On 23 July, the vast majority of the Left Group (GUE/NGL) in the European Parliament approved, together with the social democratic (S&D), Green and rightist (EPP, Renew) parties, a resolution which opposes the ‘European deal’ of 21 July, in which the Council of the European heads of state and government reached an agreement on a European recovery plan and the multi-annual budget.
There is indeed much to be said against this deal, which was a compromise to meet the concerns of the ‘frugal’ member states, led by the Netherlands, which explain the problems of southern states like Italy and Spain as the consequence of their ‘irresponsible’ budgetary policy. The deal implied the reduction of a number of items of the recovery plan and the EU budget, including health and climate. That is a valid reason for opposition, also from the left. But the resolution of the European Parliament requests not only the restoration of the original amounts of money for socially responsible causes, but also for absolutely indefensible ones. The two most reprehensible items are the European Defence Fund and the Integrated Border Management Fund.
The Defence Fund is a surreptitious way of channelling European money to the military industry under the guise of ‘industrial policy’. The 21 July deal grants ‘only’ 7 billion for this fund. The military-industrial lobby is of course disappointed, because initially 13 billion € was foreseen. We cannot accept that left and progressive parties support a request for more money for the militarization of Europe.
And there is the ‘Integrated Border Management Fund’. By endorsing the Parliament resolution, the left-wing group calls for the strengthening of Frontex, the EU’s increasingly militarised approach to migration and asylum policy, responsible for thousands of drowning people in the Mediterranean, for outsourcing border surveillance to dictatorial regimes. This policy that has already been condemned by several humanitarian organisations, and can in no way be supported by progressive forces.
It should also be remarked that the resolution is silent on the conditions which, according to the European deal of 21 July, will be attached to the allocation of grants and loans from the Recovery Fund to the Member States. By supporting the resolution, one keeps quiet about this ‘money in exchange for neoliberal reforms’ horse trade.
We conclude that the resolution fundamentally contradicts progressive views in general, and the programmes of left-wing parties in the EU in particular. By approving it, the already severely weakened left in Europe makes itself superfluous.
The signatories of this call urge the left fraction in the European Parliament and its member parties to seriously reconsider their strategic options. We also appeal to the progressive forces in the social democratic, green and other parties to resist the militarization of Europe and an increasingly inhuman and antisocial policy.
Signatories
Signed as an organisation:
Agir pour la Paix (Belgium), Belgische Coalitie stop uranium wapens, Bruxelles Panthères, Comité Surveillance OTAN, (Belgium), Communist Party of Finland, International Coordinating Committee of “No to war – no to NATO”, Leuvense Vredesbeweging (Belgium), Links Ecologisch Forum (LEF, Belgium), Mouvement Citoyen Palestine (Belgium), Socialist Democracy (Ireland), Stop Wapenhandel(Netherlands); Vredesactie (Belgium), Vrede vzw (Belgium)
Individual signatories:
Dirk Adriaensens, Brussells Tribunal (Belgium); Tassos Anastassiadis, member TPT, journalist (Greece); Karel Arnaut, antropologist, KU Leuven (Belgium); Jean Batou, solidaritéS/Ensemble à Gauche, member Geneva Parliament (Switzerland); Reiner Braun,Kampagne Stopp Air Base Ramstein (Germany); Ingeborg Breines, former president International Peace Bureau (Norway); Bob Brown, All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (USA); Marijke Colle, ecofeminist, member SAP (Belgium); Filip De Bodt, Climaxi (Belgium); Ludo De Brabander, Vrede (Belgium); Lieven De Cauter, Philosopher, RITCS, School of Arts, & Department of Architecture KULeuven; Herman De Ley, Em. Professor, Ghent University (Belgium); Klaus Dräger, former policy advisor of the GUE/NGL on employment & social affairs (Germany); Yannis Felekis, member TPT, immigrant support activist (Greece); Pierre Galand, former senator Parti Socialiste (Belgium); Eloi Glorieux, former member Flemish Parliament, peace and ecological activist; Kees Hudig, editor Globalinfo.nl (Netherlands); Anton Jäger, University of Cambridge/Université Libre de Bruxelles; Ulla Jelpke, member of German Parliament (DIE LINKE); Dimitris Konstantakopoulos, editor defenddemocracy.press, former member of the Secretariat of SYRIZA (Greece); Stathis Kouvélakis; Costas Lapavitsas, Prof. of Economics, SOAS (London), former member of the Greek Parliament; Tamara Lorincz, PhD candidate, Wilfrid Laurier University, (Canada); Herman Michiel, editor Ander Europa (Belgium); Anne Morelli, honorary professor ULB (Belgium); Karl-Heinz Peil, Friedens- und Zukunftswerkstatt (Frankfurt, Germany); Lucien Perpette, member Fourth International (Slovenia); Stefanie Prezioso, member Swiss Parliament; Matthias Reichl, press speaker, Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence (Austria); Nordine Saïdi, decolonial activist (Belgium); Catherine Samary, Alter-European economist (France); Ingeborg Schellmann, member Attac (Germany); Rae Street, activist against NATO (UK); Daniel Tanuro, ecosocialist, author, member Gauche Anticapitaliste (Belgium); Eric Toussaint, spokesperson CADTM International; José Van Leeuwen, Docp/BDS, Netherlands, Willy Verbeek, president Beweging.net Herent (Belgium); Andy Vermaut, climate and peace initiative Pimpampoentje, president PostVersa (Belgium); Marie-Dominique Vernhes, in the name of 12 members of the working group ‘Europa’ of Attac Germany; Asbjørn Wahl, author and trade union adviser (Norway); Prof. David Webb, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (UK); Andreas Wehr, Marx-Engels-Zentrum Berlin; Thomas Weyts, member SAP (Belgium); Thodoris Zeis, member TPT, lawyer, refugees and immigrant support (Greece); Bob Zomerplaag, Enschede voor Vrede (Netherlands).
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Ugly. Rough. The police of the Australian state of Victoria muscling their way in. The father and children watching. It had all arisen because the pregnant mother in question had engaged in conduct defined as incitement. In a post on her Facebook page, Zoe Buhler had urged Victorians to protest the coronavirus lockdown rules over the weekend. She encouraged the practising of social distancing measures to avoid arrest and the wearing of masks, subject to medical exceptions. “Here in Ballarat we can be a voice for those in Stage 4 lockdowns [in metropolitan Melbourne]. We can be seen and heard and hopefully make a difference.”
Social media sniffers in the state police picked up the scent and repaired to her Ballarat home in Miners Rest. Buhler promised to take down the post. “I didn’t realise I was doing anything wrong. I’m happy to delete the post. This is ridiculous.” She noted the presence of her children; the fact that she was due for an ultrasound appointment in an hour. She inquired about clarification about the term “incitement”, a word she genuinely did not comprehend.
Subsequently, she claimed the police had shown some basic courtesy. “Sorry about my bimbo moment,” she stated on reflection. But she refused to resile from her view that the conduct had been “too heavy handed, especially [to arrest me] in front of my children and to walk into my house like that.” She remains ignorant about the meaning of incitement.
The Buhler arrest was coarse, incautious, suggesting a tone-deafness prevalent in law enforcement. It was unusual in ploughing common furrows across the political divide. The Australian was assuredly predictable in its denunciation, having never quite taken the virus that seriously (deaths we shall have, but managed responsibly), though it was hard to disagree with associate editor Caroline Overington’s plea. “You can accept lockdown and support saving lives but you should still oppose cuffing anyone – much less a pregnant woman.”
Janet Albrechtsen took matters into another register with her school girl claim of fascism, a term she had no inclination to define. Albrechtsen has never been troubled by forensic details, but she was correct to assume that Buhler will not necessarily be seen as hero or martyr. Protesters are approved or repudiated depending on the flavour of the moment, and the ducking stools would be out. “Maybe she’s into crystals? Maybe she’s an anti-vaxxer?” She certainly did not share views “common with rich hippies in Byron Bay.”
The legal fraternity were more than a touch unsettled. The Victorian Bar was deeply unimpressed by a police operation that seemed, not merely rough in execution but untutored, and said so in its media release on September 3. “We recognise,” its president, Wendy Harris QC explained, “the importance of compliance with the law, but enforcement of those laws needs to be proportionate and consistent.” Arresting Buhler and handcuffing her in her home in front of her partner and children “appeared disproportionate to the threat she presented.” Case law in Victoria – Slaveski v Victoria and Perkins v County Court of Victoria – had held “that a police officer is not entitled to use handcuffs on a person merely because an arrest is made.”
Another thing also niggled the Victorian Bar Association. “Consistency in the enforcement of the law is also critical; without it, confidence in the rule of law is undermined.” This was a less than subtle swipe at mixed responses from the police: the enforcement measures taken against Buhler were “apparently at odds with other reported and more measured responses by authorities to organisers and protesters of similar protesters planned or carried out in contravention of public health directives.”
Greg Barns, National Criminal Justice spokesman of the Australian Lawyers Alliance, was similarly shaken. Writing in The Age, he was baffled by the views of Assistant Commissioner Luke Cornelius, who claimed that the police had been “polite” and “professional”. Police were good enough to assist Buhler to contact the hospital to make another appointment for the ultrasound. Hardly the point, fumes Barns. “They should not have arrested her in the first place.” The result of such muscular policing has been to gift Buhler the PR campaign and ensure “greater sympathy for those who are wanting to launch protests against the Premier [Daniel Andrews] and his government’s draconian laws.”
The mild mannered Rosalind Croucher, president of the Australian Human Rights Commission, also took to the debate, “dismayed” by the Buhler arrest. “In times of crisis, such as this pandemic, our rights are as important than ever.” Temporary measures to limit rights and freedoms to control the spread of infection might have been necessary but “must always be proportionate to the risk – and managed appropriately.”
Buhler’s case is one of several arrests conducted this week, some of which would have caused fewer twangs of sympathy or outrage. James Bartolo decided to mix reality television with pandemic law enforcement, filming his own arrest and posting it to Facebook. Unlike Buhler, Bartolo is your traditional figure of practiced conspiracy, claiming to have better insight into the world of manipulated wickedness than most. Through The Conscious Truth Network, he chest-thumpingly advertises his credentials as “truth seeker, freedom fighter, utopian advocate”.
This fine former specimen of the Australian army and addled body builder is convinced that COVID-19 is but a Trojan horse, the fiendish, fictional product of a “treasonous and corrupt network of filth” intent on enslaving us. A truculent Bartolo, in his three-minute long video, is seen arguing that the police was unlawfully trespassing on his property. “You don’t have authorisation to be on the property.” But the paperwork was in order; the police duly made their way in, arresting the 27-year-old for alleged incitement, possession of prohibited weapons and two counts of resisting them. An advertising stunt had been successfully executed.
These displays have caught the Victorian Police flatfooted. It was always bound to resonate with some politicians. On September 4, David Limbrick of the Victorian Legislative Council and member of the Liberal Democrats wrote an open letter to Victorians expressing his shock and disappointment with the state government’s response, claiming that those authoritarians who had forced Victorians to wear masks “and their enablers have been unmasked.” While not explicitly pointing out specific acts of the Victorian police, the theme of his note was clear enough. “The intrusion into our lives gets more personal and more extreme every day. The Government has given the police free reign [sic], so no wonder their behaviour just gets more outrageous.”
Limbrick has also encouraged protests, but suggests forms that do not breach the regulations. “It’s simple – bring your pots and pans, beep your horns at 8pm, and let your neighbourhood know that we don’t have to suffer in silence.” An even sounder suggestion is advanced by Barns. Make better laws, avoid sloppy drafting which leaves “enormous discretion in the hands of the police” and “educate and try to reduce tension and stress in the community.” As for Buhler’s case, they could have made things simple and civil: take her up on the offer to remove the Facebook post, explain why it was in breach, and be on their way. A sensible thought for an insensible time.
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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: A woman walks her dogs in Fitzroy Gardens park as police and defence force officers patrol in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia [David Crosling/EPA]
A Columbia Journalism Review expose reveals that, to control global journalism, Bill Gates has steered over $250 million to the BBC, NPR, NBC, Al Jazeera, ProPublica, National Journal, The Guardian, the New York Times, Univision, Medium, the Financial Times, The Atlantic, the Texas Tribune, Gannett, Washington Monthly, Le Monde, Center for Investigative Reporting, Pulitzer Center, National Press Foundation, International Center for Journalists, and a host of other groups. To conceal his influence, Gates also funneled unknown sums via subgrants for contracts to other press outlets.
His press bribes have paid off. During the pandemic, bought and brain-dead news outlets have treated Bill Gates as a public health expert—despite his lack of medical training or regulatory experience.
Gates’s media gifts, says CJR author Tim Schwab, mean that “critical reporting about the Gates Foundation is rare.” The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation declined multiple interview requests from CJR and refused to disclose how much money it has funneled to journalists.
In 2007, the LA Times published one of the only critical investigations on the Gates Foundation, exposing Gates’s holdings in companies that hurt people his foundation claims to help, like industries linked to child labor. Lead reporter Charles Piller, says, “They were unwilling to answer questions and pretty much refused to respond in any sort of way…”
The investigation showed how Gates’s global health funding has steered the world’s aid agenda toward Gates’ personal goals (vaccines and GMO crops) and away from issues such as emergency preparedness to respond to disease outbreaks, like the Ebola crisis.
“They’ve dodged our questions and sought to undermine our coverage,” says freelance journalist Alex Park after investigating the Gates Foundation’s polio vaccine efforts.
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The southern part of Greater Idlib remains the main point of instability in Syria. The military situation, which had temporarily stabilized after the end of the Turkish attack on the Syrian Army codenamed “Operation Spring Shield”, is once again deteriorating. And this time it seems that even the Turkish leadership, who have made extensive efforts to defend the so-called ‘moderate opposition’, incidentally consisting mostly of al-Qaeda terrorists, from the bloody Assad regime, is forced to admit this.
On March 5, Turkey and Russia signed a de-escalation deal that put an end to the open military confrontation in Idlib between the Syrian Army and the Turkish Army and formally created a demilitarized zone along the M4 highway between the towns of Saraqib and Jisr al-Shughur.
Under the deal, heavy weapons and radical militant formations had to be withdrawn from the demilitarized zone, Russia and Turkey launched joint patrols along the M4 and the highway was to be reopened for civilian traffic. The south part of the M4 highway was formally the zone of Russian responsibility, whereas the north part was the Turkish one. As of early September however, the majority of the points of this deal have not been implemented. Radicals, members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other al-Qaeda-linked groups such as the Turkistan Islamic Party and Houras al-Din still remain deployed in the supposed demilitarized zone. No heavy weapons were withdrawn and the M4 highway has not been reopened. Artillery duels and firefights regularly erupt on the contact line between the Syrian Army and militants protected by Turkey. Joint Russian-Turkish patrols regularly become targets of attacks by Turkey’s own proxies.
On September 1, Russia and Turkey even started a series of drills simulating the repelling of attacks on joint patrols on the M4, including the neutralization of subversive groups, the evacuation of damaged equipment and the provision of medical help to injured personnel.
Clearly, this does not look like a successful implementation of the March 5 deal. At the core of the issues are the contradictions existing between Turkey and the Iranian-Syrian-Russian alliance. Ankara is not interested in neutralizing the Idlib terrorists because they are the core of its influence in northwestern Syria. Without these groups, even the current Turkish military contingent deployed in Idlib would not be enough to keep the territories they have seized under control. Expansion into northern and northwestern Syria are open goals of President Erdogan and his Neo-Ottoman project. The neutralization of terrorists, the political settlement of the conflict and the stabilization of Syria promoted by the other side of this deal goes contrary to Turkish tactical interests.
In these conditions, it does not look like joint drills along the M4 will be enough to deal with the situation. Further to these, the sides could agree on several long- and mid-term steps that would allow for progress in the demilitarization and de-escalation processes to be achieved. These could include the following elements:
To assign two officers, one Turkish and one Russian, to their own zone of responsibility where they would be jointly responsible for the implementation of the March 5 agreement on the ground. This should remove potential barriers and bureaucratic hurdles in their communication.
To avoid potential duplication or clashing in the actions of the sides during the implementation of the demilitarized agreement, each side should identify one authorized officer to make decisions and be responsible for the implementation of the deal on the ground.
To form a joint military, diplomatic and information group to work on the development of a joint Russian-Turkish position regarding the situation in the M4 zone, to release official comments on developments, including attacks and other incidents and to develop ways to implement the deal.
In a 3 month perspective these steps might offer a chance of avoiding a new round of escalation, at least partly stabilizing the situation on the M4 highway and improving Russian-Turkish coordination in the area. If the situation develops in a positive direction and further, the mid-term goal would be the start of coordinated pin-point operations against irreconcilable armed groups, including those involved in terrorist or organized criminal activity, on both sides of the contact line. The neutralization of these groups would open the way for a potential diplomatic settlement of the situation. The format of this settlement would depend on the regional and global situation at the moment of the implementation of this scenario, and, in any case, would involve the creation of a political group representing Turkish interests in Idlib.
At the same time, the inability of Turkey and Russia to implement the March 5 deal in the long run would inevitably lead to a new round of military confrontation in Idlib. This scenario potentially includes Turkish attempts to push back the Syrian Army further and to annex northwestern Syria under the pretext of the alleged inability of the Assad government to guarantee stability and security in the region. However, this kind of Turkish action could easily backfire. In February-March 2020, the Turkish Armed Forces already failed to deliver a devastating blow to the Syrian Army. A new open military confrontation with Syria may cost even more and lead to even more dire results. Given the growing Russian-Iranian military cooperation and the developing conflict with Egypt and France, Turkey would immediately find itself caught between two stools. Therefore, at best, Turkey would be able to keep the current status quo in southern Idlib or its forces might even be forced to retreat, especially in the event of direct Iranian involvement in the battle.
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US-NATO continue building “momentum” behind Navalny incident – hope to end Nord Stream 2 pipeline before facts emerge, the pipeline is completed, and as all other options have so-far failed.
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Alexei Navalny is the ideal opposition figure for any incumbent government – he is ineffective, unpopular, and transparently compromised by malign foreign interests.
According to a poll carried out by the Lavada Center – a polling organization funded by the US government itself via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – a mere 9% of all Russians look favorably on him and his work, with most Russians unaware of who he even is.
Germany was the one place the US and NATO needed Navalny to be the most – and in a condition of poor health the US and NATO needed him to be in.
His continued existence and his monopoly over Russia’s equally unpopular opposition ensures that an effective opposition never takes root in grounds choked by his presence.
For Moscow – Navalny’s continued existence is not only not a threat, he occupies space where a real threat might otherwise emerge.
For the United States and its NATO partners who have dumped millions of dollars and political capital into Navalny’s dead-end opposition in Russia – Navalny’s continued existence is an underperforming investment at best.
“Coincidentally” just as the German-Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline nears completion – a pipeline project that will expand Russia’s hydrocarbon exports, increase revenue, and provide cheap energy to Europe in a business deal that would also help draw Europe and Russia closer diplomatically – Navalny was “poisoned.”
He wasn’t just “poisoned.” He was allegedly poisoned with nerve agents called “Novichoks” alleged to be available only in Russia. Navalny was rushed by a shadowy NGO with opaque funding called “Cinema for Peace” to Germany – of all places.
Delivered right to the heart of what is surely one of Russia’s most important economic and diplomatic projects at the moment – it is the perfect excuse for the US and NATO to pressure Germany to abandon Nord Stream 2 – an objective Washington has struggled and failed to achieve for years.
The US and NATO wasted no time accusing Russia even with no evidence presented that Russia was responsible – not to mention lacking any conceivable motive for the alleged “assassination” attempt of such an unpopular opposition figure at such a crucial time for Russia, its economy, and its ties with Western Europe and Germany in particular.
The article admits just how close to completion Nord Stream 2 is, noting (emphasis added):
Many are looking to Germany, whose Nord Stream 2 pipeline is a prominent example of selective cooperation with Russia despite concerns about the country’s approach to human rights both domestically and internationally.
The Nord Stream 2 project, which is more than 90% complete, aims to double Russia’s supply of direct natural gas to Germany. Running under the Baltic Sea, the pipeline bypasses Eastern European states, sending gas from Russia’s Narva Bay to Lubmin, a coastal town adjacent to Merkel’s constituency in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
It’s noted that the pipeline bypasses Eastern Europe where the US has repeatedly toppled governments and installed client regimes hostile to Russia – complicating Russia’s delivery of hydrocarbons to Western Europe – Ukraine being a recent example.
The DW article then admits:
Critics do not view Nord Stream 2 as purely a business affair, instead calling it a major win for Russia’s image and standing at the international level. The Navalny poisoning, which draws strong parallels to the 2018 Novichok attack on a former Russian double agent that the United Kingdom has accused the Kremlin of orchestrating, further complicates Germany’s efforts to keep politics out of Nord Stream 2.
“After the poisoning of Navalny we need a strong European answer, which Putin understands: The EU should jointly decide to stop Nord Stream 2,” tweeted Norbert Röttgen, an outspoken Russia critic in Merkel’s conservative party.
His voice carries particular weight, as Röttgen chairs the Bundestag’s Foreign Affairs Committee and he is currently running for the party’s leadership.
It doesn’t take an expert in geopolitics to have understood that an attempt on Navalny’s life would have provided a mountain of political ammunition for the US and NATO in its ongoing attempts to sabotage Nord Stream 2 and prevent “a win for Russia’s image and standing at the international level.”
This is the most compelling reason why the Kremlin would not have ordered it – especially so close to completing Nord Stream 2.
It must also be remembered that Navalny was flown directly to Germany after the alleged attack.
Germany was the one place the US and NATO needed Navalny to be the most – and in a condition of poor health the US and NATO needed him to be in. With Nord Stream 2 over 90% complete – there is little time left to threaten, coerce, and pressure Germany to otherwise abandon the project.
The alleged presence of “Novichok” nerve agents – had the attack been the work of the Kremlin – would have been a smoking gun and a virtual calling card left – all but guaranteeing immense pressure from across the West and in particular – pressure placed on Germany to cancel the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
The DW article covers what the US has already done to pressure Germany, noting (emphasis added):
The Trump administration wants to sell Germany its own gas, which critics say is more expensive than gas from Russia. Sanctions have bipartisan support in Washington, and the US has already imposed them against companies laying pipe in the Baltic Sea, prompting the Swiss-Dutch company Allseas to pull out of the project in 2019. More sanctions are awaiting the US president’s signature.
Then DW quoted Sarah Pagung – a specialist on German-Russian relations for the German Council on Foreign Relations. The article would note her saying (emphasis added):
“We can’t rule [the canceling of Nord Stream 2] out as an option, but it’s unlikely,” Pagung told DW, although she said Germany could use the Navalny poisoning as an “opportunity” to shift its position on the pipeline without appearing to be caving to US pressure.
DW all but spells out the true motive of Navalny’s alleged poisoning and his “serendipitous” delivery to Germany for treatment – to serve as a catalyst for the cancellation of Nord Stream 2.
Since Moscow has absolutely nothing to gain from this – it is the least likely suspect.
Since it not only fits into the US and NATO’s openly declared agenda of coercing Germany into cancelling the Nord Stream 2 project, it also fits a pattern of staged attacks and fabricated claims used by the US and NATO to advance their collective foreign policy – they are the most likely suspects.
Consider the much worse and absolutely verified crimes against humanity the US and NATO are guilty of – with the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 2011-onward military interventions in Libya and Syria as just two examples. Poisoning Navalny – a failed investment as a living, breathing opposition figure and turning him into a martyr – is a relatively small act of false-flag violence to create a difficult impasse for the German government regarding Nord Stream 2.
The fact that the US and NATO are rushing to conclusions without evidence – as they’ve done many times before when pushing now verified lies – only further incriminates both as the most likey suspects in Navalny’s poisoning.
For Navalny himself – his fate – if he was actually poisoned – is tragic. The very people he worked for and whose agenda he served seem to find him more useful dying than healthy in terms of advancing Western foreign policy against Russia.
There are too many “coincidences” surrounding this incident:
The attack itself at such a sensitive time for Russia, its economy, and its ties with Germany in particular;
The fact that Navalny was flown by a shadowy NGO to Germany itself;
The fact that the US has been openly trying to sabotage the German-Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline all along and;
The fact that the “attack” was allegedly carried out in such a clumsy, ineffective, and incriminating way specifically to implicate Russia.
For a US and NATO who have sold the world entire wars based on “evidence” and “accusations” of everything from nonexistent “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq to lies about viagra-fuelled rape squads in Libya – one more lie about an unpopular Russian opposition figure poisoned in Russia, picked up by a dubious NGO, and placed down right in the middle of German-Russian relations and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline the US and NATO are desperate to stop – fits a disturbing but all-too-predictable pattern.
The question is why are people still falling for it? Will Germany fall for it, or at the very least, cave – costing itself economic opportunities in exchange for a deeper and more costly role in US-NATO aggression against Russia? Only time will tell.
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Ever tried living on $1.90 a day? That is the World Bank’s “International Poverty Line (IPL).” If your income is at or below that figure, you are living in “extreme poverty.” In fact, it’s a political benchmark, low enough that the Bank can claim global poverty has been reduced significantly. Which also means that if you’re making two or three times that amount per day, you’re supposed to be overcoming poverty.
From a critical and human-interest perspective, the IPL is nonsense. Anyone living on $1.90 a day—the World Bank for many years used $1 a day to define extreme poverty—cannot possibly live a meaningful life no matter how defined. A figure even double or triple $1.90 cannot possibly address inadequate nutrition, schooling, and health care, for example. By setting the figure so low, the Bank, other international lending agencies, and governments can pretend that citizens making the Bank’s next levels of income, $3.20 and $5.50, are poor but still better off than their poorest cousins. In short, the figure evades responsibility to act on behalf of the billions of people living in extreme poverty, including those in rich nations.
Fortunately, we have an impeccable source for calling out the World Bank’s claim: Philip Alston, who recently left his post as the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. In his final report to the UN in early July, Alston said:
Even before COVID-19, we squandered a decade in the fight against poverty, with misplaced triumphalism blocking the very reforms that could have prevented the worst impacts of the pandemic. COVID-19 is projected to push hundreds of millions into unemployment and poverty, while increasing the number at risk of acute hunger by more than 250 million. But the international community’s abysmal record on tackling poverty, inequality and disregard for human life far precede this pandemic. Over the past decade, the UN, world leaders and pundits have promoted a self-congratulatory message of impending victory over poverty, but almost all of these accounts rely on the World Bank’s international poverty line, which is utterly unfit for the purpose of tracking such progress.1
The reality about global poverty, which the World Bank would prefer that we forget, is that extreme poverty has hardly improved at all in recent decades. “Even before the pandemic,” Alston says, “3.4 billion people, nearly half the world, lived on less than $5.50 a day. That number has barely declined since 1990.” Alston called the Bank’s $1.90 poverty line, which it uses to claim that over 1.1 million people were lifted out of extreme poverty between 1990 and 2015, “scandalously unambitious.” “The best evidence shows it doesn’t even cover the cost of food or housing in many countries,” he said. “The poverty decline it purports to show is due largely to rising incomes in a single country, China. And it obscures poverty among women and those often excluded from official surveys in many countries, such as migrant workers and refugees.”
The COVID Connection
In the spring 2020, the World Bank estimated that 40 million to 60 million people will fall into extreme poverty (under $1.90/day) in 2020, compared to 2019. Again, the Bank used the same flawed measurement, which means we have to add in (by the Bank’s account) anywhere from 70 to 180 million more people in the $5.50 a day category.2 These dire conclusions are consistent with trade trends. Two analysts write in Foreign Affairs that it will probably take several years for the global economy as a whole to recover from the contraction brought on by the pandemic. They cite a massive decline in exports (2020 will be “the worst year for globalization since the early 1930s”), very high unemployment, and an especially harmful impact on low-income people, who lack the education, job security, and health to survive without government support that will not be available in struggling economies. In the less well off countries, there are no stimulus payments because they are going to be even more debt-ridden than ever.3 So far, it seems that only China has avoided this prediction on export decline.
Just as Alston charged, women will bear a particularly heavy burden because of COVID-19. An Oxfam report notes:
Although the virus appears to be killing men at a higher rate than women, cutting down on child and elderly care and public health systems traps women at home, a home that is not always safe: girls who are forced to stay home from school are at increased risk of sexual violence and early pregnancy women will suffer more in other ways. Some 70% of the world’s health workers – the most exposed to the virus – are women. Women workers are most likely to have precarious jobs without labour protections. In the poorest countries, 92% of women workers are employed informally. Women also provide 75% of unpaid care, a burden that is expanding exponentially in the face of stay-at-home orders. The problem will also be compounded if this pandemic were to be followed by austerity, as with the 2008 financial crisis. Reports are already showing that domestic violence has doubled in provinces in China where restrictions have been imposed– and this pattern is being repeated all over the world.4
Enter the Climate Crisis
The process of scientific discovery seems unable to keep pace with the crisis before us. As the world scientific community warned in November 2019: “we declare, with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from around the world, clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency.”:
Despite 40 years of global climate negotiations, with few exceptions, we have generally conducted business as usual and have largely failed to address [the climate crisis]. The climate crisis has arrived and is accelerating faster than most scientists expected. . . . It is more severe than anticipated, threatening natural ecosystems and the fate of humanity. . . . Especially worrisome are potential irreversible climate tipping points and nature’s reinforcing feedbacks (atmospheric, marine, and terrestrial) that could lead to a catastrophic “hothouse Earth,” well beyond the control of humans. . . . These climate chain reactions could cause significant disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies, potentially making large areas of Earth uninhabitable.5
As environmental security worsens, so does human security. The reason is simple: the intersection of worsening climate conditions and the pandemic. Flood, drought, and other calamities compound the vulnerability of populations already hit by the virus, especially the poor, the elderly, the unemployed, ethnic minorities, and health care workers.6 Governments are put under intense pressure in terms of emergency preparedness, public health facilities, long-term unemployment, and internal security.
Food security is likely to be especially hard hit by the combination of climate change and COVID-19. Arif Husain, chief economist for the World Food Program, writes that “the pandemic could drive 130 million more people [beyond the tens of millions already facing ‘acute hunger’] into that state by December. More than a quarter of a billion people are likely to be acutely hungry in 2020.”7 People working in the informal economy and export industries; people dependent on remittances from relatives working abroad; people in the fossil fuel sector—these are among the groups whose access to food will be deeply affected by COVID-19. And if they also happen to live in conflict zones, or areas hard hit by climate change, they face insecurity that goes well beyond food.8
The East Asia Picture
In general, the East Asia region’s economic development, measured by human development indicators, was improving somewhat before COVID-19. I chose nine countries at various levels of economic development to represent the region (see Table 1). Most of the nine improved their human development index (HDI) ranking between 2009 and 2019—for example, Thailand, from 87 to 77; China from 92 to 85; and Malaysia from 66 to 61.9 (Australia and Japan slipped, while Vietnam and Philippines hardly changed.) Poverty, reflected in the rich-poor gap, remained a serious problem, however, despite the overall fairly low Gini coefficient.10 The income share of the richest 10 percent of populations was much greater than the poorest 40 percent (Table 1, columns 2, 3 and 4), with the gap rising in four countries and falling in five.11
COVID-19 has severely impacted East Asia as it has every other region. The East Asia and Pacific region (fifteen countries and territories, including six added to those in Table 1) has had its share of infections and deaths, though as a proportion of world totals (as of mid-August 2020), the numbers are very low: about 2.6 percent of cases and 2 percent of deaths.12 But infection and death tolls do not display the links between a health crisis and poverty. For East Asia and the Pacific, the World Bank estimates that COVID-19 will have a devastating effect on regional economic growth and therefore on poverty rates. The last five years of gains will all be erased, it says. Specifically, the Bank reports that whereas before the pandemic 35 million people in East Asia and the Pacific would have escaped poverty (at $5.50), now some 25 million additional people will fall into poverty, plus another 11 million if economies continue to go downhill.13Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand are all predicted to experience major economic contractions before recovering in 2021.14
In East Asia specifically, average life expectancy and schooling were improving before the pandemic. As the last column in Table 1 shows, every country experienced growth in the HDI between 2010 and 2018, with China leading the way and the emerging middle-income countries such as Indonesia and Thailand also improving significantly. Even so, we are all aware that average figures may obscure as much as they reveal. Improvements in human development typically are not evenly distributed in any society because political elites allocate resources to favored groups and locales, which are expected to return the favor in loyalty to officials. When the nextHuman Development Report is published, we can expect that income gaps will widen and other human development indicators for all countries in the region (with the possible exception of China) will reflect the pandemic’s impact on everything from public health and childhood education to overseas remittances and small businesses. It is already clear that food and income poverty in particular have worsened. A World Vision survey in 2020 of nine Asian countries, for example, found that “currently the most serious effects [of the pandemic] are increased food insecurity and poverty for vulnerable children and their families impacted by the pandemic. As families are struggling to cope with loss of income and livelihoods, meeting basic household needs is a growing challenge.” The survey found that over 60 percent of households—an estimated 85 million—in those countries were in deep trouble finding food, work, and income.15
Winners and Losers
A major omission from the World Bank’s assessment is indicators of who benefits from poverty.
The fortunes of the richest 1 percent and 10 percent never fall, nor do the tax havens that enable multinational corporations to hide a large percentage of their profits disappear. Again, Philip Alston, in his final report: “Instead, multinational companies and investors draw guaranteed profits from public coffers [such as through tax havens], while poor communities are neglected and underserved. It’s time for a new approach to poverty eradication that tackles inequality, embraces redistribution, and takes tax justice seriously. Poverty is a political choice and it will be with us until its elimination is reconceived as a matter of social justice.”
Alston’s parting shots resonate with critical scholarship on globalization. For example, a recent study done for the Asian Development Bank affirmed Alston’s conclusions on rising poverty even before COVID-19. The three authors found that although income in Asia generally was rising, its potential benefits were being undermined by growing inequality in income distribution; that globalization was mainly benefiting people with skills, education, and regional resource advantages; and that inequality was adversely affecting economic growth, mainly by limiting productivity and consumption among low-income households, and by increasing the likelihood of social unrest.16 Clearly, these trends were, and are, the result of political decisions.
We in the United States understand the politics of poverty very well. Robert Reich, the former labor secretary who often writes on inequality in America, says: “Over the last four decades, the median wage has barely budged. But the incomes of the richest 0.1% have soared by more than 300% and the incomes of the top 0.001% (the 2,300 richest Americans), by more than 600%. The net worth of the wealthiest 0.1% of Americans almost equals that of the bottom 90% combined. This grotesque imbalance is undermining American democracy.”17
It does not take much imagination to come up with solutions to the current wave of poverty. Oxfam, for example, advocates direct cash grants to the poor, debt relief, subsidies to small businesses, and taxes on both private and corporate wealth. Similarly, the Asian Development Bank study urges government targeting of poor populations and poor districts within countries for educational, health, and work opportunities. But if “poverty is a political choice,” as Alston says, redistributing wealth and providing the ingredients of human security will require nothing short of a political revolution. Quick fixes and “reforms” cannot correct the “grotesque imbalance” that is truly global in scope.
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10 Economists seems to consider that the worst cases of inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient are Brazil (53.3 between 2010 and 2017) and South Africa (63.0). In that case, none of the nine East Asian countries examined here comes close, with the range from Malaysia (41.0) to South Korea (31.6). Human Development Report 2019, Table 3.
11 Only in Thailand did the income share of the richest 1 percent exceed that of the poorest 40 percent. However, no figures were reported for the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Human Development Report 2019, Table 3.
12 Compiled from the New York Times coronavirus data set. The additional countries and territories are Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Cambodia, Taiwan, and Myanmar.
15 Ellie Wong, Carolyn Kabore, and Angeline Manzara, “Out of Time,” Devpolicy, July 10, 2020.
16 Bihong Huang, Peter J. Morgan, and Naoyuki Yoshino, eds., Demystifying Rising Inequality in Asia(Tokyo: Asian Development Bank Institute, 2019, pp. 1-5.
17 Robert Reich, “State of Disunion: Democrats Must Not Give In to Trump’s Hateful Speech,” The Guardian, February 4, 2019.
As so many of us ask when we commemorate an anniversary of decades: where have all the years gone? Have we done all we can? Have we been of true service? Did we do right?
