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Former Soviet leader and Nobel prize winner Mikhail Gorbachev warned that the battle in Ukraine could result in a nuclear war:

“A war of this kind would unavoidably lead to a nuclear war,” the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize winner told Der Spiegel news magazine, according to excerpts released on Friday.

“We won’t survive the coming years if someone loses their nerve in this overheated situation,” added Gorbachev, 83. “This is not something I’m saying thoughtlessly. I am extremely concerned.”

One of America’s top experts on Russia – Steven Cohen – has warned that failure to negotiate a peace treaty in Ukraine could lead to nuclear war.

Steven Starr – a nuclear arms expert and senior scientist for Physicians for Social Responsibility – warns that proposed U.S. legislation would be a direct path towards nuclear war with Russia.

Former Russian advisor to Margaret Thatcher John Bowne said yesterday:

I think it is dire particularly because President Obama has had the wrong end of the stick, and he follows a strategic mistake. When President Reagan and Secretary of State Gorbachev, with the assistance of Margret Thatcher, achieved an end to the cold war, in other words, the colder part of Second World War in the mid 1980’s, it was agreed, if not in writing but tacitly, that neither side would try to poach on the old buffer states of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. From the Russian point of view, they see a number of countries have voted quite democratically, like Poland, to go into the European Union and be associated with NATO and things like that. They have also seen activity by the secret services of the West, most notably the CIA in the Ukraine, to persuade them to go. This has angered the Russians, and when you come to the Ukraine and Crimea, you are treading on vital interests of Russia. It is very similar to the situation in October of 1962, when Khrushchev of the Soviet Union decided to put intercontinental ballistic missiles in Cuba, right in the soft underbelly of the United States, threating the vital interests of the United States. In that confrontation, President Kennedy had to win even if it meant nuclear war. He had to win that battle. In this case, we have the West interfering in the soft underbelly of Russia, notably the Ukraine and in Crimea. This threatens the vital interest of Russia like a warm water port with access to the Eastern Mediterranean, which they have sought for 200 years. Putin, who enjoys 80 percent domestic support, has to win even if it means going to war.

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This would have a very high risk of slipping into nuclear war. Russia has enormous ground forces, and they are very up to date. Putin has updated the Russian armed forces tremendously. They have very sophisticated rocket weapons, and if we saw massive numbers of our troops being slaughtered, maybe we would be the first to press the nuclear button. . . . So, this is a desperate situation.

Former Polish president – and famed anti-communist activist – Lech Walesa also warned that the U.S. and Nato’s arming of Ukraine could lead to a nuclear war.

Leading American political activist Noam Chomsky agrees.

Australian doctor and Nobel prize winner Helen Caldicott warns:

The expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders is “very, very dangerous,” Caldicott said. “There is no way a war between the United States and Russia could start and not go nuclear. … The United States and Russia have enormous stockpiles of these weapons. Together they have 94 percent of all the 16,300 nuclear weapons in the world.”

“We are in a very fallible, very dangerous situation operated by mere mortals,” she warned. “The nuclear weapons, are sitting there, thousands of them. They are ready to be used.”

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Caldicott strongly criticized Obama administration policymakers for their actions in forward positioning U.S. and NATO military units in countries of Eastern Europe in response to Russian support of breakaway separatists in the provinces of eastern Ukraine. On –, the U.S. government announced the deployment of the Ironhorse Brigade, an elite armored cavalry unit of the U.S. Army to the former Soviet republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, along the historic invasion route from the West to St. Petersburg.

“Do they really want a nuclear war with Russia?” she asked “The only war that you can have with Russia is a nuclear war. … You don’t provoke paranoid countries armed with nuclear weapons.”

And see this, this, this, this, this and this.

Indeed, Eric Zuesse says that the risks are so high – and the American leaders so reckless – that Russia ispreparing for an expected nuclear attack by the U.S.

Postscript: In the 1987 book To Win a Nuclear War: The Pentagon’s Secret War Plans, one of the world’s leading physicists – Michio Kaku – revealed declassified plans for the U.S. to launch a first-strike nuclear war against Russia. The forward was written by the former Attorney General of the United States, Ramsey Clarke.

In Towards a World War III Scenario, Michel Chossudovsky documents that the U.S. is so enamored with nuclear weapons that it has authorized low-level field commanders to use them in the heat of battle in their sole discretion … without any approval from civilian leaders.

May cooler heads prevail …

Since this story was first published there have been reports to the effect that Israel has no dams in Southern Israel bordering on Gaza. According to reports, the crisis was not caused by   Israel opening the dams, as claimed by the Gaza Ministry of the Interior. Below is an excerpt of a report published by Buzz Feed News:

“There are no dams in the southern Israel. This is a false story that circulates every winter. There are flash floods across southern Israel, but there are simply no dams in southern Israel,” said Hadar Horn, a spokesperson for Israel’s coordination office for the Palestinian territories. “This is a lie.”

In Gaza, the story of the dams has long been circulated as an explanation for why the central Gaza Strip floods during the winter. One Palestinian official, who spoke to BuzzFeed on condition of anonymity, said the rumor could be traced back more than a decade.

“It is easy to say it is dams, easier than saying that the problem is infrastructure — not having infrastructure, having bad infrastructure, having what little infrastructure Gaza destroyed each time there is way — that is the truth,” said the official, who spoke by phone from Gaza. He asked to remain anonymous as his statements did not coincide with those made by Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. “If we could rebuild Gaza, we could build a system that dealt with these horrible floods. But Gaza is in ruins, there is nowhere for the water to go, and each year it will be the same unless someone helps us.”

At least 80 Palestinian families were evacuated this week after water levels in the Gaza Valley (Wadi Gaza) rose to almost three meters. The original AFP story quoted Gaza’s Ministry of Interior which claimed, “By [Israel] opening the channels they flooded many homes… We had to evacuate as quickly as possible.”

Original Report by Al Akhbar

Hundreds of Palestinians were evacuated from their homes Sunday morning after Israeli authorities opened a number of dams near the border, flooding the Gaza Valley in the wake of a recent severe winter storm.

The Gaza Ministry of Interior said in a statement that civil defense services and teams from the Ministry of Public Works had evacuated more than 80 families from both sides of the Gaza Valley (Wadi Gaza) after their homes flooded as water levels reached more than three meters.

“Opening the levees to the canal has led to the flooding of several Palestinian homes, and we had to quickly evacuate the afflicted citizens,” the statement said.

Gaza has experienced flooding in recent days amid a major storm that saw temperatures drop and frigid rain pour down. The storm displaced dozens and caused hardship for tens of thousands, including many of the approximately 110,000 of Gaza’s 1.8 million residents left homeless by Israel’s assault over summer.

For 51 days this summer, Israel pounded the Gaza Strip by air, land and sea, destroying as many as 80,000 Palestinian homes. According to the UN, some 30,000 Gazans are still living in emergency shelters.

Gaza civil defense services spokesman Mohammed al-Midana warned that further harm could be caused if Israel opens up more dams in the area, noting that water is currently flowing at a high speed from the Israeli border through the valley and into the Mediterranean sea.

Evacuated families have been sent to shelters sponsored by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, in al-Bureij refugee camp and in al-Zahra neighborhood in the central Gaza Strip.

The Gaza Valley is a wetland located in the central Gaza Strip between al-Nuseirat refugee camp and al-Moghraqa. It is called HaBesor in Hebrew, and it flows from two streams — one whose source runs from near Beersheba, and the other from near al-Khalil.

Israeli dams on the river that collect rainwater have dried up the wetlands inside Gaza, and destroyed the only source of surface water in the area.

Lacking any alternative means, locals have continued to use it to dispose of their waste, creating an environmental hazard.

Gaza is also prone to severe flooding, exacerbated by a chronic lack of fuel that limits how much water can be pumped out of flood-stricken areas. The fuel shortages are a result of the eight-year Israeli blockade, which limits the import of fuel for the electric power station in Gaza, as well as other kinds of machinery related to pumping and sewage management that could help Gazans combat the floods. The most recent war has worsened the crisis.

Gaza’s sole power station, which was damaged during the war, is struggling with a severe lack of fuel and is only able to supply the enclave with six hours of power per day.

Gazans are now living by candlelight and wood fire because of electricity shortages, and rely on sandbags to stop their ruined homes from flooding.

This is not the first time Israeli authorities have opened the Gaza Valley dams.

In December 2013, Israeli authorities also opened the dams amid heavy flooding in the Gaza Strip. The resulting floods damaged dozens of homes and forced many families in the area from their homes.

In 2010, the dams were opened as well, forcing 100 families from their homes. At the time, civil defense services said that they had managed to save seven people who had been at risk of drowning.

Following a ceasefire agreement that ended the seven-week summer assault, which left more than 2,160 Gazans dead and over 11,000 injured, Israel said it would reopen Gaza’s border crossings with Israel and allow construction material into Gaza.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon said during a visit to the Gaza Strip in October that the devastation he had seen was “beyond description” and “far worse” than that caused in the previous Israel-Gaza conflict of 2012.

According to the Palestinian Authority, rebuilding Gaza will cost $7.8 billion.

However, Israel had repeatedly blocked the entry of building material, prompting the UN in September to broker another deal. The reconstruction of Gaza has yet to begin.

Israel routinely bars the entry of building materials into the embattled coastal enclave on grounds that Palestinian resistance faction Hamas could use them to build underground tunnels or fortifications.

For years, the Gaza Strip has depended on construction materials smuggled into the territory through a network of tunnels linking it to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

However, a crackdown on the tunnels by the Egyptian army after it overthrew then-President Mohammed Mursi has effectively neutralized hundreds of tunnels, severely affecting Gaza’s construction sector.

(Ma’an, Anadolu, Al-Akhbar)

According to the official economic fairy tale, the US economy has been in recovery since June 2009.

This fairy tale supports America’s image as the safe haven, an image that keeps the dollar up, the stock market up, and interest rates down. It is an image that causes the massive numbers of unemployed Americans to blame themselves and not the mishandled economy.

This fairy tale survives despite the fact that there is no economic information whatsoever that supports it.

Real median household income has not grown for years and is below the levels of the early 1970s.

There has been no growth in real retail sales for six years.

How does an economy dependent on consumer demand grow when real consumer incomes and real retail sales do not grow?

Not from business investment. Why invest when there is no sales growth? Industrial production, properly deflated, remains well below the pre-recession level.

Not from construction. The real value of total construction put in place declined sharply from 2006 through 2011 and has bounced around the 2011 bottom for the past three years.

How does an economy grow when the labor force is shrinking? The labor force participation rate has declined since 2007 as has the civilian employment to population ratio.

How can there be a recovery when nothing has recovered?

Do economists believe that the entire corpus of macroeconomics taught since the 1940s is simply incorrect? If not, how can economists possibly support the recovery fairy tale?

We see the same absence of economics in the policy response to the sovereign debt crisis in Europe. First of all, the only reason that there is a crisis is because instead of writing off that part of the debt that cannot be paid, as in the past, so that the rest of the debt could be paid, creditors have demanded the impossible–that all the debt be paid.

In an attempt to achieve the impossible, heavily indebted countries, such as Greece, have been forced to reduce old age pensions, fire government employees, reduce social services such as health care and education, reduce wages, and sell-off public property such as ports, municipal water companies, and the state lottery. These austerity packages deprive the government of revenues and the population of spending power. Consequently, consumption, investment, and government spending all fall, and the economy sinks lower. As the economy sinks, the existing debt becomes a larger percentage of the GDP and becomes even more unserviceable.

Economists have known this ever since John Maynard Keynes taught it to them in the 1930s. Yet there is no sign of this foundational economics in the policy approach to the sovereign debt crisis.

Economists it appears have simply vanished from the earth. Or, if some are still present, they have lost their voices and do not speak.

Consider “globalism.” Every country has been convinced that globalism is imperative and that not to be part of the “global economy” means economic death. In fact, to be part of the global economy means death.

Understand the economic destruction that globalism has wreaked on the United States. Millions of middle class factory jobs and professional skill jobs such as software engineering and Information Technology have been taken away from the American middle class and given to people in Asia. In the short-run this drops labor costs and benefits the profits of the US corporations that offshore the jobs, but the consequence is to destroy the domestic consumer market as jobs that permit the formation of households are replaced with lowly paid part-time jobs that do not.

If households cannot form, the demand for housing, home appliances and furnishings declines. College graduates return home to live with their parents.

Part-time jobs hurt the ability to save. People are only able to purchase cars because they can get 100 percent financing, and more in order to pay off an existing car loan that exceeds the vehicle’s trade-in value, in a six-year loan. These loans are possible, because those who make the loans sell them. The loans are then securitized and sold as investments to those desperate for yield in a zero interest rate world. Derivatives are spun off these “investments,” and a new bubble is put in place.

When manufacturing jobs are offshored, the US plants are closed, and the tax base of state and local governments declines. When the governments have trouble servicing their accumulated debt, the tendency is not to meet their pension obligations. This reduces retiree incomes, incomes already reduced by zero or negative interest rates.

This unraveling of consumer demand, the basis for our economy, was entirely obvious at the very beginning. Yet junk economists or hired corporate mouthpieces promised Americans a “New Economy” that would provide them with better, higher paying, cleaner jobs to take the place of the jobs moved abroad. As I have pointed out for more than a decade, there is no sign of these jobs anywhere in the economy.

Why did economists make no protest as the US economy was shipped abroad and deep-sixed at home?

Globalism also devastates “emerging economies.” Self-sufficient agricultural communities are destroyed by the introduction of large-scale monoculture agriculture. The uprooted peoples relocate to cities where they become a drain on social services and a source of political instability.

Globalism, like neoliberal economics, is an instrument of economic imperialism. Labor is exploited, while peoples, cultures, and environments are destroyed. Yet the propaganda is so powerful that people partake of their own destruction.

Another radioactive water leak in the sea has been detected at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, the facility’s operator TEPCO announced. Contamination levels in the gutter reportedly spiked up 70 times over regular readings.

The sensors are connected to the gutter that pours rain and ground water from the plant to a bay adjacent to the facility.

The levels of contamination were between 50 and 70 times higher than Fukushima’s already elevated radioactive status, and were detected at about 10 am local time (1.00 am GMT), AFP reported.

After the discovery, the gutter was blocked to prevent leaks to the Pacific Ocean.

Throughout Sunday, contamination levels fell, but still measured 10 to 20 times more than prior to the leak.

“We are currently monitoring the sensors at the gutter and seeing the trend,” a company spokesman said.

He did not specify the cause of the leak.

It has proved difficult for TEPCO to deal with plant decommissioning. Postponed deadlines and alarming incidents occur regularly at the facility.

Earlier this week, the UN nuclear watchdog (IAEA) said Japan had made significant progress, but there is still a radioactive threat, and a “very complex” scenario at Fukushima.

About a month ago, TEPCO announced it would miss their toxic water cleanup deadline, suspending it until the end of May, after earlier pledges it would be done by March.

To begin with, let’s be clear, neoliberalism is a criminal, murderous plague that knows no mercy. Neoliberalism is the root of (almost) all evil of the 21^st Century. Neoliberalism is the cause for most current wars, conflicts and civil strife around the globe. Neoliberalism is the expression of abject greed for accumulation of resources by a few, for which tens of millions of people have to die. Neoliberalism and its feudal banking system, led by Wall Street and its intricate network of international finance, steals public infrastructure, public safety nets – public investments paid for by nations’ citizens – robs nations of their resources (labor, physical resources above-and underground) – by avid schemes of privatization, justified under the pretext of ‘structural reforms’ to ‘salvage’ poor but often resources-rich countries from bankruptcy. 

Rescue by structural reform or adjustment is synonymous with deceit. Even IMF chief, Christine Lagarde, admitted that the model failed in Greece, thereby admitting that the notion of ‘austerity’ for the poor as a means for economic recovery is not working. – No news to most of us.

The neoliberal concept is no innovation of today. It was born in the 1930s in Europe as a response (sic) to the US depression of the 1930s. It was initially thought of as a moderate form of giving the private sector more liberty for initiatives and investments, while limiting government control.

The concept was revamped after WWII in Washington rightwing think tanks (sic), such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, Political Economy Research Centre and the like. In the UK developing hard-core neoliberalism was mostly in the domain of the Institute of Economic Affairs. Prominent, mostly Zionist ‘scholars’ elaborated the idea through the sixties and seventies into a market fundamentalism which was launched in the 1980s in the United States under President Reagan and in Europe under UK’s Prime Minister Thatcher. The concept culminated in the so-called Washington Consensus in 1989, depicting a series of ‘everything-goes’ market reform policies, to be adopted by the Washington based financial institutions, World Bank, IDB, IMF, FED, US Treasury.

Since then, neoliberalism has engulfed the world like brushfire. It knows no boundaries. It is influencing world economies like no other economic concept did before. If not by physical weapons and bloodletting wars, neoliberalism is also devastating lives, causing misery, destroying entire nations, by its financial instruments, chiefly represented by the Bretton Woods institutions, World Bank and International Monetary Fund – and lately also the European Central Bank (ECB), the economic sledgehammer of the European Union’s 19 Eurozone countries. The IMF, ECB and the European Commission (EC) have become known as the infamous ‘troika’, the cause for economic strangulation of the southern European nations – Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland – and even Italy.

Case in point is Greece. Last Friday, 20 February, Greece’s newly elected Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, and his Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, of Syriza, the alliance of so-called left-wing parties, went through a marathon session of attempted negotiations with Brussels over her € 240 billion plus debt, due at the end of February 2015. They asked for a 6-month extension without any strings attached, meaning – no more socially debilitating austerity programs. Perhaps they were dreaming, or simply not listening to the utter arrogant advance warnings of Brussels’ elitist neoliberal talking heads, especially Germany’s financial hawk, Minister of Finance, Wolfgang Schäuble, and the ultra-neoliberal chairman of the group of the 19 Eurozone finance chiefs, Jeroen Dijsselbloem.

The latter said that Athens had given its “unequivocal commitment to honour their financial obligations” to creditors, and he will hold her to the promise. This commitment refers to Mr.Tsipras’ predecessor’s, Mr. Alekos Alavanos, Letter of Agreement signed with the EU.

The result was predictable. Tsipras who campaigned under the radical but noble stand of ‘no concessions’ to the lords of Brussels, and his Finance Minister, caved in miserably. They did not get a six months extension, but only 4 months – under the condition that Greece submits a comprehensive list of reforms and reform mechanisms byMonday night, 23 February; basically the same list of austerity measures agreed upon by Tsipras’ predecessor. Implementation of the reforms would be supervised by the troika. At the outset, Tsipras-Varoufakis meekly accepted the EU conditions.

As James Petras puts it in “The Assassination of Greece”:

“Every major financial institution – the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the IMF – toes the line:  no dissent or deviation is allowed.  Greece must accept EU dictates or face major financial reprisals. “Economic strangulation or perpetual debt peonage” is the lesson which Brussels tends to all member states of the EU.  While ostensibly speaking to Greece – it is a message directed to all states, opposition movements and trade unions who call into question the dictates of the Brussels oligarchy and its Berlin overlords.”

During Friday, 20 February, while the financial marathon rambled on in Brussels, one billion euros were withdrawn from Geek banks, in anticipation of failed negotiations and possible expulsion of Greece from the Eurozone – the so-called Grexit.

It is unclear how Tsipras-Varoufakis are going to explain the hapless result brought back from Brussels to their electorate. It must remind those who can still remember how Andreas Papandreou, member of the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Party, elected as first PM after Greece was admitted in 1980 to the EU, betrayed his constituency. He promised them that Greece would exit NATO and the European Economic Community, that Greece would develop her own economy with economic growth at her pace. Soon after election he reneged on both promises. – Will the Greek people buy the Tsipras-Varoufakis ‘explanations’ for not honoring Syriza’s pre-election commitments?

Greece has various options. Tsipras-Varoufakis must know them. Perhaps they keep them hidden away until “the last ditch” moment. To begin with, they could have imposed and still can impose strict capital transfer controls, to avoid the outflow of precious capital from Greek oligarchs, capital that eventually is missing for rebuilding Greece’s economy and would need to be replaced by new debt. Although, this is basically against EU’s rule of free transfer of capital, Greece as a sovereign country, can roll back its EU vassal status, take back its sovereignty and do what every reasonable central bank would do in Greece’s situation – impose capital transfer restrictions. After all, the Euro is also – and still is – Greece’s currency.

The EU might not like it – nor would the Greek oligarchs – but it would be a bold step in the right direction. And should it result in Jeroen Dijsselbloem’s and Germany’s Wolfgang Schäuble’s boisterous threats of ‘sanctions’ – then so be it. – Why not call their bluff? – Submitting a letter on Monday that says just that – we are happy to accept your extension of 4 months, but are morally, socially and economically unable to meet your conditions of austerity. Period.

The EU has no interest whatsoever in a Greek exit. In fact, they are afraid of a Grexit, not only because of a potential default on the Greek debt, but it could open a floodgate for other southern European countries in distress to follow the Greek example. That would be the end of the Euro as we know it. It might be the final blow to the dollar-euro house of cards, house of casino money.

Tsipras–Varoufakis should stick to their promise – no more austerity programs. No more privatizations of public property, no more cuts in pensions and salaries; to the contrary, rolling back the cuts already administered, bringing back decent life conditions to the Greek people, gradually averting the illegal troika imposed misery.

Greece’s debt today stands at 175 % of her economic output. The best – and only decent and socially as well as economically viable option – is exiting the Eurozone by her own decision. Greece would be declared bankrupt. The Anglo-Saxon rating agencies would be quick in down-grading Greece financially to ‘junk’. The financial markets would shun her. No more money, but utmost pressure to repay what they can. Greece would be in the enviable position of negotiating debt repayment at HER own terms – à la Argentina in 2001.

No country can be left to starve, especially when the debt was contracted illegally or under coercion. International law allows renegotiation of such contracts – contracts signed under pressure or by corrupt governments.

Finally – or perhaps refreshingly – Greece could look east, to the Russia-China alliance. Their assistance under much more reasonable conditions is virtually assured. – Why insisting on following a defunct predatory system, when there are new promising development potentials looming on the horizon?

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik News, the Voice of Russia / Ria Novosti, TeleSur, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe.

Seit 2010 hat die Troika aus IWF, EZB und EU-Kommission wechselnde Regierungen in Athen zu insgesamt sechs Sparprogrammen gezwungen, die den Lebensstandard der arbeitenden Menschen drastisch herabgesetzt, die Sozialsysteme zerstört und Millionen einkommensschwacher Griechen in bittere Armut gestürzt haben. Aus diesem Grund hat die Mehrheit des griechischen Volkes am 25. Januar 2015 eine Partei gewählt, die ihr im Wahlkampf das Ende dieser Sparpolitik versprochen und Hoffnung auf eine bessere Zukunft gemacht hat.

Vier Wochen später steht fest: Dieser Traum ist geplatzt. Die Troika hat in den Verhandlungen der vergangenen Woche unmissverständlich klargemacht, dass sie nicht bereit ist, von ihrem Kurs abzuweichen und auf der uneingeschränkten Fortführung der Austeritätspolitik besteht. Das heißt: Die arbeitenden Menschen in Griechenland sollen auch in Zukunft für die durch die Bankenrettung entstandenen Löcher im griechischen Staatshaushalt aufkommen.

Deutschlands Finanzminister Schäuble hat mit seiner unnachgiebigen Haltung ein Exempel statuiert und den arbeitenden Menschen in ganz Europa eine unmissverständliche Botschaft zukommen lassen: Die Troika orientiert sich einzig und allein an den Interessen der Finanzindustrie. Die Nöte arbeitsloser Jugendlicher, hungernder Rentner oder schwerkranker Menschen, die ihre Medikamente nicht bezahlen können, sind ihr gleichgültig.

In der Auseinandersetzung mit der neuen griechischen Regierung hat die Troika mit Nachdruck demonstriert, wer gegenwärtig in Europa das Sagen hat. Nachdem der IWF seine Zahlungen bereits mit der Wahl am 25. Januar eingestellt hatte, zog die EZB am 11. Februar nach und akzeptierte keine griechischen Staatsanleihen mehr als Sicherheit für EZB-Kredite – eine Maßnahme, die sich nicht gegen die griechischen Banken (deren Rahmen für Notkredite kurz darauf um 5 Mrd. Euro erhöht wurde), sondern ganz gezielt gegen die neue Regierung und ihre Kritik an der Troika richtete.

Nach dieser Vorarbeit durch den IWF und die EZB übernahm die EU unter Führung Deutschlands die Aufgabe, die neue griechische Regierung auch öffentlich zu demontieren. Jegliche Erwähnung der humanitären Katastrophe im Land wurde ignoriert, alle noch so zaghaften Reformvorschläge wurden der Reihe nach abgeschmettert. Stattdessen wurde ein striktes Einhalten aller vertraglichen Vereinbarungen zur unerlässlichen Vorbedingung für weitere Verhandlungen erklärt.

Gleichzeitig wurden sämtliche Mainstream-Medien aktiviert, um der europäischen Öffentlichkeit einmal mehr einzubläuen, Griechenland habe jahrzehntelang „über seine Verhältnisse gelebt“, sich die Mitgliedschaft in der Eurozone zu Unrecht „erschlichen“, sei von der Troika „gerettet“ worden und weigere sich nun, seinen Verpflichtungen nachzukommen. Schließlich wurde auch noch mit dem Ausschluss Griechenlands aus der Eurozone gedroht und das Bündel an Unwahrheiten durch eine weitere ergänzt: Dass es sich bei der griechischen Regierung um Alex Tsipras um „Linksradikale“, „Ultralinke“ und gar um „Revolutionäre“ handle, deren Einstellung zum Eigentum und zur Einhaltung von Verträgen fragwürdig sei.

Nichts davon hat auch nur annähernd mit der Wahrheit zu tun. Die arbeitende Bevölkerung Griechenlands hat nie über ihre Verhältnisse gelebt und schon gar nichts mit der Entstehung der Krise zu tun. Schuld daran waren Banker, die sich in Milliardenhöhe verspekuliert haben und die bis heute nicht für ihre zum Teil kriminellen Machenschaften zur Rechenschaft gezogen wurden. Der auf Grund von gefälschten Zahlen erfolgte Eintritt Griechenlands in die Währungsunion geht auf das Konto einer Allianz aus griechischer Regierung, der Investment-Bank Goldman-Sachs und hoher Beamter in der EU, die die griechischen Steuerzahler in dieser Angelegenheit ganz nebenbei auf 5 Mrd. Euro Schulden und Honorarkosten von 800 Mio. Euro für die US-Bank sitzen gelassen hat.

Die vielbeschworene und vor allem von Wolfgang Schäuble immer wieder angeführte „Rettung“ Griechenlands hat es nie gegeben. Stattdessen hat eine gewaltige Vermögensumverteilung von den arbeitenden Menschen zu den Ultrareichen stattgefunden: Nachdem die griechischen Banken durch Spekulationsverluste insolvent geworden waren und ihre Kredite bei deutschen, französischen und anderen ausländischen Banken nicht mehr bedienen konnten, haben führende Politiker der EU das Geld ihrer Steuerzahler – in vielen Fällen an den Parlamenten vorbei – an die griechische Regierung geleitet, die es ihrerseits zum größten Teil auf die Konten europäischer und amerikanischer Gläubiger-Banken transferiert hat.

Vertragliche Verpflichtungen sind in der Schuldenfrage nur von Politikern und Bankern, nicht aber von der arbeitenden griechischen Bevölkerung eingegangen worden. Sie hätte diese also gar nicht brechen können, weil sie nie nach ihrer Haltung zur Austeritätspolitik gefragt wurde. Was schließlich den „Grexit“ angeht, so handelt es sich um Schreckensszenario, das gern als Druckmittel benutzt wird, dessen bewusste Herbeiführung aber höchst unwahrscheinlich ist. Die griechischen Staatsschulden liegen bei 320 Mrd. Euro und sind nach vorsichtigen Schätzungen auf dem Derivate-Markt durch Kreditausfallversicherungen in Höhe von 3 bis 5 Billionen Euro abgesichert. Ein Grexit könnte, selbst wenn die Zahlen in Wirklichkeit darunter liegen sollten, eine oder mehrere internationale Banken zu Fall bringen und den befürchteten „Dominoeffekt“ auslösen. Man kann deshalb davon ausgehen, dass die Troika (vor allem der IWF, da Kreditausfallversicherungen in der Hauptsache von den 5 größten amerikanischen Banken ausgegeben werden) alles daran setzen würde, ihn zu verhindern.

Die angebliche „ultralinke“ Einstellung der neuen Regierung entbehrt vollends jeder Grundlage. Tsipras und sein Kabinett haben weder die Enteignung griechischer Milliardäre, noch die Verstaatlichung des Finanzsektors oder gar die Einführung einer sozialistischen Planwirtschaft gefordert. Stattdessen haben sie sich von Anfang an zur EU, zum Euro und sogar zur Sparpolitik der Troika bekannt. Von ihrem politischen Standort her ist Syriza eine liberale Partei, die sich eindeutig zur Marktwirtschaft bekennt und das System des Kapitalismus nicht infrage stellt.

Die Verteufelung Syrizas wie auch die bewusste Demütigung ihrer Minister haben allerdings eine tiefere und weit über Griechenland hinausgehende Bedeutung: Sie sollen den arbeitenden Menschen in ganz Europa aufzeigen, dass es für eine liberale Reformpolitik im Interesse der notleidenden Menschen keinen Spielraum mehr gibt. Sie sind als Warnung an diejenigen gedacht, die aus purer Verzweiflung gegen soziale und wirtschaftliche Notstände aufbegehren: Wer Reformen fordert, wird von nun an in aller Öffentlichkeit als radikaler Aufrührer behandelt, der das System insgesamt in Frage stellt.

Das ist erschreckenderweise in der Sache nicht einmal ganz falsch: Die Dominanz des Finanzsektors ist inzwischen nämlich so allumfassend, dass sie bei der Jagd nach möglichst hoher Rendite nicht einmal mehr die geringsten Zugeständnisse wirtschaftlicher oder sozialer Art duldet. Ursache dieser Entwicklung ist die Tatsache, dass internationale Spekulanten ihr Geschäft seit der Krise von 2007 / 2008 mangels jeglicher ernsthafter gesetzlicher Einschränkung oder gar Regulierung weitergetrieben und sogar ausgeweitet haben. Weil sie damals straffrei ausgegangen sind, rechnen sie fest damit, im Wiederholungsfall wieder von den ihnen ergebenen Politikern mit Steuergeldern gerettet zu werden. Dieser Freibrief hat dazu geführt, dass die finanzielle (und damit auch die politische) Macht des Finanzsektors in den vergangenen sieben Jahren nicht ab-, sondern ganz erheblich zugenommen hat.

Was die politische Rolle Syrizas anbetrifft, so ist die Partei ohne Frage zum Scheitern verurteilt. Ein Ende der Austerität bei gleichzeitiger Unterordnung unter die Troika ist so wenig wie möglich wie ein Bekenntnis zum Pazifismus bei gleichzeitigem Verbleib in der Nato. Syriza wird ihre im Wahlkampf gemachten Versprechen nicht halten können. Da die arbeitende Bevölkerung Griechenlands Syriza aber nicht aus einer Laune, sondern aus bitterster existenzieller Not heraus gewählt hat, werden Wut, Enttäuschung und das Entsetzen über die Fortsetzung der unmenschlichen Austeritätspolitik nicht ohne Folgen bleiben.

Die eiserne Härte der Troika und Syrizas Abrücken von den eigenen Wahlversprechen werden zu sozialen Unruhen führen, die angesichts der explosiven Lage in Griechenland ein größeres Ausmaß als zu Beginn der Austeritätspolitik annehmen, möglicherweise auf andere Länder überspringen und sich zu einem von den derzeitigen politischen Machthabern kaum beherrschbaren Flächenbrand in ganz Südeuropa ausweiten könnten.

“Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession” is the title of a new paper by Leonard Wong and Stephen Gerras of the U.S. Army’s Strategic Studies Institute. Its thesis: the U.S. Army is full of liars who habitually lie as part of a lying culture that has internalized and normalized lying to the point of unrecognizability.

Finally a claim from the Army I’m prepared to take seriously!

But the authors aren’t interested in the Army’s lying press releases or lying Congressional testimony or lying sound bytes promoting each new war, predicting imminent success, and identifying each dead adult or child as an evildoer. In fact, it seems pretty clear that the authors are in fact lying to themselves about the nature of the Army’s lying.

To hear them tell it, the Army’s lying problem could be the same as in any other institution. They don’t compare the Army to any other institutions, except to say that their analysis applies to the whole U.S. military, and the implication is that other institutions do not have it so bad. But the root of the problem, as they see it, is impossible demands placed on members of the military. To meet the impossible demands, people lie. And this — not the mission of mass murder — makes them “ethically numb.”

Members of the Army, we’re told, engage in “ethical fading,” using euphemisms and obscure phrases to disguise the immorality of what they are doing — namely overstating the supplies shipped or understating their own weight or some other “ethical” matter, not burning families to death in their homes with million-dollar missiles.

All of this unethicalness, the authors maintain, can create hypocritical leaders who hide billions in the “Overseas Contingency Operations” slush fund or cover up sex scandals. Really? Immorality enters an institution of mass murder that routinely deceives the public and much of the government from the bottom up? Excessive demands on troops creates a culture of lying than infects the good generals at the top? Are you kidding me? No, of course you aren’t. You’re lying to yourselves.

Soldiers realize pretty quickly that they’re not benefitting the people of Iraq or Afghanistan or whatever country they’re terrorizing. They understand that the entire mission is a lie. They learn to lie about their own actions, to plant “drop weapons,” to invent justifications, to provide support for their commanders’ efforts to believe their own lies.

Matthew Hoh, a State Department whistleblower, said today: “The culture of lying that is endemic and systemic in the Army, as found by researchers with the Army War College, finds its expression in America’s pointless wars, a one trillion dollar-a-year, pork-filled and inauditable national security budget, chronic veteran suicides, an expanded and more globally robust international terrorist movement, and untold suffering of millions of people and political chaos throughout the Greater Middle East perpetuated by our war policies.

“However, listening to our military leaders, and the politicians who adore and deify them rather than oversee them, America’s wars and its military have been a great patriotic success. This report is not a surprise for those of us who have worn the uniform, nor should it be surprising to those who have watched and paid attention with a modicum of critical and independent thought to our wars these past thirteen plus years. The wars are failures, but careers must prosper, budgets must increase and popular narratives and myths of American military success must endure, so the culture of lying becomes a necessity for our Army at a great physical, mental and moral cost to our Nation.”

In other words, War Is A Lie.

In Bertrand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy, the philosopher delivered his summarization of the writings of Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas thusly, “Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the Catholic faith. If he can find apparently rational arguments for some parts of the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fall back on revelation. The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading.”

* Ronald Reagan, shameless Cold War propagandist and accomplished liar, gained big points with this ad peddling fear, of course. Fear sells well in the US, an ignorant, massively misinformed civilization.

Stolen encryption keys are just the beginning. US NSA appears to have compromised big telecom, IT manufacturers, online banking, and even passports, starting on the factory floor. 

Recent days have been marked by a record number of news stories regarding the US and its allies trying to establish total control over Internet users.

On February 16, researchers at the Moscow-based security group Kaspersky Lab announced the discovery of the ultimate virus which has virtually infected all spheres of military and civilian computing in more than 40 countries around the world. They’ve managed to discover a piece of malware that must have been installed on hard disks while they were still being manufactured, and due to its complexity and a certain number of features that it shares with Stuxnet, it’s safe to assume that it was created by US secret services.

On February 18, The Guardian confirmed that for the last 7 years Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) had been sharing personal intelligence data en masse with America’s national security agencies, regardless of the fact that it had intercepted millions of foreign citizens’ conversations. The ruling of a UK court clearly suggests that these actions were illegal on top of being carried out in violation of the the European Convention on Human Rights.

On February 19, it was announced that the National Security Agency (NSA) along with its British partner in crime, GCHQ, has manged to steal encryption keys from Gemalto – the world’s largest manufacturer of SIM-cards. This allowed the above-named intelligence agencies to tap any phone and intercept data from any mobile device that was using a SIM-card produced by Gemalto. This conspiracy was unveiled by The Intercept, which added that Gemalto was created nine years ago when the French company Axalto merged with Gemplus International which was operating in Luxembourg. Today Gemalto has more that 85 offices across the globe along with a total of 40 factories, working in close cooperation with leading telecommunication corporations, including AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, along with many others. Representatives of the three aforementioned companies refused to comment on this scandal.

One can easily count German Deutsche Telekom among the customers of the Gemalto group. Hence there is little doubt regarding the involvement of US intelligence in the tapping of Angela Merkel’s mobile phone, an incident uncovered back in mid 2014. What is particularly peculiar in this situation is the decision of The Federal Attorney General of Germany ending the investigation of the Chancellor’s tapped phone – as reported by Focus Online – on the pretext of “zero possible outcome of the investigation.” Well, the claims of the same Focus Online that “Merkel now has a new cell phone that cannot be tapped,” looks ridiculous enough, since this “new phone” uses the same-old Gemalto SIM-card. So the NSA can spy on Madam Chancellor as long as they see fit, while the attorney general sees nothing wrong about it. Well, perhaps Germany has finally agreed to stand in line with the citizens of other countries and their political and business elite, eager to play the role of laboratory rats in the US intelligence surveillance game.

One would be surprised to learn that Gemalto is producing up to 2 billion SIM-cards per year, along with chips for bank cards and identity cards. According to many information security experts, US intelligence agencies – due to the encryption keys they’ve stolen – are able to retrieve any information from mobile devices, bank cards, and/or e-passports.

The Wall Street Journal reported the “successes” of US intelligence agencies in retrieving information from millions of US citizens’ cell phones back in 2014. Most of America’s citizens are under constant watch of US security, due to surveillance systems mounted on light aircraft and drones developed by Boeing, which allows them to collect private data from thousands of mobile phones. In addition to the ability to establish the whereabouts of a person, which can be tracked with the accuracy to within three meters, a phone can be remotely blocked, while all information stored on it can be easily stolen.

On February 20, the spokesperson for the United States Department of State Jen Psaki in her typical manner complained about how difficult it is for the US to confront thousands of hostile attacks in cyberspace. However, she has never mentioned the above-listed facts and Washington’s paranoid desire to dominate cyberspace.

AFP, Feb 22, 2015 (emphasis added): Sensors at the Fukushima nuclear plant have detected a fresh leak of highly radioactive water into the sea… [with] contamination levels up to 70 times greater than the already-high radioactive status seen at the plant… TEPCO said its emergency inspections of tanks storing nuclear waste water did not find any additional abnormalities… It was not immediately clear what caused the original spike… “With emergency surveys of the plant and monitoring of other sensors, we have no reason to believe tanks storing radioactive waste water have leaked… We are currently monitoring the sensors”…  The latest incident, one of several that have plagued the plant in recent months, reflects the difficulty in controlling and decommissioning the plant… TEPCO has not been able to effectively deal with an increasing amount of contaminated water…

NHK, Feb 22, 2015: Fukushima radioactive contamination sets off alarm — [TEPCO] says it has detected high levels of radioactive substances in a drainage channel on the plant’s premises on Sunday… the plant’s alarm system went off around 10 AM… levels of beta-ray emitting substances, which are not detected under normal circumstances, had risen to up to 7,230 Becquerels per liter… The utility suspects that contaminated water in the channel may have leaked into the port.

Japan Times, Feb 22, 2015: Strontium-90 levels spike alarmingly at Fukushima No. 1 plant — The Nuclear Regulation Authority said Sunday that an alarm went off at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant signaling high radioactivity levels in drainage ditches… the first alarm sounded at around 10 a.m., and another alarm 10 minutes later indicated much higher levels. Officials said contaminated water may have been discharged into the ditches.

(Link removed) Jiji Press, Feb 22, 2015: Radioactivity Alarm Rings at TEPCO Fukushima Plant

Watch NHK’s broadcast here

The Obama administration is considering new proposals from the Pentagon to delay troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and increase the number of US forces to be stationed in the country on a permanent basis, US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter announced this weekend during a joint conference with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

Carter and Ghani indicated that formal arrangements for a larger long-term US troop presence, maintenance of US bases previously planned to close, and stepped up “counterterrorism” operations by US forces in Afghanistan may be finalized as early as the beginning of March.

“President Obama is considering a number of options to reinforce our support for President Ghani’s security strategy, including possible changes to the timeline for our drawdown of US troops,” Carter said.

President Ghani stressed “the comprehensive nature of the partnership” being worked out between his government and the Obama administration, adding that he was personally grateful for Obama’s executive decree in December 2014 ordering an additional 1,000 US troops to remain in the country on an indefinite basis.

More than 10,000 US troops remain in Afghanistan, and an array of US Special Forces and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) paramilitary units are continuing to carry out combat missions against alleged insurgents throughout the country.

Despite the proclamation of an official end to US combat operations in Afghanistan beginning December 31, 2014, recent weeks have seen a “significant increase in night raids” and a “tempo of operations unprecedented for this time of year,” the New York Times reported in mid-February.

“The official war for the Americans—the part of the war that you could go see—that’s over. It’s only the secret war that’s still going. But it’s going hard,” said an Afghan security official cited by the Times.

The US forces are leading the missions and directly engaging targets, “not simply going along as advisors,” the Times noted.

Assassination teams are regularly dispatched against “a broad cross section of Islamist militants,” the Times reported. The US-led death squads include elite soldiers under the command of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security, as well as CIA paramilitary groups, US Army Rangers and Navy SEALs.

The raids represent a continuation and intensification of the counterinsurgency strategy implemented by the US during the official occupation, which sought to stabilize the US puppet government in Kabul by murdering anyone suspected of supporting armed opposition to the Karzai regime.

As early as 2005, a top US military general declared that this strategy was leading to the total defeat of the Taliban. When the Obama administration ordered the US military to add 30,000 additional troops to its overall occupation force in 2009, General Stanley McChrystal vowed that the insurgency would be defeated by 2011.

Similar assessments were made by US leaders during the occupation of and then the “surge” of troops into Iraq, along with enthusiasm about the readiness of the Iraqi national army, which has subsequently been shattered by the seizure of large sections of the country by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

Unflagging optimism of US commanders and politicians notwithstanding, the US targeted murder programs in Afghanistan have also clearly failed. Taliban forces have regained control over large portions of the country during the past year, inflicting casualties against government and US-led International Security Assistance Force coalition troops, as well as the civilian population, at the highest rate since the US occupation began in October 2001.

In the absence of substantial support from the US military, the Afghan government stands little chance of defeating the resurgent Taliban, according to experts cited by Stars and Stripes.

“The overly positive assessments are repeated so often that the leaders in the military and civilian world start to believe it,” director of the Kabul-based Afghanistan Analysts Network told the Department of Defense-based newspaper.

The Pentagon’s claims that violence is down in Afghanistan is “borderline insane,” International Crisis Group’s lead Afghanistan analyst Graeme Smith told Stars and Stripes.

“You’re saying that the war is getting smaller, and its not; its getting a lot bigger. Policy needs to adjust to deal with the fact that the inferno is growing,” Smith said.

More than 5,000 Afghan security forces, who received their paychecks from the US government were killed during 2014 in fighting with Taliban and other anti-government militants, according to statistics provided by Kabul.

Civilian fatalities have reached their highest levels since 2009, according to a UN report released last week, which confirmed the deaths of at least 3,600 noncombatants and wounding of another 6,800 in 2014.

Amdist the ongoing catastrophe that is a result of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, US policy makers and generals are clearly determined to intensify operations against its population for years to come.

With reports of growing Chinese political influence in Afghanistan, including the cultivation of ties with sections of the government as well as with the Taliban, Washington is determined to maintain its military grip on the country and Central Asia as a whole, which remain important linchpins in its drive to control the Eurasian landmass.

Over the weekend, euro zone leaders welcomed the four month austerity programme agreed between the Eurogroup and Greece on Friday.

The agreement remains conditional on the Syriza-Independent Greeks government submitting proposals to the Eurogroup, containing the exact “reform” measures that it will implement by the end of April. According to Friday’s agreement, the measures must be “sufficiently comprehensive” and in accord with the 2012 austerity programme that the government of Alexis Tsipras has now signed on to.

No final deal is yet in place, as Syriza’s proposals have to then be agreed Tuesday by the European Commission, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, known as the “troika.” Even as he tried to sell the deal as one that allowed Greece some respite, Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis was forced to acknowledge, “If the list of reforms is not agreed, this agreement is dead.”

The Tsipras government began work on the proposals Saturday morning and details have not yet been made public. Nikos Pappas, Tsipras’ chief of staff, said Sunday, “We are compiling a list of proposals to make the Greek civil service more effective and to combat tax evasion.”

The agreement was endorsed by Germany’s governing coalition. Volker Kauder, the parliamentary leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, told Welt am Sonntag, “The Greeks have to do their homework now. Then, an extension of the aid programme can be approved by the German Bundestag. Greece has finally realised that it cannot turn a blind eye to reality.”

Thomas Oppermann, the leader of Merkel’s junior coalition partners, the Social Democratic Party, cautioned that Greece had to respond with proposals that would satisfy the Eurogroup. Offering Tsipras his “full support,” Oppermann added, “It is good that Greece is ready to carry out structural reforms. But this really has to happen now.”

Hans Michelbach, an MP for the Christian Social Union (CSU) and head of the party’s small-medium business wing, warned, “Without reliable considerations from Athens, the deal is worth nothing.” Gerda Hasselfeldt, the chair of the CSU group in Bavaria, said: “We won’t make a rotten compromise. There can be no payment without reward.”

One German government official said that German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble “believes if a country doesn’t respect the rules, we are better off without them. We can’t have a situation where we are constantly having to spend our time on a country that makes up 2 percent of the bloc’s GDP.”

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung summed up by saying, “Things will get serious on Monday.”

Syriza’s strategy since they were elected was based on trying to counter the hardline position of Germany, supported by several other countries, that Greece implement all remaining austerity measures that the previous New Democracy/PASOK government agreed. Greece held regular discussions with French President François Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, among others. The support of the Obama administration in the US, which has expressed its support for a reflationary strategy in Europe, was also solicited.

In the end this perspective failed miserably, with Greece forced to remain within the existing austerity programme and all 19 eurozone finance ministers in favour.

With a few caveats, France endorsed Germany’s position. Hollande said Saturday, “The right solution is to extend the finance allowing Greece to ensure its transition and honour its commitment.”

As the European Union displayed its reactionary character to the workers of Greece and the entire continent, Tsipras praised his capitulation to the EU as a victory. He said the deal proved the EU was “an arena of negotiation and mutually acceptable compromise and not an arena for exhaustion, submission and blind punishment.”

“We won a battle, not the war,” he said.

The Economist bluntly summed up the harsh terms to which Syriza is now committed as follows:

Syriza

“was elected on a pledge to tear up Greece’s bail-outs and leave austerity behind… It is difficult to square these promises with last night’s agreement. Greece has secured no change to the terms of its epic debt, which stands at over 175% of GDP. Its behaviour will continue to be supervised by the institutions formerly known as the troika. It is obliged to refrain from passing any measures that could undermine its fiscal targets; that appears to torpedo vast swathes of its election manifesto, which included all manner of spending pledges.”

The magazine warned, “Greece still faces an immediate funding squeeze. The bail-out funds can only be released after a ‘review’ of the bail-out provisions; that, according to the agreement, will not happen before the end of April.”

Reviewing the scale of Greece’s economic crisis and the billions in due debts that must be paid back in the weeks ahead, it concluded, “The government has reached a €15 billion ceiling on T-bill [Treasury bonds] issuance imposed by the troika, and there was no suggestion… that it might be lifted. The next two months will be painful indeed.”

In response to the deal, the supposed “left” within Syriza felt obliged to make a few noises in protest.

Giorgos Katrougalos, the deputy minister of administrative reform, had announced he would resign if “red lines,” which he did not specify, were crossed.

On Sunday, Syriza’s most senior figure, 92-year-old Manolis Glezos, said the party had broken its promises to “annul the bailout, annul the troika [of bailout monitors from the European Commission, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank] and annul all the austerity legislation.”

The government was “renaming fish as meat …without changing the actual situation.”

Pointing out that Syriza were only granted a few terminological concessions by the Eurogroup, Glezos said the troika was now known as “the institutions,” the austerity agreement “the contract” and Greece’s international lenders “the partners.”

Glezos’ comments amounted to rebellion on its knees. He concluded, “I apologise to the Greek people for participating in this illusion,” and called only for Syriza supporters to demand explanations from governing officials.

The most ludicrous statement was issued by the Communist Tendency, which is part of Syriza’s Left Platform and a section of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT).

Describing the “request to the Troika for a six-month extension of the loan agreement” as a “grave political mistake,” the statement called for, “No more retreats! The government must formulate an alternative collision plan with the blackmailers and their local lackeys, a plan that favours the working masses!”

In the most obsequious terms possible they declare, “We call upon our comrade, the Prime Minister, and the leftist ministers, to formulate an alternative plan to finance and implement the Thessaloniki programme [Syriza’s election manifesto] without relying on the loans of the extortionist ‘partners’.”

Immediately after Syriza formed a governing coalition with the right-wing xenophobic Independent Greeks, the Communist Tendency also denounced this as a “grave mistake.” One wouldn’t know from these statements that the Communist Tendency has two members on Syriza’s Central Committee. Once they spouted their rhetoric as a small opposition party. Today, they do it as the loyal opposition in a governing party committed to imposing brutal attacks on the living standards of the working class.

It seems that even Associated Press writers have been so utterly propagandized by the corrupt vaccine industry that they can’t tell truth from lies anymore. An AP story authored by Gosia Wozniacka and published yesterday on Yahoo News repeats an oft-repeated vaccine industry lie, claiming that mercury has been “phased out” of all vaccines.

