Global Research

The New York Times reports that U.S. “retaliatory” strikes in Iraq ended up killing regular Iraqi soldiers and policemen and one civilian:

Iraqi military officials strongly condemned the United States military on Friday for airstrikes launched overnight that they said killed three Iraqi soldiers, two police officers and a civilian worker, and damaged an unfinished civilian airport.

American officials said on Friday that the strikes had hit sites where rockets and other weapons were stored by an Iranian-backed militia, Kataib Hezbollah. But according to multiple Iraqi military officials, who so far have been largely supportive of the U.S. role in Iraq, the bombings killed members of the Iraqi military and police. It was not clear whether they had killed any Kataib Hezbollah fighters.

The U.S. is carrying out attacks inside Iraqi territory against Iraqis in blatant violation of that country’s sovereignty. In this case, it appears that the strikes didn’t even hit the intended targets, but killed several people that had absolutely nothing to do with the rocket attack earlier this week. The Iraqi government is once again predictably furious that our government is committing acts of war that kill their people. A statement from Iraq’s military command denounced the attack:

In a statement released on Friday morning, the Iraqi Joint Command described the attack as “an aggression” that “targeted Iraqi military institutions violating the principal of partnership” between the Iraqi security forces and the Americans.

This attack “cost the lives of Iraqi fighters while they were doing their military duty,” the statement said.

The U.S. claims to value the Iraqi government as a partner, but in practice our government treats them as if they are a colony or protectorate. Our forces attack and kill some of their troops, and when they object we tell them that it was their fault for being there. The head of Central Command blew off Iraqi complaints as arrogantly as possible:

He and other American military officials were dismissive of the Iraqi complaints given that Iraqi soldiers and police officers are often located on bases with Iranian-backed militias like Kataib Hezbollah.

“I don’t know whether the Iraqis are happy or unhappy,” General McKenzie said. “These locations that we struck are clear locations of terrorist bases. If Iraqi military forces were there, I would say it’s probably not a good idea to position yourself with Kataib Hezbollah in the wake of a strike that killed Americans and coalition members.”

It takes extraordinary gall to lecture the Iraqis like this when these are their bases in their own country. Iraqi military forces are there because it is their base. Calling it a “terrorist base” may make McKenzie feel better, but it doesn’t change the fact that our forces are attacking Iraqi forces on their soil against the wishes of their government. We commit acts of aggression against them and then berate them for daring to say anything about it.

U.S. forces have been bombing and killing Iraqis for most of my lifetime. It is insane that the U.S. is still engaged in hostilities in the same country almost thirty years after Desert Storm. The official reasons for these attacks change, but the results are the same: more dead Americans and Iraqis. These strikes serve no discernible American interest. Our military presence in Iraq is unwanted, but it is also unnecessary for U.S. security. Keeping troops there just makes them targets for no good reason. The U.S. has no vital interests there and nothing that warrants a continued military presence. The U.S. has been waging a forever war in Iraq for decades, and it needs to end before any more lives are lost.

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Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC, where he also keeps a solo blog. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

Not satisfied with Canada’s largest public relations machine, the Canadian Forces also employ various “arm’s-length” institutions to push their influence over the discussion of military and international affairs.

For example, the Conference of Defence Associations (CDA) Institute recently published a half-page ad in the Globe and Mail to announce its Conference on Security and Defence. The March 3 and 4 meeting at the venerable Château Laurier was sponsored by the Department of National Defence (DND) and Global Affairs as well as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and other arms companies. As in previous years, CDA’s confab in Ottawa drew leading military and political officials, including the Chief of the Defence Staff, who heard speakers hype security threats and push for increased military spending.

The headlines the conference generated included: “Russia poses most immediate military threat to Canada, top general says” (Globe and Mail), “Canada and the West are at war with Russia whether they want it or not: military experts” (Global) and “Top Canadian general calls out Russia and China for ‘antagonistic actions’” (CTV).

None of these stories explained what the CDA Institute actually is. The group describes itself as a “non-partisan, independent, non-profit organization [that] expresses its ideas and opinions with a view to influencing government security and defence policy.” Established in 1932, then Minister of Defence Donald Matheson Sutherland backed CDA’s creation. Since its inception CDA has been directly or indirectly financed by DND. Initially, member associations paid a small part of the funds they received from DND to CDA. But, three decades later the role was reversed. CDA received a block grant from DND and parcelled out the money to its various member associations.

Since its creation, defence ministers and governor generals (as commander in chief) have regularly appeared at CDA’s annual conference. The governor general, prime minister, defence minister and chief of the defence staff are honorary patrons or vice patrons of the organization.

At the height of Canada’s war in Afghanistan CDA received a highly politicized five-year $500,000 contract from DND. University of Ottawa professor Amir Attaran wrote, “that money comes not with strings, but with an entire leash.” To receive the money CDA committed to producing 15 opinion pieces or letters to the editor in major Canadian newspapers, generating 29 media references to the organization and eliciting 100 requests for radio/television interviews. The media work was part of a requirement to “support activities that give evidence of contributing to Canada’s national policies.” CDA didn’t initially disclose its 2007–12 DND sponsorship agreement, which was reviewed by cabinet.

CDA represents over 50 military associations ranging from the Naval Association of Canada to the Canadian Infantry Association, Royal Canadian Legion to the Military Intelligence Association. It is run by high-ranking former officers.

CDA publishes Security and Defence Briefings, Vimy Papers and Presentations and Position Papers. The organization’s quarterly journal ON TRACK “promotes informed public debate on security and defence issues and the vital role played by the Canadian Armed forces in society.” CDA has also published influential books such as Queens professor Douglas Bland’s A Nation at Risk: The Decline of the Canadian Forces.

To encourage militarist research, CDA awards a number of prizes. It puts on an annual graduate student symposium where $3,000 goes to the winning paper, $2,000 to second place and $1,000 to third place. CDA co-sponsors the Ross Munro Media Award to a “journalist who has made a significant contribution to understanding defence and security issues” and gives the Vimy Award to a “Canadian who has made a significant and outstanding contribution to the defence and security of Canada and the preservation of (its) democratic values.”

CDA advocates militarism. Its first official resolution noted “the urgent need for an increased appropriation for national defence.” At almost every CDA convention between 1946 and 1959 a resolution passed in favour of compulsory military training. A 1968 resolution called for universal military training, expressing concern that a generation of Canadians had become “unused to the idea of military service.”

In the 1980s CDA developed the idea of the “Total Defence of Canada”. In 1985 Colonel H. A. J. Hutchinson told a CDA meeting: “I would say that the Total Defence of Canada requires much more than just the support of the Canadian Armed Forces, it involves the organization of our total economy, our industrial base, towards a single objective — the defence of this country.” Hinting at the need to talk up US President Ronald Reagan’s revival of Cold War rhetoric, Hutchison said this “can only be made [possible] if the Canadian people perceive that it is necessary and that, in fact, it is the only course of action open to them.”

A 2000 CDA report funded by the Business Council on National Issues, the Molson Foundation and DND advocated increased military spending to defend free trade. It claimed “the defence establishment, including the Canadian Forces, plays a key role in an international policy which provides the insurance and the means which allow the national interest to flourish. It contributes to stability at home and abroad, thus supporting the development of an environment congenial to trade.”

In November Richard Fadden told CDA’s Vimy Dinner Canada had to be “clear-eyed” about Russia and China, which are prepared to “use virtually any means to attain their goals.” Fadden claimed, “the risks posed by these two countries are certainly different, but they are generally based on advancing all their interests to the detriment of the West.”

For the military and the industries that profit from militarism, it is important to have “arms-length” organizations that create the illusion of a diversity of voices. But honest writers should be blunt about the CDA. It is a war machine front group, created and controlled by the military.

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Defender Europe 20, NATO’s biggest wargames for over 25 years, is getting under way this month. 20,000 US troops are participating in the US’s largest deployment to Europe in over quarter of a century. With 18 states involved totaling 37,000 troops, this will be an extraordinary provocation in Europe’s border regions with Russia, including Georgia. With troop and equipment movements lasting from February through to July, the exercises themselves will take place in April and May.

2,500 UK troops will participate. According to the British Army website, #DefenderEurope demonstrates the UK’s commitment to #NATO and that the UK remains utterly committed to European security. But looking more closely at the exercises, this is clearly a rehearsal for a US invasion of Europe targeted on Russia. And going from bad to worse, the US army will also conduct Defender Pacific exercises in the ‘Indo-Pacific theater’ which will focus on ‘a South China Sea scenario’.

Those following US ‘defence’ strategy will see the clear link with the 2018 National Defense Strategy where ‘staying ahead’ of Russia and China was the clear strategic reorientation – away from the previous counter-terrorism emphasis towards ‘inter-state strategic competition’. In other words preparing for war against Russia and China. Indeed, US Army propaganda explicitly states: ‘DEFENDER-Europe 20 operationalizes the U.S. National Defense Strategy’.

So Defender 20 exercises in both Europe and Asia are the military outcomes of the strategic change and both follow the same pattern. Whilst many different national forces are involved, the central focus is on rapid deployment from the US to Europe and the Pacific.

In Europe, 20,000 US troops comprising active soldiers, national guard and reservists will be transported to seaports and airports in the Netherlands, Germany and Poland, alongside vast quantities of equipment. Personnel and equipment, including so-called ‘prepositioned stock’ already in Europe, will travel 4,000 kilometres for the exercises before returning to the US.

While the US Army has 85,000 permanently stationed troops in the Indo-Pacific region and already conducts military exercises with allies and partners, the purpose of Defender 20 in Asia is to practice rapid deployment of tens of thousands of troops from the US to the Pacific.

We are already facing the practical implementation of Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review – so-called low-yield, ‘usable’ nukes are already out there on US navy submarines. Now we are seeing active preparations for the mass war anticipated in his National Defense Strategy.

We must mobilise and work internationally to oppose these dangerous developments – and raise public awareness of the dangers they present.

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Kate Hudson has been General Secretary of CND since September 2010. Prior to this she served as the organisation’s Chair from 2003. She is a leading anti-nuclear and anti-war campaigner nationally and internationally.

While the large street mobs plaguing Hong Kong’s streets have more or less subsided, the foreign-funded movement and its supporters continue seeking every opportunity to perpetuate their agenda.

This agenda, despite the Western media claiming it is centred on advancing human rights and democracy while opposing Beijing’s “authoritarianism,” is in all actuality merely racist and anti-Chinese, a scion of both British and American attempts to impose their rule on Hong Kong and use the territory as a vector to project power across into mainland China.

Far from the conclusions reached by pro-Beijing media, the most recent example of the so-called “pro-democracy” movement’s overt racism and its attempts to hide behind legitimate excuses was covered by the pro-Western South China Morning Post (SCMP).

The article titled, “More than 100 HK restaurants refuse to serve customers from China,” at first attempts to depict supporters of the recent “pro-democracy” mobs barring mainlanders as taking measures merely to fend off the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak.

But soon even the pro-Western newspaper is forced to admit not only legitimate human rights concerns regarding what is clearly a racist and discriminatory policy, but that the restaurants involved are indeed supporters of the recent anti-Chinese mobs indicating that their real motivation is political and concerns regarding the coronavirus are a poor attempt to disguise it.

The article claims:

More than 100 restaurants in Hong Kong have refused to serve diners from mainland China during the coronavirus outbreak, according to a human rights group that is warning firms against crossing the line into racial discrimination.

The article however eventually admits that one of the restaurants investigated was previously and openly a supporter of anti-Chinese mobs masked as “pro-democracy” protests. The article stated:

The findings came three weeks after the EOC advised Kwong Wing Catering, a popular local restaurant chain — which supported the anti-government protesters who took to the city’s streets from last June — to remove notices displayed at its outlets. Those posters said the eatery would only serve Hongkongers and that its staff did not speak Mandarin.

While organisations like the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) and others are stepping up to speak out against this pattern of increasingly bold racism and discrimination, silent are the same foreign organisations that supported the anti-Chinese mobs at the height of their violence on the grounds of defending “human rights.”

The mobs then and now continue a blatant agenda of racism and discrimination, not against the government in Beijing and its policies but clearly against the over 1.3 billion people of China itself.

This reveals the movement, backed by Washington, London and Brussels, as merely hiding behind notions like democracy and human rights while in actuality trampling both while pursuing agendas built on the worst imaginable values (or lack there of).

In a time of crisis like this most recent coronavirus outbreak, those truly dedicated to humanity and its movement forward into a better future are revealed. So too are those who merely pose as progressives yet seek every opportunity to exploit the misfortune of others to advance their own self-serving and ultimately anti-social agendas.

The coronavirus has served as a litmus test, exposing the true nature of individuals, organisations and nations alike.

The “pro-democracy” mobs and their supporters have been put to the test as well, and to no one’s surprise, they have failed.

For the rest of the world looking on, if they haven’t already entirely tuned out Hong Kong’s disingenuous faux democracy movement, they now have another example of the West and its “pro-democracy” proxies revealing their true nature.

The coronavirus has caused much damage to individuals’ health, to the economy and strained relations between nations, but it has also helped shine a light on many who have for too long posed as forces of good while all along perpetuating the very worst.

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Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image is from NEO

A volley of rockets struck the Camp Taji military base in Iraq on the evening of March 11, killing three US-led coalition service members, two of them Americans and one British, and injuring 12 others. The targeted military base is a large facility located in a rural region approximately 27km north of Baghdad.

After the shelling, Iraqi security forces found the improvised rocket launcher used in the attack in the nearby area of Rashidiya. It was forty 107mm barrels installed on the back of a Kia Bongo truck. Three rockets were still remaining inside the barrel.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the attack. However, over the past months US-linked targets have witnessed a number of similar rocket attacks. Most of them led to no casualties. In general, US sources blame Kataib Hezbollah and other Iran-linked groups for these incidents.

The situation became especially tense after the US strike on a convoy of Iraqi and Iranian officers moving near Baghdad International Airport on January 3. The prominent Iranian general, commander of the Qods Force, Qassem Soleimani, was assassinated in this strike. The attack caused a large-scale crisis in the region, and prompted an Iranian retaliatiory missile strike on US military bases in Iraq. Washington swallowed a public attack on its forces by a state claiming that there were no casualties. In the following weeks, these ‘no casualties’ steadily turned into at least 110. All of them, according to the official version, received traumatic brain injury.

Additionally, the Iraqi Parliament accepted a bill demanding US troop withdrawal from the country, which Washington ignored, even threatening Baghdad with devastating sanctions, should Iraq continue to act like it is a sovereign, rather than occupied, country.

Following the attack on Camp Taji, ‘unknown aircraft’, most likely belonging to the US-led coalition, struck positions belonging to Iranian-backed groups near the Syrian-Iraqi border. The surroundings of the Syrian town of al-Bukamal, located on the highway linking Deir Ezzor and Baghdad, became the main target of the attack. Pro-Iranian sources claimed that the strikes caused material damage only.

Meanwhile, US forces in northeastern Syria strengthened their military positions by deploying additional howitzers. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces declared in an official statement that the military buildup was needed to provide US bases with additional protection. Another troop withdrawal announced by the administration of President Donald Trump is apparently successfully ongoing.

Syria’s northwest is also a source of tensions. On March 11, intense fighting erupted among Turkish-backed armed groups in the town of Azaz. As always, the incident was caused by internal contradictions between Turkish proxies who are involved in a wide range of various criminal activities and regularly clash for spheres of influence.

In the region of Greater Idlib, Turkish-backed groups, including those linked with al-Qaeda, are preparing to sabotage another ceasefire deal. They reinforced their positions north of the M4 highway and east of Jisr al-Shughur and declared that they are not planning to withdraw from any areas south of the highway. These statements go contrary to Turkish claims that preparations for the creation of a security zone in the area and the start of joint Turkish-Russian patrols are successfully in progress. Despite these, Ankara continues blaming the Syrian government for supposed violations of the Moscow deal and threatening it with military action should the ceasefire be violated. It seems that Turkey once again seeks to sweep agreements regarding the withdrawal and neutralization of radicals under the carpet, thus pushing the region into a new round of military escalation.

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Today, March 12, prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia ended the grand jury of Julian Assange and Wikileaks in which Chelsea Manning refused to testify. As a result, US District Court Judge Anthony Trenga ordered the immediate release of Chelsea Manning.

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HUGE NEWS: Chelsea Manning @xychelsea has been ordered FREE after a year jailed for refusing to testify against @wikileaks.

She accrued over a quarter million dollars in fines, which are not being waived. #ChelseaManning #JulianAssange pic.twitter.com/6VnuhSd2RL

— Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) March 12, 2020

Manning has been incarcerated since May 2019. Judge Trenga had tried to coerce Manning into testifying by imposing a fine for every day she resisted even though she said repeatedly that she would not violate her principles, which include opposition to the secret grand jury system, and would never testify.

A hearing was scheduled this Friday on a motion for release filed in February 2020 by her attorneys. Manning was arguing that her long time in jail had shown she could not be coerced to testify and that her incarceration was a punishment, which is illegal under US law. On Wednesday, her lawyers and Alexandria Sheriff Dana Lawhorne reported she attempted suicide in jail. With the end of the grand jury and Manning’s release, the Friday hearing was canceled.

In May 2019, Manning wrote a letter to Judge Anthony Trenga, the presiding judge regarding her incarceration. The letter examined the history of grand juries and how they no longer serve their original purpose. Manning wrote:

“I am certainly not alone in thinking that the grand jury process, which at one time acted as an independent body of citizens along the lines of a civilian police review board, slowly transitioned into the unbridled arm of the police and prosecution in ways that run contrary to the grand jury’s originally intended purposes.”

She pointed out how grand juries were originally independent of the police and were investigations by citizens without a prosecutor.  In fact, grand juries were originally a check on government as Manning wrote, they “nullified unjust laws or their unjust application.”  She told the judge that only the US and Liberia continue to use grand juries as many western and developed nations have abandoned the process.

After providing the judge with a “nuanced understanding of my conscientious objection to the grand jury” she wrote:

“Each person must make the world we want to live in around us where we stand… I object to the use of grand juries as tools to tear apart vulnerable communities. I object to this grand jury in particular as an effort to frighten journalists and publishers, who serve a crucial public good. I have had these values since I was a child, and I’ve had years of confinement to reflect on them. For much of that time, I depended for survival on my values, my decisions, and my conscience. I will not abandon them now.”

Manning has once again shown courageous political leadership, standing up to an abusive criminal justice system and exposing the corrupt grand jury process that has often been used for political purposes — from indicting anti-slavery activists to members of the Black Panther Party — and now against the political prisoner, Julian Assange for being an editor and publisher who told the truth about US war crimes, violations of international law and how US foreign policy dominated by corporate interests.

Manning has also shown great bravery in advancing trans rights. While imprisoned in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, she fought for her right to treatment. She also struggled for her right to be held in the women’s prison in Alexandria. Her openness about being trans has been an inspiration to others. As Lexi McMenamin wrote: “One in six trans Americans — and one in two black trans Americans — have been to prison, according to Lambda Legal. Incarcerated trans people face higher levels of violence, and experience higher rates of rape and sexual assault. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, trans people are ‘ten times as likely to be sexually assaulted by their fellow inmates and five times as likely to be sexually assaulted by staff.’”

The injustice against Manning continues. Manning’s attorneys sought to have the fines imposed by Judge Trenga vacated. Manning is facing more than $256,000 in fines, which have been accumulating at a rate of $1,000 a day. The court left those fines in place.

The incarceration of Manning was a violation of US law as the authority to incarcerate a recalcitrant witness was abused by Judge Trenga. Nils Melzer the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment wrote that Manning’s incarceration violated international law focusing on the prohibition against torture.  While we are pleased Manning has been released, she should have not served anytime in jail and the fines against her should be vacated.

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Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance where this article was originally published. 

Featured image is from Massoud Nayeri

The MH-17 trial started on March 9 in a heavily guarded judicial complex in Scheveningen, The Hague. The process is being followed by a lot of media attention.

Monied interests and government officials serving them at the federal, state, and local levels comprise America’s ruling class.

Time and again, their actions in cahoots with each other show indifference toward ordinary people — including at times of economic and other duress periods like now.

Even America’s finest hour during a decade of Great Depression fell short by not doing enough to create jobs and stimulate economic recovery — why it took WW II and its preparatory buildup to restore economic health to the country.

The US Great Recession that began in late 2007 never ended for ordinary Americans to this day because Bush/Cheney, Obama/Biden, Trump/Pence, and the Wall Street owned and operated Fed acted only to aid business, the markets, investors, and other high-net-worth individuals, not the economy or all Americans equitably.

As a result, the late 2007 period to the present day constitutes America’s 2nd Great Depression for ordinary Americans.

It’s gone unreported with real unemployment exceeding 20%, most working Americans way underemployed, most households impoverished or bordering it, most jobs available part-time or temp low-pay ones with few or no benefits.

Things today are worsening as economic conditions weaken — the nation perhaps already in recession, its depth and duration only to be known after the fact, the human toll likely to be downplayed.

Reality is polar opposite Trump’s January hyperbolic claim that the US economy is “the best it has ever been” — his regime and Congress fiddling while Rome burns.

According to economist Michael Feroli, Q II economic data will likely show economic decline exceeding its 2008 Lehman moment level.

Since the dot.com bubble burst at the end of the neoliberal 90s, force-fed austerity has been US policy when economic stimulus is needed — especially under Obama/Biden and Trump/Pence during a 2nd Great Depression for ordinary Americans.

On December 16, 1933 during the earlier Great Depression, economist John Maynard Keynes wrote an open letter to Franklin Roosevelt, calling for all-out stimulative policies to restore economic health.

He urged “spend, spend, spend.” Supply “cheap and abundant credit.” Stress “speed and quick” recovery.

Focus on “increas(ing) the national output.” Boost purchasing power by “put(ting) people back to work” on good high-paying jobs.

“(I)ncrease aggregate purchasing power.” Undertake “a large volume of loan expenditures under government auspices.”

Choose projects able “to mature quickly on a large scale.”

Roosevelt only partially followed Keynes’ advice, why a decade of Great Depression persisted that could have ended much sooner with all-out fiscal stimulus only occurring in the run-up to and during WW II.

Policies under the Clintons, GW Bush, Obama and Trump were and remain world’s apart from how FDR addressed economic crisis conditions even though he didn’t go far enough.

US ruling regimes since the 1990s focused on and continue focusing only on lifting all yachts, the vast majority of Americans left adrift on their own, sink or swim — along with waging endless wars of aggression against invented enemies to feed the nation’s military, industrial, security, media complex.

On Friday, House members passed HR 6201: Families First Coronavirus Response Act by a 363 – 40 majority vote hours after Trump declared a COVID-19 national emergency.

He should have declared an economic national emergency, not a health-related one, along with announcing all-out stimulative policies to reverse economic decline, an initiative to aid all Americans, not just its privileged class as he’s operated so far.

The House measure moves to the Senate for consideration, possible changes, followed by resolution between both Houses, Trump highly likely to sign it into law.

Although something to help ordinary Americans through likely worsening economic conditions ahead is better than nothing, House legislation falls woefully short.

It’s a tepid measure when large-scale economic stimulus is needed, including significant protection for laid off workers.

Broken clocks are right twice daily. Even establishment NYT editors highlighted “a giant hole” in the House measure, explaining the following:

“(T)he bill guarantees sick leave only to about 20 percent of workers. Big employers like McDonald’s and Amazon are not required to provide any paid sick leave, while companies with fewer than 50 employees can seek hardship exemptions from the Trump” regime.

Mike Pence told US workers to stay home if sick, falsely saying: “You’re not going to miss a pay check” — a bald-faced Big Lie for around 80% of US workers.

If ill for a protracted period for any reason, they’ll be uncompensated by their companies because of House indifference toward them — wanting their employers and their profits protected, not them.

Nothing short of protection for all workers is acceptable. A guaranteed living wage should be mandated public policy, prioritizing the welfare of all Americans.

The woefully weak House measure requires some companies to provide paid sick leave for full-time workers only up to 10 days.

Temp and part-time workers are left on their own, full-time workers as well after 10 days if still too ill to work for any reasons.

The Times: House legislation “does not apply to the nation’s largest employers — companies with 500 or more workers, who together employ roughly 54 percent of all workers.”

The measure “provides some compensation for workers who need to take longer leaves under the Family and Medical Leave Act — but this too excludes workers at big companies.”

The bill grants hardship exemptions to companies with less than 50 employees, comprising over another fourth of the nation’s workforce.

In total, House legislation leaves around 80% of US workers unprotected if ill for a protracted period.

The measure only focuses on paid sick leave related to COVID-19 illnesses — a relatively minor situation that hasn’t remotely reached epidemic levels and may not ahead.

Major protracted epidemics of cancer, heart disease, stroke, disabling injuries, and other serious illnesses requiring time off from work are unaddressed in the House measure and what’s likely to become law in the days ahead.

The Times got it right, saying: “The House’s failure to require universal paid sick leave is an embarrassment that endangers the health of workers, consumers and the broader American public.”

Governments are responsible for serving all their people. From inception, US ruling authorities served privileged interests exclusively at the expense of the public welfare.

New Deal, Fair Deal, and Great Society programs were exceptions to the rule.

Since the neoliberal 90s, especially post-9/11, they’ve been fast eroding en route toward disappearing altogether — with bipartisan support.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

On March 13, House members passed HR 6201: Families First Coronavirus Response Act by a 363 – 40 majority vote hours after Trump declared a national COVID-19 emergency.

The measure moves to the Senate. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said its members “will need to carefully review the version just passed by the House,” adding:

“I believe the vast majority of senators in both parties will agree we should act swiftly to secure relief for American workers, families, and small businesses.”

Trump’s declaration makes about $50 billion in federal funds available to states and US territories for use in dealing with and containing COVID-19.

He suspended entry of foreign nationals to the US who’ve been in Europe since end of February.

US citizens and residents returning from Europe will be screened for possible COVID-19 infection and quarantined if necessary.

Interest on debt-entrapping student loans are temporarily suspended. The Department of Energy will take advantage of low oil prices to increase the US (energy) strategic reserve.

Trump announced support for HR 6201. According to Speaker Pelosi, it authorizes $8.3 billion (in) emergency funding,” adding:

“This legislation is about testing, testing, testing. To stop the spread of the virus, we have secured free coronavirus testing for everyone who needs a test, including the uninsured.”

There’s more including “paid emergency leave with two weeks of paid sick leave and up to three months of paid family and medical leave.”

It authorizes “enhanced unemployment insurance” for laid off workers, numbers likely to increase as economic conditions weaken, maybe exponentially if things worsen dramatically because of social distancing by millions of people to avoid possible infection from the virus.

To enhance food security, the measure includes funding for increased food stamp benefits, school lunches, as well as “seniors’ nutrition and food banks.”

There’s “increased federal funds for Medicaid” and $1 billion for a National Disaster Medical System.

The measure calls for reimbursing families and individuals without health insurance, along with providing $82 million for “defense beneficiaries, $64 million for the Indian Health Service and $60 million for veterans.”

Work will begin in the House on follow-up emergency legislation. What House members passed Friday is a drop in the bucket compared to what’s needed.

The devil is also in fine print of House and Senate measures — most important in their implementation when signed into law by Trump.

What’s authorized so far by the House, likely to be largely or entirely agreed to by the Senate, already accepted by Trump, is way short of what’s needed — hundreds of billions of dollars to address an unprecedented situation that’s likely to persist for some time while economic conditions weaken, making a bad situation worse.

Monetary policy is ineffective in dealing with a national health emergency.

Fiscal policy can help greatly by putting money in the pockets of ordinary people for essentials — provided large enough amounts are authorized for as long as needed.

Government provided healthcare for everyone is vital at times like now, not tinkering around the edges alone that HR 6201 authorized.

At times of national duress like now, government is a backstop of last resort to provide aid for what households can’t provide for themselves.

Perhaps $1 trillion or several trillions of federal funding are needed to address what’s going on — the amount depending on how long emergency conditions last.

Things are likely to get much worse ahead before improving. It’s essential for Washington to work all-out cooperatively with states and local communities to address things as long as crisis conditions persist.

Newly announced restrictions in my Chicago residential building with hundreds of residents may be a sign of more of the same to come elsewhere.

We’ve been instructed to socially distance ourselves from other residents, in common areas stay six feet or more from others, not visit the management office, communicate by phone and/or email instead — all non-emergency work orders temporarily suspended.

We were told to cease visiting the building areas where residents normally gather, wash hands thoroughly before entering common areas, and use knuckles or elbows to push elevator buttons.

If ill for any reason, self-quarantine as a precaution and notify management. Building maintenance was ordered to disinfect, disinfect, disinfect common areas multiple times daily.

At the federal, state, local, and personal levels, it’s important to go all-out to deal with what may become an unprecedented situation in our lifetimes.

No guidelines exist to predict what may unfold ahead other than comparing the current situation to the century-ago Spanish flu when societal structures and state of the art medical care were world’s apart from now.

Over one-fifth of the world’s population was infected from 1918 – 1920, millions perishing worldwide.

Can history repeat? What happened before can happen again but shouldn’t if all-out proper steps are taken by authorities and individuals through self-protective measures.

At times of great duress, unity against a common foe is vital until it passes and things return to normal.

Until then, hunkering down and following sound personal hygiene practices are essential to stay safe.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The coronavirus panic has resulted in hordes of people running after toilet paper.  Such actions are the flip side of running with the bulls, except that I suspect those who run with the bulls have some sense of why they do it.  I imagine the thrill is a bit different, even if the goal is similar.

The overriding narratives of every society are composed of myths and symbols.  Societies operate within controlling mythic symbol systems whose primary purpose is to allow people to move through their lives on automatic pilot, believing they are safe from death and chaos in the arms of the authorities. All cultures revolve around death and the need to control people’s fears of it through the construction of symbols of reassurance.  People need to be convinced that they are protected.  In “normal” times, all this goes relatively smoothly and the symbols of protection – such as the military, the primary institutions, and photos of the political leaders against a backdrop of flags – serve as a comforting security blanket.  In times of extreme stress, however, whether real or created, the system of reassurance breaks down and people panic.

Enter the coronavirus and the run on toilet paper. Many economists and psychologists have commented on the fear that motivates this hoarding behavior.  Most commentaries are true as far as they go.  The problem is they don’t go very far and never touch the real issue.  Hoarding is obviously done to quell the fear of running out.  But running out of what?

Why toilet paper?  The explanations I have seen say that toilet paper is an essential household item that is easy to hoard because it has no expiration date and comes in large packages that are light and easy to carry and store.  All true.  Fear induces hoarding, and people have gone insane hoarding all kinds of items, as if the plague to end the world were upon us, which is what the mass media keeps repeating as it whips up lunatic reactions.  The end times are near!  The Grim Reaper is at your door!

The authorities have inflamed this fear, as authorities are apt to do, since fear, and the fear of death and disease, is the greatest way to control people.  Remember the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001.  Fear went rampant and people ran to religious services for a while as elements within the U.S. government sent anthrax through the mail to heighten the fear.  But anthrax was nothing compared to the coronavirus’s spread and panic.  With the 2001 attacks, the terrorist fear soon went onto the back burner to simmer away for all these years and keep everyone on an emergency fear footing so the government could execute its war and Patriot Act plans with little rebellion. It worked very well. Constant fear and anxiety became the norm as people internalized the 9/11 meme and its emergency phone number reminder.

But now the coronavirus panic is running wild and we don’t know when it will end. But why this frantic race to scoop up toilet paper? The answer should be quite obvious, but it is isn’t because it is unconscious. People react to the real biological fear of death by adopting any means that might protect them from it.  Excrement is the fundamental symbol of death.  It suggests we are bodies and nothing more; that the symbols of transcendence, whether religious or secular, are mirages. Shit has always been so associated, and always will. It has also long been associated in the Western imagination with the devil, Satan, the Lord of the underworld, who rules the pit of smelly steaming death where the bodies of people are deposited down in the earth to rot away.  That’s it.  No heaven, no immortality, just maggots in the dirt where shit descends.  The thought that that is all we are doesn’t go over well with many people.

To accept that we are only bodies, and that civilization and cultures have been constructed upon symbols created to tell us this isn’t true are pipe dreams, is the fear that runs rampant in days such as these, with the coronavirus allegedly stalking everyone as if it were Mister Pumpkin Head ready to pounce. The fundamental human fear is that we, like excrement, are destined to be buried and forgotten; that we will be buried in the earth or flushed down a toilet.  The fear is that “dead” excrement is what we are and that all the shiny symbols erected by civilization to say we are more are just bullshit.

This fear is compounded when science often claims that everything religions have ever taught is hocus pocus. The religious symbol systems that were the overarching bulwarks of western civilization have been replaced by science and technology.  But these twins have no answer for the fact of death, except to say it is inevitable and maybe we can help you to live a bit longer.  Many people, if only unconsciously, might not be satisfied with that answer.

So when death comes courting in the guise of a so-called plague or pandemic, toilet paper will keep you safe and clean. You can wipe away any reminder that you are mortal and will return to the earth; that you will rot there unless you somehow believe in the transcendent spirit of days gone by.

Rather than focus on all the death unleashed by government violence – their alleged protectors – people are easily manipulated into fearing the wrong things and unconsciously seeking some innocuous symbol that might do the job.

Running with the bulls gives people the thrill of teasing death while defeating it.  It must be very exciting.

Running after toilet paper is quite dull by comparison, but it serves a similar purpose.

It’s the people’s vaccine against death.

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The spread of the coronavirus has meant that much of the other news about developments around the world has disappeared from the normal news cycle. The situation in Syria, which involves not only the government in Damascus but also Turkey, Russia, Iran and a remaining American force in part of the country has been proving increasingly unstable.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has met face-to-face with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to come up with a de-escalation plan that would avoid any head-to-head confrontation. An agreement was reached that included a cease fire, which most observers are describing as a surrender by Erdogan that accepted all Russian-Syrian army gains in the Idlib Province, but it remains to be seen what exactly will be sustainable. There have been subsequent reports that have include claims of the downing of two Syrian aircraft and several helicopters.

The United States for its part has been sending mixed messages to appeals from the Turks for support. Donald Trump has had an on and off again relationship with Erdogan and he has more-or-less approved the Turkish presence in the border areas and continues to endorse something like regime change in Damascus. Though it seems that at least for the moment the danger of a major armed conflict between Russia and Turkey has faded, many believe that more incidents are likely and could easily escalate.

And there is a truly dangerous connection in that Turkey and the United States are, of course, members of NATO. Under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, an attack on any one member is considered to be the same as an attack on all members and all members must respond by coming to the defense of the victim of the attack. Turkey has asked the United States for Patriot missiles to defend its troops on the ground in Syria. It has also called for NATO to enforce a no-fly zone in Idlib Province, air space that is currently controlled by Russia. Omer Celik, speaking for Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, said that in his government’s view “The attack against Turkey is an attack against NATO. NATO should have been with Turkey, not starting today but from before these events.” Washington, for its part, has reportedly offered to provide Patriot batteries if the Turks do not deploy their recently purchased Russian built S-400 missiles. Trump has otherwisedeferred to the Europeans for any direct assistance and NATO has not entertained seriously anyno-fly commitment.

