Global Research

(Josué Pérez/Somoselmedio.org/Flickr/Creative Commons)

The Mexican government, welcomed as a partner of the Canadian and U.S. governments in continental economic development and security, also happens to partner in the slaughter of its own people. The murders and disappearances of the students from the Rural Normal “Raúl Isidro Burgos,” of Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, Mexico on September 26, 2014 in Iguala, was a crime of the state, as hundreds of thousands of Mexicans have claimed in their protests.

The governmental investigation that followed the September 2014 attack on these students has been deliberately incompetent and not aimed at getting to the roots of the crime that are, in fact, the tangled web of state-drug gang corruption and the state’s dirty war in defense of the neoliberal transformation of Mexico. The investigation has been staged, quite ineffectively, as a public relations operation to calm foreign investors and to cool protests, efforts that have completely failed within Mexico. By claiming that the blame was at the local level (the corrupt collusion of a local mayor and his avaricious wife with a brutal cartel) the national government seeks to present itself as the defender of justice.

But as Luis Hernández Navarro shows in his article “La matanza de Iguala y el Ejército” (The Iguala Massacre and the Army), there is—and has long been—a deep entanglement between the army, the local government of Iguala, and drug production. Guerrero  accounts for more than 60% of the Mexican production of poppies and opium gum for making heroin, and the cities of Iguala and Chilpancingo are key centers for its storage and transportation.

Many in Mexico view the army as the de facto government of the state. As Francisco Goldmanwrote in the New Yorker:

“The Mexican Army, according to many journalists and other commentators, is the real government authority in Guerrero State. ‘The army knows that state millimetre by millimetre,’ a Mexican legislator pointed out in a recent speech, ‘and they know minute by minute what’s happening there.’”

The intertwining of the government and armed forces with the drug gangs has a long history in Guerrero. José Luis Abarca, the mayor of Iguala, Guerrero, who is now under arrest, was accused of ordering the attack and having links to the Guerreros Unidos drug gang. Last year he was also accused of ordering the murder of three protesters, but the investigation was not pursued.

Colonel Juan Antonio Aranda Torres, commander of the 27th Battalion in Iguala, claimed that he and his troops knew nothing of the Ayotzinapa attacks, although they took place within 100 meters of the army barracks. At the time, he was attending a fiesta organized by María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, the wife of Mayor Abarca, now also accused of ordering the attack and being connected to drug gangs. Though Aranda Torres was trained as an intelligence and counter-intelligence officer, he claims to have seen nothing, heard nothing, and has said nothing.

This was not an isolated event. Unfortunately, torture, killings, and assassinations have become commonplace in Mexico with different levels of police or armed forces involvement, as well as drug gangs. The 27th Battalion participated in the dirty war of the 1970s and 1980s. Additionally, Human Rights Watch, in a 2011 report, “Ni Seguridad, ni derechos” (Neither Security Nor Rights), wrote that there is strong evidence that the 27th Battalion participated in the disappearance of six young people in Iguala in March 2010. These state crimes against humanity, sadly, are the rule, not the exception, in Mexico.

Several months earlier, in June 2014, the federal army carried out a mass execution of 22 young people in the town of Tlatlaya, in the neighboring state of Mexico. The army and the federal government then attempted to cover up these executions in Tlatlaya. After journalists and human rights groups exposed the cover-up and mass execution, the government arrested some low ranking soldiers.

Though we may never know the immediate motives for the killings and disappearances of the teachers college students, we do know that there has been a pattern of ruthlessly destroying opposition to the neoliberal transformation of Mexico. This has been as true in the sphere of education as it has been in natural resource development. The push by the World Bank as well as key business organizations in Mexico—as is also happening in Canada and the United States—to destroy teachers’ unions and teachers’ rights and privatize education, has led to an intensification of the attacks on the normales, the rural teachers colleges. These attacks have been underway for several decades but have recently intensified.

The Rural Normal “Raúl Isidro Burgos,” was part of a system of teachers’ colleges set up to recruit students from poor rural communities to become teachers and community organizers, a system founded during the Cárdenas presidency (1934-1940). These schools have a history of developing community leaders and union activists as well as a tradition of fighting for social justice and for the preservation of the land rights of their communities. Seventeen of the original 29 normales have already been shut down in spite of militant resistance from students, alumni, and the local communities. Ironically, the students from the Rural Normal “Raúl Isidro Burgos” were only passing through Iguala en route to Mexico City to participate in the annual October 2 march commemorating the 1968 massacre of student protesters in Mexico City.

These events, however, should not be viewed as simply related to the internal dynamics of repression, resistance, and the drug wars in Mexico. They are tied to the neoliberal transformationimposed on Mexico by its own capitalist class and state in conjunction with the capitalist classes and states of Canada and the United States, most vividly expressed in NAFTA. The neoliberal capitalist transformation of the Mexican economy requires repression to prevent or quell resistance to the massive destruction of socio-economic rights, livelihoods, and hope for a better future. Just as the neoliberal transformation of Chile came through the bloody repressions of the U.S.-supported dictator, so the neoliberal transformation of Mexico is accompanied by the bloody slaughter of tens of thousands of Mexicans. The violence is an intensification of the dirty war of the 1970s, a war that was aimed at defeating resistance to the regime in the ‘70s, and is now being carried out to discourage or defeat resistance to Mexico’s neoliberal transformation.

While the most powerful business organizations in North America—Business Roundtable (BRT), the Canadian Council of Chief Executives CCCE), and the Consejo Mexicano de Hombres de Negocios (CMHN)—propose deeper and closer ties within North America, the Mexican state continues terrorizing its own population. The image of Mexico promoted by these three peak business organizations, their related think-tanks and the three governments of North America, is that of a Mexico at the edge of a great leap forward in economic development, democracy, and socio-political stability, developments being propelled by the “opening of Mexico” and the “free market.”

The punishing reality for the vast majority of Mexicans is state-enacted and state-tolerated slaughter of its own population to complement deteriorating living standards, deteriorating social rights, the loss of land rights, and the sell-off of natural resources. Mexico has been en route to becoming a paradise for foreign investors and a hell for the vast majority of Mexicans. Theconstitutional reforms passed in 2013-2014 and their implementing legislation have openedMexico’s oil to private development and increased the ability of the government and mining companies to dispossess rural communities from their lands. These recent reforms will continue attacks on the rights of the Mexican people unless they are derailed by the growth of today’s massive popular response to the Ayotzinapa massacre.

The Mexican national state has become more repressive while at the same time increasingly losing its monopoly on coercive power. The armed forces of the national state have grown tremendouslysince the Zapatista uprising of 1994, from 216, 943 in 1994 to 265,812 in 2014 (212,208 members of the army and 53, 601, of the navy). If we add the 57,000 members of various federal security agencies, which include 40,000 members of the counter-insurgency national police force, the PFP, created in 1999 largely from officers and soldiers from the armed forces and the five thousand members of the new federal gendarmerie, the federal forces now amount to 323,000 members.

However, there are several interrelated processes that undermine the monopoly on violence of the national state: 1) the fusion and/or co-optation by the drug gangs of local governments, including police forces, as well as sections of the national police and armed forces; 2) the growth of private-for-profit military forces working for big business (domestic and foreign) and the rich to protect them against sections of the state-cartel complex or to keep workers or local communities in line. The number of these private security personnel officially recognized by the government is around90,000, including administrative personnel. However, there may as much as seven times that number if we include unlicensed security companies and many of their employees are thought by some analysts to be working with criminal gangs; 3) the massive size of well-armed drug gangs, now estimated to be about 500,000, though divided into many different irregular armies; and, 4) the significant and escalating growth of non-governmental community self-defense militias. Many of these militias are genuinely community-organized and have organized themselves to protect their communities against army and gang violence. Others started as or have been co-opted to be power instruments of local political bosses or economic elites. The government has developed others as counter-revolutionary paramilitary forces. Over the past twenty years, Mexico has become a society in arms, with most of the arms in the hands of state and private forces that continually carry out human rights violations with impunity.

The atrocities of September 26, 2014, in Iguala, Guerrero, shocked Mexican society as never before. Though Mexicans are sadly accustomed to constant reports of disappearances, killings, and mass graves, this event was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Shock was followed by outrage and protests grew weekly, especially those of other college and university students. The tenacious militancy of the 43 missing students’ parents and relatives, who have been at the forefront of mobilizations, has inspired the protesters. Three caravans of parents and other family members of the 43 have traveled all over Mexico to share stories of losses and repression, and to demand the return of the 43 alive. They have received great solidarity on their journey. On November 20, the 104th anniversary of the start of the Mexican Revolution, these three caravans converged on the Zócalo of Mexico City, joined by marches from three different points in the city. Other demonstrations took place throughout Mexico and in many parts of the world.

The national government has tried many tactics to undermine the growing protests. First, it remained silent, then declared it a local problem, then feigned great efforts to find the culprits and the missing students, finally declaring the that the students were dead based on nothing but confessions, perhaps under torture, of members of the local drug gang. These tactics have backfired and have made people even more indignant. The government’s hope that the protests would fade with time has not happened. The recent revelations that the president received a $7,000,000 house as a gift from a recipient of government contracts has also hit a nerve. The government is now employing a classic tactic of the Mexican regime—the use of provocateurs to carry out violent acts in order to prepare the justification for the possible use of violent repression, as the President recently threatened.

Mexico today is a country of dramatic contrasts and a burgeoning struggle between the barbarism being imposed on Mexico by the drug gangs, the capitalist classes, and governments of all three North American countries, and the desire for peace and social justice of ordinary Mexicans.

An earlier version of this article appeared on socialistproject.ca

Richard Roman is Associate Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Toronto, Associate Fellow of the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean, York University, and a member of Socialist Project and the Greater Toronto Workers’ Assembly. Edur Velasco Arregui is a professor in the Department of Law at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico City, former Secretary-General of SITUAM (Sindicato Independiente de Trabajadores de la Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana—Independent Union of Workers of the Metropolitan Autonomous University), and a union activist. They are the authors of Continental Crucible: Big Business, Workers and Unions in the Transformation of North America.

Enrique Peña Nieto on the campaign trail. Photo: Aristóteles Sandoval. Used under Creative Commons license.

A $3.7 billion contract to build a high-speed rail link between Mexico city and the city of Queretaro has been canceled after Enrique Peña Nieto, the Mexican president, was alleged to have accepted favors from Grupo Higa, a Mexican construction company that was a member of the winning consortium.

Aristegui Noticias, a website run by investigative journalist Carmen Aristegui, recently published details of two houses that Peña Nieto has rented from Grupo Higa businesses owned by Juan Armando Hinojosa, a construction magnate, whose businesses have won numerous contracts from the Mexican government.

The first scandal revolves around a 10,000 square feet white house in the upscale Lomas de Chapultepec neighborhood reportedly worth $7 million that is being rented from Hinojosa’s businesses by Angelica Rivera, the president’s wife. The second house – also in Lomas de Chapultepec – was rented out by Humberto Castillejos, Peña Nieto’s legal advisor. Presidential spokesman Eduardo Sánchez says that Peña Nieto merely used the second house as an office “occasionally” before he became president.

The relationship between Peña Nieto and Hinojosa’s Grupo Higa dates back to the days when he was governor of the state of Mexico between 2005 and 2011. During that period, Grupo Higa won a series of state government contracts worth $652 million. When Peña Nieto decided to run for president of the country, Eolo Plus, a Hinojosa company, rented him private helicopters and jets to allow him to campaign around the country.

Last month, a consortium of companies, including Grupo Higa as well as the China Railway Construction Corporation were awarded a $3.7 billion contract to build a high-speed rail link between the capital and the city of Queretaro 130-miles away. Three days later the contract was canceled to avoid accusations of favoritism.

“This is the decision of the president and the essential point is more transparency and clarity, so there is no doubt about the project,” Gerardo Ruiz Esparza, the transportation and communications minister, told the media.

Days later,  Aristegui revealed the link between Grupo Higa and Rivera’s house, pointing out that the house had been designed specifically for Peña Nieto and his six children. Indeed Miguel Angel Aragones, the architect of the house, told TV Azteca in October 2013, said Peña Nieto was “a real delight” to work with. He called the president “a first rate guy; intelligent, sensitive, respectful, and friendly.”

The media went to town when it was revealed that the house had “seven bedrooms, marble floors, a spa, a lift, an underground garage and mood lighting that can bathe the building in pink, violet and orange.”

Rivera – who is a wealthy soap opera actress in her own right – has attempted to explain the purchase pointing out that she had the money to buy the house to begin with. “I have nothing to hide,” Rivera said in a YouTube video. “I’m here to defend my integrity and that of my children and that of my husband.”

Critics pounced. “The response of the presidency is full of gaps, holes and lacunae that need to be clarified,” Denise Dresser, a political analyst told Arisegui. “The central point is that the house belongs to a company that has again and again received benefits from the Peña Nieto government.”

Rivera has since announced that she will sell the seven bedroom house.

We are offering a Series of Consensus Points from the international 24-member 9/11 Consensus Panel, which presents considerable new evidence about 9/11 in the form of its 44 Consensus Points to date.  The official claims regarding 9/11 are contradicted by facts that have been validated by a scientific consensus process, based on a standard medical model of investigation.

Point MC-5: Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s Behavior Between 9:00 and 10:00 AM

Introduction

Questions have been raised about whether Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld could have had responsibility for one or more of the 9/11 attacks, and whether he was partially responsible for the crash of United Airlines Flight 93, which the 9/11 Commission claimed, occurred in Shanksville, PA.

The Official Account

The activities of Secretary Rumsfeld on the morning of the 9/11 attacks show that he could not have had any responsibility for any of the attacks, even in the sense of having been able to prevent them, or anything to do with the crash of United 93.

• On the morning of 9/11, Secretary Rumsfeld held a breakfast meeting with members of Congress at the Pentagon, which lasted until about 9:00,¹ and as that meeting was breaking up, they learned that “the first plane had hit the World Trade tower.”² Authorities believed this crash to have been due to a pilot error.³

• “He [Rumsfeld] returned to his office for his daily intelligence briefing.” After he was “informed of the second strike in New York, . . . he resumed the briefing while awaiting more information.” After the Pentagon was struck, Secretary Rumsfeld went to the parking lot to assist with rescue efforts.⁴

• “Secretary Rumsfeld was not in the NMCC [National Military Command Center] when the shootdown order was first conveyed. He went from the parking lot to his office, where he spoke to the President [shortly after 10:00], then to the Executive Support Center, where he participated in the White House video teleconference. He moved to the NMCC shortly before 10:30, in order to join Vice Chairman Myers.”⁵

As that summary shows, Rumsfeld was in meetings when the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon occurred.

With regard to the Pentagon in particular, the military, as The 9/11 Commission Report pointed out, “never received notice that American 77 was hijacked.”⁶

• The military might have learned that American 77 (which, according to the 9/11 Commission, crashedinto the Pentagon) was in trouble, possibly hijacked, if any of the people dealing with the crisis had been involved in the White House video teleconference, which was conducted from the Situation Room by counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke. However, the 9/11 Commission reported: “We do not know who from Defense participated, but we know that in the first hour, none of the personnel involved in managing the crisis did.”⁷

• Rumsfeld in particular, as the summary shows, was not involved in Clarke’s video conference until a few minutes after 10:00.

Moreover, Rumsfeld also could not have had anything to do with the crash of United 93, which occurred at 10:03, for two reasons:

• Rumsfeld, as the summary shows, did not enter the NMCC until 10:30.

• “By the time the military learned about [United 93’s hijacking], it had crashed.”⁸

The Best Evidence

Claims made about Rumsfeld in The 9/11 Commission Report, which reflect claims made by Rumsfeld himself in 2004, have been contradicted by several authoritative sources.

1. Richard Clarke, the national counterterrorism coordinator, wrote a best-selling book, Against All Enemies⁹– which came out in March 2004, several months earlier than The 9/11 Commission Report. Clarke’s book contradicts claims that would be made in this Report about Rumsfeld’s activities on 9/11 between 9:00 and 10:00 AM.

• Reporting about his video conference, which evidently began at roughly 9:10,¹⁰ Clarke wrote: “As I entered the Video Center, . . . I could see people rushing into studios around the city: Donald Rumsfeld at Defense and George Tenet at CIA.”¹¹ So, whereas Rumsfeld and the Commission say that Rumsfeld went from his breakfast meeting to his office for a CIA briefing, where he remained until the Pentagon attack, Clarke said that, shortly after the second WTC attack, Rumsfeld went to the Pentagon’s teleconferencing studio.

• Clarke indicated, moreover, that Rumsfeld continued to participate in the videoconference: After the Pentagon attack,Clarke could “still see Rumsfeld on the screen.”¹² A little later, Clarke wrote, “smoke was getting into the Pentagon secure teleconferencing studio,” and “Franklin Miller urged him [Rumsfeld] to helicopter to DOD’s alternate site,” but Rumsfeld replied: “I am too goddam old to go to an alternate site.” So “Rumsfeld moved to another studio in the Pentagon.”¹³

Clarke’s account of Rumsfeld’s location from 9:10 to 9:45 seems more plausible than the account provided by Rumsfeld and The 9/11 Commission Report, because:

• Clarke’s account, if false, could have been proven wrong by the videoconference tape.

• It is not plausible that, after being told of the second attack on the World Trade Center, the Secretary of Defense would have continued listening to a CIA briefing.

• It is not plausible that, if the 9/11 Commission could have contradicted Clarke’s account of Rumsfeld, it would have failed to do so. Instead, it simply did not mention it.¹⁴

2. Robert Andrews, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, gave a lecture in 2007 that contradicted the Rumsfeld-9/11 Commission account of Rumsfeld’s movements:¹⁵

• Knowing that Rumsfeld had gone to the Executive Support Center (ESC) to join Clarke’s video conference after the second WTC attack, Andrews stated, he rushed to the counter-terrorism center [CTC] to get materials that Rumsfeld would need.¹⁶

• Then, after feeling and hearing an explosive event in the Pentagon, Andrews rushed back to the ESC, where he served as Rumsfeld’s advisor during the White House videoconference. “I was there in the Support Center with the Secretary when he was talking to Clarke on the White House video-teleconference, and to the President,” Andrews said.¹⁷

3. A third authoritative source contradicting the official account of Rumsfeld’s activities was Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, in an early April 2002 interview with military historian Dr. Alfred Goldberg,¹⁸ who would later be the first author of Pentagon 9/11.¹⁹ Wolfowitz gave a report inconsistent with the 9/11 Commission’s claim that Rumsfeld had not gone into the NMCC until after United 93 had crashed:

• Wolfowitz stated that after the Pentagon attack, he and others were told to go outside the building, but that they were allowed to go back in within “less than ten minutes” – which means, if the Pentagon was attacked at 9:38, he was referring to going back in at roughly 9:50.

• Wolfowitz reported: “We went into the NMCC, where the Secretary was, and General Myers. General Shelton was in Europe.”

• He next said: “We proceeded with discussions by secure video conference. One issue was what to do about the plane over Pennsylvania, getting orders to get fighters up to intercept it, and the Secretary getting approval from the President to shoot it down.”²⁰

This report by Wolfowitz contradicted two central elements in the account of Rumsfeld’s locations provided in The 9/11 Commission Report:

• Whereas the 9/11 Commission claimed that Rumsfeld did not go into the NMCC until 10:30, Wolfowitz reported talking with Rumsfeld there before 10:00.

• Whereas the 9/11 Commission claimed that the military did not learn about UA 93’s troubles until after it crashed, Wolfowitz reported that he and Rumsfeld, along with General Myers, had discussed “what to do about the plane over Pennsylvania.”

Conclusion

The 9/11 Commission absolved Donald Rumsfeld of any responsibility for what happened after 9:03 that morning by claiming that, in the first hour of the White House video teleconference, “none of the [Defense] personnel involved in managing the crisis [participated].”²¹ Reports by both Richard Clarke and Robert Andrews, however, show that Rumsfeld participated in this videoconference during this crucial hour.

The 9/11 Commission also absolved Rumsfeld from any involvement in the crash of UA 93 by claiming that the military did not know anything about UA 93 until after it had crashed, and that Rumsfeld was not in the NMCC prior to 10:30. Paul Wolfowitz, however, indicated that he discussed what to do about UA 93 with Rumsfeld and Myers before 10:00.

Testimonies by Richard Clarke, Robert Andrews, and Paul Wolfowitz, accordingly, provided very strong evidence that the 9/11 Commission made false claims relevant to Rumsfeld’s behavior. Further investigation of Rumsfeld’s actual behavior on the morning of 9/11, therefore, is needed.

References for Point MC-5

1. Donna Miles, “Vice Chairman: 9/11 Underscored Importance of DoD Transformation,”American Forces Press Service, September 8, 2006.

Last Wednesday December 3, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May read a petition calling for a parliamentary review “of the omissions and inconsistencies in the official United States of America 9/11 Commission Report.” (Full text of the petition below.)

It comes as no surprise that the mainstream media ridiculed her for presenting the petition, something New Democratic Party deputy Paul Dewar had refused to do.

“I do not agree with petition. It is an obligation of an MP to present every petition submitted to them,” May commented. The media immediately pointed out that it is not an obligation, insinuating that May chose to present the petition either because she supports the cause or to please her constituents.

“MPs are not not bound to present petitions and cannot be compelled to do so; nevertheless, it is evident that many Members consider it a duty to present to the House petitions brought forward by citizens,” according to the House of Commons Procedure and Practice.

Typical media reaction

The media reaction came as expected, in its predictable prepackaged biased mixture of half truths and derision:

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May put forward a bizarre petition in the House of Commons Wednesday asking the government to support a popular 9/11 conspiracy theory. (Jesse Tahirali, Elizabeth May presents ‘9/11 truther’ petition to Parliament, CTVNews.ca, December 4, 2014)

Calls to investigate 9/11 are a common refrain among conspiracy theorists who doubt the official version of events, that two airliners hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists brought down the World Trade Center towers. Many insist the twin towers were instead brought down in a controlled demolition with the U.S. government’s prior knowledge or active participation. (Ishmael N. Daro, Elizabeth May presents 9/11 ‘Truther’ petition in the House of Commons, Postmedia, December 4, 2014)

On the one hand, among the deranged subcultures of the extreme left, Truthers represent a constituency who are organized, energetic, and (in their own way) politically informed - precisely the sort of highly-motivated go-getters any self-respecting kook party would want onside…

Their message has been heard, their crankish conspiracy theory has been legitimized as a perfectly valid “voice” in our national dialogue, and, most importantly, their perception of the Greens as a party that’s sympathetic to their existence (even if only to a point) has been reconfirmed. (J.J McCullough, Elizabeth May’s 9/11 ‘truther’ petition reveals Green Party cranks, Sun News, December 6, 2014)

There are mistakes and omissions in every excerpt above, some even containing two mistakes in one sentence such as saying the “bizarre petition” is “asking the government to support a popular 9/11 conspiracy theory”. First, the Canadian government already supports a conspiracy theory, namely the official 9/11 conspiracy theory. What the petition is asking is to review the official conspiracy theory because it has been proven a complete fiction by years of serious research and investigations by prominent researchers and independent journalists. These people have done what the mainstream media failed to do and are still not doing. Their job.

Isn’t the rule of law, even seemingly, supposed to prevail in the US? Then why was a group accused within hours of the attacks, before any investigation was set up? Why was the crime scene cleaned up and the evidence removed? Why did it take so long to set up an investigation? Why is the Commission Report accepted as undeniable truth when the commissionnaries themselves said the investigation was set up to fail?

Somehow, for the mainstream media, crazy conspiracy theorists are people who denounce the absence of the rule of law in the wake of the biggest terrorist attack in America. In turn, those who are considered intelligent people with common sense are the ones who blindly accept, without any question, to be fed a prefabricated story, thinking you have to be mentally ill not to believe it and ask for a proper investigation. In the post-911 world, only “tin foil hats” ask legitimate questions. The media defamation of the truther movement is nothing but a soft version of Inquisitorial orders where denying official stories had you burned at the stake. Nowadays only your character is assassinated.

It is convenient to point out that for over 13 years the mainstream media’s obedience to authority has been remarkable. George W. Bush had demanded in his address to the UN on November 10, 2001: “We must speak the truth about terror.  Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th; malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists, themselves, away from the guilty.”

935 Iraq lies later, as well as many more about several other countries around the world, the fools remain those who don’t believe the proven liars. Go figure.

“Conspiracy theorists”: The ongoing CIA propaganda campaign against dissent

Following the liar’s orders, the media has steadily labelled those who question the official version of the 9/11 attacks as “conspiracy theorists”. It is a well-known technique, the classic ad hominem attack, which consists in avoiding to deal with one’s arguments with valid reasoning. The mainstream media never seriously address the truther movement’s claims and investigations simply because with it, the official story is brought down like a house of cards.

Defining an analysis as a “conspiracy theory” is a lame tactic to exclude any sensitive topic from the public debate. As Gary Khols noted in, The CIA’s Invention of the “Conspiracy Theorist”: Smear Campaign to Discredit Dissenters:

In his 2013 book, Conspiracy Theory in America, author Lance deHaven-Smith traced the term “conspiracy theory” back to a CIA propaganda campaign that was designed to discredit doubters of the Warren Commission’s fake search into who assassinated President Kennedy in Dallas. In this light, the use of this pejorative term is obviously a tactic to shame and humiliate those who saw through the ulterior motives of the commission, and thus effectively censor out or even banish anyone who questions official government accounts.

Global Research has been one of the leading sources of information on 9/11 since the morning after the attacks. Our extensive in-depth report contains an overwhelming amount of independent investigations covering every aspect of this topic and which challenge the official version of the events concocted by the US government and repeated blindly by the mainstream media.

In the coming weeks, Global Research will bring to you on a regular basis the 44 Consensus Points, the “best evidence” opposing the official account of 9/11 brought together by the 911 Consensus Panel. One point per week will be posted on our web site, but if you wish you can read them all here.

The organizations which submitted the petition to Parliament will hold a press conference Wednesday December 10, 11 AM, Charles Lynch Room, 130-S, Centre Block Parliament Hill, Ottawa. 

You can find the press conference details as well as the petition below.

Ottawa ON – Last week Green Party Leader Elizabeth May presented a petition calling for a Parliamentary review of new forensic evidence regarding the events of September 11, 2001.

This petition was submitted by citizens from four provinces, and is supported by three professional organizations who have been digging into 9/11 evidence for years.

These organizations will jointly deliver a press conference to the Canadian and US media on Wednesday morning at 11:00: 

Press Conference, Wednesday December 10, 11 AM, Charles Lynch Room, 130-S, Centre Block Parliament Hill, Ottawa

Three Professional Organizations Offer Evidence-Based 9/11 Statements As Helping Hand to Families of US Victims

ReThink911.ca, based in Ottawa, emphasizes the undying role of US family members in calling for an independent inquiry into 9/11. In honoring their dead, they want the truth to be known, and the value of those lost to it respected.

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (ae911truth.org), which has 2300 architects and engineers calling for a new investigation based on the evidence for controlled demolition. This organization produced the in-depth documentary “9/11: Explosive Evidence – Experts Speak Out,” in which 40 technical and building professionals explain their conclusion of “controlled demolition”. The film rose to “most watched” video nationally on PBS.org in September 2012, and is available in a 15-minute version narrated by actor Ed Asner.

The 9/11 Consensus Panel (consensus911.org):  24 expert members of the international three-year-old 9/11 Consensus Panel have developed 44 Consensus Points of “best evidence” opposing the official account of 9/11.  The Panel respondents remain blind to one another throughout a rigorous reviewing process. Included in their studies are the surprising activities of the military and political leaders that day.  The consensus process has yielded an unprecedented degree of credibility for specific points of evidence relating to 9/11.

Contacts:    

Media Relations/Interviews:     [email protected]

Organizers:  David Long, 613-204-9090,  E.Woodworth, 250-383-2417

Engineering Representative, Tony Szamboti, 856-228-4747

Architectural Representative, Richard Gage, AIA,  510-292-4710

PETITION TO THE HONORABLE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA

See the petition accepted by the Clerk of the Parliament here

PETITION TO THE HONORABLE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA

We, the undersigned citizens of Canada

who now avail themselves of their ancient and undoubted right thus to present a grievance common to your Petitioners in the certain assurance that your honourable House will therefor provide a remedy, humbly sheweth our belief that there is sufficient doubt about the omissions and inconsistencies in the official United States of America 9/11 Commission Report to show that 9/11 was an act of state sponsored terrorism. Foremost, the official United States of America 9/11 Commission Report omits new forensic evidence of the use of explosives that might have been the actual cause of the destruction of the World Trade Center Twin Towers and the collapse of the third World Trade Center Building 7. And, as a result, Canada now being a partner with the United States of America in the Global War of Terror, therefore has a responsibility to verify the findings of the United States of America 9/11 Commission Report before committing our military and other resources to the conflict.

THEREFORE,

Your Petitioners pray for the Government of Canada to conduct a

PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW

of the omissions and inconsistencies in the official United States of America 9/11 Commission Report and of the new forensic evidence listed below. Your petitioners pray that the Government of Canada hear our policy recommendation to protect Canadians against future acts of state sponsored terrorism.

The new forensic evidence includes, but is not limited to:

•Total destruction of buildings with pulverization of concrete floors – proceeding symmetrically through the path of the greatest resistance – at nearly free-fall acceleration;
•Several tons of molten iron/steel found in the debris piles of all 3 high-rises andbillions of previously molten iron microspheres in all of the WTC dust;
•Nano-thermite composite incendiaries discovered throughout the WTC dust.
•DVD Material entitled: “9/11: Blueprint for Truth” by AE911Truth.org ( View on-line in English)
•The peer-reviewed paper Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe, by Niels H. Harrit, et al. posted at the Bentham Open Chemical Physics Journal.

Your Petitioners pray for the Government of Canada to conduct a parliamentary review using advice from citizens groups and expert witnesses in the field of 9/11 studies in order to protect Canadians against future acts of state sponsored terrorism and ensure that our military resources are spent properly.

Your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray,

The Undersigned

Artist’s Rendering of the Petition

This article was first published by GR in October 2005

One element that is missing from ecological and social movement discussion about climate change is ‘geoengineering’.  ‘Geoengineering’ is one of the words used for techniques being proposed more and more frequently by scientists and commercial journalists as a ‘politically realistic’ remedy for climate change.

An article recently published in the magazine Popular Science provides a characteristic example of these kinds of proposals.

Describing a meeting in the White House in September 2001 organized by the US President’s Climate Change Technology Program to discuss ‘Response Options to Rapid or Severe Climate Change’, the article frankly admits that ‘while administration officials were insisting publicly that there was no firm proof that the planet was warming, they were quietly exploring potential ways to turn down the heat.’

In March 2001  President Bush had withdrawn US support from the Kyoto Protocol. This meeting therefore represented something like a US counterproposal to Kyoto, an ‘alternative approach to climate change’.

Some years ago Edward Teller, in his ‘Sunscreen for Planet Earth’, made a similar ‘alternative’ proposal.

The physicist and economist David Keith, who was present at the White House meeting, is quoted in the article as saying ‘if they had broadcast that meeting live to people in Europe, there would have been riots.’

Anyone can see what the ‘geoengineering’ proposals were simply by reading the relevant article in Popular Science.

For those for whom that is difficult, the proposals included:  1) underground storage of carbon dioxide,  2) wind scrubbers to filter carbon dioxide from the air,  3) ‘fertilization’ of oceans with iron to encourage growth of plankton,  4)  petrification of carbon dioxide,  5) deflection of sunlight from the earth through the use of a giant space mirror ‘spanning 600,000 square miles’.

One point worth mentioning at least in passing is that, apart from the question of how effective these measures would really be, all these highly oil-dependent ‘solutions’ to problems largely caused in the first place by burning fossil fuels, are being prepared for a world that is beginning to run out of oil. (!)

In the case of at least one geoengineering measure, by no means the most ‘outlandish’, namely: ‘Enhancing Clouds to Reflect Sunlight’, a mass of eyewitness evidence for all over the world suggests that, despite official denials, a programme serving some such purpose is not merely a proposal but a reality and has been under implementation on an immensely large scale for at least a decade.

How significant are official denials?  Note that the Popular Science article itself admits that the US administration’s words about ‘proof that the planet is warming’ do not match its deeds. If untruthful official denial of global warming is possible, why should untruthful official denial of actually ongoing measures, supposedly to combat global warming, not similarly be possible?

Geoengineering is defined as ‘intentional large scale manipulation of the global environment’, e.g. by altering climate with the primary intention of reducing undesired climate change caused by human influences. ‘Geoengineering schemes seek to mitigate the effect of fossil-fuel combustion on the climate without abating fossil fuel use; for example by placing shields in space to reduce the sunlight incident on the Earth.’  (Keith D.W. 1999. Geoengineering, Encyclopedia of Global Change, New York).

In relation to ‘geoengineering’, the ‘Climate Change 2001’ report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirms that it ‘includes the possibility of engineering the earth’s climate system by large-scale manipulation of the global energy balance. It has been estimated, for example, that the mean effect on the earth surface energy balance from a doubling of CO2 could be offset by an increase of 1.5% to 2% in the earth’s albedo, i.e. by reflecting additional incoming solar radiation back into space…. Teller et al. (1997) found that ~107 t of dielectric aerosols of ~100 nm diameter would be sufficient to increase the albedo of the earth by ~1%. They showed that the required mass of a system based on alumina particles would be similar to that of a system based on sulphuric acid aerosol…(They) demonstrate that use of metallic or optically resonant scatterers can, in principle, greatly reduce the required total mass of scattering particles required.”

If, as very many indications suggest, such programmes and such ideas are already under implementation on a very large scale and outside the framework of international law, then they must either be stopped or legalized.

There is no point in ecological organizations disagreeing with them ‘behind closed doors’ and in public confining themselves to objections at the ‘philosophical’ level.

In early September 2005 the meteorologist Scott Stevens provoked a nation-wide scandal in the United States with accusations that hurricane Katrina had been caused by Japanese mafiosi using an electromagnetic generator sold to them by the Russians. (In much the same way last year, just before the December 26 tsunami that killed 300,000 people in South-East Asia, the author Michael Crichton published a best-selling novel ‘State of Fear’, which told of ‘ecologist terrorists’ who, for the purpose of securing funding for their programmes, engaged in artificial production of earthquakes and tsunamis.)

The truth is that we are not in a position to prove to conspiracy theorists that they are mistaken when they come out with scenarios of this kind. It is no easy task in situations of secrecy and non-transparency for ordinary citizens (and possibly not only ordinary citizens) to distinguish between non-military climate mitigation and the techniques of ‘climate as weapon’.

If the political parties, parliaments and mainstream mass media are not willing to bear the political cost of honesty in relation to ‘geoengineering’ then the Social Forums must assume this responsibility on their behalf.

 Wayne Hall is a founding member of ATTAC-Hellas http://www.attac-hellas.org

It’s perhaps the greatest speculative bubble since Holland’s ‘Tulip Mania’.

At the peak of tulip mania, circa 1637, a single tulip bulb sold for more than 3,000 Dutch guilders – that’s 10 times the annual income of a skilled craftsman in those days. It was great while it lasted, but reality eventually caught up with the creative opportunists.

Man-made global warming, or as it likes to be referred to these days as ‘climate change’, had a grand plan in its heyday. The mythology was underpinned by a new economic model, one which hoped to monetize CO2 emissions – or more accurately, the absence of CO2.

Think of Al Gore and his associates like David Blood as the Bernie Madoff of the environmental movement. They created a market which has been disintegrating from day one, including a total collapse of the Chicago Climate Exchange, but not before the principle players cashed in their shares and abandoned that hip. It’s a epic story of modern day high priests and sooth sayers, political hubris and pseudo-scientific largess on a scale never before seen in history.

But their story is far from over. Get ready for the epic climbdown..

IMAGE: Blood and Gore: The carbon trading horror show.

Contrarian Pirouette from Al Gore

For Al Gore and his investor fund partner David Blood, their current thrust is more like dancing in the dark than out of the box thinking, due to “warmists” and “peakists” now having to fight on several fronts at the same time. Writing in ‘Wall Street Journal’ and similar outlets several times in 2013, they soldiered forward with the claim that “fossil carbon assets” are headed for a bust, and “green energy” can only soar. Along with Britain’s Lord Stern, the former World Bank chief economist and author of the Stern Report on “fighting” global warming, they say all fossil fuels are so dangerous for the world’s climate they must be completely phased out by 2050 or before.

Investing in these fossil carbon assets is therefore, they say, a guaranteed disaster.

Gore and Blood however know well through operating their climate-energy hedge fund, Generation Investment Management that the “carbon finance” business, especially emissions credits and related financial assets, has already suffered a bust. The world’s only mandatory credits trading scheme – in Europe – is struggling to keep itself afloat. Reasons why Europe’s ETS is now on political life support and may be scrapped include massive over-issue of credits by European governments and the European central authorities, outright fraud and re-issue of already used credits, uncertainty concerning the future value of credits, and other factors such as the intrinsic worthlessness of ‘hot air credits’.

In a winter during which Niagara Falls partly froze over, for only the second or third time in more than 100 years, the whine that global warming is alive, well and menacing becomes difficult to gurgle with a straight face, but it has been so profitable to proponents like Gore that we can understand why they are loath to invent a new Doom Thing. Their twin fight against climate-damaging and rapidly depleting oil, gas and coal reserves also has major real world logic problems.

ETS and Bad Bets

Massive over-issue of ETS tradable paper was operated not only to make warmists happy, but also to please the carbon market maker banks and climate hedge funds, who rapidly broke any link between this asset creation binge and its real world base or “underlying asset” – of actual European CO2 emissions. Which have heavily declined in most EU countries since 2008, except by supreme irony in Green Germany, presently constrained to rapidly increase its coal-fired power production. European emissions have shrunk due to economic recession, outplacement of energy-intensive industries, energy saving, and the development of “green” non-fossil energy.

