Global Research

“Iraq may soon end up with no history.” – (Archeologist Joanna Farchakh, quoted in Cultural Cleansing in Iraq, Pluto Press, 2010.)

In his indispensible book “from Sumer to Saddam” (1) Geoff Simons writes:

“The region of the world that the ancient Greeks called Mesopotamia (land between the rivers) … was a fount of civilization – a veritable crucible … cradle, womb of cultural progress … Here it was the first cities were born, writing began and the first codified legal systems were established. Here, through such ancient lands as Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia and Assyria that the vital cultural brew was stirred, the quite remarkable concoction from which Western civilization would emerge.”

That chapter “The Ancient Crucible” concludes: “We may reflect also that a modern Iraq is entitled to contemplate with awe and pride the fructifying richness of the cultures that first emerged in this land more than five thousand years ago.”

From the day of the US-UK invasion that “fructifying richness”, societal, cultural, historic has been systematically, deliberately erased in one of the most devastating, despotic, desecrating, pulverizing cultural armageddons in history.

March 19^th commemorates the twelfth anniversary of the destruction of that “crucible”, it’s wonders still unceasingly pillaged and destroyed.

When the National Museum was looted (10^th – 12^th April 2003) American troops stood by – whilst their colleagues diligently guarded the Oil Ministry.

As some of antiquity’s most sublime, wonders – fifteen thousand items – were looted, Donald Rumsfeld, demonstrably a cultural cretin, remarked: “stuff happens.”

The US military were given co-ordinates of all Iraq’s museums, monuments, archeological sites. “All of Iraq is an archeological treasure”, remarked an archeologist at the time. Yet the US troops led destruction’s way, creating a military base in Babylon (dating from c 2,300 BC) site of the Hanging Gardens. Ancient miracles were bulldozed to build a military helicopter landing pad. They did the same next to the believed birthplace of Abraham, near Ur’s great Ziggurat. Ur dates from 3,800 BC but is recorded in written history from 26^th century BC. War crimes of enormity.

After George W. Bush declared a “Crusade”, the (literally) crusading American soldiers entered predominately Muslim Iraq (as Afghanistan) with thousands of give-away Bibles, yet were clearly supremely ignorant that Babylon, as Ur, which they were destroying was sacrosanct in the three Abrahamic religions. Babylon is recorded in the Bible in the Books of Daniel, Isaiah and Jeremiah. Ur is recorded three times in Genesis and in Nehemiah.

The US soldiers’ criminal vandalism resulted in: “Babylon being rendered archeologically barren.” (Guardian, 8^th June 2007.)  The: “courtyard of the 10th-century caravanserai* of Khan al-Raba was used  for exploding captured weapons. One blast demolished the ancient roofs and felled many of the walls. The place is now a ruin.” Barbarians through the Ishtar Gate.

Destruction has continued across Iraq by both occupation forces and the unchecked gangs and factions which flocked in with the invasion and due to the feckless abandonment of border controls by the US and UK – countries near paranoid about such controls on their own borders.

The latest archeologists and historians compare again to the sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258.

On Friday, 9^th March, the Muslim Sabbath, the ancient city of Nimrud was bulldozed by self declared “Islamic State” primitives destroying what became the capital of the Neo-Assyrian empire, dating back to the 13^th century BC. The site also contained the remains of the palace of Ashurnasirpal, King of Assyria (883-859 BC) who made Nimrud his capital.

A local source told Reuters valuables were looted then the city razed to the ground. One entrance to this haunting place was guarded until last week by human headed bulls and lions with hawk’s wings. These guardians prevailed through the region’s turmoils for nearly three thousand years, to be destroyed with all they watched over by terrorists spawned by Bush and Blair’s criminal invasion.

In the south western palace is the temple of Nabu, God of wisdom, the arts and sciences, believed son of the Babylonian God, Marduk. Construction was probably between 810-782 BC.

Historian Tom Holland told the Guardian:

“It’s a crime against Assyria, against Iraq, and against humanity. Destroy the past, and you control the future. The Nazis knew this, and the Khmer Rouge – and the Islamic State clearly understand it too.”

Two days later another of the world’s wonders, Hatra, was reported largely destroyed. Hatra was built circa 3^rd or 2^nd century BC, at the same time as the great Arab cities of Syria’s Palmyra, Petra (“rose red city half as old as time”) in Jordan and Lebanon’s Ba’albek. Hatra withstood repeated attacks by the Roman Empire to be defeated by those spawned by Bush and Blair’s actions.

A 1982 Iraqi Ministry of Tourism guide describes in Hatra:

“ … a frieze with sculptures which seem to tell a religious story enacted by Gods and musicians – the most beautiful work of art so far discovered” in this vast, ethereal city of creamy stone which shimmers golden under the sun, glowing amber under dawn’s rays and the setting sun.

The columns, temples, statues communicate not alone from the temples of the Gods, but surely from the architecture of the Gods, rendering a writer searching for words seemingly not yet devised.

There is the Temple of the goddess Shahiro (“the morning star”.) An area is:

”paved with veined marble, with walls decorated with geometrical designs and eagles – eagles being the main element in the Hatra religion. Over a decorative frieze, Arabic writing dates from the second half of the Abbasid era” (750-1258 AD.) The Abbasid Caliphate oversaw the “golden age of Islamic civilization.”

Hatra abounds with temples to creation. They were dedicated to the Sun God, to Venus (the morning star) “called variously Allatu, Atra’ta and Marthin – our lady.” The God Nergoul, also with a dedicated temple, symbolized the planet Mars. The revered, great, soaring eagle had his temple, where his statues looked down from on high.

The inscriptions are predominantly in ancient Aramaic, some reading: “Kings and princes of Hatra are the victorious kings of the Arabs.” They are surely weeping.

For those who know these marvels, hearts will never mend. Tears will never dry.

On my last visit I stood in front of the statue of Abbu, wife of Santruk 1^st. I remembered James Elroy Flecker’s reflections on the British Museum. I repeated them aloud, alone in an azure dawn:

“There is a hall in Bloomsbury


That no more dare I tread,


For all the stone men shout at me and swear they are not dead


And once I touched a broken girl, and knew that marble bled.”

The day after Hatra was destroyed, so was the fourth capital of Assyria, Khorsabad, built by Sargon 11 (721-705 BC.)

Writings show a city with a royal hunting park and gardens with: “all the aromatic plants” found in the fertile Euphrates river valleys. Thousands of fruit trees, including quinces, almonds and apples were planted.

Khorsabad was extensively looted by the French in the 19^th century and by the Americans in between 1928 and 1935.

In excavation initiated by the French Consul General in Mosul in 1842, an attempt was made to: “move two 30-ton statues and other material to Paris from Khorsabad on a large boat and four rafts”(2.) Two rafts and the boat were scuttled by pirates and Iraq’s stolen treasures lost for good.

In 1855, a further effort to ship remaining treasures: ” as well as material from other sites being worked by the French, mainly Nimrud, was undertaken. Almost all of the collection – over two hundred crates – was lost in the river. Surviving artifacts from this excavation were taken to the Louvre Museum in Paris.”

Between 1928–1935, American archaeologists from the Chicago’s Oriental Institute dug in the palace area. “A colossal bull estimated to weigh 40 tons was uncovered outside the throne room. It was found split into three large fragments. The torso alone weighed about 20 tons. This was shipped to Chicago.”

The British and Germans did a fair amount of looting in southern Iraq and notably Babylon and Ur, as their national museums bear witness.

The week before the destruction of Nimrud nearly 113,000 irreplaceable books and manuscripts in Mosul Library were burned by IS savages in what Irina Bokova, Director General of UNESCO, described as “cultural cleansing” and: “One of the most devastating acts of destruction of library collections in human history.”(3) Some items were on a UNESCO rarities list.

Set alight in a pyre outside the library included Syriac books printed in Iraq’s first printing house; eighteenth century manuscripts; volumes from the Ottoman era (1534-1704 and 1831-1920.) Irreplaceable rarities – an astrolabe, an astronomical “computer” for calculating the timing of the positions of the sun and the stars, used in classical antiquity and the Golden Age of Islam also destroyed, as were superb sandglass creations.

Over a hundred personal libraries of notable families from Mosul held “over the last century” were also incinerated.

The library was then blown up.

In the same week, the Mosul Museum was also attacked. Assyrian and Hatrene statues – including one of a Hatrene King holding an eagle – were smashed, with a winged bull and the God of Rozhan. Other items are believed to have been stolen to sell, possibly in Turkey and Syria.

In July last year the centuries old tomb believed of the Prophet Jonah in Mosul was obliterated with ISIS laid explosives with the Mosque in which it lay, dating back to the 14^th century. Prior to that it was a church. “The Mosque of Jonah” was also reputed to have held part of the remains of the whale which swallowed him.

All destruction described here lay in Nineveh Province, of which John Masefield wrote:

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,

Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,

With a cargo of ivory,

And apes and peacocks,

Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine. 

Iraq, as Palestine, is being erased, with Libya, Syria and even the great pyramids of Egypt now threatened by the monsters Bush and Blair’s “Crusade” has created.

The US, UK, Canada and other countries have “military advisors” in Iraq. They are silent and inactive on these war crimes of the new Mongols.

The US and UK Baghdad Embassy websites are equally mute. Yet on the  US Embassy’s site is:

“Regarding the Status of the Iraqi Jewish Archive:

“January 28, 2015

“The Iraqi Jewish Archive remains in the custody of the U.S. National Archives and Record Administration while plans are finalized on future exhibitions in the United States. None of the materials in the Iraqi Jewish  Archive have traveled outside of the United States.  The United States continues to abide by the terms of its agreement with the Government of Iraq.”

A government under occupation of course, cannot legally make such agreements.

“The exhibit of the material in Washington in 2013 and New York in 2014 has led to increased understanding between Iraq and the United States, and a greater recognition of the diverse heritage of Iraq.  We look forward to continuing our cooperation with the Government of Iraq on this matter so that the exhibit can be displayed in other cities in the United States.”(4)

Thus, Iraqi Jewish Archives (seized by the US in May 2003) safeguarded in Iraq for hundreds of years was spirited away by the United States. Yet they have been complicit in (Babylon, Ur, Baghdad Museum and more) or inactive as the “diverse heritage of Iraq” is systematically looted and destroyed.

Curiously, in in 2005, former US Department of Justice lawyer, John Yoo, suggested that the US should go on the offensive against al-Qaeda, having

“our intelligence agencies create a false terrorist organization. It could have its own websites, recruitment centers, training camps, and fundraising operations. It could launch fake terrorist operations and claim credit for real terrorist strikes, helping to sow confusion … ” (5) See also (6.)

Incidentally, Israeli and US “military advisers” were reported arrested   nearby as destruction befell vast swathes of Nineveh Province, in a story that has gone quiet.

There are far more questions than answers.

   * Early resting places for travellers and their beasts of burden within a walled exterior, arranged around a courtyard, with food for travellers and animals, shelter, shops, washing facilities and often baths.

1.     https://www.questia.com/library/97576407/iraq-from-sumer-to-saddam

2.     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dur-Sharrukin

3.     http://globalvoicesonline.org/2015/02/25/isis-burns-mosul-library-in-iraq-destroys-thousands-of-valuable-manuscripts-and-books/

4.     http://iraq.usembassy.gov/pr_012815.html

5.     http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/02/x-admitted-false-flag-attacks.html

6.     http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-relationship-between-washington-and-isis-the-evidence/5435405

A detailed chronology of destruction of Iraq’s history 2003-2009, compiled by the Brussels Tribunal: http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Looting.htm

The latest US maritime strategic document, “A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower: Forward, Engaged, Ready,” released yesterday, makes clear that Washington is pressing ahead with its “pivot to Asia” and military build-up against China. In doing so, the US is continuing to stoke up tensions in the East and South China seas, compounding the danger of war.

The document, prepared by the US Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard, and known by the acronym CS21R, is the first major maritime strategic update since 2007. In addressing “a global security environment characterised by volatility, instability, complexity and interdependencies,” it focuses on the “rising importance of the Indo-Asia-Pacific region,” and emphasises that “the economic importance, strategic interests and geography of this vast maritime region dictate a growing reliance on naval forces to protect US interests.”

CS21R insists it is “imperative” that the US maintain its global naval predominance to defend key American interests and prevent “our adversaries from leveraging the world’s oceans against us.” The document notes, “The ability to sustain operations in international waters far from our shores constitutes a distinct advantage for the United States.”

There is nothing benign about the US strategy of maintaining overwhelming naval superiority in the Indo-Pacific region. The Pentagon’s plans for war against China, known as “AirSea Battle,” rely on the ability to mount a massive offshore air and missile attack on the Chinese mainland, including China’s military and infrastructure, supplemented by an economic blockade. Under the pretext of securing “freedom of navigation,” the US navy is ensuring that it has the ability to block key shipping lanes across the Indian Ocean used by China to import energy and raw materials from Africa and the Middle East.

CS21R reaffirms the US military’s plans to “rebalance” 60 percent of its naval and air forces to the Indo-Pacific region by 2020–just five years from now. It states:

“The Navy will maintain a Carrier Strike Group, Carrier Airwing and Amphibious Ready Group in Japan; add an attack submarine to those already in Guam and… [increase] to four the number of Littoral Combat Ships forward-stationed in Singapore… The Navy will also provide its most advanced warfighting platforms to the region, including multi-mission ballistic missile defence-capable ships; submarines; and intelligence surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft.”

Likewise, the Marine Corps will maintain a Marine expeditionary force in the region, as well as a Marine rotational force in Australia, backed by the latest warplanes, amphibious ships and vehicles to “give these forces the increased range and improved capabilities required in this vast region.”

The only “cooperative” aspect of this strategy is the drive by the US to strengthen its alliances and strategic partnerships throughout the Indo-Pacific region against China, which the document highlights as presenting the main “challenges when it employs force or intimidation against other sovereign nations to assert territorial claims.”

In fact, it is Washington that has deliberately inflamed maritime disputes in the Western Pacific by encouraging Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam to aggressively assert their territorial claims against China.

