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It certainly was dramatic, as US President Donald Trump announced in the White House Thursday an agreement by the United Arab Emirates and Israel to move to full normalisation.

Former Congressman Ron Paul and his colleague Dan McAdams recently conducted a fascinating interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which focused in part on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, who was Kennedy Jr.’s uncle. The interview took place on their program the Ron Paul Liberty Report.

Owing to the many federal records that have been released over the years relating to the Kennedy assassination, especially through the efforts of the Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s, many Americans are now aware of the war that was being waged between President Kennedy and the CIA throughout his presidency. The details of this war are set forth in FFF’s book  JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne.

In the interview, Robert Kennedy Jr. revealed a fascinating aspect of this war with which I was unfamiliar. He stated that the deep animosity that the CIA had for the Kennedy family actually stretched back to something the family patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy, did in the 1950s that incurred the wrath of Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA.

Kennedy Jr. stated that his grandfather, Joseph P. Kennedy, had served on a commission that was charged with examining and analyzing CIA covert activities, or “dirty tricks” as Kennedy Jr. put them. As part of that commission, Kennedy Jr stated, Joseph Kennedy (John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy’s father) had determined that the CIA had done bad things with its regime-change operations that were destroying democracies, such as in Iran and Guatemala.

Consequently, Joseph Kennedy recommended that the CIA’s power to engage in covert activities be terminated and that the CIA be strictly limited to collecting intelligence and empowered to do nothing else.

According to Kennedy Jr., “Allen Dulles never forgave him — never forgave my family — for that.”

I wasn’t aware of that fact. I assumed that the war between President Kennedy and the CIA had begun with the CIA’s invasion at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. The additional information added by Kennedy Jr. places things in a much more fascinating and revealing context.

Upon doing a bit of research on the Internet, I found that the commission that Kennedy Jr. must have been referring to was the President’s Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities, which President Eisenhower had established in 1956 through Executive Order 10656. Eisenhower appointed Joseph Kennedy to serve on that commission.

That year was three years after the CIA’s 1953 regime change operation in Iran which destroyed that country’s democratic system. It was two years after the CIA’s regime-change operation in Guatemala that destroyed that country’s democratic system.

Keep in mind that the ostensible reason that the CIA engaged in these regime-change operations was to protect “national security,” which over time has become the most important term in the American political lexicon. Although no one has ever come up with an objective definition for the term, the CIA’s power to address threats to “national security,” including through coups and assassinations, became omnipotent.

Yet, here was Joseph P. Kennedy declaring that the CIA’s power to exercise such powers should be terminated and recommending that the CIA’s power be strictly limited to intelligence gathering.

It is not difficult to imagine how livid CIA Director Dulles and his cohorts must have been at Kennedy. No bureaucrat likes to have his power limited. More important, for Dulles and his cohorts, it would have been clear that if Kennedy got his way, “national security” would be gravely threatened given the Cold War that the United States was engaged in with the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, North Korea, and other communist nations.

Now consider what happened with the Bay of Pigs. The CIA’s plan for a regime-change invasion of Cuba, was conceived under President Eisenhower. Believing that Vice President Nixon would be elected president in 1960, the CIA was quite surprised that Kennedy was elected instead. To ensure that the invasion would go forth anyway, the CIA assured Kennedy that the invasion would succeed without U.S. air support. It was a lie. The CIA assumed that once the invasion was going to go down in defeat at the hands of the communists, Kennedy would have to provide the air support in order to “save face.”

But Kennedy refused to be played by the CIA. When the CIA’s army of Cuban exiles was going down in defeat, the CIA requested the air support, convinced that their plan to manipulate the new president would work. It didn’t. Kennedy refused to provide the air support and the CIA’s invasion went down in defeat.

Now consider what happened after the Bay of Pigs: Knowing that the CIA had played him and double-crossed him, John Kennedy fired Allen Dulles as CIA director, along with his chief deputy, Charles Cabell. He then put his younger brother Bobby Kennedy in charge of monitoring the CIA, which infuriated the CIA.

Now jump ahead to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which Kennedy resolved by promising that the United States would not invade Cuba for a regime-change operation. That necessarily would leave a permanent communist regime in Cuba, something that the CIA steadfastly maintained was a grave threat to “national security”— a much bigger threat, in fact, than the threats supposedly posed by the regimes in Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954.

And then Kennedy did the unforgivable, at least insofar as the CIA was concerned. In his famous Peace Speech at American University in June 1963, he declared an end to the entire Cold War and announced that the United States was going to establish friendly and peaceful relations with the communist world.

Kennedy had thrown the gauntlet down in front of the CIA. It was either going to be his way or the CIA’s way. There was no room for compromise, and both sides knew it.

In the minds of former CIA Director Allen Dulles and the people still at the CIA, what Kennedy was doing was anathema and, even worse, the gravest threat to “national security” the United States had ever faced, a much bigger threat than even that posed by the democratic regimes in Iran and Guatemala. At that point, the CIA’s animosity toward President Kennedy far exceeded the animosity it had borne toward his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, several years before.

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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews atLewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.

While the media blames the crisis in Lebanon solely on corruption, the US government unleashed a “maximum pressure” campaign to push regime change and crush Lebanese resistance with sanctions and aggressive hybrid warfare.

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As the people of Lebanon suffer through one of the worst economic crises in their nation’s conflict-ridden history, the Donald Trump administration is exploiting the disaster to force regime change and weaken Lebanese resistance groups.

A massive explosion on August 4 devastated Lebanon’s capital Beirut, killing more than 150 people, wounding thousands, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless, and ravaging a sizable chunk of the city.

The massive blast also destroyed Lebanon’s most important port, where 80 percent of food was imported into the country.

Even before the apocalyptic incident, Lebanon was enduring an economic calamity that had caused hyperinflation and wiped out the wealth of much of the country, fueling widespread food shortages and 20-hour blackouts.

Lebanon’s economy is now in a state of total collapse. The value of its national currency has plummeted by 80 percent, and more than half of the population is languishing in poverty.

Political kingpins, activists, Western government-funded NGOs, and international corporate media have blamed Lebanon’s problems solely on corruption. And there is no question that widespread financial impropriety and outright theft was a key factor in bringing the country to such a dismal point.

But an even more important element that has been conveniently left out of this picture is the role of the United States, and its allies in Israel and Saudi Arabia, which have pursued a concerted policy of destabilization, or what they call “maximum pressure.”

Washington has suffocated Lebanon and its neighbors with aggressive economic warfare, explicitly aimed at paralyzing the country and weakening Hezbollah, one of the most powerful and popular resistance forces in the region, which has successfully resisted US and Israeli interventionist designs, helped defeat ISIS and al-Qaeda, and even expelled the Israeli military after two decades of brutal military occupation of south Lebanon.

Hezbollah has a political arm that is democratically elected, holding 12 seats in Lebanon’s parliament, and which has been a member of the country’s governing coalition for a decade. Because of the resistance movement’s presence in government, Washington and Tel Aviv have refused to recognize the legitimacy of Lebanese democracy, and have desperately pursued regime change.

The crushing sanctions Washington has imposed on Syria and Iran have not only devastated the economies in the area; they have produced a ricochet effect back in Lebanon, severing the country from regional trading partners.

Then there is the nine-year Western-backed proxy war on the government in Damascus, which has destabilized Lebanon’s neighbor and unleashed a historic refugee crisis, putting enormous pressure on Beirut.

All of these factors have led to a catastrophe in Lebanon.

Trump administration pushes ‘maximum pressure’ campaign on Lebanon

The response of the Trump administration to the fateful Beirut blast was more sanctions.

The Wall Street Journal reported on August 12 that the US government was preparing to impose new sanctions “against prominent Lebanese politicians and businessmen in an effort to weaken Hezbollah’s influence.”

The newspaper noted that the blast “has accelerated efforts in Washington to blacklist Lebanese leaders aligned with Hezbollah.” It added that US officials see the post-explosion chaos as “an opportunity to drive a wedge between Hezbollah and its allies as part of a broader effort to contain the Shiite force backed by Tehran.”

Top US officials want to “turn the screws in Lebanon,” the Journal reported. It quoted an unnamed official who remarked, “I don’t see how you can react to this kind of event with anything other than maximum pressure” – a reference to the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign to bring about regime change in Iran.

The Trump administration is preparing anticorruption sanctions against Hezbollah’s allies in Lebanon, as it seeks to weaken the group in the aftermath of the Beirut explosion https://t.co/jOnnuzAayT

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) August 12, 2020

Senior US officials remarked bluntly that they want Lebanon’s current government to be replaced with a “technocratic” regime that shuns Hezbollah.

This demand confirmed a 2019 report in The Grayzone by journalist Rania Khalek, which detailed how Western-backed NGOs in Lebanon were exploiting anti-corruption protests to advance a strategy to remove Hezbollah from the country’s governing coalition and install US-aligned, IMF-friendly technocrats.

The Wall Street Journal also acknowledged that the Trump “administration’s existing sanction programs against Hezbollah” have already “taken an economic toll” on Lebanon.

Washington has therefore made it clear that it has no problem pushing Lebanon deeper into the economic abyss, to the edge of state collapse, in hopes of neutralizing Hezbollah.

Washington’s all-out war on the ‘Resistance Axis’

The crisis in Lebanon cannot be understood outside of the wider context of the overarching, obsessive US strategy aimed at crushing what is known as the “Resistance Axis,” in which Hezbollah serves as a key actor.

The ongoing, nearly decade-long war on Syria looms large in this situation. When the US government and its allies in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey initiated a regime-change war against Syria in 2011 and 2012, Hezbollah immediately recognized the proxy conflict as an attack on all resistance forces in the region, which would inevitably swallow Lebanon as well.

So while Washington and the Wahhabi Gulf monarchies poured billions of dollars into arming and training Salafi-jihadist rebels groups in Syria, giving birth to ISIS and fueling the spread of al-Qaeda, Lebanese Hezbollah helped to prevent state collapse in Damascus, battling Western proxies that threatened to turn the country into a failed state, as they did in Libya after the 2011 NATO regime-change war.

Some US lawmakers openly argued in Congress that it was a “good thing” that ISIS and other Sunni extremists were attacking “Hezbollah and the Shiite threat to us.” And an Israeli think tank funded by the US government and NATO even insisted in 2016 that ISIS should not be defeated, precisely because it could “be a useful tool in undermining” Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran.

Meanwhile, as Israel treated al-Qaeda militants in its hospitals and Israeli officials said they preferred ISIS staying in power, Hezbollah played a key role in the fight to defeat ISIS and al-Qaeda, both of which had crossed from Syria into Lebanon and took over Sunni-majority border towns, which they subsequently used as bases to launch attacks on Shia- and Christian-majority Lebanese villages.

Hezbollah successfully expelled these extremist Salafi-jihadist groups, and defended Lebanese sovereignty, in collaboration with Christian militias, Sunnis and Druze, and the Lebanese national army itself.

Faced with its own failure in the military component of the war in Syria, Washington then turned to full-scale economic warfare.

US economic warfare on Lebanon, Syria, and Iran

In June, the US government imposed a crushing unilateral coercive measures regime on Syria known as the “Caesar” sanctions. The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal detailed how the US and European sanctions on Syria effectively amount to a medieval-style siege of the entire country, and all of the millions of civilians who live inside of it.

Humanitarian experts have even warned that the Western economic warfare could unleash a famine. The United Nation Food and Agriculture Organization’s Syria representative, Mike Robson, cautioned there may soon be bread shortages in Syria. “There is already some evidence of people cutting out meals,” he stated.

The economic blockade has also damaged the economy in Lebanon, which has been virtually unable to do business with one of its most important trading partners. In 2017, Lebanon was by far the largest recipient of Syrian goods, receiving nearly 32 percent of its exports. Now, the sanctions have made that exchange nearly impossible.

The US ambassador in fact explicitly stated that Lebanon would not be allowed to buy energy from Syria due to the Caesar sanctions. The US-imposed severance of the two neighbors has exacerbated the electricity crisis in Lebanon, where there are often power shortages for up to 22 hours per day.

The US economic blockade of Iran has also caused a fuel shortage in Syria, forcing people to wait in lines for hours to get gasoline.

Moreover, Damascus had relied on the Beirut port for imports prior to the explosion. Now that its crucial economic lifeline has been destroyed, both Lebanon and Syria are facing extremely severe crises and the serious possibility of famine.

A Syrian-American economist, financial analyst, and prominent online commentator known by the pseudonym Ehsani told The Grayzone “there is little doubt” that the Syria war has terribly impacted Lebanon’s economy.

While disastrous, fiscally unsound policies overseen by the Lebanese central bank – which is also heavily influenced by the US embassy – played an important role in pushing the nation to the economic brink, the war on Syria has also hurt the Lebanese economy “in a big way,” Ehsani said.

“Economic growth clearly decelerated since 2011,” the start of the war in Syria, he explained. “And it ground to a halt in the past few years, leading up to the financial crisis. Between 2016 and 2019, Lebanon’s economic growth was practically zero. And it kept declining from its pre-2011 levels steadily.”

While corruption is an endemic problem in Lebanon, it has plagued the country for decades. Yet a pivotal economic shift occurred with the introduction of the US policy of exacerbating the crises in the region to destabilize independent governments and weaken the Resistance Axis, explained journalist Elijah J. Magnier, a war correspondent who has covered the region for decades.

“The US sanctions crippled the Syrian economy due to the restriction of the flow of cash, oil, and machinery needed to re-boost the local economy,” Magnier told The Grayzone. “Moreover, the US presence in north-east Syria and their control of the oil and gas prevented the country not only from vital energy but also from the rich agriculture resources the area is known for.”

“The US sanctions on Syria stopped all Arab and Gulf countries from rebuilding the country and pushed back all possible financial investment,” he said. “This has caused the devaluation of the local currency and prevented the Lebanese market from offering an alternative to Syria for fear of direct sanctions on the Lebanese government.”

Magnier added:

“As far as it concerns Lebanon, the US asked a local bank to collect over $20 billion in cash and to ship it abroad, creating a real thirst for foreign currency in the country. Moreover, the US imposed sanctions on wealthy Lebanese living abroad and on more than one bank, injecting real fear among the population of being accused of supporting terrorism or seeing their savings confiscated by the US authorities abroad. That has starved Lebanon of several billion dollars in cash that family members used to send back home to their relatives.”

US boasts of impact of sanctions on Lebanon, and CENTCOM commander visits

While imposing de facto economic blockades on Syria and Iran, the United States has hit Lebanon with several rounds of what it calls “targeted sanctions.” These US Treasury sanctions on Lebanon have sought to punish Hezbollah and its allies in the government and business sector.

While Washington portrays targeted sanctions as supposed humanitarian measures that do not hurt civilians, economic experts say this is patently false.

Ehsani, the Syrian-American economist, told The Grayzone,

“The effects of the US sanctions on the region is to push most business transactions underground. Lawless rogue elements typically fill the void as more legitimate businesses exit the scene. Such legitimate businesses do this because most global organizations opt to follow an ‘over-compliance’ posture to avoid any chance of getting entangled in such transactions.”

US sanctions have also hurt Lebanon by “the loss of potential money inflows that had fallen under significantly more scrutiny from US Treasury,” Ehsani added. “How much of the average $7-8 billion yearly inflow got affected by these sanctions is hard to ascertain.”

“While Western capitals speak of ‘smart sanctions,’ the fact is that even industries exempt from sanctions tend to quickly fall under the sanctions regime. This can be seen with importers of raw materials for medicine for example,” he explained.

“What has been clear is that benign sanctions are a myth,” Ehsani said. “Sanctions are akin to carpet bombing the standards of living of the average citizen.”

Before the August 4 explosion, Washington itself acknowledged that its sanctions were stinging Lebanon.

Just two weeks before the Beirut blast, the US government-run media outlet Voice of America (VOA)  celebrated the effect its coercive measures were having. “US Sanctions on Syria Leave Hezbollah More Isolated in Lebanon,” it gloated.

The VOA report noted that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had described the US sanctions as part of an “economic war” aimed at “starving both Syria and Lebanon.”

The neoconservative group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) approvingly tweeted the VOA article, insisting that the resistance “network is vast, but it can be reined in.”

The Caesar Syrian Civilian Protection Act introduced sanctions on the Syrian regime, which could deter Hezbollah from pushing Lebanese state institutions from assisting Assad. The network is vast, but it can be reined in. https://t.co/ttNgsio7I8

— UANI (@UANI) July 20, 2020

This VOA report came on the heels of a quiet yet important visit that the commander of US Central Command (CENTCOM), General Frank McKenzie, took to Beirut on July 8, to pressure the Lebanese Army to distance itself from Hezbollah and strengthen its bonds with the US military.

The US embassy in Lebanon reported that the CENTCOM commander met with top Lebanese political and military officials. Lebanese President Michel Aoun tweeted a photo of a meeting with McKenzie and the US ambassador, Dorothy Shea.

قائد القيادة الوسطى في الجيش الأميركي الجنرال كينيث ماكينزي بعد لقائه الرئيس عون: مستمرون بدعم الجيش اللبناني المدافع عن استقلال لبنان وسيادته pic.twitter.com/TcvPi5wXrp

— Lebanese Presidency (@LBpresidency) July 8, 2020

Saudi monarchy-backed media outlet Al Arabiya reported gleefully on the CENTCOM visit, chirping, “US general affirms support for Lebanon; Hezbollah supporters burn Trump photos.”

The quiet US junket demonstrated that, on the eve of the Beirut blast, Washington was already ratcheting up its pressure on Lebanon’s government.

.@CENTCOM Commander General Kenneth McKenzie discussed his visit to Lebanon and U.S. support for @LebArmyOfficial in his interview with @LBCI_NEWS https://t.co/xBY52UoPCM

— U.S. Embassy Beirut (@usembassybeirut) July 9, 2020

Western governments, NGOs, and media try to pin Beirut blast on Hezbollah

The August 4 explosion appears to have been the result of the explosion of thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate that the Lebanese government confiscated from an abandoned ship in 2013 and improperly stored at the Beirut port, violating safety protocol.

The Lebanese government, which resigned a week after the blast, officially attributed the incident to negligence. But President Michel Aoun acknowledged it could have possibly been the result of an attack.

Some Beirut residents told Asia Times that they saw and heard military aircraft flying overhead moments before the explosion.

Asia Times also reported, citing unnamed Western officials, “that Western reconnaissance craft were in the skies above the Lebanese coast at the time of the blasts,” although the officials denied carrying out an attack.

A US Central Command official told Asia Times that the “cause of the first fire/explosion is still an unanswered question,” adding that there is no “actual evidence to support or confirm that” it was caused by ammonium nitrate, and that “other alternatives” are possible.

Although the incident appears to have been an accident, some Lebanese analysts have suggested the blast could have potentially been an attack by Israel, which militarily occupied south Lebanon for more than 20 years and waged a devastating war in 2006, brutally bombing Lebanon and leaving more than 1,000 Lebanese dead and parts of the country in ruins.

Israel violates Lebanon’s sovereign airspace on a daily basis. In 2019, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon reported an average of 96.5 violations each month. UN Secretary-General António Guterres even spoke out against the Israeli aggression, stating,

“I reiterate my condemnation of all violations of Lebanese sovereignty and my call for Israel to cease its violations of Lebanese airspace.”

Despite the presence of Western aircraft during the explosion, the history of Israeli attacks, and the constant Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace, there has been a concerted campaign to try to pin the blast on Hezbollah, waged by the US and Israeli governments, a coterie of hawkish think tanks, and a sizable portion of the corporate media.

There is not even a scintilla of evidence linking Hezbollah to the explosion. In fact, the Lebanese resistance group would have everything to lose if it were involved.

But this didn’t stop the Atlantic Council, NATO’s de facto think tank, which is funded handsomely by the governments of the United States, Britain, and United Arab Emirates, along with top weapons and oil corporations. The Atlantic Council’s Gulf monarchy-backed Rafik Hariri Center tried to link Hezbollah to the blast with nothing more than insinuations.

"Hezbollah is acutely aware of the danger that such chemicals—even if not of a military grade—pose to nearby civilians, perhaps more so than any other entity in Lebanon," writes @DavidADaoud in MENAsource.

Read more ⬇️ https://t.co/N62M3U1k85

— Rafik Hariri Center & Middle East Initiatives (@ACMideast) August 7, 2020

Then there was the hawkish executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth. Never one to let something like a dearth of evidence get in the way of his mindless speculation about Washington’s foreign adversaries, Roth immediately implied after the blast that Hezbollah was responsible. He did not provide a shred of evidence; it was just his gut instinct.

Pro-Western protesters in Lebanon have also seized on the chaos to call for the dissolution of the Lebanese armed resistance.

Following the explosion, anti-Hezbollah groups took over Lebanese government buildings and unfurled banners calling for Beirut to demilitarize — an obvious demand for Hezbollah to put down its weapons and end its fight against Israel.

The US and Saudi have once again sought to capitalize on politically engineered tragedies in Lebanon using their local proxies. Legitimate fury about the Beirut blast has been channeled into a sectarian campaign to disarm Hizbullah by interventionists with neo-colonial fantasies pic.twitter.com/Ml7VfOQVku

— Amal Saad (@amalsaad_lb) August 9, 2020

The US embassy in Beirut openly welcomed these demonstrations, tweeting openly, “We support them.”

1/2 The Lebanese people have suffered too much and deserve to have leaders who listen to them and change course to respond to popular demands for transparency and accountability.

— U.S. Embassy Beirut (@usembassybeirut) August 8, 2020

US pledges ‘aid’ while intentionally exacerbating Lebanon’s economic crisis

Even as the Trump administration threatens to impose more aggressive sanctions on Lebanon, seeking to punish forces that support the Resistance Axis, the US government has pledged humanitarian aid to the country.

Moments after the explosion, Washington put its public relations operations into hyperdrive, seeking to portray itself as a noble protector of Lebanon.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – the former CIA director who quipped, “We lied, we cheated, we stole; we had entire training courses” – promised support following the blast.

Spoke this morning with Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab to express my deepest condolences in the wake of the horrible explosion in Beirut. The U.S. stands in solidarity with the Lebanese people and remains committed to assist with the aftermath of this terrifying event.

— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) August 5, 2020

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a soft-power arm that Washington uses to destabilize foreign governments it has targeted for regime change, announced it would be providing Lebanon with humanitarian aid.

John Barsa, the hardline neoconservative Trump loyalist recently installed as head of the USAID, who has explicitly used the ostensible aid agency as a weapon to overthrow the progressive governments in Latin America, announced support for Lebanon the next day.

BREAKING: The 🇺🇸 is providing immediate assistance in response to the catastrophic #LebanonExplosion in Beirut. This aid will provide critical health & humanitarian support for Lebanon’s emergency response. Follow @USAIDSavesLives for updates on our response efforts. pic.twitter.com/jgNdgco3tN

— JBarsaUSAID (@JBarsaUSAID) August 5, 2020

US Central Command revealed that they were working with USAID to distribute medical supplies to Lebanon.

.@USAIDSavesLives and @USAID provide critical medical supplies to assist the people of #Lebanon #BeirutSupport @usembassybeirut @USAFCENT https://t.co/uzdwiIDaJD

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) August 11, 2020

Ironically, in the weeks before the explosion, as Lebanon’s government begged for an economic lifeline, Washington was dragging its feet.

As millions of Lebanese citizens struggled to put food on the table, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) also refused to play ball. This baffled many international observers. Left unmentioned in coverage of the IMF’s behavior was the de facto veto the US holds in the organization, which it wields as a neoliberal instrument of Washington’s economic power.

“The IMF conditions include privatization and taxes the Lebanese society can’t afford,” the journalist Elijah Magnier explained to The Grayzone. “Moreover, the IMF is controlled by the US administration, which is asking for a new government without Hezbollah. That is not feasible because Hezbollah represents 13 MPs and enjoys the support of the majority of the parliament.”

Magnier also emphasized that when Lebanon had assembled a new government in the middle of the crisis, under Prime Minister Hassan Diab, Washington waged a destabilization campaign.

“With the formation of a new government, the US boycotted it and pressured Europe and the Gulf countries to cease any support, defining it as ‘Hezbollah’s government,’” Magnier said. “These measures contributed in the hectic financial situation in the country, which was also triggered by decades of corruption and mismanagement by the US friends who ruled Lebanon for all these years.”

The pro-Israel lobby group the American Jewish Committee (AJC) let the cat out of the bag when it tweeted on August 9 that international assistance to Lebanon following the explosion “must be conditioned on the long-promised, long-avoided disarmament of Hezbollah.”

AJC made it clear that Western aid will be hung over Lebanon like a sword of Damocles, adding,

“Unless the malignant role of Iran’s terror proxy is addressed there will never be meaningful change for the people of Lebanon.”

So-called Western "aid" for Lebanon is going to be predicated on removing Hezbollah from the government (even though it was democratically elected) and disarming the Lebanese resistance to US imperialism / Israeli colonialismhttps://t.co/R3ZuMfmE1k

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) August 9, 2020

Magnier also pointed out that the amount in international aid being offered to Lebanon is relatively little.

“35 countries gathered all to offer to the UN and NGOs in Lebanon $300 million, the equivalent of what Hezbollah spend in less than five months in the country, only on salaries,” he said.

Meanwhile, as millions of Lebanese civilians suffer, financial analysts expect the US campaign of economic warfare and “maximum pressure” to only continue going forward.

“The sanctions policy are likely to stay,” Ehsani told The Grayzone. “This policy is more acceptable to the average Western electorate than direct military involvement. Policy makers are therefore likely to make more use of them post the Iraq debacle. Regional governments and average citizens will bear the brunt of this silent evisceration of their economic well being.”

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Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.

The government of far right Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu cut off fuel for the sole power plant in the Gaza Strip, a small Palestinian territory surrounded on three sides by and blockaded by Israel. As a result, on Monday the Gaza Strip’s sole power plant went dark, Al Jazeera reports.

The denial of fuel to the Gaza Strip came in response to Hamas sending ammonium balloons over Israeli territory with incendiary materials attached. The balloons have caused some brush fires. The balloons are intended to protest the Israelis reneging on their pledges to ease the blockade of the Gaza Strip. Israel keeps the 2 million Palestinians there in the world’s largest open air prison camp.

Israeli fighter jets have bombed Gaza on several occasions during the past week.

The Israelis have also stopped Palestinians from fishing, denying the population a key source of protein and interfering in livelihoods.

Before the cut-off of fuel, the Gaza Strip had electricity for 6 hours, then none for 10 hours, in an ongoing cycle. Now they will have electricity for only 4 hours daily, and that will have to made available by expensive generators. The Israel blockade on the civilian population of Gaza, in effect since 2007, has left the population poverty-stricken, so paying for fuel for generators is a real hardship.

The General Union of Worker Organizations in Gaza estimated that 90% of the Gaza Strip’s factories and workshops would be idled by the closure of the power plant. That is some 500 factories that will be left dark, leaving 50,000 workers unemployed.

Waste water treatment will also be impeded, meaning more raw sewage going into the Mediterranean.

Hospital patients are at special risk from lack of electricity. The spokesman for the Gaza ministry of health, Dr. Ashraf al-Qudra, said that the lack of power poses a threat to premature babies nurseries, to patients in intensive care units, and to kidney patients (dialysis needs electricity). It will also halt surgeries and deliveries by Caesarean section.

While the incendiary balloons are condemnable, they do not offer any justification for these forms of collective punishment on a mass scale. Israeli bombing of Hamas facilities might be justified, but not cutting of diesel supplies to the whole population. The denial of electricity to 2 million civilian noncombatants is nothing less than a war crime.

In the wake of the Rwanda genocide, a special court was set up to judge war crimes and Shane Darcy notes,

“The Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) enumerates collective punishment as a war crime…”

The Israeli authorities are therefore guilty of committing an ongoing war crime against the Occupied Palestinians of Gaza.

In my experience, many people still believe in the legitimacy of collective punishment, so let me just underline that it is very illegal and that officials who commit it can be tried for it. It was outlawed after World War II because it is the sort of nasty practice in which the Nazis liked to engage. They would take a village and then shoot every tenth villager to, as the French say, “encourage the others.” The individuals shot hadn’t committed any crime.

Usually when someone violates the Geneva Conventions, they are acting like Nazis.

As Doctors without Borders notes,

“International humanitarian law posits that no person may be punished for acts that he or she did not commit. It ensures that the collective punishment of a group of persons for a crime committed by an individual is also forbidden, whether in the case of prisoners of war or of any other individuals (GCIII Art. 87, API Art. 75.2.d, APII Art. 4.2.b). This is one of the fundamental guarantees established by the 1949 Geneva Conventions and their 1977 Additional Protocols. This guarantee is applicable not only to protected persons but to all individuals, no matter what their status or to what category of persons they belong, as defined by the Geneva Conventions (GCIV Art. 33).”

The Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War, article 3, paragraph 87, says:

“Collective punishment for individual acts, corporal punishment, imprisonment in premises without daylight and, in general, any form of torture or cruelty, are forbidden.”

Note that collective punishment is here grouped with torture as an offense. And while the paragraph concerns prisoners of war, civilians should have more rights than a prisoner of war, not fewer. Moreover, there is a sense in which Israel has taken all the Palestinians in Gaza prisoner.

The 1977 First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions reiterated this principle even more broadly. Article 75, para. 2 concerns “persons who are in the power of a Party to the conflict.” That is, the law concerns not just POWs but everyone who falls into the hands of a belligerent. The 2 million Palestinians of Gaza have certainly fallen into Israeli hands, being completely surrounded by the Israelis and being deprived by the latter of airports, seaports and freedom of movement:

• • .”2. The following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever, whether committed by civilian or by military agents: a) violence to the life, health, or physical or mental well-being of persons, in particular: i) murder; ii) torture of all kinds, whether physical or mental;iii) corporal punishment; and iv) mutilation; b) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment, enforced prostitution and any form of indecent assault; c) the taking of hostages; d)

collective punishments; and e) threats to commit any of the foregoing acts.”

Again, imposing collective punishment on persons in your power where you are a party to a conflict is in the same category as murder and mutilation.

The Second Additional Protocol of 1977 to the Geneva Conventions, Art. 4.2.b further says:

“Part II

HUMANE TREATMENT
Article 4 – Fundamental guarantees

1. All persons who do not take a direct part or who have ceased to take part in hostilities, whether or not their liberty has been restricted, are entitled to respect for their person, honour and convictions and religious practices. They shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction. It is prohibited to order that there shall be no survivors.

2. Without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing, the following acts against the persons referred to in paragraph I are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever:

(a) Violence to the life, health and physical or mental well-being of persons, in particular murder as well as cruel treatment such as torture, mutilation or any form of corporal punishment;

(b) Collective punishments.”

So all but a tiny number of Palestinians in Gaza do not take direct part in hostilities toward Israel. Half of the residents of Gaza are children. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz estimates Hamas to have 30,000 activists in its military wing. The smaller Islamic Jihad, which is not affiliated with Hamas and often defies it, is thought to have 6,000 fighters. So there are like 36,000 combatants in Gaza and nearly 2 million noncombatants, i.e. persons who do not take direct part in hostilities.

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Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Featured image is from The Bullet

During this summer of madness in Portland, Oregon, and sadness over COVID-19, two below-the-radar events occurred implicating the insatiable appetite of the United States government to spy on everyone in America. Regular readers of this column know that the feds have been wearing away at our privacy rights using a multitude of means. Yet, these two below-the-fold events this summer have caught the feds flatfooted.

Here is the backstory.

After the calamity of Watergate, Congress investigated the nature and extent of FBI and CIA spying on Americans as ordered by President Richard Nixon. A Senate committee headed by the late Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, in 1975 made such startling revelations of warrantless and unlawful spying on Americans pursuant to presidential whims — going back to FDR — that it offered legislation to provide judicial oversight.

The legislation is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. It established the FISA Court, with a rotating membership of federal district court judges appointed to it by the chief justice.

FISA is profoundly unconstitutional because it authorizes the judges on the FISA Court to issue search warrants using a lesser standard of proof than what the Constitution requires. The Fourth Amendment requires proof of the likelihood of evidence of crimes in the place to be searched as a precondition for the issuance of search warrants, and it requires specification of the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized.

When James Madison wrote the Fourth Amendment, his goal was to compel the government to focus its investigative resources on evidence of crimes, not spying on political adversaries, as the British had done to the colonists, and to establish that the natural right to be left alone by the government — privacy — is the default position.

FISA reverses all that. It presumes that the feds can obtain all the business and financial records they want about any person for any reason because they can define “business records” and “financial records” to include anything they want, such as mail from the Post Office or medical and legal records.

FISA also ignores the constitutional requirement of probable cause of crime and substitutes in an amorphous and absurd standard of probable cause of speaking to any person who has spoken to any foreign person. FISA also ignores the specificity requirement of identifying the place to be searched and the person or thing to be seized.

The FISA Court meets in secret in Washington, D.C., and even the judges on the court do not have access to its records. So, the court was hugely embarrassed a few years ago when one of its orders was leaked to the press. It was an order to Verizon directing it to furnish a year’s worth of telephone records to the National Security Agency — America’s 60,000-person strong domestic spy agency — of all 113 million Verizon customers! This was done without the NSA showing probable cause of crime and without identifying a single customer.

The unconstitutional order was granted pursuant to section 215 of FISA. That section purports to permit bulk acquisition of electronic data — print and voice — without identifying whose data is being sought and without requiring any showing of probable cause of crime. Last February, section 215 expired, and Congress made fruitless attempts to revive it.

Last week, Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., when he adjourned the Senate for the summer, addressed the issues it will take up in the fall. FISA section 215 was not among them. McConnell’s silence is baffling as he and the intelligence community have been claiming loud and long, for nearly 20 years, that without section 215, the United States is ripe for subversion and invasion.

Was the pro-spying crowd in the government exaggerating all along about its need for section 215, or will the NSA continue to spy without even a tissue of statutory authorization? My friends formerly in the NSA tell me it doesn’t care about the law or the Constitution. Its goal is to spy on all persons all the time.

A few days before the mysterious McConnell silence came a rare public warning from the NSA. These master spies were concerned that military and Department of Homeland Security personnel in the streets of Portland were unwittingly exposing themselves to being spied upon, not by the feds, but by demonstrators in the streets using the same sophisticated spying tools the government uses.

Thus, the NSA warned that the demonstrators were using stingrays — fake cell towers that send signals that lock onto mobile phones permitting the user of the tower to follow the movements of the phones — as many local police departments unlawfully do.

Stated differently, the federal government was not warning Americans about foreign spies or the depth of its own spying. It was warning government employees about the depth of sophisticated Americans spying on them. The failure to abide this warning is surely one of the reasons the feds largely departed Portland’s streets as the demonstrators knew when and where the troops would arrive.

Government spying is a way of life for tens of thousands of government personnel, even outside the NSA. Yet, all of them have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, which guarantees the right to privacy — privacy as a natural right, as the default position, with its invasion strictly limited to collect evidence of crimes from identified persons when authorized by a judge.

We have come full circle from Madison’s America. He was determined to craft a government that could not do to Americans what the British had done to the colonists. He failed.

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One cannot fail to recognise the ubiquitous crisis in all forms of leadership that exists on the planet today. Qualities of wisdom, courage and statesmanship, once admired and emulated by aspiring people of principle, have been undermined and sterilised via collective slavery to the prescribed money and power agenda, which reflects the default position of society. 

Today, little people claim to be big and ‘big’ people seem to want to be invisible. The higher values of society have been corrupted and put into reverse, replaced by a centrally directed pandemic of fear and confusion; leaving nobody sure what direction society needs to move in.

Out of this chaos a new type of leadership will need to emerge and its primary value must be Spiritual Wisdom. It is the prima facie lack of spiritual aspiration in the great body of humanity which has allowed the anti-life corruptive forces to gain such a wide ranging control over everyday life.

There are two predominantly fake versions of spirituality: formal religion and the narcissistic meditator. These have replaced the deeper calling of true individual spiritual evolution: confronting injustice and giving service to humanity.

In the former case, by replacing prophetic teachings with dogma and control, and in the latter, by using bona fide Eastern practices as a personal escape mechanism. A closing of the eyes to the need to face up to the injustices of the world and working to expose and change them.

The deeper calling which exists in all humanity has been grossly undernourished, leaving many having no ‘belief’ in the existence of a greater force for good and no sense of deeper purpose associated with ‘being alive’. What might be described as living in a permanent void.

How can life on Earth improve while such a state prevails? How can people be uplifted when the spark of life has died in them?

The starting point for reversing this dystopian state of affairs is to recognise that this spark is not actually beyond redemption. But that it is simply buried and suffocated by continuous confirmation to the long-running fake plan for society, and could re-emerge from its enforced hibernation if the right conditions were set in place to bring about such a transformation.

Since we are all blessed with receiving ‘life’ (being born) it becomes a question of admitting to a Source of this life state which comes before and extends beyond the individual ‘you’ and ‘I’. Provided one has some sense of wonderment about this greater life force one’s spirit is intact and onward one can go to develop the values of courage, dignity and statehood I mentioned at the start.

If there is no wonderment, but moral and ethical values are nevertheless expressed, this will suffice in upholding the basic dignity associated with being human, but will not give creative impetus to the evolution of human society.

But if there is no dignity and no wonderment – and the capitulation to slavery has been complete – then only a radical form of redress could come to the rescue of the values that give meaning to life and the lost souls trapped into laying their lives at the feet of our planetary oppressors.

That radical form of redress is what is now needed. It means the rise into positions of respected leadership of individuals (and groups of individuals) who are dedicated to advancing the cause of human emancipation, whatever the odds that stand against them. And since it is dogma and indoctrination that are the first two hurdles to stand in their way, these must be the first to come under sustained attack.

This means root and branch reform of the entire education system and a radical rebuilding of the teacher pupil relationship. A transformation founded upon the natural human propensity for social bonding, the insight that leads to ‘vision’ and a sharing of the work-load that life places in all our laps.

The goals that have been set for new arrivals on this planet are false. That is the first lesson for any ‘real’ education. A child arrives on Earth as a bright and beautiful human being, full of the innocent spontaneity which is a direct expression of the divine source from whence the child has come. But the figureheads of the society into which that child arrives have the ambition of turning this new human being – into a robot.  Something a bit wrong here, wouldn’t you agree?

Computer technology and the digitalised images such technology conveys, are not compatible with the human condition. They are alien to true humanity and represent a disconnect between body, mind a spirit. A distortion of our deeper bond with the greater whole without which we cannot operate as real people, only as fake lookalikes.

The emerging ‘true leadership’ will recognise this fact and ensure that the body, mind and spirit unity is redeemed as the first and most fundamental condition of the new education.

It will also recognise that the same distortion of truth lies at the heart of the financial institutions that control the global money supply, ensuring the ever greater disparity between poverty and wealth.  The new education will therefore elucidate an economic principle whereby the wealth of the planet is to be shared amongst all peoples and poverty is eradicated.

It will note that there is no proper justice left within the decisions and processes of national and international law, and will advise a fair system of trial accompanied by ‘a corrective’ process rather than the ‘coercive’ process of the existing prison system.

An alliance with cosmic law (God’s law) – known and practised as Common Law – will become the medium for judging and redirecting the antisocial acts of others.

As all humans need good food and water to be healthy, the new leadership will ensure everybody has the right to such nourishment in their daily lives. A pro-ecological agriculture and farming practice, in the hands of humane and sensitive practitioners, will therefore be recognised as the proper basis for planetary equilibrium and proper nourishment of humanity as a whole.

Within this emerging new paradigm, the emphasis will move away from a globalized marketing regime, to local and regional production and distribution systems based on the principle of co-operating rather than competition. ‘Human scale’ will be the watchword for industry of all sorts.

Where there is to be an overriding central body concerned with ensuring the course for the emergent new society is set fair, it will comprise ‘a council of the wise and true’.

Offering a sound template for living in harmony with fellow humans and with nature, is the work that those of us who share this vision, need to do at this time.

It is a very exciting time to be alive. In spite of the daunting nature of the challenges we face, the human spirit, reconnected to its divine origins and true sense of purpose, will overcome all attempts to consign it to prison. Instead it will bring about a renaissance. A renaissance far exceeding any temporary upturns in creative expression witnessed in previous centuries.

But there is one inadmissible factor without which we cannot ensure this metamorphosis reaches its full potential; a recognition that we are simultaneously both truly individual and innately social beings – who place on an equal footing the ability to lead wisely and yet to never loose touch with our roots as brothers and sisters within the great family of man.

Holding this vision in front of us, we will surely overcome all that stands in the way of the great emancipation of life on Earth.

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Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, writer, international activist, entrepreneur and teacher. His latest book ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through’ is particularly prescient reading for this time: see www.julianrose.info. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Belarus’ disproportionate budgetary dependence on five big businesses makes it extremely vulnerable to economic destabilization if the tiny percentage of the country’s population employed in those companies join in the nationwide labor strike movement to remove Lukashenko.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he intends to make a Covid-19 vaccine as “mandatory as you can possibly make it” for all Australians once it becomes available.

It emerged today that the Morrison Government has confirmed a landmark agreement with drug giant AstraZeneca to manufacture one of the world’s most promising coronavirus vaccines currently being developed by Oxford University researchers, news.com.au reports.

If it’s proved safe to use, Prime Minister Scott Morrison believes the agreement will ensure Australians will be among the first countries in the world to secure the jab, revealing this morning it could be available to Aussies as soon as early next year.

The UK Government has already ordered 100 million doses.

Asked whether the vaccine would be mandatory, Morrison told 3AW’s Neil Mitchell that it needed to get to about 95 per cent of the population.

“I would expect it to be as mandatory as you can possibly make it,” the Prime Minister said.

“There are always exemptions for any vaccine on medical grounds but that should be the only basis.

“I mean we’re talking about a pandemic that has destroyed you know, the global economy and taken the lives of hundreds of thousands all around the world and over 450 Australians here.

“We need the most extensive and comprehensive response to this to get Australia back to normal.”

However, in response to suggestions there would be community resistance to mandating it, Morrison said the government had not yet made a firm decision and this would be made once the medical issues about the vaccine were known.

Morrison said there

“we’ll take that issue when it presents when clinical trials are finished and we have to understand what the medical issues potentially might be and that’s why we’ll take advice on its application but … you know, I’m certainly open to that suggestion but that is not a position that the government has taken”.

Mitchell pointed out that there would be campaigns from the anti-vaxxers but the Prime Minister seemed unfazed.

“I’m used to that, I was the minister that established ‘no jab, no play’,” he said, referring to a programme that sees government benefits withheld from parents who do not vaccinate their children. “My view on this is pretty clear and not for turning.”

During a later press conference, Australia’s acting chief medical officer Professor Paul Kelly said the vaccine would at first, be voluntary.

“Of course, the first will be a voluntary call for people and I’m sure there will be long queues – socially distanced, of course – for this vaccine,” Kelly said.

He said there would be strong campaigns to encourage people “and we’ve had experience before of linking vaccination with other programmes and all of those things will be looked at over time”.

While the ‘no jab, no play’ programme is aimed at getting children vaccinated, the Prime Minister was asked what the government would do when they were adults.

“We’re going to take this one step at a time,” Morrison said.

“I don’t think offering jelly beans is the way to do that as you do with kids but we’ll take those issues as they present and consider what steps are necessary at that time.”

He said the rollout of the programme would also depend on clinical advice that would identify any vulnerabilities in communities.

“The obvious priority is around health workers and people like that,” he said.

