Julian Assange is not on trial simply for his liberty and his life. He is fighting for the right of every journalist to do hard-hitting investigative journalism without fear of arrest and extradition to the United States. Assange faces 175 years in a US super-max prison on the basis of claims by Donald Trump’s administration that his exposure of US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan amounts to “espionage”.

The charges against Assange rewrite the meaning of “espionage” in unmistakably dangerous ways. Publishing evidence of state crimes, as Assange’s Wikileaks organisation has done, is covered by both free speech and public interest defences. Publishing evidence furnished by whistleblowers is at the heart of any journalism that aspires to hold power to account and in check. Whistleblowers typically emerge in reaction to parts of the executive turning rogue, when the state itself starts breaking its own laws. That is why journalism is protected in the US by the First Amendment. Jettison that and one can no longer claim to live in a free society.

Aware that journalists might understand this threat and rally in solidarity with Assange, US officials initially pretended that they were not seeking to prosecute the Wikileaks founder for journalism – in fact, they denied he was a journalist. That was why they preferred to charge him under the arcane, highly repressive Espionage Act of 1917. The goal was to isolate Assange and persuade other journalists that they would not share his fate.

Assange explained this US strategy way back in 2011, in a fascinating interview he gave to Australian journalist Mark Davis. (The relevant section occurs from minute 24 to 43.) This was when the Obama administration first began seeking a way to distinguish Assange from liberal media organisations, such as the New York Times and Guardian that had been working with him, so that only he would be charged with espionage.

Assange warned then that the New York Times and its editor Bill Keller had already set a terrible precedent on legitimising the administration’s redefinition of espionage by assuring the Justice Department – falsely, as it happens – that they had been simply passive recipients of Wikileaks’ documents. Assange noted (40.00 mins):

“If I am a conspirator to commit espionage, then all these other media organisations and the principal journalists in them are also conspirators to commit espionage. What needs to be done is to have a united face in this.”

During the course of the current extradition hearings, US officials have found it much harder to make plausible this distinction principle than they may have assumed.

Journalism is an activity, and anyone who regularly engages in that activity qualifies as a journalist. It is not the same as being a doctor or a lawyer, where you need a specific professional qualification to practice. You are a journalist if you do journalism – and you are an investigative journalist if, like Assange, you publish information the powerful want concealed. Which is why in the current extradition hearings at the Old Bailey in London, the arguments made by lawyers for the US that Assange is not a journalist but rather someone engaged in espionage are coming unstuck.

My dictionary defines “espionage” as “the practice of spying or of using spies, typically by governments to obtain political and military information”. A spy is defined as someone who “secretly obtains information on an enemy or competitor”.

Very obviously the work of Wikileaks, a transparency organisation, is not secret. By publishing the Afghan and Iraq war diaries, Wikileaks exposed crimes the United States wished to keep secret. 

Assange did not help a rival state to gain an advantage, he helped all of us become better informed about the crimes our own states commit in our names. He is on trial not because he traded in secrets, but because he blew up the business of secrets – the very kind of secrets that have enabled the west to pursue permanent, resource-grabbing wars and are pushing our species to the verge of extinction.

In other words, Assange was doing exactly what journalists claim to do every day in a democracy: monitor power for the public good. Which is why ultimately the Obama administration abandoned the idea of issuing an indictment against Assange. There was simply no way to charge him without also putting journalists at the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian on trial too. And doing that would have made explicit that the press is not free but works on licence from those in power.

Media indifference 

For that reason alone, one might have imagined that the entire media – from rightwing to liberal-left outlets – would be up in arms about Assange’s current predicament. After all, the practice of journalism as we have known it for at least 100 years is at stake.

But in fact, as Assange feared nine years ago, the media have chosen not to adopt a “united face” – or at least, not a united face with Wikileaks. They have remained all but silent. They have ignored – apart from occasionally to ridicule – Assange’s terrifying ordeal, even though he has been locked up for many months in Belmarsh high-security prison awaiting efforts to extradite him as a spy. Assange’s very visible and prolonged physical and mental abuse – both in Belmarsh and, before that, in the Ecuadorian embassy, where he was given political asylum – have already served part of their purpose: to deter young journalists from contemplating following in his footsteps.

Even more astounding is the fact that the media have taken no more than a cursory interest in the events of the extradition hearing itself. What reporting there has been has given no sense of the gravity of the proceedings or the threat they pose to the public’s right to know what crimes are being committed in their name. Instead, serious, detailed coverage has been restricted to a handful of independent outlets and bloggers.

Most troubling of all, the media have not reported the fact that during the hearing lawyers for the US have abandoned the implausible premise of their main argument that Assange’s work did not constitute journalism. Now they appear to accept that Assange did indeed do journalism, and that other journalists could suffer his fate. What was once implicit has become explicit, as Assange warned: any journalist who exposes serious state crimes now risks the threat of being locked away for the rest of their lives under the draconian Espionage Act.

This glaring indifference to the case and its outcome is extremely revealing about what we usually refer to as the “mainstream” media. In truth, there is nothing mainstream or popular about this kind of media. It is in reality a media elite, a corporate media, owned by and answerable to billionaire owners – or in the case of the BBC, ultimately to the state – whose interests it really serves.

The corporate media’s indifference to Assange’s trial hints at the fact that it is actually doing very little of the sort of journalism that threatens corporate and state interests and that challenges real power. It won’t suffer Assange’s fate because, as we shall see, it doesn’t attempt to do the kind of journalism Assange and his Wikileaks organisation specialise in.

The indifference suggests rather starkly that the primary role of the corporate media – aside from its roles in selling us advertising and keeping us pacified through entertainment and consumerism – is to serve as an arena in which rival centres of power within the establishment fight for their narrow interests, settling scores with each other, reinforcing narratives that benefit them, and spreading disinformation against their competitors. On this battlefield, the public are mostly spectators, with our interests only marginally affected by the outcome.

Gauntlet thrown down 

The corporate media in the US and UK is no more diverse and pluralistic than the major corporate-funded political parties they identify with. This kind of media mirrors the same flaws as the Republican and Democratic parties in the US: they cheerlead consumption-based, globalised capitalism; they favour a policy of unsustainable, infinite growth on a finite planet; and they invariably support colonial, profit-driven, resource-grabbing wars, nowadays often dressed up as humanitarian intervention. The corporate media and the corporate political parties serve the interests of the same power establishment because they are equally embedded in that establishment.

(In this context, it was revealing that when Assange’s lawyers argued earlier this year that he could not be extradited to the US because extradition for political work is barred under its treaty with the UK, the US insisted that Assange be denied this defence. They argued that “political” referred narrowly to “party political” – that is, politics that served the interests of a recognised party.)

From the outset, the work of Assange and Wikileaks threatened to disrupt the cosy relationship between the media elite and the political elite. Assange threw down a gauntlet to journalists, especially those in the liberal parts of the media, who present themselves as fearless muckrakers and watchdogs on power.

Unlike the corporate media, Wikileaks doesn’t depend on access to those in power for its revelations, or on the subsidies of billionaires, or on income from corporate advertisers. Wikileaks receives secret documents direct from whistleblowers, giving the public an unvarnished, unmediated perspective on what the powerful are doing – and what they want us to think they are doing.

Wikileaks has allowed us to see raw, naked power before it puts on a suit and tie, slicks back its hair and conceals the knife.

But as much as this has been an empowering development for the general public, it is at best a very mixed blessing for the corporate media.

In early 2010, the fledgling Wikileaks organisation received its first tranche of documents from US army whistleblower Chelsea Manning: hundreds of thousands of classified files exposing US crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Assange and “liberal” elements of the corporate media were briefly and uncomfortably thrown into each others’ arms.

On the one hand, Assange needed the manpower and expertise provided by big-hitting newspapers like the New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel to help Wikileaks sift through vast trove to find important, hidden disclosures. He also needed the mass audiences those papers could secure for the revelations, as well as those outlets’ ability to set the news agenda in other media.

Liberal media, on the other hand, needed to court Assange and Wikileaks to avoid being left behind in the media war for big, Pulitzer Prize-winning stories, for audience share and for revenues. Each worried that, were it not to do a deal with Wikileaks, a rival would publish those world-shattering exclusives instead and erode its market share.

Gatekeeper role under threat 

For a brief while, this mutual dependency just about worked. But only for a short time. In truth, the liberal corporate media is far from committed to a model of unmediated, whole-truth journalism. The Wikileaks model undermined the corporate media’s relationship to the power establishment and threatened its access. It introduced a tension and division between the functions of the political elite and the media elite.

Those intimate and self-serving ties are illustrated in the most famous example of corporate media working with a “whistleblower”: the use of a source, known as Deep Throat, who exposed the crimes of President Richard Nixon to Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein back in the early 1970s, in what became known as Watergate. That source, it emerged much later, was actually the associate director of the FBI, Mark Felt.

Far from being driven to bring down Nixon out of principle, Felt wished to settle a score with the administration after he was passed over for promotion. Later, and quite separately, Felt was convicted of authorising his own Watergate-style crimes on behalf of the FBI. In the period before it was known that Felt had been Deep Throat, President Ronald Reagan pardoned him for those crimes. It is perhaps not surprising that this less than glorious context is never mentioned in the self-congratulatory coverage of Watergate by the corporate media.

But worse than the potential rupture between the media elite and the political elite, the Wikileaks model implied an imminent redundancy for the corporate media. In publishing Wikileaks’ revelations, the corporate media feared it was being reduced to the role of a platform – one that could be discarded later – for the publication of truths sourced elsewhere.

The undeclared role of the corporate media, dependent on corporate owners and corporate advertising, is to serve as gatekeeper, deciding which truths should be revealed in the “public interest”, and which whistleblowers will be allowed to disseminate which secrets in their possession. The Wikileaks model threatened to expose that gatekeeping role, and make clearer that the criterion used by corporate media for publication was less “public interest” than “corporate interest”.

In other words, from the start the relationship between Assange and “liberal” elements of the corporate media was fraught with instability and antagonism.

The corporate media had two possible responses to the promised Wikileaks revolution.

One was to get behind it. But that was not straightforward. As we have noted, Wikileaks’ goal of transparency was fundamentally at odds both with the corporate media’s need for access to members of the power elite and with its embedded role, representing one side in the “competition” between rival power centres.

The corporate media’s other possible response was to get behind the political elite’s efforts to destroy Wikileaks. Once Wikileaks and Assange were disabled, there could be a return to media business as usual. Outlets would once again chase tidbits of information from the corridors of power, getting “exclusives” from the power centres they were allied with.

Put in simple terms, Fox News would continue to get self-serving exclusives against the Democratic party, and MSNBC would get self-serving exclusives against Trump and the Republican Party. That way, everyone would get a slice of editorial action and advertising revenue – and nothing significant would change. The power elite in its two flavours, Democrat and Republican, would continue to run the show unchallenged, switching chairs occasionally as elections required.

From dependency to hostility

Typifying the media’s fraught, early relationship with Assange and Wikileaks – sliding rapidly from initial dependency to outright hostility – was the Guardian. It was a major beneficiary of the Afghan and Iraq war diaries, but very quickly turned its guns on Assange. (Notably, the Guardian would also lead the attack in the UK on the former leader of the Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn, who was seen as threatening a “populist” political insurgency in parallel to Assange’s “populist” media insurgency.)

Despite being widely viewed as a bastion of liberal-left journalism, the Guardian has been actively complicit in rationalising Assange’s confinement and abuse over the past decade and in trivialising the threat posed to him and the future of real journalism by Washington’s long-term efforts to permanently lock him away.

There is not enough space on this page to highlight all the appalling examples of the Guardian’s ridiculing of Assange (a few illustrative tweets scattered through this post will have to suffice) and disparaging of renowned experts in international law who have tried to focus attention on his arbitrary detention and torture. But the compilation of headlines in the tweet below conveys an impression of the antipathy the Guardian has long harboured for Assange, most of it – such as James Ball’s article – now exposed as journalistic malpractice.

The Guardian’s failings have extended too to the current extradition hearings, which have stripped away years of media noise and character assassination to make plain why Assange has been deprived of his liberty for the past 10 years: because the US wants revenge on him for publishing evidence of its crimes and seeks to deter others from following in his footsteps.

In its pages, the Guardian has barely bothered to cover the case, running superficial, repackaged agency copy. This week it belatedly ran a solitary opinion piece from Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s former leftwing president, to mark the fact that many dozens of former world leaders have called on the UK to halt the extradition proceedings. They appear to appreciate the gravity of the case much more clearly than the Guardian and most other corporate media outlets.

But among the Guardian’s own columnists, even its supposedly leftwing ones like Gorge Monbiot and Owen Jones, there has been blanket silence about the hearings. In familiar style, the only in-house commentary on the case so far is yet another snide hit-piece – this one in the fashion section written by Hadley Freeman. It simply ignores the terrifying developments for journalism taking place at the Old Bailey, close by the Guardian’s offices. Instead Freeman mocks the credible fears of Assange’s partner, Stella Moris, that, if Assange is extradited, his two young children may not be allowed contact with their father again.

Freeman’s goal, as has been typical of the Guardian’s modus operandi, is not to raise an issue of substance about what is happening to Assange but to score hollow points in a distracting culture war the paper has become so well-versed in monetising. In her piece, entitled “Ask Hadley: ‘Politicising’ and ‘weaponising’ are becoming rather convenient arguments”, Freeman exploits Assange and Moris’s suffering to advance her own convenient argument that the word “politicised” is much misused – especially, it seems, when criticising the Guardian for its treatment of Assange and Corbyn.

The paper could not make it any plainer. It dismisses the idea that it is a “political” act for the most militarised state on the planet to put on trial a journalist for publishing evidence of its systematic war crimes, with the aim of locking him up permanently.

Password divulged 

The Guardian may be largely ignoring the hearings, but the Old Bailey is far from ignoring the Guardian. The paper’s name has been cited over and over again in court by lawyers for the US. They have regularly quoted from a 2011 book on Assange by two Guardian reporters, David Leigh and Luke Harding, to bolster the Trump administration’s increasingly frantic arguments for extraditing Assange.

When Leigh worked with Assange, back in 2010, he was the Guardian’s investigations editor and, it should be noted, the brother-in-law of the then-editor, Alan Rusbridger. Harding, meanwhile, is a long-time reporter whose main talent appears to be churning out Guardian books at high speed that closely track the main concerns of the UK and US security services. In the interests of full disclosure, I should note that I had underwhelming experiences dealing with both of them during my years working at the Guardian.

Normally a newspaper would not hesitate to put on its front page reports of the most momentous trial of recent times, and especially one on which the future of journalism depends. That imperative would be all the stronger were its own reporters’ testimony likely to be critical in determining the outcome of the trial. For the Guardian, detailed and prominent reporting of, and commentary on, the Assange extradition hearings should be a double priority.

So how to explain the Guardian’s silence?

The book by Leigh and Harding, WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, made a lot of money for the Guardian and its authors by hurriedly cashing in on the early notoriety around Assange and Wikileaks. But the problem today is that the Guardian has precisely no interest in drawing attention to the book outside the confines of a repressive courtroom. Indeed, were the book to be subjected to any serious scrutiny, it might now look like an embarrassing, journalistic fraud.

The two authors used the book not only to vent their personal animosity towards Assange – in part because he refused to let them write his official biography – but also to divulge a complex password entrusted to Leigh by Assange that provided access to an online cache of encrypted documents. That egregious mistake by the Guardian opened the door for every security service in the world to break into the file, as well as other files once they could crack Assange’s sophisticated formula for devising passwords.

Much of the furore about Assange’s supposed failure to protect names in the leaked documents published by Assange – now at the heart of the extradition case – stems from Leigh’s much-obscured role in sabotaging Wikileaks’ work. Assange was forced into a damage limitation operation because of Leigh’s incompetence, forcing him to hurriedly publish files so that anyone worried they had been named in the documents could know before hostile security services identified them.

This week at the Assange hearings, Professor Christian Grothoff, a computer expert at Bern University, noted that Leigh had recounted in his 2011 book how he pressured a reluctant Assange into giving him the password. In his testimony, Grothoff referred to Leigh as a “bad faith actor”.

‘Not a reliable source’ 

Nearly a decade ago Leigh and Harding could not have imagined what would be at stake all these years later – for Assange and for other journalists – because of an accusation in their book that the Wikileaks founder recklessly failed to redact names before publishing the Afghan and Iraq war diaries.

The basis of the accusation rests on Leigh’s highly contentious recollection of a discussion with three other journalists and Assange at a restaurant near the Guardian’s former offices in July 2010, shortly before publication of the Afghan revelations.

According to Leigh, during a conversation about the risks of publication to those who had worked with the US, Assange said: “They’re informants, they deserve to die.” Lawyers for the US have repeatedly cited this line as proof that Assange was indifferent to the fate of those identified in the documents and so did not expend care in redacting names. (Let us note, as an aside, that the US has failed to show that anyone was actually put in harm’s way from publication, and in the Manning trial a US official admitted that no one had been harmed.)

The problem is that Leigh’s recollection of the dinner has not been confirmed by anyone else, and is hotly disputed by another participant, John Goetz of Der Spiegel. He has sworn an affidavit saying Leigh is wrong. He gave testimony at the Old Bailey for the defence last week. Extraordinarily the judge, Vanessa Baraitser, refused to allow him to contest Leigh’s claim, even though lawyers for the US have repeatedly cited that claim.

Further, Goetz, as well as Nicky Hager, an investigative journalist from New Zealand, and Professor John Sloboda, of Iraq Body Count, all of whom worked with Wikileaks to redact names at different times, have testified that Assange was meticulous about the redaction process. Goetz admitted that he had been personally exasperated by the delays imposed by Assange to carry out redactions:

“At that time, I remember being very, very irritated by the constant, unending reminders by Assange that we needed to be secure, that we needed to encrypt things, that we needed to use encrypted chats. … The amount of precautions around the safety of the material were enormous. I thought it was paranoid and crazy but it later became standard journalistic practice.”

Prof Sloboda noted that, as Goetz had implied in his testimony, the pressure to cut corners on redaction came not from Assange but from Wikileaks’ “media partners”, who were desperate to get on with publication. One of the most prominent of those partners, of course, was the Guardian. According to the account of proceedings at the Old Bailey by former UK ambassador Craig Murray:

“Goetz [of Der Spiegel] recalled an email from David Leigh of The Guardian stating that publication of some stories was delayed because of the amount of time WikiLeaks were devoting to the redaction process to get rid of the ‘bad stuff’.” 

When confronted by US counsel with Leigh’s claim in the book about the restaurant conversation, Hager observed witheringly: “I would not regard that [Leigh and Harding’s book] as a reliable source.” Under oath, he ascribed Leigh’s account of the events of that time to “animosity”.

Scoop exposed as fabrication 

Harding is hardly a dispassionate observer either. His most recent “scoop” on Assange, published in the Guardian two years ago, has been exposed as an entirely fabricated smear. It claimed that Assange secretly met a Trump aide, Paul Manafort, and unnamed “Russians” while he was confined to the Ecuadorian embassy in 2016.

Harding’s transparent aim in making this false claim was to revive a so-called “Russiagate” smear suggesting that, in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election, Assange conspired with the Trump camp and Russian president Vladimir Putin to help get Trump elected. These allegations proved pivotal in alienating Democrats who might otherwise have rallied to Assange’s side, and have helped forge bipartisan support for Trump’s current efforts to extradite Assange and jail him. 

The now forgotten context for these claims was Wikileaks’ publication shortly before the election of a stash of internal Democratic party emails. They exposed corruption, including efforts by Democratic officials to sabotage the party’s primaries to undermine Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton’s rival for the party’s presidential nomination.

Those closest to the release of the emails have maintained that they were leaked by a Democratic party insider. But the Democratic leadership had a pressing need to deflect attention from what the emails revealed. Instead they actively sought to warm up a Cold War-style narrative that the emails had been hacked by Russia to foil the US democratic process and get Trump into power.

No evidence was ever produced for this allegation. Harding, however, was one of the leading proponents of the Russiagate narrative, producing another of his famously fast turnaround books on the subject, Collusion. The complete absence of any supporting evidence for Harding’s claims was exposed in dramatic fashion when he was questioned by journalist Aaron Mate.

Harding’s 2018 story about Manafort was meant to add another layer of confusing mischief to an already tawdry smear campaign. But problematically for Harding, the Ecuadorian embassy at the time of Manafort’s supposed visit was probably the most heavily surveilled building in London. The CIA, as we would later learn, had even illegally installed cameras inside Assange’s quarters to spy on him. There was no way that Manafort and various “Russians” could have visited Assange without leaving a trail of video evidence. And yet none exists. Rather than retract the story, the Guardian has gone to ground, simply refusing to engage with critics. 

Most likely, either Harding or a source were fed the story by a security service in a further bid to damage Assange. Harding made not even the most cursory checks to ensure that his “exclusive” was true.

Unwilling to speak in court 

Despite both Leigh and Harding’s dismal track record in their dealings with Assange, one might imagine that at this critical point – as Assange faces extradition and jail for doing journalism – the pair would want to have their voices heard directly in court rather than allow lawyers to speak for them or allow other journalists to suggest unchallenged that they are “unreliable” or “bad faith” actors.

Leigh could testify at the Old Bailey that he stands by his claims that Assange was indifferent to the dangers posed to informants; or he could concede that his recollection of events may have been mistaken; or clarify that, whatever Assange said at the infamous dinner, he did in fact work scrupulously to redact names – as other witnesses have testified.

Given the grave stakes, for Assange and for journalism, that would be the only honourable thing for Leigh to do: to give his testimony and submit to cross-examination. Instead he shelters behind the US counsel’s interpretation of his words and Judge Baraitser’s refusal to allow anyone else to challenge it, as though Leigh brought his claim down from the mountain top.

The Guardian too, given it central role in the Assange saga, might have been expected to insist on appearing in court, or at the very least to be publishing editorials furiously defending Assange from the concerted legal assault on his rights and journalism’s future. The Guardian’s “star” leftwing columnists, figures like George Monbiot and Owen Jones, might similarly be expected to be rallying readers’ concerns, both in the paper’s pages and on their own social media accounts. Instead they have barely raised their voices above a whisper, as though fearful for their jobs.

These failings are not about the behaviour of any single journalist. They reflect a culture at the Guardian, and by extension in the wider corporate media, that abhors the kind of journalism Assange promoted: a journalism that is open, genuinely truth-seeking, non-aligned and collaborative rather than competitive. The Guardian wants journalism as a closed club, one where journalists are once again treated as high priests by their flock of readers, who know only what the corporate media is willing to disclose to them.

Assange understood the problem back in 2011, as he explained in his interview with Mark Davis (38.00mins):

“There is a point I want to make about perceived moral institutions, such as the Guardian and New York Times. The Guardian has good people in it. It also has a coterie of people at the top who have other interests. … What drives a paper like the Guardian or New York Times is not their inner moral values. It is simply that they have a market. In the UK, there is a market called “educated liberals”. Educated liberals want to buy a newspaper like the Guardian and therefore an institution arises to fulfil that market. … What is in the newspaper is not a reflection of the values of the people in that institution, it is a reflection of the market demand.”

That market demand, in turn, is shaped not by moral values but by economic forces – forces that need a media elite, just as they do a political elite, to shore up an ideological worldview that keeps those elites in power. Assange threatened to bring that whole edifice crashing down. That is why the institutions of the Guardian and the New York Times will shed no more tears than Donald Trump and Joe Biden if Assange ends up spending the rest of his life behind bars.

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This essay first appeared on Jonathan Cook’s blog: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is by thierry ehrmann | CC BY 2.0

When I was sworn in to practice before the Supreme Court in 2007, I sat near the front of the gallery. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the five-foot-tall justice, was barely visible over the bench behind which she sat. On two occasions, Ginsburg visited the law school where I taught for many years. She graciously created the Thomas Jefferson School of Law Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lecture Series at our annual Women and the Law Conference, which featured leading feminist scholars.

In all three instances, I was struck by the stark contrast between her diminutive stature and her commanding presence. Now, in death, Ginsburg commands the national discourse. How, when and who will fill her vacant seat promises to have a powerful, even determinative, effect on the election and the future of the Supreme Court itself.

After Justice John Paul Stevens retired 10 years ago, Ginsburg assumed the role of leader of the liberal wing of the Supreme Court. During her tenure on the high court, Ginsburg wrote landmark decisions — many of them in dissent — upholding the rights of women, LGBTQ people, immigrants, people of color, criminal defendants, people with mental disabilities, workers, and the poor. Ginsburg “cast more liberal votes than any other justice in the court’s weightiest cases,” law professor and political scientist Lee Epstein from Washington University in St. Louis told The New York Times.

Before her confirmation to the Court in 1993, Ginsburg had already distinguished herself as a leader in the fight for gender equality. As a lawyer for the ACLU during the 1970s, Ginsburg handled six cases in the Supreme Court, winning five of them. In 1971, she scored her first victory in Reed v. Reed, a case in which the Court for the first time struck down a state law as violative of equal protection based on sex discrimination. Ginsburg filed an 88-page brief that detailed the ways in which the law perpetuated the oppression of women. Known as the “grandmother brief,” it provided a model for lawyers litigating gender rights cases. In the brief, Ginsburg argued laws that discriminate based on sex, like those that discriminate on account of race, should be judged with strict judicial scrutiny. Women, like people of color, she noted, have suffered a history of discrimination under the law.

In perhaps her most significant majority opinion as a Supreme Court justice, Ginsburg wrote in the 1996 case of U.S. v. Virginia that excluding women from admission to the Virginia Military Institute violated equal protection. She maintained that sex differences may not be used “for denigration of the members of either sex or for artificial constraints on an individual’s opportunity.” Differential treatment, Ginsburg wrote, cannot “create or perpetuate the legal, social, and economic inferiority of women.”

One of Ginsburg’s monumental dissents came in the 2007 case of Ledbetter v. Tire and Rubber Co., in which the majority upheld strict time limits for filing employment discrimination claims under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. She pointed out that pay discrimination is not always easy to identify, writing, “Comparative pay information, moreover, is often hidden from the employee’s view. Employers may keep under wraps the pay differentials maintained among supervisors, no less the reasons for those differentials.” Ginsburg challenged Congress to overturn the ruling by changing the law, writing, “the ball is in Congress’ court.” Congress complied by passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.

Another momentous Ginsburg dissent came in 2013 in the case of Shelby County v. Holder, in which the majority struck down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, that had established a formula for preclearance of jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination. Ginsburg wrote, “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” Ginsburg’s critique has particular resonance as the GOP increases its voter suppression efforts in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. When she read her dissent from the bench, Ginsburg departed slightly from its written version in quoting Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” and adding, “if there is a steadfast commitment to see the task through to completion.”

One of Ginsburg’s most noteworthy dissents came in the 2000 case that anointed George W. Bush president of the United States. In Bush v. Gore, a 5-4 majority of the Court overruled the Florida Supreme Court’s order for a statewide manual recount in a very close election. Although conservatives usually champion states’ rights, they turned that proclivity on its head to hand the election to Bush. Ginsburg noted, “[T]he Court’s conclusion that a constitutionally adequate recount is impractical is a prophecy the Court’s own judgment will not allow to be tested. Such an untested prophecy should not decide the Presidency of the United States.”

Bush v. Gore is especially ironic in light of Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s unconscionable and hypocritical rush to confirm Ginsburg’s successor before Inauguration Day. It remains to be seen whether, with the election less than six weeks away, four Republican senators will vote with the Democrats to refrain from filling Ginsburg’s seat and leave the decision for the next president.

The Court now has eight members, three liberals and five conservatives. Chief Justice John Roberts, mindful of the legacy of the Roberts Court, ruled with the liberals to strike down an abortion restriction and uphold the Affordable Care Act. Until Ginsburg’s death, Roberts had been the swing vote on the Court. A Trump appointment would substitute a right-wing justice for Ginsburg, making a 6-3 conservative majority. There would be solid votes to overrule Roe v. Wade and strike down the Affordable Care Act.

During her 27 years on the Supreme Court, Ginsburg was a consistent protector of the poor and the disenfranchised. One must hope that the next justice who fills her seat will rule in the tradition of this legendary liberal justice.

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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.

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President Kennedy’s Role in the Vietnam War

September 23rd, 2020 by Shane Quinn

Dwight D. Eisenhower‘s presidency, which ran for eight years from January 1953, is notable in the reluctance of the “great general” to launch large-scale military offensives. This was at a time when American power was immeasurably clear of any other nation on earth.

As president, Eisenhower preferred the coup d’etat to the military invasion. After some cajoling from the British pertaining to Iran, the Americans led a putsch in August 1953 against a nationalist government in Tehran – mainly in order to ensure US-British control over Iran’s massive oil reserves, in “the most strategically important area of the world”, as Eisenhower previously described the Middle East. In June 1954 the Eisenhower administration once more resorted to the coup, this time in Guatemala, with Eisenhower’s fear on this instance being the expansion of independent nationalism in the United States’ “backyard” of Latin America. (1)

Eisenhower refused to send American forces en masse to invade Guatemala, as former president Woodrow Wilson would have done a generation before; but the repercussions for Guatemala and its people were still horrendous, the destruction of her democracy which lingers in the country to this day.

Along south-east Asia, specifically Vietnam, Eisenhower again did not descend to an outright military invasion, though he was clearly concerned about the situation. On 7 April 1954, Eisenhower warned that Japan would turn “toward the Communist areas in order to live” if a communist victory in Indochina “takes away, in its economic aspects, that region that Japan must have as a trading area”. Washington’s trepidation of the “super domino” Japan falling to communist influence spreading forth from Vietnam, would remain a serious concern of American planners over following years. (2)

Yet in reality there was no probability that conservative, US-friendly Japan would have become sympathetic to communism, in the scenario of Vietnam’s “loss”. Nor was there a likelihood, had Vietnam been left in peace, that communism would have spread to the Philippines, India, the Middle East, etc., where the masses in these countries had little idea of what communism entailed.

Though not extending to aggression, Eisenhower instituted and supported state terror methods in the Republic of Vietnam, more commonly known as South Vietnam, a state officially founded in October 1955; pending unification of the country on the basis of free elections, which were meant to be held in 1956. Washington regarded the 1954 Geneva agreements as a “disaster” which stipulated, in effect, to hand Vietnam over to the Vietnamese. Instead, Eisenhower’s government quickly established the Ngo Dinh Diem dictatorship in South Vietnam: So as to eradicate the perceived threat to US hegemony in south-east Asia and beyond.

The American author and historian, Noam Chomsky, wrote that this US-backed terrorist regime had, by 1961, “already taken perhaps 75,000 lives in the southern sector of Vietnam since Washington took over the war directly in 1954. But the 1954-1961 crimes were of a different order: they belong to the category of crimes that Washington conducts routinely, either directly or through its agents, in its various terror states. In the fall and winter of 1961-1962, Kennedy added the war crime of aggression to the already sordid record, also raising the attack to new heights”. (3)

Source: vietnamfulldisclosure.org

Less than nine months into his presidency, on 11 October 1961 John F. Kennedy ordered the dispatchment of a US Air Force squadron “Farmgate” to South Vietnam, consisting of 12 warplanes equipped specifically for counterinsurgency attacks – and which were soon authorised “to fly coordinated missions with Vietnamese personnel in support of Vietnamese ground forces” (4). Under Eisenhower, US soldiers in Vietnam remained in a “strictly advisory” role, not actually participating in raids. This status altered within the first year of Kennedy’s tenure, from terror to aggression.

In June 1956 JFK, then a senator, had outlined that,

“Vietnam represents the cornerstone of the Free World in Southeast Asia, the Keystone to the Arch, the finger in the dike. Burma, Thailand, India, Japan, the Philippines, and obviously Laos and Cambodia, are among those whose security would be threatened if the red tide of communism overflowed into Vietnam”.

His views would change little in coming years.

On 22 November 1961, Kennedy sanctioned the use of US forces “in a sharply increased effort to avoid a further deterioration of the situation” in South Vietnam. It included “increased airlift to the GVN [South Vietnamese regime] in the form of helicopters, light aviation and transport aircraft”. This equipment, along with the arrival of US armed force members to South Vietnam, would partake in “aerial reconnaissance, instruction in and execution of air-ground support and special intelligence” (5). Among the military units were three US Army Helicopter Companies, a Troop Carrier Squadron with 32 planes, fighter aircraft, a Reconnaissance Unit, and six C-123 transport planes equipped for defoliation.

Less than two weeks before, on 11 November 1961 the US National Security Council (NSC) under president Kennedy had ordered the use of “Aircraft, personnel, and chemical defoliants to kill Viet Cong food crops and defoliate selected border and jungle areas”. On 27 November 1961, it was reported that “spraying equipment had been installed on Vietnamese H-34 helicopters, and is ready for use against food crops”. Three weeks later the US Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara, authorised newly-based US warplanes in South Vietnam to begin attacking locals, who were resisting the assaults of the US-imposed dictatorship. By January 1962 further US military hardware had arrived in South Vietnam, such as advanced helicopters, along with providing tactical air support.

Chomsky observed that the above actions by the Kennedy administration “were the first steps in engaging US forces directly in bombing and other combat missions in South Vietnam from 1962, along with sabotage missions in the North. These 1961-1962 actions laid the groundwork for the huge expansion of the war in later years, with its awesome toll”. (6)

JFK put the hawkish McNamara in charge of running the war in Vietnam, despite him having scant experience of front line fighting. McNamara was more acquainted with office work, analysing spreadsheets or graphs. From 1946, he had worked in a civilian position for many years with the Ford Motor Company.

Kennedy was inaugurated as president on 20 January 1961. Over the next year and a half, US soldier numbers in South Vietnam increased sixfold, from about 900 on 31 December 1960, to 5,576 by 30 June 1962. The figures then doubled over the next six months, to 11,300 on 31 December 1962. In the early winter of 1963, at the time of Kennedy’s death, there were around 16,000 US military personnel in South Vietnam (7). During the Kennedy presidency, US troop levels on Vietnamese soil increased almost 20 times over from the end of Eisenhower’s tenure.

In July 1962, Defense Secretary McNamara stressed that US plans relating to Vietnam should stick to “a conservative view”, in that withdrawal of American forces “would take three years, instead of one, that is, by the latter part of 1965”, in the event that victory was obtained by then. This schedule would have taken Kennedy into his second term as president, providing of course that he won re-election. McNamara was Kennedy’s right-hand man, we can note – and the late 1965 timetable, regarding US involvement in Vietnam, dispels the assertions that JFK was planning to imminently withdraw US forces from Vietnam.

General Paul Harkins, himself stationed in South Vietnam, elaborated in his Comprehensive Plan of January 1963 that, “the phase-out of the US special military assistance is envisioned as generally occurring during the period July 1965-June 1966” (8). Moreover, by mid-1962 US “intelligence and sabotage forays” into Ho Chi Minh’s communist North Vietnam had also commenced, according to JFK’s National Security Adviser, McGeorge Bundy. Entering 1963 the US war strategy outlined in January of that year was, as Chomsky noted, “in an atmosphere of great optimism, the military initiatives for withdrawal went hand-in-hand with plans for escalation of the war within South Vietnam, and possibly intensified operations against North Vietnam”.

The reality on the ground bears proof of this. By the summer of 1962 and through 1963, CIA activities in Vietnam were increasing. The CIA partook “in joint clandestine operations” with the South Vietnamese armed forces against North Vietnam; CIA actions in Vietnam were recognised on 11 December 1963 by US National Security Staff member Michael Forrestal. In addition the American journalist William Pfaff had, in mid-1962, personally witnessed a CIA patrol “loading up” in an unmarked US C-46 aircraft northwards of Saigon, and heading to North Vietnam or “possibly into China itself”.

It can be important to examine the views of top level American military commanders, relating to the prospect of waging war in Vietnam. In April 1961, General Douglas MacArthur informed president Kennedy that it would be a “mistake” to fight at all in Asia, and that “our line should be Japan, Formosa and the Philippines”. In July 1961, MacArthur firmly repeated this stance during a three hour long discussion in the White House with JFK, but his advice was ignored (9). MacArthur felt that “the domino theory was ridiculous in a nuclear age”, which purports that one country after another would succumb to communism without US intervention. Kennedy is on record as promoting the domino theory.

MacArthur’s successor as the US Army Chief of Staff, General Matthew Ridgway, expressed similar sentiments to MacArthur. Ridgway had opposed the policies of Eisenhower in Vietnam from 1954, which were undertaken to subvert the Geneva Accords. In 1956, Ridgway wrote that limited US involvement in Vietnam had an “ominous ring”, which he suspected would result in escalation (10). He recalled the US Air Force destruction of North Korea in the early 1950s, and found it “incredible… that we were on the verge of making that same tragic error”, which is what president Kennedy would proceed to do. Ridgway later “passionately opposed intervention in Vietnam”, the military historian Robert Buzzanco acknowledged.

Air Force F-105s bomb a target in the southern panhandle of North Vietnam on June 14, 1966. (Photo credit: U.S. Air Force)

General J. Lawton Collins, another experienced US military man, likewise warned about armed intervention in Vietnam and surrounding regions. Collins said that he did not “know of a single senior commander that was in favour of fighting on the land mass of Asia” (11). General James M. Gavin who, like his above colleagues, had commanded US troops in the front line during World War II, was against invading Vietnam too. Even Kennedy’s closest military adviser, General Maxwell Taylor, expressed misgivings about escalating the conflict.

Meanwhile, in February 1962 JFK’s invasion of Vietnam was undeniable. By that month, US Air Force planes “had already flown hundreds of missions”, according to John Newman, the author and retired US major, who cited an army history. Many of these US airborne operations had a low-ranking Vietnamese enlisted soldier on board, just for show. Also in February 1962, on the 22nd, the top US commander in Vietnam, Lieutenant General Lionel McGarr, informed JFK that “in providing the GVN [South Vietnamese regime] the tools to do the job” Washington “must not offer so much that they [the Vietnamese] forget that the job of saving the country is theirs – only they can do it”. (12)

However, in just one week during May 1962, Vietnamese Air Force and US helicopter units flew about 350 sorties together, including offensives and airlifts. By contrast to the military commanders, the NSC civilian leadership, knowing less about war, favoured increasing the US armed presence in Vietnam. Throughout 1962, the second year of Kennedy’s term, the “main emphasis” for Washington was “on the military effort” in South Vietnam, as deliberated on by Arthur Schlesinger, JFK’s close consultant. US military advisers flocked to South Vietnam bringing with them the machines and instruments of modern war, “from typewriters to helicopters”. Furthermore, US Army personnel in early 1962 were indeed directly participating in military operations in Vietnam, a notable upsurge from the Eisenhower years.

Chomsky wrote that,

“By 1962, Kennedy’s war had far surpassed the French war at its peak in helicopters and aerial fire power… Kennedy’s aggression was no secret. In March 1962, US officials announced publicly that US pilots were engaged in combat missions (bombing and strafing). By October, after three US planes were shot down in two days, a front-page story in the New York Times reported that ‘in 30 percent of all the combat missions flown in Vietnamese Air Force planes, Americans are at the controls’, though ‘national insignia have been erased from many aircraft, both American and Vietnamese,… to avoid the thorny international problems involved’.” (13)

Through 1962, US troops were using HU-1A helicopters against South Vietnamese guerrillas. As an offensive weapon, these helicopters contained more firepower than any World War II fighter aircraft. Contrary to the long established myth that JFK, before his assassination (on 22 November 1963), was on the cusp of withdrawing US forces from Vietnam, the opposite is in fact the case. On 17 July 1963, Kennedy said that if US personnel were sent back home it “would mean a collapse not only of South Vietnam, but Southeast Asia. So we are going to stay there”.

In Kennedy’s dialogue with the broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite on 2 September 1963, the US president said,

“I don’t agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a great mistake… this is a very important struggle even though it is far away”. (14)

A week afterwards on 9 September 1963, during an NBC interview Kennedy reiterated, “I think we should stay” in Vietnam because withdrawal “only makes it easy for the Communists” (15). Three days later on 12 September Kennedy expounded,

“What helps to win the war, we support; what interferes with the war effort, we oppose. I have already made it clear that any action by either government which may handicap the winning of the war is inconsistent with our policy or our objectives” (16).

These latter comments by Kennedy, of 12 September 1963, became “a policy guideline” as noted by Roger Hilsman, JFK’s aide and adviser.

On 26 September 1963, less than two months before Kennedy’s death, he said that America stations troops in Vietnam and other nations because “our freedom is tied up with theirs” and the “security of the United States is thereby endangered” if they pass “behind the Iron Curtain. So all those who suggest we withdraw, I could not disagree with them more. If the United States were to falter the whole world, in my opinion, would inevitably begin to move toward the Communist bloc”.

On 1 November 1963, Washington implemented a long-awaited coup to oust the unreliable South Vietnamese dictator Diem. He was killed the following day, along with Ngo Dinh Nhu, his influential younger brother. Nhu had over recent months complained there were “too many US troops in Vietnam”, and the Kennedy administration was worried the brothers were pursuing a secret deal with the North Vietnamese government. JFK was anxious for the coup to proceed and he placed the new US Ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., in operational command of it. Kennedy believed that if the coup failed the US “could lose our entire position in Southeast Asia overnight”. (17)

Kennedy lauded the removal of Diem as being “of the greatest importance”, and he thanked Ambassador Lodge for his “fine job” and “leadership”. With a hawkish new military dictatorship in place in South Vietnam, Kennedy was pleased that “the prospect of defeat” which was “decisive in shaping our relations to the Diem regime” are now in the past. It is again clear that the US president was intent on remaining in Vietnam and escalating the conflict there, only removing US forces after the war was won, or so it was hoped.

Dean Rusk, the US Secretary of State under Kennedy and successor Lyndon B. Johnson, later dismissed allegations that the former intended to withdraw, “I had hundreds of talks with John F. Kennedy about Vietnam, and never once did he say anything of this sort”. (18)

Eight days before the assassination, on 14 November 1963 Kennedy told the media regarding Vietnam there was a “new situation there” following the coup, and “we hope, an increased effort in the war”. JFK continued that the US strategy should be “how we can intensify the struggle” so that “we can bring Americans out of there” (19). In Fort Worth, just a few hours prior to his death, Kennedy produced another statement saying, “Without the United States, South Vietnam would collapse overnight”.

Chomsky affirms that in the time leading up to Kennedy’s shooting,

“there is not a phrase in the voluminous internal record that even hints at withdrawal without victory. JFK urges that everyone ‘focus on winning the war’; withdrawal is conditioned on victory, and motivated by domestic discontent with Kennedy’s war. The stakes are considered enormous. Nothing substantial changes as the mantle passes to LBJ”. (20)

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

1 Susanne Jonas, “50 years later, the lessons from Guatemala”, The Progessive, 21 June 2004

2 Noam Chomsky, Rethinking Camelot (London, Verso Books, 1 April 1993) p. 40

3 Ibid., p. 23

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid., p. 50

6 Ibid., p. 23

7 Jack Valenti, “LBJ’s Unwinnable War”, Washington Post, 28 November 2001

8 Chomsky, Rethinking Camelot, p. 68

9 Francis P. Sempa, “A New Take on General MacArthur’s Warning to JFK to Avoid a Land War in Asia”, The Diplomat, 5 October 2018

10 Parameters: Journal of the US Army War College, Volume 17, p. 64

11 Army University Press, “CSI Report No. 5, Conversations with General J. Lawton Collins”

12 Robert Buzzanco, “Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the Vietnam Era”, (Cambridge University Press; New Ed Edition, 12 Jan. 2008) p. 125

13 Chomsky, Rethinking Camelot, p. 52

14 Mount Holyoke College, “President Kennedy’s Television Interviews on Vietnam, September 2 and 9, 1963”

15 Chomsky, Rethinking Camelot, p. 46

16 American Foreign Policy Current Documents, 1967, p. 873

17 Office of the Historian, “235. Memorandum of a Conference with President Kennedy”, 29 October 1963

18 James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (OUP USA; New Ed Edition, 12 Feb. 1998) p. 516

19 JFK Library, “News Conference 64, November 14, 1963”

20 Chomsky, Rethinking Camelot, p. 81

The rumor today is that Romney will reportedly say he’ll support Trump’s 3rd SCOTUS vote. So there you have it! 2020 election Game Over!

Trump will now get his 3rd Supreme Court nominee accepted by McConnell’s Senate–either before Nov. 3 or after. It doesn’t matter when so long as before January.

A SCOTUS 6-3 Trump majority now positions Trump’s SCOTUS majority to stop the mail in ballot vote count in Trump targeted blue and swing states, which would heavily favor Biden.

CNN poll shows 66% of Trump supporters will vote in person on Nov. 3 but only 22% of Biden supporters vote in person. (53% Biden supports to vote by mail). Trump will appear to win on Nov. 3 based on direct in person voting. He’ll declare victory and then move quickly to have Barr and the Justice Dept. stop the counting of mail in ballots in key swing states.

His lawyers are already fanning out and filing motions for injunctions against mail in voting. They will flood swing-blue states mail in ballot vote counting to delay the counting still further. States where Republican governors (and State secretaries of state who manage those states’ vote counting) will meanwhile throw out millions of mail in ballots based on technicalities like signatures failing to dot i’s or cross t’s to ensure Trump ‘red’ states turn in pro-Trump decisions.

Examples of US post office chaos & claims of lost vote ballots, etc. will be used by Trump lawyers to make legal argument that mail in ballots cannot be used to determine the final vote count. Injunctions will be filed to require states to disregard mail ballots. Further delays in mail in ballot counting will occur.

Disputes and legal action by Dems in response will be quickly sent up by Trump federal district judges (appointed by hundreds under McConnell since 2013) to the Supreme Court, now 6-3 in Trump’s pocket. Trump’s Supreme Court will repeat its Florida 2000 decision stopping the vote count–this time counting original votes not a recount. Only swing and blue states will be targeted, not red states already pro-Trump.

Street protests will erupt after Nov. 3 protesting the legal coup d’etat in progress. Trump has already called protestors “insurrectionists” and identified all protests as ‘antifa’ or ‘communist’. His attorney general, Barr, has also already pre-labeled protestors as “treasonous” and traitors who should be forcibly repressed and jailed

The US executive branch since 2002 now has its own executive police force called the Dept. Homeland Security (DHS), with de facto military swat teams who’ve been doing ‘dry runs’ in Seattle, Chicago, Portland and elsewhere. They will be used to suppress protests, aided by pro-Trump local police departments (e.g. New York City, etc.) and perhaps even welcoming right wing radical supportors as provocateurs to attack protestors and thus allow DHS-Police to declare protests riots and directly quash protests.

Contrary to Joe Biden declaring the US military will remove Trump from office if necessary, the US military has said publicly it ‘won’t get involved’.

Democrats will file multiple legal responses to efforts to stop the mail in vote counting that will get delayed in the lower federal court system until Trump is sworn in again in January. Trump’s 6-3 SCOTUS majority will eventually declare them unconstitutional after the fact.

Democrats’ US House of Representatives will once again impeach Trump but it will be ignored once again. Dems will not win Senate as their challengers in Senate will also be stopped from taking office after winning Nov. 3 by mail ballot count cancellation. Mail in ballot vote counting will never be concluded–as in Florida 2000. Americans will never know who actually won the election, as was the case in Florida in 2000.

Trump will gloat and restate what he’s been saying in his recent election speeches: ‘We’ll win in November and after that maybe look at another four years, or even more”!

He’ll then govern mostly by executive order in his second term, ignoring the US House, and moving money around in the US budget to wherever he wants (already doing it) in direct violation of the US Constitution.

In US foreign policy, should Trump win, watch for a total naval blockades launched against Iran and Venezuela after January 2021, if not before as an ‘October Surprise’. In 2021 the US will also engage in massive military buildup in the western pacific to confront and intimidate China.

In 2021 the US economy will relapse and contract after election due to US growing ‘Triple Crisis’ of intensifying political instability and Constitutional crisis, lack of further fiscal stimulus 4th quarter 2020, and possible Covid 19 resurgence.

Trump’s second term 2021 solution will be even more tax cuts for investors, business, and corporations–paid for by cuts in education, social safety net, social security and medicare-medicaid, and tax hikes on middle class.

Failure of the Democrats to have stopped Trump the past four years will likely usher in a basic political party re-alignment in the US as a form of authoritarian government takes hold under Trump quite different from even the limited Democracy form that has itself been slowly atrophying since the early 1990s.

The social condition during the last six months, that some liken socially to a kind of ‘low grade’ war, may well worsen in multiple ways over the coming six months into spring 2021.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Jack Rasmus.

Jack Rasmus is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Massoud Nayeri

Background

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has slammed US sanctions against his country, saying they are a flagrant violation of the UN charter.

In an address to the UN General Assembly, Rouhani said the Iranian nation successfully withstood the US maximum pressure campaign. He added, Iran even flourished under the bans while pursuing its role as a pivot of peace and stability. He pointed to some of Iran’s peace efforts in the region and beyond, including combating the Daesh terrorist group, saying such a nation does not deserve sanctions. Rouhani said the US sanctions under the pretext of nuclear proliferation are based on false and baseless accusations. The Iranian president described the UN Security Council’s rejection of US unilateralism as a victory for Iran and the world community. He said the US can impose neither negotiations nor war on Iran.

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PressTV: Could you please comment on Mr. Rouhani’s remarks?

Peter Koenig: First, Mr. Rouhani is absolutely right. Iran, together with Russia and Hezbollah played a crucial role in the Middle East Peace process, especially in Syria. And of course, Iran does not deserve any sanctions – not just because Iran is a peaceful nation and even helps brokering peace with and between other nations – but also because Iran did not violate any of the conditions under the Nuclear Accord – or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was signed under President Obama’s watch on 14 July 2015 in Vienna.

This has been confirmed again and again by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in Vienna.

PressTV: How come the U.S. insists on the sanctions though they’ve not caused Iran to abandon resistance against bullies?

PK: It’s largely propaganda. In less than 45 days Mr. Trump will face re-election – or not. Being tough on Iran will impress his conservative followers, regardless whether or not these sanctions have any impact on Iran.

Americans, are basically good people, but they don’t know the real background and impact of the sanctions. They know nothing – only the lies offered to them by the mainstream media.

Almost the same could be said for Europeans. Most of them know what the official mainstream media tells them.

President Trump, knows of course, that sanctioning Iran – and sanctioning everybody and every country that is still dealing and trading with Iran – like the European Union, for example – is illegal. We know, he doesn’t care.

But it must be said. The Iran Nuclear Deal had been approved by the UN Security Council – and is still valid. The UN Security Council does not approve of the sanctions, nor does it approve of unilaterally abrogating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – signed on 14 July 2015, still during Barak Obama’s Presidency, by Iran, the US, Russia, China, UK, Germany and the EU.

Unfortunately, although the EU does not agree with the sanctions – they will most likely go along with them. For fear of the US punishing European enterprises dealing with Iran. Very similar to what Washington does with European companies working on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, supposed to deliver gas from Russia to Germany and the EU.

But not to worry – Iran doesn’t need the west anymore.

Iran does well, focusing on the East – reorienting her trade and political focus, including monetary transactions with the east, according to eastern – i.e. China and Russian systems, approaching entry into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

PressTV: Mr. Trump said he will force renegotiation of the Nuclear Deal. What is your view on this?

PK: This will not fly, of course. And Mr. Trump knows it. But – again, its propaganda ahead of the November elections, and its part of his election campaign.

Renegotiation, once more, would require the approval of the UN Security Council – and that is highly unlikely with Russia and China – veto countries – in the UNSC.

It’s sheer blustering Trump talk.

PressTV: Why does the U.S. make claims such as being against terrorism while supporting them and putting the blame on other countries like Iran?

PK: Washington never follows logic. – Until not too long again this preposterous approach worked with many countries. The world listened. And many believed it.

But no more.

It is every day clearer that the only rogue Nation in the World – the only Nation that sponsors terrorism, is the United States.

And why are they still doing it – and blaming Iran?

Still propaganda – make believe – that The US is still the strongest country in the world the one that calls the shots on every event on the globe.

But no more and Mr. Trump and his government are aware that the US empire is on a declining branch.

But as with every dying empire, they will not give up until the end.

The EU better wake up before the end, before being pulled down into the abyss.

Iran has a bright future ahead with her orientation towards the East, China and Russia.

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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 Campaign for Peace and Democracy


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The US wants Kenya to support Israel’s political and commercial interests, or forget a free trade deal (FTA) with the world’s biggest economy.

This is one of a raft of conditions set in the ongoing FTA negotiations between Nairobi and Washington.

The US has indicated in its objectives seen by The EastAfrican that the deal with Kenya should, with respect to commercial partnerships, discourage actions that prejudice or discourage business between the US and Israel.

Washington argues that the FTA should “discourage politically motivated actions to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel.”

The US also wants the “elimination of politically motivated, non-tariff barriers on Israeli goods, services, or other commerce imposed on Israel; and the elimination of State-sponsored, unsanctioned foreign boycotts of Israel, or compliance with the Arab League Boycott of Israel.”

The inclusion of a third party, Israel, in the negotiation agenda, has seen lobby groups in Nairobi warn that the agreement could be too risky for Kenya.

The US has for decades been a staunch supporter and defender of Israel on the global stage and in volatile Middle East.

“The United States published its negotiating position before negotiations began for all to see. We are negotiating with transparency and openness,” said the US ambassador to Kenya, Kyle McCarter, when asked about the inclusion of Israel in the negotiations. “This is how we have treated the numerous other countries with which we have concluded successful free trade agreements benefiting both parties,” he added.

Political connotation

The East African Tax and Governance Network (EATGN) and East African Trade Network (EATN), the groups who have been following developments on the matter, said Nairobi was being ‘‘entrapped’’ in the Palestine-Israeli conflict.

