” And, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports: 3 out of 5 displaced workers who found a job are earning less money and one-third took a pay cut of 20% or more.

These are just two examples of many of the negative economic impacts. The impacts in other countries are also negative. The only beneficiaries are trans-national mega corporations which desire to move capital and businesses across borders without restrictions. Trade agreements consistently expand the wealth divide and increase income inequality as transnational corporations seek lower wages and costs in order to increase profits.

The current global economic system is unstable because of the connections between global trade and global financial markets. Interconnectedness and a lack of regulation of finance created a cascading worldwide impact during the 2008 financial crisis. Around the world, this has led to tremendous economic dislocation and revolts against the unfair economy and the financial institutions and governments that are responsible.

With this record it is not time to fast track more of the same rigged corporate agreements through Congress; it is time to stop and ask: How can global trade be made to work for everyone?

At a Crossroads in Global Governance

The economic crash raised doubts about whether international governmental institutions can handle the globalized economy. It resulted in calls for transformation of the government and economy from both grass roots revolts protesting lost jobs, lower incomes, austerity, corruption and an unfair economy as well as from corporate elites.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) began a Global Redesign Initiative (GRI) as a result of the 2008 economic crash (GRI is bankrolled mainly by Qatar). WEF participants saw globalization threatened because there has been a loss of legitimacy and ineffectiveness of global governance: Too many countries, organizations and people were openly critical of globalization and multinational banking. The WEF blames nation-states, the United Nations and groups like the G-8 for failing to respond appropriately to the economic crisis. In an analysis of the GRI, the Center for Governance and Sustainability at the University of Massachusetts Boston writes:

“WEF is concerned that such widespread public skepticism can lead to widespread doubt about the underlying principles of the global system. They recognize that when corporate leaders are seen as lacking morals, it does not take much for the institutions of globalization to be seen as immoral. In this situation, it would become harder and harder for the G20, for the IMF, or for individual corporate spokespersons to command respect and effective leadership on global matters of concern to the Davos community. They know that it would be increasingly problematic if important messages from the world’s elite leaders were ignored by large communities of people around the world.”

To save globalization the WEF believes governance must be redesigned. David Sogge describes their view in “Davos Man”: “When it comes to tackling global problems, nation-states and their public politics are not up to the job. Their old, run-down institutions should be re-fitted …” The WEF solution is a greater role for multi-national corporations in decision making and the weakening of nation-states. They want the UN remade into a hybrid corporate-government entity, where corporations are part of decision-making. The goal is to end nation-centric decision making and include corporations as decision makers.

The WEF points to how trade rules have stalled in the WTO as an example of the failure of nation-state governance. They believe by making corporations partners in decision making the ‘can do’ attitude of business will push these rules forward where the ‘failure mentality’ of the state-centric system stalls trade rules. From the perspective of people’s movements, this is an example of why we do not want corporations to replace nations as decision makers.

The WTO has been stalled because their rules are opposed by people around the globe. There have been massive protests at their negotiations because, for example, international trade agreements (misnamed “free” trade, really rigged trade for transnational corporations) have had a devastating impact on agriculture by destroying traditional farming, forcing farmers into cities and creating a downward depression of wages. Social movements oppose policies that promote private profit over public necessities. A growing worldwide movement led by communities most affected by globalization seeks another direction.

In light of the failure of the WTO, the elite’s push toward global corporate rule is now being codified into law through international agreements like the TPP and Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Under these agreements corporate sovereignty will increase while the sovereignty of governments shrinks and people lose their ability to influence public policy. These corporate trade agreements will create a series of laws designed to aid corporate profits over the health, safety, income and well-being of most people and further undermine the already at-risk ecology of the planet.

National and local laws will be required to be rewritten to be consistent with trade agreements negotiated in secret. This “harmonization” will require a new bureaucracy to review all laws and regulations for consistency.

The profits of transnational corporations will become so important that governments can be sued if their laws to protect public health, safety or the planet interfere with expected profits. The cases will be heard in special trade tribunals, staffed mainly by corporate lawyers on leave from their corporate jobs. Their decisions cannot be appealed to any other courts. This makes the public interest secondary to the market interests of big business.

The WEF sees itself as the model for future governance writing “The time has come for a new stakeholder paradigm of international governance analogous to that embodied in the stakeholder theory of corporate governance on which the World Economic Forum itself was founded.” The Center for Governance and Sustainability describes this in the context of the UN:

“This integration of global executives with UN diplomats and civil servants was seen as a way to rejuvenate the acceptance of globalization. The thinking is that, if globalization leaders were more involved in the policy development and program implementation of the UN, then organizations and peoples throughout the world may well look more favorably on the legitimacy of their combined efforts.”

People will react in horror to the dystopian idea of the UN becoming a corporate-government hybrid. People already see corporations wielding too much influence at the UN and within nations. The WEF approach will inflate corporate power, creating a corporate neo-feudalism that will kill democracy and the body politic.

How did the WEF arrive at this proposal that so narrowly focuses on building the power of corporations, while weakening national sovereignty? The Center for Global Governance and Sustainability describes the process:

“A key constraint for the broad acceptability of WEF’s new system is the narrow band of experts they convened to develop their proposals. WEF did not call openly for proposals. It did not invite a number of key international constituencies to participate in the process. And it did not even establish a website for public comments. WEF selected its friends to work on its Global Redesign Initiative. Over 50% of WEF’s experts were working in the US while advising World Economic Forum on this project, hardly an indication of a geographically well balanced team. Even though GRI’s finances came heavily from non-OECD countries, only 2% of its experts were working in developing countries at the time. Of WEF’s friends, only 17% were women. This narrow base has serious consequences. It undermines the WEF claims that it truly understands a multi-polar world and that it has the ability to pick the global leaders of today and tomorrow.”

This process is exactly what must be avoided in the debate on global trade and why we mustn’t allow new agreements to be fast tracked through Congress. The current system has already been too dominated by the interests of multi-national corporations and has excluded the voices of those who are harmed by its impacts.

We need a broader debate on how globalization should be handled. What is the role of transnational corporations? How can transnational corporations with larger wealth than some nations be regulated? How do we ensure the planet’s ecology is protected at this critical time of the climate change tipping point, mass species die-off, oceans under severe stress, depleting aquifers, floods and increasing desertification? How do we shrink the wealth divide that is impacting almost every country, creating widespread poverty and strife?

Twenty years into modern corporate globalization, we need to stop, think, discuss and debate, not blindly fast track more of the same failed system. Fast track would permit presidents to approve secretly negotiated trade agreements and rush them through Congress without transparency, public participation or real congressional review for the next seven years. This is the opposite of is needed.

Similar Rhetoric, Different Visions for the Future

There is a shared frustration in the global community with the inability of governments and international organizations to respond to the global financial crisis. The United Nations has shortcomings. As the Center got Global Governance and Sustainability puts it:

“Some are frustrated with the international system because urgent state functions in the international arena are not solved by the UN system. There are wars and the UN cannot stop them. There are major ecological catastrophes and the international system cannot get relief supplies into the affected areas fast enough. There are starving people in Africa and the IGOs do not prevent their unnecessary deaths.”

The WEF uses language very similar to what social movements use. For example, the WEF claims it seeks “bottom-up” decision-making, but does not define what that would look like. For social movements, this means less hierarchy, public participation, transparency, democracy and governments listening to the people at the bottom, rather than taking their cue from the elites at the top.

The WEF promotes a philosophy couched in the concept of “multi-stakeholderism,” another idea consistent with the view of social movements that the world is not unipolar, it has many actors. The WEF uses this concept to give transnational corporations, undemocratic non-state actors, decision-making power, while social movements see big business already having too much influence.

Multi-national corporations wield great influence over the global economy. They decide the distribution of vital necessities, e.g. the prices and quantities of food and medicine, how much workers will be paid as well as the distribution of wealth and the selection of products to be manufactured and where. Control of international markets is more in the decision-making power of transnational corporations than of governments. WEF sees this as a reason to formalize the decision making power of transnational corporations, making them part of government, while people’s movements see a need to expand public participation in government to act in the public interest rather than the private interest for commercial profit.

Which Path Forward? What You Can Do

David Sogge writes in the “State of Davos” that “By custom and by law, the formal management of international affairs is a matter for sovereign nations and their representatives.” He points out “the UN Charter begins with ‘We the peoples’ and affirms the ‘equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.’”

As globalization begins its third decade, the question before us is, do we want corporate rule or people’s rule? Is the wealth of a few more important than human rights? What can be done to empower people? Should the nation-state become a thing of the past and corporate sovereignty reign, or is there another path? This is a debate that cannot be fast tracked; it must be brought into the open before trade agreements cement corporate rule for decades to come.

We urge people to put their effort into stopping fast track legislation in Congress. This will not be easy because it is high on the president’s agenda, many pro-business legislators and entities like the Chamber of Congress. It can only be stopped if people work together persistently to oppose it. Get involved here.

We expect that as fast track legislation moves through Congress, the White House and corporate lobbyists will inundate members of Congress with promises in exchange for votes. In the past, votes were held open past the legal time limit as members of Congress were picked off one by one until there were enough votes to pass.

We need to maintain persistent pressure on Congress to oppose fast track. When we stop fast track, there should be a broad discussion of our vision for a globalized world structured to support universal human rights and protection of the planet.

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance and have been working to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the fast tracking of trade agreements in a three year campaign.

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China’s Plan to have an International Reserve Currency linked to Gold

March 12th, 2015 by James Hall

Common wisdom has China as the future model for the Globalist economy. Also, conventional thinking has the Western financial debt created money system as the backbone of the New World Order. The big question is, are both components of the same intentional plan? When China Has Announced Plans For A ‘World Currency’, the world is put on notice that a fundamental shift is about to take place.

What you are about to see is rather startling, but it shouldn’t be a surprise. When it comes to economics and finance, the Chinese have always been playing chess while the western world has been playing checkers. Sadly, we have gotten to the point where checkmate is on the horizon.

The following comes from CNBC …

The tightly controlled Chinese yuan will eventually supersede the dollar as the top international reserve currency, according to a new poll of institutional investors.

The survey of 200 institutional investors – 100 headquartered in mainland China and 100 outside of it – published by State Street and the Economist Intelligence Unit on Thursday found 53 percent of investors think the renminbi will surpass the U.S. dollar as the world’s major reserve currency.

Optimism was higher within China, where 62 percent said they saw a redback world on the horizon, compared with 43 percent outside China.”

Before the celebration begins that the game is up for the Federal Reserve mastery from the days of the Bretton Woods Conference, look a little closer. While gold and its fixed price were instrumental to that monitory standard, the freeing from fixed rates has generated the madness of floating currency speculation that now dominates the financial markets.

The cunning and patient Chinese built their export economy on cheap priced goods into their importing customer economies. Saving is a noble objective in the East, while going into debt is the hallmark of Western practices. The Chinese have applied their huge balance of trade surpluses to buying up commodities. Most notable is gold.

The article, Could China actually have 30,000 tonnes of gold in reserves? Makes the strongest argument that China is poised to become the new superior currency is based upon the potential of establishing a convertible relationship between the renminbi and bullion.

“China has much more gold than it is allowing the world to see. As Alasdair Macleod, probably the world’s number one analyst of the gold market, wrote that between 1983 and 2002 China probably accumulated 25,000 tons of gold. Thus, its current gold holdings are probably north of 30,000 tons in contrast to the USA which has either sold or leased most of its gold.” Now this statement coming from one of the usual gold megabulls might be ignorable, but Hunt does not fall into this category and has a good track record of insights into China’s strategic initiatives as far as metals and minerals are concerned.”

Before the rush to the door to dump your U.S. Dollars for whatever store of wealth one believes will maintain its purchasing value, consider what the voice of the global financial establishment, the IMF says. Stating the outlook from the central Bankster’s perspective in, Will the Renminbi Rule?, the message is that paper money, burdened by debt, is still firmly in place.

“Given China’s size and growth prospects, it is widely seen as inevitable that the renminbi will eventually become a reserve currency. To gauge the likelihood and timing, it is necessary to consider the typical attributes of a reserve currency and evaluate China’s progress in each of these dimensions. The factors that generally affect a currency’s reserve status includes:

• Economic size

• Macroeconomic policies

• Flexible exchange rate

• Open capital account

• Financial market development

The IMF concludes:

“The renminbi is unlikely to become a prominent reserve currency—let alone challenge the dollar’s dominance—unless it can be freely converted and China adopts an open capital account.”

Now for anyone even remotely schooled in the manners and maturations of the financial elites, turning the other cheek to a pretender, is not in the lesson book.

Investment manager, Richard Harris offers in a report, Time to create new Chinese-Hong Kong dollar, an interesting possibility.

“The HK dollar itself is a dead unit having been pegged first to the pound and later to the US dollar, with the current rate fixed in 1983. The prevailing view about depegging is that it would be too dangerous. The unit only floated for a relatively short period from 1974-1983 and, I recall, without much confidence in its success.

The obvious answer is to combine the dead HK dollar with the embryonic CNH. This would be a completely independent, floating currency. The CNY would be used for current account transactions such as exports and imports, whilst the new “Chinese Dollar” (HKD/CNH combined) would cater for capital account financial transactions.”

Keeping paper money in place as the international medium of exchange is fundamental to the New World Order. While China may never implement an actual redemption of gold for their renminbi, there is a real possibility that some gold weighted backing for Chinese paper instruments could be introduced.

The U.S. Dollar maintains illusionary worth, only because the central bankers are all in with their dollar dominated derivatives. Moreover, the Chinese are very much dependent upon their exports to keep their economy going. Settlement in Federal Reserve notes is crucial for the American system to keep buying from overseas.

Just the mere threat of payment in the renminbi for all the Chinese goods that Walmart imports could be devastating. Allowing for a gradual transition into a semi-reserve renminbi status keeps the Bankster’s game going.

The prudent analysis suggests that the NWO created China’s emergence into an economic power through off-shoring domestic industries in their subject countries. Nonetheless, the international cabal is not about to starve their interest paying indebted nations by letting the Chinese accumulate even greater cash reserves.

Expect a downturn in China’s prospects, as soon as any ascendency for their currency begins gaining a reserve acceptance.

James Hall – March 11, 2015

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Loving the Lens: ‘American Sniper’ as Movie and Event

March 12th, 2015 by Hosam Aboul-Ela

American Sniper, directed by Clint Eastwood. USA, 2014.

There is a lull at the moment in the clamor around Clint Eastwood’s controversial film American Sniper, as award season ends and the movie’s powerful box office stamina pushes the DVD release into the summer. This moment perhaps offers an opportunity to consider what—if anything—might or should be said about it as a piece of cinema.

Sniper, starring Bradley Cooper in the title role, has to have been the most written about movie in the United States over the winter months, scoring the hat-trick with its critical success, box office wallop (the first American film about the invasion of Iraq to achieve such success), and political controversy. There is an obvious and important feature of it as a film, however, that no writer has chosen to dwell upon to date: American Sniper may be the most scopophilic feature film ever produced.

“Scopophilia” is a term borrowed from Freud and applied to golden age cinema in a groundbreaking essay written by Laura Mulvey in 1975. Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” is famous as the essay that first introduced that now widely recognized analytical category of the “male gaze.” But the essay also explains how scopophilia, or pleasure in looking, takes on a special significance in classical Hollywood aesthetics. The camera’s ability to create from the composite parts of the female body an object that the viewer can vicariously master is a foundation stone of this cinema’s appeal. Through this process, commercial cinema reinforces woman’s position as “bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning.”[1] Mulvey’s examples include films by Hitchcock and other important directors from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, but American Sniper is a contemporary work that seems to go far beyond these older examples in its open willingness to fetishize the gaze. For over two hours, the camera repeatedly switches from shots of Cooper looking through a scope, to shots of what he sees through that lens. Usually what he sees are working and middle class Iraqis who—for the purposes of the film—have no voice and no existence outside his crosshairs.

In the film’s opening scene, Cooper is looking through a scope on his weapon from a rooftop in Iraq. He has detected a woman and her young son walking out of a residence showing evidence of readiness to carry out a suicide mission against American soldiers. The child is carrying an explosive, but only the American sniper has noticed. Soon, we will learn that in this moment of crisis, the sniper acts decisively, killing not only the boy, but also the mother, just before their clandestine weapon explodes. But the climax of this scene comes only later in the film. At the beginning, the scene cuts to a flashback of a young Chris Kyle hunting with his father in west Texas. This flashback includes a direct quotation of the first important and broadly successful American film about the Vietnam war: Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (1978). Like so many of the important movies about American involvement in Vietnam, American Sniper subsequently makes the home front and the American point of view—the American lens, if you will—its foundation for treating the material. The narrative cuts back and forth repeatedly from life at home in the US with its big screen televisions, cases of Lone Star, romances, and family environments, to the dusty, bullet-ridden streets of Iraqi cities, ruled masterfully by a masculine tribe of American military comrades in arms.

Within the frame of these two incommensurable settings, the plot that evolves is Kyle’s odyssey, from a directionless rodeo cowboy to a legendary war hero, a transformation that he only makes through a series of steps toward his own growth. First, he commits to a military life after watching live television footage of the Nairobi and 9/11 bombings, then makes a challenging love affair with a beautiful, good-hearted woman work as a military marriage, and finally finds meaning in life through devoting time to supporting fellow veterans when not in country.

The scenes in Iraq also manage to generate their own story lines. There is the competition between Iraqi insurgents and American forces to see who can kill the other group’s most prized combatant. Kyle comes to learn there is an Iraqi bounty on his head, even as he throws himself into more and more dogged pursuit of his Arab counterpart, a sniper named Mustafa, who is said to have medaled at the Olympics in sharp shooting. Finally, there is one other through line that the plot traces: the smoldering that unsettles the American sniper as he wracks up more and more kills. Although he doggedly refuses to voice any second thoughts about his actions, ultraverbal cues plant in the viewer the idea of a psychological cost to this lethal profession.

On this final point, reviewers have praised Bradley Cooper’s intensity in his role as Kyle, marveling at the way he manages to suggest both internal complexity and outward certainty. The lens plays a crucial role here, as the viewer is allowed to look at him in every scene and see what he sees over and over again—a strategy that centers the drama and allows meaning to be created almost exclusively through this one individual. Cooper’s performance is certainly in contrast to the almost goofy exuberance of his star turns in the recent films Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle.

An answer to the question of how this particular film about the US invasion managed to attract viewers where no others have might be found in the way it keeps it simple and stupid. Rather than innovating or attempting auteur touches, the film falls back on classic, commercial aesthetic strategies. Not only does it borrow from some of the more successful Vietnam films, it also creates a hero who belongs in the middle of a Hollywood golden era piece. In other words, the lead performance is as much Gary Cooper as Bradley Cooper. Bradley here has transformed himself by channeling the storied American male hero tradition. The guy who says little, expressing emotion through a cocked eyebrow or a smirk, but acts decisively. In the golden age, this was Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, and Alan Ladd (who also blows away a rival gunman wearing a black hat at the end of 1951’s Shane). Clint Eastwood, the film’s director, channeled this masculinist Hollywood tradition in his youth to create the man with no name in the Sergio Leone westerns—and that other ballistically righteous enforcer, Dirty Harry. To drive home the connection between this lineage of hero types, Bradley Cooper has said in interviews that he used Eastwood as a model for his character, since he only met Kyle once before the latter was killed as filming started.

Of course, it is difficult to sustain an entire essay about American Sniper, the film, and never mention the phenomenon that was the film’s reception. The film both drew at the box office and polarized critics and commentators. By the end of this frenzy, the most common article about American Sniper was neither a patriotic celebration, nor a challenging critique. Increasingly, the consensus of the award season comments and reviews boiled down to a third response that could be summarized as: “I was against the war, but liked the movie,” a superior stance voiced repeatedly in US liberal elite media, including National Public Radio and the New York Times. Part of what makes this disturbing and arrogant position possible is the film’s scopophilia.

To illustrate, in a late scene that tries to capture Kyle’s evolution, he finds himself yet again looking through his lens at a young Iraqi boy who has picked up a rocket propelled grenade launcher left in the street by a fallen insurgent. As with the opening, the American sniper again finds himself having to weigh the morality of blowing away a young Arab boy carrying a weapon. But this time, he does not pull the trigger, and the boy drops the weapon and runs off, neither firing the shot, nor realizing how close he has come to being executed by Kyle. The moment leaves Kyle breathless, and not long afterwards, he retires from the military.

Such instances telescope all other realities associated with the invasion: there are no trumped up accusations of WMDs and al-Qaeda connections, no diverse communities within Iraq, no disastrous aftermath of the war. There is only a taciturn and heroic American on a rooftop struggling with himself. Still, in this moment, the scope’s frame can barely contain its narrative structure, with the result that some viewers will surely wonder what sorts of indignities and hopelessness this young boy has been through that might make him feel the urge to randomly lift and aim an abandoned weapon he finds in the street. One might think of the Haditha incident or the scopophilically documented torture of Iraqi prisoners by American guards at Abu Ghraib prison. More broadly, the American invasion ushered in power outages, lawlessness, kidnappings, outbreaks of illness, and sectarianism. An Iraqi boy might not have had the perspective to see all of these developments, but could have easily felt himself in a changed society the moment non-Arabic speaking foreigners with guns entered his hometown.

In Sniper, however, the lens is complicit with the filmmaker in blocking out such considerations—at least for many viewers. In fact, even a simple narrative of marriage, family, and child rearing is denied to those Iraqis who pass across the lens. The specific question of what experiences the boy has endured outside the frame is blocked completely, or at least relegated to the category of the speculation. To answer it might be complicating, and so it is pushed outside of the frame in just the way such complicating factors were pushed to the side in the run up to the actual invasion, even by some of the most discriminating of establishment opinion makers. The phenomenon of the film instills the fear that something like the Iraq invasion could happen again as long as opinion makers are willing to stay tightly squeezed inside the scope.

NOTES

[1] Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985): 804.

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Obama Administration Seeks Wider War Powers

March 12th, 2015 by Patrick Martin

The three top US national security officials appeared together before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday to press the case for a broadly worded resolution authorizing the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made brief statements and answered questions from Republican and Democratic senators during a three-hour hearing.

The session focused on a proposed Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to approve the military operations launched by President Obama last August in Iraq and the following month in Syria. More than 3,000 US troops have been deployed to the region to train Iraqi Army and Syrian “rebel” forces, and US warplanes have killed thousands in a nonstop bombing campaign against ISIS targets in the two countries.

The Obama administration submitted a proposed three-page text for the AUMF only last month, more than six months after the air strikes and troop deployment began. The delay is unprecedented and underscores the increasingly open contempt of the military-intelligence apparatus for the formal trappings of democratic governance, including the constitutional prerogative of the legislature to declare war.

The White House initially refused to draft language for a resolution to approve the war against ISIS, claiming Obama had ample authority under two earlier resolutions: the AUMF of 2001, which was the basis of the war in Afghanistan and the subsequent “war on terror,” and the AUMF adopted in October 2002, which gave approval for the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq in March of 2003.

This claim is entirely specious. The 2001 AUMF gave the president authority to wage war against those who carried out the 9/11 attacks or harbored the perpetrators. ISIS did not even exist until a decade later, and it is actually at war with the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, the al-Nusra Front. Even more cynical is the claim that the 2002 AUMF for war against Iraq provides a legal basis for a war in which Iraq serves as a puppet and ally of Washington.

The new AUMF drafted by the White House would repeal the 2002 Iraq war resolution but leave the 2001 war resolution unaltered. At Wednesday’s hearing, Secretary of State Kerry and Secretary of Defense Carter reiterated the administration’s contention that the war against ISIS is legal under the 2001 AUMF and that a new resolution is desirable but not essential.

In his opening statement, which was twice interrupted by antiwar protesters who were ejected from the hearing by Capitol Hill police, Kerry asserted, “The president already has statutory authority to act against ISIL, but a clear and formal expression of this Congress’s backing at this moment in time would dispel doubt that might exist anywhere that Americans are united in this effort.”

The main purpose of the resolution, he said, was to make a political demonstration of bipartisan unity behind the US war plan. “Your unity would also send an unmistakable message to the leaders [of ISIS],” he told the committee. “They have to understand they cannot divide us…and they have no hope of defeating us.”

The new resolution would also reassure US allies in the bombing campaign in Syria, including nearly all the repressive monarchies and sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf, he said, but as far as US military actions went, it would have a purely symbolic significance. Asked directly about this later in the hearing, General Dempsey affirmed that the new AUMF would not change anything in the operations being conducted by US forces in Iraq and Syria.

These declarations, which went largely unchallenged by the Senate panel, gave the entire hearing the character of a farce. In effect, the representatives of the executive branch told the legislature that their concerns and questions, let alone the sentiments of the American people, were irrelevant. Congress could choose to rubber-stamp the new US war in Iraq and Syria or refuse to do so, but congressional action would have no effect on the actual course of events.

Committee Chairman Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, admitted before the hearing, “I think we all know, at present, whether we pass an AUMF or don’t pass an AUMF has zero effect on what is happening on the ground, none, zero.”

This marks a further stage in the decomposition of what passes for democracy in the United States. Even the Bush administration felt compelled to obtain congressional authorization for war, albeit on the basis of lies about Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” and ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda (who were actually bitter enemies).

Under Obama, the national security apparatus has gone a step further, waging war without a shred of constitutional or legal legitimacy, counting on the acquiescence or active support of both capitalist parties in Congress, as well as the corporate-controlled media.

Much of Wednesday’s hearing was taken up with wrangling between Republican senators opposing any limits on the war—for example, the three-year time limit stipulated in the administration’s draft AUMF, after which Congress would have to reauthorize the war—and Democrats expressing reservations about a new US ground war in the Middle East.

Defense Secretary Carter repeatedly explained that the three-year time limit was not an estimate of the duration of the war, but simply an acknowledgement that by 2017 there will be a new US president facing a different world security environment.

Secretary of State Kerry emphasized the administration’s opposition to any limitation on the geographic scope of the war. “What a mistake it would be,” he declared, “to send a message to [ISIS] that there are safe havens, that there is somehow just a two-country limitation…”

There was tedious parsing of the resolution’s ban on “enduring offensive ground combat operations,” which General Dempsey conceded had no precise legal meaning or military significance. One senator suggested that a conflict on the scale of the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War would be permissible under that language, since the deployment of nearly 700,000 American troops lasted only seven months (hence, not “enduring”) and was ostensibly in defense of Kuwait (hence, not “offensive”).

