The nation I grew up in no longer exists, replaced by endless state-sponsored war on humanity at home and abroad — along with the transformation of America to resemble tinpot dictatorships.
Full-blown tyranny may be one more major state-sponsored homeland false flag incidents away that could come any time in a nation where the rule of law long ago died.
On Wednesday, the ACLU and volunteer medics sued the Trump regime’s DHS, the US Marshals Service, and Portland, OR police, saying:
“In well-documented incidents, police and federal agents brutally attacked volunteer medics with rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray, batons, and flash-bangs.”
A plaintiff in the suit Savannah Guest called what’s gone on “terrifying…federal agents show(ing) no humanity or concern.”
According to the ACLU, its “lawsuit argues that the law enforcement attacks on medics violates the First and Fourth Amendments.”
“The ACLU of Oregon will also seek a court order, prohibiting law enforcement from targeting and attacking medics again.”
A statement by ACLU interim director in Oregon Jann Carson said the following:
“Volunteer medics should be celebrated, not attacked or arrested.”
“Our clients are volunteering day and night to provide aid to the injured and to create a safer environment for protesters and bystanders.”
“These attacks are unconscionable as well as unconstitutional. This lawlessness must end.”
A weeks earlier ACLU lawsuit against the Trump regime and Portland police won a court order that prohibits attacks by federal and local law enforcement authorities on journalists and legal observers.
They continue in breach of the Constitution and court order.
Perkins Coie attorney representing the ACLU Rian Peck said the following:
“The Trump (regime) and Portland Police Bureau…violated the constitutional rights of our clients to protest and lend medical services, supplies, and treatment to protesters,” adding:
“Our clients have been tear gassed, pepper sprayed, beaten, and shot with rubber bullets, even while administering care to injured protesters.”
“This lawsuit seeks to ensure that the Trump (regime) and Portland police will be held accountable for their violent, lawless, and unconstitutional actions.”
“When protest medics are rendering aid to protest attendees and innocent bystanders, they are exercising their right to free speech.”
“At the core of their message: Police violence and brutality will not deter protesters from using their voice to demand change in policing practices.”
“For as long as the protests continue, our clients intend to continue exercising their right to deliver that message.”
The new ACLU lawsuit seeks a court-ordered halt to violence by federal and local authorities, along with damages for injuries sustained by plaintiffs.
Federal, state, and local authorities are legally mandated to protect Americans from violence committed against them, along with arresting and detaining responsible parties.
Attacking peaceful protesters, journalists, volunteer medics, legal observers, and bystanders breaking no laws/threatening no one, that’s what state-terrorism is all about.
That’s what has been going on in Portland, federal and local authorities crossing the line from legally permitted law enforcement to state-sponsored violence.
Is much of the same coming to my home city of Chicago? Will I be living under hostile occupation when they arrive?
Will I be endangered on streets near my residence?
According to the Chicago Sun Times, around 200 (paramilitary) federal agents are coming to the city as part of the Trump regime’s so-called Operation Legend.
Will they be heavily armed, masked, and attired in unrecognizable uniforms, cruising city neighborhoods in unmarked vans?
Will they operate as extrajudicially in Chicago as in Portland?
Will they transform my neighborhood into a battleground?
According to US attorney, former federal prosecutor John Lausch, federal agents will work with Chicago police and city hall.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot is uneasy about their involvement, saying she’ll pursue all legal options if federal shock troops are responsible for unacceptable actions, adding:
Trump “has been on a campaign now for some time against (Dem) mayors across the country.”
He’s “trying to divert attention from his failed leadership on COVID-19.”
Asked about Lightfoot’s remarks, Trump invented his own reality, saying “cities…that are in trouble are all run by (Dems).”
“You have radical-left (Dems) running cities like Chicago and so many others (sic)” — claiming he can solve their “problem(s) (sic).”
Lausch said newly deployed federal agents in Chicago will work with “current FBI, ATF, DEA and Homeland Security teams that are already working in Chicago with the Chicago Police Department and the other local and state law enforcement.”
He also claimed their involvement in the city won’t resemble what’s going on in Portland, adding:
“This is not patrol. This is not against civil unrest.”
“This is working with the Chicago Police Department to do what we can to reduce the staggering violent crime we’re facing right now…(focusing on) gangs, guns and drugs.”
They’ll be dressed in “tactical gear,” Lausch claimed isn’t camouflage. They may work undercover.
According to acting DHS secretary Chad Wolf, (i)n Chicago, the mission is to protect the public from violent crime on the streets.”
It remains to be seen what happens after elements Mayor Lightfoot objected to having in the city show up.
The longer they stay, their numbers perhaps increasing, the greater the chance of things getting out of hand — including ordinary people threatening no one being harmed by the long arm of state-sponsored brutality.
The late Gore Vidal once mocked GW Bush for calling himself “a wartime president,” responsible for high crimes of war and against humanity at home and abroad throughout most of his time in office.
Trump calls himself a “law and order” president. The ACLU accused him of “terrorizing our communities and endangering lives.”
The organization’s Illinois executive director Colleen Connell vowed to “hold the Trump (regime) accountable…for unconstitutional actions” by federal agents in Chicago, adding:
These elements in the city “will not be a constructive force…”
They’re likely to “terrorize” neighborhoods “and create chaos.”
“This is not law and order. This is an assault on…people…and the specific protections of protest and press in the First Amendment.”
I’m personally uneasy about federal shock troops in my city, maybe in my neighborhood, likely to do more harm than good.
I’ll exhale when they’re gone.
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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.”
Another day, more shoes dropped, escalating US war on China by other means, a scenario fraught with danger by pushing things toward a point of no return that risks belligerent confrontation.
Time and again, US charges against Russia, Iran, China, Venezuela, North Korea and other countries were baseless — no credible evidence supporting them.
In less than a 24-hour period, the Trump regime took two hostile actions against China.
Its Justice Department accused Beijing of cyber-espionage, along Trump regime authorities ordering closure of its Houston consulate within 72 hours. More on the latter action below.
On Tuesday, Trump’s Justice Department issued the following statement:
Operating secretly and unconstitutionally, it failed to explain, “(a) federal grand jury in Spokane, Washington returned an indictment earlier this month charging two hackers, both nationals and residents of…China with hacking into the computer systems of hundreds of victim companies, governments, non-governmental organizations, and individual dissidents, clergy, and democratic and human rights activists in the United States and abroad, including Hong Kong and China,” adding:
“The defendants in some instances acted for their own personal financial gain, and in others for the benefit of the MSS (Ministry of State Security) or other Chinese government agencies.”
“The hackers stole terabytes of data which comprised a sophisticated and prolific threat to US networks.”
An 11-count indictment (alleging conspiracy, identity theft, and fraud) accused two Chinese nationals of “targeting companies in countries with high technology industries, including the United States, Australia, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.”
The indictment claims they targeted intellectual property, including research on COVID-19 vaccines, defense, communications, and other technology related data.
Assistant AG for national security John Demers sounded like Chinaphobe Pompeo, claiming:
“China has now taken its place, alongside Russia, Iran and North Korea in (a) club of nations that provide a safe haven for cyber criminals in exchange for those criminals being ‘on call’ to work for the benefit of the state, here to feed the Chinese Communist party’s insatiable hunger for American and other non-Chinese companies’ hard-earned intellectual property, including COVID-19 research (sic).”
The US grand jury system is unconstitutional. It violates the First, Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments.
Americans can be prosecuted for claimed association with “undesirable group(s).”
They’re subjected to unreasonable searches and seizures by unchecked surveillance powers of the state, their privacy compromised.
Due process, habeas rights, and equal justice under law no longer protect them. All of the above are hallmarks of police state rule.
A former New York Court of Appeals chief judge once slammed the US grand jury system, saying its manipulative practices can “indict a ham sandwich.”
Instead of protecting the public from oppressive government, grand juries circumvent judicial fairness, prosecutors able to manipulate the process to get indictments they seek, innocence considered no legitimate defense.
Individuals questioned are denied their 6th Amendment right to be represented by counsel and their 5th Amendment right to remain silent.
No judge is present to assure proceedings are fair and legitimate in compliance with US constitutional and statute laws.
Prosecutors alone decide what “evidence” to present to grand jurors, challenges to its legitimacy not permitted.
These individuals are closely allied to federal, state, and/or local authorities. The system is unconstitutionally rigged to indict if that’s the prosecutorial intention.
Hours after the Trump regime indictment, China’s UK envoy Liu Xiaoming tweeted the following:
“Such accusations constitute disrespect for Chinese scientists & their achievements.”
“They could also undermine international cooperation on R&D.”
“The world must strongly oppose and reject such groundless claims.”
In response to US accusations, China’s US Embassy referred to Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying’s mid-July response to dubious Beijing hacking charges by Trump regime AG William Barr, saying the following:
“Some US politicians seem to be alleging that China is waging cyberattacks to steal US research on Covid-19 vaccines,” adding:
“It’s just absurd. We are already leading the world in vaccine R&D with top researchers. We don’t need to secure an edge by theft.”
“As we speak, Chinese research teams are moving ahead with multiple vaccine tasks through five technical routes.”
She also pointed out that Trump’s 2018 “secret authorization” OK’d the CIA to run “very aggressive” cyberwar with no oversight — what the US intelligence community routinely does anyway worldwide, targeting allies and adversaries alike.
Hours after the above indictments were announced, Bloomberg News reported that the Trump regime ordered closure of China’s Houston consulate in 72 hours.
Its Foreign Ministry responded, calling the order an “unprecedented escalation,” adding:
“China strongly condemns such an outrageous and unjustified move which will sabotage China-US relations.”
“We urge the US to immediately withdraw its erroneous decision. Otherwise Beijing will “react with firm countermeasures.”
According to Bloomberg, the embassy “accused the US of harassing diplomatic staff and intimidating Chinese students, confiscating personal electrical devices and detaining them without cause,” adding:
“Chinese diplomatic missions and personnel also recently received bomb and death threats.”
Citing unnamed US sources, the Houston Chronicle reported that China’s consulate will be closed Friday at 4:00 PM, anyone still in the facility evicted.
Hostile US actions against China continue without letup.
Last weekend, Trump regime war secretary Mark Esper accused China and Russia of being the “top (US) strategic competitors,” adding:
Beijing is a bigger problem, falsely claiming its ruling authorities want international order rules rewritten.
According to China’s National Institute for South China Sea Studies, the US has 375,000 military personnel and 60% of its warships in the Indo/Pacific region, adding:
The Pentagon’s regional presence is unrelated to “defend(ing) the (US) Constitution, nor anything to do with “safeguard(ing)” peace, stability, and sovereign rights of regional nations.
The US is pressuring East Asian nations to support its aim to contain, isolate, and weaken China — a hostile policy risking direct confrontation if things are pushed too far.
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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
On Monday, debate began in Washington on extending aid to unemployed workers and other Americans in need at a time of economic crisis conditions.
Trump wants an unacceptable payroll tax cut, opposed by Dems and many Republicans — for political reasons ahead of November elections.
Employed Americans and their companies pay FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) and MEDFICA payroll taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare — core US social programs that are essential for millions of eligible recipients.
Combined, these taxes amount to 7.65% of pay up to a maximum of $137,700.
Employers and workers pay an equal amount for a combined rate of 15.3%.
According to the Tax Foundation (TF), these taxes “make up 23.05 percent of combined federal, state, and local government revenue – the second largest source of government revenue in the United States.”
Time and again, things aren’t as they seem, TF adding:
“(R)ather than workers and employers each paying 7.65 percent in payroll taxes, employers send their portion of the tax to the government and then decrease workers’ wages by almost” the same amount.
“(A)lmost the entire burden of the payroll tax is passed on to employees in the form of lower wages.”
What politicians don’t mention and establishment media don’t explain is that Social Security and Medicare are insurance plans — funded by worker/employer payroll tax deductions.
When individuals buy health, auto, life, homeowners, and other insurance from private companies, plans pay according to provisions of purchased policies.
That’s how Social Security and Medicare should work.
Pay premiums and receive benefits when eligible as originally promised when both programs became the law of the land — in 1935 and 1965 respectively.
Social Security provides retirement, disability, survivorship, and death benefits — what’s essential for most recipients who’d be greatly harmed without it.
Despite fear-mongering claims otherwise, the program is not in danger of going bankrupt.
When properly administered, it’s sound and secure, needing only modest adjustments at times to assure it.
Medicare is the nation’s largest health insurance program,” covering about 68 million Americans.
It’s for individuals aged-65 or older, some disabled people under age 65, and people of all ages with end-stage renal disease (permanent kidney failure treated with dialysis or a transplant).
So-called “entitlement reform” pushed by the US ruling class wants neoliberal harshness replacing social justice entirely that includes weakening Social Security and Medicare as prelude to eliminating both essential programs.
Also on the chopping block for eroding and elimination are food and housing assistance, collective bargaining, Medicaid, education and childcare assistance, along with other aid to the needy — wanting the US transformed into a dystopian ruler-serf society more repressive than already, militarized for control.
Both right wings of the one-party state want privileged interests controlling the national wealth, used for greater self-enrichment, militarism and endless wars, nonbelievers confined to gulag imprisonment or otherwise eliminated.
According to Politico, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hasn’t said publicly or privately if he’ll include a payroll tax cut in the GOP-controlled Senate bill to help the unemployed and other Americans in need.
At this stage Dems and Republicans are far from agreement on further aid — Dems calling a payroll tax cut a nonstarter.
The amount of unemployment benefits is another major sticking point. Dems want continuation of current benefits. Republicans want a much lower figure — from one-third to two-thirds of the current $600 a week.
At a time of likely protracted economic crisis conditions, especially harming small businesses and ordinary Americans, employers are cutting hours and pay for millions of workers.
According to an analysis for the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute, based on data from payroll processor ADP, US workers are twice as likely to get pay cuts now than during the 2008-09 financial crisis.
Millions are also working shorter hours. During hard times like now when workers need as much income as possible for essentials to life, the BF Institute found that their pay is being cut from 5 to 50%, a median cut of 10%, along with shorter hours worked.
According to payroll processor Gusto, wages and hours are being cut in nearly all sectors of the US economy.
When households have less disposable income, they spend less. About 70% of the US economy depends on consumer spending.
Less of it means making dire conditions worse. Workers fearful of being laid off are saving more and spending less.
My own observation of retail traffic along Chicago’s upscale Magnificent Mile during business hours when walking along the avenue for daily exercise is that way below normal numbers of people are out shopping compared to what I saw before current economic crisis conditions began.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Republicans prioritize “legal protections for businesses and money to reopen schools but no new funding for states and cities sought by Dem(s).”
It’s unclear what’ll be agreed on before end of July when current federal benefits expire.
Most likely it’ll be much less than what unemployed Americans need for food, shelter, clothing, medical care, and other essentials to life.
For them, things are likely to worsen ahead and remain this way.
Under one-party rule with two rights wings, lost wages and benefits are unlikely to be regained any time soon, not even when economic conditions improve — which may not be for years.
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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.”
Britain is an appendage of US imperial policy, complicit in its high crimes of war and against humanity — the supreme crime against peace.
Both countries are also united in waging war by other means against sovereign independent countries free from Western control — including a war of words, mass deception to manipulate the public mind.
Russia, China, and other sovereign independent countries are on US target list for regime change, Britain going along, supporting what breaches the UN Charter and other international law.
Claims by the US intelligence community, Congress, and press agent media about Russia US election meddling are Big Lies that won’t die.
Complicit with the US, Britain introduced a new front in their joint Russophobic campaign of mass deception — featuring false claims of Kremlin interference in its electoral process.
Its Intelligence and Security Committee fake news report perhaps was prepared on orders from Trump regime Russophobes.
Both countries presented no evidence backing their accusations because none exists, both complicit in the thinly veiled hoax establishment media support — making them complicit in the defamatory Big Lie campaign.
When accusations aren’t supported by credible evidence, they’re baseless.
Virtually everything Russia was accused of post-9/11 was false.
Yet diabolical US-led propaganda war on the country rages, Britain part of the mass deception campaign.
Shortly before the Boris Johnson regime released its fake news report on alleged Russian UK election interference, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the following:
“Russia has never interfered in other states’ election campaigns, and it does not tolerate interference in its own domestic affairs,” adding:
“Russia has never interfered in election processes in any country of the world, be it the United States, the UK or other states.”
“We do not do it ourselves, and we do not tolerate it when other countries try to meddle in our political affairs.”
“So even if this report contains some ephemeral accusations, I can assure you now that even if such accusations are there, they will be baseless.”
“This will be another set of groundless accusations.”
The fake news report containing no corroborating evidence called Russian cyber capabilities a “matter of grave concern (sic),” adding:
It poses an “immediate and urgent threat” to national security (sic).”
“The written evidence (sic) provided to us (by British intelligence and so-called independent experts) appeared to suggest that (the Johnson regime) had not seen or sought evidence of successful interference in UK democratic processes or any activity that has had a material impact on an election, for example influencing results.”
“There has been credible open source commentary suggesting that Russia undertook influence campaigns in relation to the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 (sic).”
Notorious Russophobic international con man/fraudster/tax evader Bill Browder and fake news dodgy dossier alleging Russian US 2016 election meddling preparer, former MI6 spy Christopher Steele, were two of the so-called independent experts, along with other dubious figures lacking credibility.
According to the Johnson regime’s dodgy report, “Russia considers the UK one of its top Western intelligence targets (sic).”
“(W)hile we may not experience the level and type of threat that countries on Russia’s borders suffer (sic), witnesses (sic) have suggested that we would sit just behind the US and NATO in any priority list (sic).”
“This is likely to be related to the UK’s close relationship with the US, and the fact that the UK is seen as central to the Western anti-Russian lobby.”
The report includes numerous accusations and allegations sans corroborating evidence because there is none, just Russophobic rubbish without substance.
Moscow seeks cooperative relations with the world community of nations — neither at war with or threatening other countries.
Its geopolitical agenda is polar opposite how the US, UK, other NATO members, Israel, and their imperial partners operate — waging endless wars on humanity.
Claims in Britain’s dodgy report like the following defy reality, saying:
“The security threat posed by Russia (sic) is difficult for the West to manage as, in our view and that of many others, it appears fundamentally nihilistic (sic).”
“Russia seems to see foreign policy as a zero-sum game (sic).
“(A)ny actions it can take which damage the West are fundamentally good for Russia (sic).”
“It is also seemingly fed by paranoia, believing that Western institutions such as NATO and the EU have a far more aggressive posture towards it than they do in reality (sic).”
“Russia’s promotion of disinformation and its attempts at broader political influence overseas have been widely reported (sic).
“Examples include use of state-owned traditional media (sic).”
“(O)pen source studies have shown serious distortions in the coverage provided by Russian state-owned international broadcasters such as RT and Sputnik (sic).”
There’s lots more Russophobic rubbish in Britain’s 55-page dodgy report — its pages devoid of evidence backing claims, rendering them baseless on a par with US fake news of Russian election meddling that never occurred in the country or anywhere else.
The UK report reads like a Grade B Hollywood film script — panned by critics for resembling unrealistic fiction, not reality.
It’s all about Britain’s complicity with US war on Russia by other means.
There’s no end of it no matter which right wing of the US one-party state runs things — Britain operating the same way.
Both nations are fantasy democracies, not the real thing, pretending otherwise — fooling no one paying attention.
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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.”
The Jewish National Fund, established more than 100 years ago, is perhaps the most venerable of the international Zionist organisations. Its recent honorary patrons have included prime ministers, and it advises UN forums on forestry and conservation issues.
It is also recognised as a charity in dozens of western states. Generations of Jewish families, and others, have contributed to its fundraising programmes, learning as children to drop saved pennies into its trademark blue boxes to help plant a tree.
And yet its work over many decades has been driven by one main goal: to evict Palestinians from their homeland.
The JNF is a thriving relic of Europe’s colonial past, even if today it wears the garb of an environmental charity. As recent events show, ethnic cleansing is still what it excels at.
The organisation’s mission began before the state of Israel was even born. Under British protection, the JNF bought up tracts of fertile land in what was then historic Palestine. It typically used force to dispossess Palestinian sharecroppers whose families had worked the land for centuries.
But the JNF’s expulsion activities did not end in 1948, when Israel was established through a bloody war on the ruins of the Palestinians’ homeland – an event Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe.
Israel hurriedly demolished more than 500 cleansed Palestinian villages, and the JNF was entrusted with the job of preventing some 750,000 refugees from returning. It did so by planting forests over both the ruined homes, making it impossible to rebuild them, and village lands to stop them being farmed.
These plantations were how the JNF earned its international reputation. Its forestry operations were lauded for stopping soil erosion, reclaiming land and now tackling the climate crisis.
But even this expertise – gained through enforcing war crimes – was undeserved. Environmentalists say the dark canopies of trees it has planted in arid regions such as the Negev, in Israel’s south, absorb heat unlike the unforested, light-coloured soil. Short of water, the slow-growing trees capture little carbon. Native species of brush and animals, meanwhile, have been harmed.
These pine forests – the JNF has planted some 250 million trees – have also turned into a major fire hazard. Most years hundreds of fires break out after summer droughts exacerbated by climate change.
Early on, the vulnerability of the JNF’s saplings was used as a pretext to outlaw the herding of native black goats. Recently the goats, which clear undergrowth, had to be reintroduced to prevent the fires. But the goats’ slaughter had already served its purpose, forcing Bedouin Palestinians to abandon their pastoral way of life.
Despite surviving the Nakba, thousands of Bedouin in the Negev were covertly expelled to Egypt or the West Bank in Israel’s early years.
It would be wrong, however, to imagine that the JNF’s troubling role in these evictions was of only historical interest. The charity, Israel’s largest private land owner, is actively expelling Palestinians to this day.
In recent weeks, solidarity activists have been desperately trying to prevent the eviction of a Palestinian family, the Sumarins, from their home in occupied East Jerusalem to make way for Jewish settlers.
Last month the Sumarins lost a 30-year legal battle waged by the JNF, which was secretly sold their home in the late 1980s by the Israeli state.
The family’s property was seized – in violation of international law – under a draconian 1950 piece of legislation declaring Palestinian refugees of the Nakba “absent”, so that they could not reclaim their land inside the new state of Israel.
The Israeli courts have decreed that the Absentee Property Law can be applied outside Israel’s recognised territory too, in occupied Jerusalem. In the Sumarins’ case, it appears not to matter that the family was never actually “absent”. The JNF is permitted to evict the 18 family members next month. To add insult to injury, they will have to pay damages to the JNF.
A former US board member, Seth Morrison, resigned in protest in 2011 at the JNF’s role in such evictions, accusing it of working with extreme settler groups. Last year the JNF ousted a family in similar circumstances near Bethlehem. Days later settlers moved on to the land.
Ir Amim, an Israeli human rights group focusing on Jerusalem, warned that these cases create a dangerous legal precedent if Israel carries out its promise to annex West Bank territory. It could rapidly expand the number of Palestinians classified as “absentees”.
But the JNF never lost its love of the humble tree as the most effective – and veiled – tool of ethnic cleansing. And it is once again using forests as a weapon against the fifth of Israel’s population who are Palestinian, survivors of the Nakba.
Earlier this year it unveiled its “Relocation Israel 2040” project. The plan is intended to “bring about an in-depth demographic change of an entire country” – what was once sinisterly called “Judaisation”. The aim is to attract 1.5 million Jews to Israel, especially to the Negev, over the next 20 years.
As in Israel’s first years, forests will be vital to success. The JNF is preparing to plant trees on an area of 40 sq km belonging to Bedouin communities that survived earlier expulsions. Under the cover of environmentalism, many thousands of Bedouin could be deemed “trespassers”.
The Bedouin have been in legal dispute with the Israeli state for decades over ownership of their lands. This month in an interview with the Jerusalem Post newspaper, Daniel Atar, the JNF’s global head, urged Jews once again to drop money into its boxes. He warned that Jews could be dissuaded from coming to the Negev by its reputation for “agricultural crimes” – coded reference to Bedouin who have tried to hold on to their pastoral way of life.
Trees promise both to turn the semi-arid region greener and to clear “unsightly” Bedouin off their ancestral lands. Using the JNF’s original colonial language of “making the desert bloom”, Atar said his organisation would make “the wilderness flourish”.
The Bedouin understand the fate likely to befall them. In a protest last month they carried banners: “No expulsions, no displacement.”
After all, Palestinians have suffered forced displacement at the JNF’s hands for more than a century, while watching it win plaudits from around the world for its work in improving the “environment”.
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A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.
Featured image: A sign stating ‘Danger, demolition. Entry is prohibited’ was placed by Israeli authorities on top of the rubble of the Khalialehs’ houses (MEE\Sondus Ewies)
The much-anticipated 1986: The Act film by Andrew Wakefield has finally been released, revealing the truth about the infamous 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) and its detrimental impact on the lives of innocent children.
Now available for online streaming as of July 8, the film is described as a “forensic examination” of the NCVIA, which for nearly 35 years has unjustly shielded the vaccine industry from all liability associated with vaccine-induced injuries and deaths.
Released by 7th Chakra Films, 1986: The Act dredges up the dirty history of how Big Pharma manipulated its way into becoming a protected industry – the only one of its kind – that is never held accountable for the health damage caused by its products.
Many people are unaware that it even exists, for one. It also remains uncommon knowledge that the NCVIA’s implementation is the reason why the government-recommended childhood vaccination schedule has skyrocketed to unprecedented levels.
“Many are unaware that the number of inoculations required prior to 1986 were less than a third of present day recommendations, or that this increase is correlated with a drastic surge in autism,” reports Real Immunity.
Be sure to watch the official trailer for 1986: The Act below:
With the NCVIA still in place, is America truly a safe place to have babies?
In addition to covering the impact of the NCVIA, Wakefield’s film takes a closer look at the series of events that led up to its passage. It also reveals how the vaccine industry manipulated the intent of this legislation to make vaccines a protected class of consumer product.
No other good or service available for purchase is shielded from liability in the same way that vaccines are, and this has created a scenario in which vaccine companies continue to churn out increasingly more dangerous and deadly vaccines without consequence.
All the while, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have both played their part in keeping Big Pharma happy and protected and all times, children’s health be damned.
“The agencies that are supposed to protect Americans from dangerous drugs have all become sock puppets for the industries that they are supposed to be regulating,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of Children’s Health Defense (CHD) warns in the film.
The way the film is put together depicts a couple doing extensive research about vaccines prior to giving birth to their baby. What they discover is a plethora of disturbing information that the government and mainstream media have concealed from the public.
“Included are many historical news reports that allow the viewer to connect the dots themselves,” Real Immunity explains. “We watch as the couple uncovers these secrets kept from public view in order to maintain faith in inoculations.”
Some of these secrets include the man-made polio epidemic caused by 200,000 “faulty” polio vaccines that caused paralysis and death. Another is the infamous “swine flu” pandemic, the vaccine for which resulted in many people developing narcolepsy.
Other vaccine-related topics, many of which we have also covered, include the high risks associated with the MMR vaccination for measles, mumps, and rubella, which was found to negatively impact young black boys at a disproportionately higher rate than other children.
“Is this even a safe place to have babies anymore?” the couple in the film is seen asking after weighing the pros and cons of vaccination and assessing the penalties involved with not vaccinating, which in some states include unvaccinated children not being allowed to attend school.
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It was four years in the making, but the time has come for Andy Wakefield to announce the release of his next film, “1986: The Act“, streaming online July 8, 2020.
Man and microbe, from Polio to COVID19… a never more relevant forensic examination of the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act and its consequences. What happens when an ancient wisdom – a mother’s intuition – is pitted against powerful interests in a race against time? More information. Watch the trailer:
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Peter Beinart, an influential liberal commentator on Israel and Zionism, poked a very large stick into a hornets’ nest this month by admitting he had finally abandoned his long-cherished commitment to a two-state solution.
Variously described as the “pope of liberal Zionism” and a “bellwether for the American Jewish community”, Beinart broke ranks in two essays. Writing in the New York Times and in Jewish Currents magazine, he embraced the idea of equality for all – Israelis and Palestinians.
“The painful truth is that the project to which liberal Zionists like myself have devoted ourselves for decades – a state for Palestinians separated from a state for Jews – has failed… It is time for liberal Zionists to abandon the goal of Jewish-Palestinian separation and embrace the goal of Jewish-Palestinian equality.”
Similarly, the NYT article was headlined: “I no longer believe in a Jewish state.” Beinart’s main point – that a commitment to Israel is now entirely incompatible with a commitment to equality for the region’s inhabitants – is a potential hammer blow to the delusions of liberal Jews in the United States.
Long journey
His declaration is the apparent culmination of a long intellectual and emotional journey Beinart has conducted in the public eye. It’s a journey many American liberal Jews have taken with him.
There is no heavyweight publication in the US that has not hosted his thoughts. Foreign Policy magazine ranked him in the top 100 global thinkers in 2012.
But his infatuation with Israel and Zionism has been souring for years. A decade ago, he published a seminal essay on how young American Jews were increasingly alienated from their main leadership organisations, which he criticised for worshipping at the altar of Israel even as Israeli governments lurched ever further rightwards. His argument later formed the basis of a book, The Crisis of Zionism.
The tensions he articulated finally exploded into physical confrontation in 2018, when he was detained at Israel’s main airport and nearly denied entry based on his political views.
Beinart has not only written caustically about the occupation – a fairly comfortable deflection for most liberal Zionists – but has also increasingly turned his attention to Israel’s behaviour towards its large Palestinian minority, one in five of the population.
Recognition of the structural racism towards these 1.8 million Palestinian citizens, a group whose identity is usually glossed over as “Israeli Arabs”, was a clear sign that he had begun poking into the dark recesses of Zionism, areas from which most of his colleagues shied away.
Disappointment and distrust
Beinart’s two essays have been greeted with hesitancy by some of those who might be considered natural allies.
Understandably, some Palestinians find reason to distrust Beinart’s continuing description of himself as a Zionist, even if now a cultural rather than political one. They also resent a continuing western colonial mentality that very belatedly takes an interest in equality for Palestinians only because a prominent liberal Jew adopts the cause.
Beinart’s language is problematic for many Palestinians too. Not least, he frames the issue as between Palestinians and Jews, implying that Jews everywhere still have a colonial claim on the historic lands of Palestine, rather than those who live there today as Israelis.
Similarly, among many anti-Zionists, there is disappointment that Beinart did not go further and explicitly prescribe a single democratic state of the kind currently being advanced in the region by small but growing numbers of Israelis and Palestinians.
Tested to breaking point
But the importance of Beinart’s intervention lies elsewhere. The American is not the first prominent Jewish figure to publicly turn his back on the idea of a Jewish state. Notably, the late historian Tony Judt did the same – to much uproar – in a 2003 essay published by the New York Review of Books. He called Israel an “anachronism”.
But Judt had been chiefly associated with his contributions to understanding European history, not Zionism or Israel. And his essay arrived at a very different historical moment, when Israelis and Jews overseas were growing more entrenched in their Zionism. The Oslo Accords had fizzled into irrelevance at the height of a Palestinian uprising.
Beinart’s articles have landed at a problematic time for his main audience. The most fundamental tenet of liberal Zionism – that a Jewish state is necessary, verging on sacred – is already being tested to the breaking point.
The trigger for the articles is the very tangible threat from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, backed by the Trump White House, to annex swaths of the West Bank.
Meagre alibi lost
The significance of Netanyahu’s position on annexation, as Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard has noted, depends not simply on whether annexation is realised on the ground, now or later. The declaration itself crosses a Rubicon.
Netanyahu and the right-wing faction who now control Israel unchallenged have made it explicit that they do not consider the occupation to be a temporary arrangement that will eventually be resolved in peace talks.
Image on the right is from Shutterstock
The intent to annex, whether or not the US allows such a move, now taints everything Israel does in the occupied territories. It proves beyond any doubt – even to liberal Jews who have been living in deep denial – that Israel’s goal is to permanently seize the occupied territories.
That, in turn, means that Israel has only two possible approaches to the Palestinian populations living in those territories as long as it denies them equality: It can either carry out ethnic cleansing operations to expel them, or rule over them in a formal, explicit arrangement of apartheid. That may not constitute much of a tangible difference on the ground, but it marks a legal sea change.
Occupation, however ugly, is not in breach of international law, though actions related to it, such as settlement-building, may be. This allowed many liberal Jews, such as Beinart, a small comfort blanket that they have clung to tightly for decades.
When challenged about Israel’s behaviour, they could always claim that the occupation would one day end, that peace talks were around the corner, that partition was possible if only Palestinians were willing to compromise a little more.
But with his annexation plan, Netanyhu ripped that comfort blanket out of their clutches and tore it to shreds. Ethnic cleansing and apartheid are both crimes against humanity. No ifs, no buts. As Sfard points out:
“Once Israel began officially striving for annexation – that is, for perpetuating its rule by force – it lost this meagre alibi.”
Apartheid state
Sfard makes a further important legal observation in a report written for the human rights group Yesh Din. If Israel chooses to institute an apartheid regime in parts of the occupied West Bank – either formally or through creeping legal annexation, as it is doing now – that regime does not end at the West Bank’s borders. It would mean that “the Israeli regime in its entirety is an apartheid regime. That Israel is an Apartheid state.”
Of course, one would have to be blind not to have understood that this was where political Zionism was always heading – even more so after the 1967 war, when Israel’s actions disclosed that it had no intention of returning the Palestinian territories it had seized.
But the liberal Zionist condition was precisely one of willful blindness. It shut its eyes tight and saw no evil, even as Israel debased Palestinian life there for more than half a century. Looking back, Beinart recognises his own self-inflicted credulousness. “In practice, Israel annexed the West Bank long ago,” he writes in the New York Times.
In his two articles, Beinart denies liberal Jews the one path still available to them to rationalise Palestinian oppression. He argues that those determined to support a Jewish state, whatever it does, are projecting their own unresolved, post-Holocaust fears onto Palestinians.
In the Zionist imagination, according to Beinart, Palestinians have been reinvented as heirs to the Nazis. As a result, most Jews have been manipulated into framing Israel’s settler-colonialism in zero-sum terms – as a life-or-death battle. In that way, they have been able to excuse Israel’s perpetual abuse of Palestinians.
“Through a historical sleight of hand that turns Palestinians into Nazis, fear of annihilation has come to define what it means to be an authentic Jew.” He adds that “Jewish trauma”, not Palestinian behaviour, has ended in “the depiction of Palestinians as compulsive Jew-haters”.
Forced into a choice
Annexation has forced Beinart to confront that trauma and move beyond it. Perhaps not surprisingly, most of Israel’s supporters have been reluctant to follow suit or discard their comforting illusions. Some are throwing tantrums, others sulking in the corner.
The Zionist right and mainstream have described Beinart as a traitor, a self-hating Jew, and a collaborator with Palestinian terrorism. David Weinberg of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security called Beinart “a shill for Israel’s enemies” who “secretes poison”.
Dan Shapiro, a former US ambassador to Israel, described Beinart’s advocacy of equality as a “disaster in the making”, while Dani Dayan, Israel’s consul general in New York, accused Beinart of wanting Israel to “drop dead”.
The liberal Zionist establishment has been no less discomfited. Aaron David Miller, a former US Middle East envoy, warned that Beinart’s prescription was “an illusion tethered to a fantasy wrapped in an impossibility”.
And Beinart’s friend, Jeremy Ben Ami, head of the two-state lobby group J Street, snatched back the ragged remains of the comfort blanket, arguing that peace talks would be revived eventually. In a standard Zionist deflection, Ben Ami added that Israel was no different from the US in being “far from perfect”.
But to understand how quickly liberal Zionist reasoning may crumble, it is worth focusing on a critique of Beinart’s articles by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz’s in-house liberal Zionist, Anshel Pfeffer.
Collapse of support
Pfeffer makes two highly unconvincing arguments to evade Beinart’s logic. Firstly, he claims that a one-state solution – of any variety – is impossible because there is no support for it among Palestinians and Israelis. It is, he argues, a conceit Beinart has absorbed from Jews and Palestinians in the US.
Let’s overlook Pfeffer’s obvious mistake in ignoring the fact that a single state already exists – a Greater Israel in which Palestinians have been living for decades under a highly belligerent system of apartheid, laced with creeping ethnic cleansing. Still, his claims about where Israeli and Palestinian public opinion currently lies are entirely misleading, as is his assumption about how Beinart’s attack on liberal Zionism may impact regional possibilities.
The views of Palestinians in the occupied territories (Pfeffer, of course, ignores the views of refugees) have been undergoing radical and rapid change. Support for the two-state solution has collapsed. This is far from surprising, given the current political context.
Among Palestinians, there are signs of exasperation and a mirroring of Israeli Jewish intransigence. In one recent poll, a majority of Palestinian respondents demanded a return of all of historic Palestine. What can be inferred from this result is probably not much more than the human tendency to put on a brave show when faced with a highly acquisitive bully.
In fact, increasingly Palestinians understand that, if they want to end the occupation and apartheid, they will need to overthrow their compromised leaders in the Palestinian Authority (PA), effectively Israel’s local security contractor. It is an uprising against the PA, not polls, that will seal the fate of the two-state solution. What may inspire Palestinians to take on the risk of a major confrontation with their leaders?
A part will be played, however small, by Palestinians’ understanding of how a shift from a struggle for statehood to a struggle for equal rights in one state will be received abroad. Liberal Jewish opinion in the US will be critical in changing such perceptions – and Beinart has just placed himself at the heart of that debate.
Journey to ‘self-immolation’
Meanwhile, a majority of Israeli Jews support either Greater Israel or an “end-of-the-rainbow” two-state solution, one in which Palestinians are denied any meaningful sovereignty. They do so for good reason, because either option perpetuates the status quo of a single state in which they prosper at a heavy cost to Palestinians. The bogus two-state solution privileges them, just as bantustans once did white South Africans.
The view of Israeli Jews will change, just as white South Africans’ did, when they suffer a harsher international environment and the resulting cost-benefit calculus has to be adjusted.
In that sense, the issue isn’t what Israeli Jews think now, when they are endlessly indulged, but what Israel’s sponsors – chiefly the US – eventually demand. That is why Beinart’s influence on the thinking of liberal American Jews cannot be discounted. Long term, what they insist on may prove critically important.
That was why Beinart’s harshest critics, in attacking his two essays, also warned of the current direction of travel.
Jonathan Tobin, editor of the Jewish News Syndicate, argued that Beinart’s views were “indicative of the crisis of faith within much of American Jewry”. Weinberg described the two essays as “frightening” because they charted liberal Jews’ “intellectual journey towards anti-Zionism and self-immolation”.
Both understand that, if liberal Jews abandon Zionism, one leg of the Israeli stool will be gone.
Mocked as utopianism
The other problem Pfeffer inadvertently highlights with liberal Zionism is contained in his mocking dismissal of Beinart’s claim that the justification for a “Jewish home” needs to be rooted in morality.
Pfeffer laughs this off as utopianism, arguing instead that Israel’s existence has always depended on what he vaguely terms “pragmatism”. What he means, once the euphemism is stripped out, is that Israel has always pursued a policy of “might is right”.
But Pfeffer’s suggestion that Israel does not also need to shape a moral narrative about its actions – even if that narrative bears no relation to reality – is patently implausible.
Israel has not relied solely on its own might. It has needed the patronage of western states to help it diplomatically, financially and militarily. And their enthusiastic support has depended on domestic perceptions of Israel as a moral agent.
Israel understands this only too well. It has presented itself as a “light unto the nations”, a state that “redeemed” a barren land, and one that has the “most moral army in the world”. Those are all moral claims on western support.
Beinart has demonstrated that the moral discourse for Israel is a lost cause. And for that reason, Israel’s chief allies now are states led by covert, and sometimes overt, antisemites and proud authoritarians.
Beinart is doubtless ahead of most liberal Jews in the US in rejecting Israel as a Jewish state. But it would be foolish indeed to imagine that there are not many others already contemplating following in his footsteps.
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Jonathan Cook, a British journalist based in Nazareth since 2001, is the the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is a past winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. His website and blog can be found at: www.jonathan-cook.net.
Featured image: Peter Beinart (Source: Mondoweiss)
Back in 2018, the Toronto Academic Health Science Network had a mandatory masking policy in place for nurses and health care workers, according to the Ontario Nursing Association. Staff were required “to wear an unfitted surgical mask for the entirety of their shift if they choose not to receive the influenza vaccine.”
An article on the Ontario Nursing Association (ONA) states:
“After reviewing extensive expert evidence submitted by both [sides], Arbitrator William Kaplan, in his September 6 decision, found that [the mask or vaccinate] policy is ‘illogical and makes no sense’ and ‘is the exact opposite of being reasonable.’ In reaching this conclusion, Arbitrator Kaplan rejected the hospital’s evidence.”
The arbitration report points out that there was an “admitted absence of direct evidence that mask wearing [healthcare workers] protected patients from influenza…” Thus one might ask: If a mask cannot even protect patients from influenza how is it of any use against a “super bad transmittable contagious awful virus” like COVID-19?
It went on to say that the arguments and evidence made for mask wearing “are insufficient, inadequate, and completely unpersuasive…. Evidence that masking as a source [of] control results in any material reduction in transmission was scant, anecdotal, and, in the overall, lacking.”