“Due to Kenya’s own special relationship with Israel and its pragmatic approach in dealing with issues like tensions in the Middle East, US demands for such political connotations in the USFTA would undercut the country’s reputation,” argued Leonard Wanyama, the co-ordinator of the EATGN and vice-president of the International Relations Society of Kenya, a lobby for foreign policy experts in Nairobi told The EastAfrican.

The Network and other groups had raised a petition opposing the negotiations, unless there is clarity on tax exemptions to avoid any revenue losses for the government.

But the demand for protection of Israeli interests means Washington is pursuing the goal of ending any possible support for Palestine’s Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, a global initiative by various groups across the world friendly to Palestinian grievances. The groups often seek to have Israel meet obligations under international law.

These include withdrawal by Israel from the occupied territories; removal of the separation barrier in the West Bank; full equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel; and “respecting, protecting, and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties,” according to a bulletin by the BDS Committee.

Traditionally, Kenya has often recognised Israel, but rarely makes a public statement endorsing one side or the other and supports the ultimate two-State solution for Palestine and Israel. It allows Palestine to establish a representative office in Nairobi.

This week, the Tax Network said Washington’s demand could place Nairobi in a difficult situation and called for officials to reject the call.

On Thursday, Johnson Weru, the Trade and Industry Principal Secretary told The EastAfrican that political issues are not part of the agenda, but declined to discuss the issues they agreed to.

Controversial objectives

Nairobi’s own published objectives indicate the agreement must be discussed within the limits of the EAC and the World Trade Organisation regulations. Kenya also wants a deal that takes into consideration the “special and differential treatment applicable to Kenya as a developing country.”

Under the WTO guidelines, developed countries provide certain preferential treatment to developing partners such as duty-free market access without expecting reciprocal treatment.

Whether Kenya’s refusal to accept political discussions is because of the petition filed earlier last month is yet to be clear. But the US has also included other controversial objectives, which the lobbies are opposed to.

For example, the US insists Kenya must not tax digital products like e-books or music, and Nairobi must include no provisions that require US firms operating to store data locally.

Under the WTO moratorium on e-commerce, Customs duty should be charged on ‘‘transmission’’ of those services and products, not the products or their contents themselves.

The 1998 moratorium has been challenged in situations where physical products have been digitised.

Peter Lunenborg, a Senior Programmes Officer for Trade and development at trade policy research group, South Centre, told The EastAfrican it was not unusual for countries to include conditions like this in trade negotiations, as long as they enhance their market access.

“These are disciplines that are also in USMCA (US-Mexico-Canada Agreement), so there are no surprises there. Essentially these rules, inter alia, aim at maintaining the dominance of US-based e-commerce firms,” he said, referring to the US deal that came into force last July.

Mr Lunenborg said there have been concerns, however, raised at the WTO by some members who argue e-commerce needs to be structured to protect developing countries.

Since 2017, for instance, the Africa Group at the WTO has argued that developing countries need to look beyond the possible benefits of digital solutions, and to start assessing the impact that the lack of digital and technological capabilities would have in cementing and widening the technology divide.

A report on the ‘‘digital industrial policy and development’’ by the Africa Group concluded that “a thorough assessment is required, particularly for developing countries, to assess the opportunities and threats that digital transformation will bring.

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Featured image: The US insists Kenya must not tax digital products like e-books or music, and Nairobi must include no provisions that require US firms operating to store data locally. PHOTO | FILE

André Vltchek – Remembered

September 23rd, 2020 by Peter Koenig

André, my good friend and comrade is no more.

We worked on several investigative projects together. André’s professional rigor, sharpness of understanding, vision and ability to connecting the dots is exemplary.

We shared some unforgettable moments, when we followed a refugee trail from Bodrum, Turkey, to the Greek Island of Kos in the Aegean Sea – onwards to Athens.

I’m deeply shocked and saddened beyond words by André’s sudden passing.

In the night from Monday to Tuesday 22 September, André traveled by chauffeur-driven car with his wife from Samsun on the Black Sea in Turkey to Istanbul. When they arrived in the early morning hours at the hotel and his wife wanted to wake him up, he didn’t react. He had passed away.

Andre Vltchek Dead—Murdered by NATO/Zionists? – Veterans Today | Military Foreign Affairs Policy Journal for Clandestine Services

Turkish police said André’s death was “suspicious”. His body was immediately brought to a hospital for forensic analysis.

André traveled relentlessly from one battle field to another, from one conflict zone to a war zone. He exposed innumerable atrocities committed around the world, mostly by western powers. He never wavered from revealing the truth. From Afghanistan to Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan to Argentina, Chile, Peru to Hong Kong, to Xinjiang, the Uygur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China – André was there. He reported on environmental crimes in Borneo, or originally called Kalimantan, Indonesia, where corruption is destroying vital rainforests – the lungs of Mother Earth – for the benefit of western corporations, killing wildlife and annihilating the livelihoods of indigenous people.

 


André stood always up for justice, in defense of the poor, for the persecuted, the oppressed – for those that by and large are considered non-people by the elitist Global North; the destitute, the refugees, political prisoners, those that disappear and wither away in the shadows. As an investigative journalist and geopolitical analyst, he fought Supremacist Might for Human Rights.

André was a true Internationalist. He will be deeply missed.

May his soul rest in peace and his spirit live on.

There is an extensive archive of  Andre’s article on Global Research

Read Andre’s Global Research articles here.

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Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Leon Panetta, who served as director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 2009 to 2011, and then as the Obama administration’s secretary for defence, has let the cat out of the bag, telling interviewers that the US is seeking to prosecute WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange to send a threatening message to whistleblowers and publishers alike.

The comments were aired this week in a documentary produced by German public broadcaster ARD, entitled “Wikileaks – USA against Julian Assange.” The program was a compelling and objective account of the ten year US persecution of Assange and featured strong interviews with his father John Shipton, his partner Stella Moris, WikiLeaks’ lawyers, United Nations Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer and famous National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Panetta’s remarks were arguably the most significant, because they were confirmation from the horse’s mouth of the mafia-character of the US pursuit of Assange, its politically-motivated nature and flagrant disregard for international laws and fundamental democratic rights. His comments have, not only political, but potentially legal significance, refuting the lies of the US Justice Department, aimed at presenting the attempted extradition as a bona fide process conforming with judicial norms.

Panetta’s comments have probative value, because he was intimately involved in the initial stages of the US campaign to silence Assange. A decades-long Democratic Party political operative, Panetta was head of the CIA in 2010, when the US government responded to WikiLeaks’ exposures of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and global diplomatic conspiracies, by launching an unprecedented operation against Assange and denouncing him as a “spy” or a “high-tech terrorist”

Panetta would undoubtedly have been involved in the Obama administration’s establishment of a “WikiLeaks war room,” staffed by hundreds of military and intelligence operatives, with the sole purpose of “neutralising” Assange.

It can only be assumed that he was privy to the plans surrounding various dirty tricks against the WikiLeaks founder; the 2010 global tour by Hillary Clinton to mitigate the impact of the publication of hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic cables and to line up governments internationally against Assange, and the discussions that resulted in the establishment of a secret grand jury, convened for the purpose of concocting charges against Assange.

In other words, Panetta is not a disinterested observer, but a direct participant. Moreover, while he departed the CIA in mid-2011, and retired from federal office two years later, it is well known that no one ever quite leaves the agency. Its power is based not only on a vast bureaucracy and network of field agents, but also a web of influence encompassing “retired” officials and private security companies, who are “kept in the loop.” Panetta remains a prominent political figure, heading the “Panetta Institute for Public Policy.”

It was in this context that Panetta baldly declared: “All you can do is hope that you can ultimately take action against those that were involved in revealing that information so you can send a message to others not to do the same thing.”

In other words, the prosecution of Assange is a political act, intended to send a warning to journalists who would consider publishing the secrets of the American government. Earlier in the program, Panetta had presented the publication of “classified” and “national security” material as a sin worse than any other.

Those statements alone demonstrate that the US government is lying to the British courts. Under the existing British-US extradition treaty, an individual cannot be extradited to face charges of a political nature.

Since extradition proceedings resumed last week, British prosecutors, representing the US Justice Department, have alternated between claims that Assange is charged with common criminal offenses related to hacking and espionage, meaning that his prosecution would not pose a threat to press freedom, and ominous assertions that the US government is entitled to decide what journalists can and cannot publish.

Panetta echoed the former claim, describing Assange as a “spy.” But as Edward Snowden noted, Assange is explicitly charged with possessing and publishing documents. The prosecution is an attempt to criminalise common journalistic practices, including communicating with a source and seeking to protect their identity. Snowden pointedly asked, if it was not journalism that Assange was engaged in, then what is?

Image on the right: Edward Snowden (Screenshot “Wikileaks – USA against Julian Assange”)

Moreover Panetta’s concluding comments, on the intent of the prosecution, clearly demonstrated that the motivation for the laying of charges is to crackdown on journalism more broadly.

Panetta’s statements about Assange himself underscored the intensely vindictive character of the US prosecution. He declared, without attempting to provide any evidence, that “Assange is somebody who will sell somebody in his family if he thinks that, you know, that he is going to get some attention.” This is not the language of legal proceedings, but of a vendetta.

The ARD program also included an interview with David Morales, a former Spanish navy marine turned mercenary. As head of the Undercover Global security firm, he is accused of overseeing a vast spying operation against Assange while he was residing in Ecuador’s London embassy.

Undercover Global was contracted by the Ecuadorian authorities to manage security at the embassy. But former staff members have stated that in 2015, Morales entered into a secret agreement with US intelligence agencies to surveil every aspect of Assange’s life on their behalf.

The operation, which spanned until March, 2018, allegedly ended up including the installation of cameras and microphones throughout the building, in conference rooms, a women’s toilet and elsewhere. The material was then reportedly uploaded to a server, to which US intelligence had access.

Footage of Assange and Moris captured by Undercover Global cameras (Screenshot “Wikileaks – USA against Julian Assange”)

Some of the material has made its way into the hands of Assange’s defenders, and was featured in the ARD program. Assange and Moris were shown together on a high-definition video, which picked up the audio of their conversation. Most significantly, the interceptions allegedly included discussions between Assange and his lawyers, in a flagrant breach of attorney-client privilege.

Morales, who appeared uneasy, dismissed the accusations out of hand, without providing any explanation for the voluminous evidence substantiating them that is already on the public record. At one point, the ARD interviewers asked who he had been working for. Morales replied that his contract had been with the “intelligence secretariat.” After a pause, he added, without any great conviction, that he had been referring to his official contract with the Ecuadorian authorities to manage security at the building.

Image below: David Morales after being asked who he was working for (Screenshot “Wikileaks – USA against Julian Assange”)

Morales, who is credibly accused of spying on a political refugee for money in violation of international law, pathetically complained that internal Undercover Global documents which cast an unfavourable light on his activities were “confidential” and should not see the light of day.

The denials were undercut by Panetta. With the hubris of an official accustomed to doing as he pleases, Panetta declared the allegation that US intelligence spied on Assange through Undercover Global “doesn’t surprise me. That kind of thing goes on all the time. In intelligence business, the name of the game is to get information any way you can, and I’m sure that’s what was involved here.”

Panetta knows of what he speaks. The alleged espionage likely involved the agency that he previously directed.

Two further points should be made. Panetta’s unequivocal endorsement of the Trump administration’s attempt to prosecute Assange demonstrated, yet again, the bipartisan character of the US war against WikiLeaks and journalism. It is further proof that in the official contest between the Republicans and the Democrats in this November’s presidential election, there is no alternative for the working class.

Secondly, while Panetta’s remarks clearly indicated that, in the first instance, the prosecution is intended as a threat to dissident journalists, the warning is much wider. It is an attempt to establish the conditions for victimisations and frame-ups, amid an immense global crisis of capitalism, widespread anti-war sentiment and the reemergence of the class struggle. The primary target of the turn to authoritarianism is the working class.

The program concluded with a powerful remark from Snowden: “We are setting a precedent, right now, that we are going to live with for the next hundred years. No matter what you feel about Julian Assange, the methods that WikiLeaks and everyone connected to it pioneered have changed the way journalism is done. If we cannot recognise that, and we are not willing to protect it, I think the saddest part of this whole story is that we probably don’t deserve it, and as a result we will no longer have it when we need it the most.”

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Featured image: Panetta laughing as he discusses the prosecution of Assange (Screenshot “Wikileaks – USA against Julian Assange”)

The speeches given by Presidents Trump, Putin, and Xi via video during the 2020 UN General Assembly predictably revealed that the American leader’s assessment of the contemporary international situation and related vision of the future markedly differ from his Russian and Chinese counterparts’.

The functions of the 2020 UN General Assembly are being conducted almost entirely by video this year because of World War C, the author’s term for describing the full-spectrum paradigm-changing processes unleashed by the world’s uncoordinated efforts to contain COVID-19. The highlight of Tuesday’s event was the speeches given by Presidents Trump, Putin, and Xi, which predictably revealed that the American leader’s assessment of the contemporary international situation and related vision of the future markedly differ from his Russian and Chinese counterparts’. For reference, readers can review the transcripts of their speeches in the previously hyperlinked sources embedded in each leaders’ name in the previous sentence. What follows is a summary of their views and visions, after which the most important contrasts between Trump’s and Putin & Xi’s will be briefly analyzed.

Trump

Beginning with Trump, he boasted about the US’ anti-COVID mobilization while blaming China for this global pandemic. He also condemned the People’s Republic for purportedly controlling the World Health Organization, its reported environmental devastation, and alleged trade abuses. Other highlights included mention of what he controversially described as the “peace deal” between Serbia and its NATO-occupied Province of Kosovo & Metohija, as well as the Abraham Accords, the latter of which he regarded as “the dawn of a new Middle East”. He also reminded the world of his commitment to withdraw from Afghanistan, as well as his assassination of Iranian Major General Soleimani who he called “the world’s top terrorist”. In addition, Trump claimed full credit for defeating ISIS. His vision of the future is one in which all countries put themselves first, and he predicted “that next year, when we gather in person, we will be in the midst of one of the greatest years in our history.”

Putin

Putin’s speech, by contrast, was much more constructive than Trump’s. He lauded the UN and its principle of multilateralism while reaffirming his belief that this global body’s Security Council must become more inclusive and international law more fully respected by all. The global economic crisis brought about by World War C necessitates urgent cooperation between the UN, G20, and other organizations. In this context, Putin promoted Russia’s vision of a Greater Eurasian Partnership and reiterated his country’s commitment to the creation of so-called “’green corridors’ free from trade wars and sanctions”. He also spoke in favor of “freeing the world trade from barriers, bans, restrictions and illegitimate sanctions”. The Russian leader then recommended renewing the New START with the US, offered the Sputnik V vaccine for free to all UN personnel, and called for a G5 meeting of the UNSC. At the end of his speech, Putin repeated his call for multilateralism.

Xi

Compared to Trump’s and Putin’s speeches, Xi’s was the simplest of the three, though that’s not a criticism. He succinctly summarized the socio-economic and technological advancements of mankind over the past 75 years since the UN’s founding, and like Putin, Xi urged the international community to return to the principle of multilateralism so that “after the storm comes the rainbow”. He advised the UN to “stand firm for justice”, “uphold the rule of law”, “promote cooperation”, and “focus on real action”. Some relevant points that the Chinese leader made were thinly veiled condemnations of American bullying and unilateralism, as well as recommendations “to replace conflict with dialogue, coercion with consultation and zero-sum with win-win” and for the UN’s Agenda 2030 to give priority “to non-traditional security challenges” like public health. In his optimistic vision of the future, everyone will “work to promote a community with a shared future for mankind”.

Clashing Visions

The contrast between the American leader’s vision of the future and that of his Russian and Chinese counterparts is clear. Claiming that “American prosperity is the bedrock of freedom and security all over the world”, Trump portrayed the past three and a half years in glowing terms, supposedly enriched by the success of his campaign to “Make America Great Again”. Putin and Xi obviously disagree since they each in their own way criticized what they both regard as Trump’s dangerous unilateralism, be it through waging the so-called “trade war”, imposing sanctions, or threatening not to renew the New START. Trump is confident that he’ll return to address the UN next year as the American President, while one can interpret Putin and Xi’s optimism of the future as premised on their presumed belief that Biden might ultimately replace him. All in all, these three speeches simply confirmed that the New Cold War is still mainly about the US vs. Russia and China.

Concluding Thoughts

There are other details in these three speeches such as Trump’s call for regime change in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela and Putin’s suggestion to regulate artificial intelligence and ban space weapons that weren’t touched upon for the sake of keeping this article simple and straight to the point. Readers should therefore take the time to review each of the earlier hyperlinked transcripts if they’re interested in learning about the entirety of each leader’s views. Nevertheless, the point of this piece was to summarize their assessments and outlooks in order to confirm that that the current New Cold War trajectory will likely remain on track if Trump wins re-election. In the event that Biden beats him, however, there’s a chance that the present dynamics of the US’ dual Great Power competitions with Russia and China might somewhat change, though it’s unclear whether it would be for the better like Putin and Xi might hope or for the worse like his opponents at home predict.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Earlier this month, the street outside the Old Bailey criminal court in London, where Julian Assange’s extradition hearing has been taking place, was transformed into a carnival.

Inside the Old Bailey, the courtroom has turned into a circus. There have been multiple technical difficulties, a COVID-19 scare which temporarily halted proceedings and numerous procedural irregularities including the decision by the presiding judge to withdraw permission for Amnesty International’s fair trial observer to have access to the courtroom.

If the outside was a carnival, the inside of the court soon became a circus. -Stefan Simanowitz, Amnesty International

Arriving at the court each morning was an assault to the senses with the noise of samba bands, sound systems and chanting crowds and the sight of banners, balloons and billboards at every turn.

The first day of the hearing, which started on Monday 7 September, drew more than two hundred people to gather outside the court. People in fancy dress mingled with camera crews, journalists and a pack of hungry photographers who would disappear regularly to give chase to any white security van heading towards the court, pressing their long lenses against the darkened windows.

One of the vans had come from Belmarsh high security prison, Julian Assange’s home for the last 16 months.

The Wikileaks founder was in court for the resumption of proceedings that will ultimately decide on the Trump administration’s request for his extradition to the US. The American prosecutors claim he conspired with whistleblowers (army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning) to obtain classified information. They want him to stand trial on espionage charges in the US where he would face a prison sentence of up to 175 years.

Assange’s lawyers began with a request that the alleged evidence in a new indictment handed down in June be excluded from consideration given that it came so late. The Judge denied this. In the afternoon session, the lawyers requested an adjournment until next year to give his lawyers time to respond to the US prosecutor’s new indictment. They said they had been given insufficient time to examine the new allegations, especially since they had only “limited access” to the imprisoned Assange. Indeed, this most recent hearing was the first time in more than six months that Julian Assange had been able to meet with his lawyers. The judge rejected this request.

We requested access to the court for a trial monitor to observe the hearings, but the court denied us a designated seat in court. -Stefan Simanowitz, Amnesty International

Reacting to the decision, Kristinn Hrafnsson the editor-in-chief of Wikileaks told me that: “the decision is an insult to the UK courts and to Julian Assange and to justice. For the court to deny the request to adjourn is denying Assange his rights.”

Amnesty International had requested access to the court for a trial monitor to observe the hearings, but the court denied us a designated seat in court. Our monitor initially did get permission to access the technology to monitor remotely, but the morning the hearing started he received an email informing us that the Judge had revoked Amnesty International’s remote access.

We applied again for access to the proceedings on Tuesday 8 September, setting out the importance of monitoring and Amnesty International’s vast experience of observing trials in even some of the most repressive countries.

The judge wrote back expressing her “regret” at her decision and saying: “I fully recognise that justice should be administered in public”. Despite her regret and her recognition that scrutiny is a vital component of open justice, the judge did not change her mind.

If Amnesty International and other observers wanted to attend the hearing, they would have to queue for one of the four seats available in a public gallery. We submitted a third application to gain direct access to the overflow room at the court where some media view the livestream, but this has also been denied.

Amnesty International have monitored trials from Guantanamo Bay to Bahrain, Ecuador to Turkey. For our observer to be denied access profoundly undermines open justice. -Stefan Simanowitz, Amnesty International

The refusal of the judge to not to give any “special provision” to expert fair trial monitors is very disturbing. Through its refusal, the court has failed to recognize a key component of open justice: namely how international trial observers monitor a hearing for its compliance with domestic and international law. They are there to evaluate the fairness of a trial by providing an impartial record of what went on in the courtroom and to advance fair trial standards by putting all parties on notice that they are under scrutiny.

Amnesty International have monitored trials from Guantanamo Bay to Bahrain, Ecuador to Turkey. For our observer to be denied access profoundly undermines open justice.

In the court, the overflow room has experienced ongoing technical problems with sound and video quality. More than a week after the proceedings began, these basic technical difficulties have not been properly ironed out and large sections of witness evidence are inaudible. These technological difficulties were not restricted to the overflow room. In court, some witnesses trying to “call into” the court room last week, were not able to get in. These basic technical difficulties have hampered the ability of those in the courtroom to follow the proceedings.

If Julian Assange is silenced, others will also be gagged either directly or by the fear of persecution and prosecution. -Stefan Simanowitz, Amnesty International

We are still hopeful that a way can be found for our legal expert to monitor the hearing because the decision in this case is of huge importance. It goes to the heart of the fundamental tenets of media freedom that underpin the rights to freedom of expression and the public’s right to access information.

The US government’s unrelenting pursuit of Julian Assange for having published disclosed documents is nothing short of a full-scale assault on the right to freedom of expression. The potential chilling effect on journalists and others who expose official wrongdoing by publishing information disclosed to them by credible sources could have a profound impact on the public’s right to know what their government is up to.

If Julian Assange is silenced, others will also be gagged either directly or by the fear of persecution and prosecution which will hang over a global media community already under assault in the US and in many other countries worldwide.

The US Justice Department is not only charging a publisher who has a non-disclosure obligation but a publisher who is not a US citizen and not in America. The US government is behaving as if they have jurisdiction all over the world to pursue any person who receives and publishes information of government wrongdoing.

If the UK extradites Assange, he would face prosecution in the USA on espionage charges that could send him to prison for the rest of his life – possibly in a facility reserved for the highest security detainees and subjected to the strictest of daily regimes, including prolonged solitary confinement. All for doing something news editors do the world over – publishing information provided by sources, that is in the interest of the wider public.

It is ironic that no one responsible for potential war crimes in Iraq & Afghanistan has been punished. Yet the publisher who exposed these potential crimes is the one in the dock. -Stefan, Simanowitz, Amnesty International

Outside the court, I bumped into Eric Levy, aged 92. His interest in Assange’s case is personal. He was in Baghdad during the American “shock and awe” bombardment in 2003 having travelled to Iraq as part of the Human Shield Movement aiming to stop the war and – failing that – to protect the Iraqi population.

“I’m here today for the same reason I was in Iraq. Because I believe in justice and I believe in peace,” he tells me. “Julian Assange is not really wanted for espionage. He is wanted for making America look like war criminals.”

Indeed, it is ironic that no one responsible for possible war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan has been prosecuted, let alone punished. And yet the publisher who exposed their crimes is the one in the dock facing a lifetime in jail.

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Your Man in the Public Gallery: Assange Hearing Day 14

September 23rd, 2020 by Craig Murray

Monday was a frustrating day as the Assange Hearing drifted deep into a fantasy land where nobody knows or is allowed to say that people were tortured in Guantanamo Bay and under extraordinary rendition. The willingness of Judge Baraitser to accept American red lines on what witnesses can and cannot say has combined with a joint and openly stated desire by both judge and prosecution to close this case down quickly by limiting the number of witnesses, the length of their evidence, and the time allowed for closing arguments. For the first time, I am openly critical of the defence legal team who seem to be missing the moment to stop being railroaded and say no, this is wrong, forcing Baraitser to make rulings against them. Instead most of the day was lost to negotiations between prosecution and defence as to what defence evidence could be edited out or omitted.

More of which later.

Professor Christian Grothoff

The first witness was Professor Christian Grothoff, a computer scientist based at the University of Berne Institute of Applied Sciences. Prof Grothoff had prepared an analysis of how and when the unredacted cables first came to be released on the internet.

Prof Grothoff was taken through his evidence in chief by Marks Summers QC for the defence. Prof Grothoff testified that Wikileaks had shared the cable cache with David Leigh of the Guardian. This had been done in encrypted form. It had a very strong encryption key; without the long, strong password there would be no way to access it. It was useless without the key. In reply to questions from Summers, Prof Grothoff confirmed that it was standard practice for information to be shared by an online cache with strong encryption. It was standard practice, and not in any way irresponsible. Banking or medical records might be securely communicated in this way. Once the file is encrypted, it cannot be read without the key, and nor can the key be changed. New copies can of course be made from the unencrypted original with different keys.

Summers then led Prof Grothoff to November 2010 when cables started to be published, initially by partners from the media consortium after redaction. Grothoff said that the next event was a DDOS attack on the Wikileaks site. He explained how a distributed denial of service attack works, hijacking multiple computers to overload the target website with demand. Wikileaks reaction was to encourage people to put up mirrors to maintain the availability of content. He explained this was quite a normal response to a DDOS attack.

Prof Grothoff produced a large list of mirrors created all over the world as a result. Wikileaks had posted instructions on how to set up a mirror. Mirrors set up using these instructions did not contain a copy of the cache of unredacted cables. But at some point, some mirrors started to contain the file with the unredacted cables. These appeared to be few and special sites with mirrors created in other ways than by the Wikileaks instructions. There was some discussion between Grothoff and Summers as to how the cached file may have been hidden in an archive on the Wikileaks site, for example not listed in the directory, and how a created mirror could sweep it up.

Summers then asked Professor Grothoff whether David Leigh released the password. Grothoff replied that yes, Luke Harding and David Leigh had revealed the encryption key in their book on Wikileaks published February 2011. They had used it as a chapter heading, and the text explicitly set out what it was. The copies of the encrypted file on some mirrors were useless until David Leigh posted that key.

Summers So once David Leigh released the encryption key, was it in Wikileaks’ power to take down the mirrors?
Grothoff No.
Summers Could they change the encryption key on those copies?
Grothoff No.
Summers Was there anything they could do?
Grothoff Nothing but distract and delay.

Grothoff continued to explain that on 25 August 2011 the magazine Der Freitag had published the story explaining what had happened. It did not itself give out the password or location of the cache, but it made plain to people that it could be done, particularly to those who had already identified either the key or a copy of the file. The next link in the chain of events was that nigelparry.com published a blog article which identified the location of a copy of the encrypted file. With the key being in David Leigh’s book, the material was now effectively out. This resulted within hours in the creation of torrents and then publication of the full archive, unencrypted and unredacted, on Cryptome.org.

Summers asked whether Cryptome was a minor website. Grothoff replied not at all, it was a long established platform for leaked or confidential material and was especially used by journalists.

At this stage Judge Baraitser gave Mark Summers a five minute warning on Prof Grothoff’s evidence. He therefore started to speed through events. The next thing that happened, still on 31 August 2011, is that a website MRKVA had made a searchable copy. Torrents also started appearing including on Pirate Bay, a very popular service. On 1 September, according to classified material from the prosecution supplied to Prof Grothoff, the US Government had first accessed the unredacted cache. The document showed this had been via a torrent from Pirate Bay. Wikileaks had made the unredacted cables available on 2 September, after they were already widely available. They had already passed the point where “they could not be stopped”.

Neither Pirate Bay nor Cryptome had been prosecuted for the publication. Cryptome is US based.

Joel Smith then rose to cross-examine for the prosecution. He started by addressing the Professor’s credentials. He suggested that the Professor was expert in computer analysis, but in putting together a chronology of events he was not expert. Prof Grothoff replied that it had required specialist forensic skills to track the precise chain of events.

Joel Smith then suggested that his chronology of events was dependent on material provided by the defence. Prof Grothoff said that indeed the defence had supplied key evidence, but he had searched extensively for other material and evidence online of the course of events and tested the defence evidence.

Smith then asked Grothoff whether he had withheld any information he should have given as a declaration of interest. Grothoff said he had not, and could not think what Smith was talking about. He had conducted his research fairly and taken great care to test the assertions of the defence against the evidence. Smith then read out an open letter from 2017 to President Trump calling for the prosecution of Assange to be dropped. Grothoff said it was possible, but he had no recollection of having signed it or seeing it. The defence had told him about it on Saturday, but he still did not remember it. The content of the letter seemed reasonable to him, and had a friend asked him to sign then he would probably have done so. But he had no memory of it.

Smith noted that Grothoff was listed as an initial signatory not an online added signatory. Grothoff replied that nevertheless he had no recollection of it. Smith then asked him incredulously “and you cannot remember signing a letter to the President of the United States?” Grothoff again confirmed he could not remember.

Quoting the letter, Smith then asked him “Do you think the prosecution is “a step into the darkness”?”. Grothoff replied that he thought it had strong negative ramifications for press freedom worldwide. Lewis then put to Grothoff that he had strong views, and thus was evidently “biased, partial”. Grothoff said he was a computer scientist and had been asked to research and give testimony on matters of fact as to what had occurred. He had tested the facts properly and his personal opinions were irrelevant. Smith continued to ask several more questions about the letter and Grothoff’s partiality. Altogether Smith asked 14 different questions related to the open letter Grothoff had allegedly signed. He then moved on:

Smith Did you download the cables file yourself during your research?
Grothoff Yes, I did.
Smith Did you download it from the Wikileaks site?
Grothoff No, I believe from Cryptome.
Smith So in summer 2010 David Leigh was given a password and the cache was put up on a public website?
Grothoff No, it was put on a website but not public. It was in a hidden directory.
Smith So how did it end up on mirror sites if not public?
Grothoff It depends how the specific mirror is created. On the Wikileaks site the encrypted cache was not an available field. Different mirroring techniques might sweep up archive files.
Smith Wikileaks had asked for the creation of mirrors?
Grothoff Yes.
Smith The strength of a password is irrelevant if you cannot control the people who have it.
Grothoff That is true. The human is always the weakest link in the system. It is difficult to guard against a bad faith actor, like David Leigh.
Smith How many people did Wikileaks give the key in the summer of 2010?
Grothoff It appears from his book only to David Leigh. He then gave it to the hundreds of thousands who had access to his book.
Smith Is it true that 50 media organisations and NGOs were eventually involved in the process of redaction?
Grothoff Yes, but they were not each given access to the entire cache.
Smith How do you know that?
Grothoff It is in David Leigh’s book.
Smith How many people in total had access to the cache from those 50 organisations?
Grothoff Only Mr Leigh was given access to the full set. Only Mr Leigh had the encryption key. Julian Assange had been very reluctant to give him that access.
Smith What is your evidence for that statement?
Grothoff It is in David Leigh’s book.
Smith That is not what it says.

Smith then read out two long separate passages from Luke Harding and David Leigh’s book, both of which indeed made very plain that Assange had given Leigh access to the full cache only with extreme reluctance, and had been cajoled into it, including by David Leigh asking Assange what would happen if he were bundled off to Guantanamo Bay and nobody else but Assange held the password.

Grothoff That is what I said. Harding and Leigh write that it had been a hard struggle to prise the password out of Assange’s hand.
Lewis How do you know that the 250,000 cables were not all available to others?
Grothoff In February 2011 David Leigh published his book. Before that I do not have proof Wikileaks gave the password to nobody else. But if so, they have kept entirely quiet about it.
Smith You say that after the DDOS attack Wikileaks requested people to mirror the site globally. They published instructions on how to do it.
Grothoff Yes, but mirrors created using the Wikileaks instructions did not include the encrypted file. In fact this was helpful. They were trying to build a haystack. The existence of so many mirrors without the unencrypted file made it harder to find.
Smith But in 2010 the password had not been released. Why would Wikileaks want to build a haystack then?
Grothoff The effect was to build a haystack. I agree that was probably not the initial motive. It may have been when this mirror creation continued later.
Smith As of December 2010 what Wikileaks are saying is they wish to proliferate the site as they are under attack?
Grothoff Yes
Joel Smith On 23 August 2011 Wikileaks start a mass release of cables?
Grothoff Yes. This is a release of unclassified cables and also ongoing release of redacted classified cables by media partners.
Smith They were releasing cables by country, and putting out tweets saying which countries they were releasing cables for both then and next? (Smith reads from tweets.)
Grothoff Yes. I have verified that these were unclassified cables by searching through these cables on the classification field.
Smith Were some classified secret?
Grothoff No, they were unclassified. I checked this.
Smith Were some marked “strictly protect”?
Grothoff That is not a classification in the classification field. I did not check for that.
Smith Wikileaks boast that they make the files available in a searchable form.
Grothoff Yes, but their search facility was not very good. Much easier to search them in other ways.
Smith You said Der Freitag stated that the encrypted file was available on mirrors. The article does not say that.
Grothoff No, but it says that it was widely circulating on the internet. That is done by mirroring. They did not use that word, I agree.
Smith The 29 August Der Spiegel article does not publish the password. Then Wikileaks publishes an article claiming these stories are “substantially incorrect”.
Grothoff It points to the password.
Smith Some cables were published classified “Secret”.
Grothoff These were cables that had been redacted fully by the consortium of media experts.
Smith Why do you call them “experts”?
Grothoff They knew the subject matter and the localities.
Smith Why do you call them “experts”?
Grothoff They were experienced journalists who knew what was and was not safe and right to publish. So experts in journalism. You need to distinguish between three types of cable published at this time: 1) classified and redacted; 2) unclassified; 3) the classified and unredacted cache.
Smith Are you aware that some cables were marked “strictly protect”?
Grothoff That is not a designation of a cable. It is applied to individuals. But it does not indicate that they are in danger, merely that for political reasons they do not want to be known as giving evidence to the US government?
Smith How do you know that?
Grothoff It is in the bundle I was sent, and the evidence of other defence witnesses.
Smith You don’t know.
Grothoff I do know the “strictly protect” names you are referring to were in safe countries.
Smith Before 31 August you find no evidence of full publication of the entire cache?
Grothoff Yes.

We then went through an excruciatingly long process of Smith querying the evidence for the timing of every publication prior to Wikileaks own publication, and trying to shift back the latest possible time of publication online of various copies, including Cryptome, MRKVA, Pirate Bay and various other torrents. He managed to establish that, depending which time zone you were in, some of this could be attributed to possibly very early on 1 September rather than 31 August, and that it was not possible to put an exact time within a window of a few hours on Cryptome’s unredacted publication early in the morning on 1 September.

[This exercise could cut both ways. The timing of a tweet saying a copy or torrent is up and giving a link, must be sent out after the material is put up, which could be some time before sending the tweet.]

Grothoff concluded that at the end of the day we do not know to the minute timings for every publication, but what we can say for certain is that all of the publications discussed, including Cryptome, were before Wikileaks.

Smith then noted that Parry wrote in his blog “This is a bad day for David Leigh and the Guardian. I ran the password from David Leigh’s book in an old W/L file…” but did not give the location of the file. This was at 10pm on 31 August. Within 20 minutes Wikileaks was issuing a press release “statement of the betrayal of Wikileaks passwords by the Guardian” and 80 minutes later an editorial. [I think that Smith here was trying to say Wikileaks had published Parry’s breakthrough.] Smith then invited Grothoff to agree that when Wikileaks themselves published the full documents later on 2 September, it was more comprehensible and visible than earlier publications. Grothoff replied it was not more comprehensive, it was the same. It was more visible but by that time the cat was well out of the bag and the unredacted cables were spreading rapidly all over the internet. There was no way to stop them.

Mark Summers then re-examined Grothoff and established that the evidence was that the encryption key for the full cache was given to David Leigh and to nobody else. The storage method was secure – Grothoff pointed out that precisely the same method was used to send around the court bundles in this case. Only David Leigh had revealed the password.

On mirror sites, Grothoff confirmed that the Wikileaks instructions created mirrors without the encrypted cache. All the copies of the encrypted cache he could find on other mirrors, were on sites which plainly were created using other methods, for example other software systems. Summers then got Professor Grothoff to explain the methodology he had used to verify the cables published by Wikileaks before the Leigh crash were all unclassified. Apart from dip sampling, this included a correlation of the number published for each country with the number listed as unclassified for each country in the US government directory. These matched in every case.

Summers then attempted to take Grothoff back over the timeline evidence which Joel Smith had put so much effort into muddying, but was prevented from doing so by Baraitser. She had interrupted Summers four times during his re-examination, on the extraordinary basis that this ground was gone over before; extraordinary because that is the point of a re-examination. Baraitser had permitted Smith to ask fourteen successive questions of Grothoff on the subject of why he had signed an open letter. The double standard was very obvious.

Which brings us to a very crucial point. The next witness, Andy Worthington, was at court and ready to give evidence, but was prevented from doing so. The United States government objected to his evidence, about his work on the Guantanamo Detainee files, being heard because it contained allegations of inmates being tortured at Guantanamo.

Baraitser said her ruling was not going to consider whether torture took place at Guantanamo, or if extraordinary rendition had happened. She did not need to hear evidence on these points. Mark Summers replied that the ECHR had ruled on these as facts, but that it was necessary they be stated by witnesses as appropriate as it went to the Article 10 ECHR defence. Lewis maintained the objection from the US government.

Baraitser said she wanted the prosecution and defence to produce a witness schedule that would get the case finished by the end of next week, including closing statements. She wanted them to agree what evidence could and could not be heard. Where possible she wanted evidence in uncontested statements with the defence just reading out the gist.

She also said that she did not want to hear closing arguments in court, but she would have them in writing and the defence and prosecution could just summarise them briefly orally.

What the defence should have said at this moment is “Madam, the dogs in the street know that people were tortured in Guantanamo Bay. In the real world, it is not a disputed fact. If Mr Lewis’s instructions were to deny that the earth is round, would our witnesses have to accommodate that? The truth of these matters plainly goes to the Article 10 Defence, and by pandering to the denial of a notorious and plain fact, this court will be held up to mockery. We will not discuss such ludicrous censorship with Mr Lewis. If you wish to rule that there must be no mention of torture in evidence, then so be it.”

The defence did not say any of that, but as instructed entered a process with the prosecution lawyers of agreeing the shortening and editing of evidence, a process which took all day and with which Julian showed plain signs of being uncomfortable. Andy Worthington did not get to give his evidence. The only further evidence heard was the reading of the gist of a statement from Cassandra Fairbanks. I did not hear most of this because, having adjourned to 4.30pm, the court re-adjourned earlier than advertised, while Julian’s dad John Shipton, the musician MIA and I were away having a coffee. I commend this account by Kevin Gosztola of Fairbanks’ startling evidence. It was read quickly by Edward Fitzgerald in “gist”, agreed as an uncontested account, and speaks strongly of the political motivation apparent in this prosecution.

I am very concerned about the obvious collusion of the prosecution and the judge to close this case down. The extraordinary conflation of “time management” and excluding evidence which the US Government does not want heard in public is plainly illegitimate. The continual chivvying and interruption of defence counsel in examination when prosecution counsel are allowed endless repetition amounting to harassment and bullying is illegitimate. Some extraordinarily long prosecution cross-examinations, such as that of Carey Shenkman the lawyer, have every appearance of deliberate time wasting and distraction.

Tuesday’s witness is Professor Michael Kopelman, the eminent psychiatrist, and the prosecution have indicated they wish to cross-examine him for an extraordinary four hours, which Baraitser agreed against defence objections. Her obsession with time management is distinctly subjective.

Obviously there is a moral question for me in how much of this medical evidence I publish. The decision will be taken in strict accordance with the views of Julian or, if we cannot ascertain that, his family.

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The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has once again managed to do what federal bank regulators refuse to do in the United States – come clean with the American people about our dirty Wall Street banks.

ICIJ dropped a bombshell investigative report yesterday about money laundering for criminals at some of the biggest banks on Wall Street, but you won’t find a peep about it on the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal or New York Times’ print editions. In fact, the New York Times, as of 6:44 a.m. this morning, hasn’t reported the story at all. The Wall Street Journal carries an innocuous headline, “HSBC Stock Hits 25-Year Low,” putting the focus on the British bank, HSBC, when its focus should be on the largest bank in the U.S., JPMorgan Chase, a serial felon.

JPMorgan Chase has already pleaded guilty to three criminal felony counts brought by the U.S. Department of Justice since 2014. Two of those counts related to money laundering and failure to file suspicious activity reports on the business bank account it held for Bernie Madoff for decades. JPMorgan Chase actually told U.K. regulators that it suspected Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme but it failed to share those concerns with U.S. regulators, even though it was required under law to do so.

The third felony count brought by the U.S. Department of Justice came one year later, in 2015. It related to JPMorgan’s involvement in a bank cartel that was engaged in rigging foreign exchange trading. The bank is currently under a criminal investigation for allowing its precious metals desk to be turned into a racketeering enterprise according to the Justice Department. Multiple JPMorgan precious metals traders have already been charged under the RICO statute, typically reserved for members of organized crime.

The ICIJ investigation is based on secret documents leaked from FinCEN, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a unit of the U.S. Treasury. The documents “show that five global banks — JPMorgan, HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, Deutsche Bank and Bank of New York Mellon — kept profiting from powerful and dangerous players even after U.S. authorities fined these financial institutions for earlier failures to stem flows of dirty money.”

The report has much to say about JPMorgan Chase:

To read complete report on Wall Street on Parade, click here

 

….

Every American should be horrified by this latest report from the ICIJ; every American should be outraged that the U.S. is now second only to the Cayman Islands for hiding dirty money for criminals; every American should demand that the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal give this story the front page coverage it deserves; and every American should look at this upcoming presidential election as the defining moment in whether the United States can be saved or will join a sad, tragic list of failed democracies.

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Our thanks to the authors at Wall Street on Parade

Featured image is from WSOP

Venezuela Denounces New Aggressions from the US

September 23rd, 2020 by Telesur

The Simon Bolivar Great Patriotic Pole (GPPSB) alerted that plans are being made to generate violence in the country, after the visit of the U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, to countries bordering Venezuela.

In a press conference held on Tuesday, the president of the National Constituent Assembly and parliamentary candidate for the GPPSB, Diosdado Cabello, announced that the country’s intelligence agencies had detected plans to attack public services.

Among the objectives of the sabotage would be service stations and institutions, Cabello informed from the Teresa Carreño Theater in Caracas.

“The instructions given by Pompeo to the lackeys close to us are to generate violence in our country, to bring to Venezuela the violence of Colombia,” he detailed.

He called on organized people’s power to be on alert between now and the elections next December.

“In these 75 days, we must redouble our efforts in each of our streets and communities, and immediately inform of any foreigner or person with a foreign accent,” he urged.

Cabello stressed that this call is not to cause terror but to alert.

“We know that when our people are activated, it is with courage, with the dignity that we take care of our homeland. Let us not neglect any detail; let us guarantee the peace of Venezuela between now and 6D”, he reiterated.

The leader highlighted that a Special Presidential Command would be installed and attentive around the clock to give an immediate response if necessary.

“MAXIMUM ALERT! Cabello urged people to be on alert for any outbreak of violence.”

Later on, Diosdado Cabello, who was accompanied by another parliamentary candidate, Jorge Rodríguez, highlighted the widespread participation that has been guaranteed for the elections to renew the National Assembly.

Cabello said that some 14,400 candidates have registered for the elections, of which only 554 are members of the GPPSB. A total of 107 political organizations are participating in the electoral process.

He emphasized that several political orientations have manifested in the country: the democrats, both left and right, who want to go to elections; the citizens he called “unmotivated,” who are not interested in voting; and the sector of the right that attempts to remain on the path of violence.

Regarding the latter, Cabello reasoned that a political force that does not want to go to elections is only because it does not have the votes to do so. In that respect, he assured that they expect those who participate in the process to respect the decisions of the final electoral authority, that is, the National Electoral Council (CNE).

He also insisted on the importance of these elections.

“This 6D we are playing for more than a parliamentary election, but rather to change that structure that destroyed the institutionality of the National Assembly, for a new one at the service of the people,” he expressed.

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Featured image: National Constituent Assembly President Diosdado Cabello greets pro-government supporters at a rally organized by President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela. February 12, 2020. | Photo: EFE/Miguel Gutierrez

Vice-Chairman of the Presidential Council of Libya, Ahmed Maiteeq announced that he had reached a deal on behalf of the Government of National Accord (GNA) based in Tripoli and the head of the Libyan National Army (LNA) Brigadier General Khalifa Haftar. The LNA confirmed that an agreement to resume oil exports from Libya had been brokered with the GNA, who have been in armed conflict with each other.

Maiteeq is a Libyan businessman who was elected Prime Minister in 2014, but that vote was later ruled invalid. He now serves as a Vice-Chairman of the Presidential Council headed by Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj.

Libya has been split between rival administrations based in Tripoli and Tobruk following the chaos which ensued after the US-NATO war on Libya to oust Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.

The Sarraj government is controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood and aligned with Qatar and Turkey.  The Muslim Brotherhood is seen as an outlawed terrorist organization in several countries, including Egypt, Russia, and Syria. Hafter is fighting to establish a secular Libya and is against the Islamists’ political ideology of Radical Islam.

Libya lost about $9 billion because of the oil export blockade, which was caused by Libyan tribes that opposed the distribution of oil revenues they saw as uneven.

Previously, all oil revenues went to the Libyan Central Bank and were further distributed among the regions of the country. However, the tribes in the east and south of Libya, where the main oil fields are located, believed that a significant part of the income falls into the hands of the Islamists controlling the GNA in Tripoli, who accused the LNA of blocking oil exports.

Fair distribution of oil revenues is one of the most important issues that was reflected in the decisions of the Berlin Summit and UN Security Council resolution 2510. However, for a long time, it was not possible to solve it.

Ahmed Maiteeq and Khalifa Haftar have now achieved an agreement that meets the demands of the Libyan tribes. A joint commission would be established to control oil production and the distribution of oil revenues between the two sides of the armed conflict. This would open the way for the flow of funds into Libya and the re-establishment of basic services such as electricity, which recently caused protests in both the west and east of the country.

The agreement between Maiteeq and Haftar also opens up the prospect of further negotiating in Libya and ending the war. This is important for the stability of the entire region, given that just a few months ago Egypt was ready to intervene in the Libyan conflict. If the agreement holds, it will become a symbol of a new détente in Libya, which is in the interests of both the country’s citizens, neighboring countries, and the entire international community.

The agreement will be an additional factor that will put a hold on the military situation on the ground because otherwise, it threatens the resumption of armed clashes. In the future, an oil deal could help create conditions for a sustainable inter-Libyan inclusive political dialogue.

The agreement between Maiteeq and Haftar has been a catalyst for change within the GNA. Many figures, most notably Khaled al-Mishri, opposed it. Their positions are significantly weakened against the backdrop of a successful Maiteeq policy, which demonstrated that he could conduct effective negotiations with the opposite side of the conflict. Thus, in the face of the Libyan public and the international community, he has proved to be an effective diplomat on which to bet.

Major General Ahmed al-Mismari, the spokesperson for the LNA, said recently that the “terrorist Muslim Brotherhood” Khaled al-Mishri, is an agent for Qatar in Libya.

Al-Mismari used documents from the Qatari Foreign Ministry to prove that al-Mishri receives a salary of US$250,000 a month from the Qatari intelligence services for his work in Libya. Al-Mismari went on to prove a link between the Muslim Brotherhood and the ISIS terrorists in Libya.

“I declare my sincere intention to hand over the tasks of power to the coming executive authority in time no later than October,” Sarraj said recently in Tripoli.  His announcement to step-down comes amid talks between the warring parties on ending the Libyan conflict.  Recently, the two sides agreed to hold elections within 18 months and appoint a new government.

The announcement comes amid talks between Libya’s rival factions on ending the country’s conflict. Earlier this month, they had agreed to hold elections within 18 months and appoint a new government.

Chances of Maiteeq to take the post of Chairman of the Presidential Council of Libya after the resignation of Sarraj is increasing. At the same time, since Maiteeq’s people are likely to occupy key positions in the joint committee on oil exports, the Libyan politician will get powerful leverage to influence domestic politics.

Maiteeq is a secular politician with a good reputation. He is not a completely powerless figure like Sarraj, or warlords like Fathi Bashagha, or a direct supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood like Khaled al-Mishri.

Fathi Bashagha is of Turkish origin and is the current Minister of Interior of the (GNA) appointed by Sarraj on 7 October 2018.

Bashagha is described as a war-lord controlling the Mahjoub and Halbous brigades in Misrata, being the Muslim Brotherhood’s agent in the GNA, and being tied to the government of Turkey. Some journalists have seen Bashagha playing a role in the GNA as important as the minister Sarraj.

Maiteeq is not affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and therefore looks like the best politician to possibly coordinate the peace process on the part of the GNA.

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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

Today, the prosecutors in the Julian Assange case did their show trial predecessors from other legal traditions proud.  The ghosts of such figures as Soviet state prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky, would have approved of the line of questioning taken by James Lewis QC: suggest that Assange, accused of 17 counts of violating the US Espionage Act and one count of conspiracy to commit a computer crime, reads medical literature to exaggerate his condition.

Additionally to the political hook the defence is hanging its case on – political offences being a bar to extradition in the United Kingdom’s 2003 Extradition Act) – a medical one has been fashioned.  Section 91 makes it clear that the judge in the extradition hearing must order the discharge of a person or adjourn the extradition hearing if “the physical or mental condition of the person is such that it would be unjust or oppressive to extradite him.”  This can be read alongside the application of the European Convention of Human Rights, which stipulates under Article 3 that, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Dr. Michael Kopelman, Emeritus Professor of Neuropsychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, took the stand at the Old Bailey to delve into Assange’s medical condition.  His visits to Assange had yielded a man deprived of sleep, suffering “loss of weight, a sense of pre-occupation and helplessness as a result of threats to his life, the concealment of a razor blade as a means to self-harm and obsessive ruminations of ways of killing himself.”  Kopelman was, he stated in submissions to the court, “as certain as a psychiatrist ever can be that, in the event of imminent extradition, Mr Assange would indeed find a way to commit suicide.”

The cross-examination by Lewis was in the worst traditions of the law.  Non sequiturs were aplenty; baseless assessments on expertise generously made.  Kopelman was, claimed the prosecutor, an expert in brain disease and its link with mental health, making him ill-suited to comment on Assange’s health.  Kopelman, rather put out at this, reminded Lewis that he had previously called upon his services in a difference case.  It was “a bit rich” for the prosecutor to now be challenging his qualifications.  The prosecution also suggested that Kopelman’s psychiatric credentials were somehow shaded, if not rendered inconsequential, by him being “more of an advocate”.  The defence witness snapped, suggesting he would respond to that assertion with an “unparliamentary word”.

The prosecution focused on Kopelman’s summaries of days in April and May 2019, when Assange was evaluated by psychiatrists.  This gave Lewis a chance to accuse the witness of omissions unsuitable to the defence.  Kopelman had to constantly remind Lewis that he only started to attend such sessions in person at the end of May.

In another feeble sortie, the prosecution suggested that Assange was medically sound because his performance at the extradition trial over the previous days had indicated no signs of depression.  He was attentive to proceedings; he could answer the judge.  To even the most untrained and untutored in the field of mental health, this should be regarded as an amateurish presumption: a competent performance hardly suggests the absence of depression or cognitive disturbance. 

Kopelman duly made that point, referring to the transcripts Lewis had used.  “I cannot evaluate his mental and cognitive state from what’s in here.”  Assange had “made a few comments”; he had “some long-standing semantic knowledge”; he “replied appropriately”.  None of this need suggest that his “cognitive state is normal.”  If anything, they lent credibility to a diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome.

In Kopelman’s testimony, Assange is reported to have experienced “auditory hallucinations” featuring “derogatory and persecutory” voices: “you are dust, you are dead, we are coming to get you”.  In assertions that were verging on the preposterous, even by the standards of this prosecution, Lewis attempted to erect an edifice of illusion.  Assange was taking everyone for a joy ride in a fantasy of mental ill-health that had no foundation.  He had been surely “malingering” about his symptoms.  His hallucinations had been “self-reported”.  Kopelman reminded Lewis of an elementary lesson: psychiatry tended to rely on self-reporting. “I don’t believe he’s got delusions.  He’s very worried about whether discussions are recorded.”  Given the “experiences in the embassy, that was a rational anxiety.”

Another sally followed, this time using Assange’s family as crude props for psychobabble.  In the course of the extradition proceedings, it had become clear that Assange had formed a relationship with Stella Morris, having had two children with her during his stay at the Ecuadorean embassy in London.  Two reports prepared by Kopelman included quotes from a visit with Morris.  The failure to mention Morris in his first report peeved Lewis.  Kopelman’s explanation: “This was not in the public domain at that point, and she was very concerned about privacy so we decided not to put it in.”  Once knowledge of her existence became public, “I included it.” 

Lewis would have none of it: the duty to the court overrode any matters of embarrassment to Assange, and sensitivity to Morris’ privacy was of no consequence.  Knowledge to the court of Morris and the children’s existence was vital, suggested Lewis, as it might be a “protective factor against suicide.”  Charmingly, Lewis seemed to ignore the point that having a young family would hardly be a deterrent against self-harm when facing a promise of being locked up for life in solitary confinement in another country notorious for its lugubrious prison conditions.  Death could well prove a desperate consolation.  Kopelman was on to this: married people do not resist the pathway to suicide.

The psychiatric picture of Assange drawn by Kopelman was one of regression and severity, made worse by the likelihood of harm that can arise to those with Asperger’s syndrome.  He had an “intense suicidal preoccupation.”  Findings from autism specialist Dr Simon Baron-Cohen – that suicide is nine times more likely in patients with Asperger’s “than in the general population in England” – were mentioned.  That study also found that people with Asperger’s syndrome “were significantly more likely to report suicidal ideation or plans or attempts at suicide if they also had depression.”  Assange, Kopelman reasoned, faced “an abundance of known risk factors”.

