Global Research

This week is the 19^th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. America never recovered politically from those attacks, and government responses to the Covid pandemic are repeating many of the same follies of the War on Terror.

Three days after the World Trade Center towers tumbled down, President George W. Bush promised to “rid the world of evil.” After making an outlandish promise that should have earned him derision in perpetuity, the media and the political elite rallied around Bush to give him unlimited power to purportedly achieve that goal. The fact that the 9/11 attacks were preceded by the biggest intelligence failures since Pearl Harbor became irrelevant.

Nowadays, presidents are expected to rid the nation of all risks. Politicians who promise to keep citizens safe have been permitted unlimited power to shut down businesses, churches, and almost any other activity.  The Democratic Party is echoing this theme in its campaign message that President Trump is practically guilty of murdering 180,000 Americans because he failed to prevent the Covid pandemic. The fact that stunning errors by the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration compounded the Covid death toll did not stop the rush to sacralize all government experts.

Both the 9/11 attacks and Covid Mania instantly made individual freedom irrelevant. After the Bush administration suspended habeas corpus and secretly arrested more than a thousand people in the U.S., Attorney General John Ashcroft proclaimed that “those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty… give ammunition to America’s enemies.”  Critics were still traitors regardless of how many constitutional rights the Bush administration trampled.

Mandatory masks have become the Covid equivalent of antiterror absolutism. In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, presidential candidate Joe Biden declared, “We’ll have a national mandate to wear a mask — not as a burden but as a patriotic duty to protect one another.” When asked if he will force everyone to wear a mask, Biden replied, “This isn’t about freedom, it’s about freedom for your, your neighbors.” For Biden, any presumed benefit from government edicts to curb Covid infections makes freedom irrelevant.

Last April, the New York Times declared that the Covid “virus generates much the same fear and anxiety caused by terrorism, but it is brought by nature, not by humans.” And the task for government was to “learn how to frighten [citizens] into acting for the common good.” But the vast majority of the harm inflicted during this pandemic was due to government edicts and political-bureaucratic fearmongering, not the virus itself.

Both the War on Terror and the Covid Mania quickly became permeated by “security theater.” At 400+ airports around the nation, the Transportation Security Administration erected checkpoints and proceeded to endlessly harass and molest peaceful American travelers. When protests erupted over the TSA’s nude body scanners (which failed to detect 95% of bombs and weapons smuggled past them by testers) and pointless groping of boobs and butts, politicians and much of the media defended the agency. A Los Angeles Times editorial headline proclaimed, “Shut Up and Be Scanned,” while a Washington Post columnist sneered, “Grow up, America.”

After politicians promised to vanquish Covid, they entitled themselves to micromanage Americans’ lives, shutting down almost all businesses (except for big-box stores like Wal-Mart and Target), outlawing gymnasiums (except for government employees) and hair salons (except for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi), prohibiting anyone from leaving their home to visit family or friends (Michigan), banning all recreational travel (Oregon), and shutting down public beaches (Los Angeles).

After 9/11, any purported terrorist threat anywhere purportedly justified the Bush administration’s seizure of boundless power. With the pandemic, almost all Covid cases justify politicians prohibiting almost any type of behavior. In Montgomery County, Maryland, for instance, the local health czar sought to dictate that all private schools must remain shut downas long as the county of one million had more than nine new Covid cases per day.

The most visible folly of Bush’s War on Terror was his invasion of Iraq, which his administration justified based on an array of ludicrous claims including that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapon. Bush never apologized for using false pretenses to take America into a war that left more than 4,000 Americans dead and tens of thousands others badly wounded. The fact that most foreign policy “experts” supported the invasion settled the issue, according to the establishment media.

Similarly, governors and mayors justified placing hundreds of millions of Americans under de facto house arrests based on mortality predictions on Covid-19 from the World Health Organization that were 50 times higher than the rate the U.S. experienced. Those lockdowns were far more effective at destroying 14 million jobs than preventing the spread of Covid-19 to more than six million Americans. But most of the media still presumes that the lockdown dictates were legitimate because they were based on “science and data” – regardless that much of the data was bogus and the epidemiological forecasts were wildly inaccurate.

After 9/11, many Americans felt instant hatred for anyone who protested against Bush administration crackdowns or the Iraq War. (Remember the Dixie Chicks?) After the Covid shutdowns began, the problem was not the bogus data but anti-lockdown protestors who refused to abandon their daily lives. A Democratic congressional candidate in Indiana denounced the protestors as “COVIDIOTS” and declared that he hoped Covid “disproportionately” killed them.  But  when even larger protests erupted after the killing of George Floyd, more than a thousand public health “experts” blessed the mass gatherings as a worthwhile risk to promote social justice.

In both the War on Terror and Covid Mania, the “solution” to blunders was unleashing even greater destruction. After Bush’s invasion of Iraq unleashed chaos and a religious civil war, neoconservatives claimed that the only solution was to also invade Iran. American troops in Baghdad would supposedly never be safe until the U.S. military toppled the regime in Tehran.

Similarly, lockdown zealots claim that the only reason that so many Americans died of Covid was because politicians did not shut down everything practically in perpetuity – or at least until a vaccine is available. Biden recently endorsed dictating a national shutdown if Covid infection numbers rise again. British politicians have gone even further, championing perpetuating severe restrictions on citizens’ lives until “zero Covid” is achieved.  As author Patrick Henningsen warned, “#ZeroCOVID is an excuse for fools & authoritarians to ruin society.”

The War on Terror vivified how a single vague congressional resolution – the Authorization to Use Military Force that Congress passed shortly after the 9/11 attacks – unleashed endless aggression abroad, justifying bombing Syria, Libya, Somalia, and other nations and leading to U.S. troops now fighting in 14 nations. Covid Mania precedents could spur radical shutdowns in the coming year any time that politicians or government bureaucrats claim that a new virus is “COVID-like,” thereby necessitating again placing hundreds of millions of Americans under house arrest.

Another commonality between the War on Terror and Covid Mania is that

politicians are entitled to define collateral damage out of existence. Most Americans are oblivious to the vast carnage inflicted by the U.S. military on Afghan and Iraqi civilians.  Similarly, the “experts” who score the pandemic shutdowns ignore the surge in suicides and skyrocketing drug abuse, as well as the vast loss of learning for tens of millions of students due to school shutdowns.

Stunning debacles are no impediment to politicians pirouetting as saviors. George W. Bush ran for reelection in 2004 touting pictures of the World Trade Center wreckage. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is trumpeting a new book, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic – even though his dictate requiring nursing homes to admit Covid patients helped cause more than 10,000 deaths. Nationwide, nursing home residents account for almost half of Covid-19 fatalities, and governors in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Michigan issued disastrous orders similar to Cuomo’s.

Like the endless War on Terror, the Covid shutdowns will likely be viewed as one of the greatest political debacles in modern American history. But many politicians still believe that there is no problem that cannot be solved by a bigger federal iron fist. Will the media continue venerating “experts” until American freedom and prosperity are both obliterated?

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James Bovard is the author of ten books, including Public Policy Hooligan, Attention Deficit Democracy, The Bush Betrayal, and Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, New Republic, Reader’s Digest, and many other publications. He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors, a frequent contributor to The Hill, and a contributing editor for American Conservative.

Featured image is from AE911Truth

The recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vindicated the contractor-turned-whistleblower, Edward Snowden, by ruling that the National Security Agency’s blanket data collection was unlawful and likely unconstitutional.

After Snowden alerted the world, the Obama administration claimed that the dragnet was necessary to catch terrorists, specifically Issa Doreh, Basaaly Saeed Moalin, Ahmed Nasir Taalil Mohamud, and Mohamed Mohamud, who were convicted in 2013 for sending money to a group designated terrorists by the U.S. State Department: Al-Shabaab, the Somali youth wing of the non-terrorist Islamic Courts Union, which the US and Britain overthrew in late-2006. The Ninth Circuit ruled that Obama’s assertion was “inconsistent with the contents of the classified record.”

In my new book The War on You, I look into the history of the U.S.-British intelligence complex and how it is used to try to control your thoughts and behaviors.

The Global Information Grid

In the post-WWII era, the architecture of U.S. surveillance expanded exponentially. Since the 1960s, the Pentagon has been building what it calls the Global Information Grid (GIG), first mentioned in Zbigniew Brzezinski’s book, Between Two Ages. The GIG is a network of satellites, telephone, telex, fax, and other interceptable software and hardware.

After WWII, the British and American governments signed the still-classified UKUSA Agreement. Under the Agreement, the Pentagon and UK Ministry of Defence established what journalist Peter Goodspeed calls “a massive surveillance system that can capture and study every telephone call, fax and e-mail message sent anywhere in the world.” According to Goodspeed: “[E]spionage agents from Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand — backed up by a web of ships, planes and radar and communication interception sites that ring the earth — have established the greatest spy network in history.”

One of the largest interception centers is RAF Menwith Hill, Yorkshire, UK. The station hosts 33 large, golf ball-looking spheres full of radars (radomes). As Goodspeed says, Menwith Hill spies on the whole of Europe and parts of western Russia. Another is Canada’s Communications Security Establishment, which spies on North America and eastern Russia. Another was discovered in Israel, which spies on the Middle East and Central Asia. Goodspeed notes that the Australian system “hunts for communications originating in Indochina, Indonesia and southern China. New Zealand sweeps the western Pacific.”

Britain’s Role

The Menwith Hill station was set up in 1956 by the U.S. Army Security Agency. By the year 1992, it was intercepting two million communications per hour, mainly across Europe, Africa, and Russia. The station pioneered the use of IBM computers in the early-1960s. Echelon picks relevant words spoken in telephone calls and alerts agents. It was run via the NSA’s Pathway computer system, which apparently used “off-the-shelf” technologies, from Compaq, Digital Equipment Corp., Tandem, and others (see Loring Wirbel’s book, Star Wars). Jurisdiction was given to the NSA in 1966. The Federation of American Scientists states: “Since then, Menwith Hill has sifted the international messages, telegrams, and telephone calls of citizens, corporations or governments to select information of political, military or economic value.”

Journalist Duncan Campbell notes that in 1970s’ UK, the Post Office installed wideband connections to Menwith Hill and Hunters Stones microwave radio station, as part of the microwave network which carried long-distance telephone calls during the 1970s and ‘80s. Also in the ‘70s, the NSA inserted de-encryption devices into Switzerland’s Crypto AG software, enabling the Agency to decode the traffic of 130 countries.

In 1992, says the Federation of American Scientists, British Telecom installed digital fiber optic cables. By 1996, the cables were able to carry over 100,000 simultaneous telephone calls. In the U.S., the NSA’s Operation Shamrock produced similar results. By the 1970s, the magnetic tapes recording all telegraphic communications allowed the NSA to analyze 150,000 messages per month. In August 1975, then-Director of the National Security Agency, Lt. Gen. Lew Allen, admitted to the Congressional Pike Committee that the “NSA systematically intercepts international communications, both voice and cable.”

Canada’s Role

In the year 2000, 60 Minutes reported: “If you made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to a friend, there’s a good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the [NSA].” It also noted that “Echelon’s computers capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world … [V]irtually every signal radiated across the electromagnetic spectrum is being collected and analyzed.” Mike Frost, a former spy with the Canadian services, says: “Echelon covers … the entire planet … [E]verything that’s radiated worldwide at any given instant … Baby monitors give you a lot of intelligence.”

All phone calls are listened to. Frost gives the example of a woman who told her friend that her son’s theater performance “bombed.” The word “bombed” was in the NSA’s Dictionary and triggered a computer response for officers to listen to the conversation. However, in order to know that the woman was talking about her son’s play, as opposed to an actual bombing, the NSA must have been recording everything she was saying to able to play it back to agents to get the context of the conversation. “The captured signals” of every broadcast made “are then processed through a series of supercomputers, known as dictionaries, that are programmed to search each communication for targeted addresses, words, phrases or even individual voices,” says Goodspeed.

These ground-based systems were (and are) not only linked to the hundreds of satellites orbiting the Earth, they connect to mapping and profiling software. The U.S. Space Command calls this “full spectrum dominance.”

Conclusion

The blanket surveillance is bad enough for domestic social control and international industrial espionage. But even worse is the use of “full spectrum dominance” for murder. As we’ve seen with cases like the drone up- and down-links at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany, the U.S. Global Information Grid is used to murder the world’s poorest people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere.

Satellites, GPS, and the internet itself were designed in the military sector in the previous decades and transferred to private corporations for profit, creating “dual-use’ technology. But so are the NSA’s Echelon, voice-recognition, and data point-collection software. These technologies are today incorporated into banking, insurance, social media, and marketing in what Professor Shoshana Zuboff conceptualizes as “surveillance capitalism.” These are some of the weapons in the war on you.

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T.J. Coles is a postdoctoral researcher at Plymouth University’s Cognition Institute in the UK and a regular contributor to CounterPunch and The London Economic. His books include Voices for Peace (with Noam Chomsky and others) and The War on You.

Brazil is the world’s largest user of pesticides, including more than a dozen considered highly hazardous, thanks to permissive legislation that allows some of Europe’s biggest agrochemical companies to continue selling products that have been banned in their home market.

The toxicity of these pesticides has raised concerns: 22 of them are classified as highly hazardous pesticides, or HHPs, by the Pesticide Action Network (PAN), a global coalition that advocates for eco-friendly alternatives to chemical pesticides. The classification is based on criteria developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO): in humans, they can be toxic to the reproductive system, damaging to DNA, or carcinogenic, as well as fatal to bees and other pollinators.

Even though these products have been banned in other countries, companies like Bayer, BASF and Syngenta make millions of dollars selling them in Brazil. According to IBAMA, the Brazilian environmental agency, more than 63,000 tonnes of just 10 of these 22 pesticides were sold in 2018. Sales of the other 12 products were not reported because of commercial confidentiality; IBAMA only discloses data on active ingredients manufactured by three or more companies. It also doesn’t break down the amounts sold by each company.

The companies

The global pesticide market generated $ 34.4 billion in 2017, according to the FAO. And the industry is increasingly controlled by a handful of companies. Headquartered in Switzerland, Syngenta is part of the ChemChina group, a world leader in the sector. German company Bayer comes second. It experienced massive growth in 2018 after acquiring Monsanto, which produces Roundup, a herbicide based on glyphosate, the world’s best-selling pesticide. Rounding out the top three is Germany’s BASF. Together, the three companies control 54.7% of the global agrochemical industry.

In 2018, 36.7% and 24.9% of the active ingredients sold worldwide by Bayer and BASF respectively were highly hazardous under the PAN definition, according to a reportthat lists German agrochemical companies’ sales to developing countries. The report was prepared by the Permanent Campaign Against Pesticides, INKOTA Network, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, MISEREOR and South African organization Khanyisa.

According to the study, more flexible registration procedures make it easier for highly hazardous pesticides to enter markets in the global South. Brazil is a case in point: 44% of the substances registered here have been banned in the European Union, according to a report released in July by the former president of the Brazilian Association for Agrarian Reform (ABRA), Gerson Teixeira.

Alan Tygel, a spokesman for the Campaign Against Pesticides and For Life, explains why the study began with Germany:

“The country is the world’s second-largest pesticide exporter because of these two major manufacturers. It exports 233 active ingredients — nine of which are banned in the EU but produced in Germany and then exported.

“Of the 233 active ingredients exported by Germany, 62 are considered highly hazardous,” he adds.

The report shows that half of the 24 ingredients sold by Bayer and BASF in Brazil are highly hazardous. One of them is Fipronil, an active ingredient used in insecticides marketed by BASF. The product entered PAN’s list for its fatal effects on bees. In the 1990s, it was blamed for a massive bee die-off in France. In 2017, millions of chicken eggs were contaminated by Fipronil in Belgium and the Netherlands. That same year, the product was banned from the entire EU for posing “high acute risks for bees [when used as] seed treatment in maize,” according to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

In Brazil, beekeepers list it as the main cause of the deaths of more than 500 million bees in 2018-2019. According to IBAMA, 1,600 tonnes were sold in the country in 2018 alone, to be used in the cultivation of cotton, potatoes, soybeans and corn.

Another controversial item on the list is the fungicide Carbendazim from Bayer, which has been banned from the European market since 2016. Its potential harms include genetic defects, impaired fertility, and fetus problems, in addition to being very toxic to bodies of water, according to the Campaign Against Pesticides report. The product is also on PAN’s list because it can damage DNA and be toxic to the reproductive system.

According to IBAMA, Carbendazim sales in Brazil amounted to 4,800 tonnes in 2018. In December last year, the country’s National Health Regulatory Agency (ANVISA) started reevaluating it to decide whether it should remain on the market. The process is slow and may take more than a decade, as happened recently with glyphosate, whose registration was renewed after 11 years under reevaluation. In the meantime, Carbendazim continues to be sold for the cultivation of black beans, soybeans, wheat and oranges.

The report calls on the German government to ban exports of pesticide active ingredients that are not allowed in the EU. “We do not have data on which company produces imported substances or to which countries they are exported,” says German researcher Lena Luig, from the INKOTA Network, one of the contributors to the report.

A more flexible pesticide registration procedure makes it easier for highly hazardous pesticides to enter certain countries, such as Brazil. Image Matheus Cenali/Pexels.

Syngenta makes billions from selling hazardous pesticides to poor countries, study says

Last year, the Swiss NGO Public Eye released a report showing how Syngenta makes billions of dollars selling highly dangerous pesticides, particularly to low- and middle-income countries. Those same pesticides are banned in Switzerland, Syngenta’s home country.

Using exclusive data provided by leading agribusiness intelligence company Phillips McDougall, Public Eye estimates that Syngenta made some $3.9 billion by selling highly hazardous pesticides in 2017 — more than 40% of its pesticide sales that year.

About two-thirds of these sales were made in low- and middle-income countries, with Brazil the largest individual market.

According to the report, “51 of the 120 pesticide active ingredients in Syngenta’s portfolio are not authorized for use in its home country, Switzerland; 16 of them were banned because of their impact on human health and the environment. But Syngenta continues selling them in lower income countries.”

The report lists 10 active ingredients sold by the company in Brazil that are banned in the EU and appear on PAN’s highly hazardous list. One of them is the herbicide Atrazine, the fourth-most-used pesticide in Brazil, with 287,000 tonnes sold in 2018, according to IBAMA.

The product is used in the cultivation of sugarcane, corn and sorghum. It was banned from the EU for causing endocrine disorders that affect the hormonal system. “Atrazine has been banned in Switzerland and the EU for many years because of its far-reaching and enduring contamination of drinking water sources,” says Carla Hoinkes, an agricultural researcher at Public Eye and one of the report’s authors.

Another best seller on the list is Paraquat, the sixth-most-used pesticide in Brazil, with 13,100 tonnes sold. Due to its high toxicity, it has been banned in Switzerland since 1989 and in the EU since 2017. “Paraquat is so toxic that accidental ingestion of a single sip may kill you. It is now banned in more than 55 countries, but Syngenta keeps selling it where it is still allowed,” Hoinkes says.

In 2017, Brazilian health regulator ANVISA decided that Paraquat should be removed from the country’s market. The ban is due to start on Sept. 22 this year, but faces strong lobby efforts by the agribusiness industry, which has formed a “Paraquat task force” to try to reverse the decision.

Data on sales of one of Syngenta’s main products, the insecticide Thiamethoxam, are not publicly available due to trade secrets. A member of the neonicotinoid insecticide family, it is fatal to pollinators such as bees. “Syngenta’s thiamethoxam, as well as Bayer’s Imidacloprid [which sold 10,000 tonnes in Brazil in 2018], is a ‘bee killing’ neonicotinoid insecticide that was banned from European and Swiss fields in 2018, after a long legal battle,” Hoinkes says. “According to FAO and WHO, a growing body of evidence suggests that neonicotinoid insecticides ‘are causing harmful effects to bees and other beneficial insects on a large scale.’”

Companies say there are no risks

Pesticide manufacturers have no problem with selling in Brazil products that have been banned in Europe.

According to BASF, there are major differences in crops, soil, climate, pests, and agricultural practices around the world.

“Different pests require different solutions, and all BASF products are extensively tested, evaluated and approved by each country’s competent authorities, following official and legal procedures established in the respective countries before being marketed,” the company said in a statement.

It also said that for market reasons it chose not to renew the registrations of some active ingredients in Europe. “In many cases, the active ingredient is not renewed or registered in Europe because the occurrence of pests, diseases and weeds in a temperate climate does not justify it or because there is no economically important crop.” Of the 12 ingredients produced by BASF and cited in the Campaign Against Pesticides report, only Saflufenacil has never had a license requested for the European market. The others were either never authorized or ended up being excluded from that market after reevaluations.

Bayer said the lack of approval for a given pesticide in the EU “in no way determines its safety” and that “it does not mean a double standard.”

“Our internal safety requirements ensure that our products meet minimum global standards everywhere, regardless of how developed and rigorous each country’s regulatory system may be. Since 2016, Bayer has pledged to sell only crop protection products whose active ingredients are registered in at least one OECD country,” the company said.

Syngenta said it is important to consider differences in agricultural practices around the world, including the types of crops grown and the conditions to which they are exposed, as well as the types of pests. “Products used in [Brazil], with a tropical climate and under high pressure from pests and diseases, may not be so necessary in countries where harsh winter conditions — often marked by snow — naturally reduce pest pressure. In other words, if there is no demand for a certain pesticide, there is no need to register or renew the product’s registration in that country,” it said.

CropLife Brasil, an association of pesticide manufacturers that includes Bayer, BASF and Syngenta, said the report ignores that proper use of pesticides is critical in determining its toxicity to users, their families, and consumers. “Agricultural conditions regarding flora, fauna and climate in different countries result in a wide variety of insects/pests, weeds and diseases that affect plants. This means that different pesticides will be available to farmers in Europe and other regions. Therefore, the fact that a crop protection product is not approved in the EU in no way determines its safety,” CropLife said in a statement.

Hoinkes said there is a case to be made for specific agronomic needs, but not much. “In most cases it is proven that the EU has banned or severely restricted the use of a pesticide or group of pesticides due to concerns about the environment or human health,” she says.

She cites the examples of Fipronil, Paraquat, Atrazine and Thiamethoxam.

“So companies like Syngenta or Bayer are indeed using ‘double standards’ for different countries — due to weaker regulations or poor enforcement in certain political contexts — to continue selling highly hazardous pesticides banned in their own territories because they are acutely toxic to humans, kill bees, persist in drinking water or are suspected of causing cancer, birth defects or other chronic diseases.”

Asked if they believe that there are risks in permitting domestic sales of products banned in the EU and if these bans are taken into account during pesticide evaluation, Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture (MAPA) said the country is “sovereign to regulate” and has the technical expertise to analyze pesticides. “If they are sold here, it means that they have been rigorously analyzed by MAPA, ANVISA and IBAMA, and were approved by each of these agencies according to their respective competencies.” Read the full statement from Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture.

The companies also questioned PAN’s criteria for classifying pesticides as highly hazardous. Acute toxicity, chronic health damage, environmental hazards, and being listed in international conventions and agreements for the regulation of pesticides are evaluated. PAN’s list currently includes 310 active ingredients.

BASF says that concepts sustained by NGOs such as PAN “impose restrictions beyond those established by internationally recognized government agencies such as FAO and WHO.” Neither the FAO nor the WHO are government agencies. The company also said that “regulatory agencies in each country are the best judges of their regions’ needs.”

Syngenta said that PAN’s list “is not recognized by any national or international organization.” The company added that Public Eye, the Swiss NGO that published the critical report, “seeks to undermine innovation agriculture, without which food would be scarcer, more expensive and less safe.”

Alan Tygel of the Campaign Against Pesticides says the PAN list is based on criteria defined in 2006 by two U.N. agencies: the WHO and FAO. “These two agencies defined the criteria but never listed the pesticides. The interesting and important part of [PAN’s report] is precisely that it names these highly hazardous pesticides,” he says.

Read the full statements from BASF, Bayer, Syngenta and CropLife.

This report is part of Por trás do alimento (Behind the food), a joint project of Agência Pública and Repórter Brasil to investigate the use of pesticides in Brazil, and was first published here in Portuguese on June 18, 2020. Read the full coverage on the project website.

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The signs are ominous as yet another climate record is broken. California is once again burning. From near the southern Mexico border, to San Diego and the forests of the Sierra Nevada, over two million acres of the Golden state were on fire yesterday.

As the state sweltered in record temperatures, the temperature peaked at 121 degrees over the weekend, with firefighters tackling dozens of blazes and the situation still extremely volatile.

Communities across the state are facing power blackouts and internet problems. Last night, Pacific Gas & Electric cut off electricity to parts of the North Bay area as the winds picked up. As I write, an estimated 120,000 PG&E customers are currently without power.

These are the effects of climate change. The amount of land already on fire is another grim record, and the fact it comes now, when late September and October are traditionally peak fire season, raises real cause for concern. The previous record was set decades ago in 1987 at 1.96 million acres.

Yesterday, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesperson, Lynne Tolmachoff said,

“It’s a little unnerving because September and October are historically our worst months for fires. It’s usually hot, and the fuels really dry out. And we see more of our wind events.”

The authorities are already stretched. Yesterday, the U.S. Forest Service issued a press release warning that “most of California remains under the threat of unprecedented and dangerous fire conditions with a combination of extreme heat, significant wind events, dry conditions, and firefighting resources that are stretched to the limit.”

One of the largest fires is the Creek Fire, in the Sierra National Forest, which has burned over 100 square miles of forest, with some 850 firefighters trying to tackle the blaze.

As the LA Times reports, “the Creek fire burning in the Sierra Nevada is the worst, trapping hikers, killing at least one person and destroying a large swath of the town of Big Creek.”

One local resident, Debra Rios, told the Guardian,

“I hope like heck the fire doesn’t reach my little ranch…It’s not looking good right now. It’s an awfully big fire.”

Another resident of the remote hamlet of Big Creek, told the paper,

“about half the private homes in town burned down. Words cannot even begin to describe the devastation of this community.”

“We lost our home,” Nettie Carroll, 40, another local resident, who had lived there for sixteen years, told the New York Times. “It looks like everything is completely gone.”

They are not alone. States of emergency have now been issued in five Californian counties, according to the BBC, which include Fresno County, Madera, Mariposa, San Bernardino and San Diego.

And the bad news is that it could get much worse in the coming days, reports the LA Times. According to the paper, “California’s record-breaking fire season could get much worse in the coming days as powerful winds heighten the danger of more blazes while firefighters continue to struggle with destructive conflagrations across the state.”

The paper continued “Intense Diablo winds are forecast for parts of Northern California this week…Forecasters said 25-35mph winds were expected, with gusts topping 45mph.”

And California is not the only state burning. There are also fires burning in Oregon and Washington State, where some 300,000 acres of land have burnt.

On Twitter, people pointed out that this is climate change in action. Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org tweeted:

California has already set a new record for wildfire this year–and Sept and Oct are usually the worst months
This is what a climate crisis looks like https://t.co/pkAJZjGkW9

— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) September 8, 2020

Climate Nexus added:

Scientists have linked California's increasingly intense wildfire seasons to climate change. A paper this year found that higher-than-average temps are likely to remain high for longer, possibly extending CA wildfire season to Thanksgiving. https://t.co/s0kympqHkX via @NBCNews

— Climate Nexus (@ClimateNexus) September 8, 2020

Just hours ago, a joint op-ed written by Vanessa Warheit and Laura Neish, respectively the Executive Director of 350 Bay Area and former Executive Director of Fossil Free California, highlights the financial institutions fueling these wildfires, as some of the largest banks have continued to finance fossil fuel extraction in California and across the globe — investing in over USD $700 billion to the fossil fuel industry since the adaptation of the Paris Climate Agreement.

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Considering its size, prestige and historical value, Tibet is another region within China’s frontiers of a vital nature to Beijing. Tibet in fact has a centuries-long association with mainland China; and, in modern history, was ruled from a distance by China’s authorities following the 1720 Chinese expedition to Tibet. This military operation was ordered by China’s long-ruling Qing dynasty, so as to expel the Mongol Dzungars from the area, and reinstate Beijing’s authority over Tibet.

For almost two centuries from 1720, Tibet was under the sway of China’s authorities, up to a point. By 1903 and 1904 Western intrusion in Tibet, from the British Empire, broke Beijing’s limited influence on the area. British forces entered the Tibetan capital Lhasa during early August 1904, in a campaign where their forces killed up to 3,000 Tibetans, who were poorly armed and equipped.

The Manchu-led Qing dynasty, which had governed China since 1644, was by then in difficulty and its complete collapse arrived in 1912. For the next four decades until 1949, China entered one of the greatest periods of decline in its history – as the country was dominated by the imperial powers of Britain, Japan, and the most powerful of them, the United States.

Nevertheless US power would suffer a serious blow with China’s independence in 1949. From the early 1950s Mao Zedong’s attitude to Tibet, and that of his successors, was not to eradicate its inhabitants’ way of life, nor indeed to colonise the region. The English scholar Prof. Robert Barnett, a notable specialist in Tibetan history, wrote that,

“If we try to envisage the perspective of Chinese officials and the CCP [China’s Communist Party] toward Tibet over the last 60 years, what we see for the most part is not an effort to destroy or attack Tibetan culture, as some critics have alleged, but the opposite: a long series of ‘gifts’, interrupted only by what the party now describes as the ‘errors’ of the Cultural Revolution [1966-1976]”. (1)

Mao furnished the Tibetan leadership with offerings, and in return expected their obedience and respect when required, while he refrained from directly meddling in their internal affairs. The opening gift bestowed by Mao’s government on Tibet, according to Prof. Barnett, “was that of liberation in 1950” (2). Following this, as he outlined, came “the gift of class struggle and the accompanying dispensing of land” in 1959 to the Tibetan peasantry. Then “regional autonomy” was introduced in Tibet by 1965 (Tibet Autonomous Region), and a classless society the next year. Subsequent to Mao’s death in 1976, further gifts were granted, but the nature of them altered with the shift in ideological leanings in China’s capital.

Beijing’s experienced reformist politician, Deng Xiaoping, became the country’s outright leader by 1978. Tibet was granted a household economy in 1980, stability in 1990, the market economy in 1992, and infrastructural projects were enacted by 2006 such as pertaining to housing (3). As part of the Great Western Development Strategy launched early this century, Chinese governments have sought to bridge the gap between eastern and western China. In Tibet, China’s authorities have overseen the construction and extension of airports, highways and railroads such as the Qinghai-Tibet railway, the world’s highest and costing the equivalent of $4.2 billion. It connects the Tibetan capital Lhasa 1,200 miles eastwards to central China.

Beijing has instituted wide-scale health care and educational programs in Tibet, leading to the construction of hundreds of medical centres, hospitals and schools. Following the communist accession to power, the average life expectancy of a Tibetan citizen has almost doubled, from 35 years in 1950 to 68 years over six decades later (4). As of late 2017, according to Tibet’s education department 2,200 schools of all levels were in operation across Tibet; with close to 700,000 students attending, more than 20% of Tibet’s entire population.

The Tibetan populace today remains surprisingly small at just over three million, considering its status as the second largest region in China, behind neighbouring Xinjiang. Like each Chinese province, living standards and cultural tolerance has “improved extremely rapidly” in Tibet during the past four decades, spurred on by investment initiatives implemented by Beijing (5). At least in GDP terms Tibet remains the poorest area of China. Around 80% of Tibetans currently reside in rural areas and make a living from agriculture, where overall earnings are low. Yet, over the past generation, the average per capita income of a rural Tibetan has increased substantially, from under $100 in 1992 to $1,525 by 2017. (6)

Tibet and the Plateau which bears its name has enormous planetary importance. Over 25% of the world’s human population are dependent upon fresh water continually delivered to them, by major rivers like the Yangtze and Mekong, whose sources are traced to the Tibetan Plateau’s glaciers. However, due to unchecked climate change, these glaciers have been diminishing for decades resulting in less available fresh water for humans.

Water scarcity, along with poor water quality, is already having repercussions for the two billion people reliant on Tibet’s life-giving resources. Hundreds of millions of these affected people live in nuclear-armed states like China, India and Pakistan, with the possibility of conflict erupting over water shortages. There could be a situation whereby climate change induces a nuclear war, humanity’s two biggest threats, our pincers, combining to influence each other. Tibet, which holds the largest amount of frozen fresh water outside of the poles, lost 27% of its glacier ice cover between the documented years 1970 and 2010. (7)

Tibet has considerable strategic and political significance, partly because it shares a lengthy border with India – a country led since 2014 by Narendra Modi, an extremist politician who has been dismantling Indian secular democracy and silencing critical voices. Under Modi, India’s relations with America and president Donald Trump are particularly close. The US and Indian armed forces have recently been conducting joint military exercises, meant somewhat as a warning to China.

It is hardly surprising India’s relations with China have deteriorated so much. The Trump administration has provided strong public support to India during the ongoing Himalayan border disputes, in which casualties were inflicted on both India and China in June 2020. The two states are now bolstering their forces along the contested Himalayan regions, meaning further clashes could occur in weeks to come. Tibet’s people can only look on, and hope that nothing deadly unfolds between nuclear powers.

Tibet’s paltry human population is mainly due to the area’s remote and rugged terrain, along with an average altitude of 4,500 metres above sea level. Instead, Tibet contains more wildlife than anywhere else in China, home to large mammals from Himalayan wolves and brown bears to lynx and even Bengal tigers, which were photographed in Tibet last year for the first time.

Ethnic Tibetans comprise about 90% of people residing in the region, with 8% of Tibet’s remaining populace made up of Han Chinese, along with smaller numbers of Hui, Mongols, etc. The vast majority of the population adhere to Tibetan Buddhism, which was first introduced to Tibet in the 8th century.

In May 1951, the Tibetan government signed a surrender document (Seventeen Point Agreement) in which they consented to officially become part of China, recognising Beijing’s sovereignty over their territory, but the Tibetan government would retain a great level of power regarding their own affairs. Prof. Barnett noted, “This was a policy of exceptionalism, according to which Tibet was to be treated quite differently from the rest of China and given the gift of continuing, unreformed governance and society, with a treaty-like document to confirm its status. It was unlike anything else in Chinese Communist history until the arrangement with Hong Kong 30 years later”. (8)

In 1951, the Harry Truman administration offered modest US military support to the Tibetan government. The Dalai Lama’s advisers rejected these early proposals as being “too tentative and unreliable”. The US Congress, then and now, considers Tibet a landmass occupied by China and which has the right to self-determination, overlooking Tibet’s long association with mainland China.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, succeeding Truman in 1953, significantly increased US backing for Tibet’s separatist forces. In 1956 the CIA began providing covert assistance to Tibetan insurgents and, that very year, their incitement helped to instigate several rebellions in the Kham and Amdo regions of eastern Tibet (9). The revolts were eventually suppressed by Beijing, but in Kham the unrest continued until 1962. CIA destabilisation methods in Tibet – with the assistance of other secret agents from the special services of Nepal and India – played a role in the March 1959 US-supported Tibetan uprising against Chinese control, which descended into an unmitigated fiasco for the rebels.

Mao, enraged by what he perceived as a lack of gratitude by Tibet’s leadership for his lenient strategy, ordered that the rebellion be crushed. Over the course of just a fortnight it was all over, resulting in many thousands of casualties for the Tibetans. The Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso), who received funding from the CIA for years, fled Tibet to India in late March 1959 and still lives there today. When US relations with China warmed slightly in the early 1970s, all American support for Tibet’s separatists quickly ended, leaving them embittered.

Yet from the early 1980s until today, US governments resumed and continue to channel cash to Tibetan opposition groups and exile organisations. Some of this money is funnelled through the US State Department branch, the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, along with support forthcoming from the US government funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The Trump administration is providing many millions of dollars to Tibetan separatist causes. In the year 2019 alone Washington dispensed with $17 million to Tibet’s “independence” goals, extending to Tibetan-linked groups based in India and Nepal. (10)

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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.

Environmental groups filed a legal brief today urging the Constitutional Court of Ecuador to halt all mining concessions in the Los Cedros protected forest, a global “Key Biodiversity Area.” The brief cites concerns from famed primatologist Jane Goodall and more than 1,200 other prominent scientists.

In this unprecedented case, the court could use Ecuador’s constitutional provision on the “Rights of Nature” to protect the forest from mining. Two-thirds of the reserve are now covered by mining concessions granted to the Ecuadorian state mining company ENAMI and its Canadian partners, Cornerstone Capital Resources and BHP. The Constitutional Court agreed in May to hear the case.

Jane Goodall, E.O. Wilson, Peter Raven, Rosemary and Peter Grant, and more than 1,200 other scientists from all over the world have urged the Ecuadorian government to stop mining activities at Los Cedros and Ecuador’s other protected forests. In an August letter, the scientists noted that Los Cedros is home to a remarkable 207 different species of plants and animals included on Ecuador’s Red Lists.

The scientists expressed grave concern about mining’s impacts on the exceptional biodiversity of Ecuador’s protected forests and specifically requested that all mining concessions be removed from those forests, including Los Cedros.

Earth Law Center, Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, and the Center for Biological Diversity an amicus curiae(friend of the court) brief before the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court. It asks the court to protect Los Cedros and robustly enforce constitutional provisions that establish basic rights of nature, or “pachamama,” including the rights to exist and to restoration.

“Mining companies can’t be allowed to threaten the exceptional biodiversity of Ecuador’s protected forests,” said Alejandro Olivera, senior scientist and Mexico representative at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Los Cedros Reserve is well known for its critically endangered brown-headed spider monkeys and endangered spectacled bears, as well as orchids found nowhere else on Earth. Mining companies must halt this threat and stop all mining operations at Los Cedros.”

The brown-headed spider monkey, found in Los Cedros, has lost more than 80% of its original area of distribution in northwest Ecuador. In 2005 it was estimated that there were fewer than 250 brown-headed spider monkeys globally, granting the species a place among the top 25 most endangered primates in the world.

“Twelve years after first recognizing the rights of nature in its Constitution, Ecuador must now uphold these rights in earnest, including by protecting the Los Cedros forest from devastating mining concessions,” said Constanza Prieto Figelist, Latin American legal lead at Earth Law Center. “Enforcing the rights of Los Cedros forest will also protect the human right to a healthy environment and rights of future generations because we all rely upon healthy, functioning ecosystems for our very survival.”

The groups note that the case is of great significance, both for Ecuador and the world, because it has the potential to establish important and influential “Earth jurisprudence” that will help guide humanity to be a beneficial rather than a destructive presence within the community of life. The proposed mining is unlawful, the groups say, and must be prohibited on the basis that it violates the rights of the Los Cedros Protective Forest as an ecosystem as well as the rights of the many members of that living community.

Allowing the mining to proceed would also be contrary to the national objective of achieving good living (“sumak kawsay”) and consequently would violate the Constitution of the republic of Ecuador, the groups argue. It would also be a violation of the fundamental and non-negotiable principles of nature that humanity must respect in order to live harmoniously and flourish.

An active petition to Ecuador’s government officials and the mining companies has also been launched, and the court ruling will come soon.

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Featured image: A brown-headed spider monkey (Ateles fusciceps ssp. fusciceps) in the Los Cedros Reserve, Ecuador. Photo credit: Bitty Roy.

Imagine for a moment that there is a foreign government that receives billions of dollars a year in “aid” and other benefits from the United States taxpayer. Consider beyond that, the possibility that that government might take part of the money it receives and secretly recycle it to groups of American citizens in the United States that exist to maintain and increase that money flow while also otherwise serving other interests of the recipient country. That would mean that the United States is itself subsidizing the lobbies and groups that are inevitably working against its own interests. And it also means that U.S. citizens are acting as foreign agents, covertly giving priority to their attachment to a foreign country instead of to the nation in which they live.

I am, of course, referring to Israel. It does not require a brilliant observer to note how Israel and its allies inside the U.S. have become very skilled at milking the government in the United States at all levels for every bit of financial aid, trade concessions, military hardware and political cover that is possible to obtain. The flow of dollars, goods, and protection is never actually debated in any serious way and is often, in fact, negotiated directly by Congress or state legislatures directly with the Israeli lobbyists. This corruption and manipulation of the U.S. governmental system by people who are basically foreign agents is something like a criminal enterprise and one can only imagine the screams of outrage coming from the New York Times if there were a similar arrangement with any other country.

The latest revelation about Israel’s cheating involves subsidies that were paid covertly by Israeli government agencies to groups in the United States which in turn took direction from the Jewish state, often inter alia damaging genuine American interests. The groups involved failed to disclose the payments, which is a felony. They also failed to register under the terms of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, which mandates penalties for groups and individuals acting on behalf of foreign governments. In particular, FARA mandates that the finances and relationships of the foreign affiliated organization be open to Department of the Justice inspection. It states that “any person who acts as an agent, representative, employee, or servant, or otherwise acts at the order, request, or under the direction or control of a foreign principal.” Those who fail to disclose might be penalized by up to five years in prison and fines up to $250,000.

Israel’s various friends and proxies, uniquely, have been de facto exempt from any regulation by the U.S. government. The last serious attempt to register a major lobbying entity was made by John F. Kennedy, who sought to have the predecessor organization to today’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) comply with FARA. Kennedy was killed before he could complete the process.

To be sure, the U.S. government has recently been aggressive in demanding FARA registration for other nations as well as for Americans working for foreign powers. There have been several prominent FARA cases in the news. Major Russian news agencies operating in the U.S. were compelled to register in 2017 because they were funded largely or in part by the Kremlin. Also, as part of their plea deals, the former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn both conceded that they had failed to comply with FARA when working as consultants with foreign governments.

A leading recipient of the Israeli government’s largesse has been the Israel Allies Foundation (IAF), which has a presence in 43 countries worldwide, though it is registered in the U.S. as a non-profit. It received a grant of $100,000 from Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry in 2019, part of the $6.6 million that was doled out to eleven American organizations in 2018-9. Israel Allies particularly uses Lawfare to target the non-violent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), which has a large and growing presence on university campuses. Effective lobbying by IAF in the U.S. has resulted in more than half of all states passing legislation that bans or limits the BDS activity while legislation that would criminalize organizations working against Israel has also been moving through congress. IAF has been directly involved in drafting such legislation and has more recently been pushing for new laws that would legally define criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism.

The Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs initially, in 2015-7, tried to give money openly to diaspora organizations but found that many American Jewish groups, to their credit, would not take it due to concerns over FARA and being accused of “dual loyalty.” So, the Ministry created an ostensibly non-government “public benefit company” cut-out to distribute the cash in a more secretive fashion. The mechanism was given the operational name Concert.

Concert’s sole purpose was to provide money to diaspora advocacy groups that would work primarily against BDS and other efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state. Concert had an independent board, but its activity of directed by the Strategic Affairs Ministry’s director-general.

Concert’s internal documents are predictably vague in describing the activities that it was funding, and one might assume that they are purposely misleading. They refer to “defensive and offensive” actions, on “corporate responsibility,” “the digital battlefield,” and regarding “amplification units” that would provide “support for organizations in a pro-Israeli network.” The intention was to improve Israel’s image due to the widespread and completely accurate perception that its human rights record is among the worst in the world. Concert was created to serve as a mechanism to be exploited where situations prevailed that “require an ‘outside the government’ discussion with the different target audiences… [and] provide a rapid and coordinated response against the attempts to tarnish the image of Israel around the world.”

Interestingly, one of the most recognizable recipients of Concert funds was Christians United for Israel (CUFI), America’s largest pro-Israel group, which received nearly $1.3 million in February 2019 to pay for several 10 week-long “pilgrimages” to the Holy Land. Each pilgrimage involved thirty “influential Christian clerics from the U.S.” who were clearly propagandized while they were in the Middle East. Other large disbursements went to predominantly Jewish student groups, presumably to provide them with both resources and necessary training to oppose campus critics of Israel.

The simple way to deal with the massive and illegal Israeli influencing operations that are being directed against the United States would be first of all to deduct every identifiable dollar that is being spent by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to empower supporters in America from the $3.8 billion plus that Israel receives each year directly from the U.S. Treasury. Israel would not be concerned if the United States were to recover a paltry $10 million or so, but it would definitely send a message.

And then one might follow-up by requiring all the Israeli proxies that together make up the Israel Lobby to register under FARA. One might start with AIPAC, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) but there will be many, many more before the work is done. And CUFI, for sure. The fundamentalist Christian head cases that place Israel’s interests ahead of those of their own country finally need to have their bell rung.

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Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from HAIM ZACH/GPO

Lebanon has been faced with political upheavals, and the huge explosion which destroyed the Beirut Port.  Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse asked a noted expert on Lebanon, Dr. Marwa Osman, to explain the recent visit of French President Macron to Beirut, and what it portends.  

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Steven Sahiounie (SS):  Recently, France’s President Macron met with Mohammed Raad of Hezbollah. Do you think France is changing their position on Hezbollah?

Marwa Osman (MO):  I don’t think it is a matter of position, rather a matter of a realistic view to the Lebanese political arena. Who hold the majority in the parliament? Who has the greatest public support in Lebanon? By far, the answer is Hezbollah and its allies. So it would be an absolute waste of time if Macron had decided to bypass the resistance in Lebanon while trying to find a solution to the economic and political deadlock in the country. Mind you, the Americans were not happy about this meeting, as it was the first meeting ever held between any Hezbollah member with a French President, yet this Mohammad Raad is a member of parliament that we are talking about and the head of a Lebanese political bloc that represents along with its allies the majority of the Lebanese parliament, so why wouldn’t he meet with Macron? The confusion is only there because the Americans did not like it because of the Beirut Barracks explosion of 1983 which the resistance never claimed responsibility for anyways.

SS:  Lebanon chose a new Prime Minister on the very day President Macron arrived. Do you think his visit put pressure on the choice?

MO:  Yes, it seems that everyone wanted to save face before Macron arrived because he promised the Lebanese presidency help at the international level in the form of a donors’ conference in October, and for this to take place there has to be a viable Lebanese government in place before then. Add to that the corona virus pandemic and the existential threat of a non-existent economy on the country made it also an emergency to have a government in place asap. Until now there has been no government announced but it was reported by Lebanese media that the current designated Prime Minister is set to provide the presidency with a list of names for his cabinet which should be approved soon.

SS:  Macron has given a deadline to the Lebanese politicians and threatened them with sanctions. Isn’t that interference in Lebanon’s sovereignty?

MO:  That is blatant and clear violation of political norms and international law too. As no state has a unilateral say in what other states can or cannot do. Yes, I do agree that we need anti-corruption plans put in place asap and reforms at the level of the judiciary system and the constitution and that we need to hold all those responsible accountable, but that is strictly a Lebanese internal matter and no other state or head of state has a say or even a right to give his or her opinion about this matter. Our justice system is capable of covering all the anti-corruption cases, we just need a political decision. Better yet, we need to completely remove politics from the judiciary system and that can only happen when we become a full secular state with a “one province electoral law”, which means abolishing the sectarian system of election in the country.

SS:  The tension between the Israeli occupation and Hezbollah is on the highest level since the 2006 war. Do you think “Israel” is preparing for war on Lebanon?

MO:  Israel is always at war with Lebanon, it has always been a case of cessation of hostilities, there never was peace. How can there be peace when the Israeli regime keeps violating our airspace, occupying our land and waters and assassinating our men? Every day we wake up to the sounds of fighter jets in our airspace and all day every day we are constantly harassed with spy drones that keep buzzing so loud it drives us crazy, Israel is always on high alert waiting for the next round to carpet bomb Beirut any chance it gets. However, a full out war is currently out of the question for several reasons. First, Israel knows that the rules of the game have changed especially after the resistance gained great experience from fighting off terrorism in Syria alongside the Syrian Arab army and the Russian army inside Syria. Second, Israel needs full US support to pursue a war on Lebanon and that is not an option at the moment because Trump is indulging himself in pre-elections campaigning that he has not time or desire to cause any damage to his electoral campaign and third the Israeli regime is suffering from high covid19 exposures that would keep its hands tied in the event they risked a war anytime soon.

SS:  After visiting Lebanon, Macron headed for Iraq.  What was the goal of that visit and dose France has designs on the Middle East?

MO:  Macron popping for a visit in Baghdad as the first head of state to visit the Iraqi capital since Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi took office should not come as a surprise. The French president claimed to back Iraq’s sovereignty all the while his US allies still occupy the country. However, by playing Lawrence of Arabia in Iraq, Macron aims to fill the vacuum left by an isolationist America to boost France’s clout in west Asia. President Macron has seen the vacuum in question as an opportunity. He now acts as if he is Europe’s foreign policy leader by default and thinks that he has to run the show because there is a diplomatic-relations gap in the Western world. However, by trying to court all sides, Macron risks drawing a blank with one of them. Success in Lebanon might burnish his reputation as a consummate negotiator, however, skepticism is brewing about France’s ability to play a leading role in west Asia, where the US, Russia and their allies have traditionally called the shots.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Dr. Marwa Osman has a PhD in Management, a MBA on “The Effect of Politics on the Foreign Direct Investment in Lebanon”, is a University Lecturer at the Lebanese International University and Maaref University, and is the Host of the political show “The Middle East Stream” broadcast on Press TV.

Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist.

“When the European settlers arrived, they needed land to live on. The First Nations peoples agreed to move to different areas to make room for the new settlements.” – Complete Canadian Curriculum (Grade 3), 2017.¹

In 2017, the Complete Canadian Curriculum guide for third graders claimed that “the First Nations peoples moved to areas called reserves, where they could live undisturbed by the hustle and bustle of the settlers.”² This was a radical and absurd misrepresentation of Canadian history, but it was reflective of a longstanding ideological project to convince Canadians that their country is a well-intentioned contributor to the greater good of the world. In that version of history, Canada has been a haven for refugees, it has been a voice of reason in times of international crisis, it has sought to preserve peace when others wanted war, it has made sacrifices when war was necessary to defeat injustice, and it has helped other nations build prosperous and functional societies like the one Canada built after Indigenous people, presumably, “moved to areas called reserves, where they could live undisturbed by the hustle and bustle of the settlers.”