We also may wonder on these occasions what might the future hold. Will our dreams – our Moroccan dreams – come true? Will every village and neighborhood come together, with every young person, every elderly, every woman and man from all circumstances and be part of designing and deciding the future course of their community? And will the High Atlas Foundation (HAF) be of the best service it could as the Moroccan people create the change they seek?
It is the 20th year anniversary of the High Atlas Foundation and its mission in Morocco–an organization born from the service of Peace Corps Volunteers and dedicated Moroccan friends.
With every entity that endures across time, there seems to be a miraculous component–that through unpredictable events, there remains continuity. The mission of HAF is as fixed as the universal principle upon which it is based: the people – those who are impacted by development decisions and actions – are the drivers of lasting change. We are dedicated to the premise that sustainability is manifested by and for local communities. This means that HAF commits to: inclusivity and empowerment so that people are confident as they make decisions that reflect what they need; projects that are the priorities of the people and that cut across the different sectors of life; and partnerships–because the wider and deeper the commitment, the greater the likelihood of implementation and endurance.
After some millions of growing trees later, thousands of families drinking clean water, thousands of people experiencing capacity-building so that they manifest change around them, we have also learned abiding lessons. Ripples of good intentions and of people’s projects over time create outcomes that, when observed, help us to realize there is an incalculable amount of impact out there. Impact is experienced by children and grandchildren and will be experienced by generations to come. Development, like planting a tree, is an endeavor that naturally seems to cross into faith.
Sustainability is an operational concept involving the consideration of a multiplicity of factors that require consideration in the planning of development–economic, cultural, technological, financial, environmental, geographic, historical, and gender-based factors. However, sustainability may very well be, after all, the ongoing generation of good effects that are so widespread and so deep in the heart and so across time that they belong to no one but to the people who feel the bounty, power, and ability in the moments of their lives.
As President of the Board of Directors for the Foundation’s first 10 years and President of its operations throughout its second decade, and as the one who carried the idea of what became HAF for some years prior to when it was founded in 2000, I am more grateful than I can say for the marvel of people to whom we owe everlasting gratitude. Since there are too many to mention here, and I cannot do justice by mentioning just a few, I will express my gratitude to one person who has made Morocco a potential sustainable development bastion on earth, making the participatory work of HAF and others potentially fully scalable throughout the nation. That person is His Majesty King Mohammed the VI.
The Moroccan Frameworks that guide the people’s development are replete with the highest principles of people’s driven change and their empowerment. They together form a synergistic powerful pathway forward for lasting development and, yes, prosperity. They are thoughtful, creative, and strategic in their formulation that one finds it seriously challenging to improve upon their design. The existential challenge before the people of Morocco is the fulfillment of the integrated Frameworks that promote sustainable local development.
The opportunity to create bottom-up community development movements that federate and transform public-civil-private sector relationships with sustainable prosperity in the wake, is real and Moroccan. And it is up to its people and agencies to fulfill. I, for one, appreciate the grand, continental, and totally meaningful opportunity – and commit HAF to its life of service to this Moroccan cause, and as a precedent for the world.
To 20 years, to 100 more, and to all we are able to do throughout,
Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir – President of the High Atlas Foundation in Marrakech, Morocco
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The case of the alleged assassination attempt of the Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny has generated much controversy and discussions worldwide. In Germany, where Navalny is currently, the political controversy surrounding the case is taking on particularly large proportions. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline construction project is clearly not related to the Navalny case, but according to Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Soder, the incident brought new circumstances that make Nord Stream 2 something “negative”.
Soder, is a member of the Christian Social Union and part of the conservative-centrist alliance that appointed Angela Merkel to the post of federal chancellor. He believes that the case has had a negative impact on Russia and that Nord Stream 2 would be surrounded by such controversies. Although Soder’s prestige has given him a greater voice, this has become a common discourse among some German and European politicians in general.
The opposition Greens party has made a strong call in Parliament for Nord Stream 2 to be stopped immediately. For this party, it is unacceptable to continue any international cooperation project with Russia due to the suspicion of an attempt on Navalny’s life.
“The apparent attempted murder by the mafia-like structures of the Kremlin can no longer just give us cause for concern, it must have real consequences”, Green parliamentary group leader Katrin Goering-Eckardt said.
In fact, the Greens have long opposed the construction of the gas pipeline due to ideological agendas and national projects that are irreconcilable with the German government and with the political and congressional wings favorable to Russian cooperation. However, with the Navalny case, these opponents achieved a “humanitarian justification” for their anti-Russian and pro-Western discourses.
Even the renowned parliamentarian and government ally Norbert Roettgen commented on the case condemning the normality of the agreement for the construction of the gas pipeline:
“diplomatic rituals are no longer enough (…) After the poisoning, we need a strong European answer, which Putin understands (…) The EU should jointly decide to stop Nord Stream 2”, said the German politician on a social network.
For his part, Bundestag’s vice-president Wolfgang Kubicki, stated that the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline should not be questioned at the current stage of the investigation of the alleged poisoning of Navalny, also claiming to be skeptical on the possibility of making any changes to the project. “I’m skeptical that we should question a project of this magnitude at this stage”, he told Deutschlandfunk radio.
Similarly, the position of German Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel was reasonable. She recently commented that the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline should be completed soon and that it should not be linked to the Navalny case, thus removing opposition speech and maintaining firm cooperation between Russians and Germans as a major opinion.
The construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline has divided German politics in recent years. Designed to diversify Russian gas supply routes to Europe, escaping the Ukrainian and Polish routes, the agreement aims to increase energy security in the region. However, works for the construction of the gas pipeline were suspended in December last year, after Washington threatened to impose various commercial and tariff sanctions on the Swiss company Allseas, which carried out the construction’s works. Since then, international pressure has only grown. In addition to the pressure against the project made by US, Ukraine and Poland, the governments of Lithuania and Latvia have also threatened to break economic ties with Germany.
On September 2, German government spokesman Steffen Seibert reported that toxicological tests carried out by a German Armed Forces laboratory revealed that Russian opponent Alexei Navalny, who is currently receiving treatment at Berlin’s Charité Universitätsmedizin University Hospital, was poisoned with a Novichok substance. The big problem is that the discovery of the poisoning was the reason for the start of a great information war, where the Russian government was accused, without any evidence, of planning the murder of an opposing politician. To date, there is no evidence to link the government or government agencies to the alleged attack on Navalny’s life. The mere fact that he is a political opponent does not mean that his assassination attempt is necessarily for political reasons. The spread of rumors, fake news and lies about the case is immense and an imaginary has already been created in the West that the attack was in fact committed by members of the Russian government, even though no investigation has been carried out.
The intention behind the disinformation is clear: to undermine Russia on the geopolitical scenario. Nord Stream 2 is showing this. The objective is to disseminate as much as possible any type of information that damages Russia’s image, simply to favor countries whose interests clash with those of Moscow.
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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.
“We have no money to fight hydro so we’ve got to fight back with words and with words we can fight back. By telling the truth about what really is happening in these communities.”
– Gerald McKay, Fisher Grand Rapids, MB
Wa Ni Ska Tan in Cree means ‘Wake Up’ or more precisely To “Rise up’ representing a movement of First Nations and Indigenous Communities
In Manitoba, residents in the southern community of Winnipeg have benefitted from effort to harness the raw power of those Northern flowing rivers. The surging torrents of water have plowed through dams releasing countless watts of electricity for a growing populace. Lights, motors, machines and, of course, computers depend on these outlets to thrive. Dam power as the champion of ‘clean’ energy is typically recommended as one of the chief replacers of the insidious fossil fuel depots. [2]
One slight problem: the land and people situated at the other end of the hydro-power train are enduring a wide diversity of suffering and developments that have degraded communities. Flooding caused in the wake of the dams damage burial grounds, trapping trails and medicinal tracts on which Indigenous people have endured for hundreds and even thousand of years. Once upset, this complex mix of social, environmental and cultural cohesion starts to unravel adversely impacting generations to come. [3]
Enter Wa Ni Ska Tan. This group is a mix of researchers in academic institutions and community members in these affected communities who forged alliance based on respect for hydro-impacted communities, the high level research the impacts have had on nature and on Indigenous communities, and as a force for social and environmental change. [4]
The group has had annual gatherings at various locales in Manitoba. The last annual gathering took place at the University of Winnipeg from November 8 to November 10, 2019. That event included visitors not only from Manitoba First Nations, but from similar communities across Canada as well as regions around the world, including Latin America and South Asia. [5]
This episode of the Global Research News Hour hopes to delve into some of the dynamics of hydro development, not only from the direct experience of the people on the front lines, but from the role of major investors and corporations profiting in ways not spelled out in popular messaging.
In our first component, Karleen Keeper, Leslie Dysart, and Dr. Ramona Neckoway provide a preview of life in the communities of Tataskwyak Cree Nation, South Indian Lake, and Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation respectively.
In our next installment, Senator Mary Jane McCallum, one of the keynotes, expands on her beliefs of hydro-impacts aligning with other colonial initiatives such as residential schools to essentially erase the identity of Indigenous people.
Then we get perspectives from two Latin American countries: Isabel Cristina Zuleta Lopez from Colombia and Elisa Estronioli from Brazil about the impacts of hydro-power in their communities.
Finally, we get a more in depth conversation with keynote speaker Dr. Deepa Joshi about the forces operating even on the scientific level to corrupt a process of research and activist capacity initiatives springing from water-energy policy, sanitation, irrigation and other policies.
Karleen Keeper is a youth coming from Tataskwyak Cree Nation.
Leslie Dysart is from the Community Association of South Indian Lake. He also sits on the Executive Community and on the Research Steering Committee of Wa Ni Ska Tan.
Ramona Neckoway, PhD is a Professor from the University College of the North, and comes from the community of Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation. She also sits on the Executive Community and on the Research Steering Committee of Wa Ni Ska Tan.
Senator Mary Jane McCallum is a citizen of the Barren Lands First Nation in Brochet, Manitoba. She went to Guy Hill Residential School in The Pas, and then trained as a dental assistant, dental nursing, dental therapy and ultimately Doctor of Dental Medicine. She worked as a Regional Dental Officer from 1996-2000. She has spoken to vast communities about the residential school experience. She was appointed to the Senate of Canada in 2017.
Elisa Estronioli is an activist representing Brazilian Movement of Communities Affected by Dams.
Isabel Cristina Zuleta Lopez is an activist representing the Colombian collective Movimento Rios Vivos.
Deepa Joshi, PhD is a Senior Research Fellow at Coventry University. She is a feminist political ecologist whose work analyses shifts in environmental policies and how these restructure contextually complex intersections of gender, poverty, class, ethnicity and identity. She leads several bilateral projects in South and South East Asia and Africa and she currently coordinates two longitudinal projects on the themes of environmental justice and climate change in the Eastern Himalayas and in the Eastern Gangetic Plains (India, Bangladesh and Nepal).
Houve época em que a Índia vendia orgulhosamente a noção de que estabelecia uma Nova Rota da Seda só dela – a qual, partindo do Golfo de Omã para a intersecção da Ásia Central e do Sul, permitiria acesso de Irã, Afeganistão e Ásia Central ao Mar da Arábia – competindo com a Iniciativa Cinturão e Estrada (ICE) da China.
Hoje, é como se a Índia se autoesfaqueasse pelas costas.
Teerã e Nova Delhi assinaram acordo em 2016 para construir ferrovia de 628 quilômetros, do estratégico porto iraniano de Chabahar até a cidade de Zahedan, no interior, muito perto da fronteira afegã, com uma extensão crucial para Zaranj, no Afeganistão, e adiante.
Estavam envolvidas nas negociações as companhias Iranian Railways e Indian Railway Constructions Ltd. Mas nada aconteceu, devido à morosidade indiana. Assim, Teerã resolveu construir a ferrovia, fosse como fosse, com $400 milhões de dólares de seus próprios fundos e conclusão marcada para março de 2022.
Previa-se que a ferrovia viesse a ser o principal corredor de transporte ligado a substanciais investimentos indianos em Chabahar, seu porto de entrada para o Golfo de Omã, como Nova Rota da Seda alternativa, para o Afeganistão e Ásia Central.
A modernização de infraestrutura das ferrovias e estradas a partir do Afeganistão para seus vizinhos Tajiquistão e Uzbequistão seria o próximo passo.
Toda a operação estava inscrita num acordo trilateral Índia-Irã-Afeganistão assinado em 2016 em Teerã pelo Primeiro Ministro Narendra Modi, o Presidente iraniano Hassan Rouhani e o então Presidente afegão Ashraf Ghani.
As desculpas não oficiais de Nova Delhi giram em torno do medo de que o projeto fosse atacado pelos EUA, com sanções. Nova Delhi conseguiu que o governo Trump suspendesse as sanções contra Chabahar e contra a ferrovia até Zahedan. O problema foi convencer uma gama de investidores parceiros, todos aterrorizados pelo risco de sofrerem sanções.
A verdade é que toda a saga tem mais a ver com o pensamento desejante de Modi, que conta com receber tratamento preferencial, nos termos da estratégia do governo Trump para o Indo-Pacífico, que se baseia de fato num Quad (“Quarteto”) – EUA, Índia, Austrália e Japão, estrutura destinada a conter a China. Esta é a causa de Nova Delhi ter decidido cortar as importações de petróleo do Irã.
Assim, para todos os efeitos práticos, a Índia jogou o Irã debaixo do ônibus. Não é de admirar que o Irã tenha resolvido avançar por conta própria, especialmente agora que está escorado pelo “Plano Abrangente de Parceria Estratégica entre a República Islâmica do Irã e a República Popular da China” (ing. Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between I.R. Iran, P.R. China), acordo de $400 bilhões de dólares e duração de 25 anos, e que sela a parceria estratégica entre China e Irã.
Neste caso, podem ficar sob o controle chinês duas “pérolas” estratégicas no Oceano Índico, a apenas 80 quilômetros de distância uma da outra: Gwadar, no Paquistão, entroncamento chave do Corredor Econômico China-Paquistão (ing. China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, CPEC)de $60 bilhões de dólares; e Chabahar.
Até agora, Teerã nega que o porto de Chabahar venha a ser arrendado a Pequim. Mas há possibilidade real, além dos investimentos chineses numa refinaria de petróleo perto de Chabahar, e, mesmo, no longo prazo, no próprio porto, de uma ligação operacional entre Gwadar e Chabahar. Essa ligação seria complementada pelos chineses que operariam o porto de Bandar-e-Jask, no Golfo de Omã, 350 quilômetros a oeste de Chabahar e muito perto do hiperestratégico Estreito de Ormuz.
Corredores são sempre atraentes
Nem alguma divindade indiana em surto de ressaca conseguiria imaginar “estratégia” mais contraproducente para os interesses indianos, caso Nova Delhi realmente recue da decisão de cooperar com Teerã.
Consideremos o essencial: Teerã e Pequim estarão trabalhando no que, de fato, é expansão massiva do Corredor Econômico China Paquistão, com Chabahar conectado a Gwadar e a seguir à Ásia Central e ao Mar Cáspio, pelas ferrovias iranianas. Estará também ligado à Turquia e ao Mediterrâneo Oriental, via Iraque e Síria, diretamente até a União Europeia.
Esta progressão capaz de mudar o jogo acontecerá no coração de todo o processo de integração da Eurásia – unindo China, Paquistão, Irã, Turquia e, claro, a Rússia, que já está ligada ao Irã pelo Corredor de Transporte Internacional Norte-Sul (ing. International North-South Transport Corridor).
Por enquanto, dadas as reverberações potentes em múltiplas áreas – melhoramento da infraestrutura energética, reformas de portos e refinarias, construção de um corredor de conectividade, investimentos na indústria manufatureira e suprimento pesado de petróleo e gás (questão de segurança nacional para a China) – não há dúvidas de que o acordo Irã-China está mesmo, no momento, sendo minimizado por ambos os lados.
Legenda: Vista aérea do porto iraniano de Chabahar que pode mudar de patrocinador: da Índia para a China.
As razões são autoevidentes – evitar que a ira da administração Trump suba a níveis ainda mais incandescentes, dado que ambos os atores são considerados pelos EUA como “ameaças existenciais”. Mesmo assim, Mahmoud Vezi, chefe de gabinete do Presidente Rouhani, garante que o acordo final Irã-China será assinado em março de 2021.
Enquanto isso, o Corredor Econômico China-Paquistão vai de vento em popa. O que Chabahar supostamente faria para a Índia, já está a pleno vapor em Gwadar. O trânsito comercial para o Afeganistão começou há dias, com cargas a granel vindas dos Emirados Árabes Unidos. Gwadar já começou a estabelecer-se como entroncamento chave no trânsito para o Afeganistão, muito adiante de Chabahar.
O fator estratégico é essencial para Cabul. O país depende de rotas por terra a partir do Paquistão – e algumas podem ser muito inseguras – assim como de Karachi e Porto Qasim. Especialmente para o sul do Afeganistão, a ligação por terra desde Gwadar, cruzando o Baluquistão é muito mais curta e segura.
O fator estratégico é ainda mais vital para Pequim. Para a China, Chabahar não seria prioridade, porque o acesso para o Afeganistão é mais fácil via Tadjiquistão, por exemplo.
Mas a história muda completamente, quando se trata de Gwadar – que se vai convertendo, lenta, mas firmemente, no principal entroncamento da Rota da Seda Marítima, conectando a China e o Mar da Arábia, o Oriente Médio e a África. Islamabad já está recolhendo recursos robustos, em impostos e taxas de passagem.
Resumindo, é jogo de ganha-ganha, mas sempre considerando que desafios e protestos a partir do Baluquistão não vão simplesmente desaparecer, e exigem de Pequim e Islamabad gestão muito cuidadosa.
Para a Índia, o caso de Chabahar-Zahedan não é o único retrocesso recente. O Ministro de Relações Exteriores indiano admitiu recentemente que o Irã desenvolverá “sozinho” o enorme campo de gás Farzad-B no Golfo Pérsico; e que a Índia pode vir a juntar-se à República Islâmica “de forma apropriada em estágio posterior”. O mesmo tipo de “estágio posterior” aplicado por Nova Delhi para Chabahar-Zahedan.
Os direitos de produção e exploração de Farzad-B já foram garantidos há anos para a empresa estatal indiana ONGC Videsh Limitada. Mas aí, mais uma vez, nada acontece, por efeito do proverbial fantasma das sanções.
Vale lembrar que essas sanções já estavam ativadas no governo de Barack Obama. Mesmo assim, naquela época Índia e Irã pelo menos comerciavam bens por petróleo. Projetava-se que Farzad-B voltaria a operar depois da assinatura do JCPOA (chamado “Acordo do Irã”) em 2015. Mas então as sanções de Trump, outra vez, tudo congelaram.
Não é preciso ser mestre e doutor em Ciência Política para saber quem pode acabar por tomar Farzad-B: a China, especialmente depois que, ano que vem, for assinado o acordo de parceria para os próximos 25 anos.
Contra seus próprios interesses energéticos e geoestratégicos, a Índia na realidade ficou reduzida ao status de mero refém da administração Trump. O objetivo verdadeiro dessa política de dividir para reinar aplicada contra Irã e Índia é impedir que os dois países comerciem usando as respectivas moedas, deixando o EUA-dólar fora do processo, especialmente nos negócios de energia.
O grande quadro, no entanto, sempre tem a ver com o avanço da Nova Rota da Seda através da Eurásia. Com evidências crescentes de integração cada vez mais forte entre China, Irã e Paquistão, o que se vê claramente é que a Índia só permanece integrada com as próprias inconsistências.
For years now Western media and governments have maintained an almost ceaseless barrage against China over what they claim are networks of “internment camps” built and used in China’s western Xinjiang region to persecute the Uyghur ethnic minority.
These claims are a mix of half-truths, truths taken out of context, and outright fabrications and lies.
Yet the biggest lie of all is a lie of omission – hyping, exaggerating, and even fabricating stories about China’s abuse of Uyghurs – while downplaying or entirely omitting the very real terrorist problem China faces in Xinjiang.
The BBC in a 2020 article, “China Uighurs: Detained for beards, veils and internet browsing,” would claim (emphasis added):
Predominantly Muslim, the Uighurs are closer in appearance, language and culture to the peoples of Central Asia than to China’s majority ethnicity, the Han Chinese.
In recent decades the influx of millions of Han settlers into Xinjiang has led to rising ethnic tensions and a growing sense of economic exclusion among Uighurs.
Those grievances have sometimes found expression in sporadic outbreaks of violence, fuelling a cycle of increasingly harsh security responses from Beijing.
It is for this reason that the Uighurs have become the target – along with Xinjiang’s other Muslim minorities, like the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz – of the campaign of internment.
The term “sometimes found expression in sporadic outbreaks of violence” is a deliberate and spectacular understatement with the BBC itself having previously documented the grisly terrorism extremists in Xinjiang have carried out.
Xinjiang is the Epicenter of Bloody Terrorism Protected by Western Media Silence
In June 2012, six Uighurs reportedly tried to hijack a plane from Hotan to Urumqi before they were overpowered by passengers and crew.
There was bloodshed in April 2013 and in June that year, 27 people died in Shanshan county after police opened fire on what state media described as a mob armed with knives attacking local government buildings
At least 31 people were killed and more than 90 suffered injuries in May 2014 when two cars crashed through an Urumqi market and explosives were tossed into the crowd. China called it a “violent terrorist incident”.
It followed a bomb and knife attack at Urumqi’s south railway station in April, which killed three and injured 79 others.
In July, authorities said a knife-wielding gang attacked a police station and government offices in Yarkant, leaving 96 dead. The imam of China’s largest mosque, Jume Tahir, was stabbed to death days later.
In September about 50 died in blasts in Luntai county outside police stations, a market and a shop. Details of both incidents are unclear and activists have contested some accounts of incidents in state media.
Some violence has also spilled out of Xinjiang. A March stabbing spree in Kunming in Yunnan province that killed 29 people was blamed on Xinjiang separatists, as was an October 2013 incident where a car ploughed into a crowd and burst into flames in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
These are hardly “sporadic outbreaks of violence” but rather a concerted campaign of terrorism. It is terrorism that has plagued Xinjiang and wider China for years.
Also rarely mentioned or linked to China’s policies in Xinjiang is how many thousands of Uyghur extremists have travelled abroad fighting in Western proxy wars in places like Syria and who will eventually attempt to return to China.
US State Department-funded and directed Voice of America (VOA) in its article, “Analysts: Uighur Jihadis in Syria Could Pose Threat,” would admit (emphasis added):
Analysts are warning that the jihadi group Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) in northwestern Syria could pose a danger to Syria’s volatile Idlib province, where efforts continue to keep a fragile Turkey-Russia-brokered cease-fire between Syrian regime forces and the various rebel groups.
The TIP declared an Islamic emirate in Idlib in late November and has largely remained off the radar of authorities and the media thanks to its low profile. Founded in 2008 in the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang, the TIP has been one of the major extremist groups in Syria since the outbreak of the civil war in the country in 2011.
The TIP is primarily made up of Uighur Muslims from China, but in recent years it also has included other jihadi fighters within its ranks.
The TIP has claimed responsibility for the 2011 Kashgar attacks in Xinjiang killing 23 people.
Reuters would note in its article, “China envoy says no accurate figure on Uighurs fighting in Syria,” that (emphasis added):
The Syrian ambassador to China told Reuters last year that up to 5,000 Uighurs are fighting in various militant groups in Syria.
Terrorism within China and a small army of terrorists honing their skills with US cash and weapons in a proxy war against Syria eventually to return to Chinese territory is certainly justification enough for China to take serious measures against extremism in Xinjiang.
But by now downplaying or omitting the terrorist threat in Xinjiang, the BBC and the rest of the Western media are attempting to decouple current Chinese policy in Xinjiang from the very real and extensive terrorism that prompted it.
Washington’s Role in Supporting Xinjiang Extremism
Worse still is that China’s terrorism problem in Xinjiang is the direct result of US funding and support.
Not only did the US arm and train militants in Syria Uyghur extremists are fighting alongside, separatist groups like the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) who openly seek Xinjiang “independence” have literal offices in Washington DC and are funded by the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
In fact, the US NED’s grant money to subversion in China is divided into several regions with their own dedicated pages on the NED website. Xinjiang is is listed by NED as “Xinjiang/East Turkestan” – East Turkestan being the fictional country extremists seek to create.
Much of the extremism in Xinjiang is also linked to extensive support from US ally Saudi Arabia and NATO member Turkey.
While the US funds political subversion and Turkey aids Uyghur extremists fighting in Syrian territory, US ally Saudi Arabia funnels money and resources into Xinjiang itself to radicalize Muslim communities with Riyadh’s politically-motivated and extremist Salafism.
Salafism is an ultra-conservative school of thought within Sunni Islam, espousing a way of life and prayer that harks back to the 6th century, when Muhammad was alive. Islamic State militants are Salafi, many Saudi Arabian clerics are Salafi, and so are many Chinese Muslims living in Linxia. They pray at their own mosques and wear Saudi-style kaffiyehs.
The article also noted (emphasis added):
Experts say that in recent years, Chinese authorities have put Salafis under constant surveillance, closed several Salafi religious schools and detained a prominent Salafi cleric. A once close-knit relationship between Chinese Salafis and Saudi patrons has grown thorny and complex.
And that:
…Saudi preachers and organizations began traveling to China. Some of them bore gifts: training programs for clerics, Korans for distribution, funding for new “Islamic institutes” and mosques.
This invasive radicalism transplanted into Xinjiang by the US and its Saudi allies has translated directly into real violence – a fact repeatedly omitted or buried in today’s coverage of Xinjiang and left out of US and European condemnations of China for its policies there.
The US and Europe has waged a 20 year “war on terror,” invading entire nations under false pretexts, killing hundreds of thousands, displacing tens of millions, carrying out systematic torture, and building a global-spanning surveillance network – all while more covertly arming and funding real terrorism in places like Libya, Syria, and even in China’s Xinjiang.
All of this has been done with the help of a complicit Western media bending truths or entirely fabricating lies – but also by omitting truth.
It should then come as no surprise that US and European media has chosen to lie about China’s current policies to deal with what is clearly a real and dangerous terrorism problem in Xinjiang.
But the world can choose not to believe these lies.
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Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Was Putin critic Alexey Navalny’s illness aboard a flight to Moscow a naturally occurring metabolic disorder as diagnosed by Russian doctors or something more sinister?
If the latter, was the incident manufactured to blame Russia for what no motive or evidence indicates it had anything to do with.
What happened to Navalny is reminiscent of the elaborate March 2018 father and daughter Sergey and Yulia novichok nerve agent poisoning hoax — an anti-Russia false flag.
Whatever caused their reported illness wasn’t from a reported military-grade nerve agent — the most toxic of known chemical substances, exposure causing death in minutes.
The same holds for Navalny. If poisoned by a novichok nerve agent before boarding a flight to Moscow, he’d have died in the airport terminal.
Others he came in contact with would have been contaminated, becoming seriously ill and perishing.
None of the above happened, and after two weeks since falling ill, Navalny is hospitalized at Berlin’s Charite hospital in a medically induced coma — alive, not dead.
When taken to Omsk for treatment, 44 hours of heroic efforts by Russian doctors saved his life.
In response to Germany saying that toxicologists in the country identified novichok traces in Navalny’s system, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the following:
“Instead of a thorough investigation and scrupulous joint work with the aim of obtaining authentic results, our partners prefer to make more public statements without presenting any facts,” adding:
“All this is another (Russophobic) information campaign.”
“What is most important and sad…is that our partners openly neglect — today it was demonstrated very clearly — the available mechanisms of legal interaction for obtaining genuine results.”
“The German government turned the microphone on and said what it said.”
“As far as we understand, the target audience of (Wednesday’s) statements were the European Union and NATO.”
“The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons was mentioned for some reason as well.”
“All this was done instead of what should have been done first thing — a reply to the query from the Russian Prosecutor-General’s Office.”
Last Thursday, Germany’s Justice Ministry received a request from Russia for legal assistance in getting to the bottom of what happened to Navalny.
Earlier this week, Moscow’s prosecutor general’s office asked German doctors to share their clinical findings on Navalny with their Russian counterparts.
In Omsk, they found no traces of poison or other toxins in his blood or urine, saying his illness was caused by abnormally low glucose in his blood because of a metabolic imbalance.
Putin critic Navalny is a minor irritant with scant public support.
Nothing remotely suggests that Russia would want him eliminated or otherwise harmed. No plausible motive exists.
If what happened to Navalny wasn’t natural, anti-Russia elements most likely were involved — a false flag similar to what harmed the Skripals in March 2018.
A the time, not a shred of evidence suggested Russian involvement, the same highly likely true about Navalny.
US-led Russophobes have everything to gain from his illness if determined to be from foul play, Moscow the loser under this scenario.
Based on findings by Russian doctors, his illness appears natural, but anti-Russia foul play can’t be ruled out until a thorough joint investigation is undertaken by Russian and German experts.
Until completed and findings made public, conclusions drawn by German sources are premature.
They’re highly suspicious for claiming that Navalny was poisoned by a novichok nerve agent that would have killed him — and others he came in contact with — in minutes if exposed to the toxin.
A Final Comment
Belarusian President Lukashenko claimed his government intercepted a phone call between Berlin and Warsaw, showing that Angela Merkel’s claim that Navalny was poisoned by a novichok nerve agent, what she called “attempted murder,” was false.
According to Sputnik News, “Telegram channel Pul Pervogo (aired) a video (of) Lukashenko” sharing the above information with Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin during a meeting in Minsk, the Belarusian president saying the following:
“I have to tell you that yesterday or the day before yesterday before Merkel made a statement (saying) they wanted to silence Navalny, we intercepted a conversation.”
“As far as we understand, it’s Warsaw talking with Berlin — two persons on the line.”
“Our radar intelligence intercepted it…There was no poisoning of Navalny.”
“The specialists prepared facts and maybe statements (prepared) for Merkel…”
“They did it to make sure that Putin would not interfere in Belarusian affairs.”
Lukashenko added that his government will send the intercepted recording to Russia’s Federal Security Service for further analysis.
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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.”
I just got home from back surgery where I spent 4 days in the hospital to start the recovery process. I was able to have some really good conversations with the nurses that were caring for me.
First off, the hospital was empty (in Alaska).
I asked one nurse if I could ask a few questions that I just needed answers for.
First, ‘Do masks do anything to stop a virus?” She looked at me shocked, then said “no, they don’t do anything, the N95 does stop a percentage of a virus when you wear one, but overall they don’t do a thing”.
So I asked why are there so many mandates then? We are we being bombarded with wearing a mask to save grandma?
At this time another nurse said,
“Well, when this all started we were pressured to report everyone who was admitted into the hospital as a covid case. We were also told that we were to report every death as a covid death, and to do our best to get people on a ventilator, even though we knew that it seemed to actually make things worse for the patient.”
Bottom line, most of them refused, and several were fired.
I asked what they suggested was the best way to fight the virus, and was told, the same things you would do to fight the flu.
It was pretty intense, and they were very upset when they started talking about it. Upset as in mad.
I didn’t wear a mask while I was there and was only asked one time if I would put one on when a certain nurse was coming to that section of the hospital to generally check on patients. So, I did, as it seemed important to the people I was working with. No sense in getting them in trouble. When that person left, I took it back off.
There was more conversation, including their thoughts on schools requiring masks, kids committing suicide “in one month more than we’ve had in a year”.
They had strong opinions on lockdowns when “the very thing we need to fight a virus is fresh air and the vitamin D we get from sunlight.”
One fun thing, when I was being wheeled through the hospital, the nurse stopped a few times to introduce me to other nurses working there, and she would simply say, “Hey so and so, I want you to meet Joshua, he thinks like we do”.
So there is a resistance in some of these hospitals!
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For 24 straight weeks, over a million working-age Americans applied for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits.
What’s been going on since March is unprecedented in US history, likely more of the same ahead and perhaps the worst of times to come.
Based on how economic data were calculated pre-1990, US unemployment is around 30%, not the falsely reported 9.8% BLS figure.
At a time of unprecedented economic collapse, near-unprecedented unemployment off its April low, growing food insecurity, millions of households that lost health insurance, the risk of mass evictions, and overall human deprivation, the stock market reached new highs until pulling back sharply on Thursday.
According to a Bloomberg News estimate, “more than 50 million” Americans will experience “hunger” by yearend — in the world’s richest country run by a ruling class that’s indifferent toward public health and welfare.
Well over 60 million Americans filed initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits, hundreds of thousands more swelling their ranks weekly with no near-term end to what’s going on.
During my formal working life spanning four decades from 1960 through the 1990s that included good and bad economic times, never once did I imagine needing unemployment benefits to get by.
The thought never entered my mind nor did the need arise.
Today it’s the stark reality for growing millions in the country at a time of economic collapse and no renewal of $600 weekly benefits for the unemployed that expired at end of July.
On Thursday, a fake news Labor Department report claimed 881,000 new UI applications were processed — according to its new seasonally adjusted methodology.
According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), “1.6 million workers applied for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits” last week, using non-seasonally adjusted raw data that most accurately reflects reality.
Besides 881,000 applying for state UI, another 759,000 “applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA),” EPI explained.
UI claims over the last seven days exceeded the previous week as mass layoffs continue.
EPI noted that for 24 straight weeks, “total initial (UI) claims were far greater than the worst week of the (2008-09) Great Recession.”
This year, at least 12 million US households also lost health insurance coverage along with employment.
EPI also noted that claims of state UI filings dropping by 130,000 week-over-week — from 1.01 million to 881,000 — are “wrong because it’s comparing two seasonally adjusted numbers that were calculated using two different methods (the old way and the new way).”
Comparing apples to apples, new state UI claims rose week-over-week — “using not seasonally adjusted data.”
Since Republicans let $600 in weekly UI benefits expire at the end of July, millions of jobless Americans have been hard-pressed to get by.
EPI estimates that unemployed US workers still getting state benefits “are typically (receiving) around 40% of their pre-virus earnings,” adding:
“It goes without saying that most folks can’t exist on 40% of prior earnings without experiencing a sharp drop in living standards and enormous pain.”
It’s why food insecurity exploded higher in the US and mass evictions loom because of inadequate financial resources to pay rent or service mortgages.
Trump’s executive order that authorized $300 or $400 in weekly benefits to eligible recipients was an exercise in mass deception.
EPI explained that the benefit is only available to limited numbers of jobless Americans and only “for a few weeks,” adding:
His order’s “main impact was to divert attention from the desperate need for the real relief that can only come through legislation.”
“Congress must act, but Republicans in the Senate are blocking progress.”
Voting the bums out in November will assure news bums replacing them, continuity certain like after all farcical US elections.
The state of the nation for the vast majority of its people has never been more dismal with no relief in prospect likely any time soon.
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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.”
On March 21, 1933, the Nazi-controlled Reichstag passed a law making it a crime to speak out against the government. The “Regulations of the Reich President for Defense from Treacherous Attacks against the Government of the National Uprising” made even the slightest expression of dissent from Nazi ideology a criminal offense.
This new law, among other totalitarian measures, was part of a process known as Gleichschaltung … the process of achieving rigid and total ideological coordination and uniformity in politics, culture, and private communication by forcibly repressing (or eliminating) independence and freedom of thought and expression.
GloboCap hasn’t done anything that heavy-handed in the course of rolling out the New Normal totalitarianism, but that’s mainly because they do not have to. When you control the vast majority of the global corporate media, you don’t need to pass a lot of ham-fisted laws banning all dissent from your totalitarian ideology. This isn’t the 1930s, after all. Over the last ninety years, the arts of propaganda, disinformation, and perception management have advanced to a point that even Goebbels couldn’t have imagined.
In Berlin, in the days leading up to the protests, government officials and corporate media propagandists did what officials and propagandists do … they relentlessly repeated their official narrative; namely, that anyone protesting the New Normal (or doubting the official Coronavirus narrative) is a “violent neo-Nazi extremist,” or “conspiracy theorist,” or some other form of existential “threat to democracy.”
This official narrative was originally disseminated following the August 1 protest in Berlin, the scale of which took the authorities by surprise. Tens or hundreds of thousands of people (depending on whose narrative you believe) gathered in the city to protest the New Normal and its increasingly absurd “emergency measures.” The German media, CNN, The New York Times, and other “respectable news outlets” uniformly condemned them as “neo-Nazis,” or insinuated that they were “neo-Nazi-sympathizers.”