In December 2019, conditions proved acute; in February and March, moderately severe.  The lockdown at the Belmarsh prison facility precipitated by the coronavirus pandemic did its share of harm.  Assange had sought confession with a Catholic priest, “who granted him absolution”.  He had drawn up a will, scribbled farewell letters to family and friends.  All signs of a man possibly readying for the other side.

As appalling as his conditions in Belmarsh had been, including a stint in confined isolation, the conditions “he would experience in North America would be far worse than anything experienced in the embassy or Belmarsh.”  The imminence of extradition would “trigger a suicide attempt.”  Assange’s most probable pre-trial accommodation would also encourage this.  It was at the Alexandria Detention Center where Chelsea Manning attempted suicide while being held refusing to relent to a grand jury subpoena to answer questions on WikiLeaks.  According to Kopelman, “It just shows how awful conditions must be.”

Attention turned to the prevalence of depression during Assange’s time in the Ecuadorean embassy, starting around 2015.  This had caught the attention of Nils Melzer, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture.  Melzer has taken the long view on Assange: that the combined effort of several states – Ecuador, the United Kingdom, United States, Sweden – had created conditions of “psychological torture”, part of a deliberate, progressively cruel effort.  There had been, he claimed in May 2019, “a relentless and unrestrained campaign of public mobbing, intimidation and defamation against Mr Assange, not only in the United States, but also in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and more recently, Ecuador.” 

In company with two medical experts experienced in examining potential victims of torture and ill-treatment,  Melzer’s May 9, 2019 visit to Assange confirmed that his “health has been seriously affected by the extreme hostile and arbitrary environment he has been exposed to for many years.”  Assange, “in addition to physical ailments … showed all symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture, including extreme stress, chronic anxiety and intense psychological trauma.”

In November 2019, Melzer reiterated his concerns in the face of tardiness on the part of the British authorities. “Despite the medical urgency of my [May] appeal, and the seriousness of the alleged violations, the UK has not undertaken any measures of investigation, prevention and redress required under international law.”

Melzer’s views did not impress Lewis.  His labours on the Assange case were “palpable nonsense”, lacking in balance and accuracy.  Kopelman was asked to distance himself from such conclusions, despite them not being an “important factor” in his work.  Lewis remains comfortably deaf, not merely to Melzer’s work, but the findings of such eminent groups as Doctors for Assange, an initial collective of 60 medical doctors, growing to 117 spanning 18 countries.  The Assange case, they argued in February in The Lancet, “highlights several concerning aspects that warrant the medical profession’s close attention and concerted action”.  In June, the group noted that, “Isolation and under-stimulation are key psychological torture tactics, capable of inducing severe despair, disorientation, destabilisation, and disintegration of crucial mental functions.”  The psychological torture of a publisher and journalist in a climate already hostile to journalism “sets a precedent of international concern.”

In a crude, somewhat farcical manoeuvre typical of the day’s proceedings, Lewis went just that bit lower in wondering whether Assange’s depression would have made a difference in soliciting or leaking “material from the US government.”  Would such a tormented mind have been able to meet his media commitments (“doing a chat show” for Russia Today), or conduct public speaking engagements?  Such views of depression, that great tormenter and killer, do not merely show this prosecution to be venal; they show it to be profoundly ignorant of history and medicine.

Assange’s defence team have a bright precedent to rely on.  British computer scientist Lauri Love, who was also diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, was arrested in 2015 in the UK at the request of the United States for allegedly hacking various government entities.  These included the Federal Reserve, the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA and the US Army.  Initially losing his case to avoid extradition on September 16, 2016, and facing the approval to do so by then Secretary of State Amber Rudd, Love successfully appealed to the High Court.  It was accepted that the US was an inappropriate forum to try Love; and that prison conditions awaiting him “would be oppressive by reason of his physical and mental condition.” 

The High Court also accepted that “the fact of extradition would bring on severe depression, and that Mr Love would probably be determined to commit suicide, here or in America.”  Being put on suicide watch would hardly have been adequate – it did not constitute a “form of treatment; there was no evidence that treatment would or could be made available on suicide watch for the very conditions which suicide watch itself exacerbates.” 

This was strikingly appropriate and relevant.  Kopelman, who also testified in Love’s case, had also been given reassurances at the time that the US prison system was up to scratch in guarding against suicide.  Since then, the US prison system had been marked by the prominent suicide of Jeffrey Epstein and the attempted suicide by Manning.  “Those reassurances were not very reassuring.”

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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]

The European Union has announced a new immigration and asylum policy based on the so-called solidarity of its members. However, this initiative will once again not receive unanimous support from all 27 member states. Since Germany instigated the migrant crisis five years ago, the EU is still figuring out how to clean up this catastrophic mess that has further crippled frontline Mediterranean EU member states. In 2015, German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the doors of her country to millions of illegal immigrants coming from not only the Middle East, but also from Africa, economically straining and pushing the resources of frontline states like Greece and Spain beyond their limits. This was despite them already struggling with a severe economic calamity since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.

Germany, whose employers were delighted to see the arrival of cheap labour, closed its borders when it decided it had received enough migrants and gave no warning to other EU members. Merkel then quickly agreed to gift Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan €6 billion to close Turkey’s borders with Greece to significantly reduce the entry of illegal immigrants into the EU.

The subsequent distribution of immigrants became a major issue, especially as the Visegrad Group – Hungary, Poland, Czechia and Slovakia – refused to take any of the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants stuck in Greece and other Mediterranean EU countries. Other countries just wanted to receive a handful of the migrants stuck in Mediterranean Europe.

Today, German politician Ursula Von der Leyen from Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is the president of the European Commission. She intends to present a new mechanism. In EU technocratic jargon she described the mechanism as “a new governance of migration.” Currently, illegal immigrants who arrive on European territory are obliged to register in the first country they arrive in.  Naturally, the countries most affected by this doctrine have been Greece, Malta, Italy and Spain, but also Portugal and Cyprus to a lesser extent. As an example, an illegal immigrant who entered France through Spain must return to Spain to seek asylum as they cannot do it from France.

Von der Leyen says this doctrine will be replaced by “a strong solidarity mechanism,” but is refusing to specify further details until the official presentation of the plan later this week. However, Mediterranean Europe is naturally suspicious there will be no meaningful changes after Germany left these countries to deal with a crisis it created to get a rapid influx of cheap labour. The Turkish-German pact has been manipulated at will by Ankara as it knows that it can exert pressure on the EU by unleashing a migrant crisis, just as it attempted to do again in March of this year when Turkey told tens of thousands of illegal immigrants that the gates to Greece were now open. However, Turkey can also pressure Germany as millions of Turks now live and vote in the European country after initially arriving in the 1950’s and 1960’s to be temporary cheap labour in German industries. What was initially meant to be temporary workers in German industries turned into a thriving community now numbering millions of individuals today, many of whom act as a fifth column to serve Erdoğan’s interests in Germany.

The situation on the once peaceful Greek island of Lesvos, where the local people have suffered from a massive spike in vandalism, theft, rape and murder since the migrant crisis began in 2015, is becoming untenable. This is especially apparent since the Moria camp, the main migrant camp on Lesvos, was destroyed in a fire started by Afghan asylum seekers earlier this month. This is what sparked the EU’s latest initiative to deal with the migrant crisis.

In these circumstances, no matter how much pressure is exerted on Central European countries, they will not submit to EU demands that they must accept some the hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants based mostly in Greece, Italy, Spain and Malta. Media in Central European countries suggest that they welcome people from Ukraine, Russia, Georgia and Armenia because of shared cultural and moral affinities, but not from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Congo and Somalia, where most of the illegal immigrants are from.

In fact, earlier this year, former Polish Prime Minister and current Member of the European Parliament, Beata Szydło, said that the members of the Visegrad Group will not endure blackmail on migration issues from the EU. The Visegrad Group believe that mass migration from outside of their cultural sphere will lead to the ghettoisation of many of their towns and cities, just like what happened in many areas of France, Belgium, Sweden and Germany. As the Visagrad Group will likely not adhere to the suggestions that will be made by Von der Leyen later this week, Mediterranean Europe will once again face an inefficient EU that will do little to alleviate the pressures of the migrant crisis launched by Germany’s continuous endeavour to find cheap labour.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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Today was one of reiteration and expansion.  Computer scientist Christian Grothoff of the Bern University of Applied Sciences supplied the relevant chronology on what led to the publication of unredacted US State Department cables, the subject of such concern for the prosecution.  This proved a mild taster of what was to come: the alleged deal brokered by Richard Grenell, when US ambassador to Germany, with the Ecuadorean government for the arrest and eviction of Julian Assange from the London embassy in April 2019.

Grothoff, publication and chronology

With three of the 18 counts against Assange trained on the issue of publishing unredacted cables, Grothoff’s testimony served to recapitulate the importance of timing.  By the time the organisation had published the archive, others had done so.  The horse, having bolted, would not be returning.  While WikiLeaks had taken steps to encrypt the relevant file with the documents, things went awry with its sharing with David Leigh of The Guardian in the summer of 2010.  Uploaded to a temporary website, it had a strong, decrypting passphrase.  Assange had committed only part of that passphrase to paper.

November 2010 arrived.  WikiLeaks and its media partners began releasing redacted cables. 

“The embassy cables will be released in stages over the next year,” promised WikiLeaks.  “The subject matter of these cables is of such importance, and the geographical spread so broad, that to do so otherwise would not do this material justice.” 

The organisation’s website then became the target of Distributed Denial of Server attacks.  Assange put the word out to supporters: replicate site data on various servers; create mirror sites.  In February 2011, Leigh and fellow Guardian colleague Luke Harding published their account working with Assange and WikiLeaks.  It was a hurried, and, it transpired, sloppy effort.  The full, decrypting passphrase had found its way into one chapter title.  Der Freitag caught the scent in August, supplying a few breadcrumbs to the enterprising, not least the sense that the password to the file was rather easy to locate.  Der Spiegel, one of the media partners, gave confirmation of the account.  Nigel Parry, self-described as “the first person out of the loop and in the wild to have unzipped the unreduced Cablegate cables,” merely sealed the matter.

Assange and Sarah Harrison, also of WikiLeaks, scrambled.  The US State Department was warned that the unredacted files were ready to course their way through cyberspace.  The US-based leaking outfit Cryptome gave the push along, publishing the archive.  By September 2, 2011, the deed for WikiLeaks was done: the archive was released on its site.  As Grothoff told the court, “[The password] was actually available on the internet in a way that would be virtually impossible to stop.” 

In writing about the train of events, political commentator and former civil rights litigator Glenn Greenwald thought the security measures taken by WikiLeaks poor and insufficient.  But “one point should be made absolutely clear: there was nothing intentional about WikiLeaks’ publication of the cables in unredacted form.  They ultimately had no choice.”  Releasing the cables in full was the reasonable, “safest course” of action, “so that not only the world’s intelligence agencies but everyone had them, so that steps could be taken to protect the sources and so that the information in them was equally available.”

Under questioning from the prosecution, Grothoff batted away suggestions that the publishing organisation had shared the entire archive with all 50 media partners involved with Cablegate.  “On the very specific technical point where you say WikiLeaks published those cables you are wrong, and you didn’t properly do your homework to find who first published those cables.”  WikiLeaks could not be considered the “primary publisher of the unredacted cables”.

Grothoff also faced questions about his partiality from Joel Smith QC.  Had he not appended his name to a 2017 letter to US President Donald Trump urging him not to charge Assange or other members of WikiLeaks?  “You are biased, you are partial?”  The professor could not recall adding his name, but saw Assange as a “sympathetic character” in exposing “war crimes”.  “No, I believe that looking at the indictment put forward, you’re confusing actions WikiLeaks took to hide and obscure the documents with them publishing it.” 

Fairbanks, deals and evictions

Assange’s defence team then readied the dynamite: a statement from activist and Trump supporter Cassandra Fairbanks, dated June 7, 2020, describing communications with Republican donor Arthur Schwartz.  Schwartz, with close links to Trump, was charged with running Grenell’s communications.  Fairbanks shared membership with a direct message group on Twitter comprising “multiple people who either worked for President Trump or were close to him in other ways.”  Both Grenell and Schwartz were also members.

On October 30, 2018, Fairbanks shared an interview with Assange’s mother, Christine Assange, on the forum “hoping that someone would see it and be moved to help”.  The plea did not go down well with Schwartz, who called Fairbanks to berate her for such strident advocacy.  Stop it, he insisted, as “a pardon isn’t going to fucking happen.” What instead followed were details about what was in store for Assange: charges were imminent over his connection with Chelsea Manning, not other publications (the Democratic National Committee correspondence; the Central Intelligence Agency’s Vault 7 publication). “He also told me they would be going after Chelsea Manning. I also recollect being told, I believe, that it would not be before Christmas.  Both of these predictions came true just months later.”

Fairbanks also disclosed the intention to finally deal with the issue of Assange’s political asylum.  Schwartz “also told me that the US government would be going into the Embassy to get Assange.”  This troubled her.  “I responded that entering the embassy of a sovereign nation and kidnapping a political refugee would be an act of war, and he responded: ‘not if they let us.’”  Unbeknownst to Fairbanks at the time, Grenell had, in October 2018 “worked out a deal for Assange’s arrest with the Ecuadorean government.”

The exchange upset Fairbanks.  The waterworks commenced.  Schwartz softened on the phone on hearing Fairbanks sobbing, though was hardly reassuring about what awaited the WikiLeaks publisher: Assange would “probably” only serve the rest of life in prison.

From that point on, the worm began to turn.  A visit to Assange on January 7, 2019 followed.  Fairbanks was keen to impress upon him what she knew.  Assange was concerned about surveillance.  “I know he was concerned about being overheard or spied upon and he had a little radio to cover up the conversation.”  Both she and Assange took “steps to communicate with each other to try to not be within the sight or hearing of surveillance cameras or microphones, by turning up a background of white noise and writing notes.”  Fairbanks had also paid a visit to Manning, speaking of fears “that they might come after her again.”

Within two months, embassy hospitality had chilled.  Fairbanks recalls being shocked at the treatment afforded her and Assange on that visit.  It was an encounter she wrote about, noting a progressively worsening atmosphere.  She was made to spend an hour in a cold meeting room; Assange was given harsh preliminary treatment, “subjected to a full body scan with metal detector before” being allowed into the room.  Her statement continues: “I described it at the time as ‘eerily similar to visits I have made to inmates at federal penitentiaries in the US.’ I considered at the time ‘it seemed our government was getting what they wanted from Ecuador, as a former State Department official told Buzzfeed in January.  ‘As far as we’re concerned, he’s in jail.’  I noted ‘in an interview with El Pais in July, President Moreno said his ‘ideal solution’ is that Assange may ‘enjoy’ being ‘extradited’ if the UK promises that the US will not kill him.” 

The act of bringing a radio into the meeting room to frustrate audio surveillance was a cause of consternation.  “Only eight minutes of our two hour scheduled visit were in the end available because of the conflict with security staff at the Embassy.  We were told if we wanted to talk it must be done in the conference room and only two minutes were left.” 

Fairbanks recalls the row in her March 2019 piece: how Assange had told embassy staff how “undignified” it was to be subjected to the body scan; why the staff were “afraid” of his meeting with Fairbanks.  “Is this a prison?” he inquired.  “It’s not,” came the reply. “You know it’s not.”

On March 29, 2019, Fairbanks contacted Schwartz, pressing him on what he knew about rumours of an imminent eviction from the embassy.  Schwartz called to say that he knew that Fairbanks had been less than cautious in revealing what he had told her.  He could no longer treat her as a reliable recipient.  The explanation was clear.  For Schwartz to have known, the conversations in the embassy had to have been recorded and relayed.  “It was obvious,” claimed Fairbanks, “that the US had been involved, including the State Department, and that Schwartz had been made a party to this information.”

The die was cast.  On April 11, 2019, Assange was evicted.  On April 15, ABC News ran a piece noting how the wheels for this action had begun in March 2018, “when the Ecuadoreans made their first request to the UK: a letter asking for written assurances that the UK would not extradite Assange to a country where he could face the death penalty”.  Six months followed.  The US was then approached via the offices of Ecuador’s ambassador to Germany, Manuel Mejía Dalmau, who sought “a private ‘emergency meeting’ in Berlin with the US Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, viewed as one of President Donald Trump’s closest envoys in Europe”.  During the course of one meeting, Dalmau, according to an unnamed “senior US official”, “asked whether the US would commit to not putting Assange to death”.  Grenell ran the query to the US Justice Department.  “According to the senior US official, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein consented.”  A verbal pledge followed.

Fairbanks duly tweeted the ABC story.  Ambassador Grenell was exercised.  Fairbanks’ boss was messaged: delete the tweet.  Fairbanks refused, though eventually relenting.  Grenell also had another suggestion: sack Fairbanks.  In this miasma of panic, Schwartz rang.  “This time he was frantic,” Fairbanks recalled.  “He was ranting and raving that he could go to jail and that I was tweeting classified information.”  She was informed “that in coordinating for Assange to be removed from the Embassy, Ambassador Grenell had done so on direct ‘orders from the president.’  I believed this connected President Trump to those who have been reported as having secured the deal to arrest Assange.”  She believed the veracity of Schwartz’s comment, given his known close ties to Trump and Grenell.

Schwartz had also suffered an attack of blood lust.  Several messages to Fairbanks in the aftermath of the ABC news report focused on “how everyone involved with WikiLeaks deserved the death penalty.”  This was troubling to Fairbanks, as only an oral, not written agreement, had been secured protecting Assange from any death penalty.  “Schwartz’s response to this was to send me a shrug emoji and he continued his tirade about how Assange deserved to die.”

Fairbanks also imputed to Schwartz an extensive network of influence, being a regular visitor to the White House, a “fixer” for Donald Trump, Jr., a radiantly significant figure in the Trump cosmos including “Richard Grenell, Sheldon Adelson and others.” Mention of Adelson is telling: his Las Vegas Sands company, the world’s largest casino operator, is alleged to have provided cover with the security consulting firm UC Global for surveillance operations against Assange during his embassy stay.  These were sanctioned by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The UC Global CEO, David Morales, was subsequently charged by a Spanish High Court in October 2019 for violating Assange’s privacy, breaching lawyer-client privilege, money laundering and bribery.  The UC Global files, as Max Blumenthal has noted in The Grayzone, “detail an elaborate and apparently illegal US surveillance operation in which the security firm spied on Assange, his legal team, his American friends, US journalists, and an American member of Congress who had been allegedly dispatched to the Ecuadorean embassy by President Donald Trump.  Even the Ecuadorean diplomats whom UC Global was hired to protect were targeted in the spy ring.”

Joel Smith QC, representing the prosecution, would not stomach the claims being made by Fairbanks: “the truth of what Ms Fairbanks was told by Arthur Schwartz was not in her knowledge.”  Tactics deployed previously would be done again: Fairbanks was considered a biased witness for acknowledging her support for WikiLeaks.  For the defence, Edward Fitzgerald QC put it plainly: “We say what Schwartz told [Fairbanks] is a good indication of the government at the highest level.”

The approach of the defence will have to remain one of patient, constant reminder to the court: that the case against Assange is rancid with politics, trailing its way into the backlines of the Trump administration.

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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]

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Recognizing the contentious nature of the subject, this two-part article relies only on official treatises, pacts and primary sourced evidence to compile a historically accurate account of the founding of Saudi Arabia and Al Saud family becoming ‘Royals’.

Growing up Muslim in a Muslim majority country, I spent most Friday afternoons at a mosque, attending the Jummah prayer. First part of a Jummah prayer calls for the Imam to perform a Khutbah – a weekly sermon of sorts. It was in one of those Khutbahs that I, as a very young boy, learnt about the plight of the Palestinians for the first time.

Indeed, it’s a common practice among Imams around the world to bring up the Palestinian issue at mosques, especially during Friday sermons, and pray for the Palestinian people. In those prayers and discussions, Israel’s name comes up inevitably. In fact, Israel’s oppression of Palestinians bears no ambiguity in Islamic thoughts. And condemnation of Israel, therefore, comes naturally to Muslims around the world.

However, what escapes awareness in almost all Muslims is the connection between Israel and Saudi Arabia. While zealously castigating Israel for its atrocities, Muslims often revere Saudi Arabia as the custodians of Islam’s holiest sites; completely ignoring the Kingdom’s role in founding the Zionist state in the first place.

Notwithstanding the existence of a deep-seated bias against Israel among Muslims, it’s important to recognize that the lack of criticism for Saudi Kingdom, alongside Israel, doesn’t come from bias. Indeed, this absence finds its roots not in bias, but in a complete lack of knowledge. Knowledge among current generation of Muslims, as well as among the world population, about how Saudi Arabia and its founding king, Abdel Aziz Ibn Saud, played a critical role in establishing the Zionist state of Israel.

Suffice it to say, this ignorance about one of the most critical periods in world history seems anything but normal. Amazingly, the world, especially the Muslim world, had been kept in darkness about this momentous chapter in Middle East history. Propaganda and omissions run rampant within the historical accounts of this period. Official Saudi sources like House of Saud website, for example, avoids any mention of British involvement in founding the KSA. Although this omission seems predictable to many, it’s worth noting that even mainstream media outlets like the BBC, and prominent historians such as Professor Eugene Rogan etc., routinely portray Ibn Saud as having acted independently during WWI, and not as an instrument for the British Empire.

Therefore, recognizing the contentious nature of the issue – and to avoid becoming yet another ‘perspective’ on the subject – this article relies only on primary sourced evidence and the following four official treatises and declarations to compile a historically accurate account of the events:

  1. The McMahon-Hussain Correspondence
  2. The Treaty of Darin
  3. The Sykes-Picot Agreement
  4. The Balfour Declaration

1. The McMahon-Hussain Correspondence

To properly understand the events that led to the creation of both Israel and Saudi Arabia, we must travel back to the early 1900s’ Middle East. At the outbreak of WWI in the region, Sir Henry McMahon, then British High Commissioner in Egypt, offered Hussain bin Ali, Sharif of Hijaz (or ruler of the Hijaz – the western Arabian region in which Mecca and Medina lie), an independent Arab state if he would help the British fight against the Ottoman Empire. Hussein’s interest in throwing off his Turkish overlords converged with Britain’s war aim of defeating the Ottomans. McMahon made this offer via a series of letters exchanged between him and Sharif Hussain, collectively known as the McMahon-Hussain Correspondence. On his 14 July 1915 letter to McMahon, Hussain stated, among other things, the following as one of his propositions:

“Firstly.- England will acknowledge the independence of the Arab countries, bounded on the north by Mersina and Adana up to the 37th degree of latitude, on which degree fall Birijik, Urfa, Mardin, Midiat, Jezirat (Ibn ‘Umar), Amadia, up to the border of Persia; on the east by the borders of Persia up to the Gulf of Basra; on the south by the Indian Ocean, with the exception of the position of Aden to remain as it is; on the west by the Red Sea, the Mediterranean Sea up to Mersina. England to approve the proclamation of an Arab Khalifate of Islam.”

In response, McMahon wrote on 24 October 1915:

“I regret that you should have received from my last letter the impression that I regarded the question of the limits and boundaries with coldness and hesitation; such was not the case, but it appeared to me that the time had not yet come when that question could be discussed in a conclusive manner.

“I have realized, however, from your last letter that you regard this question as one of vital and urgent importance. I have, therefore, lost no time in informing the Government of Great Britain of the contents of your letter, and it is with great pleasure that I communicate to you on their behalf the following statement, which I am confident you will receive with satisfaction:-

“The two districts of Mersina and Alexandretta and portions of Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo cannot be said to be purely Arab, and should be excluded from the limits demanded.

“With the above modification, and without prejudice of our existing treaties with Arab chiefs, we accept those limits.”

Interestingly, throughout history, there has been much disagreement as to whether this promise included Palestine. However, as we can see above, the area promised to the Arabs in McMahon’s letter excluded only the territory to the west of a line from Damascus north to Aleppo. Palestine, far to the south, was, by implication, included. Nevertheless, the British subsequently denied that they included Palestine in the promise and refused to publish the correspondence until 1939.

At the time however, Sharif Hussain believed this official promise from the British Government. He went on to make the most significant contribution to the Ottoman Empire’s defeat. He switched allegiances and led the so-called ‘Arab Revolt’ in June of 1916, which removed the Turkish presence from Arabia.

The defeat of the Ottoman Empire by the British in WWI left three distinct authorities in the Arabian peninsula. Sharif of Hijaz Hussain bin Ali of Mecca (in the west); Ibn Rashid of Ha’il (in the north); and Emir Abdel Aziz Ibn Saud of Najd and his religiously fanatical followers, the Wahhabis (in the east).

2. The Treaty of Darin

On 26 December 1915, Sir Percy Cox, on behalf of the British Government, signed the Treaty of Darin with Abdel Aziz Ibn Saud. Also known as the Darn Pact, the treaty made the lands of the House of Saud a British protectorate. The British aim of the treaty was to guarantee the sovereignty of Kuwait, Qatar and the Trucial States (later UAE). Abdul-Aziz vowed not to attack these British protectorates. He also pledged to enter WWI in the Middle East against the Ottoman Empire as an ally of Britain.

Britain’s signing of Darin Pact in December went against their promises of mutual protection made to Sharif Hussain in October; because Britain’s treaty with Ibn Saud does not oblige him to not attack the Hijaz.

The treaty also saw Abdel Aziz receiving £5000 per month ‘tribute’ from the British Government. After World War I, he received further support from the British. Support included substantially more monetary rewards and a glut of surplus munitions.

3. The Sykes-Picot Agreement 

On May 19, 1916, representatives of Great Britain and France secretly reached an accord, known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The accord aimed at dividing most of Arab lands under the Ottoman rule between the British and the French at the end of WWI. In its designated sphere, it was agreed, each country shall be allowed to establish such direct or indirect administration or control as they desire and as they may think fit.

Two diplomats, a Briton and a Frenchman, divided the map of one of the most volatile regions in the world into states that cut through ethnic and religious communities. The secret agreement largely neglected to allow for the future growth of Arab nationalism; which at that same moment the British government was using to their advantage against the Turks.

A century on, the Middle East continues to bear the consequences of the treaty. Many Arabs across the region continue to blame the subsequent violence in the Middle East, from the occupation of Palestine to the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), on the Sykes-Picot treaty.

Indeed, Britain’s signing of this treaty went directly against what it promised to the Sharif of Hijaz in October of previous year. As we will see in Part II of this article, Britain’s betrayal of their promises of an independent Arab state eventually led them to unleash their attack dog, Ibn Saud, on Sharif Hussain and topple him. This allowed the British to effectuate the Sykes-Picot accord, and subsequently establish the Zionist state of Israel.

Read Part II

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Author Rez Karim is an Electrical Engineer and Chief Editor at VitalColumns.com.

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Newly released US government documents allege [1] the Islamic State’s new leader Muhammad Sa’id Abdal-Rahman al-Mawla identified dozens of fellow militants as well as the structure of al-Qaeda in Iraq, after he was arrested in 2008 and detained at Camp Bucca. 

Three Tactical Interrogation Reports (TIR) released by the Combating Terrorism Centre (CTC) allege that al-Mawla, who at the time was an al-Qaeda judge, gave the US occupation forces in Iraq the names of 68 al-Qaeda fighters that led to the deaths of several al-Qaeda members after the US military conducted raids to hunt them down.

One of the persons named by al-Mawla was Abu Jasim Abu Qaswarah, thought to be the second-in-command of al-Qaeda in Iraq at the time. He was killed by US forces eight months after Mawla identified him as a member of the group.

According to the documents, al-Mawla was arrested in 2008 by the US forces and interrogated at Camp Bucca, a facility in Umm Qasr, southern Iraq, where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was also incarcerated. Several officials have since referred to it as a “Jihadi university” because of the training provided there.

The CTC said that al-Mawla was released in 2009 and only came to prominence earlier this year when he became the leader of the Islamic State following the death of al-Baghdadi in October.

The US put a $5m bounty last year on the head al-Mawla, also known as Abdullah Qardash or Hajj Abdullah, and he is thought to be in hiding in Syria. Though the mainstream media reports claim he is hiding in eastern Syria, he might as well be hiding in northwest Idlib province like his predecessor.

It’s important to note in the news coverage of the killing of al-Baghdadi that although the mainstream media had been trumpeting for the last several years that the Islamic State’s fugitive chief had been hiding somewhere on the Iraq-Syria border in the east, he was found hiding in northwest Idlib province, under the control of Turkey’s militant proxies and al-Nusra Front, and was killed while trying to flee to Turkey in Barisha village five kilometers from the border.

The reason why the mainstream media scrupulously avoided mentioning Idlib as al-Baghdadi’s most likely hideout in Syria was to cover up the collusion between the militant proxies of Turkey and the jihadists of al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State.

In fact, the corporate media takes the issue of Islamic jihadists “commingling” with Turkey-backed “moderate rebels” in Idlib so seriously – which could give the Syrian government the pretext to mount an offensive in northwest Syria – that the New York Times cooked up an exclusive report [2] on October 30, a couple of days after the Special Ops night raid, that the Islamic State paid money to al-Nusra Front for hosting al-Baghdadi in Idlib.

The morning after the night raid, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported [3] on October 27 that a squadron of eight helicopters accompanied by warplanes belonging to the international coalition had attacked positions of Hurras al-Din, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group, in Idlib province where the Islamic State chief was believed to be hiding.

Despite detailing the operational minutiae of the Special Ops raid, the mainstream news coverage of the raid deliberately elided over the crucial piece of information that the compound in Barisha village five kilometers from Turkish border where al-Baghdadi was killed belonged to Hurras al-Din, an elusive terrorist outfit which had previously been targeted several times in the US airstrikes.

Although Hurras al-Din is generally assumed to be an al-Qaeda affiliate, it is in fact the regrouping of the Islamic State jihadists under a different name in northwestern Idlib governorate after the latter terrorist organization was routed from Mosul and Anbar in Iraq and Raqqa and Deir al-Zor in Syria in 2017 and was hard pressed by the US-led coalition’s airstrikes in eastern Syria.

Here let me try to dispel a myth peddled by the corporate media and foreign policy think tanks that the Islamic State originated from al-Qaeda in Iraq. Many biased political commentators of the mainstream media deliberately try to muddle the reality in order to link the emergence of the Islamic State to the ill-conceived invasion of Iraq in 2003 by the Republican Bush administration.

Their motive behind this chicanery is to absolve the Obama administration’s policy of nurturing militants against the Syrian government since the beginning of Syria’s proxy war in 2011 until June 2014, when the Islamic State overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq and the Obama administration made a volte-face on its previous “regime change” policy of providing indiscriminate support to Syrian militants and declared a war against a faction of Syrian rebel groups, the Islamic State.

After linking the creation of the Islamic State to the Iraq invasion in 2003, interventionist hawks deviously draw the risible conclusion that the Obama administration’s premature evacuation of American troops from Iraq in December 2011 gave birth to the Islamic State.

Moreover, such duplicitous spin-doctors misleadingly try to find the roots of the Islamic State in al-Qaeda in Iraq; however, the Anbar insurgency in Iraq was fully subdued after “The Iraq Surge” in 2007. Al-Qaeda in Iraq became a defunct organization after the death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi in June 2006 and the subsequent surge of troops in Iraq.

The re-eruption of insurgency in Iraq was the spillover effect of nurturing militants in Syria since 2011-onward, when the Islamic State overran Fallujah and parts of Ramadi in January 2014 and subsequently reached the zenith of its power after capturing Mosul in June 2014.

The borders between Syria and Iraq are highly porous and it’s impossible to contain the flow of militants and arms between the two countries. The Obama administration’s policy of providing funds, weapons and training to Syrian militants in training camps located at the border regions of Turkey and Jordan bordering Syria was bound to backfire sooner or later.

Thus, it would be misleading to fall for the sophistry of finding the roots of the Islamic State in al-Qaeda in Iraq. Although the remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq might have joined the ranks of Syria-bound militants in Iraq in 2011, the principal cause of the creation of the Islamic State, al-Nusra Front and myriads of other militant outfits in Syria and Iraq was the “regime change” policy pursued by the Obama administration from 2011 to 2016 to topple the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

During the course of Syria’s proxy war, billions of dollars [4] worth weapons and ammunition, including American-made antitank missiles, were provided to militants in training camps located in border regions of Turkey and Jordan, and possibly in Iraq too, by the Western powers, Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf States.

It also bears mentioning that for the first year of Syria’s proxy war, American troops were still deployed next door in Iraq, as the war in Syria began in early 2011 whereas the US forces evacuated from Iraq in December 2011.

Notwithstanding, according to “official version” [5] of Washington’s story regarding the killing of al-Baghdadi, the choppers took off from an American airbase in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, flew hundreds of miles over the enemy territory in the airspace controlled by the Syrian and Russian air forces, killed the self-proclaimed “caliph” of the Islamic State in a Hollywood-style special-ops raid, and took the same route back to Erbil along with the dead body of the terrorist and his belongings.

Although Washington has conducted several airstrikes in Syria’s Idlib in the past, those were carried out by fixed-wing aircraft that fly at high altitudes, and the aircraft took off from American airbases in Turkey, which is just across the border from Syria’s northwestern Idlib province. Why would Washington risk flying troops at low altitudes in helicopters over hostile territory controlled by myriads of Syria’s heavily armed militant outfits?

In fact, several Turkish journalists, including Rajip Soylu, the Turkey correspondent for the Middle East Eye, tweeted [6] on the night of the special-ops raid that the choppers took off from the American airbase in Turkey’s Incirlik.

As for al-Baghdadi, who was “hiding” with the blessing of Turkey, it is now obvious that he was the bargaining chip in the negotiations between Trump and Erdogan, and the quid for the US president agreeing to pull American troops out of northeast Syria was the pro quo that Erdogan would hand al-Baghdadi to him on a platter.

The Trump administration promised to comply with Turkish President Erdogan’s longstanding demand to evacuate American forces from the Kurdish-held areas in northeast Syria in October last year.

Immediately following the announcement of withdrawal of US forces from northeast Syria by the Trump administration on October 6, Turkey mounted Operation Peace Spring on October 9 in which the Turkish armed forces and their Syrian proxies invaded and occupied 120 kilometers wide and 32 kilometers deep stretch of Syrian territory between the northeastern towns of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn.

In return, Trump got his very own Osama bin Laden as Turkey let US Special Forces kill fugitive leader of the Islamic State Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on October 26, weeks after the Turkish Operation Peace Spring in northeast Syria on October 9.

*

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[1] Islamic State’s ‘canary caliph’ gave intelligence to US in 2008:

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/islamic-state-leader-intelligence-us-government

[2] ISIS Leader Paid Rival for Protection but Was Betrayed by His Own:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/world/middleeast/isis-leader-al-baghdadi.html

[3] Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi killed in US raid:

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/isis-leader-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-targeted-us-raid-officials

[4] U.S. Relies Heavily on Saudi Money to Support Syrian Rebels.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/world/middleeast/us-relies-heavily-on-saudi-money-to-support-syrian-rebels.html

 
[5] Official story of the night raid killing al-Baghdadi:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/us/politics/baghdadi-isis-leader-trump.html

[6] Trump Confirms ISIS Leader Al-Baghdadi Killed In US Raid:

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/trump-make-statement-after-isis-chief-al-baghdadi-killed-turkish-border-while-fleeing

The previously unthinkable scenario of the US and Russia returning to nuclear brinkmanship with one another is once again on the cards after America’s START ultimatum to the Eurasian Great Power.

***

What Could Be Worse Than The Cuban Missile Crisis?

The Cuban Missile Crisis is universally considered to have been the most dangerous moment in the history of mankind after it prompted the US and Russia to engage in nuclear brinkmanship with one another. The end of the Old Cold War was thought by many to have made the return to such a dark scenario an utter impossibility, but the previously thinkable might be about to repeat itself very soon following the US’ START ultimatum to Russia earlier this week. That acronym refers to the latest Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty which limited the number of nuclear warheads on each side and restricted some of their delivery systems. It was agreed to by Presidents Obama and Medvedev but expires early next year. Failing to renew the agreement would unquestionably spark an uncontrollable nuclear and other arms race between these Great Powers and therefore greatly destabilize the world. Unfortunately, this might be inevitable.

The American Ultimatum To Russia

US Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control Marshall Billingslea told the Russian daily Kommersant on Sunday that the New START might be extended for less than five years through a memorandum of intent but only on the condition that China joins the deal and NATO doesn’t scale back any of its nuclear weapons from Europe during this period like Moscow requested. Russia obviously can’t compel China to do anything so the US is clearly trying to drive a wedge between the two by pressuring Moscow to lean on Beijing in this manner, which would further complicate their relations if it was even attempted. Secondly, the NATO buildup in Europe is alarming to Russia since it poses a direct threat to its national security interests. Agreeing to formalize the recent status quo which violates the Russia-NATO Founding Act and is greatly shaped by the US’ recent withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty would set a disturbing precedent too.

Russia’s Hypersonic Missiles To The Rescue

For all intents and purposes, the US isn’t negotiating in good faith but decided to present Russia with an ultimatum that it knew it would refuse, and not only that, but is powerless to comply with even if it wanted to considering its inability to force China to join the New START. It’s for this reason that Russian UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told Sputnik on Monday that his country “will find efficient ways to protect ourselves” if the New START isn’t extended. He was likely referring to Russia’s hypersonic missile achievements of the past few years that President Putin compared to the scale of the USSR’s nuclear project just last week according to TASS. The outlet also reported him as saying that

“We had to create these weapons in response to the US deploying strategic missile defense system, which in the future would be able to actually neutralize, nullify our entire nuclear potential.”

Who Stole Whose Hypersonic Missile Secrets?

Around the same time as the Russian leader’s statement, Trump accused his country of stealing hypersonic missile technology from the US during the Obama era, though one of the scientists involved in this project refuted him by pointing out that such experiments “began in the Soviet times, when Obama was still a teenager.” It should also be pointed out that a Russian scientist was arrested in summer 2018 on suspicion of passing off related secrets to what many believe was the American intelligence services. Seeing as how President Putin publicly unveiled this technology earlier that spring, the sequence of events suggests that the US truly is behind Russia in this respect and is struggling to catch up, ergo the spy games. Had Russian really stolen this technology like Trump claimed, then the US wouldn’t need to steal it back from Russia in order to win the hypersonic missile race since it would have presumably still been in possession of these same secrets.

The Poor Sport Wants To Spoil Strategic Stability Because It Lost

The US simply cannot accept that Russia –which the American government and its surrogates routinely allege is backwards, dysfunctional, and on the brink of bankruptcy — beat it in developing hypersonic missiles, which it did in order to protect its nuclear potential after Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and set the trajectory for the contemporary era of nuclear competition between Great Powers. Russia had to ensure that its second-strike capability wasn’t neutralized by the US’ global missile defense plans, hence its interest in accelerating development of hypersonic missiles for piercing through those systems. In other words, Russia foiled the US’ multibillion-dollar plans to impose its nuclear hegemony upon the world, which explains the furious response of the American government to President Putin’s spring 2018 announcement. Instead of accepting the return of strategic parity, however, the US wants to provoke a nuclear arms race with Russia.

Concluding Thoughts

There is nothing more dangerous for global stability than an all-out nuclear arms race between the US and Russia, which will in turn naturally push all the other nuclear-armed states to increase their own arsenals due to the “security dilemma” that this provokes. The US is behaving very irresponsibly in imposing an ultimatum on Russia in exchange for agreeing to the limited extension of the New START. Whether he realizes it or not, Trump is putting the world back on the path of repeating the Cuban Missile Crisis in the worst-case scenario since it might only be a matter of time before the nuclear competition between the US and Russia spirals out of control once again. The whole reason why the New START and its predecessor pacts were inked was to make that an impossibility, but it’s now once again on the forefront of decision makers’ minds. Unless Trump or perhaps even Biden has a change of heart (neither of which is likely), then the world will be in for very rough times.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from OneWorld


Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

WWIII Scenario

“The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of the people.”—Justice William O. Douglas

The U.S. Supreme Court will not save us.

It doesn’t matter which party gets to pick the replacement to fill Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. The battle that is gearing up right now is yet more distraction and spin to keep us oblivious to the steady encroachment on our rights by the architects of the American Police State.

Americans can no longer rely on the courts to mete out justice.

Although the courts were established to serve as Courts of Justice, what we have been saddled with, instead, are Courts of Order. This is true at all levels of the judiciary, but especially so in the highest court of the land, the U.S. Supreme Court, which is seemingly more concerned with establishing order and protecting government interests than with upholding the rights of the people enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

As a result, the police and other government agents have been generally empowered to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts.

Rarely do the concerns of the populace prevail.

When presented with an opportunity to loosen the government’s noose that keeps getting cinched tighter and tighter around the necks of the American people, what does our current Supreme Court usually do?

It ducks. Prevaricates. Remains silent. Speaks to the narrowest possible concern.

More often than not, it gives the government and its corporate sponsors the benefit of the doubt, which leaves “we the people” hanging by a thread.

Rarely do the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court— preoccupied with their personal politics, cocooned in a world of privilege, partial to those with power, money and influence, and narrowly focused on a shrinking docket (the court accepts on average 80 cases out of 8,000 each year)—venture beyond their rarefied comfort zones.

Every so often, the justices toss a bone to those who fear they have abdicated their allegiance to the Constitution. Too often, however, the Supreme Court tends to march in lockstep with the police state.

In recent years, for example, the Court has ruled that police officers can use lethal force in car chases without fear of lawsuits; police officers can stop cars based only on “anonymous” tips; Secret Service agents are not accountable for their actions, as long as they’re done in the name of “security”; citizens only have a right to remain silent if they assert it; police have free reign to use drug-sniffing dogs as “search warrants on leashes,” justifying any and all police searches of vehicles stopped on the roadside; police can forcibly take your DNA, whether or not you’ve been convicted of a crime; police can stop, search, question and profile citizens and non-citizens alike; police can subject Americans to virtual strip searches, no matter the “offense”; police can break into homes without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home; and it’s a crime to not identify yourself when a policeman asks your name.

The cases the Supreme Court refuses to hear, allowing lower court judgments to stand, are almost as critical as the ones they rule on. Some of these cases have delivered devastating blows to the lives and rights enshrined in the Constitution. By remaining silent, the Court has affirmed that: legally owning a firearm is enough to justify a no-knock raid by police; the military can arrest and detain American citizens; students can be subjected to random lockdowns and mass searches at school; and police officers who don’t know their actions violate the law aren’t guilty of breaking the law.

You think you’ve got rights? Think again.

All of those freedoms we cherish—the ones enshrined in the Constitution, the ones that affirm our right to free speech and assembly, due process, privacy, bodily integrity, the right to not have police seize our property without a warrant, or search and detain us without probable cause—amount to nothing when the government and its agents are allowed to disregard those prohibitions on government overreach at will.

This is the grim reality of life in the American police state.

In fact, our so-called rights have been reduced to technicalities in the face of the government’s ongoing power grabs.

In the police state being erected around us, the police can probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts.

This is what one would call a slow death by a thousand cuts, only it’s the Fourth Amendment being inexorably bled to death by the very institution that is supposed to be protecting it (and us) from government abuse.

Remember, it was a unanimous Supreme Court which determined that police officers may use drug-sniffing dogs to conduct warrantless searches of cars during routine traffic stops. That same Court gave police the green light to taser defenseless motorists, strip search non-violent suspects arrested for minor incidents, and break down people’s front doors without evidence that they have done anything wrong.

Make no mistake about it: this is what constitutes “law and order” in the American police state.

These are the hallmarks of the emerging American police state, where police officers, no longer mere servants of the people entrusted with keeping the peace, are part of an elite ruling class dependent on keeping the masses corralled, under control, and treated like suspects and enemies rather than citizens.

Whether it’s police officers breaking through people’s front doors and shooting them dead in their homes or strip searching motorists on the side of the road, in a police state such as ours, these instances of abuse are not condemned by the government. Rather, they are continually validated by a judicial system that kowtows to every police demand, no matter how unjust, no matter how in opposition to the Constitution.

The system is rigged.

Because the system is rigged and the U.S. Supreme Court—the so-called “people’s court”—has exchanged its appointed role as a gatekeeper of justice for its new role as maintainer of the status quo, the police state will keep winning and “we the people” will keep losing.

By refusing to accept any of the eight or so qualified immunity cases before it this past term that strove to hold police accountable for official misconduct, the Supreme Court delivered a chilling reminder that in the American police state, ‘we the people’ are at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to ‘serve and protect.”

This is how qualified immunity keeps the police state in power.

Lawyers tend to offer a lot of complicated, convoluted explanations for the doctrine of qualified immunity, which was intended to insulate government officials from frivolous lawsuits, but the real purpose of qualified immunity is to rig the system, ensuring that abusive agents of the government almost always win and the victims of government abuse almost always lose.

How else do you explain a doctrine that requires victims of police violence to prove that their abusers knew their behavior was illegal because it had been deemed so in a nearly identical case at some prior time?

It’s a setup for failure.

A review of critical court rulings over the past several decades, including rulings affirming qualified immunity protections for government agents by the U.S. Supreme Court, reveals a startling and steady trend towards pro-police state rulings by an institution concerned more with establishing order, protecting the ruling class, and insulating government agents from charges of wrongdoing than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution.

Indeed, as Reuters reports, qualified immunity “has become a nearly failsafe tool to let police brutality go unpunished and deny victims their constitutional rights.”

Worse, as Reuters concluded, “the Supreme Court has built qualified immunity into an often insurmountable police defense by intervening in cases mostly to favor the police.”

For those in need of a reminder of all the ways in which the Supreme Court has made us sitting ducks at the mercy of the American police state, let me offer the following.

As a result of court rulings in recent years, police can claim qualified immunity for warrantless searches. Police can claim qualified immunity for warrantless arrests based on mere suspicion. Police can claim qualified immunity for using excessive force against protesters. Police can claim qualified immunity for shooting a fleeing suspect in the back. Police can claim qualified immunity for shooting a mentally impaired person. Police officers can use lethal force in car chases without fear of lawsuits. Police can stop, arrest and search citizens without reasonable suspicion or probable cause.  Police officers can stop cars based on “anonymous” tips or for “suspicious” behavior such as having a reclined car seat or driving too carefully. Police can forcibly take your DNA, whether or not you’ve been convicted of a crime.  Police can use the “fear for my life” rationale as an excuse for shooting unarmed individuals. Police have free reign to use drug-sniffing dogs as “search warrants on leashes.” Not only are police largely protected by qualified immunity, but police dogs are also off the hook for wrongdoing.

Police can subject Americans to strip searches, no matter the “offense.” Police can break into homes without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home. Police can use knock-and-talk tactics as a means of sidestepping the Fourth Amendment. Police can carry out no-knock raids if they believe announcing themselves would be dangerous. Police can recklessly open fire on anyone that might be “armed.” Police can destroy a home during a SWAT raid, even if the owner gives their consent to enter and search it. Police can suffocate someone, deliberately or inadvertently, in the process of subduing them.

To sum it up, we are dealing with a nationwide epidemic of court-sanctioned police violence carried out with impunity against individuals posing little or no real threat. In this way, the justices of the United States Supreme Court—through their deference to police power, preference for security over freedom, and evisceration of our most basic rights for the sake of order and expediency—have become the architects of the American police state.

So where does that leave us?

For those deluded enough to believe that they’re living the American dream—where the government represents the people, where the people are equal in the eyes of the law, where the courts are arbiters of justice, where the police are keepers of the peace, and where the law is applied equally as a means of protecting the rights of the people—it’s time to wake up.

We no longer have a representative government, a rule of law, or justice.

Liberty has fallen to legalism. Freedom has fallen to fascism.

Justice has become jaded, jaundiced and just plain unjust.

And for too many, the American dream of freedom and opportunity has turned into a living nightmare.

Given the turbulence of our age, with its police overreach, military training drills on American soil, domestic surveillance, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, wrongful convictions, profit-driven prisons, and corporate corruption, the need for a guardian of the people’s rights has never been greater.

Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People,, neither the president, nor the legislatures, nor the courts will save us from the police state that holds us in its clutches.

So we can waste our strength over the next few weeks and months raging over the makeup of the Supreme Court or we can stand united against the tyrant in our midst.

After all, the president, the legislatures, and the courts are all on the government’s payroll.

They are the police state.

*

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

The Anglo-Australian multinational company Rio Tinto – the largest iron ore mining company in the world – demolished two 46,000-year-old Aboriginal rock shelters in May. What is particularly disturbing about this event is that Rio Tinto was apparently acting entirely within the law, which is to say that this kind of tragic and wanton destruction will continue to happen unless stricter regulations are enacted. The sites were located on the ancestral lands of the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura, or PKKP, people in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Anthropological studies commissioned by Rio Tinto itself confirmed that the caves were of “the highest archaeological significance,” containing an “enormous museum of information about [the PKKP people’s] ancestors’ work and lives.”

The conflict between industry and heritage that we are witnessing today is of course not a new phenomenon. Indeed, in Australia, it has been a persistent problem since at least the early 1960s when the mining and extraction of iron ore in the Pilbara region began. But the struggle can and should be seen also within the larger context of the marginalization, subjugation and decimation of the Aboriginal peoples that has been the story of their ongoing plight since 1788 when British settlers began colonizing the Australian mainland. Not until 1965 did most Aboriginal Australians enjoy full citizenship or voting rights; and it would take six more years before they were included on the national census. Australia’s indigenous people constitute only two percent of the population and yet are 28 percent of Australia’s prisoner demographic.

The unrelenting destruction of indigenous heritage sites is entirely consistent with the same ideology that has driven Australia’s aggressive campaign of deforestation. Both are expressions of one and the same policy of uncompromising colonization. Over the last 200 years Australia has lost 25 percent of its rainforest, 45 percent of open forest, and 32 percent of woodland forest. In fact, among developed countries Australia has one of the highest rates of deforestation, which has led to the annihilation of much of its native wildlife. Twenty percent of Australia’s mammals, 7 percent of its reptiles, and 13 percent of its birds are listed as extinct, endangered or vulnerable. According to wilderness.org.au, 1,000 plant and animal species are presently at risk of extinction.

The obliteration of the Juukan Gorge caves certainly represents a devastating loss to the PKKP – but it is a tragic loss for the world as well. These rock shelters fostered our understanding the human beginnings of art, religion and culture, indeed the dawn of humanity’s self-awareness – yet, as anthropologist Marcia Langton observed, “their significance for further understanding of deep human history is a matter that was willfully ignored by Rio Tinto.” What consequences did Rio Tinto suffer for its recklessness? Several of its executives will lose their bonuses, totaling roughly $6.7 million (USD 4.9 million) – a mere slap on the wrist which in the absence of legislation will do nothing to protect the few similar sites that remain.

Mining Company Rio Tinto Blows Up 46,000-Year-Old Aboriginal Sacred Caves In Western Australia - UNILAD

Source: Unilad

Dr Lawrence Owens, an archaeologist and anthropologist from the University of London, told Mining Technology,

“There is no other way of putting this – the destruction of Juukan Gorge cave was a travesty and a disgrace.” He added, “It is difficult to fully express the magnitude of what this site was, what it meant, and how its destruction has impacted upon us all.”

The caves that Rio Tinto blasted have been understandably compared to Stonehenge which is some 5,000 years old – yet the comparison does not really do justice to what we lost, given that this site was nearly ten times older than that. Moreover, unlike Stonehenge which belongs entirely to a bygone era, these caves have been continually occupied by the same peoples, generation after generation, over these tens of thousands of years. They were a kind of “encyclopedia of the Aboriginal people.”

One of the most precious and astounding discoveries in the cave was a 4,000-year-old length of plaited human hair, woven together from strands from the heads of several different people. This remarkable find established through DNA testing a direct link to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura traditional owners living today.

Rio Tinto received permission to conduct the blasts in 2013 under Section 18 of the WA Aboriginal Heritage Act.  It is an offence under Section 17 of the Aboriginal Heritage Act (AHA) of 1972 to excavate, destroy, damage, conceal or in any way alter an Aboriginal site. However, under Section 18 landowners may apply for consent to breach the restrictions established under Section 17. Accordingly, Rio Tinto was not operating illegally or flouting the law.

David Ritter, former principal legal officer for the Yamatji Land and Sea Council, observed that,

“It is a myth, expressed by the objects of the Aboriginal Heritage Act that the main purpose of the legislation is to protect Aboriginal heritage. It may be more accurate to describe the AHA as an act to regularize the obliteration of Aboriginal heritage… It is legislation by the non-Indigenous community for the non-Indigenous community that creates a superficial veneer of protection for Indigenous interests. The result is that the colonizing power can continue to do with Aboriginal places and materials exactly as it wants.”

We know that this desecration could have been avoided altogether because during a federal parliamentary inquiry, Rio Tinto’s CEO, Jean-Sebastien Jacques stated that there were four options to expand the iron ore mine in the area. Three of the options would have avoided the rock shelters, but the mining company chose the more destructive alternative as it allowed them to extract $135 million (USD 97 million) worth of iron ore, a profit that exceeded the other choices. They opted for the route that allowed the company to mine “8 million tonnes of higher-grade iron ore,” according to Mr. Jacques.

It has long been recognized that Australian laws do not adequately protect Aboriginal heritage sites. The Dampier Archipelago of Western Australia is home to thousands of Aboriginal pictographs, and perhaps the oldest surviving rock art in the world. Indeed, Australia’s Indigenous art represents the longest uninterrupted tradition of art in the world – going back over 50,000 years – with examples having been found that depict long-extinct megafauna; including the Thyalacine (Tasmanian tiger) and Fat-tailed Kangaroo. Representations of the now-extinct marsupial lion have also been found in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.