Canada in the World offers a sober re-assessment of that story, providing a broad history of Canada’s engagements in the world since Confederation (1867). Unlike many such studies, I will treat the relations between the French, British, and then Canadian settlers and the Indigenous nations they encountered as a foundational element of what Canada became, and I will insist that the legacy and logic of Canadian colonialism runs through the entire history of Canada in the world. Canada’s colonial project was driven by one fundamental material goal – the destruction of Indigenous political economic practices and their displacement by capitalism – and an equally important ideological foundation in the claim that Europeans were racially and culturally advanced and, thus, that their conquest of the Indigenous Peoples represented ‘progress.’ The interplay between this economic compulsion and its ideological framing has remained integral to the story of Canada.

 Canada’s Colonial Founding

The structure of this book is designed to highlight the central thesis that Canada’s relationships in the world have consistently followed the patterns set during its colonial founding. Part I provides an overview of the colonial project that created Canada, with emphasis on the period around Canada’s Confederation, a key point in the genocidal effort to eliminate what Canadian officials called “the Indian problem.”³ The creation of Canada took place within the broader dynamics of the emergence of capitalism, the spread of European colonialism and the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which I discuss briefly.

As a new world order was constructed around those dynamics, the foundation for what would become Canada was being established in the minds and in the material conditions of its colonial architects. First, Canada was rooted in the desire to establish a private market in land and labour and create the conditions for capitalist wealth accumulation. Thus, like any settler capitalist state, Canada was designed to destroy the Indigenous inhabitants – by extermination, expulsion, assimilation or whatever other method – and replace their societies with one that would be dominated by a handful of wealthy capitalists and the laws and institutions that support a capitalist society.

Second, it was premised on the notion that white, European society was more advanced, intelligent, rational, and just, and that white settlers were providentially destined to conquer the world. Though this notion took many forms, the various ideas that came to be known as white supremacy were deeply inculcated in the project to create Canada, justifying – in the minds of white settlers – the genocidal practices and policies that were facilitating the theft of land and destruction of Indigenous societies that settler capitalism required. White settlers were possessed by a colonial imagination, a fantasy of their superiority – and of the inferiority of those others they encountered – that permeated nearly every aspect of what became Canadian society. This colonial imagination was manifest in the most overtly genocidal expressions, like John A. MacDonald’s assertions of the superiority of the Aryan races, but it was often also present in the attitudes of settlers who believed themselves to be more progressive and enlightened, like Canadian missionaries or members of the suffragist movement in its early days.

Looking back at the period around Confederation and the conquest of the west, 21st century Canadians are often tempted to assert that, while the racism of the early settlers was terrible, it was a product of the period in which they lived and it is unfair to judge them by the standards of the present. This is a profoundly inadequate assessment. It ignores the fact that those attitudes never went away, even if they were very gradually refashioned and new language used to express them. Though Part I emphasizes the moments around Canada’s creation, it will carry the story of Canadian colonialism forward to the 21st century to illustrate that colonialism never ended but, rather, remained an ongoing and pervasive part of the Canadian story. This reality is tragically evident, for instance, in the appalling rate at which Indigenous women and children are murdered or disappeared in Canada, often with little, if any, investigation. Furthermore, as the rest of the book will illustrate, Canadians’ attitudes toward people outside of its own borders remained steeped in the same attitudes; what was said of people in Afghanistan in the 21st century reflected what had been said about Indigenous people in the 1880s.

Even in the 1880s, there was no global consensus that white supremacist values were correct. While most wealthy white people more or less accepted its basic premises, the overwhelming majority of the world was not white and did not consent to the theft of their land, the destruction of their societies, and the denigration of their cultures by Europeans. Colonialism was always met with resistance. Even within European societies and settler colonies, there gradually emerged in the 19th century a current of anti-colonial politics. Though these individuals often failed to completely transcend the white supremacy of the society they emanated from, they increasingly built connections with colonized people in struggles to overthrow the capitalist, colonial world order. The left, as this resistance came to be known, was always present in both the colonized and settler communities, and put the lie to any notion that ‘everyone’ believed in the ideas of white supremacy.

Canada Looks Outward

Part I, then, lays the groundwork for the argument at the heart of this book, which is that those key components of Canada’s founding – settler capitalism and the colonial imagination – remained central to Canada’s engagements in the world henceforth. In Part II, I return to the period around Confederation and track the parallel dynamics of Canada’s looking outward to the rest of the world, illustrating the ways in which the very same Canadians who were consolidating colonialism in Canada were projecting it elsewhere. Sam Steele, celebrated police officer who helped conquer Indigenous people and supervised the virtual slave labour of Chinese workers on the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), would later travel to South Africa to administer concentration camps holding mostly-black South Africans on behalf of the British Empire. Cornelius Van Horne, capitalist tycoon who was the president of the CPR, was quickly off to Cuba where he brought his “clearer northern brain” to monopolize the island and extract profits. By the 1930s, the Canadian military would be supporting a massacre of thousands of Indigenous farmers – “communist Indians,” Prime Minister R.B. Bennett called them – in El Salvador, in order to protect the profits of the Canadian company which monopolized electricity provision in the country.

This section of the book then locates Canada within the period of global tumult that developed in the early 20th century and exploded between 1914-1945 with two world wars and an economic catastrophe. The class dynamics of Canadian society – muted somewhat by the early stages of colonial conquest – became much clearer in this period as working-class Canadians, often immigrants, were sacrificed on behalf of the British Empire and the global supremacy of the Anglo-American powers. Central to this section is a re-assessment of Canada’s place in a world gripped by left-wing revolution and fascist reaction; most notably, Part II critically examines Canada’s relationship to the far-right movements that rose around the world in the 1920s and 1930s to illustrate that Canada often did more to foster their emergence than to stop them. Although Canada’s participation in the Second World War was mythologized as selfless and heroic, the defeat of Nazi Germany would have been much easier had Canada not spent so long supporting Hitler, refusing to accept Jewish refugees, and abandoning countries like Spain and Portugal to fascist domination.

Explaining Canada’s behaviour in this period is difficult unless one remains clear about its founding principles. Canada’s commitment was to a capitalist world, and thus it shared with the fascist powers a deep-rooted desire to crush the movements of the left that had risen up dramatically in the early 20th century in opposition to the poverty and immiseration of capitalism. In particular, Canada sought the destruction of the Soviet Union and, when Canada’s own invasion failed to defeat the Russian Revolution, it hoped to wield fascism abroad as a hammer against communism. Furthermore, like the fascist powers, the Canadian ruling classes nurtured an abiding belief in hierarchy, in the idea that the world was divided into categories of people who, based on their race, gender, class, or religion, were more or less fit to rule over others. Hitler, after all, admired Canada’s genocidal policies toward Indigenous Peoples, just as the Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King admired “the constructive work” Hitler’s Germany was doing in having “met the Communist menace at the time she did, and in the way she did,” which was, of course, by mass murder.⁴ King and Hitler also, notably, agreed “that in a large percentage of the [Jewish] race there are tendencies and trends which are dangerous indeed.”⁵ Ideologically, then, the Canadian government was not so distant from the fascists, even while many individual Canadians abhorred them.

Middle Power and Cold War

The world looked very different after the Second World War, and Part III grapples with Canada’s emergence as a so-called “Middle Power” during the Cold War. This was the era when peacekeeping became part of Canadian identity, when an image was built of a Canada that was a neutral and well-intentioned arbiter in international affairs. The reality was much different: as the people of Africa, Asia, and Latin America fought for their freedom from European colonial or neocolonial authority, Canada consistently sided with the colonial powers and undermined those struggles for freedom. Canadian magazines declared that India “was not a nation,” Canadian officials urged Britain not to relinquish control of its colonial possessions to politically “immature” Africans, and Canadian weapons were donated to France to oppose the Vietnamese fight for independence. Across the globe, Canada insisted that colonized people were not capable of self-governance, and mobilized racist stereotypes of Congolese cannibals, Papuan people “living in trees,” and South Asian leaders wearing diapers.

These were all manifestations of the same colonial imagination that Canada had applied to its own conquered peoples, so it should come as no surprise that white supremacy mobilized at home would be similarly mobilized abroad. But Canada’s undermining of the freedom struggles of colonized people was not simply ideological; by the Cold War period, Canadian capital had expanded into the world, from banking to mining to manufacturing, and the movements struggling against colonialism could not always be trusted to protect Canadian investments. Thus, part of Canada’s Cold War calculation was always to support those movements that were most amenable to maintaining a global capitalist system in a world where the existence of the Soviet Union made communism or socialism a viable option.

Canada thus became an important player in the Cold War, working closely with the United States to undermine those movements in the decolonizing world that posed a threat to the capitalist order and seeking to support those which would maintain neocolonial relations with the west. Canada opposed Indonesian freedom when it was oriented to the left, but supported it when it was ruled by a dictatorship that murdered millions of communists and welcomed foreign capital. Canada resisted the idea of Congolese independence when it was led by the charismatic left-leaning Patrice Lumumba, but quickly assisted an independent Congo taken over by right-wing forces which had assassinated Lumumba. Canada built close relations with the government of Chile and gave millions of dollars in foreign aid until Chileans elected the socialist Salvador Allende. Aid and relations were then suspended until a coup d’etat by the notorious butcher Augusto Pinochet – supported by Canada – turned Chile into a violent, capitalist laboratory.

It was all geared toward the larger goal of winning the Cold War, definitively conquering the socialist bloc that was centred around the Soviet Union which, for all its flaws and problems, remained a key source of support for popular movements around the world. Canada had, from its inception, been driven by the permanent need to expand the frontiers of capitalism, and that project got a boost in the late 1980s, when the Soviet Union collapsed and Canada found itself part of an Anglo-American alliance that effectively ruled the world. Part IV of this book assesses what Canada did with this new power. It may have seemed, to some Canadians, that whatever violence was necessary to defeat the Soviet ‘Evil Empire’ was worth it, even if it was unsavoury. For those who accepted that logic, the 1990s likely came as a shock, as Canada involved itself in global affairs that had disastrous consequences but did not have the Cold War as an excuse.

Endless Wars and Climate Catastrophe

Part IV begins by addressing the 1990s, from the catastrophic dismantling of the economies of Russia and Eastern Europe, to the wanton violence of the Persian Gulf War, to the torture and murder of Somali youth, to the chaotic and confusing war in Yugoslavia and, perhaps most notably, the deeply tragic and misunderstood crisis in Rwanda. In sum, it was a terrible victory lap for the capitalist world and, especially, for Canada. In 2001, when decades of US interference in the Middle East produced a predictable retaliation in the form of the terrorist attacks against New York and Washington, a new era in world politics was declared under the banner of the War on Terror. Devastating and calamitous invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq quickly expanded to Libya, Syria, Mali and elsewhere, and the world veered ever closer to the dystopian fantasies that permeated western pop culture. The 21st century has offered endless war, climate catastrophe, capitalist crises, and the rise of fascism, and Canada has consistently been found exacerbating all of these problems.

Canada has become one of the world’s largest exporters of weapons. Canada is one of the world’s worst polluters. Canada has routinely intervened in other countries’ affairs – Haiti, Honduras, Colombia, Venezuela – to neutralize popular movements trying to reform or replace the capitalist structures causing the crisis. And Canada has cozied up to a new wave of fascists – in Brazil, Ukraine, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Israel and arguably the United States itself – who seem possessed by a pathological death drive that leaves children in concentration camps in Texas, an entire people imprisoned by an apartheid wall in Israel, and the Amazon rainforest in flames. If the world is in crisis, Canada is a co-author, and through it all the logic has remained the same.

Behind the cascading crises of the 21st century is the endless desire for capitalist profits, of which Canada is in pursuit, especially in the environmentally destructive extractive industries. And in every struggle over Canadian access to some resource in some place, there have been people saying no, but being ignored or overruled. The same colonial imagination that led Canadians to assert their right to conquer Canada and write its laws drove Canadians to insert themselves into Honduras and re-write Honduran laws. The same certainty that Canada knew best was inherent in its transparent efforts to overthrow the Venezuelan government in favour of a pro-western oligarch, even if the vast majority of Venezuelans had not and would not choose it. The same assumption of Canadian superiority led Canadian soldiers to claim that Afghans were “two thousand years behind” and needed the Canadian occupation to help develop the country and its industries.

When people oppose Canadian intervention – as they often have – they are chastised as immature, irrational, hysterical, and backwards. When Indigenous Guatemalans opposed a Canadian mine, the Canadian ambassador told them that they needed “to face the reality of a global society.”⁶ If they were not insulted, they were attacked; after a Colombian opponent of a Canadian hydro dam travelled to Canada to denounce the project, he returned to Colombia to be murdered without a word from the Canadian government or media. Even back in Canada, when an Indigenous protestor interrupted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a fundraiser dinner to raise the issue of people dying from poisoned water at Grassy Narrows First Nation, Trudeau sarcastically mocked the protestor while he was escorted out.

It is these continuities in Canada’s engagements in the world that this book seeks to highlight. Canada’s behaviour in more than 150 years of colonial relations with Indigenous Peoples is a terrible story in itself, but is given another dimension when understood to be a consistent expression of what Canada is in the world. Canadian settlers’ pervasive and ongoing practice of sexual violence against Indigenous women was reflected in the same behaviours by Canadian soldiers in Korea. The mixture of violence and manipulation that Canada used to seize land from Indigenous communities was replicated by Canadian capitalists in Honduras in the 21st century. Perhaps most telling of all, in nearly every setting the Canadian military found itself – Somalia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan – soldiers consistently ended up calling that place “Indian Country.”

This book offers a broad history of Canada in the world, but it is not exhaustive. Such a task would be impossible to write and overwhelming to read. Instead, I have made decisions about what to emphasize, what to note briefly, and what to leave out. Those choices, naturally, betray my own interests in writing a book like this. Where many traditional Canadian historians spend much time dissecting the various personalities at the highest level of Canadian politics, my focus tends to be on the broader dynamics of historical change. This is because I seek to understand why things happen, and I do not believe this question can be answered merely by examining the decisions of a few typically wealthy men who claim to speak on behalf on an entire nation. That those people in positions of power have an effect is undeniably true and, as such, the various prime ministers are a big part of this story. But the flow of history runs much deeper than these individuals; this book suggests that Canada, regardless of its prime minister, has always been driven by a material compulsion toward the accumulation of capital and an ideological commitment to colonialism and white supremacy.

Indeed, many studies of Canadian foreign policy begin from an unsubstantiated assumption that Canadian policy is generally well-intentioned and seeks to strike a balance between the well-being of Canadians and the greater interests of the international community. Such an approach ignores the fact that Canada, like the rest of the world, is divided into many classes of people with very different interests; what is good for some may be bad for others. I understand history as being shaped by conflict between and within a variety of social classes and communities. The Canadian state, in this framework, acts as an institution that seeks to manage class conflict to the ultimate benefit of the Canadian capitalist class. As such, the phases and episodes in Canada’s foreign engagements are reflective of the evolving needs of the ruling classes. This book not only recounts various pieces of Canadian history but, in addition, contextualizes them within the framework of the Canadian colonial capitalist project.

Naturally, individual people in Canada often took on those goals and ideologies that emanated from the state, especially those whose interests most closely aligned with those of the Canadian ruling class, but many others found themselves on the opposite side for a variety of reasons. Gabriel Dumont, Mewa Singh, Alice Chown, Arthur Roy, Freda Coodin, Red Walsh, Norman Bethune, Edgar Harris, Kanao Inouye, James Endicott, Herbert Norman, Claire Culhane, Rocky Jones, Lee Maracle, Jean Claude Parrot, Suzanne Dudziak; they all found themselves on the wrong side of Canada, at some point and for some reason, but their stories are just as significant as the Prime Ministers.’ They represent the cracks in the edifice of Canada; those who were excluded from it, who were broken by it, or who extricated themselves from it and came to oppose it. In some of their lives – a soldier who refused to fight against the Bolsheviks, a nurse in Vietnam who exposed Canadian complicity in that conflict, or a nun who travelled to the Honduran border to block the passage of Canadian-supported paramilitaries – there were hints at something different that could have been, or that could yet be, in place of the Canada that is.

Still, this book is an examination of the Canada that is: how it has fit into the world, what role it has played, how it has shaped and been shaped by the dynamics around it. There is much covered here that is not typically included in foreign policy studies, ranging from the dynamics of class and race in Canada, the relationship between early waves of Canadian feminism and the Great War, and shifting attitudes toward immigration and who was included as ‘white’ and/or ‘Canadian.’ There are also forays into global and regional politics that may, on occasion, seem not to be directly related to Canada. One of the weaknesses of many of the existing studies of Canada’s engagements in the world is that the narrow focus on Canada means that the broader context in which Canada is engaging can be obscured. In fact, the Canadian government has often relied upon simplistic and de-contextualized narratives of its activities in order to cloak them in an air of harmless, good intentions. To truly understand the role Canada plays in various historical moments, it is imperative that we properly understand those moments.

For instance, the story that emerged from the crisis in Rwanda in 1994 was that a Canadian general tried to stop a genocide from taking place, but was thwarted by United Nations bureaucrats who refused to give him the resources he needed to prevent Rwandan Hutus from engaging in a vicious and coordinated spree of ethnic violence against Tutsis. That narrative is inaccurate, but explaining its inaccuracies requires some deeper understanding of the history of Great Lakes Africa. Thus, Chapter 10 diverges for several pages into that history, out of which the reader should emerge with a much fuller understanding of how Canada’s interference in Rwanda may have directly contributed to the tragedies that engulfed that country, even before 1994, and which ended with a pro-western dictatorship that perfectly suited Canada’s interests.

There are many such explorations of regional and global history, into which I insert Canada’s place, and in crafting these historical accounts I am deeply indebted to the work of other scholars. Outside of several years of fieldwork in Honduras, and the occasional personal anecdote, the knowledge that I marshal for this book is drawn from secondary sources, hundreds of them, each one containing many years of work and thinking by someone else. Although I have tried to use these sources faithfully, even when I am criticizing them, it needs be said that in a book as broad in scope as this, there are likely moments where the nuance and texture of my sources gets lost. I can only implore the interested reader to follow up on the sources that I have drawn from to get the deeper picture that, on occasion, I have had to sacrifice for relevance and brevity.

There is a fundamental question at the heart of this book: what is Canada? What is at the core of the thing – the state, the society, the culture – that was built on the place that is now called Canada and which was once under the jurisdiction of hundreds of Indigenous nations? No single answer will ever be fully satisfactory, but my intention is to cast some light on this problem by looking at how Canada has engaged in the world. What did Canada say? What did it do? Who did it support? Who did it oppose? What was Canada’s contribution to the events that shaped people’s lives over the past century and a half, and what role has it played in building the world our children will inherit? The answers to these questions will not be comforting to anyone who is committed to the idea of a nice, kind Canada trying to help people. But given the state of the 21st century world, I make no apologies if this book is jarring. The problems that Canada has helped create are so great that some view them as an existential threat to humanity itself. Even less dire interpretations of the coming calamities suggest that we must, as a species, change course urgently. A necessary first step, for people located in Canada, is an honest and unflinching look in the mirror.

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Tyler Shipley is professor of Culture, Society, and Commerce at the Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning and he has written for academic journals and local and mainstream media across North America and Europe. His recent book is Ottawa and Empire: Canada and the Military Coup in Honduras. He is the editor of Left Hook journal.

Notes

1. Quoted in Philip Lee-Shanok, “GTA book publisher accused of whitewashing Indigenous history,” CBC News, October 3, 2017.
2. Quoted in Philip Lee-Shanok, “GTA book publisher accused of whitewashing Indigenous history,” CBC News, October 3, 2017.
3. Duncan Campbell Scott, quoted in J.R. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Indian-White Relations in Canada, 3rd edition, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2000, p. 281-282.
4. William Lyon Mackenzie King, The Mackenzie King Diaries, 1893-1947, June 29, 1937, Microfiche Collection, University of Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1980.
5. William Lyon Mackenzie King, quoted in Gerald Tulchinsky, “Goldwin Smith: Victorian Canadian Antisemite,” in Alan Davies, ed., Antisemitism in Canada: History and Interpretation, Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1992, p. 84.
6. James Lambert, quoted in Todd Gordon and Jeffery R. Webber, Blood of Extraction: Canadian Imperialism in Latin America, Halifax, Fernwood, 2016, p. 95-96.

Featured image is from The Bullet

British/American human rights lawyer Smith founded UK-based Reprieve in 1999 — “an organization of courageous and committed human rights defenders.”

It provides pro bono legal and investigative work services for “some of the world’s most vulnerable people.”

They include individuals facing capital punishment and victims of abusive state practices, including “rendition, torture, extrajudicial imprisonment and extrajudicial killing.”

Reprieve lawyers and investigators represent oppressed and abused individuals worldwide — including seven Guantanamo Bay political prisoners.

London-based, its “vision is a world free of execution, torture and detention without due process.”

In the US alone, Smith represented over 300 prisoners on death row, preventing executions 98% of the time.

He rightfully calls Guantanamo prison an “affront to democracy and the rule of law.”

His mission is getting the camp closed. He helped secure the release of 69 of its wrongfully held detainees — held for political reasons alone.

For his legal expertise in championing human rights, he received numerous awards, including the Gandhi Peace Award, International Freedom of the Press Award, and Lifetime Achievement Award from The Lawyer Magazine and The Law Society.

In his book titled “Injustice: Life and Death in the Courtrooms of America,” Smith discussed US Kafkaesque injustice, a judicial system that time and again engineers convictions, including by falsified testimonies and/or suppressed exculpatory evidence.

Smith earlier said that he never stops “think(ing) how it is that an innocent person is so certain that they didn’t do it, that they can’t fathom that 12 people could find them guilty” —  what mind-manipulating prosecutors pull off time and again.

Convictions advance their careers. They don’t “wonder if (they’re) going to put an innocent person in prison…or not,” said Smith, adding:

“You just can’t do that as a human. So naturally, the people who do this job believe that everyone is guilty. And it’s something the system doesn’t take account of. But it’s sort of obvious.”

The US judicial system illegitimately legitimizes malpractice too often, especially against society’s most disadvantaged — from police to prosecutors to DAs to judges.

Time and again in US courtrooms, upholding the standard of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is a meaningless figure of speech.

Smith believes many US judicial system practitioners don’t know what the standard means, saying:

“We cannot loudly proclaim that the burden of proof is central to the system (and) then assert that we cannot begin to define it,” adding the following:

“The (US) jury system…is utter insanity because you’re not allowed to talk to jurors before or after the trial.”

“There’s no way of knowing if they did their job properly.”

“And the idea that the defense has to rely on the police for the investigation? Total insanity.”

“I’ve never met a defense lawyer here who has done any factual investigation for themselves. Total insanity.”

“And the whole notion of a barrister – that he shouldn’t have an emotional relationship with his client? Insanity.”

“You cannot represent someone, and meaningfully put them across to the jury, if you don’t have a relationship with them.”

Britain’s system matches the worst of the US, and it shows in Julian Assange’s show trial. More on Smith’s observations on what’s going on below.

In Britain, families of victims are “told their catharsis is going to come from punishment,” said Smith, adding:

“And it’s just cruel, because it doesn’t. They just get exploited. I think that’s probably the area in which we’ve been most unkind to victims.”

In one respect alone, Britain’s system is less “disastrous” than America’s. “(W)e don’t kill people,” Smith explained.

In 1965, parliament abolished capital punishment, replacing it with a discretionary maximum of life in prison.

Smith witnessed what he called the full horror of a US execution by lethal injection, saying the experience have him “much more power to (explain to jurors) what it is like.”

“The underlying concept of the (US) justice system is…ridiculous, total madness.”

Smith expects virtually everything imaginable thrown at Assange in a US court room, including what’s not in charges against him.

On Tuesday, he testified at his extradition trial in London, saying the following after the fact:

The US claims that “none of the things that I mentioned (in testimony) were relevant to the indictment, and they are wrong.”

“They are factually wrong. Right there in the indictment it charges (Assange) with a whole bunch of those things” Smith discussed, adding:

“I’m sure that every witness in this case will back me up when I say that conspiracy cases open a Pandora’s box of everything the government wants to throw at them.”

Using so-called experts like FBI agents who are part of the dirty system, hired to perpetuate it, “they throw the whole kitchen sink at people in those trials which is a danger for justice.”

Assange is considered guilty by accusation, not for any real crime, for exposing high crimes of state US authorities want suppressed.

Like hanging whistleblowers out to dry in the US for exposing government wrongdoing, mistreating Assange, prejudging him guilty as charged, assuring extradition to the US for show trial 2.0 and certain conviction, is a warning to others like him that they may face a similar fate.

The hugely corrupted US political and judicial systems are too debauched to fix.

Tinkering around the edges won’t change its fundamental flaws.

Voting in a one-party state with two right wings assures continuity whenever farcical elections are held.

Transformational change is needed, a whole new system — democracy for real according to the rule of law, replacing fantasy versions in the US and West.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is CC BY 2.0

As the United States continues to drawdown its presence in Iraq more than 17 years after invading it, other powers have their eye on the vacuum that will be left by Washington cutting its losses and departing. 

“The livelihood of millions of people throughout the World is at stake. It is my sincere hope that the truth will prevail and that the understanding provided in this detailed study will serve the cause of World peace. This objective, however, can only be reached by revealing the falsehoods behind America’s “War on Terrorism” and questioning the legitimacy of the main political and military actors responsible for extensive war crimes.” (Michel Chossudovsky, August 2005 )

Below is the preface of  Michel Chossudovsky’s bestseller:  America’s “War on Terrorism“, available from our online store. 

“America’s War on Terrorism” was launched at 9.30pm on September 11, 2001

*      *      *

At eleven o’clock, on the morning of September 11, the Bush administration had already announced that Al Qaeda was responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) and the Pentagon. This assertion was made prior to the conduct of an indepth police investigation.

That same evening at 9:30 pm, a “War Cabinet” was formed integrated by a select number of top intelligence and military advisors. And at 11:00 pm, at the end of that historic meeting at the White House, the “War on Terrorism” was officially launched.

The decision was announced to wage war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in retribution for the 9/11 attacks. The following morning on September 12th, the news headlines indelibly pointed to “state sponsorship” of the 9/11 attacks. In chorus, the US media was calling for a military intervention against Afghanistan. Barely four weeks later, on the 7th of October, Afghanistan was bombed and invaded by US troops.Americans were led to believe that the decision to go to war had been taken on the spur of the moment, on the evening of September 11, in response to the attacks and their tragic consequences.

Little did the public realize that a large scale theater war is never planned and executed in a matter of weeks. The decision to launch a war and send troops to Afghanistan had been taken well in advance of 9/11. The “terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event” as it was later described by CentCom Commander General Tommy Franks, served to galvanize public opinion in support of a war agenda which was already in its final planning stage.

America’s “War on Terrorism”

by Michel Chossudovsky

ISBN Number: 9780973714715

Pages: 365 with complete index

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The tragic events of 9/11 provided the required justification to wage a war on “humanitarian grounds”, with the full support of World public opinion and the endorsement of the “international community”.

Several prominent “progressive” intellectuals made a case for “retaliation against terrorism”, on moral and ethical grounds. The “just cause” military doctrine (jus ad bellum) was accepted and upheld at face value as a legitimate response to 9/11,without examining the fact that Washington had not only supported the “Islamic terror network”, it was also instrumental in the installation of the Taliban government in 1996.

In the wake of 9/11, the antiwar movement was completely isolated. The trade unions and civil society organizations had swallowed the media lies and government propaganda. They had accepted a war of retribution against Afghanistan, an impoverished country of 30 million people.

I started writing on the evening of September 11, late into the night, going through piles of research notes, which I had previously collected on the history of Al Qaeda. My first text entitled “Who is Osama bin Laden?”, which was completed and first published on September the 12th. (See Chapter II.)

From the very outset, I questioned the official story, which described nineteen Al Qaeda sponsored hijackers involved in a highly sophisticated and organized operation. My first objective was to reveal the true nature of this illusive “enemy of America”, who was “threatening the Homeland”.

The myth of the “outside enemy” and the threat of “Islamic terrorists” was the cornerstone of the Bush administration’s military doctrine, used as a pretext to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, not to xii America’s “War on Terrorism” mention the repeal of civil liberties and constitutional government in America.

Without an “outside enemy”, there could be no “war on terrorism”. The entire national security agenda would collapse “like a deck of cards”. The war criminals in high office would have no leg to stand on.

It was consequently crucial for the development of a coherent antiwar and civil rights movement, to reveal the nature of Al Qaeda and its evolving relationship to successive US administrations.

Amply documented but rarely mentioned by the mainstream media, Al Qaeda was a creation of the CIA going back to the Soviet- Afghan war. This was a known fact, corroborated by numerous sources including official documents of the US Congress. The intelligence community had time and again acknowledged that they had indeed supported Osama bin Laden, but that in the wake of the Cold War: “he turned against us”.

After 9/11, the campaign of media disinformation served not only to drown the truth but also to kill much of the historical evidence on how this illusive “outside enemy” had been fabricated and transformed into “Enemy Number One”.

The Balkans Connection

My research on the Balkans conducted since the mid-1990s enabled me to document numerous ties and connections between Al Qaeda and the US Administration. The US military, the CIA and NATO had supported Al Qaeda in the Balkans. Washington’s objective was to trigger ethnic conflict and destabilize the Yugoslav federation, first in Bosnia, then in Kosovo.

In 1997, the Republican Party Committee (RPC) of the US Senate released a detailed report which accused President Clinton of collaborating with the “Islamic Militant Network” in Bosnia and working hand in glove with an organization linked to Osama bin Laden. (See Chapter III.) The report, however,was not widely publicized. Instead, the Republicans chose to discredit Clinton for his liaison with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

The Clinton Administration had also been providing covert support to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a paramilitary group supported by Al Qaeda, which was involved in numerous terrorist attacks. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, more commonly known as MI6, together with former members of Britain’s 22nd Special Air Services Regiment (SAS) were providing training to the KLA, despite its extensive links to organized crime and the drug trade. Meanwhile, known and documented, several Al Qaeda operatives had integrated the ranks of the KLA. (See Chapter III).

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In the months leading up to 9/11, I was actively involved in research on the terror attacks in Macedonia, waged by the self-proclaimed National Liberation Army (NLA) of Macedonia, a paramilitary army integrated by KLA commanders. Al Qaeda Mujahideen had integrated the NLA. Meanwhile, senior US military officers from a private mercenary company on contract to the Pentagon were advising the terrorists.

Barely a couple of months prior to 9/11, US military advisers were seen mingling with Al Qaeda operatives within the same paramilitary army. In late June 2001, seventeen US “instructors” were identified among the withdrawing rebels. To avoid the diplomatic humiliation and media embarrassment of senior US military personnel captured together with “Islamic terrorists” by the Macedonian Armed Forces, the US and NATO pressured the Macedonian government to allow the NLA terrorists and their US military advisers to be evacuated.

The evidence, including statements by the Macedonian Prime Minister and press reports out of Macedonia, pointed unequivocally to continued US covert support to the “Islamic brigades” in the former Yugoslavia. This was not happening in the bygone era of the Cold War, but in June 2001, barely a couple of months prior to 9/11. These developments, which I was following on a daily basis, immediately cast doubt in my mind on the official 9/11 narrative which presented Al Qaeda as the mastermind behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. (Chapter IV.)

The Mysterious Pakistani General

On the 12th of September, a mysterious Lieutenant General, head of Pakistan’s Military Intelligence (ISI), who according to the US press reports “happened to be in Washington at the time of the attacks”, was called into the office of Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitrage.

The “War on Terrorism” had been officially launched late in the night of September 11, and Dick Armitage was asking General Mahmoud Ahmad to help America “in going after the terrorists”. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was on the phone with Secretary of State Colin Powell and the following morning, on the 13th of September, a comprehensive agreement, was reached between the two governments.

While the press reports confirmed that Pakistan would support the Bush administration in the “war on terror”, what they failed to mention was the fact that Pakistan`s military intelligence (ISI) headed by General Ahmad had a longstanding relationship to the Islamic terror network. Documented by numerous sources, the ISI was known to have supported a number of Islamic organizations including Al Qaeda and the Taliban. (See Chapter IV.)

My first reaction in reading news headlines on the 13th of September was to ask: if the Bush administration were really committed to weeding out the terrorists, why would it call upon Pakistan`s ISI, which is known to have supported and financed these terrorist organizations?

Two weeks later, an FBI report, which was briefly mentioned on ABC News, pointed to a “Pakistani connection” in the financing of the alleged 9/11 terrorists. The ABC report referred to a Pakistani “moneyman” and “mastermind” behind the 9/11 hijackers.

Subsequent reports indeed suggested that the head of Pakistan’s military intelligence, General Mahmoud Ahmad, who had met Colin Powell on the 13th of September 2001, had allegedly ordered the transfer of 100,000 dollars to the 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta. What these reports suggested was that the head of Pakistan’s military intelligence was not only in close contact with senior officials of the US Government, he was also in liaison with the alleged hijackers.

My writings on the Balkans and Pakistani connections, published in early October 2001 were later incorporated into the first edition of this book. In subsequent research, I turned my attention to the broader US strategic and economic agenda in Central Asia and the Middle East.

There is an intricate relationship between War and Globalization. The “War on Terror” has been used as a pretext to conquer new economic frontiers and ultimately establish corporate control over Iraq’s extensive oil reserves.

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The Disinformation Campaign

In the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the disinformation campaign went into full gear.

Known and documented prior to the invasion, Britain and the US made extensive use of fake intelligence to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Al Qaeda was presented as an ally of the Baghdad regime. “Osama bin Laden” and “Weapons of Mass Destruction” statements circulated profusely in the news chain. (Chapter XI.)

Meanwhile, a new terrorist mastermind had emerged: Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. In Colin Powell’s historic address to the United Nations Security Council, detailed “documentation” on a sinister relationship between Saddam Hussein and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was presented, focussing on his ability to produce deadly chemical, biological and radiological weapons, with the full support and endorsement of the secular Baathist regime.

A Code Orange terror alert followed within two days of Powell’s speech at the United Nations Security Council, where he had been politely rebuffed by UN Weapons Inspector Dr. Hans Blix.

Reality was thus turned upside down. The US was no longer viewed as preparing to wage war on Iraq. Iraq was preparing to attack America with the support of “Islamic terrorists”. Terrorist mastermind Al-Zarqawi was identified as the number one suspect. Official statements pointed to the dangers of a dirty radioactive bomb attack in the US.

The main thrust of the disinformation campaign continued in the wake of the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. It consisted in presenting the Iraqi resistance movement as “terrorists”. The image of “terrorists opposed to democracy” fighting US “peacekeepers” appeared on television screens and news tabloids across the globe.

Meanwhile, the Code Orange terror alerts were being used by the Bush administration to create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation across America. (See Chapter XX.) The terror alerts also served to distract public opinion from the countless atrocities committed by US forces in the Afghan and Iraqi war theaters, not to mention the routine torture of so-called “enemy combatants”.

Following the invasion of Afghanistan, the torture of prisoners of war and the setting up of concentration camps became an integral part of the Bush administration’s post 9/11 agenda.

The entire legal framework had been turned upside down. According to the US Department of Justice, torture was now permitted under certain circumstances. Torture directed against “terrorists” was upheld as a justifiable means to preserving human rights and democracy. (See chapters XIV and XV.) In an utterly twisted logic, the Commander in Chief can now quite legitimately authorize the use of torture, because the victims of torture in this case are so-called “terrorists”, who are said to routinely apply the same methods against Americans.

The orders to torture prisoners of war at the Guantanamo concentration camp and in Iraq in the wake of the 2003 invasion emanated from the highest levels of the US Government. Prison guards, interrogators in the US military and the CIA were responding to precise guidelines.

An inquisitorial system had been installed. In the US and Britain the “war on the terrorism” is upheld as being in the public interest. Anybody who questions its practices—which now include arbitrary arrest and detention, torture of men, women and children, political assassinations and concentration camps—is liable to be arrested under the antiterrorist legislation.

The London 7/7 Bomb Attack

A new threshold in the “war on terrorism”was reached in July 2005, with the bomb attacks on London’s underground, which resulted tragically in 56 deaths and several hundred wounded.

On both sides of the Atlantic, the London 7//7 attacks were used to usher in far-reaching police state measures. The US House of Representatives renewed the USA PATRIOT Act “to make permanent the government’s unprecedented powers to investigate suspected terrorists”. Republicans claimed that the London attacks showed “how urgent and important it was to renew the law.”

Barely a week prior to the London attacks, Washington had announced the formation of a “domestic spy service” under the auspices of the FBI. The new department—meaning essentially a Big Brother “Secret State Police”—was given a mandate to “spy on people in America suspected of terrorism or having critical intelligence information, even if they are not suspected of committing a crime.” Significantly, this new FBI service is not accountable to the Department of Justice. It is controlled by the Directorate of National Intelligence headed by John Negroponte, who has the authority of ordering the arrest of “terror suspects”.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the 7/7 London attacks, Britain’s Home Office, was calling for a system of ID cards, as an “answer to terrorism”. Each and every British citizen and resident will be obliged to register personal information, which will go into a giant national database, along with their personal biometrics: “iris pattern of the eye”, fingerprints and “digitally recognizable facial features”. Similar procedures were being carried out in the European Union.

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War Criminals in High Office

The anti-terrorist legislation and the establishment of a Police State largely serve the interests of those who have committed extensive war crimes and who would otherwise have been indicted under national and international law.

In the wake of the London 7/7 attacks, war criminals continue to legitimately occupy positions of authority,which enable them to redefine the contours of the judicial system and the process of law enforcement. This process has provided them with a mandate to decide “who are the criminals”, when in fact they are the criminals. (Chapter XVI).

From New York and Washington on September 11 to Madrid in March 2004 and to London in July 2005, the terror attacks have been used as a pretext to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. People can be arbitrarily arrested under the antiterrorist legislation and detained for an indefinite period.More generally, throughout the Western World, citizens are being tagged and labeled, their emails, telephone conversations and faxes are monitored and archived. Thousands of closed circuit TV cameras, deployed in urban areas, are overseeing their movements. Detailed personal data is entered into giant Big Brother data banks. Once this cataloging has been completed, people will be locked into watertight compartments.

The witch-hunt is not only directed against presumed “terrorists” through ethnic profiling, the various human rights, affirmative action and antiwar cohorts are also the object of the antiterrorist legislation.

The National Security Doctrine

In 2005, the Pentagon released a major document entitled The National Defense Strategy of the United States of America (NDS), which broadly sketches Washington’s agenda for global military domination. While the NDS follows in the footsteps of the Administration’s “preemptive” war doctrine as outlined in the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), it goes much further in setting the contours of Washington’s global military agenda. (See Chapter XIX.)

Whereas the preemptive war doctrine envisages military action as a means of “self defense” against countries categorized as “hostile” to the US, the 2005 NDS goes one step further. It envisages the possibility of military intervention against “unstable countries” or “failed nations”, which do not visibly constitute a threat to the security of the US.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon had unleashed a major propaganda and public relations campaign with a view to upholding the use of nuclear weapons for the “Defense of the American Homeland” against terrorists and rogue enemies. The fact that the nuclear bomb is categorized by the Pentagon as “safe for civilians” to be used in major counter-terrorist activities borders on the absurd.

In 2005, US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) drew up “a contingency plan to be used in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack”. The plan includes air raids on Iran using both conventional as well as tactical nuclear weapons.

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America’s “War on Terrorism”

The first ten chapters,with some changes and updates, correspond to the first edition of the book published in 2002 under the title War and Globalization: The Truth behind September 11. The present expanded edition contains twelve new chapters, which are the result of research undertaken both prior as well as in the wake of the invasion of Iraq. (Parts III and IV.) The sequencing of the material in Parts III and IV corresponds to the historical evolution of the post 9/11 US military and national security agendas. My main objective has been to refute the official narrative and reveal—using detailed evidence and documentation—the true nature of America’s “war on terrorism”.

Part I includes four chapters on September 11, focusing on the history of Al Qaeda and its ties to the US intelligence apparatus. These chapters document how successive administrations have supported and sustained terrorist organizations with a view to destabilizing national societies and creating political instability.

Part II entitled War and Globalization centers on the strategic and economic interests underlying the “war on terrorism”.

Part III contains a detailed analysis of War Propaganda and the Disinformation Campaign, both prior and in the wake of the invasion of Iraq.

Part IV entitled The New World Order includes a review of the Bush administration’s preemptive war doctrine (Chapter XIX), a detailed analysis of the post-Taliban narcotics trade protected by US intelligence, and a review of the 9/11 Commission Report focusing specifically on “What Happened on the Planes on the Morning of 9/11”.

Chapter XX focuses on the system of terror alerts and their implications. Chapter XXI follows with an examination of the emergency procedures that could be used to usher in Martial Law leading to the suspension of Constitutional government. In this regard, the US Congress has already adopted procedures, which allow the Military to intervene directly in civilian police and judicial functions. In the case of a national emergency—e.g., in response to an alleged terror attack—there are clearly defined provisions, which could lead to the formation of a military government in America.

Finally, Chapter XXII focuses on the broad implications of the 7/7 London Bombs Attacks, which were followed by the adoption of sweeping Police State measures in Britain, the European Union and North America.

Writing this book has not been an easy undertaking. The material is highly sensitive. The results of this analysis, which digs beneath the gilded surface of US foreign policy, are both troublesome and disturbing. The conclusions are difficult to accept because they point to the criminalization of the upper echelons of the State. They also confirm the complicity of the corporate media in upholding the legitimacy of the Administration’s war agenda and camouflaging US sponsored war crimes.

The World is at an important historical crossroads. The US has embarked on a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity. As we go to press, the Bush Administration has hinted in no uncertain terms that Iran is the next target of the “war on terrorism”.

Military action against Iran would directly involve Israel’s participation, which in turn is likely to trigger a broader war throughout the Middle East, not to mention an implosion in the Palestinian occupied territories.

I have attempted to the best of my abilities to provide evidence and detailed documentation of an extremely complex political process.

The livelihood of millions of people throughout the World is at stake. It is my sincere hope that the truth will prevail and that the understanding provided in this detailed study will serve the cause of World peace. This objective, however, can only be reached by revealing the falsehoods behind America’s “War on Terrorism” and questioning the legitimacy of the main political and military actors responsible for extensive war crimes.

I am indebted to many people, who in the course of my work have supported my endeavors and have provided useful research insights. The readers of the Global Research website at www.globalresearch.ca have been a source of continuous inspiration and encouragement.

Michel Chossudovsky, August 2005

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research. He is the author of eleven books including The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003), America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005), The Global Economic Crisis, The Great Depression of the Twenty-first Century (2009) (Editor), Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011), The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity (2015). He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  His writings have been published in more than twenty languages. In 2014, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit of the Republic of Serbia for his writings on NATO’s war of aggression against Yugoslavia.

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Germany’s failure to disclose novichoking medical evidence it claims about Alexey Navalny’s condition strongly indicates there is none.

Notably his August 20 illness happened ahead of Russian regional and local elections at 83 locations, scheduled for September 11 – 13.

On September 9, Russian Central Election Commission (CEC) chairwoman Ella Pamfilova said the following:

“I can now report with confidence…on the complete readiness of Russia’s electoral system for the single (Unified Election Day) voting…on September 13 and on the preceding days of September 11 and 12” for early voting.

Tass reported that elections “will take place at 83 Russian entities, with over 78,000 mandates involved.”

Tatarstan, Kursk, Penza and Yaroslavl regions will hold lower house State Duma elections.

Eleven regions will elect local legislators, 18 regions to hold elections for governors, 22 regions to elect municipal representatives, and “26 entities will vote on local self-governance bodies’ membership.”

“Heads of the Nenets Autonomous Region and the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area will be elected by the deputies of local legislative assemblies,” Tass explained.

In July, Russia’s upper house Federation Council and lower house State Duma passed legislation amending election laws to permit voting for three days.

The new measure doesn’t affect the procedure for absentee ballot voting that remains unchanged.

In late August, Tass reported that “3,590 people (took) part in the test run of the online voting procedure that will be used during the Russian State Duma (lower house) election in the Yaroslavl and Kursk regions planned for September.”

On July 3, Tass said “77.92% of (Russian) voters supported” new election procedures for voting on constitutional amendments.

Last March, CEC head Pamfilova said voting on constitutional amendments would not be combined with September elections because “these are two completely different campaigns, regulated by different laws.”

Earlier, spokesman for the Federal National Guard Troops Service (FNGTS) Valery Bribakin explained the following on how public order and security would be maintained for upcoming regional and local elections, saying:

“Almost 6,500 response units of the FNGTS extra-departmental guards with a total number of more than 13,000 employees will be involved.”

“The response units’ patrol routes will be shifted closer to event venues on the single voting day, which will considerably shorten the time of the units’ arrival.”

“The territorial bodies of the Federal National Guard Troops Service will also additionally involve more than 7,000 employees of the extra-departmental service, most of whom will ensure security in the areas of election polls in cooperation with law enforcement officers.”

“Security will be fully provided in cooperation with the law enforcement authorities.”

Ahead of Russia’s March 2018 presidential election, Radio Sputnik interviewed geopolitical analyst Alex Christoforou.

He noted the suspicious timing of Britain’s claim about what happened to Sergey and Yulia Skripal, falsely accusing Russia of poisoning them with a novichok nerve agent, presenting no corroborating evidence because there was none.

Was the incident an attempt to diminish support for Putin in an election he was virtually certain to win overwhelmingly?

“Putin will win the election, and we will see what happens after that,” said Christoforou, separately adding:

He’s “one of the few statesmen, one of the few measured leaders who works in a very measured and calculated diplomatic way to resolve a lot of issues that are on the world stage, as opposed to a lot of flamboyant and outrageous rhetoric we’re hearing from some of the other major powers in the West.”

The Skripals incident had no noticeable effect on Putin’s reelection bid, winning overwhelmingly by a near-77% majority.

Turnout was strong at 67.4%. Putin’s better than expected victory margin and high turnout perhaps was in response to popular displeasure over false UK-led Western accusations of what happened to the Skripals.

Post-election, Putin explained if anyone was exposed to military-grade nerve agent, they “would have died on the spot,” adding:

“Russia does not possess such agents. We have destroyed all our chemical arsenals under control of international observers.”

Blaming Russia for the Skripal incident is “utter nonsense,” he stressed. No one “in Russia would allow such a stunt (especially) ahead of presidential elections and the World Cup. It’s unthinkable.”

On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal headlined: “With Navalny Sidelined, Russia’s Opposition Seeks to Deal a Blow to Putin,” saying:

“Local (Russian) elections could show whether (what happened to) Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny has cowed the opposition or energized it.”

While nothing is certain pre-election, perhaps 2018 results are indicative of how things will turn out on Russia’s September 13 Unified Election Day.

As for Moscow’s relations with the US-dominated West, things continue to deteriorate, the Navalny incident the latest example.

Support by Britain, France, Germany and the EU for preserving the JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran over strong US opposition is a notable exception to the rule.

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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.

My first contribution to Black Agenda Report was “Madame President? No, Madame Prisoner,” a profile of Rwandan political prisoner Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza published in January 2014. Late Black Agenda Report Editor Bruce A. Dixon had asked me to write it after following my conversations with Victoire and other Rwandan dissidents for some years. Those conversations began in January 2010, when I looked into why no viable challengers to incumbent Rwandan President Paul Kagame were being allowed into that year’s presidential election. Victoire had just returned from Netherlands to Rwanda to stand as a candidate, but she had almost immediately been placed under house arrest. Why? Because upon arriving in Rwanda’s capital, where she was met by Rwandan press and fellow dissidents, she went straight to the genocide memorial and made this statement:

“We totally agree and are conscious that there has been a genocide against Tutsis and we seriously and continuously advocate that all those who were responsible be brought before the courts of justice. We also agree that there have been other serious crimes against humanity and war crimes [against Hutus]; those who committed them have to bear the legal consequences. We must all the time remember those tragedies, make sure they don’t get ever repeated. We also need to ensure that people’s lives are effectively and strongly protected by laws.”

I quoted Victoire in “Rwanda’s 1994 Genocide and 2010 Election,” one of the first essays I wrote about what I was beginning to understand, and soon heard from International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR) defense attorneys and scholars including the late Edward S. Herman, co-author, with David Peterson, of “The Politics of Genocide,” and “Enduring Lies: Rwanda and the Propaganda System, 20 Years On.” I spoke to Ed Herman six years later for “Rwanda, Burundi and Wars ‘To Stop the Next Rwanda,’” a Project Censored broadcast on KPFA and other Pacifica Radio stations.

Rwanda 2010 and beyond

Victoire went to prison for eight years, beginning in 2010, for “genocide ideology,” which means voicing a more complex genocide history than that legally codified in Rwanda. The legally codified history is that ethnic Hutus massacred up to a million or more Tutsis during the 100 days beginning on April 7, 1994, which ended when General Paul Kagame and the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) “stopped the genocide.” While in prison Victoire wrote “Between Four Walls of the 1930 prison: Memoirs of a Rwandan Prisoner of Conscience.”

Bernard Ntaganda, a Rwandan lawyer who also attempted to run against Kagame in 2010, went to prison for four years. Frank Habineza, the 2010 candidate of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, fled to Sweden after the party’s vice president was found dead by the banks of a river, with his head cut off but still in possession of his wallet and the keys to his car, which remained nearby. (Habineza later returned and became a member of Rwanda’s parliament.) Rwandan journalists went to prison, were shot dead, or fled the country and the continent.

