Global Research

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper is a former Raytheon lobbyist and another example of President Trump’s penchant for frustrating his own policies by appointing to power people who oppose his policies.  Why does Trump think he can expect a representative of the military/security complex to help him wind down Washington’s hegemonic policeman of the world routine?

Esper is out making speeches that the military/security complex needs 5% real increase annually in order to counter Russia and China (see this). It is Washington that is aggressive toward Russia and China, not the other way around.  The military/security complex desperately needs foreign enemies in order to maximize its budget and power.  Russiagate’s purpose was to prevent Trump from removing a valuable “enemy” by normalizing relations with Russia. 

The US defense  budget could be cut in half and still be larger than the combined defense budgets of Russia and China.  China spends about half as much of its economy on defense as the US.  If Russia and China intended aggression against the US, wouldn’t you expect to see much higher spending on military?

You could make a case that US defense spending is so high because of inefficiency and enormous profits hidden in “cost overruns.”  If so, then increased real spending should come from strict budetary measures and oversight.  We should not be accepting a military spending system that cannot account for trillions of dollars and is so poorly controlled that it cannot be audited.  Will patriotic conservatives ever realize that blind support for the Pentagon allows the massive rip-off of taxpayers and the neglect of real needs all for nothing but out-sized profits of arms makers? 

The military/security complex makes certain that no moves toward peace can succeed.  Its lobbyists have succeeded in undoing all the arms control agreements reached with Russia since the 1960s.  Russia’s President Putin has made repeated offers to extend the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty, but Washington has rejected his offer out of hand.  The reason is obvious.  The corrupt puppet regime of Obama agreed to a trillion dollar increase in nuclear weapons spending, and the military/security complex means to get that money.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Salon.com

This article was first published on History.com in November 2009.

On October 9, 1967, socialist revolutionary and guerilla leader Che Guevara, age 39, is killed by the Bolivian army. The U.S.-military-backed Bolivian forces captured Guevara on October 8 while battling his band of guerillas in Bolivia and executed him the following day. His hands were cut off as proof of death and his body was buried in an unmarked grave. In 1997, Guevara’s remains were found and sent back to Cuba, where they were reburied in a ceremony attended by President Fidel Castro and thousands of Cubans.

Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna was born to a well-off family in Argentina in 1928. While studying medicine at the University of Buenos Aires, he took time off to travel around South America on a motorcycle; during this time, he witnessed the poverty and oppression of the lower classes. He received a medical degree in 1953 and continued his travels around Latin America, becoming involved with left-wing organizations. In the mid 1950s, Guevara met up with Fidel Castro and his group of exiled revolutionaries in Mexico. Guevara played a key role in Castro’s seizure of power from Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and later served as Castro’s right-hand man and minister of industry. Guevara strongly opposed U.S. domination in Latin America and advocated peasant-based revolutions to combat social injustice in Third World countries. Castro later described him as “an artist of revolutionary warfare.”

Guevara resigned from his Cuban government post in April 1965, He left Cuba, traveled to Africa and eventually resurfaced in Bolivia, where he was killed. Following his death, Guevara achieved hero status among people around the world as a symbol of anti-imperialism and revolution. A 1960 photo taken by Alberto Korda of Guevara in a beret became iconic and has since appeared on countless posters and T-shirts. However, not everyone considers Guevara a hero: He is accused, among other things, of ordering the deaths of hundreds of people in Cuban prisons during the revolution.

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In July I hypothesized that “Germany’s presidency over the EU may be the most important junction in the bloc’s history since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The world is on the cusp of a multipolar order with a more evenly distributed power structure – Germany representing the EU must decide to join this new world order or remain stuck in the old one.”

This was written in the context of Germany assuming the Presidency of the Council of the European Union in July, a position it will hold until December 2020. Germany, the most important economic power in the EU, has always been the architect of the pan-European project. It’s Presidency heralded hope that the EU would break more freely from the interests of the U.S. and pursue policies that would be to the benefit of Europe and not to those across the Atlantic.

However, the hope of the EU being put on a path of self-confidence and sovereignty was quickly dashed. Germany not only continued enacting Washington’s interests, but the areas where it can pursue its sovereign policies has been dominated by self-interest rather than what benefits the entire EU. Just as French President Emmanuel Macron twice emphasized the “brain dead” status of NATO, the EU itself must also be determined as a failed pan-European project that has only been used as a tool to enforce and enact German economic interests over the continent.

The Atlantic Council last week published a joint letter from 29 Ukrainian MP’s who claim the Nord Stream 2’s “role is not commercial but geopolitical: to menace the world. That’s why the Kremlin spends so incessantly on redundant pipelines and fights so fiercely to get them going.”

The published letter cannot be underestimated as the Washington DC-based think tank is one of the most influential in the world. Even before the letter’s publication, U.S. Senators submitted a bill to sanction the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project on June 4. In July, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the Nord Stream 2 and TurkStream projects fall under CAATSA (Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions). Undoubtedly the U.S. is exerting immense pressure to ensure the Nord Stream 2 project is not completed in the hope that Europeans will lessen their reliance on Russian energy.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said “I proceed from the assumption that Nord Stream 2 will be completed. The question is when [this will happen].” Then in a message directed at Washington, Mass said “We make decisions about our energy policy and energy supply here – in Europe.”

This begs a question however – if Nord Stream 2 will be completed, why is it delayed instead of being completed?

It suggests that Germany does not have enough confidence to complete the crucial project for European energy security without approval from Washington despite Maas’ claim that Europe will act sovereignly to complete the pipeline.

What Germany effectively does by not immediately completing the Nord Stream 2 demonstrates a tier system. Maas earlier this month threatened “targeted and disruptive sanctions” against Russia for the poisoning of opposition figure Alexei Navalny, without providing evidence that Moscow was responsible. This was also followed by immediate calls for sanctions against the administration of Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus.

Berlin understands that despite its sanctions against Moscow, Russia needs Nord Stream 2 operational to end its reliance on Ukraine to delivery energy to European markets. As Ukraine is openly hostile to Russia, it is an unreliable partner. With Russian energy bypassing Ukraine to reach European markets via Nord Stream 2, Kiev will lose significant leverage over Moscow, which is why Russia for now is willing to sideline German-led sanctions and accusations to ensure the pipeline project is completed.

However, Turkey continues to violate the sovereign rights of EU member states Greece and Cyprus in the East Mediterranean, threatens them with war on a near daily basis, and even broke United Nation Security Council resolutions by opening the beach of Varosha in occupied northern Cyprus. Despite this hostile actions against EU member states, German diplomats have openly announced that sanctions against Turkey will not occur. This is directly linked to German economic and domestic political interests. With over three million Turks living in Germany, they form a major voting bloc. Coupled with over 5,000 German businesses operating in Turkey, Germany consistently ranks as Turkey’s largest trading partner.

With this we see a tier system in the unipolar world order where Washington stands at the top but Germany will defend its own economic interests with Turkey at the expense of EU member states so long as it does not clash with the interests of the U.S. At the bottom of the tier are the smaller EU states, especially those on the periphery of Europe, like Greece and Cyprus.

Germany’s European Council Presidency came at a time when the global financial market is down as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Nord Stream 2 project is near completion, and when external states are directly threatening the interests and security of EU member states. These crises and major shifts in the European geopolitical and economic landscape gave Berlin the opportunity to demonstrate its leadership position and the EU’s sovereignty from Washington as a unified bloc. Rather, Germany continually demonstrates to EU sceptics that the bloc is nothing more than a front for a German Fourth Reich, as many critics describe it, because of Berlin’s indifference to aggression by its Turkish allies against Europe’s periphery so it can protect its economic interests.

Parliamentary elections in 2021 could radically shift German foreign policy as Angela Merkel’s near 15 years chancellorship is beginning to receive heavy criticism in Germany. While Merkel’s so-called Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) has been indifferent to Turkey’s sponsored invasion of the Armenian-majority Artsakh region, or more commonly known as Nagorno-Karabakh which is internationally recognized as a part of Azerbaijan, a delegation of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) arrived in the warzone today to express solidarity directly to Armenian authorities. In fact, the AfD has maintained relations with the de facto Republic of Artsakh for at least five years, expressing its concern for Turkish expansionism and the existential threat Armenian Christians face.

The CDU portrays itself as a Christian, conservative and pro-European party, but has demonstrated neither Christianity, conservatism or pro-Europeanism in their dealings with Russia or Turkey. The AfD are certainly filling this void left by the CDU’s own failure to uphold its own ideology and it can be expected that in 2021 more AfD members will enter parliament at the expense of the CDU. Germans are becoming frustrated that Berlin’s policies are enabling Germany’s subordination to Washington’s interests while simultaneously pursuing anti-European policies. Berlin’s opportunity to enter the new Multipolar World Order has been wasted in favor of maintaining a tier system where Germany can continue to dominate the EU but only with Washington’s oversight.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Chile has been experiencing violent popular protests for over a year. The general dissatisfaction with the government of Sebastián Piñera and his allies has generated strong unrest in the country, which has worried the Chilean political elite. In this sense, fear of the consequences of the rebellions has led government officials to propose an agreement to stop the violence, but, apparently, the proposal is intended only to serve the interests of the government itself.

The Agreement for Social Peace and the New Constitution was then signed, celebrated between the political parties allied with the government and a large part of the opposition. This agreement provides for a plebiscite – scheduled for October 25th – in which Chileans must define whether they want a new Constitution and whether it should be elaborated by means of a Mixed Convention or a Constitutional Convention. These conditions are generating rejection in several social, political and territorial organizations that consider it lacking in popular legitimacy.

This pact does not include an original and sovereign Constituent Assembly as an option, but two mechanisms, which differ in integration. In the case of the Mixed Convention, it would be composed of 50% of representatives of the Congress and 50% of elected citizens; on the other hand, the Constitutional Convention would be 100% composed of representatives expressly chosen for that instance. The total impossibility of calling for a new Constituent Assembly demonstrates how it seeks to implement reforms that do not fully meet popular interests but prioritize the agendas of the government and the current congressmen.

The current Chilean Constitution does not allow a new Assembly to be convened, because this constitution is the same as it was during the military dictatorship. This means that the transition to a democratic regime has not been completed in Chile, which still has a dictatorial constitution. For the country to become a democratic nation, it is necessary to change the constitution and the government must agree to do so. The purpose of calling an Assembly is precisely to change the Constitution, so the excuse that the formation of the Assembly is “unconstitutional” cannot be evoked: if the government agrees to change the Constitution, it must do so democratically.

Faced with this scenario, many popular leaders pointed out that the agreement does not allow a true popular participation or citizenship, and is therefore insufficient to meet the demands of people, representing nothing more than a political maneuver to deceive the Chileans and contain the protests. It was also emphasized that the agreement remains silent about the several cases of abuse of authority and violation of human rights reportedly perpetrated by the Chilean police during the demonstrations. Obviously, the most correct thing to do on this issue would be to establish a committee to investigate such crimes, with judgment and punishment of those responsible, but this is not mentioned in the “agreement” proposed by the government.

Although the opinions of participants from different organizations are similar with regard to the constitutional process, the way of facing the plebiscite differs among them. There are many assemblies that campaign for the population to ignore this process, abdicating from voting in the referendum and focusing on direct action calling for the Constituent Assembly, but there are other organizations that allow freedom of action for its members, not openly opposing the vote in the referendum. This neutral attitude towards voting happens mainly because of a “despair” that has been seen in the population: in the absence of other means and in the hope of improvement, people tend to vote, even if everything indicates that there will be no changes, regardless the result. Still, there is a strong media campaign in favor of the referendum. The main Chilean news agencies maintain agreements with the government and campaign to support the referendum as a “peaceful resolution” measure. As a result, many people are deluded and decide to vote.

In fact, there is no possibility that the referendum will guarantee real changes in the life of the Chilean population, simply because the “agreement” was imposed unilaterally, without any popular endorsement. The only way to really achieve a more just society is by calling for a new Constituent Assembly, which will completely change the Chilean political structure, prioritizing popular interests, such as the social principles of work, citizenship and democratic participation. In addition, it is necessary to thoroughly investigate the crimes allegedly committed by the Chilean police against the demonstrators.

But there is no institutional way to achieve these goals. The government obviously has a privileged situation in relation to the protesters, as it is in power and can unilaterally decide the conditions of peace. Therefore, it only remains for popular organizations to continue protesting. However, many organizations tend to capitulate and adhere to the “agreement” for the reasons explained. Apparently, the referendum will take place, the protests will continue, but they will decrease significantly and, in short, there will be no real change in Chilean society.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics. 

Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

The coronavirus induced recession has plunged many countries into economic uncertainty as a result of the severe containment measures. As expected, the pandemic has triggered massive losses in different sectors of the economy which can be reflected in metrics like the real Gross Domestic Product.

Data presented by Buy Shares projects that the global real GDP will plunge by $3.94 trillion in 2020. The research also shows that the ten most impacted countries will cumulatively lose $696.56 billion in real GDP due to the pandemic.

According to the research, the United States will be the biggest loser at $174.68 billion. South Korea will be the tenth most impacted nation with a loss of $3.76 billion. Elsewhere, China is the only country to emerge with a positive growth of 1.8% or a $51.12 billion gain in real GDP.

The global economy begins recovery with the lifting of containment measures

Real GDP refers to the macroeconomic statistic that measures the value of the goods and services produced by a country during a specified period, adjusted for inflation. It measures a country’s total economic output, adjusted for price changes. Governments use the metrics for analyzing economic growth and purchasing power over time.

During the pandemic, most global economies stalled due to containment measures like nationwide lockdowns. The economy went into a sudden shock with global trade declining while labor markets witnessed massive layoffs. The decrease in real GDP is also driven by a drop in consumption and investment. However, the drop in real GDP could have been worse if some governments had not intervened to partially offset the negative contributions.

The economic projections remain conditional as they largely depend on the evolution of the pandemic and measures put in place to contain the crisis. For example, the development of a vaccine will spur rapid recovery. On the other hand, with some countries like the United States facing a second wave, they might revert to severe containment measures like lockdowns, slowing down the recovery. However, it is largely expected that most governments will be prepared for local sporadic outbreaks giving way for targeted local containment measures as opposed to a national outlook.

China’s economy positive recovery despite Covid-19 epicenter

Despite China being the Covid-19 epicenter the country has benefitted from the pandemic. As the rest of the world is still struggling to contain the virus, China’s economy has taken off after the containment measures began to pay off. Notably, the country is witnessing a surge in local consumption.

China which is the leading global manufacturer has seen most of the companies resume normal operations. The country is now exporting consumer electronics, personal protection equipment, and other goods in high demand during the pandemic. Additionally, China has been able to create jobs with fewer imports coming into the county. Most of the countries exporting to China have not resumed full operations hence it’s embarking on self-sustainability. Generally, China’s positive growth is not having a similar impact on other economies.

Notably, it is still too early to know how long the economic upheaval will last, or the real direction path. However, the impact has been severe and is widely felt, and the road to recovery might be long.

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Justin is an editor, writer, and a downhill fan. He spent many years writing about banking, finances, blockchain, and digital assets-related news. He strives to serve the untold stories for the readers.

Featured image is from BS

2020 is a year of disguises. Some examples include computer models/modelers disguised as “science/scientists,” Tyrants/Dictators/Totalitarians disguised as “elected officials,” propaganda machines disguised as “news sources,” brainwashing disguised as “information,” censorship disguised as “public health safeguard,” panic and fear disguised as “social responsibility.”

Even the virus itself has been disguised by humans as an “apocalypse.” But, the last part is not the doing of the virus, but the doings of a select number of humans who are responsible for many of the other disguises as well. And if you look at the totality of events in 2020, it is clear that the average citizen has been treated generally less than human, certainly not as adults in any case.

I believe we are in as great a crisis as a species as we have ever been. The crisis is not from some seasonal virus (which is a health issue), but it is from ourselves and what we have devolved into as a species (social, cultural, ideological issues).

I have debated with myself on how to approach the following essay. Under normal circumstances, it would be easy. But, the topic has been so warped and sensationalized into political and social hyperbole, it is difficult to get a handle on it. I could go at it strictly from a scientific perspective, but that would tune many people out.

After about two weeks of my own internal debate and several versions, I have decided to treat the readers of this essay as Human Adults. I will try to not get too technical but rather use rational arguments to approach the issue of a viral infection from the perspective of the virus molecule outside of the host, i.e., the natural environment.

Computer modeling is “a” tool, not “the” tool. The model is only as good as the assumptions put into the model. It has been clear from the start that the modelers have NO idea of how a virus works in the natural world. They have based their modeling on the assumption that the culprit is the human being. The human being must be controlled in order to control the virus. This is completely wrong. I hope to present arguments that illustrate the weaknesses of the modeling concepts.

Human Perception

The natural perceptive abilities, i.e. the physical senses, of human beings are quite poor. For example, we can see only a very, very small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, illustrated as follows:

Forty-seven years ago, Egypt and Syria launched a massive surprise attack on Israeli forces dug into fortifications along the Suez Canal and Golan Heights. The ‘limited’ Arab objective was to recapture both strategic areas that had been seized from the two Arab states in Israel’s victorious 1967 War.

Re-armed with modern – but by no means top drawer – Soviet weapons, Egypt and Syria sought to drive the Israelis back, then wait for the great powers to impose a truce. It was a badly flawed strategy, which assured the heavily armed Israelis would control the military initiative with their superiority in air power and armor.

At first, the Arab surprise attack caught Israel flat-footed. Israeli reserve armored forces were still in storage when Egyptian and Syrian armor and infantry stormed across the 1967 cease-fire lines.

Warnings of the impending assault from the most important Israeli spy, Ashraf Marwan – amazingly the son-in law of the late Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser – were ignored or shrugged off in Israel which was still filled with hubris over its lopsided, US-assisted victory in the 1967 War.

This was the first big mystery of the 1973 War. Was Marwan really a Mossad spy or a double agent, as Egypt later claimed, disinforming Israel on the time of the Arab offensive? Marwan later fell to his death – or was pushed – from a London apartment.

Syria’s armor drove into the Golan Heights from their starting positions on the plains east of Golan and the Mount Hermon massif.

The opening Arab assault was a remarkable success. I walked much of the Suez Canal soon after the war and was awed that Egypt’s military engineers had managed to get so many tanks and men across the wide canal under enemy fire.

Equally amazing was Egyptian infantry using highly effective new Soviet Sagger anti-tank missiles and air defense units employing SAM-6 anti-aircraft missiles to blunt Israeli counter attacks. Hundreds of Israeli US-supplied M40 and M60 tanks and 20% of Israel’s formidable air force were destroyed.

Most of Israel’s 15 Bar Lev forts built to defend the Suez Canal were stormed. As a connoisseur of modern fortification, I was fascinated to explore the fallen Israeli forts. Syria inflicted heavy casualties on Israeli armor defending the Golan Heights and on its forts.

The second big mystery of the war concerns the savage fight for Golan. Syrian armor and mechanized divisions had managed to claw their way to the top of the Golan Heights, from where they looked down on Galilee and most of northern Israel. We don’t know whether Syria intended to drive into Galilee, formerly a heavily Arab area, or try to defend the Golan ridgeline. But orders went out from Syrian HQ to halt the Syrian offensive when the downhill road to Galilee and Jordan River bridges were wide open. Why did the Syrians halt their advance when victory was in their grasp?

The answer remains a mystery. But the best assumption is that Soviet spy satellites saw Israel move 13 Jericho missiles out of caves at two airbases and affix their 20-kiloton nuclear warheads. Moscow immediately warned Washington and its Arab allies, both of whom feared an imminent Israeli nuclear strike against targets that included Damascus and Cairo.

So, both Egypt and Syria halted their advances. Israeli forces, bolstered by the arrival of powerful reserve armored divisions, seized the initiative and went on to achieve a brilliant victory that included crossing the Canal and encircling Egypt’s III Corps. The fighting ended after Israel failed to seize Suez and towns on the way to Damascus. Threats of Soviet intervention and America’s resupply of almost all of Israel’s lost weapons brought the 1973 War to a close.

Egypt regained Sinai – Syria and the Palestinians got nothing. The US sank ever deeper into the turbulent affairs of the Arab world. After a bad scare, Israel triumphed as the Mideast’s premier military power.

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Should antiwar forces challenge power or praise government officials in the hopes of getting some crumbs for their pet issue?

French President Emmanuel Macron does not want his initiative for Lebanon to fail. His initial path was not successful because he did not possess the political acumen necessary to confront the tricks of the Lebanese politicians. Macron wrongly believed that the “weight” of France was sufficient for everyone to stand “inline” and carry out the orders of the French “professor”. The French President did not realise that there are many political “professors” in Lebanon who insist on implementing their agendas and interests notwithstanding the severe financial crisis. Macron rectified the path of his initiative by encouraging and supporting Saad Hariri to form a “rescue government” that is supposed to stay for only 6 months. In reality, Hariri is expected to lead the cabinet until the upcoming elections in 2022.

What is the state of consultations now, and how have the alliances between political parties reshuffled?

For the first time, former Prime Minister Saad Hariri appeared to hold the game from all sides as he wanted it. He “burned” all the previous candidates, including Prime Minister Hassan Diab (and was efficiently assisted by Speaker Nabih Berri from the day Diab stepped into the Parliament). Hariri adopted the same policy even with the candidate of French President, Ambassador Mustafa Adib, overwhelming him with impossible conditions that led to his failure. The former PM disrupted the French initiative himself, by blaming the Shia duo (Hezbollah and Amal – the group led by Speaker Berri) who insisted in nominating the Finance Minister. Indeed, the duo still wants this cabinet position, but they were not the only political group with specific demands. The decision of the ‘Shia duo’ saved Hariri by blowing up Adib’s place and by allowing the leader of the ‘Free Patriotic Movement’ (FPM) to hide his requests in nominating his candidates for the new cabinet.

Today, however, the ‘political game’  is no longer under the table: Hariri – who was granted non-opposition status from Saudi Arabia to become Prime Minister – announced that he wanted this position by all means. The former PM is aware that he can form a cabinet only if he strikes a deal with the ‘Shia duo’ to secure the majority of votes at the Parliament and not the ‘majority bloc’ (which includes the Shiite duo and the Free Patriotic Movement and their allies). The House of Representatives is witnessing today a change of alliances and a sharp internal division. Fundamental and even ideological differences between old allies now appear visibly on the surface.

Hariri seized the opportunity to approach the ‘Shia duo’ and agree it can nominate the finance minister and their other ministers- as long as they are technocrats and experts in their field. This means that he fulfilled the first step he needed to return as Prime Minister, especially since Speaker Berri ensured that several Christian representatives vote for the PM, for Hariri to maintain the pact and consensus. This of course will no longer hold if and when the majority of Christians are out of the new cabinet, as they may well be.

Saad Hariri knows how to bring the Druse leader Walid Jumblatt onto his side by securing his share in the new cabinet. Thus, Hariri is able to achieve a political victory over his political arch-enemy Gebran Bassil by ignoring him and rejecting his cabinet demands.

The President of the Republic, Michel Aoun, postponed the parliamentary consultations that were, and still are, attempting to nominate Hariri as Prime Minister. Aoun accommodated Bassil, his son-in-law, who was isolated by his political ally – Hezbollah – unwilling this time to support him as it did in the formation of the previous government. The relationship between Basil and Hezbollah has endured severe differences in the past year, including “strikes below the belt”. These strikes are now no longer the exclusivity of one partner and not the other.

However, postponing the parliamentary consultations for the nomination of Hariri brought about the resentment of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who has little sympathy for President Aoun and his son-in-law. There were no endorsed justifications to postpone the consultations except the attempt to protect Basil and allow him, for another final week, to try to secure a place in the next government. Bassil was insisting on keeping the Energy Ministry, a request Hariri was not ready to accept. Bassil does not realise that there is no one currently among the political and influential leaders prepared to allow him to succeed in this ministry (even though he was in charge of it for years).

There is no constitutional reason that compels Hariri to fulfill Bassil’s desires, especially since France has intervened to express its displeasure at the delay. The French President forcefully proposed that no further delays be tolerated and that next Thursday the Prime Minister (Saad Hariri) has to be nominated. This bickering is revealing the fact that the ‘Shia duo’ was not the only one insisting on appointing its representatives in the cabinet: other parties want their share.

Hariri positively responded to the Shia, Druze, and Sunni, and left the main Christian groups out – the leaders of the “Lebanese Forces” Samir Geagea and Gebran Bassil – so they stand out as those prepared to obstruct this “reform and salvation” government.

But does this mean that the agreement between the FPM (led by Bassil) and Hezbollah has ended?

The alliance that Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah signed with the head of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), General Michel Aoun (known as the Mar Mikhael Accord) in 2006 changed its complexion when its Christian leader, who became President of the Republic, gave the leadership of his party to his son-in-law Gebran Bassil.

Hezbollah considered that the “debt” owed to General Aoun (when Aoun stood by Hezbollah during the 2006 second Israeli war on Lebanon) had been fulfilled. Hezbollah froze the country for over two and a half years, blocking the nomination of a President, notwithstanding the existence of the regional and international effort rejecting General Aoun’s candidateship. Certainly, disputes have to be tolerated because they always occur within an alliance: it is not one single party and the inherent differences becomes obvious to all.

However, in this case, these differences were not appropriately organised to maintain political unity and solidarity all the way through. The two parties benefited from each other and showed that they could be separate. In the last parliamentary elections, Gebran Bassil wanted to confront his ally Hezbollah in numerous regions, allowing Samir Geagea the victory of 15 MPs and the loss of Hezbollah in Jbeil. Of course, the Geagea-Bassil alliance during the elections crumbled quickly when the FPM did not hold to its promises to the LF once the results of the elections were out. The struggle around the “Christian leadership” remains a continuous saga between the two leaders. This is what brought back Bassil to Hezbollah notwithstanding this temporary split. However, It seems that Bassil believes that he can get away with ‘flirting’ with Israel, by stating that there are no ideological differences with the Israelis, facilitating the release of Amer al-Fakhoury, the ‘butcher of Kiyam’ (when the chief of the Army, nominated by the President, pressured the general head of the military court for a temporarily release allowing al-Fakhoury to reach the US embassy where he was smuggled out of the country), promoting “direct negotiations” with Israel (as the FPM parliament member Ziad Aswad said); and forming a delegation to the maritime negotiation dispute with political members to please the US administration.

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The war fought during the 1970s in the nation state formerly known as Rhodesia was an asymmetric conflict which pitted the Rhodesian Security Forces against the militias of Black African liberation movements, most prominent of which were ZANLA and ZAPU. Alternately known as the Rhodesian Bush War and the Zimbabwe War of Liberation, it was characterised by an unceasing brutality which claimed the lives of many non-combatants. Both government and guerrilla forces participated in the brutalisation of civilians. However, with the passage of time, many Old Rhodesians, who feel vindicated by Zimbabwe’s political and economic malaise, have sought to characterise the war as having been prosecuted by the White minority government in an ethical, rules-abiding manner. Among its forces, the Selous Scouts is often touted as a model of martial efficiency and resourcefulness, whose codes of behaviour were beyond reproach. This could not be further from the truth. While the Scouts were effective in destroying enemy guerrillas, they were at the heart of a counter-insurgency strategy which waged chemical warfare not only against guerrillas, but the wider African population. The unit was also responsible for initiating False Flag attacks which it sought to blame on Black Nationalist groups;  a mode of operation which while central to its founding aim of providing the Rhodesian state a dimension of psychological warfare, its supporters erroneously claim was alien to the unit.

The Selous Scouts were a multi-racial unit formed in 1973 to wage unconventional warfare. The methods employed included infiltration, assassination, abduction, torture, sabotage, and blackmail. The unit committed “False Flag” atrocities as part and parcel of their modus operandi. The Rhodesian “Bush War”, as is the case with a multitude of wars, had a psychological dimension in regard to which the Selous Scouts, with their expertise in “pseudo operations”, consistently undertook missions which relied on deception, and such deception was utilised to either kill a large number of the insurgent enemy (Black Nationalist) or to kill specific civilian targets in order to blame the Black African insurgents.

One example of a Selous Scout False Flag operation was conducted in February 1980. Named “Operation HECTIC”, it involved two Black African Selous Scouts named Lieutenant Edward Piringodo and Corporal Morgan Moyo bombing churches in the Salisbury area. Piringodo and Moyo used explosives captured from ZANLA guerrillas to blow up two churches; taking care to leave behind ZANU literature near the ruins caused by each blast. However, both Scouts died after a third bomb they were carrying prematurely exploded inside the car they were driving. They were near an Anglican church at the time of the final explosion which took their lives.

“Operation HECTIC” was designed to discredit Robert Mugabe’s ZANU at the forthcoming elections by making his organisation appear to be anti-Christian and anti-freedom of religion. The irony is that although influenced by Marxist-Leninist thinking, Mugabe did not totally cast off his Jesuit upbringing. For instance, he named one of his younger children, a son Bellarmine, after a not-very-well-known Catholic Saint.

Th 1980 operation suggests that the frequent allegations made by Black Nationalists that the Selous Scouts carried out atrocities against African villages and Catholic missions are extremely credible. They would have used Black African members of the force in the way Piringodo and Moyo were used to disguise themselves as guerrillas to carry out such atrocities. Mugabe, who revelled at Piringodo and Moyo being “caught and destroyed in their own devilish trap”, specifically blamed the Selous Scouts for having carried out the attack against the Catholic missionaries in February 1977, as well as for the gunning down of 27 Black African tea workers on a White-owned estate in the Honde Valley in late 1976.

Why would the Selous Scouts have committed these deeds? The answer is that alongside the war of bullets and bombs was the propaganda war. The Rhodesian state sought to discredit the Black African guerrillas among the Black populace, as well as in the international court of public opinion. History is replete with examples of states using militarised sections to carry out acts of terror. The Red Hand, the terror organisation which assassinated members of the Algerian FLN, and its West German arms suppliers was a creation of the French Secret Service. And the Military Reaction Force (MRF), a construct of British Army Intelligence, was formed by Brigadier Frank Kitson to not only gun down Irish Republican guerrillas, but to stage operations that would discredit them.

This does not mean that the disputed atrocities may not have been committed by Black African guerrillas who murdered those who they considered to be traitors to their cause, but it ought to encourage those disbelieving Old Rhodesians to remove their rose-tinted lenses and confront the brutalities perpetrated by their side.

Lt. Colonel Reid-Daly, the Commander of the Selous Scouts, was a veteran of the Malaya conflict during which time he would have seen and imbibed the more nefarious aspects of counterinsurgency employed by the British Army. While Frank Kitson’s name is often projected as the key authority in the practice of British Army counter-insurgency, the foremost exponent of what came to be known as anti-Maoist rural counter-insurgency warfare, was applied in Malaya by General Robert Thompson.

The Selous Scouts were created precisely to conduct ruthless and “ungentlemanly war”. In fact, the unit came to be known for “murder, rape, smuggling and poaching”, and its members gained a reputation as “psychopathic killers” and “vainglorious extroverts”.

The Rhodesian military began to develop counter-insurgency chemical warfare in the early 1970s, and the Scouts metamorphosed from being a tracking unit to being the central purveyors of the Rhodesian state’s chemical warfare strategy. Glenn Cross’s 1999 book, Plague Wars gives a good account of this aspect of the war. An  academic article written in 2002 by Ian Martinez for Third World Quarterly which was titled “The History of the Use of Bacteriological and Chemical Agents during Zimbabwe’s Liberation War of 1965-80 by Rhodesian Forces” is also very enlightening about the role of chemical warfare in the counter-insurgency.

The Selous Scouts were instructed to poison watering holes, stagnant water, slow moving streams, and other bodies of water near guerrilla camps inside Mozambique, near the border. In one operation, the Selous Scouts poisoned a well in Mozambique which led to the deaths of at least 200 civilians because the well was the only source of drinking water in the area. The Scouts were also instructed to spread cholera. Under cover of “Operation Long Walk” in August 1973, members of the unit poured cholera agents into the Ruya River. This also caused deaths among innocent civilians in Mozambique but was discontinued because the agent dissipated quickly in water, and it could spread back to Rhodesia including areas where the Scouts were operating.

The unit was responsible for injecting thallium into canned meat which was given to insurgents under the deception that they were being supplied from a friendly source. In one situation, the guerrillas gave their poisoned canned meat to villagers on Tribal Trust Land who were short of food, and the villagers subsequently died.

The authorities acquired double agents within the structures of the Black African guerrillas who soaked clothing and food in toxic organophosphates. This resulted in many newly recruited revolutionaries dying on the journey to guerrilla training camps in Zambia and Mozambique. This meant that those who had not yet engaged in attacking the Rhodesian state (they could after all have given up or have been told they were not guerrilla material by instructors) were pre-emptively murdered in a cruel manner. Also, because the double-agent perpetrators could be easily fingered, they were themselves killed.

Those captured Black African guerrillas who the Selous Scouts could not “turn” were either subjected to an extrajudicial execution or were used as human guinea pigs in biological experimentation, which of course inevitably led to their deaths.

While certain Old Rhodesians may claim an ‘end justifies the means’ rationale, the results contradict their frequent argument that the war was fought to defend Black Africans as much as Whites, for the Rhodesian authorities did not seem to mind that their chemical warfare programme was by the end of the 1970s causing health problems among the Black civilian population.

In 1979, Rhodesia recorded the largest recorded outbreak of anthrax, a development which has been interpreted as the deliberate use of a weaponised biological agent. Ken Flower, Chief of Rhodesia’s Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) and a CIO officer named Henrik Ellert confirmed in their memoirs that the Ian Smith-led regime used biological and chemical weapons against the guerrillas, against rural Black Africans to prevent their support of the guerrillas, and against livestock like cattle in order to reduce rural food stocks.

The application of chemical warfare[1], at the heart of which was the Selous Scouts amounted to war crimes because it arguably contravened The Hague Convention of 1907. Furthermore, the deliberate and systematic killing of livestock in Black African populated areas infringed Common Article III of the Geneva Convention, 1949. Additionally, the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) of 1972 embodied the renunciation by the world community of nations of the use of biological weapons against human beings.

There are of course difficulties associated with specific application to Rhodesia which was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention and, after its Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965, was an illegal regime. Nonetheless, the use of such weapons in both internal and international conflicts is now recognised to be a violation of customary international law. The problem of affixing the successor state to Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, with the responsibility of these crimes can be overcome by affixing responsibility of these actions onto individuals who acted on behalf of the Rhodesian state. This would mean that members of the Rhodesian Security Forces including those who served with the Selous Scouts could be prosecuted by a Nuremberg-style court for a range of offences including the murder and ill-treatment of prisoners of war, the use of biological weapons of war against both civilian and military targets as well as compelling prisoners of war to serve with a hostile army.

It should be noted that as part of the war of deception, the deaths of humans and cattle from these poisoning incidents were used as Rhodesian government propaganda to blame the guerrillas. Thus, part of the strategy of the state was geared towards sowing discord between the insurgents and rural populations. On the one hand, villagers were conditioned to believe that food shortages were been caused by guerrilla activity, while the insurgents were encouraged to believe that their food was being poisoned by villagers. In several instances, they launched attacks on those villages they held responsible.

Admissions by Selous Scouts veterans in regard to these actions and objectives have been rare, but a U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) cable from Harare to Washington D.C. in 1990 revealed that a member of the Selous Scouts admitted in 1978 that they had “tried both chemical and biological warfare techniques to kill terrorists”. And the recollections of the likes of Ken Flower and Henrik Ellert regarding Selous Scouts atrocities are highly relevant because the Scouts were directly under the control of the CIO and not the Rhodesian Army. What is more, the Rhodesian government had a tight control over the media which facilitated the psy-ops motives of the Selous Scouts. The White population were thus subject to brainwashing by government propaganda which included a great deal of disinformation.

This partly explains the reluctance of many Old Rhodesians to accept this less than salubrious aspect of the fight to maintain the status quo.

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Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England. He writes on his blog where this article was originally published. 

Note

[1] A key aspect of the chemical warfare programme concerns its funding. Researchers have pinpointed Britain as the point of origin, from where the money was funnelled through Saudi Arabia and South Africa before reaching Rhodesia. The “British-betrayed-us” mantra by Old Rhodesians forgets that the “Kith and Kin” attitude remained strong until the end when the British and the government of Ian Smith realised that the financial and manpower burdens imposed by the war on the Rhodesian state, made it impossible to continue. The emigration of Whites who wanted to avoid compulsory service, sanctions, as well as the moral contradictions inherent in maintaining a racial state, made its continuation impossible.

Featured image: Emblem of the Selous Scouts Special Forces unit of the Rhodesian Security Forces. Although nominally part of the Rhodesian Army, the Scouts were directly under the control of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) and not the Rhodesian Army. (Photo is from the author)

Twitter, the Censor and Explainer Controller for the Deep State, removed a tweet from White House Covid adviser Dr. Scott Atlas who reported accurately that the masks people are wearing do not prevent the transmission of Covid-19.