The extraordinary rock art of the Dampier Archipelago easily constitutes the largest and most diverse gallery of petroglyphs in the world. Recent archeological research confirms that the Dampier Archipelago and Burrup Peninsula (formerly known as Dampier Island) contains the largest concentration of ancient rock art in the world. However, the rock art of the Burrup Peninsula has been physically destroyed by construction and eroded by industrial emissions, continually “under threat due to high concentrations of acidic and nitrate-rich pollution from nearby industrial complexes,” according to a 2017 report published by the Journal of Archeological Science.

What we know is that the cultural and scientific significance of the rock art is comparable to ‘such world-renowned prehistoric art galleries as the caves of Lascaux in the Dordogne, and Altamira in northern Spain’. The tragedy is that we are losing the cultural riches of these region before we have had a chance to truly understand their significance – for, as a 2006 report prepared for the National Trust of Australia (WA) states, “numerous petroglyphs and other archaeological features have been destroyed and a significant portion of the extraordinary heritage of the Dampier Archipelago has been irretrievably compromised without any clear understanding of what has been lost.”

Aboriginal people represent the oldest continuous culture in the world – adequate protection of that culture will be encouraged when we respect and appreciate the wisdom of the Aboriginal people and their genius for ‘living with and fostering their environment.’ We may, for example, view Aboriginal rock art as disrupting the dualistic, Cartesian view of landscape, offering instead an embodied approach which recognizes that we “do not live in an environment. Such a position immediately posits our separation. Rather we have an environment and we are part of it and it is part of us… We are… immersed.” In Animism: Respecting the Living World (2005), Graham Harvey observes that, “[W]e have far too many experiences of the aliveness of the world and the importance of a diversity of life to fall in step completely with Cartesian modernity.” We need to broaden the interpretative lens with which we view Aboriginal rock art and see that in fact it represents an important challenge, and possibly a corrective to an overly dualistic ontology, which pits nature versus culture, mind versus body and human versus non-human.

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Sam Ben-Meir is a professor of philosophy and world religions at Mercy College in New York City.

Alt-right media personality Cassandra Fairbanks’ witness testimony was read out in court yesterday, providing evidence that Julian Assange’s April 2019 arrest at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London was politically motivated and directed by United States President Donald Trump.

Fairbanks testified that Arthur Schwartz, a wealthy Republican Party donor and key Trump ally, had told her that Assange was taken from the Ecuadorian Embassy “on orders from the president.” The conversation between Schwartz and Fairbanks occurred in September 2019 and was recorded by Fairbanks.

Schwartz, a frequent visitor to the White House and “informal adviser” or “fixer” to Donald Trump Jr., told Fairbanks the president’s orders were conveyed via US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, who brokered a deal with the Ecuadorian government for Assange’s removal. Grenell is currently director of national intelligence (acting), appointed by Trump in February this year.

Assange’s lawyer, Edward Fitzgerald QC, spelled out the significance of Fairbanks’ disclosures, telling Judge Vanessa Baraitser they were, “evidence of the declared intentions of those at the top who planned the prosecution and the eviction from the embassy.”

Fairbanks, who writes for the pro-Trump Gateway Pundit, is a prominent Assange supporter who visited the WikiLeaks founder at the Embassy on two key occasions. Her evidence was read into proceedings yesterday afternoon unopposed, with Fitzgerald explaining, “My learned friend [James Lewis QC for the prosecution] reserves the right to say ‘because she’s a supporter of Julian Assange you must take that into account in weighing her evidence.’ But we say [her evidence] is true.”

Given her close connections to leading figures in the Trump administration’s fascistic entourage, Fairbanks is uniquely positioned to expose key aspects of the politically motivated vendetta against the WikiLeaks founder. Throughout the extradition hearing, lawyers for the US government have repeatedly claimed the charges against Assange under the Espionage Act are motivated by “criminal justice concerns” and are “not political.”

 Police ejecting Julian Assange from Ecuadorian embassy in London, April 11, 2019. (YouTube)

Fairbanks’ evidence shreds the official narrative of the Department of Justice (DoJ) that Assange was arrested on April 11, 2019 in relation to “hacking.” In a phone call with Schwartz on October 30, 2018, he made clear that Assange would be arrested as political payback for his role in “the Manning case,” i.e., the disclosure by US Army whistle-blower Chelsea Manning of US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“He also told me that they would be going after Chelsea Manning,” Fairbanks recalled of her October 2018 phone conversation with Schwartz. This was one of several predictions by the Trump insider that were soon confirmed (Manning was re-arrested in March 2019), with Fairbanks concluding, “He knew very specific details about a future prosecution [of Assange] … that only those close to the situation then would have known.”

Fairbanks’ testimony provided chilling evidence of plans by the Trump administration to impose the death penalty. In his October 2018 phone call with Fairbanks, Schwartz said Assange would “probably” only serve life in prison, but went on to qualify this,

“He told me that the US government has said they will not pursue the death penalty, something that would have prevented the UK and Ecuador from extraditing him here.”

Less than six months later, just hours after Assange’s seizure from the embassy, Fairbanks again messaged Schwartz to ask if he “knew anything.”

“He responded with a series of messages about how Assange deserved a lethal injection and how both he and Manning should die in prison.” Further, “He sent me lots of messages about how everyone involved with WikiLeaks deserved the death penalty. I noted in our conversation that it had been reported that Grenell only got a verbal agreement that there would be no death penalty, nothing in writing. Schwartz’s response to this was to send me a shrug emoji and he continued his tirade about how Assange deserved to die.”

On January 7, 2019, Fairbanks travelled to London to warn Assange of US plans to seize him from the embassy and have him extradited to the US. They discussed quietly, Assange using “a little radio to cover up the conversation.” They exchanged written notes.

Fairbanks’ testimony recounts the extraordinary measures they faced during a second two-hour visit on March 25. She was left alone in a cold room for a full hour, while Assange was kept outside and subjected to a “full body scan with a metal detector” before being let in. The pair had only two minutes to talk. Fairbanks is later made to understand the reason for this aborted visit after Schwartz “called and informed me that he knew I had told Assange” during the earlier visit.

Fairbanks’ testimony provides insight into the criminal underworld surrounding the White House. After Trump fires National Security Adviser John Bolton and Grenell’s name is floated as a replacement, Fairbanks tweets about his involvement in Assange’s arrest, which elicits a “frantic” call from Schwartz.

“He was ranting and raving that he could go to jail and that I was tweeting ‘classified information’… Schwartz informed me that in coordinating for Assange to be removed from the embassy, Grenell had done so on ‘direct orders from the president’” and that “other persons who Schwartz said might also be affected included individuals who he described as ‘lifelong friends’.”

These individuals included Grenell and Las Vegas Sands boss and long-time Trump ally Sheldon Adelson.

In the first half of the day, Professor Christian Grothoff of the Bern University of Applied Sciences testified to the chronology of events leading up to the bulk release of unredacted US State Department cables in September 2011. He is a computer scientist with experience reporting on the Edward Snowden revelations. His evidence demolished the prosecution’s claim that Assange and WikiLeaks were responsible for this mass disclosure.

Grothoff explained that the cables were stored online by WikiLeaks and “encrypted with a cipher that made it basically useless to anybody that did not have the encryption key.” This was, he said, common practice when dealing with sensitive data that is too large to be sent between trusted parties by encrypted email.

When the WikiLeaks website came under attack in late 2010, limiting access to it, copies of the site began to be created by third parties. A minority of these third parties copied the encrypted documents, contrary to WikiLeaks’ instructions.

One of the people given the encryption key to these documents was Guardian journalist David Leigh. In February 2011, he and fellow Guardian writer Luke Harding published a book titled WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assanges War on Secrecy, in which the key was revealed in full.

By late August 2011, the connection between Leigh’s key and the encrypted documents posted on copies of the WikiLeaks website, but outside of WikiLeaks’ control, was reported. On August 31 and September 1, the cables began to be published on sites like Cryptome and Pirate Bay. Only afterwards, on September 2, did WikiLeaks publish the cables, explaining their reasons in an editorial:

“Revolutions and reforms are in danger of being lost as the unpublished cables spread to intelligence contractors and governments before the public. The Arab Spring would not have started in the manner it did if the Tunisian government of Ben Ali had copies of those WikiLeaks releases which helped to take down his government.”

Grothoff’s testimony highlighted the central role played by David Leigh in these events. He explained, “As far as I can tell Mr. Leigh was one of the very few given access to the full set [of cables].” Assange, Grothoff said, based on the account provided by Leigh’s own book, was “very reluctant” to give the Guardian journalist this access. Substantiating that point, Summers referred to a section of Leigh’s book which reads:

“[Leigh] asked Assange to stop procrastinating and hand over the biggest trove of all: the cables. Assange said, ‘I can give you half of them containing the first 50 percent’ and Leigh refused. All or nothing, he said. ‘What happens if you end up in an orange jumpsuit en route to Guantánamo before you can release the full files?’… Eventually, Assange capitulated.”

In another section of the book, referred to by the prosecution, Leigh describes how “It had been a struggle to prise these documents out of Assange.” Just six months later, with WikiLeaks engaged in a long process of publishing safe and redacted documents with media partners around the world, Leigh published the password to the full online store of classified, unredacted cables.

Speaking outside the court, Assange’s father, John Shipton, said,

“Today we had the prosecution trying to prove that water runs uphill and up is down. … The defence replied and conclusively demonstrated that it was David Leigh [who caused the unredacted cables to be released]. We can only conclude from the amount of time that the prosecution spent defending David Leigh that David Leigh is a state asset.”

At the end of the hearing’s morning session, an exchange between District Judge Vanessa Baraitser and the legal teams pointed to further restrictions being imposed on the defence’s ability to present its case.

Seizing on the delays caused by a potential COVID-19 outbreak in the first week of the hearing, Baraitser insisted that the defence prepare a timetable that allowed the hearing to “finish within two weeks.” When the defence replied that this would leave no time for closing submissions, she reacted enthusiastically to the suggestion of prosecution lawyer James Lewis QC that these could be submitted in written form and summarised in just half a day each for the prosecution and the defence. A final decision is forthcoming.

The hearing continues today.

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This month, Dr. Ronald B. Brown had a daring paper published in Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, conservatively entitled Public health lessons learned from biases in coronavirus mortality overestimation (Cambridge University Press)

“The subject of this article is disruptive, to say the least, although it is not as obvious from the title,” Dr. Brown told me in an email.

“The manuscript cites the smoking-gun, documented evidence showing that the public’s overreaction to the coronavirus pandemic was based on the worst miscalculation in the history of humanity, in my opinion. My manuscript underwent an intensive peer-review process. You are the first media guy who has responded to my invitation.”

It’s sadly no surprise the media has not kept Dr. Brown’s phone ringing with interview requests. The abstract, in itself, contains a firecracker where he says:

“Results of this critical appraisal reveal information bias and selection bias in coronavirus mortality overestimation, most likely caused by misclassifying an influenza infection fatality rate (IFR) as a case fatality rate (CFR).”

Is that not what we’ve seen? The number of people they said would be buried in mass COVID-19 graves better reflects how many people simply ended up with a cough and fever.

Dr. Brown added that CDC and WHO documents show that the case fatality rate for influenza was similar to the coronavirus, implying that the lockdowns were pointless. His paper questions why the 2017-2018 influenza season in the United States did not “receive the same intensive media coverage as COVID-19.”

He points out that “the accuracy of coronavirus tests rushed into production during the pandemic were unknown.” And he explores how the media began focusing on an increase in coronavirus cases while ignoring the decrease in death rates.

Much of the article looks at how lockdowns and anti-social distancing probably had little or no effect on reducing COVID-19 deaths. He says that “the public’s belief that mitigation measures were responsible for reducing coronavirus mortality may be a post hoc fallacy if lower mortality was actually due to the overestimation of coronavirus deaths.”

Speaking on the damage done by the counter-measures, Brown writes:

“The ethics of implementing fear-based public health campaigns needs to be reevaluated for the potential harm these strategies can cause.”

His report includes this mind-map on how we were all mind-warped:

You can read Brown’s full paper at Cambridge University Press. It succinctly dismisses the notion that the corona craze has anything to do with welfare of the people. As Albert Camus warned: “The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.”

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John C. A. Manley has spent over a decade ghostwriting for medical doctors, as well as naturopaths, chiropractors and Ayurvedic physicians. He publishes the COVID-19(84) Red Pill Posts – an email-based newsletter dedicated to preventing the governments of the world from using an exaggerated pandemic as an excuse to violate our freedom, health, privacy, livelihood and humanity. He is also writing a novel, COVID-27: A Dystopian Love Story. You can visit his website at: MuchAdoAboutCorona.ca

If the Democrats manage to push Joe Biden over the finish line in November’s election, he will find himself presiding over a decadent, declining empire. He will either continue the policies that have led the American empire to decadence and decline, or seize the moment to move our nation into a new phase: a transition to a peaceful and sustainable post-imperial future.

The foreign policy team Biden assembles will be key, including his choice for Secretary of Defense. But Biden’s rumored favorite, Michele Flournoy, is not the gal for this historic moment. Yes, she would break the glass ceiling as the first female Secretary of Defense, but, as one of the architects of our endless wars and record military budgets, she would only help to steer the American empire farther down its current path of lost wars, corrupt militarism and terminal decline.

In 1976, General John Glubb, the retired British commander of Jordan’s Arab Legion, wrote a little booklet titled The Fate of Empires. Glubb observed how each of the world’s empires evolved through six stages, which he called: the Age of Pioneers; the Age of Conquests; the Age of Commerce; the Age of Affluence; the Age of Intellect; and the Age of Decadence and Decline. Despite enormous differences in technology, politics and culture between empires and eras, from the Assyrians (859-612 B.C.) to the British (1700-1950 C.E.), the whole process in each and every case took about 250 years.

Americans can count the years from 1776, and few of us would deny that the American empire is in its Age of Decadence and Decline, riven by the very traits that Glubb identified for this stage, including systemic, normalized corruption, internal political hatreds, and a fascination with celebrity for its own sake.

The decline of an empire is rarely peaceful, but it does not always involve the invasion, destruction or collapse of the imperial heartland, as long as its leaders eventually face up to reality and manage the transition wisely. So it is tragic that the 2020 presidential election offers us a choice between two major party candidates uniquely unqualified to manage America’s post-imperial transition, both making vain promises to restore mythical versions of America’s past, instead of drawing up serious plans for a peaceful, sustainable and broadly prosperous post-imperial future.

Trump and his “Make America Great Again” represent the epitome of imperial hubris, while Biden pushes the time-worn idea that America should be “back at the head of the table” internationally, as if America’s neocolonial empire was still in its prime. With enough pressure from the public, Biden might be persuaded to start cutting the imperial military budget to invest in our real needs, from Medicare For All to a Green New Deal. But that’s unlikely if he picks Michele Flournoy, a die-hard militarist who has played instrumental roles in America’s failed wars and catastrophic imperial adventures since the 1990s.

Let’s look at her record:

As Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy under President Clinton, Flournoy was the principal author of the May 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which laid the ideological foundation for the endless wars that followed. Under “Defense Strategy,” the QDR effectively announced that the United States would no longer be bound by the UN Charter’s prohibition against the threat or use of military force. It declared that, “when the interests at stake are vital, …we should do whatever it takes to defend them, including, when necessary, the unilateral use of military power.”

The QDR defined U.S. vital interests to include “preventing the emergence of a hostile regional coalition” anywhere on Earth and “ensuring uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies and strategic resources.” By framing the unilateral and illegal use of military force all over the world as “defending vital interests,” the QDR presented what international law defines as aggression, the “supreme international crime” according to the judges at Nuremberg, as a form of “defense.”

Flournoy’s career has been marked by the unethical spinning of revolving doors between the Pentagon, consulting firms helping businesses procure Pentagon contracts, and military-industrial think tanks like the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), which she co-founded in 2007.

In 2009, she joined the Obama administration as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, where she helped engineer political and humanitarian disasters in Libya and Syria and a new escalation of the endless war in Afghanistan before resigning in 2012. From 2013-2016, she joined Boston Consulting, trading on her Pentagon connections to boost the firm’s military contracts from $1.6 million in 2013 to $32 million in 2016. By 2017, Flourney herself was raking in $452,000 a year.

In 2017, Flournoy and Obama’s Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken founded their own corporate consulting business, WestExec Advisors, where Flournoy continued to cash in on her contacts by helping companies successfully navigate the complex bureaucracy of winning enormous Pentagon contracts.

She obviously has no compunction about enriching herself off of taxpayer money, but what about her actual foreign policy positions? Given that her jobs in the Clinton and Obama administrations were behind-the-scenes strategy and policy positions, she is not widely blamed for specific military disasters.

But the articles, papers and reports that Flournoy and CNAS have published for two decades reveal that she suffers from the same chronic malady as the rest of the Washington foreign policy “blob.” She pays lip service to diplomacy and multilateralism, but when she has to recommend a policy for a specific problem, she consistently supports the uses of military force that she set out to politically legitimize in the 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). When the chips are down, she is one more military-industrial hammer-banger to whom every problem looks like a nail waiting to be whacked by a trillion-dollar, high-tech hammer.

In June 2002, as Bush and his gang threatened aggression against Iraq, Flournoy told the Washington Post that the United States would “need to strike preemptively before a crisis erupts to destroy an adversary’s weapons stockpile” before it “could erect defenses to protect those weapons, or simply disperse them.” When Bush unveiled his official “doctrine of preemption” a few months later, Senator Edward Kennedy wisely condemned it as “unilateralism run amok” and “a call for 21st century American imperialism that no other country can or should accept.”

In 2003, as the ugly reality of “preemptive war” plunged Iraq into intractable violence and chaos, Flournoy and a team of Democratic hawks co-authored a paper titled “Progressive Internationalism” to define a “smarter and better” brand of militarism for the Democratic Party for the 2004 election. While portrayed as a path between the neo-imperial right and the non-interventionist left, it asserted that “Democrats will maintain the world’s most capable and technologically advanced military, and we will not flinch from using it to defend our interests anywhere in the world.”

In January 2005, as the violence and chaos of the hostile military occupation of Iraq spun farther out of control, Flournoy signed onto a letter from the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) asking Congress to “increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps (by) at least 25,000 troops each year over the next several years.” In 2007, Flournoy supported keeping a “residual force” of 60,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and in 2008, she co-authored a paper proposing a policy of “Conditional Engagement” in Iraq, which Brian Katulis at the Center for American Progress dubbed “an excuse to stay in Iraq” that “poses as an exit strategy.”

As Obama’s Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, she was a hawkish voice for escalation in Afghanistan and war on Libya. She resigned in February 2012, leaving others to clean up the mess. In February 2013, when Obama brought in Chuck Hagel as a relatively dovish reformer to replace Leon Panetta as Defense Secretary, right-wing figures opposed to his planned reforms, including Paul Wolfowitz and William Kristol, backed Flournoy as a hawkish alternative.

In 2016, Flournoy was tipped as Hillary Clinton’s choice for Secretary of Defense, and she co-authored a CNAS report titled “Expanding American Power” with a team of hawks that included former Cheney aide Eric Edelman, PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan and Bush’s National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. The report was seen as a view of how Clinton’s foreign policy would differ from Obama’s, with calls for higher military spending, arms shipments to Ukraine, renewed military threats against Iran, more aggressive military action in Syria and Iraq, and further increases to domestic oil and gas production—all of which Trump has adopted.

In 2019, four years into the catastrophic war in Yemen when Congress was trying to stop US participation and halt weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, Flournoy argued against a weapons ban.

Flournoy’s hawkish views are particularly worrisome when it comes to China. In June 2020, she wrote an article in Foreign Affairs in which she spun an absurd argument that an even more aggressive U.S. military presence in the seas and skies around China would make war less rather than more likely by intimidating China into limiting its military presence in its own backyard. Her article simply recycles the tired old device of framing every U.S. military action as “deterrence” and every enemy action as “aggression.”

Flournoy claims that “Washington has not delivered on its promised ‘pivot’ to Asia,” and that U.S. troop levels in the region remain similar to what they were a decade ago. But this obscures the fact that U.S. troops in East Asia have increased by 9,600 since 2010, from 96,000 to 105,600. Total U.S. troop deployments abroad have shrunk from 450,000 to 224,000 during this time, so the proportion of U.S. overseas forces allocated to East Asia has in fact increased from 21% to 47%.

Flournoy also neglects to mention that Trump has already increased the number of U.S. troops in East Asia by over 23,000 since 2016. So, just as she did in 2004, 2008 and 2016, Flournoy is simply repackaging neoconservative and Republican policies to sell to the Democrats, to ensure that a new Democratic president keeps the United States wedded to war, militarism and endless profits for the military-industrial complex.

So it is no surprise that Flournoy’s solution to what she presents as a growing threat from China is to invest in a new generation of weapons, including hypersonic and long-range precision missiles and more high-tech unmanned systems. She even suggests that the U.S. goal in this budget-busting arms race could be to invent, produce and deploy currently non-existent weapons to sink China’s entire navy and civilian merchant fleet (a flagrant war crime) in the first 72 hours of a war.

This is only one part of Flournoy’s larger plan for transforming the U.S. military through trillion-dollar long-term investments in new weapons technology, building on Trump’s already huge increase in Pentagon R & D spending.

In a September 10th interview with the Stars and Stripes military website, Joe Biden appeared to have already swallowed heavy doses of Flournoy’s Kool-Aid to wash down Trump’s Cold War. Biden said he does not foresee major reductions in the military budget “as the military refocuses its attention to potential threats from ‘near-peer’ powers such as China and Russia.”

Biden added, “I’ve met with a number of my advisors and some have suggested in certain areas the (military) budget is going to have to be increased.” We would remind Biden that he hired these unnamed advisors to advise him, not to predetermine the decisions of a candidate who still has to convince the American public he is the leader we need at this difficult time in our history.

Picking Michelle Flournoy to lead the Pentagon would be a tragic indication that Biden is truly hell-bent on squandering America’s future on a debilitating arms race with China and Russia and a futile, potentially catastrophic bid to resurrect America’s declining imperial power.

With our economy–and our lives–devastated by a pandemic, with climate chaos and nuclear war threatening the future of human life on this planet, we are in desperate need of real leaders to navigate and guide America through a difficult transition to a peaceful, prosperous post-imperial future. Michele Flournoy is not one of them.

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Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace and author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK, and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

Featured image: Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele A. Flournoy. DoD photo by Gregory Jones, U.S. Army. (Released)

International Day of Peace: Without Justice, There will be no Peace

September 22nd, 2020 by Black Alliance for Peace

Since 1981, September 21st has been used to focus and re-dedicate global efforts toward achieving peace. But like many days created by the United Nations and global civil society to reflect the highest values and aspirations of collective humanity, the struggle for peace has been soiled by the moral hypocrisy of global oppressors.

Those states see peace as a threat. In the United States, 83-year-old Dr. W.E.B. Dubois was branded a criminal in 1951 for being the director of the Peace Information Center. In 1967, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. asserted racism, materialism and militarism were maladies of U.S. society that, if not corrected, would result in a spiritual death for the United States. When the Black Liberation Movement embraced an anti-imperialist and anti-war position and Dr. King correctly identified the United States as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, brutal repression took place—his life was taken and the movement was smashed. Today, peace activists and the peace movement are relegated to the fringes of political discourse, making direct repression unnecessary.

But, as Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton said, you can kill a revolutionary, but you can’t kill the revolution. The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) took up the historic task to fight for peace and human rights on April 4, 2017, exactly 50 years after Dr. King broke his silence on Vietnam.

We are committed to peace. But we say without equivocation or apology that without justice, there will be no peace—and for justice, we must fight for it. What compels us to resist? We see in the United States and around the world the barbarism of war, repression and imperialism. We see the structural violence of capitalism dramatically revealed by the coronavirus pandemic. We see the oligarchy’s cavalier disregard for human life has unsealed for the public a deeper level of understanding of what it has to mean to be anti-war.

So today, we celebrate the aspiration we all have for peace by re-dedicating ourselves to this cause: Extricating the power to wage war against humanity from those rogue states lorded over by the world’s rapacious, white-supremacist colonial/capitalist minority.

We say end the war in Afghanistan and prosecute the war criminals in the Obama and Trump administrations that provided weapons of war to the fascist Saudi state to wage genocidal war in Yemen. Say no to the new cold war with China, shut down the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and close the estimated 800 to 1,000 U.S. military bases around the world.

Peace, human cooperation, substantive equality and commitment to People(s)-Centered Human Rights are possible. These values represent the only rational basis for sustaining human life on the planet. Join us at 4 p.m., EST, September 24, for our webinar, Full Spectrum Dominance: From AFRICOM to Indo-Pacific Command, where we will discuss and strategize on how we can put a brake on the global bi-partisan war machine.

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Bob Woodward’s new insider account of the Trump administration, ‘Rage’, details the multi-faceted controversies surrounding President Trump’s approach to governance – none more so than his relationship with the military.

Bob Woodward is a legendary reporter whose talent for getting insiders to speak about the most sensitive matters in government dates back to Watergate and the Nixon presidency. His most recent presidential expose, ‘Rage’, touches on a wide range of controversies, from the coronavirus pandemic to issues relating to war, and the promise of war.

It is Trump’s tortured relationship with the military that stands out the most, especially as told through the eyes of former Secretary of Defense Jim ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, a retired marine general. It is clear that Bob Woodward spent hours speaking with Mattis – the insights, emotions and internal voice captured in the book show a level of intimacy that could only be reached through in-depth interviews, and Woodward has a well-earned reputation for getting people to speak to him.

The book makes it clear that Mattis viewed Trump as a threat to the US’ standing as the defender of a rules-based order – built on the back of decades-old alliances – that had been in place since the end of the Second World War.

It also makes it clear that Mattis and the military officers he oversaw placed defending this order above implementing the will of the American people, as expressed through the free and fair election that elevated Donald Trump to the position of commander-in-chief. In short, Mattis and his coterie of generals knew best, and when the president dared issue an order or instruction that conflicted with their vision of how the world should work, they would do their best to undermine this order, all the while confirming to the president that it was being followed.

The military is trapped in an inherited reality divorced from the present

This trend was on display in Woodward’s telling of Trump’s efforts to forge better relations with North Korea. At every turn, Mattis and his military commanders sought to isolate the president from the reality on the ground, briefing him only on what they thought he needed to know, and keeping him in the dark about what was really going on.

In a telling passage, Woodward takes us into the mind of Jim Mattis as he contemplates the horrors of a nuclear war with North Korea, and the responsibility he believed he shouldered when it came to making the hard decision as to whether nuclear weapons should be used or not. Constitutionally, the decision was the president’s alone to make, something Mattis begrudgingly acknowledges. But in Mattis’ world, he, as secretary of defense, would be the one who influenced that decision.

Mattis, along with the other general officers described by Woodward, is clearly gripped with what can only be described as the ‘Military Messiah Syndrome’.

What defines this ‘syndrome’ is perhaps best captured in the words of Emma Sky, the female peace activist-turned adviser to General Ray Odierno, the one-time commander of US forces in Iraq. In a frank give-and-take captured by Ms. Sky in her book ‘The Unravelling’, Odierno spoke of the value he placed on the military’s willingness to defend “freedom” anywhere in the world. “There is,” he said, “no one who understands more the importance of liberty and freedom in all its forms than those who travel the world to defend it.”

Ms. Sky responded in typically direct fashion: “One day, I will have you admit that the [Iraq] war was a bad idea, that the administration was led by a radical neocon program, that the US’s standing in the world has gone down greatly, and that we are far less safe than we were before 9/11.

Odierno would have nothing of it. “It will never happen while I’m the commander of soldiers in Iraq.”

To lead soldiers in battle,” Ms. Sky noted, “a commander had to believe in the cause.” Left unsaid was the obvious: even if the cause was morally and intellectually unsound.

This, more than anything, is the most dangerous thing about the ‘Military Messiah Syndrome’ as captured by Bob Woodward – the fact that the military is trapped in an inherited reality divorced from the present, driven by precepts which have nothing to with what is, but rather by what the military commanders believe should be. The unyielding notion that the US military is a force for good becomes little more than meaningless drivel when juxtaposed with the reality that the mission being executed is inherently wrong.

The ‘Military Messiah Syndrome’ lends itself to dishonesty and, worse, to self-delusion. It is one thing to lie; it is another altogether to believe the lie as truth.

No single general had the courage to tell Trump allegations against Syria were a hoax 

The cruise missile attack on Syria in early April 2017 stands out as a case in point. The attack was ordered in response to allegations that Syria had dropped a bomb containing the sarin nerve agent on a town – Khan Shaykhun – that was controlled by Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic militants.

Trump was led to believe that the 59 cruise missiles launched against Shayrat Airbase – where the Su-22 aircraft alleged to have dropped the bombs were based – destroyed Syria’s capability to carry out a similar attack in the future. When shown post-strike imagery in which the runways were clearly untouched, Trump was outraged, lashing out at Secretary of Defense Mattis in a conference call. “I can’t believe you didn’t destroy the runway!”, Woodward reports the president shouting.

Mr. President,” Mattis responds in the text, “they would rebuild the runway in 24 hours, and it would have little effect on their ability to deploy weapons. We destroyed the capability to deploy weapons” for months, Mattis said.

That was the mission the president had approved,” Woodward writes, clearly channeling Mattis, “and they had succeeded.”

The problem with this passage is that it is a lie. There is no doubt that Bob Woodward has the audio tape of Jim Mattis saying these things. But none of it is true. Mattis knew it when he spoke to Woodward, and Woodward knew it when he wrote the book.

There was no confirmed use of chemical weapons by Syria at Khan Shaykhun. Indeed, the forensic evidence available about the attack points to the incident being a false flag effort – a successful one, it turns out – on the part of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamists to provoke a US military strike against Syria. No targets related to either the production, storage or handling of chemical weapons were hit by the US cruise missiles, if for no other reason than no such targets could exist if Syria did not possess and/or use a chemical weapon against Khan Shaykhun.

Moreover, the US failed to produce a narrative of causality which provided some underlying logic to the targets that were struck at Khan Shaykhun – “Here is where the chemical weapons were stored, here is where the chemical weapons were filled, here is where the chemical weapons were loaded onto the aircraft.” Instead, 59 cruise missiles struck empty aircraft hangars, destroying derelict aircraft, and killing at least four Syrian soldiers and up to nine civilians.

The next morning, the same Su-22 aircraft that were alleged to have bombed Khan Shaykhun were once again taking off from Shayrat Air Base – less than 24 hours after the US cruise missiles struck that facility. President Trump had every reason to be outraged by the results.

But the President should have been outraged by the processes behind the attack, where military commanders, fully afflicted by ‘Military Messiah Syndrome’, offered up solutions that solved nothing for problems that did not exist. Not a single general (or admiral) had the courage to tell the president that the allegations against Syria were a hoax, and that a military response was not only not needed, but would be singularly counterproductive.

But that’s not how generals and admirals – or colonels and lieutenant colonels – are wired. That kind of introspective honesty cannot happen while they are in command.

Misleading the American public  

Bob Woodward knows this truth, but he chose not to give it a voice in his book, because to do so would disrupt the pre-scripted narrative that he had constructed, around which he bent and twisted the words of those he interviewed – including the president and Jim Mattis. As such, ‘Rage’ is, in effect, a lie built on a lie. It is one thing for politicians and those in power to manipulate the truth to their advantage. It’s something altogether different for journalists to report something as true that they know to be a lie.

On the back cover of ‘Rage’, the Pulitzer prize-winning historian Robert Caro is quoted from a speech he gave about Bob Woodward. “Bob Woodward,” Caro notes, “a great reporter. What is a great reporter? Someone who never stops trying to get as close to the truth as possible.”

After reading ‘Rage’, one cannot help but conclude the opposite – that Bob Woodward has written a volume which pointedly ignores the truth. Instead, he gives voice to a lie of his own construct, predicated on the flawed accounts of sources inflicted with ‘Military Messiah Syndrome’, whose words embrace a fantasy world populated by military members fulfilling missions far removed from the common good of their fellow citizens – and often at conflict with the stated intent and instruction of the civilian leadership they ostensibly serve. In doing so, Woodward is as complicit as the generals and former generals he quotes in misleading the American public about issues of fundamental importance.

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Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter

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September 20th marks the anniversary of the last speech John F Kennedy delivered to the United Nations’ General Assembly. This event bears more relevance upon our present crisis than most people could possibly imagine. This is true not only because it is wise to pay homage to great ideas of the past which lesser souls allowed to slip away and get buried under the sands of time, but also because history provides many of the solutions to seemingly impossible problems in our own time.

During his short speech, Kennedy outlined the very same fundamental obstacles to survival faced by our own world 57 years later: The spectre of nuclear annihilation looming overhead, poverty and the evils of colonialism staining humanity on earth, and the dominance of destructive modes of thinking which have prevented honest dialogue between the west and east who have so many common interests and yet have been blocked from acting upon them for want of creativity, understanding and faith.

Although it is far too rarely displayed in history, great leaders (those who are beholden to their consciences) recognize that there are solutions to every problem. From Plato to Cicero to Confucius and Christ in ancient times or Thomas More, Benjamin Franklin, Lincoln, and Kennedy in our modern age, these rare but vitally important individuals demonstrate through their words and deeds that when the dominant social rules of the game prevent those necessary and possible solutions from manifesting, then only one course of action becomes possible: Change the rules of the game.

The martyred Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin eloquently touched on this truth in 1992 shaking the hands with Yasser Arafat and advancing a two-state solution saying: “The future belongs to those who have the courage to change their axioms.”

Kennedy Breaks the Rules of the Great Game

Such was the case of John F. Kennedy who recognized early on in his short-lived presidency that the geopolitical “closed system” thinking dominant among the military and foreign policy experts of the west held only the seeds for humanity’s destruction. In his speech of September 20, 1963, Kennedy revisited a theme which he first unveiled on the day of his inaugural address in 1961: A joint U.S.-USSR space program to transform the rules of the Cold War and usher in a new creative age of reason, win-win cooperation and boundless discoveries.

In his 1961 inaugural speech, Kennedy ushered in the theme that would animate his next three years saying:

“Together let U.S. explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths and encourage the arts and commerce. Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the earth the command of Isaiah–to “undo the heavy burdens . . . (and) let the oppressed go free.”

Ten days later, Kennedy re-iterated this idea during his first state of the Union inviting Russia “to join with U.S. in developing… a new communication satellite program in preparation for probing the distant planets of Mars and Venus, probes which may someday unlock the deepest secrets of the universe”.

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and other leaders in the east heard these words with a mix of hope and trepidation.

The priests of the Cold War also heard these words… however hope was not among their feelings. Their hearts sank under the profound fear that the zero sum game theory models that they spent so much effort to bring online as substitutes for creative diplomacy would become obsolete in a new age of positive cooperation among sovereign nation states.

These latter priests who were then led by such figures as the State Department’s Dean Rusk, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, Joint Chiefs’ head Lyman Lemnitzer and the powerful Dulles brothers lit dangerous fires on multiple fronts in an effort to kill JFK’s vision in the cradle.

The form this attempted murder took was the Bay of Pigs Invasion of April 17-19 which was put into motion weeks before the young president had stepped into the White House. Even though Kennedy outflanked the Dr. Strangeloves among the Joint Chiefs of Staff by not providing air support for the invasion, grave damage was done to U.S.-Soviet relations. When he finally met Khrushchev on June 4, 1961 in Geneva, the president’s offer for space cooperation was rejected by the Russian leader who demanded America commit to arms reduction and other acts of good will before any positive cooperation could possibly take place.

Did Khrushchev recognize that Kennedy’s November 1961 firing of Allan Dulles and his threat to shatter the CIA into a thousand pieces demonstrated a potentially trustworthy partner during this period? We may never know for sure.

Despite these setbacks, Kennedy’s requests for joint U.S.-Russian cooperation in space went on unabated and we do know that Khruschev’s letter congratulating the USA for putting their first man into orbit conveyed a strong reciprocal hope saying on February 21, 1962:

“One more step has been taken toward mastering the cosmos and this time Lieutenant Colonel John Glenn, a citizen of the United States of America, has been added to the family of astronauts. The successful launching of spaceships signalizing the conquest of new heights in science and technology inspire legitimate pride for the limitless potentialities of the human mind to serve the welfare of humanity. It is to be hoped that the genius of man, penetrating the depth of the universe, will be able to find ways to lasting peace and ensure the prosperity of all peoples on our planet earth which, in the space age, though it does not seem so large, is still dear to all of its inhabitants.

If our countries pooled their efforts—scientific, technical and material—to master the universe, this would be very beneficial for the advance of science and would be joyfully acclaimed by all peoples who would like to see scientific achievements benefit man and not be used for “cold war” purposes and the arms race.”

On September 12, 1962 Kennedy electrified the aspirations of both Americans and the world delivering his famous “Moon Speech” at Rice University saying:

“We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war… We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

This speech and the accompanying top down federal spending needed to realize these goals ushered in a momentum and excitement which was nearly destroyed by the greatest nuclear confrontation humanity had ever faced only one month later as America and Russia nearly unleashed hell on earth during the 9 day Cuban Missile Crisis.

Although it took an immense effort, JFK overcame immense opposition from the Deep State to negotiate the test ban treaty on August 5, 1963 co-signed by the USA, the USSR, UK and joined by over 100 other nations prohibiting nuclear test explosions in the atmosphere, underwater or in outer space. By that time, word was circulating among JFK’s closest staffers that the president was planning to visit Moscow either during his presidential campaign or in the earliest moments of his 2ndterm in office.

Never content to mechanistically focus on one policy at a time, Kennedy’s holistic approach to statecraft always opened multiple flanks simultaneously which was witnessed in his October 1963 efforts to pull America out of Vietnam with his NSAM 263, as well as his efforts to bypass the Federal Reserve by issuing Silver backed treasury notes to finance his growth policies both at home and abroad. A fuller exposition of Kennedy’s battle is outlined in the class “Montreal’s Permindex and the Deep State Plot to Kill JFK”:

The September 20 Offensive for Cooperation

This brings U.S. to the decisive moment on September 20, 1963 as Kennedy gave his loudest impassionate call for a U.S.-Russian joint space program with the goal of putting a Russian and American on the Moon by the end of the decade. Kennedy opened his speech acknowledging the existential dark threat wrapped tightly over humanity saying:

“The world has not escaped from the darkness. The long shadows of conflict and crisis envelop U.S. still. But we meet today in an atmosphere of rising hope, and at a moment of comparative calm. My presence here today is not a sign of crisis, but of confidence.”

Kennedy lays out the two opposing versions of peace (negative/deterrence vs positive/win-win) and clearly described which one was the only sustainable and legitimate form compatible with natural law:

“If either of our countries is to be fully secure, we need a much better weapon than the H-bomb–a weapon better than ballistic missiles or nuclear submarines–and that better weapon is peaceful cooperation.”

The president poetically builds an understanding within his audiences’ mind to understand the possibility and necessity for positive peace conceptions that would require an end to Cold War thinking and usher in a new age of reason saying:

“In a field where the United States and the Soviet Union have a special capacity–in the field of space–there is room for new cooperation, for further joint efforts in the regulation and exploration of space. I include among these possibilities a joint expedition to the moon. Space offers no problems of sovereignty; by resolution of this Assembly, the members of the United Nations have foresworn any claim to territorial rights in outer space or on celestial bodies, and declared that international law and the United Nations Charter will apply. Why, therefore, should man’s first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition? Why should the United States and the Soviet Union, in preparing for such expeditions, become involved in immense duplications of research, construction, and expenditure? Surely we should explore whether the scientists and astronauts of our two countries–indeed of all the world–cannot work together in the conquest of space, sending someday in this decade to the moon not the representatives of a single nation, but the representatives of all of our countries.

“All these and other new steps toward peaceful cooperation may be possible. Most of them will require on our part full consultation with our allies–for their interests are as much involved as our own, and we will not make an agreement at their expense. Most of them will require long and careful negotiation. And most of them will require a new approach to the cold war–a desire not to “bury” one’s adversary, but to compete in a host of peaceful arenas, in ideas, in production, and ultimately in service to all mankind.”

How Did Khruschev Respond?

Everyone knows that Nikita Khrushchev, who frequently battled leading figures among Russia’s politburo during his last years in power, was deposed in a coup in 1964. But it is worth asking: how did he respond to Kennedy’s final call to cooperation? As far as this author can tell, history largely remained silent on this point for many years, until Sergei Khrushchev (Nikita’s son) delivered a revealing interview to Space Cast magazine on October 2, 1997.

In that interview, Sergei revealed that after the success of the partial test ban treaty and Kennedy’s UN speech, his father had decided to accept Kennedy’s offer saying: “my father decided that maybe he should accept (Kennedy’s) offer, given the state of the space programs of the two countries… He thought that if the Americans wanted to get our technology and create defenses against it they would do it anyway. Maybe we could get technology in the bargain that would be better for U.S. my father thought.”

Sergei also reported to Space Cast that like Kennedy, Khrushchev “was also planning to begin diverting weapons complex design bureaus into more consumer and commercial, non-military production.”

Sergei ended his interview saying: “I think if Kennedy had lived, we would be living in a completely different world.”

The Aftermath of Kennedy’s Murder

Kennedy’s murder on November 22, 1963 ended this potential and pulled humanity back into the iron grip of the Cold Warriors who sought to keep humanity’s creative potential locked under the heavy chains of nuclear terror, consumerist decadence (today called Globalization) and never-ending wars that wrecked havoc upon the next five decades.

Under this closed system paradigm, creativity’s power to change our carrying capacity through scientific and technological progress was all but banned as vast financial resources were redirected away from NASA (whose budget peaked in 1965 and was only strangled continuously thereafter) into the military industrial complex and the growing debacle in Vietnam. This war which both Kennedy and his brother had fought to stop went far in annihilating the spirit of optimism in the hearts of the young and old alike while CIA-sponsored drugs flooded the campuses of America ensuring the growth of a new ethic of escapism, anti-humanism, post-truth modernism and rejection of Judeo-Christian traditions that infused western society its moral vitality for 2000 years.

Vital investments into nuclear fusion R & D were slashed and educational reforms under control of British imperial operatives steering the OECD (like Sir Alexander King) ensured that engineering/physics and other “practical sciences” were replaced with sociology and humanities courses which would be more “relevant” in a post-industrial Brave New World.

Humanity’s Second Chance

Second chances of this magnitude do not come often, but sitting as we are once more upon the precipice of nuclear Armageddon (the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has set the Doomsday clock mere seconds to midnight), the choice of global annihilation or survival has again been put before U.S..

Today, the spirit of JFK’s vision has come alive through the leadership of Russia and China who together have re-activated bold space missions to revisit the Moon with the full backing of the powers of sovereign nation states. This has manifested in the form of the Russian-China joint program to co-develop lunar missions, which have included the European Space Agency’s participation in the upcoming Luna 25, 26 and 27 missions to the Moon scheduled to occur between now and 2025.

Roscosmos officials stated on August 27 that this program (which is open for the USA to participate in as an equal partner) “includes missions to study the Moon from orbit and surface, the collection and return of lunar soil to Earth, as well as in the future, the construction of a visited lunar base and full scale development of our satellite.” Roscosmos representatives went further to announce their plans to establish a permanent lunar base by 2030 with China following suite soon thereafter.

This orientation obviously dovetails the American Artemis Accords which president Trump and NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine (a long time friend of Roscosmos’ Dimitry Rogozin) recently unveiled to promote international partnerships in lunar and mars development standing in stark contrast to the military industrial complex’s plans to militarize space.

The spirit of JFK’s space vision has certain come alive in new and exciting ways, but one question still remains unanswered: Does America have the ability to withstand the forces seeking to dissolve the republic and join this new open system paradigm or are those forces which killed JFK and sunk humanity into an age of war and closed-system thinking too powerful to stop?

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Matthew J.L. Ehret is a journalist, lecturer and founder of the Canadian Patriot Review. He can be reached at [email protected]

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Russiagate and Russophobia: Where Law Ends, Tyranny Begins

September 22nd, 2020 by Nauman Sadiq

Recently, George Packer has written a review [1] of Andrew Weissmann’s book Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation. Weissmann was one of Robert Mueller’s top deputies in the special counsel’s investigation of the 2016 election, and he is about to publish the first insider account of the Mueller Investigation.

In a peculiar sensationalist manner that characterized the news coverage of the Russiagate investigation of Robert Mueller, George Packer writes:

“Only the Special Counsel’s Office—burrowing into the criminal matter of Russian interference in the 2016 election, a possible conspiracy with the Trump campaign, and the president’s subsequent attempts to block an investigation—offered the prospect of accountability for Trump.

“Suddenly, in March 2019, the Special Counsel’s Office completed its work. A report, hundreds of pages long, with many lines blacked out, was delivered to the attorney general. Before releasing it to the public, Attorney General William Barr pronounced the president innocent, in a brazen mix of elisions, distortions, and outright lies—for the report presented extensive evidence of cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russian assets, and of the president’s efforts to obstruct justice.

“Weissmann also came close to establishing a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. On August 2, 2016, Manafort dined in New York City with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Ukrainian-born business associate with ties to Russian intelligence and oligarchs.

“Manafort, a lavishly compensated hired gun for some of the oligarchs, had been sharing campaign strategy with Kilimnik, including sensitive polling data. Over dinner, Manafort described Trump’s strategy in four battleground states; Kilimnik in turn presented for Trump’s approval a Russian ‘peace plan’ that would amount to the annexation of eastern Ukraine.

“Last month’s Senate report, going further than the Mueller investigation, named Kilimnik as an actual Russian intelligence officer and revealed his likely connection to the 2016 election-interference operations. ‘This is what collusion looks like,’ the committee’s Democratic members wrote in an appendix.

“Weissmann and his colleagues were thwarted by chance—Manafort’s No. 2, Rick Gates, arrived late for the dinner with Kilimnik and was subsequently unable to tell investigators all that was discussed. They were hamstrung by Mueller’s decision not to look into Trump’s financial dealings with Russia, which might have established a source of Russian leverage over Trump, but which the president had declared a red line not to be crossed.”

Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation by Andrew Weissmann

It’s pertinent to point out here that not all Russians visiting the United States for traveling, education and business are “secret agents,” nevertheless even if we assume for the argument’s sake that Konstantin Kilimnik was an intelligence officer, he allegedly offered “a Russian ‘peace plan’ that would amount to the annexation of eastern Ukraine” for Trump’s approval in 2016. It’s been four years since Trump was elected president. Forget about letting Russia annex eastern Ukraine, he didn’t even recognize Russian annexation of Crimean peninsula in 2014 yet.

Only two conclusions can be drawn from this fact: either Trump didn’t keep his end of the bargain, or there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. The demonstrable fact is that when it comes to the rivalry between the Cold War-era foes, the Trump administration appears to be on the same page as the US national security establishment.

Lamenting the apparent absence of rule of law and checks and balances in the American so-called democracy, George Packer narrating the insider account of Andrew Weissmann further observes: “Where Law Ends describes numerous instances, large and small, when Mueller declined to pursue an aggressive course for fear of the reaction at the White House. For example, the special counsel shied away from subpoenaing Don Trump Jr. to testify about his notorious June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer offering dirt on Hillary Clinton.

“Mueller wanted, above all, to warn the American people about foreign subversion of our democracy, while the greater subversion gathered force here at home.”

The most revealing disclosure in these excerpts in not the Trump’s son meeting a Russian lawyer but the bottom line that while the American people have been indoctrinated to fear the foreign subversion of the American democracy, the greater subversion has gathered force at home. And that “subversive force” is certainly not the elected politicians but the deep state which the likes of Packer, Weissman and the rest of mainstream shills are paid to serve and defend.

Donald Trump’s unorthodox approach to the conduct of diplomatic relations has been a persistent thorn in the side of America’s national security establishment for the last four years, and mainstream pundits often wonder why Washington’s relations with traditional allies, including Britain, France, Germany and Canada, have soured during the tenure of the Trump administration.

The fact is that like a typical American, Trump regards America’s allies, including Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and Justin Trudeau, as subordinates beholden to him personally; whereas he treats adversaries, such as Russian President Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, as independent leaders deserving equal treatment and respect. Nevertheless, it’s an inconsequential matter of interpersonal attitude and etiquette than anything having diplomatic repercussions.

The conspiracy theories perpetuated by the establishment-controlled media that Trump is Putin’s “useful idiot” and alleged Russian interference in America’s domestic politics are sheer fabrications reminiscent of the McCarthyism of the fifties.

Russian netizens indeed lent moral support to the Trump campaign in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential race but simply because they despised Hillary Clinton, who the Russians regarded as an interventionist hawk responsible for initiating proxy wars in Libya and Syria in 2011 as Obama’s secretary of state, and also because she was the wife of former Democratic President Bill Clinton who was responsible for the break-up of former Yugoslavia in the nineties.

Despite the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US elections, Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary by a margin of 2.87 million votes. Had it not been for the archaic electoral college system and James Comey, then the director of FBI, opening last-minute investigation into Hillary Clinton using personal computers for official communications, she was the favorite to win the elections.

According to Washington’s own intelligence estimates, three powers are currently vying for interference in upcoming presidential elections slated for November 3. Two of those, China and Iran, favor Joe Biden because Trump initiated trade war with China and unilaterally annulled Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, whereas Russia allegedly supports Trump because Putin apparently has an unmistakable crush on Slovenian beauty pageant Melania.

Trump is reputed to be a staunch conservative, and it’s a known empirical observation that conservatives typically are considerably more patriotic than liberals. Collaborating with foreign powers to undermine one’s national interest doesn’t appeal to the conservative mindset.

Throughout its four-year tenure, the Trump administration has continued with the policy of its predecessors. If anything, diplomatic relations between Washington and Moscow have significantly worsened during Trump’s tumultuous four-year tenure and a New Cold War has begun between the arch-rivals.

Lastly, the impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump were nothing more than a show trial. One of the reasons the Democrats initiated the impeachment inquiry against Trump in September 2019 was that after Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation failed to establish collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign in March 2019, therefore the Democrats came up with a new hoax to discredit a Republican president in the election year.

Although the Democrats had the requisite majority in the House of Representatives to impeach Donald Trump, the Senate was clearly controlled by the Republicans. Besides, convicting a president of impeachment required two-third majority in the Senate that the Democrats never had. Then what was the purpose of initiating the proceedings if not to discredit an incumbent president in the election year

Leaving partisan interpretations of the US Constitution aside, an accused is presumed innocent until proved guilty, according to a fundamental axiom of modern jurisprudence. Then how can it be said that Trump is an “impeached president”? By such paradoxical legal interpretations, if a mala fide litigator maliciously accuses an innocent person of murder, could it be said that the person is a murderer simply because he was indicted of the offense but was never convicted of having committed a murder?

Ironically, while three US presidents have been accused of impeaching the Constitution for relatively insignificant offenses, including Bill Clinton for perjury and Donald Trump for using political influence to discredit opponents, no US president has ever been charged, let alone convicted, of waging devastating wars of aggression.

Unless impeachment proceedings are initiated against war criminals, including George Bush for invading Afghanistan and Iraq and Barack Obama for waging proxy wars in Libya and Syria, the impeachment provisions in the US Constitution would serve as nothing more than a convenient tool for settling political scores.

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Note

[1] The Inside Story of the Mueller Probe’s Mistakes:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/andrew-weissmann-mueller-book-where-law-ends/616395/

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The War on Assange Is a War on Truth

September 22nd, 2020 by Rep. Ron Paul

It is dangerous to reveal the truth about the illegal and immoral things our government does with our money and in our name, and the war on journalists who dare reveal such truths is very much a bipartisan affair. Just ask Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who was relentlessly pursued first by the Obama Administration and now by the Trump Administration for the “crime” of reporting on the crimes perpetrated by the United States government.

Assange is now literally fighting for his life, as he tries to avoid being extradited to the United States where he faces 175 years in prison for violating the “Espionage Act.” While it makes no sense to be prosecuted as a traitor to a country of which you are not a citizen, the idea that journalists who do their job and expose criminality in high places are treated like traitors is deeply dangerous in a free society.

To get around the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press, Assange’s tormentors simply claim that he is not a journalist. Then-CIA director Mike Pompeo declared that Wikileaks was a “hostile intelligence service” aided by Russia. Ironically, that’s pretty much what the Democrats say about Assange.

Earlier this month, a US Federal appeals court judge ruled that the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records was illegal. That bulk collection program, born out of the anti-American PATRIOT Act, was first revealed to us by whistleblower Edward Snowden just over seven years ago.

That is why whistleblowers and those who publish their information are so important. Were it not for Snowden and Assange, we would never know about this government criminality. And if we never know about government malfeasance it can never be found to be criminal in the first place. That is convenient for governments, but it is also a recipe for tyranny.

While we might expect the US media to aggressively come to the aid of a fellow journalist being persecuted by the government for doing his job, the opposite is happening. As journalist Glen Greenwald wrote last week, the US mainstream media is completely ignoring the Assange extradition trial.

Why would they do such a thing? Partisan politics. Journalists – with a few important exceptions like Greenwald himself – are no longer interested in digging and reporting the truth. These days they believe they have a “higher calling.”

As Greenwald puts it,

“If you start from the premise that Trump is a fascist dictator who has brought Nazi tyranny to the US, then it isn’t that irrational to believe that anyone who helped empower Trump (which is how they see Assange) deserves to be imprisoned, hence the lack of concern about it.”

That may seem like a good idea to these journalists in the short term, but for journalism itself to become an extension of government power rather than a check on that power would be deeply harmful.

We cannot have a self-governing society as was intended for our Republic if the government, with the complicity of the mainstream media, decides that there are things we are not allowed to know about it. President Trump should end the US government’s war on Assange…and on all whistleblowers and their publishers.