None of these limitations would have the slightest practical or even legal effect, according to the Obama administration, if the 2001 war resolution also remains in effect. Any action forbidden by the 2015 AUMF could be undertaken anyway under the 2001 AUMF. That is why the White House is flatly opposed to suggestions that the 2001 AUMF should be repealed.

Two further issues emerged toward the end of the hearing. Under questioning from committee chairman Corker, General Dempsey said that the Pentagon views as a “positive thing” the support given by Iran to the Iraqi offensive against Tikrit in northern Iraq. Iran has armed and directed Shiite militias that are the spearhead of that offensive, which could result in sectarian massacres of the predominately Sunni local population.

Corker pressed the administration witnesses on whether the war resolution would permit US forces to act in defense of their Syrian “rebel” clients if they came under attack by Syrian military units loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. General Dempsey replied, “The answer to that is ‘no.’ The administration has not added a Syrian regime or an Assad component to the AUMF.”

The senator indicated he favored adding anti-Assad language to the resolution, and none of the administration officials objected. Corker also asked why the administration had not given its support to a Turkish proposal to establish a “no-fly zone” in Syria, a move that would pave the way for a direct US military intervention against the Assad regime. Dempsey replied that the US was considering that option.

These exchanges point to the ultimate purpose of the US intervention against ISIS, which is the overthrow of Assad and the establishment of a US puppet regime in Damascus.

The senior Democrat on the panel, Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a war hawk of the first order in relation to Iran and Cuba, nonetheless sought to pose as an opponent of a new Middle East war on the scale of Iraq or Afghanistan. “What I don’t think Democrats are willing to do, is give the president an open authorization for war or a blank check,” he said.

The thrust of the resolution, however, is to authorize virtually open-ended warfare by the US military in any country targeted by Obama or his successor. Several senators suggested during the hearing that the AUMF would constitute a green light for US military action in Nigeria against Boko Haram, an Islamist guerrilla group that this week publicly pledged allegiance to ISIS, and to renewed US military operations in Libya, where Islamist militias claiming ISIS affiliation carried out beheadings of Coptic Christians.

None of the administration witnesses rejected these examples as possible venues for war, merely observing that the president would have to determine that targeted groups were both affiliated to ISIS and actively threatening to attack the United States or its allies. Given Kerry’s boast that “62 nations” were engaged in the US-led coalition against ISIS, the number of “allies” where US troops might be deployed under the new AUMF has grown exponentially.

No senator in either party is opposed to another imperialist war. The issues in dispute revolve around tactics—air power versus ground troops—and concerns that another massive US military deployment on the scale of Iraq and Afghanistan could ignite popular opposition both in the Middle East and at home.

There are also those—including the three top officials who testified Wednesday—who see looming conflicts with Russia over Ukraine and with China throughout the Asia-Pacific region as more important from the standpoint of the world position of American imperialism. In this view, the war with ISIS is significant but distinctly subordinate.

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The Paramilitary Occupation of America

March 12th, 2015 by Joseph Kishore

It is necessary to call things by their right names. The obscene regularity of police murders in the United States has reached the point where it is appropriate to speak of the police as an occupying army, whose daily violence and brutality can best be described as a war against the country’s poor and working people.

Practically every day brings a new outrage. The death toll mounts relentlessly, against the backdrop of harassment and beatings that are daily facts of life in much of the country. The government does not publish figures on police killings; however, according to statistics compiled from media reports, some 1,000 people lose their lives as a result of police violence every year in the United States. That averages out to almost three fatalities a day.

The list of victims reported just over the past three weeks includes:

Anthony Hill, 27, Atlanta, Georgia. Unarmed, naked, suffering from mental illness, reportedly seen hanging from his balcony and crawling on the ground. Shot dead by a police officer on March 9.

Anthony Robinson, Jr., 19, Madison, Wisconsin. Unarmed. Shot dead by a police officer who forced his way into the victim’s apartment building on March 6.

Naeschylus Vinzant, 37, Aurora, Colorado. Unarmed, wanted on an arrest warrant. Shot and killed by a heavily armed paramilitary SWAT team on March 6.

Derek Cruice, 26, Volusia County, Florida. Unarmed, killed in his home. Victim in a “no-knock” SWAT raid that turned up a few ounces of marijuana. Fatally shot in the face on March 4.

Ernest Javier Vanepa Diaz, 28, Santa Ana, California. Unarmed, killed in his car. Father of four, working two jobs. Shot dead on February 27 after, in the words of the local police chief, he “did not cooperate.”

Ruben Garcia Villapando, 31, Euless, Texas. Unarmed, killed in his car. Shot dead on February 20 after he allegedly disobeyed an officer’s commands during a traffic stop.

Antonio Zambrano-Montes, 35, Pasco, Washington. Unarmed. Accused of throwing rocks at police. Shot dead as his hands were raised on February 10.

These names must be added to a list that includes Akai Gurley and Eric Garner in New York; twelve-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio; Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; and many others.

The mind-boggling level of police violence in the United States far exceeds that of any other major industrialized country. In Germany, there were eight police killings in 2013 and 2014 combined. In Canada, about a dozen people are killed by police each year.

In the past year, more people were killed by the police in Pasco, Washington (population of 68,000) than in all of Great Britain (population of 64,000,000) over the past three years.

Some of these killings are captured on videotape and become national news. Many more are barely reported or go unmentioned.

One web site that compiles local media reports, “Killed by Police,” documented 212 police killings in the first 70 days of this year, including at least seven on Wednesday alone. One brief media account is indicative: “A suspect has been fatally wounded after a brief police pursuit… The sheriff’s deputy discharged his weapon at the car after it finally stopped. The suspect was pronounced dead…”

The above incident could have happened in Iraq or Afghanistan. Such atrocities against civilians are commonplace in the countries occupied by the American military. There have been countless reports over the past 14 years of cars shot up by US military patrols because their drivers did not follow orders; of homes raided by American troops, their occupants beaten, arrested or shot.

Like the military, the police are trained to see the population as a hostile force. They demand that anyone they encounter act with complete submissiveness. Failure to obey is punishable by a beating, a jolt of electricity, arrest or summary execution.

The local police have intimate ties with the uniformed military and Pentagon. The latter has transferred billions of dollars in heavy weapons and military-grade equipment—including armored vehicles, helicopters and automatic weapons left over from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—to police departments across the country, in a program fully endorsed by President Obama.

Aurora, Colorado, for example, where Naeschylus Vinzant was killed last week, has received $500,000 in military equipment since 2006, including a Mine Resistant (MRAP) vehicle, shields, and dozens of automatic rifles.

Volusia County, where Derek Cruice was shot, has received $1,251,000 in military equipment, mainly in the form of automatic rifles, a $250,000 personnel carrier, and a MRAP valued at nearly $700,000.

To account for the militarization of domestic policing over the past half-century, one must examine the far-reaching changes in the structure of American society that have occurred. While police violence—overwhelmingly directed against the working class and its struggles—has long been a basic feature of American life, the systematic militarization of the police has developed alongside the transformations that have taken place since the 1960s.

Heavily armed SWAT teams first made their appearance in the latter years of that decade, in response to the urban uprisings and social upheavals of the period. By the end of the decade, the ruling class was repudiating the policy of social reform it had followed since the New Deal of the 1930s.

At the end of the 1970s, the political establishment launched an offensive against the jobs, wages and living standards of the working class that has continued ever since. “Law and order” politics became the political cover for a rapid buildup of the police powers of the state, including a vast expansion of the prison system and the transformation of the police into a paramilitary force.

These processes were intensified after 9/11 under the banner of the “war on terror.” The police were integrated more directly into the massive military-intelligence apparatus—the FBI, CIA, NSA and Pentagon. The local police today are tied by a million threads to the national system of repression and control.

This is what underlies the Obama administration’s insistent interventions in defense of the police, including Obama’s statement supporting the exoneration of Darren Wilson, the Ferguson cop who killed Michael Brown, and his declaration last week that “the overwhelming number of law enforcement officers” do their job “fairly, and they do it heroically.”

The political establishment views the whitewash of Wilson not as a local question, but as a national necessity. In defending the police, in ensuring that there is no accountability for their crimes, Obama is upholding a critical part of the apparatus of repression.

The police carry out “heroic” work not in the service of the people, but in defense of the capitalist system and the ruling corporate-financial oligarchy. As social struggles develop, the police are called on to ever more directly use the violent methods honed by the military abroad against the working class at home.

Police violence is not fundamentally a question of racism, as claimed by the various organizations that orbit the Democratic Party. Whatever role racism may play in any given act of brutality, police violence is embedded in the irreconcilable conflict between the interests of the capitalist class and those of its opposite—the working class. This basic class division of society has grown all the more explosive with the colossal growth of social inequality.

This is why the fight against police violence must be rooted in the unification and mobilization of the working class, and the working class must see the fight against police violence as central to its own interests.

In drafting the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson included among the “long train of abuses and usurpations” of the British King the following: “Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us” and “protecting them, by mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they commit.” Then it was a question of overthrowing the British monarchy. Today it is a question of overthrowing the capitalist system.

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“Washington Should Support Al Qaeda to Defeat ISIS”. Council on Foreign Relations

March 12th, 2015 by Mikael Thalen

U.S. “would be better served by keeping the terrorist organization afloat…”

The Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington DC think tank with large influence over U.S. foreign policy, is once again calling on the Obama administration to support Al Qaeda terrorists under the guise of defeating the Islamic State.

In an article entitled, Accepting Al Qaeda: The Enemy of the United States’ Enemy, Foreign Affairs writer Barak Mendelsohn argues that the United States must reconsider its current policy towards the terrorist organization and its leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

“The instability in the Middle East following the Arab revolutions and the meteoric rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) require that Washington rethink its policy toward al Qaeda, particularly its targeting of Zawahiri,” Mendelsohn writes. “Destabilizing al Qaeda at this time may in fact work against U.S. efforts to defeat ISIS.”

Mendelsohn claims that by targeting both the Islamic State and Al Qaeda for airstrikes in Syria, the United States “reinforced the jihadist narrative that Washington is hostile to Sunni Muslims and ready to bargain with the murderous Alawite regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.”

“In order for U.S. President Barack Obama to fulfill his promise to ‘degrade and ultimately destroy’ ISIS, he must weaken ISIS’ control of Mosul, Raqqa, and other large population centers, as well as stop its expansion,” writes Mendelsohn. “Inadvertently, the administration’s cautious approach to military intervention makes al Qaeda—which views ISIS as a renegade offshoot—an important player in curtailing ISIS’ growth.”

Mendelsohn’s logic falls down when one considers the fact that jihadist groups supported by the U.S. in the past have gone on to join ISIS anyway, such as those who the west helped topple Colonel Gaddafi in Libya. The leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, Abdelhakim Belhadj, who once met with Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, recently became the leader of ISIS in Libya.

Numerous so-called “moderate” rebel factions in Syria have also gone on to join ISIS despite receiving U.S. support.

The article goes on to assert that the death of Zawahiri would thrust Al Qaeda jihadists into the arms of the Islamic State and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group’s current leader.

“But if and when Washington succeeds in killing Zawahiri, the leaders of al Qaeda’s branches would have the opportunity to reassess whether to remain with al Qaeda or join Baghdadi’s caliphate. It is possible that Zawahiri’s successor will be able to hold al Qaeda together, particularly if it is Nasir al-Wuhayshi, al Qaeda’s so-called general manager and the head of its Yemeni branch,” Mendelsohn states. “But it is more likely that in Zawahiri’s absence, al Qaeda would drift into ISIS’ camp, offering it manpower, resources, and access to arenas such as Algeria and Yemen where al Qaeda’s dominance has so far hindered ISIS’ expansion.”

“It is certainly ironic that at this point, when the United States is the closest it has ever been to destroying al Qaeda, its interests would be better served by keeping the terrorist organization afloat and Zawahiri alive.”

Mendelsohn’s claims regarding the Arab revolutions and the eventual growth of the Islamic State not only leave out the fact that both Al Qaeda and the Islamic State fight under the same flag, but ignore the United States’ admitted destabilization campaign to reorganize the region via proxy war.

During an interview in 2007, former NATO commander and four star General Wesley Clark admitted the Pentagon’s 2001-era plan to take down multiple countries including Libya and Syria, revealing current claims regarding the so-called grassroots spread of democracy in the Middle East to be a contrived narrative.

The Obama administration and its allies have armed, funded and trained foreign jihadist proxy armies with admitted ties to the Islamic State, all while labeling such fighters as “moderate” rebels in order to facilitate regime change in Syria.

With thousands of so-called rebels openly defecting to and fighting with the Islamic State, Mendelsohn’s tactic is nothing more than an attempt to further blur the line between enemy and ally, illustrating again how CFR elitists are happy to throw their weight behind bloodthirsty jihadists in the name of eliminating Assad’s secular regime, which has been fighting against ISIS.

President Obama left no doubt as to his intentions in late 2013 when he repealed sections of U.S. law that banned the arming of known terrorist groups in order to keep jihadists well oiled in their fight against Assad.

The Council on Foreign Relations made similar statements in January 2014 and August 2012 regarding Al Qaeda and the United States’ need for further supporting the group – the very group used as justification for dismantling the rights of every American in the wake of 9/11.

In January last year, the CFR’s Michael Doran, William McCants, and Clint Watts argued that supporting Ahrar al-Sham, a terrorist group in Syria which pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and whose leader helped plan the 9/11 attacks, would help the United States “contain Iran and Syria” as part of Obama’s “larger strategy.”

In August 2012, Council on Foreign Relations fellow Ed Husain also hailed the presence of Al-Qaeda fighters in Syria at a time when the media was still treating their existence as a conspiracy theory. Husain even lauded the “deadly results” that Al-Qaeda militants had been able to achieve in the form of terrorist bombings.

The Council on Foreign Relations is considered to be America’s “most influential foreign-policy think tank” and has deep connections with the U.S. State Department. In 2009, Hillary Clinton welcomed the fact that the CFR had set up an outpost down the street from the State Department in Washington DC, because it meant “I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing.”

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Nazis among Kiev’s National Guard: USA Today

March 12th, 2015 by RT

An Azov Battalion sergeant has confessed to USA Today of praising Nazi ideology. He also pledged a march on the Ukrainian capital after the war. A spokesman for the pro-Kiev brigade insists this is a ‘personal choice’ of no more than a fifth of the unit.

USA Today visited the Azov Battalion stationed in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol and spoke to a number of servicemen of the unit, which is sponsored by Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoysky.

Azov battalion soldiers take an oath of allegiance to Ukraine in Kiev's Sophia Square before being sent to the Donbass region (RIA Novosti / Alexandr Maksimenko)

Azov battalion soldiers take an oath of allegiance to Ukraine in Kiev’s Sophia Square before being sent to the Donbass region (RIA Novosti / Alexandr Maksimenko)

A drill sergeant who identified himself as Alex told the newspaper that he supports Nazi-style strong leadership for Ukraine but does not share Nazis’ genocide agenda against Jews, as long as minorities “don’t demand special privileges.”

Alex insisted that once the war is over, he and others from the Azov Battalion will go back to Kiev to oust the corrupt government and nationalize the property of wealthy oligarchs.

Officers of higher ranks in the battalion denied the presence of a large number of neo-Nazis among servicemen.

“I know Alex is a Nazi, but it’s his personal ideology. It has nothing to do with the official ideology of the Azov,” said Andrey Dyachenko, a spokesman for the Azov Battalion. However, he did state that “only 10 percent to 20 percent of the group’s members are Nazis.”

Students of the Azov battalion are dispatched to the conflict zone in southeastern Ukraine (RIA Novosti / Alexandr Maksimenko)

The Azov Battalion’s deputy commander, Oleg Odnorozhenko, insisted that the drill sergeant does not speak for the group. “If he has his own sympathies, it’s his own matter,” Odnorozhenko said, adding that Alex “will be dealt with severely for his lack of discipline.”

“Ideas like going to Kiev to change the government in an illegal way should be nipped in the bud,” Odnorozhenko said, adding that Alex is a “good drill sergeant and a good instructor for tactics and weapons skills,” so his future in the unit is probably as bright as it gets.

Image from voicesevas.ru

A member of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Kiev, Col. Oleksy Nozdrachov, defended the Azov fighters as patriots. “They are volunteers who decided to sacrifice their lives to the country,” he said.

“They are tough and fierce in battle who stand and fight and won’t give up soil.”

Kiev-controlled volunteer battalions and the Ukrainian Security Service are involved in an increasing number of human rights violations, including torture and forced disappearances of those suspected of “separatism,” the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a December 2014 report.

The report – which covered a period of just one month, from November 1-30 – said the Office of the Military Prosecutor had not taken any actions to investigate the “considerable” number of allegations of human rights violations, “including looting, arbitrary detention and ill-treatment by members of certain voluntary battalions such as Aidar, Azov, Slobozhanshchina and Shakhtarsk.”

In September last year, another international report confirmed that war crimes – including abductions, executions, and extortion – were committed by the Ukrainian Aidar volunteer battalion in the Lugansk region in eastern Ukraine.

The recent interview is not the first time that Ukraine battalion volunteers have openly supported Nazi ideology. Last year, troops from the Ukrainian Azov and Donbass battalions were reportedly noticed wearing swastikas and SS badges.

According to a video on German TV station ZDF, Ukrainian soldiers were shown wearing swastikas and the “SS runes” of Adolph Hitler’s elite corps. The footage was shot by a camera team from Norwegian broadcaster TV2.

A year ago, BBC Newsnight journalist Gabriel Gatehouse visited Kiev to investigate the links between the new Ukrainian government and Neo-nazis. Having reported “groups of armed men strut through the [Maidan] square with dubious iconography” – including German symbols used by SS divisions during WWII – the British journalistic investigation found that “the most organized and perhaps the most effective were a small number of far right groups,” adding that “when it came to confrontation with the police, it was often the nationalists who were the loudest and the most violent.”

“National Socialist themes are popular amongst some of us…I like the idea of one nation. A clean nation…Not like under Hitler, but in our own way, a little bit like that,” a member of Ukraine’s Right Sector told the BBC reporter, who concluded that “the influence of the far right in Ukraine is growing.”

In February, Right Sector leader Dmitry Yarosh said the party’s paramilitary units in eastern Ukraine will continue “active fighting” despite the ceasefire, as the radical movement did not recognize the Minsk peace deal agreed upon by Ukraine, France, Germany, and Russia after 16 hours of talks.

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Condemnation of ‘Act of Treason’ Gains Traction against Letter to Iranian Government by Republicans supported by Israel’s Netanyahu

March 12th, 2015 by Anthony Bellchambers

47 US Republican senators who signed a letter to the Iranian government are being accused of violating the Logan Act that was passed in 1799. The law was named after Dr George Logan of Pennsylvania, who acted as a private citizen and who negotiated with a foreign state without presidential approval. The Act was intended to prevent private citizens from communicating with foreign governments in order to manipulate American foreign policy.

The law states:

“Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”

The Iranian Foreign Minister was dismissive in his disdain as he explains international law to the authors:

“I should bring one important point to the attention of the authors and that is, the world is not the United States, and the conduct of inter-state relations is governed by international law, and not by US domestic law. The authors may not fully understand that in international law, governments represent the entirety of their respective states, are responsible for the conduct of foreign affairs, are required to fulfil the obligations they undertake with other states and may not invoke their internal law as justification for failure to perform their international obligations.”

This serious political miscalculation by 47 of the Israel-lobby-supported GOP senators could conceivably affect Netanyahu’s own bid for re-election as his sophisticated Israeli electorate probably prefer professionals rather than amateurs to determine US-Israel foreign policy.

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Ukraine Crisis Report: Violation of the Donbass Ceasefire Agreement, BRICS and IMF-World Intervention

March 12th, 2015 by Global Research News

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What Kind of World, What Kind of Future? The New World Order “Grand Design”

March 12th, 2015 by Perdana Global Peace Foundation

What kind of world would one choose to live in? If you have the choice, you could decide on a host of ideal situations, environment, income and quality of life. That is provided there is free choice. But what happens if there is no such freedom where every aspect of life is controlled and predetermined by an all powerful albeit unknown group?

That is perhaps what could happen in the New World Order (NWO). As part of their Grand Design, these powerful political and economic leaders could determine even the number of people on Earth, who lives or who dies! That is a thought that instills fear.

This was the subject of an International Conference hosted by the Perdana Global Peace Foundation (PGPF) with the theme The New World Order – A Recipe For War or Peace, at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre on 9^th March 2015.

Both the President of PGPF, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and the Chairman of PGPF Tan Sri Norian Mai took pains to provide explanations – that NWO could be an attempt by a rich and very powerful group of people bent on total domination of the world. That a group with vested interest and with links to the rich and powerful and perhaps even a Royal Family, are seeking to exert total domination over all aspects of life on this Earth.

It was indeed an impressive panel of academics, thinkers and social activists who were assembled to provide a captive audience at the PICC with their understanding of what the NWO is or what it could be, and why certain events have taken place.

In his Keynote address, Tun Dr Mahathir termed the NWO as nothing but an Old Order, as this attempt at world domination has been around for more than a century. He reminded the audience that the all powerful group wanted to reduce the total population to just about 1.5billion, at a time when the world population stood at 3 billion. This reduction could be carried out by starvation or even by the mere killing of those who do not conform to their strict code of conduct. Today the world population stands at 7 billion.

The former Prime Minister of Malaysia also termed the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) as a “New World Order” (NWO) ploy that would lead to the world’s most powerful countries dominating the global economy.

Dr Mahathir claimed that the TPPA, like many other free trade agreements, is a way for the NWO to establish a “one world government” through globalisation, as no other approach appears to be viable any longer.

“It’s not a partnership. All the countries which participate will be subjected to more rules than they ever had before. The TPPA is not about free trade, it’s about trade subjected to all kinds of laws and regulations, exposing countries to be sued by the international courts.”

The founder of PGPF also claimed that the countries that remain “recalcitrant” or refuse to conform to the trade agreement will be threatened by economic sanctions under this NWO. Among others, Dr Mahathir listed down Iran and Russia as examples.

The TPPA is a free trade agreement that has been negotiated by the US, Malaysia and nine other nations as part of the larger Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership since 2010.

In a very slick and attention grabbing presentation Dr Thomas PM Barnett claimed that the world today is a much safer place, there have been no epidemics like the Spanish Flu that took more than 60 million lives, that even AIDS and Ebola have not decimated populations. In the first 35 years after the nuclear bomb was developed there were 7 countries that acquired the weapon and became members of the Nuclear Club. But in the next 35 years, only 2 new members qualified to join that club. While many other countries have nuclear capability, no nuclear war has been fought and no bomb has been dropped on any target since 1945. While the Cuban Crisis heightened tensions between the two superpowers, namely the US and the then USSR, nothing untoward happened, except that the dangers were highlighted.

While Dr Barnett acknowledged the many failures in US policy in many parts of the world, he claimed that the US has put in place measures that seem to penalise itself more than other economies.

“Globalisation comes with rules. US pioneered the creation of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the general agreement on trade and tariffs that became the WTO,” Barnett said, referring to the World Trade Organisation.

“Well, the country most sued, since the WTO court was created, was the US. The country that has lost more suits than anybody else in the world in the WTO court, has been the US,” he added.

Barnett, who is an author and public speaker [former Pentagon official and professor at the US Navy War College], further claimed that the US has even allowed the emergence of rival trading blocs such as the BRICs — comprising Brazil, Russia, India and China – and MINT – made up of Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey, instead of stifling them.

However the presentation by the US security adviser came in for some heavy criticism from many others. Almost all speakers insisted that jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State were funded by the US and its allies, which included the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Israel.

“They say Muslims are terrorists, but it just so happens that terrorists are Made in America. They’re not the product of Muslim society, and that should be abundantly clear to everyone on this floor,” said Dr Michel Chossudovsky, the University of Ottawa’s Emeritus Professor of Economics.

“The global war on terrorism is a fabrication, a big lie and a crime against humanity,” added the founder of the Centre for Research on Globalisation. He added that the global war on terrorism was then used as justification for Islamophobia and to enact anti-terrorism laws that he claimed inadvertently demonised Muslims in the Western world through methods such as racial profiling.

Prof Chossudovsky asserted that NATO and the Turkish High Command were also responsible for recruiting members of IS and al-Qaeda’s affiliate the Al Nusra Front, while Israel is funding “global jihad elements inside Syria”.

In a rather moderate tone and providing the perspective from an Islamic viewpoint was Dr Din Syamsuddin, the chairman of Muhammadiyah in Indonesia, an organization that has 29 million members. A staunch supporter of the Inter-Faith movement, he reminded the audience of what the Holy Koran reveals about faith, hope and belief. He stressed there was a need for tolerance, for understanding and goodwill in the fight against terrorism.

Malaysian scholar and social activist, Dr Chandra Muzaffar provided the strongest arguments to debunk Dr Barnett’s theory that the world is in a much better shape now than ever before when he made reference to the many flaws in US policy that had far reaching consequences, such as the overthrow of the legitimate Salvador Allende government in Chile, the establishment of the rule of Shah Reza Pahlawi in Iran in 1953 and several others, all engineered by the US. All these had disastrous consequences.

Total US support for Israel and its actions allows that country to label anyone not agreeing with their occupation of Palestine as “terrorists”.

Dr Chandra also pointed out Muslims are being manipulated by the US to create a state of fear and turmoil. Liberation movements in may troubled spots have support in terms of armaments and funding. He asked if anyone had truly looked at the situation in Ukraine and at the historical perspective with regard Crimea. He stressed that it was the Palestinians who faced the greatest challenges.

Providing the Lebanese viewpoint was a former general and currently a professor of geopolitics at the American University of Beirut was Elias Hanna, who described the current situation in his country as most stable and peaceful. Once the hotbed of insurgency, political unrest, and sectarian conflict, the country is recovering from the earlier turmoil and playing an active role in Middle East affairs. Whilst Southern Lebanon was once the soft belly of the nation and needed Syrian support, Lebanon now provides a buffer zone for Syria in the Golan Heights.

Long time investigative journalist and a former editor of Japan Times, Yoichi Shimatsu provided shocking evidence of Israeli involvement in many of the calamities of recent times. Initial information, even before the start of an official inquiry into MH17, raise serious questions of whether Israeli intelligence tampered with the flight controls and radar identification(transponder) system of the Malaysian-operated Boeing-777.