The morph of the ETS system from potentially or possibly useful, to dysfunctional and totally perverse, took no more than about 6 or 7 years from its start in 2005. Today’s credit prices are so low they are no incentive to not emit CO2, making cheap credits a subsidy to pollute and emit more CO2, while they also remain an incentive for energy intensive industries to delocalize and quit Europe spurred by fears that when ETS finally collapses, it will be replaced by straight and high energy taxes.

Other drivers of change than the sure and certain perversion of any credit-base asset creation and trading system by the “banksters and brokers” are at least as powerful. Timewarp has rapidly affected the public and political perception of two basic key issues for policy and political change – peak oil and global warming. What Stern, Gore and Blood regularly claim, that investing in “carbon assets” today is as crazy as speculating in subprime mortgages before 2008, now reads like schizoid black humor. They say that after the 2008 credit crisis and Great Recession it is (with hindsight) ridiculous to have imagined that subprime mortgages could work. The risk of giving around 7.5 million mortgages to people in the US who couldn’t possibly pay them off was somehow “not on the radar screen” of most regulators and investors at the time. Stern, Gore, Blood and other carbon finance hopefuls still claim today that investing in fossil energy is exactly the same thing.

I can argue that peak oil was only a ‘price panic’ theme. In other words if oil prices rise enough, there will be no shortage of it, for reasons which include less demand and more supply. At the other end of the event horizon, if Detroit realty prices fall enough, there will be sufficient empty homes to house millions! In both  cases the missing link which explains all is parasitic finance and the tyranny of “investor expectations”, meaning bang for the buck.

At today’s world prices for fossil energy, 1 barrel equivalent of coal costs far below $30 and US natural gas struggles to attain $30. If car drivers feel OK with oil at $100 a barrel that is obviously their own problem, but their inability or refusal to switch fuels, to natural gas for example, does not reflect any planetary shortages of oil. The outlook for serious oversupply of oil, today, is credible but Goldman Sachs and the market maker banks operating oil markets presently prefer not to see things that way.

Global warming, about 7 years ago, was certainly the next big thing. At the time, the No Limits warmist stance was that CO2 emissions – unless we completely stop them – will cause planetary disaster by sometime in the 2045-2099 period, so tailpipe or smokestack emissions must be taxed to extinction. One absolutely real, and only apparently contrarian, result would be a major fall of fossil energy prices as Black Carbon became an illegal fuel, something like weight watchers stacking shop windows with high-calorie foods they can’t eat – and can’t be sold.

Lord Stern claims the “surplus and unusable” financial assets of fossil energy stocks and resources held by major corporations total about two-thirds of all present corporate fossil energy stocks and their declared fossil energy resources, representing several trillion dollars  of worthless “stranded value”. The argument by Gore, Blood and Stern goes on to claim investors have made a fundamental error by failing to understand there is not a calculable risk of global fossil fuel reserves becoming worthless – but an absolute certainty. Investors have made a fundamental investing error by only treating it as a risk and they will pay the consequences as the industries they invested in collapse, possibly in less than 10 years time.

Warmist Consensus In Peril

Gore and Blood say that investors are foolishly delaying the inevitable move away from, and total abandonment of all fossil fuels. They say that investors and political deciders confused risk with  uncertainty. According to hedge fund metrics, using “classical analysis” risk can be priced, but uncertainty cannot.

Lord Stern’s theory of “stranded assets” (http://www.carbontracker.org/wastedcapital) certainly did not concern Europe’s broken-backed carbon finance and trading system, or the excesses of carbon correct ranging from tree-planting in the Gobi desert to absorb CO2, to the proposed French “ecological tax” on all goods transport vehicles that supposedly would be partly used to build city center electric car and bicycle charging points. His argument was “pure warmist” – global temperatures will radically grow.

Science has already backed off from that kind of assertion. We can note that if we treated IPCC reports as credible, its latest says decadal (10-year) warming is presently set by the group of climate scientists reporting to the IPCC at 0.09 degC, meaning that warming of 2 degC will need well over 200 years.

For Stern, Gore and Blood the timeframe is vastly shorter, and they regularly cite the IEA’s carbon-conscious-calculator, which in fact directly draws on the Stern Report of 2006, and claims that two-thirds of all global fossil fuel reserves “will never be used”. Because they must never be used – due to warming of 2 degC being probable by or before 2045 or 2050 – the IEA says.

This underlines the massive logic gap and time gap between the latest IPCC warming timetable, and the IEA’s calculator.  The IPCC says two-degree warming will likely take 200 years. Lord Stern and the IEA, and Gore and Blood of course, all say it will take about 33 years. This logic gap or chasm has opened up in only a few short years, from about 2005-2007 to today.  In 2005, things were totally different for the warmists. That year, the UK’s then-Labor government organized the “Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change” conference at the later-infamous Hadley Climate Research Center (home of the Hockey Stick curve). This event levered a huge number of global warming scare stories in UK and world media, followed by the Stern Report and the IEA creating its climate-conscious-calculator.

Continuing with Gore & Blood’s logic, they say the subprime fossil fuel asset bubble is growing dangerously because most market participants are mistakenly treating carbon risk as an uncertainty, and are failing to incorporate it in their investment analysis. They are ignoring the crucial difference between a stranded asset, and a normally depreciating asset. They go on investing in fossil fuels.

A stranded asset is one that loses economic value well before the end of its anticipated life. Stranded carbon assets, Gore, Blood and Lord Stern say, include all fossil fuels as well as those assets which, given their dependence on fossil fuels, are CO2-emissions intensive. This for instance means any fossil fuel-power plant or any vehicle needing fossil fuels. Gore & Blood go on to say that energy projects with the highest break-even costs and emissions profiles will be stranded first, and give their claimed most-vulnerable cases. These are Canadian tar sands and coal, which makes a mockery of the very high EROI (energy returned on energy invested) of coal projects, compared to tarsand oil projects, uber-simply explained by the market fact that oil sells at well over 3 times the price of coal on a unit energy base.

They also argue that “they know” government policy is either soon going to make carbon assets vulnerable to stranding, directly by way of an international carbon price –  or indirectly by way of increased pollution and environment controls, water usage limits and charges, public health regulations, renewable energy mandates, and energy efficiency regulations. Investors therefore have nowhere to run or hide and must not delay on the misinformed belief that fossil fuel assets will only be vulnerable to stranding when (or if) a global carbon price is enforced.

Stranded Assets or Stranded Markets?

To be sure, renewable energy technologies can be economically competitive with fossil fuels in a number of operating contexts and countries without subsidies such as feed-in tariffs. This however is a very small part of the global energy pie due to “legacy issues”. One example of a giant legacy issue is the entire global economy, roughly 87% dependent on fossil fuels. Another example is the world’s fossil-fuelled cities where over 50% of global population now lives.

Closely related to this, and hardly mentioned by warmists like Stern, Gore and Blood the crusade to develop “new renewables”, that is wind power and solar electricity, has to concern public-sensitive issues starting with long-term pricing for electricity. No limit price increases for “green power”, to ramp up its place in the energy economy, in fact and in reality do have limits.

In late 2013, using Eurostat data, German power prices for households, not corporate consumers eligible for rebates, ran at 25.3 euro cents per kilowatthour. This prices German electricity for households at around $535 per barrel equivalent of energy. Obviously at that price, all sorts of alternatives become viable – certainly including not using electricity at all and literally freezing in the dark – but obviously not a Gore lifestyle habit !

Being mandarins, with a contempt for basic technical issues… Gore, Blood and Stern say the world must intensify or at least maintain the current rate of “backing out” fossil fuels for power generation. They ignore the critical problems faced by power producers in almost all developed countries, which start with the basic problem that when power prices are jacked up, and up, to feed in green power people consume less power . With no surprise this problem is the most acute in Europe, where the power sector crisis is only in part due to growing renewable-source power production and leftover (or legacy) impacts of European ETS.

Due to European energy transition being ahead of other world regions, the real world effect of cutting renewable energy subsidies – most dramatically in Spain – can be seen and studied by Messrs Stern, Gore & Blood. Renewables-intensive businesses have lost their “license to operate,” thereby stranding their assets. Investor retreat is now a stampede.

They of course argue that delaying action to mitigate climate change will accelerate climate change itself. The relation of that decision (or non-decision) to stranding fossil fuel and fossil energy assets is not clear, but Gore & Blood claim there is a relation. They say that delaying the abandonment of all fossil fuels will cause a much larger stranding across all industries and all asset classes in the future. This line of argument is today heavily developed by Lord Stern, who says all portfolios must be scrutinized, including equity and corporate debt valuations, giving a radical new meaning for the term “prudent risk management”.

Market Rout

There are four principal ways investors can handle the coming carbon asset collapse, according to Stern, Gore & Blood.  They say that around 10%-30% of most major stock exchange capitalizations are exposed to the coming rout. As a result, at least in theory, all stock markets are overvalued by at least that amount and index-tracking funds must restructure their portfolios before it is too late.

Second, corporate directors and executives must disclose their plans to mitigate carbon asset risks. Investors should ask if companies have a shadow price on carbon, and if not, why not? Investors need to know what amount of carbon the company plans to burn, and how it relates to the company’s long-term strategic plan. Cash flow must be diverted away from developing fossil fuels, and toward more productive non-carbon uses in the context of a transition to a low carbon economy.

Third, diversify investment to opportunities positioned to succeed in the future low-carbon economy. Investors should tilt portfolios away from assets with embedded carbon risks and toward assets with low or no carbon emissions. Gore & Blood identify “emerging solutions” such as: energy generation (solar, wind, geothermal); buildings (insulating materials, lighting, smart metering); and transport (electric vehicles, goods vehicle fleet logistics).

Fourth, although they admit it “can be complicated”, investors and companies must divest their fossil fuel assets, the surest way to reduce carbon risk. Supposedly, somebody will be there to buy the divested and soon-to-be-worthless assets, but Gore & Blood do not say who. We are obliged to imagine that Big Government will have to be there, to buy the useless assets TARP-style.

They end with a quote from John F. Kennedy to the effect that the risks and costs of an audacious plan can be less than the long run costs of “comfortable inaction”. As history tells us, we can be glad Kennedy’s rash and reckless action in the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba was followed by his inaction in the 1963 missile crisis with Russia.

Nowhere in this already-dated and heavily schizophrenic logic do we find the real missing links – the 2008 crisis was a stark proof that stock markets are wildly overvalued, with no help needed from carbon fear. Continued “recovery” of equity markets notably includes a major role for overvalued oil, and overvalued electricity, but the call to “back out carbon fuels” has been replaced and superseded by backing out low-carbon.

What You Need to Know ..

There’s a media storm regarding the Senate torture report … appropriately.

But much of the report was redacted by the CIA and White House.

Here’s what you need to know …

Initially, the torture was widespread and systemic.

As Glenn Greenwald notes:

A wide array of torture techniques were approved at the highest levels of the U.S. Government and then systematically employed in lawless US prisons around the world –at Bagram (including during the Obama presidency), CIA black sites, even to US citizens on US soil. So systematic was the torture regime that a 2008 Senate report concludedthat the criminal abuses at Abu Ghraib were the direct result of the torture mentality imposed by official Washington. American torture was not confined to a handful of aberrational cases or techniques, nor was it the work of rogue CIA agents. It was an officially sanctioned, worldwide regime of torture that had the acquiescence, if not explicit approval, of the top members of both political parties in Congress

And it wasn’t just bad guys who were tortured:

• The commander of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Janis Karpinski, estimates that 90% of detainees in the prison were innocent

• The number two man at the State Department under Colin Powell, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, says that many of those being held at Guantanamo Bay were innocent, and that top Bush administration officials knew that they were innocent

• U.S. military files show that many Guantánamo prisoners were held on the flimsiest grounds such as wearing a Casio watch, being a prisoner in a Taliban jail, driving cabs in certain geographic regions, or being Al Jazeera reporters

• Many state that those tortured were mainly innocent farmers, villagers, or those against whom neighbors held a grudge. Indeed, people received a nice cash reward from the U.S. government for turning people in as “suspected terrorists” (and see this movie)

Torture INTERFERES With Our Ability to Fight Terrorism, Obtain Intelligence Information and Protect Our National Security

Virtually all of the top interrogation experts – both conservatives and liberals (except for those trying to escape war crimes prosecution) – say that torture doesn’t work:

• Army Field Manual 34-52 Chapter 1 says:

“Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.”

• The C.I.A.’s 1963 interrogation manual stated:

Intense pain is quite likely to produce false confessions, concocted as a means of escaping from distress. A time-consuming delay results, while investigation is conducted and the admissions are proven untrue. During this respite the interrogatee can pull himself together. He may even use the time to think up new, more complex ‘admissions’ that take still longer to disprove.

• According to the Washington Post, the CIA’s top spy – Michael Sulick, head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service – said that the spy agency has seen no fall-off in intelligence since waterboarding was banned by the Obama administration. “I don’t think we’ve suffered at all from an intelligence standpoint.”

• The CIA’s own Inspector General wrote that waterboarding was not “efficacious” in producing information

• A 30-year veteran of CIA’s operations directorate who rose to the most senior managerial ranks (Milton Bearden) says(as quoted by senior CIA agent and Presidential briefer Ray McGovern):

It is irresponsible for any administration not to tell a credible story that would convince critics at home and abroad that this torture has served some useful purpose.

***

The old hands overwhelmingly believe that torture doesn’t work ….

• A former high-level CIA officer (Philip Giraldi) states:

Many governments that have routinely tortured to obtain information have abandoned the practice when they discovered that other approaches actually worked better for extracting information. Israel prohibited torturing Palestinian terrorist suspects in 1999. Even the German Gestapo stopped torturing French resistance captives when it determined that treating prisoners well actually produced more and better intelligence.

• Another former high-level CIA official (Bob Baer) says:

And torture — I just don’t think it really works … you don’t get the truth. What happens when you torture people is, they figure out what you want to hear and they tell you.

• Michael Scheuer, formerly a senior CIA official in the Counter-Terrorism Center, says:

“I personally think that any information gotten through extreme methods of torture would probably be pretty useless because it would be someone telling you what you wanted to hear.”

• A retired C.I.A. officer who oversaw the interrogation of a high-level detainee in 2002 (Glenn L. Carle) says:

[Coercive techniques] didn’t provide useful, meaningful, trustworthy information…Everyone was deeply concerned and most felt it was un-American and did not work.”

• A former top Air Force interrogator who led the team that tracked down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has conducted hundreds of interrogations of high ranking Al Qaida members and supervising more than one thousand, and wrote a book called How to Break a Terrorist writes:

As the senior interrogator in Iraq for a task force charged with hunting down Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the former Al Qaida leader and mass murderer, I listened time and time again to captured foreign fighters cite the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as their main reason for coming to Iraq to fight. Consider that 90 percent of the suicide bombers in Iraq are these foreign fighters and you can easily conclude that we have lost hundreds, if not thousands, of American lives because of our policy of torture and abuse. But that’s only the past.Somewhere in the world there are other young Muslims who have joined Al Qaida because we tortured and abused prisoners. These men will certainly carry out future attacks against Americans, either in Iraq, Afghanistan, or possibly even here. And that’s not to mention numerous other Muslims who support Al Qaida, either financially or in other ways, because they are outraged that the United States tortured and abused Muslim prisoners.

In addition, torture and abuse has made us less safe because detainees are less likely to cooperate during interrogations if they don’t trust us. I know from having conducted hundreds of interrogations of high ranking Al Qaida members and supervising more than one thousand, that when a captured Al Qaida member sees us live up to our stated principles they are more willing to negotiate and cooperate with us. When we torture or abuse them, it hardens their resolve and reaffirms why they picked up arms.

He also says:

[Torture is] extremely ineffective, and it’s counter-productive to what we’re trying to accomplish.When we torture somebody, it hardens their resolve … The information that you get is unreliable. … And even if you do get reliable information, you’re able to stop a terrorist attack, al Qaeda’s then going to use the fact that we torture people to recruit new members.

And he repeats:

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

And:

They don’t want to talk about the long term consequences that cost the lives of Americans…. The way the U.S. treated its prisoners “was al-Qaeda’s number-one recruiting tool and brought in thousands of foreign fighters who killed American soldiers.

• The FBI interrogators who actually interviewed some of the 9/11 suspects say torture didn’t work

• Another FBI interrogator of 9/11 suspects said:

I was in the middle of this, and it’s not true that these [aggressive] techniques were effective

• A third former FBI interrogator — who interrogated Al Qaeda suspects — says categorically thattorture does not help collect intelligence. On the other hand he says that torture actually turns people into terrorists

• A declassified FBI e-mail dated May 10, 2004, regarding interrogation at Guantanamo states “[we] explained to [the Department of Defense], FBI has been successful for many years obtaining confessions via non-confrontational interviewing techniques.” (see also this)

• The FBI warned military interrogators in 2003 that enhanced interrogation techniques are “of questionable effectiveness” and cited a “lack of evidence of [enhanced techniques’] success.

• “When long-time FBI director Mueller was asked whether any attacks on America been disrupted thanks to intelligence obtained through “enhanced techniques”, he responded “I don’t believe that has been the case.”

• The Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously found that torture doesn’t work, stating:

The administration’s policies concerning [torture] and the resulting controversies damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.

• The military agency which actually provided advice on harsh interrogation techniques for use against terrorism suspects warned the Pentagon in 2002 that those techniques would produce “unreliable information.”

• General Petraeus says that torture is unnecessary

• Retired 4-star General Barry McCaffrey – who Schwarzkopf called he hero of Desert Storm – agrees

• The number 2 terrorism expert for the State Department says torture doesn’t work, and just creates more terrorists.

• Former Navy Judge Advocate General Admiral John Hutson says:

Fundamentally, those kinds of techniques are ineffective. If the goal is to gain actionable intelligence, and it is, and if that’s important, and it is, then we have to use the techniques that are most effective. Torture is the technique of choice of the lazy, stupid and pseudo-tough.

He also says:

Another objection is that torture doesn’t work. All the literature and experts say that if we really want usable information, we should go exactly the opposite way and try to gain the trust and confidence of the prisoners.

• Army Colonel Stuart Herrington – a military intelligence specialist who interrogated generals under the command of Saddam Hussein and evaluated US detention operations at Guantánamo – notes that the process of obtaining information is hampered, not helped, by practices such as “slapping someone in the face and stripping them naked”. Herrington and other former US military interrogators say:

We know from experience that it is very difficult to elicit information from a detainee who has been abused. The abuse often only strengthens their resolve and makes it that much harder for an interrogator to find a way to elicit useful information.

• Major General Thomas Romig, former Army JAG, said:

If you torture somebody, they’ll tell you anything. I don’t know anybody that is good at interrogation, has done it a lot, that will say that that’s an effective means of getting information. … So I don’t think it’s effective.

• Brigadier General David R. Irvine, retired Army Reserve strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner interrogation and military law for 18 years with the Sixth Army Intelligence School, says torture doesn’t work

• The first head of the Department of Homeland Security – Tom Ridge – says we were wrong to torture

• The former British intelligence chairman says that waterboarding didn’t stop terror plots

• A spokesman for the National Security Council (Tommy Vietor) says:

The bottom line is this: If we had some kind of smoking-gun intelligence from waterboarding in 2003, we would have taken out Osama bin Laden in 2003.

• The Marines weren’t keen on torture, either

• As Vanity Fair reports:

In researching this article, I spoke to numerous counterterrorist officials from agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. Their conclusion is unanimous: not only have coercive methods failed to generate significant and actionable intelligence, they have also caused the squandering of resources on a massive scale through false leads, chimerical plots, and unnecessary safety alerts … Here, they say, far from exposing a deadly plot, all torture did was lead to more torture of his supposed accomplices while also providing some misleading “information” that boosted the administration’s argument for invading Iraq.

• Neuroscientists have found that torture physically and chemically interferes with the prisoner’s ability to tell the truth

• An Army psychologist – Major Paul Burney, Army’s Behavior Science Consulting Team psychologist –said (page 78 & 83):

was stressed to me time and time again that psychological investigations have proven that harsh interrogations do not work. At best it will get you information that a prisoner thinks you want to hear to make the interrogation stop, but that information is strongly likely to be false.

***

Interrogation techniques that rely on physical or adverse consequences are likely to garner inaccurate information and create an increased level of resistance…There is no evidence that the level of fear or discomfort evoked by a given technique has any consistent correlation to the volume or quality of information obtained.

• An expert on resisting torture – Terrence Russell, JPRA’s manager for research and development and a SERE specialist – said (page 209):

History has shown us that physical pressures are not effective for compelling an individual to give information or to do something’ and are not effective for gaining accurate, actionable intelligence.

Indeed, it has been known for hundreds of years that torture doesn’t work:

• In the ancient Far East, torture was used as a way to intimidate the population into obedience (rather than a method for gaining information)

• As a former CIA analyst notes:

During the Inquisition there were many confessed witches, and many others were named by those tortured as other witches. Unsurprisingly, when these new claimed witches were tortured, they also confessed. Confirmation of some statement made under torture, when that confirmation is extracted by another case of torture, is invalid information and cannot be trusted.

• Top American World War 2 interrogators got more information using chess or Ping-Pong instead of torture than those who use torture are getting today

• The head of Britain’s wartime interrogation center in London said:

“Violence is taboo. Not only does it produce answers to please, but it lowers the standard of information.”

• The national security adviser to Vice President George H.W. Bush (Donald P. Gregg) wrote:

During wartime service with the CIA in Vietnam from 1970 to 1972, I was in charge of intelligence operations in the 10 provinces surrounding Saigon. One of my tasks was to prevent rocket attacks on Saigon’s port.Keeping Saigon safe required human intelligence, most often from captured prisoners. I had a running debate about how North Vietnamese prisoners should be treated with the South Vietnamese colonel who conducted interrogations. This colonel routinely tortured prisoners, producing a flood of information, much of it totally false. I argued for better treatment and pressed for key prisoners to be turned over to the CIA, where humane interrogation methods were the rule – and more accurate intelligence was the result.

The colonel finally relented and turned over a battered prisoner to me, saying, “This man knows a lot, but he will not talk to me.”

We treated the prisoner’s wounds, reunited him with his family, and allowed him to make his first visit to Saigon. Surprised by the city’s affluence, he said he would tell us anything we asked. The result was a flood of actionable intelligence that allowed us to disrupt planned operations, including rocket attacks against Saigon.

Admittedly, it would be hard to make a story from nearly 40 years ago into a definitive case study. But there is a useful reminder here. The key to successful interrogation is for the interrogator – even as he controls the situation – to recognize a prisoner’s humanity, to understand his culture, background and language. Torture makes this impossible.

There’s a sad twist here. Cheney forgets that the Bush administration followed this approach with some success. A high-value prisoner subjected to patient interrogation by an Arabic-speaking FBI agent yielded highly useful information, including the final word on Iraq’s weapons programs.

His name was Saddam Hussein.

• Top interrogators got information from a high-level Al Qaeda suspects through building rapport, even if they hated the person they were interrogating by treating them as human

Senator John McCain explains, based upon his own years of torture:

I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners sometimes produces good intelligence but often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear — true or false — if he believes it will relieve his suffering. Often, information provided to stop the torture is deliberately misleading.

According to the experts, torture is unnecessary even to prevent “ticking time bombs” from exploding (see this, this and this). Indeed, a top expert says that torture would fail in a real ‘ticking time-bomb’ situation. (And, no … it did NOT help get Bin Laden).

In fact, torture reduces our national security:

• The head of all U.S. intelligence said:

“The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world,” [Director of National Intelligence Dennis] Blair said in the statement. “The damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.”

• A top counter-terrorism expert says torture increases the risk of terrorism (and see this).

• One of the top military interrogators said that torture by Americans of innocent Iraqis is the main reason that foreign fighters started fighting against Americans in Iraq in the first place (and see this).

• Former counter-terrorism czar Richard A. Clarke says that America’s indefinite detention without trial and abuse of prisoners is a leading Al Qaeda recruiting tool

• A former FBI interrogator — who interrogated Al Qaeda suspects — says categorically that tortureactually turns people into terrorists

• A 30-year veteran of CIA’s operations directorate who rose to the most senior managerial ranks,says:

Torture creates more terrorists and fosters more acts of terror than it could possibly neutralize.

• A former US Air Force interrogator said that torture just creates more terrorists

• A former U.S. interrogator and counterintelligence agent, and Afghanistan veteran said:

Torture puts our troops in danger, torture makes our troops less safe, torture creates terrorists. It’s used so widely as a propaganda tool now in Afghanistan. All too often, detainees have pamphlets on them, depicting what happened at Guantanamo.

• The Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously stated:

“The administration’s policies concerning [torture] and the resulting controversies … strengthened the hand of our enemies.”

• Two professors of political science have demonstrated that torture increases, rather than decreases, terrorism

• General Petraeus said that torture hurts our national security

• The reporter who broke Iran-Contra and other stories says that torture actually helped Al Qaeda, by giving false leads to the U.S. which diverted its military, intelligence and economic resources into wild goose chases

• Raw Story says that torture might have resulted in false terror alerts

• Hundreds of other experts have said the same things

U.S. Officials Launched a Systematic Program of Torture Using Specialized Techniques Which Produce False Confessions … to Justify the Iraq War

Not only did Bush, Cheney and other top government officials lie about us into the Iraq war by making a false linkage between Iraq and 9/11, but they carried out a systematic program of torture in order tointentionally create false evidence of that allegation.

Indeed, the entire purpose behind the U.S. torture program was to obtain false confessions.

And the torture techniques used were Communist techniques specifically designed to producefalse confessions.

Senator Levin, in commenting on a Senate Armed Services Committee report on torture in 2009,dropped the following bombshell:

With last week’s release of the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinions, it is now widely known that Bush administration officials distorted Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape “SERE” training – a legitimate program used by the military to train our troops to resist abusive enemy interrogations – by authorizing abusive techniques from SERE for use in detainee interrogations. Those decisions conveyed the message that abusive treatment was appropriate for detainees in U.S. custody. They were also an affront to the values articulated by General Petraeus.

In SERE training, U.S. troops are briefly exposed, in a highly controlled setting, to abusive interrogation techniques used by enemies that refuse to follow the Geneva Conventions. The techniques are based on tactics used by Chinese Communists against American soldiers during the Korean War for the purpose of eliciting false confessions for propaganda purposes. Techniques used in SERE training include stripping trainees of their clothing, placing them in stress positions, putting hoods over their heads, subjecting them to face and body slaps, depriving them of sleep, throwing them up against a wall, confining them in a small box, treating them like animals, subjecting them to loud music and flashing lights, and exposing them to extreme temperatures. Until recently, the Navy SERE school also used waterboarding. The purpose of the SERE program is to provide U.S. troops who might be captured a taste of the treatment they might face so that they might have a better chance of surviving captivity and resisting abusive and coercive interrogations.

Senator Levin then documents that SERE techniques were deployed as part of an official policy on detainees, and that SERE instructors helped to implement the interrogation programs. He noted:

The senior Army SERE psychologist warned in 2002 against using SERE training techniques during interrogations in an email to personnel at Guantanamo Bay, because:

[T]he use of physical pressures brings with it a large number of potential negative side effects… When individuals are gradually exposed to increasing levels of discomfort, it is more common for them to resist harder… If individuals are put under enough discomfort, i.e. pain, they will eventually do whatever it takes to stop the pain. This will increase the amount of information they tell the interrogator, but it does not mean the information is accurate. In fact, it usually decreases the reliability of the information because the person will say whatever he believes will stop the pain… Bottom line: the likelihood that the use of physical pressures will increase the delivery of accurate information from a detainee is very low. The likelihood that the use of physical pressures will increase the level of resistance in a detainee is very high… (p. 53).

McClatchy filled in some of the details:

Former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration…

For most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there.”

It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released Justice Department document…

When people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people to push harder,” he continued.”Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn’t any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam . . .

A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under “pressure” to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.

“While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq,” Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. “The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.”

“I think it’s obvious that the administration was scrambling then to try to find a connection, a link (between al Qaida and Iraq),” [Senator] Levin said in a conference call with reporters. “They made out links where they didn’t exist.”

Levin recalled Cheney’s assertions that a senior Iraqi intelligence officer had met Mohammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, in the Czech Republic capital of Prague just months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The FBI and CIA found that no such meeting occurred.

In other words, top Bush administration officials not only knowingly lied about a non-existent connection between Al Qaida and Iraq, but they pushed and insisted that interrogators use special torture methods aimed at extracting false confessions to attempt to create such a false linkage.

The Washington Post reported the same year:

Despite what you’ve seen on TV, torture is really only good at one thing: eliciting false confessions. Indeed, Bush-era torture techniques, we now know, were cold-bloodedly modeled after methods used by Chinese Communists to extract confessions from captured U.S. servicemen that they could then use for propaganda during the Korean War.

So as shocking as the latest revelation in a new Senate Armed Services Committee report may be, it actually makes sense — in a nauseating way. The White House started pushing the use of torture not when faced with a “ticking time bomb” scenario from terrorists, but when officials in 2002 were desperately casting about for ways to tie Iraq to the 9/11 attacks — in order to strengthen their public case for invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 at all.

***

Gordon Trowbridge writes for the Detroit News: “Senior Bush administration officials pushed for the use of abusive interrogations of terrorism detainees in part to seek evidence to justify the invasion of Iraq, according to newly declassified information discovered in a congressional probe.

Indeed, one of the two senior instructors from the Air Force team which taught U.S. servicemen how to resist torture by foreign governments when used to extract false confessions has blown the whistle on the true purpose behind the U.S. torture program.

As Truthout reported:

Jessen’s notes were provided to Truthout by retired Air Force Capt. Michael Kearns, a “master” SERE instructor and decorated veteran who has previously held high-ranking positions within the Air Force Headquarters Staff and Department of Defense (DoD).

***

Kearns was one of only two officers within DoD qualified to teach all three SERE-related courses within SSTP on a worldwide basis, according to a copy of a 1989 letter written Aldrich, who nominated him officer of the year.

***

The Jessen notes clearly state the totality of what was being reverse-engineered – not just ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ but an entire program of exploitation of prisoners using torture as a central pillar,” he said. “What I think is important to note, as an ex-SERE Resistance to Interrogation instructor, is the focus of Jessen’s instruction. It is exploitation, not specifically interrogation. And this is not a picayune issue, because if one were to ‘reverse-engineer’ a course on resistance to exploitation then what one would get is a plan to exploit prisoners, notinterrogate them. The CIA/DoD torture program appears to have the same goals as the terrorist organizations or enemy governments for which SV-91 and other SERE courses were created to defend against: the full exploitation of the prisoner in his intelligence, propaganda, or other needs held by the detaining power, such as the recruitment of informers and double agents. Those aspects of the US detainee program have not generally been discussed as part of the torture story in the American press.”

***

Jessen wrote that cooperation is the “end goal” of the detainer, who wants the detainee “to see that [the detainer] has ‘total’ control of you because you are completely dependent on him, and thus you must comply with his wishes. Therefore, it is absolutely inevitable that you must cooperate with him in some way (propaganda, special favors, confession, etc.).”

***

Kearns said, based on what he has read in declassified government documents and news reports about the role SERE played in the Bush administration’s torture program, Jessen clearly “reverse-engineered” his lesson plan and used resistance methods to abuse “war on terror” detainees.

In a subsequent report, Truthout notes:

Air Force Col. Steven Kleinman, a career military intelligence officer recognized as one of the DOD’s most effective interrogators as well a former SERE instructor and director of intelligence for JPRA’s teaching academy, said he immediately knew the true value of the PREAL manual if employed as part of an interrogation program.

“This is the guidebook to getting false confessions, a system drawn specifically from the communist interrogation model that was used to generate propaganda rather than intelligence,” Kleinman said in an interview. “If your goal is to obtain useful and reliable information this is not the source book you should be using.”

***

“In SERE courses, we emphatically presented this interrogation paradigm as one that was employed exclusively by nations that were in flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions and international treaties against torture,” Kleinman said. “We proudly assured the students that we – the United States – would never resort to such despicable methods.”

(Interrogators also forced detainees to take drugs … which further impaired their ability to tell the truth.)

And false confessions were, in fact, extracted.

For example:

• A humanitarian aid worker said: torture only stopped when I pretended I was in Al Qaeda

• Under torture, Libyan Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi falsely claimed there was a link between Saddam Hussein, al-Qaida and WMD

• President Bush mentioned Abu Zubaydah as a success story, where torture saved lives. Zubaydah was suspected of being a high-ranking al-Qaida leader. Bush administration officials claimed Zubaydah told them that al-Qaida had links with Saddam Hussein. He also claimed there was a plot to attack Washington with a “dirty bomb”. Both claims are now recognized to be false, even by the CIA, which also admits he was never a member of al-Qaida.

• One of the Main Sources for the 9/11 Commission Report was Tortured Until He Agreed to Sign a Confession that He Was NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO READ

• The so-called 9/11 mastermind said: “During … my interrogation I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear” (the self-confessed 9/11 “mastermind” falsely confessed to crimes he didn’t commit)

And the 9/11 Commission Report was largely based on a third-hand account of what tortured detainees said, with two of the three parties in the communication being government employees. And the government went to great lengths to obstruct justice and hide unflattering facts from the Commission.

According to NBC News:

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

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

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

Details here.

Torture Has Been Recognized As Terrorism for Thousands of Years

Moreover, torture has been recognize for thousands of years as a form of terrorism.

Indeed, America’s recently-leaked criteria for putting people on the terror watchlist says torture is terror (page 47-48):

***

Image: Anthony Freda: www.AnthonyFreda.com

Torture Is a War Crime … Which Can STILL Be Prosecuted

Many argue that the statute of limitations on Bush and Cheney’s crimes of torture have all run … so it is too late to prosecute them.

However, the United States War Crimes Act of 1996, a federal statute set forth at 18 U.S.C. § 2441, makes it a federal crime for any U.S. national, whether military or civilian, to violate the Geneva Convention by engaging in murder, torture, or inhuman treatment.

The statute applies not only to those who carry out the acts, but also to those who ORDER IT, know about it, or fail to take steps to stop it. The statute applies to everyone, no matter how high and mighty.

18 U.S.C. § 2441 has no statute of limitations, which means that a war crimes complaint can be filed at any time.

The penalty may be life imprisonment or — if a single prisoner dies due to torture — death. Given that there are numerous, documented cases of prisoners being tortured to death by U.S. soldiers in both Iraq and Afghanistan, that means that the death penalty would be appropriate for anyone found guilty of carrying out, ordering, or sanctioning such conduct.

Here’s a brief round-up showing that prisoners were injured – and killed – due to U.S. torture:

Waterboarding IS Torture

• The United States has always considered waterboarding to be a crime of torture, including when the Japanese did it in WWII

Not Just Waterboarding

• Major General Antonio Taguba: Photos Show Sodomy, Rape and Sexual Assault With Wire and Various Blunt Instruments

• The One Case of Torture Obama Doesn’t Want You to Learn About

• “The Sexual Humiliation Of Iraqi Prisoners…Was Not An Invention Of Maverick Guards, But Part Of A SYSTEM Of Ill-Treatment And Degradation”

Children, Too

• Congratulations, America … Children are Being Tortured in Your Name

• Sick To My Stomach, I Have A Duty To Report On the Torture of Children

People Died While Being Tortured

Gen. Barry McCaffrey said:

We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the CIA.

The ACLU wrote in 2005:

The American Civil Liberties Union today made public an analysis of new and previously released autopsy and death reports of detainees held in U.S. facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom died while being interrogated. The documents show that detainees were hooded, gagged, strangled, beaten with blunt objects, subjected to sleep deprivation and to hot and cold environmental conditions.

“There is no question that U.S. interrogations have resulted in deaths,” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. “High-ranking officials who knew about the torture and sat on their hands and those who created and endorsed these policies must be held accountable.

***

The documents released today include 44 autopsies and death reports as well as a summary of autopsy reports of individuals apprehended in Iraq and Afghanistan. The documents show that detainees died during or after interrogations by Navy Seals, Military Intelligence and “OGA” (Other Governmental Agency) — a term, according to the ACLU, that is commonly used to refer to the CIA.

According to the documents, 21 of the 44 deaths were homicides. Eight of the homicides appear to have resulted from abusive techniques used on detainees, in some instances, by the CIA, Navy Seals and Military Intelligence personnel. The autopsy reports list deaths by “strangulation,” “asphyxiation” and “blunt force injuries.” An overwhelming majority of the so-called “natural deaths” were attributed to “Arteriosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease.”

While newspapers have recently reported deaths of detainees in CIA custody, today’s documents show that the problem is pervasive, involving Navy Seals and Military Intelligence too.

Spiegel reported in 2009:

At least two men died during imprisonment. One of them, a 22-year-old taxi driver named Dilawar, was suspended by his hands from the ceiling for four days, during which US military personnel repeatedly beat his legs. Dilawar died on Dec. 10, 2002. In the autopsy report, a military doctor wrote that the tissue on his legs had basically been “pulpified.” As it happens, his interrogators had already known — and later testified — that there was no evidence against Dilawar …

And see this. And it is now clear that the CIA covered up murders at Guantanamo.

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 limited the applicability of the War Crimes Act, but still made the following unlawful: torture, cruel or inhumane treatment, murder, mutilation or maiming, intentionally causing serious bodily harm, rape, sexual assault or abuse.

The Nuremberg Tribunal which convicted and sentenced Nazis leaders to death conceived of wars of aggression – i.e. wars not launched in self-defense – defined the following as “crimes against peace”, or war crimes:

(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;

(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i)

The Tribunal considered wars of aggression to be the ultimate war crime, which encompassed all other crimes:

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

Judgment of October 1, 1946, International Military Tribunal Judgment and Sentence, 22 IMTTRIALS, supra note 7, at 498, reprinted in 41 AM. J. INT’LL. 172, 186 (1947).

Given that Iraq had no connection with 9/11 and possessed no weapons of mass destruction, the Iraq war was a crime of aggression and – under the standards by which Nazi leaders were convicted by the Nuremberg Tribunal – the American leaders who lied us into that war are guilty of war crimes.

Benjamin Ferencz, a former chief prosecutor for the Nuremberg Trials, declared:

A prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity — that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation.

See this, this, and this.

The Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court – Luis Moreno-Ocampo – told the Sunday Telegraph in 2007:

That he would be willing to launch an inquiry and could envisage a scenario in which the Prime Minister and American President George W Bush could one day face charges at The Hague. Luis Moreno-Ocampo urged Arab countries, particularly Iraq, to sign up to the court to enable allegations against the West to be pursued.

As a Japan Times Op/Ed noted in 2009:

In January 2003, a group of American law professors warned President George W. Bush that he and senior officials of his government could be prosecuted for war crimes if their military tactics violated international humanitarian law.

Eminent legal scholars such as former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clarke and Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law and a professor of law Lawrence Velvel have since stated that high-level Bush administration officials did commit war crimes in relation to the Iraq war.

Torture is – of course – a violation of the Geneva Conventions, which make it illegal to inflict mental or physical torture or inhuman treatment. It is clearly-established that waterboarding is torture. The torture was, in fact, systematic, and included widespread sexual humiliation, murder and otherunambiguous forms of torture.

Velvel and many other legal experts say that the torture which was carried out after 9/11 is a war crime.

General Antonio Taguba, who led an official investigation into prisoner abuse, said in 2008:

There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.

Colin Powell’s former chief of staff stated that Dick Cheney is guilty of war crimes for overseeing torture policies.

Matthew Alexander – a former top Air Force interrogator who led the team that tracked down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – notes that government officials knew they are vulnerable for war crime prosecution:

They have, from the beginning, been trying to prevent an investigation into war crimes.

Former  prosecutor in the Guantanamo military commissions, and current Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserve (Darrel Vandeveld) wrote:

Torture is a crime and the United States engaged in it. Those are two indisputable facts…

The process of self-examination and accountability has been, and remains, the only way to move forward and regain our moral and legal grounding…

We have a Department of Justice for a reason, and now it’s up to Attorney General Holder, the nation’s top law enforcement officer, to do his job and appoint an independent prosecutor to follow the evidence where it may lead…

It is critical that we hold accountable those who authorized, those who legally sanctioned and those who implemented the torture policies of one of the darkest periods in our nation’s history. What is at stake is nothing less than our democracy.

Moreover:

General Ricardo Sanchez, the former top coalition commander in Iraq, called for a Truth Commission so we might fully understand the failure of the military and civilian command to honor the pledge of our constitution.

Sanchez . . .stressed that the outcome must embrace a variety of solutions, including prosecution.

Sanchez stated, “When the president made the declaration that the Geneva Conventions no longer apply, we unleashed the hounds of hell and eliminated all the foundations for the training, ethics and structure we had built into our soldiers and our leaders for how to conduct these kinds of operations.”

Sanchez stated many problems could be traced to loyalties to individuals and political parties.

Former President Jimmy Carter is also calling for a truth commission with the possibility of prosecution:

“[I] like to see is a complete examination of what did happen, the identification of any perpetrators of crimes against our own laws or against international law,” said Carter. “And then after all that’s done, decide whether or not there should be any prosecutions.”

A Malaysian war crimes commission also found Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and five administration attorneys guilty of war crimes (although but the commission has no power to enforce its judgment).

Postscript: Torture is also apparently continuing under Obama. See this and this.

La Camera dei rappresentanti degli Stati uniti d’America ha adottato quasi all’unanimità (411 voti contro 10) la Risoluzione 758, che «condanna con forza le azioni della Federazione Russa, sotto il presidente Vladimir Putin, per aver attuato una politica di aggressione mirante al dominio politico ed economico di paesi vicini», in particolare l’Ucraina che «la Federazione Russa ha sottoposto a una campagna di aggressione politica, economica e militare allo scopo di stabilire il suo dominio sul paese e cancellare la sua indipendenza».

In tal modo la risoluzione cancella tutta la storia della penetrazione Usa/Nato in Ucraina, fino al putsch di piazza Maidan organizzato per suscitare la reazione dei russi di Ucraina e della Federazione Russa, riportando l’Europa a una nuova guerra fredda.

La risoluzione chiama quindi il Presidente a fornire al governo ucraino armi, addestramento e intelligence, e contemporaneamente a rivedere «lo stato di prontezza delle forze armate Usa e Nato».

Accusando la Russia di violare il Trattato Inf, che nel 1991 ha eliminato in Europa i missili nucleari a gittata intermedia lanciati da terra (tra cui quelli Usa schierati a Comiso), la risoluzione sollecita il Presidente a «rivedere l’utilità del Trattato Inf per gli interessi degli Stati uniti» con la possibilità di «ritirarsi dal Trattato» (non a caso nel momento in cui gli Usa ammodernano le armi nucleari che mantengono in Europa, Italia compresa).

La risoluzione sollecita inoltre il Presidente a verificare se ciascun alleato è in grado di contribuire all’«autodifesa collettiva in base all’articolo 5 del Trattato nord-atlantico». Tale articolo, che obbliga tutti i membri dell’Alleanza a intervenire se uno di loro è attaccato, viene esteso di fatto oggi anche all’Ucraina, pur non essendo ancora ufficialmente membro della Nato.

Gli alleati vengono direttamente sollecitati, nella risoluzione, a «fornire la loro piena quota di risorse necessarie alla difesa collettiva», cioè ad accrescere la spesa militare in base all’impegno preso di portarla come minimo al 2% del pil. Il che implica per l’Italia un aumento dagli attuali 52 milioni di euro al giorno, secondo i dati ufficiali della Nato (72 secondo il Sipri), a oltre 100 milioni di euro al giorno.

Sul piano economico, per «ridurre la capacità della Russia di usare le forniture energetiche quale mezzo di pressione», la risoluzione chiama l’Unione europea a «sostenere le iniziative di diversificazione energetica» intraprese dagli Usa, in particolare «l’aumento delle esportazioni di gas naturale e altri tipi di energia dagli Stati uniti» verso la Ue, l’Ucraina e altri paesi europei. In altre parole, chiama la Ue a rinunciare all’importazione di gas russo (e per questo gli Usa hanno affossato il gasdotto South Stream) per importare quello liquefatto (tra l’altro molto più caro) fornito dalle multinazionali statunitensi.

La risoluzione infine  chiama il Presidente a sviluppare una strategia per «produrre e diffondere informazioni in lingua russa in paesi con significativi settori di popolazione che parlano russo», massimizzando l’uso delle emitenti «Voce dell’America» e «Radio Europa Libera/Radio Libertà» attraverso «partnership pubblico-private» con media nazionali. Rilanciando così in Europa l’isterismo propagandistico della guerra fredda.

Questo, in sintesi, il contenuto della Risoluzione 758 che, dopo che sarà stata approvata anche dal Senato,  diverrà una vera e propria legge per l’attuale e le future amministrazioni. E allo stesso tempo una dichiarazione ufficiale di guerra alla Russia che, attraverso la Nato, riporta l’Europa in prima linea di un nuovo pericoloso confronto militare.

 Manlio Dinucci

il manifesto, 9 dicembre 2014

Both countries partner in each other’s wars. Israel bombs Syria at its discretion. Naked aggression by any standard. Longstanding Israeli practice. 

The latest incident striking a Damascus’ international airport warehouse. Believed to contain Iranian and Russian-supplied weapons. Separate attacks targeted a Dimas area military site near Lebanon’s border. Syrian and Lebanese sources reported at least 10 strikes. Israel’s last air attack was in March. Against alleged Syrian Quneitra region military positions. On Syria’s side of the Golan.

A Syrian Foreign Ministry letter to Ban Ki-moon and Chadian Security Council president Mahamat Zene Cherif said in part:

“The Syrian government called for imposing deterring sanctions on Israel, which did not hide its policy in supporting terrorism, calling also on taking all procedures, in accordance with the UN Charter, to prevent Israel from repeating such attacks.”

The letter accused Israel of committing a “heinous crime.” Striking Syrian territory lawlessly. Wanting Security Council imposed sanctions. US veto power prevents it.

Russia called Israeli attacks “aggressive action.” Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich saying:

“Moscow is deeply worried by this dangerous development, the circumstances of which demand an explanation.”

Iranian Foreign Minister spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham strongly condemned Israeli air strikes, saying:

“The Zionist regime intends to misuse Syria’s critical conditions, but the consequences of warmongerings will backfire on the regime.”

Israel collaborates with anti-Syrian terrorist groups, she added. Massacring its “oppressed people.”

Separately, Fars News reported “(a)n Iraqi army unit…find(ing) around 10 weapons and munitions depots (containing) Israeli-made weapons and explosives.”

“(I)n Hamrin mountains.” Apparently used by IS terrorists. According to Fars News:

“This is not the first time that such revelations are made about Israeli arms aids to the terrorists in the region. In February, a senior Iraqi military commander disclosed that the weapons used by ISIL in its war against both the governments of Syria and Iraq are Israeli-made. In June, the Syrian army discovered and seized a large cache of Israeli-made weapons and ammunition from Al-Qaeda-linked militants in Banias city of the Tartous governorate near the Lebanese borders. The Syrian troops discovered the arms depot in al-Maydan district of Banias city arresting several armed rebels during the operations. The security forces also confiscated several sniper rifles, thousands of bullets and forged documents as well as maps of Banias city from the armed rebels. Syrian Special Forces seized weapons and ammunition in farmlands in Banias city and arrested an armed group in the countryside trying to flee to the Lebanese territories. Earlier, in 2013, the Syrian army discovered and seized Israeli-made missiles and weapons from armed rebels in Reef (outskirts of) al-Qusseir in Northwestern Syria. (I)n December 2012, the Syrian army seized Israeli-made missiles and weapons from the armed rebels near the border with Jordan. The army confiscated (from terrorists) Israeli-made LAV anti-tank missiles and several wireless equipment which were also made in Israel…”

Israel neither confirmed or denied the latest attack. At the same time, Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz said:

“We have a firm policy of preventing all possible transfers of sophisticated weapons to terrorist organizations.”

Israel supports Islamic State, Nusra Front and other anti-Syrian terrorist groups. Serving as their air force. Along with Washington.

UN Golan Heights observers report regular contacts between Israel and radicalized terrorist groups. According to the UN Tribune:

UN Disengagement Observer Force(s) (UNDOF) “monitoring the 1974 ceasefire between Israel and Syria have witnessed interactions between members of the Israeli Defence Forces and the Al Nusra Front who have taken over a large part of the Golan Heights.” Including treating wounded terrorists in Israeli hospitals. Israel’s Ministry of Health admitted treating about 1,000 in four northern Israeli hospitals.

An IDF spokesman saying “in the past two years the Israeli Defense Forces have been engaged in humanitarian, life-saving aid to wounded Syrians, irrespective of their identity.”

UNDOF reports show IDF/extremist rebel interactions weren’t limited to medical care. Israeli forces were seen handing two boxes to extremist groups in Syrian territory.

Israeli soldiers opened a Syrian border gate. Letting two unidentified individuals enter Israel.

The IDF erected tents for dozens of families of alleged Syrian deserters. In Syrian territory. About 300 meters from Israel’s border.

Syria complained last September. Telling UNDOF the so-called camp was a “base (for) armed terrorists.” A legitimate target if not removed.

Syrian UN envoy Bashar Jaafari comments often about anti-government terrorist groups getting aid from neighboring countries.

Including an “undeclared alliance with Israel,” Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Mossad-connected DEBKAfile (DF) said unnamed “Middle East military and intelligence sources” called Israel’s latest attack its “first overt military clash with Russia” since conflict erupted in March 2011.

Allegedly targeting Iranian weapons. Moscow supplied SA-25 components. Other “top-line anti-air missile systems.” Intended for Syrian and Hezbollah use.

Russian transport planes supposedly “shipped these consignments in the last few days to the military section of Damascus international airport.”

Israeli air strikes occurred the day after Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov met with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut.

DF sources claim Moscow wants “a reckoning with the US and Israel over the fall in the last week of October of the large Russian intelligence post at Tel a-Hara in southern Syria to Syrian rebel units.”

“One of the most highly sophisticated Russian intelligence bases outside its borders…The prized hi-tech apparatus, much of it unfamiliar to Western spy agencies, was quickly shipped out of Syria for examination in the West.”

On Monday, US military sources said Israeli strikes targeted newly arrived Russian hardware. Including advanced missiles and radar.

DF saying to be deployed ahead of a possible US/Turkey imposed northern Syria no-fly zone.

Letting US warplanes operate within Syrian territory from Turkey’s Incirlik airbase. Including against Syrian aircraft, helicopters and drones entering no-fly zone areas.

Moscow calls establishing any type buffer zone direct US intervention against Syria. Giving it just cause to defend Assad.

Another wrinkle in what’s ongoing is Israel’s upcoming March 2014 elections. Netanyahu’s prime ministerial job up for grabs.

Citing security threats served him well in previous campaigns. He hopes fear-mongering will help this time. Claiming a region filled with threats.

Invented ones serving his interests. Israelis overwhelmingly supported Operation Protective Edge. Attacking Syrian positions shows Netanyahu’s toughness.

A Knesset Channel aired poll shows he’s in for a close race. An opposition Labor/Hatnua center-left alliance getting 23 seats.

Compared to Netanyahu-led Likud’s 21. Partnering with one or more right-wing parties might be enough to remain prime minister.

Despite his sagging popularity. Plunging from 77% around midyear to 38% currently.

Polls show Israelis favor him for prime minister over other choices – 26% approval compared to Labor’s Isaac Herzog’s 15% and Economy Minister (Jewish Home party) Naftali Bennett’s 11%.

Elections are over three months away. A lifetime in politics. Anything can happen between now and then.

Maybe another Gaza war to shore up Netanyahu’s popularity. Beware possible false flags or other stunts for whatever he may have in mind.

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.

An F-15 fighter jet flies over Ovda airbase, Israel (Reuters / Amir Cohen)

Syrian officials demanded the UN impose sanctions on Israel after Tel Aviv conducted airstrikes near Damascus Airport. They say the attack was a heinous crime against their sovereignty by a country which doesn’t hide its policy of supporting terrorism.

Tel Aviv committed a heinous crime against Syria’s sovereignty, said Syrian Foreign and Expatriates Ministry in two identical letters to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and to the Chair of the UN Security Council, SANA news agency reported.

The attack aimed to support armed terrorist groups in Syria, especially after Damascus made some progress in the cities of Deir Ezzor, Aleppo and Daraa, say Syrian officials.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry called for UN officials to impose sanctions on Israel, whose authorities“don’t hide their policies in supporting terrorism.” Damascus also urged UN to take all necessary procedures to prevent Israel from repeating such attacks in accord with UN Charter.

The letter asserts that Israel is trying to divert the world’s attention from the collapse of its own coalition government, which continues “its occupation of the Arab territories and violates the international legitimacy.”

Despite the Israeli attacks, Damascus will not stop its efforts to combat terrorism in all its forms, types and tools and on Syrian soil, added the letter.

On Sunday, Syrian state TV reported that Israeli army hit targets near Damascus Airport and in the town of Dimas near the Lebanese border.

“The Israeli enemy committed aggression against Syria by targeting two safe areas in Damascus province, in all of Dimas and near the Damascus International Airport,” the report said, adding that there were no casualties.

BREAKING: Syrian state TV: Israeli jets bomb near Damascus airport http://t.co/Ad3Ho5GOOU pic.twitter.com/ffKwu9SCzA

— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) December 7, 2014

On Monday sources from Syrian opposition told Arab media that Israeli warplanes destroyed a storage facility with drones and anti-aircraft missiles belonging to Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon.

These weapons, considered to be “capable of tilting the strategic balance,” especially threaten Israel’s ability to act freely in airspace of Lebanon, says a report published in pro-Hezbollah Al-Akhbar newspaper.

"@yurybarmin: #Syria-n TV reports #Israel-i air strikes on 2 safe areas near the Damascus airport. No casualties pic.twitter.com/FD7m64iIfM"

— شهــــرزاد (@Shahr2ad) December 7, 2014

Israeli authorities have neither denied nor confirmed the attack.

Israeli Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz only told an Israel Radio interview Monday, that Tel Aviv had a “firm policy of preventing all possible transfers of sophisticated weapons to terrorist organizations,”apparently referring to Hezbollah.

Video #Israeli airforce flying over #Syria today https://t.co/PKaSHwmdtb

— Elijah J. Magnier (@EjmAlrai) December 7, 2014

The UN hasn’t yet commented on Israeli airstrikes in Syria either, saying there is no “first-hand”information.

“We don’t have first-hand information to confirm. We will try to find more details, but now we have no comments,” Deputy Spokesman for UN Secretary-General, Farhan Haq, told TASS.

Ottawa ON – Last week Green Party Leader Elizabeth May presented a petition calling for a Parliamentary review of new forensic evidence regarding the events of September 11, 2001.

This petition was submitted by citizens from four provinces, and is supported by three professional organizations who have been digging into 9/11 evidence for years.

These organizations will jointly deliver a press conference to the Canadian and US media on Wednesday morning at 11:00: 

Press Conference, Wednesday December 10, 11 AM, Charles Lynch Room, 130-S, Centre Block Parliament Hill, Ottawa

Three Professional Organizations Offer Evidence-Based 9/11 Statements As Helping Hand to Families of US Victims

ReThink911.ca, based in Ottawa, emphasizes the undying role of US family members in calling for an independent inquiry into 9/11. In honoring their dead, they want the truth to be known, and the value of those lost to it respected.

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (ae911truth.org), which has 2300 architects and engineers calling for a new investigation based on the evidence for controlled demolition. This organization produced the in-depth documentary “9/11: Explosive Evidence – Experts Speak Out,” in which 40 technical and building professionals explain their conclusion of “controlled demolition”. The film rose to “most watched” video nationally on PBS.org in September 2012, and is available in a 15-minute version narrated by actor Ed Asner.

The 9/11 Consensus Panel (consensus911.org):  24 expert members of the international three-year-old 9/11 Consensus Panel have developed 44 Consensus Points of “best evidence” opposing the official account of 9/11.  The Panel respondents remain blind to one another throughout a rigorous reviewing process. Included in their studies are the surprising activities of the military and political leaders that day.  The consensus process has yielded an unprecedented degree of credibility for specific points of evidence relating to 9/11.

Contacts:    

Media Relations/Interviews:     [email protected]

Organizers:  David Long, 613-204-9090,  E.Woodworth, 250-383-2417

Engineering Representative, Tony Szamboti, 856-228-4747

Architectural Representative, Richard Gage, AIA,  510-292-4710

If proof were needed that Zionism is racism, then the evidence has been amassed over the past century and is now there for all to see. That it has taken the likes of alleged war criminal Tzipi Livni to remove the rose-tinted spectacles from the eyes of some in the Knesset is a bitter-sweet irony.

If is a big word in Middle East politics and is often used with the benefit of hindsight or wishful thinking. My “if” focuses on the departure of Israeli ministers Yair Lapid and Tzipi Livni from the Israeli cabinet; both refused to support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Jewish State Bill. In his own words Netanyahu said that the bill would provide “national rights only for the Jewish people.”

Breaking ranks, Livni and Lapid and their supporters claimed that the bill was racist and now so-called liberals and less fanatical supporters of the Zionist state agree. If passed into law it would certainly end the hollow boast of Israel’s claim to be the only democracy in the Middle East.

By consolidating a sectarian Jewish identity, it is clear that Netanyahu is pandering to right-wing voters who, at the moment, are in the majority. These are the voters who are opposed vehemently to a State of Palestine and overwhelmingly supported Israel’s latest brutal summer onslaught against Palestinians in neighbouring Gaza.

And here comes my “if”: if Livni and co are right about racism then this will lay wide open the inherent racism of Israel (and its founding ideology of Zionism) and the flawed activities, for example, of the Jewish National Fund, an organisation which will only sell land to Jews.

Founded in 1901 by Theodor Herzl, the godfather of political Zionism, the JNF was originally set up to buy land in Palestine to establish Jews-only settlements before the creation of the Zionist state of Israel. Now it’s a global charity describing itself as the “caretakers of the land and people of Israel”.

JNF critics say that it expropriates land belonging to Palestinians and has obliterated pre-1948 Arab villages by planting forests and parks over their ruins. At the moment, the charity is involved in the demolition of Bedouin villages in the Negev desert as part of yet another forestation project.

The Israeli Knesset approved the discriminatory Prawer-Begin Bill, by 43 votes to 40, for the mass expulsion of the Bedouin. If implemented fully, it will result in the destruction of 35 villages plus the forced displacement of up to 70,000 Arab citizens of Israel, as well as the dispossession of their historical lands in the Negev. Despite the Bedouin community’s complete rejection of the plan and an outcry from the international community and human rights groups, the Prawer Plan is happening right now.

Max Blumenthal, author of “Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel”, is also a film-maker of some repute who has spent much time exposing racism in Israel. In a recent article in the New York Times, he also reached for the if-word and observed: “If a shift is underway in Israeli politics, it is primarily tonal. Israel’s rightists intend to carry on the Zionist project as originally conceived, but without the pretence of democracy. In a way, their honesty is refreshing.”

The article attracted a wave of angry comments from extremists in the Zionist community who were angry that the NYT had given column inches to Blumenthal. Like most pro-Israel lobbyists they wanted to close down the debate over the failure of their project in Israel.

Yet there shouldn’t even be a debate, for the early Zionists made no secret of their intentions and views on equality. The late Dr David Eder told a court of inquiry back in 1921, when he was head of the Zionist Commission: “There can be only one National Home in Palestine, and that a Jewish one, and no equality in the partnership between Jews and Arabs, but a Jewish preponderance as soon as the numbers of the race are sufficiently increased.”

A few years earlier the American King-Crane Commission spent six weeks in Syria and Palestine, investigating the intentions and goals of Zionists. Its report stated: “The commissioners began their study of Zionism with minds predisposed in its favour… The fact came out repeatedly in the Commission’s conferences with Jewish representatives that the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine.”

In 1940, a director of the JNF, Joseph Weitz, stated: “It must be clear that there is no room for both peoples in this country… there is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to the neighbouring countries, to transfer them all; except maybe for Bethlehem, Nazareth and Old Jerusalem, we must not leave a single village, not a single tribe.”

If proof were needed that Zionism is racism, then the evidence has been amassed over the past century and is now there for all to see. That it has taken the likes of alleged war criminal Tzipi Livni to remove the rose-tinted spectacles from the eyes of some in the Knesset is a bitter-sweet irony.

If the ultra-right win in the forthcoming elections and completely engulf the Zionist State, enabling it to push on with its racist policies, then it is clear that Israel’s brain drain crisis will continue as more highly educated, entrepreneurial and talented Jews migrate back to Europe or America. Israel itself has a lot to lose by an even more determined push to the right.

If certainly is a big word, and it certainly can have serious consequences.

China has zero tolerance for many GMOs. They’ve made this clear by refusing US exports that contain genetically modified ingredients – not even in the parts per million range. Due to the recent contamination of hay from RoundUp ready GMO alfalfa, the Chinese government has now blacklisted hay from the US, and they are looking at Canada’s exports closely to determine if they will also need to be blacklisted.

One exporter of hay to China and other places around the world, Ed Shaw, said three American hay exporters have been blacklisted from exporting to China, and hundreds of container loads of hay have been turned away after GMO alfalfa was found in the loads.

Hay exported to the country from the U.S. was in quarantine due to the detection of GMO traits, specifically of genetically modified alfalfa. And this isn’t a singular occurrence, either. Last year, a Washington State grower’s hay was rejected after it tested positive for GMO alfalfa. This doesn’t sit well with China, since all imported hay is supposed to be GMO-free.

Needless to say, the trend continued, leading China to boycott all US grown-hay completely.

Forage Seed Canada president Heather Kerschbaumer said her Golden Acre Seed Co. had nine non-Roundup Ready alfalfa samples tested last year for the presence of Roundup Ready alfalfa, and all tested negative; however, GMO alfalfa is increasingly planted between vegetable crops in California and other places in the US. The possibility of cross-contamination grows stronger every planting season.

Forage Seed lost $20,000 recently due to contaminated canola seed, and now Canadian officials are concerned about GMO alfalfa contamination since it could possibly bring the Canadian export market to its knees.

More than three years ago, Phil Bereano, a co-founder of AGRA watch, argued that by deregulating the planting of GE alfalfa, the USDA was in direct contravention to its obligations under law and court decisions.

Many believe that non-GMO alfalfa crops in the US have already widely been contaminated.

With recent reports finding that the GMO contamination issue is much more serious than previously thought, as well as numerous real-life cases of cross-contamination, it seems that organic crops will never truly be safe.

Unvaccinated children are supposedly the cause, according to state health officials, of a recent whooping cough outbreak that occurred in the posh Cape Cod area of Massachusetts. But as reported by CBS Boston, all of the children affected by the outbreak were already vaccinated, proving once again that vaccines don’t really work.

Some 15 children at Falmouth High School reportedly came down with the respiratory illness, which also goes by the name pertussis, sparking a wave of panic about a corresponding increase in vaccine exemptions. But as usual, nobody affected by the outbreak was unvaccinated, and no matter how hard the media tries to spin the issue, those who were vaccinated were not protected.

Mainstream media clouds issue of vaccinations and exemptions

Reporting for CBS Boston, I-Team correspondent Lauren Leamanczyk towed the pro-vaccine line with accusations that vaccine exemptions triggered the outbreak. Undisclosed data she apparently found reveals that vaccine exemptions have increased fourfold over the past 25 years, which public health officials say increases the risk of an outbreak.

This supposed correlation proves nothing, of course, as correlation does not imply causation. But when vaccines are involved, any deviation from the standard vaccine protocol, which is basically to take whatever the government says is good for you, becomes the automatic scapegoat when an outbreak occurs.

In her story, Leamanczyk quotes the words of Dr. Sharon Daly, Chief of Pediatrics at Cape Cod Hospital, who declares that outbreaks increase when vaccination rates decrease. The implication, naturally, is that the Falmouth outbreak was triggered by unvaccinated children.

But a few paragraphs later, Leamanczyk fesses up to the fact that all of the affected children who developed whooping cough had previously been vaccinated for it. Based on this fact alone, it is clear that whooping cough vaccines don’t work, as every child who had been vaccinated should have been protected.

Even if some of the unvaccinated children at the school acted as “carriers” for the disease, a claim often made by pro-vaccine zealots, this only further reinforces that whooping cough vaccines are a failure. If unvaccinated children don’t contract whooping cough while vaccinated children do, then there is no rational basis for continuing the vaccine program.

Massachusetts doesn’t allow for philosophical exemptions, as claimed by Leamanczyk

Another failure in Leamanczyk’s article involves the type of exemptions supposedly responsible for the outbreak. She suggests that the rise in philosophical exemptions is the culprit, but Massachusetts doesn’t even allow for philosophical exemptions: only religious and medical exemptions are permitted in the Bay State!

This might seem like a minor discrepancy, but it is the basis of Leamanczyk and the health department’s argument that exemptions are the cause of the outbreak. Perhaps she meant to say medical or religious exemptions, but this major factual error calls into question the entire premise of the article, which nonsensically blames unvaccinated children for spreading disease to vaccinated children.

Vaccines either work or they don’t. Period. Blaming unvaccinated individuals for spreading disease to vaccinated individuals makes no sense, and only further exposes the vaccine agenda for what it is: a complete myth.

Whooping cough vaccines making disease more virulent

If anything, vaccinated individuals are actually the ones responsible for spreading disease. In the case of whooping cough, a study out of the Netherlands found that whooping cough has mutated genetically and become more virulent as a result of whooping cough vaccines, which would explain why outbreaks are escalating.

Another study published in the journal Infection Control Today admits that the vaccine strategy “[has] not completely eradicated strains of the bacteria,” but rather led to “an increase in diversity,” meaning deadlier strains that are more virulent and perhaps more contagious.

Sources:

http://boston.cbslocal.com

http://www.nvic.org

http://www.inquisitr.com

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/047930_whooping_cough_vaccinations_exemptions.html#ixzz3LPbUlMB9

On July 24th, the Times of London did not headline as this news-report is headlined, but instead headlined much more obscurely, “Russia fears prompt Nato to look east for HQ.” Of course, people in the West tend not to care a lot about what “Russia fears.” They also don’t care much about whether “Nato,” or actually NATO [it’s an acronym and so is supposed to be all-caps], would “look east for HQ.” So, this news-report did not garner much attention — as it was, indeed, not intended to.

Online (where the critical, analytical, readers increasingly are), it received even less, because that newspaper isn’t online, except for its subscribers — people who are willing to pay for such poor journalism as the Times; i.e, pay to read corporations’ PR presented in the form of ‘news reports.’

The lengthiest excerpt from the article that’s online is at NATO’s own site, the PR delivered straight from the horses’ mouth, which posting there is certainly validation that the article represents NATO’s position accurately, even if it does so in ‘appropriately’ vague terms. (Of course, that’s not “appropriate” for readers, but for NATO, which is the weapons-manufacturers’ trade-organization, that’s being served in this ‘news’ story.)

It reports that “a military base in eastern Europe” will be “placing supplies — weapons, ammunition and ration packs — at the headquarters” [what ‘headquarters’? It’s the first usage of this term there, and yet doesn’t say] to enable a sudden influx of thousands of Nato troops to be ready for action in the event of a crisis.” Furthermore, “the leading contender [for the ‘headquarters,’ though the vaguely written article doesn’t explicitly say so] is Multinational Corps Northeast, in Szczecin, Poland. … It would be a 24/7 fully functioning headquarters that forces [what ‘forces,’ whose ‘forces’?] could quickly fall in on to respond rapidly when needed.”

This is a vague way of saying that the prepositioned weapons there would be for “forces” who are rushing in to grab their weapons and invade Russia at a moment’s notice. The vague assumption embodied here is that this would be a defensive invasion against an offensive Russia. The news-report is written for people who have that assumption about NATO’s being ‘defensive’, and who do not worry that they might have been fooled into believing it, but the report builds upon that unquestioning assumption on the reader’s part. By this implicit instead of explicit means, the article is saying that to call NATO a purely ‘defensive’ organization isn’t a lie — which it actually is — but is instead a perfectly reasonable assumption for intelligent people to hold (despite all historical evidence to the contrary); and that, consequently the idea of NATO’s increasingly surrounding Russia with its missiles is purely a ‘defensive’ measure, nothing for Russians to find terrifying.

“The shift in posture is being proposed by General Philip Breedlove, Nato’s top commander in Europe.”

In other words, to decode this corporate PR yet further, the American General, Breedlove, who is the organization’s top commander regarding a war against Russia, has proposed this forward quick-strike (or, as Hitler called it “blitzkrieg”) base, and all of the weapons-manufacturing and sales that would be servicing the base, which the article says would be for “pre-positioned supplies, pre-positioned capabilities and a basing area ready to rapidly accept follow-on forces,” to invade Russia (since, after all, that would require the biggest-possible military sales, which is what NATO is for).

In order to provide the article’s readers with ‘authoritative’ support for its unmentioned and unquestioned assumption that NATO isn’t aggressive, the article quotes an unnamed “Nato official” as asserting: “The Russians have decided that they are willing to use force to achieve their aims . . . and that breaks with 25 years of building a security structure in Europe built around certain fundamentals.” That unquestioned assertion is, in turn, based upon a gross falsification of the history of what has happened in Ukraine this year, including of the populist-backed return of Crimea to Russia, because Russia had donated Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 and the residents there had not been consulted about the matter and still consider themselves to be Russians, and now are officially Russians, which they overwhelmingly want to be.

So, NATO is surrounding Russia with hostile forces (largely on the basis of lies about ‘Russia’s aggression against Crimea’), which are dedicated to hostility toward Russia, and yet it’s presumed (certainly by the gullible readership of the Times and of Rupert Murdoch’s other rags) to be defensive, not offensive in nature, against Russia.

When Russia’s predecessor, the Soviet Union, similarly prepared to position nuclear missiles near America, in Cuba, in 1962, U.S. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was willing to lead America to nuclear war against the Soviet Union if they went ahead with their plan. So, why is Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin waiting this long to do the same, even after his nation is already surrounded with NATO’s hostile weapons (like the U.S. never was by the Soviet Unions weapons), even decades after the Soviet Union and its communist ideology have ended and there is no longer any justification for NATO’s existence other than as Western arms-makers’ marketing organization?

Isn’t it time, then, for Russia’s President Putin to demand ‘the West’ (actually NATO, the trade-organization of U.S. and European military suppliers) to stop doing this horrendous thing, and NATO itself either to disband or to admit Russia into its membership so that the new NATO won’t threaten WW III — nuclear war?

How long will Putin wait, because NATO is already now a hot threat against not only Russia but the entire world; there will be only losers in a nuclear war; and those losers will be not only all humans, but all animals of all sorts, and all of posterity, all in order to sell these tons of weapons today.

Terminating NATO, or else admitting Russia into it, is essential for the future of the world, and so Putin should demand it now, just as JFK demanded an end to missiles-in-Cuba in 1962.

The future of the world should not be subordinated to the wills of the chief stockholders in companies such as Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.

That news-report in the Times was published on July 24th, and yet only on December 5th was its meaning introduced online (which is where the critical audience increasingly is). Professor Michel Chossudovsky headlined “America is on a ‘Hot War Footing’: House Legislation Paves the Way for War with Russia?” and he placed the Times article into its broader context to show that, yes, indeed, NATO is gearing up for an invasion of Russia. The marketing plan is a great success.

Why, then, was that Times article so obtusely written and so boringly headlined? Once the new forward-strike headquarters is up and running just a stone’s throw away from Russia, there is bound to be public discussion of what’s happening and why. But, by then it will already be too late. More than four months have already passed and the world still hasn’t noticed what’s happening; so, NATO can say, “But, we announced it on July 24th.” No, they didn’t. The news was buried, just like NATO wants to bury Russia.

Anyone who does not think that the U.S. is leading the global fascist charge now, just as Germany was doing in the 1940s, doesn’t understand what is happening, nor why.

It’s happening.

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.

1. More than 500 American citizens have died after being tased, a device considered “non-lethal.”

2. The yearly cost of the War on Drugs to the Americantaxpayer is about $40 billion. The estimated cost to end hunger worldwide is $30 billion yearly.

3. There are more than 80,000 military raids conducted by police every year in the United States.

4. There are roughly 2.3 million people locked up in the United States with another 5 million on probation or parole. The overwhelming majority are for non-violent crimes.

5. UNICOR, an establishment inside the US Federal Prison System uses its confined pool of labor to produce war goods for the US military.

6. In 36% of US SWAT raids, no contraband of any kind is found after the officers risk everyone’s life and engage in reckless actions that cost lives.

7. An average London resident is recorded over 300 times a day by Big Brother’s video surveillance apparatus.

8. The only nation to maintain a higher incarceration rate than the United States is Germany … under the Nazis.

9. 97% of reported police brutality victims are people of color.

10. Every 98 minutes, a cop kills a family pet. There have been no recorded officer deaths from a dog in last decade.

Four months ago today, Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager, was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Popular anger over yet another police murder in the United States has only deepened in the weeks and months since, fueled by the decisions of highly manipulated grand juries not to charge the police officer who killed Brown or the police officer who choked to death Eric Garner in Staten Island last July.

The response of the ruling class to these events has run along two interconnected channels. On the one hand, the protests have been utilized as an opportunity to build up the apparatus of repression even further, including the declaration of a preemptive state of emergency in Ferguson last month and the deployment of the National Guard against protests.

At the same time, the ruling elite is mobilizing the practitioners of identity politics, whose job is to insist that the killing of Brown and Garner, and the exoneration of the police officers who killed them, are entirely the result of racism. The aim is to obscure the fundamental class issues involved and maintain the political authority of the very state apparatus that is responsible for repression and violence throughout the country.

Obama himself took the lead in an interview aired yesterday on Black Entertainment Television. Feigning sympathy for the protesters, Obama urged “patience” and “persistence.” Racism, he said, “is deeply rooted in our society, it’s deeply rooted in our history.”

Seeking to leverage the fact that he is the country’s first African American president, Obama said that the issue “is not only personal for me, because of who I am and who Michelle is and who our family members are and what our experiences are, but as president, I consider this to be one of the most important issues we face.” He added, “America works when everybody feels as if they are being treated fairly.”

Obama added that the outcome of the Garner case, in particular, “gives us the opportunity to have the conversation [on race] that has been a long way coming.”

As always, the president’s comments were shot through with hypocrisy and deceit. The homilies about everyone being “treated fairly” were delivered by a president who has made sure that no punishment was meted out to the financial swindlers who caused the Wall Street crash or the CIA and Bush administration officials who oversaw and carried out torture.

As for the pretense of concern over police brutality, Obama made his position absolutely clear last week when the White House announced there would be no let-up in the programs that funnel billions of dollars in military equipment to local police forces throughout the country.

In presenting himself as a supporter of those protesting police violence, Obama seeks to exploit his racial background, an effort that is buttressed by a network of lavishly paid political scoundrels such as Al Sharpton, the multi-millionaire former FBI informant who invariably anoints himself the leader of every protest against police brutality. After meeting with the president last week, Sharpton called for a march in Washington next weekend aimed at directing popular anger over police violence into the harmless channel of appeals to Congress and the Obama administration.

These maneuvers have been accompanied by a series of articles in the “left” media insisting that the fundamental issue in the killing of Garner and Brown is “white supremacy” (in the words of one Rolling Stone article), “white privilege” and racial oppression.

One of the foulest pieces was penned by Rutgers University Professor Brittney Cooper and published on Salon.com. In “White America’s scary delusion: Why its sense of black humanity is so skewed,” Cooper denounces the “ignorance and lack of empathy” of “white folks,” who benefit from “the violence at the core of the ideology of whiteness.”

From the International Socialist Organization, the basic line is the same. In “When racism wears a badge,” the ISO’s Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes of the “terrorism that pervades Black and Brown communities,” and of a racist system that has “criminalized and impoverished African Americans.” While Taylor refers to “black” and “African American” more than 30 times, the word “class” does not appear. As for Obama, he is mentioned only to criticize him for not sufficiently focusing on questions of race.

These people have an agenda. It is to encourage divisions along racial lines within the working class. According to them, the basic problem is not capitalism, a system based on class exploitation and oppression, of which racial discrimination is one expression, but rather a hatred of blacks that is somehow built into the genetic code of white people. On this basis it is a natural and inevitable progression to support black Democrats and their bourgeois allies and oppose an independent and united movement of the working class against the entire political establishment.

