Global Research

The true “affordability” of Obamacare has been called into question by a new study, which found that average premium costs across the board have skyrocketed from what they were before the unconstitutional tax dubbed “healthcare reform” became law in 2010.

The health insurance aggregate site HealthPocket found that, among three different non-smoking age groups, 23, 30 and 63, insurance premiums jumped significantly as a result of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The worst age category was 23-year-old men, who saw their premiums increase by an average of 78 percent.

Similarly, 30-year-old men saw their premiums increase by an astounding 73 percent, while 63-year-old men witnessed a 22.7 percent increase, on average. Women in the younger age groups also saw premium increases, though less severe.

According to the report, 23-year-old women will pay, on average, 45 percent more for health insurance under Obamacare, while 30-year-old women will pay 35 percent more. The only age group where women fared worse than men was the 63-year-olds, which saw a nearly 38 percent premium increase compared to pre-Obamacare days.

“It’s very eye-opening in terms of the transformation occurring within the individual health insurance market,” stated Kev Coleman, head of research and data at HealthPocket, as quoted by The Washington Times.

“I was surprised in general to see the differences in terms of the average premiums in the pre-reform and post-reform markets. It was a higher amount than I had anticipated.”

Even with premium subsidies, Obamacare recipients still paying more for health insurance

Obamacare apologists would claim that these higher premiums are offset by government subsidies that help those who otherwise could not afford to pay them. But the data shows that many folks, especially younger ones, don’t even qualify.

“[Y]ou still have this issue of health insurance rising for that very young group and, depending on where they are with respect to income and premium, they may not qualify for a subsidy,” explained Coleman to the media. “That’s what we like to refer to as a subsidy gap.”

And as anyone with even a cursory understanding of economics understands, even if a policyholder isn’t directly paying for a subsidy, someone else in the system is. This means that, all subsidies considered, the cost of health insurance under Obamacare is still higher across the board now than it was prior.

“[T]he subsidized portion of the premium still must be paid by the government through the money it collects from the nation,” reads the study. “In other words, the subsidized costs of health insurance do not disappear but instead change payers.”

Healthy young people expected to shoulder financial burden of covering sick folks with pre-existing health conditions

The only way Obamacare can even work is if healthy younger people agree to purchase overpriced insurance, the premiums of which cover all the unhealthy folks, many of whom have pre-existing health conditions that weren’t covered under the old insurance model.

But many of the younger people who need Obamacare in the first place likely couldn’t afford health insurance prior to its implementation, and even more so can’t afford it now due to its significantly higher premium costs.

“If you’re expanding the services you’re covering, and you’re increasing the number of less healthy people in your risk pools, that’s going to increase costs,” said Coleman, noting that Obamacare insurance has the added costs associated with 10 “essential health benefits” that are required with every plan.

These benefits include things like pediatric, dental and vision care, maternity care and newborn care, even for policyholders who don’t or can’t have children or whose children are already adults.

“Attendant to that would be an increase in premiums to be able to appropriately cover those costs,” added Coleman.

Sources:

http://www.prnewswire.com

http://www.washingtontimes.com

http://www.bna.com

It is no secret that Monsanto is making life difficult for countless farmers in America with its parented seeds. After all, the biotech giant has already filed 145 lawsuits, or on average about 9 lawsuits every year for 16 straight years, against farmers who have “improperly reused their patented seeds.” But did you know that Monsanto is also leading hundreds of thousands of farmers to suicide?

Biotech has attempted dismiss the rise in farmer suicides in India due to the introduction of genetically modified crops, but the problem is too pervasive to wipe under the rug. While there are numerous contributing factors to farmer suicides in India, debt is the largest concern, which is largely fueled by non-viable crops.

Biotech sells seeds that either don’t grow or lead to the development of unstoppable superweeds and superbugs. Subsequently, biotech urges and nearly forces farmers to purchase RoundUp and other herbicidal chemicals which the farmers can ill afford. Thus, the mind-numbing cycle begins. Read this post for more in-depth information.

What’s worse is that after a farmer commits suicide, the debt falls on the remaining family members. Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, and other suicide seed sellers have essentially created a generational slave economy based on their toxic chemical and seed monopolies.

According to figures outlining farmer suicide rates, 17,638 Indian farmers committed suicide in 2009 — about one death every 30 minutes. Oftentimes, the farmers would commit the act by drinking the very same insecticide that Monsanto supplied them with — a terrible end in which Monsanto has wrecked the lives of independent and traditional farmers.

Many families are now ruined thanks to the mass suicides, and are left to economic ruin and must struggle to fight off starvation:

‘We are ruined now,’ said one dead man’s 38-year-old wife. ‘We bought 100 grams of BT Cotton. Our crop failed twice. My husband had become depressed. He went out to his field, lay down in the cotton and swallowed insecticide.’

Now, Monsanto has caused a massive 291,000 suicides in India with its GMOs, chemical creations, and shameless business practices.

“. . . the motivations for these suicides follow a familiar pattern: Farmers become trapped in a cycle of debt trying to make a living growing Monsanto’s genetically engineered Bt cotton. They always live close to the edge, but one season’s ruined crop can dash hopes of ever paying back their loans, much less enabling their families to get ahead. Manjusha’s father, like many other suicide victims, killed himself by drinking the pesticide he spreads on his crops.”

In the video below, Dr. Vandana Shiva talks about the current situation in India and how GMO’s have affected farmers there. Dr. Shiva is an Indian environmental activist and anti-globalization author.

Hagel told reporters on Friday at the Pentagon that there had been a “consistent lack of investment and support” over “far too many years”.

He said the Defense Department will increase spending on the management of the US nuclear arsenal by about 10 percent a year for the next five years. The nuclear weapons forces reportedly cost over $15 billion annually.

“The internal and external reviews I ordered show that a consistent lack of investment and support for our nuclear forces over far too many years has left us with too little margin to cope with mounting stresses,” said Hagel.

“The root cause has been a lack of sustained focus, attention and resources, resulting in a pervasive sense that a career in the nuclear enterprise offers too few opportunities for growth and advancement,” he added.

Earlier this year, Hagel ordered two reviews of the nuclear arms program following a series of media reports revealed lapses in leadership, morale, safety and security at America’s several nuclear air force bases.

Earlier this month, the US Air Force dismissed two senior commanders from its nuclear missile corps on the grounds of indiscipline and misconduct.

Commenting on the news, an American activist and expert on military affairs said the US Air Force’s frustrated, demoralized and alcoholic officers have their fingers on the nation’s nuclear buttons.

“And it’s frightening when you think about the people that are manning the nuclear weapons infrastructure in the United States are in such a bad condition. It is very frightening,” said Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, from Bath, Maine.

GJH/GJH

I want to take just a few minutes of your time because this  is really important. Please read this article, watch the videos and check out the documentaries linked below. If you’ve got any friends in the army or know anyone considering joining up please share it with them.

“Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy.” – Henry Kissinger, former U.S. National Security Advisor and Secretary of State.

War is part of human history, we have fought each other for millennia. In most cases wars have been waged to take territories and resources. All major nations have won their power through blood and iron.  Not a lot has changed today. Big players still try to dominate the world by playing out a grand chess game. They conspire to deceive and manipulate the public through propaganda campaigns and false flag operations, they often invent non-existent threats to justify their actions. Soldiers are led to believe that they are fighting for a just cause to protect their countries but in many cases this is a travesty of the truth.

The Iraq war began in 2003 but it was merely one of a legion of conflicts involving the US in the last 200 years.  The pretext for invasion was the supposed threat to international security raised by Iraq allegedly possessing weapons of mass destruction. These were never found in the end. Initially, the American Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed that military intervention would cost no more than $60 billion and predicted that the war would not last longer than 5 months. In fact, the American-led occupation lasted for 9 years and may well have to return following the rise of Islamic State. Brown University has estimated that it has cost the US more than $2 trillion, over 40 times the initial projections and it could go beyond a staggering figure of $6 trillion.  Some sources suggest the death toll has exceeded more than one million people.

So what were the real reasons for this war?

Just take a moment and watch this testimony by General Wesley Clark:

Some of the countries he mentioned  experienced  American military intervention . Not everything happened according to plan, but let’s focus on Iraq in this instance . The US and its allies hoped to benefit from this war in several respects but the main prize was oil. Iraq has one of the largest oil reserves in the world and the US had already planned to take control of its supplies much earlier.

The following statement made by Dick Cheney in 1990 before the Senate Armed Services Committee can be seen to reveal the true purpose of the invasion: “Whoever controls the flow of Persian Gulf oil has a stranglehold not only on our economy but also on the other countries of the world as well.”

The Project For A New American Century

In September 2000 the policy paper entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century” was composed by the neoconservative think tank Project For The New American Century (PNAC) of which Dick Cheney was a member.  Established in 1997 its main goal was “to promote American global leadership”.

The report explains:

‘The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.’ The PNAC document supports a ‘blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests’.

This ‘American grand strategy’ must be advanced for ‘as far into the future as possible’, the report says. It also calls for the US to ‘fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars’ as a ‘core mission’.

The PNAC report also: refers to key allies such as the UK as ‘the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership’;

Switching  from the dollar to the euro.

In late 2000 Saddam Husain switched oil trade from dollars to euros, which infuriated Washington. They decided to do so since they didn’t want to trade “in the currency of the enemy.”

The dollar is a fiat currency, it is not backed by anything, it can only maintain its position because it is used for trading worldwide. If more countries  chose to switch to another form of payment it could have catastrophic consequences for the American economy.

Other puppets played their part.

In this video from 2003, Stephen Harper, a Canadian politician who later became prime minister, and Australian Prime Minister John Howard delivered largely identical speeches urging their nations to join George W. Bush’s Coalition to invade Iraq.

The official explanation was that it was the speechwriter who was responsible for this imitation and that Stephen Harper was unaware of this “plagiarism”

Whatever the truth of this matter, when a political leader makes such a critical decision like sending their soldiers to war they should have the moral integrity to act in the interests of their own people independently.

Mike Sygula is a blogger and activist promoting alternative ideas to raise public consciousness of the important issues facing humankind. He is currently involved in establishing Awe Academy, an open source learning and teaching platform which he is now crowdfunding for. You can learn more about Awe Academy by visiting his Indiegogo: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/awe-academy-the-revolution-in-education/x/4690696 campaign. Click here: http://truththeory.com/?s=mike+sygula to read more articles by Mike Sygula, or follow him on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mike.sygula

The communiqué issued at the end of the G20 summit held in Brisbane, Australia, over the weekend stated that agreement had been reached among the participants, whose countries comprise 85 percent of the world economy, to boost global growth by an additional 2.1 percent over the next five years, or more than $2 trillion.

However, any serious examination of the state of global capitalism or even the communiqué itself and its associated documents makes clear the commitments will be honoured only in the breach.

Both the International Monetary Fund and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development poured cold water on the goal, pointing to “the high degree of uncertainty in quantifying the impact of members’ policies.”

The G20 leaders met after a year in which an array of economic data pointed to the growing stagnation and outright recession in the world economy and the increasing risks of another financial crisis, the consequences of which would be even more devastating than those of 2008.

Moreover, the summit was held amid growing geo-political tensions, arising from the renewed US military actions in the Middle East and the sanctions imposed on Russia which are further worsening the global economic outlook.

The communiqué pledged G20 members to work in “partnership” to lift growth and boost economic resilience. But major participants, including British Prime Minister David Cameron, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and US President Obama, lined up to denounce Russia and threaten further sanctions aimed at crippling its economy, the ninth largest in the world.

The contradiction between economic reality and the commitments to boost growth jump out from the very text of the communiqué.

It begins by stating that raising global growth to deliver better living standards and quality jobs for people across the world is “our highest priority.” However in same paragraph, after noting that global growth is not delivering the jobs needed and the economy is being held back by a shortfall in demand, it points to the persistence of risks, “including in financial markets and from geopolitical tensions.”

Not a small component in the shortfall in demand results from the program of austerity being implemented by all major governments as they claw back the debts incurred as a result of bailing out the financial system and banks following the global meltdown of 2008.

The risks to which it points arise from the actions of the major powers themselves. Dangers to financial markets arise from the collapse of the asset bubbles, reflected in the rise of US stock markets to a record high, which have been created by the actions of the world key central banks in placing trillions of dollars at virtually zero interest rates in the hands of banks and financial speculators.

The geo-political risks, in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, are rooted, above all, in the drive by the United States to use military and economic power in its drive to maintain its global hegemony.

The measures set out in the communiqué are themselves internally contradictory. On the one hand, it states that G20 members will “ensure our macroeconomic policies are appropriate to support growth, strengthen demand and promote global rebalancing.” However the next sentence states that they will strive to put “debt as a share of GDP on a sustainable path”—the code phrase for continuing spending cuts that drive down demand and lead to deflation and stagnation.

The summit adopted a Global Infrastructure Initiative, declaring that it “recognises that we are facing investment and infrastructure shortfalls in the global economy which will grow further if we do not act.” But there is no prospect of co-operation and collaboration in the development of such projects.

On the eve of the summit, the Obama administration heavily intervened to ensure the Australian government reversed its in-principle decision to become a founding member of the Chinese-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank on the grounds that roads, ports and other facilities financed by the bank would enhance Chinese military capacities in the region.

The focus of the G20 measures is not the boosting of economic growth but so-called structural reforms. These have two related aims: to reduce government regulations on the operations of businesses and to worsen conditions for workers, through so called “labour market flexibility.”

In his preview of the “growth plan,” Australian treasurer Joe Hockey said that as monetary policy and fiscal policy had reached their limits, the focus had to be on “structural reform.”

An article published in the Australian Financial Review on the eve of the summit, by Richard Goyder, the chief executive of the Australian corporation Westfarmers and head of the B20 group of business leaders, made clear what that would entail. He said there was “work to be done to encourage labour market flexibility” and “workforce adaptability.”

The type of measures to be adopted was indicated in the Australian commitment to the G20 plan. It included government proposals to charge higher fees for university education and to force young unemployed people to wait for up to six months before receiving any government benefits.

The complete absence of any sense of broad-based collaboration to lift the world economy was exemplified in the extremely crass remarks by Abbott to the leaders’ retreat held shortly before official proceedings began.

As the leader of the host nation, he said the task of the summit was to “instil more confidence in the people of the world.”

Abbott then began his own five-minute contribution to the discussion by declaring that his government has carried out its election commitment to stop refugee boats arriving in Australia and had repealed the tax imposed on carbon by the previous Labor government.

He went on to bewail the fact that as part of its so-called reform agenda the government had so far been unable to introduce a $7 co-payment for visits to a doctor or deregulate university fees.

While they were a particularly graphic display of narrow nationalism, if not parochialism, Abbott’s remarks were at the same time an expression of the agenda of all the summit participants. Their actions are not determined by the need for global co-operation but by the needs of their own national-state.

National interests were to the fore in the discussions on climate change. There was a redrafting of the final communiqué to include a recommendation for countries to commit funds to the United Nations Green Climate Fund after what were described as “difficult discussions” and even “trench warfare.”

The Abbott government has specifically opposed the fund, describing it as “socialism masquerading as environmentalism,” and the prime minister was reported to have made a passionate defence of the fossil fuel industry.

However, the United States is in a different position as result of the development of the shale gas industry. Consequently Obama was reported to have forcefully opposed Abbott on the question of coal and coal-fired power stations.

The dispute was an example of the conflicting national interests which render all the wordy commitments to co-operation and collaboration to lift the world economy a dead letter.

The United States is a society incapable of producing a major documentary film opposing the institution of war and explicitly advocating its abolition. If it did so, the major corporate media outlets would not sing such a film’s praises.

Yet Watchers of the Sky is beloved by the U.S. corporate media because it opposes genocide, not war.  I’m not aware of any opponents of war who don’t also oppose genocide. In fact, many oppose the two as a single evil without the stark distinction between them. But the anti-genocide academic nonprofit industrial complex has become dominated by leading advocates for war.

As we watch people lament Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur while supporting mass killing in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, we seem to be witnessing a sort of extended victors’ justice running 70 years from the hypocritical “justice” that followed World War II right through the establishment of the International Criminal Court (for Africans).

Right-wing war supporters oppose “terrorism” which means small-scale killing my government disapproves of. Liberal war supporters oppose “genocide” which means killing my government disapproves of and which is motivated by backward drives like race or religion rather than enlightened projects like control of fossil fuels, profiteering off weapons, or maintaining global hegemony.

Selective outrage over killing within a country has become a common justification for killing across borders (and oceans).

Ben Ferencz, featured in Watchers of the Sky, was recently on my radio show pushing his idea of criminalizing war while refusing to consider recent U.S. wars to fit the category of wars worth criminalizing.

Samantha Power, star of Watchers of the Sky, supports mass killing. I don’t think she’s pretending to be outraged by genocide any more than Madeline Albright who said killing a half million children had been a good policy is pretending when she claims to be outraged by genocide. I think such people are outraged by evils they have permitted themselves to see as evil, while blinding themselves to horrors they prefer not to recognize.

I recently gave a talk at a college and happened to mention Hillary Clinton’s comment about obliterating Iran. A professor interrupted me to state that such a thing never happened. A student pulled up the video of Clinton on several websites on a phone, but the professor still denied it stating that it made no sense. That is to say, it didn’t fit into his worldview. I later happened to criticize Israel’s treatment of Gaza, and the same professor got up and stormed out of the room. He could only deny what was done to Gaza by avoiding hearing it altogether. I have no doubt that he would have expressed sincere outrage over Rwanda if asked.

The problem with the focus on Yugoslavia and Rwanda is the pretense that there is something worse than, discrete from, and preventable by war. The myths about the origins and outcomes of those horrors play down the role that Western militarism had in creating them while playing up the role it had or could have had in preventing them. War is depicted as an under-utilized tool, while the effects of both war and genocide (such as refugee crises) are blamed entirely on genocide.

The odd thing is that people being slaughtered from the sky are almost always being slaughtered by the U.S. military and its allies. Those who can only see killing when it’s done by people resisting U.S. domination can usually keep their eyes comfortably downward.

Police throughout the United States are making preparations to crack down on possible protests following an imminent decision on whether to bring charges against Darren Wilson, the Ferguson, Missouri police officer who shot unarmed teenager Michael Brown on August 9. A grand jury is expected to return a decision on indictment as early as today.

The Associated Press carried a story Saturday reporting that police are “ready” for protests in cities throughout the country. The report followed the announcement last week by Missouri Governor Jay Nixon that he would call in the National Guard in the event of protests if there is no indictment of Wilson.

“Naturally, we always pay attention,” said Los Angeles Police Department spokesman Andrew Smith. “We saw what happened when there were protests over there and how oftentimes protests spill from one part of the country to another.”

The AP also cited preparations in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which has seen its own wave of recent police killings; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and New York City. In the St. Louis suburb of Berkeley, Missouri, “officials this week passed out fliers urging residents to be prepared for unrest just as they would a major storm—with plenty of food, water and medicine in case they’re unable to leave home for several days.”

The report focused on police preparations in Boston, which was put under effective martial law last year after the bomb attack at the Boston Marathon. The AP noted that the city’s “police leaders met privately Wednesday to discuss preparations” for the protests. “Common sense tells you the timeline is getting close,” a spokesman for the Boston Police said. “We’re just trying to prepare in case something does step off, so we are ready to go with it.”

The implications of the article are quite plain. In a country where the “right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” is included in the Bill of Rights, police respond to the very possibility of protests with thinly veiled threats of mass arrests, tear gas and rubber bullets.

A decision not to indict Wilson, by a grand jury that has been manipulated by the prosecutor’s office, would be extremely provocative, flying in the face of forensics evidence and multiple eyewitness accounts indicating that Brown was gunned down even though he posed no threat to Wilson. This is particularly true since an indictment is not a guilty verdict, but simply a finding that there are sufficient grounds to have a public trial.

In the event that charges are brought against Wilson, the one-sided and selective leaks of information from the grand jury, likely coordinated by state officials and presented uncritically in the media, will have already poisoned public opinion, including potential jurors in any trial.

Earlier this weekend, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch released key evidence relating to the shooting, including radio dispatch recordings on the day Michael Brown was killed, and video surveillance footage showing Wilson arriving at a hospital two hours after the shooting.

Attorneys for the family of Michael Brown noted that the video evidence contradicted earlier claims by police officials that Wilson was severely injured prior to the shooting. At the time, major media outlets, including the Post-Dispatch itself, passed off these unsubstantiated claims by the police as good coin.

“Information was leaked from within the police department that Wilson was severely beaten and suffered an orbital eye socket ‘blowout,’ indicating that Michael Brown somehow deserved to die,” attorneys for the Brown family said in an email statement. “From the video released today it would appear the initial descriptions of his injuries were exaggerated.”

Also on Saturday, Ferguson police chief Tom Jackson made clear that Wilson will not be fired if charges are not brought against him, and that he will instead be allowed to return to work.

The preparations by police throughout the US indicate that the ruling class is well aware of the explosive social tensions that are building up in the United States. The November midterm elections earlier this month exposed the chasm between the political establishment and the working class. Extremely low voter turnout revealed that broad sections of the population are alienated from and increasingly hostile to the political system as a whole.

In the aftermath of the elections, the Obama administration announced that it would double the US troop presence in Iraq, despite mass opposition to war by the population. Social inequality is soaring, while the state asserts ever-more sweeping powers to spy on the population and police proceed as though they have a license to kill workers and young people with impunity.

The fact that there can be no expression within the political system of social opposition means that this opposition will take other forms. The protests in Ferguson in August already expressed the hostility that exists among workers and young people to social inequality and the pervasive attacks on democratic rights, including the growth of a massive and unaccountable military/intelligence apparatus in the United States.

The political establishment, both Democrats and Republicans, has responded to the protests with a two-pronged strategy. Behind the scenes, the Obama administration facilitated and coordinated a police crackdown that employed military equipment transferred to local departments as part of programs that have been vastly expanded over the past decade.

On the other hand, the White House has worked with the proponents of racial politics to present the Brown killing as an issue of “race relations” in an attempt to channel popular opposition back behind the Democratic Party. The Democrats have connections with a network of local organizations that aim to obscure the fundamental social and political issues at stake in the killing of Brown and the police response to the protests over the summer.

The fundamental question presented by the events in Ferguson is not one of racial or “community” relations, but of the immense social chasm between the corporate and financial aristocracy on the one hand, and the working class and youth on the other. The state violence that has been used and is being prepared is the response of the ruling class to the class tensions building up in America.

Commemorative drawings of the victims of the 1989 massacre at UCA (Photo: Steve Rhodes, 2009)

Washington, DC. – Twenty five years have passed since the horrifying murders in El Salvador of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter, during a rampage by Salvadoran security forces in the early morning hours of November 16, 1989, on the campus of the University of Central America (UCA) in the country’s capital. It has been twenty five years of grieving by the victims’ families and the Jesuit community; and twenty five years of waiting for justice to identify and prosecute the killers.

As they have done on so many other anniversaries of the brutal crime, thousands of Salvadorans and international visitors gathered in San Salvador to commemorate the lives of Father Ignacio Ellacuría Bescoetxea, UCA’s rector at the time of his assassination; Father Ignacio Martín-Baró; Father Segundo Montes; Father Armando López; Father Juan Ramón Moreno; Father Joaquín López y López; Julia Elba Ramos and her 13-year-old child Celina Maricet Ramos.

But this year’s anniversary is a little different. Although the perpetrators have yet to be brought to trial for their role in planning and ordering the crime, human rights lawyers at the San Francisco-based Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) believe they are closer than ever to achieving some measure of justice. A case that CJA opened in 2008 before the Spanish National Court under the principle of universal jurisdiction is inching forward, with presiding Judge Eloy Velásquez ruling just over a month ago to continue prosecuting the Jesuit killings , despite the reluctance of the Spanish Parliament to allow Spain to pursue international human rights cases. Velásquez has indicted twenty senior members of El Salvador’s military for planning, ordering, or participating in the crime .

The National Security Archive has spent the past quarter of a century collecting declassified US documents on El Salvador, including the Jesuit murders. Hundreds of those documents have been entered as evidence into CJA’s Spanish case . Thousands are published in two Digital National Security Archive collections. Today, in commemoration of the deaths, the Archive posts ten documents written by US officials on the day of the murders and during the week that followed.

Taken together, the documents indicate the striking initial unwillingness on the part of the United States to acknowledge the possibility that its closest Central American ally — the Salvadoran armed forces — may have been behind the atrocity. Despite overwhelming evidence of the Army’s bitter hostility toward the Jesuits — as documented by the UN Truth Commission report — the first reaction of United States officials on the day of the murders was the imprecise speculation that often served as a default US setting whenever political violence struck in El Salvador: that “extremists on either the right or the left may be responsible,” as Ambassador William G. Walker wrote in his earliest cable to Washington about the crime.

The theory was expanded in a lengthy CIA memorandum the following day that dwelled on indications that the killers could have been from the guerrilla forces of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), citing such evidence as, “Civilians reported the presence of 100 insurgents eating and resting on the highway behind the Hoescht factory [near] Ciudad Merliot … two kilometers southwest of the University of Central America …. ” On the other hand, wrote the Agency, the killers might have been “rightist extremists,” an encoded reference to polarizing rightwing politicians such as Roberto D’Aubuisson — a leading member of the ruling party ARENA — who reportedly made threatening comments about the priests in a talk given hours after they had already been killed. Nowhere in the CIA’s analysis was the military mentioned as a possible perpetrator.

In addition to ignoring signs that members of the armed forces had carried out the crime, US officials sought to bolster Salvadoran President Alfredo Cristiani as he prepared to face the possibility that his own party’s leadership was responsible for what Walker called “a barbarous and incredibly stupid action.” On November 19, Ambassador Walker sent an impassioned (and profoundly wrong) telegram to the State Department focusing on the alleged responsibility of ARENA extremists and proposing that he tell Cristiani that “with the USG [US Government], the leadership and majority of the armed forces officer corps, and the decent forces of Salvadoran society on his side, he can and must once and for all separate himself from those responsible for this barbarism.” Meanwhile, Secretary of State James Baker asked his ambassador in Madrid to urge Spain not to cut aid to El Salvador, which it had announced it would do in response to the murder of the Spanish-born priests.

As evidence began to emerge pointing to the Army’s role in the killings, the US documents reflected the alarm felt in Washington about its implications. Secretary Baker wrote directly to the Director of the CIA William Webster to request his agency’s assistance. “We would appreciate on an urgent basis information regarding the military units present in the area at the time of the killings, and the orders issued to such units.” US Assistant Secretary of State Bernard Aronson warned Ambassador Walker to hurry the investigations, arguing that allowing them to become drawn out would likely lead to stonewalling on the part of the Salvadoran government and impunity for the killers. Aronson evidently feared the consequences of publicly airing US suspicions about military responsibility for the killings, pressing Walker to keep his findings secret.

“I cannot stress enough the importance of building as solid a case as possible and then working closely with Cristiani on a strategy. We may be asking Cristiani to do what has never been done, actions which may involve moving against elements of his own party and perhaps even divide the Army. Please hold this information very closely.”

By the following year, in 1990, the US could no longer hide what its own investigation had uncovered: that the Salvadoran armed forces “at the highest levels” made the decision to kill the Jesuits.

Now, 25 years later, the United States has a decision to make. Although the Salvadoran government has so far rejected Spain’s request for the extradition of suspects in the crime, one of the indicted officers — Col. (Ret.) Inocente Orlando Montano — pled guilty in 2012 to charges of immigration fraud and perjury in a Boston courtroom and was sentenced in 2013 to 21 months in federal prison. Spanish Judge Velásquez is seeking the extradition of Montano to Madrid following completion of his jail term. A US ruling in favor of extradition would permit the Spanish case to proceed to trial and offer families of the eight victims a chance at justice in what has been a long and painful odyssey.

Research Assistance by Alexandra Smith

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THE DOCUMENTS

Document 1: Jesuit Rector of UCA Shot Dead; Seven Others Killed
DNSA No. EL01044
U.S. Embassy in El Salvador
Confidential Cable
November 16, 1989

This confidential cable represents the U.S. Embassy’s first reaction to the assassination of Father Ignacio Ellacuria and five other Jesuit priests, along with a housekeeper and her daughter, at the Central American University. The cable includes the names and positions of each of the victims, and summarily describes information collected by the Country Team regarding events at the University prior to the murders.

Document 2: Situation Report As of 1430 Hours Local Time
DNSA No. EL00278
Central Intelligence Agency
Cable, Classification Excised
November 16, 1989

This cable from the Central Intelligence Agency illustrates the early understanding that the murders of Father Ignacio Ellacuria and his colleagues could have been perpetrated by the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). The news is buried in a general summary of FMLN activities, including the takeover of Police Detachment headquarters in Cuscatancingo, and discussion of the armed forces’ “slow” progress in battling insurgents.

Document 3: Movement of 1,000 Fresh FMLN Troops to San Salvador; Planned Role of Ellacuria in Effecting New Negotiations Between the FMLN and the Government 
DNSA No. EL00279
Central Intelligence Agency
Cable, Classification Excised
November 17, 1989

This CIA cable summarizes talks between Father Ignacio Ellacuria and members of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front regarding negotiations with the government of El Salvador. The cable states that Ellacuria approved of the idea, and suggests that he was acting as a go-between for the two groups.

Document 4: Killing of Dr. Ignacio Ellacuria
DNSA No. EL00281
Central Intelligence Agency
Intelligence Memorandum, Classification Excised
November 17, 1989

An intelligence summary suggesting possible perpetrators of the UCA murders, this CIA cable indicates: “deaths could have been perpetrated by extremists of left or right.” The military is not mentioned in this document, despite their prevalence in other sources.

Document 5: Ellacuria Murder Et Al: Request for FBI Assistance
DNSA No. EL01046
U.S. Embassy in El Salvador
Limited Official Use Cable
November 18, 1989

In this official use cable reporting President Cristiani’s request for assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the investigation of the recent murders, Ambassador Walker insists that this crime should not go the way of all the other human rights crimes that had occurred in the 1980’s, and presses for a “credible investigation.”

Document 6: Ellacuria Assassination
DNSA No. EL01047
U.S. Embassy in El Salvador
Secret Cable
November 19, 1989

Ambassador Walker reports finding the “first substantive evidence” that members of the Nationalist Republican Alliance “might have triggered events which led to [the] murder” of the Jesuit priests at UCA. The Ambassador calls on President Cristiani to recognize the truth about “the right” in his party, and stand up for democracy.

Document 7: [Letter from Secretary of State to CIA Director Requesting Help with Investigation of Jesuit Murders]
DNSA No. EL01048
Department of State, Office of the Secretary
Secret Letter
November 20, 1989

Secretary of State Baker requests help from the Central Intelligence Agency in “developing information” about the perpetrators of the murder of Father Ellacuria and his colleagues. This request shows that the State Department was beginning to understand that the Army of El Salvador was involved in the crime.

Document 8: Government Investigation of Killings in El Salvador
DNSA No. EL00282
Central Intelligence Agency
Intelligence Memorandum, Classification Excised
November 21, 1989

This CIA intelligence memorandum examines political constraints on President Cristiani as he decides how to move against the perpetrators of the Jesuit murders. The document focuses on the “circumstantial evidence” against Roberto D’Abuisson and the ARENA party. The memo states that Cristiani is “highly sensitive to international criticism of human rights abuses in El Salvador.”

Document 9: Demarche on Spanish Policy Toward El Salvador
DNSA No. 01049
Department of State
Confidential Cable
November 22, 1989

This State Department demarche requests that Ambassador Walker counsel Spain to take caution in steps against El Salvador, after reports of suspended aid and the potential for further “retaliatory actions” in response to the murder of the Spanish-born Jesuit priests. The cable includes talking points that emphasize the idea that “too much pressure at this delicate moment could play into the hands of the FMLN guerillas.”

Document 10: Ellacuria Assassination
DNSA No. EL01050
Department of State
Secret Cable
November 22, 1989

Assistant Secretary of State Bernard Aronson urges Ambassador Walker to work with President Cristiani to move the case of the Jesuit murders hastily to its next stage. He states: “drawing it out will give those involved the chance to abort our efforts as they did in Romero assassination,” referring to the 1980 murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero by killers associated with ARENA leader Roberto D’Aubuisson. Aronson goes on to say that this may involve asking the president to “do what has never been done, actions which may involve moving against elements of his own party.” Aronson closes his note with the addendum: “Please hold this information very closely.”

Ukraine’s President, Petro Poroshenko, in an Odessa TV address to the nation, on November 13th, said:

“We will have our jobs. They will not. We will have our pensions. They will not. We will have care for children, for people, and retirees. They will not. Our children will go to schools and kindergartens. Theirs will hole up in basements [from our bombs]. Because they are not able to do anything. This is exactly how we will win this war! [I.e., we will starve and terrorize them into submission.]”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHWHqj8g7Bk

His corrupt government was installed by the United States of America, in a violent coup this past February, under the cover of “Maidan” demonstrations against the previous corrupt leader of Ukraine. U.S. President Barack Obama wants U.S. oil companies to be able to frack in Ukraine, and wants to place nuclear missiles there, against next-door Russia, but the previous Ukrainian ruler wouldn’t go along with those goals. So, Obama overthrew him and now wants to get rid also of the people who had voted for him. That’s why the successor President, Poroshenko, is bombing these people: to get rid of them.

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.

 

 

Mr. J.L. kindly shared this English translation of an interview with Mr. Nikolai Patrushev, current Secretary of the Russian Security Council (since 2008), and former Director of Russia’s FSB ( Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, the renamed KGB) from 1999-2008. As such, it is a lengthy and detailed interview, but important to see how the current leadership surrounding Mr. Putin in Moscow views the world, and particularly its relationship with the USA and the West since the days of the Cold War:

Cold War II: Interview with Nikolay Patrushev, Secretary of the Russian Security Council

There are many things to be noted about Mr. Patrushev’s frank analysis. Most notably, Mr. Patrushev points out that the strategy of “vulnerabilities” that brought down the USSR was a deliberate orchestration of a collapse of energy prices, upon which the USSR built its export economy, a strategy that Mr. Patrushev strongly hints is behind the recent drop of oil prices, which, he is suggesting, will not work this time as Russia has been actively promoting new types of political and economic alliances:

“Our country’s main “vulnerability,” as defined by the CIA, was its economy. After detailed modelling, the American experts identified its “weakest link”, namely the USSR budget’s extremely high dependence on the export of energy resources. A strategy of provoking the financial and economic bankruptcy of the Soviet state was formulated, envisaging two interconnected objectives: the bringing about of a sharp reduction in revenue to the USSR’s budget from foreign trade, combined with a substantial increase in expenditure on resolving problems created from outside.

“A reduction in world oil prices was envisaged as the main measure for reducing the income side of the budget. This was successfully achieved by the mid-1980s when, as a result of US collusion with the rulers of a number of oil extracting countries, an artificial surplus of crude was created on the market and oil prices fell almost by a factor of four.”

Note that Russia’s response and determination to prevent what it viewed as clear attempts to break up the Russian Federation gained a dramatic impetus as a result of Washington’s meddling in South Ossetia:

“After 7-8 August 2008, when the Georgian leadership, with US support, attempted to annihilate South Ossetia, the world once again changed substantially. For the first time in many decades Washington provided direct support to a foreign state that had perpetrated an attack on Russian citizens and peacekeepers.

“Everything was staked on surprise. The Georgian dictator believed that a military incursion on the opening day of the international Olympic Games would put Russia in a difficult position, and the Georgians, taking advantage of this, would carry out their “blitzkrieg”. However, the Russian leadership reacted promptly to the sharp deterioration in the situation and the necessary measures were adopted to halt the aggression.

“[Yegorov] It was at that time that people started talking about the shaping of a new geopolitical reality – the multipolarity of the modern world. How did the United States react to this?

“[Patrushev] After the August events in the Caucasus, Washington was clearly alarmed by Russia’s obvious intention to take its place among the world powers of the 21st century and uphold the principle of equal opportunities and full autonomy in global politics. And also to convert the state’s financial income from the exploitation of natural resources into real economic and defence potential and human capital.

The American leadership clearly also disliked the prospects of Russia’s collaboration with China and India, the introduction of the practice of summits in the BRICS format, the successful activity of other organizations in which Russia occupies leading positions (the CSTO [Collective Security Treaty Organization], the SCO [Shanghai Cooperation Organization], and the EAEC [Eurasian Economic Community]), and the formation of the Customs Union.” (All emphasis in the original)

Thus, from the long term perspective of history, Mr. Patrushev and the current Moscow leadership believe that the ultimate goal is simply to break the Russian Federation apart:

“Analysis shows that by provoking Russia into retaliatory steps the Americans are pursuing the very same objectives as in the 1980s with regard to the USSR. Just like back then, they are trying to identify our country’s “vulnerabilities”. At the same time, incidentally, they are pursuing the objective of neutralizing European economic competitors who have, in Washington’s opinion, grown excessively close to Moscow.”

The “meme” that will drive this, Patrushev suggests, is that Russia’s vast natural resource holdings are somehow “unfair” to the rest of humanity, the implication being that the Russian Federation should be broken up (read, placed under Western control), for “the good of humanity”:

“Many American experts, in particular former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, assert that there are vast territories “under Moscow’s power” that it is incapable of exploiting and which therefore “do not serve the interests of all humanity”. Assertions continue to be heard about the “unfair” distribution of natural resources and the need to ensure so-called “free access” to them for other states.

“The Americans are convinced that people must be thinking in similar terms in many other states, particularly those neighbouring on Russia, and that in the future they will, as is nowadays the custom, form “coalitions” to support the corresponding claims on our country. As in the case of Ukraine, it is proposed to resolve problems at Russia’s expense but without taking its interests into account.

“Even during periods of a relative thaw in relations between Russia (the USSR) and the United States, our American partners have always remained true to such notions.”

This, of course, Russia will not permit, and in language echoing President Putin’s recent statements at the Valdai conference, Mr. Patrushev serves notice that this is a “pipe dream”:

“Therefore irrespective of the nuances in the behaviour of the Americans and their allies the Russian leadership still faces this task as a constant: To guarantee the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Motherland, to defend and multiply its riches, and to manage them correctly in the interests of the multiethnic people of the Russian Federation.”

So why am I taking such pains to cite so much of Mr. Patrushev’s interview in Rossiskaya Gazetta? And my answer is, not so much because of what he says, but what his remarks imply might be a long term analysis and strategy being pursued by Moscow. First, note that he has drawn attention to the “analysis and strategy of vulnerabilities” conducted under the Reagan Administration, and the economic warfare in all its various forms. Mr.Patrushev mentions the manipulation of oil prices, and though he does not mention the infamous Farewell spy case, he as former Director of the FSB no doubt knows that this economic warfare included more active measures, such as the deliberate shipping of corrupt hardware and software components from the west into Soviet industry, using the KGB’s own industrial spying program to do it. (In the Farewell case, the result was that the French-run mole within the KGB supplied Paris and Washington with the KGB’s shopping list, which Washington very obligingly and covertly supplied. One result was the massive explosion of a Soviet gas pipeline – visible from space – due to the corrupted software.)

In short, Mr. Patrushev has implied the FSB has undertaken its own vulnerabilities studies of the West and of the USA, and that a similar goal – the prying of US allies and satellites out of the Western Alliance system “space”, is the long term goal, with the implosion of the USA itself as an even longer term goal. In confirmation of this analysis, consider Mr. Patrushev’s own statements about the two-fold goal behind the formation of NATO:

“As you know, after World War II the confrontation between the USSR and the West headed by the United States took the form of a “cold war”. The military-political component of this standoff was entrusted to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), formed on the initiative of the United States on 4 April 1949. An analysis of NATO’s practical activity indicates that in creating the alliance the United States was pursuing two main objectives.

“First, a military bloc directed against the USSR was formed under American leadership.

:Second, Washington forestalled the emergence in Western Europe of an autonomous grouping of states that could have competed with the United States. It should be recalled that the territory of the United States itself, which essentially established unilateral military control over the allies, is not included in NATO’s zone of responsibility.” (Emphasis added)

Recall the similar statements of Zbigniew Brzezinski in his own book, The Grand Chessboard, that NATO was as much about containing German power as it was about containing Soviet power.

By highlighting NATO, and backhandedly indicating the pivotal position of Germany within the NATO-EU bloc, Mr.  Patrushev is, I believe, indicating what a long term Russian strategy will be, namely, to use world opinion, the already strong European-Russian international trade in energy, and the growing BRICSA bloc to leverage Europe away from NATO, or, failing that, to significantly reduce American influence within the organization.

What remains to be seen, however, is how that strategy will emerge in its operational and tactical details. But given Mr. Patrushev’s analytical tone and careful review of the world situation from the Moscow point of view, we can rest assured that some of those details are probably already worked out.

As the old Chinese proverb has it, “May you live in interesting times,” seems to be true. Time will show what those details are. One thing does emerge, however, from Mr. Patrushev’s remarks: the last time around, the Soviets played the American game (poker), and this time around, they mean to play Russia’s game (chess).

Medical experts are saying that the biggest flaw of Big Pharma today is a high percentage of ineffective products being sold without previous clinical trials. This is particularly true when anti-cancer medications are concerned.The sad fact is that Big Pharma prefers to invest in advertising and bribing officials instead of attempting to make their products truly effective. Today pharmaceutical manufacturing is handsomely funded by politicians and organized crime, since it’s has become one of the most efficient money laundering schemes and has already corrupted a large number of US and EU officials.