As I have reported to you from the beginning, the only mask available to the public that provides protection against Covid is a N95 mask.  Even this mask does not provide 100% protection.  The masks people are wearing provide zero protection.  

This is simply a fact. Dr. Atlas knows it as does every one familiar with masks, including Fauci at NIH and Redfield at CDC.  Indeed, both Fauci and Redfield along with the World Health Organization originally advised people not to wear masks.  If the masks people are wearing were effective—and they are not, just look at the containers they come in which do not say that they protect against viruses—there would be no point for masks that are effective such as N95.

A N95 mask fits tightly and, is engineered to prevent the transmission of virus and bacteria along with other pathogens.  A N95 masks restricts breathing more than the pretend masks that people are wearing. It is difficult to wear one for very long.  These masks, now that they are available, are worn by medical personnel treating Covid patients.  Those who wear them have to take breaks to avoid oxygen depletion.

Allan Smith, possibly simply an uninformed NBC News reporter, but more likely a person who needs to hold on to his job by accusing Trump and his advisor of false and misleading content that violates Twitter policy, used an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services to contradict President Trump and his advisor. See this.

CNN, of course, joined in.  Uninformed CNN reporters Jeremy Diamond and Paul LeBlanc also gave approval to Twitter’s censorship of a White House advisor and said, falsely, that both Atlas and Trump’s claims about masks were “misleading information” that Twitter needed to remove. See this.

Think about this for a minute.  It is an established fact that any mask less than a N95 offers ZERO protection from the transmission of Covid-19, yet Big Pharma shills Fauci and Redfield and NBC and CNN presstitutes contract the known fact and claim that ineffectual masks are effectual.

What is going on here? Obviously, Fauci, Redfield, and the presstitutes are playing the fear factor, but why?  Why deceive people into believing that masks that do not protect do protect? 

The only answer to this question that I can think of is that fear is needed for mass vaccination, and the fear has to be kept alive until Big Pharma has a vaccine approved.

In other words, the answer is money for the pharmaceutical companies.  Every company has to be in on the money.  According to reports there are four pharmaceutical companies, each with its own vaccine.  So fear is kept alive until all four vaccines are available.

Another reason for the false presstitute information about masks is to try to discredit Trump, thereby hurting his reelection chances, by presenting him as a person who gives advice dangerous to people’s heath and lives. The Democrats want the economy locked down so that the economic hardship is blamed on Trump and prevents his reelection.

We are told by presstitutes that Covid cases are exploding, but we are not told that this is the result of a test, declared faulty by its inventor, that produces false positives.  The rise in cases merely reflects the deficiencies of the test.

We are not told this, because the propaganda about the rise in cases adds to the fear and willingness to accept questionable vaccines.  

The “Covid pandemic” is about money, not a public health threat, unless, of course, they have a more potent Covid virus to release this winter.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blogsite, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Let no one say — without a vigorous challenge — that the so-called ‘new normal’ is not profoundly ab-normal, absurd, hideous, and intolerable. That conscious and concerned men and women of the world’s self-perceived beacon of freedom, liberty, and civil rights backed by the Rule of Law (we might suppose), are not being roundly castigated and marginalized for exercising the foremost important freedom. Speech and thought, by close association, are now under a sustained and coordinated attack from saboteurs in Reagan’s Shining City upon a Hill. The nation’s schools and universities have been infiltrated by advocates of an ideology so pervasive, powerful and alluring that all who come under its spell are at risk of being rendered docile automatons emptied of any faculty of reason.

Consider New York University, a citadel of liberalism and progressive thought in the heart of a metropolis known globally for its liberal policies. All pretense of progressive thought, speech, and policymaking are now crumbling, and the guiding (neo)liberal agenda is being shown for what it is. This is nothing new. Fascism is friendly only to those who acquiesce to its demands. The academy has been captured and soon too will the Republic as the trend continues. In a world where all organic and inorganic things are forced into the neoliberal meat grinder for packing, distribution, and sale, any speech act perceived to threaten this new order will be marked for marginalization. Where they fail to offer clear market value for this new political economy, speech and thought that depart from received neoliberal wisdom will be cancelled.

A world-renowned scholar and public intellectual of the first rank, Mark Crispin Miller is the latest notable figure caught in the crosshairs of the cult of cancel culture at NYU. As Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, Miller is under attack for doing what academics are supposed to do — present alternative views and evidence that sets young and inquiring minds on the path of critical studies. A peculiar post-9/11 passion for money, power, and control has, however, seemingly rendered respect for science and empirical evidence passé and contemptible. In a course titled Mass Persuasion and Propaganda, Miller surveys the history of propaganda from modern to contemporary society and expounds the danger of leaving this power in the hands of the few to frame and manage the objective world, manipulate the masses, inculcate ‘correct’ beliefs and behaviors, and mobilize populations to blind action. As a result of Miller’s efforts to broaden awareness of these issues, calls, lodged by a single disgruntled student, have risen that he be relieved of his position.

Open enquiry is now strictly taboo among adherents of the prevailing cancel culture. The times they are changin’, and the lot of us are being conditioned, too, by mainstream media, culture, and communication, to adopt the scripts of the new order outlining how to behave properly, and to accept its claims that we are living in the “new normal.” This new normal is a time and place that grants no open forum to independent thought, to critical inquiry, to physical science and social science unswayed by the corrupting influences of big money keen to surveil and commodify  our social, political, economic, biological, and religious existence.

Professor Miller, along with countless other academics, researchers, and journalists around the world, are under threat for encouraging their students and fellow citizens to engage with the alternative perspectives on this current crisis. Since the full picture of such a pressing issue as Covid-19 is unlikely to appear in corporate mainstream sources, citizens keenly aware of manifold media deceptions — past and present — are forced to turn to independent expert source material. This is the crime Miller is accused of — encouraging budding scholars to take hold of and contemplate the wider story surrounding this latest global deception. It is clear that Miller and a growing number of conscientious citizens across the world recognize the threat that restricted fields of discourse can pose to human and civil rights, agency, and the sovereignty of human beings and nations.

Indeed, like other academics concerned about the absence of objective truth in reporting, Miller’s approach reflects attempts in a conference of “top epidemiologists, economists, and journalists,” who gathered from October 1-4 “to discuss the global emergency created by the unprecedented use of state compulsion.” Their Great Barrington Declaration is a product of “infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists” who “have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.”

Screenshot from GBD

Sadly, although the conference was a noble effort by professionals to address the damaging effects of corporate-state coercion on the masses, the Great Barrington Declaration also appears to tacitly accept as inevitable the global march toward a great techno-feudal dystopia. By failing to confront the other outstanding social issues, the Declaration implicitly normalizes corporate-state sponsored predation, the profit-motive guiding policy for the ever-increasing number of childhood vaccinations, the widespread reliance upon the inappropriate and faulty PCR test, the practice of constraining the freedoms of perfectly healthy people, and of banishing the elderly to solitary nursing home confinement.

The Declaration fails to acknowledge the huge influence that tax-exempt foundations, masquerading as charities, wield over global health policies emanating from such institutions as the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It fails to address the potential inherent within Big Tech and Big Data contact tracing applications to usurp the constitutional rights of citizens. It fails to confront the Orwellian biometric health passports proposed to herd populations, manage movement, and to control the major gates of access to education, work, food, and housing. The Declaration fails to address the damage that mandated masks do to the physical and mental health of perfectly healthy people and the social and communal bonds they maintain.

As a graduate student in the early 1990s contending with duties in the regular Army and the post-traumatic stress of a recent deployment in a preemptive invasion of Panama, I was invited to engage with Professor Miller’s collection, Boxed In: The Culture of TV (Northwestern University Press, 1988). Among its many illuminating essays are key lessons for students and citizens concerning the unwarranted influence of mass media to inculcate values and behaviors that free and fully-informed people would very likely find revolting. Like my comrades, I learned the hard way, from experience, that the mediated world we encounter in TV, radio, and the press is merely a representation of the power of the invisible hand of the market.

While stationed in Panama, in the years leading up to the invasion, I noticed the television and print media retooling of General Manuel Noriega’s public persona. As President George H.W. Bush’s PR campaign against Noriega unfolded, more overt signs of a looming international crisis began emerging as well. Picking through magazines at the PX on Corozal, I noticed how the February, 1988 cover of Newsweek would confirm the reasons for recasting Noriega in a negative light. The rendering had become explicit. Corporate journalism framed an image of the general’s face on the cover with the headline: “Drugs, Money and Death: The Sordid Story of Panama’s Outlaw Dictator.” A scowl and look of suspicion expressed in his pockmarked face, shaded slightly by the brim of his cap, reinforced the connotations of each word in the headline. Time followed Newsweek in March with an equally emotive cover. A cropped portrait of the general’s scarred face, his dark eyes gazing into space, serious and aloof and across his forehead: “The Drug Thugs: Panama’s Noriega proves they’re a law unto themselves.” Since public awareness of Noreiga’s working relationship with Bush had already been well established for years prior, the advertising and telegraphing of impending state belligerence became all the more obvious.

In Boxed In, Miller observes that, “Like propaganda generally, advertising must…pervade the atmosphere; for it wants, paradoxically, to startle its beholders without really being noticed by them. Its aim is to jolt us, not ‘into thinking’, as a Brechtian formulation, but specifically away from thought, into a quasi-automatic action” (1988, p. 11). Nowhere was this mass media attempt to jolt the public into quasi-automatic action more evident than in Bush’s curtain call for Just Cause. Not too many months after the invasion of Panama, I began preparing my bags for a possible deployment to Saudi Arabia for Operation Desert Shield/Storm.

After Saddam Hussein’s annexation of Kuwait in early August 1990, the mainstream demonization of the Iraqi leader moved into high gear.

My own memories of the mayhem and corpses in Panama City began reemerging in early August during Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, mediated now by CNN piped into my workplace. Newsweek arrived too with its cover story shortly thereafter — its front page adorned with a mugshot of a menacing Hussein and a headline questioning whether he could be stopped. Image and text demanded audience members prepare for “The War of the Future,” as my colleagues and I tried to prepare our minds to grasp the reasons behind the sudden rush to conflict. American mainstream media stoked passions throughout the summer, yet failed to move public opinion to favor invasion. In response to this failure, October saw Nayirah, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti school girl, offer her testimonial evidence of the savage Iraqi forces leaving babies in Kuwaiti hospitals to die on a cold floor. Incubators, we were told, were evidently so central to the success of invading Iraqi hordes that Kuwaiti newborns had to be dispossessed of them.

The effect of Nayirah’s testimony on American public opinion was “quasi-automatic” as outrage against Hussein’s savagery erupted across the nation. Advertising, as Miller cites a Coca-Cola executive, “is message assimilation — the respondent must be shown to behave in some way that proves they have come to accept the message, not merely received it” (1988, p. 11). Some years later, after American bombs, missiles, and cannon fire produced the necessary destruction — the corpses of several thousand Iraqis and the compliance of Saddam Hussein — we learned that Hill & Knowlton, an American PR firm, had been employed to develop a marketing strategy for the invasion. The script given to Nayirah (in actuality, the daughter of the Kuwait Ambassador to the US), the expert stage direction, and her live performance on TV could not have been more deserving of an Academy Award.

Miller notes that good advertising is, in effect, a Pavlovian project that requires audiences not to be confronted head-on and in an alien context since a direct and vivid approach might awaken us from the receptive trance that ads put us in and cause us to meditate on their deeper meanings (1988, p. 11). The ad must totally envelope the audience and, like a Broadway play, make it one with the story. Awareness of this devious PR campaign that saw no difference between higher corporate profits and higher body counts in war made recurring nightmares of Panama all the more vivid. An effective ad campaign to capture the public mind must come down on everybody like the scents of spring, ‘as though through the air they breath, and as naturally’; for, once isolated and deliberately interpreted, an ad will betray not only the devices that may enable it to work, but certain larger truths about the system that requires it, and that (therefore) require you not think about it. (Miller, 1988, p. 11)

The same strategies used against the US population in this Pavlovian project to foment wars against people and nations, are bound to reveal themselves in this present war against pathogens. In his course on propaganda and mass persuasion, Professor Miller’s intellectual exercise threatens to awaken students to the manner in which the mainstream Covid-19 narratives are effectively “isolated and deliberately interpreted,” and allow analysis of the wider story that might reveal “larger truths about the system” that the leading myth-makers urge us “not to think about.”

In many ways, Miller’s analysis throughout Boxed In reveals an ironic situation for his critics who have boxed themselves into a safe space showing no way out of this self-imposed mental dungeon. Sign the petition in support of Professor Miller, and help free from their self-imposed darkness the ideologues who are acting to set limits on thought and speech.

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Security Council Res. 2231 (adopted July 14, 2015 — effective January 16, 2016) affirmed the landmark JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran unanimously.

It also retained an arms embargo on Iran for five years, a provision its ruling authorities accepted and adhered to voluntarily.

On Sunday October 18, the arms embargo expired, Iran now legally free to buy and sell conventional weapons.

Trump regime attempts to extend the embargo failed.

In August, Security Council members overwhelmingly defeated its aim to maintain it in place indefinitely.

Only the Dominican Republic supported the scheme. Other SC members rejected the idea — by voting against it or abstaining.

Even Britain, France and Germany — E3 JCPOA signatories — refused to go along with denying Iran its legal right to buy and sell conventional weapons.

Unlike the US, NATO and Israel, the Islamic Republic wants them solely for defense, not offense.

Iran prioritizes world peace, stability, and cooperative relations with other countries — polar opposite how the West and Jewish state operate.

Last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif said once the UN arms embargo is lifted in October,

“we will be able to satisfy our needs with the help of countries with which we have strategic relations, for example, Russia and China,” adding:

“We can provide for ourselves. We can even export weapons.”

“(W)hen necessary, we can buy from these countries. I doubt that secondary US sanctions will be an obstacle for them.”

As of Sunday, Russia intends to cooperate with Iran militarily.

Weeks earlier, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said the following:

“New opportunities will emerge in our cooperation with Iran after the special regime imposed by UN Security Council Resolution 2231 expires on October 18,” adding:

Russian relations with Iran will have “nothing to do with the unlawful and illegal actions of the US (regime), which is trying to intimidate the entire world.”

“(W)e are not afraid of US sanctions. We are used to them. It will not affect our policy in any way,” adding:

“Our cooperation with Iran is multifaceted. Defense cooperation will progress depending on the two countries’ needs and mutual willingness.”

Separately, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said

“(t)here is no such thing as an arms embargo against Iran.”

“The Security Council, when it was adopting (Res 2231) settled the nuclear issue for Iran, and this was adopted by consensus under the Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter,” adding:

“The Security Council in that resolution said that the supply of arms to Iran and from Iran would be subject to consideration by the Security Council and that on the 18th of October, 2020 this regime of sales to Iran would stop.”

“There is no embargo, and there would be no limitations whatsoever after the expiration of this timeframe established by the Security Council.”

Russia and China are likeminded on relations with Iran, including issues related to normalized trade and arms sales.

The South China Morning Post earlier said the Sino/Iran “relationship (is) built on trade, weapons and oil.”

On Wednesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the following:

The “oppressive (arms) embargo (on Iran ends) on Sunday.”

Henceforth, “we can buy and sell weapons, and this was one of the measures taken by the Government of Prudence and Hope.”

Separately, Iran’s parliamentary National Security Committee head Mojtaba Zolnouri said the following:

“Countries which are parties to the JCPOA must formally announce the lifting of arms restrictions, in accordance with the JCPOA, and let the world know that the Islamic Republic of Iran is allowed to buy and sell arms.”

US threats to try blocking Russia and China from selling arms to Iran were hollow.

On Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova explained the following:

In 2015, the “Security Council did not impose a weapons embargo on Iran in 2015. Tehran voluntarily undertook a number of restrictions.”

“It was done in the interests of the soonest successful outcome of the talks on the (JCPOA) to settle the situation around the Iranian nuclear program.”

JCPOA signatories “knew from the very beginning” that voluntary restrictions Iran accepted “had nothing to do with” consummating the nuclear deal.

Trump regime “maximum pressure” on Iran — economic, financial, and medical terrorism by another name — failed to achieve its aims.

The same goes for US sanctions war on China, Russia, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, and other countries.

Used as weapons of war by other means — a UN Charter breach — they only achieve hardships on ordinary people in targeted countries, while hardening their leadership to resist US war by other means.

On Thursday, Iran’s UN envoy Mohammad Zareian slammed Trump regime “unilateral, illegal” economic terrorism, its “mass violation of human rights” that harms millions of people worldwide.

Farcical US elections when held change nothing.

Nonviolent resistance alone is the antidote to its war on humanity at home and abroad. There’s no other way.

A Final Comment

On Sunday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry released the following statement in response to the arms embargo’s expiration, saying:

“As of (Sunday, October 18), all restrictions on the transfer of arms, related activities and financial services to and from the Islamic Republic of Iran, and all prohibitions regarding the entry into or transit through territories of the United Nations Member States previously imposed on a number of Iranian citizens and military officials are all automatically terminated.”

“In one of the JCPOA’s innovations, the definitive and unconditional termination of arms restrictions and travel bans requires no new resolution, nor does it require any statement or any other measure by the Security Council.”

“Therefore, as of today, the Islamic Republic of Iran may procure any necessary arms and equipment from any source without any legal restrictions and solely based on its defensive needs, and may also export defensive armaments based on its own policies.”

“It should be underlined here that rejecting imposition in any form is the cornerstone of Iran’s foreign policy.”

“Therefore, the imposition of any restriction on any field—including finance, the economy, energy, and armaments—has never been recognized by Iran. At the same time, Iran’s defense doctrine is premised on strong reliance on its people and indigenous capabilities.”

“This doctrine has been and will continue to be the principal driver behind all measures of the Islamic Republic of Iran in maintaining its strong defensive power. Unconventional arms, weapons of mass destruction and a buying spree of conventional arms have no place in Iran’s defense doctrine.”

“The country’s deterrence stems from native knowledge and capability, as well as our people’s power and resilience. In contemporary history Iran—despite its power disparity—has never started a war. Regrettably lucrative weapon deals—concluded mainly between Western powers and some regional countries—have contributed greatly to, and aggravated commission of, war crimes in the region, including the ongoing aggression against the Yemeni people.”

“Notwithstanding the failed attempts by the US to withhold and eliminate Iran’s benefits from Resolution 2231, Member States are required to make their laws and regulations compatible with the resolution, which “invites Member States to give due regard to these changes.”

“The Islamic Republic of Iran draws the attention of all Member States to the unambiguous provisions of the Resolution 2231 and its relevant timetables.”

“The United States, whose unlawful and malign subterfuge in its attempts to further violate a UNSC Resolution have been categorically rejected several times in the past three months by the Security Council, must abandon its destructive approach vis-à-vis Resolution 2231; return to full compliance with its commitments under the United Nations Charter; stop violating international law and ignoring international order, and cease further destabilization in the West Asia region.”

“It is evident that any measure against the provisions of UNSC Resolution 2231—particularly paragraph 1 and its defined timetables—will amount to a material breach of the resolution and the purposes of the JCPOA. In that event, the Islamic Republic of Iran reserves the right to take any necessary countermeasures to secure its national interests.”

Note: In stark contrast to the US, NATO, and Israel, Iran fosters peace, stability, and mutual cooperation with other nations.

Because of its independence, free from US control, its threatened by dark forces from abroad and forced to defend itself against possible aggression if launched.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Diana Johnstone’s memoir Circle in the Darkness is immensely absorbing. It recounts events one is familiar enough from reading the papers or watching the news, but then it takes you from what you think you know to what you need to know. Is it “radical” to expect that if “regular” people are told the truth, the natural process of democracy will set things right?

This conviction reflects the values of her childhood, when her parents worked for FDR’s New Deal in Washington. Her father actually worked for Henry Wallace – who remembers him? Or maybe it’s her Minnesotan roots, where her family stems from: the state had voted for the Socialist Eugene Debb way back when…

Maybe this is why she was outraged by the Vietnam War during her graduate studies at the University of Minnesota. Her organizing finds much local support. She actually puts together a delegation to participate in the peace talks in Paris, called the People’s Commission of Inquiry into the Solution to the War in Vietnam.

But then again, Minnesotan “family values” prove disappointing because she is “a single mother” at the time. And earlier, when she had tried to enter the world of journalism in Washington, she had been summarily dismissed. Similarly, when she proposed getting her Ph.D. in history in Minnesota, she was told that her prospects would be dim, and French Literature was more suitable to her gender.

She writes her dissertation on the novels of Andre Malraux – but then, rather unexpectedly, she decides to leave. Her destination is Paris. Her father had studied in Paris and Shanghai, so the dream of faraway places had always been present. Besides, the real dream had not been teaching, (that’s what you do because the schedule accommodates raising a child) – but writing. At the time of her failed attempt to enter the journalist profession, she had encountered and married a journalist. This took her to Rome and Bonn, where she experienced the glamorous life of embassy parties. But the marriage didn’t hold, and what she took from the experience was that “mainstream” journalism is about staying within the bounds of official sources.

So now, after a stint “back home on the range” she is off to Paris under her own steam, limited resources to support herself and her daughter, but undaunted and ready to do what it takes.

In Paris she becomes part of the lively American expat scene, participates in anti- war events, and writes a book on the history of Vietnam.   But genuine knowledge, she discovers, counts for naught without the contacts needed to publish the results – preferably less challenging results. The manuscript she puts away in a trunk is discovered years later, eaten by worms.

She had been observing the French version of the 60s, particularly the “Revolution” of 1968. But even though the whole country comes to a standstill as the result of a general strike there is a basic dichotomy of purpose. While the students enact primarily a cultural revolution on the Paris barricades, the labor movement, headed by the French Communist Party, is intent on improving workers’ conditions.

The realities of “making a living” catch up with her as well, and she is hired to the English desk of Agence France Presse. Once again, she observes the inevitable triage of information that occurs before disclosure to the public. This prompts her to write her own Newsletter, titled “The Owl” because she has chosen to work on the night shift to facilitate the exigencies of child care. Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky are early subscribers to her Newsletter.

As the 70s develop, the focus shifts from the Vietnam War to human rights, and this seems to mean primarily human rights in the Soviet Union. Diana Johnstone is tasked to translate Andrei Sakharov’s statement for the Russian Helsinki Group in 1976. He is the scientist who had been responsible for the success of the Hydrogen bomb, and then had become a dissident, and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975. However, none of this could have happened without Soviet cooperation: “Leonid Brezhnev was making every effort to promote “détente.” However, the Western media chose to highlighted the “plight” of the “Refuseniks” instead, i.e., the Soviet Jews presumably forbidden to emigrate. It turns out that the Soviets were concerned about the “brain drain” such emigration would create, and merely imposed a “tax” to recoup the advanced education invested in those now interested in leaving.

But such an evaluation clearly identifies Diana Johnstone as NOT a member of the Anglo-American Press Club. The French authorities are suspicious: is she “an American dissident?” Luckily, James Weinstein, the founder of In These Times, is interested in supporting the ideals of the American Left. In the hope of finding inspiration in Eurocommunism, he invites Diana Johnstone to become their fulltime European correspondent.

One of her assignments takes her to Italy. The powerful communist movement which had fought against Mussolini’s fascists is not exactly favored by Italy’s American liberators. As she explains, the CIA allied itself with the remnants of the fascist elements, and supported the Christian Democrats. In response, a “revolutionary romanticism,” in the guise of the Red Brigades, declares war on the “imperialist state of the multinationals.” One of their “actions” is the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, Chairman of the Christian Democratic Party. The stalemate during the negotiations of his release between the Italian Government, which seems half-hearted, and his uncompromising captors results in his “execution,” presumably by the Red Brigades.

These extreme events in Italy, also echoed in a different style by the German Baader-Meinhof Band, are the last gasp of the ambitious revolutionary hopes of the 60s. In Paris it is the intellectuals, as always, who set the pace. But now Paris becomes the seat of “new philosophers.” Taking left sides in the Cold War or militating for third world liberation by the “old philosophers” like Jean-Paul Sartre is history.

As the 80s are ushered in, “social democracy was pretty much taken for granted on the continent… the only obstacle to universal democratic socialism was the negative image of Stalinism.” Gorbachev’s pledging the needed reforms (perestroika) to set that record straight is promising. But “mysterious” assassinations of the Palestinian negotiator Dr. Issa Sartawi and Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme undermine hopeful peace prospect. Diana Johnstone concludes that their assassinations are not acts of terrorism, but liquidations: by the Israeli Mossad in the case of Dr. Sartawi, and the Swedish security police in the case of Olof Palme.

But what about Willy Brandt in Germany and Francois Mitterrand in France, both confirmed socialists? Theirs proves an uphill battle in a world dominated by Maggie Thatcher’s and Ronald Reagan’s economic monetarist policies. Willy Brandt “Ostpolitik” is undermined and in France “Capital began to flee and nationalizations were stalled by litigation… a new policy of budgetary rigor was adopted.” Later under Macron, the spontaneous resistance by the “Yellow Wests” against more austerity measures is brutally repressed by the police.

The West’s “free market” policies also have a military component. NATO (The North Atlantic Treaty Organization) had been formed in 1949 “to keep the Soviets out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” When President Reagan went ahead with the plan to deploy nuclear-armed cruise and Pershing II missiles in Europe in 1983, the Germans rally in opposition: the threatening East-West confrontation is likely to be fought out on their soil. General Bastian and young Petra Kelly, co-chair of the Green Party, are the “odd couple” representing the full range of the German popular movement.

The peace movement could claim victory when President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev shake hands in Reykjavik in 1987.  But Gorbachev’s trading of East Germany against the promise that NATO would not “move an inch” past the new border subsequently demonstrates that he was hoodwinked. And the exhilaration of the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 turned into West Germany pretty much “annexing” East Germany into its own neoliberal system.

Still, these events reorient the goals of the Left in Europe. This also questions Diana Johnstone’s usefulness to In These Times. Her next job is as the press secretary for the new Green Group in the European Parliament.  Her six-year stint observing European politics from this front-row seat is enlightening. Since peace work is her primary interest, the fact that the usually contentious Greens unite to oppose “Desert Storm” in Iraq is gratifying, but beside the point. This is also the case in their opposition to the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, which “gave vital decision-making power on the choice of investments to private financial institutions.”

Basically, the European Parliament has more or less symbolical advisory but no legislative power. Just the same, the media love the antics of Dany Cohn-Bendit “the red” (because of his red hair, not his politics). He used to be the inspiration of the 1968 Paris rebellion, and now is elected to “represent” the Greens. This, for Diana Johnstone, is the last straw. “That evening, by a single vote, the Green Group lost its soul.” She quits.

In 1996 and 1997 Diana Johnstone sets out in her little Opel to what is now Former Yugoslavia. The contested secession of Slovenia and Croatia had already taken place in 1991, and the fighting had shifted to Bosnia. The highly publicized massacres of Srebrenica had taken place in 1995, followed by the American-sponsored Dayton Peace Agreement. But this did not really resolve the issues of the large Serb enclaves in Croatia and Bosnia. And then there was the looming issue of Kosovo and the bombing of Belgrade in 1999.

Surely venturing into this literal and political minefield, taking the time to interview people on the ground, and doing diligent research qualified Diana Johnstone as a foremost “expert” on the issues of Yugoslavia? Yet when she writes two long articles on her findings, her former journal In These Times refuses to publish them, as does the reputedly “left” magazine, The Nation. Evidently, the “liberal” leaders Bill Clinton and Tony Blair had the power to set in stone the “humanitarian intervention” version of the narrative. And for that they needed the atrocities of the convenient “villain” Milosevic: but then was he not also the last Socialist holdout in the region?

Diana Johnstone’s expertise is beside the point, because the job of the “media,” as has been eloquently demonstrated by her friends Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, is “manufacturing consent.” After all, as Walter Lippman had argued earlier, are they not properly called upon to support our leaders whose onerous task it is to run the world? NATO, an organization in search of a mission since the dismantling of the Soviet Union needs salvaging. And if I may add a question of my own, what about all those newly acquired “Stans” in Central Asia, which are reeking with oil and gas? Where should the pipes conveying the golden liquid be laid? Should the American base Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo not oversee the job?

From the perspective of this “big picture,” who cares about the locals who happen to be in the way, whether in Afghanistan or Yugoslavia? As to the “common” people Diana Johnstone counts on to exercise their democratic judgment, do they even know where Kandahar or Srebrenica are? The “mainstream news” will happily take on the job of entertaining them with stories of “saving women” in Afghanistan or, alternatively, “mass rape of women” in Yugoslavia. So, when her book, Fools’ Crusade, is published in 2002, is it any surprise that she is taken to task for being a “genocide denier” regarding the “well established facts” of Srebrenica?

As she puts it, writing her kind of “truths” is “more like sending a message across the sea in a bottle.” This is also true of her Memoir. But are we prepared to read the message in the bottle which spells out the increasingly alarming “truth” of our own ignorance? For example, on the occasion of attending a session of the International Criminal Court in Tripoli in 2007, she writes positively about Muammar Ghaddafi. She states that he created “a functioning state out of a tribal society,” that he is generous in distributing the country’s oil revenues, that he is working on the task of creating an African Union – and perish the thought – its own currency?  This even questions the position of her erstwhile supporter Noam Chomsky.

And when the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon proclaims “the responsibility to protect” (R2P) in 2012, her reaction is unambiguous. The various interventions in the name of democracy and human rights against the likes of Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Muammar Ghaddafi of Libya, Bashar al Assad of Syria, Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine is but an exercise of “the West against the world.”

From her beginnings in the tradition of FDR and her father’s example of ethical commitment Diana Johnstone has been a “world watcher” from the independent perches she had managed to find for herself.  Rather than the beneficiary of “revelations” emanating from the likes of “Deep Throat” made famous during the Watergate scandal, she has stuck to “open sources and thoughtful analysis of known facts.” And as she witnesses the relentless advance of what she calls “the age of destruction,” the heading of her next to last chapter “It Can’t Go on Like This” is an urgent appeal for sanity.

But then her life-long commitment to contesting the “will to war” may “get her into bed” with some libertarian anti-war folks, and likely open to fatwas from doctrinaire Antifa purists. This happened to her Aussie namesake and fellow anti-war stalwart Caitlin Johnstone.  But here’s the rub. Caitlin Johnstone also offers a very hard “truth” to take: do we get it that if peace broke out, our lives in the West, based as they are on the proceeds of imperial plunder, would be in the toilet?

Is it the case then that we can’t have our cake and eat it too? Still, Diana Johnstone, having devoted her life to “telling the truth in an age of deceit,” as John Pilger salutes her, ends on a positive note: at least she has shown the way to the next generation of truth tellers.

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Galina Litvinov De Roeck was born in Bihach, Bosnia. Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from CUNY. Taught French, German and Russian language and literature at various institutions of higher learning, now retired. Published scholarly articles in her field. Memoir forthcoming in Spring.

Diana Johnstone is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

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Circle in the Darkness: Memoir of a World Watcher

Author: Diana Johnstone

Paperback: 444 pages

ISBN-10: 1949762130

ISBN-13: 978-1949762136

Publisher: Clarity Press, Inc. (February 1, 2020)

Click here to order.

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A hospital president and the director of the health commission in the northern Chinese city of Qingdao have been fired after China’s latest coronavirus outbreak, authorities said Thursday.

A brief notice on the Qingdao city government’s official microblog Thursday said Health Commission Director Sui Zhenhua and Deng Kai, president of Qingdao’s thoracic hospital to which the cases have been linked, were placed under further investigation. No other details were given.

Authorities ordered testing of all 9 million people in the city after a total of 12 cases, including those not displaying symptoms, were discovered over the weekend, accounting for China’s first local transmissions in about two months.

Similar mass testing campaigns have taken place after previous outbreaks. Testing began with “close contacts, close contacts of those close contacts and more casual contacts,” gradually expanding to all districts of the city, Qingdao’s health department said.

Qingdao is a major commercial harbor and industrial center known for electronics and the country’s most famous brewery, as well as the home of the Chinese navy’s northern fleet.

China, where coronavirus was first detected late last year, has largely eradicated the virus domestically but remains on guard against imported cases and a second wave of domestic transmission.

Qingdao on Wednesday reported more than 8 million tests have been conducted, with no additional cases discovered among the almost 5 million results returned.

On Thursday, the National Health Commission reported 11 new cases over the past 24 hours, 10 of them imported. The other case listed as asymptomatic was discovered Sept. 24 and had been recategorized as a confirmed case.

Hospitals were treating 240 people for COVID-19, with another 392 people being kept under observation in isolation for having tested positive without showing symptoms or for being suspected cases.

China has reported 4,634 deaths among 85,622 cases of the disease.

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Featured image: People enjoy sunset on a plank road at the Donghu Lake in Wuhan, capital of central China’s Hubei Province, March 18, 2020. No new infections of the novel coronavirus were reported on Wednesday in Wuhan, the epicenter of the epidemic, marking a notable first in the city’s months-long battle with the microscopic foe. (Xinhua/Shen Bohan)

The inevitable is happening before our eyes. The long predicted – and carefully curated – collapse of talks with the EU has happened as the die-hard Brexiteers who prorogued parliament and ejected long-standing members of the Conservative Party complete their mission.

In June last year Boris Johnson had promised to leave “Do or Die”. While everyone could see their strategy they watched him lie: “It is vital that we are prepared for a no-deal outcome if we are going to get the deal that we need. I don’t think that is where we are going to end up, I think it is a million-to-one against.”

Writing to colleagues yesterday with his usual bonhomie he talks of proceeding with “high hearts and complete confidence” to “embrace the alternative”.

To be clear the “alternative” is, according to figures based on modelling with the London School of Economics, likely to hit Britain’s economy three times harder in the long term than coronavirus, and will lead to queues at the border and shortages of fresh food and medicine.

One study predicts that by the year 2030, the UK economy could lose 14% of GDP or €57bn or €873 per head. The Scottish Government’s Chief Economist predicts No Deal could see a 6% fall in GDP by 2030, worth over £1,600 per person in Scotland and that an economic slowdown would be expected to double unemployment. Unemployment is forecast to rise by around 100,000.

These predictions were made BEFORE covid hit the economy.

This is stark economic harm foisted upon us. It’s shamelessly ideological, it’s profoundly undemocratic. It’s been pushed through against the wishes of the Scottish people and against the wishes of the UK parliament. We should be furious but we should not be surprised.

As the reality that Boris Johnson was using public money to pay Jennifer Arcuri for sex is exposed (she received £126,000 in taxpayers money), the levels of corruption, and the PM’s seeming impunity is astonishing.

Predictably the “collapse” of talks is blamed on the EU.

Let’s be clear, there have been no negotiations. As Philippe Lamberts MEP says:

Johnson lies. pic.twitter.com/CRCTqGRElZ

— Tim Walker (@ThatTimWalker) July 6, 2020

This is wildly irresponsible behavior by the government we didn’t elect. It’s completely unnecessary and it’s astonishing to watch it being played out with “high hearts and complete confidence” in the face of the coronavirus depression that is about to hit us all.

A No Deal Brexit means a No Deal Britain.

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Since his arrest nearly three years ago on trespassing charges after invading a nuclear submarine base with six others as part of a symbolic nuclear disarmament action, the Rev. Stephen M. Kelly has been held in a Brunswick, Georgia, county jail.

On Oct. 15, Kelly, a 71-year-old Jesuit priest, considered the leader of the group that came to be known as the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, was sentenced by a U.S. District Court judge to 33 months in jail, three years’ probation and restitution fees.

Because Kelly has already served 30 months and under federal law is owed 54 days a year of “good time credit,” he could essentially walk out of jail tomorrow.

“Father Kelly, it has been clear to me you are sincere in your beliefs,” said Judge Lisa Godbey Wood. “However, I would be remiss to discount the nature of the offense that we’re looking at today and the risk to safety that you knowingly undertook.”

Kelly described himself in a pre-sentence statement as a “prisoner of conscience for Christ,” and one who preaches against “the sin that flourishes in weapons of mass destruction.”

He is part of a group of Catholic pacifists who quietly and with little fanfare continue to undertake nonviolent action protesting nuclear weapons, which they say will lead to omnicide, or the destruction of the human race.

The group’s members say that they take their cues from Catholic teachings and the Bible, particularly the saying of the Prophet Isaiah:

“They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

Kelly and his collaborators believe their action was intended to prevent nuclear war. The only ordained member of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, Kelly said he was not concerned with the effectiveness of his protest, but rather with being faithful to his Christian calling.

“I answer to a higher authority in that my faith imperative, as outlined in the tenets of the Catechism, missions me to respond to the needs of the poor, oppressed, disenfranchised, in any locality and without any exclusion to those with felony record,” Kelly wrote in his statement to the judge.

He also repeatedly invoked the Nuremberg principles, enacted after World War II, which established international laws to stop crimes against humanity.

Kelly, who is a member of the Jesuits’ Western U.S. region, based in Oregon, has spent at least a decade behind bars, including six years in solitary confinement. He has refused to work during his confinement because in so doing he would support what he has called the prison industrial complex.