Even more telling is that the arbitration reported that forced masking is “a coercive practice designed to drive up vaccination rates” among staff. And, it seems, today, among citizens.
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John C. A. Manley has spent over a decade ghostwriting for medical doctors, as well as naturopaths, chiropractors and Ayurvedic physicians. He publishes the COVID-19(84) Red Pill Daily Briefs – an email-based newsletter dedicated to preventing the governments of the world from using an exaggerated pandemic as an excuse to violate our freedom, health, privacy, livelihood and humanity. He is also writing a novella, COVID-27: A Dystopian Love Story. Visit his website at: MuchAdoAboutCorona.ca
When the Partition of Ireland was first proposed in 1914 James Connolly said that such a scheme would mean “a carnival of reaction both North and South”. In the summer of 1920, as the British government unleashed the Black and Tans, and as it pushed forward legislation to partition the country, the carnival of reaction was seen in its full horror in the Six North-Eastern Counties that were to form the new state of ‘Northern Ireland’.
This reaction was both sectarian and political. Catholics were targeted because they were Catholics as Unionist political leaders and Protestant fundamentalists identified the Church of Rome as the threat to their way of life. Catholics were predominantly nationalist or republican and so they were seen as a political threat to the Union with Britain. In the Home Rule crisis of 1912-1914 Catholics had been widely targeted for sectarian attacks.
Sinn Féin had received a huge electoral mandate across Ireland in the 1918 General Election and in local elections in February and June 1920. Nationalists and republicans won control of Derry City Council and the County Councils of Fermanagh and Tyrone. The elections were held for the first time under the system of proportional representation, the results exposing the fact that even the Six Counties of ‘Northern Ireland’ were far from the ‘Loyal Ulster’ of Unionist propaganda. (They would see to this later when the new Unionist government abolished PR). The political nature of the reaction was also underlined by the fact that Protestant trade unionists and socialists were targeted as well as Catholics.
In Derry in June there were gun attacks on nationalists by the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force, as well as serious rioting, with 20 people killed. The storm intensified with the return to Ireland of Unionist leader Edward Carson. He had led opposition to Home Rule and was the key link between the Unionists in Ireland and the British Tory Party. He was a member of the British government during the First World War and was hailed by Unionists as a returning hero when he addressed the main Orange Order demonstration in Belfast on 12 July 1920. He poured petrol on the flames of fear about the rise of Sinn Féin. He said that if the British government did not protect them from “the machinations” of Sinn Féin then “we tell you we will take the matter into our own hands” and he threatened a revival of the UVF. Carson and fellow Unionist leader James Craig also whipped up fear of ‘Bolchevists’ as they warned Unionists of socialists and Sinn Féiners collaborating and seeking to recruit loyalist workers. In 1919 a strike in the shipyards had seen Protestant and Catholic workers united and no doubt this was in the minds of the Unionist leaders.
For the Catholic minority in Belfast the situation was now extremely dangerous. Unionist leaders were determined to consolidate their domination in order to firmly establish the ‘Northern Ireland’ state provided for in the forthcoming Government of Ireland Act. That domination rested on sectarian and political discrimination which ensured preferential treatment for Protestant workers, linked to their loyalty to the British connection. There was a cohort of Protestant unemployed workers who had been in the British Army during the war and could not find employment when they returned to Belfast. The same applied to many Catholics and there were both Protestant and Catholic ex-servicemen employed in the industries of Belfast. But the Ulster Unionist Labour Association played the sectarian card and demanded that preference be given to “loyal ex-service men and Protestant Unionists”.
In June RIC Divisional Commissioner for Munster Gerald Smyth had urged RIC men in Listowel, County Kerry to shoot suspects on sight and not to worry about the consequences. On 17 July Smyth was traced to the Cork County Club in Cork City by the IRA and shot dead. He was from Banbridge, County Down and his killing was used as an excuse by loyalists in that town to attack Catholic shops and homes and drive them out of workplaces. This was but a foretaste of what was to come in Belfast.
On 21 July posters summoned ‘Unionist and Protestant’ workers to a mass meeting in Belfast. The notices came from the Belfast Protestant Association and some 5,000 people assembled outside Workman Clark’s yard. The expulsion of ‘non-loyal’ workers from the shipyards and engineering works was demanded. Enflamed by loyalist rhetoric the crowd became an angry mob armed with revolvers, clubs and sledgehammers which they used to force their way into Harland and Wolff shipyard. They sought out Catholic workers and drove them from the yard; a small number of socialists and Protestant trade unionists were also expelled. Some workers had to jump into the River Lagan to escape. They were pelted with ‘Belfast confetti’ consisting of rivets and sharp metal shards. Workers were severely beaten and many were hospitalised.
In the following days the pogrom spread to other workplaces such as the Sirocco Works, Mackie’s Foundry and several linen mills. Expulsions continued for weeks and no exception was made for Catholics who had served in the British Army, some of them decorated for their services. Protestant workers not seen as sufficiently loyal were labelled ‘rotten Prods’, including sons of a Protestant yard worker forced from their work because their widowed father married a Catholic, as told to the TUC conference by Belfast socialist John Hanna.
It has been estimated that 10,000 workers were expelled from their jobs, including several hundred women textile workers. But more was to come and the second element of the pogrom was the driving of Catholics from their homes. It began in East Belfast where many Catholic-owned public houses and ‘spirit groceries’ (grocery shops with alcohol licenses) were attacked and looted and the families who lived over them forced out. One estimate said that over 70 such premises were looted and destroyed. The Catholic St. Matthew’s Chapel and nearby convent in Short Strand were attacked and burned. Catholic families were expelled from their homes in Bombay Street between the Falls and Shankill Road, the first of many such expulsions. The British Army was deployed on the streets and several people were shot dead as the disturbances intensified.
On 1 September the Daily Mail commented:
“Now that 20 people have been killed and 400 Catholic families turned out of their homes, and £1 million worth of damage done, Belfast is beginning to come to its senses. Belfast is in its present plight and is faced with future trouble simply and solely because there has been an organised attempt to deprive Catholic men of their work, and to drive Catholic families from their homes.”
The IRA could do little to defend communities given the very vulnerable position of Catholics as a surrounded minority in the tightly packed streets of the city. In Dublin in August the Dáil Cabinet decided to start a boycott of Belfast goods as an act of solidarity and to try to pressure the Unionist leadership to stop the pogroms. Some republicans such as Constance Markievicz TD did not agree with the tactic, arguing that it would be counter-productive.
July 1920 was only the beginning of the pogrom. Attacks on Catholics and expulsions from jobs and homes continued through 1921 and into 1922. Nearly 500 people were killed in Belfast between July 1920 and July 1922. As the ‘Northern Ireland’ state came into being the Ulster Volunteer Force was revived and re-armed as a force of special constables – the B-Specials – of the new Royal Ulster Constabulary. Sectarian discrimination was to continue for decades.
In 1922 a book entitled ‘Facts and Figures of the Belfast Pogrom 1920-1922’ by G.B. Kenna (real name Fr. John Hassan) was published in Dublin. It detailed the full extent of the pogrom. Only a handful of the books were printed before, incredibly, in August 1922, the book was suppressed by the Free State Provisional Government in case it would assist the anti-Treaty IRA. It is poignant to note the dedication of the book:
“To the many Ulster Protestants who have always lived in peace and friendliness with their Catholic neighbours, this little book dealing with the acts of their misguided co-religionists is affectionately dedicated.”
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Andrzej Duda‘s victory in the recent Polish presidential election will likely affect affairs in Lithuania, especially as Duda has a strong relationship with Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda. Nausėda is not only a strong ally of Duda, but he has ensured that Lithuania has become a strategic partner of Poland, so much so that he allows Duda to represent Lithuania in international forums and meetings. The most obvious example was last month’s meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Duda, where Nausėda allowed the Polish President to represent Lithuania’s interests at the White House. Nausėda himself rushed to Warsaw to personally congratulate Duda on his re-election victory and to commemorate the 610th anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald where a Polish-Lithuanian coalition decisively defeated the Teutonic Knights.
Trump especially likes that Lithuania has fulfilled a 2% GDP spending on the military which is in accordance to NATO’s financial criterion. Trump’s liking was made known to Nausėda through Duda when the letter met with the American president last month. Vilnius, in response to praise from Trump, promised to increase military spending to 2.5% of the GDP by 2030, which certainly would have pleased the American president even further.
The rapprochement between Vilnius and Warsaw is probably the only success Nausėda has had in foreign policy in the first year of his rule. During that time, Lithuania has repeatedly and loudly supported all initiatives by Duda. Any support is important for Duda as he faces clashes with Brussels and Berlin for his ultra-conservative ideology and policies. Duda and Nausėda are also frustrating the European Union as major bloc countries like France and Germany are working towards normalization of relations with Moscow, while Poland and the Baltic States maintain an aggressive anti-Russia policy.
In the first year of his reign, Nausėda tried to show loyalty and devotion to the conservatives and liberals in his country who helped him become president. But if he cannot maintain their support, he could lose influence in the upcoming autumn parliamentary elections. This could sever the Polish-Lithuanian friendship. Many conservatives in Lithuania are hostile to Poland as they recognize the threat that Polish nationalists are to the sovereignty of their country. This is because Polish nationalists claim that large swathes of Lithuania, including the capital city of Vilnius, belong to Poland.
Lithuania’s Homeland Union Party leader Gabrielius Landsbergis confirmed his own suspicions towards the Polish minority in Lithuania, believing they could be serving the interests of Warsaw or act as a fifth phalanx. Keeping in mind the nationalist sentiments of the Polish president, it can be assumed that Landsbergis’s statement was not forgotten in Warsaw. Poland also did not forget that it was the Lithuanian Conservatives who humiliated former Polish President Lech Kaczyński before his tragic death in Russia on April 10, 2010. The ruling Conservative-Liberal coalition prevented the adoption of laws on the preservation of the Polish minority’s national identity during Kaczyński’s visit to Lithuania.
If the Conservatives dominate the Lithuanian Parliament later this year, many questions will arise about the further warming of Lithuanian-Polish relations. Thus, after possibly winning the elections, the Conservatives will endanger the personal friendship between Nausėda and Duda. However, if the Conservatives adopt an aggressive approach towards Poland, Warsaw can put a stop to strategic and critical projects for Lithuania’s integration into the European energy and transportation markets. And even if the projects for the synchronization of electricity networks, the construction of gas pipelines and the construction of the Rail Baltica railway are successfully implemented, the Poles can simply put pressure on Vilnius by imposing exorbitant energy prices and transit taxes. All transport flows connecting the Baltic States with Europe pass through Poland.
Although the Nausėda and Duda friendship is undoubtedly deep, united mostly in their anti-Russian rhetoric, there is every possibility that relations between Vilnius and Warsaw can become tense following the upcoming Lithuanian parliamentary elections. It must be questioned though whether Washington will allow a potential breakdown of Polish-Lithuanian relations as both countries have been closely coordinating their efforts to oppose Russia at every opportunity.
Trump has already given his enthusiastic approval of Lithuania meeting NATO financial demands, and Duda last month was the first foreign leader to visit Trump since the coronavirus pandemic began. The Lithuanian elections could come down to the wire just as the recent Polish elections did. This very well could determine how Lithuanian-Polish relations transpire in the future, and there is little doubt that both Duda and Trump will be hoping that Nausėda’s allies are elected.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
Late on July 20, the Israeli Air Force carried out a new wave of airstrikes on the southern countryside of the Syrian capital of Damascus. According to Syria’s state-run news agency SANA, Israeli warplanes launched missiles from the airspace over the Golan Heights at 21.48 local time. It claimed that a large portion of the missiles were shot down by the Syrian Air Defense Forces, but several hit their targets. At least 7 Syrian personnel were reportedly injured in the attack.
A day earlier, on July 19, Israeli warplanes and reconnaissance drones conducted extensive flights in Lebanese airspace, near the Syrian border. Apparently, these flights were conducted in the framework of the preparations for the July 20 attack.
In early July, the Iranian leadership publicly declared that it is going to contribute efforts to increase the Syrian air defense capabilities. Many observers, including Israeli ones, saw this statement as a signal of the possible supply of Iranian air defense systems to Syria. While the possibility of such supplies still remains in question, this was enough to provoke a further Israeli military action in Syria.
Syrian sources speculate that Israel also increased its sabotage activity in southern Syria. In the previous years of the conflict, the Israeli leadership already demonstrated that it’s ready to support any terrorist group that opposes Damascus. This approach extended to the situation when the Israeli military was turning a blind eye to the presence of ISIS terrorists in close proximity to Israeli positions on the Golan Heights.
At the same time, Israel reacted adversely to the Syrian anti-terrorism efforts in the provinces of Daraa and Quneitra. In the last few months, a series of assassinations and attacks targeted Syrian government forces in this area. Pro-government sources claim that these attacks became possible thanks to Israeli support to the remaining anti-government groups in the reigon.
Early on July 21, Idlib militants shelled positions of the Syrian Army near the village of Dadikh. Pro-militant sources claimed that the attack was a response to regular ceasefire violations by the Assad regime. Regular joint Russian-Turkish patrols along the M4 highway in southern Idlib seem to be not enough to stabilize the area. Furthermore, these patrols become targets of various attacks and provocations on a regular basis.
If the situation remains same in the future, a new open military confrontation in this part of Syria will become inevitable. At the same time, a political solution to the tensions is not possible as along as the region is in fact controlled by al-Qaeda-linked factions, first of all Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
In eastern Syria, the US-baked Syrian Democratic Forces continue their anti-ISIS raids in various desert villages. Pro-Kurdish sources claim that these raids allowed to decrease notably the ISIS activity on the eastern bank of the Euphrates. Nonetheless, the terrorist group still has a wide network of cells in this part of Syria. Thus, the resumption of ISIS attacks is just a matter of time.
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If you’re still deluding yourself into believing that this thinly-veiled exercise in martial law is anything other than an attempt to bulldoze what remains of the Constitution and reinforce the iron-fisted rule of the police state, you need to stop drinking the Kool-Aid.
This is no longer about partisan politics or civil unrest or even authoritarian impulses.
This is a turning point.
Unless we take back the reins—and soon—looking back on this time years from now, historians may well point to the events of 2020 as the death blow to America’s short-lived experiment in self-government.
The government’s recent actions in Portland, Oregon—when unidentified federal agents (believed to be border police, ICE and DHS agents), wearing military fatigues with patches that just say “Police” and sporting all kinds of weapons, descended uninvited on the city in unmarked vehicles, snatching protesters off the streets and detaining them without formally arresting them or offering any explanation of why they’re being held—is just a foretaste of what’s to come.
One of those detainees was a 53-year-old disabled Navy veteran who was in downtown Portland during the protests but not a participant. Concerned about the tactics being used by government agents who had taken an oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution, Christopher David tried to speak the “secret” police. Almost immediately, he was assaulted by federal agents, beaten with batons and pepper sprayed
The so-called racial justice activists who have made looting, violence, vandalism and intimidation tactics the hallmarks of their protests have played right into the government’s hands
They have delivered all of us into the police state’s hands.
There’s a reason Trump has tapped the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection for this dirty business: these agencies are notorious for their lawlessness, routinely sidestepping the Constitution and trampling on the rights of anyone who gets in their way, including legal citizens.
Except these border patrol cops aren’t just disregarding the Constitution.
They’re trampling all over the Constitution, especially the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits the government from carrying out egregious warrantless searches and seizures without probable cause.
As part of the government’s so-called crackdown on illegal immigration, drugs and trafficking, its border patrol cops have been expanding their reach, roaming further afield and subjecting greater numbers of Americans to warrantless searches, ID checkpoints, transportation checks, and even surveillance on private property far beyond the boundaries of the borderlands.
That so-called border, once a thin borderline, has become an ever-thickening band spreading deeper and deeper inside the country.
Now, with this latest salvo by the Trump administration in its so-called crackdown on rioting and civil unrest, America itself is about to become a Constitution-free zone where freedom is off-limits and government agents have all the power and “we the people” have none.
The Customs and Border Protection (CBP), with its more than 60,000 employees, supplemented by the National Guard and the U.S. military, is an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, a national police force imbued with all the brutality, ineptitude and corruption such a role implies.
Just about every nefarious deed, tactic or thuggish policy advanced by the government today can be traced back to the DHS, its police state mindset, and the billions of dollars it distributes to local police agencies in the form of grants to transform them into extensions of the military.
As Miller points out, the government has turned the nation’s expanding border regions into “a ripe place to experiment with tearing apart the Constitution, a place where not just undocumented border-crossers, but millions of borderland residents have become the targets of continual surveillance.”
In much the same way that police across the country have been schooled in the art of sidestepping the Constitution, border cops have also been drilled in the art of “anything goes” in the name of national security.
If you’re anywhere near a border (near being within 100 miles of a border, or in a city, or on a bus, or at an airport), you can be stopped and asked to prove you’re legally allowed to be in the country. If you’re traveling on a public road that smugglers and other criminals may have traveled, you can be stopped.
In Portland, which is 400 miles from the border, protesters didn’t even have to be near federal buildings to be targeted. Some claimed to be targeted for simply wearing black clothing in the area of the demonstration.
Are you starting to get the picture yet?
This was never about illegal aliens and border crossings at all. It’s been a test to see how far “we the people” will allow the government to push the limits of the Constitution.
We’ve been failing this particular test for a long time now.
It was 1798 when Americans, their fears stoked by rumblings of a Quasi-War with France, failed to protest the Alien and Sedition Acts, which criminalized anti-government speech, empowered the government to deport “dangerous” non-citizens and made it harder for immigrants to vote.
During the Civil War, Americans went along when Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus(the right to a speedy trial) and authorized government officials to spy on Americans’ mail.
During World War I, Americans took it in stride when President Woodrow Wilson and Congress adopted the Espionage and Sedition Acts, which made it a crime to interfere with the war effort and criminalized any speech critical of war.
By World War II, Americans were marching in lockstep with the government’s expanding war powers to imprison Japanese-American citizens in detainment camps, censor mail, and lay the groundwork for the future surveillance state.
By the time 9/11 rolled around, all George W. Bush had to do was claim the country was being invaded by terrorists, and the government was given greater powers to spy, search, detain and arrest American citizens in order to keep America safe.
The terrorist invasion never really happened, but the government kept its newly acquired police powers made possible by the nefarious USA Patriot Act.
Despite the fact that the breadth of the military’s power to detain American citizens violates not only U.S. law and the Constitution but also international laws, the government has refused to relinquish its detention powers made possible by the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
Then Donald Trump took office, claiming the country was being invaded by dangerous immigrants and insisting that the only way to keep America safe was to build an expensive border wall, expand the reach of border patrol, and empower the military to “assist” with border control.
That so-called immigration crisis has now morphed into multiple crises (domestic extremism, the COVID-19 pandemic, race wars, civil unrest, etc.) that the government is eager to use in order to expand its powers.
Yet as we’ve learned the hard way, once the government acquires—and uses—additional powers (to spy on its citizens, to carry out surveillance, to transform its police forces into extensions of the police, to seize taxpayer funds, to wage endless wars, to censor and silence dissidents, to identify potential troublemakers, to detain citizens without due process), it does not voluntarily relinquish them
This is the slippery slope on which we’ve been traveling for far too long.
Sure, it’s the Trump Administration calling the shots right now, but it’s government agents armed with totalitarian powers and beholden to the bureaucratic Deep State who are carrying out these orders in defiance of the U.S. Constitution and all it represents.
Whether it’s Trump or Biden or someone else altogether, this year or a dozen years from now, the damage has been done: as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we have allowed the president to acquire dictatorial powers that can be unleashed at any moment.
There’s a reason the Trump Administration is consulting with John Yoo, the Bush-era attorney notorious for justifying waterboarding torture tactics against detainees. They’re not looking to understand how to follow the law and abide by the Constitution. Rather, they’re desperately seeking ways to thwart the Constitution.
Don’t be fooled into thinking any of this will change when the next election rolls around.
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As the distraction of BLM/Antifa riots and the coronavirus have consumed much attention and energy, the social engineering agenda of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset has taken a giant step forward in establishing the mandatory face mask as a symbol of submission to their dehumanizing agenda. Beyond Orwellian, the face mask is being used as a guise to re shape our perception of reality in acceptance of a scientific dictatorship as an integral part of a looming totalitarian globalist agenda.
As Democratic Governors have played a leading role in advancing the myth that face masks will save lives, Colorado Gov Jared Polis announced his decision on July 16th to mandate face masks to be worn in all public places in Colorado; thus codifying a medical tyranny world view.
In a July 12th Facebook page, Polis stated that “The emerging scientific data is clear” that wearing a mask protects others and reduces the risk of contracting Coronavirus. Polis then referred to those resistant to a face mask as a “selfish bastard.”
During Polis’s four page Executive Order issued on July 19th, there is not one mention of the ‘emerging science’ as support for his decision to mandate face masks; nor does Polis discuss how health effects will improve with masking except as “mitigating effects of the pandemic.” In announcing the mandate, Polis declared that “Wearing a mask is not a political statement. I don’t know how, in anybody’s mind, this became a game of political football.”
If the Governor is truly at a loss as to how masking or other lockdown requirements became a political football, he has not been paying attention. Consider the following: on March 20th, California became the first state in the country to order a Lockdown which was quickly followed by other States with Democratic Governors. To date, a majority of those Governors (21 out of 24) have all approved the mandatory wearing of face masks, albeit without applying any science. It is the arbitrary ‘shutdown’ of business as well as onerous personal requirements (such as social distancing) with a State adopting oppressive dictatorial behavior as if they have the right to make personal decisions about any one life.
Only four states with Republican Governors, some of which may be considered RINOs, have also adopted similar Executive Orders (Alabama, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Maryland).
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If CV is merely a variation of an infectious virus, sunshine and warm weather should have already limited its impact; reducing its spread and exposure. Instead, as Red States attempt to re open (ie Texas and Florida), sudden intense CV ‘hot spots’ flare which forces the State to delay and increase its shut down requirements. Given an advanced radio frequency weapon ability, those ‘hot spots’ may have been generated by 5G at the millimeter level on the electro magnetic Spectrum.
If, in fact, science is not the prime reason for mandatory face masks; that is, if face masks do not provide safety from contagion, then why mandate face masks at all? What other purpose does a face mask have but to protect the wearer or to inhibit spreading the virus? Without evidence that masks have positively reduced exposures and thereby fatalities, then the true purpose of the mandate becomes a more nefarious political and partisan gesture of psychological manipulation and control.
New England Journal of Medicine
On April 1st the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine published its Universal Masking Report including the following highlights:
“We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection.”
“The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal.”
“In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic.”
“The extent of marginal benefit of universal masking over and above these foundational measures is debatable.“
“What is clear, however, is that universal masking alone is not a panacea.”
“It is also clear that masks serve symbolic roles. Masks are not only tools, they are also talismans that may help increase health care workers’ perceived sense of safety, well-being, and trust in their hospitals. Although such reactions may not be strictly logical, we are all subject to fear and anxiety, especially during times of crisis. One might argue that fear and anxiety are better countered with data and education than with a marginally beneficial mask“
No Scientific Support for Mask Wearing
Renowned nutritionist Dr. Joseph Mercolahas recently reversed his earlier support of face masks and interviewed Dr. Denis Rancourt, PhD who examined the issue on behalf of the Ontario Civil Liberties Association. Rancourt conducted extensive research with an emphasis on masks and did a thorough review of science literature concentrating on whether any evidence exists that masks can reduce infection risk of viral respiratory disease. As a result of examining many controlled trials with verified outcomes, he found no statistical advantageto wearing a mask or not wearing a mask and that masks do no inhibit viral spread.
Rancourt asserted that “there is no evidence that masks are of any utility for preventing infection by either stopping the aerosol particles from coming out, or from going in.You’re not helping the people around you by wearing a mask, and you’re not helping yourself avoid the disease by wearing a mask. In addition, Rancourt explained that “Infectious viral respiratory diseases primarily spread via very fine aerosol particles that are in suspension in the air. Any mask that allows you to breathe therefore allows for transmission of aerosolized viruses.”
In conclusion, Rancourt stated
“we’re in a state right now where the society is very gradually evolving towards totalitarianism.As soon as you agree with an irrational order, an irrational command that is not science-based, then you are doing nothing to bring back society towards the free and democratic society that we should have.”
While the ACLU remains absent, OCLA (Ontario Civil Liberties Association) recommends Civil Disobedience against Mandatory Mask Laws. If you are not comfortable with civil disobedience and your local food markets all require a face mask, don’t deny yourself the healthy food you and your family need – but DO find ways to register your dissent against being forced to wear a face mask. Write a Letter to the Editor and contact all of your elected political leaders. Be sure they understand your objections that you will not comply with their unconstitutional and immoral behavior.
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Renee Parsons served on the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and as president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist for Friends of the Earth and a staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found at [email protected].
Featured image: A woman wearing a face mask is seen in the subway in Milan, Italy, March 2, 2020. (Photo by Daniele Mascolo/Xinhua)
One of Washington’s reoccuring dreams is creating a “pan-Asian alliance” to encircle and contain China’s economic and political rise. Unable to do this through regime change, economic incentives, military alliances, or even coercion and terrorism, it has drawn deeper and deeper from its “soft power” toolkit.
The US is also increasingly lumping its various regional assets together to fight in its growing rift with China.
In this way, it already has a “pan-Asian alliance” – made up of US-funded opposition groups, opposition parties, media platforms, and online information operations in virtually every one of China’s neighboring countries as well as within Chinese territory itself.
They are funded and directed out of US embassies and consulates throughout the region as well as through US government-funded organizations and agencies like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), and the Open Technology Fund (OTF) – as clearly seen behind the unrest in Hong Kong.
They lack any specific agenda or platform other than opposing regional governments targeted by the US and more recently – being “anti-Chinese,” “pro-Western,” and repeating ambiguous and deliberately unspecific slogans about democracy, freedom, and human rights.
Aside from direct funding from the US government and the promise of potential fame and mention across the Western media, those recruited into this “pan-Asian alliance” get little else out of it and certainly offer the public even less should they and their agenda ever find their way into local or regional leadership roles.
This alliance has increasingly found itself working together, attempting to create synergies in US-backed efforts aimed at specific Asian-Pacific nations as well as toward efforts aimed directly at China itself.
The “Mik Tea Alliance”
The name of this “alliance” is as puerile as its premise. It is essentially a collection of US-funded agitators from across the region consolidating their efforts against China specifically.
While many of these individuals and organizations involved are often referred to as “activists,” they rarely take up legitimate causes aimed at improving the lives of people in their communities and respective nations and instead function as political attack dogs unleashed against various targets of US angst.
The pro-Western Google Grant recipient Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP) in an article titled, “Milk is thicker than blood: An unlikely digital alliance between Thailand, Hong Kong & Taiwan,” would attempt to positively publicize this so-called “alliance.”
There is very little that is “unlikely” about US-backed agitators consolidating their efforts, cooperating, or aiming their collective efforts at China – unless the common denominator of US-backing is omitted – which of course it is.
HKFP claims:
For the first time, netizens from Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other Asian countries, joined forces to hit back at China’s huge online army in an internet war.
The article admits the alliance focuses on various issues the US itself is particularly obsessed with including blocking the construction of Mekong River dams, ongoing US provocations in the South China Sea, and the West’s annual shaming of China over the 1989 Tiananmen Square unrest.
Most recently the “Milk Tea Alliance” was mobilized to help attract attention to US-funded opposition groups in Thailand – attract attention to their street protest and their regime change demands – certainly not to their US funding.
Leader of US destabilization in Hong Kong – Joshua Wong – who has literally travelled to Washington DC multiple times to lobby for aid and receive awards – emerged as one of the leading figures of this alliance.
HKFP explains:
The forming of this new “Pan-Asia Alliance” – as coined by Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong – also indicated an ongoing frustration in the region regarding China’s influence and actions that affected less powerful countries on the ground level. The Milk Tea Alliance was an attempt to keep China’s unmatchable power in check, and it demonstrated the need for smaller nations to unite and cooperate. This unexpected internet war reflected a long-felt need to counter the unbalanced power dynamics in Asia.
Unsurprisingly Wong and others in the “Milk Tea Alliance” have very little to say about Washington’s oversized role in Asia’s “power dynamics” despite not even being located in Asia – or Washington’s “unmatchable power” in places like the Middle East, North Africa, or Central Asia where it has destroyed entire nations and to this day still militarily occupies several of them.
The “alliance” and media outlets like HKFP also have little to say about the coincidental nature of the alliance’s agenda and how neatly it fits in with US foreign policy – especially since the most prominent members of the alliance are literally funded, backed, and publicly rewarded by the US government.
Building Myths About “Imperial China”
Another member of Washington’s online “Milk Tea Alliance” and an eager recipient of Western backing is Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal of Thailand – whose Twitter timeline is filled with retweets of Western articles describing China’s growing “imperial” ambitions.
Despite not even being born at the time, Netiwit (born 1996) annually protests the Chinese embassy in Bangkok over the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident. He and the “Student Union of Thailand” now currently leading US-backed anti-government protests in Thailand – recently attempted to protest outside the Chinese embassy regarding Hong Kong’s new security law in addition to Tiananmen.
A Khoasod article titled, “Activists Condemn Tiananmen Killings, Give Away Cookies,” would report:
“Student Union of Thailand (SUT) is one with the Hong Kongers in condemning the recent security law, which is a severe attack against the city’s autonomy, rule of law, civil rights, and liberties,” the activists said in a statement published in Thai, English, and Chinese.
The group, which counts about 200 students as its members, added in its statement that “Chinese imperialism” is threatening the independence and livelihood in many nations, including Thailand.
Apparently the fact that Hong Kong’s current crisis is rooted in very real – and very British – imperialism is lost on Netiwit and his Student Union of Thailand.
Meanwhile, Netiwit regularly receives and accepts invitations to various Western embassies in Bangkok, including the British embassy where he literally was wining and dining with British diplomats and fellow Western-backed agitators.
As Netiwit annually complains outside the Chinese embassy about an incident that occurred years before he was even born and complains about China’s attempts to fully recover its sovereign territory from decades of British imperialism – he is regularly hosted by foreign embassies that are – today – engaged in multiple wars of aggression, military occupations, torture, and abuse on a scale that even the wildest claims about China cannot rival.
Netiwit has – unsurprisingly – yet to stage protests outside the embassies of these nations.
The “imperialist” or “revisionist” China narrative Netiwit promotes in exchange for constant mention and praise across the Western media and repeated invites to Western embassy dinners may find its place inside the “Milk Tea Alliance’s” online echo chamber – but for the vast majority of Asia’s population it is transparent propaganda and an obstruction to real economic progress, peace, and stability.
Ranting and Raving vs. Roads and Railways
Conversely, the genuine economic might China is developing and the deep and enduring ties it is creating has built a much larger, more powerful – and most importantly – more sustainable “pan-Asian” partnership.
It is a partnership in which roads, rail, airports, and seaports are being built and through which each respective nation in the region imports and exports the vast majority of their economic activity through.
China’s rise regionally and globally has created economic opportunities both within China itself for prospective students and workers and across the region as manufacturing, tourism, and trade continuously expands.
This is even noted by the Western media. In one breath it claims the “Milk Tea Alliance” shows Asia’s youth is “losing their sense of kinship with China.” In the next, it paradoxically admits that the number of Asian youths traveling, working, and studying in China “has never been higher.” It is clear the former trend is artificial and deliberately overemphasized by the Western media while the latter represents an inconvenient truth to be buried dozens of paragraphs deep in any given article on the subject.
Not only is China the largest and most important trading partner for virtually every nation in Asia, but local businesses focused on domestic markets either retail goods made entirely in China or manufacture goods made with components originating in China.
For the average worker or business owner in Asia, the rantings and ravings online by the “Milk Tea Alliance” along with their repetitive street performances and the trouble between China and the rest of Asia they seek to create are unconvincing incentives when compared to the physical roads and railways jointly built with China bringing in goods, money, tourists, and technology.
Without the US being able to match its massive soft-power political machinery with industry and investment providing a viable alternative to China – its “Milk Tea Alliance” and all those who are a part of it are simply spiteful speed bumps aimed at diminishing and disrupting regional progress, peace, and stability – not in any way promoting or contributing to it.
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Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
On July 15, Luis Fernando Camacho, leader of the violent coup against Bolivian president Evo Morales and current candidate for the Bolivian presidency, issued a desperate appeal to the Organization of American States.
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Bolivia's coup leader, Fernando Camacho, has asked the OAS to intervene to stop democratic elections taking place on September 6th.
Camacho says that "we mustn't allow the elections to become an act of resurrection" for the MAS. pic.twitter.com/wYa9FvV4ST
According to a poll done by Centro Estratégico Latinoamericano de Geopolítica, which was released on July 7, Camacho is polling at nine per cent. Meanwhile MAS (Movement for Socialism) candidate Luis Arce, Bolivia’s finance minister from 2006 until the coup, is polling at 42 per cent. To surpass Arce’s lead in the polls, Carlos Mesa, the unelected coup president Jeanine Anez, and Camacho would have to consolidate their votes, while two would need to drop out of the race.
MAS candidate Luis Arce is poised for a first-round win in Bolivia's presidential election, polling 15+ points ahead of the nearest rival.
In the appeal, Camacho, who has direct connections to the paramilitary group Unión Juvenil Cruceñista, argued that “we [Bolivia] must not allow the elections to become an act of resurrection” for MAS. This is an open call for the OAS to launch a second coup if Arce wins the presidential election, and violate the sovereignty of Bolivia yet again.
In response to this news, Evo Morales spoke out on Twitter:
Asking the OAS to rule on the suspension of the elections in Bolivia is a new blow against democracy, it is a form of intervention against the sovereignty of the State and the dignity of the people; and furthermore it is being asked by those responsible for the tragic events of 2019
Pedir que la @OEA_oficial se pronuncie para que se suspendan las elecciones en #Bolivia es un nuevo golpe contra la democracia, es una forma de intervención contra la soberanía del Estado y la dignidad del pueblo; y lo piden los responsables de los trágicos sucesos de 2019. pic.twitter.com/LDYts3EAHQ
The Bolivian people are not giving up on democracy without a fight. Today, the main Bolivian workers federation, Central Obrera Boliviana (COB) demanded “adhesion to the September 6th election date as adopted by the TSE [Election authority].”
The Central Obrera Boliviana (COB), Bolivia's main workers federation, demands adhesion to the September 6th election date as adopted by the TSE. The regime is pursuing criminal charges against the COB's leadership for the nationwide protests held on Tuesday. pic.twitter.com/BT8FhFUqKK
How Canada, the US, and OAS allied to overthrow Morales
On Nov. 29, 2017, the Morales government won a legal challenge to modify the Bolivian constitution, which would have allowed Morales to run for a fourth term as the Bolivian president.
Two years later, on Oct. 25, 2019, the winner of Bolivia’s presidential election was announced. Evo Morales won 47 per cent of the vote, while the main US-backed candidate, Carlos Mesa, won 36 per cent of the vote. Morales narrowly cleared the 10-point margin of victory required to avoid a second-round runoff election, and it seemed as if Morales was set to serve his fourth term in office.
However, the OAS would have a key role in ensuring this did not happen. The OAS, described as the “U.S Ministry of the Colonies” by former Cuban president Fidel Castro, is supposed to “represent the 35 countries in the Western Hemisphere in defence of peace, equality and national sovereignty.” However, the organization has a long history of openly backing the United States’ imperialist agenda.
In particular, during the US-led 2019 coup attempt against Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro, false claims of election fraud were utilised to try to push the “US puppet” Juan Guaido into power. The (leader), Luis Almagro praised the protests repeatedly, and allowed Canada to set up the Lima Group, an alliance of countries wishing to overthrow the Venezuelan government, without any punishment.
The Canadian and United States government ignored a Nov. 8 report from the Centre for Economic and Policy Research, a US-based think tank, who did a statistical analysis of Bolivia’s publicly available voting data which found no evidence of irregularities or fraud.
“In the four factors reviewed (technology, chain of custody, integrity of the tally sheets, and statistical projections), irregularities were detected, ranging from very serious to indicative of something wrong.”
The audit team “[could not] validate the results of this election and therefore recommends another electoral process.” They argued that “Any future process should be overseen by new electoral authorities to ensure the conduct of credible elections.”
On the very day, Canada, declared its support for the electoral audit, stating that “It is clear that the will of the Bolivian people and the democratic process were not respected.” A day later, Morales resigned the presidency after pressure was mounted by military chief, Gen. Williams Kaliman, calling for him to immediately quit and permit the “restoration of peace and stability.”
In a press release, Morales said:
I decided to resign from my position so that Carlos Mesa and Luis Camacho stop abusing and harming thousands of brothers … I have the obligation to seek peace and it hurts a lot that we face Bolivians, for this reason, so I will send my letter of resignation to the Plurinational Assembly of Bolivia.
Under severe pressure, Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera, the president of the Senate, Adriana Salvatierra of the MAS party, and the president of the Chamber of Deputies all resigned. As a result, the line of succession to the Bolivian presidency was broken.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo applauded the interim president in a statement on Nov. 13, saying that the U.S. looks forward to working with the OAS to stage “free and fair elections” by the end of 2019.
Bolivia in shambles without Morales, as elections are delayed until September 2020
In January 2020, a now-deleted racist tweet from “interim president” Áñez was caught, in which she reportedly wrote: “I want a Bolivia free of satanic indigenous rituals. The city is not for the indigenous. They should go to the mountains or plains.” Áñez also called Morales a “poor Indian” in another tweet.
Nadia Cruz, Bolivia’s ombudsman, said that charges of “sedition” and “terrorism” are being brought for simply disagreeing with or questioning the Áñez administration.
Michael Shifter, the president of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue said,
“There is unwillingness on the level of the Trump administration to hold Áñez to account, so she has a lot of room to do what she wants, including what seems to be the carrying out of vendettas.”
The promise of quick elections proved to be a lie, two months after the coup, that the Bolivian Supreme Electoral Tribunal, which was filled with Anez allies, and purged of former officials, determined the presidential election would occur on May 3. However, the Bolivian electoral court used the COVID-19 pandemic as cover to delay the elections until September 6. Now that Luis Camacho is urging the OAS to interfere in Bolivia’s elections yet again, the stage may be set for a second coup against a Movement for Socialism party’s presidential candidate within the last year.
Even the narrative of flawed elections has fallen apart, as the New York Times and others have reported that the there was no election fraud, in the 2019 election that delivered Morales his fourth term as Bolivia’s president.
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Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news site founded in 2019. He has written about Canadian imperialism, federal politics, and left-wing resistance to colonialism across the world. He is a second-year Bachelor of Journalism student at Ryerson University, who was the Head of Communications and Community Engagement for Etobicoke North NDP Candidate Naiima Farah in the 2019 Federal Election.
We bring to the attention of our readers, this timely and incisive article by Radhika Tikku, Ph.D candidate at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario.
millions of people Worldwide are suffering from depression as a result of the global crisis which is affecting humanity.
The pandemic is based on fear. it’s a big lie.
People are being manipulated. They have accepted the consensus imposed upon them: economic collapse, social engineering, poverty, despair and depression.
The impact of this crisis on mental health is beyond description. The Anti-dote is “Reconnection”: Solidarity and Mass Social Action against this diabolical project.
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, July 21, 2020
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Depression is a global problem that’s on the rise.
In Lost Connections, Johann Hari offers practical solutions for how to tackle it. Unfortunately, he misses the crucial point that personal sacrifice is the only way we can discover what makes us content.
Hari explores the sources behind depression and anxiety.
Knowing depression, Hari considers two main explanations for why depression occurs. Each blames the individual. One is that depression is the result of overactive imagination, or weakness of the will. The other is that depression is caused by brain malfunction. The brain’s chemistry is “off” and needs to regain equilibrium.
Hari scrutinizes both explanations. For the first, the sheer numbers suggest depression is not the effect of false consciousness, or that depressives lack fortitude. The second is not supported by science. So, Hari offers an alternative explanation.
Depression requires us to revise the way we live in the world. In fact, we should ask: What does it mean to be human?
Depression “is a normal response to abnormal life experiences”. [1] It’s like grief. Grief is human suffering that stems from loss. Grief is relational. We grieve the death of a loved one because we stand in a bi-directional relationship with them.
Death is not an abnormal life experience; however, modern culture has made it so.
We intellectually know that death occurs, but we do not live as if we ourselves will die.
We live out of joint with the world, as if we’re invincible. Thus, Hari’s alternative explanation is that depression is a social problem. Depression is the illness we contract when disconnected from sources of meaning. The disconnection is disorienting because we lose a part of ourselves. The antidote: Reconnection.
Hari offers sources from which we might draw meaning. All involve the individual changing life in substantive ways and becoming part of a community, closer to the soil. Our ancestors understood this fact better than we today.
Hari is skirting around the problem of the ego. It has practical, political consequences. Hari looks at ways to overcome depression, but he could have gone further: We have to change our relationship with ourselves. We need to talk about identity and how it negatively impacts us.
For instance, we’re not the “author” of our own stories. That slogan is false, because it doesn’t account for the way the world actually is. It cloisters us from the very freedom and choice we so desperately desire. Identity functions like a map; it aids in the navigation of familiar and uncharted territory.