“The CDC has phased out a mercury-containing preservative in vaccines as a precautionary measure,” claims the Associated Press story. Unfortunately, that’s simply not true. The claim is utterly false, even according to the CDC itself.

As Natural News has extensively documented in articles like this one, even the CDC openly admits mercury is still used in vaccines. In fact, the CDC vaccine additives page, found here, repeats this admission that mercury is still used in vaccines.

Furthermore, I have independently tested a flu vaccine in the Natural News Forensic Food Lab using ICP-MS instrumentation that’s sensitive to parts per billion across all heavy metals. In these tests, I found an astonishing 51 parts per million of mercury in a flu vaccine. That’s over 25,000 times the EPA’s maximum allowable concentration of mercury in drinking water. (That same test also found 0.4ppm of Aluminum in the flu shot.)

To my knowledge, I am the only journalist in America who runs a private ICP-MS laboratory. You would think that if the AP was really interested in whether there’s mercury in vaccines, they would hire a laboratory to run the tests and find out what the science really says.

But as we’ve all come to find in recent weeks, when it comes to reporting on vaccines, the mainstream media believes fact-checking is never required. After all, if anybody actually checked the facts on vaccines, they would find the fact diverging quite radically from the science-pimping propaganda that falsely claims “all vaccines are safe and effective.”

When it comes to reporting on vaccines, the entire mainstream media knowingly lies because it dare not report the truth about vaccine dangers

It is especially fascinating to note that the vaccine propaganda has reached such a fanatical fervor across America that even Associated Press writers are now blindly repeating the vaccine industry’s most persistent lies. What we are dealing with here, friends, is a nationwide epidemic of mercury denialism combined with the total abandonment of all the children who have been severely damaged by vaccines.

The delusional status of media writers has now become a serious integrity crisis for the entire mainstream media — an institution that’s losing more credibility with every single dishonest vaccine story they publish. Much of what you read about vaccines now in the mainstream media is nothing more than lying media sources quoting each other’s fabricated lies in a ridiculous circus of self-delusional non-logic.

When even the AP can’t get its story straight about the ingredients being in vaccines, you know there’s a huge credibility problem in the media. It’s no coincidence this same AP story also quotes government officials saying GMO and pesticides are safe, too. Sure they are. Because that’s the fabricated narrative being shoved down everybody’s throats these days under the fanatical banner of “SCIENCE!”

Vaccine skeptics are the real scientists

What’s really interesting in all this is how vaccine advocates are the ones abandoning science with their rampant mercury denialism. Believing that mercury does not exist — even when it does — is pretty bizarre. It’s arguably just as bizarre as believing the Earth is flat.

But vaccine skeptics such as myself are the actual scientists in the room: I run an atomic spectrometry lab (see videos here) using high-level instrumentation that can detect mercury and other elements. Thankfully, this instrument operates on the laws of physics, not the delusions of the propagandized masses in the mainstream media.

And because my Agilent 7700X ICP-MS instrument operates on the laws of physics rather than delusional propaganda, it detects mercury in vaccines using real SCIENCE. The Associated Press, of course, has absolutely no interest in my independent lab confirming the presence of mercury in today’s vaccines. That scientific finding doesn’t fit their fraudulent pro-vaccine narrative based on total fabrications.

Something I’ve noticed about the Agilent 7700X ICP-MS instrument is that, unlike every single person in the mainstream media, it will not change its answers after being screamed at by arrogant “vaccine lunatics” who claim to represent science (while actually demonstrating total pathological lunacy). No matter how often you shout at the ICP-MS instrument “There’s no mercury in vaccines!” it will still tell you how much mercury it’s finding, down to parts-per-billion accuracy.

According to almost every single vaccine pusher being quoted in the media today, my Agilent ICP-MS instrument is a “conspiracy theorist” because it keeps telling me there’s mercury in vaccines. Go figure.

Entire mainstream media in total denial of medical reality

Beyond suffering from “mercury denialism,” the entire mainstream media is also deeply invested in the willful denial that there are a growing number of children who are damaged by the toxic heavy metals and chemical adjuvants intentionally added to vaccines.

Those additives include — according to the CDC — all the following neurotoxic substances:

* Mercury
* Aluminum
* MSG
* Formaldehyde

The big lie about these additives is that they are present in such small amounts that they can’t possibly damage anyone. If that’s true, then how do you explain all these photos of vaccine-damaged children, many of which are published directly on the CDC’s own website?

A two-year-old boy devastated by a small pox vaccine. As reported by Reuters:

A two-year-old boy who developed a serious reaction to his father’s smallpox vaccination has recovered but disease detectives found infectious virus all over his house, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Thursday. A photo of the boy’s stomach is seen in a handout photo from the University of Chicago’s Comer Children’s Hospital.

A severe adverse reaction to a hepatitis vaccination:

A horrifying reaction to the BCG vaccine:

Severe skin reactions following vaccination:

Facial contortions and distortions following DTP vaccine:

Another innocent victim of vaccine damage:

Neurologically damaged by the DPT vaccine:

A smallpox vaccine reaction that has nearly destroyed this person’s arm and shoulder:

Another severe skin reaction following vaccination:

Extreme tissue damage caused by vaccines:

The HPV vaccine turned this normal, healthy girl into a brain-damaged victim of vaccines:

THESE PHOTOS ARE ONLY A SMALL PORTION of all those showing vaccine-damaged children. CDC officials, media newscasters and U.S. lawmakers claim all these photos do not exist, that these children were never harmed, and that vaccines cannot cause such damage at all.

They are liars. Worse than liars, they are medical mutilators of innocent children who continue to be severely damaged by toxic vaccines every single day, all around the world.

Watch this video by Rob Dew to learn even more:

It’s unfortunate, but mothers and babies who receive federally-funded WIC assistance (Women, Infants and Children Program) are usually provided with formula comprised of GMO ingredients, including GMO corn and GMO soy. Mothers who desire organic baby formula for their developing children are denied it. Are the poor relegated to carcinogenic, developmentally-altering, genetically modified food, and nothing else?

If Nestle/Gerber have their way, government subsidies will continue to pay for their toxic products – no matter that they will be negatively affecting the health of children of future generations.

In California alone, more than 1.45 million participants take advantage of WIC. This means that mothers can purchase baby formula with the organization’s assistance, but it must be ‘WIC-approved,’ and to the ‘exacting’ standards of the FDA.

Which formulas are approved for low-income mothers to purchase?

For starters – Enfamil EnfaCare, Gerber Good Start, and Similac. These are all on lists of baby foods to avoid because they contain GMO soy and corn, as well as traces of pesticides and herbicide.

Why would we knowingly feed our children GMOs before it has really been proven to be ‘safe’ as Monsanto, BASF, and other companies like Abbott Laboratories, Mead Johnson Nutrition, and Nestlé USA, the company who wants to own water rights, tout?

If you feed your baby one of the following three infant formulas, you are perhaps, unknowingly, feeding them GMO corn, sugar beets, and soy, since they are often used these companies’ products.

I’m lucky enough to be able to breastfeed my infant, so this is a moot point for me except as a social responsibility. But for many mothers labeled ‘working poor,’ it is nearly impossible for them to feed their babies without utilizing infant formula. Long hours at work and sometimes the lack of a two-parent household means that babies are in the care of others more often, and have to be fed from the bottle. Does this mean that to add insult to injury, the financially challenged of this nation should be forced to feed their children questionable food?

Even if you don’t formula-feed your infant, tell companies that make GMO baby formula that their actions are criminal. Tell them to stop.

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“Security to be Free.” – Motto of Gemalto, producer of SIM cards

It is hard to muster enthusiasm for events that have become so frequent in their pummelling effect, they are as expected as the sun’s clockwork appearance in the morning.  It would, however, be dangerous to yawn at the latest Edward Snowden treat, one transmitted via Glen Greenwald’s The Intercept.

The suggestions came out on Thursday that the US National Security Agency and fellow darling the UK Government Communications Headquarters went about the business of hacking the Franco-Dutch company Gemalto, one of the largest SIM card makers, for reasons of pilfering keys to the encryption codes held in the manufactured chips.  These chips also have other uses – credit cards, passports and the like. (Life here falls into grand irony: the US government has a deal with Gemalto to make such chips for passports in the first place.)

Gemalto, obviously feeling that their security was either immune, or not interesting enough, to warrant a good hack, yielded the encryption keys in bulk as they were sent to carriers.[1] In what seemed like adolescent practice, the company resorted to sending the master key files via email or File Transfer Protocol (FTP), a sort of pinch me if you can statement.  The hackers can hardly have been too impressed with their skills.

Gemalto have, instead, orchestrated something of a tactical retreat.  No, they were not specifically targeted because of their vulnerability, the ease of obtaining the encryption keys, and because of their general shoddiness.  The operation “was an attempt to try and cast the widest net possible to reach as many mobile phones as possible, with the aim to monitor mobile communications without mobile network operators and users consent.”[2]

According to The Intercept, “In one two-week period, the team accessed the emails of 130 people associated with wireless network providers or SIM card manufacturing and personalization. This operation produced nearly 8,000 keys matched to specific phones in 10 countries.”  Another two-week period produced an even richer bounty: 85,000 keys.[3]

The agencies have had their expansive ears, in other words, to the majority of cell phone communications since 2010 without even needing to go through the pretence of seeking approval from telecom companies or foreign governments, though what, exactly, those ears have actually obtained is highly questionable.  The agencies of the “Five Eyes” alliance have shown a good degree of deafness and blindness over time, and there is little reason to assume that such habits have changed.

Greg Nojeim, Senior Counsel of the Center for Technology & Democracy, was predictably gloomy about the shredding of privacy – as if there was much left to shred.[4]  “Almost everyone in the world carries cell phones and this is an unprecedented mass attack on the privacy of citizens worldwide.  While there is certainly value in targeted surveillance of cell phone communications, this coordinated subversion of the trusted technical security infrastructure of cell pones means the US and British governments now have easy access to our mobile communications.”

Then, there has to be the idea of result: what, exactly, did this vastly intrusive mission accomplish? Cell phone communication, for one, has minimal protections – the incentive to bolster the technological barriers to hacking were never there.  End-to-end encryption simply does not take place, as it only covers discussions between the phone and the relevant tower.

Russell Brandon, writing in The Verge, suggested a good degree of futility arose from the effort.  “The Gemalto attack is unique not just for its aggressive scope, but for how little it seems to have actually accomplished.”[5]  The point being made here is that intelligence services were already able to engage in stingray attacks, targeted exploits, and carrier requests via court order.  And researchers were already full of the stock of woe for SIM-level attacks around such systems as the GSM (2G), which was plagued by no small measure to authenticate cell towers and poor encryption algorithms.

European legislators are also doing the rounds of manufactured outrage, though they can hardly be any more disturbed than what had already transpired from Snowden’s revelations spectacular in 2013.[6] The European Parliament’s chief negotiator on the European Union’s data protection law, Jan Philipp Albrecht claimed that the hack was “obviously based on some illegal activities.”  The United Kingdom was doing more than just upsetting the applecart as a member of the European community in “not respecting the law of the] Netherlands and partner states”.

Behind such activities lies the stench of collusion and complicity – governments in bed with others, filled with concessions and selective blindness; companies taking up with certain agencies in the hope of being left, essentially, alone. Privacy might be killed off, but business must go on.

Brandon is wrong to assume that this heist has achieved nothing.  There are serious consequences that fly in the face of the Anglo-American obsession with corporate mercantilism.  It is exactly such revelations that do wonders to puncture market confidence in communications security.  (Just to prove a point, Gemalto’s shares fell by 7.5 per cent on Friday.)

Such acts of stealthy plunder cut both ways, and while it looks dandily much like an assault on Gemalto, it was more correctly seen as a global assault on communications.  For Matthew Green, cryptography specialist at Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute, this was “bad news for phone security.  Really bad news” (The Intercept, Feb 19).

Not just for that side of the communications aisle, either.  Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Chase, Barclays and JP Morgan will be having vexed boardroom meetings about customer suspicions and concerns.  While the NSA-GCHQ collective may have gotten access in the name of excess at the price of privacy, they have also managed, in such conduct, to give the corporate sector a cold.

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

Obama is calling for a concerted effort to shut down the Islamic State’s “sophisticated and slickly produced propaganda,” CBS New York reports.

CBS claims the IS “propaganda machine produces as many as 90,000 posts on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and other social media platforms every single day.”

“The high-quality videos, the online magazines, the use of social media, terrorist Twitter accounts — it’s all designed to target today’s young people online,” Obama said.

As Infowars.com reported earlier this week, Congress and the White House are leaning on Twitter to censor Islamic State posts on its network.

Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, the chair of a House foreign affairs subcommittee on terrorism, has singled out Twitter for allowing supposed IS operatives to recruit and propagandize on the social media platform.

“This is the way (the Islamic State) is recruiting — they are getting people to leave their homelands and become fighters,” Poe said.

Obama’s latest comments coincide with efforts by British police to find three school girls who were allegedly recruited by the terrorist army.

CBS News reported on Friday the British school girls were lured by “slick, well-produced and effective” IS propaganda.

“Becoming wives of fighters seems to be a common thing; to take part in ISIL activities in that way, by marrying and producing children, jihadist children, or becoming part of the fight themselves,” said Steven Pomerantz, a former chief of counterterrorism at the FBI.

Remarkably, and unbelievably, the corporate media insists ISIS has convinced girls to join the jihadi fight by using online images of jars of Nutella, kittens and emojis.

Telltale Signs IS Propaganda is Psyop

In September Bernie Suarez, writing for Activist Post, analyzed the “scripted oddities” of Islamic State propaganda.

Suarez noted the professional camera, editing and software skills of IS and its internet sophistication and video uploading capabilities despite supposedly being targeted by the largest and most advanced military and intelligence organizations in the world.

Suarez writes that “ISIS has all the above including social media capabilities. Amazingly, these covered-face killers have unraveled the secret of how to outsmart every world power including the U.S. Empire with regard to every form of communication. They have stomped out the U.S. military, NSA, CIA, NATO, U.N. and the intelligence of Israel, U.K. and every other nation that surrounds them.”

ISIS beheading videos, according to British forensic experts and other analysts, are fake.

In addition, there are questions about the legitimacy of the latest sensationalistic execution video of a Jordanian pilot allegedly captured by the Islamic State.

“A guest who appeared on Voice of Israel, Israel’s biggest English language broadcast network, sensationally claimed that ISIS faked the burning of Jordanian pilot Youssef al-Kasasbeh and that the highly produced video was acted out,” Paul Joseph Watson reported last week for Infowars.com.

Empowering the State to “Countermessage” ISIS and “Extremism”

The hype surrounding the supposed power of ISIS and its social media skill, including its alleged ability to hypnotize school girls, is being used to expand the power of the state and amplify its effort to “countermessage” targeted enemies.

On February 16 The New York Times reported that the “Obama administration is revamping its effort to counter the Islamic State’s propaganda machine” by “expanding a tiny State Department agency, the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, to harness all the existing attempts at countermessaging by much larger federal departments, including the Pentagon, Homeland Security and intelligence agencies.”

The agency, created by unconstitutional presidential fiat in September, 2011 “is guided by National Strategy for Counterterrorism and operates under the policy direction of the White House and interagency leadership,” according to the State Department.

Its “integrated analysis component leverages the Intelligence Community” and counters “terrorist propaganda and misinformation about the United States across a wide variety of interactive digital environments that had previously been ceded to extremists,” primarily social media and other internet media platforms.

In August of 2011 the Obama administration promised to “closely monitor… the Internet and social networking sites” in order to “counter online violent extremist propaganda.” The plan called for “aggressively” combating such ideology by “continuing to closely monitor the important role the internet and social networking sites play in advancing violent extremist narratives.”

Infowars.com reported:

In targeting the Internet and social networking websites for surveillance in the name of fighting domestic terrorism, the White House is continuing in the vein of the previous administration who in 2006 revealed that since 9/11 they had been pursuing a plan to diminish the role of “conspiracy theories” as a primary recruitment tool for terrorists.

In 2013 the Pentagon was caught manipulating social media accounts and discovered “running massive propaganda campaigns that cover a vast array of online networks.”

In 2011, Computerworld reported that the government

contracted HBGary Federal for the development of software which could create multiple fake social media profiles to manipulate and sway public opinion on controversial issues by promoting propaganda. It could also be used as surveillance to find public opinions with points of view the powers-that-be didn’t like. It could then potentially have their “fake” people run smear campaigns against those “real” people. As disturbing as this is, it’s not really new for U.S. intelligence or private intelligence firms to do the dirty work behind closed doors.

“The 6th Contracting Squadron at MacDill Air Force Base sought the development of Persona Management Software which could be used for creating and managing fake profiles on social media sites to distort the truth and make it appear as if there was a generally accepted agreement on controversial issues,” Darlene Storm noted for Computerworld.

The question then becomes, considering the past history of the intelligence community, particularly in its documented effort to create terrorist groups and, domestically, contrive terror plots for propaganda value, how much of ISIS propaganda and “recruitment” (using kittens and Nutella) is in fact produced by the U.S. military and its intelligence apparatus?

Twitter and other social media platforms are extremely useful for political activists not associated with ISIS or Islamic extremism.

Domestic political activism aimed at changing the policies of the government pose more of a threat to the state than IS which has not engaged in terror within the United States.

One of our favorite economists – Steve Keen – showed in 2010 that a large financial sector hurts the economy.

Specifically, Keen showed that bank profits above 1% of GDP are unsustainable, and lead to a Ponzi economy and – eventually – a depression.

A large financial sector also increases inequality, which in turn drags on the economy:

We noted in 2010 that extreme inequality helped cause the Great Depression … and the 2008 financial crisis.  We noted in 2011 that inequality helped cause the fall of the Roman Empire.

In a few short years, mainstream economists have gone from assuming that inequality doesn’t matter, to realizing that runaway inequality cripples the economy.

Pikettey correctly notes that inequality is now the worst in world history … and will only get worse.

***

[Economics professor] Jamie Galbraith argues that countries with larger financial sectors have greater inequality, and the link is not an accident.

And see this.

Today, Yves Smith reports that the world’s most prestigious financial agency – BIS, known as the “central banks’ central bank” – agrees:

The BIS has released an important paper, embedded at the end of this post, which has created quite a stir, even leading the orthodoxy-touting Economist to take note. Titled, Why does financial sector growth crowd out real economic growth?, its analysis of why too much finance is a bad thing is robust and compelling. This article is a follow up to a 2012 paper by the same authors, Stephen Cecchetti and Enisse Kharroubi, which found that when finance sectors exceeded a certain size, specifically when private sector debt topped 100% of GDP or when financial services industry professions were more than 3.9% of the work force, it became a drag on growth. Notice that this finding alone is damning as far as policy in the US is concerned, where cheaper debt, deregulation, more access to financial markets, and “financial deepening” are all seen as virtuous.

***

The paper starts by looking empirically at the fact that larger financial sectors are correlated with lower growth rates:

Smith notes another new study showing the detrimental effect of a large finance sector:

Brad DeLong, earlier this week, flagged another important article on why finance has become a productivity drain by [NYU Finance Professor] Thomas Philippon, titled Finance vs. Wal-Mart: Why are Financial Services so Expensive?

Despite the financial services industry having so much bigger and supposedly more efficient firms, the cost of financial intermediation is higher than in 1910. How is that possible? Is it all the new and improved looting? It’s even simpler. It’s Keynes’ capital markets as a casino problem:

… Historically, the unit cost of intermediation has been somewhere between 1.3% and 2.3% of assets. However, this unit cost has been trending upward since 1970 and is now significantly higher than in the past. In other words,the finance industry of 1900 was just as able as the finance industry of 2010 to produce loans, bonds and stocks, and it was certainly doing it more cheaply. This is counter-intuitive, to say the least. How is it possible for today’s finance industry not to be significantly more efficient than the finance industry of John Pierpont Morgan?… Technological improvements in finance have mostly been used to increase secondary market activities, i.e., trading. Trading activities are many times larger than at any time in previous history. Trading costs have decreased, but I find no evidence that increased liquidity has led to better (i.e., more informative) prices or to more insurance

This is another damning finding from a policy perspective, in that the bias of regulations has been strongly toward promoting more market liquidity. Readers may recall that we’ve been skeptical of that premise for years, noting that in the stone ages of our youth, investors were not terribly bothered by limited liquidity in large and important markets like corporate bonds. Yet the SEC and the Fed have been all in with the “more liquidity is better” program, with the SEC pushing for lower and lower transaction charges (which has the perverse effect of leading financial services firms as trading counterparties to be fleeced rather than good customers to be nutured) and promoting high frequency trading, and the Fed allowing derivatives to grow like kudzu, out of the belief (among other things) that they would facilitate price discovery in cash markets.

And of course, an overly costly financial services sector on a raw transaction level again drains resources from other sectors.

As the Tax Justice Network noted,

…an oversized large financial sector is not the Golden Goose providing benefits for all, but a cuckoo in the nest, crowding out and harming other sectors and society. Winston Churchill summarised:

“I would rather see finance less proud and industry more content.”

Moreover, a large finance sector warps the political process, and turns representative governments into oligarchies.  This – in turn – destroys economies.

Postscript:  Oligarchies also like to wage war … and war is horrible for the economy.

Instead of renouncing its odious debt and walking away, Athens agreed to pay bankers first, maintain austerity, and let long-suffering Greeks continue taking the hindmost.

SYRIZA campaign pledges proved hollow. Pleasing Brussels and Washington matter more.

After weeks of negotiations, Greece got what the Wall Street Journal called “a tenuous agreement for a four-month extension of its bailout Friday removing immediate concerns over a potential exit from Europe’s currency union but setting the stage for more tense negotiations over the country’s financial future.”

A Troika statement said:

“Greek authorities commit to refrain from any rollback of measures and unilateral changes to the policies and structural reforms that would negatively impact fiscal targets, economic recovery or financial stability, as assessed by the institutions.”

Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem said Athens “unequivocal(l)y commit(ted) to honor (its) financial obligations.”

Rolling over Friday shows what’s likely coming. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble suggested it saying “(n)ow we hope that trust can grow again.”

Markets signaled approval. The Stoxx Europe 600 reached its highest level since November 2007. Even the weak euro gained against the dollar and yen.

US equities rose. The Russell 2000 small company index hit record highs.

Candidate Alexis Tsipras pledged relief from Troika-imposed harshness. Prime Minister Tsipras proved he’s no different from other Greek politicians.

Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis tried putting a brave face on capitulation saying “(o)ur pre-electoral program was about four years. This deal is about four months.”

Left unexplained are likely worse Greek financial conditions months ahead than now.

Its debt is too onerous to repay. It won’t get easier ahead. Under Friday’s agreement, Greece must indicate more budget cuts and austerity by Monday.

Its plan must be acceptable to Troika officials. Popular needs don’t matter.

Once agreement is reached, Athens will get another 7.2 billion euros making its debt burden more onerous than already.

It’s unclear when funds will be released. On the one hand, both sides must reach agreement by April. On the other, Greece may be broke by March.

ECB officials said they’re willing to resume normal lending to Greek banks for their day-to-day operations. Weeks could pass before funds arrive with no guarantee how much or for how long.

An unnamed ECB official said normal lending won’t start until “there is a great likelihood of a positive conclusion of the programme.”

In other words, until unconditional surrender is abslutely clear. On Friday, Athens agreed to “refrain from any rollback (or) unilateral changes” of existing policies.

Greece’s debt level remains unchanged. Tsipras promised to cut it while campaigning.

Athens can opt out of some austerity measures as long as it substitutes others having just as much financial and economic impact.

Varoufakis was less than candid saying “(a)s of today, we’re beginning to be co-authors of our destiny, co-authors of the reforms that we want to implement.”

If he meant it, they’d be implemented already. Athens would forget about Troika help.

Plenty without austerity strings is available from Russia, China, and perhaps other BRICS countries.

The Financial Times hailed the “11th-hour deal…” Saying it ended “weeks of uncertainty that threatened to spark a Greek bank run and bankrupt the country.”

Troika policies bankrupted Greece. It’s a zombie country waiting for its obituary to be written.

It can rise from the ashes through responsible policies not taken. Long-suffering Greeks face continued impoverishment, unemployment and human misery as far as the eye can see.

Friday’s deal commits Athens to observe earlier agreed on bailout terms. What SYRIZA campaigning rejected.

No strict compliance, no payout, said Germany’s Schauble. According to the FT:

“The decision to request an extension of the current programme is a significant U-turn for Alexis Tsipras…”

While campaigning, he promised to kill existing bailout terms. He showed SYRIZA promises were empty.

According to Schauble, Athens “will have a difficult time to explain the deal to (its) voters.”

Naked Capitalism’s Yves Smith said “(t)here is no way of putting a pretty face on” Friday’sagreement. “It represents a huge climbdown for Syriza.”

“Despite loud promises,” it capitulated to existing bailout terms. Even SYRIZA supporters know far it fell from grace.

It showed “a propensity to over-promise and under-deliver,” said Smith. It faces an enormous challenge ahead to salvage anything out a rotten deal agreed to.

Open Europe economist Raoul Ruparel said Greece “folded this hand but the game of poker continues.”

Its government is “now short stack and living hand to hand (day to day).”

“It continues to be in a very tough position, and how the evaporation of the vision which SYRIZA sold at the election will go down at home is a crucial and potentially explosive unknown.”

Eurogroup finance ministers expressed appreciation to Greek governments over the past few years for addressing banker priorities ahead of popular ones.

They welcomed SYRIZA officials agreeing to continue along the same path as its predecessors – to honor their financial obligations to foreign creditors above all else.

To assure Western monied interests matter most of all no matter how much pain and suffering ordinary Greeks endure.

Capitulation best explains Friday’s agreement. James Petras wrote a masterful account of how Greece got into its present day mess.

He explained he was former Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou’s advisor from 1981 – 1984. Like Tsipras, he rose to power on promises of radical change.

“He…ended up capitulating to Brussels and NATO and embracing the oligarchs and kleptocrats in the name of ‘pragmatic compromises,’ ” said Petras.

It remains to be seen how Greeks react when they realize they again were had.

Petras hopes Tsipras will change tactics and avoid another Greek tragedy. It’s hard imagining a major turnaround after such a disgraceful climbdown.

The best time to strike a good deal is straightaway. The worst time is after surrendering too much hoping later to recoup.

Stephen Lendman lies in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs. 

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott is full of predictable surprises. Stomping and punching his way into the history books, his government finds itself teetering before the electoral precipice. As it should. His domestic policy lies in stagnant waters. His foreign policy has entered the comic books – a Marvel animation with misguided perceptions of world power, his seemingly rehearsed idiocy lead to threats of “shirt-fronting” Vladimir Putin and prosaic speculations at world summits. His dangerous union with Peta Credlin, his tyrannical bully of a chief of staff who keeps ministers in line and leaks to please, continues to thrive with ominous energy.

All of that simply suggests the usual, malfunctioning government in desperate need of removal, despatched by the usual electoral bloodbath the Australian electorate delves a leader who has gone beyond the pale. Australia’s generally tepid electoral landscape doesn’t tolerate the brash and the distant. Nor do one’s own backbenchers, the first ones to go under the knife.

The time for Tony’s removal, it would seem, is nigh. Not necessarily because of his inability to listen to a range of opinions, his failure to digest and synthesise the complex world around him, or his own unchanging sense of where women relate in his disjointed cosmos, though these do play a part. No – his removal is required to save the state. (One might say Constitution, but such legal chest thumping doesn’t quite wash down under.)

Even a publication such as Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian, which has done its best to feather the nest of the Abbott government since is monstrous inception – has gotten nervous. While it continues to have its demagogic spouters write the government script – Chris Mitchell as editor-in-chief, and the frothing Chris Kenny – the revelations about various meetings Abbott had over the course of his short term as prime minister is instructively dangerous. They reveal a fantasist-in-chief, a self-appointed suicidal villain keen to send thousands to their death at a moment’s trigger-happy notice.

The story, written by John Lyons in The Weekly Australian, makes the claim that, on November 25, 2014, the Prime Minister “suggested a unilateral invasion of Iraq, with 3,500 Australian ground troops to confront the Islamic State terrorist group.” The purpose: to assist in halting the surge of the IS group in northern Iraq. There was no resistance from his chief of staff, or any others, leading Abbott to raise the possibility with military planners who “were stunned”. Without “US or NATO cover”, it would be “disastrous”. “They argued that even the US was not prepared to put troops into Iraq and it would make Australia the only Western country with troops on the ground.”

Andrew Bolt at the Herald Sun (Feb 21) gives the observations no credence. He claims that US President Barack Obama was already contemplating sending in US troops in early November on the grounds of assisting Iraqi forces, bolstering an existing group of advisors. Special force deployments were already being made by Canada. Ergo, “Lyon’s story is bull – t.”

Abbott has similarly claimed that the story “as reported was false,” claiming that the Chief of the Defence Force “is as mystified by this as I am.” Finance Minister Mathias Cormann has called the story a “fabrication” (Daily Telegraph, Feb 21). The first rule of political survival is avoiding soapbox deniability – the more adamant one is in one’s rejoinders, the greater the clout to the claim. Refutations become full-blown confessions.

Even if the story was partly true, it shows Abbott the mad monk in hermetic action. While it would have been virtually impossible to imagine Australian soldiers in such a theatre without NATO or US support, what matters is the Tony worldview, the lunatic assessment that requires such numbers against such a foe, the need to throw Australian muscle into a historical meat grinder.

And it is entirely consistent with previous conduct from the PM, not to mention his extravagant insistence that a thousand Australian troops be deployed to eastern Ukraine after the shooting down of Malaysian Airliner MH17. Australian defence planners were similarly shaken by the logistical vision that was seemingly gestating in Abbott’s mind. Monolingual and resoundingly ignorant for such a task, Australia’s defence personnel would be incapable of speaking either Ukrainian or Russian, let alone distinguishing between Ukrainian or Russian militia.

While there is a case to be made for holding Australian politicians to account for surrendering sovereignty to such powers as the United States, be it via the security channel of deploying soldiers without direct discussions with Parliament to distant theatres; or the secret, and secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, the case against Abbott is even stronger. He shows that he is incapable of being a steward of any sort, a steroid-charged Biggles with an immolating streak.

He, of course, argues that such manic decisions have not become reality, suffering their predictable self-abortions. He misses the vital issue: they should never have been on the agenda to begin with. Coups have been launched for less, and it can be well argued that the dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1975 took place in less imperilling circumstances. High time for a re-enactment.

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

For decades, there has been a mostly dormant liquefied gas (LNG) import facility in the community of Cove Point on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Southern Maryland. Surrounded by forest on conservation land and across the street from residential homes and neighborhoods, the huge white storage tanks are only visible from the opening at the plant’s entrance. It used to be that locals hardly gave the facility a thought. The area is known for its Calvert Cliffs, where 12-million-year-old fossils from the Miocene Era are plentiful, for its historic light house, beaches, fishing and boating, and for the usual activities of community life.

Life is not so tranquil now. For the past 15 months, Cove Pointers have been learning what it means to live in a sacrifice zone, where corporate profits are more important than public safety and where their legitimate concerns are ignored. Dominion Resources is building a power plant, gas refinery and liquefaction train on the dormant site to import or export liquefied gas depending on whether the highest prices are at home or abroad.

This is the first time anywhere in the world that an LNG export terminal would be placed in such a densely-populated residential community. Due to the associated pollution and hazards of chemical spills, fires and explosions, these plants are placed in remote areas or, as in the community of Quintana, Texas, the corporation offered to buy local homes at market value plus $25,000 to cover the inconvenience of moving.

The community of Cove Point has not been given any choice in this situation. The planning and permitting process for the new facility have been rushed through with secrecy and lies. Dominion has donated tens of thousands of dollars to buy the community’s good will. It gave the Calvert County government $25 million to just think about the issue and has promised around $40 million a year once the terminal is running. In return, the county has waived regulations and cut taxes. Meanwhile, the community’s pleas for environmental impact and safety studies have been rejected or ignored.

Resistance to Dominion’s terminal is strong and growing in the local community with support from allies up and down the East Coast. This is the familiar story of a large corporation lying and cheating to make profits without regard for human life or the future livability of the planet. Here is a peek into what is public knowledge, though there is likely much more that has been done in secrecy.

Dominion Steering, Gagging the County Government

The League of Women Voters produced a timeline showing that the Calvert Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) knew about Dominion’s plans to expand the facility as early as the fall of 2011. In August 2012, the BOCC signed a very broad non-disclosure agreement with Dominion (with support from the county attorney John Norris) that not only prevented the commissioners from speaking in public about specifics but also prevented the public from gaining access to information through freedom of information tools. The agreement also stated that the BOCC was instructed to deny requests from regulators and the courts for information about the project and to notify Dominion immediately if such requests were made.

Dominion is also working to shut down public access to information in its home state, Virginia. A bill recently passed the Virginia legislature that would prevent public audits of Dominion’s utility rates for five years. Another bill that would have forced Dominion to provide public access to documents related to its widely-opposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline project failed in the legislature.

Although the Calvert County BOCC had been meeting with Dominion for more than a year on local zoning and tax issues, the Cove Point community first found out about the magnitude and hazards of the project when an outside environmental group, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, informed them in October of 2013.

The first public hearing held by the Calvert County government on the Dominion project occurred on October 29, 2013. Billed as a meeting of the Calvert planning commission, the county commissioners were also present and placed prominently up front. The meeting was attended by hundreds of concerned citizens, with the vast majority testifying against the project. On the agenda at that meeting was a proposed law to waive county zoning regulations for Dominion, which included regulations designed to safeguard the community. Despite vocal opposition and considerable unrest at the meeting, four of the five members of the planning commission voted in favor of the exemptions for Dominion. Immediately, the BOCC closed the record and voted to waive the zoning laws.

Fortunately, a local group, AMP Creeks Council, sued the county over the waiver of zoning regulations and won in August, 2014. The judge ruled that the law violated Maryland’s Constitution.

The county’s lack of regard for public concerns is displayed in a memo circulated prior to the next BOCC meeting on November 5, 2013. Written by the Director of Economic Development, the Director of Finance and the County Attorney, the memo recommended a plan to give a large property tax break to Dominion known as a Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT). It went on to recommend that the county commissioners “conduct the public hearing, consider public testimony, take action to close the record and approve the Ordinance that amends the local law, and approve the PILOT and tax credit agreement with Dominion Cove Point LLC [emphasis added].” The County Attorney and other officials put into writing the sham nature of the public comments which were to be heard and then promptly ignored.

The PILOT plan originated in a state bill put forth by Senate President Mike Miller and Calvert County Senator Roy Dyson that was signed into law in May of 2013. The law required, among other things, that Dominion create only 25 permanent jobs. At the BOCC’s public hearing to approve the PILOT, the Senate President, other members of the state legislature and trade union representatives testified in support of the proposal.

Dominion Donates Liberally to Political Campaigns and Civic Groups

When examining Dominion’s donations to candidates, payments to the county for various services and donations to civic groups, it is important to remember that, as The Washington Post reported: “Calvert County’s commissioners voted unanimously to waive about $506 million in county property taxes that Dominion would have owed over 14 years if the project is successfully completed. By comparison, the county’s entire budget this year is $309 million.” The Post also reported that Dominion is avoiding federal taxes on this multi-billion-dollar project because “Dominion is organizing the Cove Point project as a master limited partnership, a separate legal entity that will exempt some of the company’s earnings on the facility from federal corporate income tax.” Dominion is not being generous. It is saving hundreds of millions of dollars.

According to Open Secrets, in the 2014 election cycle, Dominion spent more than $1.3 million on donations to 125 candidates for the House of Representatives and 45 candidates for the Senate, as well as on various senate, house, governor and attorney general campaign committees and associations. The biggest recipient in Maryland was Steny Hoyer, a House leader and representative of the district that includes Cove Point. Hoyer received $10,000 directly from Dominion and an additional $30,000 from political action committees that Dominion supported.

Both Maryland senators also received large donations: $10,000 to Senator Ben Cardin and $11,000 to Senator Barbara Mikulski. State senator Roy Dyson, who introduced the bill which allowed the PILOT tax break to Dominion, received $1,000.

Perhaps one of the most interesting donations was to Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley. He received a $5,000 donation to his O Say Can You See PAC in July, just prior to his approval of a permit that allowed Dominion to build a temporary pier in a sensitive oyster area of the Patuxent River. At the hearing for the permit, the governor read paperwork, typed on his iPad and fell asleep as residents testified about their concerns over the impact of the whole project in Cove Point on their health and safety. Dominion gave the governor’s PAC another $5,000.00 a few weeks afterward and then curiously took it back. The community gave the governor a Golden Pillow award for sleeping on the job.

Dominion also donated $2,000 to Mike Evans’ campaign for Calvert County Sheriff. But the sheriff’s department, fire and police departments basically have a blank check from Dominion. In cost-sharing plans signed on June 26 with the sheriff, fire and police departments, Dominion agreed to cover the costs of personnel, training, certification and re-certification, including travel, capital expenses such as equipment, and any costs that are incurred while providing security or emergency services to Dominion.

Dominion currently covers the cost of 10 special operations personnel in the sheriff’s department and has agreed to cover the costs of 21 more. In a video, reminiscent of old propaganda films, the Calvert County Sheriff’s Office special operations commander, Lieutenant Ricky Thomas, shows off two new patrol boats bought for them by Dominion. In fiscal year 2014, Dominion reported giving $1.2 million to the Calvert sheriff’s department, about 10% of the department’s entire budget.

Additionally, in 2014, Dominion gave grants totaling $22,000 to Calvert County public schools, $27,500to the College of Southern Maryland and $50,000 to the Morgan State University blue crab studies in nearby St. Leonard. According to Dominion, it has given $500,000 to civic groups in Calvert County since 2002. This has likely generated a lot of good will from some members of the community.

Dominion is also selling the project to the community by promising jobs and a boost to the local economy. But questions remain about the true impact. Dominion’s website states that it is providing 3,000 jobs during construction, but its report to the Department of Energy says that it is creating 2,700 to 3,400 “job-years” (the equivalent of 1,000 jobs per year for each of three years). Members of the local community have complained that Dominion is not hiring locals for the jobs. In the end, Dominion promises 75 new permanent jobs, but is legally only required to create 25.

Not being discussed are the potential negative impacts on the economy. Housing prices are already falling in Cove Point, leaving some residents trapped without retirement security. The refinery and export terminal may depress tourism, an important local industry. And the increase in cancer, disease and early deaths from the toxins released by the plant will place a financial burden on local families.

But the question must be raised whether any amount of economic benefit to the community, especially one that is temporary, is worth risking the health and lives of those who live close to Dominion’s terminal. There are significant known and potential threats associated with Dominion’s project that have been ignored.

Silencing Concerns about Health and Safety

At the October 29, 2013, public meeting, the Calvert County Environmental Commission, which is tasked with providing “recommendations to the Department of Community Planning and Building, the Planning Commission, and the Board of County Commissioners on matters that affect the environment (air, land, and water) in Calvert County,” requested that an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) rather than a less substantial Environmental Assessment (EA) be conducted for Dominion’s terminal. That request was denied.

This past March, when the Environmental Assessment was completed, the Environmental Commission offered to read the EA and submit their comments to the BOCC, but they were told that their input wasn’t necessary because the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) would read the EA. In May, the Environmental Commission sent a letter to the BOCC outlining six areas of concern about the EA and offered to submit their concerns to the FERC. However, the county attorney John Norris advised them that the BOCC was the only body authorized to testify at the FERC hearings on Dominion’s terminal. And in July, County Commissioner Susan Shaw met with the Environmental Commission and told them in no uncertain terms to butt out.

Community members have also been asking repeatedly that the project be delayed until an Environmental Impact Statement and a Quantitative Risk Assessment are conducted. However, FERC granted a permit in September, and construction has begun. Since then, a number of groups have filed an appeal of FERC’s decision, and sought to have FERC stop construction and review the permit.

There are good reasons to be concerned about health and safety. Without adequate studies, the community has no way of knowing the full extent of risks; and due to the non-disclosure agreement, the BOCC has not discussed the risks. Dominion has a track record that shows it can’t be trusted. For example, when Dominion applied for its permit from FERC, it left out the existence of 90 percent of the surrounding population.

Despite the lack of studies, there are some known and potential hazards related specifically to the terminal in Cove Point. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources estimated the emissions from the new power plant being built at the terminal to provide energy for the refinery and liquefaction train. It found that more than 20 tons of pollutants will be emitted each year, including chemicals that will worsen ground-level ozone — which is already problematic in the area — and chemicals that cause cancer, respiratory and heart disease, neurological damage and risks to fetuses.

Dominion purchased emission credits that allow it to pollute the air in Cove Point. But credits won’t help the local community that will suffer the effects of breathing polluted air. They will have more exacerbations of disease leading to higher medical costs, more visits to the hospital, more cancer and more premature deaths.

There are also real concerns about the potential for a chemical spill, fire or explosion at the terminal. Such events have occurred at Cove Point and other sites in the past. Large quantities of ammonia (which is lethal if inhaled), highly pressurized liquid propane (which is highly explosive), ethane and condensate will be stored on-site on a footprint that is smaller than other similar terminals. In their comments on the EA, Earthjustice writes that this close proximity increases the risk of a cascading eventif there is a leak and fire. It also raises other risks unique to Cove Point: If an explosion occurs, the concussive impact can travel miles and the 60-foot “sound” wall could become shrapnel that also travels large distances.

In the case of a catastrophic event, the local residents may not be able to evacuate adequately. There are almost 2,400 homes including 19 in-home daycare centers and two elementary schools within a two-mile radius of the terminal. Because Cove Point is a peninsula, hundreds of families would have to drive toward the terminal to escape. Community members have been asking for a secondary evacuation road and an evacuation drill, but, so far, no actionable plans have begun.

There are more concerns about the impacts of the terminal on water, the Chesapeake Bay, noise and light pollution and traffic. These are outlined on the resource page athttp://www.wearecovepoint.org/resources/.

We Are All Cove Point

In September, FERC granted a permit for Dominion’s project to proceed at Cove Point, and construction started shortly afterward. Local members of the community who had tried to work within the legislative and judicial systems to halt construction until adequate health and safety studies had been conducted were dismayed, but they did not give up.

People were inspired by a group employing nonviolent direct action to stop a methane and propane storage cavern in Seneca Lake, New York, called “We Are Seneca Lake,” and a new coalition formed in November called “We Are Cove Point.” People and organizations from all over the East Coast joined the coalition in the recognition that stopping the terminal at Cove Point is fundamental to stopping fracking and new fossil fuel infrastructure and to mitigating the climate crisis.

Dominion reports that the terminal at Cove Point will be used to export gas from the Marcellus Shale, which covers seven states, and the Utica Shale in Ohio. This will require more fracking, pipelines and compressor stations to bring the gas to Cove Point and will place the health and safety of more communities at risk. In fact, Cabot Oil and Gas, a major fracker in Pennsylvania, has already signed contracts with the Japanese company Sumitomo to sell gas for twenty years starting on the date that the terminal at Cove Point becomes operational.

The terminal at Cove Point will release more than two million tons of greenhouse gases (GHGs) per year. This doesn’t take into account the GHGs that will be emitted by associated compressor stations, from fracking, from pipeline leaks and from the burning of gas that is transported overseas. In an era where we are expected to reach our maximum carbon budget by 2018, the addition of more GHGs will worsen the climate crisis for the whole world.

Resistance to Dominion’s terminal at Cove Point and the associated infrastructure is rising. Communities in Myersville and Leesburg have risen up against the compressor stations being expanded there. Residents of Southwestern Virginia opposed to Dominion’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline are refusing to allow Dominion surveyors onto their property and are now being sued by Dominion. Inspired by the fracking ban in New York, Pennsylvanians are pushing their new governor to stop fracking.

Members of We Are Cove Point engaged in nonviolent direct action beginning in November to raise awareness of the dangers of the terminal and to slow construction. So far, 31 people have been arrested for protesting the terminal. Some have gone to trial and a large group, which includes this author, has hearings on February 20 and 23 in Calvert County.
It will be interesting to see how Calvert County responds to the protesters. Some will present a necessity defense arguing that the terminal is a danger to public health and safety and that other methods to address the danger have failed. There is little optimism that the trial will be fair given the influence that Dominion has in the county, particularly over the county attorney, police and sheriff’s departments.

There have been more than 200 arrests for blocking construction at Seneca Lake, and many from We Are Seneca Lake have served time in jail as a result. Still, they remain resolute in their opposition — and so will the people of We Are Cove Point because in reality we are all Cove Point.

To support our work to stop this terminal, please click here to donate.

What to think of a policy that bombs countries and leaves them to their fate? Most observers of US foreign policy since 2001 regard this policy as a failure. They look upon the ruins of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and see no victory parade, no reconstruction, no stable government, no democracy, and no human rights. These are observers whose mindset is stuck in models of the past. They may have in mind WW II, a declared war, battles, victory, negotiations, treaties, and reconstruction. Say, Europe and the Marshall Plan or Japan. They may be thinking of a world order ruled by international law, Geneva Conventions, the United Nations, and of America as safeguarding this order. Consequently the disorder that the United States is sowing across the planet makes no sense. The politicos on the Potomac must be crazy—is the conclusion.

No such thing. They may be megalomaniacs, but they have a plan for precisely disorder, no less a plan than to subdue the world to its economic will militarily. America is slipping from its rank as the #1 economy in the world, a record held since the 1870s. History instructs that it is impossible to maintain a global empire without economic primacy. The American empire has its back to the wall, but it still has military supremacy, after the exit of its main challenger, the USSR, the greatest tragedy to relative peace in the world of our era. The world really did change on 11 September 2001. It gave America the excuse to choose the military option to keep dominating the world, which it could no longer do economically. The United States, too, took the opportunity to effect a silent coup at home, starting with the Patriot Act, and moving gradually forward to change the US from a democracy to a security state and to destroy, unopposed by a frightened domestic population, pieces of the world, one inconvenient country at a time. It’s a way of doing WW III without anybody but the victims noticing.

Failure? Look at Iraq, the epitome of a cancer cell eating the vital organs of the body, producing pain and suffering as it dies. But do, too, look at Iraq’s border with Iran and see that it is dotted with US military bases. Afghanistan? Permanent and indefinite US military occupation, clothed as a security agreement between Washington and Kabul, squeezing Iran on its eastern border. Libya? The removal of Muanmar Qaddafi in 2011 has left the whole continent bereft of protection from neo-colonial penetration. Since then, we’ve had the French invasion of Mali. Since the fall of Qaddafi, Libya’s North-African coast has become a gigantic refugee port, where thousands of desperate people gather chaotically to flee war and famine to reach Italy, 200 miles away, in inflatable boats. According to the United Nations, 90% of those fleeing Libya land in Italy. Only a few weeks ago 300 of these refugees drowned off the coast of Lampedusa, the volcanic island north of Sicily. According to Amnesty International’s latest report, 37,000 refugees are waiting to brave the sea to reach the shores of Europe. Two governments, two parliaments, and two armies currently rule Libya. Both vie for power and for control of the oil fields on the Gulf of Sirte. Islamist militia rule in Tripoli; a government recognized by the international “community” rules in Tobruk. In this institutional vacuum, the IS are moving in. They are in Derna, applying the whip to young men known to have imbibed alcohol. Perhaps in two months, IS will control the Libyan coast. The US is not stopping them.

Libya, in fact, provides the example, as good as any, of the logic of American imperial policy. After the bombing and the grotesque spectacle of the leader’s assassination, chaos ensues. Then, the “terrorists” move in to mop up the territory. Is there anyone sentient who still believes that the “terrorists” are the enemies of the empire? Is there anyone who still doesn’t see that the “terrorists” are the equivalent of the einsatzgruppen of the Hitlerite SS? With their sadistic theatre of public and grotesque terror, they provide the empire with reasons for intensifying interventions (Iraq) and renewing bombing campaigns for regime change (Syria). Moreover, the supposed advance of the “terrorist threat” serves to bind the empire’s vassals together in a common goal in the supposed struggle against terrorism– to “tighten security” at home and “to internationalize” foreign policy abroad. In reality, to get with the empire’s long-term goal of world domination.

Italy currently provides a good example of this vassalage to the empire’s goal. With the advance of IS in Libya, feudatory Italy prepares “to internationalize” a response to this perceived threat. To this end, it raises the specter of the black flag of IS flying on top of St. Peter’s. Italian Foreign Minister, Paolo Gentiloni, alerted viewers recently on SkyTg24 that Italy is threatened by the alarming situation in Libya, failing to note that the crisis is the result of Italy’s participation in the coup in Libya. Gentiloni warned that if mediation fails to produce results in reconciling the warring parties in Libya it is necessary “to do something more. . . . Italy is prepared to fight in a scenario of international legality.”

The “war on terror” was a brilliant propaganda idea. It created a state of exception to democratic order throughout the West, one that facilitated a craven and unquestioned transition from constitutional democracies to control states. In the US, the Patriot Act inaugurated this control state, which politologists like to call a “security state” to avoid calling it a police state, in which every citizen is regarded as a potential terrorist. The function of this type of state is not to promote order but to manage the disorder that it produces. On the world stage, terrorism is used as the instrument for creating the disorder that the world’s policeman—the United States—and its “allies” are called to manage.

Unquestionably, America is a basket case–and should be hospitalized in one of history’s asylums for states with Napoleonic delusions—but not because of its failures but because of its successes in achieving their ends: they make a wreckage of democracy and call it security; they terrorize the world one country at a time and call it . . . what? Anti-terrorism. They create the effect and call it the cause.

Is this a failure? In moral terms, yes. In imperial-policy terms, no.