Under normal circumstances and in a normal world, the very idea that a member of a defensive alliance should be able to attack another country, as Turkey has done in Syria, and then demand assistance from other members of the alliance when the attacked country fights back would be a non-starter. But the problem with that kind of rational thinking is that NATO has long since ceased to be a defensive alliance. Both as an alliance and also acting through several of its member states, it has been actively involved in wars that have nothing to do with defense of Europe or of the Atlantic relationship with Washington. NATO troops are currently in Afghanistan and have also been in Iraq, Syria and Libya. Alliance members including the U.S. fought in Bosnia and Kosovo. 

And there are the usual head cases on the American side also demanding action against Russia and Syria. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida tweeted that “The prospects of a direct military confrontation between Turkey & Russia in Syria are very high & increasing by the hour… [Erdogan] is on the right side here. Putin & Assad are responsible for this horrific humanitarian catastrophe.”

The American ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison told reporters “This is a big development, and our alliance is with Turkey, it is not with Russia. We want Turkey to understand that we are the ones that they’ve been allied with.”

The United States has further complicated the game through a recent visit made by the entourages of two senior U.S. officials whovisited Syria’s Idlib on March 3rd and pledged $108 million aid for Syrian civilians, hours after Turkey downed its second Syrianwarplane in the province. Who exactly would receive the money and how it would be distributed was, inevitably, not immediately clear.

The two diplomats slipped over the border from Turkey with the connivance of Ankara and several Syrian “resistance” groups. They conspicuously met with the so-called White Helmets, a group that claims to be involved in nonpartisan humanitarian rescue missions but which really is affiliated with terrorists, most notably the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is affiliated with al-Qaeda. HTS is the principal terrorist group operating in Idlib.

The group of American diplomats was headed by U.S. representative to the United Nations Kelly Craft, along with U.S. Special Envoy for Syria James Jeffrey. It was the first visit by American diplomats to Idlib. Craft announced that the aid package was for “the people of Syria in response to the ongoing crisis caused by Assad regime, Russian, and Iranian forces”. Jeffrey struck a more directly belligerent pose, saying that Washington would be providing ammunition in addition to the humanitarian assistance. “Turkey is a NATO  ally. Much of the military uses American equipment. We will make sure that equipment is ready and usable.” 

U.S. policy in Syria serves no American interest, but both Craft and Jeffrey are well known to be in the pocket of Israel. Craft, a big time GOP donor, who, in her fifteen months spent as Ambassador to Canada was remarkable for flying back to the U.S. from Ottawa 128 times, 70 of which were to her home in Kentucky. All on the government dime even though she is an extremely wealthy woman.

Craft left Canada when she replaced the arch Zionist Nikki Haley at the U.N. She emphasized in her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that she would “fight against anti-Israel resolutions and actions by the U.N. and its affiliated agencies.” She also:

“made a case for America returning to a leading role at Turtle Bay [the U.N.] as a way of protecting Israel… Without U.S. leadership, our partners and allies would be vulnerable to bad actors at the U.N. This is particularly true in the case of Israel, which is the subject of unrelenting bias and hostility in U.N. venues. The United States will never accept such bias, and if confirmed I commit to seizing every opportunity to shine a light on this conduct, call it what it is, and demand that these outrageous practices finally come to an end.” 

Jeffrey is even more the zealot. His full title is as United States Special Representative for Syria Engagement and the Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIL. He is, generally speaking, a hardliner politically, closely aligned with Israel and regarding Iran as a hostile destabilizing force in the Middle East region. He was between 2013 and 2018 Philip Solondz distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a think tank that is a spin-off of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). He is currently a WINEP “Outside Author” and go-to “expert.”

Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt, academic dean at Harvard University ‘s Kennedy School of Government, describe WINEP as “part of the core” of the Israel Lobby in the U.S. They examined the group on pages 175-6 in their groundbreaking book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy and concluded as follows:

“Although WINEP plays down its links to Israel and claims that it provides a ‘balanced and realistic’ perspective on Middle East issues, this is not the case. In fact, WINEP is funded and run by individuals who are deeply committed to advancing Israel’s agenda … Many of its personnel are genuine scholars or experienced former officials, but they are hardly neutral observers on most Middle East issues and there is little diversity of views within WINEP’s ranks.”

Jeffrey  set the tone  for his term of office shortly after being appointed by President Trump back in August 2018 when he argued that the Syrian terrorists were “. . . not terrorists, but people fighting a civil war against a brutal dictator.” Jeffrey, who must have somehow missed a lot of the head chopping and rape going on, subsequently traveled to the Middle East and stopped off in Israel to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It has been suggested that Jeffrey received his marching orders during the visit.

So, Trump bleats incessantly about how he wants to withdraw the U.S. from the senseless wars that it has been drawn into but at the same time his State Department sends two Zionist hardliners to Syria on a semi-secret mission to support a policy of regime change in Damascus while also providing aid that will inevitably fall into the pockets of an al-Qaeda linked terrorist group. And ammunition will also be forthcoming for the invading Turks to shoot Syrians, Russians and Iranians. If anyone is seriously interested in what is wrong with U.S. foreign policy, the activity of Craft and Jeffrey might serve as a decent case study on how not to do it. Unless, of course, the actual objective is to screw things up and involve the United States in quarrels that it could easily avoid.

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This article was originally published on American Herald Tribune.

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

Featured image: US Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft, and James Jeffrey, the US envoy for Syria, pose with rescue workers at the Syrian commercial crossing point of Bab al-Hawa in Idlib. Credit: Walid/ Twitter)

The US Navy has released on a video the emergence of its powerful submarine USS Toledo in the Arctic, in a clear act of military propaganda. The maneuver was conducted as part of the Ice Exercise (ICEX) program, which consists of a series of American military tests in the Arctic to be carried out over the next three weeks. In addition to the USS Toledo, the equally powerful submarine USS Connectcut was also sent to the Arctic. When interviewed about these drills, the US Vice Admiral Dary Caudle said that “the Arctic is a potential strategic corridor – between Indo-Pacific, Europe and the USA […] The submarine force must maintain readiness, training under conditions from the Arctic to ensure that it can protect national security interests and maintain a favorable balance of power in Indo-Pacific and Europe, if necessary”.

NATO announced for this year the “Ice Response 2020” program, to be conducted by the countries of the military alliance, with a central role to be played by Norway, due to its geographical conditions. The program consists of a series of military operations that were to be carried out between 2 and 18 March 2020. Undoubtedly, the program has a clear provocative nature and can be compared to “Defender Europe 2020”, both of which are NATO projects to provoke reactions from Russia. However, the tests were canceled due to the coronavirus epidemic.

 

In parallel, earlier this year the United States and Canada started another military program with the aim of countering the Russian presence in the Arctic, the so-called “Arctic Edge 2020”. In this program, both countries conducted exercises in the Alaskan region, testing their defense ability at low temperatures. However, the image they both managed to convey was not promising, revealing their weaknesses in this area, not convincing public opinion that the West has sufficient power to contain the Russian presence in the Arctic in the event of a war. The US has paid too much attention to the Middle East and the Pacific and neglected the strategic importance of the Arctic. For this reason, Washington and NATO are now trying to make up for their losses by conducting increasingly risky maneuvers in the region, which unnecessarily put international security at risk.

The strategic importance of the Arctic has been praised in recent years. The melting of glaciers has led to the discovery of new reserves of oil and natural gas that had not yet been explored, increasing general interest in the Arctic. Hal Brands, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University, points out that

“the Bering Sea could become a future Persian Gulf and will have a strong influence on the international scene. However, the USA no longer has a place in this region”.

Russia has expanded its military power in the region, increasing control over maritime routes – mainly the Northern Sea Route – and creating a coast guard system. President Putin recently declared that

“the realization of the Russian Federation’s state policy in the Arctic from 2020 provided […] the creation of a general designation group for the Russian Armed Forces in the country’s arctic zone, capable to provide military security in different political-military conditions”. China has also sought to increase its presence in the Arctic as part of the “One Belt, One Road Initiative”.

Faced with this scenario, the West becomes increasingly aggressive. The United States has expressed interest to deploy small and medium-range missiles in arctic region, shortly after its withdrawal from the INF Treaty. The Pentagon is developing a defense system in which it intends to deploy 20 interceptor missiles in Alaska by 2023, where 44 military units are already deployed.

In addition, NATO created a new North Atlantic command last year, significantly increasing its frequency of exercises in the Arctic. In October, the Organization made a bid to purchase a set of snow camouflage for winter operations, which includes 78.000 sets of special trousers, jackets and backpacks, all capable of withstanding temperatures of minus 40 degrees Celsius. Above all, the question remains: what will be the West’s next step? Oil and gas certainly explain a considerable part of military maneuvers and international interest in the Arctic, but they do not exhaust the reasons why the United States and NATO are increasing their presence in the north. Truly, the fact that the Russian military presence in some regions of the planet is greater than the American one is already sufficient reason for the Pentagon strategists. The dominance achieved by the West in the Middle East costed the lack of attention with the Arctic, only now realized. And Washington will not stop putting the world in danger to seek its hegemony in the region.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

On March 12, the Federal Reserve announced its biggest market intervention to date, a massive $1.5 trillion injection into the short-term funding markets (“repo”) aimed at preventing grossly-inflated stock valuations from resetting at lower prices.

There should be no misunderstanding about the Fed’s real intention or whether its meddling will work. When financial assets are purchased in bulk, prices rise, that is the immutable law of the market. Stocks and bonds do not differentiate between day-traders and Central Bankers. What matters is the amount of money and what securities are purchased. What we know from 3 iterations of Quantitative Easing (QE) is that, when the Fed buys financial assets (USTs or MBS) stock prices climb higher. Friday’s trading will undoubtedly produce the same result.

We also know that the Fed’s circuitous blabbering never explains their real objectives. The Fed is not trying to ease “ominous trading conditions” or “counter signs of market dysfunction ” or “address highly unusual disruptions in Treasury financing markets associated with the coronavirus outbreak.” That’s all diversionary mumbo-jumbo. The Fed’s real goal is to prevent the markets from working the way they are supposed to work, to prevent basic price discovery, because price discovery will dramatically reduce valuations leaving banks and other financial institutions deep underwater.

Price discovery is the means through which an asset’s price is set by matching buyers and sellers according to a price that both sides find acceptable. It is largely driven by supply and demand. It is a useful mechanism to gauge whether an asset is currently overbought or oversold. Price discovery is the central function of a marketplace and is the process of finding out the price of a given asset or commodity. (Investopedia)

When an outside actor, like the Fed, intervenes in the market and creates fake demand for financial assets that investors have shunned, it is destroying the “central function” of the free market. It is asserting power over the market to set prices and, by doing so, assumes the role of Central Planner. That is what the Fed is doing by stopping the market from clearing. It is “price setting”. It is pushing stock prices higher than their true market value by loading up on mainly US Treasuries which dramatically distort rates while inflating the price of government bonds. We can only guess what the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury would be if the Fed had not purchased $2 trillion of them to save the insolvent banks from bankruptcy in 2008? And, in case there is any doubt about that matter, here is a straightforward admission by former-Fed chairman Ben Bernanke during the post-Lehman congressional hearings:

“As a scholar of the Great Depression, I honestly believe that September and October of 2008 was the worst financial crisis in global history, including the Great Depression. If you look at the firms that came under pressure in that period. . . only one . . . was not at serious risk of failure. So out of maybe the 13 of the most important financial institutions in the United States, 12 were at risk of failure within a period of a week or two.”

Think about that. They were all broke, all the biggest banks on Wall Street were completely busted. But they were brought back to life by Lazarus Bernanke’s emergency rates, giveaway loan programs and lavish liquidity injections. At the same time, the American people were deliberately misled about the process that was underway, just as they are being misled about today’s intervention. What is actually taking place is another multi-trillion dollar bailout that is going to seriously undermine confidence in US Treasuries as a reliable barometer of financial asset value. Here’s an excerpt from an article by Bernanke’s right-hand man during the last crisis, Kevin Warsh, who underscores the risks the Fed is taking by intervening in the markets:

“The Fed’s increased presence in the market for long-term Treasury securities also poses nontrivial risks. The Treasury market is special. It plays a unique role in the global financial system. It is a corollary to the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency. The prices assigned to Treasury securities–the risk-free rate–are the foundation from which the price of virtually every asset in the world is calculated. As the Fed’s balance sheet expands, it becomes more of a price maker than a price taker in the Treasury market. And if market participants come to doubt these prices–or their reliance on these prices proves fleeting–risk premiums across asset classes and geographies could move unexpectedly. The shock that hit the financial markets in 2008 upon the imminent failures of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac gives some indication of the harm that can be done when assets perceived to be relatively riskless turn out not to be.” (“The New Malaise”, Kevin Warsh, Wall Street Journal.)

Here’s more from Warsh on the unintended consequences of the Fed’s interventions that create powerful incentives for risky behavior that undermine investment, inflate asset values, and damage the real economy.

“Extremely accommodative monetary policy, including the purchase of about $3 trillion in Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities during three rounds of “quantitative easing” (QE), pushed down long-term yields and boosted the value of risk-assets. Higher stock prices were supposed to drive business confidence and higher capital expenditures, which were supposed to result in higher wages and strong consumption. Would it were so.

Business investment in the real economy is weak … In 2014, S&P 500 companies spent considerably more of their operating cash flow on financially engineered buybacks than real capital expenditures for the first time since 2007 … We believe that QE has redirected capital from the real domestic economy to financial assets at home and abroad. In this environment, it is hard to criticize companies that choose “shareholder friendly” share buybacks over investment in a new factory. But public policy shouldn’t bias investments to paper assets over investments in the real economy.” (The Fed Has Hurt Business Investment, Michael Spence And Kevin Warsh, Wall Street Journal)

The Fed is destroying the system it is entrusted to safeguard. It’s acting as a stooge for the banks instead of an impartial referee whose job is to oversee and regulate the financial system so capital is efficiently deployed to productive investments that benefit the American people. Does anyone think the Fed is acting within its mandate by pumping the system with liquidity so crooked banks can cream bigger profits off their casino operations?

No one, and yet it continues.

There’s no way to know the true value of the benchmark 10-year Treasury (which is the “the foundation from which the price of virtually every asset in the world is calculated”) because the Fed’s relentless mucking-around has distorted prices beyond recognition. Imagine for a minute if the central banks had not purchased trillions of dollars in sovereign bonds during the financial crisis? Imagine where rates would be today?

Rates would not only be positive, they’d also be “normalized” which was the Fed’s stated goal when it tried to reduce its $4 trillion dollar balance sheet last year but then suddenly slammed on the brakes when stocks fell and the crybaby banks began howling. So now the Fed has abandoned normalization altogether while its balance sheet remains permanently submerged in red ink.

But how is capitalism supposed to work if rates are stuck at zero or go negative? Interest rates are the jet-fuel that energize capitalism. The “marginal efficiency of capital” refers to the returns that are expected from a capital asset during the time it is held by an investor. If those expected returns are reduced to zero, then the incentive to invest vanishes, the system is stood on its head, and capitalism no longer works. What is left is not productive investment, innovation or socially-beneficial development. What’s left is rampant speculation, asset prices that are completely divorced from reality, and the endless build-up of paper claims on imaginary wealth. Isn’t this an apt description of today’s Fed-generated market?

And now the Fed is at it again, tilting the system so the bulk of the nation’s wealth continues to flow upwards. Here are some of the shocking details about this latest bank bailout:

“The New York Fed said it will offer its primary dealers another $500 billion in a 3-month loan and another $500 billion in a one-month loan….Both 3-month and 1-month loans will be offered weekly “for the remainder of the monthly schedule.” That means $1 trillion a week will be available at below-market interest rates until the middle of April.

That will be on top of the $175 billion the Fed is offering daily in one-day loans and the $45 billion it is offering each Tuesday and Thursday in 14-day loans. This is a dramatic expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet to support Wall Street — all without one vote, or debate, or hearing occurring in Congress.” (“Federal Reserve Announces Unprecedented $1.5 Trillion in Loans to Wall Street Today and Tomorrow” Wall Street on Parade)

In one fell swoop, the Fed has become the market, the whole market and nothing but the market. This new bailout is not $1.5 trillion, it is more than $1 trillion per week for the remainder of the monthly schedule. This explains why “risk-free” US Treasuries sharply rose during yesterday’s selloff, it’s because the banks moved into cash so they would have the resources they needed to lend to all the desperate businesses (Cruise lines, airlines etc) that have been whacked by the coronavirus.

Wall Street Bankers Visit Trump on Wednesday

Some readers may have noticed that, on Wednesday, the CEOs from Wall Street’s biggest banks visited Trump in the White House to tell the president how well capitalized they were. Why would they do that? Why did they need to visit Trump to tell him how great they were doing?

It’s because they knew that, in less than 24 hours, the Fed was going to announce that it was dumping trillions of dollars in to the repo market and they’d be back on Easy Street. That’s why.

It was all a set-up. The fleecing of the American people is just one big freaking set up after the other. It’s infuriating.

Are the banks in trouble again? Is that why we’re being subjected to this latest sheering?

Of course they’re in trouble. Do you think you can slash $10 trillion off stock valuations and shove oil off a cliff and not have the banks in trouble?? The banks are heavily invested in oil, just as they are in derivatives trades, loans to shaky hedge funds, and stocks that are currently in freefall. Which is why the Fed has wheeled in the heavy artillery.. Check out this excerpt from an article at The Wall Street Journal:

“The deepening Wall Street rout is adding to pressure on U.S. banks, as the retreat of investors from risky assets saddles lenders with securities they are struggling to sell at desired prices. The crunch has been evident in the share prices of the largest U.S. financial firms, which have fallen 30% or more in many cases over the past month. Citigroup Inc. dropped 8.6% on Wednesday, extending its decline to 36%, nearly doubling the drop in the S&P 500…

When markets come under duress as they have over the past couple of weeks, asset prices are pushed to levels where you begin to see margin calls and other internal activity that is not always visible on the surface,” said Daniel Deming, a managing director at Chicago-based KKM Financial.

The most surprising development for traders Wednesday: the sharp decline in the price of U.S. Treasury securities, which until this week had consistently risen significantly on days when U.S. stocks were falling. The price declines sent yields higher after dropping to record lows and were fueled in part by banks selling U.S. government securities to reduce inventories and raise cash. Rates are low enough that Wednesday’s action itself didn’t hurt banks, but the unusual nature of the move raised eyebrows.”

…People familiar with some of the largest securities-dealing banks said many firms bought corporate bonds as prices fell last week, but those purchases resulted in some banks having balance sheets that executives deemed too large. With prices barely having recovered in many markets, some banks chose to sell Treasuries instead, in part reflecting their significant appreciation in recent weeks.” (“Wall Street Plunge Stresses Banks, Treasury Markets”, Wall Street Journal)

Let’s recap: Why are the banks selling Treasuries?

Because they need the cash.

Why do they need the cash?

Because–according to the author– the banks are stuck with a bunch of stocks “they are struggling to sell at desired prices.”

But that just means stock prices have dropped, it doesn’t explain why the banks need cash?

True, the only reason they would need cash is if they borrowed the money to buy the stocks in the first place, which is what the author suggests when he refers to “margin calls and other internal activity that is not always visible on the surface.” In other words, the banks need cash because their portfolio is underwater and they are leveraged up to their eyeballs.

According to the article: “People familiar with some of the largest securities-dealing banks said many firms bought corporate bonds as prices fell last week, but those purchases resulted in some banks having balance sheets that executives deemed too large.”

Corporate bonds?!? The corporate bond market froze last week, no activity at all, a complete graveyard. If the banks were dabbling in that garbage, then they must’ve gotten burned bigtime which would explain why they want another bailout from Uncle Sugar.

It’s worth noting that none of this has anything to do with the Fed. The banks were playing the stock market and lost their shirts. Who cares? Break ’em up, auction off the good assets, ring-fence the bad, install new management, and start over. That’s how the system is supposed to work. You roll the dice, and if you come up snake-eyes, you go home. End of story. That’s what we should have done in 2008 instead of keeping these parasites on life support so they could take us all over the cliff for a second time in 10 years. It’s ridiculous!

Keep in mind, the Trump administration has only allocated a lousy $8 billion to fund its response to coronavirus. So the American people –all 330 million of them– will get a whopping $8 billion while the crooked Wall Street banks get regular multi-trillion dollar infusions that allow them to swap their crappy, dog-eared securities for cold-hard cash. The banks will then roll over these 3-month loans indefinitely turning their short-term debts into perennial welfare payouts. Does that sound fair to you?

This is why people despise the Federal Reserve. They don’t see the Fed as an impartial arbiter fulfilling its mandate of price stability and full employment but an evil puppetmaster that wants to rule the world. That, of course, is a gross exaggeration. In truth, the Fed is no different than the FAA, a thoroughly corrupt and unreformable “rubber stamp” agency that is entirely controlled by the corporations it’s supposed to regulate. This latest multi-trillion dollar travesty just proves what we’ve known for a long time, that the Fed always operates in the exclusive interests of its reprobate constituents, the crooked Wall Street banks.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Today we call it breaking news, the story of the moment — before it changes again. A century ago it was what ran on the front page — the big story, the killer headline. But then as now, it is often tied up with ambitions, competition, and money.

The Front Page was also the name of a broadway play written more than 20 years before I was born. Yet I fell in love with its characters, stories and attitude by the time I was ten. Then it was called His Girl Friday, a Hollywood version often shown on early television, with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell as Walter Burns, a manipulative Chicago editor, and Hildy Johnson, an ace reporter trying to escape the grind.

This was the second film version of the hit play about tabloid reporters on the Chicago police beat. Written by former reporters Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, it was first produced in 1928, and quickly bought by Howard Hughes for the film adaptation by Lewis Milestone.

In early April, a restored version of the film was scheduled to open Global Roots 2020, a three-day festival about reporting and film, organized by the Vermont International Film Festival. Due to the coronavirus, however, all eleven films and panel discussions have been indefinitely postponed. Still, The Front Page is worth another look.

Grant and Russell in His Girl Friday

After all, the basic story has been retold on film, radio and television countless times. That includes four major films. The first, released in 1931, had a young Pat O’Brien as Hildy and Adolphe Menjou as Burns. In 1940, director Howard Hawkes updated the tale with His Girl Friday, featuring the fast-talking Grant and Russell, along with a gender switch. Then came a 1974 remake with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthew as a journalistic odd couple, and 1988’s Switching Channels, a return to the Russell-Grant model with Kathleen Turner as Hildy and Burt Reynolds as a cable TV Burns. There were also radio productions in the 1930s and 1940s, two television versions, a British musical called Windy City, and a 2016 revival of the play with Nathan Lane and John Slattery in the key roles.

In the 1950s, watching old movies on TV, I was fascinated by Grant and Russell, who seemed to both personify and hilariously exaggerate the struggle between newspaper editors and reporters, and also between men and women. The fast-talking repartee was like jousting, and the situational ethics used to get what they wanted was a revelation.

The society they inhabited was rough, lively and seductive; there were tough reporters barking into telephones, corrupt politicians and life-and-death cover ups, a ruthless editor racing deadlines and looking for angles, his defiant star reporter, a misunderstood outlaw on the run, and a good-hearted prostitute, plus other enduring types and tropes. But what really cemented the impressions was reading the play itself, one of the learning tools used by my junior high school English teacher to keep us interested.

Since then, I’ve been a major fan of Ben Hecht. Journalist, screenwriter, novelist, and activist, Hecht was a literary phenomenon, a defiant, complicated, unapologetic Jewish-American writer. Jean-Luc Godard once said, “He invented 80 percent of what is used in Hollywood movies today.” Pauline Kael annointed him “the Greatest American screenwriter.” And then, with the rise of Hitler and World War II, he continued to evolve, gradually becoming a Jewish radical and dedicating much of his last decades to the cause of Israel. At his funeral, Menachem Begin summed it up, “He wrote stories and he made history.”

Menjou and O‘Brien in the original film version

In addition to The Front Page, Hecht wrote or worked on scripts for classic films like Underworld (the 1929 silent film for which he won the first-ever Academy Award for best story), Scarface, Design for Living, Viva Villa!, Topaze, Twentieth Century, Barbary Coast, Nothing Sacred, Gunga Din, It’s a Wonderful Life, Angels Over Broadway, Comrade X, Lydia, SpellBound, Notorious, Kiss of Death, Monkey Business, and A Farewell to Arms. He also had a hand in Gone with the Wind, Foreign Correspondent, Gilda, and Roman Holiday. In all, Hecht worked on at least 140 films. What range!

And what a life! Running away to Chicago at 16, he “haunted streets, whorehouses, police stations, courtrooms, theater stages, jails, saloons, slums, madhouses, fires, murders, riots, banquet halls, and bookshops,” Hecht recalled. By the 1920s he was a noted journalist, foreign correspondent, and literary figure. And that was before Hollywood called.

In 1928, The Front Page became a hugely popular Broadway play, a sharp-edged valentine to the scruffy newsmen of an earlier era. At the time, though, many people thought Hecht and MacArthur had invented the characters and fabricated their stories. But Hecht later claimed that, in his youth, sometimes he and a photographer would actually stage shots at times to back up their made-up scoops — like a brave tugboat captain who fought off pirates on Lake Michigan, or digging a trench to  fake a severe earthquake photo. On the other hand, they met everyone and covered everything — floods, funerals, trials, and hangings.

Later, Hecht described the times this way: “We were a tribe of assorted drunkards, poets, burglars, philosophers and boastful raggamuffins. Supermen with soiled collars and holes in our pants, stony broke and sneering at our betters in limousines and unmortgaged houses. Cynical of all things on earth including the tyrannical journal that underpaid and overworked us and for which, after a round of cursing, we were ready to die.”

The actress Helen Hayes said of their work on The Front Page, “They took the corset off American theater.” Tennessee Williams once acknowledged that the play made it possible for him to conceive his own work. British Critic Kenneth Tynan described it as “the best American comedy ever written.” And playwright Tom Stoppard called it “the only American comedy of the 1920s in the way that The Importance of Being Earnest is the only English comedy of the 1890s.

I don’t know any play which sustains its verve so well.”

Nevertheless, the source material of this classic story describes a very different time, one in which objectivity and facts were the last thing on most reporters’ minds. Almost century ago, The Front Page revealed a hidden world, one based loosely on reality and filled with slippery politicians and hungry reporters, where getting the story first and boldest was considered more important than getting it right.

But their already-nostalgic vision also placed a high value on courage, community, and having a heart. In today’s white-hot media environment that unfortunately begins to sound like a romantic, and possibly obsolete notion.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Greg Guma / For Preservation & Change.

The whole world is facing the deepening and widening corruption which challenges the very survival of the free democracy and the free market economy.

Korea has been suffering for last 70 years from the corruption culture. But owing to courageous fight of Korean people and the Candle-Light Revolution of 2016-2017, Korea is freeing painfully but steadily from the dark clouds of the corruption culture.

I hope that Korea’s experience will help developing countries for assuring the development of their economy without becoming the slave of corruption.

The literature on corruption is rich but it has two shortcomings. First, it is based on a definition of corruption which is too narrow to deal with the complexity of corruption. Second, it does not cover sufficiently the range of the impact of corruption on the society.

Most of the existing studies tend to define corruption as illegal activities which are designed to maximize personal gains at the expense of those of others. But, it must be pointed out that some of the laws and regulations are designed to justify corruption.

Therefore, I would define corruption as “illegal or immoral human activities designed to maximize personal or group gains at the expense of the welfare of other persons or other groups”.

The objective of this paper is to find, on the basis of Korea’s experience, appropriate measures that would facilitate the fight against corruption.

This paper has five sections.

Section 1 offers a typology of corruption based on the Korean experience of corruption. I have found that the useful way of classifying corruption is to relate it to the behaviour of individuals and organizations involved in corruption.

Section 2 deals with the evolution stage of corruption. I argue that the phenomenon of corruption evolves by stage. The level, the contents and the impact of corruption vary by stage. Therefore, to find appropriate measure of anti-corruption, it is important to know at what stage the process of corruption finds itself.

Section 3 discusses the strategy of protecting the benefits of corruption. It will be shown that, in Korea, the strategy of protecting the fruit of corruption is brutal and sophisticated.

Section 4 copes with the impact of corruption. Here, I will distinguish between economic impact and moral impact. It goes without saying that these two types of impact are related. In fact, I argue that these two types of impact combined can destroy a country

Finally, Section 5 will show how the Korean people have fought for last 70 years against corruption risking their lives and enduring the violation of their basic human rights. In this section, I will show also how President Moon is conducting a total war against the deep rooted corruption in Korea. In addition I will show some lessons we can learn from the Korea’s experience of corruption

Typology of Corruption

The corruption takes several forms depending upon the individuals and organizations involved in the process of corruption. I am sure that the following types of corruption take place in many other countries.

A. Outright theft of public funds

One of the most notorious scandals in Korea is the embezzlement of billions of dollars of public funds by the conservative presidents of the country, civil servants, heads of public corporations, directors of research institutions, and even owners of even kindergarten.

One of the notorious cases was the embezzlements of more than $ 200 million USD by former conservative president, General Chun Doo-hwan (image on the right). He was imprisoned for corruption and abuse of power. He was ordered by the court to pay back to the government the embezzled money. But he is still claiming that he has only $260 USD in his bank; he is making mockery of Korea’s judiciary system.

Under President Lee Myong-bak, billions of dollars of public money was suspected to be stolen through what are called the “4-River Projects” and “Resource Diplomacy.” These scandals remain to be investigated.

Another case of the theft of public money is that of private kindergartens which steal openly a good part of government subsidies for personal use including the purchase of jewellery and other personal use.

B. Transaction of privileges

The market of privileged rights is huge. To do business, one has to go through a long series of regulations. But, by paying bribes to government officials, one can get privileges of going over the laws and regulations.

For instance, by paying bribes to government officials, one can get more quickly a legal building permit or illegal building permit. With bribes, a land developer can transform greenbelt land into residential land.

The supply of these privileges is provided by the public authorities. The demand of these privileges is determined by the business. The price of these privileges is the monetary value of these privileges.

The market price of these privileges is the amount of bribery. It is by no means easy to have an idea about the amount of such bribery. But, for example, it is a known secret that the amount of bribery paid by the industry of construction is 5% of the amount of sales. The total amount of bribery could be tens of billions of dollars.

C. Theft of Information

In Korea, some of those who are involved in the supervision of stock market and land development are known to be wealthy after their retirement.

The high ranking civil servants of the ministry of construction know in advance the land-development plan and buy land in the name of someone else and assure huge capital gains by selling it.

A person working at the institution which supervises the stock market has access to confidential information on investment plan of companies and can make fortune by buying or selling the stocks. God knows how much illicit money is made by these thieves of confidential information.

D. Fraudulent procurement 

The government and its numerous agents spend hundreds of billions of dollars every year to buy goods and services. For national defence alone, Korea spends a year $50 billion USD. It happens more often than not that the government and its agents pay an amount far above the real price for the procurement of goods and services.

The difference between the price paid and the real price is shared between the seller and the buyer. This is the “kick-back”. In the area of procurement of military equipment, the amount of kick-back is said to be 10% of the amount of military equipment bought.

E. Transaction of Freedom 

Perhaps, another devastating form of corruption is the transaction of freedom. Under the corrupted judiciary system, those who have committed crimes and corruption can buy freedom with bribe money.

The police do not arrest people of power despite their obvious crimes and corruption in exchange of bribery. The bureau of prosecutors does not investigate clear cases of corruption, if the accused are leaders of business ready to pay bribes.

Even if the investigation shows undeniable proof of corruption, the prosecutor does not accuse the person involved.

Heads of the largest Chaebol were suspected several times for corruption but they were seldom sent to the court trial.

Even if they were judged guilty, they were soon liberated. In many cases, even if the prosecutor provides proof of guilt, the court makes ruling of not guilty.

F. Transaction of laws 

It is a well known fact that the powerful Chaebols persuade the law makers to pass laws in their favour in exchange of disguised campaign funds.

Laws adopted by the National Assembly can affect the interests of business and other interest groups. The groups which are the most sensitive to laws are large corporations. Large corporations have, in fact, a specialized group whose job is to prevent laws harmful to them and foster those laws which are favourable to them. The laws that have been the most visible target of lobbying have been labour related laws.

Chaebols have been spending a lot of bribe money paid to law makers to prevent the adoption of pro-labour laws. This is one of the reasons for low wages and long hour of work in Korea

G. Transaction of jobs 

Another form of corruption is the transaction of jobs. In the case of a Casino in Gangwon Province, 80% of jobs were illegally given, in exchange of bribes, to those who were close to lawmakers or other persons close to the government of Park Geun-hye (image on the left).

It is suspected that Mrs Choi Soon-sil (now in prison for 20 years for corruption and illegally interfering in government policies) would have intervened, for large sum of bribe, in the nomination of cabinet ministers, judges and other high ranking officials.

Evolution Stages of Corruption 

The corruption in Korea has evolved by the following stages:

• Economic development and collusion of government-business.
• Formation of oligarchy of corruption
• Creation of corruption community

Stage 1. Economic Development and the emergence of bilateral collusion: government-business

One of the key factors of the economic miracle in Japan and Korea was the concept of Japan Incorporated (Japan Inc.) and that of Korea Incorporated (Korea Inc) by which I mean the situation in which the government and the business act as one single company. The government and the business become almost equal partners for economic policies and development.

The close cooperation government-business led inevitably to collusion in planning and executing the project of industrialization and economic development.

The story of collusion between President Park Chung-hee (image on the right) and Chung Joo-young, founder of the Hyundai Group and Lee Byung-chul, founder of the Samsung groups is almost a legend.

The stage of government-business collusion was almost identical to the period of take-off of the Korean economy (1960-1970), In fact, owing to the Korea Inc. and the bilateral collusion, Korea could free itself from absolute poverty in less than thirty years. 

Stage 2. Formation of Oligarchy  

As the economy developed further and the process of planning of economic development was executed, the role of bureaucracy became essential for the success of planning. In particular, the Bureau of Economic Planning (EPB) became the key factor of success of economic planning. As a result, the daily participation of EPB bureaucrats and high ranking officials of the Ministry of Finance and other civil servants joined the collusion. This led to the trilateral collusion: politics-bureaucracy-business.

No doubt, the trilateral collusion made significant contribution to the Han-River economic miracle. But in the absence of close supervision of the collusion, the members of the collusion became attempted to appropriate some of the fruits of economic development.

To do so, the collusion members formed a close circle to hide their illegal or immoral activities. In fact, this close circle became an exclusive oligarchy. One of the functions of the oligarchy consisted in allocating privileges to big businesses in exchange of bribe money.

There were several ways of giving public resources to big businesses. The policy loans were the most lucrative gift to the businesses. The government made loans of huge amount of money at an interest rate of less than 5%, while the market rate was above 20%.

This money was designed to foster industrialization and exports. True, a part of these loans were used for the construction of factories and exports. But, in many cases, the businesses made a fortune by making loans of the money borrowed at an interest rate much higher than 5 %.

The big businesses were given tax incentives; they were allowed free entry to industrial complexes; they were given lands which were supposed to be used for industrial use but a part of these lands were used for land speculation. The Chaebols were given all sorts of permit and privileges; they were given huge amount of grants and subsidies for reasons which were not clear.

This stage of the formation of the oligarchy took place in 1980s and 1990s. We may remember that theses two decades were active in reordering the global economy into neo-liberalism, which gave more power to big business and considerably weakened the power of the government. Under this circumstance, it could have become easier for business to dictate policies in their favour by giving bribes.