It remains to be seen whether Kelly will agree to probation or restitution as ordered by the court. He has indicated he will not.

In this 2018 file photo, peace activists hold a Catholic prayer service of repentance near the White House for the use of nuclear weapons on Japan during World War II. Kelly is considered the leader of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, a group that takes cues from the saying of the Prophet Isaiah: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” (CNS/Tyler Orsburn)

“He’s a fearless person,” said Patrick O’Neill, one of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7. “He’s not burdened by the normal self-constraints of most of us. He’s very driven in his effort to save the world from its own hand.”

On the night of April 4, 2018, the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 cut a padlock and later a security fence at Kings Bay Naval Base in Georgia, which houses six Trident submarines carrying hundreds of nuclear weapons. The intruders spilled blood on a Navy wall insignia, spray-painted an anti-war slogan on a walkway and banged on a monument to nuclear warfare.

More than an hour into their action they were apprehended and taken to jail. While four of the seven were released on bail, three refused the terms of the bail and remained in jail — none for as long as Kelly.

Last year, all seven were convicted of destruction of property on a naval installation, depredation of government property, trespass and conspiracy.

With the exception of Elizabeth McAlister, who was sentenced in June to time served, none of the other Plowshares activists has been sentenced, largely due to the coronavirus pandemic. Four of the seven have asked to postpone the sentencing because of a surge of COVID-19 sweeping through prisons across the U.S. O’Neill, another member of Plowshares 7, will be sentenced on Friday.

The Rev. Scott Santarosa, the provincial in charge of Jesuits West, said Kelly was commissioned to a peace and justice ministry.

“He’s really a wonderful guy,” Santarosa said. “I have great personal respect and affection for him.”

The two have communicated through postcards during the time Kelly was in jail.

His friend Dennis Apel, a Catholic worker who runs Beatitude House in Guadalupe, California, and who served as a character witness at the sentencing Thursday, said that upon Kelly’s release, he expected that the priest would go on an eight-day meditation retreat based on the spiritual practices of Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order.

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Featured image: Seven Catholics who call themselves the Kings Bay Plowshares are seen April 4, 2018, before they entered the Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in Georgia to protest nuclear weapons. On Oct. 15, Rev. Stephen M. Kelly (center, wearing glasses) a 71-year-old Jesuit priest, was sentenced to 33 months in jail, three years’ probation and restitution fees after he and others infiltrated a nuclear submarine base as part of a nuclear disarmament action. (CNS/Kings Bay Plowshares)

If, like me, you have the unfortunate habit of pointing out the dishonesty of the cases made for various wars, and you begin to persuade people that the wars are not actually for the eradication of the weapons of mass destruction that they proliferate, or the elimination of the terrorists that they generate, or the spreading of the democracy that they stifle, most people will soon ask “Well, then, what are the wars for?”

At this point, there are two common mistakes. One is to suppose there’s a single answer. The other is to suppose that the answers must all make rational sense. A basic response that I’ve given a gazillion times is that wars are for profit and power and pipelines, for control of fossil fuels and territories and governments, for electoral calculations, career advancement, and media ratings, payback for campaign “contributions,” for the inertia of the current system, and for an insane, sadistic lust for power and xenophobic malevolence.

We know that wars do not correlate with population density or resource scarcity or any of the factors used by some in U.S. academia to try to pin the blame for wars on their victims. We know that wars hardly overlap at all with the locations of the manufacture of weapons. We know that wars do correlate strongly with the presence of fossil fuels. But they correlate with something else as well that provides a different sort of answer to the question of what the wars are for: bases. I mean, we’ve all known for decades now that the latest U.S. permawars consist largely of coating various countries with bases, and that the goals include the maintenance of some number of permanent bases and over-sized embassy-fortresses. But what if the wars are not only motivated by the goal of new bases, but also driven in significant part by the existence of current bases?

In his new book, The United States of War, David Vine cites research by the U.S. Army showing that since the 1950s, a U.S. military presence has correlated with the U.S. military starting conflicts. Vine modifies a line from Field of Dreams to refer not to a baseball field but to bases: “If you build them, wars will come.” Vine also chronicles countless examples of wars begetting bases begetting wars begetting bases that not only beget yet more wars but also serve to justify the expense of more weapons and troops to fill the bases, while simultaneously producing blowback — all of which factors build momentum toward more wars.

Vine’s previous book was Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World. This one’s full title is The United States of War: A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, From Columbus to the Islamic State. It’s not, however, a detailed account of every U.S. war, which would require many thousands of pages. It’s also not a move away from the topic of bases. It’s a chronicle of the role bases have played and still play in the generation and conduct of wars.

There is, in the back of the book, a long list of U.S. wars, and of other conflicts that for some reason are not labeled wars. It’s a list that rolls on steadily from before the beginning of the United States to today, and that doesn’t pretend the wars against Native Americans didn’t exist or weren’t foreign wars. It’s a list that shows distant wars around the globe long-predating the completion of “manifest destiny” to the U.S. west coast, and shows small wars happening in numerous places at once and right through the occurrence of major wars elsewhere. It shows short wars and extremely long wars (such as a 36-year war against the Apache) that render obscene the constant announcements that the current war on Afghanistan is the longest U.S. war ever, and that render ridiculous the idea that the past 19 years of war is something new and different. While the Congressional Research Service once claimed the United States had been at peace for 11 years of its existence, other scholars say the correct number of peaceful years is zero thus far.

The mini-U.S. suburban paradises sprinkled across the globe as military bases are gated communities on steroids (and Apartheid). Their residents are often immune from criminal prosecution for their actions outside the gates, while the locals are only admitted within to do the yard work and cleaning. The travel and conveniences are great perks for military recruits and for budget-controlling Congress members touring base world. But the notion that the bases serve a protective purpose, that they do the opposite of what Eisenhower warned of, is just about upside down from reality. One of the main products of U.S. bases in other people’s countries is the bitter resentment that Vine reminds us pre-U.S. residents felt toward the British military occupation of North American colonies. Those British troops behaved lawlessly, and colonists registered just the sorts of complaints of looting, rape, and harassment that people who live near U.S. bases have been lodging for many decades now.

U.S. foreign bases, far from first sprouting up in 1898, were built by the budding new nation in Canada prior to the 1776 Declaration of Independence and grew rapidly from there. In the United States there are over 800 current or past military sites with the word “fort” in their names. They were military bases in foreign territory, as were countless other locations without “fort” in their current names. They preceded settler colonists. They provoked blowback. They generated wars. And those wars generated more bases, as the frontier was pushed ever outward. During the war for independence from Britain, as during most major wars that most people have heard of, the United States went right on waging numerous smaller wars, in this case against Native Americans in the Ohio Valley, western New York, and elsewhere. Where I live in Virginia, monuments and elementary schools and cities are named for people credited with expanding the U.S. empire (and Virginia’s empire) westward during the “American Revolution.”

Neither base construction nor war-making has ever let up. For the War of 1812, when the U.S. burned the Canadian Parliament, after which the British burned Washington, the U.S. built defensive bases around Washington, D.C., that did not serve their purpose remotely as well as most U.S. bases around the world do. The latter are designed for offense, not defense.

Ten days after the War of 1812 ended, the U.S. Congress declared war on the North African state of Algiers. It was then, not in 1898, that the U.S. Navy began establishing stations for its ships on five continents — which it used during the 19^th century to attack Taiwan, Uruguay, Japan, Holland, Mexico, Ecuador, China, Panama, and Korea.

The U.S. Civil War, fought because the North and South could agree only on endless expansion but not on the slave or free status of new territories, was not only a war between North and South, but also a war fought by the North against the Shoshone, Bannock, Ute, Apache, and Navajo in Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico — a war that killed, conquered territory, and forced thousands into a military-run concentration camp, Bosque Redondo, of the sort that would later inspire the Nazis.

New bases meant new wars beyond the bases. The Presidio in San Francisco was taken from Mexico and used to attack the Philippines, where bases would be used to attack Korea and Vietnam. Tampa Bay, taken from the Spanish, was used to attack Cuba. Guantanamo Bay, taken from Cuba, was used to attack Puerto Rico. And so on. By 1844, the U.S. military had access to five ports in China. The U.S.-British Shanghai International Settlement in 1863 was “Chinatown reversed” — much like U.S. bases across the globe right now.

Prior to WWII, even including much of the base expansion of WWI, many bases were not permanent. Some were, but others, including most in Central America and the Caribbean, were understood to be temporary. WWII  would change all that. The default status of any base would be permanent. This began with FDR’s trading of old ships to Britain in exchange for bases in eight British colonies — none of which had any say in the matter. Neither did Congress, as FDR acted alone, which created a horrible precedent. During WWII the United States built and occupied 30,000 installations on 2,000 bases on every continent.

A base in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, was supposedly for fighting the Nazis, but after Germany surrendered, the base construction was still completed. The oil was still there. The need for planes to land in that part of the globe was still there. The need to justify the purchase of more planes was still there. And the wars would be there as surely as rain follows storm clouds.

WWII was only ever partially ended. Huge military forces were kept permanently stationed abroad. Henry Wallace thought the foreign bases should be handed over to the United Nations. Instead he was quickly shuffled off the stage. Vine writes that hundreds of “Bring Back Daddy” clubs were formed across the United States. They didn’t all get their way. Instead the radical new practice was begun of shipping families off to join their patriarchs in permanent occupations — a move largely aimed at reducing rapes of local residents.

Of course, the U.S. military was significantly reduced after WWII, but not nearly to the extent it had been after other wars, and much of that was reversed as soon as a war could be started up in Korea. The Korean war led to a 40% increase in overseas U.S. bases. Some might call the war on Korea an immoral horror or a criminal outrage, while others would call it a tie or a strategic blunder, but from the point of view of base construction and the establishment of weapons-industry power over the U.S. government, it was, exactly as Barack Obama claimed during his presidency, a tremendous success.

Eisenhower spoke of the military industrial complex corrupting the government. One of many examples offered by Vine is that of U.S. relations with Portugal. The U.S. military wanted bases in the Azores, so the U.S. government agreed to support Portugal’s dictator, Portuguese colonialism, and Portuguese NATO membership. And the people of Angola, Mozambique, and Cape Verde be damned — or rather, let them build up hostility toward the United States, as a price to pay for keeping the United States “defended” by a global array of bases. Vine cites 17 cases of U.S. base construction displacing local populations around the world, a situation that exists side-by-side with U.S. text books claiming that the age of conquest is over.

NATO served to facilitate the construction of U.S. bases in Italy, which Italians might never have stood for had the bases been called “U.S. bases” rather than being marketed under the false banner of “NATO bases.”

Bases have continued to proliferate around the globe, with protests usually following. Protests against U.S. bases, often successful, often not successful, have been a major part of the past century of world history rarely taught in the United States. Even the well-known peace sign was first used at a protest of a U.S. military base. Now bases are spreading across Africa and up to the borders of China and Russia, while U.S. culture grows accustomed to ever more routine wars fought by “special forces” and robot planes, nuclear weapons are being built like mad, and militarism is unquestioned by either of the two big U.S. political parties.

If the wars are — in part — for the bases, shouldn’t we still ask what the bases are for? Vine recounts Congressional investigators concluding that many of the bases are kept in place by “inertia.” And he recounts various military officials indulging in fear (or, more accurately, paranoia) that sees aggressive war creation as a form of defense. These are both very real phenomena, but I think they depend on an overriding drive for global domination and profit, combined with a sociopathic willingness (or eagerness) to generate wars.

Something that I never think any book focuses on enough is the role of weapons sales. These bases create weapons customers — despots and “democratic” officials who can be armed and trained and funded and made dependent upon the U.S. military, making the U.S. government ever more dependent upon the war profiteers.

I hope every person on earth reads The United States of War. At World BEYOND War we have made working to close bases a top priority.

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Featured image: Housing on the Guantanamo base. (Source: WorldBeyondWar.org)

An October 9 Russia-brokered ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh (NK below) failed to take hold.

On Saturday, warring sides again agreed to halt fighting, effective Sunday, citing humanitarian reasons.

An Azeri Foreign Ministry statement said the following:

“The Republic of Azerbaijan and the Republic of Armenia have agreed to a humanitarian truce as of October 18th, 00h00 local time,” adding:

“This decision was taken following the statement of the presidents of the French Republic, the Russian Federation and the United States of America, representing the co-chair countries of the OSCE Minsk Group of 1 October 2020, the statement by the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group of 5 October, and in line with Moscow statement of 10 October 2020.”

On Saturday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held talks with his Armenian and Azeri counterparts by phone.

NK’s Foreign Ministry agreed to halt fighting.

It’s unclear if ceasefire will hold this time, not so far on Sunday.

Straightaway after it became effective, Armenia accused Azerbaijan of breaching it.

Armenia’s Defense Ministry spokeswoman Shusan Stepanyan said Azeri shelling and rocket fire continued early on Sunday, adding:

Pre-dawn, Azeri forces “launched mortar and artillery fire in the vicinity of Jabrayil, as well as the liberated villages on the Aras River.”

“There are no casualties among the personnel. Our units have taken adequate response measures.”

Baku had no immediate response to the charge.

Along with Russia, France and the US were involved in brokering ceasefire in NK on Saturday.

They co-chair the so-called Minsk Group. An Elysee Palace statement said the following:

“France will pay great attention to that and will remain engaged for a lasting end to hostilities and a quick start of credible negotiations.”

Since Azerbaijan initiated fighting on September 27, hundreds on both sides were killed, many others wounded, along with widespread destruction in NK.

As in all conflicts, defenseless civilians are caught in the crossfire, their lives and well-being jeopardized.

On Saturday, an Armenian Foreign Ministry statement said the following:

“We highly appreciate the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs and the direct participation of the French President (Macron) in reaching an agreement on a ceasefire on humanitarian grounds on October 17.”

“We believe that this agreement implements the joint statement adopted in Moscow, which expresses the need to introduce ceasefire verification parameters.”

Separately, Stepanyan reported calm alone “the line of contact” early Sunday.

NK’s presidential spokesman Vagram Pogosyan issued a similar statement.

Sergey Lavrov urged both warring sides to stick to ceasefire terms — in conversations with his Armenian and Azeri counterparts on Saturday by phone, according to a Russian Foreign Ministry statement.

He also urged both sides to begin serious negotiations to resolve differences and restore a durable peace — that requires compromises by warring parties.

Ceasefire terms call for exchange of prisoners and to allow for humanitarian aid to reach conflict areas.

What Russia proposed on October 9 remains in effect.

It calls for a gradual “(t)roop withdrawal from five districts at the first stage is to be complemented with the restoration of communications, economic ties and transport contacts, as well as the deployment of peacekeeping forces to guarantee the non-resumption of hostilities,” Lavrov explained.

Military observers rather than peacekeepers would be involved.

As a neutral party with good relations with both warring sides, Lavrov offered to provide them if their leadership agrees.

Turkish ties to Azerbaijan, training of their military forces, large-scale sales of Turkish heavy weapons to Baku, Ankara’s command and control involvement in fighting, along with supplying jihadist fighters against Armenia greatly fueled weeks of conflict.

In talks with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu, Lavrov failed to convince him that diplomacy alone can resolve fighting, he said, adding:

“We do not agree with the position that has been voiced by Turkey and enunciated on several occasions by President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan.”

“It is no secret. We cannot share statements to the effect that there is a military solution to the conflict and that it is acceptable.”

“Regrettably, Turkey has been able to do this, confirming that it will support any actions undertaken by Azerbaijan to solve this conflict, including military ones.”

Iran borders Armenia and Azerbaijan. On Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif discussed the situation in NK with his Azeri counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov.

According to Iran’s Foreign Ministry, he offered to help restore calm to NK and work toward achieving a durable peace — cooperatively with Minsk Group co-chair countries.

On Thursday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh expressed concern about rockets striking along its border areas, adding:

“Unfortunately, worrying reports have been received today in this regard, and that is not at all acceptable.”

Reportedly last week, missiles or rockets struck two Iranian villages, damage and at least one injury reported.

Khatibzadeh stressed that “(t)he security of our citizens living in border regions is the red line of our armed forces.”

Iran cannot “remain indifferent” to cross-border threats.

Clearly Tehran wants involvement in NK confined to helping both sides reach accommodation to halt fighting.

At the same time, its ruling authorities will act to protect the country’s security from foreign threats.

Major differences between warring parties are longstanding and deep-seated.

It’s unclear if ceasefire will hold this time or if conflict will continue.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Mark Lowcock of the United Nations gave an impassioned and apocalyptic speech on Thursday warning that 4 million Yemenis who had been receiving aid no longer are, because of a shortfall in donor contributions, and the country could be on the cusp of mass starvation.

There already is widespread malnutrition in Yemen, fueled by the war and more recently by the economic downturn of the coronavirus pandemic.

The humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen largely stems from the war on that country launched in 2015 by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which is backed to the hilt by the Trump administration. This is an American war, and Americans have Yemeni blood on their hands. A third of Yemen’s infrastructure has been destroyed, mostly by Saudi and UAE air strikes, and over 100,000 have been killed.

The United Arab Emirates, led by Mohammed Bin Zayed, is giving nothing to aid Yemen this year, despite its invasion having caused many of the problems the country is facing. The Saudis and Kuwaitis were also called out by Lowcock, and they did proffer new donations, with Kuwait offering $20 million. But the aid effort has fallen from being funded at over 60% of requested contributions to only 42%.

Lowcock, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said:

“Aid agencies are now reaching only about 9 million people a month in Yemen – that’s down from more than 13 million at the start of the year. What is to be the fate of the 4 million we no longer have the money to help? I said earlier that the window to prevent famine in Yemen is closing.”

The country’s problems are worsening along several fronts, Lowcock reported. The nationalist government of Abd-Rabbo Mansour Hadi, backed by Saudi Arabia, has long contested the insurgent Houthis or Helpers of God for the port of Hodeidah, which is key to the provisioning of the northern part of the country. Its fighters have been preventing gasoline from being offloaded, presumably in a bid to deprive the Houthis of the ability to use armored vehicles. The Houthis are local guerrillas from the northern Zaydi Shiite branch of Islam. Although they are often called “Iran-backed,” the Iranian involvement in Yemen is not extensive, and the Houthis have local Arab grievances. The billions of dollars of high-tech weaponry sold to the Saudis and the UAE for use against Yemen dwarfs the small Iranian contributions to the Houthis by orders of magnitude. Zaydis often feel that Saudi Arabia was trying to dominate them and convert them to its hardline Wahhabi sect.

Lowcock noted,

“Only 20,000 metric tons of commercial fuel entered Hudaydah in September – that’s the third lowest figure ever recorded, and 76 per cent less than in August. Currently, 20 commercial fuel ships are waiting to enter the port and discharge the equivalent of three months of imports.”

The problem is that it isn’t only the Houthis who are being starved of fuel, but ordinary people, who need it to drive to market or to hospital when ill, and farmers who need it to deliver their crops to towns.

Likewise, the basket-case condition of the country has driven the Yemeni rial down to 850 to the dollar, a historic low. This exchange rate makes it impossible for many Yemenis to afford imports, and much of the country’s food and other staples are imported

Famines are not typically caused by a complete lack of food, but by food prices being too high for people to afford to buy it. If the nationalist government cannot find a way to put back up the value of the rial, large numbers of people could starve.

The war is also getting worse, despite this week’s prisoner exchange between the Houthis and the nationalists.

Lowcock warned,

“There are now 47 active front lines across Yemen – the most ever recorded. Over several recent weeks, the heaviest clashes have occurred in Hudaydah, Marib and Al Jawf.”

This year, another 150,000 people were displaced from their homes by the fighting, 80% to homeless shelters, bringing the total in the country to a million. The country’s population is about 30 million.

Last month, the UN announced that it was forced to slash aid to 300 medical facilities in Yemen, after a third of humanitarian programs in the country were closed in spring-summer this year.

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Featured image is Creative Commons/Felton Davis

First published on August 23, 2020

If we step back from the details of daily headlines around the world and try to make sense of larger patterns, the dominant dynamic defining world geopolitics in the past three years or more is the appearance of a genuine irregular conflict between the two most formidable powers on the planet—The Peoples’ Republic of China and the United States of America. Increasingly it’s beginning to look as if some very dark global networks are orchestrating what looks to be an updated rerun of their 1939-1945 World War.   The powers that be periodically use war to gain major policy shifts.

On behalf of the Powers That Be (PTB), World War II was orchestrated by the circles of the City of London and of Wall Street to maneuver two great obstacles—Russia and Germany—to wage a war to the death against each other, in order that those Anglo-Saxon PTB could reorganize the world geopolitical chess board to their advantage. It largely succeeded, but for the small detail that after 1945, Wall Street and the Rockefeller brothers were determined that England play the junior partner to Washington. London and Washington then entered the period of their global domination known as the Cold War.

That Anglo-American global condominium ended, by design, in 1989 with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union by 1991.

Around this time, with the onset of the Bill Clinton presidency in 1992, the next phase– financial and industrial globalization– was inaugurated. With that, began the hollowing out of the industrial base of not only the United States, but also of Germany and the EU. The cheap labor outsourcing enabled by the new WTO drove wages down and destroyed one industry after the next in the industrial West after the 1990s. It was a necessary step on the path to what G.H.W. Bush in 1990 called the New World Order. The next step would be destruction of national sovereignty everywhere. Here the USA was the major obstacle.

“A little help from our friends…”

For the PTB, who owe no allegiance to nations, only to their power which is across borders, the birth of the World Trade Organization and their bringing China in as a full member in 2001 was intended as the key next step. At that point the PTB facilitated in China the greatest industrial growth by any nation in history, possibly excepting Germany from 1871-1914 and USA after 1866. WTO membership allowed Western multinationals from Apple to Nike to KFC to Ford and VW to pour billions into China to make their products at dirt-cheap wage levels for re-export to the West.

One of the great mysteries of that China growth is the fact that China was allowed to become the “workshop of the world” after 2001, first in lower-skill industries such as textiles or toys, later in pharmaceuticals and most recently in electronics assembly and production. The mystery clears up when we look at the idea that the PTB and their financial houses, using China, want to weaken strong industrial powers, especially the United States, to push their global agenda. Brzezinski often wrote that the nation state was to be eliminated, as did his patron, David Rockefeller. By allowing China to become a rival to Washington in economy and increasingly in technology, they created the means to destroy the superpower hegemony of the US.

By the onset of the Presidency of Xi Jinping in 2012, China was an economic colossus second in weight only to the United States. Clearly this could never have happened–not under the eye of the same Anglo-American old families who launched the Opium Wars after 1840 to bring China to heel and open their economy to Western financial looting–unless the Anglo-Americans had wanted it.

The same British-owned bank involved in the China opium trade, Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (HSBC), founded by a Scotsman, Thomas Sutherland in 1865 in the then-British colony of Hong Kong, today is the largest non-Chinese bank in Hong Kong. HSBC has become so well-connected to China in recent years that it has since 2011 had as Board member and Deputy HSBC Chairman, Laura Cha. Cha was formerly Vice Chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, being the first person outside mainland China to join the Beijing Central Government of the People’s Republic of China at vice-ministerial rank. In other words the largest bank in the UK has a board member who was a member of the Chinese Communist Party and a China government official. China needed access to Western money and HSBC and other select banks such as JP MorganChase, Barclays, Goldman Sachs were clearly more than happy to assist.

“Socialism with Xi Jinping Characteristics…”

All told until 2012 when Xi took charge of the CCP in Beijing, China seemed to be willing to be a globalist “team player,” though with “Chinese characteristics.” However, in 2015 after little more than two years in office, Xi Jinping endorsed a comprehensive national industrial strategy, Made in China: 2025. China 2025 replaced an earlier Western globalist document that had been formulated with the World Bank and the USA, the China 2030 report under Robert Zoellick. That shift to a China strategy for global tech domination might well have triggered a decision by the globalist PTB that China could no longer be relied on to play by the rules of the globalists, but rather that the CCP under Xi were determined to make China the global leader in advanced industrial, AI and bio-technologies. A resurgent China nationalist global hegemony was not the idea of the New World Order gang.

China:2025 combined with Xi’s strong advocacy of the Belt Road Initiative for global infrastructure linking China by land and sea to all Eurasia and beyond, likely suggested to the globalists that the only solution to the prospect of their losing their power to a China global hegemon would ultimately be war, a war that would destroy both nationalist powers, USA AND China. This is my conclusion and there is much to suggest this is now taking place.

Tit for Tat

If so, it will most likely be far different from the military contest of World War II. The USA and most of the Western industrial economies have “conveniently” imposed the worst economic depression since the 1930’s as a bizarre response to an alleged virus originating in Wuhan and spreading to the world. Despite the fact that the death toll, even with vastly inflated statistics, is at the level of a severe annual influenza, the insistence of politicians and the corrupt WHO to impose draconian lockdown and economic disruption has crippled the remaining industrial base in the US and most of the EU.

The eruption of well-organized riots and vandalism under the banner of racial protests across the USA has brought America’s cities to a state in many cases of war zones resembling the cities of the 2013 Matt Damon and Jodie Foster film, Elysium. In this context, anti-Washington rhetoric from Beijing has taken on a sharp tone in their use of so-called “Wolf Diplomacy.”

Now after Washington closed the China Consulate in Houston and China the US Consulate in Chengdu, both sides have stepped up rhetoric. High tech companies are being banned in the US, military displays of force from the US in the South China Sea and waters near Taiwan are increasing tensions and rhetoric on both sides. The White House accuses the WHO of being an agent of Beijing, while China accuses the US of deliberately creating a deadly virus and bringing it to Wuhan. Chinese state media supports the explosion of violent protests across America under the banner of Black Lives Matter. Step-wise events are escalating dramatically. Many of the US self-styled Marxists leading the protests across US cities have ties to Beijing such as the Maoist-origin Revolutionary Communist Party, USA of Bob Avakian.

“Unrestricted Warfare”

Under these conditions, what kind of escalation is likely? In 1999 two colonels in the China PLA, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, published a book with the PLA Press titled Unrestricted Warfare. Qiao Liang was promoted to Major General in the PLA Air Force and became deputy secretary-general of the Council for National Security Policy Studies. The two updated their work in 2016. It gives a window on high-level China military strategy.

Reviewing published US military doctrine in the aftermath of the 1991 US Operation Desert Storm war against Iraq, the Chinese authors point out what they see as US over-dependence on brute military force and conventional military doctrine. They claim, “Observing, considering, and resolving problems from the point of view of technology is typical American thinking. Its advantages and disadvantages are both very apparent, just like the characters of Americans.” They add, “military threats are already often no longer the major factors affecting national security…these traditional factors are increasingly becoming more intertwined with grabbing resources, contending for markets, controlling capital, trade sanctions, and other economic factors, to the extent that they are even becoming secondary to these factors. They comprise a new pattern which threatens the political, economic and military security of a nation or nations… The two authors define the new form of warfare as, “encompassing the political, economic, diplomatic, cultural, and psychological spheres, in addition to the land, sea, air, space, and electronics spheres.”

They suggest China could use hacking into websites, targeting financial institutions, terrorism, using the media, and conducting urban warfare among the methods proposed. Recent revelations that Chinese entities pay millions in ad revenues to the New York Times and other mainstream USA media to voice China-positive views is one example. Similarly, maneuvering a Chinese national to head the US’ largest public pension fund, CalPERS, which poured billions into risky China stocks, or persuading the New York Stock Exchange to list dozens of China companies without requiring adherence to US accounting transparency increase US financial vulnerability are others.

This all suggests the form that a war between China and the US could take. It can be termed asymmetrical warfare or unrestricted war, where nothing that disrupts the enemy is off limits. Qiao has that, “the first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, with nothing forbidden.” There are no Geneva Conventions.

The two Beijing authors add this irregular warfare could include assaults on the political security, economic security, cultural security, and information security of the nation. The dependence of the US economy on China supply chains for everything from basic antibiotics to militarily-vital rare earth minerals is but one domain of vulnerability.

On its side, China is vulnerable to trade sanctions, financial disruption, bioterror attacks and oil embargoes to name a few. Some have suggested the recent locust plague and African Swine Fever devastation to China’s core food supplies, was not merely an act of nature. If not, then we are likely deep into an undeclared form of US-China unrestricted warfare. Could it be that the recent extreme floods along the China Yangtze River that threaten the giant Three Gorges Dam and have flooded Wuhan and other major China cities and devastated millions of acres of key cropland was not entirely seasonal?

A full unrestricted war of China and the USA would be more than a tragedy. It could be the end of civilization as we know it. Is this what characters such as Bill Gates and his superiors are trying to bring about? Do they plan to introduce their draconian dystopian “Reset” on the ashes of such a conflict?

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image is from NEO

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Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

 

This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

First published on September 17, 2020

Covid-19: The Great Reset – is the title of a book by Klaus Schwab, Executive Chairman of the WEF, and the Senior Director of the Global Risk Network at the institution, Thierry Malleret. The present analysis is based on review of the book by Steven Guiness, of 4 September 2020 (See this).

“This important book review by Steven Guinness (UK) reveals the same old language of ‘interdependence’, collaboration and cooperation that was heard from the Trilateral Commission in 1973. The then-and-now goal is Sustainable Development, aka Technocracy, and will result in the biggest resource grab in the history of the world.” ⁃ Technocracy News Editor

The book presents a “carrot and stick” scenario; one of scary threats and rewards for obedience. Schwab and Malleret offer The Brave New World as the “New Paradise”  after the Great Reset.

The Powers that Be behind the Great Reset, cleverly work with two invisible weapons,

i) a probably man-made virus, now called covid-19 that nobody sees but corporate propaganda makes us believe is deadly and scary – fear is the associate weapon, and

ii) 5G (and later 6G, already being prepared), a strong, never experienced before, magnetic field, not talked about, not in the WEF book, not in the official media, but being rolled out over the entire world, covering every square centimeter of the earth’s surface, irradiated from hundreds of thousands of low-flying satellites.

This electro-magnet weapon is likely inflicting long-term damage, including possibly deadly damage, has been studied by hundreds of scientists, whose work has never been officially published, but stays underground. We, the People, are kept ignorant, in the shallows. Watch 5G Weapon – 8 min. Youtube below.

The Great Reset book is full with predictions of things that will or may happen, and threats, like the world will never be the same again, and we are just at the beginning of the Reset, worse is to come – or the Great Transformation, as the IMF calls what is coming.

The authors are spreading fear for the doubters of the New World Order (NWO). If you tell someone that the world is never going to be the same again, the way we are used to live our lives – the intention behind the information is not in the first place ‘predicting the future’, but instilling fear. Fearful people are vulnerable. Fear pulls the energy out of our bodies and minds, lowers the capacity of our immune system and increases the chances that we get sick, both physically from any disease, not just covid, but also mentally.

They – Schwab and Malleret – say not only that a lot of things will change forever, but ‘the worst of the pandemic is yet to come’. Wow! Scary!

Indeed, we have barely seen the tip of the iceberg. They admit, almost with a certain satisfaction, it seems, that millions of jobs will be lost and continue to be eviscerated at breathtaking speed, and that millions of small and medium size enterprises will be gone forever, that only a few will survive, namely the globalized conglomerates – Schwab’s and Malleret’s admission of the disaster unfolding upon us, is putting the icing on the cake of fear.

The reader will start thinking, ‘what will happen to me, my family, my business, or work – my children, their education – there will be an endless row of “what will happen”, leading to despair, to angst and anxieties – all kinds of pathologies. Pathology begets pathology. Big time.

More energy is sucked out of our bodies and minds, more gullibility instilled in our brains – you want to belong, you don’t want to be discarded like all those men and women who have lost their jobs, their livelihoods – who will get sick of loneliness in social distancing isolation – and may even get the covid disease, if they don’t wear a mask. You want to wear a mask. The media’s fear campaign has scared you. And when you wear a mask, you also belong. Never mind what it does for or against your health, you want to look the same – like everybody wearing masks. Wearing a mask is like a ritual that eventually allows you to belong to the masquerade. Because, have you seen how non-mask wearers are looked and sneered at, as if they were lepers or criminals?

You want to adhere to the rules – but silently and with inherent hope you look into an uncertain future – a hope of a better world, of a return to The Normal you know. There, at the horizon, hope is still glimmering like a fading sunset. And you want to race towards that horizon, a horizon that is ever moving away from you – as horizons are known to do.

Being segregated and separated from the believers for non-obedience, is the stick. Now comes the carrot. If you behave and obey the rules, you will be eligible for a vaccine – one of about 20 or 30 (maybe more) currently being developed by a myriad of different laboratories and countries. It’s the Russians, the Americans, the Chinese, the Cubans, the French, the Africans – it’s impossible to keep track of them, let alone trusting them.

Some of the vaccines are designed to genetically modifying your DNA forever – meaning, if the vaccine leaves a lasting damage, the damage will indeed be lasting, can never be cured. It may also be transmitted as a modified genome to your children and following generations. But you don’t mind. You want to get out from under this oppression, this health tyranny. You go: PLEASE-PLEASE gimme the vaccine!

And then, they tell you, once you are vaccinated, there is a chance that some of what you are used to may go back to “normal” – meaning some things will become “normal” again. But by and large, the WEF authors, the servants of the masters of the universe, tell you also that you better get used to a new normal. They never tell you actually what the new normal will exactly entail. But they tell you what’s wrong with the current world order of consisting of a collection of sovereign nation states and what the New World Order – all under One Government – would address. But they don’t say how and by whom – and what the new role of We, the People, will be, of those who survive the imploding cataclysm. It may be close to slavehood.

But, its never too late. We have the power of will and solidarity, if we reenact it, to stop this cataclysm in its tracks. It is Now the Time to Resist. We can rebuild the devastated economy and livelihoods as a project of humankind, according to our collective needs, with the principle of do no harm to our generous and beautiful Mother Earth.

We must not follow the dictate of the Great Reset, not be tempted by the carrot of a new paradise, but resist it, and take the reins of reconstruction in our own hands and minds – pursuing the common interest of humankind.

Here is what’s wrong, even in the eyes of Schwab and Malleret. There is widespread and ever-growing poverty; rampant inequality; racism; injustice – the North-South divide – and, finally, a world population that is growing too fast and is already too large. There is of course more, much more wrong with our civilization.

The two authors avoid mentioning that greed, artificially seeded conflicts and wars – biological, as well as by guns and bombs – limitless exploitation of unrenewable natural resources, of steeling public assets to privatize them, of the monumental injustice of neo-colonization of the Global South – is driven by the very deep dark diabolical elite that wants us to adopt and succumb to the new Global Reset.

The Great Reset book does not mention that there is way enough food to aliment the current and future world population. Already several years ago, FAO – the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN – has said that there is enough food to aliment at least 12 billion people with current technologies. The food is of course not distributed properly, is held back for speculation and price gains – depriving poor countries of their fair share to feed their populations.

Hundreds of thousands of people are starving and dying due to food crops speculation – and that in plain sight of the speculators, of the well-established bourses and agricultural commodities exchanges, like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, originally the “Chicago Butter and Egg Board” (founded in 1898). There are dozens of such speculating exchange bureau around the Global North.

FAO’s assertions that there is enough food for current and future world populations, does not even account for the huge potential of technology and agrarian efficiency improvement of healthy food production. Russia’s food production today is almost entirely bio – GMOs are constitutionally banned – and food is plentiful. Russia has become the world’s largest wheat exporter – bio-wheat.

Given the environmental destruction by the neoliberal constant profit-greed, eternal fetish of more and more consumption and growth, a Great Reset, or a Great Transformation (IMF), may indeed be justified, but not by the imposed globalist terms of the WEF and IMF, by the  very powers behind the destruction; not under the terms of the global corporate banking, of the global military complex and of the Silicon Valley, i.e. the 5G-driven (and soon 6G) Artificial Intelligence (AI), or more broadly, the Internet of Things (IoT).

A reset has to be a people’s reset, where only We, the People, call the shots, and set the terms for the reset. A reset that leaves nobody behind and does not aim at eliminating “superfluous” populations – so that the rich and powerful can live longer with the remaining resources of Planet Earth. Because that is really their – the globalists elite’s goal.

Their powerful tools are biowarfare, invisible enemies, like viruses, i.e. corona – and vaccines against the very viruses they impose on the world in the first place.

Clever: First you attack and kill, then you offer salvation to the survivors – and kill at the same time, by the tools of salvation. It’s called dancing on many weddings, and along the way, you divide to conquer.

Divide the plandemic believers from the non-believers;

Divide between the mask wearers and the mask protesters, divide between those who believe that “social distancing” is the answer, and those who know that social distancing accelerates the disease and eventually the process of dying.

They create an ambiance of animosity and conflicts among those who were friends.

The two master minds of the Great Reset, Klaus Schwab (image on the right) and Thierry Malleret, don’t touch this delicate subject in their book. Instead they talk about opportunities and risks. They argue that this covid-19 pandemic – let’s call in Plandemic, as it clearly has been planned – offers a rare opportunity to get the Great Reset right. They call it a Window of Opportunity.