Despite the finding of Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution that only “individual members of far-right-groups” had taken part in the August 1 protest, and that “far-right extremists had no formative influence on the demos,” both the German and international corporate media pumped out story after story about the ultra-violent neo-Nazi hordes that were about to descend on Berlin, again!
Der Tagespiegel, a major German newspaper, reported that the demo was being “infiltrated by Nazis.”
Die Tagesschau, the German BBC, shrieked that “neo-Nazis are mobilizing!” RBB, another public broadcaster, reported that the “traveling circus of Corona-deniers” was heading straight for the city! (N.B. Any reference to any kind of “deniers” in Germany evokes Holocaust deniers; i.e., Nazis).
Ver.di, the German journalists union, warned their members that they were expecting reporters to suffer “double-digit physical attacks.” And these are just a few of countless examples.
The American and UK corporate media also did their Gleichschaltung duty, disseminating the official “Nazis are Coming!” narrative. (I don’t need to do the citations, do I?) And, of course, Antifa joined in the chorus.
On Wednesday, three days before the demo, having successfully whipped the New Normal masses up into a state of wide-eyed panic over the imminent neo-Nazi invasion, the Berlin government banned the protests. The New Normal masses celebrated. A few concerns about … you know, democracy, were perfunctorily voiced, but they were quickly silenced when Interior Senator Andreas Geisel explained that abrogating the people’s constitutional right to freedom of assembly, and freedom of speech, and to petition their government, was not in any way a totalitarian act, but was purely a matter of “protecting the public health.”
For good measure, Geisel also added:
I’m not willing to accept a second time that Berlin is being abused as a stage for Corona deniers, Reichsbürger, and right-wing extremists.
The night before the demo, an administrative court overturned the protest ban. It didn’t really matter, as the authorities knew they couldn’t stop the demo in any event. Banning the protest was just part of the show (and the Gleichschaltung process the show was part of), meant to emphasize the existential threat posed by the bloodthirsty Nazi legion that was on its way to sack the city.
On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of protesters (the overwhelming majority of whom were not neo-Nazis, or Nazi-sympathizers, or any other kind of monsters) poured into the streets of central Berlin. The police surrounded them, trapping them on the avenues, closed off the side streets so they couldn’t get out, and, once again, tried to ban the protest on the grounds that they weren’t “social distancing.” Everyone sat down in the street. Cops stalked around in their masks and body armor, sweating heavily, and occasionally pushing people. Lawyers made phone calls. It was very hot. This went on for quite a while.
Eventually, the court instructed the police to let the demonstration go ahead. And the rest is history … except that it isn’t. According to the official narrative, there were no hundreds of thousands of protesters. There were “tens of thousands,” and they were all “neo-Nazis,” and “Nazi-sympathizers,” and “Coronavirus deniers,” and “stark-raving mad conspiracy theorists.” (Full disclosure: I was there with them, and, yes, indeed, there were some neo-Nazis among the hundreds of thousands in the streets, but, just like at the August 1 protest, these far-right boneheads were a small minority and not at all welcomed by the majority of the participants, no more than the Trotskyists and anti-Semites were welcomed at the 2003 anti-war protests before the US invasion of Iraq, although, yes, they were definitely there.)
In any event, hundreds of thousands of protesters made their way down Unter den Linden, through the iconic Brandenburg Gate, and onward to the main demonstration, filling the Straße des 17. Juni from the Brandenburg Gate to the Siegessäule. By now, I assume you’ve seen the pictures. Or maybe you haven’t. It’s actually fairly hard to find any photos in the media that give you any real perspective.
And, finally, we have come to the main event … which, of course, was not this enormous gathering of totally non-violent, non-Nazi people peacefully protesting the New Normal totalitarianism, nor the speech of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. No, the “story,” the official main event, was the “Storming of the Reichstag building by Nazis.”
I’ll let Mathias Bröckers handle this part. Here’s an excerpt from his recent blog post:
Storming of Reichstag Averted – Democracy Saved!
How do you manage to delegitimize a peaceful mass protest against the corona measures in such a way that the media report not about a protest by hundreds of thousands, but about the “storming” of the Reichstag?
Quite simply: you approve an application by a group of Reichsbürger to assemble directly in front of the Reichstag (N.B. the official applicant for this assembly was Ex-NPD-member Rüdiger Hoffmann) and station only three policemen in front of the west entrance despite the large police presence everywhere in the area. Then you let a crazy Q-Anon-chick scream into the microphone that “Donald Trump has declared freedom,” that “the police have laid down their weapons,” and that “everyone should now occupy the steps of the Reichstag,” and, presto, you have the images you need to dominate the coverage … a mob of a few dozen people with Reichsbürger flags “storming the Reichstag.”
Never mind the fact that the massive demonstration at the Siegesäule (i.e., Victory Column) organized by Querdenken 711 had absolutely nothing to do with this incident, which was carried out by a right-wing-extremist splinter group. The demonstration had already been delegitimized as a protest staged by Reichsbürger extremists and tin-foil-hat lunatics in the days leading up to it, and now the visual confirmation was provided.
In a video of the lead-up to the “Reichstag storming” incident, Tamara K., a natural health practitioner, and pretty obviously a far-right wacko, is the “crazy Q-Anon-chick” in question. You can clearly hear her advising the crowd that “there are no more police here,” which the video confirms.
Or rather, the few police that were there had left the building completely unguarded and pulled back to well behind this assembly of obviously far-right-extremist-type clowns (who, remember, had been granted official permission to stage their assembly at the steps of the Reichstag). This, despite the days and weeks of warnings of a “neo-Nazi invasion” from government officials and the corporate media.
Anyway, once the Reichstag steps were thoroughly occupied by far-right loonies and the Reichsflagge were in the right positions (approximately four minutes into the video), the police finally arrived to mount their defense. It was touch-and-go there for a while, but at the end of the day, democracy triumphed. Naturally, there were plenty of journalists on hand to capture this historic drama and broadcast it all around the world.
And there you have it, the official narrative, which Saskia Esken, SPD co-leader, succinctly squeezed into a tweet:
Tens of thousands of far-right radicals, Reichsbürger, QAnon followers, Holocaust deniers, anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists, and esoterics, who declare the media, science, and politicians ‘guilty’ and openly call for the storming of the Reichstag and a coup d’état. That is the 29 August Berlin demonstration.
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C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing and Broadway Play Publishing, Inc. His dystopian novel, Zone 23, is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. Volume I of his Consent Factory Essays is published by Consent Factory Publishing, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amalgamated Content, Inc. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org.
The COVID pandemic and economic collapse have highlighted the race and class inequalities in our society. With more than 35 million jobs lost, millions have lost their employer-connected health insurance in the middle of a pandemic. COVID-19 deaths are disproportionately afflicting working-class people, particularly Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people. The case for universal healthcare through a publicly-funded Medicare for All has never been stronger.
In a statement this week, WHO said two children in Sudan — one from South Darfur state and the other from Gedarif state, close to the border with Ethiopia and Eritrea — were paralyzed in March and April. Both had been recently vaccinated against polio. WHO said initial outbreak investigations show the cases are linked to an ongoing vaccine-derived outbreak in Chad that was first detected last year and is now spreading in Chad and Cameroon.
With Sino-U.S. tensions escalating over several security and economic issues, fears are mounting in the financial markets that China may massively sell U.S. government debt it holds as a weapon to choke the world’s biggest economy.
If Beijing, which owns more than $1 trillion worth of U.S. Treasury bonds, really takes such action, that would push down debt prices and drive up interest rates in the United States, stifling investment and consumer spending at home.
Before juxtaposing the U.S. and alternative responses to the corona virus’s economic effects, I would like to step back in time to show how the pandemic has revealed a deep underlying problem. We are seeing the consequences of Western societies painting themselves into a debt corner by their creditor-oriented philosophy of law. Neoliberal anti-government (or more accurately, anti-democratic) ideology has centralized social planning and state power in “the market,” meaning specifically the financial market on Wall Street and in other financial centers.
Millions of people have lost their jobs, and their lifelong savings. In developing countries, poverty and despair prevail. We are told the it is V the Virus which is responsible for the wave of bankruptcies and unemployment.
The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provides a pretext and justification to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to precipitate the entire World into a spiral of mass unemployment, bankruptcy and extreme poverty.
This large exercise called “Allied Sky” – said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg – demonstrates “the powerful commitment of the United States to the Allies and confirms that we are able to deter aggression.” The allusion to “Russian aggression” in Europe is evident.
The B-52s, that were transferred on August 22 from North Dakota Minot Air Base to Fairford in Great Britain, are not old Cold War planes used only for parades. They have been continuously modernized, and retain their role as long-range strategic bombers. Now they are further enhanced.
Can you help us keep up the work we do? Namely, bring you the important news overlooked or censored by the mainstream media and fight the corporate and government propaganda, the purpose of which is, more than ever, to “fabricate consent” and advocate war for profit.
We thank all the readers who have contributed to our work by making donations or becoming members.
If you have the means to make a small or substantial donation to contribute to our fight for truth, peace and justice around the world, your gesture would be much appreciated.
The following article was first published by Global Research 17 years ago on the 9th of September 2006, in the context of the 2006 commemoration of the tragic event of September 2001. We are now commemorating the 22nd anniversary of 9/11. May the Truth Prevail.
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“Going after bin Laden” has served to sustain the legend of the “world’s most wanted terrorist”, who “haunts Americans and millions of others around the world.”
Donald Rumsfeld has repeatedly claimed that the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden remain unknown: “It is like looking for a needle in a stack of hay”.
In November 2001, US B-52 bombers carpet bombed a network of caves in the Tora Bora mountains of eastern Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden and his followers were allegedly hiding. These caves were described as “Osama’s last stronghold”.
CIA “intelligence analysts” subsequently concluded that Osama had escaped from his Tora Bora cave in the first week of December 2001. And in January 2002, the Pentagon launched a Worldwide search for Osama and his top lieutenants, beyond the borders of Afghanistan. This operation, referred to by Secretary of State Colin Powell as a “hot pursuit”, was carried out with the support of the “international community” and America’s European allies. US intelligence authorities confirmed, in this regard, that
“while al Qaeda has been significantly shattered, … the most wanted man – bin Laden himself remains one step ahead of the United States, with the core of his worldwide terror network still in place. (Global News Wire – Asia Africa Intelligence Wire, InfoProd, January 20, 2002)
For the last five years, the US military and intelligence apparatus (at considerable expense to US taxpayers) has been “searching for Osama”.
A CIA unit with a multimillion dollar budget was set up, with a mandate to find Osama. This unit was apparently disbanded in 2005. “Intelligence experts agree”, he is hiding in a remote area of Pakistan, but “we cannot find him”:
“Most intelligence analysts are convinced that Osama bin Laden is somewhere on the Afghan-Pakistan border. Lately, it has been said that he’s probably in the vicinity of the a 7700m Hindu Kush peak Tirich Mir in the tribal Chitral area of northwest Pakistan.” Hobart Mercury (Australia), September 9, 2006)
President Bush has repeatedly promised to “smoke him out” of his cave, capture him dead or alive, if necessary through ground assaults or missile strikes. According to a recent statement by president Bush, Osama is hiding in a remote area of Pakistan which “is extremely mountainous and very inaccessible, … with high mountains between 9,000 to 15,000 feet high….”. We cannot get him, because, according to the president, there is no communications infrastructure, which would enable us to effectively go after him. (quoted in Balochistan Times, 23 April 2006)
The pursuit of Osama has become a highly ritualized process which feeds the news chain on a daily basis. It is not only part of the media disinformation campaign, it also provides a justification for the arbitrary arrest, detention and torture of numerous “suspects”, “enemy combatants” and “accomplices”, who allegedly might be aware of Osama’s whereabouts. And that information is of course vital to “the security of Americans”.
The search for Osama serves both military and political objectives. The Democrats and Republicans compete in their resolve to weed out “islamic terrorism”.
The Path to 9/11, a five-hour ABC series on “the search for Osama” –which makes its debut on the 10th and 11th of September to marks the fifth anniversary of the attacks– casually accuses Bill Clinton of having been “too busy with the Monica Lewinsky scandal to fight terrorism.” The message of the movie is that the Democrats neglected the “war on terrorism”.
The fact of the matter is that every single administration, since Jimmy Carter have supported and financed the “Islamic terror” network, created during the Carter administration at the outset of the Soviet-Afghan war. (See Michel Chossudovsky, Who is Osama bin Laden, 12 September 2001). al Qaeda is a instrument of US intelligence: a US sponsored intelligence asset.
Where was Osama on Septembers 11?
There is evidence that the whereabouts of Osama were known to the Bush Administration.
On September 10. 2001, “Enemy Number One” was in a Pakistani military hospital in Rawalpindi, courtesy of America’s indefectible ally Pakistan, as confirmed by a report of Dan Rather, CBS News. (See our October 2003 article on this issue)
He could have been arrested at short notice which would have “saved us a lot of trouble”, but then we would not have had an Osama Legend, which has fed the news chain as well as George W’s speeches in the course of the last five years.
According to Dan Rather, CBS, Bin Laden was hospitalized in Rawalpindi. one day before the 9/11 attacks, on September 10, 2001.
CBS Video with Dan Rather. Barry Petersen Reporting from Rawalpindi
“Pakistan. Pakistan’s Military Intelligence (ISI) told CBS that bin Laden had received dialysis treatment in Rawalpindi, at Pak Army’s headquarters.
DAN RATHER, CBS ANCHOR: As the United states and its allies in the war on terrorism press the hunt for Osama bin Laden, CBS News has exclusive information tonight about where bin Laden was and what he was doing in the last hours before his followers struck the United States September 11.
This is the result of hard-nosed investigative reporting by a team of CBS news journalists, and by one of the best foreign correspondents in the business, CBS`s Barry Petersen. Here is his report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BARRY PETERSEN, CBS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Everyone remembers what happened on September 11. Here`s the story of what may have happened the night before. It is a tale as twisted as the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
CBS News has been told that the night before the September 11 terrorist attack, Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan. He was getting medical treatment with the support of the very military that days later pledged its backing for the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan.
Pakistan intelligence sources tell CBS News that bin Laden was spirited into this military hospital in Rawalpindi for kidney dialysis treatment. On that night, says this medical worker who wanted her identity protected, they moved out all the regular staff in the urology department and sent in a secret team to replace them. She says it was treatment for a very special person. The special team was obviously up to no good.
“The military had him surrounded,” says this hospital employee who also wanted his identity masked, “and I saw the mysterious patient helped out of a car. Since that time,” he says, “I have seen many pictures of the man. He is the man we know as Osama bin Laden. I also heard two army officers talking to each other. They were saying that Osama bin Laden had to be watched carefully and looked after.” Those who know bin Laden say he suffers from numerous ailments, back and stomach problems. Ahmed Rashid, who has written extensively on the Taliban, says the military was often there to help before 9/11.
(…)
PETERSEN (on camera): Doctors at the hospital told CBS News there was nothing special about that night, but they refused our request to see any records. Government officials tonight denied that bin Laden had any medical treatment on that night.
(voice-over): But it was Pakistan’s President Musharraf who said in public what many suspected, that bin Laden suffers from kidney disease, saying he thinks bin Laden may be near death. His evidence, watching this most recent video, showing a pale and haggard bin Laden, his left hand never moving. Bush administration officials admit they don`t know if bin Laden is sick or even dead.
DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: With respect to the issue of Osama bin Laden`s health, I just am — don`t have any knowledge.
PETERSEN: The United States has no way of knowing who in Pakistan`s military or intelligence supported the Taliban or Osama bin Laden maybe up to the night before 9/11 by arranging dialysis to keep him alive. So the United States may not know if those same people might help him again perhaps to freedom.
Barry Petersen, CBS News, Islamabad.
(END VIDEOTAPE) END
(CBS News, 28 January 2002 emphasis added, the complete transcript of CBS report sis contained in annex to this article)
It should be noted, that the hospital is directly under the jurisdiction of the Pakistani Armed Forces, which has close links to the Pentagon. U.S. military advisers based in Rawalpindi. work closely with the Pakistani Armed Forces. Again, no attempt was made to arrest America’s best known fugitive, but then maybe bin Laden was serving another “better purpose”. Rumsfeld claimed at the time that he had no knowledge regarding Osama’s health. (CBS News, 28 January 2002)
The CBS report is a crucial piece of information in our understanding of 9/11.
It refutes the administration’s claim that the whereabouts of bin Laden are unknown. It points to a Pakistan connection, it suggests a cover-up at the highest levels of the Bush administration.
Dan Rather and Barry Petersen fail to draw the implications of their January 2002 report. They suggest that the US had been deliberately misled by Pakistani intelligence officials. They fail to ask the question:
Why does the US administration state that they cannot find Osama?
If they are to stand by their report, the conclusion is obvious. The administration is lying. Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts were known.
If the CBS report is accurate and Osama had indeed been admitted to the Pakistani military hospital on September 10, courtesy of America’s ally, he was either still in hospital in Rawalpindi on the 11th of September, when the attacks occurred or had been released from the hospital within the last hours before the attacks.
In other words, Osama’s whereabouts were known to US officials on the morning of September 12, when Secretary of State Colin Powell initiated negotiations with Pakistan, with a view to arresting and extraditing bin Laden. These negotiations, led by General Mahmoud Ahmad, head of Pakistan’s military intelligence, on behalf of the government of President Pervez Musharraf, took place on the 12th and 13th of September in Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage’s office.
He could have been arrested at short notice on September 10th, 2001. But then we would not have been privileged to five years of Osama related media stories. The Bush administration desperately needs the fiction of an “outside enemy of America”.
Known and documented Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda is a construct of the US intelligence apparatus. His essential function is to give a face to the “war on terrorism”. The image must be vivid.
According to the White house, “The greatest threat to us is this ideology of violent extremism, and its greatest public proponent is Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden remains the number one target, in terms of our efforts, but he’s not the only target.” Recent Statement of White House Assistant for Homeland Security Frances Townsend, 5 September 2006).
The national security doctrine rests on the fiction of Islamic terrorists, led by Osama who are portrayed as a “threat to the civilized World”. In the words of President Bush, “Bin Laden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions as clear as Lenin and Hitler before them. The question is will we listen? Will we pay attention to what these evil men say? We are on the offensive. We will not rest. We will not retreat. And we will not withdraw from the fight until this threat to civilization has been removed.” (quoted by CNN, September 5, 2006)
The “hot pursuit” of Osama in the rugged mountainous areas of Pakistan must continue, because without Osama, referred to ad nauseam in news reports and official statements, the fragile legitimacy of the Bush administration collapses like a deck of cards.
Moreover, the search for Osama protects the real architects of the 911 attacks. While there is no evidence that Al Qaeda was behind the 911 attacks, as revealed by nuerous studies and documents, there is mounting evidence of complicity and coverup at the highest levels of the State, Military and intelligence apparatus.
The continued arrest of alleged 911 accomplices and suspects has nothing to do with “national security”. It creates the illusion that Arabs and Muslims are behind the terror plots, while shunting the conduct of a real criminal investigation into the 911 attacks. And what were dealing with is the criminalization of the upper echelons of State.
Michel Chossudovsky is the author of the international best America’s “War on Terrorism” Global Research, 2005. He is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Center for Research on Globalization.
Note: Readers are welcome to cross-post this article with a view to spreading the word and warning people of the dangers of a broader Middle East war. Please indicate the source and copyright note.
DAN RATHER, CBS ANCHOR: As the United states and its allies in the war on terrorism press the hunt for Osama bin Laden, CBS News has exclusive information tonight about where bin Laden was and what he was doing in the last hours before his followers struck the United States September 11.
This is the result of hard-nosed investigative reporting by a team of CBS news journalists, and by one of the best foreign correspondents in the business, CBS`s Barry Petersen. Here is his report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BARRY PETERSEN, CBS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Everyone remembers what happened on September 11. Here`s the story of what may have happened the night before. It is a tale as twisted as the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
CBS News has been told that the night before the September 11 terrorist attack, Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan. He was getting medical treatment with the support of the very military that days later pledged its backing for the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan.
Pakistan intelligence sources tell CBS News that bin Laden was spirited into this military hospital in Rawalpindi for kidney dialysis treatment. On that night, says this medical worker who wanted her identity protected, they moved out all the regular staff in the urology department and sent in a secret team to replace them. She says it was treatment for a very special person. The special team was obviously up to no good.
“The military had him surrounded,” says this hospital employee who also wanted his identity masked, “and I saw the mysterious patient helped out of a car. Since that time,” he says, “I have seen many pictures of the man. He is the man we know as Osama bin Laden. I also heard two army officers talking to each other. They were saying that Osama bin Laden had to be watched carefully and looked after.” Those who know bin Laden say he suffers from numerous ailments, back and stomach problems. Ahmed Rashid, who has written extensively on the Taliban, says the military was often there to help before 9/11.
AHMED RASHID, TALIBAN EXPERT: There were reports that Pakistani intelligence had helped the Taliban buy dialysis machines. And the rumor was that these were wanted for Osama bin Laden.
PETERSEN (on camera): Doctors at the hospital told CBS News there was nothing special about that night, but they refused our request to see any records. Government officials tonight denied that bin Laden had any medical treatment on that night.
(voice-over): But it was Pakistan`s President Musharraf who said in public what many suspected, that bin Laden suffers from kidney disease, saying he thinks bin Laden may be near death. His evidence, watching this most recent video, showing a pale and haggard bin Laden, his left hand never moving. Bush administration officials admit they don`t know if bin Laden is sick or even dead.
DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: With respect to the issue of Osama bin Laden`s health, I just am — don`t have any knowledge.
PETERSEN: The United States has no way of knowing who in Pakistan`s military or intelligence supported the Taliban or Osama bin Laden maybe up to the night before 9/11 by arranging dialysis to keep him alive. So the United States may not know if those same people might help him again perhaps to freedom.
“They military had him surrounded. I have seen many pictures of the man. He is the man we know as Osama bin Laden.” Hospital employee
(CBS) Everyone remembers what happened on Sept. 11 and, reports CBS News Correspondent Barry Petersen, here’s the story of what may have happened the night before.
In a tale as twisted as the hunt for Osama bin Laden, CBS Evening News has been told that the night before the Sept. 11 terrorists attack, Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan. He was getting medical treatment with the support of the very military that days later pledged its backing for the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan.
Pakistan intelligence sources tell CBS News that bin Laden was spirited into a military hospital in Rawalpindi for kidney dialysis treatment.
“On that night,” said a medical worker who wanted her identity protected, “they moved out all the regular staff in the urology department and sent in a secret team to replace them.” She said it was treatment for a very special person and “the special team was obviously up to no good.”
“They military had him surrounded,” said a hospital employee who also wanted his identity masked, “and I saw the mysterious patient helped out of a car. Since that time,” he said, “I have seen many pictures of the man. He is the man we know as Osama bin Laden. I also heard two army officers talking to each other. They were saying that Osama bin Laden had to be watched carefully and looked after.”
Those who know bin Laden say he suffers from numerous ailments — back and stomach problems.
Ahmed Rashid, who has written extensively on the Taliban, said the military was often there to help before Sept. 11.
“There were reports that Pakistan intelligence had helped the Taliban buy dialysis machines and the rumor was that these were for wanted for Osama bin Laden,” said Rashid.
Doctors at the hospital told CBS News there was nothing special about that night, but they declined our request to see any records. Government officials reached Monday night denied that bin Laden received any medical treatment that night.
A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday the United States has seen nothing to substantiate the report.
It was Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf who said in public what many suspected: that bin Laden suffers from kidney disease, saying he thinks bin Laden may be near death.
His evidence — watching the most recent video, showing a pale and haggard bin Laden, his left hand never moving. Bush administration officials admit they don’t know if bin Laden is sick or even dead.
“With respect to the issue of Osama bin Laden’s health, I just am…don’t have any knowledge,” said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
The U.S. has no way of knowing who in Pakistan’s military or intelligence supported the Taliban or Osama bin Lade, maybe up to the night before Sept. 11 by arranging dialysis to keep him alive. So the U.S. may not know if those same people might help him again — perhaps to freedom.
Nineteen years ago next week, people in the United States got jolted out of their complacency and sense of security when two airplanes struck the Twin Towers, resulting in the collapse of those buildings, the deaths of nearly 3000 innocents, and the start of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT).
The ‘new normal’ was ushered in on September 11, 2001. Americans, suddenly realizing how vulnerable they were to attack from this outside enemy, backed their president’s plan to reek vengeance on the ‘evildoers’ who ‘hate us for our freedoms.’ Americans also seemed to invite the ‘necessary’ steps of enhancing state surveillance powers, and liberty undermining ‘anti-terrorism’ measures like the PATRIOT Act as a safeguard against the terrorist menace lurking under their beds.
But a skepticism about the official story began to emerge as President Bush and his administration began building the case for the Global War on Terrorism. Questions about insider trading in the stocks belonging to the airlines of the hijacked aircraft, Osama Bin Laden’s documented links with US Intelligence, the failure to scramble military aircraft to intercept the hijacked planes, and the unusually fast collapses of the World Trade Centre towers all provoked theories that the 9/11 attacks constituted a ‘false flag’ or ‘inside job.’
“We must speak the truth about terror. Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th; malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists, themselves, away from the guilty.” – US President George W Bush (November 10, 2001)
Authorities appear to have closed the books on all such inquiries following the release of the Official 9/11 Commission Report in 2004, but stubborn researchers and activists have continued to question and challenge the pre-text of the war Vice President Dick Cheney said “will not end in our lifetimes.”
Today, we live in an era when the majority of post secondary students remember 9/11 vaguely, if at all.
The general public is greeted to a host of other concerns, including monster hurricanes, fall-out from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the racially charged clashes in Charlottesville and other cities, the deterioration of relations between the US and Russia, and the sabre-rattling currently directed at the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea. One wonders, in the face of these clear and present dangers, whether exposing the 9/11 legend can have much of an impact on world affairs in 2017.
To address this subject, the Global Research News Hour has sought out two individuals whose dedication to 9/11 Truth research and education has become legendary.
Richard Gage AIA is a San Francisco Bay Area architect, a member of the American Institute of Architects and the founder of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. In the first part of our program Gage discusses current 9/11 Truth activities. These include a supposedly groundbreaking professional study into the September 11 collapse of World Trade Centre 7, and the involvement of members of Congress in tabling of legislation mandating a renewed investigation into 9/11. Gage expresses his conviction that 9/11 Truth and Justice can and will prevail!
Michel Chossudovsky is professor (emeritus) of Economics at the University of Ottawa, an award- winning author of 11 books, and director of the Centre for Research on Globalization, whose website globalresearch.ca launched just two days before 9/11. With the publication of his September 12, 2001 article “Who is Osama Bin Laden” he became among the first people in the world to publicly question the official 9/11 narrative. In the final half of the program, Chossudovsky maintains that even 16 years later, debunking the official 9/11 narrative is critical. He also elaborates on the geopolitical context of the War on Terrorism, including the actual motives behind US military operations in Afghanistan then and today.
The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . The show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in everyThursday at 6pm ET.
Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:
CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT
Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.
It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia, Canada. – Tune in at its new time – Wednesdays at 4pm PT.
Radio station CFUV 101.9FM based at the University of Victoria airs the Global Research News Hour every Sunday from 7 to 8am PT.
Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 10am.
Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday Morning from 8:00 to 9:00am. Find more details at www.caperradio.ca
The leader of the Solomon Islands province of Malaita announced earlier this week that his region will seek independence from the central government due to its disagreement with the capital over the latter’s recognition of Beijing last year as the legitimate government of China, which could dangerously plunge this underdeveloped nation back into a state of civil conflict that could then be exploited by the Quad as a proxy war for “containing” Chinese influence in the South Pacific through “Balkanization”.
From The Global Periphery To The Center Of Attention
The South Pacific, long regarded as a far-flung region that’s largely irrelevant to all major countries apart from nearby Australia, has increasingly figured more prominent in global media reports over the past few years as the West has sought to portray this part of the world as the latest theater in the West’s New Cold War with China. The narrative goes that China’s recent inroads through its Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) and some regional states’ decisions to recognize Beijing as the legitimate government of China has given the People’s Republic the opportunity to expand its influence there, which is being portrayed in a zero-sum manner as supposedly being a threat to Western interests. Political tensions have been building over the past year as more pressure was put upon these countries by their traditional Western partners to either reverse their relations with Beijing or at the very least “balance” them out by re-engaging with the Australia and/or the US, two of the four countries that comprise the so-called “Quad” alongside India and Japan which are collectively accused of seeking to “contain” China. Although concerning, this tense state of affairs had yet to destabilize the region, but that might soon change after the latest news coming from the Solomon Islands.
On The Precipice Of Civil War
The leader of the Malaita Province — the most populous one in the country that’s home to approximately a quarter of the Solomon Islands’ less than 700,000 people — announced earlier this week that his region will seek independence from the central government due to its disagreement with the capital over the latter’s recognition of Beijing last year. This is especially troublesome because the Solomon Islands’ de-facto state of civil war that lasted between 1999-2003 and prompted a nearly 15-year-long Australian-led peacekeeping intervention directly concerned an ethno-regional dispute between Malaita and the neighboring island of Guadalcanal which hosts the country’s capital. The Capital Territory and Guadalcanal Province collectively have more people than Malaita does, which means that any possible exacerbation of their former conflict with one another over the China-Taiwan issue could immediately plunge approximately half of the Solomon Islands back into civil conflict. That, however, might be exactly what the Quad is hoping for since it could then easily exploit this unrest as a proxy war for “containing” Chinese influence in the South Pacific through “Balkanization”.
Hybrid War On The Solomon Islands?
What’s important to point out is that the China-Taiwan issue is simply a trigger for thawing this unresolved conflict between the two islands and their people, one which predates the Quad’s formation by over a decade but could potentially be encouraged by them for the aforementioned reason. It’s extremely unlikely that the leader of Malaita Province would make such a dramatic announcement had he not already secured support from this bloc’s American and Australian members, both of whom have an interest in pushing back against what they’ve portrayed as the “aggressive” expansion of Chinese influence in the region that they’ve historically regarded as falling within their joint “sphere of influence”. The external exacerbation of preexisting identity conflicts for geostrategic reasons — especially those related to disrupting, controlling, or influencing transnational connective infrastructure projects such as BRI — fits the author’s definition of Hybrid War. That means that this scheme can rightly be described as the Quad’s Hybrid War on the Solomon Islands, which could become the catalyst of geostrategic change all across the New Cold War’s South Pacific theater if the “Balkanization” process that’s being unleashed in that country uncontrollably spreads throughout the region.
Source: OneWorld
Formalizing The “Asian NATO”
Any resumption of civil war-like unrest in the Solomon Islands as a result of Malaita’s attempted secession will almost certainly prompt another international peacekeeping mission there, one which might be led not just by Australia like last time, but jointly by it and its other three Quad partners. After all, US Deputy Secretary of State Biegun declared his country’s intention earlier this week to create a NATO-like military bloc in the so-called “Indo-Pacific” in order to “push back against China in virtually every domain” there. He strongly hinted that the Quad could play such a role, and another conflict in the Solomon Islands might be just what’s needed in order to provide the impetus for formalizing this structure to that point. The previous Australian-led peacekeeping mission wasn’t all that difficult compared to others across the world so a forthcoming one possibly led by the Quad’s four members could serve as the perfect opportunity for strengthening their military interoperability with one another in a real-world mission instead of just another exercise. It wouldn’t entail as much of a cost as doing so elsewhere in this transoceanic region should another Hybrid War be manufactured for that purpose, and the benefits to their bloc could be tremendous in terms of their grand strategic impact.
“Perception Management”
Special attention should be paid to how this scenario is already being sold to the public. Reutersquoted Malaita’s leader as evoking the UN principle of self-determination, which in this context could easily be spun in a way to sympathetically present him and his people as “freedom-loving democrats” opposed to the “Chinese-controlled tyrannical central government”. Considering how preconditioned many people across the world are to suspect China of ulterior motives through BRI, it wouldn’t be surprising if they fall for this emerging narrative. To make it more believable, unverified claims could be made about alleged human rights abuses carried out by the central government with Chinese support. Reports could also be spread fearmongering about the environmental consequences of any potential BRI projects on the island. Since the nearby Papua New Guinean Autonomous Region of Bougainville just held a non-binding UN-recognized independence referendum that overwhelmingly passed last year, the legal precedent has been established for arguing that Malaita deserves the same opportunity to choose its own destiny as the only lasting solution to the Solomon Islands’ similar ethno-regional conflict.
Proxy War Scenarios
It’s impossible to predict in detail exactly how a Quad-China proxy war in the Solomon Islands could play out, but the initial conditions are such that one can nonetheless identify the broad contours of this conflict. Violence would probably be concentrated mostly in Malaita and among migrant communities on Guadalcanal, which would thus make them the two most likely places for a Quad-led peacekeeping force to deploy. If the central government successfully secures the capital region and its surroundings, then the peacekeeping mission might only concern Malaita and thus set it along the trajectory of seemingly inevitable independence pending a UN-recognized referendum there overseen by the Quad. If the authorities lose control of parts of Guadalcanal, however, then a regime change is certainly possible with or without a Quad-led military intervention there, one which could still result in Malaita’s eventual independence but also the reversal of the country’s recognition of Beijing back to Taipei. In the course of events, China might be compelled to evacuate some of its citizens if they’re targeted by the separatists, who might also attack them systematically in order to prompt China into deepening its political, financial, and perhaps even military support of the authorities through “mission creep”.
Concluding Thoughts
The news that the leader of a South Pacific island nation’s province announced his separatist intentions might have seemed so irrelevant to the rest of the world at first glance as to not warrant any serious attention, but the fact of the matter is that this event is actually extremely important because it’s poised to turn the South Pacific into the latest hot spot of the New Cold War. The author predicted three years ago in September 2017 that “it’s impossible to speculate on exactly what could set off a renewed round of violence in the [Solomon Islands], but the most probable scenarios have to do with a continuation conflict between the people of Guadalcanal island and neighboring Malaita, which was at the core of the ‘The Tensions’ in the first place.” That’s exactly what seems slated to happen after the leader of Malaita used the central government’s recognition of Beijing as the pretext for thawing this unresolved conflict, all with the very likely support of the Quad for the purpose of “containing” China in the region through “Balkanization”, which in turn could serve as the regional security impetus for formalizing the bloc into an “Asian NATO”. The calm waters of the South Pacific might therefore soon give way to a tempest of Hybrid War trouble with global strategic implications.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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The World Economic Forum and powerful financial interests are proposing a “Green New Deal” which is “not Green”.
What is proposed below is a Green New Deal for Workers ( M.C. GR Editor)
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Workers in 2020 have a unique opportunity to vote to put two fellow workers in the White House. Howie is a recently retired Teamster and Angela is a dump truck driver. We know the economic realities that working people face in the United States. This Labor Day we call for a better class of people in the White House than the corporate crooks and flunkies that have been occupying it.
The COVID pandemic and economic collapse have highlighted the race and class inequalities in our society. With more than 35 million jobs lost, millions have lost their employer-connected health insurance in the middle of a pandemic. COVID-19 deaths are disproportionately afflicting working-class people, particularly Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people. The case for universal healthcare through a publicly-funded Medicare for All has never been stronger.
As income disappears, the rent — already too high — has become impossible for many to pay. The threat of eviction is with many of us every month. Even if eviction has been stopped by a temporary moratorium for some of us, we see our rent piling up each month so that we will be evicted anyway when the moratorium ends. We need a federal emergency housing relief program that helps people make their rent and mortgage payments during the emergency. To fix the fundamentals of the housing crisis requires a major investment in public housing, this time not just as segregated housing for the poor but as high-quality mixed-income developments that include middle-income workers and professionals.
Congress and the president are responding to the economic collapse so poorly that the nation is falling into a depression. A poll this week reported that 50% unemployed workers, 8.3 million people, were unable to cover their basic expenses in August.
Trump and Biden rely on private enterprise alone to pull us out of this economic hole. Their public economic recovery spending proposals feature corporate welfare grants, loans, and tax breaks that will supposedly trickle-down to working people as new jobs. But with working-class consumer demand depressed, it is too risky for corporations to make job-creating productive investments. Instead, they will again invest their stimulus money in stocks, bonds, and derivatives, just rearranging and further concentrating who owns the productive assets we have rather than creating new ones.