But there’s no use clinging to a moth-eaten map, where a portion of the legend and other key elements are missing. Ancient scholars understood that a person’s identity can be self-imprisoning, which is why they advocated for the renunciation of the self. Thinking yourself the hero of your life—just like thinking yourself the victim of all that’s happened to you—can obscure real knowledge about yourself.
Hari doesn’t go that far. He should have touched on renunciation of the self and how to go about it.
Renunciation of self has three dimensions. First, it requires a relentless on-going engagement between self and the world. This includes ideas. Maps are always subject to revision or wholesale rejection given new conventions or interests.
For example, Hari’s case of the reconstitution of Kotti, the tenement housing in Berlin, leaves this out. When people create a neighbourhood to force recognition of prohibitive rental increases, Kotti’s struggle was not over when the German government made concessions. But living in community, if it is really about connection, is constant negotiation toward rejuvenation of the group and ideas presupposed in one’s identity as a group. Otherwise, old ideas remain in place, obstructing real constructive change.
There has to be a constant forsaking if the objective is really to discover what it means to be human because we live in a dehumanizing world, the full nature of which is not always evident.
It’s a risky prospect.
Second, renunciation involves personal sacrifice. You have to actually give something of value up to discover new ways of living and being in the world. Sacrifice is not valued, culturally. The global pandemic forces us to do without that which we believed to be essential. New social conditions compel us to decide what is essential and give up the rest.
Third, this matters to truth. Just because map-makers reconfigure maps in light of new conventions and interests doesn’t mean anything goes. Maps are accurate or they are not; they either aid in the wayfinding experience, or they don’t. Similarly, personal sacrifice can lead us to living life more truthfully, thriving instead of merely existing.
Hari’s conclusion about a return to community and to nature to heal ourselves, to become self-possessed in ways that were previously impossible, shouldn’t be surprising but it is. It has consequences that challenge other beliefs, some cherished.
There’s more to be said though because we have to confront ourselves to get past ourselves. The ancients understood this point on a much deeper level than us.
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Radhika Tikku is a PhD candidate at Queen’s University, Canada and is currently living in Hong Kong. Her areas of interest are social epistemology and moral philosophy.
Note
[1] Hari, Johann. 2018. Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression—and the Unexpected Solutions. New York: Bloomsbury USA. 112.
Early on July 20, positions of the Syrian Army came under shelling by militants in the villages of Furu, Bahsa and Beit Hassno in the southern part of the Idlib de-escalation zone. In response, government forces struck positions of Hayat Tahrir al-Sam near Kansafra and surrounding areas.
Local tensions increased just a few days after a key infrastructure object of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in Idlib became the target of a drone attack. On July 18, three suicide drones hit facilities of the Watad Petroleum Company in the town of Saramada. This company is controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) and has a monopoly on the fuel market in Greater Idlib. It is deeply involved in oil trafficking with nearby Turkish-occupied areas in northern Aleppo and responsible for the illegal import of fuel from Turkey. A notable part of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s revenue is generated by Watad.
The HTS news agency Iba’a confirmed that the drones struck the headquarters of the company as well as its fuel market. However, the agency claimed that the strikes didn’t result in any human or material losses.
A photo of one of the drones made before the attack shows an X-shaped wing design similar to that of the Hero family of loitering munitions produced by Israel’s UVision. Syrian sources speculate that this drone may be a Russian, Syrian or Iranian reverse-engineered copy of the Israeli munition. At the same time, it is likely that the strike was conducted by Turkey itself, which is silently working to undermine the dominance of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in the region.
Earlier in July, Idlib militants attacked a joint Turkish-Russian patrol on the M4 highway with a detonated car driven by a suicide bomber. It is hard to believe that such an attack could be possible without the coordination with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham that controls the frontline in that area. So, Ankara may opt to employ some additional measures to demonstrate its dissatisfaction with such actions of its al-Qaeda partners, that Turkish state media like to call ‘moderate rebels’.
On July 19, an improvised explosive device (IED) exploded in the Turkish-occupied town of Afrin in northern Aleppo. The IED targeted a vehicle of the Sham Corps militant group wounding at least 3 of its members, including a field commander. On the same day, a car bomb attack in the town of Sajjo reportedly killed 5 people and injured dozens of others. Turkish sources often blamed Kurdish rebels for these attacks. However, ISIS cells are also quite active in the Turkish-controlled part of Syria.
On July 16, a quadcopter armed with an explosive charge targeted a group of Russian and Syrian service members in the vicinity of the town of al-Darbasiyah in northeastern Syria. Three service members of the Russian Military Police and three Syrian personnel were injured. According to reports, the attack took place during a meeting at a local coordination post, which was initiated due to the increase of ceasefire violations by Turkish-led forces on the contact line in northeastern Syria.
Even if this attack was not initiated by Turkish forces themselves, but was a local initiative of Turkish proxies, such incidents do not contribute to the stability in Syria’s northeast. The regular ceasefire violations and attacks create an explosive situation on the frontline, which runs the risk of turning into an open military confrontation between the Syrian Army and Turkish forces. The areas with a strong Turkish military presence and the US-controlled zone of al-Tanf remain the main sources of tensions and instability in Syria.
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The foundations of the great Near East were established in the Pact of Quincey (1945) following the doctrine of the Franco-British Sykes-Picot agreements of 1916 that favored the regional division of power in areas of influence and sustained on the tripod US-Egypt- Saudi Arabia. This doctrine consisted in the endemic survival in Egypt of pro-western autocratic military governments, which ensured the survival of the State of Israel (1948) and provided the US Navy with privileged access to the Suez Canal, a crucial shortcut for access direct to the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Afghanistan, remaining as a firm bastion of US geopolitical interests in the area, especially after the fall of the Shah of Persia in 1980.
The other pillar of the agreement consisted of the privileged access of the United States to Saudi Arabian oil in exchange for preserving its autocratic regime and favoring the spread of Wahhabism (doctrine founded by Mohamed Abdel Wahab in the mid-eighteenth century with the aim of becoming a vision attractive to Islam and exportable to the rest of the Arab countries), with which the Saudi theocracy became a regional power that provided the US with the key to energy dominance while serving as a retaining wall for socialist and pan-Arab currents. Finally, after the Six Day War (1967), the geostrategic puzzle of the Middle East and the Near East was completed with the establishment of autocratic and pro-Western regimes in the countries surrounding Israel (Libya, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran), leaving the Palestinians confined in the ghettos of the West Bank and Gaza.
Iraq and the Biden Plan
The Biden-Gelb Plan, approved by the US Senate in 2007 and rejected by Condolezza Rice, Secretary of State with George W. Bush, provided for the establishment in Iraq of a federal system in order to prevent the collapse in the country after the withdrawal of US troops and proposed separating Iraq into Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni entities, under a federal government in Baghdad charged with the care of the borders and the administration of oil revenues.
Thus, we will attend the appearance of Free Kurdistan presided over by Masoud Barzani with capital in Kirkust and that would include annexed areas taking advantage of the power vacuum left by the Iraqi Army such as Sinkar or Rabia in the province of Ninive, Kirkuk and Diyala as well as all the cities of Syrian Kurdish ethnicity (except Hasaka and Qamishli) occupied by the Kurdish insurgency of the BDP.
The new Kurdistan will have the blessings of the United States and will have financial autonomy by owning 20% of the farms of all Iraqi crude oil with the “sine qua non condition” to supply Turkey, Israel and Eastern Europe with Kurdish oil through the Kirkust pipeline that empties into the Turkish port of Ceyhan. On the other hand, the Sunistan with capital in Mosul and that would cover the Sunni cities of Ramadi, Falluja, Mosul, Tal Afar and Baquba (Sunni triangle), with strong connections with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and that would later lead to a radical pan-Islamist movement that it will use the oil weapon to strangle the western economies in the horizon of the next five-year period.
Finally, as the third leg of the tripod, we would have Iraqi Chi with capital in Baghdad that will counterbalance Saudi Wahhabism and that will gravitate in the orbit of influence of Iran, which will make Iran a great regional power in clear conflict with Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Iran, guardian of the Gulf and energy power
Iran acquired a regional power dimension thanks to the erratic policy of the United States in Iraq, (fruit of the political administration myopia obsessed with the Axis of Evil) by eliminating its ideological rivals, the Sunni Taliban radicals and Saddam Hussein with the subsequent power vacuum in the area. He also proposed a global negotiation with the contact group to deal with all the aspects that have confronted Western countries for thirty years, both the suffocating embargo that has plagued the Islamic Republic and the Iranian assets blocked in the United States, the role Iran regional cooperation and security cooperation in Iraq and Afghanistan.
President Mahmoud Ajmadinejad stretched the rope to the limit in the security that the United States would not attack and would limit any individual action by Israel (a discarded project of bombarding the Natanz plant with commercial jets), as a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz through which it passes A third of the world’s energy traffic could exacerbate the global economic recession and profoundly weaken the entire international political system. Thus, in an interview with Brzezinski conducted by Gerald Posner in The Daily Beast (September 18, 2009), he stated that “an American-Iranian collision would have disastrous effects for the United States and China, while Russia would emerge as the great winner, as the foreseeable closure of the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf where oil transportation destined for Northeast Asia (China, Japan and South Korea), Europe and the United States passes, would raise the price of black gold to stratospheric levels and would have severe repercussions on the economy global, becoming the totally crude EU dependent on Russia.
According to experts, Iran would possess the world’s third largest proven reserves of oil and gas, but it would not have enough technology to extract the gas from the deepest fields and would require an urgent multimillion-dollar investment to avoid irreversible deterioration of its facilities, which in practice it translates into a huge pie for Russian, Chinese and Western multinationals and an increase in the supply of Iranian crude oil to 1.5 million barrels / day within a year, with the consequent drop in prices. of the Brent and Texas reference crudes.
Furthermore, the revitalization of the 2010 energy cooperation agreement between Iraq, Iran and Syria for the construction of the South Pars-Homms gas pipeline that would connect the Persian Gulf with the Mediterranean Sea would relativize the strategic importance of the Trans-Adriatic Gas Pipeline Project (TAP) , (a substitute for the failed Nabucco gas pipeline designed by the US to transport Azerbaijani gas to Europe through Turkey), as well as the relevant role of the United Arab Emirates as suppliers of crude oil to the West, which would explain the eagerness of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey for torpedoing him.
America’s “Project of the New Middle East”
Ralph Peters Map: The Project for the New Middle East. Used for teaching purposes at the military academies. (“Unofficial”)
Are Iraq and Iran the bait for the US to involve Russia and China in a new war?
Former President Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in a speech to the Iranian-American National Council (NIAC) stated that “I believe that the US has the right to decide its own national security policy and not follow like a stupid mule what the Israelis do. ” In addition, Brzezinski, would be faced with the neocon republican and Jewish lobbies of the USA and with his habitual biting he would have discredited the geostrategic myopia of both pressure groups when affirming that “they are so obsessed with Israel, the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Iran that they have lost from the global picture: the true power in the world is Russia and China, the only countries with a true capacity to resist the United States and England and on which they would have to focus their attention ”.
We would thus be at a crucial moment to define the mediate future of the Middle East and Middle East (PROME East), since after the arrival of Donald Trump from the White House the pressure of the pro-Israeli lobby of the USA (AIPAC) would be increasing to proceed the destabilization of Iran by expeditious methods, a moment that will be used by the United States, Great Britain and Israel to proceed to redesign the cartography of the unrelated puzzle formed by these countries and thus achieve strategically advantageous borders for Israel, following the plan orchestrated 60 years ago. jointly by the governments of Great Britain, the United States and Israel and which would have the backing of the main western allies. Thus, after the approval by the Congress and the US Senate of a declaration prepared by the Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and the Democrat Robert Menéndez, who clearly states that “if Israel is forced to defend itself and take action (against Iran), the US will be at your side to support it militarily and diplomatically”, with the Trump Administration we will assist the increase in pressure from the pro-Israeli lobby of the USA (AIPAC) to proceed with the destabilization of Iran by expeditious methods.
In a first phase of said plan, the US Senate unanimously renewed the Sanctions Against Iran Act (ISA) until 2026 and after the launch of a new ballistic missile by Iran, Trump expanded the sanctions against several Iranian companies related to ballistic missiles without violating the Nuclear Agreement signed between the G + 5 and Iran in 2015, known as the Comprehensive Joint Action Plan (JCPOA) and which would only be fireworks to distract attention from the Machiavellian Plan outlined by the Anglo-Jewish Alliance in 1960 that would include the Balkanization of Iran and whose turning point would be the recent assassination of the charismatic General Qasem Soleimani.
This war could lead to a new local episode that would be involve a return to a “recurrent endemism” of the US-Russia Cold War involving both superpowers having as necessary collaborations the major regional powers namely Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
This Cold War scenario would cover the geographic space that extends from the Mediterranean arc (Libya, Syria and Lebanon) to Yemen and Somalia and having Iraq as its epicenter (recalling the Vietnam War with Lindon B. Johnson (1963-1.969).
Thus, Syria, Iraq and Iran would be the bait to attract both Russia and China and after triggering a concatenation of local conflicts (Syria, Iraq and Lebanon), this potentially could evolve towards a major regional conflict that could mark the future of the area in the coming years.
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Ambassador Uche Ajulu-Okeke isa veteran Diplomat and Development Studies Expert with thirty-year achievements in the Nigerian Foreign Service. She is widely known for her performance orientation, positive mentorship and team spirit. In recognition of her high-level competences, the Anambra State Government appointed Ambassador Ajulu-Okeke to serve in various capacities. She also served in the All Progressive Grand Party (APGA), a Southeastern-based political party, before relocating to the United States.
In the present-day Federal Republic of Nigeria, several years after its independence, the leaders have not succeeded in rebuilding its state institutions enough to reflect all-inclusive ethnic diversity, let alone in adopting Western-style democracy that takes cognizance of different public opinions on development issues in the country. The struggle for and misuse of power have brought the country into a stalemate, disrupting any efforts to overcome the deepening economic and social crisis, she explained in her in-depth discussions.
In this interview, Ambassador Uche Ajulu-Okeke further spoke about many other significant and outstanding issues that are creating tensions in the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and why the Biafra has to work unreservedly towards self-determination and independence. Here are the interview excerpts:
How is the situation, in your interpretation, in the Eastern regions that constitute Biafra today in Nigeria?
The situation in the region is dire depicting a derelict lack of infrastructure widespread unemployment, insecurity and youth hopelessness. As a result of decades of state endorsed systemic exclusion since the end of the Civil War, economic emasculation of the East by Nigeria in giving all Easterners £20 irrespective of previous bank holdings at the end of the war, State sponsored nepotic ostracism which eschewed merit and human enterprise from mainstream governance, Easterners found themselves at the brink of socio-economic exterminations and had to pull themselves up by sheer perseverance and dint of effort resulting in disenchantment with Nigeria and a massive migration to new diasporas.
In the region, what economic spheres are available for foreign investors? Currently what foreign players are showing interest in the region?
There are no foreign investors of repute in the region. However, a plethora of virile local entrepreneurs abound which provide fertile ground for viable foreign investment. The indigenous entrepreneurial spirit and the dexterous will to survive the odds has been of immense value in containing widespread poverty. To this end, a number of indigenous entrepreneurs such as Innoson Motors, Coscharis Forms, Lynden Forms, ABC Transport, Air Peace, AA Oil et cetera, have become successful industrialists from sheer dint of self-effort.
The economic spheres open to foreign investors will usher in unprecedented growth is in the area of human capital especially in the digital space. Human economy and venture capital leveraging on the age-old entrepreneurial apprenticeship tradition is the way to go for any foreign investor. No foreign investors are currently showing interest in the region due to heavy occupationist police and military presence in the region that does not permit the thriving nature of free enterprise to grow as people live and operate in a climate of persecution and fear.
What investment incentives and kinds of business support are available for foreign investors in Biafra?
The Republic of Biafra will emplace a sustainable merit-based investment regime and a justiciable investment clime based on the rule of law. With the emplacement of security and the rule of law, merit and equity in governance models and institutions and a sense of patriotism and belonging in the Citizenry, the restored Republic will lay enviable firm sustainable foundations for investor confidence and economic growth based on tried and tested models and international best practice. The model of business support incentives readily available to the People are the traditional entrepreneurial self-help. Highfaluting government postulations on business exist on paper but are beyond the reach and access of the common man, especially the unschooled rural dweller or urban slum dweller with no access to political or nepotic privilege.
Since 1970, after the civil war, has Igbo women’s status changed in the Eastern Nigeria? Generally, what are the popular perceptions about Igbo women, as against Yoruba, in Federal Republic of Nigeria?
Nothing has changed for the Igbo Woman since after the Civil War. With the increasing socio-political incarceration endured by her male brethren, Igbo women lost their self-esteem. Popular perception of the Igbo Woman are no different from the plight of their male brethren. The renowned resilient strength and baseline support for which Igbo women are known for has been corroded by willful denial of opportunity by the Nigerian State. Many have been forced into unwholesome practices for basic sustenance and are now part of the human and brain-drain which has engulfed the East.
Do the social and cultural changes influencing the activities of women in Biafra State. Can you please discuss the main spheres where Igbo women are currently?
Currently Igbo Women agonize over the seemingly disparate dissipative efforts of their Male brethren in their quest for the restoration of Biafra. Within the sphere of Christianity however Igbo women have excelled and found avenues for self-worth and social expression as religious activities and platforms have created viable avenues to restore the self-esteem of the Igbo Woman. Also, Igbo Woman in the diaspora has again and again proved beyond all reasonable doubt her achievement orientation and resilience in all walks of life. Names like Chimamanda Adichie and Ngozi Okonjo-lweala are household names.
What are the challenges, in your view, that remain especially for Igbo women and the youth in the region of Biafra?
Several challenges exist, the first of which is coercive alien hostile occupation of our homeland which have severally subjected Igbo Women to rape, ravaging their homes and farmlands, decapitating their husbands and children and sources of traditional rural livelihoods. Widespread poverty, unemployment and unemployable skill sets, remain a major challenge. State endorsed occupation of large portions of rural and village communal lands by alien hostile Jihadists have hampered the ability of women to provide for their families as supportive income earners.
Many women and young graduates from schools and cannot find jobs as there are no factories to absorb them and Government, the major employer, has become an overburdened inept nepotism and corrupt. With the prevailing socio-economic climate and the steadily dwindling economic fortunes and hostile stance of the Government towards entrepreneurial endeavor of Easterners, the future is bleak for women and youth. The only glimpse of hope in the horizon is a fallback to the age-old traditional practice of nurtured apprenticeship has been the bulwark of survival and sustenance in the face of the current existential threat facing Easterners.
Could it have been better if the region were independent of the federal system of governance?
An independent Biafra will, of course, usher in a regime of laws. A merit-based system of law and order. Independent Biafra will emplace a just and fair system where merit is accorded due cognition and reward and criminality and kleptomania is eschewed. In five years of independence indigenous enterprise of the East will reach unparalleled heights with world class infrastructure and a first-tier digital economy. This will be achieved through the effort and resilience of the indigenous Peoples of Biafra. In the face of years of criminal neglect by Nigeria and our strong footing in the Diaspora, Biafra’s emancipation and development will be the Eighth Wonder of the World.
In your objective assessment, what can you say are the current achievements or gains in the economic sphere for the Biafra under Federal President Buhari?
Absolutely nothing. The current entrapment of Biafra within the British Nigeria contraption prevents the actualization of its investment and development potential in all ramifications. This is why we Easterners want to delink from this entrapped arrangement called Nigeria.
What are some of the weaknesses and strengths of Nigeria’s stranglehold on Biafra?
Nepotism at all levels and institutions of Government. Morbid corruption. Endemic kleptocracy. Ethnic cleansing and persecution of Christians and ethnic capture of the military and security apparatus of the State. Our current entrapment in Nigeria has been of no gain to the East and a lingering Albatross.
What do you suggest could be possible exit ways out from all these? Most probably, you would advocate for political independence, to become a separate republic?
Some members of the international community and the Comity of Nations were not part of and did not participate in the 1885 Berlin Conference which saw the scramble for and partition of Africa and heralded blatant conquest colonialism. Greedy European nations lumped indigenous nationalities together with little regard for their distinct indigenes and cultures identities. European colonialism therefore created unstable amalgamations of hitherto strange and alien groupings into artificial contemporary nation states of today.
In many African nations such as Nigeria, these indigenous nationalities have had a hostile acrimonious fractious relationship that has impeded development and led to unstable anarchy. The result is that there is massive corruption and widespread kleptocracy with indigenous ethnicities in power making strenuous effort to capture State resources to the exclusion of other groups. This scenario found in many African countries today have led to several Civil Wars and quests for self-determination notable of which is the Nigeria-Biafra War and the enduring quest for self-determination of the indigenous Peoples of Biafra and recently of the entrapped nationalities of the Western and Middle Belt Regions.
The international community has long recognized that the structure of many African states remains unsustainable due to the artificial nature of their creation. They also recognize that many of these indigenous nationalities such as the Igbo have enduring ancient democratic state and governance systems that were subsumed by colonial conquest and use capable of having separate countries as seen with the Republic of Biafra.
The way forward in restoring these ancient nationalities and bringing sustainable peace and development to the beleaguered peoples of Biafra is through the conduct of plebiscites that will afford the indigenous nationalities the inalienable right to choose how they are governed.
In Nigeria, the juxtaposition of ancient nationalities with incompatible values presently held together by a coercive military decree in a centrist top down military format federations, fundamental regional autonomies should be returned to the constituent indigenous groupings through the conduct of plebiscites. There should also be the renunciation of the military Decree 1999 Constitution which has been held the constituent indigenes hostage since 1999. A return to the truly democratic 1963 Constitution and holding of self-determination autonomy plebiscites for all indigenous nationalities will usher in sustainable development and peace.
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Kester Kenn Klomegah is a passionate contributor to Global Research.
While the situation in Libya continues to escalate and the parties are preparing for a decisive battle for Sirte, Turkey, which actively supports forces of the Government of National Accord (GNA), is negotiating with its strategic partners. On July 10, National Defense Minister Hulusi Akar went on an official visit to Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. During the visit, Akar checked the work of the diplomatic mission, had dinner with representatives of national minorities, namely Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks, with Ukrainian businessmen and the head of the Special Monitoring Mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Taking into account the high tension of the situation in Libya, the defense minister’s dinner in Kiev was of great importance for the Turkish side.
According to Ukrainian Minister of Defense Andrei Taran, during the talks with Akar, they discussed ways to deepen cooperation in the defense sphere.
“The cooperation of defense companies of Ukraine and Turkey is of particular [importance]. The reached agreements will strengthen the defense potential of Ukraine. The potential and maneuverability of the Ukrainian army will significantly increase, what will contribute to the protection of peace in the region,” Taran said.
It cannot be excluded that one of the goals of the visit was to demonstrate to Kiev that Turkey favors provocative actions against Russia. Instability in the East of Ukraine or new provocations in Crimea are in Turkey’s interest at the moment. They allow to weak Russia’s position in the negotiation process on Libya at the very moment when GNA fores, supported by Turkey, are actively preparing for military action on the territory of their country.
In recent days, Kiev has become noticeably more active and has been pursuing a policy of discrediting Russia in all possible directions.
The Ukrainian side announced that one of the dead soldiers was a military medic, Mikola Ilin, who turned out to be a citizen of Estonia. His death was captured on video.
Foreign Minister of Ukraine, Dmitry Kuleba, called the murder of a medic an act of barbarism.
“I want to make it very clear that from a legal point of view, this murder has signs of a war crime, and from a moral point of view, it is nothing else but an act of barbarism,” Kuleba said.
He stressed that the diplomats will try to make the incident public.
“I will personally raise this issue. The response will be as tough as possible. We will attract all our partners. This situation will be made public,” the foreign minister said.
The death of Ilin led to the desired result, which was required by the Ukrainian authorities. The case was widely publicized. The accusations were immediately joined by the US Embassy, which previously rarely commented on the deaths of Ukrainian soldiers in the Donbass.
The European Union called the murder of a military medic a violation of the Minsk agreements, the agreements of the Normandy summit and international law.
Member of European Parliament, Michael Galer, blamed the Kremlin for the incident in eastern Ukraine on Twitter.
Besides the growing tension in the East of the country, Ukraine is increasingly speculating about Russia’s supposed intentions to conduct offensive operations in the South, which could be a response to the blocking of water supply to Crimea from Ukraine through the North Crimean channel. Water in Crimea is really critically scarce, but to solve this problem, Russia is completing the construction of a water pipeline, and is not preparing to seize the southern territories of Ukraine.
Despite the improbability of rumors about upcoming Russian attacks, on July 13, the head of the Kherson region (southern Ukraine), Yuri Gusev, appealed to the National Security Council to increase the number of military personnel in the region. Gusev also assured that Ukrainian military exercises will be held in autumn together with the Estonian military. However, the exact date of the exercise is unknown and depends on the conduct of large-scale military exercises of the Russian Armed Forces – “Caucasus – 2020”.
It is obvious that at the moment there are no signals that Russia is preparing for an offensive operation on the territory of Ukraine. Russia is currently experiencing quite acute domestic political problems, which the Putin administration is coping with worse. These include mass demonstrations in the city of Khabarovsk in the Far East and the introduction of constitutional amendments. Russian military forces are already involved in Syria, Moscow is actively participating in the negotiation process on the conflict in Libya, and the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is escalating near its borders. For a number of internal and foreign policy reasons, Russia is currently unable to deploy a major military force in new theater of operations. Thus, there is no real threat to Ukraine, but there are more and more rumors and information noise created in order to discredit Russia.
The tactical Turkish support pushes Kiev to continue its provocations against Russia. In the current situation, Erdogan has a number of levers to promote its own interests through Kiev.
Turkey and Ukraine are far from being equal partners. This fact is confirmed by the indicators of bilateral trade. Ukraine is much more interested in the Turkish market than vice versa. Ukraine is on the 27th place in the ranking of import countries to Turkey, while Turkey is one of the main importers of Ukraine.
Since 2012, Ukraine and Turkey have been negotiating the free trade zone agreement, but the document has not yet been signed. Economists note that the parties cannot agree on the terms of access for both industrial goods and agricultural products to each other’s markets.
Vladimir Volya, an expert at the Ukrainian Institute of policy analysis and management, claimed that it was difficult for Ukraine to defend its interests in negotiations with Turkey, because “Turkey is the 17th largest economy in the world and the 6th largest in Europe”.
While the economic dimension is certainly important in Turkish-Ukrainian relations, the main tone of interaction between the two countries is set by the political dimension.
As part of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, Kiev has special hopes for Ankara’s support. First of all, on the issue of Crimean peninsula. Turkey does not recognize Crimea as part of Russia, to a large extent it is connected with the Crimean Tatar population, which is presented by Kiev as allegedly oppressed by Russia. The policy of protectionism gave Turkey a broad influence on the peninsula until 2014. Before Crimea became part of Russia, the Turkish-backed Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people had notable political power in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. Also, thanks to Turkey, various extremist religious organizations, such as Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami, felt blessed on the peninsula. Today Mejlis is banned in Russia and has been replaced by other representative organizations, and the cells of the terrorist organization Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami are consistently eliminated on the territory of Crimea. However, various sources indicate that there is still an extensive network of agents of the Turkish special services among the Crimean Tatars. Ankar still cherishes hopes
The important sphere is cooperation in the defense sphere. Recently, the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF), Colonel-General Ruslan Khomchak, announced that the Ukrainian Armed Forces troops deployed in Eastern Ukraine will be equipped with Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 UAVs. State-controlled Ukrainian company UkrSpetsExport and private Turkish UAV specialist Baykar Makina signed a $69 million strategic cooperation agreement. Baykar Makina company is the most prominent of new Turkish drone makers penetrating the domestic and foreign markets.
“Turkish-Ukrainian defense cooperation will potentially go beyond drone systems,” the Ankara-based expert forecast. “Promising businesses could be armored vehicle modifications and, most notably, the Altay.”
While only a few European countries have agreed to supply weapons to Ukraine, Kiev is increasingly dependent on US and Turkish military assistance.
The Ukrainian State Company Ukrspetsexport in December 2019 exported to the Turkish company K.B.A.T. Ithalat Ihracat Mumessillik Ve Danismanlik Ticaret Ltd. the first batch of military goods under a contract for the supply of two S-125M1 Neva-M1 anti-aircraft missile systems totaling $30 million. They were subsequently delivered to the Government of National Accord in Libya.
Apparently, in the conflict in Libya, Ukraine supports Turkey not only by supplying anti-aircraft missile systems. Shortly after Akar’s visit to Kiev, two ships left the Ukrainian ports of Nikolaev and Berdyansk in the direction of Libya. Perhaps Erdogan became more cautious after the French Ministry of Armed Forces accused the Turkish Navy of harassing an arm embargo on Libya.
Ukraine, in turn, is important for Turkey as a tool of maintaining influence in the Black Sea region and for balancing its own interests in relations with Russia. While relations between Turkey and its NATO partners have being deteriorating, and it cannot count on the military support of European countries in the Libyan conflict, Erdogan can rely on Ukraine, which has also been “betrayed” by NATO countries, because despite the protracted negotiation process and long-term promises, NATO is in no hurry to accept Ukraine into its structures.
Ukraine is not the only country of the former Soviet Union where Turkey is pursuing an active policy in order to promote its interests and weaken its ‘strategic partner’, Russia. Recently there has been an escalation of the conflict on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. The moment of escalation is chosen perfectly. The current political leadership of Armenia has done everything possible to turn the Kremlin against itself. Yerevan has provided its territory and created a favorable political regime for the deployment of Western non-state companies whose goal is the destruction of Russia as a state. These organizations are backed by Western Democrats or the Brussels bureaucracy. As a partner of Russia, Armenia did not recognize the annexation of Crimea. And the President of Armenia, Pashinyan and his entourage have consistently given signals of following a Pro-Western policy. Today, the only state that can ensure the existence of Armenia as a state is Russia, but Pashinyan is doing everything possible to break their ties.
Turkey pursues a policy of incitement among partner countries. It is seen is not only by groundless provocations in Ukraine, but also in the unleashed conflict on the Azerbaijani-Armenian border. While Russia does not hurrying to openly support any of the sides, Erdogan accused Armenia of starting the conflict and expressed support for Azerbaijan.
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One of the world’s forgotten conflicts is now making headlines again.
In the last week, the military conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia has reignited, with the two nations having already been engaged in a military confrontation for decades. Nagorno Karabach, an Armenian enclave inside of Azerbaijan, is one of the main underlying factors for the conflict, but the growing rivalry between Russia and Turkey is also playing a part. More than 16 soldiers have been killed in the most recent round of fighting. Both sides are accusing each other of aggression and military action. The use of full scale armed forces and drones have been involved, killing several soldiers on both sides and reportedly an Azerbaijani general. The current outbreak of fighting has been the deadliest since the “April War” of 2016. While most clashes normally occur in and around the Armenian controlled Nagorno-Karabakh region, the current clashes are on the international border between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The international community is urging both sides to end the clashes.
The United States, European Union, and the OSCE Minsk Group are trying to defuse the situation. While it remains unclear what reignited the conflict, it seems that Armenia played a role in increasing tensions. Armenia recently constructed a new military outpost, which could have given Armenian armed forces a tactical advantage and tempted Azerbaijan to strike. At the same time, Azerbaijan is being buoyed by strong support from Ankara and may have wanted to test Russia’s support for Armenia. Remarkably, Armenia has called upon the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), of which Armenia is a member, to intervene. The CSTO’s response, from Yerevan’s point of view, however, is lacking. As of July 14, the CSTO has only called for a normalization of the situation on the border, not implying that it would provide military support for Armenia. The lack of vocal support from Moscow for Armenia is improving Azerbaijan’s position in the conflict. There is, however, a risk that the conflict will escalate to involve both Russia and Turkey.
While the military conflict may be drawing the majority of media attention, there is also an energy aspect to this conflict.
The military conflict gets full attention but another issue is a major threat to energy markets. The Caucasus is a major oil and gas transfer chokepoint, on which involves Russia, Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Central Asian countries. Energy market observers should be concerned about the proximity of the current military clashes to the Baku-Turkey oil and gas pipeline systems.
Threats to these important oil and gas pipelines, which not only connect the Central Asian producers to the global markets but also stabilize the region due to growth potential and revenues, are already significant. Gazprom Armenia, a subsidiary of Russia’s energy giant Gazprom, stated on July 14 that gas pipelines had been damaged near the border of Azerbaijan. Increased military action on both sides will only increase the danger to existing regional oil and gas infrastructure. Turkey will be hit hard if this conflict does escalate as it is largely dependent on oil and gas from the region.
Regional analysts are already assessing the possibility that the current flare up may have been instigated by Russia. The Tovuz region where the fighting is taking place is particularly close to Azerbaijan’s crucial South Caucasia pipeline (SCP). The SCP channels natural gas to Turkey’s TANAP pipeline and is a key component of Ankara’s efforts to decrease its dependence on Russian energy. For years, Turkey has been trying to diversify its energy imports, but Ankara is still heavily dependent on Moscow.
Russian gas is twice as expensive for Turkey than it is for most European customers, which is why Ankara is so desperate to move away from Russia gas. By getting Azerbaijani gas via TANAP, Turkey has been able to significantly reduce its costs. The Azeri-Turkish partnership could deepen further as a new opportunity arises in 2021, when a major gas deal between Turkey and Russia is up for renewal. Those discussions stalled in April when the two counties failed to reach an agreement. All of this combined means that Russia could be looking at losing market share in a very important growth market.
The main pipeline, the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipeline, that supplies gas to Turkey from Azerbaijan, passes through the Tovuz region of Azerbaijan. This area borders the Armenian Tavush, where the clashes took place. Due to its geopolitically strategic location, a possible Turkish military intervention, especially considering its operations in Syria and Libya, is not unthinkable. Blowing up the current infrastructure in Azerbaijan would almost certainly ensure Turkish military involvement. “Turkey will never hesitate to stand against any attack on the rights and lands of Azerbaijan,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday. Erdogan suggested a wider conspiracy lay behind the latest fighting. Turkish pro-government media have been quick to accuse Moscow of encouraging Armenia to attack Azerbaijan, albeit without substantiating evidence. Some analysts believe Turkey’s actions in Libya and Syria are related to this new conflict. Ankara could be forcing a new front, and the hand of Moscow, to get some bargaining power in North Africa.
Whatever the cause of this latest conflict, the situation is on a knife’s edge. Azerbaijan, via its defense ministry, has warned Armenia that it could launch missile attacks on its Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant. These threats could be easily be countered by Armenian actions on Azerbaijan’s weak point, its oil and gas transit pipelines. The fallout would be felt not only in European markets, but globally as well.
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Dr. Cyril Widdershoven is a long-time observer of the global energy market. Presently, he holds several advisory positions with international think tanks in the Middle East and energy sectors in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
There is an ongoing battle to suppress Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), a cheap and effective drug for the treatment of Covid-19. Dr. Anthony Fauci, advisor to president Trump has played a central role in blocking HCQ.
On May 22, an “authoritative” peer reviewed “evaluation” of HCQ was published in The Lancet. The study was allegedly based on data analysis of 96,032 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 from 671 hospitals Worldwide. That database had been fabricated. The Lancet study was “Retracted”. The objective of that fake study, quoted by the media (as well as by Dr. Anthony Fauci) was to kill the Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) cure on behalf of Big Pharma.
And now, as documented by Fox News, US medical doctors are being threatened by the State Medical Licensing Boards not to prescribe HCQ, an effective treatment for COVID.
“75,000 to 100,000 lives would be saved” if the ban on HCQ is lifted said Yale Professor of Epidemiology Dr. Harvey Risch (Interview below)
There is a media blackout on HCQ. “So much corruption in the medical field when it comes to bureaucrats” says Laura Ingraham.
And guess who was involved in blocking the use of HCQ. Dr. Anthony Fauci, advisor to president Trump.
VIDEO
Dr. Fauci had earlier stated categorically that the use of HCQ had not been studied in relation to the coronavirus. “No proven drug”: “Not Enough Known”. . That’s a “False Statement”.
What Fauci failed to mention is that Chloroquine had been tested fifteen years ago by the CDC as a drug to be used against coronavirus infections. Chloroquine was used in 2002 and tested against SARS-1 coronavirus in a study under the auspices of the CDC published in 2005 in the peer reviewed Virology Journal. The main conclusion of the article was that: Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread. It was used in the SARS-1 outbreak in 2002. It had the endorsement of the CDC.
The ban on HCQ was intended to promote a $1.6 Billion HHS Contract with Big Pharma’s Gilead Sciences Inc.
Il ministro della Difesa Lorenzo Guerini (Pd) ha espresso grande soddisfazione per la votazione «coesa» del parlamento sulle missioni internazionali. Salvo qualche dissenso sul sostegno alla Guardia costiera di Tripoli, maggioranza e opposizione hanno approvato in modo compatto, con nessun voto contrario e pochi astenuti, 40 missioni militari italiane in Europa, Africa, Medio Oriente e Asia.
Sono state prorogate le principali «missioni di pace» in corso da decenni sulla scia delle guerre Usa/Nato (cui ha partecipato l’Italia) nei Balcani, in Afghanistan e in Libia, e di quella israeliana in Libano facente parte della stessa strategia. A queste ne sono state aggiunte alcune nuove: l’Operazione militare dell’Unione europea nel Mediterraneo, formalmente per«prevenire il traffico di armi in Libia»; la Missione dell’Unione europea di «appoggio all’apparato di sicurezza in Iraq»; la Missione Nato di potenziamento del sostegno a paesi situati sul Fianco Sud dell’Alleanza.
Viene accresciuto fortemente l’impegno militare italiano nell’Africa subsahariana. Forze speciali italiane partecipano alla Task Force Takuba, schierata in Mali sotto comando francese. Essa opera anche in Niger, Ciad e Burkina Faso, nell’ambito dell’operazione Barkhane in cui sono impegnati 4.500 militari francesi, con blindati e bombardieri, ufficialmente solo contro le milizie jihadiste.
In Mali l’Italia partecipa anche alla Missione dell’Unione Europea Eutm, che fornisce addestramento militare e «consulenza» alle forze armate di questo e altri paesi limitrofi.
In Niger l’Italia ha una propria missione bilaterale di supporto alle forze armate e, allo stesso tempo, partecipa alla missione dell’Unione europea Eucap Sahel Niger, in un’area geografica che comprende anche Nigeria, Mali, Mauritania, Chad, Burkina Faso e Benin.
Il Parlamento italiano ha inoltre approvato l’impiego di «un dispositivo aeronavale nazionale per attività di presenza, sorveglianza e sicurezza nel Golfo di Guinea». Scopo dichiarato è «tutelare in quest’area gli interessi strategici nazionali (leggi quelli dell’Eni), supportando il naviglio mercantile nazionale in transito».
Non a caso le aree africane, in cui si concentrano le «missioni di pace», sono le più ricche di materie prime strategiche – petrolio, gas naturale, uranio, coltan, oro, diamanti, manganese, fosfati e altre – sfruttate da multinazionali statunitensi ed europee.
Il loro oligopolio è però ora messo a rischio dalla crescente presenza economica cinese. Non riuscendo a contrastarla solo con mezzi economici, e vedendo allo stesso tempo diminuire la propria influenza all’interno dei paesi africani, gli Stati uniti e le potenze europee ricorrono alla vecchia ma ancora efficace strategia coloniale: garantire i propri interessi economici con mezzi militari, compreso il sostegno a élite locali che basano il loro potere sulle forze armate.
Il contrasto alle milizie jihadiste, motivazione ufficiale di operazioni come quella della Task Force Takuba, è la cortina fumogena dietro cui si nascondono i veri scopi strategici. Il Governo italiano dichiara che le missioni internazionali servono a«garantire la pace e la sicurezza di queste zone, per la protezione e la tutela delle popolazioni». In realtà gli interventi militari espongono le popolazioni a ulteriori rischi e, rafforzando i meccanismi di sfruttamento, aggravano il loro impoverimento, con un conseguente aumento dei flussi migratori verso l’Europa.
Per mantenere migliaia di uomini e mezzi impegnati nelle missioni militari, l’Italia spende direttamente in un anno oltre un miliardo di euro, forniti (con denaro pubblico) non solo dal ministero della Difesa, ma anche da quelli dell’Interno, dell’Economia e Finanze, e dalla Presidenza del Consiglio.
Tale somma è però solo la punta dell’iceberg della crescente spesa militare (oltre 25 miliardi l’anno), dovuta all’adeguamento delle intere forze armate a tale strategia. Approvata dal Parlamento con unanime consenso bipartisan.
We hope that by publishing diverse view points, submitted by journalists and experts dotted all over the world, the website can serve as a reminder that no matter what narrative we are presented with, things are rarely as cut and dry as they seem.
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Last year, at least 148 tech-related Chinese enterprises were blacklisted from the US market — including tech giant Huawei and its 70 affiliates.
Targeted Chinese firms are involved in producing aviation related products, semiconductors, engineering, as well as other high-tech products and components.
‘Let China sleep, when she wakes, she will shake the world’ Napoleon reportedly said. But China has been far from asleep in recent years – the West has. In the last few decades the East Asian country of around 1.4 billion has become the manufacturing powerhouse of the world. It is not common knowledge, but in most fields it has already surpassed the United States. In a generation, a country which did not even feature on the economic league tables in 1980 is now leading them. By 2024 its estimated GDP will exceed the US’ by over $10 billion.