They talk about the Post Pandemic Era – as the panacea of the future for mankind, because, if we grab this unique window of opportunity to cooperate and collaborate between countries towards a global state, greater interdependence, we will be able to come to grips with all the ills, poverty, inequality and injustice. But the authors fall short of explaining how. They do not talk about lost national sovereignty – lost cultural sovereignty by embracing the a globalized and a globally governed world – abandoning the Nation State, and instead submitting to a One World Power.

That’s not all. The panacea of the future will be crowned by the Pearl of the Fourth Industrialization – Artificial intelligence (AI). It will be made possible by a 5G electromagnetic field, allowing the Internet of Things (IoT). Schwab and Malleret won’t say, beware, there is opposition. 5G could still be blocked. The 5G existence and further development is necessary for surveillance and control of humanity, by digitizing everything, including human identity and money.

It will be so simple, no more cash, just electronic, digital money – that is way beyond the control of the owner, the truthful earner of the money, as it can be accessed by the Global Government and withheld and / or used for pressuring misbehaving citizens into obeying the norms imposed from above. You don’t behave according to our norms, no money to buy food, shelter and health services, we let you starve. No more travel. No more attending public events. You’ll be put gradually in your own solitary confinement. The dictatorial and tyrannical global commandeering by digital control of everything is the essence of the 4^th Age of Industrialization – highly promoted by the WEF’s Great Reset.

Image below: Thierry Malleret (Source: London Speaker Bureau)

The global universal lockdown – all 193 UN members at once (what a coincidence!) – has already devastated and will continue to do so for years to come, our economy, jobs, businesses, livelihoods, society, social cohesions – you name it – what we called “normal” is gone, gone forever. That’s what Schwab and Malleret repeat time and again. As they are spreading fear, they are telling us, you better adapt to the new normal. Looking back on the ruins caused by the onset of the destructive Great Reset is no good. There is no hope, they tell us. Instead, trust in the future, the new Great Reset. It will rise from the ashes of the past and will give humanity – those who survive – in the long run a better life on a less encumbered globe. So, the WEF narrative.

The two “wise men” mercilessly hammer it in on every occasion at every corner, never can the world return to normal. They pretend to make us believe that Covid-19 has given us this unique opportunity to begin anew, with a Great Reset. It is twisting the truth, because the reality is exactly the contrary – they – the diabolical elite, the dark deep state – created Covid-19, to lock us down, in social separation, in quarantines, so they can undisturbed destroy mankind’s achievements in plain sight under the pretext of protecting us from the invisible covid virus. In reality they prepare for the Global Great Reset.

There is a real risk however which the authors recognize, namely that a strong nationalistic feeling may persevere. They call it “a broken sense of normalcy”. Nationalistic thinking may turn factions of the world ‘inwards’, more patriotic. They, the “nationalists”, will seek division or abolition of this new global government. The WEF authors see this nationalistic trend – they never call it preserving or returning to sovereignty – as dangerous. They predict, it will result in continuous conflicts and revolutions. Rebellions instead of building towards the Global Common Good. But, We, the People, know better. We can resist.

Schwab and Malleret cannot avoid mentioning the UN Agenda 2030 – the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) which are the pretext as well as the backbone of the UN Agenda 2030 – which cannot be achieved without a Global and Great Reset, because they require collaboration and cooperation among nations that have the same vision – a globalized One World Order.

Agenda 2030 is intimately linked to Agenda 21, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, adopted by more than 178 Governments at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 3 to 14 June 1992. The Global Warming / Global Climate Change agenda emanates from it.

This is the trick: Nations, mostly developing countries, who subscribe to pursue the achievement of the wonderfully human-justice 17 SDGs, will get money, aid money, loans and grants from the IMF, World Bank and other similar globalized institutions, to work towards achieving these goals. But – under the condition that they follow and submit to the Great Reset.

Nevertheless, we know that these 17 noble goals of equality, justice and a balanced world are a phantasy, the same as were the 8 Millennium Development Goals (observe the 8^th Goal: “Develop a Global Partnership for Development”) that ended in 2015. Hardly any of the 8 goals (plus 21 targets and 60 indicators for measuring progress between 1990 and 2015) have been met by a country. Now they are replaced by the new 17 SDGs – UN Agenda 2030 – which will not be met either. The SDGs are a tool for further enslavement of the Global South by the Global North.

The saving grace is that the world is not a uniform place with a homogenous population. That is where Schwab and Malleret are unwittingly right by predicting resistance. Mother Earth is diverse, colorful, and her populations come in all shapes, languages and cultures. The world consists of a vast, universal, heterogenous humanity that will, by nature, not submit to the dictate of a few. Impossible.

Undeniably, this may lead to a division towards two or more powers – the globalists and the nationalists or the patriots, as the globalists demeaningly call those who want to preserve their national identity, their national sovereignty – a sovereignty that does not stop at the political level, but encompasses monetary sovereignty and people’s individual and collective sovereignty. For the “nationalists” and “patriots”, the nationalistic trend may lead to real democracy – maybe a democracy we have never known may emerge from an autonomous and sovereign reset made by the people; a far more attractive option than the Great Reset forced upon humanity by a small globalist elite.

The division into two (or more) camps, may lead to conflicts and wars, to bloodshed. So, are warning Schwab and Malleret. But a group of sovereign nations with alliances among them, must not end in conflicts and wars. To the contrary. They will be thriving and prospering – an endless creation and development, with respect for each other.

Indeed, the People’s way of resetting the globe, may create unheard-of and unbelievable alliances. As friends were divided by the covid-drive for a Great Reset, so may enemies become friends and allies in the future – with the goal of remaining independent, autonomous and sovereign nations and people.

This type of unity was at the heart of the creation of the Confoederatio Helvetica, what is today’s Switzerland. We stand together in defense and mutual respect, but preserve our sovereignty in daily life. Thus, spoke the three representatives of three provinces under Habsburg’s tyranny in 1291, and the Swiss Confederacy was born 729 years ago.

Hope and light will prevail. We, the People, have the Power.

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Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals such as Global Research; ICH; New Eastern Outlook (NEO) and more. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

The Lebanese population faces between six to twelve hours of electricity cuts per day, and in some rural areas, there is simply no electricity provided by the government grid. Amid the backdrop of decrepit infrastructure, government corruption, devalued currency, and widespread poverty, Lebanon began talks with Israel concerning their maritime borders in the gas-rich Mediterranean Sea on Wednesday at the UNIFIL headquarters at Naquora. 

The UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL has been monitoring the disputed land boundary since Israel’s’ military withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000, ending a 22-year occupation. The two sides met together in the same room but directed their communications through a US mediator.

The US is the mediator between the two countries which remain technically ‘at war’ while hoping to end a long-running dispute which could eventually see Lebanon producing gas to convert to domestic electricity, as well as a potential revenue producer which could pay off Lebanon’s huge debts. Lebanon’s currency has lost 80 percent of its value against the dollar over the last year, and its debt-to-G.D.P. ratio is one of the world’s highest.

Lebanon and Israel are struggling to deal with high COVID-19 infection rates, while Netanyahu is slipping in the polls due to abuse of power charges, and the Lebanese government is in limbo after being labeled as corrupt and inept, while desperate for cash from foreign donors as it faces the worst economic crisis since its 1975-1990 civil war. The financial collapse was compounded by an explosion at the Port of Beirut in August, killing nearly 200 people.

Israel is already pumping gas from huge offshore fields, and this meeting will allow both sides to proceed further within the safety of an understanding of the maritime borders.

US pressure

The talks follow years of diplomacy by Washington, and the Trump Administration had hoped to use the Naquora meeting as a dramatic media show less than a month after landmark US-sponsored normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain; however, this showy plan was aborted.

The US envoy David Schenker explained that these talks “have nothing to do with the establishment of diplomatic relations or normalization.” However, it was last month that the US turned up the pressure on Lebanon to start the talks with a deadline for the agreement before the US election on November 3, while the second round of talks is scheduled for October 28.

The Naquora meeting

President Michel Aoun is the key person managing the off-shore energy resources portfolio, and he placed a representative from the Lebanese Petroleum Administration (LPA) on the negotiating team as a nod to pressure from Washington who had insisted on civilian presentation, whereas Hezbollah requested only military and technical delegates.

There are four points on the agenda of the Naqoura talks: setting the land reference point from which to depart toward the sea; defining the southern maritime border where the disputed area is located; agreeing on the land border demarcation after the completion of the maritime demarcation, and exchanging documents and handing over copies to the United Nations.

The Lebanese Negotiating team

Brigadier General Bassam Yacine is the lead negotiator, Marine Colonel Mazen Basbous is the head of operations in the Lebanese military, Najib Masihi is a Lebanese American expert in maritime and territorial boundaries, and Wissam Shbat is a board member of LPA and head of its geology and geophysics unit.

 Lebanon’s offshore possibilities

In 2017, Lebanon’s information minister announced the Cabinet had approved licenses for Italy’s Eni, Frances’s Total, and Russia’s Novatek to carry out exploratory drilling off the Lebanese coast in two of Lebanon’s 10 offshore blocks to determine whether oil and gas exist in the area.

Analyst Diana Kaissy, who heads the Lebanese Oil and Gas Initiative think-tank, said it was “impossible to know” the extent of the accessible reserves before exploration operations begin, but she said, “preliminary evaluations” showed the five blocks offered by the government were the “most promising,” with block nine bordering a sector disputed by Israel.

At issue is more than 330 square miles in the Mediterranean that Israel and Lebanon both claim is in their exclusive economic zone. The pressure to resolve the dispute has mounted as Israel and Cyprus have begun exploiting offshore gas.

Lebanon estimates it has 96 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves and 865 million barrels of oil offshore. Israel is aiming to get a percentage of a contested area of 860 square kilometers that Lebanon is claiming.

The 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) stipulates that coastal states have sovereign rights in a 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) concerning natural resources; however, the maritime dispute does not fall within the UNIFIL’s current mandate, and Israel is not a party to UNCLOS.

Lebanon reached a maritime border agreement with Cyprus in January 2007. This prompted Beirut, in July and October 2010, to deposit with the United Nations the geographical coordinates of the southern and southwestern maritime borders of that EEZ. Cyprus went ahead and signed an EEZ delimitation accord with Israel in December 2010.

Lebanon and Israel could share in the disputed 860 square kilometers, which covers Lebanon’s offshore gas Blocks 8, 9, and 10. The “Hoff line” proposal gave Lebanon 550 square kilometers, which was rejected as Beirut insists on full rights in this disputed area. Lebanon has refused to join the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum or any other regional mechanism that includes Israel; therefore, it has been more or less isolated in the eastern Mediterranean gas process given the emerging alliance between Israel, Egypt, Cyprus, and Greece.

France’s Total energy company to begin gas exploration in Block 9 by the end of the year, while Israel approved in June oil, gas exploration in Block 72, close to Lebanon’s Block 9 where exploration will soon start.

Hezbollah and Amal

Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah in a joint statement with Amal, the country’s other main party of resistance, released hours before the talks were due to start, called for the negotiating team to be revised to include only members of the military.

The Lebanese preconditions included having military and technical delegates, instead of diplomatic delegates, and setting no timeline to reach a deal, to avoid US pressure on the negotiations.

Last month the US placed sanctions on the top aide to Nabih Berri, the leader of Amal, for corruption and financially enabling Hezbollah.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from MD

Alla conferenza, tenutasi lo scorso 14 ottobre, hanno partecipato i rappresentanti del Comitato No Guerra No Nato, che sta adesso portando avanti la campagna “Assange Libero per la Nostra Libertà” per il sostegno alla liberazione dell’editore e giornalista perseguitato per aver rivelato crimini di guerra. Tra questi: Manlio Dinucci, geografo, scrittore e giornalista; Germana Leoni von Dohnanyi, scrittrice e giornalista e Berenice Galli, attivista e giornalista e l’attivista Mauro Abiti. Durante l’incontro è stato proiettato anche un messaggio video da parte di John Shipton, padre di Julian Assange.

Il processo contro Assange è un processo contro tutti quelli che lottano per la libertà e la democrazia. Assange, infatti, si è contraddistinto nel panorama dell’informazione per la continua ricerca della verità a tutti i livelli politici e istituzionali, sfidando la secretazione delle informazioni da parte dei governi, superando le barriere informatiche, portando alla luce le reali motivazioni che hanno determinato la distruzione di interi Paesi, economie e comunità. Questa è la sua colpa. Intanto, mentre si svolgono le udienze e Assange in carcere continua a versare nelle peggiori condizioni – così come denunciato anche dal responsabile Onu contro la tortura Nils Melzer, Assange che nei mesi scorsi ha denunciato le “condizioni di sorveglianza e isolamento estreme e non giustificate” alle quali era sottoposto mostrando ormai “tutti i sintomi tipici di un’esposizione prolungata alla tortura psicologica” – i responsabili dei crimini denunciati continuano a beneficiare dell’impunità.

Byoblu ha seguito per voi l’intera conferenza stampa.

Everybody likes beauty, such as the beautiful things and beautiful people. It seems that humans are born to possess the ability to appreciate beauty, even though not so many people had ever thought about what it is. Obviously the sense of beauty, and the ideas about beauty had rooted into people’s daily life long before Aesthetics appeared as a well-established sub-discipline of philosophy. Art is the notable representative of this discipline. 

 It is certain that humans developed their sense of beauty, one of the prominent features of human feelings before they developed their logic of thinking. People also had mastered the essential skills in creating beautiful things before the theory of Aesthetics came out. I feel that the human civilization spent thousands of years in practicing art, while developing theories to interpret their art work, in a way agreeable to sensible people, not excluding the possible failure in their endeavor. Those critics might have tried to guide artists in their process of art creation, however, mostly worked out as a guide for appreciation or evaluation of art, because artists are always quicker than the critics, bestowed by their inborn sensitivity and ability to catch that artistic intuition from life. A new art style appeared usually after the economic, social or religious reforms, or science and mathematics discoveries, or birth of new philosophies. 

The flourishing of art and literature during European renaissance period was not only due to the humanist rival of the ancient Greek culture, but also because of the influence of the new ideas appeared in the religion notably represented by Saint Augustine, as well as in discoveries in natural science and mathematics that provided the premises for the appearance of classic realism painting style, represented by da Vinci, and Michelangelo etc. who applied the one point perspective according to optical principle of human eyes, and used the shade and light effect to create the realist image. This period lasted almost four centuries. The capitalism in Europe matured around the same period after the industry revolution, coming along with it the global colonization, which brought great wealth to the capitalist, as well as the material improvement to people’s life, while it also irritated some upright intellectuals and artists, who got disgusted with some of the side effects of the economic growth and capital colonization. Those artists started searching for new artistic elements and inspiration for their art creation. Then appeared all genres of western modern art one after another, such as Fauvism, Impressionism, Post-impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Abstractionism, Dadaism, Surrealism, etc al, under the influence of a new trend of philosophies. 

The work of those modern artists had encountered various resistance and attacks from the traditionalists, since it seemed either weird, ugly, or mysterious and confusing to traditional artists, However, the most significant ones eventually survived and even shined at their own time, and until now. Now days, culinary art became very popular, in which style, the way to display the art pieces, matters equally important as the art work itself, which combined with latter to create a modern art concept that is what truly matters. When Duchamp was displaying a urine tub in the museum, which idea could be disgusting to a lot of people, it was inevitably accepted as an art piece by people with avant-garde mindset and thus created an unforgettable anecdote in modern art history. Is that also beautiful thing? But according to many philosophers, art is creation of beauty. Duchamp even added the mustache to the picture of Mona Lisa, seemed an irony to the ordinary artists. However, this was just one of the modern art styles, Dadaism, the art to protest, and marked this period of human art history by boldly showing their frustration about this more and more complex society and their struggle to reach for something new and different, and also by leaving such questions to people as what is art and where the art is leading us. 

Beautiful things should not be difficult to find. We could give many examples which people with sensible faculty all agree to be beautiful, however, it may not be able to be defined by one certain concept. The pity is that modern people have fallen into the habit to define any philosophical terms in a fixed formation influenced by the numerous discoveries in science and mathematics in late centuries of last millennium, which could be accepted in any other domains, but not in defining what is beauty. Those discoveries and creations brought new inspiration to the artists on one side, while constrained the thoughts of some art critics on the other side. 

Kant argues that the kinds of ‘cognition’ (i.e. thinking) characteristic of the contemplation of the beautiful are not much different from ordinary cognition about other things in the world. The faculties of the ‘understanding’ of people’s mind is responsible for concepts, and that of ‘sensibility’ (including our imagination) is responsible for intuitions. The difference between the two is that in the case of aesthetic cognition, there is no one ‘determinate’ concept that pins down an intuition. Instead, intuition is allowed for some ‘free play’, and rather than being subject to one concept. Simply put it this way, the human’s sensible faculty made the intuition possible, and the sense of beauty is aroused by intuition, as intuition is allowed for some freedom to do some playful “games” in the mind, purporting to reach a status of harmony with other related concepts in the mind, if necessary, and leads to the best pleasure possible. 

Thus, we have obtained the basic idea about the sense of beauty, which is a feeling of a biological being who possesses the faculty of sensibilities. When one says something is beautiful, it doesn’t simply mean this thing possesses “beauty” as its attribute, but also means this very person has the normal sensibility according the general understanding of our society, and/or to the common sense of this particular culture. It explains that evaluation of art involves two parts: the person who executes evaluation as the subject, and the piece of art to be evaluated as the object. And the sense of beauty can only be produced during the process of positive interaction between these two parts. 

Humans have known the essential skills of creation of art for a long time. There is a proverb says: Art lies in concealing art and that beauty and honesty can never agree. In order to be honest, people are generally required to stick to the truth of the things, where the well-defined concepts and logic are applied, which are the jobs of another faculty of human mind, but the classical realism is built on the illusionary vision of people tricked by the realism painting techniques. The volume of the image and depth of the space that people see from the two-dimensional painting art are nothing but an illusion, and obviously not real. Plus, it is better to look at it at some distance than facing up onto it by inches, in order to get that ideal image desired. Nevertheless, most people like that painting style, since it suits the way of human’s eyes. It would be easy for people to tell the beauty of a classic realism painting than of a post-impressionism one, an abstractionism one, or a Chinese literati’s painting. It takes some aesthetical training before people came to appreciate the new style of beauty created by the modern painting techniques, and meanwhile, training in traditional Chinese culture is required to understand and see the beauty of the Chinese scholar’s art. However, it was not that those non-professionals simply couldn’t see anything good from those art works. Some abstractionism art and Chinese literati’s art may not be comparable to the former classic style in the sense of realistic presentation of images, but they have another type of beauty, that is the beauty of imagination associated with the freedom to unknown, available only from the art that had come through the ingenious maneuver of the master’s hand and mind. 

Chinese people like to say that people need nice apparel just as the statue of Buda needs a gold finish. People need to dress nicely in order to attract the other sex, and gain the respect of their friends and colleagues, that is to say, to make the latter feel pleasant to be with them. A statue of Buda in shiny outfit in the temple would attract a lot more prayers than the one in shabby clothes. That explains the psychology of ordinary people in daily aesthetics. It works on many occasions, and came with it of some painting styles that emphasize on the visual effect of the art. Nevertheless, I am afraid that it is not the final beauty. 

There is another proverb that says beauty’s sister is vanity, and her daughter is lust. Obviously, the shiny, colorful, extravagant things with fancy formality would feed to some people’s taste on beauty, as those things could excite and please them. Sexy pose of women and nudes are another popular source of beauty in humans, which are associated with the people’s biological need and the sub-consciousness of their mind. I guess this proverb had enlightened many artists in their art creation. 

However, there is also one proverb that says the fair face needs no paint. I guess many Chinese painting artists, especially the literati’s painter would agree with this. As their painting work emphasizes on the simplicity, purity, and a natural elegance without much need of ornaments or decoration. It also suits with many western modern art that focus more on ideas and concepts than colorful presentation. 

I would like particularly mention one saying by our ancestor here that is: beauty’s tear is lovelier than her smile, which had bothered me greatly before, because it is against the basic definition about beauty that is to bring the pleasant feeling to people. However, when we take our time to look into some greatest art works, whether in painting, or literature, or music. We may find some of the tragedies from the theatre, the blue music, the saddest painting work would produce the most striking feeling in the audience, by making them sad, weeping, but finally the extraordinary happiness arose from deep of their heart, after that amazing chemistry connected between them and the art, and the sudden release of that unbearable emotional burden that had probably been hanging on there for long time, without being noticed before. That is the beauty of tragedies. All grow-ups have gone through unfortunate life experiences themselves or seeing their dear ones doing so, and would be more likely to understand that beauty. 

In addition, one very popular proverb says: beauty is in the eyes of beholder. When one is in love with another person, he would undoubtedly see the other one as a beauty regardless what her real look is. In this case, the appreciator already has a pleasant image in his mind, which only waited to be triggered by that particular person associated with that image. It explains that beauty is not just about skin deep. Appearance only matters to some degree in producing the sense of beauty. Have we heard that a beauty without virtue is like a flower without fragrance and virtue is fairer far than beauty. These ideas existed in almost all cultures. 

And one proverb directly defined virtue as the beauty of mind, which means that virtue itself is just one kind of beauty. Among virtues, goodness or kindness is the most mentioned one. People believe that goodness charms more than mere beauty, as if goodness is a higher level of beauty. Since the beauty’s taste is pleasure, then we may say that goodness could cause stronger pleasant feeling among people than superficial beauty which is more focus on appearance. Furthermore, similar to goodness, grace is equally important to arouse that sense of beauty among people. Graceful people are nonetheless elegant, but pretty and stylish people are not necessarily graceful. Grace is shown in each move and manner of people with unspeakable charms shining out from a magic source hidden inside them, to silently influence and please people. As a matter of fact, grace is more lasting than beauty in its general meaning, mere beauty may fade and blast, however, grace will last with handsome appearance gone. We may say that it is another higher level of beauty. 

Beautiful things can charm people by bringing them happiness with its enormous power that could be beyond the expression of art itself, which might draw much more than people can imagine. Just as if a person with full liberty would become most powerful ever, to some people, that is God. The final goal of beauty is the true freedom, so, to obtain the true sense of beauty is to achieve the true freedom of a person, that is to completely unify themselves with the universe, more concretely, is to follow the law of the universe, and to know what to do and what not to do. The real freedom is not to do whatever one likes to do, but can stop their doing when they are not supposed to do it. Especially in a complicated environment, to stay quietly by carefully listening to the revelation of the universe, or of God to some people, can gain yourself more freedom than act mindlessly. 

Humans are originated from the universe, and the universe has created all kinds of models of beauties for them at the time of their birth, only waiting for them to find those beauties through their sensibility. Just like a new-born baby whose sole idol of beauty is its mother, when it is hungry, the mother’s breast is the most beautiful; when it needs to be hugged, the mother’s arms are the most beautiful ones, and when he needs to be kissed, the mother’s lip is the most beautiful. All of those are to satisfy its basic needs for nutrition and love as a baby. When the baby grows up, he would find different beauty idols functioning as his mother’s breast, arms, or lips, as his world is growing also. And they have to find out those beauties in order to achieve their freedom as a human. But in order to find those beauties, they need to learn about the universe, that’s why human’s civilization has developed so many sensible(can not only be felt by our sensors, but also make sense to our mind) disciplines to guide them, just as the mother has guided the new-born baby. The first time when the baby cries because it is hungry, it probably doesn’t know where to get food, but the mother knows why and then put the tip of her breast into its mouth, and the cry stops. Next time, the baby would know where to search for its mother’s breast when it is hungry. If this baby happens to be a naughty one, and tries to bite its mother’s nose or ears to ease its hunger, then the mother probably wouldn’t understand that, and would just throw it in its cradle, letting it crying for ever, and think this baby is ugly, because a beautiful baby in parent’s eye would behave nicely since the looks of baby are not much different at this stage of their life. 

An individual who can achieve his full liberty would be the most beautiful one, and the very beautiful person should be the one that has achieved great liberty. Any one can do it, under the condition that there is no interruption of other people and other things, just like one of the laws of physics discovered by Newton, that a moved object could keep its motion permanently provided that there is no resistance against it at all. We all know that is not possible, since human is a social being with its own existence based on the coexistence of others., and the world is made of things of duo featured by its adversity. This is the dilemma of beauty, also of freedom. However, if we take all human as a unity, or as one person, then without the intervention of aliens, it would be much more simple, and it is possible for the human species to achieve its freedom to a great degree, and the human society would be so much better and much more pleasant to our senses. Thus the human’s beauty as one unity matters most to all, while all humanly beings as parts of the unity also matter in this extraordinary and inevitable task of looking for freedom or beauty. The job of an artist is to create beauty, and to be an idealist, we could all be an artist if we may.

In painting or related arts, there are warm colors and cold colors. The ones close to the warm color spectrum include red, orange, yellow. The ones close to cold color spectrum include green, blue and purple. Nonetheless, there are much more colors in nature or to be concocted by people than the ones mentioned above. People have preferences to different colors, while each color has different impact on their mood and emotions, and gives different psychological suggestion to people. Red color usually makes people feel exciting and happy, which is a color of celebration and associated with passion, power, ambition, courage; orange and yellow colors are cheerful and warm-hearted, and could be extravagant as well delightful, which conveys a sense of achievement or sublimity, also associates with wealth, ripeness and maturity, or hope and desire; blue color represents tranquility, stability, calmness, and loyalty; green brings a peace of mind, also suggest growth, health, freshness and liveliness; purple is a color of dignity, represents wisdom, integrity, solemnity and pride; pink is a very feminine and sexy color, which signifies beauty and love; white signifies grandness, perfection, confidence, and cleanness; dark is a mysterious color which conveys fear, unknown world, also graveness. 

One famous painting by Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, just used a light yellow color to paint Venus’s naked body, which successfully created a beautiful and lovely goddess of love, which, with her birth, brought love and hope to the world. In the painting of The Garden of Eden by Michelangelo, the delightful yellow color of Eve and Adam occupies the center of the work and might indicate the desire of our first ancestors and hope of humans.

Those psychological suggestion of colors are not permanent to any person, nor the same to different people. Colors don’t carry element of emotions themselves, but only reflect color-associated light waves of different length on human’s eyes and cause different neuron reaction in their brain and accordingly produce the so-called color emotions. What people feel about different colors not only relates to the type of color, but also the culture background of the person, circumstance of event, health situation of the color viewer etc. For example, the yellow could also signifies sickness or frailness at certain circumstance, while red could express rage or hints violence, and green associates with weakness and undecisiveness quite often. White is perfection and purity ,but sometimes may suggest arrogance. Pink color is attractive, but can’t dissociate with being frivolous sometimes. 

Some colors carry strong message of cultures just as people’s psychology are greatly effected by their culture background. Ancient Europeans tended to apply white color for their architecture, while Asian people favoured red color to paint the walls or pillars of their buildings or mansions. In some countries of Europe, people can find many antique architectures built by big white marble stones, with huge white pillars holding up in the front. And in some Asian countries, red or yellow-color painted temples, palaces could be found everywhere in their historical scenery sites or capital cities. European culture has got great influence from Greeks and Italians who reside by the sea and could have been brain- washed by the light blue color of the vast ocean and sky, while Asian culture, most influenced by Chinese people who originated from plains of inland with rich soil for agriculture, and had been seeing the yellow crops and colors of ripe fruits generation by generation, thus take it as a color of wealth and happiness. However, In some western paintings, we may found red color was actually used to depict the outfit of generals or garments of religious figures such as Jesus, Mother Mary etc al, which indicate the power and authority conveyed through this color, but usually it is not the case in Chinese culture. 

Different ethnic groups may also incline to the different tones or saturation of the same color. Western culture tend to use bright tone of the colors with high saturation in their visual art, demonstrating the openness of their personality, the brightness in their thinking, the straightforwardness and boldness of their doing. Asian people like to use less light tone of the colors with low saturation in their painting, and very often would add water or ink to the color to make it darker and less bright, which probably reflects the introspected personality of Asian people who don’t like to be seen as too sharp or too outspoken in anything they are doing, in a way trying to demonstrate their virtue of modesty. Of course, those Chinese painters are mostly gentry class people or court officials or disciples of ancient saints, and varied from the ordinary artisan people who did all the mural paintings and ceramic decorations. 

Beside color, shape is another very important element of painting art, which has square, rectangle, triangle, circle and polygons such as Pentagons, hexagons, octagons. For painters who are trained in western painting schools, they are probably told that drawing or painting images are actually the process of drawing geometric shapes and putting all of them together. At least the beginning stage of sketching is almost the same thing of drawing geometric shapes and then to round the straight lines a little bit to make them have a natural look and a better resemblance to the real image of the object. In traditional Chinese painting, the painters probably don’t go through this stage of training, due to the perception that they didn’t think the accurate forms are important. What matters to them were the quality and expressiveness of the lines, the composition of the painting and meanings conveyed through the work. Sometimes, colors are not even necessary. Still those shapes were more or less noticeably displayed in their work without their knowing. 

Different shapes also have their own psychological suggestion to viewers. Rectangles give people a sense of stability, integrity, and spaciousness. Many objects in our daily life show the rectangle shapes, such as desk, blackboard, bed, walls, doors, etc. Squares are neat and cute, and conveyed a sense of perfectness and centerness. Triangles with one side based on the bottom displays the stableness and strength, such as the Egyptian pyramid; the triangle with one point on the bottom either indicates the threat of danger such as a dagger, or the unsteady situation of impending fall-down. However, sometimes, the over-turned triangle shape could also indicate the fertile pelvis basin of the woman, which is a good sign for the family. Also, triangles with one point directing to right or left side gives a sense of movement such as the road signs. Circles convey fullness and wholeness, or indicate movement of rolling. Such as the moon, the sun and moon cake for the former, and car wheels, balls for the latter. The polygons are used in many things in our life. The patterns of window frames used interlocked hexagons quite a lot while the patterns of design for fibers for bed sheet or the table cover also favour the shape of polygons. Actually the shape of human face could be done through drawing a vertically lengthened octagon. 

Lines of the short or the long; the straight or the curved make different shapes, also directly show in the paintings or designs as an art element itself. Long straight lines show the strength, neatness and steadiness. Short ones or even the ones shortened to be the dotty brush strokes, are lively and give a sense of vitality, motion or texture if applied properly. The curved line is also an indicator of movement, and is used quite often in painting water and clouds in Chinese paintings. The curved line used in painting the flowing bands around the ancient Chinese ladies’ shoulders or arms is elegant. 

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The Azerbaijani Armed Forces have been developing their advance on Armenian positions in the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region. As in the previous several days, the main clashes are taking place in the southern part of Karabakh.

As of October 16, Azerbaijani forces finally took full control of the town of Hadrat and started an operation to push the remaining Armenian units out of the town’s surroundings. Despite this, Armenian forces still conduct regular counter-attacks attempting to force the Azerbaijani military to retreat from their recently captured positions.

Azerbaijani troops also seized the villages of Arish in the Fuzuli district, Doshulu in the Jabrayil district and the villages of Edishe, Dudukchi, Edilli and Chiraguz in the Khojavend district. Earlier this week, Azerbaijan captured Garadaghli, Melikjanli, Garakollu, Bulutan, Tagaser, Khatunbulag, Kemertuk and Teke. Thus, Armenian forces lost at least 15 towns and settlements during this week of clashes.

The Azerbaijani side employs its advantage in artillery and air power. Azerbaijani special forces also conducted several raids in the rear of Armenian positions in the south of Karabakh trying to create chaos there.

The town of Fuzuli, which for the previous days remained in the contested area, is now about to fall in the full control of Azerbaijan. If Armenian forces are not able to gain back the initiative, this will become the inevitable.

Meanwhile, the Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan announced that the Armenians tried to recapture several positions taken by Azerbaijani forces, but these attacks were repelled. According to Baku, a large number of Armenian forces, including two T-72 battle tanks, a Tor-M2KM surface-to-air missile system, four BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launchers, a D-20 howitzer, a D-30 howitzer, and two D-1 howitzers, as well as several vehicles and UAVs were eliminated.

On the morning of October 15, videos filmed in the area of Hadrut appeared online showing how Azerbaijani troops had captured two Armenian fighters, one of them was an old man (he does not even seem to be able to hold arms), then tied them with Armenian flags and had them killed. A few hours after, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry released a statement claiming that Armenians share in social media some ‘fake videos’ that are ‘not related’ to the Karabakh conflict.

Earlier, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and top Turkish officials repeatedly claimed that the Azerbaijani advance on Nagorno-Karabakh poses no threat to the Armenian population there. Nonetheless, actions like on the aforementioned videos as well as almost no reports about captured Armenian soldiers demonstrate that in fact the conflict creates a real threat of ethnic cleansing of the Armenian population in Karabakh the areas captured by Azerbaijan. In its own turn, the Armenian Defense Ministry claims that despite some ‘tactical retreats’, its forces have been successfully repelling Azerbaijani attacks.

This just week only, the Armenian side claimed that its forces had shot down 3 SU-25 warplanes and multiple UAVs of Azerbaijan. Dozens of Azerbaijani armoured vehicles and hundreds of troops were also allegedly eliminated. Nonetheless, photo and video evidence from the ground demonstrates that in fact Armenian forces are on retreat and are now trying to regroup and prevent further advances of Azerbaijan into the contested region.

Taking into account the current complex diplomatic situation in the region, the Azerbaijani military has all chances to continue its active offensive operations until the start of winter. After this, Baku will likely temporarily halt the military phase of its push to capture Karabakh and return to the negotiating table to force Armenia to surrender the region. If this does not happen, the Azerbaijani advance will likely be resumed in the spring of 2021.

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During her Supreme Court confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Amy Coney Barrett refused to say that voter intimidation is illegal, that armed poll watchers are intimidating, that voter discrimination exists, whether the president could deny someone the right to vote based on race or that Congress has a constitutional duty to protect the right to vote.

She refused to affirm that Medicare is constitutional; that married couples should not lose their right to contraceptives; that a Black worker repeatedly called the N-word was subjected to a hostile work environment; that it’s wrong to separate children from their parents at the border; or that marriage equality, the right to consensual gay sex and LGBTQ workers’ rights should be protected. Barrett would not say that human beings are responsible for climate change or that the Constitution requires a peaceful transfer of power.

Barrett’s answers — and refusals to answer — confirm that she will be the most radical right-wing member of the Court.

Even Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which struck down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), noted, “Voting discrimination still exists. No one doubts that.” Apparently, Barrett does. Roberts also said at his confirmation hearing, “I agree with the Griswold court’s conclusion that marital privacy extends to contraception and availability of that.”

When Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) asked Barrett whether a president could refuse to comply with a court order, she refused to answer. Even Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch “made it clear [during their confirmation hearings] that a president cannot refuse to comply with a court order and the Supreme Court’s word is the final word on that matter,” Leahy told Barrett.

Even Kavanaugh wrote in a court of appeals opinion that, “being called the N-word by a supervisor suffices by itself to establish a racially hostile work environment,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) told Barrett.

Barrett’s Confirmation Threatens Voting Rights

Barrett was asked whether she agreed with her mentor Antonin Scalia’s characterization of the Voting Rights Act as “a perpetuation of racial entitlement.” Barrett refused to answer. “This should sound an alarm for anyone in our country who cares about protecting voting rights for all Americans,” Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, testified at Barrett’s hearing.

An Arizona case on the Court’s docket will test another anti-discrimination provision of the VRA, Section 2, which prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race. “Given Judge Barrett’s unwillingness to recognize the threats that Black people and communities of color face in voting, I’m deeply concerned about how she would handle this case and many other such cases that will come before the Court,” Clarke told the committee.

Barrett’s Confirmation Threatens the Affordable Care Act

Barrett admitted to Leahy that she didn’t know how many people are covered by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), how many people under age 26 have health insurance under their parents’ plans thanks to the ACA, or how many Americans have tested positive for coronavirus.

If she was being straight with Leahy, Barrett is a judge wildly out of touch with the people of this country.

Barrett also refused to tell Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) that she was aware Donald Trump had opposed the ACA before he nominated her. When Sen. Kamala Harris (D-California) asked Barrett whether she had heard Trump’s statement committing to nominate judges who would strike down the ACA, the judge replied, “I don’t recall hearing about or seeing such statements.”

Has Barrett been hiding under a rock? Or is she lying?

On November 10, the Court will hear arguments in California v. Texas, which will determine the fate of the ACA. The Trump administration’s brief in the case says, “The entire Affordable Care Act must fall.” Barrett wrote in a 2017 law review article that Roberts’s 2012 majority opinion upholding the law “pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute.”

The Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee spent most of their time providing personal stories demonstrating the tragedy that would befall tens of millions of Americans who would lose their health care if the Court repeals the ACA, especially in the midst of a pandemic.

But they could have better explained why Trump is so eager to repeal “Obamacare” and why congressional Republicans have tried to abolish it 70 times. It’s the powerful insurance lobby that has Trump and GOP congress members in their pocket. Although Republicans have been promising for years that they would replace Obamacare with a better plan, no plan has ever been forthcoming.