It was also the period of the transformation of Korean industry into heavy and chemical industries allowing big businesses to have almost unlimited sources of funds.

Stage 3. Establishment of Corruption Community

The oligarchy might have felt the need for strengthening itself by sharing the illicit income with media, the academics and conservative civic groups. In this way, the network of corruption was expanded to form a community of corruption.

The community of corruption is designed to widen the network of corruption so that it can better defend themselves against the anti-corruption forces. Thus, the Korean society became doubly divided between conservatism and progressivism on the one hand and, on the other, between pro-corruption force and anti-corruption force.

The stage of the corruption community came in the 2000s during which the progressive government of Kim Dae-jung (1997-2002 and Rho Moo-hyun (2003-2008) governed the country.

During this period, the corruption community of conservatives had to slow down their activities of corruption. But, it invested money to widen and strengthen its network.

However, since Lee Myong-bak took power in 2008 and Park Geun-hye succeeded him in 2013, the conservative government ruled for 9 years (2008-2017).

During this period, the corruption community expanded and intensified its corruption activities.

In fact, the degree of corruption during this period was even greater than that of the corruption under the military dictatorship of Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan.

As a result of their crimes, Park Geun-hye is sentenced 25-year imprisonment, while Lee Myong-bak (image on the left) is judged for 15-year imprisonment and accused for additional crimes of corruption.

Strategy of protecting the benefits of corruption

The strategy of protecting the interests of the corruption community included the following.

First, in order to silence the voice of opposition, the conservative government massacred a few hundred thousand innocent people under Rhee Sygnman, Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan.

Second, the freedom of press was completely silenced either through the brutal police force or through bribe money. The sad situation is that majority of press cannot survive without Chaebols’ advertising fees which are used as bribe money

In Korea, there are three dominant national newspapers: Chosun, Joong-ang, and Dong-ah (Cho-Joong-Dong). These newspapers may account for more than a half of the circulation of major newspapers.

They exited during the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910-1945) and they are known to be pro-Japan and pro-conservative; they have been suspected to play major roles in protecting the corruption community.

Third, ordinary Koreans who were suspected for being a part of pro-progressive and anti-corruption force were the targets of false accusation for being North Korean spy by the intelligence services; they were victims of police harassment and other unlawful means of oppression.

Fourth, authors of academic publications unfavourable to the conservative government were deprived of research funds.

In Korea, there is a group of academics, called “the New Right” who justifies the Japanese invasion of Korea. They have revised the modern history book in which they have written that Japan had come to Korea for its economic development for Koreans.

They deny the existence of the crime of sex slavery of 250,000 Korean teen age girls committed by Japanese soldiers during WWII.

The New Right academics along with the conservatives have given themselves the role of criticizing the progressive force for being “Red” (Pal-Gaeng-Ie) in order to induce voters to vote for the conservative party.

Fifth, about 10,000 artists, singer, movie actors and authors of novels who were not for conservative government were put on a black list and excluded from government grants. The director of the movie “Parasite” Bong Joon-ho was also on the black list along with his crew.

Sixth, the corruption community provides money to several civic pro-conservative movements including the association of Korea War veterans and various organizations of the elderly. These people participate, in street demonstrations, to criticize the progressives. They are paid by Chaebols for their participation.

Seventh, the intra-group marriage is another way of widening and strengthening the corruption community. The most visible cases are the marriages between families of leading conservative politicians and Chaebol families. 

Negative Impact of Corruption

The major negative impact of corruption may be grouped into two groups: economic impact and moral impact.

A. Economic Impact

In the short run, corruption can weaken the competitiveness of national economy, while, in the long run, it may bring decades-long deflation as it has happened in Japan.

We may separate micro-economic impact and macro-economic impact.

Micro-economic impact my take various forms. The corrupted way of supervising competition may favour big businesses which may prevent the market from assuring fair competition leading to the loss of competitiveness of small- and medium-sized firms (SMEs).

The government’s bailout operation of insolvent firms in exchange of bribery would simply prolong the life of insolvent firms and, as a result, it could weaken the competitiveness of the Korean industries.

The corrupted system of government procurement may result in buying services and goods of unreliable quality. Korea bought    once a submarine which did not submerge in exchange of kick-back.

The macro-economic impact of corruption is as bad as the micro-economic impact.

The pro-export policy imposed upon by the oligarchy may make GDP increase, but exports do not create much the trickledown effects; it does not create jobs; it increases unemployment; it makes income distribution unfair and unequal..

In Korea, 99.9 % of the total number of firms is small-and medium-sized firms (SMEs). They create 87% of jobs. But, the oligarchy has adopted pro-Chaebol and anti-SME policies.

This policy has contributed to the increase in exports. At the same time, it has surely boosted the income of the Chaebols. The increase of Chaebols’ income meant more bribe money available.

Another feature of pro-Chaebol policy was the exploitation of the SMEs for the benefit of the Chaebols. The conservative government allowed the big companies to steal technologies developed by the SMEs, violate the contracts, delaying the payment due to the SMEs and cutting down unilaterally the price of products sub-contracted.

The results of these policies are serious enough; they have prevented the development of the SMEs; they have destroyed jobs accessible to ordinary people. The worst thing was that these policies have delayed the development of domestic industries and increased the possibility of chronic deflation.

B. Moral impact  

The moral impact of corruption is even more destructive than the economic impact.

In Korea, there is an old saying: “The downstream water becomes clean, if the upstream water is clean”

Korean people believe that the very root of corruption is the Blue House (Korean White House). In other words, the upstream water is muddy. Therefore the downstream water is muddy. So, the corruption is spread throughout the society

Under the conservative regime, the primary objective of corruption is to accumulate money.

Man becomes slave of money; the money is above the law, above the Confucian values and even above Jesus.

The social status is determined by money. The money determines the hierarchy of the society. The rich Chaebol chief becomes the king and his family becomes royal family. The king of kings is the head of Samsung Group. In fact, under the conservative government, Korea was called the Republic of Samsung.

Chaebols hire former ministers of the central government to show off that they are more important than the government, demonstrate their wealth and power. These poor former ministers are fatly paid for their lobbying in favour of pro-Chaebol policies.

The power of money has created the phenomenon of “Gap-jil” in which the rich and powerful mistreat the poor as inferior beings.

The world may remembers the 2014 incidence of “macadamia nut” in which, the second daughter of the funder of Air Korea insulted and hit one of the personnel on board of a plane for the stupid reason for not opening the bag of nuts.

Pastors of mega protestant churches which have an annual income of millions of USD seem to have the illusion of having become a king and abuse their money power and mistreat congregation members.

In fact, a number of pastors have been accused of stealing church money, but they went free without being accused for the crime. The bribe money has played its role.

In many companies, the employees are forced to do something which has nothing to do with their job descriptions.

The perilous moral impact of the corruption of the conservative leaders is translated into the worship of money and the destruction of honesty, the decency, the integrity and the loss of mutual respect and love.

Fight against corruption 

If Korea remains one of the respected countries in the world for its economic performance, it is because Korean people fought back against dictatorship and corruption.

In fact, before the Candle-Light Revolution of 2016-2017, millions of Koreans had gone down to the street and fought bravely against corrupted conservative presidents: Rhee Shygnman (19th of April  1960), Park Chung-hee (16th of October 1979), Chun Do-hwn ( 18th of May 1980 and the month of June 1987).

Finally, from late 2016 to April 2017 for eight months, 17,000,000 individuals from all walks of life went down to the frozen streets and shouted:” Impeach the Park Geun -hye! Clean the corruption!”

The Candle-Light Revolution was successful in bringing back the progressive government after nine years of destructive conservative government. And Moon Jae-in became president.

The candlelight movement in Seoul, South Korea, mobilized for change of government (Credit: Women Cross DMZ)

President Moon is the third progressive presidents. The first was President Kim Dae-jung (1998-2002) and the second, President Rho Moo-hyun (2003-2008).

President Kim Dae-jung strengthened the anti-corruption force by encouraging the unionization of labour, vitalizing existing labour unions and fostering the development of progressive civic movements. In addition, he made a major reform of Chaebols asking them to specialize, to stop the circular intra-group financing and to be more transparent in counting.

It was President Rho Moo-hyun who tried hard to guarantee the freedom of media and accomplish a fundamental reform of the police, the office of prosecutors, the courts and the intelligence services.

Measures taken by President Rho were a real challenge to the community of corruption and they plotted his impeachment with fabricated reasons. He was not impeached after all. He finished his presidential term.

However, what worried the community of corruption the most was Rho’s political and ideological legacy of just society and egalitarian democracy.

In order to kill such legacy, the conservatives fabricated fake story that the first lady, Mrs. Rho, had received an expensive watch as bribery and hid it on a rice paddy. This story continued after the take-over of power by the conservative government of Lee Myong-bak.

The family of Rho was continuously harassed even after the retirement of Rho by the police, the conservative media and the office of prosecutors. This was a burden too heavy to endure for Rho and he killed himself.

This episode illustrates how deeply the conservatives were involved in the corruption and why they fabricated incredible story so that they could cling to the rich deriving from corruption.

President Moon Jae-in was President Rho’s chief of cabinet and he knows very well how difficult it is to clean the corruption culture accumulated for 70 years. But, he knows very well also that unless Korea gets rid of the corruption, it is difficult to survive as a normal and healthy nation.

President Moon has adopted the following measures to combat corruption which can be grouped into macro-measures and micro-measures.

Macro-measures anti-corruption

Macro-measures include the North-South peace process and the improved income distribution.

The North-South peace process has resulted in a peace situation in which North Korea no longer threats South Korea.

We remember that the conservative governments have been able to keep power largely due to the North-South tension allowing them to create an atmosphere of fear and win elections. They have been pretending that they are better qualified to deal with North Korea perhaps because of their long tradition of police and military dictatorship.

One of the major socio-economic policies of the Moon’s government is the policy of economic growth with fair income distribution.

Moon’s government increased the minimum wage, increased the national pension, instituted income allowance for the elderly, reduced the number of weekly labour hour, revised the real estate taxes and other measured to slow down the increase of income of the rich and increase the income of the poor.

This policy has the effect of providing a sound basis of economic growth. This policy also allows the poor to have more income and better resist corruption and “Gap-jil.)

Micro-measures of anti-corruption

Moon’s government has taken several micro-measures to tackle the corruption of the conservatives.

First, one of the roots of corruption is the influence peddling by the staff of the Blue House (Korean White House).

Since Moon took over the power, there has been no single case of influence peddling. The mother of President has met no person outside her family for last two years to avoid rumours of influence-peddling which can be fabricated by the conservative media.

Second, Moon has reduced greatly the functions of institutions of power. For instance, the function of the National Intelligence Service (former CIA) is reduced to the management of international information. Under the conservative government, its main function was to arrest those who oppose the government’s corruption by accusing them as North Korean spy.

Moreover, Moon abolished the Military Security Command whose function was to prevent unlawful activities with the armed forces. But, it was unlawfully involved in activities of spying those who criticized the conservative government.

Third, Moon’s government nominated a committee with the mission of re-investigating cases of obvious corruption and crimes committed by the community of corruption. For instance, there was the case of raping women by a deputy director of the Office of Prosecutor, but the case was not properly investigated partly because of bribes and partly because of his close relation with powerful people within the conservative government. 

Fourth, some of the leaders of media who sided with the community of corruption for the oppression of labour unions of reporters were replaced.

Fifth, Moon’s government has passed a series of anti-corruption laws including the Kindergarten Law preventing the theft of public funds by founders of kindergartens.

Sixth, Dozens of the Blue House personnel who collaborated with the corruption community of the conservatives have been punished.

Seventh, Perhaps the most difficult fight President Moon has started is the fight against the Office of Prosecutors.

The Korean prosecutor system is the most powerful one in the world; it has the right of investigation of crime and corruption. True, he police also has the right of investigation, but it is the prosecutor’s office which has the final say. Moreover, the prosecutor has the monopoly of indictment right.

In the past, thousand cases of corruption and abuse of power have been accused. But few of them went beyond the office of prosecutor and to the court.

In short, Korea has not been able to win the war against corruption mainly because of the corrupted prosecutor’s monopoly of judiciary power.

In Korea, there is no power which can rule the prosecutor, not even the president. In a way, the prosecutor has been the most powerful and effective defender of the corruption culture.

To fight the prosecutor, Moon has been able to pass a law on the mechanism of supervising high ranking officials including prosecutors (Gong-Soo-Cheo). Moon has won a battle. But it is a long way to go before cleaning the corruption culture.

The ultimate defender of corruption is money. The conservatives have been stacking up corruption money for last 70 years amounting hundreds of billions of dollars hidden in cash, real estate, stocks throughout the world.

It may take more than 10 years, even 20 years of progressive government in power, before Korea can destroy completely the corruption culture.

Lessons

There are some lessons which can be drawn from Korea’s experience of corruption.

First, the corruption must be stopped at the first stage of the evolution of corruption, that is, the stage of the bilateral collusion.

Second, when the process of corruption attains the stage of oligarchy formation, it may take very hard measure to fight it.

Third, if we wait until the stage of the corruption community, it may take decades to clean it. This is the case of Korea

Fourth, one cannot rely always on the government for the elimination of corruption, because the government is often corrupted.

It is very fortunate that, in Korea, the progressive government of Moon is leading the fight against corruption. However, Moon needs the active cooperation of ordinary people to defeat corruption. The people are with him.

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Professor Joseph H. Chung is professor of economics and co-director of the Observatoire de l’Asie de l’Est (OAE) – the Centre d’Études sur l’Intégration et la Mondialisation (CEIM), Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). He is Research Fellow of the Center of Research on Globalisation (CRG).

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro Thursday announced that the health system is “on permanent alert,” although there are no Covid-19 cases in this South American country so far. He also reported that landing of flights from Europe, Colombia, and Panama will be prohibited from March 15.

Maduro also indicated that the border with Colombia must be cordoned off and urged the authorities of the neighboring country to act jointly to contain the disease.

“I tell President [Ivan] Duque, beyond ideological differences, this is a true humanitarian situation and we need to coordinate from government to government, from health ministry to health ministry, and cordon off the entire border and protect the people from Venezuela and Colombia,” he said.

Maduro also stressed that his government has been working to prevent the arrival of Covid-19 to Venezuela in difficult circumstances due to the U.S. blockade against the Bolivarian people.

My new animation. Confirmed cases vs. deaths from #coronavirus #Covid_19, again using data from @HopkinsMedicine. pic.twitter.com/Jsf4qIHRWa

— Joey (@JoeySchmittPhD) March 12, 2020

“We have taken all preventive measures to prevent the arrival of the virus… we have carried out all the actions that the [U.S.] criminal sanctions have allowed us to undertake.”

Previously, on Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated that the Covid-19 outbreak is a pandemic due to its spread around the world.

Faced with likely attempts by the right-wing forces to destabilize Venezuela, President Maduro called on opponents to act with a humanitarian sense and invited the population to increase their solidarity.

“Let us be the greatest example of social discipline, organization, medical scientific quality, cooperation to solve all these situations,” the Bolivarian leader said.

*

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This article by award winning author Mahdi Nazemroaya was first published by GR in November 2006 (barely a few months after Israel’s invasion of Lebanon)

It is of particular relevance  to an understanding of the ongoing process of destabilization and political fragmentation in the Middle East as well as US war plans directed against Lebanon, Syria,  Iran and Yemen.  

 

GR Editor, August 10, 2020, March 2021

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“Hegemony is as old as Mankind…” -Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. National Security Advisor

The term “New Middle East” was introduced to the world in June 2006 in Tel Aviv by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who was credited by the Western media for coining the term) in replacement of the older and more imposing term, the “Greater Middle East.”

This shift in foreign policy phraseology coincided with the inauguration of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Oil Terminal in the Eastern Mediterranean. The term and conceptualization of the “New Middle East,” was subsequently heralded by the U.S. Secretary of State and the Israeli Prime Minister at the height of  the Anglo-American sponsored Israeli siege of Lebanon. Prime Minister Olmert and Secretary Rice had informed the international media that a project for a “New Middle East” was being launched from Lebanon.

This announcement was a confirmation of an Anglo-American-Israeli “military roadmap” in the Middle East. This project, which has been in the  planning stages for several years, consists in creating an arc of instability, chaos, and violence extending from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria to Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Iran, and the borders of NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan.

The “New Middle East” project was introduced publicly by Washington and Tel Aviv with the expectation that Lebanon would be the pressure point for realigning the whole Middle East and thereby unleashing the forces of “constructive chaos.” This “constructive chaos” –which generates conditions of violence and warfare throughout the region– would in turn be used so that the United States, Britain, and Israel could redraw the map of the Middle East in accordance with their geo-strategic needs and objectives.

New Middle East Map

Secretary Condoleezza Rice stated during a press conference that

“[w]hat we’re seeing here [in regards to the destruction of Lebanon and the Israeli attacks on Lebanon], in a sense, is the growing—the ‘birth pangs’—of a ‘New Middle East’ and whatever we do we [meaning the United States] have to be certain that we’re pushing forward to the New Middle East [and] not going back to the old one.”1

Secretary Rice was immediately criticized for her statements both within Lebanon and internationally for expressing indifference to the suffering of an entire nation, which was being bombed  indiscriminately by the Israeli Air Force.

The Anglo-American Military Roadmap in the Middle East and Central Asia 

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s speech on the “New Middle East” had set the stage. The Israeli attacks on Lebanon –which had been fully endorsed by Washington and London– have further compromised and validated the existence of the geo-strategic objectives of the United States, Britain, and Israel. According to Professor Mark Levine the “neo-liberal globalizers and neo-conservatives, and ultimately the Bush Administration, would latch on to creative destruction as a way of describing the process by which they hoped to create their new world orders,” and that “creative destruction [in] the United States was, in the words of neo-conservative philosopher and Bush adviser Michael Ledeen, ‘an awesome revolutionary force’ for (…) creative destruction…”2

Anglo-American occupied Iraq, particularly Iraqi Kurdistan, seems to be the preparatory ground for the balkanization (division) and finlandization (pacification) of the Middle East. Already the legislative framework, under the Iraqi Parliament and the name of Iraqi federalization, for the partition of Iraq into three portions is being drawn out. (See map below)

Moreover, the Anglo-American military roadmap appears to be vying an entry into Central Asia via the Middle East. The Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are stepping stones for extending U.S. influence into the former Soviet Union and the ex-Soviet Republics of Central Asia. The Middle East is to some extent the southern tier of Central Asia. Central Asia in turn is also termed as “Russia’s Southern Tier” or the Russian “Near Abroad.”

Many Russian and Central Asian scholars, military planners, strategists, security advisors, economists, and politicians consider Central Asia (“Russia’s Southern Tier”) to be the vulnerable and “soft under-belly” of the Russian Federation.3

It should be noted that in his book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former U.S. National Security Advisor, alluded to the modern Middle East as a control lever of an area he, Brzezinski, calls the Eurasian Balkans. The Eurasian Balkans consists of the Caucasus (Georgia, the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Armenia) and Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan) and to some extent both Iran and Turkey. Iran and Turkey both form the northernmost tiers of the Middle East (excluding the Caucasus4) that edge into Europe and the former Soviet Union.

The Map of the “New Middle East”

A relatively unknown map of the Middle East, NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan, and Pakistan has been circulating around strategic, governmental, NATO, policy and military circles since mid-2006. It has been causally allowed to surface in public, maybe in an attempt to build consensus and to slowly prepare the general public for possible, maybe even cataclysmic, changes in the Middle East. This is a map of a redrawn and restructured Middle East identified as the “New Middle East.”

MAP OF THE NEW MIDDLE EAST

Note: The following map was prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters. It was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006, Peters is a retired colonel of the U.S. National War Academy. (Map Copyright Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters 2006).

Although the map does not officially reflect Pentagon doctrine, it has been used in a training program at NATO’s Defense College for senior military officers. This map, as well as other similar maps, has most probably been used at the National War Academy as well as in military planning circles.

This map of the “New Middle East” seems to be based on several other maps, including older maps of potential boundaries in the Middle East extending back to the era of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and World War I. This map is showcased and presented as the brainchild of retired Lieutenant-Colonel (U.S. Army) Ralph Peters, who believes the redesigned borders contained in the map will fundamentally solve the problems of the contemporary Middle East.

The map of the “New Middle East” was a key element in the retired Lieutenant-Colonel’s book, Never Quit the Fight, which was released to the public on July 10, 2006. This map of a redrawn Middle East was also published, under the title of Blood Borders: How a better Middle East would look, in the U.S. military’s Armed Forces Journal with commentary from Ralph Peters.5

It should be noted that Lieutenant-Colonel Peters was last posted to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, within the U.S. Defence Department, and has been one of the Pentagon’s foremost authors with numerous essays on strategy for military journals and U.S. foreign policy.

It has been written that Ralph Peters’ “four previous books on strategy have been highly influential in government and military circles,” but one can be pardoned for asking if in fact quite the opposite could be taking place. Could it be Lieutenant-Colonel Peters is revealing and putting forward what Washington D.C. and its strategic planners have anticipated for the Middle East?

The concept of a redrawn Middle East has been presented as a “humanitarian” and “righteous” arrangement that would benefit the people(s) of the Middle East and its peripheral regions. According to Ralph Peters:

International borders are never completely just. But the degree of injustice they inflict upon those whom frontiers force together or separate makes an enormous difference — often the difference between freedom and oppression, tolerance and atrocity, the rule of law and terrorism, or even peace and war.

The most arbitrary and distorted borders in the world are in Africa and the Middle East. Drawn by self-interested Europeans (who have had sufficient trouble defining their own frontiers), Africa’s borders continue to provoke the deaths of millions of local inhabitants. But the unjust borders in the Middle East — to borrow from Churchill — generate more trouble than can be consumed locally.

While the Middle East has far more problems than dysfunctional borders alone — from cultural stagnation through scandalous inequality to deadly religious extremism — the greatest taboo in striving to understand the region’s comprehensive failure isn’t Islam, but the awful-but-sacrosanct international boundaries worshipped by our own diplomats.

Of course, no adjustment of borders, however draconian, could make every minority in the Middle East happy. In some instances, ethnic and religious groups live intermingled and have intermarried. Elsewhere, reunions based on blood or belief might not prove quite as joyous as their current proponents expect. The boundaries projected in the maps accompanying this article redress the wrongs suffered by the most significant “cheated” population groups, such as the Kurds, Baluch and Arab Shia [Muslims], but still fail to account adequately for Middle Eastern Christians, Bahais, Ismailis, Naqshbandis and many another numerically lesser minorities. And one haunting wrong can never be redressed with a reward of territory: the genocide perpetrated against the Armenians by the dying Ottoman Empire.

Yet, for all the injustices the borders re-imagined here leave unaddressed, without such major boundary revisions, we shall never see a more peaceful Middle East.

Even those who abhor the topic of altering borders would be well-served to engage in an exercise that attempts to conceive a fairer, if still imperfect, amendment of national boundaries between the Bosphorus and the Indus. Accepting that international statecraft has never developed effective tools — short of war — for readjusting faulty borders, a mental effort to grasp the Middle East’s “organic” frontiers nonetheless helps us understand the extent of the difficulties we face and will continue to face. We are dealing with colossal, man-made deformities that will not stop generating hatred and violence until they are corrected. 6

(emphasis added)

“Necessary Pain”

Besides believing that there is “cultural stagnation” in the Middle East, it must be noted that Ralph Peters admits that his propositions are “draconian” in nature, but he insists that they are necessary pains for the people of the Middle East. This view of necessary pain and suffering is in startling parallel to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s belief that the devastation of Lebanon by the Israeli military was a necessary pain or “birth pang” in order to create the “New Middle East” that Washington, London, and Tel Aviv envision.

Moreover, it is worth noting that the subject of the Armenian Genocide is being politicized and stimulated in Europe to offend Turkey.7

The overhaul, dismantlement, and reassembly of the nation-states of the Middle East have been packaged as a solution to the hostilities in the Middle East, but this is categorically misleading, false, and fictitious. The advocates of a “New Middle East” and redrawn boundaries in the region avoid and fail to candidly depict the roots of the problems and conflicts in the contemporary Middle East. What the media does not acknowledge is the fact that almost all major conflicts afflicting the Middle East are the consequence of overlapping Anglo-American-Israeli agendas.

Many of the problems affecting the contemporary Middle East are the result of the deliberate aggravation of pre-existing regional tensions. Sectarian division, ethnic tension and internal violence have been traditionally exploited by the United States and Britain in various parts of the globe including Africa, Latin America, the Balkans, and the Middle East. Iraq is just one of many examples of the Anglo-American strategy of “divide and conquer.” Other examples are Rwanda, Yugoslavia, the Caucasus, and Afghanistan.

Amongst the problems in the contemporary Middle East is the lack of genuine democracy which U.S. and British foreign policy has actually been deliberately obstructing.  Western-style “Democracy” has been a requirement only for those Middle Eastern states which do not conform to Washington’s political demands. Invariably, it constitutes a pretext for confrontation. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan are examples of undemocratic states that the United States has no problems with because they are firmly alligned within the Anglo-American orbit or sphere.

Additionally, the United States has deliberately blocked or displaced genuine democratic movements in the Middle East from Iran in 1953 (where a U.S./U.K. sponsored coup was staged against the democratic government of Prime Minister Mossadegh) to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, the Arab Sheikdoms, and Jordan where the Anglo-American alliance supports military control, absolutists, and dictators in one form or another. The latest example of this is Palestine.

The Turkish Protest at NATO’s Military College in Rome

Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters’ map of the “New Middle East” has sparked angry reactions in Turkey. According to Turkish press releases on September 15, 2006 the map of the “New Middle East” was displayed in NATO’s Military College in Rome, Italy. It was additionally reported that Turkish officers were immediately outraged by the presentation of a portioned and segmented Turkey.8 The map received some form of approval from the U.S. National War Academy before it was unveiled in front of NATO officers in Rome.

The Turkish Chief of Staff, General Buyukanit, contacted the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, and protested the event and the exhibition of the redrawn map of the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.9 Furthermore the Pentagon has gone out of its way to assure Turkey that the map does not reflect official U.S. policy and objectives in the region, but this seems to be conflicting with Anglo-American actions in the Middle East and NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan.

Is there a Connection between Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “Eurasian Balkans” and the “New Middle East” Project?

The following are important excerpts and passages from former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski’s book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives. Brzezinski also states that both Turkey and Iran, the two most powerful states of the “Eurasian Balkans,” located on its southern tier, are “potentially vulnerable to internal ethnic conflicts [balkanization],” and that, “If either or both of them were to be destabilized, the internal problems of the region would become unmanageable.”10

It seems that a divided and balkanized Iraq would be the best means of accomplishing this. Taking what we know from the White House’s own admissions; there is a belief that “creative destruction and chaos” in the Middle East are beneficial assets to reshaping the Middle East, creating the “New Middle East,” and furthering the Anglo-American roadmap in the Middle East and Central Asia:

In Europe, the Word “Balkans” conjures up images of ethnic conflicts and great-power regional rivalries. Eurasia, too, has its “Balkans,” but the Eurasian Balkans are much larger, more populated, even more religiously and ethnically heterogenous. They are located within that large geographic oblong that demarcates the central zone of global instability (…) that embraces portions of southeastern Europe, Central Asia and parts of South Asia [Pakistan, Kashmir, Western India], the Persian Gulf area, and the Middle East.

The Eurasian Balkans form the inner core of that large oblong (…) they differ from its outer zone in one particularly significant way: they are a power vacuum. Although most of the states located in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East are also unstable, American power is that region’s [meaning the Middle East’s] ultimate arbiter. The unstable region in the outer zone is thus an area of single power hegemony and is tempered by that hegemony. In contrast, the Eurasian Balkans are truly reminiscent of the older, more familiar Balkans of southeastern Europe: not only are its political entities unstable but they tempt and invite the intrusion of more powerful neighbors, each of whom is determined to oppose the region’s domination by another. It is this familiar combination of a power vacuum and power suction that justifies the appellation “Eurasian Balkans.”

The traditional Balkans represented a potential geopolitical prize in the struggle for European supremacy. The Eurasian Balkans, astride the inevitably emerging transportation network meant to link more directly Eurasia’s richest and most industrious western and eastern extremities, are also geopolitically significant. Moreover, they are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely, Russia, Turkey, and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold.

 The world’s energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over the next two or three decades. Estimates by the U.S. Department of Energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia’s economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy, and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.

Access to that resource and sharing in its potential wealth represent objectives that stir national ambitions, motivate corporate interests, rekindle historical claims, revive imperial aspirations, and fuel international rivalries. The situation is made all the more volatile by the fact that the region is not only a power vacuum but is also internally unstable.

(…)

The Eurasian Balkans include nine countries that one way or another fit the foregoing description, with two others as potential candidates. The nine are Kazakstan [alternative and official spelling of Kazakhstan] , Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia—all of them formerly part of the defunct Soviet Union—as well as Afghanistan.

The potential additions to the list are Turkey and Iran, both of them much more politically and economically viable, both active contestants for regional influence within the Eurasian Balkans, and thus both significant geo-strategic players in the region. At the same time, both are potentially vulnerable to internal ethnic conflicts. If either or both of them were to be destabilized, the internal problems of the region would become unmanageable, while efforts to restrain regional domination by Russia could even become futile. 11

(emphasis added)

Redrawing the Middle East

The Middle East, in some regards, is a striking parallel to the Balkans and Central-Eastern Europe during the years leading up the First World War. In the wake of the the First World War the borders of the Balkans and Central-Eastern Europe were redrawn. This region experienced a period of upheaval, violence and conflict, before and after World War I, which was the direct result of foreign economic interests and interference.

The reasons behind the First World War are more sinister than the standard school-book explanation, the assassination of the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian (Habsburg) Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo. Economic factors were the real motivation for the large-scale war in 1914.

Norman Dodd, a former Wall Street banker and investigator for the U.S. Congress, who examined  U.S. tax-exempt foundations, confirmed in a 1982 interview that those powerful individuals who from behind the scenes controlled the finances, policies, and government of the United States had in fact also planned U.S. involvement in a war, which would contribute to entrenching their grip on power.

The following testimonial is from the transcript of Norman Dodd’s interview with G. Edward Griffin;

We are now at the year 1908, which was the year that the Carnegie Foundation began operations.  And, in that year, the trustees meeting, for the first time, raised a specific question, which they discussed throughout the balance of the year, in a very learned fashion.  And the question is this:  Is there any means known more effective than war, assuming you wish to alter the life of an entire people?  And they conclude that, no more effective means to that end is known to humanity, than war.  So then, in 1909, they raise the second question, and discuss it, namely, how do we involve the United States in a war?

Well, I doubt, at that time, if there was any subject more removed from the thinking of most of the people of this country [the United States], than its involvement in a war.  There were intermittent shows [wars] in the Balkans, but I doubt very much if many people even knew where the Balkans were.  And finally, they answer that question as follows:  we must control the State Department.

And then, that very naturally raises the question of how do we do that?  They answer it by saying, we must take over and control the diplomatic machinery of this country and, finally, they resolve to aim at that as an objective.  Then, time passes, and we are eventually in a war, which would be World War I.  At that time, they record on their minutes a shocking report in which they dispatch to President Wilson a telegram cautioning him to see that the war does not end too quickly.  And finally, of course, the war is over.

At that time, their interest shifts over to preventing what they call a reversion of life in the United States to what it was prior to 1914, when World War I broke out. (emphasis added)

The redrawing and partition of the Middle East from the Eastern Mediterranean shores of Lebanon and Syria to Anatolia (Asia Minor), Arabia, the Persian Gulf, and the Iranian Plateau responds to broad economic, strategic and military objectives, which are part of a longstanding Anglo-American and Israeli agenda in the region.

The Middle East has been conditioned by outside forces into a powder keg that is ready to explode with the right trigger, possibly the launching of Anglo-American and/or Israeli air raids against Iran and Syria. A wider war in the Middle East could result in redrawn borders that are strategically advantageous to Anglo-American interests and Israel.

NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan has been successfully divided, all but in name. Animosity has been inseminated in the Levant, where a Palestinian civil war is being nurtured and divisions in Lebanon agitated. The Eastern Mediterranean has been successfully militarized by NATO. Syria and Iran continue to be demonized by the Western media, with a view to justifying a military agenda. In turn, the Western media has fed, on a daily basis, incorrect and biased notions that the populations of Iraq cannot co-exist and that the conflict is not a war of occupation but a “civil war” characterised by domestic strife between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

Attempts at intentionally creating animosity between the different ethno-cultural and religious groups of the Middle East have been systematic. In fact, they are part of a carefully designed covert intelligence agenda.

Even more ominous, many Middle Eastern governments, such as that of Saudi Arabia, are assisting Washington in fomenting divisions between Middle Eastern populations. The ultimate objective is to weaken the resistance movement against foreign occupation through a “divide and conquer strategy” which serves Anglo-American and Israeli interests in the broader region.

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya specializes in Middle Eastern and Central Asian affairs. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Notes

1 Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Special Briefing on the Travel to the Middle East and Europe of Secretary Condoleezza Rice (Press Conference, U.S. State Department, Washington, D.C., July 21, 2006).

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/69331.htm

2 Mark LeVine, “The New Creative Destruction,” Asia Times, August 22, 2006.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH22Ak01.html

3 Andrej Kreutz, “The Geopolitics of post-Soviet Russia and the Middle East,” Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ) (Washington, D.C.: Association of Arab-American University Graduates, January 2002).

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2501/is_1_24/ai_93458168/pg_1

4 The Caucasus or Caucasia can be considered as part of the Middle East or as a separate region

5 Ralph Peters, “Blood borders: How a better Middle East would look,” Armed Forces Journal (AFJ), June 2006.

http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/06/1833899

6 Ibid.

7 Crispian Balmer, “French MPs back Armenia genocide bill, Turkey angry, Reuters, October 12, 2006; James McConalogue, “French against Turks: Talking about Armenian Genocide,” The Brussels Journal, October 10, 2006.

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1585

8 Suleyman Kurt, “Carved-up Map of Turkey at NATO Prompts U.S. Apology,” Zaman (Turkey), September 29, 2006.

http://www.zaman.com/?bl=international&alt=&hn=36919

9 Ibid.

10 Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives (New York City: Basic Books, 1997).

11 Ibid.

Related Global Research articles on the March to War in the Middle East

US naval war games off the Iranian coastline: A provocation which could lead to War? 2006-10-24

“Cold War Shivers:” War Preparations in the Middle East and Central Asia 2006-10-06

The March to War: Naval build-up in the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean 2006-10-01

The March to War: Iran Preparing for US Air Attacks 2006-09-21

The Next Phase of the Middle East War 2006-09-04

Baluchistan and the Coming Iran War 2006-09-01

British Troops Mobilizing on the Iranian Border 2006-08-30

Russia and Central Asian Allies Conduct War Games in Response to US Threats 2006-08-24

Beating the Drums of War: US Troop Build-up: Army & Marines authorize “Involuntary Conscription” 2006-08-23

Iranian War Games: Exercises, Tests, and Drills or Preparation and Mobilization for War? 2006-08-21

Triple Alliance:” The US, Turkey, Israel and the War on Lebanon 2006-08-06 

The War on Lebanon and the Battle for Oil 2006-07-26 

Is the Bush Administration Planning a Nuclear Holocaust? 2006-02-22 

The Dangers of a Middle East Nuclear War 2006-02-17 

Nuclear War against Iran 2006-01-03 

Israeli Bombings could lead to Escalation of Middle East War 2006-07-15 

Iran: Next Target of US Military Aggression 2005-05-01 

Planned US-Israeli Attack on Iran 2005-05-01

Trump contends that the coronavirus was “Made in China”.  And that China threatens America.