“What is important to understand with any of these vaccines is it does protect you, it does protect you but it also protects the community and, as is the case with any vaccine, there will be some individuals who, for precise medical reasons, can have issues with any vaccine,” Morrison said.

“They and their safety and their health depends on the vaccine’s take-up more broadly in the community. That’s how they get protected.

“And this is an important part of our vaccine strategy, not just on Covid-19, but more broadly. We’ll seek its most widespread application, as we do with all important vaccines.”

A vaccine holds the key to life returning to normal for millions of Australians and the hope that international travel can resume in the future after the nation’s borders were closed earlier this year.

While Morrison cautioned that more work needed to be done to prove the vaccine was safe to use, he said the government will fund the rollout of more than 25 million doses to cover every Australian for free as soon as the drug is available which could be next year.

“The Oxford vaccine is one of the most advanced and promising in the world, and under this deal we have secured early access for every Australian,” Morrison said.

“If this vaccine proves successful we will manufacture and supply vaccines straight away under our own steam and make it free for 25 million Australians.

“However there is no guarantee that this, or any other, vaccine will be successful, which is why we are continuing our discussions with many parties around the world while backing our own researchers at the same time to find a vaccine.

In a “Letter of Intent” with drug company AstraZeneca to supply the University of Oxford’s Covid-19 vaccine candidate to Australia, medical manufacturer Becton Dickinson has also been engaged for the supply of millions of needles and syringes.

The Letter of Intent covers vaccine development, production in Australia and distribution with a formal agreement including the price of the vaccine to taxpayers to follow.

However it will be provided to all Australians free of charge.

Morrison said he was also working to ensure early access to the vaccine was secured “for countries in our Pacific family, as well as regional partners in Southeast Asia.”

How the vaccine works

The Oxford University vaccine is made from a genetically engineered virus that causes the common cold in chimpanzees and is known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19.

Scientists have altered the virus to make it mimic the coronavirus and ensure the immune system can learn how to attack it. It does not involve injecting Covid-19 but a virus that “looks like” the virus to trigger an immune response.

Recent trials involving 1077 people showed promising signs that it can trigger an immune response but further trials are underway.

“The preliminary data shows that it is safe and induces a strong antibody response in all vaccinated volunteers, suggesting that an effective vaccine could be within reach,” Oxford University’s Rebecca Ashfield said in July.

“This trial was the first time that the vaccine had been given to humans: 543 healthy adults aged 18-55 were vaccinated with a single dose of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19. A further 534 people were given a control vaccine that gives similar minor reactions, including injection site redness and mild pain.

“Volunteers are having their immune response (both antibodies and T cell levels) monitored for at least 12 months, and will also be observed to see whether or not they develop Covid-19.

“The preliminary data from the trial clearly demonstrates that the vaccine induces an antibody response within 28 days. This response is in a similar range to that in individuals who have recovered from Covid-19, providing encouragement that the vaccine will be able to protect the majority of people against infection.

During the trials, 10 volunteers were also given a second “booster” dose of the vaccine which increased the antibody response to even higher levels.

“Importantly, the vaccine demonstrates an acceptable safety profile, with no vaccine-induced severe adverse events – that is, no major side-effects,” Dr Ashfield said.

Scientists working on the vaccine believe that one dose may not be enough to protect against Covid-19 infections.

“My personal prediction — based on decreases in antibody levels in individuals infected with other types of coronavirus, rather than data from the current vaccine trial — is that we’re likely to need yearly boosters, similar to annual flu jabs,” Dr Ashfield said.

Deliberately infecting people with the virus may be possible in future (after careful consideration of the ethical implications), but is not currently allowed.

A second trial has been launched involving 10,000 UK individuals, focusing on health workers and other trials are being conducted around the world, including in Brazil where rates of infection are high.

“The expanded UK trial will include children and older adults to estimate vaccine efficacy in these age groups. Immune responses in people over 70 are often lower than those in younger adults,” she said.

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A disturbing new document outlines plans for a US regime-change scheme against Nicaragua’s elected leftist government, overseen by USAID, to bring about a “market economy” and a purge of Sandinistas.

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A newly released document exposes a US government operation to overthrow the democratically elected socialist government in Nicaragua.

The plot is administered by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a regime-change vehicle that uses the pretense of “humanitarian aid” to advance Washington’s aggressive foreign-policy interests.

The document (PDF) details the creation of a new “task order” called Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua (RAIN) and its plan for “Nicaragua’s transition to democracy” – a euphemism for removing the leftist Sandinista Front for National Liberation (known commonly by the Spanish acronym FSLN) from power.

In the pages, the US government agency uses hardline neoconservative rhetoric, referring to Nicaragua’s elected government as the “Ortega regime,” and making it clear that Washington wants to install a neoliberal administration that will privatize the economy, impose neoliberal reforms, and purge all institutions of any trace of the leftist Sandinista movement.

The USAID regime-change scheme states openly that one of its top “mission goals” is for Nicaragua to “transition to a rules-based market economy” based on the “protection of private property rights.”

The document concludes by calling for the future US-installed regime in Nicaragua to “rebuild institutions” and “reestablish” the military and police; to “dismantle parallel institutions” that support the Sandinista Front; and to persecute FSLN leaders through “transitional justice measures” – in other words, a thorough purge of the Sandinista movement to prevent it from ever returning to power.

In case it was not explicit enough that Washington’s goal was regime change, the 14-page USAID document employed the word “transition” 102 times, including nine times on the first page alone.

USAID declared its intention to assist in what could be an “orderly transition” or a “sudden transition without elections,” which is clear code for a coup. At the same time, it acknowledged that Nicaragua’s right-wing opposition is divided and has little chance of winning the upcoming 2021 national election.

USAID oversees another far-right coup attempt in Latin America

Ever since the Sandinista Front returned to power in Nicaragua through democratic elections in 2006, Washington has been hellbent on trying to topple it.

In 2018, the Donald Trump administration supported a violent coup attempt in Nicaragua, in which far-right gangs took over neighborhoods and paralyzed the country with bloody barricades known as tranques. The US-backed insurgents unleashed a reign of terror, killing and injuring hundreds of Sandinista activists and state security forces; marking the homes of leftist activists, ransacking and burning some down; and torturing and threatening supporters of the elected government.

When the 2018 putsch attempt failed, the US government resorted to a raft of aggressive tactics to bring down Nicaragua’s leadership. In the past two years, the Trump administration has imposed several rounds of suffocating sanctions on the small Central American nation, often with bipartisan support in Congress, not a word of opposition from the Democratic Party, and cheers from the billionaire-funded human rights industry.

The US Agency for International Development was instrumental in the Donald Trump administration’s violent US coup attempts against Venezuela’s elected government in 2019, working directly with the Department of Defense. USAID has poured hundreds of millions of dollars funding the US regime-change efforts against the leftist Chavista government, and has bankrolled the Trump-backed coup regime of Juan Guaidó.

USAID has always functioned as a CIA cutout and soft-power arm for Washington. But under the Trump administration, it has kicked its coup efforts in Latin America into hyper drive.

In April 2020, USAID was taken over by de facto director John Barsa, a hardline Republican businessman, Trump ally, and son of anti-communist Cuban immigrants. In coordination with Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Barsa has turned USAID into a blunt weapon of regime change, openly financing putsch efforts against the socialist governments of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

US govt’s Democracy International posts job listing for USAID coup liaison in Nicaragua

The Grayzone contacted USAID to ask confirmation that the document detailing its plans for a political “transition” in Nicaragua was authentic. The agency did not respond.

We were able, however, to gather evidence demonstrating the document’s legitimacy. For starters, metadata on the PDF file show that the original author was the forms division of the US government’s General Services Administration (GSA), which oversees logistics for USAID and other agencies.

Metadata on the USAID PDF document shows it was drafted by the US government

Even more compellingly, the pages spelling out the regime-change plot employ precisely the same language and phrases as a job listing that was posted in late July by another US government-funded organization, Democracy International. In fact, the USAID document appears to be a more detailed job description for this post.

Democracy International stated in its listing on LinkedIn that it was seeking a Nicaraguan national in the capital of Managua to work as a “Senior Level Technical Expert – Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance to provide technical and programmatic support for USAID/Nicaragua’s Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua (RAIN) Task Order.”

Directly echoing the USAID document, the Democracy International job listing said that the “purpose of the Task Order is ‘to provide rapid, responsive, and relevant analytical and technical assistance that bridge USAID/Nicaragua’s efforts to create the conditions for, and support, a peaceful transition to democracy in Nicaragua.’”

This employee would help develop a “Transition Response Plan” – a regime-change scheme. (The brief job listing uses the term “transition” 10 times.)

During the Cold War, coup coordination jobs like these would have been covert positions arranged with the CIA. In the freewheeling 21st century, however, this dirty regime-change work is carried out in the open, and advertised publicly on LinkedIn.

In case it wasn’t clear what this organization’s relationship was to USAID, it stated clearly on the post: “Democracy International, Inc. (DI) provides technical assistance, analytical services and project implementation for democracy, human rights, governance and conflict mitigation programs worldwide for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. State Department and other development partners.”

The job listing explicitly noted that the employee would work with the US government to provide “technical advice and country knowledge to GON (government of Nicaragua) ministries, USG (US government), and other stakeholders.”

Clearly, Democracy International is searching for a local point person to help carry out Washington’s regime-change efforts on the ground. The USAID document spelled out in detail the specific destabilization strategy that this liaison would follow.

The Grayzone called the Democracy International office with a request for comment on the LinkedIn job listing, the RAIN program, and the USAID document. A secretary would not let us speak with a specific member of the international team, simply saying, “We will inform the relevant people that we have received a call and I can give them their name and number and they will call you.”

The secretary asked if The Grayzone had a specific question to respond to. We said, “Local Nicaraguan media outlets have criticized USAID’s RAIN program, which is described in the Democracy International job posting, and characterized it as what appears to be an attempt at orchestrating a coup in the country. Can you respond to that characterization and do you think it is fair or unfair?” The Democracy International secretary replied, “Wow that’s so interesting. I will definitely let them know that you called.”

Democracy International never called back.

USAID’s regime-change plot to “transition” Nicaragua to a “market economy”

USAID’s Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua (RAIN) plan makes it clear that it is just a “short term bridge” to bring about regime change in the country, adding, “It is USAID’s intent to follow RAIN with longer-term programs, which will be determined as the crisis evolves.”

The regime-change plot outlined a “Mission Goal 2” in which “Nicaragua provides basis for future economic growth and increased trade through transition to a rules-based market economy based on transparent and accountable regulatory institutions, fiscal and monetary stability, respect for the rule-of-law and protection of private property rights.”

A supplementary “mission objective” emphasized USAID’s desire for a new neoliberal regime in Nicaragua that “works with the private sector to rebuild institutionality and an efficient and fair administrative bureaucracy” – in other words, mass privatization.

(Among the supposed crimes committed by the Nicaraguan “regime,” USAID lists “confiscation of properties.”)

The USAID document outlined further US priorities for Nicaragua following a successful regime-change operation.

USAID’s “Mission Goal 3” would be “Security reform and rebuilding institutions” to “reestablish independent and professional security forces.” This is clearly a call for purging the police and military of Sandinista loyalists and bring in US trainers to establish a neocolonial-style security force, much like General Keith Dayton did in the occupied West Bank after Palestinian resistance was extinguished following the Second Intifada.

The “new government must act quickly to dismantle parallel institutions,” USAID adds. This is an indirect hint that Washington seeks to destroy the Sandinista Front, the Sandinista Youth, and other grassroots institutions that work with but are independent of the current socialist government. At its most severe, such a proposal could amount to an Augusto Pinochet-style purge of the left in Nicaragua.

“Additionally, it will need to implement transitional justice measures,” the USAID document added. This language, which has also been used in the proxy war on Syria, suggests the new neoliberal Nicaraguan government would be compelled to prosecute Sandinista Front officials, echoing the strategy the US-backed right-wing regimes in Bolivia and Ecuador have used to criminalize the left-wing parties that previously ruled those countries, hunt down former leftist leaders, and throw opposition officials in prison on dubious charges.

Another important part of the RAIN job would include recruiting native coup coordinators to help carry out the regime-change plot. USAID described this responsibility as follows: “Identification of potential Nicaraguan partners for rapid impact Grants Under Task Order to promote transition-related activities.”

The initiative allotted $540,000 in grants to entice Nicaraguan opposition groups into assisting the regime-change effort. (In the second-poorest country in the Western hemisphere, where the minimum wage is between $200 and $300 per month, half a million dollars is no petty sum.)

These funds would compliment the millions of dollars that USAID and the NED provide to right-wing Nicaraguan organizations every year.

The USAID document insisted that “Nicaragua’s immediate future remains highly uncertain.” Yet it acknowledged that the right-wing opposition is divided and unpopular, admitting that its leadership has not “coalesced around a party or candidate.”

Taking into account the weakness of the opposition heading into the 2021 national elections, the USAID plan outlines three scenarios for the overthrow of the socialist government and a “transition” to a US-friendly neoliberal regime.

The first is an “Orderly Transition scenario,” a far-fetched situation in which an unpopular US-backed opposition group somehow manages to win the election.

The second potential regime-change scenario is described as a “Sudden, Unanticipated Transition,” in “which one or more political crises, such as a snap or failed election, a presidential resignation, a major health crisis, a major natural disaster, or internal conflicts, lead to sudden regime crisis and transition either to an interim government or a new government.” This is the coup option, and USAID makes it clear that it would be more than happy with such a situation, and wants its RAIN liaison to prepare for it.

The third is a “Delayed Transition scenario,” in which the Sandinista government remains in power. In this case, USAID says that RAIN would help it destabilize the government in other ways and lead to future regime change.

But USAID didn’t want readers to get the wrong impression. It stressed in the document that its coup would be “gender sensitive in compliance” and based on “gender-informed analytical work.” (Although the women who make up the bulk of the Sandinista base would have to be excluded from Washington’s woke political “transition”).

The USAID document balanced its liberal language on gender with neoconservative rhetoric claiming, “Malign foreign influences, principally Cuba, Venezuela, and Russia, will continue to attempt to strengthen the corrupt autocratic Ortega regime.”

“What if Nicaragua did that in the United States?”

The existence of the USAID regime-change document was first reported on July 31 on the popular Nicaraguan radio and video show Sin Fronteras, hosted by William Grigsby Vado.

Grigsby, a prominent leftist media personality with a large following at the base of the Sandinista Front, condemned the US plot. “It is nauseating, the document; bearing to read it is difficult,” he said in outrage. “You have to have a strong liver to bear it. It pained me a lot.”

“What right does the US government have to contract a firm to subvert public order in any country?” Grigsby fumed. “It is a shameless intervention. Before they did it with the military; in this case they are doing it by subverting public order and funding political opposition activities. That is unacceptable!”

“What if Nicaragua did that in the United States, if for example Daniel Ortega said, ‘Hey, we’re going to help the protesters in Portland’?” he added. “But they reserve to themselves the right to act against the democratic institutionality of a country.”

Grigsby concluded by condemning “yankee imperialism” and slamming Nicaraguan opposition figures who are participating in this regime-change scheme.

“You all can do one of two things,” he thundered at the opposition. “Follow the rules of democracy, accept your defeat, and participate in the political game. Or you can simply remain as treasonists, hitmen, and traitors.”

The USAID document shows Washington pushing the latter option, and driving the country into a deepened conflict.

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Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.

All images in this article are from The Grayzone unless otherwise stated

On August 14, the final abandoned home was demolished with the more than $265 million in Hardest Hit Funds initially designed to preserve neighborhoods as opposed to their destruction in the majority African American city of Detroit. (See this)

Over 15,000 houses have been destroyed since 2014 yet tens of thousands more dilapidated and abandoned homes, apartments, commercial and industrial structures remain in the city.

These government funds were deliberately redirected from their intended purpose to later serve as a profitable enterprise for private companies engaging in work which environmentally has endangered hundreds of thousands of people.  A corporate-imposed administration in Detroit headed by Mayor Mike Duggan has defined its mission as the exploitation of labor, resources and tax dollars for the wealthiest interests in the city and beyond. This regime was installed during an unprecedented declaration of emergency management and bankruptcy during 2013-2014.

The 2008-2009 corporate and financial institutional bailout only provided a small percentage of the overall assistance to homeowners so deeply impacted by the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Toxic mortgages and urban bond initiatives played a pivotal role in the bankruptcies and near financial ruin of many of the major cities across the United States.

Detroit and other municipalities were already suffering from the vast transferal of wealth from the working class and oppressed peoples to the capitalist ruling class which expanded exponentially after the restructuring of the world system after 1975. Industrial centers such as Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Illinois, among others, were turned into economic wastelands where unemployment remained astronomically high while workers fled the areas seeking work and other forms of social assistance.

In Detroit, a popular struggle emerged during the latter months of 2019 over the introduction of yet another questionable municipal bond deal which would cost the people of the city a half-billion dollars. The existing demolition program which has exhausted its funds was characterized by graft, patronage and the widespread poisoning of the affected communities through the dangerous levels of lead, asbestos and other harmful materials left after the demolition of the homes and apartment buildings.

An Auditor General’s report commissioned by the City Council took several years to complete due to the lack of transparency by the Duggan administration. The overcharges, missing documents and arbitrary actions taken against salvageable homes which were not even on the demolition lists, has tarnished the image of the program in the eyes of the public. (See this)

Consequently, due to public pressure, the bond deal went down in flames at the City Council table during November. In a 6-3 vote, the Council, although not known in recent years to take positions which support the interests of the majority Detroit population, felt the mass discontent and rejected the financial scheme.

Nonetheless, amid the economic distress of the people of Detroit, the City Council has passed by a 5-4 margin another revised bond initiative introduced by the administration. The plan on paper says that 8,000 homes will be “rehabilitated” while an equal number are slated for destruction.

There is no explanation as to how this measure if approved in the November election, can improve the conditions of the people of the city. Detroit has been disproportionately stricken with COVID-19 infections. 40 percent of the deaths from the pandemic are among African Americans even though they only constitute 13 percent of the population of Michigan.

These actions by the bank-directed administration in Detroit are a reflection of the lack of mitigation efforts to resolve the existing crisis which is growing every month in its magnitude. There have been no resolutions, ordinances and executive orders issued to place a moratorium on evictions which are rapidly increasing. Similarly, the daily Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the city have been attacked on several occasions by the police resulting in more than 400 arrests and numerous injuries from pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and other crowd control tactical weapons.

A moratorium on evictions by Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer in the wake of the pandemic has been lifted. Another moratorium ordered by 36^th District Court Judge William C. McConico also expired on August 17.

Nearly 100 people gathered outside the court on August 17 demanded that no evictions be carried out in Detroit and that these actions amid the current crisis should be resisted by the people in the communities. Another car caravan outside the office of Whitmer on August 19 demanded that she reinstate the statewide moratorium.

A National Pattern of Underdevelopment of Cities

The funding allocated for the Cares Act passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by President Donald Trump in March provided the bulk of assistance to the top echelons of the capitalist ruling class in the U.S. Many firms have profited immensely from government policy at the same time granting $1,200 per worker for the masses and an additional $600 in weekly jobless benefits.

These additional benefits have run the course as Congress is divided between the Democratic and Republican parties and therefore cannot reach agreement on even a minimal bailout for the working class and oppressed. The Heroes Act passed by the House of Representatives, which called for additional financial assistance to working families, has been completely rejected by the Senate. A series of executive orders announced by Trump on August 7 excluded the supplemental payments to workers and retirees while mandating the revocation of payroll taxes for employers which would defund social security and unemployment insurance.

An article recently published by the Brookings Institution think tank assessed the emerging crisis prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The report says:

“Legacy cities are likely to suffer more deeply from the COVID-19 pandemic. They have high concentrations of residents vulnerable to the disease itself, due to underlying health conditions, inadequate access to good health care, and other environmental factors. Legacy cities also have fragile economies with long-standing structural weaknesses that expose them to more severe initial impacts and complicate their path to recovery.”

With specific reference to Detroit, this same analysis emphasizes:

“For instance, as an urban center with a high-risk population, Detroit was an early ‘ground zero’ for COVID-19 infections and deaths. Although showing signs of recovery, the pandemic’s early economic impacts on Detroit and similar places is staggering—and in most cases, more severe than those occurring in other metropolitan areas.”

Another article on the crisis was placed in the New York Times on August 17. The writers suggest that the precipitous decline in tax revenue in many cities throughout the country will result in service cuts, educational downsizing and municipal lay-offs. These developments are a result of not only the public health, services and educational problems they are a by-product of the unequal and exploitative nature of municipal finance which serves to subsidize private investment through the financial institutions.

Electoral Politics and the Status of the Cities

There is tremendous political and corporate media pressure being placed on working class and oppressed peoples in the U.S. to choose between the two parties of the ruling class, neither of which have advanced a program to begin to resolve the contemporary situation. Unrest in cities such as Portland, Seattle, Chicago and others are a direct result of the failure of the municipal governments to address the demands for police accountability and the imperatives of defunding law-enforcement.

At this critical stage, there is a need for a comprehensive redistribution of wealth. The working people are being forced to endure unemployment, hunger, lack of education and healthcare, environmental degradation along with state repression principally implemented to guarantee maximum profits for the banks and multi-national corporations.

The upcoming November elections will generate much interest and debate over the future of the U.S. However, until the workers and oppressed organize independently of the interests of Wall Street there will not be any hope for economic revival among the majority of people inside the country.

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

Featured image is from Free Press

The shaky stability established in Syria after the end of the Turkish attack on the Syrian Army in Idlib in February and March of 2020 has collapsed.

Just a day after the confrontation between the US military and the Syrian Army in the province of al-Hasakah, US troops deployed at the Koniko gas fields on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River came under rocket attack. According to local sources, at least 3 unguided rockets fell near US positions. Nonetheless, the attack led to no casualties.

A few hours earlier, two combat drones of the US military crashed in Idlib. Just ahead of the incident, pro-militant sources claimed that they had shot down 2 Russian drones in the area. Nonetheless, photos and videos from the ground immediately revealed that at least one of the crashed drones was an MQ-9 Reaper. Later, US media citing defense officials reported that the US lost two MQ-9 Reapers in a midair collision over Idlib. Many Syrian sources immediately linked the incident with the use of electronic warfare systems on US combat drones in the area.

On the same day, a Russian major-general was killed and two service members were injured after an improvised explosive device hit their convoy near the Al-Taim oil field, about 15 km outside the city of Deir Ezzor. The killed major-general was identified as Vyacheslav Gladkih. He served as Deputy Commander of the 36th Combined-Arms Army. In Syria, he was serving as an adviser to the Syrian Arab Army.

Recently, ISIS significantly increased the number of attacks on Syrian pro-government forces in the provinces of Homs and Deir Ezzor. The terrorist group is especially active near the cities of Deir Ezzor and Mayadin. It could be suggested that the group of Russian advisers was there to discuss the current situation in the area with its Syrian counterparts.

On August 19, local sources reported the simultaneous increase of military activity in the provinces of Idlib, Hasakah and Deir Ezzor. In Idlib, 3 Turkish military convoys crossed the border and moved towards the contact line between militants and the Syrian Army south of the M4 highway. Just recently, a joint Turkish-Russian patrol came under attack there, but Ankara is still set to protect al-Qaeda terrorists hiding there at any cost. In al-Hasakah, the Syrian Army is reinforcing it’s positions near Tell Tamr and in the countryside of al-Qamishli. In the provinces of Deir Ezzor, the Syrian Army and the National Defense Forces conducted several raids near the cities of Deir Ezzor and al-Mayadin. The recent series of ISIS attacks on positions of pro-government forces, including the death of a Russian major-general, will likely lead to a larger united effort of Syrian and Russian forces to track and eliminate the ISIS cells that still hide in the desert.

The conflict in Syria seems to have all chances to once again enter a hot phase with the provinces of al-Hasakah and Idlib being the main points of possible confrontation of foreign forces deployed in the country. At the same time, the ISIS threat in the central Syrian desert also remains an important destabilizing factor.

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In May 2007, Security Council Resolution 1757 established the STL “on the outskirts of the Hague.”

Ten SC members voted “yes,” none “no,” Russia, China, South Africa, Indonesia, and Qatar abstaining.

Five judges were involved in proceedings, Judge David Re presiding.

The STL’s mandate was to “hold trials for the people accused of carrying out the attack of 14 February 2005 which killed 22 people, including the former prime minister of Lebanon, Rafik Hariri, and injured many others.”

Proceedings begun on March 1, 2009 concluded with the STL’s announced ruling on August 18.

Four wrongfully accused Hezbollah suspects were tried for the crime they had nothing to do with. See below.

“Accused Salim Jamil Ayyash (was found) guilty beyond reasonable doubt of all (nine) counts against him in the indictment (sic).”

“Hassam Habib Merhi, Hussein Hassan Oneissi and Assad Hassan Sabra (were found) not guilty of all counts charged in the amended consolidated indictment.”

Charges against a fifth suspect, Mustafa Badreddine, were dropped following his 2016 death.

All suspects were tried in absentia, their whereabouts unknown.

No evidence implicated Syrian or Hezbollah’s leadership in what happened.

Yet Syrian forces based in Lebanon had to withdraw from the country because in the immediate aftermath of the incident, Damascus was falsely blamed for what it had nothing to do with — their removal a motive behind Hariri’s killing, benefitting Israel.

In announcing the STL’s ruling, presiding Judge Re called what happened on February 14, 2005 “a political act,” adding:

“The trial chamber is of the view that Syria and Hezbollah may have had motives to eliminate Mr. Hariri and some of his allies (sic).”

“However, there was no evidence that the Hezbollah leadership had any involvement in Mr Haririr’s murder, and there is no direct evidence of Syrian involvement in it.”

The STL didn’t consider the most obvious suspect with motive, opportunity, and ability to carry out what happened. See below.

No credible evidence suggested that Hezbollah members or Syrian nationals were responsible for the February 2005 incident.

In its ruling, the STL presented no evidence to suggest that Hezbollah, its members, or Syria wanted Hariri killed.

The STL’s 2,600-page ruling (and 150-page summary) failed to provide “closure” by not pointing fingers where they belong, even though the responsible party for what happened wasn’t on trial — that alone a gross miscarriage of justice.

In early August, I explained the following:

Israeli fingerprints were all over the powerful car bomb blast that killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 20 others, scores more injured.

The blast left a 30-foot-wide/six-foot-deep crater. Syria, then Hezbollah, were falsely blamed for what happened, four Hezbollah members wrongfully tried by the STL.

Israel was responsible for what happened, targeted killings one of its specialties.

At the time, Hezbollah-intercepted Israeli aerial surveillance footage and audio evidence showed Hariri’s route on the day of his assassination.

Criminal law expert Hasan Jouni called its evidence compelling.

North Lebanon Bar Association head Antoine Airout said “revelations by Hezbollah (were) very serious and objective.”

Syria and Hezbollah had nothing to gain from what happened. Israel clearly benefitted, including by false accusations against its enemies.

At the time of the incident, Middle East journalist Patrick Seale said “(i)f Syria (or Hezbollah) killed (Hariri), it must be judged an act of political suicide…hand(ing) (their) enemies a weapon with which to deliver (a destabilizing) blow.”

Judgment by the STL failed to hold Israeli PM Aerial Sharon accountable for the high crime committed by his regime.

Throughout Jewish state history since May 1948, no Israeli political or military officials were ever held accountable for high crimes of war, against humanity, or other international wrongdoing too serious to ignore.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

We discuss Diana Johnstone’s memoir, “Circle in the Darkness”:

Yugoslavia under Tito; bombing of Serbia; Camp Bondsteel; spook revelation journalism;

Paris in 1968; anti-war movement of the ‘60s; legacy of Charles de Gaulle; Europe occupied since WWII;

the Greens; Maastricht and Lisbon Treaties; neoliberal counterrevolution in the 1980s; finance capital;

internationalism vs nationalism; privatization; financial institutions living off of sovereign debt; austerity;

Yellow Vests a revival of an economic left; Antifa enforcing the establishment position;

Responsibility to Protect (R2P) a rule to break national sovereignty; destruction of Libya by NATO;

new phase of capitalism called ‘green’; censorship of intellectual discussion

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Chinese tech giant Huawei calls itself “an independent, privately-held company that provides information and communication technology (ICT)…connect(ing) over three billion people in (over) 170 countries.”

The company is leading the race to roll out 5G technology, its market potential worth trillions of dollars.

The Trump regime wants imports of Chinese tech products restricted or blocked.

It also banned US companies from using information and communications technology from sources his regime calls a threat to US national security.

Last May, Trump’s Commerce Department tightened restrictions on Huawei’s ability to buy US software and technology used to develop and produce semiconductors.

Intel, Google, Qualcomm and other US tech companies suspended sales to Huawei.

At the time, the US Commerce Department extended a temporary license to let US tech companies sell certain non-critical products to Huawei for another 90 days through late August. The temporary waiver expired.

The Trump regime wants the company cut off from US chips and other high tech products to undermine its ability to compete with corporate America effectively.

On Monday, Trump’s Commerce Department further escalated war on Huawei to prevent the company from buying foreign-made US chips.

It also added another 38 company affiliates in 21 countries to its so-called entity list.

These firms are subject to special “licensing requirements for the export, reexport and/or transfer (in-country) of specified items,” barring their access to certain US technology — according to the US Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS).

According to Chinese tech analyst Ma Jihua, newly announced Trump regime restrictions “closed all roads for Huawei” by cutting off its ability to buy US chips from foreign suppliers, adding:

“The new rule also means that the US’ previous tricks didn’t work on Huawei and the US has basically played all its cards against” the company that remains resilient despite all-out Trump regime efforts to harm its operations.

“If the US forces Huawei into the corner, the Chinese government will retaliate without hesitation.”

Commenting on the Commerce Department ruling, Pompeo falsely claimed new actions against Huawei aim “to protect US national security, our citizens’ privacy, and the integrity of our 5G infrastructure from Beijing’s malign influence (sic).”

A politicized US Justice Department indictment last year charged Huawei, two company affiliates, and its chief financial officer Sabrina Meng Wanzhou with 13 counts of financial fraud, money laundering, wire fraud, bank fraud, conspiracy to defraud the US, obstruction of justice, and violation of (illegally imposed) US sanctions on Iran.

On Monday, Pompeo said the Trump regime will “restrict most US exports to Huawei and its affiliates on the entity list” and will pressure its allies to adopt the same policy.

After initially working with Huawei to build out Britain’s 5G network, PM Boris Johnson bent to Washington’s will by announcing no new purchases of its equipment after December 31 to eliminate what his regime called “high-risk vendors.”

It’s unclear if or how many other European countries will go along with the US by no longer doing business with Huawei.

Germany reacted cooly to Trump regime’s demands, saying no evidence suggests Huawei poses a national security threat.

Czech Republic Prime Minister Andrej Babis rejected Pompeo’s demands, saying:

“We are a sovereign country. We treat these countries quite standardly like everyone else,” adding:

“I (told Pompeo) that we are moving forward as a member of the EU, that there has been a similar situation in other similar bids, and that we cannot eliminate anyone to comply with EU rules.”

He refused to rule out working with Huawei in building out the country’s 5G infrastructure.

Czech President Milos Zeman said “great powers should not be hostile to each other, but should have a common enemy, which is international terrorism.”

In early August, diplomatic outreach to the US by China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi and former Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi to preserve the world’s most important bilateral relationship fell on deaf ears in Washington.

Its hostile agenda toward Beijing is polar opposite constructive dialogue Wang and Yang urged.

So far, China hasn’t retaliated against US war on Huawei and its other enterprises.

The only language both right wings of the US one-party state understand is toughness.

It’s likely coming ahead against US companies in whatever ways China considers appropriate.

A Final Comment

In response to the latest hostile Trump regime actions against Huawei, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian issued the following strongly worded statement:

“China firmly opposes the deliberate smearing and suppression of Chinese enterprises including Huawei by the US side.”

“For some time now, the US has been abusing national security concept and state power to impose all sorts of restrictive measures on Chinese companies like Huawei without producing any solid evidence.”

“This is stark bullying.”

“What the US has done shows clearly that the market economy and fair competition principle it claims to champion is nothing but a fig leaf.”

“Such practice violates rules of international trade, disrupts global industrial, supply and value chains, and will inevitably damage America’s national interests and image.”

“I’d like to stress that the more hysterically the US tries to keep Huawei and other Chinese companies down, the more it proves they are doing great and the US is bringing hypocrisy and bullying to a whole new level.”

“Many successful businesses of other countries have suffered the same treatment in the past.”

“The shameful behavior of the US has been and will continue to be rejected by countries in the world.”

“The US claims that Huawei threatens US national security, which is totally baseless.”

“Let’s take a look at the facts.”

“Over the past 30 years, Huawei has developed over 1,500 networks in more than 170 countries and regions, and served 228 Fortune 500 companies and more than three billion people all over the world.”

“Not a single cybersecurity incident like those revealed by Edward Snowden or WikiLeaks has there been.”

“Not a single tapping or surveillance operation like PRISM, Equation Group or ECHELON has there been.”

“And not a single country has produced evidence of any backdoors in Huawei products.”

“The US is really the top empire of hackers in this world.”

“American companies Cisco and Apple admitted years ago that there are security loopholes and backdoors in their equipment.”

“US intelligence has long been running indiscriminate, illegal surveillance programs on foreign governments, businesses and individuals including those of its allies.”

“Even American citizens don’t have any secrets to speak of. These are open facts.”

“We urge the US to immediately correct its mistakes and stop smearing China and suppressing Chinese companies.”

“The Chinese government will continue to take necessary measures to safeguard Chinese companies’ legitimate rights and interests.”

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

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

A major sign of financial distress in the US economy kicked in in mid-September of 2019 when there was a breakdown in the normal operation of the Repo Market. This repurchase market in the United States is important in maintaining liquidity in the financial system.

Those directing entities like large banks, Wall Street traders and hedge funds frequently seek large amounts of cash on a short-term basis. They obtain this cash from, for instance, money market funds by putting up securities, often Treasury Bills, as collateral. Most often the financial instruments go back, say the following night, to their original owners with interest payments attached for the use of the cash.

Screenshot: Bankrate.com

In mid-September 2019 the trust broke down between participants in the Repo Market. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York then entered the picture making trillions of dollars available to keep the system for short-term moving of assets going. This intervention repeated the operation that came in response to the first signs of trouble as Wall Street moved towards the stock market crash of 2008.

One of the major problems on the eve of the bailout of 2008-09, like the problem in the autumn of 2019, had to do with the overwhelming of the real economy by massive speculative activity.

The problem then, like a big part of the problem now, involves the disproportionate size of the derivative bets. The making of these bets have become a dangerous addiction that continues to this day to menace the viability of the financial system headquartered on Wall Street.

By March of 2020 it was reported that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York had turned on its money spigot to create $9 trillion in new money with the goal of keeping the failing Repo Market operational.

The precise destinations of that money together with the terms of its disbursement, however, remain a secret. As Pam Martens and Russ Martens write,

Since the Fed turned on its latest money spigot to Wall Street [in September of 2019], it has refused to provide the public with the dollar amounts going to any specific banks. This has denied the public the ability to know which financial institutions are in trouble. The Fed, exactly as it did in 2008, has drawn a dark curtain around troubled banks and the public’s right to know, while aiding and abetting a financial coverup of just how bad things are on Wall Street.

Looking back at the prior bailout from their temporal vantage point in January of 2020, the authors noted

 “During the 2007 to 2010 financial collapse on Wall Street – the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the Fed funnelled a total of $29 trillion in cumulative loans to Wall Street banks, their trading houses and their foreign derivative counterparties.”

The authors compared the rate of the transfer of funds from the New York Federal Reserve Bank to the Wall Street banking establishment in the 2008 crash and in the early stages of the 2020 financial debacle. The authors observed, “at this rate, [the Fed] is going to top the rate of money it threw at the 2008 crisis in no time at all.”

The view that all was well with the economy until the impact of the health crisis began to be felt in early 2020 leads away from the fact that money markets began to falter dangerously in the autumn of 2019. The problems with the Repo Market were part of a litany of indicators pointing to turbulence ahead in troubled economic waters.

For instance, the resignation in 2019 of about 1,500 prominent corporate CEOs can be seen as a suggestion that news was circulating prior to 2020 about the imminence of serious financial problems ahead. Insiders’ awareness of menacing developments threatening the workings of the global economy were probably a factor in the decision of a large number of senior executives to exit the upper echelons of the business world. (See this)

Not only did a record number of CEOs resign, but many of them sold off the bulk of their shares in the companies they were leaving. (See this)

Pam Marten and Russ Marten who follow Wall Street’s machinations on a daily basis have advanced the case that the Federal Reserve is engaged in fraud by trying to make it seem that “the banking industry came into 2020 in a healthy condition;” that it is only because of “the COVID-19 pandemic” that the financial system is” unravelling,”

The authors argue that this misrepresentation was deployed because the deceivers are apparently “desperate” to prevent Congress from conducting an investigation for the second time in twelve years on why the Fed, “had to engage in trillions of dollars of Wall Street bailouts.” In spite of the Fed’s fear of facing a Congressional investigation after the November 2020 vote, such a timely investigation of the US financial sector would well serve the public interest.

The authors present a number of signs demonstrating that “the Fed knew, or should have known…. that there was a big banking crisis brewing in August of last year. [2019]” The signs of the financial crisis in the making included negative yields on government bonds around the world as well as big drops in the Dow Jones average. The plunge in the price of stocks was led by US banks, but especially Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase.

Another significant indicator that something was deeply wrong in financial markets was a telling inversion in the value of Treasury notes with the two-year rate yielding more than the ten-year rate.

Yet another sign of serious trouble ahead involved repeated contractions in the size of the German economy. Moreover, in September of 2019 news broke that officials of JP Morgan Chase faced criminal charges for RICO-style racketeering. This scandal added to the evidence of converging problems plaguing core economic institutions as more disruptive mayhem gathered on the horizons. (See this)

Accordingly,there is ample cause to ask if there are major underlying reasons for the financial crash of 2020 other than the misnamed pandemic and the lockdowns done in its name of “flattening” its spikes of infection. At the same time, there is ample cause to recognize that the lockdowns have been a very significant factor in the depth of the economic debacle that is making 2020 a year like no other.

Some go further. They argue that the financial crash of 2020 was not only anticipated but planned and pushed forward with clear understanding of its instrumental role in the Great Reset sought by self-appointed protagonists of creative destruction. The advocates of this interpretation place significant weight on the importance of the lockdowns as an effective means of obliterating in a single act a host of old economic relationships. For instance Peter Koenig examines the “farce and diabolical agenda of a universal lockdown.” Koenig writes,

“The pandemic was needed as a pretext to halt and collapse the world economy and the underlying social fabric.”

Inflating the Numbers and Traumatizing the Public to Energize the Epidemic of Fear

There have been many pandemics in global history whose effects on human health have been much more pervasive and devastating than the current one said to be generated by a new coronavirus. In spite, however, of its comparatively mild flu-like effects on human health, at least at this point in the summer of 2020, there has never been a contagion whose spread has generated so much global publicity and hype. As in the aftermath of 9/11, this hype extends to audacious levels of media-generated panic. As with the psy op of 9/11, the media-induced panic has been expertly finessed by practitioners skilled in leveraging the currency of fear to realize a host of radical political objectives.

According to Robert E. Wright in an essay published by the American Institute for Economic Research, “closing down the U.S. economy in response to COVID-19 was probably the worst public policy in at least one-hundred years.” As Wright sees it, the decision to lock down the economy was made in ignorant disregard of the deep and devastating impact that such an action would spur.“Economic lockdowns were the fantasies of government officials so out of touch with economic and physical reality that they thought the costs would be fairly low.”

The consequences, Wright predicts, will extend across many domains including the violence done to the rule of law. The lockdowns, he writes, “turned the Constitution into a frail and worthless fabric.” Writing in late April, Wright touched on the comparisons to be made between the economic lockdowns and slavery. He write, “Slaves definitely had it worse than Americans under lockdown do, but already Americans are beginning to protest their confinement and to subtly subvert authorities, just as chattel slaves did.” (See this)

The people held captive in confined lockdown settings have had the time and often the inclination to imbibe much of the 24/7 media coverage of the misnamed pandemic. Taken together, all this media sensationalism has come to constitute one of the most concerted psychological operations ever.

The implications have been enormous for the mental health of multitudes of people. This massive alteration of attitudes and behaviours is the outcome of media experiments performed on human subjects without their informed consent. The media’s success in bringing about herd subservience to propagandistic messaging represents a huge incentive for more of the same to come. It turns out that the subject matter of public health offers virtually limitless potential for power-seeking interests and agents to meddle with the privacies, civil liberties and human rights of those they seek to manipulate, control and exploit.

The social, economic and health impacts of the dislocations flowing from the lockdowns are proving to be especially devastating on the poorest, the most deprived and the most vulnerable members of society. This impact will continue to be marked in many ways, including in increased rates of suicide, domestic violence, mental illness, addictions, homelessness, and incarceration far larger than those caused directly by COVID-19. As rates of deprivation through poverty escalate, so too will crime rates soar.

The over-the-top alarmism of the big media cabals has been well financed by the advertising revenue of the pharmaceutical industry. With some few exceptions, major media outlets pushed the public to accept the lockdowns as well as the attending losses in jobs and business activity. In seeking to push the agenda of their sponsors, the big media cartels have been especially unmindful of their journalistic responsibilities. Their tendency has been to avoid or censor forums where even expert practitioners of public health can publicly question and discuss government dictates about vital issues of public policy. (See this)

Whether in Germany or the United States or many other countries, front line workers in this health care crisis have nevertheless gathered together with the goal of trying to correct the one-sided prejudices of of discriminatory media coverage. One of the major themes in the presentations by medical practitioners is to confront the chorus of media misrepresentations on the remedial effects of hydroxychloroquine and zinc.

On July 27 a group of doctors gathered on the grounds of the US Supreme Court to try to address the biases of the media and the blind spots of government. (See this)

Another aspect in the collateral damage engendered by COVID-19 alarmism is marked in the fatalities arising from the wholesale postponement of many necessary interventions including surgery. How many have died or will die because of the hold put on medical interventions to remedy cancer, heart conditions and many other potentially lethal ailments? (See this)

Did the unprecedented lockdowns come about as part of a preconceived plan to inflate the severity of an anticipated financial meltdown? What is to be made of the suspicious intervention of administrators to produce severely padded numbers of reported deaths in almost every jurisdiction? This kind of manipulation of statistics raised the possibility that we are witnessing a purposeful and systemic inflation of the severity of this health care crisis. (See this)

Questions about the number of cases arise because of the means of testing for the presence of a supposedly new coronavirus. The PCR system that is presently being widely used does not test for the virus but tests for the existence of antibodies produced in response to many health challenges including the common cold. This problem creates a good deal of uncertainty of what a positive test really means. (See this and this)

The problems with calculating case numbers extend to widespread reportsthat have described people who were not tested for COVID-19 but who nevertheless received notices from officials counting them as COVID-19 positive. Broadcaster Armstrong Williams addressed the phenomenon on his network of MSM media outlets in late July.