Luciana Bohne is co-founder of Film Criticism, a journal of cinema studies, and teaches at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania. She can be reached at: [email protected]

by Raoul Ruparel

Copyright Open Europe 2015

At tonight’s Eurogroup meeting, the Eurozone and Greece finally found a preliminary agreement which will lay the ground for the extension of financial assistance to Greece. Open Europe assesses who secured what and why Greece seems to have failed to achieve many of its goals.

Immediately after SYRIZA’s election victory in Greece, we predicted that:

While a compromise could still be possible, it will be quite painful to reach and will imply someone taking big steps back from their previous stance.

Tonight that looks to have been proven true – at least in the short term.

What does this agreement do and why?

Tonight’s deal (you can read the full Eurogroup statement here) extends the current Master Financial Assistance Facility Agreement (MFAFA) by four months in order to allow Greece to fund itself in the short term and to allow time for negotiations over what happens afterwards.

The purpose of the extension is the successful completion of the review on the basis of the conditions in the current arrangement, making best use of the given flexibility which will be considered jointly with the Greek authorities and the institutions (European Commission, ECB and IMF – formerly known as ‘the Troika’).

Tonight’s agreement seems to essentially extend the existing agreement and the tied-in conditionality of the current Memorandum of Understanding.

What points has Greece capitulated on?

Completion of the current review – Greece has basically agreed to conclude the current bailout. Any funding is conditional on such a process:

Only approval of the conclusion of the review of the extended arrangement by the institutions in turn will allow for any disbursement of the outstanding tranche of the current EFSF programme and the transfer of the 2014 SMP profits. Both are again subject to approval by the Eurogroup.

This is a clear capitulation for Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who said the previous bailout was “dead” and the EU/IMF/ECB Troika is “over”.

Remaining bank recapitalisation funds – Greece wanted this money to be held by the Hellenic Financial Stabilisation Fund (HFSF) over the extension period, and possibly be open for use outside the banking sector. However, this has been denied and the bonds will return to the EFSF, although they will remain available for any bank recapitalisation needs.

Role of the IMF – The Eurogroup statement says, “We also agreed that the IMF would continue to play its role”. Again, Greece has given in on this point and the Troika continues to exist and be strongly involved in all but name.

No unilateral action – According to the statement,

The Greek authorities commit to refrain from any rollback of measures and unilateral changes to the policies and structural reforms that would negatively impact fiscal targets, economic recovery or financial stability, as assessed by the institutions.

In light of this, a large number of promises that SYRIZA made in its election campaign will now be hard to fulfil. In the press conference given by Eurogroup Chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem and EU Economics Commissioner Pierre Moscovici, it was suggested that this pledge also applied to the measures which were announced by Tsipras in his speech to the Greek parliament earlier this week – when he announced plans to roll back some labour market reforms passed by the previous Greek government.

Four months rather than six months – Greece requested a six-month extension, but the Eurogroup only agreed to four months. This is a crucial point: it means the extension expires at the end of June. As the graph below shows, Greece faces two crucial bond repayments to the ECB in July and August which total €6.7bn. This is a very tough hard deadline. There is limited time for the longer term negotiations which will take place – provided that a final agreement on the extension is reached. It is very likely we will be back in a similar situation at the end of June.

Has Greece secured any wins?

Greece has received a couple of small fillips in the wording:

The institutions will, for the 2015 primary surplus target, take the economic circumstances in 2015 into account.

This suggests that Greece may, during this year and the extension in particular, get more fiscal leeway. As we predicted many times, this would manifest itself as a lower primary surplus target. A small victory which may provide a bit of temporary breathing space for the government. In practice, though, it was already looking difficult for Greece to meet its target this year given significant shortfalls in tax revenue.

Greece also managed to get the word “bridge” into the statement, and a specific promise to discuss a fresh programme and approach:

This extension would also bridge the time for discussions on a possible follow-up arrangement between the Eurogroup, the institutions and Greece.

What happens now?

As was stressed in the press conference, Greece will on Monday “present a first list of reform measures, based on the current arrangement”. Moving forward from this agreement, which is still largely in principle, will be conditional on these measures being judged as sufficient by the EU/IMF/ECB as a step towards completing the current bailout.

Once that is confirmed work will begin on getting the “national procedures” in place, so that all the necessary parliaments (such as Germany and Finland) have approved the extension by the end of next week.

In the not too distant future, discussions will begin on the “possible follow-up arrangement”. As we outlined in extensive detail here, there are a huge amount of differences which need to be resolved. The crucial ones being labour market and pension reforms, as well as debt relief. Chances of an agreement remain unclear, but we would expect Greece to struggle once again to get what it wants.

Finally, the Greek government has to return to Greece and sell what is almost an entire capitulation to its own MPs (some of whom would have rather left the Eurozone than abandon their aims), its coalition partner, and the public (which has strongly supported the hard-line stance). We got a taste of this in the presser, when Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said:

From the very first day, we refused to see these negotiations as a zero sum game.

We’re beginning to be co-authors of our destiny.

The Eurogroup statement is a good example of ‘constructive ambiguity’ on primary surplus targets.

I’m pleased to report that our commitments are commitments we wanted to make anyway.

Focusing on the longer term and selling the openness of the negotiation as an escape from the current programme. This may or may not be true, it is in the end a negotiation.

As we said yesterday, Greece has folded this hand but the game of poker continues. Greece is now short stack and living hand to hand (day to day). It continues to be in a very tough position, and how the evaporation of the vision which SYRIZA sold at the election will go down at home is a crucial and potentially explosive unknown.

Washington spent 16 years unsuccessfully trying to topple Venezuela’s model democracy. 

On February 19, London’s Guardian published an edited Venezuela Solidarity Campaign statement on its coup plot signed by 70 distinguished figures – including John Pilger and George Galloway.

The unedited version says:

“We the undersigned note with grave concern the announcement of the discovery of a plot to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela in a coup on Thursday February 12.”

“Government officials have said the plans included violent attacks on the presidential palace and other government buildings.”

“The thwarting of this latest coup attempt comes as leaders of numerous Latin American countries have warned of a similar situation developing in Venezuela to that which preceded the coup against Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, which led to the horrendous dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.”

“The Non Aligned Movement (118 nations) has also echoed Latin America’s rejection of attempts to overthrow Venezuela’s legitimate government.”

“Sections of Venezuela’s right-wing opposition have previously used violent and anti-democratic means to destabilise and seek to overthrow the country’s elected Government, most notably the temporarily successful coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002, and many right-wing opposition groups in Venezuela committed to overthrowing the elected, constitutional Government continue to receive funding from the US.”

“We call on all governments internationally to respect Venezuela’s elected, constitutional Government and condemn this latest coup attempt.”

Days earlier, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki called clear evidence of Washington’s coup plot “ridiculous.”

On Friday, she called coup plot accusations “false and baseless. We do not support a political transition in Venezuela by non-constitutional means.”

“We are deeply concerned by what appears to be the Venezuelan government’s efforts to escalate intimidation of its opponents by rounding up…prominent leaders of the opposition.”

Obama administration neocons stop at nothing to achieve their imperial objectives – including replacing Venezuelan democracy with fascist rule.

TeleSUR said Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma (aka “the vampire”) was arrested for plotting with Washington against President Nicolas Maduro.

Venezuela authorities charged him with sedition and conspiracy involvement in the foiled plot revealed days earlier.

He co-wrote a so-called “transition (coup) plan” with Washington favorites/fascist figures Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado.

Constitutional lawyer Jesus Silva called it “a putschist act of conspiracy that is unfortunately to the liking of thousands of opposition militants who have been indoctrinated to attack democracy.”

According to TeleSUR, “young opposition activist” Lorent Saleh involved in organizing violent street protests named Ledezma last August as a coup plotter.

On Thursday, Maduro said:

“Antonio Ledezma who, today, by order of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, was captured and is going to be prosecuted by the Venezuelan justice system, to make him answer to all of the crimes committed against the peace and security of the country and the Constitution…”

“We’ve had enough of conspiracies. We want to work in peace!” Don’t expect Washington’s foil plot to be its last.

Venezuela Analysis said although full coup plot details aren’t known, “it appears (Ledezma) is implicated beyond his call for a transitional government.”

Expect more arrests once more evidence is collected and announced, said Maduro.

“In these intelligence investigations, we have discovered a codified message, in another language, by an important leader of a party,” he explained.

“On translating it, we found that it gave the details, the elements of the coup.”

“We are about to capture the person who brought the script that they were going to read, the script they were going to read out was already written, and circulated by a person who I will name at the correct moment.”

Ledezma was implicated in the aborted April two-day coup against Hugo Chavez.

Last year, he was involved in plotting street violence. Venezuela Analysis said “(h)e planned to go on a killing spree with the help of Colombian paramilitaries, but was arrested before the plan could take place.”

He founded and heads Venezuela’s hard-right/fascist Brave People’s Alliance party.

A Final Comment

Maduro said plans to kill him and topple his government were hatched in “Bogota, Madrid and Miami.” For sure in Washington, as well as London and Ottawa.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos denied involvement. Human rights groups say at least 9,000 political prisoners languish in Colombian jails.

Some organizations say around 22,000. Including trade unionists, human rights workers, independent journalists and political activists. Right-wing death squads kill with impunity.

According to Santos, “(t)here is no plot against any government from Colombia and, of course, if I learn about something specific in this regard, I will not only condemn but act with all the strength of the law.”

He expressed concern about Ledezma’s arrest. He believes currently incarcerated anti-government coup plotters should be released.

His support for hard-right opposition figures causes tensions between both countries. It won’t surprise if Maduro announces evidence implicating him and his government in Washington’s foiled coup plot.

British and Canadian involvement are known. Maybe Israel’s dirty hands.

A New York Times propaganda piece practically exonerated Ledezma despite his history of anti-government coup plotting.

Saying “his supporters rallied in the capital and…elsewhere.” His arrest “was viewed by the opposition as the kidnapping of a political rival to” Maduro.

His “backers called it another assault on democracy…(Maduro’s) desperate (effort) to divert attention from Venezuela’s internal ills and his own disapproval ratings…”

So he “concocted Mr. Ledezma’s arrest..” The Times quoted his lawyer, Omar Estacio, saying “(h)e’s content, in a happy state of mind and not scared of anything.”

So-called unnamed witnesses called his arrest “disproportionately severe.” Despite no evidence supporting their claims, they said he was “dragged…away to the intelligence agency’s headquarters.”

The Times quoted the State Department’s Big Lie about Washington “not promoting unrest in Venezuela, nor are we attempting to undermine Venezuela’s economy or its government.”

Times editors supported Washington’s April 2002 aborted two-day coup. It outrageously vilified Chavez throughout his tenure.

Bashes Maduro the same way. Consistently substitutes Big Lies for hard truths on Venezuela and all other geopolitical issues mattering most.

It relentlessly supports monied interests at the expense of popular ones. Vilifying Venezuela’s model democracy and Bolivarian fairness reflect longstanding Times policy.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs. 

A century ago the fledgling, brand new “science” of psychology was still in the throes of struggling for cultural and academic recognition, acceptance and respect as the latest still unproven member of modern science. The Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud was credited as the “father of psychoanalysis.” With Freud as psychology’s chief pioneer, the study of the mind and human behavior was then long on theory and short on practical, evidenced-based proof. The burgeoning academic discipline of psychology – psychiatry – psychoanalysis was still in its infantile stage in comparison to the long established bastions of the modern scientific method – the standard natural sciences of physics, chemistry, biology and medicine. These physical sciences more than adequately met the rigors of the scientific method through understanding and explaining life’s material forms to the extent that their basic theories governed by established natural laws of practical application produced a consensual, accurately measurable means of both predicting and controlling matter with a very high degree of proven success. 

On the other hand, psychology/psychiatry had no luxury of any unifying basic formulas, equations, laws or quantitative application that could accurately predict, much less control, human behavior. The complexity of the human mind as it relates to behavior has always rendered prediction and control virtually impossible. Moreover, scientific prediction and control of the human species raises all kinds of ethical questions that run counter to democratic principles and free will. Hence, the closest proximity to being able to collect “scientific data” through analyzing observable behavior that could easily be quantified was through the developing branch of psychology known as behaviorism.

Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov with his bell and salivating dogs established the widely accepted phenomenon linking a stimulus to a conditioned response called classical conditioning. The seminal work of James Watson, William James and later B.F. Skinner forwarded the notion that rigorous scientific inquiry could focus on human behavior as the primary unit of observable analysis. Skinner’s concepts of operant conditioning and reinforcement as the explanatory driving force behind behavior also fit neatly alongside Freud’s rudimentary tenet that humans are motivated by drives to seek pleasure/reward and avoid pain/punishment. Effects of positive and negative reinforcement could readily be scientifically measured and assessed. Thus, the behavioristic component within psychology helped legitimize the discipline as a science.

Out of the fundamental need to further develop the science of psychology evolving from the dominant medical model came the related study and practice of psychiatry, trained medical doctors who specialize in the human mind combining study of its physical correlate the brain with behavior. Abnormal psychology developed as yet another sub-branch within the field that delved into deviant behavior and psychopathology. As a scientific discipline at the turn of the twentieth century, the formalized study of the human mind and behavior in its initial formative stages as a still wannabe science recognized only seven “known” mental disorders:mania, melancholia, monomania, paresis, dementia, dipsomania and epilepsy.

As the functions of the brain and its effects on abnormal behavior were further studied and delineated, a pressing need to classify the growing number of identifiable mental disorders manifested in 1952 with the very first published edition of the Diagnostic Statistical Method of Mental Disorders (DSM). The American Psychiatric Association Committee on Nomenclature and Statistics in its DSM-1 listed a total of 102 mental disorders. A half century later in 1994 the DSM-4 enumerated a whopping 365 mental maladies. And with the latest DSM-5 out in 2013, the massive list of mental disorders is now up to 374.

The proclivity for the psychiatric field to pathologize humans through exponentially increasing mental disorders can be the speculated result reflecting a deepening level of scientific knowledge, empirical evidence of society’s worsening mental health condition and/or the increasing linkage between psychiatry and Big Pharma’s greedy thirst for record-setting profits. The latter explanation takes into full account the unholy marriage between psychiatry and the ever-powerful pharmaceutical industry. Invention of new diseases leads to more Big Pharma profit.

Moreover, the alarming partnership merger between Big Business and Big Government combined with America’s morphing from a deceased democratic republic into an emerging fascist totalitarian oligarchy best illustrates this phenomenon that now has nearly every American able to be diagnosed with a specific mental disorder. Where there is no ethical or moral consideration for what’s best for the human population, having this convenient DSM tool leading the mental health system to in effect be able to certifiably declare virtually anyone with a diagnosable mental disorder ultimately becomes the perfect vehicle/weapon for abusive tyranny and oppression. Institutionalization in lock-up facilities like insane asylums, prisons and FEMA camps looms large in the feds’ not-so-hidden agenda, especially the United Nations Agenda 21.

For over two decades Harvard psychologist Paula Caplan has led a valiant crusade against the labeling of humans based on the proliferation of newly identified mental disorders dispersed by the bible for clinical diagnosis – the Diagnostic Statistical Method of Mental Disorders. Beginning with her 1995 book They Say You’re Crazy, Paula has long been a vocal critic of her own field of psychology and psychiatry, more recently noting that it has come to now identify 374 specific classifications of mental disorders according to the latest edition – 2013’s DSM-5. Just in the prior seven years since the release of DSM-4R, she maintains that 77 new mental disorders have sprung up joining the ever-expanding list.

Dr. Caplan cites “Pathologizing Your Period,” as illustriously perverse evidence of the damage done by inventing artificial mental disorders (like Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder) that are mere natural biological functions all to enhance the profit making machine of Big Pharma. Just to show that as a feminist she is not partial to rushing exclusively to the aid of just her own gender, Paula Caplan cites Delusional Dominating Personality Disorder as the bogus diagnosis directed at males.  She concludes the DSM is unscientific, fails to improve health and causes severe psychological damage to the diagnosed. The Hippocratic Oath of “first do no harm” is fundamentally violated by mislabeling humans in the worst possible way.

Of course the pink elephant in every psychiatrist office is Big Pharma. In a case of clear conflict of interest, while Big Pharma is busily funding the American Psychiatric Association (APA), twenty white male psychiatrists from the APA full of biases against women, minorities and the poor are misusing their paid imaginations to creatively invent yet new mental disorders every few years. Hence, Big Pharma and the psychiatrists behind the DSM both possess the self-serving interest to label more people as mentally defective in order to justify giving them more drugs. Money, profit and greed are at the root of all this horrific propaganda and disinformation.

Because there’s so little money to be made in prevention, efforts toward actively promoting stronger mental and emotional health amongst our overly stressed-out populace struggling for survival is not a high priority. The pharmaceutical and healthcare industries are more about keeping Americans unhealthy, morbidly obese on toxically saturated chemical diets that prove to be a breeding ground for heart disease and cancer. To maximize Big Business profits, by design the powers-that-be want us to continue living unhealthy lifestyles that require long term medical care.

As a practicing licensed psychotherapist employed in the mental health field for more than a quarter century, I can honestly say the mental health field is no different. For years it too has been engulfed and bought out by the sinister profit driven greed of Big Pharma. In the same way that the US health industry is not interested in curing cancer as a disease, as too much money is made from it, the amalgamation of the psychiatric and pharmaceutical industry is not about preventing mental illness, it’s about expanding and exploiting it.

The calculated focus on “psychopathologizing” the general population to the absurdist degree of making everyone diagnosable translates into a mentally defective population perennially in need of a quick fix – compliments of Big Pharma.

Misdiagnosis of mental disorders is off the charts. The entire diagnostic system has absolutely no scientific basis. The DSM is mere bogus propaganda. Operating as a psychiatric Gestapo, the DSM and Big Pharma are all about power. There is no brain pathology that can be detected by scientific medical testing. Every mental disorder is invented. It is not like a physical disease that with tests can be detected as real. Anyone with a license, credentials and wielding differential power can diagnose someone as mentally ill, using it as a malicious weapon. I found social conflict to be the crux at the root of the problem. Those who conform and don’t make waves are considered “normal” and those who do not conform and express a mind and will of their own are typically labeled deviant, abnormal, mentally defective and mentally ill. If you do not think like consensus reality, you can be misdiagnosed. Those who hold different beliefs are susceptible to being labeled “crazy.” In the name of helping, mental health professionals can actually do grave harm.

Even the most respected prominent leaders in the mental health field like National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Director Thomas Insel has criticized the DSM for going too far and not being scientifically based, “NIMH will be re-orienting its research away from DSM categories.” Investigative reporter Robert Whitaker and author of Anatomy of an Epidemic stated:

When Insel states that the disorders haven’t been validated, he is stating that the entire edifice that modern psychiatry is built upon is flawed, and unsupported by science. . . If the public loses faith in the DSM, and comes to see it as unscientific, then psychiatry has a real credibility problem on its hands.

Speaking of credibility problem, the latest misguided revelation from psychiatry in its urgent need to psychopathologize and label people is that anyone who is discerning about what they ingest in their bodies for obvious health reasons is also now diagnosable with a mental disorder. According to the latest version of the bible for clinical diagnosticians – the DSM-5, a person who demands to know if the food they consume is a GMO Monsanto-infested poisonous product, they must be suffering from “Orthorexia nervosa,” a so called condition that is “a pathological obsession for biologically pure and healthy nutrition.” Another defective label is currently used on any individual who loses a little memory as part of the natural aging process short of dementia. They are now suffering from a psychiatric illness called Mild Neurocognitive Disorder (MND).

If any young person is a nonconformist who dares questions authority, they are now quickly diagnosed with the label Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Of course a sizeable segment of the more gifted and creative students in our dumbed down educational system can easily grow bored with the dull delirium of classroom dogma. Because the slow repetitive pace in the classroom is clearly not challenging or stimulating enough for the gifted to avoid becoming restless and antsy, soon deemed a discipline and/or management problem, they then systematically get mislabeled with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD or ADD) and instantly prescribed damaging Big Pharma drugs.

Psychiatrist Colin Ross is a refreshing renegade within his field because he accurately indicts his profession for pushing drugs to the near exclusion of no longer practicing any psychotherapy. He expressed his observations regarding his fellow colleagues in psychiatry:

I also saw how badly biological psychiatrists want to be regarded as doctors and accepted by the rest of the medical profession. In their desire to be accepted as real clinical scientists, these psychiatrists were building far too dogmatic an edifice… pushing their certainty far beyond what the data could support.

I was employed in countless settings where psychiatrists would routinely arrive at the facility and see twenty or more patients within an hour or two in a cattle call ritual and then be on their merry way to their next pit stop, all the way to the bank at the end of the day. Though there are good psychiatrists and bad psychiatrists in the same way there are good therapists and bad therapists, my view of the psychiatric profession is that most are just drug pushing Big Pharma whores.

Virtually all the drug studies show that there is no difference between antidepressants and placebos in children suffering from mild to moderate depression.  Yet the side effects are horrendous with weight gain, increased cholesterol levels and adverse effects from toxicity. The psychiatry field has brainwashed our culture into believing that mental illness is caused by imbalances in the biochemical system of the brain and that psychotropic prescription medication is the answer in helping to restore balance. Yet science fails to back up that bogus claim.

There is no evidence that low Serotonin levels are the root cause consistently found in depression. Just as many people with depression have high levels. It’s been a Big Pharma myth that antidepressants address “low” Serotonin levels. And then for years we’ve been hearing about how Prozac and other antidepressants like Paxil and Zoloft have contributed if not actually caused hundreds of suicides and homicides especially amongst adolescents. The Journal of the American Medical Association even admitted years ago that the fourth leading cause of death annually in the US is from medication side effects. Death from painkillers alone have tripled in the last twenty years. Big Pharma is literally killing us.

In 2013 the DSM-5 circumvented the rising criticism that psychiatrists are creating more disorders just so that Big Pharma can make record setting profits by deceitfully sub-categorizing a litany of yet even more ways to diagnose more people but technically not significantly increase the total number of disorders. This calculated manipulation is symptomatic of the deception that is inherently rampant in the field of psychiatry as well as our society at large. With the recent decades of financial crisis, high unemployment, increased poverty and impoverishment, destabilized family structure, more families struggling to feed themselves and make ends meet, surrounded by threatening global conflict and war, our population in fact is becoming more stressed out and the state of this nation’s mental and emotional health is in fact becoming increasingly unstable. The combination of our overall population suffering more in conjunction with increased pathologizing of new diagnoses has actually caused half of Americans to be diagnosed with at least one mental disorder within their lifetime. Some critics would argue that virtually everyone can now be diagnosed with a DSM mental disorder.

This gross over-diagnosing, misdiagnosing and subsequent over-drugging has reached an epidemic crisis in America. As a licensed therapist for many years, I encountered this problem constantly. Psychology/psychiatry is not a science. In contrast, medical science bases diagnoses on physiological evidence. The mental health profession bases its diagnoses on unchallenged, bogus premises, preconceived biases and subjective judgment that have all been proven false. Additionally, the diagnosis of mental illness too frequently becomes a lifetime sentence that’s severely devaluing, debilitating and needlessly life crippling and tragic. I always detested the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM) as morally repugnant and far more damaging than beneficial. In fact, if anything it engenders a false sense of superiority and potentially a criminally abusive power within the diagnostician at the complete expense and detriment to the diagnosed. In short, it offers little to no benefit whatsoever but a whole lot of harm.

The feeble rationale rigidly holding onto the dubious notion that the diagnostic system is beneficial maintains that clustering symptoms of behavior together into an organized classification system allows for greater understanding that leads to more accurate diagnoses and subsequent greater treatment efficacy psychiatrically with prescribing specific Big Pharma drugs to treat specific disorders. I disagree totally. Misdiagnoses and prescribing drugs that too often only exacerbate and cause residual permanent damage is the commonplace norm. In very limited instances I observed drugs reducing symptoms significantly that merit the outweighed negative effects. Overall I found that both the labeling and the drugs each do far more damage than good.

This business of branding people with negative labels as deviant and abnormal that are often internalized and worn for life, i.e., clients eventually seeing themselves as permanently damaged goods, certifiably crazy. Diagnoses are simply based on a few fleeting moments of observable behavior that clinicians subjectively mistake as symptoms of DSM mental disorders because they are tuned in and trained to see the world solely through their pathological lens. To me that’s pure BS. Even a halfway decent healing practitioner looks to find and recognize client’s strengths and talents and builds on them to raise awareness, enhance self-image and confidence. It’s the difference between seeing the glass as half full or half empty with always the half empty assessment producing both a poor prognosis and usually equally poor treatment results. Stigmatization becomes a lifelong sentence and albatross that shackles and destroys humans. Society needs to be educated in order to realize as humans we all possess some degree of flaws and problems. And just because one might believe someone else has more, they are no less a person. Increased understanding brings increased compassion.

Both our culture and mental health profession has long held some serious misconceptions about the taken for granted veracity of the diagnostic system. It’s been based on fallacies and pervasive misinformation purposely disseminated for profit. Labeling hapless individuals with mental disorders while still in their youth causes young people to identify themselves by their diagnoses and subsequently internalize their role as mentally ill persons. I saw firsthand the deleterious effects that labeling had on them. My own experience found those honest and brave enough to openly display a degree of difficulty adjusting to such a sick, fake society that breeds mass alienation as ours are actually healthier than those deemed well-adjusted who thrive in an unhealthy, toxic culture based on social Darwinism, competitive aggression, greed, deception and amoral blind ambition. Moreover, I found many of the so called professionals in the mental health field to be more pathologically “mental” than those they so quickly judge.

More of the blind leading the less blind a la the gem of a 1967 cult classic called “The King of Hearts.” The film plot revolves around a French village that’s been hastily abandoned by the local villagers leaving the normally locked gate of the insane asylum unlocked while just outside town the two armies of World War I line up to systematically destroy each other. The beautiful irony of this surrealistic Fellini-esque world is shown through the joy of living so fully and gently in the moment by the so called crazy people who in fact are far more skilled and gifted in the art of living than the so called “normals” in uniform nearby who are busily annihilating themselves. The moral lesson depicted a penetratingly deep wisdom that has never rung truer than the madness gripping our technologically driven, modern world that currently has humanity on a collision course toward total self-destruction.

Ultimately the diagnostic labels say far more about the pathology of the so called professional subjectively judging, or more accurately put, misjudging others according to their own biases, warped tendencies and misplaced values. Yet unfortunately this misapplied labeling can give license to abuse and put people permanently away. As each new revised DSM is issued every few years, the list of mental disorders keeps growing exponentially. This again says more about those who come up with so many new ways to misjudge and psychopathologize other human beings than it does about those being judged. It also indicates a growing pathology within a sick culture that is so focused on branding others as less than so called normal, which doesn’t even exist in actual human form since it’s a mere statistical construct. Yet this is the expected outcome when a sick and broken political and economic system rotting and decaying morally from within merges with a sick and broken mental health system that keeps conjuring up such an extremely twisted and warped lens by which to judge other humans. If it weren’t so potentially damaging and sinister, it would readily be thoroughly laughable.

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/.

[Editor’s Note: Documentation on each of the key points in this news report and analysis can be seen by merely clicking on the link where the given point is asserted. This is being especially noted because many of the facts reported here have not been covered generally in the Western press, and much of what is reported here could surprise some readers anywhere, and thus the documentation is linked-to. Our editors have checked the links and have found all of the allegations to be backed by solid sources. The reader is thus provided the same access to these sources that we do, so as to check what’s being alleged in this article.]

U.S. President Barack Obama has repeatedly employed a tactic of attacking Russia by using fundamentalist and other conservative extremists in a given Russia-allied nation, so as to turn that Russia-allied nation away from Russia, and toward America, and then of trying to crush these very same right-wing extremists who have been so effective in defeating (or at least weakening) the pro-Russian leader in that Russia-allied country. This tactic leaves civil war and enormous bloodshed in the given formerly (or still) Russia-allied nation.

One example of this anti-Russian tactic, of relying upon far-right extremists and then of trying to defeat them (in order for Obama to maintain the secular fig-leaf that he is seeking to advance ‘freedom’, rather than to weaken both Russia and Islamic extremists), has been Russia’s ally Syria, where Obama joined with fundamentalist-Muslim extremists, by bombing the armed forces of Syria’s Russia-allied leader, Bashar al-Assad, but then Obama turned to bombing also fundamentalist-Muslim extremists, including the ones, such as al-Nusra, whom his Administrationhad actually helped to supply the sarin which was used in the infamous gas attack that Obama said was perpetrated by Assad’s forces. Theodore Postal of MIT studied the detailed evidence regarding the sarin gas attack that the Administration was citing as its basis for justifying a U.S. invasion of Syria, and he said that, though insufficient evidence was available on the basis of which to determine precisely who was to blame for that gas attack, “The administration narrative was not even close to reality. Our intelligence cannot possibly be correct.”

In order for the gas-delivery rocket to have come from Government held territory (instead of from territory controlled by the anti-Government rebels), it would have needed to fly at least 3.6 miles, but the actual rocket that was determined to have delivered the sarin was incapable of flying more than 2 or 3 miles at the very most. One thing that was clear from all of the evidence was that the Obama Administration were lying. Another was that they were eager to replace the pro-Russian dictator of Syria with an anti-Russian dictator. Obama (unlike the discredited George W. Bush regarding his similar lies about Saddam Hussein and Iraq) was not saying that his objective was to build a democratic state in Syria. Instead of democracy, Obama was talking about ending Syria’s alliance with Russia. He was presenting this as a strategic issue, against Russia — which it is: to replace Assad so that natural gas from Qatar can be pipelined through Syria to Turkey to Greece and Europe, and thereby to reduce Russia’s now-dominant position as being the chief supplier of gas to the EU.

Another example of this anti-Russian tactic — and an example which displays it outside the Middle East and the Islamic world — is currently occurring in Russia’s neighboring country of Ukraine, which is Russia’s main pipeline transit route supplying Russia’s gas to Europe. Furthermore, it’s on Russia’s very doorstep, and thus a prime location for a nuclear missile base from which to hit Moscow within only ten minutes from an American President’s button-push. (Ukraine could be, to Russia, even worse than Cuba was to the United States in 1962’s Cuban Missile Crisis.) Finally, Ukraine has a religiously anti-Russian nationalist and Roman Catholic population around Lviv and western Ukraine, which can already serve effectively as religiously fanatical enemies of Russia. Ukraine is thus an ideal anti-Russian play. As will be documented here, the rabidly anti-Russian Obama has been taking advantage of it.

(NOTE: Throughout the following, the term “nazi” will refer to any racist fascist, whereas the capital-N term “Nazi” refers only to a member of the first political party which had that ideology, Hitler’s Nazi Party. The distinction between the ideology, versus the first political Party that was based upon racist fascism, is important here, because a “nazi” may be obsessive for any type of racism, not necessarily obsessive against Jews as Hitler’s Nazi Party was. Ukraine’s nazis tend to be obsessive haters of ethnic Russians, even more than they hate ethnic Jews, but they still are ideologically nazis.)

A successful coup by Obama in February of last year used the local rabidly racist anti-ethnic-Russian fundamentalist-Christian fascists there, the local nazis whose heroes during World War II had been Ukrainians who were allied with Hitler, and now these nazis successfully, with the help of the CIA and U.S. State Department, overthrew (and even Ukraine’s current President Petro Poroshenko admitted this at the time) the Russia-friendly democratically elected Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, and they installed there a regime that, with American and European money, is bombing the region of Ukraine, Donbass, which had voted 90% for Yanukovych, who was the very same man whom Obama and his nazis had overthrown. Unless those pro-Russian voters, in Donbass in Ukraine’s southeast, can be either killed or expelled (they’re fleeing mainly to Russia), the danger exists (which would be fatal to the Ukrainian part of Obama’s anti-Russian global war), that Obama’s rabidly anti-Russian Ukrainian surrogate regime will be elected out of office and become replaced by yet another Russia-friendly democratic Government, which would then cause to have been a failed policy the overthrow of Yanukovych. So: Obama is already heavily invested in the success of that ethnic-cleansing campaign, to rid Donbass of its residents. However, just as had happened with Obama’s support of Islamic jihadists in Syria, Obama is now turning also against Ukraine’s nazis, because they are so obsessed with destroying Russia and killing or expelling all pro-Russian Ukrainians, so that Obama’s broader anti-Russian objective, of turning Ukraine into a member-nation of NATO so as to position U.S. nuclear missiles there targeting against Russia next door, is becoming seriously jeopardized.

The reason why Obama’s anti-Russian goal is becoming threatened is that increasingly the Ukrainian nazis are turning against the post-coup Ukrainian President, Petro Poroshenko, who is taking his marching-orders from the U.S. White House.

Whereas back at the time of the coup, Obama had wanted the committed Russia-hater Yulia Tymoshenko to win the presidential election that was to be held in Ukraine on May 25th, she was too closely allied with Ukraine’s overt nazis, for her to have been able to win even in the largely nazi-accepting northwest of Ukraine, which was the region that was voting in the post-coup Ukrainian Presidential election. (Turnout was light to nil in the southeast.) But, now, Poroshenko isn’t sufficiently anti-Russian to satisfy the nazis who had brought this ‘pro-European’ (actually Russia-hating) Government to power, but Poroshenko is not getting enough money from the U.S. and Europe for him to be able to come even close to finishing the extermination-job that he has been doing for Obama.

Actually, that job began earlier than Poroshenko’s election, under Tymoshenko’s ally Premier Arseniy Yatsenyuk, whom the U.S. State Department’s Victoria Nuland had selected on 4 February 2014 to run the coup-Government that became installed 22 days later. But Poroshenko has been continuing it, as being (northeast) Ukraine’s‘democratically’ elected Ukrainian President (claiming to represent all of Ukraine, even the area that he’s bombing, which had voted 90% for Yanukovych — the President whom Poroshenko had actually helped to overthrow). Poroshenko claims to represent the people who weren’t able to participate in the election and whom he is now bombing. Obama supports that position. The EU leaders have gone along with it (at least up till February 12th of 2015 and the second Minsk agreement). But Ukraine’s nazis are increasingly demanding even more (and so they refuse to go along with that agreement).

One-after-another of Ukraine’s leading nazis (meaning racist fascists), even the top Jewish one (Ihor Kolomoysky, who enjoys personal ties to the White House), has rejected President Poroshenko’s authority, or even threatened him and has demanded that he focus more on completing the extermination-campaign that was started by Yatsenyuk; and they are also organizing a campaign against Poroshenko in the parliament (or “Rada”); but now the U.S. White House is instead protecting Poroshenko from its nazi former allies, and not protecting their original stooge, Yatsenyuk.

On Tuesday, 6 January 2015, Russia’s Tass news agency bannered, “Right Sector units Refuse to Obey Orders of Ukrainian Defense Ministry,” and reported that, “Units of the radical organization Right Sector have refused to obey orders of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, presidential adviser Yury Biryukov said on TV Channel 5 on Tuesday.” Right Sector was the main armed force that had carried out the coup, and they now said that they constituted an “autonomous unit that subordinates to nobody,” so that they would follow only their own leader, Dmitriy Yarosh, not President Poroshenko’s orders.

Yarosh had led the coup, and he was now a member of the Rada — he was one of the three parliamentarians who were aiming to bring down President Poroshenko. This wasn’t really new from him: on September 18th, he hadsaid, “Unless Poroshenko comes to his senses, we’ll have a new president and commander-in-chief in Ukraine. … If anyone doubts that it’s possible, he can write to Yanukovich. He can verify that impossible things can be made happen.” Yarosh was indirectly also warning Obama there, in effect: I gave you Ukraine, and I can take it over myself if I need to.

On 10 January 2015, the Fort Russ blog headlined “Ukrainian Armed Forces Are Bombing the Right Sector,” and reported that Right Sector troops in battle were now being killed by Ukrainian Government forces, and were no longer being killed only by separatists. Then, on January 21st, UNIAN headlined, “Yarosh Wounded in Grad Attack,”and reported that “Ukrainian MP and leader of the Right Sector organization Dmytro Yarosh has been injured by shrapnel from a Grad rocket strike.” Also on January 21st, Harrison Koehli bannered at sott.net, “Kiev Lies to Its Own Troops, Sends Them to Be Slaughtered,” and he documented (with recent videos) that Ukraine’s Colonel Oleg Mikats, Commander of Ukraine’s 93rd Brigade, had been captured by the pro-Russian separatists during a battle at the Donetsk Airport. However, Koehli failed to note that Mikats was also one of Right Sector’s leaders, and that not only Mikats but also Yarosh himself had been in that battle, and that Yarosh’s “hand is damaged seriously” from a “close exploding shell” and so Yarosh was evacuated to a military hospital.

The Ukrainian site Unian headlined,“Yarosh Wounded in Grad Attack,” and said he “has been slightly wounded from shrapnel” and was up and about. “He is fighting on.” No mention was made of Mikats. As “J. Hawk” commented at Fort Russ, on January 20th, “Mikats’ capture suggests he, a rising star in the Right Sector, tried to prove his organization would succeed where the regular military had failed. Imagine the hero’s welcome he’d have gotten in Kiev had he succeeded in retaking the Donetsk Airport.” And the fact that Yarosh himself was also there, suggests even more strongly, that Yarosh was here aiming to achieve a military victory that Poroshenko’s forces could not, which would embarrass Poroshenko by showing Ukrainians that only by means of the Right Sector’s taking charge of the Government could the war against the ‘Terrorists’  — the ‘Anti Terrorist Operation,’ or ATO — be won. Perhaps one of the reasons why Mikats had been captured was that Poroshenko’s line of command had intentionally left the Right Sector forces “to be slaughtered,” so as to prevent Yarosh from overthrowing Poroshenko. The U.S.-installed operatives were now warring against one-another, and not only against Ukraine’s pro-Russians.

On January 29th, Ukraine’s Political Navigator website bannered, “Yarosh Prepares a ‘Parallel General Staff’,” and reported that Yarosh had said that “after a while, it will be implemented” — a “General Staff” of “volunteers” — to compete against and (he expected) outperform Poroshenko’s military team. Yarosh was now just waiting for Poroshenko’s regime to collapse, so that Yarosh’s own people would grab power. And then what? He would dictate terms, to Obama, and also to Ukraine’s creditors? Really? On 30 January, Fort Russ headlined, “’Yatsenyuk and Turchinov started the war!’ — Poroshenko Bloc Deputy,” and reported that in the Rada, a Poroshenko ally was stating that Yatsenyuk, and his chosen colleague who was briefly Ukraine’s appointed President until Poroshenko, Aleksander Turchinov, were to blame for the war; Poroshenko wasn’t. Rats were scurrying from this sinking ship. The next day, at the same website, the headline was, “Ukraine After Poroshenko — Analysis by Aleksandr Rodzhers,” and the analysis said that another violent Maidan would soon happen, and that U.S. “SecState Kerry personally flew to IMF to persuade them to stop Kiev credits under the pretext of ‘absence of reforms.’” Of course, this would collapse the war-effort; so, Obama had now clearly abandoned the nazis; but the author amazingly assumed the exact opposite: “Poroshenko is being flushed,” the Yatsenyuk bloc wasn’t. More reliably, however, Rodzhers recounted: “Kolomoysky-controlled battalions are still raiding business[es] but even more nakedly than before, completely ignoring the central authorities, both Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk. All representatives of central authorities have been pushed out of Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye, this process is also evident in Odessa and some other cities.”

Kolomoysky was a former White House favorite; he now went his own way, to grab whatever the new chaos was making available to be grabbed. Then, on 1 February 2015, Fort Russ bannered, “We call on all commanders to rise up and start overthrowing the government,” and reported that on that day, “a Volunteer Soldier National Assembly was held, with 500 militants who had fought in the Donbass. ‘We call on all commanders to rise up and start overthrowing the government. The battalion brotherhood is starting a national tribunal’, they chanted. … Their demands to the Verkhovna Rada included the impeachment of the President and the removal of legal immunity afforded to Rada members and judges.” Some wanted not just Poroshenko impeached, but also Yatsenyuk. On February 2nd, Oleg Tsarev, a leader of the anti-coup government in Donbass, whose life had been threatened by Kolomoysky, headlined“Dnepropetrovsk Concentration Camp,” and he reported that Kolomoysky was now a total dictator in the region (Dnepropetrovsk) over which Kolomoysky had been appointed governor. Four days later, Tsarev bannered“Stealing Is Not Work,” and he reported that Tsarev’s own family business, which unfortunately happened to be located in that district, had been forcefully stolen by Kolomoysky. This was the libertarian ideal: real anarchy. Only armed people held power — government was as “small” as possible. The gangsters were the ‘government,’ because there was none other. This was pure libertarianism: only natural law existed, because no man-made law existed to oppose and restrain it.

So: U.S. President Obama was having a difficult time getting his extremist right-wing clients to accept anything less than their total victory — such as Yatsenyuk had famously demanded. Obama’s totalitarian team were cracking at the seams. The ‘moderates,’ led by Poroshenko, seemed willing to accept a negotiated settlement with the separatists, but the extremists, led by Yarosh, accepted nothing other than the destruction of the separatists, and of all of Russia.

The Muslim extremists are likewise demanding total victory against Assad in Syria. The Muslim extremists are Sunis allied with the Bush family’s (and U.S. oil companies’) friends the Saudi dynasty, but Assad is Shiite allied with Shiite Iran and their backer Russia. The chief difference between Muslim extremists and Christian extremists (and also Jewish extremists, Hindu extremists, etc.) is their respective religious affiliations. Otherwise, they’re all basically the same. In Ukraine, the traditionally dominant religion, especially in the pro-nazi far-west of Ukraine, has been the Ukrainian Catholic Church. “It is led by His Beatitude Sviatoslav (Shevchuk), Major Archbishop of Kyiv-Galicia. His election was confirmed by Pope Benedict XVI on 25 March 2011.” Because of Ukraine’s civil war, mutual accusations have flown back and forth between Shevchuk and Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is headquartered in Moscow. On 28 May 2014, Russia’s Interfax headlined, “Patriarch Kirill accuses Ukrainian Greek-Catholics of Russophobia.” Catholic News Service responded on August 22nd, byreporting that Shevchuk “issued a rebuttal to Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow’s claims that that the Ukrainian Catholic Church and its priests were fomenting hatred and violence against believers who belong to the Orthodox Church affiliated with Moscow.” In this and other statements, Shevchuk blamed Russia.

That report continued: “Muslim Tartars are most at risk, he said, but Ukrainian Catholics, Latin-rite Catholics, Jewish communities and members of the independent Orthodox Church have ‘been menaced.’ All those communities, Archbishop Shevchuk said, ‘are further endangered by the rhetoric of the Orthodox leadership in Russia, which is becoming increasingly similar to the propaganda of Russian political authorities and leadership.’” Another name for the Ukrainian Catholic Church is the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church; and, unlike the Russian Orthodox Church, this “Greek” Catholic Church recognizes the supreme authority of Rome’s Pope.

When the Soviet Union ended, the head in Ukraine of the Russian Orthodox Church there, Patriarch Filaret, made clear his hatred of Russia, by his breaking away from the Russian Orthodox Church, though he still didn’t recognize the Pope in Rome, since to do so would have made his followers an extension of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and Filaret turned out to be more of a Ukrainian nationalist than he was any sort of Roman Catholic. Thus, he founded, in 1992, what became Ukraine’s largest denomination, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church — Kyiv Patriarchate. The #2 religious denomination in Ukraine now is the Church he broke away from: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church — Moscow Patriarchate. The #3 is the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (which had been the main Church during Hitler’s era, and which remains the leading Ukrainian Church in the most-nazi part of the country: the far west, around Lviv). Consequently, most of Ukraine’s nationalists are now members of Filaret’s Church, if they are affiliated with any. However, even those worshippers are idolizing as their political model, Stepan Bandar and the first generation of organized Ukrainian nazis during Hitler’s time, including Yaroslav Stetsko (who was briefly serving under the Nazis as their appointed Prime Minister of Ukraine), almost all of whom were devout members of what is today the #3 church in Ukraine: the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. On 6 September 2014, Reuters bannered, “Putin is under Satan’s influence: leader of Kiev Orthodox Church,” and reported that Filaret had said “there has appeared a new Cain” and he is Putin, who “has fallen under the action of Satan.” This statement by Filaret, of course, supported the nazi Government’s position. On 23 January 2015, the pro-nationalist (or ‘pro-Western’) Kyiv Post bannered, “Ukrainians shun Moscow Patriarchate as Russia’s war intensifies in Donbas,” and reported:

“Many Ukrainians have switched denominations, moving away from the Moscow Patriarchate that is very close to the authoritarian President Vladimir Putin. In a survey conducted by the Razumkov Center think tank in April 2014 [see p. 31 of this], 22.4 percent of Ukrainians then considered themselves parishioners of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate — up from 18.3 percent just a year earlier. At the same time, the number of parishioners claiming allegiance to the Moscow Patriarchate dropped in 2013-2014 from 19.6 percent to 17.4 percent of population.”

It explained the decline of the pro-Russian Church, and the growth of the new anti-Russian one, this way: “Unlike the Kyiv Patriarchate Orthodox Church that openly supports the Ukrainian army and volunteers fighting in the east with public statements and generous donations, the Moscow Patriarchate prefers to distance itself from the situation, upsetting some parishioners.” All of Ukraine’s major ‘news’ media are controlled by oligarchs (Ukrainian or Western), and/or by Western governments, and their propaganda had apparently succeeded in turning Ukraine’s population sharply to the right. This has greatly benefited nazi churches, at the expense of churches that aren’t. However, the racism of these churches is specifically anti-Russian, even more than anti-Jew. That specifically anti-Russian focus goes back to Hitler’s time, and even before.

Religion is thus being used by the respective national aristocracies in order to intensify the willingness of their respective troops to fight, kill, and die, as the various aristocracies wage wars to establish their international dominance-submission relationships. The same is true between Shia and Sunni in Islam, and between Jew and Muslim in Israel. The clergy, for any religion, keep their respective followers in line, to fight the battles of their respective aristocratic sponsors — the people who control the money. The result is ‘ethnic’ or ‘religious’ wars, which are actually inter-aristocratic wars. The respective publics fight and die, each in service to its respective national aristocracy, but the aristocrats themselves are often unseen and unheard behind the scenes; only their money talks. This has been the situation throughout history.

Both of Ukraine’s traditional two racist-facist, or nazi, political parties — both the former “Social Nationalist Party” that the CIA persuaded to rename themselves the “Freedom” or “Svoboda” Party, and the separate “Right Sector” or “Pravy Sektor” Party — derive from, and venerate, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists or OUN, which was led and co-founded by two Hitler-supporters, Stepan Bandera and Yaroslav Stetsko, both of whom had been raised in fundamentalist Ukrainian Greek Catholic families, not far from Lviv in western Ukraine, and had fathers who were priests in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which strongly supported Adolf Hitler and his Nazis. That Church’s head during World War II was Josyf Slipyj, who was also a Cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, which was Hitler’s Church, and which Roman Church chose to honor Hitler with a solemn memorial mass in Germany, upon his suicide (though suicide is prohibited by that Church), at a time when the Nazi atrocities were already well known to the Pope. Hitler’s racist writings were never placed on the Church’s banned list.

The Roman Church furthermore helped thousands of Nazis escape to Argentina and elsewhere. It hid and protected and fed many of them in a network of churches and seminaries, overseen by the Vatican, while finding places for them abroad. Money-laundering for them to dispose of looted Jewish property was handled by the Vatican Bank, and the Vatican has refused to make its key records available to courts when sued. Even the eventual Pope Paul VI was involved in it.These weren’t Jews and Gypsies or other victims of the Holocaust who were being helped by Rome; it was their murderers and thieves who were. It’s no particular religion; it’s all religion — “us” versus “them” — as if any authentic ethics can be based upon personal partisanships. The basis of any organized religion is loyalty, not ethics of any sort, at all — neither nationalistic nor religious — it is no ethics, but only fake ethics; it is a type of mere psychopathy that pretends to be ethics, that pretends to be something it’s not. Supremacism is ‘justified’ by it (“Our believers have the inside track on heaven”); and that’s its real purpose. So, in the current era: the Sunni Islamic supremacism by the Saudi Wahhabi clerics has its counterpart in the Western Christian supremacism of both of Ukraine’s two nazi Parties, both of which are anti-Moscow, pro-Rome.

This “Western” orientation turns out to include Obama, and virtually the entire American aristocracy that he represents. Furthermore, the Jewish supremacism of the Ukrainian regime’s billionaire Governor in the Dnipropetrovsk region, Ihor Kolomoyski, is likewise expressed by his Jewish nationalism or zionism, and by his major financial support to far-right Israeli causes. (He furthermore maintains both Ukrainian and Israeli citizenships.) But, basically, the Ukrainian conflict is another outcome of Rome’s war against Moscow. Rome also supports far-right Israelis, because far-right Israelis hate Moscow, just as does the Vatican.

When Slipyj died in 1984, one of the attendees at his funeral was Stetsko; and, then, “The body of the Cardinal was buried in the Basilica of Santa Sofia in Rome.” Russian communism having not yet been abandoned by Russia, U.S. President Ronald Reagan issued an anti-“Soviet” eulogy on that occasion, commemorating “Cardinal Slipyj’s commitment to God and the freedom of men.” But, at root, this wasn’t really an anti-Soviet ritual; it was an anti-Moscow one, as has been made especially clear by subsequent history — the continuance of NATO after communism ended. What had once been (at least nominally) an ideological conflict (communism v. capitalism), has since turned out to have been actually a ‘racist’ one, which is really (at the very deepest level) a conflict between contending national aristocracies; and NATO is the military arm of all national aristocracies that accept the supremacy of America’s aristocracy. The euphemism for this is “the West.”