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Selected Articles: US Sanctions and Assange’s Extradition Trial

September 22nd, 2020 by Global Research News

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Belarusian Sanctions Vetoed by Cyprus Exposes Deep Divisions Between Mediterranean and Northern Europe

By Paul Antonopoulos, September 22, 2020

The EU’s reluctance to sanction Turkey is curious considering it is militarily threatening two EU member states, Greece and Cyprus, yet wants to prioritise sanctions on Belarus, which as previously stated, is neither an EU member, an EU member candidate, or threatening EU members.

Trump Admin Unilaterally Imposes UN Sanctions on Iran

By Dave DeCamp, September 22, 2020

On Monday, the Trump administration announced new sanctions on Iran under the guise of enforcing stipulations of the 2015 nuclear deal, an agreement the US withdrew from in 2018. The US is taking these measures unilaterally, with virtually no international support.

Your Man in the Public Gallery: Assange Hearing Day 13

By Craig Murray, September 21, 2020

Friday gave us the most emotionally charged moments yet at the Assange hearing, showed that strange and sharp twists in the story are still arriving at the Old Bailey, and brought into sharp focus some questions about the handling and validity of evidence, which I will address in comment.

The US’ Latest Anti-Iranian Sanctions Will Worsen the Trade War with China

By Andrew Korybko, September 21, 2020

The US’ latest anti-Iranian sanctions won’t change much when it comes to the Islamic Republic’s present economic predicament but will almost certainly provoke a worsening of the so-called “trade war” with China since the real intent seems to be to target the countless companies that are poised to participate in those two countries’ reported $400 billion strategic partnership agreement by replicating the model of “maximum pressure” that’s been experimented against Huawei over the past year.

They Call for Assange’s Immediate Release: Heads of state, prime ministers, parliamentarians, members of Congress, … demand Assange be set free

By Lawyers for Assange, September 21, 2020

As Julian Assange fights U.S. extradition at the Old Bailey in London, over one hundred eminent political figures, including 13 past and present heads of state, numerous ministers, members of parliament and diplomats, have today denounced the illegality of the proceedings and appealed for Assange’s immediate release.

Who Is Behind the Judge Who Is Trying Julian Assange?

By Manlio Dinucci, September 18, 2020

Emma Arbuthnot is the chief judge who conducted the trial for the extradition of Julian Assange in London to the USA, where a 175 year prison sentence awaits him for “espionage,” that is, for having published evidence of US war crimes, including videos of civilians’ killings in Iraq and Afghanistan, as an investigative journalist. At the trial, assigned to Judge Vanessa Baraitser, every defense request was denied.

Trump Regime Illegally Imposing Snapback Sanctions and Arms Embargo on Iran

By Stephen Lendman, September 17, 2020

In defiance of world community sentiment and SC Res. 2231 — that’s binding international and US constitutional law — the Trump regime will unilaterally reimpose sanctions on Iran that were lifted when the JCPOA took effect.

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Yesterday there was a meeting between all of the EU’s Foreign Ministers to pass sanctions against Belarus. It created massive controversy and revealed the significant divide between Mediterranean and Northern Europe. The EU has been completely disinterested in Turkey’s blatant violations against the maritime space and continental shelf of Cyprus, ones of its 27 member states, for well over a year and a half now. However, following the Belarusian elections on August 9, the EU rapidly mobilized to sanction President Alexander Lukashenko and another 40 individuals associated with him. This was on the allegations of electoral fraud and state-perpetrated violence and repression against opposition supporters. To the great frustration of the EU, Cyprus was the only country to veto sanctions against Belarus.

Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs went on Twitter and said that Cyprus is “hostage taking” the EU on sanctions against Belarus, which “sends a wrong signal to Belarusians, our societies and the whole world.” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius said on Twitter that “some colleagues should not link things that must not be linked,” referring to Cyprus vetoing Belarusian sanctions so long as Turkey is not sanctioned. Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, now the Co-Chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, was especially angered and in a series of Tweets complained that

“Cyprus is profoundly embarrassing the EU with its linking of Belarus sanctions to unrelated issues,” that Cyprus is “misusing” its veto rights, and that “the meeting of EU foreign ministers […] will unfortunately be remembered for Cyprus again blocking any sanctions on Belarus.”

To be clear, Cyprus, one of the smallest countries in the EU with only 1.2 million inhabitants, is not taking a great moral stand to oppose sanctions against Belarus, which is neither an EU member, an EU member candidate, or a direct threat to any EU members. Rather, Cyprus is making a stand as the EU is prioritizing sanctions against Belarus as they believe it will weaken Russian influence in the Baltics and Eastern Europe. The EU has been very slow in their response to Turkish threats against Greece and Cyprus, with many member states not wanting to sanction Turkey, yet wanting fast tracked sanctions against Belarus. Cyprus will approve sanctions against Belarus as soon as sanctions against Turkey are approved by the other EU member states.

The EU’s reluctance to sanction Turkey is curious considering it is militarily threatening two EU member states, Greece and Cyprus, yet wants to prioritise sanctions on Belarus, which as previously stated, is neither an EU member, an EU member candidate, or threatening EU members. Brussels continues the line of an imagined Russian threat via Belarus against the Baltic countries and Poland, while ignoring the openly and direct threats of Turkey against Greece and Cyprus.

Unsurprisingly, Bildt was exposed in a report by the Stockholm Center for Freedom in having very intimate and close relations with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, perhaps including indirect funding. Bildt, as a northern European Swede, is not threatened by Turkish aggression due to the obvious restrictions in geography. This is the same reason for the indifferent attitudes of the Baltic countries, Sweden, Germany and other northern European countries for their disinterest in Turkish aggression against Cyprus and Greece. And herein lays the polar differences between Mediterranean and Northern Europe, which is beginning to split the EU apart.

Although Moscow continually announces its desire for cooperation with the EU, Northern Europe, led by the Baltic states and Poland, continue to pressurize Russia because of a perceived threat against these states. Russia, unlike Turkey, does not violate the sovereignty of any EU member state, nor does it make near daily military threats.

Turning Cyprus from a victim of Turkish aggression, especially considering that the latter invaded the northern portion of the island in 1974, to perpetrator, is not only an egregiously injustice to Turkey’s history of violations, it also plays right into Erdoğan’s endeavour to once again avoid sanctions. This year the Dutch vetoed an EU stimulus package to help European economies struggling with COVID-19 restrictions and the Austrians vetoed Operation Irini to prevent Turkish arms from reaching Libya. Yet, only the Cypriots are being harshly criticized for their veto on Belarus sanctions. The double-standards that characterize the Berlin-led EU foreign policy strategy in dealing with the Eastern Mediterranean crisis exposes internal inconsistencies within the Union.

What many Northern Europeans refuse to acknowledge is that Cyprus, Greece and the wider European Mediterranean region, do not have the luxury of friendly neighbors like Sweden and Germany do, and rather have to contend with an aggressor state like Turkey that openly announces its intentions to invade Greek islands and the rest of Cyprus, whilst simultaneously being militarily involved in fellow Mediterranean countries like Libya and Syria.

A small state like Cyprus, that does not have a professional military, has very limited options in dealing with such aggression, especially when its EU colleagues rush to shield Ankara from sanctions rather than defend Cyprus from an external threat. This comes to the crux of the so-called raison d’être of the EU – a supposed unity between Europe. However, Northern Europe has only demonstrated to Mediterranean Europe that there is certainly no unity, especially when two of its 27 member states are being directly threatened and violated by an external state.

On August 29, French President Emmanuel Macron announced a “Pax Mediterranea” which can be interpretated as a new Mediterranean order, one becoming increasingly independent of the EU and involves the close cooperation of Mediterranean states. With Northern Europe disinterested with security issues in the Mediterranean as they prioritize their economic relations with Turkey, there is every chance we will see a significant bloc emerge in the Mediterranean that better serves its own interests rather than those of Northern Europe.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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Remembering the Aftermath of 9/11

September 22nd, 2020 by James J. Zogby

I often write an article on the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks reflecting on the impact that tragedy had on my country and my community. I believe that it is important we never forget how we felt on that day and the days that followed.

In a piece I wrote within days of the attack in 2001, I noted how Arab Americans were overcome by a flood of conflicting emotions. We were horrified by the devastation and enormous loss of life. We were shaken by stories of the innocents who lost their lives.  We were angry at the murderers who had committed these heinous acts. But within hours after the attacks, we were forced to experience fear and isolation when the backlash began — fear because we received threats, and isolation because we were pulled away from the collective grief we were sharing as Americans and forced to look over our shoulders to protect ourselves and families. We also ultimately came to feel gratitude as so many of our fellow citizens came to our defence and protected us. I don’t ever want us to forget all of these emotions. They not only define those days, they also tell an important story about America.

This year, I didn’t write a column about 9/11. Instead, I made do with a few tweets recalling the events and emotions of the day. I am now compelled to write because of the brazenly insensitive and cavalier comments about 9/11 posted by Paul Krugman, a respected Nobel prize-winning New York Times opinion columnist. In a series of tweets, Krugman wrote the following:

 “Overall, Americans took 9/11 pretty calmly. Notably, there wasn’t a mass outbreak of anti-Muslim sentiment and violence, which all too easily happened. And while GW Bush was a terrible president, to his credit he tried to calm prejudice, not feed it.”

“Daily behaviour wasn’t drastically affected. True, for a while people were afraid to fly: My wife and I took a lovely trip to the US Virgin Islands a couple of months later, because air fares and hotel rooms were so cheap. But life returned to normal fairly fast.”

Krugman’s brazen dismissal of the painful aftermath of the attacks on the Arab and Muslim communities was so hurtful and offensive that I, and many others, felt obliged to respond. Instead of being chastened, the next day Krugman doubled down in yet another series of tweets still trying to make his case that the backlash wasn’t as severe as it might have been. He cherry-picked statistics in an effort to show how anti-Muslim hate crimes paled in comparison with anti-Black hate crimes.

Because of who he is and the potential impact of what he writes, I cannot let Krugman’s whitewashing of the post-9/11 period go unchallenged. Because we must never forget the damage done to my community and to our nation’s institutions by Bush administration policies, I need to set the record straight.

In the aftermath of the attacks, acts of hatred and death threats were frequent and frightening. My office logged 800 pieces of hate mail and phone messages in just the first few days following 9/11. Only a few hours after the planes hit the World Trade Centre, I received my first death threat. A caller to our office left a message stating, “Jim, you towel head, all Arabs must die. We will slit your throat and kill your children.”  It was the first of many. My daughter and a nephew also received threats, as did my brother John, whose office received two bomb threats. This was just what happened to my family.

My office began to receive reports from Arab Americans across the country of threats, harassment, and acts of discrimination. We researched, verified and documented each case. In testimony before the US Commission on Civil Rights, delivered one month after 9/11, I reported the threats of violence and actual acts of violence and harassment committed against my community and those who were perceived to be Arab or Muslim.

There were acts of violence against churches, mosques and Arab-owned businesses. Students were harassed, as were cab drivers and even Arab-looking shoppers. In fact, Arab and south Asian cab drivers in DC stopped working for weeks after several cases of harassment and violence by police and passengers. In all, we logged and reported hundreds of cases in just the first 30 days.

Equally serious were the hundreds of employment and housing discrimination cases that were reported to us. In numbers of instances people were fired and told that their fellow employees didn’t want “an Arab in the workplace”. We had to hire a specialist to assist these victims.

And when airline travel resumed, while the Krugmans were able to enjoy cheap flights to the Virgin Islands, Arab Americans were being subjected to cruel and indiscriminate subjective profiling. They were ordered off planes and denied the right to fly because other passengers claimed the presence of an Arab-looking person made them uncomfortable. Some cases were bizarre. An Arab American congressman was denied a seat on a flight, as was an Arab American secret service agent flying to Texas to join the president’s security detail.

But these cases tell only part of the story. While Krugman was correct to observe that president George W. Bush cautioned Americans against singling out Arabs and Muslims for blame, he fails to note the extent to which Bush’s Department of Justice (DOJ) implemented policies which did exactly that. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the DOJ launched a massive round-up of recent Arab and Muslim immigrants, many of whom were summarily deported. The tallies of those deported played out daily on the news creating fear in the community and arousing the suspicion in the general public that “they must be the problem”.

This was followed by two publicised “call-ins” in which thousands of Arabs and Muslims were contacted by mail and ordered to report for interviews with immigration officials. As a result, there was a very real fear that Arab and Muslim immigrants might be interned as Japanese Americans were during World War II.

We were, of course, spared from this fate because so many of our fellow citizens came to our defence, among the first being members of the Japanese American community. The Ad Council of America worked with us to produce newspaper and television ads warning against a backlash. The Senate and House of Representatives passed resolutions defending us. Dozens of civil rights and ethnic organisations, Christian, Jewish, Sikh and Buddhist religious leaders, and unions spoke out on our behalf. And law enforcement agencies offered us protection.

But as gratified as we were by this response, nothing can erase the lasting reminders of the fear and the hatred we experienced and the thousands of our fellow Arabs and Muslims whose lives were ruined or forever changed by violence, threats, discrimination, deportation, or just being made to feel alien in their own country.

As for Krugman’s statistics showing that the increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes was real was still significantly less than those against Blacks, all I can say is “nonsense”. In the first place, the FBI statistics he cited don’t include anti-Arab hate crimes. At the time, the government didn’t report them. Second, the firings, denial of housing, etc. aren’t considered hate crimes. Third, since the Black community is more than ten times larger than Arab Americans, using this comparison to minimise our pain is both ludicrous and hurtful. Fourth, statistics, of course, don’t include harassment by law enforcement, deportations, and other fear-inducing behaviours by government officials. And finally, since hate crimes needed to be reported to the very agencies that were causing wide-spread fear among the community, Arabs were often hesitant to report them.

So, Paul Krugman, before you write about this period, speak to us first. Maybe you don’t remember what it was like for us, we, on the other hand, can’t ever forget.

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Trump Admin Unilaterally Imposes UN Sanctions on Iran

September 22nd, 2020 by Dave DeCamp

On Monday, the Trump administration announced new sanctions on Iran under the guise of enforcing stipulations of the 2015 nuclear deal, an agreement the US withdrew from in 2018. The US is taking these measures unilaterally, with virtually no international support. The move is not only rejected by the UN Security Council but also by key European allies like the UK, Germany, and France.

President Trump signed an executive order on Monday that is meant to replace a UN arms embargo on Iran that will expire in October. The executive order allows the US to impose sanctions on any individual or entity that sells weapons to Iran.

Announcing the new measures, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted on calling the new sanctions “UN sanctions,” even though a US bid to extend the embargo failed miserably in the UN Security Council.

“The President’s executive order announced today gives us a new and powerful tool to enforce the UN arms embargo and hold those who seek to evade UN sanctions accountable,” Pompeo said.

The US says it has the authority to roll out these new measures under the “snapback” sanctions agreed to in the 2015 nuclear deal, which were meant to go into effect if Iran violates the agreement. But other signatories have pointed out the US is no longer a party to the deal, so Washington has no authority to enforce the UN sanctions. But these facts are not slowing down Pompeo and the rest of the administration.

The administration sanctioned 27 individuals and entities inside Iran’s nuclear, missile, and conventional arms sectors. Iran responded to the measures and said they would have no effect, accusing the US of seeking publicity.

Pompeo also announced new sanctions on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Iran and Venezuela, two countries under heavy US sanctions, are natural trading partners and have drawn the ire of Washington for their warming ties.

“For nearly two years, corrupt officials in Tehran have worked with the illegitimate regime in Venezuela to flout the UN arms embargo.  Our actions today are a warning that should be heard worldwide:  No matter who you are, if you violate the UN arms embargo on Iran, you risk sanctions,” Pompeo said.

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

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This past weekend, Russian state television on two major channels devoted substantial news segments of their week in review programs to the ongoing game of chicken that the U.S. is carrying on in the air and on the seas at Russia’s borders:  on the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Barents and Okhotsk seas in the Far East. From the North, from the South, from the East and West U.S. war planes are simultaneously being directed against Russian defenses to probe their effectiveness and score political points.

In the words of Russian Defense Minister Shoigu, quoted on one of these channels, Vesti, aside from intelligence gathering, one clear intent of these maneuvers is to demonstrate U.S. raw power, to impress on the Russians that there is one boss of the world who calls all the shots, to reinforce the notion of a unipolar world. Says Shoigu, Washington does not at all like the emergence of bipolar strategic balance being pursued by Russia thanks to its new strategic weapons systems and is responding with these provocations which, as explained by chief of operations of the Russian high command Sergei Rudskoi on Friday, also shown on the program, have moved from purely reconnaissance aircraft and ships, to battle ready aircraft and cutters.  B-52s and ships equipped with precision munitions and cruise missiles activate their missiles as they approach Russian frontiers to as close as 15 km to simulate attacks on the Southern Military District and the Russian installations in Crimea.

The Russian Defense Minister emphasizes that the bomber flights up to Russian borders may be American led but on the way over include fighter jets from Sweden, Germany, Ukraine and even Italy.  The point of this involvement of the allies is to impress the Old Continent with American capabilities and to persuade the countries of NATO to host American rockets.  And to those in Europe who may express concern about Russian attack should they agree to serve as launchers for the Americans, Washington responds that it has a monopoly of actionable military intelligence.

The programs on Russian television gave a different version of the relative effectiveness of reconnaissance there and in the West, stressing that Moscow is tracking all the B52s from the America’s North Dakota air arm that are now based in the U.K. from the moment they go aloft, following them across Europe, where they are accompanied by various European fighter planes and do so without the Americans’ being aware they are in the crosshairs at any point until Russian jet fighters scramble to intercept them on their approach to Russian borders.

The host of the News of the Week program on channel Vesti, Dmitry Kiselyov, warned that the Russians are considering using their electronic warfare devices to blind the incoming enemy aircraft.  For the present they merely fly up to intercept them at top speed, approach closely and tend to unnerve the NATO pilots, leading to protests from Brussels.  Should e-warfare be invoked, things could get quite rough.

According to the statistics released by General Rudskoi on Friday and shown on the Sunday news wrap-ups, the U.S. is now staging some 33 to 40 flight approaches to the Russian borders a week that are met by Russian fighters and sent on their way. On September 4th, there were 5 reconnaissance aircraft approaching the Crimea at the same time.  Major incidents of mock attacks came on 28 August and 14 September.

The Russian Armed Forces television station Zvezda (‘the Star’) noted meanwhile with satisfaction that although none of the NATO countries recognizes the Russian annexation of Crimea, they have all been very careful to stay clear of the Russian borders on the peninsula.  Said Shoigu, we have never allowed any of them to cross our border and we will never allow it.

It is regrettable that none of these activities, none of these possibilities for tragic accidents and recriminations between US-led NATO forces and Russia are being reported in Western media.  If and when there is some clash, some downed plane, it will be reported like a thunder clap in blue skies.

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A Peace Deal Like No Other

September 22nd, 2020 by Philip Giraldi

It is odd that the White House is gloating over its claimed peace agreement in the Middle East at the same time as one of the signatories is bombing Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. It all suggests that peace in the region will exclude designated enemies and the friends of those enemies, since the ties among the three parties – Israel, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain – is transparently in part an offensive alliance directed against Iran and its friends, to include Syria and Lebanon. A significant amount of the horse trading that preceded the gala signing ceremony in the White House involved who would get what advanced American weapons down the road. The UAE wants F-35 fighter bombers while Israel is already asking for $8 billion for more top-level weapons from the U.S. taxpayer to maintain its “qualitative edge” over its new found friends.

For the more sagacious readers who chose to ignore what took place, a short recap is in order. Last Tuesday President Trump hosted a White House signing ceremony during which Israel established formal ties with the two Arab states. The agreement was dubbed the Abraham Accord because it purports to build on the foundation provided by the fraternity, as one might put it, of the three Abrahamic religions, namely Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. More specifically, it created the mechanism for diplomatic, economic, and cultural ties between Israel and the two Arab countries. It should be observed that both the UAE and Bahrain are close to being client states of the U.S. Bahrain is in fact the home port of the U.S. Fifth Fleet that operates in the region and it also hosts headquarters of the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT). Both countries have long had de facto semi-secret relations with Israel on security issues and Israelis have been able to travel to them as long as they do not do so on an Israeli passport. And they both also know that the road to improving already good relations with Washington passes through Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally attended the ceremony, together with the foreign ministers of the UAE and Bahrain. Trump enthused “We’re here this afternoon to change the course of history” and presented a replica gold key to the White House to Netanyahu. It is not known if the two Arab ministers received anything beyond a “don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.”

The president observed that the two Arab nations were the third and fourth to normalize relations with Israel, following on Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994, and predicted that five more Arab countries might soon also recognize Israel. Oman and Qatar, which hosts the major U.S. airbase at Al-Udeid, are likely to be next in line as both have close ties to the United States and have never exhibited much hardline anti-Israeli fervor. The claim made before the signing, that Israel would stand down on its plan to annex much of the Palestinian West Bank as a quid pro quo for the agreement was not discussed at all, nor was it part of the document. It is generally believed that Israel will wait until after the U.S. election to make its move.

The Palestinians, who have been on the receiving end of Israeli nation-building were not invited. There were some demonstrations by Palestinians in Gaza and Ramallah denouncing the signing as it took place, together with chanting that “Palestine isn’t for sale.” Indeed, Palestinians are more-or-less invisible in Washington, having had their representational office closed by Trump in 2018 after he had been shown a fabricated video by Netanyahu in which Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas appeared to be calling for the murder of children. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also viewed the video and informed the president that it was an obvious fabrication, but Trump was convinced by it.

The U.S. media, always inclined to applaud anything that advances Israeli interests, registered its approval of the agreement. And there were calls for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Trump for his miraculous achievement, not as ridiculous as it sounds as it is at least as well deserved as the one that was given to Barack Obama. Trump the peacemaker has a nice ring to it, and it quite possibly pay off for the president in terms of votes and political contributions. Indeed, if one looks at the White House ceremony dyspeptically, it becomes clear that the whole event was staged for political purposes to advance GOP interests in the upcoming election. If it changes anything on the ground at all it actually worsens the chances for peace in the region. The UAE and Bahrain are now locked into a unified effort to oppose Iran by military force if necessary, with open support from Israel plus covert aid from Saudi Arabia as well as the full backing of the United States.

One might reasonably argue that the agreement was a win for Israel, the UAE and Bahrain, as they have succeeded in obliging the U.S. to support their own regional security interests for the foreseeable future. The media, defense contractors and politicians bought and paid for by Israel will be able to assert that the U.S. must retain significant forces in the region to defend Israel and friendly Arab states against the largely fictitious “Iranian menace.” It is unfortunately a major setback for United States efforts to limit its exposure to any and all political developments in an increasingly unstable Middle East. If the White House had really wanted to disengage from the quagmire that it has found itself in, it was an odd way to go about it.

And the Palestinians are left with nowhere to go, the presumption being that with lessening Arab support they will be reduced to begging Israel (and the U.S.) for a deal that will reduce them to the status of helots. That conclusion just might make them desperate and could trigger a new and even more bloody intifada.

The downside of the agreement is already beginning to play out as the United States is preparing to unilaterally impose sanctions on Iran that will include possible seizure of Iranian ships in international waters, while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has also warned Russia and China against trying to sell weapons to Tehran. One might well ask, how exactly does Pompeo propose to do that? Will he shoot down Russian transport planes or sink Chinese and Russian flagged ships? How does one go from being crazy to being batshit crazy, and what about all those Americans and others who would prefer not to be on the receiving end of a nuclear exchange?

Trita Parsi, who follows the situation in the Middle East closely, has suggested that Pompeo might even be planning an October Surprise, which might amount to some kind of provocation or even a false flag operation that would result in open conflict with Iran 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. Unconfirmable allegations from anonymous U.S. government sources are surfacing about an alleged Iranian plot to kill the U.S. Ambassador in South Africa. And, as of Saturday, Washington is now implementing its new sanctions regime and there is a distinct possibility that an Iranian vessel in the Persian Gulf might be seized, forcing Iran to respond. The U.S. Navy has already intercepted four Greek flagged tankers in the Atlantic Ocean on their way to Venezuela, claiming they were carrying Iranian petroleum products, which were then confiscated. Given the demonstrated propensity to use armed force, anything is possible. The thinking in the White House might be that a containable war against a recognized enemy might be just the ticket to win in November. Of course, once the fighting starts it might not work out that way.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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.

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Time and again, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) sides with Western interests against nations its officials want transformed into vassal states.

In response to the OHCHR’s support for the made-in-the-USA coup plot against Belarusian President Lukashenko, Russia’s Foreign Ministry denounced its action, saying:

“We assume that the (anti-Belarusian) UNHRC resolution was jammed through by the West in violation of principles and norms of the international law (making it) legally void.”

The largely pro-Western Human Rights Council voted 23 – 2 in favor of the unlawful resolution, 22 of the body’s 47 member states abstaining.

The session in Geneva last week unlawfully interfered in Belarus’ internal affairs, Russia’s Foreign Ministry adding:

“We note with regret that a group of countries led by the European Union imposed on the HRC another lopsided and politicized discussion, the goals of which were very far from the real concern for human rights.”

“This debate represents a blatant interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state, incompatible with the principles of international law and the provisions of the UN Charter.”

“We view the debate and the adoption of the politically-driven draft resolution as an unacceptable attempt to influence, by gross political pressure, the results of the election in Belarus and its assessment in the international community.”

“We assume that neither the UN Human Rights Council nor individual countries or groups have the right or authority to evaluate electoral processes in UN member states” — especially when grossly distorting their right by considering the winner the loser in support of a US designated puppet it wants installed.

Russia also slammed the Austrian representative. Presiding over HRC proceedings, he allowed its gross violation of international law by failing to block what went on, saying:

“We strongly condemn such actions, which are incompatible with the neutral status of the presidency in the UN collective bodies.”

Though not a current HRC member, Belarus also denounced the unlawful meddling in its internal affairs.

On Monday, EU foreign ministers failed to agree on imposing (unlawful) sanctions on Belarus.

The action requires unanimity among its 27 member states.

Cyprus blocked what other EU states support in cahoots with the US coup plot against Belarusian sovereignty.

In mid-August, Cypriot envoy to the EU Nicholas Emiliou voted against imposition of bloc sanctions on Belarus because other member states failed back Nicosia’s demand to sanction Turkey for oil and gas exploration in what the Cypriot government considers its own Mediterranean waters.

On Monday, Emiliou again voted the same way, saying:

“Cyprus remains committed to its original stance. The ministers failed to agree on a blacklist. The issue has now been postponed until the summit meeting due at the end of this week,” adding:

“The ambassador level meetings over the past weeks showed that the situation is not simple.”

“As you may know, the ambassadors’ latest meeting was on Friday and it ended inconclusively, so it was very easy to predict there will be no agreement at the Council’s session on Monday.”

“Now the issue will be discussed at the summit meeting on Thursday and Friday” this week.

The unacceptable anti-Belarus blacklist includes 40 Lukashenko government officials.

Separately, Belarus’  parliamentary Commission on International Affairs chairman Andrey Savinykh slammed unacceptable Western actions against the country’s legitimate government, saying:

“(T)oday there are already sufficient grounds to assert that a multilateral policy…no longer provides the external conditions we need for the favorable development of Belarus.”

The country’s “top priority (should be) strengthening political, economic and military relations with Russia, within the framework of the Union State” between both countries.

He also stressed that Belarus should focus away from the West toward becoming part of a “Euroasian macroregion.”

Lukashenko’s current policy calls for “developing relations with all foreign partners.”

Ahead of US designated puppet Svetlana Tikhanovskaya’s meeting with EU foreign ministers in Brussels, Belarus’ Foreign Ministry’s press secretary Anatoly Glaz slammed what he called  “brazen and blatant interference in the internal affairs of our country and total disrespect for its citizens,” adding:

“Why conduct an election if one from the outside can simply appoint a certain subject convenient in all respects and pretend to build a relationship with him or her?”

“After such steps…no one will have to prove that the course to undermine the sovereignty of Belarus is being implemented.”

“Our principled and clear position on the matter has already been communicated to the EU representative in Minsk, as well as to the relevant persons in Brussels.”

Days earlier, reciting remarks scripted by her US handlers, Tikhanovskaya called for the “international community” to intervene against Belarus’ legitimate government — expressing support for breaching the UN Charter and other international law, how the US and its imperial partners operate globally.

Separately on Saturday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova slammed Brussels for failing to recognize Lukashenko’s legitimate reelection last month, adding:

“We call on the European Union to reconsider this course, which leads to the erosion of the legal basis of the international order, and in the case of Belarus, hinders normalization in the country.”

“Our position regarding the sanctions mechanism used by the European Union (and US) is well-known.”

“It is illegitimate in terms of international law and represents unacceptable interference in internal affairs.”

“And in the context of the situation in Belarus, it contradicts the goal of restoring stability, establishing a dialogue, launching the constitutional process, and easing tensions, which EU representatives have said so much about.”

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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.

If you had said to friends in 2015 that you’d had a dream and that in about five years time the government would have deliberately and very dangerously divided the nation by instigating a nasty culture war, caused economic and political instability, threatened the Union, crashed its trading relationship with the biggest trading bloc in the world and was being threatened by the second – and then tore up the rule of law – they would have thought your weed was a bit on the strong side.

The reality of Britain today should not be forgotten.

Brexit was dragged over the line illegally.

You might want to argue that point to a greater or lesser degree but it is a matter of documented fact that the leave campaign, in almost all of its forms used illegal tactics. And as we have since (officially) learned – it was made worse by hostile state interference from Russia and American corporations. It was facilitated by front charities like the IEA who have over 400 corporate connections with the jihadists of the free-market, offering those with deepest pockets dodgy access to Brexit negotiating MP’s. We shouldn’t forget that this government was also funded by climate deniers, employers who abuse workers rights, bankers, off-shored hedge funds and many other unknown donors. Of course, all of this was facilitated by the giants of America’s Silicone Valley who were found to be breaking the law in Britain.

We also shouldn’t forget that later on Boris Johnson lied to get into power, lied about his ‘oven-ready’ Brexit deal, which turned our historic system of law and order into another lie. His government has evidentially failed in a public health crisis, and followed that up with an economic crisis – the worst in the G7 and then stoked up its culture war into a higher gear as cover. We shouldn’t forget that one day, all of this will circle back and create political and economic fires for years. When Johnson and his cronies have been booted from office, someone serious with a proper sense of moral authority will have to clean up the mess, build bridges domestically and internationally – and then attempt to unify a weary and divided nation stricken by the effects of what will look a lot like a strategy of disaster capitalism.

The Internal Markets Bill has a couple more stages to go through before getting Royal ascent with Johnson’s so-called climb-down. The Chairman of the American House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Eliot Engel (congress) has already written to Johnson confirming that there will be no US/UK trade deal if it breaks the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. Congress has asked for the Bill to be abandoned and confirmed it “threatened future bilateral relations between our two countries” (source) if he didn’t. Dominic Raab is sent to Washington to reassure Congress that Britain is trustworthy – having only admitted hours before he hasn’t actually read the Good Friday Agreement (source).

So let’s not beat about the bush here – Johnson has definitely backed Britain – right into a corner. By breaking the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) with the Internal Markets Bill (IMB), Johnson – no doubt advised by techno-Stalinist Cummings, has alienated the EU, the USA, two former attorney generals, all lawyers, judges and barristers, five former British PM’s, many senior Tories and at least half the country. Right now, with 26 days to go before Johnson’s last redline threat – Britain faces a double-barrelled shotgun blast of no-deal with either of the two biggest trading blocs in the world just as it latest Covid defence plan catches fire.

Plan B is simple.

This is a government permanently looking for others to blame. Its ever-growing list includes all 27 members of the EU, every department within the civil service, immigrants, teachers, students, the broadcast media, journalists, academics, scientists, experts, judges, and so on.

In fact anyone at all it can throw under its high mileage bus. The one sure-fire thing you can depend on is that none of the people actually responsible for getting Britain into the deepest of deep holes are blamed – or it seems nowadays – accountable.

On the same note, the mainstream media have not managed to report that Raab and Johnson sought legal advice on breaking the Withdrawal Agreement even before signing it.

If anything, this is the clearest of demonstrations of bad faith negotiation.

The IMB was always Johnson’s plan of getting out of the WA before lying to the electorate to get into Downing Street. A former British ambassador wrote 11 months ago that – “For Johnson, the Withdrawal Agreement provisions on Northern Ireland were only ever a device to get him over an immediate political difficulty. The fact he simply lied throughout the election campaign that the Withdrawal Agreement imposed no new checks or paperwork between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, should have made plain he was not serious about it. He had simply lied to the countries of the EU in signing a treaty he never had an intention to honour. He simply does not see himself as bound by any notion of honour or honesty” (source).

All the lying must be taking its toll on Borisky. Is it, therefore, any surprise that yet more rumours are circulating in the halls of Westminster and journalists with their ears to the ground that Johnson will leave No 10 soon after Brexit (source). The thought of yet another leadership contest in the midst of whatever Brexit nightmare the Tories have conjured up by then is just too hard for the brain cells to cope with.

However, we now face a new onslaught of painful politics and cruel economics as the winter beckons. You can’t gather in groups of more than six in a field – but you can if you have a big gun and wants to kill animals. Covid Marshalls with a couple of hours training will get paid more than the police officers applying the law or grade 4 nurses or teachers actually battling on the front lines. The government admits to breaking the law – then the following day launches a special ‘snitching’ hotline to report on neighbours breaking the law. Moonshot Matt will bumble his way straight under BJ’s reshuffle blame bus after breakdown Brexit. The NHS, now rudderless without PHE will be led into the jaws of C19-V2 and yet another Covid testing failure where the new testing czar Dido Harding has gone AWOL.  In the meantime, under the cover of all these self-inflicted wounds – government corruption will escalate in an unlimited and very unspecific way.

The collateral damage being inflicted all at once has the signature of Dominic Cummings writ large. The Tory party is now an insurgency and is attacking the very values of what it means to be British as they push the Union to its breakpoint. Our judicial system, the rule of law, human rights and weakened democracy stands between us and a firing squad of political anarchists and an elitist thug-cast.

We know that No 10 is rapidly morphing into a paranoid renegade regime that monitors every sound of citizenship from its new command centre instead of doing what it is supposed to be doing – managing a country in multiple crises and ensuring we are safe in their hands.

This is a government vandalising the very principles of Conservatism, of one-nation ideals and the institutions that supports civil society that they once fought to protect. The question you need to ask – irrespective of your political persuasion is – what will all this look like when we get to the other side? I’m pretty sure ‘sunny uplands’ isn’t the answer any more!

Oh, forgot to mention, in more upbeat news – Barbados just sacked the Queen.

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The COVID-19 Crisis in the UK. Towards a Full Lockdown?

September 21st, 2020 by True Publica

Big Guns: Groups of more than six in the park are lawbreaking – but groups of 30 with big guns killing stuff is not. Who are the landowners who own England’s vast grouse moors? As Who Owns England has previously exposed, grouse moor estates cover an area of England the size of Greater London – some 550,000 acres – and are propped up by millions of pounds in public farm subsidies. Now, for the first time, the owners of around 100 grouse moor estates across England are mapped. From aristocrats to autocrats – the screamingly elitist are listed (READ MORE)

The Road To Riches: Another 32 contract award notices for PPE were published this week worth a total value of £934 million. The two highest-value contracts went to Medro Ltd for £122 million (gowns) and Chemical Intelligence Ltd for £126 million (gowns). Medro was started with £1 capital in January 2019, appears to have not traded and since declared itself dormant. Naeem Ahmed is its sole reported officer and the company has no declared nature of business. Mr Ahmed’s business Medro has gone from literally zero to a £122 million government contract overnight with no scrutiny (source).

Curfew: Ministers tell Amy Jones and Gordon Rayner in the Telegraph that a national curfew is an “obvious next step” if the new regulations don’t flatten the current C19 spike (source). It appears that in two weeks time – if infections continue to increase – a full lockdown will be imposed once again.

Moonshot: The whole idea that Operation Moonshot – designed to test 10 million people a day will work is the thinking of fantasists as the technology itself has not actually been invented. In the meantime, many people are being told there are no testing centres available to them, with samples being sent abroad for processing – and that’s when testing hits just 62,000 a day at the beginning of September causing a backlog in labs of 185,000 (source). More recently, Boris Johnson has said he “doesn’t recognise” the “moonshot” target of 10 million tests a day, which he announced live on national television barely two weeks ago. In that interview, he referred to ‘millions’ of daily tests (source).

Ducking: Alain Tolhurst at Politics Home, reveals in an exclusive: “The government has been scaling back advertising for coronavirus testing as a way of dealing with a level of demand that is outstripping capacity.” You could say that the government have better skills sets in better at ducking and diving that delivering (source).

Schools Out: There are now about 1,000 UK Schools with Coronavirus infections among the school population. Last week it was 115 Scotland, 69 Northern Ireland,  55 Wales and 531 England Source: Compilation of local newspaper reports, NHS reports, and school websites.

Lockdown London: Is it just a matter of time before the restrictions imposed on Manchester, Birmingham, Bradford and Newcastle make their way to London? “Pubs and restaurants around the country face early closing times to slow coronavirus infections, with London’s public health chief warning of a ‘local curfew’ in the capital.” He says that across the country “hospitality businesses in hotspots are expected to be ordered to shut by 10 p.m.” (source – Times Paywall). Given that the government has lost control of C19 already and have emphatically stated there will be no national lockdown in furture – expect local lockdowns to get bigger and more widespread.

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Be wary of anyone insistent on using the word “streamline” in the context of policy and planning.  It suggests a suspicion of sound procedure, due process and keen scrutiny.  The streamliner hates accountability, attacks the world of red tape and suggests that barriers be removed.  Cut the tape; free the decision maker.

The streamline obsessives tend to see themselves as reformers and pruners of unnecessary waste and delay.  In Australian extradition law, for instance, the paring back of protections has been relentless.  The enthusiastic embrace of the “no evidence” model of extradition procedure was an example of such crude thinking. It was noted with some concern by the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Treaties in 2001. 

The members took a keen interest in the comments of Professor Ned Aughterson:

“There has been a trend towards streamlining the extradition process so as to facilitate extradition.  This has been at the expense of individual rights.  That is exemplified by the general abolition of the requirement to establish a prima facie case and the allocation of responsibility for the protection of individual rights to the executive.”   

Aughterson would, in turn, cite the observations of Professor Ivan Shearer that, since the 1980s, Australia had witnessed “a substantial shift away from judicial review of the extradition process towards the exercise of unreviewable executive discretion.”  Another scoring effort for the streamliners, refusing to admit those fustian judges to the party.

In 2011, the Extradition and Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation Amendment Bill made its parliamentary debut.  Political representatives were all praise for eliminating obstacles to a process they regarded as obsolete, cobwebbed by the passage of time.  (A stale approach to the liberty of the subject has that effect.)  The premise: that technology and the extent of travel had dramatically changed. 

“There was no internet in 1988 and mobile phones were a new commodity,” reflected Labor Senator Kim Carr, then Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research in his second reading speech.  He also suggested that “extraditing a person can be cumbersome and take several months to finalise, even if a person has consented to their extradition.” 

Better, then, to let the person waive the process, albeit subject to a modicum of safeguards.  Better still, have the person prosecuted in Australia.   

With this tendency in mind, we come to another instance of streamline wonkiness that does more than sneeze at civil liberties: the Defence Legislation Amendment (Enhancement of Defence Force Response to Emergencies) Bill 2020.  Again, the streamliners are out in force.  The proposed bill has measures, according to the Explanatory Memorandum, “that will enhance Defence’s capacity to provide assistance in relation to natural disasters and other emergencies.”  It supplements the existing Defence Assistance to the Civil Community (DACC) policy by “streamlining the process for calling out members of the ADF reserves” under the existing legislation and provides “ADF members, other Defence personnel and members of foreign forces with similar immunities to State and Territory emergency services personnel in certain cases while performing duties to support civil emergency and disaster preparedness, recovery and response”.  Such immunity will apply when the service is provided “in good faith”.

The granting of such immunities, notably to institutions vested with powers to wound and kill, should cause shuddering in the community.  It effectively nullifies any enforceable right of redress in instances of harm.  It is also a statement of exclusion: judges and their scrutiny will not be needed.  The protectors know best.

Alex Hawke, the Assistant Defence Minister, gave a few tips in his second reading speech of the bill on what is in store.  He praised the defence forces as critical in responding to bushfire emergencies and the COVID-19 pandemic.  The bill would “enhance” the ability of such personnel “to respond to natural disasters and other civil emergencies.”  The bill promises “more flexible service operations for reservists”.  It will also permit “the Governor-General to act on the advice of the Minister for Defence, after consultation with the Prime Minister, in all circumstances and not just for reasons of urgency.” Broadness in executive power is the enemy of liberty.

Human rights activist and advocate Kellie Tranter finds much room for concern, having a keen interest in the problems behind militarising climate change responses and, for that matter, the dangers involved in the deployment of military personnel in areas of civilian concern.  “Defence forces used in a civilian context should not be normalised,” she suggests, with good reason, in a briefing paper on the Enhancement of Defence Force Response to Emergencies Bill.  She points out that this latest proposed amendment lacks definitional scope.  “Other emergencies” is simply not defined.  The Defence Assistance to the Civil Community policy is already wide in application, seemingly decided by those in the Department of Defence.  “It is not inconceivable to see the normalisation of military forces on the streets responding to public order issues that should be dealt with by police, for example protests.”

There is much to be concerned about.  Such yardsticks as “good faith” are imprecise and feathery.  The “grossly inadequate” Human Rights Statement “does not address public rights that may well be infringed under these provisions.”  The proposed immunities would also extend to “foreign military and police forces”, suggesting more than a cheerful nod of approval to those nuclear armed allies across the pond.  “The use of a foreign army or militarised police force should not be allowed at all, and certainly not without the safeguard of citizens’ rights of access to courts.” 

Under the cover of stealth and reliable apathy, powers have been vested in Australia’s military and ministerial authorities with scant debate and even less scrutiny.  As law academic Michael Head points out with noticeable alarm, powers calling out the Australian Defence Force to deal with, for instance, “domestic violence”, or likely dangers to “declared infrastructure” are left undefined.  Vagueness bedevils the legislation, passed ostensibly to protect the populace against terrorist attacks.  “Once deployed, military personnel can exercise extraordinary powers over civilians, overturning basic legal and democratic rights.”   

The trend is not being arrested.   Australia’s defence forces, unlike the current prime minister, envisage a future of climate change chaos and a pressing need for readiness.  The Department of Defence, in a recent update, also worries about the “long-term impacts of the coronavirus pandemic”, which has “deeply altered the economic trajectory of the region and the world with implications for Australia’s prosperity and security.”  We have been warned.

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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]

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Current nuclear war plans are among any nuclear-armed military’s most closely guarded secrets. Details of one such attack plan recently became available, however, revealing that the United States envisaged using 80 nuclear weapons in case of war with North Korea. The way this particular detail emerged is also pretty unusual — the associated passage appeared in U.S. journalist Bob Woodward’s book Rage, detailing President Trump’s administration, which was published this week.

In fact, the particular quote from the book was not entirely clear:

“The Strategic Command in Omaha had carefully reviewed and studied OPLAN 5027 for regime change in North Korea — the U.S. response to an attack that could include the use of 80 nuclear weapons.”

This can be read two ways: a potential attack from the North could involve the use of 80 nuclear weapons, or the same number of weapons can be envisaged as a possible U.S. response to a first strike ordered by Pyongyang.

In an interview with NPR, Woodward cleared up any confusion, noting that the 80 nuclear weapons were part of a U.S. attack plan — OPLAN 5027, which would include ‘decapitating’ the North Korean regime of dictator Kim Jong-un.

“I think given North Korea is a rogue nation, they have, as I report, probably a couple of dozen nuclear weapons well-hidden and concealed,” Woodward explained to NPR. The veteran journalist confirmed that the then U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis was worried he might have to issue orders for a nuclear strike on North Korea.

“The potential we’d have to shoot to prevent a second launch was real,” Mattis admitted.

“You’re going to incinerate a couple million people,” Mattis told himself, according to Woodward. “No person has the right to kill a million people as far as I’m concerned, yet that’s what I have to confront.”

Secretary Mattis departs an E-4B airborne command post. (Source: DOD)

According to Woodward, Trump was worried that shooting down a North Korean ballistic missile (nuclear-armed or otherwise) on a trajectory headed toward the United States could prompt a full-scale nuclear attack from the “Hermit Kingdom.” Woodward writes that Trump had delegated authority to Jim Mattis to launch a conventionally armed interceptor missile to shoot down any North Korean missile that might be headed for the United States.

Woodward said that Mattis confided in him that he was not worried that Trump might launch a preemptive strike against North Korea. Instead, the source of his angst was the North Korean leader in Pyongyang.

In fact, such was Mattis’s level of concern that he would sleep in his gym clothes, Woodward claims. “There was a light in his bathroom… if he was in the shower and they detected a North Korean launch.”

There were alarm bells set up in Mattis’s bedroom and kitchen too, and on more than one occasion during the summer of 2017 they sounded the alert, and he entered the communications room in his Washington DC residency. Woodward explains that Mattis’s car was also constantly followed by an SUV with a team equipped to plot the flight path of any incoming missile, whether it was threatening Japan, South Korea, or the United States. If Mattis considered the missile hostile, he had a mobile communications link to issue launch orders to shoot it down.

Kim inspects a Hwasong-15 ICBM. (Source: North Korean State Media)

The book describes one particular missile alarm in particular detail. This occurred at 5:57 a.m. on August 29, 2017, when “exquisite” intelligence indicated that North Korea was about to launch another missile. Mattis was at home and entered the communications room, where he was told that U.S. interceptor missiles were ready to fire. The defense secretary monitored the progress of the North Korean missile on a geospatial map, watching it pass over Japan then come down in the sea. Woodward describes Mattis’s job at this time as “a nonstop crucible, personal and hellish. There were no holidays or weekends off, no dead time.”

Clearly, the status of a nuclear-armed North Korea provided much pause for thought within the U.S. administration during Mattis’ tenure as Secretary of Defense. That a strike plan against North Korea involving 80 nuclear weapons was discussed between the president and his defense secretary isn’t all that hard to imagine.

Back in September 2017, of course, North Korea conducted its sixth (and most recent) nuclear test, claiming the device in question was a thermonuclear bomb. The same year also saw considerable activity by North Korea’s strategic missile forces, including the first test of the Hwasong-14 and Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and several tests in which missiles passed over Japan.

Amid tensions between Washington and Pyongyang in 2017, The War Zonelooked in detail at the U.S. Strategic Command’s (STRATCOM) OPLAN 8010 — outlining the nuclear option for strikes against various unnamed states. One of the passages from the report we highlighted at the time is of particular interest (the authors’ own emphasis is included):

While dynamic security concerns in space and cyberspace evolve, traditional threats to national security continue to be presented by sovereign states, both the peer and near-peer and those regional adversary states with emerging WMD [weapons of mass destruction] capabilities.

The War Zone obtained a redacted version of the report, which does not mention North Korea by name, but which includes a section on “countries that present global threats” — more than likely coded language for North Korea.

An extract from the US Strategic Command’s Operation Plan 8010. (Source: STRATCOM)

One of the options under consideration in Washington was OPLAN 5015, a nuclear strike to take out the North Korean leadership, which Woodward also refers to, drawing again from his extensive interviews with Trump. Specifically, Woodward mentions “updating” such a plan — after all, Kim Jong-un and his predecessors will have always been priority targets in the case of an all-out war.

Kim inspects what was supposedly a thermonuclear weapon before the country’s sixth nuclear test. (North Korean State Media)

In one of his interviews, Trump tells Woodward he considered that Korean Kim Jong-un “was totally prepared” to go to war with the United States, and that full-blown conflict between the two nations was “much closer than anyone would know.” The U.S. president told Woodward that Kim Jong Un’s previously warlike outlook had been confirmed to him in his meeting with the North Korean leader. Trump considered that the situation was eventually diffused by the first-ever U.S.-North Korea summit held in Singapore in June 2018.

While tensions between North Korea and the United States have receded somewhat since 2017, the nuclear issue remains totally unresolved, with talks stalled since the second U.S.-North Korea summit in Vietnam in early 2019.

There are also signs that Pyongyang is further refining its nuclear weapons delivery systems, with claims from officials in South Korea that the North may be preparing to test a fully functional submarine-launched ballistic missile in around a year.

By increasing the portion of its nuclear arsenal carried aboard submarines, North Korea could make the detection and destruction of these weapons harder. The ability of North Korea to then launch a second strike, even if the chances of success were remote, would, in turn, require another update to the U.S. nuclear attack plans — and might involve more than the 80 nuclear weapons that Woodward wrote about.

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Featured image: Trump and Kim meet Sunday before Trump became first US president to step on North Korean territory. (White House photo)


Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

WWIII Scenario

In his recent paper, Dr. Ron B. Brown PhD writes:

“Students have been reprimanded and threatened for not following strict social-distancing rules at social events, even as the incumbent President of the United States flaunts the same social-distancing rules during his nomination acceptance speech in front of a non-distanced audience on the White House lawn. Students are being threatened even while large anti-lockdown demonstrations in Berlin and London are poised to spread around the globe. The global population is becoming increasingly fed up with enforced lockdowns to flatten a curve that has long passed the crisis stage in most nations. 

“The behaviour of school administrators toward student behaviour is an example of confirmation bias, which promotes fear-mongering and continues to cause unsupported overreaction to the coronavirus. Confirmation bias works by cherry picking only the evidence that confirms a finding, while ignoring evidence that refutes the finding.

“For example, a group of students who have gathered together in close contact without social-distancing is identified. The group is therefore immediately targeted for testing to detect the group prevalence of the coronavirus, based on the assumption that the infection was transmitted among the group members; but there is no experimental control group to make an unbiased determination if that assumption is correct or not.

“The prevalence of the infection within the identified group must be compared to the prevalence within a similar group of students who have not closely gathered without social distancing. But how often, if ever, does that experimental comparison between infected people and a control group occur? Without such a comparison, the evidence is anecdotal and the findings are biased.

“Therefore, lacking the design of a clinical case-control study (in this case, “case” refers to an infection, often asymptomatic), how can we blame the spread of the coronavirus on lack of social-distancing if no one knows the true prevalence of the coronavirus infection within the overall population?”

You can read Dr. Brown’s entire paper, Stop Blaming Students for Spreading COVID-19 and share it with students and their parents. Let’s stop schools from descending into virtual concentration camps. As Brown writes in his opening paragraph: “Students have had their education interrupted in a way that no other generation of young people ever had to endure.”

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Our thanks to John Manley for bringing this to our attention.

John C. A. Manley has spent over a decade ghostwriting for medical doctors, as well as naturopaths, chiropractors and Ayurvedic physicians. He publishes the COVID-19(84) Red Pill Daily Briefs – an email-based newsletter dedicated to preventing the governments of the world from using an exaggerated pandemic as an excuse to violate our freedom, health, privacy, livelihood and humanity. He is also writing a novel, Brave New Normal: A Dystopian Love Story. Visit his website at: MuchAdoAboutCorona.ca

Featured image is by Gavin Young/Postmedia News

We hope that by publishing diverse view points, submitted by journalists and experts dotted all over the world, the website can serve as a reminder that no matter what narrative we are presented with, things are rarely as cut and dry as they seem.

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Lies, Damned Lies and Health Statistics – The Deadly Danger of False Positives

By Dr. Mike Yeadon, September 21, 2020

I believe I have identified a serious, really a fatal flaw in the PCR test used in what is called by the UK Government the Pillar 2 screening – that is, testing many people out in their communities.  the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, misled the House of Commons and also made misleading statements in a radio interview.

Your Man in the Public Gallery: Assange Hearing Day 13

By Craig Murray, September 21, 2020

Wikileaks’ idea was a rigorous process of redaction and publication. They were going through the cables country by country. It was a careful and diligent process. Wikileaks were very serious and responsible about what they were doing. His abiding memory was sitting in a room with Wikileaks staff and other journalists, with everyone working for hours and hours in total silence, concentrated on going through the cables. Hager had been very pleased to see the level of care that was taken.

Why It Is Likelier that the U.S. Government Had Alexei Navalny Poisoned. “Immense Propaganda Asset to US”

By Eric Zuesse, September 21, 2020

The poisoning of Alexei Navalny has created intensified support by pro-U.S., and especially pro-NATO, officials in the European Union, to block the nearly completed NordStream 2 natural-gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, and to import into the EU, instead, far costlier U.S. LNG, liquefied natural gas.

Pompeo’s “Humanitarian Intervention” in Latin America: Is Washington Planning A Coup In Venezuela Before The November Elections?

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, September 21, 2020

The US and its long-time Puppet state, Colombia are moving towards another attempt for regime change against Venezuela’s President, Nicolas MaduroSecretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Latin American tour which included Colombia, Brazil, Guyana and Suriname, all share borders Venezuela was a display of the US flaunting its economic and military muscle to shape its Latin America policy for its economic and geopolitical advantage in the region.

Israel’s Knesset Votes Down Bill Guaranteeing Equality for Palestinian-Israelis, 21% of Population

By Prof. Juan Cole, September 21, 2020

The bill aimed at providing existential and democratic human rights, especially complete equality and the recognition of the Palestinian-Israeli ethnic identity. Israelis of Palestinian heritage comprise about 21 percent of Israel’s citizen population.

They Call for Assange’s Immediate Release: Lula, Rousseff, Morales, Zapatero, Corbyn, Correa, Paul, Galloway, Gravel, Varoufakis…

By Lawyers for Assange, September 21, 2020

The politicians from 27 different countries and from across the political spectrum have joined 189 independent international lawyers, judges, legal academics and lawyers’ associations by endorsing their open letter to the UK Government warning that the U.S. extradition request and extradition proceedings violate national and international law, breach fair trial rights and other human rights, and threaten press freedom and democracy.