From the mass of responses he received, Williams estimated that those not tested but counted as a positive probably extends probably to hundreds of thousands of individuals. What would drive the effort to exaggerate the size of the afflicted population? (See this at 1:03-1:15)

This same pattern of inflation of case numbers was reinforced by the Tricare branch of the US Defense Department’s Military Health System. This branch sent out notices to 600,000 individuals who had not been tested. The notices nevertheless informed the recipients that they had tested positive for COVID 19. (See this)

Is the inflation of COVID-19 death rates and cases numbers an expression of the zeal to justify the massive lockdowns? Were the lockdowns in China conceived as part of a scheme to help create the conditions for the public’s acceptance of a plan to remake the world’s political economy? What is to be made of the fact that those most identified with the World Economic Forum (WEF) have led the way in putting a positive spin on the reset arising from the very health crisis the WEF helped introduce and publicize in Oct. of 2019?

As Usual, the Poor Gets Poorer

The original Chinese lockdowns in the winter of 2020 caused the breakdowns of import-export supply chains extending across the planet. Lockdowns in the movement of raw materials, parts, finished products, expertise, money and more shut down domestic businesses in China as well as transnational commerce in many countries outside China. The supply chain disruptions were especially severe for businesses that have dispensed with the practice of keeping on hand large inventories of parts and raw material, depending instead on just-in-time deliveries.

As the supply chains broke down domestically and internationally, many enterprises lacked the revenue to pay their expenses. Bankruptcies began to proliferate at rates that will probably continue to beastronomical for some time. All kinds of loans and liabilities were not paid out in full or at all. Many homes are being re-mortgaged or cast into real estate markets as happened during the prelude and course of the bailouts of 2007-2010.

The brunt of the financial onslaught hit small businesses especially hard. Collectively small businesses have been a big creator of jobs. They have picked up some of the slack from the rush of big businesses to downsize their number of full-time employees. Moreover, small businesses and start-ups are often the site of exceptionally agile innovations across broad spectrums of economic activity. The hard financial slam on the small business sector, therefore, is packing a heavy punch on the economic conditions of everyone.

The devastating impact of the economic meltdown on workers and small businesses in Europe and North America extends in especially lethal ways to the massive population of poor people living all over the world. Many of these poor people reside in countries where much of the paid work is irregular and informal.

At the end of April the International Labor Organization (ILO), an entity created along with the League of Nations at the end of the First World War, estimated that there would be 1.6 billion victims of the meltdown in the worldwide “informal economy.” In the first month of the crisis these workers based largely in Africa and Latin America lost 60% of their subsistence level incomes. (See this)

As ILO Director-General, Guy Ryder, has asserted,

This pandemic has laid bare in the cruellest way, the extraordinary precariousness and injustices of our world of work. It is the decimation of livelihoods in the informal economy – where six out of ten workers make a living – which has ignited the warnings from our colleagues in the World Food Programme, of the coming pandemic of hunger. It is the gaping holes in the social protection systems of even the richest countries, which have left millions in situations of deprivation. It is the failure to guarantee workplace safety that condemns nearly 3 million to die each year because of the work they do. And it is the unchecked dynamic of growing inequality which means that if, in medical terms, the virus does not discriminate between its victims in its social and economic impact, it discriminates brutally against the poorest and the powerless. (See this)

Guy Ryder remembered the optimistic rhetoric in officialdom’s responses to the economic crash of 2007-2009. He compares the expectations currently being aroused by the vaccination fixation with the many optimistic sentiments previously suggesting the imminence of remedies for grotesque levels of global inequality. Ryder reflected,

We’ve heard it before. The mantra which provided the mood music of the crash of 2008-2009 was that once the vaccine to the virus of financial excess had been developed and applied, the global economy would be safer, fairer, more sustainable. But that didn’t happen. The old normal was restored with a vengeance and those on the lower echelons of labour markets found themselves even further behind. 

The internationalization of increased unemployment and poverty brought about in the name of combating the corona crisis is having the effect of further widening the polarization between rich and poor on a global scale. Ryder’s metaphor about the false promises concerning a “vaccine” to correct “financial excess” can well be seen as a precautionary comment on the flowery rhetoric currently adorning the calls for a global reset.

Prof. Anthony James Hall is Editor In Chief of the American Herald Tribune. He is Professor emeritus of Globalization Studies and Liberal Education at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta.  The focus of Dr. Hall’s teaching, research, and community service came to highlight the conditions of the colonization of Indigenous peoples in imperial globalization since 1492.

This incisive article by Rannie Amiri focussing on Israel’s spy ring in Lebanon was first published by Global Research on July 23, 2010. The article also addresses the role of the UN sponsored Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL)

Is it relevant?  According to the August 18, 2020 verdict by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) based in The Hague Salim Ayyash was found guilty of killing Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in a suicide car bombing on Feb. 14, 2005.

Cui bono? Lets review the timeline: 

Two months after the assassination, on April 7, 2005 the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1595 to form “an investigative team to look into Hariri’s assassination.”

The team’s report submitted to the UNSC in October 2005 pointed to the role of Syria’s military intelligence. The insidious role of Israel’s spy-ring operatives inside Lebanon was casually  ignored despite the evidence.

This report serves Israel’s interests. It was released 8 months before Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in July 2006.

The following article of Rannie Ariri published ten years ago suggests that the verdict of the LST judgment should be questioned.

“Outside the obvious deleterious ramifications of high-ranking Lebanese military officers working for Israel, the very legitimacy of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) is now in question”. (2010 report entitled “The Hariri Assassination: Israel ’s Fingerprints”, below)

Flash Forward to August 2020

The Beirut explosion on August 4th, followed by the LTS’ “fake verdict” on August 18, have triggered destruction as well as political and social havoc within Lebanon.

According to (former) Israel Defense Forces Chief  of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi (who currently serves as Israel’s Foreign Minister), in testimony to the Knesset [2010] revealed

“what Israel hopes the fallout from the STL’s report will be: fomentation of civil strife and discord among Lebanon ’s sectarian groups…” (Rannie Ariri, op cit).

And in recent developments, in the wake of the Beirut explosion,  Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi confirmed that Israel would channel medical humanitarian aid to Lebanon.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, August 20, 2020

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In the Middle East , the link between political machinations, espionage and assassination is either clear as day, or clear as mud.

As for the yet unsolved case of the February 2005 murder of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, the underpinnings of this covert operation including the role of Israel have now surfaced.

A crackdown on Israeli spy rings operating in Lebanon has resulted in more than 70 arrests over the past 18 months. Included among them are four high-ranking Lebanese Army and General Security officers—one having spied for the Mossad since 1984.

A significant breakthrough in the ongoing investigation occurred in late June and culminated in the arrest of Charbel Qazzi, head of transmission and broadcasting at Alfa, one of Lebanon ’s two state-owned mobile service providers.

According to the Lebanese daily As-Safir, Qazzi confessed to installing computer programs and planting electronic chips in Alfa transmitters. These could then be used by Israeli intelligence to monitor communications, locate and target individuals for assassination, and potentially deploy viruses capable of erasing recorded information in the contact lines. Qazzi’s collaboration with Israel reportedly dates back 14 years.

On July 12, a second arrest at Alfa was made. Tarek al-Raba’a, an engineer and partner of Qazzi, was apprehended on charges of spying for Israel and compromising national security. A few days later, a third Alfa employee was similarly detained.

Israel has refused to comment on the arrests. Nevertheless, their apparent ability to have penetrated Lebanon ’s military and telecommunication sectors has rattled the country and urgently raised security concerns.

What does any of this have to do with the Hariri assassination?

Outside the obvious deleterious ramifications of high-ranking Lebanese military officers working for Israel, the very legitimacy of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) is now in question. The STL is the U.N.-sanctioned body tasked with prosecuting those responsible for the assassination of the late prime minister. On Feb. 14, 2005, 1,000 kg of explosives detonated near Hariri’s passing motorcade, killing him and 21 others.

It is believed the STL will issue indictments in the matter as early as September—relying heavily on phone recordings and mobile transmissions to do so.

According to the AFP,

“A preliminary report by the U.N. investigating team said it had collected data from mobile phone calls made the day of Hariri’s murder as evidence.”

The National likewise reported,

“The international inquiry, which could present indictments or findings as soon as September, according to unverified media reports, used extensive phone records to draw conclusions into a conspiracy to kill Hariri, widely blamed on Syria and its Lebanese allies …”

In a July 16 televised speech, Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah speculated the STL would use information gleaned from Israeli-compromised communications to falsely implicate the group in the prime minister’s murder:

“Some are counting in their analysis of the (STL) indictment on witnesses, some of whom turned out to be fake, and on the telecommunications networks which were infiltrated by spies who can change and manipulate data.

“Before the (2006) war, these spies gave important information to the Israeli enemy and based on this information, Israel bombed buildings, homes, factories and institutions. Many martyrs died and many others were wounded. These spies are partners in the killings, the crimes, the threats and the displacement.”

Nasrallah called the STL’s manipulation an “Israeli project” meant to “create an uproar in Lebanon .”

 

Indeed, in May 2008 Lebanon experienced a taste of this. At the height of an 18-month stalemate over the formation of a national unity government under then Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, his cabinet’s decision to unilaterally declare Hezbollah’s fixed-line communication system illegal pushed the country to the brink of civil war.

Recognizing the value their secure lines of communication had in combating the July 2006 Israeli invasion and suspecting that state-owned telecoms might be compromised, Hezbollah resisted Siniora’s plans to have its network dismantled. Their men swept through West Beirut and put a quick end to the government’s plan. Two years later, their suspicions appear to have been vindicated.

Opposition MP and Free Patriotic Movement head Michel Aoun has already warned Nasrallah that the STL will likely indict “uncontrolled” Hezbollah members to be followed by “… Lebanese-Lebanese and Lebanese-Palestinian tension, and by an Israeli war on Lebanon .”

Giving credence to Nasrallah and Aoun’s assertions, Commander in Chief of the Israel Defense Forces Gabi Ashkenazi, predicted “with lots of wishes” that the situation in Lebanon would deteriorate in September after the STL indicts Hezbollah for Hariri’s assassination.

Ashkenazi’s gleeful, prescient testimony to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs Committee betrays what Israel hopes the fallout from the STL’s report will be: fomentation of civil strife and discord among Lebanon ’s sectarian groups, generally divided into pro- and anti-Syria factions. Ashkenazi anticipates this to happen, of course, because he knows Israel ’s unfettered access to critical phone records will have framed Hezbollah for the crime.

Israel’s agents and operatives in Lebanon and its infiltration of a telecom network have been exposed. At the very least, the STL must recognize that evidence of alleged Hezbollah involvement in Hariri’s death (a group that historically enjoyed good ties with the late premier) is wholly tainted and likely doctored.

The arrest of Qazzi and al-Raba’a in the breakup of Israeli spy rings should prompt the STL to shift its focus to the only regional player that has benefited from Hariri’s murder; one that will continue to do so if and when their designs to implicate Hezbollah are realized.

It is time to look at Tel Aviv.

Rannie Amiri is an independent Middle East commentator

First published on November 19, 2013.

Author’s Note 

Who killed Hariri, Who killed Arafat? 

According to the August 18, 2020 verdict by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) in The Hague Salim Ayyash was found guilty of killing Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in a suicide car bombing on Feb. 14, 2005. Cui bono?

In early April 2005 the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1595 to form “an investigative team to look into Hariri’s assassination.”

The team’s report submitted to the UNSC in October 2005 pointed to the role of Syria’s military intelligence. The possible role of Israel was casually ignored despite the evidence.

The following article documents the targeted assassination of Yasser Arafat which had been ordered by the Israeli Cabinet.

M. C. , August 20, 2020

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The forensic tests on samples taken from Yasser Arafat’s corpse by a team of Swiss scientists exhibit high levels of radioactive polonium-210.  The exhumation of his body was implemented in November 2012. The samples revealed “levels of polonium at least 18 times higher than usual in Arafat’s ribs, pelvis and in soil that absorbed his bodily fluids.”

These developments raise the broader issue which the media has failed to address: Who was behind the assassination of Yasser Arafat?

The assassination of Yasser Arafat had been on the drawing board since 1996 under “Operation Fields of Thorns”.

According to an October 2000 document “prepared by the [Israeli] security services, at the request of then Prime Minister Ehud Barak, stated that ‘Arafat, the person, is a severe threat to the security of the state [of Israel] and the damage which will result from his disappearance is less than the damage caused by his existence'”. (quoted in Tanya Reinhart, Evil Unleashed, Israel’s move to destroy the Palestinian Authority is a calculated plan, long in the making, Global Research, December 2001. Details of the document were published in Ma’ariv, July 6, 2001.).

In August 2003, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz declared “all out war” on the militants whom he vowed “marked for death.”

“In mid September, Israel’s government passed a law to get rid of Arafat. Israel’s cabinet for political security affairs declared it “a decision to remove Arafat as an obstacle to peace.” Mofaz threatened; “we will choose the right way and the right time to kill Arafat.” Palestinian Minister Saeb Erekat told CNN he thought Arafat was the next target. CNN asked Sharon spokesman Ra’anan Gissan if the vote meant expulsion of Arafat. Gissan clarified; “It doesn’t mean that. The Cabinet has today resolved to remove this obstacle. The time, the method, the ways by which this will take place will be decided separately, and the security services will monitor the situation and make the recommendation about proper action.” (See Trish Shuh, Road Map for a Decease Plan,  www.mehrnews.com November 9 2005)

The assassination of Arafat was part of the 2001 Dagan Plan.

In all likelihood, it was carried out by Israeli Intelligence.

It was intended to destroy the Palestinian Authority, foment divisions within Fatah as well as between Fatah and Hamas. Mahmoud Abbas is a Palestinian quisling. He was installed as leader of Fatah, with the approval of Israel and the US, which finance the Palestinian Authority’s paramilitary and security forces.

The above text was written in January 2009 as part of the following article:

The Invasion of Gaza: “Operation Cast Lead”, Part of a Broader Israeli Military-Intelligence Agenda
– by Michel Chossudovsky – 2009-01-04

Planet Lockdown. Devastating economic and social consequences. 

We are living one of the most serious crises in modern history. 

According to Michel Chossudovsky, the coronavirus pandemic is used as a pretext and a justification to close down the global economy, as a means to resolving a public health concern.  

A complex decision-making process is instrumental in the closing down of national economies Worldwide. We are led to believe that the lockdown is the solution.

Politicians and health officials in more than 190 countries obey orders emanating from higher authority. 

In turn millions of people obey the orders of their governments without questioning the fact that closing down an economy is not the solution but in fact the cause of  global poverty and unemployment. 

What we are dealing with is a crime against humanity.

And this diabolical agenda is an election issue in the U.S.  

No meaningful debate on the closure of the World economy at the Democratic Party Convention (August 17-20, 2020)

Listen to: 

Guns and Butter

Interview of Prof. Michel Chossudovsky with Bonnie Faulkner on the Economic and Social Dimensions of the Covid Crisis

download MP3 file 

 

The economic and social impacts far exceed those attributed to the coronavirus. Cited below are selected examples of  a global process: 

• Massive job losses and layoffs in the US, with more than 10 million workers filing claims for unemployment benefits. (April)
• In India,  a 21 days lockdown has triggered a wave of famine and despair affecting millions of homeless migrant workers all over the country. No lockdown for the homeless: “too poor to afford a meal”. (April)
• The impoverishment in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa is beyond description. For large sectors of the urban population, household income has literally been wiped out.
• In Italy, the destabilization of the tourist industry has resulted in bankruptcies and rising unemployment. 
• In many countries, citizens are the object of police violence. The tendency is towards a totalitarian state. 

***

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For the first time in about a year, Syrian pro-government forces and the US-led coalition found itself engaged in what seems to be direct clashes near the village of Tal al-Dhahab in northeastern Syria.

Syrian sources said that on August 17 an AH-64 Apache attack helicopter struck a checkpoint of the Syrian Army in the province of al-Hasakah after the Syrian Army and pro-government locals blocked a US military convoy in the area. According to state-run news agency SANA, the strike killed a soldier and injured two others.

It is interesting to note that according to the US-led coalition version of events, the US military convoy came under gunfire from unidentified persons, when it was passing the army checkpoint. Then, US forces returned fire. No airstrikes were conducted according to the US statement.

Tal al-Dhahab is located south of the city of Qamishli. A large number of positions of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and the US-led coalition are located the countryside of the city. US forces regularly conduct patrols around the city. These patrols often try to block the movement of the Russian Military Police convoys in the very same area. In its own turn, the Syrian Army, pro-government locals and even the Russian Military Police also block try to block US military convoys. However, the August 17 situation became the first incident when such developments led to a real confrontation between the sides. Taking into account the intensity of interactions in the Syria-US-Russia triangle, this situation is setting up a dangerous precedent that may lead to a wider confrontation between the sides.

ISIS conducted several successful attacks on positions of the Syrian Army and the National Defense Forces in the provinces of Homs and Deir Ezzor. According to pro-opposition sources, at least 5 soldiers and several civilians were killed there in the last few weeks. As of August 18, the army and its local allies are reportedly preparing to conduct another series of anti-ISIS raids in the desert. The ISIS threat still remains an important but destabilizing factor in the central Syrian desert, but government forces lack resources to fully eliminate it.

Meanwhile, the military situation once again dangerously escalated in Greater Idlib. On August 17, a joint Turkish-Russian patrol came under an attack near the village of Arihah on the M4 highway. The explosion of supposed an improvised explosive device targeted a Turksih Kirpi armoured vehicle. The attack took place in the same area where the joint Russian-Turkish patrol was hit by a car bomb on July 14.

In both cases, Turkish sources almost immediately speculated that the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) or the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) may have been behind the attacks claiming that the groups supposedly active in the area .This is a lie. Neither the YPG nor the PKK have any active presence in southern Idlib. Contrary to Turkish fairy tales, the only terrorist groups active in this part of Idlib are Turkish-sponsored terrorists like Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Turkistan Islamic Party and others. The Turkish unwillingness to get rid of its pocket al-Qaeda supporters is the main source of the instability there. Therefore, Turkish soldiers in Idlib die to protect al-Qaeda from the inevitable defeat in the event of a direct confrontation with the Syrian Army and its allies.

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In these times of COVID-19 , the big challenge for most of us is how to protect ourselves and our families from the virus and how to hold on to our jobs. For policy-makers that translates into beating the pandemic without doing irreversible damage to the economy in the process.

With over 3 million cases and some 250,000 deaths from the virus to date globally, and the expected loss of the equivalent of 305 million jobs worldwide by mid-year, the stakes have never been higher. Governments continue to “follow the science” in the search for the best solutions while foregoing the obvious benefits of much greater international cooperation in building the needed global response to the global challenge.

But with the war against COVID-19 still to be won, it has become commonplace that what awaits us after victory is a “new normal” in the way society is organized and the way we will work.

This is hardly reassuring.

Because nobody seems able to say what the new normal will be. Because the message is that it will be dictated by the constraints imposed by the pandemic rather than our choices and preferences. And because we’ve heard it before. The mantra which provided the mood music of the crash of 2008-2009 was that once the vaccine to the virus of financial excess had been developed and applied, the global economy would be safer, fairer, more sustainable. But that didn’t happen. The old normal was restored with a vengeance and those on the lower echelons of labour markets found themselves even further behind.

Now is the time to look more closely at this new normal, and start on the task of making it a better normal, not so much for those who already have much, but for those who so obviously have too little.

This pandemic has laid bare in the cruellest way, the extraordinary precariousness and injustices of our world of work. It is the decimation of livelihoods in the informal economy – where six out of ten workers make a living – which has ignited the warnings from our colleagues in the World Food Programme, of the coming pandemic of hunger. It is the gaping holes in the social protection systems of even the richest countries, which have left millions in situations of deprivation. It is the failure to guarantee workplace safety that condemns nearly 3 million to die each year because of the work they do. And it is the unchecked dynamic of growing inequality which means that if, in medical terms, the virus does not discriminate between its victims in its social and economic impact, it discriminates brutally against the poorest and the powerless.

The only thing that should surprise us in all this is that we are surprised. Before the pandemic, the manifest deficits in decent work were mostly played out in individual episodes of quiet desperation. It has taken the calamity of COVID-19 to aggregate them into the collective social cataclysm the world faces today. But we always knew: we simply chose not to care. By and large, policy choices by commission or omission accentuated rather than alleviated the problem.

Fifty-two years ago, Martin Luther King, in a speech to striking sanitation workers on the eve of his assassination reminded the world that there is dignity in all labour. Today, the virus has similarly highlighted the always essential role of the working heroes of this pandemic. People who are usually invisible, unconsidered, undervalued, even ignored. Health and care workers, cleaners, supermarket cashiers, transport staff – too often numbered among the ranks of the working poor and the insecure.

Today the denial of dignity to these, and to millions of others, stand as a symbol of past policy failures and our future responsibilities.

On May Day next year we trust that the pressing emergency of COVID-19 will be behind us. But we will have before us the task of building a future of work which tackles the injustices that the pandemic has highlighted, together with the permanent and no longer postponable challenges of climate, digital and demographic transition.

This is what defines the better normal that has to be the lasting legacy of the global health emergency of 2020.

Guy Ryder is Director-General of the International Labour Organization (ILO). 

GR Editor’s Note:

The ILO should take a firm and official stance to restore the global economy as well as recognize that the “lockdown” does not constitute a solution to the public health crisis.

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Featured image is from ILO

In the 2010 book American Empire Before the Fall, Bruce Fein maintains that beginning with the notion of Manifest Destiny and the launching of war against Mexico in 1846, and culminating in the endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has abandoned the principles that constituted the foundation of the nation as a Republic, converting itself into an empire.  He calls upon the American people take up their moral duty to restore the American Republic. 

Fein is among the founders of the American Freedom Agenda, which was established in 2007 by disaffected conservatives demanding that the Republican Party return to its traditional mistrust of concentrated government power.  

Fein’s analysis includes specific proposals that have a progressive ring, which suggests the possibility of a conservative-progressive consensus in defense of the American Republic and the Constitution.  Such proposals include impeachment of a president who deceives the Congress or the people to obtain authorization to initiate war; prohibition of war against non-state actors, like Al Qaeda or Taliban, or against a tactic, such as terrorism;  renunciation of the current war against international terrorism, replaced by an alternative approach that treats international terrorists as criminals; prohibition of military bases or troops abroad, except through Congressional declaration; the abolition of the state secrets privilege; and prohibition of the detaining of persons as enemy combatants without accusation or trial.

Fein identifies four Charter Documents: The Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, George Washington’s Farewell Address, and a July 4, 1821 speech by then Secretary of State John Quincy Adams.

These documents “expounded the nation’s revolutionary philosophy: individual liberty and due process over a national security state; government by the consent of the governed; a separation of powers; checks and balances; and sovereignty in ‘We the People,’ not a King or monarch.”  The revolutionary philosophy reflected a distrust of government; and the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, were intended to arrest governmental power.

Fein captures the individualism tied to a concept of a limited state that is central to the creed of the American Republic at its founding.  He writes that the philosophy of the Republic placed the individual at the center of society.  It was believed that individual liberty was attained through limited control and regulation of the individual by the government. 

Fein, however, does not see the Charter Documents as living documents, that is, as establishing the foundation for an evolving society, in which changing conditions create the need to formulate new interpretations of philosophical principles.  Even before the Republic was established, the merchants and producers of New England and the mid-Atlantic colonies were benefiting from trading relations with slave economies in the Caribbean as well as Charleston and Virginia, and this lucrative trade was made possible by strong, repressive states.  But this state support of commerce was not visible to the merchants and producers, because the role of their state was limited; they experienced the trade as natural, as not involving state support or regulation. 

But this would soon change.  The conquest of territories to the West created the material conditions for capitalism to evolve to the stage of monopoly capitalism, in which large companies and trusts emerged that were not subjected to any checks on their power.  In this new economic situation, if the rights of the people were to be defended, there needed to be a revised understanding of the relation between the citizen and the state.  Beginning with that historic moment, the rights of the people would have to be defended through the control of the state by the people, and their use of the state as a check on the power of corporations, thus provoking a significant practical shift in the concept of the balance of powers.  However, in the American story, the people never arrived to control the state, so its capacity to check the corporations has been limited, and attained mostly through a process of elite concessions to popular protests and demands.

Fein is right in calling the people to reject empire and turn to the task of restoring the American Republic.  But the restoration must be based on a revision of the principles of the Charter Documents, taking into account that the people now live in a world dominated by large corporations.  Such revision itself must be based on the Charter Documents.  That is, all new and reformulated principles must be established as Constitutional Amendments, supported by laws enacted by the U.S. Congress, acting on behalf of the political will of the majority of the people.  The Founding Fathers were not proposing that subsequent generations of Americans had to embrace their philosophy, which was formulated in a particular historical, social, and political context.  Rather, they were insisting that any changes in philosophy, law, or policy had to be implemented in accordance with the Constitution, the juridical foundation of the Republic.

There is another significant limitation in Fein’s insightful analysis.  Fein does not see the economic benefits that accrued to the United States in its turn from Republic to Empire.  He does not see the importance of conquest, colonialism, neocolonialism, and imperialism in creating and sustaining the global economic structures that facilitate the development of the core nations.  He sees the U.S. turn to empire as a psychological problem.  He writes that “the American Empire concocts national security worries from trifles as light as air to justify intervention for the psychic thrill of power.”  He believes that the American Empire is “endlessly at war everywhere on the planet to enjoy the juvenile thrill of domination and swagger,” . . . “for nothing more than the psychic gratification of domination.” 

The idea that imperialism is an irrational psychological disposition toward conquest without material benefits to the conquerors was formulated in the classic essay “Imperialism” by the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, originally published in Germany in 1919.  But during the course of the twentieth century, anti-imperialist movements in Latin America and anti-colonial movements in Asia and Africa emerged.  These movements understood imperialism as a practice, as a continuous series of measures designed to ensure the access of the global powers to raw materials, superexploited labor, and markets for surplus goods; continuous policies that promoted the underdevelopment of the colonized and neocolonized as they promoted the development of the core zone.  A mature understanding in our time requires appropriation of this insight into the economic logic and immorality of modern imperialism, formulated from the perspective of the victims of imperialist practice, who constitute the majority of humanity.

In not seeing the economic motives of empire, Fein reflects the limited consciousness of intellectuals of the North, who by and large do not see the relation between the economic development of the West and the conquest and colonization of vast regions of the world from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries.  They share this limitation with George Washington, who in his Farewell Address of 1796, as Fein approvingly reports, expressed the conviction that the American Republic can expand its commerce while having little political involvement in the affairs of other nations.  The father of the nation should be forgiven for such limited understanding, inasmuch as he lived prior to the emergence of popular revolutionary movements in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, which lifted up political leaders and intellectuals capable of explaining the economic development of some nations on a foundation of conquest, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, and superexploitation. 

A century and a half later, President Dwight Eisenhower, looking at the question from the practical point of view of U.S. economic interests, understood the connection between foreign affairs and the economy.  He declared in 1953, “Foreign policy should be based primarily on one consideration.  That consideration is the need for the U.S. to obtain certain raw materials to sustain its economy and, when possible, to preserve profitable foreign markets for our surpluses.  Out of this need grows the necessity for making certain that those areas of the world in which essential raw materials are produced are not only accessible to us, but their populations and governments are willing to trade with us on a friendly basis.”  For Fein, Ike’s precise and frank formulation is nothing more than the “specious orthodoxy” of the American Empire, which is irrationally driven by domination as an end in itself. 

Although Fein does not see the economic logic of imperialism, American Empire Before the Fall makes clear that empire has become too costly for the United States, politically and economically, and it therefore is not sustainable.  Moreover, Fein documents with great clarity that U.S militarist imperialist aggressions have been made politically possible through a persistent pattern of presidents lying to the Congress and to the people.   He provides persuasive evidence that that various presidents have withheld information from Congress in order to solicit Congressional support for war: Polk (Mexican-American War), Truman (Korean War), Johnson (Vietnam War and intervention in the Dominican Republic), Nixon (secret bombing of Cambodia), Clinton (Bosnia), and Bush 23 (Iraq War).  He further maintains that such conduct is an impeachable offense.  Imagine impeaching a president for something that really mattered, like launching an unconstitutional and illegal war!

Above and beyond the pattern of lying by presidents to justify particular wars, Fein maintains that the American Empire at its foundation is defended with the myth that the United States must defend democracy and human rights in the world in order to ensure international stability and access to resources, and this for the most part noble goal requires a global military presence.  Fein writes that the people have been indoctrinated into the orthodoxy of the American Empire, which maintains that “the United States has been obligated by divine Providence to make the world safe for democracy and freedom, and to crush every conceivable foreign danger before it germinates.” 

Fein further maintains that the national response to terrorism ought to be freed from the myths, distortions, and exaggerations of empire.  He maintains that international terrorism is a crime, not an act of war; international terrorists should be treated as criminals, not warriors or combatants.  He writes that “the terrorism threat can and should be defeated by an aggressive enforcement of the criminal law in federal civilian courts, coupled with Special Forces to eliminate terrorists who cannot be captured and brought to justice.”

Fein maintains that the restoration of the American Republic is the duty of every citizen.  He envisions the emergence of a new political leadership that is able to inspire the people to defend the Constitution.  In this he is entirely correct.

The new political leadership should base its appeal to the people on a national narrative that avoids the idealist errors of conservatives and progressives.  Although it ought to affirm the sacredness of the Charter Documents of the nation, the new leadership at the same time has to recognize the different economic reality of today’s world, defined by transnational corporations that operate with insufficient constraints; and it has to affirm the changed national values since the era of the Founding Fathers with respect to race, gender, and environment, without castigating the founders for being products of their time. 

The new leadership has to adopt an anti-imperialist platform as the only sustainable option for the nation, and it also has to formulate a realistic long-term comprehensive economic plan for the nation in a post-neocolonial world-system, a plan that weans the nation from the permanent war economy that has been integrally connected to imperialism.  Although opposing military presence in all regions of the planet, the new political leadership it has to support a strong military for self-defense and for defense of the national territory; and a strong, integrated law enforcement system that is able effectively counter the crimes of domestic and international terrorism, but in accordance with the due process principles of the Constitution.  With respect to possible threats to the security of citizens and the nation as a whole, it has to find a common-sense balance between naiveté and exaggeration. 

The new political leadership has to lead a process of change in the right way, in accordance with the Constitution and the law and with standards of reasoning and truth.  It has to explain to and teach the people, convoking them to the restoration of the Republic and the fulfillment of the American promise of democracy. 

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Charles McKelvey is Professor Emeritus, Presbyterian College, Clinton, South Carolina.  He has published three books: Beyond Ethnocentrism:  A Reconstruction of Marx’s Concept of Science (Greenwood Press, 1991); The African-American Movement:  From Pan-Africanism to the Rainbow Coalition (General Hall, 1994); and The Evolution and Significance of the Cuban Revolution: The Light in the Darkness (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). 

After the coronavirus pandemic exploded worldwide, Ari Friedlaender, a marine ecologist at the University of California (UC), Santa Cruz, had to abandon his fieldwork in Antarctica, where he was studying the effects of tourism and fishing on humpback whales. He was stressed, but after returning home Friedlaender realized the pandemic offered an unprecedented opportunity for similar studies of whales in nearby Monterey Bay. Lockdowns had dramatically reduced noisy boat traffic, which can stress marine life, and he and his colleagues were soon discussing how to investigate the whales’ response to the hiatus.

The study, which received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) this week, is just one example of how wildlife scientists are now working to understand the impacts of what many are calling the “anthropause”—the dramatic slowdown in human activity caused by the pandemic. Some are tracking how fish, mammals, and even iguanas are reacting to steep declines in tourism. Others are pooling data on animal movement, gathered from GPS tracking devices and automated cameras, to probe large-scale responses to emptier roads and airports. In particular, the pause has created unique natural experiments, allowing researchers to compare how animals behaved before, during, and after the pandemic.

“A lot of people are coming together to ask really big, complex questions,” says Nicola Koper, a conservation biologist at the University of Manitoba.

Megastudies launch 

The International Bio-Logging Society, for example, is coordinating a large effort to assess how reduced vehicle, ship, and aircraft traffic is affecting animal behavior. More than 300 researchers have indicated they have relevant animal tracking data from 180 species of birds, mammals, reptiles, fish, and sharks across almost 300 study populations from all continents and oceans. “There is a gold mine of data,” says Christian Rutz of the University of St. Andrews. Among other things, researchers will be investigating whether animals changed their movement patterns during the hiatus—crossing roads more frequently, for example, or venturing out at unusual times, such as during daylight rather than just at night.

Koper, who wasn’t able to get to her field sites this spring because of the pandemic, has brought together a separate team of 16 researchers to explore the same kinds of questions for 85 bird species in Canada and the United States. Working with data from eBird, a citizen science project run by Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology, the researchers are examining bird communities in 95 U.S. and Canadian counties. One question they are asking is whether species known to be less tolerant of noise, such as yellow-rumped warblers, became more abundant around airports. And they are checking whether low-flying species became more common near roads, which might imply fewer collisions with cars.

Quick changes, and some surprises

The anthropause has prompted some researchers to quickly modify existing studies. In March, during the first week of Italy’s strict lockdown, ecologist Francesca Cagnacci of the Edmund Mach Foundation’s Research and Innovation Centre got special permission to visit field sites in the forests around Trentino, where she has been tracking deer and other animals with radio collars and a few camera traps. “I was very lucky because I was allowed to go out. My helpers could not,” she recalls.

The forests usually bustle with activity, including mountain bikers, hunters, and quarry trucks rumbling along the roads. Then, “all of a sudden—silence,” Cagnacci recalls. As she installed a few dozen additional automated cameras, Cagnacci saw something very unusual: deer and other animals wandering around during daylight. “I won’t forget this for my entire life,” she says.

Now that humans are again using the forests, Cagnacci is continuing to monitor her sites. One intriguing observation is that wildlife seems to be less active now than it was before the anthropause. This is the kind of hypothesis that could be tested with the larger database being assembled by the biologging society initiative, she says.

Other studies are also producing surprises, says Amanda Bates, an ecologist at Memorial University. She is helping synthesize the results of 50 studies of changing human activity conducted this year by more than 100 researchers. One observation that might not have been obvious: Reduced traffic doesn’t always mean quieter roads, if the fewer remaining vehicles are traveling faster. And some benefits of the hiatus have been greater than expected. For example, a study in Florida found a sizable benefit to loggerhead turtles from beach closures. Females usually lay eggs about 50% of the time that they crawl onto shore, when they’re not disturbed by people, dogs, bright lights, or other dangers. But during the beach closures the rate increased to 61%, says Justin Perrault, director of research for the Loggerhead Marinelife Center. Like other studies, this finding could help managers improve the outlook for wildlife, Bates says. “The lockdown has given us the capacity to find where we can optimize conservation.”.

In Chile, researchers have made novel sightings of rare species in cities. Conservation biologist Eduardo Silva-Rodríguez of the Austral University of Chile is part of a group that placed automated cameras in urban forests and university campuses. The snapshots included some surprises: a vulnerable wild cat called the güiña (Leopardus guigna) and endangered southern river otters (Lontra provocax) that had not previously been detected in urban areas. “This opens many questions,” Silva-Rodríguez says. Have the animals always been there? Or were they just visiting, perhaps because stray dogs that once scared them away had moved away as food scraps became less available? They plan to continue to monitor for these species after the partial lockdowns are lifted.

What happens when tourists disappear?

Many researchers are examining how the standstill in tourism is affecting wildlife at popular destinations, such as national parks and marine reserves. In Ecuador’s Galápagos Marine Reserve, Jon Witman of Brown University and colleagues have received a grant to study, among other things, whether the absence of tourists makes shy marine fish bolder, a behavioral change that could alter how the ecosystem functions. The reserve, where Witman has worked for 20 years, usually gets thousands of recreational divers each year. But the lockdown has caused a decline “unlike anything that would ever happen, short of a world war,” Witman says. He heads to the Galápagos next week—none too soon. “We’re chasing a fleeting moment,” he says. The team’s findings could eventually help reserve officials fine-tune management practices, Witman says, such as by figuring out how to best spread out divers to minimize disturbance to wildlife.

In the Bahamas, researchers are examining how the absence of tourists is affecting the diet and health of rock iguanas, a lizard. Visitors routinely feed the iguanas bread, meat, fruit, and vegetables, which had helped boost their population. But it’s not clear how the treats affected their health, and now the drop in “tourism feeding could have really profound effects,” says Susannah French, a physiological ecologist at Utah State University, Logan.

French has a new grant to work with a research team that hopes to sail to the Bahamas soon to join colleagues in studying the issue. They will assess iguana population numbers, weigh the animals, take blood samples, and check their gut microbiota. The data could help local officials better manage tourists once they return, says Chuck Knapp, a conservation biologist at the Shedd Aquarium who is on the team. “We are not looking to shut down this industry, we just want to ensure that it’s sustainable,” he says.

In the Society Islands of French Polynesia, researchers are trying to answer another complicated question: Are coral reefs facing more or fewer problems now that tourists aren’t around and hotels have gone dark? On one hand, local residents appear to be returning to subsistence fishing to make ends meet, note scientists working at the Moorea Coral Reef Long Term Ecological Research site. That could mean trouble for reefs, because the increased catches could include herbivorous fish that eat algae and help keep them from overgrowing and killing coral. At the same time, the lack of tourists in waterfront hotels could help the reefs if it means less nutrient pollution from wastewater, which stimulates algae growth. To clarify such trade-offs, a postdoc on the island has been gathering socioeconomic data and other researchers have just arrived, says ecologist Sally Holbrook of UC Santa Barbara. “The COVID-19 pandemic represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to better understand the links between humans and coral reefs.”

In Zambia’s national parks, where tourism is still shut down, an NSF grant is enabling Scott Creel, a conservation biologist at Montana State University, to double the number of GPS collars his team is placing on carnivores. That should enable the researchers to test ideas about how dominant carnivores, such as lions, cope differently with human-altered landscapes from less dominant carnivores, such as hyenas and wild dogs.

In the United States, researchers at the Institute for Bird Populations are focusing on bird behavior in Yosemite National Park and several other federal parks in Western states. For years the institute has collected data on breeding bird diversity and abundance—and also estimated noise levels within the parks, which fell silent when they closed to visitors for several weeks in March. “It was quite astounding,” says Chris Ray of the University of Colorado, Boulder. “This is fantastic data.”

Crossbows and microphones

Marine researchers, meanwhile, are turning to crossbows and microphones to understand how the pandemic is affecting ocean life. In Monterey Bay, Friedlaender and his colleagues took to the water in March and early May, when boat traffic was minimal, equipped with a special crossbow that allowed them to collect blubber samples from 45 humpback whales. When they can return to the lab, they’ll measure levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, in the samples. Then, they plan to collect new samples over the next year, when boat traffic is expected to pick up. By comparing the samples, they hope to find a clear signal of just how much additional stress—if any—the boat noise creates for whales.

A project called the International Quiet Ocean Experiment (IQOE) is hoping to answer that kind of question on a larger scale. IQOE, which began in 2015, has been compiling data on underwater noise from the groups that operate large arrays of hydrophones—underwater microphones—and other listening devices. One goal is to assess the quieter background “soundscape” of the ocean, in which animals evolved their communication strategies, by taking advantage of local changes in noise, such as modification of shipping lanes or installation of wind farms. COVID-19 created a much larger perturbation: a weekslong dip in international ship traffic.

Now, IQOE hopes to gather as a big a picture as possible. “There has never before been a global network of hydrophones, so people will need to get accustomed to the idea of cooperating,” says Edward Urban, project director for IQOE, which will provide software for researchers to process data so that it can be compared in a global analysis later this year.

Scientists acknowledge that these unique scientific opportunities are coming at the expense of much human death and suffering. And they are hoping the anthropause really is a once-in-a-lifetime event. “It’s our sincere hope that no one ever gets a chance to study this again,” Witman says. “But incredible things are happening in natural ecosystems.”

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With reporting by Rasha Aridi.

Erik is a reporter at Science, covering environmental issues. 

这幅画是我对今天所看到的世界，也就是我去买菜，或者跑腿时看到的世界进行了长时间的仔细的视觉探索的结晶。

平凡的世界之所以看起来枯燥无味，只是因为我们已经习惯了，我们每天都能看到它，但平淡的世界从来都只是一个迷人的地方的欺骗性的简单外表，我们所做的一切几乎都有精神上的，和伦理上的意义。

很多时候，我们必须非常小心地观察日常世界才能感知这些东西，但有时它们会以一种明显的方式浮现出来。

想象一下，在一个原本看不见的人身上撒上灰尘，面具就是这样，权力斗争，和信仰现在以一种突出的象征宣告出来，让所有人都看到。

 

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你可以点击下面的链接阅读整篇文章的英文版，也可以用手机翻译

“The World That I See Today”: Sanity, Her Son, and the Credulous                                                

By Jordan Henderson, August 17, 2020

Don’t bother, they’re here, already performing in the center ring under the big top owned and operated by The Umbrella People. 

Trump, Biden, Pence, Harris, and their clownish sidekicks, Pompeo, Michelle Obama, et al., are performing daily under the umbrella’s shadowy protection. For The Umbrella People run a three-ring circus, and although their clowns pop out of separate tiny cars and, acting like enemies, squirt each other with water hoses to the audience’s delight, raucous laughter, and serious attentiveness, they are all part of the same show, working for the same bosses. 

Sadly, many people think this circus is the real world and that the clowns are not allied pimps serving the interests of their masters, but are real enemies.

The Umbrella People are the moguls who own the showtime studios – some call them the secret government, the deep-state, or the power elite. They run a protection racket, so I like to use a term that emphasizes their method of making sure the sunlight of truth never gets to those huddled under their umbrella. They produce and direct the daily circus that is the American Spectacle, the movie that is meant to entertain and distract the audience from the side show that continues outside the big top, the place where millions of vulnerable people are abused and killed.

And although the sideshow is the real main event, few pay attention since their eyes are fixed on the center ring were the spotlight directs their focus.

The French writer Guy Debord called this The Society of the Spectacle.

For many months now, all eyes have been directed to the Covid-19 propaganda show with Fauci and Gates, and their mainstream corporate media mouthpieces, striking thunderbolts in the storm to scare the unknowing audience into submission so the transformation of the Great Global Reset, led by the World Economic Forum, Wall Street, the International Monetary Fund, et al can proceed smoothly.

Now hearts are aflutter with excitement to see the war-loving Joe Biden boldly coming forth like Lazarus from the grave to announce his choice of a masked vice-presidential running mate who will echo his pronouncements.

And the star of the big top, the softly coiffured reality television emcee Trump, around whom the spectacle swirls, elicits outraged responses as he plays the part of the comical bad guy.

Punch and Judy indeed.

All the while the corporate mainstream media warn of grim viral milestones, election warnings, storms ahead!  The world as you know it is coming to an end, they remind us daily.

The latter meme contains a hint of truth since not just the world as we know it may be coming to an end, but the world itself, including human life, as the clowns initiate a nuclear holocaust while everyone is being entertained.

Meanwhile, as the circus rolls along, far away and out of mind, shit happens:

With more than 400 military bases equipped with nuclear weapons surrounding China, the United States military continues its encirclement of China and China enters a “state of siege.”

The U.S. conducts military exercises with the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group in the contested South China Sea. These U.S “maritime Air defense operation[s]” close to the Chinese mainland are a part of significantly increased U.S. military exercises in the area.

The U.S. Defense Secretary Esper announces that the U.S. is withdrawing troops from Germany but moving them closer to the Russian border to serve as a more effective deterrent against Russia.

Russia says it will regard any ballistic missile aimed at its territory as a nuclear attack and will respond in kind with nuclear weapons.