The Japanese government’s provocative decision in 2012 to “nationalise” uninhabited, rocky outcrops in the East China Sea known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China set in motion a dangerous and escalating confrontation. The New York Times reported this week from the Japanese Air Force base at Naha that “at least once every day, Japanese F-15 fighter jets roar down the runway, scrambling to intercept foreign aircraft, mostly from China” near the disputed islands. Sometimes, it stated, they face Chinese fighters “in knuckle-whitening tests of piloting skills, and self-control.”

While the US nominally declares its neutrality in the territorial dispute, President Obama last year publicly committed to backing Japan in a war with China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. US-Japanese military collaboration is proceeding apace, including the training of Japanese Marine units for “island defence” and the development of anti-ballistic missile systems needed to fight a nuclear war. The Japanese military is planning to station another F-15 squadron at Naha and is building a radar base on Yonaguni Island—its first new military base in decades.

Tensions in the South China Sea are even more fraught. Last December, Washington jettisoned even the pretence of neutrality in maritime disputes in the region with the publication of a State Department report declaring that China’s claims violate the international law of the sea. Behind the scenes, the US is backing a legal challenge by the Philippines, supported by Vietnam, to Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Over the past month, the US media, military and political establishment has ramped up pressure on China, denouncing its construction projects on Chinese-administered islands and reefs in the South China Sea. In comments to the US Senate in late February, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper declared that China was making “aggressive” efforts to secure control of strategic waterways. Republican Senator John McCain was even more inflammatory, suggesting that China was constructing airfields and missile bases that could deny the US Navy access to the area.

Under the guise of “freedom of navigation,” the US is determined to maintain its “right” to position substantial naval firepower in sensitive waters just off the Chinese mainland and near China’s military bases. Not only is Washington backing the Philippines and Vietnam in their territorial disputes, it is encouraging Japan and India to maintain a greater military presence in the South China Sea.

The CS21R document underscores the reckless character of American foreign and military policy. In response to the world capitalist breakdown, US imperialism is determined to maintain and reinforce its global hegemony at any cost, pursuing a strategy, whether in Asia, the Middle East or Eastern Europe, that is inexorably fuelling a confrontation with nuclear armed powers—China and Russia.

The danger of nuclear war was highlighted by the British-based Economist. In an article this month entitled “The New Age,” it concluded that “a quarter of a century after the end of the cold war, the world faces a growing threat of nuclear conflict.”

While focussed on the dangers of war over Ukraine, the article also warned of a nuclear arms race and conflict in Asia. Noting that “a crisis, say, over Taiwan could escalate alarmingly,” the magazine wrote, “Japan, seeing China’s conventional military strengthen, may feel it can no longer rely on America for protection. If so, Japan and South Korea could go for the bomb—creating, with North Korea, another petrifying regional stand-off.”

Global investors and political officials gathered yesterday in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh for the opening of a three-day Egypt Economic Development Conference, pledging to invest billions of dollars in the bloody military junta of General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Hundreds of top officials and CEOs attended, including US Secretary of State John Kerry, Italian Premier Matteo Renzi, and Chinese Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng.

The conference amounted to a political endorsement by finance capital of the Sisi junta’s bloody repression of the working class, whose demands for bread and equality drove a revolutionary upsurge that toppled US-backed Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011. It exposed the reality behind the claims of US and world imperialism to be carrying out wars and interventions in the Middle East, Africa, Ukraine and elsewhere in behalf of “human rights” and “democracy.”

The event followed by less than a week the first execution in Egypt of the nearly 1,400 Islamists condemned to death in summary trials held last year by the Sisi regime.

In his opening address to the conference, Sisi boasted that Egypt had a long-term economic development strategy based on free market economics and private investment. “Egypt has been and will always be the first line of defense against the dangers faced by the region,” he said. “You will find Egypt, as well as the entire region, safe and secure.”

With Washington leading military interventions against Islamist forces across the region, notably in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State (ISIS), Sisi promoted the Egyptian army as an anti-Islamist force, having ousted Egypt’s Islamist president, Mohamed Mursi, in a bloody coup in 2013.

“The stability of Egyptian society is stability for the region as a whole. Egypt is a model of tolerant morals, a country that denounces extremism and violence,” he declared.

As officials and media commentators hailed Sisi for returning “stability” to Egypt, the Persian Gulf sheikdoms of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates pledged to invest $12.5 billion. Transnational corporations, including British Petroleum, General Electric and Alsthom, lined up for lucrative energy and industrial contracts, including the development of the giant West Nile Delta (WND) gas field, the construction of gas-fired power plants in Suez City, and an extension of the Cairo subway.

BP called the project a “vote of confidence in Egypt’s investment climate and economic potential.”

Major international banks and corporations are creating jobs in Egypt only because they assume that ongoing political terror will guarantee low wages and high profits. Egypt’s “investment climate,” praised by BP, is one in which workers’ protests for back wages or wage increases are brutally attacked by security forces, which have detained and tortured tens of thousands of prisoners and shot thousands of peaceful protesters in the streets of Cairo.

Hundreds of strikes and workers’ protests under the Sisi junta last year culminated in the shooting of seven workers and jailing of eight last September, when police broke up a protest demanding back wages at the Abod textile factory in Alexandria. Workers’ protests continue, however, amid deafening silence in international media.

On Thursday, AP reporters spoke to Tarek Tabl, a 52-year-old construction engineer leading one of a series of workers’ protests outside government offices in Cairo, shortly before police attacked and dispersed the protest.

Workers at Tabl’s firm are demanding back wages that have not been paid for five months. “This is only going to escalate,” he said. “I’d rather kill myself than go home and face my kids.”

Tabl criticized investments that went to privatize the construction firm where he works, leading to mass layoffs. “This is the type of investment that is producing only unemployment and chaos,” he declared.

What attracts investors to Egypt are the super-profits that can be drawn from a work force facing relentless repression in an economy where monthly wages can be as low as 1,000 to 1,700 Egyptian pounds ($131 to $220).

“This part of the world is blessed with a stunning amount of commercial potential,” Kerry said at an American Chamber of Commerce event Friday morning before traveling to Sharm el-Sheikh. He said US firms, which invested $2 billion in the Sisi junta last year, stood ready to help the Egyptian economy.

Kerry met with Sisi, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah for discussions on the regional political situation before speaking at the Sharm el-Sheikh conference. There, he praised the role played by Egypt in the “war on terror,” which includes the bombing of Islamist forces that have taken control of portions of Libya since the NATO-led war in 2011 that toppled Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

The calculations involved in the conference were perhaps most bluntly laid out by Italian Prime Minister Renzi, who said he viewed both Sisi’s war on Islamism and the prevention of a new revolutionary upsurge of the Egyptian workers as key strategic interests of European imperialism.

“Your war is our war, and your stability is our stability,” Renzi told Sisi at the Sharm-el-Sheikh conference. “The issue is not about Egypt or the region only, but also about Italy and the rest of the world.”

Renzi’s comments point to the class conflicts that are developing under the surface not only in Egypt, but internationally. He is well aware of explosive opposition in the Italian and European working class to the European Union’s austerity policies, which similarly aim to impose free market policies and poverty wages on workers. Renzi is bluntly warning that a new revolutionary uprising in Egypt could spread not only throughout the Middle East, but also to the United States and Europe.

A further indication of the social physiognomy of transnational corporate elites is provided by the investment law passed by the Sisi junta earlier this month. It is designed primarily to give investors immunity from prosecution for various types of criminal behavior.

Its signature measure is a provision preventing corporate executives from going to jail for criminal behavior by their corporations. The initial stages of the Egyptian revolution in 2011 saw widespread demands by workers for the prosecution of criminal behavior by corporate executives and leading officials at state-owned enterprises.

“We cannot keep prosecuting company CEOs in cases where the company is accused of wrongdoing and sending them to jail,” Mohamed El-Sewedy, the head of the Federation of Egyptian Industries, told Ahram Online. He added that he was satisfied with the final draft of the law.

The law also sets up a single General Authority for Investment (GAFI), which will act as a rubber stamp for investment projects. Investors can require the government to process an application to liquidate their investments, should they decide to leave Egypt, in 120 days.

The law also establishes new, looser regulations for real estate sales, following court rulings upholding challenges to the legality of several high-profile land deals.

The conference at Sharm el-Sheikh is a warning not only to the Egyptian, but also to the international working class. The issues of social equality and the struggle against class oppression that led to the revolutionary uprising against Mubarak in 2011 were posed in Egypt, but they could not be resolved within the borders of one country. Workers in Egypt and around the world, including in the wealthiest countries, face the same challenge: progressive social change can come only through a revolutionary struggle of the working class for socialism.

Capitalism has reached a social and political dead end, offering nothing but escalating wars and attacks on the living standards of the masses. The easy embrace of the Sisi junta by Western officials is a warning that the military methods for suppressing internal opposition employed by Sisi are being prepared not only in Egypt, but internationally—including in Europe and America.

On Thursday the Federal Communications Commission made public a document detailing its so-called net neutrality rules that were approved two weeks ago on a 3-2 vote.

A PDF version of the document can be downloaded here.

The rules impose heavy regulations on what is currently a free and open internet and will ultimately result in federal government micromanagement.

The rules will also accelerate and finalize a long term government objective of censoring political enemies and limiting their use of the internet. Serious political opposition to the establishment has flourished on the internet and the federal government has stumbled in previous efforts to regulate speech its considers politically threatening.

Control of the internet is the primary motivation behind the FCC rule-making agenda, not net neutrality and the fallacious call to regulate corporations and enforce the principle that all data is equal.

This was made clear by opponents to the FCC report and order on remand.

“Americans love the free and open Internet. We relish our freedom to speak, to post, to rally, to learn, to listen, to watch, and to connect online. The Internet has become a powerful force for freedom, both at home and abroad. So it is sad to witness the FCC’s unprecedented attempt to replace that freedom with government control,” writes FCC commissioner Ajit Pai.

The desire to assert that control became obvious in February, 2014, when the FCC terminated a study that threatened the First Amendment right to freedom of the press. The study on “critical information needs” would have asked journalists about their “news philosophy” and raised the specter of an underhanded attempt to revive the Fairness Doctrine.

“The Commission’s decision to adopt President Obama’s plan marks a monumental shift toward government control of the Internet. It gives the FCC the power to micromanage virtually every aspect of how the Internet works. It’s an overreach that will let a Washington bureaucracy, and not the American people, decide the future of the online world,” Pai continues.

“Let’s leave the power where it belongs — with the American people. When it comes to Americans’ ability to access online content or offer political speech online, there isn’t anything broken for the government to ‘fix,’” Pai wrote in a Politico op-ed in February.

“It is difficult to imagine where we would be today had the government micromanaged the Internet for the past two decades as it does Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service. Neither of us wants to find out where the Internet will be two decades from now if the federal government tightens its regulatory grip. We don’t need to shift control of the Internet to bureaucracies in Washington.”

Concerted Effort to Neutralize Political Speech on the Internet

The entire rubric of cyberespionage and cybersecurity is designed for state control over the individual, not for protection from Anonymous and hackers in China or Russia.

“Some argue that heightened surveillance, restrictions on Internet freedom and even censorship are necessary to protect intellectual property rights, prevent cyberespionage, fight child pornography, and protect national interests such as nuclear power plants from hackers,” Fox News noted last February.

“Consequently, lawmakers — even President Obama in his State of the Union address — have been motivated to take steps to stem the hacking tide. However, the road to better security could also stifle free speech.”

In fact, the drastically overblown and often fictional threat of cyber security is engineered specifically to curtail speech, not harm from child pornographers but from political opposition to the state.

Recently refurbished cyber security legislation, having failed to become law in the recent past, is now being dusted off in congressional committees. Once enacted, cybersecurity measures will run concurrent to FCC rules and will impose a matrix of control over the internet.

The FCC and the corporate media continue to prortray the latest effort to regulate the internet as a win for the little guy, when in fact regulation will not diminish corporate control of the internet.

As Infowars.com noted in February:

Obama and the federal government have bent over backwards to portray net neutrality as a win for the little guy. In fact, despite all the siren warnings about socialism and the FCC by Obama’s opponents, the agency is in the pocket of the telecommunications industry and always has been.

Its current appointed boss, Tom Wheeler, is a former lobbyist for the cable and wireless industry, with positions including President of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association and CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association.

“Net neutrality is a classic Trojan horse,” I argued. “It will be used not only to censor speech and marginalize opposition to the political class, but will also deliver the internet to large and forever consolidating media corporations.”

As the NSA and the behavior of corporations in league with the intelligence community reveals, the internet will, after the FCC rules take hold and cybersecurity laws are implemented, finally be sanitized of meaningful political opposition and, as well, serve as a surveillance platform and a tool for corporate advertisers to categorize and target individuals.

The most recent chapter in Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s legal troubles has been framed by the Western media as everything from a politically motivated witch hunt, to discrimination against homosexuality and a violation of “human rights.”

CNN would report in their article, “Malaysia court upholds sodomy conviction against opposition leader,” that:

Malaysia’s top court on Tuesday upheld the conviction of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim on the charge of sodomizing a former political aide, prompting criticism from human rights activists. 

The decision appeared likely to be the final chapter in a lengthy and politically contentious legal battle, taking Anwar out of contention for elections for the foreseeable future.

CNN also added:

After the court decision Tuesday, Anwar said he “will not be silenced,” vowing to continue to “fight for freedom and justice.” 

“I will never surrender,” Anwar told CNN by phone, although he conceded that his task will be made a lot harder by the confines of a prison cell.

And Ibrahim’s vow to “fight for freedom and justice” was made with the confidence that this “fight” will be subsidized and fully backed by the US State Department, thus revealing the true motivations behind the Malaysian state’s lengthy attempts to remove him from the nation’s political landscape.

Enduring Treason, and Malaysia’s “Soft” Counterstroke 

In reality, Ibrahim’s sodomy conviction is probably the most indirect approach Malaysia can use in handling a politician who is essentially guilty of immense and enduring treason against the nation’s sovereignty and national interests.