The president of the US wants Americans to believe that the coronavirus pandemic carries the “Made in China” label.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo refers to it as the “Wuhan coronavirus.” 

“The Big Lie” started on January 30th when the WHO Director General pressured by powerful US economic interests declared a global public health emergency with only 150 “confirmed cases” (by the WHO) outside China with only six cases in the USA. And it was called a pandemic. 

“Fake media” immediately went into high gear. China was held responsible for “spreading infection” Worldwide.

On the following day (January 31, 2020), Trump announced that he would deny entry to the US of both Chinese and foreign nationals “who have traveled in China in the last 14 days”. This immediately triggered a crisis in air travel,  transportation, US-China business relations as well as freight and shipping transactions.

While the “Made in China” coronavirus label served as a pretext, the unspoken objective was to bring the Chinese economy to its knees.

It was an act of “economic warfare”, which has contributed to undermining both China’s  economy as well as that of  most Western countries (allies of the US), leading to a wave of bankruptcies, not to mention unemployment, collapse of the tourist industry,  etc.

Moreover, Trump’s “Made in China” coronavirus label almost immediately as of early February triggered a campaign against ethnic Chinese throughout the Western World.

Stage 2.0: “Infections Transmitted by Europeans”? 

On March 11, a new phase was launched. The Trump administration imposed a 30-day ban on Europeans entering the United States through the suspension of air-travel with the EU (with the exception of Britain).

America is now waging its “economic  war” against Western Europe, while using COVID-19 as a justification.

European governments have been co-opted. In Italy a lockdown prevails, ordered by the Prime Minister, large cities in Northern Italy including Milano and Torino have literally closed down.

Confusion, Fear and intimidation prevail.

It’s “Damage Made in America”.

Late February: Financial manipulation characterizes stock market transactions Worldwide.

The stock value of airlines companies collapses overnight. Those who had  “foreknowledge” of Trump’s March 11 decision to ban transatlantic flights from EU countries made a bundle of money. It’s called “short-selling” in the derivative market among other speculative ops. Institutional speculators including hedge funds with “inside info” had already placed their bets.

More generally, a massive transfer of money wealth has occurred, among the largest in World history, leading to countless bankruptcies, not to mention the loss of lifelong savings engineered through the collapse of financial markets.

This process is ongoing. It would be naive to believe that these occurrences are spontaneous, based on market forces. They are deliberate. They are part of a carefully designed plan involving powerful financial interests.

COVID-19: “Made in China” or “Made in America”? 

And now a new bombshell has emerged: The White House rhetoric of accusing China of spreading the “Wuhan virus” Worldwide has been questioned by both Japanese and Chinese reports:

A report from a Japanese TV station that suspected some of the 14,000 Americans died of influenza may have unknowningly contracted the coronavirus has gone viral on Chinese social media, stoking fears and speculations in China that the novel coronavirus may have originated in the US.

The report, by TV Asahi Corporation of Japan, suggested that the US government may have failed to grasp how rampant the virus have gone on the US soil.

(People’s Daily, February 23, 2020)

 

And on March 12, in a statement to the US Congress (House Oversight Committee), CDC Director Robert Redfield  candidly admitted, yes, some cases diagnosed as seasonal flu could have been coronavirus.

When did this occur? In October, November? He did not mention the dates.

CDC director Robert Redfield admitted some Americans who seemingly died from influenza were tested positive for novel #coronavirus in the posthumous diagnosis, during the House Oversight Committee Wednesday. #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/kk7q0bKE6p

— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) March 12, 2020

 

China’s Foreign Ministry reacted to CDC Robert Redfield’s statements intimating that the virus could have originated in the US.

“When Did “Patient Zero” Begin in the US?” said China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian.

Of course “WHEN” is the fundamental question.

“How many people are infected, what are the names of the hospitals, It might be US Army that brought epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent, US owe us an explanation”

See below

@CDCDirector Dr. Robert Redfield: Some cases that were previously diagnosed as Flu in the US were actually #COVID19. It is absolutely WRONG and INAPPROPRIATE to call this the Chinese coronavirus. https://t.co/Mk4RB7XYq0

— Hua Chunying 华春莹 (@SpokespersonCHN) March 12, 2020

The World is at the Crossroads of the Most Serious Social and Economic Crisis in Modern History

People Worldwide are being misled. They are told: “It’s going to get worse”. Angela Merkel has stated without a shred of evidence that “70% of the German population could contract coronavirus if more isn’t done to stop its spread.”

In several countries, the economy has closed down. Supermarkets, shopping malls, offices, factories, schools, universities are at a standstill. People are confined to their homes. Fear and intimidation prevail.

In the meantime, coinciding with the coronavirus lockdown in Italy, 30,000 US troops have been dispatched to the EU, under US-NATO’s  “Defend Europe 2020” war games against Russia, in the largest military deployment since World War II. “Could the Defender become the Invader…?”

Let’s be clear: The coronavirus pandemic is not the “cause” of this unfolding economic and social crisis. It is the “pretext” for the implementation of a carefully designed “operation” (supported by media disinformation) which destabilizes national economies, impoverishes large sectors of the World population and literally undermines the lives of millions of people. What we are dealing with is “An Act of War”.

While COVID-19 is an important Public Health concern, the freeze of economic activity coupled with the lockdown and an ongoing fear campaign does not constitute an effective means to combating the virus. What is required is a carefully designed and coordinated preventative and curative public health program.

 

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For further details see:

COVID-19 Coronavirus “Fake” Pandemic: Timeline and Analysis 

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 08, 2020

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What Happens Next: The Potential Impacts of a Continued Freeze of US Trade with China

The geopolitics are complex. How will economic events unfold? We will essentially focus briefly on US-China relations.

Those who formulated America’s “undeclared economic war” against China, failed to envisage the potential backlash on the US economy.

It’s an “Economic Harakiri” i.e. “Suicide American Style”

In a matter of  months, if normal US-China trade relations and transportation are not resumed, the impacts on the national economies of Western countries could be devastating.

A large share of goods displayed in America’s shopping malls, including major brands are  “Made in China”.

“Made in China” is the backbone of retail trade in the USA which indelibly sustains household consumption in virtually all major commodity categories from clothing, footwear, hardware, electronics, toys, jewellery, household fixtures, medical supplies, medicine and prescription drugs,,  TV sets, cell phones, etc.

“Made in China” also dominates the production of a wide range of industrial inputs, advanced technology, machinery, building materials, automotive, parts and accessories, etc. not to mention the extensive sub-contracting of Chinese companies on behalf of US conglomerates.

While the US has a powerful and sophisticated financial apparatus (which has the ability to manipulate trade and stock markets Worldwide), America’s Real Economy is in a shambles.

Production does not take place in the USA. The producers have given up production.

The US trade deficit with China is instrumental in fuelling the profit driven consumer economy which relies on “Made in China” consumer goods. Meanwhile China holds a large part of the US public debt which they can readily convert into real assets overnight.

www.Made-In-China.com

At this juncture of the coronavirus crisis, Beijing policy makers are fully aware that the US economy is fragile and heavily dependent on “Made in China”.  Moreover, China has overtaken the US in several high tech areas including 5G.

And with an internal market of 1.4 billion people, coupled with a global export market under the “Belt and Road” initiative, the Chinese economy will have the upper hand.

An underlying theme behind the Western political and media focus on the coronavirus, is to damage and undermine China’s international standing, the country where this disease is commonly purported to have spread forth from. Prominent American politicians like Mike Pompeo, the US Secretary of State, have publicly labelled this disease as “the Wuhan coronavirus”, in an attempt to harm China’s reputation and lay the blame at Beijing’s door.

Throughout this century, China has represented the main threat to American global hegemony, and this threat to US power has gradually been growing as elites in the West are only too aware. The coronavirus, whose spectre is being exaggerated by the establishment, provides an excuse to tighten the choke-hold on China.

This is happening in the shadows, away from the public glare. Indeed, China is already surrounded by hundreds of US military bases in the east Asian and Pacific regions, and for well over a year Beijing has been embroiled in a bitter trade war with Washington.

Although it may sound cynical, we can recognise another central factor behind the coronavirus hyperbole: that it is being exploited by the powers-that-be, in order to frighten and keep under control a world populace which has increasingly been rebelling against the assaults of neoliberal globalisation (1). A supposedly all-consuming virus is an ideal opportunity to warn the public not to gather outside in large groups, to remain isolated from each other and stay indoors. Simply put, be obedient and passive.

A serious infectious ailment like the coronavirus does, up to a point, merit attention and concern. It would be disingenuous to suggest otherwise, particularly when the cases are notably increasing in number. The coronavirus is presented as more dangerous in comparison to influenza (flu) – without adequate and reliable tests and statistics (2). Yet these figures are evolving, and will change over the course of time, becoming more or less severe; quite often the latter case.

It is important to put the coronavirus into context and provide some perspective. Since late December 2019 until the present, just over 4,600 deaths have officially been attributed to the illness, out of a global human population of 7.8 billion. This makes a world death toll of a tiny fraction of 1%. Among those who have died, just over 3,000 of them were Chinese citizens, comprising more than 60% of the combined fatality count.

As things stand, one is far more likely to suffer death in an automobile accident, than either contracting the coronavirus or succumbing to it. Each year there are around 1.3 million deaths worldwide from traffic accidents. Almost 40,000 people were killed on the roads in America during 2019; in China, there are on average 250,000 road fatalities each year. The number of cars worldwide are responsible for 20% of global carbon emissions.

Nevertheless there are no large-scale media campaigns directed against the hazards of vehicles. Quite the opposite, car manufacturers are regularly advertised in the corporate press; who, at the same, claim to have sincere concerns about the worsening climate crisis.

Since the first coronavirus case was said to have occurred in eastern China over two months ago, there are at the time of writing a reported 130,000 coronavirus infections globally – with it thought to have spread to 113 nations and counting, more than half of the world’s countries (3). However, this does not constitute a pandemic, as the World Health Organisation (WHO) mistakenly insists, who themselves have a somewhat dubious history in these affairs, as will be discussed below further.

A pandemic is an outbreak of disease that is occurring over both a wide geographic area “and affecting an exceptionally high proportion of the population” (4). This stark description, which can be found in separate dictionaries, seems to have escaped the attention of the WHO. It cannot be claimed that over 100,000 infections out of a world population of almost eight billion is an exceptionally high proportion of the population. This ratio accounts once more to a small fraction of 1% of all humans. In reality this is not remotely a pandemic as of yet.

Panic-inducing media headlines fail to mention that the majority of all coronavirus cases have still occurred in mainland China, where more than 80,000 people are reported to have been infected.

Even in this instance, there are firm indications that the disease has successfully been contained by Beijing’s authorities (5). Over three weeks ago and more, around 2,000 new coronavirus cases were recorded in China daily; but this worrying figure has dropped dramatically, with a mere 40 new cases in China occurring on Monday this week, the lowest number since tracking began. If the virus can be smothered in the world’s most populace country, surely the same can be achieved elsewhere.

States such as Italy and Iran, with much smaller populations than China, are well advised in seeking Beijing’s counsel on how to suppress this disease.

Much of the reporting on the coronavirus has been misleading and sensationalist. It is receiving an extent of media coverage that is not afforded to much more serious issues, like nuclear weapons and climate change – in particular the nuclear threat, which is barely focused on or even understood, despite the fact it remains the single greatest threat facing mankind.

The American author and military analyst Daniel Ellsberg said last year that, “It is true that climate change may totally disrupt civilisation as we know it, but how many lives would it cost? Whatever the number, some form of civilisation would probably survive. By contrast, a nuclear winter, which has a non-zero possibility of occurring, would occasion near extinction”. (6)

Ellsberg estimates that two years after a nuclear winter – which would spread globally in the weeks following a nuclear war between America and Russia or China – that about 100,000 people would be left alive out out of 7.8 billion. Hence his accurate description of “near extinction” for humanity, in the event of a nuclear war between the major powers. One will do well to find mention of this in mass media journals, however.

An interested scholar will also have to search hard in newspaper archives to learn anything about the near-deadly accidents, involving nuclear bombs through the decades, of which there have been many. (7)

One should be cautious whenever the mainstream press and first world politicians strongly push a certain agenda. This was most obvious in recent years with the ludicrous claims that Moscow decided the 2016 US presidential election in Donald Trump’s favour, which the American public paid scant attention to.

The WHO, who have a history of unnecessarily overestimating threat of infectious diseases under suspect circumstances, have done little to dampen the hysteria regarding the coronavirus. According to the experienced German physician Wolfgang Wodarg, who is also an expert in analysing the spread of contagious diseases, the WHO is “unduly influenced by pharmaceutical companies”, as came to light with the swine flu pandemic of a decade ago.

The swine flu of 2009 to 2010 can be classed as a pandemic, with 700 million to 1.4 billion people infected with what was an overall mild ailment (8). This may have consisted of up to 21% of the planet’s then human population.

The chief goal of the pharmaceutical industry, which is held dominion over by giant corporate entities, is to the requirements of short-term profit-making, like all corporations. Dr Wodarg further remarked of the swine flu in relation to pharmaceutical companies that, “the declaration of a pandemic hugely enriched the industry at the expense of taxpayers and governments”. (9)

The business of big pharma is accumulation of wealth for their elite base, and not in serving the public interest. An infamous virus represents a financial opening and bonanza for pharmaceutical corporations. The coronavirus is being capitalised upon with the assistance of politicians and media, whose actions are often dictated by large businesses in the neoliberal era. The media are reliant on revenue from corporate advertising, including big pharma adverts. Most media companies even have pharmaceutical representatives sitting in their boardrooms. (10)

During the panic regarding the swine flu, pharmaceuticals enjoyed billions of dollars worth of profits, as governments were compelled to stockpile huge levels of drugs and vaccines, most of which were never used. The WHO guidelines were written up by scientists on the payroll of big pharma. Paul Flynn, a veteran former British Labour MP, said that “The tentacles of drug company influence are in all levels in the decision-making process” (11). This very likely remains the case pertaining to the coronavirus.

There is another significant reason behind the campaigns of virus scaremongering. A critical one is to try to weaken China as a state, by impacting negatively upon Beijing’s ability to spread its financial clout and influence across continents. As a result of the coronavirus frenzy, the Chinese government is “losing leverage in dealings with the US and other developed countries” while “the US economy and markets could actually benefit from the coronavirus”. (12)

China is the only nation that can even attempt to challenge American dominance in the global arena. Over these past 20 years China’s neighbour, Russia, has re-emerged as a major power under Vladimir Putin, with Moscow’s presence on the international scene having grown considerably. Regardless, Russia remains a much weaker country when compared to the US. In military terms alone, the Kremlin’s annual arms expenditure amounts to less than 10% of the US, and this chasm is widening.

China’s military budget, the second largest in the world, is about a third that of America’s. The vast economic projects of Beijing, like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), are being constructed on an unprecedented scale in modern history. This has drawn considerable international and economic influence to China, not to mention prestige.

It would have been unimaginable at the end of World War II – when American strength was at its peak – that the western superpower would have no involvement in a landmark industrial program such as the Belt and Road, which is headquartered in Beijing. Unfortunately for Washington this has proven the case.

The Americans are also excluded from Beijing’s other milestone associations, like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). The AIIB, centred in the Chinese capital and established in 2015, can count among its members crucial US allies like Britain, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Australia and South Korea; along with dozens of other countries, some of them NATO states. This is a major development in international affairs, as many traditional American-friendly nations defy Washington’s wishes in entering organisations controlled by Beijing.

Britain’s decision to join the AIIB four years ago drew a particularly withering response from the White House. A top US official under president Barack Obama lamented that, “We are wary about a trend toward constant accommodation of China, which is not the best way to engage a rising power” (13). Instead one can presume that the best way to engage a rising power, is to surround it with military forces on an enormous scale – which is precisely what the Obama administration had accomplished by late 2016 in its encirclement of China.

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

Notes

1 Oscar Rickett, “From Lebanon to Chile, the people are rising up against neoliberalism”, Middle East Eye, 10 November 2019, https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/middle-east-and-rest-world-are-united-struggle

2 Live Science Staff, “13 coronavirus myths busted by science”, Live Science, 10 March 2020, https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-myths.html

3 Vasanthi Vara, “Coronavirus outbreak: the countries affected”, Pharmaceutical Technology, 12 March 2020, https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/features/coronavirus-outbreak-the-countries-affected/

4 Merriam-Webster, “Pandemic”, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pandemic

5 Lily Kuo, “How did China get to grips with its coronavirus outbreak?”, The Guardian, 9 March 2020,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/09/how-did-china-get-grips-with-coronavirus-outbreak

6 Daniel Ellsberg, “The truth-teller: From the Pentagon Papers to the Doomsday Machine”, Resilience.org, 25 April 2019, https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-04-25/the-truth-teller-from-the-pentagon-papers-to-the-doomsday-machine/

7 Hans M. Kristensen, “Declassified: US Nuclear Weapons At Sea”, Federation of American Scientists, 3 February 2016, https://fas.org/blogs/security/2016/02/nuclear-weapons-at-sea/

8 Fionnula Hainey, “When was the last flu pandemic declared?”, Manchester Evening News, 11 March 2020, https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/world-news/coronavirus-pandemic-when-was-last-17814014

9 Ronan McGreevy, “Was swine flu threat exaggerated?”, Irish Times, January 19 2010, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/was-swine-flu-threat-exaggerated-1.1241758

10 Martha Rosenberg, “Once Again, Mainstream Media Does Pharma’s Bidding”, CounterPunch, 30 May 2017, https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/30/once-again-mainstream-media-does-pharmas-bidding/

11 Randeep Ramesh, “Report condemns swine fly experts’ ties to big pharma”, The Guardian, 4 June 2010, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2010/jun/04/swine-flu-experts-big-pharmaceutical

12 Cody Willard, “The coronavirus and trade war punish China, damaging its status as a source of growth”, MarketWatch, 8 March 2020, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-coronavirus-and-trade-war-punish-china-damaging-its-status-as-a-source-of-growth-2020-03-08

13 Michelle Murray, The Struggle for Recognition in International Relations: Status, Revisionism and Rising Powers (OUP USA, 20 Dec. 2018) p. 217

COVID-19: Further Evidence that the Virus Originated in the US

By Larry Romanoff, March 11, 2020

The Taiwanese physician noted that in August of 2019 the US had a flurry of lung pneumonias or similar, which the Americans blamed on ‘vaping’ from e-cigarettes, but which, according to the scientist, the symptoms and conditions could not be explained by e-cigarettes. He said he wrote to the US officials telling them he suspected those deaths were likely due to the coronavirus. He claims his warnings were ignored.

The Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic: The Real Danger is “Agenda ID2020”

By Peter Koenig, March 12, 2020

WHO has most likely received orders from “above”, from those people who also manage Trump and the “leaders” (sic) of the European Union and her member countries, those who aim to control the world with force – the One World Order.

This has been on the drawing board for years. The final decision to go ahead NOW, was taken in January 2020 at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos – behind very much closed doors, of course. The Gates, GAVI (an association of vaccination-promoting pharmaceuticals), Rockefellers, Rothschilds et al, they are all behind this decision – the implementation of Agenda ID2020 – see below.

COVID-19 Coronavirus “Fake” Pandemic: Timeline and Analysis

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 08, 2020

On January 30th 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) in relation to China’s novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) categorized  as a viral pneumonia.  The virus outbreak was centred in  Wuhan, a city in Eastern China with a population in excess of 11 million.

In the week prior to January 30th decision, the WHO Emergency Committee “expressed divergent views”. There were visible divisions within the Committee. On January 30th, a far-reaching decision was taken without the support of expert opinion at a time when the coronavirus outbreak was limited to Mainland China.

The US Federal Reserve’s Baffling Response to the Coronavirus Explained

By Ellen Brown, March 12, 2020

When the World Health Organization announced on February 24^th that it was time to prepare for a global pandemic, the stock market plummeted. Over the following week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by more than 3,500 points or over 10%. In an attempt to contain the damage, on March 3^rd the Federal Reserve slashed the fed funds rate from 1.5% to 1.0%, in their first emergency rate move and biggest one-time cut since the 2008 financial crisis. But rather than reassuring investors, the move fueled another panic sell-off.

Coronavirus COVID-19 in South Korea: Cult Sect, Corruption and Politics

By Prof. Joseph H. Chung, March 12, 2020

In South Korea, on January 20, a woman of 35 years old from China was found to be infected and the corona-virus spread rapidly. But, owing to the rapid and efficient measures taken by the government of Moon Jae-in, the spread of the virus almost stopped and the number of cured began to increase.

And the WHO and the international media praised highly the efficient measures taken by the Korean government.

Coronavirus: Why Is Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Lying to Congress and the American People?

By Target Liberty, March 12, 2020

Dr. Anthonu Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, testified before Congress on Wednesday and said that the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) is  “10 times more lethal than seasonal flu.”

In a Europe Closed Down by the Coronavirus the EU Opens its Doors to the US Army. Could the Defender become the Invader of Europe?

By Manlio Dinucci, March 12, 2020

The Ministers for Defence of the 27 countries of the EU, 22 of which are also members of NATO, met on 4 and 5 March in Zagreb, Croatia. The central theme of the meeting (in which Lorenzo Guerini of the Democratic Party represented Italy) was not to seek a response to the Coronavirus crisis which is jamming up civil mobility, but how best to develop « military mobility ». The decisive test is the Defender Europe 20 exercise, scheduled for April and May. The General Secretary of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, who took part in the EU meeting, défines it as « the largest deployment of US forces in Europe since the end of the Cold War ».

Global COVID-19 Pandemic, This Is a Test: How Will the Constitution Fare During a Nationwide Lockdown?

By John W. Whitehead, March 12, 2020

The coronavirus epidemic may well be a legitimate health concern, but it’s the government’s response to it that worries me more in the long term.

Based on the government’s track record and its long-anticipated plans for instituting martial law (using armed forces to solve domestic political and social problems) in response to a future crisis, there’s good reason to worry.

Congress Tries to Sneak Through Dangerous Spying Bill Under the Cover of the Coronavirus Crisis

By Free Press, March 12, 2020

Leading members of the House of Representatives are rushing a vote on Wednesday to extend abusive government surveillance powers before they’re set to expire on March 15.

If approved, the USA Freedom Reauthorization Act of 2020 would reauthorize Section 215 powers Congress established under the USA Patriot Act in 2001. Section 215 is the provision national-security agencies have cited to support their unwarranted collection of phone records of hundreds of millions of people in the United States.

US CDC Director Robert Redfield Admitted that Coronavirus Deaths Have Been Miscategorized as Flu

By Larry Romanoff, March 13, 2020

The US has been lying all along.

Robert Redfield, CDC director, testifying to Congress, today admitted that virus deaths have been miscategorised as the flu.

He also stated that the standard practice has been to first test people for the flu and, if the test is positive, they stop there. They don’t test for the coronavirus.

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The White House held dozens of meetings about coronavirus response that excluded government experts because the discussions were unnecessarily classified over the objections of HHS Secretary Alex Azar, reports Reuters. Experts were not just barred from speaking openly about what we knew about the emerging pandemic. Apparently, they weren’t even allowed in the room.

“It is not normal to classify discussions about a response to a public health crisis,” an unnamed official from the Republican George W. Bush administration told the wire service. Yet this is President Trump’s approach to nearly every public health and environmental threat: find some way to exclude the experts, stop them from speaking publicly, and make decisions in a vacuum. The deliberate sidelining of public health experts and science leads to bad policy, and ultimately, to more sickness and death.

Instead of prioritizing transparency and facts, the White House is choosing secrecy and confusing contradictions. This has likely allowed the coronavirus to spread more quickly and widely in the United States, with massive consequences for the entire US population and especially for those who contract the disease, plus all of the collateral damage that comes with this kind of large-scale disruption.

People are desperate for accurate and up-to-date information about this pandemic, and CDC experts are doing their best. But their work is in spite of the administration, not in concert with it.

Every day without full transparency means we are less prepared and more vulnerable. Scientists must be at the table to help slow the spread of coronavirus, and they should be able to share what they know without being subject to political control.

I urge all scientists to add their signature to this letter urging the White House to let us hear directly from the experts.

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Michael Halpern is an expert on political interference in science and solutions to reduce suppression, manipulation, and distortion of government science.

The longest bull market in US history began on March 9, 2009.

It ended on March 11, 2020 when the Dow average closed down 20% from its 29,551.42 February 12, 2020 all-time closing high.

The same goes for the S & P 500 and Nasdaq — the former way down from its 3,386.15 closing high, the latter far below its 9,817.18 record high valuation.

According to stock market metrics used by most analysts, US equities reached bubble levels greater than before the 1929 crash and dot com peak.

Even after declining around 20% through March 11, plunging dramatically further on Thursday, the sharpest one-day fall since October 1987, valuations remain greatly inflated.

There’s much more to go on the downside to revert to mean valuations that could take considerable time to reach.

COVID-19 was the pin that burst the equity bubble, not the cause of what’s going on that’s likely to take some time to play out and very much could affect US November elections.

Years of near-zero interest rates by the Wall Street owned Fed, its money printing madness, and put protection to intervene when prices drop below a certain level inflated the equity bubble to an unprecedented level.

As Nixon’s chief economic advisor Herb Stein once said: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”

Fed policy under Greenspan, especially Bernanke and Yellen followed by Powell benefitted Wall Street, not main street.

Since the 2008-09 financial crisis,  most ordinary Americans have endured protracted depression conditions.

Real unemployment exceeds 20%. Most US workers are way underemployed, needing two or more jobs to get by.

They’re mostly rotten low-pay/poor-or-no-benefits jobs because millions of higher-paying industrial and other jobs with good benefits were offshored to low-wage countries.

Market analyst Marc Faber once said he expected Fed policy to “destroy the world.” It just takes time.

He explained the fallacy of monetary for ordinary Americans, explaining that it’s false “to believe this money will go to the man on the street.”

“It goes to the Mayfair economy of the well-to-do people and boosts asset prices of Warhols.”

“It is difficult to tell what will happen. I happen to believe that eventually we will have a systemic crisis and everything will collapse.”

“But the question is really between here and then. Will everything collapse with Dow Jones 20,000 or 50,000 or 10 million?”

Fed chairmen since Greenspan have been and continue to be “money printer(s).”

“And so it will go on. The Europeans will print money. The Chinese will print money. Everybody will print money, and the purchasing power of paper money will go down.”

Last week, he said the coronavirus isn’t causing the selloff. It’s “a catalyst for a sell-off because the global economy was already weakening a long time before it occurred.”

“(F)or the last nine months, the economics statistics coming out of Asia have pointed out to a meaningful slowdown in economic activity.”

“In some cases, an absolute decline in many sectors and industries have been going down over the last nine months.”

“Coronavirus is the icing on the cake that really knocked the markets down…Today all markets are in the sky.”

Collapsing oil and other industrial commodities provide further evidence of economic weakness.

Fed policy bears most responsibility for inflating markets to their peak level.

It’s a huge misconception to believe Fed money printing flows to the economy, lifting all boats.

It goes to banks, other financial institutions, other businesses, investors and speculators at the expense of economic development.

Instead of capital investments to build their businesses in recent years, corporate America contributed to the equity bubble by large-scale stock buybacks.

Economist David Rosenberg said when the buyback craze ends, the bull market will die with it, what apparently happened.

In late February on Bloomberg News, he said “I think very strongly that (COVID-19) probably is going to cause not just a recession in Canada, but a global recession.”

“There’s going to be, I think, quite long-lasting economic impacts that are just starting right now. And the run rate on global growth was already anemic.”

Separately, he placed the odds of global recession at 80% before this month’s market crash.

Market turmoil is more likely at an early than a late stage. Years of excess may take considerable time to unwind.

Monetary policy elevated equities to unprecedented bubble levels. More of the same won’t fix things.

What’s needed is money going for healthcare to combat COVID-19 and to main street, not Wall Street.

When investors have money, they speculate. When ordinary people have money, they spend it — making a virtuous cycle of prosperity possible that can happen when today’s excess is gone and things begin returning to normal.

Correcting 11 years of excess since the 2008-09 financial crisis won’t happen quickly or at all without productive investments to create economic growth and good-paying jobs.

A Final Comment

Plunging equity markets shouldn’t surprise. What’s been a long time coming was inevitable.

The more elevated markets become, the harder they fall.

A day of reckoning always arrives. It’s just a matter of when.

Bull markets most often overshoot on the upside. The same pattern holds when going down.

The 1929 stock market crash began on October 24 Black Thursday.

When it ended, the Dow lost 89% of its value. It took WW II and a generation until November 23, 1954 to recoup market crash losses.

After the crash, Herbert Hoover reportedly said “(p)rosperity is just around the corner.”

Weeks ahead of the March 2020 crash in his January State of the Union address, Trump called the US economy “the best it’s ever been (and) the greatest in the history of the country.”

The health of the economy and public is key to whether he’ll be a one or two-term president.

If protracted global recession follow deflating equity prices, coupled with improperly addressing COVID-19 conditions at the federal level, his reelection chances may be doomed.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

2020年1月30日，世界卫生组织（WHO）宣布了有关中国被归类为病毒性肺炎的新型冠状病毒（2019-nCoV）的国际关注的突发公共卫生事件（PHEIC）。病毒的爆发集中在武汉，这是中国东部的一个城市，人口超过1100万。

在1月30日做出决定的前一周，世卫组织紧急事务委员会“表达了不同意见”。委员会内部有明显的分歧。 1月30日，在冠状病毒爆发仅限于中国大陆的时候，在没有专家意见支持的情况下做出了影响深远的决定。

做出决定后，中国以外有150例确诊病例。美国6个，加拿大3个，英国2个，依此类推。

150例确诊病例超过64亿人口（世界人口78亿减去中国的14亿）。

被感染的风险是什么？几乎为零。

世卫组织没有采取行动来向世界公众舆论保证和告知。恰恰相反：发起了“恐惧大流行”，而不是真正的国际关注的公共卫生突发事件。

彻底的恐慌和不确定性通过精心设计的媒体虚假宣传活动得以维持。

这几乎立即导致了经济混乱，与中国的贸易和运输危机影响了主要的航空公司和航运公司。在西方国家发起了针对华人的仇恨运动，随后在2月下旬股市崩溃，更不用说旅游业危机导致无数破产。

 

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你可以点击下面的链接阅读整篇文章的英文版，也可以用手机翻译

 

COVID-19 Coronavirus “Fake” Pandemic: Timeline and AnalysisBy Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 08, 2020

There is something profoundly offensive about this declaration and, worse, there is something profoundly insufferable about the sentiments and beliefs behind it.

First of all, it is a matter of extreme white privilege to be able to “Vote Blue No Matter Who!”  What this says is that anyone that appears on the ballot as the Presidential challenger to Donald Trump is better than Donald Trump.

Anyone. What this means is that if _______ (fill in the blank) wins/won the Democratic nomination, well, it wouldn’t matter what his/her policies are, what his/her age is, what his/her mental acuity is, or their voting record, or what they smell like: he or she is Blue [read: Democrat], we have to converge and unite behind him/her, our candidate of choice, our ONLY hope to oust the guy in Washington.

Are the people who created and those who advance this slogan unable to discriminate between the various candidates, some of whom are barely indistinguishable from Donald Trump and everything he stands for, and who certainly no better?

What this says to me is that they—the Democratic Party and its supporters—have no consciousness or awareness about the true state of the Union (U.S.), or the true state of the world, or if they do they just don’t care. There’s the privilege: people of color, poor people, women and children, and many other demographics that have historically and routinely denied that space to exist on this earth don’t have such privileges.

So why then would anyone vote for ANY Democratic candidate that the system advances?

Clearly, let’s throw out Bernie Sanders as a “choice”, since the “Vote Blue No Matter Who” is not meant to include Sanders.

The propaganda system has for a long time now daily churned out reports meant to demean and devalue Bernie Sanders, reports designed to shape and direct the voting public away from Sanders and towards someone, anyone, else who will insure that Business as Usual takes the day.  However, the slogan was apparently created by the Democratic Party after Super Tuesday with the intention of channeling all voter energies and frustrations into voting for Joe Biden.

Anyone who makes the statement—with or without the insufferable self-righteousness that seems to often accompany it—whether in a Facebook post or in a NYT editorial or sitting at the lunch counter of their local small town diner needs to be prepared for the response that their sloganeering may provoke. In 2016, the response was the victory of Donald Trump.

“Blue no matter who!” is like a slap in the face to a great number of conscious, caring, compassionate people.

What is it that drives the repetition and regurgitation of this vacuous slogan: Callousness? Hope? Obliviousness? Blind faith? All of these?

Second, who is “we” that these people are purportedly speaking for when they say that “we” have to unite and get behind “our” candidate? It’s clearly the Royal “we” and I don’t know about you but I bristle when anyone presumes to speak for me, or does. The greater the propaganda anti-social propaganda venue (e.g. the New York Times or Boston Globe or Daily Hampshire Gazette) where the presumptuous slogan is expressed, the greater the insult, the more insufferable.

This is the perfect prescription for a repeat of the last election: not only do a lot of conscious caring intelligent people absolutely DESPISE the Democratic Party, and just about everyone in it, but I’m seeing a lot of these caring conscious people saying they would vote for Donald Trump before they would vote for Joe Biden. Ditto if Elizabeth Warren were the candidate of choice. Ditto Pete Buttieg. Ditto, for example, for someone as corrupt and egomaniacal as House speaker Nancy Pelosi.

No matter what propaganda the Pew Center poll pundits and anti-social media like the Washington Post are pumping out, it was not the “failure of voters to cast their votes” in 2016 that lost the first election to Trump: it was the insufferable ugliness of the candidate that people were faced with as a “choice” that drove people’s refusal to participate in the charade of voter ‘choice’.  Next to Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump looked pretty fresh (albeit, for many of us, akin to a hot steaming pasture patty).

Even almost four years later, far too many devoted Democrats still refuse to see, admit, hear or consider the corruption of the Clinton administration, of Bill Clinton, or Hillary Clinton.

On top of these denials and refusals, and what is apparently a very clear example of historical amnesia, there is the overwhelming failure of large segments of the population to recognize, admit and see the equally ugly and chronic pathologies of the Obama administration, in which Hillary Clinton played a pivotal role in advancing global chaos, human rights wrongs, war and destruction, while further eviscerating domestic policies meant to protect the environment, limit the power of corporations, institute any kind of health care reform, and provide some real equality for people of color.

I mean, let’s be clear: the Democratic Party comprises a large percentage of the rotten-to-the-core-political-center of the United States and the wasteland we call ‘congress’ and the people who run and ruin it.  The two party system comprises the heartless heartland. It is an ugly soulless duopoly that serves the one percent.

There are so many good people in our circles—I don’t care who you are—in our towns and cities and country, who won’t have anything to do with the Democrats or the Democratic Party. God bless you. God bless them.