In the months prior to the most ferocious stock market crash in history and the eruption of the biggest public health crisis of our generation, we witnessed the biggest exodus of corporate CEOs that we have ever seen. And as you will see below, corporate insiders also sold off billions of dollars worth of shares in their own companies just before the stock market imploded. In life, timing can be everything, and sometimes people simply get lucky. But it does seem odd that so many among the corporate elite would be so exceedingly “lucky” all at the same time. In this article I am not claiming to know the motivations of any of these individuals, but I am pointing out certain patterns that I believe are worth investigating.
On June 3 via their website, the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF) unveiled the outlines of their upcoming January 2021 forum. They call it “The Great Reset.” It entails taking advantage of the staggering impact of the coronavirus to advance a very specific agenda. Notably enough, that agenda dovetails perfectly with another specific agenda, namely the 2015 UN Agenda 2030. The irony of the world’s leading big business forum, the one that has advanced the corporate globalization agenda since the 1990s, now embracing what they call sustainable development ,is huge. That gives us a hint that this agenda is not quite about what WEF and partners claim.
After the corona crisis, may the world be facing a monumental paradigm shift of power towards a more balanced civilization – more social justice and equity? The global almost total lockdown, chosen by most governments around the globe in response to mastering the Covid-19 crisis, devastated the world economy, as we know it – and hundreds of millions of lives. Was it necessary? Will there be a time when those responsible for this universal, scientifically unnecessary lockdown be held accountable?
The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provides a pretext to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to trigger the entire World into a spiral of mass unemployment, bankruptcy, extreme poverty and despair.
Imagine, you are living in a world that you are told is a democracy – and you may even believe it – but in fact your life and fate is in the hands of a few ultra-rich, ultra-powerful and ultra-inhuman oligarchs. They may be called Deep State, or simply the Beast, or anything else obscure or untraceable – it doesn’t matter. They are less than the 0.0001%.
Two of the US’s top “strategic threats” are getting closer and closer within the scope of the New Silk Roads – the leading 21st century project of economic integration across Eurasia. The Deep State will not be amused.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi blasted as “lies” a series of rumors about the “transparent roadmap” inbuilt in the evolving Iran-China strategic partnership.
Days earlier at the Economic Club of New York, Pompeo continued his all-out war of words on China.
Ignoring endless US wars by hot and other means against nations on its target list for regime change, he accused China of “aggression…thievery” of US intellectual property, and hollowing out the US middle class (sic).
As usual, no evidence was cited because none exists.
China is considered US public enemy No. 1 because of its rising prominence on the world stage, not for any hostile threat it poses to America or any other nations.
Core Beijing policy is fostering cooperative relations with other countries, polar opposite all-out US efforts to dominate them worldwide.
Part of US war on China by other means is blacklisting their enterprises.
The US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (SIC) compiles what it calls an Entity List.
It includes “names of…foreign persons – including businesses, research institutions, government and private organizations, individuals, and other types of legal persons — that are subject to specific license requirements for the export, reexport and/or transfer (in-country) of specified items.”
So-called BIS license requirements are all about blacklisting designated firms of targeted countries like China.
Last year, at least 148 tech-related Chinese enterprises were blacklisted from the US market — including tech giant Huawei and its 70 affiliates.
Targeted Chinese firms are involved in producing aviation related products, semiconductors, engineering, as well as other high-tech products and components.
Falsely claiming these enterprises act “contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States” is cover for wanting corporate America to have a leg up on Chinese competition.
Blacklisted firms are prohibited from purchasing US technology without Washington’s permission.
On Monday, the Trump regime blacklisted 11 more Chinese companies.
Accusing them of human rights abuses against Xinjiang Uygurs in China’s northwest, no corroborating evidence was cited.
The so-called US Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act (December 2019) calls for sanctioning China over alleged mistreatment of these people.
Credible evidence backing claims about China’s alleged internment of millions of Uyghurs in Xinjiang is sorely lacking.
They’re based on accusations by a so-called Washington-based, US-backed Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders and dubious establishment media reports.
Beijing rejected claims, saying there’s no mass internment, no so-called “re-education camps.”
Yet unsubstantiated claims are in the US war budget to punish China over this alleged issue.
The measure also requires the director of national intelligence (DNI) to report regularly on the alleged threat of Chinese hegemony over the global 5G wireless infrastructure buildout, falsely claiming it threatens US national security.
On Monday, the Trump regime again accused China of persecuting Uygurs and exploiting them as forced labor.
Newly blacklisted Chinese firms include textile producers and others accused of “conducting genetic analyses…to further the repression of Uygurs and other Muslim minorities,” the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported.
With no credible evidence backing its claims, the Trump regime blacklisted dozens of Chinese firms it accused of “involve(ment) in China’s repression in Xinjiang,” said SCMP.
Citing no evidence, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross accused Beijing of “actively promot(ing) the reprehensible practice of forced labor and abusive DNA collection and analysis schemes to repress its citizens (sic).”
So far there’s been no official Chinese response.
In May, its US embassy slammed additions of Chinese enterprises to the Trump regime entity list, saying:
It “overstretched the concept of national security, abused export control measures, violated the basic norms governing international relations, interfered in China’s internal affairs.”
By letter to Ross, blacklisted Chinese textile producer Esquel Group’s CEO John Chen said his firm “does not use forced labor, and we never will use forced labour. We absolutely and categorically oppose forced labor” — calling for his firm to be removed from the US entity list.
Hostile US action toward China, its officials, and enterprises threaten to push things beyond a point of no return — risking direct confrontation between two thermonuclear powers.
It’s an ominous possibility because of US rage to control other nations, their resources and populations by whatever it takes to achieve its objectives — forever wars by hot and other means its favored strategies.
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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.”
Motorcycle accidents ruled Covid deaths? In the rush to paint Florida as the epicenter of the “second wave” of the coronavirus outbreak, government officials and their allies in the mainstream media have stooped to ridiculous depths to maximize the death count. A television station this weekend looked into two highly unusual Covid deaths among victims in their 20s, and when they asked about co-morbidities they were told one victim had none, because his Covid death came in the form of a fatal motorcycle accident.
Sadly, this is not an isolated incident. In fact the “spike” that has dominated the mainstream for the last couple of weeks is full of examples of such trickery.
Washington state last week revised its Covid death numbers downward when it was revealed that anyone who passed away for any reason whatsoever who also had coronavirus was listed as a “Covid-19 death” even if the cause of death had nothing to do with Covid-19.
In South Carolina, the state health agency admitted that the “spike” in Covid deaths was only the result of delayed reporting of suspected Covid deaths.
An analysis of reported daily Covid deaths last week compared to actual day-of-death in Houston revealed that the recent “spike” consisted largely of deaths that occurred in April through June. Why delay reporting until now?
We do know that based on this “spike” the Democrat mayor of Houston cancelled the convention of the Texas Republican Party. Mission accomplished?
Doesn’t it seem suspicious that so many states have experienced “delayed” reporting of deaths until Fauci and his gang of “experts” announced that we are in a new nightmare scenario?
Last week in Florida – which is perhaps not coincidentally the location of the Republican Party’s national convention – another scandal emerged when hundreds of Covid test centers reported 100 percent positive results. Obviously this would paint a far grimmer picture of the resurgence of the virus. Orlando Health, for example, reported a positivity rate of 98 percent – a shocking level – but a further investigation revealed a true positivity rate of only 9.4 percent. Those “anomalies” were repeated throughout the state.
“Cases” once meant individuals who displayed sufficient symptoms to be treated in medical facilities. But when the scaremongers needed a “second wave” they began reporting any positive test result as a “Covid case.” No wonder we have a “spike.”
Politics demands that politicians be seen doing “something” rather than nothing, even if that something is more harmful than doing nothing at all. That is why Washington is so addicted to sanctions.
The same has been true especially in Republican-controlled states in the US in response to the coronavirus. Faced with a virus that has killed about one-third as many people as the normal, seasonal flu virus in 2018, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has endorsed a partial shutdown of the economy resulting in millions tossed into the despair of unemployment. Then he arbitrarily shut down bars because massively increased testing showed more people have been exposed to the virus. And he mandated that people wear face masks. Neither shutting down bars (instead of restaurants or Walmarts) nor forcing people to wear masks will have any effect on the progression of the virus through society. But at least he looks like he’s doing “something.”
We are facing the greatest assault on our civil liberties in our lifetimes. The virus is real, but the government reaction is political and totalitarian. As it falls apart, will more Americans start fighting for their liberty?
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A coalition including states, conservation organizations, and the Northern Cheyenne Tribe today launched a new challenge against the Trump administration’s decision to open millions of acres of public lands for new coal leasing and mining. That 2017 decision ended an Obama-era leasing moratorium that had protected public lands from new coal strip mines, and the water, air, and climate pollution such mines cause.
A U.S. District Court in Great Falls, Montana, ruled in April 2019 that the administration’s decision to end the moratorium broke the law because the administration failed to evaluate the environmental harm from its decision.
However, earlier this year, the Trump administration attempted to remedy that violation by releasing a widely-criticized environmental assessment. The assessment looked at only four coal leases that the Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) had already issued, and concluded the leases did not cause any significant harm to the environment. The assessment did not consider BLM’s other coal-leasing activities over the 570-million acre federal mineral estate, which contains approximately 255 billion tons of mineable coal.
The complaint filed in the Great Falls court today challenges the administration’s findings that the federal coal-leasing program does not cause significant environmental harm, and asks the court to reinstate the moratorium on new coal leasing. Earthjustice filed the complaint on behalf of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, Citizens for Clean Energy, Montana Environmental Information Center, Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club, WildEarth Guardians, and Defenders of Wildlife. The states of California, Washington, New Mexico, and New York took similar action on Monday.
“While people across the globe are literally fighting for their lives against persistent threats to their air quality, water supplies, and sustainable climate, the Trump administration is propping up a dying industry that still inflicts long-lasting harm on communities and the health of our planet,” said Jenny Harbine, Earthjustice attorney. “We’re asking the court to restore critical protections and hold this administration accountable to the science.”
Background
The Trump administration’s actions are in stark contrast with the Obama administration, which had ordered the moratorium on new coal-leasing to allow time to reform the federal program to protect the climate and American taxpayers. In just the first stage of that review, completed this January, the Interior Department found that coal mining fouls the air, pollutes streams and destroys wildlife habitat on public land. Past estimates found that than one-tenth of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, the pollution driving climate change, come from federal coal.
In addition to studying these impacts, the Interior Department previously committed to evaluate options for improving returns to taxpayers before resuming leasing. Internal Interior Department and independent Government Accountability Office audits have recently concluded that the current leasing system shortchanges taxpayers while subsidizing coal mining. The Trump administration’s decision to resume federal coal leasing will lock in these subsidies — in addition to harmful environmental impacts — before they are fully studied.
In addition to climate and economic impacts, the mining and burning of coal from public lands imposes heavy air-quality and public-health costs through emissions of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter and mercury. Scientists have called on the United States to stop new coal leasing to help prevent the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.
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A series of violent attacks, involving explosions and fires, has been hitting Iran. The incidents have been too frequent and intense to be random accidents. They are part of an organized effort.
Caution is always advisable in attributing responsibility for such unclaimed acts, especially for all of us outside the government channels that possibly have better information about what is going on. But circumstances point strongly, as some mainstream press reporting reflects, to either or both of two suspects: the Netanyahu government in Israel, and the Trump administration in the United States.
Both of those suspects have track records that point that same way. The most conspicuous relevant act by the Trump administration was its assassination in January, with a drone-fired missile at the Baghdad airport, of Qassem Soleimani, one of the most prominent political and military figures in Iran. The Israeli record of aggressive acts against Iran has included a series of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. Those murders were part of a larger, longstanding Israeli campaign of assassinations throughout the Middle East. That campaign is in turn part of an even larger Israeli record of acts throughout the region — including, over the past couple of years, scores of aerial attacks in Syria.
Neither the Israeli government nor the Trump administration has formally declared war against Iran, but the rhetoric of each has stopped only slightly short of such a declaration. The Trump administration has made clear its intention to inflict as much pain as possible on Iran, including but not limited to economic sanctions. The Netanyahu government’s voluminous rhetoric on Iran has been every bit as hostile as what has come out of Washington, or as what has come in the opposite direction from Tehran.
Make no mistake about what is going on. This is not a set of actions “short of war,” as some would put it. It is war. We certainly should worry about escalation of the conflict into something so big that everyone would call it war. But that does not make what already has transpired anything less than acts of war.
In this regard, do not be deceived by the Iranian regime’s downplaying of the recent attacks and its restraint — so far — regarding retaliation. A date circled on Iranian policymakers’ calendars is January 20, 2021. The Iranians can read American polls, and the dominant thread at the moment in Iranian thinking about security policy is to tough it out until there is regime change in Washington. Iranian leaders don’t want to be suckered into the sort of October — or July — surprise that would generate a rally-round-the-flag effect in America and could rescue Donald Trump’s fading re-election chances, although they realize the restraint does risk making them appear weak.
No justification for the war
Although the current war has not been formally declared, it ought to be assessed by the same standards as one that has. Per international law and the United Nations Charter, war would be justified only in self-defense, as a response to, or possibly pre-emption of, an attack in the other direction. That is not the current circumstance with Iran. There is no sign that Iran is about to attack either Israel or the United States. Given that Iran would be hopelessly outclassed militarily against either of those foes, it would be foolish for Iranian leaders to contemplate such an attack.
Nor does self-defense come into play when considering proxies or other asymmetric means through which Iran might want to impose its will. A salient aspect of the large amount of ordnance that Israel has been flying across the border and dropping on targets in Syria — many of those targets reportedly connected to Syria’s ally Iran — is how there has been almost no ordnance crossing the border in the other direction, other than an odd air defense missile or two.
The weakness of any U.S. case based on self-defense was underscored by the confused official justifications for the killing of Soleimani. Hints dropped publicly about pre-empting a supposedly imminent Iranian attack never led to any evidence to that effect. In the end, the U.S. administration’s rationale rested mainly on Soleimani’s past role in supporting Iraqi militia operations that incurred American casualties during fighting in Iraq. That fighting was a direct result of an offensive war — an act of aggression — that the United States launched in 2003.
Iran’s nuclear program has been a focus of attention in recent years, and one of the most publicized of the recent attacks on Iran was at the nuclear facility at Natanz. But the multilateral agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which placed severe restrictions on the Iranian program, did a far better job of keeping a possible Iranian nuclear weapon out of reach than anything the Trump administration has done since reneging on the agreement two years ago, after which Iran accelerated its nuclear activity. As Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute of Strategic Studies observes, the JCPOA did a better job in that regard than attacks such as the one on Natanz.
The attacks also do nothing to deter aggressive or otherwise undesirable Iranian actions. Deterrence requires conditionality: pain is inflicted after bad behavior and avoided after good behavior. But the U.S. and Israeli governments seem determined to inflict pain no matter what Iran does — as underscored by the Trump administration’s reneging on the JCPOA and launching its “maximum pressure” campaign even though Iran was fully complying with its obligations under the agreement. Iran is being given an incentive only to retaliate, not to behave well.
Eventual retaliation, despite Tehran’s relative restraint so far, is one of the risks of the current undeclared war. Escalation into something bigger and more destructive is another risk. Even without such escalation, the current campaign extends indefinitely one of the fronts in America’s “forever war” in the Middle East.
Nor is any good coming out of the attacks in terms of weakening Iran or shifting a regional balance of power in America’s favor. Instead, it strengthens Iran’s reasons to find support from — and in so doing foster the influence of — the likes of Russia and China.
Israeli objectives
To the extent the Trump administration is condoning, turning a blind eye toward, or even colluding with Israeli attacks on Iran, this is bad news for U.S. interests. U.S. interests are different from those of Israel, and even more different from those of the current Netanyahu-led government.
That government has an interest in perpetuating high tension with Iran to keep Iran as a bête noire blamable for all the ills of the Middle East, to preclude any rapprochement between Washington and Tehran, to promote Israeli relations with the Gulf Arab states, and to distract attention from issues that bring international scrutiny and criticism on Israel. At the moment, Netanyahu’s incentives in this regard are stronger than ever, which may help to explain the timing of the recent wave of attacks. The distraction value of stoking the conflict with Iran has increased as Netanyahu contemplates formal annexation of parts of the West Bank and the international condemnation that will come with it.
Netanyahu also, like the Iranians, is aware of the U.S. electoral calendar and American opinion polls. He may see the next few months as an optimal and limited time for stirring the regional pot even more than Israel has in the past, while his friend Donald Trump is still in power. To the extent the stirring helps his friend’s re-election chances, so much the better from his point of view.
Netanyahu is unlikely to be worrying about escalation into a bigger war, which would serve his purposes even more dramatically. Goading Iran into retaliating in a way that would spark such a war may have been one of the objectives of the recent attacks. And it would not be Netanyahu’s job to count any ensuing American casualties.
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Featured image: President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence participate in an expanded bilateral meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday, Jan. 27, 2020, in the Oval Office of the White House. (Official White House Photo by D. Myles Cullen)
The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.
Palestinians have accused Israel of an “abominable act of thuggery and cultural appropriation” after a 1500-year-old Christian relic was “stolen” by Israeli forces early on Monday.
Video footage posted online by the PLO Department of Public Diplomacy and Policy showed Israeli forces escorting a large flatbed truck out from the town of Tuqu, in the occupied West Bank district of Bethlehem.
The rare artefact, which dates back to the Byzantine period, was used as a water basin for baptisms and is one of three known relics of its kind.
The other two include one recently discovered at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and another belonging to a church in Beit Jibrin, an ancient Palestinian town left in ruins following Israel’s 1948 invasion.
Typical. #Israel steals our land & resources, plunders our archeological/historical sites, appropriates our cultural heritage& seeks to eradicate all evidence of our identity & continuity in our ancestral homeland–a settler-colonial attempt at erasing evidence of the indigenous. https://t.co/hGEpDx5rwe
“WATCH: Israeli occupation forces stole a historical baptismal font dating back to the 6th century from the city of Bethlehem last night,” the office said, sharing a video shot by a local photojournalist.
PLO executive committee member Hanan Ashrawi called the move “an abominable act of thuggery and cultural appropriation” and urged Unesco and its director-general Audrey Azoulay “to speak out and protect Palestinian heritage”.
“A hallmark of Israel’s system of colonial occupation and oppression has been its disdainful attempts to erase Palestinian presence, culture and heritage, including the illegal appropriation and theft of heritage sites and artifacts,” she said in a statement.
In a report, the Jerusalem Post contested the account, claiming that the baptismal font was not stolen but actually returned to its original site.
According to the Post, the relic was originally stolen 20 years ago from the Khirbet Tuqu site by “unauthorised dealers using a huge forklift”. In 2002, the relic was recovered and placed near the Tuqu mayor’s home, pending the construction of a local museum.
“I welcome the return of the baptismal font, which is a cultural and historical treasure from the Byzantine period,” said Hananya Hizmi, the head of the Israeli civil administration office known as Cogat, which oversees Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, according to the Post.
“The civil administration’s heavy investment of effort and resources in the search over recent years for this item has borne fruit. We will continue working tirelessly to preserve the sites and the archaeological relics throughout Judea and Samaria, and to prevent antiquities thieves from looting the history of the region,” Hizmi said, using the Israeli government’s term for the West Bank.
It was unclear where the Israeli office had taken the relic.
Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, accused Israel of “frequently” stealing ancient artefacts from its occupied territories “through unauthorised dealers and looters”.
“Israel has been using archeology as a key tool in reinforcing its bogus territorial claims to historic Palestine … and [to] give them a veneer of historical and religious legitimacy,” Wafa said.
The Palestinian Authority only controls around 18 percent of the occupied West Bank, known as “Area A”, while “Areas B and C” are under full or partial Israeli control.
Under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel plans to annex 95 percent of the area known as the Jordan Valley, which makes up at least 22 percent of the occupied West Bank.
There are over 800,000 Israelis living in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
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Featured image: Interior of the Church of the Nativity before the latest renovations (Public Domain)
In many ways, rapper and footwear mogul Kanye West fits the mould. That mould – the star or celebrity running for high office – had already been made by the actor-cum-amnesiac Ronald Reagan, who, with his dabbling in astrology and conveniently re-imagined reminiscences, did much to prepare the White House for what one might call the “reality show”. The fruit from that garden has been ample and bitter.
After announcing his improbable and almost certainly doomed campaign for the US presidency, West, after flirting with dropping out, decided to at least have a campaign rally. Like other countries who have witnessed celebrities gather the electoral silver and make their way into office, West is playing politics emptied of politics, the patient extracted of the nerve. The anti-political politician is an oxymoron, but it is an oxymoron that has speared and skewered statecraft. The political classes are petrified in alienation, representatives shielded behind armies of pollsters, public relations gurus and party machinery. The voter might as well vote for a candidate on the autopilot gravy train. The lunatic you get is the lunatic you see.
West is his own gravy train, admittedly also stocked up with provisions from his fellow celebrity companion, Kim Kardashian. His articulations are pricks of irritation, rarely credible and almost always reversible. He does his utmost to convince that he is some discount idiot savant, trying to sound profound even as he fumbles. His rally at Charleston, South Carolina left something for everybody, though no one present should have been confused by the “all about me” theme.
It all started with predictable theatre. There was no microphone. West donned a bulletproof vest. (You ought to be worth shooting to be credible.) “2020” was shaved into performer’s head. The audience gathered could not exactly be called vast, though the rapper promised that future events would be glorious, held in “rooms where the acoustics will be incredible because I will be involved with the design.”
The presentation was peppered by such howlers as that on the abolitionist Harriet Tubman, who “never actually freed the slaves”. What Tubman did, reflected West, was just having “the slaves go work for other white people”. The fogged up looking glass was brought out, with suggestions by Dani Di Placido in Forbes that this might have been some obscure reference to “wage slavery and white supremacy”. That said, a lament follows. Why did West have to go after a “beloved civil rights hero” given his previous Trump love phase, his own “hyper-capitalist ambitions” and the fact of becoming a billionaire which can hardly happen “through opposing wage slavery”?
Knocking off the gloss of the Tubman legacy was part of a show that moved into the realm of the teary and transcendental, with the performer promoting his inspirational link to the divine. West the mystic spoke of God’s intervention, suggesting that fabulous sky creature divines are terribly incurious, and bored, by nature. “I was having the rapper’s lifestyle. I was sitting up in Paris, and I had my leather pants on … and I had my laptop up and I got all of my creative ideas. I got my shoes, I got my sound cover, I got communities, I got clothes, I got all this and the screen [went] black and white and God said, ‘if you fuck with my vision I’m going to fuck with yours’.”
It all had to do with his child, who served as a good publicity prop for the occasion. This good Lord of the mind blowing “fuck vision” had convinced West that he and his wife should have their baby. “And I called my wife and she said, we’re going to have this baby. I said we’re gonna have this child … So even if my wife were to divorce me after this speech, she brought North into the world when I didn’t want to. She stood up and she protected that child.” To ease any moral or ethical quandaries, West had a solution for troubled couples: give them money. “Everybody that has a baby gets a million dollars.”
There was much talk about his entrepreneurial prowess (boosting the Adidas bank balance and share portfolio), his “132 IQ genius”, a person who “literally went to the hospital because his brain was too big for his skull”.
There were audience interventions that rarely taxed the big-brained wonder. A certain Summer complained about education being “whitewashed”, police brutality and the “brainwashing” offered by such technology platforms as TikTok, though West spent more time fussing over not being able to hear anything above the din and distraction: “no camera flicks, no flashes, no moving, no opening up Dorito bags.” He also got preoccupied about the exits. “You see where the two exits are? Is it okay to close the doors, but keep them unlocked while we are talking?”
Campaigns for the US presidency can start as engorged, dramatic stunts, with the ego maniac festooned with ambitions that are light on policy but heavy on boastful character. The person promoting it ends up riding a historical train he cannot get off. Donald Trump, to some extent, did just that. Many in the Trump camp, leaving aside such ideological blunder busts as Steve Bannon, were as disbelieving as many others that victory was in the offing that November in 2016. Then the gag got real. West has some way to go before coming close.
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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]
‘Let China sleep, when she wakes, she will shake the world’ Napoleon reportedly said. But China has been far from asleep in recent years – the West has. In the last few decades the East Asian country of around 1.4 billion has become the manufacturing powerhouse of the world. It is not common knowledge, but in most fields it has already surpassed the United States. In a generation, a country which did not even feature on the economic league tables in 1980 is now leading them. By 2024 its estimated GDP will exceed the US’ by over $10 billion.
The US has been aware of this, although arguably has done little up until now to react other than President Obama’s ‘Pivot to Asia’ in 2012. Donald Trump has taken a much more confrontational approach since he came to the presidency, embarking on an uncompromising trade war with China, in which he has openly attempted to manipulate US allies. Britain for some time resisted, signing up last year to a deal with Chinese tech giant Huawei to roll out 5G technology across the UK, against US advice. But last week, the British government performed a U-turn on its decision, declaring it would not be allowing Huawei to be involved in its 5G network after 2027. On Sunday, Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab said that there would be ‘no return’ to normal relations with China.
So what happened to the ‘golden decade’ of Sino-British relations announced by the Cameron government back in 2015? Only last year with the shadow of Brexit looming, then PM Theresa May announced $9bn of business deals with China. But the honeymoon is now over. In a world which is dominated by two economic powers, Britain has been forced to choose sides, and the coronavirus pandemic has provided the perfect opportunity to change policy. Indeed as soon as the epidemic took hold in Britain, the anti-China rhetoric was ramped up. It was as if the Chinese had to be punished somehow for Covid crisis – suddenly the nation was enemy number one and couldn’t be trusted at all. Someone just had to be made responsible for the rising death toll in Britain; it couldn’t be Boris Johnson, Xi Jinping was a much more suitable option. In terms of making the current anti-China stance more palatable for the British public, the coronavirus crisis was just what was needed. The media campaign began, as rumours of coronavirus having been leaked from a Wuhan laboratory (although unfounded) were spread.
Up until Covid-19, Britain was silent on the plight of the Uighurs, uninterested in the Hong Kong umbrella movement, and unwilling to budge on Huawei, even under considerable pressure from the US. Even during the unrest in Hong Kong which began last year over changes to extradition laws, Britain was cautious. It had to protect its post-Brexit trading interests. But the pressure from the US has clearly proved too much. Donald Trump, for his part, personally takes credit for the UK rejection of Huawei. On the announcement of the UK decision, he said: ‘I talked many countries out of using it…If they want to want to do business with us, they can’t use it.’ Just like that, the leader of the ‘free world’ admits western nations are not free at all, but at the bidding of America. In fact, it was reported that the US effectively forced the UK to reject Huawei by imposing new sanctions that cut off the company from international semiconductor supplies, leaving Britain no choice but to look to other 5G providers.
Make no mistake, the UK was bullied out of the Huawei deal. The US administration has escalated tensions with China in the last few weeks, now imposing visa restrictions on Huawei employees entering the US, and removing Hong Kong’s special trade status. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said recently ‘if China treats Hong Kong and China as one country in a single system then so must we’. Giving a press conference last week on the subject, Pompeo was flanked by screens bearing the slogan ‘If you are doing business with Huawei, you are doing business with human rights abusers.’ (Never mind the multi-billion dollar arms contracts signed last year with Saudi Arabia, a nation famed for its lack of human rights, with a crown prince that brutally annihilates his opponents.) The US picks and chooses who it wants to fight, and when, and its motivations are primarily economic. In addition, the US elections are looming, Trump needs an enemy, and China has fallen in the crossfire.
China for its part clearly doesn’t want conflict. It has spoken of trust having been ‘seriously damaged’ and of impending ‘consequences’ for the UK of banning Huawei, but it’s not likely it would go as far as to impose its own sanctions or blacklist US companies. Multinationals such as Google and Apple are so heavily embedded in the Chinese technological infrastructure that restricting them would pose huge risk. Instead, it’s more possible that China will look towards strengthening its links with allies such as Russia, and expanding its market elsewhere. ‘In the end, this is a big world, and the UK is only a small part of it’ the Chinese foreign ministry said last week. Chinese companies will no doubt be discouraged from investing in the UK however, moving forward.
The reality is Britain has been slow to catch up with a rising China, and for too long has sat on the fence in the US-China trade war. Now it cannot afford to ignore it: in 20 years China has gone from 26th to 6th place in Britain’s largest export markets. The Covid crisis, together with increasingly aggressive US rhetoric towards the government of Xi Jinping, have now shone a light on the country, and it has become obvious that the UK is lacking a coherent China strategy. Very few people in the Foreign Office have real, hands-on experience of China and its language and culture, and this is a real handicap when dealing with any nation. With the US outright rejecting China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, and sending a warship there recently to flex its muscles, it would take very little for this ‘cold war’ to heat up.
The UK needs to craft its future China policy very carefully, or risk being swept up in the US’ next ideological crusade.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The tension between Egypt and Ethiopia is worsening. Both countries are raising their regional rivalry and threatening the North African international security with the imminence of a new conflict. The cause of the tension is due to Ethiopia’s intentions to build a large hydroelectric dam on one of the tributaries of the River Nile, the so-called “Blue Nile”. The big problem around the issue is that several studies prove that the project would result in a series of devastating environmental effects for some nearby regions, mainly in Egypt and Sudan, where such consequences would annihilate all traditional farming systems.
Egyptian authorities are trying to prevent the project from advancing by legal and peaceful means. First, trilateral negotiations were established between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia, with the aim of reaching an agreement of common interest. But the negotiations were unsuccessful and the authorities in Cairo and Addis Ababa, the main antagonists in the conflict, were unable to reach a compromise. The next step taken by the Egyptian government was to appeal to the United Nations with its demand that Ethiopia be coercively prevented from building the plant.
Despite Egypt’s efforts, the United Nations’ inertia prevented the conclusion of an international agreement on the subject. Last Tuesday, Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia again met to try to resolve the issue with a common agreement. Again, the attempt failed, and countries left the meeting with even more disagreements. As a result, Ethiopia went ahead with the project and has already started filling the dam’s reservoir. When this process is finished, traditional agriculture in Egypt and Sudan will be wiped out.
In fact, the Ethiopian project has come a long way. Since 2011, the country has been trying to build a dam to resolve its electricity issue. Currently, less than 45% of the Ethiopian population has access to electricity. The project, however, would not only solve the energy issue within the country, supplying the population entirely, but it would also allow the Ethiopian State to export surplus energy to other African countries, guaranteeing profits to the public coffers. All Ethiopia’s international claims, both regionally and globally, depend fundamentally on the triumph of the hydroelectric dam project, even becoming a matter of national pride. In short, the project is a fundamental part of the consolidation of Ethiopia as a sovereign national state in the contemporary world.
However, for countries neighboring Ethiopia, the issue is quite the opposite. What would be a pride for Ethiopians would be a real humiliation for Egyptians and Sudanese. In Egypt, about 90% of the population lives on the banks of the Nile, where fertile lands feed all traditional national agriculture, in a millenary structure of organization and production. The triumph of the Ethiopian project would automatically represent the destruction of the Egyptian State, which would have to deal with a major escalation of hunger and economic losses.
There is yet another risk that the Egyptian authorities must consider: the risk of instantaneous release of the waters. If this happens, water currents could destroy more than 70% of the entire Egyptian population, resulting in a genuine genocide. According to evaluations by Egyptian experts, the project has a series of technical inadequacies, which raises concerns about this risk.
We contemplate then the current weakness of the African system for resolving regional conflicts. Ethiopia and Egypt are members of the African Union, which, being an international organization committed to African integration, should be strong enough to resolve these regional issues, creating an alternative between National States and the global system. It is necessary to avoid as much as possible submitting such strictly regional issues to the Security Council, when smaller organizations could resolve these situations because this delay can be fatal for millions of people. The lack of integration between countries and a strong regional supranational power could lead to a new war or to the end of the Egyptian state.
Now, it may be too late for a UN or African Union statement. Ethiopia is already filling the reservoir and with that the dam’s activities begin. The impact on Egypt and Sudan will be inevitable and the responses will come soon. Sudan has been more patient and flexible than Egypt in relations with Ethiopia, but Cairo’s position is different. Visibly, Egypt is currently trying to resume a posture of strong geopolitical relevance in Africa, as we can see with the country’s important role in the Libyan civil war, aiming to guarantee its regional interests and to consolidate itself as a North African regional power. Certainly, therefore, Ethiopia will have to deal with aggressive responses.
Violent reactions are already inevitable, but a war is not. More than ever, international organizations must work together with the affected states and Ethiopia to reach a common agreement. If such an agreement is not possible, a gigantic conflict will break out in the region, and may even result in foreign military interventions.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
For several weeks, just as most states across the United States began to reopen, following three months of lockdown to “flatten the curve”, several states including Texas and Florida began reporting record new numbers who tested positive for the coronavirus. At least that is what the world is being told. More careful investigation suggests what is unfolding as a huge manipulation of coronavirus tests that includes collusion by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the same CDC who badly bungled initial rollout of the virus tests in March by distributing tests that were found to contain traces of the virus and other serious defects. The present scandal bears the earmarks of more than mismanagement. It looks like political collusion to influence the November election and far more.
It seems that today something is very, very rotten in the State of Texas. The same for Florida, California, Arizona and many other states who just after reopening, now have again imposed lockdown and the foolish and ineffective mask-wearing and social distancing. Yet if we look at the actual data for deaths attributed to the coronavirus, since around the middle of April, the daily deaths designated of COVID-19, whether “with” or “of”, has steadily dropped to a level some 90% below the peak.
Even the highly corrupt CDC has had to admit “Nationally, levels of influenza-like illness (ILI) are low overall…Changes in indicators that track COVID-19-like illness (CLI) and laboratory confirmed SARS-CoV-2 were inconsistent during the most recent week, with some increasing but others decreasing.” Then the weekly CDC report updated 17 July, makes the following statement:
“Based on death certificate data, the percentage of deaths attributed to pneumonia, influenza or COVID-19 (PIC) decreased from 8.1% during week 27 to 6.4% during week 28, representing the twelfth week of a declining percentage of deaths due to PIC… Nationally, ILI activity remains below baseline for the thirteenth week but has increased for 5 weeks now.”
Note the language very closely. The CDC defines ILI as “Influenza-like Illness.” So are we talking about tests for presence of a specific virus, SARS COV-2, that is blamed for the Wuhan outbreak that apparently has spread globally since the beginning of 2020? Or is it “influenza-like” illnesses, a catchall which may or may not include the coronavirus? The CDC has cleverly lumped deaths whether from pneumonia, influenza or COVID-19 into one neat basket of death cause they call PIC– Pneumonia, Influenza or COVID-19. All PIC deaths are now conveniently designated as COVID-19 per CDC instructions on a death certificate.
Even with this sly sleight of hand, the CDC cannot hide the fact that all PIC deaths across the USA have declined for twelve weeks now. How to keep the nation in a state of fear and lockdown longer and how to satisfy the agenda of unscrupulous Democrats who seem willing to do everything to weaken the economy to force defeat of the Republican Presidential candidate on November 3?
A ‘Cases Pandemic’?
The response has been a dramatic ramping up of the number of tests on citizens for coronavirus or more precisely for an indirect test of antibodies or other signs that may or may not indicate a person has SARS COV-2. Around the middle of June as most states were rightly opening up to more normal conditions, the CDC pushed for a massive increase in testing. Naturally a dramatic increase of those tested will give an increasing number of persons who also test positive for indications of coronavirus. Just as Trump and many state governors were sensibly advocating steps to reopen, the CDC began pushing for a dramatic increase in tests. Testing went from about 150,000 to more than 700,000 per day. Reuters reported that many of the CDC-approved tests were contaminated as well.
Now the case of Texas is exemplary of what seems to be going on. According to officials in Texas in contact with former US Congressman Ron Paul, himself a medical doctor, the Texas State Department of Health Services changed the definition of what constitutes a “Covid case” in mid-May when cases were in significant decline. The new definition states, “while previously the determination of a Covid “case” was a confirmed test result, the definition was suddenly changed to count “probable” cases as “cases.” At the same time, the threshold for determining “probable” was lowered to a ridiculous level.” Basically if you have a fever and headache, even without a corona test, you can be listed as a “probable COVID-19 patient.”
It gets worse. Based on possibly unrelated subjective criteria, up to 15 people in possible contact with that “probable” case were also listed as “probable cases.” And “probable cases” were considered cases. Presto! Texas is in panic and mandatory masks and other draconian measures imposed. Further, the Texas health officials added to the fears by reporting hospitals in the state were being flooded by corona patients. Yet when contacted, Houston hospital directors themselves, said they were nowhere near actual capacity and in fact were about the same level as they were last year. Texas has a Republican Governor and is a critical state for Trump in November.
Florida Too…
In Florida where the Republican Governor came under heavy media attack for allowing the beaches to open and other steps, as cases there were dramatically down in “The Sunshine State,” the recent spike in corona “positive” cases is equally suspicious. A local Florida TV station became alerted when they saw a breakdown of lab tests many of which showed that 100% of all tests were “positive.” The TV station contacted test labs across the state. What they found was eye-opening.
TV reporter Charles Billi noted, “We found numerous labs that are only reporting positive test results, so they show a 100-percent positivity rate. That got our attention.” They located twenty-two labs that reported 100-percent positivity rates. Two labs reported 91.18-percent positivity rates. Such results suggest something rotten somewhere. Further investigation showed that many labs did not even report negative results. But when the TV journalists contacted the various labs to question the shocking numbers, data suspiciously changed. One lab, Orlando Health, had a 98 percent positivity rate. “However, when FOX 35 News contacted the hospital, they confirmed errors in the report. Orlando Health’s positivity rate is only 9.4 percent, not 98 percent as in the report.” Similarly, Orlando Veteran’s Medical Center had a positivity rate of 76 percent. “A spokesperson for the VA told FOX 35 News on Tuesday that this does not reflect their numbers and that the positivity rate for the center is actually 6 percent.” That is a huge difference.
No surprise that COVID-19 “infections” showed an alarming rise in Florida in recent weeks. As of July 14 Florida state health officials had not replied to requests from the journalists for comment.
Citing a dramatic rise in corona positive tested persons, California Democrat governor Gavin Newsome on July 14 reversed his decision to allow reopening of schools, offices, public malls and churches, though protest marches like Antifa or BLM are permitted, it seems. That decision in a state of 40 million and the largest state economy, will deal a severe blow to any USA economic recovery before November. Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom last month ordered that ballots be mailed to all of California’s 20.6 million voters for the Nov. 3 general election.
Changed Narrative
These cases indicate the huge, stinking miasma surrounding the entire subject of risk to the American population from SARS COV-2 and a political agenda that could have ominous consequences for the democratic process in America.
The influential political forces backing the NIH guru Tony “trust science” Fauci– who has been consistently wrong in his advice, but always pushing the most draconian lockdowns and testing and vaccines–clearly are trying to continue the destructive lockdown until the November US elections. They seem willing to engage in any and every manipulation and panic promotion to do that. Now they have simply changed the narrative. Three months ago Fauci and others said the goal of the lockdowns and social distancing—something never before done in modern public health—was to “flatten the curve” of new coronavirus cases so hospitals would not be overloaded. That overload rarely happened. Now with hospitals nearly empty across the nation, the narrative has shifted to the meaningless number “new coronavirus cases,” which in fact mean new numbers tested with tests whose reliability has repeatedly been called “unsatisfactory” or worse.
Stanford University’s Dr. John Ioannidis points out that the COVID-19 fatality rate for those under the age of 45 is “almost zero,” and between the ages of 45 and 70, it’s somewhere between 0.05% and 0.3%. So, the fact that young and middle-aged adults are testing positive in large numbers is not a warning sign of an impending onslaught of deaths, as the risk of death in these age groups is minuscule. The COVID19 Curve has been “flattened.” Politics is steering the USA COVID-19 events, but not the politics Fauci and the Governor of California claim. This could have catastrophic social and economic consequences if it continues.
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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Featured image is from Windover Way Photography
Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation
Author Name: F. William Engdahl
ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2
Year: 2007
Pages: 341 pages with complete index
List Price: $25.95
Special Price: $18.00
This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”
This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.
The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.
Located near the point where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Mediterranean Sea, close to Morocco, is the Spanish Naval Station Rota that is co-tenanted with the U.S. Navy. The issue for Washington to renew its tenancy that allows the Americans to use the Andalusian military base has arisen.
Although Rota has been a center for American culture in Iberia, the U.S. presence could be shifted to the Alcazarseguir base in nearby Morocco, according to El Español newspaper. The Alcazarseguir base is located directly on the geostrategic Gibraltar Strait. For now, the U.S. has not admitted to the plan to move to the other side of the bay and argued that it has not received any offer from Morocco. However, a shadow of doubt has been cast during negotiations with Spain.
The unprecedented opportunity to move its base from Rota to Morocco was suggested just as a debate on the U.S. presence at the naval base is soon to be held in Madrid on what is an obviously sensitive issue. The 1988 bilateral agreement must be renewed by May 2021. The current balance of power on the political map indicates that reaching an agreement on the deployment of the U.S. army will not be easy.