In July 2010, prominent Tanzanian law professor and ICTR defense attorney Jwami Mwaikusa was assassinated in Dar Es Salaam, and ICTR defense attorney Peter Erlinder was arrested and charged with “genocide ideology” from mid-May to mid-June 2010, while in Rwanda to defend Victoire in court.

(Erlinder was released after international outcry motivated then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to secure his “unconditional medical release.” She did not respond to his legal arguments at the ICTR or in defense of Victoire, or to his criticism of war crimes committed by Kagame, a longstanding Clinton ally.)

Internationally known Rwandan gospel singer Kizito Mihigo joined Victoire in prison from 2014 to 2018 for recording a gospel song in which he acknowledged the genocide of Hutus as well as Tutsis during the Rwandan Civil War and its final 100 days. Like Victoire, he was released but forbidden to leave Rwanda, and in February 2020 he was arrested while trying to cross the country’s southern border into Burundi. Kizito died several days later in police custody and few believed the police report that he had committed suicide.

In 2014, the BBC produced and aired the documentary “Rwanda’s Untold Story,” which so infuriated the Rwandan President and his ruling Tutsi elite that they temporarily banned BBC Gahuza, the network’s Kinyarwanda language radio broadcast in Rwanda, and organized a list of 38 scholars and journalists to sign a statement condemning the documentary’s “revisionism.”

In Praise of Blood, Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front

In 2018, Judi Rever’s groundbreaking book “In Praise of Blood: Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front” chronicled and evidenced the crimes of Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Army, which became the national Rwandan Defense Force (RDF), in both Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Kagame’s main excuse for invading DRC has always been that he was compelled to hunt down Hutus who had killed Tutsis then fled to Congo and continued to threaten Rwanda, but Rever’s book, and the UN Mapping Report on Human Rights Abuse in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 1993-2003, document the RDF’s massacre of innocent civilians, both Rwandan refugees and Congolese.

Rusesabagina in handcuffs, Dr. Mukwege under threat

In 2010, Kagame accused Paul Rusesabagina, author of the book which became the movie “Hotel Rwanda,” of “harboring the double genocide theory.” Last week Rwandan authorities seized Rusesabagina in the UAE and flew him to Kigali in handcuffs, where they paraded him before the press and charged him with terrorism.

Dr. Denis Mukwege, the Nobel Prize winning gynecological surgeon who founded Panzi Hospital to treat victims of the sexual violence used as a weapon in DRC’s resource wars, is receiving death threats for identifying Rwanda as the primary occupier and aggressor in DRC and calling for an international tribunal to prosecute the crimes evidenced in the UN Mapping Report.

Recognize Hutu Genocide

This is just a short list of moments in the ongoing struggle over the truth of the Rwandan Genocide, and the 25 years of hell that ensued when Kagame’s army followed Rwandan refugees into the DRC and remained there to occupy and plunder. I compiled it in order to encourage BAR readers to visit the new “Hutu Genocide” website at hutugenocide.org, which calls for recognition of genocide committed against Hutu populations in Rwanda and DRC. A good entry point there is the YouTube video “A mapping of crimes in the book ‘In Praise of Blood, the Crimes of the RPF by Judi Rever’,” which begins with the statement, “This video is not meant to deny, minimize, or conceal in any way the genocide against Tutsis that took place in Rwanda in 1994.” Judi Rever says the same, as does Victoire Ingabire, and as do I.

We also agree that neither Rwandans nor Congolese will see peace until the whole truth is told.

Why the silence in the world’s upper diplomatic, governmental, and global NGO circles, including the United Nations? Because Rwanda’s violent occupation of DRC and its service as an entrepôt for stolen Congolese resources has worked out well for powerful interests in the US and elsewhere in the industrialized world, and the truth would embarrass them.

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Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire  Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and   Peace Prize  for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. Please support her work on Patreon.  She can be reached at ann-at-anngarrison.com. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The third day of extradition proceedings against Julian Assange at the Old Bailey resumed on the point of politics.  Assange as a figure of political beliefs; Assange as a target of the Trump administration precisely for having them.  The man sketching the portrait was Paul Rogers, Emeritus Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University.   

It is no mean feat trying to pin down Assange’s political system.  Leftward, rightward, with resistance to the centre?  Lashings of libertarianism; heavy doses of anti-war and holding the powerful to account?  Such figures tend to be sui generis.  In his submitted statement to the court, Rogers suggests a uniform theme. 

“The political objective of seeking to achieve greater transparency in the workings of governments is clearly both the motivation and the modus operandi of Mr Assange and the organisation WikiLeaks.”

On the stand, Rogers described the Assange method of influence and disruption: the release of the war logs, their influence on public opinion regarding the US imperium’s engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, the revelations of 15,000 unaccounted civilian casualties.  The butcher’s bill of the imperium, in other words, was laid bare by the WikiLeaks’ releases.

For Rogers, this approach jarred with various US administrations, but none more so than that of Trump’s.  Assange’s entire approach and “what he stands for represents a threat to normal political endeavour.” 

James Lewis QC for the prosecution made his effort to narrow, clip and sharpen the focus on Assange, questioning the expanse of political belief being attributed by Rogers.  At times, the prosecution seemed suspended in a time capsule, suggesting, for instance, that political opinions were only applicable to governments and leaders.  Rogers preferred a more complex picture: the evolving nature of what political opinion might constitute (for instance, it could include “transnational elites” and attitudes towards corporations).  The issue of publishing an item or not could also constitute a form of political opinion. 

Lewis then went on the attack, grumpy at the length of Rogers’ responses and suggesting that his testimony was biased towards the defence.  Why had he omitted the views of such individuals as US assistant attorney Gordon Kromberg, who argued that prosecuting Assange had been a criminal rather than political matter?  Again, Rogers took preferred the broad approach.  Prosecutors of a certain rank tend to mimic the views of their superiors – that is their due.  What mattered were those higher-ups who had initiated a change in policy regarding WikiLeaks to instigate a “politically motivated prosecution”.  This could be demonstrated with some plausibility by considering the wider political context of different administrations.  The Obama administration had set its heart on not prosecuting Assange; those in the Trump administration had warmed to the idea. 

Not quite getting his pound of flesh, Lewis moved on to targeting the reasons why the Obama administration had gone cold on prosecuting Assange.  Like many black letter lawyers on this point, the issue of Assange being confined in the Ecuadorean embassy has them in knots.  “What would be the point [of arresting Assange] if he’s hiding in the embassy?” posed Lewis.  Rogers, rather sensibly, suggested that this would constitute a pressuring move.  “It would have made very good sense to bring it at that time, to show a standing attempt to bring Mr Assange to justice.”  Lewis had also made a specious point.  As investigative journalist Stefania Maurizi points out, individuals such as Edward Snowden have been duly charged despite fleeing the jurisdiction.  Practical custody was hardly a necessary precondition to getting that paperwork ready.

Lewis proceeded to till the same ground as that covered in the testimony of Mark Feldstein, attempting to push the suggestion that the case against Assange might yield future charges, at least as believed by himself and his defence team.  Rogers offered similar parrying: the Trump administration’s approach to Assange was distinct, its attitudes conveyed through the hostile remarks of former CIA director Mike Pompeo and the then hungry Attorney General Jeff Sessions.  A difference in approach might be gathered from President Barack Obama’s commutation of Chelsea Manning’s sentence.  This was Trump’s possible counter. 

Post-lunch interest then turned to Trevor Timm, Director of Freedom of the Press Foundation.  As he points out in the submitted statement, “The decision to indict Julian Assange on allegations of a ‘conspiracy’ between a publisher and his source or potential sources, and for the publication of truthful information, encroaches on fundamental freedoms.”  WikiLeaks was a pioneer in secure submission systems such as SecureDrop, one that had been emulated by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and Al Jazeera.   

It was incumbent upon journalists that they “develop relationships with their sources” and attempts to punish publishing activity arising from the use of “leaked documents of public importance” would face First Amendment difficulties.

The Trump administration, however, had proved bolder than its predecessors.  The Espionage Act had been previously floated at such journalists as James Bamford, Ben Bradlee, Seymour Hersh and Neil Sheehan.  It took Assange’s arrest and charging in 2019 to break with tradition.

The indictment, particularly in alleging that Assange had engaged in a conspiracy with Chelsea Manning to crack a military computer passport for reasons of remaining anonymous, would criminalise a common news practice and the whole pursuit of national security journalism.  Were the prosecution permitted “to go forward, dozens of reporters at the New York Times, Washington Post and elsewhere would also be in danger.”

Lewis took umbrage at Timm’s claim, outlined in his statement, that Trump had engaged in an enthusiastic “war on journalism”.  The FPF director was unsparing, suggesting that the indictment of the WikiLeaks publisher was part of this war, “and it is no exaggeration to say the First Amendment itself is at risk.”  To Lewis, Timm replied with a salient reminder that Trump had tweeted 2,200 times about the press, describing them at stages as the “enemy of the people”.  It was “very telling that Trump’s is the first one to try to bring a case like this since the Nixon administration.” 

The prosecution preferred returning to that exhausted nag of an idea: that Assange could not be seen as a journalist.  A form of fallacious logic came into play: the US Department of Justice had no interest in prosecuting journalists and would be breaching their own prosecutorial guidelines in doing so; Assange was not a journalist, therefore showing appropriate discrimination.   

Timm had an appropriate response to this nonsensical approach.  “In the US, the First Amendment protects everyone. Whether you consider Assange a journalist doesn’t matter; he was engaging in journalistic activity.”  And if the DOJ was in breach of federal rules, it should follow that they be held accountable.   

Timm also refused to ingest the prosecution line that the indictment was sufficiently narrow to only cover the publication of documents that had revealed the names of informants working for the US.  Other charges in the indictment focused on criminalising the act of possessing the documents.  That every claim would implicate journalists across the spectrum, as would “the mere thought of obtaining these documents”.  A sinister, dangerous implication. 

The prosecution was also caught up in what a “responsible journalist” might do.  While the issue of unnecessarily publishing the name of a third party thereby endangering that person might raise matters of ethical responsibility, that, suggested Timm, was a separate question “from what is illegal or legal conduct.”  A previous attempt to criminalise publishing the name of a US intelligence source had been made, by Senator Joseph Lieberman among others, in 2010 as a direct response to the WikiLeaks disclosures.  But the Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination (SHIELD) Act never became law.   

As for whether WikiLeaks had behaved appropriately or not in publishing the entire tranche of uncensored US diplomatic cables, despite it not being responsible for leaking the password to the relevant encrypted file containing the documents, Timm was firm.  Governments should not have a hand in making such editorial judgments; the question centred on illegality, something which WikiLeaks could not be accused of.

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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 “peace deal” between the UAE and Israel announced last month cannot be interpreted solely through the lens of normalisation; it is much more than that. Normalisation between the two countries had been well underway for decades.  

What occurred on 13 August was merely an official announcement of this process. The absurdity of calling it a “peace deal” should not be overlooked; there was no war between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi. Rather, we are being confronted by a strategic alliance between these two countries – one that is aiming to shift the region’s geopolitics.

The paradox is that this alliance did not occur between two equal parties with the same political power and influence. Rather, it is an alliance between a slave, the UAE, and Israel, the master.

While the deal achieves some goals for the UAE, such as buying US F-35 fighter jets and securing the Israel lobby’s support in Washington to help conceal its crimes in Yemen, Libya, Egypt and other arenas, it gives Israel unprecedented gains.

Israel will use its agreement with the UAE to achieve several political, strategic and economic goals, of which it could otherwise never have dreamed. The alliance represents a psychological and political breakthrough in the decades-old wall of the formal Arab boycott of Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump’s adviser, Jared Kushner, are thus trying to exploit the momentum of the deal to pressure other Arab countries to normalise relations with Israel, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Sudan and Morocco. There has been much speculation about Bahrain in particular, especially after Kushner’s recent visit to Manama.

Israel will use its relations with Abu Dhabi to extend its map of influence and security to the Gulf region.

The deal turns the Gulf into an Israeli sphere of influence, especially if Oman, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia follow in the UAE’s footsteps. In light of Israel’s military and intelligence superiority, all Gulf countries will be under Israeli hegemony.

Threat to Iran

Through its presence in the Gulf, Israel will be on Iran’s western border, posing an existential threat to Tehran. Iran views normalisation between Israel and the Arab Gulf countries as a conspiracy with great risks for the region.

The UAE’s territories could be used to spy on Iran, while Israel could also infiltrate Iranian society by exploiting contacts with the Iranian community in the Emirates.

The Israel-UAE agreement also provides an opportunity for the UAE to become a large market for Israeli products, which could then spread to the rest of the Arab Gulf countries, particularly Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. According to the Financial Times, several Israeli companies were reportedly already involved in trade and investment in Abu Dhabi under the auspices of European firms, but now, they can operate openly.

Meanwhile, the Emirati investment fund Mubadala, which has capital worth about $230bn, is reportedly one of the most important investors in the Israeli technology sector. It is also expected that Abu Dhabi’s $700bn sovereign wealth fund will contribute to investments in Israel.

Overall, Israel’s most significant gain from this agreement relates to infiltrating Arab populations and changing the minds of future generations, so that they accept peace with Israel – even without securing the rights of the Palestinian people. And unlike Israel’s cold peace with Egypt and Jordan, peace with the UAE will be an intimate one.

Shifting perceptions

There appears to be a generation of Emiratis who accept normalisation with Israel and promote it openly on social media, suggesting a shift in the public perception of the Israeli occupation.

Those who follow various Emirati youth on Twitter would have seen signs of a brainwashing operation over the past few years, aiming to justify the UAE’s rapprochement with Israel, despite its racist and bloody history with Arab peoples.

In other words, we are not facing an alliance between two states, but rather an Israeli project for hegemony and influence in the region with Emirati funding and promotion, in return for some temporary gains for Abu Dhabi.

It is an illusion for the UAE to believe that this alliance will make it an important regional state, or for Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed to hail himself as the “new leader of the Middle East”, as Kushner described him in a statement upon his arrival in Abu Dhabi airport with the Israeli delegation that visited the UAE last week.

Opinion polls in the Arab world will reveal bin Zayed and his brothers to be nothing but puppets in the hands of Israel, which will toss them away after it has achieved its goals.

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Khalil al-Anani is a Senior Fellow at the Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies in Washington DC. He is also an associate professor of political science at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. You can follow him on Twitter: @Khalilalanani.

Ed Curtin…. is a revolutionary genius, a profound thinker – who sees truth where others close their eyes. “Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies” is a visionary analysis of the falsehoods we experience on a daily basis way beyond the borders of the United States.

“In a dark time, the eye begins to see” – is the philosophical underpinning of this marvelous book. Ed dissects with a sharp daring scalpel of courage the coats of hypocrisy and lies until he unmasks the tumor of deception that pervades every layer of our society. Through a universal propaganda machine, fraud permeates our lives and brains. We have become gullible, confused and start believing wrong is right and war is peace.

Ed, like Albert Camus, is fighting a constant plague, a never-ending Sisyphusian rebellion towards a horizon of freedom. Ed skillfully weaves through the shams, until we begin seeing the light. As so lucidly expressed by Leonard Cohen, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”.

Ed leaves us with a light of hope, eviscerating the scare of darkness, and is opening our eyes.

A Masterpiece.

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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 others. 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.

Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies

Author: Edward Curtin

ISBN: 9781949762266

Published: 2020

Options: EBOOK – Epub and Kindle, paper, PDF

Click here to order.

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The Baltic States have become the scene of NATO military actions especially aimed at provoking Russia and Belarus.

At the end of September, this year’s largest military exercise “Sword 2020” will take place in Latvia.

Approximately 1000 Vidzeme Brigade bodyguards and soldiers, representatives from the Lithuanian Armed Forces Volunteer Defense Forces and the NATO Extended Presence Battle Group will take part in the training. They will carry out the tasks over a wide area, covering seven counties. The urban environment, forests and meadows will become a battlefield. Outside the landfills, ammunition and combat simulations will be used. Collective training will train operations in hybrid threats, as well as improve command management capabilities.

In addition, several other NATO military exercises will take place in the Baltic States during this period.

Operation Steadfast Pyramid 20 – begun in Latvia will continue through September 11, NATO explaining:

“An Exercise Study focused on further developing the abilities of commanders and senior staff to plan and conduct operations through the application of operational art in decision making based on the ACO Comprehensive Operations Planning Directive (COPD) and utilizing a complex, contemporary scenario.”

Operation Steadfast Pinnacle 20 is scheduled for Latvia from September 13-18, explaining:

“An Exercise Study focused on further developing the abilities of commanders and senior staff to plan and conduct operations through the application of operational art in decision making based on the ACO (Allied Command Operations) Comprehensive Operations Planning Directive (COPD) and utilizing a complex, contemporary scenario.”

Operation Ramstein Guard 10 20 is scheduled for Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania from September 20-24.

“The NATO Electronic Warfare Force Integration Program is a means to exercise the NATO designated regional elements of NATO’s Integrated Air and Missile Defence System conducted through the CAOCs (Combined Air Operation Center) while also including some national systems and assets. It is designed to train Air Command Ramstein and subordinate units on the reporting/coordination requirements while exposing them to a wide variety of EW (electronic warfare) tactics and techniques in a controlled environment,” NATO officials said.

From September 1 to 10, joint war games by an infantry brigade of the Baltic Armed Forces and the 41st Field Artillery Brigade of the U.S. Army will take place in Estonia. This is the first live firing exercise by U.S. artillery outside their permanent bases in Europe.

In a statement the Russian embassy in Washington said it considers the use of multiple launch rocket systems by U.S. armed forces during the exercises in Estonia to be provocative and extremely dangerous for regional stability,

“Russia has repeatedly proposed to the United States and its allies to limit training activities and to divert the exercise zones from the Russia-NATO contact line,” the text reads. “Why do this demonstrative saber-rattling? What signal do the NATO members want to send us? Who is actually escalating tensions in Europe? And this is all happening in the context of an aggravated political situation in that region of Europe [in Belarus].”

“A rhetorical question is – how would the Americans react in the event of such shooting by our military at the U.S. border?” the embassy added.

The objective, according to the organizers of the exercises, is to test NATO’s defense capabilities against possible attacks on European soil. However, despite the official narrative, the provocative nature of the tests is truly clear.

It is obvious that military tensions have erupted in the Baltic States. Recently NATO planes that would be used in the exercises were intercepted unexpectedly by Russian fighters while flying over the border area.

It is known that Aleksandr Lukashenko accused the U.S.-led West of attempting to destabilize the country, including by deploying NATO forces close to its borders. In addition, Lukashenko put his troops on high alert and started his own military exercises, understanding NATO’s maneuvers as a provocative and threatening measure, not only against Russia, but also Belarus.

Any military provocations along Poland-Lithuania-Belarus borders with could lead to an uncontrollable escalation from all sides.

Exercises like the above go on at all times near the borders of nations on the U.S. target list for regime change.

From now through year end 2020 U.S.-led NATO military exercises will be held in Turkey, France, the UK, Kosovo, the Mediterranean Sea, Spain, Lithuania, Estonia, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Bosnia Herzegovina, Serbia, Poland and Norway.

It’s obvious that instead of prioritizing cooperative relations with the world community, NATO (U.S.) is preparing for a serious military conflict.

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Jonas Dringelis is a political journalist.

Image is from the author

In March, soon after arriving aboard the Polarstern, a German icebreaker frozen into Arctic sea ice, Jennifer Hutchings watched as ice broke up around the ship, weeks earlier than expected. Even as scientists on the research cruise scrambled to keep field instruments from plunging into the ocean, Hutchings, who studies ice deformation at Oregon State University, Corvallis, couldn’t suppress a thrill at seeing the crack up, as if she had spotted a rare bird. “I got to observe firsthand what I studied,” she says.

Arctic sea ice is itself an endangered species. Next month its extent will reach its annual minimum, which is poised to be among the lowest on record. The trend is clear: Summer ice covers half the area it did in the 1980s, and because it is thinner, its volume is down 75%. With the Arctic warming three times faster than the global average, most scientists grimly acknowledge the inevitability of ice-free summers, perhaps as soon as 2035. “It’s definitely a when, not an if,” says Alek Petty, a polar scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Now, he and others are learning that a warming atmosphere is far from the only factor speeding up the ice loss. Strengthening currents and waves are pulverizing the ice. And a study published last week suggests deep heat in the Arctic Ocean has risen and is now melting the ice from below.

Ice has kept its grip on the Arctic with the help of an unusual temperature inversion in the underlying waters. Unlike the Atlantic or Pacific oceans, the Arctic gets warmer as it gets deeper. Bitter winters and chilly, buoyant freshwater from Eurasian rivers cool its surface layers, which helps preserve the underside of the ice. But at greater depths sits a warm blob of salty Atlantic water, thought to be safely separated from the sea ice.

Read complet Sciencemag,org  article

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Paul Voosen is a staff writer who covers Earth and planetary science.

Featured image: The Polarstern, released too early from a floe, returned to the North Pole in August amid thin ice. (by STEFFEN GRAUPNER)

The delicate power balance in the East Mediterranean is changing dramatically and quickly as states begin to cooperate to contain and contract Turkish ambitions in the region. Turkey’s drive to secure and control gas and oil supplies has seen its military involve in Iraq, Syria and Libya, while also threatening war with Greece and Cyprus to annex their rights to energy exploration in the East Mediterranean. Among all this, Ankara also continues its threats against Israel and denounces the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

On the face of such aggression, Mossad considers Turkey to be a bigger threat to Israel than Iran. This also comes as Israel signed a peace treaty with the UAE, one of the biggest critics of Turkey who is not only financing elements of the Syrian Army, but is also militarily and financially supporting the Libyan National Army against jihadists loyal to the Turkish-backed Government of National Accords in Tripoli. Greece, Cyprus and Egypt have strong military relations and jointly oppose Turkish actions in Libya and the wider East Mediterranean region, while Greece, Cyprus and Israel also enjoy such relations.

However, as war rhetoric emanates from Ankara against so-called NATO-ally Greece, France has stepped up its support for the latter. This has been unexpected support as NATO, the EU and their major countries traditionally appease Turkish aggression against Greece and Cyprus. France has firmly committed its military to defend Greece in case of a Turkish attack. Effectively, we are at the cusp of an inter-NATO war in the East Mediterranean.

With Turkey creating problems on NATO’s southern flank, it would be easy for Moscow to take a step back and watch the Alliance continue its internal conflicts. However, Russia heavily depends on access to the Mediterranean via the Turkish-controlled Bosporus and Dardanelle Straits from the Black Sea which has always been an important economic and military geostrategic point for Russia. Any potential war between Greece and Turkey will inevitably see the Greek Navy blockade the Dardanelles, and therefore obstruct Russia’s quick access to the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal.

Although Russia has vocally said that international law must be implemented in the East Mediterranean, which favors Greece and Cyprus, Moscow has been careful not to antagonize the Turks either. However, to secure Russia’s interests in the region, the Kremlin might find itself forced to be actively involved in this inter-NATO hostility to ensure war does not breakout and hinder their access to the Mediterranean via the Black Sea.

Yesterday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was in Cyprus, where he emphasized the strong historic ties between Cyprus and Russia. It also comes as the Deputy Foreign Minister of Greece said that Athens wants to strengthen its ties with Moscow that were weakened by the previous government who were ousted in last year’s elections. These developments in Nicosia and Athens with Moscow appear as the Russian Foreign Ministry said that Greece is Russia’s “traditional partner” in Europe only days ago.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and French President Emmanuel Macron will meet in Corsica tomorrow to create a “joint security doctrine” between their two countries. Macron is serious about creating such a doctrine as the Charles de Gaulle nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the only one of its kind built in Europe, is sailing to the Greek continental shelf that Turkey considers its own. The de Gaulle not only carries up to 30 aircraft, but it can also transport 800 soldiers and 500 tonnes of ammunition. This is a serious challenge against the Turkish fleet that has been illegally escorting the Oruç Reis research vessel for over a month in search of gas and oil deposits in Greece’s continental shelf. An aircraft carrier is sailing against a fellow NATO member that has been threatening war with another NATO member.

Macron has already twice described NATO as “brain dead,” and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg still displays disinterest in diffusing the Greek-Turkish hostilities.

At the same time, Moscow sold Turkey the S-400 missile defense system, which not only strengthened their relations, but also created discord in NATO, Russia still has deep differences with Ankara. This is not only over Syria and Libya, but also in Crimea as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan increases his denunciations of Russia’s alleged persecution of Crimean Tartars. There is little actual substance between a Russian-Turkish geostrategic partnership that is more often than not in contradiction with each other’s ambitions.

Access through the Turkish-controlled straits is guaranteed by the 1936 Montreux Convention, giving Moscow some leverage in its relations with Turkey. If war broke out though, these straits would trap Russian shipping in the Black Sea. Russia has emphasized that the East Mediterranean issue must be resolved diplomatically and with international law. Turkey is one of 15 countries in the whole world who has not signed and ratified the United Nations Charter Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as it would favor Greece’s claims in the oil and gas rich deposits in the Each Mediterranean. In this context, if Moscow was true to its word that it supports international law, this would automatically put it on side with Greece as Russia has no interest in escalating current hostilities into a war and temporarily lose access to a major trade route.

As Macron pushes for a Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok, Russia could very well establish strong ties with France by cooperating in the East Mediterranean. This would put Russia in a security nexus that includes Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, Israel and the UAE, which is beginning to form a powerful bloc in the East Mediterranean. Depending on how Russia chooses to navigate through the current Greco-Turkish crisis could depend on how much Russian influence can be enhanced or weakened in light of the rapidly changing power balance in the region.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

“Two well-known and highly respected mainstream economists, Carmen Reinhart, a chief economist for the World Bank, and Vincent Reinhart, chief economist for Morgan Stanley bank, have recently published an article in the widely read capitalist source, Foreign Affairs, entitled ‘The Pandemic Depression’. Arguing primarily from a global perspective, the economists have concluded the US economy as of the 3rd quarter 2020 is not merely now experiencing a ‘great recession’ but now qualifies as another Great Depression.

There is another perspective, however, from which to also argue the US economy is in a bona fide Great Depression. It is from the perspective of the US Labor Market. For as of the late 3rd quarter 2020 the US economy suffers from an unemployment rate of no less than 25%–i.e. the same rate during the worst years and quarters of 1932-33, the depths of the 1930s Great Depression. Yet what we hear from the media and politicians of both wings of the Corporate Party of America—aka the Republicans and Democrats—is that unemployment is only 8.4%! That’s barely one-third of 25%.

Republicans and Trump have used the low-balled number of 8.4% as the main excuse to prevent the passage by Congress of any further economic stimulus. The Democrats have voiced no effective rebuttal since they too have accepted the 8.4%. So what is it? 8.4% and not even a great recession any longer? Or 25% and the possibility the ranks of unemployed are about to grow even further?

What follows is a debunking of the 8.4% unemployment rate and a quantitative explanation why that rate is 25%–as well as a statement of the forces that will likely result in an even further deterioration in the unemployment rate in the 2020-21 period ahead.

(25% & 40 Million Still Unemployed)

After the massive job implosion last spring, a weak rebound in jobs has occurred as the economy reopened over the early summer. But that jobs rebound has shown clear signs of faltering by late July and has clearly deteriorated by late August as unemployment claims have risen in recent weeks. Even more ominous, as that has near term condition of jobs has worsened, parallel indications show the emergence of a second, more permanent phase of job loss on the horizon. Since early March 2020, more than 55m workers have filed for, and received, unemployment insurance benefits.

According to official government data, as of the end of August, 29.5 million US workers were still getting benefits. That 29.5m reflects 18.4% workers clearly unemployed. But it’s also a subset of the total jobless, since millions haven’t been able to get benefits. So the actual number of jobless as of labor day 2020 is north of 29.5m and 18.4% Nevertheless, the statistic we hear is 8.4% unemployment rate and 13.4 million unemployed. What gives?

Some of the 55 million who received benefits at some point over the course of the last six months of the pandemic began returning to work starting in May. The number returning grew in June, but then began slowing once again in July and August as the rebound in jobs began to falter in July-August.

Others of the 55 million have simply exhausted their benefits. Many are still unemployed but no longer part of the 29.5 million that remain on benefits.

In addition, millions more workers since March have entered the labor force for the first time but they too have not been eligible to receive benefits due to lack of prior work history as first time job seekers—which precludes them from receiving unemployment benefits. Like those having exhausted their benefits, they too are unemployed but not part of the 29.5m still getting benefits at the end of August.

Joining the ranks of those unemployed but not receiving benefits are the millions who never got benefits because they simply gave up looking for work for various reasons and dropped out of the labor force—which puts them in a category in which, according to US labor department methodology, they aren’t counted as unemployed. They may be out of work, but given the oxymoronic way the US defines unemployed they aren’t considered unemployed for purposes of calculating the unemployment rate!

Finally, there are the additional millions more who never were able to get benefits since March even though they tried, due to various bureaucratic reasons.

Whether having exhausted their benefits, or first time entrants to the labor force not eligible for benefits, or whether they’ve dropped out of the labor force, or were denied benefits for bureaucratic reasons—all these groups are nonetheless part of the unemployed, even though they are not counted among the 29.5m still getting unemployment benefits.

In short, the 55m who got benefits at some point since March, and the 29.5m who are still getting them, are in both cases just a subset of a much larger number of jobless. There are millions more unemployed who never got on the unemployment benefits rolls since March and still not able to get benefits. There’s at least 10-15 million more jobless but without benefits. That means an unemployment rate, at minimum, of 25%–not the 8.4% peddled by the media apologists for Wall St. and the politicians of the Corporate Party of America (aka Trumpublicans and Democrat wings of that party).

Last April 2020 perhaps as much as 50% of the total US labor force of 160 million workers was jobless for approximately two months. As of today, Labor Day 2020, at minimum a fourth, or 25%, still remains so.

That 25% is about the same jobless rate as occurred during the worst years of the 1930s Great Depression, 1932-33!

Here’s why it’s 25% at minimum today, Labor Day, and quite possibly even more:

(Dissecting the Government’s Low-Ball U-3/8.4% Unemployment Rate)

Despite an actual 25% unemployment rate (i.e. 40 million still jobless) what we hear from the media and politicians is that the unemployment rate is only 8.4%. And thus the total unemployed is only 13.4 million. (When 8.4% is calculated on the 160 million total US labor force, the number unemployed comes to 13.4 million).

The official government statistic of 8.4% jobless is repeated ad nauseam in the media. It’s then picked up by politicians, commentators, and even progressives who should know better and parroted back to the public. But 8.4% is nonsense. A purposely low-balled, cherry-picked number for public consumption.  Here’s why:

To begin with, the 8.4% is the government’s official U-3 unemployment rate. The problem with U-3, however, is that it represents only full time workers who became unemployed. But there are at least 50 million workers in the US economy who are not ‘full time’, but part time, discouraged and what the government calls the ‘missing labor force’. The government adds these groups to its U-3 and 8.4%. That raises the unemployment rate in August to 14.2%–not 8.4%. And that translates to a total unemployed of 22.7 million—not 13.4 million.

The 14.2%/22.7 million numbers are carefully avoided in media reporting. One almost never hears the 14.2% and virtually always only the 8.4%, regardless that both are official government statistics.

But even that 14.2%/22.7m is grossly under-estimating the total unemployed. Remember that other government statistic, i.e. those receiving unemployment benefits? Workers receiving benefits as of late August was 29.5 million. And that represents a 18.4% jobless rate. Obviously, if a worker is getting benefits, he/she must be unemployed, right? But you’ll hear 29.5 million and 18.4% in the media even less than the 14.2% and 22.7 million.

In the case of the 29.5 million, moreover, we have another example of ‘low-balling’ and cherry-picking a statistic –not unlike cherry-picking the U-3 stat instead of the U-6. The media reports the number of workers getting benefits at only 16 or 17 million, not 29.5 million!

But here’s what they don’t explain when citing only 16-17 million getting benefits: That number accounts only for workers receiving unemployment benefits under the traditional State Unemployment Benefits system. The 16-17 million excludes independent contract workers, gig, freelance, and others getting benefits under the supplemental Pandemic Unemployment Insurance (PUC) program created last March as part of the Cares Act. In other words, there’s two unemployment benefits systems and the media typically chooses to report only the one when indicating workers getting benefits. There’s the traditional State Unemployment Benefits system and the new Supplemental PUC system that for the first time ever has provided benefits for the 50m non-traditional workers who were before March never eligible for benefits but are now and will continue to be eligible at least through December 2020 when that PUC system expires. Once again, it’s media cherry-picking and number low-balling time.

The State system and the PUC system together comprise the 29.5 million workers still getting unemployment benefits. 29.5m receiving benefits is certainly more than 22.7m (U-6) and even more so than 13.4m. It’s not that the government job statistics consciously lie (although in some cases they come quite close). It’s just that the government produces low ball numbers for the media to pick up, which they do and pound away at. And then commentators, politicians, business sources play their role of spreading the low ball numbers and conveniently ignoring other data.

How then did the US economy get to 29.5 million and 18.4%? Here’s the trajectory: In April more than 6 million workers filed for benefits every week for two weeks, followed by 3-5 million more for several more weeks thereafter! The weekly new benefits filing rate declined as the economy began to reopen in May. However, after May new State unemployment benefit claims still averaged 1 to 2 million every week through July; In addition, the number of PUC initial benefit claims per week also exceeded 1 million a week, every week, through July as well.

The combined totals of the two programs—State and PUC— thus never fell below 2 million initial filings a week throughout the period of the reopening of the economy, from May through July. It has also remained a combined more than 1.5m/week throughout August. That’s 6 million new unemployment filing claims—i.e. 6 million newly unemployed—in just the last month of August. Bringing the total on unemployment benefits to the 29.5 million.

But wait! The 29.5m represents only unemployed workers who were able to get benefits. There’s many more workers who became jobless but were unable to successfully get benefits; or who gave up even trying in the first place and simply dropped out of the labor force altogether. Who are they? And how great are their numbers?

Their numbers are well north of even the 29.5 million and 18.4% unemployment rate. The true total jobless includes their numbers plus the 29.5 million.

For the 29.5m receiving benefits as of Labor Day 2020 excludes those jobless who were unable to get benefits in the first place, who filed unsuccessfully for benefits, who got lost in the bureaucratic process of filing and never got benefits, or who just couldn’t figure out how to file and were not helped and gave up. The 29.5m also represents those having exhausted benefits during the last six months. And those who chose not to file even though unemployed. Finally, the 29.5m excludes new entrants to the labor force over the past six months who weren’t eligible for benefits but haven’t been able nonetheless to find work given the collapse of the economy! All these categories of jobless workers represent the unemployed as much as those receiving benefits include the obviously unemployed. So the number of jobless is actually much higher than even 29.5 million. The 29.5m is therefore just a subset of the true total unemployed.
So how many more are jobless but not getting benefits as of Labor Day 2020?

(Estimating the Actual Jobless—With & Without Benefits)

You won’t get an accurate number from the government of the total unemployed who didn’t get benefits but have been, and remain, nonetheless jobless since February 2020.

However, private research surveys do give us an idea. MarketWatch, a business research and media company, published an interesting feature story in Fidelity.com this past week, based on its survey of the Philadephia/Mid-Atlantic region of the economy. That case example survey provides a reasonable estimate of the magnitude of those jobless since March 2020 but not among the 29.5m that succeeded in obtaining unemployment benefits.

Of the total number of workers in the Philadelphia, Mid-Atlantic US region who lost their jobs since February, MarketWatch reports that only 87% actually filed successfully for benefits. And of that 87%, only 65% who bothered to file actually ended up getting benefits. That means only 52%, or roughly half of the unemployed in the Philadelphia area, actually got unemployment benefits. The other 48% were just as much out of work, but without benefits.

If Philadelphia represents a microcosm and relatively accurate sample of the entire US economy labor market, simple extrapolation means that the 55 million who successfully got benefits since March 2020 may represent barely half of the total of those who have been unemployed since March!

That means the 29.5 million still getting benefits may represent barely half of all those still unemployed. There may therefore be between 40 and 50 million workers in America still jobless—those still getting benefits (the 29.5m) and those without benefits (10m to 20m).

Thus, the oft-reported official US numbers of 8.4% unemployment rate and 13.4 million total out of work is dwarfed not only by the government’s own alternative U-6 data, as well as by its own data showing 29.5 million jobless getting benefits, but also by the fact the total jobless without benefits may be nearly as large as those with benefits.

Assuming the low-end estimate of 10 million still jobless but without benefits, and adding that to the government data that shows 29.5 million still on benefits, a total jobless of at least 40 million is the result. And that’s the low end assumption. It may be well over 40 million as of end of August 2020.

40 million is 25% of the labor force. And it’s far greater than the 8.4% and 13.4 million that the media and politicians keep drumming into our ears. What the media and politicians are telling us is only one-third of the total unemployed!

Corroborating this estimate of at least 25% unemployed today is yet another government statistic called the labor force participation rate, or LFPR. It represents workers who have dropped out of the labor force altogether. It’s in addition to the 29.5m and 18.4% rate since, by government guidelines and definitions, those who drop out of the labor force cannot receive benefits.

(Labor Force Participation Rate Suggests 5.5 Million Dropped Out)

The Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) is the percent of working age Americans who have left the Labor Force. They are neither working nor actively looking for work. But they are jobless nonetheless and should be considered among the unemployed. The LFPR was 63.4% of the 164.5 million civilian labor force in February 2020. By August the LFPR dropped to 61.7% out of a 160 million labor force. The difference translates into approximately 5.5 million workers who dropped out of the labor force since February 2020. Having dropped out they are not actively looking for work and therefore not considered unemployed by the government for purposes of calculating unemployment rates. Nor are they eligible to receive benefits since, as drop outs, they are not actively looking for work. However they are nevertheless unemployed and their 5.5 million are additional to the 13.4 million U-3 and 22.7 million U-6 unemployed or the 29.5 million getting benefits. They are among the ‘other’ 10-20 million jobless but not counted by the U-3/U-6 or included in those receiving benefits. Their number strongly corroborates that there are many millions more unemployed—not getting benefits or ignored by the government’s official monthly jobless numbers.

Let’s look at the latest of those government monthly employment numbers. Once again what appears is a fudging and manipulation of the numbers in yet other ways as well.

(August 2020 Government Employment Report)

The first thing to know about the August Employment Report is that it isn’t for the month of August. It is only for the first two weeks of the month (and the last two weeks of July). The data cuts off around the 12th of the month. So what we’re looking at in a ‘August’ report is really July 13 to August 12 jobs data—i.e. before unemployment claims began to rise again in late August.

Second, it’s important to understand that the August jobs numbers are not the actual number of jobs created July 13-August 12. It is not the raw data of actual jobs created or lost that’s reported—for August or for any month in the Labor Dept jobs reports.

The government takes the actual raw data and performs various statistical operations on that raw jobs data and reports that adjusted statistic as the actual number of jobs, even though it isn’t. But that’s what all statistics are—an operation and adjustment on the actual raw data. Moreover, the August raw data itself may be over-stated as well, not just altered by the statistical operation(s).

Raw (actual) jobs data comes from several sources: Large businesses report to the government changes in employment, layoffs, hires, etc. (called the Establishment Survey) The government also surveys a sample of households monthly (called the Population Survey). But there’s a third, more questionable source, based on data from the creation and destruction of small businesses, called the (net) New Business Development survey (NBD). That NBD data, however, represents businesses destroyed or created 6 to 9 months before the month in question—i.e. in this case August. So we get six to nine month old data integrated with current data from the Establishment and Population surveys. Mixing such older data with more recent is a questionable statistical practice. It means adding positive net new business development pre-March and Covid, in January-February, to current jobs data. That has the effect of dampening the actual numbers of August jobs unemployment. That is, it adds to and over-estimates the number of jobs created in August. If net business development for July were used—not January/February—it would mean integrating massive small business destruction that has occurred under Covid since March. That would have the opposite effect: it would dampen job creation numbers in August and increase unemployment numbers.

That’s just one example how ‘statistical operations’ on data can serve to exaggerate job growth and under-estimate unemployment.

Another sometimes questionable statistical operation is called the Seasonality adjustment. The seasonality statistical adjustment in August reduced the number of new filings for unemployment benefits in just the last week of August by 130,000. The government then reported a ‘seasonally adjusted’ 881,000 new unemployment claims for the week ending August 29, when the actual number was 1,011,000.

Similarly, in August there were 9,118,000 reported as unemployed in August when the actual data, not seasonally adjusted, for August showed 9,286,000 actually unemployed—i.e. a difference of 168,000. Put another way, there were 168,000 more jobless in actuality than reported as unemployed. 168,000 were artificially reduced from the unemployed ranks due to statistical operations involving just seasonality alone!

The statistical models assume more return to work at the end of summer than, say for instance, at the end of spring. But the point is these models are based on assumptions developed in normal times under normal conditions. Since Covid neither times or conditions are ‘normal’. Yet the government continues to use the same assumptions, models, and statistical operations to change the actual data, the actual number of employed and unemployed, to the statistical representations of the actual numbers!

The latest August official Labor Dept. job data report says 1.37m new jobs were created. This is the statistic. But the actual data, for above reasons, is far fewer new jobs and far more unemployed.

The August Report is biased in yet another way. It purports to show the condition of the US private sector economy. But 238,000 new US census workers were hired in August who’ll be gone by October. Take away the seasonality adjustment of 168,000 jobs and the 238,000 very temporary government Census workers, and the private sector actual job gain in August was roughly 964,000 not 1.37m. Even without the deduction of seasonality, the private job report company, ADP, often cited as a check on government job reports, reported only 428,000 net jobs growth in August—i.e. less than half of the government’s August jobs report.

1.37m new jobs reported, minus the 168,000 seasonal upward adjustment and minus the 238,000 Census workers, and the difference is 964,000 actual net private sector jobs created in August, or about half a million fewer than in July. The job creation monthly is an accelerating downward trend.

Even accepting the government’s own inflated monthly jobs numbers, the rate of monthly job growth has been slowing rapidly since May 2020: In May 3.4 million new jobs were reported as created. In June, as the economy reopened virtually everywhere, 4.7 million new jobs. But in July, as the economic rebound began to fade, only 1.5 million, and now as of August 12, only 1.37m. In short, even questionable statistical operations cannot total cover up the obvious downward trend.

Perhaps a better indicator of this downward trend post-August 12, is the more than 4 million workers who have newly filed for unemployment benefits the last three weeks, and undoubtedly hundreds of thousands more were also newly jobless but who were not able to get benefits or just dropped out of the labor force giving up searching for a job in today’s deeply depressed labor market.

And yet we read and hear from the media and politicians that the job market is healing rapidly and job recovery is accelerating—even as data show it is in fact deteriorating. We hear unemployment is declining fast when in fact it has begun to rise once again.

(Summing Up Jobs: March Through August 2020)

To sum up the bigger true picture of jobless during the first six months of the Covid era:

• 55 million filed for benefits, state and PUC, since last February, out of 160m labor force
• Tens of millions more failed to file or filed unsuccessfully and didn’t get benefits
• 29+ million are still getting benefits as of September Labor Day 2020
• 10-20 million still unemployed but not getting benefits as of Labor Day 2020
• 1.5 million are continuing to file first time for benefits weekly as of early September
• 8.4%/13.4m official U-3 jobless rate is the preferred ‘cherry picked’ media number
• 14.2%/22.7m is government’s alternative data (U-6) yet ignored by media & politicians
• 13.4 or 22.7m still falls far short of the 29.5m/18.4% actually still getting benefits
• At least 5.5m dropped out of labor force the past 6 mo. but not considered unemployed
• The actual unemployment rate is 25% and 40 million are still jobless, at minimum
• Even government monthly stats show a sharp slowing of new jobs added each month

As bad as the picture looks for Phase 1 (March-to Labor Day 2020) of the current crisis, future prospects for jobs for American workers after Labor Day 2020 appear even bleaker.

(2nd Wave of Restructuring & Permanent Job Loss)

The Covid virus did not cause the current economic crisis—i.e. the 2nd Great Recession. It did precipitate and accelerate and deepen that crisis, however. The US economy was weakening steadily throughout 2019, with the important sectors of business investment and manufacturing actually contracting throughout the year. Should the virus therefore disappear overnight, the deep wounds to the US economy will remain. Many of the 40 million furloughed starting in March and still jobless will not soon be recalled to their prior work—if at all. Entire industries like travel, entertainment, food & lodging, and others will not return to the ‘old normal’ of pre-Covid. A new normal will occur, but it will be one based on a much reduced output in various industries and companies and therefore employment.

Many major corporations have already announced thousands—and in some cases tens of thousands—of permanent layoffs that will take effect in the coming months. These layoffs will be permanent. They represent the leading edge of a coming second wave of job loss.

Industries deepest affected by the growing permanent restructuring and downsizing include Airlines, surface transportation, cruise lines, resorts and hotels, casinos, malls and retail services, education services, local food services, and many sectors of manufacturing that support all these industries with products and maintenance services. This is a large swath of the US economy, in both GDP and employment terms. A clearer picture of which industries, and how deeply impacted, will be clearer after September 30 when the government publishes its quarterly industry-specific statistics for the second quarter 2020.

In the meantime, announcements of thousands of planned layoffs are being announced weekly by United, American, and other airlines; by Boeing and other aerospace suppliers; by big box mall-based retail companies like JC Penneys, Kohls, Nieman Marcus and others; Movie Theater chains AMC and Cinemark; oil drilling and fracking companies; hospitals’ non-Covid related services health workers; beverage suppliers to hotels and restaurants like Coca Cola—to mention just those making front business page news in recent weeks. Tech companies are all restructuring despite healthy profits performance, shifting to remote employment on a major scale that reduces employment costs via layoffs. They will require therefore fewer building support and operations employees. Many other businesses may also shift to remote activity, with the result that urban office buildings will become less employment populated and much of the local city support services for the office building sector will dramatically downsize in employment as well.

The Federal Reserve Bank’s latest ‘Beige Book’ summary of the US economy warned that millions of workers temporarily furloughed since March may have been permanently laid off by August and more may become so. This shift of temporary laid off to permanent layoff status is corroborated by a survey that showed 3.4 million workers believe they won’t be recalled because their companies have either permanently closed or said they planned to close.

Added to this leading edge of the next wave of layoffs due to business restructuring and downsizing is the likelihood of millions more public sector state and local government layoffs. More than a million government workers have been already laid off since March. Budget and deficit problems accelerating rapidly for state and local governments due to the Covid pandemic (i.e. more expenses amidst collapsing tax revenues) will result in still more public employee layoffs. It’s been estimated these governments will need between $500 billion and $940 billion in bailout rescue in a new stimulus bill from Congress to avoid the mass layoffs. However, it appears extremely unlikely they’ll get much, if anything, in a next Congressional stimulus bill in 2020. Layoffs are therefore inevitable and in some of the larger states and cities they will be significant and forthcoming before 2020 year end.

Small business failures and permanent closures are already rising significantly. As small businesses close, jobs associated with them will disappear. And the numbers could easily amount in the millions by the end of 2021.

There are roughly 30 million small businesses in the US economy. Millions of those temporarily closed since March will fail to reopen. And the worse may be yet to come. The National Federation of Independent Businesses, an industry trade group for small business, forecasts 21% will likely fail within another six months. That’s one-fifth of the 30 million or about 6 million. Even if a high end estimate, the number is still unprecedented. At the low end is the US Census ‘Business Pulse’ survey that predicts a 5% small business job loss. That’s 1.5 million closures. Whether 6 or 1.5 million, it’s a large number with an even larger number of employees thrown out of work as the businesses close in coming months.

Other forces driving a second wave of layoffs are more difficult to estimate but no less likely. Among them include the Covid related requirement that K-12 schools implement home remote school education services. Many working class households are two-parent wage earners. They lack resources to pay for babysitters or nannies. Those with K-6 year old children in particular will be forced to have one parent quit and stay at home to ensure home schooling. These ‘quits’ will not show up as unemployed, since the parent is ‘out of work’ but not actively ‘looking for work’. They will show up as labor force drop outs. But they will be unemployed nonetheless! It’s uncertain how wide spread the remote K-8 education services will be this fall, or how long it will last. One recent estimate, however, by Brevan Howard Asset Management to its investors, concluded no fewer than 4.3 million US workers could stay home given lack of child care arrangements. A resurgence of Covid may mean millions more may have to quit their jobs and choose unemployment in order to provide their young children education via remote learning.

Another development that for now is difficult to estimate as well is the impact on employment of the lack of a necessary fiscal stimulus for households. The elimination of the $600 supplement pandemic unemployment benefit at the end of July has resulted in a reduction of no less than $65 billion in consumption spending per month starting this past August. Evictions and mortgage foreclosures will also have a negative impact on consumer household spending, which is nearly 70% of the economy and US GDP. Already the loss of the $600 benefit, combined with rising evictions, is having a major effect on consumer confidence which in August began falling again sharply. This could be exacerbated by an inadequate stimulus bill in September. Reduced working class benefits and household incomes will have an impact on consumer demand for products and services in the economy across the board, affecting nearly all sectors of businesses. And as that demand drops, it will almost certainly lead in turn to less consumer spending and in turn to more layoffs.

The preceding five forces—i.e. large corporate restructurings and permanent downsizing, a sharp rise in public sector layoffs, unprecedented business closures, remote schooling requirements of two working parent families, and general demand reduction due to inadequate next stimulus—all translate into a second wave of layoffs now emerging.

These longer term job reduction forces mean the recent tepid rebound in jobs during May-July will likely give way to a relapse in the US labor markets in coming months and a rise in unemployment. The trend may already be appearing as of late August as first time claims for unemployment benefits have begun to rise once again.