Now, for those people reading this who are cognitively challenged, this does not automatically mean that these people who reject the Democrats and the Democratic Party are devout Republicans, or any kind of Republican, or that they voted for Donald Trump. It surely does mean, however, that they celebrated when Hillary Clinton lost.

I was one of them. I worked in Central Africa for a decade, and saw so many ruined lives, so much destruction, sadness, meanness and corruption. And that’s where I learned of the very personal role of the Clinton’s in the war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide across the region.

Hillary Clinton is so shamelessly arrogant, oblivious, egomaniacal and elitist—to mention just a few of her psycho-pathologies—that she appears to still be stewing and scheming to hatch a plan to seize the Presidential nomination and occupy the Oval Office. She’s like Gollum, the drooling soulless caricature of a creature, in the Lord of The Rings, completely and insanely preoccupied with securing and holding and coveting “my precious” [read: the Oval Office]. Forget about Killary’s vile behavior and culpability in international crimes committed during the downfall and assassination of Muammar al-Gaddafi.

There remain the ugly historical records and their contemporary ongoing repercussions in Central Africa, the former Yugoslavia and the Balkans. We should never forget how the Democrats and Republicans have advanced the genocide against the Palestinian people.

People are unable to forget what they never knew. The propaganda system has so completely obliterated the true historiography of U.S. interventions in Central Africa, Somalia, Sudan, Yugoslavia and Libya during the Clinton years that people either don’t at all know what happened or simply chose a pathological collective amnesia. Along with these U.S. and allied (Canada, Israel, NATO) interventions came the unprecedented loss of life and unspeakable atrocities committed by U.S. Special Forces, blood diamond dealers and their oil & gas mercenaries connected to the Clintons, and their proxy warriors under the commands of John Garang (Sudan), Yoweri Museveni (Uganda), Paul Kagame (Rwanda), and, well, let’s not even get into the Californication of the historigrapphy of Somalia facilitated by the ficticious but patriotic whiteout of the truth under the enterprise known as Black Hawk Down.

Hillary and Bill Clinton’s ties to diamond kingpin Maurice Tempelsman are never discussed. From 1993 to 1997, for example, Tempelsman was a White House guest at least ten times, while he also met Hillary Clinton in private more than once. Tempelsman enjoyed vacationing with the Clintons and the Kennedys in Martha’s Vineyard, but he also flew to Moscow and back with President Clinton on Air Force One and was one of the 101 people who traveled with the Clinton’s on their ‘victory’ tour in Africa in 1997, even as hundreds of thousands of innocent Hutu refugees were being slaughtered in plain sight.

Tempelsman and the Central Intelligence Agency sucked the blood out of the heart of Africa for decades, propping up the dictatorship of Joseph Mobutu. And, following in the footsteps of Reagan, Clinton and the Bush gang, did Obama do anything to advance the plight of the Hutu people and stop the ongoing genocide against them or the Congolese? No. Where was Joe Biden when this was all going down? It appears he was floating around the inner circles with Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein.

The killing that the Clinton regime initiated in Central Africa was advanced by the policies and actions of the Bush and Obama administrations. The genocides in Rwanda and Congo and the absolute military dictatorships in Congo, Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan—replete with all the usual human rights horrors of outright butchery, assassinations, and disappearances—continue to this day. They are whited out of the press, or if something does appear it is expedient propaganda, fully serving the interests of the corporate elites and the corporations, continuing the process of clouding, shrouding or destroying the true history of these places and the people who live and die there.

“Vote Blue No Matter Who?”

I don’t think so.

Do black lives matter?  Only as far as posting a sign on your gentrified well-manicured lawn.

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It’s even worse when the Democrats’ vacuous slogan comes at the head of a long list of claims declaring that, well, it’s not really about voting for the candidate that has been distilled out of the murk and morass of the Democratic nomination process, but rather its about what you are REALLY voting for when you “Vote Blue No Matter Who.” This is another part of the disingenuous, shallow, weak-backboned tripe offered as a reasonable antidote to the possibility of a Trump victory. You know, this kind of thing:

“If it turns out to be Biden (or any Dem that’s not your ideal candidate) — as disappointed as many of us would be — please remember:

1. You’re not just voting for President.

2. You’re voting for who replaces RBG on the Supreme Court.

3. You’re voting for the next Secretary of Education.

4. You’re voting for federal judges.

5. You’re voting for the rule of law.

6. You’re voting for saving national parks.

7. You’re voting for letting kids out of cages.

8. You’re voting for clean air and clean water.

…

22. You’re voting for sensible gun laws.

The list goes on.

No Democrat is perfect.

Your first AND second choices may have dropped out. Your third might. But the nominee, no matter who she or he is, won’t be perfect. They won’t pass your purity test. And yet every single one of them will be better than four more years of Trump!!!

Please be reasonable.”

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The above is simplistic propaganda meant to evoke a purely hysterical emotional response. It is complete nonsense. This list and every point on it is either simplistic, reductionist, manipulative or false. It completely fails any reasonable accounting of the corruption and complicity of the Democratic Party (together with the Republican party) in creating the horrible situation that so many people are trying to survive and dying under.

One could go through the list, point by point, and debunk every single one of these false simplistic and wrong claims. Let’s pick four exemplary points (7, 8, 16 and 21):

7. You’re voting for letting kids out of cages.

Actually, in November 1997, President William Jefferson Clinton signed the Adoption and Safe Families Act into law. This Act laid the groundwork for the massive trafficking of children and parents through U.S. family courts and with the complicity and oversight of the Department of Health and Human Services (and the Administration of Children and Families). Under this Act plenty of children have been separated from protective parents, especially protective mothers, and have suffered horrible abuses while in the “Foster Care” system.

8. You’re voting for clean air and clean water.

Actually, we can look at the record of every single president who increased the already obscene military budget and we can easily demonstrate that this led to massive environmental pollution, the creation of toxic Superfund sites, and egregious corporate pollution.  Every president—at least in recent history—promulgated horrible covert or overt wars and/or they also paved the way for corporations to be treated as ‘persons’ and facilitate their getting away with absolute murder all over the planet. Every single president for the past seventy years has prioritized predatory capitalism over clean air and clean water. Even today, at this very minute, for a singular poignant example, the Town of Amherst Massachusetts, backed by the local propaganda press (e.g. the local Daily Hampshire Gazette) continues to ignore the high rates of toxic lead contamination in Amherst public schools. This was not a creation of the Trump administration, but a lethal problem contiguous to every single political administration in power for the past 60 years, at least. Under the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations, I was equally impossible to get enforcement of violations of the Clean Water Act or the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act or others. This is not a creation of the Trump administration.

16. You’re voting for veterans to get the care they deserve.

Oh really? Tell that to the veterans and see what they say.  I can count with one finger the number of presidents that have truly honored veterans by making sure veterans ‘get the care they deserve’. Which president would that one finger count?  Well, hold one hand up and drop the two fingers to the right and the two fingers to the left of your index finger. That is, no president.

21. And you’re voting against allowing the USA to become yet another authoritarian regime.

Nonsense. Arguably, every single president to date has played a role in further proscribing human and civil rights, increasing the powers and unaccountability of the defense and intelligence establishment, eviscerating the commons, and refining and growing the powers of the Executive Branch. Every single one.

“No Democrat is perfect?”

This is the understatement of the century, or millennium, or longer.

“Your first AND second choices may have dropped out…”

Or, the first choice of many many people (read: that God-forsaken radical socialist / communist bent on destroying our great country) might be getting (read: got) the royal reaming by the establishment for telling the truth more completely than anyone else.

“…Your third might. But the nominee, no matter who she or he is, won’t be perfect. They won’t pass your purity test. And yet every single one of them will be better than four more years of Trump!!!

Please be reasonable.”

Please be reasonable? Oy. One best be careful. This is the point where instead of pointing your middle finger in the direction of the Democratic party you are—apparently—supposed to shove it up your own ass.

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There are a lot of really good people out there who find more resonance and some kind of solidarity with the Republicans and the Republican party. God bless you. God bless them. However, those who voted for Donald Trump might want to think twice about this choice now that the Coronavirus is striking the United States and its entirely inadequate almost non-existent public health care system. Watching your mother or father or sister or brother die in the hallways of a hospital might seem to inspire a whole new appreciation of what might have happened had Dr. Jill Stein—a medical professional with a moral compass—been elected a few years ago.

It takes two to tango in the political duopoly we live under, the Democrats and Republicans shore each other up, watch each other’s backs, all take super PAC funds, and so there is a very real mythology at play around the concept or ideology of (voter) ‘choice’ in a two-party tyranny.

All the posting and arguing and insulting and grandstanding and bullying on both social (Twitter, facebook, etc.) and anti-social (New York Times, Washington Post, Atlantic, NPR, CNN, etc.) media are symptoms of the pathologies of western ‘society’ manufactured by the power structure and promoted through an ideology of divide and conquer.  To reduce the complex political landscape to a slogan and an ideology of “Blue no matter who!” is to succumb to the dictates and desires of the power system that is ruining our planet, destroying billions of human lives, and driving the suffering and extinction of all creatures great and small. To adopt the Democrats reductionist ideology is to follow the Pied Piper of the Propaganda system as obliviously as the rats followed the flautist in that medieval tale about conformity and fate.

The powers that be—and their propaganda pipers—have so horribly proscribed the discussions and debates about all aspects of our work and social conditions that even smart, thinking otherwise awake people have been subdued and now play along with the foolishness and stupidity and vacuousness, staying strictly within the parameters of the manufactured arguments, with little or no capacity to crawl, step or leap outside the boundaries of what is being said, and what is allowed to be said, and think more clearly, rationally and outside the box of Business as Usual.

For example: Elizabeth Warren didn’t lose out. She didn’t lose because she is a woman. She lost because her political values are unacceptable to far too many people. She scored points in this writer’s book when she slammed Bloomnberg, but far too few points too little too late and, anways, subordinated behind her otherwise Business as Usual position. All this whining and complaining that it was because she is a woman is disingenuous, at best, and fascist at worst. Ditto the demographics/populations in the south that voted for Joe Biden: the argument that black voters in the south cannot be criticized (by white people) for voting for Biden is an empty disingenuous race-baited argument. The fact is that there is a complete failure of large masses of people to understand the realities of the murderous Uncle Tom Obama administration (of which Biden was a part). This failure is not due to education alone, and it is not due to propaganda alone: there is a willful refusal to learn, comprehend, grow and thrive and this has been inculcated by think thanks and the media oligarchy based on the studied tried and true principles of propaganda and the formation of men’s (and women’s) attitudes.

Fascism is many things, but one of its central tenets is the shooting oneself in the foot: acting against one’s own interests. That is part of what fascism is. This is also part of why we have the guy in the White House who we do. That is also how and why the Clinton came to power, and the Bush gang, and Obama.

Anyone who is not angry about the destruction of the planet, the loss of life, the complete denial of our children’s future is not paying attention, psychologically dissociated, or already dead. The koan is that anyone who is (too?) angry about the situation we are in is wasting their precious life force. Hmm, so many seeming contradictions….

If people want to go around making empty foolish boorish pronouncements like “Blue No Matter Who!” they best be prepared for the response they might provoke.

“Blue no matter who?” is an INSUFFERABLE insult.

“Blue no matter who!” ? No thank you.

The real answers to the environmental and social horror show that we are witnessing, living and dying with, cannot be found in the political realm.  Any sincere concerns for the environment, for indigenous people, for clean air and water, for equality and social justice, for health care, require an admission that the system is rotten to the core, and the propaganda system—in its own interests—is covering that up.

Any real solutions revolve around true resistance, cooperation, courage and action. I’m not talking about those actions dictated by the system, trumpeted by its select champions, the foxes in sheep’s’ clothing who are acting under the cloak of radical change but only so much as insuring that plenty of powerful peoples’ profits and privileges are preserved.

But, well, we’re a long ways from any radical or revolutionary uprising, so we might as well just settle for the ruse of the “lesser of two evils” right? Vote Blue, No Matter Who!  Problem is, as history has proven all too clearly: There is no such thing as the lesser of two evils. In the end, everything seems to be drenched in red.

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Every day the news about Chinese investments in the Africa are highlighted in newspapers around the world. On the one hand, western critics believe that Beijing is seeking to expand its area of influence outside Asian territory, and on the other, pro-China analysts say the country is only looking at a space forgotten by world powers. Neither view is entirely right or wrong, but Chinese action in Africa deserves further investigation.

In the past week, Kenya celebrated a thousand days of installing the train line connecting Mombasa, Nairobi and Naivasha, financed and built by China. The Chinese rail project has proved to be profitable, as repeatedly stressed by Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta himself, significantly boosting tourism and investments in the communications area, according to data from Reuters. The benefits for China are clear and indisputable, when lending is absolutely profitable for investors. However, as Liu Yun, a researcher at the University of Zhejiang, explains, “China’s investments in African rail projects are not just about lending, but working together on the basis of mutual benefits and common gains (…) Furthermore, construction of railway lines is in line with the strategy of modern industrialization in Africa”.

This case perfectly illustrates what has generated the Chinese advance in Africa: a sum of factors in which the struggle for expansion, profit and resources undertaken by the Chinese finds the desire for growth, modernization, investment and development of Africans. China seems to be paying attention to an area hitherto forgotten or unduly treated by the other economic powers. Recently, the American Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, visited several African countries in an attempt to bring the United States closer to Africa. Without major resolutions and agreements, the American visit was basically summarized by exaggerated criticisms from Pompeo to the rapprochement between the countries he visited and China, without presenting new projects of interest that could arouse interest higher than that aroused by Beijing.

“They [the US and China] are great competitors… The US has recently neglected its main partners, but that does not mean they are abandoning them. On the contrary, China has increased and continues to strengthen its presence – in different countries and in different directions. This creates discomfort in the US. In addition to the fact that China’s investment volume in some sectors is dozens of times greater than that of the United States”, said Georgy Scherbakov, professor at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Another point to be highlighted is the issue of the investment strategy. The western bet on Africa is generally made in the private and commercial sector, paying attention to particular interests and generating little result in social issues concerning Africa. On the other hand, China seeks to invest heavily in state-level agreements with African countries, operating mainly in the sectors of infrastructure and industrial production. Also, U.S. exports to Africa grew from U$22 billion to U$26 billion between 2017 and 2019, while trade between China and Africa reached an incredible U$208 billion last year.

Clearly, China’s interest in Africa stems from the need for resources to feed its current economic potential. Spanish researcher Sebastián Ruiz Cabrera points out that “effectively, China, as a great power, needs resources to maintain its current growth wave. And these resources are found, above all, in the African continent”. Certainly, China is not the only one interested in African resources, however, it seems to be the most shrewd in establishing strategies that allow it to satisfy its interests. In addition to seeking to invest in sectors where African countries are most in need, China does not impose an ideological agenda on these countries as a condition of existence for their economic relations, unlike European embassies, which prioritize the effectuation of the human rights when establishing businesses.

There is also a minor factor that helps China to build good relations with African countries, which is the history of international cooperation between developing countries that was established during the Mao Tse-Tung years.

“Especially in the 1960s, with the cultural policy of Mao, there was a massive sending of teachers, doctors and cultural agents (…) [it’s a kind of] South-South cooperation relationship. I mean, more ‘equal to equal’, and not only in economic terms. And that still lasts”,

emphasizes Ruiz Cabrera.

In general, this record also favors the priority given to China over European countries – former colonial powers that have exploited Africa for centuries – and the USA – global hegemonic power.

For China, in addition to the search for resources and profits, operations in Africa and cooperation with poor countries generate a highly positive political image on the international scenario. Having reached the status of a world economic power, China starts to undertake humanitarian and welfare projects, which strengthen its international image. In short, China invests in Africa in pursuit of its own interests, however, it does so by seeking to meet the main needs of African countries, which has attracted more attention from them in relation to Beijing than to Western countries. The Chinese project is promising and really seems to serve mutual interests, being an example to be followed by other emerging powers.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

When the World Health Organization announced on February 24^th that it was time to prepare for a global pandemic, the stock market plummeted. Over the following week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by more than 3,500 points or over 10%. In an attempt to contain the damage, on March 3^rd the Federal Reserve slashed the fed funds rate from 1.5% to 1.0%, in their first emergency rate move and biggest one-time cut since the 2008 financial crisis. But rather than reassuring investors, the move fueled another panic sell-off.

Exasperated commentators on CNBC wondered what the Fed was thinking. They said a half point rate cut would not stop the spread of the coronavirus or fix the broken Chinese supply chains that are driving US companies to the brink.

A new report by corporate data analytics firm Dun & Bradstreet calculates that some 51,000 companies around the world have one or more direct suppliers in Wuhan, the epicenter of the virus. At least 5 million companies globally have one or more tier-two suppliers in the region, meaning their suppliers get their supplies there; and 938 of the Fortune 1000 companies have tier-one or tier-two suppliers there. Moreover, fully 80% of US pharmaceuticals are made in China. A break in the supply chain can grind businesses to a halt.

So what was the Fed’s reasoning in lowering the fed funds rate? According to some financial analysts, the fire it was trying to put out was actually in the repo market, where the Fed has lost control despite its emergency measures of the last six months. Repo market transactions come to $1 trillion to $2.2 trillion per day and keep our modern-day financial system afloat. But before getting into developments there, here is a recap of the repo action since 2008.

Repos and the Fed

Before the 2008 banking crisis, banks in need of liquidity borrowed excess reserves from each other in the fed funds market. But after 2008, banks were reluctant to lend in that unsecured market, because they did not trust their counterparties to have the money to pay up. Banks desperate for funds could borrow at the Fed’s discount window, but it carried a stigma. It signaled that the bank must be in distress, since other banks were not willing to lend to it at a reasonable rate. So banks turned instead to the private repo market, which is anonymous and is secured with collateral (Treasuries and other acceptable securities). Repo trades, although technically “sales and repurchases” of collateral, are in effect secured short-term loans, usually repayable the next day or in two weeks.

The risky element of these apparently-secure trades is that the collateral itself may not be reliable, since it may be subject to more than one claim. For example, it may have been acquired in a swap with another party for securitized auto loans or other shaky assets – a swap that will have to be reversed at maturity. As explained in an earlier article here, the private repo market has been invaded by hedge funds, which are highly leveraged and risky; so risk-averse money market funds and other institutional lenders have been withdrawing from that market.

When the normally low repo interest rate shot up to 10 percent in September, the Fed therefore felt compelled to step in. The action it took was to restart its former practice of injecting money short-term through its own repo agreements with its primary dealers, which then lent to banks and other players. On March 3^rd, however, even that central bank facility was oversubscribed, with far more demand for loans than the subscription limit.

The Fed’s March 3^rd emergency rate cut was in response to that crisis. Lowering the fed funds rate by half a percentage point was supposed to relieve the pressure on the central bank’s repo facility by encouraging banks to lend to each other. But the rate cut had virtually no effect, and the central bank’s repo facility continued to be oversubscribed the next day and the next. As observed in a March 5^th article on Zero Hedge:

This continuing liquidity crunch is bizarre, as it means that not only did the rate cut not unlock additional funding, it actually made the problem worse, and now banks and dealers are telegraphing that they need not only more repo buffer but likely an expansion of QE…

The Collateral Problem

As financial analyst George Gammon explains, the crunch in the private repo market is not actually due to a shortage of liquidity. Banks still have $1.5 trillion in excess reserves in their accounts with the Fed, stockpiled after multiple rounds of quantitative easing. The problem is in the collateral, which lenders no longer trust. Lowering the fed funds rate did not relieve the pressure on the Fed’s repo facility for obvious reasons: banks that are not willing to take the risk of lending to each other unsecured at 1.5 percent in the fed funds market are going to be even less willing to lend at 1 percent. They can earn that much just by leaving their excess reserves at the safe, secure Fed, drawing on the Interest on Excess Reserves it has been doling out ever since the 2008 crisis.

But surely the Fed knew that. So why lower the fed funds rate? Perhaps because they had to do something to maintain the façade of being in control, and lowering the interest rate was the most acceptable tool they had. The alternative would be another round of quantitative easing, but the Fed has so far denied entertaining that controversial alternative. Those protests aside, QE is probably next on the agenda after the Fed’s orthodox tools fail, as the Zero Hedge author notes.

The central bank has become the only game in town, and its hammer keeps missing the nail. A recession caused by a massive disruption in supply chains cannot be fixed through central-bank monetary easing alone. Monetary policy is a tool designed to deal with “demand” – the amount of money competing for goods and services, driving prices up. To fix a supply-side problem, monetary policy needs to be combined with fiscal policy, which means Congress and the Fed need to work together. There are successful contemporary models for this, and the best are in China and Japan.

The Chinese Stock Market Has Held Its Ground

While US markets were crashing, the Chinese stock market actually went up by 10 percent in February. How could that be? China is the country hardest hit by the disruptive COVID-19 virus, yet investors are evidently confident that it will prevail against the virus and market threats.

In 2008, China beat the global financial crisis by pouring massive amounts of money into infrastructure, and that is apparently the policy it is pursuing now. Five hundred billion dollars in infrastructure projects have already been proposed for 2020 – nearly as much as was invested in the country’s huge stimulus program after 2008. The newly injected money will go into the pockets of laborers and suppliers, who will spend it on consumer goods, prompting producers to produce more goods and services, increasing productivity and jobs.

How will all this stimulus be funded? In the past China has simply borrowed from its own state-owned banks, which can create money as deposits on their books, just as all depository banks can today. (See here and here.)

Most of the loans will be repaid with the profits from the infrastructure they create; and those that are not can be written off or carried on the books or moved off balance sheet. The Chinese government is the regulator of its banks, and rather than putting its insolvent banks and businesses into bankruptcy, its usual practice is to let non-performing loans just pile up on bank balance sheets. The newly-created money that was not repaid adds to the money supply, but no harm is done to the consumer economy, which actually needs regular injections of new money to fill the gap between debt and the money available to repay it. As in all systems in which banks create the principal but not the interest due on loans, this gap continually widens, requiring continual infusions of new money to fill the breach. (See my earlier article here.) In the last 20 years, China’s money supply has increased by 2,000 percent without driving up the consumer price index, which has averaged around 2 percent during those two decades. Supply has gone up with demand, keeping prices stable.

The Japanese Model

China’s experiences are instructive, but borrowing from the government’s own banks cannot be done in the US, since our banks have not been nationalized and our central bank is considered to be independent of government control. The Fed cannot pour money directly into infrastructure but is limited to buying bonds from its primary dealers on the open market.

At least, that is the Fed’s argument; but the Federal Reserve Act allows it to make three-month infrastructure loans to states, and these could be rolled over for extended periods thereafter. The repo market itself consists of short-term loans continually rolled over. If hedge funds can borrow at 1.5 percent in the private repo market, which is now backstopped by the Fed, states should get those low rates as well.

Alternatively, Congress could amend the Federal Reserve Act to allow it to work with the central bank in funding infrastructure and other national projects, following the path successfully blazed by Japan. Under Japanese banking law, the central bank must cooperate closely with the Ministry of Finance in setting policy. Unlike in the US, Japan’s prime minister can negotiate with the head of its central bank to buy the government’s bonds, ensuring that the bonds will be turned into new money that will stimulate domestic economic growth; and if the bonds are continually rolled over, this debt need never be repaid.

The Bank of Japan has already “monetized” nearly 50% of the government’s debt in this way, and it has pulled this feat off without driving up consumer prices. In fact Japan’s inflation rate remains stubbornly below the BOJ’s 2% target. Deflation continues to be a greater concern than inflation in Japan, despite unprecedented debt monetization by its central bank.     

 The “Independent” Federal Reserve Is Obsolete

 In the face of a recession caused by massive supply-chain disruption, the US central bank has shown itself to be impotent. Congress needs to take a lesson from Japan and modify US banking law to allow it to work with the central bank in getting the wheels of production turning again. The next time the country’s largest banks become insolvent, rather than bailing them out it should nationalize them. The banks could then be used to fund infrastructure and other government projects to stimulate the economy, following the model of China.

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This article was first posted on Truthdig.com.

Ellen Brown chairs the Public Banking Institute and has written thirteen books, including her latest, Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age.  She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Madame Nicole Belloubet, Minister of Justice:

As international scholars, politicians and journalists, we are writing to you, the French Minister of Justice, to demand an immediate halt to the indictment of Tariq Ramadan case.

This process has gone on far too long by French investigating judges, Camille Guillermet, Camille Palluel and Cyril Paquaux. heir bias, lack of impartiality, neglect of key evidence, delaying of key information and ignoring investigations brought forward by the French Criminal Division has been astonishing. In their role as “investigating judges”, it is surprising that they have chosen to ignore exculpatory evidence and suspicious connections between the plaintiffs and long-time critics of Professor Ramadan.

Let us be clear: We, the signatories of this letter, endorse France’s commitment to uphold the values of “liberté, égalité, fraternité” threatened today around the world. It is not for us to judge Tariq Ramadan’s guilt or innocence. We fully recognize the rights of the plaintiffs to have their case heard without prejudice. However, we wish to remind the country that has affirmed the inalienability of human rights and equality of the importance of respect for the principles that ensure the integrity of French justice.

It has been two years since professor Ramadan was indicted, nine months of which were spent in pre-trial solitary detention, despite the chief prison medical authority confirming his health was incompatible with incarceration due to illness. Professor Ramadan was also denied access to his case file and thus to the necessary means of preparing his defence. His right to a speedy judicial process has been ignored. Since his release in November 2018, the turn of events has been even more worrying. The following are a few examples:

The judges mandated an expert psychiatrist, Dr. Daniel Zagury, to see if there was a notion of “psychological grip” on the plaintiffs, an extremely rare procedure. The whole case depends now on his report. This is a clear conflict of interest as Dr. Zagury’s is an active member of the pro-Zionist Schibboleth association, which is ideologically opposed to Professor Ramadan. He also has friendly links with the opposing counsel Me Francis Szpiner and Me Eric Morain. We request that he recuse himself immediately.

The fourth complainant, “Elvira” was completely invalidated by the Criminal Division. The judges and prosecutors continued to hear her complaint until she recanted and it was clearly determined she did not even know Tariq Ramadan. Elvira and Mounia Rabbouj have both publicly stated, on social media, that they have been pushed and manipulated by the Israeli French paparazzi Jean-Claude Elfassi. The Criminal Division discovered that the latter has actually been in touch with the four plaintiffs (he, himself, acknowledged on I24 TV channel he was in touch with the fifth complainant in Switzerland). Surprisingly, after 28 months of investigation, Jean-Claude Elfassi has not been heard by the investigating judges.

The judges have indicted Tariq Ramadan on the basis of two witnesses whom they have not even questioned, and whom they encouraged to come forward (even though they did not file a complaint).

Has Professor Ramadan been granted the equal treatment so prized by France when high-ranking political figures, artists, and film producers accused of similar offenses have their rights protected like a gold standard? Is there one form of justice for Muslims in France and another for everyone else?

In short, we respectfully ask, has Professor Ramadan benefitted from a fair and equitable legal process, one in which he is presumed innocent until proven guilty?

Call to action

We appeal to your commitment to France’s reputation as a defender of justice. We trust that as the Minister of Justice you will respond to our appeal and address our concerns that a fair and just process be implemented. In particular, we suggest that if the Magistrates in charge of Tariq Ramadan’s case are not able to properly do their work with the impartiality required by the Judiciary’s code of ethics, they should be removed and replaced by truly impartial judges.

Signatories

Professor John Esposito, University of Georgetown, USA
Professor Tariq Modood, University of Bristol, UK
Professor Kalypso Nikolaïdis, University of Oxford, UK

The Canadian government gave refuge to a powerful former Saudi intelligence official deemed a threat to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman‘s rule, three sources familiar with the matter have told Middle East Eye.

Saad al-Jabri, once a trusted top adviser to the crown prince’s rival Mohammed bin Nayef, the former interior minister with deep ties to western intelligence agencies, is described by some observers as the most wanted Saudi outside the kingdom.

Jabri fled the kingdom in 2017 just before bin Nayef was put under house arrest and replaced as crown prince by his 31-year-old cousin.

His refuge in Canada raises new questions about an unprecedented diplomatic row between Ottawa and Riyadh in the summer of 2018.

On Friday, bin Nayef was among several royal family members and officials arrested by the crown prince in what is believed to be his latest bid to consolidate power. The Saudi government has yet to make an official statement on the arrests.

Three years earlier, it was his loyalty to bin Nayef, his decades-spanning knowledge of the inner workings of the kingdom’s powerful interior ministry and his substantial personal wealth which made Jabri a target of the young crown prince and sent him running.

“Let’s assume that there might be a coup in Saudi,” said a source familiar with the situation who spoke, as did all those briefed on the events, on condition of anonymity. “He’s the biggest threat. He would have the money and power to do something.”

A second source says even in Canada, the former official continued to be pursued, receiving intimidating messages from Mohammed bin Salman. There was also concern that there was a rendition attempt on Canadian soil to bring Jabri back to the kingdom, the source said.

MEE has been unable to independently verify this source’s account. Canadian Security Intelligence Services declined to comment.

A Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) spokesperson told MEE:

“Generally, only in the event that an investigation results in the laying of criminal charges would the RCMP confirm its investigation, the nature of any charges laid and the identity of the individual(s) involved.”

MEE sought comment from Jabri and his family through several channels, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

But sources briefed on what happened say they believe it is important that details of his ordeal come out because they further reveal the lengths to which the crown prince will go to pursue his perceived rivals.

Power struggle

During his time in the kingdom’s interior ministry, Jabri was closely involved in counterterrorism activity and served, in particular, as a conduit between bin Nayef and Saudi religious leaders.

With the beginning of Mohammed bin Salman’s rise to power in January 2015 following the death of King Abdullah and the accession of King Salman, a power struggle brewed inside the ministry between Jabri and another high-ranking ministry official, General Abdulaziz al-Huwairini, two sources told MEE.

Both Jabri and Huwairini are understood to have had close ties with US intelligence services under the leadership of bin Nayef who had established himself as a key interlocutor even before the 9/11 attacks for the Americans.

But the tensions came over their loyalties, said the sources. Jabri supported bin Nayef, who was then the crown prince, while Huwairini favoured Mohammed bin Salman, setting the stage, as the young prince grew increasingly powerful, for both Jabri and bin Nayef to eventually be pushed out.

In September 2015, Jabri reportedly met with then-CIA Director John Brennan during a trip to Washington that Mohammed bin Salman had not been made aware of. When Jabri returned home, he was fired by royal decree.

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius would later write that Jabri’s dismissal should have been an early warning sign that Mohammed bin Salman could “jump-start the kingdom – or drive it off a cliff”.

By June 2017, it was bin Nayef’s turn. That month, he was deposed, ousted from his roles as both crown prince – and heir apparent – and interior minister, and placed under house arrest in a palace.

After bin Nayef’s ordeal, Huwairini, too, was reportedly removed from his position and confined to his home briefly. US officials told the New York Times at the time that the loss of both bin Nayef and Huwarini could impair intelligence sharing with the kingdom.

But within a month, Huwairini was promoted to lead the newly created State Security Directorate which is in charge of national security and reportedly took domestic intelligence, special operation forces and counter-terrorism activities off the interior ministry’s hands.

By then, Jabri was already weeks into his escape.

Chased to Canada

After initially fleeing through Germany in the summer of 2017, Jabri travelled on to the US and is believed to have stayed in the Boston area. During this time, he wrote a blog post for Harvard University’s Belfer Center.

However, despite extensive relationships with the US intelligence community as bin Nayef’s aide, two sources informed on the matter said he did not feel safe in the US with Donald Trump in power. Instead, he went to Canada where officials secured his refuge in November 2017 and, a month later, several members of his family.

A third source with knowledge of Jabri’s situation told MEE that when he arrived in Canada, he was being chased by the Saudis who were willing to do anything to get him back.

He suggested that Jabri preferred Canada over the US not necessarily because of any specific security concerns, but because it may have been easier to bring his family to join him.

MEE asked Global Affairs Canada, Canada’s foreign ministry, if the government had protected Jabri and his family and why, and whether the Saudi government had given the impression they wanted him back in any communications with Ottawa.

A spokesperson responded only: “Global Affairs Canada does not comment on bilateral communications between states.”

A spokesperson at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said the ministry does not comment on individual cases.

MEE contacted Saudi embassies for comment but had not received a response at the time of publication.

‘MBS is the camel’

Revelations of the Canadian government’s assistance to Jabri and his family will raise questions about the diplomatic row that broke out between Ottawa and Riyadh in August 2018.

Until now, the spat appeared to the wider public to have started after Canada’s embassy in Riyadh tweeted in Arabic, calling for the release of rights activists, although experts say there were frustrations already brewing in Riyadh.

Within 48 hours of the tweets, Saudi Arabia withdrew its envoy, expelled the Canadian ambassador to the kingdom and froze all new business and investment transactions, leaving seasoned observers dumbfounded.

“Routine stuff,” wrote a leading columnist in the Globe and Mail of the tweet. “But the Saudis went inexplicably berserk.”

Sources informed about Jabri’s refuge in Canada say they believe the harbouring of the former official better explains why the row escalated so quickly.

“The tweet is just the straw that broke the camel’s back and MBS is the camel,” said one of the sources.

A Canadian diplomatic source, however, cautioned against connecting Jabri’s presence in the country to the dispute which he said he believed was not related.

Thomas Juneau, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa, said he had interviewed many of the diplomats and others involved in the Saudi-Canada row and Jabri “never came up”. But he now has questions.

“I have no reason to believe that it shaped the dispute. I think the reasons that MBS did what he did [in August 2018] are clear. But was this a small irritant that added to his frustration with Canada?” he said.

“There must have been some kind of interplay between the two story lines.”

Off the radar

Aside from his blog post, Jabri has been off the public radar since he left the kingdom although several Saudi and Gulf sources told MEE that they had heard that he was in Canada.

“He’s kept out of the public eye,” said a Saudi dissident, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “A few people spotted him by chance, but not because he approached opposition people.”

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst and director of the Brookings Intelligence Project, said he was not surprised Jabri would have found Canada “more welcoming than the US”.

“Anyone who is a dissident is at some point at risk of being forced to come back or killed on the spot,” he said. “The Trump administration ignores the problem.”

Trump has come under fire for downplaying the role of Mohammed bin Salman in the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in November 2018 even though the CIA concluded that the crown prince ordered the operation.

Saudi dissidents, both in the US and in other countries, have told MEE that Trump’s response to the killing, paired with the administration’s close ties to the kingdom, has left them anxious about their security in the US.

The FBI, as MEE first reported last year, was warning Saudi dissidents within weeks of Khashoggi’s murder that they faced potential threats to their lives from the kingdom.

And earlier this year, Abdulrahman al-Mutairi, a young Saudi living in California who has spoken out against the crown prince, told the Daily Beast and the LA Times that the FBI had thwarted an attempt by the Saudi government to kidnap him on US soil.

Saudi dissidents have told MEE that in their dealings with the FBI, the agency has sought to distance itself from the White House.

“I told them that I’m kind of afraid to deal with you guys because the current government has worked closely with [Crown Prince] Mohammed bin Salman and the Saudi government,” one who met with agents shortly after Khashoggi’s murder in 2018 told MEE.

“They said, ‘Don’t worry. We are here to protect people from everywhere. It doesn’t matter who is in the White House.”

Juneau said there was no doubt in his mind that Saudis who have fled the kingdom are justified to feel concerned for their safety, but he was unconvinced their fears should be pinned specifically on Trump.