Security at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam is operated by ICTS, an Israeli-owned airport security company based in The Netherlands founded by former officers of the Shin Beit intelligence agency. Its subsidiaries are also involved in key security functions there.

In concluding remarks, PGPF adviser and former minister Tan Sri Dr Rais Yatim also blamed the Western world for tarnishing Islam by calling the militant group Islamic State, claiming that the rest of the world had unquestioningly followed suit.

The so-called Islamic State or IS militant group should be referred to as a terrorist or extremist group, instead of what it is called now. He said the ‘Islamic State’ was a crucial term and it gave a sinful connotation to an Islamic state itself.

“One cannot accept IS as referring to Islamic State just like that. It (IS militant group) is evil. An Islamic state is not evil. An Islamic state is dictated by syariah law.”

The term Islamic State was widely used because the United States used it.

“Because the United States uses that word, we use that word as well,” he added.

At a news conference later, PGPF president Tun Dr Mahathir said the IS militant group was not an Islamic state but a bunch of terrorists.

“We were introduced to the term, Islamic State, by the United States and we accept it. This is not an Islamic state but a terrorist group. They might have been trained and supplied with weapons and money by those who call them IS.

“Therefore, we need to think over why the IS comprises Muslims who kill fellow Muslims,” he said.

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Ukrainian Crisis Video News: War in Donbass, Washington Pressures Russia, US Armored Vehicles to Latvia

March 12th, 2015 by Global Research News

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Capitalism’s Great Indian Con-Trick: Feeding “The Economic Vultures”, While Starving Agriculture

March 12th, 2015 by Colin Todhunter

The story goes like this: India is an economic miracle, a powerhouse of growth. It is a nation that increasingly embodies the spirit of entrepreneurship. And the proof? Until recently, India had year on year 9% GDP growth (or thereabouts).

Such logic, statements and figures are the stuff of headlines that pay homage to the supposed wonders of neoliberalism which the corporate media trots out time and again in the belief that if something is repeated often enough then it must be true.

Visit Delhi or Mumbai and you can witness the trappings of this ‘success’. Newly built towns on the outskirts with gleaming apartment blocks and sterile shopping malls. What more could a person want? All well and good for those who have benefited from neoliberal economic reforms that began in 1991 – because indeed it seems that is all they do want.

But these beneficiaries of neoliberalism comprise a minority. They constitute but a section of the urban population, which in turn constitutes a minority within the country. They are the ones the ideologue-economists and corporate-controlled media in the West focus on when celebrating capitalism and its global ‘success’. But what about the bulk of the population, the two thirds that live in villages and rural India?

According to Sudhansu R Das, the Indian village was once enshrined in a performing eco-system and a healthy social life (see this). In fact, the village was the centre of a rural economy, an economic powerhouse of agricultural innovation, artisanship and entrepreneurialism. However, the British Raj almost dismantled this system by introducing mono crop activities and mill-made products. Post-independent India failed to repair the economic fabric and is now actually accelerating the dismantling. As a result, rural India is too often depicted as a ‘basket case’, a drain on the nation’s subsidies and resources.

It is not, however, agriculture that is the subsidy-sucking failure it is so often portrayed as in the mainstream media. The spotlight should instead focus on corporate-industrial India, the supposed saviour of the nation, which has failed to deliver in terms of boosting exports or creating jobs, despite the massive hand outs and tax exemptions given to it (see this and this). As subsidy-sucking failures go, it has much to answer for.

Of course, corporate-industrial India is engaged in a huge con-trick, which forms part of the neoliberal agenda worldwide: subsidies to the public sector or to the poor are portrayed as a drain on the economy, while the genuinely massive drain of taxpayer-funded corporate dole, tax breaks, bail outs, sops, tax avoidance and evasion are afforded scant attention. If anything, through slick doublespeak, all of this becomes redefined as being necessary to create jobs or fuel ‘growth’.

But what does the taxpaying public get in return for subsidising the private sector in this way and for paying for its fraudulent practices? What do ordinary people get for being forced to ‘stand on their own two feet’ while subsidising a system of ‘free’ enterprise that is anything but free? Jobs… ‘growth’?

No, they see record profits and levels of inequality and experience austerity, the outsourcing of jobs, low pay, the destruction of rights, deregulation, mass unemployment and the erosion pensions and social security (see this and this).

The machinery of state is pressed into the service of private capital for the benefit of private capital under the guise of ‘growth’ or the ‘national interest’ and that is the price the rest of us pay.

This is exemplified by the following quote:

“We don’t think how our farmers on whose toil we feed manage to sustain themselves; we fail to see how the millions of the poor survive. We look at the state-of-the-art airports, IITs, highways and bridges, the inevitable necessities for the corporate world to spread its tentacles everywhere and thrive, depriving the ordinary people of even the basic necessities of life and believe it is development.” – Sukumaran CV

What Sukumaran CV describes above is in India underpinned by unconstitutional land takeovers, the trampling of democratic rights, cronyism, cartels and the manipulation of markets, which to all purposes is what economic ‘neo-liberalism’ has entailed in India over the last two decades. Corporations have run roughshod over ordinary people in their quest for profit.

In the process, there have been untold opportunities for well-placed officials and individuals to make a fast buck from various infrastructure projects and sell offs of public assets, such as airports, seeds, ports and other infrastructure built up with public money or toil.

This neoliberal agenda is based on state-corporate extremism, which has across the world resulted in national states submitting to the tenets of the Wall Street-backed pro-privatisation policies, deregulation, free capital flows, rigged markets and unaccountable cartels. It is the type of extremism that is depicted as being anything but by the corporate-controlled media.

Powerful corporations are shaping the ‘development’ agenda in India and the full military backing of the state is on hand to forcibly evict peoples from their land in order to hand it to mineral extracting and processing industries, real estate interests and industry.

Moreover, the deal that allows the Monsanto/Syngenta/Walmart-driven Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture in return for the US sanctioning and backing the opening up of India’s nuclear sector to foreign interests has shown who is setting the agenda for agriculture, food and energy.

Almost 300,000 farmers have taken their lives since 1997 and many more are experiencing economic distress or have left farming as a result of debt, a shift to (GM) cash crops and economic ‘liberalisation’ (see this). And yet the corporate-controlled type of agriculture being imposed and/or envisaged only leads to bad food, bad soil, bad or no water, bad health, poor or falling yields and an impending agrarian crisis.

It’s not difficult to see where policy makers’ priorities lie. In a recent TV interview (watch here), food policy analyst Devinder Sharma highlighted such priorities:

“Agriculture has been systematically killed over the last few decades. And they are doing deliberately because the World Bank and big business have given the message that this is the only way to grow economically… Sixty percent of the population lives in the villages or in the rural areas and is involved in agriculture, and less than two percent of the annual budget goes to agriculture… When you are not investing in agriculture, you think it is economically backwards, not performing. You are not wanting it to perform. You are ensuring that the price they get today under the MSP (Minimum Support Price) has also being withdrawn. Leave it to the vagaries or the tyranny of the markets… Twenty-five crore people in this country are agricultural landless workers. If we give these people land, these people are also start-ups, these people are also entrepreneurs… But you are only giving these conditions to industry… agriculture has disappeared from the economic radar screen of the country… 70 percent of the population is being completely ignored…”

Farmers have been imbued with the spirit of entrepreneurship for hundreds of years. They have been “scientists, innovators, natural resource stewards, seed savers and hybridisation experts” who have increasingly been reduced to becoming “recipients of technical fixes and consumers of poisonous products of a growing agricultural inputs industry” (see here).

In his interview, Devinder Sharma went on to state that despite the tax breaks and the raft of policies that favour industry over agriculture, industry has failed to deliver; and yet despite the gross under-investment in agriculture, it still manages to deliver bumper harvests year after year. Furthermore, when farmers are prioritised, politicians are accused of populism and playing to a vote bank. Yet when industry receives subsidies, hand outs and tax breaks, it is called ‘reform’and portrayed as contributing to ‘growth’:

“When we talk about budgets, it’s going to be populism or reforms. What is reforms? … if you don’t give anything to industry, they call it ‘policy paralysis’. But if you give them all kinds of dole then they think it is growth, they think it is a dream budget. In the last 10 years, we had 36 lakh crore going to the corporates by way of tax exemptions. Where are the jobs? They just created 1.5 crore jobs in the last ten years. Where are the exports? … The only sector that has performed very well in this country is agriculture. Year after year we are having a bumper harvest. Why can’t we strengthen that sector and stop the population shift from the villages… Why do you want to move the population just because Western economists told us we should follow them. Why? Why can’t India have its own thinking? Why do we have to go with Harvard or Oxford economists who tell us this?”

With GDP growth slowing and automation replacing human labour the world over in order to decrease labour costs and boost profit, where are the jobs going to come from to cater for hundreds of millions of former agricultural workers or those whose livelihoods will be destroyed as transnational corporations move in and seek to capitalise industries that currently employ tens of millions (if not hundreds of millions)?

Are they to become what Arundhati Roy calls the “ghosts of capitalism,” the invisible, shoved-aside victims of neoliberalism who are deemed surplus to requirements?

India’s development is being hijacked by the country’s wealthy ruling class and the multinational vultures who long ago stopped circling and are now swooping. Meanwhile, the genuine wealth creators, the entrepreneurs who work the fields and have been custodians of the land and seeds for centuries, are being sold out to corporate interests whose only concern is to how best loot the economy.

As they do so, they churn out in unison with their politician puppets the mantra of it all being in the ‘national interest’ and constituting some kind of ‘economic miracle’.

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The Division of the Korean Peninsula: In the Face of American Amnesia, The Grim Truths of No Gun Ri Find a Home

March 12th, 2015 by Charles J. Hanley

On the 70^th anniversary of the division of the Korean peninsula, the Korea Policy Institute, in collaboration with The Asia-Pacific Journal, is pleased to publish a special series, “The 70^th Anniversary of the U.S. Division of the Korean Peninsula: A People’s History.” Multi-sited in geographic range, this series calls attention to the far-reaching repercussions and ongoing legacies of the fateful 1945 American decision, in the immediate wake of U.S. atomic bombings of Japan and with no Korean consultation, to divide Korea in two. Through scholarly essays, policy articles, interviews, journalistic investigation, survivor testimony, and creative performance, this series explores the human costs and ground-level realities of the division of Korea. In Part 1 of the series Hyun Lee interviews Shin Eun-mi on The Erosion of Democracy in South Korea.

The truths of No Gun Ri have taken root in the heart of South Korea. A memorial tower, museum and garden of mournful sculptures have risen from the soil of the central valley where the 1950 refugee massacre took place. In the United States, however, home of the agents of those killings, much of the truth remains buried, by official intent and unofficial indifference.

Built by the South Korean government at a cost of $17 million, the new No Gun Ri Peace Park, covering 33 acres in Yongdong County, 100 miles southeast of Seoul, offers a straightforward account of what happened over four July days early in the Korean War:

As the North Korean army advanced into South Korea, residents of two Yongdong County villages were ordered from their homes by American troops, to be evacuated southward. Resting on railroad tracks near No Gun Ri, they were suddenly attacked by U.S. warplanes and many were killed. Over the next three days, U.S. troops killed many more as they huddled, trapped, under the No Gun Ri railroad bridge. An estimated 250 to 300 died.¹

The No Gun Ri Peace Park, with its memorial tower on the left, museum in the center and education (conference) building at the upper right. The railroad bridge massacre site is out of the frame on the lower left. (Photo: Charles J. Hanley)

In the 15 years since the world first learned of this mass killing, it has become increasingly clear that the U.S. Army’s 1999-2001 investigation of No Gun Ri suppressed vital documents and testimony, as it strove to exonerate itself of culpability and liability, and to declare – with an inexplicable choice of words – that the four-day bloodbath was “not deliberate.”²

But these suppressed archival documents, showing U.S. commanders ordering troops to fire on civilians out of fear of enemy infiltrators, are now on display at the peace park’s museum, illustrating a growing divide in how No Gun Ri will be remembered – or not – on two sides of the Pacific.

The official U.S. version “has framed the No Gun Ri story as an anecdotal war tragedy that can be allowed to fall into the domain of forgetfulness,” Suhi Choi writes in Embattled Memories, her newly published study of how the Korean War is memorialized.³

This article will describe some of the glaring irregularities of the official U.S. version, and show how the No Gun Ri park may prove a final bastion for securing the truth against that “domain of forgetfulness.”

The Deadly Orders of 1950

In the early weeks after North Korea’s invasion of the south on June 25, 1950, the fear that North Korean infiltrators lurked among southern refugees was fed by a few plausible reports and a torrent of rumors. Research at the U.S. National Archives by the Associated Press team that confirmed the No Gun Ri Massacre, both before and after their September 29, 1999 investigative report, found at least 16 documents in which high-ranking U.S. officers ordered or authorized the shooting of refugees in the war’s early months. Such communications, showing a command readiness to kill civilians indiscriminately, pointed to a high likelihood that the No Gun Ri killings, carried out by the 7th Cavalry Regiment, were ordered or authorized by a chain of command. A half-century later, lest that case be made, Army investigators excluded 14 of those documents from their report and misrepresented two others.⁴

In addition, the unit document that would have contained orders dealing with the No Gun Ri refugees, the 7th Cavalry journal for July 1950, is missing without explanation from the National Archives. The Army inquiry’s 2001 report concealed this fact, while claiming its investigators had reviewed all relevant documents and that no orders to shoot were issued at No Gun Ri.⁵

Here is how the Army report of 2001 dealt with three important pieces of evidence, among many documents suppressed or distorted:⁶

The Rogers Memo

Classified “Secret” and dated July 25, 1950, the day before the No Gun Ri killings began, the below memo was written by the U.S. Air Force’s operations chief in Korea, Colonel Turner C. Rogers, and sent to its acting commander, General Edward Timberlake. It got immediately to the point in its heading: “Subject: Policy on Strafing Civilian Refugees.”

Excerpt from the “Rogers memo,” in which an operations chief reported the U.S. Air Force was strafing South Korean refugees (paragraphs 3-4). The Pentagon’s 2001 No Gun Ri report omitted that fact from its description of the document. (Source: U.S. National Archives.)

Rogers wrote that “the Army has requested that we strafe all civilian refugee parties that are noted approaching our positions. To date, we have complied with the Army request in this respect.” He took note of reports that enemy soldiers were infiltrating behind U.S. lines via refugee columns, but said the strafings “may cause embarrassment to the U.S. Air Force and to the U.S. government.” He wondered why the Army was not checking refugees “or shooting them as they come through if they desire such action.” Rogers recommended that Air Force planes stop attacking refugees. Nothing has been found in the record indicating the memo had any effect, and the No Gun Ri slaughter the next day began with just such an air attack.

Pentagon investigators a half-century later couldn’t suppress this document, as they did many others, because it had been reported by the news media in June 2000, having been leaked to CBS News, possibly by Air Force researchers. Instead, the Army team, which did not reproduce the document in its report, chose to ignore the memo’s most important element, by not divulging that Rogers said the Air Force was, indeed, strafing refugees, in compliance with an Army request. Eliding that telltale paragraph No. 4, the Army investigators declared, “The Rogers memorandum actually recommends that civilians not be attacked unless they are definitely known to be North Korean soldiers.” For the sake of consistency in this particular deception, the investigative report went on to say that Rogers argued that the refugees were an Army problem and so the Army should be screening them, but it omitted Rogers’ clause, “or shooting them … if they desire such action.”⁷

In this way, the report that stands as the official U.S. record of a supposedly legitimate investigation disposed of one highly incriminating document.

General Kean’s Order

Major General William B. Kean, commander of the 25th Infantry Division, which held the front line to the right of the 1st Cavalry Division, the division responsible for No Gun Ri, issued an order to all his units dated July 27, 1950, saying civilians were to have been evacuated from the war zone and therefore “all civilians seen in this area are to be considered as enemy and action taken accordingly.”

Again, the Army investigators of 2001 had to grapple with this explosive document, since it had been reported in the original AP story on No Gun Ri. And so they simply chose to write of this order, “There is nothing to suggest any summary measures were considered against refugees.”⁸ They suggested that when Kean said civilians should be treated as enemy, he meant front-line combat troops should “arrest” this supposed enemy, not shoot him—an implausible scenario in the midst of a shooting war.

Maj. Gen. Kean’s order to treat South Korean civilians as enemy was relayed by his staff to mean they should be shot. The Pentagon’s 2001 report suppressed those instructions. (Source: U.S. National Archives)

To posit this unreal notion, the Army investigators had to conceal another division

headquarters document that said flatly that Kean’s order meant “civilians moving around in combat zone will be considered as unfriendly and shot.”⁹Other, similar communications were relayed across the division area, including one in which Kean “repeated” instructions that civilians were considered enemy and “drastic action” should be taken to prevent their movement.¹⁰ These, too, were suppressed by the Army investigators of 2001.

The Muccio Letter

Perhaps the most important document excluded from the U.S. Army’s 300-page No Gun Ri Review was a U.S. Embassy communication with Washington that sat unnoticed for decades at the National Archives. In 2005, American historian Sahr Conway-Lanz reported his discovery of this document, a letter from the U.S. ambassador to South Korea in 1950, John J. Muccio, to Dean Rusk, then-assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs, dated July 26, 1950, the day the killings began at No Gun Ri.¹¹ In it, Muccio reported to Rusk on a meeting that took place the previous evening among American and South Korean officials, military and civilian, to formulate a plan for handling refugees.

He wrote that the South Korean refugee problem “has developed aspects of a serious and even critical military nature.” Disguised North Korean soldiers had been infiltrating American lines via refugee columns, he said, and “naturally, the Army is determined to end this threat.” At the meeting, he wrote, “the following decisions were made: 1. Leaflet drops will be made north of U.S. lines warning the people not to proceed south, that they risk being fired upon if they do so. If refugees do appear from north of U.S. lines they will receive warning shots, and if they then persist in advancing they will be shot.” The ambassador said he was writing Rusk “in view of the possibility of repercussions in the United States” from such deadly U.S. tactics.

U.S. Ambassador John J. Muccio’s letter to the State Department’s Dean Rusk, dated July 26, 1950, said the U.S. Army would shoot approaching South Korean refugee groups. Army investigators deliberately omitted this document from their 2001 report on the No Gun Ri refugee massacre, which began that very day. (Source: U.S. National Archives)

The letter stands as a clear statement of a theater-wide U.S. policy to open fire on approaching refugees. It also shows this policy was known to upper ranks of the U.S. government in Washington.

In 2006, under pressure for an explanation from the South Korean government, the Army acknowledged that its investigators of 1999-2001 had seen the Muccio letter, but it claimed they dismissed it as unimportant because it “outlined a proposed policy,” not an approved one – an argument that defied the plain English of the letter, which said the policy of shooting approaching refugees was among “decisions made.”¹² In his book Collateral Damage (2006), Conway-Lanz attests to the letter’s crucial importance, writing that “with this additional piece of evidence, the Pentagon report’s interpretation (of No Gun Ri) becomes difficult to sustain” – that is, its conclusion that the refugee killings were “not deliberate” became ever more untenable.¹³

Washington’s sensitivity on the Muccio letter is seen in a 2006 cable sent by then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, found in the Wikileaks dump of State Department cables. Rice suggested the South Koreans would not get an explanation in writing of the handling of the Muccio letter, as requested.¹⁴ Presumably that would enable further obfuscation as necessary.

In Embattled Memories, Choi notes that the Muccio letter “proved that the U.S. military had a policy of shooting approaching refugees during the Korean War. Nonetheless, this counter-voice did not last long in the U.S. media. The evidence of the No Gun Ri story quickly melted into the amnesia that is the American collective memory of the Korean War.”¹⁵

The Army’s conscious “amnesia” extended to more than a dozen other archival documents from the Korean War’s first months in which commanders, for example, ordered troops to “shoot all refugees coming across river,” ordered “all refugees to be fired on,” and declared refugees to be “fair game.”¹⁶ The Army researchers who found them highlighted such incriminating passages, but they were excluded from the Army report. The report also suppressed damning testimony from veterans of the mid-1950 warfront, who confirmed civilians were being killed indiscriminately. “It had been passed around that if you saw any Korean civilians in an area you were to shoot first and ask questions later,” one testified.¹⁷ “In that war we shoot [sic] everybody that wore white,” said another, white being the everyday garb of rural Koreans.¹⁸ “The word I heard was ‘Kill everybody from 6 to 60,’” testified a third.¹⁹

The suppressed documents were later found in the Army investigation’s own processed files at the National Archives; the ex-soldiers’ transcripts were obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests.

In Defense of the Truth

Although the truth of mid-1950 South Korea and No Gun Ri was whitewashed and distorted at every turn in 2001 in Washington, DC, it has now found a home in the two-story, 20,365-square-foot memorial museum and its surrounding three-year-old No Gun Ri Peace Park, a gently landscaped place of arched bridges and flowered walkways, stretching from the bullet-pocked railroad underpasses of 1950, through a garden of powerfully evocative sculptures bearing such titles as “Ordeal” and “Searching for Hope,” to the bottom of a path leading to a hilltop cemetery and the graves of No Gun Ri victims, marked “1950-7-26.”

The No Gun Ri railroad bridge, site of the 1950 refugee massacre. (Photo: Charles J. Hanley)

Visitors (an estimated 120,000 came in 2014) will find the warning words of Ambassador Muccio and Colonel Rogers behind the museum’s glass display cases, along with numerous “shoot refugees” orders. A diorama depicts the unfolding events of late July 1950. One wall bears the names of No Gun Ri’s dead. The truths of No Gun Ri can be found as well in nearby towns and villages, home of survivors who have testified to what happened, of a man whose face was shredded by bullets as a boy at No Gun Ri, a woman whose eye was blown out, others living with the legacy of livid scars, dents in their flesh and in their psyches. Elsewhere in South Korea, others have also worked to embed No Gun Ri in the national memory, producing a major studio’s feature film, a superbly drawn, two-volume graphic narrative, and an award-winning three-part television documentary.²⁰

The park should become “a place where everyone can feel and learn the lessons of history,” South Korea’s security minister, Jeong Jong-seop, told a gathering last September of international peace museum directors at the park’s conference

building. Park director Chung Koo-do told the same gathering that No Gun Ri is “a historical issue that both Korean and American citizens should remember.”²¹

No Gun Ri Peace Park memorial tower (Photo: Charles J. Hanley)

But the memory divide—East and West—can only grow. In the United States, the Korean feature film, A Small Pond, found no distributor. The graphic narrative, though translated into French and Italian, has not been published in English. Kill ‘Em All, a hard-hitting BBC documentary on No Gun Ri, aired in Britain in prime time yet was shunned in America.²² Two years after the Army’s deceitful report, a Pentagon-affiliated publisher issued an Army apologist’s polemic on No Gun Ri, an often-incoherent book packed with disinformation.²³ In the English-language Wikipedia, the “No Gun Ri Massacre” article became a Wikipedic free-for-all between jingoistic denialists and the truth. Finally, ironically around the time the Korean park was opened in 2011, the U.S. Defense Department purged from its website the Army’s investigative report, further pushing No Gun Ri toward official oblivion.

Refugee tableau at the No Gun Ri Peace Park (Photo: Charles J. Hanley)

That 2001 report, with its self-evident gaps and often clumsy deceptions, will remain on display at the No Gun Ri museum, as the memorial park grows into its role as final defender of the grim and unchallengeable realities of No Gun Ri. The realities extend beyond No Gun Ri: In 2005-2010, in good part because of the No Gun Ri revelations, South Koreans filed reports with their government’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission on more than 200 other alleged mass killings by the U.S. military in 1950-51, most said to be indiscriminate air attacks.²⁴ The U.S. government has shown no interest in investigating those allegations.²⁵

Charles J. Hanley is a retired Associated Press correspondent who was a member of the Pulitzer Prize-winning AP reporting team that confirmed the No Gun Ri Massacre in 1999. He is co-author of The Bridge at No Gun Ri (Henry Holt and Company, 2001).

The original 1999 Associated Press interactive Web package on No Gun Ri

Three 2008 Associated Press articles on the work of South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission:

On mass executions

On the U.S. role in mass executions

On the U.S. military’s indiscriminate killing of civilians

Recommended citation: Charles Hanley, “In the Face of American Amnesia, The Grim Truths of No Gun Ri Find a Home”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 9, No. 3, March 9, 2015.

Notes

¹ Information about the No Gun Ri Peace Park was obtained during a visit by author in September 2014.

² Charles Hanley, “No Gun Ri: Official Narrative and Inconvenient Truths.” Critical Asian Studies 42:4 (2010): 589–622; also in Truth and Reconciliation in South Korea: Between the Present and the Future of the Korean Wars, ed. Jae-Jung Suh (London and New York: Routledge 2013),68–94.

³ Suhi Choi, Embattled Memories: Contested Meanings in Korean War Memorials (Reno: University of Nevada 2014), 17.

⁴ See Charles J. Hanley, Sang-Hun Choe, Martha Mendoza, The Bridge at No Gun Ri (New York: Henry Holt.2001), 286. See also Hanley, Critical Asian Studies, 609.

⁵ See Hanley, “No Gun Ri: Official Narrative and Inconvenient Truths,” 607.

⁶ The U.S. Army investigation’s handling of these three documents is detailed in Hanley, Critical Asian Studies, 599-609.

⁷ Office of the Inspector General, Department of the Army, No Gun Ri Review (Washington, D.C. January 2001), xi, 98.

⁸ Office of the Inspector General, Department of the Army, No Gun Ri Review, xiii.

⁹ Hanley, “No Gun Ri: Official Narrative and Inconvenient Truths,” 609.

¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹ Sahr Conway-Lanz, “Beyond No Gun Ri: Refugees and the United States Military in the Korean War”. Diplomatic History 29:1 (2005): 49-81.

¹² “US Still Says South Korea Killings ‘Accident’ Despite Declassified Letter,” Yonhap News Agency, 30 Oct. 2006; Hanley and Mendoza, “1950 ‘Shoot Refugees’ Letter Was Known to No Gun Ri Inquiry, but Went Undisclosed,” The Associated Press, 14 April 2007.

¹³ Conway-Lanz, Collateral Damage: Americans, Noncombatant Immunity, and Atrocity after World War II (New York: Routledge 2006), 99.