Although the U.S. is formally not at war with any African country, a new report reveals that the United States has special forces operating in 22 African countries with 29 bases and 6,000 troops, with a huge drone hub in Niger that cost 100 + million to build and is expected to have operating costs of more than $280 billion by 2024.

The U.S. continues its assault on Syria, aside from direct military operations, by building up Kurdish proxies in northeastern Syria to protect the oil fields that they are stealing from the Syrian government, a plan hatched long ago.  The U.S. says their strategy is to deny ISIS a valuable revenue stream.  The same ISIS they used to attack the Syrian government in a war of aggression.

A new document exposes the U.S. plan to overthrow the socialist government of Nicaragua through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a traditional U.S. regime change and CIA front organization.

Meanwhile, in Belarus, a place most Americans can’t find on a map, there is another color “revolution” underway.

Continuing its war against Iran and Venezuela by other means, the Trump administration seizes Iranian tankers carrying fuel to Venezuela.

“Something will happen with Venezuela.  That’s all I can tell you.  Something will be happening with Venezuela,” said Trump in a July interview with Noticias Telemundo.

And of course the Palestinians are left to suffer and die as Israel is supported in its despotic policies in the Middle East.

The list goes on and on as the U.S. under Trump continues to wage war by multiple means around the world. But his followers see him as peaceful president because these wars are waged through sanctions, special operations, drones, third parties, etc.

But back in the center ring, the two presidential clown candidates keep the audience entertained, as they shoot water at each other. Trump, who now presides over all the events just listed, and Biden, who enthusiastically supported the American wars against Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, etc.

But then the followers of Obama/Biden also see their champions as peaceful leaders.  This is even more absurd.

Don’t you like farce?

Besides being a rabid advocate for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 as a senator, Biden, as Vice-President under Obama for eight years, seconded and promoted all of Obama’s wars that were wrapped in “humanitarian” propaganda to evade international law and keep his liberal supporters quiet.

From Bush II, an outright cowboy war-wager who used America’s large military forces to invade Afghanistan and Iraq under false pretensions – i.e. lies, Obama and his sidekick Biden learned to arm and finance thousands of Islamic jihadists, run by the CIA and U.S. special forces, to do the job in more circumspect ways. They expanded and grew The United States Africa Command (U.S. AFRICOM) throughout Africa. They agreed to a $1 trillion upgrade of U.S nuclear weapons (that continues under Trump). They disarmed their followers, who, in any case, wished to look the other way. Out of sight and out of mind, Obama/Biden continued the “war on terror” with drones, private militias, color revolutions, etc. They waged war on six-seven – who knows how many – countries.

An exception to the more secretive wars was the Obama administration’s openly savage assault on Libya in 2011 under the lies of an imperial moral legitimacy. In order to save you, we will destroy you, which is what they did to Libya, a country still in ruins and chaos.  Their equally blood-thirsty Secretary of State Hillary Clinton let the cat out of the bag when she laughed and gleefully applauded the brutal murder of Libya’s leader Moammar Gaddafi with the words: “We came, we saw, he died.” Yippee!

After Libya was destroyed and so many killed in an illegal and immoral war financed with $2 billion dollars from the America treasury, Joseph Biden bragged that the U.S. didn’t lose a single life and such a war was a “prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward.”

Biden was Obama’s front man on Iraq, the war he voted for in 2003, and wrote an op ed article in 2006 calling for the breakup of the country into three parts, Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish.

When Obama launched 48 cruise missiles and more than ten thousand tons of bombs on Syria in 2016, killing over a hundred civilians, a third of them children, V.P. Biden stood proud and strong in support of the action.

When the U.S. launched the bloody coup in Ukraine in 2014, Biden was of course in agreement.

But we are told that Trump and Biden are arch-enemies. One of them wants war and the other wants peace.

How many Americans will vote for these clowns this year? They are really front men for The Umbrella People, the money people who use the CIA and other undercover forces to carry out their organized crime activities.

As C.S Lewis said in his preface to The Screwtape Letters:

The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint . . .. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.

In the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump received 129 million votes out of 157 million registered American voters eager to believe that this system is not built on imperial war making by both parties.

Perhaps that’s a generous assessment. Maybe many of those voters believe in the U.S.A.’s “manifest destiny” to rule the world and wage war in God’s name.  I hope not. But if so, you can expect a big turnout on November 3, 2020.

In any case, It’s quite a circus, but these clowns aren’t funny.  They are dangerous.

“But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns
Don’t bother they’re here”

Don’t you like farce?

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Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He is the author of the new book: https://www.claritypress.com/product/seeking-truth-in-a-country-of-lies/

For the Trump administration’s senior officials, it’s been open season on bashing China. If you need an example, think of the president’s blame game about “the invisible Chinese virus” as it spreads wildly across the U.S.

When it comes to China, in fact, the ever more virulent criticism never seems to stop.

Between the end of June and the end of July, four members of his cabinet vied with each other in spewing anti-Chinese rhetoric. That particular spate of China bashing started when FBI Director Christopher Wray described Chinese President Xi Jinping as the successor to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. It was capped by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s clarion call to U.S. allies to note the “bankrupt” Marxist-Leninist ideology of China’s leader and the urge to “global hegemony” that goes with it, insisting that they would have to choose “between freedom and tyranny.” (Forget which country on this planet actually claims global hegemony as its right.)

At the same time, the Pentagon deployed its aircraft carriers and other weaponry ever more threateningly in the South China Sea and elsewhere in the Pacific. The question is: What lies behind this upsurge in Trump administration China baiting? A likely answer can be found in the president’s blunt statement in a July interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News that “I’m not a good loser. I don’t like to lose.”

The reality is that, under Donald Trump, the United States is indeed losing to China in two important spheres. As the FBI’s Wray put it,

“In economic and technical terms [China] is already a peer competitor of the United States… in a very different kind of [globalized] world.”

In other words, China is rising and the U.S. is falling. Don’t just blame Trump and his cronies for that, however, as this moment has been a long time coming.

Facts speak for themselves. Nearly unscathed by the 2008-2009 global recession, China displaced Japan as the world’s second largest economy in August 2010. In 2012, with $3.87 trillion worth of imports and exports, it overtook the U.S. total of $3.82 trillion, elbowing it out of a position it had held for 60 years as the number one cross-border trading nation worldwide. By the end of 2014, China’s gross domestic product, as measured by purchasing power parity, was $17.6 trillion, slightly exceeding the $17.4 trillion of the United States, which had been the globe’s largest economy since 1872.

In May 2015, the Chinese government released a Made in China 2025 plan aimed at rapidly developing 10 high-tech industries, including electric cars, next-generation information technology, telecommunications, advanced robotics, and artificial intelligence. Other major sectors covered in the plan included agricultural technology, aerospace engineering, the development of new synthetic materials, the emerging field of biomedicine, and high-speed rail infrastructure. The plan was aimed at achieving 70% self-sufficiency in high-tech industries and a dominant position in such global markets by 2049, a century after the founding of the People’s Republic of China 

Semiconductors are crucial to all electronic products and, in 2014, the government’s national integrated circuit industry development guidelines set a target: China was to become a global leader in semiconductors by 2030. In 2018, the local chip industry moved up from basic silicon packing and testing to higher value chip design and manufacturing. The following year, the U.S. Semiconductor Industry Association noted that, while America led the world with nearly half of global market share, China was the main threat to its position because of huge state investments in commercial manufacturing and scientific research.

By then, the U.S. had already fallen behind China in just such scientific and technological research. A study by Nanjing University’s Qingnan Xie and Harvard University’s Richard Freeman noted that between 2000 and 2016, China’s share of global publications in the physical sciences, engineering, and math quadrupled, exceeding that of the U.S.

In 2019, for the first time since figures for patents were compiled in 1978, the U.S. failed to file for the largest number of them. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, China filed applications for 58,990 patents and the United States 57,840. In addition, for the third year in a row, the Chinese high-tech corporation Huawei Technologies Company, with 4,144 patents, was well ahead of U.S.-based Qualcomm (2,127). Among educational institutions, the University of California maintained its top rank with 470 published applications, but Tsinghua University ranked second with 265. Of the top five universities in the world, three were Chinese.

The Neck-and-Neck Race in Consumer Electronics

By 2019, the leaders in consumer technology in America included Google, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft; in China, the leaders were Alibaba (founded by Jack Ma), Tencent (Tengxun in Chinese), Xiaomi, and Baidu. All had been launched by private citizens. Among the US companies, Microsoft was established in 1975, Apple in 1976, Amazon in 1994, and Google in September 1998. The earliest Chinese tech giant, Tencent, was established two months after Google, followed by Alibaba in 1999, Baidu in 2000, and Xiaomi, a hardware producer, in 2010. When China first entered cyberspace in 1994, its government left intact its policy of controlling information through censorship by the Ministry of Public Security.

In 1996, the country established a high-tech industrial development zone in Shenzhen, just across the Pearl River from Hong Kong, the first of what would be a number of special economic zones. From 2002 on, they would begin attracting Western multinational corporations keen to take advantage of their tax-free provisions and low-wage skilled workers. By 2008, such foreign companies accounted for 85% of China’s high-tech exports.

Shaken by an official 2005 report that found serious flaws in the country’s innovation system, the government issued a policy paper the following year listing 20 mega-projects in nanotechnology, high-end generic microchips, aircraft, biotechnology, and new drugs. It then focused on a bottom-up approach to innovation, involving small start-ups, venture capital, and cooperation between industry and universities, a strategy that would take a few years to yield positive results.

In January 2000, less than 2% of Chinese used the Internet. To cater to that market, Robin Li and Eric Xu set up Baidu in Beijing as a Chinese search engine. By 2009, in its competition with Google China, a subsidiary of Google operating under government censorship, Baidu garnered twice the market share of its American rival as Internet penetration leapt to 29%.

In the aftermath of the 2008-2009 global financial meltdown, significant numbers of Chinese engineers and entrepreneurs returned from Silicon Valley to play an important role in the mushrooming of high-tech firms in a vast Chinese market increasingly walled off from U.S. and other Western corporations because of their unwillingness to operate under government censorship.

Soon after Xi Jinping became president in March 2013, his government launched a campaign to promote “mass entrepreneurship and mass innovation” using state-backed venture capital. That was when Tencent came up with its super app WeChat, a multi-purpose platform for socializing, playing games, paying bills, booking train tickets, and so on.

Jack Ma’s e-commerce behemoth Alibaba went public on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2014, raising a record $25 billion with its initial public offering. By the end of the decade, Baidu had diversified into the field of artificial intelligence, while expanding its multiple Internet-related services and products. As the search engine of choice for 90% of Chinese Internet users, more than 700 million people, the company became the fifth most visited website in cyberspace, its mobile users exceeding 1.1 billion.

Xiaomi Corporation would release its first smartphone in August 2011. By 2014, it had forged ahead of its Chinese rivals in the domestic market and developed its own mobile phone chip capabilities. In 2019, it sold 125 million mobile phones, ranking fourth globally. By the middle of 2019, China had 206 privately held start-ups valued at more than $1 billion, besting the U.S. with 203.

Among the country’s many successful entrepreneurs, the one who particularly stood out was Jack Ma, born Ma Yun in 1964. Though he failed to get a job at a newly opened Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in his home city of Hangzhou, he did finally gain entry to a local college after his third attempt, buying his first computer at the age of 31. In 1999, he founded Alibaba with a group of friends. It would become one of the most valuable tech companies in the world. On his 55th birthday, he was the second richest man in China with a net worth of $42.1 billion.

Born in the same year as Ma, his American counterpart, Jeff Bezos, gained a degree in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University. He would found Amazon.com in 1994 to sell books online, before entering e-commerce and other fields. Amazon Web Services, a cloud computing company, would become the globe’s largest. In 2007, Amazon released a handheld reading device called the Kindle. Three years later, it ventured into making its own television shows and movies. In 2014, it launched Amazon Echo, a smart speaker with a voice assistant named Alexa that let its owner instantly play music, control a Smart home, get information, news, weather, and more. With a net worth of $145.4 billion in 2019, Bezos became the richest person on the planet.

Deploying an artificial intelligence inference chip to power features on its e-commerce sites, Alibaba categorized a billion product images uploaded by vendors to its e-commerce platform daily and prepared them for search and personalized recommendations to its customer base of 500 million. By allowing outside vendors to use its platform for a fee, Amazon increased its items for sale to 350 million — with 197 million people accessing Amazon.com each month.

China also led the world in mobile payments with America in sixth place. In 2019, such transactions in China amounted to $80.5 trillion. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the authorities encouraged customers to use mobile payment, online payment, and barcode payment to avoid the risk of infection. The projected total for mobile payments: $111.1 trillion. The corresponding figures for the United States at $130 billion look puny by comparison.

In August 2012, the founder of the Beijing-based ByteDance, 29-year-old Zhang Yiming, broke new ground in aggregating news for its users. His product, Toutiao (Today’s Headlines) tracked users’ behavior across thousands of sites to form an opinion of what would interest them most, and then recommended stories.

By 2016, it had already acquired 78 million users, 90% of them under 30.

In September 2016, ByteDance launched a short-video app in China called Douyin that gained 100 million users within a year. It would soon enter a few Asian markets as TikTok. In November 2017, for $1 billion, ByteDance would purchase Musical.ly, a Shanghai-based Chinese social network app for video creation, messaging, and live broadcasting, and set up an office in California.

Zhang merged it into TikTok in August 2018 to give his company a larger footprint in the U.S. and then spent nearly $1 billion to promote TikTok as the platform for sharing short-dance, lip-sync, comedy, and talent videos. It has been downloaded by 165 million Americans and driven the Trump administration to distraction. A Generation Z craze, in April 2020 it surpassed two billion downloads globally, eclipsing U.S. tech giants. That led President Trump (no loser he!) and his top officials to attack it and he would sign executive orders attempting to ban both TikTok and WeChat from operating in the U.S. or being used by Americans (unless sold to a U.S. tech giant). Stay tuned.

Huawei’s Octane-Powered Rise

But the biggest Chinese winner in consumer electronics and telecommunications has been Shenzhen-based Huawei Technologies Company, the country’s first global multinational. It has become a pivot point in the geopolitical battle between Beijing and Washington.

Huawei (in Chinese, it means “splendid achievement”) makes phones and the routers that facilitate communications around the world. Established in 1987, its current workforce of 194,000 operates in 170 countries. In 2019, its annual turn-over was $122.5 billion. In 2012, it outstripped its nearest rival, the 136-year-old Ericsson Telephone Corporation of Sweden, to become the world’s largest supplier of telecommunications equipment with 28% of market share globally. In 2019, it forged ahead of Apple to become the second largest phone maker after Samsung.

Several factors have contributed to Huawei’s stratospheric rise: its business model, the personality and decision-making mode of its founder Ren Zhengfei, state policies on high-tech industry, and the firm’s exclusive ownership by its employees.

Born in 1944 in Guizhou Province, Ren Zhengfei went to Chongqing University and then joined a military research institute during Mao Zedong’s chaotic Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). He was demobilized in 1983 when China cut back on its engineering corps. But the army’s slogan, “fight and survive,” stayed with him. He moved to the city of Shenzhen and worked in the country’s infant electronics sector for four years, saving enough to co-found what would become the tech giant Huawei. He focused on research and development, adapting technologies from Western firms, while his new company received small orders from the military and later substantial R&D (research and development) grants from the state to develop GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) phones and other products. Over the years, the company produced telecommunications infrastructure and commercial products for third generation (3G) and fourth generation (4G) smartphones.

As China’s high-tech industry surged, Huawei’s fortunes rose. In 2010, it hired IBM and Accenture PLC to design the means of managing networks for telecom providers. In 2011, the company hired the Boston Consulting Group to advise it on foreign acquisitions and investments.

Like many successful American entrepreneurs, Ren has given top priority to the customer and, in the absence of the usual near-term pressure to raise income and profits, his management team has invested $15 to 20 billion annually in research and development work. That helps explain how Huawei became one of the globe’s five companies in the fifth generation (5G) smartphone business, topping the list by shipping out 6.9 million phones in 2019 and capturing 36.9% of the market. On the eve of the release of 5G phones, Ren revealed that Huawei had a staggering 2,570 5G patents.

So it was unsurprising that in the global race for 5G, Huawei was the first to roll out commercial products in February 2019. One hundred times faster than its 4G predecessors, 5G tops out at 10 gigabits per second and future 5G networks are expected to link a huge array of devices from cars to washing machines to door bells.

Huawei’s exponential success has increasingly alarmed a Trump administration edging ever closer to conflict with China. Last month, Secretary of State Pompeo described Huawei as “an arm of the Chinese Communist Party’s surveillance state that censors political dissidents and enables mass internment camps in Xinjiang.”

In May 2019, the U.S. Commerce Department banned American firms from supplying components and software to Huawei on national security grounds. A year later, it imposed a ban on Huawei buying microchips from American companies or using U.S.-designed software. The White House also launched a global campaign against the installation of the company’s 5G systems in allied nations, with mixed success.

Ren continued to deny such charges and to oppose Washington’s moves, which have so far failed to slow his company’s commercial advance. Its revenue for the first half of 2020, $65 billion, was up by 13.1% over the previous year.

From tariffs on Chinese products and that recent TikTok ban to slurs about the “kung flu” as the Covid-19 pandemic swept America, President Trump and his team have been expressing their mounting frustration over China and ramping up attacks on an inexorably rising power on the global stage. Whether they know it or not, the American century is over, which doesn’t mean that nothing can be done to improve the U.S. position in the years to come.

Setting aside Washington’s belief in the inherent superiority of America, a future administration could stop hurling insults or trying to ban enviably successful Chinese tech firms and instead emulate the Chinese example by formulating and implementing a well-planned, long-term high-tech strategy. But as the Covid-19 pandemic has made abundantly clear, the very idea of planning is not a concept available to the “very stable genius” presently in the White House.

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Dilip Hiro, a TomDispatch regular, is the author, among many other works, of After Empire: The Birth of a Multipolar World. He is currently researching a sequel to that book, which would cover several interlinked subjects, including the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Halting Our Descent into Tyranny: Defeating the Global Elite’s COVID-19 Coup

By Robert J. Burrowes, August 19, 2020

As many authors have documented, the global elite is conducting a coup to take complete control of our lives. It is doing this by using the ‘virus’ to terrorize the human population into believing that we will ‘catch’ Covid-19 if we do not submit to draconian restrictions on our rights and freedoms. And while the elite is conducting its coup, the most important challenges that confront our world are being largely ignored.

Keep It Real: “Circle in the Darkness: Memoirs of a World Watcher”. Review of Diana Johnstone’s Book

By Rick Sterling, August 19, 2020

One theme running through the book is the need to reach out and engage with regular people. She recounts her experiences opposing the US war on Vietnam.  Johnstone and her allies launched a campaign to educate and engage with regular Minnesotans, to explain what was happening in Vietnam and why the war should be opposed. She helped organize teams of students and teachers who went door to door in Minneapolis.

The Great Election Fraud: Will Our Freedoms Survive Another Election?

By John W. Whitehead, August 19, 2020

And so it begins again, the never-ending, semi-delusional, train-wreck of an election cycle in which the American people allow themselves to get worked up into a frenzy over the misguided belief that the future of this nation—nay, our very lives—depends on who we elect as president. For the next three months, Americans will be dope-fed billions of dollars’ worth of political propaganda aimed at keeping them glued to their television sets and persuading them that 1) their votes count and 2) electing the right candidate will fix everything that is wrong with this country.

Ten Years of Planetary Movement for Mother Earth!

By Prof. Claudia von Werlhof, August 19, 2020

The truth to be known are the facts about the system we live in, which in itself is based on different forms of direct and structural violence against life itself, against nature and against human beings! This truth is a secret and thus it has become a taboo to speak about these facts. Whenever this taboo is violated, we have observed, there is always a prompt reaction to stop any further discussion of it.

Lebanon: Pearl on the New Silk Road or Zone of Dark Age Chaos

By Matthew Ehret-Kump, August 19, 2020

In the weeks surrounding the Lebanon disaster, Iran found herself the target of a vicious sequence of attacks as arson and explosions were unleashed beginning with the June 26 explosion at the Khojir Missile production complex, the June 30 explosion at a medical clinic killing 19, a July 2 explosion at the Natanz nuclear facility which set Iran’s centrifuge production schedule back by months and the July 15 fires at the Bushehr Aluminum plant. Additionally, and the UAE experienced its own anomalous fires which ravaged one of the most important markets in Dubai (luckily empty due to Covid-19) on August 5.

Video: The Great Vaccine Debate! Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. vs Alan Dershowitz

By Robert F. Kennedy Jr and Prof. Alan Dershowitz, August 18, 2020

Don’t miss this historic debate between Children’s Health Defense Chairman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz. With the current COVID crisis dominating headlines at national and local levels, the topic of vaccines is now front and center.

The Hunger Crisis in Guatemala

By Yanis Iqbal, August 18, 2020

A report released by Oxfam in July 2020 states, “COVID-19 is deepening the hunger crisis in the world’s hunger hotspots and creating new epicentres of hunger across the globe. By the end of the year 12,000 people per day could die from hunger linked to COVID-19, potentially more than will die from the disease itself.” Like other regions in the world, Latin America, too, is set to witness the intensification of an already-existing hunger crisis with the number of people facing severe food insecurity increasing from 4.3 million in 2019 to 16 million in 2020, an increase of 269%.

Agenda ID2020 of the “One World Order”: The 101 to Understanding Its Implications

By Peter Koenig and Dr. Vernon Coleman, August 17, 2020

Agenda ID2020 – is hardly mentioned by any media, let alone the mainstream. Agenda ID2020, if carried out, is the ultimate control by a small elite – of the One World Order (OWO), also called the New World Order (NWO) – over the world population. It is a mechanism that would allow controlling every movement of each one of the 7-plus billion people of planet earth, including everyone’s health records, cash flows, bank accounts, as well as our behavior in this ultra-controlled society – which I refrain from calling civilization anymore.

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At a time when the European Union was extremely quick to mobilize and condemn Alexander Lukashenko’s presidential re-election and is preparing a sanctions package against Belarus, disinterest and appeasement towards Turkish aggression against member states Greece and Cyprus continues unabated. Many are questioning why the EU was so easily able to mobilize to condemn Belarus, a non-EU member, but after years of Turkey violating Cypriot maritime space and being on the verge of war with Greece, the European bloc remains indifferent to their own members facing hostility from a non-EU member state.

The EU already has a reputation of being Germany’s “Fourth Reich” in Greece. This is the same rhetoric used by EU sceptics all across Europe, with renowned historian and journalist, Simon Heffer, writing in the Daily Mail what many Europeans were feeling during the economic crisis in previous years:

“We are witnessing […] the economic colonisation of Europe by stealth by the Germans. Once, it would have taken an invading military force to topple the leadership of a European nation. Today, it can be done through sheer economic pressure.” Heffer continues by saying that the “rise of the Fourth Reich” stems from Germany “using the financial crisis to conquer Europe” as its policies “would make Europe effectively a German empire.”

Germany and Turkey are both massive countries of 83 million and 82 million people respectively. As they both have large populations, they are therefore energy hungry, but neither have their own gas and oil deposits to speak of, and completely rely on external sources to meet their energy demands. It is on this basis that the German-Turkish alliance has been strong for hundreds of years.

With Europe industrializing in the 1800’s, the German Confederacy and the Austro-Hungarians were finding themselves catching up to the British and the French as they did not possess colonies like their counterparts. Rather, their need for cheap resources came from the Ottoman Empire who at the time still ruled over large swathes of the Balkans, the Middle East and North Africa. The vast Ottoman Empire directly bordered the Austro-Hungarians, meaning there was an unhindered path between the German states and the riches of the Middle East without Russian, British or French influence. However, this would change as Greece, with assistance from the Russians, British and French, would achieve independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1822 with the proclamation of the Hellenic Republic, the first country ever to achieve independence from the Ottomans. The German funding, arming and training of the Ottomans was not enough to prevent Greece’s independence, creating a threat to German access to Ottoman resources, and over the next century the Serbs and Bulgarians would also achieve their independence, completely severing German access to Ottoman resources as pro-Russian/British statelets were being established between the two entities.

However, the German-Turkish alliance would continue even after World War I with the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923 that replaced the Ottoman Empire. The alliance would continue even with Nazi Germany, when Turkey signed a Friendship Treaty on June 18, 1941. After the war, millions of Turks would migrate to West Germany to fill a labor void, and today account for about 5% of the population, a huge number that is enough to influence German policy and public opinion.

It is with this long history that Germany to this day continues to appease Turkey’s aggression against Greece and Cyprus despite the two being EU member states. As Matthias Warnig, the Chief Executive Officer of Nord Stream 2, himself says, Germany will become Europe’s main energy hub once the pipeline connecting “the world’s largest gas reserves in northern Russia to consumers in Europe” is complete. Germany remains defiant despite U.S. threats of sanctions to complete this project.

During his recent working visit to Moscow, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said at a joint press conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, that

“sanctions between partners are, of course, the wrong way. Ultimately, where we draw our energy from remains our sovereign decision. No country has the right to dictate Europe’s energy policy through threats. It will fail.”

By Germany vetoing EU condemnation against Turkish aggression on Greece and Cyprus just days ago, Berlin is guiding Turkey towards a conflict with Greece. For the Germans, such a conflict would be beneficial as it would end the EastMed pipeline project between Israel, Cyprus and Greece that is favored by the U.S., ensuring that Germany remains the sole energy hub of Europe. For the Turks, as it is energy starved, its provocations against Greece and Cyprus is in the hope of either starting a military conflict, or forcing the Greeks and Cypriots to surrender some of its continental shelf rights so that it can access rich deposits of gas and oil in the Aegean Sea and Eastern Mediterranean. Germany’s appeasement towards Turkey is a mutually beneficial exercise for both countries to secure their energy interests.

In fact, the disinterest in Washington and Berlin to alleviate threats of war between Greece and Turkey has been noticed by Russia, with Moscow even offering to mediate the crisis if called upon by Athens and Ankara. However, neither have taken up the Russian offer, with Turkey remaining isolated in its demands, not able to secure open German support but has at least Germany’s silence and indifference, while Greece and Cyprus will be relying on France and other regional states to try and secure its interests. Regardless, Berlin’s insistence on not supporting fellow EU member states against hostility from non-member states ensures that its own interests can be served. This demonstrates that for Germany, the EU is a non-violent mechanism to control much of the continent and that true European solidarity does not exist.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Belarusian President Lukashenko’s announcement that presidential elections will follow a planned constitutional referendum possibly paves the way for a “phased leadership transition” in the Color Revolution-beleaguered former Soviet Republic, one which opens up an opportunity for Russia to protect its national interests if a friendly candidate like Viktor Babariko comes out on top or ends up sharing power with a Western-friendly one like Sergei Tikhanovsky.

As it was expected, the ‘historic’ UAE-Israeli peace deal did not contribute to the stability in the Middle East. Instead, the situation has been slowly, but steadily moving towards a larger confrontation in the region.

Immediately after the announcement of the US-sponsored peace deal, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that his country is not going to fulfill one of its key provisions – the suspension of the annexation of West Bank territories. The prime minister emphasized that the annexation plan was just delayed, but not suspended.

“There is no change to my plan to extend sovereignty, our sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, in full coordination with the United States,” Netanyahu said adding that “Israel will have comprehensive peace agreements with other Arab countries without returning to the 1967 borders.”

This unfortunate, but expected statement goes fully in the framework of the Israeli regional policy and contradicts position of the US-sponsored deal reached with the UAE. In particular, Crown Prince Abu Dhabi Mohammed bin Zayed emphasized that “it was agreed to stop Israel’s annexation of the Palestinian lands.”

The Israeli actions strengthened the already existing controversy over the deal and on August 15-16, the situation escalated in the Gaza Strip. According to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), Palestinian protesters with explosives tried to approach the security fence and then Palestinian forces launched at least 2 rockets at southern Israel. In its own turn, IDF aircraft conducted a series of airstrikes on what Tel Aviv described as Hamas targets.

If the Israeli leadership keeps its course on the annexation of the West Bank areas, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will expectedly escalate, and even possibly expand further. For example, in this scenario, an escalation could be expected in the area of the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights and on the Lebanese-Israeli contact line.

On August 14, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah already declared that the movement “will not remain silent on the crime of the bombing the Port of Beirut if it is proven that Israel is behind it.” According to Nasrallah, Hezbollah would wait for results of an investigation into the Beirut port explosion and if it turns out to be an act of sabotage by Israel then it would “pay an equal price”.

The August 4 blast in the port of Beirut is still surrounded by mystery and uncertainties, and many sources, including the top US leadership, still consider the possibility that the tragedy was caused by some kind of ‘attack’. In this event, the main suspect is Israel, which has always been interested in the destabilization of neighboring Arab states to secure own dominance in the region.

Tensions are also growing between the United States and Iran. On August 14, the Department of Justice announced that US forces have seized some 1.116m barrels of Iranian fuel aboard 4 ships headed for Venezuela. The seizure came amid increasing attacks on US forces and facilities from pro-Iranian and anti-US armed groups in Iraq.

On the evening of August 16, a rocket targeted the Green Zone of Iraq’s capital Baghdad, which houses government buildings and foreign missions. The strike led to no casualties. Just a few hours earlier, the pro-Iranian armed group Ashab al-Kahf released a video showing an improvised explosive device attack on a US equipment convoy in the Anbar area.

The group claimed that the convoy was fully destroyed.

On August 15, two rockets targeted the biggest US military base in Iraq – Camp Taji. The base is located north of Baghdad. On the same day, a convoy carrying logistical supplies for the U.S.-led coalition was targeted on the highway between Dhi Qar and Basrah in southern Iraq. The attack was conducted by another pro-Iranian group, Usbat al-Tha’ireen. Pro-US sources denied any casualties as a result of the attack. These were just the most recent in about two dozen various attacks on US-affiliated targets in Iraq during the past few weeks.

If the US and Iran continue the current confrontational course, it is expected that the number and intensity of attacks in Iraq will increase boosting the chances of an open confrontation between the US and Iranian-led forces.

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On February 14, 2005, an explosion rocked Beirut killing and injuring hundred of people chief among them the former Prime Minister of Lebanon, Rafik al-Hariri. The West was quick to blame Hezbollah and Syria. In 2006, Israel and its tanks rolled into Lebanon.

15 years later, on August 4^th, another explosion rocked Lebanon. This time, the fingers were again pointed at Hezbollah and its ‘Iran backers’. And once again, Israeli tanks crossed into Lebanon.

After years of investigating the first incident, on Tuesday, August 18, 2020, Syria and Hezbollah were acquitted of involvement in the 2005 explosion. Judges at a U.N.-backed tribunal said Tuesday that there was no evidence the leadership of the Hezbollah militant group and Syria were involved in the 2005 suicide truck bomb assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.”

Yet reading the Western media headlines, one would think that the judge had found Hezbollah guilty. Just as the most recent explosion was blamed on Hezbollah. But what would Hezbollah gain from such horrific acts?  If not Hezbollah, ‘cui bono’? The answer is simple. Proving it is not.

The 1967 war resulted in the exponential expansion of Israeli water sources including the  control of the Golan “Heights” (also referred to as the Syrian Golan). For decades, Syrian Golan and the return of its control to Syria had posed a major obstacle to the Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations. Israel’s water demands make it virtually impossible to accommodate this process. In fact, even with full control of the Golan, Israel’s water crisis in 2000 were so acute that it prompted Israel to turn to Turkey for water purchase.

Importantly, Syria’s presence in Lebanon since the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war in 1975 played a crucial role in hindering Israel’s never-ending water demands. Although the 1955 Johnston Plan (under the auspices of the Eisenhower administration) proposed diverting water from Lebanon’s Litani River into Lake Kinneret, it was not officially formulated, though it remained an attractive prospect. In 1982, Israeli forces established the frontline of their security zone in Lebanon along the Litani. Numerous reports alleged that Israel was diverting large quantities of Litani water.

On June 6, 1982, Israel advanced into Lebanon. However, the Syrian army halted the Israeli army advance in the battle of Sultan Yakub and the battle of Ain Zahalta. Sharon’s plan to conquer all of Lebanon and destroy Syria as a military power was thwarted. In reviewing the book and the battles, the famous scholar and activist, Israel Shahak, opined that “the principal purpose of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon was destruction of the Syrian Army”[i].

A 1987 book by Col. Emmanuel Wald of the Israeli General Staff entitled “The Ruse of the Broken Vessels: The Twilight of Israeli Military Might (1967-1982) reveals the aims of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the month of pre-planning that had gone into it.  Wald writes that Ariel Sharon’s master plan codenamed “Oranim” was to defeat the Syrian troops deployed in the Bekaa Valley all the way to the district of Baalbek in North of Lebanon. According to Wald, “during the first days, it was quietly approved by the U.S.”.

Sharon’s plans were put in the backburner. Though the urgency of the successful implantation of the plan was not lost on Israelis; perhaps made even more urgent in the face of the 1991 Lebanese-Syrian Treaty of Brotherhood, Cooperation and Coordination .  The treaty was a challenge to Israel and its diversion of water and annexation.  When Syria replaced Israel as the dominant power in southern Lebanon in May 2000, Israeli fears grew that Syrian success in controlling the Golan and by extension, Lake Kinneret, would have a devastating effect on Israel.

Washington, always ready to serve Israel, passed the Syrian Accountability Act and the Lebanon Sovereignty Restoration Act.  Without any hesitation to investigate the explosion, Washington and the West did not hesitate to place the blame on Syria and Hezbollah. Much to the delight of The Washington Institute, the pro-Israel think tank, the United States implemented the Act which in addition to sanctions, called for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon.   In 2006, the deck was cleared for Israel to attack Lebanon.

Although the Tribunal found no ties to Syria or Hezbollah leadership, it did convict Salim Ayyash –  a Hezbollah member. The question is, was Ayyash a rogue member acting on his own or was he a member of Israel’s “Arab Platoon” (Ronen Bergman, 2018)[ii].

The Arab Platoon a clandestine commando unit whose members operated disguised as Arabs, were trained fighters who could operate inside ‘enemy’ lines, gather information, and carry out sabotage and targeted killings. Their training included commando tactics and explosives, but also intensive study of Islam and Arab customs. Nicknamed the “Mistaravim” (the name by which the Jews went in some Arab countries), they practiced Judaism but in all other aspects were Arabs.

It is not clear to this writer if Ayyash was a Hezbollah member or a Mistaravim. However, it is evident that neither Syria, Lebanon, nor Hezbollah benefited from the attack.

Curiously, the initial tribunal date coincided with the Lebanon port explosion which devasted the country, even making it appear as if the explosion and the delay in the hearing would benefit Hezbollah. Undoubtedly, the findings of the Tribunal must have been very disappointing for Israel and its backers who had placed the blame on Hezbollah and Syrian leadership. It may be reassuring for some and worrying for others that the FBI is in Beirut investigating. FBI has managed to build quite a reputation for cover ups.

Beirut has been devastated. And as with 2006, every foe is out to grab a part of this beautiful country. During the 2006 war, while Israel bombed Lebanon, Carlyle profited greatly – as did the Saudis, the U.S., and of course, Israeli. The systematic destruction of Lebanon translated into significant opportunity for the Carlyle Group and with the ‘crisis, they announced a $1.3 billion fund for investment in the region. They were not alone. The rush was on. The big investment banks — Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers – all increased their presence in the region. Israel, the perpetrator as the benefactor, received an increase of USD 500 million additional in aid package from the U.S. in September of the same year (Ynet news).

With millions of funds from  CIA/NED spent in Lebanon over the past few years (NED 2018, etc.), the country is ripe for its enemies to bend it to their will.   Clearly, this would not benefit Hezbollah, Iran, or Lebanon.   Fingers have also been pointed at Israel for being the culpit.  It may take several years for the truth to come out – and be proven.  At the end of the day though, cui bono?

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Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich is an independent researcher and writer with a focus on US foreign policy.

Notes

[i] Sahak, Israel.  Israel Considers War With Syria as It Ponders 1982 Invasion of Lebanon,The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (September 30, 1992).

[ii] Ronen Bergman.  Rise And Kill First; The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations.  P. 24. Random House 2018

The verdict was finally delivered Aug. 18 by presiding Judge David Re, of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), based near The Hague in The Netherlands. The trial, which began in 2014 and cost about $1 billion, found that there was no direct evidence implicating the leadership of Hezbollah, or of the Syrian Arab Republic in the attack which killed Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on Feb. 14, 2005. 

Salim Ayyash was found guilty of conspiracy to commit a terrorist act, killing Rafik Hariri, murdering 21 others, and attempting to murder 226 more in the suicide car bombing; however, his whereabouts remain unknown. Evidence was presented that Ayyash had possession of one of the six cell phones which were used by the assassination squad. Three other defendants: Hussein Hassan Oneissi, Assad Hassan Sabra, and Hassan Habib Merhi were acquitted by the STL.

Hezbollah has consistently denied any involvement in the event. However, it was widely assumed that the STL would blame Hezbollah or Syria.  When Rafik Hariri was murdered in 2005, many blamed Israel.

Reactions to the STL verdict

Lebanese President Michel Aoun welcomed the verdict of STL as an ‘achievement of justice’.  Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, son of Rafik Hariri, said he accepted the verdict.

Who killed Rafik Hariri?

Patrick Seale wrote Feb. 23, 2005, in “The Guardian”, that Israel’s ambition has long been to weaken Syria, sever its strategic alliance with Iran and destroy Hezbollah. Israel has great experience at “targeted assassinations”, not only in the Palestinian territories but across the Middle East. Over the years, it has sent hit teams to kill opponents in Beirut, Tunis, Malta, Amman, and Damascus.

On Feb. 16, 2005, Australian investigative journalist Joe Vialls wrote of his theory on the Beirut bombing, “Bearing in mind that this blast was caused by a highly specialized micro-nuke sourced from Dimona in the Negev Desert.” He wrote, “In a desperate attempt to slow down their forthcoming defeat in Palestine, Jewish Special Forces micro-nuke former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, then instruct western media outlets to falsely blame the atrocity on Syria.”

Gregory M. Zeigler, Ph.D., former Captain, US Army, Military Intelligence wrote on July 23, 2005,

“On a large number of topics, Joe Vialls’ analyses are still the most penetrating and detailed available. He was one of the first to expose the problems in the stories of the Bali and Jakarta bombings, the assassination of Rafik Hariri.”

In the aftermath of the Hariri bombing, Lebanon became split between a US-EU-NATO coalition, and another supported by Hezbollah and its allies Iran and Syria.

The people of Lebanon, and their politicians, remain divided between those who wanted the tribunal to blame Hezbollah, and others who see the court as a political tool to discredit Hezbollah.

France versus Turkey in Beirut

On Aug. 13, the Turkish President Erdogan accused the French President Macron of “colonial designs” in Lebanon, and ridiculed Macron’s visit to the destroyed Port of Beirut as “putting on a show.”

The French Ministry of Armed Forces said on Aug. 13 that France would deploy two Rafale fighter jets and the frigate Lafayette off the coast at Beirut as part of a plan to demonstrate its military presence in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.  Macron is opposed to Erdogan’s attempt to control the Sea through drilling for energy resources, which has angered both Greece and Cyprus, as well as the maritime agreements he made with Libya, which are incongruous, and his military intervention in the Libyan conflict.

International warships gather at Beirut

And on Friday, the Lebanese Army said On Aug. 14, the French helicopter carrier PHA Tonnerre docked at Beirut’s port, carrying a French army engineering unit, engineering vehicles, and necessary equipment to remove debris from Beirut port, according to the Lebanese Army.  Medical and food aid, construction material, and two vehicles donated to the Lebanese Civil Defense, from France were with the carrier.

Lt. Gen. Sir John Lorimer, the UK Defense Senior Adviser Middle East and North Africa, said on Aug. 17 in Beirut,

“The deployment of HMS Enterprise complements an immediate package of military and civilian support. As part of the strong relationship between both our armies, the UK has offered enhanced support to the Lebanese Armed Forces, who are central to the Government of Lebanon’s response, including tailored medical help, strategic air transport assistance, and engineering and communications support.”

The Beirut Port Blast

The STL verdict was delayed 2 weeks due to the devastating explosion at the Port of Beirut, which coincided with the original verdict date of Aug. 4 which killed nearly 180 people, injured more than 6,000, and destroyed thousands of homes. Thirty people are still missing after the blast, which caused up to an estimated $20 billion in damage.

Bedri Daher, Head of the Customs Authority for Lebanon, was arrested Aug. 17, after being questioned by Judge Fadi Sawwan for over four hours. Beirut newspaper Al-Akhbar reported that while Daher was under interrogation he said that the UN inspected the Rhosus when it entered Lebanese territorial waters in 2013 and found no restricted items onboard despite that the ship delivered nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate to Beirut Port. The UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti has denied the claim.

After the explosion, Daher said he repeatedly warned the country’s judiciary about dangerous substances stored at Beirut’s port, sending six memos to judiciary officials warning that the substances posed a danger to the public.

US Undersecretary for Political Affairs David Hale told reporters in Beirut, “The FBI will soon join Lebanese and international investigators at the invitation of the Lebanese in order to help answer questions that I know everyone has about the circumstances that led up to this explosion.” The US views Hezbollah, a political party with members in the parliament, as a terrorist group.  Washington may have missed the chance to pin the Hariri murder on Hezbollah, but they may view the Beirut Port blast investigation as a second chance to hit their mark.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

Featured image is from MD

Super Lawyer Rocco Galati sues the Canadian government, Trudeau, Health Ministers, and others in first of its kind superior court lawsuit.

Galati lays out for listeners why his client and others have decided to sue over the extreme COVID measures that have now been proven to cause 14 to 1 more deaths than the actual virus. With these facts now proven, the government only continues to promote these extreme measures.

His lawsuit has a long list of experts, data, and more to prove the case against the government.

This lawsuit should serve as an important example to others around the world to also push back against these mandates that are destroying lives.

You can learn more and follow this important lawsuit by following Rocco Galati’s Twitter @RoccoGalatiLaw.

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A recently discovered transcript of an interview with a British intelligence officer who played a leading role in the 1953 coup that restored powers to the shah of Iran claims that Britain was the driving force behind the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh.

On the anniversary of the UK-US-led coup d’etat that removed Iran’s democratically elected leader, an interview with Norman Darbyshire – head of the MI6 spy agency’s “Persia” station in Cyprus at the time – was published.

In his account, Darbyshire said Britain had convinced the US to take part in the coup.

Darbyshire’s comments came from an interview with the creators of an episode of 1985 British series End of Empire. His interview was not used directly in the programme, as he did not want to appear on camera.

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As many authors have documented, the global elite is conducting a coup to take complete control of our lives. It is doing this by using the ‘virus’ to terrorize the human population into believing that we will ‘catch’ Covid-19 if we do not submit to draconian restrictions on our rights and freedoms.

And while the elite is conducting its coup, the most important challenges that confront our world are being largely ignored, as I will briefly discuss below.

If you are not already familiar with it, you can read (or watch) a sample of the overwhelming evidence that reports on the virus are vastly exaggerated and distorted:

‘Unmasking the Lies Around COVID-19: Facts vs Fiction of the Coronavirus Pandemic’,

‘COVID19 PCR Tests are Scientifically Meaningless’,

‘Death by killing old people, not COVID – The Basic Deception’,‘An Inconvenient Covid-19 Truth: Dr Andrew Kaufman and Del Bigtree’ (republished after being taken down)

and ‘COVID-19 Does Not Exist: The Global Elite’s Campaign of Terror Against Humanity’.