When Germany’s Nazis took over Ukraine in 1941, they had appointed Stetsko as Ukraine’s Prime Minister, and he said at the time, “Jews help Moscow to keep Ukraine in captivity; that is why I hold that Jews should be annihilated and the German method of destruction of Jewry is necessary.” Furthermore, according to wikipedia, “On 30 June 1941, Stetsko declared in Lviv the formation of a Ukrainian state which ‘will closely cooperate with the National-Socialist Greater Germany, under the leadership of its leader Adolf Hitler which is forming a new order in Europe and the world.’ … Gestapo and Abwehr officials protected Bandera followers.” This is what those followers did:

The base for Bandera and Stetsko was (and remains) Lviv. Even before the Janowska Concentration Camp was built in Lviv, late in 1941, the “Banderites” as they were called, rounded up and slaughtered the local area’s Jews. According to wikipedia: “Encouraged by the German army, local Ukrainian nationalists murdered about 5,500 Jews during the second Lviv pogrom in early July 1941. On July 25–27, 1941, a second pogrom took place, known as the ‘Petliura Days’, named for Symon Petliura [a political hero to both Bandera and Stetsko]. For three straight days, Ukrainian militants went on a murderous rampage through the Jewish districts of Lwów. Groups of Jews were herded out to the Jewish cemetery and to the prison on Łąckiego street where they were shot. More than 2,000 Jews were killed and thousands more were injured.” The Ukrainian leader at the time, Stetsko, had already endorsed these actions; and now they were being done.

However, unlike in Germany where the chief bigotry was against Jews, Stetsko’s and Bandera’s actual chief bigotry was against Russians. For Hitler, killing Jews took a higher priority than killing Russians. However, Stetsko as Ukraine’s new leader cooperated — and eagerly — with Hitler’s Holocaust against Jews. It just wasn’t his main objective: destroying Russia (and killing all Ukrainians who supported Russia) was Stetsko’s top goal. In this respect, he was unlike Hitler: his priority of bigotries was different. But he cooperated with and followed Hitler’s lead at that time. Hitler briefly imprisoned both him and Bandera anyway, because they insisted upon ultimate independence for Ukraine, which Hitler wouldn’t allow for any country, and especially not for a ‘Slavic’ one. Hitler’s contempt for Slavs was nowhere nearly as intense as was his contempt for Jews, but it was still contempt. He viewed Jews as snakes, descended from the snake in Genesis 3, and so to be killed for constituting the ongoing source of “original sin,” which he felt must be eradicated; but he viewed Slavs as mere “Untermenschen” or “sub-humans,” and so to be enslaved as constituting human beasts-of-burden, their land to be taken from them by “Aryans” (who are pure-blooded Christians, as he viewed it). As regards Muslims and Japanese, etc., Hitler didn’t even think at all about them, except as potential allies. His total concern was Christian history, Christian culture. Other cultures, he just didn’t care about.

The CIA’s file on Stetsko noted on p. 139 that Stetsko was “Chairman of the Central Committee of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations,” and on its p. 72 the CIA’s file noted the specific type of racism of this organization, its anti-Russian bigotry:

“ABN hates all things Russian — not Bolshevik but Russian. It proclaims ‘We are fighting for the complete annihilation and partition of the Russian empire.’ … The whole course of Russian history is portrayed as … the nature of ’that people.’ … ’The Russian people,’ ABN Correspondence says,’ has never been able to evolve what the West considers to be an order of society worthy of human beings.’ The refrain continues: ’There is only one inveterate enemy of humanity in this world: Moscow.’ … It does not matter for ABN what type of government is established in Russia, for ‘Russians are all the same.’”

Consequently, the CIA — an agency of America’s aristocracy that seeks global supremacy for them — worked very closely with Stetsko, against Russia (not really against communism, which was just the aristocracy’s ideological cover-story).

So, in regards to foreign policy: just as Obama is allied with Islamic extremists, he is allied also with Christian extremists, and with Jewish extremists — all in order to conquer Russia, which is his real goal.

But, now, Obama’s nazis in Ukraine, who brought Obama to power there via the coup, are trying to assert independence from him, by toppling Poroshenko and replacing him with a leader who is to the right of even the conservative voters who constitute the overwhelming majority in northwestern Ukraine. Obama knows that that’s an impractical idea. But perhaps Obama had simply not been aware that extremist right-wingers despise anyone who would negotiate with people whom they passionately hate and despise and want to see dead; and, that, therefore, Obama’s support to religious extremists might produce consequences that would get out of his control. It’s happening right now in Ukraine, just as it did in Syria.

On 22 May 2014, Agence France Presse headlined from Lviv, “In Ukraine’s Nationalist Bastion, Locals Want Revenge Against Rebels,” and Vassyl Trukhan reported an encounter with a resident there, who “protested that the government was just ‘too soft’. ‘We must kill the separatists and bring the traitors to justice so that order is restored and we stop the spread of this gangrene.’” As Ukraine’s military failure to eliminate this “gangrene” becomes clearer, the public support for another violent overthrow of Government grows — but, this time, it will be indigenous, not imposed.

The only way that people like Hitler or bin Laden can be satisfied is for their enemies to be utterly destroyed. Is Obama like that? He will need to decide whether he is or not. But, for now, he’s supporting Poroshenko in Ukraine, and the moderate Islamists in Syria. He had started with Tymoshenko and al-Nusra, but he’s now essentially at war against both of them — he is turning against the extremists in both countries. But, he still needs those extremists, in order to achieve his objective of destroying Russia.

Obama will thus now have to choose between, on the one hand, destroying Russia, or, on the other, negotiating with Russia a face-saving way out of Obama’s primary foreign-policy aim: that of crushing Russia.

Both in Syria, and in Ukraine, Obama’s real target is regime-change in Russia — replacing Vladimir Putin with someone who will accept Russia’s being a client-state of the American Empire; that is, a nation whose aristocracy subordinates itself to America’s aristocracy. Obama’s initial hope in Ukraine had been that Putin would send Russia’s armed forces into Donbass to rescue its pro-Russian population, which would then give Obama an open door toward turning northwestern Ukraine into a U.S. military base ‘to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression.’ Putin didn’t do that. The aid that he has supplied to Donbass has been far short of an overt war against Ukraine.

Obama’s fallback position has perhaps been for Russian nationalists to win the support of Russia’s own population if Putin lets the people in Donbass be exterminated and he thus becomes replaced via a Russian civil war, which would provide a U.S. pretext to invade Russia, and to establish “order” there. But that too isn’t happening. On the contrary: this past December 18th, the AP headlined “Poll: 81 percent back Putin even as ruble falls.” This AP poll confirmed previous polls, such as Gallup’s having bannered on July 18th, “Russian Approval of Putin Soars to Highest Level in Years: Ratings of U.S., European Union leadership sink to record lows, in single digits.”

If Obama cannot find a solution to this problem, then the possibility of a nuclear war, which would destroy the entire planet, is very real, and then the outcome of Obama’s anti-Russia war will end up depending upon whether or not Obama can accept what would inevitably be a very embarrassing public defeat for him, and for his aristocratic backers — America’s aristocracy (including not just his backers but the ones who had stood with Mitt Romney when he asserted that Russia “is without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe”) — a defeat which would prove to the world that the nation that Obama leads, which he has repeatedly called by the supremacist nationalist phrase, “the one indispensable nation,” isn’t so unique, after all. By his calling his country that, he is implicitly asserting that every other nation is “dispensable.” Hitler, too, felt that way about his nation, Germany (“Deutschland über alles” was his phrase for it). But Hitler didn’t possess nuclear weapons; Obama does, and Obama might soon have to either give up his extreme nationalism, or else use these weapons to enforce it.

Such a defeat would be a huge come-down for Obama’s ego. So, maybe he will stick with his plan, even if it means destroying the world. But, no one today can yet say which is more important to him: Is it destroying Russia? Or is it instead avoiding a nuclear war?

Within a few years, we (or at least the survivors) will know which of these two priorities was the higher for him.

The people whom Obama represents are standing firm with the nazis. Obama’s chief political donor, George Soros, is, in fact, frantically campaigning throughout the world for taxpayers in both the U.S. and EU to finance at least a $20 billion step-up in aid to Ukraine so that they can complete the job that he has personally invested very heavily in. (Of course, some of Obama’s main financial backers don’t have any involvement in Ukraine, and don’t care what happens there. None who do care, however, has in any way been supporting the anti-nazi position and helping the Donbass residents.)

The U.S. House and Senate are both virtually unanimous, by more than 98%, supporting more money from U.S. taxpayers in order to achieve a successful final solution to rid Donbass of its existing residents so that NATO missiles can be placed there. Republicans have traditionally hated Russians (not only communism), and congressional Democrats have recently been bought-off by aristocrats such as Soros (who, perhaps, has hated Russians all his life; though, until the fall of communism there, he had veiled this hatred by criticizing communism instead — and, now that the ideological veil is finally off, the nazi shows; and, consequently, on a popular Ukrainian TV station, which was financed by the U.S. Government, the Dutch Government, and Soros’s International Renaissance Foundation, a journalist even spoke openly about the necessity to exterminate at least 1.5 million residents of Donbass). So, the slaughter of Donbass residents goes on. And Ukraine is now trying also to starve them to death. So, Soros now is pleading for $50 billion from taxpayers in U.S. and EU, in order to finish the job.

Killing and starving millions of people is costly, but Soros has a plan to do it, with taxpayers’ money — ‘loans’, which will go to the very end of Ukraine’s creditors’ line for payback from a bankrupt country, and therefore can’t even begin to be paid, ever: never start to pay, no matter how hard Ukrainian citizens might work in order to pay their taxes and so their country’s debts. These ‘loans’ will instead be donations, not really loans, from Western taxpayers. But the money won’t go to the citizens of Ukraine; all of it is to go instead to the war-effort, to the anti-Russian killing-campaign. On January 9th, Ukraine’s Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, reassured the IMF, EU, and other investors of all funds that are being loaned to Ukraine, that Ukraine is doing everything possible to fulfill on its financial obligations to all investors: “I would also like to note that the money that we get in the framework of international financial assistance, does not go to finance the state budget deficit, it does not go to the payment of pensions, it does not go to the payment of wages. All of this is happening in the first place, solely to perform our external obligations.” On 1 May 2014, the IMF (whose money comes from taxpayers in U.S. and the EU, not from the aristocrats whose investments the IMF protects and whom the IMF actually serves) had stated that Ukraine’s first obligation, without which the IMF would lend no more money, is to win the war against Donbass. Yatsenyuk, thus, is here reassuring the IMF, and other investors in Ukraine, that their money will not go to pay for anything but winning this war.

The IMF, and other lenders, require Ukraine to win this war, because, if the Ukrainian Government doesn’t win, thenthe natural gas and other assets that are in the ground in that region will not become available to be sold (privatized) by the Ukrainian Government in order to pay-off those investors; instead, the residents there (the people whom the Ukrainian Government is now trying to eliminate) will control those assets, as being assets of a separate state — one which has not borrowed from these investors. The IMF wants the assets that are in the ground, not the people who are living on it. That is why it demands victory (elimination of the people in Donbass) — or else Ukraine will promptly go bankrupt. (And, perhaps, so too will some of those investors.)

Ukrainian citizens will be bled dry to live in perhaps the most corrupt country on Earth. As Ukraine’s nazis proudly say: “Ukraine above all! Russians on knives!!”

In order to support the nazis, Obama even had his U.N. representative vote with only two other countries — Ukraine and Canada — against a resolution condemning racist fascism (nazism). Ukraine wasn’t so much as mentioned in the resolution (though Ukraine is the world’s only country now that has an outright nazi government), but these three countries stood out alone from all the rest, and voted against the thoroughly reasonable (especially in light of the recent worldwide increase in racism) resolution, anyway. The remaining fig-leaf of American decency is thus now gone. Ukraine refused to endorse the resolution; and, so, the U.S. representative said that the U.S. stands with Ukraine. Canada then joined in, supporting the U.S., even despite all the rest of the world. Like Obama’s agent controlling the coup, Victoria Nuland, had said, just weeks before the coup: “F—k the EU!” She had, we now know, meant it: If the EU feels queasy about installing a nazi government in Ukraine, then to hell with them — we’re the ones in control, and they’ll do what we say!

This statement by her was actually in character, and it expressed one of the reasons why Obama had given her the power that she has, to exterminate people that America’s aristocrats want to get rid of: she had previously been Vice President Dick Cheney’s foreign-policy advisor, and then, during 2005-2008, she became the U.S. Ambassador to America’s international military club against Russia, NATO. Her husband, Robert Kagan, had been John McCain’s foreign-policy advisor during the 2008 Presidential campaign (and McCain has been one of the leading American supporters of Ukraine’s nazis); and, before that, Kagan had been one of the main proponents throughout 2002 and 2003 of George W. Bush’s “regime change in Iraq” policy, and of its resulting 2003 invasion of Iraq, which Kagan prominently argued for. Victoria Nuland was one of Hillary Clinton’s closest advisors, while Hillary was Secretary of State; and, on 5 July 2014,The New York Times noted that Robert Kagan had “co-founded an influential bipartisan advisory group during Mrs. Clinton’s time at the State Department.” So: Hillary Clinton can be expected to be similar to Barack Obama, John McCain, Dick Cheney, and Mitt Romney, all of whom favor a “muscular” foreign policy, to advance the interests of the American aristocracy, and so to crush Russia and its aristocrats.

Throughout history, aristocracies have been at war against each other, asserting their dominance over one-another; and, after the historically brief period when democracy had been fashionable, the world is returning to that aristocratic model, of Empire. The modern term for it is fascism; and the extreme, or racist, form of that, is nazism.

In addition to the aim of America’s aristocracy to place quick-strike missiles in Ukraine aimed against Moscow, Washington also seeks to grab away Russia’s role of being the main energy-supplier to Europe; and this means changing Russia’s gas-pipeline through Ukraine to Europe, to become instead a pipeline carrying fracked gas from Ukraine’s own Yuzivska gas field in Donbass, to Europe, thus replacing Russia as that gas supplier, so that this formerly Ukrainian gas will have been privatized to Western aristocrats in the fire-sale of formerly Ukrainian-Government-owned property, and the Russian-built pipeline will be benefiting Western aristocrats instead of Russian ones. A good summary of this plan was provided by local resident “Ayre,” (Ms. Ayre Vende) titled “Naked Goals of Ukrainian Genocide.” She said that Western aristocrats are “interested in the war to make Yuzivska gas field clear of local folks.” The land will be destroyed anyway, so (purely as a business proposition) the people who live there might as well be killed or expelled by war — it’ll remove an economic problem for Western investors, since the land will thus get cleared of its population in advance of the transaction. War will have cleared the land for these new owners.

Consequently, Western aristocrats benefit not only by increasing their military advantage, but by increasing their economic advantage as against Russia’s. It’s a double-whammy, for Western aristocrats. The economic losses will be experienced not only by Russia, but by taxpayers in the West, who will have paid for the bombs, etc. Meanwhile, all of the investment profits will go to the investors who will have bought up these privatized fire-sale Ukrainian assets. But this means that the war against the Donbassers must first be won. Obama needs the nazis for that, but he also needs to keep these nazis under his control. It’s like a rodeo’s bucking-bronco act, but it spills lots more blood and guts. And it transfers even more wealth to the ‘right’ aristocrats than they had previously controlled.

Push is finally coming to shove, for Obama’s favorite foreign-policy tactic — the use of dedicated nazis to lead their regime-changes, so as to establish and maintain their international dominance. Now that Obama is learning this lesson, that things can get out of control this way, he will have to make up his mind who he is. In Syria and Iraq the supporters of global Islamic Caliphate, and in Ukraine the supporters of “Ukraine above all!” (like Hitler’s “Deutschland über alles!”), are willing to destroy the world in order to achieve their goal of nationalistic dominance; so, Obama will ultimately need to decide whether he’s really one of them himself — one of the nazis — or not.

We can’t yet know. But does he? Perhaps that’s the biggest unresolved mystery here. What are his priorities? Beyond all of the rhetoric, what is he, really? How does he feel about the enormous bloodshed he has caused —bloodshed of entirely innocent civilians who are trapped in the hatred by some, and the unconcern by others (such as himself)? Does the person who ultimately caused these deaths, even care about it? His White House hasargued to the U.S. Supreme Court that political lying is essential to democracy. (The Court unanimously agreed.) So: what’s the real purpose of his lying? He does it on both domestic and foreign policy. Is he as proud of himselfas he seems? What are his values, or does he have any?

The mystery is about Obama — it is not about his standard foreign-policy tactic, which is clear. Obama will soon have to make a choice, about what he really is.

PS: Two objections will be discussed here that are frequently raised regarding Russia’s alleged blame in the Ukrainian matter:

First, the White House and its agents assert that Russia precipitated the conflict in Ukraine by its ‘aggression’ in ‘seizing’ Crimea away from Ukraine. These allegations ignore that in 2010, Russia and Ukraine had signed a 25-year extension on the lease that Russia had had on Russia’s Black-Sea-Fleet naval base at Sevastopol in Crimeaever since 1783, when Crimea first became a part of Russia. In 1954, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev donated Crimea to Ukraine without considering the wishes of the Crimean population, who strongly opposed that, and who overwhelmingly considered themselves to be Russians, not to be Ukrainians, anyway. One of Obama’s objectives in taking over Ukraine in the 2014 coup was to cancel the remaining 21 years on Russia’s lease. Crimeans and Russia both opposed doing that, and Crimeans held a plebiscite on March 16th about whether to rejoin Russia. With that as historical background, then:

(A) The March 16th, 2014, referendum of the voters in Crimea, produced a 96% vote to secede. Some people, like the anti-democratic Russian nationalist “Girkin,” ridiculed it, because the Ukrainian Government’s officials in Crimea at the time (who hadn’t yet been changed by the new coup Government) opposed holding any such referendum. But of course they would have opposed it; they’d have gotten immediately fired by the new Government if they had said that this new Government wasn’t now legally the Government in Ukraine. Girkin said: “The Ukrainian army units remained loyal to Kyiv as they were. Furthermore, most of the army remained that way. The only thing that made what we have accomplished in Crimea possible was the presence of Russian army.” And that too is true, just not relevant: without the Russian army there (as part of the lease agreement for protecting Russia’s naval base), Crimea would have gone the way of Donbass: civil war. The real question is instead: Did the majority of Crimeans favor or oppose rejoining Russia? The answer to that question is clear; it is:

(B) Gallup polled 500 Crimeans during May 16-30 in 2013, and found that only 15% considered themselves “Ukrainian.” 24% considered themselves “Crimean.” But 40% considered themselves “Russian.” Even beforeObama’s February 2014 coup which overthrew the Ukrainian President whom 80% of Crimeans had voted for, the Crimean people overwhelmingly wanted to secede from Ukraine — and, especially now they did, right after the President for whom they had overwhelmingly voted, Viktor Yanukovych, had been overthrown in this extremely bloody coup. Furthermore, in April 2014, Gallup again polled Crimea, and they found that 71.3% of Crimeans viewed as “Mostly positive” the role of Russia there, and 4.0% viewed it as “Mostly negative”; by contrast, only 2.8% viewed the role of the United States there as “Mostly positive,” and a whopping 76.2% viewed it as “Mostly negative.” During the intervening year, Crimeans’ favorability toward America had plunged down to 2.8%, from its year-earlier 6%. Clearly, what Obama had done in Ukraine (his violent coup in Kiev) had antagonized the Crimeans. And, as if that weren’t enough, the 2014 poll provided yet more evidence: “The 500 people that were sampled in Crimea were asked [and this is crucial] ‘Please tell me if you agree or disagree: The results of the referendum on Crimea’s status [whether to rejoin Russia] reflect the views of most people here.’ 82.8% said ‘Agree.’ 6.7% said ‘Disagree.’” In the hearts of the local residents, Crimea was still Russian territory, after an involuntary hiatus of 60 years; and, so, the Russian Government accepted them back again, into Russia — this was not ‘Russia’s seizure of Crimea.’ It was Russia’s protection of Crimeans, from the invasion of Ukraine by the United States in a bloody coup in Kiev.

Second, the White House and its agents blame Russia for the shooting-down of Malaysia’s MH17 airliner over Ukraine’s conflict-zone on 17 July 2014, and on that basis they won a crucial hike in the economic sanctions against Russia. However, even if it had been the case that the White House and its Ukrainian regime were correct in their allegations that this shoot-down resulted from an error by the separatists when they were mistaking that airliner for a Ukrainian bomber, of which they had already shot down several (in order to protect themselves and their families from being bombed), this still would not have been any reason for Obama and the EU to hike the economic sanctions against Russia, as they did. But it was not the case: The Ukrainian Government shot down the airliner, and moreover intentionally — it was downed by gunfire and then missile-fire both from at least one Ukrainian fighter-plane. U.S. President Obama had failed to persuade the EU to hike those sanctions, and so this event was perpetrated precisely in order to get these sanctions hiked, which the event (and the propaganda about how it had happened) succeeded in achieving.

The bottom line in all of this is:

Whether or not Russia’s President Vladimir Putin should be removed from power is something that should be determined by the Russian people themselves, by means of uncorrupted democratic procedures that are not being manipulated either by Russia’s aristocracy or — and especially not — by the aristocracy of America or any other foreign country.

Obama’s desire for regime-change in Russia is by now obvious, just as was G.W. Bush’s desire for regime-change in Iraq. In either instance, one’s prejudices about the matter (and everything that had helped to produce those prejudices) should be rejected, in favor of the actual relevant facts, in the given case; and the relevant facts regarding the situations in both Syria and Ukraine are facts about Obama and his aggressions against Russia, vastly more than they are any facts about Putin and his aggressions against the United States, especially because there are actually no aggressions by Putin against the United States, though there might soon be such, if Obama keeps pressing for Putin’s removal, either by the tactics that are described here, or else by others. Bush succeeded in Iraq. He ended Saddam and the existing regime there. The results if Obama succeeds in Russia could turn out to be even worse — far worse than what resulted in Iraq. And the costs to the entire world would likely be incalculably higher.

The American Government has become extremely skilled at overthrowing foreign democratically elected — and sometimes not elected — governments. But clearly now, the government that urgently needs to be replaced is the one in the United States itself. This has nothing to do with the U.S. Constitution — the Supreme Court has already destroyed that, and replaced it with rule-by-aristocracy, which America’s Founders had instead tried to end, rather than to establish. The American aristocracy itself is now the enormous threat to this planet. America is ruled by corruption, which is normal throughout the world; but absolute power corrupts absolutely, and America’s aristocracy is seeking (and close to obtaining) absolute power. Obama calls this aristocratically controlled America, “the one indispensable nation.” To him, all other nations are dispensable. It’s the same nationalistic ideology as Hitler’s “Deutschland über alles!” and nazi-Ukraine’s “Ukraine above all!” But it’s backed by nuclear weapons and the world’s largest military.

All other NATO nations must therefore quit the U.S. military alliance, NATO, which should have been disbanded when the Soviet Union did. And every nation should view the U.S. — the power that controls this country, which is America’s aristocracy — to be profoundly hostile; because, tragically, that’s what America has now become, to the welfare of all countries.

The American people are not to blame for this. The gangsters who control this nation are. They now threaten the entire world. They need to be cut off, by all other nations.

Any nation that considers itself to be “the one indispensable nation” needs to be dispensed with. Germany, Italy, and Japan, each declared themselves to be the one indispensable nation, before the world almost exhausted itself in defeating them.

Perhaps the solution this time around won’t need to be so violent. But continued inaction certainly will be. The choice is thus stark, and delay would be disastrous.

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.

Beginning in 2010, a previously undisclosed unit of the British GCHQ acting with support from the NSA, the Mobile Handset Exploitation Team (MHET), penetrated the internal networks of cell phone SIM card manufacturing companies in order to steal encryption keys before the phones came to market, according to documents revealed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and published this week on the Intercept .

The latest revelations of hacking to spy on cell phone communications underscore the criminality of the operations undertaken by the NSA and GCHQ and their companion agencies in imperialist countries around the world.

The documents show that MHET agents “cyberstalked” employers at SIM card manufacturers, monitoring their social media accounts, emails and other personal information with technology provided by the NSA in order to gain means to infiltrate their employers’ networks. “These people were specifically hunted and targeted by intelligence agencies, not because they did anything wrong, but because they could be used as a means to an end,” said the ACLU’s Christopher Soghoian to the Intercept .

Subscriber identity modules, or SIM cards, store identification information for cell phone users, including encryption keys that protect vital personal information that is transferred from a phone to a wireless carrier. By obtaining the encryption keys of mobile devices, intelligence agencies are able to bypass a phone’s security to monitor all communication on a given device, including voice communication, text messages and emails.

Over a three month period, “millions of keys were harvested” and shared with the NSA, which has the capability to process millions of keys per second, according to the Intercept. Gemalto, the world’s largest producer of SIM card technology, had hundreds of thousands of encryption keys stolen as part of the GCHQ’s DAPINO GAMMA program in early 2010, while MHET sought to develop similar means to infiltrate other manufacturing firms. The Intercept notes that the team’s largest “score” of keys was in its hacking of the Chinese technology firm Huawei, a company that the US government has accused of collaborating with Chinese intelligence.

The documents expose as lies claims made by President Obama in early 2014 that

“… people around the world, regardless of their nationality, should know that the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don’t threaten our national security and that we take their privacy concerns into account in our policies and procedures.”

“Gaining access to a database of keys is pretty much game over for cellular encryption,” Matthew Green, a cryptology expert at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute, told the Intercept. Green stated that the latest revelations were “bad news for phone security. Really bad news.”

The Intercept notes that, due to the document only revealing the activities of MHET in its incipient period, “It is impossible to know how many keys have been stolen by the NSA and GCHQ to date,” adding that, “even using conservative math, the numbers are likely staggering.” Considering the fact that the NSA/GCHQ obtained each user’s encryption key illegally, allowing them to circumvent requirements to obtain warrants and other formalities, there is no official record of who the government is monitoring.

The documents show that, in addition to operating in collusion with private firms to monitor the population, the intelligence agencies also freely break the law in order to achieve the same ends.

The monitoring of the world’s population illegally by the US and Britain goes far beyond the practices engaged in by those countries, such as China and Russia, that western imperialism seeks to target for military intervention and often accuses of cyber espionage.

The latest documents come as representatives of the US intelligence community have called for the ending of encryption software altogether, claiming that it hampers the job of law enforcement. “Encryption isn’t just a technical feature; it’s a marketing pitch. … And my question is, at what cost,” said FBI director James Comey to an audience late last year at the liberal Brookings Institution.

“Perhaps it’s time to suggest that the post-Snowden pendulum has swung too far in one direction—in a direction of fear and mistrust,” Comey said in reference to the public’s reaction to the whistleblower’s revealing of mass government spying.

In the years following the beginning of the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” a series of revelations have exposed the horrific torture practices used against prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, CIA “black sites” and other prisons abroad, as a matter of state policy.

These barbaric practices, which were documented in stomach-churning detail in the CIA torture report released last year, are rooted in the aims of US imperialism to plunder and dominate the world, and to suppress by force all opposition to its predatory aims. But the same ruling class that is waging imperialist war abroad is waging a class war at home, presiding over the enormous enrichment of the financial oligarchy at the expense of the working class.

There is no hard line between the foreign and domestic policy, a fact that was given concreteness this week in the revelation, published in the Guardian newspaper, that one of the top interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had pioneered the methods he used at the torture camp working as a detective in Chicago.

According to the Guardian, Richard Zuley obtained at least one wrongful murder conviction by methods that he would later use at Guantanamo Bay: Prolonged shackling in “stress positions,” threats against family members, threats that the accused could be subject to the death penalty if they did not confess and demands that those under torture implicate themselves and others.

The newspaper cites the example of one Chicago woman who Zuley kept shackled to a wall for more than 24 hours, until she confessed that she and her ex-boyfriend had committed a murder. She remains in prison to this day. Another, Lathierial Boyd, was released in 2013 after spending 23 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.

Zuley’s background and his outstanding ability to extract confessions was noticed by administrators at Guantanamo Bay, who set him to work in a team of torturers at the prison.

Among Zuley’s victims, according to the Guardian, was Ould Slahi, author of the recently-published book Guantánamo Diary, in which he recounts being tortured, sexually assaulted and beaten to within an inch of his life at the prison, to the point where he would sign any confession his torturers would put before him.

The revelations, declared the Guardian, express “a continuum between police abuses in urban America” and the torture perpetrated in the name of the war on terror. The case of Zuley is hardly an aberration, however. The American ruling class presides over a country that incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than any other in the world, where the brutal treatment of prisoners is a daily reality.

A recent report from the ACLU, for example, documents the horrific conditions facing over 80,000 people in solitary confinement in the US prison system, including the mentally ill, mentally handicapped and children. The barbaric practice has been declared a form of torture by the United Nations.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, 95 percent of those subjected to solitary confinement reported developing symptoms of psychological illness, such as panic or anxiety attacks and hallucinations. In Texas alone, there are more than 100 prisoners who have spent more than 20 years in tiny cells for 22 hours a day, with virtually no direct contact with any other human beings.

Domestic prisons, which are increasingly being used to hold those accused of terrorism, often as a result of entrapment by intelligence agencies, are likewise introducing rules similar to those in force abroad. Next week, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the body that oversees civilian penitentiaries, will implement a new rule that, in the words of law professor David M. Shapiro “all but prevents prisoners incarcerated in the United States and suspected of connections to terrorism from speaking with their families.”

Shapiro notes that another set of recently-introduced methods “make an unprecedented inroad into the attorney-client privilege, permitting federal agents to intercept communications between certain prisoners deemed a threat to national security and their attorneys.” He adds that prisons in New York and Colorado have already used these methods.

The prison system, which is topped off by the continued barbaric practice of state-sanctioned execution, is only part of a broader apparatus, including a massive and militarized police force that kills with impunity and an intelligence system that spies on the population in violation of basic democratic rights. Whether under Democrats or Republicans, Bush or Obama, the state functions ever more openly as an instrument of violence and repression.

If the methods utilized at Guantanamo and elsewhere represent in part the “export” of techniques used within the US, it is also true that the brutal methods honed by the ruling class abroad will be and are being transferred ever more directly back into the United States, applied to suppress the growth of political opposition to war and social inequality.

The reemergence of torture, forced confession, and other “medieval” practices is part of the repudiation of democratic legal and political forms of society under the pressure of growing social inequality.

The American financial aristocracy, which makes its wealth through fraud and swindling, and the degraded thugs they hire to carry out their dirty work in prisons, precincts, and torture chambers, see the legal norms of due process and equality under the law as mere impediments to their wanton plunder, violence and murder.

While mainstream media promulgate a fictitious message of Russian threats in the Baltic, Vladimir Putin’s next big play lies far to the south, writes Oliver Tickell. The gross intransigence of the EU, the IMF, the European Central Bank and Germany are forcing Greece into a powerful new economic and energy alliance with Russia that will reshape Europe – and for the better.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will“launch a campaign of undercover attacks to destabilise the Baltic states on Nato’s eastern flank”, the Telegraph reports today – along with all other mainstream news media.

How do we know this? Because the UK’s Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has said so. Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia watch out – the Russian peril is fast coming your way.

“There are lots of worries”, Fallon told the newspaper.

“I’m worried about Putin. There’s no effective control of the border, I’m worried about his pressure on the Baltics, the way he is testing NATO, the submarines and aircraft … They are modernising their conventional forces, they are modernising their nuclear forces and they are testing NATO, so we need to respond.”

Covert attack by Russia on the Baltic states is “a very real and present danger”, Fallon insisted.

Now where did we hear that before? Ah yes. On 16th December 1998 President Bill Clinton said that that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein presented “a clear and present danger” to the stability of the Persian Gulf and the safety of people everywhere.

We all know where that led: the Iraq war followed a few years later. We also know that the claim was a monstrous untruth: Saddam had no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. So why should we believe Fallon now? Where is his evidence? He has none. When you already know the truth, who needs evidence?

Fallon – and NATO – should keep their eyes on the ball

But while Fallon’s attention is focused on the imaginary threat to the Baltic states, there is another country that really could be ‘at risk’ – and not because of cyber-attack, invasion by ‘green men’ or a campaign of destabilisation emanating from the Kremlin.

No, the EU, the European Central Bank, the IMF and European finance ministers have already been doing all the destabilisation that’s needed – forcing Greece into a deep programme of austerity that has seen the economy shrink by 25% over five years, the closure of vital public services, mass unemployment and the forced sell-off of public assets.

And now the Greeks – and their newly elected Syriza government – have had enough. This week the Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras flatly refused to renew the €240 billion ‘bailout’ package, which comes with all the austerity strings, and he today advanced proposals for a ‘six-month assistance package’ free of harsh conditions to give Greece time to renegotiate its debt.

The standoff continues, and will be decided tomorrow by EU finance ministers. It’s not looking good: Germany has already stated that the Greek proposal “does not meet the conditions”. But if the finance minsters don’t agree, then what?

You guessed it: Tsipras will turn to Russia. Earlier this month Tsipras and Putin agreed on a range of bilateral ties, including the construction of a pipeline that would carry Russian natural gas from the Turkish border across Greece to the other countries of southern Europe.

This follows the re-routing of the ‘South Stream’ pipeline, which had been due to cross Bulgaria but was effectively blocked by the EU’s retrospective application of energy market rules, under heavy pressure from the USA. Last November and December Putin negotiated the pipeline’s realignment across Turkey with Turkish President Erdogan – right up to the Greek border.

Following the agreement between Putin and Tsipras, which came complete with an invitation to Moscow on Victory over the Nazis day, 9th May, the pipeline link to the major countries of southern Europe is now complete, at least on paper. And once it’s built, Greece will effectively control – and profit from – that gas supply, and take a strategic position in Europe’s energy landscape.

But Greece is a NATO member!

Greece’s increasingly warm relationship with Russia is already causing concern among other EU and NATO countries. German Defense Minister Ursula von Der Leyen has saidthat Greece was “putting at risk its position in the NATO alliance with its approach to Russia.”

This provoked a fierce retort from Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos who branded the attack as “unacceptable and extortionate” – noting that “Greece was always on the side of the Allies when they pushed back German occupation troops.”

“Statements that replace the EU and NATO’s institutional bodies are unacceptable as blackmailing”, he added. “They undermine the European institutions except if Germany’s aim is to dissolve the European Union and the NATO.”

So if Tsipras’s refinancing proposal is refused tomorrow will Greece quit NATO and the EU, to join the Eurasian Union? Not if Mr Putin gets his way: Greece is worth much more to Russia as an ally within the EU and NATO than outside – where it can veto more trade sanctions against Russia, block the TTIP and CETA trade deals with the USA and Canada, and oppose NATO’s increasing belligerence from within.

But we could see Greece simply renouncing its manifestly unpayable and unjust €320 billion national debt, and quitting the Eurozone straitjacket – while receiving an emergency liquidity package from Russia to support the launch of the New Drachma.

In fact, we could see a re-run of important elements of the Ukraine play of December 2013, when Russia offered a support package under which it would buy $15 billion in bonds from Ukraine, supporting its collapsing currency, and supply it with deeply discounted gas – £268 per cubic metre rather than the maarket price of $400.

A $15 billion purchase of New Drachma denominated Greek bonds would be a superb launch for Greece’s new currency, and would firmly cement Greece’s long term alliance with Russia, providing it with a valuable long term bridgehead into both the EU and NATO.

This move would also give inspiration and confidence to progressive political movements across Europe that take inspiration from Syriza’s fight for economic justice – in Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, the UK and beyond – and bear the powerful message: there is an alternative.

And while NATO, the EU, the USA and their loyal servants, among them the UK’s Michael Fallon, deliberately whip up a fictitious threat in the Baltic, ignoring the real danger they face to the south, the masterly Mr Putin would once again make fools of them all.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist, but this article is written in a personal capacity.

When not long ago Mr. Obama said that Western sanctions had left Russia’s economy «in tatters» he probably was not aware of one congenital creed so very intrinsic to the country he has been provoking into war. Russians have one peculiar saying for hard times – «the worse it seems the better it is», meaning that deprivation fosters ingenuity. The tough present brings Russians a unique opportunity to temper the national character and master self-reliance, regardless of politics and whether one is for or against Putin. In fact, Russian president has recently marked utmost importance of reviving the national economy by means of inner resources: natural, human and technological. As Russian food becomes of equal strategic importance to Russian energy, the national food security will be bolstered by a number of opportune measures.

Without much ado the government has banned both domestic cultivation and imports of GM products, the draft law awaits approval by the Russian Parliament. Apart from several cases in southern Russia when big agriholdings secretly planted GM corn and sunflower seeds (without approval of the government authorities), genetically modified seeds are not welcome in Russia. As prime minister Medvedev’s Cabinet has already suspended negotiations with foreign biotech companies (including Monsanto and Syngenta), the main focus remains on traditional sustainable agriculture, integrated with effective farming and processing facilities. The priority is set to enhance production of Russia’s traditional staple crops like wheat, rye and buckwheat both for local consumption and export demand. On entering the World Trade Organization, Russia was expected to allow genetically modified organisms (GMO) for food production and distribution within its market. Vladimir Putin declared that the country would stay GMO-free without violating its obligations to the WTO. The main reason why the government is opposing incursion of GMO into the country is that Russia owns some of the most precious non-destroyed top soil on our planet and it is worth being maintained GMO-free, free from chemicals like Roundup or Atrazine, which are clandestine tools of ecological disaster. However, what can’t be underestimated is that Russia has a considerable export potential for staple crops, while a tremendous lack of organic food in the world is expected in the future.

Hemp Production in Easter Siberia

All new is well forgotten old. A promising venture, initiated by the Russian government in 2013, was the reappearance of hemp production in eastern Siberia – Buryat Republic and Altay. Historically speaking, Russian economy leant on cannabis, known as pen’ka, which was used in local industries as well as exported to Europe and the Americas: international trade in hemp profited Russians for centuries. Lately Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service has confirmed its plans for advanced farming of cannabis hybrids low in THC. Currently Russian hemp is processed for multiple purposes, including clothing, health care and defence.

This article was written on February 15, 2015.

Alex Levin, a Moscow-based international trade negotiator and investigative journalist. 

Bloomberg reported last month:

“Banks don’t have a need for deposits, and the demand for loans by households and firms is weak,” Niels Storm Stenbaek, chief economist at the Danish Bankers Association, said in a phone interview.

Wait … what?

Banks don’t need deposits?   They’re not giving many loans?  Isn’t that what banks do?

If they’re not collecting deposits and making loans, what are they doing?

In reality, big banks aren’t really acting like banks anymore.  Big banks do very little traditional banking, since most of their business is from financial speculation. For example, we noted in 2010 that less than 10% of Bank of America’s assets come from traditional banking deposits.

The big banks are manipulating every market. They’re also taking over important aspects of the physical economy, including uranium mining, petroleum products, aluminum, ownership and operation of airports, toll roads, ports, and electricity. And they are using these physical assets to massively manipulate commodities prices … scalping consumers of many billions of dollars each year (more hereand more).

The evidence demonstrates that the big banks have essentially become huge criminal enterprises …waging warfare against the people of the world.

Image by William Banzai

Apart from the above-described manipulation, virtually all of the big banks’ profits come from taxpayer bailouts and subsidies  (see this, this and this).  Why don’t they need deposits? Because the taxpayers are showering them with money.

And they don’t need deposits because – as is now admitted by the mainstream – banks create money out of thin air.  In other words, banks don’t need deposits in order to make loans.

At the same time,  the big banks have sat on the money the government threw at them – with the encouragement of the Fed – instead of loaning it out to Main Street to kickstart the economy. As wenoted in 2012, small banks are much more interested in making loans to the little guy than the TBTFs:

USA Today points out:

Banks that received federal assistance during the financial crisisreduced lending more aggressively and gave bigger pay raises to employees than institutions that didn’t get aid, a USA TODAY/American University review found.

Dennis Santiago – CEO and Managing Director of Institutional Risk Analytics … notes:

The vast majority of this contraction of credit availability to American industry has been by the larger banks ….

Fortune reports that smaller banks are stepping in to fill the lending void left by the giant banks’ current hesitancy to make loans. Indeed, the article points out that the only reason that smaller banks haven’t been able to expand and thrive is that the too-big-to-fails have decreased competition ….

BusinessWeek notes:

As big banks struggle, community banks are stepping in to offer loans and lines of credit to small business owners….

Fed Governor Daniel K. Tarullo said:

The importance of traditional financial intermediation services, and hence of the smaller banks that typically specialize in providing those services, tends to increase during times of financial stress. Indeed, the crisis has highlighted the important continuing role of community banks….

[Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas President] Thomas M. Hoenig pointed out in a speech at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce summit in Washington:

During the recent financial crisis, losses quickly depleted the capital of these large, over-leveraged companies. As expected, these firms were rescued using government funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The result was an immediate reduction in lending to Main Street, as the financial institutions tried to rebuild their capital. Although these institutions have raised substantial amounts of new capital, much of it has been used to repay the TARP funds instead of supporting new lending.

On the other hand, Hoenig pointed out:

In 2009, 45 percent of banks with assets under $1 billion increased their business lending.

45% is about 45% more than the amount of increased lending by the too big to fails.

Indeed, some very smart people say that the big banks aren’t really focusing as much on the lending business as smaller banks.

Specifically since Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999, the giant banks have made much of their money in trading assets, securities, derivatives and other speculative bets, the banks’ own paper and securities, and in other money-making activities which have nothing to do with traditional depository functions.

Indeed, the “Too Big To Fail” are doing everything they can to fight the availability of low-cost loans for Main Street and the little guy.

The bottom line is that we don’t need the big banks.   Indeed, top economists, financial experts and bankers say that the big banks are too large … and their very size is threatening the economy. They saywe need to break up the big banks to stabilize the economy.

This is especially true since the monsters are growing larger and larger … and have mutated so much that they’re no longer even behaving like real banks.

“If it is not announced by 10:00 tomorrow that Yanukovich is gone, we’re going to attack with weapons.” -Anonymous Protester speaking in Kiev’s Independence Square following the signing of a Compromise Deal between elected representatives of the Ukrainian Parliament, February 21, 2014 [1]

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The period from February 18 to February 23 marked the dramatic climax of the Euromaidan movement, a pivotal turning point in Ukraine’s political dynamics, and a watershed moment in the history of international relations.

Three months of street demonstrations and occupations of government buildings responded to with police crack-downs and mass arrests crescendo-ed to this turbulent five day period.

On February 20, Kiev saw the worst day of bloodshed it had seen in seven decades with 88 people being killed in a 48 hour period. [2]

On February 21, a Compromise Deal calling for early elections, constitutional reform and the withdrawal of forces both of authorities and the opposition “from administrative and public buildings” as well as “streets, city parks and squares.” [3]

This deal was rejected by the crowds gathered in Maidan Square. The next day, President Yanukovych had fled, and protesters had taken control of Presidential Administration buildings. Shortly thereafter a rump Parliament voted for Yanukovych’s impeachment, and set elections for May 25. [4]

In the days that followed, the Parliament would vote to ban Russian as a second official language, appoint Olexander Turchynov as interim president, and nominate Arseniy Yatsenyuk as Prime Minister.

The new Prime Minister would eventually sign the very Association Agreement with the EU which Yanukovych rejected, sparking the Maidan uprising. [5]

What followed was the secession of Crimea from Ukraine and rejoining Russia, together with rebellions in the East and South rejecting the authority of the Kiev government and sparking an ongoing civil war.

Media reporting on the Ukraine crisis has been dogged by allegations of mainstream media bias. In fact, the media literacy and watchdog group Project Censored has labelled ‘Media Hypocrisy in covering Ukraine Crisis‘ as one of the top 25 most censored stories of 2013-14. In particular, it is argued that the media has blocked out clear evidence of Neo-Nazi involvement in the overthrow of Yanukovych, and the extent to which it is US/NATO interests, more than Russian President Vladmir Putin, fostering the aggression.

One of the sources of this story is Robert Parry. Investigative Journalist Robert Parry is convinced this was a coup enabled by Neo-Nazis and provides the details, including the role of the Neo-Cons in fostering the Maidan protests, the failure of the media to responsibly report on the facts, and the motivation of the NeoCons to escalate the conflict with Putin potentially to a nuclear climax.

Rick Rozoff, manager of the STOP NATO list-serve breaks down the current situation in the wake of the Minsk Ceasefire, the victory of rebel forces at Debaltseve, and his take on whether Russia has a winning or losing hand in the ongoing conflict.

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

The show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in every Monday at 3pm ET.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS  during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario –1  Thursdays at 1pm ET

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border.

It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia Canada. – Tune in every Saturday at 6am.

 Notes:

1) Sabine Siebold and Natalia Zinets (February 21, 2014), Reuters; http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/02/21/uk-ukraine-idUKBREA1H0EM20140221

2) BBC (November 13, 2014), Ukraine crisis: Timeline; http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-26248275

3) http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/cae/servlet/contentblob/671350/publicationFile/190051/140221-UKR_Erklaerung.pdf

4) BBC (November 13, 2014) op. Cit

5) Adrian Croft (March 21, 2014), “European Union signs landmark association agreement with Ukraine” ;http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/21/us-ukraine-crisis-eu-agreement-idUSBREA2K0JY20140321

Senior member of Hamas’ political bureau Mousa Abu-Marzkouk yesterday revealed that Quartet peace envoy Tony Blair is trying to blackmail Hamas in return for reconstructing the Gaza Strip.

On his Facebook page, Abu-Marzouk revealed five conditions put by the Quartet that Hamas has to meet in order to make room for the reconstruction of what the Israeli occupation destroyed during last summer’s 51-day war in Gaza.

Abu-Marzouk said: “Once again, and in the name of the international community, Tony Blair is exploiting the tragedy made by the Israeli occupation that includes the destruction of homes and making people homeless.”

Expressing deep concern about the devastated people in Gaza, Abu-Marzouk said: “Destroyed homes of Palestinians in Gaza became shrines to Blair and his likes. Blair says that there is no reconstruction unless these five conditions are fulfilled, and Hamas has to agree to:

• Accept the Palestinian reconciliation.
• Accept the political programme based on a Palestinian state on 1967 borders.
• Reiterate that Hamas is a Palestinian faction with only Palestinian goals and it is not part of any Islamist movement with regional goals.
• Adopt the two-state solution as a final, not temporary, solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
• Send an assurance message to Egypt that Gaza is not a terror base for Sinai terrorists and hold talks with the Egyptian government to stop terrorism in Sinai.”

“These are the conditions for Hamas to be accepted by the international community as well as the Quartet’s conditions for rebuilding Gaza and improving living standards,” Abu-Marzouk said.

He added: “These conditions do not mean that Hamas will deal with the Zionist enemy; not even one condition was put on Israel.”

Abu-Marzouk refuted the conditions one by one. Regarding the reconciliation, he said: “It was achieved. I do not know what is needed more from Hamas, which conceded everything for a technocrat government.”

About the state on the 1967 borders, he said: “The problem is not with the Palestinian side, but with the other side. Blair should have spoken about it with Israel. He should have asked it whether it accepts a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital and whether it accepts to dismantle settlements.”

Regarding Hamas’s goals, he stressed that Hamas is a Palestinian faction with Palestinian goals and it is not part of a regional Islamist movement. “We know that he means the Muslim Brotherhood,” he said.

“This is used by all as a pretext,” he stressed. “Hamas is a Palestinian movement and its history proves that as it has not carried out any of its operations outside the Palestinian lands. Even when its leaders were targeted outside Palestine, it did not respond in the same places.”

Meanwhile, he reiterated the importance of Hamas having links with any side offering help for it. “We have no interest to have hostility with any party wherever it is and whatever the ideological differences with it are,” he said.

About the two-state solution, Abu-Marzouk said: “Blair knows that any oppressive agreement cannot remain alive for too long. Any agreement imposed by the current powers cannot remain the same when these powers change.”

Regarding Egypt, he explained: “Egypt is not merely a neighbouring country; its stability and unity are in the Palestinian interest. We deal seriously and responsibly with anyone who harms Egypt. Gaza will absolutely not be a breeding ground for terrorism.”

Adding that Hamas’s relationship with Egypt is not of Blair’s concern.

Five years ago I was invited to become the chief political commentator of the Telegraph. It was a job I was very proud to accept. The Telegraph has long been the most important conservative-leaning newspaper in Britain, admired as much for its integrity as for its superb news coverage. When I joined theTelegraph had just broken the MPs’ expenses scandal, the most important political scoop of the 21st century.

To read the full article, click here

The transnational pharmaceutical cartel will be positioning itself to profit handsomely if a federally-mandated adult immunization program becomes law. The proposed US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) policy will be implemented alongside the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act (ACA), thereby becoming a standard component of US national healthcare policy.

Published on February 6, 2015 amid the “measles outbreak” media frenzy, the HHS is accepting “public comment” on its Draft National Adult Immunization Plan (NAIP) until March 9, 2015. Under the NAIP, all adult American citizens will be compelled to receive current and retroactive vaccination regimens that may amount to several dozen “shots” per individual during their “catch-up” phase. Under the federally-mandated immunization schedule children presently receive 49 vaccines before the age of six.

The NAIP underscores how

[t]he adult schedule … includes catch-up vaccinations for those adults who never initiated or did not complete a multi-dose series when vaccination was first recommended during childhood. Catch-up vaccinations include vaccines such as measles, mumps, rubella and varicella, which are routinely recommended for administration during childhood (p. 1).

The NAIP is intended to supplement the National Vaccine Plan (NVP), published in conjunction with the ACA. The HHS describes the NVP as “a guiding vision for vaccination for the decade 2010-2020 and strategic direction for coordination of the immunization enterprise in the United States” (NAIP, p. 9), by highlighting the alleged public health problem posed by the low vaccination rates of US adults.