Saudi dissidents and royals were being forcibly brought back to the kingdom before 2015. Since then, it’s simply a trend that has ramped up at the impetus of the crown prince.

“That Saudis wouldn’t feel safe abroad, 100 percent I agree. Where I would be very sceptical is that it’s because of the Trump administration. I think it’s because of MBS that Saudis shouldn’t feel safe abroad.”

Specifically of Jabri, Riedel said: “What he hasn’t done is say anything public.” When asked how he interprets Jabri’s silence, he said, “I think he’s scared. Wouldn’t you be?”

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Featured image: Saad al-Jabri (L) was a top aide to Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Nayef (R) for years in the kingdom’s interior ministry (MEE/Mohamad Elaasar)

In South Korea, on January 20, a woman of 35 years old from China was found to be infected and the corona-virus spread rapidly. But, owing to the rapid and efficient measures taken by the government of Moon Jae-in, the spread of the virus almost stopped and the number of cured began to increase.

And the WHO and the international media praised highly the efficient measures taken by the Korean government.

However, after the thirty-first person was found infected on February 7, the number of the infected skyrocketed and, as of March 5, it reached almost 5,800. This person is a member of the cult sect, the Shincheonji.

What is happening? Why the sudden explosion of the infected?

I argue that the combination of the collusion between the conservative party and a cult sect, corruption and politics are related to the present virus crisis in South Korea. 

This paper has three sections. In the first section, I will show the origin and the activities of the religious cult sect, Shincheonji. In the second section, I will discuss the corrupted link between the cult sect and the conservative politicians. Finally, in the final section, I will analyse the conservative party’s possible use of the virus crises as a tool of winning the general election to be held on the 15th of April.

The Cult Sect

The full name of the cult sect in question is Shincheonji Church of Jesus the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony (the Shincheonji).

Shin-cheon-ji means : the “New Heaven and Earth”;  Shin (New)- Cheon (Heaven)-Ji (Earth).

The Shincheonji was established in 1984, by the cult leader Lee Man-hee as a Christian church which is regarded as heretic cult by the mainstream churches and many religion-related experts.

South Korea has been the popular target of heresies and cult sects. There are perhaps more than one million followers of cult sects. One of the reasons of this situation is known to be the failure of meeting people’s spiritual needs by the mainstream Christian church.

By and large, three heretic dogmas are prevailing. The first is the criminal use of the Christian eschatology, that is, the doctrine of the end of the world. The second is the distorted use of the doctrine of salvation. The third is the combination of the two.

The cult sects announce a specific year of the end of the world, for instance October 24, 1992 set up by the cult (Dami-kyo: Coming- Future Church). There were other cases: November, 1969 and September, 1987 announced by other cult sects.

The Shincheonji predicted the end of the world once in 1991. It did not happen. So, it picked this time 2000. Having seen that the end of the world did not come in 2000, the cult said that the end of the world will come when there will be 144,000 members of the Shincheonji.

Well, when the predicted number of 144,000 was approaching, Lee Man-hee knew that his prophesy was a lie. This time, he said that the end of the world will come only when God picks 144,000.

The cult sect attracts a huge crowd of people and convinces them to give up all earthly things including real estate, money, wives and daughters. In this way, the cult leader becomes millionaire and commits all kind of crimes including sexual violence and violation of the human rights.

The central elements of Shincheonji’s cult doctrine include the following:

First, the sect leader, Lee Man-hee (image on the left) is the “Messiah” who came to earth to save the world; he is regarded as immortal.

Second, Lee Man-hee teaches that only 144,000 persons could be saved and go to heaven; this belief is based on the statement of the Book of Revelation in the News Testament.

“I was told that the number of those who were called with God’s seal on their head was 144,000. They were from twelve tribes in Israel, twelve thousand from each tribe.” (Revelation 7:5-8)

The name of the cult comes also from the Book of Revelation.

“There I saw a new heaven and earth.” (Revelation 21: 1)

Third, to become one of the 144,000 selected, one has to obey the cult leader.

The Shincheonji has become one of the main global cult sects. The geographical distribution of its members in 2019 was: China (18,440), the U.S. (4,264), Mongolia (2,773), South Africa (1,403), Uganda (1,031), the Philippines (704), Australia (579), Germany (547), Japan (358), other non-Korean countries (1,750). The total number of the members outside South Korea was 31,852.

As of 2019, there were 239,353 members in South Korea alone. So, the total number of the followers of the Shincheonji cult was 271,205.

The Shincheonji’s the annual revenue is said to be about US$1 billion. Nobody knows the exact figure, but one thing sure is that it is very wealthy.

Thus, we have a huge and awfully well funded cult sect. Therefore, if it decides to obstruct the anti-virus efforts of the progressive government of Moon Jae-in, it can do it very well.

Unfortunately, there are signs showing that the cult is obstructing, most likely intentionally, the government’s effort to beat the COVID-19. We will see this later in this paper.

Corruption: Collusion between the Conservative party and the Shincheonji

The Sincheonji is a heretic cult. But, it is amazing that it has more than survived despite sustained attacks and criticism by mainstream churches and media.

There can be several reasons for its success including the efficiency of brainwashing, productive recruiting, strong discipline and the blind obedience of its members.

However, the most significant reason for its success is the close collusion with the conservative politicians. To have collusion, each party involved should get something in return.

For the conservative politicians, the Shincheonji may provide political funds and well disciplined members who are the precious human resource to be used for political activities.

On the other hand, for the Shincheonji, the conservative politicians could be its best protector from the prosecution for its crimes including illegal or immoral recruiting of the youth, embezzling of public funds, stealing members’ properties and many other crimes.

The collusion between the Shincheonji and the conservative party has been translated into close cooperation in various manners.

However, before we discuss the modality of cooperation, it is important to trace back the historical background of such cooperation.

The world remembers that General Park Chung-hee snatched the power by military coup in 1962 ending up with a government with little legitimacy. The lack of his government’s legitimacy meant poor popular support. To rule, he needed as many blind supporters as possible. He found them among the followers of the cult sects.

Choe Tae-min was one of the cult leaders who could provide such human resources. Choe established, in 1973, a cult called “Yeong-seh church” which was one of the most heretic churches in Korea based on the curious combination of Buddhism, Christianity and the Chun-do-kyo (way to heaven).

Chun-do-kyo is a Korean brand of traditional East Asian religions including Shamanism. In his cult sect, Choe Tae-min pretended to be “Miroogi” (Messiah).

It is reported that Choe’s Yeong-seh church and the Shincheonji was closely connected and this connection continued through Park Geun-hye, daughter of General Park Chung-hee and Chie-Soon-sil, daughter of Choe Tae-min.

Here, in order to better understand the connection between the conservatives and the Shincheonji, we have to understand the relationship between the family of General Park and the family of the cult leader Choe.

The first lady of General Park Chung-hee, mother of Park Geun-hye, was murdered by mistake in 1974 by a North Korean spy from Japan. After the death of her mother, Park Geun-hye became closely linked with Choe Tae-min and the “Yeong-Seh” church.

In 1974, Choe Tae-min was 62 years old, while Park Geun-hye was  22 years old. In that year, General Park Chung-hee was 58 years old.

Choe Tae-min became the most trusted moral and spiritual guide of Park Geun-hye; Choe’s influence on Park Geun-hye was so great that Choe was said to have utterly controlled Park Geun-hye’s mind and body.

Choe Tae-min died in 1994. This means that, for more than twenty years, Park Geun-hye was well exposed to Choe Tae-min’s cult doctrine.

After the death of Choe Tae-min, his daughter Choe Soon-sil took over the cult. She became inseparable friend of Park Geun-hye. Thus, the connection of Park Geun-hye with the cult would have become even more extensive.

In fact, during the four years of tragic presidency of Park Geun-hye (2013-2017) her government was often called the “shamanistic” regime.

Coming back to the issue of the COVID-19, the danger is that about 70% of the infected are the Shincheonji members. Therefore, to beat the virus, the government of Moon Jae-in needs the Shincheonji’s cooperation. But, the cult does not cooperate.

I will discuss later how the cult does not cooperate. What interests me now is the reason of non-cooperation by the cult with government.

I argue that the reason of the Shincheonji’s non-cooperation is its intention of providing electoral advantage to the conservative party at the coming general election to be held on April 15.

However, unless the cult is intimately colluded with the conservative government, the Shuncheonji would not take the policy of non-cooperation with government in power at the risk of punitive actions which can be taken by the government.

In fact, the cult-conservative party collusion and cooperation is quite substantial. There are several signs of such collusion and cooperation.

First, the names of the conservative party and the cult are identical.

The name of the cult is Shincheonji; it is written in Chinese characters: Shin(新-new)- Cheon (天-heaven)- Ji (地-earth).

Now, the conservative party chose in 2002, as its new name, in Korean “hangeul” (Korean alphabet) was Sae (새-new) -Noori(누리-heaven and earth)- Dang (Party)

At that time, Park Geun-hye was the leader of the conservative party. It appears that it was she who insisted to pick this name.

Second, Park Geun-hye and the Lee Man-hee, the cult leader, met frequently. In the 2000s, Park Geun-hye sent greeting massages to Lee Man-hee.

Third, the Christian Council of Korea announced in 2012 that there was close link between the conservative party and the Shincheonji.

Fourth, in 2002, Cha Ha-sun, a member of the Shincheonji recruited 10, 000 new members of the conservative party.

Fifth, in the 2000s, an elder of the Shincheonji was nominated in a few committees of the conservative party.

Sixth, two lawmakers of the conservative party are known to be closely connected to the Shincheonji, namely, Kim Jin-tae and Kwak Sung-do.

Seventh, members of the Shincheonji are often nominated as staff of the conservative party leaders: the office of Lee Jung-hyun in 2006 was an example.

Eighth, in the 2000s, the conservative lawmaker, Kwak Sung-do was involved in the scandal of bank loans of US$ 1.8 billion for the Shincheonji.

Ninth, in 2019, at the annual huge gathering of the Shincheonji’s, Heavenly Culture, World Peace and Restoration of Light (HWPL), the former vice-president of the National Assembly (member of the conservative party) made a keynote speech and nine current lawmakers of the conservative part sent congratulatory messages. This event was designed to recruit international members of the Shincheonji.

Tenth, up to now, the conservative party has not criticized the lack of Shincheonji’s cooperation.

Politics 

The political history of South Korea has been one of deep rooted mistrust and constant existential fight between the conservatives and the non-conservatives.

The conservative political force has ruled Korea 50 years from 1948 to 1998 by Rhee Sygnman and three four-star army generals, Park Chung-hee, Chun Doo-hwan, Rho Tae-wook and Kim Young-sam, the first civil president.

In addition, the conservative party has ruled South Korea 9 years from 2008 to 2017 by Lee Myong-bak and Park Geun-hye.

Thus, the conservative party has ruled South Korea for 59 years under various names.

On the other hand, the progressive force governed South Korea only for 10 years by Kim Dae-jung and Rho Moo-hyun from 1998 to 2008. And, since 2017, the government of Moon Jae-in has been in power.

Korea has had seven conservative presidents. Of these seven, Rhee Sygnman was kicked out by students, Park Chung-hee was assassinated by his CIA director, Chun Doo-hwan and Rho Tae-wook served prison terms.

Park Guen-hye is put in prison for 27-years. Lee Myong-bak is condemned for 17-year prison but he is on parole for health reasons.

This leads us to ask the inevitable question of why such dishonourable ends of their presidencies. The answer is this: they are all accused and condemned for corruption, abuse of power and violation of human rights.

When they say that they are “conservative”, we would expect to see that they “conserve something”. But, they don’t to seem be interested in conserving something valuable such as equality, peace, social justice and respect for others.

What they try to conserve seems to be their privileges, power, money and perpetual rule of the country by fear tactics, oppression of the voices of opposition and, especially, the use of the corrupted penal and judiciary system to protect their vested interests.

In this way, the ordinary Koreans have had to endure for 60 years the oppressive rule of the corrupted conservative government.

But, the South Korean people have fought courageously for last 60 years and, finally, in 2016-2017, 17,000,000 people went down the street to impeach Park Geun-hye who was the first woman president, the most incompetent president ever seen in Korea and the most easily manipulated by greedy and immoral people led by Choe Soon-sil who is now in prison.

Since the impeachment of Park Geun-hye, Mooon Jae-in took over the power and declared the total war against the corruption of the conservatives.

This has meant the danger of the very survival of the corruption community of conservatives led by the conservative politicians.

To survive, the conservative party, Liberty Korea Party (LKP) has decided to do everything available to prevent Moon from realizing his dream of eliminating corruption, to save the economy from becoming the victim of deflation through the development of the small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), more equal income distribution and the genuine democracy for all the people, not for the elite alone.

Unfortunately, the party in power, the Democratic Party does not have the majority in the National Assembly so that it had to rely on the cooperation of the LKP to adopt laws and regulation needed to implement of Moon’s policies.

The LKP knowing this weakness of the Moon’s progressive party, it has done every possible trick to prevent the National Assembly from adopting these laws and regulations which were essential for Moon’s policies to be implemented.

The LKP members often used physical violence in the National Assembly Building to prevent the passage of laws designed to improve the welfare of the ordinary people. As a matter of fact, dozens of violent LKP members are now waiting for their court trials.

The general election is scheduled for the 15th of April and all the recent polls have indicated humiliating defeat of the LKP.

In the past, in a similar situation, the conservative party used the North-South tension as the main election campaign theme, and often won the elections. But, now, owing to the Moon’s leadership and diplomacy, there is no more North-South tension useful to the LKP.

Therefore, the conservatives have to find some other means to win the election. But they do not have much; what they might be able do can be summed up into three strategies.

First, they have succeeded in unifying several various conservative forces into one new party, called “mi-rae-tong-hap-dang” (Unified Future Party). But, its synergy effects remain to be seen.

Second, Park Geun-hye in prison sent a message through her lawyer asking all the anti-Moon forces to unite. The true objective of the message is, perhaps, to ask the Shincheonji to help the conservative party at the election.

Third, perhaps the most productive strategy could be the maximum spread of the COVID-19 and use it as the excuse for blaming Moon’s government’s “policy failure” of containing the virus. For this, the conservatives need the cooperation of the Shincheonji.

If this happens, it could be a serious challenge for Moon’s progressive party.

As of March 5, there are about 5,800 known infected persons and about 70% of these are related to the Shincheonji cult sect.

It is quite possible that the members of the cult obstruct Moon’s government anti-virus war in order to help the conservative party.

In fact, there are some events which could suggest the Shincheonji’s plan to hamper the government’s anti-virus war.

First, the Shinchenji refuses to provide the list of its members. The list provided so far is incomplete.

Second, the city of Taegu where the cult’s largest branch is located asked the police to conduct forced search for the list, but it has not been able to so, because the prosecutor has not given the authorization; the prosecutor’s office is a part of the conservative party.

Third, many of Shincheonji members are allowed, possibly by the cult leader, to wonder freely around the country provoking community transmission of virus.

Fourth, during the press conference on March 2, the cult leader, Lee Man-hee did not ask his followers to come out to report to the authorities for the virus test.

Fifth, the members of the Shincheonji seem to be made by the cult leadership to believe that the COVID-19 is the God’s will. Therefore, spreading the virus is not a sin. If this is true, then, we are in deep trouble.

I am not sure of the real impact of such strategy of the Shincheonji on the results of the election.

However, I know one thing. If the progressive party of Moon Jae-in does not win this election with majority, we cannot exclude the possibility of the return to power of the conservative government in two years.

Then, nobody knows what will happen to Korea. It is likely that the money will dictate human mind and soul, the corruption community will prosper, human dignity will be ignored, equality and justice will be crushed and the economy will stagnate.

There is another thing which bothers me. It is the possibility that the Sinchenji can become an agent of global transmission of the virus.

The COVID-19 crisis is no longer the problem of Korea alone. As long as the Shincheonji continues spread the virus, it is no longer the question of community transmission in South Korea but the problem of the global transmission of virus.

Remember this. There are about 32,000 Shincheonji members outside South Korea, about 4,300 in the U.S. alone.

The world needs concerted efforts to make the Shincheonji people to stop playing political games with COVID-19 for the conservative party and cooperate in the global fight against the virus crisis.

To conclude, I would like add a few words about the warm heart of ordinary Koreans shown for the most vulnerable victims of the virus crisis.

There are many voluntary fundraising projects for those families who are the victims. One of the groups who are most severely affected by the virus crisis includes small self-employed service firms and low-income people.

What touched me deeply is the fact that many landlords of apartments, office buildings and restaurants cut rent or exempt rent for the small and marginal businesses and low-income tenants.

We remember that the ordinary Koreans gave, during the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008, their personal wedding rings and other golden objects to help paying back the IMF debt.

As long as Koreans have courage and warm heart, they will surely overcome the present crisis, as they did before, in other crises, despite the presence of many rotten apples in the society.

Author’s Notes: Most of the data and information used in this paper are from Korean language secondary sources including Namu-wiki, TV programs, news-papers including Kuk-Min-Il-Bo and others.

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Professor Joseph H. Chung is professor of economics and co-director of the Observatoire de l’Asie de l’Est (OAE), the Centre d’Études sur l’Intégration and la Mondialisation (CEIM), Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG).

Dr. Anthonu Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, testified before Congress on Wednesday and said that the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) is  “10 times more lethal than seasonal flu.”

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Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases:

"People always say the flu does this, the flu does that…"

COVID-19 is "10 times more lethal than seasonal flu"

"I think that's something that people can get their arms around & understand." pic.twitter.com/43zp90silf

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) March 11, 2020

He doesn’t know this, it is a flat out lie that only fuels the current hysteria about COVID-19.

Any honest scientist studying the disease will tell you that it is unknown as to what the death rate from the virus is because we don’t have enough data on cases that are mild, where people might have thought they had a cold or just the common flu and didn’t report to a healthcare facility.

Dr. Jeremy Samuel Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an instructor at Harvard Medical School, has written:

The public is behaving as if this epidemic is the next Spanish flu, which is frankly understandable given that initial reports have staked COVID-19 mortality at about 2–3 percent, quite similar to the 1918 pandemic that killed tens of millions of people.

Allow me to be the bearer of good news. These frightening numbers are unlikely to hold. The true case fatality rate, known as CFR, of this virus is likely to be far lower than current reports suggest. Even some lower estimates, such as the 1 percent death rate recently mentioned by the directors of the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, likely substantially overstate the case.

We shouldn’t be surprised that the numbers are inflated. In past epidemics, initial CFRs were floridly exaggerated. For example, in the 2009 H1N1 pandemic some early estimates were 10 times greater than the eventual CFR, of 1.28 percent. Epidemiologists think and quibble in terms of numerators and denominators—which patients were included when fractional estimates were calculated, which weren’t, were those decisions valid—and the results change a lot as a result. We are already seeing this. In the early days of the crisis in Wuhan, China, the CFR was more than 4 percent. As the virus spread to other parts of Hubei, the number fell to 2 percent. As it spread through China, the reported CFR dropped further, to 0.2 to 0.4 percent. As testing begins to include more asymptomatic and mild cases, more realistic numbers are starting to surface.

Indeed, in areas where testing appears to be more aggressive, the CFR number is much lower. In Germany, the number is almost in line with the flu at 0.15 percent.

Below is a much more sound way of presenting the current situation, via Dr. William Schaffner, Professor of Preventive Medicine in the Department of Health Policy as well as Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

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Featured image is from Flickr

Lebanon’s decision to default on the repayment of a $1.2 billion Eurobond was inevitable. Prime Minister Hassan Diab was absolutely right to put d needs of the Lebanese over the timetable for paying the country’s debilitating debts to international creditors. Lebanon should repay some $4.6 billion this year at a time Central Bank reserves have fallen to $20-30 billion.

Diab revealed Lebanon’s debt now stands at $90 billion, or 170 per cent  of GDP and pledged to restructure the debt as well as reduce the country’s outsized banking sector. Beirut can expect tough negotiations with creditors because governments have, over decades, failed to enact reforms needed to rescue the collapsing economy.

Lebanon’s political elite is responsible for the failure to reform, although hundreds of thousands of Lebanese have taken to the streets since October to demand reforms and an end to mismanagement and corruption. The elite refuses to meet these demands because this would involve government change: Not only an end to the reign of the elite but also of the sectarian model of governance, which allocates the presidency to a Maronite Christian, the prime ministry to a Sunni, the speakership of parliament to a Shia and shares out other positions to the country’s leading religious sects.  This regime has led to Lebanon’s downfall.

During the best of times, the “swinging sixties”, Beirut was the “Paris of the Middle East”. The city boasted, somewhat disingenuously, that one could ski on its mountain slopes in the morning and swim at its beaches in the afternoon. This was, of course, possible towards the end of the snow season, and on days where the sea was calm and the sun shone bright. During the golden years, life was beautiful for Lebanese living above the poverty line. Those below were kept in line by local feudal lords. The country prospered with a laissez-faire economy and insouciant politicians who saw no need to reform.

But, all was not well in Lebanon. The mid-seventies ushered in 15 years of sectarian civil war. The commercial heart of Beirut was destroyed. The airport closed. Tourism collapsed. Hotels and restaurants shuttered. Tens of thousands of Lebanese, particularly educated youth, left the country. Israel occupied a swathe of the south in 1978. Israel’s army wreaked destruction as it marched to Beirut in 1982. The civil war was meant to end in 1989 with the Taif agreement but continued until October 1990 when Syria’s army intervened.

Civil conflict and Israeli invasions devastated Lebanon’s physical and economic infrastructure, halved Lebanon’s GDP and reduced its role as a trading and banking hub. Although, in the immediate post-war period the economy rebounded dramatically this recovery was illusory as it was from a wartime low. A new political elite emerged. Feudalists and traditional district bosses were replaced by warlords, entrepreneurs who made billions abroad and ambitious sons of sixties politicians.

Reconstruction has been haphazard and propelled by self-interested businessmen. Mismanagement and corruption have ballooned. A succession of governments have not repaired the country’s war-damaged electricity grid, an essential component of recovery. Cuts occur daily. For full coverage, consumers have to pay both the country’s electricity company and owners of neighbourhood generators. Many Lebanese cannot afford to pay two electricity bills and suffer outages. Potable water is in short supply and consumers rely on private companies for water. Lebanon’s beaches are polluted by raw sewage because the country has no means of recycling it. Garbage overflows from landfills. Unemployment is rife, among university graduates as well as manual labourers.

As a result of the war in Syria, Lebanon’s lucrative trade and transit trade with Syria and the Arab hinterland has been halted and more than a million Syrian refugees have sought safety in Lebanon, putting its war-wasted infrastructure and depleted resources under greater pressure than before the conflict. Remittances from expatriate Lebanese have dwindled.

Lebanon’s banking sector, which had relied on account secrecy, suffered after 2010 when the US imposed measures to curb money laundering, tax evasion by US citizens and transfers to organisations deemed to be “terrorist” by Washington. To attract depositors, Lebanese banks have offered high interest rates on dollars and Lebanese pounds, encouraging Lebanese to put their money in banks rather than invest in business which would promote economic development and provide jobs.

Lebanon is no longer carefree. It has been ranked 138th out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s index of corruption and, in terms of income, Lebanon became one of the most unequal in the world. Forty per cent of Lebanese live below the poverty line while the top one per cent receives 25 per cent of national income.

As if Lebanon does not have enough troubles, the novel coronavirus is infecting increasing numbers of hapless, helpless civilians at a time hospitals suffer from lack of funding, medicines, virus testing kits and protective clothing for doctors and nurses.

Having installed before independence in 1943 the country’s disastrous, and so far indestructible, sectarian system of governance, Lebanon’s former colonial ruler, France, has proffered medical aid.

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Terrorist groups operating in Idlib are preparing for a new rebranding under Turkish patronage. According to Syrian sources, Hayat Tarir al-Sham (formerly the official Syrian branch of al-Qaeda), the Turkistan Islamic Party (an al-Qaeda-linked group), the National Front for Liberation (a coalition of Turkish proxies friendly to al-Qaeda) and several smaller groups are going to create a united command center and even declare a formal merger.

The idea is to shuffle well-known al-Qaeda terrorists with their supposedly moderate Turkish-backed counterparts, and give them a new name and logo. So, Ankara will have a formal reason to claim that there are no ‘terrorists’ in Idlib and the current situation in the region fully corresponds with the agreements reached with Iran and Russia. These agreements exclude terrorist organizations, which control up to 90% of the militant-held part of Greater Idlib, from the ceasefire and allow military actions against them. The issue is that the same agreements declare that Turkey must separate so-called ‘moderate rebels’ from ‘terrorists’. This is hardly possible because there is little difference between them. Therefore, the Turkish leadership opted to unite them painting them as the ‘moderate opposition’ once again violating the word and spirit of the de-escalation agreements.

Earlier in the conflict, various terrorist groups already employed this approach. For example, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham was previously known as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra. The group changed its name in an attempt to distance itself from al-Qaeda and present itself as part of the moderate opposition that is brutally oppressed by the Assad regime, Iran and Russia. This plan failed because terrorists, even if they change their flag and wear new hats, remain terrorists and continue acting like terrorists.

On March 15, Turkish and Russian forces are set to start conducting joint patrols along the agreed security corridor on the M4 highway in southern Idlib. On March 10, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that the patrols will start from the settlement of Trumba – 2 km west of Saraqib – to the settlement of Ain al-Havr. Additionally, Cavusoglu repeated threats that his country will attack Syrian forces if they do not comply with the ceasefire. How this ceasefire will survive with no real anti-terrorist fight in Idlib remains another big secret. According to pro-Turkish sources, the Turkish Army and its proxies will control the part of the security corridor north of the M4, while the Russians will present south of the highway. However, so far, there have been no indications that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other terrorist groups are withdrawing means and forces from the area. This situation creates an apparent pretext for a military escalation.

The public behavior of the Turkish leadership and Turkish media outlets does not help to de-escalate the situation either. Since March 5, Ankara has been doing its best to paint the failed Operation Spring Shield as a major victory. After tiring the audience out with unrealistic numbers of supposed Syrian Army casualties, Turkey moved on to mocking the military capabilities of the Russian air defense systems. On March 10, Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdogan claimed that his forces had destroyed 8 Pantsir air defense systems in the Idlib zone. This number goes contrary to data provided by the Turkish Defense Ministry which claimed that 8 air defense systems of various types were destroyed during Operation Spring Shield. It seems that the amount of supposedly destroyed military equipment of the Syrian Armed Forces continues to grow.

The Russian Defense Ministry called Erdogan’s claims “more than overestimation” and noted that apparently the data, which the Turkish leader receives about the results of the operation,  is not very precise. The military said that a total of 4 Pantsir systems were deployed in Idlib and only 2 of them were damaged. It recalled that most of the Syrian air defense means and measures are deployed in the area of the country’s capital, Damascus.

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Syria Chemical Attack: Douma Whistleblowers Respond to OPCW’s Attempts to Discredit Them

By Dave DeCamp, March 12, 2020

Two whistleblowers that have been speaking out about a scandal within the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) have responded to the organization’s attempts to discredit them. The OPCW has been doing some serious damage control over its investigation into a chemical attack that allegedly took place in Douma, Syria on April 7^th 2018. New revelations from The Grayzone and journalist Peter Hitchens severely undermine the OPCW’s attack on the brave whistleblowers.

In a Europe Closed Down by the Coronavirus the EU Opens its Doors to the US Army. Could the Defender become the Invader of Europe?

By Manlio Dinucci, March 12, 2020

The Ministers for Defence of the 27 countries of the EU, 22 of which are also members of NATO, met on 4 and 5 March in Zagreb, Croatia. The central theme of the meeting (in which Lorenzo Guerini of the Democratic Party represented Italy) was not to seek a response to the Coronavirus crisis which is jamming up civil mobility, but how best to develop « military mobility ». The decisive test is the Defender Europe 20 exercise, scheduled for April and May. The General Secretary of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, who took part in the EU meeting, défines it as « the largest deployment of US forces in Europe since the end of the Cold War ».

Covid-19 “Is a Significant Economic Threat”

By UNCTAD, March 12, 2020

The spread of the coronavirus is first and foremost a public health emergency, but it is also, a significant economic threat. The so-called “Covid-19” shock will cause a recession in some countries and depress global annual growth this year to below 2.5 per cent, the recessionary threshold for the world economy.

COVID-19: Further Evidence that the Virus Originated in the US

By Larry Romanoff, March 11, 2020

The Taiwanese physician noted that in August of 2019 the US had a flurry of lung pneumonias or similar, which the Americans blamed on ‘vaping’ from e-cigarettes, but which, according to the scientist, the symptoms and conditions could not be explained by e-cigarettes. He said he wrote to the US officials telling them he suspected those deaths were likely due to the coronavirus. He claims his warnings were ignored.

Video: Saudi-initiated All-out Oil War Could Lead to Collapse of Kingdom Itself

By South Front, March 11, 2020

It all began on March 8 when Riyadh cut its April pricing for crude sales to Asia by $4-$6 a barrel and to the U.S. by $7 a barrel. The Kingdom expanded the discount for its flagship Arab Light crude to refiners in northwest Europe by $8 a barrel offering it at $10.25 a barrel under the Brent benchmark. In comparison, Russia’s Urals crude trades at a discount of about $2 a barrel under Brent. These actions became an attack at the ability of Russia to sell crude in Europe. The Russian ruble immediately plummeted almost 10% falling to its lowest level in more than four years.

How Black Swans Are Shaping Planet Panic

By Pepe Escobar, March 11, 2020

Is the planet under the spell of a pair of black swans – a Wall Street meltdown, caused by an alleged oil war between Russia and the House of Saud, plus the uncontrolled spread of Covid-19 – leading to an all-out “cross-asset pandemonium” as billed by Nomura?   

Or, as German analyst Peter Spengler suggests, whatever the averted climax in the Strait of Hormuz has not brought about so far “might now come through market forces”?

US-Israel Predictably Behind Turkish Aggression in Syria

By Tony Cartalucci, March 11, 2020

Turkey’s ongoing fighting in northern Syria’s Idlib governorate was – from the beginning of recent escalations – clearly a continuation of Washington’s wider now 9 year-long proxy war against Damascus.

Whatever gains Turkey had made in terms of reducing its role in Washington’s proxy war and repairing ties with Syria’s allies Russia and Iran – were clearly less important to Ankara amid these recent weeks of renewed aggression than whatever Washington has either promised Anakara or threatened it with.

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Sanaa Post reported that the American soldiers were received by the occupying UAE forces at their headquarters on the island.

There is speculation that the US intends to establish its own military base amid reports that America had sent military experts to equip observation points to deploy radars and air defense points on the strategically located island overlooking the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, according to Middle East Monitor.

US forces had previously arrived on Socotra in December of last year and started installing a Patriot missile system in order to protect the Saudi and Emirati forces on the island at the time.

Socotra, home to some 60,000 people, sits at the entrance to the Gulf of Aden. Shipping traffic passes by the island on the way to the Bab al-Mandab Strait and Suez Canal.

The island has a unique ecosystem and has been listed by UNESCO as a world natural heritage site.

Residents of Socotra Island have repeatedly staged protests to vent their outrage at the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for deploying military forces there.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE are key members of a coalition that has been waging a deadly war on Yemen since March 2015 in support of the former Yemeni president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, and against the Houthi Ansarullah movement.

The Saudi-led military campaign has killed and injured over 600,000 civilians, according to the Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights.

Several Western countries, the US and the UK in particular, are accused of being complicit in the aggression as they supply the Riyadh regime with advanced weapons and military equipment.

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This is a test.

This is not a test of our commitment to basic hygiene or disaster preparedness or our ability to come together as a nation in times of crisis, although we’re not doing so well on any of those fronts.

No, what is about to unfold over the next few weeks is a test to see how well we have assimilated the government’s lessons in compliance, fear and police state tactics; a test to see how quickly we’ll march in lockstep with the government’s dictates, no questions asked; and a test to see how little resistance we offer up to the government’s power grabs when made in the name of national security.

Most critically of all, this is a test to see whether the Constitution—and our commitment to the principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights—can survive a national crisis and true state of emergency.

Here’s what we know: whatever the so-called threat to the nation—whether it’s civil unrest, school shootings, alleged acts of terrorism, or the threat of a global pandemic in the case of COVID-19—the government has a tendency to capitalize on the nation’s heightened emotions, confusion and fear as a means of extending the reach of the police state.

This coronavirus epidemic, which has brought China’s Orwellian surveillance out of the shadows and caused Italy to declare a nationwide lockdown, threatens to bring the American Police State out into the open on a scale we’ve not seen before.

If and when a nationwide lockdown finally hits—if and when we are forced to shelter in place— if and when militarized police are patrolling the streets— if and when security checkpoints have been established— if and when the media’s ability to broadcast the news has been curtailed by government censors—if and when public systems of communication (phone lines, internet, text messaging, etc.) have been restricted—if and when those FEMA camps the government has been surreptitiously building finally get used as quarantine detention centers for American citizens—if and when military “snatch and grab” teams are deployed on local, state, and federal levels as part of the activated Continuity of Government plans to isolate anyone suspected of being infected with COVID-19—and if and when martial law is enacted with little real outcry or resistance from the public—then we will truly understand the extent to which the government has fully succeeded in recalibrating our general distaste for anything that smacks too overtly of tyranny.

This is how it begins.

The coronavirus epidemic may well be a legitimate health concern, but it’s the government’s response to it that worries me more in the long term.

Based on the government’s track record and its long-anticipated plans for instituting martial law (using armed forces to solve domestic political and social problems) in response to a future crisis, there’s good reason to worry.

This is not a government with a rosy view of the future.

To the contrary, the government’s vision of the future is particularly ominous if a Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command is anything to go by.

The training video, which provides a chilling glimpse of what the government expects the world to look like in 2030, says a lot about the government’s mindset and the way its views the citizenry. Even more troubling, however, is what this military video doesn’t say about the Constitution and the rights of the citizenry: nothing at all.

In typical fashion, the government seems to consider the Constitution only when forced to do so. It complies with the dictates of the Constitution even less frequently. Indeed, the government’s efforts to systematically lock down the nation and shift us into martial law have not been stymied one iota by the restraints imposed upon it by the Constitution: when it’s not bulldozing its way through the Fourth Amendment, the government just sidesteps it (with the help of the courts).

So what should you expect if the government decides to declare a national state of emergency and institute a nationwide lockdown?

More of the same of what we’ve been seeing in recent years.

After all, like the proverbial boiling frogs, the government has been gradually acclimating us to the specter of a police state for years now: Militarized police. Riot squads. Camouflage gear. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Surveillance cameras. Kevlar vests. Drones. Lethal weapons. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Stun grenades. Arrests of journalists. Crowd control tactics. Intimidation tactics. Brutality.

This is how you prepare a populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.

We have made it way too easy for the government to lockdown the nation.

It won’t take much more for martial law to be declared, a nationwide lockdown instituted, and the American people to be terrorized into compliance by the government’s latest and greatest scare tactic, even if it means being stripped of one’s constitutional rights at a moment’s notice.

This continual undermining of the rules that protect civil liberties has far-reaching consequences on a populace that not only remains ignorant about their rights but is inclined to sacrifice their liberties for phantom promises of safety.

It may be that we’ve already gone too far down this road. However, don’t let this latest “crisis” cause you to panic to such an extent that you relinquish your fundamental right to make decisions for yourself and your loved ones and willingly surrender what remains of your freedoms.