The US’ Latest Anti-Iranian Sanctions Will Worsen the Trade War with China

By Andrew Korybko, September 21, 2020

The US’ latest anti-Iranian sanctions won’t change much when it comes to the Islamic Republic’s present economic predicament but will almost certainly provoke a worsening of the so-called “trade war” with China since the real intent seems to be to target the countless companies that are poised to participate in those two countries’ reported $400 billion strategic partnership agreement by replicating the model of “maximum pressure” that’s been experimented against Huawei over the past year.

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I never expected to be writing something like this. I am an ordinary person, recently semi-retired from a career in the pharmaceutical industry and biotech, where I spent over 30 years trying to solve problems of disease understanding and seek new treatments for allergic and inflammatory disorders of lung and skin. I’ve always been interested in problem solving, so when anything biological comes along, my attention is drawn to it. Come 2020, came SARS-CoV-2. I’ve written about the pandemic as objectively as I could. The scientific method never leaves a person who trained and worked as a professional scientist. Please do read that piece. My co-authors & I will submit it to the normal rigours of peer review, but that process is slow and many pieces of new science this year have come to attention through pre-print servers and other less conventional outlets.

While paying close attention to data, we all initially focused on the sad matter of deaths. I found it remarkable that, in discussing the COVID-19 related deaths, most people I spoke to had no idea of large numbers. Asked approximately how many people a year die in the UK in the ordinary course of events, each a personal tragedy, They usually didn’t know. I had to inform them it is around 620,000, sometimes less if we had a mild winter, sometimes quite a bit higher if we had a severe ’flu season. I mention this number because we know that around 42,000 people have died with or of COVID-19.

While it’s a huge number of people, its ‘only’ 0.06% of the UK population. Its not a coincidence that this is almost the same proportion who have died with or of COVID-19 in each of the heavily infected European countries – for example, Sweden. The annual all-causes mortality of 620,000 amounts to 1,700 per day, lower in summer and higher in winter. That has always been the lot of humans in the temperate zones. So for context, 42,000 is about ~24 days worth of normal mortality. Please know I am not minimising it, just trying to get some perspective on it. Deaths of this magnitude are not uncommon, and can occur in the more severe flu seasons. Flu vaccines help a little, but on only three occasions in the last decade did vaccination reach 50% effectiveness. They’re good, but they’ve never been magic bullets for respiratory viruses. Instead, we have learned to live with such viruses, ranging from numerous common colds all the way to pneumonias which can kill. Medicines and human caring do their best.

So, to this article. Its about the testing we do with something called PCR, an amplification technique, better known to biologists as a research tool used in our labs, when trying to unpick mechanisms of disease. I was frankly astonished to realise they’re sometimes used in population screening for diseases – astonished because it is a very exacting technique, prone to invisible errors and it’s quite a tall order to get reliable information out of it, especially because of the prodigious amounts of amplification involved in attempting to pick up a strand of viral genetic code. The test cannot distinguish between a living virus and a short strand of RNA from a virus which broke into pieces weeks or months ago.

I believe I have identified a serious, really a fatal flaw in the PCR test used in what is called by the UK Government the Pillar 2 screening – that is, testing many people out in their communities. I’m going to go through this with care and in detail because I’m a scientist and dislike where this investigation takes me. I’m not particularly political and my preference is for competent, honest administration over the actual policies chosen. We’re a reasonable lot in UK and not much given to extremes. What I’m particularly reluctant about is that, by following the evidence, I have no choice but to show that the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, misled the House of Commons and also made misleading statements in a radio interview. Those are serious accusations. I know that. I’m not a ruthless person. But I’m writing this anyway, because what I have uncovered is of monumental importance to the health and wellbeing of all the people living in the nation I have always called home.

Back to the story, and then to the evidence. When the first (and I think, only) wave of COVID-19 hit the UK, I was with almost everyone else in being very afraid. I’m 60 and in reasonable health, but on learning that I had about a 1% additional risk of perishing if I caught the virus, I discovered I was far from ready to go. So, I wasn’t surprised or angry when the first lockdown arrived. It must have been a very difficult thing to decide.

However, before the first three-week period was over, I’d begun to develop an understanding of what was happening. The rate of infection, which has been calculated to have infected well over 100,000 new people every day around the peak, began to fall, and was declining before lockdown. Infection continued to spread out, at an ever-reducing rate and we saw this in the turning point of daily deaths, at a grim press conference each afternoon.

We now know that lockdown made no difference at all to the spread of the virus. We can tell this because the interval between catching the virus and, in those who don’t make it, their death is longer than the interval between lockdown and peak daily deaths. There isn’t any controversy about this fact, easily demonstrated, but I’m aware some people like to pretend it was lockdown that turned the pandemic, perhaps to justify the extraordinary price we have all paid to do it.

That price wasn’t just economic. It involved avoidable deaths from diseases other than COVID-19, as medical services were restricted, in order to focus on the virus. Some say that lockdown, directly and indirectly, killed as many as the virus. I don’t know. Its not something I’ve sought to learn. But I mention because interventions in all our lives should not be made lightly. Its not only inconvenience, but real suffering, loss of livelihoods, friendships, anchors of huge importance to us all, that are severed by such acts. We need to be certain that the prize is worth the price. While it is uncertain it was, even for the first lockdown, I too supported it, because we did not know what we faced, and frankly, almost everyone else did it, except Sweden. I am now resolutely against further interventions in what I have become convinced is a fruitless attempt to ‘control the virus’. We are, in my opinion – shared by others, some of whom are well placed to assess the situation – closer to the end of the pandemic in terms of deaths, than we are to its middle. I believe we should provide the best protection we can for any vulnerable people, and otherwise cautiously get on with our lives. I think we are all going to get a little more Swedish over time.

In recent weeks, though, it cannot have escaped anyone’s attention that there has been a drum beat which feels for all the world like a prelude to yet more fruitless and damaging restrictions. Think back to mid-summer. We were newly out of lockdown and despite concerns for crowded beaches, large demonstrations, opening of shops and pubs, the main item on the news in relation to COVID-19 was the reassuring and relentless fall in daily deaths. I noticed that, as compared to the slopes of the declining death tolls in many nearby countries, that our slope was too flat. I even mentioned to scientist friends that inferred the presence of some fixed signal that was being mixed up with genuine COVID-19 deaths. Imagine how gratifying it was when the definition of a COVID-19 death was changed to line up with that in other countries and in a heartbeat our declining death toll line became matched with that elsewhere. I was sure it would: what we have experienced and witnessed is a terrible kind of equilibrium. A virus that kills few, then leaves survivors who are almost certainly immune – a virus to which perhaps 30-50% were already immune because it has relatives and some of us have already encountered them – accounts for the whole terrible but also fascinating biological process. There was a very interesting piece in the BMJ in recent days that offers potential support for this contention.

Now we have learned some of the unusual characteristics of the new virus, better treatments (anti-inflammatory steroids, anti-coagulants and in particular, oxygen masks and not ventilators in the main) the ‘case fatality rate’ even for the most hard-hit individuals is far lower now than it was six months ago.

As there is no foundational, medical or scientific literature which tells us to expect a ‘second wave’, I began to pay more attention to the phrase as it appeared on TV, radio and print media – all on the same day – and has been relentlessly repeated ever since.

I was interviewed recently by Julia Hartley-Brewer on her talkRADIO show and on that occasion I called on the Government to disclose to us the evidence upon which they were relying to predict this second wave. Surely they have some evidence? I don’t think they do. I searched and am very qualified to do so, drawing on academic friends, and we were all surprised to find that there is nothing at all. The last two novel coronaviruses, Sars (2003) and MERS (2012), were of one wave each. Even the WW1 flu ‘waves’ were almost certainly a series of single waves involving more than one virus. I believe any second wave talk is pure speculation. Or perhaps it is in a model somewhere, disconnected from the world of evidence to me? It would be reasonable to expect some limited ‘resurgence’ of a virus given we don’t mix like cordial in a glass of water, but in a more lumpy, human fashion. You’re most in contact with family, friends and workmates and they are the people with whom you generally exchange colds.

A long period of imposed restrictions, in addition to those of our ordinary lives did prevent the final few percent of virus mixing with the population. With the movements of holidays, new jobs, visiting distant relatives, starting new terms at universities and schools, that final mixing is under way. It should not be a terrifying process. It happens with every new virus, flu included. It’s just that we’ve never before in our history chased it around the countryside with a technique more suited to the biology lab than to a supermarket car park.

A very long prelude, but necessary. Part of the ‘project fear’ that is rather too obvious, involving second waves, has been the daily count of ‘cases’. Its important to understand that, according to the infectious disease specialists I’ve spoken to, the word ‘case’ has to mean more than merely the presence of some foreign organism. It must present signs (things medics notice) and symptoms (things you notice). And in most so-called cases, those testing positive had no signs or symptoms of illness at all. There was much talk of asymptomatic spreading, and as a biologist this surprised me. In almost every case, a person is symptomatic because they have a high viral load and either it is attacking their body or their immune system is fighting it, generally a mix. I don’t doubt there have been some cases of asymptomatic transmission, but I’m confident it is not important.

That all said, Government decided to call a person a ‘case’ if their swab sample was positive for viral RNA, which is what is measured in PCR. A person’s sample can be positive if they have the virus, and so it should. They can also be positive if they’ve had the virus some weeks or months ago and recovered. It’s faintly possible that high loads of related, but different coronaviruses, which can cause some of the common colds we get, might also react in the PCR test, though it’s unclear to me if it does.

But there’s a final setting in which a person can be positive and that’s a random process. This may have multiple causes, such as the amplification technique not being perfect and so amplifying the ‘bait’ sequences placed in with the sample, with the aim of marrying up with related SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA. There will be many other contributions to such positives. These are what are called false positives.

Think of any diagnostic test a doctor might use on you. The ideal diagnostic test correctly confirms all who have the disease and never wrongly indicates that healthy people have the disease. There is no such test. All tests have some degree of weakness in generating false positives. The important thing is to know how often this happens, and this is called the false positive rate. If 1 in 100 disease-free samples are wrongly coming up positive, the disease is not present, we call that a 1% false positive rate. The actual or operational false positive rate differs, sometimes substantially, under different settings, technical operators, detection methods and equipment. I’m focusing solely on the false positive rate in Pillar 2, because most people do not have the virus (recently around 1 in 1000 people and earlier in summer it was around 1 in 2000 people). It is when the amount of disease, its so-called prevalence, is low that any amount of a false positive rate can be a major problem. This problem can be so severe that unless changes are made, the test is hopelessly unsuitable to the job asked of it. In this case, the test in Pillar 2 was and remains charged with the job of identifying people with the virus, yet as I will show, it is unable to do so.

Because of the high false positive rate and the low prevalence, almost every positive test, a so-called case, identified by Pillar 2 since May of this year has been a FALSE POSITIVE. Not just a few percent. Not a quarter or even a half of the positives are FALSE, but around 90% of them. Put simply, the number of people Mr Hancock sombrely tells us about is an overestimate by a factor of about ten-fold. Earlier in the summer, it was an overestimate by about 20-fold.

Let me take you through this, though if you’re able to read Prof Carl Heneghan’s clearly written piece first, I’m more confident that I’ll be successful in explaining this dramatic conclusion to you. (Here is a link to the record of numbers of tests, combining Pillar 1 (hospital) and Pillar 2 (community).)

Imagine 10,000 people getting tested using those swabs you see on TV. We have a good estimate of the general prevalence of the virus from the ONS, who are wholly independent (from Pillar 2 testing) and are testing only a few people a day, around one per cent of the numbers recently tested in Pillar 2. It is reasonable to assume that most of the time, those being tested do not have symptoms. People were asked to only seek a test if they have symptoms. However, we know from TV news and stories on social media from sampling staff, from stern guidance from the Health Minister and the surprising fact that in numerous locations around the country, the local council is leafleting people’s houses, street by street to come and get tested.

The bottom line is that it is reasonable to expect the prevalence of the virus to be close to the number found by ONS, because they sample randomly, and would pick up symptomatic and asymptomatic people in proportion to their presence in the community. As of the most recent ONS survey, to a first approximation, the virus was found in 1 in every 1000 people. This can also be written as 0.1%. So when all these 10,000 people are tested in Pillar 2, you’d expect 10 true positives to be found (false negatives can be an issue when the virus is very common, but in this community setting, it is statistically unimportant and so I have chosen to ignore it, better to focus only on false positives).

So, what is the false positive rate of testing in Pillar 2? For months, this has been a concern. It appears that it isn’t known, even though as I’ve mentioned, you absolutely need to know it in order to work out whether the diagnostic test has any value! What do we know about the false positive rate? Well, we do know that the Government’s own scientists were very concerned about it, and a report on this problem was sent to SAGE dated June 3rd 2020. I quote: “Unless we understand the operational false positive rate of the UK’s RT-PCR testing system, we risk over-estimating the COVID-19 incidence, the demand on track and trace and the extent of asymptomatic infection”. In that same report, the authors helpfully listed the lowest to highest false positive rate of dozens of tests using the same technology. The lowest value for false positive rate was 0.8%.

Allow me to explain the impact of a false positive rate of 0.8% on Pillar 2. We return to our 10,000 people who’ve volunteered to get tested, and the expected ten with virus (0.1% prevalence or 1:1000) have been identified by the PCR test. But now we’ve to calculate how many false positives are to accompanying them. The shocking answer is 80. 80 is 0.8% of 10,000. That’s how many false positives you’d get every time you were to use a Pillar 2 test on a group of that size.

The effect of this is, in this example, where 10,000 people have been tested in Pillar 2, could be summarised in a headline like this: “90 new cases were identified today” (10 real positive cases and 80 false positives). But we know this is wildly incorrect. Unknown to the poor technician, there were in this example, only 10 real cases. 80 did not even have a piece of viral RNA in their sample. They are really false positives.

I’m going to explain how bad this is another way, back to diagnostics. If you’d submitted to a test and it was positive, you’d expect the doctor to tell you that you had a disease, whatever it was testing for. Usually, though, they’ll answer a slightly different question: “If the patient is positive in this test, what is the probability they have the disease?” Typically, for a good diagnostic test, the doctor will be able to say something like 95% and you and they can live with that. You might take a different, confirmatory test, if the result was very serious, like cancer. But in our Pillar 2 example, what is the probability a person testing positive in Pillar 2 actually has COVID-19? The awful answer is 11% (10 divided by 80 + 10). The test exaggerates the number of covid-19 cases by almost ten-fold (90 divided by 10). Scared yet? That daily picture they show you, with the ‘cases’ climbing up on the right-hand side? Its horribly exaggerated. Its not a mistake, as I shall show.

Earlier in the summer, the ONS showed the virus prevalence was a little lower, 1 in 2000 or 0.05%. That doesn’t sound much of a difference, but it is. Now the Pillar 2 test will find half as many real cases from our notional 10,000 volunteers, so 5 real cases. But the flaw in the test means it will still find 80 false positives (0.8% of 10,000). So its even worse. The headline would be “85 new cases identified today”. But now the probability a person testing positive has the virus is an absurdly low 6% (5 divided by 80 + 5). Earlier in the summer, this same test exaggerated the number of COVID-19 cases by 17-fold (85 divided by 5). Its so easy to generate an apparently large epidemic this way. Just ignore the problem of false positives. Pretend its zero. But it is never zero.

This test is fatally flawed and MUST immediately be withdrawn and never used again in this setting unless shown to be fixed. The examples I gave are very close to what is actually happening every day as you read this.

I’m bound to ask, did Mr Hancock know of this fatal flaw? Did he know of the effect it would inevitably have, and is still having, not only on the reported case load, but the nation’s state of anxiety. I’d love to believe it is all an innocent mistake. If it was, though, he’d have to resign over sheer incompetence. But is it? We know that internal scientists wrote to SAGE, in terms, and, surely, this short but shocking warning document would have been drawn to the Health Secretary’s attention? If that was the only bit of evidence, you might be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. But the evidence grows more damning.

Recently, I published with my co-authors a short Position Paper. I don’t think by then, a month ago or so, the penny had quite dropped with me. And I’m an experienced biomedical research scientist, used to dealing with complex datasets and probabilities.

On September 11th 2020, I was a guest on Julia Hartley-Brewer’s talkRADIO show. Among other things, I called upon Mr Hancock to release the evidence underscoring his confidence in and planning for ‘the second wave’. This evidence has not yet been shown to the public by anyone. I also demanded he disclose the operational false positive rate in Pillar 2 testing.

On September 16th, I was back on Julia’s show and this time focused on the false positive rate issue (1m 45s – 2min 30s). I had read Carl Heneghan’s analysis showing that even if the false positive rate was as low as 0.1%, 8 times lower than any similar test, it still yields a majority of false positives. So, my critique doesn’t fall if the actual false positive rate is lower than my assumed 0.8%.

On September 18th, Mr Hancock again appeared, as often he does, on Julia Hartley-Brewer’s show. Julia asked him directly (1min 50s – on) what the false positive rate in Pillar 2 is. Mr Hancock said “It’s under 1%”. Julia again asked him exactly what it was, and did he even know it? He didn’t answer that, but then said “it means that, for all the positive cases, the likelihood of one being a false positive is very small”.

That is a seriously misleading statement as it is incorrect. The likelihood of an apparently positive case being a false positive is between 89-94%, or near-certainty. Of note, even when ONS was recording its lowest-ever prevalence, the positive rate in Pillar 2 testing never fell below 0.8%.

It gets worse for the Health Secretary. On September the 17th, I believe, Mr Hancock took a question from Sir Desmond Swayne about false positives. It is clear that Sir Desmond is asking about Pillar 2.

Mr Hancock replied: “I like my right honourable friend very much and I wish it were true. The reason we have surveillance testing, done by ONS, is to ensure that we’re constantly looking at a nationally representative sample at what the case rate is. The latest ONS survey, published on Friday, does show a rise consummate (sic) with the increased number of tests that have come back positive.”

He did not answer Sir Desmond’s question, but instead answered a question of his choosing. Did the Health Secretary knowingly mislead the House? By referring only to ONS and not even mentioning the false positive rate of the test in Pillar 2 he was, as it were, stealing the garb of ONS’s more careful work which has a lower false positive rate, in order to smuggle through the hidden and very much higher, false positive rate in Pillar 2. The reader will have to decide for themselves.

Pillar 2 testing has been ongoing since May but it’s only in recent weeks that it has reached several hundreds of thousands of tests per day. The effect of the day by day climb in the number of people that are being described as ‘cases’ cannot be overstated. I know it is inducing fear, anxiety and concern for the possibility of new and unjustified restrictions, including lockdowns. I have no idea what Mr Hancock’s motivations are. But he has and continues to use the hugely inflated output from a fatally flawed Pillar 2 test and appears often on media, gravely intoning the need for additional interventions (none of which, I repeat, are proven to be effective).

You will be very familiar with the cases plot which is shown on most TV broadcasts at the moment. It purports to show the numbers of cases which rose then fell in the spring, and the recent rise in cases. This graph is always accompanied by the headline that “so many thousands of new cases were detected in the last 24 hours”.

You should know that there are two major deceptions, in that picture, which combined are very likely both to mislead and to induce anxiety. Its ubiquity indicates that it is a deliberate choice.

Firstly, it is very misleading in relation to the spring peak of cases. This is because we had no community screening capacity at that time. A colleague has adjusted the plot to show the number of cases we would have detected, had there been a well-behaved community test capability available. The effect is to greatly increase the size of the spring cases peak, because there are very many cases for each hospitalisation and many hospitalisations for every death.

Secondly, as I hope I have shown and persuaded you, the cases in summer and at present, generated by seriously flawed Pillar 2 tests, should be corrected downwards by around ten-fold.

I do believe genuine cases are rising somewhat. This is, however, also true for flu, which we neither measure daily nor report on every news bulletin. If we did, you would appreciate that, going forward, it is quite likely that flu is a greater risk to public health than COVID-19. The corrected cases plot (above) does, I believe, put the recent rises in incidence of COVID-19 in a much more reasonable context. I thought you should see that difference before arriving at your own verdict on this sorry tale.

There are very serious consequences arising from grotesque over-estimation of so-called cases in Pillar 2 community testing, which I believe was put in place knowingly. Perhaps Mr Hancock believes his own copy about the level of risk now faced by the general public? Its not for me to deduce. What this huge over-estimation has done is to have slowed the normalisation of the NHS. We are all aware that access to medical services is, to varying degrees, restricted. Many specialities were greatly curtailed in spring and after some recovery, some are still between a third and a half below their normal capacities. This has led both to continuing delays and growth of waiting lists for numerous operations and treatments. I am not qualified to assess the damage to the nation’s and individuals’ health as a direct consequence of this extended wait for a second wave. Going into winter with this configuration will, on top of the already restricted access for six months, lead inevitably to a large number of avoidable, non-Covid deaths. That is already a serious enough charge. Less obvious but, in aggregate, additional impacts arise from fear of the virus, inappropriately heightened in my view, which include: damage to or even destruction of large numbers of businesses, especially small businesses, with attendant loss of livelihoods, loss of educational opportunities, strains on family relationships, eating disorders, increasing alcoholism and domestic abuse and even suicides, to name but a few.

In closing, I wish to note that in the last 40 years alone the UK has had seven official epidemics/pandemics; AIDS, Swine flu, CJD, SARS, MERS, Bird flu as well as annual, seasonal flu. All were very worrying but schools remained open and the NHS treated everybody and most of the population were unaffected. The country would rarely have been open if it had been shut down every time.

I have explained how a hopelessly-performing diagnostic test has been, and continues to be used, not for diagnosis of disease but, it seems, solely to create fear.

This misuse of power must cease. All the above costs are on the ledger, too, when weighing up the residual risks to society from COVID-19 and the appropriate actions to take, if any. Whatever else happens, the test used in Pillar 2 must be immediately withdrawn as it provides no useful information. In the absence of vastly inflated case numbers arising from this test, the pandemic would be seen and felt to be almost over.

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Dr Mike Yeadon is the former CSO and VP, Allergy and Respiratory Research Head with Pfizer Global R&D and co-Founder of Ziarco Pharma Ltd.

Featured image is from Lockdown Sceptics

Your Man in the Public Gallery: Assange Hearing Day 13

September 21st, 2020 by Craig Murray

Friday gave us the most emotionally charged moments yet at the Assange hearing, showed that strange and sharp twists in the story are still arriving at the Old Bailey, and brought into sharp focus some questions about the handling and validity of evidence, which I will address in comment.

Nicky Hager

The first witness of the day was Nicky Hager, the veteran New Zealand investigative journalist. Hager’s co-authored book “Hit and Run” detailed a disastrous New Zealand SAS raid in Afghanistan, “Operation Burnham”, that achieved nothing but the deaths of civilians, including a child. Hager was the object of much calumny and insult, and even of police raids on his home, but in July an official government report found that all the major facts of his book were correct, and the New Zealand military had run dangerously out of control:

“Ministers were not able to exercise the democratic control of the military. The military do not exist for their own purpose, they are meant to be controlled by their minister who is accountable to Parliament.”

Edward Fitzgerald took Hager through his evidence. Hager stated that journalists had a duty to serve the public, and that they could not do this without access to secret sources of classified information. This was even more necessary for the public good in time of war. Claims of harm are always made by governments against any such disclosures. It is always stated. Such claims had been frequently made against him throughout his career. No evidence had ever emerged to back up any of these claims that anybody had been harmed as a result of his journalism.

When Wikileaks had released the Afghan War Logs, they had been an invaluable source to journalists. They showed details of regular patrols, CIA financed local forces, aid and reconstruction ops, technical intelligence ops, special ops and psychological ops, among others. They had contributed much to his books on Afghanistan. Information marked as confidential is essential to public understanding of the war. He freqently used leaked material. You had to judge whether it was in the higher public interest to inform the public. Decisions of war and peace were of the very highest public interest. If the public were being misled about the conduct and course of the war, how could democratic choices be made?

Edward Fitzgerald then asked about the collateral murder video and what they revealed about the rules of engagement. Hager said that the Collateral Murder video had “the most profound effect throughout the world”. The publication of that video and the words “”Look at those dead bastards” had changed world opinion on the subject of civilian casualties. In fact the Rules of Engagement had been changed to put more emphasis on avoiding civilian casualties, as a direct result.

In November 2010 Hager had travelled to the UK to join the Wikileaks team and had become involved in redacting and printing stories from the cables relating to Australasia. He was one of the local partners Wikileaks had brought in for the cables, expanding from the original media consortium that handled the Afghan and Iraqi war logs.

Wikileaks’ idea was a rigorous process of redaction and publication. They were going through the cables country by country. It was a careful and diligent process. Wikileaks were very serious and responsible about what they were doing. His abiding memory was sitting in a room with Wikileaks staff and other journalists, with everyone working for hours and hours in total silence, concentrated on going through the cables. Hager had been very pleased to see the level of care that was taken.

Edward Fitzgerald asked him about Julian Assange. Hager said he found him completely different to the media presentation of him. He was thoughtful, humorous and energetic. He dedicated himself to trying to make the world a better place, particularly in the post 9/11 climate of a reduction of citizen freedoms in the world. Assange had a vision that the digital age would enable a new kind of whistleblower which could correct the information imbalance between government and citizen. This was against a background of torture, rendition and war crimes being widely committed by western governments.

James Lewis QC then rose to cross-examine on behalf of the US government

Lewis Have you read the indictment and the extradition request?
Hager Yes.
Lewis What charges do you see there?
Hager I see a mish-mash. Some charges of publication, some of possession then other stuff added.
Lewis Assange is not charged with publishing the collateral murder video your evidence says so much about
Hager You can’t look at the effect the Wikileaks revelations had on the world in that kind of neat and compartmentalised way. The cables, logs and all the rest affected the world as a whole.
Lewis Is Assange charged with publication of any of the documents you have relied on in your works?
Hager That would take me some research to find out, which he is charged with publishing and which with possession.
Lewis Have you ever paid a government official to give you secret information?
Hager No.
Lewis Have you ever hacked?
Hager No, probably. That depends how you define “hack”.
Lewis You have as a journalist merely been the passive recipient of official information. Presumably you have never done anything criminal to obtain government information?
Hager You said “passive”. That is not the way we work. Journalists not only actively work our sources. We go out and find our sources. The information might come in documents. It might come on a memory stick. In most cases our sources are breaking the law. Our duty is to help protect them from being caught. We actively help them cover their backs sometimes.
Lewis In your report on Operation Burnham you protected your sources. Would you knowingly put a source in danger?
Hager No, of course not. However…
Lewis No. Stop. You answered.

Edward Fitzgerald QC rose to object but found no support from the judge.

Lewis On 2 September 2011 the Guardian published an editorial article abhorring Wikileaks’ publishing of unredacted cables and stating that hundreds of lives had been put in danger. Do you agree with those statements?
Hager My information is that Wikileaks did not release the cables until others had published.
Lewis We say your understanding is wrong. On 25 August Wikileaks published 134,000 cables including some marked “strictly protect”. What is your opinion on that?
Hager I am not going to comment on a disputed fact. I do not personally know.
Lewis The book “Wikileaks: the Inside Story” by David Leigh and Luke Harding of the Guardian newspaper states that Assange “wished to release the whole lot sooner”. It also states that at a dinner at El Moro restaurant, Assange stated that if informants were killed, they had it coming to them. Would you care to comment?
Hager I know that there was great animosity between David Leigh and Julian Assange by the point that book was written. I would not regard that as a reliable source. I do not want to dignify that book by answering it.
Lewis Are you trying to assist the court or assist Assange? In a talk recorded at the Frontline Club, Assange stated that Wikileaks only had a duty to protect informants from “unjust” retribution, and that those who gave information to US forces for money or engaged in “truly traitorous” behaviour deserved their fate. Do you support that statement?
Hager No.
Lewis You say it would have been impossible to write your book without confidential material from Wikileaks. Did you need the names of informants?
Hager No.
Lewis The Operation Burnham report found at p.8 that, contrary to your assertions “New Zealand Defence Forces were not involved in planning preparation and execution”.
Hager What you have quoted does not relate to the main operations covered in the book. It only refers to something covered as a “minor footnote” in the book. Most of the findings of the book were confirmed.
Lewis The Official Report states of your book “Hit and Run was inaccurate in some respects”.
Hager We did not get everything right. But the major points were all true. “Civilian casualties confirmed. Death of child confirmed. Prisoner beaten up confirmed. Falsified reports confirmed.”
Lewis How many cables did you personally review?
Hager A few hundred. They were specifically cables relating to Australasia.
Lewis And what criteria did you use to make redactions?
Hager There were quite a few names marked “strictly protect”. This was not, in the context, for reasons of safety in the countries which I was working on. It was purely to avoid political embarrassment.
Lewis But how long did you work in London on the cables?
Hager It was several days, to do several hundred cables.
Lewis Did you show your statement to the defence in draft?
Hager Yes, I have always done this when I have submitted an affidavit.

[This is normal. Affidavits or statements from defence witnesses are normally drawn up and, if affidavits, taken under oath by the defence solicitors.]

Lewis Did the defence suggest to you that you should place the section on Rules of Engagement next to the Collateral Damage video?
Hager Yes. But I was very happy to do it, it made perfect sense to me.

Edward Fitzgerald QC then rose again for the re-examination.

Fitzgerald You were asked if you know what Assange is charged with. Do you know he is charged with obtaining and receiving all of the diplomatic cables, the Iraq war logs, the Afghan war logs, the rules of engagement, and the Guantanamo detainee assessments?
Hager Yes.
Fitzgerald And he could not have published any of them without first obtaining and receiving them? So the distinction as to which he is charged for publishing makes no difference to the liability of journalists like yourself to the Espionage Act for obtaining and receiving US classified information?
Hager Yes.
Fitzgerald You work with sources. That means the person who provides you with the information or material. And do you have a duty to protect that source?
Hager Yes.
Fitzgerald You were asked about the September 2011 publication of cables. What do you know about how that came about?
Hager I believed the Wikileaks people and witnessed their extreme seriousness in the redaction process to which they invited me in. I do not believe they suddenly changed their mind about it. This publication came about through a series of bad luck and unfortunate events, not by Wikileaks. But that nine month redaction process was not wasted. Wikileaks had at an early stage warned the US authorities and invited them to be part of the redaction process. Assange had stressed to US authorities the danger to those named in the report. While the US authorities had not got involved in redaction, they had started a massive exercise in warning those named in the reports that they might have been in danger, and helping those the most at risk to take measures to relocate. I think this is overlooked. Julian Assange bought those people nine months. I also believe that is the major part of the explanation why in the end there were no identifiable deaths and was no wholesale damage.
Fitzgerald What do you believe the bad luck to have been?
Hager I understand it was the publication of a password in the Leigh/Harding book, but I have no direct knowledge.
Fitzgerald On this book, you have said there was bad blood between Luke Harding, David Leigh and Julian Assange.
Hager Yes, I would not put much weight on that book as a source myself.

[I hope you will forgive me for adding personal knowledge here, but the bad blood was nothing to do with redaction and everything to do with money. Julian Assange was briefly the most famous man in the world for a while and had not yet been tarnished with the allegations arranged in Sweden. Rights to an Assange book on Wikileaks and a biography were potentially worth millions to the authors. Collaboration had been discussed with Leigh but Julian had decided against. The Guardian were furious. That is what really happened. It seems a good explanation of why they instead published a money-spinning book attacking Assange. It does not really explain why they published the password to the unredacted cable cache in that book.]

Fitzgerald Julian Assange stated at the Frontline Club that sources had to be protected from “unjust retribution”. Do you agree with that?
Hager Yes.
Fitzgerald He was trying to draw a distinction with categories who do not deserve protection. Informants who give false information for money, agents provocateurs, those who turn in innocents for personal motives. We have seen the press in the UK, for example, name certain informants in Northern Ireland who had played a bad part. What do you think of naming informants in those kind of circumstances?
Hager I don’t want to comment on Northern Ireland. It is all a very difficult topic.
Fitzgerald Could you comment further on the collateral murder video and the rules of engagement?
Hager The RoEs simply govern when soldiers can and cannot use force. They raise important questions. Are they correct? Do they minimise civilian casualties? Are they consistent with the laws of armed conflict?
Fitzgerald One charge related to receiving and obtaining the RoEs. Is that why you mentioned them?
Hager Yes. The soldiers always retain the base right of self-defence. There is no basis for claiming their publication poses a dire risk for the troops. It arguably leads to less conflict if people know when force will and will not be used.
Fitzgerald You affirm that when the defence asked you to put together the collateral murder video with the rules of engagement, you agreed purely on the basis that was correct and right in your own opinion?
Hager Yes.

Jennifer Robinson

The court then moved to its first witness with “read evidence”. It has been agreed that some witnesses whom the prosecution does not wish to cross examine will have their evidence “read” into the record without having to appear. After substantial discussions and disagreements between the lawyers this has been resolved to be a short summary or “gist” of their evidence. My reports then for this group of witnesses are the gist of a gist; in this case of the evidence of Jennifer Robinson.

Jennifer Robinson is a lawyer who has advised Julian Assange since 2010. She represented him in his Swedish legal issues. On 15 August 2017 he asked her to join him for a meeting in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London with US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher and an aide Charles Johnson. Rohrabacher had stated he was acting on behalf of President Donald Trump and would report back to Trump on his return to Washington.

Rohrabacher said that the “Russiagate” story was politically damaging to President Trump, was damaging to US interests and to US/Russian relations. It would therefore be very helpful if Julian would reveal the real source of the DNC leaks. This would be in the public interest.

Julian Assange had put the case for a full pardon for Chelsea Manning and for any indictment against himself as a publisher to be dropped on First Amendment grounds. Rohrabacher had said there was an obvious “win win solution” here and he would investigate “what might be possible to get him out.” Assange could reveal the DNC source in return for a “pardon, deal or arrangement”. Assange had however not named any source to him.

Khaled El-Masri

There had been three days of intense discussion between the counsel and the judge, with the United States government objecting bitterly to Mr El-Masri being heard. A compromise had been reached that he could give evidence provided he did not allege he was tortured by the US Government. However, when he came to give evidence, Mr El-Masri was strangely unable to connect by videolink, even though the defence team had been able to speak to him by video a few hours earlier. Technical staff in the court having been unable to resolve the (ahem) technical issue, rather than simply postpone his evidence until a videolink had been established – as had happened already with two other witnesses when quality issues arose – Judge Baraitser suddenly decided to raise again the issue of whether el-Masri’s evidence should be heard at all.

James Lewis QC for the US Government stated that they did not merely oppose his evidence of being tortured. They opposed the making of any claim that a Wikileaks-released cable showed that they had put pressure on the government of Germany not to arrest those allegedly concerned in his alleged extradition. The US Government had not pressurised the Government of Germany, Lewis said. Mark Summers QC for the defence said that the Supreme Chamber of the European Court in Strasbourg had already judged his claims to be true, and that the Wikileaks cable plainly and inarguably showed the US Government exerting pressure on Germany.

Judge Baraitser said she was not going to determine if the US had pressurised Germany or if el-Masri had been tortured. Those were not the questions before her. Mark Summers QC said that it went to the question of whether Wikileaks had performed a necessary act to prevent criminality by the US Government and enable justice. Lewis responded that it was unacceptable to the US government that allegations of torture should be made.

At this point, Julian Assange became very agitated. He stood up and declared very loudly:

“I will not permit the testimony of a torture victim to be censored by this court”

A great commotion broke out. Baraitser threatened to have Julian removed and have the hearing held in his absence. There was a break following which it was announced that el-Masri would not appear, but that the gist of his evidence would be read out, excluding detail of US torture or of US pressure on the government of Germany. Mark Summers QC started to read the evidence.

Khaled el-Masri, of Lebanese origin, had come to Germany in 1989 and was a German citizen. On 1 January 2004 after a holiday in Skopje he had been removed from a coach on the Macedonian border. He had been held incommunicado by Macedonian officials, ill-treated and beaten. On 23 July he had been taken to Skopje airport and handed over to CIA operatives. They had beaten, shackled, hooded and sodomised him. His clothes had been ripped off, he had been dressed in a diaper, shackled to the floor of an aircraft in a cruciform position, and rendered unconscious by an anaesthetic injection.

He awoke in what he eventually learned was Afghanistan. He was held incommunicado in a bare concrete cell with a bucket for a toilet. He was held for six months and interrogated throughout this period [details of torture excluded by the judge]. Eventually in June he was flown to Albania, driven blindfold up a remote mountain road and dumped. When he eventually got back to Germany, his home was deserted and his wife and children had left.

When he made his story public he was subject to vicious attacks on his character and his credibility and it was claimed he was inventing it. He believes the government sought to silence him. He sought a local lawyer and persisted, eventually getting in touch with Mr Goetz of public TV, who had proven his story to be true, traced the CIA agents involved to North Carolina and even interviewed some of them. As a result, Munich state prosecutors released arrest warrants for his CIA kidnappers, but these were never executed. When Wikileaks issued the cables the pressure that had been brought on the German government not to prosecute became plain. [The judge did not prevent Summers from saying this.] We therefore know the US blocked judicial investigation of a crime. The European Court of Human Rights had explicitly relied on the Wikileaks cables for part of its judgement in the case. The Grand Chamber confirmed that he had been beaten, hooded, shackled and sodomised.

There had been no accountability in the USA. The CIA Inspector-General had declined to take action over the case. The ECHR judgement and supporting documentation had been sent to the office of the US Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia – precisely the same office that was now attempting to extradite Assange – and that office had declined to prosecute the CIA officers concerned.

A complaint had been made to the International Criminal Court including the ECHR judgement and the Wikileaks material. In March 2020 the ICC had announced it was opening an investigation. In response US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had declared any non-US citizen who cooperated with that ICC investigation, including officers of the ICC, would be subject to financial and other sanctions.

Finally, el-Masri testified that Wikileaks’ publication had been essential to him in gaining acceptance of the truth of the crime and of the cover-up.

In fact, the impact of Mark Summers’ reading of el-Masri’s statement on the court was enormous. Summers has a real gift for conveying moral force and constrained righteous anger in his tone. I thought the testimony had a definite impression on Judge Baraitser; she showed signs not of discomfort or embarrassment, but of real emotional distress while she was listening intently. Subsequently, two different witnesses, each situated in separate sections of the court from me, both in separate and unprompted conversations with me, told me that they thought that el-Masri’s testimony had really gotten through to the judge. Vanessa Baraitser is after all only human, and this is the first time she has been forced to deal with what this case is actually about.

Dean Yates

The United States had objected that Mr Yates’ evidence should not include description of the actual content of the Collateral Murder video. I could not hear or understand any rationale why Baraitser agreed to this, but she did so rule, and four times she interrupted Edward Fitzgerald QC while he was reading the “gist” of Yates’ statement, to tell him he must not mention the content of the video.

Edward Fitzgerald read out that Mr Yates was a highly experienced journalist who had been Bureau Chief for Reuters in Baghdad. Early on 12 July 2007 “loud wailing” broke out in their office and he learnt that Namir, a photographer, and Saeed, a driver, had been killed. Namir had left early to cover a reported conflict with militants. Yates could not work out what had happened. A minivan nearby had its front shattered; the US military had taken Namir’s two cameras and refused to release them. The report was thirteen killed and nine injured. There did not appear to be any evidence of a firefight at the scene.

Yates had attended a US military HQ briefing where he was told that a hostile group had been deploying Improvised Explosive Devices in the road. He was shown photographs of machine guns and RPGs allegedly collected from the scene. He was shown three minutes of the video. It showed [Here Baraitser cut Fitzgerald off].
Yates had subsequently submitted a request to the US military to view the whole video, which had been denied. So had requests for the rules of engagement.

When Wikileaks released the Collateral Murder video, in the video Saeed was shown for three minutes crawling and trying to get up, while the Americans watching him remotely were saying “come on buddy, all you’ve got to do is pick up a weapon” so they could shoot him again. The Good Samaritan pulled up to help and the shots were seen destroying his windscreen and car. Edward Fitzgerald kept doggedly reading out bits of Yates’ testimony as Baraitser continually asked him to stop in a manner that was almost pleading.

Yates said that when he saw the video he immediately realised the US had lied to them about what happened. He also immediately wondered how much of that meeting at USHQ had been choreographed.

Something struck Yates very hard later. He had always blamed Namir for peering round the corner with his camera, which had been mistaken for a weapon and therefore caused him to be shot. It was Julian Assange who subsequently made the point that the order to kill Namir had been given before he had peered round the corner. He vividly recalled Assange saying “and if that’s within the RoEs, then the RoEs are wrong.” Yates was glad to absolve Namir but felt a terrible burden of guilt for having blamed him all the while for his own death.

Yates concluded that had it not been for Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange, the truth of what had happened to Namir and Saeed would never have been known. Thanks to Wikileaks, their deaths had a profound effect on public opinion.

James Lewis QC stated the American government had no questions but this did not imply the evidence was accepted.

Carey Shenkman

Finally, we turned to the second half of Clair Dobbin’s cross-examination of Carey Shenkman on his testimony on the history of the Espionage Act. This may seem dull, but it has actually been extremely revealing in terms of revealing US government claims of the right to use the Espionage Act (1917) against any journalist, anywhere in the world, who obtains US classified information.

Dobbin opened part 2 by asking Shenkman whether he was seriously arguing that there existed any law that precluded the prosecution of a journalist under the Espionage Act for revealing national security information. Shenkman replied that the law had components; legislation, common law and the constitution, and that these interact. There is a very strong argument that the First Amendment does preclude such prosecution.

Dobbin asked whether any case established this beyond doubt. Shenkman replied that there had never been such a prosecution, so it had never come before the Supreme Court. Dobbin asked whether he accepted that in the New York Times case, the Supreme Court had said such an Espionage Act case could be brought. Shenkman replied that some of the judges had mentioned the possibility in their dicta, but that is not what they were ruling on and they had not heard any arguments before them on the issue.

Dobbin said that the judge in the Rosen case had stated that the New York Times case might have had a different outcome if pursued under the espionage act 79/3/e and such future prosecution was not precluded. Shenkman said the Rosen judgement was an outlier and did not refer to media publication. The Justice Department had decided no further action on Rosen. Shenkman referred her to a 2007 Harvard Law Review article on Rosen. It had been dropped because of First Amendment concerns.

Dobbin tried again and asked Shenkman whether he accepted that the judgement in Rosen found the interpretation of dicta in the New York Post case did not preclude prosecution. Shenkman, who seemed to be enjoying this, said the issue had not been briefed before the Supreme Court. And the Rosen judgement had not been carried through. Dobbin suggested this meant it was arguable both ways. Shenkman replied the Supreme Court judgement in NYT was about prior restraint.

Dobbin then asked Shenkman whether he accepted the fact that the vagueness objection to the Espionage Act had been rejected by the courts in whistleblower cases. Shenkman said there were many and sometimes contradictory cases in different appellate jurisdictions. But these were all cases involving government insiders not journalists.

Dobbin then asked why Shenkman’s witness statement did not make clear that the Espionage Act had been subject to judicial refinement. Shenkman replied that was because he did not think most academics would agree with that. It had been interpreted but not refined. Dobbin said that the effect of the interpretation had been to narrow its scope. She quoted the Rosen judgement again and the Morison judgement. They narrowed the scope to leak of official information that was damaging to the interests of the United States. This was an important new test. The Rosen judgement said this was “a clear safeguard against arbitrary enforcement.”

Shenkman replied that addresses only one particular aspect of the Espionage Act, the definition of national security information, and there had been whole books written on that. Quoting one line of one judgement really did not help. Other aspects were extremely broad. The main problem with the Act was the same legal standard is applied to all categories of recipient – the whistleblower, the publisher, the journalist, the newspaper seller and the reader could all be equally liable.

Dobbin then suggested the prosecution could not be political because it was the court that decides the definition of national security information. Shenkman replied that on the other hand it is the executive that decides what material is classified, who is prosecuted and on what charges. It was not just a matter of prosecution. The Espionage Act could be shown historically to have a chilling effect on important journalism.

Dobbin then asked Shenkman whether he agreed that the provisions under which Assange were tried had never been intended to apply to “classic espionage”. Shenkman said most authorities would reject the idea of a clear and singular intent. Dobbin said that in the Morison case the judgement had rejected the argument that the provision was limited to classic espionage. Shenkman rather wickedly agreed that yes, that judgement had indeed broadened the application of the act – as opposed to refining it. But other judgements were available. Besides, she had asked him about intent. What Congress intended in 1917 and what the Morison court decided were two different things. There had been numerous successful prosecutions of whistleblowers under Obama. Plainly the courts generally accepted that these provisions apply to government insiders. There had never been a prosecution of a journalist or publisher.

Dobbin, who is nothing if not persistent, asked Shenkman if he accepted that the Morison judgement says that only provision 79/4 applies to classic espionage. Shenkman replied that the Morison judgement was a single star in the night sky among myriad points of navigation through these laws. They then got in to discussion of the views of various professors on the subject.

Now I cede to very few in my interest in the details of this case, and certainly I absolutely appreciate the fundamental threat posed by the insistence on the general application of the Espionage Act against journalists as outlined by the prosecution, above all in the current political climate; but it was now late Friday afternoon after a very hard week and I have my limits. I decided to see how many verses of Shelley’s The Masque of Anarchy I could recall instead.

When my consciousness groped its way back to the courtroom, Dobbin was putting to Shenkman that the fact that numerous potential prosecutions had been dropped, just proved the act was used responsibly and properly. Shenkman said that was to ignore the chilling effect both in general and in specific threats to prosecute. Chilling caused papers costs, delays and even bankruptcies. President Roosevelt had used the threat of the Espionage Act to suppress independent black newspapers.

Dobbin suggested that in the instances where it had been decided not to prosecute due to the First Amendment, these cases had related to responsible major media titles. Shenkman replied that this was not true at all. Beacon Press, for example, which published the full Pentagon Papers, was a small religious organisation.

Dobbin said none of the past examples resembles Wikileaks. Shenkman again disagreed. There were many striking points of similarity in different cases. Dobbin replied that Wikileaks’ sole purpose and design was to source material from those entitled to receive it and give it to those not entitled to see it. It was solicitation on a mass scale. Shenkman said she was reaching for a distinction. Similarities to the Beacon Press and Amerasia cases were obvious.

Dobbin concluded that Shenkman’s opinion and evidence was “frivolous and nonsensical”.

Mark Summers then re-examined Shenkman. He referred to the Jack Anderson case. Anderson had published entire Top Secret documents, unredacted, in time of war. He had not been prosecuted under the Espionage Act on First Amendment grounds. Shenkman replied yes, and the documents he had published were particularly sensitive communications intelligence (intercepts).

Summers referred to sentences from judgements which Dobbin had invited Shenkman to accept as “uncontrovertible statements of the law” but which were anything but. In the Morison case he pointed out that the two other judges in the case had explicitly contradicted the very sentence Dobbin had quoted. Judge Wilkerson had stated “the First Amendment interest in informed national debate does not simply vanish at the mention of the words “national security””.

Summers said above all the US government now relied on the Rosen judgement. He asked what level of court that had been. Shenkman replied that it was a district court, the lowest level of US court. And the Justice Department had decided against proceeding with it. Finally Summers said that Shenkman had stated there had never been a prosecution, but there had been threats resulting in a chilling effect. What types of people had been threatened with prosecution under the Espionage Act for publishing? Shenkman stated that in every case it was political; opponents of the Presidency, minority groups, pacifists and dissidents.

That concluded the week.

Comment

There are numerous serious questions relating to the handling of evidence in this case. I should start by saying that the government of the United States had objected to almost all of the defence evidence. They want the defence witnesses ruled as either not expert (hence the sustained rudeness and attacks) or not relevant. Judge Baraitser had ruled that she will hear all the evidence, and decide only when she comes to judgement, what is and is not admissible.

Against that we then have her decision that the witnesses can only have half an hour of going through their statements before cross-examination. That is against a US government request that witness statements should not be heard before cross-examination at all. Theoretically Baraitser agreed to this, but she let in half an hour to “orient the witness”, which gets the basic facts out there. Baraitser rejected the defence arguments that statements should be read or explained at length by the witness in court, for the benefit of the public, on the basis that the statements are published. But they are not published. The Court does not publish them. It gives copies to journalists registered to cover the trial, but those journalists have no interest in publishing them. The first two days’ witness statements were published here, but for several days they stopped. They seem to have started again on Friday, but this is not satisfactory for the public.

Next we have the specific pieces of evidence that are banned on US objection, like the details of el-Masri’s torture or of the content of the Collateral Murder video. I can understand that it is true that this court is not judging if el-Masri was tortured – in fact that is now established by the ECHR. But plainly his story is relevant to Wikileaks’ defence of necessary publication to prevent crime and enable judicial process. The fact is that the USA wants to avoid the political embarrassment and media publicity of el-Masri’s torture and the events of the Collateral Murder video being detailed in court. Why an English court is complying in this censorship is beyond me.

I am deeply suspicious of the “breakdown” of the videolink making el-Masri’s evidence in person “technically impossible” after days in which the US government tried to block that evidence. I am also deeply suspicious of the strange fact that unlike other witnesses with video problems, there was no rescheduling. Video and sound quality has been deplorable for several defence witnesses. In a world where we have all got used to videocalls this last few months, the extraordinary failure of the court to operate everyday technology is a level of incompetence it is difficult quite to believe in.

Finally and more importantly, what constitutes evidence?

Lewis consistently and repeatedly quotes the words of Luke Harding and David Leigh to witnesses, more or less every day, yet Leigh and Harding are not in the witness box to be cross-examined on their words. As you know, I am absolutely furious that Lewis has been allowed to repeat Harding’s words about the conversation in the El Moro restaurant to witness after witness, but that John Goetz, who was actually part of the conversation and an eyewitness, was not permitted by the court to testify on the subject. That is absolutely ludicrous.

Finally, we have the affidavits submitted by Kromberg and Dwyer on behalf of the US government. These are apparently treated as “evidence”. Lewis specifically categorised Dwyer’s proof free assertion in Dywer’s affidavit that informants had been harmed, as “evidence” this had happened. But how can these affidavits be evidence if the authors cannot be cross-examined on them? One of the defence counsel told me on Friday that Kromberg will not be made available for cross-examination, as though they had just been told of that. It is not right that an affidavit full of highly dodgy statements and propositions should be accepted as evidence if the author cannot be challenged. The whole question of “evidence” in this case needs a fundamental rethink.

On another point, I was very pleased Nicky Hager testified under oath that in the cables he redacted “strictly protect” designation of names was used to prevent political embarrassment, as the prosecution has repeatedly claimed that the 134,000 unclassified and/or redacted cables in the original limited mass cable release by Wikileaks included names marked “strictly protect”. This is not a security classification. As someone who operated the near identical UK system for over 20 years and held the very highest levels of security clearance, and frequently in that period read American material, let me explain to you. Any material which contained the name of someone who would be at risk of death if published, or which would create real and acute danger to the national interest, would by very definition have been classified “Secret” or “Top Secret”, the latter generally relating to intelligence material. All of the Chelsea Manning material was at a level of classification below that.

Furthermore as Daniel Ellsberg pointed out, and I was very well used to, there exists separately to the classification a distribution system which limits who actually gets the material. The Manning material was unlimited in distribution and therefore available literally to tens of thousands of people. That again could not have happened if it contained the dangers now claimed.

“Strictly protect” is nothing to do with security classification, which is what protects national security information. As Hager said, its normal use is to prevent political embarrassment. As in Australasia, it is a term largely used to protect their secret political assets. Here is an example from a Wikileaks cable which I believe is one of those in the specific release which the prosecution is citing.

As you can see, nothing whatsoever to do with the safety of informants in Afghanistan. Much more to do with other objectives.

I am very glad Hager did raise the real use of “strictly protect”, because I have been waiting for the right moment to explain all that.

So that is my account of Friday, published on Monday. It is perhaps fortunate that normally I don’t have the luxury of time in publishing the reports. Otherwise they might all ramble on at this length.

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The poisoning of Alexei Navalny has created intensified support by pro-U.S., and especially pro-NATO, officials in the European Union, to block the nearly completed NordStream 2 natural-gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, and to import into the EU, instead, far costlier U.S. LNG, liquefied natural gas. A very real possibility thus now exists that the poisoning of Navalny will turn out to have been worth many billions of dollars to U.S. frackers, by causing the nearly-completed NordStream 2 to be turned to waste so that fracked U.S. LNG will sell in Europe. The present article will explore the relative likelihood that the poisoning of Navalny isn’t merely coincidentally perfectly timed in order to achieve that objective for the benefit of America’s gas-industry, but that it probably was actually planned and perpetrated in order to achieve this.

The idea that the Russian Government poisoned Alexei Navalny presumes such astounding stupidity on the part of Russia’s Government as to be exceedingly dubious, at best. Navalny, though he actually is favorably viewed by only around 2% of Russians (as indicated in polls there), is widely publicized in U.S.-and-allied media as having instead the highest support by the Russian people of anyone who might challenge Vladimir Putin for Russia’s leadership. It’s a lie, and always has been. Other politicians have far higher polled support in Russia. For example, whereas in the latest poll, published on September 5th, Navalny was one of four individuals who had 2%, Zhirinovsky had 5% and Zhirinovsky was the only person who had more than 2%, other than Putin, who had 56%. In the 2018 Presidential election, Zhirinovsky polled at 13.7%, Grudinin polled at 12.0%, and Putin polled at 72.6%. The actual election-outcome was Putin 76.69%, Grudinin 11.7%, and Zhirinovsky 5.65%. The idea that Putin would need to kill anyone in order to be leading Russia is so stupid and uninformed (and mis-informed) that it is beyond belief, though it is widely publicized in The West as being instead the reality. But what is true is that Navalny has been an immense propaganda-asset to the U.S. Government, and he now is especially so.