Biotech expert C. Glenn Begley, the former Vice-President and Global Head of Hematology and Oncology Research at Amgen – one of the largest cancer research centers in the US, is now a senior vice president in a private biotech company TetraLogic. In his article published in Nature magazine back in March 2012, Glenn stated that a series of tests conducted under his supervision proved that out of 53 anti-cancer drugs that had been developed by “respected laboratories,” a total of 47 showed no noticeable improvements in patients’ health conditions (which amounts to 88%).

Unfortunately, this study was proven right by a number of research teams that arrived at similar results while running tests. In 2009, a group of researchers at Michigan State University reached a similar conclusion, just like Bayer‘s research team. At the same time certain research institutes, like the famous Harvard Medical School, prefer to falsify their studies. In Harvard’s case it received a hefty grant of 15 million dollars from the Federal government.

Big Parma is all about PR campaigns and advertisements, while putting new potentially dangerous drugs on the market. For example, Glivec and Sutent that are authorized for usage in Europe, are reducing the size of tumors by wiping out pericytes that prevent the growth of tumor-nourishing blood vessels. As a result, additional testings showed, these drugs force cancer to spread faster across a body, making it increasingly more deadly.

Canadian Professor at the Department of Pharmacology at Dalhousie University, George S. Robertson is also stressing the ineffectiveness of certain drugs that are being put on the market today.

Over the past two decades, the most promising drugs that should have allowed people to fight cancer effectively were Gleevec and Herceptin. However, as it has been recently discovered, each of these medications initiated genetic mutations of cells, by turning a regular one into a malignant cell.

Scientists from Bayer had little luck with their studies as well. In 2011, in a paper “Believe it or not”, Bayer admitted that researchers couldn’t get the same results in clinical trials on stage two of their testings. The head of Target Discovery at Bayer Schering Pharma admitted that research teams couldn’t replicate the initial results of most of Bayer’s studies, no matter how hard they tried. Out of 47 potential new anti-cancer drugs less than one-quarter got past stage two. The scandal that followed put an end to all anti-cancer studies at Bayer.

According to C. Glenn Begley, when investigating Amgen Inc, approximately 100 scientists could not confirm the official results of clinical trials they contacted the producers of these drugs. Some of them demanded that Amgen Inc should sign a non-disclosure agreement in order to keep these facts from being published.

In pursuit of federal grants Big Pharma is falsifying research, by paying for factless publications in scientific journals, which then opens a direct path to the introduction of new drugs on the market, regardless of their potential danger. Unfortunately, regular people across the globe are to pay for this deceit, more often than not with their own lives.

Vladimir Platov, Middle East expert, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

A controversial government contractor once again finds itself in hot water, or in this case, melting glacier water.

TransCanada chose Environmental Resources Management Group (ERM) as one of its contractors to conduct the environmental impact statement for Keystone XL on behalf of the U.S. State Department. ERM Group also happens to have green-lighted a gold mining project in central Asia that is now melting glaciers.

ERM Group has a penchant for rubber-stamping projects that have had tragic environmental and public health legacies. For example, ERM formerly worked on behalf of the tobacco industry to pitch the safety of its deadly product.

A January 2014 study about Keystone XL’s climate change impacts published in the journal Nature Climate Change paints a drastically different picture than ERMGroup’s Keystone XL tar sands study.

The Kumtor Gold Mine, owned by Centerra Gold/Cameco Corporation, was provided a stamp of approval from ERM Group in October 2012. Similar to the TransCanada arrangement with the State Department on Keystone XL, Centerra served as the funder of the report evaluating its own project.

“The mine sits at an altitude of 4,000 meters above sea level, in the Tien Shan mountain range and among some of Kyrgyzstan’s – and the region’s – most important glaciers,” explained an October 28 story published in Asia Times.

“Centerra Gold has consistently dismissed as untrue that operations at Kumtor have had negative implications for the glaciers, which are reportedly melting with observable speed due to years of dumping rock tailings onto the ice sheet. The Canadian company has backed its position with expert evaluations from consultancies such as Environmental Resources Management.”

DeSmogBlog’s finding comes in the aftermath of the U.S. House of Representatives voting to authorize the Alberta to Cushing, Oklahoma KeystoneXL northern leg, with a vote in the U.S. Senate to follow on November.

Josh Earnest, White House press secretary, hinted President Barack Obama will veto the bill if it arrives at his desk, with Obama also sounding as if a veto looms in a recent public appearance.

“I have to constantly push back against the idea that Keystone is either a massive jobs bill for the U.S. or is somehow lowering gas prices,” said Obama. “Understand what the project is, it will provide the ability for Canada to pump their oil and send it through their land down to the Gulf where it will be sold everywhere else.”

Bill Promoters Cite ERM Report

Promoters of the latest legislative push to ram through Keystone XL North have cited ERM’s State Department report as a reason for why Obama should sign off on the bill.

“The time for excuses is over,” the head of the American Petroleum Institute(API), Jack Gerard, said at an API-sponsored panel convened by The Hill (beginning at about 4:42 in the video). “This has been in the process for six years and has gone through five comprehensive environmental reviews and somehow [there is] this excuse that we’ve got to let the [permitting] process continue.”

Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), sponsor of the Senate bill and in the midst of a run-off vote election against U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) — sponsor of the House-version of the bill — sang a similar tune about the ERM study at a press conference.

“This project has cleared every environmental hurdle and it has met the complete environmental review,” Landrieu stated in listing off the reasons why the pipeline should be approved.

The sponsor of another Senate bill introduced in May calling for the approval of Keystone XL North, U.S. John Hoeven (R-ND), also cited ERM’s State Department report in addressing the full Senate floor on November 13.

“[T]he final environmental impact statement…stated the project will have have no siginficant environmental impact [and] stated that very clearly,” said Hoeven.

“Hail Mary”

The Landrieu-Cassidy run-off has become what Houston Chronicle energy reporter Jennifer Dlouhy called a “Hail Mary” for both of them at The Hill event.

“There is no more vivid example that elections matter than the Keystone XLpipeline,” said Dlouhy (beginning at 33:33). “Both Representative Cassidy and Senator Landrieu are fighting to claim the title of the oil industry’s biggest champion, as well as that seat, and both view Keystone XL as their Hail Mary.”

But if Big Oil catches the Hail Mary pass and runs the ball into the end-zone, it will mean more melting glaciers in the Arctic at the hands of climate disruption, caused by the tar sands production Keystone XL North will incentivize.

Since October 2014, both Ankara and Washington altered or adjusted their approaches to the battle over Kobani. Mounting pressure, including domestic anger and protests in Turkish Kurdistan against Turkey’s ruling AK Party, forced neo-Ottomanist Turkish President Erdogan and his officials to allow token support to cross the Syrian-Turkish border into Kobani. One hundred and fifty Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) peshmerga troopers from Iraqi Kurdistan were allowed to transit through Turkish territory into Kobani on November 1, 2014. The Pentagon also started to airdrop supplies near Kobani.

There are, however, catches to both gestures of support from the US and Turkish governments. Firstly, the corrupt KRG in Iraqi Kurdistan is a Turkish, US, and Israeli ally and business partner. The KRG is also a rival of the local Kurdish authorities in Kobani and hostile towards the most popular political movement in Syrian Kurdistan, the Democratic Union Party (PYD). Secondly, some of the US supplies that the Pentagon has dropped near Kobani got into the hands of the ISIL. In context of the US and Turkish goals addressed earlier, it appears that the US airdrops getting into the hands of the ISIL was intentional.

Washington’s attitude towards Syrian Kurdistan or Rojava has been very different from its attitude towards the corrupt KRG in Iraqi Kurdistan or Southern Kurdistan. In August 2014, when the ISIL attacked territory under the KRG’s control in Iraqi Kurdistan, the US immediately «appeared» to come to the aid of the KRG’s peshmerga units in the battles for Zumar and Sinjar (Shingal), albeit the Iraqis and other local actors, including the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Syrian Kurds, did most of the work fighting the ISIL, and evacuating the multi-ethnic Yezidi, Muslim, and Christian populations from these areas. Moreover, the US airstrikes utterly failed to stop the ISIL’s siege of Sinjar and many of the defending KRG peshmerga actually fled their posts when the ISIL’s forces advanced. If it was not for the PKK’s deployment, the Iraqi military would not have been able to evacuate many of the residents. The point here is that while heavy weaponry was delivered to the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraqi Kurdistan, it has not been delivered to the Democratic Union Party in Syrian Kurdistan, which has done more to fight the ISIL than the KRG.

The main reasons for the different US attitude and approach towards the Syrian Kurds are based on the facts that the Syrians Kurds are:

(1) not US allies;

(2) they are not opposed to Damascus or pushing for regime change in Syria; and

(3) they are not working to fragment Syria or Iraq.

Tensions run high between the Turkish government and the PYD. The ideological and working affiliation of the PYD to the PKK, which was aligned to Damascus in the past and has fought a bitter civil war against the Turkish military in Northern Kurdistan, has been cited as one of the reasons for the tensions between Ankara and the PYD. The reasons for the tensions, however, are not merely on account of the PYD’s affiliation to the PKK. In reality, Turkish officials do not want to see another autonomous Kurdish region on their southern border, especially a free-thinking one that is run by an inclusive grassroots movement which is unpredictable and not under Turkish influence.

Turkey sees the PYD and an autonomous Rojava or Syrian Kurdistan as a potential threat to itself, because a genuinely independent and inclusive Kurdish polity could encourage Turkish Kurds to make demands for similar autonomy in Northern Kurdistan or Turkish Kurdistan. Syrian Kurdistan could also be used as a pedestal to reinforce the Kurdish struggle in Northern Kurdistan and as a base for the paramilitary wing of the PKK, the People’s Defence Force (Yekineyen Parastina Gel, HPG). Moreover, Syrian Kurds and the majority of Turkish Kurds speak the Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish, use the same Latin alphabet, and generally have closer cultural, linguistic, social, and political affinities towards each other than they do with the majority of the ethnic Kurds in Iraq and Iran.

Did the KRG coordinate with the ISIL or did they have a Tacit Understanding?

Albeit there was fighting between the KRG’s peshmerga forces and the ISIL, it has to also be remembered and emphasized that the ISIL and the KRG both took coordinated steps at expanding their territory inside Iraq (at the expense of the Iraqi federal government) in June 2014, respectively taking over Mosul and Kirkuk. This took place while the US refused to share any satellite images or intelligence data about the ISIL offensive entering Iraq from Syria with the Iraqi security forces or the federal government in Baghdad.

In context of the August 2014 fighting between the KRG peshmerga and the ISIL, the Pentagon’s role has greatly been exaggerated to provide support for its airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. «Coming to the aid» of the KRG is language taken from the misleading narratives that want to promote Washington as an «indispensable power.» When the US came to the «aid» of the KRG, it merely demarcated the territorial boundaries inside Iraq between the KRG and the ISIL. Essentially, the US airstrikes let the ISIL know where its territory was, where the KRG’s territory was, and roughly where their borders were.

Iraqi officials also reported that Israeli forces were present on the round in Iraq with the ISIL fighters when they invaded Mosul. US weapons that had disappeared from NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan also reappeared in the hands of the ISIL during their offensive of Mosul. These «missing» US arms from Afghanistan were most probably smuggled either through Turkey and/or Jordan (with lesser possibilities of Iraq and/or Lebanon) with the knowledge of the US and NATO.

The Democratic Union Party Has Worked to Protect and Unite All Rojava and Syria

For the sake of unity inside Syrian Kurdistan and to prevent fragmentation and infighting among the Syrian Kurd community, the PYD pursued a policy of cooperation with the KRG-supported Kurdish National Council while it steadfastly refused to compromise its political platform or end its support for national dialogue inside Syria and with the government in Damascus. Albeit tensions remain between the PYD and the Kurdish National Council, the PYD agreed to form the Kurdish Supreme Committee with the Kurdish National Council, through an accord brokered in Iraqi Kurdistan by the KRG, on July 12, 2012.

Under the accord, which recognizes the primacy of the PYD in Syrian Kurdistan, the seats in the Kurdish Supreme Council are equally divided between the PYD and the other Kurdish parties forming the Kurdish National Council. As part of the power sharing agreement, control over the YPG and YPJ is said to have formally been transferred to the Supreme Kurdish Council by the PYD. The YPG and YPJ, however, are nominally run by the Supreme Kurdish Council and are under the control of the PYD in practice. While the YPG and the YPJ act like a local army in Rojava, the policing and internal security forces of the Supreme Kurdish Council are the Asayish.

At the same time that the PYD has worked to maintain unity among the Syrian Kurds, it has not forgotten the non-Kurds of Syrian Kurdistan or the rest of Syria. PYD leaders have worked to create a system of inclusion that works to preserve the diversity of Syrian Kurdistan and maintain a spirit of tolerance in Rojava and Syria. This is why the PYD has reached out to the Arab, Armenian, Assyrian, and Turcoman (Turkoman) communities of Syrian Kurdistan to also represent their interests and to be their movement too.

YPG and YPJ troops have also worked to protect all the members of Syrian society in their areas of control, regardless of their faiths or ethnicities, from attacks by the US-backed insurgents. Many Sunni Muslim Arab Syrians have even sought refuge in the areas of Syria under PYD administration. The YPG and YPJ even have Arabs, Armenians, Assyrians, and other ethnic groups among their ranks. Plus, it was the YPG and YPJ that quickly came to the rescue and aid of the Syrian Turcoman when they were attacked by the ISIL and ironically not Turkey which never passes a chance to parade itself as the champion of the Turcoman and Turkic minorities in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. In the case of Sinjar, it was also the YPG and YPJ that entered Iraq with the PKK to help save most the residents there from being executed or enslaved by the ISIL.

After the Arabs, Manipulating the Kurds: Preparing for a Kurdish Summer? 

The KRG on the other hand has taken a different path from the Kurds in Syria. Although the KRG preaches Iraqi unity and pays lip service to pluralism, Iraqi Kurdistan under the KRG has become a hub for a dangerous alliance of neoliberal profiteering and intolerant ultra-nationalist sentiments that have racist views towards Arabs, Turks, Turcoman, Persians, and other ethnic groups. Washington wants to use ethno-nationalism in Kurdistan as a weapon, just as it has capitalized on ultra-nationalism and anti-Russian views in Ukraine.

Preparations are being made to eventually ignite a «Kurdish Summer.» This goal includes igniting Kurdish ethno-nationalism to (1) help divide Syria and Iraq and to (2) destabilize the countries that have Kurdish populations. When systematic attacks by Jabhat Al-Nusra against Kurdish towns commenced in 2013, it was precisely with this understanding that it was noted that the following was the objective: «The targeting of Kurdish civilians in Syria by US-supported armed thugs is part of a deliberate attempt to galvanize the Kurds and pit them in a resurgent struggle against the non-Kurd regions.»  The same text, written on August 15, 2013, noticed that Washington was silent, because the Syrian Kurds were systematically being tortured, raped, and executed by insurgents groups supported by it, Turkey, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, and their allies. It was warned, however, that Washington and its cohorts would opportunistically «make supportive noise for the Kurds once they get the result they are seeking.»

To recap the argument made on August 15, 2013 about the situation in Rojava was thus: «The systematic massacres of Syrian Kurds mark the start of a new strategy to entangle the Kurds in the fighting inside Syria. The targeting of the Syrian Kurds by insurgent groups like Al-Nusra is premeditated and strategically executed precisely with the intention of galvanizing the Kurds in Syria and elsewhere into forming more armed groups and segregating themselves from non-Kurds.»

The PYD realized this too. This is why the PYD’s strategy has been based on maintaining pluralism and peaceful coexistence between all Syrian citizens. This is yet another reason as to why the US and its allies want to defeat the PYD.

Neutralizing the Syrian Kurds as a Free Force

Kobani is one of the three unofficial administrative divisions of the de facto autonomous region of Syrian Kurdistan or Rojava. The other two administrative division of Syrian Kurdistan are Efrin, which corresponds to Aleppo Governorate’s northwesternmost district that goes by the same name (called Afrin in Arabic and Efrin in Kurdish), and Jazira or Cizire, which roughly corresponds to northernmost sub-districts (nawahi) of the multi-ethnic Al-Hasakah Governorate’s three northern districts (manatiq) of Al-Malikiyah (Derika Hemko in Kurdish), Al-Qamishly (Qamislo in Kurdish), and Ras Al-Ayn (Sere Kaniye in Kurdish).

What sets Kobani apart from Efrin and Cizire, however, is its strategic location in north central Syria and the fact that it is the intermediate de facto district of the autonomous areas held by the YPG, PYD, and Kurdish Supreme Council. Capturing it is a step towards de-linking the Kurdish zones of autonomy. The surrender of Cizire, Kobani, and Efrin also means that almost all the northern Syrian border with Turkey will be in insurgent hands. With these Kurdish zones gone, the anti-government held border areas in the Syrian governorates of Al-Hasakah, Ar-Raqqah, Alepp, and Idlib will be united as one vast stretch of compartmentalized insurgent territory that will be fortified from the Turkish border by the US, Turkey, and their allies.

 Kobani was surrounded on three fronts by October 6, 2014. The Turkish military had mobilized with armed columns of tanks and troops on the Syrian-Turkish border to the north while from the southeast and southwest the ISIL anti-government brigades were inching closer with their military assault. Hiding his joy, President Erdogan declared that Kobani would collapse on October 7, 2014. While the battle was raging, either tacitly or directly, the Turkish government essentially gave the Syrian Kurd fighters defending the area against the Turkish-supported ISIL offensive ultimatums. Syrian Kurds were told that they could either join the anti-government forces working for regime change in Syria or be butchered by the ISIL. This is why US Department of State Spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki was asked by a journalist the following question on October 6: «Are you waiting for a Turkish deal with the Kurds?»

Speaking to the Istanbul-based Turkish newspaper Özgür Gündem, the Group of Communities in Kurdistan (KCK) leader Sabri Ok testified that the ISIL’s fighters in Syria were merely foot soldiers in the service of the Turkish government. He explained that Ankara had actually requested the offensive on the Syrian Kurds. According to Sabri Ok, the AK Party was using its links to the ISIL to push for the elimination of the de facto autonomous Kurdish areas in Syria.

What this should make clear is that the ISIL attacks on Kobani and Syrian Kurdistan seek to neutralize and marginalize the PYD. The goals of the offensive include either forcing the PYD to make concessions to Ankara and Washington or replacing the PYD by allowing those Syrian Kurds aligned to the KRG and Turkey to take control of the area under substitute administrations that would be inclined to follow US and Turkish edicts and desires.

Things in Kobani, however, did not go as planned. Refusing to give up, the outnumbered YPG and YPJ volunteers heroically maintained their positions against the ISIL. Two days after Erdogan said Kobani would fall, on October 9, he was forced to say that the riots in Turkey had nothing to do with Kobani. As mentioned earlier, both Erdogan and the US government faced mounting criticism and pressure to support Kobani too. This forced them to voice their support or to make gestures of support.

Rojava and the Domino Effect Strategy in Syria

The war on the ISIL has been presented by the US and its allies as a new war against a new enemy, but it is in fact a continuation of the war against Syria and all of Syria’s people, including the Syrian Kurds. For decades many of the Kurds wrongly thought that the US supports them. Instead Washington and players like Israel have geopolitically manipulated them time and time again. While Kurds have hoped for help from US military jets, even if they are illegally bombing Syria, they have instead found themselves being killed by US tanks and arms in the hands of the ISIL.

Among many of the Syrian Kurds it is an open secret that the battle for Ayn Al-Arab or Kobani has really been about controlling the Syrian-Turkish border and forcing the Syrian Kurds to fall into line with the objectives of Ankara and Washington. The war in Rojava is a battle for control of the peripheries of Syria. If the YPG and YPJ fall or are absorbed into the insurgency, the fighting against the Syrian military will increase and the insurgents in the north will look towards the Mediterranean coast and southward towards the Syrian capital. This process could very well be described as a geographic or spatial domino effect strategy that intends to takeout the PYD and Rojava as a means of going after the Syrian government in Damascus.

Aside from a geographic domino effect, there is also a social one. While it has amply been demonstrated by the Democratic Union Party that it does not want to divide Syria and that the Syrian Kurds see themselves as constituents of Syrian society, hazardous conditions have arisen in Rojava and Syria. The growing mixture of militias in Syria has the potential for widening existing cleavages. Lebanonization has clearly and unfortunately made inroads in Syria. Albeit this will not necessarily divide the country, it can lead down a path of communitarianism and federalization. The Syrian Arab Republic will surely never be the same again.

Come what may, the Syrian Kurds and the inhabitants of Syrian Kurdistan have categorically stated that they do not need or want foreign intervention by the US or Turkey, but would appreciate logistical help in their battle to save their homes.

To read the first part, please click here.

This past Friday was a near carbon copy of the previous Friday for the precious metals.  Both were “outside reversal” days where the overnight and morning sessions were quite weak, only to bottom and then reverse to the upside strongly on very heavy volume by the day’s end.  First, this type of action is almost unheard of for precious metals and has happened only a handful of times over the last 15-20 years.  Also, both reversals were quite large from the day’s early lows to their final closes, the range was 3-4% which obliterated the long held “2% rule”.  We have now seen this twice in exactly 6 trading days and both were on a Friday. 

I want to emphasize “FRIDAY” and put it in capital letters to boot. Friday is the end of the week where there is no trading over the weekend.  (It is also the most important day to chartists where the charts cut off and print a close for the weekly period.)   Once business closes on Friday, participants are basically frozen in their position until Monday morning …or until the market reopens.  Market participants obviously know this and either position themselves accordingly or square their books going into weekends, it has been this way since the beginning of markets.  That said and as you know, I am a believer that we will see a system wide “re set” and this will in most all likelihood occur over a weekend.

I wasn’t sure when sitting down to write this how I’d structure it, meaning give you evidence and lead to a conclusion or the reverse?  My conclusion is that we have hit a precious metals BOTTOM and are now reversing, the worst is over in my opinion!  I must confess, I called a bottom 2 days after the low in June of 2013, some 16 months ago …which stood as correct until 2 weeks ago… I was wrong.  I did not in any way believe the $1,180 level in gold would be broken, it was.  That level was broken the day after the last FOMC meeting when 7 days worth of global production was sold at 12:30 AM on the COMEX.  Clearly this sale was meant to “break the charts” and break the spirits of any remaining PM bulls.  It did break the charts and sentiment along with it.  I actually saw a bullish/bearish sentiment reading this past week at “0” bulls, I can’t remember where I saw it but I can tell you in 30 years I have never seen this before in any market.

OK, here is what I see and what leads me to believe we now have a hard bottom in.  We had the two consecutive reversal Fridays and both on very big volume.  These can be considered “impulse waves” if you will.  The previous week’s raid occurred just as the GOFO lease rates were again going negative (an impossibility in any normal market scenario).  Since then, the GOFO rates have gone further negative and have now seen two (possibly three, we will know on Monday?) record negative consecutive days.  GOFO rates should never be negative yet they are more negative than any time since 2001 when the gold bull market began.  Negative lease rates mean that the real metal is scarce which is a direct contradiction to dropping prices.  I will say this, while the COMEX can create 7 days worth of paper gold and sell it while everyone is sleeping to “make” price, they cannot create real gold out of thin air to satisfy real leasing needs.  What I am saying is this, rates in the “real” market show gold as very scarce, NOT plentiful as price would suggest.

Another anomaly occurred this past Thursday and Friday.  Scotia stepped up and served 920 Nov. COMEX gold contracts on Thursday and another 462 Friday.  This is VERY strange and can only be explained as “someone either needs or wants gold…NOW”!

I say “now” because the November month is historically a very small delivery month, there are only a few days left and there were only 33 contracts open prior to these 920, and 462 being served.  This represents 92,000 ounces of gold, almost three tons and 46,200 ounces or nearly 1 1/2 tons.  In a contract that is going off the board in short order, for what possible reason would this ever be done?  Who is the ultimate buyer and why now?  We can’t know “who?”, we can only speculate on “why now?” but we do know one thing for an absolute.  Someone is desperate for gold and has to have it immediately!  I have never seen anything like this in the COMEX metals in the last 15 years happen even once …but back to back days smacks of something really different!  Stay tuned as I plan to write more about this anomaly and the GOFO backwardation in my next piece.

Other pieces to the puzzle include very high open interest for Dec. silver, still contracted for more than 7 ounces for each ounce represented in registered inventory.  Interestingly, the bullish consensus on the dollar has never ever been higher than it is right now, everyone has moved to one side of the boat.  Russia announced a doubling of their purchases over the last three months to 55 gold tons while China is averaging nearly this amount weekly …and India looks to again be ramping up purchases.  We also have seen a rampage in Europe, particularly Germany where silver demand has recently been voracious.  So much so that many mints have gone “back order” including the U.S. mint suspending the sales of Silver Eagles.  Anecdotally, I would also like to mention the premiums on U.S. Gold Liberty coins has risen dramatically over the last two weeks, so much so that they now actually cost more than when gold itself was $30-$40 higher.  I understand, “they don’t make these anymore” but dealers are being forced to raise what they will pay owners to entice product.  NONE of this is the action of a market where the thought process is “get me out now”!

As a backdrop, we still need to hear from the G-20 and what was decided there along with the Swiss vote at the end of the month and also the “nuisance” factor of ISIS announcing they will create their own currencies …made of gold and silver.  We already know the APEC/G-20 meetings have respectively shown little U.S. respect as president Obama was pictured far from the center and (I mean no disrespect) between two women…followed by Mr. Putin being isolated by his lonesome for the G-20 photo.   I bring this up because China/Russia obviously knows the game of proper diplomacy, I can see no way a U.S. president would ever be treated like this unless something was afoot and close to being made public (I wrote about this in my “G-20 Massacre” article last week).  As for the treatment of Mr. Putin who now says he will leave the summit early, do the G-7 members really believe there is an upside to poking “the bear”?

As for the Swiss vote, this may be quite interesting as the banking powers that be seem to be putting a public full court press for a “no” vote.  If this was “no big deal”, there would not be as much or as many efforts to “scare” the voters away from gold.  For that matter, the recent price action may be directly connected to this vote and is being used to scare the “yes” vote?  I mentioned the announcement of gold and silver currency by ISIS because this will also increase demand.  Please do not think the “timing” of their announcement was by any coincidence or by chance, they can see everything we do and understand precious metals are the Achilles Heel of the Western fiat systems.

One last area I’d like to address is sentiment from personal experience.  In all my years as a broker and since then writing, I have never seen the fear that has been recently prevalent.  I have never received so many e-mails and phone calls from fear the stricken as I have of late.  These past two weeks have topped the charts.  Even the die hard’s are questioning their logic.  Never mind that demand far exceeds supply or that gold and silver cannot be produced for long at these prices, the fear has run rampant and blood is running through the streets (minds) of precious metals investors.

Please understand what is happening and why.  President Obama met with the leaders of finance last year and then suddenly gold and silver started to drop.  This in my mind was a last ditch effort to show the world “dollar is good, gold is bad”.  It has worked … so far, the only problem being “gold cannot be printed” and the West will at some point run out of metal to supply the buyers.  I did not take lightly “calling bottom” in June, 2013 and I don’t do so now.  That level held for 16 months until the most recent operation but it is what it is.

The action of the last two Friday’s tells me that something has definitely changed and physical buyers are digging in their heels.  In my opinion, we will not trade at the current levels for long.  I will be surprised if the action from here is not “V” shaped and another impulse wave kicks it off.  Whether or not we have a market closure, holiday and “re set” I don’t know but I do believe it is a likely scenario.  Any number of events could possibly be pointed to as (“but if such and such didn’t happen we would have been fine”) a reason.  There must be a “reason” for public consumption when in fact the “real reason” is simply an unworkable monetary experiment.

An EA 18G Growler from the Shadowhawks of Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 141 takes off. (Photo: Mass Communications Specialists 3rd Class Bradley J. Gee / US Navy)

Olympic National Park and Olympic National Forest in Washington State are two of the most beautiful wilderness areas in the United States. Majestic glacier-clad peaks rise above temperate rainforest-covered hills. Gorgeous rivers tumble down from the heights and the areas are home to several types of plants and animal species that exist nowhere else on earth.

These protected national commons are also the areas in and near where the US Navy aims to conduct its Northwest Electromagnetic Radiation Warfare training program, wherein it will fly 36 of its EA-18G “Growler” supersonic jet warplanes down to 1,200 feet above the ground in some areas in order to conduct war games with 14 mobile towers. Enough electromagnetic radiation will be emitted so as to be capable of melting human eye tissue, and causing breast cancer, childhood leukemia and damage to human fetuses, let alone impacting wildlife in the area.

If it gets its way, this means the Navy would be flying Growler jets, which are electronic attack aircraft that specialize in radar jamming, in 2,900 training exercises over wilderness, communities and cities across the Olympic Peninsula for 260 days per year, with exercises lasting up to 16 hours per day.

No public notices for the Navy’s plans were published in any media that directly serve the Olympic Peninsula; hence the Navy initially reported that it had received no public comments on its “environmental assessment” for the war games.

One barely advertised public comment meeting was held in the small town of Forks, a several hour drive from the larger towns and cities that will be impacted by the war games. When asked to schedule more public comment meetings, the Navy refused.

But word spread. Tens of thousands of residents across the peninsula became furious, and widespread and growing public outcry forced the Navy to extend the public comment period until November 28 and schedule more public meetings.

It is not news that the Navy has been conducting electronic warfare exercises for years, but it might come as a surprise for people to learn that according to the US Navy’s Information Dominance Roadmap 2013-2028, the Navy states it “will require new capabilities to fully employ integrated information in warfare by expanding the use of advanced electronic warfare.”

What is at stake is not just whether the military is allowed to use protected public lands in the Pacific Northwest for its war games, but a precedent being set for them to do so across the entire country.

The Die Is Cast

The Navy already has an area in Mountain Home, Idaho, that is available for such war gaming.

Nevertheless, according to the Navy’s “environmental assessment,” it opted not to fly the 400 miles to Idaho in order to save jet fuel and enable their personnel to have more time with their families.

The war games would include the use of large RV-sized trucks equipped with electromagnetic generating equipment that would be dispersed along 14 sites in Olympic National Forest and several right along the boundary of Olympic National Park. While no trucks would, in theory, be allowed inside Olympic National Park, the warplanes would most likely be crossing over the park on a regular basis.

The exercises would be conducted by naval warplanes launching from the US Naval Air Station on Whidbey Island that would fly over the northern coast of the Olympic Peninsula in order to reach the West Coast, where they would fly inland over national forestland and Olympic National Park, in order to target the vehicles’ aimed electromagnetic radiation.

According to the Navy’s so-called environmental assessment, the purpose of these war games is to train to deny the enemy “all possible frequencies of electromagnetic radiation (i.e. electromagnetic energy) for use in such applications as communication systems, navigation systems and defense related systems and components.”

Six of the radiation emitting truck sites would be within 10 miles of the Quinault Reservation, and at least six of them would be right along the border of Olympic National Park.

Truthout requested comment from the Quinault and received this statement from Fawn Sharp, the president of the Quinault Indian Nation:

The Quinault Indian Nation has spoken with the Navy regarding the electronic warfare range proposal due to our ongoing concerns for our people and our wildlife in our usual and accustomed hunting grounds. Our people have lived here for thousands of years. We have always depended upon the fishing, hunting and gathering resources here, and managed these resources for the benefit of current and future generations. Today we co-manage these resources with our fellow sovereigns, the state and federal governments. The Navy has responded to our questions, on a government-to-government basis. At this time our only additional comment is that we will be monitoring the Navy’s activities, to assure there is no harm to the resources we manage and must protect for the sake of our people, our heritage and our generations to come.

The Navy claimed it had served notice to the Makah, Quileute, Hoh and Quinault tribes, all located in close proximity to the proposed war games areas.

John Moshier, the Navy’s northwest environmental manager for the US Pacific Fleet,has stated that their planes would be flying as low as 1,200 feet above the ground.

Yet the Navy’s environmental impact assessment does not even mention noise pollution or the sound of the Navy’s jets, and lists “no significant impacts” for public health and safety, biological resources, noise, air quality or visual resources.

Tens of thousands of outraged residents from around the Olympic Peninsula have expressed their opposition via letters to the US Forest Service, public meetings, letters to the editor in newspapers across the peninsula, flooding article comment sections and via social media.

David King, the mayor of Port Townsend, a town on the Northeast corner of the Olympic Peninsula, has voiced his opposition to the plan, along with numerous other public officials from around the Olympic Peninsula, in addition to the thousands of angry residents.

“This is bringing militarism home in a very direct way, in one of the most pristine parts of the country,” Linda Sutton, a retired teacher who lives in Port Townsend, told Truthout. “Most of the people who live here do so because we are free of this kind of militarism. And people who visit here, come here for the natural beauty and environment, and if we allow this place to be turned into a war-gaming area, it is reprehensible.”

(Photo: Dahr Jamail)

“No Significant Impact?”

According to the National Park Service, the top two purposes of a national park are:

• To preserve and protect the natural and cultural resources for future generations.
• To provide opportunities to experience, understand and enjoy the park consistent with the preservation of resources in a state of nature.

As for national forests, according to US Code 475, which outlines the purposes for which national forests were established and how they are to be administered:

No national forest shall be established, except to improve and protect the forest within the boundaries, or for the purpose of securing favorable conditions of water flows, and to furnish a continuous supply of timber for the use and necessities of citizens of the United States; but it is not the purpose or intent of these provisions, or of said section, to authorize the inclusion therein of lands more valuable for the mineral therein, or for agricultural purposes, than for forest purposes.

The Navy’s war-gaming plans are most likely in violation of the stated purposes of the National Park Service, in addition to being in violation of the aforementioned US code.

The Navy’s so-called environmental assessment, which they claim includes plans for “protecting people and large animals,” reported “no significant impact” would result from the $11.5 million warfare training project, which aims to be operational by September 2015.

The report, however, failed to provide specifics on either the maximum potential exposure or the intensity of the electromagnetic radiation emitters from the trucks to be used in the war games.

Nevertheless, Dean Millett, the district ranger for the Pacific district of the Olympic National Forest, had issued a draft notice of a decision in which he had agreed with the Navy’s finding of “no significant impact,” which has cleared the way for a Forest Service special permit to be issued to the Navy for the war games. Millet, however, insists that the decision is his to make, but has not made a final decision yet.

Under massive public pressure, however, Millett reopened public comment because of what he claimed was “renewed interest . . . from members of the public who were unaware of the proposal.”

(Photo: Dahr Jamail)

Mike Welding, the Naval Air Station at Whidbey Island spokesman, recently admitted to reporters that any antennas emitting electromagnetic energy produce radiation.

“As a general answer, if someone is in the exclusion area for more than 15 minutes, that’s a ballpark estimate for when there would be some concern for potential to injure, to receive burns,” he said.

The Navy’s “environmental assessment” (EA) states, “There are no conclusive direct hazards to human tissue as a result of electromagnetic radiation,” and, “Links to DNA fragmentation, leukemia, and cancer due to intermittent exposure to extremely high levels of electromagnetic radiation are speculative; study data are inconsistent and insufficient at this time.”

However, in direct contradiction to the Navy’s responses along with their so-called environmental assessment, in 1994, the US Air Force published the report,“Radiofrequency/Microwave Radiation Biological Effects and Safety Standards: A Review.”

Page 18 of the report states: “Nonthermal disruptions have been observed to occur at power densities that are much lower than are necessary to induce thermal effects. Soviet researchers have attributed alterations in the central nervous system and the cardiovascular system to the nonthermal effect of low level RF/MW radiation exposure.”

The report concludes, “Experimental evidence has shown that exposure to low intensity radiation can have a profound effect on biological processes.” (emphasis added)

It is important to note that at the time that report was written, the standard for exposure was 50,000 milliwatts per square meter. Today, the maximum exposure limit is 10,000 milliwatts per square meter, yet even that level is more than 1 million times higher than the allowable exposure limits published in the 2012 BioInitiative Report.

Furthermore, the “EA” quotes from a study (Focke et al. 2009) that deals with extremely low frequency radiation (50 hertz) only and is thus completely irrelevant to the gigahertz radiation being proposed (1 gigahertz equals 1 billion hertz).

The Navy has not provided any relevant studies that prove no long-term effects to flora and fauna for their proposed 4,680 hours per year of exposure.

Nor does the “EA” factor in the electromagnetic radiation from the Navy’s Growler jets, as the jets will be using it to locate ground transmitters.

Peer-reviewed, published scientific studies about the harmful effects to humans of electromagnetic radiation abound.

A quick search on Google Scholar for “Electromagnetic fields risk to humans” produces over 63,000 results, most of which are published scientific studies that chronicle the deleterious impact of electromagnetic fields to the human organism.

Some of the studies titles are: “Carcinogenicity of radiofrequency,” “The sensitivity of children to electromagnetic fields,” “Exposure to extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields and the risk of malignant diseases – an evaluation of epidemiological and experimental findings,” “Extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields as effectors of cellular responses in vitro: possible immune cell activation,” and “Exposure to electromagnetic fields and the risk of childhood leukemia,” to name just a few.

One study, titled “Leukemia and Occupational Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields: Review of Epidemiologic Surveys,” states in its abstract: “Results for total leukemia show a modest excess risk for men in exposed occupations, with an enhanced risk elevation for acute leukemia and especially acute myelogenous leukemia.”

A report titled “Biological effects from electromagnetic field exposure and public exposure standards,” published in the journal Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy in 2008, concluded:

Health endpoints reported to be associated with ELF and/or RF include childhood leukemia, brain tumors, genotoxic effects, neurological effects and neurodegenerative diseases, immune system deregulation, allergic and inflammatory responses, breast cancer, miscarriage and some cardiovascular effects. The BioInitiative Report concluded that a reasonable suspicion of risk exists based on clear evidence of bioeffects at environmentally relevant levels, which, with prolonged exposures may reasonably be presumed to result in health impacts.

Electromagnetic radiation’s impact on wildlife is very well documented, as thousands of peer-reviewed scientific studies have been published on the topic.

In May 2014, a study titled “Electromagnetic Interference Disrupts Bird Navigation, Hints at Quantum Action” was published in the journal Nature. “Researchers found out that very weak electromagnetic fields disrupt the magnetic compass used by European robins and other songbirds to navigate using the Earth’s magnetic field,” according to the study.

That same month another study, “Sensory biology: Radio waves zap the biomagnetic compass,” was also published in Nature. “Weak radio waves in the medium-wave band are sufficient to disrupt geomagnetic orientation in migratory birds, according to a particularly well-controlled study,” Nature reports. It added, “Interference from electronics . . . can disrupt the internal magnetic compasses of migratory birds.”

A 2013 study published in Environment International, “A review of the ecological effects of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF),” concluded, “In about two-third[s] of the reviewed studies ecological effects of RF-EMF [were] reported at high as well as at low dosages.”

A June 2011 study published in Ecosphere, titled “Impacts of Acute and Long-Term Vehicle Exposure on Physiology and Reproductive Success of the Northern Spotted Owl,” found that while the spotted owl is able to compensate for a low level of increased noise pollution and vehicle presence up to a threshold, “beyond which disturbance impacts may be greatly magnified – and even cause system collapse.” The northern spotted owl is an endangered species.

While more studies on the impact of electromagnetic radiation on larger animals are underway and the results pending, the negative impacts on birds in the proposed war-gaming areas are clear.

Dahr Jamail, a Truthout staff reporter, is the author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, (Haymarket Books, 2009), and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq, (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported from Iraq for more than a year, as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last ten years, and has won the Martha Gellhorn Award for Investigative Journalism, among other awards.

His fourth book, The Mass Destruction of Iraq: Why It Is Happening, and Who Is Responsible, co-written with William Rivers Pitt, is available now on Amazon. He lives and works in Washington State.

Copyright, Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

A new correlation study published in the Journal of Organic Systems has linked glyphosate, the primary ingredient in Monsanto’s best-selling herbicide, Roundup, to an enormous increase in chronic diseases across the United States.

Supporting countless studies before it, this new report is a detailed analysis proving an undeniable link between glyphosate-based herbicides and the rates of chronic disease all over the country.

Dr. Nancy Swanson and the President of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), Andre Leu, led the research team which proved – once again – that glyphosate and Roundup are lethal, even in small amounts.

The chemical is prevalently used on crops across the nation and world. Friends of the Earth Europe, says that more than 650,000 tonnes of glyphosate products were used over five years ago, with the amount being used increasing each year.

This increase in use is contributing to the development of diseases such as diabetes, obesity, lipoprotein metabolism disorder, Alzheimer’s, senile dementia, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, autism, and cancer. The report details how there is a direct correlation between the incidence of these diseases and glyphosate use.

It isn’t as if the toxicity levels of glyphosate are not already known by its makers. Monsanto was refusing to release to the public lab tests conducted in St. Louis, Missouri, which gave them authority to use glyphosate in China.

This is the company that is responsible for making PCBs, DD.T and Agent Orange as well, all of which caused irreparable health damage ignored by regulators for decades.

Glyphosate-based herbicides have been identified as the next widely used chemical on a list of chemicals consumers should be aware of.

Read: 7 Nasty Effects of Pesticides

The world’s number one weed killer, Glyphosate, or N-(phosphonomethyl)glycine, is posing serious harm to humans and the environment, yet the poison developed by John E. Franz of the Monsanto Company has been allowed on the US market since the 1970s.

It isn’t just Monsanto who sells glyphosate, though. There are now over 100 different manufacturers of the product throughout the world. You can find it in other products with names such as Clearout 41.

Although glyphosate is used primarily in agricultural settings, it is also sprayed by public authorities on roads and pavements. Even managers of golf courses and home gardeners still use the toxic chemicals to control weeds.