“[T]he NAIP is intended to promote coordinated planning and action across all stakeholder groups,” the 52-page document reads, “[i]ncluding those within and outside of the federal government” (p. 6). In addition to the health and personnel-related agencies within HHS’ purview, such as the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration, other government and “stakeholder groups” include the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the “vaccine industry” and “academic/research organizations” (p. 7).

Given the frequent and serious side effects of vaccines routinely documented in the inserts accompanying them, the government appears to be waging a high stakes game with public health under the guise of prevention that will soon extend to the entire US adult population.

The NAIP is unambiguous in its ambition and intent. “The vision for adult immunization is to protect the public health and achieve optimal prevention of infectious diseases and their consequences through vaccination of all adults” (emphasis retained, p. 6).

The NAIP was developed in coordination with the RAND Corporation, whose services were “enlisted to review historic literature, interview stakeholders, and collect plan date to identify plan priorities and key indicators” (p. 8).

Specific “subgroups of adults” will be particularly targeted for vaccination, “such as healthcare workers and pregnant women.”

HHS lists four specific objectives in its NAIP policy. The subpoint strategies of each goal are summarized below, although it should be noted that the original document contains highly detailed strategies for achieving each (pp. 11-25) .

1: Strengthen the adult immunization infrastructure.

Objective 1.1: Monitor and report trends in adult vaccine-preventable disease levels and vaccination coverage data for all ACIP-recommended vaccines. In cases where there are associated Healthy People 2020 goals, measure progress toward established targets.

Objective 1.2: Enhance current vaccine safety monitoring systems and develop new methods to accurately and more rapidly assess vaccine safety and effectiveness in adult populations (e.g., pregnant women).

Objective 1.3: Continue to analyze claims filed as part of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) to identify potential causal links between vaccines and adverse events.

Objective 1.4: Increase the use of electronic health records (EHRs) and immunization information systems (IIS) to collect and track adult immunization data.

Objective 1.5: Evaluate and advance targeted quality improvement initiatives.

Objective 1.6: Generate and disseminate evidence about the health and economic impact of adult immunization, including potential disease burden averted and cost-effectiveness with the use of current vaccines.

2: Improve access to adult vaccines.

Objective 2.1: Reduce financial barriers for individuals who receive vaccines routinely recommended for adults.

Objective 2.2: Assess and improve understanding of providers’ financial barriers to delivering vaccinations, including to stocking and administering vaccines.

Objective 2.3: Expand the adult immunization provider network.

Objective 2.4: Ensure a reliable supply of vaccines and the ability to track vaccine inventories, including during public health emergencies.

3. Increase community demand for adult immunizations.

Objective 3.1: Educate and encourage individuals to be aware of and receive recommended adult immunizations.

Objective 3.2: Educate, encourage, and motivate health care professionals to recommend and/or deliver adult vaccinations.

Objective 3.3: Educate and encourage other groups (e.g., community and faith-based groups, tribal organizations)to promote the importance of adult immunization.

4: Foster innovation in adult vaccine development and vaccination-related technologies.

Objective 4.1: Develop new vaccines and improve the effectiveness of existing vaccines for adults.

Objective 4.2: Encourage new technologies to improve the distribution, storage, and delivery of adult vaccines.

Despite religious and philosophical exemptions from vaccines offered in almost every state, not to mention the abundant side effects–including possible carcinogenesis–associated with such substances, roughly 95% of American families subject their children to the federally-mandated immunization schedule. Under the NAIP, government bureaucrats and the vaccine industry are now poised to foist a similarly intensive yet scientifically dubious program on the entire US population.

Peasants in northern Mozambique are struggling to keep their lands, as governments and foreign companies move aggressively to set up large-scale agribusiness projects. They are being told that these projects will bring them benefits. But, so far, the country’s experience with foreign investment in agriculture has been disastrous.

This report looks at the companies already setting up agribusiness operations in the Nacala Corridor, an area that the government has prioritised for agribusiness development. These companies, typically structured through offshore tax havens and often connected to Mozambican political elites, have been grabbing lands and extracting wealth in ways reminiscent of the country’s colonial days.

From liberation to land grabs

Mozambique declared independence on June 25, 1975 after a decade of armed struggle. The peasants, workers, and students of Mozambique had defeated the Portuguese empire, guided by a common ideal of “freedom of man and earth”.

The ideals of the national liberation struggle are enshrined in the Republic’s first constitution, which recognises the right of the Mozambican people to resist all forms of oppression. These ideals also resonate in the first national anthem of the Republic of Mozambique, promising to turn the country into the grave of imperialism and exploitation.

Land was particularly important to the country’s liberation struggle. Portuguese settlers had occupied vast tracts of the country’s most fertile lands. When Mozambique achieved independence, these lands were immediately taken back and nationalised. Under the 1975 constitution, the state – on behalf of the Mozambican people – became the owner of all lands in the country. The constitution also recognised agriculture as the foundation of development with industry as its main engine, to be underpinned by a policy of national industrialisation led by state companies and cooperatives.

One year after independence, a brutal civil war broke out which ended only with the founding of a second republic in 1992 in the wake of the Rome General Peace Accords, signed between the government and RENAMO. Then followed two decades of structural adjustment policies imposed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Today, 40 years after independence, the revolutionary vision of the national liberation movement is in tatters and the Mozambican government is thoroughly dominated by a neoliberal ideology that relies narrowly on foreign investment for the development of all economic sectors, whether agriculture, infrastructure, fishing, tourism, resource extraction, health or education.

Foreign investment in the country has thus expanded rapidly in recent years. According to the National Bank of Mozambique, the net inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2013 amounted to $ 5.9 billion, up 15.8% from 2012, making Mozambique the third largest destination for FDI in Africa.1 Much of this capital has gone into resource extraction, such as mining and exploration of hydrocarbons. But agriculture is also emerging as an important target of foreign companies, especially in the Nacala Corridor, a vast stretch of fertile lands across northern Mozambique where millions of peasant families live and farm.

Over and above this, these investments are the result of a very strong alliance between international capital through the big multinational corporations, with the support of the governments in their home countries with the local political-economic elite with the intention of exploiting the country’s main agro-ecological regions and the potential in mining and hydrocarbons. It is within this context that this research analyses the movements of the different players in the occupation and appropriation of the Nacala Corridor, one of the country’s richest regions, which, besides being home to the country’s main ecosystems, is the repository of reserves of a number of minerals.

A new era of plantations in northern Mozambique

The rising foreign interest in farmland is not unique to Mozambique. The entire African continent has been seized by a scramble for farmland. Since 2008, foreign companies have been scouring Africa in search of fertile lands to produce agricultural commodities for export. Hundreds of deals have already been signed covering millions of hectares.

(Photo: Erico Waga for GRAIN)

The rush for African farmland is partly a result of the food price crisis of 2008, which made it difficult for countries dependent on food imports to source the foods they need at affordable prices. In response, some of the richer food importing countries, like the Gulf states, China and Japan, adopted new policies to encourage their corporations to acquire large farms overseas to produce foods for export back to their home countries. Africa is seen as one of the new frontiers where agricultural commodities can be produced cheaply and exported to supply the world’s growing demand.

2008 was also the year of a severe global financial crisis. As stock markets collapsed, the financial industry began to look for new, more secure and profitable assets where it could place the trillions of dollars it manages. Within a couple of years, hundreds of new financial vehicles were created to funnel money into the acquisition of farmland and agricultural operations.

On top of this, the world’s dominant food and agribusiness corporations are increasingly interested in Africa. Markets in the North are saturated, and for companies such as Monsanto, Olam, Yara and Nestlé, Africa is a largely untapped source for new profit. However, Africa’s lands, seeds and food systems remain mainly in the hands of small farmers and pastoralists who feed their families and supply local markets outside of the orbit of corporate global food and agricultural chains. For these companies to grow, peasant agriculture has to be replaced with large scale industrial plantations, and local food systems have to be replaced by transnational corporate food chains, from the seeds to the supermarket shelves.

The result is that small farmers and pastoralists from across Africa are under increasing pressure from governments and companies to give up their lands and water resources. According to a 2010 World Bank report, more than 70% of the large scale agricultural land acquisitions that have occurred in the world over the past decade have been in sub-Saharan Africa, especially in Ethiopia, Sudan and Mozambique.

The Government of Mozambique has unabashedly sought to attract this wave of foreign agricultural investment to its shores, and particularly to the Nacala Corridor in the north of the country. It is partnering with foreign governments and donors, most notably Japan and Brazil, on a massive programme known as ProSavana, which aims to transform 14 million hectares of lands currently cultivated by peasant farmers serving local markets in this area into massive farming operations run by foreign companies to produce cheap agricultural commodities for export.

Mozambique’s National Peasants Union (UNAC) has been leading a campaign to raise awareness about the situation in the Nacala Corridor and to oppose ProSavana. Strong national and international opposition has helped to slow down the project and derail some of its more aggressive land grabbing components.

This does not mean that the government and foreign companies have given up on taking control of the lands and water resources of the Nacala Corridor for large scale agribusiness. In January 2014, high level government officials and businessmen gathered for the presentation of a new development project in the Lúrio River Basin. The development involves a massive farm project along the Lúrio River, at the intersection of the provinces of Niassa, Nampula and Cabo Delgado.

(Slide from a presentation made by the Vale do Rio Lúrio company in January 2014 that has not been made publicly available.)

The $4.2 billion project is being overseen by a company called Companhia de Desenvolvimento do Vale do Rio Lúrio which appears to be run by TurConsult Ltda. TurConsult is owned by Rui Monteiro, an influential businessman in Mozambique’s hotel and tourism industry, and Agricane, a South African company that has provided consulting and management services to many large-scale agribusiness projects in Africa, especially in the sugar industry. It is not clear who is providing finance for the project.

The company’s plan is to construct two hydroelectric dams of 40 MW and 15 MW on the Lúrio River and to create an irrigation scheme covering 160,000 ha, as well as the development of around another 140,000 ha for rain fed agriculture, contract farming and livestock production. The project will focus on the export production of cotton, maize, cereals, and cattle, as well as sugar cane for biofuel ethanol. Preliminary estimates are that upwards of 500,000 people living in the area will be affected by the project. As with ProSavana, the details of this project are being kept hidden from the public, with only anonymous sources citing that it has already been submitted to the Agriculture Ministry for analysis, with expectation that it will be approved at the Council of Ministers, as required by law for projects of this magnitude.

(Slide adapted from a presentation made by Companhia de Desenvolvimento do Vale do Rio Lurio in January 2014.)

The Lúrio River project and ProSavana should not be seen separately. They are part of a broader push, involving the World Bank and the G8’s New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, to open Mozambique up to large scale agribusiness projects.

The G8’s New Alliance was proposed by the US government and signed by some 40 states, international financial institutions and multilateral organisations at the 2009 G8 Summit in L’Aquila, Italy.3 Under the New Alliance, a Framework Agreement was signed with Mozambique and translated into a national public policy, the National Agricultural Investment Plan (PNISA), which has become the blueprint for agricultural development in Mozambique.

PNISA was supposed to address the priorities of Mozambicans by putting the country’s recently formulated Strategy Plan for the Development of the Agricultural Sector (PEDSA) into practice. But through the New Alliance’s Framework Agreement, PNISA has been shaped to mainly address the interests of the major global powers, especially the G8 countries and their respective corporations, under the guise of enhancing Mozambique’s “food and nutrition security”.4

As part of its Framework Agreement, the Mozambican government has already instituted significant reforms to facilitate foreign investment in agribusiness. These include changes to land laws to provide a more flexible allocation of land titles, known as a “right of use and benefit of land” (DUAT), and changes to its seed and fertiliser laws to harmonise them with the Southern African Development Community (SADC). These reforms are important in opening the door to mega agribusiness projects in the Nacala Corridor.5

Another important project encouraging the scramble for lands in the area is the Strategic Plan for the Nacala Corridor. This plan pulls together various major investments in infrastructure, resource extraction, mining and transportation. The map below illustrates the web of investments in mining, agribusiness and transportation in the Nacala Corridor and how these are being connected to other regional transportation corridors through the refurbishment of a 912 km railway line connecting the coal town of Moatiza with the Port of Nacala. The Strategic Plan is funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) – the Japanese company Mitsui is a major investor in the Moatiza coal mine, the railway and the port of Nacala, as well as being a potential investor in agricultural production in the area.6

(Image from PEDEC (Project for Economic Development Strategies for the Nacala Corridor), 2014)

The governments, companies and agencies promoting ProSavana and the other projects in the Nacala Corridor maintain that local farmers will benefit from in the new investment, infrastructure and access to markets. They also say that peasants will not be displaced from their lands to make way for corporate farms.

Yet it is apparent that these projects are already encouraging land grabs in the Nacala Corridor. A number of foreign companies, some in collaboration with local businesses linked to members of Mozambique’s ruling FRELIMO party, have already acquired large areas of farmland in the area and have displaced thousands of peasant families.

The money that is now pouring into agribusiness in the Nacala Corridor is essentially recreating what the local people experienced under Portuguese colonialism. During the colonial period, the administration generously handed out the most fertile lands in the area to Portuguese investors. At times the Mozambicans farming the lands were given small amounts in compensation, but most often they were simply evicted. With independence in 1975, the Portuguese investors fled and the local people returned to their lands to resume farming. In some cases, state companies took over the colonial plantations, but few of these companies were able to maintain production, and communities later reclaimed much of this land as well.

Mozambique’s land law gives communities possession over lands that they have farmed for over 10 years. So these former colonial estates should now have formally reverted to local farmers. But as the area has once again become a target for foreign investment in agriculture, the Mozambican government is colluding with foreign investors to provide them with long term leases over these same lands. The colonial echo is strengthened by the fact that some of the investors are Portuguese families that became rich during the colonial period and are now coming back to Mozambique to set up plantations on the very same lands Portuguese colonialists fled 40 years ago. Few of them have backgrounds in agriculture but many have connections with influential members of the ruling FRELIMO party who help them acquire lands and manage any opposition from local communities.

Often the communities are not even aware of who is grabbing their lands. The companies that take possession of their lands are typically registered in offshore tax havens like Mauritius where the identity of the owners of the companies and the financial records are kept secret. This leaves the Mozambican authorities and affected communities few options to hold these companies to account for their actions or ensure that a minimum amount of their profits stays within the country.

This report, based on available articles, official documents, interviews and field reports, provides detailed information about cases of land grabbing for agricultural production that are already occurring in the Nacala Corridor. It exposes some of the key players involved and shows how foreign investors and their industrial model of agribusiness are wreaking havoc on the local peasant communities and their food systems. These land grabs provide a clear picture of the kind of “investment” Mozambican peasants can expect from ProSavana, the Vale do Rio Lurio project and other initiatives to encourage foreign investment in agribusiness in the country.

Portuguese colonialism is back

Mozaco and the Grupo Espirito Santo

The Mozambique Agricultural Corporation (Mozaco) was established in Mozambique in June 2013 by Rioforte Investments and João Ferreira dos Santos (JFS Holding).

Mozaco says it acquired a DUAT for 2,389 ha near the village of Natuto in the Malema District of Nampula Province in June 2013, where it plans to cultivate soybeans and cotton. The company says its “objective is to expand it up to 20,000 hectares.” It also intends to pursue contract production with 116-170 local farmers on 83 ha, building on a programme developed with the US NGO Technoserve.7

Abandoned house belonging to a family resettled by Mozaco. (Photo: Erico Waga for GRAIN)

The area occupied by Mozaco in Natuto community, Administrative Post Canhunha, Malema District, is an area that in colonial times was occupied by a settler called Morgado, who produced tobacco and cotton on around 1,000 ha. After independence, the government nationalised the lands and installed a state company known as Unidade de Namele, which also operated farms in Ribaué and Laulaua Districts. At its height, the state farm employed 5,000 workers but, by 1989, with the civil war intensifying, it was shut down.

“When the company was closed, workers were owed several years of back wages,” says a 48 year old father of seven from Natuto who worked at the Unidade de Namele farm. “But, as it was impossible to complain because of the level of government repression at the time, many of us just ended up taking small parcels of land from the state farm of between 1-5 hectares, which we cultivate to this day. The company João Fereira dos Santos cultivated a few hectares of Virginia tobacco in the early 1990s, but it abandoned these operations years ago.”8

Under Mozambican land legislation, families who have occupied and farmed lands for more than a decade, such as those farming the lands of the old Unidade de Namele farm, are supposed to be granted DUATs that prohibit any company or state agency from displacing them from the lands unless it is clearly in the public interest, such as for the construction of hospitals, schools or highways.

However, local farmer leaders say that Mozaco has already evicted 1,500 farmers to make way for their operations. The organisation ADECRU calculates that several thousand more will lose their lands if the company is allowed to expand to 20,000 ha.9 And access to land is only part of what’s at stake for the communities: Mozaco no doubt chose the area because it is situated between two important rivers, the Malema and the Nataleia, where 4,500 families live and farm. These families now risk losing access to their lands and the water they need to farm and survive.

During the 2012-3 season, Mozaco cultivated soybeans on around 200 ha. In its second season, the company expanded to 400 ha. Ten families lost their homes in the process, and were paid compensation ranging from 3,000 Mt ($90) to 10,000 Mt S$300). The local church of Santa Lucia was also destroyed and 1,500 farmers had their access to lands in the area taken away, without any compensation and in complete violation of the land law.10

JFS Holding is 100% owned by the Ferreira dos Santos family of Portugal. They have a long history of involvement in agriculture in Mozambique and JFS is today the largest cotton company in the country. The majority owner of Mozaco, however, is Rioforte Investments, with 60% of the company’s shares.11

Rioforte is a Luxembourg-headquartered company that was set up in 2009 to hold the non-financial assets of Grupo Espirito Santo – a Portuguese financial dynasty with deep political connections that is currently embroiled in perhaps the worst economic scandal to ever hit Portugal.

In May 2014, the Banco de Portugal issued an audit questioning the financial stability and transparency of Grupo Espirito Santo’s main company, the Banco Espirito Santo. This was followed in August, by a controversial €4.5 billion rescue of Banco Espirito Santo, with backing from the EU.

As part of the rescue package, Banco Espirito Santo was divided into two banks: one composed of the “good assets” and one composed of the “toxic assets”. These toxic assets consisted mainly of the bank’s investments in the largely unregulated and unaudited companies of the Grupo Espirito Santo.

Investigators in at least six countries – Portugal, Switzerland, Venezuela, Panama, Luxembourg and Angola – are reported to be poring over bank documents, transfers and deals, trying to determine what tricks the Grupo Espirito Santo may have used to keep itself afloat.12

It appears that Rioforte’s assets, including its farms, were dumped in the “toxic” pile. Beyond its Mozaco farming operation in Mozambique, Rioforte owns three soybean and cattle farms in Paraguay covering 135,000 ha through its subsidiary Paraguay Agricultural Corporation (Payco), and three eucalyptus and food crop farms in Brazil covering 32,000 ha through two other subsidiaries.13

It is not clear what will now happen with Mozaco and Rioforte’s other farms. In July 2014, Rioforte Investments, with nearly 3 billion euros in debts, requested protection from its creditors in a Luxembourg court – a request that was granted. But in October 2014, the Commercial Court of Luxembourg reversed its decision and ruled that the BES Group subsidiary was to be liquidated and the resulting funds used to pay off its creditors. Grupo Espírito Santo’s efforts to appeal the decision were denied.

Banco Espirito Santo also owns 49% of Moza Banco, the fourth largest private bank in Mozambique. It is not yet clear what the collapse of the Espirito Santo empire will mean for this bank, which is 51% owned by a consortium of Mozambican investors, led by the former governor of the Bank of Mozambique Prakash Ratilal and in which former President Guebuza is said to have shares.14

Agro Alfa SARL

(Carlos Simbine)

Agro Alfa SARL is a Portuguese owned agricultural machinery company that was nationalised after independence in 1975. It was privatised in 1996 and, with government support, became actively involved in producing industrial components for the Mozal aluminum project, led by BHP, Mitsubishi and South Africa’s IDC. As a result, the company’s revenues soared by 6 times between 2000 and 2011. Mozal presently accounts for around half of all the company’s sales. Another 40% of its revenue comes from contracts with the Ministry of Education.15

Through the privatisation process, Agro Alfa was taken over by the Portuguese businessman José Adelino Nogueira Aires Alves and Jacinto Sabino Mutemba of Mozambique. In 2011, a Chinese company, Tianjin Machinery Import & Export Corporation, and a Cyprus-based company, V&M–Import and Export Agents (Pty) limited, made significant investments in the company’s share capital. José Alves and Jacinto Mutemba now own 26.6% of the company each while V&M owns 26.4% and Tianjin Machinery owns 16%.

Agro Alfa has recently begun to pursue the acquisition of farmlands in the District of Monapo in Nampula province. It first set its sights on a 650 ha former colonial estate that had been occupied by farmers from the village of Nacololo after the country’s independence in 1975. Under Mozambican land laws, those lands should have reverted to the communities, since they had occupied and farmed them for over 10 years, and some of the local farmers had even obtained DUATs covering part of the farm. In 2013, however, Agro Alfa moved in and evicted the farmers, built a fence around the farm, and started planting soybeans.16

Agro Alfa is also pursuing the acquisition of lands in the nearby community of Vida Nova, also in Monapo District. Here too Agro Alfa has been trying to get rights over two former colonial farms of around 2,000 ha. The local farmers had been evicted from these farms during the colonial administration to make way for concessions to Manuel Logrado and Manuel dos Santos, both of Portugal. With independence in 1975, the lands were reclaimed and farmed once again by the local people of Vida Nova and the other surrounding communities of Micolene, Numacopa, and Napepele.

The local people say that Agro Alfa’s claim to the lands is based on an agreement with the chief of a neighbouring village, Merutu, that was signed after a one day meeting he had with the company. They say that this chief has no authority over their ancestral lands and they refuse to recognise the agreement.17

It is not clear if Agro Alfa is acquiring the lands for its own operations or on behalf of other investors, perhaps in partnership. The company is closely connected to at least two other active investment companies in Mozambique: Rural Consult Ltda, which is controlled by Jacinto Mutemba, and Tsemba Sociedade de Desenvolvimento Ltda, which is a partnership between Agro Alfa and influential businessman Carlos António da Conceição Simbine, an important player in the newly established Moza Banco.

Both Rural Consult and Agro Alfa are important shareholders in Banco Unico, alongside Grupo Americo Amorim of Portugal and Intelec of Mozambique (see AgroMoz). And Agro Alfa is said to have high-level connections with the Mozambican political elite, including the son of Armando Guebuza, Mussumbuluko Guebuza.18

One of Agro Alfa’s owners, José Alves, recently joined a new company called the Aldira Group that seeks to develop investment partnerships between companies in Mozambique, Chile and Portugal. Tsemba is listed as one of Aldira’s associated companies, as is a Portuguese company called Suaves Planos Lda.19

Little is known of Suaves Planos other than that it is managed by Carlos Jorge Martins Pereira, a member of the Portuguese national assembly for the PSD party, and Sérgio Nuno Nogueira Aires Alves, an alderman for the CDS-PP party, former president of the Vilaverdense Football Club and commercial director of Moza Banco in Mozambique.20

AgroMoz

(Salimo Abdula, main business partner to former president Guebuza: AgroMoz is reported to be a joint venture between Portugal’s Grupo Américo Amorim of Portugal and Intelec, which Abdula heads.)

The profile of AgroMoz company speaks volumes about the transformation under way in the Nacala Corridor. This company, a partnership involving the richest man in Portugal, the former president of Mozambique and one of the largest land holders in Brazil, has set up operations in the heart of the area’s soybean producing zone.

In 2012, AgroMoz representatives arrived at the administrative post of Lioma, hastily arranged for rights to lands with some government authorities and proceeded to evict more than a thousand peasants from Wakhua village from their lands.21

“The process started in 2012 and, at the time, we were told that the AgroMoz project was to deal with an area estimated at only around 200 hectares to begin with a plot to test the productivity of several seed varieties such as soybeans, corn and beans,” says Agostinho Mocernea, Secretary of the village of Nakarari. But the company quickly expanded.22

In the 2013/2014 season, AgroMoz cultivated 2,100 ha, planting soybeans on 1,700 ha and rice on the other 400 ha. The company says its intention is to reach 12,000 ha.23

The evicted farmers received minimal compensation, ranging from 2,000 to 6,500 Mt ($65-200). One of the farmers, Fernando Quinakhala, a father of five children, says AgroMoz evicted him from a 3.5 ha plot of land that he and his ancestors farmed. The company determined that he was entitled to 6,500 Mt in compensation, but Quinakhala says the compensation was nowhere near what the land is worth to him and his family. “I didn’t take the money because it was quite insignificant,” he says.24

According to another farmer from Wakhua, Mariana Narocori, mother of three children, when the procedure for the granting of land began, she was summoned to participate in a meeting advertised by the local leader, where it was announced that the lands would be given to AgroMoz.25

“I was forced to sign a document whose contents I didn’t have access to, and I received only 4,500 Mt ($155),” says Narocori. “A week later, a bulldozer arrived and demolished my house and destroyed the crops. I was homeless and had to move to the town of Nakarari where I was assigned a plot of land on which I built my house and farm to survive.”26

Her story shows how the displacement of people from Wakhua puts pressure on lands in other areas and creates risks of more land conflicts.

AgroMoz has not fulfilled its promise to the community to construct a clinic and a school. It is, however, already badly affecting the health of the local people. Last season the company commenced aerial spraying of pesticides on its soybean crops.

“In the 2013/2014 agricultural campaign, a group of AgroMoz workers came to tell us that during the spraying, carried out by a small plane, people had to leave their homes as a way to prevent possible harm caused by the chemical,” says Mocernea. After a few days, almost all the residents began to suffer from the flu and their crops died.27

Despite the opposition from local people and the destructive impacts that the company has had so far, the Mozambican government granted AgroMoz a DUAT for 9,000 hectares in Lioma. At the time, Armando Guebuza, one of the investors in AgroMoz, was still president of the country.

AgroMoz is reported to be a joint venture between the Grupo Américo Amorim of Portugal, a holding company of Portugal’s richest man Américo Amorim, and Intelec, which the US embassy has described as “an investment vehicle for President Guebuza”28 The Pinesso Group of Brazil, which operates farms on over 180,000 ha in Brazil and 22,000 ha in Sudan, handles the agricultural operations, but it is not clear if they also own a share in the company.

Information from company registry documents and employee websites suggests that AgroMoz is in fact part of AGS Moçambique, SA., a Mozambican company owned by two Portuguese subsidiaries of Grupo Amorim (Solfim SGPS and Sotomar – Empreendimentos Industriais e Imobiliários, S.A.) and ESF Participaçoes, a subsidiary of ESF Investimentos, which is owned by Intelec and SF Holdings, both of them headed by Guebuza’s main business partner Salimo Abdula.

In the name of God

“When the Missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the Missionaries had the Bible. They taught us how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible.” – Jomo Kenyatta

New Horizons

One of the big ideas for the Nacala Corridor is to turn it into a major production zone for poultry. Various companies and donor projects have been trying, in different ways, to stimulate US-style contract poultry farming and the cultivation of crops for feed, particularly soybeans, within the area.

One of the first such projects was led by the Zimbabwean farmer and missionary Andrew Cunningham, who established a hatchery and feed mill called New Horizons Mozambique in 2005, on 300 ha 15 km west of Nampula City, with support from the US NGO Technoserve and, later, the World Bank’s IFC.29

In 2007, New Horizons Mozambique was acquired by Cazz Services Ltd, which appears to be registered in the British Virgin Islands, and J.K. Trust, an unknown company.30Then, in 2011, US-based New Horizons Africa LLC took a 33% share in the company. New Horizons Africa LLC is owned by the Ron Cameron family of Arkansas, which also owns Mountaire Corp, the sixth-largest poultry company in the US, and is a major funder of the Republican Party.31

New Horizons was not only set up to do business, but also “to see God’s kingdom extend into rural Africa.” The company, through close partnership with the Newfrontiers evangelical church in Zimbabwe, is constructing what it calls a “Community of Fusion” in the area, that integrates poultry operations, religious schools, and churches.

One of the companies that became part of this “community” in 2011 is the Center Fresh Group – the second largest egg producer in the US, with around 25 million hens in their farms at any given moment.32 Through a joint venture called Mozambique Fresh Eggs, with New Horizons and Eggs for Africa, another poultry company within the “community” that is run by the Newfrontiers Church, Center Fresh is building and operating large-scale egg laying operations.

“It’s very good land. But the people just don’t have the knowledge. I think the whole region is going to be the next big agriculture boom,” says Center Fresh Group partner Bruce Dooyema.

Rei do Agro

The backers of New Horizons and its associated companies maintain that their priority is to create opportunities for the local people. Yet, the business plan for Mozambique Fresh Eggs has involved a partnership with another American company to establish a large scale farm in the area to produce feed crops for their poultry.33

As they were considering their investment in Mozambique, the owners of the Center Fresh Group brought in Jes Tarp and Paul Larsen to Nampula to see if they could set up farming operations similar to what the two had done in Ukraine. Tarp and Larsen’s company, Aslan Global Management, had already raised funds in the US to acquire and operate on 10,000 ha in the Ukraine.

Aslan, through its Mozambican subsidiary Rei Do Agro, acquired a DUAT for 2,500 ha,”with a commitment for 10,000 additional hectares”, from the Mozambican government in Gurúè, Zambezia, about 130 km west of the New Horizons poultry operations, as well as a 42,000 ha cattle ranch in Morogoro, Tanzania. Both areas are epicentres of land conflicts between foreign investors and local people.

Aslan Global Management is financed by about 50 Americans who have each invested around $100,000 in the company.34 “There are farmers, there are doctors, there are insurance agents. People from all walks of life,” says Tarp.35

The funds of these “ordinary” Americans are channeled into Aslan Global and Rei do Agro through a complex web of companies located in offshore and tax friendly jurisdictions, from Mauritius to the US State of Delaware.36 These companies are connected to numerous other companies managed by Tarp, Larsen and/or their business associate Quentin Silic that are registered to the same Naples, Florida address.

Tarp is a former evangelical pastor from Denmark and Larsen is a financial manager with a dubious past, who is heavily involved with new church-based financial schemes.

Larsen and Silic were permanently barred from the US securities industry by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) in 2011. This was after Paul Larsen racked up 15 disclosure events in 4 years, involving millions of dollars in claimed losses from his clients.37A disclosure event is a regulatory action, sanction, lawsuit, customer complaint, criminal conviction or termination.

Larsen is said to have preyed on retirees and exploited church connections to gain their trust. In one case, Larsen had a retired couple cash in their retirement savings and invested them in risky alternative investments in which they accumulated substantial losses. Larsen also failed to disclose his own business interest in the companies in which he was investing his clients’ savings.38 One FINRA arbitration claim alleges damages in excess of $2 million relating to the sale of investments in risky funds and companies, including the UKAG Group LLC, which Tarp, Larsen and Silic used to fund their agricultural operations in the Ukraine.39

This has not prevented Rei do Agro from receiving generous funding from European development funding agencies. The company’s 2013/14 farming activities were financed by AgDevCo, a UK-based company that is backed by the UK, Dutch and Norwegian governments, and it also receives support through the EU/IFAD/FAO funded ProParcerias programme.40Mozambique Fresh Eggs and New Horizons are also funded by European development finance agencies, through the African Enterprise Challenge Fund, which is hosted by AGRA and financed by DFID, SIDA, and AusAid.41

“The problem with Africa as a whole, is there is no economy,” says Wallie Hardie, a US farmer who sits on the Aslan Group’s board and consults for Rei do Agro. “The reason there’s no economy is that 20 years ago most of these countries were occupied by Communists, so they really don’t understand the profit model. They really don’t understand about capitalism.”42

Captains of industry

Construction of infrastructure to support large-scale agriculture is under way throughout the Nacala Corridor. (Photo: Erico Waga for GRAIN)

Corredor Agro

Corredor Agro is a Mozambican company controlled by two wealthy European families: the Von Pezold family of Germany and Austria and the Hoegh shipping dynasty of Norway. The company has recently established two farms in Nampula: the 2,200 ha Meserepane Farm, where it cultivates field crops, and the 6,000 ha Metocheria Farm, where it grows bananas. It also runs contract production projects, notably for cassava in a tie-up with the beer company SABMiller.

Workers at the company’s banana plantation went on strike in July 2010 demanding better wages, health care, an end to evictions without just cause, and the expulsion of some members of the board. The Mozambican government eventually fined the company $200,000 for violating Mozambique’s labour laws.

Local communities are also upset about the lands that the company has acquired. The community at Metocheria says consultations over land were badly conducted, with poor information and false promises.

“Matanuska came to deceive and hurt people because it took all of our fertile land, limited access to the Monapo River and now there is much poverty and hunger is getting worse,” says one resident.

“Matanuska fooled us by saying they would raise incomes for the population and improve our living conditions. The man who came to talk with the communities and people handed out biscuits and the community accepted the project in anticipation of employment and other benefits,” says another resident.43

Höegh Autoliners Chairman Leif O. Høegh and Mozambique’s then First Lady, Her Excellency Maria Da Luz Dai Guebuza, October 2011.

Corredor Agro is a joint venture of Rift Valley Holdings, a Mauritius registered company owned by the Von Pezold and Hoegh families that controls 400,000 ha of farmland across Africa, and Matanuska Mauritius Limited, for which there is no public information.44

The company’s Metocheria Farm banana plantation is partly owned by Norfund. Chiquita, one of the world’s largest producers of bananas, was also initially involved in the plantation. A cable from the US Embassy in Mozambique published by Wikileaks reveals that Chiquita decided that it would be better for the company to pursue the expansion of banana production in Africa indirectly through tie-ups with companies rather than by establishing its own plantations.45

“Chiquita made a strategic decision to invest in Africa differently than it has invested in Latin America. The company will not invest directly in land or cultivation, but will partner with a local investor who buys/leases the land,” says the US Embassy cable.

Other documents show that Chiquita oversaw and directed the selection of lands for the banana plantation. However, in 2010, Chiquita decided to pull out of Mozambique, saying that the quality of the bananas were insufficient and that piracy along the African coast made northbound shipments too risky. In January 2014, Matanuska entered into a partnership with US-based Dole Foods that makes Dole the sole distributor of Matanuska’s bananas for Africa, Europe and the Middle East.46

In February 2013, Matanuska reported an outbreak of the Panama disease (Foc-TR4) at its farm, which has since destroyed much of its crop. Scientists are unsure how the banana fungus, which has wreaked havoc on banana plantations and small farms across Asia, arrived at the Matanuska operation. Some speculate that it was brought over by a staff member from the Philippines. This marks the first evidence of this lethal banana disease in Africa and there is a real danger that the disease could now spread to other parts of Mozambique and throughout Africa.47

Hoyo Hoyo

Hoyo Hoyo is a Mozambican company, established by Quifel Resources, a Portuguese conglomerate controlled by the aristocrat and racing car driver Miguel Pais do Amaral. The company has two DUATs: one in Zambezia for 20,000 ha and another in Tete for 8,000 ha.

Hoyo Hoyo commenced operations on the Zambezia lands, on an old state farm in area around the village of Ruace in the district of Gurúè. These lands had been reoccupied by local people shortly after independence in 1975. A survey in 2012 found there were 836 farmers working 1,945 ha of the 3,500 ha Hoyo Hoyo intended to use. Hoyo Hoyo promised the people it would provide compensation and would prepare new lands for resettlement, but this did not materialise.

“I was expelled from my land, which I inherited from my parents, with promises of new land to work on and 680 dollars in compensation. Since I was expelled, one year ago, all I was paid is about a quarter of the amount they promised to pay, and there is no information about the new land to work on,” says Delfina Sidónio, a mother of three, who was evicted from her lands by Hoyo Hoyo.

“Our life was all in that land. That land gave us food and supplies – our life style,” says Ernesto Elias, head of the smallholders’ association forum in Ruace.

“The last harvest crops are now finishing in our storehouses and from the next two months we don’t know how we will survive,” says another smallholder farmer, Fatima José, who lost lands to the company.

The land concessions were allocated to Quifel Natural Resources Moçambique, Lda., a subsidiary of Quifel Natural Resources SA of Portugal, in December 2009.48 But just prior to the Council of Ministers approving the grant of the 10,000 ha land concession to Quifel, 20% of the company was handed over to Lioma Agricultura e Projectos de Gestao, Lda, a company controlled by two people with high level political connections, the Portuguese lawyer Francisco Xavier Vaz de Almada de Avillez and Mozambican businessman Armando Jeque.49

The company floundered for a couple of years. People were evicted from the lands, but hardly any investment was made in production. Then, in January 2012, Quifel Natural Resources SA sold its shares to a company registered in Mauritius called Hoyo One Ltd.50

Hoyo One Ltd appears to be owned by the BXR Group of the Netherlands through its Dutch subsidiary Hoyo Hoyo B.V. BXR, which is owned by the Czech billionaire Zdenek Bakala and “trusts” associated with Credit Suisse bankers, has recently begun to invest heavily in farmland, with over 60,000 ha in Argentina, 12,000 ha in Brazil and 1,000 ha in Malawi.

New farmland financiers

Regional Development Company Ltd

(The Mauritian Minister of Finance, Charles Gaëtan Xavier Luc Duval)

In 2009, the Government of Mauritius established the Regional Development Company Ltd (RDC) to carry out investments in Mozambique, particularly in food production.

Under an initial agreement with the Government of Mozambique, RDC was issued a DUAT for 5,000 ha in Manica province and another DUAT for 18,500 ha in Maputo province, both for 49 years and both granted to the Regional Development Company (Moçambique) Limitada, a Mozambican company established in 2010 and 100% owned by the Mauritius Ministry of Foreign Affairs.51

RDC says it acts as an “interface” between investors and the Government of Mozambique. It identifies investors, negotiates with them and then assigns them lands within its DUAT concessions under an “Assignment of Land Development Agreement”. The investors pay the RDC an annual fee for the lands and services it provides. One of the stipulations of the agreement is that the investors offer 25% of their production on a right of first refusal basis to each of the governments of Mozambique and Mauritius.52

The investors that the RDC has so far engaged with for operations on the lands in Maputo and Manica include:

• British American Investment Co. Ltd of Mauritius, a major shareholder of Nairobi-based Equity Bank, which is pursuing a maize and soybean plantation on 6,000 ha;

• La Compagnie des Trois Amis Ltd of Mauritius, which is partnering with two Indian entities, Supreme Agro Projects Ltd and Prama Consulting Services Ltd, on a 4,000 ha rice plantation,

• Mozpeixe SA of Mozambique, which is owned by Quantum Business Development Ltd and partners from South Africa and Mauritius and is pursuing an aquaculture project;

• Nirmal Seeds Pvt Ltd of India, which is pursuing 2,000 ha for rice seed production; and,

• Sri Rajeswari Oil Traders of India, which is pursuing oilseed production on 4,000ha.

In early 2013, the RDC issued a new call for investors for a 2,456 ha DUAT that its Mozambican subsidiary was issued, this time in the administrative post of Canacué, Monapo District, Nampula Province. These lands were seized from the local people during the Portuguese colonial administration and given to José Nunes da Cruz of Portugal. After independence the lands were resettled by hundreds of local small farmers, as can be seen on the Google satellite map of the RDC’s DUAT area:https://www.google.ca/maps/@-15.0330808,40.1318209,12443m/data=!3m1!1e3)

Information has not been made public as to whether an investor has been allocated the lands in Canacué. The deadline for companies to submit expressions of interest was May 27, 2013.

African Century Agriculture (ACA)

(Jonathan Chenevix-Trench)

ACA is the largest contract farming operator in Gurúè , Zambezia, with 844 soybean contract farmers on 1250 ha. These contract farming operations have been heavily backed by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, through a project called InovAgro. The project involves a 3-year contract farming arrangement with local farmer cooperatives to produce soybeans for ACA’s poultry farm (known as King Frango), under which the Swiss provide microfinance and cover 50% of the costs of machinery and 70% of the operating costs (2nd year 50%, 3rd year 30%).

But ACA has its sights set on more than contract farming. In the same area oef Gurúè, it acquired a 1,000 ha DUAT and has started large-scale farming. Meanwhile, in Lichinga, it received an even bigger 3,800 ha DUAT on the lands of a former state farm.

Its Lichinga operations are handled through a joint venture company called African Century Matama Limitada (AC Matama) that is 20% owned by the Fundaçao Malonda – a foundation owned by the Government of Mozambique and the Swedish International Development Agency.53 AC Matama’s support from European development agencies also comes through a $500,000 tranche of financing in 2014 from AgDevCo, a UK-based company that is supported by the UK, Dutch and Norwegian governments.

The Lichinga farm was established in the post-independence period with Chinese development assistance, but was abandoned during the civil war, and the lands were reoccupied by local farmers. Conflicts which erupted in the 1990s when the government tried unsuccessfully to move these farmers out to make way for South African investors persist today in connection with AC Matama’s operations.54

Sérgio Gouveia, Director of AC Matama, admits that because of unresolved problems with DUATs the “war” with peasants over land tenure continues at the Lichinga operation.55

African Century Agriculture Ltd is registered in Mauritius and owned by African Century Group – a company registered in Mauritius and operating out of London. Its owners are not known. The African Century Group was established by Jonathan Chenevix-Trench a former chairman of Morgan Stanley, one of the world’s largest financial companies. It has been investing heavily in African banks, food industries, infrastructure and real estate, with support from Norfund. Another of its subsidiaries, African Century Foods Ltd of Mauritius, owns Frango King Limitada, one of Mozambique’s largest industrial poultry producers. The company intends to “develop into the leading white protein agri-business in Sub-Saharan Africa, capturing as much of the value-chain as possible from farm to fork.”

Chenevix-Trench is also a member of the board of the Mozambican company Machangulo SA, which was established to construct a luxury resort on 80,000 ha of land on the Machangulo peninsula with financial backing from Prince Willem Alexandre of the Netherlands.56 The Crown Prince backed out of his investment in 2012 after media reports of corruption and the violent repression of local fisherman and villagers protesting against the project.57

“I passionately believe in the need to get red-blooded capitalism into Africa,” says Chenevix-Trench.

Trigon Mozagri

(Joakim Johan Helenius)

Trigon Capital is a company based in Estonia that is controlled by Finnish businessman Joakim Johan Helenius and the Finnish private equity firm Thominvest Oy.58 Its subsidiary Trigon Agri A/S, based in Denmark, was established to raise funds for the acquisition of farms in Eastern Europe. By 2014, it had amassed farmland holdings of around 170,000 ha in the Ukraine and Russia, as well as dairy farms in Estonia.

In 2013, Trigon Capital launched a new company in Estonia, Trigon Mozagri Spv to invest in farming operations in Mozambique with Helenius and Jan Peter Ingman as directors.59

“These days you are more likely to get rich quick in Africa than in Estonia,” says Helenius.60

His company’s first acquisition was Mocotex LLC, a cotton company with farming operations in the Mocuba District of Zambezia Province. Trigon claims that Mocotex has a 1000 ha commercial farm and overall access to 18,800 ha of “prime arable land” that is part of a former state-owned farm.

According to a Trigon brochure, Trigon and its investors acquired 51% of Mocotex, with the other 49% remaining with its South African owners.

Mocotex was established in 1997 by the South African government’s Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) and a mysterious company called Caravel – Development International Projects Inc (Caravel Development). In December 2009, IDC sold its 75% stake in Mocotex for $10,000, with 25% going to Caravel and 50% going to another mysterious company called Aristo Group Trading. Then, in April 2013, the Aristo Group sold 20% of its shares to the South African, Graham Hewlett, who, along with his brother John Hewlett, have a long history of involvement in corporate farming in Mozambique.61 Graham Hewlett is now managing the Mocotex operations for Trigon.

There are no records indicating who the owners of Caravel Development and Aristo Group Trading are.62

A February 15, 2015, op-ed on Venezuela by Enrique Krauze seems to have slipped by the New York Times‘ factcheckers.

Krauze’s thesis (a tired one, but very popular with Venezuelan and Cuban right-wingers in South Florida) is that Venezuela has not only followed “the Cuban model,” but has recently outdone Cuba in moving Venezuela further along a socialist path even as Cuba enacts economic reforms. This idea is not merely an oversimplification–as it might appear to the casual observer of Latin American politics–but is largely misleading. To bolster his case, Krauze–a prominent Mexican writer and publisher–includes numerous false statements and errors, which should have been caught by the Times‘ factcheckers.

Krauze begins by claiming that the Venezuelan government, first under President Hugo Chávez and then his successor Nicolás Maduro, has taken control over the media. Chávez “accumulated control over the organs of government and over much of the information media: radio, television and the press,” we are told, and then Maduro “took over the rest of Venezuelan television.”

A simple factcheck shows this to be false. The majority of media outlets in Venezuela–including television–continue to be privately owned; further, the private TV audience dwarfs the number of viewers watching state TV. A 2010 study of Venezuelan television found that

as of September 2010, Venezuelan state TV channels had just a 5.4 percent audience share. Of the other 94.6 percent of the audience, 61.4 percent were watching privately owned television channels, and 33.1 percent were watching paid TV.

A 2013 Carter Center report found that Venezuela’s private TV outlets had about 74 percent of the audience share for coverage of “recent key newsworthy events.”

The media landscape has changed little since. National opposition station Globovisión was sold in 2013, but to a private party; it was not “taken over” by the government. And opposition voices continue to appear on national TV outlets–even the ones that are often described as “pro-government”–free to make the harshest criticisms of the government and to encourage people to protest, as several prominent opposition figures did last year during the violent street blockades and demonstrations aimed at forcing Maduro to step down.

Globovisión, for example, aired interviews–following its change in ownership–with opposition leader María Corina Machado and Juan Guaido of Leopoldo López’s Voluntad Popular party; during her interview, Machado argued that people have the right to overthrow the democratically elected government. And many other Venezuelan networks also frequently broadcast opposition voices.

In fact, the New York Times issued a correction last year after reporting that Globovisión was “the only television station that regularly broadcast voices critical of the government.” It’s a shame that the same standards for accuracy in the Times‘ news section apparently do not apply to the opinion page.

Krauze then says that Maduro “confronted” those “protesting students with arrests and gunfire,” and that “many were killed” as, supposedly, Maduro “suppressed demonstrations by the opposition.” A quick review of events last year–as covered by the New York Times, among others–reveals a wholly different story.

First, most of those killed were either pro-government or were bystanders. Many of those killed (at least 11,according to David Smilde of the Venezuelan Politics and Human Rights blog, who in turn cites the opposition paper El Universal) were National Guard officers, police or pro-government counter-protesters. A number of bystanders and motorists (at least 10) were also killed as a result of the protesters’ violent tactics, which included stringing barbed wire across the streets in order to decapitate Chavista motorcyclists. (Two died this way.) Demonstrators fired on Guard and police officers, killing at least seven.

It is true that some security forces fired on demonstrators, killing at least three. Yet as over a dozen members of Congress noted in a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, the Maduro government arrested some 20 security state agents in connection with these incidents. This was not a case of government-ordered crackdown on protests; if it were, the opposition’s street blockades might have been cleared in days–instead, they remained for weeks–and motorists and cyclists might have been saved from decapitation, crashing into barricades, or getting shot when they got out of their stopped cars.

Having attempted to present the Venezuelan government as some sort of dictatorial regime where freedom of press and assembly are crushed, Krauze goes on to present a series of flawed statements about Venezuela’s economic relationship with Cuba.

First, Krauze writes that “Venezuela absorbs 45 percent of Cuba’s trade deficit.” Official data on Venezuela/Cuba trade is opaque, so it is unclear where Krauze is getting his figure. In terms of its overall trade, Cuba does not have a trade deficit, but a small trade surplus ($697 million USD, according to the WTO). So this statement is false.

Krauze states, “Chávez-era economic agreements with Cuba were all highly favorable to the island nation.” But that the agreements are favorable to Cuba does not preclude them from being favorable to Venezuela as well. They are complementary exchanges: Venezuela has a surfeit of oil yet lacks human capital in some sectors. It could be the case that what Venezuela receives is of a lesser value than what it sends, but unfortunately there is a paucity of information to prove this either way.

What is certain is that the services exported to Venezuela extend far beyond the services of 40,000 Cuban medical professionals. Venezuela sends hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans to Cuba for various operations (including Operación Milagro, which extends eye treatments to people in numerous Latin American countries at the joint cost of Venezuela and Cuba). Thousands of Venezuelans have been given scholarships, particularly for the study of medicine. Cuba also exports substantial quantities of pharmaceuticals to Venezuela. It also sends educators and other professionals.

In further arguing that Venezuela is somehow putting Cuba’s interests before its own, Krauze claims, “The expenses for the Missions…involved Venezuelan payments of about $5.5 billion annually, of which the Cuban regime retained 95 percent, the rest going toward paying the doctors.” But this ignores that Cuba provides other services to Venezuela. It also ignores the difficulties in comparing salaries with Cuba, given the vast subsidies for goods that exist in the Cuban economy. The salaries for medics on these foreign postings are vastly larger than normal public sector salaries in Cuba.

Krauze also writes that “thousands” of Cuban doctors that Venezuela is paying for “have defected to other countries in recent years.” Despite US government efforts to actively encourage such defections, which the New York Times has condemned, the overall defection rate of Cuban medics on overseas missions is less than 2 percent (as of 2011, using US figures on the number of defectors and Cuban figures for the number of medics on overseas missions). The amount of defections  in Venezuela from 2006-11 was 824, which works out to a rate of about 1.1 percent–slightly less than the overall rate.

Krauze claims: “Oil was supplied at such low prices that Cuba could turn around and refine and export some of it at a profit.” This makes something normal sound very conspiratorial–those two-faced Cubans, getting oil on the cheap from Venezuela then selling it out the back door! Actually, Venezuela has invested heavily in Cuba’s downstream capabilities–renovating a moribund Soviet-era refinery in Cienfuegos, Cuba.

Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA, owns a 49 percent stake in the refinery and therefore shares in its proceeds. The aim of the investment project was to create a refinery that could help satisfy Cuba’s domestic requirements but also turn Cuba into a hub for exports of refined products to the Caribbean. Thus it guarantees purchases of Venezuelan oil and allows Venezuela to better access Caribbean markets (i.e. it has a similar justification to Venezuela’s ownership and investments in several US refineries).

Krauze writes, “Mr. Maduro’s government insists that the crisis is an ‘economic war’ conducted by the right and refuses to alter the nation’s currency controls.” Krauze may have missed the news last week, but the Times‘ fact-checkers shouldn’t have: As reported by the Times, the Venezuelan government announced “an easing of the tightly controlled exchange rates that critics say have fed the nation’s economic crisis.”

Maduro’s claim of “economic war”? While there’s little doubt that most of Venezuela’s economic woes stem from its problematic exchange rate regime, the government’s recent documented busts of massive hoarding of essential items by private companies should not be dismissed out of hand, either.

Perhaps Krauze wouldn’t have felt he needed to stretch the truth so far–and present so many inaccurate claims–if his thesis weren’t so flawed. Chávez and Maduro have never claimed that they wanted to bring the Cuban model to Venezuela; this is a fantasy of the Venezuelan right. To the contrary, after announcing his plan for “Socialism for the 21st Century,” Chávez said, “Some are saying that we want to copy the Cuban model. No…. It would be a very serious mistake for Venezuela to copy a model like the Cuban, or any other.”

For his part, Raúl Castro has also expressed support for Latin American countries pursuing their own respective economic and political choices: “Each [leader] is learning their own identity and finding their own identity within the continent. We aren’t the godfathers and they aren’t the heirs,” he told Oliver Stone in the 2010 documentary South of the Border.

The fact is, whether Krauze wants to admit it or not, Venezuela is a democracy, and the Maduro government was democratically elected–as were the Chavista municipal officials who won a majority of elections half a year after Maduro was elected, in a stunning defeat for the opposition. Krauze doesn’t have to like the current Venezuelan government, but he shouldn’t confuse it with an unelected one, as in Cuba.

Nor should he be so easily confused by the Venezuelan economic system–where the private sector enjoyed strong growth in the years after Chávez took office–versus the Cuban model of socialism. More worrying is that the New York Times opinion page would be so baffled by these important differences.

Steve Ellner has taught economic history at the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela since 1977. His most recent book is his edited Latin America’s Radical Left: Challenges and Complexities of Political Power in the Twenty-First Century (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).

You can reach the New York Times op-ed page at [email protected] (Twitter: @NYTOpinion). Please remember that respectful communication is most effective.

Both before and after Crimea left Ukraine and joined Russia in a public referendum on 16 March 2014, the Gallup Organization polled Crimeans on behalf of the U.S. Government, and found them to be extremely pro-Russian and anti-American, and also anti-Ukrainian. (Neither poll was subsequently publicized, because the results of each were the opposite of what the sponsor had wished.) Both polls were done on behalf of the U.S. Government, in order to find Crimeans’ attitudes toward the United States and toward Russia, and also toward Ukraine, not only before but also after the planned U.S. coup in Ukraine, which occurred in February 2014 but was actually kicked off on 20 November 2013, the day before Ukraine’s democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych publicly announced that Ukraine had received a better economic offer from Russia’s Eurasian Economic Community than from America’s European Union. (The EEC subsequently became the Eurasian Economic Union, now that it was clear that Ukraine was going with the EU.) That decision by Yanukovych in favor of the EEC was mistakenly thought by him to be merely an economic one, and he didn’t know the extent to which the U.S. Government had set up an operation to overthrow him if he didn’t go along with the EU’s offer. (If some of these basic historical facts don’t come through from merely the wikipedia articles alone, that’s because the CIA is among the organizations that edit wikipedia articles, and so wikipedia is unwittingly a political propaganda vehicle. It is especially used for propaganda by the CIA and FBI.)

More recently, a poll of Crimeans was issued on 4 February 2015, by the polling organization GfK, and paid for this time by the pro-American-Government Canadian Government, via its Canada Fund for Local Initiatives, and via Free Crimea, which is itself funded by the latter organization. However, the Canadian Government got no better news than the U.S. Government had gotten: 82% of Crimeans “Fully endorse” Crimea’s having become part of Russia (of which it had been part between 1783 and 1954, and which the public there had never wanted to leave); 11% “Mostly endorse” it; 2% “Mostly disapprove”; 3% “Don’t know”; and only 2% “Fully disapprove.” Or, to put it simply: 93% approve; 3% don’t know, and 4% disapprove. This poll was publicly issued only in the polling organization’s own report, which was made available only in Russian (the Ukrainian Government’s main language for international business) and therefore not comprehensible to English-speakers. It was titled, “СОЦИАЛЬНО-ПОЛИТИЧЕСКИЕ НАСТРОЕНИЯ ЖИТЕЛЕЙ КРЫМА Исследование проведенное GfK Ukraine по заказу компании” or “SOCIO-POLITICAL SENTIMENTS IN CRIMEA: Research conducted by GfK Ukraine on the order of the company.” On February 10th, an English-language article reported and summarized the poll’s findings.

During the 16 March 2014 public referendum in Crimea, 96% voted to rejoin Russia. One question on the post-referendum, April 2014, U.S.-sponsored Gallup poll in Crimea, was headlined, “Perceived Legitimacy of March 16Crimean Referendum” (on page 28 of the poll-report), and 82.8% of Crimeans agreed with the statement, “The results of the referendum on Crimea’s status likely reflect the views of most people here.” 6.7% disagreed. According to the newer poll (4 February 2015), 96% were for annexation to Russia, and 4% were opposed, which happens to be exactly what the 16 March 2014 referendum had actually found to be the case. But, continuing now with the description of the April 2014 Gallup poll: its “Views of Foreign Parties’ Role in the Crisis — Crimea” (p. 25), showed 76.2% of Crimeans saying that the role of the U.S. was “Mostly negative,” and 2.8% saying the U.S. role was “Mostly positive”; while Crimeans’ attitudes towards Russia were the exact opposite: 71.3% said Russia’s role was “Mostly positive,” and 4.0% said it was “Mostly negative.”

An accurate reflection of the reason why Crimeans, during the lead-up to the referendum, were appalled by America’s extremely violent and bloody takeover of the Ukrainian Government (as the EU itself had confirmed), was given on Crimean television shortly before the referendum, when a former criminal prosecutor in the Ukrainian Government, who lived and worked in Kiev and saw with her own eyes much of the violence but was not personally involved in the events, quit her office, and got in her car and drove back to her childhood home in Crimea, now unemployed, because she was so revulsed at what had happened to her country. On this call-in show, which was watched by many Ukrainians, she explained why she could no longer, as a lawyer and a supporter of the Ukrainian Constitution, support the Ukrainain Government — that it was now an illegal Government. She closed her opening statement, just before taking the calls from people over the phone, by saying, “Despite that our ‘great politicians’ who seized power by bloodshed, are now claiming that we don’t have the right to decide our own future — citizens of Crimea, you have every right in the world. Nobody is allowed to ururp power.” She subsequently became a criminal prosecutor in the new Crimean government, enforcing now the Russian Constitution, in Crimea.

However, anyone who says that Russia “seized Crimea,” is clearly lying or else is fooled by people who are.

Here, then, are highlights from a typical Western ‘news’ report about Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, in the issue of TIME magazine (December 10th online, December 22nd issue on newsstands), headlining “Vladimir Putin, The Imperialist,” in which Putin was a “runner-up” as the “Person of the Year” — a year when, actually, Obama overthrew Ukraine’s Government and replaced it with one run by racist-fascist (or nazi) haters of Russia, who were setting up to yank the remaining years on Russia’s lease of its crucial Black Sea Naval Base in Crimea, and the Crimeans were imminently fearing a Ukrainian invasion (the author was Simon Shuster):

His decision in March to invade and then annex the region of Crimea from Ukraine marked the first growth of Russia’s dominions since the fall of the Soviet Union. …

With the conquest of Crimea, a derelict peninsula about the size of Massachusetts, Putin at last restored a scrap of Russia’s honor, says Gorbachev, by “acting on his own,” unbound by the constraints of U.S. supremacy and the table manners of international law. …

That name [Crimea], redolent with the history of Europe’s 19th century wars, has become a byword in Russia for national revival, a taste of the imperial glory that a generation of Russians have long hungered for. …

Already expelled from the G-8 club of wealthy nations in March after the annexation of Crimea, Putin was further ostracized at the G-20 summit. …

So, was Putin’s taste of empire worth the cost to Russian prosperity? For those who carry the grudges of Russian history, it was. …

Russia now seeks to position itself as an alternative to the Western model of liberal democracy—and it’s had some success. Right-wing politicians in France and the U.K., not to mention Central and Eastern Europe, are not shy about declaring their admiration for Putin. The ultraconservative government of Hungary, a member of NATO and the European Union, has announced its intention to develop as an “illiberal state” modeled on Russia, cracking down harshly on civil society. …

Putin will face challenges of his own as the West begins to rally against his aggressiveness. …

Make no mistake, though: Russians also remember that their country once dominated a sixth of the earth’s landmass and stood as a global player second to none. That is the role Putin seeks to regain. …

Nothing was said about the Black Sea fleet, nor about any strategic issue. Nothing was provided in order to help readers understand what was happening. Readers’ Cold-War buttons were being pushed; that is all. America’s aristocracy despises its public, whom they merely manipulate and control.

Here is an article about (and linking to) U.S. President Barack Obama’s “National Security Strategy 2015,” in which Obama uses the term “aggression” 18 times, 17 of them referring to Russia. Obama never once cites a reason for appying that term; for example, unlike Simon Shuster, he doesn’t even so much as mention “Crimea.”

And, here is the best video that has yet been issued on Obama’s February 2014 coup, the coup that installed the Ukrainian regime that has been carrying out the ethnic cleansing operation, which Ukraine calls their ‘Anti Terrorist Operation,’ in the Donbass region, though it’s really the anti-resident operation there.

That fate of ethnic cleansing or local genocide — the fate which befell the residents of Ukraine’s Donbass region,the region that’s shown in dark purple in this election-map for the man whom Obama overthrew in February 2014 and which is the area that voted 90% for him — is the fate that Crimeans were protected from when they rejoined Russia.

Russia’s using its troops, who were permanently stationed in Crimea already and didn’t need to ‘invade’ anything in order to protect the residents in Crimea so that they could hold their referendum in peace, is what blocked the seizure of Crimea by the newly installed Ukrainian regime.

The invader was the United States, in its typically sneaky post-1950 way: a coup d’etat. What Dwight Eisenhower’s, Allen Dulles’s, and Kermit Roosevelt’s CIA operation had done to Iran in 1953, Barack Obama’s and Victoria Nuland’s operation did to Ukraine in 2014: a violent coup installing a far-right government — in Obama’s case, even a nazi government (and see this and this and this).

That — and the firebombings and other horrors that Washington’s Brookings Institution think tank want U.S. taxpayers to finance yet more of in Donbass — is what Russia protected Crimeans from.

The aggressor here is not Vladimir Putin; it is Barack Obama. All honest news media (such as here and here and here and here and here and here and here) are reporting that. For economic analysis and reporting on these and other events, here is an excellent general news source. (It autotranslates if viewed in google’s chrome browser.) As for dishonest ‘news’ media, such as TIME  and Fox ‘News,’ they serve a different purpose than truth; so, none of them will be listed here, where the only interest is truth.

PS: For further insights into the lying that is prevalent in the West regarding Crimea, Ukraine, and Russia, see this remarkably honest testimimony to the U.K. House of Lords’ 20 February 2015 Committee report, “The EU and Russia: before and beyond the crisis in Ukraine,” linked there on p. 108 as “RUS0012” and titled “Irina Kirillova MBE – Written evidence,” in which that Cambridge university professor describes the profound disappointment of ordinary people she had encountered in Russia, as they saw the misrepresentations in the West regarding the situations in Russia, Ukraine and Crimea. Outside of the English-speaking world, and especially in the regions that are not controlled by the U.S., the fakery of ‘journalism’ in the English-speaking world is becoming shockingly more evident than it formerly was. As usual, however, the House of Lords’ final report ignored these realities; and, throughout, it starts with the assumption that Russia is aggressive and that the West is merely responding to that. This professor’s written testimony was thus ignored. Most of the other individuals in the “Appendix 2: List of Witnesses” were the Anglo-aristocracy’s usual Russia-haters, such as Ian Bond, Director of Foreign Policy, Center for European Reform, saying that, “The most important thing is that the EU, as a rules-based organisation, should follow a rules-based approach to Russia,” as if that would be something alien to Russians. This type of bigoted condescenscion was rife throughout the report. If those people are as blind to evidence and science as they put themselves forth as being, they are dangerous in any governmental role; and to call the U.K. a ‘democracy’ is questionable, at best. Britain is an aristocracy, not a democracy. And the U.S. is at least as bad. In regards to the relationships between Russia, Ukraine, and Crimea, the West might be as bad as Ukraine, and should just quit the entire matter and try to start over from scratch, which means to let the nazis whom Obama placed into power there sink, not provide them with more weapons. Or, if more weapons are provided to them, then the rest of the West should issue sanctions against any nation that does that. Under liars and fools the West is drifting towards a totally unwarranted nuclear conflict with Russia.

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.

The Kiev regime is desperate. It is involved in conscripting Ukrainian children adopted or fostered by parents in foreign countries. These children are now being drafted. 

Here is an article on this, roughly translated from a newspaper, El Heraldo, in the Aragon region of Spain:

http://www.heraldo.es/noticias/aragon/2015/02/18/ucrania_reclama_regreso_los_jovenes_acogidos_aragon_para_militarizarlos_340568_300.html

“The Ukrainian government demands the return of youths in foster care in Aragon to join the military” 

Efe. Huesca | Updated 18/2/2015 at 15:59   

The goal is that after a period of instruction, they’re introduced into the conflict zone.

Young Ukrainians, who are in foster families in Aragon, are being claimed by the Government of Ukraine to return to their country to be introduced into the conflict zone, according to the president of the Association of Child Welfare of Aragon, Eduardo Puente. The purpose of this call-up is to perform military service in Ukraine. After a month of military training, they’re sent into the war zone, say Eduardo Puente, and Angelines, the latter being the foster mother of Tola, a youth who has been called from Ukraine to join the army soon. Puente explained that his association, which coordinates a program of Ukrainian children who are welcomed in Aragonese families during summers and the holidays, knows five cases in the community, where young people are in this difficult situation, but is convinced that “many more” exist.

A normal case

A typical case is this of Tola, a young Ukrainian 18 years old who studied with an Aragonese host family for six years and whose biological parents informed him by phone a few weeks ago from Ukraine after receiving a letter ordering him to join the war.

Angelines, who is the foster mother of Tola, moved immediately to try to prevent his return to Ukraine. According to her, the Foreign Ministry welcomed to Spanish forces young Ukrainians studying in Spain, so that they will return to their country of origin during holiday periods. This woman has made the young man welcomed by the Spanish Police to become a figure of international protection which is renewed every six months and allowed to continue in Spain without returning to Ukraine on vacation, but considers this protection “insufficient.” Angelines, the biological mother of two children, ensures that nothing be communicated to him of his military call-up being passed along to him from his parents, because Tola was “very nervous” the moment he first heard of the call-up to return to his village, where, he says, many people his age have already died because of the conflict. The woman does not want Tola to return to Ukraine to perish in the conflict, and has appealed to the Spanish state to be granted Spanish nationality.

He has stated that he knows the case of another young Ukrainian hosted in Aragon, J., 16 years old, afraid of being called also to return to his country once he reaches draft age. As he explained, she and the foster mother of J. are trying to get him Spanish nationality to avoid all these problems. Tola began to be hosted at holiday periods by Angelines when age 9 and J. at 8 with another family, also Aragonese. The situation of conflict made the two families take turns to go on holiday to Ukraine and to rent an apartment to get the lowest J., did not have to spend the summer at the orphanage and live situations danger. Their adoption has not been possible confesses Angelines because the Ukrainian authorities do not provide the paperwork to make or care about the plight of children living in orphanages. Now, Angelines sees everyday news with Tola and reads daily to learn of the situation in Ukraine, although convinced that much of the violence that occurs in the country is not known abroad. She ensures that Tola feels Spanish and that trips made to Ukraine are only to see his biological family, never with the intention of staying more than a short period of time. According Angelines, Tola is a good student, perfectly integrated with their peers, but J., due to his more complicated origin, has difficulties with his studies and needs further support.

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.

by Sean Sweeney

During its first days in office, Syriza has taken actions that suggest it is willing to confront the EU’s neoliberal approach to energy and to embark on a new course. New Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has also stated his government will restore collective bargaining agreements and stop 300,000 planned layoffs.

Employees of the Public Power Corparation (PPC) protest against the company’s privitazation [Photo: Aggeliki Koronaiou]

The Syriza government has said it will stop the proposed sell off of the Public Power Corporation (PPC) which is 51 per cent publicly owned but had been targeted for full-on privatization in 2016. “We will halt immediately any privatization of PPC,” Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis told Greek television a few hours before officially taking over his portfolio. “There will be a new PPC which will help considerably the restoration of the country’s productive activities,” he said. Lafanzis also announced that the mostly state-run gas company, DEPA, will also not be privatized. Both the PPC and DEPA were due to be privatized under the conditions imposed by the Troika.

The actions of the new government suggest that Syriza is ready to take steps to implement key aspects of the platform adopted at its first Congress in July 2013. Syriza is committed to “a new paradigm of social, environmental and economic development” and for the “ecological transformation of the economy.” Syriza says it will pursue the “practice of democratic planning and social control on all levels of central and local government.” In its election manifesto, Syriza declared it was for “Ecological transformation in development of energy production.”

Breaking with the EU’s Neoliberal Energy Policy

Syriza’s program and manifesto, and its early actions to halt the further privatization of power generation and gas, suggest that the EU’s neoliberal approach to energy transition and climate protection is being challenged in a way that could have implications beyond the EU itself. Nevertheless, Greece is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. Therefore halting privatization should be seen as a crucial first step in what will be a longer journey toward a new energy system and ecological transformation.

The election of Syriza comes at a time when the EU’s neoliberal approach to energy is in serious trouble. This approach was based on electricity market liberalization – ostensibly to promote ‘choice’ and ‘efficiency’ that was pursued via the Internal Market in Energy directive passed down to member states in 1996. The 2009 EU climate Directive also mandates a 20 per cent reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, a 20 per cent share of renewable energy sources, and a 20 per cent savings in energy consumption by the year 2020 (based on 2005 levels). These are the so-called “20-20-20” targets. The EU has therefore maintained that liberalization and the scaling up of renewable energy go hand in hand. This is based on the groundless belief that only the private sector can drive renewable energy.

The liberalization of Greece’s electricity sector has stretched over a 14-year period. In 2001 Greece passed a law allowing any company to produce electricity, thus ending the PPC’s monopoly. In 2007 individual consumers were gradually granted full “rights” to choose their energy supplier. Renewable energy companies were given special access to distribution and transmission systems. New feed-in tariffs (FiTs) were defined and introduced in 2007 and permits for offshore wind parks became possible. A modest amount of renewable energy was developed as a result of these measures, with the benefits going mainly to private companies and land owners.

But in June 2013 Greece (along with Spain, Italy and others) announced a huge cut (44.7 per cent) in the FiT and the rush to solar and wind power in Greece ground to a halt. This has been the pattern across most of the EU as member states sought to control the mounting costs of the FiT programs. The main message here is that it takes a large amount of liberalization and, paradoxically, subsidies and government intervention, to generate a relatively modest amount of renewable energy. Importantly, renewable energy has made real headway in Germany as a result of an expansion of municipal control and public investment. (But even here coal generated 60 per cent more electrical power than renewable sources in 2014). In recent years many municipalities have decided to reclaim their local grids from private corporations. Germany has thus seen a major expansion of direct municipal provision of energy services. Those who refer to Germany’s successes in advancing renewable energy often appear unaware of, or perhaps reluctant to acknowledge, the role of public authorities in challenging privatization and intervening on behalf of the broader public. The EU’s dual priorities of energy market liberalization and climate protection are in fact incompatible with each other. Liberalization has led to an oligarchic situation where just five energy companies are dominant (EDF, RWE, EOn, GDF Suez and ENEL), consumer choice is mostly fictitious, and renewable energy companies rely on power purchasing agreements, ‘capacity mechanisms,’ and subsidies to survive.

Dealing with Fossil Fuel Dependence

The failure of EU policy makes it clear that a new course is needed, and Syriza can show ‘another energy is possible’ in the EU and beyond. But Greece faces some particularly difficult challenges. Greece relies on domestic lignite (brown coal) for 70 per cent of its electrical power and imports large volumes of gas from Russia, Turkey and Algeria. However, the country enjoys an average of 300 days of sunshine per year and has considerable wind power and geothermal potential. Syriza will therefore inherit a situation where what is public (domestic lignite, overseen by the PPC) is environmentally destructive and what is presently private – renewable energy – will be needed in large volumes in order for Syriza to reduce its import bill and also develop renewable energy in accordance with its political platform.

Some may conclude (including leaders and supporters of Syriza) that, when seen in the light of the many immediate challenges facing the new government, fossil fuel dependency is a problem that can be addressed over the longer term. Greece has cheap and abundant supplies of lignite coal, and this resource can not go unused – even though the ecological effects of lignite use are widely acknowledged. A typical power station using lignite emits 37 per cent more carbon dioxide per unit of power output than a power station using black coal. Lignite use has made a major contribution to Greece’s disproportionately large contribution to global warming and negatively impacts public health. Greece’s air pollution is higher than the OECD average, and the air pollution levels in Athens, exacerbated by the increase in the burning of wood, are today 15 times higher than the EU’s alert level.

Energy Planning is the Key to Ecological Transformation

Changing a country’s energy system may be a decades-long process, but there is no reason why the process cannot begin immediately. The just released TUED Working Paper, Energy Democracy in Greece: Syriza’s Program and the Transition to Renewable Power identifies four broad and overlapping political goals that can serve as reference points for Syriza as it shapes its energy and climate policy. These are:

1. Establish control over the country’s energy future (energy self determination)
2. Secure a broad-based and inclusive process for developing and implementing a national energy transition plan
3. Reduce fossil fuel dependency
4. Scale up publicly-owned renewable energy

By halting the privatization of the PPC and DEPA, Syriza has already gone some way toward reaching the first goal. This is a hugely important first step, but Syriza must also strive to develop publicly owned and democratically managed renewable power, and generate domestic solar and wind supply chains. This is discussed below, and is explained in more detail in the TUED working paper Energy Democracy in Greece.

Goal 2: Securing a Broad-Based and Inclusive Process

Syriza can convene a broad-based and inclusive process for both developing and implementing a national energy transition plan. Preliminary proposals for the fossil-to-renewables transition can be offered as a starting point for a national debate and discussion around broad goals. The transition to a new renewables-based energy system will present many technical as well as political challenges, but decisions can be made based on the best available research and a thorough review of all of the available options.

The short term benefits of a transition to renewable energy, such as cleaner air, improved public health, lower costs for energy in less than a decade, reduced dependence on fuels from abroad, significant job creation, etc., need to be highlighted alongside the importance of long-term climate stability and a sustainable political economy. The process must attempt to show how such a transition plan could strengthen community-based control and constructive autonomy.

Unions, small businesses presently engaged in renewable power, representatives of social movements and progressive research institutions, might constitute the core of a commission of representative groups convened to develop the plan. Syriza supporters around the world with relevant expertise can also be engaged in the process.

Engaging the union GENOP-DEH in the energy transition and the restructuring of the PPC are clearly important steps, as concerns about jobs will be uppermost. The workers in the industry can be integrated into the new ownership and oversight structures. They can be given a large degree of responsibility for operating and maintaining the systems, something they do every day. Sections of middle management can also be constructively engaged.

Goal 3. Reducing Fossil Fuel Dependency

Greece has the potential to produce enough renewable power to meet its needs from within its own borders, and do so in a way that will generate both jobs and savings.

As noted above, Greece is today very dependent on fossil fuels both domestic (lignite or brown coal) and foreign (oil and gas). Its renewables sector is small and presently privately owned (excluding domestic solar thermal systems). From the perspective of reducing GHG emissions, it would of course be better to first substitute renewables for domestic lignite and then reduce the use of gas use later on. This is due to the fact that “burner tip” emissions from gas are almost a half of that generated from coal, and considerably less than half of lignite-generated “burner tip” emissions. But coal-to-gas fuel switching in Greece may not be the best option politically or economically during the first phase of the transition. Importantly, gas-fired power generation is the domain of a handful of private Independent Power Producers (IPPs) that have become present in Greece during the liberalization period. Reducing gas imports will therefore increase the portion of Greece’s energy that is under public control. And a fully ‘reclaimed’ PPC will ensure that the benefits of domestic lignite use are at least retained in Greece.

During the first phase of Greece’s energy transition (perhaps a decade or so) the strategy should, as far as possible, entail a straight swap: domestic renewable energy should replace imported natural gas and oil, which together generates roughly 13 per cent of Greece’s electricity. However, oil-based generation has thus far served island communities or thermal power stations near Athens as a means of avoiding lignite-related air pollution. Therefore any reduction in oil-based electricity generation will need to address specific challenges of this nature.

But if renewable energy generation can increase at a level of several GWs per year (Germany installed 7.6 GW of new solar capacity in 2012 alone) then the annual reductions in gas-based generation should be more or less comparable. The faster the deployment of renewables, the faster Greece’s bill for imported gas will be reduced.

During the first phase of the energy transition it is important to announce a cap on lignite use in order to protect against the temptation to replace imported gas with more lignite-fired generation. A supplementary cap on GHGs from lignite could also serve a purpose, and retiring the oldest lignite-fueled power plants and introducing pollution control technologies where appropriate could complement such a policy. A cap on lignite use could be accompanied by announcing a moratorium on the construction of any new lignite-fired power plants.

Clearly, Syriza must conduct a careful assessment of the environmental, social and economic implications of projects presently approved or under construction. Lignite reserves in Greece are plentiful and could last many decades, but the existing lignite-powered generation facilities presently operational in Greece will not last forever and an effective moratorium on new construction will mean that the fleet of lignite-fired stations will eventually become dilapidated and will have to be decommissioned. The trajectories for the phase out of lignite use will, however, depend on how fast renewable energy can be scaled up in Greece, and how technical and financial challenges are met and obstacles negotiated.

Given the significant number of workers engaged in lignite mining, transportation and power generation, workers and communities that depend on lignite need to be reassured that the transition away from lignite is not going to happen without their active involvement and it will be stretched out over a period of years. Firing workers is not on Syriza’s agenda, under any circumstances. No worker or community will be asked to pay a disproportionate price for the energy transition while others in Greece (and globally in the form of reduced emissions) reap the benefits. A set of robust protections and guarantees need to be given priority in order to avoid alienating the workers and communities likely to be affected by a shift away from lignite – however far in the future that shift may actually be.

Goal 4: Scaling Up Publicly-Owned Renewable Energy

A large and rapid deployment of renewable energy in Greece is possible. But it will need to be grounded in a stable financial model, which means finding a way to recover investments in the system, operation and maintenance costs, and perhaps generating surplus revenue for upgrades and new investments. In the EU, incentives like the FiT have allowed for individuals, small businesses, and even cooperatives, become partially independent of the grid. However, this means the costs to maintain and renew the system are shifted to those who are not “prosumers” – mostly people without property and/or disposable income. Furthermore, the rapid deployment of renewable energy raises the problem of intermittency (the wind does not always blow, nor the sun always shine) which will require the development of new ‘smart’ grid options and technologies that can integrate and coordinate many different feed-in points. FiTs therefore probably have only a limited role in the energy transition.

Renewable energy cooperatives could also play an important role. In the many instances where public utilities have become marketized and profit-driven in accordance with the neoliberal agenda, the growth of cooperatives has been seen as a positive development. Furthermore Germany’s 700 renewable energy cooperatives have provided a launch pad for remuncipalization of power generation in over 40 cities. Cooperatives have also helped solidify popular support for Germany’s relatively impressive shift toward renewable power.

Lafanzanis’ statement that “there will be a new PPC” is particularly relevant here. The PPC could work with municipalities, unions and communities to drive the transition to renewable energy in a way that is ambitious enough to meet emissions reduction targets and reduce fuel costs relatively quickly. The PPC already has a presence in renewable energy and therefore some experience to offer, particularly with regard to larger installations. A reformed and reoriented PPC could play the role of buyer and installer of PV and do so in a way that spreads the benefits more evenly than is the case with the ‘prosumer’ model.

A reformed PPC can therefore be a driver of renewable energy deployment in Greece. Indeed, there have been instances where utilities have been known to pivot toward on-site generation of solar, often as a preemptive measure, aimed at moving into and enclosing ‘disruptive’ market competition. In Greece, the PPC can be instructed to play a role in helping, rather than hindering, both the deployment of renewable energy and aggressive end-use energy conservation. The effort to build energy democracy in Greece may wish to situate municipal-based power at the center of a new energy system with a reformed PPC playing a coordinating and technical role.

An ambitious deployment of renewable energy can also create significant numbers of jobs in Greece. Solar PV manufacturing is today dominated by a few countries, as is wind turbine production. Jobs can, however, immediately be created in the production of basic components and in the construction, installation and maintenance of renewable energy projects. Large-scale deployment will also stimulate demand for cables and connectors and other electrical components. Array planners are also needed.

Clearly, the scale and speed of the planned deployment will have an impact on the prospects of manufacturing gaining a foothold in Greece and also its chances of future expansion. Publicly-owned manufacturing facilities or cooperatives are not inconceivable, but phase one may require ‘joint venture’ arrangements in order to allow for the transfer of skills and knowledge.

It is possible to imagine the installation and related work being performed by PPC employees earning decent wages. The PPC could also be the primary purchaser of solar modules, inverters and other components. Public buildings – schools, hospitals, etc. – could be assessed in order to see if they are suited for solar PV, and a plan developed to install PV systems over the course of the next decade or two. In Greece, the largest single classification for buildings are public schools. Already the Centre for Renewable Energy Sources (CRES) has explored possibilities of photovoltaic systems development on the rooftops of schools, in partnership with Greece’s School Buildings Organization (SBO). A national energy transition plan could involve developing an inventory of public buildings and spaces in order to assess their capacity for on-site power generation.

The transition to renewable energy in Greece will require commitments of capital. But when measured against the financial, health-related and ecological costs of continuing with fossil fuels, renewable energy is the best possible social investment. For a more specific quantification, we can consider the cost of the public sector’s annual electricity bill, which can then be calculated over 20 years based on recent trends. This cost can be then compared to the cost of major solar PV deployment in those facilities. The price of globally sourced PV, along with installation and maintenance costs are today such that PV systems can pay for themselves within 5 years after which time the electricity supply to these facilities will be virtually free. There is every likelihood that the electricity costs to sustain the public sector – including schools, hospitals, and other government buildings – will actually fall quite dramatically over a 20-year period.

Capital could also be sourced from a variety of sources. In 2012 the PPC made a pre-tax profit of €276-million. A ‘reclaimed’ PPC would provide the option of redirecting capital to renewables. Another option is for PPC to issue bonds against its future revenues. These can be issued domestically rather than internationally and provide a tried and trusted mechanism for financing public services.

Another possibility is a carbon tax. There are numerous options for designing a carbon tax, such as imposing it on major industrial emitters in Greece, or through a charge on petrol. Greece consumed an average of 343,000 barrels of crude oil per day in 2011, of which almost half (46%) was used for transportation. According to the IEA (2009 data) compared with other OECD Europe countries, Greece has a relatively low tax on gasoline and diesel. A small carbon tax of a few cents on a liter of petrol would generate significant revenue that could in turn be dedicated to investment in renewable energy.

Conclusion

Syriza’s existing programmatic commitments to work toward “the development of a new paradigm of social, environmental and economic development,” and the need to build a public sector of a “new type” could transform energy and climate politics in the EU and beyond. But only if these commitments are implemented. Halting privatization of the PPC and DEPA was a massive first step in the right direction. If Greece can show that another energy is possible, not just theoretically but in the form of a real open, transparent and democraticaly directed transition bringing measurable gains, then the implications for society and the ecosystems that sustain us all are potentially enormous. •

Sean Sweeney, is the coordinator of Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (where this article first appeared) and Director of the International Program for Labor, Climate & Environment at the Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies, CUNY.

Many remember General Wesley Clark as the man who almost started World War III by ordering the British to fire on Russian peacekeepers who landed in the Kosovo capital, Pristina, before the Americans. British commander of the international KFOR peacekeeping force, General Sir Mike Jackson, is reported to have replied, “I’m not going to start the third world war for you.”

One of the most interesting things about Gen. Clark, however, is his propensity to blurt fascinating things out every now and again.

Who can forget his interview with Amy Goodman back in 2007 where he revealed that one of the top generals in the Pentagon had showed him a memo from then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld not long after the 9/11 attack outlining US global war plans. According to Clark at the time, the general said:

[W]e’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, “You remember that?” He said, “Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!”

Well Clark is back with another very interesting blurt.

Far from a spontaneously-arising root-of-all-evil organization, at least according to General Wesley Clark, ISIS was created and funded by our “closest allies.” As the General said:

ISIS got started through funding from our friends and allies… to fight to the death against Hezbollah.

Which friends and allies, he did not say. But he did suggest that it has become a “Frankenstein monster.”

So the insider, Gen. Wesley Clark, informs us that our closest allies in the Middle East have helped create ISIS — the organization we are spending billions of dollars to fight.

We do know that  Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the other Gulf States have long been obsessed with fighting Hezbollah and Assad, and that both are keen to keep the US fighting on their behalf in the region. Could these be who he was thinking about?

Maybe rather than continue to expand the US military presence in the region to fight ISIS, it’s time for the US to have a really good talk with its “allies” in the Middle East.

Watch Clark here:

The US is a few “accidental” airstrikes away from total war with Syria. The US is reportedly working with Turkey to provide militants inside of Syria with radios to call in US airstrikes to help in their “fight against ISIS.” Despite the obvious reality that these militants are in fact fighting alongside ISIS and are primarily fighting the Syrian Arab Army, and that such airstrikes are inevitably going to be called in on Syrian, not ISIS targets, the US is nonetheless attempting to assure the world this is not the case.

The London Telegraph declared in its article, “Moderate Syrian rebels ‘to be given power to call in US air strikes’,” that:

The US is planning to train some 5000 Syrian fighters a year under the plan as part of an effort to strengthen the fractured rebel movement against the government of President Bashar al-Assad and extremist groups. 

The Wall Street Journal reported that the initial training would focus on helping rebels hold ground and resist fighters allied with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

The Telegraph would also report:

Four to six-man units will be equipped with rugged Toyota Hilux vehicles, GPS and radios so they can identify targets for airstrikes.

Even in the Telegraph’s article, it is clear that this plan will inevitably be aimed at the Syrian government and its troops, the only secular force in the region fighting Al Qaeda and its spin-off, ISIS.

What “Moderate Rebels?” 

The Telegraph reports that the US and Turkey are to train and equip “moderate Syrian rebels” to call in US airstrikes. In reality, by the West’s own admission, the very last of NATO’s so-called “moderate” fronts have long since been folded into groups operating directly under Al Qaeda’s banner.

To highlight the absurdity of this recent plan proposed by the US and NATO-member Turkey, the Telegraph itself has reported in an earlier article titled, “Syrian rebels armed and trained by US surrender to al-Qaeda,” that:

Two of the main rebel groups receiving weapons from the United States to fight both the regime and jihadist groups in Syria have surrendered to al-Qaeda.

The US and its allies were relying on Harakat Hazm and the Syrian Revolutionary Front to become part of a ground force that would attack the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

For the last six months the Hazm movement, and the SRF through them, had been receiving heavy weapons from the US-led coalition, including GRAD rockets and TOW anti-tank missiles.

But on Saturday night Harakat Hazm surrendered military bases and weapons supplies to Jabhat al-Nusra, when the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria stormed villages they controlled in northern Idlib province.

Clearly, there are no “moderates” to speak of, and for those following the Syrian conflict from the beginning, it is clear that armed militancy sprung up from networks of Muslim Brotherhood extremists, funded and organized years before the so-called “Arab Spring” by the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel for the explicit purpose of creating a regional sectarian-driven conflagration to effect regime change in Syria, Lebanon, and Iran.

Indeed, Al Qaeda’s (and ISIS’) current presence in Iraq and Syria, and their leading role in the fight against the Iranian-leaning government’s of Damascus, Baghdad, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, are the present-day manifestation of a Western criminal conspiracy exposed as early as 2007. Revealed by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his article, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” it was stated explicitly that (emphasis added):

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda. 

As early as June of last year, it was reported that ISIS would be used as a means to incrementally draw in US forces in preparation for a direct military intervention aimed at Damascus itself. Unable to trigger the conflict using the canard of “WMDs,” ISIS has provided a series of increasingly more horrific provocations to help gather backing behind direct US military intervention in Syria.

The extremists groups portended by Hersh’s 2007 report are undeniably the vanguard of Western-backed attempts to topple the government of Syria, undermine Iran, and draw in Lebanon’s Hezbollah. It appears that the West is willing to go as far as fighting directly alongside literal terrorists they have used for over a decade as a pretext to invade and occupy the nations of Afghanistan and Iraq, at the cost of thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan lives.

USAF Becomes the Islamic State Air Force  

Clearly then, if all the “moderate rebels” the US claims are in Syria have in fact long-ago pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda, then US airstrikes called in by these militants will essentially be airstrikes called in by Al Qaeda against the only legitimate forces in the region actually fighting terrorism.

The creation of ISIS, just like during the US occupation of Iraq where Al Qaeda created the “Islamic State of Iraq” to maintain plausible deniability, is simply an attempt to build distance between the Al Qaeda terrorists the US is directly arming and will soon be providing air cover for, and the overt atrocities being carried out by these very same terrorists.

While ISIS is currently being touted by the US as the pretext upon which this recent move is predicated, the reality is instead that America and its allies are simply “easing into” a direct military confrontation with the Syrian Arab Army.

As US airstrikes begin hitting Syrian positions, it is likely that eventually Syria or its allies will retaliate and provoke a wider and more direct campaign against Damascus itself. Should Syria and its allies resist striking back, the US is likely to manufacture a provocation anyway.

Barring Syria and its allies’ ability to provide sufficient deterrence against the beginning of this latest, most dangerous, and most desperate yet leg of America’s war on Syria, and should Syrian defenses be incapable of staving off a Libyan-style NATO operation that has left that nation entirely in the hands of ISIS, expect to see yet another nation handed directly over to extremists – intentionally – for the sole purpose of continuing this proxy crusade next into Lebanon and Iran, then into southern Russia and western China.

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

The Greek government is currently locked in a life and death struggle with the elite which dominate the banks and political decision-making centers of the European Union. What are at stake are the livelihoods of 11 million Greek workers, employees and small business people and the viability of the European Union.  If the ruling Syriza government capitulates to the demands of the EU bankers and agrees to continue the austerity programs, Greece will be condemned to decades of regression, destitution and colonial rule.  If Greece decides to resist, and is forced to exit the EU, it will need to repudiate its 270 billion Euro foreign debts, sending the international financial markets crashing and causing the EU to collapse.

The leadership of the EU is counting on Syriza leaders abandoning their commitments to the Greek electorate, which as of early February 2015, is overwhelmingly (over 70%) in favor of ending austerity and debt payments and moving forward toward state investment in national economic and social development (Financial Times 7-8/2/15, p. 3).  The choices are stark; the consequences have world-historical significance.  The issues go far beyond local or even regional, time-bound, impacts.  The entire global financial system will be affected (FT 10/2/15, p. 2).

The default will ripple to all creditors and debtors, far beyond Europe; investor confidence in the entire western financial empire will be shaken.  First and foremost all western banks have direct and indirect ties to the Greek banks (FT 2/6/15, p. 3).  When the latter collapse, they will be profoundly affected beyond what their governments can sustain.  Massive state intervention will be the order of the day.  The Greek government will have no choice but to take over the entire financial system . . . the domino effect will first and foremost effect Southern Europe and spread to the ‘dominant regions’ in the North and then across to England and North America (FT 9/2/15, p. 2).

To understand the origins of this crises and alternatives facing Greece and the EU, it is necessary to briefly survey the political and economic developments of the past three decades.  We will proceed by examining Greek and EU relations between 1980 – 2000 and then proceed to the current collapse and EU intervention in the Greek economy.  In the final section we will discuss the rise and election  of Syriza, and its growing submissiveness in the context of EU dominance, and intransigence, highlighting the need for a radical break with the past relationship of ‘lord and vassal’.

Ancient History:  The Making of the European Empire

In 1980 Greece was admitted to the European Economic Council as a vassal state of the emerging Franco-German Empire.  With the election of Andreas Papandreou, leader of the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Party, with an absolute majority in Parliament, hope arose that radical changes in domestic and foreign policy would ensue.1/ In particular, during the election campaign, Papandreou promised a break with NATO and the EEC, the revoking of the US military base agreement and an economy based on ‘social ownership’ of the means of production. After being elected, Papandreou immediately assured the EEC and Washington that his regime would remain within the EEC and NATO, and renewed the US military base agreement.  Studies in the early 1980’s commissioned by the government which documented the medium and long-term adverse results of Greece remaining in the EEU, especially the loss of control of trade, budgets and markets, were ignored by  Papandreou who chose to sacrifice political independence and economic autonomy in favor of large scale transfers of funds, loans and credit from the EEC.  Papandreou spoke from the balcony to the masses of independence and social justice while retaining ties to the European bankers and Greek shipping and banking oligarchs.  The European elite in Brussels and Greek oligarchs in Athens retained a stranglehold on the commanding heights of the Greek political and economic system.

Papandreou retained the clientelistic political practices put in place by the previous right-wing regimes – only replacing the rightist functionaries with PASOK party loyalists.

The EEC brushed off Papandreou’ phony radical rhetoric and focused on the fact they were buying control and subservience of the Greek state by financing a corrupt, clientelistic regime which was deflecting funds for development projects to upgrade Greek economic competitiveness into building a patronage machine based on increased consumption.

The EEC elite ultimately knew that its financial stranglehold over the economy would enable it to dictate Greek policy and keep it within the boundaries of the emerging European empire.

Papandreou’s demagogic “third world” rhetoric notwithstanding, Greece was deeply ensconced in the EU and NATO.  Between 1981-85, Papandreou discarded his socialist rhetoric in favor of increased social spending for welfare reforms, raising wages, pensions and health coverage, while refinancing bankrupt economic firms run into the ground by kleptocratic capitalists.  As a result while living standards rose, Greece’s economic structure still resembled a vassal state heavily dependent on EEC finance, European tourists and a rentier economy based on real estate, finance and tourism.

Papandreou solidified Greece’s role as a vassal outpost of NATO; a military platform for US military intervention in the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean; and market for German and northern European manufactured goods.

From October 1981 to July 1989 Greek consumption rose while productivity stagnated; Papandreou won elections in 1985 using EEC funds. Meanwhile Greek debt to Europe took off … EEC leaders chastised the misallocation of funds by Papandreou’s vast army of kleptocrats but not too loudly.  Brussels recognized that Papandreou and PASOK were the most effective forces in muzzling the radical Greek electorate and keeping Greece under EEC tutelage and as a loyal vassal of NATO.

Lessons for Syriza:  PASOK’s Short-term Reforms and Strategic Vassalage

Whether in government or out, PASOK followed in the footsteps of its rightwing adversary (New Democracy) by embracing the NATO-EEC strait-jacket. Greece continued to maintain the highest per capita military expenditure of any European NATO member.  As a result, it received loans and credits to finance short-term social reforms and large scale, long-term corruption, while enlarging the party-state political apparatus.

With the ascent of the openly neoliberal Prime Minister Costas Simitis in 2002, the PASOK regime “cooked the books”, fabricated government data on its budget deficit, with the aid of Wall Street investment banks, and became a member of the European Monetary Union.  By adopting the euro, Simitis furthered deepened Greece’s financial subordination to the non-elected European officials in Brussels, dominated by the German finance ministry and banks.

The oligarchs in Greece made room at the top for a new breed of PASOK kleptocratic elite, which skimmed millions of military purchases, committed bank frauds and engaged in massive tax evasion.

The Brussels elite allowed the Greek middle class to live their illusions of being ‘prosperous Europeans’ because they retained decisive leverage through loans and accumulating debts.

Large scale bank fraud involving three hundred million euros even reached ex-Prime Minister Papandreou’s office.

The clientele relations within Greece were matched by the clientele relations between Brussels and Athens.

Even prior to the crash of 2008 the EU creditors, private bankers and official lenders, set the parameters of Greek politics.  The global crash revealed the fragile foundations of the Greek state – and led directly to the crude, direct interventions of the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission – the infamous “Troika”.  The latter dictated the ‘austerity’ policies as a condition for the “bail-out” which devastated the economy, provoking a major depression; impoverishing over forty percent of the population, reducing incomes by 25% and resulting in 28% unemployment.

Greece:  Captivity by Invitation

Greece as a political and economic captive of the EU had no political party response.  Apart from the trade unions which launched thirty general strikes between 2009 – 2014, the two major parties, PASOK and New Democracy, invited the EU takeover.  The degeneration of PASOK into an appendage of oligarchs and vassal collaborator of the EU emptied the ‘socialist’ rhetoric of any meaning.  The right wing New Democracy Party reinforced and deepened the stranglehold of the EU over the Greek economy.  The troika lent the Greek vassal state funds(“bail-out”) which was used to pay back German, French and English financial oligarchs and to buttress private Greek banks.  The Greek population was ‘starved’ by ‘austerity’ policies to keep the debt payments flowing-outward and upward.

Europe:  Union or Empire?

The European economic crash of 2008/09 resounded worst on its weakest links – Southern Europe and Ireland.  The true nature of the European Union as a hierarchical empire, in which the powerful states – Germany and France – could openly and directly control investment, trade, monetary and financial policy was revealed.  The much vaunted EU “bailout” of Greece was in fact the pretext for the imposition of deep structural changes.  These included the denationalization and privatization of all strategic economic sectors; perpetual debt payments; foreign dictates of incomes and investment policy.  Greece ceased to be an independent state:  it was totally and absolutely colonized.

Greece’s Perpetual Crises:  The End of the “European Illusion”

The Greek elite and, for at least 5 years, most of the electorate, believed that the regressive (“austerity”) measures adopted – the firings, the budget cuts, the privatizations etc. were short-term harsh medicine, that would soon lead to debt reduction, balanced budgets, new investments, growth and recovery.  At least that is what they were told by the economic experts and leaders in Brussels.

In fact the debt increased, the downward economic spiral continued, unemployment multiplied, the depression deepened.  ‘Austerity’ was a class based policy designed by Brussels to enrich overseas bankers and to plunder the Greek public sector.

The key to EU pillage and plunder was the loss of Greek sovereignty. The two major parties, New Democracy and PASOK, were willing accomplices.  Despite a 55% youth (16 – 30 years old) unemployment rate, the cut-off of electricity to 300,000 households and large scale out-migration (over 175,000), the EU (as was to be expected) refused to concede that the ‘austerity’ formula was a failure in recovering the Greek economy.  The reason the EU dogmatically stuck to a ‘failed policy’ was because the EU benefited from the power, privilege and profits of pillage and imperial primacy.

Moreover, for the Brussels elite to acknowledge failure in Greece would likely result in the demand to recognize failure in the rest of Southern Europe and beyond, including in France Italy and other key members of the EU (Economist 1/17/15, p. 53).  The ruling financial and business elites in Europe and the US prospered through the crises and depression, by imposing cuts in social budgets and wages and salaries.  To concede failure in Greece, would reverberate throughout North America and Europe, calling into question their economic policies, ideology and the legitimacy of the ruling powers.  The reason that all the EU regimes back the EU insistence that Greece must continue to abide by an obviously perverse and regressive ‘austerity’ policy and impose reactionary “structural reforms” is because these very same rulers have sacrificed the living standards of their own labor force during the economic crises (FT 2/13/15, p. 2).

The economic crises spanning 2008/9 to the present (2015), still requires harsh sacrifices to perpetuate ruling class profits and to finance state subsidies to the private banks.  Every major financial institution – the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the IMF – toes the line:  no dissent or deviation is allowed.  Greece must accept EU dictates or face major financial reprisals. “Economic strangulation or perpetual debt peonage” is the lesson which Brussels tends to all member states of the EU.  While ostensibly speaking to Greece – it is a message directed to all states, opposition movements and trade unions who call into question the dictates of the Brussels oligarchy and its Berlin overlords.

All the major media and leading economic pundits have served as megaphones for the Brussel oligarchs.  The message, which is repeated countless times, by liberals, conservatives and social democrats to the victimized nations and downwardly mobile wage and salaried workers, and small businesspeople, is that they have no choice but to accept regressive measure, slashing living conditions (“reforms”) if they hope for ‘economic recovery’ – which, of course, has not happened after five years!

Greece has become the central target of the economic elites in Europe because, the Greek people have gone from inconsequential protests to political powers.  The election of Syriza on a platform of recovering sovereignty, discarding austerity and redefining its relations with creditors to favor national development has set the stage for a possible continent-wide confrontation.

The Rise of Syriza:  Dubious Legacies, Mass Struggles and Radical (Broken) Promises

The growth of Syriza from an alliance of small Marxist sects into a mass electoral party is largely because of the incorporation of millions of lower middle class public employees, pensioners and small businesspeople.  Many previously supported PASOK.  They voted Syriza in order to recover the living conditions and job security of the earlier period of “prosperity” (2000-2007) which they achieved within the EU.  Their radical rejection of PASOK and New Democracy came after 5 years of acute suffering which might have provoked a revolution in some other country.  Their radicalism began with protests, marches and strikes were attempts to pressure the rightwing regimes to alter the EU’s course, to end the austerity while retaining membership in the EU.