Spanish dictator Francisco Franco agreed for the U.S. to use the base. In return for consenting, he was given weapons for his army that was devastated during the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War and after his closest allies, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, ceased to exist after being defeated in World War II. During and after the Cold War Era, the base has been one of the most strategic for the U.S. Navy as it can effectively control a major trade route and the only other entry point into the Mediterranean with the exception of the Bosporus-Dardanelle Straits and the Suez Canal.
According to plans by the U.S. Navy, the Aegis destroyer warships will be replaced by more modern ships. In addition, by 2024, two more units will be gradually added to the contingent – a total of 6 ships. This will mean an increase in the number of U.S. troops too, especially with the arrival of a new helicopter fleet. Incidentally, the latter amendment was not included in the bilateral agreement between the U.S. and Spain. This potential influx of more soldiers to Rota creates an incentive for Spain to keep the U.S. Navy in the town as it will mean more U.S. dollars flowing into local businesses.
“The more destroyers at the base, the better for the city,” said Rota Mayor Javi Ruiz Arana, a member of the so-called Socialist Party. “Rota is ready for more troops and a possible expansion [of the base], but we need time and information to make the most of this. Keep in mind that the base takes up a quarter of the commune and should benefit local residents.”
As Rota is an entry point from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean and straddles very closely to the Islamic World via North Africa, U.S. actions in the Middle East/North Africa region creates extra activity in the town. On the political spectrum, few speak out against the base, realizing that it is the main engine of the local economy and employment. This is a trap however. The comfort of hosting American military personnel has meant the economy is not diversified and is mostly targeted towards the foreign soldiers.
However, local anti-war sentiment around the base intensified after a U.S.-led bombing raid of the Shayrat air base in Syria on April 7, 2017 occurred. The bombing raid was a response to an alleged chemical attack on Khan Shaykhun in jihadist-held Idlib province that the West blamed on the Syrian government without evidence. The bombing raid had the participation of a U.S. destroyer based in Rota, prompting the anti-war rhetoric in the town to intensify.
Spanish politician Inmaculada Nieto said
“We Spaniards must learn to say ‘enough’. Coexistence with U.S. foreign policy makes us a target, and Trump’s policy backs this up. They justify their interventionism with economic and business benefits, but it is based on a misinterpretation of what the allied countries are.”
The base and the military industry that revolves around it is a lifeline for Rota and its surrounding region that is collapsing due to Spain’s high unemployment rate, caused by an economic crisis that is only exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. In March, more than 25,000 newly unemployed people returned to the region as a result of the pandemic.
This creates a dilemma as in the current economic system the base is needed for immediate employment and finances, but there is a strong anti-war sentiment in the town that has existed ever since the base opened for American use. This anti-war sentiment has only increased since the American strikes against Syria. Whether this will be enough for the U.S. to decide to pack up and leave for Morocco, or for the Spanish government to decide to stop leasing the base to the Americans remains to be seen. Pressure is on the Spanish government now to decide between the economy or playing a part in U.S. aggression across the Mediterranean.
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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
Are things today on a path similar to what Professor of Government Graham Allison called events in 1941 that led to war between the US and Japan?
Clearly the risk of confrontation between the US and China is real by accident or design — even though policies of yesteryear’s imperial Japan and today’s China are world’s apart.
Graham pretends that Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor was beyond Washington’s imagination.
US intelligence broke the Japanese code, understood what was coming, tracked the Japanese fleet across the Pacific, failed to warn Pearl Harbor commander Admiral HE Kimmel, and let the attack happen to give FDR the war he wanted.
It’s highly unlikely that hawks from both wings of the US war party want belligerent confrontation with a nation like China able to hit back as hard as it’s struck by an aggressor.
At the same time, US war on China by other means rages, posing a risk of escalating to direct confrontation.
Trump is a political novice, a geopolitical know-nothing, an intellectually challenged businessman/reality TV personality, awakening one morning to discover he was president-elect.
He’s the first US president with neither government or military experience.
Profoundly ignorant about what a head of state should know, he’s surrounded by hardliners, notably manipulative ones on geopolitical issues.
He understands only what they feed him and Fox News rubbish, his favorite TV station, manipulating his mind, brainwashing him on major geopolitical issues.
He’s not a reader, favors oral communications, keeps briefing sessions short when held, and dislikes details he lacks interest in and may not properly understand on major issues related to affairs of state.
He may not know that ISIS, al-Qaeda, and likeminded jihadist groups are US creations — perhaps because this reality was never told him by his handlers.
He’s ignorant about international, constitutional, and US statute laws, likely knowing little or nothing about the legal limits of his duties and powers.
He’s a public personality performer, not a deep thinker, perhaps unaware of disastrous US foreign policy on his watch with endless preemptive wars raging in multiple theaters and risk of unthinkable war with China, Russia, and/or Iran.
Is he sleepwalking toward belligerent confrontation with one or more of these nations that could go nuclear if launched?
He likely has no understanding of the destructive power of today’s thermonukes — able to turn cities like New York to smoldering rubble.
The South China Morning Post (SCMP) is running a series of articles on possible war between the US and China.
It explained that when Pompeo met with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s top diplomatic aide Yang Jiechi weeks earlier, nothing was achieved toward smoothing increasingly hostile bilateral relations — both nations remaining on a possible collision course.
Days earlier, Pompeo roared that “(t)he world (sic) will not allow Beijing to treat the South China Sea as its maritime empire,” adding:
“America stands with our Southeast Asian allies and partners in protecting their sovereign rights to offshore resources…(We) reject any push to impose ‘might makes right’ in the South China Sea (sic).”
Might makes right is what the US does worldwide, what its preemptive wars by hot and other means are all about — the rule of law never an obstacle to its pursuit of its imperial agenda.
Did Pompeo’s hostile remarks infer US military action against China in waters it claims as its own?
Does Trump understand the potential seriousness of what’s going on?
Is he so tunnel-vision focused on the November election that he’s mindless of possible belligerent confrontation with China, Russia, and/or Iran?
Is he sleepwalking toward Gomorrah with blinders, out of his element and ignorant about the risk of pushing things too far beyond the point of no return — with potentially catastrophic consequences.
SCMP stressed that “growing distrust and hostility between Beijing and Washington has not only made China-US rivalry a self-fulfilling prophecy, but also left much of the world deeply polarized” at a time of worsening coronavirus outbreaks and economic crisis conditions, adding:
“…China-US relations are unravelling at an unprecedented speed, government officials and pundits have warned.”
China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations president Yuan Peng believes Beijing should prepare for belligerent confrontation with the US.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi stressed that Sino/US relations are worse than any time since they were officially established in 1979 — because of US strategic misjudgments and McCarthy-style paranoia, he said.
The provocative presence of US warships in the South China Sea close to its territory risks potential confrontation that could explode to something much more serious.
US-based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security’s Gal Luft believes with Washington in full containment mode, things passed the point of no return.
Mistrust is increasing, direct person-to-person dialogue dying, a situation fraught with dangers.
A months earlier Trump regime policy paper acknowledged the failure of Washington’s engagement with China since official relations were established — without admitting where blame lies.
In 2018, Henry Kissinger said “(f)rom a historical point of view, China and the US are almost destined for conflicts.”
Former Chinese deputy foreign minister Fu Ying explained that “(t)he greatest uncertainty for both militaries lies in the fact that both sides have yet to set up an effective crisis management mechanism and there remains ambiguity over each other’s bottom lines, rules about interactions as well as the ‘red lines.’ ”
“As a result, both sides need to constantly test each other, increasing the risks of incidents and uncontrollable outcomes.”
Possible belligerent confrontation between the US and China is the most important geopolitical issue of our time.
I’ll have more to say on this in follow-up articles.
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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.”
An exiled Iranian opposition group held its annual Free Iran conference online on Friday featuring speeches from an array of former US politicians and military officials. The conference was held by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a coalition led by the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq), a controversial group widely considered to be a cult, and up until 2012, designated as a terrorist organization by the US government.
So she decided to take her radiation meter for measuring electromagnetic fields – and do some ‘readings’ in this whole area. She visited the conference areas, where they had these ‘public access’ areas that were for mobile phones – cell phone access and also for wifi access. In these conference areas they tend to have very high ceilings – and she found that the radiation was not that bad, but in the corridors where most of the staff worked – as these were very narrow corridors – with metal walls and very low ceilings above all these public access points – her meter would not even measure the exposure levels there, as it was off the scale!
The election of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a follower of the ousted Erbakan, as Turkey’s prime minister in 2003 set Turkey on a collision course with NATO and the West. Erdogan is an unapologetic Islamist whose pan-Ottoman vision of Turkey’s role in the world clashes with the traditional transatlantic script followed by NATO.
The U.S. government stopped its atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons in 1962, shortly before signing the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963. And it halted its underground nuclear tests in 1992, signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996. Overall, it conducted 1,030 nuclear weapons test explosions, slightly more than half the global total.
41 years on from the revolutionary triumph of 1979, the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN) in Nicaragua looks stronger and with greater legitimacy than ever. Nicaragua embodies the same revolutionary paradox as Cuba and Venezuela. Despite all three countries being attacked via illegal unilateral coercive measures imposed by the US government, followed by its European allies, all three revolutionary governments have defended their peoples against the current pandemic with much greater success than neighboring countries.
One of the secret elements of the deal signed last year is that China will invest US$280 billion in developing Iran’s oil, gas, and petrochemicals sectors. This amount will be front-loaded into the first five-year period of the new 25-year deal, and the understanding is that further amounts will be available in each subsequent five year period, provided that both parties agree. There will be another US$120 billion of investment, which again can be front-loaded into the first five-year period, for upgrading Iran’s transport and manufacturing infrastructure, and again subject to increase in each subsequent period should both parties agree. In exchange for this, to begin with, Chinese companies will be given the first option to bid on any new – or stalled or uncompleted – oil, gas, and petrochemicals projects in Iran.
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When Haiti is called “exceptional,” it is rarely in the positive sense of the term. An exceptional Haiti often refers to a strange and enigmatic place where the theories and practices applicable to other societies inexplicably fail. In Haitian literary studies, this concept is referred to as “Haitian exceptionalism,” an expression popularized by the late Michel-Rolph Trouillot in his brilliant essay entitled, “The Odd and the Ordinary.” In this essay written in 1990, Trouillot argues that Haiti is far too often represented as a grotesquely unique, strange, erratic, and therefore inexplicable place. In this same essay, Trouillot rejects Haitian exceptionalism in this form and encourages Haitianists to transcend this ideology which he described as “fiction [1].” According to Trouillot, the fiction of exceptionalism not only obscures Haiti’s place in the world but sets it beyond the realm of analysis or comparison. He also sees in this ideology a scapegoat that detracts from the accountability of Western powers in Haiti’s condition, which leads to a “silencing of history [2] “. Further, according to Trouillot, in its most repugnant form, this idea would imply that Haiti’s misfortune is due to a congenital illness of the Haitian mind which would deprive, for example, political dilemmas of rational explanations or practical solutions.
Considering Trouillot’s call to transcend the fiction of Haitian exceptionalism as depicted in the literature, this essay aims to reimagine the term as a means of asserting Haiti’s rightful place in world history.
By “Haitian exceptionalism,” we do not see the idea that Haiti is exceptionally strange, incomprehensible and enigmatic, but rather that it occupies a special place among the nations and is disposed to a “manifest destiny,” which consists of siding with the most vulnerable and defending the freedom of the oppressed.
This manifestation of positive exceptionalism finds its match in American exceptionalism, a doctrine that maintains that the United States embodies the purest form of political freedom and democracy and is endowed with the unique mission of transforming the world. Our ideology of an exceptional Haiti in no way reflects this ethic of superiority over other nations; rather, it is rooted in a superlative humanist vocation. This view of an exceptional Haiti is not new. It was shared by pioneer thinkers such as Baron de Vastey, chronicler and secretary to King Christophe, who saw in the struggle of the African slaves a manifestation of the will of God himself [3]. In his book, The Colonial System Unveiled, he writes: “Great God! How great are your works! It is from a herd of slaves that your Almighty formed the elements necessary to avenge your divine laws [4].”
Such an exceptional history necessarily implies exceptional responsibilities. In fact, since obtaining its independence after achieving the first successful slave revolt in the modern world, Haiti has always assumed a role of defender of freedom and served as a refuge for the world’s afflicted. It was even written in the first constitution dated from 1805: “he who is a slave becomes automatically free by setting foot on Haitian soil.” Moreover, in 1815, when Simón Bolívar hit rock bottom in his struggle for the liberation of Latin America, it was in the arms of the young Haitian republic that he took refuge; and from Haitian President Alexandre Pétion, he received the necessary support to continue his fight against the Spanish troops.
In return, Pétion made only one request: the abolition of slavery wherever Bolívar would command. In 1822, President Boyer embraced the liberation struggle of the Grecian people, deciding that Haiti should not remain indifferent to it. He saw in Haiti and Greece a similarly long history of oppression and promised to do everything in his power to help the cause of the Hellenes. At the beginning of the 20th century, faced with the rise of Nazism, Haiti not only renounced the Hitler regime, but also opened its doors to persecuted European Jews. Thus, even with its challenges, Haiti has always assumed its moral responsibility as a defender of justice and protector of the oppressed, thus fulfilling its manifest destiny.
Today, racial discrimination and social inequality continue to limit opportunities for many around the world. In the United States, more than fifty years after the struggle for civil rights, African Americans find themselves having to affirm that “black lives matter.” Faced with these situations, Haiti cannot remain indifferent. It must continue at all costs to shake off the yoke of servitude wherever it can and to express its unconditional support for the oppressed of this world. Consequently, this “exceptional” country needs more courageous men and women who believe, deep down in their souls, in this “Haitian greatness” and in the universal mission of this chosen people.
The time has finally come for us to live up to our history and claim our rightful place among the nations. It is our duty to fulfill our manifest destiny, to continue to inspire the nations and to carry the torch of freedom for the oppressed people of this world.
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Notes
[1] Trouillot, M. R. (1990). The Odd and the Ordinary: Haiti, the Caribbean, and the World. Cimarrón: New Perspectives on the Caribbean, 2(3), 3.
[2] Trouillot, M. R. (1995). Silencing the past: Power and the production of history. Beacon Press
[3] Charles, A. (2002). Haitian exceptionalism and Caribbean consciousness. Journal of Caribbean Literatures, 3(2), 115-130.
[4] Vastey, B. P. V. (1814). Le système colonial dévoilé. Cap-Henry : P. Roux Imprimerie du Roi. Print.
The Brazilian government on Friday made an announcement on its so-called Defense legal base, a set of documents comprised of the National Defense Policy, National Defense Strategy and White Paper on National Defense. Every four years Brazil’s Congress must approve the three documents. These documents contain the guidelines for the Defense of Brazil and due to legal determination, they discuss important issues such as Brazil’s strategic planning for the 21st century, modernization of the Armed Forces, economic support for national defense, and peace and humanitarian aid operations.
The new edition of the documentation will likely be delivered to the National Congress on Wednesday.
According to the Ministry of Defense, the National Defense Policy points to the risk of tensions and crises in South America. This is the first time this has happened since these documents began. As an example of highlighting tension and crises in the region, the ministry cited the crisis of Venezuelan immigrants on the Brazilian border, demonstrating that the document is a consequence of Brasilia’s current close alignment with Washington. Diplomatic alignment with the U.S. certainly creates conflict and the issue of Venezuela is one example of that. Something that would normally not be a source of conflict between states as it is an internal political dispute, has now become a continental issue, according to Brazil’s new defense policies. Brazil has many times expressed their enthusiasm to invade Venezuela if the U.S. were to do so as well.
The pressure for conflict in Latin America is mostly caused by American diplomacy. Brazil’s diplomacy under President Jair Bolsonaro, dubbed the “Tropical Trump,” is totally subjugated to American interests. As tensions between Washington and Caracas escalate, a change of Brazil’s formerly friendly policies towards Venezuela was inevitable. The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has aggressively attempted to cause a civil war in Venezuela by orchestrating political and military coup’s against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Ruling parties in the U.S. traditionally support international crises during electoral time to try and unify voters to justify their re-election.
Another important factor entangling regional politics is the likely end of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). The organization has been abandoned by the majority of its member countries for the past three years, reflecting the shift of left-wing domination in South America to right-wing. Conservative governments in Latin America effectively ended UNASUR, which once served as a forum to peacefully discuss the region’s problems, by withdrawing from it
One of the objectives declared by the Ministry of Defense is the investment of 2% of Brazil’s GDP into the military sector. This is aligned with NATO expectations despite Brazil not being a North Atlantic country or an alliance member. Although Bolsonaro’s government is in favor of strengthening the Armed Forces, in practice this will prove extremely difficult as the already battered Brazilian economy has been further decimated by the coronavirus pandemic.
With coronavirus exacerbating poverty and unemployment in Brazil, the expansion of defense resources is questionable. About 70% of the defense budget is committed to the armed forces payroll. That means that even increasing the defense budget, personnel expenses will take up most of the increase because salaries have also increased.
The Bolsonaro government pays homage to Washington, hence its plans to spend 2% of its GDP on the military despite a permeating poverty problem in Brazil. In reality, being so close to Washington has done very little to benefit Brazil. And often, albeit not usually from Bolsonaro but rather through his direct advisers and ministers, including his own son, criticism of the Chinese government persists despite China being Brazil’s main trading partner. Brazil should balance its relations with China and the U.S. However, Brazil’s new defense policy, that aims to increase its budget to the military, makes it appear that it is becoming an unofficial NATO member to police South America.
Brazilian foreign minister Ernesto Araújo is an open critic of multilateralism. Araújo, as well as Bolsonaro, is also known for his ideological proximity to Washington. These positions may conflict with views expressed in the original White Paper on National Defense, which defends bodies such as UNASUR and emphasizes the importance of multipolarity. For 2020, it is expected that Brazil’s defense policies will be against multilateralism. Based on Brazil’s current foreign policy, Brasilia is much more subservient to American interests and goes against Brazilian interests.
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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
The Guardian carried a very strange piece yesterday under the heading “Stamps celebrating Ukrainian resistance in pictures”. This was the first image shown: .
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The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) was, without any shadow of a doubt, responsible for the slaughter of at least 200,000 Polish civilians; they liquidated whole Polish communities in Volhynia and Galicia, including the women and children. The current Polish government, which is as anti-Russian and pro-NATO as they come, nevertheless has declared this a genocide. It certainly was an extremely brutal ethnic cleansing. There is no doubt either that at times between 1942 and 1944 the UPA collaborated with the Nazis and collaborated in the destruction of Jews and Gypsies. It is simplistic to describe the UPA as fascist or an extension of the Nazi regime; at times they fought the Nazis, though they collaborated more often. There is a real sense in which they operated at the level of medieval peasants, simply seizing local opportunities to exterminate rural populations and seize their land and assets, be they Polish, Jew or Gypsy. But on balance any reasonable person would have to conclude that the UPA was an utterly deplorable phenomenon. To publish a celebration of it, disguised as a graphic art piece, without any of this context, is no more defensible than a display of Nazi art with no context.
In fact the Guardian’s very brief text is still worse than no context.
Ukrainian photographer Oleksandr Kosmach collects 20th-century stamps issued by Ukrainian groups in exile during the Soviet era.
Artists and exiles around the world would use stamps to communicate the horrors of Soviet oppression. “These stamps show us the ideas and values of these people, who they really were and what they were fighting for,” Kosmach says.
That is so misleadingly partial as a description of the art glorifying the UPA movement as to be deeply reprehensible. It does however fit with the anything goes stoking of Russophobia, which is the mainstay of government and media discourse at the moment. Even at the height of the Cold War, we never saw such a barrage of unprovable accusations leveled at Russia through the media by “security service sources”.
A whole slew of these were rehearsed by Andrew Marr on his flagship BBC1 morning show. The latest is the accusation that Russia is responsible for a cyber attack on Covid-19 vaccination research. This is another totally evidence free accusation. But it misses the point anyway. The alleged cyber attack, if it happened, was a hack not an attack – the allegation is that there was an effort to obtain the results of research, not to disrupt research. It is appalling that the UK is trying to keep its research results secret rather than share them freely with the world scientific community. As I have reported before, the UK and the USA have been preventing the WHO from implementing a common research and common vaccine solution for Covid-19, insisting instead on a profit driven approach to benefit the big pharmaceutical companies (and disadvantage the global poor).
What makes the accusation that Russia tried to hack the research even more dubious is the fact that Russia had just bought the very research specified. You don’t steal things you already own.
If anybody had indeed hacked the research, we all know it is impossible to trace with certainty the whereabouts of hackers. My VPN’s are habitually set to India, Australia or South Africa depending on where I am trying to watch the cricket, dodging broadcasting restrictions. More pertinently, Wikileaks Vault 7 release of CIA material showed the specific programmes for the CIA in how to leave clues to make a leak look like it came from Russia. This irrefutable evidence that the CIA do computer hacks with apparent Russian “fingerprints” deliberately left, like little bits of Cyrillic script, is an absolutely classic example of a fact that everybody working in the mainstream media knows to be true, but which they all contrive never to mention.
Thus when last week’s “Russian hacking” story was briefed by the security services, that Jeremy Corbyn deployed secret documents on UK/US trade talks which had been posted on Reddit, after being stolen by an evil Russian who left his name of Grigor in his Reddit handle, there was no questioning in the media of this narrative. Instead, we had another round of McCarthyite witch-hunt aimed at the rather tired looking Jeremy Corbyn.
Personally, if the Russians had been responsible for revealing that the Tories are prepared to open up the NHS “market” to big American companies, including ending or raising caps on pharmaceutical prices, I should be very grateful to the Russians for telling us. Just as the world would owe the Russians a favour if it were indeed them who leaked just how systematically the DNC rigged the 2016 primaries against Bernie Sanders. But as it happens, it was not the Russians. The latter case was a leak by a disgusted insider, and I very much suspect the NHS US trade deal link was also from a disgusted insider.
When governments do appalling things, very often somebody manages to blow the whistle.
If you can delay even the most startling truth for several years, it loses much of its political bite. If you can announce it during a health crisis, it loses still more. The world therefore did not shudder to a halt when the CEO of Crowdstrike admitted there had never been any evidence of a Russian hack of the DNC servers.
You will recall the near incredible fact that, even through the Mueller investigation, the FBI never inspected the DNC servers themselves but simply relied on a technical report from Crowdstrike, the Clinton related IT security consultant for the DNC. And now know for sure that Crowdstrike had been peddling fake news for Hillary. In fact Crowdstrike had no record of any internet hack at all. There was no evidence of the email material being exported over the internet. What they claimed did exist was evidence that the files had been organised preparatory to export.
Remember the entire “Russian hacking” story was based ONLY on Crowdstrike’s say so. There is literally no other evidence of Russian involvement in the DNC emails, which is unsurprising as I have been telling you for four years from my own direct sources that Russia was not involved. Yet finally declassified Congressional testimony revealed that Shawn Henry stated on oath that “we did not have concrete evidence” and “There’s circumstantial evidence , but no evidence they were actually exfiltrated.”
This testimony fits with what I was told by Bill Binney, former Technical Director of the National Security Agency (NSA), who told me that it was impossible that any large amount of data should be moved across the internet from the USA, without the NSA both seeing it happen in real time and recording it. If there really had been a Russian hack, the NSA would have been able to give the time of it to a millisecond. That the NSA did not have that information was proof the transfer had never happened, according to Binney. What had happened, Binney deduced, was that the files had been downloaded locally, probably to a thumb drive.
So arguably the biggest news story of the past four years, the claim that Putin effectively interfered to have Trump elected, turns out indeed to be utterly baseless. Has the mainstream media, acting on security service behest, done anything to row back from the false impression it created? No it has doubled down.
The “Russian hacking” theme keeps being brought back related to whatever is the big story of the day.
Brexit? Russian hacking.
UK General election 2019? Russian hacking
Covid-19 vaccine? Russian hacking.
Then we have those continual security service briefings. Two weeks ago we had unnamed security service sources telling the New York Times that Russia had offered the Taliban a bounty for killing American soldiers. This information had allegedly come from interrogation of captured Taliban in Afghanistan, which would almost certainly mean was obtained under torture.
It is a wildly improbable tale. The Afghans have never needed that kind of incentivisation to kill foreign invaders on their soil. It is also a fascinating throwback of an accusation – the British did indeed offer Afghans money for, quite literally, the heads of Afghan resistance leaders during the first Afghan War in 1841, as I detail in my book Sikunder Burnes.
You do not have to look back that far to realise the gross hypocrisy of the accusation. In the 1980’s the West was quite openly paying, arming and training the Taliban -including Osama Bin Laden – to kill Russian and other Soviet conscripts in their thousands. That is just one example of the hypocrisy. The US and UK security services both cultivate and bribe senior political and other figures abroad in order to influence policy all of the time. We work to manipulate the result of elections – I have done it personally in my role as a UK diplomat. A great deal of the behaviour over which western governments and media are creating this new McCarthyite anti-Russian witch hunt, is standard diplomatic practice.
My own view is that there are malign Russian forces attempting to act on government in the UK and the USA, but they are not nearly as powerful as the malign British and American forces acting on their own governments. The truth is that the world is under the increasing control of a global elite of billionaires, to whom nationality is irrelevant and national governments are tools to be manipulated. Russia is not attempting to buy corrupt political influence on behalf of the Russian people, who are decent folk every bit as exploited by the ultra wealthy as you or I. Russian billionaires are, just like billionaires everywhere, attempting to game global political, commercial and social structures in their personal interest.
The other extreme point of hypocrisy lies in human rights. So many western media commentators are suddenly interested in China and the Uighurs or in restrictions on the LBGT community in Russia, yet turn a completely blind eye to the abuse in western “allies” such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. As somebody who was campaigning about the human rights of both the Uighurs and of gay people in Russia a good decade before it became fashionable, I am disgusted by how the term “human rights” has become weaponised for deployment only against those countries designated as enemy by the western elite.
Finally, do not forget that there is a massive armaments industry and a massive security industry all dependent on having an “enemy”. Powerful people make money from this Russophobia. Expect much more of it. There is money in a Cold War.
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Monsanto owner Bayer AG is backing away from a plan to contain future Roundup cancer claims after a federal judge made it clear he would not approve the scheme, which would delay new trials and limit jury decision-making.
The plan concocted by Bayer and a small group of lawyers was filed last month in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California as part of a effort by Bayer to put an end to sweeping litigation that has so far led to three losses in three jury trials, staggering punitive damage awards and shareholder discontent. More than 100,000 people in the United States claim exposure to Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup herbicides caused them to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) and that Monsanto long knew about and covered up the cancer risks.
On Monday Judge Vince Chhabriaissued an order setting a hearing on the matter for July 24 and making it clear he would not approve the settlement plan. He was “skeptical of the propriety and fairness of the proposed settlement,” Chhabria wrote in the order.
In response, on Wednesday the group of lawyers who had structured the deal with Bayer filed a notice of withdrawal of their plan.
The proposed settlement plan for future class action litigation was separate from the settlement agreement Bayer made with lawyers for plaintiffs who have already filed cases and is designed to help Bayer contain and manage future liability. Under the structure put together by Bayer and a small group of plaintiffs’ lawyers the class action settlement would have applied to anyone exposed to Roundup who had not filed a lawsuit or retained a lawyer as of June 24, 2020, regardless of whether or not that person already had been diagnosed with cancer they believe was due to Roundup exposure.
The plan would have delayed the filing of new cases for four years, and called for the establishment of a five-member “science panel” that would take any future findings on cancer claims out of the hands of juries. Instead, a “Class Science Panel” would be established to determine whether Roundup can cause non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and if so, at what minimum exposure levels. Bayer would get to appoint two of the five panel members. If the panel determined there was no causal connection between Roundup and non-Hodgkin lymphoma then the class members would be barred from future such claims.
Judge Chhabria took issue with the whole idea of a science panel. In his order, the judge wrote:
“In an area where the science may be evolving, how could it be appropriate to lock in a decision from a panel of scientists for all future cases? For examine, imagine the panel decides in 2023 that Roundup is not capable of causing cancer. Then imagine that a new, reliable study is published in 2028 which strongly undermines the panel’s conclusion. If a Roundup user is diagnosed with NHL in 2030, is it appropriate to tell them that they’re bound by the 2023 decision of the panel because they did not opt out of a settlement in 2020?”
Bayer said it would set aside $1.25 billion for the arrangement. The money would be used to compensate class members diagnosed with NHL for the “effects of the delay” in litigation, and to fund research into the diagnosis and treatment of NHL, among other things.
The plaintiffs’ attorneys who put the plan together with Bayer stood to make more than $150 million in fees payable by Bayer. They are not the same law firms that have led the litigation to date. This group of law firms include Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein; Audet & Partners; The Dugan Law Firm; and lawyer Samuel Issacharoff, Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law.
Several members of the lead law firms who won the three Roundup cancer trials oppose the proposed class action settlement plan, saying it would deprive future plaintiffs of their rights while enriching those other lawyers who have not previously been at the forefront of the Roundup litigation.
It is not clear how the withdrawal of this proposed class action settlement plan might impact the larger settlement of existing claims. Bayer said last month it will pay up to $9.6 billion to resolve roughly 75 percent of the current claims and will continue working to settle the rest. That settlement does not require court approval.
Bayer issued a statement Wednesday saying it remains “strongly committed to a resolution that simultaneously addresses both the current litigation on reasonable terms and a viable solution to manage and resolve potential future litigation.”
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An exiled Iranian opposition group held its annual Free Iran conference online on Friday featuring speeches from an array of former US politicians and military officials. The conference was held by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a coalition led by the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq), a controversial group widely considered to be a cult, and up until 2012, designated as a terrorist organization by the US government.
The MEK is considered the top Iranian opposition group in Washington, and if Iran hawks had their way, the MEK would replace the current Islamic regime in Tehran. Trump administration officials like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have appeared at events with MEK members. After the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in January, it was reported that President Trump sought advice on Iran from MEK-linked allies, like his personal attorney and former mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani.
A frequent guest of the MEK, Giuliani spoke at Friday’s conference, calling for regime change and railing against the mullahs.
“To me, the mullahs are like the people who ran the mafia, the people I prosecuted who ran the mafia and extorted their people,” Giuliani said.
The former mayor also praised Maryam Rajavi, the MEK’s leader.
“Regime change in Iran is within reach. That’s the goal of NCRI and Maryam Rajavi.”
Senator Martha McSally (R-AZ) and Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX) also spoke at the conference, the only sitting members of Congress to attend.
“Thank you to Madame Rajavi on everything she’s done. I want to encourage young people to continue your fight, your resistance … the people of the United States are with you,” Gooden said.
Other speakers from the US included former Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, former New Jersey Senator Robert Toricelli, and others. The MEK pays well for these short speeches. President Trump’s Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chaocollected $50,000 from the MEK for a five-minute speech in 2015. Although he was missing from this conference, former National Security Advisor John Bolton is a MEK favorite and has delivered many speeches to the group. Records show the MEK has paid Bolton at least $180,000 for speeches over the years.
“Our first commitment is that we, the Iranian people and the Resistance, will overthrow the clerical regime and will reclaim Iran,” Rajavi said. “The final word is that the mullahs have no solutions and their regime is doomed to fall in its entirety.”
The MEK is now based out of Albania, but for many years they operated in Iraq after the group was kicked out of Iran in the 1980s. The MEK started as a leftist organization in the 1960s and carried out attacks on the US-backed Shah’s police force throughout the 1970s. The group played a role in the 1979 overthrow of the Shah but ultimately opposed the new Islamic government and carried out major attacks against the mullahs.
The MEK was welcomed into Iraq by Sadam Hussein, who gave them refuge at a military base, Camp Ashraf. From their base in Iraq, the MEK carried out terrorist attacks inside Iran and took Hussein’s side in the brutal eight-year war between Iran and Iraq war. For these reasons, it is believed the MEK has little or no support inside Iran today. The MEK is also suspected of being involved in assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists that took place in 2012.
After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US government commissioned a report on the MEK from inside their former headquarters at camp Ashraf. The report concluded that the MEK has “many of the typical characteristics of a cult, such as authoritarian control, confiscation of assets, sexual control (including mandatory divorce and celibacy), emotional isolation, forced labor, sleep deprivation, physical abuse and limited exit options.”
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Dave DeCamp is the assistant news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.
The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.
The conservative Heritage Foundation has consistently fought international treaties banning weapons that pose an outsized threat to civilians in the war zone. This would include anti-personnel landmines, cluster munitions, and “killer robots”—as well as regulations that would enforce arms embargoes on human rights offenders. And yet, Heritage fails to disclose a possible financial incentive for taking these positions.
Heritage received at least $5.8 million from the Hanwha Group between 2007 and 2015, according to the organization’s annual reports reviewed by Responsible Statecraft. Between 2010 and 2014, Hanwha—a South Korean conglomerate that has produced landmine and autonomous weapons systems—contributed a minimum of $1 million per year, making Hanwa one of the Heritage Foundation’s biggest donors. Hanwha was not listed as a donor after 2015, but Heritage permits donors to make anonymous contributions and Heritage and the Hanwha Group did not respond to questions about whether the funding arrangement continued after 2015.
However, Korean media regularly reports on the close relationship between Heritage and Hanwha, and suggested their friendly relationship was alive and well, at least as recently as October 2018 when Heritage Foundation founder Edwin J. Feulner and Hanwha Group Chairman Kim Seung-youn met in Seoul. This meeting was documented by The Korea Herald, a major South Korean English language newspaper. Topics discussed included: “difficulties faced by Korean businesses in the U.S., despite the successful renegotiation of the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement.”
“Feulner and the Hanwha chairman have maintained a working relationship for the past 30 years, holding regular meetings to discuss outstanding political and economic issues between the two countries,” concluded The Korea Herald article.
Heritage’s work may have proven particularly beneficial for Hanwha.
In January of that same year, an op-ed by Heritage Senior Research Fellow Theodore R. Bromund took The New York Times editorial board to task for urging the U.S. to join the Mine Ban Treaty, an agreement signed by 164 countries with the goal of eliminating anti-personnel landmines around the world. His column laid out clearly the Heritage Foundation’s positions on arms control agreements that might impact Hanwa.
“Why hasn’t the U.S. gotten rid of its land mines?” Bromund asked.
“Because South Korea uses mines to defend itself against North Korea, and South Korea is an ally of ours.”
He continued:
“But according to the Times, ‘given the North’s nuclear buildup, a mined DMZ seems to be a Cold War vestige of diminished value. So because North Korea has nuclear weapons, we should abandon our land mines? I’m glad the Times wasn’t advising NATO on how to defend Western Europe during the Cold War.”
“I had no clue Hanwha was giving [Heritage] money,” said Mark Hiznay, associate director of the Arms Division at Human Rights Watch. “Hanwha for a long time was only producing ammunition and weapons for the South Korean military, but that changed in the mid-2000s when they started broadening their exports.”
The ICBL’s “Stop Explosive Investments” campaign describes Hanwha as “a diversified industrial conglomerate. Its defence division makes munitions, guidance and delivery systems.” In recent years the group has “opened up to the export market, both exhibiting at international arms fairs and selling military equipment abroad.”
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo participates in a Q&A after delivering a speech, “After the Deal: A New Iran Strategy”, at the Heritage Foundation, in Washington, D.C, on May 21, 2018. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]
“Heritage hasn’t been too hot on multilateral or humanitarian disarmament treaties dating back into the mid-90s, when the first efforts to ban mines start bubbling up on the international stage,” said Hiznay.
Opposing international efforts to eliminate the manufacturing of products produced by one of Heritage’s biggest donors poses a potential conflict of interest that no Heritage scholars disclosed in their condemnation of the Mine Ban Treaty. That potential conflict of interest became even more glaring when Heritage defended autonomous weapon systems, including one manufactured by Hanwha, the SGR-A1.
The SGR-A1 is an autonomous sentry designed to replace human guards on the DMZ between North and South Korea, complete with the capacity to identify humans through voice recognition and, if a person is unable to provide an access code, fire on an individual with a variety of possible weapons, including a machine gun or a grenade launcher. Activists have expressed concerns about autonomous weapons systems lowering the threshold for initiating the use of deadly force, complicating the chain of accountability, and ignoring ethical concerns that a human operator might take under consideration.
Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow Steven Groves, appeared to share none of those concerns in two reports published after Hanwha’s December 2014 announcement of its acquisition of Samsung Techwin, the manufacturer of the SGR-A1.
In a March 2015 report titled, “The U.S. Should Oppose the U.N.’s Attempt to Ban Autonomous Weapons,” Groves mentions the SGR-A1 in the first paragraph as an example of autonomous weapons systems currently under development, and he urged the U.S. delegation to the 2015 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) to, “identify nations at the CCW that are inclined to support a ban on [lethal autonomous weapons systems systems] and persuade those nations against that course of action.”
Such an effort by the U.S. delegation would have benefited manufacturers of autonomous weapons systems, such as Hanwha, whose development, sale, and potential export of systems like the SGR-A1 might be limited by such a ban.
In April 2016, Groves, again referencing the SGR-A1 as an example of an autonomous weapon system, argued for the normalization of autonomous weapons and for the U.S. and “like-minded nations” to convene a “group of experts drawn from advanced militaries, legal academia, robotics engineers, computer programmers, and ethicists” to develop a manual on how law of armed conflict principles can be applied to autonomous weapons. Groves acknowledged that such an effort goes against “the momentum in U.N. Forums and among human rights and arms control activists […] to ban [autonomous weapons], not normalize them.”
Groves did not disclose Heritage’s funding from Hanwha in either of his reports defending autonomous weapons, which included explicit references to Hanwha’s SGR-A1.
In 2017, Groves departed Heritage to serve as Chief of Staff for then-U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley before moving to the Trump White House where he worked as an assistant special counsel. Groves’ LinkedIn profile says he “[r]epresented the White House in the investigation conducted by Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election” and later worked as deputy press secretary before returning to Heritage in June 2020.
“Neither [Bromund nor Groves were] aware of Hanwha’s donation or any relationship between Heritage and Hanwha,” said a Heritage spokesperson. “Heritage’s authority rests on the rigor, depth, and independent nature of our research and analysis. The Heritage Foundation’s broad base of more than a half-million members guarantees that no donor or group of donors has the ability to direct the views or activities of Heritage.”
Heritage did not provide a conflict of interest policy, when requested, but the spokesperson was adamant that the foundation refuses “to engage in contract research,” and “takes no money from government—whether federal, state, local, tribal, or foreign—for any research activity or any other purpose.” Heritage added that “when a potential donor specifies conditions for the use of funds to be donated, Heritage declines the donation if the conditions would compromise our research independence.”
While Heritage never mentions Hanwha in conjunction with any of its work touching on policies that could impact their donor’s business, Hanwha press releases and South Korean media regularly highlighted the close relationship between Heritage and Hanwha leadership.
Between 2012 and 2018 Hanwha published at least six press releases reporting on meetings between Hanwha and Heritage executives.
“In 2011, to thank [Hanwha] Chairman Kim [Seung-Youn] for his contribution to bilateral non-governmental diplomacy, the foundation named the conference center on the 2nd floor of the Heritage Foundation Pennsylvania Avenue Building in Washington, D.C., the ‘Kim Seung Youn Conference Center,’” said one such press release.
The Korea Herald published three articles on meetings between Heritage founder Edwin Feulner and Kim just in 2016 and 2017.
Indeed, the relationship between Kim and Feulner, who chaired the Trump administration’s transition team, may have secured Kim a special invitation to Trump’s inauguration.
“Hanwha Group Chairman Kim Seung-youn has been at the vanguard of fostering business cooperation with the United States, years before uncertainties emerged upon the inauguration of US President Donald Trump, who has expressed skepticism toward the two countries’ free trade agreement,” wrote The Korea Herald in June, 2017.
“Kim’s ties with leading business figures in the US, including Heritage Foundation President Edwin Feulner, has made him one of the rare South Korean business representatives who is able to bridge the differences between the two new administrations and seek mutual benefits.”
The paper later added,
“Kim was also invited to Trump’s inauguration ceremony in January at the recommendation of Feulner.”
Neither the Heritage Foundation nor Hanwha responded to questions about whether the Korea Herald report was accurate and, if so, if Kim took Feulner up on the invitation.
While Heritage and Hanwha are not forthcoming about the details of their multi-million dollar relationship, including whether it is ongoing, several things are clear: Hanwha’s $5.8 million-plus in contributions to one of the most influential conservative think tanks in the U.S. coincided with high profile meetings between Hanwha and Heritage’s leadership in Seoul, a named conference room at Heritage’s Washington offices, and a flood of reports and analysis opposing arms control efforts that could have limited the market for several of Hanwha’s weapons products, a potential conflict of interest that Heritage never disclosed in their research products.
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The Oil Conservation Commission’s proposed regulations seem benign, but within the details lurks a disturbing devil. For example:
The rules would allow oil and gas companies to use and transport “produced water” when drilling and fracking, provided that public health, the environment, and fresh water are protected. Unfortunately, there exist no standards or safeguards to actually protect public health, the environment, and fresh water from “produced water.” In fact, this waste is considered too toxic to treat. There is no way for the Commission to ensure that the use and transport of the oil and gas industry’s toxic waste will protect workers, groundwater, surface waters, and otherwise ensure the environment is not contaminated.