This is not to deny the existence of racism, which is encouraged among the more backward layers recruited into the police. Yet the violence directed at Brown, Garner and countless other workers and youth is far more about socio-economic class than about race. While African Americans are disproportionately the targets of police killings, white workers and youth still comprise the majority of victims. It is often black police commissioners and black mayors—and even black presidents—who oversee the oppression of minority youth.

The insistence, bordering on hysteria, with which political forces around the Democratic Party proclaim race to be the fundamental social category in America is proportional to the degree this brand of politics is being discredited—particularly by the experience of the Obama administration itself.

Obama, promoted by the likes of the Nation and the ISO as the “transformative candidate” six years ago, has presided over a historic reversal in the living conditions of workers of all races. Well into the Obama administration’s supposed “recovery,” social inequality in the United States is higher than at any point since the Great Depression of the 1930s, thanks to the massive transfer of wealth to Wall Street it has engineered.

Social polarization has grown the most among African Americans and other ethnic minorities, with the great majority suffering a decline in living standards and a small elite growing wealthy from programs such as affirmative action and their incorporation into the political and corporate establishment. Obama is, in fact, the embodiment of this corrupt and reactionary social layer.

In Detroit, which is overwhelmingly African American, an African American emergency manager, working closely with the Obama administration, has overseen the plundering of the city in the interests of the financial aristocracy, including huge cuts in the pensions and health benefits of active and retired city workers. Wages for the working class as a whole, and particularly industrial workers, have plummeted. Public schools and social infrastructure have been relentlessly attacked.

All of this has an impact on popular consciousness, encouraging the understanding that it is class, not race, which determines government policy. The identity politics that has become a mainstay of bourgeois rule in the United States over the past four decade has suffered a severe blow. The likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, and the milieu of political organizations rooted in identity politics and based on affluent layers of the upper-middle class, are themselves increasingly despised.

The driving force behind the eruption of police violence in the United States is class oppression. The combination of imperialist war abroad and social counterrevolution at home is expressed politically in the erection of a police state apparatus directed ever more openly against social and political opposition within the United States.

The conflict between the financial aristocracy and the working class is the fundamental source of the brutality and violence of the state. The same conflict creates the objective foundation for a political movement that can put an end to this brutality: an independent and united movement of the entire working class, in opposition to capitalism and all of its political defenders.

The Pentagon has put tens of thousands of US soldiers on high alert, including Marines and special operations forces, ahead of Tuesday’s expected release of a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the torture of prisoners at CIA “black site” prisons around the world.

The Obama White House and the Pentagon confirmed Monday that the higher alert status had been declared in anticipation that the report would provoke popular outrage, particularly in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan and North Africa, as well as in countries that provided facilities for the CIA torture program, including Poland, Romania, Lithuania and Thailand.

The heightened security measures come amid a frenzied campaign by former CIA and Bush administration officials to attack the report’s publication, denouncing it preemptively as a virtual act of treason. Former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden set the tone with an appearance on the CBS interview program “Face the Nation” Sunday, where he said the report “will be used by our enemies to motivate people to attack Americans and American facilities overseas.”

He added that the report would undermine Washington’s global influence. “There are countries out there who have cooperated with us on the war on terror at some political risk that are relying on American discretion,” he said. “I can’t imagine anyone out there going forward in the future who would be willing to do anything that even smacks of political danger.”

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers issued an even more apocalyptic warning, declaring flatly that the report “is a terrible idea,” adding, “Our own intelligence community has assessed that this will cause violence and deaths.”

Islamic fundamentalist groups would seize on the report’s revelations, he claimed, although an ample supply of grisly accounts of US torture is already available on the Internet. “They’ll use it for their propaganda machine,” he told Bloomberg News. “Why are we going to risk the lives of some diplomat, for what? We’re going to risk the lives of some intelligence official who had nothing to do with this, for what?”

Both the US Central Command, which includes the Middle East and Afghanistan, and the US Africa Command, which covers the entire African continent, have ordered higher alerts. Nearly 5,000 Marines are likely first responders in the event of attacks on US embassies, consulates or bases. These include crisis-response teams based in Sigonella, Italy, Morón, Spain, and Kuwait, as well as the 2,000-strong Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group, currently on board ships in the Gulf of Aden.

The USS Makin Island, the helicopter and troop carrier that is the flagship of the amphibious group, was the launching pad for Friday’s failed raid by Navy SEALs on an alleged Al Qaeda compound in Yemen, in which a US journalist and a South African teacher, both held hostage, were killed.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest revealed Monday that the administration had been informed the Senate report on CIA torture would be released Tuesday. The release of the report “could lead to a greater risk… to US facilities and individuals all around the world,” Earnest said. “The administration has taken the prudent steps to ensure that the proper security precautions are in place.”

The Senate report is only a partial exposure of the crimes committed by the US intelligence agency. It is limited to the period 2002-2006, during the Bush administration, and is heavily censored by the CIA itself, with pseudonyms substituted for the names of all CIA officers except the top decision-makers, and the pseudonyms themselves blacked out.

The document being released is not the full 6,700-page report compiled by the committee, based on 6 million pages of material examined as part of a three-year probe, but only an executive summary of 500 pages. The report is limited to what the CIA did. It does not review the actions of officials at the Bush White House and Justice Department who gave the green light to torture and concocted pseudo-legal justifications for it.

Nonetheless, advance comments by Senate Committee members suggest that the report contains new and grisly details of the torture campaign, including extensive waterboarding, physical violence, death threats and other methods characterized by one senator as “medieval.”

In an unusual public commentary, former President George W. Bush was interviewed Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” telecast and denounced the Senate report’s criticism of both CIA torture and the subsequent efforts to cover it up. “We’re fortunate to have men and women who work hard at the CIA serving on our behalf,” Bush said. “These are patriots. And whatever the report says, if it diminishes their contributions to our country, it is way off base.”

The New York Times reported Monday that a group of former Bush administration officials, including former CIA directors Hayden, George Tenet and John McLaughlin, are spearheading the effort to rebut the report in advance of its release. The newspaper did not note the self-interested character of this campaign: all three men, along with Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney and other top officials, could face war crimes prosecution if they traveled overseas as a result of the evidence provided by the Senate report, even though the report itself avoids any discussion of White House responsibility for the torture program.

The tone of the pro-torture campaign was expressed most crudely by Cheney, who denounced the Senate report’s contention that the CIA had lied to the Bush White House about the results of its torture interrogations, calling the claim “a crock.” Bush and Cheney are celebrating the torture program rather than attempting to distance themselves from it.

The Bush administration phased out the “black site” program in 2006 after it had been publicly exposed through leaks to the US and European media. Torture undoubtedly continued at other facilities, including Bagram Prison in Afghanistan and US detention camps in Iraq.

After he took office in 2009, Obama signed an executive order banning waterboarding and other methods of interrogation classified as torture under international law, but he blocked any prosecution of Bush administration officials who authorized torture, while the Justice Department ultimately decided not to bring any charges against the torturers themselves.

The Obama administration has stalled publication of the Senate Intelligence Committee report for more than two years, giving the CIA itself the final say over what would be declassified and pressuring Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein and other Democrats to accept nearly all of the redactions demanded by the agency.

In the final months of talks, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough personally intervened to get the bulk of the CIA’s demands accepted. Feinstein also agreed that CIA officials would not face any consequences for their unconstitutional spying on the Senate committee itself, revealed earlier this year.

In March, Feinstein, long a reliable defender of the CIA and apologist for the NSA domestic spying program, went to the well of the Senate to announce that the CIA had hacked into computers being used by Senate Intelligence Committee staffers who were preparing the report. She accused the CIA of violating the US Constitution as well as federal laws.

CIA Director John Brennan at first denied the charge, but later admitted them to be true, even as he charged the Senate staffers with stealing classified material and referred the matter to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution. Obama sprang to Brennan’s defense and has continued to adamantly support him. Brennan was promoted by Obama to head the agency after serving as the White House counterterrorism adviser.

In a final effort to delay the report’s publication, Secretary of State John Kerry called Feinstein December 5 and suggested that the report could cause problems for the ongoing US military operations in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State fundamentalist group, as well as for US hostages held in the region. The Obama administration and the CIA evidently hoped that further delay might halt publication entirely once the Republicans take control of the Senate and the Intelligence Committee in January.

But in a legal proceeding before US District Court in Washington last week, the Justice Department conceded that the report would likely be made public within days. The department has been fighting a Freedom of Information Act request for the release of the report’s executive summary to a consortium of media plaintiffs. On Thursday, the department filed a brief document postponing a motion for summary judgment against the plaintiffs on the grounds that the Senate committee “will publicly release the Executive Summary early next week,” making the issue moot.

The recent nomination of Ashton Carter for U.S. Secretary of Defense raises the prospect of a more hawkish foreign policy. In particular, Carter’s past positions on North Korea may portend policy choices that could put the lives of Koreans on both sides of the border at risk.

In 1993, Ashton Carter was placed in charge of the task force on North Korea that issued a position paper for the National Security Council. According a Defense Department official, Carter “wanted military options taken very seriously.” The paper “was very pessimistic about the prospects for negotiations” and recommended launching an attack on North Korea’s nuclear facilities. Many working under Carter were said to have been “appalled” by the report, which suggested that the probability of war would not be very high following an attack. [1]

One year later, the Clinton Administration was moving toward war, which was now seen as not only likely but desirable. According to Ashton Carter, in 1994 he and Defense Secretary William Perry “readied plans for striking at North Korea’s nuclear facilities and for mobilizing hundreds of thousands of American troops for the war that probably would have followed.” The Yongbyon facility was to be targeted by precision-guided bombs. “We were highly confident that it could be destroyed without causing a meltdown that would release radioactivity into the air.” Carter and Perry felt that the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear program “was even more dangerous” than military conflict, and they “were prepared to risk a war to stop it.” [2]

As a graphite-moderated reactor, Yongbyon “does have flammable graphite in it,” Carter later wrote. “So you need to worry that a fire could start that would sweep all this radioactive junk up from the core and cause a radiological problem downwind. We were very confident we could avoid that.” [3]

Carter and his associates were all too ready to risk Korean lives to serve American aims. The assumption that an attack on Yongbyon would not have spewed radioactive material across the Korean Peninsula is questionable at best. Some years later, the South Korean government commissioned a simulation of a strike on Yongbyon and found that if all of the facilities at the site were hit, one quarter of the population within a 50 kilometer radius would die within hours. Nuclear fallout could have spread as far as China and Japan, and the soil throughout the Korean Peninsula would have been contaminated for up to ten years. [4]

In Carter’s mind, any response by North Korea would start a war. The presumption was that the United States would be blameless for its initial attack. “[W]e would be calling their bluff,” Carter explained. The senselessness of expecting North Korea to acquiesce in being attacked can be gauged by imagining the reverse. If some other nation bombed an American nuclear plant, sending radioactive material billowing across a large swath of territory, would one expect the U.S. to do nothing in response?

“There were substantial risks associated with carrying out that attack,” Carter admitted in a 2003 interview. “That was a risk that I certainly felt at the time, and feel now, was worth running in light of the enormous risks to our security associated with letting North Korea go nuclear.” [5]

Were North Korea to respond militarily, “U.S. forces, working side by side with the South Korean army and using bases in Japan, would quickly destroy the North Korean army and the North Korean regime,” at an estimated cost of tens of thousands of casualties. [6]

South Korean President Kim Young-Sam was not as indifferent to the sacrifice of Korean lives as were officials of the Clinton Administration. “At that time the situation was really dangerous,” he later recalled. “The Clinton government was preparing for war,” with an aircraft carrier off the coast and U.S. warships preparing for a naval bombardment. As American forces were being deployed, Kim warned U.S. Ambassador James Laney that another war would turn all of Korea into a bloodbath, and South Korea would not move “even a single soldier” in support of the U.S. war. Kim then phoned President Clinton and argued with him for 32 minutes. “I told him there would be no inter-Korean war while I was president. Clinton tried to persuade me to change my mind, but I criticized the United States for planning to stage a war with the North on our land.” [7] Although Clinton relented by the end of the phone call, he considered South Korean opposition only a temporary setback and continued to plan for war.

Alarmed at the drift to war, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter intervened directly by flying on a personal mission to Pyongyang for talks with North Korean officials. After the initial talks, Carter phoned the White House, interrupting a council of war then in progress. Carter passed along the news that North Korean leader Kim Il Sung had agreed to engage in negotiations with the U.S. on a final resolution of the nuclear issue. Knowing the White House might be inclined to ignore the prospect of a negotiated settlement, Carter said he had arranged for a CNN film crew to transmit an immediate live broadcast in which he would announce the outcome of his meeting with Kim.

When news of Jimmy Carter’s intention was announced to others at the White House council of war, they reacted with indignation. Tuning to CNN, Clinton Administration officials watched with fury as Carter announced a North Korean commitment to negotiate the nuclear issue. “Nothing should be done to exacerbate the situation now,” Carter added. The following day, negotiations between Carter and Kim resulted in North Korea agreeing not to reprocess spent fuel at Yongbyon, thereby removing the last excuse the U.S. side had for spurning a diplomatic solution.

A State Department official later reflected “The shocking thing about the Carter visit wasn’t that people were disappointed that someone was going. It was that when he got the freeze, people here were crestfallen.” [8] Clinton Administration officials wanted a war. According to another former State Department official, “It went down to the wire. The American people will never know how close we were to war. Had [North Korea] not accepted, we had 50,000 troops on the [border]. We were hell-bent about stopping them.” [9]

Unused military plans can always be dusted off for later use. In the days leading up to North Korea’s failed launch of a Taepodong-2 missile on July 5, 2006, Ashton Carter, in an editorial he co-wrote with William Perry, declared, “The United States should immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched.” Carter admitted, “Our South Korean allies will surely not support this ultimatum – indeed they will vigorously oppose it. The United States should accordingly make clear to the North that the South will play no role in the attack, which can be carried out entirely with U.S. forces and without use of South Korean territory.” Anticipated South Korean opposition was not a factor for Carter in his advocacy of military action in which Korean lives would be lost.

In case North Korea responded to the attack, Ashton Carter and William Perry called for the United States to introduce “U.S. air and naval forces into the region at the same time it made its threat to strike the Taepodong.” [10]

In a striking display of hypocrisy, American outrage over North Korea’s launch in 2006 came just weeks after the United States test fired a Minuteman III ICBM on June 14. The U.S. missile flew 4,800 miles before its three warheads stuck the Kwajalein Missile Range in the Marshall Islands.

Even after North Korea’s Taepodong failed in less than one minute after launch, Ashton Carter rejected criticisms that his call for a preemptive strike was too risky, arguing that “if the U.S. is ever going to defend a line in the sand with North Korea, that is the least provocative way to do it, and next time it will only be riskier.” His presumption was that the U.S. should take military action at some point. The only question was when. “We continue to advise the U.S. government to strike any further Taepodong test missiles before they can be fired,” he and Perry added. [11]

“Diplomacy with North Korea must have a coercive dimension, so economic strangulation and use of military force must be credibly on the table,” Carter has written. “But they can and should be used only when diplomacy has been shown to have been tried and failed.” [12]  The Obama Administration steadfastly refuses to engage in diplomacy, claiming that diplomacy has failed even while ignoring the fact that it was the United States which first violated each agreement before North Korea followed suit. The conventional wisdom in the United States is that diplomacy has been tried and found wanting. There can be no dialogue unless the North Koreans first give the United States everything it wants without getting anything in return other than the vague promise of talk. For Carter, this means there remains no impediment to the use of military force.

Ashton Carter is popular with both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party for his technocratic abilities and his eagerness for military action, and he is expected to be easily confirmed as the next U.S. Secretary of Defense. In that role, he will not make policy, but he will be in a strong position to advocate his positions and to influence policy.

Carter has shown a marked disregard for the lives that would be lost in the reckless actions he has proposed. It remains to be seen how much influence he will wield and how U.S. policy towards North Korea may change in the Obama Administration’s remaining two years in office, but it cannot be ruled out that South Korea may find itself in the position of having to block the United States from plunging the peninsula into war.

Gregory Elich is on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and the Advisory Board of the Korea Policy Institute. He is a columnist for Voice of the People, and one of the co-authors of Killing Democracy: CIA and Pentagon Operations in the Post-Soviet Period, published in the Russian language.

On Thursday, November 20, 2014, the body of 54-year old Melissa Millan, a divorced mother of two school-age children, was found at approximately 8 p.m. along a jogging path running parallel to Iron Horse Boulevard in Simsbury, Connecticut. A motorist had spotted the body and called the police.

According to the coroner’s report, it was determined that Millan’s death was attributable to a stab wound to the chest with an “edged weapon.” Police ruled the death a homicide, a rarity for this town where residents feel safe enough to routinely jog by themselves on the same path used by Millan.

Information has now emerged that Millan had access to highly sensitive data on bank profits resulting from the collection of life insurance proceeds from her insurance company employer on the death of bank workers – data that a Federal regulator of banks has characterized as “trade secrets.”

Millan was a Senior Vice President with Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual) headquartered in Springfield, Massachusetts and a member of its 39-member Senior Management team according to the company’s 2013 annual report. Millan had been with the company since 2001.

According to Millan’s LinkedIn profile, her work involved the “General management of BOLI” and Executive Group Life, as well as disability insurance businesses and “expansion into worksite and voluntary benefits market.”

BOLI is shorthand for Bank-Owned Life Insurance, a controversial practice where banks purchase bulk life insurance on the lives of their workers. The death benefit pays to the bank instead of to the family of the deceased. According to industry publications, MassMutual is considered one of the top ten sellers of BOLI in the United States. Its annual reports in recent years have indicated that growth in this area was a significant contributor to its revenue growth.

Banks as well as other types of corporations enjoy major tax benefits through the use of this type of insurance. The cash buildup in the policies contribute to annual earnings on a tax-free basis while the death benefit is received free of Federal income tax when the employee eventually dies. Even if the worker is no longer employed at the bank, it can still collect the death benefit. Banks owning BOLI routinely conduct “death sweeps” of public records using former employees’ Social Security numbers to determine if a former employee has died. It then submits a claim request for payment of the death benefit to the insurance company.

Read more…

The International Criminal Court dropped charges against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta on December 3, 2014. This is good news, even though the I(mperialiste) CC claims it was done because of Kenya’s refusal to cooperate. This case has been examined closely in Justice Belied recently published by Baraka Books. When President Kenyatta appeared before the ICC in The Hague in October 2014, Baraka Books ran the following excerpts from Chief Charles Taku’s article in Justice Belied, The Unbalanced Scales of International Criminal Justice. In light of this news, we are proud to repost them.

“Demeaning,” “condescending,” “neo-colonial posturing.” That is how Chief Charles Taku of Cameroun describes the actions of the of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and other international courts in Justice Belied: The Unbalanced Scales of International Criminal Justice, edited by Sébastien Chartrand and John Philpot. (order directly from GR)

Following are excerpts from two articles by Chief Charles Taku who makes the case that the actions of the ICC—and other international courts—are essentially “neo-colonial posturing.”

Excerpt from Chapter 1 of Justice Belied.

“African Court and International Criminal Courts:
Discriminatory International Justice and the Quest for a New World Judicial Order”

The ICC: The Price of Selective and Discriminatory Justice

The International Criminal Court has come under serious criticism by African states for its unjustified focus on Africa during its ten years of existence. This focus has been reasonably explained by the fact that some of the superpowers that have opposed the ICC and indeed refused to ratify the Rome Statute have deflated the attention of the court towards Africa.Justice Belied

The provision in the statute of the ICC that the UN Security Council may make referrals or deferrals before the court[1] gives these world powers extraordinary powers to control the formulation, conduct, and execution of prosecutorial policy, in a manner that detracts attention from conflicts around the world that are sponsored by these powers either through proxies or as direct participants. To these superpowers and their proxies, the ICC has become a convenient conduit to effect regime change in errant regimes in Africa as well as to protect their strategic geopolitical interests.

The urgency with which the prosecutor of the ICC purported to have conducted investigations and filed indictments against Muammar Gaddafi and some of his close aides in Libya at the heart of the war, when NATO bombs were indiscriminately falling on Libya for eight months, surprised many in Africa. It was more amazing that when the ICC indictee Muammar Gaddafi was apprehended alive and murdered in cold blood, the media antics that characterised the tenure of Mr. Moreno Ocampo as the prosecutor of the ICC went dead. The next time we heard about him was when he was informing the world, invoking the principle of complementarity,[2] that the judicial system of Libya was well-equipped to try Islam Gaddafi, the captured son of Muammar Gaddafi held by rebels over whom the central governing authority in Libya has no control.

Paradoxically, the same prosecutor explained his intervention in the Kenya post-election violence on the grounds that no mechanism existed within Kenya for a credible trial of the indicted to be conducted. This decision to intervene in Kenya was made barely two months after the commencement of the post-election violence in 2007. Within the same period, the same Western powers that supported the position of the prosecutor towards the situation in Kenya were appealing to Kenya to prosecute within its judicial system pirates and perpetrators of international crimes against foreign vessels in the Indian Ocean.

The obsession to “baby-sit” Africa reached humiliating proportions when Mr. Ocampo, whose mandate was to oversee the fight against impunity at the global level, publicly displayed his implication in the politics of Kenya by singling out Kenya alone as the focus of his farewell address. It is demeaning and condescending neo-colonial posturing like this that finally compelled the African Union to stand up for the sovereignty, dignity, and interest of the African Continent and all black people the world over who felt insulted by this policy of humiliating selective focus on Africa by the ICC and international criminal justice in general.

Excerpt from Chapter 7 of Justice Belied.

“The ICC and Kenya: Going Beyond the Rhetoric”

Chief Charles Taku

Stepping on Sensitive Political, Ethnic, and Cultural Nerves

The prosecutor, Moreno Ocampo, chose the public media as a platform to lay out his cases from the moment he made known his intention to intervene in the Situation in the Republic of Kenya. In so doing, he made the media a legitimate arena for the litigation of the cases. This venue of choice attracted a plethora of participants, some intended, others not. The media has since influenced public opinion on the cases in ways unimagined.

A significant media influence arose from the decision by the prosecutor to recruit some media practitioners as intermediaries in conducting investigations. The evidence collected through this process was presented before the Pre-Trial Chamber for confirmation of charges against the accused and in the unfolding trials. Mr. Barasa, a journalist practicing in the Rift Valley against whom the prosecutor has secured a warrant of arrest and transfer to the court for witness tampering, was recruited by the prosecutor to help in gathering evidence against accused in Case No. 1. It is unclear how this suspect tampered with witnesses whom he had a prosecutor’s mandate to recruit. It is hoped that the proceedings against him, when and if they occur, will open a window to the world about the manner and tactics the prosecutor used to collect the evidence she is relying on to pursue these prosecutions. It may reveal a consistent pattern of questionable prosecutorial tactics that a Trial Chamber of the ICC criticised and warned against in the Lubanga trial.[3]

In his public media statements and in public court documents, the prosecutor laid out his case in political, cultural, and ethnic terms,[4] which carried significant risks. An obvious risk was the possibility that alternative explanations might account for the existence of these factors during the election violence. The alternative explanations could undermine the prosecutor’s theories of the cases.

The prosecutor disregarded the political trends and shifting political alliances that are known influential factors in Kenyan politics. Like past elections, these factors were present during the election in which the alleged crimes occurred. The presence of these unpredictable political trends significantly undermined the theoretical relevance of assumed ethnic allegiance and cultural homogeneity that were claimed as facilitators of the alleged crimes. Contrary to this theory, the political forces that existed during the elections transcended alleged ethnic and cultural compartments in which the purported crimes were locked.

All ethnicities in Kenya were active in all the political parties, fielded candidates in the elections, and reacted differently to victory and defeat in their respective constituencies. The fact that some of the parties commanded a majority within distinct ethnic and cultural groups in locations where the crimes were alleged to have been committed did not undermine this reality. This significant factor was not seriously considered, and where considered was not given the attention it deserved.

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was confronted with a similar situation in the case of The Prosecutor v. Augustin Ndindiliyimana, Augustin Bizimungu, Francois-Xavier Nzuwonemeye, and Innocent Sagahutu.[5] In that case, the prosecutor struggled to explain every conceivable crime that occurred in Rwanda in 1994 in ethnic terms.

When the ICTR was established, UN investigative reports held the Rwandan Patriotic Front accountable for the crimes that led to the extermination of hundreds of thousands of Hutu, in particular in areas that were entirely under the RPF occupation throughout the war.

Unlike the ICC prosecutor, the ICTR prosecutor acknowledged that serious crimes were perpetrated against the Hutu and promised to investigate. Recognising the occurrence and magnitude of these crimes and undertaking to investigate at first gave the investigations a presumption of legitimacy. Regrettably, the tyranny of victors’ justice left the ICTR prosecutor struggling to place the responsibility for the crimes that were perpetrated against Hutu victims (whom the prosecutor categorised as “moderates”) on other Hutu whom she claimed to identify and categorised as “extremists.”

At the trial, the prosecutor did not convincingly explain or establish the circumstantial categorisation of Hutu into “moderate” and “extremist.” The prosecutor failed to account adequately for the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Rwandan citizens of Hutu and Twa ethnicity and to justify his inability to investigate and prosecute alleged perpetrators of the crimes. Like the ICTR, the inability of the ICC prosecutor to conduct proper investigations into all the crimes alleged significantly undermined her claims of seeking justice for victims and her supposed record of fighting impunity.

It may reasonably be discerned from Mr. Ocampo’s numerous press statements that he intervened in the Kenya political arena when the perpetration of crimes was ongoing with a preconceived list of suspects and a case theory that perceived the crimes in ethnic terms. Once he sought and received permission of the Pre-Trial Chamber to open investigations, he found no need to conduct proper investigations to obtain credible evidence against all perpetrators of all crimes irrespective of ethnicity, or other discriminatory grounds. As a result, the cases he brought for trial lacked legitimacy in the eyes of a sizeable component of Kenyan citizens and victims. This may explain the lack of support the cases may be experiencing among the victims, witnesses, and the public at large. The alleged ethnic, cultural, and political foundations of the cases, both factual and theoretical, were therefore mired in serious controversy from inception. (…)

On or about September 10, 2013, the prosecutor (Fatou Bensouda) delivered her opening statement in Case No. 1. The statement was illustrated by, among other evidentiary material, videos of the Kalenjin elders in session performing traditional rites. The prosecutor, when laying out her case, failed to give serious consideration to the potential backlash that criminalising aspects of the Kalenjin and Kikuyu culture and traditions might cause. Alleging that Kalenjin initiation rites and protected cultural practices were used to perpetrate, or facilitate the perpetration of, crimes stated in the indictment was a serious misjudgment. The prosecutor came out, in the view of many Africans across the continent, as culturally insensitive. The misjudgment in this regard could potentially persuade some victims, witnesses, and their families to decide against participating in the trial process.

Evidence concerning sensitive aspects of the culture and traditions of victims, witnesses, and the public at large was treated with caution at the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the ICTR. Exposing to the world evidence on the initiation rites of a people and other aspects of their culture considered sacred is seen in most of Africa to be a serious affront to the cultural identity of the people. Alexander Zahar and Goran Sluiter[6] offered the following unpleasant opinion on a finding in the introductory section of the Akayesu judgment at the ICTR:

In the introductory section of the Akayesu judgment, which offers a potted history of Rwanda, we are told that in the early twentieth century the distinction between Hutu and Tutsi was based on lineage rather than ethnicity. We are told not consistently that the demarcation line was blurred (one could move from one status to another).[7]

In footnote 11, the authors described this finding as “simplistic, tendacious, at times incoherent and full of inaccuracies.”[8]fanon

The safeguarding and protection of African cultures and traditions have been at the centre of African consciousness. Frantz Fanon decried the fact that “the indigenous population of Africa is discerned by the west as an indistinct mass.”[9] Senghor wrote that the role of the intellectual has at least two responsibilities in his society: “First, to perceive what is good for his country, while holding intact the traditions of the past. The intellectual is one who must, in order to have a true national consciousness, be aware of his tradition and the sources of his past, a past which is still relevant even as he creates in reaction to it.”[10]

Writing about advocates of African heritage, Wilfred Cartey and Marin Kilson stated:

[T]o validate one’s heritage, to explore one’s culture, to examine thoroughly those institutions which have persisted through centuries is perhaps the first step in a people’s search for independence, in their quest for freedom from foreign domination. Such a validation, such an exploration and examination is resolutely undertaken at the turn of the nineteenth and beginning of twentieth century by four Africans, Casely Hayford, Jomo Kenyatta, James Africanus B. Horton, and Edward Blyden.[11]

This spirit was and is alive in Kenya and most of Africa. It is the driving force of African renaissance and the ongoing struggle for freedom from the pervasive influences of neo-colonialism in the continent. The cultural sensitivities transgressed in these cases in laying out the prosecutor’s case cannot therefore be minimised or wished away.

__________

Chief Charles Taku was lead counsel at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda from October 1999 to February 2014, the Special Court for Sierra Leone from July 2005 to May 2013 and the International Criminal Court (continuing investigation in the Situation in the Republic of Kenya) from March 2012 to October 2013. Chief Taku and Co-counsel Beth Lyons won an acquittal in the Military II case on appeal at the ICTR. He is the author of “Contextual Foundations of International Criminal Jurisprudence, Authorhouse, 2012.

Notes

[1] See Articles 13(b) and 16 of the ICC Statute.
[2] See Article 17 of the ICC statute.

[3] Judgment of Trial Chamber 1 in Prosecutor v. Thamas Lubanga Dyilo, dated March 14, 2012, Decision on Intermediaries, May 13, 2010.

[4] The Prosecutor, Mr. Ocampo, was also rebuked by the Pre-Trial Chamber in the Situation in Libya due to prejudicial press statements made by him, which infringed on the suspects’ rights to fair trial.

[5] ICTR-00-56-T, The Prosecutor v. Augustin Ndindiliyimana, Augustin Bizimungu, Francois-Xavier Nzuwonemeye, and Innocent Sagahutu. The Trial Chamber entered a conviction and sentenced the accused to various terms of imprisonment. On appeal, co-counsel Beth Lyons and I obtained a reversal of the conviction of Major Francois-Xavier Nzuwonemeye and an acquittal entered in his favour, more than twelve years after he was arrested in France and transferred to the jurisdiction of the ICTR.

[6] Zahar, Alexander and Sluiter, Goran, “Genocide Law: An Education in Sentimentalism: The Problem with the Group”, in International Criminal Law: A Critical Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 158.

[7] Supra.

[8] Supra.

[9] Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, New York, 1966, The Intellectual Elite in Revolutionary Culture, p. 126.

[10] Wilfred Cartey and Martin Kilson, The Africa Reader: Independent Africa, “The role of the intellectual in independent Africa,” Random House, New York, 1970, p. 124.

[11] Ibid., p 3.

The German Newspaper Die Zeit published an open letter from various German personalities calling for diplomacy instead of war with Russia:

[Former President] Roman Herzog, [former Vice-President] Antje Vollmer, [Filmmaker] Wim Wenders, [former Chancellor] Gerhard Schröder and many more personalities are calling for a dialogue with Russia.

More than 60 personalities from the realms of politics, economics, culture and the media warn against a war with Russia in a strong appeal and are demanding  a new policy of détente in Europe. They are calling on the federal government, members of parliament and the media.

Here are short excerpts from the letter and the names of the signatories:

No one wants war. But North America, the European Union and Russia will inevitably drive us to war if they don’t put an end to this dangerous spiral of threats and counter-threats. All Europeans, including Russia, have a common responsibility towards peace and security…

We, the signatories, call on the federal government to take its responsibility towards peace in Europe. We need a new policy of détente in Europe. This is only possible on the basis of equal security for all and equal and mutual respect for partners…

We must not push Russia out of Europe. That would be unhistorical, unreasonable and dangerous for peace. Since the Congress of Vienna in 1814 Russia belongs to the recognized global players in Europe. All who have tried to change that violently have been bloodily defeated…

We appeal to the media, to perform their duty to report without prejudices and be more convincing than ever before. Editorialists and commentators demonize whole nations without giving their story enough value…

The signatories

Mario Adorf, actor
Robert Antretter (Bundestag ret.)
Prof. Dr. Wilfried Bergmann (Vice – President of the Alma Mater Europaea)
Prince Luitpold of Bavaria (Royal Holding and license KG)
Achim von Borries (director and writer)
Klaus Maria Brandauer (Actor, Director)
Dr. Eckhard Cordes (Chairman of the Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations)
Prof. Dr. Herta Däubler-Gmelin (Minister of Justice Retired)
Eberhard Diepgen (Former Governing Mayor of Berlin)
Dr. Klaus von Dohnanyi (Mayor of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg)
Alexander van Dülmen (A-Board Company Filmed Entertainment AG)
Stefan Dürr (Managing Partner and CEO Ekosem-Agrar GmbH)
Dr. Erhard Eppler (Federal Minister for Development and Cooperation retired)
Prof. Dr. Heino Falcke (Propst iR)
Prof. Hans-Joachim Frey (CEO Semper Opera Ball Dresden)
Father Anselm Grün (Fr.)
Sibylle Havemann (Berlin)
Dr. Roman Herzog (Former President)
Christoph Hein (writer)
Dr. Dr. hc Burkhard Hirsch (Bundestag Vice President retd)
Volker horns (Academy Director Retired)
Joseph Jacobi (organic farmer)
Dr. Sigmund Jähn (former astronaut)
Uli Jörges (journalist)
Prof. Dr. Dr. hc Margot Käßmann (EKD Council President and former bishop)
Dr. Andrea von Knoop (Moscow)
Prof. Dr. Gabriele Krone-Schmalz (former correspondent for the ARD in Moscow)
Friedrich Küppersbusch (journalist)
Vera Gräfin von Lehndorff (artist)
Irina Liebmann (writer)
Dr. hc Lothar de Maizière (Former Prime Minister)
Stephen Märki (artistic director of the theater Bern)
Prof. Dr. Klaus Mangold (Chairman Mangold Consulting GmbH)
Reinhard Mey and Hella (Songwriter)
Ruth Misselwitz (Protestant pastor Pankow)
Klaus Prömpers (journalist)
Prof. Dr. Konrad Raiser (eh. General Secretary of the World Council of Churches World)
Jim rocket (Photographer)
Gerhard Rein (journalist)
Michael Röskau (Secretary ret)
Eugen Ruge (writer)
Dr. hc Otto Schily (Federal Minister of the Interior Retired)
Dr. hc Friedrich Schorlemmer (ev. theologian, civil rights)
Georg Schramm (comedian)
Gerhard Schröder (Chancellor aD)
Philipp von Schulthess (Actor)
Ingo Schulze (writer)
Hanna Schygulla (actress, singer)
Dr. Dieter Spöri (Minister of Economics)
Prof. Dr. Fulbert Steffensky (Cath. Theologian)
Dr. Wolf-D. Stelzner (Managing Partner: Institute for WDS analyzes in cultures mbH)
Dr. Manfred Stolpe (Former Prime Minister)
Dr. Ernst-Jörg von Studnitz (Ambassador)
Prof. Dr. Walther Stützle (secretary of defense Retired)
Prof. Dr. Christian R. Supthut (Board Member Retired)
Prof. Horst Teltschik (former adviser at the Federal Office for Security and Foreign Policy)
Andres Veiel (Director)
Dr. Hans-Jochen Vogel (Federal Minister of Justice retd)
Dr Antje Vollmer (Vice-President of the German Bundestag Retired)
Bärbel Wartenberg-Potter (Lübeck Bishop retired)
Dr. Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker (scientists)
Wim Wenders (Director)
Wenzel (Songwriter)
Gerhard Wolf (writer, publisher)

When the grand jury rendered its non-indictment verdict on the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, protesters from the area converged on the local police department headquarters. They were there to express their outrage and demand that justice be done. The whole world witnessed the occupation of Ferguson by the fully militarized and armed police. It looked more like an invading army than anything else. These armed forces were the only barrier between the people and the police station. It is perfectly understandable that people express their anger against the police and judicial system. While the occupying force protected the police station, individuals were free to loot and burn small local businesses under very dubious circumstances: the jury decision was rendered late at night and no protection at all was offered to the local businesses. Was this done on purpose?

The FBI had already sent “an extra 100 FBI agents to Ferguson just before the grand jury decision.” The true story behind the arbitrary destruction is not known at this time. In any case, it is now history. These conveniently burned-out buildings and civilian vehicles have been easily converted by the media – and by the Obama administration down to the local authorities in Ferguson and other cities – into the stereotype of what is simply labelled as “violent demonstrations” in order to dampen the spirit of principled resistance. The widely propagated scenes of burning, looting and its aftermath instantly became the archetype of what is painted as typical of noble, militant and conscientious resistance. The anarchist scenario completely overshadows all the perfectly legitimate and courageous forms of action taken by the people against the occupying armed forces positioned in the Ferguson area to protect the police headquarters. The Ferguson protests spread to other cities across the U.S, where on many occasions people faced off with local police forces.

The Ferguson case may generate controversial discussion around the looting, destruction and burning. However, one cannot ignore the important question that it raises regarding protest and just resistance by the people in the face of the state’s use of force to deter people from fighting for their dignity and rights. It is not cut and dry. The U.S. state, in the broad sense of the term, from the federal government to its tentacles in the local state and city authorities, is the purveyor of violence in the U.S. Let us therefore place Ferguson in perspective. By so doing, we can keep in mind the most grotesque manifestation of this violence, as seen in Ferguson, in the form of the heavily militarized police. Its deadly military equipment is funnelled into the local areas by the U.S. federal government and the military. The Ferguson violent occupation was revealed for the world to witness, yet the dismantling of the militarization is not on Obama’s agenda. The goal, according to the President, is only to “to make sure that the program is transparent.”

As for the protestors, what actions are they supposed to carry out to demand that justice be done, if not by resisting the forces that protect the local police? In American democracy, the right to resist is labelled “violent,” while defending the status quo is considered normal and non-violent.