Dr. Farhan Bhatti, CEO of a Michigan nonprofit clinic, testified that without the ACA, insurance companies could discriminate against anyone who has tested positive for COVID-19, which would constitute a pre-existing condition, as well as any other pre-existing conditions. They could refuse to provide coverage or raise costs. “Any judge who opposes the ACA endangers a lifeline that my patients count on to stay healthy, and in many cases, to stay alive,” Bhatti told the senators.

Barrett’s Confirmation Threatens Racial Justice and Reproductive Rights

In light of the national discourse and public protests against systemic racism and police brutality, Booker asked Barrett what books or law review articles she’s read about racial disparities in the criminal legal system. Barrett cited the sentencing guidelines, sentencing commission reports and “conversations” she’d had. Booker said there are books on the bestseller list, including The Color of Law, Just Mercy and The New Jim Crow, because “people are seeking to know what the facts are.”

Booker told Barrett that the “war on drugs” is a war on Black and Brown people “because of the outrageous disparities.” He confronted Barrett with a lengthy blog post she wrote questioning whether people sentenced under the racially discriminatory cocaine law should have their sentences adjusted retroactively after the law was overturned. Booker noted that of the 20,000 people affected, 98 percent were Black or Brown. He pointed out that Barrett never mentioned that the prior law, with its racially biased sentencing disparities for crack and powder cocaine disproportionately affecting Black people, was unjust.

When asked about the standard for overruling Supreme Court precedent, Barrett called Brown v. Board of Education — which held that “separate but equal” schools discriminated against Black children — a “super-precedent,” that is, “precedent that is so well-established that it would be unthinkable that it would ever be overruled.” But Barrett refused to say that Roe v. Wade is also a super-precedent because many people are trying to overturn it. That’s not surprising as she signed a statementreferring to Roe as “barbaric” and a “raw exercise of judicial power.” She also opposed access to contraception under the Affordable Care Act, calling it “an assault on religious liberty.”

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) cited 14 abortion cases winding their way through the courts. They include abortion bans between six and 24 gestational weeks, bans on dilution and extraction (which account for almost all second trimester abortions), requirements that fetal remains be buried or cremated, unnecessary requirements imposed on abortion providers like transfer agreements with hospitals, reason bans, and parental notification and consent requirements.

Many of these cases could reach the Supreme Court. Although no case has yet squarely presented the issue of whether Roe should be overturned, right-wingers have erected procedural barriers aimed to cause death of abortion by a thousand cuts.

Make no mistake: Reproductive rights are on the line if Barrett joins the Court.

Dark Money Propelled Barrett to the Supreme Court

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) did a masterful job of explaining how dark (secret) money has been spent to overturn the ACA and put Barrett and other right-wingers on the high court. He described “orchestrated” campaigns with amicus briefs written by right-wing organizations and signed by GOP senators. Whitehouse cited “the Judicial Crisis Network campaigning for Supreme Court nominees, writing briefs for senators against the Affordable Care Act, supporting the Republicans who are bringing this case, and leading the selection process for this nominee.”

Whitehouse displayed a list of 80 cases decided by a 5 to 4 vote with no Democrats joining the majority. These cases were backed by identifiable GOP donor interests and they won all of them. They’re not about Roe or the ACA, Whitehouse told Barrett. “They’re about power,” he said, listing three categories of cases: (1) unlimited dark money in politics (Citizens United); (2) diminishing the civil jury (“annoying to big corporate powers”); and (3) weakening regulatory agencies (favoring polluters like the fossil fuel industry and Koch industries).

Barrett explained the process by which a case gets to the Supreme Court: Someone suffers an injury, gets a lawyer, sues, and the case winds its way up to the high court. But Whitehouse clarified how big funders inject cases into the system to serve their political and economic interests. He described “a whole array of legal groups also funded by dark money, which … bring cases to the court. They don’t wind their way to the court, your honor, they get shoved to the court by these legal groups. Many of which asked to lose below so they can get quickly to the court to get their business done there.” Whitehouse cited the example of a $45 million campaign to get rid of union dues which succeeded when the Court decided Janus v. AFSCME in 2018 and overruled its 40-year-old decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education.

Trump has made clear he wants Barrett confirmed to the Court in time to decide election challenges. Nevertheless, Barrett refused to commit to recusing herself in any cases that come before the Court contesting the election results.

The Democratic senators repeatedly said that the GOP’s hypocritical rush to install Barrett on the Court while people are already voting in the middle of a pandemic is “not normal.” They should instead be working to pass COVID-19 relief for the millions of people who are suffering.

Barrett will be confirmed to the Court and at age 48, she could serve for decades. She will create a 6 to 3 right-wing majority on the Court. But if the Democrats win both the presidency and the Senate, two of the three branches of government could check and balance the judicial one.

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Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and a member of the advisory board of Veterans for Peace. Her most recent book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

Enquanto a “crise do Coronavirus” continua a provocar consequências socio-económicas devastadoras, também em Itália, uma grande parte do “Fundo para a Recuperação” é destinada não aos sectores económicos e sociais mais atingidos, mas aos sectores mais avançados da indústria bélica.

De acordo com o Fundo de Recuperação, a Itália deveria receber € 209 biliões nos próximos seis anos, dos quais cerca de 81 como subsídios e 128 como empréstimos a serem reembolsados com juros.

Entretanto, os Ministérios da Defesa e do Desenvolvimento Económico apresentaram uma lista de projectos de carácter militar no valor de cerca de 30 biliões de euros (Análise da Defesa, Fundos também para a Defesa do Fundo de Recuperação, 25-09-2020). Os projectos do Ministério da Defesa prevêem atribuir 5 biliões de euros do Fundo de Recuperação para aplicações militares nos sectores da cibernética, das comunicações, do Espaço e da inteligência artificial. Os projectos relativos ao uso militar da 5G são significativos, principalmente no Espaço, com a concretização de uma constelação de 36 satélites e outros.

Os projectos do Ministério do Desenvolvimento Económico, relacionados, sobretudo, com o sector aeroespacial militar, prevêem uma despesa de 25 biliões de euros do Fundo de Recuperação. O Ministério pretende investir num caça da sexta geração (a suceder ao F-35 de quinta geração), o Tempest, denominado “o avião do futuro”. Outros investimentos dizem respeito à produção de helicópteros/tilt rotors militares da nova geração, capazes de decolar e aterrar na vertical e voar a alta velocidade.

Ao mesmo tempo, irá investir em drones e unidades navais da nova geração e em tecnologias submarinas avançadas.Também são esperados grandes investimentos no sector das tecnologias espaciais e de satélite. Várias dessas tecnologias, entre as quais se destacam os sistemas de comunicação 5G, serão usadas com um duplo objectivo – militar e civil. Visto que alguns dos projectos militares apresentados pelos dois departamentos se sobrepõem, o Ministério do Desenvolvimento Económico elaborou uma nova lista que permitirá reduzir as suas despesas em 12,5 biliões de euros.

No entanto, permanece o facto de que se está a programar gastar uma quantia que varia  de 17,5 a 30 biliões de euros retirados do Fundo de Recuperação para fins militares, que devem ser reembolsados ​​com juros. Além desta quantia, há mais 35 biliões destinados a fins militares e a serem gastos pelos governos italianos durante o período 2017-2034, sobretudo, no orçamento do Ministério do Desenvolvimento Económico.

Esta verba soma-se ao orçamento do Ministério da Defesa, elevando a despesa militar italiana para mais de 26 biliões de euros por ano, equivalente a uma média de mais de 70 milhões de euros por dia, em dinheiro público subtraído às despesas sociais. Cifra que a Itália se comprometeu com a NATO a aumentar para uma média de cerca de 100 milhões de euros por dia, de acordo com o que foi solicitado pelos Estados Unidos.

A atribuição para este efeito de uma grande parte do ‘Recovery Fund’ permitirá à Itália atingir este nível. Na primeira fila, entre as indústrias militares que pressionam o governo a aumentar a fatia militar do Fundo de Recuperação, está a empresa Leonardo,da qual o Ministério do Desenvolvimento Económico possui 30% das acções. A Leonardo está integrada no gigantesco complexo militar-industrial USA, comandado pela Lockheed Martin, construtora do F-35 em cuja produção participa essa mesma empresa Leonardo, através da sua fábrica em Cameri.

A Leonardo que se autoproclama “protagonista mundial no Aeroespaço, na Defesa e na Segurança”, com a missão de “proteger os cidadãos”, demonstra como pretende fazê-lo, ao usar a sua influência e poder para roubar aos cidadãos, recursos vitais do “Fundo de Recuperação”, a fim de conseguir uma maior aceleração da “recuperação” da indústria bélica.

Recursos que seremos sempre nós a pagá-los, acrescidos de juros. Pagaremos assim, “o avião do futuro”, que nos protegerá, assegurando um futuro de guerra.

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo original em italiano :

Dal Recovery Fund 30 miliardi per il militare

Tradutora: Maria Luísa de Vasconcello

O planeta inteiro está estupefato, espantado, chocado e aterrorizado com o espetáculo da democracia desvelado nas sombras do imperialismo messiânico – acrescente um monte de surpresas asquerosas tipo “bala de prata” de outubro.

Estamos dentro do território de Frank Underwood. Para ficar de acordo com o suprassumo da “Sociedade do Fingimento” retratado por Baudrillard nos idos dos anos 80, todas as semelhanças com um espetáculo de Vale Tudo não são, por óbvio, mera coincidência.

Comecemos com as pesquisas

Todos os tipos de pesquisas circulam por aí como dervixes sufistas rodopiantes. A maioria delas espelha os democratas trilhando o caminho da vitória e apontam uma inevitável Rota do Inferno para Trump. Uma pesquisa feita pelo The Economist dá a Joe “Walking Dead” Biden estonteantes 91% de chance – lembram de Hillary, em 2016? – de vitória no Colégio Eleitoral.

Exsurge um consenso impulsionado pelos Democratas de que Trump – inapelavelmente descrito como um proto-fascista perigoso e alucinado, prejudicial aos negócios mundo afora – não aceitará os resultados em quaisquer estados norte-americanos com tradição Republicana no qual ele venha a ser derrotado por margem pequena, como Arizona, Flórida, Michigam, Carolina do Norte, Pensilvânia e Wiscosin.

Ocorre que no desenrolar da campanha a história é diferente. As evidências mostram que nos comícios dos “Walking Deads” há mais pessoas que surgem dos ônibus de Biden que eleitores do Partido Democrata em carne e osso. A campanha Biden/Harris, mostrando sua perícia em Relações Públicas, tratam esses comícios como segredos de campanha.

Aparentemente, o próprio presidente revelou a estratégia de longo prazo de sua equipe: “daqui a dois anos ainda estaremos contando votos … se voltarmos ao Congresso, a vantagem é nossa. Penso em algo por volta de 22 a 26, uma vez que se conta um voto por Estado.”

É uma referência à 12ª Emenda à Constituição: se eleitores de determinado estado não conseguem chegar a um resultado quanto ao vencedor, a decisão vai para a Câmara. Ali, todos os estados têm direito a apenas um voto. Pensem que estados controlados pelos republicanos com Alasca, Dakota do Norte, Dakota do Sul e Wyoming (todos com apenas um representante [republicano] na Câmara) tem o mesmo peso que California (que tem 52 representantes na Câmara, dos quais 45 são democratas).

Trump leva vantagem: no cenário atual, seriam mesmo 26 a 22, com dois – Pensilvânia e Michigam – em tese empatados.

Pergunte aos quant⁽¹⁾

Enquanto as próprias pesquisas internas do Partido Republicano indicam que os Democratas ainda não estão batendo de porta em porta, os entusiastas de Trump enxameiam nas casas, já tendo atuado em cerca de 20 milhões de residências nos estados indecisos.

Junte a isso uma nova pesquisa Gallup indicando que 56% dos (norte)americanos consideram estar melhor sob Trump do que estiveram anos atrás sob Obama/Biden. Você pode apelidar isso de “a volta do ‘é a economia, estúpido’”

O Grupo Trafalgar – que previu corretamente a eleição de 2016 – aposta que Trump vencerá por pouco o Colégio Eleitoral, com 275 votos.

O principal analista quantitativo do JPMorgan mapeou exaustivamente as mudanças entre eleitores registrados para negar quase quaisquer pesquisas que apontem para uma vitória folgada dos Democratas. Isso quer dizer que Trump pode perfeitamente acabar vencendo na Santíssima Trindade: Pensilvânia (20 votos), Flórida (29 votos) e Carolina do Norte (15 votos).

Como cereja do bolo, nada mais inesperado que um buraco negro massivo engolindo uma estrela aconteceu nesse outubro de surpresas, na última semana: a CNN de repente resolveu fazer jornalismo e estraçalhou Nancy Pelosi diante das câmeras.

Isso pode ser de mau agouro para a presidente-na-espera Kamala Harris, a qual, como poucos recordam, foi ungida como herdeira do eixo Obama/Pelosi em reunião secreta no verão de 2017.

Sigamos o dinheiro

Vamos seguir o dinheiro.

É brincadeira de criança. Para os republicanos, o homem da grana é o esquematizador de cassinos Sheldon Adelson – que literalmente comprou o Congresso por uma mixaria de $150 milhões de dólares. Já para os democratas, o dono da burra é Haim Saban – que tem seu próprio think tank e é a pessoa que socorre Hillary quando esta necessita de numerário. Essencialmente, o demente democrata é o operador do “homem da mala”.

Só para melhorar as coisas, tanto Adelson quanto Saban são defensores ferrenhos de Israel-acima-de-tudo. Um agente de Inteligência dissidente bateu no fígado: “O mafioso Sheldon Adelson financiou Trump porque o achou melhor para Israel, embora Israel favorecesse Hillary”.

Há quatro anos, fontes fidedignas de Nova Iorque com as quais eu tinha contato acertaram o resultado das eleições com dez dias de antecedência.

Uma delas, magnata de Nova Iorque intimamente ligado aos Mestres do Universo que controlam Wall Street, também foi na jugular:

“O Estado Profundo governa tanto Republicanos quanto Democratas. Trump teve que trabalhar dentro do sistema. Ele sabe disso. Sou amigo de Donald e sei que ele quer fazer a coisa certa. Mas ele não manda. Claro que ele quer relações amistosas com Rússia e China. Ele é um homem de negócios. Quer negociar com eles, não lutar. Nós traçamos as linhas mestras da campanha dele em 2016: parar a manipulação e moedas que destrói as indústrias domésticas; cessar a imigração ilimitada que acaba com os salários das classes baixas e encorajar a distensão com a Rússia e a China. A grande maioria dessas coisas não aconteceu nos últimos quatro anos.”

Há gente de Nova Iorque que acrescentaria: “de um jeito ou outro, Trump fez 90% do que eles queriam. É melhor ter no poder um rufião conhecido e manter os proletários andando em círculos.”

Na frente financeira, há coisas que jamais verão a luz: Wall Street, mesmo mantendo uma fachada favorável aos Democratas, não está minimamente interessada numa vitória Democrata “retumbante”, desde que isso significaria queda imediata em ações da bolsa em Wall Street. Da mesma forma com uma eleição que pudesse ser contestada ou postergada – e nesse caso Goldman Sachs prevê um cenário de pesadelo no qual o índice S&P cairia para apenas 3100 pontos.

Então, devagar com o andor, este é o cenário preferido por Wall Street: Trump vence e produz mais cortes generosos de impostos – paralelamente, o sentimento em Wall Street é que Trump continuará a despejar dinheiro às mancheias aconteça o que acontecer. Afinal, na realidade a única “política” real é que Wall Street transformou o Fed em um fundo de investimento livre.

Por sua vez, algo que a equipe de Trump com certeza não quer é o Grande Reinício (Great Reset, no texto em inglês – nt) – a ser oficialmente lançado no encontro virtual de Davos em janeiro de 2021.

Tudo isso acontece simultaneamente, enquanto Goldman Sachs, mais uma vez, alerta estridentemente que a única maneira de “salvar” a nação de sua dívida portentosa e eternamente prestes a explodir é a desvalorização do dólar.

Hillary quer outro emprego

No teatro de sombras – ou plano de luta livre sem regras – do conflito de Trump contra o Estado Profundo (Deep State, no texto em inglês – nt) outro dos atores novaiorquinos confirma que “Trump nunca teve permissão para cumprir parte substancial de sua própria agenda o que demonstra onde está o poder real. Na medida em que ele dá tudo o que pedem, que seja o aumento de um orçamento militar já gigantesco, o complexo Militar/Industrial quer a vitória de Trump. Já Biden se recusa a assumir tal compromisso.”

Como “apenas obedeciam ordens” Clapper, Brennan Comey e Mueller estão sendo protegidos. Quanto à hiena belicista e narcisista chamada Hillary Clinton, esta precisa que Biden/Harris vençam, para, entre outras coisas, escapar da cadeia, desde que se cumpra um acordo “secreto” entre ela e Obama, que a forçou a se manter distante enquanto o ex-presidente assumia como líder de fato da vasta máquina política do DNC (Democratic National Committee – Comitê Nacional Democrata – nt).

Qualquer um que tenha um cérebro em atividade e more em Beltway tem consciência de que o Walking Dead foi escolhido justamente porque mal se qualifica como capacho dos poderosos. Admitindo-se que ele vença as eleições, o poder real por trás do trono será o eixo Obama/Pelosi – e seus mestres suspeitos de sempre. Seja muito bem vindo ao reinado da Presidente Kamala.

Hillary, claro, não dá ponto sem nó, dobra as apostas e não faz prisioneiros. Acabou de divulgar um manifesto de 5000 palavras que pode ser entendido como uma candidatura a chefia do Pentágono.

Todos esses planos e contra planos não afetam os padrões principais do Estado Profundo, que continuam inabaláveis. Compreende-se então que o pântano proverbial do Distrito de Columbia continua a proteger suas crias. Além da possibilidade real de que Trump sequer é qualificado para escolher seus subordinados, acrescente-se que na verdade não lhe foram dadas opções decentes: teve que lidar com espécimes do naipe de Gina “rainha da tortura” Haspel, O Bigode Belicoso de John  Bolton e Mike “nós mentimos, nós enganamos, nós roubamos” Pompeo.

O que nos leva ao Procurador Geral William Barr – e a uma questão resiliente em muitos corredores da Beltway: qual a causa da falta de indiciamentos mesmo quando se amontoavam as evidências de malfeitos relacionados ao Estado Profundo.

Muito simples: Barr é ao mesmo tempo parte da CIA e da gang do Velho pai Bush, recrutado quando ele ainda cursava o ensino médio em 1971. Quando seu mentor se tornou diretor da CIA em 1976, Barr adentrou no Departamento Jurídico da CIA e a partir daí sua carreira decolou, culminando em 1991 com a nomeação para a Presidência da Consultoria Jurídica sob o Presidente Bush.

Nem é preciso dizer que Barr a seguir impediu quaisquer eventuais investigações contra Bush, Clinton e demais operadores da CIA, desde o BCCI até o roubo do software da PROMIS.

Não haveria voluntários dispostos a desvendar porque Trump escolheu Barr – ou como o Estado Profundo fez isso acontecer. O fato é que Barr foi alçado logo depois da morte de Papai Bush. Com ou sem os 33.000 e-mails deletados de Hillary, é muito pouco provável que Trump “tirasse” do pântano o agente da CIA William Barr

São esses fatos que levam aqueles jogadores em Nova Iorque a apostar que Barr não acionará suas baterias contra qualquer estrela na galáxia do Estado Profundo.

Mas permanece o fato de que a NSA (Agência de Segurança Nacional – nt) armazenou todas as chamadas, conversas ou e-mails em suas massivas Torres de Servidores (Servers Farms no texto em inglês – nt) e que Trump tem o poder de ordenar a divulgação de tudo – o que na realidade já fez. Mesmo assim, aos proletários foram oferecidas apenas pobres narrativas sobre espécies animais ameaçados, tipo WWF (World Wide Fund [for Nature]).

 

“Voltei” – em esteroides

A balcanização total da cultura dos Estados Unidos encerrada em containers blindados de irracionalidade impede quaisquer possibilidades de debate civilizado. O que resta é uma proliferação interminável de maus atores, exércitos de trolls pagos, robôs, ultraje da massa embrulhado como se fosse barras de chocolate e a histeria geral.

Aconteça o que acontecer, esteja pronto para um massacre tipo Kill Bill logo à frente.

Neste fogo cruzado – não apenas metafórico – aparece John Lydon, também conhecido como Johnny Rotten, lenda do Sex Pistol e milionário residente na melhor parte de Venice Beach, Los Angeles. Ele votará em Trump.

Para o Presidente Trump, é a consagração – mesmo que Trump esteja mais para Village People (“Young man/ there’s no need to feel down” – não é preciso se sentir arrasado, meu jovem – nt) que o Sex Pistols em “Holidays in the Sun” ou os Dead Kennedys em “Holiday in Cambodia”.

Dica para o POTUS (Presidente Of The United States – Presidente dos Estados Unidos – nt) doidão na Flórida: “Estou de volta” em esteroides, trabalhando a multidão excitada como um profissional, atingindo o clímax em passos da dança YMCA na finalização: “I’ll kiss the guys, and the beautiful women…” (Beijarei os manos e as mulheres bonitas… – nt).

Faça a comparação com o “Zé Dorminhoco” (Sleepy Joe, no texto em inglês – nt) em Ohio, encarando, bem, ninguém, na realidade: “I’m running as a proud Democrat … for the Senate”. (Estou concorrendo como um orgulhoso candidato Democrata… ao Senado (!) – nt)”

Semana passada, uma incontável multidão de oito pessoas compareceu em um comício Biden/Harris no Arizona.

A palhaçada continua inabalável enquanto uma pandemia com taxa de mortalidade de mais ou menos 0,14% – de acordo com estimativas da própria Organização Mundial de Saúde – está custando à economia global nada menos que espantosos $28 trilhões de dólares, de acordo com o FMI.

Antes que eu me esqueça: só termina quando Britney, a magrela, cantar “I did it again” …

 

Artigo original em português :

POTUS Punk vs. Dem Dementia

Strategic Culture Foundation 15 de Outubro de 2020

Tradução de btpsilveira

The whole planet is enthralled, appalled, shocked and awed by the spectacle of democracy as enacted under the shadow of messianic imperialism – complete with a slew of slimy, smoking gun October Surprises.

We’re in total Frank Underwood territory. And as befits the ultimate “society of the simulacrum” pictured by Baudrillard back in the swingin’ 1980s, all those similarities with a Wrestlemania spectacular are obviously not mere coincidence.

Let’s start with the polls.

All manner of polls are circulating like whirling dervishes. Most highlight myriad Dem paths to victory and an inexorable Highway to Hell for Trump. A poll by The Economist gives Joe “Walking Dead” Biden a whopping 91% chance – remember Hillary in 2016? – of winning the Electoral College.

A Dem-fueled consensus is emerging that Trump – relentlessly depicted as a deranged, lunatic proto-fascist who’s bad for business worldwide – will dispute results in any Republican-led state which he may narrowly lose, as in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Yet on the campaign trail, it’s a completely different story. Evidence shows that on The Walking Dead’s rallies, there are more people from the Biden bus and reporters than flesh-and-blood Dem voters. The Biden-Harris campaign, demonstrating its matchless P.R. skills, spins these rallies as campaign secrets.

Team Trump’s long-shot strategy seems to have been unveiled by the President himself:

“We are going to be counting ballots for the next two years (…) We have the advantage if we go back to Congress. I think it’s 26 to 22 or something because it’s counted one vote per state.”

That was a reference to the 12^th Amendment to the Constitution: if state electors can’t agree on a president, the decision goes to the House. And then each of the 50 states gets one vote. So picture small GOP-controlled states such as Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming (each with one Republican in the House) having the same weight as California (52 members in the House, 45 of them Democrats.)

Advantage Trump: as it stands, it’s indeed 26 to 22, with two – Pennsylvania and Michigan – basically tied.

Ask the quant

Internal GOP polls show that while the Biden-Harris campaign is not knocking on any doors, Trump volunteers have actually swarmed no less than 20 million homes in swing states.

Combine it with a new Gallup Poll showing that 56% of Americans state they are better off now under Trump than four years ago under Obama/Biden. Call it the return of “It’s the economy, stupid.”

The Trafalgar Group – which correctly called the 2106 election – bets that Trump narrowly wins the Electoral College with 275 votes.

JPMorgan’s top quant Marko Kolanovic has exhaustively mapped changes in voter registration to dismiss virtually every poll showing a Dem sweep. This implies that Trump may well end up winning the Holy Trinity: Pennsylvania (20 votes), Florida (29 votes) and North Carolina (15 votes).

And to top it off, something more exotic than a black hole eating a star has happened in this October Surprise-laden week: CNN decided to practice real journalism and eviscerated Nancy Pelosi on camera.

That may be quite a bad omen for President-in-Waiting Kamala Harris, who very few remember was forged as the heir to the Obama-Pelosi axis in a secret meeting in the Hamptons way back in the summer of 2017.

Follow the money

Now let’s Follow The Money.

That’s a slam dunk. For Republicans, the top bagman is casino schemer Sheldon Adelson – who literally bought Congress for a paltry $150 million. For Democrats, it’s Haim Saban – who owns his own think tank and is Hillary’s go-to moneyman. The Dem dementia is essentially a bagman op.

To make it even more digestible, both Adelson and Saban are rabid Israeli-firsters. A dissident Beltway intel op cuts all corners: “The Mafia front man Sheldon Adelson financed Trump for Israeli insurance even though Israel was for Hillary.”

Four years ago, selected New York sources I was in touch with correctly called the election result at least 10 days before the fact.

One of these, a New York business tycoon intimate with assorted Masters of the Universe in control of Wall Street, once again goes to the jugular:

“The Deep State governs both Republicans and Democrats. Trump has to work within the system. He knows it. I am a friend of Donald and I know he wants to do the right thing. But he is not in charge. He certainly wants to be friends with Russia and China. He is a businessman. He wants to make deals with countries not fight them. We were among those who set the main campaign features for him in 2016: stop rigged currencies destroying domestic industries, stop unlimited immigration destroying the lower classes wages and encourage detente with Russia and China. Largely nothing has happened in four years.”

Still, adds another New York player, “Trump does 90% of what they want anyway. Better to keep a villain at the top to blame and keep the proles running in circles.”

On the financial front, that will never be admitted publicly: but Wall Street, while projecting a mere pro-Dem façade, is not interested in a Democrat “sweep”, because that would tank Wall Street stocks. A contested/protracted election would go the same way – with Goldman Sachs projecting a nightmare scenario of the S&P down to only 3,100 points.

Thus the preferred, hush hush, Wall Street scenario: a Trump win and more juicy tax cuts – in parallel with the sentiment that Wall Street’s priority is for the Fed to keep showering trillions of dollars in helicopter money whatever happens. After all the only “policy” in town is that Wall Street turned the Fed into a hedge fund.

For its part, what Team Trump certainly does not want is the Great Reset – to be officially “launched” at a virtual Davos in January 2021.

And all this while Goldman Sachs, once again, is adamant that the only way to “save” the nation from it humongous, ever-exploding debt is to devalue the U.S. dollar.

Hillary wants a new job

In the shadow play – or Wrestlemania plot – of Trump’s face-off against the Deep State, another of those New York players confirms that, “Trump was not allowed to do much of his agenda. That shows you where the real power is. The military-industrial complex wants Trump in as he is giving them everything they want for a giant military buildup. But Biden will not make that commitment.”

Clapper, Brennan, Comey and Mueller “were just following orders and are being protected.” As for warmongering narcissistic hyena

Hillary Clinton, she needs a Biden/Harris win essentially to stay out of jail, a follow-up to a “secret” deal struck with Obama which had her bow out to the former President as the de facto leader of the vast DNC machinery.

Anyone with a brain across the Beltway knows The Walking Dead was chosen because he does not even qualify as a place mat. Assuming he would be elected president, the real power behind the throne will be the Obama-Pelosi axis – and their usual suspect masters. Welcome to the reign of President Kamala.

Hillary though is leaving nothing to chance, doubling down and taking no prisoners. She has just released a 5,000-word manifesto which reads as an application to become head of the Pentagon.

The fact that with all the plot twists key vectors of the Deep State continue to be untouchable should be read as the proverbial D.C. swamp protecting their flock. More than the possibility that Trump is unqualified when it comes to picking minions, more realistically he was never given any decent options: so he was stuck with nefarious specimens such as Gina “Queen of Torture” Haspel, The Warring Mustache John Bolton, and Mike “We Lie, We Cheat, We Steal” Pompeo.

Which bring us to Attorney General William Barr – and a persistent question across many Beltway corridors: how come there have been no indictments as evidence piles up of interlocking Deep State-related shenanigans.

Simple: Barr is CIA, part of the old Daddy Bush gang, recruited when he was still in high school, in 1971. When Daddy Bush became CIA director in 1976, Barr stepped into the CIA’s legal office and started his steady climb, culminating in 1991 as Chief Legal Counsel to Daddy Bush’s presidency.

Needless to add, Barr subsequently squashed every possible investigation on Bush, Clinton and assorted CIA ops, from BCCI to the theft of PROMIS software.

No one will volunteer to be on the record showing how Trump selected Barr – or how the Deep State made it happen. The fact is Barr was appointed shortly after the death of Daddy Bush. It’s unlikely that Team Trump have “turned” CIA asset Barr away from the swamp – with or without Hillary’s 33,000 deleted emails.

And that’s what leads those New York players to bet that Barr won’t go after any star in the Deep State galaxy.

Still the fact remains that the NSA has stored every possible call, chat or email on its massive server farms. Trump has the power to order everything to be released – as he did. Yet, as it stands, the proles have only been offered a WWF-themed sitcom.

“I’m back” on steroids

The total balkanization of culture in the U.S. into bulletproof containers of irrationality is precluding any possibility of civilized debate. What’s left is an endless proliferation of fake actors, paid troll armies, bots, mob outrage packaged as chocolate bars, all out hysteria.

Whatever happens, get ready for some major Kill Bill mayhem ahead.

And into this shooting war – not only metaphorical – steps John Lydon, a.k.a. Johnny Rotten, Sex Pistol legend and a millionaire resident of the tony parts of Venice beach in L.A. He’s voting Trump.

That’s the ultimate crowning of POTUS Punk – except that Trump is more Village People (“Young man/ there’s no nee to feel down”) than the Sex Pistols in Holidays in the Sun or the Dead Kennedys in Holiday in Cambodia.

Cue to POTUS Punk in Florida, “I’m back” on steroids, working an excited crowd of thousands like a pro, complete with YMCA dance moves at the end: “I’ll kiss the guys, and the beautiful women…”

Now compare it to “Sleepy Joe” in Ohio, in front of, well, nobody really: “I’m running as a proud Democrat…for the Senate”.

Last week an astonishing eight people showed up for a Biden-Harris rally in Arizona.

And the racket goes on while a pandemic with an Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of roughly 0.14% – according to the WHO’s own estimate – has cost the global economy no less than a whopping $28 trillion, according to the IMF.

Oh yes: it ain’t over till slim Britney “I Did It Again” sings.

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Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

What Happened: Bill Gates recently appeared on NBC news stating that after the first generation of COVID vaccines becomes available, a second wave of vaccines will then hit the market, letting the public know that the COVID vaccine will be a multi-dose vaccine.

Approximately 6 months ago he gave multiple interviews, in one of them stating that “It is fair to say that things won’t go back to truly normal until we have a vaccine that we’ve gotten out to basically the entire world.”

In this most recent interview, he discussed how vaccine hesitancy is at an all time high, but did not address the concerns that vaccine safety advocates commonly bring up, some of which you can see in the articles listed towards the end of this article. Instead, like many other mainstream media interviews and pieces about vaccines, the idea that they’re not completely safe and effective for everyone seemed to be brushed off as a mere “conspiracy theory.”

From here he was asked about misinformation that’s spread on social media outlets, and the responsibility the government has to limit, stop and slow down its spread. But this begs the question, how much of this information is actually misinformation? If scientists and various publications raise legitimate concerns about vaccines, it also seems to be pilled into the ‘misinformation’ category in the minds of people like Bill Gates.

This is a very serious issue, as legitimate safety concerns regarding vaccines continue to be completely ignored and never really addressed. That being said, there is a lot of misinformation out there. Whenever writing about this topic it’s imperative one uses credible sources and information.

Right now we have a digital authoritarian “fact-checker” patrolling the internet telling people what is and what isn’t. Should people not have the right to examine information and sources for themselves and decide on their own what they choose to believe? Are we really so unintelligent that we can’t determine what a credible source is anymore, and require a ‘ministry of truth’ to tell us what is?

Why This Is Important: Why doesn’t mainstream media or Bill Gates actually addresses the concerns that are being raised by scientists and doctors? Why is ridicule and terms like “conspiracy theory” always used instead?

What are the concerns? Vaccine injury is one of them. The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act has paid more than $4 billion to families of vaccine injured children. A 2010 HHS pilot study by the Federal Agency for Health Care Research (AHCR) found that 1 in every 39 vaccines causes injury, a shocking comparison to the claims from the CDC of 1 in every million.

Again, it’s no secret that vaccine hesitancy is at an all time high, even among physicians.  Professor Heidi Larson, a Professor of Anthropology and the Risk and Decision Scientist Director at the Vaccine Confidence Project stated at a World Health Organization (WHO) conference that:

The other thing that’s a trend, and an issue, is not just confidence in providers but confidence of health care providers, we have a very wobbly health professional frontline that is starting to question vaccines and the safety of vaccines. That’s a huge problem, because to this day any study I’ve seen… still, the most trusted person on any study I’ve seen globally is the health care provider…

Are these health care professionals being had by “conspiracy theories?”

Again, there are many concerns with vaccine safety, and if you browse through our site they are not hard to find. You can refer to the articles listed below if you want to dive deeper into a few examples that are backed by proper sources. This is the information that never seems to be acknowledged by the mainstream.

The question on many people’s minds seems to be if the vaccine will be made mandatory for things like travel or to enter into certain buildings. No doubt health authorities will face many backlashes and protests if this is the case. We will see what happens.

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Featured image is from CE

America, we need to have a conversation. It is a very serious and dire conversation that has been intentionally ignored and swept under the rug for far too long.  It concerns a dialogue that our entire mainstream media, in its conventional blindness, refuses to acknowledge.  Yet its consequences are potentially severe and perhaps deadly. It may not eventually have an impact upon you personally nor your health, but it will surely have a profound adverse effect upon someone you know or perhaps even a loved one.

It is time to finally agree on a very simple fact. It is a truth that needs to be driven into our nation’s collective consciousness: Vaccination hesitancy and opposition did  not mysteriously appear out of a vacuous void.  Nobody rubbed an Arabian lamp to release an anti-vaccine genie upon the public. However, this is the image that our federal agencies, the medical establishment, your average pediatrician, the vaccine tsars such as Bill Gates and his ilk, and the media project upon the visual mental screen of our culture.

In effect they reify a false narrative on our behalf. In our opinion any hope that life will return to normal is now a pipedream. The pandemic has spurred too many other financially driven initiatives that are going to propel the redefinition of “normalcy” and none of these measures will benefit the average person.

Rather than engage in open dialogue to reevaluate the causes for vaccination hesitancy, which has been increasing substantially and especially after the first announcements to develop a Covid-19 vaccine, the pro-vaccination regime has been focusing its attention on how to launch counter-measures to reinvigorate popular faith in vaccines.

Common sense should tell us this is the wrong discussion. The only real genies that have appeared in the vaccine vials themselves that have been responsible for vaccine injuries, an epidemic of neurological disorders in our children, weakened immune systems, life-long autoimmune conditions and deaths. Every parent with a vaccine-injured child at one time placed their complete faith in the safety of the vaccines that their children received. Wholeheartedly they believed the medical establishment. They believed their pediatricians and school health officials. And they listened intently to the television talking heads who convinced them with scare tactics to get vaccinated for whatever infectious outbreak was being reported that particular week. Therefore there are very rational reasons, also based on a large body of scientific evidence, for why vaccine hesitancy is on the rise. Our federal health agencies, in particular the CDC and FDA, and certainly the drug makers, have done nothing forthrightly to earn our trust. Nor should we be sucker punched into handing it over to them during this pandemic.

Many people are now eager to see a Covid-19 vaccine available under the hopeful assumption that their lives will return to 2019 before the pandemic was declared. Many are also willing to sacrifice themselves as guinea pigs in these vaccine clinical trials. As admirable as their courage may be, we must ask whether it is founded on a sound understanding of vaccine risks or is it simply an emotional reaction to the panic that has been orchestrated by our government’s health officials, the tsars of the vaccination imperium such as Bill Gates, the World Health Organization and those voices doing the bidding of the industrial pharmaceutical complex.

Not every expert in the fields of immunology, virology and genetics is buying into the Covid-19 vaccine frenzy.  But sadly their voices are either muffled in the louder noise of panic control and medical propaganda or worse are being ignored or censored altogether. Yet they too now more than ever need to have a seat at the table.  Not every problem requires a technological medical solution, and more often than not the irrational rush for such technological remedies makes matters far worse and costs more lives.