Most notably, perhaps, Torsten Engelbrecht and Konstantin Demeter, the authors of the second reference cited above, wrote to the authors of four of the principal, early 2020 papers claiming discovery of a new coronavirus and each of them in their response ‘concede[d] they had no proof that the origin of the virus genome was viral-like particles or cellular debris, pure or impure, or particles of any kind. In other words, the existence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA is based on faith, not fact.’

Moreover, Engelbrecht and Demeter also wrote to Dr Charles Calisher, a prominent and veteran virologist, asking if he knew of ‘one single paper in which SARS-CoV-2 has been isolated and finally really purified’. His answer? ‘I know of no such a publication. I have kept an eye out for one.’

But you can read the paper by Engelbrecht and Demeter if you want to consider the other efforts they made, unsuccessfully, including by contacting prominent institutions such as the Robert Koch Institute in Germany, to locate documented proof that a purified SARS-CoV-2 virus had been isolated.

And in the video above titled ‘An Inconvenient Covid-19 Truth’, Dr Andrew Kaufman states:

‘There is not one scientist who has isolated or purified a virus and made a concrete association with a new illness…. There have been spikes in mortality around the world in different places but we need to look for other causes or explanations for that since there is no solid evidence that there is a virus causing anything.’

So why are some people dying? Some are dying from pre-existing health conditions (‘comorbidities’), some are dying from influenza (as happens to 650,000 people each year: see ‘

Up to 650 000 people die of respiratory diseases linked to seasonal flu each year’), some are dying as a result of living in a toxic environment – see

‘The China lockdown: origin of the war against the population of Earth, pretense of containing the virus’– some are dying in response to the deployment of 5G technologies, some are dying from the fear and other emotional responses to the isolation in which they have been imprisoned, and some are dying of unrelated causes falsely attributed to Covid-19, as the many articles and videos on the statistical manipulation have exposed.

See, for example, ‘COVID 19 Is A Statistical Nonsense’.

Given the categorical science that this virus does not exist, it is clear that the restrictions already imposed, and those that will be imposed, supposedly to tackle this non-existent infection labeled Covid-19, make history’s worst despots – as well as those depicted in dystopian novels and films – look benevolent by comparison.

This is because the intended and ongoing consequences of these restrictions, if they are all successfully implemented, will be catastrophic: those human beings still alive will be reduced to digitized identities controlled by forces literally beyond their perception and one (presumably) unintended consequence of this coup will be the extinction of our species. Let me explain why.

The Elite Coup

If you have not been following the literature in relation to the ongoing coup and its rapidly accumulating costs, you can read a sample from the most recent documentation here:

Economist and geopolitical analyst Peter Koenig, formerly of the World Bank, in ‘IMF and WEF – From Great Lockdown to Great Transformation. The Covid Aftermath’ notes as follows:

‘Deep-State-Actors’ behind the scene were using Covid to… cause a total lockdown of people as well as of the world economy…. This mighty lockdown order, instigated from ‘high-up’, way above the world’s governments and the UN, and with such co-opted ‘authorities’, like the WHO, has brought the world economy down on its knees within less than 6 months….

One of the opportunities the IMF sees emerging from this crisis, is ‘the digital transformation – a big winner from this crisis’. The IMF doesn’t say what it means, but it requires foremost digitizing people’s identity and digitizing money – total control over people’s movements, health records, cash flow, bank accounts and more. See also ‘The Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic: The Real Danger is “Agenda ID2020”.

Former Air Force Captain David Skripac in ‘What Are the Truly Verifiable Facts Surrounding COVID-19?’ summarizes the non-existent or flawed science around the existence of the SARS-CoV-2 RNA virus, the diagnostic testing, the use of masks and the claim that the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) for COVID-19 is far greater than the seasonal influenza, and concludes as follows:

What is certain, though, is that all of the medical martial law edicts that have been issued in united fashion have been based on unsubstantiated science. Equally clear is that the drive for a global COVID-19 vaccine regimen and the global surveillance grid are moving ahead in concert to transform the world as we know it – ifwe allow it to happen.

Professor Michel Chossudovsky in his recently republished timeline ‘COVID-19 Coronavirus “Fake” Pandemic: Timeline and Analysis’ outlining events leading up to and then immediately following declaration of the pandemic by the World Health Organization on 30 January 2020, carefully documents such points as Event 201 held in New York in October 2019, and notes the following:

What we are dealing with is ‘economic warfare’….

Our… analysis reveals that powerful corporate interests linked to Big Pharma, Wall Street and agencies of the US government were instrumental in the WHO’s far-reaching decision. 

What is at stake is the alliance of ‘Big Pharma’ and ‘Big Money’, with the endorsement of the Trump Administration. The decision to launch a fake pandemic under the helm of the WHO on January 30, was taken a week earlier at the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF). The media operation was there to spread outright panic.

We are dealing with a complex global crisis with far-reaching economic, social and geopolitical implications.

US constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead in his article ‘One Nation Under House Arrest: How Do COVID-19 Mandates Impact Our Freedoms?’ documents the extensive and ongoing encroachments on rights and freedoms in the USA and highlights the following:

On a daily basis, Americans are already relinquishing (in many cases, voluntarily) the most intimate details of who we are – their biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.) – in order to navigate an increasingly technologically-enabled world.

COVID-19, however, takes the surveillance state to the next level. 

There’s already been talk of mass testing for COVID-19 antibodies, screening checkpoints, contact tracing, immunity passports to allow those who have recovered from the virus to move around more freely, and snitch tip lines for reporting ‘rule breakers’ to the authorities….

In this post-9/11 world, we have been indoctrinated into fearing and mistrusting one another instead of fearing and mistrusting the government. As a result, we’ve been forced to travel this road many, many times with lamentably predictable results each time: without fail, when asked to choose between safety and liberty, Americans historically tend to choose safety.

Failing to read the fine print on such devil’s bargains, ‘we the people’ find ourselves repeatedly on the losing end as the government uses each crisis as a means of expanding its powers at taxpayer expense.

And, technologically, it is now incredibly easy to do this in many ways.

In one of his ongoing videos (that, so far, has not been censored) about the Covid-19 coup – this one titled ‘This Couldn’t Possibly Happen. Could it?’ the transcript for which can be accessed by clicking the ‘Health’ tab after entering his website– the UK’s Dr Vernon Coleman explains one sinister aspect of this technological control:

If you were a mad doctor and you wanted to control an individual it would be a doddle.

You’d just tell them you were giving them an injection to protect them against the flu or something like that and in the syringe there would be a little receiver. And then you’d stick a transmitter on the roof of the house across the road from where they lived.

And then you could send messages to make them do whatever you wanted them to do. You could make them sad or angry or happy or contented. You could make them run or fight or just spend all day in bed.

Remember, that’s what Dr Delgado was doing over half a century ago. It’s nothing new.

Of course, if you wanted to do the same thing for lots of people you’d need a whole lot of people to help you….

And you’d need something to inject into people. A medicine of some kind for example.

And then you’d need someone good at software to help with all the transmitting and the receiving and you’d need people with access to lots of tall poles or roofs where they could put the transmitter things.

But none of that would be any good unless you had a reason for injecting people. You can’t just go around injecting millions of people for no reason.

Ideally, you’d need them all to be frightened of something so that they were keen to let you inject them. And then you could put your tiny receivers into the stuff that was being injected. Or squirted up their noses or whatever.

Whitney Webb provides further insight into the elite intention in this regard. In one of her meticulously-researched articles – ‘Coronavirus Gives a Dangerous Boost to DARPA’s Darkest Agenda’– she outlines the hidden technological agenda behind the Covid-19 coup that might well be delivered as part of any vaccination program by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). After carefully outlining the history and ‘logic’ of what is taking place, she concludes with the chilling words:

Technology developed by the Pentagon’s controversial research branch is getting a huge boost amid the current coronavirus crisis, with little attention going to the agency’s ulterior motives for developing said technologies, their potential for weaponization or their unintended consequences….

This is especially true given that – without a major crisis such as that currently dominating world events – people would likely be unreceptive to the widespread introduction of many of the technologies DARPA has been developing, whether their push to create cyborg “super soldiers” or injectable Brain Machine Interfaces (BMIs) with the capability to control one’s thoughts. Yet, amid the current crisis, many of these same technologies are being sold to the public as “healthcare,” a tactic DARPA often uses. As the panic and fear regarding the virus continues to build and as people become increasingly desperate to return to any semblance of normalcy, millions will willingly take a vaccine, regardless of any government-mandated vaccination program. Those who are fearful and desperate will not care that the vaccine may include nanotechnology or have the potential to genetically modify and re-program their very being, as they will only want the current crisis that has upended the world to stop.

In this context, the current coronavirus crisis appears to be the perfect storm that will allow DARPA’s dystopian vision to take hold and burst forth from the darkest recesses of the Pentagon into full public view. However, DARPA’s transhumanist vision for the military and for humanity presents an unprecedented threat, not just to human freedom, but an existential threat to human existence and the building blocks of biology itself.

In essence then, the ongoing elite coup is accelerating the so-called fourth industrial revolution as well as development of the technologies with which the Pentagon plans to fight future wars. If they succeed, you will only exist provided you have a biometric digital identity vaccinated into your body –

see ‘Africa to Become Testing Ground for “Trust Stamp” Vaccine Record and Payment System’– that confirms your existence, contains your vaccination record and your ‘authority’ to pay digital money.

But, as discussed by Dr Vernon Coleman and Whitney Webb, the ‘vaccine’ might well contain much more than that. In any case, you might not be relieved to know that this system will even work ‘in areas of the world lacking internet access or cellular connectivity’ and that it ‘does not require knowledge of an individual’s legal name or identity to function’.

Who you really are, as a human individual, will be irrelevant and will be largely gone: The nanotechnology in your body will have altered and redefined you. It will be used to control your behaviour in response to a digital signal controlled by others. Whether as worker or soldier, you will do as directed to serve elite ends, no longer having volition of your own.

If this is not enough to convince you of what is at stake, you can read further itemization of the adverse impacts of this coup in other articles such as

‘The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup Against a Terrified Humanity: Resisting Powerfully’ and

‘How the Covid-19 Crisis Affects Individual Rights and Freedoms. A New Crisis in International Law?’

And you can access a substantial list of resources carefully compiled by Roger Brown in ‘The Covid-Lockdown Crisis – Alternative Info & Sources’.

Of course, you do not need to believe the scholars I have cited above. Major elite organizations, such as the World Economic Forum (WEF), have been equally clear, even if they cast what is happening rather more positively given their role in generating the Covid-19 ‘crisis’ to precipitate the coup in the first place. In its document ‘The Great Reset: A Unique Twin Summit to Begin 2021’ the WEF candidly notes that:

COVID-19 has accelerated our transition into the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

But given the deeper agenda of which the fourth industrial revolution (with its military implications) is only a part, the WEF also notes in its recent report, without even a hint of irony after citing a report by sustainability experts – see ‘Scientists’ warning on affluence’– that:

Affluence is the biggest threat to our world… 

True sustainability will only be achieved through drastic lifestyle changes… rather than hoping that more efficient use of resources will be enough.

The World Economic Forum has called for a great reset of capitalism in the wake of the pandemic. See ‘This is now the world’s greatest threat – and it’s not coronavirus’.

Of course, it is entirely possible that the WEF has not heard of Mahatma Gandhi who modeled and espoused substantially reduced consumption more than 100 years ago while also modeling and advocating local self-reliance – ‘Earth provides enough for every person’s need but not for every person’s greed’ – and those activists and experts who have lived and/or articulated such a course since Gandhi.

But, then again, does the WEF really mean what it sounds like it means? Is the global elite about to forego its affluence and return its wealth to those billions of impoverished people who are just the latest of many generations from whom the elite has stolen virtually everything through military conquest, an economic system and other structures of exploitation that ‘allocate’ resources in accord with mechanisms over which ‘ordinary’ people have no control?

Or is the global elite more interested in a new series of mechanisms that further impoverish the human population and exploit the natural world, particularly if the bulk of the human population has been effectively robotized by the nanotechnology in the Covid-19 vaccine and can simply be directed to work (or kill in war), irrespective of working conditions and recompense?

Ignoring the Challenges that Really Threaten Us

But the coup to take greater control of our lives is just one of the many adverse outcomes that we can expect and this is why human extinction, by any of four separate paths, is a likely outcome.

Whether by the ongoing demolition of weapons control agreements –

see ‘Trump’s War On Arms Control and Disarmament’– endlessly fighting and provoking wars –

see ‘Largest U.S. Seizure of Iranian Fuel from Four Tankers’(although this has since been contradicted by Iran) – and even courting the risk of nuclear war –

see ‘Kremlin Warns The US Of Nuclear Retaliation If Russia Or Her Allies Are Targeted’– the current US-generated military environment has not been this close to nuclear armageddon at any time in history. Unfortunately, things have deteriorated dramatically since the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 2020 Doomsday Clock Announcement back in January ‘Closer than ever: It is 100 seconds to midnight’.

Of course, it should be noted, the fundamental driver of these latest regressive developments (which simply add to those many regressive developments that have preceded them) is the US nuclear doctrine that has been in place since 2003. As explained by Professor Michel Chossudovsky: ‘The Hiroshima Day 2003 meetings had set the stage for the “privatization” of nuclear war…. This long war against humanity is [now being] carried out at the height of the most serious economic crisis in modern history. It is intimately related to a process of financial restructuring which has resulted in the collapse of national economies and the impoverishment of large sectors of the world population. The ultimate objective is world conquest.’

Watch ‘Secret Meeting on the Privatization of Nuclear War Held on Hiroshima Day 2003’.

And in case you believe that ‘world conquest’ is fanciful, consider the following. As mentioned above, the technology now available after decades of effort enables receiver nanochips to be sprayed, injected or otherwise implanted into human bodies. With the ongoing deployment of 5G (which includes extensive space and ground-based technologies), it will be possible to direct the individual behaviour of each of those people. Given that the control technology will be owned by corporate executives, here are just four examples of how the elite might direct that it be used (more or less as a ‘drone pilot’ sitting in the United States controls a drone flying in the Middle East that fires weapons on local people):

1. The official chain of command to launch nuclear weapons can be subverted by using remote control to direct the chosen individual in a particular chain of command to order (or execute) the launch of one or more nuclear weapons at the target(s) nominated at the time(s) specified. Subordinates can be directed to follow orders they might otherwise question.
2. ‘Cyborg soldiers’ (either as mercenaries or formal military personnel) in groups or as individuals can be deployed anywhere to fight as ordered by those in charge of their remote controls.
3. ‘Cyborg workers’ can be instructed to work in dangerous conditions for extended periods and simply be replaced as required. Someone else close by will have been vaccinated too.
4. Activists on any issue can simply to be instructed to refrain from further involvement in their campaign. Or to actively take the opposite position to the one they had previously.

Anyway, just briefly on the other three imminent threats to human survival.

The climate remains under siege. Despite elite propaganda to the contrary, Earth passed 2°C above the 1750 (preindustrial) baseline in February 2020 – see ‘Crossing the Paris Agreement thresholds’ and ‘2°C crossed’– and given that carbon dioxide emissions generate ‘maximum warming’ about one decade after the emission actually occurred – see ‘Maximum warming occurs about one decade after a carbon dioxide emission’– ‘the full warming wrath of the carbon dioxide emissions over the past ten years is still to come’. See ‘2°C crossed’.

However, with even most activists accepting the elite-driven narrative in relation to Covid-19, efforts to curb the climate catastrophe are largely on hold despite the fact that ‘global warming is rampaging, running amuck’ with fires in eastern Siberia  – ‘the very region of the planet that’s famous for the coldest temperatures of all time… now recording Miami-type summer temperatures’ – according to NASA satellite images ‘depict[ing] an inferno of monstrous proportions’ with which ‘nothing in modern history compares’. See ‘Freakish Arctic Fires Alarmingly Intensify’.

And having mentioned fires, how is the Amazon going after last year’s disastrous season? Not well, according to this latest report: ‘More than 260 major, mostly illegal Amazon fires detected since late May’.

But if fires in Siberia and the Amazon do not concern you, did you realize that the warming temperature is now causing methane to leak from Antarctica (not just the Arctic) too? See ‘Riddles in the cold: Antarctic endemism and microbial succession impact methane cycling in the Southern Ocean’ and ‘As Planet Edges Closer To Climate Tipping Points, Scientists Identify Methane Gas Leak In Antarctica’.

Moreover, while the global industrial shutdown has temporarily reduced emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, it has also significantly reduced the aerosol masking effect generated by burning fossil fuels as explained by Professor Guy McPherson in his recently-published paper ‘Will COVID-19 Trigger Extinction of All Life on Earth?’ For reasons he carefully explains in his paper, McPherson concludes:

The ongoing reduction in industrial activity as a result of COVID-19 almost certainly leads to loss of habitat for human animals, hence putting us on the fast track to human extinction.

Apart from the serious threat of nuclear war and the accelerating climate catastrophe, in their latest paper Professor Gerardo Ceballos and his colleagues provide further evidence of the ongoing ‘biological annihilation’ of life on Earth and what it means for ecosystem functioning while documenting the complicating factors that have arisen during the COVID-19 crisis because capturing wildlife for trade or food was one backup economic survival option for many people when other options were shut down.

‘Even though only an estimated 2% of all of the species that ever lived are alive today, the absolute number of species is greater now than ever before. It was into such a biologically diverse world that we humans evolved, and such a world that we are destroying…. Millions of populations have vanished in the last 100 years…. The reason so many species are being pushed to extinction by anthropogenic causes is indicated by humans and their domesticated animals being some 30 times the living mass of all of the wild mammals that must compete with them for space and resources’. But, Dr Ceballos adds: ‘Many of the species endangered or at the brink of extinction are being decimated by the legal and illegal wildlife trade.’ See ‘Vertebrates on the brink’.

But if you want another account, you can read a solid summary in the latest media release of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) here:

‘Nature’s Dangerous Decline “Unprecedented”; Species Extinction Rates “Accelerating”’.

And for just one of the latest accounts in the ongoing stream of disasters,

see ‘Calls for swift action as hundreds of elephants die in Botswana’s Okavango Delta’.

Of course, while the World Economic Forum does not even list electromagnetic radiation (or nuclear war, for that matter) as one its top ten ‘risks’ –

see ‘The Global Risks Report 2020’– because its plan to implement the fourth industrial revolution (with its profound implications for the future of warfare) depends on the deployment of 5G, this deployment is already wreaking havoc (and presumably a driver of at least some of the ill-health and deaths falsely attributed to Covid-19) and is another path to imminent human extinction.

See ‘Deadly Rainbow: Will 5G Precipitate the Extinction of All Life on Earth?’

Apart from other, locally disastrous outcomes, this deployment means that the existing fleet of functional satellites orbiting Earth, which totaled 2,666 on 1 April 2020 – see ‘Satellite Database’– but has already grown by a couple of hundred since then, will be vastly expanded to 100,000 in the near future.

This will disturb, in a way that goes profoundly beyond all previous disturbances, the global electrical circuit, that evolved over eons and sustains all life.

In short, we will have fundamentally altered the very conditions that made the evolution of life on Earth possible.

So why is this all happening?

The coup being conducted by the global elite, that is also fast-tracking four paths to human extinction, is a direct outcome of their unconscious terror and the insanity this causes. The elite is not capable of considering ‘the big picture’ because each member of the elite, as well as all those who serve it, is trapped in a confined psychological state that makes them incapable of perceiving or behaving beyond the terrified imperative to endlessly seek control. This outcome is the direct result of the violence they each suffered as a child and which now leads them to endlessly but dysfunctionally seek the control they were denied as a child. See ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

In essence, a terrorized child will result in an equally terrified and powerless adult. Powerless individuals are so terrified that they will not get what they want that they fear the idea of cooperation for mutual benefit. Hence, they must endlessly seek total control so that they will feel ‘safe’. Of course, safety based on control of this nature is a delusion and, even if it could be achieved, is dysfunctional. This is partly why the elite coup, which is designed to give them total control, fails to take account of factors beyond the coup, particularly including the paths to extinction they are accelerating.

In contrast, powerful individuals are happy to negotiate in an atmosphere that allows conflicting parties to explore mutually beneficial outcomes. They readily understand that others have needs and these can be met without undermining the satisfaction of their own needs. Control is simply not important to them beyond that which allows it to be shared among equals.

For further discussion of this point, see ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.

Moreover, it is worth pointing out, wealth accumulation is just another compulsive behaviour: that is, a serious but common psychological disorder in industrialized societies. And these individuals need considerable psychological help. But we do not help them by participating in their delusion that control and wealth are what they need. See‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’.

Resisting the Elite Coup so Far

Fortunately, increasing numbers of people are becoming aware of the coup and resistance to it is now building steadily (even if corporate media outlets routinely ignore these actions, underestimate the numbers and/or smear those resisting). Here is just a sample of the most recent ‘demonstrations’ (but not other forms of nonviolent resistance):

A large march and rally – estimated at 1.3 million people – was held in Berlin on 1 August 2020.

See ‘Media grossly underestimates massive turnout at Berlin’s “End of the Pandemic” protest’.

The rally included speeches by two police officers to which you can listen.

See ‘German police speak out against draconian COVID-19 restrictions, lies and fear-mongering’.

A demonstration was held in London on the same date.

See ‘“Masks are Muzzles”: Thousands March in Berlin & London Against Mandatory Masks & Covid-19 measures (PHOTOS, VIDEOS)’.

Another demonstration was held in Stuttgart.

See ‘Protesters March in Stuttgart Against Tight COVID Measures’.

And another in Montreal on 8 August 2020.

See ‘Thousands rally in downtown Montreal to protest Quebec’s mandatory mask rules’.

On 9 August 2020, 6-7,000 people attended a mega-Church service, despite threats from the police about exceeding the limit of 100, without maintaining social distancing or wearing masks.

See ‘Defiance! 6,000 Attend “Illegal” California Church Service’.

On 16 August 2020, thousands of people gathered under the giant Spanish flag that decorates Colon Square in the centre of Madrid to protest against the restrictions imposed to supposedly combat the ‘coronavirus pandemic’. See ‘“Freedom!” Demonstrators Gathered in Madrid Against Wearing of Masks’.

John C.A. Manley argues that getting accurate printed information before the eyes of people is important if we are to counter the elite’s propaganda bombardment through the corporate media. See ‘Protest against COVID Disinformation and Social Engineering’.

Research indicates that two-thirds of people in the UK are unwilling to be vaccinated and many of these would go to prison rather than submit to vaccination. See ‘Britons would “go to prison before being injected” as distrust of Covid vaccine grows’.

Of course, this position already has a strong basis in international law given that everyone has the right to accept or reject medical procedures in accordance with the Nuremberg Medical Code 1947 – see ‘Fifty Years Later: The Significance of the Nuremberg Code’– and article 6.1 of the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights.

This is worth remembering given that, apart from the purpose of vaccination mentioned above, ‘the US government has just granted big pharma immunity from liability claims if the vaccine produces damaging side effects’ – see ‘Europeans Are Waking Up to Government Covid Tyranny. Why Are We Still Asleep?’

– and other countries are likely to follow suit, despite the extensively documented record of vaccines causing devastating harms including massive lethality. For a taste of the vast literature on this point, see ‘Gates’ Globalist Vaccine Agenda: A Win-Win for Pharma and Mandatory Vaccination’.

As Dr Stefan Lanka has explained about vaccines generally:

Only ignorant people who blindly trust in the state authorities who are ‘testing’ and approving the vaccines can regard vaccination as a ‘small harmless prick’. The verifiable facts demonstrate the danger and negligence of these scientists and politicians, who claim that vaccines are safe, have little or no side-effects and would protect from a disease. None of these claims is true and scientific. See ‘The Misconception Called “Virus”: Measles as an example’.

Anyway, there are many options and resistance is taking many forms, including individual actions of enormous variety. And they are not all done with great fanfare. People are conducting street parties, joining protests they would not normally attend or just going about their business as if the lockdowns were not in place.

Of course, there is no point pretending that all of this is happening without police repression. At the moment, however, it seems that Melbourne, the capital city of the state of Victoria in (mainland south-eastern) Australia, takes the prize for the most repressive government and police response in a so-called ‘democracy’. See ‘Letters From Melbourne, a “Ghost Town Police State” Under Brutal Covid Lockdown’.

As an aside, it is worth remembering this as you ponder your own response to this coup: People who are terrified will believe the elite-driven narrative promulgated by elite agents such as the World Health Organization, governments and the corporate media. It is those people who can investigate and still think for themselves on whom our resistance must be built. So seek out and work with those in the latter category as a priority. It might not seem like it at times but they are everywhere, as the examples above illustrate.

Resisting the Elite Coup Strategically

While the resistance so far has been crucially important, my own hope is that we can build on this while also tackling each of the key threats to human survival.

If we are to do this effectively, it would be useful to start by giving yourself time to focus on feeling your emotional responses – fear, anger, sadness, pain, dread…. – to whatever is generating an emotional reaction: living in a confined space, someone in your household, wearing a mask, Covid-19, the elite coup, the imminent threats of extinction or anything else. See ‘Putting Feelings First’.

This is always invaluable so that you can engage meaningfully and strategically in the effort, whatever issue you choose to fight.

So once you have a clearer sense of your emotional reactions to this knowledge and have allowed yourself time to focus on feeling these feelings, you will be in a far more powerful position to consider your response to the situation. And, depending on your interests and circumstances, there is a range of possible responses that will each make an important difference.

Fundamentally, you might consider making ‘My Promise to Children’ which will include considering what an education for your children means to you, particularly if you want powerful individuals – not ones who are submissively obedient to elite directives and project their fear onto blameless but ‘legitimized victims’ – who can perceive reality and resist violence. See ‘Do We Want School or Education?’

You might consider supporting others to become more powerful. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

You might also consider how your diet and healthcare could usefully be revised to empower you to resist medical propaganda, particularly given the extensively documented death-dealing for which corporate medicine is responsible. See, for example, ‘Pharma Death Clock’.

If you wish to strategically resist the elite coup, you can read about nonviolent strategy, including strategic goals for doing so, from here: Coup Strategic Aims.

Remaining pages on this website fully explain the twelve components of the strategy, as illustrated by the Nonviolent Strategy Wheel, as well as articles and videos explaining all of the vital points of strategy and tactics, such as those to help you understand ‘Nonviolent Action: Why and How it Works’ and ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’.

Given the complexity of the configuration of this conflict, however, which involves the need to fight simultaneously to retain our essential humanity, defeat the elite coup and avert near-term human extinction, it is important that our tactical choices are strategically-oriented (as are those listed on the Strategic Aims page nominated above). Hence, three further considerations assume importance.

First, choose/design tactics that have strategic impact, that is, they fundamentally and permanently alter, in our favor, the power relationship between the elite and us.

Second, when tactical choices are made, focus them on undermining the elite coup, not just features of it, such as ‘social distancing’ or the lockdowns. At its most basic, this can be achieved by using tactical choices that mobilize people to act initially, as is happening, but then inviting them to consider taking further, more focused, action as well (such as those nominated in the strategic goals referenced above). This is important if our actions are to have impact on key underlying measures, such as those being taken by the elite to advance the fourth industrial revolution, including the robotization of humans for war-fighting.

Third, choose/design tactics that also have strategic impact on the greatest threats to human survival, including the collapsing biodiversity on Earth, the threat of nuclear war, the climate catastrophe and the deployment of 5G. Given the incredibly short timeframe in which we are now working to avert human extinction, while people are mobilizing it is important to use this opportunity to give them the chance to perceive the ‘big picture’ of what is taking place – beyond lockdowns and other measures supposedly being used to tackle Covid-19 – and to act powerfully in response.

Fortunately, as more people become aware of the deeper strands of what is taking place, the energy to break the lockdowns, resist other limitations on our rights and freedoms (such as contact tracing, Covid-19 testing/temperature checks, mask-wearing and vaccinations) as well as resist the coup itself will gather pace. As I have previously outlined, using a locally relevant focus, or perhaps several, for which many people would traditionally be together – a cultural, religious or sporting event, a nonviolent action, a community activity such as working to establish a community garden to increase local self-reliance, a celebration and/or a return to work – we can mobilize people to collectively resist. As has been happening.

If you wish to focus on powerfully resisting one of the primary threats to human existence – nuclear war, the deployment of 5G, the collapse of biodiversity and/or the climate catastrophe – you can read about nonviolent strategy, including strategic goals to focus your campaigns, from here: Campaign Strategic Aims.

You might also consider joining those who are powerful enough to recognize the critical importance of reduced consumption and greater self-reliance as essential elements of these strategies by participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’. While you over-consume or are dependent on the elite for your survival, in any way, you are vulnerable.

Conclusion

There is no SARS-CoV-2 virus. There is no Covid-19 disease. Therefore, you cannot be tested for it, you cannot ‘prevent’ infection by social distancing, wearing a mask, vaccination or being under house arrest. You cannot ‘catch’ a virus that does not exist.

Meanwhile, the elite coup to deny you your rights as a free, autonomous human being tightens its grip, inflicts enormous psychological and physical violence in a staggering variety of forms on those imprisoned in their homes (if they have one), kills those throughout Africa, Asia and elsewhere unable to survive in the severely disrupted global economy – see ‘WFP chief warns of “hunger pandemic” as Global Food Crises Report launched’ and ‘COVID-19 could kill more people through hunger than the disease itself, warns Oxfam’– and accelerates the rush to extinction on four separate counts.

You can submit to tyranny or you can resist it.

And if you cannot do it for yourself, do it for the children. They deserve a better world than the short-lived one that is rapidly unfolding.

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ANNEX

In addition, you are welcome to consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

Or, if you want something simpler, consider committing to:

The Earth Pledge 

Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:

1. I will listen deeply to children. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.
2. I will not travel by plane
3. I will not travel by car
4. I will not eat meat and fish
5. I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food
6. I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
7. I will not own or use a mobile (cell) phone
8. I will not buy rainforest timber
9. I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
10. I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
11. I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
12. I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
13. I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
14. I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.

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Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is [email protected] and his website is here. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The COVID-19 pandemic did not stop U.S. protectionism and its trade disputes with the rest of the world, especially with China and the European Union. In actual fact, it deepened the conflict. This behaviour anticipates very complicated post-pandemic international trade, which can exacerbate the protectionist tendencies of developed economies and, therefore, affect the global recovery.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) now estimates a drop of up to 18.5% in the exchange of goods and services internationally for this year. Instead of a framework for cooperation and coordination to address the global crisis caused by COVID-19, the U.S. has complicated cooperation between powers.

World trade fell sharply in the first half of the year, due to the impact of the pandemic on the world economy. WTO economists estimate that the volume of trade will fall sharply in 2020, but it is unlikely it will be the worst-case scenario forecast made in April, which expected a contraction of 32%. According to WTO statistics, the volume of merchandise trade declined 3% in the first quarter. Initial estimates for the second quarter point to a year-on-year decline of 18.5%.

“The collapse in trade we are currently witnessing reaches historic levels; in fact, it is the most pronounced that we have evidence for. But there is an important positive side to this phenomenon, and that is that it could have been much worse,” said Director General Roberto Azevêdo.

The very sharp drop in the GDP of most countries due to the pandemic has immediately caused a sharp decline in international trade. The French-based Argentine economist Bruno Susani wrote that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump seeks to organize world trade based on the needs of maintaining its economic dominance.

A 2014 document from the Argentine Foreign Ministry warns that the established rules favour a small but very powerful group of developed economies and does not prevent the U.S. from being the most demanding country in the WTO and the main violator of the organization’s regulations. The U.S. deploys a wide range of illegitimate barriers to impede the entry of certain imported products that could compete with its domestic production.

The U.S. has the most experience in applying protectionist barriers and employs a broad set of trade-distorting measures, such as tariff caps on certain primary products, tariff quotas, export subsidies and technical barriers, among others. While postulating free trade in international forums, the U.S. has protectionist measures for its local markets.

In the last two years, the Trump administration accounts for half of the complaints that have been presented to the WTO. The U.S. has received the largest number of lawsuits in the history of the WTO, with 121 accusations. It is also the one that has lost the most cases in the WTO. Washington has been convicted in 75% of cases. This behaviour is accompanied by a series of commercial reprisals initiated by the U.S.

The U.S. does not only have a trade war with China, a country that is considered a threat, but Washington also has established trade restrictions with European countries, South Korea, Brazil and other countries that are supposedly considered as allies.

The decision by Trump to raise tariffs on steel and aluminium, and the consequent response of the European Union to raise tariffs on other U.S. goods, was a breach of the rules of coexistence in international trade between allies. Protectionist measures are placed whenever the interests of U.S. companies face a difficult situation to maintain their position in the domestic market or to preserve dominance in international markets.

Economist Silvio Guaita explained that the U.S. represents 25% of the world Gross Product, a percentage that is higher if the productions of subsidiaries and affiliates of its multinationals installed in other countries are counted. Its economy is important but is no longer the sole economic engine of the world since China and its area of ​​influence in Asia have also become an important driver of the international economy. That is why the protectionist policy and the trade war waged by the U.S. can provoke a slow exit from the current global crisis.

Among the 500 largest companies in the world, according to Forbes, there are already almost as many Chinese companies as American. In practice, this crisis has shown that China plays a more important role in global production, trade, tourism, and commodity markets today compared to the U.S.

Since 2018, the U.S. has been increasing trade disputes, especially with China. At the beginning of this year, before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, they had reached an agreement in principle, with important conditions for China. But after that deal, the Trump administration accused China, without any evidence, of spreading the coronavirus. This confrontational strategy has another front – ​​technology and telecommunications. Trump restricted Chinese telecommunications company Huawei, which is ahead in developing 5G technology compared to U.S. firms. The White House argues that this decision was due to a threat to its “national security.”

In this instance of dispute between the two powers, there is no WTO and no other international body with powers to intervene and stop this escalation that puts the stability of the world economy at risk. By maintaining such an aggressive policy, the U.S. is only hindering the global economic recovery as we slowly begin approaching the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

On Baghdad’s al-Rashid street, stalls, tea houses and restaurants serve unmasked customers in crammed markets in spite of COVID-19 rapidly spreading among the populace. This busy street in Baghdad is a testament to pre-existing governance failure that has been felt in many developing countries reeling from the impact of COVID-19 on their economies.

Nearby at al-Rusafi Square, exhausted porters pulling back-breaking cargo intersect in a cobweb of traffic threads under the scorching sun of Iraq’s merciless summer. A horse on a leash looks on as drivers of taxis-turned-buses yell for the last passenger to fill an empty seat. Honking mingles with a stream of slurs spouted off by an angry driver who wants through, but cannot. A daily repertoire of mayhem plays on, and the din resonates across the square where car bombs incinerated many humans in recent years.

People most vulnerable to poverty are presented with no alternatives encouraging them to stay indoors. The absence of financial support is pushing them to resume their labor in risky environments. While easing movement restrictions enables daily workers to provide for their families, authorities have not provided any mobile health awareness teams in packed markets, nor arranged the distribution of increasingly-expensive face masks.

In Iraq, as is the case elsewhere in countries facing the multifaceted challenge posed by the pandemic, fragile groups of people are left to fend for themselves as the government kneecaps itself in the race to contain the spread of the COVID-19 infection.

“We would die of hunger”

For residents of the many impoverished areas of downtown and eastern Baghdad, staying indoors is an unattainable luxury. “We would die of hunger,” says Mohammed Turki, a 44-year-old porter sitting on the edge of a nearby ally.

Turki has been working as a porter for the past sixteen years, at best earning somewhat around $20 a day. But “that’s if I could find work,” he says. Otherwise, his daily wage ferrying merchandise in Baghdad’s markets doesn’t exceed $8– barely enough to feed his four children.

Today, one pack of surgical masks costs around $13 in Baghdad.

Around noon, shop owners at and nearby al-Rusafi Square who complain of plunging sales roll down the shutters. The economic consequences of COVID-19 cast a pall over many livelihoods.

Echoing World Bank projections that poverty will increase by the double in 2020, a report by the Iraqi Ministry of Planning, with support of UNICEF and other organizations, found that “an additional 4.5 million (11.7%) of Iraqis risk falling below the poverty line as a result of the socio-economic impact of COVID-19. This sharp increase would bring the national poverty rate to 31.7% from 20% in 2018.”

In post-invasion Iraq, consecutive governments have either failed or lacked the will to diversify the country’s oil-dependent economy. They kept the national industry and agriculture in limbo and turned their eyes on flooding the Iraqi market with imported goods instead.

A recent study by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on the impact of COVID-19 and the drop in oil prices says, “high levels of conflict, coupled with the COVID-19 outbreak and the drop in oil revenues, can further increase extreme poverty.”

View of al-Rusafi Square in Baghdad, Iraq on 14 July 2020 | Picture by Nabil Salih. All rights reserved

Ali Tawfiq is one of those at risk of sliding deeper into poverty if a full lockdown to curtail the spread of COVID-19 is imposed again. He sees no alternative but to pull a handcart through crowded markets to care for himself, his blind father, and two disabled brothers: a vendor and a porter.

“I am the one who supports my family. Not showing up at the market means I will not be able to eat or drink,” he says.

Legacy of war

Nineteen-year-old Tawfiq is from generations of downtrodden victims of the war the US and its allies waged against Iraq in 2003. He started working as a porter at the age of ten. Few years into the occupation, he lost his sister in a terrorist attack. “My sister died in a car bomb explosion in al-Mansour in 2007. She was only ten,” he says.

The CNN report earlier this week alleging that Iran paid bounties to the Taliban to kill US troops aims to reinforce the narrative that Tehran supports “terrorists”, portray the country as an obstacle to peace in Afghanistan, and lastly prompt multilateral sanctions pressure upon it.

Diana Johnstone has written a compelling and insightful book. It is mostly a review and analysis of significant events from the past 55 years. It concludes with her assessment of different trends that are being debated on the Left today including “identity politics”, Antifa and censorship.  This is a book to be read, enjoyed and discussed.  

“Circle in the Darkness” gives glimpses into Johnstone’s personal life. She was born in St. Paul, Minnesota and grew up there and in Washington DC. She studied and taught at the University of Minnesota before moving and living most of her life in Europe – mostly in France with stints in Germany and Italy.

Her parents divorced when she was young. She had a special love and connection with her father who, ironically, was an analyst for the Pentagon.  Evidently he also had an open and critical mind, writing the memoir “From MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning”.

Diana had a daughter at a relatively young age and largely raised her on her own. She finished her PhD in French literature, then worked as a teacher, translator,  photographer and journalist.

There are interesting observations and comparisons. As Diana and her daughter moved between Minnesota and France, she compared the different educational systems. She notes, “There is a tendency in American grade schools for the kids to gang up against whichever unfortunate schoolmate has been selected by class bullies for tormenting ….. from my observation it is not like this in France.”  She also describes the difficulties being a single mother before it was more common.

The book is full of insights based on her first hand experience living in Yugoslavia as a young exchange student, being a photographer for Associated Press, translating news reports for Agence France Presse,  reporting on the end of the Cold War for “In These Times” and being press officer for the coalition of Green Parties in the newly formed European Union.

Grass Roots Activism

One theme running through the book is the need to reach out and engage with regular people. She recounts her experiences opposing the US war on Vietnam.  Johnstone and her allies launched a campaign to educate and engage with regular Minnesotans, to explain what was happening in Vietnam and why the war should be opposed. She helped organize teams of students and teachers who went door to door in Minneapolis. Later, they sent a citizens delegation to Paris to meet with and hear from the Vietnamese representatives. Afterward, they reported back to communities throughout the state and country. Johnstone says these actions did not get the media attention but deepened opposition to the war in profound ways.  The students and teachers going into the neighborhoods had to educate themselves in advance; they learned from the questions (and sometimes opposition) of community members; the delegation which met the Vietnamese representatives in Paris were deeply impressed and conveyed their experience on their return.

Johnstone is an unusually perceptive analyst. For example, her analysis of the Watergate scandal and Nixon resignation raises important but overlooked issues. Rather than seeing this as the hallmark of investigative journalism, she notes that it established the model of journalism relying on unidentified government sources. Looking back, the Watergate scandal effectively deflected attention from the ongoing slaughter in Southeast Asia. “Getting rid of Nixon was a brilliant coup that united generations, torn asunder by opposing attitudes toward the war …..Watergate washed away the national sins. It prepared America to be ‘born again’ first as the innocent Gerald Ford and then as the good Christian Jimmy Carter, champion of human rights.”  Moreover “The shenanigans around Watergate were a distraction from the most significant acts of the Nixon administration, in particular the shakeup of the world economy by the August 1971 decision to suspend (meaning to end) the convertibility of the dollar into gold. This was a direct result of the huge U.S. debt resulting from the cost of the Vietnam War.”

The author has a stark assessment of what happened to the Left. “As for the American antiwar movement, half a century later, it has vanished almost without a trace as an influential political force. There are perhaps more intelligent critics of war than ever before, but they are largely confined to the virtual world of the web, without significant impact on a political system which is totally integrated into a military industrial complex that relies on endless conflicts.”

Critical International Events

Through her work at Associate Press and Agence France Presse, Johnstone saw how stories are selected and prioritized depending on establishment bias. She also saw how the media can promote certain types of protest leaders. There are critical assessments of some protest leaders who became famous including Daniel Cohn Bendit. She gives a scathing critique of celebrity French philosopher Bernard Henri Levy.

Johnson has valuable insights on many events over the 1970’s and 80’s.  A few examples are

• the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme, who was likely behind it  and how it has led to Swedish subservience to the US
• the causes and consequences of the assassination of Aldo Moro by ultra-leftists in Italy
• the murder of Palestinian moderate Dr. Issa Sartawi at a Socialist Party conference
• the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II by a Turkish militant and the propaganda campaign trying to link him to Bulgaria and Soviet Union
• the growing influence of Israel in western foreign policy

In the 1980’s and early 1990’s,  Johnstone watched closely, interviewed key players and reported on the rise of detente between the USA and Soviet Union She concludes, “Not enough credit is given to Mikhail Gorbachev and to the 1980s peace movement”.

The book is subtitled “Memoirs of a World Watcher”. Johnstone describes how radical islamists were used to undermine the socialist Afghanistan government beginning 1979.  When the Soviet Union collapsed, the US had no restraints. She summarizes “Mikhail Gorbachev was a naive negotiator, outfoxed by the Americans”  and “The total surrender of ‘real existing’ communism in the East contributed to the defeat of the Western Left”.

In 1991 the US seemingly invited Saddam Hussein to go into Kuwait, then built up a huge force to expel and then massacre thousands of retreating Iraqi soldiers. With operation “Desert Storm” viewed as a military success,  President Bush declared  “The Vietnam syndrome is over!”

Yugoslavia and “Humanitarian Imperialism”

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, neoliberal economic policies quickly dominated the globe. The European Union was formed in 1992.  Johnstone describes how the EU imposed rules and requirements that favored private banks and institutions and restricted or prevented state intervention and solutions.  Yugoslavia, as the sole remaining socialist holdout, was under increasing pressure and media attack.

Johnstone describes how “humanitarian imperialism” emerged at this time.  With the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) needed a new mandate and reason for existing.  They found this new purpose in media distortion and demonization of Serbia and Yugoslavia. NATO promoted the “Kosovo Liberation Army” and other divisive elements then bombed Serbia for 78 consecutive days. Yugoslavia was broken into pieces.