Our alternative is large-scale public investment in new public enterprises and services to benefit the working-class majority. Our ecosocialist Green New Deal will create 30 million jobs in manufacturing, construction, transportation, energy, and agriculture to rebuild our production systems for zero-to-negative carbon emissions and 100% clean energy by 2030. It provides for a Just Transition of up to five years wage and benefits maintenance for workers displaced by this economic transition, but few will need it for very long with all the new jobs that will be created.
We create 8 million more jobs with an Economic Bill of Rights to a living-wage job, a guaranteed income above poverty, affordable housing, universal health care, lifelong tuition-free public education, and a secure retirement for every senior by doubling Social Security benefits.
The two corporate parties, who represent their Wall Street and big business donors, continue to undermine the rights of workers and let employers get away with breaking labor, health, and safety laws. It is time to repeal repressive labor laws, starting with the Taft-Hartley law that restricts labor’s ability to organize, act in solidarity, and engage in political activity. We need to enact new laws that enable union organization, including card check union recognition and the repeal of anti-union “right-to-work” laws.
We call for a Workers Bill of Rights, including workers rights to unions, to living wages, to portable defined-benefit pensions, to information about chemicals used at work, to refuse unsafe work, and to participate in enterprise governance. In order to increase economic security and strengthen workers’ power, we must replace employment-at-will laws, which let employers discharge workers for any reason or no reason, with just cause termination laws, where workers can only be fired for nonperformance or economic reasons. We must extend constitutional rights into the workplace, including free speech, association, and assembly, and freedom from warrantless employer surveillance, search, and seizure.
Even before the pandemic health and economic crisis hit, three super-rich Americans owned more wealth than the bottom 50% of the population, who earn a poverty-level median income of $18,000 a year.
Now, mounting COVID-19 deaths, economic depression, accelerating economic inequality, and climate collapse are all reasons to restructure our economy into a socialist economic democracy where the working-class majority is empowered to protect its interests and receive the full value of its labor. The first step is the ecosocialist Green New Deal for economic recovery as well as climate recovery.
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Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker are the candidates for president and vice-president of the Green Party of the United States and the Socialist Party USA.
French President Emmanuel Macron has visited Lebanon for the second time in less than a month following the terrible blasts that destroyed Port Beirut. Macron first visited Lebanon on August 6, two days after a warehouse with 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate exploded, killing 190 people, injuring another 6,500 and leaving 300,000 citizens homeless. The detonation, one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history, is undeniably the result of corruption, greed and the incompetence of politicians that has become an endemic problem in Lebanon. The explosion has only exacerbated the collapse of the Lebanese economy.
The cost of property damage caused by the explosions varies between $3.8 billion and $4.6 billion, while the economic damage amounts between $2.9 billion and $3.5 billion, according to a World Bank estimate. In total, $6.7 billion to $8.1 billion has been slashed from Lebanon in total. This in a tiny country of just a few million citizens already economically suffering.
After landing on August 31, Macron met legendary actress and singer Fairuz, a Christian who is one of the few Lebanese figures that is admired across the different faiths in Lebanon. Officially, the purpose of the French head of state’s visit was obvious – to ensure that the conditions were met for the formation of a new government that was capable of carrying out the essential tasks of reconstruction and reforms in Lebanon. The changes are urgent in the electricity and banking sectors, as well as in the public market that is currently too opaque, which favors irregularities. To see how urgent these changes are needed, consider that Beirut does not yet have 24-hour electricity for its residents.
Macron’s goal, declared to the press, is to avoid Lebanon ending up “in the hands of the vileness of the regional powers” and to prevent the country from falling into a new civil war. This will prove difficult as regional powers, such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran, are all competing for influence in Lebanon. Although the Sunni Muslims can fall back on Turkish and Saudi patrons, while the Shi’a have Iranian patronage, the Christians of Lebanon, whom by constitution always occupy the presidency, do not have such state-backing like their Muslim counterparts. And this is exactly what Macron can exploit.
The undeclared objective is to control the transformation process and, consequently, to be the repairer of Lebanon in order to maintain an important bridgehead that guarantees its political and commercial interests, not only in the East Mediterranean, but also in the Middle East. France’s fight is actually about maintaining its privileged role as a former colonial power there, a source of criticism against Paris but which is well received by the main Lebanese Christian forces, who claim that they are not only suffering from an economic and political crisis, but also existential.
“Lebanese people, you are like brothers to the French. I promised you: I will come back to Beirut to take stock of the emergency aide and help you build the conditions for reconstruction and stability,” Macron tweeted on Tuesday.
The coming weeks will be critical for reforms in Lebanese politics and it remains to be seen how much Macron can influence these critical but continuously delayed necessities. As a former colonial power, even if it was just for a few decades, France feels it has a right to expand its influence into Lebanon. With France on a path towards greater independence in its foreign policy, moving further away from the interests of Washington and Berlin, and having ambitions to become a stronger power than it already is, Macron is attempting to reclaim France’s former colonies as its spheres of influence. This is occurring most notably in Africa, where it is currently challenging Turkish attempts to spread its interests. However, France is now on the offensive to bring the Franco-Turkish struggle to a new arena, the Middle East.
By gaining a foothold in Lebanon, Macron can weaken Turkish attempts to become the gatekeeper of the Sunni stronghold of north Lebanon, while being able to project its influence into neighboring Syria, also a former French colony. From Lebanon, Macron can then also project his power further into the East Mediterranean where France is currently backing Greece and Cyprus against Turkish maximalist behavior. However, Macron’s interests in the Middle East is not only reduced to its former colonies, but also expands into Iraq. Macron visited Baghdad on Wednesday after Lebanon. In Baghdad, Macron gave his full support to Iraqi sovereignty in face of Turkey’s illegal military intervention in the north of the country that recently killed Iraqi soldiers.
Although French and Turkish interests are clashing in the East Mediterranean and Africa, by Macron becoming the gatekeeper of Lebanon, the French President is expanding his country’s influence and challenging Turkish expansionism in a new arena – the Middle East… but it all begins in Lebanon.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
The Israeli Air Force conducted a second round of missiles strikes on Syria in less than a week.
Late on September 2, Israeli warplanes launched missiles at the T4 airport in the province of Homs. According to Syria’s state media, the strikes were conducted from the direction of the US-controlled zone of al-Tanf on the Syrian-Iraqi border. Syrian pro-government sources claimed that a large part of the missiles was intercepted. The impact of the strikes remains unclear.
The T4 airport is well known as the operational base of Iranian-backed forces and as a logistical hub for Iranian supplies moving to Syria. At various times, Iranian unmanned aerial vehicles, including combat ones, were also deployed there.
The most recent previous Israeli strike on Syria took place on August 31 targeting the countryside of Damascus city and the province of Daraa. At that time, the Syrian side confirmed that at least 2 people had been killed and 7 others injured. Local sources also claimed that the strike had allegedly destroyed 4 air defense systems. This data remains unconfirmed.
The Israeli strikes came amid a new round of tensions in southern Idlib. As Turkey and Russia conduct tactical drills simulating the repelling of attacks on their patrols on the M4 highway, the Syrian Army and Turkish-backed militants exchanged strikes south of the area.
On September 2nd and 3rd, the Syrian Army shelled militant positions near Kafar Aweed and Baluon in southern Idlib, and al-Salaf in northern Lattakia. Pro-militant sources claim that the strikes hit civilian targets only. However, this is hardly believable as these areas are full of fortifications, including underground ones, created by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its al-Qaeda-linked allies.
Earlier, several Syrian soldiers were reportedly killed or injured in a series of militant attacks in the southern part of the Idlib de-escalation zone. Most likely this together with regular attacks on joint Turkish-Russian patrols on the M4 forced the Syrian Army to return to more active measures for implementing the ceasefire on the contact line.
The security situation still remains conflicted along the Palmyra-Deir Ezzor highway and in the countryside of al-Mayadin. Over the past days, the Syrian Army, the National Defense Forces and Iranian-backed militias have conducted several raids against ISIS cells hiding in the desert. Nonetheless, these raids did not lead to a breakthrough in the fight against the terrorist group. Its members continue planting IEDs, ambushing convoys and assassinating people in the area. According to pro-militant sources, over 100 pro-government fighters were killed or went missing in western and southern Deir Ezzor in late August alone.
According to Syria and Russia, terrorists use the US-controlled areas on the eastern bank of the Euphrates and in al-Tanf as a foothold for attacks on Syrian troops. As long as this thorn remains in place, attacks will continue.
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The World Health Organization says a new polio outbreak in Sudan is linked to an ongoing vaccine-sparked epidemic in Chad — a week after the U.N. health agency declared the African continent free of the wild polio virus.
In a statement this week, WHO said two children in Sudan — one from South Darfur state and the other from Gedarif state, close to the border with Ethiopia and Eritrea — were paralyzed in March and April. Both had been recently vaccinated against polio. WHO said initial outbreak investigations show the cases are linked to an ongoing vaccine-derived outbreak in Chad that was first detected last year and is now spreading in Chad and Cameroon.
“There is local circulation in Sudan and continued sharing of transmission with Chad,” the U.N. agency said, adding that genetic sequencing confirmed numerous introductions of the virus into Sudan from Chad.
On Monday, WHO warned that the risk of further spread of the vaccine-derived polio across central Africa and the Horn of Africa was “high,” noting the large-scale population movements in the region.
More than a dozen African countries are currently battling outbreaks of polio caused by the virus, including Angola, Congo, Nigeria and Zambia.
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Michael Crowley reported for the New York Times [1] Thursday, September 3, that American allies and former US Officials fear Trump could seek NATO exit in a second term. According to the report,
“This summer, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser John R. Bolton published a book that described the president as repeatedly saying he wanted to quit the NATO alliance. Last month, Mr. Bolton speculated to a Spanish newspaper that Mr. Trump might even spring an ‘October surprise’ shortly before the election by declaring his intention to leave the alliance in a second term.”
The report adds,
“In a book published this week, Michael S. Schmidt, a New York Times reporter, wrote that Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff John F. Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, told others that ‘one of the most difficult tasks he faced with Trump was trying to stop him from pulling out of NATO.’ One person who has heard Mr. Kelly speak in private settings confirmed that he had made such remarks.”
Donald Trump now relies on “a team of inexperienced bureaucrats” and has grown more confident and assertive, as he has already sacked purportedly “seasoned national security advisers,” including John F. Kelly; Jim Mattis, another retired four-star Marine general and Trump’s first defense secretary; and H.R. McMaster, a retired three-star Army general and Trump’s former national security adviser.
In July, the Trump administration announced plans to withdraw 12,000 American troops from Germany and sought to cut funding for the Pentagon’s European Deterrence Initiative, though the main factor that prompted Trump to pull out American forces from Germany was German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s refusal to attend G-7 summit in person due to coronavirus outbreak. The summit was scheduled to be held at Camp David on June 10 but was cancelled. About half of the troops withdrawn from Germany were re-deployed in Europe, mainly in Italy and Poland, and the rest returned to the US.
Historically, the NATO military alliance at least ostensibly was conceived as a defensive alliance in 1949 during the Cold War in order to offset conventional warfare superiority of the former Soviet Union. The US forged collective defense pact with the Western European nations after the Soviet Union reached the threshold to build its first atomic bomb in 1949 and achieved nuclear parity with the US.
But the trans-Atlantic military alliance has outlived its purpose following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and is now being used as an aggressive and expansionist military alliance meant to browbeat and coerce the former Soviet clients, the Central and Eastern European states, to join NATO and its corollary economic alliance, the European Union, or be internationally isolated. If not Washington, the Europeans themselves should have abandoned the redundant militarist organization long ago.
Regarding the global footprint of American forces, according to a January 2017 infographic [2] by the New York Times, 210,000 US military personnel were deployed across the world, including 79,000 in Europe, 45,000 in Japan, 28,500 in South Korea and 36,000 in the Middle East.
Although Donald Trump keeps complaining that NATO must share the cost of deployment of the US troops, particularly in Europe where 47,000 American troops were stationed in Germany since the end of the Second World War and before the withdrawal of 12,000 US forces in July, 15,000 American troops were deployed in Italy and 8,000 in the United Kingdom, fact of the matter is that the cost is already shared between Washington and host countries.
Roughly, European countries pay one-third of the cost for maintaining US military bases in Europe whereas Washington chips in the remaining two-third. In the Far Eastern countries, 75% of the cost for the deployment of American troops is shared by Japan and the remaining 25% by Washington, and in South Korea, 40% cost is shared by the host country and the US contributes the remaining 60%.
Whereas the oil-rich Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC) – Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar – pay two-third of the cost for maintaining 36,000 US troops in the Persian Gulf where more than half of world’s 1,477 billion barrels proven oil reserves are located, and Washington contributes the remaining one-third.
Besides withdrawing 12,000 troops from Germany, the Trump administration has also pledged to scale down American troop presence in Afghanistan after reaching a peace deal with the Taliban on February 29. The United States currently has about 8,600 troops in Afghanistan, and plans to cut its troop levels in Afghanistan to “a number less than 5,000” by the end of November, Defense Secretary Mark Esper announced in August, before the complete withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan by April next year, as stipulated by the terms of the peace pact reached with the Taliban at Doha, Qatar.
If we take a cursory look at the insurgency in Afghanistan, the Bush administration toppled the Taliban regime with the help of the Northern Alliance in October 2001 in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attack. Since the beginning, however, Afghanistan was an area of lesser priority for the Bush administration.
The number of US troops deployed in Afghanistan did not exceed beyond 30,000 during George Bush’s tenure as the American president, and soon after occupying Afghanistan, Washington invaded Iraq in March 2003 to expropriate its 140 billion barrels proven oil reserves, and American resources and focus shifted to Iraq.
It was the ostensibly “pacifist and noninterventionist” Obama administration that made the Afghanistan conflict the bedrock of its foreign policy in 2009 along with fulfilling then-President Obama’s electoral pledge of withdrawing American forces from Iraq in December 2011, only to be redeployed a couple of years later when the Islamic State overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in early 2014.
At the height of the surge of the US troops in Afghanistan in 2010, the American troops numbered around 100,000, with an additional 40,000 troops deployed by the rest of the NATO members, but they still could not manage to have a lasting impact on the relentless Taliban insurgency.
Similarly, the Nobel-laureate President Obama initiated a proxy war in Syria in 2011 to safeguard Israel’s regional security because the Bashar al-Assad government in alliance with Hezbollah in Lebanon constituted single biggest threat to Israel’s northern borders, a fact that became obvious to Israeli military strategists when Hezbollah mounted hundreds of rocket attacks into northern Israel during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict.
After being elected, the Trump administration had to contend with the legacy of its predecessor. But thankfully, the conflict in Syria is gradually winding down. Before the evacuation of 1,000 American troops from northern Syria last year, the Pentagon had 2,000 US forces in Syria. After the drawdown of US troops at Erdogan’s insistence in order for Ankara to mount a ground offensive in northern Syria, the US has still deployed around 1,000 troops, mainly in oil-rich eastern Deir al-Zor province and at al-Tanf military base.
Al-Tanf military base is strategically located in southeastern Syria on the border between Syria, Iraq and Jordan, and it straddles on a critically important Damascus-Baghdad highway, which serves as a lifeline for Damascus. Washington has illegally occupied 55-kilometer area around al-Tanf since 2016, and several hundred US Marines have trained thousands of Syrian militants in the military base battling the Syrian government.
It’s pertinent to note that rather than fighting the Islamic State, the purpose of continued presence of the US forces at al-Tanf military base is to address Israel’s concerns regarding the expansion of Iran’s influence in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
Regarding the continued presence of American forces in oil- and natural gas-rich Deir al-Zor governorate, it’s worth pointing out that Syria used to produce roughly 400,000 barrels crude oil per day. Answering questions from Senator Lindsey Graham, Secretary of State Pompeo confessed [3] last month that the State Department had awarded an American company, Delta Crescent Energy, with a contract to begin extracting oil in northeast Syria.
Much like the “scorched earth” battle strategy of medieval warlords – as in the case of the Islamic State which burned crops of local farmers while retreating from its former strongholds in eastern Syria – Washington’s basic purpose in deploying the US forces in oil and natural gas fields of Deir al-Zor governorate is to deny the valuable source of income to Damascus.
After the devastation caused by nine years of proxy war, the Syrian government is in dire need of tens of billions dollars international assistance to rebuild the country. Not only is Washington hampering efforts to provide international assistance to the hapless country, it is in fact squatting over Syria’s own valuable resources.
Finally, after liberating Mosul and Anbar from the Islamic State in Iraq in July 2017 and Raqqa in Syria in October 2017, the Trump administration has decided [4] to reduce the number of American troops deployed in Iraq from current 5,200 to 3,500 troops in the next three months.
Another reason why Washington can no longer maintain large troop presence in Iraq is that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has vowed that Iran would not tolerate the presence of American forces in Iraq following the brazen assassination of venerated Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in January, and American military bases in Iraq have come under repeated rocket and missile attacks, particularly in an Iranian missile strike at al-Assad military base in January, scores of American troops suffered concussion injuries and had to be evacuated to Germany for treatment.
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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism.
Notes
[1] Allies and Former U.S. Officials Fear Trump Could Seek NATO Exit in a Second Term:
September 4th, 2020 by International Criminal Court
The International Criminal Court (“ICC” or “Court”) condemns the economic sanctions imposed by the US earlier today on the Court’s Prosecutor and a member of her Office.
The new measures, announced pursuant to the US Executive Order 13928 dated 11 June 2020, are another attempt to interfere with the Court’s judicial and prosecutorial independence and crucial work to address grave crimes of concern to the international community as mandated under the ICC Rome Statute.
These coercive acts, directed at an international judicial institution and its civil servants, are unprecedented and constitute serious attacks against the Court, the Rome Statute system of international criminal justice, and the rule of law more generally.
The Court continues to stand firmly by its personnel and its mission of fighting impunity for the world’s most serious crimes under international law, independently and impartially, in accordance with its mandate. In doing so, the Court benefits from the strong support and commitment of two thirds of the world’s States which are parties to the Rome Statute.
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Comments Off on International Criminal Court (ICC) Condemns US Economic Sanctions. Washington’s Interference in ICC Judicial and Prosecutorial Independence
Established in 1985, the MRI Whale Unit is a global, African research, conservation and education facility that researches the ecology, population dynamics and behaviour of the diverse cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) in the Southern African sub-region and surrounding oceans, with the principal objective of providing knowledge that will promote their conservation. A primary raison d’être of the Unit remains the development of human capacity in these areas. Research, Conservation and Education are interlinked to execute forward-looking programmes, integral for the understanding of conservation priorities for African cetaceans.
The MRI Whale Unit possesses a wealth of expertise and tacit knowledge, intellectual property, and well-established knowledge resource bases. The Unit has current national and international collaborations with over 30 organisations, and co-leads the research theme on southern right whales of the Southern Ocean Research Partnership of the International Whaling Commission (iwc.int/sorp)
Research Projects range across a broad national and international geographic and institutional spectrum and align within these Research Themes:
Recovering Whales – The role of large whales in Southern Hemisphere Ocean Ecosystems
Large Migratory whale population abundance and trends
Southern right whale population abundance and trends
East and West coast humpback whale abundance
Antarctic blue whale population abundance
Acoustic monitoring of seasonal presence and abundance of baleen whales on historical whaling grounds
Large whale feeding ecology
West coast humpback feeding ecology
Southern right whales as a model species to predict the effects of climate change on Southern Ocean productivity
Southern right whale body condition on the South African breeding ground
African Links – Building African Marine Mammal research capacity
African East Coast and Western Indian Ocean
Establishing movement links of humpback whales between SA and Mozambique, Madagascar and the Western Indian ocean archipelago breeding grounds
Monitoring occurrence of southern right whales in Mozambique and links between SA and Mozambique
The Real and Imminent Extinction Risk to Whales, Dolphins And Porpoises
This is an open letter from experts highlighting the current risks to the worlds cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises). The list of signatories to the statement is still being regularly updated. The final date to sign on is the end of September. If your name is missing or if there are some other problems with your sign-on please email us and we will correct this.
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With Sino-U.S. tensions escalating over several security and economic issues, fears are mounting in the financial markets that China may massively sell U.S. government debt it holds as a weapon to choke the world’s biggest economy.
If Beijing, which owns more than $1 trillion worth of U.S. Treasury bonds, really takes such action, that would push down debt prices and drive up interest rates in the United States, stifling investment and consumer spending at home.
As large-scale sales of U.S. dollar-denominated assets would trigger the depreciation of the currency against the Japanese yen, the Asian nation’s economy could be also beset by a downturn in exports, a key engine of growth, diplomatic sources said.
“Should China sell U.S. bonds at a rapid pace in a bid to attack the United States, relations between the two countries would irrecoverably deteriorate,” said Yuzo Sakai, chief manager of foreign exchange business promotion at Ueda Totan Forex Ltd.
“Under such circumstances, market participants would rush to buy the safe-haven Japanese currency by selling risky assets, probably leading to a steep appreciation of the yen,” Sakai said.
Recently, the United States has been intensifying its offensive against China, especially after the mainland enforced a controversial national security law for its territory Hong Kong, which has been lambasted for eroding freedoms and human rights there.
In late June, China enacted the legislation to crack down on what it regards as secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces in Hong Kong, apparently aiming to quell anti-government protests in the former British colony.
Since then, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has taken steps such as ordering China to shut down its consulate general in Houston, Texas, and imposing sanctions on Chinese officials including pro-Beijing Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam.
China has so far implemented retaliatory measures against the United States, sparking concern that their battle would develop into a “financial war,” one of the diplomatic sources said.
Amid speculation that Trump may ultimately expel China from the dollar settlement system in the world, the leadership of President Xi Jinping could “threaten the United States by saying it will sell U.S. Treasury debt at high volume,” the source said.
Indeed, China has been gradually letting go of U.S. bonds since Trump waged a tit-for-tat tariff trade war in 2018.
In June, China decreased its holdings of U.S. Treasury bills, bonds and notes by $9.3 billion to a total of $1.07 trillion, according to the U.S. government. China has already fallen behind Japan to become the second-biggest holder of U.S. Treasury debt.
Bond prices move inversely to yields. If a U.S. Treasury sell-off accelerates, it could bring a surge in interest rates, dealing a crushing blow to the U.S. economy with mortgage rates and corporate borrowing costs ballooning, analysts said.
Should the outlook for the U.S. economy dim and risk-averse sentiment spread in the financial market, demand for the yen would grow, which could impede recovery in Japan’s export-oriented economy, they added.
A higher yen usually dampens exports by making Japanese products more expensive abroad and cutting the value of overseas revenues in yen terms.
“The Japanese economy has languished due in part to the new coronavirus pandemic and last year’s 2-percentage-point consumption tax hike. In addition to them, if the yen excessively rises, Japan would face a predicament,” another diplomatic source said.
Japan’s economy in the April-June period shrank an annualized real 27.8 percent from the previous quarter, the sharpest contraction on record.
Some pundits, however, have ruled out the possibility of China’s massive selling of U.S. debt, saying it could backfire on Beijing.
A U.S. Treasury sell-off “might damage the United States in the short term but it would inculcate critical economic instability into the global and Chinese economy,” said Stephen Nagy, a senior associate professor at International Christian University in Tokyo.
Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies at Temple University Japan in Tokyo, echoed the view, saying the question is “where would all that liquidity be invested and how disruptive might that be?”
“Nudging a fragile global economy into the abyss has great potential to harm China’s economy,” he said.
Kingston added that dumping U.S. Treasury bonds “would lower the price as they are sold off, and other countries might see them as relatively attractive compared to other investment options and scoop them up at bargain prices.”
But an institutional investor at a major security house in Tokyo said it may be difficult for Japan to boost its holdings of U.S. government debt as the move could be condemned by other nations as a “currency manipulation.”
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Official figures show that more than 50,000 people have waited a year for treatment – up from 1,117 a year ago.
It comes amid concern about a surge in positive Covid cases, with daily records showing 1,522 cases, up from 1,048 the day before. However, weekly figures show the first decline for six weeks, despite rises in the numbers being tested.
But medics said efforts to restore services are moving too slowly, with some likening their hospitals to “the Mary Celeste” because so many patients were being kept away.
Prof Neil Mortensen, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said the NHS was struggling to restore services, with a lack of routine testing for NHS staff hindering efforts to create “Covid-free” zones.
Prof Mortensen, who took up his post last month, said many patients had been left in pain and distress, following the decision to suspend routine surgery for months.
While some surgeons were left frustrated and “didn’t have much to do” for months during the epidemic, they were now finding that procedures intended to protect against Covid meant they could only cope with half their normal workload.
“Most surgeons would say productivity is around half what it was before,” said Prof Mortensen, a colorectal surgeon.
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Monday, the first historic commercial flight between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) touched down, delivering US President Donald Trump’s adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, and Israeli National Security Adviser Meir Ben Shabbat. The goal of the trip is to work out the details of the ‘Abraham Accord’ between Israel and the UAE that was announced by the White House on Aug. 13.
The Israeli airliner, El Al, was decorated with the word peace in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. Saudi Arabia granted the Israeli airline permission to fly over the Kingdom, which contains the two holiest sites in Islam, and normally has been off-limits.
UAE explosions
Abu Dhabi, one of the seven Emirates of the UAE, was rocked with a horrific explosion that ripped through the ‘Kentucky Fried Chicken’ and ‘Hardees’ fast-food restaurants just after 10 am. Monday. The two restaurants are located on Rashid bin Saeed Street, also known as “The Airport Road”. Experts and locals are questioning whether the explosion was directed at the Israeli delegation which was landing at the airport, which killed two persons and sent several others to the hospital with injuries. Windows on the first floor of a four-floor building were shattered, and many vehicles parked outside were also destroyed. Levin David Bwiso, a Ugandan ex-pat who lives behind the restaurant building, said he and his neighbors initially thought the powerful jolt was an earthquake.
Earlier that morning in Dubai, which is another of the seven Emirates, an explosion killed an Asian man in a restaurant and caused a blaze which was battled by the Dubai Civil Defense.
The Abu Dhabi government, and the Dubai Civil Defense each released identical statements of the cause of the two separate explosions, which are miles apart and occurred on the same morning. The cause of the explosions, causing 3 deaths, multiple injuries, and severe property damage, including the evacuation of residents, was cited as a gas leak from a routine gas canister exchange.
The officials made a point to urge locals to not speculate on social media as to the cause. The UAE has strict laws governing social media and public comments. Those which are controversial, or perceived to not be in support of the official statements can be grounds for arrest and imprisonment, or deportation from the UAE which is a monarchy, not a democracy.
Opposition to the deal
UAE dissidents have established “UAE Resistance Union Against Normalization”. The founding members believe that a normalization of relations with Israel “legitimizes Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands”, and are committed to the Palestinian people, oppose any diplomacy with Israel, and seek to “raise awareness about the dangers of normalization of ties with Israel.”
Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erakat tweeted yesterday:
“Peace is not an empty word used to normalize crimes and oppression. Peace is the outcome of justice. Peace is not made by denying Palestine’s right to exist and imposing an apartheid regime. Apartheid is what Netanyahu means by ‘peace for peace.’”
The flight represents a “stab in the back of the Palestinian people, a prolonging of the occupation, and a betrayal of the resistance of the (Palestinian) people,” Hamas said in a statement.
Jewish settler groups are also in opposition to the deal because they were promised the annexation of the West Bank and Jordan Valley. Many of the settlers are American born Jews who are squatting on Palestinian land, in violation of UN resolutions which the US has supported for decades.
Emirati public opinions
Emiratis are prohibited by law to oppose the deal between UAE and Israel on social media or publically. The US Embassy cautioned the NPR reporter who made the historic trip that the press was not to use the name of any Emirati official or resident.
In a June Washington Institute poll, roughly 80% of Emiratis questioned opposed business contacts with Israel. 73% of Emiratis want their government to focus more on internal reforms over any foreign policy issue, and only 28% are “pushing for a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict”.
McDonald’s sign of peace
Ron Robin is president of the University of Haifa; however, in the past, he was vice provost at New York University and was responsible for establishing its international campus in Abu Dhabi in 2010.
In an interview, he said,
“It was critical in the agreement for NYU Abu Dhabi, and now the agreement between the UAE and Israel, that we learn from each other.” He added, “We don’t have the funds that they have; we don’t have the resources that they have.” Looking to the future of the deal he said, “There’s an expression that no two countries which have McDonald’s have ever gone to war.”
Netanyahu statements
Prime Minister Netanyahu said that there is “no change in my plan to apply our sovereignty to Judea and Samaria [West Bank] in full coordination with the US I’m committed to it.”
At a news conference in Jerusalem on Monday, Netanyahu said: “… with an entrepreneurial economy like ours, with vast economic capabilities, with big money looking for investment channels.”
UAE statement
Emirati ruler Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan issued the decree on Saturday, allowing trade and commerce between the UAE and Israel, and abolishing the 1972 boycott on Israel.
Israel and the UAE discussed economic, scientific, trade, and cultural cooperation on the visit, which seeks to pair Emirati investors with Israeli companies seeking capital.
UAE Jewish community
Ross Kriel is the president of the Jewish Council of the Emirates, and is hopeful for, “…great possibilities for prosperity and peace.” He pointed out that approximately 65% of the Arab world is under 35 years old. What he didn’t say is that these young Arabs are likely to have been affected by Arab and western media which does not champion the cause of resistance to the occupation of Palestine. The parents and the grandparents of these young Arabs would be more likely to have clear identification with ‘resistance’.
Jared Kushner
Jared Kushner took the lead representing the US in the delegation which accompanied Israeli officials to the UAE. Trump’s son in law has been trying to push forward his” Deal of the Century”, which was not warmly accepted at its unveiling. Kushner said Palestinians should not be “stuck in the past”.
Jared Kushner’s FBI background check raised ‘red-flags’ in 2016, and caused former White House counsel Don McGahn to question whether Kushner should receive a top-secret security clearance, and he expressed his concern in writing to Trump’s chief of staff; however, in 2018 Trump overruled the intelligence officials and granted Kushner the highest security clearance.
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3. Do you think that “saving lives” is compatible with the confinement of millions of people who have caused an increase in domestic violence (battered women and children)?
6. Do you think that “saving lives” is compatible with conditions that lead to massive unemployment, which in turn leads to poverty, lack of access to health care, criminality, violence and famine?
The August 20 Zoom conference with Venezuelan Foreign Minister of People’s Power Jorge Arreaza, featured, among other issues, his devastating analysis of the Trudeau government’s interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs on behalf of Trump. Any justice-loving Canadian listening may think that Simon Bolívar, the 19th-century Venezuelan independence hero had it right. He famously said: “The United States appears to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.” However, we may now add Canada under Justin Trudeau along with the U.S.; Canadians imbued with a sense of the principles of sovereignty, not to mention international law, need to recognize it.
At one point in the lengthy conference, Arreaza, asked:
“Why was Canada following the steps of the United States? Why was Canada even taking the blows, to say things that the United States, because of the very bad reputation they have in Latin American countries, couldn’t say? So, Canada began to be in the frontlines of the aggression against Venezuela. And we had really no idea what would happen.
Why Canada? We always saw Canada as a bridge, as an actor with whom we could establish dialogue and search for dialogue with the United States and even other parts of the world. But it was not the case, and [Canada] always using the framework of the defence of human rights. So, you know that the prime minister of Canada, Mr. Trudeau has had, … and he is nothing like his father I must say, and he has had some differences with the Trump administration, especially climate change, trade agreements, etc. And …., so Venezuela was an easy card to agree upon, so that’s what they did. They said, okay, we have these fights, but let’s agree about Venezuela. We will do what you can’t do. Let us organize the Lima group. It won’t be you directly, Mr. Pompeo. It’s going to be Chrystia [Freeland], it’s going to be Trudeau. It’s going to be easier if we do it this way, because if the United States is a member of the Lima group, no one is going to give any credibility to this group, because they will believe that it is the United States with its regime change policy trying to attack Venezuela.
And, … there is a second reason or motivation that produces this aggression from Canada against Venezuela. It is related to the oil interests, these big companies in Alberta, this province of Canada where you produce heavy oil just like Venezuelan oil, heavy oil, and your refineries, especially in the south of the United States, in Texas, in Florida and other parts, are designed for the Venezuelan oil, for heavy oil. Because traditionally it was Venezuela that supplied this petroleum, this oil to the refineries. And now, because of this aggression against Venezuela, because of these sanctions against Venezuela, the oil from Canada is substituting for the oil from Venezuela.
There was a clear motivation, but there was also some interest from some companies, like Crystallex, which was a mining company in Venezuela, which was like a fake company, which never existed, really, because, its name is Crystallex [gold], because it was created for a region in Venezuela which had important goldmines called cristinas, so it was Crystallex. […] But, at some point, President Chávez decided to nationalize all the gold industries, and these companies were asked to leave Venezuela. So, they went to an arbitration process and suddenly, during these last years, we lost this arbitration process and that money that the public of Venezuela, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela owes, has to pay to this Crystallex so-called company.
But it is related to Canada, it’s Canadian and they have links with this member of parliament, Juan Guaidó. I must say that nobody knew Juan Guaidó before he raised his hand in the middle of a demonstration in the street and self-proclaimed as president of our country, and many Venezuelans have forgotten his name. … So, all this business interest came into this new chess game and Canada was in the vanguard of this aggression against Venezuela.
We must remember that this Lima group was created because the United States didn’t manage to have all the votes they needed in the OAS, the Organization of American States, to expel Venezuela or apply the Democratic Charter of the Americas and intervene in Venezuela, especially because they couldn’t convince the ALBA countries and the countries of the CARICOM, the Caribbean nations. They never had the 24 votes they needed, they even didn’t have the 18 votes at the beginning. So, they created this Lima group, which is an informal group. It is not legal, it is not registered in any international organization and it meets to attack Venezuela. And usually the chair of this group is Peru, usually, but that’s formal. The real orders and instructions are given by Canada, but especially from the U.S., from Washington to Canada to the Lima group. And in one of the last meetings they had, they even connected with video conferences with Pompeo. The United States is not a member of the group, and Pompeo tells them what to do.”
In a first meeting with Elliot Abrams (Trump’s special envoy for Venezuela) at the UN, Arreaza recalled that he told him that, in reference to all the plans and predictions to overthrow Maduro, that they will not come to fruition. Arreaza pointed out:
“Well, after that [first meeting] we met and I told him, you see, Mr. Abrams, that nothing happened, that our military is respecting our Constitution and our government and your coup d’état has failed. And he said, ‘Okay, if it failed, I must accept it, at least for now. But next, we are going to apply a maximum pressure strategy. And we have a lot of allies.’ And on his list, Canada was always the first one.”
However, despite the support of the Trudeau government for the Trump/Pompeo regime change sanctions and attempted coup d’états, Arreaza extended an olive branch:
“And I want to share with you [the Canadian public], I insist, if Mr. Champagne, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada, wants to have a conversation with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, I can call him, and we can have a telephone phone call right now. If he wants to meet with me in Ottawa, in Caracas, in Mexico City, in Beijing or whatever, I can travel. Whenever you want, because we believe that we should respect Canada and Canada should respect Venezuela and not interfere in Venezuelan internal affairs.”
Again, in the context of the question and answer period from journalists, this one relating to the plans for another U.S.-led military intervention, Arreaza reiterated:
“Maybe they [Canadian government officials] can listen to this [conference]. I am so sure that, I don’t know if the Minister, but people from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Canada are listening to this conference, to this exchange, and they are taking notes, hopefully they rectify themselves, and they will never support, not now or in the future, a military operation against Venezuela.”
There has been no word from the Canadian government. However, on August 21, an article was published in the National Post by one of the journalists that attended the conference. Quoting extensively from Guaidó’s fake ambassador, it makes essentially two points:
The economic hardships afflicting Venezuela are the fault of the Maduro government and not U.S./Canadian sanctions.
Canada and the Lima group exist to save Venezuela from a “humanitarian disaster,” “human rights violations” and carry through a “democratic transition.”