According to the new study:

“Within the last 20 years there has been an alarming increase in serious illnesses in the US, along with a marked decrease in life expectancy (Bezruchka, 2012). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that the cost of diabetes and diabetes-related treatment was approximately $116 billion dollars in 2007.

Estimated costs related to obesity were $147 billion in 2008 and cardiovascular diseases and stroke were $475.3 billion in 2009. Health care expenditures in the US totaled 2.2 trillion dollars in 2007 (CDC, 2013a). The onset of serious illness is appearing in increasingly younger cohorts. The US leads the world in the increase in deaths due to neurological diseases between 1979-81 and 2004-06 for the 55-65 age group (Pritchard et al., 2013).”

The study points out that, “these findings suggest environmental triggers rather than genetic or age-related causes,” especially since chronic diseases are showing up in younger and younger individuals.

“During this same time period, there has been an exponential increase in the amount of glyphosate applied to food crops and in the percentage of GE food crops planted (Benbrook, 2012). We undertook a study to see if correlations existed between the rise of GE crops, the associated glyphosate use and the rise in chronic disease in the US.”

The bottom line?

“The significance and strength of the correlations show that the effects of glyphosate and GE crops on human health should be further investigated.”

On 60 Minutes, CBS reporterLara Logan (11/9/14) presented a dramatic and emotional account of the fight against Ebola at one treatment facility in Liberia. But there was just one problem: Liberians didn’t speak on the broadcast.

Former New York Times correspondent Howard French weighed in onTwitter as the broadcast aired, and collected his thoughts on Storify (11/9/14) under the headline “Africa Without Africans, Brought to You by 60 Minutes.”

As he put it:

There’s a large literature of what’s meant by Africa w/out Africans. Common examples come from journalism that quotes just diplomats + aid workers + foreign experts of one kind of another. Usually, they’ll throw in a quote from a taxi driver or an anonymous market worker to cover their, you know…

Indeed, the focus of Logan’s reporting was the US medical workers who had traveled to Liberia to care for the sick–”more than 2,000 Americans leading the response,” anchor Scott Pelley explained in his introduction, “and more on the way.” The segment was based on life at one treatment center run by the International Medical Corps, with CBS focusing on the American doctors and nurses treating the sick.

There’s no doubt that they are brave; one doctor speaks of the “global citizen’s responsibility” to act, and a nurse who speaks very plainly about the chance she could get sick and die: “I’m OK with that, because I’d rather be here helping than home and safe.”

But Americans aren’t the only ones risking their lives to treat Ebola patients. Logan explained that “most of the staff here are Liberian, and to lift their spirits they mark every new shift with hymns.” That narration is accompanied by footage of singing African health workers, while Logan continues:

The stigma of the disease is so great, many of them say they’re treated as outcasts when they commute back home every day. But in here, the Americans who work with them call them heroes.

Logan even shows Liberian workers suiting up:

In sweltering heat and often 100 percent humidity, they cover every inch of their bodies in plastic and rubber armor. They’re so hard to recognize, they wear their names on their foreheads.

But she sits down with one of the American doctors to ask: “How tough is it wear that suit?”

At one point, Logan expressed a desire to include Liberian voices: “We want to talk to some of the patients, but you have to keep your distance.”

There’s been plenty of criticism of US media coverage of Ebola for focusing on the slim threat to Americans while thousands of Africans have died. 60 Minutes didn’t do that at all. But it represented a different kind of media problem: The show traveled to the scene of the crisis–and chose to portray it through American eyes. As French put it, “It’s the erasure of Africans from history, in this case their own history, and to reserve meaningful thought and agency to whites.”

NATO countries have stepped up their threats against Russia on the eve of the G20 summit in Australia. While they accuse the country of violating Ukrainian sovereignty, they are themselves preparing a massive escalation of military violence.

In an interview with the Bild newspaper on Friday, new NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg accused Russia of undermining “the value-based security architecture in Europe”. Russian President Vladimir Putin had “in any case, promoted the flare-up of conflict [in eastern Ukraine].”

Specifically, Stoltenberg accused the Kremlin of providing the separatists in the east of Ukraine with heavy weapons and soldiers. NATO has observed that, “Russia has again brought arms, equipment, artillery, tanks and rockets over the border into Ukraine”, he claimed. On Wednesday, NATO Supreme Commander Philip Breedlove declared there was no longer any doubt that Russia was intervening militarily in Ukraine.

The same day, US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki spoke of “continuing, ongoing and blatant violations of the Minsk Accord by Russia and its representatives”. She announced the United States was taking a tough stance. In early September in Minsk, the Ukrainian government and the separatists had agreed to a ceasefire and to far-reaching autonomy for the east of the country. Both have not yet been implemented.

Representatives of the Ukrainian government, which came to power in February this year as the result of a coup orchestrated by the West, joined in the chorus. The Ukrainian ambassador to the UN, Yuriy Sergeyev, wrote on Twitter, “I believe that the UN must be informed as soon as possible about the fact that Russia is planning a full-scale invasion in Ukraine.”

The Ukrainian Ambassador to the OSCE, Ihor Prokopchuk, warned of “unpredictable threats to the security of Europe” resulting from the Russian activities. The spokesman for the National Security Council, Andriy Lysenko, even said that Ukraine was preparing for an attack by Russia from the Black Sea.

Neither government representatives nor the NATO Secretary General provided concrete evidence for these accusations. On Wednesday, Russia rejected the allegations. These were “nothing but hot air,” said Major General Igor Konashenkov. “All this is not based on facts.” The separatists also contradicted reports of military support from Russia.

Earlier this week, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which has an observer mission deployed on the ground, spoke only of military convoys that had been moving westward inside the separatist region. Moreover, the border with Russia has seen increased crossings by uniformed personnel in both directions. They have, however, been unarmed.

According to both parties to the conflict, the fighting in the region has persisted. Again and again there have been heavy artillery attacks on Donetsk. On Thursday, for the first time, the Kiev regime admitted to also carrying out military actions behind the front line.

Fierce fighting has continued around Donetsk airport, which was actually ceded to the separatists in the Minsk Accord. However, the Ukrainian units have refused to withdraw and have engaged in fierce fighting with the rebel forces ever since.

In the fighting on Thursday, at least four Ukrainian soldiers were killed, according to government figures. The separatists spoke of numerous civilians being killed in the attacks on Donetsk. The OSCE reported that the separatists had been able to make some territorial gains.

The allegations that Russia is stoking up the conflict clearly serve NATO’s efforts to cover up its own aggressive plans. Since February’s fascist-backed coup, the NATO states have systematically worked at rolling back Russian influence and incorporating Ukraine into their own sphere of interest.

Now they are preparing for further escalation. “I see my main task in preparing military action”, Ukrainian Defence Minister Stepan Poltorak said at a cabinet meeting. Ukraine had to prepare “to fight”; Kiev was ready to take “unpredictable actions”.

On Thursday, an adviser to Ukrainian Interior Minister Sorjan Schkirjak said that the Ukrainian army had spent $65 million on heavy military technology in the last week alone, which would be moved “to the front line” in the near future and used against the separatists in Donbass.

A day later in an interview with the Rheinische Post, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin praised Ukraine’s comprehensive military upgrade. “We now have thousands of soldiers who can fight, and have already proven this”, Klimkin said. “I’m sure that if it were necessary, these units could act effectively against the terrorists supported by Russian soldiers.”

According to a Ukrainian television report, the regime is working to make old howitzers battle-ready. The gun has a calibre of 203 millimetres and a range of 50 kilometres. With their help, the Ukrainian army could attack rebel-held areas from outside the official demilitarized zone.

NATO has also announced a more aggressive approach towards Russia. There will be more patrol flights and more troop rotations through Eastern Europe, according to Stoltenberg in the Bild interview. To enhance the troops’ preparedness, more manoeuvres were held. “Every second day, a new NATO military exercise begins”, the secretary general of the alliance said. NATO states would also have to “spend more on their defence”, as security cannot be had for free, he added.

In an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the minister of defence of NATO member Estonia, Sven Mikser, demanded a greater NATO presence in his country. As in the Cold War, Russia should be deterred militarily. “When you’re dealing with a regime like Putin’s, weakness is far more provocative than strength,” Mikser said.

The sabre-rattling is being accompanied by threats of new economic sanctions against Russia. “Russia’s actions in Ukraine are unacceptable,” British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Friday in the Australian capital of Canberra. “If Russia continues to worsen the situation, we could intensify the sanctions,” he added. The United States threatened to add further Russian politicians to the sanctions list.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who will meet Putin on the fringes of the G20 meeting, had already expressed similar comments regarding the crisis in Ukraine. She attacked Putin at a press conference in Auckland, New Zealand. Russia was not upholding the Minsk Accord, and was breaching the “territorial integrity of Ukraine,” the chancellor said. “That worries me a lot.” On Monday, the 28 EU foreign ministers meet to discuss further sanctions against Russia.

Meanwhile, the separatists have called on the Kiev government to resume talks on the Minsk Accord, at which representatives of both the OSCE and Russia will be involved. “We are willing to travel in the next few days and to return to work”, said Denis Puschilin, the spokesman of the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk, adding, “The problem is that the Ukrainian side is taking so long to respond.”

The outbreak of the crisis in Syria in March 2011 has resulted in the emergence of new social, political and economic conditions for the Syrians that have been forced to abandon their homeland and seek shelter from the violence and terror in other countries. This crisis has had devastating impacts on the citizens of Syria, as many have lost family members, friends, neighbours, as well as their homes and livelihoods. In addition to experiencing intolerable violence, they have also endured dramatic decreases in their living standards, including rapidly rising poverty levels, diminished purchasing power, inequality and discrimination in their recipient countries, and numerous barriers to accessing housing, jobs and social services, such as education and health care.

According to recent reports from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), as of August 29, 2014, more than 3 million Syrians have fled the country, while another 6.5 million have been displaced within Syria.  Of those that fled in search of safety and shelter, the majority became refugees in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. There are currently 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Turkey[1], three-quarters of which are women and children. This already exceeds UNHCR planning figures for 2014, which expected the number of Syrian refugees in Turkey to reach 1.3 million by the end of this year, with a projected increase to 1.6 million[2] by December 2015.  This high number of Syrian refugees is largely due to the fact that Turkey essentially practices an open door policy with regards to Syrian civilians seeking to escape the violence in their country. Although accepting so many Syrian refugees may have enhanced Turkey’s image in the eyes of the international community, responding to the needs of such a large number of people has created many challenges and issues for the nation and its citizens.

According to UNHCR, upon their initial arrival with little more than the clothes on their backs and what they managed to carry, the Syrians “receive an ID card, which provides access to free health care services in Turkish clinics, as well as other aid provided by local municipalities, non-government organisations and other aid agencies. The card is a critical document that also shows refugees have the temporary protection of the Turkish government”[3]. However, although Turkey practices an open door policy in terms of allowing Syrians to seek refuge from the violence in their home country, they are not granted refugee status. This is because Turkey only grants refugee status to people originating from European countries in accordance with the Geneva Convention of 1951(established to protect European refugees) and the Protocol of 1967 (addressed all refugees worldwide), which define the status, as well as the social and legal rights of all refugees[4]. Turkey initially labelled the Syrians entering the country in the early stages of the conflict as “guests”, later modifying it to people under “temporary protection”[5], while not clarifying the precise meaning of this designation.

The term “temporary protection” has also not been formally defined by UNHCR. The most likely reason that the Turkish government chose to employ this label is because it allows them to withhold certain rights and benefits that the Syrians should be entitled to as refugees under the United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees (1951), which demands “basic minimum standards for the treatment of refugees”[6]. Together, the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol attempt to provide “the same standards of treatment enjoyed by other foreign nationals in a given country and, in many cases, the same treatment as nationals”[7]. The 1951 Convention includes many rights such as “the right not to be punished for illegal entry into the territory of a contracting State (Article 31)”, “the right to work (Articles 17 to 19)”, “the right to housing (Article 21)”, “the right to education (Article 22)”, “the right to public relief and assistance (Article 23)”, “the right to freedom of religion (Article 4)”, “the right to access the courts (Article 16)”, “the right to freedom of movement within the territory (Article 26)”, and “the right to be issued identity and travel documents (Articles 27 and 28)” [8].  Furthermore, if the refugees are forced to remain in the host country for a longer period of time, the 1951 Convention recognizes that they need more rights in order to have security and live with dignity[9]. Therefore, the decision to not grant the Syrians escaping violence in their own countries refugee status is more than an exercise in semantics; it is a cynical attempt by the Turkish government to evade responsibility and deny the Syrian refugees the rights to which they are entitled, which has had a significant detrimental impact on their daily lives in terms of employment, housing, education, and health care.

Upon their initial arrival to their host countries, many of the Syrian refugees may not have been aware that they were only at the beginning of a very long and difficult journey, as their safety was their primary concern at that point.  Some of them may have expected the crisis to be over by now, which would have allowed them to return home and start re-building their lives. However, recent developments suggest that it may be quite some time before the situation becomes stable enough to return to Syria.

Currently, only 100,000 of the 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Turkey are actually living in the refugee camps[10] that have been set up for them. This is likely because the primary objective of these camps is to provide basic needs and they do little in terms of integrating them into society or offering any meaningful employment or training. For these reasons, the majority of Syrians have opted to leave the camps in favour of moving to various cities around the country in search of better opportunities to provide for themselves and their families. In doing so, however, they expose themselves to new challenges, such as obtaining employment, finding shelter, learning Turkish, and integrating into a society where they have no rights.

Sinan Gokcen of the European Roma Rights Centre described the situation faced by Syrian refugees as follows:  “They live in miserable conditions in informal camps or in abandoned buildings without access to water and proper sewage. Collecting paper and scrap metal are the main sources of income.”[11] Currently, it is not uncommon to see some Syrians, mainly children, filthy and malnourished, begging for money in the streets or engaging in undocumented labor in a variety of industries and businesses including the agricultural sector, restaurants, or peddling small items (i.e. bottled water, toys, tissues, etc.) as street vendors Turkish cities. This is largely the consequence of desperation and frustration faced by Syrian families who are not receiving adequate help and support from the Turkish government or the international community.

UNHCR confirmed that 75% of Syrian refugees are women and children, primarily “orphaned girls and daughters of war widows”[12]. While they may have escaped the bombs and violence in their homeland, many have already fallen victim to “criminal rings that are forcing them into sexually exploitative situations ranging from illicit marriages to outright prostitution”[13]. It has been reported that “pimps, matchmakers, drug dealers, and traffickers work in overlapping circles along the border”[14] in order to find Syrian women and girls to exploit, labelling girls aged between 12 and 16 as “pistachios”, 17 to 20 as “cherries”, 20 to 22 as “apples”, and 22 years and older as “watermelon”[15]. The lack of adequate protection and the failure to provide social and economic security on the part of the host country has allowed these women and girls to be preyed upon by criminal and depraved elements of society.

Syrian refugees are not the only ones experiencing difficulties; Turkish citizens are also faced with new economic and social realities that have arisen since their arrival. For example, the high volume of Syrian refugees visible in many Turkish cities has significantly impacted unskilled Turkish citizens, as they are unable to compete with the low wages or poor working conditions that the Syrians are willing to accept.  More precisely, the high demand for menial work has driven down wages and led to the deterioration of working conditions and labour rights for refugees and unskilled domestic workers alike. This has resulted in some hostility with the local population who feel as though the Syrians are stealing their jobs. Tensions are further exacerbated by the fact that a few of the Syrian refugees have committed crimes, some violent in nature, which have been reported in the news.  All of these factors combined have led some Turkish citizens to generalize all of the Syrian refugees in their country as criminals and beggars. As a result, there have been some reports of assaults and protests against refugees in different cities including Adana, Gaziantep and Kahramanmaras.

At present, it does not appear as though a peaceful resolution to the conflict will emerge anytime soon in Syria.  Even if the conflict comes to an end in a few years, the destruction of so much of the country’s infrastructure means that an extensive rebuilding process will be needed before a sense of normality can be restored in people’s lives. For these reasons, one cannot reasonably preclude the possibility that Syrian refugees will be forced to reside in their recipient countries for many years. That being said, if the Turkish government and international community are not proactive in establishing a stable environment, both socially and economically, for the Syrian refugees they are hosting, their children will most likely grow up without adequate education or the skills they need to achieve success and prosperity in the future.

The complexity of the situation requires special attention on the part of the international community, as Turkey, on its own, cannot effectively provide a healthy environment for 1.5 million Syrians and help them deal with the physical and psychological trauma that they have endured. Humanitarian interventions typically have a short-term focus, prioritizing the provision of basic needs and essential services within refugee camps, namely food, water, healthcare and education.  While these are obviously important measures, policies should also aim to achieve positive outcomes in the longer-term. For example, a concerted effort needs to be made in terms of providing social assistance to those refugees that choose to live outside of the camps in order to help them better integrate into the society of the host country.

Achieving positive outcomes in the long-term would require changes to the Geneva Convention of 1951 and the Protocol of 1967. Specifically, the fact that these laws, as currently constituted, permit the Turkish government to avoid granting refugee status to the Syrians fleeing the violence in their country, as outlined by UNHCR 1951, makes them particularly vulnerable in Turkey. First and foremost, Turkey needs to remove the geographic origins of people as a factor in the determination of whether or not to recognize refugee status.

When examining the origins of the Geneva Convention of 1951 and the Protocol of 1967, it is not surprising that they do not adequately address the problems faced by Syrian refugees in Turkey.  The initial idea for establishing guidelines and laws for the adequate protection of refugees and their human rights originated with the end of the First World War (1914-1918)[16]. However, it was not until 1951, after the end of the Second World War (1939-1945), that the international community actually adopted the Convention on the Status of Refugees[17], which was subsequently amended in1967. In other words, the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol were established in accordance with the geopolitical, social, and economic realities of the time, when most refugees originated from European countries that were heavily impacted by the First and Second World Wars.

As mentioned in the previous paragraph, the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol, as currently constituted, are not capable of adequately addressing the problems faced by Syrian refugees. As a result, a combined effort is required on the part of the UN and the international community to amend 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol in order to develop, finance, and implement programs and services to meet the needs of contemporary refugees and ensure that their rights are upheld. First and foremost, changes need to be made to guarantee that all people that are deserving of refugee status, including the Syrians currently residing in Turkey and other countries, are recognized as such, which would prevent governments from evading their responsibilities by employing vague and broad terms such as “guests” or people under “temporary protection”. That being said, it is not reasonable to expect individual countries to meet their obligation of providing “basic minimum standards for the treatment of refugees”[18], as stated by the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol, when they are overwhelmed by the sheer number of people that have crossed their borders. At the moment, Turkey needs to determine a course of action for providing 1.5 million Syrian refugees with their basic needs, in addition to a safe and stable environment so as to allow them to lead their lives with dignity and respect. However, any amendment has to take into consideration current social, economic, and cultural realities of Syrian refugees.

The international community, NGOs and recipient countries need bear in mind that the normal lives of Syrian refugees have been interrupted for an indefinite period of time for geopolitical reasons and through no fault of their own. While these refugees occupied a wide range of professions in their home country, including teachers, professors, musicians, artists, bureaucrats, labourers, doctors, mechanics, retailers, etc., they now have to focus on the unfamiliar task of struggling for survival.

Without amendments to the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol, as well as meaningful financial and institutional support on the part of the international community, Syrian refugees will not receive adequate assistance in the areas of employment, housing, education, health care, productive capacity, and the ability to provide for their families. Specifically, the international community has a crucial role to play in terms of openness, transparency and combating corruption in the administration of refugee programs. Otherwise, they will not be able to enact policies and programs that adequately deal with the social, physical, and economic needs of the refugees in areas that include worker rights, health, education, safety, and human rights. Sound policies will be developed only when the international community makes decisions based on the specific needs of the refugees, which includes the timing, speed, and sequence of the implementation of programs and policies.

The international community, host countries, and their citizens need to be prudent and realize that the problems and struggles faced by Syrian refugees are not only short-term in nature; they have the potential to extend well into the future, even beyond this current conflict. It is often easier to remedy problems if they are foreseen well in advance and dealt with through preventative measures instead of trying to remedy them after the onset of a situation and its impacts are entrenched. This view is shared by Machiavelli who stated that “the medicine is no longer in time because the malady has become incurable” (Machiavelli, The Prince, p. 21).

Notes

[1] Turkey hosts the second largest population of Syrian refugees after Lebanon.

The decision this week by the ICC not to investigate the point-blank killing, by Israeli commandos, of nine unarmed Turkish passengers on board the Mavi Marmara aid vessel in 2010, although there was a ‘reasonable basis’ to believe that Israel had committed a war crime in its maritime attack upon civilians, seems indefensible.

The decision not to prosecute will inevitably raise questions about the integrity and impartiality of the ICC in the face of political pressure by the global Israel lobby that already operates in Washington, London and Brussels.

The reason given by the ICC chief prosecutor that the court is more concerned with larger scale incidents, ignores the fact that this attack upon civilian passengers in international waters was part of a six year campaign by the Israeli government to effect an illegal regime change in Gaza by means of a blockade of essential goods to 1.8 million Palestinian Arabs – that still continues today.

This perverse decision would seem to have severely damaged the court’s credibility in any future war crimes investigation and could well signal its own demise as a claimed international body that has yet to be ratified by the U.S. (or its client state, Israel), China or India – i.e. over half the global community.

Fox, the London Telegraph, and the Daily Mail all published articles promoting a video claiming to show a Syrian boy rescuing a young girl amid heavy gunfire during Syria’s ongoing conflict. The Daily Mail article claimed under its titled, “Heroic young boy runs through sniper fire in Syria, pretends to get shot, then rescues terrrified girl as bullets hit the floor around them,” that: 

Yabroud was the last rebel stronghold held by the FSA on the Lebanese border before it fell to Assad’s forces in March 2014.

The video, which was uploaded yesterday, has already had nearly 500,000 views.

It was later re-published on YouTube by Sham News Network, which is run by activists based in Damascus.

Several YouTube comments claim the video is fake, but experts told The Telegraph they have no reason to doubt its authenticity.

The Telegraph, referenced by the Daily Mail, in an article titled, “Watch: Syrian ‘hero boy’ appears to brave sniper fire to rescue terrified girl in dramatic video,” would claim:

The Telegraph cannot independently verify the footage but it is thought the incident took place in Yabroud – a town near the Lebanese border which was the last stronghold of the moderate Free Syrian Army. Experts tell the paper they have no reason to doubt its authenticity.

It would not be the first time gunmen had targeted children in the nearly four years of bloody civil war.

More than 11,000 children have died in war-torn Syria since 2011, including hundreds targeted by snipers, a report by the London-based Oxford Research group revealed earlier this month.

The group found that sniper fire killed 389 Syrian children under the age of 17 between March 2011 and August 2013.

The UN has previously accused the Syrian regime of “crimes against humanity” – including the use of snipers against small children.

Nowhere does the Telegraph claim “experts” of any kind believed the video was authentic. Instead, what the Telegraph did was engage in the same intentionally misleading, manipulative propaganda much of the Western media has resorted to in its coverage of the Syrian conflict, and many others, for years – cite a baseless, unverified claim – then roll it in together with other baseless claims so that they appear to support one another as factual.

While the Daily Mail claims “experts” claimed “they have no reason to doubt its authenticity,” those who have witnessed the West’s intentional, systematic deceit throughout the duration of the Syrian conflict could cite many reasons. With it now confirmed that the above mentioned video is a hoax, yet another reason still can be cited.

Indeed, the video was a complete hoax – a literal production filmed in Malta, not Syria, and consisting of actors, actresses, and special effects. The UK Mirror in its article, “Footage of Syrian ‘hero boy’ dodging sniper’s bullets to save girl revealed as FAKE,” would finally admit:

Lars Klevberg, 34, from Oslo, devised the hoax after watching news coverage of the troubles in Syria.

He told BBC Trending: “If I could make a film and pretend it was real, people would share it and react with hope.

“We shot it in Malta in May this year on a set that was used for other famous movies like Troy and Gladiator.

“The little boy and girl are professional actors from Malta. The voices in the background are Syrian refugees living in Malta.”

Not the First Time

Klevberg admits that “Syrian refugees living in Malta” participated in his propaganda stunt. This is far from the first time the West and its proxies have been caught blatantly producing false reports, footage, and claims regarding the Syrian conflict. In fact, the Western media’s coverage of the Syrian conflict is nothing more than a series of deceptions crutching their way along on their audience’s perceived ignorance, from one exposed sham to another.

During the beginning of the Syrian conflict in 2011, there was “Gay Girl in Damascus” who turned out to be a 40 year-old American man based in the UK. It is exactly “activist-based” footage, claims, and alleged personalities that the West has based its case against the Syrian government on.

There was also “Syria Danny,” a regular guest on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 until he was caught blatantly staging chaos off-camera ahead of a scheduled call-in.

Now, yet more staged videos, fabricated claims, and accusations are making their rounds – and being exposed – at yet another critical juncture during the Syrian conflict – with terrorist strongholds falling to the Syrian government and the West’s “Islamic State” rouse falling apart.

It is important that each of these fabrications, hoaxes, and staged productions are mentioned, again and again, when next the West parades out unverified claims it attempts to resell its narrative and agenda with. It is also critical to understand why exactly many in the general public continue to place their trust in media enterprises that continuously and now quite overtly, deceive the public.

On November 9, 2014, Germany and its Western Allies, celebrated the ‘Fall of the Berlin Wall’ and the subsequent‘re-unification’of the ‘two Germanys’.  Prime Minister Merkel described the ‘historic event’ as a “victory of freedom for all peoples in Europe and across the world.”  The entire Western media and officialdom echoed Merkel’s rhetoric, as 300,000 Germans gathered at the Brandenburg Gate hailed their leader as she spoke of ‘one people, one nation and one state in freedom, peace and prosperity…’  But Merkel’s discourse is a self-serving chauvinist fabrication which distorts the real consequences of a united Germany.  Moreover, the Western celebration of ‘fallen walls’ is very selective.

The notion that Germany was ‘unified’ democratically is of dubious historical accuracy.  The consequences of a powerful unified Germany have not led to a peaceful prosperous Europe and Germany’s current role in world politics, particularly its policies toward the Middle East, North Africa and the Ukraine, has been anything but peaceful.

The Walls of Freedom and the Walls of Prison

While NATO regimes celebrate the ‘Fall of the Berlin Wall’ as the highest expression of freedom, these same political leaders support, finance and promote the construction of oppressive walls throughout world:  Unified Germany and its NATO partners have supported Israel’s Separation Wall dividing and caging millions of Palestinians for the better part of two decades.  Apparently there are progressive and reactionary ‘walls’ – ‘good walls’ and ‘bad walls’. Unlike the Palestinians, Berliners were never deprived of basic necessities and subject to random displacement or even murder – the Western airlift provided all for West Berliners.  Israel’s Separation Wall results in division and seizure of Palestinian land, ancestral homes, farms, schools and cultural sites while centuries-old olive groves are razed – depriving their owners of productive income.

The US has built its own massive ‘Security Wall’ along its Mexican border, incarcerating and even shooting refugees fleeing Washington’s militarization of Central America and Mexico.  The US ‘Security’ Wall condemns millions of Mexicans and Central Americans to live in terror and misery in murderous US client narco-states.  In the past seven years, over 100,000 Mexican civilians have been killed under the reign of US-backed Presidents, who were elected through fraud, as they relentlessly pursue the US mandated “War on Drugs”.  Similar levels of killings ravage Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala where narco-gangs, with the backing of corrupt political, police and military officials, terrorize the cities and countryside.  The death toll from US military interventions in Central America far exceeds those by the former-Soviet Union in Eastern Europe. The US border wall ensures that the survivors of this terror will remain exposed to the brutal rule of US-backed regimes.

At the same time, the civilized ‘European Union’ has erected its land and sea ‘Walls against refugees’ from Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon and Palestine, fleeing NATO directed invasions and proxy wars in their countries.  According to the UN Commission on Refugees, 13 million civilians have been displaced by US wars in Iraq and Syria.  Many fleeing the war zones crash up against the European ‘legal walls’ – immigration restrictions, concentration or “internment” camps and prolonged detentions welcome their “flight to freedom”.

Chancellor Merkel chose not to mention these ‘civilized’ walls against people fleeing NATO’s ‘humanitarian interventions’.  Nor have the Prime Ministers and Presidents of Europe or the US and its ‘ally’ Israel acknowledged the deaths and suffering…because these are their Walls, their own ‘barriers to freedom’.

Democratic Re-Unification or Annexation by Force

Merkel glosses over the crucial fact that the East Germans were never consulted or allowed to hold a free election to decide what kind of relation they would like with the West German regime.  They were never asked under what terms and in what time frame “reunification” would take place.  The West German regime seized control and dictated economic and social policies that destroyed their eastern neighbors’ economy by fiat.  Hundreds of thousands of East German factory-workers faced brutal arbitrary firings as the capitalist ‘West’ shut closed state factories.  East German farmers looked on helplessly as their prosperous, stable co-operatives were dissolved on the orders of West German officials.  Where was the democracy in this policy of brutal annexation and political viciousness that slashed the former ‘East’ Germans living standards, multiplied unemployment ten-fold, greatly prejudiced the welfare benefits and employment of female workers and devastated pensioners?  Over 1.5 million Eastern German workers were uprooted and became economic refugees in the ‘West’ where wages were double the rate in ‘liberated’ East Germany.  The wages were higher, but so was the job insecurity and the loss of social welfare provisions of the East.  And if the death of 138 East Germans during 28 years, trying to escape over the Wall, was a tragedy, then what should we call the thousands who have drowned or died other horrible deaths trying to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe or to scale the Wall separating the US and Mexico, or  Israel’s Wall strangling six million Palestinians?

There are many ‘death strips’ denying Latin Americans, Palestinians, Middle Easterners their freedom from want, blocking their escape from US-NATO wars and Israeli genocide.  But those ‘atrocious walls’ were not mentioned by Chancellor Merkel at the Brandenburg Gate as she celebrated the 25^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  The scribes and scribblers from the New York Times, the Financial Times and the Washington Post did not mention these real, contemporary walls and their brutal toll.  The selective denunciation of certain Walls contrasts with the politics of erecting ‘other’, more formidable Walls. Western walls of exclusion carry with them a denial of responsibility for the political and economic conditions that has driven millions of refugees to flee Central America, Palestine, the Middle East and North Africa.

US intervention and support of proxy death-squad regimes and the brutal military in Central America, from the 1960’s to the 1990’s, resulted in over 250,000 civilian deaths and the displacement of over 2 million refugees.

US-EU invasions and proxy wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria for over a decade have uprooted more than 13 million people and killed well over million civilians.

Israel’s wars and occupation against the Palestinian people have resulted in over 500,000 Jewish colonial settlers grabbing Palestinian land since 1967.The self-proclaimed Jewish state forcibly displaced hundreds of thousands and killed, maimed and jailed over 300,000.  To admit that the West constructs and maintains its own system of atrocious walls inevitably points to the policy of decades of prolonged bloody imperialist wars leading to millions of refugees.

Imperial wars are characterized by the construction and maintenance of complex ‘Western Walls’, far deadlier and brutal than the Berlin Wall and less likely to fall.  In fact, Western Walls are multiplying and being fortified by the latest surveillance technology.  Larger budgets and more lethal arms for anti-immigrant police, has led to the brutal hunt, capture and incarceration of refugees – as Western regimes become more like police states .

The Malignant Consequences of the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Annexation of East Germany

The annexation of East Germany vastly increased the economic power of Germany, providing German capital with several million skilled workers and trained engineers at no cost.  Germany’s enhanced power dictated the course of the European Union’s economic policy.  With the onset of the economic crisis, Germany’s capitalist and political elite were well positioned to dictate the terms of ‘recovery’ – and impose the entire burden on the working and middle classes of Southern Europe and Ireland.  Germany’s ruling class, in firm control of the EU directorate, forced “austerity programs” on Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Ireland.  These regressive policies, which ensured that creditors would recover their loans with interest, led to spiraling unemployment rates, in some cases of over 50% for young people, and long-term, large-scale decline in living standards.  ‘Unified Germany’ flexed its newly found economic muscle and extended its hegemony over the EU and ensured debt payments from its European subjects.

Unified Germany’s economic power led to renewed political and military aspirations to engage and assert its presence in the US led imperial wars in the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and the Ukraine.  By the end of the first decade of the 21^stcentury ‘united Germany’ was profitably supplying weapons, logistics and military missions in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.  It provided Israel with weapons and economic aid while Palestinians were expelled from their homes and land.   Merkel’s imperial ambitions were revealed in her wholehearted backing of the far-right coup in Ukraine.  Subsequently Germany imposed sanctions against Russia and supported the Kiev regime’s savage military blitz against the Donbass.  In the Ukraine, Germany once again, as in the 1930’s, found allies among neo-Nazi collaborators and thugs willing to slaughter ethnic Russian speaking federalists in the East.   Merkel’s dream is to convert the Ukraine into a German-American client state, where German exports would replace Russian goods and German agro-mineral investors can exploit the country’s raw materials.

Conclusion

It is obvious that Merkel, Obama and other imperialist rulers have a double standard with regard to ‘Walls’ – they denounce ‘Communist Walls’ while supporting murderous ‘Capitalist Walls’ against refugees; they celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall while they build bloodier Walls against the victims of their imperial wars.

Apart from the cant and hypocrisy of Western officialdom, there is a political logic guiding these policies.  The West’scriteria , for deciding which Walls are worthy of support and which Walls should fall, runs along the following lines:  Walls that keep out victims of imperialist wars are progressive and necessary for ‘national security’; Walls that protect Communist, nationalist or leftist regimes are repressive, dehumanizing and must fall.

If we consider the larger political consequences of an event, like the fall of the Berlin War and the subsequent arbitrary annexation of the East, it is clear that ‘re-unified’ Germany’s exercise of power has had a profoundly negative impact on the economies of Southern Europe and has concentrated dictatorial political powers in the hands of German decision-makers operating through EU headquarters in Brussels.  Unified Germany has renounced its passive role and re-asserted its role in world politics: slowly at first as a passive junior partner to US imperialist wars in the Middle East and now, more decisively, by linking up with Ukraine rightists and thugs and imposing economic sanctions on Russia.

Germany’s ‘great fall’ after World War II required a half century to “put all the pieces together again”.  But once in place, Germany seeks to project world power, particularly through its proxies in the EU and NATO, in alliance with US imperialism.  The Fourth Reich increasingly looks back to the Third Reich.

The United States is a gung-ho supporter of a genocide that it created. (Click on those links, for the verification of these shocking facts — shocking only because they’re covered up by our ‘press.’) Why does Europe tolerate this, and even participate in it? But, they do.

On November 14th, France missed the second deadline for them to supply to Russia the Mistral helicopter-carrier ship that Russia had already paid for in full, and which had been built to Russian specifications, not suitable for use by NATO.

Back on 14 May 2014, Michael R. Gordon — one of the New York Times ‘reporters’ (more-realistically: stenographers for the U.S. Administration) who had ‘reported’ back in 2002 about how horrific were the WMD or Weapons of Mass Destruction that Saddam Hussein was building up, but which actually didn’t exist except in the Administration’s disinformation-agencies — headlined in that propaganda-outlet for the U.S. Government (propagandistically calling itself a ‘news’paper), “France’s Sale of 2 Ships to Russians Is Ill-Advised, U.S. Warns,” and he lambasted the dastardly purveyor of what U.S. nationalists had contemptuously called “freedom fries”; he opened his ‘news report’ as the stenographer to power that he and his newspaper are, with: “In a closed-door meeting in February 2010, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates urged his French counterpart not to proceed with the sale of two amphibious assault ships to Russia because it ‘would send the wrong message to Russia and to our allies in Central and East Europe.’” In other words: Russia is the enemy; don’t deal with them in any other way.

Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post, headlined the next day disdainfully, “Europe goes its own way,” and she opened, “France’s attempt to sell warships to Russia is both a ‘sell the rope to hang themselves’ moment and a comment on U.S. stature these days.” She lied: Russia isn’t France’s enemy; the U.S. has become that. And France wasn’t in any “attempt to sell warships to Russia”; those warships had already been sold and built and paid for, but Washington was turning the screws on their ‘friend’ France, to induce them not to deliver what had already been sold and manufactured.

 America’s fascists, and even for our racist-fascists or “nazis,” the Cold War has never ended, not even when the Soviet Union did and when Marxist economics became rejected everywhere but in Cuba and North Korea. Apparently, the Cold War was never really about communism, if one believes these fascists; it was about destroying Russia. For them, it has actually been just a marketing plan for U.S.-made weapons. Now that Russia is a democracy — perhaps more so than the U.S. now is — the old hatred still burns like hot coals in the black hearts of Barack Obama, Republicans, and all other far-rightist, pro-oligarchic, U.S. politicians, who serve the people at Raytheon Corporation and Lockheed-Martin, and other producers for NATO, the Western arms-buying club.

Gutless France isn’t telling Uncle Sam to shove off about that, but is instead setting itself up to pay a very heavy price for today’s peddler of genocide, the U.S. You don’t see this fact — or this, or even this — reported in the New York Times, or theWashington Post, or the Wall Street Journal. Those facts come from ‘the enemy.’

I am a European-American who is outraged that my country has taken up what had been one of Hitler’s big objectives, of destroying and subjugating Russians, and that Europe is participating in this moral degradation of America, all for the benefit of an all-too-powerful group of U.S. and a few cooperating European oligarchs, who think that their blood is not on the line if this produces a nuclear war against Russia. But their gated communities and frost-windowed limousines won’t protect even them from the viciousness of the hatreds and psychopathies that they harbor, if they succeed at prostituting ‘democracy’ in this way.

America needs a real press, not an aristocratically controlled ‘news-media,’ that are constantly for sale to the highest bidder, whomever can put up the advertising bucks to buy the ‘news reporting’ and ‘editorial opinions,’ that shape ‘democracy.’

 

The siege of Knightsbridge is a farce. For two years, an exaggerated, costly police presence around the Ecuadorean embassy in London has served no purpose other than to flaunt the power of the state. Their quarry is an Australian charged with no crime, a refugee from gross injustice whose only security is the room given him by a brave South American country. His true crime is to have initiated a wave of truth-telling in an era of lies, cynicism and war.

The persecution of Julian Assange must end. Even the British government clearly believes it must end. On 28 October, the deputy foreign minister, Hugo Swire, told Parliament he would “actively welcome” the Swedish prosecutor in London and “we would do absolutely everything to facilitate that.” The tone was impatient.

The Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny, has refused to come to London to question Assange about allegations of sexual misconduct in Stockholm in 2010 – even thoughSwedish law allows for it and the procedure is routine for Sweden and the UK. The documentary evidence of a threat to Assange’s life and freedom from the United States – should he leave the embassy – is overwhelming. On May 14 this year, US court files revealed that a “multi subject investigation” against Assange was “active and ongoing.”

Ny has never properly explained why she will not come to London, just as the Swedish authorities have never explained why they refuse to give Assange a guarantee that they will not extradite him on to the US under a secret arrangement agreed between Stockholm and Washington. In December 2010, the Independent revealed that the two governments had discussed his onward extradition to the US before the European Arrest Warrant was issued.

Perhaps an explanation is that, contrary to its reputation as a liberal bastion, Sweden has drawn so close to Washington that it has allowed secret CIA “renditions” – including the illegal deportation of refugees. The rendition and subsequent torture of two Egyptian political refugees in 2001 was condemned by the UN Committee against Torture, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch; the complicity and duplicity of the Swedish state are documented in successful civil litigation and WikiLeaks cables. In the summer of 2010, Assange had been in Sweden to talk about WikiLeaks revelations of the war in Afghanistan – in which Sweden had forces under US command.

The Americans are pursuing Assange because WikiLeaks exposed their epic crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq: the wholesale killing of tens of thousands of civilians, which they covered up; and their contempt for sovereignty and international law, as demonstrated vividly in their leaked diplomatic cables.

For his part in disclosing how US soldiers murdered Afghan and Iraqi civilians, the heroic soldier Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning received a sentence of 35 years, having been held for more than a thousand days in conditions which, according to the UN Special Rapporteur, amounted to torture.

Few doubt that should the US get their hands on Assange, a similar fate awaits him. Threats of capture and assassination became the currency of the political extremes in the US following Vice-President Joe Biden’s preposterous slur that Assange was a “cyber-terrorist”. Anyone doubting the kind of US ruthlessness he can expect should remember the forcing down of the Bolivian president’s plane last year – wrongly believed to be carrying Edward Snowden.

According to documents released by Snowden, Assange is on a “Manhunt target list”. Washington’s bid to get him, say Australian diplomatic cables, is “unprecedented in scale and nature”. In Alexandria, Virginia, a secret grand jury has spent four years attempting to contrive a crime for which Assange can be prosecuted. This is not easy. The First Amendment to the US Constitution protects publishers, journalists and whistleblowers. As a presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama lauded whistleblowers as “part of a healthy democracy [and they] must be protected from reprisal”. Under President Obama, more whistleblowers have been prosecuted than under all other US presidents combined. Even before the verdict was announced in the trial of Chelsea Manning, Obama had pronounced the whisletblower guilty.

“Documents released by WikiLeaks since Assange moved to England,” wrote Al Burke, editor of the online Nordic News Network, an authority on the multiple twists and dangers facing Assange, “clearly indicate that Sweden has consistently submitted to pressure from the United States in matters relating to civil rights. There is every reason for concern that if Assange were to be taken into custody by Swedish authorities, he could be turned over to the United States without due consideration of his legal rights.”