This too shall pass.

Remember, a police state does not come about overnight.

Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, no matter how it starts, with a questionable infringement justified in the name of safety or a nationwide lockdown to guard against a global pandemic, it always ends the same: by pushing us one step closer to a future in which the government has all the power and “we the people” have none.

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

Leading members of the House of Representatives are rushing a vote on Wednesday to extend abusive government surveillance powers before they’re set to expire on March 15.

If approved, the USA Freedom Reauthorization Act of 2020 would reauthorize Section 215 powers Congress established under the USA Patriot Act in 2001. Section 215 is the provision national-security agencies have cited to support their unwarranted collection of phone records of hundreds of millions of people in the United States.

The new legislation, unveiled by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, is sponsored by Reps. Jerrold Nadler of New York and Adam Schiff of California, chairmen of the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees respectively. This bill makes some minor reforms, including adding a public advocate to some additional secretive FISA court deliberations. But it fails to put in place limits favored by privacy, racial-justice and civil-liberty advocates, most of whom support an alternative bill, the Safeguarding Americans’ Private Records Act, introduced earlier this year with bipartisan support.

Free Press Action Government Relations Director Sandra Fulton made the following statement:

“In the last few weeks, progressive lawmakers have demanded legislation to protect their constituents and avoid a rubber-stamp renewal of the Patriot Act’s most dangerous provisions. But now leading Democrats are bypassing regular order, rushing the renewal process, and quietly cutting a deal with pro-surveillance Republicans to allow the NSA and other intelligence agencies to continue spying on innocent people across the United States. These lawmakers are attempting to sneak this bad bill through despite strong bipartisan opposition from the public. And they’re doing this without a proper debate, or any chance for amendments from members who want to protect our civil liberties, while the country is focused on the spread of COVID-19.

“The supporters of this harmful legislation are touting it as a strong reform measure, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. It would renew invasive spying powers that endanger vulnerable communities — like people of color, trans folks, activists and journalists — for a president who acts in open and cruel defiance of constitutional limits to his power.

“This makes no sense. The same House leaders who voted to impeach the president for abuse of power are now handing him massive and destructive spying powers in the middle of a public-health crisis. Congress has until March 15 to pass a bill or the sunset provisions of the Patriot Act will kick in and the law won’t be renewed. There are very good reform bills on the table that would renew some of these Patriot Act powers while curbing the worst abuses. But the USA Freedom Reauthorization Act isn’t one of those good options.

“The Patriot Act passed in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and created a massive and deeply problematic surveillance infrastructure that national-security forces have repeatedly abused. That’s why Congress put in place sunset provisions: so it could reexamine the potential for government misuse of these spying powers and allow for reforms. We need Congress to debate whether the government should maintain such broad and invasive powers. Congress has had almost five years to prepare for this debate, but here lawmakers are sneaking through a renewal of these laws just days before they expire and in the midst of a national health emergency.

“It’s unthinkable that any member of Congress would now seek to grant an extension of these powers to the same agencies that have so often sidestepped safeguards and ignored the spirit and the letter of previous similarly milquetoast reforms. Every member of Congress must vote against the USA Freedom Reauthorization Act and demand more reforms and restrictions to runaway government surveillance.

“While we’ve fought these dangerous spying powers since they were enacted, the Trump administration poses a unique threat to the most vulnerable communities in this country. House Democratic leaders who have opposed Trump’s abuse of power in other circumstances shouldn’t enable his ability to violate our fundamental privacy rights.”

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Manning was unlawfully imprisoned last March (again in May after briefly released) for invoking her constitutional right of silence — refusing to give grand jury testimony to aid the Trump regime’s attempted crucifixion of Julian Assange.

For the past year and during her earlier 7-year (2010 – 2017) ordeal for revealing information about US high crimes of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, her First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eight Amendment rights were violated.

Scheduled to appear in Alexandria, VA federal court Friday for a hearing on a petition to end her punitive incarceration, a statement by Alexandria sheriff Dana Lawhorne said the following on Wednesday:

“There was an incident at approximately 12:11 p.m. today at the Alexandria Adult Detention Center involving inmate Chelsea Manning. It was handled appropriately by our professional staff and Ms. Manning is safe.”

Spokesman for Manning’s legal team attorney Andy Stepanian she’s “still scheduled to appear on Friday for a previously-calendared hearing, at which Judge Anthony Trenga will rule on a motion to terminate the civil contempt sanctions stemming from her (March and) May 2019 refusal to give testimony before a grand jury investigating the publication of her 2010 disclosures,” adding:

“Her actions today evidence the strength of her convictions, as well as the profound harm she continues to suffer as a result of her ‘civil’ confinement — a coercive practice that the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, recently said violates international law.”

She “remains unwavering in her refusal to participate in a secret grand jury process that she sees as highly susceptible to abuse.”

Her lawyers reported her suicide attempt with no further elaboration, saying she “previously indicated that she will not betray her principles, even at risk of grave harm to herself.”

According to London’s Daily Mail,  Manning “attempted suicide inside her Virginia jail cell and was resuscitated by prison guards,” adding:

She “tried to hang herself with a sheet…(F)ound about 1pm (Wednesday, she) had a pulse (and) was breathing while en route to the hospital.”

“A jail deputy discovered her while conducting a check in the special housing unit where Chelsea is being housed,’ a source told DailyMail.com.”

“They found her with a sheet around her neck. Other deputies arrived and first aid was administered before she was taken to the hospital.”

“It was a close run thing. Chelsea was unconscious. She was blue and unresponsive, but the deputies were able to resuscitate her,” according to the unnamed Daily Mail source.

Manning has been held in repressive solitary confinement up to 23 hours daily — conditions authorities call highly restrictive, high-custody housing units, inmates isolated from the general prison population.

She’s in a windowless 8 x 10 feet cell devoid of human contact, sunlight, and fresh air.

Oppressive conditions aim to crush the human spirit, mind and body — breaching the 8th Amendment’s prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishments.”

Protracted isolation from sensory deprivation can cause irreversible trauma. Some prisoners become zombies.

Others become sociopaths. PTSD symptoms are rife, including panic attacks, lethargy, insomnia, nightmares, dizziness, social withdrawal, memory and appetite loss, delusions and hallucinations, profound despair and hopelessness, as well as suicidal thoughts.

Longterm isolation is like being buried alive, former prisoners explain.

Law Professor Judith Resnik earlier explained that “(s)olitary confinement is disabling (and) harmful for human health and safety,” adding:

“It can do harm for people who are mentally OK and inflict terrible damage on people who are already mentally ill.”

It’s torture by any standard. Yet the practice exists in most US states and in federal prisons.

No one should be locked in a cage with minimal or no human contact under any conditions.

On Friday in Alexandria district court, Manning’s attorneys will argue for her release from punitive incarceration on grounds that she’s “incoercible…her confinement…transformed from a coercive into a punitive sanction, and thus is in violation of the law.”

Her resolve and moral conviction are “unwavering,” proved time and again for the past decade.

Continuing her indefinite detention constitutes “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Earlier Manning said: “No matter how much you punish me, I will remain confident in my decision.”

“I have been separated from my loved ones, deprived of sunlight, and could not even attend my mother’s funeral.”

“It is easier to endure these hardships now than to cooperate to win back some comfort, and live the rest of my life knowing that I acted out of self-interest and not principle.”

She can’t be coerced, pressured, or otherwise pushed to violate her moral and ethical standards.

No matter the outcome of Friday’s hearing, she remains steadfast to her principles.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

A conservative judge of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals signaled on Tuesday, March 10, that he will probably vote to let President Donald Trump use $3.6 billion in diverted military money to expand the border wall, even as construction crews blast legally protected indigenous burial grounds and natural resources on Arizona’s border with Mexico.

Circuit Judge Daniel Collins, a Trump appointee who joined the liberal appeals court a year ago, dominated questioning by the three-judge panel during oral arguments in San Francisco, seemingly stunning one lawyer with his legal reasoning.

The exchange came as California Justice Department attorney Heather Leslie told the court that diverting military funds to build a border wall had cost Joint Base Andrews a $13 million child development center and the state of Maryland the anticipated tax revenue.

“Does the deli that’s next door to that child care center, do they have a claim, too, because their business will go down because the child care center isn’t completed?” Collins shot back.

“Don’t say th—” Leslie replied, apparently taken aback.

Collins interrupted, “How far do ripples of economic harm go out? Your tax revenue is the business next door that’s adversely affected. How far does this go?”

Collins and Leslie also butted heads on the question of whether Trump violated the appropriations clause of the Constitution, which says Congress must affirmatively approve all uses of appropriated funds.

“I’m not seeing how the constitutional limit emerges from the appropriations clause. Congress can authorize spending how it wants,” Collins said.

Leslie replied that a President may tap general funds in national emergencies or health crises, but not “where Congress has specifically limited, the very same day the President signs [an appropriations bill], into law.”

“He can’t modify it with billions of dollars and new locations,” she said. “There is specific congressional intent, on the record, very clear, abundant, we had a record-breaking government shutdown over this.”

Chief Judge Sidney Thomas and Circuit Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw, both Clinton appointees, also sat on Tuesday’s panel. Neither indicated how they may rule.

In February 2019, the President declared a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border to divert billions in military and counter-narcotics funding for a wall, with the apparent goal of reducing illegal border crossings and cross-border flows of drugs and crime. This came after Congress appropriated only a fraction of the $5.7 billion he had demanded for the project.

The Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition, and a group of states led by California, sued Trump and his administration, alleging that they circumvented Congress’s Constitutional appropriations power in order to free up extra money. U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam Jr. in Oakland, California, agreed, issuing a ruling that banned a string of proposed reallocated wall projects worth a combined $6.1 billion, under identical permanent injunctions issued in May and December.

A different Ninth Circuit panel all but upheld the May injunction when it refused the federal government’s request to pause it. But in July, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in to green-light construction while the litigation plays out, a sign it might rule for the government if it were to take the case.

When it was asked to preserve a stay of the December injunction, the current Ninth Circuit panel obliged, citing the Supreme Court order as a basis for its own.

Both injunctions are now pending before the Ninth Circuit. Meanwhile, construction is progressing at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, a protected wildlife reserve in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert which shares a thirty-mile stretch of the border with Mexico. Laiken Jordahl, a borderlands campaigner with the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, says a wall there would block migrating wildlife, put more pressure on endangered species, and “be an eyesore on the land for decades to come.”

“The border wall is ripping a hideous scar through the most spectacular Sonoran Desert ecosystem on the planet,” Jordahl tells The Progressive. “There’s already so much damage to grieve.”

The case hinges on Section 2808 of the United States Code, a rarely used statute that allows the federal government, rather than Congress, to reallocate military construction funds to urgent military construction projects in connection with a national emergency. When Trump declared a national emergency on the border last year, he invoked Section 2808 to reallocate money for a wall.

Section 2808 has only ever been invoked to build things like airfield runways and to secure weapons of mass destruction. So to make the case that border wall construction qualified as “military construction,” the Defense Department put all the lands slated for construction along the border (in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas) under its jurisdiction for three years and administratively assigned it to U.S. Army Garrison Fort Bliss in Texas, near El Paso.

Judge Gilliam rejected the move when he blocked construction last December.

“Defendants’ interpretation would grant them essentially boundless authority to reallocate military construction funds to build anything they want, anywhere they want, provided they first obtain jurisdiction over the land where the construction will occur,” Gilliam ruled. “Although defendants attempt to reassure the court that they ‘are not arguing that the entire southern U.S. border’ constitutes a military installation for purposes of Section 2808, there is nothing in their interpretation to preclude them from doing so.

“When asked during the hearing whether defendants’ reading of Section 2808 had a limiting principle, counsel could not articulate one,” Gilliam said.

In court on Tuesday, U.S. Justice Department attorney Thomas Byron said the national emergency declaration itself was the limiting principle, and Section 2808 lets the Defense Department bypass any federal or state law that would hinder it from reallocating money in a national emergency.

“Nothing in the terms or context of this statute would suggest that Congress intended to restrain the Defense Secretary in an emergency in the ways the District Court suggested,” Byron said.

The administration has since waived dozens of federal laws, including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, to fast-track construction.

Last month, federal contractors began demolition work in Organ Pipe. The monument is part of the ancestral homelands of the Tohono O’odham indigenous peoples and is next to the Nation’s federally recognized reservation, which stretches into Mexico. The wall would end less than two miles from the western boundary of the reservation.

Construction at Organ Pipe has been disastrous for the O’odham. An O’odham burial site near Quitobaquito Springs was bulldozed, damaging the desert oasis used in the annual O’odham salt pilgrimage. Another burial site at Monument Hill was dynamited without notifying the O’odham beforehand. Ancient saguaro cacti were reportedly uprooted.

Ned Norris Jr., the O’odham Nation’s chairman, testified about the situation before the U.S. House of Representatives last month.

“Congress must withdraw or at least better limit [the administration’s] authority to unilaterally give itself waivers to circumvent every federal statute on the books,” Norris testified. “This kind of non-challengeable authority may be tolerated in a totalitarian state, but it does not sit well among the statutes that are supposed to protect our freedoms in the United States of America.”

By Trump’s logic, Section 2808 theoretically also authorizes him to take over native reservations for border wall projects. Congress hasn’t eliminated reservation lands since the Termination Era of the 1950s and 1960s, when the practice was used to break up reservations and assimilate indigenous peoples. University of Colorado Law School professor Sarah Krakoff, who specializes in American Indian law, doesn’t believe Trump would embrace termination now, particularly in a military context.

“It would be an extraordinary, unprecedented, and highly suspect move, legally and politically, for the Trump Administration to take land out of trust without Congressional authorization and to put it to military purposes,” Krakoff tells The Progressive.

But the Trump Administration has floated proposals to privatize reservations. In 2017, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke called for an “off-ramp” for taking reservations out of protected trust status by giving indigenous groups the “choice of leaving Indian trust lands and becoming a corporation.” Before Trump took office, his Native American Affairs Coalition chairman, Representative Markwayne Mullin, Republican of Oklahoma, also pushed for privatization.

Because privatization can eliminate powers of self-government and immunities from state and local jurisdiction, it represents a major threat to indigenous groups, Robert Anderson, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School specializing in American Indian Law, tells The Progressive.

“These powers and immunities are critical parts of tribal existence protected by existing federal law,” he says.

The Ninth Circuit panel did not say Tuesday when it will rule.

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Helen Christophi is an independent legal journalist covering reproductive rights and public health. She lives in Oakland, California.

Featured image: Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen speaks during a visit to President Trump’s border wall in the El Centro Sector in Calexico, California. © Reuters / Earnie Grafton

Two whistleblowers that have been speaking out about a scandal within the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) have responded to the organization’s attempts to discredit them. The OPCW has been doing some serious damage control over its investigation into a chemical attack that allegedly took place in Douma, Syria on April 7^th 2018. New revelations from The Grayzone and journalist Peter Hitchens severely undermine the OPCW’s attack on the brave whistleblowers.

Leaked documents and testimony from the two whistleblowers show the OPCW ignored its experts and suppressed findings to fit the narrative that the Syrian government was responsible for the alleged attack in Douma.

The OPCW published its final report on the Douma incident in March 2019. That report concluded there were “reasonable grounds” to believe a chemical attack took place and that chemical was “likely molecular chlorine.” The first leak that undermined the final report was an unreleased engineering assessment published by the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media. The assessment analyzed two cylinders found in Douma that were said to be the source of the chlorine gas.

Central to the claim that the Syrian government was responsible for the alleged attack was the idea that the two cylinders were dropped from an aircraft. But the unreleased engineering assessment concluded there was a “higher probability that both cylinders were manually placed at those two locations rather than being delivered from aircraft.” This conclusion was left out of the final report.

The OPCW launched an investigation into the dissemination of the engineering assessment and released a report on it in February. The report titled, “Report of the Investigation into Possible Breaches of Confidentiality” does not find enough evidence to pin the blame on either whistleblower for leaking the assessment. Instead, the report is an attack on the credibility of the two individuals known as “Inspector A” and “Inspector B.”

Inspector A is Ian Henderson, a 12-year OPCW veteran and author of the leaked engineering assessment. Inspector B, a 16-year OPCW veteran, wishes to remain anonymous and is likely the whistleblower who used the pseudonym “Alex” when he gave testimony to journalist Jonathan Steele for a story published by Counterpunch.

The OPCW claimed that Henderson’s engineering assessment was not an official OPCW document and that Henderson completed it without going through the proper channels. A written statement from Henderson to the UN was published by The Grayzone shortly after the OPCW’s report on the leak came out and severely undermined this claim. According to Henderson’s statement, he had a green light from OPCW management to conduct the study, and upon its completion, the assessment was peer-reviewed by other OPCW employees.

Henderson and Inspector B responded to the OPCW attack through journalist Peter Hitchens in his blog for The Mail on Sunday. Both inspectors describe the OPCW’s investigation report as “a bait and switch tactic that creates the illusion of a report about a breach of confidentiality, when in fact it is little more than a public defense of the scientifically questioned Douma Report.”

Besides taking issue with the contents of the breaches of confidentiality report, the detailed response published in The Mail reiterates the whistleblowers’ main concerns with how the OPCW handled the Douma investigation. The OPCW Douma Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) that deployed to Syria was replaced with a team of inspectors that only deployed to “Country X,” which is likely Turkey. The Douma FFM compiled a detailed 116-page interim report that was highly altered by OPCW management before it was released to the public. After internal issues with the interim report, the Douma FFM was replaced.

The findings and scientific work of the Douma FFM were completely ignored in the drafting of the OPCW’s final report. One example of this is a meeting between OPCW inspectors and toxicologists that took place in June 2018, where toxicologists were shown pictures and videos of alleged victims. WikiLeaks published minutes from this meeting in December. According to the minutes, the “key takeaway” for the OPCW team that attended the meeting was that “the symptoms observed were inconsistent with exposure to chlorine.”

The findings from the June 2018 meeting with toxicologists are reflected in the original interim report but are not included in the final report. The final report mentions two consultations with toxicologists, one in September 2018, and one in October 2018, but no details from these meetings are given.

The OPCW claims that after the Douma FFM was dismissed, the bulk of the scientific work for the report took place. But as Inspector B puts it, “Regardless of what new information had been gathered since the Interim Report, it is scientifically unacceptable to exclude any facts that could impact on the conclusions of an investigation.”

The Grayzone obtained letters from both Henderson, and Inspector B addressed to OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias. In these letters, both men protest the OPCW’s investigation into the breaches of confidentiality.

In his letter, Henderson defended his and Inspector B’s reputation, “I feel that I need to respond to the attempted smear on the reputations of Inspector B and myself. We are long-serving and dedicated OPCW supporters. We both have reams of documents such as performance appraisals, emails, letters of commendation and others, that reflect a history of service at the highest level in terms of qualifications, skills, expertise, leadership, integrity and professionalism throughout our time at the OPCW.”

Henderson also addressed issues with the Douma investigation and brought a new detail to light. One of the cylinders in Douma was found on a rooftop balcony (known as Location 2), according to Syrian opposition that was on the ground, chlorine was discharged from the cylinder into the building and killed dozens of people in the basement. Henderson explains in his letter to Arias that the basement was not connected to the rest of the building. Henderson wrote, “The drafters of the final FFM report appear to have accepted that victims throughout the apartment block at Location 2, were immediately exposed to such high concentrations of chlorine that they collapsed on the spot and were not able to exit the building. This is all the more puzzling taking into account the upper parts of the building and the basement were not connected (i.e. the gas had to exit the building onto the street and re-enter the basement door).”

Henderson also raises a question about the meeting with toxicologists discussed above. Henderson asks, “Why did the report drafters omit the opinions of the toxicologists who considered the symptoms inconsistent with chlorine?”

The OPCW claims three independent experts disagreed with the conclusions of Henderson’s engineering assessment. Henderson suggests that he and these three independent experts should get together to “justify their work” and show “what facts, information, data, assumptions and inputs were used.” Henderson believes this exchange of facts and methodology will “quickly show who has got the wrong end of the stick.”

Inspector B’s letter also defended the reputation of the two whistleblowers. Both Henderson and Inspector B raised issue with the way Director-General Arias described them as “individuals who could not accept that their views were not backed by evidence.” Inspector B responded to that claim by saying, “It is not that A and B ‘are individuals who could not accept that their views were not backed by evidence’, it is that A and B are individuals who could never accept that a scientific investigation is not backed by science.”

Reading the long accounts from Henderson and Inspector B, it is undeniable that there was some sort of cover-up within the OPCW. Both Henderson and Inspector B said US officials from an unknown agency presented “evidence” to the Douma FFM that “proved” the Syrian government carried out a chemical attack in Douma. It was around the time of this briefing that the Douma FFM was replaced. The US had a clear motive to influence the OPCW’s investigation. Shortly after the alleged attack, the US, UK, and France launched an airstrike against Syrian government targets.

The blame for this cover-up does not lie solely on OPCW management, media outlets that have ignored this scandal share the responsibility. Since Russia intervened in Syria on behalf of the Syrian government, any information that goes against the Western narrative related to the war is framed as Russian propaganda or disinformation. But which government has a history of waging war in the region over false pretenses, especially related to chemical weapons or WMDs?

In Peter Hitchens blog for The Mail on Sunday, Ian Henderson presented a question he believed the investigators should have asked the Director-General. A question every investigator or journalist should ask: “Why would two of the most qualified senior Inspection Team Leaders, with impeccable records of scientific expertise, impartiality, and judgment, arguably the best in the organization, suddenly ‘go rogue?’”

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Dave DeCamp is assistant editor at Antiwar.com and a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn NY, focusing on US foreign policy and wars. He is on Twitter at @decampdave.

The Ministers for Defence of the 27 countries of the EU, 22 of which are also members of NATO, met on 4 and 5 March in Zagreb, Croatia. The central theme of the meeting (in which Lorenzo Guerini of the Democratic Party represented Italy) was not to seek a response to the Coronavirus crisis which is jamming up civil mobility, but how best to develop « military mobility ». The decisive test is the Defender Europe 20 exercise, scheduled for April and May. The General Secretary of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, who took part in the EU meeting, défines it as « the largest deployment of US forces in Europe since the end of the Cold War ».

The 20,000 soldiers who, with 10,000 others already on site, and 7,000 NATO allies, are presently arriving in Europe from the USA, informs the US Army Europe. They are to deploy « throughout the European region ». The US forces are bringing with them 33,000 pieces of military equipment, from personal weapons to Abrams assault tanks. It is obvious that they will therefore need adequate infrastructures for their transport. But there is a problem, as revealed by a report by the European Parliament (February 2020): « Since the 1990’s, European infrastructures have been developed only for civil usage. However, military mobility has become a key question for NATO. As the Alliance lacks the tools to improve military mobility in Europe, the European Union, which does possess the legislative and financial tools to do so, plays an indispensable role ».

The Action Plan on Military Mobility, presented by the European Commission in 2018, plans to modify «those infrastructures which are not adapted to the weight and dimensions of military vehicles ». For example, if a bridge is unable to support the weight of a column of tanks, it must be reinforced or rebuilt. On the basis of this criterion, the test for the strength of the new bridge, which in Gênes will replace the collapsed Morandi bridge, will have to be carried out with Abrams tanks weighing 70 tonnes each. These modifications, which are useless for civil purposes, will require massive expenditure to be assumed by the member countries, with a « possible financial contribution by the EU ».

The European Commission has provided for a primary allocation of 30 billion Euros – this is public money taken from our pockets. The Plan also intends to « simplify the Customs formalities for military operations and for the transport of dangerous military-style merchandise ».

The US Army Europe has demanded the institution of a « Military Schengen Zone », with the difference that it will not be people who will be allowed to travel unhindered, but tanks.

The Defender Europe 20 exercise – as was explained during the meeting in Zagreb – « will enable the identification of all obstacles to military mobility, which the EU will have to remove ».

The transport network of the EU will therefore be tested by 30,000 US soldiers, who will « deploy throughout the European region », exempted of the Coronavirus standards. This is confirmed by a video showing the first 200 soldiers of the US Army Europe arriving in Bavaria on 6 March. While in Lombardy, only a few hundred kilometres away, more severe standards are in place, in Bavaria, where the first European outbreak of Coronavirus was noted, US soldiers just off the plane shook hands with German authorities and kissed the comrades without any masks. Spontaneous question – could they already be vaccinated against the Coronavirus?

Besides, we might ask ourselves what could be the purpose of « the largest deployment of US forces in Europe since the end of the Cold War », officially to « protect Europe from any potential threats » (with  a clear reference to the « Russian menace »), at the moment when Europe is in crisis  because of the threat of the Coronavirus (there is even one case at NATO headquarters in Brussels). And since the US Army Europe informs us that « movements of troops and equipement in Europe will last until July », we can only wonder if all of the 20,000 US soldiers will go back to their Homeland, or will some of them stay behind with their weapons.

Could the Defender become the Invader of Europe?

Translation   Pete Kimberley

Source Il Manifesto (Italy)

The spread of the coronavirus is first and foremost a public health emergency, but it is also, a significant economic threat. The so-called “Covid-19” shock will cause a recession in some countries and depress global annual growth this year to below 2.5 per cent, the recessionary threshold for the world economy.

Even if the worst is avoided, the hit to global income, compared with what forecasters had been projecting for 2020 will be capped at around the trillion-dollar mark. But could it be worse? Published today, a new UNCTAD analysis suggests why this may be the case.

Losses of consumer and investor confidence are the most immediate signs of spreading contagion, the analysis suggests.

However, a combination of asset price deflation, weaker aggregate demand, heightened debt distress and a worsening income distribution could trigger a more vicious downward spiral. Widespread insolvency and possibly another “Minsky moment”, a sudden, big collapse of asset values which would mark the end of the growth phase of this cycle cannot be ruled out.

“Back in September we were anxiously scanning the horizon for possible shocks given the financial fragilities left unaddressed since the 2008 crisis and the persistent weakness in demand,” said UNCTAD’s director of Globalization and Development Strategies, Richard Kozul-Wright.

“No one saw this coming – but the bigger story is a decade of debt, delusion and policy drift.”

The Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s offers some parallels with the current situation, but that crisis occurred before China gave the region a much bigger global economic footprint and when the advanced economies were in reasonably good economic shape.

This is not the case today.

Public and private aggregate debt levels in many developing countries already are at elevated, and in several cases acute, distress levels.

While the recent explosion of corporate debt, much of it of low credit quality, poses the most immediate danger in advanced economies, developing countries face a range of fast deepening financial and debt vulnerabilities that do not bode well for their ability to withstand another external shock, Mr. Kozul-Wright said.

China also has become a crucial source of longer-term borrowing for developing countries and if its lending conditions tighten with the slowdown, those with strongest financial links to China might be amongst the slowest to recover from the economic impact of the Covid-19 crisis.

A preliminary downside scenario sees a $2 trillion shortfall in global income with a $220bn hit to developing countries (excluding China). The most badly affected economies in this scenario will be oil-exporting countries, but also other commodity exporters, which stand to lose more than one percentage point of growth, as well as those with strong trade linkages to the initially shocked economies.

Growth decelerations between 0.7 and 0.9 per cent are likely to occur in countries such as Canada, Mexico and the Central American region, in the Americas; countries deeply inserted in the global value chains of East and South Asia, and countries in the immediacy of the European Union.

The analysis points out that a persistent belief in the soundness of economic fundamentals and a self-correcting world economy continues to hamper policy thinking in the advanced economies.

“This will stymie the bolder policy interventions needed to prevent the threat of a more serious crisis and increases the chances that recurrent shocks will cause serious economic damage in the future,” Mr. Kozul-Wright added.

Central Banks are not in a position solve this crisis alone and an appropriate macroeconomic policy response will need aggressive fiscal spending with significant public investment, including into the care economy, and targeted welfare support for adversely affected workers, businesses and communities, the analysis argues. International coordination of these programmes will be required.

Ultimately, says Mr. Kozul-Wright, a series of dedicated policy responses and institutional reforms are needed to prevent a localized health scare in a food market in Central China from turning in to a global economic meltdown.

Figure 1. Global GDP Growth, 1995-2020

Source: UNCTAD calculations based on IMF, WEO, October, 2019

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Of course, the worst pandemic of the 21st century is out and about us. Italy is now in a ‘lockdown’ state and throughout most of the world people are in a panic mode.

And why not? Viruses like this Corona Virus can kill.

Yet, in the world of politics there have been, for a long time now, those two other ones:

The Lemming Virus and the Apathy virus.

They only kill what is left of our Republican Democracy… which is not much at all!

The Trump cabal has very shrewdly mislabeled what is actually the main force behind this hijacking of our democracy, the real Deep State. What Eisenhower referred to as the Military Industrial Complex is in actuality the genuinely crooked and evil Deep State.

Thus, Trump’s lemmings keep harping on what in reality is the actual cause of  their demise, the force not in opposition, but actually behind his actions. It is the old joke of what the masochist said to the sadist. The masochist said ‘ Hit me!’ …. and the sadist answered ‘ NO!’. Ditto for the lemmings who run off the cliff of reason when the Democratic Party pied pipers lead them.

 We have this Two Party Scam that has continually gotten more powerful since the end of WW2. We know how the right wing Republican Party behaved when FDR tried to save Capitalism for his class. He made many great reforms to the system, with Socialism as the torch bearer. Not complete Socialism, but enough common sense policies to help stop the massive bleeding of the masses.

Yet, the greedy Republican Fat Cats wanted no part of any reforms to their plantation system. If you read the history of Marine General Smedley Butler, you will find out how those same right wing Neo Nazi American Fat Cats tried to institute an actual Amerikan Coup de tat. Butler ratted them out and it failed.

Then  FDR dies and his successor, good old ‘Give em hell Harry’ Truman, drops the two immoral and unnecessary A Bombs to show our new enemy, the Soviets, that we had the bomb and could make more than just one. Truman, the Democrat, helped set up the CIA under his watch to do as many ‘dirty tricks’ they could do against his new enemy, our former ally.

The Soviets were the ones who lost almost 30 million of  their people to stop the Nazi machine. ‘Friends…lovers no more’ as the song went.

Harry also made sure that the Taft-Hartley Act was used to stop the unions from doing what should be as American as apple pie: The labor strike. From that point on the scam was in full throttle. So much so that the Democrats showed no balls when one of their own, JFK, stood up to that Deep State, and it killed him.

Then, again, when that same evil group had MLK and then RFK murdered, silence from the other half of this One Party/Two Party con job.

Now we come to the most heinous of the two viruses, the Apathy Virus. We have millions, perhaps over a hundred million of our citizens, who suffer from this ailment. You engage one of them in any sort of conversation about the situation facing us here in Amerika, and either they A) Don’t know shit or B) Don’t care to know. One surmises that the old adage ‘Ignorance is bliss’ rings true for them.

They may care about what gossip is going on where they live, or care about their kids’ soccer league. Perhaps they care about the prices going up at the supermarket, or their other bills, but NEVER about the cause of these problems. Some may get pissed about the price of their cable or phone bills, or how they are being squeezed by health care or dental care costs, or insurance costs… but never about the WHY! They just frown and pay the bills (and some may not even be able to do that) and never seem to say ‘Hey, this sucks! We need some needed change here!’

No, like the serfs on a giant feudal manor, they just know their place in the BIG PICTURE  and won’t upset the MAN. Here’s the kicker: When someone or maybe a group of someones comes along to organize their anger and frustration into a better solution…they turn away. As far as the lengths that this Apathy Virus can come to, this writer remembers, as if it was yesterday:

Everyone knows the Kitty Genovese story. On March 13, 1964, three dozen New Yorkers heard a 28-year-old woman, their neighbor, being raped and stabbed in the street below by a house burglar named Winston Moseley, and no one did anything. Some turned up the television so as not to hear her screams.

W.C Fields said it best folks: “Never give a sucker an even break!”

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Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, World News Trust and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 300 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

In an era where agreements have been abandoned as “bad”, to use that favourite word of US President Donald Trump, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons continues to feature on the books of diplomacy.  But age seems to be wearying it and decoding sober readings from hype-filled tat has been a testing task.

United Nations Secretary General António Guterres was glowing enough in congratulation: “Throughout the past half century, the NPT has served as an essential pillar of international peace and security, and the heart of the nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime. It has conferred tangible security benefits on all States parties.”  Very ceremonial, very proper.  In 2003, the NPT was deemed by US ambassador Thomas Graham Sr. “the centrepiece of international efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons”.

Commemorative praise for the NPT on its golden anniversary have sounded like the musings of madness.  Michael O’Hanlon, Director of Research and Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institute, says that, “Current arsenals are big, but they are only as one-fifth the size of what they were a half-century ago.”  Only slightly less existentially murderous, then.  O’Hanlon also has room for praising the Additional Protocol, enabling inspectors “to go places where they suspect monkey business, even if those sites are not officially declared by the country in question.”

Robert Einhorn, Senior Fellow in the Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative was warmed by the treaty’s instilling of norms against nuclear proliferation, backed by the IAEA’s monitoring system, a threat of sanctions for those violating non-proliferating obligations and controls on the export of particular technologies.  The group of five nuclear states were obligated, by the spirit and substance of the treaty, to also “make ‘good faith’ efforts to reduce and ultimately eliminate their nuclear arsenals.”  Well, in a fashion.

For all the praise (O’Hanlon gives it a respectable 2.5 cheers) the NPT continues to be characterised by the aristocratic haves and the proletarian have nots: the traditional nuclear-weapon states (NWS) and non-nuclear-weapon states (NNWS).  Only South Sudan, India, Israel and Pakistan remain outside the treaty, due to a combination of accident and design.  To accede to the regime, these countries would have to dismantle their nuclear arsenals and place relevant nuclear material under international safeguards.  Nuclear-weapons status is intended as exclusive, reserved for those who “manufactured and exploded a nuclear weapon or other nuclear explosive device prior to 1 January 1967.”

The NPT also propounds a mix of charity and weapons puritanism.  Non-nuclear weapons states would, under Article V, be able to access the research gained from nuclear explosions conducted by the aristos.  But these same aristos would undertake not to assist any states not in the club to develop or acquire nuclear weapons.  Commitments to the NPT, notably by non-nuclear weapon states, would be verifiable through the inspection powers of International Atomic Energy.

As Leonard Weiss has observed, the NPT remained “a flawed institution that requires considerable tending to, including constant efforts to obtain consensus of its parties concerning evolving interpretations of its provisions in order to maintain its effectiveness as a non-proliferation tool if not its survival altogether.”  Problems with consensus can be demonstrated by the fact that five of the nine quinquennial treaty review conferences have yielded a satisfactory, agreed upon final document on the status of implementation.

The case of evolving interpretations was demonstrated in sharp terms on April 26, 1968 at a meeting of 124 delegations at the 22^nd session of the United Nations General Assembly. The subject: drafting a viable nuclear non-proliferation instrument.  US ambassador to the UN Arthur Goldberg envisaged “three major purposes”: reducing the chances of nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands; building a global system led by the International Atomic Energy Agency overseeing equitable and fair access “to the peaceful blessings of nuclear energy” and globalise nuclear and general disarmament.