In a follow-up article published on August 26 in the National Post the same journalist, rather than taking into account the objections raised on social media (and a letter sent to him by the author of these lines to rectify some facts) went even further. He more forcefully continued to portray the Trudeau government and the Lima group as a force for “peaceful transition to democracy in Venezuela.”
In the meantime, indications are that a military invasion of Venezuela is being organized now by the U.S. and its allies for October, just before the November 4 Presidential elections. Why are the Trudeau government and Canadian media ignoring this?
In the light of this colossal breach of international law, can Canadians remain silent? On the contrary, members of parliament, trade unions, political organizations and intellectuals in Canada and throughout the world must speak out now!
See the full Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza Conference and discussion that took place on August 20, here thanks to Canadian Dimension
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Washington announced the lifting of the embargo to sell American-made non-lethal equipment to the Republic of Cyprus. US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, told Cypriot President Nikos Anastasiadis over the phone on Tuesday that Washington decided to lift the embargo imposed on Cyprus since 1987, but only for non-lethal equipment.
“The Republic of Cyprus is a key partner in the Eastern Mediterranean. I am pleased to announce that we are deepening our security cooperation. We will waive restrictions on the sale of non-lethal defense articles and services to the Republic of Cyprus for the coming fiscal year,” Pompeo said on Twitter.
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry slammed the decision saying it “disregards the equality and balance” on the island and said it expected its NATO ally to “review” it, “otherwise, Turkey as a guarantor country will take the necessary reciprocal steps in line with its legal and historical responsibility to guarantee the security of the Turkish Cypriot people.”
Cyprus was divided in 1974 when Turkey invaded the northern portion of the East Mediterranean island. Turkey then established the illegal Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus that is recognized by no other country in the world except Turkey. Washington established an arms embargo on Cyprus in 1987 in the supposed attempt to encourage the reunification of Cyprus and prevent an arms race on the island, however, this was actually to ensure that the island remained permanently divided to serve NATO interests in the region. For decades the U.S. has not only tolerated Turkish aggression, but has encouraged it.
In fact, a declassification from the National Security Adviser’s Memoranda of Conversation Collection at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library revealed that then US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, told President Gerald Ford that if Greece went to war with Turkey, America should back the Turks and that they were entitled to seize a part of the island. When speaking about a Greek response to a Turkish invasion of Cyprus, Kissinger told the president that “We certainly do not want a war between the two, but if it came to that, Turkey is more important to us and they have a political structure which could produce a Qadhafi,” referring to Libya’s long-time ruler. Kissinger added that “there is no American reason why the Turks should not have one-third of Cyprus.”
The US appeasement for Ankara during the decades of the Cold War, and beyond it, is what has created a “Qadhafi” in the country that Kissinger had told about. Although US President Donald Trump undoubtedly has a “bromance” with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for his personal business ventures, many within the US state apparatus have a growing animosity towards Turkey. The US State Department as recently as last week condemned Turkey for hosting Hamas leaders, and Senators and Congressmen from both major political parties are banding together to force American sanctions on Turkey.
The US Ambassador to Cyprus, Judith Garber, stated only yesterday that the US decision to lift the embargo imposed on Cyprus, in terms of non-lethal equipment, does not concern Turkey but greater security and stability in the Eastern Mediterranean. Garber said that the US decision to lift the embargo will be valid from October 1, 2020 until September 30, 2021. Garber reminded that the legislation that enabled the announced decision calls on Cyprus to continue its efforts to implement strong anti-money laundering and financial regulatory oversight regulations and to take the necessary steps to refuse access to Russian warships in its ports for supplies and services. The American Ambassador went on to claim that Russia is playing a very destabilizing role in the region.
“Cyprus is an important partner and a key player in the Eastern Mediterranean… this step strengthens our security relationship with Cyprus and increases security in the Eastern Mediterranean,” she added.
In return for not allowing Russian ships to port in Cyprus, the island country can buy non-lethal equipment from the Americans, such as binoculars and bullet proof vests.
It is highly unlikely that decisionmakers in the Cypriot capital of Nicosia will enforce Washington’s desires as Russia has been a mainstay of the Cypriot economy when the US has never showed an interest in it. The US always had a preference for its foreign investment in the East Mediterranean to go to Turkey and Israel instead. In addition, although Cyprus does not have a fully professional military, it is a highly militarized state, despite being a country of only 1.2 million people. Cyprus has 14-month compulsory military service for all men, where they will also be reservists until they are 50 years old. With the US embargoing weapons to Cyprus to ensure Turkey’s military superiority on the island, it is Russia that sells critical weaponry to the Cypriots.
Cyprus is not a NATO member; in fact, it is a NATO member that occupies northern Cyprus. It is for this reason that Nicosia has a lot more independence in its decision making to its interests – unlike Greece, as an example of an East Mediterranean NATO member. Cyprus is not willing to sacrifice a decades’ long positive relationship with Russia to buy military gloves and boots from the US. Nicosia understand that the US demands are not to serve Cypriot interests, whether it be security from another potential Turkish invasion or for the reunification of the island, but rather they are receiving tokenistic gifts from Washington so that it can become an anti-Russian state in the East Mediterranean. Although the US has made efforts to improve relations with Cyprus, albeit for the ulterior motive of targeting Russia, decision makers in Nicosia will opt to try and balance its relations with Washington and Moscow. However, this also means that Cyprus is unlikely to decide to close their ports to Russian ships.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
In Brazil, a serious environmental crisis is approaching. The Amazon Forest and the Brazilian Pantanal are suffering the direct consequences of deforestation and irregular exploitation of their natural resources, which are already beginning to threaten the very existence of these biomes.
At the beginning of October, around 50 civil society organizations joined together to demand from the National Development Bank (BNDS) – Brazilian federal bank whose objective is to finance large national economic projects – the release of financial resources for the Amazon Fund – a project that aims to undertake a series of initiatives for the preservation of natural resources and combating deforestation in the Amazon Forest. The reason why the Amazon Fund needed to resort to BNDS is simple: its external partners are ending alliances due to the misuse of money.
Last year, Germany and Norway suspended transfers after Environment Minister Ricardo Salles announced changes to the fund’s management. Such changes significantly reduced the participation of the civil society and entities in defense of the forest, which began to be questioned by environmentalists as a possible scheme to prevent the implementation of environmental defense projects, facilitating deforestation. Still, recently, the campaign “DefundBolsonaro” was created, with a strong presence of indigenous community leaders and environmental activists, whose objective is to pressure companies and investors that support President Bolsonaro to cease financing his government due to the serious environmental impact of his policies.
Another factor that is currently on the rise and strongly contributes to the destruction of the Amazon is the spread of fires. Since the beginning of July, the number of fires in the Amazon has increased by almost 30% over the same period last year.
The Amazon rainforest had 6,803 fires in July. The previous month had already been the worst June in the last 13 years, according to official data from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE). In August, 29,307 fire outbreaks were reported, 12.4% above the historical average.
Faced with the catastrophic scenario in the Amazon rainforest, Bolsonaro acts through silence and denialism, completely ignoring the existence of such fires and further encouraging deforestation and the destruction of the native forest for the expansion of agribusiness – most of these fires are caused by farmers interested in expanding pasture for cattle or destroying native vegetation for the cultivation of agricultural products.
A recent episode that caused particular collective indignation, mainly on social networks, was the release of a video of Bolsonaro’s participation in a meeting of the Davos Economic Forum, in 2019, in which the president and foreign minister, Ernesto Araújo, talked privately with former US Vice President Al Gore. In this private and informal conversation, Al Gore mentions that he is deeply concerned about the situation in the Amazon and Bolsonaro replies that there are many resources in the Amazon and that he “would like to explore them with the United States”. The tone of absolute disdain with which the Brazilian president refers to the largest biome in his country has caused revolt not only in Brazil, but among environmentalists worldwide.
Brazil’s Amazon, Forest Fires, August 2020
Despite the serious situation in the Amazon, the case of the Brazilian Pantanal is similarly terrible and even more worrying.
The Pantanal had in August the worst month in its history regarding fires, with 5,935 ones reported. In the previous month, July, the Pantanal also recorded the highest number of fires in a month of July in its history. Although the numbers appear to be lower than those in the Amazon, the situation in the Pantanal is more worrying since this biome is much smaller than the Amazon rainforest.
According to several experts, the Brazilian Pantanal may disappear completely in less than three decades if public policies for environmental purposes are not promptly implemented in order to stop deforestation and fires. The disappearance of the Pantanal would bring with it the extinction of several animal and plant species that only exist in this biome or that have its largest population there. In addition, the impact on the Brazilian economy would be gigantic, due to the economic potential of the region, where tourism and the rational and sustainable exploitation of natural resources earn millions of dollars every year.
The path Bolsonaro is taking is a true political suicide. The neglecting on the environmental issue will cost Brazil to stay completely out of the new global dynamic, where sustainability and investments in environmental projects are assuming a central role in the world economy – which will be even more evident in the post-pandemic world. Still, Bolsonaro can reawaken the debate around the internationalization of the Amazon – a topic previously suggested by Emmanuel Macron and which has gained great popularity among politicians worldwide. Still, something like a defense of the internationalization of the Pantanal may also come up, which would be a serious blow against Brazilian sovereignty and national unity.
The question that remains is: having the debate about the internationalization of Brazilian biomes already arisen and Bolsonaro affirmed that he wanted to “explore the Amazon with the US”, would the Brazilian president really be innocent or interested in bringing these biomes to the foreign domain?
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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.
Hegemon USA increasingly finds itself isolated on the world stage.
The harder it pressures, bullies, otherwise threatens and/or bludgeons other countries to bend to its will, the further its isolation longer-term.
On Tuesday, Joint Commission of the JCPOA signatories Russia, China, Britain, France, Germany and Iran met in Vienna, a statement by Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov saying the following:
“We are witnessing an important process of consolidation of parties to the JCPOA against this American venture.”
“We are certain that the results of today’s event will help our colleagues in New York continue their work in the right direction.”
Ministers attending the meeting stressed the importance of preserving the landmark JCPOA agreement.
By abandoning it illegally in May 2018, the Trump regime has no say on matters relating to it.
Remaining P4+1 countries oppose imposing snapback sanctions on Iran, what the Trump regime vowed to do unilaterally in flagrant violation of the rule of law both wings of the US one-party state ignore with disturbing regularity.
Ryabkov stressed that
“(w)e are certain that if the international community and the UN Council members will continue to stick to principled positions on this issue, which is what we are working on, then the situation will emerge when the US will be alone in the UN Security Council with this paradoxical point of view.”
“At least, such a unique development seems rather likely.”
“Therefore, the US can end up losing a lot if it does not review its unfounded position and does not take obvious things into account.”
Ryabkov told other ministers of Vladimir Putin’s call for a Persian Gulf security summit, saying:
“The Russian delegation used the (Vienna meeting) to substantively deliver not only details of this proposal, but also to promote the colleagues’ understanding of the concept of collective security in the Persian Gulf area, which we put forward in an updated form last year.”
Following talks between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his German counterpart Heiko Maas before the Vienna meeting, both ministers agreed on the importance of preserving the JCPOA.
Maas stressed it at a Tuesday press conference. The Trump regime has no support for abandoning what’s affirmed by SC Res. 2231, making the JCPOA binding international law.
Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif earlier denounced the US for being an “unreliable partner that is violating all legal norms and doesn’t abide by its obligations.”
From Vienna on Tuesday, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said the following:
“All JCPOA members and the majority of the international community members are opposed to the US’ unilateral policies and its policy of weakening multilateralism, international organizations and multilateral approaches in the international relations.”
“Everybody complains about the measures the US is taking to ruin the international institutions.”
On Wednesday, Iranian President Rouhani said the Trump regime “will certainly not succeed in its claim that it would return all the sanctions against Iran later in September,” adding:
“It is another meaningless and baseless claim by the US, as it deprived itself of any right when it walked out of the (JCPOA) deal in 2018.”
A joint statement by remaining P4+1 signatories on Tuesday said the following in full:
“1. A meeting of the Joint Commission of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) took place in Vienna on 1st September, 2020.”
“Under the terms of the JCPOA, the Joint Commission is responsible for overseeing the implementation of the agreement.”
“The Joint Commission was chaired, on behalf of EU High Representative Josep Borrell, by EEAS Secretary General Helga-Maria Schmid and was attended by representatives of China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and Iran at the level of Political Directors/Deputy Foreign Ministers.”
“2. All participants reaffirmed the importance of preserving the agreement recalling that it is a key element of the global nuclear non-proliferation architecture, as endorsed by UN Security Council Resolution 2231 (2015).”
“Full implementation of the agreement by all sides remains crucial.”
“3. In light of recent discussions in the United Nations Security Council in New York concerning the issue of the attempted reinstatement of previously lifted UN sanctions, the participants reaffirmed that the United States unilaterally announced its cessation of participation in the JCPOA on 8 May 2018 and that it had not participated in any JCPOA-related activities subsequently.”
“Participants reconfirmed that it therefore could not be considered as a participant State.”
“In this regard, participants also reaffirmed their various statements and communications made previously at the Security Council including that of the High Representative of 20 August as Co-ordinator of the JCPOA to the effect that the US cannot initiate the process of reinstating UN sanctions under UNSC resolution 2231.”
4. Participants welcomed the Joint Statement of Iran and the IAEA dated 26 August the implementation of which has already started.”
“In this context, they recalled the important role of the IAEA as the sole impartial and independent international organization responsible for the monitoring and verification of nuclear non-proliferation commitments.”
“5. The Joint Commission addressed nuclear as well as sanctions lifting issues under the agreement. Experts will continue discussions on all issues of concern.”
“6. Participants reiterated the importance of nuclear non-proliferation projects, in particular the Arak Modernization Project and the stable isotope project in Fordow.”
“Taking into account the potential consequences of the US decision in May to end the Arak waiver, participants reiterated their strong support and collective responsibility for the continuation of the project.”
“7. The meeting took place against the background of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“Participants expressed their solidarity with all countries affected in their efforts to address the outbreak.”
“The Joint Commission had not been able to convene recently due to relevant travel restrictions.”
If remaining P4+1 JCPOA signatories abide by their commitments to reject US demands for snapback sanctions on Iran and for the UN arms embargo on the country to expire on October 18, the Trump regime will be isolated on these issues and can be effectively countered.
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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.”
Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth is thrilled to present “Justice Rising,” an online conference on the continuing struggle for 9/11 justice and the destructive trajectory of the post-9/11 world.
The conference will run from Friday, September 11, to Sunday, September 13, marking the 19th anniversary of the day that changed our world so profoundly. The conference will go for three hours each day and will be open to all free of charge.
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Conference Schedule
The conference goes for three hours each day. All times are Eastern Daylight Time.
Justice Friday
The Long Road to Justice | 6 to 6:45 PM Eastern
AE911Truth founder Richard Gage opens the conference with a look at where the organization has been since its founding in 2006 and what lies ahead.
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A UK Family Fights for Truth | 6:45 to 7:30 PM
9/11 family member Matt Campbell reflects on the loss of his brother Geoff 19 years ago to the day and outlines his family’s effort to open a new inquest into his brother’s death in the UK.
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Closing in on NIST | 7:30 to 8:15 PM
AE911Truth’s Ted Walter, Tony Szamboti, and Mick Harrison of the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry discuss the latest on the pending “request for correction” to NIST’s 2008 report on WTC 7.
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The Expanding Legal Front | 8:15 to 9 PM
Mick Harrison is joined by Barbara Honegger and David Meiswinkle, also of the Lawyers’ Committee, to report on the group’s efforts, including a bold new initiative to be announced around September 11.
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The rapidly shifting geopolitical realities, every new emerging international security situation, and (especially) current circumstances in South Asia behoove Pakistan to treat the Kashmir issue as its top priority – and thankfully Islamabad is doing that. The recent statement by Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, concerning the establishment of an alternative Muslim bloc to deal with the Kashmir issue – in the face of Saudi opposition to raising it within the OIC – is certainly historic.
Not for the past half century has Islamabad issued any statement even remotely close to as ‘confrontational’ as this one. There are of course a variety of factors at play, which have led to the culmination of the audacity of the current Pakistani government to be so publicly explicit and candid with the House of Saud.
Prime Minister Imran Khan‘s incredibly vocal and relentless pursuit of justice for Kashmiris in the face of Indian annexation and ongoing settler-colonial brutality in the region (driven by BJP’s Nazi ideology) – and the House of Saud’s immediate blessing of India’s inhumane action is one such factor. The humiliation that the Prime Minister personally felt when MBS vomited all potential threats to Imran and to Pakistan to prevent him from attending the KL Summit proved to be a good lesson of what kind of a ‘friend’ MBS is to him (and to Pakistan).
Simultaneously, there are larger geopolitical tectonic shifts taking place, albeit gradually, that are increasingly enabling Islamabad to commit to affirming its sovereignty, autonomy, and to a process of deepening decolonization.
Certain changes in the international political economic arena have provided Pakistan with a position where interests and future plans of the world’s two most formidable superpowers, both U.S. and China, are completely dependent on Islamabad. The US, in its typical transactional and opportunistic way, is completely dependent on Islamabad to have some type of withdrawal from Afghanistan. The U.S. National Security establishment is becoming very nervous about Pakistan’s indifference to Washington because of the former’s strengthening relations with China. China, on the other hand, is effectively encircled by American naval ships and bases dead set on some form of confrontation with Beijing at some point – making Pakistan’s Gwadar port literally a lifeline for China to continue its incredible need for energy as well as its preponderant role in global trade and supply lines.
In addition, it is becoming clear that there is something remarkably different about the current political dispensation in Pakistan itself. Both the civilian leadership of Imran Khan and the dominant sections of the military high command are in agreement about much of the foreign policy and national security objectives of Pakistan at this critical historical juncture. Something that many ‘Westoxicated’ liberals in Pakistan aren’t happy with.
Islamabad no longer seems to be handicapped by either the old Cold War framework or the ‘War on Terror’ era that kept Pakistan subordinated and entrapped within the needs of Washington.
The Pakistani historian Ayesha Jalal has a predilection to highlight issues of self and sovereignty in post-colonial states such as Pakistan. Now is the right time to reimagine an Islamicate reconstruction embodied in the Pakistani polity.
And crucially, it is at this time when the weaknesses, not the strengths, of global and regional Zionism are on full display. Both Muslims throughout the world as well as the millions upon millions in the Global South and Global North who have been in solidarity with the Palestinians, the Kashmiris, and with oppressed peoples everywhere, see the blatant contradictions by countries like the House of Saud, the UAE, and Egypt. These nations not only refrain from calling out these crimes against humanities that Israel and India are perpetrating but, on the contrary, opt to bestow awards on them (to Modi) and/or legitimize the atrocities (by recognizing Israel in its post-1967 form).
These contradictions can no longer be concealed. Leaders like Imran and Erdogan realize that this is the moment where meaningful Islamicate integration between Muslim nations and societies, seriously committed to social justice, could finally lead to the demise of what many analysts call the curse of Saudi Wahhabi hegemony.
As it is well-understood, this is no easy or small geopolitical maneuvering taking place. It may very well take some time. But the signs are there. The effective enslavement of Islamabad to Riyadh due to economic matters may one day see its pleasant end when Pakistan’s leadership starts taking more trips to Doha than to Riyadh.
It’s a choice that Islamabad needs to make. Having disentangled itself from various humiliating forms of subordination to outside powers, it seems pretty clear that this dynamic of subordination has one remaining irritant left for Pakistanis: that of the House of Saud.
Fortunately, the Pakistani leadership has the choice to be more independent and affirm its own dignity in deepening its integration and cooperation with other Islamicate countries such as Turkey, Iran, Qatar, and Malaysia, as well as with other nations from the Global South. That seems to be the only way forward to deepening decolonization for a real, meaningful independence.
Zooming out we can see a trend of shifting alliances in the world, especially in the Eastern hemisphere. China is leading a bloc joined by Russia and Iran. Turkey and Malaysia are mobilizing too, and it will not be a surprise if they try to jump in as well. Pakistan in such a situation finds itself in a very favorable position both geopolitically and economically. If addressed well, this is arguably the most critical juncture in the country’s history for Islamabad to take advantage of.
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Dr. Junaid S. Ahmad is Professor of Religion and Global Politics in Islamabad, Pakistan, and is a Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) in Istanbul.
The U.S. is Saving the Financial Sector, not the Economy
Before juxtaposing the U.S. and alternative responses to the corona virus’s economic effects, I would like to step back in time to show how the pandemic has revealed a deep underlying problem. We are seeing the consequences of Western societies painting themselves into a debt corner by their creditor-oriented philosophy of law. Neoliberal anti-government (or more accurately, anti-democratic) ideology has centralized social planning and state power in “the market,” meaning specifically the financial market on Wall Street and in other financial centers.
At issue is who will lose when employment and business activity are disrupted. Will it be creditors and landlords at the top of the economic scale, or debtors and renters at the bottom? This age-old confrontation over how to deal with the unpaid rents, mortgages and other debt service is at the heart of today’s virus pandemic as large and small businesses, farms, restaurants and neighborhood stores have fallen into arrears, leaving businesses and households – along with their employees who have no wage income – to pay these carrying charges that accrue each month.
This is an age-old problem. It was solved in the ancient Near East simply by annulling these debt and rent charges. But the West, shaped as it still is by the legacy of the Roman Empire, has left itself prone to the massive unemployment, business closedowns and resulting arrears for these basic costs of living and doing business.
Western civilization distinguishes itself from its Near Eastern predecessors in the way it has responded to “acts of God” that disrupt the means of support and leave debts in their wake. The United States has taken the lead in rejecting the path by which China, and even social democratic European nations have prevented the corona virus from causing widespread insolvency and polarizing their economies. The U.S. corona virus lockdown is turning rent and debt arrears into an opportunity to impoverish the indebted economy and transfer mortgaged property and its income to creditors.
There is no inherent material need for this fate to occur. But it seems so natural and even inevitable that, as Margaret Thatcher would say, There Is No Alternative.
But of course there is, and always has been. However, resilience in the face of economic disruption always has required a central authority to override “market forces” to restore economic balance from “above.”
Individualistic economies cannot do that. To the extent that they have a strong state, they are not democratic but oligarchic, controlled by the financial sector in its own interest, in tandem with its symbiotic real estate sector and monopolized infrastructure. That is why every successful society since the Bronze Age has been a mixed economy. The determining factor in whether or not an economic disruption leaves a crippled economy in its wake turns out to be whether its financial sector is a public utility or is privatized from the debt-strapped public domain as a means to enrich bankers and money-lenders at the expense of debtors and overall economic balance.
China is using an age-old policy used ever since Hammurabi and other Bronze Age rulers promoted economic resilience in the face of “acts of God.” Unless personal debts, rents and taxes that cannot be paid are annulled, the result will be widespread bankruptcy, impoverishment and homelessness. In contrast to America’s financialized economy, China has shown how natural it is for society simply to acknowledge that debts, rents, taxes and other carrying charges of living and doing business cannot resume until economic normalcy is able to resume.
Near Eastern protection of economic resilience in the face of Acts of God
Ancient societies had a different logic from those of modern capitalist economies. Their logic – and the Jewish Mosaic Law of Leviticus 25, as well as classical Greek and Roman advocates of democratic reform – was similar to modern socialism. The basic principle at work was to subordinate market relations to the needs of society at large, not to enrich a financial rentier class of creditors and absentee landowners. More specifically, the basic principle was to cancel debts that could not normally be paid, and prevent creditors from foreclosing on the land of debtors.
All economies operate on credit. In modern economies, bills for basic expenses are paid monthly or quarterly. Ancient economies operated on credit during the crop year, with payment falling due when the harvest was in – typically on the threshing floor. This cycle normally provided a flow of crops and corvée labor to the palace, and covered the cultivator’s spending during the crop year. Interest typically was owed only when payment was late.
But bad harvests, military conflict or simply the normal hardships of life frequently prevented this buildup of debt from being paid. Mesopotamian palaces had to decide who would bear the loss when drought, flooding, infestation, disease or military attack prevented the payment of debts, rents and taxes. Seeing that this was an unavoidable fact of life, rulers proclaimed amnesties for taxes and these various obligations incurred during the crop year. That saved smallholders from having to work off their debts in personal bondage to their creditors and ultimately to lose their land.
For these palatial economies, resilience meant stabilization of fiscal revenue. Letting private creditors (often officials in the palace’s own bureaucracy) demand payment out of future production threatened to deprive rulers of crop surpluses and other taxes, and corvée labor or even service in the military. But for thousands of years, Near Eastern rulers restored fiscal viability for their economies by writing down debts, not only in emergencies but more or less regularly to relieve the normal creeping backlog of debts.
These Clean Slates extended from Sumer and Babylonia in the 3rd millennium BC to classical antiquity, including the neo-Assyrian, neo-Babylonian and Persian Empires. They restored normal economic relations by rolling back the consequences of personal and agrarian debts – bondage to creditors, and loss of land and its crop yield. From the palace’s point of view as tax collector and seller of many key goods and services, the alternative would have been for debtors to owe their crops, labor and even liberty to their creditors, not to the palace. So cancelling debts to restore normalcy was simply pragmatic, not utopian idealism as was once thought.
The pedigree for “act-of-God” rules specifying what obligations need not be paid when serious disruptions occur goes back to the laws of Hammurabi c. 1750 BC. Their aim was to restore economic normalcy after major disruptions. §48 of Hammurabi’s laws proclaim a debt and tax amnesty for cultivators if Adad the Storm God had flooded their fields, or if their crops failed as a result of pests or drought. Crops owed as rent or fiscal payments were freed from having to be paid. So were consumer debts run up during the crop year, including tabs at the local ale house and advances or loans from individual creditors. The ale woman likewise was freed from having to pay for the ale she had received from palace or temples for sale during the crop year.
Whoever leased an animal that died by an act of god was freed from liability to its owner (§266). A typical such amnesty occurred if the lamb, ox or ass was eaten by a lion, or if an epidemic broke out. Likewise, traveling merchants who were robbed while on commercial business were cleared of liability if they swore an oath that they were not responsible for the loss (§103).
It was realized that hardship was so inevitable that debts tended to accrue even under normal conditions. Every ruler of Hammurabi’s dynasty proclaimed a Clean Slate cancelling personal agrarian debts (but left normal commercial business loans intact) upon taking the throne, and when military or other disruptions occurred during their reign. Hammurabi did this on four occasions.
Bronze Age rulers could not afford to let such bondage and concentration of property and wealth to become chronic. Labor was the scarcest resource, so a precondition for survival was to prevent creditors from using debt leverage to obtain the labor of debtors and appropriate their land. Rulers therefore acted to prevent creditors from becoming a wealthy class seeking gains by impoverishing debtors and taking crop yields and land for themselves.
By rejecting such alleviations of debts resulting from economic disruption, the U.S. economy is subjecting itself to depression, homelessness and economic polarization. It is saving stockholders and bondholders instead of the economy at large. That is because today’s rentier interests take the economic surplus in the form of debt service, holding labor and also corporate industry in bondage. Mortgage debt is the price of obtaining a home of one’s own. Student debt is the price of getting an education to get a job. Automobile debt is needed to buy a car to drive to the job, and credit-card debt must be run up to pay for living costs beyond what one is able to earn. This deep indebtedness makes workers afraid to go on strike or even to protect working conditions, because being fired is to lose the ability to pay debts and rents. So the rising debt overhead serves the business and financial sector by lowering wage levels while extracting more interest, financial fees, rent and insurance out of their take-home pay.
Debt deflation and the transition from finance capitalism to an Austerity Economy
By injecting $10 trillion into the financial markets (when Federal Reserve credit is added to U.S. Treasury allocation), the CARES act enabled the stock market to recover all of its 34 percent drop (as measured by the S&P 500 stocks) by June 9, even as the economy’s GDP was still plunging. The government’s new money creation was not spent to revive the real economy of production and consumption, but at least the financial One Percent was saved from loss. It was as if prosperity and living standards would somehow return to normal in a V-shaped recovery.
But what is “normal” these days? For 95 percent of the population, their share of GDP already had been falling ever since the Obama Depression began with the bank bailout in 2009, leaving an enormous bad-debt overhead in place. The economy’s long upswing since World War II was already grinding to an end as it struggled to carry its debt burden, rising housing costs, health care and related monthly “nut.”
This is not what was expected 75 years ago. World War II ended with families and businesses rife with savings and with little debt, as there had been little to buy during the wartime years. But ever since, each business cycle recovery has started with a higher ratio of debt to income, diverting more revenue from business, households and governments to pay banks and bondholders. This debt burden raises the economy’s cost of living and doing business, while leaving less wage income and profit to be spent on goods and services.
The virus pandemic has merely acted as a catalyst ending to the long postwar boom. Yet even as the U.S. and other Western economies begin to buckle under their debt overhead, little thought has been given to how to extricate them from the debts and defaults that have accelerated as a result of the broad economic disruption.
The “business as usual” approach is to let creditors foreclose and draw all the income and wealth over subsistence needs into their own hands. Economies have reached the point where debts can be paid only by shrinking production and consumption, leaving them as strapped as Greece has been since 2015. Rejecting debt writedowns to restore social balance was implanted at the outset of modern Western civilization. Ever since Roman times it has become normal for creditors to use social misfortune as an opportunity to gain property and income at the expense of families falling into debt. Blocking the emergence of democratic civic regimes empowered to protect debtors, creditor interests have promoted laws that force debtors to lose their land or other means of livelihood to foreclosing creditors or sell it under distress conditions and have to work off their debts.
In times of a general economic disruption, giving priority to creditor claims leads to widespread bankruptcy. Yet it violates most peoples’ ideas of fairness and distributive justice to evict debtors from their homes and take whatever property they have if they cannot pay their rent arrears and other charges that have accrued through no fault of their own. Bankruptcy proceedings will force many businesses and farms to forfeit what they have invested to much wealthier buyers. Many small businesses, especially in urban minority neighborhoods, will see years of saving and investment wiped out. The lockdown also forces U.S. cities and states to cope with plunging sales- and income-tax revenue by slashing social services and depleting their pension funds savings to pay bondholders. Balancing their budgets by privatizing hitherto public services will create monopoly rents and new corporate empires.
These outcomes are not necessary. They also are inequitable, and instead of being a survival of the fittest and most efficient economic solutions, they are a victory for the most successful predatory operators in society. Yet such results are the product of a long-pedigreed legal and financial philosophy promoted by banks and bondholders, landlords and insurance companies to reject economy-wide debt relief. They depict writing down debts and rents owed to them as unthinkable. Banks claim that forgiving personal and business rents would lead absentee landlords to default on their mortgages, threatening bank solvency. Insurance companies claim that to make their policy holders whole would bankrupt them. So something has to give: either the population’s broad economic interests, or the vested interests insisting that labor, industry and the government must bear the cost of arrears that have built up during the economic shutdown.
As in oligarchic Rome, financial interests in today’s world have gained control of governments and captured the political and regulatory agencies, leaving democratic reformers powerless to suspend debt service, rent arrears, evictions and depression. The West is becoming a highly centrally planned economy, but its planning center is Wall Street, not Washington or state and local governments.
Rising real estate arrears prompt a mortgage bailout
Canada and many European governments are subsidizing businesses to pay up to 80 percent of employee wages even though many must stay home. But for the 40 million Americans who haven’t been employed during the closedown, the prospect is for homelessness and desperation. Already before the crisis about half of Americans reported that they were living paycheck to paycheck and could not raise $400 in an emergency. When the paychecks stopped, rents could not be paid, nor could other normal monthly living expenses.
America is seeing the end of the home ownership boom that endowed its middle class with property steadily rising in price. For buyers, the price was rising mortgage debt, as bank credit was the major factor in raising property prices – a home is worth however much a bank will lend against it. For non-whites, to be sure, neighborhoods were redlined against racial minorities. By the early 2000s, banks began to make loans to black and Hispanic buyers, but usually at extortionately high interest rates and stiffer debt terms. America’s white home buyers now face a fate similar to that which they have long imposed on minorities: Debt-inflated purchase prices for homes so high that they leave buyers strapped by mortgage and compulsory insurance payments, alongside declining public services in their neighborhoods.
When mortgages can’t be paid, foreclosures follow. That causes declines in the proportion of Americans that own their own homes. That home ownership rate already had dropped from about 58 percent in 2008 to about 51 percent at the start of 2020. Since the 2008 mortgage-fraud crisis and President Obama’s mass foreclosure program that hit minorities and low-income buyers especially hard, a more landlord-ridden economy has emerged as a result of foreclosed properties and companies bought by speculators and vast absentee-owner companies like Blackstone.
Many businesses that closed down did not pay the landlords. Realizing that if they are held responsible for paying full rents that accrued during the shutdown, it would take them over a year to make up the payment, leaving no net earnings for their efforts, the incentive was to close. That was especially the case for restaurants with compulsory limited “distance” seating and other stores obliged to restrict the density of their customers. Many restaurants and other neighborhood stores decided to go out of business. Some 19 percent of mortgage loans had fallen into arrears already by May, along with about 10 percent of retail stores.
The commercial real estate sector owes $2.4 trillion in mortgage debt. About 40 percent of tenants did not pay their rents for March, April and May, from restaurants and storefronts to large national retail markets. A moratorium on evictions put them off until August or September 2020. But in the interim, quarterly state and local property taxes were due in June, which also was when the annual federal income-tax payment was owed for the year 2019, having been postponed from April in the face of the shutdown.
The prospective break in the chain of payments of landlords to their banks may be bailed out by the Federal Reserve, but nobody can come up with a scenario whereby the debts owed by non-elites can be paid out of their own resources, any more than they were rescued from the junk-mortgage frauds that left over-mortgaged homes (mainly for low-income victims) in the wake of Obama’s decision to support the banks and mortgage brokers instead of their victims. In fact, it takes a radical scenario to see how state and local debt can be paid as public budgets are thrown into limbo by the virus pandemic.
The fiscal squeeze forces governments to privatize public services and assets
Since 1945, the normal Keynesian response to an economic slowdown has been for governments to run budget deficits to revive the economy and employment. But that can’t happen in the wake of the 2020 pandemic. For one thing, tax revenue is falling. Governments can create domestic money, of course, but the U.S. government quickly ran up a $2 trillion deficit by June 2020 simply to support Wall Street’s financial and corporate markets, leaving a fiscal squeeze when it came to public spending into the real economy. Many U.S. states and cities have laws obliging them to balance their budgets. So public spending into the real economy (instead of just into the financial and corporate markets) had to be cut back.
U.S. states and localities are facing a huge tax shortfall that is forcing them to cut back basic social services and infrastructure. Sales taxes from restaurants and hotels, income taxes, and property taxes from landlords not receiving rents are mounting from millions to billions. New York City mayor de Blasio (image on the left) has warned that schools, the police and public transportation may have to be cut back unless the city is given $7 billion. The CARES act passed by the Democratic Party in control of the House of Representatives made no attempt to allocate a single dollar to make up the widening fiscal gap. As for the Trump administration, it was unwilling to give money to states voting Democratic in the presidential or governorship elections.
The irony is that just at the time when a pandemic calls for public health care, political pressure for that abruptly stopped. Logically, it might have been expected the virus to have become a major catalyst for single-payer public health care, not least to prevent a wave of personal bankruptcy resulting from high medical bills. But hopes were dashed when the leading torch bearer for socialized medicine, Senator Bernie Sanders, threw his support behind Joe Biden and other opponents for the presidential nomination instead of focusing the primary elections on what the future of the Democratic Party would be. It decided to focus the 2020 U.S. election merely on the personality of which candidate would impose neoliberal policy: Republican Donald Trump, or his opponent running simply on a platform of “I am not Trump.”
Both candidates – and indeed, both parties behind them –sought to downsize government and privatize as much of the public sector as possible, leaving administration to financial managers. Past government policy would have restored prosperity by public spending programs to rebuild the roads and bridges, trains and subways that have fallen apart. But the fiscal squeeze caused by the economic shutdown has created pressure to Thatcherize America’s crumbling transportation and urban infrastructure – and also to sell off land and public enterprises, basic urban health, schools – and at the national level, the post office. Fiscal budgets are to be balanced by selling off this infrastructure, in lucrative Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) with financial firms.