This sector of SYRIZA is ‘radical’ in what it opposes today and conformist with its nostalgia for the past.  –the time of euro funded vacation trips to London and Paris, easy credit to purchase imported cars and foodstuffs, to ‘feel modern’ and ‘European’ and speak English!

The politics of Syriza reflects, in part, this ambiguous sector of its electorate.  In contrast Syriza also secured the vote of the radical unemployed youth and workers who never were part of the consumer society and didn’t identify with “Europe”.   Syriza has emerged as a mass electoral party in the course of less than five years and its supporters and leadership reflects a high degree of heterogeneity.

The most radical sector, ideologically, is drawn mostly from the Marxist groups which originally came together to form the party.  The unemployed youth sector joined, following the anti-police riots, which resulted from the police assassination of a young activist during the early years of the crisis.  The third wave is largely made up of thousands of public workers, who were fired, and retired employees who suffered big cuts in their pensions by order of the troika in 2012.  The fourth wave is ex PASOK members who fled the sinking ship of a bankrupt party.

The Syriza Left is concentrated at the mass base and among local and middle level leaders of local movements.  The top leaders of Syriza in power positions are academics, some from overseas.  Many are recent members or are not even party members.  Few have been involved in the mass struggles – and many have few ties with the rank and file militants. They are most eager to sign a “deal” selling out the impoverished Greeks

As Syriza moved toward electoral victory in 2015, it began to shed its original program of radical structural changes (socialism) and adopt measures aimed at accommodating Greek business interests.  Tsipras talked about “negotiating an agreement” within the framework of the German dominated European Union.  Tsipras and his Finance Minister proposed to re-negotiate the debt, the obligation to pay and 70% of the “reforms”! When an agreement was signed they totally capitulated!

For a brief time Syriza maintained a dual position of ‘opposing’ austerity and coming to agreement with its creditors. It’s “realist” policies reflected the positions of the new academic ministers, former PASOK members and downwardly mobile middle class. Syriza’s radical gestures and rhetoric reflected the pressure of the unemployed, the youth and the mass poor who stood to lose, if a deal to pay the creditors was negotiated.

EU – SYRIZA: Concessions before Struggle Led to Surrender and Defeat

The “Greek debt” is really not a debt of the Greek people.  The institutional creditors and the Euro-banks knowingly lent money to high risk kleptocrats, oligarchs and bankers who siphoned most of the euros into overseas Swiss accounts, high end real estate in London and Paris, activity devoid of any capacity to generate income to pay back the debt.  In other words, the debt, in large part, is illegitimate and was falsely foisted on the Greek people.

Syriza, from the beginning of ‘negotiations’, did not call into question the legitimacy of the debt nor identified the particular classes and enterprise who should pay it.

Secondly, while Syriza challenged “austerity” policies it did not question the Euro organizations and EU institutions who impose it.

From its beginning Syriza has accepted membership in the EU.  In the name of “realism” the Syriza government accepted to pay the debt or a portion of it, as the basis of negotiation.

Structurally, Syriza has developed a highly centralized leadership in which all major decisions are taken by Alexis Tsipras.  His personalistic leadership limits the influence of the radicalized rank and file.  It facilitated “compromises” with the Brussels oligarchy which go contrary to the campaign promises and may lead to the perpetual dependence of Greece on EU centered policymakers and creditors.

Moreover, Tsipras has tightened party discipline in the aftermath of his election, ensuring that any dubious compromises will not lead to any public debate or extra-parliamentary revolt.

The Empire against Greece’s Democratic Outcome

The EU elite have, from the moment in which Syriza received a democratic mandate, followed the typical authoritariancourse of all imperial rulers.  It has demanded from Syriza (1) unconditional surrender (2) the continuation of the structures, policies and practices of the previous vassal coalition party-regimes (PASOK-New Democracy) (3) that Syriza shelve all social reforms, (raising the minimum wage, increasing pension, health, education and unemployment spending  (4) that SYRIZA follow the strict economic directives and oversight formulated by the “troika” (the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund) (5) that SYRIZA retain the current primary budget surplus target of 4.5 percent of economic output in 2015-2017.

To enforce its strategy of strangulating the new government, Brussels threatened to abruptly cut off all present and future credit facilities, call in all debt payments, end access to emergency funds and refuse to back Greek bank bonds – that provide financial loans to local businesses.

Brussels presents Syriza with the fateful “choice”, of committing political suicide by accepting its dictates and alienating its electoral supporters. By betraying its mandate, Syriza will confront angry mass demonstrations. Rejecting Brussels’ dictates and proceeding to mobilize its mass base, Syriza could seek new sources of financing, imposing capital controls and moving toward a radical “emergency economy”.

Brussel has “stone-walled” and turned a deaf ear to the early concessions which Syriza offered.  Instead Brussels sees concessions as ‘steps’ toward complete capitulation, instead of as efforts to reach a “compromise”.

Syriza has already dropped calls for large scale debt write-offs, in favor of extending the time frame for paying the debt.  Syriza has agreed to continue debt payments, provided they are linked to the rate of economic growth.  Syriza accepts European oversight, provided it is not conducted by the hated “troika”, which has poisonous connotations for most Greeks.  However, semantic changes do not change the substance of “limited sovereignty”.

Syriza has already agreed to long and middle term structural dependency in order to secure time and leeway in financing its short-term popular impact programs.  All that Syriza asks is minimum fiscal flexibility under supervision of the German finance minister-some “radicals”!

Syriza has temporarily suspended on-going privatization of key infrastructure (sea- ports and airport facilities) energy and telecommunication sectors.  But is has not terminated them, nor revised the past privatization.  But for Brussels “sell-off” of Greek lucrative strategic sectors is an essential part of its “structural reform” agenda.

Syriza’s moderate proposals and its effort to operate within the EU framework established by the previous vassal regimes was rebuffed by Germany and its 27 stooges in the EU.

The EU’s dogmatic affirmation of extremist, ultra neo-liberal policies, including the practice of dismantling Greece’s national economy and transferring the most lucrative sectors into the hands of imperial investors, is echoed in the pages of all the major print media.  The Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Le Monde are propaganda arms of EU extremism.  Faced with Brussel’s intransigence and confronting the ‘historic choice’ of capitulation or radicalization, Syriza triedpersuasion of key regimes. Syriza  held numerous meetings with EU ministers.   Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Finance Minister Yanis Vardoulakis traveled to Paris, London, Brussels, Berlin and Rome seeking a “compromise” agreement.  This was to no avail.  The Brussels elite repeatedly insisted:

            Debts would have to be paid in full and on time.

            Greece should restrict spending to accumulate a 4.5% surplus that would ensure payments to creditors, investors, speculators and kleptocrats.

The EU’s lack of any economic flexibility or willingness to accept even a minimum compromise is a political decision:  to humble and destroy the credibility of SYRIZA as an anti-austerity government in the eyes of its domestic supporters and potential overseas imitators in Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland (Economist 1/17/15, p. 53).

Conclusion

The strangulation of Syriza is part and parcel of the decade long process of the EU’s assassination of Greece.  A savage response to a heroic attempt by an entire people, hurled into destitution, condemned to be ruled by kleptocratic conservatives and social democrats.

Empires do not surrender their colonies through reasonable arguments or by the bankruptcy of their regressive “reforms”.

Brussel’s attitude toward Greece is guided by the policy of “rule or ruin”. “Bail out” is a euphemism for recycling financing through Greece back to Euro-controlled banks, while Greek workers and employees are saddled with greater debt and continued dominance.  Brussel’s “bail out” is an instrument for control by imperial institutions, whether they are called “troika” or something else.

Brussels and Germany do not want dissenting members; they may offer to make some minor concessions so that Finance Minister Vardoulakis may claim a ‘partial victory’ – a sham and hollow euphemism for a belly crawl

 The “bail out” agreement will be described by Tsipras-Vardoulakis as ‘new’ and “different’ from the past or as a ‘temporary’ retreat.  The Germans may ‘allow’ Greece to lower its primary budget surplus from 4.5 to 3.5 percent ‘next year’ – but it will still reduce the funds for economic stimulus and “postpone” raises in pensions, minimum wages etc.

Privatization and other regressive reforms will not be terminated, they will be “renegotiated”.  The state will retain a minority “share”.

Plutocrats will be asked to pay some added taxes but not the billions of taxes evaded over the past decades.

 Nor will the PASOK – New Democracy kleptocratic operatives be prosecuted for pillage and theft.

Syriza’s compromises demonstrate that the looney right’s (the Economist, Financial Times, NY Times, etc.) characterization of Syriza as the “hard left” or the ultra-left have no basis in reality.  For the Greek electorate’s “hope for the future” could turn to anger in the present.  Only mass pressure from below can reverse Syriza’s capitulation and Finance Minister Vardoulakis unsavory compromises.  Since he lacks any mass base in the party, Tsipras can easily dismiss him, for signing off on “compromise” which sacrifices the basic interests of the people.

However, if in fact, EU dogmatism and intransigence forecloses even the most favorable deals, Tsipras and Syriza, (against their desires) may be forced to exit the Euro Empire and face the challenge of carving out a new truly radical policy and economy as a free and independent country.

A successful Greek exit from the German – Brussels empire would likely lead to the break-up of the EU, as other vassal states rebel and follow the Greek example.  They may renounce not only austerity but their foreign debts and eternal interest payments.  The entire financial empire – the so-called global financial system could be shaken . . . Greece could once again become the ‘cradle of democracy’.

Post-Script:   Thirty years ago, I was an active participant and adviser for three years (1981-84) to Prime Minister Papandreou.  He, like Tsipras, began with the promise of radical changes and ended up capitulating to Brussels and NATO and embracing the oligarchs and kleptocrats in the name of “pragmatic compromises”.  Let us hope, that facing a mass revolt, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Syriza will follow a different path.  History need not repeat itself as tragedy or farce.

Notes:

[1] The account of the Andreas Papandreou regime draws on personal experience, interviews and observations and from my co-authored article “Greek Socialism:  The Patrimonial State Revisited” in James Kurth and James Petras, Mediterranean Paradoxes:  the Politics and Social Structure of Southern Europe (Oxford:  Berg Press 1993/ pp. 160 -224)

James Petras was Director of the Center for Mediterranean Studies in Athens (1981-1984) and adviser to Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou (1981-84).  He resigned in protest over the PM expulsion of leading trade unionists from PASOK for organizing a general strike against his ‘stabilization program’. Petras is co-author of Mediterranean Paradoxes: The Politics and Social Structure of Southern Europe.  His latest books include Extractive Imperialism in the Americas (with Henry Veltmeyer); and The Politics of Empire:  the US, Israel and the Middle East.

The deaths of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Heath Ledger may have grabbed headlines, but there is a far larger tragedy behind America’s recreational painkiller epidemic. Deaths from prescription painkillers have more than tripled in the last 20 years, while drug overdose is now the leading cause of accidental death in the United States.

These deaths are not the consequences of poverty cycles or criminal gangs; they are a consequence of our country’s dysfunctional health system. This particular disease is almost unique to the US, with causes that lie in the very institutions that should have our best interests at heart.

Almost all the opioids taken recreationally originate from a legitimate prescription from a legitimate doctor. They are not bought on the street. They are, by and large, not bought online, either. They are not sourced from pharmacy heists or other criminal activity. Painkillers come from friends and family, legally in possession of them thanks to a culture that has normalized the use of powerful painkillers to the extent that 10.43% of 18-25 year olds have used prescription pain relievers recreationally.

The question is not so much why do kids use prescription drugs – kids have always experimented with drugs – but why prescription drugs in particular? How come they are so easily accessible?

Over-Prescription

How do kids get hold of Valium? Oxycontin? One way is by raiding their mother’s medicine cabinet. It starts with a legitimate prescription, and when the pain goes away, mom likes to keep a few around.

The truth is that doctors are over prescribing. The number of prescriptions for opioids has risen from around 76 million in 1991 to nearly 207 million in 2013. The US is easily the largest consumer globally, accounting for nearly 100% of total world hydrocodone (e.g. Vicodin) use and 81% for oxycodone.

Read: 16 of Nature’s Best Natural Painkillers

Needless to say, not all doctors are at fault. It’s usually confined to a relative handful in an area. And there is a particularly high concentration of over prescription amongst doctors who work alone, whose work – including their prescriptions – is not peer reviewed. Over-prescription is permitted by an under-regulated health system.

But why are they so ready to hand them out? Escalation like this isn’t the result of a few overzealous doctors.

Direct to Consumer Advertising

America is one of only two countries in the world to allow direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs. Other than New Zealand, you will never see an advert, in any form, anywhere else on Earth for drugs you can’t buy over the counter.

The result is patients going to their doctor, specifically asking for a particular drug. The industry defends the practice as one of giving information. But as Dr. Dee Mangin, associate professor at the Christchurch School of Medicine and Health Sciences, New Zealand, puts it: “The truth is direct-to-consumer advertising is used to drive choice rather than inform it.”

As with any advertising, it’s being used to create demand rather than simply aid consumers into making informed choices. Dr. Manging continues: “In an era of shared decision-making, it’s much more likely general practitioners will just do what the patient asks.”

The Business of Health

And why wouldn’t a doctor do as their patient asks? We have a medical system that treats healthcare as a business. When I go see my doctor, I go as a patient, yes, but also as a customer. And the customer is always right. If my doctor won’t give me what I want, maybe I’ll go to one that will. Even if not consciously, financial concern may trump medical concern.

Doctors are under pressure from suppliers as well. Pharmaceutical companies aren’t in the business of handing out drugs for those who need them. They are in the business of selling them, and they sell them through doctors, pressuring them to supply particular drugs – the drugs they’re advertising directly to consumers (patients).

When the FDA loosened regulations requiring a full listing of side effects in direct-to-consumer advertising in 1985, prescriptions began to skyrocket. And as they did, accidental drug deaths did too – having tripled since 1990. In 2013, there were 43,982 drug overdose deaths in the United States, 51.8% of those (22,767) were from pharmaceuticals.

Prescription Culture

The up-shot is this, by creating and allowing a loosely regulated healthcare system that treats medicine as a business and allows direct-to-consumer advertising, not only are prescription pills more readily available, but their use is normalized.

Of course this doesn’t only happen in America. But it happens all over the globe and a lot more countries. And only because we let it.

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Istorija ima običaj da se ponavlja. Argentina prolazi kroz sličan proces kroz koji je prolazila Rusija nakon što ju je Vladimir Putin preuzeo od Borisa Jeljcina početkom 21. veka. Federalna vlast u Buenos Ajresu se sada bori da utvrdi svoju ekonomsku i političku moć.

Nažalost, Buenos Ajres je suočen sa opozicijom koju čine stari režim i oligarsi koji sarađuju sa SAD. Ove sile se protive većim nacionalnim projetkima, renacionalizaciji većih kompanija i jačanju izvršnog ogranka vlasti. Što se toga tiče, okršaji argentinske predsednice Kristine Fernandez de Kirhner sa njenim protivnicima podsećaju na Putinove okršaje sa ruskim oligarsima i političarima koji su želeli da potčine Rusiju Vol Stritu i Vašingtonu.

Svaka moguća prilika se koristi za oslabljivanje argentinske vlasti. Predsednica Fernandez de Kirhner je čak javno optužila svoje domaće protivnike i SAD da sarađuju kako bi promenili režim. Kada je ISIS pretio da će je ubiti 2014. godine, ona je tvrdila da u stvari Vašington pokušava da je ubije jer Vašington kontroliše ISIS.

Smrt Alberta Nismana

Poslednji okršaj argentinske vlasti je počeo u januaru 2015. godine istog dana kada su Izraelci ubili iranskog revolucionara, brigadnog generala Muhameda Alahdadija u Siriji. Tada je specijalni tužilac Alberto Nisman pronađen upucan u glavu u kupatilu svog zaključanog apartmana 18. januara 2015. godine.

Nisman je istraživao eksploziju zgrade koja je pripadala Argentinskoj izraelskoj zajedničkoj asocijaciji (AMIA) iz 1994. godine narednih 10 godina. Njemu je zadatak ponovo poverio predsednik Nestor Kirhner, pokojni muž trenutne argentinske predsednice 2003. godine.

On je par dana pre ubistva objavio tvrdnje protiv argentinske predsednice Kristine Fernandez de Kirhner i ministra spoljnih poslova, Hektora Timermana, koji je i sam Jevrej. Nisman je naveo da su „iranski zvaničnici isplanirali i finansirali napad, da je Hezbolah, saveznik Irana u Libanu, izveo napad, a da je predsednica de Kirhner sve to zataškala kao deo ugovora o isporuci iranske nafte u Argentinu“.

Jevrejski novinar, Damjan Pahter, koji je pobegao iz Argentine nakon Nismanove smrti, dodao je ulje na vatru, iskritikovavši argentinsku vladu iz Izraela. Pahterov članak je Argentinu uporedio sa nacističkom Nemačkom.

Pre nego što nastavimo dalje, važno je dodati da za deset godina istrage Alberto Nisman nije uspeo zvanično da optuži Iran niti Hezbolah. Takođe je otkriveno da se Nisman često konsultovao sa SAD povodom slučaja i da ga je Roland Nobl, bivši šef Interpola, optužio da je lagao o optužbama u okviru slučaja AMIA.

Nismanova smrt je označena kao samoubistvo. Međutim, tajming Nismanove smrti je veoma sumnjiv. On je umro samo nekoliko sati pre nego što je trebalo da svedoči pred argentinskim Kongresom. Argentinska vlast je izjavila da je njegova smrt iscenirana kako bi poljuljala vlast. Ova tvrdnja je u potpunosti tačna.

Peta kolona u Argentini

Guardian je objavio članak 27. januara 2015. godine u kojem se izveštava da je smrt Alberta Nismana nastavak borbe između argentinske vlasti i argentinskih obaveštajnih agencija.

U njemu je rečeno da su vladini zvaničnici okrivili špijune za saradnju sa Nismanom, među kojima je glavni bio Antonio Stiuso, koji je do nedavno prisluškivao političke neprijatelje predsednice. On je optušten nakon što je Fernandezova otkrila da sarađuje sa Nismanom i SAD.

Fernandezova je takođe iskritikovala Dijega Lagomarsina, koji je u ponedeljak optužen da je ilegalno pozajmio oružje Nismanu.

Gore navedene činjenice ukazuju na to da su unutrašnja bezbednost Argentine i obaveštajci radili na tome da svrgnu sopstvenu vlast na čelu sa Fernandezovom.

U Argentini postoji peta kolona. Treba napomenuti da ovi kolaboratori potiču iz vremena vojne diktature u Argentini, koja je usko sarađivala sa SAD. Upravo zato je argentinska vlada pokrenula istragu o aktivnostima nekoliko agenata federalne policije koji su pratili Nismana i odlučila da zameni Obaveštajni sekretarijat sa novom federalnom obaveštajnom agencijom.

„Moramo reformisati argentinski obaveštajni sistem kako bismo dobili sistem koji služi nacionalnim interesima“, rekla je predsednica Argentine. Ona je takođe navela da je Obaveštajni sekretarijat radio na tome da potkopa vladu i uništi sporazum sa Iranom.

AMIA je izgovor, a Argentina učestvuje u globalnom ratu

Slučaj AMIA je politizovan na dva fronta. Jedan su domaći problemi, a drugi su međunarodni odnosi. Grupa argentinskih oligarha koristi slučaj AMIA da preuzme kontrolu nad državom, dok ga SAD koriste za nešto drugo – da postave pritisak na argentinsku vlast i da se umešaju u poslove Argentine.

Smrt Alberta Nismana se koristi za demonizaciju argentinske vlasti od strane političkih protivnika. Opozicija čak navodi Nismana kao mučenika u borbi za demokratiju i slobodu u državi koju vodi autoritativni režim.

Iran nije jedina meta u ovom slučaju, niti se on svodi na traženje pravde za žrtve eksplozije. Kina, Rusija, Kuba, Brazil, Venecuela, Ekvador, Bolivija i mnoge druge države takođe su mete u ovoj globalnoj borbi između SAD i koalicije nezavisnih država koje se opiru uticaju SAD.

Konačni cilj jeste ponovno uspostavljanje američkog uticaja nad Argentinom i njenom spoljnom politikom. Tu spada i obustavljanje mera koje je Buenos Ajres započeo radi pridobijanja kontrole nad Folklandskim ostrvima od Britanaca, a koja se nalaze u energijom bogatom južnom Atlantiku.

Pored rata oko energetskih rezervi, SAD se spremaju i na poljoprivredni napad koji podrazumeva destabilizaciju cena hrane u Argentini, pošto je Argentina velika poljoprivredna sila.

The PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) did not object to the appointment of new UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process Nikolay Mladenov, although he was described by Tayseer Khaled, a member of the PLO’s Executive Committee, as “persona non grata” — not trusted by the Palestinians and nor qualified for the job.

The 15-member UN Security Council unanimously voted to appoint Bulgarian Mladenov, 42, to succeed Holland ’s Robert Serry. He would also be the representative of the UN secretary general to the International Quartet (the UN, US, EU and Russia ), and personal representative of the UN chief to the PLO (the State of Palestine) and the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Although protocol allows the PLO the right to reject diplomatic representatives to the organisation, observers cannot understand why it accepted Mladenov. There is no convincing answer except a futile desire by the PLO to appease the UN and Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, at a time when PLO diplomatic efforts are focused on the UN and its agencies.

Mladenov not only failed in a similar mission as UN envoy to Iraq and resigned, he is someone who describes himself — and is described by the leaders of the Israeli occupation — as “a good friend of Israel ”. As Bulgarian foreign minister, Mladenov suggested a “military alliance” between Bulgaria and Israel . He has often spoken about his bias towards “ Israel ’s right to exist” and its right “to defend itself” against Palestinians resisting Israeli occupation. He even admitted to being a Free Mason, and publicly advocated the US ’s “constructive chaos” policies in the Arab world. In fact, his Jewish origins may be the least controversial aspect of him.

Meanwhile, the occupation state does not hesitate in ignoring the UN, its resolutions and representatives, disregarding and even assassinating them when necessary. Most recently, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman threatened to “expel” Mladenov’s predecessor Serry as “persona non grata”. Shortly before that, William Schabas, the head of the UN commission investigating the occupation’s recent war on the Gaza Strip, resigned after Israel refused to cooperate with him or allow him to enter the country.

After the UN tolerated the assassination of its first envoy to Palestine , Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte in 1948, at the hands of the Zionist Stern Gang led by Yitzhak Shamir (who later became prime minister of the occupation state), Israel was emboldened to adopt a permanent policy of disregarding the UN without deterrence so far.

In fact, over the past two years the occupation state has carried out a proxy war against the UN. It has facilitated logistics, intelligence, firepower and medical assistance to allow the domination of militias fighting the Syrian regime on its side of the disengagement zone between the liberated and occupied Arab Syrian Golan. This compelled the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) to withdraw after its positions were attacked, dozens of its troops kidnapped and their weapons and equipment seized. Until today, the UN has not dared to rectify the situation, which resulted in the collapse of the UN-sponsored ceasefire and rules of engagement between Syria and Israel .

The Middle East is teeming with international peace envoys. The UN has one, so does the US , the EU, Russia , China and the Quartet. Their names change without anything on the ground in occupied Palestine changing. Except for expanding the occupation through settlements under the “peace” umbrella these envoys provide, without any hope that the international community they represent will be able to effect any real tangible change for the present and future of the Palestinian people on the ground.

So what can Mladenov do that his predecessors, the UN, the Quartet, the Arab League and others, couldn’t?

Khaled believes the real test, to remove Palestinian doubts about Mladenov’s role and mission, will be his position on the siege on Gaza and reconstruction there. However, Mladenov’s track record does not indicate there is cause for optimism. Nor does the track record of “UN special coordinators” since the creation of the position in 1994 and the subsequent expansion of its role, as well as the extensive history of choosing UN and US envoys of Jewish origins or related in the first degree to Jews, such as Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, John Kerry, Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk and Quartet representative Tony Blair.

On 6 February, the secretaries general of the UN and Arab League issued a joint statement expressing “deep concern” about conditions in Gaza . They urged Arab and international donors to honour their financial pledges made at the Cairo Conference last October “as soon as possible”, in order to rebuild the Gaza Strip and end the siege there. A few days ago, James Rowley, UN coordinator for humanitarian affairs in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, sent out an “urgent call” for these commitments to be fulfilled and an “immediate” lift of the siege on Gaza, because he is “very concerned another conflict will break out” if not.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry described the statement by the Quartet on 8 February after it met in Munich , Germany , as “short of expectations” because it ignored “all the old-new and evolving truths” of the occupation state.

The Quartet also said it is “deeply concerned” about the “difficult conditions in Gaza where reconstruction needs to be quicker” and urged donors to “pay their financial pledges as soon as possible”. However, it linked this to encouraging both sides to “restart negotiations as soon as possible”.

Restarting talks “as soon as possible”, nonetheless, must await the outcome of general elections in Israel and the US . This means the Palestinian people must wait for another two years in the vain hope of reconstructing Gaza . It is obvious the occupation state is enjoying the luxury of time, making easy the occupation without resistance, as well as building settlements without deterrence.

Before handing over the reins to Mladenov, Serry described the failure of donors to pay their dues as “scandalous” and warned “if there is no progress in the coming months” — not two years — towards a two-state solution, “the reality will be a one state [solution]”: the single state of Israel . Former UN coordinator Terry Rod Larsen said in 2002, “the Palestinian patient is dying in the interim.”

Last December, Serry warned in his report to the Security Council that a war in Gaza “could re-ignite if conditions on the ground do not change” in the besieged Gaza Strip. It is clear that what Serry described as a “deadly diplomatic vacuum” coupled with the ongoing siege on rebuilding Gaza, are an explosive recipe in the besieged Gaza Strip, the outcome and ramifications of which are unpredictable.

The “scandal” of donors not paying their dues to rebuild Gaza , as Serry described it, under the pretext that the PLO government does not control the Gaza Strip, is a green light given by the international community to the occupation state to carry out another military assault on national resistance forces in Gaza .

The scandal of Arabs not paying their pledges at Arab summits to provide the PA with a financial “safety net” amounts to flagrant Arab pressure on the PLO to accept the Quartet’s proposal to restart talks with the occupation state “as soon as possible”.

This is Mladenov’s dual mission as the new UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process. PLO negotiators continue to wait for a breakthrough by “peace” envoys that are imposed on them and appointed by the US and the UN, although they represent the occupation state. Mladenov is the most recent. He will not change anything on the ground.

Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Birzeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories ([email protected]). This article was translated from Arabic and first published by Al-Ahram Weekly on 20 February 2015.

A small community in Uganda is challenging a UN-backed international oil palm venture that has expropriated small farmers and obliterated an entire forest on a Lake Victoria island to establish a vast plantation. Three years after the grab, Friends of the Earth groups are backing the islanders legal action, which is launched today.

Four years ago, an oil palm plantation partly operated by the oil palm giant Wilmar International began on Bugula, a highly biodiverse island on Lake Victoria. Then home to about one hundred small-scale farmers, the project was sold to them with extravagant promises of employment and development.

Yet today, 3,600 hectares of pristine forest have been destroyed, replaced with a vast swathe of oil palm, and many farmers and their families find themselves destitute with little compensation – if any – awarded to them for the loss of their land.

Finding themselves in increasingly desperate circumstances, three of them are today launching their legal action on behalf of the rest of the community against the oil palm company, Oil Palm Uganda Limited (OPUL), demanding the restitution of their land and compensation for lost crops and income.

Although nominally independent, OPUL is 90% owned by Bidco Uganda, itself a joint venture between the oil palm giant Wilmar International, Josovina Commodities and Bidco Oil Refineries, a Kenya-based company. Wilmar International holds at least 39% of the shares in OPUL and is providing technical expertise for the project.

In launching the legal action in Masaka today, the Bugula islanders are taking on more than just these mighty corporations.

The oil palm project is backed by the Ugandan government, which even helped to finance it, and by a United Nations agency: the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), which is “directly overseeing” the project after providing a $52 million loan.

So this is ‘improving access to land and tenure security’?

Established in 1974 after the World Food Conference, IFAD’s ‘motto’ is “Enabling poor rural people to overcome poverty”. Its Financing Policies and Criteria state that the projects it finances should incorporate “engagement with indigenous peoples” and“improving access to land and tenure security”.

The Bugula project is carried out under IFAD’s ‘Vegetable Oil Development Project – Phase 2‘ which claims to be aimed at “increasing the domestic production of vegetable oil and its byproducts, thus raising rural incomes for smallholder producers and ensuring the supply of affordable vegetable oil products to Ugandan consumers.”

According to IFAD, “Oil palm activities are carried out on Bugula Island in Kalangala District (Ssesse islands) and Buvuma Island in Mukono District. In the course of the project, about 3,000 smallholder farmers will directly benefit from oil palm development and 136,000 households from oilseed development. The project is directly supervised by IFAD.”

It records a total project cost of $146.2 million, to which it is contributing a $52.0 million loan repayable in 2018, co-financed with SNV Netherlands Development Organization, which is contributing $0.3 million. It claims to benefit 139,000 households.

The Ecologist spoke today with Alessandro Marini, IFAD’s Country Representative for Uganda by telephone, but he repeatedly refused to comment at that time because he was“on his way into a meeting”. He has since failed to respond to our email requesting his views.

The UK is the single biggest contributor to IFAD.

John Muyiisa’s story

In January, Anne van Schaik of Friends of the Earth Europe joined NAPE / Friends of the Earth Uganda in a fact-finding mission to Bugula Island, Kalangala, and visited the house of John Muyiisa, one of the plaintiffs (see photo).

John saw his 43-acre plot taken for the palm oil project, and has since not stopped fighting to get it back. John showed us the state of his house, which is about to collapse because he doesn’t have the resources to repair it. The foundations of the new house he was planning to build for his family have been left abandoned since the project began.

When he showed us the small plot that was left to him, John said: “We all depended on this land. My land was not only my income but also a secured future income for my children. It would have provided me with the money I needed to buy a new house. Now I have lost my land and our plans are shattered.” These concerns have found little sympathy among local government officials.

We also visited the nearby island of Buvuma, where IFAD has financed another oil palm project. When we expressed our interest to hear from the local community about the effects of the island’s palm oil project, they exhausted themselves by explaining the benefits of the project.

“There will be electricity, employment, new roads, and extra income for local palm oil growers”, officials told us. This sounded all-too familiar to what we heard during a visit in 2013, but two years on, these promises seem emptier than ever.

Once we had finished speaking with the officials, we joined them at a community meeting at the district house to discuss compensation for lost land. When the chairperson gave farmers the floor to talk about the effects of the project, many raised their hands.

They talked about how the compensation had been inadequate, how it is totally unclear to them how it had been calculated, and how some of them didn’t want to leave their land but were given no choice. Clearly embarrassed and annoyed, a local official responded and corrected them. “People should not first sign an agreement and then complain after”, he said.

His unsympathetic stance was mirrored by other government officials on both islands. Often we heard jokes about how farmers drank away their compensation money in bars, got themselves a second wife or otherwise managed to fritter it away.

This indifference, although unspoken, is implicitly shared by IFAD, BIDCO, OPUL and Wilmar. Indeed, the chain of responsibility stretches back further – to banks in Europe and the USA whose financial support sets the wheels in motion for these devastating land grabs.

Europe’s mega-banks financing palm oil explosion

Taking the case of Wilmar International, in 2014 US and EU financiers had a total of €371 million of shares in the corporation, and 1.1 billion Euro in loans outstanding to them.

For instance in the Netherlands, ING held more than €26 million in shares; the British bank HSBC held €298 million in loans, while BNP Paribas and Dutch Rabobank held €189 million and €111 million respectively. Deutsche Bank held €4 million in shares and €12 million in outstanding loans.

Like Wilmar, many of these financiers have adopted policies to address the environmental, social and governance impacts of their investments. However, there is no accountability mechanism in place for most of these commitments, and so there is no financial or legal incentive for financiers to follow through.

This means that many European financial institutions, through their investments in agribusiness projects, are supporting a significant number of what are in fact land grabs in the global South. Such incidents are widespread and growing: new cases are reported to civil society organisations on a near-weekly basis in countries from Cambodia and Papua New Guinea to Indonesia, Myanmar and Nigeria.

Europe needs to take action at the political level. Both by ensuring financial institutions on its soil are not complicit in land grabs, and by voting this year to finish reforms to halt the expansion of agrofuels which compete for cropland.

UN-IFAD must hang its head in shame

And clearly IFAD is an organization crying out for abolition. Its financing of the Bugula Island land grab is in clear violation of its financing principles and criteria, indeed the very purpose of its existence – “Enabling poor rural people to overcome poverty”

While IFAD speaks of “community-driven development approach to fighting rural poverty“, “improving access to land and tenure security”, “dynamic and inclusive rural development“, “food and nutrition security for all”, “inclusive growth and poverty eradication”, and “sustainable smallholder agriculture” it is actually financing land-grabbing projects that achieve the precise reverse of all its empty rhetoric.

Indeed it is robbing poor farmers and farming communities of their land and livelihoods, leaving them destitute, and handing over their wealth for plunder by foreign corporations and profiteering financiers.

As for John and the rest of the former farmers of Bugula, the next steps in their fight for justice will be taken in court in Masaka. With pressure coming at them from both sides, the message to oil IFAD, palm companies and financiers alike is clear: the battle against land grabs is on.

Action: to support John Muyiisa’s struggle in his search for legal redress for the farmers of Kalangala, please visit our crowdfunding page.

Anne van Schaik campaigns for accountable finance at Friends of the Earth Europe, and works with Friends of the Earth groups in Europe, South East Asia and Africa against landgrabbing for palm oil plantations. In coalition with FERN, Global Witness, ActionAid and others, she works to establish regulation measures for financiers at the EU level.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

A strong force for the liberation of Africans, African Americans and oppressed people throughout the world was gunned down on Feb. 21, 1965.

At the Audubon Ballroom in the Washington Heights section of Harlem, New York, Malcolm X, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, was preparing to address an audience of some 400 people at a weekly meeting of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) at 3:15 p.m. when he was interrupted by an apparent diversionary tactic. Then several men stood up and began firing shotguns and pistols at Malcolm X striking him at least six times in the face, chest and other parts of his body.

This act of public premediated murder deriving from a conspiracy was not surprising to many people. Just one week before, the home of Malcolm X was firebombed in Elmhurst, Queens Long Island where he lived with his pregnant wife and four children.

Malcolm had received countless threats since his departure from the Nation of Islam 11 months before. Members of the NOI security force, the Fruit of Islam, had made attempts to attack him on several occasions since early 1964.

In the aftermath of his assassination the corporate media proclaimed that his death was a direct result of political struggle between Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam led at the time by Elijah Muhammad who was based in the city of Chicago. However, what is often overlooked and not thoroughly examined is the role of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the New York Police Department (NYPD) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in conducting surveillance and other counter-insurgency operations against the NOI as well as two other organizations Malcolm X formed during the last year of his life, the Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the OAAU.

What the FBI Files Reveal

The FBI kept extensive files on Malcolm X and the NOI over a period of years. Malcolm joined the NOI at the aegis of his family members who had been recruited while he was in prison.

Even prior to Malcolm’s conversion, he had read extensively on numerous topics including history and philosophy while incarcerated in the Norfolk Prison Colony in Massachusetts. By the time he joined the NOI in 1948 he was well versed in logic, historical studies and politics.

Some of the earliest FBI files which have been released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) contain a letter written by him to the-then United States President Harry S. Truman at the beginning of the U.S. intervention in Korea where he stated that “I have always been a communist.” Malcolm expressed his opposition to the invasion of Korea and said during the last war he had attempted to enlist in the Japanese army.

This letter was written even after he had joined the NOI. Malcolm spent over six years in prison for petty crimes such as burglary and larceny during 1946-1952. He had been scheduled for parole in 1951 but was denied.

After his parole he came to live in Inkster and Detroit, Michigan where he had family members. After working in a retail outlet and a factory in Inkster and Wayne, he would soon become a full-time organizer for the NOI.

The files reveal that the FBI in conjunction with the Detroit police monitored his activities thoroughly. They noted in the files that he resided on Williams Street in Inkster and Keystone in Detroit.

Meetings taking place at Temple No. 1 in Detroit on Frederick Street where Malcolm was in attendance and spoke were recorded in the files. It was noted when he travelled to Chicago to meet with Elijah Muhammad and when Malcolm was sent to Philadelphia and Boston to takeover operations there.

In 1954 it is shown that he became the minister at No. 7 in Harlem. The content of his sermons were recorded in the files as well. Efforts were underway to determine whether he was in violation of his parole so that he could possibly be locked up again by the authorities in Michigan or other states.

An office memorandum from the Detroit Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the FBI to the-then Director J. Edgar Hoover, dated May 10, 1954, says “On May 7, 1954 SA (presumably Special Agent whose name is redacted), contacted the Michigan parole authorities, at which time (redacted) advised that captioned subject was discharged from his parole by the Michigan parole authorities on May 18, 1953 and thus is not currently in violation of his parole.”

By 1955 it is noted in the FBI files that Malcolm was approached and interrogated by at least two government agents. According to the report on the Jan. 10, 1955 “Interview of Malcolm Little”, it says that “The subject was very uncooperative in this interview. He refused to furnish any information concerning the officers, names and members, to furnish doctrines or beliefs of the MCI (Muslim Cult of Islam, the NOI as described and labelled by the FBI) or family background data on himself.”

Malcolm maintained as reported by the agents that “he believes in all the teachings of Elijah Mohammed of Chicago, Illinois, and that Elijah Mohammed was his leader and that he considered Elijah Mohammed superior to all. Subject considered the ‘Nation of Islam’ higher and greater than the United States Government. He claimed that Allah is God, the supreme being, and that Elijah Mohammed is the greatest prophet of all, being the last and greatest Apostle.” (NY 105-8999)

The report went on to describe the physical characteristics, names and aliases of Malcolm X. Little or Malachi Shabazz. It also recorded that in 1943 Malcolm had been turned down by the draft board for induction in the military saying that he had a “Psychopathic Personality and sexual perversion.”

Malcolm X Splits With the NOI and is Assassinated Within One Year

Surveillance of Malcolm X and the NOI continued throughout the late 1950s and 1960s. At the time of the suspension of Malcolm X by Elijah Muhammad, his departure to form two other organizations, the Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the OAAU, the FBI files indicate that close monitoring of both organizations intensified.

One year prior to the departure of Malcolm X from the NOI it was stated in a book by African American journalist Louis Lomax that John Ali, National Secretary of the NOI based in Chicago, was a former FBI agent. The book entitled “When the Word is Given: A Report on Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X and the Black Muslim World” focuses heavily on the role of Malcolm X inside the organization.

Later FBI director Hoover approved a directive to Lomax saying that Ali had never been an agent. However, it did not categorically deny that Ali worked for the Bureau as an informant or operative. Lomax never refuted the claim and repeated it in a subsequent book entitled “To Kill a Black Man” written after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968.

The federal government was concerned that Malcolm’s advocacy of armed self-defense would prompt violent activity on the part of African Americans. In one memorandum from the New York field office it details an investigation by the bureau and the city police surrounding the purchase of arms by a suspected member of the MMI.

The files from April-June 1964 contain copies of newspaper articles written about Malcolm X’s activities as well as a transcript from a radio interview in Cleveland. Later during a visit to Boston and Chicago, the full text of interviews or summations aired over several radio stations were transcribed by FBI agents.

In a memorandum from the SAC in New York to FBI Director Hoover dated July 2, 1964, its states “Basically, Malcolm X as chairman of the OAAU espouses the same line that he follows as leader and spokesman of the MMI. He continues to have an overtone of black nationalism; continues to criticize non-violence in the civil rights field and urges a policy of self defense; and desires to internationalize the racial movement and affiliate with African nations.”

This same document goes on to note that “The third confidential source used is (redacted). The LHM (letter head memorandum) is classified ‘Confidential’ to protect this source since revelation of information therefore might reveal this source which could have an adverse effect on the national defense interests…. The NYO (New York Office) will continue to closely follow the activities of Malcolm X, the MMI and the OAAU. Close liaison in this regard is being maintained with BSS (Bureau of Security Services), NYCPD (New York City Police Department).”

It then goes on to say “Any information coming to the attention of the NYO indicating that Malcolm X or his MMI/OAAU are planning any racial type demonstration or activities anywhere will be promptly furnished to the Bureau and interested offices.”

At the time of Malcolm X’s assassination at least one BSS or BOSS agent was present in the person of Gene Roberts, an undercover police officer. Roberts had been told by his superiors to go down to the OAAU headquarters and get to know the members, then win their confidence and apply for membership.

Roberts was eventually placed on security and was assigned on numerous occasions to protect Malcolm X. He admitted in several interviews that he saw what he thought was a “dry run” of the assassination on Feb. 15, the day after Malcolm’s home was bombed in Queens. During a meeting and later press conference at the Audubon Ballroom, Roberts says two men got into an argument during the meeting.

The BOSS agent said that he reported this to his superiors but does not reveal their response. On the day of the assassination when a similar argument erupted, Roberts left the stage at the Audubon and headed towards the area where the two men were supposedly arguing when one ran down the aisle firing while two or three others close to the front stood up and fired several shots into Malcolm’s body, wounding him mortally.

Roberts is then seen supposedly applying mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to Malcolm on the stage. He reportedly told Betty Shabazz, his wife, that Malcolm was dead.

After the shooting it took uniformed police a considerable amount of time to arrive inside the ballroom. One of the assassins, who later plead guilty, Talmadge Hayer or Thomas Hagin, was caught by Malcolm’s supporters and was being beaten outside the location of the assassination. Hayer had been wounded in the leg reportedly by one of Malcolm’s bodyguards.

There were subsequent newspaper reports and eyewitness accounts that at least one other man, possibly two, were taken away from the scene as suspects by the New York City police. They later vanished without being charged in the assassination.

Later during the late 1970s, Hayer in an affidavit and interview with journalist Tony Brown gave up the names of four other individuals who were a part of the assassination squad. He had refused to reveal these facts during his trial in 1966, although he stated that Thomas 15X Johnson and Norman 3X Butler, also convicted in the assassination, were not accomplices.

One of the assailants named by Hayer was William Bradley, a resident of Newark, New Jersey. In fact Hayer said that all of the members of the assassination squad were from the Newark mosque.

Bradley is reportedly seen in a film clip outside the Audubon the day of the assassination involved in the brawl surrounding the rescue of Hayer by the New York City police. He is then seen walking away from the scene.

Reports have also surfaced that NOI National Secretary John Ali met with Hayer and members of the assassination team the night prior to the murder of Malcolm X. Johnson, who spent over twenty years in prison for a crime he and Hayer both said he did not commit, reported in a filmed interview that John Ali had come to New York days before the assassination to admonish the mosque there for not taking decisive action against Malcolm X.

A recent article published in the New York Daily News stated that “In the late 1970s, Hagan provided some tantalizing clues. In two affidavits filed in 1977 and 1978, he provided partial names for his four accomplices.” (Feb. 15)

Continuing, the article says “Hagan identified the shotgun-toting man who was the first to open fire on Malcolm as Willie X. Hagan’s lawyer, the famed William Kunstler, determined that Willie X was a man named William Bradley. But the case quickly went cold. More than three decades passed before Bradley was identified as the towering Newark man living under the name Al-Mustafa Shabazz.”

How could these assassins avoid law-enforcement scrutiny and prosecution for five decades? It was well known that both the FBI and the NYPD hated Malcolm X and his organizational work.

In addition, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) closely monitored Malcolm’s travels in Africa, the Middle East and Europe during the last year of his life. Yet the official version of the assassination promoted by the authorities and the corporate media is that his death was exclusively the result of a dispute between Malcolm and members of the NOI.

Bradley refused to make any comments to the New York Daily News and referred inquiries to his attorney. He maintains that he was not at the Audubon on the day of the assassination even though numerous researchers have identified him as being both inside and outside the ballroom.

Continuing Implications of the Assassination of Malcolm X

During the course of the 1960s numerous leading public figures and officials in the U.S. were assassinated including President John F. Kennedy, Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., former Attorney General and Senator Robert Kennedy, Illinois Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark as well as others. Researchers and journalists examining these murders have expressed dismay over the failure of law-enforcement and the U.S. Congress to fully investigate and pursue those involved.

The assassinations of African American liberation leaders and organizers coupled with police frame-ups, imprisonment, psychological warfare campaigns and other forms of counter-insurgency had a devastating impact on the struggle against racism and national oppression. Even today this same pattern continues with the mass incarceration along with widespread brutality and murder of African Americans.

During 2014, unrest swept the country in response to the police killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and others. Nonetheless, none of the law-enforcement agents responsible in these incidents have been prosecuted by local authorities or the U.S. Justice Department.

When Barack Obama took office in 2009, there were efforts made to have his Attorney General Eric Holder re-open the investigation into the assassination of Malcolm X. This was never done as the Justice Department has neither pursued federal charges against the police and other racists for the killing of African Americans across the country.

These developments reveal clearly that the U.S. is still a racist state where the lives of African Americans do not matter. From the killings of pioneering leaders in the Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movements to working class and poor youth, the actions of the government on all levels speak to the need for a fundamental transformation of the capitalist system of exploitation and national oppression.

The US military will direct a major military offensive against the Iraqi city of Mosul beginning as early as April, an official with the Pentagon’s Central Command (CENTCOM) told reporters in a conference call Thursday.

The plan calls for the US military forces in Iraq to prepare air, artillery and ground attacks against the densely populated city of 1.4 million, where an estimated 2,000 fighters affiliated with Islamic State in Iraq and Syria are reported to be entrenched.

The main body of the US-overseen Iraqi expeditionary force will be comprised of five brigades of Iraqi recruits, who will receive training at US-run camps before the operation begins, the CENTCOM official said.

US military advisors and special operations detachments will accompany the Iraqi troops, the official said.

The offensive will mark a bloody new phase of Operation Inherent Resolve, which has organized nearly 2,500 US and coalition strikes against Iraq and Syria and deployed some 2,600 US ground troops to Iraq since it began in August 2014.

Mosul fell to ISIS in June of last year, when a force of approximately 1,500 Islamist fighters routed Iraqi government forces with 15 times as many troops. Many residents, who had faced sectarian-based repression by the US-backed regime in Baghdad, welcomed the expulsion of its forces from the city. In a debacle for US policy in the region, ISIS extended its grip over at least a third of the country as US-trained and equipped security forces melted away.

Prior to the invasion by ISIS, Mosul, a city of more than a million people, had already been devastated by the US war and occupation that began in 2003. Approximately half of the city’s population, more than 500,000 people, fled as ISIS consolidated its control over northern Iraq last summer.

Washington’s plan to retake the city with some 25,000 Iraqi government troops directed and led by US “advisors” and backed by American fire-power threatens to unleash the kind of barbaric siege that was inflicted upon the population of Fallujah under the US military occupation.

The plans for US ground forces to fight alongside front-line Iraqi troops, directing strikes and providing combat support, stands in direct contradiction to President Barack Obama’s assurances last year that his administration “will not be sending US troops back into combat in Iraq.”

US and allied forces launched a fresh round of some 25 airstrikes against targets across Iraq and Syria on Wednesday and Thursday, pummeling targets near Haditha, Kirkuk, Mosul, Sinjar, Tal Afar, Al Hasakah and Kobani.

Even as the Pentagon was unveiling the plans for a siege of Mosul, the US and Turkey announced an agreement to arm and train new battalions of “moderate” Syrian “rebels” at the rate of 5,000 fighters a year.

While Washington claims that these forces are being prepared to combat ISIS, both Turkey and the so-called “rebels” are preparing another sectarian-based offensive aimed at overturning the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Whatever differences exist between Washington and Ankara, the move threatens a further escalation of the US imperialist intervention in the region and of the bloodbath in Syria.

An initial deployment of more than 400 US troops will oversee the training programs, Pentagon spokesman Admiral John Kirby confirmed, adding that the total may increase into the thousands.

The Syrian militants will receive instruction in light arms and “more sophisticated” military specialties at US-run camps in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan, in preparation for operations backed by US air and ground support. The Obama administration has already begun the delivery of pickup trucks mounted with machine guns and equipped with radios for calling in US airstrikes.

Anthony Cordesman, a former Pentagon official and leading strategist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has placed the coming Iraq offensive within the context of a strategy for a wave of US military operations in the Middle East, Africa and beyond, in a paper published last week, titled “Boots on the Ground, The Realities in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.”

Cordesman argues that the US military must learn from the experiences of the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars, in which large US occupation forces won tactical victories while failing to enable local militaries to “stand on their own.”

The US must turn to lighter, more flexible deployments to maintain control over urban centers and vital natural resources, as central governments fragment and rebel militias increasingly dominate the hinterland, Cordesman argues.

“The ability to rapidly insert small cadres of ‘stiffeners’ like Special Forces, Rangers, and Marine combat teams may be more critical than to try to move large U.S. combat units,” he writes.

Such “high mobility strike forces” would bolster the conventional armies of “host countries” with logistical support, airstrikes and tailored use of the most advanced weapons systems, thus insuring a modicum of stability in countries of critical importance to the US government.

Indicating possibilities being considered inside the Obama administration for future interventions in Iraq and Syria, Cordesman argues that the US must develop joint forces capable of “controlling populations” and securing “key parts of the economy” amid conditions of “lasting attrition,” praising the recent success of operational, mentor and liaison teams (OMLTs) in Afghanistan in providing “forward assistance in urban warfare tactics.”