Lets consider one important voice now being ignored.

Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi is no nickel-dime physician. He has practiced medicine for five decades, was a post-doctoral researcher at one of the world’s most prestigious research institutes – the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics, and later held the Microbiology Chair at the University of Mainz in Germany for a dozen years. He has impeccable credentials that in our opinion outweigh many of our so-called medical experts preaching from their official soapboxes.  Dr. Bhakdi is not anti-vaccine, however he is deeply worried about the new technologies for a Covid-19 vaccine being rushed to market. One of the greatest fears being heard over the internet is that these new gene-based vaccines will recombine with our body’s DNA and cause untold health problems.  But this worries Bhakdi less than other far greater risks with life-long debilitating consequences:

First, there is the possibility of mutagenesis, or mutations occurring due to the insertion of the vaccine’s viral-based gene. This is especially worrisome given the possibility that these insertions could occur in reproductive cells and will thereby be inherited by future children. These were among the safety concerns raised by the Paul Ehrlich Institut in Germany and published in the journal Methods in Molecular Biology.

Second, there is a very real danger that our body’s immune system will identify this inserted genetic material as a foreign invader and create anti-DNA antibodies that will in turn trigger an autoimmune disease. There is no certainty that an adverse autoimmune response will occur immediately or even shortly after vaccination. It may take one, two, three or more years before the vaccinated person lapses into a serious, or even life-threatening, autoimmune condition. There are over 80 different autoimmune illnesses; it is a toss of the dice as to which might appear. Nevertheless in the case of such an event, the gene-based Covid-19 vaccine cannot be ruled out as a fundamental cause.

And don’t place any bets that you will be properly diagnosed if symptoms of a chronic autoimmune disease begin to appear.  During the annual European League Against Rheumatism conference in 2018, two papers were delivered that should frighten us far more than Covid.  Separate studies found that approximately 95 percent of patients were misdiagnosed on at least one occasion after displaying autoimmune symptoms. About thirty-five percent were told it was psychosomatic, “all in their head.”  How many parents have been told by their pediatricians after the collapse of their child into mental despondency shortly after receiving one or more vaccinations that it has nothing to do with a vaccine and is their genes or another cause?

Then there is a third and even more “terrible” danger with these new vaccines.  It is wise to give heed to Dr. Bhakdi’s warnings in his book Corona False Alarm? Facts and Figures (Chelsea Green):

“… during or after production of the viral spike, waste products of the [virus’] protein must be expected to become exposed on the surface of the targeted cells [i.e., cells which the virus has latched onto]. The majority of healthy individuals have killer lymphocytes that recognize these viral [waste] products. It is inevitable that autoimmune attacks will be mounted against the cells. Where, when and with which effects this might occur is entirely unknown. But the prospects are simply terrifying.”

Although early research shows DNA and mRNA vaccines have benefits over the current cultured viral vaccines because of their high potency, they are still experimental. Much remains unknown. And because this new generation of vaccines are very recent, there is no reliable data to reach a medical consensus about their safety profile nor their potential long-term adverse risks. It is Dr. Bhakdi’s belief that a Covid-19 vaccine is completely unwarranted. An important fact people fail to realize is that the vaccine will not necessarily prevent you from contracting the virus. Instead you are more likely to not fall ill. However, you can still contract the virus and remain a spreader and infect others.  The only incentive for a Covid-19 vaccine is that it is an enormous cash cow for the drug industry.

Each of us should be deeply concerned about the above potential adverse effects from a Covid-19 vaccine.  Vaccination policy is supposed to be based upon concise benefit-risk analyses. Sadly, this has never been a firm policy implemented in the US and it has been a factor largely denied by the majority of the medical community. Every vaccination is a game of Russian roulette. For safer vaccines there may be 10,000 or even 100,000 chambers in the syringe-shaped revolver but there is always that one live bullet. For other less safe vaccines such as Gardasil, MMR and DpT the odds for that single bullet drop dramatically. As in the case of Merck’s Gardasil the results can be catastrophic; for this reason Robert Kennedy Jr has filed a major lawsuit against the vaccine’s maker.  And so far, the future prospects of a truly safe Covid-19 vaccine appear to be far off into the distant horizon if ever.

So why such concern over a Covid-19 vaccine?

Following AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine clinical trial it was reported that at least one participant had a very serious vaccine injury. “The highest levels of NIH are very concerned,” reported the pro-Pharma news site Fierce Biotech.  Yet British health authorities permitted the trial to resume.  And this is where the event becomes insidious.  No information about the nature of the injury nor its severity has been made public.  The company has argued it cannot release further information because of patient privacy. In other words, despite the government being the appendage that will distribute the vaccine, for the maker’s financial benefit, it has no leverage to review the injuries from the clinical trials. US health officials have come to the conclusion that the participant was diagnosed with vaccine-induced transverse myelitis, a debilitating inflammation of both sides of the spinal cord.  AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine is “a weakened version of a common cold virus (adenovirus) from chimpanzees that has been genetically changed so it is impossible for it to grow in humans.” Or so the Participant Information Sheet for the vaccine trial alleges.

It is also worth noting that anyone with a history of immunosuppression, immunodeficiency, angioedema, anaphylaxis, cardiovascular condition, gastrointestinal disease, liver or renal disease, a neurological illness or a psychiatric condition, allergies, a cancer diagnosis, alcohol or drug dependency, is pregnant, or received another vaccine within 30 days was excluded from participating in the trial.  Of course, this is not unusual. This is not an uncommon list of exclusionary conditions used during all vaccine trial recruitments to assure that only the healthiest people are enrolled that in turn reduces substantially the likelihood of adverse reactions. Nevertheless, once launched, the vaccine will be distributed indiscriminately to everyone, except in cases of very severe prior medical conditions.

This week it was reported that an adverse reaction occurred during Johnson’s and Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine trial. Information about the actual diagnosis of the participant’s adverse reaction remains unknown. But the case must be extremely serious because it signaled a high red alert and J&J halted its trial with 60,000 enrolled participants. Vaccine–related injuries, and even casualties, are not uncommon in such trials.  J&J’s press release stated it is conducting an investigation internally – meaning that outside authorities without conflicts-of-interest are again excluded — in order “to respect this participant’s privacy.”  Similar to AstraZeneca’s vaccine, J&J’s relies upon a genetic engineered vector of a human adenovirus which infects our cells and then delivers the engineered blueprint it is carrying. The company plans to manufacture more than 1 billion doses for global distribution to almost a seventh of the world’s population.

Finally, there is Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine that is based on mRNA technology, a trick of genetic engineering with lipid nanoparticles (LNP) that when injected turns our bodies into their own vaccine manufacturing factories. There seems to be more secrecy behind this company over the others. Moderna managed to get past the hurdle of animal testing and leap right into human clinical trials. However, according to a preliminary article in the New England Journal of Medicine, 80 percent of the participants in the moderate and high dose trial groups reported moderate to severe adverse reactions. If we take a look at Moderna’s Form S-1 Registration submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission we discover:

“[T]here can be no assurance that our LNPs [lipid nanoparticles] will not have undesired effects. Our LNPs could contribute, in whole or in part, to one or more of the following: immune reactions, infusion reactions, complement reactions, opsonation reactions, antibody reactions . . . or reactions to the PEG [a synthetic vaccine ingredient]… Certain aspects of our investigational medicines may induce immune reactions from either the mRNA or the lipid as well as adverse reactions within liver pathways or degradation of the mRNA or the LNP, any of which could lead to significant adverse events in one or more of our clinical trials.”

This Form S-1 was filed back in November 2019 and therefore serious risks of mRNA vaccines have been well known for a sufficient length of time to elicit grave caution.

All three of these companies’ Covid-19 vaccines are now included in Trump’s Operation Warp Speed.  Bill Gates, who is heavily invested in all of these vaccines, is eager to profit over their future prospects. “We need to make billions of doses,” Gates wrote on his blog page, “we need to get them out to every part of the world, and we need all of this to happen as quickly as possible.” We might add: and, damn the regulations and high safety standards that could hinder us.

And one final warning. Don’t count upon the mainstream media to educate you about any of this. In the event you or a loved one is injured or contracts a life-long autoimmune illness from one of these new Covid-19 vaccines, lower your hopes and expectations that you will be rewarded, if at all, with adequate compensation for damages. As a consequence of Reagan’s 1986 National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, the drug companies – and make no mistake, vaccines are also drugs – were left off the hook from any legal liability due to vaccine-related injuries and deaths. Don’t rely upon our word. This is recently from the media darling of the pharmaceutical dynasty, the Wall Street Journal, in its article “People Harmed by Coronavirus Vaccines Will Have Little Recourse,”

“The U.S. government paid out $4.4 billion over more than 30 years covering injuries relating to a host of vaccines—from flu to polio—but payouts for potential injuries from Covid-19 vaccines will be covered by a far less-generous program. Covid-19 vaccine injuries will be covered under a program known as the “countermeasures injury” compensation fund… The new fund has a tougher threshold for proving a relationship between an injury and the vaccine, experts say. The newer fund has a shorter statute of limitations, no avenue for appeals and doesn’t pay damages for pain or suffering like the older vaccine program does.”

The Journal article continues with reporting on the aggressive efforts underway by the vaccine companies to secure additional protection from personal liability due to vaccine injuries. In other words, they are preparing for a worse case scenario.

Do you have a fuller picture now of the larger stakes behind national governments’ hasty release of a Covid-19 vaccine? Now ask yourself why a more open and public discussion is not being conducted to address the evidence for these very legitimate concerns and fears. The warnings stated herein warrant a rise in vaccine hesitancy and opposition across the public landscape.  The conspiracy theorists are not the parents caring for neurologically damaged children for the remainder of their lives. The real denialists are those in the mainstream media who are too lazy, biased or lack a moral conscience to perform proper due diligence and mine the scientific literature for answers. Do yourself a favor. Simply don’t listen to them.

And when Gates, Fauci, Trump, Biden or any state governor begin talking about the “awesome” promises of a Covid-19 vaccine or its mandate, turn off your television or computer screen.  These people are only the profiteers protecting the vaccine makers and in the event of vaccine injuries we are just collateral damage in the “War Against Corona”.

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Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null co-direct Progressive Radio Network. They are frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Zero Hedge

In July 2017, two journalists working for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Dan Oakes and Sam Clark, wrote of a stash of incriminating documents, running into hundreds of pages.  They were “secret defence force documents leaked to the ABC”.  These documents gave “an unprecedented insight into the clandestine operations in Australia’s elite special forces in Afghanistan, including incidents of troops killing unarmed men and children.”  

In exposing these depravities of invasion, adventurism and war, the devotees of secrecy got busy. Bureaucrats chatted; investigations commenced.  On June 5, 2019, officers of the Australian Federal Police raided the Sydney offices of the ABC.  It was a busy time for the police; Annika Smethurst of News Corp was also the subject of a warrant, having written about discussions about a proposed enlargement of surveillance powers already possessed by the Australian Signals Directorate.  Both warrants had been executed pursuant to alleged breaches of official secrecy under the old version of the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth).  Legal affairs editor of The Australian, Chris Merritt was alarmed enough to write of a less than brave new world.  “Welcome to modern Australia – a nation where police raid journalists in order to track down and punish the exposure of leaks inside the federal government”. 

Both warrants were subsequently challenged.  The returns for journalism were mixed.  In the case of the ABC, they were abominable.  In February, the Federal Court Justice Wendy Abraham dismissed the effort by the broadcaster to impeach the warrant.  She found the warrant validly drafted and sufficiency clear.  Justice Abraham also affirmed that the implied constitutional right to communicate on political subjects was not a personal, enforceable one, merely a restraint on state power. “[T]he notion of speech as an affirmative value has no role to play.” 

Screenshot from ABC

This formulation of Australian law, miraculously extracted from the worn teeth of the Australian constitution, is designed to render any such rights inoffensive and benign, lest the citizenry get uppity with such ideas as free speech.  This state of affairs ought to encourage a move towards a bill or charter of rights, but Australia’s politicians will have none of it.  Constitutionally enshrined rights would only inhibit the powers of parliament and frustrate the ever abstract sovereign will.     

Smethurst had better luck in invalidating the search warrant on April 15.  But the judges of the High Court found against the police the way a teacher might against an essay from a student prone to poor grammar.  The warrant in question failed “to identify any offence under section 79(3)[of the Crimes Act]” and significantly misstated “the nature of an offence arising under it.”  In short, go back to class and mind your punctuation before searching the homes and workplaces of journalists.  The ill-gotten gains of the police – material taken from the Smethurst’s home – could still be kept, guaranteeing her a run of sleepless nights.

The AFP subsequently confirmed that a brief of evidence had been submitted to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDDP), the result of the July 11, 2017 referral received from the Chief of the Defence Force and then acting-secretary of defence.  It recommended that charges be made, though only against Oakes.

With Oakes facing a gloomy prospect of being charged, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security released its report on “the impact of the exercise of law enforcement and intelligence powers on the freedom of the press.”  The report, with its 16 recommendations, was predictably weak and timorous.  At times, it reads like a cosy overview of how government institutions in the country truly appreciate the role of a free press.  There are merry references to Australia’s vibrant democracy.  It notes such fairly meaningless improvements as the Attorney General’s direction of September 19, 2019 that his consent would be required were the CDPP to initiate prosecutions against journalists.

The power to issue warrants against journalists was barely challenged.  At most was a qualifying recommendation that the role of the Public Interest Advocate be expanded.  This creature was already an oddity, given the secretive nature of the office.  We know little about the credentials of those who occupy the office, nor its actual workings.  The committee suggests a more active role for the advocate in dealing with warrant applications against journalists and media investigations concerning breaches of government secrecy.  “The PIA must represent the interests of the principles of public interest journalism, and be authorised to request information to clarify elements of the warrant application provided by ASIO or an enforcement agency to enable the case to be built in their submission.”  The monstrous chink in this already perforated armour is that that the PIA is wholly dependent on the evidence and claims of the government agency.  The balancing act ceases to be credible.

With this less than comforting backdrop, it was confirmed on October 15 that the CDDP would not be taking the matter up against Oakes.  According to a statement from the AFP, “In determining whether the matter should be prosecuted, the CDPP considered a range of public interest factors, including the role of public interest journalism in Australia’s democracy.”  Having applied its own version of a “public interest” test (all government agencies seem to be doing so these days), the prosecutor found no reason to pursue the case despite believing that there was a “reasonable chance” of securing a conviction on three criminal charges.

As with such prosecutions, the public interest is a weapon twisted not in the name of the public’s interest, whose ignorance must be assured, but in the name of the state’s interest, ever reliant upon secrecy.  To that end, “The CDPP determined the public interest does not require a prosecution in the particular circumstances of the case.”

The conclusion of the case against Oakes can only be troubling.  The CDPP preferred waving the wand of deterrence just in case other journalists might wish to engage in the same practice.  After all, there was a “reasonable” chance of securing a successful conviction.  Clark, while welcoming the decision, claimed that “the matter should never have gone this far.”

As with the dangerous US Department of Justice indictment against WikiLeaks publisher and Australian national Julian Assange, the very fact of its existence is, in itself, threatening.  It is a roaring threat, a promise that publishing national security information that reveals the dark side of state power will be pursued, and, importantly, can be pursued.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

There is considerable speculation in Washington about a so-called October Surprise being engineered by either party to change the outcome of the upcoming election. The original October Surprise took place in 1980, when Ronald Reagan’s campaign manager William Casey conspired with several senior CIA officers in Europe to convince the Iranian government to delay the release of the American Embassy hostages until after the November election against Jimmy Carter. Casey believed that any earlier release of the hostages would give a boost to the Carter campaign. The Iranian government was approached and complied with the request, believing that it would result in a less hostile relationship with the new administration. In the event, Reagan defeated Carter and some believed that the continuation of the hostage crisis had made the administration look feckless and hurt the incumbent.

The latest version of the October Surprise relates inevitably to the recent bout of President Donald Trump with COVID-19, which some “conspiracy theorists” are attributing to his having been deliberately infected by the Democrats to take him out of the race. There is no evidence to support such a claim and it is not even clear exactly how one would go about getting access to the president and introducing the virus.

Another recent version of the Surprise involves starting a little war to demonstrate national resolve and willingness to directly confront America’s enemies. It has been suggested that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo might be considering staging some kind of provocation or even a false flag operation that would result in open conflict with Iran or even Syria with the U.S. arguing that the fighting is both lawful and defensive in nature. Such as suggestion might be considered insanity, but there are signs that the U.S. in heightening its delegitimization campaign against Iran in particular. Unconfirmable allegations from anonymous U.S. government sources are surfacing about an alleged Iranian plot to kill the U.S. Ambassador in South Africa while Washington is now implementing new unilateral sanctions against Tehran as well as Damascus. The downside that suggests that starting something with Iran might be a bridge too far is the considerable ability of the Mullahs to strike back against U.S. forces in the region. Venezuela might be considered a much softer target, where the U.S. also has sanctions and a naval blockade in place.

But also given the fact that Trump’s taxes and Hunter Biden’s illegal meanderings in Eastern Europe have failed to arouse much public anger, perhaps the most interesting option for staging an October Surprise is already out on the table as it were and has been alluded to by a number of Republican politicians as well as by some of the punditry in the conservative media. It consists of a declassified letter sent to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) by Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe. DNI Ratcliffe was responding to Graham’s request for an intelligence community overview of the FBI’s handling of Crossfire Hurricane. Crossfire Hurricane was the cover name given to what has turned out to be a possible Hillary Clinton initiated FBI-run largely clandestine defamation campaign directed against Trump and all his associates that may have been launched formally in July 2016.

In the letter, DNI Ratcliffe provided the following declassified information to the Senate committee for its consideration. The letter was received by Graham on September 29^, the same day as the first presidential debate. The key points are:

• “In late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee. The IC does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication.

• “According to his handwritten notes, former Central Intelligence Agency Director Brennan subsequently briefed President Obama and other senior national security officials on the intelligence, including the ‘alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.’”
• “On 07 September 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok regarding ‘U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private mail server.’”

Noting the fact that the Bureau did not aggressively follow-up on the claims regarding Clinton, who was expected to win the election, Graham subsequently commented on the letter, saying “This latest information provided by DNI Ratcliffe shows there may have been a double standard by the FBI regarding allegations against the Clinton campaign and Russia. Whether these allegations are accurate is not the question. The question is, did the FBI investigate the allegations against Clinton like they did Trump? If not, why not? If so, what was the scope of the investigation? If none, why was that?”

The Ratcliffe letter was followed by a committee review of the confidential information that supported the claims made in the letter. On the following day, the committee questioned former head of the FBI James Comey who implausibly claimed that Crossfire Hurricane “didn’t ring a bell,” before asserting that his bureau “did not intentionally commit wrongdoing” though there may have been some “real sloppiness” on the part of some FBI employees.

An angry Donald Trump subsequently ordered that all the documents relating to the Russiagate investigation be declassified, but neither the CIA nor the FBI appears to be in any hurry to comply, so there are unlikely to be any new revelations before the election.

So the real smoking pistol that might have turned into an October Surprise may have been the expectation on the part of some Senate Republicans that the story about Hillary Clinton personally initiating an illegal conspiracy involving the FBI and intelligence community to destroy a political rival would take off politically. As President Barack Obama reportedly was briefed on what was taking place and signed off on it, it is plausible that Biden as Vice President was also in the loop. That might have been enough to turn voters against Joe Biden and the party that he represents.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on one’s point of view, the U.S. media has not taken the bait. The tale revealed by the Ratcliffe-Graham letter was hardly replayed in the mainstream and there were few in the public space who stridently demanded that Hillary Clinton publicly face the consequences for her illegal and one might even suggest treasonous actions. Hatred of Trump in the media seemingly cancels out all other considerations, particularly when it is the Democrats who are behaving badly.

And now time is running out. If either party has an October Surprise up its sleeve it had better produce it soon. Only about three weeks to go until the election.

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Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org,address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Trasmissione radiofonica.
Conducono in studio Mauro Caruso e Ludovica Di Chiara

Thousands of US soldiers continue to pace and patrol exactly the same routes as their predecessors did in 2001, fighting a seemingly endless conflict that both the American and Afghan public have long since soured on.

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Nineteen years ago last week the United States invaded Afghanistan, a country halfway around the world that few in America had heard of and even fewer knew anything about. Today, thousands of U.S. soldiers and many more private military contractors continue to pace and patrol exactly the same routes as their predecessors did in 2001, fighting a seemingly endless and pointless conflict that both the American and Afghan public have long since soured on.

One example of this is Master Sgt. Trevor deBoer, deployed to the country three times with the 20th Special Forces Group.

“When we started this, people asked why I was going, and my response was, ‘So my sons don’t have to fight this war,’” deBoer told military news site Stars and Stripes.

But, ironically for deBoer, Afghanistan is exactly where his son, Spc. Payton Sluss ended up, metaphorically and literally walking in his footsteps. “My feet were walking the same land you were,” Sluss said to his father. This father-son dynamic is not as unique as one might expect; Stars and Stripes also profiled a number of other parents and children in the same situation.

The story was another case of life imitating art, as it bore an eerie resemblance to a three-year-old article in the satire outlet The Onion, called “Soldier Excited To Take Over Father’s Old Afghanistan Patrol Route.” In it, a fictional interviewee claims that “It’s just so incredible that I’ll soon be walking the very same footpath as my old man, securing the perimeter of Camp Chapman in Khost Province just like he did so many years ago,” expressing his pride in taking flak from the same angry rebel groups and dodging IEDs on the same deserted roads. But reality is increasingly driving satirists out of a job these days.

A new poll found that Americans are extremely weary of the conflict and want it to come to an end as soon as possible. Nearly 62 percent of the country backed a peace agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban signed in February, with the number of respondents who want to keep troops in Afghanistan until “all enemies have been defeated” dropping from 30 percent in 2019 to just 15 percent today. The poll also found that Americans want a decrease in foreign interventions and military presence around the world. About twice as many favor cutting the military budget than increasing it.

President Trump appeared to be on the verge of pulling out of Afghanistan for good in the summer and was in negotiations for a peace deal. However, anonymous intelligence officials leaked stories to The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal alleging that Russia, and later Iran, were paying off the Taliban to kill U.S. soldiers, causing a media storm that was used as the basis to postpone the withdrawal. Trump is now claiming only that U.S. troops “should” be out by Christmas.

A costly humanitarian war

The United States and its allies quickly invaded Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, citing the Taliban’s refusal to hand over chief suspect Osama Bin Laden. Yet the Taliban were, in fact, willing to negotiate through neutral third parties, but were not given the chance. Bin Laden was captured and killed in 2011 — over nine years ago — yet the United States has still not left the country.  The Trump administration has even ramped up the war, dropping the “Mother of All Bombs” — the largest non-nuclear explosion in world history — in 2017. Between January and October of 2018, it dropped 5,982 more bombs, the highest number in over a decade.

The humanitarian cost of the war is debated, with little agreement about the scale of the violence perpetrated against Afghanistan’s people. What is not in doubt is the attitude of Afghans. A poll published last year found that zero percent of respondents described themselves as “thriving,” and 85 percent described their situation as “suffering.” Less than half the country said they experienced any enjoyment in the previous day, while 52 percent admitted to constantly worrying. The $2 trillion conflict has much to do with it.

The war has a serious effect on American lives too, and not just those of the military. The state of Oregon, for instance, was not able to effectively tackle this summer’s record-breaking wildfires because their firefighting helicopters had been requisitioned by the Department of Defense and sent to Afghanistan to continue bombing the country. Over 1 million acres of Oregonian land was destroyed, and eleven people were killed as a result. Continuing to send fathers and sons off to fight in foreign lands will mean fewer resources at home.

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Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary.

Featured image is U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Adam Mancini/Released

Public Citizen today filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to compel disclosure of coronavirus vaccine development and manufacturing contracts with major pharmaceutical corporations worth billions of dollars.

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, challenges HHS’s withholding of records requested by Public Citizen under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) related to Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s initiative to accelerate the development of COVID-19 treatments and vaccines.

Operation Warp Speed, which is co-led by HHS, has given more than $10 billion to pharmaceutical corporations. The terms of these contracts remain secret. Public Citizen first requested Operation Warp Speed’s contracts with AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Pfizer and Regeneron, among others, in May 2020. The contracts could shed light on critical questions like:

• Will pharmaceutical corporations be required to set a reasonable price for their products, or will they be free to profiteer despite the public’s massive investment?
• Will taxpayer-funded technology be held as corporate secrets, or can the U.S. government share technology with the World Health Organization to advance scientific research, accelerate manufacturing and more quickly end the global pandemic?
• What rights does the U.S. government maintain in the factories it is helping build?

“The success, failure and terms of Warp Speed projects may determine when and under what conditions people living in the U.S. receive a safe and effective vaccine,” said Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines program. “Taxpayers deserve to know what they are getting in return for their billions of dollars in investments. Health experts should be able to assess whether our government is doing everything possible to end the pandemic.”

Earlier this year, Public Citizen worked with the group Knowledge Ecology International to demand that HHS enforce its disclosure requirements for a pharmaceutical corporation developing a COVID-19 vaccine. At that time, a leader of Operation Warp Speed responded:

“The trust of the American people is vital in the all-of-America response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In recognizing this important relationship, the leadership of… Operation Warp Speed [is] committed to remaining transparent with the American people.”

The lawsuit is available here.

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Featured image is from the author

The top 50 think tanks in America, as ranked by the University of Pennsylvania’s Go To Think Tank Index, received over $1 billion from U.S. government and defense contractors. The top recipients of this funding were the RAND Corporation, the Center for a New American Security, and the New America Foundation, according to analysis by the Center for International Policy.

Donations to these think tanks came from 68 different U.S. government and defense contractor sources, under at least 600 separate donations. The top five defense contractor donors to U.S. think tanks were Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martina and Air Bus.

The Top 10 Think Tanks by Amount Received from U.S. Government and Defense Contractors 

Top think tank funders from within the U.S. government include the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Air Force, the Army, the Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department. The defense contractors that forked over the most to think tanks were Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Airbus.

However beautiful an art piece might be, or however delicious the food could serve the gourmet, people never stopped to change their taste on things. It is because the human’s nerves tend to gain fatigue easily when focusing on the same thing too long. Just as if you stared at certain color without blinking your eyes for half hour or so, you would feel the color having lost its attraction, or even having changed to its original hue to something different. Perhaps that explains part of the reason that all art forms have been constantly developing their new styles. Other reasons could be that the economic, social and political change of the society led to different life style and the demand for new art. 

 When most people were still enjoying the classical Chinese figure painting style which had prevailed in Tang dynasty, there appeared a Madman Liang Kai in Song dynasty who left his official post as an painter-in-attendance from the court and went to become a Buddhism monk. He was the first well-known artist to paint people with broad brush strokes while applying the techniques of splattering ink on paper which was usually applied on modern Chinese painting, and created distinctly different style of figure painting, such as his Celestial Man and Li Bai Reciting a Poem(see volume 1 of Chinese Painting – a Showcase to Chinese Culture). Even though Liang was not regarded as the father of modern art in China, he did make a corner stone in Chinese painting art. It was not until the late Ming dynasty that a revolutionary figure in Chinese art history, Xu Wei (1521-1593 AD) founded the genre of modern art and was worshipped as the father of modern art by numerous followers and modern art practisers, such as masters Zhu Da (1626 – 1705 AD) and Shi Tao (1642 – 1707 AD) from the early Qing Dynasty. The important figure from Beijing painting style such as Qi Baishi (1864 – 1957AD) was a great admirer of Xu and Zhu, and undoubtedly a devoted disciple to those precedent masters. Their work all featured with very expressive brush strokes and vivid figure, and usually with beautiful poems. 

Just like the western modern art, Chinese modern art came to paint a lot of ordinary people and scenes of daily life, and used distinct brush strokes. During the Tang or Jin Dynasty, the celebrated artists are court painters or government officials, such as Gu Kaizhi (344 – 406 AD), Yan Liben(600 – 673 AD) and Zhou Fang(730 – 800 AD) who painted mostly figures from mythologies, emperors and court ladies, with dedicated coloring and detailed depiction of forms, a style for the taste of the royal family, or high-rank officials, or rich people. Liang was brave enough to break that rule of traditional figure painting. And the masters in Ming dynasty made the Free-hand painting style in figures, landscape and birds or flowers a very popular practice, which is opposite to the style of Tang’s court painting that is called Gongbi painting style. Xu Wei made a giant stride in the course of development of Chinese painting, and made painting such a approachable media to freely express the inner spirit and emotions of the painters, which used a lot of calligraphic strokes in the painting and directly added poems to the image of the work. When we see the image, one can feel the poem; while we read the poem, one can vision the image, such as his work The Grape and Chrysanthemum, which have been introduced in the volume one of this book. 

We may see that there are some similarities among those painters mentioned above. Liang Kai went to become a Buddhism monk after his political career from government, while Zhu Da and Shi Tao (whose original family name was also Zhu) were both offspring of the royal family from Ming dynasty and retreated from the mundane world to become the Buddhism monk after the Man People conquered the Ming emperor and built the Qing Empire. Xu Wei was never successful in his pursuit of career in government, and was even thrown into the jail for some reason. He tried writing drama also, but painting made him one of the greatest artists in Chinese history. So all those artists were not happy with their life. The loss of their home country or the huge failure in their career associated with the great disappointment at the old dynasty and resistance to the new authority made them feel estranged from the current society. With angers and frustration growing inside and pushing them to find out a way to let out, of course, emotional display on their work would be a reasonable solution for a painting artist. Thus, maneuvering the ink and varying the brush strokes just came so naturally to them. So for Chinese modern artist, they didn’t start to search for the new techniques before they had that desire to express their inner emotions. 

It seemed a different story for the pioneer of Post-impressionism painting master Paul Cezanne (1839-1906 AD), equally as the father of modern art in western painting. As western painting artists took techniques as a very important part of their artisanship, just as they could be bored with the old painting subject, they never gave up trying new techniques to fine tone their work. Cezanne applied distinct lines in his painting, which was usually avoided in the classical realism painting due to the requirement for a illusionary realistic look of the image, which is usually accomplished by using the shade and light to create a volume-like body of the object and depth of the space. The application of strong lines for images make it look less realistic, however, it greatly influenced the work of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973 AD), the founder of Cubism. Cezanne also innovated the short-brush stroke for an effect of shimmering light in the painting, by juxtaposing the dots of different colors of light or dark artistically to reflect the light which led to the creation of new style of Pointillism. I am afraid we have to credit all these to this talented painting master to make him worthy of the title as the father of western modern art. 

Zhu Da and Shi Tao lived a estranged life in their late time, trying to void the harassment and persecution of the new government, during which ordeal they found their inspiration of painting. The Post-impressionist Gauguin(1848 – 1903 AD) went to search for new painting subject in Tihiti, a distant island from main-stream civilization of Europe. Cezanne hid himself for art creation while experimenting with new painting techniques in southern France, while Van Gogh (1853 – 1890 AD) lived a isolated life in Arles and produced some later to become the master pieces of post-impressionism. Van Gogh applied many strong colored lines in his work, to create a style of painting with vibrant colors, a contrast to his destitute life situation, maybe a comfort to his constant depression. 

Zhu Da painted most work of flowers, or birds with funny looks and desolate landscape. He was a great master in maneuvering the ink by producing different shades of ink with one brush stroke. In those shades, the volume is indicated, even may not clearly shown strictly to the standard of classical realism; accordingly, without real colors in painting, but we can tell “colorful” hues in the painting. This is the feature of Chinese modern art at its beginning stage, minimal application of colors, less endeaveur to focus on the resemblance of the object, however, enough to satisfy the need of the painters, luckily with no interruption of extra labour to intervene his flow of artist input, in addition, with poems added to further express the spirit and thoughts of the master, aesthetic value is enhanced to the work. In Chinese poems, there are no well-defined concepts, but artistic conceptions. So the enormous room for imagination, the expressive brush strokes carried with strong emotions, the symbolic image together with the connotations beyond the words of poem, all bring up a sensational feeling of beauty to the viewers. The beauty might come after that saddest feeling delivered by the painter, combined with a refreshing feeling prompted by the painter’s intuition from practicing the new belief in Buddhism, and thus made it the most impressive one. To the painter himself, the completion of the creation of the work would bring great comfort to his wounded soul, and lead to a complete relaxation after pouring out all the restrained emotions and thoughts, and a feeling to transcend the experience of his life, as well as that of producing the art under the spiritual guidance of the new belief. Consequently, a great pleasure and self-content that is more meaningful and lasting than one received material wealth or achieved career success. That is the pleasure only associated with beauty, and nothing else. 

When it came to middle or late Qing Dynasty, with Shanghai becoming the international port for business and a major city exposed to foreign culture and art influence, colors took its important role in Chinese free-hand brush painting style, especially in Bird and Flower genre. Among those painters, Wu Changshuo was a successful example. The peony painted by him gave a very rich color look and were favoured by many trades of people. This is the Shanghai School of painting, an art for all class of people, a genre to paint different subjects of every day life. Until now, the Chinese painting has come down to the door of general people from the wall of temples, the palace of the royals, and the study of the Confucianism scholars. Paintings had become part of the business, started to show up in the commercial galleries and business shops. Those painting works fed the taste of ordinary people, whether they were well-educated or not, whether they were seniors or young people. 

To some degree, Chinese literati painting had the feature of impressionism style, such as distinct brush strokes for the outline of the image, not focusing on the resemblance of the object, inclined to paint real people from their life. Quite some Chinese landscape paintings, as well as bird and flower genre even present a great deal of abstractionism element in their work, such as the Six Gentlemen by the master Ni Zan(1301-1374AD) from Yuan dynasty, and the Bamboo and Rock by Zheng Xie(1693-1765AD) from Qing dynasty, or the Orchard by Zheng Sixiao of song dynasty. Coincidently, the abstractionism goes together with symbolism quite often, as displayed on those painting works mentioned above. Orchard is a symbol of purity and integrity, and bamboo is the upright one with unbending character. Both are the so-called Junzi (gentleman) by Chinese painters, and bear the noble characters in Chinese culture (details also refer to Part 1, Si Junzi – Four Gentlemen of volume 1 of this book). 

Chinese literati’s painting is a very unique art genre among all two-dimensional art forms. It was first started by Wang Wei (701- 761 AD), a poet and painter from Tang dynasty, then officially became a genre in Song dynasty, and reached its peak in Ming dynasty. All the practisers had to be the scholars in order to have that particular taste. Literati’s painting should be simple and pure but not plain and vague, elegant but not too fancy, concise but not superficial, primitive but not dull. The person was not only required to be very well educated in Chinese philosophies such as Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism and so on, but also to be very sophisticated in painting brush work and composition. You have to know the Buddhism to understand that particular meaning of being simple and pure, or the Daoism to know how to be primitive and concise, and to learn the Confucianism to grasp the essence of being elegant. 

Being elegant here may take more endeavour to dig into its original meaning here. In Chinese figure paintings, there are some commonly used brush strokes, such as the silk-line brush stroke created by Gu Kaizhi (344 – 406 AD), the iron-line brush stroke by Yanli Ben (600 – 673 AD), the willow-leaf brush stroke created by Wu Daozi(680 – 760 AD). Wu was regarded as a “saint of painting” in Chinese history, however, his brush stroke was sneered at by the classical literati’s painters, and thus he was expelled from that painting genre, because they felt that the willow-leaf brush stroke didn’t satisfy that requirement of being elegant, not as smooth as silk-line, neither as stern as iron – line. There was something deliberately maneuvered in that brush stroke, in order to enrich the painting language, which was not encouraged in traditional literati’s painting, even though it might enhance his individual style and charm the crowd. Shi Tao was an great renovator in brush stroke also, he used very bold impressionist brush stroke and smart washes in his painting and earned him the fame of being one of greatest Chinese modern artist. However, he was accepted by some orthodox art critics as a successful innovator in literati’s painting and was highly regarded by them. One has to carefully study their painting works before they came to understand all that subtlety. 

To achieving the effect of being pure and simple, one had to be an excellent brush work master, to immerge himself into the nature and follow its rules, and enable him to produce the image that would look as natural as it is. However, it didn’t mean to achieve the exact likeness here, but that the image in painting should immediately remind you of the real thing in nature, but anything else, and make you forget that it was nothing but a painting. Because the spirit of the object reflected from the image would immediately catch your attention, and make you neglect all the techniques. 