The neoliberal rent-extractive plan is for private capital to buy monopoly rights to repair the nation’s bridges by turning them into toll bridges, to repair the nation’s roads and highways by making the toll roads, to repair sewer systems by privatizing them. Schools, prisons, hospitals and other traditionally public functions are set to become lucrative consulting opportunities on the road to privatization. Even the police are to be privately owned security-guard agencies and managed for profit – on terms that will provide interest and capital gains for the financial sector. It is a New Enclosures movement seeking monopoly rent much as landlords extract land rent.
Having given $10 trillion dollars to support financial and mortgage markets, neoliberals in both the Republican and Democratic parties announced that the government had created so large a budget deficit as a result of bailing out the banking and landlord class that it lacked any more room for money creation for actual social spending programs. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell advised states to solve their budget squeeze by raiding their pension funds to pay their bondholders.
For many decades, public employees accepted low wage growth in exchange for pensions. Their patient choice was to defer demands for wage increases in order to secure good pensions for their retirement. But now that they have worked at stagnant wages for many years, the money ostensibly saved for their pensions is to be given to bondholders. Likewise at the federal level, pressure was renewed by both parties to cut back Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, with Obama’s 2010 Simpson-Bowles Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform to reduce the deficit at the expense of retirees and the poor.
In sum, money is being created to fuel the financial sector and its stock and bond markets, not to increase the economy’s solvency, employment and living standards. The corona virus did not create this shift, but it catalyzed and accelerated the power grab, not least by pushing public-sector budgets into crisis.
It doesn’t have to be this way
Every successful economy has been a mixed public/private economy with checks on the financial sector’s power to indebt society in ways that impoverish it. Always at issue, however, is who will control the government. As American and European industry becomes more debt ridden, will they be oligarchic or democratic?
A socialist government such as China’s can keep its industry going simply by simply writing down debts when they can’t be paid without forcing a closedown and bankruptcy and loss of assets and employment. The world thus has two options: a basically productive public financial system in China, or a predatory financial system in the United States.
China can recover financially and fiscally from the viral disruption because most debts ultimately are owned to the government-based banking system. Money can be created to finance the material economy, labor and industry, construction and agriculture. When a company is unable to pay its bills and rent, the government doesn’t stand by and let it be closed down and sold at a distressed price to a vulture investor.
China has an option that Western economies do not: It is in a position to do what Hammurabi and other ancient Near Eastern palatial economies did for thousands of years – write down debts so as to keep the economy resilient and functioning. It can suspend scheduled debt service, taxes, rents and public fees from having to be paid by troubled areas of its economy, because China’s government is the ultimate creditor. It need not contend with politically powerful bankers who insist that the economy at large must lose, not themselves. The government can write down the debt to keep companies in business, and also their employees. That’s what socialist governments do.
The underlying problem is finance capitalism. Its roots lie at the heart of Western civilization itself, rejecting the “circular time” permitting economic renewal by Clean Slates in favor of “linear time” in which debts are permanent and irreversible, without public oversight to manage finance and credit in the economy’s overall long-term interest.
It often is easier to get rich in such times of disaster and need than in times of normal prosperity. While the U.S. economy polarizes between creditors and debtors, the stock market anticipates fortunes being made quickly from the insolvency of business with assets and property to be grabbed. Coupled with the Federal Reserve’s credit creation to support the financial and real estate markets, asset prices are soaring (as of June 2020) for companies that expect to get even richer from the widespread distress to come in autumn 2020 when evictions and foreclosures are scheduled to begin again.
In that respect, the corona virus’s effect has been to help defeat the financial sector’s enemy – governments strong enough to regulate it. The fiscal squeeze resulting from widespread unemployment, business closedowns, rent and tax arrears is being seized upon as a means of dismantling and privatizing government at the federal, state and local levels, at the expense of the citizenry at large.
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There has been considerable controversy regarding Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Republican National Convention address pre-recorded at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem and aired last Tuesday night. As usual however, the discussion, if one might dignify it using such a term, has been partisan in nature and focused on issues that one might consider to be of secondary importance. The perceived problems for Democrats and their media allies have been first of all the inappropriateness of a Secretary of State getting involved at all in an electoral campaign and also the possible illegality of overseas Embassy money and resources being used in support of a political speech. Misuse of government property is, perhaps not coincidentally, a charge also being leveled against President Donald Trump for his use of the White House as a prop in his final address to the convention.
To be sure, the money issue can be fixed by the Republican National Committee reimbursing the federal government proportionate to the expenses incurred by Pompeo on his trip for the actual costs associated with the speech. The other issue, which effectively comes down to enforcement of the Hatch Act prohibiting government employees from engaging in political activity, is admittedly more difficult, and it also runs contrary to the tradition that the Secretary of State represents the entire country and should avoid participating in explicitly partisan events. Congress’s Oversight committee is currently looking into the options for responding to the Pompeo speech, though it is already clear that it will turn out to be the usual partisan political finger pointing exercise.
Pompeo started out by stating how Donald Trump’s policies had made every American, including his own family, safer. He then went on to provide the evidence, how among “bold initiatives” all over the world in foreign policy
“The president has held China accountable for covering up the China virus and allowing it to spread death and economic destruction in America and around the world and he will not rest until justice is done.”
Pompeo then went on to give Trump top marks for brokering the historic “peace deal” between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. He enthused that “This is a deal that our grandchildren will read about in their history books.”
Pompeo also praised other foreign policy “successes” to include the assassination of Iranian General and “terrorist” Qassim Soleimani and the “defeat” of ISIS, both of which are, to put it mildly, greatly exaggerated. But he saved his best news for last, praising how President Trump had moved the U.S. Embassy to “this city of God” the “rightful capital of the Jewish homeland, Jerusalem.” It was inter alia an in-your-face show of support for Israel, which was the one foreign country praised by multiple speakers on every night of the Republican convention.
If the underlying issue is that Pompeo was clearly in a political mode when praising Donald Trump and his policies, then it should be observed that the Jerusalem address differs little from what Pompeo has said on a score of occasions in Washington and elsewhere. That he made the comments to a narrow audience drawn from one political party is disturbing, but it could still be framed as a discussion of foreign policy before a gathering of Americans. And as for possible consequences, Pompeo and Trump would certainly ignore any actions initiated by inspectors general in the State Department and executive branch who might try to sanction the Secretary based on “political” comments that are sandwiched into what will be described as a foreign policy briefing. Pompeo has in fact already fired one State Department inspector general who was reportedly investigating the Secretary’s spending on gatherings that were political in nature. The House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel also is working on a motion to hold Pompeo in contempt for his refusal to respond to subpoenas over his “transparently political misuse of Department resources.”
An additional complaint about the speech has been the fundamentalist Christian content, which, though not in any way illegal, was regarded by many as unseemly. But that, it might seem, is part of the more significant issues raised by the content and venue for the address. Pompeo’s trip to Jerusalem was timed to coincide with the Republican conference. It was not just coincidence that he was in Israel and was able to photo-op his shaking of the hand of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, guarantee the Jewish state’s security and appear on the big screen at the convention with Jerusalem behind him. It was, in short, once again playing the Israel card to raise the enthusiasm level of the GOP’s most loyal constituency, the Christian Zionists. And to ensure that the message was received, it was delivered by the Trump administration’s leading Christian Zionist, Mike Pompeo.
But the ultimate irony is that the presentation by Pompeo was essentially a bit of theater, relying on a fraudulent rendition of America’s hypothetical foreign policy successes under Donald Trump. Trump’s campaign against China is very much a work-in-progress that could have a very serious downside, while simultaneously the relationship with the Kremlin, involving per Pompeo “deterring Russian aggression,” has become worse than it was when the Cold War ended. Meanwhile America’s European allies regard Trump and Pompeo as dangerous sociopaths.
And the “Deal of the Century” agreement between Israel and the UAE is already in tatters, with UAE representatives canceling a meeting after learning that the Jewish state has been pressuring Pompeo and the White House to block any sale of advanced F-35 fighter aircraft to the Arab state to “preserve Israel’s military advantage.” The agreement was a sham in any event, intended to give Trump a “victory” to help his electoral prospects at the expense of the hapless Palestinians, and no other Arab states, with the possible exception of basket case Sudan, appear willing to follow the UAE’s lead.
Since the so-called agreement, the Israeli air force has reverted to normal, pounding targets in both Lebanon and Syria, very little of which is being reported in the U.S. media. Nor have accounts of American provocations against Russian military personnel in Syria made the front pages, which, given the danger involved, is probably where they should be if the media were in any way responsible. Indeed, one has to go to the Grayzone to learn just to what extent both of America’s leading political parties are itching for more intervention in Syria to increase pressure on Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.
Unfortunately, the message coming from Pompeo in Jerusalem is not just an isolated political gambit. The United States of America has become the instigator and sustainer of a disproportionate share of global violence. With a hotly contested election coming up, there may be some hope that the brutal foreign policy prevailing since 9/11 will change, but, unfortunately, the reality is that in Washington some things will always remain the same.
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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: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on August 24, 2020 in Jerusalem. (Photo: Pompeo/Twitter)
Unlawfully imposed US sanctions on targeted nations, entities and individuals are weapons of war by other means.
On Wednesday, Pompeo said the Trump regime blacklisted ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and the court’s Jurisdiction, Complementary, and Cooperation Division head Phakiso Mochochoko under a June White House executive order, saying the following:
The US “never ratified the Rome Statute that created the court, and we will not tolerate…attempts to subject Americans to its jurisdiction,” adding:
“Individuals and entities that continue to materially support those individuals risk exposure to sanctions as well.”
The State Department earlier “restricted the issuance of visas for certain individuals involved in the ICC’s efforts to investigate US personnel.”
While the US didn’t ratify the Rome Statute, Afghanistan did in February 2003.
Image on the right: Fatou Bensouda
When agreeing to probe charges of US war crimes in the country, an appeals chamber of the ICC unanimously reversed a lower chamber’s decision that halted an inquiry because the US doesn’t recognize the court’s jurisdiction to probe its officials, only those of its adversaries.
An ICC statement said that after Afghanistan “deposited its instrument of accession to the Rome Statute on 10 February 2003,” the court “may…exercise its jurisdiction over crimes listed in the Rome Statute committed on the territory of Afghanistan or by its nationals from 1 May 2003 onwards.”
In response to the unacceptable Trump regime’s actions, a breach of the letter and spirit of international law, a statement by the court said the following:
“These coercive acts, directed at an international judicial institution and its civil servants, are unprecedented and constitute serious attacks against the Court, the Rome Statute system of international criminal justice, and the rule of law more generally.”
Separately, Judge O-Gon Kwon, president of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court—Republic of Korea said the following:
Sanctioning court officials by the Trump regime “weaken(s) our common endeavor to fight impunity for mass atrocities.”
“We stand by our court and its staff as well as those cooperating with it in implementing its judicial mandate.”
“A meeting of the Bureau of the Assembly will take place shortly to consider the measures imposed by the (Trump regime) and ways to give effect to our unstinting support for the court.”
Since beginning its probe of US Afghanistan war crimes in 2017, the ICC said it received over 700 complaints from aggrieved victims.
In June, Trump declared a state of national emergency over the ICC’s probe of US war crimes in Afghanistan.
At the time, he issued an executive order that authorizes blocking property of ICC officials in the US if sanctioned by Washington. It also prevents them from traveling to the US.
There’s no ambiguity about US high crimes of war and against humanity in all its preemptive wars by hot and other means throughout the post-WW II period and earlier.
In early March, ICC judges authorized an investigation into accusations of war crimes by US military and intelligence personnel, Afghan forces, and the Taliban in the country.
Given the ICC’s history since established in 2002 of targeting victims of US high crimes, never the US or its imperial partners earlier, it’s unclear what will come of its probe into indisputable US war crimes in Afghanistan.
Though mandated to prosecute individuals (not nations) for crimes of war, against humanity, genocide and aggression, the court never targeted the main offenders of these crimes.
It requires a giant leap of faith believe it’ll go now where it never went before.
Maybe illegal Trump regime sanctioning of its chief prosecutor and another key official will convince the court to respond by fulfilling its mandate against the world’s leading perpetrator of war crimes USA in one of its theaters — Afghanistan.
There’s no ambiguity of its criminal history.
It’s put up or shut up time for the ICC to hold the US responsible for high crimes too grievous to ignore in all its preemptive wars of aggression against nonbelligerent states threatening no one.
A Final Comment
The 2002 American Service Members’ Protection Act (ASPA, aka Hague Invasion Act) “protect(s) United States military personnel and other elected and appointed officials of the United States government against criminal prosecution by an international court to which the United States is not party.”
The measure authorizes the president to use “all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any US or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.”
Decades of US high crimes are well documented, its officials never held accountable. Nor have their counterparts in other NATO countries and Israel.
Will this time be different? Will the ICC fulfill its mandate by conducting a credible probe of US war crimes in Afghanistan?
Will the court call for holding culpable individuals accountable for offenses in the country it determined to be war crimes?
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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.”
Admittedly, a lot of good happened over the last years in Lithuania, but unfortunately we have also see political leadership that is not interested in developing their own country.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrovslammed Lithuania’s alleged “undemocratic methods” to support the Belarusian opposition.
“We see attempts to unbalance the situation. As a matter of fact, no one is concealing this. Our Lithuanian neighbours have already overstepped all bounds of decency in the demands that they are putting forth. And we have reasons to presume that they are working with Svetlana Tikhanovskaya via undemocratic methods that do not show much respect for the sovereignty of Belarus,” said Lavrov.
Responding to Lavrov’s statement, Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius said that Lithuania had no intention of meddling into Belarus’ affairs, as it has no right of doing so, but it would assist people prosecuted by the Minsk government.
In turn, press secretary of the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Anatoly Glaz said:
“We have carefully read the statements of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. In any case, these are our neighboring countries, and their opinion is important for us. It is, however, becoming less and less important in the light of recent hasty steps, and it is unfortunate to state this. It is not clear how this step of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia will support the sovereignty and independence of Belarus they have spoken so much about.”
In his words,
this “express desire to repeat old mistakes and thoughtlessly go round in a circle certainly causes sincere disappointment”.
“As you know, the biggest foolishness is to do the same thing and hope for a different result. The history of our independent state eloquently confirms that any attempts of sanctions on Belarus lead their initiators only to the opposite effect. We are absolutely convinced that today’s decision of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia will also be no exception. Moreover, our Baltic neighbors have also launched a spiral of sanctions. We have previously stated that Belarus would have to take adequate response to the initiators of such steps. This will be done. We will patiently wait for the moment when common sense will prevail in the minds of our partners. We are confident that this moment will come sooner than some might think,” said the representative of the Belarusian MFA.
However, statements by Lithuanian politicians are attempts to divert the attention of citizens from the country’s problems.
According to Eurostat, the unemployment rate in Lithuania in July was one of the highest in the European Union (EU). The unemployment rate among young people under 25 years old increased over the year from 11.3% to 23.1%, driving emigration to countries such as Norway and the U.K.
Many Lithuanians, especially the young people, who should lead the country forward, are terrible disillusioned over the development, and leave in droves. They are registered as unemployed in Lithuania. Those who are left here show dissatisfaction over how they have been treated.
The Lithuanian authorities hope that the young people will leave Belarus and go to Lithuania. They are doing everything possible to achieve this goal.
As for the sanctions that the Baltic States have imposed travel sanctions on Belarusian leaders, including Alexander Lukashenko.
Besides, the Baltic States will soon sign a political declaration, committing to block Belarusian nuclear imports.
It should be noted that Latvia showed solidarity with Lithuania in boycotting electricity from the Belarusian nuclear power plant just last week. However, Latvia said it would trade with Russia, leaving a possibility for Astravyets energy to enter the common network via Russia. Therefore, talks on how to trade with non-EU countries will have to continue.
In turn, Belarus refuses to send its cargoes through the Klaipeda port. A.Lukashenko expressed hope to agree with Russia on the diversion of the transit of Belarusian cargoes from the Baltic States to Russian ports. According to some media estimates, Belarusian companies account for one third of the capacity of the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda and the transit of Belarusian goods makes up about 2 per cent of Lithuania’s GDP. If Belarus stops transit through Klaipeda, the Lithuanian Railways company (Lietuvos geležinkeliai) will also suffer. As a result, the state budget of Lithuania will not receive up to 30% of taxes.
Obviously, political and economic differences between neighboring countries will negatively affect all countries in the region.
Besides, analysts are confident that if such rhetoric between Lithuania and its neighbors continues, it will further damage Lithuania’s already weak economy.
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The big financial news yesterday was that, despite the pandemic, Wall Street just recorded its best August in more than 30 years.
However history was also made in what is yet another seismic shift in the financial clout of the oil industry.
The once mighty Exxon suffered the corporate humiliation of being booted out the highly influential Dow Jones Industrial Index.
“The last day of August also marked the first day of trading for the newly reconfigured Dow”, reported the Washington Post. “The index, which tracks 30 large publicly traded companies, swapped out three companies.” And one of those was oil giant, ExxonMobil.
Do not underestimate the significance of this moment. Exxon is the oldest member of the influential Index, having joined in 1928.
The Seeking Alpha investor website calls the move the “ultimate insult” for Exxon. As an article in NPRnotes:
“The Dow Jones Industrial Average is the classic blue-chip stock index. Exxon Mobil is an iconic blue-chip stock … It reflects just how once-dominant Exxon has diminished.”
Even a year ago if you had said Exxon was going to be booted out of the Dow Jones you would have been laughed at. But how the once mighty have fallen.
Twenty one years ago, in 1999, when Exxon and Mobil merged, it not only created the world’s largest private oil company, but for many years, Exxon Mobil was the world’s largest publicly traded company.
But the company’s demise has been a long time coming. The Motley Fool investor website has calculated that Exxon’s stock has lost value over the past 20 years. This compares to an increase of over 130% for the S&P 500.
Such was the size of the company that even seven years ago, Exxon was still the world’s most valuable corporation. But since then, the company’s market value has disintegrated a staggering $267 billion.
Even the normally loyal Dallas News notes that “Exxon’s stock had fallen in four of six years before 2020 and is down another 40% year to date.”
“Exxon is now a shell of its former self”, argues one commentator for CNN, calling the company’s removal from the Dow a “humiliation.”
It is hard to see a route back into the Dow for Exxon as investors take flight over climate change and COVID-19 and look to lucrative renewables instead. CNN concludes “Exxon is the best-known company in the fossil fuels industry at a time when investors would prefer to bet on solar, wind and Tesla.”
“The removal of Exxon Mobil Corp. from the index after an uninterrupted presence since 1928 shouldn’t come as a surprise. It’s not the end of Big Oil, but it may signal the start of the beginning of the end.”
Make no mistake, it really is yet another significant milestone in the demise of Big Oil.
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With the signing of the Abraham Accord, UAE Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash praised the formalisation of Israeli ties as a “bold initiative of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed” that has frozen West Bank annexation to allow “more time for peace opportunities through the two-state solution”. He called it “a realistic approach”.
Reaction to this initiative has been mixed, especially within the Arab world. Palestinian politician Hanan Ashrawidenounced the deal, telling bin Zayed:
“May you never experience the agony of having your country stolen; may you never feel the pain of living in captivity under occupation; may you never witness the demolition of your home or murder of your loved ones. May you never be sold out by your ‘friends.’”
Jordan also criticised the deal, despite having signed a 1994 peace treaty with Israel, with Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadiwarning:
“If Israel sees the agreement as an incentive for the end of the occupation and the return of the Palestinian people’s right to freedom and to establish their independent state on the 1967 borders with Eastern Jerusalem as its capital, the region will move towards a just peace. However, if Israel does not do this, the conflict will deepen and threaten the whole region.”
Regime survival
More recently, a controversial tweet from Jordan’s Prince Ali bin Hussein featured the word “traitor” across photographs of bin Zayed. Although it was later taken down, the tweet received more than 900 retweets, with comments ranging from praise of bin Hussein’s “honourable stance” to reminding him of “the 1994 Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty in Wadi Araba, your Highness”.
The mixed reception is a reminder that Jordan’s relationship with Israel is intertwined with its majority Palestinian population, expelled from occupied land in waves from 1948-67. This population is significant and effects how the Hashemite dynasty constructs its legitimacy and regime survival, which might be at the core of Jordan’s anger towards the UAE’s new deal.
Under the 1994 peace treaty, Jordan was forced to formally relinquish claims to the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This was problematic, as Jordan’s Hashemites have drawn on religious lineage for legitimacy, including custodianship of Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque.
But in exchange for peace with Israel, Jordan grew closer to a major US ally. This had two advantages: Jordan could push Israel for more US aid and act as a covert mediator between Israel and proximate states.
The former was an urgent need throughout the 1990s. “Jordan’s tilt toward Iraq in the 1990 Kuwait crisis had poisoned American-Jordanian relations,” noted Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Center for Middle East Policy. “Aid had been stopped, military support and logistics cut off, and the Jordanians’ only port at Aqaba was under quarantine to check for traffic transiting to Iraq via Jordan.”
In 1994, King Hussein “was ready to go for a peace treaty [in exchange for] Israeli help with Washington to restore relations, including the resumption of military aid … as well as delivery of a squadron of F-16 jet fighters for the Royal Jordanian Air Force.”
Mediation channels
Jordan’s treaty with Israel allowed Amman to attempt to counter its unpopularity with attempts to hold peace summits that could bolster its status as an arbiter. This was apparent in 2013, when King Abdullah II announced Amman’s willingness to act as a facilitator for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
“The window of opportunity is still open to re-galvanise” peace efforts, he insisted during a joint press conference with US President Barack Obama.
There is no doubt that the task of balancing a Palestinian populace, religious legitimacy through landmarks in Jerusalem, and a peace treaty with Israel gave Amman the credentials to push this initiative. It would also ensure that Jordan could profit from the ability to host Israeli political figures and Arab leaders who wished to communicate discreetly.
For a resource-dry monarchy, the ability to provide such channels have allowed it to be regarded as an essential and stable actor in the region. This notion is especially true when considering that Jordan was only the second Arab country after Egypt to sign a peace treaty with Israel.
The Egypt-Israel treaty of 1979 cost then-Egyptian President Anwar Sadat his life; he was assassinated in 1981. Jordan’s King Hussein did not seem to face such repercussions, leading some analysts to describe him as an adroit ruler in an unstable region. He passed the reins to King Abdullah in 1999.
Deepening Gulf-Israel ties
Yet, recent events in the Gulf are challenging Jordan’s status as Israel’s strongest facilitator in the Arab world. Under right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Gulf relations have started to thaw.
In October 2018, Netanyahu was welcomed by Oman’s Sultan Qaboos. Oman’s communications minister said the visit was symbolic of “the good relations that are developing between the Israeli government and the Sunni countries that oppose the Iranian terror, which also threatens them”.
The focus on Iran as a common enemy seems to have encouraged a deepening of Gulf-Israel ties. Indeed, as early as 2017, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was reportedly visiting Israel for secret talks on regional peace. This was followed in October 2018 by a $250m deal for Israeli spy equipment and “strategic military exchanges”.
Saudi Arabia’s smaller ally, Bahrain, has maintained covert contacts with Israel since 1994 (ironically, the year of the Israel-Jordan peace treaty). Like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain regards Iran as a threat, with Iran periodically making territorial claims to Bahrain.
“Bahrain’s outreach to Israel certainly underscores a continuing, and probably increasing, interest in exploring the prospects for better relations, and even potentially a new strategic relationship, between Israel and the Gulf Arab countries,” noted Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
Future peace talks
As the UAE leads a new opening with Israel, there is no doubt the US will be pleased. For a cash-strapped kingdom such as Jordan, 2020 is reversing the political benefits of 1994.
If Abu Dhabi is now closer to Israel and Washington and were able to freeze settlements, would this mean that future peace talks would be headed away from Amman and towards the UAE? Would a reduced role for Jordan mean less US aid? If the so-called Abraham Accord eclipses the 1994 Washington Declaration, what relevance would Jordan still have for the US?
The US would still consider Jordan’s geostrategic value, but a reduced importance as a conduit for Arab access to Israel may mean reduced aid, reduced living standards and greater socioeconomic difficulties amid a backdrop of increasing unrest. Perhaps this is why Jordanian artist Emad Hajjaj was arrested for his cartoon critical of the new relations.
In addition to shifting geopolitics, the status of Al-Aqsa mosque as a Jordanian religious buttress is now under threat. From Jerusalem, the response to a change in Al-Aqsa’s religious status has been swift and firm. Jerusalem’s Grand Mufti has prohibited Muslims from the UAE from visiting and praying at the Al-Aqsa Mosque insisting that any visitors to the mosque must pass through Jordan or the Palestinian territories – not Ben Gurion Airport.
But can such a fatwa be pragmatically enforced, and what about Jordan’s response? The fatwa represents a rejection of the Israeli occupation, but Al-Aqsa also represents Jordanian religious legitimacy.
With a Palestinian majority populous, King Abdullah II has responded coldly to UAE-Israel relations but will no doubt be balancing this response with access to Washington and the Emirates.
No matter what balancing act is chosen, one thing is clear: if Jordan still wants Washington’s attention, it must also please the UAE.
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Dr. Nicolai Due-Gundersen is author of The Privatization of Warfare (Cambridge: Intersentia) and former Adviser to the Arab Institute for Security Studies (ACSIS), Amman, Jordan. His research currently examines non-democratic political legitimacy in the face of the Arab Spring. He tweets @Nicolaiofarabia
Lukashenko’s entirely speculative claim last week about Poland’s supposed intention to annex Belarus’ Grodno region was nothing more than an attempt to trick Putin into “pulling a Crimea” by compelling him to comply with Russia’s CSTO mutual defense obligations to its “Union State” partner in the face of this hyped-up foreign threat, which was a ruse that the Russian leader was much too wise to fall for.
If Poland Didn’t Annex Lvov, Why Would It Annex Grodno?
There’s a lot of talk in Central & Eastern Europe about Lukashenko’s dramaticclaim last week that Poland is plotting to annex Belarus’ Grodno region, but this was nothing more than pure speculation that was shared for ulterior reasons. Poland, while wanting to revive its long-lost “sphere of influence” in the region through the US-backed “Three Seas Initiative” (TSI) that it leads, knows very well that any move in that direction would trigger a Russian military intervention under the CSTO’s clause mandating its members to mutually defend one another. It’s telling that Poland didn’t attempt to annex the Lvov region of Western Ukraine in the midst of its neighbor’s own turmoil over six years ago despite that area’s namesake city being much more culturally and historically significant to Poles than any place in Belarus’ Grodno region. The very fact that Poland would decline doing so in Lvov despite there being much less of a military deterrent to such a scenario than in Grodno casts serious doubt on Lukashenko’s claim, which naturally raises the question of why he made it.
Lukashenko’s Logic
The author previously argued that Russia wouldn’t “pull a Crimea” in Belarus unless it was tricked into doing so by Lukashenko either provoking a border incident with NATO and/or “stepping back” to allow the domestic situation to deteriorate to such a point where Russia feels compelled to offer military assistance. With this in mind, his ridiculous Grodno claim begins to make more sense. Lukashenko wanted to trick Russia into militarily intervening in his support since he fears for his political future in the face of the ongoing Color Revolution against him, but he also doesn’t want to become just another regional leader in the event that Belarus subsequently (re)unites with Russia, nor does he want to be sidelined in that scenario through the same “phased leadership transition” that he himself hinted at in mid-August. His thinking seems to be that if he can trick Russia into “pulling a Crimea”, then Moscow wouldn’t be able to “encourage” his exit from the political scene in any “face-saving” way, which would thus enable him to rule indefinitely under overt Russian tutelage.
Russia’s “Balancing” Strategy In Practice
Russia is behaving extremely cautiously in this situation since it understands the risks inherent to both the regime change and “Crimea 2.0” scenarios, which is why Putin played it very coy during his latest interview. On the one hand, he seemed to signal support for some of the legitimate protesters’ (importantly, not the rioters’!) demands and the possibility of a “phased leadership transition” by saying that “if the people take to the streets, it cannot be ignored. Everybody must listen to them and respond. By the way, the President of Belarus said that he is willing to consider conducting a constitutional reform, adopting a new Constitution, holding new parliamentary and presidential elections based on the new Constitution.”
On the other hand, however, he hinted that Russia might intervene if events quickly spiral out o control, saying that “Mr Lukashenko has asked me to create a reserve group of law enforcement personnel, and I have done this. But we have also agreed that this group would not be used unless the situation becomes uncontrollable, when extremist elements – I would like to say this once again – when the extremist elements, using political slogans as a cover, overstep the mark and start plundering the country, burning vehicles, houses, banks, trying to seize administration buildings, and so on.” Taken together, it’s clear to see that Putin is practicing a “balanced” yet flexible policy in regards to the Belarusian Crisis.
Putin Didn’t Bite The Bait
Putin’s calm and rational approach should be applauded since it’s arguably the best stance that Russia can take towards this rapidly changing issue. That doesn’t seem to suit Lukashenko though, who likely fears that his counterpart is leaning closer towards the “phased leadership transition” scenario following the US Deputy Secretary of State’s visit to Moscow that the author wrote about last week. After all, it’s probably not a coincidence that Lukashenko made his dramatic claims about Poland’s non-existent intentions to annex Grodno right after that visit took place, obviously wanting to remind Putin about this hyped-up threat in case the Russian leader was persuaded to cooperate with the US in advancing a pragmatic “political solution” to the crisis that would ultimately result in his “democratic” departure from office. Playing the “Polish card” was designed to manipulate Putin’s legitimate suspicions of NATO’s motives towards Russia’s traditional “sphere of influence” but failed to influence him since he wisely realized the game that Lukashenko was playing.
Concluding Thoughts
The Hybrid War on Belarus has reached a stalemate, but Lukashenko still fears for his political future since he never thought that he’d ever be in such a situation as he’s currently found himself. Russia isn’t riding to his rescue like he always took for granted would happen in this scenario since his failed “balancing” act over the past year made it seriously doubt his reliability as a partner, though its leadership’s distrust of him personally doesn’t change its geostrategic calculus towards Belarus. Russia won’t ignore credible NATO threats against its fellow “Union State” nor sit idly if EuroMaidan starts to repeat itself in Minsk, though neither has happened as of yet, and thus the trigger for military intervention under the CSTO hasn’t (yet) been pulled. Being increasingly fearful of his future and the possibility of Russia working with the US to advance a “phased leadership transition”, Lukashenko decided to pull the trigger himself by hyping up non-existent Polish threats to Grodno so that Putin rushes in and saves him, but the Russian leader knew better than to fall for this ridiculous trick.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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The data and concepts have been manipulated with a view to sustaining the fear campaign.
The estimates are meaningless. The figures have been hyped to justify the lockdown and the closure of the national economy, with devastating economic and social consequences. The Virus is held responsible for poverty and mass unemployment.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s deep and longstanding ties to U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors chairman Robert Duncanare coming under heightened scrutiny after corporate paperwork filed Monday listed Duncan as a director of a major GOP super PAC closely aligned with the Kentucky Republican.
The new filing (pdf) with Virginia’s State Corporation Commission—an independent regulatory agency that oversees political action committees—names Duncan as one of three directors of the Senate Leadership Fund, a massive super PAC that has spent nearly $18 million in support of Senate Republicans thus far in the 2020 election cycle.
The US government’s goal is to get the grouping of four countries and others in the region to work together as 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”, said Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun.
Every crisis—manufactured or otherwise—since the nation’s early beginnings has become a make-work opportunity for the government to expand its reach and its power at taxpayer expense while limiting our freedoms at every turn.
Indeed, the history of the United States is a testament to the old adage that liberty decreases as government (and government bureaucracy) grows. To put it another way, as government expands, liberty contracts.
Less than two months after Trump ally and GOP megadonor Louis DeJoy took the helm of the U.S. Postal Service, the House of Representatives met in an emergency session to address widespread fears about potential sabotage of this vital public agency at a time when it is needed more than ever to deliver medicine and other essentials and to facilitate mail-in voting.
On August 22, 26 Republicans joined 231 Democrats to pass H.R. 8015, which addresses these concerns by: providing $25 billion in direct emergency relief for USPS, requiring all official election mail to be treated as “first-class mail,” and prohibiting the removal of mail sorting machines and mailboxes and reversing any already implemented changes that could delay mail delivery.
At times, meds are more dangerous than diseases they’re supposed to protect against or cure.
Independent experts agree that all vaccines are hazardous to human health because they contain mercury, aluminum, formaldehyde, phenoxyethanol (antifreeze), and other toxins able to weaken and potentially destroy the human immune system.
For nearly four years, we have been laser focused on November 3, 2020, the day that Donald Trump could be voted out of office. In all likelihood, however, the election will not be decided that evening as it has in the past (with the notable exception of the 2000 election). That is because in order to protect themselves against COVID-19, a record number of people will forego the polls and mail their ballots, which take longer to count. There are several scenarios of what could transpire between November 3 and January 20. All of them are frightening.
In a statement [1] released Wednesday morning, Germany’s federal government said special toxicology tests carried out on Alexei Navalny since he arrived from Russia had given “unequivocal proof” that a Novichok agent had been used on the Russian dissident.
Navalny was transported out of Siberia to Berlin last month after he fell ill due to the suspected poisoning of his tea. He has been in a medically induced coma since he arrived in Germany. Novichok is the same group of nerve agents 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.
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.
Sergei Skripal 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.
In the aftermath of the Salisbury poisonings in March 2018, the US, UK and several European nations expelled scores of Russian diplomats and the Trump administration ordered the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle. In a retaliatory move, Russia also expelled a similar number of American, British and European diplomats, and ordered the closure of American consulate in Saint Petersburg. The relations between Moscow and Western powers reached their lowest ebb since the break-up of the former Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in December 1991.
A month after the Salisbury poisonings, an alleged chemical weapons attack took place in Douma, Syria, on April 7, 2018, and Donald Trump ordered a cruise missile strike in Syria on April 14, 2018, in collaboration with the Theresa May government in the UK and the Emmanuel Macron administration in France. The strike took place little over a year after a similar cruise missile strike on al-Shayrat airfield on April 6, 2017, after an alleged chemical weapons attack in Khan Sheikhoun, though both cruise missile strikes were nothing more than a show of force.
But the fact that out of 105 total cruise missiles deployed in the April 14, 2018, strikes against a military research facility in the Barzeh district of Damascus and two alleged chemical weapons storage facilities in Homs, 85 were launched by the US, 12 by the French and 8 by the UK aircrafts demonstrated the unified resolve of the Western powers against Russia in the aftermath of the Salisbury poisonings in the UK a month earlier.
It bears mentioning that the American air and missile strikes in Syria are not only illegal under the international law but are also unlawful according to the American laws. While striking the Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria, Washington availed itself of the war on terror provisions in the US laws, known as the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), but those laws do not give the president the power to order strikes against the Syrian government targets without prior approval of the US Congress which has the sole authority to declare war.
The Intercept reported last year [2] that the Trump administration had derived the authority to strike the Syrian government targets based on a “top secret” memorandum of the Office of Legal Counsel that even the US Congress couldn’t see. Complying with the norms of transparency and the rule of law were never the strong points of the American democracy but the Trump administration has done away with even the pretense of accountability and checks and balances in the conduct of international relations.
Moreover, over the years, Israel has not only provided medical aid and material support to the militant groups battling Damascus – particularly to various factions of the Free Syria Army (FSA) and al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate al-Nusra Front in Daraa and Quneitra bordering the Israel-occupied Golan Heights – but Israel’s air force has virtually played the role of the air force of Syrian militants and conducted hundreds of airstrikes in Syria during the eight-year conflict.
In an interview to New York Times [3] in January last year, Israel’s outgoing Chief of Staff Lt. General Gadi Eisenkot confessed that the Netanyahu government approved his shift in strategy in January 2017 to step up airstrikes in Syria. Consequently, more than 200 Israeli airstrikes were launched against the Syrian targets in 2017 and 2018, as revealed [4] by the Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz in September 2018.
In 2018 alone, Israel’s air force dropped 2,000 bombs in Syria. The purpose of Israeli airstrikes in Syria has been to degrade Iran’s guided missile technology provided to Damascus and its Lebanon-based proxy, Hezbollah, which poses an existential threat to Israel’s regional security.
Though after Russia provided S-300 missile system to the Syrian military after a Russian surveillance aircraft was shot down by Syrian air defenses during an Israeli incursion into the Syrian airspace, on September 2018, killing 15 Russians onboard, the Israeli airstrikes in Syria have been significantly scaled down.