Also, in reality, the West’s feigned outrage over the violation of Ibrahim’s “human rights” is yet another example of foreign interests using nobler principles to couch their hegemonic, meddling agenda behind.

Malaysia has only been independent from British colonial rule for about a generation. It gained independence from the UK in 1957 but still remains part of its Commonwealth of Nations. Anglo-American interests, however, have remained entwined with Malaysia’s fate, unabated, as have attempts to steer Malaysia’s current course socially, politically, and economically.

As the West has done elsewhere, it has cultivated an opposition front in Malaysia to represent its interests. It has also spend immense amounts of resources, time, and energy to groom and install into power a client regime headed by Anwar Ibrahim himself.

This has manifested itself most recently as the so-called “Bersih” “clean and fair elections” street movement, which had initially claimed to be independent of any political party, but has since been revealed to be openly led by Ibrahim and his political party.

Bersih itself is also a construct of Western interests. Before it began widespread street protests, monkeying Western-backed “color revolutions” taking place elsewhere around the world, the US State Department’s National Democratic Institute (NDI) – a subsidiary of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – openly documented its financial and political support for the group on its official website. In efforts to obfuscate this fact in fear that it would undermine Bersih’s legitimacy, US funding now goes undisclosed – ironically only garnering further suspicion amongst the more well informed in Malaysia and around the world.

Ibrahim himself has maintained close ties to Washington and Wall Street. Not only has his Bersih movement been fully backed by NED and its subsidiaries, but he himself  was literally in Washington D.C. in person, attending various NED functions. This includes serving as a panelist for NED’s “Democracy Award” and a panelist at a NED donation ceremony – the very same US organization funding and supporting his Bersih street movement – casting irrefutable doubt on their official agenda for “clean and fair elections.”

Clearly, Ibrahim, his political party, and is street front are in actuality a singular US-backed political front seeking power in exchange for Malaysia’s sovereignty.

Despite his enthusiastic vow to “fight” back, Ibrahim, it is suspected, will melt away politically and take with him his political front. Malaysia, in turn, must ensure that not only is Ibrahim fully and permanently removed from politics, but it must also expose and neutralize the tentacles of Western meddling reaching into Malaysia with which other political opposition members might attempt to interface.

In neighboring Thailand, the realization that its political problems are owed largely to Western meddling is becoming a more accepted mainstream talking point.

Likewise, Malaysia suffers from such meddling. Likewise, this reality must become a mainstream talking point and that opposition parties, no matter how much they may oppose the current government, are obliged to but Malaysia’s sovereignty first.

Trading one unfavorable government for another, particularly one that answers to interests abroad, is leaping from the frying pan and into the fire.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.

Documentary by Harold Crooks, 2014, Canada, 98′

PRODUCED by Nathalie Barton, InformAction Films

http://www.thepricewepay.ca/

This article was first published on April 8, 2014.

Most Americans are taught in school that fascism is a ruthless one party dictatorship, the most popular example being Nazi Germany. This is a misconception. Fascism is a political economy, not merely a political system that existed in one moment of history. Fascism, as defined by Black revolutionary and assassinated political prisoner George Jackson, is the complete control of the state by monopoly capital. Fascism is the last stage of capitalism in the heart of the US imperial center where the relationship between the state and corporation becomes indiscernible.  A difficult, but necessary, task for the left in this period is to acknowledge that fascism is the system of rule in the United States.

The privatization of the public sector, de-unionization of the entire labor force, and violent austerity are the seeds of domestically grown fascism in the economic realm.  Such fascist activity has brought about the rapid decline of political and economic conditions for the working class and the rapid accumulation of wealth and profit for the ruling class. Workers are doing more and more on the job for less and less pay.  The jobless are either searching desperately for work or not searching at all.  Shelters are overflowing and turning the homeless away. The US has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners despite only possessing 5 percent of the world’s population.  Mass joblessness, poverty, imprisonment, and homelessness are material forces that breed fear and competition amongst the working class.

The paradox of fascism lies in its ability to sustain and grow in the midst of deteriorating conditions for the majority of the population. The racist foundation of this country is useful in this regard. The white working class steadfastly defends its privileges obtained from white imperial pillage of Black and indigenous people both here and abroad. The white ruling class maintains unity with the white working class because, although exploitation has heightened for everyone, Black and indigenous people (including undocumented immigrants) remain economically and socially oppressed to a much harsher degree than Whites.  To ensure racism does not precipitate a radical struggle between white supremacy and Black freedom, the US ruling class has molded and trained a Black political class. This class of neo-colonial elites, with Barack Obama leading the way, works in the interests of fascism by protecting the rule of the white ruling class while teaching the entire Black community that Black faces in high imperial places is not only desired, but also worthy of staunch defense.

Furthermore, fascism relies on a racist enforcement arm to control the political direction of the oppressed.  The expanded surveillance and military state that currently spies, detains, and wiretaps the 99 percent remains more dangerous and repressive for the Black community. The vast majority of wiretaps, police and vigilante murders, and stop-and-frisks happen to Black and brown people.  So instead of joining forces with the Black community to build a powerful movement, exploited white Americans can still rely on the state to enforce racism on its behalf.

The US corporate media and education system provide the ideological chains of fascism.  In this period, both systems serve as mouthpieces for US imperial ambitions, values, and behaviors. Fascism is normalized in the American mind through the inculcation of racism, individualism, and a depoliticized and inaccurate conception of history and politics.  The US education system conditions the oppressed and oppressors into their positions in society. Black and indigenous youth attend factory schools that emphasize obedience to authority, which instills a dehumanized and subservient disposition for a future in low-wage work or prison.  From K-12, Black working class youth are taught to “pledge allegiance” to the flag of genocide and colonialism in over-crowded, police-occupied, and privatized schools.  White youth “pledge allegiance” in better-funded schools more capable of conditioning them into positions of power.  However, all youth are taught a mythological version of US history that applauds white supremacy, colonialism, and capitalist development as “freedom” and “democracy.”

The corporate media, despite being far more monopolized than the US school system, provides a more diverse means of education. Corporations like CNN and the New York Times habitually lie about the facts of political events to protect the white ruling class and its institutions from accountability.  Corporate hip-hop, music, and television entertainment compliment corporate news syndicates by doping the mind full of mindless garbage.   It matters little if the media of choice is watching “Scandal”, listening to Nicki Minaj on the radio, or reading the Washington Post. The boardrooms of five corporations are manufacturing consent to the US fascist system. Malcolm X succinctly summarized the function of the corporate media when he said “if you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

Friday, April 4^th was the 46^th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination.  Although King never claimed that the US was a fascist society, he certainly was struggling with the fundamental structure of US society by the end of his life.  In “Where do We Go from Here” (1967) for instance, King stated that

“ . . . more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society . . .and you see, my friends, when you deal with this you begin to ask the question, ‘Who owns the oil?’ You begin to ask the question, ‘Who owns the iron ore?’ You begin to ask the question, ‘Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that’s two-thirds water?’”

Unsurprisingly, King’s opposition to racism, capitalism, and war placed a target on his life. The US government was found guilty of using its intelligence agencies to murder King in 1999.  The murder of King was part and parcel of the US government’s crackdown on the radical left, which is now imbedded in the legal framework of this country since the institution of the “War on Terror.”  King’s legacy should inspire us to dig deep into the roots of the type of society we live in and the type of society we want to live in.  George Jackson’s conclusion that the US indeed is a fascist society receives little attention from the US left. Further, this article could not possibly analyze in the detail deserved every element of the US ruling order. However, there is ample evidence that we should no longer be asking the question of whether fascism exists in this country, but rather, where do we go from here.

Danny Haiphong is an activist and case manager. You can contact Danny at: [email protected].

Variety is pleased that CNN has “gotten over itself” and is inserting ads into its news programming.

“CNN Tests New Ways to Mix Ads With News,” a Variety headline (3/5/15) declared, over a story about how the cable news channel has “gotten over itself” and has “looked for more ways to weave ad messages into programming.”

Variety TV editor Brian Steinberg reports that the Time Warner outlet used to worry “that mixing editorial and advertising too closely could foster a perception that CNN’s journalism was swayed by a sponsor.”

But faced with falling ad revenues, Time Warner is seeing opportunities to sell ads during programs that are “not so tied to breaking news.” That’s why on its New Day morning show, “a logo for General Mills’ Fiber One cereal shows up during weather reports.”

Katrina Cukaj, executive vice president of CNN ad sales, says she “is open to the idea of running an advertiser’s logo in its bottom-of-the-screen zipper, so long as the appearance is tailored appropriately”: “If it’s financial information, if it’s actual data from the markets,” she told Variety, “I could potentially put a financial advertiser on there.”

Yes, combining real financial information with corporate-selected data designed to sell financial products–that could never confuse anybody, could it?

“As coverage of the 2016 elections gets underway, [Cukaj] said, CNN sees a potential chance to bring advertisers into sponsorship of quizzes and polls.” In other words, CNN likes the idea of making its presentation of public opinion dependent on corporations who are paying good money to influence public opinion.

Variety presents CNN’s new tack–which it depicts as part of a broader trend throughout the TV industry–as advertisers “helping to bring news from an outlet to a consumer, as opposed to interrupting or influencing it.” But it’s sillyto pretend that embedding advertising inside the news isn’t going to impact content.

“Placing these ads in some of CNN’s more traditional programming might be difficult,” the trade paper notes, citing Donna Speciale, president of ad sales forCNN parent unit Turner Broadcasting: “In breaking news, you don’t know what’s going to be happening and a lot of it is tragedy. Clients don’t want to get near that, and that environment is not ideal” for selling the right to stick your logo in the news frame. “But the increase of programming that has elements of entertainment in it lends the network the opportunity to test ideas ‘CNN hasn’t had in the past,’ she said.”

It’s as though the “increase in programming that has elements of entertainment in it” has nothing to do with the fact that “clients don’t want to get near” tragedy and unpredictable news: Really, there is a cause-and-effect relationship here, and putting the ads inside the news rather than next to it is only going to makeCNN and other newscasters less eager to give viewers information that doesn’t lend itself to being commercialized like that.

Variety‘s Time Warner sources assure us they are “mindful of maintaining boundaries between ads and editorial content.” Which somehow calls to mind Fry from the sci-fi comedy Futurama,  a character who wakes up in the year 3000 and is shocked to find that corporations are inserting ads into his dreams. When a friend asks, “Didn’t you have ads in the 21st century?” he responds:

You can contact CNN here (or on Twitter @CNN). Remember that respectful communication is the most effective.

“A lot of balls and ovaries there are here to defend this land. Yankees of shit.” An anti-imperialist refrain inspired by a popular Chávez slogan. (Credit: Lucas Koerner/venezuelanalysis.com)

Caracas – Venezuelan social movements converged in Plaza Venezuela in the center of the capital on Thursday to manifest their firm rejection of the latest round of U.S. sanctions.

On Monday, President Obama issued an executive order sanctioning seven top officials of the Venezuelan government as well as declaring the Bolivarian nation an “unusual and extraordinary national security threat,” a step that could pave the way for possible economic sanctions.

This latest move by the U.S. administration has been roundly condemend by a host of nations and regional bodies, including Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, UNASUR, CELAC, and most recently China and Russia.

Among the movements assembled in the center of Caracas on Thursday were various collectives such as the Pioneers Encampament, government-affiliated social missions such as the Great Housing Mission and Barrio Tricolor, as well as a plethora of people representing their neighborhood communal councils.

Chanting “Yankee go home” and “Venezuela respects itself”, thousands of Venezuelans of all ages filled the streets with their characteristic red shirts, exhibiting national pride and indignation in response to the White House’s announcements.

“We are here to defend the motherland left to us by Chávez, Bolívar, Zamora, and all of our heroes and heroines, because we’ve also had many heroines, many barefooted women who defended this country. We’re following in the same legacy as all of them,” Lies Guzmán of the Socialist Environmental Workers’ Front told Venezuelanalysis.

“We are steeled, knee to the ground, for anything that happens, with the women in the vanguard, prepared on all fronts, including the diplomatic, military, and guerrilla fronts if necessary.”

In his executive order, President Obama expressed concern for alleged human rights violations in Venezuela.

Olenia Quintana, 32, of the Pioneers Encampment collective challenged what she perceives to be a clear double standard underlying the U.S president’s accusations.

“If you’re talking about human rights, the first thing that Obama needs to do in his country is revise all of the laws. [The United States] is the only country [in the hemisphere] with the death penalty. Here there is no death penalty.”

This critique has been repeated on numerous occasions by President Nicolas Maduro who has denounced the U.S. government’s human rights record vis-a-vis its own people.

On Monday, the Venezuelan leader called on Obama to defend the rights of U.S. citizens, including “Black people killed in U.S. cities every day, the thousands of people who don’t have a place to sleep and die of cold on the streets of New York, Boston, or Chicago, and those detained in Guantánamo.”

Despite general indignation, Venezuelans attending yesterday’s rally were keen to distinguish between the actions of the U.S. government and its people.

“The message to the people of the United States is that they should rise up,” declared José Zegarra, 36, a construction worker and general coordinator of the Revolutionary Hugo Chávez Workers’ Front.

“In the United States, there are many dignified people who know that their government has regrettably interfered in the affairs of other countries, believing itself the world policeman. But the average North American person isn’t any kind of world policeman, but a person who has to work to eat, work to pay the mortgage, work to pay the heat and everything else.”

Guzmán echoed this sentiment, underscoring the need for social and political transformation in the U.S.

“[The U.S. people] must organize and make the necessary changes in their country, which is a noble but subdued country, whose people are much more subdued than our own [people].”

How far does the fraud and contamination of our country’s products go? The list is seemingly endless. Recently adding on to the list, mega-company Johnson and Johnson was recently found out to be knowingly selling adulterated bottles of Tylenol that contain metal particles.

The makers of this children’s Tylenol seemed to think it was OK to pollute our nation’s children  – even if it meant a federal criminal charge.