In 2002 Johnstone wrote a book about the NATO attack, western propaganda and show trial. Her book is titled “Fool’s Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions”. She was attacked in the media for challenging the dominant assumptions about the conflict. She responded to the attacks saying,” I do not deny atrocities, but unlike others I give them a political context.”  Others strongly defended her. Canadian law professor Michael Mandel wrote, “Fools Crusade is not only the definitive work on the Balkans Wars, it is also an inspiring example of how to rescue truth from the battlefield when it has become war’s first casualty”.

Western media distortion and intervention in Yugoslavia went almost unopposed. The antiwar movement was widely confused and silent.  This was followed by the US invasions of Afghanistan then Iraq.

Along with media distortions and comparisons to Hitler and the Holocaust,  there emerged the justification for violating national sovereignty based on the “Right to Protect” (R2P). This was the pretext for overthrowing the Libyan government of Moammar Gadhafi.  Johnstone discusses how R2P has been used to confuse and silence antiwar forces, even some prominent traditional antiwar analysts. Johnstone has interacted with Noam Chomsky many times over decades and is overall very positive. But she notes that “even he might get something wrong”.  She documents how the co-author of  “Manufacturing Consent” was evidently fooled into believing media reports from Benghazi Libya. Chomsky said the western sponsored uprising was “wonderful”. It is now clear that media reports and NGO accusations from Benghazi were false.  They were the pretense to launch the NATO campaign to overthrow the government.

Western intervention, including the sponsorship of terrorist armies in Syria, has been sold to the unwitting public using this model.  Wherever the US and NATO wish to intervene, there is a “humanitarian crisis” and “responsibility to protect”.

Critical Current Issues

“Circle in the Darkness” analyzes many current issues of contention and debate on the left. She argues that suppression of debate and free speech, whether by the Right or Left, is counter-productive. She also argues that violence and vandalism hurts the progressive cause even when it gives a spurt of publicity and media attention.  She describes many examples over the past 50 years and how frequently the instigators were government or police agents.

Johnstone describes the spectacular growth of the “Yellow Vest” movement in France. She documents how it began, how it was supported and joined by common people and how it reached across party lines.  She contrasts the broad support of the Yellow Vest movement with narrow support of the student protests of May 1968.  She writes,  “Sociologically, this revolt was the opposite of May ’68. Instead of privileged students, imagining a non-existent working class revolution in a time of prosperity, this was the working class itself , in hard times.”

Johnstone describes how French police then attacked the Yellow Vest protesters with many injuries and even deaths. She writes, “Curiously, all this heavy handed repression totally failed to prevent masked ‘Black Bloc’ members from taking advantage of this opportunity to attack the police, set fires, break shop windows ….. Police did nothing to prevent unidentified intruders from invading the ground floor of the Arc de Triomphe to smash up a statue of Marianne…. It is noteworthy that almost all the seriously injured were peaceful Yellow Vest protesters, whereas the Black Blocs often got away unscathed. Perhaps the Black Blocs believe they are fighting the system. Whatever their intentions, they have served as a useful auxiliary to government repression.” 

Johnstone notes the massive media effort to control popular thoughts and anger. “The mainstream media have moved farther and farther away from informing the public and nearer to instructing them in what they should think and do.” She thinks the Left is also infused with dogma.  Diana Johnstone recounts the falling out with Counterpunch magazine after they published a “barrage of attacks” on the analyst and writer Caitlin Johnstone (no relation).  “That was indeed the start of Caitlin’s rise to great prominence in anti-war circles and beginning of CounterPunch’s decline from ‘fearless muckraking’ to snide sniping at the genuine heirs to the independent spirit of the founder, Alexander Cockburn. The gist of the CounterPunch attacks on the Australian Johnstone were that she dared say she would join even with someone on the right against war. That is simple good sense, but it was picked up by the Antifa purification squad as proof of tendencies toward fascism. When I saw them coming after Caitlin, I figured they’d be coming after me, and that my association with CounterPunch was soon coming to an end.”

Johnstone argues in favor of working for peace with all forces which agree on that issue, whether or not they agree on all issues of “identity politics”.  She argues that we should not be distracted from the root causes of war and social inequality.  When the Left focuses on the fringe right, the establishment is not only happy, they encourage and promote this diversion.

“The specialty of the AntiFa is to situate the threat of tyranny on the powerless margins of society – from isolated groups of costume party neo-Nazis to outspoken persons on the left accused of ‘red-brown’ tendencies. This amounts to keeping the Left herded into its sheep pen, while the wolves roam freely.”

Johnstone is  hopeful and encouraged by two things: a new generation of truth seekers and the fact that life is full of surprises.

This book is full of insights and analysis about where the world is at and how we got here. It includes important ideas and thoughts about what we can do to resist the drift toward global war and catastrophe. Above all, Diana Johnstone argues for the importance of discussion, debate and keeping it real.

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Rick Sterling is an independent journalist based in the SF Bay  Area. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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

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Circle in the Darkness: Memoir of a World Watcher

Author: Diana Johnstone

Publisher: Clarity Press

Click here to order.

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On July 29, YouTube terminated Del Bigtree’s “The Highwire” account after he posted a video of Del and me discussing my debate with Alan Dershowitz on vaccine mandates. YouTube also purged hundreds of other truthful videos on vaccines.

YouTube’s owner, Google, is effectively a vaccine company. Two subsidiaries of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, market and manufacture vaccines: Calico and Verily. Arthur Levinson, Genentech’s former CEO, runs Calico, an anti-aging drug company while Verily teams with Pharma to conduct drug and vaccine clinical trials.

In 2016, Alphabet inked a $715 million deal with GlaxoSmithKline to create Galvani, another venture to develop bioelectronic medicines and vaccines and to mine medical information from Google customers. Google’s Customer Services President, Mary Ellen Coe, sits on Merck’s board.

In 2016, Google partnered with Sanofi launching Onduo, a virtual diabetes clinic and in 2018 in another business that uses analytics to develop new drugs and vaccines.

In 2018, Google invested $27,000,000 in Vaccitech to make vaccines for flu, MERS, and prostate cancer. Vaccitech calls itself “the future of mass vaccine production.” In 2020, Vaccitech started work on a COVID vaccine. Google claims to provide politically and commercially neutral searches, but it systemically manipulates search results to suppress accurate vaccine safetyand efficacy information and steers users toward deceptive and fraudulent Pharma propaganda.

Google’s algorithms censor negative information about COVID vaccines and positive information about therapies like hydroxychloroquine that compete with the vaccines in development. Google censors reports that diminish public panic about COVID-19. Google’s definition of “misinformation” is “any information, even if accurate and true, which criticizes vaccination products.” Facebook and Google hired “FactChecker” (Politifact) to censor vaccine misinformation.

Politifact was launched by a grant from the Gates Foundation, the world’s largest vaccine promoter. Google’s orchestrated censorship across social media is crippling legitimate debates over international vaccination policies. This is a crisis for liberal democracies.

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Featured image is from CHD

Every summer is hot, and every summer there are heatwaves, but what we are witnessing in 2020 is rewriting all of the rules.  It has been blistering hot across the Southwest, and record after record is being broken.  In a year when we have had a seemingly endless series of things go wrong, we definitely didn’t need a historic heatwave to hit us, and it is causing all sorts of problems.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we will be getting any relief for at least a few more days, because it is being reported that record-setting heat is “expected to last throughout the week”…

As many as 52 million people remain under heat alerts in the West on Monday, where some could see temperatures between 110 and 130 degrees. The heat is expected to last throughout the week, possibly setting more than 100 new daily record highs.

A high temperature of 100 degrees is really hot, a high temperature of 110 degrees is dangerously hot, a high temperature of 120 degrees is catastrophically hot, and a high temperature of 130 degrees is not supposed to happen.

But it just did.

On Sunday, the high temperature in Death Valley reached 130 degrees…

A temperature of 130 degrees Fahrenheit (54.4 degrees Celsius) recorded in California’s Death Valley on Sunday by the US National Weather Service could be the hottest ever measured with modern instruments, officials say.

The reading was registered at 3:41 pm at the Furnace Creek Visitor Center in the Death Valley national park by an automated observation system — an electronic thermometer encased inside a box in the shade.

Prior to Sunday, modern instruments had never measured a temperature that high anywhere in the world.

The old all-time global record of 134 degrees has stood since 1913, but the validity of that old record has been heavily disputed…

In 1913, a weather station half an hour’s walk away recorded what officially remains the world record of 134 degrees Fahrenheit (56.7 degrees Celsius).

But its validity has been disputed for a number of reasons: regional weather stations at the time didn’t report an exceptional heatwave, and there were questions around the researcher’s competence.

In any event, everyone can agree that what happened on Sunday was truly a historic event, and it definitely wasn’t an isolated incident.

Just one day before, we witnessed a new daily record high temperature in Sacramento…

Downtown Sacramento set a new record-high temperature of 111 degrees on Saturday, during what is the biggest heatwave of the year so far in the area.

And that came on the heels of Palm Springs absolutely smashing a daily record on Friday…

Palm Springs shattered the previous record of 117° for today’s date by recording 120° this afternoon! Thermal set a record for the ‘highest minimum’ for the days date with a low temperature of just 92° this morning.

Needless to say, all of this heat is putting an enormous amount of strain on California’s power system as people endlessly stay indoors and try to cool off.  In fact, things have gotten so bad that authorities just announced “the first rolling blackouts in the state since 2001”…

As California struggles to rebound from the coronavirus pandemic, wilting heat and wildfires, it’s facing another dangerous crisis: blackouts.

As temperatures broke records across the state, California energy officials announced the first rolling blackouts in the state since 2001 and warned that the state was bracing for what could be the largest power outage it has ever seen, likely on Monday.

Do you remember those crazy days back in 2001?

It seems like it was just yesterday that the Enron scandal erupted, but it really was almost 20 years ago.

Where has the time gone?

Officials are hoping that the rolling blackouts in California will be limited to this week, but they aren’t making any promises.

Meanwhile, record high temperatures are also happening in Nevada.  Las Vegas has been absolutely baking, and new record highs were being anticipated for both Monday and Tuesday…

It’ll be record-hot on Monday and Tuesday in Las Vegas, according to the National Weather Service, as southern Nevada bakes beneath a heat wave that tied a high-temperature mark on Sunday.

The expected high Monday was 114 degrees (45.56 Celsius) at McCarran International Airport, well above the current record temperature of 111 degrees set Aug. 17, 1939, meteorologist Dan Berc said.

And over in Phoenix, there have already been eight days this year with a high temperature of at least 115 degrees, and that breaks the old record that was set in 1974…

According to the National Weather Service in Phoenix, Phoenix reached 115°F during the afternoon hours of August 17, breaking a record set in 2013.

On August 14, Phoenix tied a record for the date with a high of 117 degrees (47 Celsius). Friday was the eighth day in 2020 with a high of at least 115 degrees (46 Celsius), beating the old record of seven days in 1974, the National Weather Service said.

Quite a few years ago I was in Phoenix during a heatwave, and I remember absolutely scorching the bottoms of my feet when I walked along a concrete path without any shoes on.

Dangerous heat is a constant reality this time of the year in Phoenix, but residents have learned how to live with it.

However, the record heat that we are seeing this year combined with extremely dry conditions have created an ideal environment for giant dust storms, and the millions of people living in the area have been warned that some are likely in the days ahead.

Throughout the Southwest, we are starting to see alarming patterns emerge.  If you look at the latest U.S. Drought Monitor map, you will notice that nearly the entire Southwest is already in some stage of drought right now.  In the 1930s, very high temperatures and exceedingly dry conditions for months on end combined to create “the Dust Bowl”, and many are concerned that something similar may now be starting to happen.

Even if you are not yet convinced that a new “Dust Bowl” is coming, everyone should be able to agree that what we are witnessing in the Southwest right now is very, very unusual.

In so many ways, our world seems to be going completely nuts right now, and many believe that this is just the beginning.

The good news is that September is coming, and that means that the weather in the Southwest should begin to cool off a bit.

But throughout this year it has just been one crisis after another, and we shall see what else 2020 has in store for us in the months ahead.

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Michael Snyder’s brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com. He publishes thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News which are republished across other news outlets.

Featured image is from EOTAD

The UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) on Tuesday found Salim Jamil Ayyash guilty of conspiracy to kill former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri and 21 others in a 2005 bombing.

There was insufficient evidence against three other men charged as accomplices in the bombing and they were acquitted, the tribunal found.

Judges said they were “satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt” that the evidence showed that Ayyash possessed “one of six mobiles used by the assassination team” and ruled he was guilty of committing a terrorist attack and of murder.

They were also satisfied that the 56-year-old Ayyash “had associations with Hezbollah”.

Hariri’s son, Saad, also a former Lebanese prime minister, said he accepts the verdict and said it was time for the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement to assume responsibility.

“Hezbollah is the one that should make sacrifices today,” he said. “I repeat: we will not rest until punishment is served.”

Earlier on Tuesday, the court said there was no evidence the leadership of Hezbollah or the Syrian government were involved in the killing.

Hariri, who had close ties with the United States, Western and Gulf Arab allies, was seen as a threat to Iranian and Syrian influence in Lebanon.

“The trial chamber is of the view that Syria and Hezbollah may have had motives to eliminate Mr Hariri and his political allies, however, there is no evidence that the Hezbollah leadership had any involvement in Mr Hariri’s murder and there is no direct evidence of Syrian involvement,” said Judge David Re, reading a summary of the court’s decision.

Billionaire Hariri’s assassination plunged Lebanon into what was then its worst crisis since the 1975-90 civil war, leading to the withdrawal of Syrian forces and setting the stage for years of confrontation between rival political factions.

Hezbollah has denied any involvement in the 14 February 2005 bombing.

The case has been overshadowed by the Beirut blast earlier this month, the largest in Lebanon’s history, that killed 178 people and drew outraged demands for accountability.

During the trial, victims spoke powerfully in court about lost family members.

The reading of the verdict, which was scheduled to last six hours, was being broadcast by video, with only a handful of public and press allowed into the courtroom due to the coronavirus pandemic.

‘Chief defendant had Hezbollah associations’

DNA evidence showed the blast that killed Hariri was carried out by a male suicide bomber who was never identified.

Prosecutors used mobile phone records to argue that the men on trial, Ayyash, Hassan Habib Merhi, Assad Hassan Sabra and Hussein Hassan Oneissi, carefully monitored Hariri’s movements in the months leading up to the attack to time it and to put forward a fake claim of responsibility as a diversion.

Along with Ayyash, judges also said on Tuesday they were satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Oneissi was the main user of another of the phones.

However, they said they were not satisfied with the evidence linking the phones with the two other suspects, Merhi and Sabra.

Bombing ‘mastermind’

The judges said evidence also linked phones to the alleged mastermind of the bombing, Hezbollah commander Mustafa Badreddine – who was indicted by the court but killed near Damascus in May 2016.

Prosecutors said Ayyash was a ringleader of the group, while Oneissi and Sabra allegedly sent a fake video to the Al-Jazeera news channel claiming responsibility on behalf of a made-up group. Merhi had been accused of general involvement in the plot.

While prosecutors had shown that the suspects used mobile phones to coordinate the attack, the judges said on Tuesday that they did not sufficiently connect the suspects to a false claim made immediately after the attack by people who must have known Hariri would be killed.

“The prosecution has therefore not proved its case beyond reasonable doubt [against three suspects’] participation in the false claim of responsibility for the attack on Hariri,” said Judge Janet Nosworthy.

Court-appointed lawyers had said there there was no physical evidence linking the defendants to the crime and they should be acquitted.

‘Lebanon needs to see law and justice’

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Friday he was not concerned with the trial and that if any members of the group were convicted, it would stand by their innocence.

Hezbollah’s Al Manar TV and the pro-Damascus Al Mayadeen channel did not cover the trial, which other broadcasters in Lebanon were airing live.

Beirut tour guide Nada Nammour, 54, speaking before the reading of the verdict began, told Reuters that the crime should be punished.

“Lebanon needs to see law and justice… We were born in war, we lived in war and will die in it, but our children deserve a future,” she said.

The verdict in The Hague may further complicate an already tumultuous situation after the 4 August blast and the resignation of the government backed by Hezbollah and its allies.

Port blast in focus

The judgment had initially been expected earlier this month, but was delayed after the port explosion.

The investigation and trial in absentia of the four Hezbollah members has taken 15 years and cost roughly $1bn.

It could result in a guilty verdict and later sentencing of up to life imprisonment, or acquittal.

The hybrid court, with Lebanese criminal law and a mix of international and Lebanese judges, could serve as a model if Beirut decides to prosecute this month’s explosion, Reuters reported.

Some Lebanese say they are now more concerned with finding out the truth behind the Beirut port blast.

“I do want to know what the verdict is… but what matters now is who did this [port blast] to us because this touched more people,” Francois, a volunteer helping victims in a ruined district, told Reuters.

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The U.S. Postal Service is under threat of collapse and privatization. This comes after years of federal political maneuvering that has effectively depleted revenues and staffing – issues now amplified by new cuts to overtime worker pay and slowed delivery.

This matters now more than ever as the COVID-19 pandemic rages, and ahead of November elections when many Americans anticipate voting by mail in order to stay safe.

But the impacts of degrading the USPS go beyond simply making mail service less reliable and hindering the ability of Americans to fairly exercise their right to vote.

As an urban designer and scholar of American cities, I have long witnessed the effects that these kinds of intentional public sector degradations have on the social and physical fabric of American cities.

The post office shapes American public and private life in cities and towns, large and small. A dismantled USPS erodes American social ties, neighborhoods and even families.

A democratizing institution

The post office is what urban designers call a “local public anchor institution.” These are the shared civic buildings, services and spaces accessible by all and benefiting all, and they also include public schools, libraries and parks. They support the population without discrimination, through economic downturns and even during pandemics.

There was a time when institutions like the post office served as the civic and economic backbone of the country. After the Great Depression, investing in the USPS was a key element of the New Deal’s massive employment policy agenda and national civic building and arts programs. Those investments built avenues to middle-class jobs for minorities and veterans – opportunities that the USPS still provides today.

There’s a democratizing quality to the service. No matter what city or suburb you live in, everyone can recognize the ubiquitous blue mailboxes, which enable all citizens to send mail to any location on Earth.

While the mailboxes unite the country under one aesthetic, individual post offices highlight the rich diversity of American regionalism.

On Nantucket, the post office is a grey, weathered, cedar-shingled bungalow. Along the Detroit River, it’s a boat – with its own floating ZIP code and “mail-in-the-pail” system that delivers mail to and from ships.

In Chicken, Alaska, the post office is a log cabin, and La Jolla, California, residents recently fought to save their tile-roofed southern California Mission-style branch.

These quirky local anchors connect people to particularities of time and place. Significantly, in 2012 the National Trust for Historic Preservation added historic post offices to their list of endangered buildings.

Meanwhile the bigger, main post offices like those in St. Louis, Washington, D.C. and New Orleans are treasured architectural marvels that span entire city blocks. Built at the turn of the 20th century and now on the National Register of Historic Places, their grand designs represent ambitious public investment and confidence in the government’s role to foster trade, commerce and communication.

St. Louis’ old post office is on the National Register of Historic Places. Library of Congress

Eroded ideals

Are those ambitions already defeated?

Like all U.S. public institutions, the post office has endured decades of defunding. The 1970 Postal Reorganization Act, for example, established the USPS as a government agency that, even though it would remain under control of Congress, would not be able to receive any tax revenue. In 2006, the USPS was further undermined by a Republican-led congressional mandate requiring it to pre-fund 75 years of retiree pensions.

As the USPS has been steadily hollowed out, its collective assets have been leased or auctioned off to private developers.

The D.C. Post Office – built in 1899 – is now a Trump Hotel. Chicago’s Old Main Post Office, now under private ownership, recently vied to become Amazon’s second headquarters.

If the architectural design of public buildings serves as an outward expression of how a government values its people and places, it seems as though recent administrations have thought less and less of regular Americans and good urbanism.

Many post office branches built in the last 30 years are cheap and formulaic skeletons of their prior incarnations. You can find them in strip malls.

These bland buildings align with corporate imperatives that excise certain design elements for the sake of economic efficiency. Solid wood, high ceilings, natural light or design particulars in tune with local conditions are usually the first to go. This happens even though, as a public good, the USPS cannot technically – nor should it ethically – compete with private companies.

What are we left with when collective anchors are no longer designed as aspirational, creative places for public life to play out? Can you find a contextually designed FedEx store that reflects the same kinds of optimism and durability of early U.S. post offices?

Reinforcing our social networks

Even as the richest aesthetic dimensions of the post office are cut from budgets, its social benefits live on. Mail carriers have unexpectedly helped people trapped or caught in house fires, and have even aided victims of human trafficking. For one 11-year old stuck at home during the pandemic, her mail carrier became a new pen pal and friend.

Many smaller town post office branches double as social hubs. In Truxton, Missouri, the post office is also the news center, a bus shelter and after-school stop for kids to get candy.

Public institutions like the Postal Service allow people to forge new relationships outside of their normal circles. My mom texts her Northern Virginia mailwoman, Carla. Letter carriers, some of whom have walked the same route for years, watch families grow and change.

These moments of social solidarity enrich life in cities and towns in the same way that architecture does.

Today the USPS stands as one of the last public, civic institutions left in American cities and towns. Unlike libraries, schools or parks, the USPS does not receive external private philanthropic support. This is just as well, since subsidies and outsourcing can influence decision-making and cloud accountability.

As the Postal Service teeters – economically sabotaged and on the brink of being sold off – it’s all-the-more needed to preserve the durable, social, accessible, sustainable and beautiful cities and towns that citizens deserve.

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Patty Heyda is Associate Professor of Urban Design and Architecture, Washington University in St Louis.

Featured image: The J.W. Westcott II is the country’s only floating ZIP code. cactuspinecone/flickr, CC BY

“Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest—forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries.” ― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

And so it begins again, the never-ending, semi-delusional, train-wreck of an election cycle in which the American people allow themselves to get worked up into a frenzy over the misguided belief that the future of this nation—nay, our very lives—depends on who we elect as president.

For the next three months, Americans will be dope-fed billions of dollars’ worth of political propaganda aimed at keeping them glued to their television sets and persuading them that 1) their votes count and 2) electing the right candidate will fix everything that is wrong with this country.

Incredible, isn’t it, that in a country of more than 330 million people, we are given only two choices for president? How is it that in a country teeming with creative, intelligent, productive, responsible, moral people, our vote too often comes down to pulling the lever for the lesser of two evils?

The system is rigged, of course.

It is a heavily scripted, tightly choreographed, star-studded, ratings-driven, mass-marketed, costly exercise in how to sell a product—in this case, a presidential candidate—to dazzled consumers who will choose image over substance almost every time.

As author Noam Chomsky rightly observed,

“It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars.”

In other words, we’re being sold a carefully crafted product by a monied elite who are masters in the art of making the public believe that they need exactly what is being sold to them, whether it’s the latest high-tech gadget, the hottest toy, or the most charismatic politician.

This year’s presidential election, much like every other election in recent years, is what historian Daniel Boorstin referred to as a “pseudo-event”: manufactured, contrived, confected and devoid of any intrinsic value save the value of being advertised.

After all, who wants to talk about police shootings, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture schemes, private prisons, school-to-prison pipelines, overcriminalization, censorship or any of the other evils that plague our nation when you can tune into a reality show carefully calibrated to appeal to the public’s need for bread and circuses, diversion and entertainment, and pomp and circumstance.

But make no mistake: Americans only think they’re choosing the next president.

In truth, however, they’re engaging in the illusion of participation culminating in the reassurance ritual of voting. It’s just another Blue Pill, a manufactured reality conjured up by the matrix in order to keep the populace compliant and convinced that their vote counts and that they still have some influence over the political process.

It’s all an illusion.

The nation is drowning in debt, crippled by a slowing economy, overrun by militarized police, swarming with surveillance, besieged by endless wars and a military industrial complex intent on starting new ones, and riddled with corrupt politicians at every level of government.

All the while, we’re arguing over which corporate puppet will be given the honor of stealing our money, invading our privacy, abusing our trust, undermining our freedoms, and shackling us with debt and misery for years to come.

Nothing taking place on Election Day will alleviate the suffering of the American people.

Unless we do something more than vote, the government as we have come to know it—corrupt, bloated and controlled by big-money corporations, lobbyists and special interest groups—will remain unchanged. And “we the people”—overtaxed, overpoliced, overburdened by big government, underrepresented by those who should speak for us and blissfully ignorant of the prison walls closing in on us—will continue to trudge along a path of misery.

With roughly 22 lobbyists per Congressman, corporate greed will continue to call the shots in the nation’s capital, while our so-called representatives will grow richer and the people poorer. And elections will continue to be driven by war chests and corporate benefactors rather than such values as honesty, integrity and public service.

Just consider: while billions will be spent on the elections this year, not a dime of that money will actually help the average American in their day-to-day struggles to just get by.

Conveniently, politicians only seem to remember their constituents in the months leading up to an election, and yet “we the people” continue to take the abuse, the neglect, the corruption and the lies. We make excuses for the shoddy treatment, we cover up for them when they cheat on us, and we keep hoping that if we just stick with them long enough, eventually they’ll treat us right.

When a country spends billions of dollars to select what is, for all intents and purposes, a glorified homecoming king or queen to occupy the White House, while tens of millions of its people live in poverty, nearly 18 million Americans are out of work, and most of the country and its economy remain in a state of semi-lockdown due to COVID-19 restrictions, that’s a country whose priorities are out of step with the needs of its people.

Then again, people get the government they deserve.

No matter who wins the presidential election come November, it’s a sure bet that the losers will be the American people if all we’re prepared to do is vote.

As political science professor Gene Sharp notes in starker terms,

“Dictators are not in the business of allowing elections that could remove them from their thrones.”

To put it another way, the Establishment—the shadow government and its corporate partners that really run the show, pull the strings and dictate the policies, no matter who occupies the Oval Office—are not going to allow anyone to take office who will unravel their power structures. Those who have attempted to do so in the past have been effectively put out of commission.

So what is the solution to this blatant display of imperial elitism disguising itself as a populist exercise in representative government?

Stop playing the game. Stop supporting the system. Stop defending the insanity. Just stop.

Washington thrives on money, so stop giving them your money. Stop throwing your hard-earned dollars away on politicians and Super PACs who view you as nothing more than a means to an end. There are countless worthy grassroots organizations and nonprofits working in your community to address real needs like injustice, poverty, homelessness, etc. Support them and you’ll see change you really can believe in in your own backyard.

Politicians depend on votes, so stop giving them your vote unless they have a proven track record of listening to their constituents, abiding by their wishes and working hard to earn and keep their trust.

It’s comforting to believe that your vote matters, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt was right:

“Presidents are selected, not elected.”

Despite what is taught in school and the propaganda that is peddled by the media, a presidential election is not a populist election for a representative. Rather, it’s a gathering of shareholders to select the next CEO, a fact reinforced by the nation’s archaic electoral college system. In other words, your vote doesn’t elect a president. Despite the fact that there are 218 million eligible voters in this country (only half of whom actually vote), it is the electoral college, made up of 538 individuals handpicked by the candidates’ respective parties, that actually selects the next president.

The only thing you’re accomplishing by taking part in the “reassurance ritual” of voting is sustaining the illusion that we have a democratic republic.

In actuality, we are suffering from what political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page more accurately term an “economic élite domination” in which the economic elite (lobbyists, corporations, monied special interest groups) dominate and dictate national policy.

No surprise there.

As an in-depth Princeton University study confirms, democracy has been replaced by oligarchy, a system of government in which elected officials represent the interests of the rich and powerful rather than the average citizen.

We did it to ourselves.

We said nothing while our elections were turned into popularity contests populated by individuals better suited to be talk-show hosts rather than intelligent, reasoned debates on issues of domestic and foreign policy by individuals with solid experience, proven track records and tested integrity.

We turned our backs on things like wisdom, sound judgment, morality and truth, shrugging them off as old-fashioned, only to find ourselves saddled with lying politicians incapable of making fair and impartial decisions.

We let ourselves be persuaded that those yokels in Washington could do a better job of running this country than we could. It’s not a new problem. As former Senator Joseph S. Clark Jr. acknowledged in a 1955 article titled, “Wanted: Better Politicians”:

“[W]e have too much mediocrity in the business of running the government of the country, and it troubles me that this should be so at a time of such complexity and crisis… Government by amateurs, semi-pros, and minor-leaguers will not meet the challenge of our times. We must realize that it takes great competence to run a country which, in spite of itself, has succeeded to world leadership in a time of deadly peril.”

We indulged our craving for entertainment news at the expense of our need for balanced reporting by a news media committed to asking the hard questions of government officials. The result, as former congressman Jim Leach points out, leaves us at a grave disadvantage:

“At a time when in-depth analysis of the issues of the day has never been more important, quality journalism has been jeopardized by financial considerations and undercut by purveyors of ideology who facilely design news, like clothes, to appeal to a market segment.”

We bought into the fairytale that politicians are saviors, capable of fixing what’s wrong with our communities and our lives, when in fact, most politicians lead such sheltered lives that they have no clue about what their constituents must do to make ends meet. As political scientists Morris Fiorina and Samuel Abrams conclude,

“In America today, there is a disconnect between an unrepresentative political class and the citizenry it purports to represent. The political process today not only is less representative than it was a generation ago and less supported by the citizenry, but the outcomes of that process are at a minimum no better.”

We let ourselves be saddled with a two-party system and fooled into believing that there’s a difference between the Republicans and Democrats, when in fact, the two parties are exactly the same. As one commentator noted, both parties support endless war, engage in out-of-control spending, ignore the citizenry’s basic rights, have no respect for the rule of law, are bought and paid for by the corporate elite, care most about their own power, and have a long record of expanding government and shrinking liberty.

Then, when faced with the prospect of voting for the lesser of two evils, many simply compromise their principles and overlook the fact that the lesser of two evils is still evil.

Perhaps worst of all, we allowed the cynicism of our age and the cronyism and corruption of Washington, DC, to discourage us from believing that there was any hope for the American experiment in liberty.

Granted, it’s easy to become discouraged about the state of our nation. We’re drowning under the weight of too much debt, too many wars, too much power in the hands of a centralized government, too many militarized police, too many laws, too many lobbyists, and generally too much bad news.

It’s harder to believe that change is possible, that the system can be reformed, that politicians can be principled, that courts can be just, that good can overcome evil, and that freedom will prevail.

Yet I truly believe that change is possible, that the system can be reformed, that politicians can be principled, that courts can be just, that good can overcome evil, and that freedom can prevail but it will take each and every one of us committed to doing the hard work of citizenship that extends beyond the act of voting.

A healthy, representative government is hard work. It takes a citizenry that is informed about the issues, educated about how the government operates, and willing to make the sacrifices necessary to stay involved.

Most of all, it takes a citizenry willing to do more than grouse and complain.

The powers-that-be want us to believe that our job as citizens begins and ends on Election Day. They want us to believe that we have no right to complain about the state of the nation unless we’ve cast our vote one way or the other. They want us to remain divided over politics, hostile to those with whom we disagree politically, and intolerant of anyone or anything whose solutions to what ails this country differ from our own.

What they don’t want us doing is presenting a united front in order to reject the pathetic excuse for government that is being fobbed off on us.

So where does that leave us?

We’d better stop hanging our hopes on a political savior to rescue us from the clutches of an imperial president.

It’s possible that the next president might be better, but then again, he or she could be far worse.

Remember, presidential elections merely serve to maintain the status quo. Once elected president, that person becomes part of the dictatorial continuum that is the American imperial presidency today.

If we are to return to a constitutional presidency, “we the people” must recalibrate the balance of power.

The first step is to start locally—in your own communities, in your schools, at your city council meetings, in newspaper editorials, at protests—by pushing back against laws that are unjust, police departments that overreach, politicians that don’t listen to their constituents, and a system of government that grows more tyrannical by the day.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the only thing that will save us now is a concerted, collective commitment to the Constitution’s principles of limited government, a system of checks and balances, and a recognition that they—the president, Congress, the courts, the military, the police, the technocrats and plutocrats and bureaucrats—answer to and are accountable to “we the people.”

This will mean that Americans will have to stop letting their personal politics and party allegiances blind them to government misconduct and power grabs. It will mean holding all three branches of government accountable to the Constitution (i.e., vote them out of office if they abuse their powers). And it will mean calling on Congress to put an end to the use of presidential executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements as a means of getting around Congress and the courts.

As historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. concludes:

“I would argue that what the country needs today is a little serious disrespect for the office of the presidency; a refusal to give any more weight to a President’s words than the intelligence of the utterance, if spoken by anyone else, would command… If the nation wants to work its way back to a constitutional presidency, there is only one way to begin. That is by showing Presidents that, when their closest associates place themselves above the law and the Constitution, such transgressions will be not forgiven or forgotten for the sake of the presidency but exposed and punished for the sake of the presidency.”

In other words, we’ve got to stop treating the president like a god and start making both the office of the president and the occupant play by the rules of the Constitution.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

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

Boris Johnson may not fight the 2024 general election, and his heart might not be in staying the full term, an expert has suggested.

Professor Steven Fielding, a professor of political history at the University of Nottingham, explained:

“We’re not even sure he’ll be in charge for that long”.

He told Newsweek:

“The talk around him and the nature of the COVID crisis itself means you’ve got to really want to be in government and really apply yourself. There are things about Johnson that people have questions about — his capacity and whether he wants to do this [in the long term].”

Johnson in recent months has been accused of a lack lustre approach to governing, like across the pond with Donald Trump. He has been criticised for regular holidays, long weekends, and even three hour power naps during the day.

But not only are there questions about whether Johnson wants to server the full time, he said that he could be forced out like his predecessor Theresa May if the tensions in his cabinet become too much.

“Whatever Boris wants to do, there are people around him who don’t want to do the same,” he explained.

“People like [home secretary] Priti Patel and other ministers around the cabinet table are not happy with big government or even a relatively modest government. There are so many tensions in the Conservative Party about all sorts of things and there are questions about the person in charge about whether he really is in charge.”

Last month a leading polling expert revealed that Keir Starmer could win an election if one is held imminently.

Peter Kellner, former president of polling company YouGov, told The New European that the Labour leader could have enough support to build an electoral consensus between different parties to enter Downing Street.

Ben Page from Ipsos Mori, however, told Newsweek his company’s data suggests that Johnson could still be an electoral asset at the next election, and the public remain relatively supportive of the PM.

He explained:

“The hill [opposition party] Labour has to climb, the fact that Johnson remains well ahead of [Labour leader] Keir Starmer on who would make best prime minister, the lack of progress so far in Labour being seen as ready to govern all suggest that at least in polling terms, Johnson can win. But, of course, a year is a long time in politics.”

But there are warnings that Johnson should ignore the red wall voters at his own peril, with those who have previously backed Labour but supportive of Brexit likely to decide the prime minister’s future.

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Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook

The article below is only an excerpt, you may download full document at the link provided at the bottom.

Introduction

Within 10 years we have reached a point at which we can say: We have done our best to get Rosalie Bertell´s knowledge distributed in the world. In addition, we have contributed to this with our Information-Letters in different languages, public speeches, and the spreading of a lot of additional information on current debates and facts (www.pbme-online.org).

Why do people not want to know about the violence that is committed against Mother Earth?

Is it a taboo to reveal a secret?

One thing, however, has never been understood properly: Dr. Bertell´s knowledge has, so far, not become the issue of an open public debate. Not only the powers that be, but also the social movements of today have not allowed this to happen. Very often, people reject this knowledge right away, because it is shocking to them. A first reaction typically consists of fleeing from it instead of trying to learn and doing something about it. Most of them simply deny the possibility that something like „military geoengineering“ may even exist. In an effort to avoid confronting these facts they grasp the term prepared from above for the purpose of doing away with this sort of “evil knowledge“ and call it a ”conspiracy theory”!

So, even Rosalie Bertell who was a person beyond any possible suspicion of working at the levels of conspiracy theories, has been interpreted as such. Obviously, this could not be further from the truth, but it serves the interests of those who possibly don´t want the truth to be known.

The truth to be known are the facts about the system we live in, which in itself is based on different forms of direct and structural violence against life itself, against nature and against human beings! This truth is a secret and thus it has become a taboo to speak about these facts. Whenever this taboo is violated, we have observed, there is always a prompt reaction to stop any further discussion of it.

I have come to the conclusion that the truth about the system we live in, if we want it or not, is so horrible that nearly everyone tries to avoid seeing it, because otherwise:

• s/he would feel either very uncomfortable, and even guilty, or
• would feel ridiculous by turning out powerless in spite of feeling rather powerful, instead, and/or
• s/he would suddenly feel deprived of a generally assumed protection of life from above or elsewhere, causing fear, and/or
• s/he would have to bury his or her assumptions about the validity of the general ”values“ the system preaches, e.g. rights and justice, freedom and democracy, or peace and happiness, and/or
• s/he, taking the ”evil knowledge“ seriously, would have to stand up immediately in order to stop the violence the system is committing against life, nature and humanity. This, however, is felt as a too heavy burden to take over…

In the meantime we know where this violence of our ”system“, our modern civilization, is based on. It is rooted in the system of ”patriarchy“, as I call it.

The intention of patriarchy is to change all of life, nature and humanity, in fact the entire society into a ”man-made“, artificial one, i.e. not allowing life to exist any longer in its organic ways on this Planet earth, and in natural and motherly ways. The man-made world is by definition a pater-arché one, a ”creation“ of so-called fathers instead of mothers and Mother Nature. In order to reach this patri-archal utopia, which, by the way, is several thousands of years old, in its course much violence has already been applied, indeed. This violence has turned into a trauma, and at the same time, it is considered forbidden knowledge and is suppressed. It has been hidden on all levels and cannot possibly be addressed openly! As long as this patriarchal civilization has not succeeded in transforming life, nature, humans, the whole world – and the Planet itself – into a completely man-made, patri-archal world, violence will continuously be applied as a necessary means of achieving its dangerous goals. It is for these reasons that people are not allowed to recognize the direct and structural violence inherent in the system!

This mental paradox is the secret of patriarchy. Because, the patriarchal narrative tells us there is no violence, the transformation-process from the natural to the artificial is one to the better and higher. Today it is called progress!

The taboo consists of revealing the violence applied in its course to an allegedly better and higher world, so that this world may not appear anymore as the better and higher one, given the price of destruction paid for it.

The secret to be revealed tells us that violence does not lead to better and higher worlds at all, but to what it produces – namely destruction! Destruction is the overall outcome of this ”alchemical“ – as I call it – transformation process by violence. This is its logic, and nobody is allowed to see it and to name it. Reflecting about the patriarchal violence against nature, the earth, life and the people, seeing it and speaking about it, not to mention acting against it – these are the heaviest taboos in this patriarchal system. This is the ”evil“ knowledge, the forbidden one, the forgotten one, the knowledge driven into the underground and thus made subconscious! I call it the ”collective subconscious“. As we all have experienced patriarchal violence, we recognize at once, perhaps unconsciously, when it comes to its revelation! We are panicking with it, because then danger is near and has to be averted. We have to protect ourselves against the danger of meddling with patriarchal systemic violence which would destroy us! Everyone seems to know it, because nearly everybody reacts the same way, when it happens!

It is clear now how difficult it is to acknowledge what Rosalie Bertell is teaching us. She teaches us that in the meantime patriarchy, in the form of the military and the MIC, has started to destroy our very living conditions and the Planet itself! So, we are literally forced to do something against it if we want to continue living on this earth! This means that we have to address patriarchy and its systemic, direct and structural violence, running the risk of becoming the ones who break the taboo, revealing and naming the secret!

Continue reading, download the whole “10th Anniversary” Information-Letter here.

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This article was originally published on PBME.

Prof. Claudia Von Werlhof, is a distinguished author, professor of political science and women’s studies, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria. She is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

Featured image is from Media Lens

Many voices have been quick to enter the chorus of commentators hypothesizing the manifold possible causes of the devastating explosions which occurred on the afternoon of August 4 in Beirut which has led to mass anarchy and the surprising resignation of the government on August 11th.

While I have no great novel contribution to offer in that growing array of hypotheses (which are slowly turning into noise), I would like to share an insight which addresses a too-often-overlooked aspect of the role of Lebanon in the Great Game. Before proceeding, it is useful to hold in the mind several points of certainty:

1) The official narrative of a chance mishap of Turkish fireworks instigating the detonation of the 2700 tons of ammonium nitrate which had been sitting at the Port of Beirut for six years is entirely unbelievable.

2) This event should not considered in any way separated from the anomalously large pattern of explosions and arson which have spread across the Arab and African worlds in recent weeks.

3) This pattern of chaos must itself be seen in the context of the clash between two systems: The collapsing NATO unipolar alliance on the one side and the New Silk Road-led multipolar alliance on the other.

The Matter of Causality

The Middle East has been labelled the “geopolitical pivot” of the world island by devout adherents to the Hobbesian worldview of Halford Mackinder such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger and Bernard Lewis. Today it is understood that whomever can either stabilize or destabilize this region can control the levers for the “world island” (Africa, Europe, and Eurasia)… and as Mackinder once said “who controls the world island, controls the world.”

In the case of Lebanon, the role that this region plays as “Pearl on the New Silk Road”, and intersection of all major civilizations of the globe, has shaped global policy considerations in Washington, London and Israel for the past several years. The destructive events underway Lebanon cannot be separated from the breathtaking spread of Belt and Road projects across Iraq, Iran, Syria and other Arab nations.

More than Coincidence

In the weeks surrounding the Lebanon disaster, Iran found herself the target of a vicious sequence of attacks as arson and explosions were unleashed beginning with the June 26 explosion at the Khojir Missile production complex, the June 30 explosion at a medical clinic killing 19, a July 2 explosion at the Natanz nuclear facility which set Iran’s centrifuge production schedule back by months and the July 15 fires at the Bushehr Aluminum plant. Additionally, and the UAE experienced its own anomalous fires which ravaged one of the most important markets in Dubai (luckily empty due to Covid-19) on August 5.

If any of these anomalies were taken individually, “chance” could always be blamed as culprit. However when one takes them all together and recognizes the revolutionary BRI-connected agreements currently being finalized between both China and Russia with Iran does one get a solid idea of the deeper causality underlying these apparently separate situations of chaos.

Iran and the New Silk Road

The fact is that the long awaited $400 billion China-Iran economic and security pact which is in its final stages of negotiation includes not only important oil for infrastructure agreements which will extend advanced rail and new energy grids to Iran. This program also includes an important military/security partnership which will dramatically transform the “rules of the game” in the middle east for generations. Elements of this pact include not only defense and intelligence sharing infrastructure, but also also bolster China’s new digital currency the e-RMB which will circumvent western controls on trade.

Meanwhile Russia’s announced extension of the 20 year security/economic partnership agreement first signed in 2001 by Presidents Rouhani and Putin will certainly be finalized in the coming months. Iran has also made it’s interests in acquiring Russia’s S400 system well known and all geopoliticians understand well that this system which is spreading fast across all of Eurasia from Turkey to South Korea renders America’s F-35s and THAAD missile systems impotent and obsolete.