The rules would allow the oil and gas industry to discharge or otherwise dump its toxic waste outside of oil and gas producing areas. Although the rules would allow this only where approved by the New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission, they explicitly imply that the Commission will at some point adopt rules that will actually allow the dumping of “produced water” onto lands and in streams. This is a scary proposition considering that there are no known methods to safely treat this waste. The Oil Conservation Commission’s rules appear to set the stage for a more insidious plan to allow companies to dump their toxic waste into our environment.
Overall, the Oil Conservation Commission’s rules would set a dangerous precedent. Rather than help New Mexico transition away from reliance on oil and gas, they would further entrench and enshrine the industry, jeopardizing the state’s health, environment, and its ability to confront the climate crisis.
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Jeremy Nichols is the Climate and Energy Program Director of WildEarth Guardians.
Claiming that Macedonians voluntarily chose to rename our country into “North Macedonia” and ethnicity into “North Macedonians” is like saying that Indigenous groups choose to be called “Redskins”. And when Western media attack Macedonians for denouncing the forced name change, it would be akin to them attacking Indigenous groups for denouncing anti-Indigenous terms.
Welcome to The Surreal World: Macedonia.
Yes, Macedonians get attacked for denouncing the derogatory terms used against us. Why? Because the United States says so. And they fund media and so-called “think tanks” to do the same. These same groups accuse Macedonians of the exact tactics that are being used against us. The US has perfected the “offence is the best defence” tactic, and they have taught other oppressors (namely Greece, Bulgaria and Albania) how to use it against Macedonians, and other minorities, too.
The US brutally stripped Macedonians of our right to self-determination by illegally forcing through a name change and by using methods that would be viewed as a declaration of war if ever used against the United States, including granting amnesty to terrorists, stoking (starting) a civil war, election-rigging, blatantly violating the Constitution…but wait, it wasn’t the US Constitution so the Republicrats (or do they prefer Demopublicans?) didn’t care. Yes, both US parties are united in their insatiable desire for US imperialism.
But why the forced name change? To prevent Greece and Bulgaria from vetoing Macedonia’s NATO and EU membership bids, something they pledged to do unless Macedonia changed its name to “North Macedonia” and gave away the name, identity and history of Macedonians to Greece and Bulgaria, depending on context. Confused? Just check the 19-page “Prespa Agreement” (that no Macedonian agreed to) which governs what, when, why, how and where we can identify ourselves.
And this is not just a “dispute” between the Republic of Macedonia and Greece/Bulgaria. All of Macedonia was partitioned in 1913 among Serbia (now the independent Republic of Macedonia), Greece, Bulgaria and, in 1919, Albania. The forced name, identity and history change affects all Macedonians, everywhere.
To combat against the outrage expressed by Macedonians at being called “North Macedonians” from “North Macedonia”, the United Political Parties of America claim that we’re taking away the right of self-determination for those (nobody) who choose to use the imposed name. It’s like defending the rights of someone who breaks into your house and condemning you for calling the police.
Our name and identity have been misappropriated, yet the US and their favourite foreign policy pupil, Greece, accuse Macedonians of cultural misappropriation for existing as who we’ve always been — Macedonians. Try figuring that one out. Following the illogical US playbook (Trump has “perfected” it), Greece, in 1988, implemented the most blatantly obvious propaganda switch in their history — claiming Macedonia’s name after generations spent denying its existence and fiercely suppressing any mention of it. As many Greek politicians have admitted, though, the reason had nothing to do with the name — it was to “wipe Macedonia off the map” and to deny its policy of persecution and cultural genocide against the large Macedonian minority in Greece.
The oppressor has claimed our name, publicly celebrates the eradication of our ethnic identity (Greek politicians have made the cultural genocide of Macedonians a campaign slogan), yet they accuse the oppressed of oppressing. The US-style maze of circular logic was fun on that Seinfeld episode with Elaine and the phone guy, but it’s not that much fun when US politicians and their deranged protégés employ it to wipe out my ethnic group. And it’s not just Trump doing it (his administration didn’t even start this policy, but they’re “proudly” continuing it), it’s every single foreign-interventionist president going back decades. Unlike our oppressors though, I won’t misappropriate the second Seinfeld reference and claim it as my own.
So, what would happen if the English claimed that the names of Indigenous groups belonged to them — does that mean colonization and brutalization of Indigenous lands and people didn’t happen? This is exactly what Greece will have you believe about Macedonia and Macedonians. They’re selling the idea that if you own the name, identity and history of the oppressed, no oppression could possibly have occurred. And to “prove” the unprovable, Greece’s mentor is spending millions of US-taxpayer dollars funding media and “think tanks” to write Peterman-worthy anecdotes trying to get you to buy this fancy, hate-filled fabrication.
The Twilight Zone continues. When Macedonians called for an end to the anti-Macedonian name negotiations and subsequent forced name change, we were called “radicals” by the racists. That’s like Nazis claiming that they suffered at the hands of Jews in World War II. Appealing for human rights conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to be fairly applied to Macedonians causes the most openly interventionist country in the world, the United States, to attack the oppressed.
So how do we put an end to this brutally surreal reality show? Put yourself in our shoes. Don’t ignore hatred against any ethnic group, including Macedonians. Condemn it. Otherwise, whether intended or not, you’ll be enabling hypocritical foreign interventionism and rewarding cultural misappropriation.
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Bill Nicholov is the President of Macedonian Human Rights Movement International.
“Personality is persona, a mask…The mask is magic…Larva means mask; or ghost…it also means mad, a case of demoniacal possession.” – Norman O. Brown, Love’s Body
Walk the streets in the United States and many countries these days and you will see streaming crowds of people possessed by demons, masked and anonymous, whose eyes look like vacuums, staring into space or out of empty sockets like the dead, afraid of their own ghosts. Fear and obedience oozes from them. Death walks the streets with people on leashes in lockstep.
That they have been the victims of a long-planned propaganda campaign to use an invisible virus to frighten them into submission and shut down the world’s economy for the global elites is beyond their ken. This is so even when the facts are there to prove otherwise. It is a clear case, as Peter Koenig tells Michel Chossudovsky in this must-see interview, that is not a conspiracy theory but a blatant factual plan spelled out in the 2010 Rockefeller Report, the October 18, 2019 Event 201, and Agenda 21, among other places.
Who can wake the sleepwalkers up in this cowardly new world where culture and politics collude to create and exploit ignorance?
Fifty-five years ago on this date, July 20, 1965, Bob Dylan released his song “Like a Rolling Stone.” It arrived like a rocking jolt into the placid pop musical culture of the day. It was not about wanting to hold someone’s hand or cry in the chapel. It wasn’t mumbo-jumbo like “Wooly Bully,” the number one hit. It wasn’t like the pop pap that dominates today’s music scene. It wasn’t Woody Guthrie in slow time.
It beat you up. It attacked. It confronted you. Maybe, if you were alive then, you thought Dylan was kidding you. You thought wrong. Bitching about his going electric was a dodge. He was addressing all of us, including himself.
Still is. But who wants to hear his recent “Murder Most Foul” and read Dylan’s scathing lyrics about the assassination of JFK, the killing that started the slow decay that has resulted in such masked madness. “And please, Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” he tells us in capital letters for emphasis. Exactly what all the mainstream media have done, of course, and not by accident.
There are no alibis. “How does it feel/To be on your own/with no direction home/A complete unknown/Like a rolling stone?”
It was in the mid-1960s when confidence in knowing where home was and how to get there disappeared into thin air. If you left mommy and daddy, could you ever get back from where you were going? Who had the directions? Absolutes were melting and relativity was widespread. Life was wild and the CIA was planning to make it wilder and more confusing with the introduction of LSD on a vast scale. MKUltra was expanding its scope. Operation Mockingbird was singing so many tunes that heads were spinning, as planned. The national security state killers were in the saddle, having already murdered President Kennedy and Malcolm X as they sharpened their knives for many more to come. The peace candidate, Lyndon Baines Johnson, had been elected nine months earlier with 61.1% of the popular vote and went immediately to work secretly expanding the war against Vietnam. War as an invisible virus. Who knew? Who, but a small anti-war contingent, wanted to know? War takes different forms, and the will to ignorance and historical amnesia endure. War is a disease. Disease is weaponized for war. In 1968 Richard Nixon was elected on a “secret plan” to end the Vietnam War and then ramped it up to monstrous proportions, only to be reelected in 1972 by carrying 49 out of 50 states.
Who wants to know now? The historian Howard Zinn once said correctly that this country’s greatest problem wasn’t disobedience but obedience.
What’s behind the masks? The lockstep?
On the same day that Dylan released “Like a Rolling Stone,” Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, just back from a “fact-finding” trip to Vietnam, recommended to LBJ that U.S. troop levels in Vietnam be increased to 175,000 and that the U.S. should increase its bombing of North Vietnam dramatically. This was the same McNamara who, in October 1963, had agreed with JFK when he signed NSAM 263 calling for the withdrawal of 1,000 military personnel from Vietnam by the end of 1963 and the remainder by the end of 1965. One of the moves that got Kennedy’s head blown open.
Poor McNamara, the fog of war must have clouded his conscience, confused the poor boy, just like Secretary of State Colin Powell holding up that vile vial of “anthrax” at the United Nations on February 5, 2003 and lying to the world about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Powell recently said, “I knew I didn’t have any choice. He’s the President.” How “painful,” to use his word, it must have been for the poor guy, lying so that so many Iraqis could be slaughtered. Of course, he had no choice. These war criminals all wear masks. And have no choice.
Masks, or demonic possession, or both. You?
Also in that fateful year 1965, far out of sight and out of mind for most Americans, the CIA planned and assisted in the slaughter of more than a million Indonesians, led by their man, General Suharto. This led to the coup against President Sukarno, who two years earlier had been on good terms with JFK as they worked to solve the interrelated issues of Indonesia and Vietnam. Their meeting planned for early 1964 was cancelled in Dallas on November 22, 1963.
And the politicians and media luminaries came out in their masks and told the public that communists everywhere were out to get them.
It’s tough being on your own. It hurts to think too much. Or think for yourself, at least. To obey an authority higher than your bosses. “I was tricked” is some sort of mantra, is it not?
You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns
When they all did tricks for you
Dylan was lost and disgusted when he wrote the song. His own music sickened him, which, for an artist, means he sickened himself. He had just returned from a tour of England and was sick of people telling him how much they loved his music when he didn’t. He needed to change.
What else is the point of art but change? If you’re dead, or afraid of getting dead, you aren’t going to change. You’re stuck. Stuck is dead. Why wear a mask if you know who you are?
Knowledge, or more accurately, pseudo-knowledge or mainstream media lies, is a tomb “the mystery tramp” sold to us, a place to hide to avoid pain and guilt.
I have read more books than anyone I know. It sickens me.
I know too much. That sickens me.
I sicken myself. All the news sickens me.
I know so much no one believes me.
As Francesco Serpico once told me: “It’s all lies.”
Of course. Dylan and Serpico are blood brothers.
Only art tells the truth. Real art.
Not bullshit pop art. Some say “Like a Rolling Stone” is about Edie Sedgwick, “the girl of the year” in 1965 and one of Andy Warhol’s superstars. Perhaps to a degree it is, but it’s far more than that. It’s about us.
Poor Edie was poisoned by her wealthy family at a young age and barely had a chance. She was an extreme example of a rather common American story. People poisoned in the cradle. Thinking of her got me thinking of Andy Warhol, the death obsessed hoarder, the guy who called his studio “The Factory” in a conscious or unconscious revelation of his art and persona, his wigs and masks and the hold he has had on American culture all these years. Isn’t he the ultimate celebrity?
Warhol once took my photo on a deserted street. His and my secret but this is the truth. West 47thStreet on an early Sunday morning, 1980. I guess he thought he was doing art or collecting images for his museum of dead heads. When I asked him why, he said I had an interesting face. I told him he did too, rather transparent and creepy, but I didn’t want to capture him. He was a ghost with a camera, a face like a death mask, trying to capture a bit of life. I told him I didn’t give him permission to shoot me, but he turned and walked away into the morning mist. The shooters always just walk away in pseudo-innocence.
I then went down the street to the Gotham Book Mart that was my destination and asked James Joyce why he had written “The Dead,” and Joyce, secretive as ever, quoted himself, “Ed,” he said, “Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.” Now that was direction.
Only those who know how to play and be guided by intuition are able to escape the living tomb of so-called knowledge; what Dylan called, lifelessness. But that was from “Desolation Row,” released as the closing track of Highway 61 Revisitedon August 30, 1965. The only acoustic song on the album. Slow it down to make the point another way. “Like a Rolling Stone” was the opening track.
Do you feel all alone or part of a masked gang roaming the streets incognito? Miss and Mr. Lonely, does that mask help? How do you feel?
Desolation means very lonely. From Latin, de, completely, solare, lonely.
Does that mask help? Do you feel alone together now, one of the crowd?
Do you really want to know about desolation row? It’s here. It was here in 1965, too. Only the true lonely know how it feels to really be all alone.
The Umbrella People, those who some call the deep state or secret government under whose protection all the politicians work, say they want to protect us all from death and disease. They are lying bastards who’ve gotten so many to imitate their masked ways. They can only sing a mockingbird’s song.
Listen to real singers. Dylan has arched the years, as true artists do. Who has paid close attention to what he said this year about the assassination of President Kennedy in his song, “Murder Most Foul”? Or were many caught up in the propaganda surrounding corona virus, and rather than contemplating his indictment of the U.S. government and its media accomplices, were they contemplating their navels to see if a virus had secreted itself in there. Viruses lurk everywhere, they say, and the corporate media made certain to circulate a vaccine about the truth in Dylan’s song. This is normal operating procedure.
We are on still on Desolation Row.
“Take Off the Masks.” That was the title of a book by Rev. Malcolm Boyd that I reviewed long ago. He was a gay priest who decided that his mask was a lie. He came out into the light of truth. He had guts.
It is time for everyone to take off the masks. Escape from Desolation Row by seeing what’s going on behind our backs.
Listen to Dylan, long ago – today:
At midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
And they bring them to the factory
Where their heart attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row
Praise be to Nero’s Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
Everybody’s shouting
“Which side are you on?”
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This interview of an ex United Nations Editor brings much needed clarity to cut through the propaganda, and the deceit, especially in relation to the increasing health problems and their effects on living organisms – people.
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There has always been a lingering question as to why is 5G being hyped up, as the panacea for all things with communications and especially the internet of things. That they must deploy NOW as soon as possible! Why the hurry?
Claire Edwards has worked for 19 years in the UN in Austria as an editor on Drugs and Crime, anti Terrorism and especially worked on Space documents and the ‘peaceful use of outer space’ … which has a legal subcommittee and a scientific and technical sub committee and as a results she has a very good understanding of Space Law as well as some of the issues regarding space (which should be designated as part of the global commons).
What brought her to an in-depth understanding of 5G and its effect on human health is that in December 2015 the UN installed all along the ceilings in what is called ‘public access points’ in the UN International Centre in Vienna in Austria. These areas were for public use.
Radiation Exposure ‘off the scale’
So she decided to take her radiation meter for measuring electromagnetic fields – and do some ‘readings’ in this whole area. She visited the conference areas, where they had these ‘public access’ areas that were for mobile phones – cell phone access and also for wifi access. In these conference areas they tend to have very high ceilings – and she found that the radiation was not that bad, but in the corridors where most of the staff worked – as these were very narrow corridors – with metal walls and very low ceilings above all these public access points – her meter would not even measure the exposure levels there, as it was off the scale!
So she contacted all the authorities in Vienna, as well – also the UN medical service in Vienna – and also the Staff Union – and staff representatives. She said that this needs to be looked into and that they bring in the Building Biology people in to find out if these levels are safe. She spent two years chasing this up and the result was that everyone ignored her.
She says as soon as the technology was deployed she became ill (hypersensitivity) – she was ill for 7 months with flu and colds continuously. What she has found out since is that flu symptoms are nearly identical to electromagnetic radiation poisoning. Because it’s an environmental toxin.
Asking the United Nations Secretary General about 5G
She did not connect this at the time – but as soon as this technology was activated – that is when she started to suffer health affects. However as no one would do anything about it, she decided on early retirement and it was not until a year and a half later that the United Nations Secretary General made a visit to Vienna – during which he addressed the staff and she was still able to, as an ex UN employee – attend his talk.
So she addressed the Secretary General Antonio Guterres as nobody else would listen – telling him that this was extremely dangerous and that something should be done about it. See this.
She was concerned for the 4,000 UN staff who work at the Centre and that were being exposed everyday for 8 hours or so. The reaction from the Secretary General was to make a joke out of this. Which Claire felt was highly inappropriate. Especially as he is an electrical engineer and a physicist. Where previously he had actually taught about telecommunications technology early in his career. So of all people, he should (would) have known what Claire was talking about. Naturally she considers this negligence in the extreme.
Meanwhile the staff in Vienna have been exposed to this for 4 years and she has heard of people who have collapsed and died, people who have had heart attacks, a phenomenal number of breast cancer cases. However, this issue is not being addressed.
So after addressing the Secretary General she wrote to the EMS Scientist Appeal of 2016 as well as well as the EU-5G Appeal of 2017 Stating that she has told the UN Secretary General of the dangers of 5G so he cannot say he doesn’t know now – because she has just told him.
What came as a result was that the professor of the EU – 5G appeal asked her to help them on the issue of Space, and she now has found herself assisting on a very committed level.
No understanding and adequate training in electromagnetic radiation
The universal problem that is ubiquitous today is that medical staff are given no training to understand what the health consequences and effects are from electromagnetic radiation. So they simply do not know. However, people in the emerging understanding of the consequences of electromagnetic radiation – actually have a whole history that goes back to the 18th century when electricity was first generated – and she says that we know what all the symptoms are.
That electromagnetic radiation is alien to our biology – so it affects everything – it’s going to exacerbate every disease. And she said you can not basically list them.
And the medical staff do not really know – so what will happen is you turn up at a hospital and say – Doctor I am having all these nose bleeds – or all of a sudden I am having all the headaches – Dr I have something wrong with my heart. Am I having a heart attack? Dr I can’t get my breath – I can not breathe … I have pain all over my body … etc tinnitus – these are common initial symptoms.
Heart problems? So they send you to a heart specialist. Tinnitus – to a hearing specialist etc – however they do not know what is really happening. They do not see this as a “syndrome” – which is what it is. Because the medical people do not get training in it.
There are over ten thousand peer review studies – that the public do not get to hear or see
Even though there are over 10,000 peer review studies of the effect of 5G – disseminating this information is a huge challenge. (When was the last time the NZ Herald or Radio NZ gave another side of the 5G debate?) However, Claire says that there have been over 28,000 studies – But the regulatory Agencies have been co-opted by Corporations and that guidelines have been set that are deliberately astronomically high.
For example – most of the world is using the ’so-called’ safety guidelines of the International Commision on Non Ionising Radiation Protection.
It’s a Private Club
It is a little club in Germany – that under German law it’s actually a little private club. It operates under no transparency – no supervision – it appoints its own members, none of the members of the International Commision on Non Ionising Radiation Protection are medical doctors or environmentalists. These are technical people, who systematically dismiss all the science on the biological effects of electromagnetic radiation. As a result, they have set these ’so-called’ safely guidelines, so high – to give you an example.
Listen – to where in Sweden an apartment close to an antenna 10 metres away that to break the safely guidelines you would need 666,000 such antennas around this apartment in order to exceed those safety guidelines. (It’s a farce). It is like something akin to setting your speed limit for your cars when driving along the road at say a million miles an hour. You could never exceed these limits.
Also, regarding these International Commision on Non Ionising Radiation Protection ‘guidelines is that a lie has been perpetrated.
Military use of microwave radiation – as weapons
The American military wanted to develop microwave radiation weapons. This is all documented. They, put together and compiled a whole series of compendia in the 1970’s and the 1980’s of all the bodies biological effects to microwave radiation – because they wanted to develop microwave weapons. We have this information, because it has been declassified and a lot of these studies came from the Soviet Union. There were thousands of studies listed.
In 1973 the World Health Organisation – which is part of the United Nations – held a symposium of which the title was
The Biologic affect and health hazards of Microwave Radiation. So this shows that there were and are biological effects.
Note that in 1976 there is a document emanating from the US military – stating – It’s not desirable to have adequate public exposure limits – because this would impede the development of weapons and also impede the profit of industry. (The military Industrial complex).
Weapons Expert Barry Trower, calls this the saddest and most despicable document in history.
So this has all been suppressed (surprised?)
The International Commision on Non Ionising Radiation Protection insists that there are no biological effects and that there are only heating effects. This is what is called the ‘thermal hypothesis.’
The basis of the thermal hypothesis means that if you simply hold your phone away from your body, it cannot be heating you – and therefore you are going to be relatively safe. This is not the case because these frequencies are alien to our biology and it will interfere with our whole bodies biological system because our body functions electrically.
That exposing ourselves to microwave radiation is essentially killing our body. That is why the US military wanted to develop microwave radiation weapons – in order to kill!
Note that over the last 25 years with mobile phones and wireless technology we are now all immersed – 24/7 .
Insects and the effects of ubiquitous microwave radiation
Insects are being affected – so what about bees? She says the phenomenon of colony collapse disorder – that the bees are dying. She states that when Marconi was doing his experiments with wireless in 1906 around 90% of the bees on the Isle of Wight died. They brought in fresh bees and they too died within a week. So this is a known.
Claire has talked with various beekeepers and they have shared many different stories. One keeper when visiting his hives had bees swarm out of the hive and attack his mobile phone, because they felt the emanations coming off the phone. Another bee keeper said that he very quickly worked out that the bees were dying when he placed his hives in between two antennas. So he actually made a map of the area where all the phone antennas were and made sure that he never sited his hives between two phone antennas.
Safety Guidelines – Incongruent?
The so called safety guidelines have been based on a 200 pound US military male – someone with a substantially sized body. With regard to the thermal affect – the smaller the body the greater the effect.
Therefore women are far more vulnerable to this. Especially children. Because children’s bodies contain more water – proportionately. Plus they have growing brains and their brains are always growing until adulthood. She mentions that a 2 minute mobile phone call, with your phone near your ear will cause your blood brain barrier to leak. So children should never come into contact with a mobile phone. She says even computer use is detrimental, as children with their growing brains are especially vulnerable.
She states that there are reports of children in the USA who’ve been immersed in radiation who now have brains that are like senile old people.
A scientist from the US – Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT has predicted that by the year 2025 every second baby will be autistic. That the smaller the body the more susceptible it becomes. She states that effects to the foetus in utero, could occur? She talks about even small exposures causing autism and HDHD. Listen
In China, pregnant women are required to wear a protective apron to protect them from exposure to electromagnetic radiation. Plus the police even enforce the wearing of this apron.
But in the west we are never told about this exposure and remain oblivious to the consequences.
That even today some pregnant women find it convenient to use ‘their bump’ to actually put their laptop on and rest it directly above the foetus.
Bird deaths falling out of the sky. The Hague in Holland. Listen 24 or so minutes here.
Coventry hospital in the UK – testing 5G for their ambulance service – and birds just dropped dead all around. See this.
Regarding the elderly
There is a huge wave of neurological disease and death manifesting in the western world – are we entering a tipping point? She mentions the rates of dementia are escalating rapidly. Even dementia in people younger than 30 years of age. Listen.
Pacemakers could be a serious problem – especially stepping through metal detectors at airports. But, if we have ubiquitous 5G technology everywhere – what does this mean for people with pacemakers.
Satellites in geo-stationary orbit
So with antennas every hundred metres and 53,000 satellites in geo-stationary orbit beaming down at us continuously from space – there will be no escape?
Effects on the human body
This includes replacement metal body parts – It could re radiate radiation deeper into one’s body.
Mercury amalgam fillings – could leak.
HEARING AIDS problematic serious pain in the jaw when exposed to wireless technology.
Hence the precautionary principle has to be enacted in the meantime.
We are an experiment in a microwave oven – but actually we are now an experiment with the microwave oven door being left open.
5G is to going to supersede 3G and 4G – yet we are all going to be exposed by them all as they are all still going to be used.
The accumulative effect of what all these technologies have caused over the last 20 years has yet to be measured.
Also covered is the Schumann resonance and that of the earth at 7.83 hertz – but it has changed and now oscillates higher. This needs to be researched.
Claire talks about the difference between 4G and what 5G Phased Arrays are.
She describes a directional beam that is part of this technology
Listen to this …
That all the studies – 10,000 of them are being suppressed.
Closed In-House Research
The Telecom industry finances its own studies and in doing so they muddy the waters … and though there are 25,000 plus universities world wide – there does not appear to be a University that is prepared to carry our ‘independent’ research. If an independent study of 5G on bees was conducted and the research was unfavourable against this new technology – the University could very well lose its funding.
Just like the same play book as tobacco and asbestos, there is a war going on to hide the research on new products and technologies less they never get to market.
The truthful scientists can’t get published – and can also lose their tenure or and even receive threats …
Note: there is a race to deploy this technology before the public become wise to the dangers – hence the hurry.
Club of Rome
In this interview we also hear about the Club of Rome that started in 1972. It comes under the microscope with its report Limits to Growth.
“The common enemy of humanity is man.
In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome.
The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
That on a finite planet there are limits to growth especially in the extraction of natural resources and the resulting pollution, however we also hear that the findings were used to skew the evidence to find a way to halt the massive increase in population. This is where social manipulation comes in and brings us to the present day where population pressure is now being subtly manipulated. This also includes eugenics.
The Club of Rome subsequently founded two sibling organizations, the Club of Budapest and the Club of Madrid. The former is focused on social and cultural aspects of their agenda, while the latter concentrates on the political aspects. All three of these ‘Clubs’ share many common members and hold joint meetings and conferences.
Ex NZ Prime Ministers – Helen Clark and Jenny Shipley are members.
Note that there is a push to: take power away from ‘local authorities’ and the people. This is part of the strategy to consolidate power. For example dissolve all localise Councils and bring them under a larger umbrella organisation. E.g the ‘enforced’ formation of NZ’s largest super city – that of Auckland.
To tie this all in to a more coherent understanding – there is a push by these Clubs to ‘influence consensus reality’ – however it is not being done ‘openly and transparently’.
That these organisations plus the United Nations have not come out and mentioned the ‘Precautionary Principle’ with regard to 5G is of concern to us all.
This means that we are being herded down a particular pathway – that is treating us to not being recognised as ‘souls’ in a human body – but more so, just a collectivised mass of humanity that can be told what to do – without us ever being engaged in the process of co-creating and shaping our future and the destiny of our children and grandchildren.
Finally Claire mentioned:
Is the Stop 5G Movement Being Hijacked?
George Soros is involved. Where ever he puts his money – there are major problems.
The only way through this is for us here in NZ is to build up locally and take our concerns and educate our local residents and Councils as to what is happening. We have to organise locally.
“We need to do everything from a grassroots level.”
Note it is important that we do not align with stop5Ginternational.org as they have ‘another agenda running.’
This below is some information on the telecommunications situation in NZ about how 5G fits into the picture here.
First of all, to date the NZ government has ignored health concerns about 5G, seemingly preferring to take advice on health effects from a committee that includes people with telco industry connections. See this.
The Minister of Health and the Minister of Telecommunications refused an invitation to meet with Prof. Dariusz Leszczynski when he visited NZ late last year.
Unfortunately, the intransigence of key ministers in central government means that 5G is already operational in parts of NZ.
Vodafone has been able to launch 5G in parts of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown. It is using a 3.5 GHz band for this. 5G has been introduced to parts of some of the smaller towns in the South Island by Spark. Spark is using a 2.6 GHz band for this and the towns are Alexandra, Westport, Clyde, Twizel, Tekapo and Hokitika.
Other than these areas, most of New Zealand remains 5G-Free.
There is a test zone in the Viaduct Basin in downtown Auckland where Spark has been (and probably still is) testing a 27 GHz band. Other than this, to the best of my knowledge, NZ does NOT have small cells producing this type of high frequency radiation.
A couple of smaller towns in the North Island have effectively fought off telco plans to build new cell phone towers and therefore helped to stymie telcos’ plans for 5G for their town. (They have done this with good community organisation and a lot of courage because in NZ, the regulations about cell phone tower placement are massively biased in favour of telcos – not communities – if you want background information it is here).
In NZ we are facing a situation where telcos are generally pushing wireless communications in general, in addition to hyping 5G. Telcos are marketing wireless home phone systems to unwary consumers. (See this link) plus recently there have been a couple of reports about telcos refusing to connect customers to the copper system, see this.
Telcos here are also marketing “fixed wireless” internet systems even in areas where good internet is available via copper or fibre. (See this)
The other issue that we are facing here in NZ is that in November 2018, the government passed legislation (the Telecommunications (New Regulatory Framework) Amendment Bill) that means that access to the copper landline phone system is going to be phased out in many areas of NZ . Fibre has been installed, largely at taxpayer expense in most NZ towns and cities (the roll out of fibre is ongoing). See this link for a summary of the campaign against the Telecommunications (New Regulatory Framework) Amendment bill.
In practical terms, the passing of the Telecommunications (New Regulatory Framework) Amendment bill means that in order to have a hard wired internet and phone connection, most NZers will end up having fibre as their only option as most of the population lives in towns and cities. The 5G-Free NZ campaign encourages the use of hardwired phone and internet systems. See this link for details.
In terms of space-based 5G, there was a “consultation” in 2018 organised by Radio Spectrum Management NZ (which is a business unit of the government’s Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and SpaceX indicated its interest in operating 5G in NZ in that consultation. See this.
NZ also unfortunately has a rocket launching facility on the Mahia Peninsula (the closest city to Mahia is Gisborne) where satellites are being launched including those with links to the US military/intelligence agencies.
NB: I do not have any information about whether the Mahia site is being used for 5G satellite launches but this is obviously a possibility and for obvious reasons many NZers are not happy about the use of the site for launching military-linked payloads – especially given the huge grass-roots activism in the 1980s that led to NZ being a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone…
I trust this gives you a useful overview of the NZ situation.
For information about the rallies throughout NZ on the 25 January 2020 – please click here.
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Tim Lynch, is a New Zealander, who is fortunate in that he has whakapapa, or a bloodline that connects him to the Aotearoan Maori. He has been involved as an activist for over 40 years – within the ecological, educational, holistic, metaphysical, spiritual & nuclear free movements. He sees the urgency of the full spectrum challenges that are coming to meet us, and is putting his whole life into being an advocate for todays and tomorrows children. ‘To Mobilise Consciousness.’
When two countries who are supposed to be military allies fall out and almost get themselves into a shooting match, you know there’s going to be trouble ahead. The problem for NATO is, this time, it may prove terminal.
For a story that involves high seas skullduggery, clandestine gun-running, a punch up between people who are supposed to be friends, and an incident that could be fatal for the world’s biggest military alliance, this one started mundanely enough.
Back on June 7, 2020, a Tanzanian-flagged cargo ship, the Cirkin, quietly departed a Turkish port and set sail toward the Libyan port of Misurata.
No one is absolutely certain what its 5,800 tons of cargo was, but it’s safe to say it probably wasn’t carpets.
No, that wouldn’t require the three Turkish warships who escorted the Cirkin on its four-day, 1,000 nautical mile journey. It was almost certainly carrying military equipment for the Libyan army under the command of the Government of National Accord (GNA), in contravention of the UN-imposed arms embargo.
Things started to go wrong three days later, when a Greek helicopter, operating from a Greek frigate, the Spetsai, approached the ship and requested permission to land a boarding party for the purpose of inspecting it. The Spetsai and its helicopter were operating as part of Operation Irini, an effort in the Mediterranean undertaken by the European Council to enforce a UN arms embargo on Libya. Cirkin’s Turkish escorts rejected the request.
The Spetsai withdrew and monitored the Cirkin from a distance. Shortly afterwards, the cargo ship turned off its transponder.
A French frigate, the Courbet, operating as part of Operation Sea Guardian, a NATO maritime security operation, was then informed by NATO that the Cirkin was possibly carrying arms in violation of the UN embargo.
After the Cirkin failed to identify itself to the Courbet, and refused to divulge its final destination, the Courbet sought to board the vessel. At this point, one of the Turkish frigates illuminated the Courbet three separate times with its fire control radar, an indication it was intending to engage its weapons systems.
The Courbet withdrew, and the next day the Cirkin arrived in Misrata, where it discharged its cargo.
J’accuse
France has condemned the Turkish actions and filed an official complaint with NATO; a subsequent investigation by NATO was deemed to be “inconclusive,” although the details remain classified. For its part, Turkey has demanded an apology from France. In response, France has withdrawn its forces from Operation Sea Guardian, and demanded that NATO take seriously the task of enforcing the UN arms embargo on Libya, an act that would put it at conflict with Turkey, a NATO member.
This is where the incident becomes murky – it appears that Operation Sea Guardian lacked any NATO mandate to operate in support of Operation Irini, and that the decision to interdict the Cirkin was taken unilaterally by France, void of any NATO authority.
In the days following the June 10 incident, the European Union appealed to NATO to authorize ships assigned to Operation Sea Guardian to operate in direct support of Operation Irini’s Libyan embargo enforcement mission. However, such authorization would require the unanimous consent of all of NATO’s members, making any such authorization impossible given Turkey’s inevitable veto.
Dysfunctional and deeply divided
The circumstances that led to the confrontation between two ostensible NATO allies in the waters off Libya point to a level of dysfunction in the NATO alliance that underscores the reality that the 71-year old has outlived its utility. And that its current search for relevance outside of the post-Second World War transatlantic framework of rules-based liberal order it was created to defend, has placed the alliance on a self-destructive path where it is increasingly in conflict with itself.
More often than not, the culprit at the center of these disputes is Turkey, which raises the question as to the continued viability of Turkey as a NATO member, as well as the viability of the alliance itself.
Ever since Turkey joined NATO, in February 1952, it has been the odd man out. Its military importance to the alliance was immense – by bringing Turkey onboard, NATO not only secured its southern flank with the Soviet Union, but also insured that Turkey could never align itself with Moscow down the road.
In exchange, however, NATO had to overlook many issues that, in any other environment, proved detrimental to Turkey’s being a NATO member. The military-on-military aspect of the Turkish-NATO relationship was, at its founding, rock solid – indeed, in 1950, Ankara had dispatched a brigade of Turkish troops to fight alongside the US and the UN in defense of South Korea.
Military coups and purchases of Russian arms
But the Turkish military was a double-edged sword; in 1960, the Turkish military orchestrated a coup against the democratically elected Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, who was subsequently executed by a military tribunal in 1961. While the Turkish military restored civilian rule in 1965, it stepped in again in 1971 to oust the government of Suleiman Demirel, and again in 1980, overthrowing another Demirel-led government.
In 1998, the Turkish military undertook what has been called a “postmodern” coup, demanding the resignation of the government of Necmettin Erbakan without resorting to the actual suspension of the constitution.
The civil-military discord inherent in this string of coups is representative of the fundamental internal conflict between secular and Islamist forces inside Turkey that has been ongoing since the founding of the modern Republic.
The US and other NATO allies turned a blind eye to the Turkish military’s proclivity for overthrowing duly-elected civilian governments because the system these interventions preserved – secular, pro-West governments – were seen as a better alternative to populist Islamist movements that did not share core NATO values.
The election of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a follower of the ousted Erbakan, as Turkey’s prime minister in 2003 set Turkey on a collision course with NATO and the West. Erdogan is an unapologetic Islamist whose pan-Ottoman vision of Turkey’s role in the world clashes with the traditional transatlantic script followed by NATO.
In July 2016, when the Turkish military undertook a failed effort to oust Erdogan, many of the perpetrators were officers with pro-NATO tendencies who objected to Erdogan’s Islamist agenda. Since the failed coup, Erdogan has reshaped the Turkish military so that its leadership is aligned ideologically with his vision of Turkey’s place in the world – a vision which often operates in opposition to NATO objectives.
Perhaps the most visible manifestation of this Turkish-NATO incompatibility is Turkey’s purchase of Russian S-400 surface-to-air missiles. The US has threatened Turkey with sanctions over this and has terminated Ankara’s participation in the production of the F-35 fighter.
Other areas of friction include Turkey’s invasion and occupation of northern Syria, and its subsequent conflict with US-backed Kurdish forces operating there; Turkey’s ongoing military operation in northern Iraq, done without the permission of the Iraqi government; and Turkey’s support of the Government of National Accord (GNA) in Libya.
It is this support to the GNA, which comes in the form of arms shipments and manpower support, which precipitated the naval incident with France and has Turkey on a collision course with NATO today.
The NATO alliance has been struggling with relevance since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The many fractures that exist within the alliance – the new “East bloc” versus “old Europe,” rule of law proponents versus autocratic governments, transatlantic originalists versus global expansion – have been papered over by the consensus-based organization in an effort to project unity. But the inherent incompatibility of Erdogan’s pan-Ottomanism (the driving force behind Turkey’s Libyan intervention) with the rules-based “liberal order” that NATO purports to espouse, is not so easily swept under the proverbial carpet.
The incident between France and Turkey exposes the fundamental weakness of NATO, an organization desperately in search of relevance. The reality is that Turkey is the weakest link in this alliance, and its continued presence represents a poisonous pill that will ultimately prove to be the death of it. The only question is, how soon?
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Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer. He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter
My opinions about MSF are largely based on seeing them in action on Samos. Like many on the island we had a positive attitude given what we knew of their work war zones. Overall after 5 years of their (intermittent) presence opinions are now mixed seeing MSF as both good in part and bad in others. For example, senior MSF managers here during one period – all of them French – had no clue that their lavish life styles enjoyed with each other caused great offence on an island which was suffering from catastrophic poverty. Their separation from the local community was seen as a statement of their superiority. This was true for nearly all the people and agencies which came to Samos after 2015. With MSF it was a bit more of a surprise to see such overt colonial behaviour when it proclaims values which decry all forms of oppression and discrimination.
I have not given MSF much thought recently but this changed last week after reading the following;
“The medical NGO Médecins Sans Frontières is institutionally racist and reinforces colonialism and white supremacy in its humanitarian work, according to an internal statement signed by 1,000 current and former members of staff. “
This is the opening sentence to the Guardian’s article on MSF which was published on Friday July 10th 2020.
As one former MSF aid worker said: “This moment of reckoning is massively overdue.” And not just for MSF but for all NGOs active in humanitarian work. This is far more than a matter for MSF.
The open letter signed by 1000 current and former MSF staff members ought to be explosive. These staff members provide a diagnosis that goes far deeper than the obvious surface problems to much deeper ailments in its very structure. Difficult truths are revealed by staff members across the organisation; top to bottom. As Avril Benoit, executive director of MSF USA noted, “when you first encounter this, you say “That’s not me, I’m a humanitarian, we’re all such good people. But if you look at a picture of those at the highest executive levels, there is your answer. The good people we may be and the policies we’ve brought in are not enough” (Guardian 10 July)
Revealing the precise details of the illness demands a wide-ranging rigorous analysis. It is to its credit that the initial responses within MSF to the open letter suggests that it has embraced the problem and is prepared to range deeply to bring about changes to improve. But this is no easy task in an organisation such as MSF which believes itself to be a humanitarian world leader in its area and was recognised as such with a Nobel peace prize in 1999. As we witnessed on Samos island local people who were lucky enough to be employed by MSF were proud to be part of such a well respected NGO. But as the 1000 signatories illustrate, caring for an organisation like MSF also means being prepared to be ruthless in your criticisms; where no area is left untouched and where taken for granted positions are re-examined and changed as needed. These staff members behind the letter believe in MSF. They believe it can be so much better.
Neither should we ignore the many ethical and excellent workers employed in the NGO sector generally. These organisations are not driven by profit and have a commitment to service and often justice. So we must ask how is it such seemingly benign organisations staffed by usually decent people end up like MSF and so many others? Those like Benoit need to explore how seemingly good people end up doing bad things. So no searching for ‘bad apples’. The malaise of MSF is systemic. As it is across the entire social welfare field.
Malignant Organisations
Many changes and investigations are needed. I hope it will include a rigorous challenge to bureaucratic and hierarchical forms of organisation. I believe that many of the problems which blight MSF and the NGO humanitarian sector more generally can be traced back to a specific hierarchical type which feeds on prevailing inequalities and becomes embedded in a myriad of distorting ways. Such an organisational form in various guises is now deeply embedded in the world. It is as seen as the norm and expected. It is rarely questioned today although in its creation and implementation it was influenced by the need to control and manage activity in the interests of prevailing power. Yet as MSF is now finding it has brought about devastating consequences. Hierarchies which manage soon accrue privilege and power; flows of information concerning policy and practice inevitably flow down to front line workers who are increasingly far away from the decision makers and challenges from the base are ruled out. Is this why on Samos at least the MSF contracts for local workers run to pages and pages containing what can only be described as gagging clauses ?