Johnson & Johnson subsidiary McNeil Consumer Healthcare ‒ which makes Infants’ and Children’s Tylenol and Children’s Motrin ‒ agreed to pay $25 million to resolve the case, the Associated Press reported, citing court documents. The deal came at a plea hearing Tuesday afternoon.

“The proposed criminal resolution is sufficient to punish McNeil for its past failures and to deter McNeil from violating” federal law in the future, prosecutors wrote in a memo to the judge overseeing the case.

As reported by RT:

“Metal particles ‒ including nickel, iron and chromium ‒ were introduced during the manufacturing process at McNeil’s plant in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania. The company began a voluntary recall in April 2010. The drugs may also have contained more of the active drug ingredient than specified, the company said in a statement at the time.”

According to the New York Times, Marc Boston, a McNeil spokesman, had this to say:

“The particles may be solidified product ingredients or manufacturing residue such as tiny metal specks.”

Though while the contamination issue is concerning all by itself, the truly large problem is that Johnson and Johnson knowingly continued to sell the product despite known adulteration. The prosecutors accused the company of continuing the sale of the product for approximately a year after the problem had surfaced. Immediate action wasn’t even in McNeil’s line of sight.

Court documents reveal that a consumer had reported black specks inside Infants’ Tylenol in 2009, leading to McNeil to find metal particles during production. Still, production continued to months.

As mentioned, the problem was traced back to machinery at the Fort Washington plant in PA by the Food and Drug Administration. This is where manufacturing violations were discovered, where airborne contamination from a chemical used for wood pallets riddled the area. The plant was shut down in 2010, rebuilt, but hasn’t re-opened.

Johnson & Johnson has been forced to issue a variety of pharmaceutical recalls since 2009. McNeil was not the only subsidiary that had quality-control failures during that time period.

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The Washington Post illustrates a story about anti-Americanism in Russia with a photo of Communist demonstrators carrying a prop missile with an anti-Obama slogan; the Communist were supported by 17 percent of the Russian public in recent polling. (photo: Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters)

“Thought the Soviet Union was anti-American?” asks the Washington Post‘sMichael Birnbaum (3/8/15). “Try today’s Russia.”

Birnbaum, the Post‘s Moscow bureau chief, reports on a new “torrent of anti-Western fury” there:

After a year in which furious rhetoric has been pumped across Russian airwaves, anger toward the United States is at its worst since opinion polls began tracking it. From ordinary street vendors all the way up to the Kremlin, a wave of anti-US bile has swept the country, surpassing any time since the Stalin era, observers say….

More than 80 percent of Russians now hold negative views of the United States,according to the independent Levada Center, a number that has more than doubled over the past year and that is by far the highest negative rating since the center started tracking those views in 1988.

The “anti-Western anger” has been “fed by the powerful antagonism on Russian federal television channels” since “Putin cranked up the volume after protest movements in late 2011 and 2012, which he blamed on the State Department.” A political analyst is quoted:

What the government knew was that it was very easy to cultivate anti-Western sentiments, and it was easy to consolidate Russian society around this propaganda.

Wow, must be tough living in a totalitarian society like that, where people respond like puppets to government manipulation of the media, huh?

Funny thing, though–the anti-American sentiment in Russia is pretty much a mirror image of anti-Russian sentiment in the United States, which has likewise risen to record heights since polling began roughly 25 years ago. Here’s the polling of Russians about the US:

And here’s the polling of Americans about Russia, from Gallup (2/16/15):

Note that the spikes in hostility occur precisely together. The Post describes these as a “list of perceived slights from the United States”:

The United States and NATO bombed Serbia, a Russian ally, in 1999. Then came the war in Iraq, NATO expansion and the Russia-Georgia conflict. Each time, there were smaller spikes of anti-American sentiment that receded as quickly as they emerged.

But they could just as easily be described as a list of perceived slights by Russia toward the United States. On both sides, the population seems to object about equally to the rival nation using violence against a smaller country and the rival nation failing to endorse one’s own nation’s use of violence.

Despite the obvious symmetry in US/Russian public opinion, don’t expect the Washington Post to run any articles about how a wave of anti-Russian bile following a wave of furious rhetoric being pumped across US airwaves. That would raise an uncomfortable questions about how easy it for a US president to crank up the volume of anti-whomever sentiment–and the role of media outlets like the Post in facilitating such cranking up.

The one common thread in modern U.S. foreign policy is an insistence on “free market” solutions to the world’s problems. That is, unless you’re lucky enough to live in a First World ally of the United States or your country is too big to bully.

So, if you’re in France or Canada or – for that matter – China, you can have generous health and educational services and build a modern infrastructure. But if you’re a Third World country or otherwise vulnerable – like, say, Ukraine or Venezuela – Official Washington insists that you shred your social safety net and give free reign to private investors.

If you’re good and accept this “free market” domination, you become, by the U.S. definition, a “democracy” – even if doing so goes against the wishes of most of your citizens. In other words, it doesn’t matter what most voters want; they must accept the “magic of the market” to be deemed a “democracy.”

Thus, in today’s U.S. parlance, “democracy” has come to mean almost the opposite of what it classically meant. Rather than rule by a majority of the people, you have rule by “the market,” which usually translates into rule by local oligarchs, rich foreigners and global banks.

The late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Governments that don’t follow these rules – by instead shaping their societies to address the needs of average citizens – are deemed “not free,” thus making them targets of U.S.-funded “non-governmental organizations,” which train activists, pay journalists and coordinate business groups to organize an opposition to get rid of these “un-democratic” governments.

If a leader seeks to defend his or her nation’s sovereignty by such means as requiring these NGOs to register as “foreign agents,” the offending government is accused of violating “human rights” and becomes a candidate for more aggressive “regime change.”

Currently, one of the big U.S. complaints against Russia is that it requires foreign-funded NGOs that seek to influence policy decisions to register as “foreign agents.” The New York Times and other Western publications have cited this 2012 law as proof that Russia has become a dictatorship, while ignoring the fact that the Russians modeled their legislation after a U.S. law known as the “Foreign Agent Registration Act.”

So, it’s okay for the U.S. to label people who are paid by foreign entities to influence U.S. policies as “foreign agents” – and to imprison people who fail to register – but not for Russia to do the same. A number of these NGOs in Russia and elsewhere also are not “independent” entities but instead are financed by the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

There is even a circular element to this U.S. complaint. Leading the denunciation of Russia and other governments that restrain these U.S.-financed NGOs is Freedom House, which marks down countries on its “freedom index” when they balk at letting in this back-door U.S. influence. However, over the past three decades, Freedom House has become essentially a subsidiary of NED, a bought-and-paid-for NGO itself.

The Hidden CIA Hand

That takeover began in earnest in 1983 when CIA Director William Casey was focused on creating a funding mechanism to support Freedom House and other outside groups that would engage in propaganda and political action that the CIA had historically organized and financed covertly. Casey helped shape the plan for a congressionally funded entity that would serve as a conduit for this U.S. government money.

But Casey recognized the need to hide the CIA’s strings. “Obviously we here [at CIA] should not get out front in the development of such an organization, nor should we appear to be a sponsor or advocate,” Casey said in one undated letter to then-White House counselor Edwin Meese III – as Casey urged creation of a “National Endowment.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “CIA’s Hidden Hand in ‘Democracy’ Groups.”]

Casey’s planning led to the 1983 creation of NED, which was put under the control of neoconservative Carl Gershman, who remains in charge to this day. Gershman’s NED now distributes more than $100 million a year, which included financing scores of activists, journalists and other groups inside Ukraine before last year’s coup and now pays for dozens of projects in Venezuela, the new emerging target for “regime change.”

But NED’s cash is only a part of how the U.S. government manipulates events in vulnerable countries. In Ukraine, prior to the February 2014 coup, neocon Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland reminded Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion in their “European aspirations.”

Nuland then handpicked who would be the new leadership, telling U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt that “Yats is the guy,” referring to “free market” politician Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who not surprisingly emerged as the new prime minister after a violent coup ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22, 2014.

The coup also started a civil war that has claimed more than 6,000 lives, mostly ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine who had supported Yanukovych and were targeted for a ruthless “anti-terrorist operation” spearheaded by neo-Nazi and other far-right militias dispatched by the U.S.-backed regime in Kiev. But Nuland blames everything on Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Nuland’s Mastery of Ukraine Propaganda.”]

On top of Ukraine’s horrific death toll, the country’s economy has largely collapsed, but Nuland, Yatsenyuk and other free-marketeers have devised a solution, in line with the wishes of the Washington-based International Monetary Fund: Austerity for the average Ukrainian.

Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, Nuland hailed “reforms” to turn Ukraine into a “free-market state,” including decisions “to reduce and cap pension benefits, increase work requirements and phase in a higher retirement age; … [and] cutting wasteful gas subsidies.”

In other words, these “reforms” are designed to make the hard lives of average Ukrainians even harder – by slashing pensions, removing work protections, forcing people to work into their old age and making them pay more for heat during the winter.

‘Sharing’ the Wealth

In exchange for those “reforms,” the IMF approved $17.5 billion in aid that will be handled by Ukraine’s Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, who until last December was a former U.S. diplomat responsible for a U.S. taxpayer-financed $150 million investment fund for Ukraine that was drained of money as she engaged in lucrative insider deals – deals that she has fought to keep secret. Now, Ms. Jaresko and her cronies will get a chance to be the caretakers of more than 100 times more money. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine’s Finance Minister’s American ‘Values.’”]

Other prominent Americans have been circling around Ukraine’s “democratic” opportunities. For instance, Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter was named to the board of directors of Burisma Holdings, Ukraine’s largest private gas firm, a shadowy Cyprus-based company linked to Privat Bank.

Privat Bank is controlled by the thuggish billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky, who was appointed by the Kiev regime to be governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, a south-central province of Ukraine. In this tribute to “democracy,” the U.S.-backed Ukrainian authorities gave an oligarch his own province to rule. Kolomoysky also has helped finance paramilitary forces killing ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.

Burisma has been lining up well-connected American lobbyists, too, some with ties to Secretary of State John Kerry, including Kerry’s former Senate chief of staff David Leiter, according to lobbying disclosures.

As Time magazine reported,

“Leiter’s involvement in the firm rounds out a power-packed team of politically-connected Americans that also includes a second new board member, Devon Archer, a Democratic bundler and former adviser to John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. Both Archer and Hunter Biden have worked as business partners with Kerry’s son-in-law, Christopher Heinz, the founding partner of Rosemont Capital, a private-equity company.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Whys Behind the Ukraine Crisis.”]

So, it seems even this modern form of “democracy” has some “sharing the wealth” aspects.

Which brings us to the worsening crisis in Venezuela, a South American country which has been ruled over the past decade or so by leftist leaders who – with broad public support – have sought to spread the nation’s oil wealth around more broadly than ever before, including paying for ambitious social programs to address problems of illiteracy, disease and poverty.

While there were surely missteps and mistakes by the late President Hugo Chavez and his successor Nicolas Maduro, the Chavista government has made progress in addressing some of Venezuela’s enduring social ills, which had been coolly ignored by previous U.S.-backed rulers, such as President Carlos Andres Perez, who collaborated with the CIA and hobnobbed with the great and powerful.

I was once told by an Andres Perez assistant that the Venezuelan president shared his villa outside Caracas with the likes of David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger, bringing in beauty pageant contestants for their entertainment.

Chavez and Maduro at least have tried to improve the lot of the average Venezuelan. However, facing a deepening economic crisis made worse by the drop in world oil prices, Maduro has found himself under increasing political pressure, some of it financed or inspired by Washington and supported by the rightist government in neighboring Colombia.

Allegations of a Coup

Maduro has reacted to these moves against his government by accusing some opponents of plotting a coup, a claim that is mocked by the U.S. State Department and by the U.S. mainstream media, which apparently doesn’t believe that the United States would ever think of staging a coup in Latin America.

This week, the White House declared that the evidence of any coup-plotting is either fabricated or implausible, as the New York Times reported. President Barack Obama then cited what he called “an extraordinary threat to the national security of the United States” from Venezuela and froze the American assets of seven Venezuelan police and military officials.

The fact that Obama can deliver that line with a straight face should make any future words out of his mouth not credible. Venezuela has done nothing to threaten the “national security of the United States” extraordinarily or otherwise. Whatever the truth about the coup-plotting, Venezuela has a much greater reason to fear for its national security at the hands of the United States.

But in this up-is-down world of Official Washington, bureaucrats and journalists nod in agreement at such absurdities.

A few weeks ago, I was having brunch with a longtime State Department official who was chortling about the pain that the drop in oil prices was inflicting on Venezuela and some other adversarial states, including Iran and Russia.

I asked why the U.S. government took such pleasure at watching people in these countries suffer. I suggested that it was perhaps more in U.S. interests for these countries and their people to be doing well with money in their pockets so they could shop and do business.

His response was that these countries had caused trouble for U.S. foreign policy in the past and now it was their turn to pay the price. He also called me a “Putin apologist” when I wouldn’t agree with the State Department’s line blaming Russia for all of Ukraine’s ills.

But the broader question is: Why does the United States insist on imposing “free market” rules on these struggling countries when Democrats and even some Republicans agree that an unrestrained “free market” has not worked well for the American people? It was “free market” extremism that led to the Great Depression of the 1930s and to the Great Recession of 2008, the effects of which are only now slowly receding.

Further, real democracy – i.e., the will of the majority to shape societies to serve the many rather than the few – has turned out also to be good economics. American society and economy were arguably strongest when government policy encouraged a growing middle class from the New Deal through the 1970s.

To be sure, there were faults and false starts during those decades, but experiments with an uncontrolled “free market” have proven catastrophic. Yet, that is what the U.S. government seems determined to foist on vulnerable countries whose majorities would prefer to make their societies more equitable, more fair.

And beyond the negative social impact of the “free market,” there is the danger that conflating policies that cause economic inequality with democracy will give democracy a very bad name.

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

KIEV, March 12 /TASS/. Alexander Peklushenko, the former governor of Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, has been found dead in his home, Anton Gerashchenko, a Ukrainian parliament deputy and an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, said on Thursday.