And then there are still the ‘known unknowns’ that could exacerbate conditions further: the increasingly likelihood of a historic political crisis surrounding the November 3 elections. That will breed massive uncertainty and potentially an even worse economic crisis and associated layoffs. Or the Covid virus could resurge significantly once again as winter sets in, as many fear will happen. That too will lead to more shutdowns and furloughing of jobs once again. Even further down the road is the 2021 ‘black swan’ event of another financial crisis, as businesses, households, and local governments begin to default on their debts and precipitate another financial crisis similar to 2008-09.

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

Jack Rasmus is author of the recently published book, ’The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump’, Clarity Press, January 2020. He blogs at jackrasmus.com and hosts the weekly radio show, Alternative Visions on the Progressive Radio Network on Fridays at 2pm est. His twitter handle is @drjackrasmus. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

As the rest of Europe and the world remains under the grip of draconian rules and the threat of new lockdowns, Sweden, which allowed its citizens to remain free throughout the entire pandemic, has pretty much declared victory over the coronavirus.

The country now has one of the lowest infection rates on the planet, and it’s difficult not to admire how it has handled the past year, with no strict lockdown or compulsory face mask rules. All businesses, schools and public places remained open in Sweden for the duration.

“Sweden has gone from being the country with the most infections in Europe to the safest one,” Sweden’s senior epidemiologist Dr. Anders Tegnell commented to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

“What we see now is that the sustainable policy might be slower in getting results, but it will get results eventually,” Tegnell clarified.

Tegnell previously warned that encouraging people to wear face masks is “very dangerous” because it gives a false sense of security but does not effectively stem the spread of the virus.

“The findings that have been produced through face masks are astonishingly weak, even though so many people around the world wear them,” Tengell has urged.

Last week, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control confirmed Sweden’s drop in infection rate, with only 12 cases per million, compared to 18 in neighbouring Denmark and 14 in nearby Norway.

Graphic: The Sun

At the peak of the Sweden’s outbreak, it was seeing 108 new infections per million people, as it pursued a “herd immunity” strategy.

The figures also show that out of 2500 randomly selected and tested people in Sweden, none tested positive, compared to 0.9 percent positive in April, and 0.3 percent in May.

“We interpret this as meaning there is not currently a widespread infection among people who do not have symptoms,” said Karin Tegmark, deputy head of the Public Health Agency of Sweden.

When compared to the rest of Europe, Sweden’s death rate sits somewhere in the middle. However, officials are confident that playing the long game will see this improve drastically.

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Featured image is from The Unz Review

Sanctions are a blunt weapon used by the mighty against the weak to compel them to capitulate to political demands, but almost always put pressure on populations rather than rulers who concede nothing. Although sanctions have been liberally used in this region they have not had the result desired by those imposing them.

They have been employed since 1979 against revolutionary Iran by the US and later by the international community, since 1990 against Iraq, and since 2004 against Syria.

In all three cases, sanctions have had a destructive impact on local efforts to contain Covid-19, which has spread across the region and the world and will continue to spread as long as centres of infection exist.

As early as April, the British medical journal, The Lancet, reported that Iran’s “capacity to respond to the virus is substantially impeded by unilateral economic sanctions re-imposed after the US administration withdrew from the nuclear deal in May, 2018”. The Lancet criticised the Trump administration fop making a bad situation worse by ramping up sanctions in March of this year.

The Lancet continued, “Even before COVID-19, Iran’s health system was feeling the effect of the sanctions. Their impact is now severe because they restrict the government’s ability to raise funds or import essential goods,” including protective gear, tests and medicines. The Lancet pointed out that of “the ten countries with the highest  number of  recorded cases [in April], Iran is the poorest”. Iran cannot afford to fund “adequate prevention, diagnosis and treatment”. The country cannot adopt measures to strengthen its responses to the pandemic, The Lancet said.

Sanctions on Iran were imposed long before Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 agreement signed by the US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany which limited Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for lifting sanctions. US sanctions on Iran were imposed in 1979 following the overthrow of Washington’s ally and have been tightened and elaborated by US allies. This process has prevented Iran from exporting its oil, its main source of revenue, driving down the value of Iran’s currency, and plunging it into negative economic growth.

Although food and medicine are meant to be exempted from sanctions, Iran cannot access essential supplies because the US controls international banking and finance and threatens to punish any country or firm that deals with Iran. Consequently, for years Iran has not been able to procure medicine and medical equipment needed for cancer, heart, diabetes, and other common ailments and the country’s health sector has been run down.

The pandemic took hold in Iran in February and has established its grip on the country since then. Latest figures show that Iran has had 387,000 cases with 22,293 deaths. While failing to deal with the virus early and mismanagement are largely responsible for this toll, sanctions have played a key role. Iran’s failure to contain Covid-19 has led to the spread to the region and countries as far away as Norway and Canada.

Follwing Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the international community imposed heavy sanctions on Iraq. Once again the US, this time under George W.H. Bush, was prime mover. Once again food, medicine and humanitarian supplies were meant to be excluded but were not. Following the US-led war that forced Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, UN mediator Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan urged the victors to provide humanitarian aid to Iraq and prevent the collapse of health care which, at the time, was provided to 90 per cent of the population. This did not happen. Over the next five years, half a million Iraqi children died of disease and malnutrition and the country’s national health system, the best in the region, deteriorated. Asked in 1996 about this terrible toll, US ambassador to the UN Madeline Albright responded, “I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it.” For the US, yes; for Iraqi families, no.

Although sanctions eased in 1996 with the introduction of the UN’s oil-for-food programme, restrictions on oil sales and trade remained until well after the 2003 Iraq war was mounted by George W. Bush at a time Iraq had largely recovered from the 1991 assault. The second Bush war and subsequent occupation plunged Iraq into unending instability and chaos. The health care system collapsed. More than 20,000 doctors fled the country, leaving only 30,000. Today, Iraq has a serious shortage of doctors and health workers because it does not have the funds to employ medical graduates although Covid-19 has Iraq in its brutal grip. Iraqis have suffered 260,400 cases and more than 7,500 deaths. Among these victims are 44 doctors who died and more than 1,500 who have been infected.

Sanctions, initially introduced because of Damascus support for Palestinian opponents of Israel, were intensified after unrest erupted in 2011 and morphed into civil and proxy wars during the middle of that year. The Syrian national health system, which had provided primary care for the majority of Syrians, has been heavily impacted. Doctors have left the country. Widely used medicines have become unavailable due to sanctions. Covid-19 has put a huge strain on clinics, hospitals and staff. Worldometer reports that Syria has had 3,171 covid cases and 134 deaths but these could be underestimates due to difficulties in identifying and tracing cases in a country still beset by warfare, instability and sanctions-driven economic decline.

While lockdown was initially employed to contain infection, Syrians cannot afford prolonged periods of economic inactivity. Protective gear, test kits and medications are absent. Death notices are being posted in neighbourhoods and on social media. Doctors and nurses are among the dead. Danny Makki reporting for the US Middle East Institute argues that Syria cannot “get through this pandemic without some form of serious international medical support”. Instead, the Trump administration has toughened sanctions on firms and individuals who deal with the Syrian government while the Western powers do nothing and insufficient supplies trickle in from the World Health Organisation and China.

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Featured image is from InfoBrics

The great question after yesterday’s hearing was whether prosecution counsel James Lewis QC would continue to charge at defence witnesses like a deranged berserker (spoiler – he would), and more importantly, why?

QC’s representing governments usually seek to radiate calm control, and treat defence arguments as almost beneath their notice, certainly as no conceivable threat to the majestic thinking of the state. Lewis instead resembled a starving terrier kept away from a prime sausage by a steel fence whose manufacture and appearance was far beyond his comprehension.

Perhaps he has toothache.

Professor Paul Rogers

The first defence witness this morning was Professor Paul Rogers, Emeritus Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford. He has written 9 books on the War on Terror, and has been for 15 years responsible for MOD contracts on training of armed forces in law and ethics of conflict. Rogers appeared by videolink from Bradford.

Prof Rogers’ full witness statement is here.

Edward Fitzgerald QC asked Prof Rogers whether Julian Assange’s views are political (this goes to article 4 in the UK/US extradition treaty against political extradition). Prof Rogers replied that “Assange is very clearly a person of strong political opinions.”

Fitzgerald then asked Prof Rogers to expound on the significance of the revelations from Chelsea Manning on Afghanistan. Prof Rogers responded that in 2001 there had been a very strong commitment in the United States to going to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Easy initial military victories led to a feeling the nation had “got back on track”. George W Bush’s first state of the union address had the atmosphere of a victory rally. But Wikileaks’ revelations in the leaked war logs reinforced the view of some analysts that this was not a true picture, that the war in Afghanistan had gone wrong from the start. It contradicted the government line that Afghanistan was a success. Similarly the Wikileaks evidence published in 2011 had confirmed very strongly that the Iraq War had gone badly wrong, when the US official narrative had been one of success.

Wikileaks had for example proven from the war logs that there were a minimum of 15,000 more civilian deaths than had been reckoned by Iraq Body Count. These Wikileaks exposures of the failures of these wars had contributed in large part to a much greater subsequent reluctance of western powers to go to war at an early stage.

Fitzgerald said that para 8 of Rogers’ report suggests that Assange was motivated by his political views and referenced his speech to the United Nations. Was his intention to influence political actions by the USA?

Rogers replied yes. Assange had stated that he was not against the USA and there were good people in the USA who held differing views. He plainly hoped to influence US policy. Rogers also referenced the statement by Mairead Maguire in nominating Julian for the Nobel Peace Prize:

Julian Assange and his colleagues in Wikileaks have shown on numerous occasions that they are one of the last outlets of true democracy and their work for our freedom and speech. Their work for true peace by making public our governments’ actions at home and abroad has enlightened us to their atrocities carried out in the name of so-called democracy around the world.

Rogers stated that Assange had a clear and coherent political philosophy. He had set it out in particular in the campaign of the Wikileaks Party for a Senate seat in Australia. It was based on human rights and a belief in transparency and accountability of organisations. It was essentially libertarian in nature. It embraced not just government transparency, but also transparency in corporations, trade unions and NGOs. It amounted to a very clear political philosophy. Assange adopted a clear political stance that did not align with conventional party politics but incorporated coherent beliefs that had attracted growing support in recent years.

Fitzgerald asked how this related to the Trump administration. Rogers said that Trump was a threat to Wikileaks because he comes from a position of quite extreme hostility to transparency and accountability in his administration. Fitzgerald suggested the incoming Trump administration had demonstrated this hostility to Assange and desire to prosecute. Rogers replied that yes, the hostility had been evidenced in a series of statements right across the senior members of the Trump administration. It was motivated by Trump’s characterisation of any adverse information as “fake news”.

Fitzgerald asked whether the motivation for the current prosecution was criminal or political? Rogers replied “the latter”. This was a part of the atypical behaviour of the Trump administration; it prosecutes on political motivation. They see openness as a particular threat to this administration. This also related to Trump’s obsessive dislike of his predecessor. His administration would prosecute Assange precisely because Obama did not prosecute Assange. Also the incoming Trump administration had been extremely annoyed by the commutation of Chelsea Manning’s sentence, a decision they had no power to revoke. For that the prosecution of Assange could be vicarious revenge.

Several senior administration members had advocated extremely long jail sentences for Assange and some had even mooted the death penalty, although Rogers realised that was technically impossible through this process.

Fitzgerald asked whether Assange’s political opinions were of a type protected by the Refugee Convention. Rogers replied yes. Persecution for political opinion is a solid reason to ask for refugee status. Assange’s actions are motivated by his political stance. Finally Fitzgerald then asked whether Rogers saw political significance in the fact that Assange was not prosecuted under Obama. Rogers replied yes, he did. This case is plainly affected by fundamental political motivation emanating from Trump himself.

James Lewis QC then rose to cross-examine for the prosecution. His first question was “what is a political opinion?” Rogers replied that a political opinion takes a particular stance on the political process and does so openly. It relates to the governance of communities, from nations down to smaller units.

Lewis suggested that Assange’s views encompassed the governance of corporations, NGOs and trade unions. They could not therefore be considered as “political opinion”. Rogers replied that the province of the political in the last fifty years or so now includes much more beyond the strict governmental process. Assange particularly discusses relationships between government and corporations and the latter’s influence on government and society as part of a wider ruling establishment.

Lewis then asked “is simply being a journalist a person who expresses political opinions?” Rogers replied not necessarily; there were different kinds of journalist. Lewis than asked “So just being a journalist or publisher does not necessarily mean that you have political opinions, does it?” Rogers replied “not necessarily, but usually.” Lewis then suggested that the expression of editorial opinion was what constituted a political view in a journalist. Rogers replied that was one way, but there were others. Selection of material to publish could manifest a political view.

Lewis then rattled off a series of questions. Is transparency a political opinion? Does Assange hold the view that Governments may never hold secrets? Should that transparency enable putting individuals at risk? There were more.

Rogers replied that these questions did not permit of binary answers.

Lewis then took Rogers to Assange’s speech to the Stop the War Coalition, where he stated that the invasion of Poland at the start of the Second World War was the result of carefully concocted lies. Did Prof Rogers agree with that view? What political opinion did that view represent? Rogers replied it represented a strong political opinion and a particular view on the origin of war. Lewis then quoted another alleged comment of Assange, “Journalists are war criminals” and asked what political opinion that represented. Rogers replied that it represented a suspicion of certain journalistic practices.

Rogers said that he had never said he supported or identified with Assange’s views. He strongly disagreed with some. But that they were coherent political views there was no doubt.

Lewis then read out a lengthy quote by Assange to the effect that strongly anti-transparency governments will always result in more leaks, followed by more restrictions and this would set up a cycle. Lewis asked Rogers what political view this could be said to represent. Rogers replied it was an interesting analysis of the working of highly autocratic systems. Their concern with secrecy leads to increased leaks which decrease their security. He was not sure if it was explicit, but he believed Assange may be positing this as a new development made possible by the internet. Assange’s thesis was that autocratic regimes harbour the seeds of their own destruction. It was not a traditional view held by political scientists but it was worth consideration.

Lewis now changed tack. He stated that Prof Rogers was appearing as a “so-called expert witness” under a continuing obligation to be unbiased. He had a duty to consider all supporting evidence. US Assistant Attorney Gordon Kromberg had submitted an affidavit explicitly denying there was any political motivation for the prosecution, stating that it is evidence based. Why did Prof Rogers not mention the Kromberg statement in his report? An unbiased expert witness would take into account Kromberg’s statement.

Rogers replied that he spoke from his expertise as a political scientist, not a lawyer. He accepted that Kromberg had made his statement but believed a wider view to be more important.

Lewis stated that Kromberg’s first affidavit stated that “based on the available evidence and applicable law a grand jury had approved the charges.” Why had Rogers not mentioned the grand jury? Rogers said that he had taken a wider view about why there was a decision now to prosecute and not in 2011, why Kromberg’s statement was being made now after a gap of eight years. This was anomalous.

Lewis then asked “I want to consider why you did not consider the opposite view. Have you seen the evidence?” At this point he was grinning very strangely indeed, looking up at the judge, leaning back with one arm wide across his chair back, in some sort of peculiar alpha male gesture. I believe Rogers’ videolink only gave him a wide view of the whole courtroom, so how much he could see of the body language of his questioner I am unsure.

Rogers said he had seen the evidence. Lewis gurned in wild-eyed triumph “you cannot have seen the evidence. The evidence has only been seen by the grand jury and not released. You cannot have seen the evidence.” Rogers apologised, and said he had understood Lewis to mean Kromberg’s affidavit as the evidence. Rogers went on to say that less than 24 hours ago he had received an evidence bundle of 350 pages. It was unfair to expect him to have a precise mental picture of every document.

Lewis then returned to a Gordon Kromberg affidavit which said that prosecutors have a code which bars them from taking politically motivated decisions. Rogers replied that may be right in theory, but was untrue in practice, particularly in the USA where a much higher percentage of senior officials in the Department of Justice were political appointees who changed with each administration. Lewis asked Rogers whether he was alleging the prosecutors did not follow the code outlined by Kromberg. Rogers replied you had to consider the motivation of those above the prosecutors who influenced their decisions. “What you are giving me is a fair representation of how federal prosecutors are supposed to do their work. But they work as those above direct them.”

Lewis repeated that the code excludes political motivation for prosecution. Was Rogers claiming that Gordon Kromberg was acting in bad faith? Rogers replied no, but he was acting under political direction. The timing of this indictment after eight years was the key. Lewis asked whether that mattered if a crime had been committed. He referred to historic prosecutions of those soldiers who had allegedly committed crimes in Northern Ireland over twenty years ago. Was it political motivation that led to new prosecutions now? Rogers said this was more about bad faith.

Lewis asked if Rogers understood what Assange was being prosecuted for. Was he being prosecuted for publishing the collateral murder video? Rogers replied no, the charges were more specific and mostly related to the Espionage Act. Lewis stated the majority of charges were focused on complicity in theft and on hacking. Rogers responded there was obviously a wider political question as to why acts were being done in the first place. Lewis stated that on the question of publication, charges only related to the unredacted names of sources. Rogers said that he understood that was what the prosecution is saying, but was not agreed by the defence. But the question remained, why is this being brought now? And you could only look at that from the point of view of developments in American politics over the last twenty years.

Lewis asked Rogers to confirm that he was not saying US prosecutors were acting in bad faith. Rogers replied that he would hope not, at that level. Lewis asked if Rogers’ position was that at a higher level there had been a political decision to prosecute. Rogers said yes. These were complex matters. It was governed by political developments in the US since about 1997. He wished to speak to that… Lewis cut him off and said he preferred to look at evidence. He cited a Washington Post article from 2013 which stated that there had been no formal decision not to prosecute Assange by the Obama administration (this was the same article Lewis had quoted yesterday to Feldstein, on which he had been called out by Edward Fitzgerald for selective quotation). Rogers replied yes, but that must be considered in a wider context.

Lewis again refused to let Rogers develop his evidence, and gave the quotes from Assange’s legal team, again as given yesterday to Feldstein, to the effect they had in 2016 not been informed charges had been dropped. Rogers replied that was just what you would expect from Wikileaks at that time. They did not know and were bound to be cautious.

Lewis: Do you accept there had been a continuing investigation from Obama to Trump administrations.

Rogers: Yes, but we do not know at what level of intensity.

Lewis: Do you accept that there was no decision not to prosecute by Obama

Rogers: There was no decision to prosecute. It did not happen.

Lewis: How could they prosecute when Assange was in the Embassy?

Rogers: That would not preclude a prosecution going ahead and charges being brought. That might be a way to bring pressure on Ecuador.

Lewis: Assange’s lawyer said there was no decision not to prosecute by the Obama administration.

Rogers: I have accepted there was no decision not to prosecute. But there was no prosecution and it was considered.

Lewis: Judge Mehta said there was ongoing investigation of others beside Manning. And Wikileaks tweeted Assange’s willingness to come to the USA to face charges if Manning was granted clemency.

Rogers: Obviously Assange and his lawyer could not be sure of the situation. But it must be understood that bringing Julian Assange to the USA for a major trial of someone who was perceived by many Trump supporters and potential Trump supporters as an enemy of the state, might be of crucial political benefit to Mr Trump.

Lewis now responded that Rogers was not a real expert witness and “had given a biased opinion in favour of Julian Assange”.

Edward Fitzgerald QC then re-examined Prof Rogers for the defence. He said that Mr Lewis had appeared to see something sinister in Mr Assange’s statement that the invasion of Poland and second world war had been started by lies. To what lies did Prof Rogers think that Assange was referring? Rogers replied the lies of the Nazi Regime. Fitzgerald asked if this was a fair point. Rogers replied yes.

Fitzgerald read the context of Assange’s statement which also referred to lies starting the Iraq war. Rogers agreed that lies leading to war was a consistent Assange political theme. Fitzgerald then invited Rogers briefly to summarise the consequences of the change of US administration. Rogers stated that under Trump, the narrative from senior politicians on Wikileaks had changed.

The Bush administration had viewed the Iraq war as essential, with the support of most American people. That view had gradually changed until Obama had won basically on a “withdraw from Iraq” ticket. Similarly the Afghan war had been thought winnable but gradually the political establishment changed their mind. This shift in view was partly due to Wikileaks. By 2015/6 American politics had moved on from the wars and there was no political interest in prosecuting Wikileaks.

Then Trump came in with a completely new attitude to the entire fourth estate and to openness and accountability of the executive. That had led to this prosecution. Fitzgerald directed Rogers to a Washington Post article which stated:

The previously undisclosed disagreement inside the Justice Department underscores the fraught, high-stakes nature of the government’s years-long effort to counter Assange, an Internet-age publisher who has repeatedly declared his hostility to U.S. foreign policy and military operations. The Assange case also illustrates how the Trump administration is willing to go further than its predecessors in pursuit of leakers — and those who publish official secrets.

Rogers agreed this supported his position. Fitzgerald then asked about Lewis’s comparison with prosecution of British soldiers for historical crimes in Northern Ireland. Rogers agreed that their prosecution in no way related to their political opinions, so the cases were not comparable. Rogers’ final point was that four months after Barr took office as attorney general, charges were increased from a single one to eighteen. This was a pretty clear indication of political pressure being put on the prosecutorial system.

Trevor Timm

The afternoon witness was Trevor Timm, co-founder of the Freedom of the Press Association in San Francisco, again via videolink. You can see his full evidence statement here. The Freedom of the Press Association teaches and supports investigative journalism and seeks to document and counter violations of media freedom in the USA.

Mr Timm testified that there is a rich history in the USA of famous reporters covering defence and foreign affairs related matters drawing upon classified documents. In 1971 the Supreme Court had decided the government could not censor the NYT from publishing the Pentagon Papers. There have been several instances over history where the government had explored using the Espionage Act to prosecute journalists but no prosecution had ever materialised because of First Amendment constitutional rights.

For the defence, Mark Summers QC put to Mr Timms that this was the prosecution’s case: Chelsea Manning had committed a crime in whistleblowing. So any act that helped Chelsea Manning or solicited material was also a crime. Timm replied this was not the law. It was standard practice for journalists to ask sources for classified material. The implications of this prosecution would criminalise any journalist in receipt of classified intelligence. Virtually every single newspaper in the United States had criticised this decision to prosecute on these grounds, including those that have opposed Wikileaks’ general activities.

This was the only attempt to use the Espionage Act against a person not in government employ apart from the AIPAC case, which had collapsed for that reason. Many great journalists would have been caught by this kind of prosecution, including Woodward and Bernstein for the cultivation of Deep Throat.

Summers asked about the prosecution’s characterisation of the provision of a drop box by Wikileaks to a whistleblower as criminal conspiracy. Timm replied that the indictment treats possession of a secure drop box as a criminal offence. But the Guardian, Washington Post, New York Times and over 80 other news organisations have secure drop boxes. The International Committee of Investigative Journalists has a drop box with a specific “leak to us” page requesting classified documents. Timms’ own foundation had developed in 2014 a secure drop box which they taught, and which had been adopted by multiple news organisations in the USA.

Summers asked if news organisations advertised drop boxes. Timm replied yes. The New York Times links to its secure drop box in its social media posts. Some even took out paid adverts for whistleblowers. Summers asked about the “most wanted list” which the prosecution characterised as criminal solicitation. Timm replied that multiple respectable news organisations actively solicited whistleblowers. The “most wanted” list had been a Wiki document which had been crowdsourced. It was not a Wikileaks document. His own foundation had contributed to it along with many other media organisations. Summers asked if this was criminal activity. Timm replied in the negative.

Summers asked Timm to expound his thoughts on the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture in 2014. Timm said that this vital and damning report on CIA involvement in torture had been much redacted and was based on thousands of classified documents not made available to the public. Virtually the entire media had therefore been involved in trying to obtain the classified material that revealed more of the story. Much of this material was classified Top Secret – higher than the Manning material. Many newspapers appealed for whistleblowers to come forward with documents and he had himself published an appeal to that effect in the Guardian.

Summers asked if it had ever been suggested to Timm this was criminal behaviour. Timm replied no, the universal belief had been that it was first amendment protected free speech. The current indictment is unconstitutional.

James Lewis QC then cross-examined for the prosecution. He said this was claimed to be expert opinion, but did Timm know what that meant in UK law? Timm said he had an obligation to explain his qualification and to tell the truth. Lewis replied that he was also supposed to be objective, unbiased and have no conflict of interest. But the Free Press Foundation had contribute to Assange’s defence fund. Lewis asked how much? Timm replied US$100,000.

Lewis asked if there were any conditions under which the Foundation would get their money back. Timm replied no, not to his knowledge. Lewis asked whether Timm would feel personally threatened were this case to go to prosecution. Timm replied that would represent a threat to many thousands of journalists. The Espionage Act was so widely drafted it would even pose a threat to purchasers and readers of newspapers containing leaked information.

Lewis said that Timm had testified that he had written advocating a leaking of CIA material. Did he fear he would be prosecuted himself? Timm replied no, he had not asked for material to be leaked to himself. But this prosecution was a real threat to thousands of journalists represented by his organisation.

Lewis said that the prosecution position is that Assange is not a journalist. Timm replied that he is a journalist. Being a journalist does not mean working for the mainstream media. There was a long legal history of that going back to pamphleteers at the time of Independence.

This cross examination was not going so well, and Lewis reached yet again for Gordon Kromberg’s affidavit as for a comfort blanket. Kromberg had sworn that the Department of Justice takes seriously the protection of journalists and that Julian Assange is no journalist. Kromberg had further sworn that Julian Assange was only being prosecuted for conspiring to illegally obtain material, and for publishing unredacted names of informants who would be at risk of death. The government is going out of its way to stress it is not prosecuting journalism.

Timm replied that he based his opinion on what the indictment said, not on the Department of Justice press release from which Lewis had read. Three of these charges relate to publication. The other charges relate to possession of material. Lewis said that Timm was missing the hacking allegation which was central to Count 1 and several other counts. Lewis quoted an article in the Law Review of New York Law School, which said that it was illegal for a journalist to obtain material from the wreckage of a crashed airplane, from an illegal wiretap or from theft, even if the purpose were publication. Would it not be illegal to conspire with a source to commit hacking?

Timm replied that in this case the allegation appeared to be that the hacking was to protect the identity of the source, not to steal documents. Protection of sources was an obligation.

Lewis then asked Timm if he had seen the actual evidence that supports the indictment. Timm replied only some of it, in particular the Java script of the messages allegedly between Assange and Manning. Lewis said Timm could not have seen all the evidence as it had not been published. Timm replied he had not said he had seen it all. He had seen the alleged Assange/Manning messages which had been published.

Lewis said that Assange had published unredacted material which put lives in danger. That was the specific charge. Timm replied that, assuming the assertion was true, the prosecution was still unconstitutional. There was a difference between responsible and irresponsible, and legal and illegal. An act could be irresponsible, even blameworthy, and still not illegal.

There had never been a prosecution for publication of names of informants, even where they were allegedly put in harm’s way. Following the official line about harm to informants precisely due to Wikileaks’ publication of the cables, Senator Joe Liebermann had introduced the Shield Bill into Congress. It failed specifically on First Amendment grounds. The episode tells us two things; firstly that Congress considered publication of informants’ names was not illegal and secondly that neither did they wish to make it illegal.

Lewis quoted a Guardian editorial condemning the publication of names, and stated that the Washington Post, New York Times, El Pais and Der Spiegel among many others had condemned it too. Timm replied that still did not make it illegal. The US government ought not to be the arbiter of whether an editorial decision is correct or not. Timm also felt it worth noting in passing that all of those media outlets whose opinions Lewis held in such high regard, had condemned the current attempt at prosecution.

Lewis asked why we should prefer Timm’s opinion to that of the courts. Timm replied that his opinion was in line with the courts. Countless decisions over centuries upheld the First Amendment. It was the indictment which was out of tune with the courts. The Supreme Court had expressly stated that there was no balance of harm argument in First Amendment cases.

Lewis asked Timm what qualification he had to comment on legal matters. Timm replied he had graduated from Law School and had gained admission to the New York Bar, but rather than practice he had worked on academic analysis of media freedom cases. The Foundation often joined in with litigation in support of media freedom, on an amicus basis.

Lewis said (in a tone of disbelief) that Timm had stated this prosecution was part of “Trump’s war on journalism”. Timm cut in niftily. Yes, he explained, we keep track on Trump’s war on journalism. He has sent out over 2,200 tweets attacking journalists. He has called journalists “enemies of the people”. There is a great deal of available material on this.

Lewis asked why Timm had failed to note that US Assistant Attorney Gordon Kromberg had specifically denied that there was a war on journalists? Timm said he had addressed these arguments in his evidence, though without specifically referencing Kromberg. Lewis stated that Timm had also not addressed Kromberg’s assertion that Assange is not charged simply with receipt of classified material. Timm replied that is because Kromberg’s assertion is inaccurate. Assange is indeed charged with offences encompassing passive receipt. If you get to count 7, for example and look at the legislation it charges under, it does precisely criminalise passive receipt and possession.

Lewis asked why Timm had omitted Kromberg’s reference to the grand jury decision? Timm replied that it meant very little: 99.9% of grand juries agree to return a prosecution. An academic study of 152,000 grand juries had revealed only 11 which had refused the request of a federal prosecutor to prosecute.

Lewis asked Timm why he had failed to mention that Kromberg asserted that a federal prosecutor may not take political considerations into account. Timm replied that did not reflect reality. Prosecution was one prong of many in President Trump’s war on journalism. Lewis asked whether Timm was saying that Kromberg and his colleagues were acting in bad faith. Timm replied no, but there had been a story in the Washington Post that more senior federal prosecutors had been opposed to the prosecution as contrary to the First Amendment and thus unconstitutional.

Mark Summers then re-examined for the defence. He said that Kromberg presents two grounds for Assange not being a journalist. The first is that he conspired with Manning to obtain confidential material. Timm replied that this cultivating of a source was routine journalistic activity. The indictment is precluded by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has ruled that even if a journalist knows that material is stolen (but not by him), he may still publish with entitlement to First Amendment protection.

Summers asked Timm about Lewis’s comparison of Assange’s contact with Manning to theft from an airplane wreck or illegal wiretap. Timm said this alleged offence did not reach that bar. The government does not allege that Assange himself helped Manning to steal the material. It alleges he provided help to crack a code that enabled Manning better to protect his identity.

Lewis here interrupted with a lengthy quote from one of Kromberg’s affidavits, to the effect that the government was now alleging that Assange helped Manning hack a password in order to facilitate obtaining classified information. Timm said yet again Kromberg’s affidavit did not appear to match the actual indictment. The claim there is that the password hacking “may have made it more difficult to identify Manning”. It is about source protection, not theft. Source protection is normal journalistic activity.

Summers stated that Kromberg’s second justification for stating that Assange is not a journalist was that he published the names of sources. Timm replied that he understood these facts were disputed, but in any event the Supreme Court had made plain such publication still enjoyed First Amendment protection. Controversial editorial choice did not render you “not a journalist”.

Summers asked Timm if he accepted Kromberg’s characterisation that Assange was only being prosecuted for alleged hacking and for publication of names. Timm said he did not. Counts 16, 17 and 18 were for publishing. All the other counts related to possession. Count 7 for example was for “knowingly unlawful receiving and obtaining”. That described passive receipt of classified information and would criminalise much legitimate journalistic activity. Huge swathes of defence, national security and foreign affairs reporting would be criminalised.

Comment

The defence have been attempting the last two days to make a rational case that this is a politically motivated prosecution and therefore not eligible under the terms of the UK/US extradition treaty of 2007 (relevant extract pictured above).

In opening argument back in February, the prosecution had run a frankly farcical argument that Article 4 of the treaty does not apply as incompatible with UK law, and an esto argument that Assange’s activity is not political as in law that word can only mean support for a particular party. Hence Lewis’s sparring on that point with Prof Rogers today, in which Lewis was well out of his depth.

Lewis primary tactic has been rudeness and aggression to disconcert witnesses. He questions their honesty, fairness, independence and qualifications. Today his bullying tactics ran foul of two classier performers than he. That is no criticism of Professor Feldstein yesterday, whose quiet dignity and concern was effective in a different way in exposing Lewis as a boor.

Lewis’s remaining tactic is to fall back repeatedly on the affidavits of Gordon Kromberg, US Assistant Attorney, and his statements that the prosecution is not politically motivated, and on Kromberg’s characterisation of the extent of the charges, which everybody else but Lewis and Kromberg finds inconsistent with the superseding indictment itself.

Witnesses understandably back away from Lewis’s challenge to call Kromberg a liar, or even to question his good faith. Lewis’s plan is very plainly to declare at the end that every witness accepted Kromberg’s good faith and therefore this is a fair prosecution and the defence have no case.

Perhaps I can assist. I do not accept Kromberg’s good faith. I have no hesitation in calling Kromberg a liar.

When the best thing your most supportive colleague can say about you, is that out-and-out Islamophobes do enjoy temporary popularity in the immediate aftermath of a terror attack, then there is a real problem. There is a real problem with Gordon Kromberg, and Lewis may very well come to regret resting the weight of the credibility of his entire case upon such a shoogly peg.

Kromberg has a repeated history of Islamophobic remarks, including about Muslim women. As the Wall Street Journal reported on September 15th 2008,

“Kromberg has taken a lot of heat recently for comments made and tactics taken in terrorism prosecutions”… said Andrew McCarthy, a former federal terrorism prosecutor. “As long as nothing goes boom, they want to say you’re an Islamophobe. The moment something does go boom, if the next 9/11 happens, God help anyone who says they weren’t as aggressive as Gordon.”

For British readers, Kromberg is Katie Hopkins with a legal brief. Conjure up that image every one of the scores of times Lewis relies on Gordon Kromberg.

More to the point, all expert witnesses have so far said that Kromberg’s precious memoranda explaining the scope of the indictment are inaccurate. It is at odds either with actual practice in the USA (the lawyer Clive Stafford Smith made this point) or the actual statutes to which it refers (the lawyers Trevor Timm and of course Mark Summers QC for the defence both make this point).

Crucially, Kromberg has a proven history of precisely this kind of distortion away from the statute. Also from the Wall Street Journal:

Federal judge Leonie M. Brinkema lashed out at the prosecutor [Kromberg], calling his remark insulting. Earlier, she had chastised Kromberg for changing a boilerplate immunity order beyond the language spelled out by Congress and questioned whether Arian’s constitutional rights had been violated.

“I’m not in any respect attributing evil motives or anything clandestine to you, but I think it’s real scary and not wise for a prosecutor to provide an order to the Court that does not track the explicit language of the statutes, especially this particular statute,” Brinkema said at the hearing in the Alexandria courtroom.

Next time Lewis asks a witness if they are questioning Kromberg’s good faith, they might want to answer “yes”. It certainly will not be the first time. As Trevor Timm testified today, senior prosecutors in the Justice Department had opposed this prosecution as unconstitutional and refused to be involved. Trump was left with this discredited right wing sleazeball. Now here we are at the Old Bailey, with a floundering Lewis clutching at this oaf Kromberg for intellectual support.

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Featured image is from 21st Century Wire

NATO has stepped up its activities in the neutral waters of the Barents Sea, raising tensions in the Arctic region. In just one day, Russian pilots escorted three military planes, one Norwegian and two British. One of the British planes was headed specifically for the Russian border when it was identified and escorted by the Russian fighter MiG-29, which caused discontent among Russian military and politicians.

Aerial maneuvers in the region were intense and revealed a new stage in the operations of the Western military alliance in the vicinity of the Arctic. Commenting about the incidents, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu stated that, while NATO training flights near Russian borders are not new, the nature of those flights has changed, considering that military flights were less frequent and now they are regular, with constant war training and missile tests, with a large number of aircrafts being used in such operations.

It is important to note, however, that the increased activities of NATO forces has been general and not restricted to the Arctic zone alone. Previously, on September 1, Russian fighters escorted three US Air Force strategic B-52H bombers over the Baltic Sea. The day before, August 31, a Su-27 fighter from the Russian Aerospace Force intercepted four NATO planes heading for the Russian border. In addition, in the past week, Russian fighters had to take off three times to escort a Norwegian Air Force aircraft over the Barents Sea.

NATO’s maritime presence has been equally striking. Currently, the US Navy destroyer USS Ross, armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles and the Aegis air defense system, is leading a fleet of NATO warships that entered the Barents Sea on September 7.

These ships, bases and fighter planes are part of a major military program that aims to build a complex defense system for Europe. In fact, NATO continues to prepare for an eventual war against Russia and uses increasingly aggressive maneuvers to demonstrate its military strength and capability. What is not yet clear is the reason for such an alarm for a possible war. After all, what would be Russia’s interest in a war against the West (in NATO programs, it is preparing for a possible Russian attack)? The one who shows the most hostility and does not seem to want any kind of friendly relationship with Moscow is precisely the Western alliance, and the reasons seem clear.

NATO is a military organization designed by Washington exclusively to serve American interests. The alliance was created in the Cold War, in a context of geopolitical bipolarity precisely to contain the Soviet advance and guarantee Western interests. After the end of the Cold War, what is its purpose for existence, considering that the US already enjoys the global dominance? Simply, to preserve and perpetuate such hegemony. However, American power is in significant decline, with several facts showing the emergence of a multipolar world.

Faced with this scenario, Washington, which leads NATO, is organizing demonstrations of force that are aimed simply at ensuring the West’s ability to maintain its dominance in case of a conflict or war. Thus, determined targets are chosen to be the focus of these demonstrations, such as Russia in Europe, China in the Pacific, Venezuela in the Caribbean. For each of these targets, Washington invests in the support of a geographically close countries or region, such as Western Europe in the Russian case, India in the Chinese case and Colombia in the Venezuelan case. In fact, none of these target countries has any pretensions to declare war against the US, invade Europe or anything similar. These narratives are created to justify dangerous and bold military maneuvers whose aim is simply to demonstrate force.

Especially in the Arctic, the US has a historical weakness, with Russia playing a role of regional hegemony. Washington is increasingly trying to gain space in the Arctic zone, but it cannot reverse its historical backwardness alone, thus depending on a joint NATO effort.

However, the effects of these measures are extremely dangerous. Russia cannot simply ignore the provocations, accepting that foreign forces carry out maneuvers on its border. Moscow will certainly react with similar exercises and as a result the diplomatic crisis with the US will deepen. Likewise, the role of European countries in Washington’s plans is unstable. Such military maneuvers do not favor major European interests, but many countries with lesser military potential see NATO as a possibility to increase its geopolitical relevance and then adhere to all the programs of the alliance. In the Arctic, however, all NATO efforts are unlikely to be successful, with Russian regional dominance being virtually irreversible in the current circumstances.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Over the last two decades the western imperialist states and their allies have imposed draconian sanctions on the Southern African nation of Zimbabwe.

Not only has the economic embargo impacted the majority of Zimbabweans, the entire Southern African Development Community (SADC) region has been impacted negatively.

Nonetheless, the 15-member SADC grouping has maintained its solidarity with Harare amid repeated attempts to destabilize and overthrow the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union, Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) ruling party. These efforts include the funding of numerous opposition parties and their political initiatives along with threats some years ago to engage in a direct military intervention by Britain, the former colonial power.

On September 8, the fraternal African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa sent a delegation to Zimbabwe for discussions with its ZANU-PF counterparts. ZANU-PF acting spokesperson Patrick Chinamasa told the Zimbabwe Herald newspaper that the ANC delegation would only meet with the ruling party as they were sister organizations which had transformed themselves from liberation movements into ruling parties.

Image on the right: Zimbabwe Mininster of Industry and Commerce Dr. Sekai Nzenza (Herald photo)

The visit by the ANC leadership group comes amid the backdrop of renewed attempts by opposition parties in both countries to cast aspiration on the Zimbabwe government. Ace Magashule, the Secretary General of the ANC, led the delegation from South Africa aimed at discussing important matters affecting the entire SADC region.

An article published on September 9 in the state-owned Herald says of the ANC delegation that it is composed of:

“Apart from Cde Magashule, the ANC delegation includes, party national chairman Cde Samson Gwede Mantashe, Cde Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula (member of the NEC and Minister of Defense and Military Veterans), Cde Tony Yengeni (member of the NEC and National Working Committee (NWC), and chairperson of the NEC on Peace and Stability), Cde Lindiwe Zulu (member of the NEC, chairperson of the NEC on International Relations and Minister of Social Development) and Cde Enoch Godongwana (member of NEC and chairperson of the NEC on Economic Transformation.”

At the same time the current social and political situation in South Africa is a cause for concern within the region and Africa as a whole. South Africa has the largest number of COVID-19 pandemic cases while the ANC government is struggling to provide adequate testing and mitigation efforts.

As of September 9, the number of confirmed cases in South Africa is 640,441. Some 15,086 people have died from the virus and 567,729 are considered recovered.

The pandemic and the government’s declaration of a health emergency in late March have been paralleled by the rise of an already high jobless rate. Concomitantly, the value of the national currency, the rand, has been in decline.

President Cyril Ramaphosa told a virtual briefing of the South African National Editor’s Forum (SANEF) on September 9, in relationship to government policy aimed at addressing the financial crisis:

“We will be able to identify key projects across all our provinces that we can embark on. Some of them are ready and some are almost ready by a press of a button very shortly and they will create quite a number of jobs.”

Contrasting these figures with Zimbabwe where the number of those infected are far lower, the ZANU-PF government has been successful in limiting the spread of the disease inside the country. Zimbabwe has 7,388 confirmed COVID-19 cases, some 2,018 deaths from the disease, while 5,477 people are deemed to have recovered.

These official statistics on the public health situation in Zimbabwe have ironically been confirmed by the United States Embassy in the capital of Harare. Successive administrations in Washington since 2000 and even before, have maintained a hostile diplomatic posture towards ZANU-PF.

However, in a press release issued on September 9, the U.S. Embassy warned of the overall threat of international travel which has continued since March. The Embassy cited the same statistics being published by various global data centers including the World Health Organization (WHO), which has been publicly attacked by the administration of President Donald Trump leading to the withdrawal of funding to the agency based in Geneva, Switzerland.

Opposition Parties and Imperialism in Southern Africa

The leading group attempting to unseat the elected ZANU-PF government in Zimbabwe is the Movement for Democratic Change (Alliance). The MDC-A is one of many other MDC formations which arose at the time of the comprehensive land reform program during 2000 when the previous administration of the late first President Robert Mugabe expedited land redistribution.

Zimbabwe’s land question was the basis for the mobilization and organization of the people during the national liberation struggle of the 1960s and 1970s. In order to avoid an outright military victory by the armed revolutionary guerrilla organizations of ZANU-PF and the-then Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU-PF) headed by the late Vice President Joshua Nkomo, the U.S., working with Britain, the previous colonial power in Zimbabwe, facilitated a political settlement to the independence war at the Lancaster House talks in late 1979.

These talks resulted in internationally-supervised multi-party elections during April 1980 when ZANU-PF won an overwhelming majority. A coalition government encompassing ZANU-PF, ZAPU-PF and the remnants of the settler-colonial regime ruled the country for five years when a new republic was born. By 1987, ZANU-PF and ZAPU-PF had merged, resolving many of the political difficulties which arose during the early years of independence.

Both Washington and London had pledged to assist the Zimbabwe government in the land reform process during the Lancaster House talks. These imperialist governments reneged on their promises prompting the ZANU-PF administration to pass legislation in 2000 expropriating the European settler-colonial agricultural class, taking back for the African people the most arable and productive land inside the country.

Image below: Zimbabwe Minister of Information Monica Mutsvangwa (Herald photo)

Despite reports to the contrary in recent months, the Zimbabwe Minister of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services, Monica Mutsvangwa, reiterated that the land reform process was irreversible. President Emmerson Mnangagwa has been involved in efforts to improve relations with all of the country’s adversaries since he took office in November 2017. Negotiations with some displaced European farmers have resulted in the resumption of agricultural production by a small number of these business interests.

However, the U.S. maintains its hostile position towards the ZANU-PF government. In late July, Chinamasa described the Washington ambassador to Zimbabwe, Brian Nichols, as a “thug.” Nichols was accused of funding the opposition to deliberately destabilize the country and place Zimbabwe at greater risk of a wider spread of COVID-19.

MDC-A leaders were seeking to hold an anti-government demonstration on July 31 which would have contravened the public health policies enacted by President Mnangagwa. Chinamasa said on July 27 that:

“He (Nichols) continues to engage in acts of undermining this republic and if he does so, if he continues engaging in acts of mobilizing and funding disturbances, coordinating violence and training insurgents, our leadership will not hesitate to give him marching orders. Diplomats should not behave like thugs, and Brian Nichols is a thug.”

U.S. Has Horrendous Human Rights Record

Since the beginning of 2020, Washington has been further exposed for its failure in the public health sphere. The U.S. has over 6 million COVID-19 cases resulting in excess of 190,000 deaths since February.

The economic impact of the pandemic triggered a 32% decline in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the second quarter, the sum total of goods and services produced in a given country. Millions are still unemployed while being imperiled by the threat of evictions, foreclosures and hunger.

After a series of police and vigilante killings of African Americans and other people of color, the law-enforcement execution of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25 sparked a nationwide upsurge in anti-racist demonstrations and urban rebellions. Calls for the defunding and dismantling of police have taken on a mass character.

Consequently, the Trump administration’s destabilization program against Zimbabwe and the entire SADC region has been rejected by progressive forces throughout the sub-continent and beyond. The country and region needs humanitarian assistance, not unwarranted interference in their internal affairs.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from Herald; featured image: Zimbabwe ZANU-PF and ANC delegation hold critical talks in Harare on September 9, 2020 (Herald photo)

2020 is an unusual year; weddings have been cancelled, schools closed, almost all large public gatherings banned, the global economy dismantled; the middle class and Main Street’s small and medium sized businesses are struggling to survive.  In California, the film industry, the theaters have been hit hard.  The Grand Lake Theater, which has generously hosted countless events and 15 prior 9/11 Truth Film Festivals is currently closed.

In March, the Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance could no longer meet legally and was forced to hold meetings in cyberspace. No Lies Radio, hosted Zoom meetings for the group; discussions and organizing continued, despite the obstacles and challenges that everyone faced  The group voted to go “virtual” this year, with the assistance of No Lies Radio, who has been web-streaming the live Film Festival for many years.

The Grand Lake Theater created a wonderful space for public interaction. The lobby was always filled with tables and the opportunity for people to converse, share materials, organize, inspire and support one another. It was where the choir met.  There were hugs, the opportunity to catch up with old friends and make new ones. The unique atmosphere of an old-style theater with popcorn, cookies, kindred spirits gathering together, in person, was a wonderful experience for many people.. However, a virtual Film Festival is the best we can do, under the current circumstances, when Draconian laws mandate social distancing and mask wearing. Online webinars do allow some interactivity, questions and answers, and bringing in distant speakers. Guns and Butter’s Bonnie Faulkner will kick off the Film Festival, as she has for 16 years. The program will be posted on the Northern California 9/11 Truth website [sf911Truth.org] when we finalize it. The Film Festival will be held Thursday, September 10th, noon to 8:00 pm Pacific Daylight Time.

As this dramatic year continues to unfold, the program is evolving; some films are still in production. Included are the best 9/11 Truth films that we could find, since last year’s Film Festival. In addition to 9/11, our speakers will address Covid19 and the problems facing the upcoming national election.

The impact of 9/11 continues to shape US domestic and foreign policy, robbing us of our liberties, and costing millions of lives, as the subsequent wars continue to wreak havoc abroad. The Northern California 9/11 Truth  Alliance has  been committed to “ seek and disseminate truths about the terrible crimes committed on September 11, 2001, exposing gaps and deceptions in the official story. Our goal is to inspire more eyewitness revelations, truthful media coverage, and a movement that will bring the responsible criminals to justice and eliminate governmental and corporate policies that enable criminal elements to commit such acts.”

This year’s Featured Films include:

‘Calling Out Bravo 7 2020 Edition’

Produced by Firefighters for 9/11 Truth, this excellent, comprehensive documentary, includes details on the destruction of the three World Trade Center buildings on 9/11 that are not well known. Very informative and important, a must see, especially for those who have never realized the deep flaws within the official narrative

‘The Genesis of The 9/11 “War on Terror”: How Much Does Mainstream Academia Really Know?’

Compiled from an excellent presentation by Dr. Piers Robinson on 9/11/2019 at the Public Master Class on the events of September 11, 2001 in Zurich, Switzerland.  Dr Piers Robinson is Co-Director of the Organisation for Propaganda Studies, convenor of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media and associated researcher with the Working Group on Propaganda and the 9/11 Global ‘War on Terror’.  He is currently a Speciality Chief Editor for Political Communication and Society, Frontiers in Communication and sits on the editorial boards of several academic journals.

‘9/11 Whistleblowers‘

Produced by James Corbett, The Corbett Report. A detailed look at the whistleblowers, that have spoken out, whose voices and stories have challenged  the official narrative. They include- Kevin Ryan, Cate Jenkins, Barry Jennings, Michael Springmann and William Rodriguez.

And more to be announced.

Featured Speakers and Panelists:

Kevin Ryan- Heroic whistleblower, Kevin Ryan, was fired for going public on 9/11 by Underwriters Laboratories. He has continued to speak out, and investigate the events of 9/11. He has authored numerous articles, the book-‘ Another Nineteen: Investigating Legitimate 9/11 Suspects’ and has edited The Journal of 9/11 Studies. He will speak on “Parallels Between 9/11 and Covid19.”

Jonathan Simon– Author of ‘CODE RED: Computerized Elections and the War on American Democracy-Election 2020 Edition’, Executive Director of Election Defense Alliance, he has published numerous papers on various aspects of election integrity since 2004. Dr. Simon is a graduate of Harvard College and New York University School of Law and will address “Could the November Election be Stolen?”

New York Fire Commissioner Christopher  Goia of the Franklin Square and Munson Fire Department, helped pass a powerful resolution in support of the Grand Jury Investigation of 9/11 in July 2019.  He served in the Marine Corps, and as an Emergency Medical Technician for 25 years, he also worked  in construction, and volunteered for the Fire Department for three decades.