Even America’s CNN let slip, in a news-report on September 18th, regarding Navalny, that “his list of enemies is as long as it is powerful,” but they said nothing about whom those “enemies” might be. No one questions that Navalny claims to be an anti-corruption campaigner, and that this would generate enemies regardless of whether his accusations are truthful. The article on “Alexei Navalny” at Wikipedia, which is CIA-edited and written, and which blacklists (blocks from linking to) sites that aren’t CIA-approved, indicates that Navalny has accused numerous individuals of corruption, but not that any of those individuals is corrupt — and this is at a site (Wikipedia) which can reasonably be expected to link to documentation of any damning evidence that Navalny has come up with. But the article doesn’t link to any. The article does make clear that Navalny has been hoping to use these accusations in order to rise in Russian politics. It would be a dangerous way to rise in any nation’s politics, regardless of whether those accusations are true. The idea that Putin was behind this is insane. Is Putin so stupid as to poison the U.S. regime’s most-heavily propaganda-favored Russian precisely at the time when the EU is about to grant final approval to Russia’s vast (and virtually completed) NordStream 2 pipeline?

England’s Financial Times headlined on September 16, “Germany offered €1bn for gas terminals in exchange for US lifting NS2 sanctions,” and sub-headed “Deal, detailed in a letter by Olaf Scholz to Steven Mnuchin, predates the poisoning of Alexei Navalny.” They reported that “In the August 7 letter seen by the Financial Times, Mr Scholz said Germany would increase its financial support for LNG infrastructure and import capacities ‘by up to €1bn’ in exchange for the US ‘allow[ing] for the unhindered construction and operation of Nord Stream 2’,” and reported that:

The US has long opposed Nord Stream 2 and in December imposed sanctions against companies involved in its construction. That move prompted Swiss pipe-layer Allseas to suspend its work with just 6 per cent left to install. A group of US senators from across the political divide are pushing to extend those sanctions.

Criticism of the project has grown in Europe too, with opponents saying it will increase Europe’s dependence on Russian energy exports at a time of rising tensions with Moscow. In her State of the Union address on Wednesday, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said: “To those that advocate closer ties with Russia, I say that the poisoning of Alexei Navalny with an advanced chemical agent is not a one-off. This pattern is not changing — and no pipeline will change that.

The U.S. regime’s agent, von der Leyen, is doing her utmost to serve U.S. LNG marketers. Many other U.S.-regime agents also are.

On September 17th, America’s neoconservative (or pro-U.S.-empire) Newsweek bannered “Opinion: Open Letter: For the Sake of Transatlantic Security, Stop Nord Stream 2,” with 114 signatories of NATO-related U.S. and European officials, and published their argument that, “Over the past decade, the Government of the Russian Federation has engaged in a litany of malign activities aimed at upending liberal democratic norms across Europe and North America. The shocking poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny by a variant of the weapons-grade nerve agent Novichok shows that Moscow has not been deterred by Western actions and statements and refuses to reverse its destabilizing political adventurism at home and abroad.”

How blatant and scummy can a marketing campaign get?

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 and of Christ’s Ventriloquists: The Event that Created Christianity.

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The US and its long-time Puppet state, Colombia are moving towards another attempt for regime change against Venezuela’s President, Nicolas MaduroSecretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Latin American tour which included Colombia, Brazil, Guyana and Suriname, all share borders Venezuela was a display of the US flaunting its economic and military muscle to shape its Latin America policy for its economic and geopolitical advantage in the region. 

Pompeo’s press statement with Colombia’s President Ivan Duque began with

“The United States remains the largest single donor of humanitarian and development assistance around the world, including for Venezuelans in need, because doing our part to respond to global crisis situations is a national security priority.” 

There were two main issues they both agreed upon and that was to deepen ties economically with Pompeo promising more US investments in Colombia and to overthrow their common enemy, Nicolas Maduro.  Pompeo mentioned Colombia’s support behind Juan Guaido and the nations who influence the Maduro government including Cuba, Iran and Russia,

Colombia’s backing of opposition leader Juan Guaido “and the democratic transition for a sovereign Venezuela free of malign influence from Cuba, from Russia, from Iran, is incredibly valued.”

Pompeo praised Colombia’s lapdog President by claiming that “You are a true leader for the region and the dignity of all of its people.”  Colombia’s President Ivan Duque has continued the same human rights violations from previous US supported regimes according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) who released a statement on the matter in early January of this year:

We are deeply troubled by the staggering number of human rights defenders killed in Colombia during 2019. According to our records, 107 activists were killed last year, and our staff in Colombia are still in the process of verifying 13 additional cases reported during 2019 which, if confirmed, would raise the annual total to 120 killings. Attacks on human rights defenders had already intensified during 2018, when 115 killings were confirmed by the UN Human Rights Office in Colombia. And this terrible trend is showing no let-up in 2020, with at least 10 human rights defenders already reportedly killed during the first 13 days of January.

We renew our call on the Colombian Government to make a strenuous effort to prevent attacks on people defending fundamental rights, to investigate each and every case and to prosecute those responsible for these violations, including instigating or aiding and abetting violations. The vicious and endemic cycle of violence and impunity must stop. Victims and their families have a right to justice, truth and reparations.

The great majority of the 107 killings in 2019, happened in rural areas, almost all (98 %) in municipalities with illicit economies where criminal groups or armed groups operate, and 86 % of the total number took place in villages with a poverty rate above the national average. While more than half of the killings occurred in just four provinces — Antioquia, Arauca, Cauca and Caquetá — murders were nevertheless recorded in 25 different provinces. The single most targeted group was human rights defenders advocating on behalf of community-based and specific ethnic groups such as indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombians. The killings of female human rights defenders increased by almost 50 per cent in 2019 compared to 2018

Following his meeting with the Colombian president, Pompeo’s press statement signaled that the US will fund $348 million for “humanitarian assistance” which really means a “humanitarian intervention” in neighboring Venezuela:

The United States is demonstrating our continued commitment to the Venezuelan people and our response to the ongoing humanitarian crisis caused by the corrupt and illegitimate Maduro regime with the announcement of an additional nearly $348 million in humanitarian assistance.

This amount includes nearly $143 million from the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, and more than $205 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development

Washington is interested in Venezuela’s oil, they want a lapdog government under someone like Juan Guaido who Trump called “Venezuela’s true and legitimate president” in a State of the Union speech last February.  Trump visited South Florida in early July for a meeting with the U.S Military Southern Command and said that “something will happen with Venezuela. That’s all I can tell you” and that Washington “will be very much involved.”  Trump’s former National Security Advisor John Bolton, who is a neocon relic from the 1980′s told Fox News before he was fired that “we’re in conversation with major American companies now… It will make a big difference to the US economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”  Controlling Venezuela’s oil is Washington’s priority in South America, not for the humanitarian causes as Trump’s top neocon warmonger Mike Pompeo has claimed.  Pompeo emphasized on the continued success of Colombia’s ‘War on Drugs’or what he called “the poison of narcotics”, he said that

“our two countries are also standing strongly against the poison of narcotics.  Mr. President, your administration has been exemplary in this area.  Colombian law enforcement, even in these difficult times, has stepped up cocaine interdiction and eradication.  You manually cleared 57% more coca fields in 2019 than in the year prior, 2018.  Look, we all need to do more to reach the goal to cut this coca cultivation.  I know you’ll do that.  The U.S. is here to help by sharing resources, expertise, and we applaud the work that you have done.  Thank you for that.” 

Duque thanked Pompeo in response

“I think that, Mr. Secretary, we had a wonderful meeting, and I thank you once again for visiting our country, for being here.  And as we said repeatedly in the past, the U.S.-Colombia relationship is strengthened every day.  And you have said so – Colombia represents our most important ally in Latin America – and we feel the same.  And we do so because we share common values and we will continue to share and strengthen those values throughout our history.  So my gratitude to you and to President Trump.  Thank you so much.”

Hugo Chávez, the late Venezuelan President once said that

“Unfortunately, Colombia is, strategically, the beachhead for Yankee strivings in South America, their base of operations. [They] send elite troops under a drug-war façade. So Colombia is a country occupied by foreign troops that has yet to stop the production and trafficking of drugs.”

Indeed, Colombia is the main staging ground for any future US-led invasion against Venezuela who holds more oil than any of their South American counterparts.  The stage is set with the US and Colombia in an attempt to remove Maduro from power with either a coup attempt by the opposition or with a full US-led invasion.  However, if Washington were to launch a conflict with Venezuela, it would be most likely after the elections and if of course, Trump wins in November.  However, removing Maduro from power by force will be a difficult task to do since he has full-support of the Venezuelan military and the people who will be the core of the resistance.  Russia and China also back Maduro.  If the US were to achieve their goals of regime change, Big Oil would reap the benefits and Trump would keep another promise that he will surely brag about to his Latino base in South Florida made-up of right-wing Cuban exiles, Venezuelans and other Latino groups who support US efforts to overthrow the Venezuelan, Cuban and the Nicaraguan governments.  Trump’s first-term in office was relatively peaceful because he did not approve a conventional war, but in his second-term, he won’t be so-peaceful because he won’t owe the public anything, if of course he wins a second-term.

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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his blog site, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from SCN

The London pan-Arab daily al-Quds al-Arabi (Arab Jerusalem) reports that the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, voted down a proposed basic law introduced by Yousef Jabareen on behalf of the Joint List. It aimed at altering the constitutional basis of the Israeli state, requiring democratic principles, cultural pluralism and complete equality for all citizen on both civil and national levels.

What follows is a paraphrase of the article with a few comments by me. One comment by me to begin with: Israel has all along had a choice between being a democratic state for all its citizens or being an ethno-nationalist oligarchy with second-class citizens at home and Apartheid subjects in the West Bank. This is not the first Knesset vote to demonstrate forcefully that the Israeli majority wants the latter.

The bill aimed at providing existential and democratic human rights, especially complete equality and the recognition of the Palestinian-Israeli ethnic identity. Israelis of Palestinian heritage comprise about 21 percent of Israel’s citizen population.

The Knesset roundly rejected the bill, with both the Likud-led far right coalition of prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the Blue and White bloc of his foreign minister and sometime rival, Benny Gantz, voting against it.

The bill specified that “Israel shall be a democratic state, guaranteeing equality in rights, and concentrating on the principles of human dignity, liberty and equality, in accord with the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations.” It further said, that “the state will provide equal legal protection to all its citizens, and will guarantee completely national, cultural, linguistic and religious privacy to the two national groups within it,the Jews and Arabs.”

The law specifies that “Arabic and Hebrew are the two official languages in the state, and the two languages have an equal position in all the functions and work of the legislative, executive and judicial branches.”

It sought to guarantee “to the aboriginal Palestinian Arab minority the just right to be represented and to be influential in all the branches of government in the state, in public institutions, in every setting where decisions are made,” and that “the Palestinian Arab minority in the state will have the right to establish its own institutions in the realms of education, culture and religion and will be authorized to manage these institutions via representative bodies chosen by Arab citizens.”

Jabareen, who has law degrees from Hebrew University and the American University and has taught law at Tel Aviv University and the University of Haifa, noted that international laws and instruments specify the protection of these rights of aboriginal minorities and that some countries, such as Canada and Australia, also guarantee them.

Canada recognizes special rights for the First Nations (what US tribes tend to call Indians, a term disliked among Canadian tribes). These rights are generic and specific:

“Generic rights are held by all Aboriginal peoples across Canada, and include:

Rights to the land (Aboriginal title)

Rights to subsistence resources and activities

The right to self-determination and self-government

The right to practice one’s own culture and customs including language and religion. Sometimes referred to as the right of “cultural integrity,”

The right to enter into treaties.

Specific rights, on the other hand are rights that are held by an individual Aboriginal group. These rights may be recognized in treaties, or have been defined as a result of a court case.”

Canada also recognizes special rights for the French minority (which settled before the English), and is an officially bilingual state.

According to al-Quds al-Arabi, Jabareen said that Israel has defined itself since it was established after the Catastrophe (nakbah) that befell the Palestinians as “a democratic Jewish state.”

Documents in the Israeli National Archives show that Zionist militias of the late British Mandate of Palestine admitted that they were responsible for 85% of the ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinian population in 1947-48. Contrary to international law, Israel refused to allow the 720,000 Palestinians expelled to return to their homes, making their families permanent refugees. There are now 12 million Palestinians, with some 2 million Israeli citizens, 5 million living under Israeli military occupation and kept stateless, and the rest refugees scattered among many countries, especially Jordan and Lebanon.

Then in the summer of 2018, Israel legislated what is known as the “National Law,” which defines it as a state of the Jewish people, ignoring the Israelis of Palestinian heritage and making them guests in their own country.

The first article of the National Law speaks of “the land of Israel” being the historic homeland of the Jewish people, wherein the state of Israel was established. As for the fourth article, it says that “the Hebrew language is the official language of Israel,” effacing Arabic, which had long been the second official language.

This law, which some consider to be racist, says that “the state considers the development of Jewish settlements to be a national value, and works to encourage and support their establishment and maintenance.”

During the past year, the Knesset has shot down numerous proposals to amend the National Law to forbid discrimination against non-Jews.

The Joint List, which largely comprises Israelis of Palestinian heritage along with leftist Jews, announced that it is forestalled from voting to amend the National Law because its fundamental position is that the law must be repealed in its entirety, and the complete equality of Palestinian Arab citizens must be enshrined.

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The US’ latest anti-Iranian sanctions won’t change much when it comes to the Islamic Republic’s present economic predicament but will almost certainly provoke a worsening of the so-called “trade war” with China since the real intent seems to be to target the countless companies that are poised to participate in those two countries’ reported $400 billion strategic partnership agreement by replicating the model of “maximum pressure” that’s been experimented against Huawei over the past year.

Unilateral Sanctions

The looming expiration of the UNSC arms embargo on Iran next month prompted the US to unilaterally declare that it regards these and other related sanctions as having been reimposed by the UN despite the global body failing to do so. This factually false pretext serves as the formal justification for the US to threaten so-called “secondary sanctions” against all those who violate its stance towards this issue, thereby turning Iran into an issue of worldwide significance once more. The global strategic context has changed in the nearly two and a half years since the US left the nuclear deal in May 2018, however, which is why the contemporary state of affairs in which this move is being made deserves to be analyzed in order to assess the real aims that the US intends to advance this time around.

Fading Hegemony

After all, the only reason why the US is still pressuring Iran is because its earlier policy of “maximum pressure” failed to influence the targeted government, the same as it failed to convince the international community to support the US’ stance. In this sense, the latest moves must be seen as having been made from a position of weakness, one in which the US is no longer able to impose its fading unipolar hegemony like before. Nevertheless, the US can boast of a few successes such as scaring away India and many other close US partners from retaining their hitherto privileged energy and commercial relations with Iran, which could have crashed the country’s economy and provoked serious socio-political unrest had its people not proven their legendary resilience to such an externally encouraged Hybrid War destabilization.

China’s Opportunity

Iran’s increased “isolation” created a priceless opportunity for China to negotiate a rumored $400 billion comprehensive strategic partnership with the Islamic Republic, one whose details have yet to be verified but which is still widely thought to be significant. As former friends like India continue to stay away from Iran in response to the US’ intensified “maximum pressure” campaign, this will by default increase the importance of Iran’s relations with China, which in turn are poised to make the People’s Republic a serious player in the Mideast if it replicates its Pakistani model of investment to become the host country’s top partner. The US wants to avoid that happening at all costs, which is why the latest sanctions must also be seen in the context of the so-called “trade war” since the threatened “secondary” ones can inflame that economic conflict.

“Trade War”

The rumored scale and scope of China’s reported investment interests in Iran presumes that its most important companies will participate in this gargantuan effort, thereby enabling the US to indirectly worsen the “trade war” in violation of “phase one” of their related agreement by imposing restrictions against them and perhaps even their other foreign partners in the worst-case scenario. In other words, the “maximum pressure” model that it’s been implementing against Huawei over the past year can be expanded to cover countless other companies as well. With this in mind, the latest unilateral sanctions aren’t just about “isolating” Iran, but “isolating” China too, though like practically everything that the Trump Administration has attempted over nearly the past four years, this strategy’s survival is dependent on the outcome of November’s elections.

Concluding Thoughts

Far from being just an intensification of the already failed “maximum pressure” policy against Iran, the US’ latest sanctions against the Islamic Republic are really intended to worsen its “trade war” with China. On the pretext of imposing “secondary sanctions” against any entity that violates its unilateral economic restrictions against the country, America can target in one fell swoop all the Chinese companies that plan to participate in the rumored $400 billion strategic partnership agreement between those two. This will enable it to replicate its “maximum pressure” policy against Huawei on an unprecedented level against countless other targets. Of course, for as ambitious as this unstated strategy is, it might remain nothing more than theoretical if Trump loses the upcoming elections and Biden decides to reverse his predecessor’s policy in this respect.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from OneWorld

Check here for the latest update to this list. 

As Julian Assange fights U.S. extradition at the Old Bailey in London, over one hundred eminent political figures, including 13 past and present heads of state, numerous ministers, members of parliament and diplomats, have today denounced the illegality of the proceedings and appealed for Assange’s immediate release.

The politicians from 27 different countries and from across the political spectrum have joined 189 independent international lawyers, judges, legal academics and lawyers’ associations by endorsing their open letter to the UK Government warning that the U.S. extradition request and extradition proceedings violate national and international law, breach fair trial rights and other human rights, and threaten press freedom and democracy.

Politicians endorsing the call to free Julian Assange include Jeremy Corbyn, former Prime Minister of Spain, Luis Zapatero, several members of the European Parliament, former presidents of Brazil, Lula da Silva and Dilma Roussef, and Australian parliamentarians from the cross-party parliamentary group to free Assange.

Kenneth MacAskill, Member of UK Parliament, former Justice Secretary of Scotland, and lawyer, commented, “This is a political crucifixion not legal process and is about seeking to bury truth and those exposing it.”

The unprecedented appeal to the UK government by the international political community follows concerns raised by Amnesty International, the Council of Europe, The American Civil Liberties Union, Reporters Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, and numerous other rights organisations regarding the chilling effect Assange’s prosecution will have on press freedom. Amnesty International’s petition calling for the U.S. Government to drop its charges against Assange has garnered over 400,000 signatures.

Today marks the beginning of the third week of the extradition hearings, which have drawn wide criticism for failing to uphold the principle of open justice by preventing independent observers including from Amnesty International, PEN Norway and others from monitoring the trial.

The Trump administration is seeking Mr Assange’s extradition from the UK to prosecute him under the Espionage Act for his work as a journalist and publisher. The 2010 publications, on which the U.S. government’s attempted prosecution is based, brought to light a range of public interest information, including evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Last week during the hearing the court heard that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks undertook careful redaction processes to protect informants, that no informants are known to have been harmed by their publications, and that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks were not responsible for publishing un-redacted cables. Nevertheless, the prosecution asserted the right of the U.S. to prosecute all journalists and all media who publish classified information.

Quotes:

Luiz InácioLula da Silva, President of Brazil (2003-2010), Honorary citizen of the City of Paris (2020), Nobel Prize Nominee (2018):

“If the democrats of the planet Earth, including all journalists, all lawyers, all unionists and all politicians, have no courage to express themselves in defence of Assange, so that he is not extradited, it means we have a lot democrats out there who are liars. Assange should be perceived as a hero of democracy. He does not deserve to be punished. I hope the people of the UK, the people of France, the people of the United States will not allow this atrocity. As was the knee of a policeman killing a black man, this will be the knees of millions of governors from around the world suffocating Assange so that he dies. And we do not have the right to allow that.”

Andrew Wilkie MP, Independent Member for Clark and Co-Chair of the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group:

Julian Assange is being politically persecuted for publishing information that was in the public interest, including hard evidence of U.S. war crimes. That the perpetrator of those war crimes, America, is now seeking to extradite Mr Assange is unjust in the extreme and arguably illegal under British law. If it goes ahead, not only would Mr Assange face 175 years in prison, but the precedent would be set for all Australians, and particularly journalists, that they are at risk of being extradited to any country they offend.”

Mikuláš Peksa, Member of European Parliament, Member of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy:

“Freedom of speech remains a crucial value in the beginning of the 21st century. Despite it sometimes revealing inconvenient truths, we shall do our best to protect it.”

Open Letterhttp://www.lawyersforassange.org/en/open-letter.html

Political endorsements: http://www.lawyersforassange.org/en/endorsements.html

Legal signatorieshttps://www.lawyersforassange.org/en/signatories-all.html

Contact: [email protected]

Full list of political endorsements:

Heads of State

1. Alberto Fernández, President of Argentina (2019), lawyer, Professor of Criminal Law (University of Buenos Aires), former Chief of the Cabinet of Ministers, adviser to Deliberative Council of Buenos Aires and the Argentine Chamber of Deputies, deputy director of Legal Affairs of the Economy Ministry, Argentina

2. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Vice President of Argentina (2019), President of Argentina (2007-2015), lawyer, Argentina

3.  Dilma Rousseff, President of Brazil (2011-2016),economist, former Minister of Energy and former Chief of Staff of the Presidency of the Republic, Brazil

4. Ernesto Samper, President of Colombia (1994-1998),lawyer, economist, former Secretary General of UNASUR, Senator of the Republic and Minister of Economic Development, Ambassador of Colombia in Spain, Colombia

5.  Evo Morales Ayma, President of Bolivia (2006-2019), trade unionist, activist and Bolivian leader of Aymara descent, President of the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba, Former President pro tempore of UNASUR and CELAC, Bolivia

6.  Fernando Lugo, President of Paraguay (2008-2012)Senator, Roman Catholic priest and bishop, Paraguay

7.  José Luis Zapatero, Prime Minister of Spain (2004-2011), lawyer, Professor of Constitutional Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of León, former Deputy in General Courts by Madrid, deputy in General Courts of Spain, president of the Council of the European Union, Spain

8.  José (Pepe) Mujica, President of Uruguay (2010-2015)Former Deputy, Senator and Minister of Livestock Agriculture and Fisheries, Uruguay

9. Leonel Fernandez, President of the Dominican Republic (1996-2012), lawyer,president of the EU–LAC Foundation, president of the World Federation of United Nations Associations, Professor at Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) and Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

10.  Luiz InácioLula da Silva, President of Brazil (2003-2010), Honorary citizen of the City of Paris (2020), Nobel Prize Nominee (2018), Brazil

11.  Martín Torrijos, President of the Republic of Panama (2004-2009), political scientist and economist, Panama

12. Nicolas Maduro Moros, President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Venezuela

13.  Rafael Correa, President of Ecuador (2007-2017), former Minister for the Economy, Professor of Economics,Ecuador

Ministers, Diplomats and Politicians

14. Álvaro García Linera, Vice President of Bolivia (2006-2019), mathematician, academic, Bolivia

15.   Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Member of Parliament (since 1983), Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition (2015-2020), United Kingdom

16.   John McDonnell, Member of Parliament (since 1997), Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer (2015-2020), UnitedKingdom

17.  Andrew Wilkie, MP,Independent Federal Member for Clark, Australia

18.  Gregor Golobic, philosopher, former Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology, former Secretary General of Liberal Democracy party, former president of Zares party, advisor to former President of the Republic of Slovenia, Dr. Janez Drnovšek, Slovenia

19.   Arthur Chesterfield-Evans M.B.,B,S., F.R.C.S.(Eng.), M.Appl.Sci. (OHS), M.Pol.Sci. Ex-Member of Legislative Council New South Wales Parliament, Australia

20.  Ögmundur Jónasson, former Icelandic Minister of Interior, Iceland

21.  Ron Paul, Former U.S. Congressman from Texas, USA

22.  Peter Whish-Wilson, Australian Greens, Senator for Tasmania, Australia

23.  Jožef Škol, political scientist, former Minister of Culture, former State Secretary for Culture, first president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDS), former head of Liberal Democracy, former President of the National Assembly, Slovenia

24.  Prof. Slavoj Žižek, philosopher, sociologist, psychologist, psychoanalyst, theologian, politician and cultural critic, author, former member of the Liberal Democratic Party and its candidate for the presidency of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia (1990), Slovenia

25.  Carlo Sommaruga, lawyer, Member of Swiss Parliament, Conseiller aux Etats, Switzerland

26.  Patrick Breyer, Member of the European Parliament, Member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, Germany

27.  Marketa Gregorova, Member of the European Parliament, Vice-Chair of the delegation to the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly, Czech Republic

28.  Mikuláš Peksa, Member of the European Parliament, Member of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy, biophysicist, Czech Republic

29.  Yanis Varoufakis, Member of the Hellenic Parliament for Athens B, Minister of Finance (2015), former Secretary-General of MeRA25, economist, academic, philosopher, Greece

30.  Spomenka Hribar, author, philosopher, sociologist, politician, columnist, public intellectual, co-founder of the Slovenian Democratic Union (1989), former prominent member of the Democratic opposition of Slovenia (Demos), and key figure in the efforts for the independence and democratization of Slovenia, Slovenia

31.  Cédric Wermuth, Congressman of the Nationalrat des Schweizerischen Parlaments, Vice President of the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland, Switzerland

32.  Enrique Fernando Santiago Romero, Congressman, Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), lawyer,Spain

33.   Clare Daly, Member of the European Parliament, Republic of Ireland

34. Kenneth Wright MacAskill, Member of Parliament, Shadow SNP Spokesperson, Cabinet Secretary for Justice (2007-2014), United Kingdom

35.  Eleonora Evi, Member of the European Parliament, Italy

36.  Francesca Businarolo, Member of Parliament of Italy, lawyer, Italy

37.  Idoia Villanueva Ruiz, Member of the European Parliament, former Senator, Spain 

38.  Eric Bertinat, Conseiller municipal et chef de groupe UDC Ville de Genève, Président de la commission du lodgement, Ancien président du Conseil municipal,Switzerland

39. Ignazio Corrao, Member of the European Parliament, member of the European Parliament Committee on Development and the European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs,lawyer, Italy

40.  Joti Brar, Deputy Leader of the Workers Party of Britain, United Kingdom

41. Gregor Gysi, Member of Parliament of the German Bundestag,lawyer, author, moderator, Germany

42. Guillaume Long, former Permanent Representative of Ecuador to the United Nations Organization,former Minister of Foreign Affairs,Minister of Culture and Heritage, Coordinating Minister of Knowledge and Human Talent, former advisor to the National Secretariat of Planning and Development of Ecuador,France / Ecuador

43.  Matthew Robson, former Minister for Courts, Minister of Corrections and Disarmament, Minister for Land Information, Associate Minister of Foreign Affairs, International Association Of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA), New Zealand

44. Michel Larive, Member of the French National Assembly, Member of the Committee for Cultural Affairs and Education, France

45.  Mike Gravel, United States Senator (1969-1981), who officially released the Pentagon Papers, former Speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives, presidential candidate (2008 & 2020), United States of America

46.  Mirella Liuzzi, Member of Parliament of Italy, Italy

47.  Piernicola Pedicini, Member of the European Parliament,Italy

48.  Rosa D’Amato, Member of the European Parliament,Italy

49.  Txema Guijarro García, Member of the Congress of Deputies, Chair of the Congress’ Committee on Budget, economist, Spain

50.  George Galloway, leader of the Workers Party of Britain, former Member of Parliament (1987-2009 and 2013-2015), former general secretary of War on Want, writer, broadcaster, United Kingdom

51. Prof. Jadranka Šturm Kocjan, retired Professor of pedagogy and psychology, Member of Parliament (1992-1996), Ambassador in Bucharest (2010-2015), Ambassador in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay (2015-2019), Slovenia

52. Franco Juri, geographer, journalist, publicist, author, Member of Parliament (1990-93, 2008-11), vice-president of the Zares Party (2011), Ambassador in Spain and Cuba (1993-1997), state secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1997-2000), Slovenia

53.  Scott Ludlam, Senator (2008-2017), former deputy Leader of the Australian Greens, Australia

54. Adriana SalvatierraSenator and President of the Senate of Bolivia, Bolivia

55.  Alberto Rodríguez Saá, Governor of San Luis Province, lawyer, Argentina

56.  Alejandro Navarro, Senator, Professor of Philosophy, Chile

57.  Alexandre Padilha, Senator, Minister of Institutional Relations in the Lula administration and Minister of Health under Dilma Rousseff, physician, Brazil

58. Alicia Castro, Argentina’s Ambassador in Russia, former Argentina’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom (2012- 2016), former Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Argentina / Venezuela

59. Aloizio Mercadante, former Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation Minister of Educatio, former Chief of Staff of the Presidency of the Republic, former Deputy and Senator, Brazil

60. Andréia de Jesus Silva, State Congresswoman of Minas Gerais State, lawyer, Brazil

61. Áurea Carolina, Federal Congressman of Minas Gerais State, political scientist, Brazil

62. Beatriz Paredes, Senator,former Ambassador of Mexico in Cuba and in Brazil, former Congresswoman and former Governor of the state of Tlaxcala, former President of the Congress of the Union, the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate,Mexico

63.  Camilo Lagos, National President of the Progressive Party of Chile and of the Progresa Foundation,Chile

64.  Carlos Alfonso Tomada, Legislator of the City of Buenos Aires, lawyer, former Minister of Labor, Employment and Social Security, Director of the Centre for Labour and Development Studies of the National University of San Martín, Argentina

65. Carlos Ominami, former Minister of Economy, former Senator, economist, Order of the Rising Sun award-winner (Japan), Chile

66. Carlos Sotelo Garci?a, former Senator, former Undersecretary of Political Development, Secretary of Image and Propaganda Organization, Government Exercise and Electoral Action, Mexico

67. Celso Nunez Amorim, former Brazilian Ambassador to the United Kingdom, former Minister of Foreign Relations and former Minister of Defence, Professor of Political Science and International Relations, Brazil

68.  Clara López Obregón, former Minister of Labour,former Mayor of Bogotá and former Auditor General of the Republic, lawyer, economist, Professor at the Universidad del Rosario and Universidad de los Andes, Colombia

69.  Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, former Senator for the state of Michoacán and former Head of Government of Mexico City,Mexico

70. Daniel Martinez, former Senator of the Republic and Mayor of Montevideo,former Minister of Industry, Energy and Mining, Uruguay

71.   David Choquehuanca, former Foreign Minister of Bolivia,Bolivia

72.  David Miranda, Federal Congressman of Rio de Janeiro State, named by named by Time magazine one of the world’s next generation of new leaders (2019), Brazil

73.  Edmilson Rodrigues, Federal Congressman of Pará State, former Mayor of Belém, architect, Brazil

74. Elizabeth Gómez Alcorta, Minister of Women, Genders and Diversity, lawyer, Professor, Member of Consejo de la Internacional Progresista, Argentina

75.  Esperanza Marti?nez, Senator, former Minister of Public Health and Social Welfare, Paraguay

76.   Fabiana Rios, Congresswoman, former Governor of the province of Tierra del Fuego, Argentina

77. Felipe Solá, Congressman, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, former Governor of the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina

78.  Fernanda Melchionna, Federal Congressman of Rio Grande do Sul State, Leader of PSOL in the Federal Chamber of Deputies,Brazil

79.  Fernanda Vallejos, Congresswoman, economist, Argentina

80.  Fernando Haddad, former Minister of Education, former Mayor of São Paulo, former Chief of staff to the Finance and Economic Development Secretary of the Municipality of São Paulo and Special advisor to the Ministry of Planning, Budget and Management, presidential candidate (2018), lawyer, academic, Professor of Political Science, department of the University of São Paulo, Brazil

81.  Ivan Valente, Federal Congressman of São Paulo State, engineer, Brazil

82. Fernando Solanas, Argentine Ambassador to UNESCO, former National Senator, film director, screenwriter, special Honorary Golden Bear at Berlin Film Festival prize winner, Argentina

83.  Fidel Ernesto Naváez, former Ecuadorian Consul and First Secretary in the United Kingdom, Ecuador

84. Florencia Juana Saintout, Congresswoman of Buenos Aires Province, former dean of the Facultad de Periodismo y Cominicación Social (UNLP) (2010-2018),Argentina

85. Francisco Durañona, Senator, former Mayor of San Antonio de Areco, Argentina

86. Gabriel Mariotto, former vice Buenos Aires Governor, journalist,Argentina

87. Gabriela Rivadeneira, former President of the National Assembly of Ecuador, former Governor of Imbabura, Ecuador

88. Glauber Braga, Federal Congressman of Rio de Janeiro State, lawyer, Brazil

89. Horacio Chique, Councillor of Moreno FDT, Buenos Aires district, Argentina

90. Jorge Arreaza, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Venezuela

91. Jorge Enrique Taiana, Congressman,former Ambassador of Argentina in Guatemala,former Minister of Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Worship, Legislator of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, Argentina

92. José Eduardo Cardozo, former Minister of Justice, former Attorney General and Federal Deputy, lawyer,Brazil

93. José Miguel Insulza, Senator, former Secretary General of the Organization of American States, Minister of Foreign Affairs, former Home office Secretary, former Secretary General of the Presidency, former Minister of the Interior, lawyer and Professor of Political Theory at the University of Chile and of Political Science at the Catholic University, Chile

94. Julian Hill,  Member of Federal Parliament, Commonwealth of Australia, Australia

95.  Karol Cariola, Congresswoman,doctor in medicine, Chile

96.  Luiza Erundina, Federal Congresswoman of São Paulo State, former Mayor of São Paulo, sociologist, Brazil

97. Marcelo Brignoni, Chief of Staff of Advisors to the Presidency of MERCOSUR Parliament, former Congressman, Argentina

98. Marcelo Freixo, Federal Congresswoman of Rio de Janeiro State,. Chairman of the Defence of Human Rights and Citizenship Commission on the Rio de Janeiro Legislative Assembly, broadcaster and Professor, Brazil

99. Marco Enríquez-Ominami, former Congressman, founder and former president of Fundación Progresa, filmmaker, France / Chile

100. María Cristina Perceval, former Senator, Permanent Representative of Argentina to the United Nations (2012), Professor of Advanced Epistemology at UNCuyo, Argentina

101.  María José Lubertino, former National Congresswoman, President of the Asociación Ciudadana por los Derechos humanos, lawyer, Argentina

102.  María Rachid, Congresswoman for the constituency of Buenos Aires, Head of the Instituto contra la Discriminación de la Defensoría del Pueblo de Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires (CABA), vice-president of the National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism, Argentina.

103.  Maximiliano Reyes,Undersecretary for Latin America and Caribbean of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, former Congressman, Mexico

104.  Mónica Xavier, Senator, doctor in medicine, Uruguay

105. Oscar Alberto Laborde, Congressman, President of Mercorsur Parliament (Palasur), Argentina

106.  Pablo Bergel, former Congressman for the constituency of Buenos Aires, environmentalist, Argentina

107. Paulo Pimenta, State Congressman of Rio Grande so Sul State, journalist, Brazil

108.  Sâmia Bomfim, Federal Congresswoman of Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil

109.  Talíria Petrone, Federal Congresswoman of Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil

110. Tarso Genro, former Minister for Justice, International Relations and Education political adviser to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, former President of Brazil, former Governor of Rio Grande do Sul, former mayor of Porto Alegre, lawyer, Brazil

111. Tereza Campello, former Minister of Social Development and Fight against Hunger,economist, international consultant on social development and social protection, visiting fellow at University of Nottingham (UK), Professor and research associate at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ), Brazil

112.  Verónika Mendoza, former Congresswoman, former Vice Presidency of the Committee on Culture and Cultural Heritage, Member of the Commission of Andean, Amazonian and Afro-Peruvian Peoples, Environment and Ecology, shift coordinator of the Parliamentary Representation of Cusco, president of the Decentralization Commission, Peru

113. Wadih Damous, Congressman, former President of the Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil (OAB) in Rio de Janeiro, lawyer,Brazil

114.  Zoé Robledo Aburto, former Secretary of Human Rights, former Senator and Deputy, Director of the Mexican Social Security Institute, Mexico

Additionally

Kevin Rudd, statement by former prime minister of Australia, 2007-2010; 2013, Australia

Chris Williamson, former British member of parliament, 2010-2015; 2017-2019, United Kingdom

Political Parties

Pirate Party SloveniaSlovenia

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Featured image is from Lawyers for Assange

Dear Prime Minister,

Dear Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice,

Dear Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs,

Dear Home Secretary,

We write to you as legal practitioners and legal academics to express our collective concerns about the violations of Mr. Julian Assange’s fundamental human, civil and political rights and the precedent his persecution is setting.

We call on you to act in accordance with national and international law, human rights and the rule of law by bringing an end to the ongoing extradition proceedings and granting Mr. Assange his long overdue freedom – freedom from torture, arbitrary detention and deprivation of liberty, and political persecution.

A. ILLEGALITY OF POTENTIAL EXTRADITION TO THE UNITED STATES

Extradition of Mr. Assange from the UK to the US would be illegal on the following grounds:

  1. Risk of being subjected to an unfair trial in the US

Extradition would be unlawful owing to failure to ensure the protection of Mr. Assange’s fundamental trial rights in the US. Mr. Assange faces show trial at the infamous “Espionage court” of the Eastern District of Virginia, before which no national security defendant has ever succeeded. Here, he faces secret proceedings before a jury picked from a population in which most of the individuals eligible for jury selection work for, or are connected to, the CIA, NSA, DOD or DOS.[i]

Furthermore, Mr. Assange’slegal privilege, a right enshrined in Art. 8 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and long recognised under English common law, was grossly violated throughconstant and criminal video and audio surveillance at the Ecuadorian embassy carried out by the Spanish security firm, UC Global. This surveillance was, according to witness testimony, ordered by the CIA and has triggered an investigation into the owner of UC Global, David Morales, by Spain’s High Court, the Audiencia Nacional.[ii] The surveillance resulted in all of Mr. Assange’s meetings and conversations being recorded, including those with his lawyers. The Council of Bar and Law Societies of Europe, which represents more than a million European lawyers, has expressed its concerns that these illegal recordings may be used – openly or secretly – in proceedings against Mr. Assange in the event of successful extradition to the US. The Council states that if the information merely became known to the prosecutors, this would present an irremediable breach of Mr. Assange’s fundamental rights to a fair trial under Art. 6 of the ECHR and due process under the US Constitution.[iii] Furthermore, the prosecuting state obtained the totality of Mr. Assange’s legal papers after their unlawful seizure in the Embassy. Upon hearing that the Government of Ecuador was planning to seize and hand over personal belongings of Mr. Assange, including documents, telephones, electronic devices, memory drives, etc. to the US, the UN Special Rapporteur on Privacy, Joseph Cannataci, expressed his serious concern to the Ecuadorian government and twice formally requested it to return Mr. Assange’s personal effects to his lawyers, to no avail.[iv] The UN Model Treaty on Extradition prohibits extradition if the person has not received, or would not receive, the minimum guarantees in criminal proceedings, as enshrined in Art. 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).[v]

  1. The political nature of the offence prohibits extradition

The US superseding indictment issued against Mr. Assange on the 24 June 2020 charges him with 18 counts all related solely to the 2010 publications of US government documents. The publications, comprising information about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, US diplomatic cables and Guantanamo Bay, revealed evidence of war crimes, corruption and governmental malfeasance.[vi]

Charges 1-17 are brought under the Espionage Act 1917, which, in name alone, reveals the political and antiquated nature of the charges.[vii]Furthermore, the essence of the 18 charges concerns Mr. Assange’s alleged intention to obtain or disclose US state “secrets” in a manner that was damaging to the strategic and national security interests of the US state, to the capability of its armed forces, the work of the security and intelligence services of the US, and to the interests of the US abroad. Thus, the conduct, motivation and purpose attributed to Mr. Assange confirm the political character of the 17 charges brought under the Espionage Act (‘pure political’ offences) and of the hacking charge (a ‘relative political’ offence). In addition, several US government officials have at various times ascribed motives “hostile” to the US to Mr. Assange, an Australian citizen.[viii] The UK-US Extradition Treaty, which provides the very basis of the extradition request, specifically prohibits extradition for political offences in Art. 4(1). Yet the presiding judge and prosecution wish to simply disregard this article by referring to the Extradition Act 2003 (“EA”) instead, which does not include the political offence exception. This blatantly ignores the fact that the EA is merely an enabling act that creates the minimum statutory safeguards, but it does not preclude stronger protections from extradition as expressly provided in subsequently ratified treaties such as the UK-US Extradition Treaty. Furthermore, there is broad international consensus that political offences should not be the basis of extradition.[ix] This is reflected in Art. 3 of the 1957 European Convention on Extradition, Art. 3 ECHR, Art. 3(a) of the UN Model Treaty on Extradition, the Interpol Constitution and every bilateral treaty ratified by the US for over a century.

  1. Risk of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in the US

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (“the UN Rapporteur on Torture”), Professor Nils Melzer, has expressed with certainty that, if extradited to the US, Mr. Assange will be exposed to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Similar concerns have also been raised by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, and Amnesty International has recently restated its concerns in relation to the unacceptable risk of mistreatment.[x]

The detention conditions, and the draconian punishment of 175 years, in a maximum security prison, which Mr. Assange faces under the US indictment, would constitute torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, according to the current UN Rapporteur on Torture and according to theconsistently expressed opinion of his predecessor, as well as of NGOs and legal authorities.[xi]

If extradited, Mr. Assange would, by the US government’s own admission, likely be placed under Special Administrative Measures. These measures prohibit prisoners from contact or communication with all but a few approved individuals, and any approved individuals would not be permitted to report information concerning the prisoner’s treatment to the public, thereby shielding potential torture from public scrutiny and government from accountability.[xii]

Under the principle of non-refoulement, it is not permissible to extradite a person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing that they would be subjected to torture. This principle is enshrined in the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, specifically Art. 33(1) from which no derogations are permitted. Also relevant are Art. 3(1) UN Declaration on Territorial Asylum 1967, Art. 3 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), and Art. 2 of the Resolution on Asylum to Persons in Danger of Persecution, adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in 1967. As an obligation arising from the prohibition of torture, the principle of non-refoulement in this area is absolute and also takes on the character of a peremptory norm of customary international law, i.e. jus cogens.[xiii]

Mr. Assange, who was accepted as a political asylee by the Ecuadorian government owing to what have proved to have been wholly legitimate fears of political persecution and torture in the US, should clearly have been accorded protection of this principle, firstly by Ecuador and secondly by the UK. Ecuador violated its human rights obligations by summarily rescinding Mr. Assange’s asylum in direct contradiction of the ‘Latin American tradition of asylum’[xiv] and the Advisory Opinion OC-25/18 of 30 May 2018 of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights affirming the principle of non-refoulement in cases of persons who have entered an embassy for protection.[xv] The entry of the Ecuadorian Embassy by UK police and the arrest of Mr. Assange were thus based on an illegal revocation of his nationality and asylum, which can only be rectified by the UK upholding its own duty to protect the principle of non-refoulement by denying extradition to the US.

B) VIOLATIONS OF THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AND THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Counts 1-17 of the indictment under the Espionage Act violate the right to freedom of expression, the right to freedom of the press and the right to know. These counts present standard and necessary investigative journalistic practices as criminal.[xvi] Such practices include indicating availability to receive information, indicating what information is of interest, encouraging the provision of information, receipt of information for the purpose of publication, and publication of information in the public interest.

Under the charge of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, the initial indictment criminalised also Mr. Assange’s alleged attempt at helping his source to maintain their anonymity while providing the documents in question, which falls squarely under the standard journalistic practice and duty of protecting the source. In a bid to detract from this fact and re-paint Mr. Assange as a malicious hacker, the US DOC has published a new “superseding indictment” on 24 June 2020, without even lodging it with the UK court first, alleging the recruitment of, and agreement with, hackers to commit computer intrusion. The new indictment has emerged unjustifiably late in the day, is based on no new information and the testimony of two highly compromised sources.

We agree with the assessment of the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe thatThe broad and vague nature of the allegations against Julian Assange, and of the offences listed in the indictment, are troubling as many of them concern activities at the core of investigative journalism in Europe and beyond.”[xvii] Extradition on the basis of the indictment would gravely endanger freedom of the press, a cornerstone of European democracies enshrined in Art. 10 ECHR.[xviii]

The US furthermore seemingly concedes the unconstitutionality of the charges, having stated in one of its submissions to the Court that Mr. Assange will be denied the protections of freedom of speech and the press guaranteed under the First Amendment due to his being a foreign national.[xix] Furthermore, extraditing Mr. Assange to the US with the knowledge of their intended discrimination against him would make the UK an accessory in a flagrant denial of his right to non-discrimination.

The extradition to the US of a publisher and journalist, for engaging in journalistic activities while in Europe, would set a very dangerous precedent for the extra-territorialisation of state secrecy laws and “would post an invitation to other states to follow suit, severely threatening the ability of journalists, publishers and human rights organisations to safely reveal information about serious international issues.”[xx] Such concerns for journalistic freedom are echoed by the journalistic profession – over a thousand journalists signed an open letter opposing Mr. Assange’s extradition.[xxi]Massimo Moratti, Amnesty International’s Deputy Europe Director has branded the US government’s unrelenting pursuit of Mr. Assange as “nothing short of a full-scale assault on the right to freedom of expression” which “could have a profound impact on the public’s right to know what their government is up to.”[xxii]

Furthermore the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has stated that member States should “consider that the detention and criminal prosecution of Mr Julian Assange sets a dangerous precedent for journalists, and join the recommendation of the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture” in his call to bar the extradition and for the release from custody of Mr. Assange.[xxiii]

C) VIOLATIONS OF THE RIGHT TO BE FREE FROM TORTURE, THE RIGHT TO HEALTH, AND THE RIGHT TO LIFE

The UN Rapporteur on Torture has reported, and continues to report, on the treatment of Mr. Assange as part of his United Nations mandate. On 9 and 10 May 2019, Prof. Melzer and two medical experts specialised in examining potential victims of torture and other ill-treatment visited Mr. Assange in Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh (HMP Belmarsh”). The group’s visit and assessment revealed that Mr. Assange showed “all symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture, including extreme stress, chronic anxiety and intense psychological trauma.”[xxiv] The UN Rapporteur on Torture concluded “Mr. Assange has been deliberately exposed, for a period of several years, to persistent and progressively severe forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the cumulative effects of which can only be described as psychological torture”. The UN Rapporteur on Torture condemned “in the strongest terms, the deliberate, concerted and sustained nature of the abuse inflicted”, and characterised the failure of the UK government and the involved governments to take measures for the protection of Mr. Assange’s human rights and dignity as “complacency at best and complicity at worst”.[xxv]

The abuse includes systematic judicial persecution and violations of due process rights in all jurisdictions involved and in all related legal proceedings.[xxvi] It has most recently been demonstrated in the treatment of Mr. Assange during the extradition proceedings heard at Woolwich Crown Court, proceedings destined to be infamously remembered for the “glass box” to which Mr. Assange was confined as if he, an award winning journalist and a publisher, was a dangerous and violent criminal.

Mr. Assange was subjected to arbitrary detention and oppressive isolation, harassment and surveillance, while confined in the Ecuadorian embassy[xxvii] and continues to be so subjected as a prisoner in HMP Belmarsh. In Belmarsh, Mr. Assange has served the irregular and disproportionate sentence of 50 weeks[xxviii] for an alleged bail infringement. Perversely, the allegation, charge and conviction resulted from Mr. Assange legitimately seeking and being granted diplomatic asylum by the Ecuadorian government, which accepted Mr. Assange’s fear of politicised extradition to, and inhuman treatment in, the US, as well founded.[xxix] Although Mr. Assange has now served the sentence, he remains imprisoned without conviction or legal basis for the purpose of a political, and thereby illegal, extradition to the US. Further, he is imprisoned amid the Coronavirus pandemic, despite the above and despite his vulnerability to the virus owing to an underlying lung condition exacerbated by years of confinement and a history of psychological torture. It is particularly worrisome that, as a result of his health and the medical circumstances, he has even been unable to participate by videolink at recent hearings, yet he has been refused bail.[xxx]

UK authorities violated Mr. Assange’s right to health while deprived of his liberty in the Ecuadorian Embassy by denying him access to urgent medical diagnosis and care.[xxxi] The two medical experts who accompanied the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture on his May 2019 visit to HMP Belmarsh warned that unless pressure on Mr. Assange was alleviated quickly, his state of health would enter a downward spiral potentially resulting in his death.[xxxii] Mr. Assange’s father, Mr. John Shipton, has reported that his son was subjected to physical torture by his being placed in a “hot box.”[xxxiii] On 1 November 2019 the UN Rapporteur on Torture stated: “[u]nless the UK urgently changes course and alleviates his inhumane situation, Mr. Assange’s continued exposure to arbitrariness and abuse may soon end up costing his life.”[xxxiv] Soon after, on 22 November 2019, over 60 doctors from around the world raised concerns about the precarious state of Mr. Assange’s physical and mental health which included fears for his life, and requested his transfer to a hospital properly equipped and staffed for his diagnosis and treatment.[xxxv]

Furthermore, it has been revealed by the employees of UC Global, who worked at the Ecuadorian embassy, that the CIA actively discussed and considered kidnapping or poisoning Mr. Assange.[xxxvi] This shows a shocking disregard for his right to life and the due process of law of the very government seeking his extradition.

We would like to remind the UK government:

  • of its duty to protect Mr. Assange’s right to life, which is the most fundamental human right enshrined in Art. 6 of the ICCPR, Art. 2 of the ECHR and Art. 2 of the Human Rights Act (HRA);
  • that the prohibition of torture is a norm of international customary law and constitutes jus cogens. The prohibition is absolute and so there may be no derogation under any circumstances, including war, public emergency or terrorist threat. It is also enshrined in Art. 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Arts. 7 and 10 ICCPR, CAT, and Art. 3 ECHR;
  • of its unconditional obligation, under Art. 12 CAT, to ensure that its competent authorities proceed to a prompt and impartial investigation of reported torture, which it has thus far failed to undertake; and
  • that it is a member State of the World Health Organization, whose Constitution states: “The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of […] political belief [,,,]everyone should have access to the health services they need, when and where they need them.”

We call on the UK government to take immediate action to cease the torture being inflicted upon Mr. Assange, to end his arbitrary and unlawful detention, and to permit his access to independent medical diagnosis and treatment in an appropriate hospital setting. That doctors, their previous concerns having been ignored, should have to call on governments to ‘End torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange’ in The Lancet is extremely worrying.[xxxvii]

D) VIOLATIONS OF THE RIGHT TO A FAIR TRIAL

We condemn the denial of Mr. Assange’s right to a fair trial before the UK courts. This right has been denied as follows.

  1. Judicial Conflicts of Interest 

Senior District Judge (Magistrates’ Courts) Emma Arbuthnot, who as Chief Magistrate oversees Mr. Assange’s extradition proceedings, has been shown to have financial links to institutions and individuals whose wrongdoings have been exposed by WikiLeaks, the organisation which Mr. Assange founded.[xxxviii] This seemingly clear conflict of interest was, however, not disclosed by the District Judge. District Judge Arbuthnot did not recuse herself and was permitted to make rulings to Mr. Assange’s detriment, despite the perceived lack of judicial impartiality and independence. District Judge (Magistrates’ Courts) Michael Snow has further exhibited bias and unprofessionalism by participating in the defamation of Mr. Assange’s character, labelling the multi-award-winning public interest publisher and Nobel Peace Prize Nominee a “narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests” in response, ironically, to Mr. Assange’s legal team raising what were patently legitimate concerns regarding bias in the proceedings.[xxxix]

  1. Inequality of Arms

Mr. Assange has been denied time and facilities to prepare his defence in violation of the principle of equality of arms which is inherent to the presumption of innocence and the rule of law.

After his arrest, the British police did not allow Mr. Assange to collect and take his belongings with him.[xl] Subsequently, Mr. Assange was deprived of his reading glasses for several weeks.[xli] Until end of June 2020 he was also denied access to a computer. While a computer has now been provided it is without internet access and read only, preventing the possibility of Mr. Assange typing any notes thus being entirely unsuitable for the preparation of his defence. Mr. Assange was furthermore denied access to the indictment itself for several weeks after it had been presented, while his access to other legal documents remains limited to this day due to the bureaucracy and lack of confidentiality involved in prison correspondence. Furthermore, despite the complexity of the case and the severity of the sentence that Mr. Assange would face if extradited to be tried in the US, prison authorities are failing to ensure that Mr. Assange can properly consult with his legal team and prepare for his defence, by severely restricting both the frequency and duration of his legal visits. Since mid-March 2020, Mr. Assange has altogether not been able to meet in person with his lawyers.

The effects of the torture to which Mr. Assange has been subjected have further limited his ability to prepare his defence and, at times during proceedings, even to answer basic questions, such as questions about his name and date of birth.[xlii] While further hearings have been delayed until September, it is unclear whether this will enable Mr. Assange the necessary time and resources to prepare his defence, since he is unable to communicate with his lawyers (due to his imprisonment during the pandemic) apart from being given limited concessions for a limited period of time, i.e. phone calls restricted to 10 minutes.