¹⁴ U.S. State Department cable. 31 August 2006. “Response to Demarche: Muccio Letter and Nogun-ri.” From Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to U.S. Embassy, Seoul.

¹⁵ See Choi 11.

¹⁶ Hanley, “No Gun Ri: Official Narrative and Inconvenient Truths,” 609-610.

¹⁷ Ibid.

¹⁸ Ibid.

¹⁹ Ibid.

²⁰ Namely, writer-director Lee Saang-woo’s film A Little Pond; the graphic narrative No Gun Ri Story, by Park Kun-woong and Chung Eun-yong; Munwha Broadcasting Corp.’s series “No Gun Ri Still Lives On.”

²¹ “Welcome Address,” “Tragic Memories of the No Gun Ri Victims’ Community,” Report of the 8th International Conference of Museums for Peace, Sept. 19-22, 2014, The No Gun Ri International Peace Foundation.

²² British Broadcasting Corp., Kill ‘em All, Timewatch, 1 Feb. 2002.

²³ Robert L. Bateman, No Gun Ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2002)

²⁴ John Tirman, The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America’s Wars (New York: Oxford.2011).

²⁵ Hanley and Hyung-Jin Kim, “Korea Bloodbath Probe Ends; US Escapes Much Blame.” The Associated Press (Seoul), 11 July 2010.

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Fukushima: A Journey through an Ongoing Disaster

March 12th, 2015 by William Johnston

“A Body in Fukushima” is an ongoing project that consists of still photographs shot by William Johnston of Eiko Otake performing in the area surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi Reactor and of video interpretations of those still photographs made by Eiko.

Representative images and videos are embedded in the text below.

—

A Body in Fukushima Winter 2014, excerpt. Full video here.

One day in November of 2013 I answered the phone to hear the voice of Eiko Otake saying excitedly, “Bill! What do you think of going to Fukushima to shoot photos of me performing in the stations along the Jōban Line?” For several years Eiko, better known as half of the performance duo Eiko and Koma, and I had collaborated in the classroom and by then knew each other well. We had co‑taught two different courses, Japan and the Atomic Bomb and Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining in which we integrated movement exercises with historical and environmental studies. We both have long-standing interests in those and related topics, and had spoken at length about the triple disaster of 3.11 in Japan. Soon after the earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, we had talked about our concern for the people of Tōhoku and exchanged feelings of dread at the unfolding nuclear disaster in Fukushima. And I knew that she had visited Fukushima with a friend only five months after 3.11. But this new proposal took me by surprise.

Earlier that year Harry Philbrick, the Director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, had invited Eiko and Koma to perform in that city’s renowned 30^th Street Station. Koma was suffering from an ankle injury however, so Eiko decided to create a solo work, the first of her career.

The grandeur of the Philadelphia Station led Eiko to think afresh about the deserted train stations she had seen along the Jōban Line near Fukushima.

She remembered thinking at the time how some of those stations would never be used again in the foreseeable future. Not long before, they had been busy with schoolchildren, commuters, shoppers, tourists, and travelers. As she watched the businessmen and women in suits and travelers with their suitcases waiting for trains in the halls of the 30^th Street Station she thought, “what if I dig a hole into this marble floor as if digging a well for water and that hole goes and reaches to Fukushima: then it is like a hole that is the passage to another world in Alice’s Wonderland.” By dancing in the stations of Fukushima before performing in Philadelphia it seemed possible, as she put it, “to make that distance between two places malleable.” As Eiko later recalled, “I thought about taking some photos of the stations in Fukushima and of dancing in both Fukushima and Philadelphia. In that way, my body would carry a piece of Fukushima for the people in Philadelphia.” The journey had started in what Eiko conceived as a series called “A Body in Stations.”

We met in Tokyo on January 14, 2014, and took the train from Ueno to Iwaki, in Fukushima. There, we rented a car and drove first to Hirono, at that time the furthest north one could travel on the Jōban Line, and from there started to explore the stations that had been closed as a result of the 3.11 disasters.

It was late in the afternoon but we decided to explore Kido Station, the first where Eiko was contemplating performing. The station was boarded up, the streets eerily deserted. No damage from the earthquake was immediately visible and the tsunami had not reached that far inland. A cat scampered across in front of a house; a police car drove by us but the officers said nothing. Personal mail, books, and manga fell out of a broken garbage bag on the sidewalk. Kido was close to J-Village, which had been the training ground for Japanese soccer players in 2002 when Japan had co-sponsored the World Cup, and soccer motifs decorated the streetlamps of the deserted streets. In front of the station stood a dosimeter reminding us of the invisible disaster that had spread across Kido and many other towns to the north and west.

The next morning we drove around the area closer to the coast east of Kido station. Huge black vinyl bags lined the road on both sides in places, and on the fields further away they were stacked two or three high and sometimes more. We later learned that they were one-ton bags filled with radioactive soil and debris. A half devastated house stood close to the road and I parked the car in its driveway. We got out and walked around the neighborhood. Houses that had been damaged by the earthquake and tsunami stood untouched for nearly three years because of the invisible blanket of radioactive dust that covered them. One house, modest in size, had its front sliding glass doors smashed apart by the tsunami so that the entire front of the house was open to the elements, which was true for almost all of the houses in this neighborhood. From stairwell to the second floor a computerized voice announced the time. I wondered whether batteries could last that long. The only other sounds were of the wind blowing the faded curtains. A stuffed toy duck, now nothing but a bit of radioactive debris, lay on shards of broken glass.

Another house had roof damage from the earthquake but suffered little damage from the tsunami. White tarpaulins had been weighted down with sandbags to keep the roof from leaking until it could be repaired.

We walked back to the car and explored the house next to the driveway in which we had parked. It was large and built traditionally, with huge, naturally formed beams holding up an intact roof that stood above an interior that looked as though a miniature tornado had swept through it. Household belongings were strewn in complete disarray. Dolls and other objects still sat upon the shelves in front of an upright piano that lay on its back, pinned down by a fallen pillar. In what must have been the living room, two chairs had been placed so that one could sit there and look out at what once must have been a lovely garden. The owners must have returned and sat down for a time; I could only imagine the range of emotions they might have felt.

The neighboring house across the street had been nearly as large and elegant. Its front also had been hit by the tsunami. A corner pillar was washed away leaving the roof intact, cantilevered by its large beams. A photo lay among the rubble, its glass shattered. But it was possible to make out the image: an aerial view of the neighborhood in better times, perhaps in the 1970s or 1980s, showing a large number of houses clustered together. After returning, I discovered that it had been called Yaburemachi (破町), quite literally “torn town,” perhaps the legacy of tsunamis past.

We looked at each other and we both knew that I needed to make some images of Eiko performing there. A broken house was outside the original idea of “A Body in Stations” but the place somehow demanded our attention. It became a turning point for the entire project. While we kept the Jōban Line stations as definite destinations we also watched for other locations that called for attention. There were many. We spent the rest of that day, January 15, 2014, traveling from Kido to Tatsuta and further north to Tomioka. We ended the day with a look at Yonomori Station. Everyplace else we visited allowed short-term visitors, but Yonomori was just across the line of permitted entry. We thought that it was for a good reason and kept our stay short.

The following day we drove far inland and around the entire zone of radioactivity so that we could visit stations north of the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown site. In the afternoon, we reached Momouchi, the station just north of Namie, which was inside the evacuation zone, or as it is euphemistically called in Japanese, the “zone of difficult return” (帰還困難区域).. It had been only slightly damaged by the earthquake but was well away from the tsunami. By then we had established a rhythm to our work. I suggested places where she might perform. Eiko would reflect on it or suggest another, and after some consideration choose her costumes. When we exhausted the possibilities for one site or when we ourselves got exhausted, we moved to the next. The afternoon light of the short winter days was fading before we finished.

Our last day was January 17, which was clear and cold. Our first destination was the station at Shinchi. We followed the road to its location on the GPS. I thought there must be a problem with the GPS system, since there was nothing at that site that resembled a station. But it was indeed the right place. Shinchi station had been devastated by the tsunami and since it was well outside the zone affected by radiation it had been completely dismantled. Had it been inside the evacuation zone it would have been left standing, as was Tomioka station. From there we went to the next station to the north, which was Sakamoto. It also had been damaged beyond repair and dismantled, leaving the asphalt covered concrete platform standing above the surrounding fields. In front of the platform a small memorial marked the spot where the station’s front entrance had been. Despite the chilly wind, Eiko performed for an extended period there.

Our last station was Komagamine, It was still cold if not so windy and Eiko performed for the camera until it was nearly dark.

As we drove between locations we often were silent. I was deeply moved by the knowledge that many of the people who had lived in the deserted houses and traveled through the now empty railway stations might never return. Even now, four years later, many of those evacuated are living in “temporary” shelters. Some have given up completely on the possibility of return and moved to other parts of the country. Former residents could visit their houses for only a few hours at a time, but because of the radioactivity could not reclaim even undamaged belongings. Outside the evacuation zone much of Tōhoku is on its way to rebuilding. But the nuclear meltdown was a manmade disaster and one that the proponents of nuclear energy promised could never happen. After the fact it was, they claimed, literally beyond conception (sōteigai); a better translation might be that it exceeded their assumptions. But that claim rang hollow. It seemed safe to say that the engineers and corporate executives who designed and ran the nuclear reactors had willfully decided to assume that this kind of disaster was impossible. To plan for it would have dug deeply into corporate profits. Government regulators, by approving the plans for the reactor’s design, accepted that assumption.

In this respect the Fukushima meltdown reflected a larger trend. Where anger and ignorance, expressed through aggressiveness and arrogance, had dominated the first half of the twentieth century, greed and ignorance had come to dominate the second half of the century and continues today. The First and Second World Wars were stirred, in no small part, by real and imagined injustices. Nearly entire populations committed themselves to war efforts, accepting as somehow inevitable the consequences of death and destruction for their own nations but particularly for their victims. Since 1945, while myriad and brutal Asian wars continued, in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear war has been averted over seven decades. At the same time people came to ignore the insanity of unlimited economic growth and ever-greater wealth. Nuclear energy seems to promise as much electrical power as any economy might need. Its proponents swore to its safety and continue to do so today, despite the many accidents, large and small, that have occurred in nuclear power generation facilities worldwide. Japan’s first major accident occurred in 1978 when Fukushima Daiichi’s No. 3 Reactor was allowed to run out of control for over seven hours. It was successfully brought back under control but the accident was kept secret until 2007. There are many today who support nuclear plants saying that it can cut carbon emissions. Perhaps that is true but nuclear power will never be one-hundred-percent safe especially in a country with frequent earthquakes. Explosions and accidents can produce environmental and human disasters as well illustrated by Fukushima. And there is no avoiding the fact that ignorance of nuclear danger has been cultivated by those who want that danger hidden—recall the cute figure of Plutonium Boy that was created in the 1990s to put the Japanese people at ease with nuclear power.

We left Fukushima on January 18, and from there we went directly to visit Hayashi Kyoko, the writer and survivor of the Nagasaki atomic bombing. Eiko and I both were nervous about how she would see the images we had created. Upon seeing a selection of ten images, Ms. Hayashi said, “Because you are in these pictures, I look at each scene much longer. I see more detail. I see each photograph wondering why Eiko is here, how she decided to be here, how she placed herself here.“

When Harry Philbrick saw the images he immediately wanted to exhibit them at PAFA. Eiko showed them to other curators, and soon we had three exhibitions planned for the fall of 2014 and winter of 2015, at the Galleries of Contemporary Art in Colorado Springs and at Wesleyan University.

Not long after Eiko had returned to the United States while I stayed in Japan to research my next project, she contacted me asking if I would like to return to Fukushima in the summer. Despite the scheduling difficulties I knew it was something we had to do.

We returned to many of the same locations we visited in January over the course of five days in late July. Some things had changed but it was all too clear that parts of Fukushima were fated to become nuclear wastelands for the foreseeable future. We worked all day and then assessed the day’s images in the evening. Where we shot fewer than 2,000 images in the winter we shot over twice that number in the summer.

–

A Body in Fukushima Summer 2014, excerpt. Full video here.

In pursuing this project it has been my desire to bring attention to the suffering that nuclear power had imposed on the people of Fukushima in particular, but beyond Fukushima, too. Through witnessing itself we can reflect on and help bring about change to what is being witnessed. For me, Eiko’s performances make visible the anguish of the people and other living beings who have suffered from the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns and allow us to bear witness with a kind of intimacy that otherwise remains on the margins. Many have forgotten, or want to forget the fact that the disaster is ongoing and will be for a long time to come. Corporate interests and their governmental supporters are invested in making us forget at a time when the Abe administration is committing to putting Japan’s nuclear plants back online. Which makes this a continuing journey. I hope that Eiko and I will be able to go and bear witness again to the true price of nuclear energy.

William Johnston is Professor of History, East Asian Studies, and Science in Society at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut but for the 2015-16 is Edwin O. Reischauer Visiting Professor of Japanese Studies at Harvard. His books include Geisha, Harlot, Strangler, Star: A Woman, Sex, and Morality in Modern Japan. New York, Columbia University Press, 2005 and The Modern Epidemic: A History of Tuberculosis in Japan. Cambridge, Council on East Asian Studies Publications, Harvard University, 1995. He is also the author of “Hōken ryōmin kara rettō no hitobito e: Amino Yoshihiko no rekishi jujutsu no tabiji” (From Feudal Fishing Villagers to an Archipelago’s Peoples: The Historiographical Journey of Amino Yoshihiko), Gendai shisō(revue de la pensé d’aujourd’hui), vol. 41, no. 19, 2014, pp. 232-249.

He is working on a book about the history of cholera in nineteenth-century Japan. His photographic work has been exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, the Galleries of Contemporary Art at Colorado State University, Colorado Springs, and at Wesleyan University, and has appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times.

Born and raised in Japan, and based in New York since 1976, Eiko Otake is a movement-based multidisciplinary performing artist. For over forty years, she has worked as Eiko & Koma performing worldwide. For the 50 plus works they have co-created, both Eiko and Koma handcrafted sets, costumes, sound, and media. Eiko is currently presenting a solo project, A Body in Places, which opened with A Body in a Station, a twelve hour performance at Philadelphia’s Amtrak station in October 2014. Photo exhibition A Body in Fukushima, a collaboration with photographer William Johnston, tours with the project. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award, the Dance Magazine Award, and an inaugural USA Fellowship and the Duke Performing Artist Award, Eiko regularly teaches at Wesleyan University and Colorado College.

Recommended citation: William Johnston with Eiko Otake, “The Making of ‘A Body in Fukushima’: A Journey through an Ongoing Disaster,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 9, No. 4, March 9, 2015.

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China’s Gold Strategy

March 12th, 2015 by Alasdair Macleod

China first delegated the management of gold policy to the People’s Bank by regulations in 1983.

This development was central to China’s emergence as a free-market economy following the post-Mao reforms in 1979/82. At that time the west was doing its best to suppress gold to enhance confidence in paper currencies, releasing large quantities of bullion for others to buy. This is why the timing is important: it was an opportunity for China, a one-billion population country in the throes of rapid economic modernisation, to diversify growing trade surpluses from the dollar.

To my knowledge this subject has not been properly addressed by any private-sector analysts, which might explain why it is commonly thought that China’s gold policy is a more recent development, and why even industry specialists show so little understanding of the true position. But in the thirty-one years since China’s gold regulations were enacted, global mine production has increased above-ground stocks from an estimated 92,000 tonnes to 163,000 tonnes today, or 71,000 tonnes* ; and while the west was also reducing its stocks in a prolonged bear market all that gold was hoarded somewhere.

The period I shall focus on is between 1983 and 2002, when gold ownership in China was finally liberated and the Shanghai Gold Exchange was formed. The fact that the Chinese authorities permitted private ownership of gold suggests that they had by then acquired sufficient gold for monetary and strategic purposes, and were content to add to them from domestic mine production and Chinese scrap thereafter rather than through market purchases. This raises the question as to how much gold China might have secretly accumulated by the end of 2002 for this to be the case.

China’s 1983 gold regulations coincided with the start of a western bear market in gold, when Swiss private bankers managing the largest western depositories reduced their clients’ holdings over the following fifteen years ultimately to very low levels. In the mid-eighties the London bullion market developed to enable future mine and scrap supplies to be secured and sold for immediate delivery. The bullion delivered was leased or swapped from central banks to be replaced at later dates. A respected American analyst, Frank Veneroso, in a 2002 speech in Lima estimated total central bank leases and swaps to be between 10,000 and 16,000 tonnes at that time. This amount has to be subtracted from official reserves and added to the enormous increase in mine supply, along with western portfolio liquidation. No one actually knows how much gold was supplied through the markets, but this must not stop us making reasonable estimates.

Between 1983 and 2002, mine production, scrap supplies, portfolio sales and central bank leasing absorbed by new Asian and Middle Eastern buyers probably exceeded 75,000 tonnes. It is easy to be blasé about such large amounts, but at today’s prices this is the equivalent of $3 trillion. The Arabs had surplus dollars and Asia was rapidly industrialising. Both camps were not much influenced by western central bank propaganda aimed at side-lining gold in the new era of floating exchange rates, though Arab enthusiasm will have been diminished somewhat by the severe bear market as the 1980s progressed. The table below summarises the likely distribution of this gold.

Gold Supply 31102014.jpg

Today, many believe that India is the largest private sector market, but in the 12 years following the repeal of the Gold Control Act in 1990, an estimated 5,426 tonnes only were imported (Source: Indian Gold Book 2002), and between 1983 and 1990 perhaps a further 1,500 tonnes were smuggled into India, giving total Indian purchases of about 7,000 tonnes between 1983 and 2002. That leaves the rest of Asia including the Middle East, China, Turkey and South-East Asia. Of the latter two, Turkey probably took in about 4,000 tonnes, and we can pencil in 5,000 tonnes for South-East Asia, bearing in mind the tiger economies’ boom-and-bust in the 1990s. This leaves approximately 55,000 tonnes split between the Middle East and China, assuming 4,850 tonnes satisfied other unclassified demand.

The Middle East began to accumulate gold in the mid-1970s, storing much of it in the vaults of the Swiss private banks. Income from oil continued to rise, so despite the severe bear market in gold from 1980 onwards, Middle-Eastern investors continued to buy. In the 1990s, a new generation of Swiss portfolio managers less committed to gold was advising clients, including those in the Middle East, to sell. At the same time, discouraged by gold’s bear market, a western-educated generation of Arabs started to diversify into equities, infrastructure spending and other investment media. Gold stocks owned by Arab investors remain a well-kept secret to this day, but probably still represents the largest quantity of vaulted gold, given the scale of petro-dollar surpluses in the 1980s. However, because of the change in the Arabs’ financial culture, from the 1990s onwards the pace of their acquisition waned.

By elimination this leaves China as the only other significant buyer during that era. Given that Arab enthusiasm for gold diminished for over half the 1983-2002 period, the Chinese government being price-insensitive to a western-generated bear market could have easily accumulated in excess of 20,000 tonnes by the end of 2002.

China’s reasons for accumulating gold

We now know that China had the resources from its trade surpluses as well as the opportunity to buy bullion. Heap-leaching techniques boosted mine output and western investors sold down their bullion, so there was ample supply available; but what was China’s motive?

Initially China probably sought to diversify from US dollars, which was the only trade currency it received in the days before the euro. Furthermore, it would have seemed nonsensical to export goods in return for someone else’s paper specifically inflated to pay them, which is how it must have appeared to China at the time. It became obvious from European and American attitudes to China’s emergence as an economic power that these export markets could not be wholly relied upon in the long term. So following Russia’s recovery from its 1998 financial crisis, China set about developing an Asian trading bloc in partnership with Russia as an eventual replacement for western export markets, and in 2001 the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation was born. In the following year, her gold policy also changed radically, when Chinese citizens were allowed for the first time to buy gold and the Shanghai Gold Exchange was set up to satisfy anticipated demand.

The fact that China permitted its citizens to buy physical gold suggests that it had already acquired a satisfactory holding. Since 2002, it will have continued to add to gold through mine and scrap supplies, which is confirmed by the apparent absence of Chinese-refined 1 kilo bars in the global vaulting system. Furthermore China takes in gold doré from Asian and African mines, which it also refines and probably adds to government stockpiles.

Since 2002, the Chinese state has almost certainly acquired by these means a further 5,000 tonnes or more. Allowing the public to buy gold, as well as satisfying the public’s desire for owning it, also reduces the need for currency intervention to stop the renminbi rising. Therefore the Chinese state has probably accumulated between 20,000 and 30,000 tonnes since 1983, and has no need to acquire any more through market purchases given her own refineries are supplying over 500 tonnes per annum.

All other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation** are gold-friendly or have increased their gold reserves. So the west having ditched gold for its own paper will now find that gold has a new role as Asia’s ultimate money for over 3 billion people, or over 4 billion if you include the South-East Asian and Pacific Rim countries for which the SCO will be the dominant trading partner.

*See GoldMoney’s estimates of the aboveground gold stock by James Turk and Juan Castaneda.
**Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, India, Iran, Pakistan, and Mongolia. Turkey and Afghanistan are to join in due course.

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Libya, ISIS and the Unaffordable Luxury of Hindsight

March 12th, 2015 by Ahmad Barqawi

Who are you?” the late Muammar Gaddafi once rhetorically asked in a famous speech of his towards the end of his reign; (rightly) questioning the legitimacy of those seeking to over-throw his government at the time, calling them extremists, foreign agents, rats and drug-addicts. He was laughed at, unfairly caricatured, ridiculed and incessantly demonized; a distasteful parody video poking fun at the late Libyan leader even went viral on social media; evidently the maker of the video, an Israeli, thought the Libyan colloquial Arabic word “Zenga” (which means an Alleyway) sounded funny enough that he extracted it from one of Gaddafi’s speeches, looped it on top of a hip-hop backing track and voila… he got himself a hit video which was widely (and shamefully) circulated with a “revolutionary” zeal in the Arab world. We shared, we laughed, he died.

But the bloody joke is on all of us; Gaddafi knew what he was talking about; right from the get-go, he accused the so-called Libyan rebels of being influenced by Al-Qaeda ideology and Ben Laden’s school of thought; no one had taken his word for it of course, not even a little bit. I mean why should we have? After all, wasn’t he a vile, sex-centric dictator hell-bent on massacring half of the Libyan population while subjecting the other half to manic raping sprees with the aid of his trusted army of Viagra-gobbling, sub-Saharan mercenaries? At least that’s what we got from the visual cancer that is Al Jazeera channel and its even more acrid Saudi counterpart Al-Arabiya in their heavily skewed coverage of NATO’s vicious conquest of Libya. Plus Gaddafi did dress funny; why would anyone trust a haggard, weird-looking despot dressed in colorful rags when you have well-groomed Zionists like Bernard Henry Levy, John McCain and Hillary Clinton at your side, smiling and flashing the victory sign in group photo-ops, right?

Gaddafi called them drug-addicted, Islamic fundamentalists; we know them as ISIS… it doesn’t seem much of a joke now, does it? And ISIS is what had been in store for us all along; the “revolutionary” lynching and sodomization of Muammar Gaddafi amid manic chants of “Allahu Akbar”, lauded by many at the time as some sort of a warped triumph of the good of popular will (read: NATO-sponsored mob rule) over the evil of dictatorship (sovereign state), was nothing but a gory precursor for the future of the country and the region; mass lynching of entire populations in Libya, Syria and Iraq and the breakup of key Arab states into feuding mini-statelets. The gruesome video of Colonel Gaddafi’s murder, which puts to shame the majority of ISIS videos in terms of unhinged brutality and gore, did not invoke the merest of condemnations back then, on the contrary; everyone seemed perfectly fine with the grotesque end of the Libyan “tyrant”… except that it was only the beginning of a new and unprecedented reign of terror courtesy of NATO’s foot-soldiers and GCC-backed Islamic insurgents.

The rapid proliferation of trigger-happy terrorist groups and Jihadi factions drenched in petrodollars in Libya was not some sort of an intelligence failure on the part of western governments or a mere by-product of the power vacuum left by a slain Gaddafi; it was a deliberate, calculated policy sought after and implemented by NATO and its allies in the Gulf under the cringe-inducing moniker “Friends of Libya” (currently known as the International Coalition against ISIS) to turn the north-African country into the world’s largest ungovernable dumpster of weapons, al-Qaida militants and illegal oil trading.

So it is safe to say that UNSC resolution 1973, which practically gave free rein for NATO to bomb Libya into smithereens, has finally borne fruit… and it’s rotten to its nucleus, you can call the latest gruesome murder of 21 Egyptian fishermen and workers by the Libyan branch of the Islamic State exhibit “A”, not to mention of course the myriad of daily killings, bombings and mini-civil wars that are now dotting the entire country which, ever since the West engineered its coup-d’etat against the Gaddafi government, have become synonymous with the bleak landscape of lawlessness and death that is “Libya” today. And the gift of NATO liberation is sure to keep on giving for years of instability and chaos to come.

In an interview with the western media misinformation collective that is the BBC, ABC and the Sunday Times in February 2011; the late Muammar Gaddafi told his condescending interviewers; “have you seen the Al Qaeda operatives? Have you heard all these Jihadi broadcasts? It is Al Qaeda that is controlling the cities of Al Baida and Darnah, former Guantanamo inmates and extremists unleashed by America to terrorize the Libyan people…”. Darnah is now the main stronghold for ISIS in Libya.

In a bizarre coincidence (or some sort of cosmic irony); the date on which ISIS chose to release its video of the beheading of Egyptian captives, thereby officially declaring its presence in the war-torn country with three oil fields under its control, (appropriately) marked the 4th anniversary of the start of the so-called Libyan revolution on February 15^th, 2011; a more apt “tribute” to commemorate the Western instigated regime-change debacle in Libya could not have been made.

But even long before ISIS became the buzzword, the acrid nature of a “revolutionary” Libya showed in full, sickening splendor almost instantly right after the old regime fell, everything the late Gaddafi was falsely accused of doing was literally perfected to a chilling degree by the so-called rebels; massacres, indiscriminate shelling of residential areas, car-bombings, mass arrests, torture, theft of oil and national resources… the whole lot. In 2013; two British pro-Palestine activists, on their way to Gaza with an aid convoy, got to experience first-hand the rotten fruits of the Libyan chapter of the so-called Arab Spring when they were abducted by a motely crew of Libyan revolutionaries-turned-warlords in the city of Benghazi and gang raped in front of their father.