Some of these malign influences are all too obvious such as MSF’s ‘discriminatory and unfair pay structure’ in which local workers are paid massively below those of their managers. But equally negative are the less obvious ways in which these organisational forms have created a belief that the expertise required to deliver and manage their activities is to be found almost exclusively amongst a narrow group of socially and educationally privileged people. Simply requiring formal qualifications for a job immediately excludes the majority of the population and reinforces as it reflects privilege. Unquestioned, these taken for granted processes provide a fertile environment in which enduring discriminations from class to race to gender and beyond, flourish as opportunities and rewards are handed out.
Credentialed and certificated the professionals are also encouraged to believe themselves superior and entitled. As one MSF staff member observed such a mind set sees no problem in placing fresh graduates as supervisors of local staff with 10 or 20 years experience. What follows from regulations which only acknowledge so called formal qualifications is dire because it ignores valuable and needed resources as well as undermining and insulting other forms of knowledge and skill acquisition. Hardly surprising then that within MSF “trying to support a national staff [member] as an international staff [member] is the most tedious, unjust and gut-wrenchingly frustrating process I have ever endured” (Guardian July 10). Add to this mix the specific cultural influences that shape the countries which fill the top positions the results can be very toxic. As one MSF staffer noted there “was an almost suffocating white saviour mentality”. And another, “there was a constant feeling that the international staff need the [locals] to get on with things, otherwise ‘we’ are better than ‘them’. It was exhausting”.
All Knowledge Matters
And here on Samos it has also been exhausting seeing virtually every intervention -apart from the Open Kitchens in 2016 – fail to embrace and involve both refugees and local people so cutting themselves off from important resources of knowledge and effort. The consequences of this failure are significant and led to a separation between islanders and refugees that should never have occurred. Locals were commonly seen as well meaning amateurs who had to stand aside as the credentialed professions took over. And refugees, well they were refugees; objects of their intervention and certainly not respected partners. Either way, both groups were sidelined. This is but one example of failing to recognise and respect the depths of knowledge and skills which abound amongst us. By ignoring ‘public’ knowledge and by seeing education as restricted only to schools and colleges these organisations fail to embrace vital forms of understanding and skills which are created in and by social and collective experiences. Significantly, skills and knowledge from these roots are more likely to be seen as a social good to be shared with all. This stands in stark contrast to the individualised and privatised expertise common to the ‘professions’.
The consequences are profound, especially for all interventions concerned with the welfare of the people for it creates a range of barriers between the ‘helpers’ and the ‘helped’ all of which distort and lead to poor and ineffective services. This is not to reject expertise but rather to argue for a much broader and inclusive recognition of expertise and above all, to see all expertise as something to be shared and offered with humility. Expertise should never justify superiority. The professional expertise most of us now experience is intrinsically dis-respectful and often undermines those they seek to ‘help’. I recall vividly the outrage of a single mother with 3 adolescent children confronted with a psychologist’s report which blamed her for her eldest boy’s shoplifting. “Not one word” she said about how brilliantly they had survived enduring poverty with its crap housing and schools. “And now, one mistake and it’s all my fault.” And the mum’s account rooted in her family’s circumstances and experiences was given no credence; not even asked for.
This is an all too common experience across a wide range of welfare and social policies and practices. It comes with top down hierarchical organisations. Not only does it ignore vast resources of knowledge and skill it suffocates alternative forms of organisation which are rooted in solidarity and mutual action. Existing outside the paradigm of top down organisations these get little attention yet there are tens of thousands of grass roots initiatives globally which meet some of the needs of humanity more effectively than that provided ‘from above’. The evidence of the benefits of interventions based on solidarity is abundant if we care to look.
I am delighted by the actions of the 1,000 former and current MSF staff. The context of the corona virus pandemic and the equally global Black Lives Matter actions have played their part in bringing about the open letter. I believe their initiative has provided us with an important chance to open up a fundamental interrogation of the organisational forms and attendant cultures which have been taken for granted as the only way to do things. As the MSF staff show, this approach fails miserably.
I hope that we don’t fail to realise the opportunities this open letter provides to struggle for the changes needed.
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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Samos Chronicles.
“The nuclear testing now being considered by the Trump administration is designed with the same purpose that weapons have traditionally had in world affairs: to intimidate other nations.”
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Americans who grew up with nightmares of nuclear weapons explosions should get ready for some terrifying flashbacks, for the Trump administration appears to be preparing to resume U.S. nuclear weapons tests.
The U.S. government stopped its atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons in 1962, shortly before signing the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963. And it halted its underground nuclear tests in 1992, signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996. Overall, it conducted 1,030 nuclear weapons test explosions, slightly more than half the global total.
Nuclear tests, of course, enabled the nine nuclear powers to develop bigger and more efficient nuclear weapons for the purpose of waging nuclear war. Along the way, millions of people in the United States and other nations died or developed illnesses caused by the radioactive fallout from these tests.
The CTBT, which banned all nuclear weapons tests, has been signed by 184 nations, including the United States. This century, only North Korea has flouted the treaty, triggering an avalanche of condemnation from other nations.
But the Trump administration now seems to be preparing to ignore treaty constraints and world opinion by reviving nuclear weapons explosions. A Washington Post article reported that, in mid-May 2020, a meeting of senior U.S. officials from top national security agencies engaged in serious discussions about U.S. nuclear test resumption. According to one official, the idea was that test renewal would help pressure Russia and China into making concessions during future negotiations over nuclear weapons.
In an apparent follow-up, Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) introduced an amendment to the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would give the Trump administration “no less than $10 million” to conduct a nuclear weapons test, “if necessary.” Taken up by the Senate Armed Services Committee on June 10, the amendment passed by a vote along strict party lines. Currently, Congress is debating the NDAA.
Meanwhile, during a press briefing in Brussels, the administration’s special envoy for arms control stated that the U.S. government “will maintain the ability to conduct nuclear tests if we see reason to do so.” Although he said he was “not aware of any reason to test at this stage,” he added that he would not “shut the door on it,” either. “Why would we?”
Actually, there are numerous reasons why the resumption of U.S. nuclear weapons explosions is a terrible idea. If the U.S. government began atmospheric nuclear testing, it would violate the Partial Test Ban Treaty (which it ratified), as well as the CTBT (which it signed but, thanks to Republican Senate opposition, has not yet ratified). Even if U.S. nuclear tests were conducted underground and, thus, violated only the CTBT, the result would be a dramatic loss of credibility for the United States and an escalation of the nuclear arms race. As Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, has remarked: “Other nuclear powers would undoubtedly seize the opportunity provided by a U.S. nuclear blast to engage in explosive tests of their own, which could help them perfect new and more dangerous types of warheads.”
In addition, a considerable numbers of non-nuclear nations might decide that, given the U.S. government’s failure to fulfill its treaty obligations, their adherence to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty no longer made sense. Therefore, they would begin nuclear testing to facilitate developing their own nuclear weapons arsenals.
Furthermore, U.S. nuclear weapons explosions, whether in the atmosphere or underground, would have serious health and environmental consequences. Even underground U.S. tests have released large quantities of radioactive fallout, and the U.S. government is still dealing with the devastation they caused to communities near the testing sites. Furthermore, no method has been found for cleaning up the plutonium and other radionuclides that the tests have left underground.
Remarkably, there is no military necessity for nuclear test resumption. Not only does the U.S. government possess nearly half the world’s nuclear weapons, which are quite sufficient to eradicate life on earth, but the occasionally-cited justification for testing―that it is necessary to make sure U.S. weapons actually work—is deeply flawed. The U.S. government has spent tens of billions of dollars on the Stockpile Stewardship Program, a wide range of diagnostic, non-explosive tests, to ensure that its nuclear weapons are reliable. And every year the directors of the U.S. nuclear weapons labs report that they are.
In fact, the nuclear testing now being considered by the Trump administration is designed with the same purpose that weapons have traditionally had in world affairs: to intimidate other nations. Within this framework, it makes perfect sense to use U.S. military might to bully the Russian and Chinese governments into compliance with U.S. government demands. The problem with that kind of thinking is that military intimidation is a very dangerous game, especially when it’s played with nuclear weapons.
Naturally, nuclear critics have assailed Trump’s new military gambit. John Tierney, the executive director of the Council for a Livable World, declared that the administration’s reported consideration of nuclear tests “was as reckless as it was stupid. The United States does not need to conduct explosive nuclear tests and we don’t want anyone else to, either.” Congressional Democrats have been particularly outspoken in opposition. In early June, Senator Edward Markey (D-MA), a long-time Congressional leader on nuclear arms control and disarmament issues—joined by 13 other Democratic Senators, including Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer—introduced the Preserving Leadership Against Nuclear Explosives Testing (PLANET) Act, which would prohibit funding for U.S. nuclear tests.
On July 16, Markey joined distinguished scientists and other nuclear experts at a virtual press conference to announce the publication of an Open Letter in Science calling upon the nation’s scientific community to support the PLANET Act and oppose nuclear test resumption.
Who knows? Under fire, Trump might suddenly declare that he never heard of the idea!
From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.
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ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102 Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling) PDF Edition: $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Reviews
“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.” –John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University
“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.” -Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations
Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction. –Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute
Made-in-the USA irreconcilable differences define bilateral relations, things worsening, not improving.
Bipartisan US hardliners are waging war on China by other means — a futile attempt to undermine its growing prominence on the world stage that could escalate to direct conflict if things are pushed too far.
What’s going on is the stuff that wars are made of. US hegemonic aims are all about seeking unchallenged dominance over other nations by whatever it takes to achieve its aims.
Wars by hot and/or other means that include color revolutions, coups, assassinations, blockades, and other hostile actions are its favored strategies against nations it doesn’t control — when pressure, bullying and bribes don’t work.
International, constitutional, and US statute laws never stand in the way of how it choose to advance its imperium.
The Trump regime reportedly may revoke visas for all Chinese Communist Party members and their families — the action if taken to affect over 90 million individuals.
Trump and China’s Xi Jinping haven’t communicated directly in months.
China’s Foreign Ministry slammed the US threat to ban millions of CCP members, equating it to targeting “the entire population of” the country if imposed — what Pompeo neither confirmed or denied when asked about it.
US-based China expert Scott Kennedy called the possibility “self-defeating” and “blindly dumb.”
An attempt to separate CCP members from the general population will likely bring them closer together.
US wars by hot and other means that attempt to turn populations against governments Washington wants replaced by puppet regimes it control most often are counterproductive.
During Obama regime-led aggression to topple Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, I recall citing poll numbers showing his overwhelming popularity.
When the security of people are threatened by war and/or other external hostile actions, ordinary people most often turn to their only source of help, their own governments.
According to Australian political analyst Richard McGregory, banning CCP members if ordered by the US would “end” bilateral relations, adding:
“There would be no Chinese visiting the US for any kind of substantial talks, say for trade negotiations or financial consultations, because any official of any seniority is by definition a member of the party.”
“It is a blunderbuss which would not serve US interests, let alone get Washington anywhere it wants to go in the China relationship.”
London-based Professor of Chinese Studies Kerry Brown believes numbers affected by such a ban if implemented could be “three or four times” higher than 90 million.
The total could be “a quarter of the Chinese population,” he said.
Banning CCP members from entering US territory and expelling members already here would amount to designating the party “a terrorist organization” — pushing the envelope closer to direct confrontation.
The South China Sea already is the world’s most dangerous hot spot, along with the Middle East.
US rage for controlling other nations could push things over the edge to unthinkable confrontation between two thermonuclear powers.
In testimony to Congress in the early 1980s, father of the Pentagon’s nuclear navy Admiral Hyman Rickover warned that when nations go to war, they’ll use whatever weapons in their arsenals believed necessary to win.
It’s a frightening possibility given what’s going on and steadily escalating between the US and China.
Separately, the State Department released an internal 2018 cable.
It alleges that the SARS-Cov-2 virus that causes COVID-19 disease escaped or was deliberately released from a Wuhan virology lab.
No evidence was cited because none exists.
The dubious claim is raised time and again by Trump, Pompeo, other regime officials, and Chinaphobic establishment media — part of made in the USA war on China by other means.
China’s White Paper on COVID-19 released weeks earlier refuted US Big Lies about the virus.
Beijing leads the world in containing its spread in contrast to Trump regime indifference toward public health and welfare in the US.
Given Washington’s longstanding history of biowarfare, it’s highly likely that COVID-19 came from a US biolab, spread worldwide from there, including to China.
In all its preemptive wars on nations threatening no one, the US uses chemical, biological, radiological, and other banned weapons.
In 1975, the Senate Church Committee confirmed from a CIA memorandum that US bioweapons were stockpiled at Fort Detrick, MD – including anthrax, encephalitis, tuberculosis, shellfish toxin, and food poisons.
International law bans use of biological, chemical, and radioactive weapons.
The rule of law never interferes with the US pursuit of its imperial aims.
Evidence suggests that the misnamed “Wuhan virus” was made in the USA.
Spreading it nationwide and worldwide was and remains all about engineering the largest ever wealth transfer from ordinary people to privileged ones.
It’s also about letting US corporate favorites consolidate to greater size and gain greater market share by eliminating tens of thousands of small, medium-sized and some larger firms.
What’s been going on throughout most of 2020 is a likely diabolical made in the USA mother of all false flags — surpassing 9/11 by causing unprecedented harm to countless numbers people, entities, and economies of nations worldwide.
The fallout of what’s going on is likely to continue its global ravaging longterm.
What was unleashed caused US economic collapse.
It risks the mother of all Great Depressions that may haunt ordinary Americans for years to come with no New Deal policies to the rescue in prospect to mitigate things.
It’s the wrong time to be young in pursuit of career development and advancement in America.
Abounding opportunities I had as a long ago freshly minted MBA graduate only exist today for the privileged few.
Since the neoliberal 90s, notably since the engineered 2008-09 financial crisis, especially since made in the USA economic collapse, the vast majority of Americans entering the work force likely face harder than ever hard times longterm.
The nation’s ruling class thirdworldized the country, a diabolical plot to transform America into a ruler-serf society — militarized to maintain control.
The nation I grew up in no longer exists, replaced by a society unsafe and unfit to live in, along with endless war on humanity at home and abroad that threatens everyone everywhere.
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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.”
It could be that the ongoing gratuitous murders by police across America are not mistakes but part of a program of terror and fear to control, to maintain unjust apportionment of power, resources, money, in the hands of a few. As the need rises, more people of color are cut in to positions of power to control others. But as the presidency of Barack Obama suggests, buying off minorities with models of success is not a solution. simply a broadening of the power base of unjust controls.
These are controls which have historically furthered white supremacy at the expense of non-whites. From the perspective of genocide prevention, at what point does the society’s service to white power slip into an attempt to eradicate non-white communities? At what point does life for non-whites become unbearable? At what point do random police murders of black people become a program indicating the risk of genocide?
One indication of when the majority group in a society crosses the line to subjugate, oppress, enslave, destroy a minority group is available in awareness of the society’s political prisoners. These reflect the system’s targeted groups. When any prisoner is imprisoned for political reasons on false charges, the prisoner becomes a political prisoner, and the system acts criminally. At what point will a country’s law betray itself in order to keep its power elite in power?
What happened to George Floyd and Eric Garner and Michael Brown, weren’t isolated cases but representative of thousands of people the country’s middle classes haven’t heard of but who form a norm of expectation for minorities throughout the country. Whatever color, the victims are usually poor people.
They often have disabilities. Law enforcement seems unable to cope with mental disabilities or people with medical conditions, appropriately.
Poor white people are not spared police violence unless they are part of the right wing, inevitably racist law enforcement infra-structure.
Any death caused by police is unnecessary. U.S. Police are not trained to wound rather than kill, if under threat. They are trained or programmed to kill as part of a psychological control of the people by fear.
This could be noted as state terrorism. Police violence simply acts out the controls of society. Their acts are metaphors for the functioning of society, for job markets, for chances of advancement at work, for the prevailing ethic in law enforcement or how the military is used. Police murders as an aspect of nation-wide training programs are simply naked assertions of injustice applied to people who have committed crimes or haven’t. The murdered represent the visible tip of an iceberg, raw facts, in policies of law enforcement. Question: if the man on the street is vulnerable to being murdered by rank and file police officers, what’s in store for community leaders protecting their people?
Under COINTELPRO of last century’s 50s through 70s, extremes of injustice were applied to Black community leaders in particular, who then became political prisoners. In 2020 some are still in prison. Due to state programs which targeted them for prosecution and disappearance, it would be hard to prove they are not innocent. The Black Panthers was a community support group. Panther leaders tried to protect their communities from ignorance, poverty and drugs. Protesting racist injustice they were the object of government warfare.
The murder of George Floyd is representative of the justice dealt even leaders of the U.S. Black community historically. These aren’t simply the murders of high profile people such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcom X, or the rank and file murders of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, but the “night and fog” operations against men and women who have been hidden away in the U.S. prison system for life.
Among these the case of Imam Jamil Al-Amin whom the reader might know as the former H. Rap Brown, has seemed the most hopeless, because it is so clearly a result of the system’s oppression, corrupt law enforcement, and the convenience of the FBI. Local law enforcement was collaborative, and the prosecution and judiciary assumed a stance of naivete with regards to Federal attempts to take Al-Amin out of commission. Al Amin’s targeting by the FBI’s COINTELPRO was very much part of the case but entirely ignored in court papers. It is likely he was under surveillance for most of his adult life. The multi-racial (and probably Christian) jury that convicted him was not introduced to the government crimes of COINTELPRO. In court It would repeatedly watch Al-Amin not rise, as required by his religion, when the judge entered. He was a Muslim. It was six months after the World Trade Center’s destruction. After conviction he was moved to a supermax prison far from home, visits and affect on his Georgia community, and he was placed in solitary. The extra-judicial punishment was applied why ? For being intellectually a revolutionary? An anti-drug community leader? A convert to Islam? For his strong faith and eloquence? For not being white?
I first noted Imam Jamil Al-Amin‘s conviction and imprisonment in 2004. He was convicted on March 9, 2002. Time has only made his innocence and the mechanism of his false conviction, more clear. Finally a video is available of Otis Jackson’s confession to the murder of one policeman and wounding of an other, the principle crimes Imam Jamil was convicted of: “The Confession – My Name Is James Santos aka Otis Jackson (We Demand A Retrial For Imam Jamil)” (May 1, 2020). The video must be viewed- Jackson’s description fits fairly closely the description of the killer provided by witnesses to the killing, Imam Al-Amin’s does not. Request for a re-trial was refused. Recently a mechanism to explore cases where there have been possible miscarriages of justice has commenced in Fulton County, and through it the Imam’s support group has renewed hope he’ll be freed. He is one of many U.S. political prisoners who has contracted cancer in prison. I recommend a short video of Al-Amin’s address to the International Islamic Unity Conference in 1996. “Stop the Violence – Imam Jamil el-Amin, Imam of Community Masjid of Atlanta,” which starts, I seek refuge in the law from misleading and from being misled, from betraying and from being betrayed into ignorance by others.I ask Allah to guide my heart and to guide my tongue….
They took his normal life away with his freedom. To extend our understanding of parallel murders by police we are faced with instance after instance of unjustifiable homicide against a U.S. racial minority: George Floyd, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Laquan McDonald, Matiana Jefferson, Aura Rosser, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Jamar Clark, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Stephon Clark, Botham Jean, Breonna Taylor, Michelle Cusseaux, Janisha Fonville, Akai Gurley, Gabriella Nevarez, Tanisha Anderson, and others represent some of the Black victims. This is a specific listing of a practice by southern police which did not end with the 1964 Mississippi murders of Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney. Mapping Police Violence points out that from 2013 through 2019 police killed 7,666 people in the U.S.. 28% were ‘Black people,’ who were three times as likely to be victims of police murder.
However, a great many people killed by police were not Black people. I’ve found no statistical comparisons available to compare the number of police murders of Black people to police murders of poor whites, Asians or Hispanics, but at a terrible cost to the black community the essential point is now made.
Returning to a concern with the Convention on Genocide, the ongoing long standing risk to America’s Black community is multiplied by the risk to the Hispanic community, Asian community, Arab community, Muslim community, Jewish community, LGBT community, radical left community, in other words the risk to any discernible U.S. minority whether recognized by the Convention on Genocide or not. The Convention offers individual groups a tool to fight and prosecute State oppression, domestically but given the reluctance of North American lawyers to address the government under the Convention, internationally as well.
The poor are at risk, whatever ethnic racial or religious group they are part of. The enemy of the poor is much greater than the police who are simply telegraphing society’s intentions. As each group counters the system’s aggression in the future, the mutual support of each other group by all groups is necessary. The divisions by any prejudice or bias between groups can destroy humanity.
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J.B. Gerald writes on his blog site, Gerald and Maas Night’s Lantern, where this article was originally published.
41 years on from the revolutionary triumph of 1979, the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN) in Nicaragua looks stronger and with greater legitimacy than ever. Nicaragua embodies the same revolutionary paradox as Cuba and Venezuela. Despite all three countries being attacked via illegal unilateral coercive measures imposed by the US government, followed by its European allies, all three revolutionary governments have defended their peoples against the current pandemic with much greater success than neighboring countries.
The fundamental reason for that paradox is that all three revolutionary governments are implementing national human development projects focused on the needs and well being of the human person. With practically no exceptions, all other countries in the region are subjugated to the neocolonial US imperialist vision. They all prioritize corporate profit inspired by the demented neoliberal myth of “free markets” making impossible any sovereign project of national human development. The counter-revolutionary debacle in Bolivia offers explicit confirmation of that reality.
In Nicaragua, the victories of the Sandinista Front for National Liberation over the last thirteen years derive directly from Sandinismo’s historic program of 1969. Proclaimed under the leadership of Carlos Fonseca Amador, that program itself expressed the patriotic but also Bolivarian vision of General Augusto C. Sandino. Above all else, the extraordinary contemporary achievements of the FSLN led by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo embody a triumph of loyalty, unity and commitment to that national program of sovereign development, over a century in the making.
During all that time, the US ruling elite and their governments have vainly tried to stop that sovereign revolutionary project. In 1934, on their orders, Anastasio Somoza murdered General Sandino and his comrades. With support from the US ruling elite, the Somoza dictatorship ran Nicaragua as a vast private hacienda for over 40 years. After the FSLN led the tyrant’s overthrow in 1979, the US elite imposed a vicious terrorist war, continuing even after it was condemned in 1986 by the International Court of Justice.
After losing the epoch-making national elections of 1990, the FSLN divided and most people thought the movement was finished. But then, most people fail to understand how for the FSLN, “Patria Libre o Morir” (“Free Homeland or Death”) is not just a slogan but a fundamental mission its militants live out and serve with every breath they take. When Comandante Tomas Borge Martínez wrote about “The Patient Impatience” he was writing about an implacable resolve and a serene revolutionary love inevitably destined to defeat the savage sadism and cynical hypocrisy of the US elites and their allies.
After returning to office in January 2007, Daniel Ortega and FSLN legislators were re-elected in successive democratic elections in 2011 and 2016, with increased support each time, on the basis of their implementation of the FSLN’s historic program remade as a National Human Development Program. In response, the US government invested millions of dollars to organize and stage a violent coup attempt in April 2018. An investigation by Managua’s Radio La Primerísima’s William Grigsby revealed that just in 2017-2018, USAID alone invested over US$15 million in the opposition aligned organizations that carried out or directly supported the failed coup attempt.
They paid over US$3.2 million to Nicaragua’s three most well known anti-government human rights organizations and another US$3 million to Carlos Fernando Chamorro’s CINCO anti-government media NGO conglomerate. They paid another US$9 million to other organizations that also supported the violent coup attempt, including the Anti-Canal Movement and NGOs run by Monica Baltodano, Felix Maradiaga and Juan Sebastian Chamorro. William Grigsby’s report demolishes the standard Western media portrayal of the failed 2018 coup attempt as a spontaneous uprising led by independent civil society organizations.
The increasingly severe illegal unilateral coercive measures against Nicaragua correspond to the increasing frustration of the US government and its allies. They have failed and will continue failing to undermine popular support for Daniel Ortega’s government let alone achieve their ultimate objective of destroying the FSLN . In part their failure is based on the tremendous social and economic achievements of the government team led by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
Poverty fell from 48.3% in 2007 to 24.9% in 2016. In the same period extreme poverty fell from 17.2% to 6.9%. Health care in Nicaragua is free. In May 2020 the country had more hospital beds at 18.5 per 10000 people than Colombia or Mexico and more intensive care beds at 8.6 per 100,000 people than Japan or the United Kingdom. The country has built 19 hospitals since 2007 with 7 under construction and another 7 scheduled to be built over the next few years. The country will inaugurate its second lineal accelerator for cancer treatment later this year. Maternal mortality has dropped to 34 deaths per 100,000 births thanks in large part to the country’s unique prize-winning Maternal Shelter program for rural women.
Primary and secondary education in Nicaragua are free with numerous auxiliary programs focused on poverty reduction, like free school meals, dental hygiene programs and help with children’s school accessories. Investment in improved school buildings and classroom equipment are constant, along with investment in education technology infrastructure. Vocational technical training is also free in well equipped centres across the country. Low income students receive scholarships to attend university. Among many other subsidized programs, low income families receive subsidies for electricity. Public bus transport in the capital Managua is also subsidized.
Electricity coverage reaches 97% of the population. 90% of the population has access to drinking water. Nicaragua’s highway system is ranked among the top five in Latin America. Nicaragua remains the safest country in Central America and among the safest in all the Americas. Nicaragua is among the top five countries in the world in terms of women’s political representation and among the top ten countries in the world closest to acheiving gender equality. Every year a government program extends property titles to tens of thousands of households, the majority made out to women. Indigenous and afro-descendant peoples have land title to almost a third of Nicaragua’s national territory.
Beyond the social and economic indicators, two fundamental processes underlie Nicaragua’s successful revolutionary transformation. One is the democratization of the country’s economy, prioritizing the popular economy and small farmers. This has enabled many thousands of new protagonists, the majority of them women, to participate actively in the country’s economic life for the first time. It has also promoted and defended thousands of cooperatives, enhancing their access to technical advice, credit and marketing expertise. The same is true generally of small farm production and artisan production of all kinds in rural areas where 40% of Nicaragua’s people live. Accompanying that democratization, the other fundamental revolutionary process in Nicaragua has been the steady integration of the country’s Caribbean Coast.
In 2012 the International Court of Justice restored to Nicaragua over 90,000 km2 of maritime territory previously usurped for over 70 years by Colombia, making a physical, political and economic reality of what has always been the social and cultural reality, namely, that Nicaragua is a Caribbean country. Following up that crucial international legal watershed, the government’s highway program has connected the Pacific Coast with the port of Bluefields, the main southern Caribbean Coastal urban centre and will also connect soon via a new all-weather road to the port of Bilwi, the main urban centre in the country’s northern Caribbean Coast. The government has invested tens of millions of dollars in highways, drinking water and mains sewage, health and education infrastructure as well as electricity and optic fibre connections fulfilling the FSLN’s historic commitment to vindicate the rights of Nicaragua’s Caribbean population.
All of this is a large part of why the US, its allies and the mercenary opportunists in Nicaragua’s oligarchy will not be able to achieve regime change in Nicaragua. But the most important reason is that almost half Nicaragua’s population are Sandinista. They will never submit to any foreign intervention or control by the the United States and its allies. Today’s 41st anniversary reaffirms and vindicates the sacrifice of so many heroes and martyrs that made possible Nicaragua’s Sandinista People’s Revolution in 1979, its survival of the US terrorist war of the 1980s and its peaceful return to government in 2007. As Daniel Ortega put it at last year’s commemoration of the national hero Benjamín Zeledón:
“…history keeps repeating itself. The difference now, is that after July 19th 1979, passing through the 17 years in which the Sandinistas were out of government, on July 19th 1979, here, in the heart of the majority of Nicaraguans, in the majority of rural families and urban workers, of youth, of professional people, a new Consciousness has taken root. At long last, Nicaragua after 1979 has a people fully aware and full of love for their country.”
From Diriangén to Zeledón and Sandino, to Carlos Fonseca and Daniel Ortega, the patterns of history do prevail and that is why, in Nicaragua, nothing will stop the Sandinista People’s Revolution.
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Last August, Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Zarif, paid a visit to his China counterpart, Wang Li, to present a roadmap on a comprehensive 25-year China-Iran strategic partnership that built upon a previous agreement signed in 2016. Many of the key specifics of the updated agreement were not released to the public at the time but were uncovered by OilPrice.com at the time. Last week, at a meeting in Gilan province, former Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad alluded to some of the secret parts of this deal in public for the first time, stating that:
“It is not valid to enter into a secret agreement with foreign parties without considering the will of the Iranian nation and against the interests of the country and the nation, and the Iranian nation will not recognize it.”
According to the same senior sources closely connected to Iran’s Petroleum Ministry who originally outlined the secret element of the 25-year deal, not only is the secret element of that deal going ahead but China has also added in a new military element, with enormous global security implications.
One of the secret elements of the deal signed last year is that China will invest US$280 billion in developing Iran’s oil, gas, and petrochemicals sectors. This amount will be front-loaded into the first five-year period of the new 25-year deal, and the understanding is that further amounts will be available in each subsequent five year period, provided that both parties agree. There will be another US$120 billion of investment, which again can be front-loaded into the first five-year period, for upgrading Iran’s transport and manufacturing infrastructure, and again subject to increase in each subsequent period should both parties agree. In exchange for this, to begin with, Chinese companies will be given the first option to bid on any new – or stalled or uncompleted – oil, gas, and petrochemicals projects in Iran. China will also be able to buy any and all oil, gas, and petchems products at a minimum guaranteed discount of 12 per cent to the six-month rolling mean average price of comparable benchmark products, plus another 6 to 8 per cent of that metric for risk-adjusted compensation. Additionally, China will be granted the right to delay payment for up to two years and, significantly, it will be able to pay in soft currencies that it has accrued from doing business in Africa and the Former Soviet Union states. “Given the exchange rates involved in converting these soft currencies into hard currencies that Iran can obtain from its friendly Western banks, China is looking at another 8 to 12 per cent discount, which means a total discount of around 32 per cent for China on all oil gas, and petchems purchases,” one of the Iran sources underlined.
Another key part of the secret element to the 25-year deal is that China will be integrally involved in the build-out of Iran’s core infrastructure, which will be in absolute alignment with China’s key geopolitical multi-generational project, ‘One Belt, One Road’ (OBOR). To begin with, China intends to utilise the currently cheap labour available in Iran to build factories that will be financed, designed, and overseen by big Chinese manufacturing companies with identical specifications and operations to those in China. The final manufactured products will then be able to access Western markets through new transport links, also planned, financed, and managed by China.
In this vein, around the same time as the draft new 25-year deal was presented last year by Iran’s Vice President, Eshaq Jahangiri (and senior figures from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and intelligence agencies) to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, Jahangiri announced that Iran had signed a contract with China to implement a project to electrify the main 900 kilometre railway connecting Tehran to the north-eastern city of Mashhad. Jahangiri added that there are also plans to establish a Tehran-Qom-Isfahan high-speed train line and to extend this upgraded network up to the north-west through Tabriz. Tabriz, home to a number of key sites relating to oil, gas, and petrochemicals, and the starting point for the Tabriz-Ankara gas pipeline, will be a pivot point of the 2,300 kilometre New Silk Road that links Urumqi (the capital of China’s western Xinjiang Province) to Tehran, and connecting Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan along the way, and then via Turkey into Europe.
Now, though, another element that will change the entire balance of geopolitical power in the Middle East has been added to the deal.
“Last week, the Supreme Leader [Ali Khamenei] agreed to the extension of the existing deal to include new military elements that were proposed by the same senior figures in the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] and the intelligence services that proposed the original deal, and this will involve complete aerial and naval military co-operation between Iran and China, with Russia also taking a key role,” one of the Iran sources told OilPrice.com last week. “There is a meeting scheduled in the second week of August between the same Iranian group, and their Chinese and Russian counterparts, that will agree the remaining details but, provided that goes as planned, then as of 9 November, Sino-Russian bombers, fighters, and transport planes will have unrestricted access to Iranian air bases,” he said.
“This process will begin with purpose-built dual-use facilities next to the existing airports at Hamedan, Bandar Abbas, Chabhar, and Abadan,” he said.
OilPrice.com understands from the Iranian sources that the bombers to be deployed will be China-modified versions of the long-range Russian Tupolev Tu-22M3s, with a manufacturing specification range of 6,800 kilometres (2,410 km with a typical weapons load), and the fighters will be the all-weather supersonic medium-range fighter bomber/strike Sukhoi Su-34, plus the newer single-seat stealth attack Sukhoi-57. It is apposite to note that in August 2016, Russia used the Hamedan airbase to launch attacks on targets in Syria using both Tupolev-22M3 long-range bombers and Sukhoi-34 strike fighters. At the same time, Chinese and Russian military vessels will be able to use newly-created dual-use facilities at Iran’s key ports at Chabahar, Bandar-e-Bushehr, and Bandar Abbas, constructed by Chinese companies.
These deployments will be accompanied by the roll-out of Chinese and Russian electronic warfare (EW) capabilities, according to the Iran sources. This would encompass each of the three key EW areas – electronic support (including early warning of enemy weapons use) plus electronic attack (including jamming systems) plus electronic protection (including of enemy jamming). Based originally around neutralising NATO’s C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) systems, part of the new roll-out of software and hardware from China and Russia in Iran, according to the Iran sources, would be the Russian S-400 anti-missile air defence system: “To counter U.S. and/or Israeli attacks.” The Krasukha-2 and -4 systems are also likely to feature in the overall EW architecture, as they proved their effectiveness in Syria in countering the radars of attack, reconnaissance and unmanned aircraft. The Krasukha-2 can jam Airborne Warning And Control Systems (AWACS) at up to 250 km, and other airborne radars such as guided missiles, whilst the Krasukha-4 is a multi-functional jamming system that not only counters AWACS but also ground-based radars, with both being highly mobile.
It is again apposite to note here that an entire EW company (encompassing the three core elements of EW) can consist of as little as 100 men and, according to the Iran sources, part of the new military co-operation includes an exchange of personnel between Iran and China and Russia, with up to 110 senior Iranian IRGC men going for training every year in Beijing and Moscow and 110 Chinese and Russians going to Tehran for their training. It is also apposite to note that Iran’s EW system can easily be tied in to Russia’s Southern Joint Strategic Command 19th EW Brigade (Rassvet) near Rostov-on-Don, which links into the corollary Chinese systems. “One of the Russian air jamming systems is going to be based in Chabahar and will capable of completely disabling the UAE’s and Saudi Arabia’s air defences, to the extent that they would only have around two minutes of warning for a missile or drone attack from Iran,” one of the Iran sources told OilPrice.com last week.
An indication of what Iran hopes to receive in return its co-operation with China, and Russia, came last week when Zhang Jun, China’s permanent United Nations (U.N.) representative, in a statement to the Security Council, told the U.S.: “To stop its illegal unilateral sanctions on Iran… The root cause of the current crisis is the U.S.’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018 and the re-imposition of unilateral sanctions against Iran.” He also opposed the U.S.’s push for the extension of the U.N. arms embargo on Iran, which expires in October. “This has again undermined the joint efforts to preserve the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action],” Zhang said, and added: “The [JCPOA] agreement was endorsed by the U.N. Security Council [UNSC] and is legally binding.”
He concluded:
“We urge the U.S. to stop its illegal unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction, and return to the right track of observing the JCPOA and Resolution 2231 [of the UNSC].”
Securing China’s support was a key reason for the original secret part of the deal agreed last year, along with that of Russia, as the two countries have two-fifths of the total Permanent Member votes on the UNSC, with the others being the U.S., the U.K., and France. Aside from this support and the US$400 billion+ of investments pledged by China, the other reason that Iran has agreed to such Chinese (and Russian) influence in its country going forward is that China has guaranteed that it will continue to take all of the oil, gas, and petchems that Iran requires.
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Simon Watkins is a former senior FX trader and salesman, financial journalist, and best-selling author. He was Head of Forex Institutional Sales and Trading for Credit Lyonnais, and later Director of Forex at Bank of Montreal. He was then Head of Weekly Publications and Chief Writer for Business Monitor International, Head of Fuel Oil Products for Platts, and Global Managing Editor of Research for Renaissance Capital in Moscow.
We are reposting this important 2015 article by Eric Zuesse
The British polling organization ORB International, an affiliate of WIN/Gallup International, repeatedly finds in Syria that, throughout the country, Syrians oppose ISIS by about 80%, and (in the latest such poll) also finds that 82% of Syrians blame the U.S. for ISIS.
The Washington Post summarized on September 15th the latest poll. They did not headline it with the poll’s anti-U.S. finding, such as “82% of Syrians Blame U.S. for ISIS.” That would have been newsworthy. Instead, their report’s headline was “One in five Syrians say Islamic State is a good thing, poll says.” However, the accompanying graphic wasn’t focused on the few Syrians who support ISIS (and, at only one in five, that’s obviously not much.) It instead (for anyone who would read beyond that so-what headline) provided a summary of what Syrians actually do support. This is is what their graphic highlighted from the poll’s findings:
82% agree “IS [Islamic State] is US and foreign made group.”
79% agree “Foreign fighters made war worse.”
70% agree “Oppose division of country.”
65% agree “Syrians can live together again.”
64% agree “Diplomatic solution possible.”
57% agree “Situation is worsening.”
51% agree “Political solution best answer.”
49% agree “Oppose US coalition air strikes.”
22% agree “IS is a positive influence.”
21% agree “Prefer life now than under Assad.”
Here are the more detailed findings in this poll, a poll that was taken of 1,365 Syrians from all 14 governates within Syria.
The finding that 22% agree that “IS is a positive influence” means that 78% do not agree with that statement. Since 82% do agree that “IS is US and foreign made group,” Syrians are clearly anti-American, by overwhelming majorities: they blame the U.S. for something that they clearly (by 78%) consider to be not “a positive influence.”
Here is the unfortunately amateurish (even undated) press release from ORB International, reporting their findings, and it links directly to the full pdf of their poll-results, “Syria Public Opinion – July 2015”. Though their press-operation is amateurish, their polling itself definitely is not. WIN/Gallup is, instead, the best polling-operation that functions in Syria, which is obviously an extremely difficult environment.
WIN/Gallup and ORB International had previously released a poll of Syria, on 8 July 2014, which reported that, at that time, “three in five (60%) of the population would support ‘international military involvement in Syria’. In government controlled regions this drops to 11% (Tartus), 36% (Damascus) and rises in those areas currently largely controlled by the opposition – Al Raqqah (82%), Aleppo (61%), Idlib (88%).” In other words: The regions that were controlled by Islamic jihadists (Sunnis who are backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United States) were, a year ago, overwhelmingly wanting “international military involvement in Syria.” They wanted to be saved from ISIS. Government-controlled regions didn’t feel the need for international involvement. Syrians were, apparently, at that time expecting “international military involvement” to be anti-jihadist, not pro-jihadist, as it turned out to be (which is the reason why the current poll is finding rampant anti-Americanism there).
This earlier poll further found that, “There is also evidence to suggest that Bashar al-Assad’s position is strengthened from a year ago.”
So, apparently, the more that the war has continued, the more opposed to the U.S. the Syrian people have become, and the more that they are supporting Bashar al-Assad, whom the Syrian people know that the U.S. is trying to bring down.
This article was first published by Global Research on January 18, 2018
As the Second World War advanced from its early stages, the United States was assessing which sections of the earth it would hold conquest over. American planners had to remain patient, however. A seemingly endless string of conquests for the Nazis had astonished the world – particularly those in the US – and led to Adolf Hitler being crowned as “the new Napoleon”.
In the summer of 1942, under Hitler’s domineering command of the military, the Germans controlled vast swathes of Europe – from Warsaw to Oslo to Paris, and eastwards onto Athens, Kiev and Sevastopol. It was one major victory after another for the Third Reich, blighted by the narrow failure to take Moscow in late 1941 after a celebrated Russian counterattack, and the inability to gain air superiority over Britain.
Yet, by November 1942, Hitler had plunged deeper into Russian territory than even Napoleon in his pomp 130 years before. By this point, Nazi forces had killed many millions of Russians – much of whom were innocent civilians – in “a war of annihilation”, as Hitler had previously said.
Come early November [1942], 90% of Stalingrad had been taken by German infantry after weeks of fierce house-to-house fighting. The swastika was now flying over the tallest building in Stalingrad city centre. Such news prompted a buoyant Hitler to say in an after-dinner speech in Munich that,
“I wanted to take the place [Stalingrad], and you know, we’ve done it. We’ve got it really, except for a few enemy positions still holding out. Now they say, ‘why don’t we finish the job more quickly?’ Well, I prefer to do the job with quite small assault groups. Time is of no consequence at all”.
At this stage, American planners were preparing with certainty for a postwar world split up between the Third Reich and the leader of the Free World. The Nazis would control the whole of mainland Europe and Eurasia, while the US would command the Western Hemisphere, the Far East, and the former British empire. American imperialists gave this unprecedented sphere of conquest a title, “the Grand Area”.
The plans were soon altered, however. Despite Hitler’s assertions, time was catching up on the Germans. Just days later Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Premier, orchestrated another famous counterattack with fresh reserves – smashing the overextended German lines. By November 23 the German 6th Army, which led the conquest over France in 1940, was completely encircled by superior forces.