“There are grounds to believe that he had been driven to suicide,” Gerashchenko said in an interview aired by a Ukrainian television channel.

Peklushenko’s body – with a bullet in the neck – was found in the Solnechnyi village on Thursday. Law enforcers are working at the scene.

Peklushenko was a member of the Party of Regions and the head of the party’s branch in the Zaporizhia region. He was appointed governor of the Zaporizhia region in 2011. Prior to that he had been a deputy of Ukraine’s Verkhovnaya Rada (parliament) of the IV-VI convocations.

Another two members of Ukraine’s Party of Regions, Mikhail Chechetov and Stanislav Melnik, were found dead some time ago. A number of high-ranking officials committed suicides in Ukraine from January 26 to February 28. Nikolay Sergiyenko, the former first deputy head of the Ukrzheldoroga railway company who was appointed by Ukraine’s former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov shot himself from a hunting rifle; Alexey Kolesnik, the former governor of the Kharkiv region, hanged himself in his home on January 29 without leaving a suicide note. The 57-year-old mayor of Melitopol, Sergey Valter, hanged himself on February 25 hours before a court hearing on his case. The body of Alexander Bordyuga, the deputy chief of the Melitopol police department, was found in a garage on February 26.

While business is good, you live a little better than what your income would provide.  You do this with confidence because each year has been at least as good if not better than the year before, so living a little large and adding debt to your balance sheet is not a great concern.  Then you start living even further beyond your means.  As time passes, the leader of the local gangs asks you if your gang would like to join?  Of course you want be part of this well known and prestigious group of gangs but one of the preconditions is your business must be good.  It doesn’t matter what your businesses are, what does matter is you can make money and not be a drag on the other gangs.  Knowing that you already owe some out of town loan sharks what do you do?

First off you hire Golden Suks to help you with some creative accounting and enter into a few contracts with them so you have something to show when you open the books for your entry audit.  “Sure we owe Clive down the street but Guido owes us and will pay Clive directly if his interest rate starts to rise, so it’s all good!”.  This is where it gets interesting, you are accepted in as one of the gangs but business begins to slow and even your crew starts holding back on you.  Normally you get a 25% “tribute” on anything they steal or conjure up, but now, even on deals you find out about you aren’t getting what you used to.  This is a problem, a BIG one!

You see, while living above your means you had to keep borrowing more from your loan shark.  He never really pushed you and was willing to let you just pay interest because you had always paid on time.  This begins to change as business slows, now your source of cash became less willing to lend.  What do you do?  Simple, you decide to go to other loan sharks and take on more loans because as the saying goes, “you only live once and you might as well have fun doing it”.  This of course is akin to normal people paying off one credit card with another but it’s OK as long as you can keep borrowing more.

Along the way another problem arose, you had to for appearance sake give a monthly stipend to the families of deceased “soldier’s”.  You did this out of cash flow and even gave some of them cars and houses.  You don’t want to kick out the spouses and children of those who had provided for you so you go to the local pawn shop with deeds and titles.  The pawn shop gives you some cash and the families still get to use the cars and houses, problem solved!

Then the problems really begin, the other bosses just so happened to have a meeting at a resort where three or four of your loan sharks were vacationing. Your name came up and each one found out you were in debt to ALL of them.  You tried to divert attention but it turned out this news got back to the other bosses, your whole charade then came down.  As news normally does, it spread like wildfire.  Everybody knew you were broke which lead to other consequences.  Even your own gang was rebelling and the tribute money dried up to a trickle.  It was a good run but now it’s over.

Enough parody, what Greece is doing now by borrowing against unencumbered (though probably worthless) pension treasury securities is ridiculous.  If this is their plan, the people will riot further, run their banks until they all close and destroy the country.  They are pledging pension assets to raise cash …and are using this cash to bid for their own bonds.  They must issue new bonds in order to pay for maturing old bonds!  What will happen when they need to actually make the repo payment in order to get the pension assets back?  Where will this money come from?  And when they can’t come up with the money, even their retirement plan becomes unfunded.  I do want to make another obvious point, what good will Greek treasuries be to the new holders who lent money against them to begin with?  What could possibly go wrong?

As I have said many times before, “broke is broke” and cannot be solved with more liquidity which will ultimately need to be paid back.  This is the broad systemic problem, liquidity cannot (never could) fix a solvency problem.  More liquidity only creates more debt and only buys some time while making the overall problem larger and larger.  At some point in time, the money either gets paid back or “bankruptcy” is admitted.

Before finishing I would like to make one other point.  Greece is no different than the EU itself, the U.S., the IMF, Britain or any other Western fiat Ponzi. The only difference is that Greece got “caught” first and did not have the ability to print their own money.  While “printing” has allowed the fraud(s) to be covered up and smoothed over, sooner or later the debt must be paid back…and this is the game.  The debt cannot be paid back and never was expected to really be paid back, rolling debt over and over and over was the plan. The funniest thing to me is all of this supposedly is “already in the market”. In other words, all of this is “priced in”!  At a time where “risk” of all sorts has never been higher, there is virtually zero premium for any risk. In the simplest of terms, we live in a world gone mad!

No one looked to the end game because it was so much fun while playing the game.  I have no idea what the “event” will be but please remember this, huge forest fires all begin with one thing in common, a very small spark or something to ignite it.  They all start small and all grow out of control.  This, is the collective global monetary system we live with and why so many nations are preparing to exit the game.

This week NATO delivered more than 100 tanks and heavy armored units, and several thousand soldiers including US troops, to Latvia, on the border with Russia, in its “Operation Atlantic Resolve.” US Army General John O’Conner made no secret that the military operation was aimed at fighting Russia, stating that the delivery of the heavy weapons to Latvia would “demonstrate resolve to President Putin and Russia that collectively we can come together.” 

The tanks would stay, he added, “for as long as required to deter Russian aggression.”

As the western tanks and soldiers arrived, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland told the US Senate that she could “confirm” that new Russian weapons were being delivered to Ukraine, but she provided no details or evidence and the OSCE monitors on the ground have not reported any such movement.

According to RPI Academic Advisor John Laughland, “the purpose of these [exercises] is to ratchet up the tension with Russia to keep applying more and more aggressive initiatives, to put Russia ever further on the back foot.”

Asked whether such a NATO show of force on Russia’s border does not put the Minsk peace process in jeopardy, Laughland answered:

The Western powers have never been interested in peace processes. What they are interested in is victory. … The point about Minsk is that France and Germany have a slightly, and I emphasize, slightly different perception from Washington, London, and Brussels, the NATO headquarters. France and Germany are to some extent trying to find a peace agreement. But they are being fought by the Americans and by the British, to put it very simply.

The end goal of the EU/NATO saber-rattling targeting Russia, he said, is to “reinforce the existing supranational institutions of the West – the European Union, on the one hand, and the transatlantic bond on the other.” Russia as the enemy will give some meaning and legitimacy to the ongoing maintenance of the European Union and NATO. The EU leadership is firmly behind this project, he added, but it remains to be seen how much of the population supports such a gambit.

Watch Laughland’s interview:

“Obama’s 2015 Selma paradigm meshes with his 2007 fiction that Blacks had already traveled 90 percent of the road to equality.”

Barack Obama returned to Selma, Alabama, last Saturday, with an updated version of his speech on race delivered eight years ago, during another commemoration of the 1965 march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Back then, presidential candidate Obama told the crowd at Brown Chapel AME Church that Blacks had already come “90 percent of the way” to racial equality. He was implicitly predicting that the election of himself as the first Black president would propel African Americans to 100 percent equality, completing the journey and marking the end of racial politics in the United States. It was a bald-faced lie, by any statistical measurement. Blacks had never earned more than 66 cents on the white dollar, and would fall much further behind before Obama set foot in Selma, again. Catastrophically, Black median household wealth would collapse to one-twentieth that of whites under his watch.

A year after his first Selma speech, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright affair would force candidate Obama to give a widely acclaimed presentation on race, in Philadelphia. Obama trashed his former pastor for harboring a “profoundly distorted view of this country — a view that sees white racism as endemic” – a term defined as “belonging or native to a particular people or country.” He denied that racism had ever been endemic in the U.S.

Last weekend, Obama returned to the subject of endemic racism. “What happened in Ferguson may not be unique, but it’s no longer endemic, or sanctioned by law and custom; and before the Civil Rights Movement, it most surely was,” he told the huge throng in Selma. Obama now admits that racism had once been endemic to the country but, apparently, the marching of Black feet had stamped it out, so that it is now limited to Ferguson-like localities. “We do a disservice to the cause of justice,” he said, “by intimating that bias and discrimination are immutable, or that racial division is inherent to America.” How dare they malign the world’s first apartheid nation, a country that rose to superpower status on stolen land and labor, in such cruel fashion!

Obama tries to split the U.S. historical time-line in two: Before Civil Rights (BCR) versus After Civil Rights (ACR) – an exercise that allows him to dismiss today’s racial realities by dumping the endemic variety into the era before voting rights and scraping the leftovers into benighted places like Ferguson, Missouri. Obama’s 2015 Selma paradigm meshes with his 2007 fiction that Blacks had already traveled 90 percent of the road to equality and were one presidential vote away from completing the process – which is another way of saying that the Democratic Party will set you free.

The president’s reasoning also gives aid and comfort to the majority of whites, including youngsters, that now believe white people are the most discriminated-against class in America. If endemic racism has been all but eliminated and Black people have already achieved near-equal status, then Black protestations to the contrary are baseless and maliciously racist in intent. The real problem, therefore, is “reverse racism”: that Black Lives Matter too much. As anti-racist white scholars Paul Street and Tim Wise warned in the run-up to the 2008 election, many whites interpret Obama’s ascension as having removed any residual legitimacy from Black complaints. Obama’s rhetoric and behavior buttress that twisted worldview.

Before going to Selma, Obama took care to preserve the impunities of killer cops. He stands firmly by Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision not to indict former Ferguson officer Darren Wilson on civil rights charges in the death of Michael Brown. Wilson, “like anyone else who is charged with a crime, benefits from due process and a reasonable doubt standard,” the president told a largely Black crowd in South Carolina. “If there is uncertainty about what happened, then you can’t just charge him anyway because what happened was tragic.”

For Obama and Holder, the routine killing of unarmed Blacks by police is “tragic,” but not evidence of anything endemic in American society – certainly, not something for the U.S. Justice Department to worry about.

The division of U.S. history into pre- and post-Selma eras is also a way of delegitimizing the struggles that continued after passage of civil rights legislation: the battles against domestic and global social injustice and the fight against what the Black Panther Party for Self Defense called the police “army of occupation.” Five years after the events on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the national policy of mass Black incarceration had become fully operational. Over the space of two generations, an entire people would be criminalized by the Mass Black Incarceration State – what Michelle Alexander calls “The New Jim Crow” – a system so pervasive and unremitting that one out of every eight prison inmates in the world is now an African American. This is the system that Obama and Holder so vigorously defend.

Atlanta Black Congressman John Lewis, who was beaten senseless by the Alabama Highway Patrol on Edmund Pettus Bridge, told last weekend’s crowd: “If someone told me 50 years ago I’d be back on this bridge introducing a black president of the United States, I’d have said you’re crazy.”

Maybe. And, if someone had said, back in 2007, when Barack Obama spoke at Brown Chapel AME Church, that he would surpass George Bush in fomenting war and chaos in the world, including a 7-month bombing campaign against an African country; exempt “too big to jail” bankers from all criminal penalties; pass legislation effectively nullifying due process of law (except, apparently, for killer cops); and subvert public education in favor of privatized charter schools – in short, that the first Black president would become the “more effective evil” – few would have believed it. But now we know.

It is a bridge that Black people had to painfully cross, to arrive at the other side of the illusion.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected].

GR Editor’s Note

Published below is a review by Washington’s Blog of recent statements by members of the 9/11 Commission.

In many regards, these statements by the 9/11 Commissioners are misleading.  The report is loaded with distortions, fabrications and a deliberate coverup of the evidence. And the commissioners bear full responsibility for these lies and fabrications. 

And now they are proposing to set up a new investigation. They say that they “Did Not Get the Full Story” and they blame the government and the CIA.

In fact what they did was to “fabricate a story” and unquestionably this was undertaken in complicity with US intelligence and the Bush administration.  

Their recent statements outlined below should be put into  context. Their unspoken mandate was to uphold the Big Lie, which consisted in presenting a fictitious narrative, namely that Muslims were behind the 9/11 attacks.  And to this date, that narrative prevails. 

“What happened on the planes” as described in their report is sheer fiction and fantasy and they bear full responsibility in that regard. Below is an excerpt from my earlier study on the 9/11 attacks (published in America’s War on Terrorism, Global Research, 2005):  

The 9/11 Commission’s Report provides an almost visual description of the Arab hijackers. It depicts in minute detail events occurring inside the cabin of the four hijacked planes:

In the absence of surviving passengers, this “corroborating evidence”, was based on passengers’ cell and air phone conversations with their loved ones. According to the Report, the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) was only recovered in the case of one of the flights (UAL 93).

Focusing on the personal drama of the passengers, the Commission has built much of its narrative around the phone conversations. The Arabs are portrayed with their knives and box cutters, scheming in the name of Allah, to bring down the planes and turn them “into large guided missiles” (Report, Chapter 1, http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.pdf ).

The Technology of Wireless Transmission

The Report conveys the impression that cell phone ground-to-air communication from high altitude was of reasonably good quality, and that there was no major impediment or obstruction in wireless transmission.

Some of the conversations were with onboard air phones, which contrary to the cell phones provide for good quality transmission. The report does not draw a clear demarcation between the two types of calls.