Before the evacuation of 1,000 American troops from northern Syria last year, the Pentagon had 2,000 US forces in Syria. After the drawdown of US troops at Erdogan’s insistence in order for Ankara to mount a ground offensive in northern Syria, the US has still deployed 1,000 troops, mainly in oil-rich eastern Deir al-Zor province and at al-Tanf military base.
Al-Tanf military base is strategically located in southeastern Syria on the border between Syria, Iraq and Jordan, and it straddles on a critically important Damascus-Baghdad highway, which serves as a lifeline for Damascus. Washington has illegally occupied 55-kilometer area around al-Tanf since 2016, and several hundred US Marines have trained thousands Syrian militants battling the Syrian government there.
It’s worth noting that rather than fighting the Islamic State, the purpose of continued presence of the US forces at al-Tanf military base is to address Israel’s concerns regarding the expansion of Iran’s influence in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
Regarding the continued presence of American forces in oil- and natural gas-rich Deir al-Zor governorate, it’s worth pointing out that Syria used to produce roughly 400,000 barrels crude oil per day. Answering questions from Senator Lindsey Graham, Secretary of State Pompeo confessed [5] last month that the State Department had awarded an American company, Delta Crescent Energy, with a contract to begin extracting oil in northeast Syria.
Much like the “scorched earth” battle strategy of medieval warlords – as in the case of the Islamic State which burned crops of local farmers while retreating from its former strongholds in eastern Syria – Washington’s basic purpose in deploying the US forces in oil and natural gas fields of Deir al-Zor governorate is to deny the valuable source of income to Damascus.
After the devastation caused by nine years of proxy war, the Syrian government is in dire need of tens of billions dollars international assistance to rebuild the country. Not only is Washington hampering efforts to provide international assistance to the hapless country, it is in fact squatting over Syria’s own valuable resources.
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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism.
Notes
[1] Germany Says Aleksey Navalny Was Poisoned With Novichok Nerve Agent:
He has become part of the furniture when it comes to discussions about privacy rights and personal liberties, arguably an odd sort of thing for a man who also dealt in the shadows of intelligence secrets. But Edward Snowden has been doing his bit to reveal and chip away at the foundations of the national security state that continues to thrive. The advent of coronavirus and pandemic surveillance will merely serve to advance it, but in June 2013, Snowden’s exposures of National Security Agency practices were raw and unsettling to the wonks of the establishment.
The most troubling of the revelations was not that the NSA conducts surveillance, its natural bread and butter; it was how such grubbily enterprising efforts as the metadata collection program were allowed to flourish with feral abandon. The forests of paranoia after the 9/11 attacks on US soil proved rich for such legislative instruments as the USA PATRIOT Act. Section 215, in particular, authorised the bulk collection by agencies of telephony metadata, known in the trade as call detail records. It had been barely read by members of Congress in a hurry; patriotism can encourage a special sort of dedicated illiteracy.
The NSA program, at least in that form, was ended with the reforms passed by the USA FREEDOM Act of 2015. Critics were quick to note that section 215 was merely given a trim and a clean. The original provision permitted the NSA to store call detail records (time, duration, the numbers communicating in a call, excluding the content of the call) and search them as required. Since the changes, such records are held by telephone companies; the agency can only request them via an order of the Foreign Intelligence Service Court.
The provision, according to Human Rights Watch, “still permits the government to collect a staggering amount of data, in secret and without a warrant, on how people use their phones, chilling freedom of expression and association.” Between 2015 and 2019, the program cost $10 million and could only boast one significant lead, a palpably poor return for even the most devout surveillance types.
The expiry of Section 215 powers in March 15, 2020 led to a merry legislative jig. The Senate passed the USA FREEDOM Reauthorization Act in May. The oversight measures proposed by Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) made it through, expanding the role of independent advisers to the court established by the Foreign Intelligence Service Act of 1978. But in so doing, the Senate failed to adopt the amendment proposed by Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Steve Daines (R-MT), which would have prevented the government conducting warrantless surveillance on internet browsing and search histories.
Wyden was more than a touch irritated at his colleagues.
“The legislation,” he outlined in a statement, “hands the government power for warrantless collection of Americans’ web browsing and internet searches, as well as other private information, without having to demonstrate that those Americans have done anything wrong.”
The Senate also refused to prohibit the use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 and surveillance conducted under the Article II executive power against people in the United States or in proceedings against them, both ideas of Senator Rand Paul (R-KY).
Privacy advocates were feeling a touch deflated. It took a decision by a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals handed down on September 2 to add a spring to their steps, if only after the fact. The decision in United States v Moalin was not bound to make them break out into a canter. The facts of the case covered the previous incarnation of bulk surveillance exposed by Snowden. The outcome was also a tad troubling. The four appellants, Somali immigrants convicted in 2013 for transferring $10,900 in support of the terrorist group al-Shabaab, had their convictions upheld.
The judges “held that the government may have violated the Fourth Amendment [protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures] when it collected the telephony metadata of millions of Americans, including at least one of the defendants, pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act”. Unfortunately for the defendants, “the metadata collection, even if unconstitutional, did not taint the evidence introduced by the government at trial.” The application for suppression of the evidence – what were described by the defendants as the “alleged ‘fruits’ of the unlawful metadata collection,” failed. Additionally, the FISA wiretap evidence was not held to be “the fruit of the unlawful metadata collection.”
Scattered through the judgment are a few sprinklings of hope for privacy advocates. Some of these are merely confirmations and recapitulations. Others are clarifications for the intelligence community. The government had, for instance, argued that “ordinary criminal investigations” should not be treated in the same context as those in a “foreign intelligence context”. The Fourth Amendment protections should be applied differently.
Not so, claimed the panel. The judges acknowledged that the Fourth Amendment required notice to be given to a defendant “when the prosecution intends to enter into evidence or otherwise use or disclose information obtained or derived from the surveillance of that defendant conducted pursuant to the government’s foreign intelligence authorities.” As the Fourth Amendment did apply to foreign intelligence investigations, it followed that “US criminal defendants against whom the government uses evidence obtained or derived from foreign intelligence may have Fourth Amendment rights to protect.” The problem for the defendants here was that failure to provide notice by the government did not prejudice them.
The American Civil Liberties Union’s Patrick Toomey saw the ruling as vindicating “that the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ records violated the Constitution.” The mandatory notice requirement for authorities constituted an essential “protection” in a field of “novel spying tools”. The Snowden legacy continues to be harvested, if unevenly.
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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 summer of 2020 will certainly be remembered for many events, and most of them unrelated to the 21st century’s first pandemic. In the East Mediterranean, four key events stand out among others this summer – tensions and hostilities between NATO members Greece and Turkey; the peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates; the devastating Beirut Port explosion; and, renewed attacks and reprisals between Israel and the Islamist forces active in the Gaza Strip. Of these though, the most immediate issue is the current hostility between Greece and Turkey, especially since it was revealed only yesterday in Germany’s Die Welt that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ordered for a Greek ship or fighter jet be destroyed. The order, according to Die Welt, was refused by his generals.
With these emerging issues over the summer, global and regional powers are using geopolitical manoeuvring to advance their spheres of influence. This has brought the East Mediterranean to the forefront of many state interests, especially those seeking to expand their power, particularly France, Germany and Turkey.
The dispute between Greece and Turkey is clearly territorial and energy related, with the latter desperately seeking cheap energy sources for its large population of nearly 85 million. The movements that Germany developed in the East Mediterranean aims to structure a wider national sphere of influence, both to stabilize the southern peripheries of Europe and to limit French attempts to regain and strengthen its influence in the region. By offering the Hamburg frigate to the “Irini” European naval operation to enforce an arms embargo on Libya, Berlin fielded a military asset which will not upset the equilibrium of the Mediterranean Basin, but will probably change Irini’s mission to be much less hostile towards Turkey that is arming and backing jihadists belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood Government of National Accords based in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.
Germany has also tried to involve itself in the current Greco-Turkish hostilities in the East Mediterranean by attempting to translate the strength of its political and economic dominance over the two countries to force them to negotiate. However, this has been without any success as Turkey continues to act unilaterally and make threats of war against Greece. The Germans are effectively attempting to compete with the French in the region. Paris resolutely sides with Athens while Germany is unwilling to relinquish its centuries’ long alliance with the Turks.
The US is close to a presidential election and the last thing that President Donald Trump wants is to present his constituents with a new war thousands of miles away from home. France, Germany and Turkey, all involved in the East Mediterranean at the moment, have understood this. It is entirely plausible that Germany is somehow trying to replace the US in a very large area, ranging from the Mediterranean to the borders of Russia, using the European Union to achieve this. The convergence of a conflict in the Aegean and Germany’s involvement should be seen as competitive, and not complementary to American moral suasion. These ambitions were clearly perceived in the Oval Office and probably contributed to the US’ decision to lighten the American military presence in Germany. In Washington, no one wants the consolidation of German supremacy in Europe. Formally allied countries are behaving more frequently as competitors, if not outright rivals. It is happening between Greece and Turkey, as well as between France and Germany, and Germany and the US.
The world has not become more violent or volatile, but rather the forces that shape it and the structure of international relations have changed. The decline of exclusive US power has seen the rise of a multipolar world order, with not only the rise of great global powers like China, but also regional powers that are willing to engage in realpolitik to expand their sphere of influence, like Turkey. The decline of US unipolarity has freed up space to be exploited by Middle Powers.
France and Turkey have shown no particular hesitation in using all tools at their disposal to advance their agenda, including the military. Germany has also attempted to appear in the Mediterranean, a circumstance that seems to have awakened even Italy from its torpor, even if it remains extremely confused in its East Mediterranean policy as it attempts to appease the EU, as well as Turkey, to try and expand its influence into Libya. This has been too no effect. Many countries will find it increasingly difficult to claim absolute extraneousness to the logic of geopolitical competition, especially as the East Mediterranean becomes increasingly hostile. The truth is, as much as Germany attempts to become an influencer in the Mediterranean, especially in support of their Turkish allies, Berlin will not be able to break the French dominance in the region, as it is not a Mediterranean country, nor does it have a Mediterranean naval base. France has an entire Mediterranean coastline complemented with several bases and a massive fleet, and can therefore easily project its power in the region. Germany will not have this capability in the foreseeable future in the East Mediterranean. For this reason, Germany will not be able to break French dominance in the region.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
In Europe civil air traffic is expected to drop by 60% this year compared to 2019, due to Covid-19 restrictions, putting more than 7 million jobs at risk. On the other hand, military air traffic is growing.
On Friday, August 28, six US Air Force B-52 strategic bombers flew over the thirty NATO countries in North America and Europe in a single day, flanked by eighty fighter-bombers from allied countries in different sections.
This large exercise called “Allied Sky” – said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg – demonstrates “the powerful commitment of the United States to the Allies and confirms that we are able to deter aggression.” The allusion to “Russian aggression” in Europe is evident.
The B-52s, that were transferred on August 22 from North Dakota Minot Air Base to Fairford in Great Britain, are not old Cold War planes used only for parades. They have been continuously modernized, and retain their role as long-range strategic bombers. Now they are further enhanced.
The US Air Force will shortly equip seventy-six B-52s with new engines at a cost of $20 billion. These new engines will allow bombers to fly 8,000 km without refueling in flight, each carrying 35 tons of bombs and missiles armed with conventional or nuclear warheads. Last April, the US Air Force entrusted Raytheon Co. to produce a new long-range cruise missile, armed with a nuclear warhead for the B-52 bombers.
With these and other strategic nuclear attack bombers, including the B-2 Spirit, the US Air Force has made over 200 sorties over Europe since 2018, mainly over the Baltic and the Black Sea close to Russian airspace.
European NATO countries participate in these exercises, particularly Italy. When a B-52 flew over our country on August 28, Italian fighters joined in. simulating a joint attack mission.
Immediately after, Italian Air Force Eurofighter Typhoon fighter-bombers took off to deploy to the Siauliai base in Lithuania, supported by about one hundred specialized soldiers. Beginning September 1, they will remain there for 8 months until April 2021, to “defend” the Baltic airspace. It is the fourth NATO “air policing” mission carried out in the Baltic area by Italian Air Force.
Italian fighters are ready 24 hours a day to scramble, to take off on alarm and intercept “unknown” aircrafts: they are always Russian airplanes flying between some internal airport and the Russian Kaliningrad exclave through international airspace over the Baltic.
The Lithuanian base of Siauliai, where they are deployed, has been upgraded by the United States; USA has tripled its capacity by investing 24 million euros in it. The reason is clear: the air base is just 220 km from Kaliningrad and 600 from St. Petersburg, a distance that a fighter like the Eurofighter Typhoon travels in a few minutes.
Why is NATO deploying these and other conventional and nuclear dual-capacity aircrafts close to Russia? Certainly not to defend the Baltic countries from a Russian attack which would mean the beginning of the thermonuclear world war if it happened. The same would happen if NATO planes attacked neighboring Russian cities from the Baltic.
The real reason for this deployment is to increase tension by creating the image of a dangerous enemy, Russia preparing to attack Europe. This is the strategy of tension implemented by Washington, with the complicity of European governments and Parliaments and the European Union.
This strategy involves a growing military spending increase at the expense of social spending. An example: the cost of a flight hour of a Eurofighter was calculated by the same Air Force in 66,000 euros (including the aircraft amortisation). An amount larger than two average gross salaries per year in public money.
Every time a Eurofighter takes off to “defend” the Baltic airspace, it burns in one hour the corresponding of two jobs in Italy.
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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.
Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Over the last several months the security situation in the Cabo Delgado province of the Republic of Mozambique has worsened in the aftermath of several armed attacks by a self-proclaimed Islamist group.
One strategic port town, Mocimboa da Praia, was seized by 1,000 insurgents jeopardizing the homes and livelihoods of the people in the area along with endangering a key sector in the national economy which has held the promise of significant development for this former Portuguese colony.
Mocimboa da Praia is located just 70 kilometers from the border with the United Republic of Tanzania, a contiguous state with a long history of cooperation with the ruling party, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), which led the armed independence struggle against Portuguese colonialism during the 1960s up until independence during 1974-75. The port was the base for the military operations in the north aimed at preventing further damage by the rebel group which calls itself the Ahlu Sunnah Wal-Jamaa (ASWJ), known as well as “Al-Shabaab”, meaning “the youth” in Arabic.
This port was the scene of the emergence of the ASWJ nearly three years ago in October 2017 when 30 rebels attacked a police station killing two officers and causing property damage. After 2017, the number and severity of the ASWJ attacks have grown exponentially.
Since 2017, when the rebels were responsible for 3 armed attacks, these operations have accelerated with 19 in 2018, 34 in 2019 and 43 so far in 2020. According to Thunis Marais of the Rhula Intelligent Solutions, a Mozambique-based risk management firm, there could have been as many as 617 attacks by the ASWJ resulting in 1,842 deaths. (See this)
The escalation of these rebel attacks has generated concern throughout the Southern African Development Community (SADC) regional organization. SADC is composed of 15 states extending from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) down to the Republic of South Africa and outward into the Indian Ocean states of Seychelles, Mauritius, Madagascar and the Union of Comoros. At two recently-held regional conferences of SADC in August, the issue of Mozambican security was discussed as regional governments pledged to assist Maputo.
Summit 40th Website Carousel
Even among mass organizations, there is a growing awareness of the danger posed by the attacks in Cabo Delgado. Obviously, the numerical rise in attacks indicates that external funding, perhaps connected with the same interests that have facilitated the so-called Islamic State (ISIS), are now involved in spreading the same threats to Southern Africa.
The Role of Western Capitalist States in Southern African Energy Development
Over the last several years, geological surveys of the Indian Ocean coastline of Mozambique and neighboring countries indicate that there are vast Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) deposits which have drawn the attention of international mining companies and financial institutions. Prospects for the extraction of LNG could provide the Mozambique government with much needed revenue to build infrastructure including public transportation, housing, healthcare and education.
There are multi-national corporations from the United States and France involved in the development of the LNG projects. The Mozambique LNG Total website says of the status of the country’s energy resource:
“The Mozambique LNG Project started with the discovery of a vast quantity of natural gas off the coast of northern Mozambique in 2010, leading to a $20 billion Final Investment Decision in 2019. Now, through cooperation and responsible project planning, the project is on track to deliver LNG in 2024. For now, our plans for the approximately 65 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas include a two-train project with the ability to expand up to 43 million tons per annum (MTPA). The Project is operated by Total – the world’s second largest LNG player with a leading presence in Africa – which is uniquely qualified to ensure the Mozambique LNG Project helps to meet the world’s increasing demand for sustainable, reliable and cleaner energy sources.” (See this)
U.S.-based energy firm Anadarko Petroleum Corporation has agreed to construct a LNG liquefaction and export terminal in Mozambique which will cost approximately $20 billion. Reportedly Anadarko has agreed to a takeover by Occidental Petroleum Corporation which will then sell its interests to Total SA, the same firm mentioned above that is based in France. (See this)
In addition to the role of Anadarko and Occidental, the Export-Import Bank (EXIM) of the U.S., an independent federal agency, has agreed to provide $4.7 billion in financing for the Mozambique LNG project in an effort to enhance Washington and Wall Street’s competition with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for economic influence in Africa. An EXIM press release in June says of the effort that:
“As part of EXIM’s historic 2019 reauthorization, Congress directed EXIM to establish the ‘Program on China and Transformational Exports.’ The Program’s purpose is to advance the United States’ comparative leadership in the world with respect to China and strengthen America’s competitiveness through EXIM’s support of transformational U.S. exports—and the U.S. jobs that make them possible—as U.S. companies seek to compete and win in the global marketplace.” (See this)
Many geo-political regions of the world are expected to move away from a reliance on coal for energy purposes to LNG since it is considered a cleaner form of energy. Consequently, Mozambique and other regions of East Africa has been the source of much exploration and economic speculation.
Aggravating the already existing security situation in Mozambique, the impact of climate change has also been a major challenge since 2019 when Cyclones Idai and Kenneth struck the northern region of the country causing monumental environmental and structural damage along with the loss of wildlife and people. Consequently, the appearance of an armed insurgency grouping will further hamper the capacity of the government in the capital of Maputo to rapidly address these formidable issues.
Solidarity Expands to Mass Organizations
During a SADC People’s Summit held virtually from August 18-21, there was a regional call for solidarity with Mozambique in response to the security situation in Cabo Delgado. Also in Tanzania, the country will be holding general elections on October 28.
Both Mozambique and Tanzania have Islamic populations which extend back for centuries even prior to the advent of colonialism. Mozambique has a smaller proportion of Muslims than Tanzania and its islands. In Mozambique it is estimated that 17% of the population are Muslim largely centered in the north of the country. In Tanzania on the mainland, it is said that 35% of the people adhere to Islam while on the island of Zanzibar, 99% of the population are Muslim.
The existence of significant Muslim populations in Mozambique, Tanzania as well as other East African states such as Kenya and Somalia, provides an opening for the Islamist groupings aligned with ISIS to gain a base within the countries. Often, as in other states in West Asia such as Iraq and Syria, the existence of uneven social development and unresolved political grievances can be exploited to wage attacks on governments and the people. These Islamist groupings have their origins in geo-political areas where the U.S. has waged war against sovereign states including Libya in 2011, where the Pentagon and NATO overthrew the government of former leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi rendering the North African country to impoverishment and instability.
Similar attacks on civilians such as public executions through beheadings and other forms of violence are surfacing in the character of the insurgent activities being carried out in Mozambique, Kenya and Somalia. These armed actions against civilians and government installations are at variance with the character of the wars waged by national liberation movements such as FRELIMO which focused attention during the independence struggle on structures which upheld the colonial and imperialist systems based in the Western countries.
According to a report on the People’s Summit in August:
“The Southern African People’s Solidarity Network (SAPSN) has called upon peace-loving citizens in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to stand in solidarity with the people of Mozambique as the country deals with multiple and overlapping crises, including military conflicts and religious extremism. SAPSN also instructed citizens in the region to stand in solidarity with citizens in the United Republic of Tanzania as the country holds its General Election on October 28 this year.” (See this)
SAPSN People’s Summit in August 2020
The gathering urged regional governments and people’s organizations to stand in solidarity against extremism, drug trafficking, human rights violations and the attempt to plunder resources by local and foreign interests. The SAPSN Declaration issued at the conclusion of the conference emphasized:
“We understand that the growing conflict in Northern Mozambique is ultimately the result of extra-activism and theft of natural resources at the cost of the local small-scale food producers, including farmers, fisher folks, livestock holders, herders, and host communities.”
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
This article was originally published on Asia Times.
There was a time when New Delhi was proudly selling the notion of establishing its own New Silk Road – from the Gulf of Oman to the intersection of Central and South Asia – to compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Now it looks like the Indians have stabbed themselves in the back.
In 2016, Tehran and New Delhi signed a deal to build a 628-km rail line from strategic Chabahar port to Zahedan, very close to the Afghan border, with a crucial extension to Zaranj, in Afghanistan, and beyond.
The negotiations involved Iranian Railways and Indian Railway Constructions Ltd. But in the end nothing happened – because of Indian foot-dragging. So Tehran has decided to build the railway anyway, with its own funds – $400 million – and completion scheduled for March 2022.
The railway was supposed to be the key transportation corridor linked to substantial Indian investments in Chabahar, its port of entry from the Gulf of Oman for an alternative New Silk Road to Afghanistan and Central Asia.
Upgrading rail/road infrastructure from Afghanistan to its neighbors Tajikistan and Uzbekistan would be the next step. The whole operation was inscribed in a trilateral India-Iran-Afghanistan deal – signed in 2016 in Tehran by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and then Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.
The unofficial New Delhi excuse revolves around fears that the project would be slammed with US sanctions. New Delhi actually did get a Trump administration sanctions waiver for Chabahar and the rail line to Zahedan. The problem was to convince an array of investment partners, all of them terrified of being sanctioned.
In fact, the whole saga has more to do with Modi’s wishful thinking of expecting to get preferential treatment under the Trump administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy, which relies on a de facto Quad (US, India, Australia, Japan) containment of China. That was the rationale behind New Delhi deciding to cut off all its oil imports from Iran.
So far all practical purposes, India threw Iran under the bus. No wonder Tehran decided to move on its own, especially now with the $400 billion, 25-year “Comprehensive Plan for Cooperation between Iran and China”, a deal that seals a strategic partnership between China and Iran.
In this case, China may end up exercising control over two strategic “pearls” in the Arabian Sea/Gulf of Oman only 80 km away from each other: Gwadar, in Pakistan, a key node of the $61 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and Chabahar.
Tehran, so far, has denied that Chabahar port will be offered on a lease to Beijing. But what is a real possibility, apart from Chinese investments in an oil refinery near Chabahar, and even, in the long run, in the port itself, is an operational link between Gwadar and Chabahar. That will be complemented by the Chinese operating the port of Bandar-e-Jask in the Gulf of Oman, 350 km to the west of Chabahar and very close to the hyper-strategic Strait of Hormuz.
How corridors attract
Not even a Hindu deity on hangover could possibly imagine a more counter-productive “strategy” for Indian interests in case New Delhi backs off from its cooperation with Tehran.
Let’s look at the essentials. What Tehran and Beijing will be working on is a de facto massive expansion of CPEC, with Gwadar linked to Chabahar and further onwards to Central Asia and the Caspian via Iranian railways, as well as connected to Turkey and the Eastern Mediterranean (via Iraq and Syria), all the way to the EU.
This game-changing progress will be at the heart of the whole Eurasian integration process – uniting China, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and of course Russia, which is linked to Iran via the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC).
For the moment, for all its hefty reverberations in multiple areas – upgrade of energy infrastructure, refurbishing of ports and refineries, construction of a connectivity corridor, investments in manufacturing, and a steady supply of Iranian oil and gas, a matter of national security for China – there’s no question that the Iran-China deal is being effectively downplayed by both sides.
The reasons are self-evident: not to raise the Trump administration’s ire to even more incandescent levels, considering both actors are considered “existential threats”. Still, Mahmoud Vezi, chief of staff for President Rouhani, guarantees the final Iran-China deal with be signed by March 2021.
CPEC, meanwhile, is on a roll. What Chabahar was supposed to do for India is already in effect at Gwadar – as transit trade to Afghanistan started only a few days ago, with bulk cargo arriving from the UAE. Gwadar is already establishing itself as a key transit hub to Afghanistan – way ahead of Chabahar.
For Kabul, the strategic factor is essential. Afghanistan essentially depends on overland routes from Pakistan – some can be extremely unreliable – as well as Karachi and Port Qasim. Especially for southern Afghanistan, the overland link from Gwadar, through Balochistan, is much shorter and safer.
For Beijing, the strategic factor is even more essential. For China, Chabahar would not be a priority, because access to Afghanistan is easier, for instance, via Tajikistan.
But Gwadar is a completely different story. It’s being configured, slowly but surely, as the key Maritime Silk Road hub connecting China with the Arabian Sea, the Middle East and Africa, with Islamabad collecting hefty transit funds. Win-win in a nutshell – but always taking into consideration that protests and challenges from Balochistan simply won’t disappear, and require very careful management by Beijing-Islamabad.
Chabahar-Zahedan was not the only recent setback for India. India’s External Affairs Ministry has recently admitted that Iran will develop the massive Farzad-B gas field in the Persian Gulf “on its own” and India might join “appropriately at a later stage”. The same “at a later stage” spin was applied by New Delhi for Chabahar-Zahedan.
The exploration and production rights for Farzad B were already granted years ago for India’s state company ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL). But then, again, nothing happened – due to the proverbial specter of sanctions.
Sanctions, by the way, had been in effect already under Obama. Yet at the time, India and Iran at least traded goods for oil. Farzad B was scheduled to be back on track after the signing of the JCPOA in 2015. But then Trump’s sanctions iced it again.
It doesn’t take a PhD in political science to ascertain who may eventually take over Farzad B: China, especially after the signing of the 25-year partnership next year.
India, against its own energy and geostrategic interests, has in fact been reduced to the status of hostage of the Trump administration. The real target of applying Divide and Rule to India-Iran is to prevent them from trading in their own currencies, bypassing the US dollar, especially when it comes to energy.
The Big Picture though is always about New Silk Road progress across Eurasia. With increasing evidence of closer and closer integration between China, Iran and Pakistan, what’s clear is that India remains integrated only with its own inconsistencies.
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Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Court hearings in Britain over the US administration’s extradition case against Julian Assange begin in earnest next week. The decade-long saga that brought us to this point should appall anyone who cares about our increasingly fragile freedoms.
A journalist and publisher has been deprived of his liberty for 10 years. According to UN experts, he has been arbitrarily detained and tortured for much of that time through intense physical confinement and endless psychological pressure. He has been bugged and spied onby the CIA during his time in political asylum, in Ecuador’s London embassy, in ways that violated his most fundamental legal rights. The judge overseeing his hearings has a serious conflict of interest – with her family embedded in the UK security services – that she did not declare and which should have required her to recuse herself from the case.
All indications are that Assange will be extradited to the US to face a rigged grand jury trial meant to ensure he sees out his days in a maximum-security prison, serving a sentence of up to 175 years.
None of this happened in some Third-World, tinpot dictatorship. It happened right under our noses, in a major western capital, and in a state that claims to protect the rights of a free press. It happened not in the blink of an eye but in slow motion – day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.
And once we strip out a sophisticated campaign of character assassination against Assange by western governments and a compliant media, the sole justification for this relentless attack on press freedom is that a 49-year-old man published documents exposing US war crimes. That is the reason – and the only reason – that the US is seeking his extradition and why he has been languishing in what amounts to solitary confinement in Belmarsh high-security prison during the Covid-19 pandemic. His lawyers’ appeals for bail have been refused.
Severed head on a pike
While the press corps abandoned Assange a decade ago, echoing official talking points that pilloried him over toilet hygiene and his treatment of his cat, Assange is today exactly where he originally predicted he would be if western governments got their way. What awaits him is rendition to the US so he can be locked out of sight for the rest of his life.
There were two goals the US and UK set out to achieve through the visible persecution, confinement and torture of Assange.
First, he and Wikileaks, the transparency organisation he co-founded, needed to be disabled. Engaging with Wikileaks had to be made too risky to contemplate for potential whistleblowers. That is why Chelsea Manning – the US soldier who passed on documents relating to US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan for which Assange now faces extradition – was similarly subjected to harsh imprisonment. She later faced punitive daily fines while in jail to pressure her into testifying against Assange.
The aim has been to discredit Wikileaks and similar organisations and stop them from publishing additional revelatory documents – of the kind that show western governments are not the “good guys” managing world affairs for the benefit of mankind, but are in fact highly militarised, global bullies advancing the same ruthless colonial policies of war, destruction and pillage they always pursued.
And second, Assange had to be made to suffer horribly and in public – to be made an example of – to deter other journalists from ever following in his footsteps. He is the modern equivalent of a severed head on a pike displayed at the city gates.
The very obvious fact – confirmed by the media coverage of his case – is that this strategy, advanced chiefly by the US and UK (with Sweden playing a lesser role), has been wildly successful. Most corporate media journalists are still enthusiastically colluding in the vilification of Assange – mainly at this stage by ignoring his awful plight.
Story hiding in plain sight
When he hurried into Ecuador’s embassy back in 2012, seeking political asylum, journalists from every corporate media outlet ridiculed his claim – now, of course, fully vindicated – that he was evading US efforts to extradite him and lock him away for good. The media continued with their mockery even as evidence mounted that a grand jury had been secretly convened to draw up espionage charges against him and that it was located in the eastern district of Virginia, where the major US security and intelligence services are headquartered. Any jury there is dominated by US security personnel and their families. His hope of a fair trial was non-existent.
Instead we have endured eight years of misdirection by the corporate media and its willing complicity in his character assassination, which has laid the ground for the current public indifference to Assange’s extradition and widespread ignorance of its horrendous implications.
Corporate journalists have accepted, entirely at face value, a series of rationalisations for why the interests of justice have been served by locking Assange away indefinitely – even before his extradition – and trampling his most basic legal rights. The other side of the story – Assange’s, the story hiding in plain sight – has invariably been missing from the coverage, whether it has been CNN, the New York Times, the BBC or the Guardian.
From Sweden to Clinton
First, it was claimed that Assange had fled questioning over sexual assault allegations in Sweden, even though it was the Swedish authorities who allowed him to leave; even though the original Swedish prosecutor, Eva Finne, dismissed the investigation against him, saying “There is no suspicion of any crime whatsoever”, before it was picked up by a different prosecutor for barely concealed, politicised reasons; and even though Assange later invited Swedish prosectors to question him where he was (in the embassy), an option they regularly agreed to in other cases but resolutely refused in his.
It was not just that none of these points was ever provided as context for the Sweden story by the corporate media. Or that much else in Assange’s favour was simply ignored, such as tampered evidence in the case of one of the two women who alleged sexual assault and the refusal of the other to sign the rape statement drawn up for her by police.
The story was also grossly and continuously misreported as relating to “rape charges” when Assange was wanted simply for questioning. No charges were ever laid against him because the second Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny – and her British counterparts, including Sir Keir Starmer, then head of the prosecution service and now leader of the Labour party – seemingly wished to avoid testing the credibility of their allegations by actually questioning Assange. Leaving him to rot in a small room in the embassy served their purposes much better.
When the Sweden case fizzled out – when it became clear that the original prosecutor had been right to conclude that there was no evidence to justify further questioning, let alone charges – the political and media class shifted tack.
Suddenly Assange’s confinement was implicitly justified for entirely different, political reasons – because he had supposedly aided Donald Trump’s presidential election campaign in 2016 by publishing emails, allegedly “hacked” by Russia, from the Democratic party’s servers. The content of those emails, obscured in the coverage at the time and largely forgotten now, revealed corruption by Hillary Clinton’s camp and efforts to sabotage the party’s primaries to undermine her rival for the presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders.
Guardian fabricates a smear
Those on the authoritarian right have shown little concern over Assange’s lengthy confinement in the embassy, and later jailing in Belmarsh, for his exposure of US war crimes, which is why little effort has been expended on winning them over. The demonisation campaign against Assange has focused instead on issues that are likely to trigger liberals and the left, who might otherwise have qualms about jettisoning the First Amendment and locking people up for doing journalism.
Just as the Swedish allegations, despite their non-investigation, tapped into the worst kind of kneejerk identity politics on the left, the “hacked” emails story was designed to alienate the Democratic party base. Extraordinarily, the claim of Russian hacking persists even though years later – and after a major “Russiagate” inquiry by Robert Mueller – it still cannot be stood up with any actual evidence. In fact, some of those closest to the matter, such as former UK ambassador Craig Murray, have insisted all along that the emails were not hacked by Russia but were leaked by a disenchanted Democratic party insider.
An even more important point, however, is that a transparency organisation like Wikileaks had no choice, after it was handed those documents, but to expose abuses by the Democratic party – whoever was the source.
The reason that Assange and Wikileaks became entwined in the Russiagate fiasco – which wasted the energies of Democratic party supporters on a campaign against Trump that actually strengthened rather than weakened him – was because of the credulous coverage, once again, of the issue by almost the entire corporate media. Liberal outlets like the Guardian newspaper even went so far as to openly fabricate a story – in which it falsely reported that a Trump aide, Paul Manafort, and unnamed “Russians” secretly visited Assange in the embassy – without repercussion or retraction.
Assange’s torture ignored
All of this made possible what has happened since. After the Swedish case evaporated and there were no reasonable grounds left for not letting Assange walk free from the embassy, the media suddenly decided in chorus that a technical bail violation was grounds enough for his continuing confinement in the embassy – or, better still, his arrest and jailing. That breach of bail, of course, related to Assange’s decision to seek asylum in the embassy, based on a correct assessment that the US planned to demand his extradition and imprisonment.
None of these well-paid journalists seemed to remember that, in British law, failure to meet bail conditions is permitted if there is “reasonable cause” – and fleeing political persecution is very obviously just such a reasonable cause.
— Defend Assange Campaign (@DefendAssange) April 7, 2019
Similarly, the media wilfully ignored the conclusions of a report by Nils Melzer, a Swiss scholar of international law and the United Nations’ expert on torture, that the UK, US and Sweden had not only denied Assange his basic legal rights but had colluded in subjecting him to years of psychological torture – a form of torture, Melzer has pointed out, that was refined by the Nazis because it was found to be crueller and more effective at breaking victims than physical torture.
Assange has been blighted by deteriorating health and cognitive decline as a result, and has lost significant weight. None of that has been deemed worthy by the corporate media of more than a passing mention – specifically when Assange’s poor health made him incapable of attending a court hearing. Instead Melzer’s repeated warnings about the abusive treatment of Assange and its effects on him have fallen on deaf ears. The media has simply ignored Melzer’s findings, as though they were never published, that Assange has been, and is being, tortured. We need only pause and imagine how much coverage Melzer’s report would have received had it concerned the treatment of a dissident in an official enemy state like Russia or China.
In the past two years, in the entire mainstream UK press:
– Number of Editorials, Op-Eds mentioning "Nils Melzer": 0.
– Number of Editorials, Op-Eds mentioning "Assange" and "torture": 0.
Last year British police, in coordination with an Ecuador now led by a president, Lenin Moreno, who craved closer ties with Washington, stormed the embassy to drag Assange out and lock him up in Belmarsh prison. In their coverage of these events, journalists again played dumb.
They had spent years first professing the need to “believe women” in the Assange case, even if it meant ignoring evidence, and then proclaiming the sanctity of bail conditions, even if they were used simply as a pretext for political persecution. Now that was all swept aside in an instant. Suddenly Assange’s nine years of confinement over a non-existent sexual assault investigation and a minor bail infraction were narratively replaced by an espionage case. And the media lined up against him once again.
A few years ago the idea that Assange could be extradited to the US and locked up for the rest of his life, his journalism recast as “espionage”, was mocked as so improbable, so outrageously unlawful that no “mainstream” journalist was prepared to countenance it as the genuine reason for his seeking asylum in the embassy. It was derided as a figment of the fevered, paranoid imaginations of Assange and his supporters, and as a self-serving cover for him to avoid facing the investigation in Sweden.