This contradiction was intensified in the aftermath of the grand jury decision to clear police of the murder of Eric Garner. It proved to be the last straw: his murder, captured on film, was even more blatant than Michael Brown’s. The accumulation of injustice was combined with the fact that it took place in New York City – the centre of many, as the media admit, “icons” of U.S. wealth and the establishment. The New York City movement spread to other major cities in the U.S. The main goal was to paralyze and disrupt. The media placed emphasis on just (but relatively defensive) slogans such as “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” or “I Can’t Breathe” to overshadow the slogans “Shut It Down” and “No Justice, No Peace.” Others raised the slogan: “This Is What Democracy Looks Like.” This is an allusion, consciously or not, to the crying need for political power of the people in the face of a false American democracy representing the status quo through elections in a truncated “two-party system.” What was the purpose of blocking important highways and streets and invading icons of big business to disrupt normal commerce? One protester explained it well: “People who don’t already realize what is happening, maybe they will open their minds a little bit, or people that do realize and don’t care will realize that people are angry and it’s not OK.”

The mainstream media showered the New York police and city authorities with compliments on their “restraint.” Media had a field day with the New York police’s description of their particular tactic: allowing people “to blow off steam.” Do the police and media perhaps not realize how condescending and arrogant this sounds to the people who courageously demonstrate for hours on end in the street? Obama congratulated NYC authorities and police in their handling of the protests, which he termed peaceful. What was “peaceful” about the protests New York and Chicago? In both these cities, as well as in others, hundreds were arrested. In Chicago, a “standoff” in front of a police station that was protected by a wall of police was reported to be nonetheless “so far peaceful.” What does “so far peaceful” mean? The assertion is that as long as the people do not defy the police, the situation can be qualified as “peaceful.” The police forces, to the contrary, by their very nature are supposedly “peaceful” in protecting the state, abstracting the armed instrument of the state from the actual system it is meant to defend and protect. Any obvious exception to this rule of police acting “peacefully” is treated as merely an “abuse” that can be camouflaged through some superficial reform, such as “police training”, changing some individuals and faces in positions of authority or even remove some “bad apples”, all in an attempt to stem the people’s anger.

In New York City, several hundred people were arrested two nights in a row. Why? While the charges may be minor, what was their “crime”? Why were they carted off in police vans? In most cases, their “crime” was not obeying orders to refrain from marching in the streets and thus blocking the road and traffic. To strive to limit and forcefully contain demonstrations to the sidewalks, as do the police in New York, is in itself an act of violence even though it may go under the guise of keeping the peace. They are preventing those who try to draw the attention of – as stated by the demonstrator quoted above – first, the people who remain indifferent or aloof from the problem, and, second, those who are indeed conscious but have not yet physically joined the movement. These street activities are the only means at their disposal at this time: blocking main arteries, converging on the large, commercial monopolies and temporarily disrupting them. It is completely arbitrary to consider this as violent in any way or a violation of the law. This accusation of “violence” is based on American democracy and similar systems in other countries. It is meant to protect the status quo. Even if  people resist arrest and indeed actively confront authority, they are, in my view, entirely justified.

This warranted intransigence in the face of police arbitrariness was highlighted through an incident in New York on the night of December 4 that was not at all covered by the mainstream media. According to alternative news source AlterNet, about 100 protesters in Manhattan were on the streets at 1 a.m. The police ordered them to disperse, as they were supposedly disrupting “vehicular traffic.” A journalist reported that the demonstrators refused and instead threw glass bottles at the police, resulting in several violent arrests. The police responded by using a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) to disperse the demonstrators.

“One person who was present at the scene, Moth Dust, a photographer, said people became aggravated after the LRAD was used and began throwing trash and rocks in the direction of police. She said she was affected by the sound waves.

‘I thought I was fine until I realized I was getting dizzy and migraine was spreading to all over my face,’ she said.

LRADs were used in the first days of unrest in Ferguson Missouri, and have been used by police at protests throughout the world. They were developed by the US military after an insurgent attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, and were used by the NYPD [New York Police Department] against Occupy Wall Street protesters.

According to Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, ‘The LRAD can reach decibel levels as high as 162. For comparison, a normal conversation is usually 60 decibels, while a lawn mower can reach to 90 decibels. A level of 130 decibels is typically considered the average pain threshold for most humans.’

Furthermore, Informed Health Online [IHO] notes that a jet engine registers at about 140 decibels. Anything at or above this range, IHO explains, ‘is called acoustic trauma. Depending on how long the ears are exposed to the sound and how intense it is, it may damage the eardrum, the middle ear and/or the inner ear. Damage like this is usually temporary, but some hearing loss may remain.’

The head investor and media relations for the LRAD Corporation in San Diego, California, told Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty that the weapon is so precise that those ‘standing behind or next to’ the device can hardly hear it. However, the YouTube footage shows dozens of people scurrying away from the sound blasts, which can be heard clearly on film.”

In another episode, on the night of December 6–7, this one in Berkeley, California, a violent confrontation took place. The media in a chorus headlined that the demonstration by mainly University of California Berkeley campus students “turned violent.” What happened? A wall of armed police was deployed to confront the demonstrators protesting directly against the Berkeley police headquarters. The demonstrators on the street were blocked. The so-called peaceful police tried to disperse the crowd that resisted. This is one account, by an intern minister at the First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco, published in a local newspaper:

“The police began walking forward and in 2-3 seconds were pressed up against us with their batons held parallel between them and us. I shouted ‘Be calm, be calm, we’re peaceful!’ And they kept walking forward. I looked to the left and a police officer had begun jabbing a protester with the end of his baton. I turned around to retreat and passed a woman who had fallen and was being trampled. I bent down to pick her up under one armpit while another woman grabbed her other arm. As we were lifting her backwards I saw an officer raise his baton over my shoulder and was struck on the back of the head as I was bent forward. My vision momentarily blacked out and I saw stars. I put my hand to the back of my head and started running. I felt a welt rise immediately and blood ran down my neck and covered my hand.”

The situation and the reports from Berkeley are still ongoing at the time of writing. According to the established logic, the “turning violence” buzzwords are only applied when the people resist orders to disperse, but is not suitable for the orders to disperse backed by the armed police. In the same report quoted above, the slogans rhythmically chanted by the protesters consisted of, among others, “Whose streets? Our streets!” and “Hey cops, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.” In comments posted on the newspaper’s blog, some people raise the possibility that the looting that took place that night in Berkeley by a splinter anarchist group could well have been organized by the state’s infiltrators to discredit the demonstration.

Based on the New York and Berkeley reports, it may seem difficult at first glance to distinguish between peace and violence: who are the perpetrators of violence and who stands and acts in favour of peace? However, these articles accompanied by photos and videos bring to the fore two points.

The first is that the right, and indeed the obligation, to oppose injustice is an inalienable right that goes beyond the niceties of the superfluous trappings of democracy considered in the abstract. One either recognizes this or does not.

Second, behind the veneer of American democracy lies the real nature of a state that is based on extreme militarism and aggression. While the struggle to counter the injustices committed against Michael Brown and Eric Garner, and in favour of dignity for the people, was being played out in the streets of America, Obama swore in the new Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, on December 5, 2014. Obama said on that occasion that the U.S. military is “the greatest fighting force in the history of the world.” Ashton returned the compliment by saying that he will serve the “greatest fighting force the world has ever known.” This military is increasingly known on the world scale as an aggressive force leaving death, destruction and torture in the wake of its attempt to impose American democracy on a global scale. The military efforts of the U.S. abroad are an extension of the violence that pervades U.S. society domestically, from the widespread use of guns to the murder of blacks and suppression of demonstrators by police forces, as the New York and Berkeley examples above indicates.

Were these incidents in New York and Berkeley exceptions? As long as the resistance continues, people can expect more of the same. Thus, there is the need to deepen and extend defiance, while ensuring not to fall prey to the mainstream media misinformation and political pressures regarding peace and violence in American democracy.

Arnold August, a Canadian journalist and lecturer, is the author of Democracy in Cuba and the 1997–98 Elections and, more recently, Cuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion. Cuba’s neighbours under consideration are the U.S., Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. Arnold can be followed on Twitter @Arnold_August.

The title may seem strange coming from a pollster, especially one who deals daily in the world of data. The name of the company where I work together with my son is called Zogby Analytics and I am a great believer in capturing tons of statistical and behavioral information to find trend lines, areas where services can be improved and lives can be enhanced from an accurate reading of situations.

But data is only numbers and the left brain alone will never set us free. Ultimately we live in a world of other people who are multidimensional, very complicated, individual mosaics representing DNA combinations, parental nurturing, diverse peer relationships, strands of many cultural influences, a multiplicity of life experiences, observations, sources of information, and social networks. If you are old enough to remember the television series about crime in New York, The Naked City, you will certainly recall the show’s introduction – “There are eight million stories in the naked city.”

And this is where so many pundits, especially those who are ready to immediately defend the decisions of the grand juries in both Ferguson and Staten Island, miss the mark. Because these two events are about two very real victims who represent their community’s very real histories, sensibilities, and shared perspectives. They are two young and imperfect men who were community warehouses of painful memories. Try telling an abused child that the abuser has a history of pain or the priest or scout leader is really a man to be trusted. Try explaining that most adults are good people, that it hasn’t been all priests or other leaders. It is as futile as telling an African American child that the cop in the patrol car is his friend, is a benign servant of the community. That is not what the child knows, experiences, probably has seen for himself or herself, or hears. Thus it is not a matter of what statistics show. It is the community’s history, perceptions, emotions, and what a community’s leadership understands . It is a narrative that may or may not defy the statistics – but ultimately it is the story, not the stats that we all have to grasp.

So from the outset, as we learned of the Ferguson grand jury decision, we had former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani tell us that 93% of African American crime victims suffer at the hands of African Americans. The Mayor shined in many respects when he led the country’s largest city, but empathy with African Americans was never his strong suit. Or take this excerpt from a column by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Jack Kelly:

Of 1,265 murder victims in St. Louis between 2003 and 2012, 1,138 (89.9 percent) were black, according to University of Missouri-St. Louis criminologist David Klinger, a former police officer.

About 90 percent of the black decedents (1,025) were slain by other blacks, his research indicates. Thirty-two were killed by police officers, 22 (1.93 percent) by white cops.

Between 1976 and 2011 across the United States, 7,982 blacks were murdered each year, on average – 94 percent by other blacks, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. About 227 blacks (2.8 percent) were shot by police each year, according to a study by Pro Publica (which pointed out that national statistics on police shootings are difficult to assess because of differences in how police departments report them).

All respect to Mr. Kelly, who is a very good journalist, but what does this have to do with anything? Two young black men are dead (again) from two supposedly routine police operations. The bean counting doesn’t really matter here. African Americans are outraged – so are a lot of non-African Americans, especially young people. The statistics don’t really tell us anything about perceptions developed out of a community’s pain. Statistics are always good to know, but relying only on numbers misses the point. Real analytics includes a sense of history, a lot of heart, and a large injection of right brain activity. I learned that from television as a kid: “There are eight million stories in the naked city.” And there are a lot more in African American communities throughout the United States.

One last note, if it turns out Belgium does decide to repatriate their gold, this would mean Germany, Holland and Belgium have all done the same exercise.  I would add that Austria would probably be next …which would mean what?  The stage would then be set for a likely breakup of the formal EU into “north and south” regions.  These nations while holding gold in hand would benefit from a markup in gold prices and allow for a “northern euro”, backed partially or on a ratio basis to gold.  The line is forming and the back of the line is no place to be!

Bill Holter, Miles Franklin associate writer

South Stream, the $45 billion project to deliver Russian natural gas via underwater pipeline through the Black Sea to Bulgaria and on to other Balkan and southern European markets, is dead. Russian President Vladimir Putin made the death pronouncement on December 1, during a trip to Turkey to meet Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It has major geopolitical and economic consequences for the EU.

As Putin explained, “If Europe doesn’t want to realize this, then it means it won’t be realized. We will redirect the flow of our energy resources to other regions of the world. We couldn’t get necessary permissions from Bulgaria, so we cannot continue with the project. We can’t make all the investment just to be stopped at the Bulgarian border,” Putin said. “Of course, this is the choice of our friends inEurope.”

The Russian President didn’t waste a minute to show how he plans that redirection. The real loser is not Russia, but the EU who managed yet again to shoot themselves in the foot by their buckling under to Washington pressure from Victoria Nuland’s State Department and the Obama Administration hawks. The South Stream would have provided secure delivery to southern EU countries including Bulgaria, Hungary, Austria, Italy, Croatia and also Serbia. It would avoid the current transit pipelines running through Ukraine. Similarly, to avoid a repeat of the US-induced Ukrainian disruptions of Russian gas to the EU in 2009, Russia and Germany agreed the construction of Nord Stream, also avoiding Ukraine.

Now, by forcing Bulgaria, an EU member, to halt South Stream, using blackmail of a Bulgarian bank bailout last June, the EU has made itself dependent on gas security via Ukraine, a country the EU’s own political spinelessness has helped turn into a failed state ruled by a cabal of Brussels-and-Washington backed gangsters and oligarchs. We might use the term “stupid” to describe EU policy on South Stream, were it not for the fact at the end of the day Washington blackmail on the EU caused the South Stream blockage policy to be implemented, just as the economically devastating EU Russia sanctions were imposed only after extreme pressure on Berlin and Paris by Washington.

Bringing Turkey closer to Eurasia

Russia and Turkey have just signed an agreement to expand the existing Russian Blue Stream gas pipeline to Turkey by an immediate 3 billion cubic meters to the current 13.7 bcm of gas pumped to Turkey via Blue Stream, for a total near 17 bcm.

Putin also announced a fascinating new option, to build a gas hub on the Turkish-Greek border to supply Europe with gas to compensate for the loss of South Stream. He told the press, “We are ready to not only expand the Blue Stream, but to build another pipeline system to supply the growing demand of the Turkish economy, and if it is deemed justified, to set up an additional gas hub for the South European consumers on Turkish territory, near the border with Greece.”

Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller revealed that he has signed a memorandum of understanding on building a new Turkey-bound pipeline under the Black Sea, with capacity to pump 63 billion cubic meters to Turkey, about equal to the now-defunct South Stream.

If we follow the motion of his feet and not so much his mouth, Erdogan is above all a pragmatic political survivor. Internal conflict, above all with the CIA-linked Fetullah Gülen movement as I detail in Amerikas Heiliger Krieg, has increased distance between Erdogan and Washington despite Turkey’s NATO membership. Until now, Washington’s neo-conservatives Richard L. Morningstar, now Ambassador to Azerbijan, had relied on an obedient Turkey as an alternative to carry gas or oil from Azerbaijan independent of Russia.

If Erdoğan accepts the Russian offer of forming an energy alliance, it would mark a sharp policy change for Turkey, a geopolitical shift of immense importance and Erdogan knows as much, even if he seems to have a confused idea of a clear strategy for Turkey. A Russian-Turkey energy hub on the Greek border would signal a decisive change of strategy by Erdogan. A significant hint of that was contained in the statement that the new gas supplies to Turkey from Russia will be paid in local currencies, not in the US dollar. Turkey already is Russia’s largest foreign gas customer after Germany. Erdogan has also asked to be accepted in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization led by Russia and China.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

L’India fu scioccata il 13 ottobre 2014, quando la Russia ha firmato il contratto con la Cina per 11 sottomarini d’attacco classe Amur (Project 1650), nonostante la riluttanza indiana. La Russia deve garantire il trasferimento tecnologico per la costruzione in Cina di questo tipo di sottomarini, considerati i sottomarini diesel-elettrici più avanzati al mondo. I sottomarini d’attacco convenzionali francesi Scorpene sono la versione migliorata della precedente classe Agosta 90B. Tre sottomarini Agosta 90B furono consegnati dalla marina francese al Pakistan. L’ultimo di essi, l’Hamza (S139), fu consegnato nel 2006 con il sistema anaerobico API (Air Independent Propulsion) che permette di navigare senza risalire in superficie per sette giorni. Ciò spinse l’India ad avviare i negoziati, otto anni fa, con i cantieri DCN (che producono la portaelicotteri Mistral) per l’acquisto di sei sottomarini Scorpene, a spese della Russia, con la possibilità di produrne sei in India.

L’India sperava, in quel momento, di ricevere il primo sottomarino nel 2015. Nel frattempo, l’India ha appreso che il Pakistan negozia l’acquisizione di tre sottomarini tedeschi Tipo 214, superiori alla classe Scorpene, e dotati del sistema PLC con cui rimanere in immersione per tre settimane. Inoltre, a causa della stretta relazione tra Cina e Pakistan, una volta realizzato il trasferimento di tecnologia in Cina, i sottomarini d’attacco classe Amur potrebbero subito ritrovarsi nella marina pachistana.

Il 10 dicembre 2014, il Presidente Putin visiterà New Delhi, la prima dalla nomina del primo ministro Narendra Modi alla guida dell’India. Lo scopo dichiarato della visita è l’intensificazione degli scambi russo-indiani. La reazione della Casa Bianca all’annuncio della visita era estremamente dura. “Abbiamo già detto che non è il momento giusto per fare accordi con la Russia. Naturalmente, abbiamo inviato tale messaggio a tutti i nostri alleati e partner internazionali“, ha avvertito la portavoce del dipartimento di Stato degli Stati Uniti, Marie Harf. La dichiarazione degli Stati Uniti esce dopo che la Francia s’è rifiutata di consegnare le portaelicotteri Mistral comprata dalla Russia, rifiuto interamente dovuto a Washington. Stati Uniti e Parigi finiranno sulla lista nera dei venditori disonesti, scoraggiando chi intende acquistare navi e attrezzature militari prodotte dal cantiere francese DCN. Putin convincerà il Primo ministro Modi ad abbandonare il contratto con la Francia per i sottomarini francesi Scorpéne a vantaggio dei sottomarini Amur? Altri contratti prioritari con la Francia saranno cancellati dall’India?
I meglio informati sulle intenzioni di India sono i servizi segreti del Regno Unito. Un mese prima della visita di Putin, il ministro della Difesa inglese Michael Fallon diede un’intervista al quotidiano “Times of India“, offrendosi di fornire velivoli Eurofighter Typhoon, prodotti dal consorzio anglo-tedesco-italiano, se l’India rinuncia al contratto MMRCA (aerei da combattimento multi-ruolo medio) da 20 miliardi di dollari per l’acquisto di 126 aerei da combattimento Rafale.

Valentin Vasilescu

Reseau International 7 dicembre 2014

Traduzione di Alessandro Lattanzio – SitoAurora

The St. Louis County and Municipal Police Academy held a special class on October 24 for “upper-echelon law enforcement professionals.” The subject:

OFFICER-INVOLVED SHOOTING — YOU CAN WIN WITH THE MEDIA

The class, taught by PR agent Rick Rosenthal, focused on such topics as “Managing the Media When Things Get Ugly (Think Ferguson).” A flyer promoting the class promised, “In addition to the Ferguson case study, this fast-paced class is jam-packed with the essential strategies and tactics, skills and techniques that will help you WIN WITH THE MEDIA!”

Sound boring? Not at all! “The training is also highly entertaining,” the flyer emphasized. “You will learn a lot, and you’ll have fun doing it!”

That does sound like fun–learning how to best manipulate the media after your colleagues have killed a human being.

In case you weren’t able to join in the festivities, Rosenthal shared some of his insights with the cop-oriented website PoliceOne.com (8/2/12), in an interview headlined “Feeding the Animals: 10 Tips for Winning With the Media After an OIS.” (OIS= Officer-Involved Shooting–imagine if you had to say that whole phrase every single time!)

The headline is a reference to Rosenthal’s advice to “feed the animals early and often”–by which he means “talking to the media.” And the article explains why you do that:

The more information they are fed after an OIS, “the less likely they’ll go foraging on their own, finding far less knowledgeable and far less credible ‘sources’ for ‘news’ that is often based on innuendo, hearsay, speculation, vengeance and biased personal opinion.”

“Foraging on their own” means journalists talking to sources (or “sources”) who aren’t the police. If you follow Rosenthal’s tips for handling the “animals,” apparently you can avoid that disastrous phenomenon altogether.

* * *

Hat tip: @Projectheureka, @MWallner_.

Much has been said about Goldman’s control over the most important Federal Reserve of all, that of New York, where the all important Markets Group is located, which does as the name implies, “influences” markets (those who may have missed it are encouraged to read “Goldman “Whistleblower” Sues NY Fed For Wrongful Termination“,  “How Goldman Controls The New York Fed: 47.5 Hours Of “The Secret Goldman Sachs Tapes” Explain“, “A Quick Look At Goldman’s Takeover Of The US Judicial System: NY Fed Edition“, and of course “I Am Putting Everything In Goldman Sachs Because These Guys Can Do Whatever The Hell They Want.”

And while it is very clear by now that nothing will change under the current corrupt and compromised executive, legislative and judicial system, because at the end of the day, Goldman has indirect control over all three branches of government , here is the one anecdote which, in a non banana republic, would be the straw that finally broke the camel’s back.

From the FT:

As the financial crisis raged in September 2008, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley sought sanctuary from the Federal Reserve.

The last two big independent broker-dealers were allowed to become bank holding companies, giving them access to government liquidity that could keep them afloat.

Goldman drafted its own statement, quoting Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive, as saying: “We believe that Goldman Sachs, under Federal Reserve supervision, will be regarded as an even more secure institution.”

According to people familiar with the matter, Goldman then drafted another release and sent it to the New York Fed. This one was to be used as the central bank’s own statement.

And while the FT is kind enough to digest that piece of shocking information for the rest of the “stupid voters“, the bottom line is simple: the Federal Reserve of Goldman Sachs (in New York and everywhere else), is the bank that not only calls all the shots and makes the rules, but it also writes the words on the Fed’s teleprompter (as for Obama’s, not even Goldman would bother with that).

On Sunday December 7, Israel reportedly launched airstrikes inside Syria yet again, this time very close to Damascus in the area near Damascus International airport. Israeli airstrikes also took place in the town of Dimas which is located close to the Lebanese border.

At this time, Israel has yet to comment on the airstrikes.

Syrian state television has stated that “The Israeli enemy committed aggression against Syria by targeting two safe areas in Damascus province, in all of Dimas and near the Damascus International Airport.”

State news agency SANA also stated that the strikes were a “flagrant attack on Syria.”

Lebanese state news agencies have reported that Israeli jets “breached its airspace” on Sunday.

Reuters reports that “Residents in Damascus said they heard loud explosions and opposition activists posted photos online of jet streams in the evening sky and fiery explosions. Syria’s army general command said on state television that there were “material losses in some facilities.” It said the strike benefited al Qaeda.”

Further reports suggest that the targets of the Israeli jets were an agricultural airport in Dimas and an import-export warehouse in Damascus. Both of these locations are under control of the Syrian military and involve supplies and food greatly needed for the Syrian people.

These targets, of course, fit in with the larger trend of both Israeli and American airstrikes in Syria in the past that have targeted civilian locations, Syrian infrastructure, Syrian oil refineries, and, particularly, food centers such as grain silos.

While airstrikes are conducted under the guise of defeating ISIS, the fact is that these airstrikes have done little to even inconvenience the terrorist organization which itself is funded, directed, trained, armed, and controlled by the U.S., NATO, and the GCC. The airstrikes have been largely aimed at Syrian military interests as well as necessities of the Syrian people.

The attacks come as the Western-backed forces of the Islamic State launched a major assault on the Syrian air base in Deir el-Zour. That attack was ultimately repelled and defeated by the Syrian army.

This is by no means the first time that Israel has attacked Syria in support of the Western-backed terrorists or even the first time that it has done so in coordination with them.

For instance, on October 30, 2013, Israel attacked and completely destroyed a Syrian air defense base in Snobar Jableh, Syria which is located near Latakia, a port city on the coast of the Mediterranean. The base was alleged to have housed a surface-to-air missile battery.

It is also known that Israel launched attacks against Syrian forces and military convoys at least four times prior to the October 30 attack.

As recently as June, 2014, Israel launched a series of airstrikes against Syrian military positions under the pretext of retaliation for a cross-border attack which was almost certainly initiated by death squad fighters whose logistical inadequacy spilled over into Israeli occupied territory in the Golan Heights. Given the questionable circumstances surrounding the justifying incident – the killing of an Israeli teenager by an alleged anti-tank missile – one would be justified in questioning the Israeli story.

While the occasional attack on Syrian territory is bad enough, the fact is that Israel has apparently coordinated these attacks with the death squad directors on the ground so as to provide cover fire and diversions for death squad “swarming” and jihadist invasions.

For instance, in May 2013, WABC host and best-selling author Aaron Klein stated that an Israeli airstrike in Syria was closely coordinated with Turkey which, in turn, helped coordinate the death squad attacks to occur at the exact same time as the Israeli airstrikes. The sources speaking to Klein came from Jordanian and Egyptian intelligence agencies.

Klein wrote,

Israel’s air strike in Syria today was coordinated with Turkey, which in turn coordinated rebel attacks throughout Syria timed to coincide with the Israeli strike, according to Egyptian and Jordanian intelligence sources speaking to KleinOnline. The sources said the rebels did not know about the Israeli strike in advance but instead were given specific instructions for when to begin today’s major assaults against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. “Almost the moment the Israel Air Force departed was the moment the rebel advance began,” added the Egyptian intelligence source. Multiple reports have noted how the Syrian rebels consist in large part of al-Qaida-linked jihad groups. The Egyptian and Jordanian sources described how immediately after today’s Israeli air strike the jihadist rebels used access roads to advance toward Damascus and began heavy clashes with Syrian military forces throughout the country.

Some have speculated that Israel’s continued incursions into Syrian territory is not only an attempt to weaken the military forces of the Syrian government and support the terrorists operating inside the country but to cause Syria’s air defense system to light up and give away its concealed positions. Regardless, Israel has once again demonstrated how it is, in reality, the most volatile state in the Middle East despite its claims to the contrary.

Brandon Turbeville is an author out of Florence, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Francis Marion University and is the author of six books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1and volume 2, and The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria. Turbeville has published over 300 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV.  He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com. 

Would you have given Rommel plans of the allied invasion of Normandy in 1944? Then why allow an undeclared nuclear state in 2014 to infiltrate European state security?

The security of both EU and NATO has potentially been compromised by awarding national defence contracts to the world’s only secret nuclear weapon state, one that – similar to North Korea – refuses to be subject to UN or IAEA safeguards.

The state of Israel is not in NATO, not in Europe and not subject to EU law – but is in the extraordinary position of having managed to gain sensitive defence contracts and military intelligence with a significant number of NATO and EU member governments.

There is now a growing body of concerned opinion that military defence contracts for all EU governments should only be placed with NATO based suppliers, as a prerequisite for secure European military defence systems. At the present, this is not the case and there is a serious danger that the security of many EU governments, (including the British Ministry of Defence), has potentially already been compromised.

If Rommel had gained details of American and British intelligence for the invasion of Normandy in July 1944, up to 160,000 allied troops would have been killed and World War 2 would have been lost. In fact, the Axis powers had no prior notice and, thank God, the tide of war was able to be turned conclusively in the favour of America, the British Commonwealth of Nations and the free world.

Incredibly, we now seem to have forgotten the fact that the first imperative for any government is the survival of the nation it represents. And that duty requires it not to share intelligence with those who refuse to be a party to international agreed treaties and conventions such as the UN’s IAEA, the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) all of which are designed to keep us safe.

Notes

http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/nato_countries.htm

http://europa.eu/about-eu/countries/index_en.htm

http://www.eurosatory.mod.gov.il/welcome.htm

America’s military is the world’s greatest polluter. Especially in war theaters. During conflicts. Long after they end.  Notably in Iraq and Afghanistan. Toxic wastelands and then some. Large areas unsafe for human habitation. Military operations generate hundreds of thousands of tons of toxic waste. Dangerous carcinogens. Including depleted uranium, heavy metals, hazardous chemicals, plastics, solvents, asbestos, pesticides, petroleum fuels, fungi, and bacteria. Poisoning air, water and soil. Affecting local populations and US forces. Causing virtually every imaginable health problem. Many longterm. Debilitating. Others potentially fatal. Including cancer, heart disease, diabetes, gastrointestinal ailments, kidney and liver diseases, respiratory, skin and other infections, asthma, immune system suppression, ulcers, birth defects, severe headaches, emotional distress, pulmonary problems, sexual dysfunction and chronic diarrhea.

Open-air burn pits as large as 10 acres bear much responsibility. Used to incinerate trash. Notably in Iraq and Afghanistan. State-of-the-art incinerators when used release heavy metals, unburned toxic chemicals and entirely new ones during incineration. Hundreds. Potentially thousands. Many unidentified. Many more toxic than original waste burned. Remaining longterm. Some producing virtual permanent contamination. Once released, traveling vast distances. Via air and water currents. Producing global contaminants.

Affecting food and water ingested. Air inhaled. According to EPA data:

“Fugitive emissions and accidental spills may release as much or even more toxic material into the environment than direct emissions from incomplete waste incineration.”

Explosions and fires release toxins. Some potentially catastrophic. A US air force fact sheet says:

“Burning solid wastes in an open pit generates numerous pollutants. These pollutants include dioxins, particulate matter, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide, hexachlorobenzene, and ash.”

“Highly toxic dioxins, produced in small amounts in almost all burning processes, can be produced in elevated levels with increased combustion of plastic waste (such as discarded drinking water bottles) and if the combustion is not at high incinerator temperatures.”

“Inefficient combustion of medical or latrine wastes can emit disease-laden aerosols.”

In October 2008, the US Military Times headlined “Report: Army making toxic mess in war zones,” saying:

A Rand Corp. report shows “cases of hazardous waste dumped in ditches, soldiers setting up tents on top of fuel spills and service members exposed to cyanide gas during overseas deployments.”

DOD “has no overarching policy to ensure environmental mishaps in Iraq and Afghanistan don’t harm troops’ health, create political disputes and avoid costly clean-up efforts when it’s time to leave those countries.”

“If not properly addressed in planning or operations, environmental considerations can make it more difficult for the Army to sustain the mission – yet environmental considerations are not well incorporated into Army planning or operations in any phase of an operation.”

The report titled “Green Warriors: Army Environmental Considerations for Contingency Operations from Planning through Post-Conflict,” states:

DOD contractors dump waste oil in Iraq landfills. Then sold the barrels.

US soldiers in Afghanistan buried drums containing unidentified liquids. Later discovered to be hazardous. Contaminating soil and groundwater.

An Iraq airfield has leaking fuel tanks.”Major health issues arise whenever it is necessary to dig.”

Iraq commanders set up hazardous waste disposal areas close to camp perimeters.

High-grade diesel fuel was spilled into an Iraq lake. Used for base drinking water.

US Iraq forces improperly dumped insecticides, batteries, oil products and other hazardous materials.

Iraq troops became ill after rolling leaking drums of industrial-strength pesticides out of a building.

In August 2010, New York Times correspondent James Risen discussed problems from burn pit toxic waste exposure.

Former staff sgt. Susan Clifford one of many victims. Involved in dumping Balad Air Base trash “into a massive, open-air pit.”

“Every conceivable type…” Including “plastics, batteries, appliances, medicine, dead animals, even human body parts…”

Burned “with a dousing of jet fuel. A huge black plume of smoke hung over the pit, nearly blinding Ms. Clifford on her twice-a-month visits, and wafted over the entire base.”

Clifford was a serious runner. In 2005, she began coughing up phlegm. Had breathing problems. Had difficulty working out. Couldn’t physically train. Her symptoms worsened. Became serious. Doctors discovered her lungs filled with fluids. Unlike what they ever saw before. Unsure what to do. In April 2010, Clifford retired from army service with full disability.

“(O)ne one of the first veterans to receive an official ruling from the military that exposure to open-air burn pits at American bases in Iraq and Afghanistan have caused medical problems,” said Risen.

Numerous others affected the same way. Pentagon officials downplay the problem to this day.

At the time, Force Health Protection and Readiness Program deputy director, Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, saying:

“(N)o medical data…indicate(s) any specific illness or illnesses have been caused by exposure to burn-pit smoke.”

As recently as summer 2014, Veterans Affairs officials claim no evidence showing burn pit toxins cause longterm health problems.

Truth is polar opposite. Pulmonary expert Dr. Robert Miller treated dozens of soldiers home from Iraq. He found a pattern of unusual respiratory and pulmonary disease.

Linked to burn pit exposure, he believed. A huge problem, he said. Soldiers know more about it than physicians.

He’s called from “all over the country.” Returning soldiers and vets needing help.

Sciencecorps calls itself

“an informal network of health professionals who work on environmental and occupational health issues, relying on the fields of toxicology, epidemiology, medicine, and other technical areas.”

Conducting “hazard and community evaluations…Involved “in research and policy development.”

“(W)orking to strengthen public health protections and awareness through outreach and education.”

Studying “health hazards of chemicals commonly used on military bases.” Saying toxic exposure among US personnel is “well-established.”

Evidence of toxic contamination is indisputable. Human effects are devastating.

“The enemy you know is far less dangerous than the one you don’t know,” said Sciencecorps. DOD operates irresponsibly.

Letting US personnel handle dangerous toxins. Without warning of potential hazards. Or providing adequate protective gear.

Most US bases at home and abroad are contaminated. Exposure causes diseases, disability, and cross-generational damage. To veterans and families.

Large open-air burn pits produce toxic clouds of chemicals. Created during incineration.

Exposure (even small amounts) causes potential harm to every body organ. Initiating a chain of biological events. Showing up sooner or later.

According to Sciencecorps, health problems depend “on a range of individual characteristics.”

Including “timing of exposure, whether exposure occurs through inhalation, ingestion, or skin exposure, and individual susceptibility.”

“Individual susceptibility is determined by genetic differences, previous and current health conditions, past and ongoing exposures to other chemicals and risk factors, diet, lifestyle, age, gender, and other personal variables.”

Most veterans know little about toxin exposure. Proving chemical causation isn’t easy. Getting VA help depends on it.

Many hazardous chemicals are genotoxic. Damaging genetic material in cells. Causing mutations. Dictating how bodies function.

Whether cancer or other diseases may develop. Usually long after military personnel leave service. Making it harder to get VA benefits.

When entering service, US military personnel have no idea what’s coming. War zone enemies are less dangerous than environmental contaminants.

Future illnesses and diseases way outnumbering battlefield casualties. The hidden cost of war.

Affecting hundreds of thousands of service personnel and vets. Local populations.

The price for advancing America’s imperium. Monied interests alone benefit.

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. 

52-year-old Belgian Geert Tack – a private banker for ING who managed portfolios for wealthy individuals – was described as ‘impeccable’, ‘sporty’, ‘cared-for’, and ‘successful’ and so as Vermist reports, after disappearing a month ago, the appearance of his body off the coast of Ostend is surrpunded by riddles…

Tack disappeared on November 5th…

 Impeccable. Sporty. Cared for. Successful. Just some qualifications that are attributed to the 52-year-old from the Belgian Geert Tack Haaltert.

Geert Tack worked as a private banker for ING and managed portfolios of wealthy clients. The Belgian was much respected in the financial world and was known as an up and top professional. His sudden disappearance had the effect of a bombshell. “If Tack himself was having trouble he has managed to keep it well hidden”, colleagues say.

Nobody then could have guessed that the man would not return on Wednesday, November 5th to his wife in their villa Vondelen.

And would be found dead this weekend off the coast of Ostend…

On December 3, the body was found on the coast of Ostend and removed from the water. The prosecutor confirmed today that it is Geert Tack, but it is still awaiting further results of the autopsy for the exact cause of death. The results of toxicological testing are not yet known.

The examiner states that the body showed no outward signs of violence.

As Vermist comments, he was well-liked and successful but the situation of his disappearance remain odd to say the least…

What makes the case very mysterious are the rather peculiar circumstances under which he disappeared. A few weeks earlier Tack drove his car to the garage and then took a replacement car. Oddly enough, he used it much later, shortly before he disappeared. Meanwhile, the car, a Renault Espace, has been found in Knokke, but Tack’s whereabouts are still unknown to this day. Also –  why did he find it sometimes so difficult to get to sleep in the weeks before his disappearance?  Why did he leave his laptop and cell phone at home  that Wednesday morning ? Although a desperate act can not be excluded, there are also people considering the missing part of a preconceived plan. From his position Tack had the opportunity – whether or not forced by third parties – to run off with money from his clients. It is a hypothesis that is being seriously investigated by the federal police, but which colleagues refuse to consider. “He would never do something like that” said one of them with certainty. “Geert is a blameless man.”