Erik Lawyer– Founder of Firefighters for 9/11 Truth. Currently Erik lives and works in Colorado building community and resilience. His organization, One Becoming One works on personal transformation, as well as overcoming fear through love.

Access to the Film Festival can be found at No Lies Radio.

Another Virtual 9/11 Truth Conference

Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth is behind “Justice Rising,” an online conference on the struggle for 9/11 justice. The international lineup features David Ray Griffin, Niels Harrit, and Steven Jones. It will also offer a deep look into AE911Truth’s upcoming feature documentary SEVEN.

Friday, September 11: 6 to 9 PM Eastern (12 to 2 AM Central European Summer Time)

Saturday, September 12: 3 to 6 PM Eastern (9 to 11 PM Central European Summer Time)

Sunday, September 13: 6 to 9 PM Eastern (12 to 2 AM Central European Summer Time)

Justice Friday: Richard Gage, AIA, will open the conference. Speakers will include UK 9/11 family member Matt Campbell and barrister Nick Stanage; AE911Truth’s Ted Walter and Tony Szamboti; and, from the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, Mick Harrison and David Meiswinkle.

Science Saturday: SEVEN director Dylan Avery; Dr. Leroy Hulsey, whose Building 7 study the film is about; AE911Truth board member Roland Angle; and 9/11 researchers David Ray Griffin, Niels Harrit, and Steven Jones.

Big Picture Sunday: “War on Terror” expert Daniele Ganser; the Rutherford Institute’s John Whitehead; and James Corbett of The Corbett Report.

For more information, please visit this page.

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Carol Brouillet Co-Founder of the Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance, and organizer of many, many, conferences, film festivals, rallies, marches. Publisher of over 7,000,000 Deception and Perception Dollars to draw attention to the problems with the official 9/11 narrative and promote peaceful alternatives to the dominant paradigm. Mother, Congressional candidate, radio-show host for many years, concerned and active on many different issues, especially global economics. Her website is http://www.communitycurrency.org/.

Nineteen years ago today, on September 9th, 2001, two days prior to the tragic events of 9/11, the Global Research website was launched at www.globalresearch.ca.

We started up in late August with a handmade web design on FrontPage.  A student in philosophy gave me a hand in drafting the home page and putting the project online. (See below for screenshot.)

On the morning of September 8,  I took a two hour “crash course” on the use of file transfer FTP software from a young software specialist, who taught me how to upload articles to the website.

Among our first articles was a coverage of the events surrounding 9/11 and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan on October 7.

(Viewable here: https://web.archive.org/web/20011014234017/http://www.globalresearch.ca/)

From these modest beginnings, with virtually no resources, the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) has evolved into a dynamic research and independent online media group.

So much has changed since 2001, but the need for independent voices reporting on issues of global concern remains, and is perhaps more important now than ever before in GlobalResearch.ca’s 19 years online.

We are the crossroads of a global crisis which must be understood and analyzed in all its complexities.

Our thanks to our authors from all major regions of the World, from all walks of life, from committed independent voices, journalists, scholars, scientists, college and high school students, human rights and anti-war activists, environmentalists.

Over the years, more than 25,000 authors have contributed to Global Research (in English, French and Spanish as well as in other languages).

There is an ongoing campaign against independent media including Global Research.

Truth is a powerful and “peaceful weapon”.

On our 19th Birthday, Freedom of Expression Must Prevail.

Michel Chossudovsky, September 9, 2020

Click to donate:

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On behalf of the Global Research team, we extend our sincere thanks for your continued support and encouragement over all these years!

Imagine the reaction if the Russian government funded programs and events for years inside the US to create youth groups indoctrinated in support of Moscow’s interests – particularly in regards to voting in US elections and the shaping of the US government itself.

It would be considered up to and including an act of war, with Russian-funded organizations in the US dismantled, those involved jailed for sedition and even treason, and heavy penalties leveled against Russia directly.

Yet the United States itself has been engaged in these very activities for years – directly interfering in the internal political affairs of targeted nations around the globe.

“Youth” groups directly involved in current protests across Asia – from Hong Kong to Thailand – propped up by US government money are the result of years of US efforts to recruit, indoctrinate, and turn the region’s youth against incumbent governments – especially those with close ties to China.

Washington “Youth” Brand in Thailand

The Western media and their Thai partners have helped build up the “youth” brand of recent anti-government protests in Thailand.

Despite Thailand’s billionaire-led opposition and the US government itself being behind virtually every aspect of the current protests – they are still described as “youth-led,” “self-organized,” “organic,” and “spontaneous.”

Of course, with major rallies – including one supposedly organized by secondary school children – featuring expensive stages, professionally printed banners, ribbons, flags, and clothing, promoted by US government-funded media platforms across US-based social media platforms, and serving the interests of opposition parties led by aging billionaires – there is obviously nothing youthful, self-organized, organic, or spontaneous about any of them.

But where did this “youth” brand come from?

One of the Thai “youth” leaders – Parit “Penguin” Chiwarak – visiting the US Embassy in 2016 provides a clue.

In fact, Parit “Penguin” Chiwarak’s visit was just part of a much wider strategy by the US government to manipulate and leverage not only Thailand’s youth, but young people across all of Southeast Asia to create a pro-Western political bloc to weild against a rising China and its allies in the region.

US “Pivot to Asia’s” Failure Led to Using, Abusing, Hiding Behind Region’s Youth

It was part of the US “Pivot to Asia” which began in 2011 with then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s article in Foreign Policy Magazine titled, “America’s Pacific Century” – a manifesto declaring America’s desire to establish hegemony over Asia.

Clinton would state:

The future of politics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq, and the United States will be right at the center of the action.

Of course, the United States isn’t located in Asia.

An entire ocean stands between the continents of North America and Asia. Asia’s affairs are no more America’s business than America’s business is Asia’s. For the US to be “right at the center of the action” is a declaration of intent to impose American interests onto the region at the expense of Asia’s collective sovereignty.

Clinton herself references Afghanistan and Iraq – located in another region the US was “at the center of the action” in – and a region America’s interference including multiple wars of aggression has left utterly devastated by war, infighting, terrorism, economic collapse, and several of the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st century.

While Clinton pretended to advocate working with China in her article, she also made sure to promote Washington’s growing investments in confrontations with Beijing. This includes in the South China Sea where the US poses as self-appointed arbiter in territorial claims. It also includes the US State Department’s “Lower Mekong Initiative” in which the US seeks to create tensions between China and Southeast Asia over the use of the Mekong River which flows through the region.

Clinton also admitted to America’s growing military presence in the region while attempting to deny its purpose was to “constrain China’s growth.” But of course it was for decades and still is Washington’s primary foreign policy objective in Asia to encircle and contain China’s growth – a fact now all but entirely admitted by the US government.

Enter Asia’s Youth

America’s “Pivot to Asia” began with attempts to bend regional governments into partnerships with Washington against China.

This categorically failed with even the Philippines at one point disregarding an “international” court case the US funded and fought for on its behalf against China – deciding instead to resolve its dispute with Beijing bilaterally itself.

Other nations that had once maintained relatively close ties to the US – including Thailand – had already begun a pivot of their own – toward Beijing.

With the possibility of persuading existing governments to do Washington’s bidding all but extinguished – efforts began to leverage US “soft power” as a means of coercing or even replacing uncooperative governments. This included ongoing efforts to build up opposition parties but also to augment them with the region’s “youth.”

Washington’s YSEALI and Generation Democracy 

This manifested itself in several ways through a series of programs, events, and through huge amounts of funding via the US State Department itself as well as through the US’ notorious regime change arm, the National Endowment for Democracy.

One program created in 2013 called “Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative” (YSEALI) sought to indoctrinate a cadre of local youths from across ASEAN – including through trips to the United States itself and “seeding” money provided to start activist groups upon returning home.

Through a variety of programs and engagements, including U.S. educational and cultural exchanges, regional exchanges, and seed funding, YSEALI seeks to build the leadership capabilities of youth in the region, strengthen ties between the United States and Southeast Asia, and nurture an ASEAN community.

YSEALI’s own mission statement admits (emphasis added):

In case one cannot spot what’s wrong with YSEALI’s mission statement, simply imagine a Russian-funded program operating in the US, Canada, and Mexico “building the leadership capabilities of youth” in North America.

YSEALI Thai alumni are – almost without exception – both anti-China and now fully involved in Thailand’s current ongoing anti-government protests.

Another program is called “Generation Democracy” funded by the US NED and its subsidiary, the International Republican Institute (IRI).

Launched in Bangkok in 2017 by US Ambassador to Thailand Glyn Davies – a US National War College graduate who specialized in “non-military instruments in persuasive, inducement, and coercive strategies” – it sought to – according to its own website (emphasis added):

“Young people in Asia are looking to build a vibrant future that is citizen-centered and hopeful,” said IRI President Ambassador Mark Green. “Through Generation Democracy, we look forward to working with them to make this vision a reality.”

Again, imagine a Russian-funded program aimed at helping selected youth build America’s future. By doing so, one can easily see how the activities of YSEALI and Generation Democracy – when looking past its superficial platitudes – constitutes blatant political interference in violation of international law and norms – law and norms the US itself would never allow to be infringed upon in protecting its own internal political affairs.

An example of how these programs are involved in shaping the decisions of young voters in Southeast Asia and in Thailand specifically – was Generation Democracy’s 2019 workshop held at Thammasat University called, “Get out the Vote (GOTV) Ideathon.”

This weekend, Thais will go to the polls for their first general election in eight years. Since 2014, Thailand has been under a military led government, creating an environment where civic and political participation is severely limited.The US IRI’s own website in a post titled, “Thailand: Young People Refuse To Be Silenced In This Historic Election Year,” directly reflects Thai opposition talking points depicting the current pro-Beijing government in Thailand as “authoritarian” and the “youth’s” desire to replace it with “democracy” according to Washington D.C.

The post claims:

Nothing is mentioned about what happened in 2014 or the fact that the military-led government had ousted the previous government – headed by billionaire fugitive Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister Yingluck Shinawatra – which was in the process of robbing nearly a million rice farmers and killing protesters in the streets.

By the time the military intervened, over 20 people including women and children had died in nearly daily attacks on protests sites. It is no coincidence that both the US government and the Thai opposition it sponsors omit this crucial context.

IRI’s tone is identical to the current Thai opposition’s because the US government directly backs and has deliberately shaped the opposition’s agenda in Thailand.

In addition to laying the groundwork over the last several years to recruit and leverage Thailand’s youth – the US government through the NED is funding virtually every aspect of Thailand’s current so-called “student protests” – everything from forming the protest’s leadership, to organizing petitions to rewrite Thailand’s constitution, to promoting the protests across the media, to even filling up the protests with people.

The ultimate and stated goal of the protesters themselves is regime change and the rewriting of Thailand’s constitution.

It is a process that has repeated itself all over the world and over many years.

The New York Times article, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings,” revealed how these same groups now working to shape Thailand’s opposition and the nation’s youth today were behind the so-called “Arab Spring” in 2011 – previously claimed to have been “self-organized” by regional youths.

One of the primary forums used by the US government to recruit, train, and equip Arab World youth was literally called the Youth Movement Summit – according to the US government’s America.gov website.

The 2008 statement titled, “Announcement on Alliance of Youth Movements Summit,” would claim:

India could have followed the Chinese Defense Ministry’s suggestion to investigate the first-ever firearm discharge near the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in almost half a century, which could have helped New Delhi “save face” before Beijing by de-escalating this extremely dangerous situation that it’s entirely responsible for provoking, but it declined doing so since it’s seemingly more important for Modi to “save face” before his domestic audience even if it leads to a disastrous “war by miscalculation” with China.

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Remember the goal of flattening the curve? Ensuring that hospitals weren’t overrun? Well, what do you call a scenario where thousands of cases result in zero hospitalizations? I’d call it the ultimate flat curve – or downright flat line. Yet rather than recognizing the detection of mild cases among college students as portents of good news, universities continue to sow panic for no good reason.

If we had in place the strict eligibility threshold for COVID-19 testing that we had in March when tests were scarce, we quite literally would not know the “epidemic” of mild and asymptomatic cases on college campus even exists. After being open for weeks, college campuses have no reported deaths or even hospitalizations that I can find. You might say that’s because they’ve done such an amazing job preventing cases. Nope: They have tons of reported cases. Dr. Andrew Bostom, a cardiovascular and epidemiology researcher, posted a spreadsheet on twitter of all the cases in 17 state university systems as of September 4:

1/ Very Reassuring U.S. Return To Campus C19 News: ZERO reported C19 hospitalizations despite >11,000 students testing C19+, i.e., being declared “C19 cases” pic.twitter.com/XrGlWddlsd

— Andrew Bostom (@andrewbostom) September 5, 2020

There is not a single hospitalization among them. How is this an emergency situation? If anything, the fact that there are so many cases is a blessing, because, with such a young population, these cases are a de facto vaccine, creating herd immunity without danger.

Despite this blessing, the University of Arizona has hired a private security company to “patrol and ensure compliance of health and safety directives” on campus, essentially turning the campus into a prison and criminalizing the lives of young adults who have near-zero risk from the virus. They must be suffering the epidemic of the century there in order to warrant such heavy-handed policing, right?

Well, according to Dr. Richard Carmona at the College of Public Health at the University of Arizona, they found a few “cases” at a sorority house and “were able to identify, very early, before anybody was symptomatic, that there were sick people in their dorm.”

The horror! Some asymptomatic cases. What are they going to do during the flu season when even young people actually get sick for a week? The entire purpose of counting cases during an epidemic is because they might predict mass casualties. During this pseudo-epidemic on college campuses, they need to count cases to even know they exist. But if they don’t result in serious illness, then what is the purpose of counting them more than rhinovirus colds?

Then there is the issue of what exactly these PCR tests are detecting. Many of them could be false positives, insignificant viral loads, or the dead RNA of a virus that passed weeks ago still being carried around in the student’s nasal passages. There is no metric for any of this being monitored in the testing. The irony of the University of Arizona using positive testing of benign cases as the baseline for such draconian measures is that so many of those tests turn out to be false positives. Out of the 13 positive results among members of the university’s athletics department last week, 11 of them turned out to be false upon retesting.

But evidently, negative tests aren’t even enough to escape to clutches of tyranny. Last Monday, Ohio Health Director Lance D. Himes signed an order requiring even students who test negative to be isolated in a quarantine house on campus. It includes asymptomatic individuals or even those merely “exposed” to a COVID-positive individual. They’d be barred from exiting the quarantine house without written permission from a health official, and individual universities would decide whether parents are even allowed to visit them. This is a mandate for de facto prison – all for an “epidemic” built on false or notional positives with no health risks beyond the ordinary bugs that spread on campuses every year.

By sending your children to Ohio’s public colleges, you are essentially sending them off to jail, because it’s nearly impossible for them not to be quarantined. Ohio State University is conducting mandatory random testing of 8,000 students each week via their “surveillance testing program.” Based on everything we know about false positive or old dead viral RNA, it’s a near-certainty that the testing will net dozens of people every week. Now, this order will force numerous friends and dorm-mates to be confined as well.

It’s becoming self-evident every week that the virus that is really spreading is an incorrigible psychosis. Rather than confining our youth for a cold that might not even spread in its asymptomatic form, perhaps its time to start confining some of the public health officials … to a mental health facility.

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Daniel Horowitz is a senior editor of Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @RMConservative.

Featured image is from CODEPINK

Powerful forces in the US and UK want Assange crucified for the unforgivable “crime” of truth-telling investigative journalism the way it should be on vital for everyone to know geopolitical issues.

That’s what his slow-motion extradition to the US trial in Britain is all about.

John Pilger called proceedings a “Stalinist trial,” guilt automatic in advance.

In Stalinist Soviet Russia, the aim was to eliminate everyone not bending to his will, proceedings conducted secretly or not at all.

Mistreatment of Assange since forcefully dragged from Ecuador’s London embassy in April 2019 has been all about inflicting constitutionally banned cruel and unusual punishment, along with killing him slowly from neglect and abuse, a high crime against humanity under international law.

On Monday, show trial proceedings resumed, presided over by hostile to judicial fairness district judge Vanessa Baraitser.

UK authorities assigned her the task of assuring Assange’s extradition to the US for kangaroo court proceedings or conspiring with a plot to eliminate him by slow-motion maximum security mistreatment.

A US/UK conspiracy aims to assure that he’s never freed from prison confinement by denying him due process and equal protection under law — so guilty as charged is certain no matter his innocence of all charges.

Baraitser limited his access to counsel, leaving him in legal limbo.

She denied his emergency bail request at a time of large-scale coronavirus outbreaks in Britain, and rejected more time requested by his legal team to address a Trump regime superseding indictment.

In late June, a US Justice Department statement said the following:

“A federal grand jury returned a second superseding indictment today charging Julian P. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, with offenses that relate to (his) alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States (sic),” adding:

“The new indictment does not add additional counts to the prior 18-count superseding indictment returned against Assange in May 2019.”

“It does, however, broaden the scope of the conspiracy (sic) surrounding alleged computer intrusions with which Assange was previously charged.”

Addressing the court on Monday, legal team member for Assange Mark Summers said fairness demands that if the prosecution is permitted to revise its indictment, the defense should be granted more preparatory time to respond.

According to WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson, the Trump regime had 10 years to make their case against Assange.

His lawyers worked for the past year in preparing a defense against the first superseding indictment.

“Throwing this (second one) at the last minute is an absolute insult to the UK courts and to Julian and to justice,” Hrafnsson stressed, adding:

This gross injustice must be “addressed upon appeal and on every level.”

In testimony by video link, Journalism Professor Mark Feldstein explained that leaking and publishing documents related to national security has been longstanding practice in the US, a First Amendment right.

Never before was a journalist or publisher prosecuted for what’s constitutionally permitted, he stressed.

The current phase of Assange’s extradition hearing is expected to last up to a month.

Charges against him in original or revised form are spurious.

Earlier he explained that WikiLeaks has the right “to publish newsworthy content (that’s) (c)onsistent with the US Constitution. We publish material that we can confirm to be true.”

That’s what speech, press, and academic freedoms are all about — the most fundamental of democratic rights without which all others are jeopardized.

Unjustifiably charging him under the long ago outdated 1917 Espionage Act, a WW I relic pertaining to the war alone, nothing in its aftermath, along with one phony accusation of computer crime, compounds the travesty of justice against him.

Baraitser permitted only nine members of the public to be in court for proceedings — dubiously claiming COVID-19-related restrictions.

Five seats were reserved for Assange’s family and friends, four alone for the general public.

NGOs, press freedom advocates, and EU MPs had remote access permission granted them to monitor proceedings withdrawn — on the unacceptable pretext of protecting “the integrity of the court” by making what’s going on inside London’s Old Bailey as secretive as possible.

In response, whistleblower Edward Snowden tweeted the following:

“The extradition of Julian Assange is a malicious prosecution by any standard. Even critics of the man ought to condemn this as a show trial.”

“The ‘crime’ in question is the greatest public service @Wikileaks ever performed: exposing (US) abuses” in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Drop the charges. #FreeAssange”

Wanting him prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned longterm is less about him personally, much more a message to others who may follow in his footsteps.

It makes clear that a fate similar to his awaits anyone exposing US high crimes it wants concealed.

The same goes for whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning.

Imprisoned twice, now free, she could experience a repeat of what she endured at the discretion of the US ruling class.

That’s how police state injustice operates in fantasy democracy America.

A Final Comment

In New York Times v. United States (June 30, 1971), the US Supreme Court’s landmark 6 – 3 majority ruled that the Times and Washington Post were legally permitted to publish what’s known as the Pentagon Papers — material leaked by Daniel Ellsberg.

A per curiam court statement said the following:

“Any system of prior restraints of expression comes to this court bearing a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity.”

The government “thus carries a heavy burden of showing justification for the imposition of such a restraint.”

Majority Supreme Court justices agreed with their district and appeals court counterparts that Congress shall make no law (that) abridg(es) the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

Under rights affirmed by the First Amendment, publications, groups or individuals may legally publish truthful information in the public interest no matter how it was obtained.

If extradited to the US, convicted and imprisoned, Assange will be denied what’s mandated under the First Amendment, affirmed by majority Supreme Court ruling.

Proceedings against him turned the rule of law on its head — supported by establishment media for failing to denounce what’s going on.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Massoud Nayeri

This morning we went straight in to the evidence of Clive Stafford Smith, a dual national British/American lawyer licensed to practice in the UK. He had founded Reprieve in 1999 originally to oppose the death penalty, but after 2001 it had branched out into torture, illicit detention and extraordinary rendition cases in relation to the “war on terror”.

Clive Stafford Smith (image below) testified that the publication by Wikileaks of the cables had been of great utility to litigation in Pakistan against illegal drone strikes. As Clive’s witness statement put it at paras 86/7:

86. One of my motivations for working on these cases was that the U.S. drone campaign appeared to be horribly mismanaged and was resulting in paid informants giving false information about innocent people who were then killed in strikes. For example, when I shared the podium with Imran Khan at a “jirga” with the victims of drone strikes, I said in my public remarks that the room probably contained one or two people in the pay of the CIA. What I never guessed was that not only was this true but that the informant would later make a false statement about a teenager who attended the jirga such that he and his cousin were killed in a drone strike three days later. We knew from the official press statement afterwards that the “intelligence” given to the U.S. involved four “militants” in a car; we knew from his family just him and his cousin going to pick up an aunt. There is a somewhat consistent rule that can be seen at work here: it is, of course, much safer for any informant to make a statement about someone who is a “nobody”, than someone who is genuinely dangerous.
87. This kind of horrific action was provoking immense anger, causing America’s status in Pakistan to plummet, and was making life more dangerous for Americans, not less.

Legal action dependent on the evidence about US drones strike policy revealed by Wikileaks had led to a judgement against assassination by the Chief Justice of Pakistan and to a sea change to public attitudes to drone strikes in Waziristan. One result had been a stopping of drone strikes in Waziristan.

Wikileaks released cables also revealed US diplomatic efforts to block international investigation into cases of torture and extraordinary rendition. This ran counter to the legal duty of the United States to cooperate with investigation of allegations of torture as mandated in Article 9 of the UN Convention Against Torture.

Stafford Smith continued that an underrated document released by Wikileaks was the JPEL, or US military Joint Priority Effects List for Afghanistan, in large part a list of assassination targets. This revealed a callous disregard of the legality of actions and a puerile attitude to killing, with juvenile nicknames given to assassination targets, some of which nicknames appeared to indicate inclusions on the list by British or Australian agents.

Stafford Smith gave the example of Bilal Abdul Kareem, and American citizen and journalist who had been the subject of five different US assassination attempts, using hellfire missiles fired from drones. Stafford Smith was engaged in ongoing litigation in Washington on whether “the US Government has the right to target its own citizens who are journalists for assassination.”

Stafford Smith then spoke of Guantanamo and the emergence of evidence that many detainees there are not terrorists but had been swept up in Afghanistan by a system dependent on the payment of bounties. The Detainee Assessment Briefs released by Wikileaks were not independent information but internal US Government files containing the worst allegations that the US had been able to “confect” against prisoners including Stafford Smith’s clients, and often get them to admit under torture.

These documents were US government allegations and when Wikileaks released them it was his first thought that it was the US Government who had released them to discredit defendants. The documents could not be a threat to national security.

Inside Guantanamo a core group of six detainees had turned informant and were used to make false allegations against other detainees. Stafford Smith said it was hard to blame them – they were trying to get out of that hellish place like everybody else. The US government had revealed the identities of those six, which put into perspective their concern for protecting informants in relation to Wikileaks releases.

Clive Stafford Smith said he had been “profoundly shocked” by the crimes committed by the US government against his clients. These included torture, kidnapping, illegal detention and murder. The murder of one detainee at Baghram Airport in Afghanistan had been justified as a permissible interrogation technique to put fear into other detainees. In 2001, he would never have believed the US Government could have done such things.

Stafford Smith spoke of use of Spanish Inquisition techniques, such as strapado, or hanging by the wrists until the shoulders slowly dislocate. He told of the torture of Binyam Mohammed, a British citizen who had his genitals cut daily with a razor blade. The British Government had avoided its legal obligations to Binyam Mohammed, and had leaked to the BBC the statement he had been forced to confess to under torture, in order to discredit him.

At this point Baraitser intervened to give a five minute warning on the 30 minute guillotine on Stafford Smith’s oral evidence. Asked by Mark Summers (image on the left) for the defence how Wikileaks had helped, Stafford Smith said that many of the leaked documents revealed illegal kidnapping, rendition and torture and had been used in trials. The International Criminal Court had now opened an investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan, in which decision Wikileaks released material had played a part.

Mark Summers asked what had been the response of the US Government to the opening of this ICC investigation. Clive Stafford Smith stated that an Executive Order had been issued initiating sanctions against any non-US citizen who cooperated with or promoted the ICC investigation into war crimes by the US. He suggested that Mr Summers would now be subject to US sanction for promoting this line of questioning.

Mr Stafford Smith’s 30 minutes was now up. You can read his full statement here. There could not have been a clearer example from the first witness of why so much time yesterday was taken up with trying to block the evidence of defence witnesses from being heard. Stafford Smith’s evidence was breathtaking stuff and clearly illustrated the purpose of the time guillotine on defence evidence. This is not material governments wish to be widely aired.

James Lewis QC then cross-examined Clive Stafford Smith for the prosecution. He noted that references to Wikileaks in Stafford Smith’s written evidence were few and far between. He suggested that Stafford Smith’s evidence had tended to argue that Wikileaks disclosures were in the public interest; but there was specifically no public interest defence allowed in the UK Official Secrets Act.

Stafford Smith replied that may be, but he knew that was not the case in America.

Lewis then said that in Stafford Smith’s written evidence paras 92-6 he had listed specific Wikileaks cables which related to disclosure of drone policy. But publication of these particular cables did not form part of the indictment. Lewis read out part of an affidavit from US Assistant Attorney Kromberg which stated that Assange was being indicted only for cables containing the publication of names of informants.

Stafford Smith replied that Kromberg may state that, but in practice that would not be the case in the United States. The charge was of conspiracy, and the way such charges were defined in the US system would allow the widest inclusion of evidence. The first witness at trial would be a “terrorism expert” who would draw a wide and far reaching picture of the history of threat against the USA.

Lewis asked whether Stafford Smith had read the indictment. He replied he had read the previous indictment, but not the new superseding indictment.

Lewis stated that the cables Stafford Smith quoted had been published by the Washington Post and the New York Times before they were published by Wikileaks. Stafford Smith responded that was true, but he understood those newspapers had obtained them from Wikileaks. Lewis then stated that the Washington Post and New York Times were not being prosecuted for publishing the same information; so how could the publication of that material be relevant to this case?

Lewis quoted Kromberg again:

“The only instance in which the superseding indictment encompasses the publication of documents, is where those documents contains names which are put at risk”.

Stafford Smith again responded that in practice that was not how the case would be prosecuted in the United States. Lewis asked if Stafford Smith was calling Kromberg a liar.

At this point Julian Assange called out from the dock “This is nonsense. Count 1 states throughout “conspiracy to publish”. After a brief adjournment, Baraitser warned Julian he would be removed from the court if he interrupted proceedings again.

Stafford Smith said he had not said that Kromberg was a liar, and had not seen the full document from which Lewis was selectively quoting at him. Count 1 of the indictment is conspiracy to obtain national security information and this references dissemination to the public in a sub paragraph. This was not limited in the way Kromberg suggests and his claim did not correspond to Stafford Smith’s experience of how national security trials are in fact prosecuted in the United States.

Lewis reiterated that nobody was being prosecuted for publishing except Assange, and this only related to publishing names. He then asked Stafford Smith whether he had ever been in a position of responsibility for classifying information, to which he got a negative reply. Lewis then asked if had ever been in an official position to declassify documents. Stafford Smith replied no, but he held US security clearance enabling him to see classified material relating to his cases, and had often applied to have material declassified.

Stafford Smith stated that Kromberg’s assertion that the ICC investigation was a threat to national security was nonsense [I confess I am not sure where this assertion came from or why Stafford Smith suddenly addressed it]. Lewis suggested that the question of harm to US national interest from Assange’s activities was best decided by a jury in the United States. The prosecution had to prove damage to the interests of the US or help to an enemy of the US.

Stafford Smith said that beyond the government adoption of torture, kidnapping and assassination, he thought the post-2001 mania for over-classification of government information was an even bigger threat to the American way of life. He recalled his client Moazzam Begg – the evidence of Moazzam’s torture was classified “secret” on the grounds that knowledge that the USA used torture would damage American interests.

Lewis then took Stafford Smith to a passage in the book “Wikileaks; Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy”, in which Luke Harding stated that he and David Leigh were most concerned to protect the names of informants, but Julian Assange had stated that Afghan informants were traitors who merited retribution. “They were informants, so if they got killed they had it coming.” Lewis tried several times to draw Stafford Smith into this, but Stafford Smith repeatedly said he understood these alleged facts were under dispute and he had no personal knowledge.

Lewis concluded by again repeating that the indictment only covered the publication of names. Stafford Smith said that he would eat his hat if that was all that was introduced at trial.

In re-examination, Mark Summers said that Lewis had characterised the disclosure of torture, killing and kidnapping as “in the public interest”. Was that a sufficient description? Stafford Smith said no, it was also the provision of evidence of crime; war crime and illegal activity.

Summers asked Stafford Smith to look at the indictment as a US lawyer (which Stafford Smith is) and see if he agreed with the characterisation by Lewis that it only covered publication where names were revealed. Summers read out this portion of the superseding indictment:

and pointed out that the “and” makes the point on documents mentioning names an additional category of document, not a restriction on the categories listed earlier. You can read the full superseding indictment here; be careful when browsing as there are earlier superseding indictments; the US Government changes its indictment in this case about as often as Kim Kardashian changes her handbag.

Summers also listed Counts 4, 7, 10, 13 and 17 as also not limited to the naming of informants.

Stafford Smith again repeated his rather different point that in practice Kromberg’s assertion does not actually match how such cases are prosecuted in the US anyway. In answer to a further question, he repeated that the US government had itself released the names of its Guantanamo Bay informants.

In regard to the passage quoted from David Leigh, Summers asked Stafford Smith “Do you know that Mr Harding has published untruths in the press”. Lewis objected and Summers withdrew (although this is certainly true).

This concluded Clive Stafford Smith’s evidence. Before the next witness, Lewis put forward an argument to the judge that it was beyond dispute that the new indictment only related, as far as publication being an offence was concerned, to publication of names of defendants. Baraitser had replied that plainly this was disputed and the matter would be argued in due course.

The afternoon resumed the evidence of Professor Mark Feldstein, begun sporadically amid technical glitches on Monday. For that reason I held off reporting the false start until now; I here give it as one account. Prof Feldstein’s full witness statement is here.

Professor Feldstein is Chair of Broadcast Journalism at Maryland University and had twenty years experience as an investigative journalist.

Feldstein stated that leaking of classified information happens with abandon in the United States. Government officials did it frequently. One academic study estimated such leaks as “thousands upon thousands”. There were journalists who specialised in national security and received Pulitzer prizes for receiving such leaks on military and defence matters. Leaked material is published on a daily basis.

Feldstein stated that “The first amendment protects the press, and it is vital that the First Amendment does so, not because journalists are privileged, but because the public have the right to know what is going on”. Historically, the government had never prosecuted a publisher for publishing leaked secrets. They had prosecuted whistleblowers.

There had been historical attempts to prosecute individual journalists, but all had come to nothing and all had been a specific attack on a perceived Presidential enemy. Feldstein had listed three instances of such attempts, but none had reached a grand jury.
[This is where the technology broke down on Monday. We now resume with Tuesday afternoon.]

Mark Summers asked Prof Feldstein about the Jack Anderson case. Feldstein replied he had researched this for his book “Poisoning the Press”. Nixon had planned to prosecute Anderson under the Espionage Act but had been told by his Attorney General the First Amendment made it impossible. Consequently Nixon had conducted a campaign against Anderson that included anti-gay smears, planting a spy in his office and foisting forged documents on him. An assassination plot by poison had even been discussed.

Summers took Feldstein to his evidence on “Blockbuster” newspaper stories based on Wikileaks publications:

• A disturbing videotape of American soldiers firing on a crowd from a helicopter above Baghdad, killing at least 18 people; the soldiers laughed as they targeted unarmed civilians, including two Reuters journalists.
• US officials gathered detailed and often gruesome evidence that approximately 100,000 civilians were killed after its invasion of Iraq, contrary to the public claims of President George W. Bush’s administration, which downplayed the deaths and insisted that such statistics were not maintained. Approximately 15,000 of these civilians killings had never been previously disclosed anywhere.
• American forces in Iraq routinely turned a blind eye when the US-backed government there brutalized detainees, subjecting them to beatings, whippings, burnings, electric shock, and sodomy.
• After WikiLeaks published vivid accounts compiled by US diplomats of rampant corruption by Tunisian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and his family, ensuing street protests forced the dictator to flee to Saudia Arabia. When the unrest in Tunisia spread to other Mideast countries,WikiLeaks was widely hailed as a key catalyst for this “Arab Spring.”
• In Afghanistan, the US deployed a secret “black” unit of special forces to hunt down “high value” Taliban leaders for “kill or capture” without trial.
• The US government expanded secret intelligence collection by its diplomats at the United Nations and overseas, ordering envoys to gather credit card numbers, work schedules, and frequent flier numbers of foreign dignitaries—eroding the distinction between foreign service officers and spies.
• Saudi Arabian King Abdullah secretly implored the US to “cut off the head of the snake” and stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons even as private Saudi donors were the number-one source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.
• Customs officials caught Afghanistan’s vice president carrying $52 million in unexplained cash during a trip abroad, just one example of the endemic corruption at the highest levels of the Afghan government that the US has helped prop up.
• The US released “high risk enemy combatants” from its military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba who then later turned up again in Mideast battlefields. At the same time, Guantanamo prisoners who proved harmless—such as an 89-year-old Afghan villager suffering from senile dementia—were held captive for years.
• US officials listed Pakistan’s intelligence service as a terrorist organization and found that it had plotted with the Taliban to attack American soldiers in Afghanistan—even though Pakistan receives more than $1 billion annually in US aid. Pakistan’s civilian president, Asif Ali Zardari, confided that he had limited control to stop this and expressed fear that his own military might “take me out.”

Feldstein agreed that many of these had revealed criminal acts and war crimes, and they were important stories for the US media. Summers asked Feldstein about Assange being charged with soliciting classified information. Feldstein replied that gathering classified information is “standard operating procedure” for journalists. “My entire career virtually was soliciting secret documents or records”

Summers pointed out that one accusation was that Assange helped Manning cover her tracks by breaking a password code. “Trying to help protect your source is a journalistic obligation” replied Feldstein. Journalists would provide sources with payphones, fake email accounts, and help them remove fingerprints both real and digital. These are standard journalistic techniques, taught at journalism college and workshops.

Summers asked about disclosure of names and potential harm to people. Feldstein said this was “easy to assert, hard to establish”. Government claims of national security damage were routinely overblown and should be treated with scepticism. In the case of the Pentagon Papers, the government had claimed that publication would identify CIA agents, reveal military plans and lengthen the Vietnam War. These claims had all proven to be untrue.

On the White House tapes Nixon had been recorded telling his aides to “get” the New York Times. He said their publications should be “cast in terms of aid and comfort to the enemy”.

Summers asked about the Obama administration’s attitude to Wikileaks. Feldstein said that there had been no prosecution after Wikileaks’ major publications in 2010/11. But Obama’s Justice Department had instigated an “aggressive investigation”. However they concluded in 2013 that the First Amendment rendered any prosecution impossible. Justice Department Spokesman Matthew Miller had published that they thought it would be a dangerous precedent that could be used against other journalists and publications.

With the Trump administration everything had changed. Trump had said he wished to “put reporters in jail”. Pompeo when head of the CIA had called Wikileaks a “hostile intelligence agency”. Sessions had declared prosecuting Assange “a priority”.

James Lewis then rose to cross-examine Feldstein. He adopted a particularly bullish and aggressive approach, and started by asking Feldstein to confine himself to very short, concise answers to his precise questions. He said that Feldstein “claimed to be” an expert witness, and had signed to affirm that he had read the criminal procedural rules. Could he tell the court what those rules said?

This was plainly designed to trip Feldstein up. I am sure I must have agreed WordPress’s terms and conditions in order to be able to publish this blog, but if you challenged me point blank to recall what they say I would struggle. However Feldstein did not hesitate, but came straight back saying that he had read them, and they were rather different to the American rules, stipulating impartiality and objectivity.

Lewis asked what Feldstein’s expertise was supposed to be. Feldstein replied the practice, conduct and history of journalism in the United States. Lewis asked if Feldstein was legally qualified. Feldstein replied no, but he was not giving legal opinion. Lewis asked if he had read the indictment. Feldstein replied he had not read the most recent indictment.

Lewis said that Feldstein had stated that Obama decided not to prosecute whereas Trump did. But it was clear that the investigation had continued through from the Obama to the Trump administrations. Feldstein replied yes, but the proof of the pudding was that there had been no prosecution under Obama.

Lewis referred to a Washington Post article from which Feldstein had quoted in his evidence and included in his footnotes, but had not appended a copy. “Was that because it contained a passage you do not wish us to read?” Lewis said that Feldstein had omitted the quote that “no formal decision had been made” by the Obama administration, and a reference to the possibility of prosecution for activity other than publication.

Feldstein was plainly slightly rattled by Lewis’ accusation of distortion. He replied that his report stated that the Obama administration did not prosecute, which was true. He had footnoted the article; he had not thought he needed to also provide a copy. He had exercised editorial selection in quoting from the article.

Lewis said that from other sources, a judge had stated in District Court that investigation was ongoing and District Judge Mehta had said other prosecutions against persons other than Manning were being considered. Why had Feldstein not included this information in his report? Assange’s lawyer Barry J Pollock had stated “they are not informing us they are closing the investigation or have decided not to charge.” Would it not be fair to add that to his report?

Prof Feldstein replied that Assange and his lawyers would be hard to convince that the prosecution had been dropped, but we know that no new information had in 2015/16 been brought to the Grand Jury.

Lewis stated that in 2016 Assange had offered to go to the United States to face charges if Manning were granted clemency. Does this not show the Obama administration was intending to charge? Should this not have been in his report? Feldstein replied no, because it was irrelevant. Assange was not in a position to know what Obama’s Justice Department was doing. The subsequent testimony of Obama Justice Department insiders was much more valuable.

Lewis asked if the Obama administration had decided not to prosecute, why would they keep the Grand Jury open? Feldstein replied this happened very frequently. It could be for many reasons, including to collect information on alleged co-conspirators, or simply in the hope of further new evidence.

Lewis suggested that the most Feldstein might honestly say was that the Obama administration had intimated that they would not prosecute for passively obtained information, but that did not extend to a decision not to prosecute for hacking with Chelsea Manning. “If Obama did not decide not to prosecute, and the investigation had continued into the Trump administration, then your diatribe against Trump becomes otiose.”

Lewis continued that the “New York Times problem” did not exist because the NYT had only published information it had passively received. Unlike Assange, the NYT had not conspired with Manning illegally to obtain the documents. Would Prof Feldstein agree that the First Amendment did not defend a journalist against a burglary or theft charge? Feldstein replied that a journalist is not above the law. Lewis then asked Feldstein whether a journalist had a right to “steal or unlawfully obtain information” or “to hack a computer to obtain information.” Each time Feldstein replied “no”.

Lewis then asked if Feldstein accepted that Bradley (sic) Manning had committed a crime. Feldstein replied “yes”. Lewis then asked “If Assange aided and abetted, consulted or procured or entered into a conspiracy with Bradley Manning, has he not committed a crime?” Feldstein said that would depend on the “sticky details.”

Lewis then restated that there was no allegation that the NYT entered into a conspiracy with Bradley Manning, only Julian Assange. On the indictment, only counts 15, 16 and 17 related to publishing and these only to publishing of unredacted documents. The New York Times, Guardian and Washington Post had united in condemnation of the publication by Wikileaks of unredacted cables containing names. Lewis then read out again the same quote from the Leigh/Harding book he had put to Stafford Smith, stating that Julian Assange had said the Afghan informants would deserve their fate.

Lewis asked: “Would a responsible journalist publish unredacted names of an informant knowing he is in danger when it is unnecessary to do so for the purpose of the story”. Prof Feldstein replied “no”. Lewis then went on to list examples of information it might be proper for government to keep secret, such as “troop movements in war, nuclear codes, material that would harm an individual” and asked if Feldstein agreed these were legitimate secrets. Feldstein replied “yes”.

Lewis then asked rhetorically whether it was not more fair to allow a US jury to be the judge of harm. He then asked Feldstein: “You say in your report that this is a political prosecution. But a Grand jury has supported the prosecution. Do you accept that there is an evidentiary basis for the prosecution?”. Feldstein replied “A grand jury has made that decision. I don’t know that it is true.” Lewis then read out a statement from US Assistant Attorney Kromberg that prosecution decisions are taken by independent prosecutors who follow a code that precludes political factors. He asked Feldstein if he agreed that independent prosecutors were a strong bulwark against political prosecution.
Feldstein replied “That is a naive view.”

Lewis then asked whether Feldstein was claiming that President Trump or his Attorney General had ordered this prosecution without a factual basis. The professor replied he had no doubt it was a political prosecution, this was based on 1) its unprecedented nature 2) the rejection of prosecution by Obama but decision to prosecute now with no new evidence 3) the extraordinary wide framing of the charges 4) President Trump’s narrative of hostility to the press. “It’s political”.

Mark Summers then re-examined Professor Feldstein. He said that Lewis had suggested that Assange was complicit in Manning obtaining classified information but the New York Times was not. Is it your understanding that to seek to help an official leaker is a crime? Professor Feldstein replied “No, absolutely not”.

“Do journalists ask for classified information?”
“Yes.”
“Do journalists solicit such information?”
“Yes.”
“Are you aware of any kind of previous prosecution for this kind of activity.”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Could you predict it would be criminalised?”
“No, and it is very dangerous.”

Summers than asked Professor Feldstein what the New York Times had done to get the Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg. Feldstein replied they were very active in soliciting the papers. They had a key to the room that held the documents and had helped to copy them. They had played an active not a passive role. “Journalists are not passive stenographers.”

Summers reminded Prof Feldstein that he had been asked about hacking. What if the purpose of the hacking was not to obtain the information, but to disguise the source? This was the specific allegation spelt out in Kromberg memorandum 4 paras 11 to 14. Professor Feldstein replied that protecting sources is an obligation. Journalists work closely with, conspire with, cajole, encourage, direct and protect their sources. That is journalism.

Summers asked Prof Feldstein if he maintained his caution in accepting government claims of harm. Feldstein replied absolutely. The government track record demanded caution. Summers pointed out that there is an act which specifically makes illegal the naming of intelligence sources, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Prof Feldstein said this was true; the fact that the charge was not brought under the IIPA proves that it is not true that the prosecution is intended to be limited to revealing of identities and in fact it will be much broader.

Summers concluded by saying that Lewis had stated that Wikileaks had released the unredacted cables in a mass publication. Would it change the professor’s assessment if the material had already been released by others. Prof Feldstein said his answers were not intended to indicate he accepted the government narrative.

Edward Fitzgerald QC then took over for the defence. He put to Prof Feldstein that there had been no prosecution of Assange when Manning was prosecuted, and Obama had given Manning clemency. These were significant facts. Feldstein agreed.

Fitzgerald then said that the Washington Post article from which Lewis complained Feldstein had quoted selectively, contained a great deal more material Feldstein had also not quoted but which strongly supported his case, for example “Officials told the Washington Post last week that there is no sealed indictment and the Department had “all but concluded that they would not bring a charge.”” It further stated that when Snowden was charged, Greenwald was not, and the same approach was followed with Manning/Assange. So overall the article confirmed Feldstein’s thesis, as contained in his report. Feldstein agreed. There was then discussion of other material that could have been included to support his thesis.

Fitzgerald concluded by asking if Feldstein were familiar with the phrase “a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich”. Feldstein replied it was common parlance and indicated the common view that grand juries were malleable and almost always did what prosecutors asked them to do. There was a great deal of academic material on this point.

THOUGHTS

Thus concluded another extraordinary day. Once again, there were just five of us in the public gallery (in 42 seats) and the six allowed in the overflow video gallery in court 9 was reduced to three, as three seats were reserved by the court for “VIPs” who did not show up.

The cross-examinations showed the weakness of the thirty minute guillotine adopted by Baraitser, with really interesting defence testimony cut short, and then unlimited time allowed to Lewis for his cross examination. This was particularly pernicious in the evidence of Mark Feldstein. In James Lewis’ extraordinary cross-examination of Feldstein, Lewis spoke between five and ten times as many words as the actual witness. Some of Lewis’s “questions” went on for many minutes, contained huge passages of quote and often were phrased in convoluted double negative. Thrice Feldstein refused to reply on grounds he could not make out where the question lay. With the defence initial statement of the evidence limited to half an hour, Lewis’s cross examination approached two hours, a good 80% of which was Lewis speaking.

Feldstein was browbeaten by Lewis and plainly believed that when Lewis told him to answer in very brief and concise answers, Lewis had the authority to instruct that. In fact Lewis is not the judge and it was supposed to be Feldstein’s evidence, not Lewis’s. Baraitser failed to protect Feldstein or to explain his right to frame his own answers, when that was very obviously a necessary course for her to take.

Today we had two expert witnesses, who had both submitted lengthy written testimony relating to one indictment, which was now being examined in relation to a new superseding indictment, exchanged at the last minute, and which neither of them had ever seen. Both specifically stated they had not seen the new indictment. Furthermore this new superseding indictment had been specifically prepared by the prosecution with the benefit of having heard the defence arguments and seen much of the defence evidence, in order to get round the fact that the indictment on which the hearing started was obviously failing.

On top of which the defence had been refused an adjournment to prepare their defence against the new indictment, which would have enabled these and other witnesses to see the superseding indictment, adjust their evidence accordingly and be prepared to be cross-examined in relation to it.

Clive Stafford Smith testified today that in 2001 he would not have believed the outrageous crimes that were to be perpetrated by the US government. I am obliged to say that I simply cannot believe the blatant abuse of process that is unfolding before my eyes in this courtroom.

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Julian Assange, Prometheus Bound

By Pepe Escobar, September 09, 2020

Amid thundering silence and nearly universal indifference, chained, immobile, invisible, a squalid Prometheus was transferred from the gallows for a show trial in a faux Gothic court built on the site of a medieval prison.

Kratos, impersonating Strength, and Bia, impersonating Violence, had duly chained Prometheus, not to a mountain in the Caucasus, but to solitary confinement in a high-security prison, subject to relentless psychological torture. All along the Western watchtowers, no Hephaestus volunteered to forge in his smithy a degree of reluctance or even a sliver of pity.

Video: Outside the London Show-trial of Julian Assange: John Pilger’s Speech

By John Pilger, September 09, 2020

Veteran investigative journalist and filmmaker John Pilger delivered the following speech outside London’s Old Bailey Central Criminal Court on Monday, the first day of resumed show-trial proceedings for the extradition of Julian Assange to the US. Pilger, along with a number of other leading journalists and human right monitors, was denied access to the court.

Assange’s Second Day at the Old Bailey: Torture, Drone Strikes and Journalism

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, September 09, 2020

The highlights of the second day of Julian Assange’s extradition proceedings at the Central Criminal Court in London yielded an interesting bounty.  The first was the broader public purpose behind the WikiLeaks disclosures, their utility in legal proceedings, and their importance in disclosing instances of US extrajudicial killings, torture and rendition.  The second involved a discussion about the practice of journalism and the politicised nature of the prosecution against Assange.

Your Man in the Public Gallery: the Assange Hearing Day 6

By Craig Murray, September 08, 2020

Court 10 appeared to be a fairly bright and open modern box, with pleasant light woodwork, jammed as a mezzanine inside a great vault of the old building. A massive arch intruded incongruously into the space and was obviously damp, sheets of delaminating white paint drooping down from it like flags of forlorn surrender. The dock in which Julian would be held still had a bulletproof glass screen in front, like Belmarsh, but it was not boxed in. There was no top to the screen, no low ceiling, so sound could flow freely over and Julian seemed much more in the court. It also had many more and wider slits than the notorious Belmarsh Box, and Julian was able to communicate quite readily and freely through them with his lawyers, which this time he was not prevented from doing.

Julian Assange: Future Generations of Journalists Will Not Forgive Us if We Do Not Fight Extradition

By Peter Oborne, September 07, 2020

Let us further suppose the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture said this dissident showed “all the symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture” and that the Chinese were putting pressure on the UK authorities to extradite this individual where he could face up to 175 years in prison.

The outrage from the British press would be deafening.

There would be calls for protests outside the prison, solemn leaders in the broadsheet newspapers, debates on primetime news programmes, alongside a rush of questions in parliament.

The situation I have outlined above is nearly identical to the current plight of Julian Assange.

The “Stalinist” Trial of Julian Assange

By John Pilger, September 07, 2020

If the powerful lie to us, we have the right to know. If they say one thing in private and the opposite in public, we have the right to know. If they conspire against us, as Bush and Blair did over Iraq, then pretend to be democrats, we have the right to know.

It is this morality of purpose that so threatens the collusion of powers that want to plunge much of the world into war and wants to bury Julian alive in Trumps fascist America.

As British Judge Made Rulings Against Julian Assange, Her Husband Was Involved with Right-wing Lobby Group Briefing Against WikiLeaks Founder

By Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis, September 07, 2020

Westminster chief magistrate Lady Emma Arbuthnot made two key legal rulings against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in February 2018, which ensured he would not be able to take up his asylum in Ecuador.