  1. Denial of the defendant’s ability to properly follow proceedings and direct his legal team

Mr. Assange and his lawyers have repeatedly informed the Court of his inability to properly follow proceedings, to consult with his lawyers confidentially and to properly instruct them in the presentation of his defence due to his being prevented from sitting with them and being confined to a bulletproof glass box. The arrangement has forced Mr. Assange to resort to waving to get the attention of the judge or the people sitting in the public gallery, in order to alert his lawyers who are seated in the courtroom with their backs to him. Although District Judge Vanessa Baraitser accepted that the decision as to whether Mr. Assange should be allowed to sit with his lawyers was within her powers, yet she refused to exercise her power in Mr. Assange’s favour, despite the prosecution having made no objection to the application. Amnesty International has expressed concerns that if adequate measures are not in place at further hearings to ensure Mr. Assange’s effective participation in, and thereby the fairness of, the proceedings would be impaired.[xliii]

  1. Refusal to address mistreatment of the defendant

Mr. Assange’s lawyers informed the Court that during a single day, on 22 February, prison authorities handcuffed him 11 times, placed him in 5 different cells, strip-searched him twice, and confiscated his privileged legal documents. Overseeing the proceedings, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser explicitly refused to intervene with prison authorities claiming that she has no jurisdiction over his prison conditions. This oppressive treatment has rightly been condemned by The International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute.[xliv] Co-Chair, Anne Ramberg Dr jur hc, branded it a “serious undermining of due process and the rule of law.[xlv] Further, international psychiatrists and psychologists have cited this as further evidence of psychological torture.[xlvi]

We remind the UK government that the right to a fair trial is a cornerstone of democracy and the rule of law. It is a basic human right enshrined in Art. 10 UDHR, Art. 14 ICCPR, Art. 6 ECHR and Art. 6 HRA. These provisions, along with long-standing common law principles, demand a fair and public hearing before an independent and impartial tribunal, the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, the right to be informed promptly and in detail of the nature and cause of the charges, the right to be provided with adequate time and facilities for the preparation of one’s defence, and the right to have the ability to communicate with one’s counsel.

For all these reasons we respectfully request that the UK government bring an end to the US extradition proceedings against Mr. Assange and ensure his immediate release from custody.

Yours sincerely,

Lawyers for Assange

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Notes

[i] The Central Intelligence Agency, The National Security Agency, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of State.

[ii] José María Irujo, ‘Director of Spanish security company that spied on Julian Assange arrested’, El País, (9 October 2019) available at:

https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2019/10/09/inenglish/1570606428_107946.html.

[iii] Council of Bar and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE), CCBE Letter regarding the interception of communications between Julian Assange and his lawyers addressed to Ms. Priti Patel, 24 February 2020.

[iv] United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, ‘UN expert on privacy seriously concerned by Ecuador’s behaviour in Assange and Moreno cases’, (23 May 2019),available at:

https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=24646&LangID=E.

[v] United Nations Model Extradition Treaty, Art. 3(f); International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Art. 14.

[vi] In the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, United States v. Julian Paul Assange, 24 June 2020, available at: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/wikileaks-founder-charged-superseding-indictment, supersedes the indictment In the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, United States v. Julian Paul Assange, 23 May 2019, available at: https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1165556/download.

[vii] David Sadoff, Bringing International Fugitives to Justice, (Cambridge University Press, 2016), p. 202.

[viii] For example, Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State and former CIA Director, 13 April 2017 ‘WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service… And it overwhelmingly focuses on the United States, while seeking support from anti-democratic countries and organizations. It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is – a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors’

[ix] R. Stuart Phillips, ‘The Political Offence Exception and Terrorism: Its Place in the Current Extradition Scheme and Proposal for Its Future’, 15 Dickinson Journal of International Law, (1997) p. 342.

[x] Amnesty International, ‘US/UK: Drop charges and halt extradition of Julian Assange’, (21 February 2020), available at: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/02/usuk-drop-charges-and-halt-extradition-of-julian-assange/.

[xi] ‘UN torture rapporteur: Julian Assange’s detention has no legal basis’, Going Underground, (30 November 2019), available at: https://www.rt.com/shows/going-underground/474719-un-torture-rapporteur-assange/.

[xii] Allard K. Lowenstein, The Darkest Corner: Special Administrative Measures and Extreme Isolation in the Federal Bureau of Prisons (International Human Rights Clinic; The Centre for Constitutional Rights, 2017).

[xiii] Report submitted by the Special Rapporteur on Torture, Mr. Theo van Boven, Civil and Political Rights in Particular Issues Related to Torture and Detention, UN Doc. E/CN.4/2002/137, 26 February 2002, para. 14, and Committee against Torture (CAT), General Comment No. 4: On the implementation of Article 3 of the Convention in the context of Article 20, advanced unedited version, 9 February 2018, para. 9. This paragraph states that “The principle of “non-refoulement” of persons to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that they would be in danger of being subjected to torture is similarly absolute”.

[xiv] The term ‘Latin American tradition of asylum’ commonly refers to the catalogue of bilateral and multilateral treaties related to the legal institution of territorial and diplomatic asylum adopted for the benefit of politically persecuted persons in Latin America, including the non-extradition clause for political crimes or political motives.

[xv] Advisory Opinion OC-25/18 of 30 May 2018 requested by the Republic of Ecuador, Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACrtHR), (30 May 2018), available at:

https://www.refworld.org/cases,IACRTHR,5c87ec454.html, paras. 188-189; see also European Commission on Human Rights, W.M. v. Denmark, No. 17392/90. Decision on Admissibility of 14 October 1992, para. 1, and Human Rights Committee, Case of Mohammad Munaf v. Romania (Communication No. 1539/2006), UN Doc. CCPR/C/96/D/1539/2006, Views adopted on 21 August 2009, paras. 14.2 and 14.5.

[xvi] David Greene, at conference organised by GUE/NLG, European Union Left – Nordic Green Left, Journalism Is Not A Crime – The Assange Extradition Case, (14 November 2019), available at: https://web-guengl.streamovations.be/index.php/event/stream/journalism-is-not-a-crime-the-assange-extradition-case.

[xvii] Julian Assange should not be extradited due to potential impact on press freedom and concerns about ill-treatment, Commissioner for Human Rights for the Council of Europe (20 February 2020), available at: https://www.coe.int/en/web/commissioner/-/julian-assange-should-not-be-extradited-due-to-potential-impact-on-press-freedom-and-concerns-about-ill-treatment.

[xviii] European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), Goodwin v United Kingdom, para. 39.

[xix] Mohamed Elmaazi, ‘Assange Extradition: US Government Claims Foreign Journalists Aren’t Protected by First Amendment’, Sputnik International (24 January 2020), available at: https://sputniknews.com/uk/202001231078116774-assange-extradition-us-government-claims-foreign-journalists-arent-protected-by-first-amendment-/; This was already previously hinted at by former CIA director Mike Pompeo who claimed that the First Amendment of the US Constitution should not apply to Mr. Assange at all, as he is not a US citizen. Glenn Greenwald, ‘Trump’s CIA Director Pompeo, Targeting WikiLeaks, Explicitly Threatens Speech and Press Freedoms’, The Intercept (14 April 2017), available at: https://theintercept.com/2017/04/14/trumps-cia-director-pompeo-targeting-wikileaks-explicitly-threatens-speech-and-press-freedoms/.

[xx] Courage foundation, Briefing for the Council of Europe, ‘Why Opposing Julian Assange’s Extradition to the U.S. Matters for European Democracy’, (March 2019), available at: https://defend.wikileaks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Council-of-Europe-briefing.pdf.

[xxi] Speak Up for Julian Assange: International journalist statement in defence of Julian Assange, available at: https://speak-up-for-assange.org/journalists-speak-up-for-julian-assange/.

[xxii] Amnesty International, ‘ US/UK: Drop charges and halt extradition of Julian Assange’, (21 February 2020), available at: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/02/usuk-drop-charges-and-halt-extradition-of-julian-assange/.

[xxiii] Council of Europe, Parliamentary Assembly, ‘Threats to Media Freedom and Journalists’ Security in Europe’, Resolution 2317 (2020), para. 6.2, available at: https://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/XRef/Xref-XML2HTML-en.asp?fileid=28508&lang=en.

[xxiv] United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, ‘UN expert says “collective persecution” of Julian Assange must end now, (31 May 2019)’, available at: https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=24665.

[xxv] Ibid.

[xxvi] ‘UN torture rapporteur: Julian Assange’s detention has no legal basis’, Going Underground, (30 November 2019), available at: https://www.rt.com/shows/going-underground/474719-un-torture-rapporteur-assange/.

[xxvii] United Nations Human Rights Council, Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Opinion No. 54/2015 concerning Julian Assange (Sweden and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), A/HRC/WGAD/2015, (22 January 2016) available at: http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Detention/A.HRC.WGAD.2015.docx.

[xxviii] United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, ‘United Kingdom: Working Group on Arbitrary Detention expresses concern about Assange proceedings’, (3 May 2019), available at: https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=24552&LangID=E.

[xxix] Deborah Shipley, Criminal Litigation Practice and Procedure, (2019), p 56: “Although failing to answer bail at the police station is technically a criminal offence, it is very rare in practice for the police to charge a suspect with this offence.”

[xxx] Lizzie Dearden, ‘Julian Assange ‘too ill’ to attend latest court hearing in US extradition case’, The Independent, (1 June 2020), available at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/julian-assange-court-hearing-us-extradition-health-ill-sick-a9543126.html.

[xxxi] Open Letter to UK Home Secretary Priti Patel and Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott, (23 November 2019), available at: https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/23/doctors-petition-uk-home-secretary-over-julian-assange/ and https://medium.com/@doctors4assange.

[xxxii] ‘UN torture rapporteur: Julian Assange’s detention has no legal basis’, Going Underground, (30 November 2019), available at: https://www.rt.com/shows/going-underground/474719-un-torture-rapporteur-assange/.

[xxxiii] John Shipton at GUE/NLG, European Union Left – Nordic Green Left, Journalism Is Not A Crime – The Assange Extradition Case, (14 November 2019), available at: https://web-guengl.streamovations.be/index.php/event/stream/journalism-is-not-a-crime-the-assange-extradition-case.

[xxxiv] United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, ‘UN expert on torture sounds alarm again that Julian Assange’s life may be at risk’, (1 November 2019), available at: https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25249.

[xxxv] Open Letter to UK Home Secretary Priti Patel and Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott, (23 November 2019), available at: https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/23/doctors-petition-uk-home-secretary-over-julian-assange/ and https://medium.com/@doctors4assange.

[xxxvi] Conrad Duncan, ‘Julian Assange: WikiLeaks founder ‘at high risk of suicide’ if extradited to US, hearing told’, The Independent (24 February 2020), available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/julian-assange-extradition-hearing-wikileaks-suicide-us-trump-a9356141.html.

[xxxvii] Frost S, Johnson L, Stein J, Frost W. ‘End torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange’, The Lancet (7 March 2020); 395:e44–5.

Hogan W, Frost S, Johnson L, Schulze T G, Nelson E A, Frost W. ‘The ongoing torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange’, The Lancet (4 July 2020); 396:22-23.

[xxxviii] Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis, ‘Revealed: Chief magistrate in Assange case received financial benefits from secretive partner organisations of UK Foreign Office’ (21 February 2020), available at: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-02-21-revealed-chief-magistrate-in-assange-case-received-financial-benefits-from-secretive-partner-organisations-of-uk-foreign-office/.

[xxxix] Simon Murphy, ‘Assange branded a narcissist by judge who found him guilty’, The Guardian, (11 April 2019), available at: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/apr/11/assange-branded-a-narcissist-by-judge-who-found-him-guilty.

[xl] Mandate of the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Reference UA GBR 3/2019, 27 May 2019, Geneva, available at: https://spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMResultsBase/DownLoadPublicCommunicationFile?gId=24641, p. 8.

[xli] John Pilger, Talk given at Free the Truth conference, Novemer 2019, available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DH0s8hGLS6A&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR1jD_2OQuuHAoBkpksctnHj0UGt-A05epeihobvjzmqryfu0zXi_Ux1qG8.

[xlii] Jack Peat, ‘Assange “struggles to say his own name” as he appears in curt’, The London Economic, (21 October 2019), available at: https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/assange-struggles-to-say-his-own-name-as-he-appears-in-court/21/10/.

[xliii] Amnesty International, ‘UK: Amnesty International urges the UK to guarantee a fair extradition process to Julian Assange’ (27 February 2020), available at: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/02/uk-amnesty-international-urges-the-uk-to-guarantee-a-fair-extradition-process-to-julian-assange/.

[xliv] International Bar Association, the global voice of the legal profession, ‘IBAHRI condemns UK treatment of Julian Assange in US extradition trial’, (10 March 2020), available at: https://www.ibanet.org/Article/NewDetail.aspx?ArticleUid=c05c57ee-1fee-47dc-99f9-26824208a750.

[xlv] Ibid.

[xlvi] Lissa Johnson, ‘Psychological Torture, Coronavirus, and Julian Assange’, Concurrent Disorders, (2 April 2020) available at: https://concurrentdisorders.ca/2020/04/03/psychological-torture-coronavirus-and-julian-assange/.

Trump’s Mideast Mirage

September 21st, 2020 by Eric Margolis

The Trump administration, desperate for some good news, just manufactured its own news by confecting a ‘peace’ deal between Israel and a bunch of pipsqueak Arab monarchies – just in time for November US elections.

The Gulf monarchies – the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain – that signed this agreement are so frightened of neighboring Iran that they would happily have opted for Israeli rule rather than welcome the angry, unforgiving Iranians, who call the Gulf Arabs ‘traitors, cowards and backstabbers,’ a sentiment shared by much of the Arab world.

Few Americans could find these little sheikdoms on a map. But many evangelical voters, who have a comic-book view of the Mideast, will think the Trump administration has achieved a major feat by supposedly bringing peace to the Holy Land. Cynics, among them many Israelis, will likely scoff at such falafel in the sky thinking. Oman is expected to sign the new accord.

Israel remains intent on expanding its borders to gobble up all of what was historic Palestine and its water resources. Five million Palestinians will remain stateless. Israel also has its eye on fertile parts of Syria and Lebanon.

As I suggested in my book on Mideast strategy, ‘American Raj,’ the key beneficiaries of any Arab-Israeli peace deal would be Israel’s bankers, businessmen and arms makers. If a decent peace deal can be made with the Palestinians, the doors of the entire Muslim world (a fifth of humanity) will be opened to Israel’s commerce and finance. This will be a huge bonanza worth orders of magnitude more than the West Bank’s scrubby slopes.

But to do so, Israel’s hard right and religious extremists will have to lessen their demands for Arab land and water – that is, what they term, Greater Israel. Just as difficult and obdurate will be Trump’s evangelical core voters who want to see a mythical Biblical Israel recreated, paving the way for the return of the Messiah and earth’s fiery destruction.

The United Arab Emirates, population just under 10 million, is only 10% Arab. The rest of its people are mainly Indians and Pakistani coolies, giving rise to the old bon mot that Dubai and Abu Dhabi are the world’s best Indian-run cities.

Non-Arab members of the UAE are treated like slaves. They are paid a pittance, poorly fed, and live in squalor. Non-Arabs have no rights. Arab citizens don’t have any rights either, just a better standard of living.

I remember these tiny city states from the early 1970’s when I worked for a leading US firm that smuggled high-end cosmetics and perfumes into India, Pakistan and the USSR via Dubai’s busy port.

Back in the day, Britain’s intelligence agency, MI6, controlled Oman and its royal rulers. Similarly, the CIA today exercises great influence over Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, not to mention Egypt and Morocco. Tiny Qatar maintains a degree of independence in the face of Saudi threats and efforts by the Trump people to crush it.

The big Mideast deal ballyhooed by Trump and Co. is in reality a phony peace between secretly allied Gulf States and Israel. They have been playing footsie for over a decade. It is not primarily about peace but about Iran and arms sales to the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia that they have no idea how to use. Weapons sales are a protection payoff to Washington, which has important bases in Qatar, the UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

What next? Will Trump declare a trans-Pacific alliance between Tonga and the US to ‘contain’ China?

As for peace in the Mideast, recall the biting words of Roman historian Tacitus, ‘where they make a desert they call it peace.’ That is what awaits over five million Palestinian refugees, not a new dawn promised by the Trump administration.

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What the Flint Water Crisis Meant for My Family

September 21st, 2020 by Nakiya Wakes

In 2015, my life fell apart.

The first signs of trouble came from my son Jaylon. He was five years old and, although he struggled with ADHD, perfectly healthy. But then he started acting out in ways he never had before. His school didn’t know how to handle it, so they started suspending him. By the time he was six, they had suspended him 70 times.

Jaylon wasn’t the only child struggling. Many other children in Flint were acting out too, and no one knew why.

Now we do: It was lead poisoning.

That same year, I was pregnant. We didn’t yet know we weren’t supposed to drink the water. We didn’t yet know we were bathing in poison.

I started bleeding and went to the emergency room. They did an ultrasound, said I had miscarried, and told me to go home. I told them something wasn’t right, even more than the miscarriage. But they ignored me, a lower-income African American woman.

Back at home, I started hemorrhaging. I had to be rushed back to the hospital. It turns out there was another baby — I had been pregnant with twins. The doctors had treated me so carelessly they didn’t even know there was another baby when they sent me home. That night, I lost that baby too.

Two years later, I lost another set of twins. My daughter miscarried my grandchild. She might never be able to have children.

This didn’t happen because of us, the residents of Flint. It didn’t even happen because of those we elected in our city. It happened because an “emergency management” board appointed by the state tried to cut costs by getting our water out of the polluted Flint River rather than Lake Huron.

This wasn’t a decision decided by democratic vote. This was forced on us without even the barest measure of corrosion controls, even though the toxicity of the Flint River is notorious. They gambled with our lives, and we lost.

And who has been held accountable? No one. There are no active indictments, charges, or court cases related to the poisoning. A few weeks ago, they announced a financial settlement of $600 million for victims, but it feels like too little, too late.

How can I put a price tag on the lost lives of my four babies, or on the damage to my son, which will last the rest of his life? How do you put a price tag on the trauma, pain, and turmoil that greedy politicians inflicted on our whole community for the sake of profit? You can’t.

Compensation for victims is the bare minimum of what needs to happen. My son and the kids of Flint need more support. The politicians responsible need to be held accountable. Black people, poor people, and struggling low-income people need to matter.

Ultimately, this isn’t just a story about Flint.

Thousands of communities across the United States have lead levels as bad or worse than Flint’s were. That’s why the Poor People’s Campaign is calling for clean, public water for every person in this country — and an end to water shutoffs for people struggling to pay bills, especially during a pandemic.

Enough lives have fallen apart. It’s time to start putting them back together.

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The American Southwest is witnessing a horrific and inexplicable phenomenon, likely due to the climate crisis: hundreds of thousands of migratory birds are dying off. The birds seem to be just “falling out of the sky,” as The Guardian reported.

An eerie scene was captured on video and posted to the Las Cruces-Sun News in New Mexico. Journalist Austin Fisher was out on a hike on Sunday when he encountered a trail of dead birds. The New Mexico Game & Fish department has been inundated with calls from residents concerned about all the dead birds they are seeing.

“We started receiving calls a week ago on Tuesday the eighth and they haven’t really stopped since then from all across the state,” said Game & Fish Department spokeswoman Tristanna Bickford, as The Santa Fe New Mexican reported. “We can’t say any official cause at this time. That would be pure speculation.”

The die-off isn’t just happening in New Mexico. According to The Guardian, clusters of various dead birds, including flycatchers, swallows, bluebirds, blackbirds, sparrows and warblers have been spotted in Colorado, Texas, Arizona and Nebraska.

“It’s just terrible,” said Martha Desmond, a professor at the New Mexico State University’s department of fish, wildlife and conservation ecology, to CNN. “The number is in the six figures. Just by looking at the scope of what we’re seeing, we know this is a very large event, hundreds of thousands and maybe even millions of dead birds, and we’re looking at the higher end of that.”

“I collected over a dozen in just a two-mile stretch in front of my house,” said Desmond, as The Guardian reported. “To see this and to be picking up these carcasses and realizing how widespread this is, is personally devastating. To see this many individuals and species dying is a national tragedy.”

While the New Mexico Game & Fish Department started receiving calls on Sept. 8, Desmond’s timeline goes back to Aug. 20 when a large number of dead birds were spotted at the U.S. Army White Sands Missile Range and White Sands National Monument.

“On the missile range we might in a week find, get a report of, less than half a dozen birds,” Trish Butler, a biologist at the range, told KOB, the NBC News affiliate in Albuquerque.

“This last week we’ve had a couple hundred, so that really got our attention.”

According to NBC News, why exactly the mass die-off is happening is a mystery. Desmond suggested that a cold front that hit New Mexico or a recent drought might play a part. She added that the wildfires burning across the west may be a factor.

“There may have been some damage to these birds in their lungs. It may have pushed them out early when they weren’t ready to migrate,” she said to NBC News.

The birds migrate from Alaska and Canada to reach their winter homes in Central and South America. Besides the smoke damaging their lungs, it is possible that the wildfires forced the birds to change their pattern away from resource-rich coastal areas to a desert where the food and water they need to refuel are much more difficult to find, according to The Guardian. In other words, they may be starving, dehydrated and exhausted.

“The birds seem to be in relatively good condition, except that they are extremely emaciated,” wrote Allison Salas, a graduate student at New Mexico State University, on Twitter. “They have no fat reserves and barely any muscle mass. Almost as if they have been flying until they just couldn’t fly anymore.”

The collected carcasses are being logged and sent to two facilities for testing, the National Wildlife Health Centre in Wisconsin and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service forensics laboratory in Oregon. It’s expected that testing will take a couple of weeks before officials can state a cause of death, according to The Guardian.

In the meantime, scientists are crowdsourcing research and asking citizens to log any dead bird sightings on the website of the Southwest Avian Mortality Project.

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Featured image: A MacGillivray’s Warbler found dead in Fairplay, Colorado on Sept. 1, 2020. Southwest Avian Mortality Project

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Throughout his tenure, Trump showed he’s a deal-breaker, not maker — notably by unilaterally abandoning the landmark INF Treaty and JCPOA nuclear deal.

Extending New START is jeopardized. Expiring on February 5, 2021 if not renewed, the decade-ago agreement is the only remaining arms control treaty between Russia and the US.

Preserving it is essential to avoid a greater arms race than already ongoing.

Between them, Russia and the US have an estimated 94% of nuclear warheads.

Bush/Cheney’s December 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), asserted America’s preemptive right to unilaterally declare and wage future wars using first strike nuclear weapons.

Obama’s 2010 and 2015 National Security Strategies pledged US first-strike use of these weapons against any adversary, nuclear armed or not.

Trump earlier said the US “must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability…”

As long as these weapons exist, they’ll likely be used again with devastating effects.

The only way to prevent eventual nuclear war is by eliminating these weapons entirely.

Trump’s National Security Strategy falsely called China and Russia “revisionist powers” that seek to “challenge American power, influence, and interests” — to be countered by escalated US militarism, including “new weapons systems” for winning wars quickly.

According to Trump’s NSS, enhancing the US nuclear arsenal is “essential to prevent nuclear attack, nonnuclear strategic attacks, and large scale conventional aggression.”

The above is code language for asserting the preemptive right to use nukes against invented enemies for the US to defend its “vital interests.”

US imperial aims pose an unprecedented threat to everyone everywhere.

Obama approved a $1 trillion program to upgrade America’s nuclear arsenal over the next 30 years.

Trump supports the same policy instead of stepping back from the risk of unthinkable nuclear war able to kill us all.

New START imposes limits on US and Russian nuclear warheads and bombs — as well as on deployed ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and nuclear-capable heavy bombers.

The agreement doesn’t limit non-deployed ICBMs and SLBMs, but monitors their numbers and locations.

On Monday, Russia’s’ UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia said the following:

“If New START is not extended, we will find effective ways to protect ourselves.”

“We are certainly interested in extending the treaty, as we see it as a key element of strategic stability.”

Nebenzia stressed the Kremlin’s belief that the US wants the entire system of arms control agreements dismantled so it’s free to enhance its military capabilities unconstrained by bilateral or multilateral deals.

Calling its rage for militarism a “global problem…more and more evidence (reveals) its desire to secure full discretion for power projection and use of force.”

Trump regime envoy for arms control Marshall Billingslea said New START won’t be extended by the US unless Russia agrees to its demands.

Earlier, Russia’s upper house Federation Council International Committee chairman Konstantin Koshchev called Washington’s position on extending New START “alarming (by its) categoricalness.”

Its position is “either as we say or nothing,” a way to prevent New START’s extension, not the other way around.

The last remaining bilateral arms control treaty may end in February.

The Trump regime wants no limits on deployment of US-NATO weapons in Europe, including intermediate and short-range nuclear capable ballistic missiles.

Its one-sided demand is either accept this threat to its security or the US will be free to modernize and expand its nuclear arsenal without constraints.

Instead of extending New START  in its current form with no preconditions as Putin proposed, Billingslea offered only a nonbinding Trump regime memorandum of intent.

He also wants China made part of agreed on terms. Russia has no objection if Beijing approves the idea it rejected so far.

In July, its Department of Arms Control director general Fu Kong said the following:

“(I)t is unrealistic to expect China to join the two countries in a negotiation aimed at nuclear arms reduction” — given the difference in sizes of their nuclear arsenals.

Beijing reportedly has around 300 nukes compared to around 6,000  warheads by both Russia and the US, according to the Arms Control Association.

Moscow also called for Britain and France to be involved in current talks, what Billingslea rejected.

He also opposes Russia’s call for the US to reduce its nuclear arsenal in Europe.

He warned that if Moscow doesn’t yield to US demands, “after Trump is reelected, the ‘entrance fee’…will increase,” adding:

If a deal isn’t reached by February, the US will abandon New START entirely, where things appear to be heading.

So far, there’s been no official Kremlin response to Billingslea’s demands.

Russian upper house Federation Council Foreign Affairs Committee member Oleg Morozov called them “outrageous,” adding:

“It’s like saying: ‘Give me your gun and the gun of your neighbor or I’ll shoot you in the head.’ ”

According to the Arms Control Association, the Trump regime “oppose(s) an unconditional” extension of New START proposed by Russia.

An “impasse” between both countries on this vital to world security issue “cast(s) an ominous shadow over the future of the last remaining arms control agreement” between both countries.

Billingslea falsely called New START “deeply flawed” — how Trump regime officials describe all landmark deals they want abandoned.

Both sides remain far apart on key issues. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov involved in talks with Billingslea said “any additions” to New START “would be impossible both for political and procedural reasons,” adding:

Moscow will not support an “extension at any cost.”

“If the US embellishes its possible…decision in favor of extension with all sorts of preconditions and burdens, this work with all possible additional requirements, then I think the problem of extending the treaty won’t be that easy to resolve.”

With US elections approaching, New START expiring in February, and both sides miles apart on extending it, maintaining the landmark deal is jeopardized.

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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.


Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

WWIII Scenario

Longtime incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko overwhelmingly defeated opposition candidates to remain in office.

US-designated puppet-in-waiting,  Svetlana Tikhanovskaya was chosen to serve Washington’s imperial interests.

On Saturday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova slammed Brussels for meddling in Belarusian internal affairs, saying the following:

“…Belarus is not the only example” of how the EU colludes with Washington against other countries in breach of the UN Charter and other international law.

“We call on the European Union to reconsider this course, which leads to the erosion of the legal basis of the international order, and in the case of Belarus, hinders normalization in the country.”

Stressing the illegality and destabilizing effects of possible EU sanctions on the country, Zakharova added:

“Our position regarding the sanctions mechanism used by the European Union is well-known.”

“It is illegitimate in terms of international law and represents unacceptable interference in internal affairs.”

“And in the context of the situation in Belarus, it contradicts the goal of restoring stability, establishing a dialogue, launching the constitutional process, and easing tensions, which EU representatives have said so much about.”

Zakharova also strongly criticized an invitation by EU foreign ministers for Tikhanovskaya to attend an upcoming ministerial meeting in Brussels, saying:

“EU foreign ministers’ overtures to the self-appointed Belarusian opposition representative and her invitation to Brussels ‘to communicate’ is an integral part of the scenario to meddle in Belarus’ domestic affairs.”

“It is a brazen violation of fundamental norms of the United Nations Charter and the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which anniversaries are marked by international community this year.”

Russia views unacceptable bloc actions as further “proof of the European Union’s retreat from previous statements that there is no geopolitics in regard to Belarus or any parallels with the scenario of February 2014 in Ukraine when certain EU nations had come forward as so-called guarantors of the agreement between the government and opposition, which was trampled on the next day.”

Extrajudicial EU policy is supported by its foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and majority European Parliament MPs.

“The attempts to ‘rock the boat’ are obvious, and Brussels should not be surprised that there will be a response,” Zakharova stressed, adding:

“Behind imaginary concern for the people of Belarus, the EU actually tries to decide for them how they should live.”

“We would say again that the EU prefers not to talk about the constitutional reform, which aims to promote a nationwide dialogue in this country.”

“In general, we can see that disrespect for objective intra-political realities, rampant support to opposition forces, up to recognition of ‘impostors’ by certain EU member states which Brussels is unable to ‘rein in,’ and the option to oust the current government through sanctions, pressure and propaganda are being increasingly entrenched in the EU foreign policy arsenal.”

“Regrettably, Belarus is not the only example in this respect.”

Geopolitically, the EU is largely subservient to Washington’s agenda.

Separately, remarks by Belarusian Foreign Ministry spokesman Anatoly Glaz were similar to his Russian counterpart — stressing “impudent and open interference in the internal affairs of our country and complete disrespect for its citizens” by the EU and US.

Reciting scripted remarks, Tikhanovskaya called for “international community” intervention in Belarus by video message to the UN Human Rights Council — supporting the made-in-the-USA coup attempt to topple the country’s legitimate government.

Russia supports Belarusian sovereignty, free from foreign interference.

On Wednesday, Sergey Lavrov said during Lukashenko’s Sochi meeting with Putin days earlier, both leaders discussed implementation of the 1999 Union State treaty between both countries, adding:

“Work is underway.” Because over 20 years passed since both nations agreed on the treaty, governments of both nations “began to work on identifying the agreed-upon steps that would make our integration fit current circumstances.”

Lukashenko agreed on the need to deepen integration after resisting the idea throughout most of his time in office since 1994.

Given a made-in-the-US coup plot to replace him with pro-Western puppet rule, Lukashenko appears more willing for Belarus to join with Russia as part of a Union State.

As the saying goes, the devil is in the details. At the same time, consummation of a Union State agreement between both countries most likely would be an effective way to defeat the US coup plot.

Things are moving in this direction. It also makes sense because around 80% of Belarusians are ethnically Russian. Both countries share a slavic heritage.

They’re each other’s most important political, economic, trade, and defense partners. Lavrov expressed confidence about achieving bilateral integration — perhaps to be announced in the coming days or weeks.

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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.

The United States’ Existential Challenge against China

September 21st, 2020 by tricontinental

US President Donald Trump and his ‘war council’ – led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – have amplified their aggression against China. What began as a trade dispute in the 1990s has now escalated into the United States making an existential challenge against China.

The threat against China is made not for irrational reasons, but for perfectly rational ones, which are laid out below in our Red Alert no. 9 (also available as a separate download from our website). These have to do with the emergence of China as a major economic and technological power. What most rankles the US ruling class is that the various hybrid war techniques to weaken or overthrow the government are simply not available. The only means at the disposal of the United States to hold on to its power – chillingly – is armed force.

Is the United States trying to impose a war on China?

For the past several decades, the US has conducted a trade war against China. There are two key issues that worry the United States: first, a trade imbalance that benefits China, and, second, the growth of the Chinese technology sector. Techniques that the US has used against China include: pressuring China to revalue its currency against the dollar, pressuring China to prevent ‘piracy’ on intellectual property in order to slow down its domestic intellectual property developments, and pressuring China to slow down or cease its Belt and Road Initiative.

The US has now begun a war against the Chinese economy. The attempt to isolate Huawei and ZTE from their suppliers and their markets will have a debilitating impact on the growth potential of the Chinese economy. The US has sanctioned roughly 152 companies that make chips and other products for Huawei and ZTE. Increased bans – through the US government’s Clean Network initiative – would prevent US companies from using Chinese cloud services and undersea cables, and it would ban Chinese apps from appearing on app stores. The US government has increased pressure on other countries to join in this campaign.

The US government has increased its military pressure along the eastern rim of China. This includes the 2017 revival of the Quad (Australia, India, Japan, and the US), the creation of the US’ Indo-Pacific Strategy (its key document from 2020 is called ‘Regain the Advantage’), and the development of a range of new weaponry, including cyberweapons. This military power has come alongside hostile rhetoric against China, with attention focused on Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Taiwan, and the depiction of the coronavirus pandemic as a ‘China virus’. Evidence is not as important here as the use of older racist and anti-Communist ideas to demonise China.

Why is the US increasing its pressure against China?

China’s technological advances could result in a generational advantage over the West. China’s scientific and technological developments came because of the country’s investment in higher education and in its ability to transfer technology from firms that entered the country to manufacture goods. In 2018, Chinese scholars for the first time published more scientific articles than their colleagues in the US, and Chinese firms filed more patent applications than US firms. Chinese tech firms have now produced products that appear to be ahead of US, European, and Japanese products. Examples for this include 5G, BeiDou (a better mapping technology than GPS), high-speed trains, and robots.

Faced with US pressure, China has crafted an independent trade and development agenda. Since the world financial crisis, China began diversifying its economy from reliance upon the US and European markets to build up its own internal market and to increase engagement with the Global South. The immediate projects that developed included the Belt and Road Initiative, the String of Pearls Initiative, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and the China-Community of Latin American and Caribbean States Forum. The Chinese government has also begun to pay more attention to the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). These moves come alongside a remarkable poverty eradication programme.

Currently, China is highly dependent on imported energy – such as gas from ASEAN nations, Australia, and Qatar. The China-Russia 6000kms ‘Power of Siberia’ pipeline will bring 38 billion cubic metres of natural gas, a substantial increase to meet the demands for the 90 billion cubic meters consumed by China. In 2014, Russia’s multinational energy corporation Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Corporation signed a $400 billion for a thirty-year deal.

Increasingly, China has attempted to build institutions outside of Western-controlled trade and development architecture, including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (founded in 2014). As part of this, China has committed to de-dollarisation; China has proposed to hold its reserves and to conduct trade in currencies other than the US dollar. This is a long-term but inevitable development, and one that threatens the overall role of the Wall Street-Dollar complex. China’s cooperation with Russia is most advanced in this arena, with about 50% of Russia-China trade conducted in roubles and yuan (Russia owns about 25% of the global yuan reserves). Both Russia and China are divesting themselves of their dollar reserves. In January 2020, Russia sold $101 billion, or 50%, of its dollar reserves and moved $44 billion into Euros and $44 billion into yuan. The yuan, however, represents only 2% of global currency reserves.

Against the eastward expansion of NATO and the emergence of the Quad, China and Russia have crafted a military and diplomatic Eurasian security bloc. This is evident in the arms deals and the military exercises, but also in diplomatic coordination. For example, Russian and Chinese foreign ministry spokespersons Maria Zakharova and Hua

Chunying said in late July that they would join efforts in combatting the information war against China and Russia. Chinese diplomats have taken a more forthright attitude in their statements; they have been dubbed the ‘wolf warrior diplomats’, an allusion to a popular film where a Chinese soldier from an elite Wolf Warrior troop defeats a group of terrorists led by an ex-US Navy Seal.

Clearly, the US has found that Chinese leadership has been unwilling to go the Gorbachev road – namely, to surrender the Chinese model to the will of the United States. There is no possibility that the Communist Party of China will dissolve itself. The Chinese middle class – possible fodder for a ‘colour revolution’ – does not have any appetite to overthrow the government. It is content with the direction of the government and sees that its government has improved living standards and has been able – unlike Western governments – to tackle the Coronavirus pandemic (as we write about in a series on ‘CoronaShock’). A Harvard University study shows that the government led by the Communist Party of China has increased its approval from 2003 to 2016, largely because of the social welfare programmes and the fight against corruption pushed by both the Communist Party of China and by the Chinese government. The overall approval stands at 93%.

What contradictions does the US war project face?

Chinese economic developments – such as the country’s capacity to outspend the US in development aid to outbid Western firms in trade deals – has produced alliances between China and key capitalist sectors in countries that have otherwise been secure US allies. Examples of this are amongst sections of the capitalist class in the Philippines and Sri Lanka, where Chinese investment has been welcomed.

The Chinese state has intensified its intervention in the tech sector inside China, with a $14 billion private and public fund to support tech developments. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) – China’s top chip company – had an initial public offering (IPO) in Shanghai which netted $7. 5 billion. As a consequence of such funds and its own scientific developments, China will soon be able to bypass the US chip firms.

China’s economic capacity continues to exert pressure on fragments of capital in different countries. For instance, Australian mining companies rely upon China to buy iron ore from Australia. These companies lobby Canberra not to take too hostile a position against China. Roughly one third of Australia’s total exports go to China; these include soy, barley, meat, fruits, gas, and the raw minerals. The Australian government is forced to acknowledge these concerns, even though it has a longer-term perspective than the short-term profit concerns of the mining conglomerates. China has already hedged its bets, increasing purchases of soy and meat from Argentina and Brazil, and it will likely buy more mined goods from Brazil (Brazil’s Vale is using massive ships to carry mined goods to China).

The US military is stretched thin between the conflicts in Venezuela and Iran, and now in China. The US Navy has had four secretaries in a year, part of the chaos in the Trump administration. As a consequence, the US Navy has complained about the lack of ability to handle so many theatres of war at the same time. China has developed sophisticated defence mechanisms, such as cyber warfare techniques that have the ability to shut down US communications, starting with their satellites, and such as their Dongfeng missiles, which are capable of hitting the US navy ships that are in the South China Sea.

The eighth century Chinese poet Li Bai wrote of the ugliness of war; as far as war is concerned, nothing has changed over the centuries.

Soldiers smear their blood on the dry grass
While generals map the next campaign.

Wise people know winning a war
Is no better than losing one.

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The Center for Biological Diversity sued the administration for public records detailing the U.S. government’s efforts on behalf of Bayer, the maker of the herbicide glyphosate, to convince Thailand last year to reverse its planned ban of the cancer-linked chemical.

The lawsuit comes after documents previously obtained by the Center revealed evidence that the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. trade officials worked closely with the pesticide and processed-food industries to pressure Thailand into scuttling its ban on glyphosate, which the World Health Organization’s cancer-research arm has listedas a probable carcinogen.

The lawsuit, which was filed on Wednesday, seeks additional documents that administration officials have refused to release regarding their communications with representatives of Bayer and other corporations that stood to benefit from the reversal of the ban.

“It’s bad enough that this administration has ignored independent science to blindly support Bayer’s self-serving assertions of glyphosate’s safety,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center. “But to then act as Bayer’s agent to pressure other countries to adopt that position is outrageous.”

The earlier communications obtained by the Center through a Freedom of Information Act request reveal a coordinated effort between U.S. officials and powerful, multinational corporations to thwart actions abroad that might harm sales of their products.

Bayer and Archer Daniels Midland, a U.S.-based international commodities trader, were two of the companies working with federal officials to pressure Thailand to reverse its plan to ban glyphosate, according to the documents.

In October 2019 Thailand’s National Hazardous Substances Committee voted to ban glyphosate and two other highly controversial pesticides: chlorpyrifos and paraquat. But one month later — five days before the ban was to go into effect — Thailand suddenly reversed its decision on glyphosate.

Records reveal that the U.S. government got involved after Bayer appealed to the administration to intervene on two separate occasions in September and October 2019. Both appeals for intervention were forwarded to Ted McKinney, USDA undersecretary for trade and foreign agricultural affairs, who previously worked for the pesticide company Dow Agrosciences for nearly 20 years.

Eight days after Bayer’s second request, McKinney sent an official letter to Thailand’s prime minister asking the country to reconsider its planned ban.

Concurrent with its efforts at USDA, Bayer was in regular contact with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the federal agency responsible for recommending U.S. trade policy to the U.S. president.

Documents show that agency collected intelligence on individuals in the Thai government who supported the ban. In discussing the matter with representatives from Bayer, U.S. trade officials sought information on a supporter of the ban, the Thai deputy agriculture minister:

“…it would be useful to know her personal motivations (i.e., is she a diehard advocate of organic food; and/or staunch environmentalist who eschews all synthetic chemical applications). Knowing what motivates her may help with USG counter arguments.”

The U.S. trade office also asked who in Thailand would be in the best position to influence this decision. Bayer replied, “All efforts should be focused on the Prime Minister.”

Representatives of Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM) also met with officials at the U.S. trade office in November and provided the agency with: “…some more intel on the issue, per the questions that were raised during our meeting…”

In October and November, there were at least two official meetings between ambassadors of the two countries. Memos from both meetings indicated that the glyphosate ban was discussed alongside the impending U.S. decision to revoke Thailand’s favorable trade status, allegedly due to worker rights issues. The Thai glyphosate ban and the decision to revoke trade preferences occurred on Oct. 22 and Oct. 25, respectively.

While the official White House media talking points specifically mention how to respond if asked whether the trade status decision was due to a cause other than workers’ rights (i.e. glyphosate), other talking points related to the U.S. response to Thailand’s glyphosate ban specifically omitted discussion of the trade preferences, stating that the U.S. trade office, “does not support inclusion of any mention of [trade preferences] in these talking points.”

Two days before Thailand reversed its planned ban on glyphosate, a draft letter to Thailand was sent to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue for his approval. The content of that letter has not been revealed.

Included in the Center’s lawsuit against USDA is a demand for the final draft of that letter.

Read the full USDA FOIA production here

Read the full USTR FOIA production here

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The Trump administration declared Saturday [1] that all UN sanctions against Iran had been restored, and that its triggering of the “snapback” mechanism in the UN Security Council resolution that enshrined the 2015 Iran nuclear deal had taken effect at 8 p.m. Eastern Time.

That is thirty days after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo notified the council that Iran was in “significant non-performance” with its obligations under the accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.

The White House plans to issue an executive order on Monday spelling out how the US will enforce the restored sanctions, and the State and Treasury departments are expected to outline how foreign individuals and businesses will be penalized for violations.

“The United States expects all U.N, member states to fully comply with their obligations to implement these measures,” Mike Pompeo said. “If UN member states fail to fulfill their obligations to implement these sanctions, the United States is prepared to use our domestic authorities to impose consequences for those failures and ensure that Iran does not reap the benefits of UN-prohibited activity.”

It’s worth pointing out that the Iran sanctions that were lifted in 2015 after the signing of JCPOA were “third party” sanctions, implying that any state or business organization doing business with Iran wouldn’t be able to engage in commercial activities with the US government and commercial enterprises based in the US.

This is exactly what the executive order on Monday would likely stipulate, and it needs to be seen whether the administration allows any exceptions or relief to states and business entities violating the order.

Although the European Union is resisting the Trump administration’s pressure to enforce the snapback mechanism, the global financial system is led by the United States. Europe and the UN will find no choice but to toe Washington’s line, if the Trump administration issues the executive order penalizing states and commercial organizations doing business with Iran.

Donald Trump has repeatedly said during the last four years that the Iran nuclear deal signed by the Obama administration in 2015 was an “unfair deal” that gave concessions to Iran without giving anything in return to the US.

Unfortunately, there is a grain of truth in Trump’s statements because the Obama administration signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran in July 2015 under pressure, as Washington had bungled in its Middle East policy and it wanted Iran’s cooperation in Syria and Iraq to get a face-saving.

In order to understand how the Obama administration bungled in Syria and Iraq, we should bear the background of Washington’s Middle East policy during the recent years in mind. The nine-year conflict in Syria that gave birth to myriads of militant groups, including the Islamic State, and after the conflict spilled across the border into neighboring Iraq in early 2014 was directly responsible for the spate of Islamic State-inspired terror attacks in Europe from 2015 to 2017.

Since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in August 2011 to June 2014, when the Islamic State overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq, an informal pact existed between the Western powers, their regional allies and jihadists of the Middle East against the Iranian resistance axis. In accordance with the pact, militants were trained and armed in the training camps located in the border regions of Turkey and Jordan to battle the Syrian government.

This arrangement of an informal pact between the Western powers and the jihadists of the Middle East against the Iran-allied forces worked well up to August 2014, when the Obama Administration made a volte-face on its previous regime change policy in Syria and began conducting air strikes against one group of militants battling the Syrian government, the Islamic State, after the latter overstepped its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq from where the US had withdrawn its troops only a couple of years ago in December 2011.

After this reversal of policy in Syria by the Western powers and the subsequent Russian military intervention on the side of the Syrian government in September 2015, the momentum of jihadists’ expansion in Syria and Iraq stalled, and they felt that their Western patrons had committed a treachery against the jihadists’ cause, hence they were infuriated and rose up in arms to exact revenge for this betrayal.

If we look at the chain of events, the timing of the spate of terror attacks against the West was critical: the Islamic State overran Mosul in June 2014, the Obama Administration began conducting air strikes against the Islamic State’s targets in Iraq and Syria in August 2014, and after a lull of almost a decade since the Madrid and London bombings in 2004 and 2005, respectively, the first such incident of terrorism occurred on the Western soil at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, and then the Islamic State carried out the audacious November 2015 Paris attacks, the March 2016 Brussels bombings, the June 2016 truck-ramming incident in Nice, and three horrific terror attacks took place in the United Kingdom within a span of less than three months in 2017, and after that the Islamic State carried out the Barcelona attack in August 2017, and then another truck-ramming atrocity occurred in Lower Manhattan in October 2017 that was also claimed by the Islamic State.

More to the point, the dilemma that the jihadists and their regional backers faced in Syria was quite unique: in the wake of the Ghouta chemical weapons attacks in Damascus in August 2013, the stage was all set for yet another no-fly zone and “humanitarian intervention” a la Gaddafi’s Libya; the war hounds were waiting for a finishing blow and then-Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and former Saudi intelligence chief Bandar bin Sultan were shuttling between the Western capitals to lobby for the military intervention. Francois Hollande, then the president of France, had already announced his intentions and David Cameron, then the prime minister of the UK, was also onboard.

Here it should be remembered that even during the Libyan intervention, the Obama administration’s policy was a bit ambivalent and France under the leadership of Nicolas Sarkozy, then the president of France, had taken the lead role. In Syria’s case, however, the British parliament forced David Cameron to seek a vote for military intervention in the House of Commons before committing the British troops and air force to Syria.

Taking cue from the British parliament, the US Congress also compelled Obama to seek approval before another ill-conceived military intervention, and since both the administrations lacked the requisite majority in their respective parliaments and the public opinion was also fiercely against another Middle Eastern war, therefore Obama and Cameron dropped their plans of enforcing a no-fly zone over Syria.

In the end, France was left alone as the only Western power still in favor of intervention; at that point, however, the seasoned Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov staged a diplomatic coup by announcing that the Syrian government was willing to ship its chemical weapons stockpiles out of Syria and subsequently the issue was amicably resolved.

Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf Arab states, the main beneficiaries of the proxy war against the Baathist government in Syria, however, had lost a golden opportunity to deal a fatal blow to their regional rivals.

To add insult to the injury, the Islamic State, one of the numerous militant outfits fighting in Syria, overstepped its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in 2014, from where the US troops had withdrawn only a couple of years ago in December 2011.

Additionally, when the graphic images and videos of Islamic State’s executions surfaced on the internet, the Obama administration was left with no other choice but to adopt some countermeasures to show that it was still sincere in pursuing Washington’s dubious “war on terror” policy; at the same time, however, it assured its Turkish, Jordanian and Gulf Arab allies that despite fighting a war against the maverick jihadist outfit, the Islamic State, the Western policy of training and arming the so-called “moderate” Syrian militants will continue apace and that Bashar al-Assad’s days were numbered, one way or the other.

Moreover, declaring the war against the Islamic State in August 2014 served another purpose too: in order to commit the US Air Force to Syria and Iraq, the Obama administration needed the approval of the US Congress which was not available, but by declaring a war against the Islamic State, which was a designated terrorist organization, the Obama administration availed itself of the war on terror provisions in the US laws and thus circumvented the US Congress.

But then Russia threw a spanner in the works of NATO and its Gulf Arab allies in September 2015 by its surreptitious military buildup in Latakia that was executed with an element of surprise unheard of since General Rommel, the Desert Fox.

When Russia deployed its forces and military hardware to Syria in September 2015, the militant proxies of Washington and its regional clients were on the verge of drawing a wedge between Damascus and the Alawite heartland of coastal Latakia, which could have led to the imminent downfall of the Bashar al-Assad government.

With the help of the Russian air power, the Syrian government has since reclaimed most of Syria’s territory from the insurgents, excluding Idlib in the northwest occupied by the Turkish-backed militants and Deir al-Zor and the Kurdish-held areas in the east, thus inflicting a humiliating defeat on Washington and its regional clients.

Keeping this background of the quagmire created by the Obama administration in Syria and Iraq in mind, it becomes amply clear that the Obama administration desperately needed Iran’s cooperation in Syria and Iraq to salvage its botched policy of training and arming jihadists to topple the government Bashar al-Assad in Syria that backfired and gave birth to the Islamic State that carried out some of the most audacious terror attacks in Europe from 2015 to 2017.

Thus, Washington signed JCPOA in July 2015 that gave some concessions to Iran, and in return, then hardliner Prime Minister of Iraq Nouri al-Maliki was forced out of power in September 2014 with Iran’s tacit approval and moderate former Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi was appointed in his stead who gave permission to the US Air Force and ground troops to assist the Iraqi Armed Forces and allied militias to beat back the Islamic State from Mosul and Anbar.

The Iran nuclear deal, however, was neither an international treaty under the American laws nor even an executive agreement. It was simply categorized as a “political commitment.” Due to the influence of Zionist lobbies in Washington, the opposition to the JCPOA in the American political discourse was so vehement that forget about having it passed through the US Congress, the task the Obama administration faced was to muster enough votes of dissident Democrats to defeat a resolution of disapproval so that it couldn’t override a presidential veto.

The Trump administration, however, is not hampered by the legacy of Obama administration and since the objective of defeating the Islamic State had already been achieved in 2017, therefore Washington felt safe to unilaterally annul the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018 at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s behest, and the crippling “third party” sanctions have once again been put in place on Iran.

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Note

[1] US says all UN sanctions on Iran restored:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-says-all-un-sanctions-on-iran-restored-but-world-yawns/2020/09/19/afb460a2-fad4-11ea-85f7-5941188a98cd_story.html

Featured image is from Al-Masdar News


150115 Long War Cover hi-res finalv2 copy3.jpg

The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0
Year: 2015
Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

Another day and another huge blow to the fossil fuel industry. A key investor in the new coal mine in Australia, operated by mining giant Glencore, has said it will not invest in the AUD 1.5 billion Valeria project as the economics “don’t stack up” anymore.

This week the investment firm concerned, UniSuper Management, said it would scrap investments that get more than 10% of revenue from thermal coal.

A spokesperson for the company told Bloomberg “I can’t think of a more tangible way of us demonstrating how seriously the risks are that are posed by decarbonization” than by withholding support for Glencore’s mine. “Thermal coal is bound to be a stranded asset,” they said. It is yet another sign that coal’s terminal decline is continuing. No one wants to invest anymore.

Where one dirty fossil fuel leads, others now follow. Oil is in deep trouble, too. On Monday, the global giant, BP, conceded in its Annual Energy outlook that within its “base-case scenario,” oil consumption has peaked for good in 2019.

Additionally, there has been a hugely influential conference of the oil industry in Singapore this week. The Asia Pacific Petroleum Conference (APPEC) was held virtually for the first time. Reuters reported, “major oil industry producers and traders are forecasting a bleak future for worldwide fuel demand.”

CNBC added that influential analysts at the conference put out a stern warning: due to the poor financial returns that oil companies were offering, in response the collapse in demand of oil, “drawing investment to the sector would be a problem.”

Ben Luckock, from trading company Trafigura, warned it might be “hard to see where the investment comes from.” He added, “who is going to fund our next investment cycle? Indeed, is anyone going to be incentivized to fund us?” In short, no one wants to invest anymore.

One such analyst, Ed Morse, managing director and global head of commodities research at Citi, said, “between a lot of us, we’re talking about another demand shock. It’s like fighting the last battle.”

It is not just analysts that are worried. One oil industry insider, Arif Mahmood, from Malaysian state producer Petronas warned the conference that after the pandemic, “energy transition will be pushed forward much faster.”

And as the industry fails to find investors and as oil companies cut costs, they are capping and leaving wells behind. They are capping wells in the hope that prices may rise, but in the meantime, the companies risk themselves going bust.

And when companies go bust, who will look after their leaking legacy?

An important investigation by Bloomberg Green, published yesterday, examined the issue of the shocking state of over three million abandoned oil and gas wells in the United States. Nor is this a problem only linked to America. There are believed to be nearly 30 million abandoned oil and gas wells worldwide.

Many of these wells are leaking methane, the potent greenhouse gas or polluting water courses. As the article states, “if carbon dioxide is a bullet, methane is a bomb.”

We have known for a long while that abandoned wells were a problem, but we still do not know the extent of the problem. Even now. The oil industry may be dying, but it will still pollute us for decades after its death.

One scientist tracking the issue, Mary Kang from Princeton, has been modeling how carbon dioxide and methane leak from old wells. In 2016, Kang published a study of 88 abandoned well sites in Pennsylvania, revealing that 90% of wells investigated leaked methane.

Another scientist working on the issue, Anthony Ingraffea, a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell who has studied leaks from oil and gas wells for decades, told Bloomberg, “we really don’t have a handle on it yet… We’ve poked millions of holes thousands of feet into Mother Earth to get her goods, and now we are expecting her to forgive us?”

What we do know is that as more and more companies go bust in the coming days, weeks, months, and years, they will try to escape paying the cost to permanently seal their wells. It will be the taxpayers who pick up the billion dollar bill. The cost to safely plug and decommission the 100,000 active and idled wells in California alone could be in excess of $9 billion.

In the meantime, nonsensically, we carry on drilling. As I pointed out earlier in the week, despite this, and the climate emergency, California alone has approved 1,679 new drilling permits this year.

So we know we have a ticking climate “bomb” leaking from wells, as they spew out methane, exacerbating our climate emergency. But still we are not forcing oil companies to set aside billions to pay for their mess.

And when they go bankrupt, this situation is going to get worse. As Bloomberg notes, the oil industry may disappear, but “gas wells never really die.”

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