That type of work can only be accomplished when the painter’s brush work has reached a highly sophisticated level and was led by the nature itself, instead of by the painter’s hand. Also the painter has to have very thorough knowledge of the object, from its appearance to its inner characters, and can call them out anytime during the process of his artistic creation. For example, when one paints a pine tree, he should already have its image in his mind before he takes the brush, then he may take a deep breath to vision the spirit of the pine tree. This vision is greatly influenced by his mindset of that moment. As we all know the pine is an evergreen plant that can live for many years, as well stand the cold winter and get even greener in snowy season. So pine is a symbol for longevity, vitality and perseverance in Chinese culture, however, which character the painter was going to display in his work mainly depends on his current mood, the thoughts propelled by that defined circumstance and his own stories. Some painter might be inclined to express the longevity and vitality of the pine, especially when he put it together with the cranes in the same painting, while other painters might like to expression the perseverance of the pine, to show their formidable strength and unbendable integrity. Different visions of those characters in the painter might affect the brush language and bring up different expressions to the image and make its display not the same. 

However, the traditional literati painting finally retreated from art battle field after centuries of glorious history when the Qing dynasty was overthrown and replaced by the Republic of China in year 1911. Then the following New Culture Revolution launched by some intellectuals who had studied abroad gave it a deadly blow by completely negating the Confucianism who had dominated the ideology of China for about two thousand years. Lingnan School of painting appeared at this time of break-point between new culture and traditional Chinese culture. It was a school created by Gao Jianfu( 1879 – 1951 AD) and his friend Chen Shuren. Gao first took training in traditional Chinese paintings, then went to Japan for an exchange in art, and brought some fresh ideas and techniques of western painting back to China, since Japan had been one of pioneers to learn from advanced western European countries. Then, Xu Beihong (1895 – 1953 AD) who studied painting in France came back China to teach western painting as a professor in Art Academies in Beijing. Xu was also regarded as a member of the Lingnan painting school. This school was well-known for its effort to incorporate western painting techniques into traditional Chinese painting. Gao’s painting kept the freehand brush work for its expressiveness and spontaneity, while applied the realism drawing and painting techniques to make the image look more real. There was also inscription and seal applied in the painting, so, maybe it could be taken as the new scholar painting with new ideas and new techniques, to be differentiated from the ones without inscription, which are solely focused on the fine depiction of the work and mainly for the taste of the image itself. Xu painted both oil painting and Chinese painting, and was so good at painting horses in Chinese freehand brush style that he was mostly known for his horse painting among Chinese people, perhaps some of them don’t even know that he was also good at oil painting. 

The New Culture Revolution started in year 1915 of last century, soon after the end of Qing dynasty, the last one of Chinese feudal empires. Most leaders of the revolution had studied abroad, who were strongly against the Chinese traditional culture without reservation, and enthusiastically welcomed the western culture without hesitation. (Politics could be involved in the situation to certain degree). Luckily, the Chinese brush and ink were still kept, to make the Chinese calligraphy and painting practice still possible. It was not that Chinese traditional paintings are not beautiful, but because after over a thousand years of facing the images produced by the same set of tools had created the sensational fatigue to the appreciators’ eye. I had tried to show some Chinese master pieces of antique time to people of various nationality who all responded that they were elegant, still they could feel more attached to the type of art produced by their own people, due to the culture habit – a habitual way of thinking under the strong and long-time influence of certain culture. 

The interesting thing is that the western modern art were in its feverous renovation around the same period. After the style of new realism, new classism, there appeared fauvism, impressionism, post-impressionism, expressionism, cubism, futurism, abstractionism, Dadaism, Surrealism, and so on. It was also not that the paintings from the renaissance period were not attractive enough, the smile of Mona Lisa by da Vinci was possibly able to catch the soul of all people in the world, but the artists’ sensitivity made them always restless in searching and trying new things. 

According to the official record, among those modern western masters, Picasso was probably the one who had visited China and highly regarded Chinese painting by saying that the true art was in China. Whether the comment was reasonable or not, it did say a fact, that the western modern art renovation had got influence from Chinese art, the painting or the calligraphy. Just from the distinct brush lines they applied whether in post-impressionism style, the cubism, or the abstractionism, they can’t deny this truth. Some may argue that those masters didn’t borrow those elements directly from China, but from the Japanese art such as Ukiyoe, which could be true. Picasso himself just had a great collection of Japanese Ukiyoe art at home. The same case applied to some other modern artist. The thing is that Chinese neighbour Japanese might also like Chinese art and it was quite usual for neighbours to borrow from each other. We just need to see where the root is from. As a matter of fact, those impressionist, or cubists also learned from the primitive art in Africa and the Oceanian culture and then influenced the later artists. 

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Unlike fellow former Soviet Republics Belarus and even neighboring Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan’s latest elections didn’t result in any turmoil even though one might have expected it to have due to some similarly discernible risk factors, but that wasn’t the case (at least not yet) for five primary reasons.

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After Turkey downed a Russian jet operating in Syria in late 2015, there was a major risk that the Syrian War could explode into a greater conflict between the two Eurasian countries. The Turkish attack resulted in the death of two Russian servicemen and relations between Moscow and Ankara were again tested in December 2016 when Russian Ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, was assassinated by off-duty police officer Mevlüt Mert Altıntaş. Although Russian President Vladimir Putin accepted the explanation from his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that the assassination was not ordered by the state, Nordic Monitor has published compelling evidence that Altıntaş had strong connections to the so-called Turkish deep state. Despite these major setbacks in Russian-Turkish relations, by the end of 2017 the two countries signed a $2.5 billion agreement for Turkey to acquire the Russian-made S-400 air defence system, considered the most sophisticated of its kind in the world.

As is well-known, this deal resulted in tense relations between Turkey and its NATO allies, and many speculated that with Russian encouragement Ankara would eventually leave the Atlantic Alliance. It is highly unlikely that Turkey will ever leave NATO willingly or be ejected from the organization. Turkey, as a key country connecting East and West and controlling Straits linking the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, knows that it is one of the most important geostrategic countries in the world and can afford to leverage both NATO and Russia to advance its own ambitions.

The Russian-Turkish partnership has seen Ankara acquire the S-400 system, Russia has a critical part in the construction of the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant, and cooperation on significantly reducing conflict in Syria. However, it now appears that Moscow is becoming increasingly frustrated and antagonized by Ankara’s constant escalation of hostilities across Russia’s southern flank and/or areas of interest. Despite Russia and Turkey cooperating in Syria, they support opposing sides in Libya, but this is not considered a major issue between them, or at least not enough to change the course of their bilateral relations. However, the war in Artsakh, or more commonly known as Nagorno-Karabakh, has exposed the fragility of relations between Moscow and Ankara.

Artsakh, despite being an integral part of the Armenian homeland for over 2,500 years and always maintaining an overwhelmingly Armenian majority population, was assigned to the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic in the early 1920’s. However, in 1989 Armenians in Artsakh demanded unification with the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. This demand was ultimately rejected by Moscow. However, the final collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992 sparked a war in Artsakh. The Armenians achieved a decisive victory in 1994 and the Republic of Artsakh emerged, although it is still internationally recognized as a part of Azerbaijan.

The OSCE Minsk Group, comprising of France, Russia and the U.S., is the foremost international body attempting to end the decades-long conflict between the de facto independent Republic of Artsakh and Azerbaijan. Although minor wars and skirmishes have been commonplace since 1994, the current war is the most serious escalation, especially when considering the internationalization of the conflict because of Turkey’s transfer of special forces, military advisers, and more importantly, Syrian jihadist mercenaries.

Many within the Syrian government and military have expressed frustration that Russia effectively prevented a Syrian Army offensive at the beginning of the year to liberate more areas of Idlib from Turkish-backed jihadist rule. It is likely that Moscow’s push for a ceasefire in Idlib was to appease Turkey in the hope that it would slowly de-escalate and eventually withdraw from Syria. However, Erdoğan used the lull in the fighting in Idlib to transfer Syrian jihadist mercenaries to fight in Libya. These militants fight on the side of the Muslim Brotherhood Government of National Accords based in Tripoli. They are in opposition to the Libyan National Army, which is based in Tobruk and has ties to Russia.

The transfer of Syrian militants to Libya certainly concerned Moscow, but Libya is not as geopolitically crucial for Russia. However, the transfer of Syrian militants to Azerbaijan brings various terrorists and mujahideen forces right to the very doorstep of Russia in the South Caucasus. Whereas Syrian militants in Idlib and Libya were no real threat to Russia directly, bringing such forces can now easily put them in direct contact with Islamist terrorists based in Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia in Russia’s Caucasus region.

This will likely be a gamechanger in Russian-Turkish relations.

Moscow’s reaction to Turkey transferring Syrian terrorists to Azerbaijan is beginning to reveal itself. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that Moscow “has never considered Turkey as a strategic ally” and emphasized that Russian military observers should be placed on the line of contact between Artsakh and Azerbaijan. Although Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev repeatedly calls for Turkey to be involved in the Minsk Group or in negotiations, Russia has continually blocked Ankara from being involved in any negotiations.

Russia’s frustration with Turkey can even be felt in the East Mediterranean now. As recently as September 5, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova angered many Greeks when she urged states to be “guided by common sense and take into consideration the geographical peculiarities of a region” when discussing Turkey’s illegal claims against Greece in the East Mediterranean. Zakharova effectively adopted Turkey’s arguments that if Athens enacts its international legal right to extend its territorial waters from six nautical miles to 12, then the Aegean will effectively become a “Greek lake,” and therefore the Turks believe “common sense” has to prevail over this “geographical peculiarity.”

However, only yesterday, it appeared that Moscow now indirectly supports Greece’s position in the East Mediterranean, with the Russian Embassy in Athens tweeting that “Russia’s position as a permanent member of the UN Security Council is the starting point. We consider the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea the ‘cornerstone’ of international maritime agreements. The Convention explicitly provides for the sovereign right of all States to have territorial waters up to 12 nautical miles and sets out the principles and methods for delimiting the [Exclusive Economic Zone]. This also applies to the Mediterranean.”

It was also announced yesterday that Lavrov will be making a working visit to Greece on October 28. Russia’s repositioning on the East Mediterranean issue by firmly supporting a states’ right to extend its territorial waters to 12 nautical miles as permitted by international law, something that Turkey has said would be a “reason for war” if Greece enacts its legal right, is likely part of its retaliation against Erdoğan’s transfer of Syrian terrorists to the doorstep of Dagestan. Although Moscow tolerated Erdoğan’s aggression in Syria, Iraq and Libya, by threatening war on Armenia, a Collective Security Treaty Organization member state, and transferring militants to the border of Dagestan, Turkey has overstepped Russia’s patience and this can be considered a gamechanger in their bilateral relations.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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While the “Coronavirus crisis” continues to cause devastating socio-economic consequences also in Italy, a large part of the “Recovery Fund” is destined not to the most affected economic and social sectors, but to the most advanced sectors of the war industry.

According to the EU Recovery Fund, Italy should receive € 209 billion over the next six years, of which about 81 is for grants and 128 for loans to be repaid with interest. In the meantime, the Defense and Economic Development Ministries have presented a list of military projects for an amount of approximately 30 billion euros (Defense Analysis, from the Recovery Fund financing also for Defense, 09-25-2020).

The projects of the Ministry of Economic Development, mainly relating to the military aerospace area, foresee an expenditure of 25 billion euros from the Recovery Fund. After the F-35 fifth generation, the Ministry intends to invest in a sixth-generation fighter, the Tempest, called “the plane of the future.”

Other investments concern the production of new generation military helicopters / tiltrotors, capable of vertical take off and landing, and flying at high speed. At the same time, the Ministry will invest in next-generation drones and naval units, and advanced underwater technologies. Large investments are also expected in the space and satellite technology field.

Several of these technologies, including 5G communication systems, will be for military and civilian dual use. Since some of the military projects presented by the two departments overlap, the Ministry of Economic Development has drawn up a new list that makes it possible to reduce its spending to 12.5 billion euros.

In addition to these expenses, more than 35 billion is allocated for military purposes by Italian governments for the period 2017-2034, largely in the budget of the Ministry of Economic Development.

These expenses are added to the budget of the Ministry of Defense, bringing Italian military spending to over 26 billion per year, equivalent to an average of over 70 million euros per day, in public money subtracted from social expenses. A figure Italy is engaged to with NATO, as requested by the United States, to increase to an average of about 100 million euros per day. The allocation for this purpose of a large part of the Recovery Fund will allow Italy to reach this level.

Among the military industries, in the front row, pressing the government to increase the military share of the Recovery Fund, is Leonardo Ltd, whose 30% shareholding is owned by the Ministry of Economic Development.

The Leonardo group is integrated in the gigantic US military-industrial complex headed by Lockheed Martin, builder of the F-35 whose production Leonardo himself participates in with the factory in Cameri. Leonardo defines itself as a “global player in Aerospace, Defense and Security,” with the mission of “protecting citizens.”


This demonstrates what the company intends to do by using its influence and power to steal vital resources from citizens, and from the “Recovery Fund,” for a further acceleration in the “recovery” of the war industry – resources that we will always pay for, increased by interest. In this way we will be paying for “the plane of the future,” which will protect us and ensure a future of wars. 

(the manifesto, 13 October 2020)

Today Cuba obtained a new and resounding victory in the UN Human Rights Council, gaining election to the body for the 2021-2023 period.

Despite the aggressive campaign by the United States against the Cuban candidacy for the Council, the General Assembly elected Cuba as a member with 170 votes out of 193 possible.

With this victory the Caribbean nation reaffirms its commitment to an international order based on inclusion, social justice, human dignity, mutual understanding, and the promotion and respect of cultural diversity, a press release from the Cuban mission to the United Nations indicated.

At the same time, this statement adds, it demolishes the current maneuvers of the United States administration, who lost ground in their slandering of Cuba’s exemplary human rights record.

“The Caribbean island will continue to defend dialogue and cooperation with its own voice, in favor of all rights for all people.”

According to a note from the Cuban Foreign Affairs Ministry, the nation presented its candidacy to the Human Rights Council, proud to be among the countries whose governments have done much to achieve the widest possible enjoyment of all human rights for all their citizens.

Electa #Cuba al Consejo de Derechos Humanos por 170 votos, el 88 % de los miembros de @UN

Nuestro país es parte de 44 de los 61 instrumentos internacionales de DDHH, cuyo cumplimiento reporta a ONU

A pesar de la campaña de desprestigio, los logros de Cuba no pueden ser opacados pic.twitter.com/PNjp7NDNIw

— Bruno Rodríguez P (@BrunoRguezP) October 13, 2020

Cuba is a founding member of the Human Rights Council, created in 2006; it held a seat for two consecutive periods until December 2012, and years later it held a seat for two more consecutive periods (2014-2016 and 2017-2019).

In this capacity Cuba presented resolutions on the right to food, cultural rights and cultural diversity, and on the effects of foreign debt on the enjoyment of human rights, in particular economic, social and cultural rights, among others.

The active participation of the largest of the Antillean isles in that body also resulted in the renewal of the mandate of the independent expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order.

The United Nations Human Rights Council was established on March 15, 2006 and is currently made up of 47 UN member states, which are elected directly and secretly in the General Assembly.

As established, this body that meets at the UN office in Geneva, Switzerland, is responsible for the promotion and protection of human rights throughout the world and has the capacity to debate various interconnected issues.

Cuba is recognized as a country firmly committed to building an increasingly just society concerned with the wellness of the human being and with social justice. The country obtained the secret, direct and individual vote of 170 members of the UN General Assembly, which the island sees as “the result of respect and admiration for the humanist work of the Cuban Revolution.”

According to the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations,

“the self-determination and resistance of the Cuban people in the face of serious obstacles and threats caused by the unilateral policy of hostility, aggression, and the economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed by the United States, is honored in this way.

“It is also a recognition of the significant progress that Cubans have made in the enjoyment of all their rights, and of their extensive record of international cooperation in the field of human rights, demonstrating through concrete facts their unequivocal willingness to respect frank and open dialogue ”added the statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Greater Antilles will be accompanied in this body by Bolivia, China, Ivory Coast, Gabon, France, Malawi, Mexico, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Senegal, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and the United Kingdom.

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Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said on Thursday that he tasked a Pentagon-funded university to focus half of its curriculum on China. The move is a testament to the shift in the US military’s focus from terrorism to so-called “great power competition,” as outlined in the 2018 National Defense Strategy.

“As part of our top-10 goal to focus the department on China, I directed the National Defense University to refocus its curriculum by dedicating 50 percent of the coursework to China by academic year 2021,” Esper said at an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation.

The National Defense University is a higher-learning facility run by the Pentagon that offers graduate programs mostly to members of the US military.

“I also tasked the military services to make the People’s Liberation Army [China’s military] the pacing threat in our professional schools, programs and training,” the Pentagon chief said.

Esper also warned of the threat China and Russia pose to US global hegemony.

“Our strategic competitors China and Russia are attempting to erode our hard-earned gains,” he said.

The former Raytheon lobbyist also touted a new plan to increase the fleet of the US Navy that Esper has dubbed “Battle Force 2045.” The plan calls for the Navy to have a 500 ship fleet by 2045. Currently, the US Navy has just under 300 battle-ready ships.

The Pentagon released its annual report on China’s military in September. The report says China has the world’s largest navy and has “an overall battle force of approximately 350 ships and submarines.”

Despite having more ships, China’s navy is vastly smaller than Washington’s in terms of tonnage. One example of this is the number of aircraft carriers each nation has, with the US having eleven aircraft carriers, while China only has two.

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Dave DeCamp is the assistant news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

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Background

The fourth batch of Yemeni detainees has arrived the in Sana’a as part of the largest prisoner swap between the country’s warring sides. The residents in the capital received 112 prisoners after their plane landed in the Sana’a international airport. 1-thousand 81 men will be released in two days.

A two-day prisoner swap between Yemen’s warring sides is underway. The move is part of a deal reached last month in Switzerland. Here is a report:

Yemen’s warring sides are exchanging detainees in the largest prisoner swap between the Ansarullah movement and the Saudi-backed former regime. One-thousand eighty-one men will be freed in a two-day swap. –Hussein al-Bukhaiti – Political Commentator

The exchange was agreed last month after a week of negotiations in Switzerland. The prisoner swap is being overseen by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Analysts believe the exchange is a victory for Yemen’s Ansarullah movement. – Naseh Shaker – Political Analyst

Ansarullah Spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam says the swap brings hope for peace-building. The United Nations special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths also hailed the success of the operation.

“Today’s release operation, led by the I-C-R-C, is another sign that peaceful dialogue can deliver. I hope the parties will soon reconvene under UN auspices to discuss the release of all conflict-related prisoners and detainees.” – Martin Griffiths, UN special envoy for Yemen.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in order to bring former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power.

But the campaign that was supposed to last only a few months is raging on more than five years later now. The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has killed more than 100-thousand people, mostly civilians.

Saudi Arabia’s US-backed deadly war and an all-out blockade against Yemen, in tandem with outbreaks of cholera and now the covid-19 pandemic, have left some 24 million Yemenis, or 80% of the population, in need of aid. 20 million Yemenis also lack sufficient food supplies and access to clean water.

Riyadh has so far turned a deaf ear to all humanitarian pleas to stop the war. Yemenis say today’s prisoner swap is an important step, but what is necessary as a prelude to stop the conflict is an end to Saudi Arabia’s aggression and blockade.

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PressTV: Tell me the significance of this prisoner swap.

Peter Koenig: A prisoner swap is always a positive sign. It could be a first step to a cease fire – and leading hopefully to Peace negotiations.

At the outset, yes it may look like a victory, perhaps rather a “first step” towards peace, because victory is saying a lot —- of the Yemen’s Ansarullah movement, actually for better understanding it is the Houthi Shia’ movement.

All depends on what the Saudis will do next.

If they get instructions from the US and the UK and other European allies, like France – to halt the bombing, then we may be able to talk about an interim success.

The Saudis will do what their western Masters tell them to do.

The Saudis have been mostly a proxy for the US and UK. If you look at the map, you see how strategically located Yemen is… and Yemen in control of a left-leaning government, a government that supports the people, supports a move towards democracy, is not what the west wants.

However, the US has already reached a little talked-about target, namely to set up via the UAE (United Arab Emirates) a military base on Socotra, a beautiful island with some 60,000 inhabitants off the Yemeni Coast, off Aden, in the Gulf of Aden.

On 8 September 2020, politicians in Aden reported that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has begun building two military camps on Yemen’s Socotra island. In this case it is the UAE building the military camps, what will eventually become a military base, to which the US and western allies will have access.

The UAE were supporting Saudi Arabia in the fight against the Yemeni Houthis, who were and are fighting for their freedom, autonomy and democracy. The UAE were instrumental in blocking the port of Hudaydah so that no food and vital medicine could enter Yemen. The UAE – close ally to the western powers – is co-responsible for famine, disease – foremost cholera – and death of tens of thousands of children.

So, perhaps UAE military bases on Socotra island, to which the west, i.e. NATO, will have free access, may have been a “chip” in the negotiations for the prisoner exchange. This is of course speculation, but it would make geopolitical sense.

Image on the right is from Al-Masdar News

PressTV: How significant do you think this exchange is where initially the Saudi regime thought that its war on Yemen would only take a month and now more than five and a half years later, Riyadh has had to agree to negotiate with AnsaraAllah?

PK:  What we don’t know is what went on behind closed doors. I understand negotiations on Socotra started already in 2016…
That would be one explanation – another one, more straightforward, is the Irani support the Houthis received.

It wasn’t or isn’t direct weapons support, but military advice and technical support, so that the Yemeni Houthis are able to build their own military precision weapons, like rockets, missiles and drones, and are able to hit with drones’ guided missiles anywhere in Saudi Arabia, as we have seen when Yemeni missiles destroyed a Saudi pipeline last year.

Therefore the Saudi bombing had to go on – with of course weapons – bombs and missiles – supplied by the US, UK, and France. A Financial bonanza for the western weapons industry. War is a very profitable business.

PressTV: The talks leading up to this swap agreement were held in Switzerland. Do you think the so-called international community can play a more active role in trying to bring this war to an end?

PK: The talks were hosted by the International Red Cross (ICRC), that’s why it was taking place in Switzerland.

Yes, I believe the international community should play a much more active role when PEACE is at stake – anywhere in a conflict zone around the world.

Unfortunately, those who have a political weight in the international community are also those who have a vested interest in wars and conflicts – not only weapons sales, also moving a step or two closer to controlling the energy-and other resources-rich Middle East.

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PressTV: Why has Saudi Arabia not been condemned for its blockade on Yemen which is preventing foodstuffs and even medicine from entering the country?

PK: They have been condemned, but not with much noise and only with tiny voices; to no avail, because they got the support from the US, UK, France and Germany. Yes, Russia and China have voiced their opposition to the Saudi / US / UK war on Yemen. But their voices were silenced by the western-bought and oriented media.

We are living in a dystopian world, where rights and international laws do no longer count.

Breaking international laws is the new normal. And the public at large is so used to it, it doesn’t even react.

Laws and international rules are made up by the western powers, as they go along in the process of trying to conquer the world.

Fortunately, we have Russia and China as permanent members in the UN Security Council. Although, the UNSC has not been able to achieve Peace in Yemen – nor in Palestine, for that matter – it is at least a forum which the media cannot simply ignore. And little by little people will recognize who is behind all these conflicts and vested interests.

In the long-run, western powers for absolute dominance will not succeed.

Its not in the laws of nature.

PressTV: The Saudis are well equipped with sophisticated equipment and weapons which they buy from London and Washington despite their many human rights violations in this war. Shouldn’t these two countries be held partially responsible for the death and destruction which has been taking place inside of Yemen?

PK: Absolutely. Of course they should.

They are not only behind the war in Yemen, but they are involved in all the Middle Eastern conflicts, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, now Lebanon – wherever you look it’s the bloody fingerprints of the west, and often Israel acts as a proxy for Washington – almost all conflicts are started by the US, NATO and its European allies.

And not to forget, by western funding of terrorism.

PressTV: We have seen a big difference between the Yemeni fighters during the first year of war until now. It is no longer rare now that the Houthis are able to attack the Saudis. Does this help in being able to negotiate, even in being able to have a prisoner swap?

PK: Yes, probably. The fact is that the Houthis have become much stronger in the past five years of war – which the Saudis started in March 2015, when in the US the Obama Administration was still in power.

The Houthis have made technological advances in building their own drones, missiles, and rockets. They have shown the Saudis that they have the precision and capacity to attack Saudi Arabian targets practically anywhere in the Saudi territory. This is impressive and surely may have had a crucial influence in this first step of a prisoner exchange; first step to what I hope will be a much more important goal – Peace.

PressTV: Is the lesson learned here that in order to have effective political negotiations, that an entity needs to be strong militarily?

PK: In general, it helps.

We have seen other examples throughout the world, not least, North Vietnam won the war against the South which was basically the US Army, because the North Vietnamese were well equipped and were strategic thinkers. They gained the upper hand – to eventually prompt the US the leave.

So, yes, military strength helps definitely in defining the term to the war or peace process. In this case the AnsaraAllah movement, alias the Houthis military strength and strategic thinking has certainly played a role – reaching the point where they are now; possibly a step away from a Peace Process.

PressTV: Where do you see the situation in Yemen going?

PK: I am optimistic, hoping that the ICRC will involve the UN Security Council in calling for a Cease Fire and Peace Talks. The suffering of a poverty-stricken population without the war, has become atrocious with the war, especially affecting children. The Saudis, helped by the UAE and of course supported by western powers, have literally committed genocide – by depriving the population of vital food and medication imports, causing famine and famine related diseases – and countless death.

PressTV: Do you think the Saudi regime, basically Muhammad bin Salman, is getting to the point that he is ready to negotiate with AnsaraAllah?

PK: Yes, I do hope so. It may not be an easy negotiation, because a “loser” can never admit losing. But I do hope under the guidance of the UN Security Council and the strong presence of Russia and China in the UNSC, negotiations for PEACE may emerge – and that Peace may bring restoration to this devastated country.

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Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals such as Global Research; ICH; New Eastern Outlook (NEO) and more. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image is from Another Day in the Empire

“The paintings which I propose to do will depict the struggles of a people to create a nation and their attempt to build a democracy” – this is how Jacob Lawrence described his project in 1954. Over sixty-five years later his proposal has, if anything, become only more urgent. Two days after this exhibition closes, Americans will vote in what is arguably the most significant election in a generation, an election that will measure our commitment to preserving that democracy, the struggle for which was Lawrence’s mighty theme.

Jacob Lawrence is among the most recognized and celebrated African American painters of the twentieth century. Yet the series to which this exhibition is devoted – Struggle: From the History of the American People (1954-56) – has received relatively scant attention. Lawrence intended an immensely ambitious project: a series of sixty paintings beginning with European colonization and ending with World War I and America’s ascendance to the world stage. Ultimately, however, the series would comprise thirty small-scale tempera paintings on hardboard, detailing significant historical moments in the period lasting from 1775 to 1817; moments which will often underscore the role, and the experience, of people of color in the creation of the republic and its formative years.

Harlem Bar

The panels commence with a painting that draws its title from Patrick Henry’s famous “liberty” speech defending the colonial cause: “…Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?” We begin, then, with the stirring scene of a crowd that stands roused, their arms upraised, their fists clenched, and their eyes fixed on the commanding orator elevated above the rest. Henry’s right hand grasps a bayonet, while his left hand hovers above the chaotic scene, drawing the viewers eye to a dark wall that drips with blood, reinforcing our awareness of the bloody conflict that is to ensue.

Blind Beggars

This painting is immediately followed by the “Massacre in Boston” – particularly notable for its central foregrounding of a dying Crispus Attucks, the seaman of African and Wampanoag descent who escaped slavery to become the first martyr of the American Revolution. The fifth panel confronts the experience of slavery head-on, drawing its title from the petition of an enslaved man to the Province of Massachusetts Bay: “We have no property! We have no wives! No children! We have no city! No country!” It is a frightful scene of violence, with bayonets and knives flashing, naked brown bodies dripping blood, accentuated throughout by Lawrence’s sharp, angular lines.

The ninth installment is “Defeat”, a deeply moving reflection on the physical and emotional toll that military setbacks and the brutal winter took on Washington’s army. We see the backs of the men as they turn away from the dying warhorse that lies partially covered in the foreground, a poignant symbol of their desperate condition. It is an excellent example of Lawrence’s brilliant sense of economy, his ability to compress the greatest amount of meaning and emotional energy within the smallest surface. We are clearly in the presence of an artist who has thought long and deeply about his subject – and indeed we know that he spent “long hours” researching the period at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library (now the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture). Each of his compositions require an active participation on the viewers part, a readiness to engage with Lawrence not only in the exercise of our historical imagination, but in reexamining the ways we reconstruct, and mythologize the past – what gets left out, what is elided, and what is buried.

The next painting – about the crossing of the Delaware River on the night of December 27, 1776 – is a case in point. Lawrence takes a theme which was immortalized in Emanuel Leutze’s, “Washington Crossing the Delaware” (1851), also in the Metropolitan Museum, and transforms the meaning of the event – where it is less about the heroism of one man, General George Washington, and more about the “excessively severe” night, “which the men bore without the least murmur” – to quote from Washington’s military aide Tench Tilghman, whose firsthand observations served as a key source.  In other words, Lawrence underscores the shared, collective struggle, and the bravery, resilience and sheer nerve of all the men who took part.

We crossed the River at McKonkey’s Ferry 9 miles above Trenton … the night was excessively severe … which the men bore without the least murmur…-Tench Tilghman, 27 December 1776/Struggle Series – No. 10: Washington Crossing the Delaware (Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 2003) © 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

“And a Woman Mans a Cannon” is an important addition to the series because it reminds us that women also took part in the fighting – in particular, Margaret Cochran Corbin, who took her husband’s place when he fell in the Battle of Fort Washington. She boldly fought on until wounded and captured. Lawrence emphasizes her spiritedness and bravery – with her dead husband at her feet, and a pistol at her side, her standing figure extends almost the full height of the panel, imposing, dauntless and resolute.

The fifteenth painting takes its title from the preamble of the Constitution – “We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility…” – and once again Lawrence challenges the tendency to idealize, or in this case to mythologize the making of the constitution in Philadelphia 1787. In Lawrence’s depiction, the delegates are not bathed in heavenly light but in a dark room; they are not all standing erect as if modeling for a statue, but so utterly exhausted they can hardly sit upright; they are not cordially interacting and observing decorum, but gnashing, panting and gesticulating madly as the sweat rolls off their faces. Is it realism then Lawrence is after? Far from it. Seven sword hilts gleam in the foreground, symbolizing the seven states that were needed for ratification. Lawrence is also guided by an idea – the idea that this country was born out of struggle, and conflict, whether on the battlefield or in the halls of state. These delegates who are giving birth to the constitution look as though they are literally suffering the pangs of labor. Lawrence, to his credit, has not forsaken idealism – he has given us an idea that can inspire us today; one that is rooted in action, and sacrifice, courage and perseverance in defeat.

…is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the prices of chains and slavery? Patrick Henry-1775 (Collection of Harvey and Harvey-Ann Ross) © 2020 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The eighteenth panel captures a memorable moment from the expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. In August of 1805, Clark recorded in his journal that their translator and guide, a Lemhi Shoshone woman named Sacagewea, was reunited with her brother, Chief Cameahwait, from whom she had been separated since childhood. Lawrence depicts this moment of recognition between brother and sister by focusing our attention on their faces, unmistakably tinged with sadness, even as their eyes interlock. Its tenderness is underscored by Lawrence’s title, which records President Jefferson’s order to the explorers to treat all the natives they encounter “in the most friendly and conciliatory manner…” The painting becomes a painful reminder of how little the country in fact heeded the example set by Lewis and Clark in their interactions with the indigenous peoples of the American West.

Every panel in the series bears close examination and engagement. Lawrence recognizes the significance of those that have been under-represented, marginalized or oppressed. As he observed: “I don’t see how a history of the United States can be written honestly without including the negro.” Unfortunately, some of the paintings have been lost and are only known by black and white reproductions, others have been completely lost and only their titles are known. Still, enough remains that this exhibition is a profoundly rewarding experience, coming at a time when we desperately need to reinvigorate our commitment to democracy and universal enfranchisement, to the struggle against authoritarianism, and the cult of personality.

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Sam Ben-Meir is a professor of philosophy and world religions at Mercy College in New York City.

“ A vaccine with those reaction rates could cause grave injuries in 1.5 billion humans if administered to “every person on earth”. That is the threshold that Gates has established for ending the global lockdown.”

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– Robert F Kennedy Jr [1]

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Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

According to the most recent poll conducted by the research firm Leger, roughly two out of every three Canadians intend to get the vaccine for COVID, once it has been approved by Health Canada. Only 17% of the Canadian population said “no.” [2]

That makes a certain amount of sense if you factor in the panic generated by the Sars-CoV-2 virus. No other known bug has brought our society to the point of shutting down. No one ever witnessed the economic desecration. None saw countries closing their borders. And now, many are starting to see face masks and social distancing as the new normal. So, if the promise that the world will return to pre-pandemic normal, once that magical elixir has been constructed, who wouldn’t risk the shot?

The Director General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is a major booster of immunization. He claims that vaccines are to credit for the near annihilation of smallpox, polio and other feared diseases. Now he promises that the COVAX facility, co-led by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), and the WHO, will be delivering two billion doses of the COVID vaccine by the end of next year. [3]

The pharmaceutical corporations driving the vaccine push will certainly make tons of money getting a shot distributed to hundreds of millions around the world. But might there also be a risk associated with it? Is there another agenda that the authorities may be pursuing that patients may not even be aware of that will affect not only their health, but their prospect of freedom? This is the question that the Global Research News Hour investigates in part four of this special series on Coronavirus.

In our first half hour, the Global Research News Hour reassembles three of the guests from past episodes of this series, Sucharit Bhakdi MD, Meryl Nass MD, and Docs for an Open Debate, share their reservations about the COVID vaccine. In our second half hour, Peter Koenig, an economist and geopolitical analyst with background at the WHO, brings forward his perspective that includes an ID2020 nanochip that could ultimately raise the threat to a new level.

Sucharit Bhakdi, MD is a physician and  a post-doctoral researcher. He was named chair of Medical Microbiology at the University of Mainz in 1990, where he remained until his retirement in 2012. He has published over three hundred articles in the fields of immunology, bacteriology, virology, and parasitology, for which he has received numerous awards and the Order of Merit of Rhineland-Palatinate. He is a specialist in microbiology and one of the most cited research scientists in German history. His book, co-authored by Karina Reiss, is Corona: False Alarm? Facts and Figures. 

Docs for Open Debate is a group in Belgium doctors and health professionals intent on demanding more critical analysis of the pandemic fight, relaxation of the extreme emergency measures, and freedom to express their positions on mainstream media. They crafted an open letter to this end which has so far been signed by 515 physicians and 1767 medically trained health professionals. Their site is docs4opendebate.be

Meryl Nass, MD is a General Internal Medicine Physician with 40 years of experience. She is an epidemic and anthrax expert and composes a series of blogs for the site Anthrax Vaccine as well as Global Research. She’s based in Ellsworth, Maine.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals such as Global Research; ICH; New Eastern Outlook (NEO) and more. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 291)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

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 .

Notes:

1. https://www.globalresearch.ca/moderna-covid-vaccine-trials/5713705
2. https://leger360.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Legers-Weekly-Survey-October-13th-2020.pdf
3. https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/08/1070912

What’s happening in the US — with no significant relief in prospect — is unparalleled in the the nation’s history.

Unemployment, growing poverty, food insecurity, and overall deprivation are growing, not easing — while politicians in Washington prioritize war-making and self-interest over essential aid to needy households, small businesses, as well as cash-strapped states and local communities.

Both right wings of the US one-party state are guilty of crimes against humanity at home and worldwide.

Whatever the outcome of November 3 elections, nothing fundamental will change — unacceptable continuity assured like nearly always before.

On Thursday, another 898,000 jobless Americans filed new claims for unemployment insurance (UI).

Another 373,000 applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) — the federal program for workers ineligible for regular UI.

If not renewed, PUA will expire at yearend.

For the past 30 weeks, numbers of jobless US workers filing for unemployment benefits were double or more the highest ever single week total in US history.

What should make regular headlines gets short shrift at best.

The NYT gave the latest report scant attention, nothing on its front page about what should have been top-featured.

Separately, brief Times coverage of the latest filings for unemployment benefits published the wrong total.

Instead of 898,000 applying for UI, it reported 885,000 — omitting PUA filings.

Its business section published the correct number of UI filings, including mention of PUA ones.

WaPo was also dismissive about another 1.3 million Americans filing for unemployment benefits — burying the news in a related report, saying the following:

“The number of new unemployment claims jumped last week, the Labor Department reported on Thursday.”

No further elaboration was given, nothing about unprecedented numbers of jobless workers in need of federal aid to survive.

WaPo’s business section gave the news more attention, calling rising UI filings “a sign that recovery (sic) could be stalling.”

You’d think that when 1.3 million or more unemployed Americans file UI claims for 30 straight weeks it would be headline news — not in the US by most establishment media.

The Wall Street Journal gave the news prominent, but incomplete, coverage.

Its report omitted PUA claims, failing to explain that another 1.3 million jobless US workers filed for unemployment benefits in the latest week — not 898,000 alone.