Come the following year, 1943, it was increasingly clear to the Roosevelt administration that the Germans were heading towards defeat – which is precisely what unfolded two years later. Russia deserved the vast majority of credit for winning the Second World War – which is scarcely ever mentioned – yet Russia was almost destroyed in doing so, losing over 25 million people along with immeasurable damage to her infrastructure.
The US had not suffered invasion or bombing and in 1945 controlled a remarkable 50% of the world’s wealth. The Grand Area was now to be expanded to control as much of Eurasia as possible too. The Americans had a problem to overcome, however – by war’s end the anti-Nazi Resistance had become powerful and contained many Socialist and Communist elements. The traditional order had to be restored.
Resistance factions would not be conducive to American demands and were to be smashed. At this point, the US did not possess the knowledge of infiltration in breaking up undesirable organisations.
Yet there were those who did possess that ability: Nazi leaders who for years had been specialists in undermining the Resistance through covert techniques. Men like Wehrmacht General Reinhard Gehlen, who was head of German intelligence on the Eastern Front (1942-45), where the most atrocious crimes were perpetrated. The US further hired SS Captain Klaus Barbie – “the Butcher of Lyon” – who had performed a key role in destabilising the Resistance in the Netherlands, and from 1942 on, in Nazi-occupied France.
Gehlen himself was initially under the guidance of the US Army, before being overseen by the recently-formed CIA in 1949. Gehlen headed secret espionage activities against the Soviet Union as head of the so-called Gehlen Organisation – with hundreds of ex-Wehrmacht and SS intelligence officers under his command, all with American assurance.
A declassified CIA intelligence document describes him as, “the Master Spy, the Man of Mystery, Spy of the Century”. Later, for 12 years, Gehlen was the first president of the Federal Intelligence Service of West Germany (1956-1968) – and was also the highest ranking reserve officer in the West German military, before being forced into retirement in 1968.
Barbie, formerly of the SS and Gestapo, was recruited by the US Army’s Counterintelligence Corps in 1947 – historians estimate he bears direct responsibility for the deaths of up to 14,000 people. He was accountable for other crimes such as the widespread use of torture, and the deportation of Jewish children to Auschwitz.
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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky.
This article was originally published by The Duran.
The Armenian-Azerbaijani tensions have once again turned South Caucasus into a hot point increasing chances of a new regional war.
The key difference with previous military incidents between the two countries is that the point of confrontation shifted from the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh Republic to the Armenian-Azerbaijani state border. Clashes first erupted on July 12 in the area of Tovuz and since then both sides have repeatedly accused each other of provoking the conflict, attacking civilians and declared defeats of the ‘enemy’.
According to the Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan, the fighting started after Armenian forces opened fire on positions of Azerbaijani forces in the Tovuz district. The fighting which included the use of combat drones, artillery, mortars, and battle tanks continued over the following days, including July 17. The Azerbaijani military confirmed that at least 12 personnel, including Major General Gashimov Polad and Colonel Ilgar Mirzaev, were killed. In turn, Kerim Veliyev, Azerbaijan’s deputy defense minister, said that 100 Armenian soldiers were killed, several fortified positions were destroyed and that a UAV was shot down. Armenia, according to Veliyev, is hiding the real number of its casualties.
Azerbaijani media and top leadership describe the current situation as an act of Armenian aggression, and say that Azerbaijani forces are only responding to it. President Ilham Aliyev even called Armenia a “fascist state” adding that “Armenian forces could not enter Azerbaijan in one centimeter of soil and will never be able to do this”.
The Armenian version of events is quite different. According to it, the clashes started after a group of Azerbaijani soldiers violated the Armenian state border in an UAZ vehicle. The defense ministry press service claimed that after the warning from the Armenian side, “the enemy troops returned to their positions”. It added that later Azerbaijani forces attacked an Armenian checkpoint.
As of now, the Armenian military said that it had repelled two ‘offensives’ involving at least 100 soldiers supported by fire of several artillery battalions. These attacks were allegedly actively supported by combat and reconnaissance drones of Azerbaijan. A spokesperson for the Armenian Defense Ministry Artsrun Hovhannisyan said that Azerbaijan lost at least 20 soldiers, a battle tank and other equipment during the clashes. Armenia says that only 4 of its service members were killed.
Both Armenia and Azerbaijan claim that their forces are repelling an aggression of the enemy, which has been attacking it and killing civilians. However, despite the harsh rhetoric, the leadership of the both countries are sending signals that they are not interested in a larger military confrontation.
At the same time, years of war propaganda and historic tensions between the nations push the situation towards a further escalation. A unilateral move towards the cessation of hostilities by leaders of either country would be presented by the other one as a sign of weakness and promoted as an admission of defeat. Taking into account the complicated political and economic conditions in both countries, neither Armenian nor Azerbaijani leaders could afford such a public move. Therefore, de-escalation is possible only through international mechanisms.
The situation is further complicated by the complex diplomatic situation in the region of the South Caucasus. Armenia, alongside with Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). The CSTO expressed its concerns over the situation and called on the sides to commit to a ceasefire regime. Nonetheless, the Russia-led security bloc, and Russia itself, demonstrated that in the current situation they will focus on diplomatic measures.
Since the 2018 coup, when Nikol Pashinyan came to power in Armenia, the country has been consistently undermining its relations with the CSTO and Russia by persuing a quite weak, but apparent anti-Russian and pro-Western foreign policy course. The bright dream of the Pashinyan government is to sell its loyalty to the United States for some coins and commit itself to the way of the so-called ‘European integration’. The issue with this plan is that Washington and its partners need Armenia only as a tool of their geopolitical gains and are not interested in providing it with any kind of military protection or economic assistance. The Pashinyan government is forced to play a double game in an attempt to simultaneously please its ‘democratic’ masters and receive protection and assistance from Russia. This attitude is not a secret for Moscow.
On the other hand, in the event of a large-scale military confrontation, Azerbaijan will be supported by its main ally Turkey, which also has close bilateral ties with Russia. Ankara already declared that it fully supports Azerbaijan and condemned the supposed ‘Armenian aggression’. Thus, in the event of full-scale military confrontation, Armenia will immediately find itself in a very complicated situation, and direct military assistance from the CSTO and Russia will be unlikely until there is no threat to Armenian statehood.
So, the Armenian chances in a limited military conflict with Azerbaijan and Turkey is at least shaky. Turkey and Azerbaijan fully understand this. By undermining strategic relations with Moscow, and thus the balance of power in the region, Erevan put the entire South Caucasus on the brink of a new regional war.
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US seeks to disrupt growing Thai-Chinese relations. US-funded protesters seek to remove elected government and rewrite constitution, or at the very least, cause Hong Kong-style chaos.
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The Western media is claiming “pro-democracy” protests are taking place in Thailand.
Several hundred people led by a group called Free Youth gathered on Saturday near the Democracy Monument in Bangkok to call for the dissolution of the House and a rewrite of the constitution.
Little information is provided as to who “Free Youth” is or where they are getting their money to organize this event at a time when the vast majority of Thais are struggling to get back to business after the COVID-19 crisis.
But there were clues.
The article included photos of the protest at Bangkok’s Democracy Monument, as well as professionally printed “missing” signs attempting to attribute a large number of missing activists to the current government.
However, at least one poster is of an activist – Somchai Neelapaijit – who went missing under the government of Thaksin Shinawatra -a politician favored by the US but long since ousted from power – who is one of several sponsors of the current protests. His “red shirt” mobs are visibly present in the ranks of recent protests.
Another poster is of Cha Lee Rakchongcharoen aka “Billy” who went missing under Thaksin’s sister Yingluck Shinawatra’s regime whom many in the current government helped oust from power.
Another poster still is of Surachai Saedan – a convicted murderer and terrorist who helped lead Thaksin’s militant “red shirt” street front in past episodes of violence.
The photo of the posters was courtesy of “Thai Lawyers for Human Rights” (TLHR). The Bangkok Post never mentions who TLHR is or that one of their members – Anon Nampa – is leading the current protests.
Also not mentioned is that TLHR is funded by the US government.
TLHR, Prachatai, others – All US-funded, All involved in Recent Protests The US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has funded TLHR since 2014. Bangkok Post in a 2016 article titled, “The lawyer preparing to defend herself,” would admit:
…[TLHR] receives all its funding from international donors including the EU, Germany and US-based human rights organisations and embassies of the UK and Canada.
One of the founding members – Sirikan “June” Charoensiri – was later awarded the US State Department’s “2018 International Women of Courage Award.” She is also regularly accompanied by US and European embassy staff when hearing charges regarding her overt foreign-funded sedition.
Prachatai – which claims to be “an independent, non-profit, daily web newspaper” is also funded extensively by the US government as well as various European govenrments and multiple corporate-funded foundations including convicted financial criminal George Soros’ Open Society.
To date, Prachatai has only made one disclosure regarding its foreign funding and ties and has not updated it since 2011 (9 years ago). Virtually all of the 8 million baht it disclosed came from the US government or affiliated corporate and government foundations.
It is still listed by the US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as a recipient of funds (1.5 million Thai baht) as of 2019 under the “Foundation for Community Educational Media” after previously being referred to as “Prachatai” in previous NED disclosures.
Prachatai’s “executive director” – Chiranuch Premchaiporn – is still listed by the US NED as an NED “Fellow.”
NED Fellows admittedly contact counterparts in Washington calling into serious question Prachatai’s claims of being “an independent, non-profit, daily web newspaper” rather than an outlet of US State Department-funded propaganda.
Prachatai along with other US NED-funded fronts have played a key role in both promoting recent protests, helping organize and train protesters, as well as defend them.
Together with TLHR member – the above mentioned Anon Nampa – leading protests against the current government and now calling for the government to step down we see a push for regime change being led and organized by individuals and organizations with confirmed links to the US government.
US Targets Thai-Chinese Relations Thailand – with a population of 70 million and the second largest economy in Southeast Asia – has been expanding its relations with China for years.
Thailand and China also are now holding joint military exercises in Thailand – balancing out joint drills carried out with the US since the 1980s.
Thailand is also a key One Belt, One Road (OBOR) partner with a section of high-speed rail meant to connect China, Laos, Thailand, and Malaysia already under construction in Thailand and neighboring Laos.
China is also Thailand’s largest and most important import and export partner, the largest source of foreign direct investment and the largest source by far of tourists. Chinese FDI in Thailand is 13 times higher than America’s. Chinese tourists account for more tourism in Thailand than all Western nations – including the US – combined.
It is safe to say that Thailand has much stronger ties with China than it does with the US – a trend the US has sought to rectify not by offering Thailand better economic, political, or military partnerships – but through the sort of political meddling now playing out in the streets of Thailand today and meddling that has destabilized Thailand politically since US proxy Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted in 2006.
US efforts to return Thaksin and his political allies to power have defined Thai politics ever since, including two attempts in 2009 and 2010 by Thaksin and his supporters to take power by force. In 2010 these efforts included hundreds of armed militants with war weapons resulting in nearly 100 dead and widespread arson.
2019 elections saw Thaksin and his allies lose both the popular vote and fail to create a larger coalition than the current ruling government.
Among Thaksin’s allies is fellow billionaire Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit. His party – Future Forward – came in distant third with 2 million fewer votes than the current ruling party. He is openly backed by the US and has openly expressed policies which include abandoning the Thai-Chinese high-speed railway and reducing military spending – parenthetically on Chinese weapons.
US, UK, and EU embassy staff accompany Thanathorn in Bangkok in an open act of support as he faced various criminal charges for corruption and election law violations.
Protests today are designed to either affect regime change – seeking to place either Thanathorn or another nominee of Thaksin’s into power – or to create enough chaos to reduce Thailand’s ability to function as a reliable partner for China’s economic rise regionally and globally.
The US finds itself attempting to claw back regional primacy in Asia-Pacific and around the globe – leveling a growing number of sanctions against nations like Russia and China, battling Chinese companies directly, sowing chaos in streets in and around China – most recently in Hong Kong – and attempting to sabotage relations between China and its growing list of partners and allies.
In the days, weeks, and months ahead the US and its partners will continue attempting to seek leverage in Thailand to do just this – and the protesters the Western media claims are “pro-democracy” but clearly paid by and working for Washington are just the beginning.
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In a world dominated by American exceptionalism and neo-colonialism, hunger has become a weapon of war. “The use of starvation of the civilian population as a method of warfare is prohibited” under international humanitarian law yet the U.S. regularly reduces entire nations to dangerous levels of food insecurity in order to subjugate them.
Food, next to life itself, has become our greatest common denominator. Its availability, quality, price, its reflection of the culture it feeds and its moral and religious significance make it quite literally history’s staff of life.’ Today, in the never-ending worldwide struggle to determine who will control its production, quality and accessibility, food is no longer viewed first and foremost as a sustainer of life. Rather, to those who seek to command our food supply it has become instead a major source of corporate cash flow, economic leverage, a form of currency, a tool of international politics, an instrument of power,a weapon!” – A.V. Krebs, “The Corporate Reapers: The Book of Agribusiness”
The U.S. Coalition’s hybrid war strategy on Syria under the cover of COVID-19 is so vast and interconnected that a single article could never give it the breadth it deserves. In this article, I will demonstrate that the U.S. and its allies are deliberately seeking to plunge Syria into a state of blockade, food insecurity, and aggravated poverty. Infuriated by a failed military campaign to remove the Syrian leadership and government, the U.S. Coalition is now turning the economic screws on a nation that has endured a 10-year brutal war of attrition waged by extremist mercenaries power-multiplied by the U.S. supremacist alliance.
Criminal Caesar Law
On June 17, 2020, the Caesar Act went into effect. According to Morgan Ortagus, U.S. State Department Spokesperson, the law is a sustained campaign of sanctions targeting the Syrian government.
Today, we begin a sustained campaign of sanctions against the Assad regime under the Caesar Act. The individuals and entities targeted today have played a key role in obstructing a peaceful, political solution to the conflict.”
The law targets 39 officials or entities associated with the Syrian government. First Lady, Asma Al Assad is identified as a “war profiteer” and her financial dealings will be restricted alongside other members of her family, even those not living in Syria. Journalist Eva Bartlett, who has spent time in Syria and has consistently challenged dominant, U.S. narratives, recently wrote movingly, for MintPress News about the initiatives set up by the First Lady to heal her war-battered country contrary to the Caesar Law interpretation of her role.
Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban, political and media advisor to President Bashar Al Assad, has spoken extensively on the Caesar Act and the economic war on Syria. Dr. Shaaban says that the Caesar Act is a concerted attack against Syria’s allies and that pressure will be brought to bear upon those who have steadfastly supported Syria in its campaign to rid itself of the terrorist occupation financed and equipped by the “regime change” alliance led by the U.S. Dr. Shaaban’s full statement can be heard here
Rime Allaf, a Syrian analyst deeply embedded in the Western institutions that continue to drive the political campaign to criminalize the Syrian government, confirmed Dr. Shaaban’s opinion of such multi-spectrum-war strategies. “Any company, any government, any entity around the world is going to be sanctioned if they deal with the Syrian regime elite who the State Department believes are responsible for committing these atrocities,” she wrote.
The U.S. has already threatened the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with coercive measures should it dare “violate the Caesar Law.” The UAE recently began working to normalize relations with the Syrian government as the military victory against terrorist factions the UAE once supported becomes a reality.
Banksy-style graffiti on a wall on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria. Photo | local source
The Caesar Act is intended to derail Syria’s post-war reconstruction efforts. Several Emirati companies have visited Damascus in recent months and have indicated an interest in collaborating with the Syrian government to rebuild specific areas of the country. Immediately prior to the launch of the Caesar Act, the Syrian parliament approved “oil exploration contracts signed with Mercury LLC and Velada LLC,” both Russian companies with a focus on Damascus and Northeast Syria, which is currently occupied by U.S. Coalition forces and allied militants, predominantly the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Effectively, the Caesar Act and all preceding economic sanctions are designed to prevent the necessary restoration and maintenance of essential infrastructure and basic services that provide stability, food, water, electricity, fuel, income, and medical care to the Syrian people.
The U.S.-led occupation of Syria’s oil fields is meant to prevent access to that oil for the Syrian people and to provide revenue for the U.S. Coalition’s proxy forces. The reality is that the U.S. and its allies are intent upon blockading, besieging and suffocating the Syrian people in a final bid to turn the nation against its government.
Where military measures have failed, economic pressure will now be increased with devastating consequences for a population that has already endured the horrifying effects of war and sectarian violence for 10 long years.
Researcher Rick Sterling’s carried out a thorough investigation into the fraud that was the Caesar Report and wrote a follow-up article detailing the U.S. legislative power grab through the Caesar Act that may be turned against any individual or entity perceived to be violating U.S. full-spectrum dominance with regards to Syria. An important point is made in Sterling’s article:
The exception to punishing sanctions are 1) Idlib province in the North West, controlled by Al Qaeda extremists and Turkish invading forces and 2) north east Syria controlled by U.S. troops and the proxy separatists known as the “Syrian Democratic Forces”. The U.S. has designated $50 million to support “humanitarian aid” to these areas. Other U.S. allies will pump in hundreds of millions more in aid and “investments”. U.S. dollars and Turkish lira are being pumped into these areas in another tactic to undermine the Syrian currency and sovereignty.”
Resource theft and the war on wheat
Just before the Caesar Act went into effect, the Syrian permanent representative to the UN, Dr. Bashar Al Jaafari, launched a stinging attack on the U.S.’ coercive measures that remorselessly target the Syrian people. Jaafari referred to the burning of trucks containing aid from the UN World Food Programme, set on fire by sectarian factions in Lebanon before they could reach Syria.
When the United States daily steals 200.000 barrels of oil from the Syrian oil fields, 400.000 tons of cotton, 5.000.000 sheep and sets fire to thousands of hectares of wheat fields, and deliberately weakens the value of the Syrian pound, and when it imposes coercive economic measures aiming to choke the Syrian people and occupying parts of the Syrian lands, and when the U.S. representative expresses her concern over the deteriorating situation of the Syrian citizen’s living conditions the logical question will be : are not these acts the symptoms of political schizophrenia? Does that not indicate an acute disease?”
Section 401 of the Caesar Act outlines the conditions for the lifting of sanctions against Syria. The final demand is “accountability for “perpetrators of war crimes in Syria and justice for victims of war crimes.” I have deliberately omitted the reference to the Syrian government. Why? The U.S. Coalition-aligned complex of media and UN agencies focus primarily upon the criminalization of the Syrian “regime” with scant regard for the war crimes being committed by the U.S. and the various terrorist or extremist groups indirectly and directly under their command. Yet there is surely a case for holding the U.S. Government accountable for war crimes and to demand justice for the victims of this protracted psychological war against the Syrian people, those who are rarely if ever mentioned in western media reports.
America’s scorched earth policy in Syria
The essence of food security for any country, but particularly during a grueling and destructive 10-year war, is in locally produced and controlled food sources. A very important element of the war against Syria has been the occupation, destruction, and theft of resources.
In May 2020, the U.S. forces in northeast Syria dropped thermal balloons from Apache helicopters over agricultural lands south of Hasaka which ignited serious crop fires that burned extensive areas of wheat and barley. Local sources reported that American helicopters also buzzed farmhouses and villages, terrorizing local populations.
On May 24, sources in the Hasaka countryside reported that Turkish militias had torched wheat and barley fields in the Tal Tamr and Abo Raseen areas. An estimated 2,000 hectares were devastated by these fires. While ostensibly Turkey’s agenda in Syria is separate from that of the U.S., Turkey is still a NATO member state and therefore it cannot be ruled out that the U.S. and Turkey were collaborating to deprive Syrians of their livelihoods, infrastructure, and food sources while enabling mercenary militias to benefit from the black market trade of resources, with Turkey as one of the main trading routes and receiving hubs.
According to estimates, 130,000 hectares of wheat and 180,000 hectares of barley have been destroyed by these fires to date.
A map produced by researcher and former Syrian Arab Army soldier, Ibrahim Mohammad, based in Aleppo, pinpoints areas that are being affected by the crop infernos. During a recent trip to the southeast, specifically to the villages east of Sweida city that were savagely attacked by U.S.-protected ISIS terrorists on the July 25, 2018 – I was told of fires mysteriously ignited to the West of Sweida destroying food crops there. The reemergence of extremist militia forces to the West of Daraa and in the south, including Nusra Front and ISIS, may point to the culprits responsible for the fires.
Map showing all the crop-fires raging intermittently across Syria. Credit | Ibrahim Mohammad
Another important and related element of this multi-spectrum war against Syria is the potential British intelligence role in training and equipping these armed groups that are now resurfacing and carrying out regular assassinations of government employees or targeting Syrian Arab Army vehicles with IEDs, kidnapping and running familiar subversive operations against the Syrian government and loyalists. A clandestine intelligence war is being ignited south of Damascus which forms part of the US Coalition hybrid war strategy designed to destabilise Syria without the need for all-out war. It is these same armed groups that are suspected, by local sources, to be responsible for the crop fires in the south of the country.
A pattern emerging is of a deliberate scorched earth policy being waged by the U.S. Coalition and its assets on the ground across the country. At the same time, Turkey is reported to be forcing Syrian farmers to sell their wheat to Turkey in exchange for Turkish currency and U.S.-backed Kurdish contras have restricted the sale of wheat to Damascus and are stockpiling reserves in areas they control, which account for an estimated 70 percent of total Syrian wheat production.
Anger among local farmers over the restrictions and hijacking of their livelihoods has grown. On June 30, civilians were filmed blocking trucks that were transporting stolen wheat into Turkey.
On June 14, 2020, Turkish-backed militant groups set fire to large areas planted with wheat and barley on the outskirts of Ras Al Ain and in the suburbs of Abou Rasseine in the north and northwest of Hasaka. The villages of Macharfa and Om Kheir, under occupation by Turkey-backed militants, had their crops devastated by these fires. Civilian homes were burned to the ground by the rampaging fires.
An elderly Assyrian man, Issac Esho Nissan, was one of the victims of the flames that raged in the Hasaka agricultural region. His hands and face were badly burned by the fire but he still valiantly fought the blaze in an attempt to prevent the ravaging of more crops by occupying forces. As elsewhere in Syria throughout this 10-year war, Syrian civilians have been forced to protect their meager resources against overwhelming and disproportionate force. According to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) at least two civilians have perished in the fires. The economic devastation and psychological pressure brought to bear upon an already war-ravaged population are hard to quantify and even harder to imagine.
The SDF is not the benevolent force in the region that they are often portrayed to be in the western media, which, along with the U.S. Coalition has attempted to mold them into a “democratic” alternative autonomy to Damascus. They have played an important role in furthering the U.S. Coalition’s plan to balkanize Syria and they are pivotal to U.S. and Israeli plans to occupy the Syrian territory east of the Euphrates, the nation’s bread and oil basket.
On June 27, SDF groups took over the building of the regional Syrian Grain Corporation administration center and occupied it by force. They now also occupy the General Electricity Company in Hasaka and employees have been forcibly removed from the premises. The SDF has effectively flip-flopped between Damascus and the U.S., now reaffirming allegiance to the renewed U.S. occupation of the territory managed by the SDF.
To date, the SDF is still occupying buildings in Hasaka. According to local sources, they have increased their military presence in the complex in order to prevent the return of government employees and the restoration of services to civilians. The SDF is also preventing the delivery of flour to the Al-Baath bakery in Qamishli City which is the main provider of bread to civilians in the area.
On July 2, Israeli forces patrolling the Golan Heights in southern Syria set fire to crops in Sehita, Quneitra (previously occupied by U.S.-backed militants and the White Helmets). Israeli soldiers then fired live ammunition on farmers and civilians who went to battle the flames.
Turkey, the U.S., and Israel form a monstrous triad of marauding forces who have entered Syrian territory in violation of international law and are in the process of asset-stripping on an industrial scale without a single ounce of outrage from the international community, who claim to defend the rights of Syrian citizens. How are these rights defended when their entire infrastructure is being reduced to bare bones by the military vulturism of the “humanitarian” hypocrites? Syria has multiple American knees on its neck, but still, we see no worldwide protests against the slow suffocation that Syrians are being forced to bear.
The mythical US troop withdrawal
While Trump had announced the prospect of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syrian territory in October 2019, the U.S. has, contrary to that announcement, steadily increased its military footprint in the north and northeast under cover of COVID-19. Convoys of military vehicles and equipment have been steadily pouring into the oil-rich region since borders were closed globally to allegedly prevent the spread of the virus. U.S. troop movement is apparently not restricted by social distancing and quarantine regulations.
On July 1, 2020, U.S. forces established a new military and airbase in Al Yarubiya, Hasaka. Reports from the area by SANA indicated that U.S. troops and the SDF are collaborating to secure wheat supplies, reinforcing the base with concrete blocks, and posting SDF guards to protect the perimeters of the camp and the wheat silos.
While reoccupying previously evacuated illegal military bases and imposing new ones upon Syrian territory, the U.S. and the SDF continue their theft of Syrian oil. Simultaneously the US Coalition media and UN “humanitarian” agencies are actively peddling the global Covid-19 “pandemic” narrative in Syria and supporting the push for a crippling lockdown in this already besieged nation.The U.S. “exceptional” and predatory neocolonial campaign continues unhindered by concerns about the spread of the virus to troops on the ground intent on looting a country of all it needs to survive.
On July 1, a convoy of U.S.-commissioned oil-tankers with a U.S. military escort drove through Syria and into Iraq via the “illegal” Semalka crossing in Al Malikiyah city in northeast Hasaka. These convoys are draining Syria of its life-blood. It is summer now and electricity outages caused by a lack of fuel to run generators are not as long or as disruptive, but come the winter, when rural areas could be reduced to one hour of electricity per day, this resource plundering will have a devastating effect upon the Syrian people.
The Trump administration is blatant about the exploitation of Syrian oil to provide revenue for their separatist poster boys in the SDF. In a recent statement, Marine Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, head of US Central Command (CENTCOM) said:
Additionally, we’re there to assist the SDF in the maintenance of theoil facilities for their use to help themgenerate income, which could be used for a variety of things,some of which would be to continue operations against ISIS,” (emphasis added)
The SDF is conducting similar looting campaigns in the northeast under the supervision of the U.S. Coalition. Entire railway tracks, running between Deir Ezzor and Hasaka are being dismantled and the looted iron is being traded across the border by what are effectively criminal racketeers. Nothing is left intact, railway stations that have weathered decades of history are stripped bare and all the metal is reportedly transferred to Turkey where it is melted down and transformed into new railway tracks to be sold outside of Syria.
There have also been reports of the U.S. installing Patriot air defense systems in northeast Syria. While this has not been categorically confirmed, sources inside Syria believe that it is a provocative move by the U.S. neoconservative lobby and the Pentagon, the prospect of which is very possible, especially when the considerable amount of territory actually being reoccupied by the U.S. military is factored in.
Deliberate and inhumane environmental warfare
Another byproduct of U.S. occupation is the pollution and contamination of water sources and agricultural lands. The SDF, who benefit most from the illegal oil revenue, appears to have neglected the maintenance of the dilapidated pipelines. Crude oil and waste products, many of which are carcinogenic, are seeping into rivers and streams. Inevitably when these rivers overflow onto agricultural land bordering their banks, the toxic waste is transferred to the crops.
A goat in oil-drenched areas of north-east Syria. Photo via Al Monitor.
Recent reports highlight the increase in cancer cases in these areas. The primitive refineries are breeding disease, birth defects, meningitis, skin conditions, and severe respiratory sickness. The birth defects include hypothyroidism at birth, thalassemia, hemophilia. All these horrifying effects on the Syrian population are concentrated in the areas around the oil-wells under control of the U.S. Coalition and their various proxies.
Sheep grazing oil in north-east Syria. Photo via Al Monitor.
Trees are dying, many of the green spaces are reportedly shrinking due to the air and soil pollution that is ignored by the occupying forces intent only upon the short-term revenue, not the long term preservation of the environment. Needless to say, this environmental disaster will not make it onto the agenda at any of the international meetings to discuss the “humanitarian” crisis in Syria. Creating waves over the mismanagement of occupied resources by a U.S.-sponsored occupier is apparently not an option. The chronic contamination of the vast network of rivers and streams that cover much of the northeast will ensure the toxicity of crops and livestock for decades to come. Plunder without conscience, the shameful hallmark of U.S. neocolonialism.
It must also be noted that the U.S. has admitted to the use of depleted uranium in northeast Syria which is likely also contributing to the toxic waste which is already having a devastating effect upon the Syrian population. This use of WMDs in an illegal interventionist war against the people of Syria is, of course, never mentioned by the U.S.-appointed arbiters of war crimes in Syria whose focus is on the alleged “chemical attacks” that have been hugely discredited by experts from within the OPCW who have exposed the organization to be corrupt and compromised – in particular with regards to the incident in Douma, eastern Damascus in April 2018.
The legacy of depleted uranium radioactive waste and its subsequent, horrifying mutilation of the human form is not something the U.S. is a stranger to. The level of contamination in Iraq after the U.S. allied aggression at various times in their history is still frighteningly high, and the transferral of irradiated scrap metal, often by dealers who are children, is ensuring the spread of the toxic waste. Recovery from U.S. invasion, occupation, and devastation of all resources either by obliteration, theft, or pollution are slow and painful, leaving entire generations suffering from the debilitating consequences while the U.S. walks free, a war criminal at large.
Hydro hegemony and water theft
In addition to the aforementioned “maximum pressure” measures, water is also being weaponized in order to collectively punish the Syrian people for withstanding 10 years of war without abandoning their support for their government, army and their allies.
Map showing the Euphrates river that dissects much of the region with its source in Turkey
Recently, local Syrian media and activists have been reporting the “shocking” reduction in water levels of the Euphrates river, the largest in Syria. From the city of Jarablus to the Tishreen Dam, Syrians are witnessing a substantial decrease in the water levels which threaten drought conditions if it continues. This is due to Turkey, a NATO member state, closing two dams that release water into Syria, located in Turkish territory, including the giant Elisu Dam.
As part of an agreement signed in 1987, Turkey committed to pumping a minimum of 500 cubic meters per second, yet that rate has now fallen to 150 cubic meters per second, agonizingly reduced for the people of the region and the whole of Syria. In Damascus, we are already feeling the effects as electricity outages have increased because of greater downtimes in running the hydroelectric power stations.
Over the years Turkey has periodically violated this agreement but water hegemony is now a savage instrument of war for the neo-Ottoman would-be emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Drinking water is restricted in the north and northeast and agricultural production is at risk from drought-like conditions.
The administration of Tishreen Dam, the second-largest hydroelectric station in Syria, has warned of devastating consequences for the economy of the local communities if Turkey continues to reduce water levels. Food insecurity and drought threaten to decimate the population. The Euphrates and Tishreen hydroelectric stations have had to reduce their shifts from 18 to 10 hours starting in mid-June. As already mentioned, this will have a knock-on effect upon the remainder of Syrian territory. Amateur video filmed by a member of the local community shows the result of Turkey cutting the water supply to an area in northeastern Syria.
Dr. Al Jaafari has highlighted the Turkish war-crimes at the UN but without any outrage from the “international community” that a NATO member state is effectively cutting off the water supply to more than one million Syrian civilians. Al Jaafari did not hesitate to point out this hypocrisy during his address:
We are saddened that those who are self-appointed defenders of the right of Syrians to restore their daily security and stability – whether from Western States, OCHA or United Nations specialized agencies, have not said a word to condemn these inhumane practices.”
Certainly, it is evident that whether it is Turkey, Israel, or the U.S., water, food, and essential infrastructure, including health and humanitarian sectors, are now being targeted in an effort to further pressurize the blockaded, besieged Syrian people. Criminal operations among the various contra factions are exacerbating the situation on the ground and intensifying economic misery and deprivation.
ISIS airlifts and thermal balloons on Syrian land
I will cover the hypocrisy of UN agencies and western “aid” organizations in another part of this series but in connection with the resource hegemony discussed in this Part One, it is worth pointing out the double-speak deployed by such agencies when it comes to covering the “humanitarian” situation in Syria.
There has been a huge outcry over the apparent inaccessibility for foreign “aid” into northeast Syria due to Russia and China’s veto of a UN resolution to keep “aid” flowing into the U.S.-Turkish-SDF occupied region via the Al Yarubiah crossing that links northern Iraq to northeastern Syria.
It is no secret that aid that enters this region may be hijacked by Turkish or American-backed “boots on the ground,” but there is another element to this issue that should raise eyebrows. While the claim is that “aid” is not reaching these U.S.-controlled areas, the U.S. is allegedly transporting ISIS fighters from Syria across the border into Iraq. So the movement of troops during a “global pandemic” crisis is not restricted to the U.S. Army but also to the terrorist group which has been the pretext for the “war against terror” on Syrian soil.
While the U.S. can move client terrorist fighters around on Syrian territory and is quite happy to transport them into Iraq, the U.S. does not apply itself to providing genuine humanitarian aid to the Syrian people effectively under their control. The hue and cry at the UN and among aligned human rights groups like Amnesty International are based upon the usual deliberate obfuscation of reality on the ground.
How many of you actually thought about COVID-19 while reading about the U.S. military and economic strategy that has been ramped up against Syria while we are all focused on a virus that has brought the world to a standstill? For the U.S. alliance, business as usual, supporting terrorism, destroying the planet and bringing misery, poverty, and starvation to yet another nation in the name of “democracy” because the government does not comply with U.S.-dominated foreign policy.
The Syrian government’s defense of agricultural lands
The genuine resource crisis in the northeast is being used to further criminalize the Syrian government by the UN and aligned media in the West.
A recent article in the Financial Timessheds copious crocodile tears over the starvation of Syrian children without one mention of U.S. Coalition sanctions, resource theft, the fraudulent Caesar Act and the 10-year war waged by the U.S. alliance to remove the Syrian government in violation of any applicable version of international law. This lying-by-omission has been a regular tactic used by the war-mongering establishment media outlets when it comes to Syria. Nor does the article mention the measures being taken by the beleaguered Syrian government to combat the agricultural crisis.
The Syrian government has increased the purchase price of wheat from 225 Syrian pounds (SYP) to 400 SYP per kilogram in order to support the agricultural sector. The funding plan to combat the effects of the U.S. scorched earth policy with regards to wheat and barley crops amounts to 800 billion SYP per annum in “extraordinary” response to the looming crisis generated by hostile external forces.
Anyone who is being misled by western media into believing the Syrian state would relish the starvation or wholesale deprivation of its citizens should read this enlightening essay by a former research intern at the British Embassy, Damascus, Louis Allday. Allday describes the Syrian government, comprising a complex of national institutions, civil society organizations and charitable institutions, as responding proactively and rapidly to the drought that ravaged the country from 2006 until the start of the U.S. allied aggression in 2011.
How that drought may well have been orchestrated by Turkey in order to tenderize the population prior to the fabrication of the “Arab Spring” charade in Syria, is a subject for another article at a later date.
Turning a blind eye to the causes of Syrian misery
At the end of June, “donor nations” from within the U.S. Coalition that has plunged Syria into the abyss of war and economic anguish for the last 10 years, pledged a total of $ 7.7 billion to tackle the “deepening” humanitarian crisis in Syria. COVID-19 was cited as one of the factors compounding the misery of 17 million Syrians – to date, Syria has had 372 confirmed cases, 14 deaths and 126 recoveries from the virus. The majority of cases have been found in Damascus or the surrounding countryside, many among those returning from abroad.
I have outlined the flaunting of global “lockdown” policies by the U.S. military and their affiliates on the ground in Syria so this pseudo protectionism towards the Syrian people over COVID-19 is exposed as the fraud it really is.
“EU Crisis Management Commissioner Janez Lenarcic announced the total at the end of a day-long online pledging conference organized by the EU and United Nations” – he said:
We have today expressed solidarity with the Syrian people, not only with words, but with concrete pledges of support that will make a difference for millions of people.”
I will be investigating the destination of the financial and material “aid” that enters areas of Syria not under the control of the internationally recognized Syrian government, at a later date. However for these nations to be genuinely in solidarity with the Syrian people they should be campaigning for America and allies to lift their knee from the neck of these people and to end sanctions, to banish the Caesar Law which is illegal and immoral and to end the support for terrorist and separatist factions inside the country.
Professor Michel Raimbaud, a former French diplomat, argues that the Western silent complicity with economic terrorism must come to an end. Raimbaud said:
Imposing sanctions on countries is more barbaric than military confrontation which is nearing an end – it is an illegal and immoral war. It is a stain on humanity. These sanctions must be lifted immediately and unconditionally.”
What we are seeing in Syria is the unfolding of the US/UK-led neo-colonialist blueprint that was previously used against Iraq. In 1991 the U.S. alliance deliberately bombed Iraq’s water purification and electricity infrastructure before imposing sanctions that prevented their restoration. Sanctions that are more accurately described as a military blockade, just as we are seeing now in Syria. In both 1991 and 2003, US allied bombing campaigns targeted animal feed stores, poultry farms, fertilizer warehouses, water pumping stations, irrigation systems, fuel depots and agricultural installations. These destructive tactics designed to undermine the survival mechanisms of the nation under attack are being replayed in Syria with similar cataclysmic consequences.
Late 2019, I had a meeting with the administration of the Ministry of Agriculture in Lattakia on the Syrian coast. During the meeting, I was informed that the US Coalition-sponsored occupying forces have decimated 30% of the Syrian livestock sectors, 60-70,000 beehives have been stolen and merchanted in Turkey. Villages they invaded were looted, agricultural equipment was either destroyed or sold in Turkey. Over 30% of Syrian forestry has been cut down and the wood sold to Turkey. Between 2012-2015, terrorist groups occupied protected zones in an area about 47km away from Lattakia – this led to extensive damage to land that had nurtured 260 rare plant species including 65 species of medicinal plants.
Around 650,000 hectares of Syrian land are planted with an estimated 90 million Olive trees. In Afrin (north-west of Aleppo) there are 18 million trees under control of the Al Qaeda-led militants. Aleppo has traditionally been the leading producer, followed by Idlib, Tartous, Homs, Lattakia and Hama. The average annual production is 150,000 tonnes of oil and 350,000 tonnes of olives. There are 800 distilleries across Syria with most of them clustered in the above mentioned provinces. Currently, about half the productive areas are under the control of Turkish proxy forces, dominated by Nusra Front (Al Qaeda in Syria). Turkish traders have made huge profits buying Olive oil at low prices, blending with Turkish oil and exporting to Europe at elevated prices.
US Coalition economic sanctions do not affect Syrian resources stolen by coalition members. Syrians who, themselves, might attempt to revive trade with Europe would be immediately punished and restricted by these unilateral economic shackles.
American barbarism and genocidal supremacism must be called to account. The rogue-state standards that the U.S. is setting for the world will threaten all Humanity now and in the future. Syrian lives matter because without this beleaguered nation setting us the example for resilience, resourcefulness and resistance against neo-colonialist hegemony, perpetual war will be the status quo for the foreseeable future.
Special thanks for help with research for this article and the double checking of information goes to Ibrahim Mohammad, Syrian activist and researcher, former Syrian Arab Army soldier.
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All images in this article are from the author unless otherwise stated
Citizens worldwide are still being urged to avoid direct contact with other people in order to protect themselves from infection with the corona virus, even though this virus does not pose any particular danger and “social distancing” has not been proven to be an effective protection. The relationship with the conspecifics is as important for us humans as the air we breathe. The restriction of social contacts is therefore an attack on human nature and leads to serious consequential damage for young and old: feelings of loneliness, depression, addictive behavior, stress, hopelessness and suicidal thoughts increase dramatically. In older people, serious physical illnesses are added as a result of lack of family contact and lack of exercise. Their premature demise is not collateral damage for the global elite, but is intended. We also have to worry about the youth.
As an educational scientist and psychologist, I have long been pointing out to parents and educators that a large part of the young generation, despite countless virtual contacts with peers, is isolated and lives in its own “Facebook world”. Renowned brain researchers and psychiatrists are also sounding the alarm. Since the adult generation often does not seek or have access to this world of their children, many of them are left to themselves and no longer in exchange with their parents and the adult world. They prefer to hang on the drip of the Internet giants and internalize their view of man and the world.
More and more parents are complaining that they have difficulties in getting into a relationship with their children, that they don’t let their children tell them anything and even turn away from them. Enlightened psychologists and educators know that this development has been consciously driven forward by interested parties for years. For the isolated human being, isolated from his conspecifics, whose family and communal roots have been cut off, is for global rat catchers and their governments an easy prey. It can be better controlled, manipulated and instrumentalized for violent excesses and wars.
In difficult times like the present, the lonely and isolated young person lacks the maintaining family and friendship ties and thus loses courage and orientation. The new virtual “friends” and companions are also followers or even part of the global rat catchers. This development has followed a hidden agenda for decades. All parents, educators and those interested in the common good must know this.
Recently, French bestselling author Michel Houellebecq also commented on this topic: He does not believe in a better world after Corona. On the contrary, he sees a tendency to accelerate isolation and alienation. In a letter to the radio station “France Inter” he writes:
“We will not wake up in a new world after the containment; it will be the same, only a little worse… (…) For some years now, all technological developments, whether small (video on demand, contactless payment) or large (teleworking, internet shopping, social networks), have resulted in the reduction of material and especially human contacts (as the main objective?).(1)
He believes that the pandemic is a great pretext for this serious trend.
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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is an educational scientist and graduate psychologist. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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