Proponents of Humanitarian Interventions must be patting themselves on the back these days; now that Libya has completed its democratic makeover from a country with the highest standard of living in Africa under Gaddafi’s rule into a textbook definition of a failed state; a godless wasteland of religious fanaticism, internal bloodletting and wholesale head-chopping, in fact Libya became so “democratic” that there are now two parliaments and two (warring) governments; each with its own (criminal) army and supported with money and caches of weapons from competing foreign powers, not to mention the myriad of secessionist movements and militias which the illegal coup against Gaddafi has spawned all over the country while free health care, education and electricity, which the Libyans took for granted under Gaddafi’s regime, are all now but relics of the past; that’s the “Odyssey Dawn” the Libyans were promised; a sanitized version of Iraq sans the public outrage, neatly re-packaged in a “responsibility to protect” caveat and delivered via aerial bombing campaigns where even the West’s overzealous Gulf Co-conspirators Club (GCC), driven by nothing beyond petty personal vendettas against Gaddafi, got to test the lethality of its rusted, American-made military aircrafts alongside NATO on the people of Tripoli and Sirte.

This is what Gaddafi had predicted right from the get-go and then some; the ephemeral euphoria of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions was just too potent and too exhilarating for us to read the fine print; was it a conspiracy or a true revolutionary spirit gone awry? It doesn’t really matter now that ISIS has become the true legacy of Tahrir Square; “they will turn Libya into another Afghanistan, another Somalia, another Iraq… your women won’t be allowed out, they will transform Libya into an Islamic Emirate and America will bomb the country under the pretext of fighting terrorism”, the late Libyan leader had said in a televised speech on February 22^nd, 2011, and more prophetic words were never spoken.

America’s “clean war” Libyan prototype proved to be such a success that it was replicated with a wanton abandon in Syria; Paul Bremer’s “Blackwater” death squads of old, which reigned terror all over Iraq, are back… with an Islamic twist; bearded, clad in black and explosives from head to toe and mounting convoys of Toyota Land Cruiser trucks with an ever-expanding, seemingly borderless Islamic Caliphate (that somehow leaves the Zionist regime unencumbered in its occupation of Palestine) set in their sights.

Everyday the Arab World is awakened to a new-videotaped atrocity; steeped in gore and maniacal terror courtesy of ISIS (or IS or ISIL), and countless of other “youtubeless”, albeit more heinous crimes courtesy of America’s very own ever-grinding, one-sided drone warfare; the entire region seesaws between machete beheadings and hellfire missile incinerations. Death from above… as well as below; the War on Terror rears its ugly head once again; to bring in line those nasty terrorists that the West itself funded and sponsored in the name of democracy to destabilize “unsavory” regimes; an unrelenting Groundhog Day that starts with the Responsibility to Protect and ends with the War on Terror, with thousands of innocent lives, typically chalked up to collateral damage, crushed in the process.

This is exactly what Gaddafi foresaw; a Libya mired in utter chaos, civil conflict and western diktats; a breeding ground for Jihadi fundamentalism and extremists… too bad we just laughed his warnings off to an Israeli-made parody tune.

Ahmad Barqawi, freelance columnist and writer.

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“War is Addictive”: The GOP, Iran and Diplomatic Sabotage. Tom Cotton’s Letter signed by 47 Senate Republicans

March 12th, 2015 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

“They’re [the Republicans] contacting a foreign power in the middle of a war. It’s a damn bad mistake.” – President Lyndon B. Johnson, 1968

War is addictive. It is also sweet to those who do not know it. There is always someone else who fights it on their behalves. The GOP is better at that than most – their desperation to keep seats in Congress and win others has propelled them to lunatic belligerence. Middle Eastern states have been removable furniture for some time – at least when it comes to their regimes – and the GOP strategists seem to think that a pulverising strike on Iran might not be the worst option available.

None of the recent cantankerousness towards Iran seems fortuitous. The Boehner invitation to Israel’s prime minister without White House approval, a mote in the eye of Obama; the Netanyahu pageantry of proposed violence and illegal war regarding Iran’s nuclear ambitions; and now, Tom Cotton’s letter signed by 47 Senate Republicans suggesting that the war trumpets are being readied with constitutional flyers. “Senate Republicans have moved from mere opposition to Obama’s foreign policy to outright sabotage”.[1]

The letter to Tehran, dated March 9, reads like a childish exclamation, an impetuous feeling that its authors are being left out in the cold of history.[2] “It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system.” (Cotton, the callow Arkansas freshman behind the note, evidently repays such ignorance by not knowing the Iranian constitutional system.)

With school teacher dourness, the note goes on to defang and denude any agreement that might arise between the Obama administration and that of Ayatollah Khamenei and his colleagues. “Congress,” it reminds the readers, “plays the significant role of ratifying [international agreements]”.

The signatories, bursting with pride, suggest the limiting nature of the president’s office – the occupant in the White House can only ever be there a maximum of two four-year terms, “whereas senators may serve an unlimited number of 6-year terms.” The sense of staleness would be hard to avoid, and the readers in Tehran will be justified in thinking that the occupants in the great thieving house that is Congress have lost their marbles. “We hope this letter enriches your knowledge of our constitutional system and promotes mutual understanding and clarity as nuclear negotiations progress.” The prelude to any attack usually comes in the form of a lecture.

The opportunity to convert this absurd event into a partisan spectacle was hard to resist. Democrat Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan suggested that she “never would have sent a letter to Saddam Hussein.” Senator Dick Burin of Illinois could only heave a sigh of resignation. “It’s just, I could not think of a more overt effort to jeopardize peace negotiations” (Politico, Mar 9).

There is even a suggestion that the Republicans might have been flirting with the sirens of treason, though the Democrats have hardly been immune from the business of seeking war when some vague sense of patriotic debauchery demanded it. Hillary Clinton, seeing a golden opportunity, suggested that, “Either the senators were trying to be helpful to the Iranians or harmful to the commander-in-chief.”[3] The Clintons have never been averse to resorting to the gun in international non-diplomacy, and Clinton’s reptilian manoeuvres should come as no surprise.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif was merely cool in reaction. “In our view, this letter has no legal value and is mostly a propaganda ploy. It is very interesting that while negotiations are still in progress and while no agreement has been reached, some political pressure groups are so afraid even of the prospect of an agreement that they resort to unconventional methods, unprecedented in diplomatic history.”[4]

Not quite. America’s political nest of intrigue and damnation has had a few twists and turns that demand caution in using the term “unprecedented”. The prolonging of the Vietnam War in 1968 had every bit to do with the machinations of presidential contender Richard Milhous Nixon even as a struggling Lyndon Baines Johnson was trying to cut some peace measure with his North Vietnamese counterparts.

There was one vital obstacle to any settlement: the South Vietnamese. On October 29, 1968, the Johnson administration got a sense that Nixon was seeking to block any peace settlement, hoping to prolong the war. In what reads like a seedy backroom conspiracy, Johnson’s Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Eugene Rostow, received word from Wall Street financier Alexander Sachs that collusion was taking place between financiers and bankers over frustrating any peace deal. Money was to be made, and peace was not going to help.

Eugene passed the material on to his brother, the national security advisor Walt Rostow. “The speaker,” explained Eugene, “said he thought the prospects for a bombing halt or a cease-fire were dim, because Nixon was playing the problem… to block… They would incite Saigon to be difficult, and Hanoi to wait.”[5] The content of FBI wiretaps on GOP behaviour incensed Johnson, who did use the “treason” word.

The derailment of the Paris talks by the Nixon-Kissinger union was the stellar performance of an empire running out of ideas, largely because it was readying itself for the imperial and ultimately decaying rule of the Nixon administration. Sabotage, political attainment, survival – these are the ghoulish synonyms of party ambitions.

In the GOP’s case, dabbling with disruptive verve in the diplomacy of the incumbent administration may have worked in the past, but it comes with its risks. Various Republican senators refused to pen their name to the letter, not through any act of virtue, so much as strategy. Cotton and his colleagues were being foolish in their zeal. “I knew,” claimed Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, “it was going to be only Republicans on [the letter]. I just don’t view that as where I need to be today.”[6]

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

Notes:

[1] http://www.vox.com/2015/3/10/8183851/cotton-iran-2016

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/03/09/world/middleeast/document-the-letter-senate-republicans-addressed-to-the-leaders-of-iran.html?_r=1

[3] http://www.vox.com/2015/3/10/8184427/clinton-iran-letter

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/world/asia/white-house-faults-gop-senators-letter-to-irans-leaders.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1

[5] http://truth-out.org/progressive-picks/item/13994-how-richard-nixon-sabotaged-1968-vietnam-peace-talks-to-get-elected-president

[6] http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/iran-letter-could-backfire-gop-dissenters-say-115922.html

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The ECB’s Noose Around Greece: How Central Banks Harness Governments

March 12th, 2015 by Ellen Brown

Remember when the infamous Goldman Sachs delivered a thinly-veiled threat to the Greek Parliament in December, warning them to elect a pro-austerity prime minister or risk having central bank liquidity cut off to their banks? (See January 6^th post here.) It seems the European Central Bank (headed by Mario Draghi, former managing director of Goldman Sachs International) has now made good on the threat.

The week after the leftwing Syriza candidate Alexis Tsipras was sworn in as prime minister, the ECB announced that it would no longer accept Greek government bonds and government-guaranteed debts as collateral for central bank loans to Greek banks. The banks were reduced to getting their central bank liquidity through “Emergency Liquidity Assistance” (ELA), which is at high interest rates and can also be terminated by the ECB at will.

In an interview reported in the German magazine Der Spiegel on March 6^th, Alexis Tsipras said that the ECB was “holding a noose around Greece’s neck.” If the ECB continued its hardball tactics, he warned, “it will be back to the thriller we saw before February” (referring to the market turmoil accompanying negotiations before a four-month bailout extension was finally agreed to).

The noose around Greece’s neck is this: the ECB will not accept Greek bonds as collateral for the central bank liquidity all banks need, until the new Syriza government accepts the very stringent austerity program imposed by the troika (the EU Commission, ECB and IMF). That means selling off public assets (including ports, airports, electric and petroleum companies), slashing salaries and pensions, drastically increasing taxes and dismantling social services, while creating special funds to save the banking system.

These are the mafia-like extortion tactics by which entire economies are yoked into paying off debts to foreign banks – debts that must be paid with the labor, assets and patrimony of people who had nothing to do with incurring them.

Playing Chicken with the People’s Money

Greece is not the first to feel the noose tightening on its neck. As The Economist notes, in 2013 the ECB announced that it would cut off Emergency Lending Assistance to Cypriot banks within days, unless the government agreed to its bailout terms. Similar threats were used to get agreement from the Irish government in 2010.

Likewise, says The Economist, the “Greek banks’ growing dependence on ELA leaves the government at the ECB’s mercy as it tries to renegotiate the bailout.”

Mark Weisbrot commented in the Huffington Post:

We should be clear about what this means. The ECB’s move was completely unnecessary . … It looks very much like a deliberate attempt to undermine the new government.

. . . The ECB could . . . stabilize Greek bond yields at low levels, but instead it chose . . . to go to the opposite extreme — and I mean extreme — to promote a run on bank deposits, tank the Greek stock market, and drive up Greek borrowing costs.

Weisbrot observed that the troika had plunged the Eurozone into at least two additional years of unnecessary recession beginning in 2011, because “they were playing a similar game of chicken. . . . [T]he ECB deliberately allowed these market actors to create an existential crisis for the euro, in order to force concessions from the governments of Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Ireland.”

The Tourniquet of Central Bank Liquidity

Not just Greek banks but all banks are reliant on central bank liquidity, because they are all technically insolvent. They all lend money they don’t have. They rely on being able to borrow from other banks, the money market, or the central bank as needed to balance their books. The central bank (which has the power to print money) is the ultimate backstop in this sleight of hand. If that source of liquidity dries up, the banks go down.

In the Eurozone, the national central banks of member countries have relinquished this critical credit power to the European Central Bank. And the ECB, like the US Federal Reserve, marches to the drums of large international banks rather than to the democratic will of the people.

Lest there be any doubt, let’s review Goldman’s December memo to the Greek Parliament, reprinted on Zerohedge. Titled “From GRecovery to GRelapse,” it warned:

[H]erein lies the main risk for Greece. The economy needs the only lender of last resort to the banking system to maintain ample provision of liquidity. And this is not just because banks may require resources to help reduce future refinancing risks for the sovereign. But also because banks are already reliant on government issued or government guaranteed securities to maintain the current levels of liquidity constant.

In the event of a severe Greek government clash with international lenders, interruption of liquidity provision to Greek banks by the ECB could potentially even lead to a Cyprus-style prolonged “bank holiday”. And market fears for potential Euro-exit risks could rise at that point. [Emphasis added.]

Why would the ECB have to “interrupt liquidity provision” just because of a “clash with international lenders”? As Mark Weisbrot observed, the move was completely unnecessary. The central bank can flick the credit switch on or off at its whim. Any country that resists going along with the troika’s austerity program may find that its banks have been cut off from this critical liquidity, because the government and the banks are no longer considered “good credit risks.” And that damning judgment becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as is happening in Greece.

“The Icing on the Cake”

Adding insult to injury, the ballooning Greek debt was incurred to save the very international banks to which it is now largely owed. Worse, those banks bought the debt with cheap loans from the ECB! Pepe Escobar writes:

The troika sold Greece an economic racket …. Essentially, Greece’s public debt went from private to public hands when the ECB and the IMF ‘rescued’ private (German, French, Spanish) banks. The debt, of course, ballooned. The troika intervened, not to save Greece, but to save private banking.

The ECB bought public debt from private banks for a fortune, because the ECB could not buy public debt directly from the Greek state. The icing on this layer cake is that private banks had found the cash to buy Greece’s public debt exactly from…the ECB, profiting from ultra-friendly interest rates. This is outright theft. And it’s the thieves that have been setting the rules of the game all along.

That brings us back to the role of Goldman Sachs (dubbed by Matt Taibbi the “Vampire Squid”), which “helped” Greece get into the Eurozone through a highly questionable derivative scheme involving a currency swap that used artificially high exchange rates to conceal Greek debt.

Goldman then turned around and hedged its bets by shorting Greek debt.

Predictably, these derivative bets went very wrong for the less sophisticated of the two players. A €2.8 billion loan to Greece in 2001 became a €5.1 billion debt by 2005.

Despite this debt burden, in 2006 Greece remained within the ECB’s 3% budget deficit guidelines. It got into serious trouble only after the 2008 banking crisis. In late 2009, Goldman joined in bearish bets on Greek debt launched by heavyweight hedge funds to put selling pressure on the euro, forcing Greece into the bailout and austerity measures that have since destroyed its economy.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote in the UK Telegraph on March 2^nd:

Syriza has long argued that [its post-2009] debt is illegitimate, alleging that the ECB bought Greek bonds in 2010 in order to save the European banking system and prevent contagion at a time when the eurozone did not have a financial firewall, not to help Greece.

Mr. Varoufakis [the newly-appointed Greek finance minister] said the result was to head off a Greek default to private creditors that would have led to a large haircut for foreign banks if events had been allowed to run their normal course, reducing Greece’s debt burden to manageable levels. Instead, the EU authorities took a series of steps to avert this cathartic moment, ultimately foisting €245bn of loan packages onto the Greek taxpayer and pushing public debt to 182pc of GDP.

The Toxic Central Banking System

Pepe Escobar concludes:

Beware of Masters of the Universe dispensing smiles. Draghi and the … ECB goons may dispense all the smiles in the world, but what they are graphically demonstrating once again is how toxic central banking is now enshrined as a mortal enemy of democracy.

National central banks are no longer tools of governments for the benefit of the people. Governments have become tools of a global central banking system serving the interests of giant international financial institutions. These “too big to fail” behemoths must be saved at the expense of local banks, their depositors, and local economies generally.

How to escape the tentacles of this toxic squid-like banking hierarchy?

For countries with a bit more room to maneuver than Greece has, one option is to withdraw public and private deposits and put them in publicly-owned banks. The megabanks are deemed too big to fail only because the people’s money is tied up in them. They could be allowed to fail if public funds were not at risk.

The German SBFIC (Savings Banks Foundation for International Cooperation) has proposed a pilot project on the Sparkassen model for Greece. Other provocative options have also been proposed, to be the subject of another article.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the best-selling Web of Debt. Her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her nearly-300 blog articles are at EllenBrown.com. Listen to “It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown” on PRN here.

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“Cash Cops”: How Civil Forfeiture Enriched US Law Enforcement

March 12th, 2015 by Devon Douglas-Bowers

Civil forfeiture is a major issue that’s recently gotten into the news, notably due to Attorney General Eric Holder’s change to the controversial police action of seizing people’s property. Unfortunately, Holder’s actions, while laudable, won’t stop the massive damage that has already been done – and may very well continue the problem. Because although the media has finally begun to talk about the issue, we still haven’t been presented with a full scope of civil forfeiture: what it is and what it means.

To understand forfeiture, one must go back to colonial America. The idea of civil forfeiture comes directly from the British; early forfeiture law “refers to the power of a court over an item of real or personal property.” This could include land, in which the court would decide who owned a piece of land, or marriage, where the courts would have the authority to terminate a marriage.

Originally, in rem jurisdiction was “incorporated into American customs and admiralty laws governing the seizure of ships for crimes of piracy, treason and smuggling in the early days of the Republic, and during the American Civil War.” It was later formalized in 1966 “in the Supplemental Rules for Certain Admiralty and Maritime Claims which apply to our civil forfeiture cases.” So the United States has always had some type of civil forfeiture law.

The situation changed, however, when President Nixon announced the War on Drugs and began to use civil forfeiture as an instrument of law enforcement. Author Montgomery Sibley notes that, as part of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, Congress strengthened civil forfeiture as a means of confiscating illegal substances and the means by which they are manufactured and distributed. In 1978, Congress amended the law to authorize the seizure and forfeiture of the proceeds of illegal drug transactions as well.

Under Nixon, the Continuing Criminal Enterprise statute was also enacted, targeting repeat offenders of lucrative drug trafficking. Meanwhile, an important side effect of the Control Act was that it not only allowed police to seize private property being used in a crime – it also made clear that the owner of said property had to prove the property in question was not being used as part of a crime.

In other words, when it comes to proving that someone’s property isn’t being used for criminal purposes, the burden of proof is on the owner, not the police. This creates a situation where the police can essentially confiscate someone’s belongings, allege that the items are being used to further a crime, and the owner must somehow prove that the allegation is false – something that can be extremely difficult to do.

In 1984, under President Ronald Reagan, further changes were made under the Comprehensive Crime Control Act with regards to funds attained from civil forfeiture. Two new forfeiture funds were federally created, “one at the U.S. Department of Justice, which gets revenue from forfeitures done by agencies like the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and another now run by the U.S. Treasury, which gets revenue from agencies like Customs and the Coast Guard.”

As PBS reported, “these funds could now be used for forfeiture-related expenses, payments to informants, prison building, equipment purchase, and other general law enforcement purposes.”

However, there was a major change in that local law enforcement this time would also get to have their share of the pie. “Within the 1984 Act was a provision for so-called ‘equitable sharing,’ which allows local law enforcement agencies to receive a portion of the net proceeds of forfeitures they help make under federal law.”

As soon as this occurred, America saw a massive increase in the amount of civil forfeitures carried out by federal agents between 1989 and 1999, when the value of civil forfeiture recoveries nearly doubled from $285,000,039 to $535,767,852 – a 187% increase in only 10 years. And the numbers only grew as time went on.

In 2012, $4.6 billion was acquired via civil forfeiture, compared to a decade earlier, in 2002, when the amount seized was just $322,246,408. The increase of over 1,400% reveals a major cash cow for law enforcement.

There was an attempt to reform civil forfeiture through the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000. This included several changes most notably in regards to poor or impoverished defendants, where the new law ordered courts to issue the defendant a lawyer “when the property in question is a primary residence,” as well as to pay the lawyer regardless of the outcome of the case, whereas before, defendants had to essentially defend themselves.

In addition, the issue of burden of proof changed as the government now had to “establish, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the property [was] subject to forfeiture,” where previously the government could seize property solely on probable cause. Put simply, in order to seize property, the government now had not just to present evidence, but to present evidence “based on the more convincing evidence and its probable truth or accuracy, and not on the amount of evidence.”

With that reform, it was no longer enough to say there was a possibility that the evidence could have been used in a crime. However, the law didn’t deal with the problem that the burden of proof was on the property owner, nor did it deal with the conflict of interest in which the government could seize property and sell it – using the money to fund its own operations. Because the pressing question still remains: how exactly do police use the funds they’ve gained from civil forfeitures?

In 2013, Vice reported that a district attorney in Georgia used the funds to “to buy football tickets and home furnishings,” whereas “officers in Bal Harbor, Florida, took trips to LA and Vegas and rented luxury cars, and other DAs and police chiefs have bought everything from tanning salons to booze for parties.”

The Washington Post also reported that police are using the funds to militarize themselves, buying an array of items such as “Humvees, automatic weapons, gas grenades, night-vision scopes and sniper gear. Many departments acquired electronic surveillance equipment, including automated license-plate readers and systems that track cellphones.” And this spending is on top of the military surplus gear police receive from the Pentagon.

While there is a federal force to ensure that funds are used appropriately, it’s wildly understaffed; the Justice Department has about 15 employees assigned to oversee compliance, with some five employees responsible for reviewing thousands of annual reports. Essentially, then, police are free to spend the money they gain from civil forfeitures on anything they want, without fear of punishment.

Besides the previously noted conflict of interest and burden of proof issues, there are also other major problems with civil forfeiture – notably, the disproportionate racial impact and harm it causes to innocent people.

In 2012, Vanita Gupta, the ACLU deputy legal director, was involved in a settlement of several civil forfeiture cases in Texas in which mainly black and Latino drivers were pulled over, many times without justification, and had their assets seized by police. Gupta noted that civil forfeiture laws “invite racial profiling” and “incentivize police agencies to engage in unconstitutional behavior in order to fund themselves off the backs of low-income motorists, most of whom lack the means to fight back, without any hard evidence of criminal activity. It is no way to run our justice system.”

Furthermore, in 2014, the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute reported reported that civil forfeiture laws “routinely amount to de facto racial discrimination, as law enforcement officials routinely target low-income people of color, seizing their assets.” It quoted the ACLU as saying that “asset forfeiture practices often go hand-in-hand with racial profiling and disproportionally impact low-income African-American or Hispanic people who the police decide look suspicious and for whom the arcane process of trying to get one’s property back is an expensive challenge.” Thus, like many aspects of the criminal justice system, civil forfeiture disproportionately impacts minorities.

Great harm is also committed against innocent people who are not actually engaging in any crime.Gothamist reported that in March of 2012, the NYPD confiscated $4,800 belonging to Gerald Bryan, and took Bryan “into custody on suspected felony drug distribution, as the police continued their warrantless search.” Bryan’s case was later dropped, but when he went to reclaim his money “he was told it was too late: the money had been deposited into the NYPD’s pension fund.”

The NYPD’s civil forfeiture was declared unconstitutional twice. However, the process still continues, reflecting a failure to protect the basic rights of citizens – and a breakdown in the rule of law. The very people who are supposed to enforce the law are the ones who profit from ignoring it – something that was proven in a recent study by the Institute for Justice, which found that “civil forfeiture encourages choices by law enforcement officers that leave the public worse off.”

“Under civil forfeiture,” said the report, “when participants could gain financially by taking property from others, that is overwhelmingly what they did.”

While many might argue that the civil forfeiture game has changed due to recent actions taken by AG Holder, unfortunately very little actually has. As Vox reported in January: “Holder’s order only curtails ‘adoptions’ that are requested through the federal program by a local or state police department working on its own. It still allows local and state police to seize and keep assets when working with federal authorities on an investigation, and when the property is linked to public safety concerns — such as illegal firearms, ammunition, and explosives.”

Thus, civil forfeitures continue unabated for the most part. This data analysis revealed that “only about a quarter—25.6 percent—of properties seized under equitable sharing were federal ‘adoptions’ of properties seized by state or local law enforcement, the kind of seizures the new policy targets” and that “of the nearly $6.8 billion in cash and property seized under equitable sharing from 2008 to 2013, adoptions accounted for just 8.7 percent.” Put simply: local and state law enforcement can still engage in civil forfeiture and make large amounts of money off it.

To make things worse, incoming Attorney General Loretta Lynch appears undisturbed by the current state of civil forfeiture, since she “has used civil asset forfeiture in more than 120 cases, raking in some $113 million for federal and local coffers,” and even calling it a “wonderful tool.”

There have been attempts at reform. But both of them – the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2014, and the Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration Act, which “would protect the rights of citizens and restore the Fifth Amendment’s role in seizing property without due process of law,” died in Congress. In the meantime, it seems that cops and the government will continue to cash in on the property of U.S. citizens.

This article was originally published on Occupy.com The author can be reached at devondb[at]mail[dot]com.

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Syriza’s Only Choice: A Radical Step Forward

March 12th, 2015 by Spyros Lapatsioras

“One must know how to employ the kairos [right or opportune moment] of one’s forces at the right moment. It is easy to only lose a little, if one always keeps foremost in the mind the idea that unity is never the trick, but the game.” — Guy Gebord, “Notes on poker.”

1. Introduction

The transitional “bridge Agreement” of the 20th of February is a truce intended by the Greek government and welcomed by the other side (the European “institutions”). Within the truce period (the next four months), the conditions for negotiating the next agreement will be shaped. This could mean that everything is still open. However, that is not true for two reasons. First, the very transitional agreement changes the balance of power. Second, the “hostilities” will continue in the course of the next four months (i.e. the review of the commitments and the re-interpretation of the terms by each party).