To its credit, the Journal’s report explained the dismal state of the US jobs market in detail.

Federally funded $600 in weekly benefits expired at end of July.

Congress and the White House failed to agree on extending what’s vitally needed.

On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader McConnell said the body will consider a small relief bill next week.

During the greatest ever US Great Depression that’s likely to be long-lasting, things worsening before improving at an unknown time ahead, small isn’t good enough when large-scale help is essential — now.

Before economic crisis happened this year, growing poverty in the US was the new normal

Today after economic collapse occurred, a grimmer new normal faces growing millions of Americans.

Without jobs and federal aid, when unemployment benefits end in the coming weeks, they’ll be no income without substantial federal help.

Today, millions of Americans are hard-pressed to pay rent, service mortgages, feed family members, afford medical care, and be able to have other essentials to life, health and well-being.

According to FoodPolitics.com, numbers of Americans “who say they cannot always afford enough food hit the highest level on record,” notably “among families with young children.”

Black households are hit hardest. They’re twice as likely as their white counterparts to face food insecurity. Latino households are nearly as hard hit.

Food, Research and Action Center president Luis Guardia said Covid related lockdowns “wreaked havoc on so many things: on public health, on economic stability and obviously on food insecurity.”

According to a Northwestern University report, food insecurity doubled because of economic crisis conditions — affecting about one in four households.

About 30% of US households with children are food insecure, the report explained.

Feeding America estimates that around 54 million people “face hunger and food insecurity every day” in 2020.

According to data reported by Axios.com, 103 million working-age Americans are considered “not in the labor force,” not unemployed.

It’s why official Labor Department reports distort reality.

Based on how calculated pre-1990, real US unemployment is 26.9% — not the phony BLS 7.86% figure, an affront to tens of millions of Americans who want work but can’t find it for lack of jobs.

Layoffs are rising, not falling. Greater numbers of furloughed workers lost jobs permanently.

Looking ahead to 2021 — regardless of November election results — hard times in the US are likely to get harder.

A weak economy at year’s end 2019 collapsed because of unacceptable Covid-related shutdown.

The toll from this policy has been infinitely more harmful to countless millions of Americans and the economy overall than public health concerns over

Covid disease.

In late August, Biden said the following:

“I would be prepared to do whatever it takes to save lives (sic). We cannot get the country moving until we control the virus (sic).”

Civid is an illness, not a virus, a somewhat more contagious version of seasonal flu/influenza.

The latter is an annual occurrence in the US and most other countries — unaccompanied by fear-mongering induced mass hysteria and destructive shutdowns.

Asked if he’d shut down US economic activity if advised to take this step by “scientists,” Biden said: “I would shut it down.”

If he defeats Trump in November, his domestic agenda may worsen economic crisis conditions.

Trump is wrong on countless issues — his opposition to another shutdown, not one of them.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from The Falling Darkness

Weapons-makers — aka merchants of death and mass destruction — fuel conflicts when occur.

The US by far dominates the global arms trade. 

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the US accounted for 36% of major conventional weapons sales from 2015 – 2019.

Throughout most of the post-WW II period, the US dominated the global arms market.

Arms and security expert William Hartung explained that for 25 of the past 26 years, “the United States has been the leading arms dealer on the planet, at some moments in near monopolistic fashion.”

Saudi Arabia and other Middle East countries are major buyers of US arms.

In areas where large amounts of heavy weapons are sold, wars often follow.

For nearly three weeks, Azerbaijan’s war on Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh (NK below) has been raging.

All-out efforts by Russia to broker a ceasefire haven’t taken hold.

Israel and Turkey are major suppliers of heavy weapons to Baku. The Jewish state reportedly provided 61% of its weapons last year — based on SIPRI data.

They include Israel’s IAI Harop, a loitering munition called a “suicide drone” — self-destructing when striking a target.

The Jewish state is also supplying missiles and banned cluster munitions.

Since conflict began in late September, Israel shipped significant amounts of arms to Azerbaijan.

According to the Asia Times, citing an anonymous Israeli war ministry “senior” official, “Azerbaijan would not be able to continue its operation at this intensity without our support.”

The anonymous Israeli source said they’ve been regular airlifts of heavy weapons to the country.

Azeri officials acknowledged buying them. In response to Israel’s involvement as an arms supply, Armenia recalled its envoy to the country.

While Israel has diplomatic relations with both countries, it’s more strategically tied to Azerbaijan.

According to the Asia Times, citing unexplained leaks, Azerbaijan “permitted Israel to use its airfields to strike nuclear targets in the Islamic Republic.”

In August, a spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization said a July explosion causing damage to its Natanz nuclear site was “sabotage.”

Other Iranian officials believe cyber-sabotage was behind the blast, Israel and/or the US perhaps responsible for what happened.

The Asia Times also said that “Israeli intelligence has reportedly utilized Azerbaijani infrastructure to create listening posts and gather critical Iranian security information,” adding:

“These actions place Baku at great risk of Iranian retaliation. On Tuesday, Iran said its forces had shot down an Israeli-made drone that veered from the fighting in Karabakh on its territory.”

Turkey also is a major arms supplier to Baku.

Based on Turkish Exporters’ Assembly data, Reuters reported the following:

“Turkey’s military exports to its ally Azerbaijan have risen six-fold this year, with sales of drones and other military equipment rising to $77 million last month alone before fighting broke out over the (NK) region.”

From January through September this year, Turkey reportedly sold Azerbaijan around $123 million worth of heavy weapons — especially in August and September ahead of all-out Azeri war on Armenia in NK.

Russia supplies arms to both countries.

Sputnik News head Dmitry Kiselev spoke with Armenian and Azeri leaders.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called things in NK “very tense…a lot of losses on both sides.”

Weapons used by warring sides include “tanks, drones, aircraft and helicopters, armored vehicles, artillery, rocket artillery and so on.”

“And a lot of soldiers and troops are involved in these military activities.”

“I mean that very large-scale and fierce battles are going on.”

Pashinyan added that “there is concrete evidence that terrorist fighters from Syria are fighting” in NK.

“Turkey is the main sponsor of this war. Turkey has hired and deployed these terrorist fighters…”

As for compromises with Baku to end fighting, Pashinyan said (t)here is such a line…”

“It’s the right to self-determination of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh. And at all times, Armenia was ready for such a compromise.”

“Azerbaijan refused to sign” an agreement on this issue, he claimed.

Azeri President Ilham Aliyev told Sputnik’s Kiselev that “Pashinyan is” supported by George Soros.

Aliyev’s position is that “under no circumstances can the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan be compromised, under no circumstances can Azerbaijan agree to recognize the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh.”

The enclave in Azeri territory has a majority Armenian population.

“Baku sees Karabakh…as a war of liberation, while Yerevan views it as conquest,” said Kiselev.

Differences between both sides are longstanding and deep-seated — why attempts to resolve fighting failed to succeed so far.

Aliyev believes that “the Armenian community and the Azerbaijani one can peacefully live and coexist in Nagorno-Karabakh in the future.”

They’re caught in the middle of fierce fighting. Unknown numbers of civilians were killed or wounded.

Aliyev claimed his forces destroyed over $1 billion worth of Armenian military equipment.

While each side blames the other for ongoing fighting, Baku launched it. Yerevan responded defensively.

On Thursday, Pashinyan urged the US and France to join with Russian efforts for ceasefire and conflict resolution diplomacy.

He called the humanitarian situation in NK “more than serious.”

He said what’s going on in the enclave is the result of “Turkey’s expansionist and imperialistic policies.”

He called Armenia “the last barrier to Turkey’s expansion to the east and southeast.”

Resolving weeks of fighting proved to be no simple matter.

Interviewed by RT, foreign doctors in NK to treat the wounded expressed “shock” over the severity of what they’ve seen — “horrible injuries,” according to one doctor saying:

“Some will die. Some will be disabled. It’s very hard from a psychological point of view. It’s a real shock for us…”

“(X)-rays show splintered bones and torn muscles…(H)igh energy explosives leave incomparable damage.”

In all wars, civilians suffer most. In NK, they’re hunkered down in basements, wanting an end to fighting.

The longer it continues, the greater the danger to their lives and welfare.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Joseph Biden was asked during a recent interview on MSNBC whether he thought domestic unrest would occur in the streets of the United States if all votes were not counted on November 3, throwing the outcome of the upcoming presidential election into question.

He replied by saying,

“I’m not going even to entertain that, because I’m not anticipating that will happen…. The last thing we need is the equivalent of a coup.  I mean, this is not who we are.”

History refutes Biden’s claim.  The United States perpetrates coup d’états.  It does so often.  And it does so without apology.

Did Ukraine cross Biden’s mind when he was asked whether the legitimacy of the imminent American presidential election might be called into question?  He was Barack Obama’s point man in the aftermath of the U.S. sponsored coup in 2014 that used neo-Nazis to bring sycophants of the IMF to power in Kiev precipitating a civil war.

And what about Honduras, where Obama passively accepted a coup against the democratically elected Zelaya government in 2009 that was undertaken by military graduates of the infamous School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia?

Exactly how would Biden characterize the removal of Muammar Gaddafi from power by Islamic extremists and NATO bombing in Libya as engineered by Obama in 2011, an action he and Secretary Clinton fully endorsed?  A coup? Regime change? Biden has a history of vocally supporting the latter while calling it humanitarian intervention.

Biden fully advocated Obama’s dirty war on Syria that began in 2011, to dislodge the Ba’athist government of Bashar al-Assad from power.  If elected president, he pledges to increase military spending and keep troops in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan as part of a broader plan to pressure Assad and confront Russia and Iran in the Middle East.

Biden is a neoliberal interventionist who is on the record as voting for Bush Jr’s war in Iraq that toppled the Ba’athist government of Saddam Hussein from power in 2003 after covert war planners realized that a coup could not eliminate the Iraqi president because of impenetrable security measures taken by the Iraqis.

Does Biden know anything about the secret history of U.S. covert interventionism?  How about the events that unfolded in Iran in 1953?  Guatemala in 1954?  Congo (Zaire) in 1960?  South Vietnam in 1963?  Indonesia in 1965?  Dominican Republic in 1961 and 1965?  Greece in 1967?  Chile in 1973?

Do the names Mohammed Mossadegh, Jacobo Arbenz, Patrice Lumumba, Ngo Dinh Diem, Sukarno, Rafael Trujillo, Juan Bosch, George Papandreou and Salvador Allende have any meaning for Biden?

Biden knows the fate of these leaders and the U.S. government’s complicity in their demise in the same way John Gotti and his underboss Sammy Gravano of the Gambino crime family knew the names of the victims on their hit list.

Biden is no less a mafioso than any of the underbosses of New York’s five crime families, having served as Obama’s Vice-President for eight years.  For example, in 2015, he engaged in blackmail by threatening to withhold a billion dollars in U.S. loan guarantees from the leaders of Ukraine unless they fired the country’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin who was investigating Burisma, an energy company on whose board of directors sat the Vice-President’s son, Hunter Biden.  The prosecutor was fired, and the investigation halted as Biden Jr. collected $83,000 per month to sit on the board of a gas company he knew nothing about in a country whose language he did not speak.

Mafia tactics are part and parcel of American foreign policy as evidenced by the history of U.S. intervention in Cuba.  Besides imposing a 60 year economic embargo on the island, the U.S. government took part with the Italian-American mafia in several failed attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro.  The mafia had vast holdings in Havana casinos it was trying to protect, while the CIA wanted to safeguard the investments of U.S. corporations and banks in the Caribbean.

Coup d’états are not only reserved for the leaders of foreign government who displease the rulers of empire.

Closer to home, ‘Russiagate’ and ‘Ukrainegate’ were attempts to remove Donald Trump from power by the intelligence community led by the CIA’s John Brennan, the NSA’s James Clapper and the FBI’s James Comey.  They acted at the behest of Hillary Clinton, a member along with husband Bill, of the notorious Clinton crime syndicate of racketeers and war criminals.

Trump, rather than learn from the illegality of the exercise, ordered Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a de facto caporegime, to foment a coup in Venezuela by removing President Nicolas Maduro from power in favor of U.S. puppet Juan Guaido.  The coup attempt has failed, but U.S. economic sanctions have killed over 40,000 Venezuelan people.

When examining the history of American coup d’états, the assassination of John Kennedy was the most dramatic.  As was the murder of  Robert Kennedy.  The Kennedy brothers were impediments to the military-industrial complex during the cold war with the Soviet Union that threatened to go nuclear during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the hot war in Vietnam that was so divisive during the tumultuous year of 1968.  Both were killed by acts of state.

The United States only supports elite democracy when the elites serve corporate interests and those of the national security autocracy.  Even within this context, there are intense struggles to determine which faction of the ruling class will hold power.

American citizens should know their choice in the upcoming presidential election is limited to selecting the leader of the Democratic or Republican crime syndicates.  The two-party system of American imperialism works on behalf of a rapacious owing class that uses murder, extortion, sanction, bribery, electoral fraud, war and mass violence to control the world.

There should be no illusion that a vote for the Democrat Biden or the Republican Trump, is a vote for the American political mafia, a ruthless outfit that protects the material interests of the corporate plutocracy in a very unfree global market, proving that capitalism is synonymous with organized crime.

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Donald Monaco is a political analyst who lives in Brooklyn, New York.  He received his Master’s Degree in Education from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1979 and was radicalized by the Vietnam War.  He writes from an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist perspective.  His recent book is titled, The Politics of Terrorism, and is available at amazon.com

The World Health Organization’s Regional Director for Europe Hans Kluge says governments should stop enforcing lockdowns, unless as a “last resort,” because the impact on other areas of health and mental well-being is more damaging.

In an interview with Euro News, Kluge cautioned against the imposition of more lockdowns unless they are “absolutely necessary.”

NEW: WHO Europe Director, Hans Kluge tells me, no government should enforce another national lockdown unless it is absolutely necessary, a last resort

He says damage to other health areas, mental health, domestic violence, schools and cancer treatment is too great pic.twitter.com/jzbh9YbH7z

— Darren McCaffrey (@DarrenEuronews) October 13, 2020

“He says damage to other health areas, mental health, domestic violence, schools and cancer treatment is too great,” tweeted reporter Darren McCaffrey.

Kluge’s warning matches that of the WHO’s special envoy on COVID-19, Dr David Nabarro, who recently told the Spectator in an interview that world leaders should stop imposing lockdowns as a reflex reaction because they are making “poor people an awful lot poorer.”

WATCH: Dr David Nabarro, the WHO's Special Envoy on Covid-19, tells Andrew Neil: 'We really do appeal to all world leaders: stop using lockdown as your primary control method'. Watch the full interview here: https://t.co/XLdaedsKVS #SpectatorTV @afneil | @davidnabarro pic.twitter.com/1M4xf3VnXQ

— The Spectator (@spectator) October 9, 2020

It also resonates with numerous other experts who have desperately tried to warn governments that lockdowns will end up killing more people than the virus itself, but have been largely ignored.

Germany’s Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development, Gerd Muller, recently warned that COVID-19 lockdowns will result in “one of the biggest” hunger and poverty crises in history.

“We expect an additional 400,000 deaths from malaria and HIV this year on the African continent alone,” Muller said, adding that “half a million more will die from tuberculosis.”

Muller’s comments arrived months after a leaked study from inside the German Ministry of the Interior revealed that the impact of the country’s lockdown could end up killing more people than the coronavirus due to victims of other serious illnesses not receiving treatment.

Another study found that lockdowns will conservatively “destroy at least seven times more years of human life” than they save.

Professor Richard Sullivan also warned that there will be more excess cancer deaths in the UK than total coronavirus deaths due to people’s access to screenings and treatment being restricted as a result of the lockdown.

His comments were echoed by Peter Nilsson, a Swedish professor of internal medicine and epidemiology at Lund University, who said,

“It’s so important to understand that the deaths of COVID-19 will be far less than the deaths caused by societal lockdown when the economy is ruined.”

According to Professor Karol Sikora, an NHS consultant oncologist, there could be 50,000 excess deaths from cancer as a result of routine screenings being suspended during the lockdown in the UK.

Experts have also warned that there will be 1.4 million deaths globally from untreated TB infections due to the lockdown.

As we further previously highlighted, a data analyst consortium in South Africa found that the economic consequences of the country’s lockdown will lead to 29 times more people dying than the coronavirus itself.

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Featured image is a screenshot from a Youtube video

Israel has stopped granting any visas to employees at the United Nations’ human rights agency, effectively forcing the body’s top staff to leave, Middle East Eye can reveal.

In February, Israel announced it was suspending ties with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) after a report highlighted more than 100 companies that work in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Since June all requests for new visas have gone unanswered, with passports sent off for renewals coming back empty.

Nine of the organisation’s 12 foreign staff have now left Israel and the Palestinian territories for fear of being undocumented there, the OHCHR confirmed. Among those is country director James Heenan.

The other three have visas that are due to expire in the coming months. Three staff due to travel to Israel to start their work have been unable to do so.

Israeli and Palestinian staff continue to work and the organisation’s offices have not been closed.

“The absence of international staff from the occupied territory is a highly irregular situation and will negatively impact on our ability to carry out our mandate,” Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the OHCHR, told MEE.

“We continue to hope that this situation will be resolved soon, and we are actively engaged with various relevant and concerned parties to that end.”

All access to the Palestinian territories is controlled by Israel and the country has faced multiple allegations of quashing access to human rights workers in recent years.

Last year, Israel expelled Human Rights Watch’s country director Omar Shakir, after accusing him of supporting calls for a boycott, a claim he denied. Also last year, the Israeli government refused to renew the mandate for an international force that monitored violations in the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.

Shakir said the “forcing out of UN human rights monitors marks yet another attempt by the Israeli government to curtail documentation of its systematic repression of Palestinians”.

“Denying visas in order to punish critics has now become a central tool in Israel’s sustained assault on the human rights movement,” he told MEE.

‘Victory march’

The OHCHR writes regular reports highlighting alleged Israeli rights abuses in occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip.

In February, it published a list of 112 companies that work in Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law. The report, which highlighted Tripadvisor, Airbnb and the truck and digger maker JCB, among others, was welcomed by Palestinians but sparked Israeli ire.

In retaliation, Israel’s then-Foreign Minister Israel Katz suspended ties with the organisation, which he hailed as an “exceptional and harsh measure”.

It was not clear at the time what the practical implications would be.

“This development is not surprising given OHCHR’s official embrace of efforts to damage the Israeli economy,” Anne Herzberg, a legal advisor for pro-Israel organisation NGO Monitor, said in a statement on Thursday. “These actions suggest OHCHR’s willingness to be a party to the conflict rather than abide by its humanitarian obligations of impartiality and non-politicisation.”

United Nations employees across the world are supposed to have automatic access to visas to carry out their work.

Backed by fervent support from US President Donald Trump, Israel has achieved a string of global diplomatic successes in recent years, including recent peace agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

Martin Konecny, director of the European Middle East Project think tank, said restricting the OHCHR was part of a wider trend.

“With the support of the US, Israel has won one victory after another in the international arena – such as the UAE and Bahrain agreements. Human rights scrutiny is kind of nuisance that stands in the way of this victory march,” he said.

“I think Israel feels emboldened, not least through the support of the Trump administration, to act against organisations with human rights remits.”

He said that while European governments had criticised Israeli policies regarding this, there had been little action to force Israel to change course.

A spokesperson for the Israeli foreign ministry said it had nothing to add to statements suspending relations in February.

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Featured image: The Israeli and American flags displayed on the walls of the Old City in Jerusalem (Photo: Yonatan Sindel)

“We’re number one!” The United States famously fails to actually lead the world in anything desirable, but it does lead the world in many things, and one of them turns out to be the poisoning of the Pacific and its islands. And by the United States, I mean the United States military.

A new book by Jon Mitchell, called Poisoning the Pacific: The US Military’s Secret Dumping of Plutonium, Chemical Weapons, and Agent Orange, tells this story. Like all such catastrophes, this one escalated dramatically at the time of World War II and has continued ever since.

Mitchell starts with the island of Okunashima where Japan produced chemical weapons during World War II. After the war, the United States and Japan dumped the stuff into the ocean, stuck it in caves and sealed them shut, and buried it in the ground — on this island, near it, and throughout various parts of Japan. Putting something out of sight was apparently going to make it disappear, or at least burden future generations and other species with it — which was apparently just as satisfactory.

“Between 1944 and 1970,” Mitchell tells us, “the U.S. Army disposed of 29 million kilograms of mustard and nerve agents, and 454 tons of radioactive waste into the ocean. In one of the codenames beloved by the Pentagon, Operation CHASE (Cut Holes and Sink ’Em) involved packing ships with conventional and chemical weapons, sailing them out to sea, and scuttling them in deep waters.”

The United States didn’t just nuke two Japanese cities and a wide area to which the radiation spread, but also numerous other islands. The United Nations actually handed islands over to the United States for safe keeping and the development of “democracy,” and it nuked them — including Bikini Atoll which the world had the decency to name a sexy swimsuit after, but not to protect, and not to compensate the people forced to evacuate and still unable to safely return (they tried from 1972 to 1978 with bad results). The islands of various atolls, when not utterly destroyed, have been ruined with radiation: the soil, the plants, the animals, and the surrounding sea and sealife. The radioactive waste produced was not a problem, thank goodness!, since all that was required was to hide it out of sight, for example under a concrete dome on Runit Island that was guaranteed to last for 200,000 years but is cracking already.

On Okinawa some 2,000 tons of unexploded WWII ordnance remains in the ground, periodically killing, and likely to take 70 more years to clean up. But that’s the least of the problems. When the United States was done dropping Napalm and bombs, it turned Okinawa into a colony that it labeled “the junk heap of the Pacific.” It moved people into internment camps so that it could build bases and ammunition storage areas and weapons testing areas. It displaced 250,000 out of 675,000 people, using such gentle methods as tear gas.

When it was spraying millions of liters of Agent Orange and other deadly herbicides on Vietnam, the United States military was sending it its troops and weapons from Okinawa, where a middle school suffered from a chemical weapons accident within 48 hours of the first troops being sent off to Vietnam, and it got worse from there. The USA tested chemical and biological weapons on Okinawans and on U.S. troops on Okinawa. Some of the chemical weapons stockpiles it shipped off to Johnston Atoll after Oregon and Alaska rejected them. Others it dumped in the ocean (in containers that are now wearing out), or burned, or buried, or sold to unsuspecting locals. It also dropped nuclear weapons into the sea near Okinawa accidentally, twice.

Weapons developed and tested in Okinawa were deployed to Vietnam, including napalm strong enough to burn flesh under water, and stronger CS gas. The color-coded herbicides were used in secret at first, because the United States didn’t know that it could count on the world to accept its claim that targeting plants rather than humans (except as collateral damage) made it legal to use chemical weapons. But the herbicides killed all life. They made the jungles go silent. They killed people, made them ill, and gave them birth defects. They still do. And this stuff was sprayed on Okinawa, stored on Okinawa, and buried in Okinawa. People protested, as people will  do. And in 1973, two years after banning the use of deadly defoliants in Vietnam, the U.S. military used them against nonviolent protesters on Okinawa.

Of course, the U.S. military has lied, and lied, and lied some more about this sort of thing. In 2013, in Okinawa, people working on a soccer field dug up 108 barrels of Agent this and that color of poison. Confronted with the evidence, the U.S. military just kept lying.

“Although U.S. veterans are slowly receiving justice,” Mitchell writes, “there has been no such help for Okinawans, and the Japanese government has done nothing to help them. During the Vietnam War, fifty thousand Okinawans worked on the bases, but they have not been surveyed for health problems, nor have the farmers of Iejima or the residents living near Camp Schwab, MCAS Futenma, or the soccer field dump site.”

The U.S. military has been busy developing into the planet’s top polluter. It litters the globe, including the United States, with dioxin, depleted uranium, napalm, cluster bombs, nuclear waste, nuclear weapons, and unexploded ordnance. Its bases generally claim the right to operate outside the rule of law. Its live-fire (war rehearsal) sites poison surrounding areas with deadly water runoff. Between 1972 and 2016, Camps Hansen and Schwab on Okinawa also caused almost 600 forest fires. Then there’s dumping fuel over neighborhoods, crashing planes into buildings, and all variety of such SNAFUs.

And then there’s firefighting foam and the forever chemicals often referred to as PFAS, and written about extensively by Pat Elder here. The U.S. military has poisoned much of the ground water in Okinawa with apparent impunity, despite knowing about the dangers since 1992 or earlier.

Okinawa is not unique. The United States has bases in countries around the Pacific and in 16 colonies where people hold second-class status — places like Guam. It also has hugely destructive bases in places that have been made into states, like Hawaii and Alaska.

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Featured image: US naval base in Apra Harbor, Guam. (US Navy / Codie L. Soule / Flickr)

The 2020 Election Bamboozle: We Are All Victims of the Deep State’s Con Game

By John W. Whitehead, October 15 2020

The United States has the dubious distinction of being the world’s leading arms dealer. It dominates the global trade in a historic fashion and nowhere is that domination more complete than in the endlessly war-torn Middle East. There, believe it or not, the U.S. controls nearly half the arms market. From Yemen to Libya to Egypt, sales by this country and its allies are playing a significant role in fueling some of the world’s most devastating conflicts. But Donald Trump, even before he was felled by Covid-19 and sent to Walter Reed Medical Center, could not have cared less, as long as he thought such trafficking in the tools of death and destruction would help his political prospects.

Look, for example, at the recent “normalization” of relations between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel he helped to broker, which has set the stage for yet another surge in American arms exports. To hear Trump and his supporters tell it, he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for the deal, dubbed “the Abraham Accords.” In fact, using it, he was eager to brand himself as “Donald Trump, peacemaker” in advance of the November election. This, believe me, was absurd on the face of it. Until the pandemic swept everything in the White House away, it was just another day in Trump World and another example of the president’s penchant for exploiting foreign and military policy for his own domestic political gain.

If the narcissist-in-chief had been honest for a change, he would have dubbed those Abraham Accords the “Arms Sales Accords.” The UAE was, in part, induced to participate in hopes of receiving Lockheed Martin’s F-35 combat aircraft and advanced armed drones as a reward. For his part, after some grumbling, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to one-up the UAE and seek a new $8 billion arms package from the Trump administration, including an additional squadron of Lockheed Martin’s F-35s (beyond those already on order), a fleet of Boeing attack helicopters, and so much more. Were that deal to go through, it would undoubtedly involve an increase in Israel’s more than ample military aid commitment from the United States, already slated to total $3.8 billion annually for the next decade.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

This wasn’t the first time President Trump tried to capitalize on arms sales to the Middle East to consolidate his political position at home and his posture as this country’s dealmaker par excellence. Such gestures began in May 2017, during his very first official overseas trip to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis greeted him then with ego-boosting fanfare, putting banners featuring his face along roadways leading into their capital, Riyadh; projecting a giant image of that same face on the hotel where he was staying; and presenting him with a medal in a surreal ceremony at one of the kingdom’s many palaces. For his part, Trump came bearing arms in the form of a supposed $110 billion weapons package. Never mind that the size of the deal was vastly exaggerated. It allowed the president to gloat that his sales deal there would mean “jobs, jobs, jobs” in the United States. If he had to work with one of the most repressive regimes in the world to bring those jobs home, who cared? Not he and certainly not his son-in-law Jared Kushner who would develop a special relationship with the cruel Saudi Crown Prince and heir apparent to the throne, Mohammed bin Salman.

President Donald Trump poses for photos with ceremonial swordsmen on his arrival to Murabba Palace, as the guest of King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, Saturday evening, May 20, 2017, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Trump doubled down on his jobs argument in a March 2018 White House meeting with bin Salman. The president came armed with a prop for the cameras: a map of the U.S. showing the states that (he swore) would benefit most from Saudi arms sales, including — you won’t be surprised to learn — the crucial election swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

Nor will it surprise you that Trump’s jobs claims from those Saudi arms sales are almost entirely fraudulent. In fits of fancy, he’s even insisted that he’s creating as many as half a million jobs linked to weapons exports to that repressive regime. The real number is less than one-tenth that amount — and far less than one-tenth of one percent of U.S. employment. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

American Arms Dominance

Donald Trump is far from the first president to push tens of billions of dollars of arms into the Middle East. The Obama administration, for example, made a record $115 billion in arms offers to Saudi Arabia during its eight years in office, including combat aircraft, attack helicopters, armored vehicles, military ships, missile defense systems, bombs, guns, and ammunition.

Those sales solidified Washington’s position as the Saudis’ primary arms supplier. Two-thirds of its air force consists of Boeing F-15 aircraft, the vast bulk of its tanks are General Dynamics M-1s, and most of its air-to-ground missiles come from Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. And mind you, those weapons aren’t just sitting in warehouses or being displayed in military parades. They’ve been among the principal killers in a brutal Saudi intervention in Yemen that has sparked the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe.

A new report from the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy (which I co-authored) underscores just how stunningly the U.S. dominates the Middle Eastern weapons market. According to data from the arms transfer database compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in the period from 2015 to 2019 the United States accounted for 48% of major weapons deliveries to the Middle East and North Africa, or (as that vast region is sometimes known acronymically) MENA. Those figures leave deliveries from the next largest suppliers in the dust. They represent nearly three times the arms Russia supplied to MENA, five times what France contributed, 10 times what the United Kingdom exported, and 16 times China’s contribution.

In other words, we have met the prime weapons proliferator in the Middle East and North Africa and it is us.

The influence of U.S. arms in this conflict-ridden region is further illustrated by a striking fact: Washington is the top supplier to 13 of the 19 countries there, including Morocco (91% of its arms imports), Israel (78%), Saudi Arabia (74%), Jordan (73%), Lebanon (73%), Kuwait (70%), the UAE (68%), and Qatar (50%). If the Trump administration goes ahead with its controversial plan to sell F-35s and armed drones to the UAE and brokers that related $8 billion arms deal with Israel, its share of arms imports to those two countries will be even higher in the years to come.

Devastating Consequences

None of the key players in today’s most devastating wars in the Middle East produce their own weaponry, which means that imports from the U.S. and other suppliers are the true fuel sustaining those conflicts. Advocates of arms transfers to the MENA region often describe them as a force for “stability,” a way to cement alliances, counter Iran, or more generally a tool for creating a balance of power that makes armed engagement less likely.

In a number of key conflicts in the region, this is nothing more than a convenient fantasy for arms suppliers (and the U.S. government), as the flow of ever more advanced weaponry has only exacerbated conflicts, aggravated human rights abuses, and caused countless civilian deaths and injuries, while provoking widespread destruction. And keep in mind that, while not solely responsible, Washington is the chief culprit when it comes to the weaponry that’s fueling a number of the area’s most violent wars.

In Yemen, a Saudi/UAE-led intervention that began in March 2015 has, by now, resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians through air strikes, put millions at risk of famine, and helped create the desperate conditions for the worst cholera outbreak in living memory. That war has already cost more than 100,000 lives and the U.S. and the United Kingdom have been the primary suppliers of the combat aircraft, bombs, attack helicopters, missiles, and armored vehicles used there, transfers valued in the tens of billions of dollars.

There has been a sharp jump in overall arms deliveries to Saudi Arabia since that war was launched. Dramatically enough, total arms sent to the Kingdom more than doubled between the 2010-2014 period and the years from 2015 to 2019. Together, the U.S. (74%) and the U.K. (13%) accounted for 87% of all arms deliveries to Saudi Arabia in that five-year time frame.

In Egypt, U.S.-supplied combat aircraft, tanks, and attack helicopters have been used in what is supposedly a counterterror operation in the Northern Sinai desert, which has, in reality, simply become a war largely against the civilian population of the region. Between 2015 and 2019, Washington’s arms offers to Egypt totaled $2.3 billion, with billions more in deals made earlier but delivered in those years. And in May 2020, the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced that it was offering a package of Apache attack helicopters to Egypt worth up to $2.3 billion.

According to research conducted by Human Rights Watch, thousands of people have been arrested in the Sinai region over the past six years, hundreds have been disappeared, and tens of thousands have been forcibly evicted from their homes. Armed to the teeth, the Egyptian military has also carried out “systematic and widespread arbitrary arrests — including of children — enforced disappearances, torture, extrajudicial killings, collective punishment, and forced eviction.” There is also evidence to suggest that Egyptian forces have engaged in illegal air and ground strikes that have killed substantial numbers of civilians.

In several conflicts — examples of how such weapons transfers can have dramatic and unintended impacts — U.S. arms have ended up in the hands of both sides. When Turkish troops invaded northeastern Syria in October 2019, for instance, they faced Kurdish-led Syrian militias that had received some of the $2.5 billion in arms and training the U.S. had supplied to Syrian opposition forces over the previous five years. Meanwhile, the entire Turkish inventory of combat aircraft consists of U.S.-supplied F-16s and more than half of its armored vehicles are of American origin.

In Iraq, when the forces of the Islamic State, or ISIS, swept through a significant part of that country from the north in 2014, they captured U.S. light weaponry and armored vehicles worth billions of dollars from the Iraqi security forces this country had armed and trained. Similarly, in more recent years, U.S. arms have been transferred from the Iraqi military to Iranian-backed militias operating alongside them in the fight against ISIS.

Meanwhile, in Yemen, while the U.S. has directly armed the Saudi/UAE coalition, its weaponry has, in fact, ended up being used by all sides in the conflict, including their Houthi opponents, extremist militias, and groups linked to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. This equal-opportunity spread of American weaponry has occurred thanks to arms transfers by former members of the U.S.-supplied Yemeni military and by UAE forces that have worked with an array of groups in the southern part of the country.

Who Benefits?

Just four companies — Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Dynamics — were involved in the overwhelming majority of U.S. arms deals with Saudi Arabia between 2009 and 2019. In fact, at least one or more of those companies played key roles in 27 offers worth more than $125 billion (out of a total of 51 offers worth $138 billion). In other words, in financial terms, more than 90% of the U.S. arms offered to Saudi Arabia involved at least one of those top four weapons makers.

In its brutal bombing campaign in Yemen, the Saudis have killed thousand of civilians with U.S.-supplied weaponry. In the years since the Kingdom launched its war, indiscriminate air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition have hit marketplaces, hospitals, civilian neighborhoods, water treatment centers, even a school bus filled with children. American-made bombs have repeatedly been used in such incidents, including an attack on a wedding, where 21 people, children among them, were killed by a GBU-12 Paveway II guided bomb manufactured by Raytheon.

A General Dynamics 2,000-pound bomb with a Boeing JDAM guidance system was used in a March 2016 strike on a marketplace that killed 97 civilians, including 25 children. A Lockheed Martin laser-guided bomb was utilized in an August 2018 attack on a school bus that slaughtered 51 people, including 40 children. A September 2018 report by the Yemeni group Mwatana for Human Rights identified 19 air strikes on civilians in which U.S.-supplied weapons were definitely used, pointing out that the destruction of that bus was “not an isolated incident, but the latest in a series of gruesome [Saudi-led] Coalition attacks involving U.S. weapons.”

It should be noted that the sales of such weaponry have not occurred without resistance. In 2019, both houses of Congress voted down a bomb sale to Saudi Arabia because of its aggression in Yemen, only to have their efforts thwarted by a presidential veto. In some instances, as befits the Trump administration’s modus operandi, those sales have involved questionable political maneuvers. Take, for instance, a May 2019 declaration of an “emergency” that was used to push through an $8.1 billion deal with the Saudis, the UAE, and Jordan for precision-guided bombs and other equipment that simply bypassed normal Congressional oversight procedures completely.

At the behest of Congress, the State Department’s Office of Inspector General then opened an investigation into the circumstances surrounding that declaration, in part because it had been pushed by a former Raytheon lobbyist working in State’s Office of Legal Counsel. However, the inspector general in charge of the probe, Stephen Linick, was soon fired by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for fear that his investigation would uncover administration wrongdoing and, after he was gone, the ultimate findings proved largely — surprise! — a whitewash, exonerating the administration. Still, the report did note that the Trump administration had failed to take adequate care to avoid civilian harm by U.S. weaponry supplied to the Saudis.

Even some Trump administration officials have had qualms about the Saudi deals. The New York Times has reported that a number of State Department personnel were concerned about whether they could someday be held liable for aiding and abetting war crimes in Yemen.

Will America Remain the World’s Greatest Arms Dealer?

If Donald Trump is re-elected, don’t expect U.S. sales to the Middle East — or their murderous effects — to diminish any time soon. To his credit, Joe Biden has pledged as president to end U.S. arms and support for the Saudi war in Yemen. For the region as a whole, however, don’t be shocked if, even in a Biden presidency, such weaponry continues to flow in and it remains business as usual for this country’s giant arms merchants to the detriment of the peoples of the Middle East. Unless you’re Raytheon or Lockheed Martin, selling arms is one area where no one should want to keep America “great.”

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William D. Hartung, a TomDispatch regular, is the director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy and the co-author of “The Mideast Arms Bazaar: Top Arms Suppliers to the Middle East and North Africa 2015 to 2019.”

Featured image is from Stop the War Coalition