There are signs that the Swedish public and legal community do not support prosecutor’s Marianne Ny’s intransigence. Once implacably hostile to Assange, the Swedish press has published headlines such as: “Go to London, for God’s sake.”

Why won’t she? More to the point, why won’t she allow the Swedish court access to hundreds of SMS messages that the police extracted from the phone of one of the two women involved in the misconduct allegations? Why won’t she hand them over to Assange’s Swedish lawyers? She says she is not legally required to do so until a formal charge is laid and she has questioned him. Then, why doesn’t she question him?

This week, the Swedish Court of Appeal will decide whether to order Ny to hand over the SMS messages; or the matter will go to the Supreme Court and the European Court of Justice. In high farce, Assange’s Swedish lawyers have been allowed only to “review” the SMS messages, which they had to memorise.

One of the women’s messages makes clear that she did not want any charges brought against Assange, “but the police were keen on getting a hold on him”. She was “shocked” when they arrested him because she only “wanted him to take [an HIV] test”. She “did not want to accuse JA of anything” and “it was the police who made up the charges”. (In a witness statement, she is quoted as saying that she had been “railroaded by police and others around her”.)

Neither woman claimed she had been raped. Indeed, both have denied they were raped and one of them has since tweeted, “I have not been raped.” That they were manipulated by police and their wishes ignored is evident – whatever their lawyers might say now. Certainly, they are victims of a saga worthy of Kafka.

For Assange, his only trial has been trial by media. On 20 August 2010, the Swedish police opened a “rape investigation” and immediately — and unlawfully — told the Stockholm tabloids that there was a warrant for Assange’s arrest for the “rape of two women”. This was the news that went round the world.

In Washington, a smiling US Defence Secretary Robert Gates told reporters that the arrest “sounds like good news to me”. Twitter accounts associated with the Pentagon described Assange as a “rapist” and a “fugitive”.

Less than 24 hours later, the Stockholm Chief Prosecutor, Eva Finne, took over the investigation. She wasted no time in cancelling the arrest warrant, saying, “I don’t believe there is any reason to suspect that he has committed rape.” Four days later, she dismissed the rape investigation altogether, saying, “There is no suspicion of any crime whatsoever.” The file was closed.

Enter Claes Borgstrom, a high profile politician in the Social Democratic Party then standing as a candidate in Sweden’s imminent general election. Within days of the chief prosecutor’s dismissal of the case, Borgstrom, a lawyer, announced to the media that he was representing the two women and had sought a different prosecutor in the city of Gothenberg. This was Marianne Ny, whom Borgstrom knew well. She, too, was involved with the Social Democrats.

On 30 August, Assange attended a police station in Stockholm voluntarily and answered all the questions put to him. He understood that was the end of the matter. Two days later, Ny announced she was re-opening the case. Borgstrom was asked by a Swedish reporter why the case was proceeding when it had already been dismissed, citing one of the women as saying she had not been raped. He replied, “Ah, but she is not a lawyer.” Assange’s Australian barrister, James Catlin, responded, “This is a laughing stock … it’s as if they make it up as they go along.”

On the day Marianne Ny re-activated the case, the head of Sweden’s military intelligence service (“MUST”) publicly denounced WikiLeaks in an article entitled “WikiLeaks [is] a threat to our soldiers.” Assange was warned that the Swedish intelligence service, SAP, had been told by its US counterparts that US-Sweden intelligence-sharing arrangements would be “cut off” if Sweden sheltered him.

For five weeks, Assange waited in Sweden for the new investigation to take its course. The Guardian was then on the brink of publishing the Iraq “War Logs”, based on WikiLeaks’ disclosures, which Assange was to oversee. His lawyer in Stockholm asked Ny if she had any objection to his leaving the country. She said he was free to leave.

Inexplicably, as soon as he left Sweden — at the height of media and public interest in the WikiLeaks disclosures — Ny issued a European Arrest Warrant and an Interpol “red alert” normally used for terrorists and dangerous criminals. Put out in five languages around the world, it ensured a media frenzy.

Assange attended a police station in London, was arrested and spent ten days in Wandsworth Prison, in solitary confinement. Released on £340,000 bail, he was electronically tagged, required to report to police daily and placed under virtual house arrest while his case began its long journey to the Supreme Court. He still had not been charged with any offence. His lawyers repeated his offer to be questioned by Ny in London, pointing out that she had given him permission to leave Sweden. They suggested a special facility at Scotland Yard used for that purpose. She refused.

Katrin Axelsson and Lisa Longstaff of Women Against Rape wrote: “The allegations against [Assange] are a smokescreen behind which a number of governments are trying to clamp down on WikiLeaks for having audaciously revealed to the public their secret planning of wars and occupations with their attendant rape, murder and destruction… The authorities care so little about violence against women that they manipulate rape allegations at will. [Assange] has made it clear he is available for questioning by the Swedish authorities, in Britain or via Skype. Why are they refusing this essential step in their investigation? What are they afraid of?”

This question remained unanswered as Ny deployed the European Arrest Warrant, a draconian product of the “war on terror” supposedly designed to catch terrorists and organized criminals. The EAW had abolished the obligation on a petitioning state to provide any evidence of a crime. More than a thousand EAWs are issued each month; only a few have anything to do with potential “terror” charges. Most are issued for trivial offences—such as overdue bank charges and fines. Many of those extradited face months in prison without charge. There have been a number of shocking miscarriages of justice, of which British judges have been highly critical.

The Assange case finally reached the UK Supreme Court in May 2012. In a judgement that upheld the EAW – whose rigid demands had left the courts almost no room for manoeuvre – the judges found that European prosecutors could issue extradition warrants in the UK without any judicial oversight, even though Parliament intended otherwise. They made clear that Parliament had been “misled” by the Blair government. The court was split, 5-2, and consequently found against Assange.

However, the Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, made one mistake. He applied the Vienna Convention on treaty interpretation, allowing for state practice to override the letter of the law. As Assange’s barrister, Dinah Rose QC, pointed out, this did not apply to the EAW.

The Supreme Court only recognised this crucial error when it dealt with another appeal against the EAW in November last year. The Assange decision had been wrong, but it was too late to go back.

Assange’s choice was stark: extradition to a country that had refused to say whether or not it would send him on to the US, or to seek what seemed his last opportunity for refuge and safety. Supported by most of Latin America, the courageous government of Ecuador granted him refugee status on the basis of documented evidence and legal advice that he faced the prospect of cruel and unusual punishment in the US; that this threat violated his basic human rights; and that his own government in Australia had abandoned him and colluded with Washington. The Labor government of prime minister Julia Gillard had even threatened to take away his passport.

Gareth Peirce, the renowned human rights lawyer who represents Assange in London, wrote to the then Australian foreign minister, Kevin Rudd:

“Given the extent of the public discussion, frequently on the basis of entirely false assumptions… it is very hard to attempt to preserve for him any presumption of innocence. Mr. Assange has now hanging over him not one but two Damocles swords, of potential extradition to two different jurisdictions in turn for two different alleged crimes, neither of which are crimes in his own country, and that his personal safety has become at risk in circumstances that are highly politically charged.”

It was not until she contacted the Australian High Commission in London that Peirce received a response, which answered none of the pressing points she raised. In a meeting I attended with her, the Australian Consul-General, Ken Pascoe, made the astonishing claim that he knew “only what I read in the newspapers” about the details of the case.

Meanwhile, the prospect of a grotesque miscarriage of justice was drowned in a vituperative campaign against the WikiLeaks founder. Deeply personal, petty, vicious and inhuman attacks were aimed at a man not charged with any crime yet subjected to treatment not even meted out to a defendant facing extradition on a charge of murdering his wife. That the US threat to Assange was a threat to all journalists, to freedom of speech, was lost in the sordid and the ambitious.

Books were published, movie deals struck and media careers launched or kick-started on the back of WikiLeaks and an assumption that attacking Assange was fair game and he was too poor to sue. People have made money, often big money, while WikiLeaks has struggled to survive. The editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, called the WikiLeaks disclosures, which his newspaper published, “one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years”. It became part of his marketing plan to raise the newspaper’s cover price.

With not a penny going to Assange or to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood movie. The book’s authors, Luke Harding and David Leigh, gratuitously described Assange as a “damaged personality” and “callous”. They also revealed the secret password he had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing the US embassy cables. With Assange now trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy, Harding, standing among the police outside, gloated on his blog that “Scotland Yard may get the last laugh”.

The injustice meted out to Assange is one of the reasons Parliament will eventually vote on a reformed EAW. The draconian catch-all used against him could not happen now; charges would have to be brought and “questioning” would be insufficient grounds for extradition. “His case has been won lock, stock and barrel,” Gareth Peirce told me, “these changes in the law mean that the UK now recognises as correct everything that was argued in his case. Yet he does not benefit. And the genuineness of Ecuador’s offer of sanctuary is not questioned by the UK or Sweden.”

On 18 March 2008, a war on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was foretold in a secret Pentagon document prepared by the “Cyber Counterintelligence Assessments Branch”. It described a detailed plan to destroy the feeling of “trust” which is WikiLeaks’ “centre of gravity”. This would be achieved with threats of “exposure [and] criminal prosecution”. Silencing and criminalising this rare source of independent journalism was the aim, smear the method. Hell hath no fury like great power scorned.

www.johnpiler.com

For important additional information, click on the following links:

http://justice4assange.com/extraditing-assange.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/assange-could-face-espionage-trial-in-us-2154107.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ImXe_EQhUI

http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/nlj/wikileaks_doj_05192014.pdf

https://wikileaks.org/59-International-Organizations.html

https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1202703/doj-letter-re-wikileaks-6-19-14.pdf

The following is a short documentary about many of the people that have been described as “Euro-Maidan activists” and their activities inside Ukraine that the US, Britain, France, Germany, Poland and the European Union have supported.  Eric Zuesse 

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At a time when France is commemorating the carnage of 1914-1918, when the President is planning budget cuts everywhere except on nuclear weaponry, when some 150 nations (including for the first time the USA and perhaps Russia) are expected to be in Vienna on December 8-9 – Vienna, at the heart of the Europe ravaged by two World Wars – for the 3rd Intergovernmental Conference on « the hamanitarian impact of nuclear weapons » i.e. their catastrophic and inhuman effects, what do France’s leaders propose? They propose authorising the five nuclear states with permanent seats on the Security Council (France being one) to prepare for mass crimes and to commit them with impunity.That is what emerges from an official article published by Laurent Fabius on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website.

What the Minister of Foreign Affairs does is to follow up the “simple yet ambitious proposition” made by President Hollande at the UN General Assembly on 24 September 2013 that “when the Security Council needed to pronounce on a case of a mass crime, the permanent members would undertake to suspend their veto powers”, and to declare in his article that “realistically, this code of conduct should exclude cases where the vital national interests of a permanent member state were in jeopardy.”

Thus, for Laurent Fabius, mass massacres must be condemned unanimously and combatted when perpetrated by chemical means or by a state without nuclear arms, but not when perpetrated by a nuclear-armed stated with a permanent seat on the S.C.

Implicitly, Fabius is admitting that nuclear weapons are instruments of « mass crime ». But France, justifying her weapons as always as necessary to defend her « vital interests » (no other state voices this argument) has to be able, « realistically » to use them with impunity. She must have the possibility, in such a case, of invoking her « vital interests » and vetoing any sanction by the international community. At the same time, France would be authorising her colleagues in the « Club of Five » to use the same excuse for massacring her own population.Crimes against humanity are thus forbidden, except by the five nuclear states with permanent seats … including (key point) the French Republic. « The homeland of Human Rights », as we keep hearing.

His article is over a year old. It dates from October 2013. Its logical implications were mentioned by nobody at the time (except ACDN, which denounced them immediately in a resolution sent to « Sortir du nucléaire » [the Nuclear Phase-Out Network]). The piece is still online today on the Ministry’s website, and so it still inspires policy. Anyone can look it up and note the Minister’s startling admissions:

This week has been a turning point in a seven month campaign to Save the Internet. The campaign began when FCC Chair, Tom Wheeler, told the media in May that he was considering creating a tiered Internet where wealthy corporations could pay for faster service giving them an advantage over start-ups, small businesses, entrepreneurs and citizen activists.

The Campaign for the Impossible: Internet as Common Carrier and Net Neutrality

The net neutrality rules were thrown out by a court in January 2014. Following that decision, millions of people emailed, petitioned and telephoned the FCC urging net neutrality but the FCC did not seem to be listening. More was needed.

Popular Resistance joined with net neutrality activists to not only stop the tiered Internet but to push for treating the Internet as a common carrier where there would be equal access for all without discrimination.

We participated in a protest 8 days before the public meeting where the FCC would announce its new rule-making proceeding. At that protest, we announced we would sleep at the FCC until the meeting.

The first night we slept at the FCC by ourselves. That night, people visited us and the next day one person joined us, bringing the first tent. The media began to notice as we put up massive banners and lined the outside of the FCC with signs.The encampment started growing.

Every morning we stood by the garage and entrances to the FCC greeting everyone who worked there with message calling for net neutrality and reclassifying the Internet as a common carrier. FCC employees came out to thank us for standing up for net neutrality.

The encampment was supported by the Internet freedom movement. Groups like Fight for the Future, Free Press, Demand Progress and two dozen other organizations all worked together. The FCC began receiving thousands of phone calls, tens of thousands of emails and hundreds of thousands of petitions.

TIME Magazine reported the “eighth floor executive office has been thrown into chaos amid a mounting backlash that shut down its phone lines as a growing number of Open Internet advocates camp out in front of their office.” They reported Chairman Wheeler had to hold a meeting to lift the morale of the dispirited staff. The encampment was also covered in the Washington Post, Guardian and other major outlets.

Fissures began to develop among corporations with the broadband providers and telecoms, e.g. Comcast, Verizon and AT&T supporting a tiered Internet, but all the content providerslike google, Facebook, Amazon and many others opposing it. Internet investors and start-ups came out on the side of net neutrality. As the pressure grew, three of the five FCC commissioners visited the camp, including the chair, Tom Wheeler.

A large protest bringing hundreds of people to the FCC was held the day of the public hearing to announce the rulemaking.

As the rule-making hearing began, three of us stood up and interrupted demanding “real net neutrality,” “reclassification as a common carrier” and protection of the Internet as the forum for Freedom of Speech in the 21^st Century.

Major Breakthrough: FCC Includes Reclassification in Rulemaking Proceeding

At the meeting, Wheeler used rhetoric that sounded like he supported real net neutrality but proposed a rule that would have created a tiered Internet. But, the pressure had became so intense that Chairman Wheeler included the movement’s proposal: reclassifying the Internet as a common carrier under Title II and restoring net neutrality rules; along with his tiered Internet proposal. The FCC wanted comments on both options.

The comments started to pour in. Thousands of people were commenting every day. The numbers grew rapidly.  Then on June 1, 2014, John Oliver of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, jumped in with a 13 minute monologue that explained net neutrality, described Comcast as behaving like a mafia shakedown and compared putting Chairman Wheeler in charge of the Internet as equivalent to a dingo babysitting. This spurred even more public comments.

The net neutrality movement continued to build. There were protests organized at FCC office’s all over the country, then protests at Comcast and Verizon offices, protests at Obama fundraisers and more protests at the FCC in Washington, DC. Popular Resistance produced a “musical protest” entitled “Which Side Are You On, Tom?” asking whether Tom Wheeler was with the people or the telecoms? For four weeks before the musical we leafleted the FCC, inviting employees, including Chairman Wheeler, to join us for the musical. We had heard so much thanks from FCC employees that we published an open letter thanking FCC employees for their support for net neutrality.

An online Internet Slowdown was held resulting in “2 million emails and nearly 300,000 calls (averaging 1,000 per minute) to Congress. On top of that, so many pro-Net Neutrality comments were filed (722,364 to be exact) that the FCC’s site broke (again).”

By the time the public comment period was coming to an end, net neutrality had become a bandwagon with so many comments it crashed the FCC’s system. In the end more than 3.7 million people had commented – by far the record number of comments on any FCC rulemaking. Analysis of the comments showed that 99% wanted net neutrality. The people had spoken clearly and loudly – they wanted an Internet free of discrimination, with equal access for all where broadband and telecom companies could not impact content.

Wheeler Still Not Listening

Despite this overwhelming support for reclassification under Title II, Wheeler continued to try to find a way to satisfy Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and other telecoms and broadband providers. Rather than full reclassification and real net neutrality, Wheeler was urging a hybrid plan of partial reclassification which would continue to allow telecoms to negotiate special deals with corporations for different services.

Anger grew in the Internet community that the FCC was not listening to 3.7 million people and was putting the profits of a handful of corporations ahead of protecting the Internet. Various groups began to take action – when commissioners opposed to net neutrality held meetings, advocates for net neutrality were there, commissioners were invited to meetingsaround the country, FCC employees were called, 75,000 people told the White House to fireor  demote Wheeler, the White House was warned that the Democrats could lose the Internet vote and photos were posted showing support for net neutrality (submit yours!).

Pressure continued to grow. Rumors began to surface that the Obama administration was considering speaking out on the issue but that advisers were divided. To help them decide, a protests was held at the White House and in 30 cities across the country on November 6.

We learned that the greatest obstacle to net neutrality was the Chairman. We then decided that it was necessary to bring the message directly to Chairman Wheeler that he needed to listen to the people. As a former top lobbyist for the telecom and broadband industry, Wheeler needed to be reminded that he worked for the people now, not the telecoms. We decided to confront him at home and block his driveway.

As we turned the corner to his house, Wheeler was just coming out the door. Three of us jumped out of the car and sat in his driveway, our social media person got out and started filming, the rest of us joined quickly bringing signs to cover the front of his house.  Wheeler tried to engage us, initially posing for a photo-op in front of a Save The Internet sign. We told him this was not a photo-op for him but people telling him it was time to listen to the people. We sang to him: “Which side are you on, Tom. Are you with the people or with the telecoms?” We continued to make it clear that we wanted full reclassification, not hybrid plans as well as real net neutrality rules put in place.

President Obama Joins the Debate

When Barack Obama ran for office he was outspoken in his support for the level playing field of the Internet. He spoke about how it was an engine for creativity in the economy and promised he would “not take a back seat” to anyone in protecting the Internet. His appointments as FCC chair have been disappointing as none have been advocates for net neutrality. When President Obama picked Tom Wheeler as chairman, someone who had been a major fundraiser during his campaigns and who had been a top lobbyist for the industry, there was concern in the net neutrality community.

Prior to November 10, President Obama had only modestly spoken in opposition to an Internet with fast lanes and slow lanes based on how much a corporation paid.  But two hours after we blockaded Wheeler’s driveway President Obama said everything we wanted him to say. He said it with specificity, not leaving himself any wiggle room for a political escape hatch.

President Obama called for reclassification of the Internet under Title II and putting in place net neutrality rules.  The president said:

“An open Internet is essential to the American economy, and increasingly to our very way of life. By lowering the cost of launching a new idea, igniting new political movements, and bringing communities closer together, it has been one of the most significant democratizing influences the world has ever known.

“‘Net neutrality’” has been built into the fabric of the Internet since its creation — but it is also a principle that we cannot take for granted. We cannot allow Internet service providers (ISPs) to restrict the best access or to pick winners and losers in the online marketplace for services and ideas. That is why today, I am asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to answer the call of almost 4 million public comments, and implement the strongest possible rules to protect net neutrality.”

He went on to give specific recommendations to the FCC on what was required.

That night we returned to Wheeler’s home but with a non-confrontational attitude. Things had changed dramatically since the morning blockade of his driveway, not only had the President come out strongly but others were joining the President’s call. The momentum had shifted and a national consensus was forming in favor of reclassification and net neutrality.  We gave his wife a bottle of wine with a note saying we were “looking for an Internet hero.” We greeted Wheeler when he returned home in a friendly manner and then talked about the national consensus and how the FCC needed to be part of it.

We also said that if they did so, the movement would ensure Congress did not take action against the FCC. We began to shift our attention to the telecoms and broadband providers with a protest at the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, which Wheeler used to head, and now was run by Michael Powell the former FCC commissioner who made the mistake of reclassifying the Internet from a common carrier to an information service in 2002.

Shockingly, the Washington Post reported the next day that Chairman Wheeler was thinking of breaking with the president. Not only had Wheeler ignored millions of Americans who took the time to comment to the FCC, now he was going to ignore the President who appointed him to the position!

We had a series of escalating tactics planned to pressure Wheeler. We had put those aside when President Obama spoke out and momentum had shifted, but the Washington Post article pushed us to review those tactics and let him know that we were upset with the direction The Post reported he was considering.  We picked a relatively mild tactic, placing door knockers on the doors in his neighborhood with Tom Wheeler’s picture on them and letting neighbors know he was threatening the Internet.  This resulted in a strong response from the FCC.

Some press reports have clarified that Wheeler had not decided to break with the President, but had also not made a decision on reclassification yet. This was a nuanced distancing from The Post story, enough for us not to escalate further. While Wheeler has still not made it clear whether he will follow the views of millions of Americans and the President, we are watching closely and waiting to see the direction he goes.

Celebrate and Press On

On Thursday night, we joined with other net neutrality advocates in holding a#PartyAtTheFCC to celebrate how far we have come but also to build energy for the next phase of advocacy. We tried to invite the commissioners, but FCC security prevented it.

Despite rain and cold, the #PartyAtTheFCC went forward, along with parties in more than a dozen cities, ending with people in the FCC driveway chanting “Party at the FCC” and “Net Neutrality Now:”

We know we have not won yet, but we also know we are capable of winning. The battle for the future of the Internet has been engaged and the right solution – resclassification under Title II and putting in place strong net neutrality rules – has gone from being politically impossible to seemingly inevitable.

It is proof that even in a government corrupted by money, united and mobilized people who act strategically with creative tactics can win. Stay tuned and get ready to become engaged if things begin to turn the wrong way. Winning the battle for the future of the Internet is one that will impact each of us, and we all must take responsibility for it.

Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese are organizers with Popular Resistance, which provides daily movement news and resources. Sign up for their daily newsletter; and follow them on twitter, @PopResistance.

Taking part in the meeting were President of Russia Vladimir Putin, President of Brazil Dilma Rousseff, President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping, Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi and President of the South African Republic Jacob Zuma.

The Russian President invited all the participants to the BRICS Summit, which will take place in Ufa on July 8-9, 2015.

PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA VLADIMIR PUTIN: Good afternoon, friends, colleagues.

It gives me great pleasure to greet you here. I have just recently visited the People’s Republic of China, were our Chinese friends hosted the APEC Summit. I would like to congratulate them on this. I think the Summit was organised on the highest level. We had some very frank conversations, and here we will have the opportunity to continue the conversations we began in Beijing.

I would like to say that I consider our meetings within the G20 framework to be very useful and important because they give us a chance to compare notes regarding the enormous flow of information and our positions on world trade, the global financial situation, our common actions to improve the situation in the global economy, giving consideration to the interests of the actively developing economies as well.   I would like to note in this connection that we are successfully implementing the decisions to create dedicated financial institutions within BRICS. Madam President [of Brazil Dilma Rouseff] referred to it earlier. We are finalising the creation of the Development Bank and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement, which were founded at the summit in Fortaleza. They have a significant total capital of $200 billion. This will provide us with common mechanisms capable of stabilising national capital markets in case of crisis situations in the global economy. Meanwhile, new joint lending opportunities will make it possible to expand our trade and economic ties.

It is important that ties between our five states are expanding in other areas as well. Thus, our cooperation in industry and technology is becoming more efficient. New joint projects have evolved in such areas as energy, mineral resources production and processing, agro-industry and high technology. We also share a common stand on information security and exchange experience in resolving acute social issues and in developing agriculture, education and science.

Friends and colleagues, in April 2015 Russia will take over the Presidency in BRICS. Our efforts will be directed at a further expansion of cooperation within our association. Russia is drafting a strategy for our economic partnership and an investment cooperation roadmap.

Friends, I would like to invite you all to the Russian city of Ufa on July 8-9, 2015 for another joint effort. We will prepare for the event together.

2014 was a banner year for Afghanistan’s booming opium industry. According to a United Nations annual survey released on Wednesday, opium cultivation set a record in 2014, increasing by an impressive 7 percent year-over-year and up nearly 50 percent from 2012. Afghanistan presently produces 80 percent of the world’s heroin which provides billions of dollars in illicit profits for the powerful drug Mafia. Heroin trafficking and production have flourished under US military occupation and transformed Afghanistan into a dysfunctional narco-colony.

Readers who follow events in Afghanistan will recall that the Taliban had virtually eradicated poppy production before Bush and Cheney launched their war in 2001. The Pentagon reversed that achievement by installing the same bloodthirsty warlords who had been in power before the Taliban. Naturally, this collection of psychopaths–who the western media lauded as the “Northern Alliance”–picked up where they left off and resumed their drug operations boosting their own wealth and power by many orders of magnitude while meeting the near-insatiable demand for heroin in capitals across Europe and America.

In a Thursday article in the New York Times, Rod Nordland suggests that the recent uptick in production can be pinned on the Afghan presidential elections. Here’s what he says:

“The eight-month presidential and provincial elections…affected opium production not only in the increased demand by politicians for campaign cash, but also in diverting police and military resources to the elections and away from opium eradication.

Opium crop eradication decreased by 63 percent from 2013 to 2014, the report said. Such changes were seen in nearly all provinces where there were eradication efforts underway…

Andrey Avetisyan, a former Russian ambassador to Afghanistan and now the head of the United Nations drug agency here, said United Nations officials had met with (newly-elected President) Ashraf Ghani recently and were encouraged by his concern. He understood well that drug trafficking suffocates the normal economic development,” Mr. Avetisyan said. “We are quite optimistic.” (Afghan Opium Cultivation Rises to Record Levels, New York Times)

Think about how that for a minute. Nordland admits that production rose because of the “the increased demand by politicians for campaign cash”, but then he does an about-face and says that those same politicians (like new president Ashraf Ghani) support opium eradication. Does that make sense to you, dear reader? Is Nordland trying to say that Afghan politicians only support eradication when they don’t need money, but do a quick 180 when they do?

It’s worth noting that Washington’s new man in Kabul, President Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, received a Master’s degree from Columbia University, taught at Johns Hopkins University from 1983 to 1991, and joined the World Bank in 1991. In other words, he has the perfect pedigree for an aspiring sock puppet who will do whatever Washington tells him to do.

It’s also worth mentioning that Ghani signed a controversial security deal to allow US combat troops to stay in Afghanistan after the occupation formally ends. (US troops will also enjoy total immunity from prosecution.) Karzai refused to cave in on the issue, which made him persona non grata at the White House, but eager-to-please Ashraf signed the document the day after he was sworn into office. Here’s the scoop from the Washington Post:

“The United States and Afghanistan on Tuesday signed a vital, long-delayed security deal that will allow nearly 10,000 American troops to remain in Afghanistan beyond the final withdrawal of U.S. and international combat forces this year.

The Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA), and a separate pact signed with NATO, permit the continued training and advising of Afghan security forces, as well as counterterrorism operations against remnants of al-Qaeda. The signing of the documents comes as Taliban insurgents are increasing their attacks in an effort to regain control in anticipation of the combat troops’ departure.

The accord was signed a day after Ashraf Ghani was sworn in as Afghanistan’s new president in a power-sharing government, marking the first democratic hand­over of power in the nation’s history. Ghani’s predecessor, Hamid Karzai, who had presided over the country since shortly after the Taliban was driven from power in 2001, had refused to sign the agreement, souring relations with Washington.” (U.S. and Afghanistan sign vital, long-delayed security pact, Washington Post)

You can see why they love Ghani in Washington. The man is clearly prepared to bend over backwards to please his handlers at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

There’s no reason to think that Ghani is going to be any tougher on poppy growers or drug traffickers than Karzai. The whole thing is a joke. Besides, Ghani doesn’t have the resources to wage that kind of war. He can’t deploy combat units to burn the fields, or hunt down and bust the kingpins, or freeze the assets in suspect bank accounts. Only the US has that kind of power, and they’re not interested. According to the report by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction:

“The recent record-high level of poppy cultivation calls into question the long-term effectiveness and sustainability of those prior efforts….Given the severity of the opium problem and its potential to undermine U.S. objectives in Afghanistan, I strongly suggest that your departments consider the trends in opium cultivation and the effectiveness of past counternarcotics efforts when planning future initiatives.” (CNN)

“Counternarcotics efforts”? What counternarcotics efforts? The US hasn’t lifted a finger to fight the ballooning drug trade in 14 years.

Show me one headline in the last decade where US agents rolled up even one big-name drug trafficker in Afghanistan? The Washington PR guys don’t even bother faking it with photos of captured kilos of heroin stacked a mile high or shady looking gangstas blindfolded and handcuffed doing the perp walk for the media. They don’t fake it, because they don’t care what the public thinks. In fact, they even shrugged off the UN report. The State Department issued a bland statement saying they were “disappointed”, while a spokesman for the Pentagon, Michael Lumpkin, opined, “In our opinion, the failure to reduce poppy cultivation and increase eradication is due to the lack of Afghan government support for the effort.”

Got that? In other words, blame Karzai. How’s that for accountability?

So what’s going on here? Is the US is really allowing an illicit multi-billion dollar industry to flourish right under its nose (without involvement of any kind) or is there a part of this story that’s missing from the headlines? Of course, that leads us to an area of speculation that the media considers taboo, the prospect that US intel agencies are somehow implicated. As journalist and author Alexander Cockburn pointed out some years ago:

“There are certain things you aren’t meant to say in public in America. … A prime no-no is to say …that the CIA’s complicity with drug dealing criminal gangs stretches from the Afghanistan of today back to the year the Agency was founded in 1947.” (Why They Hated Gary Webb, Alexander Cockburn, CounterPunch)

Is that it? Is that why Afghanistan has emerged as the world’s biggest producer of heroin, because the CIA is somehow involved?

It seems quite likely, although I suspect it has less to do with greed than it does with policy. After all, the production and trafficking of narcotics helps the US achieve its strategic goals in Afghanistan, that is, to pacify the public, to maintain the loyalty of the warlords, and to open the country to resource extraction and military bases. As long as the warlords get their payola, the US is able to maintain some control over the hinterland beyond Kabul, which is a big part of the gameplan. Now check out this blurb from an article by Alexander Mercouris titled “The Empire of Chaos and the War on Drugs” which gives a brief history of the CIA’s involvement in the drug trade:

…during the French war in Indochina, the SDECE (French secret service) … turned to the French Connection to organise the heroin traffic, partly in order to fund its own operations against the Vietnamese Communists. After the French left, this operation was taken over by the CIA, with opium poppies grown and processed in the area now known as the Golden Triangle by CIA-backed Chinese drug lords associated with the anti-Communist Kuomintang movement, which had ruled China before the 1949 Communist takeover. The extent of collaboration between the US and the drug traffickers was so great that in the 1960s, the CIA was actually arranging flights to ship heroin from southeast Asia to the US.

The extent of CIA and SDECE collusion with the French Connection and with the Chinese drugs lords of southeast Asia was exposed in 1972 by the US historian Alfred W. McCoy in a seminal book The Politics of Heroin: CIA involvement in the Global Drug Trade (first edition 1973 and third edition 2003)…

The center of opium cultivation then switched to Afghanistan, where the same pattern reproduced itself. The major cultivators and traffickers of opium and heroin were assorted criminals and gangsters who made up a large proportion of the so-called Mujahidin, the Islamic jihadi insurgency which the CIA was supporting in the 1980s because they were fighting the Soviets. These criminals, of whom the most notorious is the Afghan warlord and drug trafficker Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, used the Soviet war in Afghanistan as a cover and protection for their criminal activities. Later many of these same people formed the core of the so-called Northern Alliance, which, together with the US, overthrew the Taliban in 2001 and formed the government that has ruled Afghanistan ever since. The Taliban had tried to eradicate opium cultivation and heroin trafficking. Following their overthrow, both resumed with a vengeance…

Many people are vaguely aware that cocaine production and trafficking took off in Columbia in the 1970s and 1980s at a time when the right-wing pro-US Columbian government was fighting a counterinsurgency war against a left-wing guerrilla movement known as the FARC and that this war continues to this day…

What even fewer people know is that, repeating the pattern of what happened in southeast Asia in the 1960s and in Afghanistan in the 1980s, what caused the Latin American cocaine trade to explode was the CIA’s involvement in it. In the 1980s the CIA formed an alliance with the Colombian drugs lords to support the Contras, the right-wing insurgency the CIA supported to overthrow the left wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua. With CIA encouragement, the Contras themselves became heavily involved in the cocaine trade, as did the various right-wing paramilitary groups the CIA was simultaneously supporting in El Salvador during the civil war there. The key transit corridor of these Colombian drugs was Mexico, where the individual who controlled the cocaine trade was Miguel Gallardo, a gangster who is now acknowledged to have been a CIA asset. Gallardo is the acknowledged godfather of all the various vicious Mexican drug cartels that have proliferated in Mexico ever since, which have reduced parts of the country to a state of virtual war…

The CIA’s admission of its role in creating the modern cocaine trade is little known and barely acknowledged in the US. A look at the present state of the heroin trade makes it grimly obvious that nothing has changed and that no lesson has been learned.” (The Empire of Chaos and the War on Drugs, Alexander Mercouris, Sputnik)

Do you see the pattern here? This isn’t about profits. It’s about crushing workers movements, leftist organizations, and any emerging grassroots group that threatens the plutocratic system of wealth distribution. To achieve that end, Washington would just as soon climb into bed with jihadis and Neo Nazis as they would with druglords and narco kingpins. In fact, they have!

The point is, Afghanistan’s bumper crop is not an accident. It’s a form of social control that fits with Washington’s broader strategic objectives of maintaining a permanent military presence in Central Asia and of opening up the country to resource extraction. The proliferation of drugs helps to keep the “little people” in line so the adults can get on with the business of looting.

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].

“If a soldier beat up or shot somebody, all he had to say – if he said anything at all – was that he felt threatened. As a result, our behaviour at war was completely unchecked. That’s why it was possible for American soldiers to decapitate Iraqis by means of machine-gun fire and then use their heads as objects of play.” -Joshua Key (2007) [1]

“We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to.” -Colonel Nathan Jessep, played by Jack Nicholson, from the fictional 1992 movie A Few Good Men.

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Veteran’s Tales

As noted in last week’s program, the myth of the soldier as guarantor of freedom and security for our fellow citizens has become wide-spread and reinforced in the imaginations of citizens, particularly in America, and lately in Canada.

We therefore see the “Support the Troops” monicker adorning bumpers and webpage banners.

Veterans’ Day and Remembrance Day ceremonies increasingly are, in the opinion of this author, becoming celebrations of the sacrifice of ‘heroic’ men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice for their country. These sentiments overwhelm any sense of regret about the tragedy of their loss and the resolve to put an end to such military conflicts so future generations of soldiers (and civilians) need not suffer the same gruesome fate.

Even on Canada Day 2014, Prime Minister Stephen Harper in his public remarks, chose not to mention scientific, medical, artistic or other such achievements, nor the creation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, nor the debut of national projects such as publicly funded health care.

Instead he chose to focus almost exclusively on the accomplishments of our military personnel abroad, and the prowess of our Olympic and Paralympic athletes. Evidently, PM Harper seeks to transform Canada’s image away from the land of friendly ‘hosers’ to that of a Modern Day Sparta.

Not surprisingly then, this unthinking devotion to all things military has affected policy. It is fueling more US wars of aggression in the Middle East and prompting Canada’s enthusiastic support.

This week’s Global Research News Hour takes a close look at the toll war takes on the fighting men and women and particularly on the broader society. Critically, it examines the roots of the pro-war mentality that has gripped the imaginations of the people, and of the men in particular. This show also probes possible remedies that might potentially de-program members of the pro-war cult.

Both of the show’s two guests are veterans of the US Armed Forces, and have served in missions abroad. They are now staunch critics of US military adventurism.

Stan Goff began his military service in January, 1970 as an infantryman with the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Vietnam. His service took him to seven more conflict areas after Vietnam, including Guatemala, Grenada, El Salvador, Peru, Colombia, Somalia, and Haiti. He retired as a Master Sergeant from the US Army in 1996. He has taught military science at the US Military Academy at West Point. Over the last decade he has published a number of articles and three books, including Sex and War, and Full Spectrum Disorder: The Military in the New American Century. He currently authors the blog Chasin’ Jesus. His latest book, Borderline – Reflections on War, Sex, and Church from Wipf and Stock (Cascade Books) is expected to be released in February of 2015.

 Joshua Key who hails out of Guthrie, Oklahoma was trained as a US combat engineer was dispatched to Iraq in April of 2003. He claims to have witnessed numerous instances of abuse of the Iraqi civilian population by US forces, which went unaddressed by commanding officers. He fled the war for reasons of conscience at the end of 2003, and with his then wife and children in tow, made his way across the border to Canada in early 2005. He has sought and been denied refugee status in that country. Remarried to a Canadian, he along with other Iraq War Resisters and deserters are ‘living in limbo’ waiting for deportation orders back to the US where they face the prospect of dishonorable discharge and lengthy prison sentences for the crime of desertion. Joshua Key is the author, along with Lawrence (Book of Negroes) Hill of The Deserter’s Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier who Walked Away from the War in Iraq.

 

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

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

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

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

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

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

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

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

CFRU 93.3FM in Guelph, Ontario. Tune in Wednesdays from 12am to 1am.

Notes

1)  Joshua Key (2007) ‘The Deserter’s Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier who Walked Away from the War in Iraq’ p.216

 

In a joint press conference yesterday, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his British counterpart David Cameron set a tone of confrontation for the G20 leaders summit due to start today in the Australian city of Brisbane. Both leaders zeroed in on Russia, bluntly accusing Moscow of expansionism, and, in the case of Cameron, threatening to impose further economic sanctions over Ukraine.

In the lead-up to the summit, Abbott had declared that he intended to “shirtfront”—that is, physically confront—Russian President Vladimir Putin over the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine. At this week’s APEC summit in Beijing, Abbott demanded a meeting with Putin at which he insisted—without providing any evidence—that Russia was responsible for the tragedy and called for an apology and compensation.

The Australian Prime Minister kept up the attack yesterday, accusing Putin of “trying to recreate the lost glories of tsarism or the old Soviet Union.” “Whether it’s bullying of Ukraine, whether it’s the increasing Russian military aircraft flying into the airspace of Japan or European countries, whether it’s the naval task force which is now in the South Pacific, Russia is being much more assertive,” he said.

British Prime Minister Cameron joined the attack. In a barely concealed comparison of Russia to Nazi Germany prior to World War II, he declared: “We have to be clear about what we’re dealing with here: it is a large state bullying a smaller state in Europe and we’ve seen the consequences of that in the past and we should learn the lessons of history and make sure we don’t let it happen again.”

Cameron said he intended to let Putin know in a “brush-by” meeting at the G20 summit that Russian actions were unacceptable. He bluntly warned that “if Russia continues to make matters worse [in Ukraine], we could see those sanctions increase. It is as simple as that.”

In a speech earlier yesterday in the Australian parliament, Cameron also took a swipe at China, attacking the idea that so-called “democracies” like Britain and Australia would be “out-competed and out-gunned by countries that believe there is a shortcut to success [via] a new model of authoritarian capitalism.”

Quite apart from the lies and distortions involved, the language employed, or perhaps more accurately deployed, by the two leaders was highly provocative. It was not the measured, nuanced language of diplomacy, but that of militarism, aggression and war. That is not to say that such words are never used at summits—behind closed doors. But in this case, it was out in the open, before the G20 leaders had even begun to formally meet.

The Australian government has billed this G20 summit as critical in establishing international cooperation to boost the global economy and create jobs. Treasurer Joe Hockey has boasted of setting the definite goal of an additional two percent GDP growth. The wall-to-wall media coverage of the summit in Brisbane has been accompanied by hours of breathless commentary and speculation on the outcomes to be expected.

In reality, all of the leaders jetting in to Brisbane understand that no agreement is going to be reached on economic cooperation, much less on meaningful action on climate change or any of the other myriad international issues being touted. In the five years since the G20 first met in the face of the 2008 global financial crisis, the world economy has been mired in an intractable breakdown, signalled today by acute financial instability, deepening economic slowdown and fears of further crises.

The limited economic cooperation of the first G20 meeting has been replaced by an increasingly open resort to the beggar-thy-neighbour policies accompanied by threats, provocations and the use of military force. So obvious are the antagonisms that today’s editorial in the Australian Financial Review commented: “Australia is hosting the G20 in a year when old-fashioned geopolitics has made a stunning return.”

As the G20 meets today, a small fleet of Russian naval vessels are being shadowed by Australian frigates and surveillance aircraft as well as American warships somewhere in international waters off the north-east Australian coast. Whatever the exact calculations of the Russian government, this show of force only compounds the already tense atmosphere at the summit.

However, the chief responsibility for rising geo-political tensions around the world lies with US imperialism, which has ratcheted up a confrontation with Russia by engineering the fascist-led coup in Ukraine in February and launching a new war in the Middle East, aimed primarily at ousting Russia’s ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In a bid to impose its dictates on Moscow, Washington, in league with its European allies, has imposed sanctions on Russia that are crippling its economy.

Speaking to the TASS news agency yesterday, Putin made the obvious point that the sanctions “run counter to the very principle of G20 activities, and … to international law” and violated the principles of the WTO and GATT. “The United States itself created that organisation at a certain point. Now it is crudely violating its principles,” he declared.