Around this time, her husband, Lord James Arbuthnot, a former Conservative defence minister with links to the British military and intelligence establishment, was working closely with the neo-conservative Henry Jackson Society (HJS), a pressure group with a strongly anti-Assange agenda. Lord Arbuthnot has hosted and chaired events for the HJS at the House of Lords and long sat on its “political council”.

This is the tale of an Ancient Greek tragedy reenacted in AngloAmerica.

Amid thundering silence and nearly universal indifference, chained, immobile, invisible, a squalid Prometheus was transferred from the gallows for a show trial in a faux Gothic court built on the site of a medieval prison.   

Kratos, impersonating Strength, and Bia, impersonating Violence, had duly chained Prometheus, not to a mountain in the Caucasus, but to solitary confinement in a high-security prison, subject to relentless psychological torture. All along the Western watchtowers, no Hephaestus volunteered to forge in his smithy a degree of reluctance or even a sliver of pity.

Prometheus is being punished not for stealing fire – but for exposing power under the light of truth, thus provoking the unbounded ire of  Zeus The Exceptionalist, who’s only able to stage his crimes under multiple veils of secrecy.

Prometheus pierced the myth of secrecy – which envelops Zeus’s ability to control the human spectrum. And that is anathema.

“Prometheus Being Chained by Vulcan,” 1623 oil painting by Dirck van Baburen. (Vulcan Rijksmuseum, Wikimedia Commons)

For years, debased, hack stenographers worked relentlessly to depict Prometheus as a lowly trickster and inconsequential forger.

Abandoned, smeared, demonized, Prometheus was comforted by only a small chorus of Oceanids – Craig Murray, John Pilger, Daniel Ellsberg, Wiki warriors, Consortium writers. Prometheus was denied even the basic tools to organize a defense that might at least rattle Zeus’s cognitive dissonant narrative.

Oceanus, the Titan father of the Oceanids, could not possibly urge Prometheus to appease Zeus.

Fleetingly, Prometheus might have revealed to the chorus that exposing secrecy was not what best suited his heart’s content. His plight might also, in the long run, revive popular attachment to the civilizing arts.

One day, Prometheus was visited by Io, a human maiden. He may have forecasted she would engage in no future travels, and she would bear him two offspring. And he may have foreseen that one of their descendants – an unnamed epigone of Heracles – many generations hence, would release him, figuratively, from his torment.

Zeus and his prosecutorial minions don’t have much of a case against Prometheus, apart from possession and dissemination of classified Exceptional information.

Still it was eventually up to Hermes — the messenger of the Gods, and significantly, the conduit of News — to be sent down by Zeus in uncontrollable anger to demand that Prometheus admits he was guilty of trying to overthrow the rules-based order established by the Supreme Exceptional.

This is what’s being ritualized at the current show trial, which was never about Justice.

Prometheus won’t be tamed. In his mind, he will be relieving Tennyson’s Ulysses: “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

So Zeus may finally strike him with the thunderbolt of Exceptionalism, and Prometheus will be hurled into the abyss.

Prometheus’s theft of the secrecy of power, though, is irreversible. His fate will certainly prompt the late entrance of Pandora and her jar of evils – complete with unforeseen consequences.

Whatever the verdict reached in that 17^th century court, it’s far from certain that Prometheus will enter History just as a mere object of blame for human folly.

Because now the heart of the matter is that the mask of Zeus has fallen.

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This article was originally published on Consortiumnews.

Pepe Escobar, a veteran Brazilian journalist, is the correspondent-at-large for Hong Kong-based Asia Times. His latest book is 2030. Follow him on Facebook.

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

Here’s your BLM Pop Quiz for the day: What do “Critical Race Theory”, “The 1619 Project”, and Homeland Security’s “White Supremacist” warning tell us about what’s going on in America today?

1. They point to deeply-embedded racism that shapes the behavior of white people
2. They suggest that systemic racism cannot be overcome by merely changing attitudes and laws
3. They alert us to the fact that unresolved issues are pushing the country towards a destructive race war
4. They indicate that powerful agents — operating from within the state– are inciting racial violence to crush the emerging “populist” majority that elected Trump to office in 2016 and which now represents an existential threat to the globalist plan to transform America into a tyrannical third-world “shithole”.

Which of these four statements best explains what’s going on in America today?

If you chose Number 4, you are right. We are not experiencing a sudden and explosive outbreak of racial violence and mayhem. We are experiencing a thoroughly-planned, insurgency-type operation that involves myriad logistical components including vast, nationwide riots, looting and arson, as well as an extremely impressive ideological campaign. “Critical Race Theory”, “The 1619 Project”, and Homeland Security’s “White Supremacist” warning are as much a part of the Oligarchic war on America as are the burning of our cities and the toppling of our statues. All three, fall under the heading of “ideology”, and all three are being used to shape public attitudes on matters related to our collective identity as “Americans”.

The plan is to overwhelm the population with a deluge of disinformation about their history, their founders, and the threats they face, so they will submissively accept a New Order imposed by technocrats and their political lackeys. This psychological war is perhaps more important than Operation BLM which merely provides the muscle for implementing the transformative “Reset” that elites want to impose on the country. The real challenge is to change the hearts and minds of a population that is unwaveringly patriotic and violently resistant to any subversive element that threatens to do harm to their country. So, while we can expect this propaganda saturation campaign to continue for the foreseeable future, we don’t expect the strategy will ultimately succeed. At the end of the day, America will still be America, unbroken, unflagging and unapologetic.

Let’s look more carefully at what is going on.

On September 4, the Department of Homeland Security issued a draft report stating that “White supremacists present the gravest terror threat to the United States”. According to an article in Politico:

“…all three draft (versions of the document) describe the threat from white supremacists as the deadliest domestic terror threat facing the U.S., listed above the immediate danger from foreign terrorist groups…. John Cohen, who oversaw DHS’s counterterrorism portfolio from 2011 to 2014, said the drafts’ conclusion isn’t surprising.

“This draft document seems to be consistent with earlier intelligence reports from DHS, the FBI, and other law enforcement sources: that the most significant terror-related threat facing the US today comes from violent extremists who are motivated by white supremacy and other far-right ideological causes,” he said….

“Lone offenders and small cells of individuals motivated by a diverse array of social, ideological, and personal factors will pose the primary terrorist threat to the United States,” the draft reads. “Among these groups, we assess that white supremacist extremists …will pose the most persistent and lethal threat.”..(“DHS draft document: White supremacists are greatest terror threat” Politico)

This is nonsense. White supremacists do not pose the greatest danger to the country, that designation goes to the left-wing groups that have rampaged through more than 2,000 US cities for the last 100 days. Black Lives Matter and Antifa-generated riots have decimated hundreds of small businesses, destroyed the lives and livelihoods of thousands of merchants and their employees, and left entire cities in a shambles. The destruction in Kenosha alone far exceeds the damage attributable to the activities of all the white supremacist groups combined.

So why has Homeland Security made this ridiculous and unsupportable claim? Why have they chosen to prioritize white supremacists as “the most persistent and lethal threat” when it is clearly not true?

There’s only one answer: Politics.

The officials who concocted this scam are advancing the agenda of their real bosses, the oligarch puppet-masters who have their tentacles extended throughout the deep-state and use them to coerce their lackey bureaucrats to do their bidding. In this case, the honchos are invoking the race card (“white supremacists”) to divert attention from their sinister destabilization program, their looting of the US Treasury (for their crooked Wall Street friends), their demonizing of the mostly-white working class “America First” nationalists who handed Trump the 2016 election, and their scurrilous scheme to establish one-party rule by installing their addlepated meat-puppet candidate (Biden) as president so he can carry out their directives from the comfort of the Oval Office. That’s what’s really going on.

DHS’s announcement makes it possible for state agents to target legally-armed Americans who gather with other gun owners in groups that are protected under the second amendment. Now the white supremacist label will be applied more haphazardly to these same conservatives who pose no danger to public safety. The draft document should be seen as a warning to anyone whose beliefs do not jibe with the New Liberal Orthodoxy that white people are inherently racists who must ask forgiveness for a system they had no hand in creating (slavery) and which was abolished more than 150 years ago.

The 1619 Project” is another part of the ideological war that is being waged against the American people. The objective of the “Project” is to convince readers that America was founded by heinous white men who subjugated blacks to increase their wealth and power. According to the World Socialist Web Site:

“The essays featured in the magazine are organized around the central premise that all of American history is rooted in race hatred—specifically, the uncontrollable hatred of “black people” by “white people.” Hannah-Jones writes in the series’ introduction: “Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country.”

This is a false and dangerous conception. DNA is a chemical molecule that contains the genetic code of living organisms and determines their physical characteristics and development….Hannah-Jones’s reference to DNA is part of a growing tendency to derive racial antagonisms from innate biological processes….where does this racism come from? It is embedded, claims Hannah-Jones, in the historical DNA of American “white people.” Thus, it must persist independently of any change in political or economic conditions….

…. No doubt, the authors of The Project 1619 essays would deny that they are predicting race war, let alone justifying fascism. But ideas have a logic; and authors bear responsibility for the political conclusions and consequences of their false and misguided arguments.” (“The New York Times’s 1619 Project: A racialist falsification of American and world history”, World Socialist Web Site)

Clearly, Hannah-Jones was enlisted by big money patrons who needed an ideological foundation to justify the massive BLM riots they had already planned as part of their US color revolution. The author –perhaps unwittingly– provided the required text for vindicating widespread destruction and chaos carried out in the name of “social justice.”

As Hannah-Jones says, “Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country”, which is to say that it cannot be mitigated or reformed, only eradicated by destroying the symbols of white patriarchy (Our icons, our customs, our traditions and our history.), toppling the existing government, and imposing a new system that better reflects the values of the burgeoning non-Caucasian majority. Simply put, The Project 1619 creates the rationale for sustained civil unrest, deepening political polarization and violent revolution.

All of these goals conveniently coincide with the aims of the NWO Oligarchs who seek to replace America’s Constitutional government with a corporate Superstate ruled by voracious Monopolists and their globalist allies. So, while Hannah-Jones treatise does nothing to improve conditions for black people in America, it does move the country closer to the dystopian dream of the parasite class; Corporate Valhalla.

Then there is “Critical Race Theory” which provides the ideological icing on the cake. The theory is part of the broader canon of anti-white dogma which is being used to indoctrinate workers. White employees are being subjected to “reeducation” programs that require their participation as a precondition for further employment . The first rebellion against critical race theory, took place at Sandia Labs which is a federally-funded research agency that designs America’s nuclear weapons. According to journalist Christopher F. Rufo:

“Senator @HawleyMO and @SecBrouillette have launched an inspector general investigation, but Sandia executives have only accelerated their purge against conservatives.”

Sandia executives have made it clear: they want to force critical race theory, race-segregated trainings, and white male reeducation camps on their employees—and all dissent will be severely punished. Progressive employees will be rewarded; conservative employees will be purged.” (“There is a civil war erupting at @SandiaLabs.” Christopher F Rufo)

It all sounds so “Bolshevik”. Here’s more info on how this toxic indoctrination program works:

“Treasury Department …

The Treasury Department held a training session telling employees that “virtually all White people contribute to racism” and demanding that white staff members “struggle to own their racism” and accept their “unconscious bias, White privilege, and White fragility.”

The National Credit Union Administration

The NCUA held a session for 8,900 employees arguing that America was “founded on racism” and “built on the blacks of people who were enslaved.” Twitter thread here and original source documents here.

Sandia National Laboratories

Last year, Sandia National Labs—which produces our nuclear arsenal—held a three-day reeducation camp for white males, teaching them how to deconstruct their “white male culture” and forcing them to write letters of apology to women and people of color. Whistleblowers from inside the labs tell me that critical race theory is now endangering our national security. Twitter thread hereand original source documents here.

Argonne National Laboratories

Argonne National Labs hosts trainings calling on white lab employees to admit that they “benefit from racism” and atone for the “pain and anguish inflicted upon Black people.” Twitter thread here.

Department of Homeland Security

The Department of Homeland Security hosted a Training on “microaggressions, microinequities, and microassaults” where white employees were told that they had been “socialized into oppressor roles.” Twitter thread here and original source documents here.” (“Summary of Critical Race Theory Investigations”, Christopher F Rufo)

On September 4, Donald Trump announced his administration “would prohibit federal agencies from subjecting government employees to “critical race theory” or “white privilege” seminar…

“It has come to the President’s attention that Executive Branch agencies have spent millions of taxpayer dollars to date ‘training’ government workers to believe divisive, anti-American propaganda,” read a Friday memo from the Office of Budget and Management Director Russ Vought. “These types of ‘trainings’ not only run counter to the fundamental beliefs for which our Nation has stood since its inception, but they also engender division and resentment within the Federal workforce … The President has directed me to ensure that Federal agencies cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund these divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions.”

The next day, September 5, Trump announced that the Department of Education was going to see whether the New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project was being used in school curricula and– if it was– then those schools would be ineligible for federal funding. Conservative pundits applauded Trump’s action as a step forward in the “culture wars”, but it’s really much more than that. Trump is actually foiling an effort by the domestic saboteurs who continue look for ways to undermine democracy, reduce the masses of working-class people to grinding poverty and hopelessness, and turn the country into a despotic military outpost ruled by bloodsucking tycoons, mercenary autocrats and duplicitous elites. Alot of thought and effort went into this malign ideological project. Trump derailed it with a wave of the hand. That’s no small achievement.

Bottom line: “Critical Race Theory”, “The 1619 Project”, and Homeland Security’s “White Supremacist” warning represent the ideological foundation upon which the war on America is based. The “anti-white” dogma is the counterpart to the massive riots that have rocked the country. These phenomena are two spokes on the same wheel. They are designed to work together to achieve the same purpose. The goal is create a “racial” smokescreen that conceals the vast and willful destruction of the US economy, the $5 trillion dollar wealth-transfer that was provided to Wall Street, and the ferocious attack on the emerging, mainly-white working class “populist” movement that elected Trump and which rejects the globalist plan to transform the world into a borderless free trade zone ruled by cutthroat monopolists and their NWO allies.

This is a class war dolled-up to look like a race war. Americans will have to look beyond the smoke and mirrors to spot the elites lurking in the shadows. There lies the cancer that must be eradicated.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from TUR

“No one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end.”—George Orwell

You can map the nearly 20-year journey from the 9/11 attacks to the COVID-19 pandemic by the freedoms we’ve lost along the way.

The road we have been traveling has been littered with the wreckage of our once-vaunted liberties, especially those enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.

The assaults on our freedoms that began with the post-9/11 passage of the USA Patriot Act laid the groundwork for the eradication of every vital constitutional safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse.

The COVID-19 pandemic with its lockdowns, mask mandates, surveillance, snitch lines for Americans to report their fellow citizens for engaging in risky behavior, and veiled threats of forced vaccinations has merely provided the architects of the American police state with an opportunity to flex their muscles.

These have become mile markers on the road to tyranny.

Free speech, the right to protest, the right to challenge government wrongdoing, due process, a presumption of innocence, the right to self-defense, accountability and transparency in government, privacy, press, sovereignty, assembly, bodily integrity, representative government: all of these and more have become casualties in the government’s ongoing war on the American people. In the process, the American people have been treated like enemy combatants, to be spied on, tracked, scanned, frisked, searched, subjected to all manner of intrusions, intimidated, invaded, raided, manhandled, censored, silenced, shot at, locked up, denied due process, and killed.

What the past 20 years have proven is that the U.S. government poses a greater threat to our individual and collective freedoms and national security than any terrorist, foreign threat or pandemic.

In allowing ourselves to be distracted by terror drills, foreign wars, color-coded warnings, partisan politics, pandemic scares, and other carefully constructed exercises in propaganda, sleight of hand, and obfuscation, we failed to recognize that the U.S. government—the government that was supposed to be a “government of the people, by the people, for the people”—has become the enemy of the people.

Indeed, the U.S. government has grown so corrupt, greedy, power-hungry and tyrannical over the course of the past 240-plus years that our constitutional republic has since given way to an idiocracy, and representative government has given way to a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) and a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens).

Although the Bill of Rights—the first ten amendments to the Constitution—was adopted as a means of protecting the people against government tyranny, in America today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.

“We the people” have been terrorized, traumatized, and tricked into a semi-permanent state of compliance by a government that cares nothing for our lives or our liberties.

The bogeyman’s names and faces have changed over time (terrorism, the war on drugs, illegal immigration, a viral pandemic), but the end result remains the same: in the so-called name of national security, the Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded with the support of Congress, the White House, and the courts.

What we are left with today is but a shadow of the robust document adopted more than two centuries ago. Sadly, most of the damage has been inflicted upon the Bill of Rights.

Here is what it means to live under the Constitution, post-9/11 and in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic.

The First Amendment is supposed to protect the freedom to speak your mind, assemble and protest nonviolently without being bridled by the government. It also protects the freedom of the media, as well as the right to worship and pray without interference. In other words, Americans should not be silenced by the government. To the founders, all of America was a free speech zone.

Despite the clear protections found in the First Amendment, the freedoms described therein are under constant assault. Increasingly, Americans are being arrested and charged with bogus “contempt of cop” charges such as “disrupting the peace” or “resisting arrest” for daring to film police officers engaged in harassment or abusive practices. Journalists are being prosecuted for reporting on whistleblowers. States are passing legislation to muzzle reporting on cruel and abusive corporate practices. Religious ministries are being fined for attempting to feed and house the homeless. Protesters are being tear-gassed, beaten, arrested and forced into “free speech zones.” And under the guise of “government speech,” the courts have reasoned that the government can discriminate freely against any First Amendment activity that takes place within a government forum.

The Second Amendment was intended to guarantee “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” Essentially, this amendment was intended to give the citizenry the means to resist tyrannical government. Yet while gun ownership has been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as an individual citizen right, Americans remain powerless to defend themselves against SWAT team raids and government agents armed to the teeth with military weapons better suited to the battlefield. As such, this amendment has been rendered null and void.

The Third Amendment reinforces the principle that civilian-elected officials are superior to the military by prohibiting the military from entering any citizen’s home without “the consent of the owner.” With the police increasingly training like the military, acting like the military, and posing as military forces—complete with heavily armed SWAT teams, military weapons, assault vehicles, etc.—it is clear that we now have what the founders feared most—a standing army on American soil.

The Fourth Amendment prohibits government agents from conducting surveillance on you or touching you or invading you, unless they have some evidence that you’re up to something criminal. In other words, the Fourth Amendment ensures privacy and bodily integrity. Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment has suffered the greatest damage in recent years and has been all but eviscerated by an unwarranted expansion of police powers that include strip searches and even anal and vaginal searches of citizens, surveillance (corporate and otherwise) and intrusions justified in the name of fighting terrorism, as well as the outsourcing of otherwise illegal activities to private contractors.

The Fifth Amendment and the Sixth Amendment work in tandem. These amendments supposedly ensure that you are innocent until proven guilty, and government authorities cannot deprive you of your life, your liberty or your property without the right to an attorney and a fair trial before a civilian judge. However, in the new suspect society in which we live, where surveillance is the norm, these fundamental principles have been upended. Certainly, if the government can arbitrarily freeze, seize or lay claim to your property (money, land or possessions) under government asset forfeiture schemes, you have no true rights.

The Seventh Amendment guarantees citizens the right to a jury trial. Yet when the populace has no idea of what’s in the Constitution—civic education has virtually disappeared from most school curriculums—that inevitably translates to an ignorant jury incapable of distinguishing justice and the law from their own preconceived notions and fears. However, as a growing number of citizens are coming to realize, the power of the jury to nullify the government’s actions—and thereby help balance the scales of justice—is not to be underestimated. Jury nullification reminds the government that “we the people” retain the power to ultimately determine what laws are just.

The Eighth Amendment is similar to the Sixth in that it is supposed to protect the rights of the accused and forbid the use of cruel and unusual punishment. However, the Supreme Court’s determination that what constitutes “cruel and unusual” should be dependent on the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” leaves us with little protection in the face of a society lacking in morals altogether.

The Ninth Amendment provides that other rights not enumerated in the Constitution are nonetheless retained by the people. Popular sovereignty—the belief that the power to govern flows upward from the people rather than downward from the rulers—is clearly evident in this amendment. However, it has since been turned on its head by a centralized federal government that sees itself as supreme and which continues to pass more and more laws that restrict our freedoms under the pretext that it has an “important government interest” in doing so.

As for the Tenth Amendment’s reminder that the people and the states retain every authority that is not otherwise mentioned in the Constitution, that assurance of a system of government in which power is divided among local, state and national entities has long since been rendered moot by the centralized Washington, DC, power elite—the president, Congress and the courts.

If there is any sense to be made from this recitation of freedoms lost, it is simply this: our individual freedoms have been eviscerated so that the government’s powers could be expanded.

Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to the Deep State—the corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that has set itself beyond the reach of the law and is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House.

This is a government that, in conjunction with its corporate partners, views the citizenry as consumers and bits of data to be bought, sold and traded.

This is a government that spies on and treats its citizens as if they have no right to privacy, especially in their own homes.

This is a government that is laying the groundwork to weaponize the public’s biomedical data as a convenient means by which to penalize certain “unacceptable” social behaviors.

This is a government that subjects its people to scans, searches, pat downs and other indignities by the TSA and VIPR raids on so-called “soft” targets like shopping malls and bus depots by black-clad, Darth Vader look-alikes.

This is a government that uses fusion centers, which represent the combined surveillance efforts of federal, state and local law enforcement, to track the citizenry’s movements, record their conversations, and catalogue their transactions.

This is a government whose wall-to-wall surveillance has given rise to a suspect society in which the burden of proof has been reversed such that Americans are now assumed guilty until or unless they can prove their innocence.

This is a government that treats its people like second-class citizens who have no rights, and is working overtime to stigmatize and dehumanize any and all who do not fit with the government’s plans for this country.

This is a government that uses free speech zones, roving bubble zones and trespass laws to silence, censor and marginalize Americans and restrict their First Amendment right to speak truth to power. The kinds of speech the government considers dangerous enough to red flag and subject to censorship, surveillance, investigation, prosecution and outright elimination include: hate speech, bullying speech, intolerant speech, conspiratorial speech, treasonous speech, threatening speech, incendiary speech, inflammatory speech, radical speech, anti-government speech, right-wing speech, left-wing speech, extremist speech, politically incorrect speech, etc.

This is a government that adopts laws that criminalize Americans for otherwise lawful activities such as holding religious studies at home, growing vegetables in their yard, and collecting rainwater.

This is a government that persists in renewing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the president and the military to arrest and detain American citizens indefinitely.

This is a government that saddled us with the Patriot Act, which opened the door to all manner of government abuses and intrusions on our privacy.

This is a government that, in direct opposition to the dire warnings of those who founded our country, has allowed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to establish a standing army by way of programs that transfer surplus military hardware to local and state police.

This is a government that has militarized American’s domestic police, equipping them with military weapons such as “tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft,” in addition to armored vehicles, sound cannons and the like.

This is a government that has provided cover to police when they shoot and kill unarmed individuals just for standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety.

This is a government that has allowed private corporations to get rich at taxpayer expense by locking people up in private prisons for non-violent crimes, while providing Corporate America with a source of cheap labor.

This is a government that has created a Constitution-free zone within 100 miles inland of the border around the United States, paving the way for Border Patrol agents to search people’s homes, intimately probe their bodies, and rifle through their belongings, all without a warrant. Incredibly, nearly 66% of Americans (2/3 of the U.S. population, 197.4 million people) now live within that 100-mile-deep, Constitution-free zone.

This is a government that treats public school students as if they were prison inmates, enforcing zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior, failing to teach them their rights under the Constitution, and indoctrinating them with teaching that emphasizes rote memorization and test-taking over learning, synthesizing and critical thinking.

This is a government that is operating in the negative on every front: it’s spending far more than what it makes (and takes from the American taxpayers) and it is borrowing heavily (from foreign governments and Social Security) to keep the government operating and keep funding its endless wars abroad. Meanwhile, the nation’s sorely neglected infrastructure—railroads, water pipelines, ports, dams, bridges, airports and roads—is rapidly deteriorating.

This is a government whose gun violence—inflicted on unarmed individuals by battlefield-trained SWAT teams, militarized police, and bureaucratic government agents trained to shoot first and ask questions later—poses a greater threat to the safety and security of the nation than any mass shooter. There are now reportedly more bureaucratic (non-military) government agents armed with high-tech, deadly weapons than U.S. Marines.

This is a government that has allowed the presidency to become a dictatorship operating above and beyond the law, regardless of which party is in power.

This is a government that treats dissidents, whistleblowers and freedom fighters as enemies of the state.

This is a government—a warring empire—that forces its taxpayers to pay for wars abroad that serve no other purpose except to expand the reach of the military industrial complex.

This is a government that has in recent decades unleashed untold horrors upon the world—including its own citizenry—in the name of global conquest, the acquisition of greater wealth, scientific experimentation, and technological advances, all packaged in the guise of the greater good.

This is a government that allows its agents to break laws with immunity while average Americans get the book thrown at them.

This is a government that speaks in a language of force. What is this language of force? Militarized police. Riot squads. Camouflage gear. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Surveillance cameras. Kevlar vests. Drones. Lethal weapons. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Stun grenades. Arrests of journalists. Crowd control tactics. Intimidation tactics. Brutality. Contempt of cop charges.

This is a government that justifies all manner of government tyranny and power grabs in the so-called name of national security, national crises and national emergencies.

This is a government that exports violence worldwide, with one of this country’s most profitable exports being weapons. Indeed, the United States, the world’s largest exporter of arms, has been selling violence to the world in order to prop up the military industrial complex and maintain its endless wars abroad.

This is a government that is consumed with squeezing every last penny out of the population and seemingly unconcerned if essential freedoms are trampled in the process.

This is a government that believes it has the authority to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation, the Constitution be damned.

In sum, this is a government that routinely undermines the Constitution and rides roughshod over the rights of the citizenry.

This is not a government that believes in, let alone upholds, freedom.

So where does that leave us?

As always, the first step begins with “we the people.”

Those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. It is there to protect, defend and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them. Our power as a citizenry comes from our ability to agree and stand united on certain freedom principles that should be non-negotiable.

It was no idle happenstance that the Constitution opens with these three powerful words: “We the people.” In other words, we have the power to make and break the government. We are the masters and they are the servants. We the American people—the citizenry—are the arbiters and ultimate guardians of America’s welfare, defense, liberty, laws and prosperity.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we have managed to keep the wolf at bay so far. Barely.

Our national priorities need to be re-prioritized. For instance, some argue that we need to make America great again. I, for one, would prefer to make America free again.

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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].

Featured image is from Land Destroyer Report

Veteran investigative journalist and filmmaker John Pilger delivered the following speech outside London’s Old Bailey Central Criminal Court on Monday, the first day of resumed show-trial proceedings for the extradition of Julian Assange to the US. Pilger, along with a number of other leading journalists and human right monitors, was denied access to the court.

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It is with a sad heart that I report the sudden and unexpected death of Kevin Zeese early Sunday morning. Kevin was working up until the end and died in his sleep of a possible heart attack.

There will be an online tribute to Kevin on Saturday, September 19 at 3:00 pm Eastern/12:00 pm Pacific on Zoom. Click here to register. This event will also be livestreamed at Facebook.com/PopularResistanceOrg and YouTube.com/PopularResistanceOrg.

Kevin was going to write a newsletter this weekend about the extradition trial of Julian Assange, which begins today. Kevin understood the great importance of the prosecution of Julian Assange as a battle that will define journalism in the 21st century and our right to know.

He was helping to organize an online event featuring Daniel Ellsberg, James Goodale and Chris Hedges, moderated by Sue Udry. That event will still take place. You can register for it here. The Facebook page for it is here.

You can read the June 28th newsletter we wrote about Julian Assange, “Government Attacks Media as Peoples Media Reveals the Truth.”

Please follow the trial, spread the word about it and do what you can to support Assange. I know that Consortium News will be following it closely. His partner and the mother of his two sons launched a crowdfunding campaign for legal support.

Tributes to Kevin are already being posted. Here are a few:

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/us-activist-and-friend-to-venezuela-kevin-zeese-passes-away-20200906-0005.html

https://howiehawkins.us/hawkins-press-secretary-and-activist-kevin-zeese-has-passed-away/

https://www.coha.org/coha-expresses-its-heartfelt-solidarity-over-the-death-of-attorney-and-human-rights-activist-kevin-zeese/

https://davidswanson.org/kevin-zeese-irreplaceable/

https://taskforceamericas.org/tfa-statement-on-the-passing-of-kevin-zeese/>

https://www.wpc-in.org/statements/kevin-zeese-%E2%80%94-presente-people%E2%80%99s-movement-has-lost-one-its-most-beloved-and-treasured

https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2020/09/06/kevin-zeese-rip/

Kevin fought to bring truth every day. We must not lose this struggle.

I will do my best to keep Popular Resistance going and strive to maintain the high quality that Kevin brought to it. See above for the details of the online tribute his sons and I are planning. We are working on a fund to honor him and keep his legacy growing, as he deserves.

Rest in power, Kevin Zeese.

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Featured image: Longtime progressive activist and organizer Kevin Zeese died early Sunday, September 2, 2020. He was 64. (Image: Portrait of Kevin Zeese by Robert Shetterly)

The revelation that Canadian soldiers have been in Saudi Arabia for 17 years highlights Canada’s ties to the repressive monarchy, contribution to the Iraq war and hollowness of Canadian foreign policy mythology.

Recently researcher Anthony Fenton tweeted,

“raise your hand if you knew that there was a ‘Detachment’ of Canadian soldiers serving under US auspices operating AWACS spy planes out of a Saudi Arabian air base since the war on Iraq began in 2003 to THE PRESENT DAY.”

The Canadian soldiers stationed at Prince Sultan Air base near Riyadh represent another example of Canada’s military ties to the authoritarian, belligerent monarchy. Canadian naval vessels are engaged in multinational patrols with their Saudi counterparts in the region; Saudi Air Force pilots have trained in Alberta and Saskatchewan; Montreal-based flight simulator company CAE has trained Saudi pilots in numerous locales; Canadian-made rifles and armoured vehicles have been shipped to the monarchy, etc.

According to DND, Canada’s deployment to Saudi Arabia began on February 27, 2003. That’s four weeks before the massive US-led invasion of Iraq. The Canadians stationed in Riyadh were almost certainly dispatched to support the US invasion and occupation.

In another example of Canadian complicity in a war Ottawa ostensibly opposed, it was recently reported that Canadian intelligence agencies hid their disagreement with politicized US intelligence reports on Iraq. According to “Getting it Right: Canadian Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, 2002-2003”, Canada’s intelligence agencies mostly concluded that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, which was the justification Washington gave for invading Iraq. While CSIS delivered a report to their US counterparts claiming Iraq was seeking nuclear weapons capabilities, more serious analyses, reported the Canadian Press, were “classified ‘Canadian Eyes Only’ in order to avoid uncomfortable disagreements with the U.S. intelligence community which would exacerbate the sensitivities affecting relations at the political level.”

As Richard Sanders has detailed, Canada supported the US-led invasion of Iraq in many ways: Dozens of Canadian troops were integrated in US units fighting in Iraq; US warplanes enroute to that country refueled in Newfoundland; Canadian fighter pilots participated in “training” missions in Iraq; Three different Canadian generals oversaw tens of thousands of international troops there; Canadian aid flowed to the country in support of US policy; With Canadian naval vessels leading maritime interdiction efforts off the coast of Iraq, Ottawa had legal opinion suggesting it was technically at war with that country.

As such, some have concluded Canada was the fifth or sixth biggest contributor to the US-led war. But the Jean Chrétien government didn’t do what the Bush administration wanted above all else, which was to publicly endorse the invasion by joining the “coalition of the willing”. This wasn’t because he distrusted pre-war US intelligence or because of any moral principle. Rather, the Liberal government refused to join the “coalition of the willing” because hundreds of thousands of Canadians took to the streets against the war, particularly in Quebec. With the biggest demonstrations taking place in Montréal and Quebecers strongly opposed to the war, the federal government feared that openly endorsing the invasion would boost the sovereignist Parti Québecois vote in the next provincial election.

Over the past 17 years this important, if partial, victory won by antiwar activists has been widely distorted and mythologized. The recent National Film Board documentary High Wire continues the pattern. It purportedly“examines the reasons that Canada declined to take part in the 2003 US-led military mission in Iraq.” But, High Wire all but ignores Canada’s military contribution to the war and the central role popular protest played in the “coalition of the willing” decision, focusing instead on an enlightened leader who simply chose to do the right thing.

The revelation that Canadian troops have been stationed in Saudi Arabia for 17 years highlights our military ties to the Saudi monarchy and warfare in the Middle East. It also contradicts benevolent Canada foreign policy mythology.

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Yves Engler is the author of 10 books, including A Propaganda System: How Canada’s Government, Corporations, Media and Academia Sell War and Exploitation. 

Featured image is from DV

The ongoing U.S. “war on terror” has forcibly displaced as many as 59 million people from just eight countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia since 2001, according to a new report published Tuesday by Brown University’s Costs of War Project.

Titled “Creating Refugees: Displacement Caused by the United States’ Post-9/11 Wars” (pdf), the new report conservatively estimates that at least 37 million people have “fled their homes in the eight most violent wars the U.S. military has launched or participated in since 2001.”

The latest figure represents a dramatic increase from the Costs of War Project’s 2019 report, which estimated that 21 million people had been displaced internally or forced to flee their home countries due to violence inflicted or unleashed by U.S.-led wars over the past two decades. That report also put the death toll of the so-called war on terror at 801,000 and the price tag at $6.4 trillion.

The new report argues that “wartime displacement (alongside war deaths and injuries) must be central to any analysis of the post-9/11 wars and their short- and long-term consequences.”

“Displacement also must be central to any possible consideration of the future use of military force by the United States or others,” the report states. “Ultimately, displacing 37 million—and perhaps as many as 59 million—raises the question of who bears responsibility for repairing the damage inflicted on those displaced.”

In addition to the tens of millions displaced by U.S. military actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya, and Syria, the report notes that millions more have been displaced by “smaller combat operations, including in: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Niger, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia.”

“To put these figures in perspective, displacing 37 million people is equivalent to removing nearly all the residents of the state of California or all the people in Texas and Virginia combined,” the report says. “The figure is almost as large as the population of Canada. In historical terms, 37 million displaced is more than those displaced by any other war or disaster since at least the start of the 20th century with the sole exception of World War II.”

Kudos to @CostsOfWar & @QuincyInst boardmember Catherine Lutz for this crucial study.

The blob assumes there's something fundamentally wrong with the Middle East.

Few acknowledge America's role in the instability and refugee flows.

It's massive…
https://t.co/5EGmqFUpBL

— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) September 8, 2020

David Vine, professor of anthropology at American University and the lead author of the new report, told the New York Times that the findings show “U.S. involvement in these countries has been horrifically catastrophic, horrifically damaging in ways that I don’t think that most people in the United States, in many ways myself included, have grappled with or reckoned with in even the slightest terms.”

Matt Duss, foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), demanded such a reckoning in a tweet responding to the Costs of War Project’s latest findings.

“The scale of the disaster the United States has inflicted on the world—through three war on terror presidencies—is staggering,” wrote Duss. “We need a reckoning. We can’t simply move on.”

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

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The highlights of the second day of Julian Assange’s extradition proceedings at the Central Criminal Court in London yielded an interesting bounty.  The first was the broader public purpose behind the WikiLeaks disclosures, their utility in legal proceedings, and their importance in disclosing instances of US extrajudicial killings, torture and rendition.  The second involved a discussion about the practice of journalism and the politicised nature of the prosecution against Assange.

Human rights attorney Clive Stafford Smith and founder of Reprieve, an organisation specialising in investigating instances of US detention, rendition and disappearances, was called by Mark Summers QC for the defence.  The disclosures by WikiLeaks, he claimed, had been important in the issue of challenging the legitimacy of US drone strikes in Pakistan.  Successful litigation conducted in that country found such strikes “criminal offences and that criminal proceedings should be initiated against senior US officials involved in such strikes.” A high court in Pakistan had found that they constituted a “blatant violation of basic human rights”.  Stafford Smith noted how the drone assassination program “leaked over to narcotics … they were targeting people for death for their involvement in drug trade because it was seen as funding terrorism.  I could go on…” 

The statement submitted to the court by Stafford Smith also emphasised how the WikiLeaks material disclosed on the treatment of detainees in Guantánamo were “the top of a very important discourse that would seem to be important in the public interest, about the abysmal intelligence used to detain prisoners and make important public policy decisions.”  Stafford Smith’s statement also volunteers a twist: that the material published by WikiLeaks on the subject seemed to be “the best face that the US government could put on the crimes it had committed against the Guantánamo prisoners.” 

In his testimony, Stafford Smith affirmed the mixed returns of those disclosures.  The leaks initially seemed to portray “the very worst that the US authorities confect about the prisoners I have represented”.  He was “frustrated” on first reading the WikiLeaks documents, thinking “they would leak what I get to see”.  The mosaic, however, was pieced together to disprove the case against his client. 

When it came to discussing the issue of enhanced interrogation techniques used by US personnel, Stafford Smith suggested the similarities shown in method to those used in the Spanish Inquisition.  “As you go through the documentation WikiLeaks leaked, there are all sorts of things identified, including where people are taken and renditioned … and that was the case in Binyam’s case.”  In being part of an effort to hold US officials to account for war crimes, Stafford Smith had a teasing pointer on the implications for WikiLeaks.  “Anyone can be sanctioned who is seeking to assist in an investigation which could lead to ICC [International Criminal Court] investigation, which is what WikiLeaks does”.  It was a pointed reminder that Assange’s defence team could well fall within the remit of US sanctions currently directed at the ICC by the Trump administration.  

In his overall assessment, Stafford Smith suggested that,

“The power and value of WikiLeaks disclosures about Iraq and Afghanistan can scarcely be understated, and are of ‘key importance’ to ‘evidence war crimes and human rights violations by the US and its allies.”

All of this left James Lewis QC of the prosecution more than a touch cranky.  Stafford Smith had referred to cables that did not form the subject of charges against Assange.  They were, claimed Lewis, irrelevant; the US case was only concerned with those documents that had revealed the names of informants.  The defence claim is precisely the opposite: that such documents as referred to by Stafford Smith would also be covered by the charges of Assange “communicating” and “obtaining” classified material.  The whole show could be the subject of a prosecution on US soil.  

Cheekily, Stafford Smith suggested that Lewis was “wrong about the way in which cases are prosecuted” in the US.  Merely because such cables were not outlined in the indictment did not suggest prosecutors would not use them in trial.  “You cannot tell the court how this case will be prosecuted.  You’re making things up.” 

Such legal bickering proved too much for Assange.  “This is nonsense,” he claimed from the dock.  “Apparently my role is to sit here and legitimate what is illegitimate by proxy.”  Cue Judge Vanessa Baraitser, who took witheringly to the intervention. “I understand of course you will hear things, most likely many things you would not like, and you would like to intervene but it is not your role.”  While Assange remaining in court was “something the court would wish for”, it “could proceed without you.”

A feature that has stood out in the entire endeavour against Assange is the stench of politics.  Lewis disagrees; the investigation into Assange and WikiLeaks has been an organic, methodical one, building since 2010 and flowering in 2020.  The testimony of journalism academic Mark Feldstein suggested otherwise.  He referred to a Washington Post piece from November 2013 highlighting the decision by the Obama administration to not proceed.  Officials from the Justice Department did stress at the time that no “formal decision” had been made, as the grand jury investigating WikiLeaks remained impanelled.  But there was “little possibility of bringing a case against Assange, unless he is implicated in criminal activity other than releasing online top-secret military and diplomatic documents.”  The implications of prosecuting Assange were evidently clear: to do so would lead to the obvious conclusion that US news organisations and journalists would also face the prosecutor’s brief. 

This cautionary attitude was not to be found at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  In 2017, they were seeking a “head on a pike”.  By then, President Donald Trump had moved into an offensive mode against journalists; the then director of the Central Intelligence Agency Mike Pompeo was resolute in categorising WikiLeaks as a hostile non-state intelligence agency, while Jeff Sessions as Attorney-General was all zeal in asking prosecutors to take a closer look at the Assange case. 

But the worm had not entirely turned.  Federal attorneys such as James Trump, a figure in the prosecution of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, who had leaked classified material to journalist James Risen, and Daniel Grooms, demurred.  Both were concerned that undertaking such a prosecution would fall foul of the First Amendment, and be plagued by legal and factual challenges.

Feldstein pushed home the points in his testimony in deeming the efforts against Assange political in nature.  The scope of the charges had no precedent; the Obama administration had shown reservations in embarking on what would be a fraught process; the wording of the superseding indictment suggested political leanings; and Trump had shown a deep antipathy for the press.  Previous efforts to prosecute journalists, he concluded, were “obviously highly political”.

Undeterred, the prosecution resorted to a conventional tactic: accusing the witness of speculating.  The reality Feldstein needed to consider was whether names had been revealed in the publication of such documents.  Doing so would result in harm. If this had been the case, suggested Feldstein, the prosecution might have simply used the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, a narrower statute for the purpose.  Instead, terms such as “conspiracy” and “recruiting” – the sort normally coupled with “terrorist”, had been deployed.  Besides, the issue of “harm” tended to be a bread and butter response by governments that was impossible to prove and used to conceal improprieties.  

As a case in point, that most pertinent of precedents, the Pentagon Papers, was cited.  As Feldstein noted, the arguments made by prosecutors at the time about the consequences of their disclosure – possible prolongation of the Vietnam War, identification of CIA officials, exposure of war plans – were also caught up in the concept of “immediate and irreparable” harm.  It subsequently transpired that one prosecutor thought no harm would arise at all.  What mattered was the effort by the Nixon administration to question the loyalty of media outlets.

Standard journalistic method, Feldstein reiterated, directs the source, asking what is needed and seeking more information as relevant.  The journalist effectively works with the source.  Criminalising that as a case of “conspiring” would make the “most of what investigative journalists do … criminal.”

On the point of the journalist’s craft, the prosecution continued to push the precarious argument that the publishing activities of the New York Times were different from that of WikiLeaks.  Journalists did not steal or unlawfully obtain information.  Here, Feldstein conceded, things could be murky.  “We journalists are not passive stenographers.  To suggest receiving anonymously in the mail is the only way is wrong.”  As to whether he had engaged in publishing such information, Feldstein was unequivocal: not so much “classified documents” but certainly “soliciting and publishing secret information.”

A balanced overview of the day’s proceedings would have found Lewis struggling with the prosecution narrative focusing on alleged harm caused by Assange, the defence resolute in returning to the big picture element of the disclosures.  This was too much to expect from the pedestrian reporting of a Fourth Estate more obsessed with Assange the man.  From The Guardian to the Daily Beast, only one thing mattered: the warning by Judge Baraitser that Assange should keep silent and avoid any outbursts.  As Kevin Gosztola observed, “US prosecutors win the news cycle on Day 2.”

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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]

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Below is a series of documents that proves the FBI has withheld critical information from 9/11 families and the American people.

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2002 DOJ Response to Request for Osama Bin Laden Arrest Warrant

The 2002 D.O.J. response to the 9/11 families’ legal team’s request for a copy of the arrest warrant of Osama Bin Laden. The DOJ responded to the request stating that for the legal team to access this information, they had to have Bin Laden sign a release form for his warrant. The 9/11 families want to know why the DOJ protected the privacy of a known terrorist leader?

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2017 DOJ Response to Request for 9/11 Hijackers’ Passports

The 2017 DOJ response to the 9/11 families’ legal team’s request for copies of visa records for 3 of the main 9/11 hijackers: Khalid al Mihdhar, Nawaf al Hazmi, and Salem al Hazmi. DOJ responded to the request stating the legal team had to provide obituaries/death certificates for the hijackers to obtain the documents. Why, 16 years after the 9/11 attacks, did the DOJ continue to protect the privacy of the hijackers?

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2012 FBI 9/11 Investigation Status Report

Heavily redacted 2012 status report from the FBI regarding the progress of the 9/11 investigation. The most vital information provided by this document appears at the end of page 3 and beginning of page 4. It states “main subjects include Fahad al-Thumairy, Omar Ahmed al-Bayoumi, [redacted]. These subjects provided the hijackers with assistance in daily activities, including procuring living quarters, financial assistance, and assistance in obtaining flight lessons”. Who is the third redacted name who worked with two known Saudi government officials, Thumairy and Bayoumi, as they assisted the 9/11 hijackers assimilate into American life unnoticed before 9/11? The document also shows the ways the DOJ has continually prevented the 9/11 families from obtaining information regarding the people behind 9/11, through redacting and hiding key information from the families and their legal teams.

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Declaration of Former FBI Agent Stephen Moore

Sworn statement under oath from former FBI agent Stephen Moore regarding his time as head of the Los Angeles FBI 9/11 investigation from 2001-2008. Moore states that his investigation concluded that “diplomatic and intelligence personnel of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia knowingly provided material support to the [first] two 9/11 hijackers [who entered the U.S.] and facilitated the 9/11 plot.” The findings of the Los Angeles FBI investigation undermine the 9/11 Commission Report finding that two known Saudi officials, Thumairy and Bayoumi, did not provide assistance to the 9/11 hijackers. Why did one of the largest 9/11 FBI investigations find credible evidence implicating 2 Saudi officials, yet this evidence was ignored in the 9/11 Commission Report?

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2015 FBI 9/11 Commission Report Review Excerpt

2015 FBI Review of original 2004 9/11 Commission Report. Highlighted sections from this excerpt mention two key pieces of evidence in our case. The first mentions 2 people who assisted the 9/11 hijackers based out of San Diego, al-Sadhan and al-Sudairy. These two men were later proven to be Saudi officials. The second highlighted section states that there was an additional individual tasked by al-Thumairy, a known Saudi official, to help take these two 9/11 hijackers assimilate when they were in San Diego. This section of evidence also allowed our legal team to track down the 2012 FBI report. What else was uncovered by the FBI’s follow-up 9/11 investigation from 2007-2016?

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A manifestação de 12 de Setembro, em Roma, “Stop 5G” concentra-se, com razão, nas possíveis consequências das emissões electromagnéticas para a saúde e para o meio ambiente, em particular sobre o decreto que impede os prefeitos de regulamentar a instalação de antenas 5G, na área municipal.

No entanto, continua a ignorar-se um aspecto fundamental desta tecnologia: o seu uso militar. Já falamos no il manifesto (10 de Dezembro de 2019), mas com resultados escassos. Os programas sucessivos lançados pelo Pentágono, documentados oficialmente, confirmam o que escrevemos há nove meses.

A “Estratégia 5G”, aprovada em 2 de Maio de 2020, estabelece que “o Departamento de Defesa deve desenvolver e empregar novos conceitos operacionais que utilizem a conectividade ubíqua oferecida pela tecnologia 5G para aumentar a eficácia, resiliência, velocidade e letalidade das nossas forças armadas”.

O Pentágono já está a experimentar as aplicações militares desta tecnologia em cinco bases aéreas, navais e terrestres: Hill (Utah), Nellis (Nevada), San Diego (Califórnia), Albany (Geórgia), Lewis-McChord (Washington), Confirmou, em conferência de imprensa, em 3 de Junho, o Dr. Joseph Evans, Director Técnico da 5G, do Departamento de Defesa.

Ele então anunciou que as aplicações militares da 5G, serão, em breve, testadas noutras sete bases: Norfolk (Virginia), Pearl Harbor-Hickam (Hawaii), San Antonio (Texas), Fort Irwin (Califórnia), Fort Hood (Texas), Camp Pendleton (Califórnia), Tinker (Oklahoma).

Os especialistas prevêem que a 5G terá um papel decisivo no desenvolvimento de armas hipersónicas, inclusive as que têm ogivas nucleares: para guiá-las em trajectórias variáveis, a fim de evitar mísseis interceptores, têm de recolher, processar e transmitir muito rapidamente, enormes quantidades de dados. É necessário o mesmo para activar as defesas em caso de ataque com tais armas, confiando nos sistemas automáticos.

A nova tecnologia também terá um papel fundamental na battle network (rede de batalha), sendo capaz de conectar milhões de equipamentos de rádio bidireccionais numa área circunscrita.

A 5G também será extremamente importante para os serviços secretos e para as forças especiais: tornará possível sistemas de espionagem muito mais eficazes e aumentará a letalidade dos drones assassinos.

Essas e outras aplicações militares dessa tecnologia estão, certamente, também a ser estudadas na China e noutros países. Portanto, o que está em curso sobre a 5G não é só uma guerra comercial.

Confirma-o o documento estratégico do Pentágono: “As tecnologias 5G representam capacidades estratégicas determinantes para a segurança nacional dos Estados Unidos e dos nossos aliados”. É necessário, portanto, “protegê-las dos adversários” e convencer os aliados a fazerem o mesmo para garantir a “interoperabilidade” das aplicações militares da 5G no âmbito da NATO.

Isto explica por que é que a Itália e os outros aliados europeus dos EUA excluíram a Huawei e outras empresas chinesas das licitações para o fornecimento de equipamentos de telecomunicações 5G.

“A tecnologia 5G – explica o Dr. Joseph Evans numa conferência de imprensa, no Pentágono – é vital para manter as vantagens militares e económicas dos Estados Unidos”, não só contra os seus adversários, principalmente a China e a Rússia, mas também contra os próprios aliados.

Por esta razão “o Departamento de Defesa está a trabalhar estreiramente com parceiros industriais, que investem centenas de biliões de dólares em tecnologia 5G, a fim de explorar esses investimentos maciços para aplicações militares de 5G”, incluindo “aplicações de dupla utilização” militares e civis.

Por outras palavras, a rede comercial 5G, construída por empresas privadas, é usada pelo Pentágono com uma despesa menor do que seria necessário se a rede fosse construída apenas para fins militares.