This is the 36th Dead Banker of the year (via Beforeitsnews):

1) David Bird, 55, long-time reporter for the Wall Street Journal working at the Dow Jones news room
2) Tim Dickenson, a U.K.-based communications director at Swiss Re AG
3) William Broeksmit, 58, former senior manager for Deutsche Bank
4) Ryan Henry Crane, age 37, JP Morgan
5) Li Junjie, 33, Hong Kong JP Morgan
6) Gabriel Magee, 39, age JP Morgan employee
7) Mike Dueker, 50, who had worked for Russell Investments
8) Richard Talley, 57, was the founder and CEO of American Title (real estate titles)
9) James Stuart Jr. 70, Former National Bank of Commerce CEO was found dead in Scottsdale, Ariz
10) Jason Alan Salais, 34 year old IT Specialist at JPMorgan since 2008
11) Autumn Radtke, 28, CEO of First Meta, a Singapore-based virtual currency trading platform
12) Eddie Reilly, 47, investment banker, Vertical Group, New York
13) Kenneth Ballando, 28, investment banker, Levy Capital, New york
14) Joseph A. Giampapa, 55, corporate bankruptcy lawyer, JP Morgan Chase
15) Jan Peter Schmittmann, 57, voormalig topbestuurder ANB/AMRO, Laren, Nederland
16) Juergen Frick, 48, CEO Bank Frick & Co AG, Liechtenstein
17) Benoît Philippens, 37, directeur BNP Parisbas Fortis Bank, Ans, België.
18) Lydia…, 52, bankier Bred-Banque-Populaire, Parijs
19) Andrew Jarzyk, 27, bankier, PNC Bank, New York
20) Carlos Six, 61, Hoofd Belastingdienst en lid CREDAF, België
21) Jan Winkelhuijzen, 75, Commissaris en Fiscalist (voormalig Deloitte), Nederland.
22) Richard Rockefeller, 66, achterkleinzoon elitebankier John D. Rockefeller, Amerika
23) Mahafarid Amir Khosravi (Amir Mansour Aria), 45, bankeigenaar, zakenman en derivatenhandelaar, Iran
24) Lewis Katz, 76, zakenman, advocaat en insider in de bancaire wereld, Amerika
25) Julian Knott, Directeur Global Operations Center JP Morgan, 45, Amerika
26) Richard Gravino, IT Specialist JP Morgan, 49, Amerika
27) Thomas James Schenkman, Managing Director Global Infrastructure JP Morgan, 42, Amerika
28) Nicholas Valtz, 39, Managing Director Goldman Sachs, New York, Amerika
29) Therese Brouwer, 50, Managing Director ING, Nederland
30) Tod Robert Edward, 51, Vice President M & T Bank, Amerika
31) Thierry Leyne, 48, investeringsbankier en eigenaar Anatevka S.A., Israël
32) Calogero Gambino, 41, Managing Director Deutsche Bank, Amerika
33) Shawn D. Miller, 42, Managing Director Citigroup, New York, Amerika
34) Melissa Millian, 54, Senior Vice President Mass Mutual, Amerika
35) Thieu Leenen, 64, Relatiemanager ABN/AMRO, Eindhoven, Nederland
36) Geert Tack, 52, Private Banker ING, Haaltert, België

Last week the US House voted overwhelmingly in favor of an anti-Russia resolution so full of war propaganda that it rivals the rhetoric from the chilliest era of the Cold War. Ironically, much of the bill condemns Russia for doing exactly what the US government has been doing for years in Syria and Ukraine!

For example, one of the reasons to condemn Russia in the resolution is the claim that Russia is imposing economic sanctions on Ukraine. But how many rounds of sanctions has the US government imposed on Russia for much of the past year? I guess sanctions are only bad when used by countries Washington doesn’t like.

The resolution condemns Russia for selling weapons to the Assad government in Syria. But the US has been providing weapons to the rebels in Syria for several years, with many going to terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS that the US is currently bombing!

The resolution condemns what it claims is a Russian invasion of Ukraine (for which it offers no proof) and Russian violation of Ukrainian sovereignty. But it was the US, by backing a coup against the democratically elected Yanukovich government in February, that first violated that country’s sovereignty. And as far as a military presence in Ukraine, it is the US that has openly sent in special forces and other military advisors to assist the government there. How many times have top US military and CIA officials visited Kiev to offer advice and probably a lot more?

The resolution condemns Russia for what it claims are attempts to “illicitly acquire information” about the US government. But we learned from the Snowden revelations that the NSA is spying on most of the rest of the world, including our allies! How can the US claim the moral authority to condemn such actions in others?

The resolution attacks Russian state-funded media, claiming that they “distort public opinion.” At the same time the bill demands that the thousands of US state-funded media outlets step up their programming to that part of the world! It also seeks “appropriate responses” to Russian media influence in the rest of the world. That should be understood to mean that US diplomats would exert pressure on foreign countries to shut down television networks like RT.

The resolution condemns what it claims is Russia’s provision of weapons to the Russian-speaking eastern part of Ukraine, which seeks closer ties with Russia, while demanding that the US government start providing weapons to its proxies on the other side.

As I have said, this is one of the worst pieces of legislation I can remember. And trust me, I have seen some pretty bad bills. It is nothing but war propaganda and it will likely lead to all sorts of unintended consequences.

Only ten Members – five from each party – opposed this reckless resolution. Probably most of those who voted in favor did not bother to read the bill. Others who read it and still voted in favor may have calculated that the bill would not come up in the Senate. So they could vote yes and please the hawks in their districts – and more importantly remain in good graces of the hawks who run foreign policy in Washington – without having to worry about the consequences if the bill became law.

Whatever the case, we must keep an eye on those Members of Congress who vote to take us closer to war with Russia. We should thank those ten Members who were able to resist the war propaganda. The hawks in Washington believe that last month’s election gave them free rein to start more wars. Now more than ever they must be challenged!

The Government of Ukraine held a ceremony on Saturday, December 6th, with the country’s President, Petro Poroshenko, reviewing newly donated weapons, from undisclosed donors.

According to the official announcement, “The Armed Forces’ units received tanks Т-64BМ ‘Bulat’, tanks Т-64 BV, Т-72 B1, Т-72UA, Т-72A, BТR-3е and BТR-4е, self-propelled artillery 2C1 and helicopters Mi-8 and Mi-2. The President personally inspected all.”

Poroshenko said:

“We are providing the troops with new armored vehicles, precise anti-tank means, counterbattery means, means of communication and protection systems. At the same time, we are holding negotiations with our partners on the procurement of modern weapons that are not produced in Ukraine.”

Weapons bought from other countries can be paid for only with borrowed money, because the Government of Ukraine is basically broke and soaring even deeper into debt, and is sharply cutting back on pensions and other expenditures than military, which is receiving the Government’s virtually total focus. Any added loans will never be able to be paid back, because Ukraine will not be able to pay back all of the existing loans. Consequently, all countries that are now ‘lending’ additional funds to Ukraine are simply donating to Ukraine. Furthermore, the IMF is demanding that the breakaway Ukrainian areas be conquered in order for additional loans to be made to the Ukrainian Government. So, all newly loaned money will be going to Ukraine’s military.

Here are the new tanks:

http://www.president.gov.ua/en/gallery/2369.html#39924

These weapons will be sent to the southeast, in order to conquer the breakaway republics that reject the regime that was forced upon them on February 22nd, in an extremely violent coup against the then-existing President, Viktor Yanukovych, for whom the residents in that area had voted approximately 90%. That rejection of the coup-regime sparked an on-again, off-again, invasion from the Ukrainian armed forces, which can be seen at various sites, such as here and here and here and here.

The official announcement of this ceremony said that the new weapons will “help Ukrainian warriors win and liberate the Ukrainian territories from the occupants.”

The election of President Poroshenko was held only in the areas of Ukraine that accepted the coup-imposed regime. “The occupants” (as the President there referred to them) in the other area did not participate in that election, the election of him, though his Government demands they accept that Government as representing them, nonetheless. After the new regime started dropping bombs on them, and sending tanks in to kill as many of them as fast as possible, their determination not to accept this Government only hardened.

The last Ukrainian Government election in which those people, “the occupants,” were voting, occurred in 2010, at which Viktor Yanukovych won above 80% in some districts, and above 90% in other districts. A map showing the vote in each district of Ukraine, in that election — the last fully national Ukrainian election — can be seen here:

by DIY Roots Action

To US Congress:

Reverse the steps taken in the recently passed resolution H. Res. 758, which distorts facts and hypocritically condemns actions the United States is itself guilty of in order to antagonize Russia, effectively declaring a new Cold War. The resolution demands that Russia be isolated and that the U.S. and NATO be prepared for war. This approach should be unacceptable in a new head of the Pentagon, and Congress should replace militarism with diplomacy toward Moscow.

Why is this important?

NATO encirclement, the U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine, an attempt to use an agreement with the European Union to bring NATO into Ukraine at the Russian border, a U.S. nuclear first-strike policy, are all policies which attempt to substitute force for diplomacy.

Tensions between Russia and the U.S. are being fueled every day by players who would benefit financially from a resumption of the Cold War which, from 1948 to 1991 cost U.S. taxpayers $20 TRILLION dollars (in 2014 dollars), an amount exceeding our $18 trillion National Debt. The resolution just passed by the House calls for “the President, in consultation with Congress, to conduct a review of the force posture, readiness and responsibilities of United States Armed Forces and the forces of other members of NATO to determine if the contributions and actions of each are sufficient to meet the obligations of collective self-defense under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, and to specify the measures needed to remedy any deficiencies…” In other words, “let’s get ready for war with Russia.”

This is a dangerous and costly direction. Using diplomacy, rather than poor substitutes for it, would save dollars and lives, while allowing us to prioritize useful projects and collaborate with our international allies. This is a moment in which we all must raise our voices to make that change.

Sign the petition.

Friday’s payroll jobs report is another government fairy tale or, to avoid polite euphemisms, another packet of lies just like the House of Representatives Resolution against Russia and every other statement that comes out of Washington.

Washington is averse to truth.  Washington can only lie.

First let’s pretend that the 321,000 new jobs that the government claims the economy created in November are true, and let’s see where these jobs are.

Specialty trade contractors, which I think are home and office remodelers, accounted for 20,000 jobs. I doubt that people are putting money into houses and buildings that are worth less than the mortgage.

Manufacturing accounted for 28,000–a very high monthly figure for recent years, one that is unbelievable in view of the rise in the trade deficit and declines in consumer spending on furniture (-3.8%), major appliances (-8.3%), women’s apparel (-17.7%), and household textiles such as towels and sheets (-26.5%), and when US business investment consists of corporations repurchasing their own stocks.

The rest of the claimed jobs are in private domestic services, that is, they are third world jobs.  Retail trade claims 50,200 and transportation and warehousing claims 16,700. These numbers are impossible to believe in view of the closings of middle class department stores and Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales flops.

Financial activities claims 20,000, most of which appear to be insurance related–perhaps the growth of Obamacare bureaucracy.

Professional and business services claims 86,000, a very large number for recent years.  What are professional and business services?

Professional and business services are  “accounting and bookkeeping services” (16,400 jobs)–a possible (temporary) increase as W2s for 2014 are coming due to be issued–and ”administrative and support services (40,600 jobs)–mainly temps.

Next we come to “health care and social assistance” with 37,200 jobs concentrated in “ambulatory health care services” and “social assistance.”

Then we have “food services and drinking places” with 26,500 claimed jobs.

Bringing up the rear is Government employment with 7,000 jobs.

What are we to make of these job claims?

It is unlikely that there were 26,500 new jobs for waitresses and bartenders when consumer spending on restaurants, alcohol, and entertainment declined by 3.8%, 4.5%, and 5.4%. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-02/middle-class-spending-crash-explained   Restaurants and bars do not hire more people when demand is dropping.

No one hired 50,200 new retail clerks when anchor stores of shopping centers are closing and strip malls stand abandoned in unfinished construction.

If we are sufficiently gullible to believe the BLS jobs report of 321,000 new jobs in November, we should be disturbed that the vast bulk of the jobs are third world domestic service jobs that do not produce exports to offset the massive trade deficit of the US offshored economy. Moreover, the majority of these jobs do not produce sufficient income for a person to establish a household or qualify for a mortgage or car loan.

America is bleeding herself dry so that corporate executives and shareholders can live the high life on bonuses and capital gains resulting from exploited foreign labor and the destruction of the American middle class.

Now, let’s move on to other conclusions.  John Williams, an expert on government statistical data, points out, ignored of course by the presstitute media, that full-time employment in America today is 2,400,000 less than employment in 2007.

What this means is that the US is short 2.4 million jobs from 7 years ago. So how is there an ongoing recovery? In the meantime the population has grown.

Remember, the official unemployment rate is low, because discouraged workers who cannot find jobs are not counted as unemployed.  To be counted as unemployed, you have to be actively searching for a job. As job search is expensive and unemployed people have no money, when job search produces no results people give up. They are unemployed but not counted as such.

John Williams points out that most of the 321,000 new jobs were created by manipulating seasonal adjustments and by the birth-death model that arbitrarily adds jobs that the BLS model assumes were created that month.  The BLS never provides any proof of those phantom jobs.

John Williams also points out that many of the payroll jobs are part-time jobs and one person often has several jobs. As no one can live on one part time job, many households and individuals are sustained by multiple part-time jobs. The jobs are not a measure of the number of employed, because many persons hold several jobs in order to make ends meet.

Keep in mind that much of the increased activity in the highly touted payroll employment numbers is tied to multiple part-time jobs held by individuals.  In other words there is double and triple counting of those employed.

The alleged “recovery” is based on severely understated inflation. When an item in the inflation index rises in price, a lower priced item is substituted for it or the price increase is called a “quality improvement” and not registered in the inflation index. This keeps the official inflation rate low.  Therefore, when nominal GDP is deflated by the understated inflation index, real GDP growth is the result. The growth is an illusion. In fact, the “real” GDP growth is merely the non-measured price rises or inflation that is not captured by the erroneous methodology.

There is practically no official inflation, but somehow the price of ground beef rose 17 percent during the year.http://www.globalresearch.ca/low-inflation-the-price-of-ground-beef-has-risen-17-percent-over-the-past-year/5409588  Presstitutes and PR flacks explain away the price rise as the result of drought while others blame the price increase on smaller beef herds.

With inflation outpacing the growth of real incomes, consumer purchasing power is falling. Real spending fells with the fall in purchasing power. John Williams’ inflation estimates are much higher than the government’s and indicate that the bulk of the population is experiencing extreme financial hardship.

An economy based on consumer spending cannot grow when real consumer incomes and/or consumer credit do not grow.  As these are not growing, the “recovery” is a fiction created by a measure designed to understate inflation.

In the 21st century “democratic” Western policymakers have brought about an extraordinary concentration of income and wealth in elite hands, while subjecting the vast majority of Western populations to financial stress.

The ladders of upward mobility have been taken down. A new aristocracy of wealth has been created along with a militarized police state to defend the aristocracy’s interests. A political-economic-social system has been created in the West in which only the elite have a stake.

This stake is based on a house of cards.  The utterly corrupt central banks of the West, a collection of gangsters, have kept the house of cards standing longer than I thought possible. But it will be a historical first if a house of cards stands forever. The derivatives exposures of four American banks exceed by several times the world GDP.  There is no way these exposures are covered by the banks’ capital or by their depositors deposits.

Wall Street and the presstitute media have manufactured the impression that all is well, and those fools driven by greed have gone along with the manufactured impression.  But the facts are otherwise.

 A top problem of Ukraine has been corruption and cronyism, so it may raise eyebrows that new Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, an ex-U.S. diplomat and newly minted Ukrainian citizen, was involved in insider dealings while managing a $150 million U.S. AID-backed investment fund, writes Robert Parry.

Ukraine’s new Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, a former U.S. State Department officer who was granted Ukrainian citizenship only this week, headed a U.S. government-funded investment project for Ukraine that involved substantial insider dealings, including $1 million-plus fees to a management company that she also controlled.

Jaresko served as president and chief executive officer of Western NIS Enterprise Fund (WNISEF), which was created by the U.S. Agency for International Development (U.S. AID) with $150 million to spur business activity in Ukraine. She also was cofounder and managing partner of Horizon Capital which managed WNISEF’s investments at a rate of 2 to 2.5 percent of committed capital, fees exceeding $1 million in recent years, according to WNISEF’s 2012 annual report.

The growth of that insider dealing at the U.S.-taxpayer-funded WNISEF is further underscored by the number of paragraphs committed to listing the “related party transactions,” i.e., potential conflicts of interest, between an early annual report from 2003 and the one a decade later.

In the 2003 report, the “related party transactions” were summed up in two paragraphs, with the major item a $189,700 payment to a struggling computer management company where WNISEF had an investment.

In the 2012 report, the section on “related party transactions” covered some two pages and included not only the management fees to Jaresko’s Horizon Capital ($1,037,603 in 2011 and $1,023,689 in 2012) but also WNISEF’s co-investments in projects with the Emerging Europe Growth Fund [EEGF], where Jaresko was founding partner and chief executive officer. Jaresko’s Horizon Capital also managed EEGF.

From 2007 to 2011, WNISEF co-invested $4.25 million with EEGF in Kerameya LLC, a Ukrainian brick manufacturer, and WNISEF sold EEGF 15.63 percent of Moldova’s Fincombank for $5 million, the report said. It also listed extensive exchanges of personnel and equipment between WNISEF and Horizon Capital.

Though it’s difficult for an outsider to ascertain the relative merits of these insider deals, they could reflect negatively on Jaresko’s role as Ukraine’s new finance minister given the country’s reputation for corruption and cronyism, a principal argument for the U.S.-backed “regime change” that ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych last February.

Declining Investments

Based on the data from WNISEF’s 2012 annual report, it also appeared that the U.S. taxpayers had lost about one-third of their investment in WNISEF, with the fund’s balance at $98,074,030, compared to the initial U.S. government grant of $150 million.

Given the collapsing Ukrainian economy since the Feb. 22 coup, the value of the fund is likely to have slipped even further. (Efforts to get more recent data from WNISEF’s and Horizon Capital’s Web sites were impossible Friday because the sites were down.)

Beyond the long list of “related party transactions” in the annual report, there also have been vague allegations of improprieties involving Jaresko from one company insider, her ex-husband, Ihor Figlus. But his whistle-blowing was shut down by a court order issued at Jaresko’s insistence.

John Helmer, a longtime foreign correspondent in Russia, disclosed the outlines of this dispute in an article examining Jaresko’s history as a recipient of U.S. AID’s largesse and how it enabled her to become an investment banker via WNISEF, Horizon Capital and Emerging Europe Growth Fund.

Helmer wrote: “Exactly what happened when Jaresko left the State Department to go into her government-paid business in Ukraine has been spelled out by her ex-husband in papers filed in the Chancery Court of Delaware in 2012 and 2013. …

“Without Figlus and without the US Government, Jaresko would not have had an investment business in Ukraine. The money to finance the business, and their partnership stakes, turns out to have been loaned to Figlus and Jaresko from Washington.”

According to Helmer’s article, Figlus had reviewed company records in 2011 and concluded that some loans were “improper,” but he lacked the money to investigate so he turned to Mark Rachkevych, a reporter for the Kyiv Post, and gave him information to investigate the propriety of the loans.

“When Jaresko realized the beans were spilling, she sent Figlus a reminder that he had signed a non-disclosure agreement” and secured a temporary injunction in Delaware on behalf of Horizon Capital and EEGF to prevent Figlus from further revealing company secrets, Helmer wrote.

“It hasn’t been rare for American spouses to go into the asset management business in the former Soviet Union, and make profits underwritten by the US Government with information supplied from their US Government positions or contacts,” Helmer continued. “It is exceptional for them to fall out over the loot.”

Jaresko, who served in the U.S. Embassy in Kiev after the collapse of the Soviet Union, has said that Western NIS Enterprise Fund was “funded by the U.S. government to invest in small and medium-sized businesses in Ukraine and Moldova – in essence, to ‘kick-start’ the private equity industry in the region.”

While the ultimate success of that U.S.-funded endeavor may still be unknown, it is clear that the U.S. AID money did “kick-start” Jaresko’s career in equity investments and put her on the path that has now taken her to the job of Ukraine’s new finance minister. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko cited her experience in these investment fields to explain his unusual decision to bring in an American to run Ukraine’s finances and grant her citizenship.

A Big Investment

The substantial U.S. government sum invested in Jaresko’s WNISEF-based equity fund also sheds new light on how it was possible for Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland to tally up U.S. spending on Ukraine since it became independent in 1991 and reach the astounding figure of “more than $5 billion,” which she announced to a meeting of U.S.-Ukrainian business leaders last December as she was pushing for “regime change” in Kiev.

The figure was so high that it surprised some of Nuland’s State Department colleagues. Several months later – after a U.S.-backed coup had overthrown Yanukovych and pitched Ukraine into a nasty civil war – Under Secretary of State for Public Affairs Richard Stengel cited the $5 billion figure as “ludicrous” Russian disinformation after hearing the number on Russia’s RT network.

Stengel, a former Time magazine editor, didn’t seem to know that the figure had come from a fellow senior State Department official.

Nuland’s “more than $5 billion” figure did seem high, even if one counted the many millions of dollars spent over the past couple of decades by U.S. AID (which puts its contributions to Ukraine at $1.8 billion) and the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy, which has financed hundreds of projects for supporting Ukrainian political activists, media operatives and non-governmental organizations.

But if one looks at the $150 million largesse bestowed on Natalie Jaresko, you can begin to understand the old adage that a hundred million dollars here and a hundred million dollars there soon adds up to real money.

Those payments over more than two decades to various people and entities in Ukraine also constitute a major investment in Ukrainian operatives who are now inclined to do the U.S. government’s bidding.

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

With the abolition of the gold standard in 1971 by then President Nixon, dollar denominated reserves in the coffers of the world were no longer directly convertible into gold. The agreement of the 1944 established so-called “Bretton Woods System” was therefore broken, opening the way for free floating fiat currencies – free to be printed at will without any backing of gold or a country’s economic output. The fiat system remains in place as of this day.

The Bretton Woods System that (re)-introduced the gold standard – an official convertibility rate of US$ 35 per troy ounce (about 32 grams) – was named after the town in New Hampshire, where 44 nations met in 1944 to develop a new international monetary system – and incidentally, where at the same time the IMF and the World Bank were founded. Switzerland was not part of the party, as it joined the IMF / WB system only in May 1992. However, the IMF and the World Bank moved on from a currency regulator and reconstruction (Europe) organization to today’s largest international financial institutions with powers to make or break a country.

In 2011 the world’s total gold holdings, according to official statistics were 171,300 tons, of which almost half is in jewelry and less than 20% in Central Banks. Extrapolating from an annual gold production of about 2,400 tons today’s (2014) total (official) gold holdings should be close to 180,000 tons.

The Swiss always had a special affair with gold. Since WWI the Swiss currency was coveted as a reserve currency, similar to gold and the US dollar. After the (re)-establishment of the gold standard in 1944 Switzerland accumulated gold that reached a level of close to 5,000 tons by 1970, accounting for more than half the Swiss foreign exchange reserves and covering circulating paper money with up to 120% of gold.

At the end of the 1990’s, the SNB had 2,590 tons of gold to comply with the obligation to still back a portion of the paper money in circulation with gold. At that time the gold reserves constituted about 43% of total reserves. That proportion shrunk to 18% by 2009 and to 7 % in 2014.

In 1999, Switzerland became a signatory of the so-called Washington Agreement on Gold Sales (WAGS), joining most of the OECD ‘hard currency’ countries. The WAGS basically meant that gold was “no longer needed for monetary policy”, thereby setting gold free for sale by central banks at market prices – and for huge profits. Accordingly, Swiss monetary policy followed the neoliberal dictate of fiat money and instant profit taking.

Between 1993 and 2014 Switzerland sold about 1,600 tons of gold, way more than any country, more than half of it during the 2000 – 2004 period, when gold prices were at the lowest between US$ 300 and US$ 500 / oz. By September 2014, SNB gold reserves were (officially) at 1,040 tons (7 %). Yet, Switzerland is still the 7^th largest gold holder in the world, after the US with 8,130 tons (72% of reserves), Germany 3,400 tons (67%), Italy 2,450 tons (66%), France 2,435 tons (65%), Russia 1,170 tons (10%) and China 1,055 tons (1%). The IMF is reported as holding 2,800 tons. These are official figures. They may hide underreporting, especially for Russia and China – and possibly also for Switzerland.

In per capita terms Switzerland is with 128 grams (not counting jewelry and other privately owned gold) by far the largest gold holder in the world, followed by Germany (42 grams), Italy (40), France (38) and the United States (26). This actually follows the Swiss gold tradition, a tradition of a stable currency enhanced by the Swiss neutrality throughout WWII – and to some extent until today. The sense of owning Swiss francs in times of crisis is growing.

The onset of the 2008 financial crisis has again meant huge sums of foreign currencies flowing into Switzerland and converted into Swiss francs (CHF). This has further strengthening the franc, making it according to the SNB and the Federal Government, a central-right coalition, an over-valued currency and Swiss exports uncompetitive. Indeed, the value of the CHF has been steadily rising. At the end of 2007 it was pegged at CHF 1.60 per Euro, increasing to CHF 1.25 at the end of 2010, peaking in august 2011 at 1.09, fast approaching a 1 : 1 ratio.

Between 1970 and 2008 the CHF appreciated by close to 330% against US$ and about 60% vs the Euro. The Euro exists as virtual currency since 1 Jan 1999, and sine 2002 in notes and coins. Before the creation of the Euro, the CHF was closely linked to a basket of major EU currencies, and followed the so-called ‘snake’ – the fluctuation of the basket’s average, the strongest component of which was the Deutsche Mark.

Swiss external trading is to 80% with the European Union, the bulk of it with Germany. Switzerland without natural resources to speak of is a country of exports, mainly manufacturing of high precision equipment and services, notably banking and tourism. Competitiveness with the euro is therefore important.

On 6 September 2011, the constitutionally autonomous SNB, driven by the Swiss industrial lobbies and supported by the Federal Government, took the unusual step of force-devaluing the franc by about 10%, fixing a Swiss franc / Euro floor of CHF 1.20 per Euro.

In a Press Release of 6 Sept 2011, the SNB announced –

The Swiss National Bank (SNB) is therefore aiming for a substantial and sustained weakening of the Swiss franc. With immediate effect, it will no longer tolerate a EUR/CHF exchange rate below the minimum rate of CHF 1.20. The SNB will enforce this minimum rate with the utmost determination and is prepared to buy foreign currency in unlimited quantities.

To maintain this exchange rate means the SNB needs utmost flexibility to (i) print money according to needs which has become common place in our western neoliberal monetary system, and (ii) to ‘play’ with its reserves, including with gold – buying and selling, according to needs, also called multi-currency swapping.

The SNB’s balance sheet is one of the most lucrative in the world, and has become even more so after the forced CHF 1.20 / Euro parity. Total SNB assets in 1997 were CHF 70 billion, increasing to CHF 270 billion in 2011, the time of the CHF-Euro parity decision – and doubling three years later, in 2014 to CHF 550 billion. One could conclude that the devaluation was highly profitable.

The question that begs to be asked is who are the main beneficiaries of a force-devaluation in a country that has already one of the highest and most expensive living standard in the world? According to Eurostat, the European Union’s official bureau of statistics, in a basket of living costs of the 28 EU members plus Switzerland and Norway, where the average living cost is 100%, Switzerland’s cost of living is by far the highest with 164%, followed by Norway (156) and Denmark (154) and way down by Germany (107) and France (108).

Switzerland is a country of monopolies. Not being a member of the EU enhances the monopolies and thereby the high cost of living – which benefits the rich and creates a growing gap between them and the poorer segments of the population. A force-devaluation of the currency enhances the status quo, i.e. the holders of the monopolies have to do little or nothing to adapt their prices (and profits) to the high value of the currency – and to the competition outside of Switzerland. They survive well and the Swiss economy keeps growing. Unemployment has been kept low at 3.1 % (November 2014), with a slight tendency to increase – and with a so far unspoken uncertainty of the future in a surrounding EU economic system on decline, on which the Swiss economy highly depends.

The common Swiss, the base of the right wing Swiss People’s Party, is wary. They sense that things have changed, that the stability of Europe, the world, is not what it used to be a decade ago. They see wars all over the globe and hear propaganda and threats of a WWIII or a Cold War II. They look in fear to the East, where Russia is an alleged new threat, after the nasty Soviet Union was defeated 25 years ago. They see key currencies, like the euro and the dollar, waning and with the Swiss franc pegged to the Euro; its traditional high value of stability also risks declining. When the CHF was backed by gold, there was no risk for the national currency.

The “Save the Swiss Gold” initiative was launched in 2011 by the Swiss People’s Party. One of the architects and key drivers of the initiative, Mr. Stamm, said the measure was needed because the SNB’S monetary policy now tied Switzerland to the weakened euro and will further weaken the Swiss franc.

The referendum required that

– The SNB must hold at least 20% of its total assets in gold;

– The SNB does not have the right to sell its gold; and

– All the gold of the SNB must be stored physically in Switzerland.

The first two points would severely curtail the SNB’s range of activity to maintain the CHF 1.20 parity to the euro. To comply with the requirements, increasing the current level of 7% of reserves to 20% could be achieved over five years. It would mean the SNB would have to buy every year close to 14% of the current world gold production, i.e. a 5-year total of 1,700 tons at a price of CHF 67 billion (US$ 70 billion), at an assumed average price of CHF 1,250 / oz. (current gold price is CHF 1,165 and falling). This would have an impact on the precious metal’s value, as well as on maintaining the ‘sacred’ 1.20 parity.

A spokesman for the Swiss Economic Institute said,

The SNB would not be prohibited from defending the level [of CHF 1.20 / Euro], but it would need to keep its gold ratio at 20% of holdings, so for every euro it will buy in the market to defend the floor, it would need to add more gold to its reserves – permanently. The SNB’s ability to defend its floor would be seriously hampered. The accumulation of unsellable gold would impose an enormous restriction on the conduct of the SNB’s monetary policy.

As with many things in Switzerland, gold is shrouded in secrecy. Nobody knows exactly where it is stored, how much of it is in Switzerland. When the Finance Minister was asked recently by a parliamentarian about the whereabouts of the Swiss gold reserves, he answered he didn’t know and he didn’t want to know. However, since gold is of high importance to the Swiss, they have always considered SNB’s gold reserves as the property of the Swiss people. Many of them, on both sides of the aisle, were upset when in 2000 after a constitutional change prompted by the signing of the Washington Agreement on Gold Sales, the SNB started selling its gold.

The initiative was basically ignored by the ‘market’ and most of Switzerland until October, when polls indicated a 44% ‘yes’ vote – or a too-close-to-call prediction. These were dangerous signs for the SNB and the Swiss Federal Council – that it might be accepted, which means strong restrictions in SNB’s maneuvering capacity – trading with its reserves.

At the last hour the SNB and the Federal Government issued warnings that accepting the referendum would mean a severe hindrance in SNB’s freedom of action to maintain the CHF-Euro parity – which is sacrosanct to the Swiss business community.

They finally succeeded. On 30 November 2014, the referendum was defeated by 78% of popular votes.

However, this is likely not the end of the gold story. The referendum has stirred a lot of attention to the importance of gold in Switzerland and around the world. Though the SNB’s liberty to maneuver its forex reserves freely will remain intact, people and politicians will put more pressure on transparency. Worldwide, lovers of the gold standard will be awakened and encouraged, when instead the attention should be on a new monetary system, based on a country’s real output, social and physical. By all accounts, gold is not eatable. What is its real value in a crisis, other than feeding an illusion?

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, the Voice of Russia, now Ria Novosti, 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. 

Congress is poised to give a foreign mining company 2,400 acres of national forest in Arizona that is cherished ancestral homeland to Apache natives. Controversially, the measure is attached to annual legislation that funds the US Defense Department.

This week, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees quietly attached a provision to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would mandate the handover of a large tract of Tonto National Forest to Resolution Copper, a subsidiary of the Australian-English mining company Rio Tinto, which co-owns with Iran a uranium mine in Africa and which is 10-percent-owned by China.

The “Carl Levin and Howard P. ‘Buck’ McKeon National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015” – named after the retiring chairmen of the Senate and House Armed Services panels – includes the giveaway of Apache burial, medicinal, and ceremonial grounds currently within the bounds of Tonto. News of the land provision was kept under wraps until late Tuesday, when the bill was finally posted online.

The land proposed to be given to Resolution Copper, in exchange for other lands, includes prime territory Apaches have used for centuries to gather medicinal plants and acorns, and it is near a spot known as Apache Leap, a summit that Apaches jumped from to avoid being killed by settlers in the late 19th century.

Lands included in the plan will stop 1,500 feet short of Apache Leap and will not initially include an area known as Oak Flats, though, when it comes to the oaks, contradictory legal parameters are but a minor hurdle for a company like Resolution Copper to eventually drill there.

The House may vote on the NDAA as soon as this week with rules included that would bar the Senate from amending the legislation. On Wednesday night, a last-minute effort to strip the land provision from the NDAA failed in the House Rules Committee, which voted to give one hour for debate over the NDAA in the House.

Terry Rambler, chairman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe, told The Huffington Post he was saddened by news of the proposal, yet not all that surprised.

“Of all people, Apaches and Indians should understand, because we’ve gone through this so many times in our history,” Rambler said.

“The first thing I thought about was not really today, but 50 years from now, probably after my time, if this land exchange bill goes through, the effects that my children and children’s children will be dealing with,”Rambler added.

“Since time immemorial people have gone there. That’s part of our ancestral homeland,” Rambler said.”We’ve had dancers in that area forever – sunrise dancers – and coming-of-age ceremonies for our young girls that become women. They’ll seal that off. They’ll seal us off from the acorn grounds, and the medicinal plants in the area, and our prayer areas.”

Arizona Sen. John McCain was instrumental in adding to the NDAA the land deal that had been pursued by Rio Tinto for a decade, according to HuffPo. Some in Congress were reportedly concerned with the deal, but it ultimately materialized thanks to economic assurances. Rio Tinto claims mining in Tonto will generate $61 billion in economic activity and 3,700 direct and indirect jobs over 40 years.

Rambler said whether Rio Tinto’s economic assertions are true or not, it may not matter.

“It seems like us Apaches and other Indians care more about what this type of action does to the environment and the effects it leaves behind for us, while others tend to think more about today and the promise of jobs, but not necessarily what our creator God gave to us,” he said.

Rambler said he was particularly concerned with long-term ramifications, including the company’s intent to use “block cave” mining, which means digging under the ore, causing it to collapse.

“What those mountains mean to us is that when the rain and the snow comes, it distributes it to us,”Rambler said. “It replenishes our aquifers to give us life.”

Resolution Copper has said its mining plan for the area has been filed with the National Forest Service and that it will comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) that supposedly protects federal lands.

But Rambler said NEPA is no match for Resolution Copper’s intent.

“This is what will happen – the law in one area says there will be consultation, but the law in another area of the bill says the land exchange will happen within one year of enactment of this bill,” Rambler said. “So no matter what we’re doing within that one year, the consultation part won’t mean anything after one year. Because then it’s really theirs after that.”

Basically, NEPA will only protect lands that remain in federal hands. The rest is fair game, according to federal law.

“We would only have to do NEPA on any activity that would take place on remaining federal land,” said Arizona Bureau of Land Management official Carrie Templin.

The 2015 NDAA contains other land deals, including one that would subject 70,000 acres of Tongass National Forest in Alaska to logging and another provision that would give 1,600 acres from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State for purposes of industrial development, a plan that has spurred tribal protest.

The US House of Representatives might have though it through a bit more, but House Resolution 758, the handiwork of Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill), passed with 98 percent of the vote.[1]  The text lasts a dreary 16 pages, but that is the least of it.  It states, in the undusted, revised language of Cold War vitriol, the agenda of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, which the House accuses of using “a policy of aggression against neighbouring countries aimed at political and economic domination.”  It makes reference to Russia’s purported violation of “each of the 10 principles of the 1975 Helsinki Accords in its relations with Ukraine.”

A line is drawn in the sand of political engagement – Russia, it is claimed, further violated ceasefire agreements of the September Minsk Protocol while also providing “military equipment, training, and other assistance to separatist and paramilitary forces in eastern Ukraine.”  This, in turn, is said to breach the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, not to mention breaching that rather worn document, the United Nations Charter.

The resolution is, furthermore, a dossier of blame, a document of accusation. Russia’s paw prints are said to be on everything from the disruption of Ukrainian elections on May 25, 2014 to the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17.

It also, for good measure, throws in a reference to Russia’s support for Syria’s Bashar Assad regime, which sadly, in the game of bloody geopolitics, is neither here nor there.  The White House, in its own confused way, happily supplies a motley collection of “moderates” and fundamentalists against Assad, some of whom transform into beheading freedom fighters the moment they relocate from Syria to Iraq.

Such is the magic of political cant and strategic calculation surrounding such groups as the al-Nusra front or ISIS.  Strategy operates in a moral vacuum, even if it is tarted up by the public relations firms.

Bullying foreign policy is a place where angels fear to tread.  The resolution’s insistence on “lethal aid” is dangerous, not because Putin is the picture of sweetness (the Russian President did claim in September that he could have “Russian troops not only in Kiev, but also in Riga, Vilnius, Tallinn, Warsaw and Bucharest” in two days), but because it aims to meddle and force the issue in Ukraine.  It flies the flag high for the regime in Kiev, cloaking it with pristine credentials.

It is worth noting, on that point, the original circumstances for the conflict, seeded, as it were, by what effectively amounted to a coup after the Maidan protests ran away with the blessings of various European capitals and Washington.  This does not feature in HR 758.  The fracturing of Ukraine is very much an affair of force and calculation, a historically tragic stew of considerations that is not served by the righteous language of any side.

The entire language of HR 758 is, in fact, not so much historically slanted as inspiringly ignorant. Paragraph 22 assumes that Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 – the European Union put the kibosh on that suggestion after an investigation of its own.  It might even be said that the Georgian regime had been irresponsibly encouraged in its bullishness by NATO encouragement, even if it might have been misconstrued.

The resolution does its own bit of dangerous meddling, insisting in paragraph 13 that Kiev “resume military operations against the eastern regions seeking independence.”  While cease-fires tend to be the pretences of diplomatic stone-walling, such a statement is tantamount to a full egging on, an encouragement for further slaughter.

Not that you should tell the likes of US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who is on record boasting about the $5 billion expended on regime change in Ukraine, that sordid term fed by an open cheque book at US taxpayer’s expense.

Ron Paul, in his reaction to the passage of HR 758, attacked the resolution’s use of language “that should have made even the neocons blush”.[2]  World War Three, argues Paul, is effectively around the corner, the result of “one of the worst pieces of legislation ever”.

As an avid watcher of such resolutions in Congress, Paul claims that such wording is pregnant with consequences.  In 1998, the Iraq Liberation Act proved to be the precursor for invasion in 2003.  “I did not oppose the Act because I was an admirer of Saddam Hussein – just as now I am not an admirer of Putin or any foreign political leader – but rather because I knew then that another war against Iraq would not solve the problems and would probably make things worse. We all know what happened next.”

Even before Paul’s response, former US congressman Dennis Kucinich suggested that HR 758 was “tantamount to a ‘Declaration of Cold War’.”[3]  “NATO encirclement, the US-backed coup in Ukraine, an attempt to use an agreement with the European Union to bring NATO into Ukraine at the Russian border and a US nuclear first-strike policy are all policies which attempt to substitute force for diplomacy” (Press TV, Dec 3).  Time, it would seem, to dig in for the bloody, and expensive long haul.