Putin acknowledged that the sanctions were harming Russia which faced the prospect of “catastrophic fall” in energy prices on which its economy depended. Russia’s central bank is forecasting zero growth for next year, amid a falling rouble and share prices. But Putin warned that such measures would also impact on other economies, including the US and the EU. “Everyone must understand that the global economy and finance these days are exceptionally dependent on each other,” he said.

Putin’s appeals for greater economic cooperation are certain to fall on deaf ears. As the Russian president himself pointed out, the US is intent on establishing two agreements—one Transatlantic and the other Transpacific—that specifically exclude China, the world’s second largest economy, and Russia, which ranks ninth.

At the APEC summit this week in Beijing, Obama provocatively hosted a meeting of Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) members that pointedly did not include the host nation. Obama is also waging what US economic analyst Fred Bergsten described to the Australian Financial Review as “Washington’s jihad” to undermine China’s plans for a regional infrastructure bank.

For the past five years, Obama has been engaged in a confrontational “pivot to Asia” aimed against China that was formally announced on the floor of the Australian parliament in November 2011. The American president will deliver a keynote speech in Brisbane today on American leadership in the Asia Pacific that will set the stage for a further escalation of tensions in the region.

US national security official Evan Medeiros told the media: “It will be his vision for what he wants to accomplish in the Asia-Pacific and the ways in which he will do it, covering diplomatic issues, economic issues, security issues, people-to-people issues.”

“It will be very forward-leaning,” Medeiros declared.

In other words, Obama will set out in unmistakeable terms an aggressive, all-embracing strategy for ensuring the predominance of US imperialism in Asia, through diplomatic provocation, economic bullying and preparations for war.

With that midterm election out of the way, media are spending even more time talking about the 2016 presidential race. And one of the themes is how Hillary Clinton will create distance from the Obama administration’s record.

Along those lines, Politico has a piece (11/11/14) by William Cohan that lays out a strong case that Wall Street (and its money) is more excited about her than Obama. But Politico falls down when it tries to argue that that Obama has been unusually  tough on Wall Street.

Under the headline “Why Wall Street Loves Hillary,” Cohan lays out a pretty persuasive case that the finance industry has strong feelings for Clinton. The implication is that they don’t feel so close to Obama, and there’s evidence to bear this one: He took in far less in campaign donations from Goldman Sachs in 2012 than he did in 2008.

The problem with Politico‘s analysis is how it miscasts Obama’s approach to Wall Street:

 During a speech last December at the Conrad Hotel, in New York, her message could not have been more different from Obama’s hot, anti-Wall Street rhetoric: “We all got into this mess together, and we’re all going to have to work together to get out of it.”

It’s not totally unusual to read about Obama’s supposedly tough rhetoric. But what are they really talking about? Cohan tries to spell it out here:

By 2009 the bloom was off the rose. In an interview with 60 Minutes, Obama not only referred to Wall Street as the “fat cat bankers” but also blamed Wall Street for causing the financial crisis. “People on Wall Street still don’t get it,” he said. In July 2010, just weeks after a much-vilified Goldman agreed to pay a $550 million fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission–then the largest fine ever–to settle charges stemming from Goldman’s underwriting and selling of a synthetic collateralized debt obligation, the details about which the SEC believed Goldman had failed to properly disclose to investors, Obama joked at the White House Correspondents Dinner: “All of the jokes here tonight are brought to you by our friends at Goldman Sachs. So you don’t have to worry–they make money whether you laugh or not.”

So the evidence is Obama making a comment on 60 Minutes and apparently blaming Wall Street for the economic collapse. But while financiers would no doubt rather be referred to as “entrepreneur/philanthropists” than as “fat cat bankers”–a phrase that did not become a regular part of Obama’s vocabulary–there is little doubt that Wall Street does in fact deserve a major share of blamefor the financial meltdown. It’s peculiar to classify a commonplace observations about the world as “hot rhetoric.”

And there’s the fact that Obama made a joke about Goldman Sachs’ profitability–at a dinner where presidents make jokes!–right after the company just paid out a massive settlement for the kind of behavior that helped fuel the economic collapse.

In other words, this is not exactly a strong case. And the weird thing is, several paragraphs later, the Politico piece admits as much, in its own way:

Where Obama blamed Wall Street—not inaccurately—for behavior that caused the 2008 financial crisis and championed new Wall Street regulations like the Volcker Rule and the 2010 Dodd-Frank law that really stick in the craw of money men—all while presiding over a veritable profit boon for the financial industry—Clinton said hardly a word on the topic of Wall Street shenanigans.

So it’s not that Obama was right to say that Wall Street crashed the economy; to Politico, he was “not inaccurate.”

The story here, of course, is that Wall Street sees Hillary Clinton more favorably than Obama–something you may have read about it this summer in the New York Times (7/7/14). But Politico shouldn’t therefore suggest that Obama has been especially tough on them, rhetorically or otherwise.

UPDATE: The bigger question, of course, is not Obama’s rhetoric, but his actions–most notably his administration’s failure to hold Wall Street executives responsible for the widespread fraud that helped bring down the economy, and his appointment of financial industry alums like Lawrence Summers and Jack Lew to key economic posts.

The Pentagon is “certainly considering” sending US ground troops into Iraq for inevitably bloody battles to retake Mosul, the country’s second-largest city, from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and to secure the predominantly Sunni Anbar province and its border with Syria, the top uniformed US commander told a Congressional hearing Thursday.

Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, addressed the House Armed Services Committee barely one week after the Obama administration ordered the doubling of the number of US troops deployed in Iraq, with another 1,500 “advisers” being sent into the country, most of them to embattled Anbar province.

With the new US war in the Middle East now in its fourth month, there is every indication that this was only the first in what will prove a series of military escalations as Washington pursues a strategy that extends well beyond the stated aim of “degrading and destroying” ISIS.

Dempsey urged “strategic patience” in what he described as a “complex and long-term undertaking.” He said that he did not support the US intervening to fight the war itself with the kind of “large military contingent” deployed in the previous Iraq war, unless a series of US “assumptions are rendered invalid.”

These include the consolidation of an “inclusive” government in Baghdad and the development of the Iraqi Security Forces to the extent that they are capable of taking back the areas of Anbar and Nineveh province that were overrun by ISIS.

Neither of these “assumptions” is by any means certain. The Iraqi government remains dominated by Shia sectarian parties, and Shia militias have been responsible for the bulk of the advances made against ISIS, which have been accompanied by attacks on the Sunni civilian population and episodes of “ethnic cleansing” to drive Sunnis out of villages near Shia population centers. Such military victories, won with the backing of US air strikes, have only served to deepen the sectarian divisions in Iraq and strengthen the Sunni resistance, which was the central element in facilitating the ISIS offensive.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi military remains largely in disarray, despite recent sackings of dozens of generals and other senior officers by the new government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. A classified assessment of the state of the Iraqi military conducted by the Pentagon in July concluded that barely half the existing units were even fit to be trained by US “advisers.” It warned, moreover, that many units were infiltrated by both Sunni militants and Shia militiamen, raising a distinct threat that US personnel training them could come under the kind of “insider” attacks that became commonplace in Afghanistan.

Dempsey spoke in terms of “80,000 competent” Iraqi troops being needed to defeat ISIS in Iraq. In their absence, he suggested, US forces could be called upon to fill the breach.

Further emphasizing the fraud of President Barack Obama’s pledge that the new war in the Middle East would not see American “boots on the ground,” the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Buck McKeon, warned that he would kill any legislation authorizing the use of military force in Iraq and Syria that included a proscription on the use of US combat troops.

“I will not support sending our military into harm’s way with their arms tied behind their backs,” he said.

In questioning Dempsey, McKeon demanded, “How can you successfully execute the mission you’ve been given to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL (ISIS) when some of your best options are taken off the table?”

The administration, which is seeking congressional approval of $5.6 billion in funding for the new war, has reversed its earlier stand that it did not need a congressional vote on the war itself and has indicated that it will seek an Authorization of the Use of Military Force (AUMF) along the lines of those passed in 2001 and 2003, paving the way to over a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, as it escalates the US-led war in Iraq, the Obama administration is reportedly also debating a shift in its strategy in neighboring Syria to further regime change, i.e., bringing down the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Wrestling with the inherent contradictions in its new war—which is ostensibly directed against ISIS, whose advances were made possible by the arms and aid provided by Washington and its regional allies to it and other Islamist-led militias—the administration has reportedly concluded that its stated policy of “Iraq first” and then Syria is no longer tenable.

The limited US air strikes that have been conducted in Syria, outside of the attacks on ISIS fighters seeking to overrun the Kurdish town of Kobani on the Turkish border, have been directed at both ISIS targets and those of the Al Nusra Front, which is the Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda. They have apparently had the unintended effect of bringing together these two Islamist factions, which had previously been at each other’s throats, while weakening their supposedly more “moderate” US-backed Sunni militias opposed to the Assad regime.

Together these two Islamist factions, which reportedly reached a unity pact last week, constitute the bulk—and by far the most combat effective—of the forces opposed to Assad. They recently routed US-backed factions like the Syrian Revolutionaries Front and the Hazm Movement, large sections of which defected along with their US-supplied arms to Al Nusra.

According to CNN, the White House has convened a series of meetings of national security principals on the crisis in Syria and has concluded that, “ISIS may not be defeated without a political transition in Syria and the removal of President Bashar al-Assad.”

In part, according to the report, the administration is responding to mounting pressure from its regional allies, particularly Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States—backers of the Islamist militias in Syria, whose main interest is the overthrow of Assad.

“Among the options being discussed are a no-fly zone on the border with Turkey and accelerating and expanding the Pentagon program to vet, train and arm the moderate opposition,” according to CNN.

The imposition of a no-fly zone, which has been demanded by Turkey, would entail an intense US bombing campaign to knock out Syria’s air force and air defenses, turning the new Middle East intervention into a direct war on Syria.

Even as the White House and the Pentagon prepare for a major escalation of the war in the Middle East, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel Friday announced that a review of the US nuclear war arsenal had concluded that billions more must be spent to ensure that US nuclear weapons are “safe, secure and effective.”

The review, initiated following a series of scandals involving cheating and drug use by missile launch crews and misconduct by the nuclear war force’s most senior commanders, concluded that a 10 percent increase is needed in the $15-16 billion budget for the nuclear force over each of the next five years.

Pentagon officials claimed that the nuclear arsenal had been neglected because of 13 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The turn to modernize the nuclear war force is being carried out in the context of US military provocations against both Russia and China and points to the growing danger of a nuclear Third World War.

Several environmental groups have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of State and Secretary John Kerry over the permitting of a controversial border-crossing northern leg of a pipeline system that DeSmogBlog has called Enbridge‘s “Keystone XL Clone.”

The Keystone XL Clone is designed to accomplish the same goal as TransCanada‘s Keystone XL: bringing Alberta’s tar sands to Gulf coast refineries and export market. It consists of three legs: the Alberta Clipper expansion as the northern leg, the Flanagan South middle leg and the Seaway Twin southern leg.

Green groups have called the northern leg an “illegal scheme”because the Enbridge Alberta Clipper expansion proposal didn’t go through the normal State Department approval process. Instead, State allowed Enbridge to add pressure pumps to two separate-but-connected pipelines on each side of the border and send Alberta’s diluted bitumen (“dilbit”) to market.

Enbridge dodged a comprehensive State Department environmental review, which involves public hearings and public commenting periods. The groups say this is illegal under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and have demanded a re-do for Enbridge’s application process.

“The only thing worse than dirty oil is dirty oil backed by dirty tricks. This is the fossil fuel equivalent of money laundering,” Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a press release announcing the lawsuit. “The Obama administration should be ashamed of itself for letting Enbridge illegally pump more dirty tar sands oil into the United States.”

The maneuver has a key beneficiary: former Obama Administration Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, who now serves as President of the private equity giant Warburg Pincus.

Geithner’s connection to the lawsuit not only adds intrigue, but also reveals the purpose of Enbridge’s Keystone XL Clone: an export fast-track to the global market.

Timothy Geithner, MEG Energy, Warburg Pincus

Geithner departed as Secretary of the Treasury in January 2013 and in November of that year, Warburg Pincus named Geithner president of the firm. He assumed the role beginning March 2014 — a natural transition given theWarburg family played a key role in the creation of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank.

But what do Geithner and Warburg Pincus have to do with any of this?

Enter tar sands production company MEG Energy. Bloomberg data shows that Warburg Pincus owns a 16.88 percent stake in MEG, the largest equity owner of the company by percentage.

MEG Energy, which went public in 2010 on the Toronto Stock Exchange, owns the Christina Lake Project, the Surmont Project and other prospective tar sands production land lease holdings.

Beyond owning tar sands production projects, MEG has a contract to send its tar sands through Enbridge’s Keystone XL Clone pipeline system, according to a recent article published in the Globe and Mail.

“MEG has booked capacity for 25,000 barrels a day on the [Flanagan South] pipeline, due to start up in early December, with potential to boost shipments to 100,000 b/d over time,” wrote Global and Mail reporter Jeffrey Jones.

A document posted on the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) website confirms the contractual relationship between MEG and Enbridge. It began in December 2011, a month before President Obama kicked the can down the road on making a decision on Keystone XL’s northern leg.

“MEG…contracted with Enbridge…to ship crude oil on Enbridge’s Gulf Coast Access Project for service from Flanagan, Illinois to Cushing, Oklahoma and on to the Texas Gulf Coast, pursuant to an executed Transportation Services Agreement (MEG TSA),” reads the FERC document.

MEG and Tar Sands Exports

On MEG’s quarter three investor call, the company said it is considering applying for a permit to export tar sands from the Gulf coast.

“We certainly are looking at those types of things. We are well positioned,” Bill McCaffery, CEO of MEG Energy, said on the earnings call. He also noted that MEGhas achieved record quarterly tar sands production rates.

“If you take the Flanagan/Seaway combination, obviously it lands us in Houston area and obviously you can move to other built areas…We have not applied that at this stage, but we are evaluating that,” McCaffery continued.

Enbridge also has skin in the tar sands export game via its subsidiary Tidal Energy Marketing and has already exported tar sands crude to Italy and Spain. Enbridge received a permit from the U.S. government to export “limited quantities” of tar sands crude this past spring.

Enterprise Products Partners, the co-owner of the Seaway Twin pipeline with Enbridge, also is a player in the oil exports game.

In June, the Obama Administration issued a permit to Enterprise to export oil condensate originating from the Eagle Ford Shale basin, the first U.S. unrefined oil product exported from the U.S. in over four decades.

“State Department Oil Services”

When 2016 Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State, DeSmogBlog referred to the State Department’s backroom wheeling and dealing done on behalf of TransCanada and the proposed KeystoneXL pipeline as “State Department Oil Services.”

It now appears Enbridge has taken a lesson from TransCanada’s playbook, with Geithner’s Warburg Pincus chomping at the bit for dilbit to flow through Enbridge’s Keystone XL Clone and to the global market.

“[T]he State Department must stop turning a blind eye to Big Oil schemes to bypass U.S. laws and nearly double the amount of corrosive, carbon-intensive tar sands crude it brings into our country,” said Michael Bosse, Sierra Club deputy national program director, in a press release. “Enbridge has been allowed to play by their own rules…at the expense of our water, air, and climate.”

Watch the animation created by Mark Fiore for DeSmogBlog in 2012 about Hillary Clinton’s State Department Oil Services:

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

As most Americans, if not the financial media, are aware, Quantitative Easing (a euphemism for printing money) has failed to bring back the US economy. 

So why has Japan adopted the policy?  Since the heavy duty money printing began in 2013, the Japanese yen has fallen 35% against the US dollar, a big cost for a country dependent on energy imports.  Moreover, the Japanese economy has shown no growth in response to the QE stimulus to justify the rising price of imports.

Despite the economy’s lack of response to the stimulus, last month the Bank of Japan announced a 60% increase in quantitative easing–from 50 to 80 trillion yen annually.

Albert Edwards, a strategist at Societe Generale, predicts that the Japanese printing press will drive the yen down from 115 yen to the dollar to 145.

This is a prediction, but why risk the reality? What does Japan have to gain from currency depreciation? What is the thinking behind the policy?

An easy explanation is that Japan is being ordered to destroy its currency in order to protect the over-printed US dollar.  As a vassal state, Japan suffers under US political and financial hegemony and is powerless to resist Washington’s pressure.

The official explanation is that, like the Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan professes to believe in the Phillips Curve, which associates economic growth with inflation.  The supply-side economic policy implemented by the Reagan administration disproved the Phillips Curve belief that economic growth was inconsistent with a declining or a stable rate of inflation.  However, establishment economists refuse to take note and continue with the dogmas with which they are comfortable.

In the US QE caused inflation in stock and bond prices as most of the liquidity provided went into financial markets instead of into consumers’ pockets.  There is more consumer price inflation than the official inflation measures report, as the measures are designed to under-report inflation, thereby saving money on COLA adjustments, but the main effect of QE has been unrealistic stock and bond prices.

The Bank of Japan’s hopes are that raw material and energy import prices will rise as the exchange value of yen falls, and that these higher costs will be passed along in consumer prices, pushing up inflation and stimulating economic growth.  Japan is betting its economy on a discredited theory.

The interesting question is why financial strategists expect the yen to collapse under QE, but did not expect the dollar to collapse under QE.  Japan is the world’s third largest economy, and until about a decade ago was going gangbusters despite the yen rising in value. Why should QE affect the yen differently from the dollar?

Perhaps the answer lies in the very powerful alliance between the US government and the banking/financial sector and on the obligation that Washington imposes on its vassal states to support the dollar as world reserve currency.  Japan lacks the capability to neutralize normal economic forces.  Washington’s ability to rig markets has allowed Washington to keep its economic house of cards standing.

The Federal Reserve’s announcement that QE is terminated has improved the outlook for the US dollar.  However, as Nomi Prins makes clear, QE has not ended, merely morphed.

The Fed’s bond purchases have left the big banks with $2.6 trillion in excess cash reserves on deposit with the Fed.  The banks will now use this money to buy bonds in place of the Fed’s purchases.  When this money runs out, the Fed will find a reason to restart QE. Moreover, the Fed has announced that it intends to reinvest the interest and returning principle from its $4.5 trillion in holdings of mortgage backed instruments and Treasuries to continue purchasing bonds. Possibly also, interest rate swaps can be manipulated to keep rates down. So, despite the announced end of QE, purchases will continue to support high bond prices, and the high bond prices will continue to encourage purchases of stocks, thus perpetuating the house of cards.

As Dave Kranzler and I (and no doubt others) have pointed out, a stable or rising dollar exchange value is the necessary foundation to the house of cards.  Until three years ago, the dollar was losing ground rapidly with respect to gold.  Since that time massive sales of uncovered shorts in the gold futures market have been used to drive down the gold price.

That gold and silver bullion prices are rigged is obvious. Demand is high, and supply is constrained; yet prices are falling.  The US mint cannot keep up with the demand for silver eagles and has suspended sales. The Canadian mint is rationing the supply of silver maple leafs. Asian demand for gold, especially from China, is at record levels.

The third quarter, 2014, was the 15th consecutive quarter of net purchases of gold by central banks. Dave Kranzler reports that in the past eight months, 101 tonnes have been drained from GLD, an indication that there is a gold shortage for delivery to physical purchasers.  The declining futures price, which is established in a paper market where contracts are settled in cash, not in gold, is inconsistent with rising demand and constrained supply and is a clear indication of price rigging by authorities.

The extent of financial corruption involving collusion between the mega-banks and the financial authorities is unfathomable.  The Western financial system is a house of cards resting on corruption.

The house of cards has stood longer than I thought possible. Can it stand forever or are there so many rotted joints that some simultaneous collection of failures overwhelms the manipulation and brings on a massive crash?  Time will tell.

Since publication of this article, we have received information to the effect that the photo is unconfirmed and was intended to create confusion. (M. Ch. GR Editor)

According to information obtained from the email of George Bilt, a former MIT alumni and aviation expert for more than 20 years, the Malaysian Boeing 777 flight #MH17 Amsterdam – Kuala-Lumpur, which tragically collapsed on July 17, 2014, was shot down by a Ukrainian fighter jet chasing it.

The email was sent a few days ago attention to the Russian Union of Engineers which published a preliminary Incident Report on MH17 this August.

“I fully agree with the results of your analysis of the causes of Boeing catastrophe. It was shot down by a fighter jet.”

– wrote the author who presented himself as George Bilt.

The assertion was supported by a space photo made presumably by a US or UK spy satellite at the moment of attack around 13:20 UTC on July 17, 2014.

Russian Channel 1 has released satellite images edivencing that Malaysian Boeing MH17 (top of picture) was shot down by a Ukrainian warplane (bottom left).

The picture, which clearly shows the launch from the left wing fighter exactly the cockpit, was attached to the e-mail. The landscape, weather, aircraft sizes on picture are fully consistent with the circumstances of the accident.

Ivan Andrievsky, the first Vice-President of the Russian Union of Engineers comments:

“Here is a space picture taken from a low orbit. According to the coordinates specified in the picture, we can assume that it was taken by a US or British spy satellite. We conducted a detailed analysis of the image and there was no sign of a fake here.”

On July 21 the head of Main Directorate for Operations of the HQ of Russia’s Armed Forces, Lieutenant-General Andrey Kartopolov stated that according to the data of objective control a Ukraine Air Force military jet SU-25 was detected moments before the downfall of Boeing.

RELEVANT VIDEO:

U.S. President Barack Obama’s operation (click on this for the documentation) to exterminate pro-Russian voters in Ukraine, was discussed back in July by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s chief foreign affairs advisor, Sergei Glazyev, in an interview by Alyona Berezovskaya, of this website: http://en.ukraina.ru/editor/20140717/1010844100.html

U.S. news-media have not been reporting about the U.S.’s hiring nazi (otherwise known as racist-fascist) Ukrainian politicians, and nazi mercenaries, in order to eliminate the residents in Ukraine’s southeast, where the people had in 2010 voted at around 90% for the very same man whom the Obama Administration overthrew in a violent Kiev coup on February 22nd of this year.

So, let’s now see whether U.S. news-media will report (even this belatedly — it’s already four months) on the Russian Government’s view about this important matter.

Here is the key portion of Glazyev’s interview, in which the Russian Government, essentially, presents its view of Obama’s ethnic-cleansing program in Ukraine, to get rid of Moscow-friendly voters in Ukraine

A.B. The war between the United States and Novorossiya is getting more intense. The Pentagon has announced weapons deliveries to the Ukrainian punishers, while accusing Russia of delivering weapons to the self-defense forces. Does this mean that the US has a right to officially deliver weapons and finance the punitive forces and ulra-nationalists? How should Russia react to this?

S. G. The main task that the American puppet masters have set for the junta is to draw Russia into a full-scale war with Ukraine. It is for this purpose that all of these heinous crimes are committed – to force Russia to send troops to Ukraine to protect the civilian population, which has been fleeing to Russia in the hundreds of thousands and begging for help. Naturally, Russia can’t remain indifferent. Therefore, the American supervisors of the Ukrainian Nazis call far escalation of violence and more victims. Heavy artillery is used against women and children. People are trapped in blockaded cities without water and food. Some cities are facing a real famine. In other words, genocide is being committed on orders from America to force Russia to interfere and protect the civilian population, the same ethnic Russians and Ukrainians, living on the other side of the border. And I should say that the public pressure provoked by these tragic events is very high.

A.B. Many politicians and experts believe that America needs this war to cleanse the territory for shale gas production in the future. It’s a well known fact that major shale gas deposits are located in the Donetsk People’s Republic. Today, we are witnessing the cleansing of Donbas. Those who refused to leave for Russia will be killed or put in filtration camps.

S.G. The war has been provoked to destroy the Russian World, to draw Europe into it, and to surround Russia with hostile countries. Unleashing this world war, America is trying to deal with its own internal problems, which are much more serious than shale gas or a Ukrainian gas pipeline.

A. B. A war for the sake of war? Shouldn’t there be a financial interest?

S. G. The bankruptcy of the US financial system, which is unable to service its foreign debt, the lack of investments to finance a breakthrough to a new technological order and to maintain America’s competitiveness, and the potential defeat in the geopolitical competition with China. To resolve these problems, Americans need a new world war. Using Ukrainian ultra-nationalists as a tool to unleash this war, they are not facing any risk, since they are killing Ukrainians with the hands of the Ukrainians. Pushing the two largest countries of the Russian world against each other, they are trying to destroy and weaken Russia, causing it to fragment, as they need this territory and want to establish control over this entire space. We have offered cooperation from Lisbon to Vladivostok, whereas they need control to maintain their geopolitical leadership in a competition with China. Nazis are their main instrument. They have been training them for decades. It’s a well known fact that following the liberation of Ukraine from the fascists, hundreds of thousands of Banderites and their families fled to America and Canada. They served as a basis for cultivating an aggressive Ukrainian Nazism. It was then exported to Ukraine and today we see American agents in power, who are using ultra-nationalists to foment a new world war against Russia.

A. B. If it is so obvious, and Russian authorities understand that the current leaders in Ukraine are US agents, being used to destabilized the situation around Russia and undermine Russian statehood, should Moscow engage in a dialogue with Kyiv?

S.G. The fact is that not everyone in Moscow understands the essence of the tragic events in Ukraine. People always try to avoid complications, but unfortunately, it doesn’t work. Despite the willingness to hold peaceful negotiations and to stop the killings, it’s not working, as you can see. This has to do with the fact that the real president of Ukraine is not Petro Poroshenko, but the US ambassador in Kyiv.

Closing note: He is referring there to Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. Ambassador in Ukraine, taking instruction from Victoria Nuland of President Obama’s State Department (who takes instruction from John Kerry who takes instruction from Barack Obama), regarding whom he must choose to lead the post-coup Ukrainian Government. A detailed transcript and explanation of that 4 February 2014 conversation between Pyatt and Nuland can be seen here.

Of course, the fact that the man who would be appointed 18 days later to run Ukraine was being selected during this momentous phone-conversation was ignored there. U.S. ‘news’ media could not deny that this phone-conversation took place, because even the White House now essentially acknowledged that it was authentic. So, instead, U.S. ‘news’ media just ignored the import of what was being said in this history-making conversation — the conversation that led to the ethnic-cleansing campaign that’s now going on (which U.S. ‘news’ media likewise are ignoring). How much longer will this cover-up by America’s press continue?

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010.

by Case About Bird Flu

Below are some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about Ebola vaccines and drugs that cover whether they are clinically proven to be safe and effective, whether you can be compelled to take them, whether you will be entitled to damages if you suffer adverse events reactions, when the vaccines and drugs will be available, which pharmaceutical companies and military organizations are developing them, where Ebola comes from and how severe the Ebola outbreak is.

The Ebola vaccines and drugs

Q. Are there any safe and effective Ebola vaccines available?

A. No. “At present, there are no safe or effective vaccines, nor readily available efficacious drugs that can treat the disease,” according to a Norwegian Institute of Public Health Discussion Note on Ebola dated October 21, 2014. (

http://news.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/Norway_submission_WHO_EVD_23Oct2014.pdf

Experimental treatments such as Zmapp and Brincidofovir have been given to a few Ebola patients with mixed results. Other experimental approaches, such as Serum from recovered Ebola patients, have been tried out successfully following efforts dating back to a 1995 Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Q. Have clinical trials ever been performed on Ebola vaccines?

A. Yes. Prior to 2014 all Ebola vaccine trials were discontinued. The three most recent Ebola vaccine trials were suspended, terminated or withdrawn in phase 1 of clinical trails.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/Norway_submission_WHO_EVD_23Oct2014.pdf

Q. What is phase 1 of clinical trials?

A. Phase 1 is the earliest phase of clinical trials where basic safety is tested. Traditional clinical trials involve three phases.

Q. Is it something I should worry about if every one of the most recent Ebola vaccine trials using the traditional clinical trials approach was terminated in phase 1?

A. Yes. The most recent Ebola vaccine developed by the US Department of Defense and Tekmira Pharmaceuticals – TKM-100802 for Injection; Drug: Placebo– was suspended over safety concerns

http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT02041715

Q: What kind of Ebola vaccines will there be?

A: There are two leading Ebola vaccines candidates. The first one is an Ebola “ChAd3” vaccine. This is developed by scientists from Okairos, a Swiss-Italian biotechnology company owned by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. It uses a cold virus that infects chimpanzees and a Zaire Ebola virus.

The second one is called an Ebola “rVSV” vaccine. It uses a vesicular stomatitis virus, which causes a mouth disease in cattle and Ebola . It was developed by the Canadian government and licensed to NewLink Genetics in Ames, Iowa.

There are also Rabies and Ebola vaccines and an Ebola and Marburg nasal vaccine in the pipeline along with several other vaccine candidates which may be ready in 2015

http://news.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/Norway_submission_WHO_EVD_23Oct2014.pdf

Q. How much time will the new Ebola vaccines and drugs be in development?

A. GSK’s Ebola “ChAd3” vaccine could wrap up a five-week clinical trial in humans in November 2014, enter field trials shortly after and be ready for wide distribution early in 2015.

http://www.dddmag.com/articles/2014/09/two-anti-ebola-vaccines-historic-race

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/statements/2014/second-ebola-vaccine/en/

http://www.who.int/immunization/diseases/ebola/1-MPK_ebola_vaccine_development_presentation.pdf

Q. Is five weeks of clinical trials on humans enough for an Ebola vaccine?

A. No. Five weeks is not enough to determine whether a vaccine is safe and works. A vaccine undergoes three clinical trials under the traditional approach and takes on average 10.71 years to develop. (N) Also, a vaccine only has a 6% chance of entering the market. Drugs can take 10 to 15 years to develop with 95% failure risk at point of discovery. (4) Ebola is one of the most rapidly fast-tracked vaccines in history.

Q. Isn’t Ebola a deadly virus?

A. Yes. Ebola is a very severe viral infection with a high death rate. It is also contagious, transmitted by bodily fluids.

Q. Are experimental Ebola drugs and vaccines necessary to stop the Ebola outbreak?

A. No. The New York Times asked 10 leaders of the fights against smallpox, polio, SARS, rinderpest, Guinea worm and other diseases for their views on how best to fight the Ebola outbreak. All were sure the Ebola outbreak could be stopped without experimental drugs or vaccines. Applying proper protocols on screening, quarantines, protective clothing and travel bans have been effective ways of stopping outbreaks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/30/science/leadership-and-calm-are-urged-in-outbreak.html?mabReward=RI%3A5&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&region=CColumn&module=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine&_r=1

Q. Are there plans to give these experimental vaccines to many people?

A. Yes. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases , told The Canadian Press that it’s “quite conceivable, if not likely” that fast-tracked Ebola vaccines may have to given to entire countries.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-national-i222nstitute-of-health-nih-we-may-have-to-vaccinate-whole-countries-to-stop-ebola-outbreak/5407196

Q. Could I get Ebola from the vaccine?

A. It cannot be ruled out that you will get Ebola from the vaccine. An HIV vaccine, which used the same cold virus as the GSK Ebola vaccine, was halted because it was found to give people HIV. Men who had previously caught colds caused by the same chimpanzee “cold” virus used to make the HIV vaccine were two to four times as likely to become infected with HIV if they got the HIV vaccine.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/health/research/trial-vaccine-made-some-more-vulnerable-to-hiv-study-confirms.html

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/databases/alerts/hiv_step_study.html

The Ebola “ChAd3” vaccine is made from a cold virus, a chimpanzee “cold” virus, specifically a chimp adenovirus type 3 (ChAd3). The cold virus is used as a carrier, or vector, to deliver material from the Zaire Ebola and Sudan Ebola virus.

http://www.niaid.nih.gov/news/QA/Pages/EbolaVaxQA.aspx

Q. Surely, someone will stop the Ebola vaccine trial if people end up getting infected with Ebola from it?

A. The trial might not be stopped. The HIV vaccine was stopped because it was found to infect people when it underwent traditional clinical trials. But the Ebola vaccine will not undergo the same traditional clinical trials.

Q. When was the HIV trial halted?

A. The Step trial of the NIAID and Merck HIV vaccine was halted in phase IIb in 2007 when results showed that people were being infected by the vaccine.

Q. Why won”t the Ebola vaccine be halted in phase IIb if results show people are getting infected?

A. Phase IIb and 3 of the Ebola vaccine trials will be performed in west Africa in areas with poor local research infrastructure and low numbers of well trained medical staff. This will make it difficult to keep track of participants in the study and find out if they have been infected with Ebola from the vaccine or suffered other adverse events from the Ebola vaccines and drugs. According to a study, collecting data on vaccines during an epidemic may be impossible. Also, “any data obtained to assess benefit or toxicity could have innumerable biases and misappropriations,making their application under current research standards impossible.”

http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1915876

Q. Could it really happen that something as important as people getting a lethal Ebola disease from the vaccine is not recorded?

A. Everything depends on accurate records. But there are significant problems with records of patients in Ebola affected countries. Just one example: there is no record of one woman known to have been delivered to an Ebola Treatment Centre in Liberia. There is no record of what happened to her or even whether she is alive or dead. ()

Q. Does this lack of proper data collection mean that the Ebola vaccine could pass its trials even if it infects people with Ebola?

A. Yes. If data on people who may have been infected with Ebola by the vaccine is not collected, then the infections will not be recorded in the clinical trial results, and the Ebola vaccine may well be judged safe enough to enter market.

Q. Does that mean an Ebola vaccine that infected people in field trials could be given to the wider population?

A. Yes. If the Ebola vaccine passes its rushed field trials, The World Health Organization (WHO) could decide to give the vaccine to wider populations, also in the USA, UK and Europe.

Q. Are there any other problems with the Ebola vaccine trials?

A. The GSK Ebola “ChAd3” vaccine is based on data obtained from trials in monkeys, which did not show lasting protection. Six of the eight macaques monkeys who were given one Ebola “ChAd3” shot died at ten months.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/07/us-health-ebola-vaccines-idUSKBN0H20NQ20140907

Also, the monkey trial involved a mild lab form of Ebola and not the harsh west Africa type so it is hard to extrapolate the data.

Q. Have there been problems with these types of rushed vaccine trials before?

A: Yes. Eleven children died during Pfizer’s meningococcal meningitis trial, in which 200 Nigerian children were administered ceftriaxone or an unregistered medication, trovafloxacin, without informed consent.

In addition, there were large numbers of adverse events reactions reported for the swine flu vaccine which was also fast tracked and did not undergo traditional clinical trials. Large numbers of children have suffered narcolepsy as a result of the swine flu vaccine. There were also many miscarriages. It is hard to know how many miscarriages were caused by the swine flu vaccine.More than 3,500 post-vaccination miscarriages in the USA may have simply been ignored by the Centre of the Disease Control.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/Norway_submission_WHO_EVD_23Oct2014.pdf

Q. What is informed consent?

A. WHO has said that participants in the Ebola early stage trials must give their informed consent. That means the participants have to be informed of the risks of the experimental Ebola vaccines.

Following experiments on concentration camp prisoners by the Nazis, the Nuremberg Codei was drafted to provides ethical guidelines for medical researchers to protect human test subjects in scientific experiments from injury, disability or death. A key principle of the Nuremberg Code—that doctors must obtain voluntary informed consent from the person about to be experimented on, especially when it comes to clinical trials of experimental vaccines.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/02/19/drug-company-lies-and-uses-human-as-guinea-pigs.aspx

Q. Are people really going to be informed of the risks of the Ebola vaccine?

A. It is very hard for people in an epidemic setting to give meaningful informed consent to experimental treatments, especially if there are high levels of illiteracy as is the case in Ebola-affected countries, according to a study. The study notes that a “physicians’ ability to meaningfully inform vulnerable populations is overestimated. The belief that informed consent is understood by patients naive to advanced health care, especially in an epidemic, is cavalier.”

http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1915876

Q. Has it happened before that people who should have given their informed consent did not?

A. Yes. An example is the 200 children in Nigeria during Pfizer’s meningococcal meningitis trial. Eleven children died.

Q. How can Ebola vaccines and drugs be given to people with so few tests?

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared Ebola an emergency of international concern. That means Ebola vaccines and drugs do not have to be demonstrated to be safe and effective before they are given under emergency use provisions.

Ebola vaccines and drugs can be developed, tested, licensed and used on people all at the same time.

http://www.who.int/immunization/diseases/ebola/Finn_WHO_Sept_29_2014.pdf

An emergency declaration allows for the criteria for passing Phase 11b and 3 trials could be lowered to a minimum.

Q. If I damaged by an experimental Ebola vaccine or drug, will I get compensation?

A. It’s not clear. Pharmaceutical companies are asking for global indemnity so that the patients bars the risk. They received indemnity in 2009 for the swine flu vaccine.

http://www.ageofautism.com/2014/11/new-ebola-vaccine-manufacturers-seek-global-indemnity-so-that-patient-bears-risk.html

Q. What about other kinds of tests Ebola vaccines and drugs will be given?

A. Apart from the fast track clinical trials, there are plans to test multiple drugs at once in an umbrella study.

The umbrella study is a new and controversial type of trial design in which a person on a drug is paired with someone from a comparison group. 

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/11/06/health-officials-unveil-plan-to-test-multiple-ebola-drugs-at-once/?intcmp=latestnews

Also, a step wedge randomised trial is planned involving 8000 people.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2288/6/54

Q. Are there problems with these studies?

Yes, In the case of umbrella studies, subjects have to be perfectly paired for a pattern to be detectible. In the case of stepped wedge studies, there are problems with accurate results. Safety and efficacy results can be easily manipulated to appear higher or lower (N).

Also, some Ebola drugs will be developed under the animal rule, such as Tekmira’s siRNA therapeutics.

http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ABEA-50QJTB/0x0x693285/ef3d52ca-f45b-46f5-8fc7-444e0e98087a/MacLachlan_DIA_Filovirus2.pdf

Q: What is the animal rule?

A: The Animal Rule provides that under certain circumstances, where it is unethical or not feasible to conduct human efficacy studies, the FDA may grant marketing approval based on adequate and well-controlled animal studies when the results of those studies establish that the drug is reasonably likely to produce clinical benefit in humans.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/a-liberian-scientist-claims-the-u-s-is-responsible-for-the-ebola-outbreak-in-west-africa/5408459

Q. What forms will the vaccines come in?

A. Some vaccines like the Rabies and Ebola vaccine to be manufactured by IDT Biologika can be produced in liquid and freeze dried forms. There is also a nasal spray forms.

Q. Are any of the Ebola vaccines genetically modified?

A. Yes. The “chimp cold” virus in GSK’s ChAd3 Ebola vaccine is genetically engineered to contain both Ebola and Marburg viral DNA. The virus slips into healthy cells as normal cold viruses do, and co-opts their machinery, causing them to pump out the Ebola protein.

http://www.dddmag.com/articles/2014/09/two-anti-ebola-vaccines-historic-race

Q. Are genetically modified viruses and bacteria an indication that these viruses may have come from bioweapons labs?

A. Yes. Genetrcally engineering viruses and bacteria to make them more lethal is the purpose of bioweapons research programmes.

Q. How much research does the US military do on Ebola?

A. Ebola is classified as a lethal virus — a Biosecurity level 4 or ‘Category A Priority Pathogen’ – and this has encouraged significant funding of Ebola research by the US government in the last 10 to 15 years. (N)

Cumulative research funding from 2008 to July 2014 for Ebola drugs and vaccines has been over $469.3 million in the USA. This funding has supported a pipeline of at least 11 drug candidates. Two entered clinical phase I; three are currently in preclinical development but expected to enter clinical trials soon. At least six other drug candidates previously at different stage of development appear to have been either discontinued or halted in the absence of renewed funding. The funding has also supported eight vaccines. Two are in clinical phase I and six in preclinical development. In addition, from 2000 to 2014, the US government spent almost US$956m to research that has been directly or potentially relevant to Ebola(N).

The US government and the military started making vaccines against Ebola and a related virus, Marburg, during the 1990s. The National Institutes of Health came up with a program called Partnerships in Biodefense.

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2014/10/symposium-vaccine-seen-best-hope-arresting-ebola

Q. Is it true that the US government owns a patent on Ebola?

A. A patent on Ebola was awarded to the United States government in 2010. That patent number is CA2741523A1. The patent claims U.S. government ownership over all variants of Ebola which share 70% or more of the protein sequences described in the patent: “[CLAIMS] …a nucleotide sequence of at least 70%-99% identity to the SEQ ID…” Also, the patent claims ownership over any and all Ebola viruses which are “weakened” or “killed,” meaning the United States government is claiming ownership over all Ebola vaccines.
http://www.naturalnews.com/046946_ebola_outbreak_vaccines_patents.html#ixzz3J2icrAwU

The “ownership” over Ebola extends to Ebola circulating in the bodies of Ebola victims. When Dr. Kent Brantly was relocated from Africa to the CDC’s care in Atlanta, samples of his blood were acquired for research by the CDC and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Q. Did the Ebola outbreak have anything to do with a bioweapons labs?

A. Dr. Francis Boyle, a scholar of biowarfare and international law at the University of Illinois, who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, the US implementing legislation for the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, hassaid that Ebola originated in a US bioweapons lab.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40012.htm

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40013.htm

http://www.waronwethepeople.com/another-ebola-problem-solved-natural-source-found/

http://www.globalresearch.ca/ebola-genetically-modified-organism-developed-in-us-biowarfare-laboratories-in-africa/5409003

“This isn’t normal Ebola at all,” he said. “I believe it’s been genetically modified.”