2. The Agreement of February 20: A First Step on Slippery Ground…

2.1 Negotiation targets

In the first substantive phase of negotiations at the Eurogroup of the 12th February, the Greek government sought an agreement on a new “bridge program” stating that it would be impossible to extend the existing program on the grounds that it has been rejected by the Greek people:

The “bridge program” would not involve conditions, reviews and so on, but should be an official manifestation of the willingness of all parties to negotiate without pressure and blackmail and without any unilateral action.
In the above context, Greece would forgo the remaining installments of the previous program, with the exception of the return of the €1.9-billion that the ECB and the rest of Eurozone’s national central banks gained from the holding of Greek bonds (programs SMP and ANFA). Greek authorities could issue treasury bills beyond the limit of €15-billion to cover any liquidity emergencies.
At the end of this transitional period: (a) Greece would submit its final proposals, which according to the program of the government would include a new fiscal framework for the next 3-4 years and a new national plan for reforms; (b) the issue of a sovereign debt restructuring-reduction would come to the negotiating table.

The German government and the “institutions” (EU, ECB, IMF) came to the negotiations with the position that Greece had to request a six-month “technical extension” of the existing program – renamed as the “existing arrangement” – to enable its successful completion.

2.2 The outcome of the negotiation

The agreement of the 20th of February includes a four-month extension of the “Master Financial Assistance Facility Agreement (MFFA), which is underpinned by a set of commitments.” The extension of the Agreement (“which is underpinned by a set of commitments”) means: (a) evaluations by the three “institutions,” (b) commitments and conditions, (c) scheduled installments as they appear in the previous Program, subject to a positive evaluation, (d) return of the profits from holding Greek bonds by the ECB and national CBs, but subject to a positive evaluation by the “institutions” (even given the “independence” of the ECB).

In short there is a rejection-withdrawal of the Greek government’s negotiation targets (1) and (2). In addition, there is no explicit reference to how the government will cover its short term financing needs (e.g. issuing treasury bills to cover bond redemptions, interest payments and other possible emergencies) until the completion of the assessment. In this regard, the reference to the independence of the ECB may imply its “discretion” in assessing the extent to which the Greek government responds positively to the “commitments” that accompany the extension of the agreement (something which undoubtedly will complicate any “interpretative” attempts in relation to the agreement on the part of Greek government).

At the same time, the February 20 Agreement includes the statement: “The Greek authorities have also committed to ensure the appropriate primary fiscal surpluses or financing proceeds required to guarantee debt sustainability in line with the November 2012 Eurogroup statement.” This means that the Greek government refrains from the target of debt restructuring-reduction and adopts the sustainability plan based on debt repayment mostly through primary surpluses. This implies the rollback from point (3b) of its initial negotiating package.

What the Greek government has won (aside from the mere change in terminology, about which there was intense debate) is:

Part (a) of section (3) of its initial suggestions, namely the right to propose reforms to the “institutions” for approval with regard to fiscal consolidation and growth. The policy measures agreed by the previous government (reduction of pensions and increase of VAT in the islands) were thus taken out. Both sides agreed to give particular emphasis to the “overdue” fight against corruption and tax evasion, public sector efficiency, improving the tax system, etc.[1]
Further negotiations on the size of the primary surplus for 2015. Instead of the previously agreed 3% of GDP, the new agreement leaves open the issue of a lower primary surplus for 2015: “The institutions will, for the 2015 primary surplus target, take the economic circumstances in 2015 into account.”

It is clear that the new agreement is a truce, but truce is by no means a tie. The agreement is a first step on slippery ground. The Greek government may have gained time, but the political landscape seems quite tough, having minor similarities with the initial minimum negotiation targets set by the Greek side on February 12th.

3. Is There Still Room to Challenge Neoliberalism?

3.1 The supervision as balance between “political risk” and “moral hazard”

The political strategy of Syriza and the European Left is to overthrow neoliberalism, that is the economic and social regime that seeks to subordinate all social practices (from education and social security to the public finances) to the jurisdiction and regulatory role of markets. The European Left thus seeks to leave to governments the freedom to curtail the power of markets, thereby bringing to the fore the priority of social needs.

Neoliberalism constantly promotes the interests of capital against the interests of the workers, professionals, pensioners, young people and other vulnerable groups. The extreme version of neoliberalism, as expressed, for example, by [German Finance Minister Wolfgang] Schäuble, is not devoid of rational objectives and strategy. It attempts to resolve, and so far it does, two fundamental issues:

First, the social legitimacy of a model of labour without rights and social protection, with low and flexible wages and the absence of any meaningful bargaining power. Such a development is to be pursued in order to create favorable conditions for profitability and capital accumulation.

Second, the organization of the Eurozone (the coordination of fiscal policies, banking union, rescue packages, etc.) on the basis that member states should not succumb to “moral hazard” with the support of social (and other) expenditures that rely on public borrowing. Member States are faced with the dilemma: austerity-cuts-privatizations or the risk of default. By and large, these are commensurate choices. Even in the latter scenario, member states would accept a rescue package, the content of which is again austerity-cuts-privatizations.

This conservative perspective favors debt repayment by way of privatizations and primary surpluses, while it is not opposed to reforms such as those proposed by the Greek government (and possibly needed by Greek society) – such as more efficient organization of tax collections, modernization of the public administration,[2] and the fight against corruption. They may even welcome a new political personnel, as they realize that the traditional political staff is in decline, having lost its social legitimacy. A political scene dominated by the traditional political personnel, which has been discredited in the eyes of the social majority, is clearly considered by the neoliberal establishment as a “political risk” since it can easily trigger uncontrolled social outbreaks.

At the same time, neoliberalism recognizes as “moral hazard” any policy that supports the interests of the working-class, expands the public space, supports the welfare state, and organizes the reproduction of society beyond and outside the scope of markets.

In other words, the strategic question for neoliberalism is to define the level of austerity that targets an “optimal” balance between “political risk” and “moral hazard.”

Generally speaking, these two risks, the “moral” and the “political” one, move in opposite directions due to their consequences in the current political conjuncture. When moral hazard increases, political risk declines and vice versa. Therefore, the tension (when they encounter each other) results in an appropriate balance between them. The “independent authorities,” being immunized against any democratic control, especially on issues related to the economy (the main example here is the “independence” of the ECB), create a mechanism for detecting the balance between these two “risks.” Nevertheless, this mechanism remains incomplete.

In the European Union the key role to austerity has now been undertaken by the “evaluation of the agreements.” If we closely inspect the agreement of the 20th of February, we will see that it is not entirely closed to demands that increase “moral hazard,” i.e. to promoting arrangements to the benefit of the welfare state and labour interests. However, the key point of the agreement is that “institutions” will assess, supervise and indicate which particular reforms do not create problems to public finances and do not jeopardize future economic growth and the stability and smooth functioning of the financial system.[3] This assessment-surveillance sets a serious impediment to the implementation of the political program and the social transformations sought by Syriza in the first place.

While the question of how the government will be able to meet its financing needs remains open, statements by the ECB and the IMF are eloquent proofs of the continuous assessment stemming from the nature of the agreement: new pledged reforms are interpreted as substitutes for the commitments of the previous agreement. In particular the IMF does not accept any rollback from the completion of reforms mentioned in the previous “Program” with regard to market flexibility, privatizations, and social security reforms. It is worth noting that the non-quantification of objectives, the non-specified deficit, the absence of any explicit estimation of the fiscal gap, leaves widely open the interpretation of the actions with regard to the new agreement as equivalent to those contained in the previous one.[4]

3.2 How did we get there: On the tactics and strategy of the negotiation

The main question about the importance of the agreement of the 20th of February is what room it leaves to the government to implement its program. To answer this question we need first to analyze the “difficulties” that led the government to the compromise of the 20th of February.

The agreement was apparently determined by external factors – the given and known neoliberal context of the “institutions” – and internal factors, which played finally the most important role.

It was only of secondary importance the weak preparation of the government, along with the contradictory tactics of the Ministry of Finance:

The absence of any reliable plan based on numbers and analysis. The superficial level is obvious in the technical Annex of the “non-paper” prepared by the Greek government for the Eurogroup meeting of February 16. More importantly, in the same Annex the crucial assumption is made that debt sustainability can be associated with long-term primary surpluses. This argument is an important strategic retreat.
The release of some general principles of the proposal for debt reduction from London. This was a tactical mistake: Without any prior meeting with the ECB, a proposal is announced from a non Eurozone country that involves a swap of bonds held by the ECB. This proposal requires a change in the ECB rules and invokes, without any second thought, a negative response by the ECB. The negative response by the ECB is related not only to its policy and the existing delicate balance on the board, but also to the criticisms it received for rules violation after the recent decision to embark on quantitative easing. It is also obvious that the ECB does not need to be directly involved in such an agreement. The same result could be reached by alternative ways that are not incompatible with current political balances. The other part of the proposal concerning the loans of the EFSF linked to growth rates is too abstract and vague and definitely concerns the next round of the negotiations.
It seemed that the government gave too much emphasis to communications management of the negotiation as opposed to other important aspects of it. This was a negative signal, both domestically and abroad. For instance, the incident with [Eurozone finance chief Jeroen] Dijsselbloem apparently stimulated “national sentiment,” but also took away considerable bargaining power: the Greek government spent the whole weekend calming down the markets before Monday’s critical opening. This fact widely signaled that the Greek government might not not have any stable negotiation strategy.

We can easily see that this weakly planned negotiation by the Greek side, despite the time spent by the protagonists, was practically a blind jump. Several mishandlings and shifts showed the partners that the Greek side is susceptible to manipulation.

Nevertheless, what finally determined the outcome of the negotiation was neither the tactical moves nor the “external” front, but the front within the Greek society. What determined the retreat of the Greek side was the strategic decision to represent on the political level the social strata which perceive as unthinkable any disruption of market stability – even though everyone was aware of the actual historical stake of the confrontation. The much discussed scenario of a bank-run should be defined and examined (despite the technical mechanisms available to prevent it) always within the context of the social relations of power. At the same time, it is a fatal mistake to adopt the argument that a Grexit necessarily follows from a supposed “collapse” of banks. This is a zero-probability scenario, which simply was the argument used by the previous conservative Papandreou-Papademos-Samaras governments to present memoranda as the only choice to the Greek society. This argument always remains a “weapon” of extreme neoliberals like Schäuble.[5]

3.3 The challenge: Nothing can change or another world is possible?

The above analysis leads us to the conclusion that we have an agreement which significantly restricts freedom of action on public finances but also in other areas. Therefore, the economic landscape, which sets the ground not only for the final assessment of the new program in June but also for the new round of negotiations, is slippery.

The fact that the Greek government chooses to present the apparent retreat and forced change of its program as a “victory” is a bad sign for the future. It shows that the government is more interested in communication than in substance. This attitude could gradually become the political ground for a real defeat, especially as long as the message transmitted and received by the society reinforces the belief: “Do not believe the politicians in what they say, their only intention is to stay in the government.”

“The question … is whether the government will insist on superficially presenting the result of the negotiation as a ‘victory,’ disregarding all the critical issues that emerged, or will it attempt to analyze in depth the conditions and the consequences of the retreat?”

Let us consider the following simple fact: The Minister of Finance publicly accepted that 70% of the existing Memorandum is good for the Greek society. Nevertheless, this government did not come to power supporting the 70% of the Memorandum – if Syriza had pledged so, it would probably not be included in the parliamentary map today, playing the key role. The attempt to redefine the mandate so as to encompass the 70% of the Memorandum is practically an attempt to change the social alliances which has supported so far the historical experiment of a left government. Obviously 70% in itself is just an arbitrary number (why not 68% or 72%?; is it based on pages, sub-chapters, or measures?). Its adoption invokes a new political symbolism and paves the way for new social alliances. The question, which remains open even for the government, is whether the government will insist on superficially presenting the result of the negotiation as a “victory,” disregarding all the critical issues that emerged, or will it attempt to analyze in depth the conditions and the consequences of the retreat as long as there is still time (very little, indeed, since the next round of negotiations will soon start)?

In fact the agreement of February 20th leaves the government and Syriza with only one way out of the impasse of neoliberal European corset: storming forward!

Storming forward with truth as vehicle: to start from the assumption of a retreat in order to seek out ways to avoid any long term damage. The government should instead bring back on the agenda our programmatic commitments to redistribute income and power in favor of labour, to re-found the welfare state, democracy and participation in decision making.
Storming forward with the vehicle of radical reform of the tax system (so that capital and the wealthy strata of the society finally bear their appropriate burden) and the fight against corruption of part of the Greek economic elites.

A new wave of radical domestic institutional changes is urgently needed in order to build on a new basis the social alliances with the subordinate classes. Metaphorically, what is missing and seems to disappear after the agreement of the 20th of February is any domestic “memorandum against the wealth” which will improve the living conditions of the working people. The goal that “capital should pay for the crisis” has never been more to the point.

In a society where the loss of 25% of GDP and the impoverishment of large part of the population is just the visible aspect of the rapid intensification of social inequalities, in a society where mass unemployment is the numerical complement of a severe deterioration in working conditions, in a society of multiple contradictions and high expectations, the popularity of the government will not be maintained at 80 per cent for a long time.

The policy of the government can only remain hegemonic if it supports the interests of the working majority in a struggle against neoliberal strategy. There is no room for “ethnarch” policy generally and loosely defending everything “Greek” or “European”: such an approach never has, and never will represent the perspective of the Left.

Spyros Lapatsioras is Assistant Professor of Political Economy, University of Crete, Member of the Central Committee of Syriza.

John Milios is Professor of Political Economy, National Technical University of Athens, Member of the Central Committee of Syriza.

Dimitris P. Sotiropoulos is Senior Lecturer at the Open University Business School in the UK and member of Syriza.

Notes:

1. Of course, every decision still requires approval by the “institutions”: “The Greek authorities commit to refrain from any rollback of measures and unilateral changes to the policies and structural reforms that would negatively impact fiscal targets, economic recovery or financial stability, as assessed by the institutions.” [“Eurogroup statement on Greece” Feb. 20, 2015.]

2. The devil always hides in the details, in the form that this modernization will take.

3. For instance, we should not forget that economic growth in the current program relies on exports and that every wage increase is automatically considered as being against competitiveness and the target increase in exports. No matter how empirically erroneous is this perspective, it still reflects the viewpoint of the “institutions.” Another example is the solution to the non-performing loans because it affects the financial systems and thus every policy proposal should secure the OK by the “institutions.”

4. In his official letter to Jeroen Dijsselbloem on Feb. 24, 2015, Mario Draghi says: “We note that the commitments outlined by the authorities differ from existing programme commitments in a number of areas. In such cases, we will have to assess during the review whether measures which are not accepted by the authorities are replaced with measures of equal or better quality in terms of achieving the objectives of the programme.”

5. James Galbraith also refers to “grexit” as an adequate reason to seek an immediate compromise: “No agreement would have meant capital controls, or else bank failures, debt default, and early exit from the Euro.” [“Reading The Greek Deal Correctly” Feb. 23, 2015.]

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Human Rights Watch “Fail”: Uses Photo of American Bombing Destruction of Syria To Condemn Assad

March 12th, 2015 by Brandon Turbeville

Putting its hypocritical and biased nature on full display once again, the alleged human rights organization, Human Rights Watch, was recently caught in an attempt to fabricate “evidence” of Assad’s use of barrel bombs in civilian areas for the purposes of further demonizing the secular Syrian government.

On February 25, HRW posted a photo of a devastated civilian area in Syria with the tagline “Syria dropped barrel bombs despite ban.” The “ban” HRW is referring to is the ban on bombing civilian areas that applies to both sides in Aleppo after the United Nations stepped in to save the Western-backed terroristsfrom annihilation. Assad’s forces had surrounded the city and had cut off a major supply route for the death squads from Turkey thus making the ultimate elimination of the jihadist forces a virtual inevitability.

As Somini Sengupta wrote for the New York Times on February 24,

Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that the Syrian government had dropped so-called barrel bombs on hundreds of sites in rebel-held towns and cities in the past year, flouting a United Nations Security Council measure.

In a report released Tuesday, the group said it relied on satellite images, photos, videos and witness statements to conclude that the Syrian government had bombarded at least 450 sites in and around the southern town of Daraa and at least 1,000 sites in Aleppo in the north.

The report focused on the period since Feb. 22, 2014, when the Security Council specifically condemned the use of barrel bombs, which are large containers filled with explosives and projectiles that can indiscriminately hurt civilians and are prohibited under international law.

There was only one problem with HRW’s tweet – the photograph the organization provided was not Aleppo.

In fact, the damage that had been wrought upon the civilian area in the photograph was not committed by the Syrian military but by the United States.

The photo was actually a picture of Kobane (Ayn al-Arab), the city which has been the site of heavy US aerial bombardment over the last several months as the US engages in its program of death squad herding and geographical reformation of sovereign Syrian and Iraqi territory.

But, while HRW was content to use the destruction of the city as a reason to condemn the Assad government and continue to promote the cause for US military action in Syria, the “human rights organization” was apparently much less interested in the exact same destruction wrought by US forces.

In other words, if Assad’s forces bomb a civilian area into the stone age, it is an atrocity, a war crime, and justification for international military involvement. If the United States bombs a civilian area into the stone age, it’s no biggie.

Partially funded by George Soros, Human Rights Watch has repeatedly shilled for NATO and America’s imperialist aims, particularly in Syria.

For instance, when Western media propaganda had reached a crescendo regarding the outright lie that Assad had used chemical weapons against his own people, HRW stood right beside Barack Obama and John Kerry in their effort to prove Assad’s guilt. HRW even went so far as to repeat the lie that the UN report suggested that Assad was the offending party, driving the final nail into the coffin of any credibility HRW may have had.

When a last-minute chemical weapons deal was secured by Russia in an effort to avoid yet another US/NATO invasion of Syria, HRW did not rejoice for the opportunity of peaceful destruction of chemical weapons and a chance to avoid war, it attacked the deal by claiming that it “failed to ensure justice.” Of course, the deal did fail to ensure justice. There were no provisions demanding punishment of the death squads who actually used the weapons or the US/NATO apparatus that initiated and controlled the jihadist invasion to begin with.

Regardless, when Mother Agnes Mariam of the Cross released her report that refuted what the US/NATO was asserting in regards to chemical weapons in Syria, HRW embarked upon acampaign of attack against her and her work.

Even as far back as 2009, however, HRW was showing its true colors when it apparently signed off on and supported renditions – the process of kidnapping individuals off the street without any due process and “rendering” them to jails and prisons in other countries where they are often tortured – in secret talks with the Obama administration.

If HRW ever had any credibility in terms of the question of actual human rights, then all of that credibility has assuredly been lost. HRW is nothing more than a pro-US, pro-NATO NGO that acts as a smokescreen for the continuation of the violation of human rights across the world – that is, unless those violations are committed by America’s enemies.

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The ISIS-US Empire – Their Unholy Alliance Fully Exposed

March 12th, 2015 by Joachim Hagopian

Let’s be perfectly clear. The United States is not actually at war with ISIS. As Global Research director, economist and author Michel Chossudovsky plainly points out recently, Obama is simply waging “a fake war” against the Islamic State forces, putting on another propaganda show for mainstream media to keep his flock of American sheeple asleep in echo-chambered darkness. With a mere cursory review of recent historical events, one can readily realize that virtually everything Big Government tells us is happening in the world, you can bet is a boldface lie.

For over three and a half decades the US has been funding mostly Saudi stooges to do its dirty bidding in proxy wars around the world, beginning in Afghanistan in the 1980’s to fight the Soviets with the mujahedeen-turned al Qaeda that later would mutate into ISIS. Reagan and Bush senior gave Osama bin Laden his first terrorist gig. Our mercenary “Islamic extremists” for-hire were then on the CIA payroll employed in the Balkans during the 1990’s to kill fellow Moslem Serbs in Kosovo and Bosnia. For a long time now Washington’s been relying on the royal Saudi family as its chief headhunters supplying the United States with as needed terrorists on demand in order to wage its geopolitics chessboard game of global hegemony, otherwise known by the central banking cabal as global “Theft-R-Us.”

The Bush crime family were in bed with the bin Ladens long before 9/11 when that very morning George H W Bush on behalf of his Carlyle Group was wining and dining together with Osama’s brother at the posh DC Ritz Carlton while 19 box cutting Saudi stooges were acting as the neocon’s hired guns allegedly committing the greatest atrocity ever perpetrated on US soil in the history of this nation. And in the 9/11 immediate aftermath while only birds were flying the not-so-friendly skies above America, there was but one exception and that was the Air Force escort given the bin Ladens flying safely back home to their “Terrorists-R-Us” mecca called Saudi Arabia. On 9/11 the Zionist Israeli Mossad, Saudi intelligence and the Bush-Cheney neocons were busily pulling the trigger murdering near 3000 Americans in cold blood as the most deadly, most heinous crime in US history. If you’re awake enough to recognize this ugly truth as cold hard fact, then it’s certainly not a stretch to see the truth behind this latest US created hoax called ISIS.

Renowned investigative journalist and author Seymour Hersh astutely saw the writing on the wall way back in 2006 (emphasis added):

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

The US Empire along with its international partner-in-crime Israel has allowed and encouraged Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to be the primary financiers of al Qaeda turned ISIS. Even Vice President Joe Biden last year said the same. If Empire wanted to truly destroy the entire Islamic extremist movement in the Middle East it could have applied its global superpower pressure on its allied Gulf State nations to stop funding the ISIS jihadists. But that has never happened for the simple reason that Israel, those same Arab allies and the United States want a convenient “bad guy” enemy in the Middle East and North Africa, hiding the fact that al Qaeda-ISIS for decades has been its mercenary ally on the ground in more recent years in the Golan Heights, Libya, Iraq and Syria.

As recently as a month ago it was reported that an Islamic State operative claimed that funding for ISIS had been funneled through the US. Of course another “staunch” US-NATO ally Turkey has historically allowed its territory to be a safe staging ground as well as a training area for ISIS. It additionally allows jihadist leaders to move freely in and out of Syria through Turkey. Along with Israel and all of US Empire’s Moslem nation states as our strategic friends in the Middle East, together they have been arming, financing and training al Qaeda/ISIS to do its double bidding, fighting enemies like Gaddafi in Libya and Assad in Syria while also posing as global terrorist boogie men threatening the security of the entire world. Again, Washington cannot continue to double speak its lies from both sides of its mouth and then expect to continue having it both ways and expect the world to still be buying it.

A breaking story that’s creating an even larger crack in the wall of the US false narrative is the revelation that Iraqi counterterrorism forces just arrested four US-Israeli military advisors assisting (i.e., aiding and abetting) the ISIS enemy, three of whom hold duel citizenships from both Israel and America. This latest piece of evidence arrives on the heels of a Sputnik article from a couple weeks ago quoting American historian Webster Tarpley saying that “the United States created the Islamic State and uses jihadists as its secret army to destabilize the Middle East.” The historian also supported claims that the ISIS has in large part been financed by the Saudi royal family. Interviewed on Press TV the critic of US foreign policy asked why NATO ally Turkey bordering both Iraq and Syria where the Islamic State jihadists continue to terrorize, why can’t Turkey simply use its larger, vastly superior army to go in and defeat the much smaller ISIS, especially if the US and NATO were serious about destroying their alleged enemy. Again, if ISIS is the enemy, why did the US recently launch an air strike on Assad’s forces that were in process of defeating ISIS? The reason is all too obvious, the bombing was meant to afflict damage to stop Assad’s forces from beating back ISIS that the US is clearly protecting.

Finally, Tarpley reaffirmed what many others have been saying that chicken hawk Senator John McCain is actual buddies with ISIS kingpin Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Of course photos abound of his frequent “secret” meetings with ISIS leadership illegally conducted inside Syria. This confirmed fact provides yet one more obvious link between the high powered criminal operative posing as US senator and the so called enemy of the “free world” ISIS.

Recall that iconic photo from June last year of American supplied trucks traveling unimpeded in the ISIS convoy kicking up dust in the Iraqi desert fresh from the Syrian battlefields heading south towards Baghdad. It was no accident that they were equipped with an enormous fleet of brand new Toyota trucks and armed with rockets, artillery and Stinger missiles all furnished by US Empire. Nor was it an accident that the Iraqi Army simply did an about face and ran, with orders undoubtedly coming from somewhere high above in the American Empire. The Islamic State forces were allowed to seize possession of 2500 armored troop carriers, over 1000 Humvees and several dozen US battlefield tanks all paid for by US tax dollars. This entire spectacle was permitted as ISIS without any resistance then took control of Mosul the second largest city in Iraq including a half billion dollars robbing a bank. Throughout this process, it was definitely no accident that the United States allowed the Islamic State forces to invade Iraq as with advanced US airpower it could have within a couple hours easily carpet bombed and totally eliminated ISIS since the Islamic State possessed no anti-aircraft weapons. And even now with the hi-tech wizardry of satellites, lasers, nanotechnology and advanced cyber-warfare, the US and allied intelligence has the means of accurately locating and with far superior firepower totally eradicating ISIS if the will to do so actually existed. But the fact is there is no desire to kill the phantom enemy when in fact it’s the friend of the traitors in charge of the US government who drive the Empire’s global war policy.

Washington’s objective last year was to purposely unleash on already ravaged Iraq the latest US-made, al Qaeda morphed into the Islamic monster-on-steroids to further destabilize the Middle East, seek a regime change to replace the weak, corrupt, Sunni persecuting Maliki government in Baghdad and ‘balkanize” Iraq into three separate, powerless, divisive sections in similar vein of how the West tore apart and dissected Yugoslavia into thirteen ineffectual pieces. The globalist pattern of bank cabal loans drowning nations into quicksand debt and transnationals and US Empire posts predatorily moving in as permanent fixtures always replace what was previously a far better off sovereign nation wherever King Midas-in-reverse targets to spreads its Empire disease of failed-state cancer. After Yugoslavia came Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Ukraine. It goes on and on all over the globe. The all too familiar divide and conquer strategy never fails as the US Empire/NWO agenda. But the biggest reason ISIS was permitted to enter and begin wreaking havoc in Iraq last June was for the Empire to re-establish its permanent military bases in the country that Maliki had refused Washington after its December 2011 pullout.

With 2300 current US troops (and rising up to 3000 per Obama’s authorization) once again deployed back on the ground in Iraq acting as so called advisors, Iraq is now the centerpiece of US military presence in the Middle East region. Before a doubting House Armed Services Committee last Tuesday, CENTCOM Commander General Lloyd Austin defended Obama’s policyinsisting that ISIS can be defeated without use of heavy ground forces, feebly claiming that they’re on the run because his commander-in-chief’s air strike campaign is actually working. How many times before have we heard generals’ glowing reports to Congress turn out to be lies?