The Greek government has repudiated its election pledges, agreeing Friday to a four-month extension of the existing loans and austerity programme dictated by “troika” of the European Commission, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

After nearly a month of negotiations with the political representatives of the European banks, Syriza has accepted the conditions demanded by the troika. The Eurogroup statement noted the agreement remained conditional on Greece presenting, on Monday, a “first list of reform measures, based on the current arrangement.”

Syriza’s proposals must be approved the following day by the Eurogroup and the troika, who will “provide a first view whether this is sufficiently comprehensive to be a valid starting point for a successful conclusion of the review.”

April was set as a deadline for Greece to complete a final list of austerity measures, which will be “further specified and then agreed” by the troika.

The statement asserts the

“Greek authorities commit to refrain from any rollback of measures and unilateral changes to the policies and structural reforms that would negatively impact fiscal targets, economic recovery or financial stability, as assessed by the institutions”.

Without Greek compliance with these orders it will not receive billions of euros in further loans it requires in order to avoid defaulting on its debt of €320 billion.

Opening the press conference following five hours of talks, Eurogroup chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem said Greece had given “their unequivocal commitment to honour their financial obligations” to creditors. He stressed, “Economic recovery cannot be put in danger, fiscal stability cannot be put in danger, financial sector stability cannot be put in danger.”

Before the Eurogroup meeting began, German Chancellor Angela Merkel held a press conference with French President François Hollande. She insisted that the Greek government had still not moved far enough in accepting the brutal cuts agreed to by the previous New Democracy-led government.

Merkel warned, “There is a need for significant improvements in the substance of what is being discussed so that we can vote on it in the German Bundestag, for example next week.”

As negotiations were taking place, at least a billion euros were withdrawn from Greece’s banks due to fear that no agreement would be reached. A reporter from Greece’s SKAI TV commented, “They came here determined to have a political solution, otherwise on Tuesday it would have been necessary to enforce capital controls [on Greek banks].”

Syriza’s agreement to continue enforcing austerity measures under the dictate of the European banks is the inevitable outcome of its class position and social interests.

Commenting on the political and social backlash Syriza will face, Pavlos Tzimas, a Greek political commentator, said, “Very heavy concessions have been made, politically poisonous concessions for the government. It’s going to be a crash test on the domestic front for the government.”

Immediately following the press conference German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble spoke in similar terms: “The Greeks certainly will have a difficult time to explain the deal to their voters. As long as the programme isn’t successfully completed, there will be no payout.”

Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis earlier signalled that Syriza was ready to accept virtually anything. Athens had “gone not an extra mile [but] an extra 10 miles” in its proposal for the extension, he said. Other euro zone nations would have to meet Greece “not half way, but one-fifth of the way” in order to reach agreement.

The announcement on Friday followed by only one day the German governments’ emphatic rejection Thursday of a proposal by the Greek government for an extension of its previous credit agreement with the EU.

In that proposal, presented by Varoufakis, Greece insisted that the “new government is committed to a broader and deeper reform process aimed at durably improving growth and employment prospects, achieving debt sustainability and financial stability.” In the vaguest terms, it called for “enhancing social fairness and mitigating the significant social cost of the ongoing crisis.”

As soon as the text of the proposal from Varoufakis was made public, the German Finance Ministry rejected it. Financial Times writer Peter Spiegel pointed out that Germany took particular exception to language that “seems to leave main points open to negotiation” by stating that the “purpose of the requested six-month extension of the Agreement’s duration” is “to agree the mutually acceptable financial and administrative terms…”

For Europe’s ruling elite, there are no “mutually acceptable financial and administrative terms,” only an unconditional surrender.

Reuters published a document it said, “describes Germany’s position” in response to Varoufakis’s letter. It states that Greece’s request “opens immense room for interpretation” and includes no clear commitment to successfully conclude the current programme, and it falls short of a clear freeze of Greek measures.”

The document spelled out the precise wording that would be acceptable. It stated,

“We need a clear and convincing commitment by Greece, which may just contain three short and well understandable sentences: ‘We apply for the extension of the current programme, making use of built-in flexibility. We will agree with the institutions any changes in measures from the existing MoU. And we aim at successfully concluding the programme’.”

In the end, this is what Syriza agreed to. It balked only at returning with an agreement that explicitly called on it to impose the hated “Memorandum of Understanding”—the list of austerity measures originally agreed to as part of the loan agreement. Syriza was allowed to have the “troika” renamed as the “institutions” and the “Memorandum of Understanding – MoU” recast as the “Master Financial Assistance Facility Agreement” (MFAFA)

However, the MFAFA, the official name of the loan agreement, includes language requiring that Greece “comply with the measures set out in the MoU,” that is, with the austerity measures dictated by the European banks.

The abject capitulation of the Syriza government exposes the utter political bankruptcy of the myriad petty-bourgeois pseudo-left organizations throughout the world who just a few weeks ago hailed the electoral victory of Tsipras as an earth-shaking event. Far from denouncing Syriza’s betrayal, these groups will work overtime conjuring up excuses and justifications. But broad sections of the Greek working class will see the agreement for what it is: a cynical and cowardly act of political treachery.

The Saker web site reports rebel forces in total control of Debaltsevo. It cites Russian sources saying about 1,000 troops didn’t surrender.

Sputnik News reported Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) military spokesman Eduard Basurin estimating about 3,000 junta troops remaining.

Rebels intend simply waiting them out to succumb to hunger, cold and recognition that continued fighting is futile. They can’t last much longer. They’re virtually out of ammunition and food.

Debaltsevo represents the “catastrophic collapse of combat capability of the junta forces,” said The Saker. It’s why Poroshenko is desperate for Western help. He wants NATO doing his fighting for him.

Kiev’s military is a spent force. The Saker said it reached its “breaking point.” Debaltsevo represents a Ukrainian Stalingrad. Engaging rebels head-to-head assures more catastrophic defeats.

Especially since Ukrainian conscripts don’t what to wage war on their own people. Rebels are determined to prevail in their freedom struggle from fascist rule.

It’s just a matter of time before conflict resumes full-force. Perhaps this time with US-led NATO doing Kiev’s fighting.

Poroshenko Bloc MP Vadim Denisenko urged NATO air strikes on rebel held areas. The Alliance “is very slow in acting,” he said.

Only now are there public discussions about Kiev’s open secret. Washington and other NATO countries have been supplying heavy weapons throughout months of conflict covertly.

On Tuesday, Putin said “(a)ccording to our information,” Western countries are already delivering arms.”

They accomplish nothing but more death and destruction. The don’t change the balance of things on the ground.

Supplying more heavy weapons means “(t)he result will remain the same as it is today.,” Putin stressed.

“(T)his is an inevitability, since the vast majority of the personnel of Ukraine’s armed forces, in my opinion, has no desire to participate in a fratricidal war, far away from their own homes, while the Donbas militia have the great motivation of protecting their families.”

“(T)he next step will obviously be air strikes,” said Denisenko. Maybe by spring. “(T)here is no possibility for a political compromise on the matter of solving the conflict in eastern Ukraine.”

“(A)ll that’s left to do is to formally declare (full-scale) war.” Junta forces need all the help they can get. A previous article said they’re outmaneuvered, outsmarted, outfought and soundly defeated.

Obama so far wages proxy war in Ukraine. Once Congress authorizes unconstrained use of military force, will he deploy US troops to Donbass?

Will he order air strikes on rebel held areas? Will he pressure other NATO countries to wage war? Will he end up ravaging and destroying another country? Will millions more Ukrainians be affected?

Poroshenko’s call for Western peacekeepers is a thinly veiled request for NATO help.

Kiev’s national security and defense council wants it. NSDC head Akekandr Turchinov said “(w)e hope (parliament) will support this this decision regarding an appeal to the UN and EU on the deployment of a peacekeeping contingent to Ukraine.”

Its parliament is rubber-stamp. Fascist regimes operate this way. Turhinov wants NATO forces positioned along the entire demarcation line as well as so-called “uncontrolled” parts of the Russian/Ukrainian border.

Imagine US and other NATO combat troops deployed meters from Russian territory. Imagine hugely flashpoint conditions.

Turchinov ludicrously calls it a way to “provide real steps for the peaceful settlement of conflict in Ukraine.”

Poroshenko says it’s “the most effective and optimal solution…” Deploying peacekeepers requires Security Council authorization. Russia justifiably expressed opposition.

Moscow’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said Poroshenko’s proposal indicates a “lack of determination” to observe Minsk II provisions.

“I think it’s a little bit disturbing, because they just signed the Minsk agreements on February 12,” said Churkin.

“And the Minsk agreements provide for” OSCE monitors only. “There is nothing about the UN or European Union.”

“So for them to start talking immediately about something else…I think instead of coming up with new ideas they should really work harder on implementing what they agreed on.”

Poroshenko and Turchinov proposing Western combat troops in Donbass masquerading as peacekeepers flies in the face of wanting real conflict resolution.

On February 18, Foreign Policy (FP) published a report explaining Kiev’s military dire state.Ukrainian youths reject war, it said.

They’re “making themselves scarce.” Growing numbers ignore conscription notices. A young man identified as Roman said he’s “against every war, but especially this (one) because it’s meaningless.”

It was “created artificially. The Ukrainian mass media helped this along by spreading this patriotic hysteria.”

Earlier, Ukrainian military sources said 85,792 summoned for service in 13 regions last year didn’t report as ordered.

“Now young men with views like Roman’s are on the run as the government tries to stem a rash of reported draft dodging and is cracking down on anti-war sentiments,” said FP.

Mass avoidance of service “raised questions about whether Ukraine will…be able to recruit the manpower it needs to defend itself against (nonexistent) Russian aggression.”

The Big Lie persists despite clear evidence debunking it. FP operates like other media scoundrels. Presstitution is national MSM affliction.

Truth-telling on issues mattering most is strictly verboten. Big Lies substitute ad nauseam.

FP blames Russia and rebels for US planned, implemented and directed Kiev aggression against its Donbass citizens.

It said nothing about lawless putschists running things. Neo-Nazis masquerading as democrats. Fully supported by Washington. Jointly planning their next moves against rebels wanting freedom from fascism.

Poroshenko serves at Washington’s discretion. His days may be numbered. Obama officials, Kiev hardliners and militant oligarchs may want him replaced.

Rumors circulated last September after earlier defeats. Talk was about replacing his fumbling administration with new leadership.

It surfaced again as junta forces faced defeat in Debaltsevo. The German publication Der Tagesspiegel discussed it.

Saying “in Kiev…an open power struggle (rages) between” Poroshenko and prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

When Poroshenko announced Minsk ceasefire terms, “some of the large Ukrainian TV channels turned away.”

“Even the 5 channel (he owns) did not show his speech.” Observers see an ongoing power struggle he may lose.

Ultimately things will be decided in Washington. Obama installed Poroshenko. He’s a convenient US stooge. If no longer useful, he’s out.

Yatsenyuk is a Washington favorite. He’s virulently anti-Russian. He wants Donbass freedom fighters crushed.

Perhaps he’ll be Ukraine’s next president – tasked with waging greater than ever full-scale aggression on his own people.

Maybe this time with US-led NATO help? Will Ukraine be another Libya?

Will Obama use congressionally authorized unconstrained war-making powers to unleash US-led NATO force like before?

Will Southeatern Ukraine be ravaged and destroyed in the process? Will millions more Ukrainians be harmed? Countless thousands killed or maimed. Enormous greater numbers displaced.

How much more criminality will Obama add to his rap sheet in his remaining 23 months in office? He’s already a war criminal multiple times over.

His lust for mass slaughter and destruction appears insatiable. Perhaps he’ll attack Russia after Ukraine.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

 Gene therapy involves identifying and replacing faulty or missing genes, or engineering augmentations for existing genes to permanently cure a wide number of conditions and illnesses ranging from cancer and diabetes, to regenerative processes like rebuilding hearts or storing sight and hearing.

A breakthrough clinical trial in 2012 saw several patients stricken with incurable leukemia put into permanent remission using gene therapy. The actual process of creating re-engineered cells taken from a patient and reintroducing them costs approximately $15,000, and such procedures are still in the experimental phase. While this cost does not include the required intensive care required to bring a patient from the brink of death back into full health, it is likely the costs in the near future will be drastically lower than current and far less effective cancer treatments are today.

The transformative power of this new technology spells the end of big pharmaceutical monopolies who wallow in billions in profits year to year, enabling them to continue dominating modern medical practice through the skewing of regulatory bodies, the stacking of academic studies, and even the expansive, global bribery of doctors and other medical practitioners to push big pharma’s products.

As gene therapy enters into mainstream medicine, big pharma has attempted to control it. In order to continue reaping the unwarranted profits, influence, and power big pharma has accumulated over the decades, they plan to compensate for the drastic drop in prices and the fact that many conditions will now be permanently curable, cutting patients off from a lifetime of dependency on big pharma’s cocktails.

Essentially, they have announced that patients will be placed essentially into lifetime debt in exchange for single treatments that will cure them – cures that will be priced at around $1 million.

Indeed, Reuters would report in an article titled, “Insight – Paying for gene therapy: are annuities the next big thing?,” that:

Drugmakers contend that a one-time cure, even at a price of more than $1 million, would save money over the long term. But there are concerns that health insurers will balk at covering that kind of upfront cost.

The therapies do not cost $1 million, keeping big pharma a monopoly does. Reuters also includes in their article insurers demanding exorbitantly priced medications be discounted, and under pressure, big pharma was able to cut prices by as much as 50% and still stay in business.

February 20, 2015, marks the one-year anniversary of the heinous slaughter of protesters and police by neo-Nazi snipers who transformed a relatively peaceful protest against Ukraine’s democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, into a violent anti-Russia coup. To this day, the illegitimate regime ruling in Kiev has done virtually nothing to bring their sniper allies to justice.

Many political actors in the West, including the Obama administration’s CIA and State Department, as well as members of the European Union were accomplices in the anti-Russia coup. Foolishly, they supported a coup in Kiev that provoked anti-Kiev mobilizations among Russians living in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Thus they recklessly courted the civil war that ravages Ukraine today, as well as the justly deserved devastating defeats suffered by coup regime forces in Ilovaisk and Debaltseve.

Nevertheless, like thieves caught in broad daylight, the Obama administration, the EU, and NATO have attempted to deflect the blame on to Russia. Russophobes within the West’s think tanks and mainstream news media have embraced their lies. Thus, so has Boobus Americanus. Consequently, the civil war that now threatens to dismember Ukraine also threatens to spark World War III.

Why? Because, Russia’s TV news has been equally successful in convincing the overwhelming majority of Russians that the U.S. provoked regime change in Kiev in order to weaken Russian influence in the region. Consequently, support for President Putin and anti-American sentiment have grown enormously.

Fortunately — for readers who suspect that the relentless Western demonization of Russia and its leader, President Vladimir Putin, is a crudely hysterical, self-serving cover for the relentless U.S., EU, and NATO expansion that, finally, has met its Waterloo in Ukraine — we now have Richard Sakwa’s detailed and thoughtful new book, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands.

According to Professor Sakwa, the crisis had its origins in: (1) “structural contradictions in the international system” (p. 5), and (2) “the profound tensions in the Ukrainian nation and state-building processes since Ukraine achieved independence in 1991” (p. 2). Russia has played a secondary role in both, but largely in reaction to steps taken in Washington, Brussels and Kiev.

Professor Sakwa correctly claims, “The groundwork of the Ukrainian conflict has been latent for at least two decades. It was laid by the asymmetrical end of the Cold War, in which one side declared victory while the other was certainly not ready to ‘embrace defeat’” (Ibid). He might have added that America’s declaration of victory, called “triumphalism,” is just another strain of our relentless and obnoxious boasting, called “American Exceptionalism,” which dates back, at least, to the post-Revolutionary War period. Then, victory over the British moved the president of Yale College, Ezra Stiles, to proclaim America to be “God’s New Israel” and to compare George Washington to “Joshua commanding the armies of the Children of Israel and leading them into the Promised Land.” (Richard M. Gamble, The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation, p. 10–11.)

Triumphalism, as politics, reared its ugly head when America’s conservatives, with the support of the military-industrial complex, attempted to credit President Reagan (especially his military buildup) for the collapse of the Soviet Union. The inconvenient fact that Reagan left office in January, 1989, while the collapse did not occur until almost three years later, in late December, 1991, did nothing to temper their claim. More difficult to gloss over, however, was the scathing criticism of Reagan made by conservatives, just as he was leaving office.

It was then that William Safire, Howard Phillips and George Will claimed that Reagan had been duped by Mikhail Gorbachev. Mr. Will, for example, went so far as to assert: “Reagan has accelerated the moral disarmament of the West – actual disarmament will follow – by elevating wishful thinking to the status of political philosophy” (See Francis Fitzgerald, Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War, p. 467).

The triumphalists also needed to bury the contrary assertions made by Reagan’s own Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack F. Matlock. Ambassador Matlock denied that Reagan sought either the disintegration of Communist rule or the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But, the most fateful failure of the triumphalists, was their refusal to recognize, let alone credit, Mikhail Gorbachev for the conceptual breakthroughs that led to the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War. For example, it was Gorbachev who advanced the concept of “mutual security.” His foreign policy advisor, Anatoly Chernyaev, explained “mutual security” as follows: “We are by no means talking about weakening our security. But at the same time we have to realize that if our proposals imply weakening U.S. security, then there won’t be any agreement.” (See Walter C. Uhler, “Gorbachev’s Revolution,” The Nation, Dec. 31, 2001, p. 44)

That conceptual failure had fateful policy implications for post-Cold War Europe. After all, when the West commenced its relentless expansion of the European Union and NATO, it dismissively lectured Russia that such expansion was no threat to Russia – even if the Russian leaders thought otherwise!

In addition to displaying insufferable arrogance, the West’s dismissive lectures demonstrated that the triumphalists were in no mood to operate according to Gorbachev’s concept of mutual security. They were still playing by zero-sum Cold War ground rules that, in their closed minds, had won the Cold War. But, by doing so, they virtually guaranteed that Russia eventually would reintroduce such Cold War ground rules as well.

It was President George H.W. Bush’s sense of triumph – as will be shown below — that compelled him to persuade West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to renege on his crucial promise to Mikhail Gorbachev: no eastward expansion of NATO. And it was the triumphalism of Bush’s Secretary of Defense, Richard Cheney, as well as his assistant, Paul Wolfowitz, that led to the promulgation of the infamous Defense Planning Guidance, which became known as the “Wolfowitz Doctrine.”

Writing in the September/October 2014 issue of Foreign Affairs, Mary Elise Sarrote noted that, at their meeting on February 10, 1990, Kohl assured Gorbachev that, in return for Moscow’s permission to begin the reunification of Germany, “naturally NATO could not expand its territory to the current territory of [East Germany].” “In parallel talks, [West German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich] Genscher delivered the same message to his Soviet counterpart, Eduard Shevardnadze, saying, ‘for us, it stands firm: NATO will not expand itself to the East.’”

According to Professor Sarrote, “After hearing these repeated assurances, Gorbachev gave West Germany what Kohl later called ‘the green light.’” Kohl “held a press conference immediately to lock in his gain.” However, he did not mention the quid pro quo — no eastward expansion of NATO.

(The Soviet Union lost some 27,000,000 men, women and children before defeating Nazi Germany in World War II. By comparison, the U.S. lost some 400,000 during that war. Consequently, permitting the reunification of Germany in return for West Germany’s assurance of no NATO expansion eastward was an enormous concession by Gorbachev.)

Professor Sakwa believes, “There was no deal prohibiting NATO’s advance since it had appeared utter insanity even to conceive of such a thing” (p.45). But, I’m not so sure. After all, when Kohl met with Bush at Camp David on February 24-25, he was persuaded to back away from his informal agreement with Gorbachev. “Bush made his feelings about compromising with Moscow clear to Kohl: ‘To hell with that! We prevailed and they didn’t. We can’t let the Soviets clutch victory from the jaws of defeat.’” (See “A Broken Promise,”Foreign Affairs, p. 93-94 in print edition)

In May 1990, Gorbachev exposed the bad faith of the Americans and Germans, when he told Secretary of State James Baker: “You say that NATO is not directed against us, that it is simply a security structure that is adapting to new realities. Therefore, we propose to join NATO.” Baker refused. (Ibid. p. 95)

The worst consequence of arrogant American triumphalism in the first Bush administration was the “Wolfowitz Doctrine.” It came to light in early March 1992, when the New York Times reported the details of Paul Wolfowitz’s Defense Planning Guidance (DPG), which had been leaked to the newspaper. Mr. Wolfowitz urged that the United States:

“must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” In a word, Mr. Wolfowitz had drafted a plan for everlasting American global hegemony. According to Professor Sakwa, “this has been the strategy pursued by the U.S. since the fall of communism” (p. 211).

According to the Times, the DPG stipulated that:

“the United States should not contemplate any withdrawal of its nuclear-strike aircraft based in Europe and, in the event of a resurgent threat from Russia, ‘we should plan to defend against such a threat’ farther forward on the territories of Eastern Europe ‘should there be an Alliance decision to do so.’”

As the Times correctly notes: “This statement offers an explicit commitment to defend the former Warsaw Pact nations from Russia.” The DPG also suggested:

“that the United States could also consider extending to Eastern and Central European nations security commitments similar to those extended to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Arab states along the Persian Gulf. And to help stabilize the economies and democratic development in Eastern Europe, the draft calls on the European Community to offer memberships to Eastern European countries as soon as possible.” (See “U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals develop,” New York Times. ) Thus, the DPG proposed aggressive policies that would keep Russian from “even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.”

Yet, the reality proved to be much more aggressive than Wolfowitz’s DPG. Taking advantage of a weakened, inward looking Russia, the Clinton administration urged Warsaw Pact nations to apply for membership in NATO. Thus, not only did aggressive NATO expansion occur long before Russia became a “resurgent threat,” aggressive NATO expansion actually provoked Russia into becoming a resurgent threat.

(The triumphalism of the Clinton administration was best expressed by a proponent of NATO expansion, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: “[I]f we have to use force it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and see further than other countries into the future…” (Sakwa, p. 227)).

In addition to NATO’s relentless territorial expansion came a second type of expansion that was totally consistent with Wolfowitz’s DPG. NATO expanded its strategic concept to include offensive war, not only in self-defense of member states that had been attacked, but also to guarantee European security and uphold democratic values within and beyond its borders. In fact, the new strategic concept was put into practice a month before it was announced, when, for the first time, NATO used military force against a sovereign state (Yugoslavia) that had not attacked a NATO member. Russians of every class and political persuasion were livid, but nobody in the West paid much attention.

Russia’s compassion and support for the U.S after al-Qaeda’s heinous attacks on 9/11 quickly evaporated when President George W. Bush authorized American troops to invade Iraq. Vice President Cheney and Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz — the scoundrels behind the DPG — played critical roles in fostering the worst war crime of the 21st century. According to Professor Sakwa, “after the Iraq war of 2003 Russia became increasingly alienated and developed into what I call a ‘neo-revisionist’ power, setting the stage for the confrontation in Ukraine.” (p.30)

Also setting the stage for the confrontation in Ukraine was the further expansion of NATO. On March 29, 2004, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania Slovenia, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Romania joined Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic (which had been admitted in 1999) as members of NATO.

In 2005, after a protest against crooked elections in Ukraine resulted in the so-called Orange Revolution, the Bush administration hurriedly dispatched Daniel Fried, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs to the new government in Ukraine. According to WikiLeaks, Mr. Fried not only communicated the U.S. Government’s commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty, but also “emphasized U.S. support for Ukraine’s NATO and Euro-Atlantic aspirations” (Sakwa, p.52-53). He emphasized America’s support for joining NATO, notwithstanding the fact that Ukrainians overwhelmingly opposed joining NATO.

On February 12, 2007, while the United States was still conducting its criminal assault on Iraq, President Putin aired his grievances about NATO expansion at the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy. He said: “I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernization of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: ‘the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee’. Where are these guarantees?”

Clearly, Western aggression and double-dealing were on Putin’s mind – just as it had been on the mind of every Russian leader since Gorbachev. As the grievances mounted, yet another threat arose — the eastward expansion of an “Atlanticized” European Union. EU expansion was not an explicit threat to Russia, until the very day that the Treaty of Lisbon was signed, 13 December 2007. Why? Because, under the new treaty, all countries joining the EU must “align their defense and security policies with those of NATO” (Sakwa, p. 30).

Yet, another provocation occurred at the Bucharest NATO summit in April 2008, when the military alliance recognized the aspirations of Georgia and Ukraine to become its next members. According to Professor Sakwa, it took protests by Russia, as well as “the combined efforts by the French and Germans to dissuade President George W. Bush from starting the process of Ukrainian and Georgian accession then and there.” (p. 54-55)

Then, there was the provocation that began in May 2008, when Poland pressured the EU to develop the Eastern Partnership (EaP) program, which targeted six former Soviet states (including Ukraine) on the EU’s borders. Although the EaP “was not considered a step toward EU membership for its participating states, … [it] sought to create a comfort zone along the EU’s borders by tying these countries in to a Western orientation.” (Sakwa, p. 39)

According to Professor Sakwa, “The EaP was the brainchild of foreign minister Radoslaw (Radek) Sikorski,” – called “another East European fruitcake” by “one perceptive commentator” (Sakwa, p. 40) – but he then drafted in his Swedish counterpart Carl Bildt to give the idea greater heft in intra-EU negotiations.” (p. 39)

The EaP became the EU’s method of forcing states to choose between the West and Russia. According to Professor Sakwa, “Its partisans insisted on the sovereign right of those states to join the alliance system of their liking. The concept of ‘choice’ thus became deeply ideological and was used as a weapon against those who suggested that countries have histories and location, and that choices have to take into account the effect that they will have on others.” (p. 40)

(The concept of choice was meant to negate Russia’s national security claims to a sphere of influence in Ukraine. But, as noted scholar John Mearshreimer recently observed, “the United States does not tolerate distant great powers deploying military forces anywhere in the Western hemisphere, much less on its borders” (Sakwa, p. 236, quoting from “Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s fault,” Foreign Affairs, September-October 2014, p. 78))

Thus, “the EaP represented a qualitatively different level of interaction that effectively precluded closer integration in Eurasian projects, and indeed had a profound security dynamic that effectively rendered the EU as much of a threat in Russian perceptions as NATO.” (p. 41)

Many pundits in the West, including Tom Friedman and Trudy Rubin, have decried Russia’s decision to upset the world’s peaceful “end of history” liberal economic world order by resorting to such revolting twentieth-century geopolitical tactics as invading another country. Their views deserve contempt, not only because NATO’s expansion has been geopolitical from the start – as was the U.S. invasion of Iraq — but also because the EaP “had a profound geopolitical logic from the first” (Sakwa, p. 40). It is worth adding that, by precluding “closer integration in Eurasian projects,” the EaP violated the very principles of the liberal economic world order that advocates like Friedman and Rubin supposedly hold dear.

On top of all of these provocations came the provocation that finally incited a Russian military response – Georgia’s military invasion of the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, in August 2008. Russia responded to Georgia’s attack by sending troops into South Ossetia, bombing Gori, occupying part of Georgia and recognizing the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It was a well-deserved humbling of Georgia’s reckless ruler, Mikheil Saakashvili, and a well-deserved smack across the collective faces of the U.S., the EU, and NATO.

Clearly, asserts Professor Sakwa, Russia’s counterattack in Georgia “was a response to the threat of NATO enlargement” (p. 40). Unfortunately, the Georgia crisis failed to make clear to everyone that Russia “is prepared to use force when its national interests are at stake” (Mikhail Margelov, quoted by Sakwa, p.5). Now, the world faces a possible World War III over Ukraine, because triumphalists in the West ignored Russia’s growing outrage over relentless and provocative eastward expansion by the EU and NATO.

In 1991, the U.S. commenced its investment in a democracy promotion program in Ukraine, which, according to obnoxious neocon Victoria Nuland, cost American taxpayers $5 billion by 2013. In 1992, as we have seen, Paul Wolfowitz drafted a Defense Planning Guidance that aimed at perpetual U.S. hegemony over the world.

In 1997, Zbigniew Brzezinski — who later became a foreign policy advisor to the Obama administration – had published a book titled The Grand Chessboard, which was:

“translated into Russian and is part of everyday political discussion” (Sakwa, p.215). According to Mr. Brzezinski, “Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”

“However, if Moscow regains control over Ukraine, with its 52 million people and major resources as well as access to the Black Sea, Russia automatically again regains the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state, spanning Europe and Asia” (See Chris Ernesto, “Brzezinski Mapped Out the Battle for Ukraine in 1997,” March 15, 2014, anti-war.com. )

Between 2004 and 2013, the EU spent 496 million euros, in order to subsidize Ukrainian “front groups” (Sakwa, p. 90). In September 2013, Carl Gershman, the president of the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, declared that Ukraine represented “the biggest prize,” because it not only would cause Putin to lose the “near abroad,” but also might lead to the overthrow of Putin himself (Ibid, 74-75). In a word, the EU and the US had been waging a war against Russia by other than military means.

As Professor Sakwa put it, “The Ukrainian border at its closest is a mere 480 kilometers from Moscow and thus the whole issue assumed an existential character. Ukraine matters to Russia as an issue of survival, quite apart from a thousand years of shared history and civilization, whereas for Brussels or Washington it is just another country in the onward march of ‘the West’” (p. 75)

As should be clear, from the evidence presented above, Professor Sakwa devotes much attention to the “structural contradictions in the international system” that led to the “Ukraine crisis.” But, he also closely examines the role that the “Ukrainian crisis” played in the “Ukraine crisis.” The “Ukrainian crisis” is Professor Sakwa’s term for “the profound tensions in the Ukrainian nation and state-building processes since Ukraine achieved independence in 1991, which now threaten the unity of the state itself” (p. ix).

He notes three distinct and irreconcilable social and political tendencies that have undermined the state-building processes in Ukraine — the Orange, Blue and Gold. The first, which he calls Orange and “monist,” is largely based in Galicia and western Ukraine. It is ultra-nationalistic and wallows in its victimization at the hands of Russians. It fosters support for nation-building by focusing its attention on an external evil that has kept Ukrainians down. Thus, it is virulently Russophobic. But, “externalization means that inadequate attention is devoted to finding negotiated domestic solutions to domestic problems” (p. 70).

The Orangists seek to create a culturally autonomous state for Ukrainians, largely by constructing myths about its history and by purging itself of the Russian language. For example, they demand that Holodomor be recognized as genocide, notwithstanding the fact that Stalin’s viciously engineered famine of 1932-33 “was not restricted to Ukraine alone, with millions dying in the Kuban and the lower Volga.” (p. 19) Worse, in 2010, the Orangists outraged much of the civilized world when it awarded the notorious Nazi collaborator, Stepan Bandera, the title of “Hero of Ukraine” (p. 19).

The Orange tendency also can be credited for ensuring that the 1996 constitution recognized Ukrainian as the sole national language and described Russian as the language of a national minority — notwithstanding the fact that 80% of Ukraine’s population uses Russian as its language of daily communication, and notwithstanding the fact that, according to 2012 data, “60 percent of newspapers, 83 percent of journals, 87 percent of books and 72 percent of television programs in Ukraine are in Russian” (p. 59) As one correspondent put it: “Is there any other country on earth where a language understood by 100% of the population is not a language of state?” (Sakwa, p. 149) Clearly, it was a move made by a people with a huge inferiority complex when it comes to Russian culture.

The Blue and “pluralist” tendency, like the Orange, has been “committed to the idea of a free and united Ukraine” (p. x). But, it “recognizes that the country’s various regions have different historical and cultural experiences, and that the modern Ukrainian state needs to acknowledge this diversity in a more capacious constitutional settlement” Unlike the Orange tendency, the Blue tendency insists that “Russian is recognized as the second state language and economic, social and even security links with Russia are maintained” (p. x)

Finally, Professor Sakwa describes the Gold tendency; the tendency of powerful and corrupt oligarchs to use their dominant political and economic power to create chaos, suck the lifeblood out of its people, and make a joke of Ukrainian democracy ever since the state achieved independence. As Professor Sakwa puts it, “While the two models of Ukrainian state development, the monist and pluralist, quarreled, the bureaucratic-oligarchic-plutocracy ran off with the cream” (p.60). In reality, Ukraine has been a basket-case since its independence.

“One hundred people control some 80-85 percent of Ukraine’s wealth” (p. 61). Name the oligarch. Whether it has been Kuchma, Yushchenko, Tymoshenko, Akhmetov, Taruta, Firtash, Poroshenko, Kolomoisky, Yanukovych or others, the oligarchs have alternately competed or cooperated with one another, through bribes and political favors, to make Ukraine one of the most corrupt countries in the world (See “Welcome to Ukraine: One of the ‘Biggest Kleptocracies in the World’.”).

As a consequence, Ukraine is one of two post-Soviet countries whose GDP has yet to reach its 1991 level. One person in three lives below the poverty line and, in 2014, inflation reached 20 percent. Unemployment in the first quarter of 2014 was 9.3 percent – and that was after milions of Ukrainians had left the country to seek work on the EU and Russia (Sakwa, p.72-73).

Professor Sakwa is correct to note that “endless oligarch war and self-enrichment of the elite” was accompanied by “declining living standards” and the “onset of ‘stealth authoritarianism’” (p. 73). He also is correct when he concludes that the rule of Viktor Yanukovych was the most corrupt, self-enriching and authoritarian of all of. “Crude methods of physical coercion were applied, of the sort that Yanukovych had long practiced in Donetsk but which were new to Ukraine as a whole, and exceeded anything in Putin’s Russia” (p. 74)

The fact that the EU and Russia found Yanukovych an acceptable partner with whom to do business, did not prevent “the growing gulf between an irresponsible elite and the mass of the people,” which “was the crucial precipitating factor for the protest movement from November 2013. The ‘European choice’” – made by the protesters after Yanukovych backed away from signing the Association Agreement on November 21st — “acted as the proxy for blocked domestic change” (Sakwa, p. 67).

Professor Sakwa credits neo-Nazi Right Sector (Pravy Sektor) for taking the lead in organizing the defense of Kiev’s Independence Square (known as Maidan) during the protest against Yanukovych’s decision to accept aid from Russia. He also credits Right Sector and neo-Nazi Svoboda for preventing the collapse of the revolt on the Maidan.

But, he blames Right Sector and Svoboda, among other protesters, for the sniper fire on February 20th that proved decisive in achieving the coup that took place two days later. He also blames the “high degree of U.S. meddling in Ukrainian affairs,” and notes that Victoria Nuland’s infamous “fuck the EU” actually referred to “the hesitancy of the EU to go along with American militancy on the Ukraine crisis” (p. 87).

Professor Sakwa makes mincemeat of the claims, made by members of the coup regime and its supporters in the West, that by fleeing from Kiev, President Yanukovych had, in effect, abdicated. In fact, at least four attempts to assassinate Yanukovych occurred after his security service deserted him. (p. 89)

Finding the counter-mobilizations in Crimea and eastern Ukraine to be as justified (or unjustified) as the one that occurred in Kiev, Professor Sakwa observes:

“The forcible seizure of power by radical nationalists represented a breakdown of the constitutional order in Kiev; and if the constitutional order had been repudiated in the center, then on what basis could it be defended in the regions?” (p. 109)

Professor Sakwa also believes that Putin’s decision to annex Crimea was not part of a long-term plan to reconstitute the Soviet Union – as many fools in the West believe – but a “counter-coup” in response to the coup in Kiev. It proved to be enormously popular in Russia.

When attempting to assess what happened in eastern Ukraine, Sakwa concludes that:

“two elements developed in parallel: a genuine regional revolt adopting the tactics of the Maidan against the ‘Ukrainizing’ and anti-Russian policies pursued by the Kiev authorities; and the strategic political considerations of Moscow, which exploited the insurgency to exercise leverage against the Kiev government to achieve defined goals – above all a degree of regional devolution, initially called federalization – as well as to ensure that the strategic neutrality of the country was maintained” (p. 156). He adds that these goals might actually be in the best interests of Ukraine itself.

He reaches two conclusions about events in eastern Ukraine that this reviewer would dispute: (1) Russia probably supplied the SA-11 Buk missile-launcher that unintentionally shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 and (2) Russia’s military had little to do with the devastating defeat that separatist forces inflicted on Kiev’s army at Ilovaisk. But, I’m in no better position to defend my conclusions than he.

In seeking to explain the accord in U.S. politics that unites liberals and conservatives, Sakwa goes beyond kneejerk U.S. Russophobia, which he dates to the failed Polish uprising of 1830, and quotes David Bromwich, who observed:

“The state apparatus which supports wars and the weapons industry for Republican yields welfare and expanded entitlements for Democrats” (p.226). Thus, for liberal universalists and geopolitical realists alike, the Ukrainian crisis of 2013 offered an opportunity to complete the ‘unfinished revolution’ of the Orange administration from 2004, pushing aside more cautious Europeans to consolidate U.S. hegemony (‘leadership’) and to punish Russia – for its temerity in upstaging the U. S. over the Syrian chemical weapons crisis in mid-2013, for giving refuge to the whistle-blower Edward Snowden…, and in general for its refusal to kowtow in the appropriate manner.”

When it all blew up in America’s face, the U.S. imposed sanctions, “the hubristic application of the instruments of hegemonic power” (p. 183). Noting Vice President Biden’s admission that the U.S. forced EU members to impose sanctions, he concludes that Europe demonstrated “it was incapable of mastering the very basic principle of modern statecraft – the independent solution of problems” (p. 204).

Professor Sakwa approvingly quotes Seumas Milne, who asserted:

“It’s not necessary to have any sympathy for Putin’s oligarchic authoritarianism to recognize that Nato and the EU, not Russia, sparked this crisis – and that it’s the Western powers that are resisting a negotiated settlement that is the only way out, for fear of appearing weak” (p. 222 from “Far from keeping the peace, Nato is a constant threat to it,” The Guardian, 4 September 2014).

Unfortunately, that was not Professor Sakwa’s final word on the matter. On the penultimate page of his exceptionally judicious and comprehensive book, he proceeds to undermine virtually everything he said about the Wolfowitz Doctrine, America’s hegemonic war party, and the threat NATO posed to Russia by asserting: “Russia’s stance of resentment and self-exclusion… needs to be modified to encompass the fact that neither NATO nor the EU is systematically hostile to Russian’s interests” (p. 255). Say what?

Walter C. Uhler is an independent scholar and freelance writer whose work has been published in numerous publications, including Dissident Voice, The Nation, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Journal of Military History, the Moscow Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. He also is President of the Russian-American International Studies Association (RAISA). He can be reached at: [email protected]. Read other articles by Walter C., or visit Walter C.’s website.

Obama’ recent visit to India netted a trove of economic, military, and nuclear power agreements with India. The visit – and the agreements –  underscored the attempt by the U.S. state to utilize its ‘pivot to Asia’ to create military and economic alliances with other Asian nations in order to encircle and isolate China.  

The military wing of the ‘Asian Pivot’ is called ‘Air-Sea Battle Plan’. It involves progressively moving up to 60% of  U.S. military forces into the Asian area, alongside the placement of new and advanced military equipment and new military bases and alliances with countries like the Philippines, South Korea, and Japan.

The economic wing of the pivot is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). It’s a proposed regional regulatory and investment treaty which would exclude and which currently involves negotiations between Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam.

This military and economic encirclement strategy confronts, however, a very  large obstacle. The U.S. state may for now remain the worlds sole military super-power, based on its enormous expenditures for military, security, and online monitoring of the worlds’ people. But China has emerged in the past seven years as the worlds’ leading industrial super-power. In a shift – unprecedented historically for its speed – China has ,moved at warp speed in the past seven years to replace the U.S. as the world’s largest industrial producer.  As recently as 2007, China produced a mere 62% of U.S. industrial output.  But by 2011, China’s  output was 120% of U.S. output, and the gap continues to grow.  This displacement of the U.S. by China is the fastest shift in the balance of world industrial output in recorded economic history.

In the same period in which Chinas’ industrial production essentially doubled, US industrial output shrank by one percent,, EU industrial output  declined by nine percent  and Japans output shriveled by seventeen percent..

This historic shift of industrial power to China has immense consequences. To begin with, we need to recognize that real wealth is not money, stocks, bonds, or the  manipulation of exotic financial instruments such as derivatives as found on Wall Street.  Real wealth is the result of ability to produce goods and services which have value for human beings.

In China the hundreds of thousands of industrial workers churning out products in just one province – Guangdong – outnumber the entire industrial workforce of the U.S. An ever-increasing proportion of the worlds manufactured goods are produced:  each year in China: hundreds of millions of socks to cover the worlds feet; the majority of clothing worn in the U.S. while most-often bearing U.S. brands, is China-made; computers and mobile phones such as  the Apple products are primarily produced in China, as are the notebook computers sold worldwide by Chinese computer company Lenovo. The largest annual production of Chinese state-owned, joint state-private, and solely private  companies.  And the largest annual production of cars in any country  in the world now also takes place in China. And there are the high speed Chinese-made magnetic trains which increasingly crisis-cross the country, and which are being sold and erected in varoius other countries.

The notion that China’s rise can be ‘contained’ or encircled is dubious not only because of China’s industrial prowess, but also because of the international trade it engenders.

As the Economist magazine observed: “China’s international trade in goods did indeed lead the world in 2013. Its combined imports and exports amounted to almost $4.2 trillion, exceeding America’s for the first time.”  In fairness, it should be added that when international trade in services is added to trade in manufactured goods, the U.S. was still ahead.  U.S. industry also retains the lead in hi-tech production methods, though that lead is being narrowed.

China’s trade relationships with other Asian nations – nations the U.S. stare is attempting to woo – constitutes a particular barrier to isolating China. The China–ASEAN Free Trade Area is a free trade area among the ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the People’s Republic of China.  Implemented in 2010, the China-Asian free trade zone  reduced tarrifs or import duties on 90% of goods to zero.

Prospective participants in the U.S.-sponsored TPP are still engaged in complex negotiations. Even if successful TPP will be primarily a regulatory framework and not an actual free trade zone. By contrast, China-Asian is already the largest free trade area in terms of population, and third largest in nominal GDP, in the world. Besides China, it includes Vietnam, Thailand,, Laos, Cambodia Myanmar, Philippines, Brunei, Indonesia.and Singapore.

Chinese trade with the other member nations is growing at a healthy 10% per year; and currently stands at about 500 billion (U.S.) per year. China is furthering economic integration with its neighbors by providing financial and technical support for construction of railways linking Chinese cities with key points in neighboring countries like Vietnam and Thailand.

As the worlds’ new industrial super-power, trying to encircle or catch China is at best an arduous task. “The train.” one might say, “has already left the station.”

The fliers touted new ballfields, science labs and modern classrooms. They didn’t mention the crushing debt or the investment bank that stood to make millions. — Melody Peterson, Orange County Register, February 15, 2013  

Remember when Goldman Sachs – dubbed by Matt Taibbi the Vampire Squid – sold derivatives to Greece so the government could conceal its debt, then bet against that debt, driving it up? It seems that the ubiquitous investment bank has also put the squeeze on California and its school districts. Not that Goldman was alone in this; but the unscrupulous practices of the bank once called the undisputed king of the municipal bond business epitomize the culture of greed that has ensnared students and future generations in unrepayable debt.

In 2008, after collecting millions of dollars in fees to help California sell its bonds, Goldman urged its bigger clients to place investment bets against those bonds, in order to profit from a financial crisis that was sparked in the first place by irresponsible Wall Street speculation. Alarmed California officials warned that these short sales would jeopardize the state’s bond rating and drive up interest rates. But that result also served Goldman, which had sold credit default swaps on the bonds, since the price of the swaps rose along with the risk of default.

In 2009, the lenders’ lobbying group than proposed and promoted AB1388, a California bill eliminating the debt ceiling requirement on long-term debt for school districts. After it passed, bankers traveled all over the state pushing something called “capital appreciation bonds” (CABs) as a tool to vault over legal debt limits. (Think Greece again.) Also called payday loans for school districts, CABs have now been issued by more than 400 California districts, some with repayment obligations of up to 20 times the principal advanced (or 2000%).

The controversial bonds came under increased scrutiny in August 2012, following a report that San Diego County’s Poway Unified would have to pay $982 million for a $105 million CAB it issued. Goldman Sachs made $1.6 million on a single capital appreciation deal with the San Diego Unified School District.

Green Light to Exploit

In a September 2013 op-ed in SFGate.com called “School Bonds Are a Wall Street Scam,” attorney Nanci Nishimura wrote:

. . . AB1388, signed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2009, [gave] banks the green light to lure California school boards into issuing bonds to raise quick money to build schools.

Unlike conventional bonds that have to be paid off on a regular basis, the bonds approved in AB1388 relaxed regulatory safeguards and allowed them to be paid back 25 to 40 years in the future. The problem is that from the time the bonds are issued until payment is due, interest accrues and compounds at exorbitant rates, requiring a balloon payment in the millions of dollars. . . .

Wall Street exploited the school boards’ lack of business acumen and proposed the bonds as blank checks written against taxpayers’ pocketbooks. One school administrator described a Wall Street meeting to discuss the system as like “swimming with the big sharks.”

Wall Street has preyed on these school boards because of the millions of dollars in commissions. Banks, financial advisers and credit rating firms have billed California public entities almost $400 million since 2007. [State Treasurer] Lockyer described this as “part of the ‘new’ Wall Street,” which “has done this kind of thing on the private investor side for years, then the housing market and now its public entities.”

Gullible school districts agreed to these payday-like loans because they needed the facilities, the voters would not agree to higher taxes, and state educational funding was exhausted. School districts wound up sporting shiny new gymnasiums and auditoriums while they were cutting back on teachers and increasing classroom sizes. (AB1388 covers only long-term capital improvements, not daily operating expenses.) The folly of the bonds was reminiscent of those boondoggles pushed on Third World countries by the World Bank and IMF, trapping them under a mountain of debt that continued to compound decades later.

The Federal Reserve could have made virtually-interest-free loans available to local governments, as it did for banks. But the Fed (whose twelve branches are 100% owned by private banks) declined. As noted by Cate Long on Reuters:

The Fed has said that it will not buy muni bonds or lend directly to states or municipal issuers. But be sure if yields rise high enough Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan will be standing ready to “save” these issuers. There is no “lender of last resort” for muniland.

Debt for the Next Generation

Among the hundreds of California school districts signing up for CABs were fifteen in Orange County. The Anaheim-based Savanna School District took on the costliest of these bonds, issuing $239,721 in CABs in 2009 for which it will have to repay $3.6 million by the final maturity date in 2034. That works out to $15 for every $1 borrowed.

Santa Ana Unified issued $34.8 million in CABs in 2011. It will have to repay $305.5 million by the maturity date in 2047, or $9.76 for every dollar borrowed.

Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified issued $22.1 million in capital appreciation bonds in 2011. It will have to repay $281 million by the maturity date in 2049, or $12.73 for every dollar borrowed.

In 2013, California finally passed a law limiting debt service on CABs to four times principal, and limiting their maturity to a maximum of 25 years. But the bill is not retroactive. In several decades, the 400 cities that have been drawn into these shark-infested waters could be facing municipal bankruptcy – for capital “improvements” that will by then be obsolete and need to be replaced.

Then-State Treasurer Bill Lockyer called the bonds “debt for the next generation.” Butsome economists argue that it is a transfer of wealth, not between generations, but between classes – from the poor to the rich. Capital investments were once funded with property taxes, particularly those paid by wealthy homeowners and corporations. But California’s property tax receipts were slashed by Proposition 13 and the housing crisis, forcing school costs to be borne by middle-class households and the students themselves.

The same kind of funding shift has occurred in college education nationally. Tuition at public universities and colleges was at one time free. But in successive economic downturns, states have made up for shortfalls in educational budgets by raising tuition. By 2012, tuition was covering 44% of the operating expenses of public higher education. According to a March 2014 report by Demos, 7 out of 10 college seniors now borrow, and their average debt on graduation is over $29,000.  The result nationally is a student debt that has grown to $1.5 trillion.

The State that Escaped: North Dakota  

According to Demos, per-student funding has been slashed since 2008 in every state but one – the indomitable North Dakota. What is so different about that state? Some commentators credit the oil boom, but other states with oil have not fared so well. And the boom did not actually hit in North Dakota until 2010. The budget of every state but North Dakota had already slipped into the red by the spring of 2009.

One thing that does single the state out is that North Dakota alone has its own depository bank. The state-owned Bank of North Dakota (BND) was making 1% loans to school districts even in December 2014, when global oil prices had dropped by half. That month, the BND granted a $10 million construction loan to McKenzie County Public School No. 1, at an interest rate of 1% payable over 20 years. Over the life of the loan, that works out to $.20 in simple interest or $.22 in compound interest for every $1 borrowed. Compare that to the $15 owed for every dollar borrowed by Anaheim’s Savanna School District or the $10 owed for every dollar borrowed by Santa Ana Unified.

How can the BND afford to make these very low interest loans and still turn a profit? The answer is that its costs are very low. It has no exorbitantly-paid executives; pays no bonuses, fees, or commissions; pays no dividends to private shareholders; and has low borrowing costs. It does not need to advertise for depositors (it has a captive deposit base in the state itself) or for borrowers (it is a wholesale bank that partners with local banks, which find the borrowers). The BND also has no losses from derivative trades gone wrong. It engages in old-fashioned conservative banking and does not speculate in derivatives. Unlike the vampire squids of Wall Street, it is not motivated to maximize its bottom line in a predatory way. Its mandate is simply to serve the public interest.

North Dakota currently has a population of about 740,000, or the size of Santa Ana and Anaheim combined. If a coalition of several such cities were to form a municipally-owned bank, they too could have their own low-cost capital funding mechanism, allowing them to escape the budget-sucking tentacles of Wall Street’s vampire squids.

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