As evidence, Boyle points to the existence of US government laboratories in Africa that are creating bioweapons under the guise of working on cures. Boyle says Ebola came out of one of these bioweapons labs in Kenema, Sierra Leone. He said: “Kenema is the absolute epicentre of the outbreak. Something happened there. It could have been an accident in the lab or they might have been testing an experimental vaccine [on the population] using live genetically modified Ebola and calling it something else.” In addtion, Boyle says the speed of Ebola’s spread and the number it is killing is proof that Ebola is a modified form. “I

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/10/ebola-2.html

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/10/bioweapons-expert-reaffirms-belief-ebola-escaped-biowarfare-lab.html

Q. Are there other scientists who think that Ebola is a bioweapon?

A. Yes. Dr. Cyril Broderick, Professor of Plant Pathology, in a front-page article published in the Liberian Observer, declared. He goes on to explain:
[Dr Leonard Horowitz] confirmed the existence of an American Military-Medical-Industry that conducts biological weapons tests under the guise of administering vaccinations to control diseases and improve the health of “black Africans overseas.”

Q. Can I be forced to take the Ebola vaccine or be placed forcibly under quarantine?

A. As soon as WHO declared Ebola an epidemic emergency, of international concern it triggered the International Health Regulations (2005) allowing for forced vaccination and quarantine. Most countries have national pandemic plans allowing for the vaccination of 100% of the population, also by force.

Also, President Barack Obama signed an executive order #13674, on July 31, 2014, which allows the U.S. federal government to arrest and quarantine any person who shows symptoms of infectious disease.

This executive order allows federal agents to forcibly arrest and quarantine anyone showing symptoms of:

…Severe acute respiratory syndromes, which are diseases that are associated with fever and signs and symptoms of pneumonia or other respiratory illness, are capable of being transmitted from person to person, and that either are causing, or have the potential to cause, a pandemic, or, upon infection, are highly likely to cause mortality or serious morbidity if not properly controlled.

http://www.naturalnews.com/046946_ebola_outbreak_vaccines_patents.html#ixzz3J2jIIKFG

Q. Have any military measures already been applied during the Ebola epidemic?

A. Yes. Liberia, for example, declared a state of emergency was declared in early August, with a 9 p.m. curfew and soldiers and police officers patrolling the streets. Communities were quarantined including a part of the Liberian capital called West Point, home to about 75,000 people. Barbed wire was used to lock in the residents without food and water. The military fired on residents, killing a 15-year-old boy and severely wounding a 22-year-old man.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/14/world/africa/president-ellen-johnson-sirleaf-ends-state-of-emergency.html?_r=0

Sierra Leone is now under a state of medical martial law, where Ebola victims were hunted down in door-to-door manhunts.

http://www.naturalnews.com/046946_ebola_outbreak_vaccines_patents.html#ixzz3J2jIIKFG

Q. Are the Ebola diagnostic kits accurate?

A. There are several. The FDA prohibits claims that its Ebola diagnostic kit is safe or effective. The diagnostic kit has never been tested on any Ebola negative specimens.

Q. When did WHO declare Ebola an epidemic of international emergency allowing experimental Ebola vaccines and drugs to be given to people?

A. On August 8^th, 2014.

Q. But Ebola is an out of control epidemic, isn’t it?

A. No. According to WHO’s Ebola expert Pierre Formenty, Ebola was under control. Responding to a question on whether the situation had ‘got out of hand’ Dr. Formenty replied that the situation was not out of hand at a press conference on June 27^th, shortly before Ebola made the emergency declaration.

http://reliefweb.int/report/sierra-leone/regular-press-briefing-information-service-27-june-2014-ebola-outbreak-west

Liberia has lifted the state of emergency in November because Ebola cases have declined dramatically and more than two thirds of the 696 beds in Liberia’s Ebola treatment centers are empty,. New admissions and the number of dead bodies being picked up by burial teams are both falling.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/14/world/africa/president-ellen-johnson-sirleaf-ends-state-of-emergency.html?_r=0

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/07/liberia-ebola-empty-beds_n_6121680.html

Q. Why did WHO declare Ebola an emergency if Ebola was not an out of control epidemic?

A. Vaccine makers like GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) may have influenced WHO’s declaration. GSK acquired a Swiss biotech company which had a preclinical Ebola vaccine in 2013. GSK offered these preclinical vaccines to WHO in March 2014 when the Ebola outbreak started. As soon as WHO declared Ebola an emergency in August, WHO gave GSK a contract to produce Ebola vaccines. These GSK Ebola vaccines could not be given to anyone without an emergency declaration by WHO.

Q. Is WHO’s emergency declaration a repeat of the swine flu scandal in 2009 when GSK and other pharmaceutical companies were accused of inflating the threat of the swine flu in order to trigger lucrative swine flu vaccine contracts?

A. Yes. In 2009, WHO concealed from the public that many of its advisers were on the payroll of pharmaceutical companies, who stood to profit from a pandemic emergency.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10235558

WHO has also concealed from the public the fact that at least one pharmaceutical company, GSK had a financial stake in WHO declaring Ebola an international emergency. GSK bought a Swiss biotech company with a preclinical Ebola vaccine in 2013 and offered WHO the vaccine in March 2014. However, in an email dated April 3^rd, WHO denied there were any vaccines available or potential conflicts of interests involved in its declaration of a n Ebola emergency.

Q. Does GSK have a good record?

A. No.

On 2 September 2014, 45 litres of concentrated live polio virus solution were released into a river by the pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), in Rixensart, Belgium.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/pharmaceutical-giant-glaxosmithkline-accidentally-released-45-liters-of-concentrated-live-polio-virus-in-the-environment/5405801

The Argentinean Federation of Health Professionals accused GlaxoSmithKline of misleading participants and pressuring impoverished, disadvantaged families into enrolling their children in clinical trials of the experimental Synflorix pediatric pneumonia vaccine. Fourteen of the children participating in the experimental vaccine trial died.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/02/19/drug-company-lies-and-uses-human-as-guinea-pigs.aspx

in 2012, GSK was fined $3billion after admitting to the  ‘biggest healthcare fraud in history’. GSK paid U.S. medics to prescribe potentially dangerous medicines to adults and children.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2167742/GlaxoSmithKline-pay-3b-fine-pleading-guilty-healthcare-fraud.html

In 2014, China fined UK pharmaceuticals firm GlaxoSmithKline $490m (£297m) after a court found it guilty of paying out bribes to doctors and hospitals in order to have their products promoted.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29274822

Q. Are there safer cures for Ebola?

A. There are promising cures. These include serum from Ebola survivor’s blood which are being tested.

A Japanese anti-viral drug called Favipiravir is being studied in Guinea. It has been given to several Ebola patients and all patients survived.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/researchers-to-start-studies-of-two-antivirals-in-ebola-patients-in-december-

A doctor in rural Liberia inundated with Ebola patients says he’s had good results with a treatment he tried out of HIV drug. Dr. Gorbee Logan has given the drug, lamivudine, to 15 Ebola patients, and all but two survived. That’s about a 87% survival rate.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/27/health/ebola-hiv-drug/

Studies on the clinical impact of vitamin C look promising.

http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v10n14.shtml

http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v10n13.shtml

Good supportive care can help Ebola patients.

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2014/11/good-supportive-care-can-help-ebola-patients-experts-say

U.S. Air Force study called Interaction of silver nanoparticles with Tacaribevirus underlines the effectiveness of treatment with colloidal silver 

http://www.jnanobiotechnology.com/content/8/1/19

Copyright Case about Bird Flu, 2014

If there were any remaining doubts about the unlimited stupidity Western corporate media is capable of dishing out, the highlight of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing has been defined as Russian President Vladimir Putin supposedly “hitting” on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s wife – and the subsequent Chinese censoring of the moment when Putin draped a shawl over her shoulders in the cold air where the leaders were assembled. What next? Putin and Xi denounced as a gay couple?

Let’s dump the clowns and get down to the serious business. Right at the start, President Xi urged APEC to “add firewood to the fire of the Asia-Pacific and world economy”. Two days later, China got what it wanted on all fronts.

1) Beijing had all 21 APEC member-nations endorsing the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) – the Chinese vision of an “all inclusive, all-win” trade deal capable of advancing Asia-Pacific cooperation – see South China Morning Post (paywall). The loser was the US-driven, corporate-redacted, fiercely opposed (especially by Japan and Malaysia) 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). [See also here.

2) Beijing advanced its blueprint for “all-round connectivity” (in Xi’s words) across Asia-Pacific – which implies a multi-pronged strategy. One of its key features is the implementation of the Beijing-based US$50 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. That’s China’s response to Washington refusing to give it a more representative voice at the International Monetary Fund than the current, paltry 3.8% of votes (a smaller percentage than the 4.5% held by stagnated France).

3) Beijing and Moscow committed to a second gas mega-deal – this one through the Altai pipeline in Western Siberia – after the initial “Power of Siberia” mega-deal clinched last May.

4) Beijing announced the funneling of no less than US$40 billion to start building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

Predictably, once again, this vertiginous flurry of deals and investment had to converge towards the most spectacular, ambitious, wide-ranging plurinational infrastructure offensive ever attempted: the multiple New Silk Roads – that complex network of high-speed rail, pipelines, ports, fiber optic cables and state of the art telecom that China is already building across the Central Asian stans, linked to Russia, Iran, Turkey and the Indian Ocean, and branching out to Europe all the way to Venice, Rotterdam, Duisburg and Berlin.

Now imagine the paralyzed terror of the Washington/Wall Street elites as they stare at Beijing interlinking Xi’s “Asia-Pacific Dream” way beyond East Asia towards all-out, pan-Eurasia trade – with the center being, what else, the Middle Kingdom; a near future Eurasia as a massive Chinese Silk Belt with, in selected latitudes, a sort of development condominium with Russia.

Vlad doesn’t do stupid stuff

As for “Don Juan” Putin, everything one needs to know about Asia-Pacific as a Russian strategic/economic priority was distilled in his intervention at the APEC CEO summit.

This was in fact an economic update of his by now notorious speech at the Valdai Club meeting in Sochi in October, followed by a wide-ranging Q&A, which was also duly ignored by Western corporate media (or spun as yet more “aggression”).

The Kremlin has conclusively established that Washington/Wall Street elites have absolutely no intention of allowing a minimum of multipolarity in international relations. What’s left is chaos.

There’s no question that Moscow pivoting away from the West and towards East Asia is a process directly influenced by President Barack Obama’s self-described “Don’t Do Stupid Stuff” foreign policy doctrine, a formula he came up with aboard Air Force One when coming back last April from a trip to – where else – Asia.

But the Russia-China symbiosis/strategic partnership is developing in multiple levels.

On energy, Russia is turning east because that’s where top demand is. On finance, Moscow ended the pegging of the rouble to the US dollar and euro; not surprisingly the US dollar instantly – if only briefly – dropped against the rouble. Russian bank VTB announced it may leave the London Stock Exchange for Shanghai’s – which is about to become directly linked to Hong Kong. And Hong Kong, for its part, is already attracting Russian energy giants.

Now mix all these key developments with the massive yuan-rouble energy double deal, and the picture is clear; Russia is actively protecting itself from speculative/politically motivated Western attacks against its currency.

The Russia-China symbiosis/strategic partnership visibly expands on energy, finance and, also inevitably, on the military technology front. That includes, crucially, Moscow selling Beijing the S-400 air defense system and, in the future, the S-500 – against which the Americans are sitting ducks; and this while Beijing develops surface-to-ship missiles that can take out everything the US Navy can muster.

Anyway, at APEC, Xi and Obama at least agreed to establish a mutual reporting mechanism on major military operations. That might – and the operative word is “might” – prevent an East Asia replica of relentless NATO-style whining of the “Russia has invaded Ukraine!” kind.

Freak out, neo-cons

When Little Dubya Bush came to power in early 2001, the neo-cons were faced with a stark fact: it was just a matter of time before the US would irreversibly lose its global geopolitical and economic hegemony. So there were only two choices; either manage the decline, or bet the whole farm to consolidate global hegemony using – what else – war.

We all know about the wishful thinking enveloping the “low-cost” war on Iraq – from Paul Wolfowitz’s “We are the new OPEC” to the fantasy of Washington being able to decisively intimidate all potential challengers, the EU, Russia and China.

And we all know how it went spectacularly wrong. Even as that trillionaire adventure, as Minqi Li analyzed in The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy, “has squandered US imperialism’s remaining space for strategic maneuver”, the humanitarian imperialists of the Obama administration still have not given up, refusing to admit the US has lost any ability to provide any meaningful solution to the current, as Immanuel Wallerstein would define it, world-system.

There are sporadic signs of intelligent geopolitical life in US academia, such as this at the Wilson Center website (although Russia and China are not a “challenge” to a supposed world “order”: their partnership is actually geared to create some order among the chaos.)

And yet this opinion piece at USNews is the kind of stuff passing for academic “analysis” in US media.

On top of it, Washington/Wall Street elites – through their myopic Think Tankland – still cling to mythical platitudes such as the “historical” US role as arbiter of modern Asia and key balancer of power.

So no wonder public opinion in the US – and Western Europe – cannot even imagine the earth-shattering impact the New Silk Roads will have in the geopolitics of the young 21st century.

Washington/Wall Street elites – talk about Cold War hubris – always took for granted that Beijing and Moscow would be totally apart. Now puzzlement prevails. Note how the Obama administration’s “pivoting to Asia” has been completely erased from the narrative – after Beijing identified it for what it is: a warlike provocation. The new meme is “rebalance”.

German businesses, for their part, are absolutely going bonkers with Xi’s New Silk Roads uniting Beijing to Berlin – crucially via Moscow. German politicians sooner rather than later will have to get the message.

All this will be discussed behind closed doors this weekend at key meetings on the sidelines of the Group of 20 in Australia. The Russia-China-Germany alliance-in-the-making will be there. The BRICS, crisis or no crisis, will be there. All the players in the G-20 actively working for a multipolar world will be there.

APEC once again has shown that the more geopolitics change, the more it won’t stay the same; as the exceptional dogs of war, inequality and divide and rule keep barking, the China-Russia pan-Eurasian caravan will keep going, going, going – further on down the (multipolar) road.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).  He may be reached at [email protected].

 

KAFR KANA, Galilee – Rauf Hamdan admitted to one small consolation as he sat in his mourning tent, greeting the steady stream of well-wishers paying condolences nearly a week after his son was gunned down in the street by Israeli police.

“At least his death was caught on camera,” he told Middle East Eye. “Otherwise the police would accuse me of lying when I said that he was executed in cold blood. The police can claim whatever they like. The truth is there for all to see.”

The killing of 22 year-old Kheir Hamdan – and the footage of it caught on security cameras that quickly went viral on social media – set off a firestorm of protests in Palestinian communities across Israel this past week that has yet to die down.

Hamdan instantly became a symbol: a victim of Israeli brutality and oppression, merging the experiences of Israel’s large minority of 1.5 million Palestinian citizens with those of their kin in the occupied territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.

Although their inhabitants are disconnected politically and geographically, all these Palestinian areas currently simmer with a shared and barely suppressed rage that may yet erupt into a new uprising, or Intifada.

The Hamdan family home in Kafr Kana, a town of 22,000 Palestinians in northern Israel near Nazareth, is located in an overcrowded backstreet, close to a church over the site where Jesus supposedly performed his first miracle, turning water into wine at a wedding.

But Kafr Kana, like other Palestinian communities in Israel, feels like a community under an occupation of sorts.

Land and jobs scarce

Despite the flood of pilgrims, there are no hotels or major restaurants in the town. Israeli tour buses pay a flying visit that offers Kafr Kana none of the usual benefits of tourism.

Wadea Awawdy, a local journalist, pointed out that half of the town’s inhabitants were under 18. But jobs are scarce, as are the chances of finding land to build a home, usually a cultural pre-requisite here for getting married. None of that looks accidental to residents.

Kafr Kana’s only land reserves for housing and industry have been seized by the state and reassigned to Nazareth Ilit, a Jewish city built decades ago to “Judaise” Nazareth and its environs. “They have a large industrial zone on our land,” said Awawdy. “The only thing we get from it is pollution from a glass smelting factory.”

It is a picture of neglect and marginalisation common in Palestinian communities across the Galilee. Excluded from a meaningful Israeli identity, the minority increasingly feels it shares a common struggle with Palestinians across the Green Line.

The entrance to the Hamdan home hosts a martyr poster of the kind familiar when Palestinians are killed by the Israeli army in the occupied territories. Hamdan’s face is framed by the Palestinian flag.

The passage down to the mourning tent is adorned with images of the al-Aqsa mosque, the Islamic holy site regularly at the centre of Palestinian protests in occupied East Jerusalem.

Wrapped around 50 year-old Rauf Hamdan’s neck is a keffiyeh, a scarf that Yasser Arafat made a symbol of Palestinian resistance.

Concealing faces

Over the past week, such scarves have been concealing the faces of some of the thousands of youths who have clashed with police in Kafr Kana and elsewhere during protests against Hamdan’s killing. That has not stopped police arresting dozens of youths.

The keffiyeh has also been adopted by thousands of Palestinian children in Israeli schools as a visual protest. On Wednesday, a Palestinian Knesset member, Basel Ghattas, caused a flood of complaints when he donned it inside the Knesset.

“We are seen as the enemy by Israel because we are Palestinians,” said Rauf Hamdan. “Our citizenship makes no difference to the security forces.”

Hamdan’s assessment echoes that of an official inquiry into an earlier incident, 14 years ago, when the police fired live ammunition and rubber bullets at unarmed demonstrators in the Galilee at the start of the Second Intifada. Thirteen Palestinian citizens were killed and hundreds wounded in what have come to be known as the October 2000 events.

The Or Commission concluded that Israeli police related to the Palestinian minority “as an enemy.”

This week, one of the three members of that commission, Shimon Shamir, a noted history professor, said on Israeli radio that the police’s approach to the country’s Palestinian minority had only gotten worse in the intervening years.

That, said Awawdy, was how it looked to most Palestinian citizens too as they watched the video of Hamdan’s killing.

‘Sack of potatoes’

Hamdan’s final moments late on the night of 7 November were captured by cameras from several angles outside an electrical shop close to his home.

The store’s owner, Ehab Khoury, tutted angrily as he watched the video again. Like others, he was outraged by footage showing Hamdan being shot in the upper body from close range as he tried to flee from a police van.

Judging by Khoury’s reaction and the hushed conversations in the mourning tent, even more infuriating were the scenes of Hamdan, moments after he was severely wounded, being dragged along the ground by his arms and into the van.

“What is he?” said Khoury. “A citizen or a sack of potatoes? Why did they not call an ambulance when it was clear he was badly wounded?”

Police claim they fired a warning shot, though the cameras do not show the officer who fired on him doing so. But one of Khoury’s videos reveals the shadow of a policeman’s raised arm, holding a gun, from the far side of the van, out of the camera’s view.

That night, a bullet smashed through neighbour Edward Khoury’s bedroom window. If that was the warning shot, it looks suspiciously like it was fired with no regard to the safety of the residents close by.

Other details have further inflamed passions. The video shows the police van driving past the camera on its way out of Kafr Kana, having made a late-night arrest of Hamdan’s cousin following a domestic incident. Hamdan himself had been pepper-sprayed during the arrest.

Many seconds later, Hamdan comes into view chasing after the departing police. Then the van suddenly appears again in view of the camera, the police apparently having decided to return to deal with Hamdan.

Hospital trip delayed

The youth is seen banging on the window with an object police say was a knife. But he flees as the police emerge. According to medical reports, he was shot twice.

The cousin’s testimony to lawyers suggests the police drove around for some long minutes away from the nearest hospitals in Nazareth before heading for a much more distant one in Afula, losing vital time.

“His killing was pre-meditated,” said his father. “The police were leaving. They came back only to kill him.”

Human rights lawyers at Adalah, a legal centre for Israel’s Arab minority, believe the evidence suggests Hamdan was “executed.”

Unlawful killings by police have been a continuing occurrence since the 13 deaths in October 2000, said Jafar Farah of Mossawa, an advocacy group for the Palestinian minority.

Mossawa has identified 35 cases of Palestinian citizens being killed in similar circumstances by security forces since 2000, including previous incidents in Kafr Kana. Only in three cases were officers convicted, but the courts handed down short sentences.

“There is the same impunity for the security forces when it comes to using live ammunition against civilians, whether it is in Israel or the occupied territories,” said Farah.

Comments a few days before Hamdan’s killing by the police minister, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, that terrorists “should be sentenced to death” rather than arrested had, said Farah, given “a green light” to police to use live ammunition against civilians.

Sceptical of inquiry

Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein has insisted on an investigation by a justice ministry unit known as Mahash, but few in the Palestinian minority expect it to be thorough.

“I have no trust that Mahash will get to the truth,” said Rauf Hamdan.

That scepticism is shared by human rights lawyers. A recent report by Adalah noted that Mahash had closed without action 93 per cent of complaints between 2011 and 2013, including in cases of clear breaches of police regulations.

Earlier, Mahash was accused of failing to properly investigate the police officers responsible for killing the 13 demonstrators in October 2000. None were ever indicted.

There are signs that the police are expecting similar lenience on this occasion. National Commissioner Yohanan Danino dismissed criticism of the police’s treatment of Hamdan as “unfounded” and “irresponsible.”

But the Palestinian minority’s concerns are not limited to police brutality. The political reaction has been equally disturbing.

Rauf Hamdan said no government official had visited the tent, or called to offer condolences. Instead, government leaders have used Hamdan’s death to further question the minority’s status as citizens.

Both Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his economics minister, Naftali Bennett, have suggested Hamdan was a “terrorist,” placing his fight with the police on a par with recent Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians.

‘Move to Gaza’

But more worrying still, Netanyahu has exploited the outpouring of anger in the Galilee to confirm the Palestinian minority’s growing suspicion that the Israeli authorities see no future for them in a Jewish state.

Netanyahu has called on the interior minister to investigate stripping the protesters in Kafr Kana and elsewhere of their citizenship. He has also urged them to “move to the Palestinian Authority or to Gaza … Israel will not put any obstacles in your way.”

Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, leapt at the chance to promote again his plan to redraw Israel’s borders to expel a quarter of a million Palestinian citizens, saying: “It is clear that territorial and population swaps must be part of the solution. Us here and them there.”

A Palestinian Knesset member, Ahmed Tibi, said Netanyahu had “gone off the rails” in making his remarks, a view shared by the liberal daily Haaretz. An editorial accused Netanyahu of “exposing his nationalist face to the public.”

Since earlier in the year, Netanyahu and his government have been intensifying their efforts to silence the minority’s Palestinian representatives, both in and out of the parliament.

The electoral threshold was raised in March to a level that may ensure there are no Palestinian parties in the next Knesset. Meanwhile, Netanyahu used the protests over Hamdan’s killing to reiterate plans to outlaw the Islamic Movement, the minority’s most popular extra-parliamentary political faction.

Farah noted that clashes between police and the Palestinian minority were occurring more regularly and growing in intensity. “Once these crises occurred once every decade or more. But they are now a pattern. We saw violent confrontations over the summer during the attack on Gaza and only weeks later it’s happening again.”

There is deep distrust of the police and politicians, but Farah believes the anger is unlikely for the time being to translate into an Intifada. “The leadership here is opposed,” he said. “Despite the hostile atmosphere in the Israeli parliament, courts, media and public, there is still a preference to seek redress through political and legal channels.”

Awawdy, the journalist from Kafr Kana, is more pessimistic. “This government sees us at worst as enemies and at best as guests whose rights can be taken away at any moment. If things keep on this way, an explosion is coming. You can sense it in the air.”

The British Prime Minister was evidently enjoying the backslapping as he strode into the Australian parliament. David Cameron felt at home before members he could count on, so much so the weak jokes seemed to have effect.  The UK-Australian relationship was discussed.  Like a long union, it had gathered some dust, losing its frisson perhaps, but never its presumption of friendship.  “It is extraordinary to think that no British Foreign Secretary had visited Australia in nearly 20 years.  I was determined to change that.”

Rocky times were still times when the couple stuck it through.  “Our ties have been woven not only in the best of times, but in the worst of times.  Never more so than in each other’s – and in humanity’s – bleakest hours.”[1]  Then come the security elements to the relationship, the Five Power Defence Arrangement and the Five Eyes intelligence sharing partnership.

Cameron said the right things for his audience.  Like a cabinet file, he had gone through the main folders.  Mention Gallipoli.  Mention that, “Those diggers were not just fighting for their country, they were shaping the identity of a new young nation.” Mention the permanent state of warring commitment between the two countries.  Note that Australian Aboriginals have managed to make it to the elite institutions of Cambridge and Oxford.  Appeal to the Australian pragmatism: “You are a ‘can do’ country.”  Speak about assertiveness in absence of thought.  “Typical Australia. Always there, with action not words.”

There was also another striking point.  Cameron had selected his audience, and moment, with good reason. Islamic radicalisation was on the script, and he was keen to push the message of how best to cope with it.  “In both our countries we have seen some of our young people radicalised, going off to fight in Iraq and Syria, and even appalling plots to murder innocent people back in our own countries.”  Given the Abbott government’s attempt at passing some of the most far reaching, and sinister national security legislation in decades, the British PM knew where he had landed.

For Cameron, British foreign policy, in alliance with the United States and Australia, does not explain radicalisation.  Muslims do not engage in foreign conflicts because of the actions of their host country.  This is the sentiment of obliviousness, one that takes refuge in the idea of exceptional values challenged by exceptional threats. We do no harm; only harm is done to us.  “There is no opt-out from dealing with this.  We have to confront this threat at its source.”

Cameron’s suggests the converse.  British foreign policy has been good for Islam.  “Now I can show you examples all over the world where British aid and British action have saved millions of Muslim lives, from Kosovo to Syria.” The fantasy of salvation is yet another way of branding acts of interference as acts of humanitarian benevolence.

Then come the avenues by which radicalisation can take place.  Local conditions such as poverty are irrelevant to Cameron, “though of course our nations are united in tackling deprivation wherever it exists.” The convenient dismissal of foreign policy and domestic social policy as causes enables Cameron to take free rein over targeting a specific group.  For anyone vaguely acquainted with such radicalisation notions, the processes, and the causes, vary dramatically between communities. In the comforts of a Parliamentary speech, complexity gives way to easy wrapping and simple summaries.

The true demon of radicalisation, argues Cameron, is the big bad space of the Internet, for “the root cause of the challenge we face is the extremist narrative.”  Like Don Quixote having a beef with the windmills, Cameron is concerned that government can engage in the task of removing “extremist material” from the Internet.  “There is a role for government in that.  We must not allow the Internet to be an ungoverned space.”

And if the government can’t do it, companies must.  “In the UK we are pushing them to do more, including strengthening filters, improving reporting mechanisms and being more proactive in taking down this harmful material.”  Censorship, for Queen and country, is the suggested antidote.

It should be obvious that such ideas give way to undermining of the very “values” that animate the British system, be they the presumption of innocence, free speech, the innate wisdom of the common law, or the judgment of those good sages of Parliament.  The Counter-Terrorism Bill suggests a reversal of the onus of proof- that one returning from Syria or Iraq fighting for the various militias should well be detained for the very grounds of that travel.  This is institutional guilt rather than punishable conduct.  Australia’s foreign fighter legislation has the same slant.

The other point to note is that such laws are simply not clear about whether the foreign fighter prohibitions apply evenly.  If one had rewound the tape of history to examine how such laws would operate in the context of a conflict like the Spanish Civil War, we would find individuals such as George Orwell and Arthur Koestler doing time in the cells of Blighty. It would have equally applied to the pro-Fascist fighters who took sides with Generalissimo Franco. The practice of it is something else.

The problems have already been faced in the Australian context: do you punish a Syrian-Australian fighter who fights for the Assad regime?  What of Kurdish fighters of Australian or British origin who find themselves fighting in northern Iraq against ISIL forces?  Law, in a theoretical sense, should be of even application.  The practice, however, tends to see favouritism.  The narrative, in other words, is slanted towards punishing Islamic radicalism personified by the Islamic State. It does not single out the fighters sponsored by Western interests. Nor does it distinguish the range of militias that might fall into a prosecutable group as opposed to another.

So much for the wisdom of Parliament, which has gone off.  But irrespective of all that, the UK and Australia can be counted upon to do, not so much the right thing, as the predicable thing.  They have their own narratives to push, even if they end in being self-defeating ones.

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

At the APEC Summit in Beijing,  Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott who is hosting this week’s G20 meetings in Brisbane, intimated in no uncertain terms, during a 15 minute encounter with Russian President Vladimir Putin, that Moscow was responsible for the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine. 

During the meeting, Mr Abbott is reported to have stated that “Russia had armed the rebels who shot down the aircraft and killed 38 Australians.”  Mr Abbott said that  “MH17 was destroyed by a missile from a launcher that had come out of Russia, was fired from inside Eastern Ukraine and then returned to Russia… [and that this] was a very serious matter.”

Global Research has from the outset provided extensive coverage of the downing of MH17. The evidence and analysis not only dispels Prime Minister Abbott’s accusations, it points unequivocally to a false flag attack instigated by the US-NATO supported Kiev regime, as well as a coverup by the Australian and Dutch investigators.

Lest we forget, the downing of MH17 was used as a pretext by Washington to impose economic sanctions on the Russian Federation.

The Western media and governments have gone to arms length to suppress and distort the evidence which points to the downing of MH17 not by a Buk missile but by a Ukrainian military aircraft.

Spanish Air Traffic Controller’s Twitter Report [translated from Spanish]

One of the first reports (in real time) pointing to the presence of two Ukrainian military aircraft  was revealed by the Spanish air traffic controller’s twitter messages on the day of the attacks. (emphasis added)

11:48 – 17 de jul. de 2014

The B777 plane flew escorted by Ukraine jet fighter until 2 minutes before disappearing from the radar,

11:54 – 17 de jul. de 2014

“If kiev authorities want to tell the truth, It´s gathered, 2 jet fighters flew very close minutes before, wasn’t downed by a fighter”

12:00 – 17 de jul. de 2014

“Malaysia Airlines B777 plane just disappeared and Kiev military authority informed us of the downing, How they knew?”

12:00 – 17 de jul. de 2014

“7:00 minutes after [plane disappeared], the downing was notified, later our tower was taken with foreigner staff, they still here ”

12:01 – 17 de jul. de 2014

“all this is gathered in radars, to the unbelieving, shot down by kiev, here we know it and military air traffic control also”

13:15 – 17 de jul. de 2014

“Here the military commanders are in control and admit that the military could be following other orders , but no, the pro-Russian”

13:29 – 17 de jul. de 2014

“Interior Minister knew what the fighters were doing in the area, the defense minister didn’t.”

13:31 – 17 de jul. de 2014

“Military confirm It was Ukraine, but still does not know where the order came from”

The Spanish air-controller’s Twitter account was closed down by Twitter. This report from Kiev’s air traffic control was  dismissed by the mainstream media as “a conspiracy theory”. The audio records of communication between air traffic control and the plane were not made public.

Spanish Air Controller @ Kiev Borispol Airport: Ukraine Military Shot Down Boeing MH#17 bBy Global Research News, July 18, 2014

The Report of German Pilot Peter Haisenko

German pilot Peter Haisenko in a path-breaking analysis pointed to bullet like holes which could not have been triggered by a buk missile:

The cockpit shows traces of shelling! You can see the entry and exit holes. The edge of a portion of the holes is bent inwards. These are the smaller holes, round and clean, showing the entry points most likely that of a 30 millimeter caliber projectile.

Revelations of German Pilot: Shocking Analysis of the “Shooting Down” of Malaysian MH17. “Aircraft Was Not Hit by a Missile” By Peter Haisenko, September 09, 2014

The Suppressed BBC Report on Eyewitness Testimonies

The BBC  in an early report from Eastern Ukraine (which was subsequently suppressed) provided testimonies that MH17 was shot down by a military aircraft.  The BBC has censored its own news reporting. That BBC report including the video was removed by the BBC:

The inhabitants of the nearby villages are certain that they saw military aircraft in the sky shortly prior to the catastrophe. According to them, it actually was the jet fighters that brought down the Boeing.

The Ukrainian government rejects this version of events. They believe that the Boeing was shot down using a missile from a “BUK” complex that came in from Russia.

BBC reporter Olga Ivshina and producer Oksana Vozhdayeva decided to find the place from which the missile was allegedly launched.

…

Eyewitness #2: … And there was another aircraft, a military one, beside it. Everybody saw it.

Eyewitness #1: Yes, yes. It was flying under it, because it could be seen. It was proceeding underneath, below the civilian one.  

Original BBC Video Report: Preserved by Google Web-cache

[both the original BCC video as well as the web cache BBC report on Google has also been suppressed]

Below is the same BBC Russian Services report which was reposted on the internet

 

See Deleted BBC Report. “Ukrainian Fighter Jet Shot Down MHI7″, Donetsk Eyewitnesses By Global Research News, September 10, 2014

The Report of OSCE Monitor Michael Bociurkiw

Michael Bociurkiw,  head of the OSCE group of monitors confirmed in late July in a CBC TV interview (which has not been suppressed) the presence of  machine gun holes in fuselage (pointing to a military aircraft rather than a missile). The byline of the CBC report was  “OSCE monitor Michael Bociurkiw mentions bullet holes in #MH17, not able to find any missile so far” 

Original source http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/malaysia… – OSCE monitor Michael Bociurkiw mentions bullet holes in #MH17, not able to find any missile so far.

The Kiev Regime’s Official Report on the Downing of MH17 

It is worth noting that one week after Michael Bociukiw’s statement, the Kiev regime released its official report (August 7) on the downing of  MH17  drafted by Ukraine’s intelligence bureau, The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). This report, which borders on the absurd, has barely been acknowledged by the mainstream media.

According to the SBU report entitled Terrorists and Militants planned cynical terrorist attack at Aeroflot civil aircraft , the Donetsk militia (with the support of Moscow) was aiming at a Russian Aeroflot passenger plane and shot down the Malaysian MH17 airliner by mistake. That’s the official Ukraine government story which has not been reported by the MSM, nor mentioned “officially” by Western governments.

According to the Kiev regime, the Donetsk militia did not intend to shoot down Malaysian airlines MH17. What the “pro-Russian rebels” were aiming at was a Russian Aeroflot passenger plane. 

The MH17 was shot down “by mistake” according to an official statement by the head of Ukraine’s Secret Service, Valentine Nalyvaichenko (Ukraine News Service, August 7, 2014). 

According to SBU Chief Nalyvaichenko who casually accuses the Russian government of planning to shoot down a Russian Aeroflot flight:

“Ukraine’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies have established during the investigation into a terrorist attack on the Boeing… that on that day, July 17, and at that time military mercenaries and terrorists from the Russian Federation planned to carry out a terrorist attack against a passenger aircraft of Aeroflot en route from Moscow to Larnaca… as a pretext for the further invasion by Russia,”

“This cynical terrorist attack was planned for the day when the [Malaysia Airlines] plane happened to fly by, planned by war criminals as a pretext for the further military invasion by the Russian Federation, that is, there would be a casus belli,” he added.

Thus, according Nalyvaichenko, the terrorists downed the Malaysian airliner by mistake.” (Ukraine Interfax News, August 8, 2014)

Nalyvaichenko said that the Kiev government reached this conclusion “in the course of its own investigation into the downing of MH17″.

According to Britain’s foremost news tabloid, The Mail on Sunday, quoting the head of Ukraine intelligence, the insidious design of the pro-Russian rebels (supported by Moscow) was to shoot down a Russian commercial airline plane, with a view to blaming the Ukrainian government. The objective of this alleged “false flag” covert op was to create a justifiable and credible pretext for Vladimir Putin to declare war on Ukraine.

Desperate MH17 “Intelligence” Spin. Ukraine Secret Service Contends that “Pro-Russian Rebels had Targeted a Russian Passenger Plane”. “But Shot Down Flight MH17 by Mistake”By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, November 06, 2014

SELECTED ARTICLES

Below is a selection of key articles which dispels the media lies and official government fabrications to the  effect that the Donbass militia supported by Moscow was behind the attack on Malaysian airlines MH17. 

At no juncture during the Ukrainian crisis could the downing of flight MH17 have been more convenient for NATO and its proxy regime in Kiev. Kiev’s forces in eastern Ukraine are being repealed. NATO’s attempts to bait Russia into moving into Ukrainian territory have failed.

Dutch MH17 Investigation Omits US “Intel”. Fabrications and Omissions Supportive of US-NATO Agenda Directed against Russia By Tony Cartalucci, September 19, 2014

MH17 Verdict: Real Evidence Points to US-Kiev Cover-up of Failed “False Flag” By 21st Century Wire, September 14, 201

Report by Dutch Investigators of MH17 Crash Dispels Notion about Missile Attack. Michel Chossudovsky By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, September 11, 2014

Spanish Air Controller @ Kiev Borispol Airport: Ukraine Military Shot Down Boeing MH#17 By Global Research News, July 18, 2014

Dutch Safety Board (DSB) Report: Malaysian MH17 was Brought Down by “A Large Number of High Energy Objects”, Contradicts US Claims that it Was Shot Down by a “Russian Missile” By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Julie Lévesque, September 09, 2014

“Support MH17 Truth”: OSCE Monitors Identify “Shrapnel and Machine Gun-Like Holes” indicating Shelling. No Evidence of a Missile Attack. Shot Down by a Military Aircraft? By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, September 09, 2014

Camouflage and Coverup: The Dutch Commission Report on the Malaysian MH17 Crash is “Not Worth the Paper it’s Written On”By Peter Haisenko, September 11, 2014 

 400 billion dollar 40 year oil and gas deal between China and Russia is a response to the new cold war pressure and sanctions on Russia says Professor Michael Hudson

SHARMINI PERIES, EXEC. PRODUCER, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Sharmini Peries, coming to you from Baltimore.

During this year a number of governments applied sanctions against Russia for its involvement in the alleged pro-Russian unrest in the Ukraine. Sanctions against Russia were applied by many countries, with the United States and the European Union taking a lead. In retaliation, Russia has responded with sanctions against a number of countries, including a total ban on food imports from the European Union, United States, Norway, Canada, and Australia.

What does all of this mean to Europe, the United States, and the geopolitical reconfigurations on trade pacts?

Here to discuss all of this is Michael Hudson. Michael is coming to us from New York City. He is the distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

So, Michael, what’s going on this week in Beijing?

MICHAEL HUDSON, PROF. ECONOMICS, UMKC: The APEC meetings. In most such meetings for the last few years, including the G20 meetings (coming up in Brisbane this weekend) nothing really has been done. The United States is attending as the odd man out.

At issue are two different views of how economies should evolve. China is moving for its own trading bloc instead of being in a privatized pro-corporate bloc, it’s a mixed economy. So what you have is the Chinese economy growing very rapidly, and the American economy that’s been going flat.

In a situation like this there’s not really much to say. China and the United States have announced pretty much what they were going to do anyway and make it appear as if they’re all doing it in harmony.

President Obama was talking mainly to his American base, and to the Republican Party in particular to work on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. His vision is an agreement that will abolish government regulation of the environment, abolish regulation of banking, and implicitly nullify the Dodd-Frank Act. If a bank misbehaves or a government requires higher reserve requirements, then under the new international law that Mr. Obama is pushing, the government have to pay the private bank as if it weren’t regulated. And if a government imposes environmental fines on a company for polluting the environment, the government will have to pay the company whatever it would have made if it didn’t have any such fines.

The big news in the American press is that China has agreed to lower its air pollution. Well, of course China has to do this. If you’ve been in Beijing, you know it’s a polluted city. So this is just an announcement of where it’s going. Russia announced at the meetings a $400 billion 30-year gas deal with China to increase gas exports, with some oil also going to China. So China will scale back its coal plants, and there’ll be less coal smoke in the air.

Mr. Obama said that the United States is also going to cut back carbon emissions. But he’s still pushing for the XL Pipeline with Alberta to bring tar sands oil into the United States. That is the most high polluting activity on the planet.

What has been less talked about are the banking changes that have been announced.

PERIES: Before you move on, Michael, isn’t it a bit ironic that on one hand China signs an accord with the United States making a commitment to cut emissions, but on the other hand they’re making a deal with Russia that includes oil, a fossil fuel that will obviously increase emissions, not reduce them?

HUDSON: Every economy needs oil to some extent. China has to use oil for many things that gas simply won’t work for. Every country’s GDP goes up in keeping with its energy consumption. You could say the rise in productivity for the last hundred years, throughout the Industrial Revolution, has been an increase in energy use per worker or per unit of output. So it’s energy that’s pushing growth. And of course China needs oil. In fact, one of its problems is that when people are getting richer, they want to have cars, and they use gasoline. So of course China’s going to be dependent on oil from Russia.

Mr. Putin said that as a result of these deals, Russian trade with China and the rest of Asia is going to increase from 25 percent to 40 percent of Russia’s GDP. This leaves Europe out in the cold. What’s been clear at the meeting is that there’s a coming together between China and Russia. This has been the opposite of what American foreign policy has been trying to push for since the 1980s. What is ironic is that where the United States thought that it was putting pressure on Russia and sanctions following the NATO adventure in Ukraine, what it’s actually done is bring Russia and China closer together.

The most important way in which they’re coming together is reflected in Mr. Putin’s announcement that Russia is setting up its own bank clearing house system independent of the so-called SWIFT system. When you transfer funds from one bank to another, or when any bank uses U.S. dollars, it has to go through the SWIFT clearing house system in the United States.

Right now the only country that’s not part of this is Iran. To Russia, this has tipped America’s hand. It showed that what U.S. Cold Warriors really want is to break up Russia and China, and to interrupt their financial and banking services to disorient their economies. So Russia, China and Iran – and presumably other Asian countries – are now moving to establish their own currency clearing systems. To be independent of the SWIFT system and the U.S. dollar, Russia and China are denominating their trade and investments in rubles and yuan instead of the dollar. So what you’ve seen in the last few days in Beijing is a rejection of the dollar standard, and a rejection of American foreign policy behind it.