More significantly, what this carefully drafted script fails to mention is that, given the prevailing technology in September 2001, it was extremely difficult, if not impossible, to place a wireless cell call from an aircraft traveling at high speed above 8000 feet:

“Wireless communications networks weren’t designed for ground-to-air communication. Cellular experts privately admit that they’re surprised the calls were able to be placed from the hijacked planes, and that they lasted as long as they did. They speculate that the only reason that the calls went through in the first place is that the aircraft were flying so close to the ground

(http://www.elliott.org/technology/2001/cellpermit.htm)

Expert opinion within the wireless telecom industry casts serious doubt on “the findings” of the 9/11 Commission. According to Alexa Graf, a spokesman of AT&T, commenting in the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks:

“it was almost a fluke that the [9/11] calls reached their destinations… From high altitudes, the call quality is not very good, and most callers will experience drops. Although calls are not reliable, callers can pick up and hold calls for a little while below a certain altitude”

 (http://wirelessreview.com/ar/wireless_final_contact/) (Michel Chossudovsky, What Happened on the Planes on September 11, 2001, August 10, 2004

The Commissioners “express doubt” is the underlying theme. Doubt about what they wrote in report?

Were they deliberately misled as suggested below? Are they expressing doubts concerning their own lies?  

The 9/11 Commissioners  have stated that Pentagon officials lied to the Commission, yet many of these lies have been embodied in the report. 

Michel Chossudovsky, March 13, 2015 

*      *      *

The 9/11 Commission Didn’t Believe the Government … So Why Should We?

by Washington’s Blog, March 13, 2015

9/11 Commissioners Admit They Never Got the Full Story

The 9/11 Commissioners publicly expressed anger at cover ups and obstructions of justice by the government into a real 9/11 investigation:

• 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton says “I don’t believe for a minute we got everything right”, that the Commission was set up to fail, that people should keep asking questions about 9/11, and that the 9/11 debate should continue

• The 9/11 Commission chair said the Commission was “set up to fail”

• The Commission’s co-chairs said that the CIA (and likely the White House) “obstructed our investigation”

• 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that “There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn’t have access . . . .”

• 9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer said “We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting”

• 9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: “It is a national scandal”; “This investigation is now compromised”; and “One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up”.  When asked in 2009 if he thought there should be another 9/11 commission, Cleland responded: “There should be about fifteen 9/11 commissions”

• The Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) – who led the 9/11 staff’s inquiry – said “At some level of the government, at some point in time…there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened“. He also said “I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described …. The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years…. This is not spin. This is not true.”

No wonder the Co-Chair of the congressional investigation into 9/11 – Bob Graham – and 9/11 Commissioner and former Senator Bob Kerrey are calling for either a “PERMANENT 9/11 commission” or a new 9/11 investigation to get to the bottom of it.

Some examples of obstruction of justice into the 9/11 investigation include:

• An FBI informant hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000. Specifically, investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House. As the New York Times notes:

Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the White House on Tuesday of covering up evidence ….The accusation stems from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s refusal to allow investigators for a Congressional inquiry and the independent Sept. 11 commission to interview an informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who had been the landlord in San Diego of two Sept. 11 hijackers.

• The chairs of both the 9/11 Commission and the Official Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 said that Soviet-style government “minders” obstructed the investigation into 9/11 by intimidating witnesses (and see this)

• The 9/11 Commissioners concluded that officials from the Pentagon lied to the Commission, and considered recommending criminal charges for such false statements

• The tape of interviews of air traffic controllers on-duty on 9/11 was intentionally destroyed by crushing the cassette by hand, cutting the tape into little pieces, and then dropping the pieces in different trash cans around the building as shown by this NY Times article (summary version is free; full version is pay-per-view) and by this article from the Chicago Sun-Times

• As reported by ACLU, FireDogLake, RawStory and many others, declassified documents shows that Senior Bush administration officials sternly cautioned the 9/11 Commission against probing too deeply into the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001

Both the 9/11 Commission Investigation and 9/11 Trials Were Based on Unreliable Evidence Produced by Torture

The CIA videotaped the interrogation of 9/11 suspects, falsely told the 9/11 Commission that there were no videotapes or other records of the interrogations, and then illegally destroyed all of the tapes and transcripts of the interrogations.

9/11 Commission co-chairs Thomas Keane and Lee Hamilton wrote:

Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation.

The chief lawyer for Guantanamo litigation – Vijay Padmanabhan – said that torture of 9/11 suspects was widespread.

And Susan J. Crawford – the senior Pentagon official overseeing the military commissions at Guantánamo told Bob Woodward:

We tortured Qahtani. His treatment met the legal definition of torture.

Indeed, some of the main sources of information were tortured right up to the point of death.

Moreover, the type of torture used by the U.S. on the Guantanamo suspects is of a special type. Senator Levin revealed that the the U.S. used Communist torture techniques specifically aimed at creating false confessions. (and see this, this, this and this).

And according to NBC News:

• Much of the 9/11 Commission Report was based upon the testimony of people who were tortured

• At least four of the people whose interrogation figured in the 9/11 Commission Report have claimed that they told interrogators information as a way to stop being “tortured”

• One of the Commission’s main sources of information was tortured until he agreed to sign a confession that he was NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO READ

• The 9/11 Commission itself doubted the accuracy of the torture confessions, and yet kept their doubts to themselves

If the 9/11 Commissioners themselves doubt the information from the government, why should we believe it?

As the Jihadi John narrative continues to evolve, there are pressing questions concerning British security services, Mohammad Emwazi and his family…

Over the past couple of weeks, British security services, along with the FBI, revealed that they had ‘unmasked’ the ISIS terror video persona known as ‘Jihadi John’, and had even known his identity for the last 6 months. While this news stunned the international community – it was quickly revealed that the man suspected of being the ISIS front-man was known by MI5 for the past 6 years.

The man purported to be the infamous ISIS executioner by Western media, is former computer programmer, 27-year-old Mohammad Emwazi. According to reports, Emwazi is believed to have left the UK to join ISIS militants in Syria sometime in 2013.

However, some reports have stated that Emwazi was headed to do aid work in Turkey in 2013. Emwazi’s parents reported him missing in August of 2013 and were told that he was in Syria by authorities some four months later.

Scripted Terror

Following the alleged unveiling of Jihadi John’s identity, Kuwaiti government officials disclosed that Mohammad Emwazi’s parents recognized him in the propagandized ISIS ‘beheading’ videosand that they knew of their son’s alleged extremist views before he headed to Syria, according tothe UK’s Telegraph.

In the news release for the Telegraph entitled, “Jihadi John: Father accuses Mohammed Emwazi of being a dog and terrorist,” written by Robert Tait, discussed a controversial interview with an apparent colleague of 51-year-old Jassem Emwazi, Mohammad’s father. The colleague was stated as being 40-year-old Abu Meshaal and he along with Jassem, are said to work together at a ‘Cooperative supermarket depot’ near the Kuwaiti-Iraqi border. Meshaal gave a stirring account of the elder Emwazi’s emotional state regarding his estranged son, seemingly paraphrasing a personal conversation that both men had about Mohammad and his suspected involvement with militants.

Here’s a portion of the Telegraph report for review:

“The father of Mohammed Emwazi described his son as a “dog, an animal and a terrorist” and revealed he begged his parents for forgiveness before joining Isil and becoming Jihadi John, the Daily Telegraph can disclose.”
“The colleague, Abu Meshaal, 40, said Mr Emwazi was in tears during Monday’s conversation, in which he described the identification of his son as the hooded executioner filmed beheading seven British, American and Japanese hostages as a “catastrophe” for his family.

He was very emotional and crying the whole time,” said Mr Meshaal. “He said, ‘my son is a dog, he is an animal, a terrorist. He said he had talked to him a lot trying to persuade him to return to his personal life but that the son didn’t listen to him. He said, ‘To hell with my son’.”

The report goes on to state that Emwazi’s father, Jassem, was ‘interrogated’ by Kuwaiti investigators last week and that he received a phone call in 2013 from Turkey, where Mohammad asked his parents’ blessing before heading to Syria to fight alongside ISIS and other militants.

Additionally, Kuwait’s Qabbas newspaper apparently spoke to another unnamed colleague which claimed that Jassem Emwazi had been ‘concerned’ long before his son was charged with being an internationally known terrorist.

The controversial report echoed across Western media outlets, with many citing the alleged quotes from Jassem Emwazi and other colleagues as being more evidence of Mohammad Emwazi’s descent into terror.

However, just one day later, Jassem Emwazi hired an attorney to stifle what he called ‘false rumours’ concerning his son and family in media. In fact, two of the first news releases to push the apparently false narrative, appeared to come from an ABC news story which claimed Emwazi’s mother knew her son was Jihadi John and the Telegraph story that was mentioned above from March 3rd.

The apparently ginned-up story involving Emwazi’s family garnered heavy circulation for 24-48 hour period, but was quickly buried in the news cycle following the conflicting account of Emwazi’s father.

In a report featured by The Guardian, it was disclosed that Jassem Emwazi, had indeed sought legal council regarding the apparently fabricated tales about his son and family:

“Jassem Emwazi told the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Qabas: “There is nothing that proves what is being circulated in the media, especially through video clips and footage, that the accused is my son Mohammed, who is being referred to as the alleged executioner of Daesh (Isis).”

“I have a message to the Kuwaiti people that many of the rumours are false,” he said. “Because I felt that some people have believed it, I have assigned a lawyer to defend me and to prove … that what is being said is untrue.”

The report continues:

“when asked directly by the Guardian on Monday, he (Jassem Emwazi) said this was untrue, adding that the information was an outright “lie, lie, lie.”

After reviewing this information, we’re left to consider the strong possibility that the Emwazi family quotes were likely planted in order to sensationalize and further distort public opinion over the ‘reality’ of Jihadi John’s alleged identity.

The current deception concerning the Emwazi story, appears to have been influenced by Western interests and reminds me of another fabled Kuwaiti tale that was used to sway public opinion in 1990. On October 10th, 1990, Nayirah al-Ṣabaḥ, the daughter of Kuwaiti ambassador for the United States, Saud Al-Sabah, provided a tearful testimony that turned out to be false, as she claimed to have witnessed Iraqi soldiers taking babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital during the Iraq invasion of Kuwait. This was the lie that Washington and its PR strategists used as a pretext for the Gulf War in 1990, pre-dating the WMD lie that was used to invade Iraq in 2003.

Like in 2002-2003, similar pressure by US military interests to mount a renewed war in the Middle East is clearly underway again – and again, Kuwait is playing a central role in ramping-up the drama.

There are many moving parts in the Emwazi story and we should first examine all angles before adopting any of the many assumptions currently being passed to the public via mainstream media and their government ‘sources’…

IMAGE: ‘The SITE of Terror’ – ISIS terror video presenter Jihadi John propagandized by the terror watchdog group SITE. (Photo link dailymail.co.uk)

Tale of the Tape

Following graduation from the University of Westminster, Emwazi is said to have been scrutinized and targeted for recruitment by Britain’s main intelligence agency MI5 after a planned safari with friends in Tanzania in May of 2009. After Emwazi’s treatment by authorities, he was said to have reached out to the human rights group CAGE.

Strangely, new reports have emerged stating that the reason for Emwazi’s detention and expulsion from Tanzania, according to local authorities, was because he had been drunk and disorderly while insulting immigration staff upon his arrival.

According to the home affairs minister in Tanzania, a document names Emwazi, Ally Adorus and Marcel Schrodel as having been drunk and displaying misconduct after their arrival in Tanzania. However, it should be mentioned that Tanzania authorities have close ties to Britain and this information should be examined more thoroughly.

Mohammad Emwazi’s relationship with the advocacy group CAGE and its research director Asim Qureshi, has stirred up a wave of controversy, along with the timed release of Emwazi information. CAGE’s dissemination of Emwazi material seemed to be simultaneously tied to the ‘official’ release of Emwazi’s identity by authorities. This is a key aspect to consider when looking at the many ‘moving parts’ in this case.

Recently, CAGE released an eye-opening tape recorded session with Mohammad Emwazi, and it was disclosed that MI5 agents had been tracking Emwazi and had confronted him, accusing him of having extremist views while actively seeking to recruit him to spy, or ‘inform’,  presumably on other Muslims. The newly released material from CAGE depicts a man who appears to have been harassed, and one could even consider the very real scenario where Emwazi was coerced into alleged violent activity and joining to terror group ISIS.

Most shockingly however, were the recent audio recordings provided by CAGE, that displayed Emwazi’s condemnation for extremism, as he apparently stated that the attacks on 9/11 and London’s 7/7 bombings  “were wrong.”

Here’s the short clip on YouTube from CAGE…

IMAGE: Coerced Operative? – Was Mohammad Emwazi forced to participate, and ‘play a role’ in the fraudulent ISIS terror videos? (Photo link 24matins.fr)

Revisiting the Past

Another element to scrutinize in the Emwazi story, is that shortly after Mohammad was named as being Jihadi John, conveniently an “unnamed former school friend” is claimed to have recognized Emwazi as the terror presenter.

The friend explained that he first met Emwazi in 1999 when both had attended the recently scandal plagued institution Quintin Kynaston Secondary School in St John’s Wood, North London.

There have been at least two other former pupils at Quintin, that have also been implicated in terrorism, prompting some to be concerned about the institution.

Is it possible that this school was being used the groom future subjects in clandestine operations?

Back in 2009, UK intelligence services in partnership with Metropolitan Police, announced the existence of a covert social engineering effort known as the The Channel Project, which was being run in hopes to target children with traits which may indicate an attraction to “extreme” views and a susceptibility to being groomed by “radicalisers” in the future. It goes without saying, that a secret program of this kind could just as easily be used to groom future ‘radicals’ and informants too.

Here’s a video provided by Britain’s Channel 4, that depicts a camera shy Emwazi in his teenage years…

IMAGE: ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ – Mohammad Emwazi at Mary Magdalene Church of England primary school
in Maida Vale, West London. (Photo link Mirror.co.uk)

Emwazi relocated back to UK in 2010 after having worked as salesman for a Kuwaiti IT company, where he was regarded by his boss as being, “the best employee we ever had.” Emwazi’s  former boss also noted in a Guardian report from March 1st that, “How could someone as calm and quiet as him become like the man who we saw on the news? It’s just not logical that he could be this guy.”