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

Notes

[1] https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hres758/text
[2] http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2014/december/04/reckless-congress-declares-war-on-russia/
[3] http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/no_to_war_hot_or_cold_with_russia_20141201

In the globalization era, economic warfare is the main weapon used by the Transnational Elite to integrate into the New World Order of neoliberal globalization any country resisting the loss of economic and national sovereignty that joining it implies. Its conclusion is that only the building of an economic and political union of sovereign nations, like the original conception of the Eurasian Union was, which would embrace the nations all over the world still fighting the NWO of neoliberal globalization, from Europe and Asia up to Latin America and the Arab world, could possibly create conditions of self-reliance and self determination and, at the same time, an alternative pole to the present criminal unipolar world.

In recent developments, it became clear that economic warfare is the main weapon used by the Transnational Elite, (TE- i.e. the network of the elites based mainly in the G7 countries which run the New World Order of neoliberal globalization), to subordinate Russia and integrate every other country still resisting the process, e.g. Iran and Venezuela. This includes not just the usual economic sanctions, or the blocking of new projects to facilitate distribution, like the South Stream project but, also, as the dramatic decline in the price of oil has shown in the last few months, the induced fall in its price. This was the case of the last OPEC meeting when Saudi Arabia was the main organ for the implementation of this plan.

As it is well known, Saudi Arabia is the biggest producer and exporter of oil and its actions in the last OPEC meeting were decisive in bringing about the present dramatic decline in its price. As the associate editor and chief economics commentator at the Financial Times put it, celebrating the fact that Russia, Iran and Venezuela might be particularly affected (“Two cheers for the sharp falls in oil prices” was the eloquent title of his article), it was Saudi Arabia that “triggered” this dramatic event:

“Particularly important might be the impact on net oil-exporting countries. Among vulnerable producers are regimes that one would dearly like to see weakened, Vladimir Putin’s Russia foremost among them… To sustain oil prices, Opec needed to cut output by about 1mbd. But it – or, more precisely, Saudi Arabia – has refused to do so. This has triggered the recent fall in prices”.[1]

However, Saudi Arabia is not just a very important player in the oil market. It is also one of the most absolutist, politically and ideologically, regimes on Earth.

Politically, the regime is controlled, as an absolute monarchy, by one family, where the king, who is also the prime minister, combines legislative, executive, and judicial functions, with royal decrees forming the basis of the country’s legislation, while the numerous members of the royal family (which includes at least 7,000 princes) dominate the entire political system. This fact does not prevent of course the Transnational Elite (well known for its fight for “democracy” all over the world!) to fully support this regime and to accuse, instead, Russia for absolutism!

Ideologically, almost a quarter of its population is Salafis and most of the rest are Wahhabis, although the differences between them seem similar to the nonsensical differences between Christian theologians in the Middle Ages. The essence is that they both represent the most puritanical, (i.e. conservative) approaches to Islam. As an analyst put it, “mostSalafists fill the ranks of groups called “pietist” or “quietist”, who preach obedience to any government, however corrupt or autocratic, as long as it calls itself Muslim. The aim is to avoid that worst of states: fitna or calling into question the unity of the community of the faithful”.[2]

It is therefore hardly surprising that Saudi Arabia and its ideology was enthusiastically embraced by the West, in the pre-globalization era, as a useful tool to fight Soviet influence as well as pan-Arabic socialism, and by the Transnational Elite in the globalization era, as a useful tool to fight any nations resisting their abolition of sovereignty within the New World Order (NWO) of neoliberal globalization. This was clearly shown for instance when Saudi Arabia supported in every possible way the Salafi jihadi, who butchered the peoples of Libya and Syria and only recently stopped supporting their offspring, ISIS, when they become targeted by the Transnational Elite for attempting to follow their own line in building an Islamic State.[3]  Unsurprisingly, the methods used by ISIS, like beheading which were repeated ad nauseam by the TE media in order to terrorize Western middle classes and justify its ‘war on terrorism’, have in fact been practiced for years by its client Saudi regime, with nobody in the ‘civilized’ West bothering much about it, as long as they were able to keep expanding their highly profitable business of arms selling to the regime. As another analyst described the Saudi regime in a highly substantiated analysis:

To this day, Saudi Arabia carries out barbaric executions against both criminals and political enemies, including victims accused of ‘sorcery and witchcraft’ in the aptly named, ‘Chop-Chop Square’ located in the capital of Riyadh where heads are literally chopped off by hooded swordsmen…. Saudi Arabia’s brutally repressive internal security apparatus is a creation of US advisors and operators. Its military, both covert and conventional, is also armed through astronomically large weapons sales (including a recent sale considered the largest in US history) by its Wall Street and London allies. The atrocities committed by the despotic Saud regime are directly facilitated by US advisers, operators, and arms. Saudi Arabia also hosts the US military, a sizable force until it was spread out amongst the orbiting despotic regimes of Qatar (note: see Aljazeera), Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.[4]

Of course, it was not just systemic economists who celebrated the dramatic fall in the price of oil, as even the upper echelons of the transnational economic elite, like the head of the IMF, found also difficult to disguise their joy in describing the impact of this event. Thus, as Christine Lagarde explained, a 30 percept drop in oil prices translates into a 0.8 percent boost in growth for “most advanced economies,” and “probably 0.6 percent for the US,” and then she went on to elaborate as follows the implications for US and Russia:

For the United States, low energy prices could help to stimulate growth to 3.5 percent next year from the October forecast of 3.1 per cent… For Russia, exports of oil and gas equate to 68 per cent of Russia’s total exports, and 50 per cent of its federal revenues. Russia has already spent almost $90 billion from its currency reserves in 2014, or 4.5 per cent of its economy to support plunging rubble that has lost more than 40 per cent from the start of the year.[5]

No wonder the TE media celebrate the projected fall in real incomes, as described by Alexei Vedev, the Russian deputy economy minister. Thus, Vedev, assuming that the sanctions will remain in place throughout 2015, something that implies that capital markets for the majority of Russian banks and companies will remain closed, predicted that the country, by the end of the year would be in recession, the first one since 2009. The size of this recession will be greater the lower the price will be next year, but even if it stays at around $80 (a rather optimistic assumption because of inflation which is already rather high as a result of the devaluation of the rouble), real incomes are expected to fall by around 3%. Also, given that capital markets are still open, capital flight from Russia will continue and capital outflows of $125bn are expected for this year, which could rise to $90bn in 2015.[6] The Financial Times is (as usually) more frank than Western liberal “Left” papers in expressing their deeper wishes for a ‘velvet revolution’ in Russia as a result of the intensifying crisis and openly raises the question whether “Putin’s popularity can weather a perfect economic storm and “a fall in real incomes which will hit hard working class families in regions supportive of the president”.[7]

It is therefore clear that Saudi Arabia’s action in precipitating the dramatic fall in the price of oil was far from accidental. Furthermore, It was hardly motivated by a Saudi attempt to keep its dominant share in the oil market, supposedly threatened by the US shale oil production. This explanation, given by the ‘globalist’ faction within the Russian elite and the liberal “Left” in the West, was in fact an alibi used by the TE itself and the Saudis in order to disguise the real aim of this action. That is, the use of the price of oil as a highly effective weapon of economic warfare in order to force Russia and associate resisting regimes (like Iran and Venezuela) either to submit to the TE rule, or face a possibly severe economic recession (depending on how long the price of oil will be kept at very low levels) which could well lead to ‘velvet revolutions’ in all these countries and, possibly, to regime changes. The alternative “explanation” in terms of a supposed ‘war’ between S.A. and US not only “forgets” the client nature of the former to the latter but also the simple fact that such an action could only have a temporary effect. Clearly, at the moment the price of oil starts rising again for political or economic reasons ―this has nothing to do with any ‘laws’ or ‘tendencies’ like the ‘peak oil’ disaster theory and the likes[8]― shale oil production will of course resume with revenge.

In fact, the present dramatic fall in the price of oil is part of a long-term plan to force the ‘nationalist’ part of the Russian elite to submit to the Transnational Elite’s (TE) rule, despite the aspirations of the overwhelming majority of the Russian people that follows it. This was clearly shown when this majority enthusiastically welcomed the only real counter-attack so far against the continuing and intensifying attack by the TE against Russia, i.e. the re-integration of Crimea.

The long-term plan to hit Russia at the economic front is shown by the systematic TE effort to undermine the only effective export of the country since the catastrophic destruction of Russian industry, following the collapse of USSR and the growing reliance of Russia since then on imports to cover even the basic needs of its people. This was a collapse not in the sense that the Soviet regime failed to cover (at least) the basic needs of its people. In fact, the opposite could be shown even by reliable Western research at the time.[9] Yet, it still failed to cover effectively non-basic needs and, even more so, to create conditions of real workers’ democracy. This, combined with an economic campaign against USSR, using (yet again!) the dramatic fall in the price of oil but also (as the fall in oil price was not enough at the time, given the self-reliance of USSR) the arms race, led initially to the taking over of power by the globalist faction within the Russian elite under Gorbachev (who effectively wanted a post-Mao Chinese kind of a hybrid capitalism cum “communism”) and, eventually, to the TE- favourite, Boris Yeltsin. As Engdahl put it, “we now see as evidence that clearly indicates there was a CIA coup d’état backing Boris Yeltsin to be the man of Washington, so as to dismantle the Russian economy entirely after 1990”.[10] It was in this sense that one may talk of a collapse of the USSR, given that the natural supporters of the regime, the working class, did not mobilize to stop these plans which led to the destruction not only of the socialist revolution but of the Russian economy itself.

Thus, it was not just the present TE cancellation of the Russian attempt to bypass Ukraine (which, for the time being is, to all intents and purposes, a formal protectorate of it), through the South Stream pipeline ––thanks to the successful ‘pressure’ of the EU on its informal protectorate, Bulgaria. In fact, a similar story happened a few years ago with another informal protectorate of the EU, Greece, when the Burgas-Alexandroupoli pipeline was cancelled, following heavy pressure by the TE, through its EU component. That was an oil project for transportation of Russian oil from the Bulgarian Black seaport of Burgas to the Greek Aegean port of Alexandroupoli, which was an important alternative route for Russian oil, bypassing the Turkish-Straits. Although the project was described as one of the shortest pipelines through a plain terrain and therefore one of the cheapest and cost effective,[11] and the agreement was signed in Athens in 2007 by President Putin and PM Karamanlis, the TE, having already planned (well before the Ukraine crisis!) the drastic reduction of EU’s dependence on Russian oil, went as far as, effectively, replacing Karamanlis by its much more obedient organ George Papandreou—in reality, a product of the US-Zionist elites. Papandreou not only torpedoed this very fruitful for the Greek people agreement that could have reduced the absolute dependence of Greece on the TE and open the door for a possible future entry into the Eurasian Union but, also, played a leading role in bringing forward the Greek economic catastrophe. Thus, it was Papandreou himself who invited the IMF (as Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then IMF director himself revealed, to “help” Greece), even though the Greek solvency problem was not publicly known at the time and according to several experts the bailout was still avoidable, without the catastrophic ‘help’ of the TE and its troika. Clearly Papandreou, as well as his successor Papadimos, who, was also a ‘man of the TE’, played a very dirty role in precipitating the Greek economic catastrophe––although of course, the underlying causes were systemic and had to do with Greece’s integration into the EU.[12]

The conclusion is that, although the present agreements with China and Turkey aiming to create new outlets for Russia’s energy exports are useful defending acts, they cannot be taken in any way as solutions to the problem which underlies all the above symptoms: the fact that Russia, although it still possesses a much higher degree of economic and national sovereignty than China, (let alone Turkey, whose army is completely dependent on its US patron!), it is still characterized by a high degree of economic dependence on the NWO. The merry liberal “Left” in the West, which, together with the globalist faction in Russia, celebrate as “victories” the deals with China and Turkey, simply cannot understand the crucial difference between an ally and a business partner.[13] As Aleksey Maslov, Head of the Russian-Chinese Expert Council aptly put it, “China is not an ally”[14] and the same applies to BRICS or countries like Turkey, which has also geopolitical interests of their own in the Middle East, very different from those of Russia. So, although the globalist faction inside Russia, as well as the fellow travellers in the “Left” abroad try to confuse the issue, allies have to be clearly distinguished from business partners. The BRICS countries could perfectly be good business partners to Russia (as long of course as their economic interests coincide, or at least are parallel) but whether they would be allies to Russia in an intensifying conflict with the TE, which could well put their economic interests in jeopardy, is a completely different matter.

La Commissione esteri del Senato, in una risoluzione sulla Siria (Doc. XXIV, n. 43), ha impegnato il governo a «sostenere in tutti i modi, incluso quello militare, l’azione della coalizione internazionale»: in altre parole, ha autorizzato (con voto favorevole PD-Pdl e contrario di Sel e 5Stelle) un intervento militare diretto dell’Italia in Siria.

La crisi siriana – sostiene la premessa approvata invece anche da Sel e con l’astensione di 5Stelle – si è trasformata in guerra civile «per la chiara e riconosciuta responsabilità del regime del presidente Assad», creando «il terreno ideale per il rafforzamento dell’estremismo fondamentalista armato, in particolare di quello del Daesh» (Isis) che costituisce oggi «una minaccia all’integrità territoriale dei paesi dell’area, oltre che una delle maggiori sfide contemporanee alla sicurezza, alla democrazia e alla libertà».

Sono stati in realtà gli Usa e i maggiori alleati Nato a finanziare, armare e addestrare in Libia nel 2011 gruppi islamici fino a poco prima definiti terroristi, tra cui i primi nuclei del futuro Isis; a rifornirli di armi attraverso una rete organizzata dalla Cia (documentata da un’inchiesta del New York Times nel marzo 2013) quando, dopo aver contribuito a rovesciare Gheddafi, sono passati in Siria per rovesciare Assad; sono stati sempre gli Usa e la Nato ad agevolare l’offensiva dell’Isis in Iraq (nel momento in cui il governo al-Maliki si allontanava da Washington, avvicinandosi a Pechino e a Mosca).

Vi sono su questo molte prove. Ad esempio la foto del senatore Usa John McCain, in missione in Siria per conto della Casa Bianca, che incontra nel maggio 2013 Ibrahim al-Badri, il «califfo» a capo dell’Isis. O il servizio televisivo trasmesso pochi giorni fa dalla tedesca Deutsche Welle, che mostra come centinaia di tir attraversano ogni giorno senza alcun controllo il confine fra Turchia e Siria, trasbordando carichi diretti a Raqqa, base delle operazioni Isis in Siria.

La Commissione del Senato sostiene inoltre che l’intervento militare in Siria, effettuato dalla coalizione internazionale di cui fa parte l’Italia, è autorizzato dalle risoluzioni 2170 e 2178 del Consiglio di sicurezza dell’Onu. Mentre in realtà esse stabiliscono solo l’obbligo dei paesi membri dell’Onu di prevenire il reclutamento, l’organizzazione, il trasporto e l’equipaggiamento di individui che si recano in altri Stati allo scopo di attuare atti terroristici (cosa che fanno proprio Usa e Nato).

L’intervento militare degli Stati uniti e di loro alleati in Siria non è quindi autorizzato dal Consiglio di sicurezza. E, incentrato apparentemente sull’Isis (in realtà funzionale alla strategia Usa/Nato), esso mira alla completa demolizione della Siria, finora impedita dalla resistenza interna e dalla mediazione russa in cambio del disarmo chimico di Damasco, e alla rioccupazione dell’Iraq. In questa guerra può entrare ora anche l’Italia.

Manlio Dinucci

Nearly five years ago, at the 2010 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty Review Conference, the nuclear powers restated their commitment to a “diminishing role for nuclear weapons in security policies to minimize the risk that these weapons ever be used and to facilitate the process of their total elimination.”

US President Barack Obama and then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the New START treaty, promising to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear missiles and launchers.

However, this year’s right-wing coup in Ukraine, organised by the US and European Union, followed by a campaign of sanctions and war threats against Russia, combined with the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” aimed at asserting US control over the Asia-Pacific, are provoking a new nuclear arms race.

According to Hugh Chalmers, an analyst at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, “All nuclear states are undergoing some form of nuclear modernization at the moment, or will very soon be going through that process… You can look around the world and see new missiles being developed, new submarines, new cruise missiles…”

Shortly before he was fired last week, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel used two separate Pentagon studies, arising out of the drugs and academic cheating scandal at nuclear bases, to authorise the US Department of Defense to request a further 10 percent increase in funding to upgrade its nuclear infrastructure every year for the next five years.

The nuclear arm of the military will be given a higher profile, with the commander of the US Air Force Global Strike Command promoted from a three-star to a four-star general, and the head of the service’s nuclear integration elevated from two-star to three-star rank.

“Our nuclear deterrent plays a critical role in ensuring US national security and it is Department of Defense’s highest priority mission,” Hagel declared. “No other capability we have is more important.”

Hagel’s announcement came on top of the Obama administration’s approval in September of 12 new missile submarines, up to 100 new bombers, and 400 land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) costing $355-billion and possibly as high as $1 trillion.

According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the US currently maintains an estimated 4,650 deliverable war heads, 2,120 of which are currently deployed on ballistic missiles.

Testing of missiles has also increased. On November 7, two cruise missiles and one ballistic missile were destroyed over the Pacific Ocean by a similar number of interceptors fired from a destroyer in order to assess the response of the Aegis missile defence system to several attacks at once. A land-based variant of the Aegis system is planned for deployment in Europe.

The president of manufacturer Raytheon Missile Systems, Taylor Lawrence, declared, “No other nation in the world has the capability to do what the US Navy and Missile Defense Agency demonstrated today.”

For its part, Russia is spending $560 billion on modernising its military over the next six years, with 25 percent set aside for its ageing nuclear forces. Currently, the Kremlin has a total of 1,643 ballistic missiles, an increase of 131 since March.

Earlier this month, Russia conducted its most comprehensive nuclear weapons drill to date involving its entire “Nuclear Triad” of strategic bombers, submarines and silo-based missile systems to evaluate its preparedness for an attack. A Topol-M silo-based ICBM capable of carrying up to six nuclear warheads with an individual yield of 800 kilotons was tested. The devastating power of such a bomb can be seen when compared to the single 13-18 kiloton atomic bomb dropped by the US on Hiroshima in 1945, which led to the deaths of up to 166,000 Japanese civilians.

Missile tests from submarines have also taken place, including Russia’s newest Bulava ICBM, with a range of about 5,000 miles and the capacity to carry an unprecedented 10 nuclear warheads.

China also is developing missiles that will be able to reach any area of the US for the first time, and recently launched its first nuclear-powered submarine belonging to the Jin-class, which will carry a dozen ICBMs. Recent estimates suggest China has no more than 75 ICBMs.

Pakistan and India are also attempting to modernise their nuclear arsenals and both countries have test-fired new missiles recently.

Over the past few months, the US and Russia have been accusing each other of breaching the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which called for the elimination of nuclear and conventional ground-launched missiles able to fly between 300-3,400 miles.

Frank Orban, III, a US State Department official during the Reagan administration who helped negotiate the INF treaty, warned, “If there are problems, violations of the INF, the world should be concerned that the START treaty will also soon be violated, thus reigniting the strategic arms race—creating once again a serious confrontational atmosphere between the United States and Russia.”

Orban added, “Violations of the 1987 INF carry far more serious implications than most people recognise.”

The crisis provoked by the US and its European allies, centring on Ukraine and NATO’s eastward expansion towards Russia’s borders, and the parallel “pivot to Asia” targeting China, has brought the world the closest it has been to global war since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Any belief that a nuclear war is impossible because modern governments would not risk catastrophe is disproved by the rapid modernisation of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. Beset by mounting economic and social problems for which they have no progressive solution, the ruling elites are increasingly inclined to see war as a risk worth taking.

In his opening speech at the SZ Economic Summit, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier appealed to business heads to support Germany’s rise to be a world power.

The meeting did not take place in the Dusseldorf Parkhotel, but in Berlin’s Hotel Adlon. Sitting in the audience was not Fritz Thyssen and Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, but Thyssen-Krupp CEO Heinrich Hiesinger and other current heavyweights of German big business. And of course, the Social Democratic Party Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is not Adolf Hitler.

Nevertheless, Steinmeier’s appearance recalled Hitler’s speech to the Dusseldorf Industry Club on January 26, 1932. Like the soon to become Führer, Steinmeier made a direct appeal to German big business to support Germany’s rise to be a world power. He explicitly called on big business to support him and the government in pushing through a militarist foreign policy turn against the will of the people.

Steinmeier’s programme strongly recalls the German lust for power, once believed to be a thing of the past. “Germany should ‘lead Europe to lead the world’, ‘Europeanise Russia’ and ‘multilateralise the US’”, Steinmeier demanded, citing an essay that has been featured on an official web site of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for months. He added, “No small task!”

The implications of these words are unmistakable. Germany’s return to an aggressive foreign policy runs along similar channels as followed in the first half of the 20th century. The German elites once again see it as their “task” to dominate Europe in order to become a world power. Today, as before, this programme of German imperialism means conflict with Russia and the United States.

To “Europeanize Russia” means nothing other than to subordinate Russia to a Europe controlled by Germany. To “multilateralise the US” means to contest the role of the United States as the world hegemon. In other words, German foreign policy in the future will develop increasingly in opposition to the two powers against which it has already waged two world wars.

After the crimes of the Nazi regime, the German elites are, at least for now, still trying to present their programme of a third “grab for world power” as if it were being imposed on them from the outside. Every day, “the expectation of German involvement” is encountered from our “partners abroad”, Steinmeier protested at the Adlon. He had therefore “asked a large group of international experts to formulate their expectations of German foreign policy”.

From the many responses he received to this request, Steinmeier highlighted just one, titled “Germany’s destiny: leading Europe in order to lead the world”. This comes from the pen of the Indian-born Professor Kishore Mahbubani of the National University of Singapore, located in an authoritarian, one-party state.

The text, together with other calls for a more aggressive German foreign policy, can be found on the web site “Review 2014” of the German Foreign Ministry. Of Mahbubani’s key demands, Steinmeier said tersely, “And do you know who said that? Not a Frenchman, not an American, but an Indian professor wrote that for us.”

Steinmeier’s speech was remarkable not only for its call for German leadership in the world. It also expressed an openly imperialist programme. At its core was the conclusion that in a world that is increasingly dominated by national conflicts, Germany’s global interests can no longer be pursued by purely economic means, but must rely on foreign policy and military force.

At the beginning of his remarks, Steinmeier said that it was no accident that “at the end of this turbulent year of 2014”, he was opening this business congress with a “decidedly foreign policy speech”. In his “entire political biography”, he could “not remember a time in which international crises in such great number, in so many places in the world, of such different nature, are assailing us simultaneously as is the case today.”

The German foreign minister drew a picture of a global situation that is strongly reminiscent of the world before the Second World War. A world in which “the struggle for influence and domination” prevails, “crisis is the new normal”, clear “cracks and divides” come forward and “we stare at the differences between states, peoples and cultures”. Even “in dealing with our closest partners, especially the United States”, the “public debate is dominated by differences, not common ground.”

Economically, a “return to stronger national borders” could be seen following the financial and economic crisis of 2008. This development is a challenge for both economic and foreign policy, especially for Germany, he said. The “recession of globalization” threatened the “export-driven economy”, while the “peak of contradictions” undermined the “tools of the diplomats”.

Steinmeier drew the conclusion that it was in the interest of big business to support a more aggressive foreign policy, even if it brought short-term economic disadvantages.

The “first step to recovery” comes from “the consciousness of those who knew that for us Germans, we cannot stand aloof from the crisis of the global order! Where we can, we—politicians and business leaders—must rouse us Germans from any insular thinking and any feelings of comfort!” Those who recognize this must “also take the next step: As the most networked country, we depend on a peaceful and rule-based order in the world, and we must also intercede for this! Not only in Europe but worldwide…”

Steinmeier impressed upon the representatives of big business that the rise of Germany to a global power could not be achieved solely through the means of peaceful trade: “Economic globalization alone does not guarantee political convergence … ! More BMWs on the streets of Moscow and more VW plants in China’s metropolitan areas do not necessarily lead to greater political common ground.”

Business must therefore take part in the sanctions imposed by the West against Russia. “Through the annexation of Crimea and its actions in eastern Ukraine”, Russia had placed in question “international law and rule-based order” and thus “violated the foundations of both our security and also our well-being”. The Western powers reacted with sanctions “that also cause ourselves economic costs”. The “costs to a permanently endangered Europe” were, however, “far greater”, and the sanctions were therefore “also in the long-term interests of business”, Steinmeier argued.

At the same time, he stressed that the goal of the sanctions should not be to “economically subjugate Russia”. That was extremely dangerous. “A destabilised, or even collapsing Russia is for themselves and others the much greater risk. Whoever talks like that does European security a disservice.”

Steinmeier added:

“Those who say: ‘We are finished with them!’ might be able to win applause from some quarters – but in fact we will never be finished! I still remember, at the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, the Canadian Foreign Minister said at a meeting: ‘We have now to decide whether Russia is a friend or foe, partner or opponent’. I told him: ‘In Canada you can put the question this way perhaps. For Europe Russia will always remain a very large neighbor, and it will either have a good or a bad influence on our development.’“

This was a blatant jab at the United States. Steinmeier named Canada, but he was in fact criticizing Washington which has taken the most aggressive course in the conflict with Russia. As its smaller imperialist neighbor Canada supports US foreign policy, which is prepared to risk an open military confrontation with Russia in order to bring about regime change in Moscow.

For its part Germany wants to put Russia on the defensive, but does not want the complete collapse of their bilateral economic relations. At the same time, it is not (yet) ready to openly confront the United States. But it is beginning to pursue its imperialist interests more independently and more self-assuredly against other powers. Steinmeier left no doubt that, as in the past, this includes the use of military force and war.

To combat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, he said, “Of course the military solution is a part, and we do not shirk from this. In the summer, we decided to support the fight by sending arms to the Kurdish Peshmerga.” While the “principle not to send weapons into areas of crisis” still held, foreign policy consists of “considering many non-perfect options”, and “in such cases, one must have regard to whether one is upholding principles or rather hiding behind them.”

Steinmeier’s entire speech makes clear that the ruling elites in Germany are no longer willing to “hide” behind any “principles” or restrictions that they had to accept after defeat in World War II. They are preparing to impose the new foreign policy programme on the German people.

At the conclusion of his remarks, Steinmeier referred to a survey by the Körber Foundation, which asked Germans “whether Germany should engage more strongly than before internationally”. Only 38 percent answered “Yes”, 60 percent said “No, please continue to hold back.”

The foreign minister commented as follows: “This is the gap between external expectations and internal readiness, ladies and gentlemen, with which I have to deal. To be honest, if I were an engineer, I would, in good conscience, not build a bridge over such a gulf. As a politician, I have to! And I would be happy—and if I was not mistaken in my presentation, it is in your interests—if German business assists a little! Many thanks.”

What Steinmeier is proposing is an alliance of the state and big capital against the population that is overwhelmingly hostile to the new war course. Such an alliance, combining the rich and the powerful against the majority, is deeply undemocratic. After the terrible experiences of two world wars, opposition to war is deeply rooted, especially in Germany. Nevertheless, the ruling elites have decided to return to a policy of war, and impose this on the population.

When Steinmeier had finished, there was thunderous applause in the ballroom of Hotel Adlon.

For the first time since WW II, overt fascists hold real power in Europe. Radicalized ultranationalists. Anti-Semites. Hate-mongers. 

Cold-blooded killers. Whitewashing high crimes. A puppet regime. America’s newest colony.

Mocking democratic values. Violating fundamental rule of law principles. Unaccountably.

Western leaders won’t explain. Nor will the media. Hard truths are buried.

Ukraine’s government usurped power forcibly. Putschist rule has no legitimacy.

Especially regimes waging war on their own people. Murdering them in cold blood. Committing horrendous human rights abuses.

Tolerating no opposition. Ruling by intimidation. Force-feeding neoliberal harshness on impoverished people. Making life unbearable overall. More on this below.

On December 4, Wall Street Journal editors published illegitimate/oligarch Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko’s op-ed headlined “A Year Later, a New Ukraine.”

Legitimate editors wouldn’t touch this rubbish. Journal editors featured it. Beginning-to-end misinformation. Deception. Big Lies.

WSJ editorials and op-eds reinvent history. Poroshenko’s rant is Exhibit A, saying:

“For the first time since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, the nation has the opportunity to evolve into a true European democracy, thanks to the recent election of a pro-European constitutional majority to Parliament. A pro-reform and pro-European Parliament and government are now in place, and a politically reset Ukraine has been empowered to make permanent changes that have been long awaited by the Ukrainian people and by the international community.”

Fact: Ukrainian-style democracy is none at all. Pure fantasy.

Fact: Presidential and parliamentary elections were farcical. Illegitimate by any standard.

Fact: Whole families won parliamentary seats.

Fact: Poroshenko’s son, Oleksiy, represents Vinnitsa region’s No. 12 precinct.

Fact: The same one his father represented years earlier. Bequeathed to his son.

Itar Tass commented earlier, saying:

“…Ukraine’s political class is built on the foundation of nepotism and cronyism, as all the political forces display the tradition of nominating candidates on the grounds of kinship. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said parliamentary elections “were marked by an unprecedented number of gross violations of basic international standards for democratic elections, which were recorded during the election campaign, election day and vote counting. A year passed since” Maidan protests, said Poroshenko. Followed by “the Revolution of Dignity,” he claimed.

“Ukrainians were opting for freedom, not fear, choosing democracy, not dictatorship, and believing in the future, not the past. The idea of a new Ukraine was born. We had the courage to fight for it. Now we have the institutional powers to implement it.”

Fact: Right Sector neo-Nazis murdered Kiev residents and police.

Fact: Ousted President Viktor Yanukovych was wrongfully blamed.

Fact: Fascist snipers used automatic weapons. Fired from Philharmonic Hall’s rooftop and windows. Overlooking the Maidan. Clear evidence proved it.

Fact: Washington orchestrated what happened. Putschists practically lived at its embassy. It was coup d’etat headquarters.

Fact: Reuters discovered “serious flaws” in Kiev’s investigation. Including “missing evidence.” Regime officials “played roles in supporting the uprising.”

Ukrainians want democratic freedoms. Responsible governance. Verboten notions for fascists. Ruling by brute force.

Poroshenko’s governance is more deform than reform. Saying “Ukraine is finally ready to build a robust state” denies reality.

So is claiming a Moscow threat. None whatever exists. No evidence suggests otherwise.

“On the external front, we are united in fighting for our freedom and for our future as an independent nation – a fight that has implications for all of Europe and global security,” said Poroshenko.

Fascists deplore freedom. Crushing it for unchallenged control.

Ukrainian independence was lost. Washington controls its newest colony.

Poroshenko its puppet leader. Presiding over a police state apparatus. Ruling by intimidation.

Serving at America’s discretion. Remaining president as long as he remembers who’s boss.

Truth is polar opposite his Big Lies. Russia’s White Book documented hard truths. Revealing serious human rights violations. Including:

(1) Violations of human rights.

(2) Interference by the European Union and United States.

(3) Weapons and violent methods used by protesters.

(4) Restrictions on basic freedoms and crackdown on dissidents.

(5) Discrimination based on ethnic background.

(6) Religious persecution.

According to Moscow’s press service, content is “based on reports in the Russian and Western media, as well as statements by representatives of the current Kiev authorities and their supporters, eyewitness testimon(ies), observations and on-site interviews collected by Russian nongovernmental organizations.”

A second White Book covers the period April through July 2014. Calling conditions “aggravated in all areas.” Worse than ever.

Including illegitimate fascist rule. Brazen pressure and threats. Severe repression. Physical violence. Suppressing press freedom.

Terrorizing independent journalists. Harassing and beating them. No-holds-barred brutality. Like Nazi Germany.

History has a disturbing way of repeating. Core elements are unchanged. Ukrainians were betrayed. Expect worse ahead, not better.

Kiev’s dirty war continues. Without mercy. Against Donbas residents. Wanting real democracy. Rejecting fascist rule.

Putting their lives on the line for freedom. A testimony to courage. Deserving universal support.

Their liberating struggle continues. Largely on their own. Russia the only nation providing vitally needed humanitarian aid.

Kiev wanting millions of Donbas residents isolated. Denied what people need to survive. Attacked with heavy weapons. Illegal ones.

According to Russia’s Foreign Ministry Commissioner for Human Rights Konstantin Dolgov:

“For the first time, Human Rights Watch clearly recognized that the Ukrainian military are using multiple-launch missile systems and banned weapons against civilians in Donbas. This confirms the data contained in the White Book released by the Russian Foreign Ministry. Rights activists must put pressure on the West and on Kiev authorities to prevent further crimes.”

Russia’s updated White Book (its 3rd edition) contains documented evidence of new crimes and abuses.

Especially “social and economic strangling” of Donbas residents. Noting neo-Nazi mass marches.

“Why does this happen in Europe of the 21st century,” asked Dolgov? “What is happening presents a major threat to the entire international community.”

According to Russia’s updated White Book, “Ukrainian government forces used phosphorus and cluster bombs, Grad and Uragan multiple rocket launchers and Tochka-U ballistic missiles against the population in the south-east of the country.”

“Along with heavy weapons and warplanes, Ukrainian authorities used such ammunition as incendiary, phosphorous and cluster bombs, howitzer artillery and 240-mm mortar systems.”

Dolgov called Kiev’s actions serious war crimes, saying:

“Certainly, all such facts can be taken as nothing but war crimes which were committed and are still being committed against civilians.”

Mass graves discovered contained hundreds bodies of Nazi-style extrajudicial executions.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry urged international organizations and media to report non-politicized assessments of what’s ongoing.

As a way to help stop outrageous abuses. Its Ministry saying:

“We are convinced that distraction from reality and attempts to conceal it from the international community or to manipulate public opinion are a hypocritical and dead-locked path.”

Kiev caused Donbas area catastrophic conditions. Up to 60% of homes were destroyed or seriously damaged.

Regime authorities tried blocking Russian aid. Convoys of mercy. “The fundamental position of the Russian Federation remains unchanged,” its Foreign Ministry said.

“(I)n favor of strict observance of the Minsk agreement on both sides.”

“Kiev’s time to finally stop the reckless attempts to solve the problem of relations with the south-east of the country with tanks, guns and other military ways, renounce violence and to negotiate with the representatives proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics. No other way, and this without talking heads of Ukraine and their foreign patrons of the establishment of Ukrainian democracy is absurd.”

Moscow has verifiable information of unjustifiable political imprisonments.

“The period under review was characterized by the rapid degradation of the situation in the field of freedom of expression and restrict the activities of undesirable Kiev government media,” according to its updated White Paper.

“International News Safety Institute has recognized Ukraine as the most dangerous country in the world for journalists.”

Political censorship is rife. All popular Russian TV channels are blocked.

“The rapidly developing practice of political persecution and widespread persecution of the politicians supporting an approach different from Kiev held a cynical course,” Russia’s White Book says.

“For this purpose, (it notes) the murder of political opponents, the fabrication of criminal cases, illegal searches, confiscation of property, assault and bullying banal tricks such as ‘junk lustration’ and other illegal methods of influence, contrary to the principle of the rule of law and democratic standards. According to the Russian Federal Migration Service, November 20, the total number of Russian citizens are in Ukraine is 831,085 thousand people. In Russia there is deployed 795 temporary accommodation centers in which there are 38,643 people, including 12,046 children up to 18 years. 486,233 citizens of Ukraine in the territorial bodies of Russia have applied to the Russian Foriegn Ministry Service to determine their legal status. 243,141 of them apply for temporary asylum in Russia and 5,721 submitted applications for recognition as a refugees. All crimes committed during the Ukrainian crisis must be objectively, fairly and effectively investigated.”

Especially killing, terrorizing and imprisoning journalists. Maidan killings. The Odessa massacre.

Using force disproportionately. Murdering civilians. Targeting children. Downing MH17. Mass graves with extrajudicially executed victims. Use of prohibited weapons. Other war crimes too serious to ignore.

“It is crucial that the Ukrainian authorities stop the ‘bandaging’ and begin an independent, impartial, effective and transparent investigation,” Russia’s White Book said.

Accountability is long overdue. So is honest MSM journalism. Reporting hard truths.

Explaining fascist ruthlessness in Europe’s heartland. Unbridled brutality defines it. Preventing regional peace and security.

Risking the unthinkable. War without end. Spilling cross-border.

Open conflict with Russia. Nuclear war with America involved.

Risking humanity’s survival. Lunatics in Washington make anything possible.

A Final Comment

Last month, a Ukrainian citizen emailed the following comments, saying:

“Dear Mr. Lendman,

Thank you a lot (for) tell(ing) the truth. I live in Ukraine, Izmail (city in the Southwest of the country). My relatives live in Donbas. After USA brought ‘the democracy’ to Ukraine, we here cannot even tell what we’re thinking. There is really fascist power here now.”

Vladimir (I am sorry. I’m afraid to sign my last name)”

On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin clinched a groundbreaking deal with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that will strengthen economic ties between the two nations and make Turkey the major hub for Russian gas in the region. Under the terms of the agreement, Russia will pump additional natural gas to locations in central Turkey and to a “hub at the Turkish-Greek border” which will eventually provide Putin with backdoor access to the lucrative EU market, although Turkey will serve as the critical intermediary. The move creates a de facto Russo-Turkey alliance that could shift the regional balance of power decisively in Moscow’s favor, thus creating another formidable hurtle for Washington’s “pivot to Asia” strategy.  While the media is characterizing the change in plans (Putin has abandoned the South Stream pipeline project that would have transported gas to southern Europe) as a “diplomatic defeat” for Russia, the opposite appears to be the case.  Putin has once again outmaneuvered the US on both the energy and geopolitical fronts adding to his long list of policy triumphs. Here’s a brief summary from Andrew Korybko at Sputnik News:

“Russia has abandoned the troubled South Stream project and will now be building its replacement with Turkey. This monumental decision signals that Ankara has made its choice to reject Euro-Atlanticsm and embrace Eurasian integration.