Serão os utentes comuns – a quem as multinacionais 5G venderão os seus serviços – a pagar pela tecnologia que, como prometem, deve “mudar as nossas vidas”, mas que, ao mesmo tempo, será utilizada para criar armas da nova geração para uma guerra, que significará o fim das gerações humanas.

Manlio Dinucci

il manifesto, 8 de Setembro de 2020

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo original em italiano :

Il lato oscuro del 5G: l’uso militare

il manifesto, 8 de Setembro de 2020

Tradutora: Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos

Novichok must be the most cryptic and deceptive chemical placebo ever developed by the erstwhile super-power that exploded the world’s largest 50 megaton Tsar Bomba in its heyday in the 1960s, because victims infected by it create an ephemeral stir across international media lasting a few days, recover within weeks and are never heard about again.

Globally renowned Putin-critic, albeit lacking a significant political constituency in Russia itself, Alexey Navalny was hastily transported out of Siberia to Berlin on August 22 after he fell ill due to the suspected poisoning of his tea. He had been in a medically induced coma since he had arrived in Germany.

A week later, on September 2, German Chancellor Angela Merkel (image, with Trump, August 2020) anxiously announced Navalny had been poisoned with the Cold War-era nerve agent Novichok. Mainstream media’s credulous sheeple were pondering over stately funeral arrangements and the likely place for a shrine where the illustrious anti-communist crusader would be buried.

But in a dramatic turn of events yesterday, September 7, the German officials gleefully announced Navalny was out of coma and was responding well to verbal and visual stimuli,  as he was found staring at German nurses.

Sarcasm aside, Novichok is the same group of nerve agents that was used on the Russian former spy Sergei Skripal, who was attacked in Britain two years ago.

On March 4, 2018, Sergei Skripal, a Russian double agent working for the British foreign intelligence service, and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a public bench outside a shopping center in Salisbury.

A few months later, in July 2018, a British woman, Dawn Sturgess, died after touching the container of the nerve agent that allegedly poisoned the Skripals, though it is contested if she ever came in contact with Novichok. Because what sort of a dopey secret agent would casually discard a bottle of nerve agent that allegedly looked like a perfume bottle in a public park, where a British lady would pick it up and spray it on herself to check out the fragrance? Instead of high-budget spy thriller, that sounds like a made-up cock and bull story.

Nevertheless, in the case of the Skripals, Theresa May, then the prime minister of the United Kingdom, promptly accused Russia of attempted assassinations and the British government concluded that Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a Moscow-made, military-grade nerve agent, Novichok.

was recruited by the British MI6 in 1995, and before his arrest in Russia in December 2004, he was alleged to have blown the cover of scores of Russian secret agents. He was released in a spy swap deal in 2010 and was allowed to settle in Salisbury. Both Sergei Skripal and his daughter have since recovered and were discharged from hospital in May 2018.

The only plausible explanation for the media hype surrounding the poisoning of the Skripals and Navalny appears to be that Western powers want to impose economic sanctions on Russia and, as usual, the mainstream media has been tasked with the responsibility to create public opinion for the impending international isolation of Russia.

On the subject of economic sanctions, it’s an evident fact that neocolonial powers are ruled by behemoth corporations whose wealth is measured in hundreds of billions of dollars, far more than the total GDP of many developing nations. The status of these multinational corporations as dominant players in international politics gets official imprimatur when the Western governments endorse the congressional lobbying practice of so-called “special interest” groups, which is a euphemism for corporate interests.

Since the Western governments are nothing but the mouthpiece of business interests on international political and economic forums, therefore any national or international entity which hinders or opposes the agenda of corporate interests is either coerced into accepting their demands or gets sidelined.

In 2013, the Manmohan Singh’s government of India had certain objections to further opening up to the Western businesses. The Business Roundtable, which is an informal congregation of major US businesses and together holds a net wealth of $6 trillion, held a meeting with the representatives of the Indian government and literally coerced it into accepting unfair demands of the Western corporations.

The developing economies are always hungry for foreign direct investment (FDI) to sustain economic growth, and this investment mostly comes from the Western corporations. When the Business Roundtables or the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) form pressure groups and engage in “collective bargaining” activities, the nascent and fragile developing economies don’t have a choice but to toe their line.

State sovereignty, that sovereign nation states are at liberty to pursue independent policies, particularly economic and trade policies, is a myth. Just like the ruling elites of the developing countries which maintain a stranglehold and monopoly over domestic politics; similarly, the neocolonial powers and multinational corporations control international politics and the global economic order.

Any state in the international arena which dares to transgress the trade and economic policies laid down by neocolonial powers and multinational corporations becomes an international pariah like Castro’s Cuba, Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, Ayatollah’s Iran, or more recently, Maduro’s Venezuela.

Venezuela has one of the largest known oil reserves in the world. Even though the mainstream media’s pundits hold the socialist policies of President Nicolas Maduro responsible for economic mismanagement in Venezuela, fact of the matter is that hyperinflation in its economy is the effect of US sanctions against Venezuela which have been put in place since the time of late President Hugo Chavez.

Another case in point is Iran which was cut off from the global economic system from 2006 to 2015, and then again after May 2018 when American President Donald Trump unilaterally annulled the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), because of Iran’s supposed nuclear ambitions. Good for Iran that it also has one of the largest oil and gas resources, otherwise it would have been insolvent by now.

Such is the power of Washington-led global financial system, especially the banking sector, and the significance of petro-dollar, because the global oil transactions are pegged in the US dollars all over the world, and all the major oil bourses are also located in the Western financial districts.

The crippling “third party” economic sanctions on Iran from 2006 to 2015 have brought to the fore the enormous power that the Western financial institutions and the petro-dollar as a global reserve currency wields over the global financial system.

It bears mentioning that the Iranian nuclear negotiations were as much about Iran’s nuclear program as they were about its ballistic missile program, which is an equally dangerous conventional threat to Israel and the Gulf’s petro-monarchies, just across the Persian Gulf.

Despite the sanctions being unfair, Iran felt the heat so much that it remained engaged in negotiations throughout the nearly decade-long period of sanctions, and such was the crippling effect of those “third party” sanctions on Iran’s economy that had it not been for its massive oil and gas reserves, and some Russian, Chinese and Turkish help in illicitly buying Iranian oil, it could have defaulted due to the sanctions.

Notwithstanding, after the brutal assassination of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, and the alleged (unconfirmed) hand of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in the murder, certain naïve political commentators of the mainstream media came up with a ludicrous suggestion that Washington should impose sanctions on Saudi Arabia.

As in the case of aforementioned Iran sanctions, sanctioning Saudi Arabia also seems plausible; however, there is a caveat: Iran is only a single oil-rich state which has 160 billion barrels of proven oil reserves and has the capacity to produce 5 million barrels per day (mbpd) of crude oil.

On the other hand, the Persian Gulf’s petro-monarchies are actually three oil-rich states. Saudi Arabia with its 266 billion barrels of proven oil reserves and 10 mbpd of daily crude oil production, and UAE and Kuwait with 100 billion barrels of proven reserves, each, and 3 mbpd of daily crude oil production, each. Together, the share of the Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC) amounts to 466 billion barrels, almost one-third of the world’s 1477 billion barrels of total proven oil reserves.

Therefore, although imposing economic sanctions on the Gulf States might sound plausible on paper, the relationship between the Gulf’s petro-monarchies and the industrialized world is that of a consumer-supplier relationship. The Gulf States are the suppliers of energy and the industrialized world is its consumer, hence the Western powers cannot sanction their energy suppliers and largest investors.

If anything, the Gulf’s petro-monarchies had “sanctioned” the Western powers in the past by imposing the oil embargo in 1973 after the Arab-Israel War. The 1973 Arab oil embargo against the West lasted only for a short span of six months during which the price of oil quadrupled, but Washington became so paranoid after the embargo that it put in place a ban on the export of crude oil outside the US borders, and began keeping sixty-day stock of reserve fuel for strategic and military needs.

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.

It is difficult not to notice something contrived in the currently announced “pandemic” of the Novel Covid-19 virus. Media coverage of this event has all the hallmarks of a coordinated hysterical campaign, namely:

• the use of emotions instead of numbers and logic (for example videos showing allegedly overflowing hospitals and morgues, which can easily be staged or occur due to a natural situation unrelated to Covid-19)
• the refusal to even mention the most obvious counter-arguments (for example, the media will never compare the number of deaths caused by flu in recent years with Covid-19 deaths)
• and the complete censorship of all opinions that disagree with the mainstream media narrative, even those that come from recognised experts.

We have witnessed the publication of numerous fake stories, like the CNN report about bodies being left on the streets in Ecuador which was later debunked. We have frequently seen hysterical headlines that are not supported in any way by the contents of the article.

Finally, the national, as well as the local coverage, is always vague, never saying who exactly is ill or what they’ve got, or whether they are at home or in a hospital, and they never say how they treat the disease. Vagueness in media is a sure sign of lying.

Out of any proportion to reality, the mass media continues to drone on ominously that this is the New Normal, and that we might as well get used to it, that the world will never be as it was before the coronavirus. This is nothing more and nothing less than classic psychological warfare.

Why would a viral outbreak require “psy-ops”, that is, unless something larger was afoot?

The mainstream media as usual labels everybody who objects to their version of events a “Conspiracy Theorist.”

However, in addition to usual roster of sceptics like James Corbett or Del Bigtree, we now have many established scientists and doctors publicly questioning the version of events that is being presented by the mainstream media and governments.

These are, to name a few: Dr Sucharit Bhakdi, a professor emeritus at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz and former head of the Institute for Medical Microbiology; Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, a member of PACE; Prof Dolores Cahill, Vice Chair of the IMI Scientific Committee (she has more important titles than I can fit here); Dr Peer Eifler from Austria; Dr Claus Köhnlein; Dr Scott Jensen, Minnesota Senator; Harvey A. Risch, professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health.

Each one of these intelligent, articulate and trustworthy people with top credentials disagree with the official story.

All these doctors accuse media, governments and WHO of fabricating the Covid pandemic and abusing their powers by taking extreme measures in the face of a disease that has shown no signs of being any worse than a typical seasonal flu.

Some of these doctors add even more disturbing accusations, namely, that some patients died because doctors used a wrong treatment protocol, that medical authorities were directed to list ‘coronavirus’ as the cause of death even when no coronavirus analysis was made, that many deaths were caused by putting people with active Covid-19 into nursing homes and, finally, that a drug capable of saving hundreds of thousands of lives is being denied to the population.

The question is…is this campaign of fear a spontaneous overreaction to a new virus, or was it organized by somebody to achieve some malicious goals?

If we conclude that the pandemic indeed is fake, the worldwide media campaign manufactured, government officials and WHO bribed or coerced, then further questions arise. Is there anyone who has the ability to pull this off?

If yes, then why did they do it, and how?

Long before this “pandemic” we heard talk that we are living through a time of crisis, but it seems nobody ever fully identifies the crisis or what caused it. In our view, the false pandemic is closely related to this crisis and it is impossible to understand current events without a clear understanding of the crisis.

A short answer to the questions posed above: we live in a unique time, at the tail end of a European colonial project that existed for 500 years, making Europe and the US the richest, most influential part of the world and the envy of most of its inhabitants.

From the end of WWII through the 1960’s, this colonial project was gradually replaced by neo-colonialism, controlled almost exclusively by US plutocrats. In the last 10-20 years, the systems of neo-colonialism began to break down due to the economic rise of China and also due to the degeneration of Western elites. In recent years, what we call the Free World maintains its way of life simply by going deeper and deeper into debt.

This situation cannot continue indefinitely, and very soon we can expect an abrupt fall in the standard of living in the US, the UK and most European countries, accompanied by tremendous social upheavals. The US plutocracy has no economic or military means to stop this collapse.

A clever solution would be to pin the blame on a natural phenomenon, like a disease, and then justify any amount of violence necessary to keep the problems resulting from the crisis under control.

US plutocrats conveniently control most of the world’s media and have a huge network of “charitable” foundations and affiliated NGO institutions all over the world. This network has been used for generations as a tool for influencing media, educational institutions, governments and international organizations, for social engineering and ideological control.

We will now discuss above short thesis in more detail.

Is such a campaign at all possible?

Is there somebody out there who is capable of organising a world-wide media campaign supported by governments and international organisations?

Yes, we can be sure that such players exist because we have a recent example of one such media campaign that was clearly artificially created.

Coincidentally, this campaign was also aimed at convincing the population that we are in immediate danger, and that it will require drastic measures to save us.

I mean, of course, the Greta Thunberg campaign.

In no time at all, a 13-year-old girl was elevated to a position of worldwide prominence by mysterious agents. Whoever organised this campaign was also able to arrange for Greta to speak at the United Nations, the European Parliament, the Davos Economic Forum and so on. On top of this, Amnesty International gave her an award. This makes no sense unless Amnesty International is directed from the same center that command our “independent” mainstream media.

Just recently the first Gulbenkian Foundation Prize for Humanity, about one million Euros, was given to Greta. She was called “one of the most remarkable figures of our days” and a “charismatic and inspiring personality.”

It would be highly unlikely, to say the least, that journalists all over the world became simultaneously fascinated by this little girl and the simple-minded message she was coached to deliver. It is equally unlikely that the UN, the Davos Forum and the European Parliament all independently decided that her platitudes were something interesting and important for them to hear in person. And I am sure that the people in Amnesty International and the Gulbenkian Foundation are not so deranged as to sincerely believe in Greta’s greatness.

To believe that this campaign was caused exclusively by the virtues of Greta would be as naive as believing the 1960’s Soviet media campaign that once glorified the “simple Soviet girl” who wanted to donate her eyes to blind USA Communist party leader Henry Winston came into existence because of sincere journalistic interest in this “heroine” instead of being commanded by the Politburo.

Thus we can safely conclude that forces capable of organising worldwide media campaigns and influence the corridors of power do exist.

Volumes have been written about plutocratic control of the American media, among them “Manufacturing Consent” by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, “The Media Monopoly” by Ben Bagdikian, “Taking the Risk out of Democracy” by Alex Carey, “Media Control” and “Necessary Illusions” by Noam Chomsky.

Already in 1928, Edward Bernays, considered the father of public relations in America, wrote:

In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”

Noam Chomsky put it more bluntly:

Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the US media.”

Note that control over the US media is achieved without requiring direct ownership of it. Herman and Chomsky quote Sir George Lewis, that the market would promote those papers

enjoying the preference of the advertising public… advertisers thus acquired a de facto licensing authority since, without their support, newspapers ceased to be economically viable.”

Of course, only big advertisers can exercise significant political clout over the media. In the next part of our article we will describe an even more important source of media control, the so-called “charitable” foundations.

To a substantial extent, the mainstream media outside of the US is also controlled by American plutocrats.

Control is achieved in large part because the overwhelming majority of newspapers around the world get their international stories from three (3) news agencies. Two out of the three big news agencies, Reuters and Associated Press, are directly controlled by American plutocrats.

The role of news agencies is analysed in the article titled “The Propaganda Multiplier” published in Off-Guardian. In one particular case study, the geopolitical coverage in nine leading daily newspapers from Germany, Austria and Switzerland was examined for diversity and journalistic performance.

The results confirm a high dependence on global news agencies (from 63% to 90% of content, excluding commentaries and interviews) and the lack of their own investigative research.

More direct methods of control are described, for example, in the book Journalists for Hire: How the CIA Buys the News by Dr. Udo Ulfkotte. Dr. Ulfkotte died from heart attack at a relatively young age shortly after publishing his book in 2014. An English translation of his book is already for years listed as “Currently unavailable” on Amazon.

The invisible hand of the free market is refusing to bring this book to its readers. Although Dr. Ulfkotte mentions only the CIA in the title of his book, he makes it clear that “charitable” foundations are also heavily involved in foreign media control.

The hardest part to understand is how governments all over the world were forced to accept the media narratives during this false pandemic.

To start with, most governments have no independent capacity to evaluate medical events and they have no choice other than to accept WHO advice. Furthermore, US government and globalist medical organizations used their influence.

One of the very few heads of state who dared to reject the coronavirus panic, Belarusian President Lukashenko, testified that he was offered 950 million dollars from the IMF and the World Bank if he would introduce quarantine, isolation and curfew “like in Italy”.

The plutocratic influence network

To organise a worldwide campaign changing life in the whole world, a force that deserves to be called a shadow government is needed. Theodore Roosevelt, who was US President from 1901 to 1909, informed the world that:

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.”

He called this shadow government “the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics.”

However, to run a shadow government on such a scale, one needs large, well-financed institutions. Skull & Bones, the Masons or the Illuminati would not do. It would require an extensive network of institutions that employ well-paid professionals who are given reliable career paths.

The only way to run such an extensive network (designed, as it were, for essentially nefarious purposes) would be to keep it in full view, but disguised with an innocent appearing cover. US plutocrats a long time ago found the perfect cover story that would allow them to establish shadow government institutions.

These institutions are masked as “charitable” foundations. The foundations act through financing wide networks of “think tanks” and NGO’s all over the world, and therefore their power is not constrained by national boundaries.

The most notorious foundations are, to name but a few: The Rockefeller Foundation, The Ford Foundation, the Open Society Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

One important line of foundation activity is helping careers of servile journalists, scholars and experts lifting them into positions of prominence. Foundations aid struggling journalists and academics by giving them “prestigious” prizes, fellowships and research grants. Though мany of these professionals will spend most or all of their careers in university and government being supported mostly by taxpayer money, they get these lucrative and prestigious appointments due to their history of conformity to foundation agenda.

For example, nothing will help a recent PhD in political or social sciences to get a tenure-track professorship position better than being awarded a grant by a foundation. In this way, foundations leverage their money by elevating professionals that have shown their fidelity to positions supported by state money in the amounts much greater than the money they have spent for prizes, fellowships and grants. The result is that, though few people occationally rebel, most of professionals in ideological sphere understand the game and toe the line.

Foundations often collaborate closely with the CIA, but it would be incorrect to say that the foundations are controlled by the CIA. It is rather that the same people who control the foundations, also control the government -including the CIA. Both systems are merely parts of a larger system that freely shares cadres between entities; this is often referred to as the “revolving door”. As an example, Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA officer, is now a senior fellow at the “Foundation for Defense of Democracies.”

As we mentioned above, foundations act through think tanks and NGOs. Hundreds or thousands of these organisations exist. Here we will not make the effort to classify them and enumerate them. We will simply call all the foundations, together with think tanks and NGOs, the Plutocratic Influence Network (PIN).

The Plutocratic Influence Network is involved in ideological control, social engineering, and direct subversion of “dictatorships,” meaning regimes that do not allow American plutocrats to exploit their countries. Plutocratic media prefers to call PIN “Civil Society,” cleverly disguising PIN as a loose network of independent citizen initiatives and the basis of democracy.

Here is what think tanks do, according to Martin S. Indyk, vice president and director of the Foreign Policy Program at Brookings, one of the oldest and most prestigious think tanks in Washington:

Our business is to influence policy with scholarly, independent research, based on objective criteria, and to be policy-relevant, we need to engage policy makers,”

Of course, “objective research” never brings results which are contrary to plutocratic interests.

According to Matt Taibbi:

the largest dozen or so of these privately funded ‘research institutions’ have an immense impact on public discourse. The Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute exist solely to produce research and commentary that will influence public opinion. They have fancy halls in which to hold press conferences and roundtables and their hired help – people like Heritage’s Cohen and Carnegie’s McFaul – wait virtually around the clock for journalists to call.”
The Russia Journal, March 15-21, 2002

Think tanks also receive money directly from corporations and from Western governments. To complicate things further, foundations make grants to each other and occasionally to private companies.

The scale of foundation and think tank activity is enormous. According to political commentator Vladimir Simonov, in 2004 there were at least 2,000 Russian non-governmental organisations that live on US grants and other forms of financial assistance.” Many millions of dollars are spent on “nurturing some ‘independent press centres’, ‘public commissions’ and ‘charity foundations’” (RIA Novosti June 1, 2004).

The diabolical horns of the foundations pop up in the most unexpected places. The World Health Organisation, which most presume is a public resource, is “generously” supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF).

Swissmedic, the Swiss Agency for Therapeutic Products, (which sounds like the epitome of cleanness and neutrality) is also supported by BMGF. There is little doubt that we will find foundation money in hundreds of other organisations we had presumed neutral.

We can only guess how this money will influence bureaucrats and thus put much larger amounts of taxpayer money under foundation control. As experience shows, bureaucrats and politicians are surprisingly easy to bribe. All it takes is a little additional money for travel or a few conferences in nice places. Or it might be small bonuses on top of their salaries, or an opportunity to get a well-paid and honourable position after retirement or good jobs for bureaucrat’s relatives and friends.

While it is difficult to penetrate the secretive world of the Plutocratic Influence Network, sometimes events occur that show us the degree of coordinated control inside it. What is the connection between Transparency International (TI) and the Covid fake pandemic?

Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, previously a distinguished member of TI’s Board of Directors, publicly denied the existence of the pandemic. In response, Transparency International removed D. Wolfgang Wodarg from its board. The situation is bizarre.

Dr Wodarg (who is a medical doctor) had expressed his own professional opinion which was in no way related to his work at TI. The censorship of TI can only be explained by an order from those who fund and control it, i.e. the same Plutocratic Influence Network which, in our opinion, organised the whole Covid campaign.

Any serious investigation into the Plutocratic Influence Network requires huge resources and political will. The US Congress tried to investigate foundations only twice, the first time between 1913-1915 (the Walsh Commission) and then in 1954 (the Reece Committee).

The Walsh Commission was created to study industrial relations and touched foundations only tangentially. Its final report in 1915 points out that the goal of a foundation is not charity, at least not in the original meaning of this word, but ideological control over education and media:

The Reece Committee did a more comprehensive investigation, which however did not come to completion because it was sabotaged by powerful forces in Congress. Nevertheless, a lot of valuable materials were collected, and in 1958, Rene A. Wormser, a member of the Committee, published a book, Foundations: Their Power and Influence, in which he described the results of the investigation.

We have no space here to review this book and will limit ourselves to some short quotes.

Wormser notes a great (and dire) influence that foundation-financed social research has on government:

What is more, much of this research can be classified as “scientism,” that is, pseudo-science pretending to be as objective as physics, but in fact giving results that are desired by those who run the show.

Wormser quotes the 1925 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report which openly states its antidemocratic coercive goals:

Underneath and behind all these undertakings there remains the task to instruct and to enlighten public opinion so that it may not only guide but compel the action of governments and public officers in the direction of constructive progress.”

The book also describes briefly a blatant case of social engineering by the Rockefeller Foundation, when they supported the fake sex research of Dr. Kinsey. The Kinsey Reports went on to eventually cause tremendous changes in the private lives of Americans.

Here we can conclude that the Plutocratic Influence Network was created for influencing education, public opinion and governments. It may even alter our most basic and private attitudes by making use of covert propaganda and fake social “research”. The plutocrats have huge resources and many thousands of trained professionals to perform these tasks. Therefore, they are very likely to have the appropriate tools required to create a false pandemic.

We will talk about their specific techniques and goals below.

What crisis?

Since at least 2008 we have been hearing from everywhere that we live in troubled times, that a crisis is coming. According to WEF Founder Klaus Schwab, “The Great Reset” is required. The whole world order is nearing its end and new and sinister order is coming. What exactly this crisis is remains unexplained.

As already noted in the introduction, our claim is that the much-publicised impending crisis is simply the denouement of the European colonial project that began over 500 years ago. During this period of time, Western European civilization (including its extensions, most importantly the US) led the world economically and militarily, and dominated the world’s art, science and ideology. The result of this crisis will be the loss of Europe’s leading position and a precipitous drop in the standard of living of its population.

Western propaganda, of course, attributes the material prosperity of the West to freedom, democracy, free enterprise, free media, and human rights. And last but not least, to important contribution of feminism and LGBTQ+ rights. Though few Westerners would dare say it openly nowadays, most believe that their prosperity is also due to their superior work ethic and mental abilities.

In fact, it is the opposite. Western prosperity is based largely upon military power, the systematic violation of the most basic freedoms and human rights in exploited countries, and systematic interference in free markets. The wealth of the West is directly connected to the misery of most of the world.

US army bases all over the world, constant wars, bombings and drone strikes are not required for free trade and free markets. It would be naive to believe that the US Army is used to bring freedom and human rights onto benighted natives. On the contrary, armies are employed to steal resources and exploit conquered populations as cheap labour.

For our purposes we can divide the era of colonialism into three stages, Direct Colonialism, Neo-colonialism and, more recently, the Terminal Stage of Neo-colonialism which is based on deeper and deeper levels of indebtedness.

Western Direct Colonialism of the New World and what later became known as the Third World began in earnest over 500 years ago, but this period of direct rule gradually began to break down after the end of WWII.

When war between Nazi Germany and the USSR was ignited, it looked like the Anglo-American domination of the post-war world was assured. Unfortunately for the West, WWII led to the rise of the Soviet Union as a global power, and the creation of a socialist China (the full implications of which were not felt until recent decades). The American establishment briefly hoped that the situation might be saved by their new nuclear weapons; however, the Soviet nuclear bomb tested in 1949 put an abrupt end to their dreams of perpetual global rule.

Economically, though, full victory was achieved. At this point in time, the US produced 50 percent of the world’s economic output. Most technically-advanced products were manufactured only in the US and therefore sold at top prices, due to almost complete absence of competition. Their main industrial rivals, Germany and Japan, were laid in ruins.

The US planned to prevent the rebuilding of their industries in an attempt to maintain their economic world domination indefinitely. The Morgenthau Plan was a proposal to eliminate Germany’s ability to wage war by eliminating its arms industry and its ability to compete by restricting other key German industries. Japan was completely prostrate before the American Navy and occupation forces.

With the US economic and naval domination of the world, British, French and all the other colonies naturally began to fall under de facto control of the US. To exploit them, old style colonial direct control was no longer needed.

Therefore the decolonization process and transition to Neo-colonialism. In establishing formal independence of former colonies, Soviet help was only of secondary importance, except in China, Korea and later Vietnam.

Militarily and politically the West ran into a quagmire soon after WWII. The Soviet Union suddenly became a strong military rival, seizing control of Eastern Europe and immediately afterwards aiding China to liberate itself. There were strong communist parties in Italy, France and Greece; China soon began to put pressure on Asia, most significantly in Korea and Vietnam.

To contain the Soviet Union and China, the US desperately needed allies. The only solution was to allow Germany and Japan to restore and develop their industries.

As it turned out, this solution contained seeds of its own destruction. Over the years, German and Japanese manufacturers quickly became successful competitors, and gradually undermined American pre- eminence. America’s treatment of Germany and Japan is often presented to us as the epitome of virtuous generosity, of the beatific desire to share American-style democracy and prosperity with all the nations of the world.

This apparent open-handedness was, however, the exception rather than the rule. If these countries had not been needed as bulwarks to contain the spread of communism, they would have been left de-industrialized, backward and exploited.

Common tactics of neo-colonialists include bribing the local elites, providing them with weapons, loans, mercenaries, police and security services training, political and media support, offshore havens for stolen monies and the ever-present threat of direct military intervention. These methods are described in detail by Chomsky and Perkins among others.

After the breakup of the Soviet Union and the reforms in China, it looked again, as it did during WWII, that an era of US world domination was at hand. Russia was greatly weakened, its wealth plundered. Politically, it was dominated by the US. China appeared to be nothing more than a limitless Bangladesh, an endless source of cheap labor, a loss of control by the Communist Party just a matter of time.

Only one obstacle stood between the US and total world domination – the Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces.

It was expected, however, that Russia could not maintain them for long. The American foreign debt, which had grown so rapidly throughout the Reagan era because of growing Germans and the Japanese competition, stopped growing under Clinton. All looked rosy. Even military expenditures were somewhat reduced under Clinton. It was the “end of history”, they proclaimed.

And then, the victory unexpectedly turned into a crushing defeat. Putin wrestled control of Russia away from the West-friendly oligarchs and started to restore its economy, its independence, and its army. This was followed by unexpected victories over American-supported-and-armed Georgian forces in South Ossetia, then Crimea, Donbass and Syria. Russian military contractors began popping up in Libya and other African countries.

China has become even a bigger problem. The Chinese tricked the West in a big way. The Communist Party kept the control. They attracted Western companies with cheap labor, good organization and infrastructure. And then, the Party created conditions first for copying and mastering Western technologies and later for developing their own advanced technologies. Unlike Bangladesh, they did not let hard-earned dollars to be squandered for upper-class consumption. They spent them for education, research, infrastructure and building up their own industrial might.

With its growing economic power, China was able to do what the Soviet Union was never able to do – to displace the West economically in the Third World, which included most of Asia, Africa and Latin America. With losing its pre-eminent place at the top of the global economic pyramid, America’s foreign debt resumed its growth and has now reached truly unsustainable dimensions.

Similar debt crises have occurred in the UK, Spain, Italy and other countries that piggy-backed onto American neo-colonialism.

This crisis does not depend on the incompetency of Trump or the cleverness of Putin or Xi, it is entirely objective.

For a while after the initial setbacks, the US government continued to pin its hope on the military. After 2001 the Pentagon budget was growing again, starting up new wars all around the world.

However, these wars failed to produce the desired economic benefits. Quite the opposite. Gradually, American generals began to realize the limits of American military power. They realized that they cannot fight Russia and China under realistic scenarios. We have no space here for a more detailed analysis of this interesting and important question.

We found only one work that attempts to quantify the “real” GDP of Western countries – one that takes into account the massive foreign trade deficit. The Awara Study on Real GDP Growth Net-of-Debt concluded that:

The real, debt-adjusted, GDP growth of Western countries has been in negative territory for years. Only by massively loading up debt have they been able to hide the true picture and delay the onset of an inevitable collapse of their respective economies. The study shows that the real GDP of those countries hides hefty losses after netting the debt figures, which gives the Real-GDP-net-of-debt.”

This study claims that from 2009 through 2013, the real GDP-net-of-debt decreased approximately 45% in the US and the UK; it dropped in Spain by 55%, Italy by 35%, France by 30% and Germany by 18%. Though we do not consider these numbers precise, we think they reflect the reality pretty accurately.

Even though the West is already feeling a pinch, it is still very difficult for the majority of Westerners to recognize the coming crisis.

They may be reluctant to admit they were ever the beneficiaries of brutal colonial thievery, or that the free ride has come to an end. They short-sightedly focus on blaming China for taking their industrial jobs, never doubting for a moment their right to cheap Chinese products. They still fail to understand that when Western jobs come back, the goods currently being manufactured in China by cheap labor will become unaffordable to most Westerners.

Why would they do it?

Assume, as we have shown above, the ruling plutocrats have the ability to organize a fake worldwide pandemic. Why would they want to do such a thing? How would they profit? Let’s look at possible motives.

Nothing is new under the moon, and the regime in Washington has a history of using fabricated crises to achieve their goals. According to H.L. Mencken:

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

One reason for a “pandemic” might be to extract benefits from the widespread economic disruption resulting from lockdowns. It is quite likely that the big companies will be able to swallow up their smaller competitors, who were often forced to close their doors by the local authorities.

US administrators and those of the European Union announced huge Covid19 relief measures to the tune of many hundreds of billions of dollars and euros respectively. Who will profit from this windfall? Most likely some well-connected big players. Business Insider magazine reported in June 2020 that “American billionaires are now nearly 20% richer than they were at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new report by the Institute for Policy Studies.”

Pharmaceutical companies will be certainly interested in vaccination profits. But are they powerful enough to pull the whole show? Not likely.

Atomization of society, breaking up community solidarity, eroding all non-monetary connections between people, destroying family relations and weakening blood ties, is a long-standing plutocratic project. Now, using this fake pandemic, the plutocrats have gone even further, now they train us to see each other not as friend, not as brother, not even as a source of profit, but mainly as a source of mortal infection.

This message is conveyed not only verbally through the mass media; we are physically compelled to keep our distance, shamed into refusing our neighbor’s handshake, and threatened with fines for being seen without a mask. The physical aspect of social engineering is more effective than simple verbal brainwashing and it makes the social changes more permanent.

Physical restraint creates social habits that will be difficult to break in the future.

While all the above reasons may be valid, the main reason in our opinion is the impending crisis of the West described above. The paradigm of Western society is based upon ever-growing consumption. Westerners do not understand that it is possible to live with less and be happy.

One can expect that the coming drastic fall in consumption will result in the permanent breakdown of Western society. We are already seeing widespread rioting in American cities. With the widely accepted cover story of the “global pandemic”, ruling plutocrats intend to cover up their past failures and continue ruling under an artificially created state of emergency.

Conclusion

We have presented our analysis of the current Covid-19 “pandemic”. If indeed deliberately planned it could be considered a crime against humanity. Even more ominously, there are indications that global lockdown is only the first taste of what eventually might be a semi-permanent state of emergency rule.

Bill Gates himself, on June 23 in a video currently featured on the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation website, openly promised us that there is going to be a “next one”, and – “That one, I say, will get attention this time.”

One of the most important considerations in investigating a suspected crime is finding a motive. Cui bono – who benefits? We described a possible motive for the events and showed that the suspects possess instruments that make fabricating a global “pandemic” possible.

If you work for a foundation, an NGO, an international organization, or a government and have first-hand internal knowledge of events, we invite you to write to us.

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Gregory Sinaisky has Ph.D. in Computer Science and lives in Zurich. He writes among other subjects about disinformation in media, military affairs, social and scientific topics.

Featured image is from OffGuardian

La manifestazione del 12 settembre a Roma «Stop 5G» si focalizza a ragione sulle possibili conseguenze delle emissioni elettromagnetiche per la salute e l’ambiente, in particolare sul decreto che impedisce ai sindaci di regolamentare l’installazione di antenne 5G sul territorio comunale.

Si continua però a ignorare un aspetto fondamentale di questa tecnologia: il suo uso militare. Ne abbiamo già parlato sul manifesto (10 dicembre 2019), ma con scarsi risultati. I successivi programmi varati dal Pentagono, ufficialmente documentati, confermano quanto scrivevamo nove mesi fa.

La «Strategia 5G», approvata il 2 maggio 2020, stabilisce che «il Dipartimento della Difesa deve sviluppare e impiegare nuovi concetti operativi che usino la ubiqua connettività offerta dal 5G per accrescere l’efficacia, la resilienza, la velocità e letalità delle nostre forze armate».

Il Pentagono sta già sperimentando applicazioni militari di questa tecnologia in cinque basi delle forze aeree, navali e terrestri: Hill (Utah), Nellis (Nevada), San Diego (California), Albany (Georgia), Lewis-McChord (Washington), Lo ha confermato, in una conferenza stampa il 3 giugno, il Dr. Joseph Evans, direttore tecnico per il 5G al Dipartimento della Difesa.

Ha quindi annunciato che applicazioni militari del 5G verranno tra poco testate anche in altre sette basi: Norfolk (Virginia), Pearl Harbor-Hickam (Hawaii), San Antonio (Texas), Fort Irwin (California), Fort Hood (Texas), Camp Pendleton (California), Tinker (Oklahoma).

Gli esperti prevedono che il 5G avrà un ruolo determinante nello sviluppo di armi ipersoniche, comprese quelle a testata nucleare: per guidarle su traiettorie variabili, sfuggendo ai missili intercettori, occorre raccogliere, elaborare e trasmettere enormi quantità di dati in tempi rapidissimi. Lo stesso è necessario per attivate le difese in caso di attacco con tali armi, affidandosi a sistemi automatici.

La nuova tecnologia avrà un ruolo chiave anche nella battle network (rete di battaglia), essendo in grado di collegare in un’area circoscritta milioni di apparecchiature ricetrasmittenti.

Estremamente importante sarà il 5G anche per i servizi segreti e le forze speciali: renderà possibili sistemi di spionaggio molto più efficaci e accrescerà la letalità dei droni-killer.

Queste e altre applicazioni militari di tale tecnologia sono sicuramente allo studio anche in Cina e altri paesi. Quella in corso sul 5G non è quindi solo una guerra commerciale.

Lo conferma il documento strategico del Pentagono: «Le tecnologie 5G rappresentano capacità strategiche determinanti per la sicurezza nazionale degli Stati uniti e per quella dei nostri alleati». Occorre quindi «proteggerle dagli avversari» e convincere gli alleati a fare lo stesso per assicurare la «interoperabilità» delle applicazioni militari del 5G nel quadro della Nato.

Ciò spiega perché l’Italia e gli altri alleati europei degli Usa hanno escluso la Huawei e altre società cinesi dalle gare per la fornitura di apparecchiature 5G per telecomunicazioni.

«La tecnologia 5G – spiega il Dr. Joseph Evans nella conferenza stampa al Pentagono – è vitale per mantenere i vantaggi militari ed economici degli Stati uniti», nei confronti non solo degli avversari, in particolare Cina e Russia, ma degli stessi alleati.

Per questo «il Dipartimento della Difesa sta lavorando strettamente con i partner industriali, che investono centinaia di miliardi di dollari nella tecnologia 5G, allo scopo di sfruttare questi massicci investimenti per applicazioni militari del 5G», comprese «applicazioni a duplice uso» militare e civile.

In altre parole, la rete commerciale del 5G, realizzata da società private, viene usata dal Pentagono con una spesa molto più bassa di quella che sarebbe necessaria se la rete fosse realizzata unicamente a scopo militare.

Saranno i comuni utenti, a cui le multinazionali del 5G venderanno i loro servizi, a pagare la tecnologia che, a quanto promettono, dovrebbe «cambiare la nostra vita», ma che allo stesso tempo servirà a realizzare armi di nuova generazione per una guerra che significherebbe la fine delle generazioni umane.

Manlio Dinucci

Your Man in the Public Gallery: the Assange Hearing Day 6

By Craig Murray, September 08 2020

If you asked me to sum up today in a word, that word would undoubtedly be “railroaded”. it was all about pushing through the hearing as quickly as possible and with as little public exposure as possible to what is happening.

Gates Foundation is Also Destabilizing Africa’s Food Economy. The Restructuring of Global Food Production

By F. William Engdahl, September 08 2020

The Palestinian National Project: No Rallying Plan In Sight…Yet

By Rima Najjar, September 08 2020

How and in which direction to go remains an open question, but the great achievement of Masarat’s ninth annual conference is that it has signaled, loudly and clearly, that change in Palestine is inevitable and that it is Palestinians themselves who will shape it.

COVID19 PCR Tests Are Scientifically Meaningless

By Torsten Engelbrecht and Konstantin Demeter, September 07 2020

Russia – Nord Stream 2 vs. Poisoning of Alexei Navalny

By Peter Koenig, September 07 2020

The US has for years been objecting voraciously against this pipeline. Trump: “Why should we pay for NATO to defend Germany, when Germany buys gas from Russia and makes herself dependent on Russia?” – He added, “We offer Germany and Europe all the gas and energy they need.”

Syrian-Turkish tensions have ramped up in the region of Greater Idlib over the past few days.

On September 5, heavy clashes between Syrian troops and Turkish-backed militants broke out near the town of Fleifel and Saraqib in southeastern Idlib, near the town of al-Enkawi in northwestern Hama and Kafr Taal in western Aleppo. According to pro-militant sources, at least 5 Syrian Army troops were killed in injured in the confrontation. They claim that it is the Damascus government that violated the ceasefire triggering the confrontation. At the same time, Syrian sources say that the clashes started after the Turkish Armed Forces conducted several artillery strikes on Syrian Army positions near the town of Saraqib.

A day later, on September 6, the Turkish military once again shelled Syrian troops near Saraqib, and near Kafr Nabl. The impact of the strikes remain unclear. Nonetheless, pro-government sources did not report any casualties. In response to the attack, Syrian forces launched a series of strikes on positions of the Turkish-backed terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham near the towns Fatterah, Sufuhon, Kafar Aweed and Kinsafra in the southern part of the so-called Idlib de-escalation zone.

Meanwhile, unidentified gunmen attacked a checkpoint of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham near the town of Kafar Takharim reportedly killing and injuring several terrorists. After the attack, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham security forces arrested five militants of a small local armed faction called the Hananu Brigade. The terrorist group suspected that these fighters were behind the attack, but this turned out to be untrue. The detained militants were released within a few hours. The real identity of the attackers remains unclear.

On September 7, the Turkish Defense Ministry said that a Turkish soldier had died from wounds received in an attack in southern Idlib. The attack by unidentified militants took place near Ariha. Syrian troops refrain from striking positions of the Turkish military, likely trying to avoid further escalation and demonstrate that the ceasefire regime still exists at least formally.

Nevertheless, the current situation, when Turkish forces attack the Syrian Army with impunity under the cover of the ceasefire, cannot last long and will likely inevitably lead to an escalation if the Erdogan regime does not change its behavior.

The Russian Aerospace Forces have intensified strikes on identified ISIS targets in the central Syrian desert, according to reports by pro-militant sources. Despite the recently concluded operation of the Syrian Army and the Russian military in the desert that allegedly resulted in the elimination of over 300 ISIS members, ISIS continues its attacks. The most recent attacks took place in western Deir Ezzor, south of Mayadin, in the area between the town of Hamimah and the T3 station and near Itriyah. Therefore, Russia, Syria and Iran continue their joint effort against ISIS.

On September 5, the Syrian Military Intelligence Directorate, the National Defense Forces and the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps detained 5 ISIS members wearing Iranian military uniforms and driving a vehicle with pro-Iranian slogans in Mayadin.

On September 7, local sources revealed that the Syrian Army with support of the Russian Aerospace Forces has launched a new security operation covering eastern Homs, eastern Hama, southern Aleppo and southern Raqqa. According to reports, up to 25 ISIS terrorists were already neutralized in these areas.

Some sources claim that the Damascus government is eager to neutralize the ISIS threat in the Homs-Deir Ezzor desert before the start of any new open confrontation with Turkey. If the new Turkish-Syrian conflict starts before this, ISIS terrorists will become an even more serious security problem for government forces.

I went to the Old Bailey today expecting to be awed by the majesty of the law, and left revolted by the sordid administration of injustice.

There is a romance which attaches to the Old Bailey. The name of course means fortified enclosure and it occupies a millennia old footprint on the edge of London’s ancient city wall. It is the site of the medieval Newgate Prison, and formal trials have taken place at the Old Bailey for at least 500 years, numbering in the hundreds of thousands. For the majority of that time, those convicted even of minor offences of theft were taken out and executed in the alleyway outside. It is believed that hundreds, perhaps thousands, lie buried under the pavements.

The hefty Gothic architecture of the current grand building dates back no further than 1905, and round the back and sides of that is wrapped some horrible cheap utility building from the 1930’s. It was through a tunnelled entrance into this portion that five of us, Julian’s nominated family and friends, made our nervous way this morning. We were shown to Court 10 up many stairs that seemed like the back entrance to a particularly unloved works canteen. Tiles were chipped, walls were filthy and flakes of paint hung down from crumbling ceilings. Only the security cameras watching us were new – so new, in fact, that little piles of plaster and brick dust lay under each.

Court 10 appeared to be a fairly bright and open modern box, with pleasant light woodwork, jammed as a mezzanine inside a great vault of the old building. A massive arch intruded incongruously into the space and was obviously damp, sheets of delaminating white paint drooping down from it like flags of forlorn surrender. The dock in which Julian would be held still had a bulletproof glass screen in front, like Belmarsh, but it was not boxed in. There was no top to the screen, no low ceiling, so sound could flow freely over and Julian seemed much more in the court. It also had many more and wider slits than the notorious Belmarsh Box, and Julian was able to communicate quite readily and freely through them with his lawyers, which this time he was not prevented from doing.

Rather to our surprise, nobody else was allowed into the public gallery of court 10 but us five. Others like John Pilger and Kristin Hrafnsson, editor in chief of Wikileaks, were shunted into the adjacent court 9 where a very small number were permitted to squint at a tiny screen, on which the sound was so inaudible John Pilger simply left. Many others who had expected to attend, such as Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders, were simply excluded, as were MPs from the German federal parliament (both the German MPs and Reporters Without Borders at least later got access to the inadequate video following strong representations from the German Embassy).

The reason given that only five of us were allowed in the public gallery of some 40 seats was social distancing; except we were allowed to all sit together in consecutive seats in the front row. The two rows behind us remained completely empty.

To finish scene setting, Julian himself looked tidy and well groomed and dressed, and appeared to have regained a little lost weight, but with a definite unhealthy puffiness about his features. In the morning he appeared disengaged and disoriented rather as he had at Belmarsh, but in the afternoon he perked up and was very much engaged with his defence team, interacting as normally as could be expected in these circumstances.

Proceedings started with formalities related to Julian’s release on the old extradition warrant and re-arrest under the new warrant, which had taken place this morning. Defence and prosecution both agreed that the points they had already argued on the ban on extradition for political offences were not affected by the superseding indictment.

Magistrate Baraitser then made a statement about access to the court by remote hearing, by which she meant online. She stated that a number of access details had been sent out by mistake by the court without her agreement. She had therefore revoked their access permissions.

As she spoke, we in the court had no idea what had happened, but outside some consternation was underway in that the online access of Amnesty International, of Reporters without Borders, of John Pilger and of forty others had been shut down. As these people were neither permitted to attend the court nor observe online, this was causing some consternation.

Baraitser went on to say that it was important that the hearing was public, but she should only agree remote access where it was “in the interests of justice”, and having considered it she had decided it was not. She explained this by stating that the public could normally observe from within the courtroom, where she could control their behaviour. But if they had remote access, she could not control their behaviour and this was not in the “interests of justice”.

Baraitser did not expand on what uncontrolled behaviour she anticipated from those viewing via the internet. It is certainly true that an observer from Amnesty sitting at home might be in their underwear, might be humming the complete soundtrack to Mamma Mia, or might fart loudly. Precisely why this would damage “the interests of justice” we are still left to ponder, with no further help from the magistrate. But evidently the interests of justice were, in her view, best served if almost nobody could examine the “justice” too closely.

The next “housekeeping issue” to be addressed was how witnesses should be heard. The defence had called numerous witnesses, and each had lodged a written statement. The prosecution and Baraitser both suggested that, having given their evidence in writing, there was no need for defence witnesses to give that evidence orally in open court. It would be much quicker to go straight to cross-examination by the prosecution.

For the defence, Edward Fitzgerald QC countered that justice should be seen to be done by the public. The public should be able to hear the defence evidence before hearing the cross-examination. It would also enable Julian Assange to hear the evidence summarised, which was important for him to follow the case given his lack of extended access to legal papers while in Belmarsh prison.

Baraitser stated there could not be any need for evidence submitted to her in writing to be repeated orally. For the defence, Mark Summers QC was not prepared to drop it and tension notably rose in the court. Summers stated it was normal practice for there to be “an orderly and rational exposition of the evidence”. For the prosecution, James Lewis QC denied this, saying it was not normal procedure.

Baraitser stated she could not see why witnesses should be scheduled an one hour forty five minutes each, which was too long. Lewis agreed. He also added that the prosecution does not accept that the defence’s expert witnesses are expert witnesses. A Professor of journalism telling about newspaper coverage did not count. An expert witness should only be giving evidence on a technical point the court was otherwise unqualified to consider. Lewis also objected that in giving evidence orally, defence witnesses might state new facts to which the Crown had not had time to react. Baraitser noted that the written defence statements were published online, so they were available to the public.

Edward Fitzgerald QC stood up to speak again, and Baraitser addressed him in a quite extraordinary tone of contempt. What she said exactly was: “I have given you every opportunity. Is there anything else, really, that you want to say”, the word “really” being very heavily emphasised and sarcastic. Fitzgerald refused to be sat down, and he stated that the current case featured “substantial and novel issues going to fundamental questions of human rights.” It was important the evidence was given in public. It also gave the witnesses a chance to emphasise the key points of their evidence and where they placed most weight.

Baraitser called a brief recess while she considered judgement on this issue, and then returned. She found against the defence witnesses giving their evidence in open court, but accepted that each witness should be allowed up to half an hour of being led by the defence lawyers, to enable them to orient themselves and reacquaint with their evidence before cross-examination.

This half hour for each witness represented something of a compromise, in that at least the basic evidence of each defence witness would be heard by the court and the public (insofar as the public was allowed to hear anything). But the idea that a standard half hour guillotine is sensible for all witnesses, whether they are testifying to a single fact or to developments over years, is plainly absurd. What came over most strongly from this question was the desire of both judge and prosecution to railroad through the extradition with as little of the case against it getting a public airing as possible.

As the judge adjourned for a short break we thought these questions had now been addressed and the rest of the day would be calmer. We could not have been more wrong.

The court resumed with a new defence application, led by Mark Summers QC, about the new charges from the US governments new superseding indictment. Summers took the court back over the history of this extradition hearing. The first indictment had been drawn up in March of 2018. In January 2019 a provisional request for extradition had been made, which had been implemented in April of 2019 on Assange’s removal from the Embassy. In June 2019 this was replaced by the full request with a new, second indictment which had been the basis of these proceedings before today. A whole series of hearings had taken place on the basis of that second indictment.

The new superseding indictment dated from 20 June 2020. In February and May 2020 the US government had allowed hearings to go ahead on the basis of the second indictment, giving no warning, even though they must by that stage have known the new superseding indictment was coming. They had given neither explanation nor apology for this.

The defence had not been properly informed of the superseding indictment, and indeed had learnt of its existence only through a US government press release on 20 June. It had not finally been officially served in these proceedings until 29 July, just six weeks ago. At first, it had not been clear how the superseding indictment would affect the charges, as the US government was briefing it made no difference but just gave additional detail. But on 21 August 2020, not before, it finally became clear in new US government submissions that the charges themselves had been changed.