As far as PR goes, it appears the lies and propaganda are once again working. With help from the steady stream of another beheading-of-the week posted like clockwork on Youtube for all the world to shockingly see, not unlike when traffic slows down to look for bloodied car victims mangled on the highway. Apparently this thinly veiled strategy is proving successful again on the worked over, dumbed down, short attention-spanned American population. According to a poll released just a few days ago, 62% of Americans want more GI boots on the ground in Iraq to fight the latest made-by-America enemy for Iraq War III. Incredibly only 39% believe that more troops on the ground would risk another long, protracted war. Again, short attention spans are doomed to keep repeating history as in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

This polling propaganda disinformation ploy fits perfectly with prior statements made a few months ago by America’s top commander General Martin Dempsey that the US military presence in both Iraq and Syria must be a long term commitment as the necessary American sacrifice required to effectively take out ISIS. With US leaders laying the PR groundwork for more Empire occupations worldwide, of course it’s no accident that it conveniently fits in with the Empire’s agenda to wage its war of terror on a forever basis. Efforts by Washington to “prep” Americans for these “inevitable,” open-ended wars around the globe are designed to condition them into passive acceptance of lower intensity, “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” conflicts specifically to minimize and silence citizens from ever actively opposing yet more human slaughter caused by more US state sponsored terrorism in the form of unending imperialistic wars.

Every one of these “current events” have been carefully planned, coordinated, timed and staged for mass public consumption, none more so than those beheadings of US and British journalists, aid workers and Middle Eastern Christians along with the desecration of ancient Iraqi history with dozens of destroyed museums, churches and shrines. Obama and the Empire want us all to be thoroughly horrified and disgusted so we fear and hate the latest designated Islamic enemy. Hating your enemy to the point of viewing them as the lowest of the lowest, sub-human animal is an old psyops brainwashing trick successfully employed in every single war from the dawn of violent man. It effectively dehumanizes the enemy while desensitizing the killing soldier. For over a year now we’ve seen this same MSM game being relentlessly waged to falsely demonize Putin. The sinister, warped minds of the divide and conquer strategists from the ruling class elite don’t mind the resultant hating of Moslems around the world either. That’s all by diabolical design too.

If only six organizations control the entire planet’s mass media outlet that feeds the masses their daily lies like their daily bread, another winning bet would be that in a heartbeat they could also effectively shut down the internet pipeline that showcases ISIS horror show theatrics on the global stage. But by design, they are willingly, cunningly disseminated for worldwide mass consumption.

In fact the only consistent group that’s even been able to militarily hold their own and actually challenge ISIS, the Kurds, are watching UK ship heavy arms to the same losing team the Iraqi army that ran away from defending Mosul. The last time the West gave them weapons and supplies, they handed them right over to ISIS.

In a recent Guardian article, a Kurdish captain said that the Kurds offered to even buy the second hand weapons from the British used in Afghanistan. But because the West is afraid the heavy arms might empower Kurdish nationalism into demanding their own sovereign nation for the first time in history, the US wants to ensure that Iraq stays as one nation after implanting its latest Baghdad puppet regime. The fiercely independent Kurds are feared if they were granted autonomy that they might refuse to allow their homeland to be raped and plundered by the US unlike the corrupt current Iraqi government. The Kurdish fighters could sorely use the bigger guns as they plan to launch an offensive in April or May to take back Mosul from ISIS. But when permitting an ancient ethnic group its proper due by granting political autonomy risks interfering with the Empire’s rabid exploitation of another oil-rich nation, all bets are off in doing the right thing.

The mounting evidence is stacking up daily to unequivocally prove beyond any question of a doubt that ISIS is in fact a US mercenary ally and not the treasonous feds’ enemy at all. From mid-August 2014 to mid-January 2015 using the most sophisticated fighter jets known to man, the US Air Force and its 19 coalition allies have flown more than 16,000 air strikes over Iraq and Syria ostensibly to “root out” ISIS once and for all. Yet all this Empire aggression has nothing to show for its wasted phony efforts as far as inflicting any real damage on the so called ISIS enemy. Labeled a “soft counterterrorism operation,” a prominent Council on Foreign Relations member recently characterized Obama’s scheme as too weak and ineffectual, and like a true CFR chicken hawk, he strongly advocates more bombs, more advisers and special operations forces deployed on the ground.

But the records show that all those air strikes are purposely not hitting ISIS forces because they are not the actual target. Many air strike missions from both the US Air Force as well as Israeli jets have been designed to destroy extensive infrastructure inside Syria that hurts the Syrian people, causing many innocent civilian casualties, while not harming ISIS at all. This in turn ensures more ISIS recruits for America’s forever war on terror. Repeatedly oil refineries, pipelines and grain storage silos have also been prime targets damaged and destroyed by the West. Because in 2013 Obama’s false flag claim that Assad’s army was responsible for the chemical weapons attack was thwarted by strong worldwide opposition and Putin’s success brokering the deal that had Assad turning over his chemical weapons, a mere year later ISIS conveniently provided Obama’s deceitful excuse to move forward with his air offensive on Syria after all.

Finally, on numerous occasions the US was caught red-handed flying arms and supply drops to the Islamic jihadists on the ground. According to Iraqi intelligence sources, US planes have engaged regularly in air drops of food and weapons to ISIS. These sighting began to be observed after one load was “accidentally” dropped last October into so called enemy hands supposedly meant to go to the Kurdish fighters. Realizing the US has betrayed them, as of late Iraqi security forces have been shooting down US and British aircraft engaged in providing supplies and arms to their ISIS enemy. This is perhaps the most incriminating evidence yet in exposing the truth that ISIS is being supported, supplied and protected by the US Empire more than even the Iraqi government forces the US claims to be assisting in this phony war against the militant Islamic jihadists.

Clearly the unfolding daily events and developments in both Iraq and Syria overwhelmingly indict the United States as even more of “the bad guy” than the supposed ISIS terrorists. Recently the US was caught financing ISIS and has all along supported Arab allies that knowingly fund Islamic extremism. During the six months since Obama vowed to go after them and “root them out,” countless times the US and allies have maintained the so called enemy’s supply line with regularly scheduled air drops. Meanwhile, in both Syria and Iraq after a half year of alleged bombing, ISIS forces are reported to be stronger than ever. The air strikes have not been hitting jihadist targets because the American and coalition forces’ actual targets in Syria have been vital infrastructure and civilians that are clearly attacks on Assad. All of this irrefutable evidence piling up is backfiring on the American Empire. The world is now learning just how devious, diabolical and desperate the warmongering, pro-Zionist powerbrokers who are the war criminals controlling the US rogue government really are. Their evil lies are unraveling their demonic agenda as the truth cannot be stopped.

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Yearning for the Past: Is Human Society Regressing?

March 11th, 2015 by John Kozy

“Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they’re here to stay
Oh, I believe in yesterday”—The Beatles 1965

In the 1970s, I had a staunch conservative colleague, a political science professor, who was the only professor I ever met who openly used his classroom as a bully pulpit for his political views. Once, in a seminar he and I participated in, I asked him to tell the audience what conservatives conserve since they obviously are not conservationists. He was caught off guard by the question but eventually stated two platitudes: our values and our way of life. I tried to show him that both were meaningless expressions. To be meaningful, the pronoun “our” needs a specific antecedent. Without one, it could refer to any group—the wise or the stupid, the good or the bad, the ugly or the beautiful. Likewise the phrase “way of life” and the word “values” also must have some specific content to be meaningful. Some people value fairness and honesty, others cheating and lying. Some ways of life involve robbery and assault and others, serving people. Sentences that lack specific content are rarely meaningful. But I doubt that I convinced my colleague. Someone who doesn’t want his mind changed is difficult to convince! So have some fun and ask your favorite conservative what conservatives conserve and judge her/his reply. Does it make any sense? is the question.

Yet, the word “conservative” has always had a specific and precise meaning. It was coined by François-René de Chateaubriand in 1818. He used the word as the title of a magazine whose object was to restore the Bourbon monarchy by undoing the policies instituted during the French Revolution. Chateaubriand and others sought to return France to the time of the Ancien Régime (old order).Since that time, conservatives have tried to preserve the status quo or, better still, to return to “the way things were” at sometime in the past. In different times and at different places, of course, there are different old orders, so there is no single group of ideas that are conservative. Conservatives from different parts of the world often disagree among themselves. But the unifying attitude is always a yearning for the past.

In Europe in the nineteenth century, the yearning was for a return to the time before the French Revolution, before 1789. In America, some conservatives yearn for a return to the 1920s, others the 1850s, and still others to the 1600s. In Germany, some still yearn for a return to the 1930s. in Israel, some yearn for a time before the Christian era. And in the Arab world, some yearn for a time before the death of Muhammad. These yearnings are deeply felt. So the question is, Is human society regressing?

Look at the evidence. In America, the rights of wage-earners to organize and collectively bargain has been largely eliminated. The Supreme Court has torn the heart out of the Voting Rights Act and governors throughout the nation have begun to limit the right to vote of many citizens. The elimination of regulations used to promote the fairness of business is constantly sought. And racism has become rife. In Europe anti-Semitism is again becoming common. Israel, whose founders were staunchly progressive socialists, has now become a banal reactionary state. The voices of reaction are loud and heard everywhere while the voices of progress are hardly heard at all. Active progressive movements exist nowhere. The voices of progress have fallen silent. Conservatives everywhere are measuring progress by walking backwards!

Conflict within and between societies was once manifested as conflict between reactionaries and progressives. But today things are different. Reactionaries and progressives engage in mere skirmishes while the real conflict is taking place between two large conservative societies—the Western and the Arabian. Skirmishes can often be resolved by compromise, but conflict between two diametrically opposed cultures can not. What can either side give up that would mollify the other? Their forms of government? Their economic practices? Their cultural values? I suspect not! America promises to “degrade and destroy” ISIL. There is no space for compromise.

But Islamic conservatism is not comprised of a group of individuals. It does not consist of an organization. It is an ideology. It cannot be shot with a gun. It cannot be stabbed with a knife. It cannot be poisoned. It cannot be blown to bits with a missile. As any American should know, just as the ideology of racism has not been annihilated after numerous generations, the ideology that holds ISIL together cannot be destroyed either. The killing of people who hold that ideology will have no effect on its existence. It has already become a Lernean Hydra. Each lopped off head grows two more.

On September 11, 2001, the United States set out to punish those responsible for crashing airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon even though the perpetrators died in the crashes. America would extract its “pound of flesh” along with millions of gallons of blood. Although ostensibly done to protect Americans, some of the flesh and blood extracted was and continues to be American. But no one can convincingly argue that Americans are safer today than they were on September 10^th. Butchering the flesh and spilling the blood has achieved nothing. Now the American government wants more. But the degree of safety Americans enjoy is inversely related to the number of jihadists killed. The more killed, the less safe Americans are.

There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. How many Americans will die trying to kill even one percent of them? Even if one percent is killed, how many of the others will become jihadists? How many years of killing will this take? The human race can very easily annihilate itself in this mad attempt to “degrade and destroy.”

That human society is regressing is obvious if the proliferation of cyberware being developed is discounted. Cyber trinkets will not solve human problems. So the question to be answered is not is human society in regress but how far back it will go—the 1920s, the eighteenth century, the Middle Ages, the seventh century, or perhaps the Stone Age. What will the denouement of the human race be?

John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who writes on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and another 20 years working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and a small number of commercial magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from that site’s homepage.

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How the American Public is Deceived by the News and Canada’s “Torture Act”

March 11th, 2015 by Global Research News

Core Inflation in the US Would Be Just As Low As in the Eurozone if Measured on the Same Basis, Washington’s Blog, March 11, 2015

Despite Stronger U.S. Growth Anyone with a pulse knows that Europe is stuck in a downturn worse than the Great Depression. Most think that the U.S. has fared better … but that is debatable. Mega-bank Société Générale’s strategist Albert Edwards…

Terrorism is “Made in the USA”. The Global War on Terrorism is a Fabrication, A Big Lie, Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 11, 2015

Prominent academic and author Dr Michel Chossudovsky warned that the so-called war on terrorism is a front to propagate America’s global hegemony and create a New World Order. Dr Chossudovsky said terrorism is made in the US and that terrorists…

A New World Order: A Threat to Sovereign States, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, March 11, 2015

New World Order a big threat to sovereign states, speakers at an international conference say. The anti-war initiative, Perdana Global Peace Foundation, has a single goal of putting an end to war. Founded by Malaysia’s former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir…

Suppressing Key Facts, How the American Public Is Deceived by the “News”, Eric Zuesse, March 11, 2015

If the public is systematically lied-to by the Government and by a virtually uniformly cooperative press suppressing key facts in order to pump that lie, such as was the case during 2002 and 2003 in the lead-up to America’s invasion…

Boris Nemtsov Assassination: Confession of Former Russian Officer could Prompt “Mole-Hunt”, Dr. Christof Lehmann, March 11, 2015

The Moscow Basmanny Court, on Sunday, sanctioned the detention of three additional suspects in the case of the murder of Russian politician Boris Nemtsov. Meanwhile, Daur Dadayev , a former Chechen officer pleaded guilty for his involvement. The developments prompt…

Impending Threat to Canadian Democracy: Harper Government’s “Anti-Terrorism Act” isn’t about Terrorism, it’s a Torture Act, Michael Keefer, March 11, 2015

The Harper government’s Bill C-51, or Anti-Terrorism Act, subverts basic principles of constitutional law, assaults rights of free speech and free assembly, and is viciously anti-democratic.

Fukushima Coverup: Sick US Navy Sailors’ Class Action Law Suit, US Government, Doctors Bury Truth about Fukushima RadiationBy David Gutierrez, March 10, 2015

Image: Navy Lieutenant Steve Simmons U.S. Navy sailors exposed to radioactive fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster have been falling ill, even as the Defense Department insists that they were not exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. Many of the…

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At Least 103 Civilians Killed by U.S. Led Bombing in Syria Since September

March 11th, 2015 by Interventions Watch

That’s according to a count by the Syrian Network for Human Rights. They also claim that Kaya Mueller, a U.S. NGO worker who was being held by ISIS, was killed in a U.S. airstrike. As here:

‘In this report we will document the civilian casualties from December 14th, 2014 until February 17th, 2015. These incidents have caused the deaths of no less than 63 civilians, including 3 children and 5 women, for an overall death toll of 103 individuals including 11 women, once of which is a confirmed American woman as well as 11 children. This information has been documented by the SNHR by name, picture, date, and time’.

And this tally is almost certainly incomplete, because the Network say that they have been unable to:

‘ . . . record or document the deaths toll caused behind ISIS lines, and no one can claim that, except within the media propaganda, and that is because ISIS has never published the names, photos or any videos or any information about them, and there is no information source or reporters behind ISIS lines to deliver such news, photos, and account for the number of victims’.

This is pure supposition, but given that U.S. led airstrikes will have been concentrated ‘behind ISIS lines’, then it’s possible that a substantial number of civilian deaths may have been caused, but gone undocumented, by them.

Will our intrepid free media, so passionately concerned about the suffering of civilians in Syria, be following up on this report?

I wouldn’t hold your breath.

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CIA Restructuring to “Cover Entire Universe”; European Union Wants its Own Army

March 11th, 2015 by Stop NATO

Here are excerpts from the most recent articles published on Stop NATO.

East And South: NATO Chief, Commanders Expand Rapid Strike Forces

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
March 11, 2015

Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg discussed security challenges with NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Philip Breedlove, and participated in a conference of senior military commanders during a visit to Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe on Wednesday (11 March 2015). The Secretary General thanked the commanders for the remarkable work of Allied forces in the face of a highly complex and uncertain security environment…

The Secretary General warned that Russia’s aggressive actions against Ukraine have undermined the post-Cold War security order in Europe…

JenPsak: U.S. To Report On Sending Lethal Weapons To Ukraine

Ukrinform
March 11, 2015

Psaki says when U.S. government reports on providing weapons to Ukraine

KYIV: The United States plans to submit a report to Congress on possible providing defense lethal assistance to Ukraine, envisaged by the requirements of Ukraine Freedom Support Act “as soon as possible”.

U.S. State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki said this during a daily press briefing on Tuesday, an Ukrinform correspondent reported.

“The reports are currently undergoing an interagency review. We’re committed to delivering these reports to Congress as soon as possible,” she said.

According Psaki, the delay in submitting the report is due to the “extremely volatile” situation in Ukraine, which is discussed on a daily basis. “We want to ensure that Congress has the most complete and up-to-date information,” she assured.

The Speaker added that the U.S. President delegated to the State Department certain reporting requirements in the Ukraine Freedom Support Act, but there are several agencies who weigh in on the content.

As reported, one of the sections of Ukraine Freedom Support Act, adopted in mid-December, provides reporting by the President of the United States on possible deliveries of defensive weapons to Ukraine, conducting exercises and training of military personnel. The deadline set by this law passed on February 15.

Polish Prime Minister On Ukraine War: For First Time Blood Being Shed For European Union

Interfax-Ukraine
March 11, 2015

Kopacz: Europe faces greatest security crisis since Cold War

Eastern Partnership: The West’s Final Assault On the Former Soviet Union

The Prime Minister of Poland Ewa Kopacz has said that the Ukrainian conflict has triggered an unprecedented security crisis in Europe.

”We have the greatest security crisis in Europe since the Cold War,” she said in an interview with Polish media, adding that it would be irresponsible to disregard this threat.

According to Kopacz, for the first time “blood is actually being shed for the European Union, or for an attempt at integration into the European Union.”

”We need to protect our own interests, but at the same time fight for something that Ukraine is fighting for today,” she said, adding that Europe should condemn those who don’t respect Ukraine’s desire for European integration.

On March 11, Warsaw will host the annual conference of Poland’s military leadership. The main topics will include the conflict in Ukraine and preparations for the 2016 NATO summit in Warsaw.

Last night, Polish National Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak said that the conference will undoubtedly will be guided by the events in eastern Ukraine…

Former Co-Triumvir: U.S. Blatantly Insults Georgian Sovereignty Over Saakashvili

Civil Georgia

March 10, 2015

Tbilisi: Nino Burjanadze, ex-parliament speaker and leader of Democratic Movement–United Georgia opposition party, accused the United States of “blatant insult of Georgia’s sovereignty” and criticized the Georgian authorities for not reacting on appearance of ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili, wanted by Tbilisi, at a hearing in the U.S. Senate’s foreign relations committee.

“This is an insult of our state; this is a continuation of the insulting policy, which was also demonstrated by inviting wanted ex-president as a main guest at [the European Parliament] during ratification of [the Association] Agreement,” she said on March 10.

In his capacity as Ukrainian president’s adviser and chairman of Ukraine’s International Advisory Council on Reforms, Saakashvili testified before Senate foreign relations committee’s subcommittee on Europe and regional security cooperation on March 4, when it held a hearing on “Russian aggression in Eastern Europe.”

“What do declarations by the western states, including by the United States, mean about respecting Georgia’s sovereignty? Respecting Georgia’s sovereignty first and foremost mean that one has to respect the authorities of this country and its decisions and one should not be receiving wanted person,” Burjanadze said…

NATO Land Forces Prepare For New Article 5 Collective War

Stars and Stripes
March 10, 2015

NATO country leaders meet to hone response to future threats
ByJennifer H. Svan

RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany: High-level NATO leaders met this week at Ramstein to consider the future of the alliance’s ground forces in the wake of the conflict in Ukraine and events in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization-LANDCOM Corps Commanders’ Conference drew more than 140 participants from nearly every country in the 28-member alliance, including NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove.

He and Army Lt. Gen. John Nicholson Jr., the commander of NATO Allied Land Command, spoke of the broader security environment facing NATO post-Afghanistan and the challenges ground forces, in particular, must address to hone and ready a land component that could respond to an international crisis at a moment’s notice.

“We are adapting to some of the most significant changes to the security environment here in Europe since the Cold War,” Breedlove said, “and I am pleased to say that NATO is adapting as rapidly as its 21st Century challenges are also evolving.”

Breedlove said NATO’s land forces headquarters — established in 2012 at Izmir, Turkey, to ensure the interoperability of NATO ground forces — “is focused on matching our readiness to the environment” and working with nations on contingency planning “in support of NATO’s readiness action force,” as outlined at the pivotal NATO Wales Summit last fall. Interoperability has been a constant, if elusive, goal for the alliance since the early 1950s…

U.S. Military Moves To Russian Borders For First Time Ever

United States European Command
March 10, 2015

3rd Infantry Division arrives to support Operation Atlantic Resolve
By Media Operations Division
United States European Command

RIGA, Latvia: Soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division offload an M1A2 Abrams Main Battle Tank from the transportation vessel “Liberty Promise” March 9 at the Riga Universal Terminal docks. More than 100 pieces of equipment, including the tanks, M2A3 Bradley Fighting Vehicles and assorted military cargo, will move on to sites in other areas of Latvia as well as Estonia and Lithuania in support of Operation Atlantic Resolve.

Approximately 750 U.S. Army and military vehicles and equipment, including tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, artillery pieces and helicopters from the 3rd Infantry Division arrived in Riga, Latvia, on Monday by ship to support Operation Atlantic Resolve and planned Army-Europe multinational training exercises in that region. This equipment will be used for training of NATO allies in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania…

Serbia: NATO Victim In 1999, NATO Military Colony In 2015

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Military Liaison Office Belgrade
March 9, 2015

Admiral Ferguson said that NATO and Serbia are successfully cooperating through various Partnership of Peace mechanisms, and noted that the recently adopted IPAP agreement provides space for deepening relations and practical cooperation. The Serbian officials noted that Serbia appreciates NATO’s assistance in improving capacities for participation of its soldiers in EU and UN peacekeeping missions, and added that the Serbian Armed Force’s cooperation with KFOR is excellent on all levels.

Admiral Ferguson also met with Chief of NATO MLO Belgrade, Brig. Gen. Lucio Batta, to discuss the most recent developments in NATO-Serbia relations and the role of the office in supporting Serbiaćs defense sector reform and future IPAP-related initiatives.

This was Admiral Ferguson’s first visit to Serbia since assuming command of JFC Naples in July 2014. In addition to his NATO responsibilities, Admiral Ferguson is also Commander U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa…

Need EU Army To Aid NATO In Confronting Russia: Official

Activ

March 10, 2015

Juncker: NATO is not enough, EU needs an army

The European Union needs its own army to face up to Russia and other threats, as well as to restore the bloc’s standing around the world, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told a German newspaper yesterday (8 March).

Arguing that NATO was not enough because not all members of the transatlantic defence alliance are in the EU, Juncker said a common EU army would send important signals to the world.

“A joint EU army would show the world that there would never again be a war between EU countries,” Juncker told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper. “Such an army would also help us to form common foreign and security policies and allow Europe to take on responsibility in the world.”

Juncker said a common EU army could serve as a deterrent and would have been useful during the Ukraine crisis.

“With its own army, Europe could react more credibly to the threat to peace in a member state or in a neighbouring state,” he said…

U.S. Deploys 3,000 Troops, 750 Military Vehicles To Baltic

Stars and Stripes
March 9, 2015

Troops and hardware from 3rd Infantry Division heading to Eastern Europe
By Jon Harper

WASHINGTON: Thousands of troops and major hardware from the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division are heading to the Baltic region to reassure NATO allies…according to the Pentagon.

Approximately 3,000 soldiers from the division’s 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team are bringing approximately 750 vehicles and pieces of heavy equipment with them, including tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, artillery pieces and helicopters. The gear arrived Monday via ship in Riga, Latvia, Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren told reporters.

The troops and equipment will participate in multinational training exercises with Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, which will kick off in May. The exercises are part of Operation Atlantic Resolve, a U.S.-Army led mission which began last year…

Germany: United States Army NATO Soldiers In European War Games

USANATO Public Affairs

March 5, 2015

USANATO-1GNC Soldiers Conduct Deployment Exercise in Muenster, Germany

MUENSTER, Germany: United States Army NATO Soldiers assigned to NATO’s 1st German-Netherlands Corps conducted a deployment readiness and alert exercise Mar. 4, as part of a series of exercises making up NATO Exercise Trident Juncture 15, the alliance’s larges exercise this year.

The Soldiers, along with their Dutch, Germany, Romanian and Turkish partners practiced alert and deployment procedures for a would be short-notice deployment, culminating with the air-loading of Soldiers and equipment onto a C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft.

1st GNC, headquartered in Muenster, Germany, is one of several NATO headquarters responsible for rapidly deploying to provide command and control to NATO forces during operational deployments. The deployment and alert excercise provided 1st GNC leaders an assessment of how well their organization can do that…

NATO’s Top Political Body Meets With Jordanian King At NATO Headquarters

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
March 9, 2015

Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg underscored the importance of the Alliance’s partnership with Jordan in talks with His Majesty King Abdullah II at NATO headquarters on Monday (9 March 2015). After meeting the Secretary General, the King discussed regional security challenges with Allied ambassadors at a session of the North Atlantic Council.

Mr. Stoltenberg underlined that NATO Allies and Jordan face the same security challenges and threats, including terrorism and extremism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and the consequences of failing states.

The Secretary General expressed his sympathy to the people of Jordan for the recent barbaric killing of a Jordanian pilot by ISIL, and stressed that the terrible acts conducted by extremists underlined the need for us to work even closer together.

Mr. Stoltenberg welcomed Jordan’s key role in promoting regional security, calling the country a force for moderation and a special partner for NATO. Jordan has participated in NATO-led missions in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Libya. Jordan is the first Mediterranean Dialogue country to join the NATO Response Force. NATO is also working with Jordan to build its defence capacity and support training for other partners in the region…

U.S. Adds Black Hawks To NATO’s Anti-Russian Operation

Stars and Stripes
March 6, 2015

Operation Atlantic Resolve expands with Black Hawks
By Michael S. Darnell

GRAFENWÖHR, Germany: An additional 450 soldiers and 25 Black Hawk helicopters will join the expanding roster of units converging on eastern Europe in March as part of a longer-term effort to reassure allies worried about Russia’s intentions.

Pilots, flight and ground crews from the 4th Battalion, 3rd Aviation Regiment, 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade out of Hunter Army Air Field, Ga., will be deploying to Illesheim, Germany, later this month.

From the staging ground there, they will then deploy in support of Operation Atlantic Resolve, a multinational training mission to reassure Poland and the Baltic countries of NATO’s commitment in the face of Russia’s aggressive moves in Ukraine.