Emwazi is said to have been recruited to an unnamed ‘international terror gang’ sometime in 2012 by Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed who lived just a couple of miles from Emwazi’s Queen’s Park, West London home.

According to the Mirror, those on the periphery of Emwazi, appear to be affiliated to those involved in the 1998 US Embassy bombing in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, as well as those “said to be linked” to the 7/7 London bombings. One could argue that the 1998 Embassy bombing was a clear shift in operations with the US-backed Mujahideen proxy fighters, as they quickly became a ‘sworn’ enemy of the West after being linked to the 1998 bombing as “al-Qaeda” for the first time. The late 1990′s marked the ramp up to the War on Terror:

“Emwazi’s network spreads even further. A file seen by The Mirror shows a direct link between Ahmed Mohammed and two al-Qaeda killers.

One of the men, Saleh Nabhan, was behind the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 250 and the 2002 attempt to bring down an Israeli airline with Stinger missiles.

Together with Harun Fazul he also trained and guarded British terror suspect Samantha Lewthwaite – the White Widow.”

The same Mirror report from February 27th continued by explaining how Ahmed Mohamed met Mohammad Emwazi at a mosque, prior to Emwazi’s apparent radicalization some 3 years later.

Curiously, in the very same report by the UK’s Mirror, the unnamed former school friend who is said to have identified Emwazi, stated that Emwazi never went to a mosque and he never seemed that religious:

“Today security sources revealed that Emwazi, 26, and burkha disguise jihadi Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed met in 2006 at a West London mosque before Emwazi began a computer programming course at Westminster University.”

Is it possible that Ahmed Mohamed worked as a security services asset and that MI5, in conjunction with other groups, sought to recruit Emwazi at least 3 years prior to his detention in May of 2009?

Interestingly, is was reported that Ahmed Mohamed’s control order was quashed in the Court of Appeal in May of 2014, while Mohamed was still seemingly absent from the UK.

IMAGE: ‘The al-Qaeda & al-Shabaab link’ – Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed allegedly ‘averted MI5′
while pretending to be a woman cloaked in burka in 2013. (Photo link celebnew.com)

The Relationship of Terror & Security

In November of 2013, according to security officials, Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed was suspected to have been linked to a plot to bomb the London Olympics and another alleged Westgate-like attack on Eton College. Ahmed Mohamed was named as being a member of an“Al Shabaab sleeper cell known as the London Boys.”

As we reported last week here at 21WIRE, Emwazi’s longtime West London associate, former UK rapper Abdel Bary, the initial ‘Jihadi John’ suspect, had also been linked to the ‘London Boys’network, along with Emwazi.

We were told that Emwazi had “fled the gaze of MI5” in early 2013 to head for Syria, around the same time Bary disappeared from London – also near the same time that ‘burkha wearing’ Ahmed Mohamed gave the security agency the slip, escaping after being implicated in several terror plots.

How would it be possible for all three of these men to thwart MI5 and escape undetected from the UK, as they would have mostly certainly been closely watched considering their connection to theLondon Boys sleeper cell and the apparent affiliation to al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab?

Western political leaders and their media will publicly discuss the idea of so-called terror ‘sleeper cells’ ad nauseam, hiding in a nation near you, but none of them will acknowledge the historical fact that they themselves help to harbor, grow, foment and radicalize individuals through secret counter-terrorism operations. Allied nations of course, will bring up the fact that Western intelligence regularly uses double agents and informants, under the banner of ‘security’ to obfuscate the true intentions of such programs – always careful as to how they paint Western foreign policy aims.

According to reports, the London Boys were connected to “planned attacks” at top London hotels as well as several other locations. It was previously released that a Somali cell was active in Britain and had been trained by Al Qaeda’s former leader in Africa, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the same associate of ‘White Widow’ Samantha Lewthwaite, at a camp in Mogadishu in 2006.

Rather conveniently, there were blueprints that specified certain British targets found with Fazul, when he was killed during a gunfight at a police checkpoint in Mogadishu in 2011.

In excerpt that 21WIRE previously linked to from the Daily Mail, an as of yet unnamed source, stated that Emwazi had joined up with other militant groups prior joining ISIS:

“The son of a minicab driver, he was reported to have occasionally prayed at a mosque in Greenwich, south-east London.”

“A source who claims to have met with Emwazi in Syria told Channel 4 news that they believed Emwazi initially joined the Migrants Brigade or Mujahideen in 2012.”

“Emwazi was believed to have been based in Syria’s Idlib Province and then outside Aleppo, before going on to join Al-Nusra and finally ISIS.”

Problem, Reaction, Solution?

Other reports suggest that security services were not able keep track of Emwazi when he relocated to Syria, because of the recently abolished anti-terror control orders in the UK. Will the latest Emwazi drama be used to tighten terror control orders?

In revealing article by investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed, appearing on Middle East Eye, once again British security is shown to be inextricably tied to known radicals:

“According to Dr Noman Hanif, a lecturer in international terrorism and political Islam at Birkbeck College, University of London, and an expert on Hizb ut-Tahrir, the group’s presence in Britain likely provided many opportunities for Western intelligence to “penetrate or influence” the movement.

Dr Hanif, whose doctoral thesis was about the group, points out that Husain’s tenure inside HT by his own account occurred “under the leadership of Omar Bakri Mohammed,” the controversial cleric who left the group in 1996 to found al-Muhajiroun, a militant network which to this day has been linked to every major terrorist plot in Britain.

Bakri’s leadership of HT, said Dr Hanif, formed “the most conceptually deviant period of HT’s existence in the UK, diverting quite sharply away from its core ideas,” due to Bakri’s advocacy of violence and his focus on establishing an Islamic state in the UK, goals contrary to HT doctrines.”

It has been documented that Anjem Choudary and Omar Bakri the founders of Al-Muhajiroun, a terror labeled organization that was banned, are linked to British intelligence.

‘The Jihadi Rewrite’

In a recent BBC report, an alleged former ISIS fighter was said to have defected from the terror group. A man calling himself Abu Ayman, has come forward claiming to have met Emwazi in Syria. The is the media’s key link which closes the Emwazi circle. The report was splashed across media outlets worldwide, with most treating the alleged fighter’s word as being 100% truthful, even though his identity was not confirmed.

However, one should consider Ayman’s role in all of this and why he would come forward to support the Western narrative of Jihadi John – without any hard evidence to prove Emwazi is Jihadi John.

Something else to consider: If Ayman has actually defected from ISIS and presumably returned to a Western nation, why wouldn’t he be arrested for his involvement with the terror group?

In another, almost buried report, we were told the unlikely scenario – that Jihadi John allegedly ‘reached out’ to Western media outlets via a third party in Syria, to apologize for the trouble his identity has caused. While the report attempts to be a serious piece of journalism, the story reeks of PR strategist’s attempting to validate the unmasking of Jihad John as Mohammad Emwazi, through a cheap parlor trick (planted story) directed at Western audiences.

Over the last 24 hours the terrible Jihadi John scripting continues, as Sky News reports the reason that hostages were seen calm before their alleged executions in the ISIS ‘beheading’ videos was because often, “they were routinely subjected to mock executions with their captors telling them they would not be killed as it was a show for the camera.”

This newly cooked-up report claimed that a masked ISIS militant known only as “Saleh”, provided the otherwise unverifiable execution details.

Below is an interview conducted by Sky News with ‘Saleh’. The interview appears tobe another attempt to humanize the ISIS cause, while continuing to deceive the public about the character known as Jhadi John…

The latest Gallup poll shows that even as Americans are more satisfied with the American economy, they are more dissatisfied with the government; and that this government-dissatisfaction is so high that for the first time while Gallup has been following this matter, the ratio of dissatisfaction with government is swamping the ratio of dissatisfaction with both of the other two matters that Americans are dissatisfied with: the economy, and unemployment.

In this Gallup report, dated March 12th, dissatisfaction with government has slightly risen, while dissatisfaction regarding all other matters has either gone down, or else remained constant.

When asked “What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?” 18% now say “government.” 11% say “economy.” 10% say “unemployment.” And 7% say “immigration/illegal aliens.” “Healthcare” was also 7%. All other issues were lower than 7%.

What has actually soared is the ratio of dissatisfaction with the government, divided by the highest other issue of dissatisfaction. This ratio has recently skyrocketed.

Dissatisfaction with government has previously been as high as 20% in April 2014, but at those times dissatisfaction with other issues was higher than it is now (for example, dissatisfaction with the economy was 16% in April 2014, whereas now it’s only 11% — the economy has improved).

For some reason(s), Americans are especially frustrated with their government right now. Perhaps Americans, who previously preferred divided control of government (a ‘Democratic’ President and a solid-Republican Congress — both houses being now Republican), and who now have what the polls had previously shown that Americans wanted on that (divided government), are starting to change their minds about divided government: they don’t like it, after all.

Here is additional support for this hypothesis: This particular poll happens to have been taken during March 5th throuth 8th. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the U.S. Congress occurred right before that, on March 3rd, and it represented a historically unprecedented affront and insult to a sitting U.S. President, both from the opposition political party (in this case, by Republicans), and also from a supposedly-allied foreign government (Israel).

Another Gallup poll, released just a day earlier, on March 11th, was headlined, “Americans’ Views of Netanyahu Less Positive Post-Visit,”  and it found that Netanyahu’s speech caused his “favorable” rating to plunge, from 32% down to 17%, among Democrats, and to edge upward slightly from 60% to 62% among Republicans. Among the population overall, his favorable rating declined, from 45% down to 38%.

German radio, Deutsche Welle, headlined on March 10th, “Republicans to Obama: We really don’t like you,” and reported:

If there was any doubt how Republicans felt about President Obama and a nuclear deal with Iran after last week’s congressional spectacle featuring the Israeli premier, there shouldn’t be after their letter to Tehran. 

Last week’s unprecedented event of having a foreign leader in the final stages of a close election campaign speak before a joint session of Congress without consulting the White House seemed like a tough act to follow — especially when the sole purpose of that speech was to bash the Obama administration’s nuclear talks with Iran. That event was orchestrated by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

By [now] publishing an open letter to Iran’s leadership and lecturing Tehran about the US Constitution and legislators’ opposition to a nuclear agreement, however, the Republican-controlled Senate may have succeeded in besting the performance of the lower house.

“I think there is no precedent in the history of the Republic for Senators to write to a foreign leader in this way,” Nigel Bowles, director of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford, told DW.

So: perhaps this historically unprecedented desire by the opposition political party to sabotage a sitting American President explains the reason why Americans’ dissatisfaction with their government is increasing, even when dissatisfaction with other matters is not rising.

It’s hard to explain the increase in government-dissatisfaction any other way. Whereas in February, Gallup had found that 17% of Americans were dissatisfied with their government and that 16% were dissatisfied with their economy, in March Gallup found that 18% of Americans were dissatisfied with their government and that only 11% were dissatisfied with their economy. Even with the economy’s apparent improvement, dissatisfaction with the government was still edging up. Perhaps Netanyahu’s speech, and the 46 Senate Republicans telling Iran that a treaty signed by this President would bind only him and not the U.S. Government, can explain this rise in dissatisfaction with the government.

On March 10th, veteran foreign-affairs journalist Robert Parry, a partisan Democrat, said,

 “Yes, I know many Republicans and their overwhelmingly white ‘base’ don’t consider the African-American Obama the legitimate President despite his two election victories. But never in American history has a major political party as brazenly challenged the constitutional authority of a sitting president to conduct foreign policy.”

According to my hypothesis, the people who would be the most dissatisfied with our government now would likely be independents — the people who are dissatisfied with both political parties. I therefore requested from Gallup a party-breakdown of that 18%; and they kindly provided those figures: the 18% overall figure consisted of:  21% of Independents, 18% of Republicans, and 14% of Democrats. That fits.

In our hyper-partisan era, perhaps one might think of Democrats as being people who dislike Republicans, Republicans as being people who dislike Democrats, and Independents as being people who dislike both. Since our government consists of both, Independents tend to dislike government. That does not mean they dislike democracy. Perhaps they tend to question whether we still have a democracy. By contrast, Democrats and Republicans tend to think that their party should run the Government. Democrats want a “democracy”; Republicans want a “republic” (presumably meaning an elite to run the country); and Independents are largely dissatisfied with the way that both parties are functioning.

As of February 8-11, Gallup’s findings regarding party-affiliation were: 43% Independents, 29% Democrats, and 25% Republicans.

However, this is a far more partisan era than most in U.S. history. And the percentage of independents is higher now than before. Usually, Republicans are dissatisfied with the government when a Democrat is President, and Democrats are dissatisfied with the government when a Republican is President. Independents used to be in the middle on that. Until recently, Independents weren’t so much rejecting the government as they were simply “moderates” between the two parties — on the fence. That was a less partisan time. For example, on 10 January 2006, when Republican G.W. Bush was President, Gallup reported that, “Ten percent of Republicans mention government dissatisfaction as the most important problem, while 12% of independents and 14% of Democrats do so.” Americans were far more satisfied with their government then, than they are today; and, whereas Democrats were the most-dissatified group with it then, they are the least-dissatisfied group with it now. And, whereas Independents were in the middle then for government-dissatisfaction, they are at the top in that, today, in our far-more-polarized political environment. The general sense back in 2006, even after the catastrophic invasion of Iraq, and after the dismal handling of 2005 Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, was far more favorable toward the American government, than today’s environment is.

Fifteen years of unmitigated rotten government have had an impact on the public’s perceptions about the government. And this impact has not been favorable.

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.

Sudan President, Omar al-Bashir has alleged that the American and Israeli intelligence agencies are responsible for Boko Haram and Islamic State (ISIS) insurgency in Africa.

According to him, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Israel’s national intelligence institute, Mossad are behind Boko Haram and ISIS attacks in Africa.

Speaking to Euronews in an interview, al-Bashir said no Muslim could do what the sects does, suggesting that it was the intention of US and Israel to increase enmity against Islam.

“I said CIA and the Mossad stand behind these organisations; there is no Muslim who would carry out such acts,” he said.