There were now new charges that were standalone and did not depend on the earlier allegations. Even if the 18 Manning related charges were rejected, these new allegations could still form grounds for extradition. These new allegations included encouraging the stealing of data from a bank and from the government of Iceland, passing information on tracking police vehicles, and hacking the computers both of individuals and of a security company.

“How much of this newly alleged material is criminal is anybody’s guess”, stated Summers, going on to explain that it was not at all clear that an Australian giving advice from outwith Iceland to someone in Iceland on how to crack a code, was actually criminal if it occurred in the UK. This was even without considering the test of dual criminality in the US also, which had to be passed before the conduct was subject to extradition.

It was unthinkable that allegations of this magnitude would be the subject of a Part 2 extradition hearing within six weeks if they were submitted as a new case. Plainly that did not give the defence time to prepare, or to line up witnesses to these new charges. Among the issues relating to these new charges the defence would wish to address, were that some were not criminal, some were out of time limitation, some had already been charged in other fora (including Southwark Crown Court and courts in the USA).

There were also important questions to be asked about the origins of some of these charges and the dubious nature of the witnesses. In particular the witness identified as “teenager” was the same person identified as “Iceland 1” in the previous indictment. That indictment had contained a “health warning” over this witness given by the US Department of Justice. This new indictment removed that warning. But the fact was, this witness is Sigurdur Thordarson, who had been convicted in Iceland in relation to these events of fraud, theft, stealing Wikileaks money and material and impersonating Julian Assange.

The indictment did not state that the FBI had been “kicked out of Iceland for trying to use Thordarson to frame Assange”, stated Summers baldly.

Summers said all these matters should be ventilated in these hearings if the new charges were to be heard, but the defence simply did not have time to prepare its answers or its witnesses in the brief six weeks it had since receiving them, even setting aside the extreme problems of contact with Assange in the conditions in which he was being held in Belmarsh prison.

The defence would plainly need time to prepare answers to these new charges, but it would plainly be unfair to keep Assange in jail for the months that would take. The defence therefore suggested that these new charges should be excised from the conduct to be considered by the court, and they should go ahead with the evidence on criminal behaviour confined to what conduct had previously been alleged.

Summers argued it was “entirely unfair” to add what were in law new and separate criminal allegations, at short notice and “entirely without warning and not giving the defence time to respond to it. What is happening here is abnormal, unfair and liable to create real injustice if allowed to continue.”

The arguments submitted by the prosecution now rested on these brand new allegations. For example, the prosecution now countered the arguments on the rights of whistleblowers and the necessity of revealing war crimes by stating that there can have been no such necessity to hack into a bank in Iceland.

Summers concluded that the “case should be confined to that conduct which the American government had seen fit to allege in the eighteen months of the case” before their second new indictment.

Replying to Summers for the prosecution, Joel Smith QC replied that the judge was obliged by the statute to consider the new charges and could not excise them. “If there is nothing proper about the restitution of a new extradition request after a failed request, there is nothing improper in a superseding indictment before the first request had failed.” Under the Extradition Act the court must decide only if the offence is an extraditable offence and the conduct alleged meets the dual criminality test. The court has no other role and no jurisdiction to excise part of the request.

Smith stated that all the authorities (precedents) were of charges being excised from a case to allow extradition to go ahead on the basis of the remaining sound charges, and those charges which had been excised were only on the basis of double jeopardy. There was no example of charges being excised to prevent an extradition. And the decision to excise charges had only ever been taken after the conduct alleged had been examined by the court. There was no example of alleged conduct not being considered by the court. The defendant could seek extra time if needed but the new allegations must be examined.

Summers replied that Smith was “wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong”. “We are not saying that you can never submit a new indictment, but you cannot do it six weeks before the substantive hearing.” The impact of what Smith had said amounted to no more than “Ha ha this is what we are doing and you can’t stop us.” A substantive last minute change had been made with no explanation and no apology. It could not be the case, as Smith alleged, that a power existed to excise charges in fairness to the prosecution, but no power existed to excise charges in fairness to the defence.

Immediately Summers sat down, Baraitser gave her judgement on this point. As so often in this hearing, it was a pre-written judgement. She read it from a laptop she had brought into the courtroom with her, and she had made no alterations to that document as Summers and Smith had argued the case in front of her.

Baraitser stated that she had been asked as a preliminary move to excise from the case certain conduct alleged. Mr Summers had described the receipt of new allegations as extraordinary. However “I offered the defence the opportunity to adjourn the case” to give them time to prepare against the new allegations. “I considered of course that Mr Assange was in custody. I hear that Mr Summers believes this is fundamental unfairness”. But “the argument that we haven’t got the time, should be remedied by asking for the time.”

Mr Summers had raised issues of dual criminality and abuse of process; there was nothing preventing him for raising these arguments in the context of considering the request as now presented.

Baraitser simply ignored the argument that while there was indeed “nothing to prevent” the defence from answering the new allegations as each was considered, they had been given no time adequately to prepare. Having read out her pre-prepared judgement to proceed on the basis of the new superseding indictment, Baraitser adjourned the court for lunch.

At the end of the day I had the opportunity to speak to an extremely distinguished and well-known lawyer on the subject of Baraitser bringing pre-written judgements into court, prepared before she had heard the lawyers argue the case before her. I understood she already had seen the outline written arguments, but surely this was wrong. What was the point in the lawyers arguing for hours if the judgement was pre-written? What I really wanted to know was how far this was normal practice.

The lawyer replied to me that it absolutely was not normal practice, it was totally outrageous. In a long and distinguished career, this lawyer had very occasionally seen it done, even in the High Court, but there was always some effort to disguise the fact, perhaps by inserting some reference to points made orally in the courtroom. Baraitser was just blatant. The question was, of course, whether it was her own pre-written judgement she was reading out, or something she had been given from on high.

This was a pretty shocking morning. The guillotining of defence witnesses to hustle the case through, indeed the attempt to ensure their evidence was not spoken in court except those parts which the prosecution saw fit to attack in cross-examination, had been breathtaking. The effort by the defence to excise the last minute superseding indictment had been a fundamental point disposed of summarily. Yet again, Baraitser’s demeanour and very language made little attempt to disguise a hostility to the defence.

We were for the second time in the day in a break thinking that events must now calm down and get less dramatic. Again we were wrong.

Court resumed forty minutes late after lunch as various procedural wrangles were addressed behind closed doors. As the court resumed, Mark Summers for the defence stood up with a bombshell.

Summers said that the defence “recognised” the judgement Baraitser had just made – a very careful choice of word, as opposed to “respected” which might seem more natural. As she had ruled that the remedy to lack of time was more time, the defence was applying for an adjournment to enable them to prepare the answers to the new charges. They did not do this lightly, as Mr Assange would continue in prison in very difficult conditions during the adjournment.

Summers said the defence was simply not in a position to gather the evidence to respond to the new charges in a few short weeks, a situation made even worse by Covid restrictions. It was true that on 14 August Baraitser had offered an adjournment and on 21 August they had refused the offer. But in that period of time, Mr Assange had not had access to the new charges and they had not fully realised the extent to which these were a standalone new case. To this date, Assange had still not received the new prosecution Opening Note in prison, which was a crucial document in setting out the significance of the new charges.

Baraitser pointedly asked whether the defence could speak to Assange in prison by telephone. Summers replied yes, but these were extremely short conversations. They could not phone Mr Assange; he could only call out very briefly on the prison payphone to somebody’s mobile, and the rest of the team would have to try to gather round to listen. It was not possible in these very brief discussions adequately to expound complex material. Between 14 and 21 August they had been able to have only two such very short phone calls. The defence could only send documents to Mr Assange through the post to the prison; he was not always given them, or allowed to keep them.

Baraitser asked how long an adjournment was being requested. Summers replied until January.

For the US government, Mark Lewis QC replied that more scrutiny was needed of this request. The new matters in the indictment were purely criminal. They do not affect the arguments about the political nature of the case, or affect most of the witnesses. If more time were granted, “with the history of this case, we will just be presented with a sleigh of other material which will have no bearing on the small expansion of count 2”.

Baraitser adjourned the court “for ten minutes” while she went out to consider her judgement. In fact she took much longer. When she returned she looked peculiarly strained.

Baraitser ruled that on 14 August she had given the defence the opportunity to apply for an adjournment, and given them seven days to decide. On 21 August the defence had replied they did not want an adjournment. They had not replied that they had insufficient time to consider. Even today the defence had not applied to adjourn but rather had applied to excise charges. They “cannot have been surprised by my decision” against that application. Therefore they must have been prepared to proceed with the hearing. Their objections were not based on new circumstance. The conditions of Assange in Belmarsh had not changed since 21 August. They had therefore missed their chance and the motion to adjourn was refused.

The courtroom atmosphere was now highly charged. Having in the morning refused to cut out the superseding indictment on the grounds that the remedy for lack of time should be more time, Baraitser was now refusing to give more time. The defence had called her bluff; the state had apparently been confident that the effective solitary confinement in Belmarsh was so terrible that Assange would not request more time. I rather suspect that Julian was himself bluffing, and made the call at lunchtime to request more time in the full expectation that it would be refused, and the rank hypocrisy of the proceedings exposed.

I previously blogged about how the procedural trickery of the superseding indictment being used to replace the failing second indictment – as Smith said for the prosecution “before it failed” – was something that sickened the soul. Today in the courtroom you could smell the sulphur.

Well, yet again we were left with the feeling that matters must now get less exciting. This time we were right and they became instead excruciatingly banal. We finally moved on to the first witness, Professor Mark Feldstein, giving evidence to the court by videolink for the USA. It was not Professor Feldstein’s fault the day finished in confused anti-climax. The court was unable to make the video technology work. For ten broken minutes out of about forty Feldstein was briefly able to give evidence, and even this was completely unsatisfactory as he and Mark Summers were repeatedly speaking over each other on the link.

Professor Feldstein’s evidence will resume tomorrow (now in fact today) and I think rather than split it I shall give the full account then. Meantime you can see these excellent summaries from Kevin Gosztola or the morning and afternoon reports from James Doleman. In fact, I should be grateful if you did, so you can see that I am neither inventing nor exaggerating the facts of these startling events.

If you asked me to sum up today in a word, that word would undoubtedly be “railroaded”. it was all about pushing through the hearing as quickly as possible and with as little public exposure as possible to what is happening. Access denied, adjournment denied, exposition of defence evidence denied, removal of superseding indictment charges denied. The prosecution was plainly failing in that week back in Woolwich in February, which seems like an age ago. It has now been given a new boost.

How the defence will deal with the new charges we shall see. It seems impossible that they can do this without calling new witnesses to address the new facts. But the witness lists had already been finalised on the basis of the old charges. That the defence should be forced to proceed with the wrong witnesses seems crazy, but frankly, I am well past being surprised by anything in this fake process.

The same Gates Foundation which is behind every aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic from financing much of the WHO budget, to investing in favored vaccine-makers like Moderna, is engaged in a major project in Africa which is destroying traditional small farmer production of essential food crops in favor of monoculture crops and introduction of expensive chemical fertilizers and GMO seeds that are bankrupting small farmers. The project, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), is directly connected with key global institutions behind the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset.

If we know the actual history of the Rockefeller Foundation and related tax-free undertakings of one of the world’s most influential families, it is clear that in key areas the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has inherited the Rockefeller agenda from the medical industrial complex to education to agriculture transformation.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, working in tandem with the closely allied Rockefeller Foundation, is not only at the center of the orchestration of unheard-of severe economic lockdown measures for the much-disputed COVID-19 illness. The Gates foundation is also at the very center of the UN Agenda 30 push to transform world agriculture into what they call “sustainable” agriculture. A keystone project for the past 14 years has been Gates’ funding of something called the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa or AGRA.

AGRA Fraud on Africa

When the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation founded AGRA in 2006, joined by their close ally, the Rockefeller Foundation, they proclaimed their goal was to “tackle hunger in Africa by working to achieve a food secure and prosperous Africa through the promotion of rapid, sustainable agricultural growth based on smallholder farmers.” AGRA promised to double the agricultural yields and incomes of 30 million small-scale food producer households by 2020.It is now 2020 and it has been a total failure in this regard. Notably,AGRA deleted these goals in June 2020 from its website without  explanation.Based on what they have done we can assume that was never the true goal of Gates and Rockefeller foundations.

In a 2009 speech in Iowa promoting his New Green Revolution for Africa, Bill Gates declared, “The next Green Revolution must be guided by smallholder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and the environment.” The Gates Foundation proclaimed that the AGRA “is an Africa-based and African-led effort to develop a thriving agricultural sector in sub-Saharan Africa.” Sounds very nice. Reality is quite different.

To further that “Africa-led” impression, Gates hired the former UN Secretary General, Ghana’s Kofi Annan. Annan had just retired amid an Iraq oil-for-food corruption scandal at the UN involving his son. Annan was to be the front face, the chairman of AGRA. In reality the Gates Foundation ran things, with their guy,Rajiv “Raj” Shah, directing implementation of policies in African target countries. When initial attempts to push Monsanto GMO seeds and pesticides on GMO-free African farmers met with great resistance, they shifted instead to sell conventional but Monsanto-owned seeds along with costly chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

Suspiciously, the Gates Foundation and AGRA have been anything but open and transparent about what they have accomplished in 14 years. For good reason. The model they have pushed in 13 African countries  has significantly worsened the food self-sufficiency of small farmers and instead created debt traps in which small producers are forced to take on heavy debt to buy expensive patented seeds, are forbidden to use own seeds or mixed crops, and forced to produce cash crops in a monoculture for export. AGRA has received more than $1 billion dollars from mainly the Gates Foundation, with USAID and the UK and German governments adding smaller sums.

False Promises

In a new detailed report evaluating results country-by-country, the reality of the Gates Africa agriculture project shows alarming, but not surprising, results. The report is called False Promises: The Green Revolution in Africa. It was prepared by a group of African and European NGO’S in collaboration with Timothy A. Wise, Senior Advisor at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy of Tufts University. The report  concluded, “yield increases for key staple crops in the years before AGRA were just as low as during AGRA. Instead of halving hunger, the situation in the 13 focus countries has worsened since AGRA was launched. The number of people going hungry has increased by 30 percent during the AGRA years… affecting 130 million people in the 13 AGRA focus countries.” That is no minor failure.

In an approach that is little different from the 19th Century racist European colonial practices, the Gates Foundation and its AGRA have seriously harmed small-scale food producers by subjecting them to high levels of debt. In Zambia and Tanzania, small-scale food producers were unable to repay the loans for fertilizer and hybrid seeds after the first harvest. AGRA projects also restrict the freedom of choice for small-scale food producers to decide for themselves what they want to grow. AGRA forces them to a one-sided cultivation of mainly maize for export markets, what global agribusiness wants. Not surprising as Bunge and other international grain cartel companies are involved with AGRA. Traditional climate-resistant and nutrient-rich crops have declined in alarming degrees in many cases.

The study found that for millet, an indigenous and vital cereal and fodder grain favored for 7,000 years due to its productivity and short growing season under dry, high-temperature conditions, AGRA has produced disaster. The report notes,“millet production fell by 24 percent in the 13 AGRA focus countries from 2006 to 2018. Moreover, AGRA lobbies governments on behalf of agricultural corporations to pass legislation that will benefit fertilizer producers and seed companies instead of strengthening small-scale food production.”

Rather than help local small farmers to improve their yield per acre, the AGRA merely repackages the 1960’s Green Revolution in Mexico and India for Africa, home to some of the world’s richest farmland soils. That Green Revolution of the 1960s, initiated by the Rockefeller Foundation, introduced industrial large-scale agriculture mechanization and introduction of chemical fertilizers and seeds from multinationals which went to the benefit of large farmers and destroyed much of the economy of small producers. That predictably bankrupted countless small producers. The result was that while select wealthy producers thrived, millions of poorer farmers were forced to flee to the cities where they settled in urban slums. But that in fact was a major aim of the first Green Revolution as it created a cheap workforce for the globalization drive of manufacture that was to follow.

The Gates and Rockefeller foundation-led AGRA in Africa is little different.  In 14 years, AGRA in Africa has influenced member governments to promote buying of multinational companies’commercial seeds every year and expensive chemical fertilizers, by promising grand gains that do not materialize. In the process traditional small farmers or farming communities are forbidden to use farm-saved or -bred seeds.

This is the same dependency model Monsanto and agribusiness has used with patented GMO seeds in the USA. The Gates Foundation is a significant shareholder in Monsanto, now part of Bayer AG. AGRA has done little or nothing to protect small farmers from being bankrupted by subsidized EU or USA imports. Instead their traditional food crops are being displaced by monoculture maize production for international export, leaving African countries more than ever dependent on more imported foods. The Gates AGRA is succeeding, but not in its cosmetic stated goals. Rather it has made African food production more globalized and dependent than ever on the will of global multinationals whose aim is cheap inputs. Under the ruse of giving farmers a “wider choice” of patented high-yield seeds (most for maize), they in fact limit a farmer’s choice. He must buy those seeds and is forbidden to reuse his own indigenous seeds. If at harvest time farmers are unable to sell his AGRA-mandated maize to repay his debt for seeds and fertilizer, they often are forced to sell their precious cattle or to incur even more debt-a classic colonial debt slavery model.

Dubious Leadership

The Gates Foundation has promoted AGRA as an “African initiative” and put itself as far as possible in the background. The new chairman of AGFA since August 2019 is Hailemariam Desalegn, Former Prime Minister of Ethiopia. Desalegn, former chairman of the Chair of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the dictatorial ruling party where WHO head Tedros was also a Politburo member, was forced to resign in 2018 following mass protests.

Less public board members of AGRA include two leading executives of the agribusiness giant, Unilever, and two senior officials of the Gates Foundation, as well as from the Rockefeller-founded CGIAR- Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. Other board members include a member of the Rockefeller Foundation trustees and a former Africa partner for the French bank, Rothschild &Cie .

As well, the new President of the Rockefeller Foundation, the founding perpetrator of the AGRA agenda,Dr. Rajiv J. Shah, is on the AGRA board. Shah left his earlier position with the Gates Foundation and was named USAID director under Obama. USAID not surprisingly became a partner of AGRA.In 2017 Shah moved from USAID to be tapped as President of the Rockefeller Foundation. Small world. The same Rockefeller Foundation is deeply involved in the World Economic Forum Great Reset. Shah just released a Rockefeller report, Reset the Table: Meeting the Moment to Transform the US Food System. It is a precursor to a major global “reset” of the food system being prepared by the circles around Gats and Rockefeller and the UN. More on that another time.

Since 2014 the President  of AGRA has been a controversial Rwandan former Agriculture Minister under the corrupt Kagame dictatorship. Agnes Kalibata also is a member of the Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum, the International Fertilizer Development Corporation (IFDC), based in USA.

In December, 2019, just before the public alarm over outbreak of a “novel coronavirus” in Wuhan China, UN Secretary General ,AntónioGuterres, named Kalibata to head the 2021 UN  Food Systems Summit. In response some 176 organizations from 83 countries, wrote to Guterres to repeal her appointment. Their letter stated,

“Founded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, AGRA’s efforts have centered on capturing and diverting public resources to benefit large corporate interests. Their finance-intensive and high input agricultural model is not sustainable beyond constant subsidy, which is drawn from increasingly scarce public resources. Since 2006, AGRA has worked to open up Africa—seen as an untapped market for corporate monopolies controlling commercial seeds, genetically modified crops, fossil fuel-heavy synthetic fertilizers and polluting pesticides.”

In her defense 12 voices wrote to Guterres urging him to stand firm. Eleven of the 12 had links to the Gates Foundation. Their voice prevailed.

During the global grain crisis of the mid-1970’s then-US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, another Rockefeller protégé, allegedly declared

“Who controls the food controls the people.”

The globalization of world food production and creation of agribusiness, first guided by the Rockefeller Foundation and today with the Gates Foundation taking a more visible lead, is perhaps the most threatening factor to world health and mortality, far more than any coronavirus has shown.

Notably the same people promoting fear and lockdowns for that putative virus are busy reorganizing world food production in an unhealthy manner. It seems to be no coincidence as Bill Gates is a known advocate of eugenics and population reduction.

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

Featured image is from NEO

As I watched the proceedings in Ramallah of Masarat’s landmark ninth annual conference from my home in the US while also being bombarded on social media by the unfolding shameful travesty of the Israeli-Emirati detente, my need for comfort was desperate in its urgency.

For those participating in the sixteen conference sessions from various locations, especially among the young, the need to vent naked pain and strongly held beliefs was palpable.

Ideas for change, however, remained mired in a babel of voices. Because of that, there was ultimately no comfort to be had from this conference — no comfort in the old order and no comfort in the opaque promise of the new.

No comfort but ultimately hope from a conference titled “Palestine after Trump’s vision: What’s to be done?”

“The achievement of Masarat’s ninth annual conference is that it has signaled, loudly and clearly, that change in Palestine is inevitable and that it is Palestinians themselves who will shape it.”

We already knew coming to the conference that the old is useless. What this conference made clear is that, if the new is to rise up at all, it has to be nothing short of a tidal wave that sweeps away disagreements and divisions, and plants in its wake a unified vision that rallies all Palestinians around it.

That’s a tall order for a conference; it is a radical order for a revolution.

The conference was meant to explore how “to change reality by acknowledging it and dealing with it without submission and surrender, extremism or adventurousness… … We ask ‘what is to be done?’ because the old has collapsed and appears incapable of renewal, change or reform, and the new has yet to be born, and will be born from the womb of the old by preserving its achievements and strengths, and bypassing mistakes, sins, weaknesses and shortcomings.”

But as Hani Al Masri, Director General of Masarat, continues in his summing up, what emerged from this conference is far from a rallying cry. He minces no words in pointing out the degree and depth of disagreement:

“The most prominent characteristic of the opinions and observations that were presented in the conference was their diversity, and indeed wide disagreement, for everyone sings to their own drummer without the aid of a crystallizing single vision. There is an absence of a common denominator or consensus or a decisive central current that enjoys the support of a clear majority. There were many self-justifying, defensive and evangelizing interventions that lay blame on opponents without presenting an effective, initiative and integrated alternative.”

“To me, this conference seems like the first vote of a sequestered jury in a complicated criminal case who still need many days of deliberation before reaching a unanimous vote.”

Hani Al Masri describes the plethora of beliefs and opinions as follows (my translation from Why is the question of ‘what to do’ still on the table?):

The conference reflected disagreements about almost everything. There were disputes over what we want, how to achieve it, and why we have reached the catastrophic situation in which we live. Is the latter the result of external or internal factors, or both?

Disagreement arose over the plan, the goals and the required action, how to deal with leaders, with existing forces with the tools at our disposal; there was dispute over whether to have a clean break from the existing political system as something that must necessarily be demolished or simply to bring down the leadership. There are those who justify and defend each proposition and those who criticize both deeply and call for change, even though the seeds of change have not matured yet despite the intensified need for them. This could mean that the collapse of the old order without an alternative will create a vacuum and ensuing chaos that the occupation is able to take advantage of, especially in light of its desire to alter the Palestinian Authority for the fourth time in sync with the new reality created by racist settler colonialism, which has striven for decades to create a fait accompli and facts on the ground that make the Israeli plan the only solution on the table, and the only game in town.

In this context, differences arose among the advocates of the one state and the so-called “two-state solution.” There is more than one school among those who advocate for the liberation of Palestine and the establishment of a single democratic state on the ruins of the settler colonial project: a bi-national state, a state for all its citizens, a state with multiple regimes, a racist Jewish state within which to struggle for equal rights, or a state based on the historical reconciliation between the Zionist movement and the Palestinian national movement … etc. Needless to say, neither of these two propositions is within reach, and there are different approaches to achieving each of them.

There are those who are calling for adherence to the negotiated settlements, while moving away from US sponsorship and expanding the framework of the Quartet.

And there are those who are calling for an end to the attempts to revive the negotiated settlement that Israel killed long ago and now wants to bury in the annexation plan it developed and is waiting for the appropriate time to implement.

There are those who do not see a contradiction [in working toward several goals at different stages or simultaneously] — ending the occupation and creating a state within the borders of 67, achieving individual and national equality for the Palestinians of the interior [citizens of Israel], the right of return, and at the same time struggling to establish a single democratic state on the ruins of the settler-colonial apartheid project. This group recognizes the limits of what can be achieved at this stage. At the same time, they refuse to abandon Palestinian national and strategic goals and the historical context of the struggle.

Disagreements [among activists] about how to organize also arose over questions about whether the Palestinian Authority could be reformed and rebuilt, or whether it has committed suicide in Oslo and since then, and therefore a new and creative way must be found to deal with the current reality [of Israeli expansionism]. There were also disagreements about what to do with the existing power structure [the Palestinian Authority], whether it is necessary to preserve it or whether it has to collapse –i.e., be dissolved, handing its keys over to the occupation, whether to preserve it despite the occupation’s plan to destroy it, or transform it into a tool of the national program within the Palestinian Liberation Organization after rebuilding the latter, or transform the existing power structure into a state.

Debate and disagreement arose again about the question of holding elections; should they be both presidential and legislative or only legislative? Or elections for the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Liberation Organization? Or just for the National Council? And is this to be done electronically or in person? Are elections the magic wand that is able to resolve the Palestinian predicament, or are elections a means rather than a goal, one of the general tools of democracy within a comprehensive Palestinian resolution. Additionally, speakers disagreed on the form of resistance required [for liberation] — whether it ought to be armed or peaceful popular protest, or include all forms of struggle?

Hani Al Masri has long been clear on what needs to be done — to revive and redefine (resuscitate) the Palestinian national project that’s been hollowed out by the Oslo agreement [the hoped-for state] dwarfed into bantustans, leaving us with divided dysfunctional powers under occupation.

“The most that can be achieved in the current situation is to keep the Palestinian cause alive,” Masri concludes, “and to make it possible for the Palestinian people to continue to exist in their homeland within a general and organized national framework that includes wider representative participation by all political blocs, independents, youth, women and Palestinians in exile, as well as by new developing forces and groups, especially since the old order has collapsed and seems incapable of renewal, change or reform, and the new has not yet been born, and it will be born from the womb of the old by preserving its achievements and strengths, and bypassing mistakes, sins, weaknesses and shortcomings.”

How and in which direction to go remains an open question, but the great achievement of Masarat’s ninth annual conference is that it has signaled, loudly and clearly, that change in Palestine is inevitable and that it is Palestinians themselves who will shape it.

To me, this conference seems like the first vote of a sequestered jury in a complicated criminal case who still need many days of deliberation before reaching a unanimous vote.

Featured image: Hani Al Masri, the highly respected Director General of Masarat — The Palestinian Center for Policy Research & Strategic Studies, during its ninth annual conference titled “Palestine after Trump’s vision: What’s to be done?”

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.

The fine circus that is British justice resumed at London’s Central Criminal Court on September 7, with the continued extradition proceedings against Julian Assange.  Judge Vanessa Baraitser was concerned that approximately 40 individuals had received remote video access they apparently should not have.  “In error, the court sent out orders to others who had sought access.  I remain concerned about my ability to maintain the integrity of the court if they are able to attend remotely.” 

Showing a continuing obsession with controlling her court as manorial property, Baraitser felt that having such individuals access the proceedings might lead to breaches (she did not specify which ones).  “Once livestreaming takes place, the court cannot manage this breach even less when the person is outside the jurisdiction.” Inadvertently, the judge had put her finger on the very heart of WikiLeaks and the terror it inspires in the establishment: an event or occurrence that is published, remotely; information, previously confined, escaping.  “I want to make it clear that the public interest and allowing remote access is unlikely to meet the interests of justice tests.”  To wit, she needed new applications from the excluded observers.  “For those who consider they still cannot travel to the UK to attend the hearing, then they need to apply again and I will consider it.”

One of the organisations excluded by Baraitser’s ruling was Amnesty International, a body that has sent fair trial monitors to observe the practices of regimes more authoritarian and less inclined to observe the rule of law.  Marie Struthers stated it plainly, noting the initial rejection of the application for a physical spot last month, followed by the granting of six remote viewing slots, reduced to one, then, it transpired, none. “This is not normal.”  To have the organisation’s “legal observer … find out this morning that he had not been granted even REMOTE access to the Assange proceedings is an outrage.” 

Rebecca Vincent, director of international campaigns of Reporters Without Borders suggested that allowing “so few trial monitors [and] journalists into today’s hearing seemed more of a political decision rather than a logistical one.”  To such exclusions could also be added parliamentarians. 

With assured opacity and a lack of transparency, the scene was set.  What would Judge Baraitser come up with to restrict the scope of Assange’s case against extradition to the US?  One lay in controlling the presentation of witness statements.   The defence suggested a full show, assisting witnesses in going through their statements in court.  The public might be better informed of the issues. 

Baraitser offered a novel reading: doing so would not assist the defence, the public or Assange “and would not be a fair.”  Another way of reading it would have been: no justifications and podiums for the cause.  James Lewis QC of the prosecution thought that the statements were adequate enough.  It followed that they would be made public.  “In my view,” concluded Baraitser on that point, “there is no benefit whatsoever to allowing the witnesses give evidence in chief.”  Thirty minutes for orientation was more than adequate. 

Defence counsel Mark Summers QC focused on the staggered nature of the US indictment against Assange, beginning initially as a single charge, ballooning into an enlarged indictment stuffed by allegations of espionage, followed by a second superseding indictment.  “It is a curiosity that the US had, in previous hearings, been content for the hearings to go ahead in February and May, presumably knowing that this was coming.”  It was not initially clear what had changed, but by August 21, the material put before the court constituted a “potential standalone basis for criminality”.  Irrespective of whether the US rejected the existing allegations linked to Chelsea Manning, “Assange can be extradited and potentially convicted for this conduct on its own and this is a resounding and new development in this case.” 

One feature of the prosecution attacked by Summers was the mentioning of Assange’s alleged “co-conspirators” linked to hacking incidents.  As Kevin Gosztola reminds us, they had been subject of legal prosecutions in the US and UK a decade ago, while Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson was mentioned in a filing by the prosecution last year.  It followed that material from that case, which involved conviction in Iceland for fraud, theft and impersonation of Assange, should have been included in the previous indictment.  The defence also brought up those rich remarks by the Icelandic Interior Minister at the time, who “believed the investigation [of Thordarson by the FBI] was in order to ‘frame Assange’.”

Other co-conspirators mentioned were Hector Xavier Monsegur (“Sabu”), Jake Davis (“Topiary”) and Ryan Ackroyd (“Kalya”), all making legal appearances in the Southwark Crown Court for their alleged hacking spree with LuzSec.  The defence contended that, as they were all prosecuted in the UK despite “competing US indictments being issued during the currency of the UK case”, Assange should have been prosecuted in the UK alongside such conspirators at the time. “The forum bar is obviously engaged.”

The prosecution case, in short, had become a quite different creature to the beast it originally was.  The indictment now claimed, for instance, that Assange and WikiLeaks had assisted former security contractor Edward Snowden to evade arrest.  The prosecution had also brought the focus back on alleged nefarious cyber activity on Assange’s part, thereby discrediting the need to publish material exposing, for instance, US war crimes.  Targeting the hacker distracts from the more sinister implication of targeting a publisher. 

“It would be extraordinary for this court to be beginning an extradition hearing in relation to allegations like that within weeks of their announcement,” submitted Summers, “without warning and even more extraordinary to do so in circumstances where the defendant is in custody.” 

The stunning lack of fairness was emphasised.  It was “impossible” for Assange’s team to “deal with the allegations being put to him and in relation to material for which you have been provided no explanation for their late arrival.”  Inadequate time had been given and inadequate notice, on dealing with these new “separate criminal allegations”.  With that in mind, Summers submitted that the court excise the new allegations.

Obstacles to adequate preparation have never bothered the judge in this case.  With her usual rusted stubbornness, Judge Baraitser put the blame down to the defence, essentially approving the conduct of the US Department of Justice.  Excision could only be granted in instances of a bar outlined in statute or a case of abuse of process. But not even the forum bar seemed to sway her. 

Failing in that application, Summers moved to the issue of an adjournment to January.  It was not an application without risk, given Assange’s conditions in Belmarsh prison.  “We have not been able to answer the allegations which have only been made in the last few weeks.  This has been made worse because of the conditions we are having to work under.”  No earlier application had been made for the very simple reason that Assange had not seen the new request, hobbled by poor access to documentation provided by his defence team via traditional postal means.  “We have not had an opportunity to meet and consult with him.”  He still had not received “the revised opening note” with accompanying documentation that the DOJ was developing more than a narrative, but the basis for “standalone criminality capable of sustaining a conviction if accepted in its own right.” 

Judge Baraister initially offered a nibble of tokenistic interest.  She acknowledged that the defence team had not seen Assange for some six months, and wondered if they had spoken to him by phone. Yes, came the reply, but these were incoherent episodes, consisting of two short conversations.  He had “to take in information from us on – any view – complex documents and to make him aware of the issues and to take a decision on them.”  A 10 minute adjournment followed.  Baraitser’s decision: the defence should have applied previously to do so but did not; the defence, in not doing so, should have acted as if the proceedings would continue.

Peering through the ruins of a process that is becoming more political with each session was the testimony of Mark Feldstein of the University of Maryland, authority on history and journalism.  Feldstein’s point in defence of WikiLeaks is outlined in his statement: drawing exacting definitions of what journalism is or otherwise within the US Constitution makes little sense.  “Assange … is protected by the First Amendment whether he qualifies as a journalist or not.” 

The testimony proceeded to develop such ideas.  Thousands upon thousands of leaks of classified information had informed “the public about government decision making but they also evidence government dishonesty”. Journalists made Pulitzer Prize winning careers in using material from such leaks, an activity protected by the First Amendment as “the public had a right to be informed.”  Charging publishers and news outlets was simply not done; authorities preferred to charge the source or whistleblowers.  While history evinces cases of “presidential enemies” being sought, the line had always been drawn.  Till now.

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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]

In Venezuela, Juan Guaidó no longer appears to be the leader of the opposition. The forgiveness of 110 opponents by President Nicolás Maduro completely fragmented the political wing opposing the regime, which, in practice, removes from Guaidó the “monopoly” of militancy against the government. Maduro’s decision to forgive as many opponents as possible seems particularly strategic in an election year. For the December 2020 parliamentary elections, Maduro’s allies represent the only unified and solidly based political wing in the country, while currently his opponents are fragmented into several factions.

Another oppositionist leader, Henrique Capriles has already announced that he will dispute the elections. In recent times, after a long period of silence and inactivity, Capriles has occupied an increasingly prominent place in Venezuelan politics, diminishing Guaidó’s influence on the opposition. Capriles seems to have a more interesting political alternative for some opposition groups than the proposal by Guaidó, who is a politician absolutely aligned with external interests and who openly defends Venezuela’s total subordination to Washington.

[In the 2012 presidential Elections, Capriles received financial as well as political support from the Hanns Seidel Foundation linked to the right of Bavaria’s Christian Democratic Party, M.C. GR Editor]

Perhaps this was the reason for the fall of Guaidó’s political strength. 2020 was for the opposition leader the year of his abrupt fall. On February 5, Guaidó attended a conference at the Capitol in Washington DC and was applauded by Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi and everyone in attendance. At that time, the illusion that Guaidó was in fact the president of Venezuela was fully consolidated. Guaidó himself believed to be the country’s president, which was the starting point of his downfall.

It seemed inevitable that the invention of the “Guaidó’s presidency” would result in the opposition being closed to the Venezuelan political reality. The history of the opposition leader, since his recognition in January 2019 by Trump, is a succession of errors and deficiencies that denounce his total inability to lead the country. The most notable mistakes so far have been his explicit participation in the landing of Colombian mercenaries on the Venezuelan coast and the leakage of his connections with drug trafficking in South America, which has greatly weakened his public image inside and outside Venezuela.

Guaidó’s decline, at first, had little impact on the Venezuelan opposition, as there was his “recognition” as the country’s president. But this illusion could not last long. The proximity of the parliamentary elections in December aroused in the Venezuelan opposition a strong wave of political realism and led different factions to assume the obvious truth: Guaidó is not the president of the country. This fact becomes even more evident when Maduro pardons and legalizes more than one hundred opponents, creating ties of cordiality in internal disputes – something that Guaidó still refuses to accept. Then a scenario was created in which the opposition is divided between those who recognize the legitimacy of the government and oppose it politically in the elections and, on the other hand, Guaidó, who recognizes himself as president with American support. This new scenario will completely change the way in which political disputes in Venezuela will take place and may even destabilize the opposition’s international alliances.

How long will Washington invest in Guaidó as its ally in opposing Maduro? What makes Guaidó more interesting than, for example, the political figure of Capriles or any other politician who will announce his candidacy for the December elections? Guaidó will not run in the parliamentary elections because he believes he is the president of the country, while other politicians will run and will be able to make real and effective opposition against Maduro. Will international actors interested in the fall of the government really continue to fuel the illusion that Guaidó is the president rather than supporting opponents within Parliament? It is a question that remains unanswered, but we can predict the outcome.

Indeed, there is no future for the Venezuelan opposition as it is today. The entire political wing that opposes Maduro is absolutely fragmented, with no unity of thought among its representatives, much less a solid national project. The only thing in common that opponents want is to overthrow Maduro, but that will not happen so easily. The Venezuelan government remains strong and well-structured, with an effective political apparatus at its disposal, which cannot be seen in the opposition. Opponents’ political forgiveness was a checkmate for the next elections. The weakness of the opposition became clear and all of its representatives were disadvantaged: Guaidó lost political strength and will possibly be without international alliances; the other opponents have broken ties with Guaidó and are not strong enough to face the government, even though they may run for election.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Speaking last week at the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum, US Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Biegun said that the US wants the defence relations with India, Japan and Australia – known as “the QUAD” – to resemble something more closely to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). QUAD is an acronym for Quadrilateral Security Dialogue” involving four countries – the US, Japan, India and Australia. The idea of ​​unifying four of some of the most important countries in the Indo-Pacific region was launched during the first term of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. That was in 2007. After that, the idea was forgotten for 10 years. By 2017, US President Donald Trump revived it when he started promoting the concept of the Indo-Pacific Strategy to prevent Chinese dominance in the region. QUAD played a leading role in the realization of this concept.

Biegun’s statement reveals that Washington’s goal is to get the four countries and others in the Indo-Pacific region to become a bulwark against “a potential challenge from China” and “to create a critical mass around the shared values and interests of those parties in a manner that attracts more countries in the Indo-Pacific and even from around the world … ultimately to align in a more structured manner.”

“The Indo-Pacific region is actually lacking in strong multilateral structures,” he said. “They don‘t have anything of the fortitude of NATO or the European Union. The strongest institutions in Asia oftentimes are not, I think, not inclusive enough and so … there is certainly an invitation there at some point to formalise a structure like this. Remember even NATO started with relatively modest expectations and a number of countries [initially] chose neutrality over NATO membership.”

Many politicians in the region are wary of these American ideas as it is clearly directed towards China. The Americans do not hide this motive either. In addition, Southeast Asian countries are not receptive to the idea of a military bloc in the region. The White House is striving to form a military bloc in Asia-Pacific, but establishing military cooperation corresponding with each country in the QUAD is not enough. Responsibility to each other is needed and the transformation of the entire region into an area of ​​responsibility of the new organization is what has to be created if they hope to oppose China. This ambition will not be done with just existing US military bases in Okinawa and Australia, but will have to ultimately expand the network of US bases across the Indo-Pacific region if they hope to contain China’s growing influence.

When NATO was established in Europe in 1949, 12 countries joined and nothing was mentioned in the legal documents about the Soviet Union. The socialist countries of Eastern Europe then quickly became the main rival of NATO. Currently NATO has 30 members and the bloc’s border are directly on Russia’s. Even with the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO still orchestrated and headed the breakup of Yugoslavia and then the downfall of long time Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi.

The question then becomes whether Indo-Pacific people want such a similar organization in their region that can very easily bring war and destruction.

The US, which currently has a fierce conflict with China, certainly wants to strengthen its strategic positioning by creating a coalition of states wanting to resist China’s rise. Therefore, the US Department of Defense hopes that some Southeast Asian countries, mainly those that have territorial disputes with China, like Vietnam and the Philippines, will join the QUAD, contributing financially and materially to the overall military structure. And then, as is the case in Europe, “Asian NATO” could become a tool to enact American interests in the region.

As was the case with NATO in Europe, the national armies of coalition members had to buy weapons made by the US. Therefore, the US military industrial complex will strongly support the idea of ​​establishing an “Asian NATO.” This would present vast opportunities to the American military industry as countries that previously bought Russian weapons, like India, will have to completely refurbish. But in terms of priority, of course, is the desire to curb a growing China, meaning that the refurbishment of weapons will become secondary.

It is unlikely that the QUAD will be successful in converting into an “Asian NATO” against China as such a bloc would need greater support than just Australia, India and Japan. Without the support of massive Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia and Thailand, the “Asian NATO” will not be able to contain the rise of China. Such an alliance would be heavily dependent on India to match China’s manpower and capabilities, but they fall short as China has already begun to infrastructurally develop and become a mainstay of the economies of India’s neighbors, most notably Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, thereby themselves containing India. Without the help of Southeast Asia, the QUAD cannot oppose China despite Washington’s hopes.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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One of the lessons from our recent visit to Iran as a Peace Delegation is that Iran is a mature country. It is 2,500 years old, ten times as old as the United States and one of the world’s oldest continuous major civilizations with settlements dating back to 7,000 BC. It was an empire that controlled almost half the Earth for over 1,000 years. It is hard not to see the US-Iran relationship as one between an adolescent bully and a mature nation.

The root cause of the problems between the United States and Iran is not because Iran has oil, an Islamic government, nuclear weapons or Iran’s role in the Middle East — it is because in 1979, Iran ended 26 years of US domination. Foreign Minister Zarif explained to our Peace Delegation:

“…the U.S. difficulty with Iran is not because of the region, not because of human rights, not because of weapons, not because of the nuclear issue – it’s just because we decided to be independent – that’s it – that’s our biggest crime.”

Since the 1979 Revolution, the US has sought to dominate Iran using sanctions and threats of military aggression. Iran has responded by seeking negotiation with the US. The Iran Nuclear Agreement (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA), which took over ten years to finalize, was viewed by Dr. Zarif as a first step toward more agreements.

Although Iran fulfilled its side of the nuclear agreement, the US did not relieve the sanctions, as promised, and under the Trump administration, increased the sanctions and left the agreement. On our trip, we learned first hand about the impacts of these actions.

Facing The Ugly Realities Of US History With Iran

Correcting the relationship between the US and Iran begins with an honest review of US policy since 1953. It is a record for which the US should be ashamed and shows the need for a new approach.

The 1953 Coup

The August 19, 1953 coup was one the US denied for decades but has now been proven by documents released by the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. The British government also released documents showing its involvement. Information has been made public over the decades, but even after 65 years, many documents about ‘Operation Ajax’ remain classified.

The coup was led by CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of President Teddy Roosevelt and cousin of President Franklin Roosevelt. The coup not only impacted Iran but the Middle East and was a model for US coups around the world, which continue to this day. As we write, we are on our way to Venezuela where a US-led coup just failed.

The 1953 coup was preceded by economic sanctions to destabilize the Mossadegh government and a Guaido-like fake Prime Minister. The coup initially failed on August 16 when the Shah fled to Baghdad and then to Rome. Before fleeing, he appointed former Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi as Prime Minister to replace the elected Prime Minister Mossadegh. Zahedi continued the coup with the military arresting Mossadegh at his home on April 19. When Operation Ajax succeeded, Zahedi became Prime Minister and the Shah returned to rule as a brutal dictator until 1979. Mossadegh was imprisoned until his death in 1967.

Installation Of The Brutal Shah

The Shah became the enforcer for the United States in the Middle East. His rule coincided with the US war in Vietnam when the US focused its military in Southeast Asia. When President Nixon came to office in 1969, Iran was the single-largest arms purchaser from the US. Nixon encouraged a spending spree and by 1972, the Shah purchased over $3 billion of US arms, a twenty fold increase over 1971’s record.

US weapons buying continued throughout the decade dwarfing all US allies including Israel. The weapons being sold required thousands of US military support troops in Iran. In 1977, President Carter sold more arms to Iran than any previous years. Carter toasted the Shah as “a rock of stability” during a visit to Tehran at the end of 1977.

The stability was not as rock solid as Carter imagined. Domestically, a conglomerate of western oil companies ran the oil industry taking fifty percent of the profits but not allowing Iran to audit the accounts or have members on the board of directors. The Shah recognized Israel and put in place modernization policies that alienated religious groups. In 1963, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was arrested for making a speech against the Shah after several days of protests. The Shah’s brutal secret police, the SAVAK, made mass arrests and tortured and killed political prisoners. The Islamic clergy, still headed by Khomeini living in exile since 1964, became more vociferous in its criticisms.

Mass protests and strikes struck Iran in 1978. On November 4, 1979, Iranian students seized the US Embassy and held fifty-two hostages for 444 days until January 1981. Khomeini returned from exile in February 1979. In December, a new Constitution creating the Islamic Republic was approved by referendum and Khomeini became the Supreme Leader.

US Supports Iraq’s War Against Iran

The Iraq war would not have been possible without US encouragement and support in the form of money, naval assistance and weapons. The US also provided Iraq with the ingredients for the chemical weapons as well as intelligence on where to use them. More than one million people were killed and more than 80,000 injured by chemical weapons in the Iraq war.

The US Shoots Down A Civilian Airliner

The US also killed 289 Iranians when a US missile shot down a commercial Iranian airliner in July 1988. The US has never apologized for this mass killing of civilians. When we were in Iran, we visited the Tehran Peace Museum and our delegation did what our country should do, apologized.

Forty Years Of US Economic Sanctions

The US has imposed economic sanctions since the Islamic Revolution began. In 1980, the US broke diplomatic relations with Iran and Carter put in place sanctions including freezing $12 billion in Iranian assets and banning imports of Iranian oil. Every president since Carter has escalated sanctions against Iran. In response, Iran has developed a “resistance economy” where it has become more self-sufficient and built relationships with other countries.

US Withdrawal From Nuclear Agreement And Increased Sanctions

The most recent atrocity is the failure to live up to the carefully negotiated nuclear agreement. Iran’s Foreign Minister Zarif painstakingly negotiated the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal between China, France, Russia, the UK, Germany, the US, and the European Union for more than a decade. Iran complied with all the requirements of the agreement, but the US did not lift sanctions, as promised, and exited the deal under President Trump, leading to protests against the US throughout Iran.

The people of Iran were joyous when the JCPOA was finalized as it promised relief, i.e., the release of $29 billion in Iranian funds held abroad, allowing US exports of Iranian oil, allowing foreign firms to invest in Iran and allowing trade with the rest of the world through the global banking system.

Instead of abiding by the agreement, the US escalated sanctions against Iran. Trump’s escalation has been harsh as the US seeks “to isolate Iran politically and economically, by blocking its oil sales, access to hard currencies and foreign investments, along with more harsh sanctions and overall financial hardships on the country.” Sanctions include secondary sanctions on non-US corporations and nations doing business with Iran, which the International Criminal Court found to be illegal.

These sanctions are having a significant human impact. They are causing a rapid devaluation of Iranian currency resulting in increasing costs of basic goods, including a tripling of the cost of imported goods such as cars. When we were in Iran, we heard firsthand about the impact sanctions have on people’s lives, e.g. the inability to get life-saving medicines, make financial transactions, use apps or translate books from the US into Farsi. In a restaurant, the menu warned prices may not be as listed because of rapid inflation. We interviewed Dr. Foad Izadi of the University of Tehran on Clearing the FOG about the impact of the sanctions and how US policies are alienating youth.

We spent time at the University of Tehran with students and faculty in the American Studies department. They were excited to speak with people from the United States, as few people from the US are able to get visas, and they lamented not being allowed to travel to the US. We found that we have much in common and believe we would benefit from more exchanges with Iranians.

Ongoing US Destabilization Iran And Threats Of War

Sanctions are designed to destabilize the government but are instead uniting people against the United States. If anything, US actions will put in place a more anti-US government in upcoming elections. The US has a flawed understanding of Iranian politics and global politics around US unilateral sanctions. The Iran sanctions are likely to speed up the de-dollarization of the global economy and end US dollar hegemony and are illegal.

The US is also fomenting rebellion. The Trump administration has been seeking regime change through various actions including violence. It created a Mission Center in the CIA focused on regime change in Iran and spends millions of dollars to encourage opposition in Iran, working to manipulate protests to support a US agenda. The threat of war continues and becomes ever more likely in an administration dominated by Iran hawks, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo.

Creating A Peaceful, Positive Relationship Between The US And Iran

The history of US behavior toward Iran cannot be ethically defended. The US needs to appraise this history and recognize it has a lot for which to apologize, then it must correct its policies.

A group of prominent Iranian-Americans recently sent an open letter to Secretary Pompeo, writing: “If you truly wish to help the people of Iran, lift the travel ban [although no Iranian has ever been involved in a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, Iran is included in Trump’s Muslim ban], adhere to the Iran nuclear deal and provide the people of Iran the economic relief they were promised and have eagerly awaited for three years.”

Until the US is ready to accept responsibility for its abhorrent actions, Iran will continue to build a resistance economy and relations with other countries. There is talk of US-sanctioned countries joining together as a countervailing force. Such countries include Russia, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Somalia, Belarus, Iraq, a number of African countries and more, as well as China with US trade tariffs. Building relationships through civil society, academia, professional societies, and government are needed to create a unified opposition to challenge US sanctions.

Our tasks in the US are to create opportunities for greater knowledge about and exchanges with Iran. Students at the University of Tehran are interested in dialogue with students and professors in the US. Members of the peace delegation live in areas across the US and can speak to groups about Iran. Contact us at [email protected] if you are interested in any of the above. We must educate our members of Congress about Iran and insist that the sanctions be lifted and that the US rejoin the JCPOA, and we must stop the threats of war against Iran.