The unit will remain deployed for about nine months, U.S. Army Europe said in a March 3 news release…

CIA To Restructure To “Cover Entire Universe”: Director

Xinhua News Agency
March 7, 2015

CIA to be restructured to “cover entire universe”: Director

WASHINGTON: The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is planning to create new units in a series of reorganizations, aiming to “cover the entire universe” amid modern threats and crises, CIA Director John Brennan said Friday.

Announcing the restructuring to the 67-years-old agency Friday, Brennan said the move comes after nine outside experts spent three months analyzing the agency’s management structure, including what CIA deputy director David Cohen called “pain points”, organizational areas where the CIA’s bureaucracy does not work efficiently.

Briefing reporters at CIA headquarters earlier this week, Brennan said officers will be reassigned to 10 newly created ” mission centers,” a move to concentrate the agency’s focus on specific challenges or geographic areas, such as weapons proliferation or Africa…

Poland: U.S. To Deploy Interceptor Missiles For NATO War Games

Trend News Agency
March 7, 2015

A battery of US Patriot missile systems will arrive in Poland at the end of March to take part in NATO military exercises, Polish Ministry of National Defense said Friday.

“This time the deployment of a Patriot battery [in Poland] will be a part of operation Atlantic Resolve aimed at increasing military presence at NATO’s Eastern flank,” the Ministry spokesman Janusz Walczak said.

According to Walczak, the military exercises with participation of about 100 US troops and some 30 vehicles will last for several days. The battery to be deployed in Poland belongs to the US military contingent stationed in Germany.

US Patriot batteries participate in military exercises in Poland under the 2008 bilateral missile defense agreement…

Britain, U.S. Make Military “Gifts” To Ukrainian Belligerent

Ukrinform
March 7, 2015

London plans to ship consignment of non-lethal weapons to Kyiv

KYIV: The UK intends to ship a consignment of non-lethal military equipment to Ukraine.

Deutsche Welle German news agency reported the news citing the UK Minister of Defense Michael Fallon.

“Non-lethal equipment that is to be shipped as a gift is meant to prevent further Ukrainian losses and improve its spatial awareness,” the German news agency quoted the head of the British Ministry of Defense as saying.

====================================================================

Ukrinform
March 7, 2015

PM Yatseniuk discusses American technical assistance with US Deputy State Secretary

KYIV: Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatseniuk discussed with US Deputy Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who is visiting Kyiv, the issue of a security situation in eastern Ukraine on Friday, March 6.

The news was reported on Ukraine’s Government portal website.

“The Prime Minister of Ukraine discussed with the US official the issue of security situation in eastern Ukraine, focusing on the need for a common decisive opposition by the international community to the aggressive policy conducted by the Russian Federation,” said the statement.

It is noted that an important element of these efforts is to stabilize the economic situation in Ukraine through the government’s efforts to implement systemic reforms with the support provided by its international partners.

Moreover, Yatseniuk and Blinken discussed priority areas for obtaining the expert and technical assistance from the United States, including, in particular, to enhance Ukraine’s defense capabilities, reform of law enforcement agencies, and assistance in the financial sector.

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Haiti: Was the U.S. Military-Intelligence Complex Involved in the Murder of Oriel Jean, Former Security Chief for President Aristide?

March 11th, 2015 by Kim Ives

On September 2012, gunmen killed Oriel Jean, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s former security chief from 2001 to 2003, in Port-au-Prince. After misleading media reports and rumors, he was falsely accused of selling out Aristide when jailed in the U.S. for 30 months on charges of money laundering. After returning to Haiti in September 2013, he led a low-profile life running a construction company.

In 2001, as the George W. Bush administration began targeting Aristide officials like Oriel, a few dozen heavily armed paramilitary “rebels,” led by former army officer and police chief Guy Philippe and former death-squad leader Jodel Chamblain, began launching military raids from the Dominican Republic on the Police Academy on Jul. 28, 2001 and the National Palace on Dec. 17, 2001, both of which the Special Unit for Guarding the National Palace (USGPN), under Oriel’s direction, repulsed.

In 2002, using one of its usual political pressure tactics, the U.S. issued a list of Haitian government officials, including Oriel, to whom it would deny visas due to their alleged ties to Haitian drug traffickers. On Jun. 27, 2003, conservative Radio Métropole reported that Oriel had been “spotted” two days earlier leaving the Port-au-Prince international airport “incognito… with his entire family” for Canada, insinuating that he was fleeing the country and might be arrested by Canadian authorities. Oriel rebutted the report the same day in a telephone interview with Radio Kiskeya, saying he’d traveled to Montreal for no more than two weeks to seek medical attention for a bad knee, while his family had joined him for a vacation and to see relatives.

“Before you spread rumors, you should try to confirm the information,” Oriel complained to Kiskeya and the media in general. “There are simple calls you could make. My God, if I am going to leave for a few days, do I have to hold a press conference?”

Despite the interview, Oriel hastily flew back to Port-au-Prince on Jul. 1, 2003. But, with the U.S. tightening the political screws, it was decided he should resign as USGPN chief a few days later, just as Nesly Lucien had been forced to resign as police chief in March 2003.

Oriel continued to play a central but background role in Aristide’s security until the coup d’état of Feb. 29, 2004. Eight days later, armed with a visa and having received assurances from an official in the Canadian Embassy that he was welcome, Oriel flew from Punto Cana, Dominican Republic to Toronto, but he was arrested on arrival there. Canadian authorities told him they had cancelled his visa.

“My lawyer and I asked them how they could revoke someone’s visa without telling them,” Oriel told Haïti Liberté in a 2007 interview. “If someone has no right to enter Canada, you have to tell them that beforehand, not after they’ve taken a flight and arrived there… If they don’t want me to enter, return me to the Dominican Republic or Haiti. I even asked them to return me to Haiti.”According to Oriel, he and his lawyer had won this argument when the proceedings were interrupted, and the judge was presented with an extradition request from Washington. “My lawyer told me that I could fight the extradition request, but given the close relationship between Canada and the U.S., I had very slim chances of winning,” Oriel said. “The legal fight, the judicial process, in Canada might take two or three years during which time I’d be detained, and if I did lose, the clock would start at zero again when I was extradited to the U.S.. So despite some opposition from my family and supporters in Canada, I decided not to fight the extradition request and to face my accusers in the U.S..”

Oriel was extradited to the U.S. on Mar. 19, 2004. Prosecutors accused him of helping to offload drugs and demanding a cut of drug profits, charges Oriel vigorously denied. He insisted that he had taken part in no illegal activities or drug-trafficking whatsoever. “But my lawyer said to me: ‘Listen son, you’re not in Haiti anymore. Here in the U.S. they have this charge called conspiracy. Even if you personally weren’t involved in anything, if you were at all associated with someone who is charged with a crime, and you even accepted five cents from him, there are ways to accuse you. Going to a trial is very risky given the demonization of [the] Lavalas [government]. I advise you to clear yourself, tell them what is true, what is not true, and make a deal.’”

Oriel followed the advice and admitted to knowing Haiti’s three principal drug traffickers and having even accepted gifts from them. “Knowing they were drug traffickers, I should have kept my distance from them,” he said. “I admitted my error and agreed to pay the price.”

“As I did my job, I thought I was just dealing (en affaire avec) with the Haitian government,” he added. “I didn’t realize I was dealing with the U.S. government.”

He made a deal to plead guilty to the charge of “Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering” and to testify against drug trafficker Serge Edouard, who was convicted for life in 2005.
“There are some who say I betrayed Aristide and said things about him and gave up other people, and that was why I got so little time,” he said in his 2007 interview. “People can say anything. The truth is that I simply told them what I knew about the drug traffickers.”

Released from prison in September 2006, with one year probation, Oriel went to work as a parking lot attendant at Ft. Lauderdale Hollywood Airport, working the midnight to 8:00 a.m. shift. The U.S. State Department granted him an S visa, given to “alien witnesses and informants,” which had to be renewed every year following an interview.

Some years, U.S. officials would delay the renewal. One of those years was 2011. Following Aristide’s Mar. 18, 2011 return to Haiti from a seven-year exile, Oriel told Haïti Liberté that the Justice Department had sent a team of three investigators to ask him questions about Aristide. He said he provided them with no answers and sent a hand-delivered message to Aristide about the visit. In the same note, he gave Aristide some advice and warnings about people in his security team.

Finally, Oriel decided to leave Florida and return to Haiti in September 2012. Under the terms of his S visa, he would not be allowed back into the U.S., so he knew it was a one-way trip. “He didn’t want to stay in the U.S. any longer,” his wife Bettina told Haïti Liberté. “He was tired of working nights at the parking lot. He felt a lot of stress in the States from work, financial problems, and his immigration status and thought he could contribute more in Haiti. He was like a fish out of water.”

Back in Haiti, he went to work as Operations Director for Claudy Construction, owned by Claude Guillaume, who also owns Claudy Center Borlette, a popular private lottery in Haiti. “The Martelly government offered him a job, but he refused it,” said Oriel’s childhood friend Alix Sainphor. “He didn’t want to be involved in politics, and he didn’t want anything to do with Martelly.”

He maintained a low profile, but trouble came looking for him. Investigating Judge Ivickel Dabrézil subpoenaed Oriel, along with many others, including Aristide, to provide him with any information they had concerning the Apr. 3, 2000 murder of radio journalist Jean Dominique and his radio’s guardian Jean-Claude Louissaint.

Oriel said that he told Dabrézil what he knew about the matter, testimony that might implicate former Lavalas Family Senator and Aristide Foundation director Mirlande Libérus – now living in Florida – in the double killing.

“You have to understand that I have no power, no money, no team of lawyers to avoid talking to Dabrézil when he subpoenaed me,” Oriel told Haïti Liberté in 2013. “He is taking testimony from many people. I told him exactly what was said to me, what I did, and what I know. First, I don’t want to get in trouble by hiding something or telling a lie, and second, I think we should get to the truth in the Jean Dominique case. It’s gone too long unsolved.”

“Some people say I accused Aristide, which is not true,” he continued. “I was dealing with Mirlande. I don’t know where it went from there. She will have to give her testimony. But don’t blame me for just telling what I experienced.”

With this tension between certain former Lavalas Family leaders and Oriel, the stage was set for tragedy.

“He had received numerous death threats, particularly in February 2014,” said Sainphor. “At that time, he chose to leave Haiti and stay in the Dominican Republic for a month and a half. When he felt the danger had passed, he returned. But shortly before he was killed, he had received more threats.”

Some Haitian analysts question whether the hidden hand of the “laboratory,” as the U.S. military/intelligence complex is called in Haiti, might be involved. “It could be that the laboratory killed two birds with one stone,” said Henriot Dorcent of the party Dessalines Coordination (KOD). “They eliminate a very connected and experienced guy who was once a militant in and apparently remained sympathetic to the Haitian people’s struggle for justice, democracy, and sovereignty. And at the same time, they lay the crime at Aristide’s doorstep, thereby undermining the people’s mobilization against the regime of President Michel Martelly, their puppet.”

This hypothesis is given credence by the reaction of Martelly’s former spokesman Guyler C. Delva, secretary general of SOS Journalists, who put out a Mar. 3 statement saying that Oriel had “constantly been the subject of death threats from individuals close to former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide whom he had accused of ordering the murder of Jean Dominique.” In truth, even in a long interview with the former security chief which Delva made public on Mar. 10 on Radio Caraïbes, Oriel stopped short of directly accusing anybody of the crime but simply lays out a version of events and circumstances that are very suggestive. As Alix Sainphor said: “Guy Delva is lying, twisting and framing Oriel’s words to further his own agenda.”

Other pro-Martelly politicians, like Sauveur Pierre-Etienne of the Struggling People’s Organization (OPL), have also charged that Aristide is behind Oriel’s killing.

“Aristide had asked Mirlande and others to ‘neutralize’ Jean Dominique, whom he saw as a strong challenger for the presidency coming from Préval’s party Kozepèp,” Oriel told Haïti Liberté in 2013. “Did he mean for them to physically eliminate him? Frankly, I don’t think so.”

Oriel Jean’s funeral is scheduled to be held on Mar. 11 at the Parc de Souvenir cemetery in Port-au-Prince, where he will be buried. He is survived by his wife, Bettina, his father, Odiyel, two sisters, Mamoune and Gladys, and four children, two boys and two girls, ranging in ages from 27 to 12.

It is perhaps fitting to close with Oriel’s own words from his 2007 interview with Haïti Liberté: “The U.S. government and media has tried to paint me as a corrupt criminal, like Jean-Claude or François Duvalier, Ti Bobo, Bòs Pent, Luc Désir, etc. Those who know my trajectory, who know where I come from in the struggle since 1986, know that’s not me. Those who have worked alongside me know that I’m a militant and an upright citizen (sitwayen de bien). However, I recognize that I’m not perfect, I made errors as everyone does, and I’ve paid for my errors and started anew. I have made my self-criticism (otokritik). But I have never been a trafficker, a drug dealer, a criminal. I cannot spend my whole life fighting against dictatorial power – people who kill others, who beat others – to become one of them today. My relationship with someone I should not have been friendly with, which got me into trouble, I don’t deny that. I accept that. But to make me into something I’m not is not good. I’m very critical because I was in a key post, and I saw how the government finished badly, and I’m critical of many people. I’m critical of Aristide, I’m critical of myself, I’m critical of many people who were in power because I saw what happened in front of me and how in the end it was the people who were the victim. As I always say, I am a child of the people, I was raised among the people, and I will die among the people.”

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Beyond Twelve Years A Slave: What the United States Owes Black America

March 11th, 2015 by Paul Street

Image: Scene from 12 Years a Slave.

“The uncompensated crime and tragedy of racial oppression in before and after slavery continues to accumulate its blood and financial cost to this very day.”

I am never more than slightly encouraged about white America’s capacity for breaking from the United States’ deeply embedded racism when I hear one of my fellow US Caucasians report that they’ve viewed the Black British director Steve McQueen’s powerful movie Twelve Years a Slave and were “moved” (sometimes to tears) by it. It’s good that some US whites have retained enough inner humanity to recognize and recoil from the revolting racist cruelty and abominable torment that lay at the heart of the Southern US slave system depicted in Twelve Years a Slave. Sadly and sickeningly enough, untold millions of white Americans have been induced to think of the slave South as some kind of quaint, benign, and paternalistic time and place when benevolent white masters cared for the black chattel they viewed as inferior “family members.”

Twelve Years a Slave burst that childish white historical bubble with a relentlessly true-to-life and death portrayal of 1840s and 1850s slave traders, slave-owners, and slave-drivers as ferocious and perverse sociopaths, exploiters, torturers, sadists, and rapists. Based on the published 1853 narrative of Solomon Northrup, a free Black Northerner who was kidnapped and sold into Georgia cotton slavery, the film rightly portrays the slave system as a living Hell for its Black victims.

Good for McQueen and good, I suppose, for whites and others who have left the movie with a new or newly intensified sense of repugnance at the massive crime that was North American Black slavery. Any other feeling taken from the movie would be a strong indication that one is less than human.

A Bigger White Block: What the United States Owes Black America

Still, we shouldn’t exaggerate the anti-racist moral victory here. White America’s major block when it comes to acknowledging what the United States did and owes to Black Americans through and because of chattel slavery is not a failure to acknowledge that system’s immorality and cruelty. For every white American who idiotically believes that the “old time” South was a happy time and place for slavers and their masters alike, you can count two or three more with the elementary decency to recognize that slavery was a nightmare of misery and suffering for slaves. A much bigger and more important block in the white American mind comes around the question of what the United States is obliged to pay Black Americans because of the crime of slavery, committed over two and half centuries stretching from the nation’s colonial origins through the American Revolution (itself largely fought largely to guarantee North American slavery’s survival and expansion) and the Civil War. The answer for most whites on this score is of course “absolutely nothing.”

Here we are talking, or should be talking, about compensation – reparations (yes, the “R word”) – for more than the astonishing loss, trauma, anguish and unpaid labor imposed on and extracted from Black Americans. A brilliant historical literature now shows that, in the words historian Edward Baptist, “the commodification and suffering and forced labor of African Americans is what made the United States powerful and rich” decades before the Civil War. By 1836, Baptist reasonably calculates, nearly half the nation’s economy activity derived directly and indirectly from the roughly 1 million Black slaves (just 6 percent of the national population) who toiled on the nation’ southern cotton frontier. Capitalist cotton slavery was how United States seized control of the lucrative the world market for cotton, the critical raw material for the Industrial Revolution, emerging thereby as a rich and influential nation in the world capitalist system by the second third of the 19th century. As Baptist explains in his recent widely read book The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 2014):

“From 1783, at the end of the American Revolution to 1861, the number of slaves in the United States increased five times over, and all this expansion produced a powerful nation…white enslavers were able to force enslaved African American migrants to pick cotton faster and more efficiently than free people. Their practices transformed the southern states into the dominant force in the global cotton market, and cotton was the world’s most widely traded commodity at the time, as it was the key material during the first century of the industrial revolution. The returns from cotton monopoly powered the modernization of the rest of the American economy, and by the time of the Civil War, the United States had become the second nation to undergo large-scale industrialization” (p. xxi).

“Slavery was an especially brutal form of capitalism, driven by ruthless yet economically “rational” torture along with a dehumanizing ideology of racism.”

This is what Baptist calls “the half” that “has never been told”: the dynamic and profitable contribution of cotton slavery to the development of the US capitalist system. Contrary to what many US abolitionists thought before the Civil War, Baptist shows that the systematic terror perpetrated against slaves in the South was about much more than sadism and psychopathy on the part of slave traders, owners, and drivers. Slavery, Baptist demonstrates was a highly cost-efficient method for extracting surplus value from human beings, far superior in that regard to “free” (wage) labor in the onerous work of planting and harvesting cotton. It was an especially brutal form of capitalism, driven by ruthless yet economically “rational” torture along with a dehumanizing ideology of racism – and one that proved the key driving force behind the rise of a powerful national capitalism and great mercantile, banking, and manufacturing fortunes in the “free labor” North and across the entire US before the Civil War.

Consistent with Baptist’s findings, Twelve Years shows slaves being whipped and otherwise abused in accord with their precisely measured productivity in cotton fields. On the whole, however, the greater impression left by the movie is one of highly sexualized and mentally disturbed psychopathy on the part of the masters, something that tends to distract from slavery’s underlying “rational” centrality to US capitalist development. I am afraid that many of the movie’s viewers have been encouraged to continue the abolitionist mistake of separating the sociopathic brutalization of the slaves from the profit imperatives of capital within and beyond the South.

The “Freed” in 1863/65 Narrative: Another Half Left All Too Untold

Another and related great block to white Americans’ proper understanding of what the US owes to Black America goes beyond what people could ever get from Twelve Years a Slave, which ends with Northrop’s return to free life in upstate New York in 1853 (thanks to the intervention of a benevolent white anti-slavery carpenter played by Brad Pitt). I am referring to the widespread narrative that the US set its Black slaves “free” during and after the Civil War.

Okay, Go Compete

This “freed during and after the Civil War” story line is highly problematic on at least three levels. First, there is the absurdity of expecting four million people (the US slave population on the eve of the Civil War) who had been horrifically and systematically disfigured, tortured, traumatized, pulverized, stripped of wealth and income and otherwise savagely abused over centuries by the multiple and unfathomable torments of slavery to be in any kind of condition to suddenly and magically compete on a free and equal basis for jobs, land, education, and businesses with a free white population spared the incredible ordeal of racist total commodification – this in a nation that remained viciously racist in North and West as well as South after the Civil War. Success in the capitalist so-called free market depends largely on what one brings to the market and slavery took everything, or close to it, from those who survived it.

A Poker Chip Analogy

Second, there is the related absurdity – repeated again and again in US history from 1865 through the present day of thinking – that Blacks could ever be granted “equal opportunity” to succeed in the white capitalist US without a massive prior redistribution to Black America of wealth and other advantages stolen from it over centuries since the onset of North American Black slavery in the 17th century. Racial (and class and other) inequalities are cumulative and because they accumulate over time, the distinction that defenders of the current racial status quo make between “past and present racism” is inadequate and deceptive. The ongoing need for historical acknowledgement and correction, commonly called reparations, was expressed with a useful metaphor by the Black political scientist Roy L. Brooks nearly two decades ago:

“Two persons – one white and the other black – are playing a game of poker. The game has been in progress for some 300 years. One player – the white one – has been cheating during much of this time, but now announces: ‘from this day forward, there will be a new game with new players and no more cheating.’ Hopeful but suspicious, the black player responds, ‘that’s great. I’ve been waiting to hear you say that for 300 years. Let me ask you, what are you going to do with all those poker chips that you have stacked up on your side of the table all these years?’ ‘Well,’ said the white player, somewhat bewildered by the question, ‘they are going to stay right here, of course.’ ‘That’s unfair,’ snaps the black player. ‘The new white player will benefit from your past cheating. Where’s the equality in that?’ ‘But you can’t realistically expect me to redistribute the poker chips along racial lines when we are trying to move away from considerations of race and when the future offers no guarantees to anyone,’ insists the white player. ‘And surely,’ he continues, ‘redistributing the poker chips would punish individuals for something they did not do. Punish me, not the innocents!’ Emotionally exhausted, the black player answers, ‘but the innocents will reap a racial windfall.'”

Roy Brooks’ surplus “chips” are not quaint but irrelevant hangovers from “days gone by.” Besides having been accumulated largely through blood-soaked expropriation from Black Americans, they are weapons of racial oppression in the present and future. Given what is well known about the relationship between historically accumulated resources and current and future success, the very distinction between past and present racism ought perhaps to be considered part of the ideological superstructure of contemporary white supremacy functioning as an ongoing barrier to black advancement and equality.

Savage Racial Oppression Since the Civil War

Third and last but not least, there is the harsh historical reality that the racist US South was basically permitted to undertake the “reconstruction of Black servitude” (in the words of the anti-racist scholar Stephen Steinberg) to keep Black Americans essentially chained to cotton production in the wake of the Civil War and the aborted effort at anti-racist Reconstruction in the South. Millions of Black Americans journeyed into a type of freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) and the Thirteenth Amendment (1865) only to fall back under the shadow of involuntary servitude – slavery by another name – shortly thereafter. Reparations are due Black America not only for two plus centuries of chattel slavery but also for the hyper-exploitative system of cotton sharecropping and debt peonage that followed pure slavery’s demise, the Black Pass Codes and ubiquitous racial terror and violence that enforced the restored servitude, and for the political re-disenfranchisement and the Jim Crow segregation that were imposed across the South by extra-judicial terror and law in the final decades of the 19th century (and which lasted through the seventh decade of the 20th century), Reparations are due also for the brutal, commonly violence-enforced system of de facto racial segregation and inequality maintained in the North through the last century and into the present; for the forced, often murderous expulsion of “free” Blacks from thousands of Midwestern and border state “sundown towns” during the late 19th and early 20th centuries; for the present so-called New Jim of “racially disparate” (racist) mass incarceration and felony-marking, not to mention the ongoing shoot-down of hundreds of Black Americans (young Black males especially) by white US police each year.

The savage oppression of Black Americans after the Civil War and slavery’s formal demise should also be considered part of “the half” that “has never been told” – or is at least badly under-told and widely ignored in white majority America – about the US Black historical experience.

The Savage Irony of the Civil War

I’m not sure the post-1865 history isn’t even worse in a way than the long nightmare of slavery. Between 1861 and 1865, more than 700,000 Americans, including 40,000 Black Union soldiers, died in the US Civil War. That epic conflict led to the formal abolition of slavery and was fought essentially over the issue of slavery’s death or survival after January of 1863. “If God wills that [the war] continue,” US President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed in his Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865), “until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’”

To what end did the 40,000 Black Union anti-slavery warriors meet their early demise? For less than a decade, between 1866 and the early 1870s. Baptist notes, “Reconstruction in the South seemed like it might produce a radically transformed society. White resistance was brutal and widespread but the national commitment to emancipation kept federal troops stationed in the South.” But the commitment was not that strong and did not last very long in the new Age of Capital:

“…after 1873, when the industrial economy fell into a deep depression, white America’s conscience wavered. Consumed by labor disputes in the North, Republican leaders were increasingly unlikely to see the free [Black] laborers of the South as people with whom they shared interests….Across the South, night riders went out – hooded in white, burning, raping, beating, and killing. They stole one state’s elections after another. They torched the homes of black folks bold enough to buy land…They rode to Washington to make deals. To resolve the disputed presidential election of 1876, northern Republicans made a corrupt bargain with the South’s Democratic rulers to let the later have ‘home rule.’ The ‘Redeemers’…changed the laws to roll back as much of Reconstruction as they could. By 1900, they had taken away the vote from most Black men, and many of the less reliable white men as well. They also lowered the book of segregation – ‘Jim Crow,’ as people would come to call it – an array of petty and brutal rules [that]….forbade Americans…from enjoying the civil rights to move in public space as equals or have access to the same education and economic opportunities as white.”

Then the Jim Crow South added supreme historical insult to injury. Dixie “built monuments to the defeated generals of their war for slavery, memorialized the old days of the plantation, and wrote histories that insisted that the purpose of the war had been to defend their political rights against an oppressive state,” Baptist notes. “They were so successful at the last goal that they eventually convinced a majority of white Americans, including most historians, that slavery had been benign and that ‘states’ rights’ had been the cause of the Civil War.”

Solomon Northrup at least got to return to a type of freedom (a highly qualified Antebellum Northern version of it) in 1853. For millions of Southern Black ex-slaves, neither the Civil War nor Reconstruction did the trick. The uncompensated crime and tragedy of racial oppression in before and after slavery continues to accumulate its blood and financial cost to this very day, when median white household wealth is 22 times higher than median Black household wealth in the US, when fully 39% of Black American children, compared to just 14% of white US children, live below the federal government’s notoriously inadequate poverty level, and when Black Americans comprise more than 40% of the nation’s giant (2.4 million) prison population. “Long ago” history lives on in ugly racist shame while untold masses of US Caucasians preposterously believe that Black Americans have been given every opportunity to advance and succeed (“the president is Black, isn’t he?”) in a nation that “set them free” in 1863.

Paul Street is the author of Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Routledge, 2005) and Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: A Living Black Chicago History (Rowman & Littlefied, 2007).

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