But when British police invaded the embassy in April last year and arrested him for extradition to the US on precisely the espionage charges Assange had always warned were going to be used against him, journalists reported these developments as though they were oblivious to this backstory. The media erased this context not least because it would have made them look like willing dupes of US propaganda, like apologists for US exceptionalism and lawlessness, and because it would have proved Assange right once more. It would have demonstrated that he is the real journalist, in contrast to their pacified, complacent, power-worshipping corporate journalism.
The death of journalism
Right now every journalist in the world ought to be up in arms, protesting at the abuses Assange is suffering, and has suffered, and the fate he will endure if extradition is approved. They should be protesting on front pages and in TV news shows against the endless and blatant abuses of legal process at Assange’s hearings in the British courts, including the gross conflict of interest of Lady Emma Arbuthnot, the judge overseeing his case.
They should be in uproar at the surveillance the CIA illegally arranged inside the Ecuadorian embassy while Assange was confined there, nullifying the already dishonest US case against him by violating his client-lawyer privilege. They should be expressing outrage at Washington’s manoeuvres, accorded a thin veneer of due process by the British courts, designed to extradite him on espionage charges for doing work that lies at the very heart of what journalism claims to be – holding the powerful to account.
Journalists do not need to care about Assange or like him. They have to speak out in protest because approval of his extradition will mark the official death of journalism. It will mean that any journalist in the world who unearths embarrassing truths about the US, who discovers its darkest secrets, will need to keep quiet or risk being jailed for the rest of their lives.
That ought to terrify every journalist. But it has had no such effect.
Careers and status, not truth
The vast majority of western journalists, of course, never uncover one significant secret from the centres of power in their entire professional careers – even those ostensibly monitoring those power centres. These journalists repackage press releases and lobby briefings, they tap sources inside government who use them as a conduit to the large audiences they command, and they relay gossip and sniping from inside the corridors of power.
That is the reality of access journalism that constitutes 99 per cent of what we call political news.
Nonetheless, Assange’s abandonment by journalists – the complete lack of solidarity as one of their number is persecuted as flagrantly as dissidents once sent to the gulags – should depress us. It means not only that journalists have abandoned any pretence that they do real journalism, but that they have also renounced the aspiration that it be done by anyone at all.
It means that corporate journalists are ready to be viewed with even greater disdain by their audiences than is already the case. Because through their complicity and silence, they have sided with governments to ensure that anyone who truly holds power to account, like Assange, will end up behind bars. Their own freedom brands them as a captured elite – irrefutable evidence that they serve power, they do not confront it.
The only conclusion to be drawn is that corporate journalists care less about the truth than they do about their careers, their salaries, their status, and their access to the rich and powerful. As Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky explained long ago in their book Manufacturing Consent, journalists join a media class after lengthy education and training processes designed to weed out those not reliably in sympathy with the ideological interests of their corporate employers.
A sacrificial offering
Briefly, Assange raised the stakes for all journalists by renouncing their god – “access” – and their modus operandi of revealing occasional glimpses of very partial truths offered up by “friendly”, and invariably anonymous, sources who use the media to settle scores with rivals in the centres of power.
Instead, through whistleblowers, Assange rooted out the unguarded, unvarnished, full-spectrum truth whose exposure helped no one in power – only us, the public, as we tried to understand what was being done, and had been done, in our names. For the first time, we could see just how ugly, and often criminal, the behaviour of our leaders was.
Assange did not just expose the political class, he exposed the media class too – for their feebleness, for their hypocrisy, for their dependence on the centres of power, for their inability to criticise a corporate system in which they were embedded.
Few of them can forgive Assange that crime. Which is why they will be there cheering on his extradition, if only through their silence. A few liberal writers will wait till it is too late for Assange, till he has been packaged up for rendition, to voice half-hearted, mealy-mouthed or agonised columns arguing that, unpleasant as Assange supposedly is, he did not deserve the treatment the US has in store for him.
But that will be far too little, far too late. Assange needed solidarity from journalists and their media organisations long ago, as well as full-throated denunciations of his oppressors. He and Wikileaks were on the front line of a war to remake journalism, to rebuild it as a true check on the runaway power of our governments. Journalists had a chance to join him in that struggle. Instead they fled the battlefield, leaving him as a sacrificial offering to their corporate masters.
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Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Julian Assange court sketch, October 21, 2019, supplied by Julia Quenzler.
“Anyone who believes anything the US government says is gullible beyond the meaning of the word.” –Paul Craig Roberts, 2014
The dramatic reversal in official U.S. policy regarding facial masking is epitomized by, first, the May, 2020 report of the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in which facial masks are acknowledged to be ineffective in blocking viral transmission, this followed two months later by CDC’s inexplicable July, 2020 recommendation that the public be masked. The earlier report was based on a review of 14 randomized controlled trials and reviews since 1982. The radical change two months later was based on nothing that could in any way negate the dozens of earlier studies.
On the July, 2020 web page, a heading, ‘Evidence for Effectiveness of Wearing Masks’, shows a ridiculous artist’s rendition of the now familiar spiked spheres indicating viruses bouncing off a cloth surface like pingpong balls off concrete (although the text states “droplets”). It is a visual lie, purposeful and unforgivable. A link to “emerging evidence” of mask efficacy leads to a bibliography of 19 “Recent Studies” (scroll down). It is difficult to explain to non-scientists what do, and what do not, qualify as bona fide scientific studies, but, just to make a point, the first listed in this CDC bibliography is a report based on a single asymptomatic infection. This might qualify as an item to incorporate into a study, but it is not in itself a “study” by the 17 (no kidding) listed authors.
The other 18 (on the website’s August 7, 2020, “update”) consist primarily of reports of viral loads, the prevalence of asymptomatic patients, “presumed” transmission in a family of 5, rates of spread, fabric filtration efficiency, even laser light visualization of oral droplets (really). Only 4 deal with masks per se, and not one comes close to making a case for the efficacy of public masking. One actually ends with the authors support of
“…. surgical mask use as one of the recommended cough etiquette interventions” [their term]. Etiquette? Check them out (scroll down). The list, a pathetically limp effort by the CDC to justify its indefensible authorization of public masking, does absolutely nothing to overturn years of studies that, in sum, show public masking to be ineffective in preventing transmission of viruses. There are no new definitive scientific studies yielding the claimed “…. hard evidence that risk of transmission goes down dramatically when people wear masks.”
Masks, and only those of a professional grade, are intended specifically as protection for health professionals dealing with infected patients likely to spread pathogens in aerosol form. The program to mask society is a grotesque governmental manipulation of a frightened and confused public. The CDC, by its hawking of the public masking charade, betrays the public trust. The situation absolutely reeks of a concealed project of global scale, and if serious investigative journalism were a norm, there would be reporters all over the apparent political connections like flies on rotting meat. Instead, we have major media intent on eclipsing a vast source, authoritative but suppressed, of anything that counters the totalitarian “official narrative”.
The contemporary situation regarding the CDC and media is not unique. In 2009, investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson reported on CBS that the CDC suddenly advised against testing for H1N1 “Swine Flu” virus (in disregard of its federal mandate) after having declared it an epidemic. The professed reason for the reversal was that further tracking during a known epidemic would waste resources. In an interview by Jon Rappoport, Attkisson added that she learned through the Freedom of Information Act that before the CDC halted testing, nearly none of the cases that had been reported as H1N1 had actually been Swine Flu, or any flu at all. And what then? CBS, and news media generally, ignored her discovery and continued to claim a Swine Flu epidemic. Attkisson summed up with “We aired numerous stories pumping up the idea of an epidemic, but not the one that would shed original, new light on all the hype [and] it meant that many in the public took and gave their children an experimental vaccine that may not have been necessary.”
There is now a doubling down on enforcement of public masking. Here, September 16, 2020 on C-Span, is CDC Director Robert Redfield [skip to 1:04:40] testifying before Congress: “Face masks are the most important powerful public health tool we have ….. We have clear scientific evidence they work, and they are our best defense. I might even go so far as to say that this face mask [he holds up a standard cloth mask] is more guarantee to protect me against Covid than when I take a Covid vaccine, because the immunogenicity may be 70%, and if I don’t get an immune response, the vaccine’s not going to protect me. This mask will.” According to decades of scientific studies, the statement by the CDC Director is pure fabrication.
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When it comes to conspicuous in-your-face lying, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) may have set a bureaucratic record. Anyone still unaware that a third World Trade Center building, Building 7, collapsed later in the day on 9/11/2001 has either been in some form of solitary confinement or embalmed by TV reporting and America’s “newspapers of record”. Building 7 dropped suddenly and perfectly because it had been professionally prepared for destruction long before 9/11/2001, and a few minutes into this 15-minute presentation by A&E makes that very clear. The twin facts that Building 7 was (1) such a masterful controlled demolition that it has been called “a work of art”, and (2) its not having even been mentioned in the official 9/11 Commission Report (itself a shameless hoax), indicates not only the crime, but also an ongoing cover up with tendrils extending into many sectors of government, media and, most sadly, academia.
The 2008 release of NIST’s study, which offers the lie that office fires caused the collapse, is astounding in its brazenness and includes their computer simulation that bears no resemblance to what you actually see as 7 begins its drop with perfect symmetry at near free fall speed, as if thousands of tons of structural steel suddenly did not exist. The 4-minute video within the NIST release includes a governmental functionary lying into the camera as he most certainly was ordered to do. He is lying because the collapse of Building 7, in all of its naked obviousness, is the single event most likely to “open one’s eyes”, this leading to the discovery of an entire catalog of lies. From the standpoint of the creators of the 9/11 attack, the “office fires” lie must be protected at all cost.
The falsehoods being perpetrated by the CDC and NIST are not isolated within circumscribed strategies. Instead, both are enmeshed in a much larger, multi-faceted imperial project that has a global reach. For those who search out its disturbing details, there is a toll. William Pepper, who spent 40 years in pursuit of the truth regarding the King Assassination, wrote regarding the experience, “Its revelations and experiences have produced in the writer a depression stemming from an unavoidable confrontation with the depths to which human beings, even those subject to professional codes of ethics, have fallen.” That is a fair description of my own sentiments as I watch the pronouncements of medical experts from the CDC and engineers from NIST.
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Bill Willers is an emeritus professor of biology, University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. He is founder of the Superior Wilderness Action Network (SWAN) and editor of Learning to Listen to the Land, and Unmanaged Landscapes, both from Island Press. He can be contacted at [email protected]
Late on August 31, air defense forces of Syria were activated to repel Israeli missile strikes on the countryside of the Syrian capital of Damascus and the southern part of the country. According to reports, Israeli missiles targeted positions of Iranian-backed forces in the area of Mahajah and Hezbollah positions in the area of Izraa in the province of Daraa. Another group of missiles reportedly hit alleged positions of Iranian-backed forces in the area of Sahnaya in the Damascus countryside. The missiles were allegedly launched from the area of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
According to Syrian media, at least 2 people were killed and 7 others were injured in the attack. Material damage was also reported. The Israeli strikes were likely conducted as a part of the current Israeli-Hezbollah tensions in the region. Just recently, the sides exchanged a number of threats and the Israeli military even struck a supposed Hezbollah target on the Israeli-Lebanese contact line. In response, Hezbollah vowed to kill an Israeli soldier for every killed Hezbollah member. Therefore, if some Hezbollah members were killed in the August 31 attack, the movement will have to respond to this by force, or its public image in the region will be significantly undermined. Such a blow will be especially painful in the conditions of the developing political and social crisis in Lebanon following the Beirut port explosion on August 4.
On August 29, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency claimed that the United Arab Emirates has had intelligence agents in northern Syria working with Kurdish YPG and PKK militias over the past few years. They reportedly trained YPG/PKK members in the fields of espionage, counter-espionage, sabotage, acts of assassination, signals intelligence, information security and communication networks. This training allegedly took place in the areas of Qamishli, Hasaka and Deir ez-Zor.
Earlier, on August 27, Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen TV reported that a group of Saudi service members had entered the area of al-Shaddadi in the province of al-Hasakah. According to reports, the Saudi side has been trying to convince local Arab tribes to support the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The SDF mostly consists of and is led by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) that in its own turn have ties with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The PKK is considered a terrorist group by Turkey and a number of other countries, including the United States. Thus, Turkey conducts military operations against the SDF and the YPG in northern Syria, while the United States supports them with weapons, funds and diplomatic cover.
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The director of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has welled-up because of it. In March, he feared that the world’s elderly citizens risked being marginalised in any pandemic policy. “If anything is going to hurt the world, it is moral decay. And not taking the death of the elderly or the senior citizens as a serious issue is moral decay.”
The elderly have, along with other categories of doomed vulnerability, found themselves centre stage in this epidemiological play of death. They feature in morbidity reports across the globe. They are designated objects of state charity to be protected in some cases, shunned in others. Often, they are abandoned, left to perish alone, with only medical staff for company, if that.
In March, the theme of abandonment featured strongly in accounts from Spain, where choices on the elderly, cruel and desperate, were made. Retirement homes had become bits of paradise for coronavirus transmission. Staff, poorly equipped and terrified, neglected and ignored their obligations. During the course of disinfecting various care homes, the country’s military made alarming discoveries. Residents were abandoned; others were found dead in bed. Spanish Defence Minister Margarita Roblespromised that the government would be “strict and inflexible when dealing with the way older people are treated”.
In Australia, the picture was repeated. In Victoria’s second coronavirus surge, dead aged care residents were left in their beds at various aged care facilities across Melbourne for hours on end. An already rotten system was shown to be putrefying. Professor John Moloney, an emergency field doctor, came up with the understatement of the moment. “What it shows is that there are significant pockets of society that are very vulnerable and it doesn’t take much to tip them over.” It did not take long for squabbles to take place: the Victorian state government, already troubled by a failed quarantine system, sniping with the Commonwealth government, which wields general control over the aged care system.
The federal health minister, Senator Richard Colbeck, has come across as a ditherer of some note. His expertise, and lack of interest in his portfolio, is commensurate with his lack of interest in seniors. When asked the obvious question by a parliamentary inquiry as to how many elderly residents had died from coronavirus, he remained untroubled by knowledge. It took 35 seconds of awkward silence as he rifled through his documents.
Labor Senator Katy Gallagher would not wait: 254, as of the morning of Thursday, August 20. Her colleague, Penny Wong, had come to the conclusion that the minister was resolutely incompetent. “You know,” she explained on the ABC news channel on August 26, “I sit in the Senate every day with this bloke … I would not trust the care of my parents to him.”
Galloping diseases unveil accepted hypocrisies. In reaching judgement on the impact of COVID-19, some world leaders have suggested a calculus at play. In a March 22 interview, Ukraine’s former health minister Illia Yemets obtusely advised the government to focus on those “who are still alive” – those above 65 were nothing better than “corpses”.
Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro has also gone for the fatalist line. He pleads the case for the hungry poor and unemployed – the economy first, in other words – even as he minimises the effect of a lethal virus that disproportionately harms them. Towards the end of March, he laid bare his morgue-driven logic. “I’m sorry, some people will die, they will die, that’s life.” The same went for his old mother, a lady aged in her nineties. Car factories should not stop, he argued, “because of traffic deaths.”
In the United States, the business interest remains in perennial battle against that of health. The pro-economic faction in the Trump administration remains strong while such establishment voices as the New York Timesargue “that a trade-off will emerge – and become more urgent in the coming months, as the economy slides deeper into recession.”
Industries do not stop because morgues fill. Impetuously, Beppe Sala, the mayor of Italy’s economic engine, Milan, shared a video with the slogan “Milano non si ferma” (Milano does not stop) at the end of February. The virus was not to be feared; the engine had to keep purring. “We bring home important results every day because every day we are not afraid. Milan doesn’t stop.” The NSS Magazine was effusive in praise at such audacity and happy that the scaremongers had not won the day. The “mayor’s intervention demonstrated how the institutions must work in synergy with the private sector to avoid uncertainty about the future and to support the realities that have made Milan a European city.”
In a matter of weeks, Italy had become the next global epicentre of infection, passing China’s death toll from the virus. Sala came to rue his enthusiasm. “It was a video that went viral on the internet. Everyone was sharing it, I also shared it, rightly or wrongly, probably wrongly.”
The calculus of death is something embraced by those who claim to be far sighted realists, wedded to a form of grim reaper choice theory. Conservative, and not infrequently reactionary columnist for The Australian Janet Albrechtsen makes the case. And she prosecutes it with considered callousness. Writing in May, Albrechtsen offers a view not atypical to the spread sheet specialists who allocate resources and prioritise life. In that world, the elderly are doomed. “Government and policymakers are confronted by tough questions every day about where to spend money.”
She insists on speaking to doctors, though an unnamed “senior anaesthetist” is quoted as telling her that health decisions “are often shrouded in secrecy, but we don’t have unlimited resources to treat everyone to the maximum.” A patient’s age becomes relevant in deciding, for instance, “who will get more years of life from a set of lungs or a new heart.”
Seeing humans as viable producers – and only that – leads to the endorsement of a particularly nasty streak of eugenics. The Canadian, Oxford-based historian Margaret MacMillan, otherwise credited with being fairly liberal minded, makes the case that those over seventy “were not productive members of society, were not the people we need to get the economic engines going again, and we tend to be more vulnerable, so we should stay out of the way and let others get on with it”. The productive will out; the elderly are merely needless intrusions.
Such needless intrusions can be disposed of. Steel cold in reflection, a piece run in the British paper The Telegraph was not shy about suggesting as much, even as the death toll rose. “Not to put too fine a point on it,” opined columnist Jeremy Warner, “from an entirely disinterested economic perspective, the COVID-19 might prove mildly beneficial in the long term by disproportionately culling elderly dependents.” The virus could be congratulated.
Such mightily inhumane reasoning merely serves to ignore that old question of adequate resources and funding. To that end, the global economy itself needs a grand post-pandemic refitting. UN Secretary General António Guterressuggests
“designing fiscal and monetary policies able to support the direct provision of resources to support workers and households, the provision of health and unemployment insurance, scaled up social protection, and support to businesses to prevent bankruptcies and massive job losses.”
When health becomes a matter of profit and Social Darwinian priorities; when the granting of medical services becomes a crude exercise of penny pinching because the tax dollars are not there, choices on survival assume an almost criminal form. Harm and the risk of making them can be minimised. Sentimentality need not come into it. But COVID-19 has shown that human rights, and notably those of the elderly, are brittle before the march of pandemics, made worse by the desk bound policy maker and politicians captivated by bottom lines and budgets.
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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: The private Herron nursing home in a Montreal suburb lost 31 patients to COVID-19 after their caregivers fled the premises (Source: Eric THOMAS/AFP)
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s deep and longstanding ties to U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors chairman Robert Duncan are coming under heightened scrutiny after corporate paperwork filed Monday listed Duncan as a director of a major GOP super PAC closely aligned with the Kentucky Republican.
The new filing (pdf) with Virginia’s State Corporation Commission—an independent regulatory agency that oversees political action committees—names Duncan as one of three directors of the Senate Leadership Fund, a massive super PAC that has spent nearly $18 million in support of Senate Republicans thus far in the 2020 election cycle.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the Senate Leadership Fund has recently received multi-million dollar donations from casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, and other right-wing billionaires.
Duncan—who raised more than $400 million for the GOP during his tenure as chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2007 to 2009—was nominated to the USPS Board of Governors by President Donald Trump in 2017 confirmed by the McConnell-led Senate in August of 2018. A McConnell spokesperson told the Louisville Courier Journal last month that the GOP leader recommended Duncan to Trump.
“As a businessman, a public servant, and a dedicated mentor to young people, Mike is an outstanding choice to help oversee the world’s largest postal organization,” McConnell said in an April 2018 Senate hearing considering Duncan’s nomination.
🚨 NEW: in paperwork filed minutes ago, USPS Board of Governors Chairman Robert M. Duncan is listed as Director of Mitch McConnell's $130M super PAC, Senate Leadership Fund.https://t.co/vYxNfIag9Fpic.twitter.com/ILOzdXcCPb
News of Duncan’s current high-level role on a super PAC closely linked to McConnell added fuel to growing concerns that recent USPS operational changes imposed by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy—a Republican megadonor to both McConnell and President Donald Trump—are a ploy to influence the outcome of the November election in the GOP’s favor and, ultimately, privatize the Postal Service.
The sweeping changes—many of which DeJoy vowed to suspend last month in the face of immense public backlash—have dramatically slowed package deliveries across the nation and intensified concerns about the timely arrival of mail-in ballots in November. Last month, Democratic lawmakers urged the Board of Governors to remove DeJoy over his mail service changes and conflicts of interest, but members of the board—which unanimously appointed DeJoy in May despite his lack of USPS experience—have remained supportive of the postmaster general.
“Can the GOP’s takeover of USPS be any more blatant?” economist Robert Reich asked Monday in response to the new filing.
“The corruption is bottomless,” added Renee Graham, a columnist for the Boston Globe.
During a House Oversight Committee hearing last month, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) called attention to Duncan’s ties to the Senate Leadership Fund and American Crossroads, another major Republican super PAC. Duncan confirmed that he on the boards of both GOP organizations while also serving as chairman of the USPS Board of Governors.
— Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi (@CongressmanRaja) August 24, 2020
Lawmakers and progressive commentators suggested that McConnell’s close relationship with the top official on the USPS Board of Governors could have something to do with the Republican leader’s refusal to consider House-passed legislation providing $25 billion in emergency funding for the Postal Service. In a tweet last month, McConnell dismissed widespread concerns about mail slowdowns across the U.S. as “overblown conspiracy theories.”
“Is this why the Senate Majority Leader refuses to pass legislation to protect the USPS?” Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, asked Monday night in response to the new document.
Advocacy group Swing Left tweeted late Monday that the fresh details surrounding Duncan’s ties to McConnell further highlight the need to oust the Kentucky senator, who is set to face off against Democratic challenger Amy McGrath in November.
“What a coincidence—the USPS chair’s other job is at Mitch McConnell’s super PAC, while Mitch kills Postal Service funding to secure our elections with his ‘Senate Graveyard,'” the group said. “We have to take his gavel away this November.”
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News and information can only go so far. Despite the utopian fluffiness about having multiple platforms, the consumers of news want only one thing: the reassurance that their prejudice is secure and their world view left unchallenged. The reader of Rupert Murdoch’s Sun would dare not venture into the sinned waters of The Guardian. Those of The Guardian would argue that readership was an oxymoronic term when used for the Sun.
Facebook did nothing to cure this. It simply secured an easy avenue for having pre-cooked material, tailored with its platform, available for outlets wishing to furnish them with content. Through its algorithmic tyranny, it has assisted in reducing users to a standard conformist imbecility. Using Facebook for news, which it admittedly does not create, is using a low grade heroin for affirmation, a junkie’s form of denial. It offers little by way of redemption: you are encouraged, through your habitual likes and visits, to simply ingest the same hog feed.
Like Google, Facebook is facing Australia’s proposed draft media bargaining code with concern and threat. The draft legislation proposes to involve government regulators in the relationship the company has with news sharing and largely arose because of foot dragging by the digital giants in negotiations with Australian regulators. While Facebook News, a service that pays approved publishers, was established in the United States, no Australian equivalent was forthcoming.
Taking the voluntary element out of proceedings, an impatient Australian Consumer and Competition Commission decided to produce a mandatory code on revenue distribution. It romantically and mystifyingly, envisages Australian news outlets, “including independent community and regional media”, getting “a seat at the table for fair negotiations with Facebook and Google.”
The response from Facebook’s Australasian managing director Will Easton is a stab at being ominous.
“Assuming this draft code becomes law, we will reluctantly stop allowing publishers and people in Australia from sharing local and international news on Facebook and Instagram. This is not our first choice – it is our last.”
The news field is bedevilled by unsympathetic characters. Remember the now defunct News of the World, the world’s finest lavatory reading? The Leveson Inquiry? Few should feel for such giants as News Corp, whose contribution to the news effort, including bankrupting the integrity of the Fourth Estate, has left a dubious, often sordid legacy. Murdoch has, over the years, smacked his lips at the prospect of making Facebook pay for the content of his outlets, which he regards almost whimsically as meritorious. In 2018, he suggested that, if the company wanted “to recognize ‘trusted’ publishers then it should pay those publishers a carriage fee similar to the model adopted by cable companies”. Comically enough, he claimed that such publishers “are obviously enhancing the value and integrity of Facebook through their news and content” but not being adequately remunerated for them.
A government policy favouring such a beast is worthy of scepticism and the spectre of News Corp sitting at the table with Facebook is a spectacle of disturbing hilarity. But Facebook’s relationship with news is also fraught, contending with claims that its platform permits all sorts of matter, masquerading as news, to make its way through the feed. This is a point media organisations such as Nine never tire of reminding the company of, claiming itself to be a provider of “reliable news content to balance the fake news that proliferates on [Facebook’s] platform.” The University of Canberra’s 2020 Digital News Report also found that some 36 per cent of Australians were “most worried about misinformation” on Facebook.
The company is also being rather selective whenever it becomes the news. Take the way Easton describes the consequences of following the proposed code, the most galling of all being that Facebook will supposedly have to pay for all shared news content. But not every item of news will necessarily require payment (heaven forfend). In some cases, the value is bound to be negligible. The ACCC acknowledges that
“Facebook already pays some media for news content. The code simply aims to bring fairness and transparency to Facebook and Google’s relationships with Australian news media businesses.”
The language of Easton’s statement is also reminiscent of dictatorial benevolence: We support local news outlets, “particularly local newspapers”; “we recognize that news provides a vitally important role in society and democracy”, though our “News Feed is not a significant source of revenue for us.” The Facebook News Feed generated gratis “additional traffic worth an estimated $200 million AUD to Australian publishers.”
The question now on the lips of news sharers is whether Facebook will make good its threat. The Treasurer Josh Frydenbergis feeling bolshie about it all. “We don’t respond to coercion or heavy-handed threats wherever they come from.” Former ACCC chairman Allan Fels is unworried, proposing that the government deploy a weapon far more discomforting to the Silicon Valley giants. “They could drop the code and just apply a tax – a general tax on digital transactions. And the platforms have far more to lose from that.”
Some users will feel the digital pinch. The Digital News Report claims that 39 percent of Australians use Facebook for news in the general category (the global average being 42 percent); 49 percent have done so for news specific to COVID-19. But in the jungle of punditland, views vary. Business law academic Rob Nicholls shifts the emphasis back to the news producers themselves. Should Facebook bar its sharing services, he writes in The Conversation, “it will potentially lead to very uncompelling content on both Facebook and Instagram. Can you imagine Instagram or Facebook without the ABC or Australian news sources?”
Facebook, Nicholls also reasons, clearly misunderstands the nature of mandatory industry codes. Akin to a franchising code of conduct that acknowledges the power imbalance between franchisors and franchisees, the ACCC legislation recognises the same “for news media businesses and social media platforms.”
Easton, should the threat be made good, will be returning Facebook to what it once was: the social network of old created by dysfunctional anti-social types desperate to be loved. “Facebook products and services in Australia that allow family and friends to connect will not be impacted by this decision.” The just will be barred from sharing news on it, which, in the scheme of things, might not be such an awful thing.
Time, then, to get inventive. Go back to libraries. (Where and when you can.) Subscribe to a range of other news outlets directly. Encourage them to deliver news instead of being the news. Cut out the niggling middleman and go for the source, be it via app, or email subscription. There is even some research suggesting that this is already taking place. James Meese and Edward Hurcombe have identified “a renewed focus on subscriptions”. Older media companies have also noticed readers visiting their publication home pages, challenging “the idea that [they] depend totally on Facebook.” Facebook was never a deity but whatever it is, the time has come to well and truly demote it.
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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]
Washington’s goal is to get countries in the Indo-Pacific region to work together as a bulwark against ‘a potential challenge from China’, says the US official- He says the four nations are expected to meet in Delhi sometime this autumn
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Washington aims to formalise its closer Indo-Pacific defence relations with India, Japan and Australia – also known as “the quad” – into something more closely resembling the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nat), a senior US State Department official said on Monday.
The US government’s goal is to get the grouping of four countries and others in the region to work together as 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”, said Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun.
“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,” Biegun added.
Biegun cautioned that Washington would keep its ambitions for a Pacific Nato “checked”, saying that such a formal alliance “only will happen if the other countries are as committed as the United States”.
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Featured image: Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun (Source: state.gov)
Once again, NATO is operating dangerous and bold military maneuvers in regions close to the European Russian border. This time, the country hosting the tests is Estonia, a Baltic State that in recent decades has been characterized by a strong pro-Western and anti-Russian stance. The small European country is occupied by a large contingent of American troops and will be in such a situation until at least September 10, when the operations end.
The tests started on September 1 are already causing a small diplomatic crisis between Russia and the United States. The Russian Embassy in Washington commented on the exercises with great antipathy:
“The Russian Federation has repeatedly offered to the United States and its allies to limit training activities and to divert exercise areas from the line of contact between Russia and NATO. We consider the actions of the US Armed Forces in Estonia provocative and extremely dangerous for regional stability (…) What signal from NATO members want to send us? Who is actually fueling tensions in Europe? And all this is taking place in the context of an aggravated political situation in that region of the European continent. Rhetorical question: how would the Americans react if such shooting were carried out by our military near the US borders?”.
In addition to the diplomatic crisis, military tension broke out in the region last Tuesday. NATO planes that would be used in the exercises were intercepted unexpectedly by Russian fighters while flying over the border area. In addition, Aleksandr Lukashenko, president of Belarus, 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.
The exercises also begin during a series of events that have raised tensions in the region. On Friday, an American B-52 bomber and a Russian Su-27 aircraft conducted dangerous maneuvers in European airspace, chasing each other. On the same day, similar tensions were reported in the Ukrainian Black Sea. Countries with less military potential are becoming concerned and feel threatened by hostilities, such as Sweden, which has issued a danger warning to its troops.
This is not the first time that the Baltic countries have become the scene of NATO military actions especially aimed at provoking Russia. For years, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have increased their participation in NATO programs, together with Poland, countries that since the end of communism have been adhering to positions against Russia on the international stage. This exercise currently being carried out in Estonia is in its eighth edition, having already become an annual NATO program. In 2020, Germany, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Spain, United States, Estonia, Finland, France, Netherlands, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Norway, Poland, United Kingdom, Czech Republic and Romania are participating in the operations.
The objective, according to its organizers, 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, especially when we take into account the current global moment, where the world faces a terrible pandemic, of which the US is precisely the biggest victim. In early 2020, a NATO military program was in preparation, foreseeing a series of audacious exercises in Europe, mainly in the border region with Russia. This program – dubbed “Defender Europe 2020” – was canceled just a few months ago due to the pandemic. At the time, Defender Europe’s tests were interpreted as provocative acts against Russia because they foresee a large concentration of American military contingent on the Russian border, which we are also witnessing now in Estonia. Although such tests have been going on for years, in 2020 the implementation of this program in the midst of the pandemic has a much more provocative dimension: Washington is transmitting to Russia its message that it remains awake in the geopolitical scenario.
But this is not the most correct attitude. While the pandemic data on American soil is approaching 200,000 dead and the country is dealing with a strong internal crisis, with violent demonstrations and racial tensions, Washington is preparing war plans and demonstrations of strength in other continents.
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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.
Sino/US relations are more fraught with dangers than at any time since Nixon’s 1972 meeting with Mao in Beijing — followed by formal normalization of relations by Jimmy Carter and Deng Xiaoping in 1979.
Growing mistrust and friction define bilateral relations today because of Washington’s aim to undermine China’s political, economic, industrial, technological, and military prominence on the world stage.
Trump’s Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy director Peter Navarro earlier said “(w)e are at war” with China.
According to his war secretary Mark Esper,
“(t)he Pentagon is prepared for China,” adding:
Beijing aims “to displace us (sic) — certainly from the region and preferably on the global stage (sic).”
“(I)f we don’t wake up to the long-term challenge and the possible threat that China presents to us (sic), then we may find ourselves living in a world different (from) what we want to live in (sic).”
Pompeo called China the “central threat of our times,” vowing US toughness to counter its growing prominence, a “threat” to Washington’s hegemonic aims.
In response to Trump regime pressure, Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany, Japan, Norway and Sweden, along with right wing EU parliament members agreed to join a US-led anti-China alliance.
According to Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun, the Trump regime seeks a NATO-like alliance of Indo-Pacific nations to counter China, adding:
The region “lack(s) strong multilateral structures.”
It doesn’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 formalize a structure like this.”
US-dominated NATO began modestly in April 1949 with 12 founding members.
Today it has 30 with longterm aims of expanding the alliance worldwide to serve US imperial interests.
As long as it exists, world peace and stability will remain unattainable.
The risk of global war with nuclear weapons will haunt humanity at a time when Washington’s only enemies are invented. No real ones exist.
China, Russia, Iran, and other sovereign independent countries on the US target list for regime change seek cooperative relations with other countries, confrontation with none.
Their military expenditures are a small fraction of what Washington spends for global militarization and belligerence.
NATO has always been about offense, not defense, notably since the Soviet Union dissolved nearly 30 years ago.
As long as the alliance exists and expands, a permanent state of war will threaten humanity.
Last week, Trump regime national security advisor Robert O’brien vowed to challenge China in its part of the world, saying:
The US “is not going to back down from its long-held principles that the world’s ocean-ways and international waters should be free for navigation, and the same with space and with air rights in international airspace.”
He added that so-called “quad” countries USA, Japan, Australia and India meetings are planned in September and October to counter China.
Pompeo and O’Brien aim to enlist other Indo-Pacific nations to ally with the US against China, a policy certain to heighten regional tensions more than already.
According to the Nikkei Asian Review,
“(a) smarter way for Asia to move forward…would be to avoid ideological conflict, accept the region’s realities, set aside or solve sovereignty disputes and focus on the hard-nosed issues of economic development for which the region has a good track record,” adding:
This “approach is necessary because previous attempts to forge a common Western-led Asian strategic structure have had little success.”
The 1954-formed Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) dissolved in 1977.
Since then, there’s been no multinational Asian military alliance — what Washington wants reestablished to serve its regional imperial interests.
Earlier attempts to include India in a pro-Western Asian alliance fell short.
The US is an unreliable partner because of its global militarism and belligerence at the expense of cooperative relations among the world community of nations that mutually benefit them all.
Washington’s notion of a “free and open Indo-Pacific” is all about its aim to dominate the region.
At this year’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong warned that “(w)e do not want to end up with rival blocs forming or countries having to take one side or another.”
Asian nations should work cooperatively with others worldwide non-confrontationally in the interest of regional and world peace.
It’s also in their interest to have the Indo-Pacific Asian-led, not dominated by a non-regional power.
Separately, a Pentagon warship provocatively sailed through the 112-mile-wide Taiwan Strait for the second time in two weeks — defying the Sino/US agreed on one-China principle, prompting its Foreign Ministry to express “deep concerns to the US side,” adding:
“The Taiwan question is the most sensitive and important issue between China and the US.”
“We urge the US to abide by the one-China principle and the three joint communiques, to be prudent and act appropriately with regards to Taiwan so that it doesn’t harm China-US relations and the peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait’s region.”
“We sternly warn related parties that any statement and act that sabotages the one-China principle and stirs up trouble in the Taiwan Straits does not fit the fundamental interests of China and the US, and damages the well-being of compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Straits, as it brings a real threat to peace and stability in the region, which is very dangerous.”
Beijing rejects a statement by the Pentagon, saying the transit of its warships through the Taiwan Strait “demonstrates the US commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” adding:
“The US Navy will continue to fly, sail and operate anywhere” in international waters and airspace.
Last week in agreement with China, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen warned “of the risk of accidental conflict from the rise in (regional) military activities.”
According to Chinese military expert Song Zhongping, provocative transiting of the Taiwan Strait by US warships poses a “real threat” to Beijing.
It risks possible collisions with Chinese warships that monitor its waters or an incident resulting in confrontation.
Along with its vessels, PLA satellites, radar, aircraft, reconnaissance drones, and warplanes monitor movements of US regional military forces close to Chinese territory.
If trespass into its waters or airspace occurs, a defensive response follows to counter the intrusion.
China Arms Control and Disarmament Association advisor Xu Guanghu noted that provocative US military activities in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait help the PLA prepare for combat by treating the intrusions as “simulated enemies.”
A PLA spokesman explained that its forces are on constant high alert to defend Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity against threats posed by the Pentagon’s regional presence.
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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.”
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