If the China-Russia-Iran triangle can be firmly established, then not only does America’s sanctions regime policy disintegrate, but a vital platform of Middle Eastern development will be established to better spearhead the growth of transport and advanced development corridors from China to the east (and Africa) along the New Silk Road. Since November 2018 an Iran-Iraq-Syria railway has taken great strides towards implementation as part of middle east reconstruction funded by Iran and ultimately connecting to Syria’s Lattakia Port as a hub to the Mediterranean and a 32km Shalamcheh-Bashra railway is in an advanced phase of development with Iran’s Minister of Roads and Urban Development Abbas Ahmad stating:

“Iran’s railway system is linked to railways of central Asia, China and Russia and if the 32 km Shalamcheh-Basra railway will be constructed, Iraq can transfer goods and passengers to Russia and China and vice versa.”

While the 32 km rail line would be phase one, the 2^nd phase is scheduled to be a 1545 km rail and highway to the Syrian Port.

The Iran-Iraq-Syria regional participation in the broader New Silk Road is incredibly important, especially since Iraq signed a September 2019 Memorandum of Understanding to join the BRI under a new infrastructure-for-oil program. This plan involves China’s reconstruction of the war-torn region under a multiphase program of hard infrastructure (rail, roads, energy and water projects), and soft infrastructure (hospitals, schools and cultural centers).

Similarly, China has made it intention to bring real reconstruction programs to Syria are also well known and President Bashar Al Assad’s long overdue Four Seas Strategy first announced in 2004 (and sabotaged with the Arab Spring) is finally coming back on line. President Assad had won 7 countries over to sign onto it’s construction by 2010 and entailed connecting all four major water systems (Mediterranean, Caspian, Black Sea, and Persian Gulf) together via rail and infrastructure corridors as a driver for win-win cooperation and regional modernization. Assad had said of the project in 2009 “once we link these four seas, we become the unavoidable intersection of the whole world in investment, transport and more.”

A fuller video of this important project can be viewed here:

Lebanon: Pearl of the New Silk Road

Lebanon’s participation in this long-awaited process should be obvious to all, sharing as it does a major border with Syria, hosts 1.5 million Syrian refugees and also a vital port to the Mediterranean making it a keystone of east-west development. Connecting this emerging zone of development to Africa where the Belt and Road has emerged as a leading force of change and hope in recent years, Lebanon finds itself among the most strategic keystones.

Designs for rail connecting Lebanon’s Port of Tripoli through Jordan and thence through Egypt would be create a new positive field of prosperity which could dramatically change the rules of the Middle East and Africa forever.

On June 17, 2020 the Chinese Embassy publicized an offer to extend BRI projects to Lebanon featuring a modern railway connecting coastal cities in the north with Tripoli through Beirut to Naquora in the south. China’s National Machinery IMP/EXP Corporation also offered the construction of three new power plants of 700 MW each, a new national energy grid and port modernization. The Embassy’s press release stated:

“The Chinese side is ready to carry out practical cooperation actively with the Lebanese side on the basis of equality and mutual benefit in the framework of joint work to build the Belt and Road… China is committed to cooperation with other nations mainly through the role of its companies, the leading role of the market, and the catalytic role of government and commercial operation. Chinees companies continue to follow with interest the opportunities of cooperation in infrastructure and other fields in Lebanon.”

These offers were applauded by Hassan Nasrallah (leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah and partner in the coalition government) who had been an outspoken advocate of Lebanon’s participation in the BRI for years. Nasrallah has also advocated liberating Lebanon from the IMF whose structural adjustments and conditionality-laden investments have resulted in the small country’s debt exploding to over 170% of its GDP with nothing to show for it.

It is noteworthy that the same day China made its offers known publicly, Washington imposed the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act to punish all who wish to trade with Syria which itself has not only further crushed Syria’s cries for economic reconstruction, but had taken direct aim at Lebanon which sees 90% of Syrian goods flow through its borders to the Mediterranean.

When Chinese delegations first made their vision for the BRI’s extension to Lebanon known in March 2019 where the Arab Highway from Beirut to Damascus and rail to China was floated, western stooge Saad Al Hariri said no, preferring instead to sign onto a $10 billion IMF plan. Over a year later, not one iota of infrastructure was built. Secretary of State Pompeo played a major role at keeping Lebanon from “going east” as Nasrallah and even President Aoun had desired when he stated in a March 2019 press conference “Lebanon and the Lebanese people face a choice: bravely move forward as an independent and proud nation or allow the dark ambitions of Iran and Hezbollah to dictate your future.”

Pompeo’s obsessive drive to eliminate Hezbollah and especially the influence of Nasrallah in Lebanon has less to do with any perceived threat Israel claims to its existence and everything with Hezbollah and Iran’s embrace of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

When Chinese offers were renewed in June 2020, Pompeo’s stooge David Schenker (Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs) gave a June 23 interview stating that Hezbollah “is not an organization that seeks reform, but rather one that lives on corruption”. Schenker warned Lebanon from falling into the “China Trap” and said that Nasrallah’s demands that Lebanon “look east” was “shocking”.

Without going into a lengthy refutation of the “China debt trap” argument (which is really just the effect of western imperialists projecting their own dirty practices onto China’s BRI), it is sufficient to say that it is a 100% myth. A summary overview of Chinese investments in Africa which are numerically similar to American investments demonstrates that the difference is found entirely in QUALITY as China uniquely invests in real construction, manufacturing and even African banking which are verboten by all imperialists who only wish to use Africa as a looting ground for cheap resources and cheaper labor.

Speaking to this issue, and the hope for Lebanon more broadly the BRIX Sweden’s Hussein Askary stated:

“It is becoming obvious that a tiny country like Lebanon, but fully sovereign and independent can break the back of a global empire by opting to follow the path of progress, national sovereignty and international cooperation according to the win-win model offered by China. This does not mean cutting all bridges to the west. It is necessary to keep those that are in the true interest of Lebanon and its people. If the U.S. and Europe wish to change their policies and join China in offering Lebanon power, transport, water and agro-industrial investments, the Lebanese people and leadership would take them with open arms”.

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Matthew J.L. Ehret is a journalist, lecturer and founder of the Canadian Patriot Review.

Don’t miss this historic debate between Children’s Health Defense Chairman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz.

With the current COVID crisis dominating headlines at national and local levels, the topic of vaccines is now front and center.

The two attorneys debate a range of issues including vaccine mandates, the PREP Act, the lack of vaccine safety studies, Jacobson vs. Massachusetts, and HHS’s failure to act on provisions of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. Are compulsory vaccines even legal? Should any government be able to force medical procedures on families?

An insightful discussion that no one contemplating vaccine safety should miss.

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Featured image is from Natural News

Continuando a análise começada na primeira parte deste artigo – Monopólio, desemprego e desigualdade: faces da crise capitalista (I) –, vejamos como a crise do trabalho (desemprego) e a crise ambiental se relacionam, constituindo-se como duas faces da “crise estrutural capitalista”.[*]

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Pandemia de 2020, crise econômica mundial de 2008, inundações e secas, crise de fome de 2007 cujo resultado foi a marca histórica de um bilhão de famintos, devastação das florestas e poluição dos oceanos, degradação de culturas e povos reduzidos gradativamente à dependência e miséria: o que liga estes fenômenos é que todos eles são resultados do chamado “progresso capitalista”.

“Progresso” que, longe de ser um efetivo “desenvolvimento” humano – aprofundamento das liberdades, melhorias na cultura, saúde, educação, emancipação, prazer, tempo livre –, pelo contrário, é apenas um eufemismo com que se oculta um caótico “avanço tecnológico” e um  “crescimento econômico” sem planejamento racional. 

Neste processo de crescimento concorrencial e desordenado (nomeado pelos capitalistas de “livre-mercado”), o capital, a partir de um controle cada vez maior da natureza (de que explora matérias-primas) e do próprio homem (de quem explora a força de trabalho), segue “avançando” sempre mais por sobre os recursos do planeta e seus diversos povos.

Bastante análogo a um tumor cancerígeno, o capitalismo se amplia de modo desgovernado, consumindo em sua “metástase” tudo à sua volta, a ponto de ameaçar o próprio “corpo” que o sustenta: o ser humano e o planeta.

Este processo irracional e fundamentalmente insustentável já tinha sido percebido por Karl Marx ainda no século XIX, quem apesar de não ter visto o cenário limite que hoje podemos vislumbrar, conseguiu descrevê-lo em seus traços preponderantes, como se explana neste artigo. 

Duas faces da crise estrutural: desemprego e devastação ambiental

Para se compreender o problema do “progresso” capitalista, é preciso observar algumas características fundamentais deste modo de produção, sobretudo o conceito de crise estrutural do sistema – que se refere a uma crise “lógica” intrínseca a este modo de produção. Para além de suas frequentes crises socioeconômicas “cíclicas”, a crise estrutural é um problema da própria irracionalidade interna do capitalismo. Isto porque seu mecanismo de funcionamento pressupõe e mesmo diviniza um eterno “crescimento econômico” –  como se se pudesse crescer infinitamente, como se o planeta não tivesse os limites territoriais e energéticos que tem. 

Os resultados disto, visíveis no cotidiano dos noticiários e em grande medida já revelados e mensurados por cientistas, em linhas gerais são: o aumento irreversível da população sem emprego, cronicamente excluída do sistema; a destruição ambiental a um nível que ameaça a própria vida sobre a Terra, ou ao menos a maior parte de sua população.

Como mostrado na primeira parte dessa análise, com o avanço da tecnologia e da automação dos processos produtivos, por um lado o capital tende a se concentrar ainda mais (em mãos de poucos e poderosos monopólios); por outro, o “exército industrial de reserva” cresce vertiginosamente, lançando à completa exclusão social uma massa cada vez mais impactante de trabalhadores, que nunca reaverão seus postos (“desemprego estrutural”).

Consequências nítidas desse movimento são, dentre outras:

i) a precarização do trabalho (terceirizações, uberização, redução de direitos trabalhistas);

ii) aumento do abismo social entre ricos e pobres;

iii) fome em níveis jamais constatados ao longo da história;

iv) e também a degradação ambiental.

Sim, além do ser humano, a natureza também é vítima preferencial do capital, pois se naquele o capital encontra força de trabalho para explorar, nesta ele encontra matérias-primas para pilhar.

Deste modo, na medida em que cresce a automatização, os capitalistas veem a taxa de lucro ser gradativamente diminuída. Como reação de desespero, e para estender o prazo do problema, o capital tem diversos artifícios, tais como:

i) suprimir direitos sociais conquistados ao longo de séculos (trabalhistas, previdenciários);

ii) inflar artificialmente sua fortuna  (bolhas de crédito, dinheiro sem lastro);

iii) provocar guerras para o aquecimento do mercado (renovação bélica, desova de armas, seguida da reconstrução civil dos países destruídos);

iv) conquistar belicamente ou por pressão econômica novos territórios cujos recursos possam ser explorados, coagindo nações para que aceitem seu modelo exploratório (agronegócio, mineração, etc), cujo ganho rápido por vezes seduz governos periféricos, enquanto o grosso dos lucros vaza desses países (que têm seus solos e subsolos devastados) sob a forma de matérias-primas (commodities), que irão alimentar sobretudo a grande indústria do centro capitalista (EUA, UE, etc).

Com este fenômeno de avanço das fronteiras do capital por sobre terrenos ainda pouco explorados, ocorre que milhões de pequenos camponeses são expulsos de suas terras, ou obrigados a ingressar forçadamente no sistema, endividando-se (em  nome da “competitividade”) e logo quebrando, diante das concorrências maiorais. 

Um dos resultados disso é que o camponês, sem ter para onde ir, por vezes é forçado a optar pela migração para áreas florestais – caso da Amazônia, cuja fronteira agrícola vem sendo impulsionada por gente do Cerrado, expulsa pelo poder do agronegócio. 

Outro grave problema ambiental – talvez o pior – é o aquecimento climático global, fruto de uma produção industrial mal planejada que não visa satisfazer ao homem, mas ao lucro, processo que advém da ideia absurda de se perseguir sempre o “crescimento econômico”, ainda que o planeta seja restrito em recursos (que já se aproximam de seu esgotamento).

Não cabe nesse texto um debate sobre todas as implicações e causas da crise ambiental, mas diante do atual panorama de caos sanitário, vale ainda mencionar que segundo relatório do Programa das Nações Unidas para o Meio Ambiente, diversas das epidemias mais graves que ameaçaram o mundo nas últimas décadas (ébola, gripe aviária, síndrome respiratória aguda grave, febre do Nilo, zika, e agora, até onde se sabe, inclusive a covid-19), são consequências da degradação da natureza:  “75% das doenças infecciosas emergentes são zoonóticas” – ou seja, transmitidas por animais a humanos, devido especialmente à aproximação de espécies silvestres das metrópoles, motivadas pela destruição de seus habitats naturais.

Marx e a crise socioambiental: o debate O’Connor-Bellamy Foster 

Vejamos agora como Karl Marx, já em seu tempo, percebia o problema ambiental (que então, com a ampliação desmesurada da indústria, se iniciava); e como dois destacados marxistas dedicados ao tema socioecológico, James O’Connor e Bellamy Foster, compreendem as contribuições de Marx ao tema, e a relação que há entre a “crise estrutural” (relativa à lógica interna do capitalismo) e a crise ambiental (consequência do “crescimento” irracional). 

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Até meados do século XX, a crise ambiental não foi observada com a gravidade que merece. O debate ambiental ganha peso nas últimas décadas do século à medida que os desastres naturais se tornam evidentes, e que se percebe que isto se configura em uma restrição estrutural ao “progresso” capitalista.

No âmbito do pensamento marxista, o interesse pela questão obtém força nos anos 1980, quando é fundada a revista de ecologia-socialista “Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: a journal of socialist ecology” (1988), projeto liderado por O’Connor, no qual se destaca também Elmar Altvater, e que seria acompanhado de perto – embora não sem divergências – por Bellamy Foster e outros marxistas [1]. 

Os movimentos revoltosos que se espalham pelo planeta por volta de 1968 são um marco deste processo, o que amplia o debate público sobre a questão do meio ambiente e impulsiona o desenvolvimento de pesquisas acadêmicas. 

Assim, o questionamento sobre os “limites ecológicos” do crescimento econômico e suas relações com o “desenvolvimento humano” é reintroduzida no debate científico, após um significativo hiato separando esse evento de contestação popular, da obra de Karl Polanyi – quem em 1944, na obra A grande transformação, tratou das formas como a ampliação do mercado debilitou as próprias condições sociais e ambientais. 

O nível da discussão desse período, porém, ainda era bem fraco, tendo como linhas principais o “naturalismo burguês”, o “neomalthusianismo”, a “tecnocracia do Clube de Roma” ou o purista “ecologismo profundo” – como mostra O’Connor, fundador da corrente marxista ecológica, que começa a modificar este cenário cognitivo superficial [2]. 

O’Connor e o “ecologismo marxista”

Para o sociólogo e economista estadunidense, a base para se pensar a questão é se perceber que nem a força de trabalho, nem a dita “natureza externa” são algo “produzido” pelo capital (embora sejam tratadas como mercadorias). 

O’Connor afirma que, para se analisar a raiz das contradições capitalistas, devem ser levadas em conta as “condições de produção” (que Polanyi chamou “mercadorias fictícias”, e que não se relacionam diretamente com a lei do valor trabalho, estudada por Marx). 

Pode-se dividir essas “condições” em três tipos: 

i) as “pessoais” (ligadas à reprodução da força de trabalho);

ii) as “naturais-externas” (campos, florestas, rios, recursos energéticos);

iii) as “gerais-comunitárias” (infraestrutura, edificações urbanas, etc).

É importante frisar aqui que Marx, já em sua época, tinha se dado conta que a “agricultura” e a “silvicultura capitalistas” eram severamente daninhas à natureza – pois que arruinavam a “qualidade da terra” e prejudicavam a saúde do próprio homem. 

O’Connor, entretanto, acredita que Marx, apesar de suas percepções iniciais, não chegou ao ponto de estabelecer propriamente a “conclusão” do problema, ou seja: a de que os novos métodos agrícolas (ecologicamente prejudiciais) viessem a produzir um aumento dos “custos” dos elementos usados pelo capital [3]. 

Ou de outro modo, diz O’Connor, Marx não teria captado que os tais “limites naturais” (autogerados pelo crescimento da produção capitalista) viriam a se tornar obstáculos “físicos”, levando o sistema a uma crise distinta daquela do “trabalho abstrato” (que é tratada na obra marxiana e depois amplamente debatida pelos marxistas). 

A este “limite físico”, O’Connor denomina “segunda contradição” do capitalismo, contrastando-a com a “primeira” (que resulta da, antes explicada, “tendência decrescente da taxa de lucro”). À “primeira contradição”, ele associa o movimento trabalhista de classes; já à “segunda”, ele relaciona o surgimento dos “novos movimentos sociais” (coletivos de resistência às diversas formas com que o capital agride as “condições de produção”).

O’Connor divide estes novos movimentos sociais, segundo suas relações motivadoras, do seguinte modo: 

i) as de “condições pessoais”, relacionadas a movimentos como o feminista, o negro, e o dos povos indígenas, dentre outros;

ii) as “comunitárias”, associadas a movimentos urbanos, de habitação, etc.;

iii) as “naturais” – ligadas a problemas ambientais e que são a origem do “ecologismo”.

Deste modo, o marxista ianque, ainda que considere ambas as “contradições” capitalistas como faces da crise estrutural – ou seja, processos que levam o sistema a um limite –, sugere porém que, em seu tempo (fim do século XX), a “segunda contradição” (analisada pela então emergente “teoria ecologista marxista”) já teria um protagonismo mais decisivo para a crise capitalista contemporânea, do que a “primeira contradição” (a “do trabalho”, criticada desde há muito mais tempo por variadas correntes marxistas) [4]. 

Bellamy Foster e a ecologia desenvolvida por Marx 

Conterrâneo de O’Connor e também um dos grandes impulsionadores da crítica ecológica de corte marxista, Bellamy Foster contrapõe-se à teoria de seu colega e do grupo de pesquisadores de sua citada revista. Propõe uma discussão “radical”, que se apoie em contornos da realidade mais nítidos, verificando sua “raiz”, conforme deve se dar em um procedimento de investigação pautado pelo método dialético que Marx e Engels iniciaram.

Ainda que valorize certos aportes dos chamados “ecologistas marxistas”, Foster entende que essa corrente peca por “economicismo” e por “funcionalismo”, perspectivas que considera “pouco dialéticas”.

Para Foster, O’Connor parte de uma premissa errônea, ao achar que conforme o capitalismo se visse transtornado pela degradação ambiental, existiria uma “tendência” de que o próprio capital tentasse resolver esse problema (gerador de aumento dos custos produtivos). Desse ângulo, poderia se supor uma abertura para que os movimentos sociais viessem a pressionar o capital, com vistas a que as “externalidades” (ligadas às “condições naturais-externas”) fossem devidamente pagas pelos capitalistas. 

Para Bellamy Foster essa conjectura não tem lastro na realidade. Citando uma ideia do grupo dos “verdes alemães” – segundo a qual o capital só irá reconhecer que “dinheiro não se come”, quando “a última árvore já tenha sido cortada”, ele argumenta que a devastação ambiental já é extremamente séria, ainda que não tenha chegado ao nível de restringir “suficientemente” as “condições de produção”. 

Como exemplos de sua tese, destaca que “50% das espécies” da Amazônia estão ameaçadas de extinção, sem que isso tenha efetivamente afetado a produção capitalista; ou ainda, que o buraco da camada de ozônio, que põe em xeque a própria sobrevivência da espécie, não será argumento suficiente para que os donos do mundo abdiquem de sua destrutiva competição por lucros. 

Estas ideias que se centram apenas na “contradição ambiental”, diz Foster, contraditoriamente acabam por “minimizar as dimensões reais da crise ecológica”. Além disto, há problemas empíricos na teoria de O’Connor, pois não existem evidências de que a escassez natural já seria atualmente uma real barreira para o capital, quando o consideramos em sua totalidade – já que ainda há bastante território a se conquistar, além dos variados artifícios com que o poder do sistema logra se abster desses chamados custos externos [5].

Assim sendo, Foster entende que a Terra, hoje, ainda é um grande presente nas mãos dos capitalistas, e antes que o capital seja “sensibilizado” pelo desastre ecológico, boa parcela da natureza e da humanidade terão sido exterminadas por essa prática irracional. 

Ele nota ainda que, mesmo em um cenário limite, as elites sempre tramarão formas para poder estender por mais tempo sua insanidade (como um exemplo simbólico, veja-se os monumentais diques de proteção construídos nas terras baixas da riquíssima Holanda). 

A tese de Foster é a de que a chamada “primeira contradição” (ligada ao trabalho), ao contrário do que pensa O’Connor, continua a ser a principal causa da crise estrutural capitalista, antes da “segunda” (ambiental). Apesar disso, ele não aprecia essa ideia algo “dualista”, que divide em categorias quase isoladas os antigos e os novos movimentos sociais (uma visão unilateral das complexas causas do problema).

Foster considera que esse enfoque de O’Connor é “economicista”, pois que trata os novos movimentos sociais (advindos da “segunda contradição”) como sendo hoje supostamente “mais importantes” à resistência popular, legando assim a um plano secundário as lutas de classes – o que acaba por reduzir a centralidade da categoria da práxis, um dos cernes do pensamento marxista. 

Como o próprio Marx analisou o problema ambiental

Vejamos agora o que o próprio Marx pensou sobre a questão ambiental. Conforme o levantamento que Foster realizou em seu impactante livro A ecologia de Marx (2000), Marx e Engels, na obra A ideologia alemã, quando abordam a evolução histórica da divisão do trabalho, não expõem apenas as “formas de propriedade” (burguesa, feudal, estatal, comunal, tribal), mas também dão destaque ao começo do antagonismo entre a cidade e o campo, fenômeno que se consolidaria “plenamente” sob o modo de produção capitalista, com sua divisão do trabalho entre agrícola e industrial-comercial, o que gera enormes conflitos. 

Marx desenvolve esse tema em O capital, denominando “fratura metabólica” a essa contradição original do capitalismo – que separa o homem da terra, alienando-o da base material que sustenta sua existência. 

A partir dessas constatações, Marx passa a elaborar uma pioneira “teoria da sustentabilidade”, em escritos nos quais aborda “diretamente” problemas hoje bem atuais, tais como os seguintes (citados por Foster): “condições sanitárias”, “contaminação”, “desflorestamento”, “desertificação”, “inundações”, “reciclagem de nutrientes”, “diversidade de espécies”.

Anteriormente, em seus Esboços da crítica da economia política (ou Grundrisse), Marx já tinha discutido como as mudanças na propriedade fundiária, durante o capitalismo, levaram ao alijamento dos “filhos da terra”, do “peito em que se criaram”, fazendo com que inclusive o “próprio trabalho do solo” viesse a ser alienado, tornando-se uma fonte de “subsistência mediada”, “dependente” das relações sociais. 

A conclusão a que Marx chega é a de que, para se poder superar o capitalismo, é preciso: que o “trabalho assalariado” seja abolido, criando-se para em seu lugar uma comunidade de trabalhadores associados; mas também, que seja posto um basta na alienação dos seres humanos com relação à terra que nos alimenta a todos.

Tendo em conta estas concepções de vanguarda presentes na obra marxiana, Foster defende que o pensador alemão desenvolveu efetivamente uma “teoria ecológica” – e uma teoria “completa” –, diferentemente do que crê O’Connor; ainda que Marx tenha escolhido não se focar na especificidade de como os “custos ecológicos” influenciam de modo direto a economia (fato que, não obstante, já em seu tempo ele observou e comentou, caso da crise dos solos que ficou evidente a partir dos anos 1840). 

Ao invés de enveredar por uma análise “economicista” (que restringiria a verificação das contradições ecológicas), diz Foster, Marx se volta “cada vez mais” a uma reflexão sobre a “regulação” racional do metabolismo entre o ser humano e o meio ambiente, ou seja, o que hoje chamamos de “sustentabilidade” – algo que não será possível, senão através da superação do “trabalho alienado”. 

Em suma: Marx opta por investigar a questão de modo ampliado – “totalizante” –, sem se restringir às categorias isoladas com que o cientificismo moderno (de perspectiva positivista) divide artificialmente a realidade. Para ele, a questão básica para a construção de uma sociedade evoluída – comunista – passa justamente pelo estabelecimento de um metabolismo homem-natureza mais racional. 

Hoje, a crise ambiental atingiu um estágio perigoso, o que Marx não poderia ter adivinhado em seu século. Porém, o núcleo da questão ecológica é ainda a antinatural separação entre campo e cidade. Isto, afirma Foster, não só ou prioritariamente por causa dos impactos na produção industrial; a devastação da natureza é um problema vasto e repleto de implicações que, tendo sido criado pela própria “estrutura” do capitalismo, não poderá ser estudada apenas pelo viés “econômico”: é preciso entendê-la também como problema “social” e “cultural”: como um fenômeno dialético, conflitivo, que é ao mesmo tempo humano e natural. 

Contudo, para se alcançar tal entendimento, é preciso superar-se os atuais modelos cognitivos da “ciência dominante” – que em seu reducionismo tende a compartimentar em categorias estanques o conhecimento, como se pode verificar na divisão rudimentar (que seria ingênua, não fora interessada) entre ciências naturais e ciências humanas – o que, como se sabe, sustenta o tecnicismo e alienação intelectual da sociedade moderna capitalista. 

Yuri Martins-Fontes

Imagem : Ilustração de Karl Marx com barba de grama / Reprodução: ecossocialismooubarbarie.wordpress.com

Notas

[*] As duas partes deste artigo se baseiam em capítulo da seguinte investigação pós-doutoral (em vias de publicação): MARTINS-FONTES, Yuri. “Marxismo e saberes originários: das afinidades entre os outros saberes e a concepção histórico-dialética”. Em Relatório Final de Pesquisa de Pós-Doutorado 2015/2017 [supervisão: professor Paulo Eduardo Arantes]. São Paulo: Departamento de Filosofia da Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas da Universidade de São Paulo, junho de 2017.

[1] Destacados marxistas trataram da relação entre crise estrutural e a questão ecológica já por volta dos 1990 (caso de Mészáros e Postone), mas não desenvolveram o tema, priorizando investigações sobre a crise do trabalho alienado.

[2] O’Connor, “Las condiciones de producción por un marxismo ecológico”, em O’Connor e Alier (orgs.), Ecología Política. Ver também: Wilson Ferreira de Oliveira, “’Maio de 68′: Mobilizações ambientalistas e sociologia ambiental”, em Mediações, v.13, n.1-2, 2008 (Dossiê: “40 anos de Maio de 1968”).

[3] Como coloca Engels, Marx concebeu sua teoria não como “doutrina”, mas como “método”; ver “Carta a Werner Sombart” (11/03/1895); e G. Foladori, “Questão ambiental em Marx”, em Crítica marxista.

[4] O’Connor, “Las condiciones de producción por un marxismo ecológico”, obra cit.

[5] Foster, “Capitalismo y ecología: la naturaleza de la contradicción” (2002); e La ecología de Marx: materialismo y naturaleza [2000]. 

The bountiful new book, Rita Blitt: Around and Round (Tra Publishing, 2020), looks back at the long and prolific career of this notable American artist. If Blitt’s work is about anything then it is about the exuberance, the joy, the sometimes almost mad ecstasy of creative spontaneity. Much of her work is suffused with a kind of wild and kinetic extemporaneity, which seems to resound with a forceful but unforced “Yes!” – a Yes to life, a Yes to the world, a Yes to the here and now, the living moment pregnant with infinite possibility. Her gestural art is dynamic, uninhibited, and no less sensuous for being abstract. In the improvisational, rhythmic musicality of her paintings, Blitt expresses with unerring directness the energy and intensity of embodied imaginative experience.

We can find the precursors to Blitt’s work in the Abstract Expressionists, in Jackson Pollack, and certainly Franz Kline. But perhaps the most revealing historical antecedent for appreciating Blitt is the often overlooked but immensely important Swedish artist, Hilma af Klint – the first Western painter to produce non-representational, or abstract art. For af Klint, painting was a way of communicating the hidden, spiritual nature of Reality, which could only be conveyed non-representationally. One of the techniques she utilized was automatic drawing – what some might call doodling, but which is in essence a way of “creating art without conscious thought.”

For Blitt, this is indeed the seedbed for everything else that grows and follows in terms of artistic production. Her immense, even heroic, sculptures – dozens of which can be found around the world – have their origin in automatic drawings. “My spontaneous lines are the essence of me…” This automatism is a technique which seems especially well-suited to allowing the artist herself to become a pen or brush in the hands of something if not higher, then certainly more primitive, more primordial than her conscious ego or empirical self.

Rita Blitt paints with two hands – which is not to say she can paint with either hand; but that she paints with both hands simultaneously. Just as a musician uses two hands to play an instrument. And the comparison is both telling and illustrative. Music, and dance, are extraordinarily important for gaining a full understanding of Blitt’s work and her achievement as an artist and a painter. One of the ways in which Blitt is perhaps most indebted to Pollack is that, like Pollack, her paintings record not an experience so much as an event, an action – or, if you prefer, a dance. A choreographer recalls being in the studio with Blitt and “she was moving as fast as the dancers, sweating too, whipping out drawing after drawing.”

Some of Blitt’s most arresting work is accomplished with only bold black lines – such as the Copland Appalachian Spring Series (1995). Sometimes she will add a smattering of color, with dashes and flakes of bright yellow and red – as, for example, in the collage series Feeling the Music (2008). But Rita Blitt is also a consummate colorist, quite capable of departing from the gestural spontaneity which is most characteristic of her work. In the 1980s, she embarked on the Oval series, which included a number of pastels and paintings, and were far more chromatic than linear, recalling the ‘color-field painting’ of Mark Rothko. Among the most successful of these is the oil on canvas Finding Center (1983), with its womb-like pointed oval, and striking use of modulated yellows. Blitt would return repeatedly to this form; for example, in the pastels Seeking Inner Peace II (1984) and The Glow of Red (1984), both of which demonstrate her profound sense of color.

The richness and variety of Blitt’s color palette is on full display in such works as Aspen Morn (1964) and Hand of G-d (Beyond) (1990). These acrylic paintings push the bounds of landscape art so much so that they verge on abstraction. Hillside, trees, sky, and sun seem almost ready to dissolve into each other, as if we are witnessing these scenes in a kind of dream. Rita’s brush is intoxicated by the delirious beauty it wants to capture. These and other paintings inspired by the Aspen countryside – including the all but abstract Happy Rocks (1966) – reveal a deep and abiding love of the natural world.

Rita Blitt: Around and Round is a richly satisfying book, not least because it spans seven decades in the career of this artist, from the 1950s up until the present, including paintings from 2019. At nearly 90 years of age, Blitt has revealed herself to be a prolific, dynamic and varied artist, comfortable working with different media and on vastly different scales. What unites her body of work is first and foremost that she is essentially an affirmative artist. Her work is joyous, celebratory, and even “a search for the sublime.”

In drawing, painting and sculpture, Blitt is a tireless, indefatigable but always honest investigator of the power and significance of line, and linearity. In the hands of an artist a line can function like a lock-pick in the hands of a thief. What the artist will deftly reopen is that secret storehouse of Being, a treasure that the world wants to hide and at the same time unfold – renewing in the process nothing less than the mystery and wonder of our communion with the wellspring of Life. In Rita’s hands, lines may undulate, and flow, curve, swerve, dart, or recede, halt, break, veer off or return. They can surprise, delight, soothe or unsettle. They can be bold or delicate, fine as thread or thick as rope. They are, however, always her own – a truthful exploration and expression of our being in the world.

For Rita Blitt, art is music, art is dance – which is just to say, art is life. Drawing, painting, and sculpture are ways that we remind ourselves of what it feels like to be alive, to be truly and immensely alive. Her work has the merit of insisting that to be a living part of humanity is to be an embodied being, sensuous, and awake to each of our senses. Rita paints with both her hands just as we grasp the world with both our hands. Her work is a testament to the artist’s incessant striving towards the fullness of existence; an unfettered expression of the infinite bursting forth from our finite selves, and the inexhaustible wonder that stirs within the very core of our being.

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Sam Ben-Meir is a professor of philosophy and world religions at Mercy College in New York City. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Tech giants tend to cast thin veils over threats regarding government regulations.  They are also particularly concerned by those more public spirited ones, the sort supposedly made for the broader interest.  Google has given us an example of this in an open letter published on August 17 to all Australians – the generosity that comes with transparency – that does not shy away from a degree of menace.  Penned by the company’s Australasian managing director Mel Silva, it starts with a note of warning on accessing the Google website, a white exclamation mark framed by a pyramid of yellow. “The way Aussies search every day on Google is at risk from new Government regulation.” 

Google’s terse and syntax-challenged response was directed at the draft News Media Bargaining Code developed by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and released on July 31.  Digital platforms have made all the running of late, extinguishing media outlets in an exercise of withering effectiveness, while subjugating others.  Along the way, a myth has been created: the idea of small news producers and users, treasured and promoted. 

The code seeks to grant news media businesses the power to individually or collectively bargain with Google and Facebook over revenue for news that is included on their platforms.  As the ACCC explains, the imbalance between digital platforms and conventional media outlets has arisen because of the “less favourable terms for the inclusion of news on digital platform services”.  The ACCC would have responsibility to administer and police the code, while the Australian Communications and Media Authority would be the gatekeeper over which media news businesses would qualify to use the scheme. 

To qualify, such outlets must, for instance, “predominantly produce ‘core news’, and publish this online”. They must “adhere to appropriate professional editorial standards” and “maintain editorial independence from the subjects of their news coverage.”  A local ingredient is also added: that they “operate primarily in Australia for the purpose of serving Australian audiences,” with annual revenue exceeding A$150,000 for the most recent financial year or three out of five most recent financial years.  

Google regards the Code as nothing less than a satanic imposition on the free flow of information by a state authority. But more to the point, it is a challenge to the way it has sought to cultivate its own licensing arrangements with publishers, known as the Publisher Curated News initiative.  Brad Bender (where to they find them?), Vice President of Product Management News, discussed the plan in a company statement on June 25, 2020.  “The program will help participating publishers monetize their content through an enhanced storytelling experience that lets people go deeper into more complex stories, stay informed and be exposed to a world of different issues and interests.”   

Bender, in gibbering like this, shows little understanding of his material.  The quality of news should be shorn of storytelling of an enhanced nature.  Dull facts do not necessarily make for poor reading.  But we do live in the age of Donald Trump and Silicon Valley oligopolies, where, like hormone pumped meat, the taste often matters more than the health of the content.  And complexity is not exactly high on that list of preferences. 

The PCN initiative has already yielded various deals with outlets that have done their bit in improving the Australian media stable: The Saturday Paper’s publisher Schwartz Media, Crikey publisher Private Media and InDaily publisher Solstice Media.  Unsurprisingly, Google is using them as paragons of how the negotiated model, free of regulator meddling, works.

According to Silva, permitting the Australian authorities to go ahead with the measure would dramatically worsen Google Search and YouTube and “could lead to your data being handed over to big news businesses, and would put the free service to use at risk in Australia.”  This is markedly amusing, given that Google and that other behemoth, Facebook, is very much into the business handing over the details of consumers to third parties, a practice often excused by complex consent agreements. 

The company contends that hefty news media businesses will be unduly advantaged.  All others who have a website, small business or YourTube channel will suffer.  The big entities would “artificially inflate their ranking over everybody else, even when someone else provides a better result.”  Silva suggests that Google is more than generous to news sites as it is, paying them millions of dollars and sending “them billions of free clicks every year.”  To give news site providers a leg-up via government regulation would “put our free services at risk.”

The head of YouTube APAC, Gautam Anand, has also used talk that sits oddly with the Silicon Valley monsters: fairness.  The Code, he argues, would “create an uneven playing field when it comes to who makes money on YouTube.”  The ones to benefit from it will be those “big news businesses who can demand large amounts of money over and above what they earn on the platform” thereby leaving less for “you, our creators, and the programmes to help you develop your audience in Australia and around the globe.”

This has been dismissed as disinformation and piffle by the ACCC.  In a statement released on the same day of Google’s letter it attempted to put to bed claims that the company would find itself having to charge for gratis services.  “Google will not be required to charge Australians for the use of its free services such as Google Search and YouTube, unless it chooses to do so.”  Nor will Google “be required to share any additional user data with Australian news businesses unless it chooses to do so.”

The ACCC has its ardent supporters.  The appropriately named Bridget Fair of Free TV Australia called Google’s letter the product of “a monopolist flexing its considerable muscle” in its attempt to retain “excessive profits.”  The note was “straight out of the monopoly 101 playbook trying to mislead and frighten Australians to protect their position as the gateway to the internet.”  She defends the proposed ACCC code as “ensuring a free and vibrant Australian news media sector into the future.”  Any data Google agreed to supply “would have to be under existing Australian privacy laws.”

While there is much to encourage in terms of having a vibrant media sector of boisterous and inquiring voices, anyone vaguely familiar with the Australian news scape will be aware that it tends towards the yawningly monochrome.  Google’s disingenuous point is that such big leaguers are bound to run off with the revenue loot ahead of smaller news providers, making the situation worse.

The ACCC is accepting public submissions regarding the Code till August 28.  Google has already made its view clear: a shot of threatening fury that government regulations of this sort will unduly hinder the “experience” it provides its users and benefit big fish news outlets.  But the ACCC, this small, relatively miniscule entity in the global regulatory landscape, is spoiling for a fight.

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

Featured image is from Pixabay

When repeated ad nauseam, Big Lies take on a life of their own.

Before the television age arrived, famed actor/humorist Will Rogers once said: “All I know is what I read in the papers.”

He might have added that mind manipulation gets most people to believe almost anything, no matter how false.

In July, the NYT falsely claimed that “Russia secretly offered (the Taliban) bounties to kill US troops” in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon denied the claim. So did the NSA, saying it had no corroborating intelligence that suggests it. The CIA declined to comment at the time.

The Times then backed off from its initial claim, shifting the narrative to Russia paying “Taliban-linked militants to kill American and coalition troops in Afghanistan (sic),” using a middleman “contractor (sic).”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry slammed the accusation. Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov minced no words, calling the claim “100 percent bulls..t.”

What goes around comes around — the same accusation repeated, this time by CNN against Iran, saying:

“US intelligence indicates (that) Iran paid bounties to Taliban for targeting American troops in Afghanistan (sic),” adding:

“(A)t least six attacks (were) carried out…last year…(b)ounties…paid by a foreign government identified to CNN…as Iran (sic).”

“The name of the foreign government that made these payments remains classified” — a clear red flag.

The same US intelligence earlier claimed Russian US election meddling, never providing evidence to corroborate the accusation because none existed then or now.

There was no Russian US election meddling, no evidence suggesting foreign interference from any source in US elections earlier or ahead.

When accusations aren’t supported by credible proof, they’re groundless. No legitimate tribunal would accept them.

Iran is the region’s leading proponent of peace, stability, and cooperative relations with other countries, threatening none — except in self-defense if attacked, it legal UN Charter right.

In all US preemptive wars of choice against invented enemies,  notably post-9/11, no evidence suggests a foreign nation paid individuals in targeted countries to kill US troops.

Iran hasn’t attacked another nation in centuries. Claiming it paid Taliban fighters or anyone else to target US forces anywhere is unsupported by cold hard facts.

US officials and establishment media specialize in managed news misinformation, disinformation, fake news and Big Lies.

Falsely accusing Iran of paying Taliban fighters to kill US forces is part of the Trump regime’s “maximum pressure” on the country that’s all about wanting its sovereign government, free from US control, transformed into a vassal state, its resources handed to Western business interests, its people relegated to serfdom.

Using CNN as a transmission agent, the Big Lie about Russia paying bounties to the Taliban that died shifted to blaming Iran — same accusation, same fake news, different targeted country.

CNN’s report came out Monday, following Washington’s most humiliating ever Security Council defeat.

One nation alone, the Dominican Republic, supported its attempt to extend a UN arms embargo on Iran that expires on October 18.

In response, Trump vowed to unilaterally invoke the JCPOA snapback provision this week.

It lets any of its signatories reimpose veto-proof sanctions on Iran that were null and void when the agreement took effect in January 2016.

By unlawfully abandoning the JCPOA in May 2018, the Trump regime lost the right under SC Res. 2231 to invoke snapback.

Only Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany may legally invoke the provision.

They unanimously oppose this action because it would undo years of diplomatic efforts that went into establishing the JCPOA they want preserved.

Trump has no legal authority to invoke snapback — so if takes this step, it’ll be extrajudicial, breaching Security Council Res. 2231, which of course was violated by his abandonment of the JCPOA, a binding international agreement on all nations.

Taliban fighters need no foreign monetary incentive to target US forces, at war on Afghanistan and occupying parts of it illegally since October 7, 2001.

Time and again, Iran, Russia, China, and other nations on the US target list for regime change are falsely accused of all sorts of things they had nothing to do with.

Alleged Iranian bounties to Taliban fighters is the latest US fake news about the country that’s no more credible than countless other debunked accusations.

In June 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported without proof that “Tehran…quietly increased its supply of weapons, ammunition and funding to the Taliban, and is now recruiting and training their fighters (sic).”

The story died, the latest fake news about Iran surfacing on Monday.

Tehran’s new Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh succeeded Seyed Abbas Mousavi, following his appointment as Islamic Republic envoy to Azerbaijan.

Khatibzadeh dismissed the claim of his government supplying arms  to the Taliban for any purpose, saying:

“What is going on in Afghanistan today is the result of the US’ warmongering acts and interference in the affairs of Afghanistan,” adding:

“The accusations leveled by the state secretary of the United States is sort of shifting the blame onto others and an attempt to divert public opinion of the Afghan people from Washington’s assistance to Daesh (ISIS).”

“The US has not still given the public opinion an explanation for the nature of the helicopters flying in the airspace of Afghanistan under the control of NATO for supporting Daesh.”

Khatibzadeh responded to Pompeo saying the following:

“(W)e know the history (sic). We know that the Russians have armed the Taliban in the past (sic).

“We know that the Iranians continue to arm them today (sic). So we know these facts (sic).”

Pompeo’s fake news about Russia, China, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, and other nations was repeatedly exposed and debunked.

Time and again, both right wings of the US war party falsely accuse other nations for their own high crimes of war and against humanity.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from OneWorld

Congress decided to go on vacation while millions of U.S. workers are in economic limbo and while the United States continues to engage in criminal activity, such as when it seized four Iranian oil tankers that were on their way to Venezuela last week.

Yet the focus of the corporate press was on one story: Joe Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris as his running mate.

Amid this clear contradiction, we are not going to waste any space on the merits of Biden’s decision except to raise one question: For the people of the global South suffering because of U.S. sanctions, subversions, war and threats of war, will it matter who is sitting in the White House in January?

For the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), both parties represent the interests of rapacious capital that have decided that force, coercion, lawlessness and war are the tools that must be deployed in order to hold on to the advantages they enjoy in the international order. For us, it doesn’t matter who sits in the White House in January because the criminality of the U.S. state will continue.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris—representing the neoliberal, transnational wing of capital—already have their marching orders.

The Obama-Biden administration oversaw U.S.-supported and/or -initiated coups in Brazil, Egypt, Honduras and Ukraine; intensified regime-change efforts in Iraq, Iran and Syria; attempted coups in Venezuela; the destruction of Libya; expanded drone warfare across northern Africa and western Asia; and a 1,900 percent increase in military activities in Africa through the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). If history is a guide, nothing will be different if Biden and Harris are in the White House.

Regardless of who is in office, the wars, inhumane sanctions, death and destruction in what Frantz Fanon referred to as the “zones of non-being”—those spaces occupied by the non-European peoples of the world—will continue.