The 25-year-long ruler of Sudan advised that the battle against ISIS and Boko Haram should not be confronted with military power alone, but also with ideological conversion of the radicals.

“Our policy has been largely successful; after we arrest these young people, we bring a group of young scholars to engage in dialogue with them about their thoughts, and we succeed to bring a lot of them back from their radical ideas,” he said.

Earlier, Lebanon’s Hezbollah group had also claimed that CIA and Mossad were behind the terrorist sects in Nigeria, Syria and Iraq.

The 71-year-old also spoke as regards the Human Rights Watch (HRW) that 200 women were raped and abused in Sudan, stating that the claims were “opposition-run and Israel funded.”

Al-Bashir took over power in June 1989 and has since ruled the north-eastern African country as its seventh president.

Source

There’s Big Pharma, Big Ag, and now Big Sugar – all industries too sweet on the smell of money to be truthful about their products to the public. New information has come forth that proves the sugar industry knew their products would cause dental and health issues since the 1950’s, but they worked with our government agencies (cigarette-ad-campaign-style) to make sure we wouldn’t know the true damage sugar could cause until we were all addicted.

Internal documents exchanged between a sugar industry trade association, representing 30 international sugar manufacturers and our government, prove that sugar companies knew from the 1950’s that sugar is the principal cause of tooth decay, yet they immediately set about deflecting the blame onto other bogus factors, not to mention, left the door open for fluoridation of our water.

The sugar industry found an ally in America’s National Institutes of Health (NIH), supposedly responsible for looking after the public health.

This means that minimally, the NIH, and likely the FDA have known that sugar is the main cause of tooth decay for years, (forget that it also alters the brain’s reward system and causes obesity, and cancer, among other things). These agencies decided to side with the sugar industry to cover up the lie they would tell us all, and created the National Caries Program, completely ignoring the fact that sugar causes dental decay and cavities.

The sugar industry also colluded with the food industry to find out which enzymes could break up dental decay and even financed a vaccine to prevent tooth decay. Just as long as they could still sell us – SUGAR.

Read: The 37 Cereals with TONS of Disease-Linked Sugar

Lobbyists from the sugar industry-filled seats throughout our government including the National Institute of Dental Research, which sets the agenda for the National Institutes of Health initiatives.

Stanton Glantz, a researcher from the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF), who discovered the cache of papers that had been left to the University of Illinois by the late Roger Adams, a professor of organic chemistry who served on the Sugar Research Foundation, and which blew open the collusion that was happening within the sugar industry and our government agencies, said:

“These tactics are strikingly similar to what we saw in the tobacco industry in the same era.”

But yea – let’s ignore the sugar and keep adding fluoride to the water. Don’t mind the money trail from a multi-billion dollar industry at all. Greed has made all our smiles less beautiful.

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In February 2015, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights met in Banjul,  Gambia, for its 17^th Extra-Ordinary Session, to deal with critical matters pending since the cancellation and delay of previous sessions due to the spread of Ebola during 2014.

One critical matter in front of the Commission was the new environmental and social safeguards being proposed by the World Bank and the Commission was very clear in its concerns. In its Resolution on the topic, the Commission noted the very real advances achieved in promoting and protecting the rights of indigenous peoples in Africa, both at the normative level and with regard to the development of relevant plans, policies and programmes”. The possible cooling effect of the World Banks proposals on such progress was noted, with the Commission calling for all “international organizations to further promote human rights on the continent and abstain from taking initiatives that could have a negative impact on policies for the promotion and protection of the rights of indigenous peoples”. [Emphasis added]

The Commission expressed strongly worded views on the proposed opt-out provided for in ESS7 (the Standard for indigenous peoples), highlighting that the opt-out “would have the effect of removing all the safeguard obligations designed to protect the fundamental human rights of indigenous peoples provided therein” and that the opt-out “would encourage States not to comply with their international and regional obligations and commitments, and discourage the evolving State practice for the enhanced protection of indigenous peoples in Africa”.

This powerful statement to the international community was followed with specific requests from the Commission that “the World Bank align its Environmental and Social Safeguards Policy and associated Environmental and Social Standards (ESS) with international and regional legal frameworks for the protection of indigenous peoples” and that this must include “removing the ‘opt-out’ clause included in Environmental and Social Standard 7 (ESS7)”.

In Africa, two sub-regional meetings among indigenous peoples’ representatives were convened on the edges of the sub-regional World Bank consultations in Francophone Africa (Yaoundé, March 3^rd) and Anglophone Africa (Nairobi, February 27^th). In Nairobi, Peter Kitelo from the Forest Indigenous Peoples Network in Kenya said “‘this Resolution underlines the dangers posed to us, and our communities, if the World Bank introduces this so-called ‘alternative approach’ and renders the protection of our fundamental rights as optional”.

Increasingly Governments sitting on the Executive Board of the World Bank are expressing concern at the proposed amendment, with the Executive Director of the Nordic and Baltic States issuing the following statement:

“The proposal to introduce an alternative approach to the standard on Indigenous Peoples (ESS7) is a great concern. In our view, this poses a risk to internationally agreed indigenous peoples’ rights and might derail a process that has gradually increased countries recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights. The proposed approach leaves excessive discretion to borrowers and the bank to disregard international 
norms. For these reasons we see it as contradictory to the promise of “no dilution” and very far from the ambition of the Bank to showing leadership.”

Joji Carino, Director of the Forest Peoples Programme, said “the international human rights community could not be clearer about the need to remove the ‘alternative approach’ from the currently proposed safeguards, first the UN Special Rapporteurs and now this critical statement from the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights – we hope the Bank is listening.”

Background documents:

Resolution on the World Bank’s draft Environmental and Social Policy (ESP) and associated Environmental and Social Standard (ESS)

http://www.achpr.org/sessions/17th-eo/resolutions/301/

Final Communiqué of the 17th Extra-Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (link to PDF)

http://www.achpr.org/files/sessions/17th-eo/info/communique17eos/achpr17eos_fincom_eng.pdf

Press Contacts:

(UK): Helen Tugendhat, Policy Advisor on Legal and Human Rights and Responsible Finance: UK mobile +44 7551 493783 [email protected]

(UK): James Harvey, Communications Manager: +44 (0)1608 652 893 [email protected]

Forest Peoples Programme works with forest peoples in South America, Africa, and Asia, to help them secure their rights, build up their own organisations and negotiate with governments and companies as to how economic development and conservation are best achieved on their lands. The vision of the organisation is that forests be owned and controlled by forest peoples in ways that ensure sustainable livelihoods, equity and well-being based on respect for their rights, knowledge, cultures and identities. For more information, please visit www.forestpeoples.org

Forest Peoples Programme, 1c Fosseway Business Centre, Stratford Road, Moreton in Marsh GL56 9NQ, UK Tel:+44 (0)1608 652893 www.forestpeoples.org Charity Registration Number: 1082158 A company limited by guarantee (England & Wales) Reg. No. 3868836

At times I feel completely overwhelmed by the current US-NATO military operations aimed at Russia.  It’s growing rapidly – one can’t help but wonder if the recent ‘victory’ of the self-defensive forces in eastern Ukraine wasn’t allowed by Washington and Kiev as a way to get public opinion behind the already well established plans for even more NATO escalation.

It’s all just far too neat and tidy to be seen otherwise.  This is not a conspiracy but a well designed military plan to take down Moscow.  They are playing with fire. In some respects the ‘project’ is now impossible to stop.  The question for the moment is how long will this attack on Russia go on and what level of conflict will result?  Will it go nuclear?  If so the world is fucked.

The Pentagon role now is to send legions of NATO trainers into Ukraine to “push Kiev’s [reluctant] troops forward” in order to “deter Russian aggression.”  It’s a long term military operation that is going to be exceedingly expensive.  It’s got to be sold to the American people and folks throughout Europe.  In order to make this public relations campaign successful the perpetrators have to flip the switch – turn the story ass backwards – blame the other side for doing what US-NATO are in fact doing.

The source of the aggression is quite clear to me.  US-NATO are all over Russia’s border.  I learned today that the current right-wing EstonianPresident Toomas Hendrik Ilves grew up in New Jersey and went to Columbia University.  It’s funny how the US is able to continually put their agents into office in key nations around the world.

Go back to post WW II and note how fascist Syngman Rhee lived in the US and was then put in power in South Korea to ensure Washington’s control.  Recall the many fascist dictators that the US repeatedly put in place in Vietnam, Iran, Indonesia and throughout Latin America and the African continent.  It’s called good corporate planning.

More recently in 2008 we saw Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili (also trained in the US at George Washington University) launch an attack on Russian speaking republics South Ossetia and Abkhazia along Russia’s border.  Russia responded to the Georgian military strike against the  people there by counter-attacking Georgia.  The fighting took place in the strategically important Transcaucasia region which borders the Middle East.

I’ll never forget watching the first US politician to arrive in Georgia after the 2008 shooting war subsided.  It was then Sen. Joe Biden who made that visit, just months before being selected as Obama’s running mate. Biden came back slinging much anti-Russian rhetoric and most importantly threatened Russia with dire consequences if it did not do as instructed by Washington and Brussels.   Biden of course also led the effort in the Senate to send more weapons and US military ‘trainers’ to Georgia.  So this is all a familiar story.

Just this morning NPR (National Public Radio) had an interview with a Russian woman who ‘fingered’ Putin as the one who called for the killing of Boris Nemtsov this past weekend in Moscow.  It’s all so damn convenient – the pieces just keep tumbling into place as the case is made for war with Russia in order to contain the ‘evil Putin’.  Can you see Manuel Noriega (Panama), Saddam Hussein (Iraq), and Muammar Qaddafi (Libya) all over again?  It’s a tried and true twisting of the truth in order to set up supposed ‘obstacles’ for take down.  It’s always sold though as the mighty super-moral US swooping in to protect ‘freedom and democracy’.  Walt Disney couldn’t have done this any better.

The US-NATO expansion of the conflict in Ukraine is indeed a declaration of war against Russia.  And from what I can make out the Russian people see the writing on the wall – they can hear the train coming.  Sadly the American people have no clue what is going on nor do most of those in Europe.

This project has been set up with criminal precision.  After all the CIA and the Pentagon have had alot of practice over the years.  This is what Washington does best.

Washington, DC – On the heels of a series of political stunts on Capitol Hill that have heightened partisanship and threatened to sabotage nuclear negotiations with Iran, 50 organizations sent a letter to the Senate today warning against legislation that would entrust Congress with expanded powers to block an eventual nuclear deal. 

The letter urges Senators to oppose the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (S.615), and was signed by groups including the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), Friends Committee on National Legislation, Win Without War, MoveOn.org, CREDO, and Americans for Peace Now.

“The outrageous political stunts in the Senate have made it clear that some in Congress will stop at nothing to kill nuclear talks with Iran, regardless of the consequences,” said NIAC Policy Director Jamal Abdi. “Tom Cotton and his colleagues should not be rewarded with additional powers to sabotage a deal and drag the U.S. into war.”

As detailed in the letter below, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act contains numerous elements that risk disrupting negotiations in their final stage and blocking the President from using existing authorities to implement a prospective deal. The bill would delay implementation of any agreement for 60 days, insert conditions that are outside the scope of the P5+1’s negotiations, and provide Congress with new veto powers over a deal.

A copy of the letter is below:

Thursday, March 12, 2015

To: Members of the U.S. Senate

As organizations representing millions of Americans that support a peaceful diplomatic resolution to the nuclear standoff with Iran, we strongly urge you to oppose S.615, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act. By threatening to reject a prospective nuclear deal, inserting conditions outside the scope of negotiations, and delaying the implementation of any agreement for months, this bill risks derailing the best chance to both prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon and avert a disastrous war.

We understand that some members of Congress seek additional consultation and oversight regarding a final agreement. This bill is not the means to do so. Instead, this bill risks ensuring that there is no agreement for Congress to oversee in the first place. The politicized manner through which some have attempted to advance this bill, by seeking to bypass regular procedure and pass the bill at such a delicate time in negotiations, should give pause to those members who do not want to subject a potential nuclear deal to a vote that is based on politics rather than substance. If Members of Congress support this bill and it ends up defeating a nuclear deal, they would own the consequences of a diplomatic failure: an expanding Iranian nuclear program, the unraveling of international sanctions on Iran, and an increasing threat of war.

There are appropriate ways to increase Congressional oversight of a nuclear deal with Iran without threatening to scuttle a diplomatic solution. However, in order to give negotiations the best chance to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon and avert war, it is important that Congress reject S.615.

Sincerely,

American Friends Service Committee

American Values Network

Americans for Peace Now

Arab American Institute

Arms Control Association

Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Center for Interfaith Engagement of Eastern Mennonite University

Center for International Policy

Citizens for Global Solutions

Church of the Brethren, Office of Public Witness

CODEPINK

Conference of Major Superiors of Men

Council for a Livable World

CREDO

Daily Kos

Friends Committee on National Legislation

Global Exchange

Global Ministries of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and United Church of Christ

The HAND Foundation

Historians Against the War

Institute for Policy Studies

International Civil Society Action Network

Jewish Voice for Peace

Just Foreign Policy

Maryknoll Office of Global Concern

MoveOn.org Civic Action

National Council of Churches

National Iranian American Council

National Security Network

NETWORK

Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Pax Christi International

Peace Action

Peace Action West

People Demanding Action

Physicians for Social Responsibility

Presbyterian Church (USA)

Progressive Democrats of America

RootsAction.org

Sojourners

United Church of Christ, Justice and Witness Ministries

United for Peace and Justice

United Methodist Church, General Board of Church and Society

U.S. Labor Against the War

USAction

Veterans for Peace

WarisaCrime.org

Win Without War

Women’s Action for New Directions

World Beyond War

[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.

2. 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

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

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).

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Geoffrey R. Pyatt Skirmisher of Euromaidan

Video by Live Leak

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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/.

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!

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 .

“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

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.)

“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.”

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

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. 

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

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]

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.

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.

–

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A Jason A Video Production 

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

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.

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.

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

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.”

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.

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