China has doubled its military spending since Mr. Obama was there in 2009. The president of China politely said, let’s make sure there’s not an accidental bang up in the air or on sea. What he means is, “We’ve defined our airspace over the islands that we’re claiming as ours, so if one of your planes comes too close to ours and we bump into it and knock it down, please don’t take this as an attack on America. We don’t really mean it personally.” So China’s really throwing its weight around.

That’s why Mr. Obama has looked so uncomfortable at these meetings. He knows that he hasn’t gotten anything he wants. Asian countries are not about to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and they’re moving on now to Brisbane, Australia.

In the next few days you’re going to see Europe being left out. The sanctions that the United States and NATO have insisted that it impose on Russia have led to Russian counter-sanctions against French and Baltic and European exports. French farmers are already demonstrating, and Marine Le Pen’s nationalists are likely to win the next election. The Baltic States are also screaming from losing their farm exports. France, Latvia, and even Germany had been looking to Russia as a growing market the last few years. Yet their leaders obeyed U.S. demands not to deal with the Russian market. This leaves Europe in a position of economic stagnation.

As for the sanctions isolating Russia economically, this is just what it needs to protect its industrial revival and economic independence. In conjunction with China, it’s integrating the Russian economy with that of China, Kazakhstan and Iran. Russia is now going to be building at least two atomic reactors in Iran. The center of global investment is shifting to Asia, leaving the United States out as well as Europe.

So you can expect at the G20 Brisbane meetings next week to see increased pressure from Europe to break away from the U.S. sanctions. All the United States has diplomatically at the present time is military pressure, while Russia and China have economic growth – markets and investment opportunities opening up. Despite the fact that there was an agreement on high-technology trade between the United States and China, the U.S. is basically being left out. This seems to be why Mr. Obama was looking so out of sorts at the meetings. He knows that the strategy that he was given by his neocons is backfiring.

PERIES: Finally, Michael, how do you think this is going to be dealt with by Congress and a Republican-controlled Senate now?

HUDSON: Obama said that he looked forward to dealing with the Republicans now that he doesn’t have to deal with the Democrats anymore. Republicans are the only party that would agree to his pro-corporate, anti-labor Trans-Pacific Partnership. He has shown himself to be a Republican in the same spirit as Cheney and George W. Bush. The noises coming out of Washington from Harry Reid and the Democratic leadership are blaming Obama for mishandling the economy so badly and losing them the election – as if it were not their own doing and Steve Israel’s support for Republican-striped Democratic Blue Dog candidates. So if I can paraphrase what Obama essentially said, it’s “I’m a Republican and I’m supporting Wall Street.” He’s letting the Republicans know he’s pushing for the kind of giveaways that the lobbyists have written into the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I think you’ve had Lori Wallach on your show explaining exactly what this is. So you can expect Obama to move even more sharply to the right, getting Republican support while the Democrats pretend to scream in agony and say, “My God, what have we ever done with bringing this guy in?” – while supporting Hillary.

PERIES: Michael Hudson, as always, thank you so much for joining us.

HUDSON: It’s good to be here. Thank you very much.

PERIES: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

The US, the UK, Russia, China and France are rebuilding or upgrading their arsenals of nuclear weapons. The other four nuclear states(Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea) too are ‘improving’ their arsenals. As we discuss the statistics and strategies of ‘nuclear arsenals’ and ‘nuclear deterrence’ it can be hard to keep in mind the reality underlying the abstract discussions.

The nine nuclear states have over 10,000 nuclear weapons in their stockpiles¹. This is enough to wipe out the entire population of the planet many times over together with all other life forms.

Is this sane? Has the human race lost its senses? A single United States thermonuclear warhead, designated W88, has an estimated ‘yield’ of 475 kilotons².  The ‘yield’ is the destructive power expressed in tons of TNT equivalent.

The W88 is over 30 times more destructive than the bomb which wiped out Hiroshima.

A single W88 could completely destroy London, Moscow or New York. Each bomb on a major city would kill millions of people; women, children, babies, old people, everyone. The suffering would be indescribable and for many would go on for months and years before death. No emergency services could begin to cope There would be no relief. What sort of people would do such a thing? What kind of human would threaten such an atrocity?  

 

The US government has 5 nuclear submarines on patrol at all times carrying 1000 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb³. Is it possible to imagine the degree of paranoia represented by such a standing threat? The UK government has started to spend one hundred billion pounds on rebuilding its Trident fleet of nuclear submarines, each one with the capacity to incinerate over 40 million people. This is being done at a time when many citizens are suffering from inadequate defences against flooding and when the social services are being radically cut back. 

The situation is being rendered even more dangerous by the US and Russia who keep 1,800 weapons on high alert atop long-range ballistic missiles that are ready to launch 5 to 15 minutes after receiving an order!

It is ironic that the worst offenders are the five permanent members of the ‘Security’ Council of the United Nations. They have had 69 years to get rid of their nuclear weapons while all that the citizens of the world hear from them are windy speeches around purported good intentions which never come to fruition.

Citizens of the world have simultaneously become aware that the nuclear states do not intend to get rid of their nuclear weapons and that their existence imposes a permanent and intolerable threat to us all. The existence of nuclear weapons means they could be used by accident, by misunderstanding or by malicious intent. How can we ever be sure that some deranged psychopath will not gain power in one of the nuclear states and deceive him/herself into believing that it is in their best interests to make a first strike? How can we ever be sure that some terrorist organisations will not hack into the electronic control systems and carry out the launching themselves? And we now know that even a small nuclear exchange could be a lethal threat to everyone on the planet. In a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan 20 million people would die from the nuclear blasts, fires, and radioactive fallout. And the fallout would have global consequences that would kill millions of people, disrupt climate patterns, and threaten global agricultural collapse⁴.

 Furthermore decent people round the globe know that the existence of nuclear weapons is a brooding evil which undermines the moral integrity of humankind. As the great moral leader Desmond Tutu wrote “Nuclear weapons are an obscenity. They are the very antithesis of humanity⁵…’

The only remedy is an enforced world ban on the existence of nuclear weapons. The other weapons of mass destruction have already been banned. It is the turn of the last and most destructive of them all.

And finally there is hope. The huge burgeoning of awareness in the citizens of the world is bearing fruit.

There are 9 nuclear states and there are 183 non-nuclear states. The security of the non-nuclear states is threatened by the irresponsible and self-focused behaviour of the 9 others. But these 9 are outnumbered by 20 to one. The non-nuclear majority which do not feel the need for a lethal ‘security’ crutch have decided to take the initiative. And rather than focus on the numbers and ‘yields’ of the weapons it was wisely decided to concentrate on the effects on humanity of the use of nuclear weapons. The next logical development, as the nuclear states continue to deny their obligations to shed their arsenals, is for the non-nuclear states to proceed independently to enact a treaty outlawing these weapons internationally. By focusing attention on the humanitarian consequences of their use they are well on their way to doing so.

The first International Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons was held in 2013. Humanity owes a great debt to Norway for this initiative.

This ground-breaking and historic conference was attended by delegates from 127 countries and 70 nongovernmental organizations. The nuclear states were invited but declined to attend. It is not easy to face up to the implications of these arsenals especially if you bear the primary responsibility. India and Pakistan sent observers.

After hearing presentations from a wide range of experts on the various effects of nuclear weapon detonations the conference concluded that “it is unlikely that any state or international body could address the immediate humanitarian emergency caused by a nuclear weapon detonation in an adequate manner and provide sufficient assistance to those affected.” Conference members also agreed that the effects of a nuclear weapon detonation will not be constrained by national borders but will produce significant negative regional and global effects⁶.

Mexico offered to host a follow-up meeting to this conference and such is the vital importance of this approach that other states declared their intention to organise additional events on this subject.

The Second Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons was held in Nayarit, Mexico, on 13 and 14 February 2014. It included delegations representing 146 States, the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement and civil society organizations.

The powerful summary statement of the conference Chair pointed out that the broad participation of states and civil society reflected the burgeoning awareness that this issue is of the utmost importance to all the peoples of the world. Due to ‘…proliferation, the vulnerability of nuclear command and control networks to cyber-attacks and to human error and potential access to nuclear weapons by non-state actors, in particularly terrorist groups’ the risks are ‘growing globally’.

The risks of ‘accidental, mistaken, unauthorised or intentional use is growing significantly due to more countries holding weapons on higher levels of combat readiness’. As awareness of the humanitarian impact grows hearts and minds are being changed worldwide. These weapons must be outlawed; ‘in the past, weapons have been eliminated after they have been outlawed. We believe this is the path to achieve a world without nuclear weapons’. He called for a ‘legally binding instrument’ and declared that the, ‘time has come to initiate a diplomatic process conducive to this goal. Our belief is that this process should comprise a specific timeframe, the definition of the most appropriate fora, and a clear and substantive framework, making the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons the essence of disarmament efforts. It is time to take action ⁷.’

The Third Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons will be held in Austria later this year. The movement for an international ban is unstoppable.

The International Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)⁸ is a coalition of over 350 organisations in 90 countries. Ray Acheson, in her closing statement on behalf of ICAN to the Second Conference included the words ‘The claim by some states that they continue to need these weapons to deter their adversaries has been exposed by the evidence presented at this conference and in Oslo as a reckless and unsanctionable gamble with our future’.

She went on to explain that the use against cities of less than one percent of existing weapons would put billions of lives in jeopardy and have a long lasting detrimental  effect on both the planet’s climate and agriculture. She insisted that we must act to get rid of them or they will be used by accident, misunderstanding or malicious intent. Getting rid of them will take courageous leadership by states but such leadership will have the support of civil society. She concluded ‘It is time to change the status quo. It is time we ban nuclear weapons.

 So with these and other major forces at work there is an unstoppable movement towards banning these Armageddon machines. The nuclear states have become a sorry sight. Frozen in a realm of outdated thinking which was always inhuman; their leaders frightened and paranoid and prepared to put the survival of humanity in jeopardy simply in order to feel important and powerful as they strut, uncomprehending, on the world stage.

Their brief and nightmarish ascendancy is over. The world has moved on.

Notes

1.     http://www.scribd.com/doc/168600341/Bulletin-of-the-Atomic-Scientists-2013

2.      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W88

3.     http://www.psr.org/chapters/washington/energy-and-peace/trident.html

4.      http://www.good.is/post/what-the-volcano-can-teach-us-about-nuclear-war/

5.    http://wagingpeace.org/articles/db_article.php?article_id=417

6.    http://thebulletin.org/mexico-preview-humanitarian-approach-disarmament

7.    http://www.sre.gob.mx/en/images/stories/cih/ci.pdf

8.    http://www.icanw.org/campaign-news/ican-closing-statement-to-the-second-conference-on-the-humanitarian-impact-of-nuclear-weapons/

On Friday, Italians held a rally in the city of Rome, urging Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to reconsider his economic plans.

Meanwhile, Italian workers’ unions from both public and private sectors have called for a one-day nationwide strike on Friday.

People in 20 cities are expected to join the strike to protest “against the politics of liberalism and austerity,” said the far-left COBAS union spokesman, Piero Bernocchi, in a statement.

The unions are demanding that the Italian government grant higher pensions, increase the investment in public services and set a guaranteed minimum wage.

The rally and nationwide strike came after the Italian National Statistical Institute (Istat) announced on Friday that the country’s economy was still beset with recession in the third quarter of 2014.

According to reports, Italy’s gross domestic product (GDP) dropped by 0.1 percent during the July-September period. The country’s GDP shrank by 0.2 percent in the second quarter of 2014 while it was flat in the first quarter of the year.

Italy started to experience recession after its economy contracted by 0.2 percent in the third quarter of 2011 and by 0.7 percent in the fourth quarter of the same year.

Over the past decade, Italy has been the slowest growing economy in the eurozone as tough austerity measures, spending cuts, and pension changes have stirred serious concerns for many people already grappling with the European country’s ailing economy.

Italians have been staging protests against high unemployment, economic adversity, and hardship over a series of government-imposed austerity packages in the recent past.

Watch video here

MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber heads the National Bureau of Economic Research Health Care Program.  He’s an associate editor of the Journal of Public Economics and Journal of Health Economics. Involved in creating healthcare policy. A key 2006 Massachusetts Romneycare architect.

Serving in a similar Obamacare capacity. The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). For HHS and congressional democrats. A willfully designed scam. A rationing scheme boon to predatory providers.

Enriching insurers, drug companies and large hospital chains. At the expense of universal affordable coverage. Market-based for maximum profits. Letting providers escalate prices. Regulatory light. Loopholes let profiteers game the system. Benefitting at the expense of ripped-off consumers. Leaving millions uninsured. Most others way underinsured.

A healthcare disaster. Unaffordable for most people. Providing inadequate protection. Forcing millions to pay 40% or more out-of-pocket. For co-pays and deductibles. On top of costly premiums. Rising annually. Double the cost of other developed countries. During protracted Main Street Depression conditions.

Eroding safety net protections. Leaving tens of millions of Americans unemployed. Millions more underemployed. Living from paycheck to paycheck. One missed one away from homelessness, hunger and despair. Forcing most households into bare bones coverage. Leaving them woefully uninsured or underinsured against catastrophic illnesses. Profit matters more than people.

Healthcare is a fundamental human right. Obamacare commodifies it more than ever. A huge provider giveaway. Shifting costs unfairly to consumers. Designed this way. Social injustice writ large. Obama wants social safety net protections eliminated.

In lockstep with congressional bipartisan complicity. Leaving ordinary people on their own sink or swim. Depriving them of affordable healthcare coverage. When most needed. A crime against humanity and then some.

On November 9, the conservative Heritage Foundation-controlled digital news web site Daily Signalheadlined “Caught on Camera: Obamacare Architect Admits Deceiving Americans to Pass Law.”

Two videos surfaced. One in 2012. On so-called health insurance exchanges. Where consumers sign up for coverage. Get subsidies if qualify. “In the law, it says if the states don’t provide them, the federal backstop will,” said Gruber.  “The federal government has been sort of slow in putting out its backstop. I think partly because they want to sort of squeeze the states to do it.”

“I think what’s important to remember politically about this is if you’re a state and you don’t set up an Exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits.”

“But your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. So you’re essentially saying to your citizens, you’re going to pay all the taxes to help all the other states in the country.”

“I hope that’s a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these Exchanges, and that they’ll do it. But you know, once again, the politics can get ugly around this.”

Gruber commented in a second October 2013 video. Calling “(l)ack of transparency” in designing Obamacare “a huge political advantage.”

“And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.”

“We had to lie to” do it, he said. Truth and full disclosure would have exposed the scam. Enactment couldn’t happen politically. “You just literally (couldn’t) do it…Transparent financing? Transparent spending?”

“(T)his bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO (Congressional Budget Office) did not score the mandate as taxes. If so, “the bill dies…So it’s written to” be willfully deceptive. Confusing. Opaque. Hiding its real purpose from public view.

Claiming individual mandate policy forcing consumers to buy coverage or be penalized wasn’t a tax. Suppressing information about younger, healthier consumers forced to pay more for coverage. Through higher premiums, deductibles and co-pays. To cover costs for older more vulnerable to illness Americans. A ripoff by any standard.

According to Gruber:

“In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said healthy people are gonna pay in – if you made it explicit that healthy people are going to pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed.”

Transparency would have killed it. Big Lies assured passage. A monster scam. Making a dysfunctional system worse. Obama lied claiming Americans “will be empowered to make choices about their own lives and livelihood.”

An “opportunity to pursue their dreams.” Promises Obama made were broken. “If you like your health care plan,” you can keep it, “period.” Millions of Americans lost theirs. “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period.” Doing so requires millions of Americans paying extra. “(W)e’ll lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year.”

They’re significantly higher for most households. Increasingly unaffordable. Up to “90% of Americans (with) health insurance (get) stronger, better and more secure (coverage than) before…They don’t have to worry about anything else.” Onerous mandates are imposed on individuals with employer-provided coverage.

“(N)o family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase.” Obamacare mandates 18 tax hikes, fees and penalties. Middle income households are heavily impacted. Obama said he wouldn’t sign any plan “add(ing) one dime to our deficits – either now or in the future.”

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates  Obamacare costs will “increase the primary deficit (annually) by 0.7 percent of gross domestic spending.”

Elements “reduc(ing) costs for families, businesses, and government (are) in this bill.” Higher insurance premiums and other increased costs assure higher spending, not less. “I will protect Medicare,” Obama promised. Obamacare cuts its spending. Mandated $700 billion + 2013 – 2022 decreases. Future ones planned.

Over the next decade or sooner, radically transforming Medicare. Obama wants it privatized. Handed to Wall Street en route to eliminating it altogether.

The same for Social Security. Downsizing Medicaid ahead. Leaving America’s most vulnerable increasingly on their own. Especially when help most needed.

Obama lied promising a public option. Saying he’d “sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of (his) first term as president that will cover every American.”

Millions remain uninsured. Millions more woefully underinsured. No public option. One never intended. Providers enriched at the expense of proper healthcare matters most.

“(T)his law means more choice, more competition, and lower costs for millions of Americans,” said Obama (evoking Adam Smith market myths.)  ACA is polar opposite. Compromising a fundamental human right. Bartering human life and welfare for profit.

Marketplace medicine fails when most needed. For most people unable to afford proper coverage.  Predatory healthcare giants reduce competition. Consolidate for greater control. In most US counties, consumers have either one or two insurer choices. Escalating costs. Americans deserve much better than they’re getting.

Universal single payer advocates hope their day will come. Medicare for all alone works.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

Barack Obama is secretly negotiating the largest international trade agreement in history, and the mainstream media in the United States is almost completely ignoring it.  If this treaty is adopted, it will be the most important step toward a one world economic system that we have ever seen.  The name of this treaty is “the Trans-Pacific Partnership”, and the text of the treaty is so closely guarded that not even members of Congress know what is in it.  Right now, there are 12 countries that are part of the negotiations: the United States, Canada, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.  These nations have a combined population of 792 million people and account for an astounding 40 percent of the global economy.  And it is hoped that the EU, China and India will eventually join as well.  This is potentially the most dangerous economic treaty of our lifetimes, and yet there is very little political debate about it in this country.

Even though Congress is not being allowed to see what is in the treaty, Barack Obama wants Congress to give him fast track negotiating authority.  What that means is that Congress would essentially trust Obama to negotiate a good treaty for us.  Congress could vote the treaty up or down, but would not be able to amend or filibuster it.

Of course now the Republicans control both houses of Congress.  If they are foolish enough to blindly give Barack Obama so much power, they should all immediately resign.

And it is critical that people understand that this is not just an economic treaty.  It is basically a gigantic end run around Congress.  Thanks to leaks, we have learned that so many of the things that Obama has deeply wanted for years are in this treaty.  If adopted, this treaty will fundamentally change our laws regarding Internet freedom, healthcare, copyright and patent protection, food safety, environmental standards, civil liberties and so much more.  This treaty includes many of the rules that alarmed Internet activists so much when SOPA was being debated, it would essentially ban all “Buy American” laws, it would give Wall Street banks much more freedom to trade risky derivatives and it would force even more domestic manufacturing offshore.

In other words, it is the treaty from hell.

In addition to imposing Obama’s vision for the world on 40 percent of the global population, it is also being described as a “Christmas wish-list for major corporations”.  Of the 29 chapters in the treaty, only five of them actually deal with economic issues.  The rest of the treaty deals with a whole host of other issues of great importance to the global elite.

The following list of issues addressed by this treaty is from a Malaysian news source…

• domestic court decisions and international legal standards (e.g., overriding domestic laws on both trade and nontrade matters, foreign investors’ right to sue governments in international tribunals that would overrule the national sovereignty)

• environmental regulations (e.g., nuclear energy, pollution, sustainability)

• financial deregulation (e.g., more power and privileges to the bankers and financiers)

• food safety (e.g., lowering food self-sufficiency, prohibition of mandatory labeling of genetically modified products, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease)

• Government procurement (e.g., no more buy locally produced/grown)

• Internet freedom (e.g., monitoring and policing user activity)

• labour (e.g., welfare regulation, workplace safety, relocating domestic jobs abroad)

• patent protection, copyrights (e.g., decrease access to affordable medicine)

• public access to essential services may be restricted due to investment rules (e.g., water, electricity, and gas)

Why can’t we get this type of reporting in the United States?

And if this treaty is ultimately approved by Congress, we will essentially be stuck with it forever.

This treaty is written in such a way that the United States will be permanently bound by all of the provisions and will never be able to alter them unless all of the other countries agree.

Are you starting to understand why this treaty is so dangerous?

This treaty is the key to Obama’s “legacy”.  He wants to impose his will upon 40 percent of the global population in a way that will never be able to be overturned.

Of course Obama is touting this treaty as the path to economic recovery.  He promises that it will greatly increase global trade, decrease tariffs and create more jobs for American workers.

But instead, it would be a major step toward destroying what is left of the U.S. economy.

Over the past several decades, every time a major trade agreement has been signed we have seen even more good jobs leave the United States.

And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why this is happening.  If corporations can move jobs to the other side of the planet to nations where it is legal to pay slave labor wages, they will make larger profits.

Just think about it.  If you were running a corporation and you had the choice of paying workers ten dollars an hour or one dollar an hour, which would you choose?

Plus there are so many other costs, taxes and paperwork hassles when you deal with American workers.  For example, big corporations will not have to provide Obamacare for their foreign workers.  That alone will represent a huge savings.

Any basic course in economics will teach you that labor flows from markets where labor costs are high to markets where labor costs are lower.  And at this point it costs less to make almost everything overseas.  As a result, we have already lost millions upon millions of good jobs, and countless small and mid-size U.S. companies have been forced to shut down because they cannot compete with foreign manufacturers.

Later this month, consumers will flock to retail stores for “Black Friday” deals.  But if you look carefully at those products, you will find that almost all of them are made overseas.  We buy far, far more from the rest of the world than they buy from us, and that is a recipe fornational economic suicide.

We consume far more wealth that we produce, and anyone with half a brain can see that is not sustainable in the long run.  The only way that we have been able to maintain our high standard of living is by going into insane amounts of debt.  We are currently living in the largest debt bubble in the history of the planet, and at some point the party is going to end.

Please share this article with as many people as you can.  We need to inform people about what Obama is trying to do.

If Obama is successful in ramming this secret treaty through, it is going to do incalculable damage to what is left of the once great U.S. economy.

On September 1, 2014 the US State Department published a report, in which it was stated that for first time since the collapse of the USSR, Russia reached parity with the US in the field of strategic nuclear weapons. Thus, Washington admitted that Moscow regained the status that the Soviet Union had obtained by mid-70’s of the XX century and then lost.

According to the report from the State Department, Russia has 528 carriers of strategic nuclear weapons that carry 1,643 warheads. The United States has 794 vehicles and 1,652 nuclear warheads.

It just so happens that today, Russia’s strategic nuclear forces (SNF) are even more advanced in comparison with those of the US, as they ensure parity on warheads with a significantly smaller number of carriers of strategic nuclear weapons. This gap between Russia and the United States may only grow in the future, given the fact that Russian defense officials promised to rearm Russia’s SNF with new generation missiles.

The progress was made possible thanks to the treaty on the limitation of nuclear weapons, also known as START-3. The treaty was signed by Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama on 8 April 2010 in Prague (came into force on 5 February 2011). In accordance with the document, nuclear warheads of the parties are to be reduced to 1,550 by 2021. The number of carriers (intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and heavy bombers) is supposed to be cut to 700 units.

It was the first strategic agreement, after the treacherous policy of democrats, in which Russia managed to win significant advantages. In the treaty, the Americans, for the first time in history, undertook to reduce their strategic nuclear potential, while Russia won an opportunity to increase it. Furthermore, the new treaty removed important limitations that existed in the previous START 1 and START 2 treaties. It goes about the size of areas for the deployment of mobile ICBMs, the number of multi charge ICBMs, and the possibility to build railway-based ICBMs. Russia did not make any concessions.

Having written off Moscow as a serious geopolitical rival, flying on the wings of inaccessible military and technological superiority, Washington drove itself into a trap, from which it does not see a way out even in a medium-term perspective.

Recently, a lot has been said about so-called “sixth-generation wars” and high-precision long-range weapons that should ensure victory over enemy without coming into direct contact with its armed forces. This concept is highly questionable (The US failed to achieve victory in such a way both in Iraq and Afghanistan). Yet, this is the point, where Russia enters the parity line as well. The proof is long-range cruise missiles of a new generation that will soon be deployed on submarines of the Black Sea Fleet and missile ships of the Caspian Flotilla.

In today’s Russia, many find this hard to believe. This is a common belief for many of those, who still enthusiastically remain in captivity of the myths about the absolute “weakness” of Russia and the absolute “superiority” of the West. The myth was made up in the 90’s under the influence of Boris Yeltsin and his betrayal of Russian national interests. One has to admit that during that time, the myth was real, if one may say so.

Times have changed. One can easily understand the new state of affairs.

For example, let’s consider the potential of conventional weapons of Russia and the West in the European Theater of Operations (ETO). In this area, it is generally believed that NATO is a lot stronger than Russia. Yet, a first encounter with reality smashes this misbelief into pieces.

As is known, the main striking force, the core of combat power of the ground forces is tanks. By the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Armed Forces had about 20,000 tanks in the ETO.

The Americans, in turn, deployed 6,000 heavy Abrams tanks on the territory of the allied group. Despite this, the combined potential of NATO forces in Europe was still significantly inferior to the Soviet potential. To compensate this imbalance, NATO strategists were forced to resort to tactical nuclear weapons (TNW).

In the first half of the 1950s, NATO conducted a research about what kind of forces the bloc should have to show reliable resistance to large-scale ground offensive of superior forces of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries. The calculations showed then that one required at least 96 full-fledged divisions for the purpose. Yet, the cost of armament for one of such divisions exceeded $1 billion. Plus, one required two or three more billion to maintain such a large group of troops and build appropriate infrastructure. This burden was clearly beyond the power of the economy of the West.

The solution was found in a move to deploy a group of US tactical nuclear weapons on the continent, and that was done soon. By early 1970s, the US arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons counted about 7,000 units of ammunition. The highest achievement in the area was the creation of weapons of selective action – neutron warheads (for guns of 203-mm and 155-mm caliber, and for Lance missiles) with a capacity from 1 to 10 kilotons. The warheads were seen as the key in combating land forces personnel, particularly Soviet tank crews.

Given the nuclear factor, to reflect “Soviet aggression,” NATO required to deploy only 30, rather than 96 divisions, and so they were deployed.

How do things work in this area now? In early 2013, the Americans withdrew the last group of heavy Abrams tanks from Europe. In NATO countries, over the last 20 years, one new tank would replace 10-15 old, yet still capable, tanks. At the same time, Russia was not decommissioning its tanks.

As a result, today Russia is the absolute leader in this regard. In mid-2014, the balance of the Defense Ministry had as many as 18,177 tanks (T-90 – 400 pcs., T-72B – 7,144 pcs., T-80 – 4,744 pcs, T-64 – 4,000 pcs, T-62 – 689 pcs, and T-55 – 1200 pcs.).

Of course, only a few thousand tanks are deployed in permanent readiness units, and most of them remain at storage bases. Yet, NATO has the same picture. Therefore, the decisive superiority of Russian tanks has not gone anywhere since the times of the USSR.

Here is another surprise. As for tactical nuclear weapons, the superiority of modern-day Russia over NATO is even stronger.

The Americans are well aware of this. They were convinced before that Russia would never rise again. Now it’s too late.

To date, NATO countries have only 260 tactical nuclear weapons in the ETO. The United States has 200 bombs with a total capacity of 18 megatons. They are located on six air bases in Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Turkey. France has 60 more atomic bombs. That is pretty much it. Russia, according to conservative estimates, has 5,000 pieces of different classes of TNW – from Iskander warheads to torpedo, aerial and artillery warheads! The US has 300 tactical B-61 bombs on its own territory, but this does not change the situation against the backdrop of such imbalance. The US is unable to improve it either, as it has destroyed the “Cold War legacy” – tactical nuclear missiles, land-based missiles and nuclear warheads of sea-based Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Continue to Part II

 

“There’s more police than people.” – Sara Elks, Brisbane resident, Nov 14, 2014

The diary entry of “why bother” might end an account of days spent at such a summit, but the G20 still has, in its chatting ranks, individuals who ought to know what they are talking about. But distance and disengagement prove fundamental at such gatherings.  The first steps of inflicting this on the populace are through G20 prohibited person notices on protesters who are deemed threatening or unwelcome within the summit area.

So far, Deputy Commissioner Ross Barnett has identified four especially dangerous individuals, though such danger in this case is entirely relative.  The G20 (Safety and Security) Act is a strange beast indeed, susceptible of the widest reading and application.  So much, then, for the supposed openness of Australia’s spirit of protest.

One such activist prohibited from attending such zones is Ciaron O’Reilly, who was surrounded by police while sitting without giving offence or incident on Boundary Street in the West End area during the afternoon.  The posters he was holding must have been scurrilous stuff –“Free Julian Assange” and “Obama, O-Bomber, O-Bummer”.[1]  O’Reilly certainly does have gumption, having attempted the disarming of a B52 bomber at a New York military base during the 1991 Gulf War.

Special laws of ordinary vision but extraordinary application have excluded numerous items from being brought into set zones without a “lawful reason”.  In another authoritarian sock to the jaw, banners are on the list.  So are surf skis and reptiles, along with that menagerie of dangerous Australian animals that might become weapons. And eggs. Oh, and let us not forget the tactically deployable urine and animal manure.

The one thing journalists did find exciting as the city was emptying out its sensibility were three topless vegan protesters covered in green colouring.  Presumably green coloured, half-nude protesters are not offensive to the cult of G20 protection, though perhaps they ought to be.  A member of PETA insisted that G20 leaders attempt to become vegans during the course of the proceedings. An unlikely prospect, but nonetheless worth a shot.

In the meantime, Australia’s efforts to continue to insist on economic growth – and just in case anyone forgot – more growth – as the vital agenda item on the G20 schedule, seemed rather hollow as parts of Brisbane vacated en masse.  “Locals say that the CBD and Southbank resemble a ghost town.”[2]  Department stores and shops are operating on reduced hours.  The only thing evidently growing was the presence of security personnel and the ever deepening presence of the thin blue line.  One report suggested that brothels were the true winners in the security clamp.

The Lord Mayor of the city, Graeme Quirk tried putting a brave face on things by spouting inanities.  “This event will help us to get better known, it will mean more tourism numbers for hotels, retail stores and restaurants for years to come.”  The things people will do when they are in a fix.

In off shore proceedings hinging on the summit’s start, the Australian press felt a rush of blood with the presence of four Russian naval vessels doing what such vessels presumably do.  They were sighted in the Coral Sea and were, in the chilling words of one news channel, “bearing down on Australia.”[3]  Some trivia worth nothing here: Australian media outlets were suddenly able to name such Russian vessels as the cruiser Varyag.  A refreshing change from the Olympics, when commentary reached such sophisticated heights as “the Russian won”.

It was unlikely that the Russian navy, in the event of getting into Australian waters, was going to be towed out to Indonesia, which has been the response of Australia’s midget like patrol forces to asylum seekers.  The rationale there is simple: If it involves asylum seekers hoping to avail themselves of the Refugee Convention, they deserve every bit of bruising Australia’s guardians of their girt by sea can dish.

Analysts spoke of Vladimir Putin “flexing muscle” via sea channels, a nice counter to the Australian muscle flexing Tony Abbott.  They were also quick to point out that such muscles were somewhat flabby – rickety Soviet era vessels were being used in the operation, with tugboats to match.  The tugboat, said a smug member of the Strategic and Defence Studies centre at the Australian National University, was there to tow out vessels failing at sea.  “The take-away point here is the over-emphasis our society still places on material assets and ‘hard power’.”[4] Presumably, Australia’s respectably mediocre navy, with its appallingly misspent acquisitions, may have something to teach their Russian colleagues.

The language from the Australian Defence Force, in contrast with those of Channel 7’s news office, tended to be less alarmist.  In an official sobering statement, it clarified that, “The movement of these vessels is entirely consistent with provisions under international law for military vessels to exercise freedom of navigation in international waters.”  The Russian response, which must have been delivered with some mirth bearing in mind Abbott’s stance on the subject, was that Moscow was testing its navy for purposes of monitoring climate change.

If Abbott wanted, through his distorted lenses of the world, an apology from the Russian president for the shooting down of MH17 over Ukrainian territory, this was as good as it was going to get. While he tends to have suffered something of a drought of common sense, the Australian Labor Party’s Bill Shorten did at least pick up on one thing: Russia cares not a jot what the US satrap thinks.

Now, all that is left is for the chatter to begin, insulated by the grand gestures of authoritarian stifling and muffling that typifies such carnivals of conversation.

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

Israel has banned Norwegian doctor and human rights activist Mads Gilbert from entering Gaza for life.

Gilbert, a professor at the University Hospital of North Norway, where he has worked since 1976, earned international renown for his philanthropic work in late 2008, during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, an attack that, according to Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, killed roughly 1,400 Gazans, including almost 800 civilians, 350 of whom were children.

The aid worker, along with fellow Norwegian doctor Erik Fosse, decided to volunteer in Gaza as soon as he heard that bombing had started, on 27 December 2008. Thanks to diplomatic and economic support (in the sum of $1 million dollar of emergency funding from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), the two physicians managed to arrive in the strip by 30 December.

The Israeli government prevented all international press from entering Gaza during Cast Lead (a documentary, The War Around Us, was made about the only two foreign reporters in the strip at the time), in what Gilbert called Israel’s insidious “PR plan.” The doctor, as one of the only international aid workers in Gaza, thus devoted considerable time to speaking with local Palestinian news outlets, some of whom were reporting on behalf of foreign networks including BBC, CNN, ABC, and Al Jazeera.

BBC aired an interview with Gilbert, conducted in the hospital. The questions asked, and the answers garnered, were eerily similar to those he would give just five years later, during Operation Protective Edge. The interviewer began asking him to respond to Israel’s claims that it was not targeting civilians, that it was only attacking Hamas militants. Gilbert called the claim “an absolutely stupid statement” and explained that, among the hundreds of patients he had seen at that point, only two had been fighters. The “large majority” were women, children, and men civilians. “These numbers are contradictory to everything Israel says,” he reported.

Gilbert drew attention to the fact that the overflowing hospital did not have enough supplies to treat all of its patients, and censured the international community for doing nothing to assist them. Israel would not let in foreign doctors, and yet Palestinians were “dying waiting for surgery.” “This is a complete disaster,” he remarked, calling it “the worst man-made disaster” he could think of. “There are injuries you just don’t want to see in this world.”

Operation Protective Edge

In 2008 and 2009, Gilbert treated Palestinians who had been grievously wounded by Israel’s use of experimental and illegal chemical weapons, including white phosphorous, dense inert metal explosives (DIME) munitions, and flechette shells. In July 2014, in the midst of Israel’s most recent attack on Gaza, Gilbert spoke with Electronic Intifada, revealing that he saw indications of renewed use of DIME weapons and flechettes.

While volunteering in Shifa hospital, Gaza’s principal medical facility, Gilbert penned an open letter, lamenting the unspeakable horrors the Israeli military was instigating.

[Israel’s] “ground invasion” of Gaza resulted in scores and carloads with maimed, torn apart, bleeding, shivering, dying… All sorts of injured Palestinians, all ages, all civilians, all innocent.

The heroes in the ambulances and in all of Gaza’s hospitals are working 12 to 24‑hour shifts, grey from fatigue and inhuman workloads (without payment in Shifa for the last four months). They care, triage, try to understand the incomprehensible chaos of bodies, sizes, limbs, walking, not walking, breathing, not breathing, bleeding, not bleeding humans. Humans!
…
Ashy grey faces – Oh no! not one more load of tens of maimed and bleeding. We still have lakes of blood on the floor in the emergency room, piles of dripping, blood-soaked bandages to clear out – oh – the cleaners, everywhere, swiftly shovelling the blood and discarded tissues, hair, clothes, cannulas – the leftovers from death – all taken away… to be prepared again, to be repeated all over.

More than 100 cases came to Shifa in the last 24 hours. Enough for a large well-trained hospital with everything, but here – almost nothing: electricity, water, disposables, drugs, operating-room tables, instruments, monitors – all rusted and as if taken from museums of yesterday’s hospitals. But they do not complain, these heroes.

Now, once more treated like animals by “the most moral army in the world.”

The doctor directed one heart-wrenching passage to President Obama, writing “Mr Obama – do you have a heart? I invite you – spend one night – just one night – with us in Shifa. I am convinced, 100 per cent, it would change history. Nobody with a heart and power could ever walk away from a night in Shifa without being determined to end the slaughter of the Palestinian people.”

Israel later attacked Shifa hospital. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) “strongly condemn[ed]” the incursion, saying it “demonstrate[d] how civilians in Gaza have nowhere safe to go.” MSF director Marie-Noëlle Rodrigue stated, in an official statement, “When the Israeli army orders civilians to evacuate their houses and their neighborhoods, where is there for them to go? Gazans have no freedom of movement and cannot take refuge outside Gaza. They are effectively trapped.” Shifa was one of the over 10 medical facilities Israel bombed in its 50-day offensive.

Human Rights Work

In 2000, Gilbert made headlines for saving the life of a skier who had been trapped in sub-zero water. She had been pronounced clinically dead, with a body temperature of 57 °F, but Gilbert managed to revive her. For his service, Gilbert was awarded the Northern Norwegian of the Year award.

Before Operation Protective Edge commenced in early July 2014, Gilbert toured medical and health facilities and individual homes in Gaza, researching for a United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) report on the dire state of the strip’s health sector. He wrote of “overstretched” health facilities, widespread physical and psychological trauma, “a deep financial crisis,” a lack of needed medical supplies, and a “severe energy crisis.” He also noted the “devastating results of the blockade imposed by the Government of Israel,” with rampant poverty, a 38.5% unemployment rate, food insecurity in at least 57% of households, and inadequate access to clean water. All of these already extreme ills were only exacerbated by the July-August Israeli assault on Gaza, an onslaught that left roughly 2,200 Palestinians dead, including over 1,500 civilians, more than 500 of whom were children.

Gilbert is not the only one Israel has recently prevented from entering Gaza. In August, just after the end of its military assault, Israel refused to allow Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the world’s leading human rights organizations, from entering the strip, impeding them from conducting war crimes investigations. The organizations had been requesting access for over a month, before Israel had even begun its ground invasion of Gaza, yet were continuously prevented from doing so, Israeli journalist Amira Hass reported in Haaretz, “using various bureaucratic excuses.”

Israel has banned Human Right Watch investigators from entering Gaza since 2006; Amnesty International has been refused access since 2012. Dr. Mads Gilbert is the latest esteemed persona non grata to be added to this growing list.

Solidarity, Not Pity

Other aid workers and medical professionals have faced even worse consequences for volunteering to help Palestinians. In August, Israeli occupation forces killed a social worker. In the same month, as the Israeli military engaged in a campaign to target and openly murder Palestinian civilians who spoke Hebrew, Israeli forces assassinated volunteers working with the Palestine Red Crescent, a non-profit humanitarian organization, part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.

A common myth suggests that Israel ended its occupation of Gaza with its 2005 disengagement. The state’s ability to ban, and even kill, internationally recognized human rights organizations and doctors—not to mention food,construction equipment, and medical supplies—from entering Palestinian territory, however, demonstrates that Gaza is by no means autonomous. Israel’s siege of the strip is clearly a continuation of its 47-year-long illegal military occupation.

As legal scholar Noura Erakat explains

Despite removing 8,000 settlers and the military infrastructure that protected their illegal presence, Israel maintained effective control of the Gaza Strip and thus remains the occupying power as defined by Article 47 of the Hague Regulations. To date, Israel maintains control of the territory’s air space, territorial waters, electromagnetic sphere, population registry and the movement of all goods and people.
…
Palestinians have yet to experience a day of self-governance. Israel immediately imposed a siege upon the Gaza Strip when Hamas won parliamentary elections in January 2006 and tightened it severely when Hamas routed Fatah in June 2007. The siege has created a “humanitarian catastrophe” in the Gaza Strip. Inhabitants will not be able to access clean water, electricity or tend to even the most urgent medical needs. The World Health Organization explains that the Gaza Strip will be unlivable by 2020. Not only did Israel not end its occupation, it has created a situation in which Palestinians cannot survive in the long-term.

In his July interview with Electronic Intifada, Gilbert made it clear that his work as a medical professional cannot be done—the Palestinian people cannot live healthy, yet alone free, lives—while Israel continues its illegal siege and occupation. “As a doctor, my prescription is very clear. Number one, stop the bombing, and that means stop Israel from bombing civilians and indiscriminately hitting families. Number two, lift the siege. And number three, find a political solution,” he stated.

In a late October discussion with the Daily Targum, Gilbert encouraged Americans to do what they can to speak out against Israel’s illegal occupation and blockade of the Palestinian territories, and to pressure their government to stop its indefatigable support for Israeli crimes.

At present, the US provides Israel with over 3.1$ billion of military aid per year. In the past 52 years, over $100 billion US tax dollars have been given to the country in military aid alone.

“You are the change-makers,” Gilbert told American readers. “The key to the change when it comes to the occupation of Palestine lies in the United States.” “Solidarity, not pity,” he said, is the solution.

Ben Norton is an activist, artist, and freelance writer. He can be found on Twitter at @HeartsMindsEars. Visit Ben’s website.