But what we also continue is the resistance. BAP will not collaborate with either of the parties. As an alliance, we maintain our independence. Individual members can do as they like. We say “No Compromise, No Retreat: Defeat the War on African/Black People in the U.S. and Abroad” and liberate all the laboring and oppressed of the world.

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Five Moroccan authors have announced their decision to boycott an Emirati literary prize in objection to the UAE’s “normalization” deal with Israel, Spanish newspaper EFE reported Saturday.

According to the report, the Moroccan writers all expressed their dismay and disappointment at the UAE for abandoning the Palestinian cause. It transpired in the writers’ individual statements that commitment to the Palestinian cause is of utmost importance to them.

‘Modest show of solidarity’

Writer Yahya Ben El Oualid announced his stance on his Facebook page, according to the same source. In his message, El Oualid revealed that he entered the UAE’s prominent Sheikh Zayed literary contest one month ago with his most recent book on “Arab intellectuals.”

A report released by Oxfam in July 2020 states, “COVID-19 is deepening the hunger crisis in the world’s hunger hotspots and creating new epicentres of hunger across the globe. By the end of the year 12,000 people per day could die from hunger linked to COVID-19, potentially more than will die from the disease itself.” Like other regions in the world, Latin America, too, is set to witness the intensification of an already-existing hunger crisis with the number of people facing severe food insecurity increasing from 4.3 million in 2019 to 16 million in 2020, an increase of 269%.

Unprotected from the various global setbacks, Guatemala is also experiencing the pain of a hunger crisis exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. In June 2020, the World Food Programme (WFP) wrote the following about Guatemala: “With 2.3 million people in food insecurity nation-wide…and an additional 2.3 million people directly affected by the COVID-19 crisis, it is estimated that in the next 4 months, 800,000 people will be in severe food insecurity and need of food assistance”. In June 2020, 1.2 million people were in need of emergency food aid, an increase of 570,000 from the beginning of the year. At the end of May 2020, more than 15,000 cases of acute malnutrition were reported among children, exceeding the total number for the year 2019. In urban and peri-urban areas, the number of people requiring food assistance will double or triple in 2020. In Chiquimula, for example, there are 221 children with acute malnutrition, an increase of 56.6% from the last year. In the municipality of Camotán, there are 67 cases of malnutrition, an astronomic increase from 18 cases the previous year.

Angela Naletilic, Deputy Director for Action Against Hunger in Central America, says that

“More than half of Guatemalan households are having difficulty accessing markets and four out of ten families are using coping strategies that leave them worse off, such as depleting their savings or selling some of their assets,”.

Due to disruptions in supply chains, there has been a spike in food prices in Guatemala, further pushing the country into a 2008-like food price crisis where a 34% increase in the price of yellow maize plunged 450,000 Guatemalans into poverty. As a result of the aggravating hunger pandemic in Guatemala, protests have been staged and according to an agitator,

“We are dying not only from the virus but also from hunger, poverty, forgetfulness of the state, exploitation by businessmen, and corruption by politicians and the military”.

The present-day hunger crisis in Guatemala is a result of long-term, neoliberal policies, oriented towards the economic subordination of the country as a stable periphery for the global imperialist empire. Beginning roughly from the 1980s and 1990s, the country has witnessed the large-scale economic entrenchment of a neoliberal food system characterized by the growth of agro-export crops (mainly palm oil and sugarcane), decreasing land for domestic food crops and a grotesque land concentration in the hands of the few. In Guatemala, two-thirds of the agricultural land is dominated by 2.5% of the country’s farms, less than 1% of landowners hold 75% of the best agricultural land, 90% of rural inhabitants live in poverty, 27% of rural dwellers do not own land and more than 500,000 campesino families live below the level of subsistence. The average minimum landholding necessary for family subsistence in the country is between 4.5 and 7 hectares. In 1979, “88 percent of productive farm units were less than family subsistence size, holding 16 percent of arable land, while 2 percent of units held 65 percent of arable land…Between 1964 and 1979 the number of farms of less than 3.5 hectares doubled; between 1950 and 1979, the average farm size among those with less than 7 hectares fell from 2.4 to 1.8 hectares.” Through this drastic decrease in the size of landholdings, approximately 96% of farm units (comprising 20% of all agricultural lands) fell into the subsistence or below-subsistence categories in 1998.

Export-oriented Agro-industrialization in Guatemala

The undermining of subsistence and food security by land concentration has been accompanied by the destabilization of maize-self sufficiency and the concomitant substitution of food crops with agro-export crops. Maize in Guatemala is grown on one-third of the agricultural land and accounts for 91 per cent of the total cereal area in the country. It is also used in the making milpa, an ancient polycultural system of beans, maize and a variety of native greens. In the 1961-1990 period, maize imports had accounted for less than 4% of total consumption. Since then, imports have increased exponentially, accounting for one-third of the domestic supply. Whereas 98% of Guatemala’s total maize consumption during the 1980s was domestically produced, the proportion has declined to an average of 76% since 1990. This undermining of domestic maize production capabilities has occurred through reductions in agricultural expenditures and credits. Between 1983 and 1987, state credit for maize, beans and rice fell by 40%.

Withdrawal of state support for traditional maize farmers combined with the introduction of the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) of 2004 to disrupt traditional agricultural practices. The free trade agreement allowed “US agribusiness to flood the markets with subsidized grains, further undermining local production. Extreme poverty spiked by 10 percentage points between 2006 and 2014”. While Guatemala farmers stopped receiving any support from the state, American corn farmers continued to “receive both direct subsidies (an average of $28,000 per farmer, which is more than five times Guatemala’s per capita GDP)…and indirect supports (like cheap water for irrigations and cheap oil made into fertilizers)”. As a result of this serious disparity, U.S. imports to Guatemala grew by 90 percent in less than a decade after DR-CAFTA, the sales of American produce in maize, wheat, and soy reaching $1.1 billion in 2014. From 649 Metric Tons (MT) in 2004, Guatemala’s maize imports have grown to 1600 MT in 2019. Currently, 4 of the top 5 exports of Guatemala are agricultural products, an indication of the economic extensiveness of DR-CAFTA.

The systematic dismantling of domestic maize production has paved the way for the installation of an export-oriented agricultural model comprising predominantly of palm oil and sugarcane. In 2008, the government of Guatemala considered 1,101,604 hectares, or thirty-seven per cent of the country’s total farmland, to be suitable for sugarcane and oil palm cultivation. In 2010, 102,000 hectares had been planted with oil palms and the area expansion from 2000 to 2010 was 590%. Between 2000 and 2016, palm oil production in Guatemala climbed six-fold, making it the second-largest oil palm producer in Latin America. The expansion of sugar-cane plantations in Guatemala occurred between 2001 and 2012, leading to a 55% increase in production area and a 46% increase in production volume. Total production in 2012 reached 2.5 million tons of sugar, of which 61 per cent were exported, and the total area amounted to 256,000 hectares. Annually, Guatemala produces over 2.7 million MT of sugar, ranking as the second largest sugar exporter in Latin America and fourth in the world.

Through the expansion of oil palm and sugarcane, food insecurity has heightened. The planting “of oil palm and sugarcane over lands previously dedicated to peasant and small-scale capitalist farming is eroding local wage labor opportunities because it is much less labor-intensive…oil palm and sugarcane require 52 and 36 working days per hectare/year respectively, while, for instance, the two annual maize harvests require 112 and chili cultivation 184 working days.” Substitution of food crops “by the corporately owned plantations [of palm oil and sugarcane] diminishes the employment and income opportunities of small-scale corn producers, regional traders and micro-entrepreneurs. These losses are not sufficiently compensated by the jobs and incomes offered by the agribusiness companies. The assertion that the highly capitalized agribusiness is a source of additional incomes and employment is not true in the case of Guatemala.”

Guatemala’s Annual Agricultural Survey of 2013 has found that a continuous growth of agro-export land surface in ten years, from 2003 to 2013, has coincided with a 26% decrease in the total agricultural employment. When income decreases, people are unable to afford food items and presently, half of the population is not able to afford the basic food basket. In addition to the loss of income, sugarcane and palm oil cultivation have “contributed to the disappearance of certain nutritious foods…compromised ecological resources (e.g. water, forest, and soils), and heightened the region’s exposure to external shocks (e.g. oil palm price fluctuations). Furthermore, food insecurity is exacerbated by the scalar incongruence between (beyond-community) food system threats, shocks and stresses, and (primarily within-household) adaptation strategies in relation to self- and market- provisioning of food.”

Violence, Securitization and Environmental Disaster

Palm oil and sugarcane plantations, apart from leading to market-oriented de-peasantization, also cause displacement, environmental disasters, economic uncertainty and consequently, food insecurity. In the Polochic Valley, for example, negotiations between campesino communities, state agencies, and the Chabil Utzaj sugar cane company fell apart in March 2011 “as at least 14 violent evictions were carried out between January and March 2011 on land claimed by the company. Community corn fields were destroyed in Canlún during the blitz, and private security guards returned to attack campesinos from the group on 21 May, killing Oscar Reyes with 12 gunshots and wounding at least three others”.

Through the use of violence against campesinos cultivating maize and other food crops, the sugar cane company was able to displace the peasants from their own lands, eliminate domestic food production in the region, force the campesinos into being dependent on imported food for consumption and exploit the rising food prices of the 2007-2008 period. Not having any disposable income as a result of crop destruction, the evicted campesinos were left in a state of intense food insecurity wherein the rising food prices disallowed them from achieving a basic subsistence level.

Like sugarcane, palm oil monocultures, too, are associated with environmental disasters, violence and food insecurity. A farmer settled in southwest Peten talks about how palm oil companies, through their securitization and militaristic regulation of agricultural lands, create barriers for food production: “When I want to go to my land, they don’t let me; I have to ask permission to harvest my corn or take out firewood or construction wood. I have to give accounts of what I take. This is what the company has done. They made it private property and planted palm on both sides of the road and don’t let anyone pass anymore. The security guards inspect what I carry in my bag when I go to my field in the morning; they write down my name and my identification number and they repeat this in the afternoon, too.” Many a times, palm oil companies don’t have the consent of the community and operate without any governmental licenses. According to a person living in the Polochic Valley,

“In 1996 the palm [cultivation] began [here], without the consent of the communities … they just came, planted their palm, and put up their factory. They didn’t ask if it’s okay or what the communities think about it …. At first, they said it is going to bring development and it’s a good process. But the truth is, there’s no development – rather, it’s a disaster.”

Along with securitized regulation and the violation of free, prior and informed consent, palm oil production is also linked to environmental disasters and the contamination of the Río la Pasió River in the Sayaxché municipality is a paradigmatic example of such catastrophes. In May 2015, the oxidation lagoons (containing wastes from oil mills and chemicals for fertilizers and pesticides) of the company Reforestadora de Palma S.A. (REPSA), a subsidiary of the biggest producer of palm oil in Guatemala, the Olmeca group, overflowed due to heavy rains and spilled their contents (mainly malathion) into the surrounding areas. As a result of this spillover, four severe effects were produced: “1) an at least 150 km-long section of the [Río la Pasió] river damaged; 2) between 13 to 17 communities [of the Sayaxché municipality]directly affected (more than 12,000 persons) along with, indirectly, the whole department [of Petén] ; 3) fish populations of at least 23 species identified by a government institution decimated as a result of the toxic spill; and 4) the possibility that the river’s ecosystem would never recover”.

Out of the 23 species decimated by the spillover, six were endangered species and six had economic value for the communities. With the deaths of the economically valuable fishes, there has been a concomitant loss of 8 million euros. In addition to ecological-economic loss, the malathion overflow has heavily impacted the communities living in the department of Peten since exposure to the chemical “interferes with the normal functioning of the nerves and the brain; and exposure to very high levels in air, water, or food for a short time can cause shortness of breath, chest tightness, vomiting, cramps, diarrhea, blurred vision, excessive sweating, dizziness, unconsciousness, and death.” Melding and synchronizing the all-pervasive effects of the malathion spillover, Saúl Paau, a community Leader, characterizes it as a crime against humanity:

“We can categorize the case as a crime against humanity, because not only are various species of our rivers being killed, but the river is also part of our historical culture, it is part of our territory, we feed on it, and with pollution and fish mortality today the food security of each and all the 116 thousand inhabitants that live in the municipalities of Sayaxché is violated…The issue of the breakdown of the ecosystem and the environment is not only water and fish, it is air, is human health, environmental health ”.

The ecological catastrophe in the Sayaxché municipality was in the making for many years since the palm oil project of REPSA did not have an approved Environmental Impact Study (EIS) and despite this the Guatemalan state allowed the company to carry out its operations. Américo González López, Mayor of the Manos Unidos Cooperative, talks about how the RESPA palm oil project in the Sayaxché municipality was flawed from the beginning and had state protection for whatever plunder it did in the region: “This case [contamination of Río la Pasió] proves that MARN [Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources] has failed and that the municipality has failed. The people of the area were not consulted about the project in spite of the fact that it was a project with a huge environmental impact. How is it possible that this type of situation was not foreseen? Or that now the government doesn’t know what to do to mitigate the harm done? This shows that the EIS were not real. They monopolize the water. They divert the river water to their greenhouses or for watering the palm trees, and the rivers are drying up. In the 48 years I have lived here, I have never seen river levels so low. The watering holes in our pasturelands have dried up and that has never happened before. They took down too many trees, and now they are using too much water.” The disruption of hydrological dynamics by palm oil companies is not an isolated event and the destruction of water balances is a part and parcel of palm oil production which has an extremely high water requirement of 5500 m3 /ton of crop yield – about five times that of maize.

Various organizations have attempted to protest the unencumbered pillage of REPSA and to bring attention to the irreparable ecological damage being done by the company.  A local community group called the Commission for the Defense of Life and Nature, for instance, took legal action and won a court ruling that called the spill as an “ecocide” and asked the company to suspend operations for six months at the Sayaxché palm plantation in Petén. But these judicial decisions have been overturned by violence linked to RESPA. Subsequent to the court ruling, three environmental defenders were kidnapped and a fourth activist, named Rigoberto Lima Choc, a 28-year-old schoolteacher from Champerico who had filed the complaint, was killed. After this spate of violence, REPSA continued with its palm oil business. Along with overt violence, REPSA is also utilizing informational platforms, confrontational tactics and securitization strategies to quell long-term resistance against its environmentally disastrous operations. Lorenzo Pérez, Coordinator of the National Council of Displaced Persons of Guatemala, says,

“Other companies sit down at the dialogue table and are more respectful, but REPSA doesn’t want to meet with the people. They have security personnel who take videos and photos of journalists. They are currently harassing journalists and have an ongoing REPSA radio campaign to convince people of their good image. People are aware of the impact they are having, but in order to keep their job, they don’t say anything. Some time ago when 15 workers tried to form a union, they were fired.”

Meanwhile, the people of Sayaxché continue to suffer from the ecocide and the statement of María Margarita Hernández de Herrera, a 45-year-old Q’eq’chi Mayan woman, living with her husband and three children in the village of Canaán, in Sayaxché, Petén, expresses the long-term repercussions of the river contamination for the livelihoods of many:

“This [river contamination] is the most difficult thing for a community that lives surrounded by [palm oil]plantations, because we’ve lost the lands where we used to cultivate our crops; and with the contamination of the river, we can no longer fish and prepare the catch alongside the river to eat with our beans. The entire environment is contaminated because now we have constant infestations of flies in our food, on our fruits, so we have to take special care that the children don’t get sick. We see that the color and the smell of the river has changed; our water sources have diminished; and when we wash our clothes and bathe our children in the river, we get skin lesions, diarrhea, nausea.”

In its 1989 annual report, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) had blamed the structural adjustment policies of the 1980s for the death of hundreds of thousands of children in the Global South. Instead of using bland, benumbed and bureaucratic jargon, it had used unequivocal terms to condemn the cruelty of structural adjustment programs:

“It is essential to strip away the niceties of economic parlance and say that what has happened is simply an outrage against a large segment of humanity. The developing world’s debt, both in the manner in which it was incurred and in the manner in which it is being ‘adjusted to’ is an economic stain on the second half of the twentieth century. Allowing world economic problems to be taken out on the growing minds and bodies of young children is the antithesis of all civilized behavior. Nothing can justify it. And it shames and diminishes us all.”

The words used by UNICEF back then in 1989 resonate loudly with the current situation in Guatemala. In this country, the prevalence of stunting in children under 5 is one of the highest in the world at 46.5% nationally. The stunting rate rises to 70% in some departments and 90% in the hardest hit municipalities. In 2019, food insecurity had worsened as more than 78% of the corn and bean harvest was lost in the year, affecting 250,000 people. Child malnutrition also increased from 60% in 2016 to 69% in 2019. Silveria Pérez, a mother of four living in a rural Guatemalan community, says,

“You’re told your child is malnourished. You get scared and wonder if your child is going to die. You can’t sleep because you’re thinking about what you can do. But as you have no money, there’s no way he’ll get better.”

All this is slated to aggravate in the coming months as neoliberal capitalism, unable to look beyond the narrow horizons of profit maximization, fails to tackle the hunger crisis and becomes “an outrage against a large segment of humanity”.

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On August 9, presidential elections were held in Belarus with five candidates bidding to be head of state. According to the Central Election Commission, the incumbent president, Alexander Lukashenko, won in the first round with over 80% of the votes. Mass protests began in Belarus right after the announcement of the preliminary election results. People went to the streets, expressing their dissatisfaction with the results of the elections that they believe were unfair. Mass protests turned into riots and there were clashes between rioters and the police. Many people were detained and injured, and two protestors died.

Representatives of the European Union and the U.S. stated that they did not consider the presidential elections fair and appealed to the Belarusian authorities to have a second election. As both the EU and U.S. condemned Lukashenko’s re-election, it was therefore unsurprising that the deputy head of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Paweł Jabłoński, stated that Poland did not want the EU to limit itself to only introducing sanctions against Belarus, as he claims it will push Belarus deeper into the sphere of Russian influence.

Tomorrow’s EU summit to discuss the situation in Belarus, and possibly pass sanctions, resulted from Warsaw’s call for prompt action, and above all, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki who personally exerted pressure immediately after the Belarusian elections.

“We do not want the EU’s reaction to be limited only to presenting an idea for sanctions and adopting a joint statement, which is obviously needed, but to give Belarusians something more,” said Paweł Jabłoński in an interview with PAP. “The point is that we should present a real offer to resolve this conflict in a stable and lasting manner, and this is only possible if we, as the EU, offer Belarus a real perspective of cooperation if a solution based on dialogue is reached.”

Jałoński also pointed out that EU member states should jointly adopt a common position on the events in Belarus.

“We will want to send a signal that if Belarus begins the process of reforms leading to a system in which citizens decide on the direction of changes, the EU is ready for real cooperation with Belarus – primarily economic,” said Jabłoński, adding that “Belarusians should be able to choose their own development path and have a real choice here – our role is to propose this choice.”

This suggests that Warsaw’s main concern is to see the liberalization of the Belarusian economy to follow the same path as the other post-Soviet countries in Eastern Europe. The World Bank estimates that 75% of industrial output comes from state-owned companies, with the state sector employing about half of the Belarusian workforce. Because of this, unemployment in Belarus was at 4.6% in 2019, significantly lower than neighboring Ukraine (8.8%), Latvia (6.52%) and  Lithuania (6.35%), with only Poland having a lower figure at 3.47%. Belarus is also capable of consistent GDP growth without having to rely on remittances like its neighboring countries which are also experiencing population decline due to immigration.

Effectively, what Lukashenko has done is protected the country from neo-liberal policies that spread throughout Eastern Europe after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, which resulted in many of the industries being shut down or privatized, impoverishing much of the population. Because of this action, Lukashenko earned the nom de guerre of “the last dictator of Europe” and Belarus the title of “mini-Soviet Union.”

Although Lukashenko has a complicated relationship with Moscow, one that can be cold at times, but generally speaking, Belarus, which gets its etymology from “White Rus(sia)”, has positive relations with its larger neighbor. Lukashenko, who at times panders towards the West, has amicable relations with Syria, Venezuela and other states that are targeted by the U.S. and Western Europe. Due to Lukashenko’s strong relations with these states and his sternness in preventing the liberalization of the economy, it is expected that when an opportunity is presented for the West, a Maidan-like event will begin in Belarus.

Although Poland is pushing for a Maidan-like event to occur, it is not the only neighbor of Belarus that wants this. A faction of the Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats in the Seimas, the unicameral parliament of Lithuania, called for the immediate announcement of Lithuanian sanctions against the 39 most influential representatives of the “Alexander Lukashenko regime,” as they termed it.

“Lithuania must clearly, quickly and unambiguously formulate and consolidate strategic provisions for the Belarusian regime at the European Union and transatlantic level, be an icebreaker in the fight for freedom and against tyranny. Sanctions must also send a signal to other influential members of the regime that continue to support Lukashenko, will mean a stalemate and further sanctions against a wider range of the current elite,” said leader of the Seimas opposition, Gabrielius Landsbergis.

It was recently revealed that Lithuania had a key role in the Ukrainian Maidan events, and Poland’s involvements are also well noted. It is unsurprising that both countries are once again united in their demands to escalate tensions and hostilities with Belarus in their mad drive in what they perceive to be the de-Sovietizing and de-Russification of Eastern Europe. Perceiving that Russia and Belarus could be a threat to their security, both Warsaw and Vilnius have taken the opportunity to escalate the protests through rhetoric in the hope that a Maidan-like event will occur in Belarus, thereby further weakening Russian influence in Eastern Europe.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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Any comment on regional implications of the Agreement is, of course, highly speculative as the real reasons for such an initiative are rarely disclosed by those with the power of decision. In this case the uncertainties are magnified by some central ambiguities in the language of the text, especially the word ‘suspend’ in relation to Israeli plans to annex portions of the West Bank. This territory is considered internationally to be part of Occupied Palestine, and by Israel as ‘disputed territory.’

I would offer the following tentative reactions to the Agreement: Israel was motivated by Netanyahu’s effort to justify a delay in fulfilling his election promise to annex large portions of the occupied West Bank territory belonging to Palestine, and the Agreement provided a basis to claim compensatory benefits. Netanyahu was also under pressure to convince Israelis that he could be an effective leader, and achieve peace and security in the region while under indictment for corruption and without making concessions to the Palestinians. The Agreement can be viewed as a victory for hard line reactionary Israeli politics, and also pleased Trump by allowing him to claim credit for brokering a deal that is being touted as a ‘breakthrough’ for ‘peace.’ In this usage, peace refers to Israel/Arab relations, and ignores the unresolved conflict with the Palestinian people and their leadership.

It is less clear what motivated the UAE to act at this time. There is speculation that once ‘peace’ with Israel is achieved, the UAE will be eligible to buy advanced weapons systems from the U.S., including the latest military drones. The UAE may have also wanted to strengthen the anti-Iran coalition while Trump remains the American president, fearing that if Biden wins the November election, he might restore the agreement on Iran’s Nuclear Program negotiated during the Obama presidency but repudiated by Trump. It is also plausible that the UAE is making a move to establish its leadership among Gulf countries, and getting out from beneath Saudi Arabia’s shadow.

It is possible in order to reach a common understanding the parties agreed not to specify what was meant by the word ‘suspend’ in relation to formal annexation by Israel of West Bank territory. It is also possible that a confidential understanding among the three parties was reached that the annexation freeze would be maintained for at least six months, and that during the next six months could be ended by Israel with U.S. approval, after one year, could be ignored by Israel in moving forward with annexation.

This is the normalization of relations mediated by Trump and this agreement is to be signed in the White House. What propaganda will Trump use for this issue in the presidential election?

As Trump has already claimed, this will be presented to the American people as a demonstration of the effectiveness of Trump’s deal-making diplomacy, as well as securing a victory for Israel in its efforts to achieving normalization with Arab countries without allowing the formation of an independent sovereign Palestine. The location of the signing ceremony at the White House will be a high-profile photo op for Trump, and will be conveyed to the world as a sign of continued American leadership in the search for stability in the region in ways that preserve the strategic interests of the U.S. and Israel. Whether many Americans will be very impressed by such PR showmanship remains to be seen. Some liberal American anti-Trump voices have joined in celebrating the Agreement, including a feverish puff piece by the influential NY Times opinion writer Thomas Friedman that misleadingly treats the Agreement as a ‘geopolitical earthquake’ with a positive and unifying impact on the entire Middle East. Little attention has so far been devoted in the West to how the agreement harms the Palestinian struggle for basic rights or bears on the efforts to exert pressure on Iran to conform to Western priorities.

This agreement, on the other hand, shows the concern of the UAE and Saudi Arabia about a US without Trump. In fact, by bringing Israel into clear security and political relations, the two countries will have more support from the US government. What is your assessment?

It seems that this is an accurate, but not central consideration. These leading Gulf countries had long been cooperating with Israel in a variety of ways, including establishing economic and diplomatic links, cyber-security, and joining forces to exert pressure on Iran and to lend support to anti-government forces in Syria. It is doubtful that the Biden presidency would have challenged these political orientations if he is elected, although a changed leadership would likely review whatever promises or commitments Trump made to induce the UAE to sign the Agreement, and openly break ranks on whether to normalize Arab relations with Israel without the prior commitment by Israel to accept a Palestinian state on the territories occupied in 1967. It remains unclear whether Saudi Arabia was a silent partner to this initiative or feared that it might spark anti-regime activism within its own country, and encouraged UAE to take the lead.

The UAE has announced that the annexation plan has been canceled under this agreement. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the plan to annex the West Bank was still on the table and had only been postponed. What is your assessment?

There seems little doubt that the two parties to the August 13^th Agreement want to put forward divergent interpretations of what was agreed upon as it bears on the Netanyahu/Trump endorsement of annexing those portions of occupied Palestine on which unlawful Israeli settlements are currently situated. The UAE to hide its abandonment of the Palestinians in their struggle for basic rights seeks to claim that obtaining the Israeli pledge to suspend its annexation plan preserves the hope for a Palestinian state that encompasses the entire West Bank. In contrast, Israel wants to convince especially its settler movement that the suspension is temporary, and when an opportune moment arises, annexation will go forward on the basis of the assertion of Israeli sovereignty. It should be understood that the territory in question has already been annexed by facts on the ground, and what is pledged by Israel is the ambiguous pledge to ‘suspend’ formal annexation for an unspecified time. The shift from de facto to de jure annexation seems to be connected with the readjustment downwards of Palestinian expectations in the event that some kind of negotiations between Israel and Palestine are resumed in the future. It may be relevant to recall that the UN partition resolution (GA Res. 181) looked to confer about 56% of Palestine to Israel after the end of the British Mandate. At the end of the 1948 War Israel increased its territorial scope to 78% of Paleestine, and it was presupposed in diplomacy that Israel would be expected to retain the territory gained by military operation and Palestinians lowered their goals to achieving statehood on the remaining 22%, which was again further eroded by the outcome of the 1967 War, and subsequent developments (including settlements, separation barrier, and other encroachments, all unlawful).

Doesn’t this agreement mean the failure of the deal of the century? Because the lands that are to be occupied by Israel according to the deal of the century apparently cannot join according to this agreement (According to the announcement of the United Arab Emirates, of course).

In my judgment this UAE/Israel Agreement should not be regarded as the failure of the deal of the century, but its indirect and partial implementation, which looked to vest Israeli sovereignty in 30% of the West Bank. Although Israel has agreed to suspend annexation, I think the best interpretation is that this is a temporary commitment that will be altered within a year, and then a gradual renewal of annexation will go forward, possibly without needing or seeking U.S. approval. The UAE may object, especially if Netanyahu moves too soon to revive annexation plans, but is unlikely to undo the Agreement so long as it serves its regional strategic interests. The UAE, together with other major Arab governments, had long ago abandoned meaningful support for the Palestinian struggle and adopted policies that moved by stages toward the sort of cooperation that is now normalized and endorsed openly in the Agreement, which has the blessings of Washington and allows Israel to reassure Israelis that it is enhancing security and lessening its sense of being a regional pariah.

An alternative view of the Israel/UAE Agreement is to view it as a Plan B that is designed to hide the provisional failure of the parties and the world to accept the Trump plan (From Peace to Prosperity). The new approach pretends that the Agreement is a ‘HUGE’ contribution to peace, as Trump claimed in a tweet. The Palestinians, Turks, and Iranians know better! Also, noteworthy, the parties ignored the relevance of international law. Annexation, whether de facto or de jure was in violation of international humanitarian law, and so Israel & Trump are rewarded for agreeing to suspend what amounts to a ‘money laundering’ operation even if no money was involved.

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Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, Distinguished Research Fellow, Orfalea Center of Global Studies, UCSB, author, co-author or editor of 60 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs. In 2008, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) appointed Falk to two three-year terms as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.” Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and associated with the local campus of the University of California, and for several years chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His most recent book is On Nuclear Weapons, Denuclearization, Demilitarization, and Disarmament (2019).

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On December 6, Venezuelans will go to the polls to elect a new National Assembly. Since the last election in 2016, self-declared interim president and opposition leader Juan Guaidó has seen his domestic popularity—and his standing among many foreign nations—slide.

In fact, upon Guaidó’s return last year from an international tour—financed by the United States—to seek backing for more sanctions and the ouster of elected president Nicolás Maduro, Guaidó was booed out of the Caracas airport. Such was the anger of ordinary Venezuelans against an individual who recently signed a contract with US-based mercenaries to overthrow the government in a bizarre failed plot that has come to be known as the “Bay of Piglets.”

Now, Guaidó and right-wing factions within the National Assembly are boycotting the elections, as opposition leaders have vowed not to recognize the “false” electoral body designated by the Supreme Court. The Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (United Socialist Party of Venezuela, or PSUV) and its allies are expected to win on December 6.

While Guaidó’s standing in Venezuela is currently at rock bottom, the self-declared interim leader has also seen much of his international support evaporate. According to an August 14 press statement issued by the US State Department entitled “Joint Declaration of Support for Democratic Change in Venezuela”:

We call on all political parties and institutions in Venezuela to engage promptly in, or in support of, a process that will establish a broadly acceptable transitional government that will administer free and fair presidential elections soon and begin to set the country on a pathway to recovery. For a peaceful and sustainable resolution of the crisis, a transitional government is needed to administer presidential elections, so that no candidate has an improper advantage over others.

For its part, Global Affairs Canada (GAC) issued an identical statement, calling for a “swift and peaceful transition to democracy” in Venezuela.

Like Venezuela’s opposition leaders, US President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will not recognize the upcoming legislative elections. They have instead demanded “a process that will establish a broadly acceptable transitional government that will administer free and fair presidential elections,” which are not yet due, and which would necessarily exclude Maduro. This is the usual formula: one that establishes a pretext for more sanctions, violent regime-change actions and open coup attempts, all geared to stoke a revolt among the Venezuelan people and a mutiny among the armed forces.

However, the press statement issued by the US State Department and GAC is notable because of the dwindling number of ally countries that are now “committed to the restoration of democracy in Venezuela.” What used to be a long list of more than 50 nations is now down to just 19: Albania, Australia, Bahamas, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Georgia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Israel, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Republic of Korea, Saint Lucia, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.

This is a far cry from the formerly extensive coalition of dozens of states that have heretofore unequivocally recognized and supported Guaidó. The State Department could not even get sign-on from all of the members of the Lima Group—the multilateral body consisting of 14 countries, including Canada, that is dedicated to a “peaceful exit to the ongoing crisis in Venezuela.” Thus, the list of partner states now includes Israel, along with some of the most servile allies of the US (and notable violators of human rights and democracy) such as Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, and Haiti.

More intriguingly, the two rivals to Canada’s defeated bid for a United Nations Security Council Seat last June, Norway and Ireland, do not appear on the list of countries dedicated to “an end to the Maduro dictatorship.” This appears to vindicate those who had lobbied the UN and other international organizations to reject Canada’s campaign for a UNSC seat, citing the Trudeau government’s support for anti-democratic actions in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Haiti, to name just a few examples.

Even many in the US Congress admitted the failure of the Trump administration’s Venezuela policy in a recent hearing.

“Our Venezuela policy over the last year and a half has been an unmitigated disaster,” said Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut and a member of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “If we aren’t honest about that, then we can’t self-correct.” Murphy continued, declaring that US support for Venezuela’s opposition forces has handed Maduro an opportunity to label Guaidó an ‘American patsy’ while hardening support for his government around the world.

Ironically, Trump may have been better off if he considered some of the diplomatic overtures coming from within the Venezuelan government. Its Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jorge Arreaza, wrote an op-ed for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), stating,

“Trump would do better if he followed his initial instinct of talking to President Maduro. A respectful dialogue with Venezuela is what is really in the interest of the United States.”

It is not surprising that Senator Murphy’s admission of failed coup attempts at a recent Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting on August 4 has become a popular YouTube video. During the hearing, Murphy pressed Special Representative for Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, on the administration’s disastrous policy on Venezuela, which has “left America in a weaker position, failed to restore democracy, and allowed the humanitarian situation to worsen.” Murphy continued:

[W]e thought that getting Guaidó to declare himself president would be enough to topple the regime. Then we thought putting aid on the border would be enough. Then we tried to sort of construct a kind of coup in April of last year, and it blew up in our face when all the generals that were supposed to break with Maduro decided to stick with him in the end… I think this is just a prescription to get stuck in a downwards spiral of American policy from which we cannot remove ourselves.

The Canadian media should take a similarly critical stance toward the Trudeau government’s dubious attempts to oust the Maduro regime, including its failure to condemn Guaidó for his partnership with armed US mercenaries to foment a violent coup within Venezuela. Anything less is an endorsement of generations of failed US-led policies in Latin America, ones that have contributed to violence and destabilization throughout the entire hemisphere.

Join the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute (CFPI) on Thursday, August 20, for an historic event featuring Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza, who will speak directly from Caracas on Canada’s interference in Venezuela and the Trudeau government’s support for self-declared interim president Juan Guaidó. The event is sponsored by Canadian Dimension. You can register for the webinar here.

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This article was originally published on Canadian Dimension.

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US cold war on China risks turning hot if bipartisan hardliners in Washington push things too far.

Their hostile actions are all about wanting China’s development, growth, and prominence on the world stage undermined.

Since Trump took office, scores of Chinese tech-related companies were blacklisted from doing business in the US.

Falsely accused of threatening US national security, ByteDance’s TikTok video-sharing firm has been on the Trump regime’s target list for months.

It poses no security threat to the US or any other countries.

Yet last December, the Pentagon banned its use by military personnel on government-issued devices.

Congressional legislation was introduced to prohibit federal employees from using TikTok on government devices.

The DNC warned against using the video-sharing platform.

It’s hugely popular with over 100 million US users, countless millions more worldwide — why it’s drawn scrutiny in Washington.

Targeting the firm and many other Chinese tech-related ones is part of US war on the country and its enterprises by other means.

It’s all about wanting corporate America to have a competitive advantage.

Claiming targeted Chinese firms pose a national security threat is cover for what’s really going on.

The CIA reportedly indicated that it found no evidence of Beijing getting TikTok user information from the company.

Trump paid no attention. Last week by executive order, he gave ByteDance 90 days to divest from TikTok, overriding his earlier 45 day ultimatum.

Like most everything he says, the EO falsely said he acted “to deal with (a) national emergency” when none exists with the firm, its parent company or China.

He lied claiming “the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in the People’s Republic of China continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States (sic).”

He falsely said that user data collected by TikTok “threatens to allow (Beijing) access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”

No evidence corroborates the claim. The CIA refuted it.

Trump is congenital liar, a disgrace to the office he holds, contemptuous of the rule of law, sovereign nations not controlled by the US, and ordinary people everywhere — at home and abroad.

ByteDance didn’t respond to Trump’s EO. Last week, it issued a statement saying the following:

It’s “committed to continuing to bring joy to families and meaningful careers to those who create on our platform for many years to come,” adding:

“We will pursue all remedies available to us in order to ensure that the rule of law is not discarded and that our company and our users are treated fairly – if not by the (regime), then by the US courts.”

China seeks cooperative relations with the US and other countries.

Trump regime and congressional hostility toward Beijing make achieving this objective with Washington unattainable.

What Trump calls a “plague” unleashed by China and other Big Lies widens the breach between both nations, heightening the risk of direct confrontation.

On August 17, China’s official People’s Daily accused the US of waging cold war on the country, including by McCarthyite tactics, adding the following:

“Recently a group of former statesmen and scholars from 48 countries initiated an online event themed ‘A new Cold War against China is against the interests of humanity.’ ”

“A joint statement named ‘No to the New Cold War’ was issued in 14 languages, which epitomized a strong call for the US side to stop forming an anti-China coalition and dividing the world.”

The initiative and similar ones fall on deaf ears in Washington — letting nothing interfere with advancing its imperial aims.

A Final Comment

Surprisingly in late July, the pro-war, pro-US corporate empowerment, pro-dirty business as usual Brookings slammed Pompeo’s recent address in Yorba Linda, CA that focused on China bashing, saying the following:

Pompeo “engaged in doublespeak.”

He called for “organiz(ing) the free world, while alienating and undermining” it.

He “extol(ed) democracy while aiding and abetting its destruction .”

He “praise(d) the Chinese people while (claiming) ill intent of Chinese students who want to come to America.”

He’s loyal to Trump “who cares not one whit for democracy, dissidents, freedom, or transparency overseas.”

The same goes for Pompeo, other regime hardliners, and most congressional members.

“Pompeo has some nerve to now claim that what is upside down is right side up.”

Brookings also slammed China. It supports Washington’s imperial agenda.

It takes issues with actions by Trump, Pompeo, and likely others in his regime — while ignoring their war on humanity at home and abroad.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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Some Americans continue to believe that when they go to the internet they will get a free flow of useful information that will guide them in making decisions or coming to conclusions about the state of the world. That conceit might have been true to an extent twenty years ago, but the growth and consolidation of corporate information management firms has instead limited access to material that it does not approve of, thereby successfully shaping the political and economic environment to conform with their own interests. Facebook, Google and other news and social networking sites now all have advisory panels that are authorized to ban content and limit access by members. This de facto censorship is particularly evident when using the internet information “search” sites themselves, a “service” that is dominated by Google. Ron Unz has observed how when the CEO of Google Sundar Pichai faced congressional scrutiny on July 29^th together with other high-tech executives, the questioning was hardly rigorous and no one even asked how the sites are regulated to promote certain information that is approved of while suppressing views or sources that are considered to be undesirable.

The “information” sites generally get a free pass from government scrutiny because they are useful to those who run the country from Washington and Wall Street. That the internet is a national security issue was clearly demonstrated when the Barack Obama Administration sought to develop a switch that could be used to “kill it” in the event of a national crisis. No politician or corporate chief executive wants to get on the bad side of Big Tech and find his or her name largely eliminated from online searches, or, alternatively, coming up all too frequently with negative connotations.

Google, for example, ranks the information that it displays so it can favor certain points of view and dismiss others. Generally speaking, “progressive” sites are favored and conservative sites are relegated to the bottom of the search with the expectation that they will not be visited. In late July, investigative journalists noted that Google was apparently testing its technical ability to blacklist conservative media on its search engine which processes more than 3.5 billion online searches every day, comprising 94 percent of internet searching. Sites targeted and made to effectively disappear from results included NewsBusters, the Washington Free Beacon, The Blaze, Townhall, The Daily Wire, PragerU, LifeNews, Project Veritas, Judicial Watch, The Resurgent, Breitbart, Drudge, Unz, the Media Research Center and CNSNews. All the sites affected are considered to be politically conservative and no progressive or liberal sites were included.

One has to suspect that the tech companies like Google are working hand-in-hand with some regulators within the Trump administration to “purge” the internet, primarily by removing foreign competition both in hardware and software from countries like China. This will give the ostensibly U.S. companies monopoly status and will also allow the government to have sufficient leverage to control the message. If this process continues, the internet itself will become nationally or regionally controlled and will inevitably cease to be a vehicle for free exchange of views. Recent steps taken by the U.S. to block Huawei 5G technology and also force the sale of sites like TikTok have been explained as “national security” issues, but they are more likely designed to control aspects of the internet.

Washington is also again beating the familiar drum that Russia is interfering in American politics, with an eye on the upcoming election. Last week saw the released of a 77 page report produced by the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) on Russian internet based news and opinion sources that allegedly are guilty of spreading disinformation and propaganda on behalf of the Kremlin. It is entitled “Understanding Russia’s Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem” and has a lead paragraph asserting that “Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem is the collection of official, proxy, and unattributed communication channels and platforms that Russia uses to create and amplify false narratives.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, The New York Times is hot on the trail of Russian malfeasance, describing the report and its conclusions in a lengthy article “State Dept. Traces Russian Disinformation Links” that appeared on August 5^th.

The government report identifies a number of online sites that it claims are actively involved in the “disinformation” effort. The Times article focuses on one site in particular, describing how “The report states that the Strategic Culture Foundation [website] is directed by Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the S.V.R., and stands as ‘a prime example of longstanding Russian tactics to conceal direct state involvement in disinformation and propaganda outlets.’ The organization publishes a wide variety of fringe voices and conspiracy theories in English, while trying to obscure its Russian government sponsorship.” It also quotes Lea Gabrielle, the GEC Director, who explained that “The Kremlin bears direct responsibility for cultivating these tactics and platforms as part of its approach of using information and disinformation as a weapon.”

As Russia has been falsely accused of supporting the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and the existence of alternative news sites funded wholly or in part by a foreign government is not ipso facto an act of war, it is interesting to note the “evidence” that The Times provides based on its own investigation to suggest that Moscow is about to disrupt the upcoming election. It is: “Absent from the report is any mention of how one of the writers for the Strategic Culture Foundation weighed in this spring on a Democratic primary race in New York. The writer, Michael Averko, published articles on the foundation’s website and in a local publication in Westchester County, N.Y., attacking Evelyn N. Farkas, a former Obama administration official who was running for Congress. In recent weeks, the F.B.I. questioned Mr. Averko about the Strategic Culture Foundation and its ties to Russia. While those attacks did not have a decisive effect on the election, they showed Moscow’s continuing efforts to influence votes in the United States…”

Excuse me, but someone writing for an alternative website with relatively low readership criticizing a candidate for congress does not equate to the Kremlin’s interfering in an American election. Also, the claim that the Strategic Culture Foundation is a disinformation mechanism is overwrought. Yes, the site is located in Moscow and it may have some government support but it features numerous American and European contributors in addition to Russians. I have been writing for the site for nearly three years and I know many of the other Americans who also do so. We are generally speaking antiwar and often critical of U.S. foreign policy but the contributors include conservatives like myself, libertarians and progressives and we write on all kinds of subjects.

And here is the interesting part: not one of us has ever been told what to write. Not one of us has ever even had a suggestion coming from Moscow on a good topic for an article. Not one of us has ever had an article or headline changed or altered by an editor. Putting on my ex-intelligence officer hat for a moment, that is no way to run an influencing or disinformation operation intended to subvert an election. Sure, Russia has a point of view on the upcoming election and its managed media outlets will reflect that bias but the sweeping allegations are nonsense, particularly in an election that will include billions of dollars in real disinformation coming from the Democratic and Republican parties.

Putting together what you no longer can find when you search the internet with government attempts to suppress alternative news sites one has to conclude that we Americans are in the middle of an information war. Who controls the narrative controls the people, or so it seems. It is a dangerous development, particularly at a time when no one knows whom to trust and what to believe. How it will play out between now and the November election is anyone’s guess.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

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