 In what may possibly be the biggest move towards multipolarity thus far,..Turkey, has done away with its former Euro-Atlantic ambitions. A year ago, none of this would have been foreseeable, but the absolute failure of the US’ Mideast policy and the EU’s energy one made this stunning reversal possible in under a year. Turkey is still anticipated to have some privileged relations with the West, but the entire nature of the relationship has forever changed as the country officially engages in pragmatic multipolarity.

Turkey’s leadership made a major move by sealing such a colossal deal with Russia in such a sensitive political environment, and the old friendship can never be restored…The reverberations are truly global.”  (“Cold Turkey: Ankara Buckles Against Western Pressure, Turns to Russia”, Sputnik News)

Korybko seems to be alone in grasping the magnitude of what happened in Ankara on Monday, although –judging by the Obama administration’s silence on the topic–the gravity of the transaction is beginning to sink in.  Grandmaster Vlad’s latest move has caught US powerbrokers flat-footed and left them speechless. This is a scenario that no one had anticipated and, if it’s not handled correctly, could turn out to be a real nightmare. Here’s more on Monday’s press conference from Russia Today:

“Putin said that Russia is ready to build a new pipeline to meet Turkey’s growing gas demand, which may include a special hub on the Turkish-Greek border for customers in southern Europe.

For now, the supply of Russian gas to Turkey will be raised by 3 billion cubic meters via the already operating Blue Stream pipeline…Moscow will also reduce the gas price for Turkish customers by 6 percent from January 1, 2015, Putin said.

“We are ready to further reduce gas prices along with the implementation of our joint large-scale projects,” he added.”  (“Putin: Russia forced to withdraw from S. Stream project due to EU stance”, RT)

How can this happen? How can Putin waltz into Ankara, scribble his name on a few sheets of paper, and abscond with a key US ally right under Washington’s nose?  Isn’t there anyone at the White House who’s smart enough to anticipate a scenario like this or have they all been replaced with warmongering ding-dongs like Susan Rice and Samantha Powers?

The Obama administration has been doing everything in its power to control the flow of gas from east to west and to undermine Russian-EU economic integration. Now it looks like the nimble Putin has found a way to avoid the economic sanctions, (Turkey rejected sanctions on Russia)  avoid US coercion and blackmail (which was used on Bulgaria, Hungary, and Serbia), and avoid Washington’s endless belligerence and hostility, and achieve his objectives at the same time.   But– then again– isn’t that what you’d expect from a level-headed martial arts pro like Putin?

“I won’t beat you,” says Bad Vlad.  “I’ll let you to beat yourself.”

And, so he has. Just ask the befuddled Obama who has yet to prevail in any of his encounters with Putin.

But why the silence? Why hasn’t the White House issued a statement about the big Russian-Turkey gas deal that everyone’s talking about?

I’ll tell you why. It’s because they don’t know what the hell just hit them, that’s why. They were completely blindsided by the announcement and can’t quite figure out what it means for the issues that are on the very top of their foreign policy agenda, like the pivot to Asia, or the wars in Syria and Ukraine, or the much-ballyhooed gas pipeline from Qatar to the EU, that was supposed to transit– you guessed it– Turkey.  Is that plan still in the works or has the Putin-Erdogan alliance put the kibosh on that gem too?   Let’s face it, Putin has really knocked it out of the park this time. Team Obama is clearly out of its league and has no idea of what’s going on. If Turkey turns eastward and joins the growing Russian bloc, US policymakers are going to have to scrap the better part of their strategic plans for the coming century and go back to Square 1. What a headache.

There’s a good article in Wednesday’s New York Times that summarizes Washington’s ambivalence towards South Stream perfectly. Here’s an excerpt:

“Moscow has long presented the project, proposed in 2007, as making good business sense because it would provide a new route for Russian gas to reach Europe. Washington and Brussels have opposed the project on the grounds that it was a vehicle for cementing Russian influence over southern Europe and for bypassing Ukraine, whose price disputes with Gazprom twice interrupted supplies to Europe in recent years.”

Putin’s Surprise Call to Scrap South Stream Gas Pipeline Leaves Europe Reeling”, New York Times)

This has been the argument from the get-go, that selling gas to people in the EU somehow strengthens Putin’s maniacal grip on the continent. What a joke. Would you, dear reader, be willing turn off the heat, tear up your energy bill, and freeze to death in the dark to prove to your gas company that you’re not willing to capitulate to their tyrannical rule?

Of course not, because the idea is ridiculous. Just like blocking South Stream is ridiculous. Putin is selling gas, not tyranny.  He doesn’t want people clicking their heels and goosestepping to work. That’s just propaganda from the people in the oil industry who lost the competition for supplying fuel to the EU. Call it sour grapes if you want, because that’s what it is. Their pipeline failed, (Nabucco) and Putin’s won. End of story. It’s called capitalism. Deal with it.

And here’s another thing: The countries that South Stream would have served, do not have a back-up supplier to meet their growing gas needs. So by following Washington’s lead, they’ve basically shot themselves in the foot. Analysts figure that any replacement for Russian gas will probably be 30 percent more expensive then they would have paid Gazprom.

Hurrah for the US! Hurrah for stupidity!

The US has been determined to sabotage South Stream from the very beginning, mainly because Washington wants its corporations and banks to control the flow of gas to the EU market through privately-owned pipelines in Ukraine. That way they can rake in bigger profits for their moneybags shareholders. Without going into too much detail about the various methods the US has used to torpedo the project, there’s one story that’s worth a look. This is from Zero Hedge:

 “…two months before the Ukraine government was overthrown the prime  minister of Bulgaria, Plamen Oresharski,  ordered a halt to work on the South Stream on the recommendation of the EU. The decision was announced after his talks with US senators.

“At this time there is a request from the European Commission, after which we’ve suspended the current works, I ordered it,” Oresharski told journalists after meeting with John McCain, Chris Murphy and Ron Johnson during their visit to Bulgaria on Sunday. “Further proceedings will be decided after additional consultations with Brussels.”

At the time McCain, commenting on the situation, said that “Bulgaria should solve the South Stream problems in collaboration with European colleagues,” adding that in the current situation they would want “less Russian involvement” in the project.

“America has decided that it wants to put itself in a position where it excludes anybody it doesn’t like from countries where it thinks it might have an interest, and there is no economic rationality in this at all,” (said)Ben Aris, editor of Business New Europe told RT.”  (“Europe Gives Bulgaria A Bank System Lifeline As Battle Over “South Stream” Pipeline Heats Up”, Zero Hedge)

Let me get this straight: Madman McCain strolls into town and immediately starts ordering people around telling them he wants  “less Russian involvement”, and that’s enough to bring South Stream to a screeching halt? Is that what you’re telling me?

Yep. Sure sounds like it.

Does that help you see what’s really going here? This isn’t about Putin. It’s about gas, and who’s going to profit from that gas, and in whose currency that gas will be denominated. That’s what it’s about. The rest of the nonsense about “Russian involvement” or terrorism or human rights or national sovereignty is just gibberish. The people who run this country (like McCain), don’t care about that kind of stuff.  What they care about is money; money and power. That’s it.

So what are they going to do now?  How are the big powerboys in Washington going to express their rage over this new threat created by Putin and Erdogan?

It doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out, after all, we’ve seen it a million times before.

They’re going to go after Erdogan hammer and tongs. That’s what they always do, isn’t it?

The only reason they haven’t started in already is because they’re getting their propaganda ducks in a row, which usually takes a day or two. But as soon as that’s taken care of, they’ll start dismantling old Recep one excruciating headline at a time. Erdogan is going to be the new Hitler and the greatest threat to humanity the world has ever seen.  You can bet on it.

Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds thinks that Washington has had-it-in for Erdogan a long time now, dating back to a  dust up he had with the CIA a few years back. In any event, she gives a pretty good account of what we can expect now that Erdogan is on Washington’s enemies list.  Here’s a clip from her post at Boiling Frogs:

“We all know what happens to those puppets when they end up in a rift with the CIA. Don’t we? The rift always brings expiration. Once a puppet is considered expired, then lo and behold, all of a sudden, the reversal branding and marketing begins: All old skeletons are dug out of the deep closets and leaked to the media. His previously overlooked human rights violations are looked at and scrutinized under a microscope. The terrorist card is brought into the equation. And the list goes on…

… All Empire-installed puppets and regimes must commit to the Empire’s commandments….Thou shall not violate the Imperial commandments. Because if you do, thou shall be disgraced, exposed, uninstalled, and may even be given death. All you have to do is look at the past century’s history. See what happens when an installed puppet gets too confident and inflicted with hubris, and ignores one or more commandments. This is when they are reborn as dictators, despots, torturers, and yes, terrorists. This is when their backyards get dug up to find a few grams of weapons of mass destruction.”…

No matter how we look at it Erdogan’s days are numbered … Anyone who ever dares to be this reckless will be punished and made an example for all other installed-puppets…”  (“Turkish PM Erdogan: The Speedy Transformation of an Imperial Puppet”, BFP)

So there it is. That’s what you can expect by the end of the week when the media starts their full-throttle demonizing of Erdogan, the man who dared to act independently and put the interests of his own people above those of the Washington mob bosses.  As anyone who’s followed US foreign policy for the last 60 years will tell you; that’s a big no-no.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at [email protected].

The principle Nazi ideological prop that secured massive financial and political support from Germany’s leading industrialists was the Communist and Soviet threat.  The main Nazi military drive, absorbing two-thirds of its best troops, was directed eastward at conquering and destroying Russia.  The ‘Russian Threat’ justified Nazi Germany’s conquest and occupation of the Ukraine, the Balkans, Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, with the aid of a substantial proportion of local Nazi collaborators.

After Germany’s defeat , division  and  disarmament, and with the extension of Soviet power,  the US reinstated the Nazi industrial and banking giants, officials and intelligence operatives. At first they were engaged in rebuilding their domestic economy and consolidating political power, in collaboration with the US military occupation forces.

By the late 1960’s Germany regained economic primacy in Europe and was at the forefront of European ‘integration’, in association with France and England. It soon came to dominate the principle decision – making institutions of the European Union(EU). The EU served as Germany’s instrument for conquest by stealth. Year by year, through ‘aid’ and low interest loans,the EU  facilitated German capitalist’s  market penetration and financial expansion,through out south and central Europe. Germany set the agenda for Western Europe, gaining economic dominance while benefiting from US subversion and encirclement of Eastern Europe, Russia and the Baltic and Balkan states.

Germany’s Great Leap Forward:  The Annexation of East Germany and the Demise of the USSR

Germany’s projection of power on a world scale would never have occurred if it had not annexed East Germany.  Despite the West German claims of beneficence and ‘aid’ to the East, the Bonn regime secured several million skilled engineers, workers and technicians, the takeover of factories, productive farms and, most important, the Eastern European and Russian markets for industrial goods, worth  billions of dollars.  Germany was transformed from an emerging influential EU partner, into the most dynamic expansionist power in Europe, especially in the former Warsaw Pact economies.

The annexation of East Germany and the overthrow of the Communist governments in the East allowed German capitalists to dominate markets in the former  Eastern bloc .As the major trading partner,  it seized control of major industrial enterprises via corrupt privatizations decreed  by the newly installed pro-capitalist client regimes.  As the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgarian, the Baltic States “privatized” and “de-nationalized” strategic economic, trade, media and social service sectors, ‘unified’ Germany was able to resume a privileged place.  As Russia fell into the hands of gangsters, emerging oligarchs and political proxies of western capitalists, its entire industrial infrastructure was decimated and Russia was converted into a giant raw-material export region.

Germany converted its trade relations with Russia from one between equals into a ‘colonial’ pattern:  Germany exported high value industrial products and imported gas, oil and raw materials from Russia.

German power expanded exponentially, with the annexation of the “other Germany”, the restoration of capitalism in Eastern Europe and the ascendancy of client regimes eager and willing to submit to a German dominated European Union and a US directed NATO military command.

German political-economic expansion via ‘popular uprisings’, controlled by local political clients, was soon accompanied by a US led military offensive – sparked by separatist movements.  Germany intervened in Yugoslavia, aiding and abetting separatists in Slovenia and Croatia .It backed the US-NATO bombing of Serbia and supported the far-right, self-styled Kosovo Liberation Army ( KLA),engaged in a terrorist war in  Kosovo .  Belgrade was defeated and regime change led to a neo-liberal client state.  The US built the largest military base in Europe in Kosovo. Montenegro and Macedonia became EU satellites.

While NATO expanded and enhanced the US military presence up to Russia’s borders, Germany became the continent’s pre-eminent economic power.

Germany and the New World Order

While President Bush and Clinton were heralding a “new world order”, based on  unipolar military supremacy, Germany advanced its new imperial order by exercising its  political and economic levers.  Each of the two power centers, Germany and the US, shared the common quest of rapidly incorporating the new capitalist regimes into their regional organizations –the European Union (EU) and NATO– and extending their reach globally.  Given the reactionary origins and trajectory into vassalage of the Eastern, Baltic and Balkan regimes, and given their political fears of a popular reaction to the loss of employment, welfare and independence resulting from their implementation of savage neoliberal “shock policies”, the client rulers immediately “applied” for membership as subordinate members of the EU and NATO, trading sovereignty, markets and national ownership of the means of production for economic handouts and the ‘free’ movement of labor, an escape valve for the millions of newly unemployed workers.  German and English capital got millions of skilled immigrant workers at below labor market wages, and unimpeded access to markets and resources. The US secured NATO military bases, and recruited military forces for its Middle East and South Asian imperial wars.

US-German military and economic dominance in Europe was premised on retaining Russia as a weak quasi vassal state, and on the continued economic growth of their economies beyond the initial pillage of the ex-communist economies.

For the US, uncontested military supremacy throughout Europe was the springboard for near-time imperial expansion in the Middle East, South Asia, Africa and Latin America.  NATO was ‘internationalized’ into an offensive global military alliance: first in Somalia, Afghanistan then Iraq, Libya, Syria and the Ukraine.

The Rise of Russia, The Islamic Resistance and the New Cold War

During the ‘decade of infamy’ (1991-2000) extreme privatization measures by the client rulers in Russia on behalf of EU and US investors and gangster oligarchs, added up to vast pillage of the entire economy, public treasury and national patrimony.  The image and reality of a giant prostrate vassal state unable to pursue an independent foreign policy, and incapable of providing the minimum semblance of a modern functioning economy and maintaining the rule of law, became the defining view of Russia by the EU and the USA. Post-communist Russia, a failed state by any measure, was dubbed a “liberal democracy” by every western capitalist politician and so it was repeated by all their mass media acolytes.

The fortuitous rise of Vladimir Putin and the gradual replacement of some of the most egregious ‘sell-out’ neo-liberal officials, and most important, the reconstruction of the Russian state with a proper budget and functioning national institutions, was immediately perceived as a threat to US military supremacy and German economic expansion.  Russia’s transition from Western vassalage to regaining its status as a sovereign independent state set in motion, an aggressive counter-offensive by the US-EU. They financed a neo-liberal-oligarchy backed political opposition in an attempt to restore Russia to vassalage via street demonstrations and elections .Their efforts   to oust Putin and re-establish Western vassal state failed.  What worked in 19991 with Yeltsin’s power grab against Gorbachev was ineffective against Putin.  The vast majority of Russians did not want a return to the decade of infamy.

In the beginning of the new century, Putin and his team set new ground-rules, in which oligarchs could retain their illicit wealth and conglomerates, providing they didn’t use their economic levers to seize state power.  Secondly, Putin revived and restored the scientific technical, military, industrial and cultural institutions and centralized trade and investment decisions within a wide circle of public and private decision makers not beholden to Western policymakers.  Thirdly, he began to assess and rectify the breakdown of Russian security agencies particularly with regard to the threats emanating from Western sponsored ‘separatist’ movements in the Caucuses, especially, in Chechnya, and the onset of US backed ‘color revolutions’ in the Ukraine and Georgia.

At first, Putin optimistically assumed that, Russia being a capitalist state, and without any competing ideology, the normalization and stabilization of the Russian state would be welcomed by the US and the EU.  He even envisioned that they would accept Russia  as an economic, political, and even NATO partner.   Putin even made overtures to join and co-operate with NATO and the EU.  The West did not try to dissuade Putin of his illusions .In fact they encouraged him, even as they escalated their backing for Putin’s internal opposition and prepared a series of imperial wars and sanctions in the Middle East, targeting traditional Russian allies in Iraq, Syria and Libya.

As the ‘internal’ subversive strategy failed to dislodge President Putin, and the Russian state prevailed over the neo-vassals, the demonization of Putin became constant and shrill. The West moved decisively to an ‘outsider strategy’, to isolate, encircle and undermine the Russian state by undermining allies, and trading partners

US and Germany Confront Russia:  Manufacturing the “Russian Threat”

Russia was enticed to support US and NATO wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya in exchange for the promise of deeper integration into Western markets.  The US and EU accepted Russian co-operation, including military supply routes and bases, for their invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.  The NATO powers secured Russian support of sanctions against Iran.  They exploited Russia’s naïve support of a “no fly zone” over Libya to launch a full scale aerial war.  The US financed  so-called “color revolutions” in Georgia and the Ukraine  overt, a dress rehearsal for the putsch in 2014  Each violent seizure of power allowed NATO to impose anti-Russian rulers eager and willing to serve as vassal states to Germany and the US.

Germany spearheaded the European imperial advance in the Balkans and  Moldavia, countries with strong economic ties to Russia.  High German officials “visited” the Balkans to bolster their ties with vassal regimes in Slovenia, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Croatia.  Under German direction, the European Union ordered  the vassal Bulgarian regime of Boyko “the booby” Borisov to block the passage of  Russian owned South Stream pipeline to Serbia, Hungary, Slovenia and beyond.  The Bulgarian state lost $400 million in annual revenue . . .  Germany and the US bankrolled pro-NATO and EU client politicians in Moldavia – securing the election of Iurie Leanca as Prime Minister.  As a result of Leanca’s slavish pursuit of EU vassalage, Moldavia lost $150 million in exports to Russia.  Leanca’s pro-EU policies go counter to the views of most Moldavians – 57% see Russia as the country’s most important economic partner.  Nearly 40% of the Moldavian working age population works in Russia and 25% of the Moldavians’ $8 billion GDP is accounted for by overseas remittances.

German and the US empire-builders steamroll over dissenting voices in Hungary, Serbia and Slovenia, as well as Moldova and Bulgaria, who’s economy and population suffer from the impositions of the blockade of  the Russian gas and oil pipeline.  But Germany’s, all out economic warfare against Russia takes precedent over the interests of its vassal states:  its theirs to sacrifice for the ‘Greater Good’ of the emerging German economic empire and the US – NATO military encirclement of Russia.  The extremely crude dictates of German imperial interests articulated through the EU, and the willingness of Balkan and Baltic regimes to sacrifice fundamental economic interests, are the best indicators of the emerging German empire in Europe.

Parallel to Germany’s rabid anti-Russian economic campaign, the US via NATO is engaged in a vast military build-up along the length and breadth of Russia’s frontier.  The US stooge, NATO Chief Jens Stoltenberg, boasts that over the current year, NATO has increased 5-fold the warplanes and bombers patrolling Russian maritime and land frontiers, carried out military exercises every two days and vastly increased the number of war ships in the Baltic and Black Sea.

Conclusion

What is absolutely clear is that the US and Germany want to return Russia to the vassalage status of the 1990’s.  They do not want ‘normal relations’. From the moment Putin moved to restore the Russian state and economy, the Western powers have engaged in a series of political and military interventions, eliminating Russian allies, trading partners and independent states.

The emergent of extremist, visceral anti-Russian regimes in Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania served as the forward shield for NATO advancement and German economic encroachment.  Hitler’s ‘dream’ of realizing the conquest of the East via unilateral military conquest has now under Prime Minister Merkel taken the form of conquest by stealth in Northern and Central Europe , by economic blackmail in the Balkans ,and by violent putsches in the Ukraine and  Georgia.

The German economic ruling class is divided between the dominant pro-US sector that is willing to sacrifice lucrative trade with Russia today in hopes of dominating and pillaging the entire economy in a post-Putin Russia (dominated by ‘reborn Yeltsin clones’); and a minority industrial sector, which wants to end sanctions and return to normal economic relations with Russia.

Germany is fearful that its client rulers in the East, especially in the Balkans are vulnerable to a popular upheaval due to the economic sacrifices they impose on the population.  Hence, Germany is wholly in favor of the new NATO rapid deployment force, ostensibly designed to counter a non-existent “Russian threat” but in reality to prop up faltering vassal regimes.

The ‘Russian Threat’, the ideology driving the US and German offensive throughout Europe and the Caucuses, is a replay of the same doctrine which Hitler used to secure support from domestic industrial bankers, conservatives and right wing overseas collaborators among extremists in Ukraine, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria.

The US-EU seizure of power via vassal political clients backed by corrupt oligarchs and Nazi street fighters in Ukraine detonated the current crisis. Ukraine power grab posed a top security threat to the very existence of Russia as an independent state.  After the Kiev take-over, NATO moved its stooge regime in Kiev forward to militarily eliminate the independent regions in the Southeast and seize the Crimea .thus totally eliminating Russia’s strategic position in the Black Sea. Russia the victim of the NATO power grab was labelled the “aggressor”. The entire officialdom and mass media echoed the Big Lie. Two decades of US NATO military advances on Russia’s borders and German-EU economic expansion into Russian markets were obfuscated.  Ukraine is the most important strategic military platform from which the US-NATO can launch an attack on the Russian heartland and the single largest market for Germany since the annexation of East Germany

The US and Germany see the Ukraine conquest as of extreme value in itself but also as the key to launching an all-out offensive to strangle Russia’s economy via sanctions and dumping oil and to militarily threaten Russia. The strategic goal is to reduce the Russian population to poverty and to re-activate the quasi-moribund opposition  to overthrow the Putin government and return Russia to permanent vassalage. The US and German imperial elite, looking beyond Russia, believe that if they control Russia, they can encircle ,isolate and attack China from the West as well as the East.

Wild-eyed fanatics they are not.  But as rabid proponents of a permanent war to end Russia’s presence in Europe and to undermine China’s emergence as a world power, they are willing to go to the brink of a nuclear war.

The ideological centerpiece of US-German imperial expansion and conquest in Europe and the Caucuses is the “Russian Threat”.  It is the touchstone defining adversaries and allies.  Countries that do not uphold sanctions are targeted.  The mass media repeat the lie.  The “Russian Threat” has become the war cry for cringing vassals – the phony justification for imposing frightful sacrifices to serve their imperial ‘padrones’ in Berlin and Washington –  fearing the rebellion of the ‘sacrificed’ population.  No doubt, under siege, Russia will be forced to make sacrifices.  The oligarchs will flee westward; the liberals will crawl under their beds.  But just as the Soviets turned the tide of war in Stalingrad, the Russian people, past the first two years of a bootstrap operation will survive, thrive and become once again a beacon of hope to all  people looking to get from under the tyranny of US-NATO militarism and German-EU economic dictates.

The doctrine of white supremacy was invented in 17th century North America to justify the use and practice of slavery in the British colonies (and at the time not just limited to the south of what became the United States, but in all of them).  Just before the First US Civil War, the doctrine was well-summarized by Alexander Stephens, a Southern Unionist who later became Vice-President of the Confederate States of America under the arch-secessionist Jefferson Davis:

Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race. Such were, and are in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature’s law. With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the Negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Cain, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. Our new government is founded on the opposite idea of the equality of the races. Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the Negro is not equal to the White man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural condition.”

As I wrote in a column published in 2009, as it started the First Civil War in support of secession, the South had six principal war aims:

1. The preservation of the institution of African and African-American (the latter the courtesy of the slave owners and slave masters) slavery and its uninhibited expansion into the Territories of the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountain region, and the Southwest.
2. The acceptance by the whole United States of the Doctrine of White Supremacy on which the institution of slavery was established.
3. The establishment and subsequent strong prosecution of American Imperialism outside of North America (a position much more strongly held in the South than in the North).
4. The full, irrevocable, placement in Constitutional law of the Southern version of the doctrine of “States Rights,” that before the First Civil War primarily was in place to serve the maintenance of the institution of slavery.
5. The South strongly supported low tariffs on foreign manufactured goods while the North wanted high tariffs to protect domestic industrial development.
6. A major element of Southern politics was the use of the Big Lie Technique in politics, that, for example, the First Civil War was most ironically about “Southern Freedom,” that is the freedom to keep an element of the population enslaved.  Further along these lines, whatever the war was, it was not a rebellion, but rather a “War Between the States,” as Pat Buchanan (who had relatives from Mississippi who fought for the CSA) still refers to it, or the “War of Northern Aggression,” what it is called by James Porter, II, President of the National Rifle Association.

Except that the institution of chattel slavery does not exist, the South achieved all of its war aims, some of them beyond the wildest dreams of any of its leaders.  While for the most part that victory is pretty-well self-evident, I have detailed how they did that in, among other places, the column cited above and in my book The 15% Solution.  Perhaps most importantly, the Doctrine of White Supremacy dominates the thinking of much of the white US, both consciously and unconsciously.

Then, what immediately followed the end of the First Civil War in the South was, on the economic side, the assurance of the perpetuation of a living situation for the freed slaves that in many ways mimicked slavery, that is share-cropping (“40 acres and a mule” died under the veto pen of the Southern successor to President Lincoln, Andrew Johnson).  On the political side, the first objective of the formation of the original Ku Klux Klan was to deny the freed slaves the vote, which was fully accomplished following the withdrawal of the Union Army occupiers in 1877.  This system, along with social and commercial segregation, “Jim Crow,” stayed in place until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.  With the recent Supreme Court decision voiding a key section of that Act as it applied to the South, along with the Republican national voter suppression campaign,  African-American, as well as Latino, voting is being once again repressed, both by making it physically more difficult as well as by the imposition of a version of the poll tax: the acquisition, with no taxpayer support, of the “Voter ID.”  And etc., etc., etc.

And so, you might be saying at this point, what this all has to do with the killing of Michael Brown, black, by the police officer Darren Wilson, white.  It has everything to do with it.  An unusual event?  No, of course not.  For example, in the month between July 17 and August 17, 2014, 60 persons were killed by police officers, almost all of them black or Latino virtually none of them involved in committing a potentially fatal offense.  As “The World Can’t Wait” put it: “The murder of Black and Brown youth by the state goes on like clockwork.”

There is a reason for this state of affairs and it is not just that some white cops are racists and truly regard blacks and Latinos as second-class or non-citizens, with no rights.   It is not just because a district attorney decides on his own that he is not going to play prosecutor in this particular case, but rather defense attorney for the accused, which he can do until the cows come home in the absence of any means of cross-examination either of the accused or his witness supporters (one of whom made her own racism abundantly clear in her personal journal.  Furthermore, there was no attorney to stand in on the true prosecutorial side to challenge, before a judge, what the mis-named “prosecutor” was actually doing in defending, not prosecuting.

Oh yes, and as for why District Attorney Robert McCulloch chose to make his announcement of the Grand Jury’s decision in prime time rather than around the time when it was reached, about 2:00 PM in the afternoon?  Well, he did just win re-election, so that’s not it.  No.  This man was addressing all white US who think the way that he does, and all the white law enforcement personnel across the US who don’t want to have to worry too much should they just happen to kill an African-American or Latino in the course of duty.  McCulloch, who would likely deny vigorously that he consciously thinks in this way at all, it being so ingrained in the thought-processes of so many US, is, along with the modern Republican Party in the Congress, the Supreme Court and many state and local governments sending out a clear message: White supremacy lives.  And so, not to worry.

For many US, white supremacy is the doctrine that governs their lives.  They, sub-consciously for the most part, need to feel secure in that thinking.  And they need to feel that US “law enforcement” is doing its part to provide them with that security.  I am not talking about feeling secure in their physical surroundings, for given how highly segregated US society is, that is not too often an issue.  I am talking about what goes on inside their heads.  And so Michael Brown is killed, and the killing will not stop.  Actually, in terms of the number of deaths, police killings of black and Latinos make lynching the Old South (which was not always of blacks, mind you), except in the early days of the practice, look like much ado about not too much.  Marches, demonstrations, police lapel cameras (“Oh dear, in the heat of the moment mine fell off!”), civilian review boards, etc. are not going to change the reality in the US, still submerged under the victory of the South in the First Civil War and what it accomplished.  Only the Second Civil War, which is coming, is going to change that.

by Wake Up

In the six month period from 1st March 2014 to 31st August 2014, Eighty of London’s Metropolitan Police staff travelled to Israel. This period coincides with Operation Protective Edge, the recent bombardment and massacre of of over 2000 Palestinians in Gaza.

Recently it was revealed that the Israeli army is systematically training US police forced in tactics and strategy developed as an occupying army. Has the same or similar service been provided to European police forces?

The Metropolitan Police will not reveal the purpose of the trips to Israel or the rank of the staff that travelled. A reason given for withholding the information is that it would “have the effect of compromising law enforcement tactics and strategies ”. However, If the Metropolitan Police are learning inappropriate tactics and strategy to use on London civilians then, it is for that very reason, that this information should be released into the public domain.

If it’s the reverse and the police are teaching tactics and strategy to Israel in the context of its illegal occupation then it shows a level of involvement in the occupation that was hitherto hidden and may imply criminal behaviour according to international law.

“when your police come back, you become their enemy”

Our modern world is an electromagnetic soup filled with pulses, radio frequencies, computer screens, wireless signals, and a host of wearable gadgets that are emitting damaging radiation.

Peer-reviewed scientific studies have drawn conclusions that should concern us all, but particularly for young children and pregnant women. Government agencies are even doing battle amongst themselves over outdated scientific information that still impacts current regulations.

Yet another credible voice is now sounding the alarm about the pervasive dangers of Electromagnetic Fields (EMFs) – Professor Martin Pall, PhD – professor of Biochemistry and Basic Medical Science at Washington State University, Pullman. His lecture can be viewed below, as well as a summary of his findings amid a flood of other scientific research.

It is worth noting that Pall’s concerns have been echoed by others throughout the field of biochemistry and health science.

• A prominent neuroscientist recently went on record in a lecture to the medical community which gave strong credence to the concerns of everyday citizens.
• A world-renown biochemist went as far as to say that wireless radiation is a biohazard and should be abolished in certain settings.
• British ER physician and founder of Physicians’ Health Initiative for Radiation and the Environment (PHIRE), Dr Erica Mallery-Blythe, analyzed the exponential growth of damaging sources of EMFs – damaging to all life, as life could be defined as anything that possesses an electromagnetic field. She concludes her lecture (viewed here) with some practical solutions that can be taken to mitigate the effects of bio-active frequencies which can cause disruption of our DNA fractal antenna and promote a host of stress responses.

Professor Pall states unequivocally in his lecture in Oslo, Norway:

“I think this is going to be one of the major issues in the next few years. Most people are not aware of this, and the people who are mostly know the old data – and there’s a lot of new [information] on this that’s extremely, extremely important.”

Pall shows us how, with an increasing preponderance of so-called ‘smart’ meters, ‘smart’ phones and other microwave-emitting technologies and infrastructure, the health of the public is in danger; that our young are the most at risk and that urgent action to protect people is now required.

Prof. Pall’s extensive research over recent decades into this issue shows that:

• Microwaves damage humans at levels far below present radiation limits, through mechanisms at the cellular level
• These biological mechanisms can – completely or partially – be behind growing “unexplained illnesses” like sudden cardiac death, ME, weakened immune system, fibromyalgia, post-traumatic stress, and increased DNA breakage, etc.
• The effects can, in principle, affect all multicellular animals, and is proven, for example, in mussels (molluscs)
• You need neither New Age, tendentious science or conspiracy theories to justify this.

Now is the time to become informed and keep your friends and family up to date on new research that shows the threats some of our new technologies pose to the more vulnerable among us. How many times do we need to hear the assurances of the scientific establishment that they have covered all bases in advising governments to create health guidelines that later turn out to be woefully inadequate?

USAID homes in Haut Damier. (Photo: Marthen Malo)

According to documents from USAID, 750 houses built by USAID near the new Caracol industrial park, were found to be of poor quality and will take millions of dollars to repair.  The houses are part of USAID’s “New Settlement Program,” which was the subject of a Government Accountability Office (GAO) reportin October 2013 as well as a USAID Inspector General (IG) audit in April 2014.

The GAO report found that USAID had initially planned on building 15,000 houses but that the number had been reduced to just 2,600. At the same time costs skyrocketed, from $53 million to over $90 million. At the time of the report, just 900 houses had been built across Haiti. (For more on the housing project, and how these estimates changed, see “Outsourcing Haiti” from earlier this year in Boston Review.)

Speaking before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in October 2013, Beth Hogan, an Assistant Administrator at USAID, explained how those cost increases occurred:

Again, it’s because of the requirements that we put into our solicitation document that it meet international building codes, that it comply with federal building standards, that these materials would be disaster- and hurricane-proof.

Hogan went on to say that she was “very happy with the quality” with which the contractors were building the houses. David Gootnick, the author of the GAO report and the Director of International Affairs and Trade at the agency, echoed Hogan’s remarks, telling Congress that, “they are excellent homes that are built to a very high standard.”

However, last month, USAID quietly awarded a contract worth up to $4.5 million to an American-based firm, Tetra Tech, to provide a remediation plan for the Caracol houses. The seriousness of the deficiencies was great enough for USAID to bypass normal contracting procedures and award the contract without receiving other bids. The justification document, required when normal procedures are not followed, explains that an independent assessment was performed in August 2014, which “revealed numerous deficiencies” including “missing roof fasteners, sub-specification roof materials and concrete reinforcement, and other structural and drainage issues.”

The document explains that given the location’s susceptibility to hurricanes and other extreme weather events, the repairs must be “carried out immediately in order to prevent possible harm to residents.” The contractors responsible for the deficient buildings have already been asked to begin repairs, with Tetra Tech providing construction management services. But the blame for the poor construction doesn’t simply rest with the contractors.

The IG audit from April 2014 found that USAID required quality control plans to be drafted by the contractors themselves and that USAID personnel “did not review the contractor’s quality control procedures.” If USAID had reviewed the plans, it would have been determined that they were “not adequate to ensure that contractors documented, tracked, and corrected deficiencies,” according to the IG. Further, the IG reported that USAID “had not completed annual contractor performance evaluations” for any of the contractors working on the New Settlements Program. The lack of oversight has proven costly.

With the $4.5 million just in construction management costs, the average cost per house will increase another 20 percent, to $39,000, more than four times the original estimate.

The continued lack of decent housing in Haiti as we approach the fifth year anniversary of the 2010 earthquake remains an issue of great concern to many groups monitoring international post-quake assistance efforts.  On November 24^th, Mennonite Central Committee and other groups will host a conference on “Housing and Shelter in Haiti” with Haitian civil society leaders and academics who will discuss the flagging and inefficient international response to Haiti’s critical housing crisis.

L’Italia, facendo parte della Nato, deve destinare alla spesa militare in media 52 milioni di euro al giorno secondo i dati ufficiali della stessa Nato, cifra in realtà superiore che il Sipri quantifica in 72 milioni di euro al giorno.

Secondo gli impegni assunti dal governo nel quadro dell’Alleanza, la spesa militare italiana dovrà essere portata a oltre 100 milioni di euro al giorno.

È un colossale esborso di denaro pubblico, sottratto alle spese sociali, che potrebbe essere fortemente ridotto se l’Italia uscisse dalla Nato.

L’Alleanza Atlantica persegue una strategia espansionistica e aggressiva.

Dopo la fine della guerra fredda, ha demolito con la guerra la Federazione Jugoslava; ha inglobato tutti i paesi dell’ex Patto di Varsavia, tre dell’ex Urss e due della ex Jugoslavia; ha occupato militarmente l’Afghanistan; ha demolito con la guerra la Libia e tentato di fare lo stesso con la Siria.

Ha addestrato forze neofasciste e neonaziste ucraine, organizzando il putsch di piazza Maidan che ha riportato l’Europa a una situazione analoga a quella della guerra fredda, provocando un nuovo pericoloso confronto con la Russia.

Ha iniziato a proiettare le sue forze militari nell’Oceano Indiano nel quadro di una strategia che mira alla regione Asia-Pacifico, provocando un confronto militare con la Cina.

In tale quadro, le forze armate italiane vengono proiettate in paesi esterni all’area dell’Alleanza, per missioni internazionali che, anche quando vengono definite di «peacekeeping», sono guerre finalizzate alla demolizione di interi Stati (come già avvenuto con la Federazione Jugoslava e la Libia).

Uscendo dalla Nato, l’Italia si sgancerebbe da questa strategia di guerra permanente, che viola la nostra Costituzione, in particolare l’Art. 11, e danneggia i nostri reali interessi nazionali.

L’appartenenza alla Nato priva la Repubblica italiana della capacità di effettuare scelte autonome di politica estera e militare, decise democraticamente dal Parlamento sulla base dei principi costituzionali.

La più alta carica militare della Nato, quella di Comandante supremo alleato in Europa, spetta sempre a un generale statunitense nominato dal presidente degli Stati uniti. E anche gli altri comandi chiave della Nato sono affidati ad alti ufficiali statunitensi. La Nato è perciò, di fatto, sotto il comando degli Stati uniti che la usano per i loro fini militari, politici ed economici.

L’appartenenza alla Nato rafforza quindi la sudditanza dell’Italia agli Stati uniti, esemplificata dalla rete di basi militari Usa/Nato sul nostro territorio che ha trasformato il nostro paese in una sorta di portaerei statunitense nel Mediterraneo.

Particolarmente grave è il fatto che, in alcune di queste basi, vi sono bombe nucleari statunitensi e che anche piloti italiani vengono addestrati al loro uso. L’Italia viola in tal modo il Trattato di non-proliferazione nucleare, che ha sottoscritto e ratificato.

L’Italia, uscendo dalla Nato, riacquisterebbe la piena sovranità: sarebbe così in grado di svolgere la funzione di ponte di pace sia verso Sud che verso Est.

Sostieni la campagna per l’uscita dell’Italia dalla NATO.

LA PACE  HA BISOGNO ANCHE DI TE.

Inviare le adesioni a: [email protected]