The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) concluded its two day summit on November 13 in Nyapyidaw, Myanmar.

While the plenary discussions held at this year’s summit did not see much in the way of open hostility, every regional actor was engaged in strained political maneuvers. The tensions throughout Southeast Asia, centered upon the disputed waters of the South China Sea, have reached their sharpest pitch in decades and the threat of war is palpable.

The culpability for this state of affairs rests squarely with Washington. Under the presidency of Barack Obama, it has pushed to militarily encircle and isolate China, seeking to subordinate Beijing to the dictates of US imperialism.

Over the past year, Washington has permanently stationed four Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) in Singapore. It has drawn up and is supporting Manila’s international legal dispute against China’s claim in the South China Sea. It has concluded the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) deal to base unlimited numbers of US troops in the Philippines. It lifted its maritime arms embargo against Vietnam. The US military has made more port calls in 2014 in the Asia Pacific than in any prior year, and it has conducted repeated live fire drills in the South China Sea.

This has inflamed regional tensions and has produced numerous close calls, in which the possible outbreak of war was as close as the itchy trigger finger of a single Vietnamese, Filipino or Chinese sailor. March saw a tense month-long armed standoff in the Spratly Islands between Philippine marines and the Chinese coast guard. Beijing’s deployment of an oil rig in disputed waters led to a confrontation with Hanoi in May and June.

Speaking at the US-ASEAN session, Obama stressed “the importance of all countries in the region to abide by rules-based norms and international law.” This is the stock language targeting Beijing which the Obama administration deploys at every regional gathering, depicting China as the aggressor, in violation of international law.

Obama also stated that “on economic issues we’re part of a group of nations trying to shape a high standards trade agreement for all Asia.” This is a reference to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Washington’s attempt to shape the economic architecture of the Asia Pacific region in the interest of US imperialism. The TPP, far from being “for all Asia,” pointedly excludes China.

During the East Asia Summit (EAS), Chinese Premier Li Keqiang attempted to counter the pressure from Washington by proposing what he called “a friendship treaty” with Southeast Asian countries. The content of the proposed “friendship treaty” was not clear, but Li stressed that Beijing was holding to its policy of bilateral negotiations with rival claimants to the South China Sea. Washington has been pushing for a multilateral resolution, in which it would have a stake in the negotiations.

Li also repeated Beijing’s proposal to construct what it terms a “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” of $US40 billion investment throughout the region. This economic blandishment is no doubt appealing to the developing economies of Southeast Asia, but it does not reduce the tensions generated by Washington one iota.

Caught in a situation in which pointing out the aggressive role of Washington is perilous, Li sought to play down these tensions, stating that “the situation in the South China Sea is on the whole stable.”

On the contrary, the South China Sea is an explosive expression of the seething global tensions stoked by Washington’s imperialist drive to war.

In the two weeks prior to the ASEAN summit: Taiwan conducted live fire drills in the South China Sea, and its defense minister visited military construction on the disputed island of Itu Aba. Malaysia had its submarines test fire torpedos in the disputed waters. On November 5 Russia announced that it would be holding live fire drills in the South China Sea.

Washington, meanwhile, conducted its first ever trilateral live fire war games in the South China Sea with Japan and the Philippines. The US also staged land based war games in Japan, which apparently targeted the Philippines. The Washington Post quoted a retired Pentagon analyst as stating that you “can’t control the South China Sea if you don’t control the Philippine land mass.”

During the ASEAN summit, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung stated that Hanoi would “apply every peaceful and necessary measure under international law to protect the country’s legal rights in the disputed sea region.” This seems to indicate Hanoi’s intent to file a legal case against Beijing, along the lines of the suit filed by Manila. Dung had stated in May that Vietnam was preparing such a case.

Dung continued, stating that “the East Sea [South China Sea] situation remained complex so far, with large-scale reclamation being carried out on many reefs and submerged features, changing their original status. These acts contradict the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), which China signed with ASEAN nations in 2002.”

Hanoi is concerned that land reclamation in the South China Sea will alter the status of its claim.

Recently elected Indonesia President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) played an assertive role at the summit. He called for the establishment of a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea. He stated that Indonesia would be increasing its defense spending from 0.8 percent to 1.5 percent of gross domestic product over the next five years. At the same time, he said that Jakarta would balance between the United States and China. “Indonesia is and will remain in the middle. Our Constitution stipulates that we must perform free and active diplomacy. We’re always willing to play an active role as an honest broker.”

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi both likewise pushed the question of “maritime security” and the need for a “binding code of conduct” and the “rule of international law.” Modi, under India’s “Look East” policy and at the encouragement of Washington, has been increasing New Delhi’s ties with Hanoi, including drilling for oil in the South China Sea, sharpening tensions with Beijing. Abe, currently aligned with the US ‘pivot,’ is looking to increase the economic hold and political clout of Japanese imperialism in the region.

Despite being the leading US proxy in the region, Philippine President Benigno Aquino spent no time with Obama. A US marine stands charged in the Philippines of the brutal murder of a Filipino, Jennifer Laude, during recent war games in the country. The crime has raised the spectre of widespread opposition to the basing of US forces in the Philippines, and by not speaking with Obama, Aquino was able to avoid the pressure to raise the awkward question of Laude’s death.

Obama now travels to Brisbane for the G20 summit, where he is slated to deliver what is being billed as a major policy speech on Washington’s role in the Asia Pacific region. It will no doubt be a further escalation of Washington’s drive to war.

As fighting flares again between the NATO-backed regime in Kiev and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, Russia announced Wednesday that it is re-starting regular patrols in international air space off the US coastline by nuclear-capable strategic bombers. This is the first time since the end of the Cold War that Russia is planning routine patrols off the coast of the United States.

This is a sharp warning that the confrontation the United States and the NATO powers are waging with Russia and China—enormously escalated by the right-wing US-backed coup in Ukraine—poses the risk of world war and a nuclear conflagration.

At a meeting of Russia’s national military council announcing the decision, Defense Secretary Sergei Shoigu said: “In the current situation, we have to maintain military presence in the western Atlantic and eastern Pacific, as well as the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. Due to that, as part of the drills, Russian long-range bombers will conduct flights along Russian borders and over the Arctic Ocean.”

Shoigu made clear that this deployment was a response to NATO threats in the Ukraine crisis. “In many respects, this is connected with the situation in Ukraine, with fomentation of anti-Russian moods on the part of NATO and reinforcement of foreign military presence next to our border,” he explained.

The Kremlin is thought to be negotiating deals for naval or aerial resupply with countries around the world: Algeria and Cyprus in the Mediterranean; Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba in Latin America; Seychelles in the Indian Ocean; and Vietnam and Singapore in Southeast Asia.

As fighting flares in nearby Ukraine, Shoigu also announced that Russia would strengthen its forces on the Crimean peninsula. “Under these conditions, the formation of full-fledged and self-sufficient forces on the Crimean peninsula is a priority task,” he said. He also stated that Russia’s southern military district, the area of the Russian mainland bordering Ukraine, would be reinforced.

Russia’s nuclear saber-rattling is utterly reactionary. Nonetheless, central responsibility for the risk of nuclear war rests with the imperialist powers of the NATO alliance.

In overthrowing Russian-backed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, the NATO powers, led by Washington and Berlin, worked directly with right-wing, Ukrainian fascist elements such as the Right Sector militia and allied reactionaries, including business oligarch Yulia Tymoshenko. In a leaked phone call the month after the coup, Tymoshenko called for the annihilation of ethnic Russians in Ukraine and the murder of Russians and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “It’s about time we grab our guns and kill those scum and their leader,” she said.

Tymoshenko still enjoys NATO support, and a member of her Fatherland Party, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, is Ukraine’s prime minister.

As civil war erupted in Ukraine, and NATO poured troops, warships and fighter planes into Eastern Europe—from the Baltic republics to Poland and the Black Sea—Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was shot down under circumstances that remain unclear. The NATO powers immediately blamed the catastrophe on Russia, and the Western media whipped up a hysterical campaign that could only be interpreted as a call to war with Russia. (See: Are you ready for nuclear war?)

After months of tension, with fighting intensifying again in eastern Ukraine, the Kremlin has evidently concluded that these bellicose threats are serious, and require a Russian response aimed not only at the Kiev regime, but also at its international backers.

While Shoigu’s threat is directly aimed at the United States, Russian war planning inevitably entails preparation for strikes on major US allies: the survival of some portion of Russia’s population in a war with a US-led alliance depends on destroying the nuclear weapons stationed on the soil not only of the United States, but also Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey and Japan. Britain and France also maintain their own nuclear weapons.

Aerial tensions are also exploding in Europe and the Asia-Pacific. British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon told the Wall Street Journal that Russian military aviation was intensifying its activities in international air space around Europe.

“We’ve seen larger formations, going further,” he said. “On October 31, we saw Russian aircraft go past Norway, past Denmark, past the UK, past Ireland, all the way down to Portugal.” Fallon called the flights “intimidating and frankly dangerous.”

While Russian warships are currently deployed for exercises off Australia, a tense aerial stand-off has erupted in East Asia. Recent Japanese government figures show that Tokyo scrambled fighter jets to monitor Russian military aircraft at a far higher rate this year through September than the same period in 2013—324 times, as opposed to 126. The total number of times Japanese aircraft scrambled to intercept incoming aircraft this year was at a historic high of 533.

This eruption of a major war scare between the world powers testifies to the irrationality of the nation-state system and the historic bankruptcy of capitalism.

The only way forward is the mobilization of the international working class against imperialist war and for socialism on an internationalist program. In this struggle, no support can be given to the maneuvers of the capitalist regimes in Moscow or Beijing. Representing a layer of super-rich oligarchs that emerged from the restoration of capitalism and the looting of public property, they are incapable of making any appeal to anti-war sentiment in the international proletariat.

Their policy veers between making bellicose threats, with the aim of forcing the imperialist powers to the negotiating table, and attempting to reach a deal with them as providers of oil or cheap labor to major transnational corporations. Thus, Russia has recently tested a new Bulava intercontinental ballistic missile, and China is testing Jin-class ballistic missile submarines capable of launching nuclear strikes on the continental US from the Pacific Ocean.

While such weapons can play a major role in a war that would incinerate the planet, they do nothing to mobilize opposition to such a war that exists among workers internationally. Instead, they will be seized upon by the imperialist powers and their allies as a pretext to step up their denunciations and military encirclement of Russia.

Asked by the Sueddeutsche Zeitung what he thought of “Russian hardball tactics in the air and the seas,” Estonian Defense Minister Sven Mikser replied: “In a certain way, it is positive. It helps the West to remain vigilant.”

The similarities between mass incarceration and mass murder have been haunting me for a while, and I now find myself inspired by Maya Schenwar’s excellent new book Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn’t Work and How We Can Do Better. This is one of three books everyone should read right away. The others are The New Jim Crow and Burning Down the House, the former with a focus on racism in incarceration, the latter with a focus on the incarceration of youth. Schenwar’s is an overview of incarceration in all its absurd and unfathomable evil — as well as being a spotlight leading away from this brutal institution.

Locked Down, Locked Out is both an incomparably put together report incorporating statistics and studies with individual quotations and anecdotes, and a personal story of how incarceration has impacted the author’s own family and how the author has thought through the complex issues.

Yes, I did recently write an article specifically criticizing the widespread habit of calling everything a “war,” and I do still want to see that practice ended — but not because the linguistic quirk offends me, rather because we make so many things, to one degree or another, actually be like wars. As far as I have seen, no other practice bears remotely as much similarity to war as does prison. How so? Let me count the ways.

1. Both are distinctly American. No other nation spends as much on its military or its prisons, engages in as many wars or locks up as many people.

2. Both are seemingly simple and easy solutions that don’t solve anything, but seek to hide it away at a distance. Wars are waged thousands of miles from home. Prisoners are stored out-of-sight hundreds or thousands of miles from home.

3. Both are fundamentally violent and dependent upon the notion that a state “monopoly” on violence prevents violence by others, even while the evidence suggests that it actually encourages violence by others.

4. Both rely on the same process of dehumanizing and demonizing people, either enemies in a war or criminals in a prison. Never mind that most of the people killed by bombs had nothing to do with the squabble used as motivation for the war. Never mind that most of the prisoners had nothing to do with the sort of behavior used to demonize them. Both populations must be labeled as non-human or both institutions collapse.

5. Both are hugely profitable and promoted by the profiteers, who constitute a small clique, the broader society actually being drained economically by both enterprises. Weapons factories and prisons produce jobs, but they produce fewer and lower-paying jobs than other investments, and they do so with less economic benefit and more destructive side-effects.

6. Both are driven by fear. Without the fear-induced irrational urge to lash out at the source of our troubles, we’d be able to think through, calmly and clearly, far superior answers to foreign and domestic relations.

7. Both peculiar institutions are themselves worse than anything they claim to address. War is a leading cause of death, injury, trauma, loss of home, environmental destruction, instability, and lasting cycles of violence. It’s not a solution to genocide, but its wellspring and its big brother. U.S. prisons lock up over 2 million, control and monitor some 7 million, and ruin the lives of many millions more in the form of family members impacted. From there the damage spreads and the numbers skyrocket as communities are weakened. No damage that incarcerated people could have done if left alone, much less handled with a more humane system, could rival the damage done by the prison industry itself.

8. Both are default practices despite being demonstrably counter-productive by anybody’s measure, including on their own terms. Wars are not won, do not build nations, do not halt cruelty, do not spread democracy, do not benefit humanity, do not protect or expand freedom. Rather, freedoms are consistently stripped away in the name of wars that predictably endanger those in whose name they are waged. The nation waging the most wars generates the most enemies, thus requiring more wars, just as the nation with the most prisoners also has the most recidivists. Almost all prisoners are eventually released, and over 40% of them return to prison. Kids who commit crimes and are left alone are — as many studies have clearly and uncontroversially documented — less likely to commit more crimes than kids who are put in juvenile prison.

9. Both are classist and racist enterprises. A poverty draft has replaced ordinary conscription, while wars are waged only on poor nations rich in natural resources and darkish in skin tone. Meanwhile African Americans are, for reasons of racism and accounting for all other factors, far more likely than whites to be reported to the police, charged by the police, charged with higher offenses, sentenced to longer imprisonment, refused parole, and held to be violating probation. The poor are at the mercy of the police and the courts. The wealthy have lawyers.

10. The majority of the casualties, in both cases, are not those directly and most severely harmed. Injuries outnumber deaths in war, refugees outnumber the injured, and traumatized and orphaned children outnumber the refugees. Prisoners’ lives are ruined, but so are the greater number of lives from which theirs have been viciously removed. A humane person might imagine some leniency for the convict who has children. On the contrary, the majority of U.S. prisoners have children.

11. Both institutions seem logical until one imagines alternatives. Both seem inevitable and are upheld by well-meaning people who haven’t imagined their way around them. Both appear justifiable as defensive measures against inscrutable evil until one thinks through how much of that evil is generated by optional policies and how extremely rare to nonexistent is the sort of evil dominating the thinking behind massive industries designed for a whole different scale of combat.

12. Both war and prisons begin with shock and awe. A SWAT team invades a home to arrest a suspect, leaving an entire family afraid to go to sleep for years afterward. An air force flattens whole sections of a city, leaving huge numbers of people traumatized for life. Another word for these practices is terrorism.

13. Both institutions include extreme measures that are as counterproductive as the whole. Suicidal prisoners put into solitary confinement as punishment for being suicidal are rendered more suicidal, not less. Burning villages or murdering households with gunfire exacerbate the process of making the aggressor more hated, more resented, and less likely to know peace.

14. Both institutions hurt the aggressor. An attacking nation suffers morally, economically, civilly, environmentally; and its soldiers and their families suffer very much as prisoners and prison guards suffer. Even crime victims suffer the lack of apology or restitution or reconciliation that comes with an adversarial justice system that treats the courtroom as a civilized war.

15. Both horrors create alternative realities to which people sometimes long to return. Prisoners unable to find work or support or friendship or family sometimes return to prison on purpose. Soldiers unable to adapt to life back home have been known to choose a return to war despite suffering horrifically from a previous combat experience. The top killer of U.S. soldiers is suicide. Suicide is not uncommon among prisoners who have recently been released. Neither members of the military nor prisoners are provided serious preparation for reintegrating into a society in which everything that has been helping them survive will tend to harm them.

16. Both war and prisons generate vicious cycles. Crime victims are more likely to become criminals. Those imprisoned are more likely to commit crimes. Children effectively orphaned by incarceration are more likely to become criminals and be incarcerated. Nations that have been at war are more likely to be at war again. Solving Libya’s problems three years ago by bombing it predictably created violent chaos that even spilled into other nations. Launching wars on Iraq to address the violence created by previous wars on Iraq has become routine.

17. Both institutions are sometimes supported by their victims. An endangered family can prefer incarceration of a violent or drug-addicted loved one to nothing, in the absence of alternatives. Members of the military and their families can believe it is their duty to support wars and proposals for new wars. Prisoners themselves can see prison as preferable to starving under a bridge.

18. Both institutions are disproportionately male in terms of guards and soldiers. But the victims of war are not. And, when families are considered, as Schenwar’s book considers them so well, the victims of incarceration are not.

19. Both institutions have buried within them rare stories of success, soldiers who matured and grew wise and heroic, prisoners who reformed and learned their lessons. No doubt the same is true of slavery or the holocaust or teaching math by the method of applying a stick to a child’s hands.

20. Both institutions are often partially questioned without the possibility of questioning the whole ever arising. When Maya Schenwar’s sister gives birth in prison and then remains in prison, separated from her baby, people ask Schenwar “What’s the point? How is Kayla being in prison helping anyone?” But Schenwar thinks to herself: “How isanyone being in prison helping anyone?” Candidate Barack Obama opposed dumb wars, while supporting massive war preparations, eventually finding himself in several wars, all of them dumb, and one of them the very same war (or at least a new war in the very same nation) he had earlier described in those terms.

21. Both institutions churn along with the help of thousands of well-meaning people who try to mitigate the damage but who are incapable of redeeming fundamentally flawed systems. Reforms that strengthen the system as a whole tend not to help, while actions that shrink, limit, or weaken support for the whole machinery of injustice deserve encouragement.

22. Both are 19th century inventions.  Some form of war and of slavery may go back 10,000 years, but only in the 19th century did it begin to resemble current war and incarceration. Changes through the 20th and early 21st centuries expanded on the damage without fundamentally altering the thinking involved.

23. Both include state-approved murder (the death penalty and the killing in war) and both include state-sanctioned torture. In fact much of the torture that has made the news in war prisons began in domestic prisons. A current war enemy, ISIS, had its leadership developed in the cauldron of brutal U.S. war prisons. Again, the aggressors, the torturers, and their whole society are not unharmed.

24. Crime victims are used to justify an institution that results in more people being victimized by crime. Victims of warlike abuse by others are used to justify wars likely to harm them and others further.

25. Prisoners and veterans often leave those worlds without the sort of education valued in the other world, the “free world” the prisoners dream of and soldiers fantasize that they are defending. A criminal record is usually a bar to employment. A military record can be an advantage but in other cases is a disadvantage as well in seeking employment.

26. Beyond all the damage done by war and prisons, by far the greatest damage is done through the trade-off in resources. The money invested in war could pay for the elimination of poverty and various diseases worldwide. A war-making nation could make itself loved for far less expense than what it takes to make itself hated. It could hang onto a much smaller, more legitimately defensive military like those of other nations while attempting such an experiment. The money spent on prisons could pay for drug treatment, childcare, education, and restorative justice programs. A nation could go on locking up violent recidivists while attempting such a change.

27. Restorative justice is the essence of the solution to both war and prison. Diplomacy and moderated reconciliation are answers to the common problem of writing an enemy off as unreachable through words.

I might go on, but I imagine you get the idea. Huge numbers of Americans are being made seriously worse citizens, and almost all of them will be back out of prison trying to survive. And, if that doesn’t do it for you, consider this: when incarceration is this widespread, there’s every possibility that it will someday include you. What if you’re falsely accused of a crime? What if somebody puts a link on a website to illegal pornography and you — or someone using your computer — clicks it? Or you urinate in public? Or you use marijuana in a state that legalized it, but the feds disagree? Or you blow the whistle on some abuse in some branch of the government that you work for? Or you witness something and don’t report it? Or you work so hard that you fall asleep driving your car? An injustice to one is an injustice to all, and injustice on this scale is potentially injustice to every one.

What to do?

Californians just voted on their ballots to reduce prison sentences. Get that on your ballot.  For the first time ever, this week, a prosecutor was sent to prison for falsely convicting an innocent person. We need a whole reworking of the rewards and incentives for prosecutors who have long believed that locking people up was the path to success. We need activist resistance to prison expansion, divestment from for-profit prison companies, and educational efforts to begin changing our culture as well as our laws. Locked Down, Locked Out provides a terrific list of organizations to support, including those that can help you become a prisoner’s pen-pal. Schenwar explains that there is nothing prisoners need more, as long as they are locked up. Those not receiving mail are seen as the easiest targets for abuse by guards and other prisoners. And our receiving their letters may be the best way for us to learn about the hidden world in our midst.

Transcript of Speech by Mnar Muhawesh of Mint Press News on the Role of the Alternative Media

Thank you so much for having me. I’m honored to be here and to be surrounded by a group of people who have dedicated their lives to understanding the world around them and to helping bring people closer together through the ideals of peace, unity, compassion and understanding.

But since September 11, 2001, it seems like the basis of those ideals, this crazy idea of peace, is nearly impossible to find in the world we live in today.

How we hear and learn about the world, and even about what’s going on in our own nation, is through one lens, which is the media. But never has this lens been more narrow and more extreme than it is today. We do not have a mainstream media anymore; we have an extreme, corporate media beating the drums of war.

Between the over-hyping of topics like Ebola, ISIS, the iPhone, Renee Zellweger’s facelift and personal attacks between the two-party candidates from last week’s elections, the media is actually training us to fit the mould of a shallow consumer-driven society that thrives off of fear, sensationalism, and one that supports war.

More specifically, the coverage of the Middle East: ISIS, the beheadings of journalists, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Syrian chemical weapons attack as a pretext for war, the Sunni-Shiite divide, and Palestinian resistance — it seems almost instantly the naïve and evil preconceptions about the Middle East post-9/11 have resurfaced once again.

Muslims are the boogeymen of our time.

Yet those who are truly concerned about war and its human casualty, those who are concerned about the growing inequality in this nation, those who are concerned about climate change, net neutrality, about big money in politics, police brutality, Big Brother, the fading away of our civil liberties — are not the concerns of a fringe minority, nor the concerns of a silent majority. In fact, these are the concerns of the silenced majority.

We are silenced by this extremist corporate media, which is why it’s more important now than ever that we take our media back through independent and alternative journalism like MintPress. Because without an independent media acting as a watchdog to those in power, we are only feeding into a system that drives revenue to elitists through the most profitable act of business our nation has come too comfortably to love: WAR.

Between 1983 and the year 2000, our media consolidated from over 50 corporations to six: GE, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, News Corp, CBS.

These six major corporations now control over 90 percent of what Americans see, hear and read. These six corporations rake in over $300 billion in revenue each year — that’s $36 billion more than Finland’s GDP.

So, for the past 30 years or so, it’s never been a better time for big business like the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, oil, defense and construction industries, special interest groups, and even foreign governments like the Arab Gulf states and Israel, to invest in the American media.

Between arming separatist militias in Ukraine, Libya and Syria, providing arms to our allies in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Israel, Iraq, Qatar and many more, fighting a “War on Terror” in Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Kenya, Mali, Niger and elsewhere, and propping U.S.-friendly leaders across the globe and arming revolutions — U.S.-made military weapons can be traced to nearly every conflict in the world.

Yet most Americans don’t know this and are unaware of who we’re actually at war with.

Speaking of war: The U.S. is now involved in 134 acts of wars or none, depending on your definition of “war.” World War II was actually the last time Congress officially declared war. Since then, the conflicts we’ve called “wars” — from Vietnam to the Second Iraq War — have actually been congressional “authorizations of military force.”

This kind of doublespeak that our politicians and media use is supposed to sound defensive, like we’re protecting ourselves — It’s a matter of national security — but actually it’s nothing but offensive.

As John Kerry put it: “We’re engaged in a major counterterrorism operation.” This is the “War on Terror” he is referring to.

Jumping to the current “war” we’re involved in now that the media has fearmongered the public into supporting is the one against ISIS.

It has turned into a gravy train for profits. From a report that we conducted at MintPress: Since the beginning of this year, the defense stocks of America’s top five arms producers — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman — are trading at record prices as shareholders reap the benefits from escalating military conflicts around the world including against ISIS, fuelling the very military-industrial complex that has ownership of our media and drives the public into war.

But it’s important to break down this specific conflict because it would help us understand not only how the media manipulates conflict narratives to justify war, but it could better help us understand how we need to reform our foreign policy to focus more on a peace economy.

The war on ISIS: It seems complex and hard to follow, thanks to our media.

The fact that U.S. intelligence assesses that ISIS poses no current threat to the U.S. is repeatedly ignored by our politicians and media. In the last two months, President Obama and John Kerry have presented the American public with the idea that ISIS could pose a threat to the U.S. — which is why our “no boots on the ground” initiative against ISIS has begun, completely contradicting evidence provided by U.S. intelligence.

In fact, what the media has done is provided unlimited airtime to these politicians, analysts and pundits who directly profit from war, who represent the defense industries, who work for the oil companies and construction industries, without questioning them once.

It’s sectarian. They can’t get along. ISIS will attack us. The people in the Middle East need us. Our allies in the region support U.S. involvement.

But the story is as simple as this: What we see taking place in the Middle East is indeed a mess fueled by sectarianism, but it’s a mess that we allowed to happen. It’s a mess that is also being fomented by competing regional allies in the Middle East — Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia — not only for economic and regional influence, but most importantly for control over oil and gas supplies. Because at the end of the day, money means power.

The story really begins in invading Iraq, last year’s near-invasion of Syria.

According to retired NATO Secretary General Wesley Clark in a video that has gone viral, a memo from the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense just a few weeks after 9/11 revealed plans to “attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years,” starting with Iraq and moving on to “Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.”

In a subsequent interview, Clark argues that this strategy is fundamentally about control of the region’s vast oil and gas resources.

Thanks to alternative media like WikiLeaks, leaked emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor, including notes from meetings with Pentagon officials, have confirmed that the U.S. and U.K. were actively training Syrian opposition forces since 2011, [training activities] aimed at the “collapse” of Assad’s regime “from within,” which would essentially undermine Iran.

This was the same strategy the U.S. would engage in Libya with the fall of Gadhafi.

These leaked documents I was just refering to go on to say: “The geographic area of proven oil reserves coincides with the power base of much of the Salafi-jihadist network. This creates a linkage between oil supplies and the long war that is not easily broken or simply characterized… For the foreseeable future, world oil production growth and total output will be dominated by Persian Gulf resources.”

And how this will be accomplished will be through sectarianism and civil strife.

This goes on to say:

Divide and Rule focuses on exploiting fault lines between the various Salafi-jihadist groups to turn them against each other and dissipate their energy on internal conflicts.

This strategy relies heavily on covert action, information operations (IO), unconventional warfare, the United States and its local allies could use the nationalist jihadists to launch proxy campaigns. US leaders could also choose to capitalize on the ‘Sustained Shia-Sunni Conflict’ trajectory by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes against Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world.

And how this would be executed — this report lays out the plan of “shoring up the traditional Sunni regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan as a way of containing Iranian power and influence in the Middle East and Persian Gulf.”

Noting that this could actually empower al-Qaida jihadists, the report concluded that doing so might work in Western interests by bogging down jihadi activity with internal sectarian rivalry rather than targeting the U.S. — all of this supports a military-industrial complex that supports endless war.

And as a result, this same terror group — ISIS — that we’re air striking has taken control of oil and gas reserves there in Syria and Iraq. They’re now officially the richest and most well-financed terror group in the world, according to reports from the last two weeks.

But the media won’t tell us that it’s about economics. Who would support a war for oil, for gas, or for money? That’s not ethical or respectable. It’s immoral. Not many people would jump on board.

We do jump on board when we say we’re ending tyranny, we’re fighting an enemy that hates us, we’re saving those people. They do not get along. Our allies in the region need our help.

To put all of this in context: This kind of promoting war by the media started with Iraq. As we prepared to invade Iraq those who did act as a government watchdog, those who provided an alternative perspective, were censored and attacked.

As the U.S. launched its invasion of Iraq, MSNBC canceled anti-war anchor Phil Donahue’s talk show after an internal memo that was leaked argued that he would be a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.” He was described as anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration’s motives in Iraq.

The report warned that the Donahue show could be “a home for the liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.” And that’s according to FAIR [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting], a media watchdog.

John Perry, the reporter for Newsweek that provided alternative coverage about Iraq and challenged the WMDs narrative, provided an interview that showcased that Iraq didn’t possess weapons of mass destruction — which is why we went to occupy Iraq in the first place, isn’t it?

Not only was he ridiculed, but he was smeared, called a conspiracy theorist, pro-Saddam and anti-Bush. And of course, later we learned that Saddam never possessed WMDs and our politicians lied to us about that.

And MintPress has been on the forefront of providing alternative coverage to our wars, including the one we see taking place today against ISIS.

Now, if we take a look back to last year, when our media was beating the drums of war to attack Syria, and in last year’s case it was to save the Syrian people from the Assad regime — CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, trickling down all the way to the local level to our newspapers and local TV stations.

Our media became the official mouthpiece for President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry to promote airstrikes on Syria because, as our administration put it, the Assad regime is using chemical weapons against his own people.

It was weapons of mass destruction all over again. It was nearly the same narrative we used to justify the war in Iraq and we’re now using it to justify war in Syria. The Obama administration used the chemical weapons attack as a pretext for war.

Now, Obama and Kerry actually made it clear to the American public that they don’t have evidence that Assad used chemical weapons on his people, nor did they need it, but they were sure that he did — therefore, the U.S. was ready to strike Syria. This was the pretext for war.

Two days later, a MintPress article went viral. It was on-the-ground reporting from our journalists who spoke with Syrians in Ghoutha. We spoke with doctors, with rebels themselves, their family members, and we asked them, because those were the experts, those were the witnesses, and those are the people at the heart of the story: Who committed this chemical weapons attack?

And they told us that the al-Qaida-linked rebels let off the sarin gas and that the rebels were receiving arms, funding and even the sarin from Saudi intelligence.

Shortly after, our Syria coverage was actually used and cited between John Kerry and Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov in discussion about U.S. airstrikes against Syria. MintPress, alternative and independent media, helped stop last years airstrikes. But it didn’t come without a price.

Shortly after we published that article, my team was under attack, intimidated, bullied and smeared. Our reporters on the story were bullied into retracting their involvement from this coverage a month after thereporting was published.

Next thing we knew, I was being attacked in a direct character assassination.

BuzzFeed and other bloggers who were beating the drums of war attempted to discredit our alternative coverage on Syria, and instead of challenging our reporting, it became a personal attack on myself and my family.

But this is an intimidation and silencing tactic which has been used against many of our truth-tellers before us, like Phil Donahue from MSNBC, like John Perry from Newsweek, like revolutionary truth-tellers Malcom X, Martin Luther King, Julian Assange, Bradley [Chelsea] Manning, Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden.

Not once in any of these smears was our reporting challenged. The conversation shifted away from the U.S. nearly dragging us into war based on false pretexts to what I was wearing.

It was sexist, Islamaphobic, xenophobic and ignorant.

But MintPress is not alone. Just a few months after our newsroom was bullied and attacked, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist by the name of Seymour Hersh made international headlines when he published an article called “Whose Sarin?,” which detailed leaked intelligence he had received about the U.S. knowing that the al-Qaida rebels had most likely propagated this sarin gas attack to frame the Assad regime as a pretext for war.

But Obama was being pressured by Turkey and Saudi Arabia to strike Syria.

And this Seymour Hersh we’re talking about here: [He’s] the same journalist who exposed the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam and its cover-up and exposed abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Soon after, he was also smeared and ridiculed by the media like never before. This revered journalist, like John Perry from MSNBC, was labeled as pro-Assad and a conspiracy theorist by the same organizations that are beating the drums of war and who smeared MintPress.

It’s not just Syria or the war in Iraq — the manipulation of narratives, the censoring of stories, the ridiculing of alternative voices happens across the board for nearly every conflict we see.

My dear friend Amber Lyon, who produced a brilliant documentary for CNN about the Bahraini government repressing calls for freedom and revolution there, became a whistleblower after CNN refused to air her documentary.

She had discovered that CNN was receiving PR money from Bahrain and nearly every Gulf nation to ensure their coverage of those nations was positive.

She went on to expose that those national security reporters we see are actually spokespeople for the U.S. government and defense contractors. Those foreign affairs reporters who are in other countries bringing us those stories are paid hush money if they report on a conflict that is not in the interest of our government and our allies.

Fox News: Now it’s no secret that Fox News is entertainment news. They actually admit that. But it begs the question: Why does Saudi Prince al-Waleed own the largest stake in Fox?

BuzzFeed: The same organization that smeared MintPress, who questioned how could a woman could fund her own news organization, is receiving PR money from an Israeli lobby group to ensure BuzzFeed’s international coverage fits Israel’s political interests — and that’s according to NPR and the Atlantic. The reporter Rosie Gray who directed the smear, was also recently exposed as being part of a ring of journalists tied to pro-democracy groups that push a neoconservative agenda in corporate newsrooms.

The New York Times actually receives gag orders from Israel when it’s about to publish an article that goes against Israeli interests.

All these news organizations that I just mentioned are all tied to our local newspapers and channels. It all trickles down to the local level.

What we’ve actually done, though, is shot ourselves in the foot because not only have we violated the U.S. Constitution in its definition of how the media should function under our First Amendment rights, but we’ve actually crushed any notion of real information about our own communities and our world today by being influenced by the very same groups we’re meant to act as a watchdog to.

The role of journalism in the United States, as defined by the U.S. Constitution, is to act as a government watchdog and to work in the interest of the public to hold those in power accountable and prevent them from abusing their power.

Journalism is a public interest entity that is actually a form of activism because as George Orwell put it, in a world full of deceit, speaking the truth is a revolutionary act.

There’s always a light at the tunnel because alternative and independent media is a growing voice. More Americans are turning to alternative media to get to the heart of the stories.

In fact, we’re actually experiencing a renaissance, if you will, since 2001 of independent journalists and independent media outlets like MintPress, who want to fill in this major void of honest media.

One that speaks truth, that informs the public, that holds those in power by acting as a watchdog, by exposing the atrocities that are committed by war, and [one] that shares stories that matter to humanity to bring us all closer together, and one that unites us all — a media that actually promotes peace.

The world is a complex place, but it can only take independent media to bring back that understanding that we lack for the world around us.

The corporate media divides us, it creates boogeymen, it induces fear, and survives off of sensationalism and to hate what is different. Although the world is complex, we are actually interconnected more than we know.

It’s no wonder why over 60 percent of Americans actually don’t trust the media anymore, according to a recent Gallup poll.

Political language has unfortunately been designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.

Malcolm X once said, “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

Today it’s the Muslims, yesterday it was the Russians, and many years ago it was the Communists. Different enemies, altered narratives, same motive: money, oil, gas, resources and influence.

Tomato pickers in Morocco – who supply fresh produce during the winter to big European supermarket chains like Albert Heijn in the Netherlands and Sainsbury’s and Tesco in the UK – are paid poverty wages, according to a new report from Fairfood International.

“If you live here in Europe and you eat tomatoes in winter, there’s a high chance that they are from Morocco, often produced under unfair working conditions,” Anselm Iwundu, executive director of Fairfood, saidin a video released in June.

And the poverty wages have a major impact on the whole country’s economy, since tomatoes account for almost half of Morocco’s vegetable exports. The North African country is the third largest exporter of tomatoes to the European Union (EU), after the Netherlands and Spain.

Lahcen Moski, a 38-year-old tomato picker in Morocco, told the authors of the report that he made 60 dirhams ($6.78) a day working in hazardous conditions in tomato fields.

“What is 60 dirhams going to do for your livelihood? When you think of the children, of clothes, of food, or even to try to save for something bigger, or medicines… it is nothing” Moski said. He says he has to buy groceries on credit to support his wife and son.

Zahra Elbakili, a 62-year-old woman with six children, told Fairfood that she was fired when she attempted to set up a union chapter with 22 other women.

Labor analysts say this is outrageous. “Must food and clothes in Europe and the United States be so cheap that the migrant workers picking, processing or sewing them on another continent cannot afford their own groceries?” wrote Alisa Tang, an editor at the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Most of these Moroccan tomato pickers work for a small number of companies like the Azura Group, Agri-Souss, Delassus and Idyl who produce over 90 percent of tomatoes in the country.

But Fairfood points out that the major British and Dutch retailers wield even greater power over Morocco’s agricultural workers since 90 percent of these Moroccan tomatoes are eventually sold in Europe, and 76 percent of fresh fruit and vegetables purchased in the Netherlands and nearly 90 percent in the UK are bought at supermarkets.

The burden of these low wages falls disproportionately on women.  Some 70 percent of the agricultural workers in the Souss Massa Drâa region, where most of Morocco’s tomatoes are grown, are women, a surprising statistic for a country that has one of the lowest female labor participation rates in the world. Many of these workers are young, single, migrant workers who are looking to avoid social stigmatization and marginalization.

Fairfood says that over a third of the workers that they surveyed were paid below the minimum wage of €147.44 a month for agricultural workers. Indeed Souss Massa Drâa has the third highest percentage of people living in poverty and the highest percentage of poverty severity in Morocco.

In responses to the Fairfood report made to Business & Human Rights Resource Center, however, the retailers denied that they paid below minimum wage.

Tesco said that its own investigation “did not correlate with the generalized findings reported by Fairfood” stating that an ethical trade manager conducted random samples of worker pay slips at each supplier that showed that all their workers were paid above the minimum wage for agricultural workers. Sainsbury’s claimed that its supplier “pays not just the legal wage, but more than 20 percent above minimum wage to all workers.” Albert Heijn stated that all its workers were paid “at least the Moroccan minimum wage for agricultural workers and higher rates are paid for overtime.”

Tesco did acknowledge that only 30 percent were paid at or above the living wage range of €316 to €497 per household per month.

Fairfood has started a campaign to lobby these European retailers to pay a living wage to workers in their supply chain. The NGO is working with Fédération Nationale du Secteur Agricole, a local agricultural union in Morocco, to help agricultural workers on the ground to speak up for their rights.

The revelations of poverty wages for tomato pickers in Morocco are just the latest in a series of investigations that have revealed the impact of cheap goods available in Western retail chains. Recently, activists published details of workers working under slave like conditions in Thailand to harvest shrimp for U.S. and U.K. supermarkets. And while the sweatshop conditions under which garments are produced in countries like Bangladesh and Cambodia are well known, feminists who launched a T-shirt campaign to campaign for women’s rights in the UK were deeply embarrassed when it was discovered that their products were sewn for low wages by women in Mauritius under poor working conditions

Police in Modesto, California are attributing a recent crime drop to special software reminiscent of the Hollywood blockbuster “Minority Report.”

Predictive policing software, which utilizes mathematical algorithms often used in earthquake prediction, examines several years’ worth of crime and sociological data in order to predict where a crime will likely occur down to a 500-square-foot area.

According to Capt. Rick Armendariz, the software has brought crime down to a three-year low, despite less officers patrolling the streets due to budget cuts.

“It looks at our crime history the last 10 years using a mathematical equation and it gives us what we call a high probability of where the next crime is going to occur,” Armendariz told CBS Sacramento.

Armendariz believes the software is responsible for a drop in multiple crimes including burglaries, commercial theft and robberies.

“We’re trying to get away from rearview policing, looking at crime that has happened,” Armendariz said.

Officers rely on a top 10 list produced by the software to give them insight into problem areas around the city.

“Telling our officers this is where you need to be at at those times,” Armendariz said.

While police hail the program as an effective crime fighting tool, local residents were not as quick to support the department’s findings.

“If you don’t take the reports, the crime stats go down,” one resident said on social media. “Try reporting a minor theft in Modesto and see what I mean.”

“Just like the one gentleman said, if it’s not reported of course crime will drop. They don’t respond to the lost dog, stuck keys in the car anymore,” another added. “No PDs do. So then less reports=less crime. Funny how they’re giving the PD credit when all they’re doing is less work…”

Despite glowing reviews from departments across the country, others are skeptical of the software’s ability to lower crime as well.

“Predictive policing is at the cutting edge of policing today. The problem is that, historically, the cutting edge of policing is dull,” Criminology Professor John Eck told the Guardian last June. “[Predictive policing] fosters a whack-a-mole policing mentality. Not that whacking moles doesn’t work – but it is unnecessarily intrusive in people’s lives, which erodes their limited confidence in the police, and undermines something fundamental to our ideals of democracy.”

Others feel the software could begin targeting individuals, leading to false positives and potentially dangerous situations.

“How do you cross-examine a computer?” Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a law professor at the University of the District of Columbia, asked. “To stop you and frisk you and search you, a police officer needs reasonable suspicion, so my question is how will this affect reasonable suspicion?”

Just like Modesto, nearly every department in possession of such software was able to obtain it through federal grants.

Earlier this year, two departments in Washington state publicly announced their acquisition of the PredPol predictive policing software.

With big data collection becoming increasingly unpopular due to revelations surrounding the NSA, fewer and fewer Americans are trusting public servants to use the technology responsibly, especially including police given their illegal activities with Stingrays cell phone interceptors.

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