The Soviet position, less light on the hill in its realisation, was fronted by UN Ambassador Vasili Kuznetsov, and privileged non-proliferation as a fundamental objective.  The closure of “all channels, both direct and indirect” that would lead “to the possession of mass destruction weapons” had to be the main aim of any international system of nuclear governance.  Kuznetsov was mindful that “some States not yet in possession of nuclear weapons are approaching a level of industrial, scientific and technological development such as will enable them to quickly embark on the road to manufacturing weapons of mass destruction.”  He proved less than oblique on which States these might be – namely, those “which are pursuing or have pursued in the recent past an aggressive policy that strive to enter the nuclear arms race.”  The sceptre of Western Germany and historical enemies, in other words, loomed large.

Jonathan R. Hunt suggests that current views of NPT arrangements centre on US-Russian insistence against an enlargement of the nuclear club with the rest of the nuclear family firming up on the traditional “three pillars”.  Amidst this lie such conceptual tangles as a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone in the Middle East, a point that riles rather than encourages consensus.  The gulf between nuclear and non-nuclear states over the NPT’s implementation has, observed a well-grounded Sérgio Duarte, president of the 2005 Non-proliferation Treaty Review Conference, “widened considerably over the decades and still prevents meaningful dialogue.”

The NPT, after five decades, has certainly proved to be stubbornly durable ahead of the 2020 Review Conference.  Other instruments of control have gone by the wayside, withered by expediency and self-interest; the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty are now documents of history.

The Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has also been edging its way into prominence as a prizing rival, but the NPT retains a traditional mix, permitting the club to remain exclusive to the clubbable, and to discourage others from joining it.  It’s central point – that states with nuclear weapons will pursue general and complete disarmament – remains the stuff of hope, the aspiration of doddering types indifferent to certain timelines and programs.  Those in the club speak less of disarmament than euphemistically modernising their arsenals and preventing upstarts (North Korea, Iran) from upsetting the order.  This leaves the rationale against total non-proliferation intact.  As long as nuclear weapons remain inextricably connected to sovereignty and terror-inducing deterrence, they will remain worthy of retention to those who have it, and acquisition for those who do not.

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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]

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s attempt to intimidate the Syrian Army and force them to withdraw to the Sochi Agreement lines in Idlib utterly failed, resulting in the Turkish leader having to embarrassingly accept large swathes of liberated territory will remain under Syrian sovereignty despite his attempts to occupy it. This was especially embarrassing as Erdoğan’s end of February ultimatum came and went with no grand Turkish military offensive to push back the Syrian Army as he had promised. This embarrassment comes as Erdoğan’s approval has reached as low as 41.1% according to data published by the Ankara-based pollster MetroPoll last Friday. As Erdoğan’s foreign policy is largely driven by a desire for a neo-Ottoman ambitions and to serve as a distraction from Turkey’s currency nosedive, he was quick to create issues against the “Old Enemy,” Greece.

In a tantrum and frustrated that his power projections of aggression against both Libya and Syria failed, Erdoğan unleashed tens of thousands of illegal immigrants against Greece and utilized English-speaking Turkish media to discredit the Balkan country’s border protection units for human rights violations. Although many commentators claim that Erdoğan’s unleashing of illegal immigrants is an attack against the European Union (EU), we cannot ignore that the second and only other EU state that Turkey borders is Bulgaria, a country that Ankara assured would not send illegal migrants to, a promise that has not yet been broken. Erdoğan is not only punishing Greece for vetoing a NATO communique in support of Turkish operations in Idlib, he is pushing ahead with his imperial ambitions to not only steal Syrian territory, but Greece’s eastern island and northern mainland territories, as outlined on published government-funded maps of “Greater Turkey.”

Erdoğan wasted no time after the Idlib ceasefire deal was made with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday after the latter embarrassed the Turkish leader by meeting him in a room with a statue of Catherine the Great, the liberator of Crimea who defeated the Ottoman Empire in many wars. On the very same day as meeting, Erdoğan announced that Turkey will deploy 1000 special forces police to the Greek border to fight back against Greek security forces who have successfully ensured that thousands of illegal immigrants have not entered EU territory. It’s an odd choice that Turkey deployed special forces police considering it is not their borders that have breach attempts and rather it has been an aggressor as they continually shoot tear gas at Greek border security and attempt to pull down the border fence so migrants can illegally enter Greece. Although it may seem like an exaggeration to some, Athens is treating this latest migrant crisis as a Turkish asymmetric invasion, as they remember the words of former Turkish President Turgut Özal, who said “We do not need to make war with Greece. We just need to send them a few million immigrants and finish with them.”

To assist in distracting the Turkish population of his failures in Syria and the economy, Erdoğan has fully utilized Turkish media to assist in the propaganda campaign. Turkey is one of the lowest ranked countries for media freedoms in the world, is the second most susceptible country surveyed on the European continent to fake news, has the most journalists jailed in the whole world, and 90% of media is government controlled. It is fair to be sceptical of Turkey and its coverage of the latest migrant crisis, and here is why.

On Saturday, Bosnian Muslim reporter Semir Sejfovic of Turkish state-owned TRT World made such a comical performance that Twitter users are mocking him to be an Oscar nominee after his elaborate attempts to accuse Greek police of firing live ammunition into Turkey. It is one comical performance that has to be seen to be believed. The ridiculousness of the performance was so much so that several screen grabs show even the illegal immigrants surrounding Sejfovic laughing during the “intense firing” of live ammunition by the Greek police. Other users questioned why illegal immigrants much closer to the border fence and seen in the background of the video never took cover and continued standing as usual during the alleged shooting, something Sejfovic has refused to answer.

In another incident on Saturday, TRT World published photos claiming Greek soldiers stripped and robbed illegal immigrants of their clothes, mobiles and money. The problem? In other photos not published by TRT World, the same illegal immigrants are seen in front of a camera phone preparing to take the propaganda photos, while in another photo a mobile phone is clearly seen inside the pocket of a “robbed” illegal immigrant.

In another incident on Sunday, TRT World made a tweet on Sunday publishing photos of immigrants in hospital wounded “when Greek forces opened fire” over the weekend. However, a quick search found that the fourth photo is from at least November 2019.

These are just some of the many allegations made by English-speaking Turkish media that have been debunked. It demonstrates that Turkey is not interested in objective reporting the migrant crisis but are serving a critical role as Erdoğan’s propaganda wing to discredit Greece in front of international audiences. However, if we use social media responses, European responses and other media republications of Turkish media claims as indicators, it all points that TRT World has only served to reinforce Turkish media’s bad reputation rather than discredit Greek border security and catastrophically failed in their objective.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.

It was predicted, warned against and is happening. Universities fattened by the Chinese student market are now in a state of financial shock, cutting losses, trimming courses and doing what over managed institutions do best: remove working productive staff while preserving the gouty managerial class. COVID-19 was but a catalyst for something that was already deep seated, a doomsday scenario for universities with management structures keen to make a killing from one traditional source. There were other incentives to do so, of course: falling government investment in education, an increased interest in finding sources of private income. 

No better example of this is present than Australia, a country indulgent and intoxicated with the seemingly endless number of Chinese payers (for that is what they are) coming in for an education often delivered on the cheap, corners roughly cut and admission standards adjusted. (This is particularly the case regarding language requirements.)  COVID-19 began in China, and from China, the constriction in supply from manufacturing to education is being felt.  Industries are facing storms.  Airlines are cancelling flights and grounding aircraft; desperate equity selloffs are taking place.   

Gita Gopinath, writing for the International Monetary Fund’s Blog, makes the following point on consequences arising from the virus: “In addition to this sectoral effects, worsening consumer and business sentiment can lead to firms to expect lower demand and reduce their spending and investment.  In turn, this would exacerbate business closures and job losses.” 

In the tertiary and broader education sector, incomes are falling.  “I have already lost a lot of work from the coronavirus outbreak, and will continue to lose more if it isn’t under control soon,” laments Luke C on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Facebook Messenger page.  One Tim O, who claims to be a doing sessional work at a university, expresses a similar attitude on the same forum. “If coronavirus gets bad and the university shuts down or provides fewer tutorials, I could be left jobless.  That would lead by income to be cut by a total of approximately $750 a week. It would be devastating for me.”

Casual staff at the University of Queensland in the Institute of Continuing and TESOL Education are feeling the pinch, having lost 17 weeks of work even as Chinese students were warned of failing courses if they did not cough up their semester fees on time.  “About half our students are from China,” Francine Chidgey, a casual teacher in ICTE’s employ, explained to Guardian Australia.  “I’ve been told that I won’t have teaching shifts for 17 weeks.  About 40 of my colleagues are in the same position, with others receiving only one or two days’ work per week, and occasional relief work.”

Deeper considerations are at play here. COVID-19 has presented university management with a grand razor and a distraction.  The consequences of myopic decisions can be minimised.  The University of Tasmania, for one, is taking the lead in making use of the coronavirus.  Where there is catastrophe, let there be opportunities; where there is darkness, let there be a venal hope.  Now is the time to clean the stables, count the losses, make cuts. 

The timing was, as ever with these things, immaculate, given the plea from Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison to employers across the spectrum “to support your workers, by keeping them employed.  Hold on to your people, because you will need them on the bounce back on the other side.”

University of Tasmania’s Vice Chancellor Rufus Black had other ideas in mind when penning his letter to staff.  The university, he argued, was “working against powerful forces” in seeking sustainability but an “overreliance on China as a market for international education and what is now emerging as a pandemic” necessitated drastic decisions on course offerings.  (The number is to fall from 514 to 120.)    

“Thanks to the good work of our teams responding to the issue, the majority of our students in China and subject to travel restrictions have started to study with us. But as we know the spread of the illness continues to shift.  We have a long way to go in dealing with this issue and its consequences will last well beyond this year.”  

Reading such justifications requires an abundant degree of scepticism.  Management-speak is a nasty sort of agitprop and should be treated as such.  It sees the removing of competent staff as necessarily expedient while it deflects from its blunders.  The letter from Black, for instance, speaks of the reaction to COVID-19 as part of a broader pattern of planning that was already in the works, but was simply hurried along in somewhat violent fashion.  “In the face of it we are not making enough progress to be the right size to be sustainable even in the short time.”  

Black also inadvertently reveals the mens rea of the university managerial class, that concept of criminal guilt lawyers of the British legal tradition are so fond of.  University planners were aware that an overreliance on the Chinese market was dangerous, a “known strategic risk”.

The university’s press release on Tuesday packages the slashing of jobs and the reduction of courses as part of a vision, as astigmatic as it might have been.  The point being made here is that such reductions were always on the table, factored and measured.  There was a “redesign” of the university’s “course architecture”, one designed to “remove much of the complexity” of what was being offered.  This is crude code for job cuts, staff losses and, as is the norm, the continued thriving of the vampiric handlers at the top end of the management spectrum.  They won’t be offering their heads on the platter of accountability any time too soon.

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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]

Saudi Arabia launched an all-out oil war offering unprecedented discounts and flooding the market in an attempt to capture a larger share and defeat other oil producers. This “scorched earth” approach caused the biggest oil price fall since the war in the Persian Gulf in 1991.

It all began on March 8 when Riyadh cut its April pricing for crude sales to Asia by $4-$6 a barrel and to the U.S. by $7 a barrel. The Kingdom expanded the discount for its flagship Arab Light crude to refiners in northwest Europe by $8 a barrel offering it at $10.25 a barrel under the Brent benchmark. In comparison, Russia’s Urals crude trades at a discount of about $2 a barrel under Brent. These actions became an attack at the ability of Russia to sell crude in Europe. The Russian ruble immediately plummeted almost 10% falling to its lowest level in more than four years.

Another side that suffered from Saudi actions is Iran. The Islamic country is facing a strong US sanctions pressure and often selling its oil via complex schemes and with notable discounts already.

Saudi Arabia is planning to increase its output above 10 million barrel per day. Currently, it pumps 9.7 million barrels per day, but has the capacity to ramp up to 12.5 million barrels per day. According to OPEC and Saudi sources of The Wall Street Journal, Riyadh’s actions are part of an “aggressive campaign” against Moscow.

The formal pretext of this campaign became the inability of the OPEC+ (a meeting of representatives of member states of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and non-OPEC members) to extend output agreements.

Saudi Arabia was seeking up to 1.5 million b/d in further oil production cuts, but this proposal was rejected by Russia. After the inability to reach the new OPEC+ deal, Saudi Arabia became the frist and only power that took aggressive actions on the market. However, it is hard to imagine that Saudi Arabia would go for such an escalation without at least an order or approval from Washington.

This came amid the detention of two senior members of the Saudi royal family – Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, the younger brother of King Salman, and Mohammed bin Nayef, the king’s nephew – on March 7. This development took place just ahead of the Saudi offensive on the oil market, and was likely a tip of the ongoing undercover struggle between the pro-US and pro-national factions of the Saudi elites; and the pro-US bloc seems to have the upper hand in this conflict.

In this case, the real goal of the Saudi campaign is not only to secure larger share of the oil market and punish Moscow for its unwillingness to accept the proposed OPEC+ deal, but to deliver a powerful blow to Washington’s geopolitical opponents: Russia and Iran. Pro-Western and anti-government forces existing in both Russia and Iran would try to exploit this situation to destabilize the internal situation in the countries.

On the other hand, Saudi Arabia may soon find out that its actions have backfired. Such economic and geopolitical games amid the acute conflict with Iran, military setbacks in Yemen and the increasing regional standoff with the UAE could cost too much for the Kingdom itself.

If the oil prices fall any further and reach $20 per barrel, this will lead to unacceptable economic losses for Russia and Iran, and they could and will likely opt to use nonmarket tools of influencing the Saudi behavior. These options include the increasing support to Yemen’s Houthis with intelligence, weapons, money, and even military advisers, that will lead to the resumption of Houthi strikes on Saudi oil infrastructure.

On top of these, the Saudi leadership may suddenly find that the internal situation in the Kingdom is being worsened by large-scale protests rapidly turning into an open civil conflict.

Such a scenario is no secret for international financial analysts. On March 8, shares of Saudi state oil company Aramco slumped below their initial public offering (IPO) and closed 9.1% lower. On March 9, it continued the fall plunging another 10%.  There appears to be a lack of buyers. The risks are too obvious.

At the same time, the range of possible US actions in support of Saudi Arabia in the event of such an escalation is limited by the ongoing presidential campaign. Earlier, President Donald Trump demonstrated that a US military base could become a target of direct missile strike and Washington will not order a direct military action in response. Taking into account other examples of the US current approach towards non-Israeli allies, Riyadh should not expect any real support from its American allies in this standoff.

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Abstract

The electromagnetic radiation (EMR) emitted out of wireless communication modules in various IoT devices (especially used for healthcare applications due to their close proximity to the body) have been identified by researchers as biologically hazardous to humans as well as other living beings. Different countries have different regulations to limit the radiation density levels caused by these devices. The radiation absorbed by an individual depends on various factors such as the device they use, the proximity of use, the type of antenna, the relative orientation of the antenna on the device, and many more. Several standards exist which have tried to quantify the radiation levels and come up with safe limits of EMR absorption to prevent human harm. In this work, we determine the radiation concern levels in several scenarios using a handheld radiation meter by correlating the findings with several international standards, which are determined based on thorough scientific evidence. This study also analyzes the EMR from common devices used in day to day life such as smartphones, laptops, Wi-Fi routers, hotspots, wireless earphones, smartwatches, Bluetooth speakers and other wireless accessories using a handheld radio frequency radiation measurement device. The procedure followed in this paper is so detailed that it can also be utilized by the general public as a tutorial to evaluate their own safety with respect to EMR exposure. We present a summary of the most prominent health hazards which have been known to occur due to EMR exposure. We also discuss some individual and collective human-centric protective and preventive measures that can be undertaken to reduce the risk of EMR absorption. This paper analyses radiation safety in pre-5G networks and uses the insight gained to raise valuable concerns regarding EMR safety in the upcoming 5G networks.

Introduction

The ever-increasing adoption of wireless communication has created a very complex situation of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) exposure. With new technologies such as 5G, the number of devices will increase exponentially and operate on a broader frequency spectrum. With this upcoming technology, the society will be more connected than ever before, and would witness huge economic growth. However, it is very important to identify beforehand, if any, harmful or adverse effects resulting from increased exposure of human beings.

Currently, there are about 15 billion wireless local area network (WLAN) devices ranging from Wi-Fi routers to Internet of Things (IoT) devices [1], 9 billion mobile connections, and about 67% of the world population currently uses mobile phones [2]. Any unidentified or unaddressed health hazard due to the use of these devices or exposure to their radiation could impact the health of people globally.

Several organizations at both national and international levels have established guidelines for limiting EMR exposure in residential as well as occupational scenarios. Scientific research on EMR exposure-related biological effects began as early as the 1940s [3], but gained significant pace in the early 2000s with the widespread increase of EMR exposure due to cellular communications.

The International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) has issued regulatory limits on EMR exposure for the general public and workers. ICNIRP’s 1998 guidelines have been adopted by most of the countries in the world today [4]. But these limits only take into account the thermal effects of EMR and dismiss evidence on the biological effects of EMR exposure as unclear or unsatisfactory findings. In addition, there are several standards prescribed by medical bodies such as the Building Biology, BioInitiative, and Austrian Medical Association Standards. These limits have been arrived at after extensive scientific research of thermal, non-thermal, chronic exposure, and biological effects carried out by health experts from across the world. On comparing these limits with those prescribed by the ICNIRP, it can be seen that the limits prescribed by the medical bodies are several orders of magnitude lower than those prescribed by the ICNIRP. Therefore, a clear understanding of the differences between these limits, and an assessment of the current exposure levels in accordance with both kinds of exposure limits mentioned above is the need of the hour.

In the literature, many research studies have analyzed health hazards due to EMR exposure [5]. Numerous adverse health conditions such as cancer, infertility, damage to the auditory system, alteration of blood cells and blood flow, mental, cognitive and sleep disorders, and impaired childhood development have been identified in various studies. We have explored the literature in this area and presented a section describing various health risks associated with EMR exposure.

The major contributions of this paper are highlighted below.

• We analyse radiation levels of commonly used cellular, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi devices to estimate how safe they are to human beings in terms of radiation.
• The procedure followed in this work serves as a tutorial for the general public who can arrive at a good estimate of their radiation exposure with minimal technical knowledge or expertise.
• We review several works which have identified various health hazards resulting from EMR exposure and presents the findings to highlight dangers of excessive EMR exposure.
• Then, we suggest techniques for people as well as societies/organizations to protect themselves from excessive EMR exposure and also presents ways to minimize ambient EMR levels in different environments like schools, hospitals, and homes.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows.

In Section II, we discuss the nature of EMR used in wireless communication devices and the need to analyze EMR from various common sources such as mobile phones, laptops and other cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and IoT devices.

In Section III, we discuss a few important standards and guidelines for EMR exposure which have been determined by scientific organizations/commissions to avoid EMR related health hazards in humans.

In Section IV, we present our findings on the radiation levels present in common use cases of popular devices.

In section V, we summarize the important health hazards of EMR exposure that have been documented and reported. In section VI, we describe some measures to protect ourselves from EMR and also discuss ways to minimize ambient EMR in public places. In section VII, we recommend some proactive prevention techniques which can be immediately adopted at both individual and societal levels to prevent harmful EMR exposure. In section VIII, we discuss our findings from section IV in light of sections II, III, V and VI. We finally conclude the paper in section IX.

Continue reading here…

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As the UK trade minister Greg Hands visits the United States for trade talks (1), an alliance of civil society groups this morning delivered nearly 70,000 signatures to the Department for International Trade calling on the UK government to commit to keeping controversial ‘corporate courts’ out of post-Brexit trade deals.

The petition, collected by the Stop ISDS campaign which is backed by more than 40 civil society organisations and trade unions in the UK (2), calls for the UK government to commit to excluding investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, from future trade and investment deals with countries including the United States.

ISDS is a secretive shadow legal system written into thousands of trade and investment deals around the world. These ‘corporate courts’ give foreign companies the power to sue for millions over laws that harm their profits. They have been used by corporations to challenge laws including health warnings on cigarette packets, raising the minimum wage and protecting the environment from mining.

Leaked papers from preliminary US-UK trade talks last year indicated that the US government has proposed including ISDS in a US-UK trade deal (3). The UK government today announced that US-UK negotiations will begin later this month (1).

Leah Sullivan, senior trade campaigner at War on Want said:

“This is a clear call to the Government to reject ISDS in its entirety; it’s anti-democratic and hands power to corporations to undermine our basic human rights. UN independent experts have already said ISDS ‘should be abolished’ – now we need a commitment that it will not be part of the UK’s trade and investment policy.”

Mary Milne, head of campaigns & communications at Traidcraft Exchange said:

“This petition shows that the UK public believes ISDS has no place in trade deals. It’s a deeply unfair system sold to poorer countries under the premise of attracting foreign investment. Instead, it gives multinational companies a powerful tool to challenge government policies aimed at protecting human rights, public health and the environment. This completely contradicts the UK’s commitments to the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement.”

Jean Blaylock, trade campaign and policy manager at Global Justice Now said:

“Big business has used corporate courts to sue governments outside of the national legal system on everything from fossil fuels to water prices to anti-smoking policies. Corporate courts were thoroughly rejected when TTIP, the EU-US trade deal, was killed off four years ago. But now the threat has been resurrected in the wake of Brexit, starting with a trade deal with Trump.”

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Notes

1. See https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-us-trade-negotiations-to-start-this-month-as-minister-of-state-for-trade-policy-visits-us-east-coast

2. The Stop ISDS campaign is supported by more than 40 civil society groups and trade unions in the UK. See https://stopisds.org.uk/. The UK campaign is allied with European Stop ISDS campaign, which has collected a further 850,000 signatures calling on the EU to remove ISDS from trade and investment deals. See https://stopisds.org/

3. See https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/blog/2019/dec/3/trump-trade-deal-could-multiply-threat-corporate-courts 

When the history of the Syrian conflict is written, the fighting that took place between the Syrian Army and its allies on the one side, and the Turkish military and Turkish-backed Syrian rebels on the other, from early February through early March 2020 in and around the Syrian town of Saraqib, will go down as one of the decisive encounters of that war. 

Representing more than a clash of arms between the Syrian and Turkish militaries, the Battle for Saraqib was a test of political will between Turkish President Recep Erdogan and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. History will show Turkey lost on both accounts.

The Battle for Saraqib had its roots in fighting that began back in December 2019, in the form of an offensive carried out by the Syrian Army, supported by the Russian Air Force, against pro-Turkish opposition forces in and around Idlib province. The Syrian-Russian offensive represented the collapse of the so-called Sochi Agreement of September 17, 2018, which established what were known as “de-escalation zones” separating the Syrian Army from anti-government rebel forces in Idlib. As part of the Sochi Agreement, Turkey set up a dozen “observation posts”—in reality, fortified compounds housing several hundred troops and their equipment—throughout the Idlib de-escalation zone.

In exchange for legitimizing the existence of fortified Turkish observation posts, the Sochi Agreement mandated specific actions on Turkey’s part, including overseeing the establishment of a “demilitarized zone” within the de-escalation zone where tanks, artillery and multiple rocket launchers were to be excluded, and from which all “radical terrorist groups” would be removed by October 15, 2018. Moreover, Turkey was responsible for restoring transit traffic on two strategic highways linking the city of Aleppo with Latakia (the M4 highway) and Damascus (the M5 highway.)

While Turkey established its fortified observation posts, it failed to live up to any of its commitments under the Sochi Agreement—no demilitarized zones were created, no heavy equipment evacuated, and no “radical terrorist groups” removed from the de-escalation zone. This last point was of particular note, since the most prominent of these “radical terrorist groups”—Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS—was also the largest and most effective of the anti-Assad groups operating in Idlib province.

The objective of the December 2019 Syrian military offensive was to achieve through force of arms what Turkey had failed to do—restore transit traffic capability for both the M4 and M5 highways and, in doing so, evict HTS and other anti-Assad rebel groups from the de-escalation zones. By early February 2020 the Syrian Army had, through its advances, surrounded a number of Turkish observation posts, putting Turkey in the politically difficult situation of sitting and watching while the anti-Assad forces it had helped create, train and equip were being defeated on the field of battle.

Turkey sought to blunt the Syrian advance on Feb. 3, by reinforcing its observation post located near the strategic town of Saraqib, which overlooked the juncture of the M4 and M5 highways. Whomever controlled Saraqib likewise controlled both highways. When a large Turkish military convoy heading toward Saraqib was brought under Syrian artillery fire, killing five Turkish soldiers and three Turkish civilian contractors, Turkey responded by shelling Syrian Army positions, killing scores of Syrian soldiers. This was the opening round of what would become the Battle for Saraqib and represented the first large-scale combat between the Syrian and Turkish militaries since the Syrian crisis began in 2011.

The Syrian attack on the Turkish Army in Idlib was a red line for President Erdogan, who in a statement made before Turkish parliamentarians on Feb. 5, warned that “if the Syrian regime will not retreat from Turkish observation posts in Idlib in February, Turkey itself will be obliged to make this happen.” Erdogan backed up his rhetoric by deploying tens of thousands of Turkish troops, backed up by armor and artillery, to its border with Syria, while continuing to dispatch reinforcements to its beleaguered observation posts inside Idlib.

On Feb. 6, the Syrian Army captured Saraqib. Four days later, on Feb. 10, Turkish-backed rebels, backed by Turkish artillery, launched a counterattack against Syrian Army positions around Saraqib, which was beaten back by heavy Syrian artillery fire. In the process, the Turkish observation near the village of Taftanaz was hit by Syrian shells, killing five Turkish soldiers and wounding five others. The Turks responded by striking Syrian Army positions throughout Idlib province with sustained artillery and rocket fire.

Speaking to Turkish parliamentarians after the attack on Taftanaz, Erdogan declared that “we will strike regime forces everywhere from now on regardless of the Sochi deal if any tiny bit of harm comes to our soldiers at observation posts or elsewhere,” adding that“We are determined to push back (regime forces) behind the borders of the Sochi deal by the end of February.”

The capture of Saraqib and the vital M4-M5 highway juncture allowed the Syrian Army to seize control of the entire M5 highway for the first time since 2012. The Syrian Army then proceeded to push west, toward the city of Idlib, closing to within eight miles of the provincial capital. In order to blunt the Syrian advances, Turkey deployed hundreds of Special Forces who integrated into the ranks of the anti-regime units, helping coordinate their attacks with Turkish artillery and rocket supporting fires. Starting Feb. 16, the rebel fighters, supported by Turkish Special Forces, launched a relentless attack against Syrian Army positions in and around the village of Nayrab, located mid-way between Idlib and Saraqib. Nayrab eventually fell on the night of Feb. 24. The cost, however, was high—hundreds of rebel fighters were killed, along with two Turkish soldiers.

The Turks and their rebel allies then turned their sights on Saraqib itself, pushing out of Nayrab and securing a foothold in Saraqib’s eastern suburbs and cutting the M5 highway in several locations. The Syrian Army had shifted most of its offensive power to the southwest, where they were advancing toward the M4 highway. The Syrians called in fighters from Hezbollah and pro-Iranian militias to help stabilize the Saraqib front. The Turkish military, in an effort to break up Russian and Syrian aerial attacks, began employing man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), firing more than 15. While none of these hit their targets, they did cause the Russians and Syrian to abort their attacks and leave the area.

In retaliation for the Turkish employment of MANPADS, Russia and Syrian aircraft struck a Turkish mechanized battalion operating in southern Idlib on Feb. 27, killing more than 33 Turkish soldiers, and wounding some 60 more. This attack sent shock waves through Turkey, with Erdogan threatening to punish all parties responsible, including the Russians (who denied their involvement in the attack, despite evidence to the contrary.)

On March 1 President Erdogan ordered Turkish forces to carry out a general offensive in Idlib, named Operation Spring Shield, intended to drive Syria and its allies back to the positions they held at the time of the Sochi Agreement in September 2018. The combined Turkish-rebel offensive immediately stalled in the face of steadfast Syrian resistance, backed by Russian air strikes. The Syrian Army recaptured Saraqib and took control of the entire M5 highway, reversing the earlier Turkish gains.

By March 4, the situation facing the Turkish-backed rebel fighters was so dire that they gave up all pretense of independent operations, and instead intermixed themselves within the Turkish outposts to avoid being targeted by the Russian Air Force. Erdogan, recognizing that the game was up, flew to Moscow on March 5 for an emergency summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, where they negotiated the terms of a new ceasefire agreement.

The Moscow Summit was a bitter pill for Erdogan to swallow. Although formulated as an “additional protocol” to the existing September 2018 Sochi Agreement, the deal struck between Erdogan and Putin in Moscow was very much a document of surrender for the Turks. His fiery rhetoric and threats to push the Syrian Army and its allies out of Idlib the contrary, Erdogan was compelled to accept a new “de-escalation” zone defined by the frontlines as they stood on March 6.

Moreover, the Turks were now compelled to share enforcement and monitoring of a 12-kilometer “demilitarized zone” straddling the M4 highway with Russian military patrols. Lastly, adding insult to injury, the Turks were denied a no-fly zone over Idlib, ceding control of the air to the Russian Air Force, while still being required to disarm and remove all persons belonging to terrorist organizations, which in this case meant HTS, the most numerous and effective of the anti-Assad rebel groups. In short, Russia secured for Syria all its hard-won victories, while ceding nothing to Turkey save a face-saving ceasefire.

For Syria and Russia, the Battle of Saraqib was about restoring Syrian sovereignty over the totality of Syrian territory; for Turkey, it was about securing lasting Turkish control and influence over the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib. Turkey lost on both accounts. While Turkey has been allowed to maintain its chain of fortified “observation posts”, the vast majority of these are surrounded by the Syrian Army, and of no military value.

Moreover, the dismal performance of the Turkish Army and its anti-Assad allies against the Syrian Army and its allies, including the Russian Air Force, in the Idlib campaign as a whole, and the Battle of Saraqib in particular, have put to rest any thoughts Erdogan might have retained about imposing Turkey’s will on either Damascus or Moscow; Turkey now knows that there will not be a Turkish military solution to the problem of Idlib.

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Is the planet under the spell of a pair of black swans – a Wall Street meltdown, caused by an alleged oil war between Russia and the House of Saud, plus the uncontrolled spread of Covid-19 – leading to an all-out “cross-asset pandemonium” as billed by Nomura?   

Or, as German analyst Peter Spengler suggests, whatever the averted climax in the Strait of Hormuz has not brought about so far “might now come through market forces”?

Let’s start with what really happened after five hours of relatively polite discussions last Friday in Vienna. What turned into a de facto OPEC+ meltdown was quite the game-changing plot twist.

OPEC+ includes Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Essentially, after enduring years of OPEC price-fixing – the result of relentless US pressure over Saudi Arabia – while patiently rebuilding its foreign exchange reserves, Moscow saw the perfect window of opportunity to strike, targeting the US shale industry.

Shares of some of these US producers plunged as much as 50% on “Black Monday.” They simply cannot survive with a barrel of oil in the $30s – and that’s where this is going. After all these companies are drowning in debt.

A $30 barrel of oil has to be seen as a precious gift/stimulus package for a global economy in turmoil – especially from the point of view of oil importers and consumers. This is what Russia made possible.

And the stimulus may last for a while. Russia’s National Wealth Fund has made it clear it has enough reserves (over $150 billion) to cover a budget deficit from six to ten years – even with oil at $25 a barrel. Goldman Sachs has already gamed a possible Brent crude at $20 a barrel.

As Persian Gulf traders stress, the key to what is perceived in the US as an “oil war” between Moscow and Riyadh is mostly about derivatives. Essentially, banks won’t be able to pay those speculators who hold derivative insurance against a steep decline in the price of oil. Added stress comes from traders panicking with Covid-19 spreading across nations that are visibly unprepared to deal with it.

Watch the Russian game

Moscow must have gamed beforehand that Russian stocks traded in London – such as Gazprom, Rosneft, Novatek and Gazprom Neft – would collapse. According to Lukoil’s co-owner Leonid Fedun, Russia may lose up to $150 million a day from now on. The question is for how long this will be acceptable.

Still, from the beginning Rosneft’s position was that for Russia, the deal with OPEC+ was “meaningless” and only “cleared the way” for American shale oil.

The consensus among Russian energy giants was that the current market setup – massive “negative oil demand,”positive “supply shock” and no swing producer – inevitably had to crash the price of oil. They were watching, helplessly, as the US was already selling oil for a lower price than OPEC.

Moscow’s move against the US fracking industry was payback for the Trump administration messing with Nord Stream 2. The inevitable, steep devaluation of the ruble was gamed.

Still, what happened post-Vienna essentially has little to do with a Russia-Saudi trade war. The Russian Energy Ministry is phlegmatic: Move on, nothing to see here. Riyadh, significantly, has been emitting signs the OPEC+ deal may be back in the cards in the near future. A feasible scenario is that this sort of shock therapy will go on until 2022, and then Russia and OPEC will be back to the table to work out a new deal.

There are no definitive numbers, but the oil market accounts for less than 10% of Russia’s GDP (it used to be 16% in 2012). Iran’s oil exports in 2019 plunged by a whopping 70 %, and still Tehran was able to adapt. Yet oil accounts for over 50% of Saudi GDP. Riyadh needs oil at no less than $85 a barrel to pay its bills. The 2020 budget, with crude priced at $62-63 a barrel, still has a $ 50 billion deficit.

Aramco says it will be offering no fewer than 300,000 barrels of oil a day beyond its “maximum sustained capacity” starting April 1. It says it will be able to produce a whopping 12.3 million barrels a day.

Persian Gulf traders say openly that this is unsustainable. It is. But the House of Saud, in desperation, will be digging into its strategic reserves to dump as much crude as possible as soon as possible – and keep the price war full tilt. The (oily) irony is that the top price war victims are an industry belonging to the American protector.

Saudi-occupied Arabia is a mess. King Salman is in a coma. Every grain of sand in the Nefud desert knows Jared of Arabia Kushner’s whatsapp pal MBS has been de facto ruler for the past five years, but the timing of his new purge in Riyadh speaks volumes. Princes Mohammed bin Nayef, the king’s nephew, and Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, his younger brother, are now really in detention.

The CIA is fuming: Nayef was and remains Langley’s top asset. When Saudi regime spin denounced “Americans” as partners in a possible coup against MBS, that word needed to be read as “CIA.” It’s just a matter of time before the US Deep State, in conjunction with disgruntled National Guard elements, comes for MBS’s head – even as he articulates taking over total power before the G-20 in Riyadh next November.

Black Hawk down?

So what happens next? Amid a tsunami of scenarios, from New York to all points Asia, the most optimistic say that China is about to win the “people’s war” against Covid-19 – and the latest figures confirm it. In this case, global oil demand may increase by at least 480,000 barrels a day.

Well, that’s way more complicated.

The game now points to a confluence of Wall Street in panic; Covid-19 mass hysteria; lingering, myriad aftershocks of Trump’s global trade mess; the US election circus; total political instability in Europe. These interlocked crises do spell Perfect Storm. Yet the market angle is easily explained: that may be the beginning of the end of Wall Street artificially inflated by tens of trillions of US dollars pumped by the Fed through quantitative easings and repos since 2008. Call it the calling of the central bankers’ bluff.

A case can be made that the current financial panic will only subside when the ultimate black swan – Covid-19 – is contained. Borrowing from the famous Hollywood adage, “No one knows anything,” all bets are off. Amid thick fog, and discounting the usual amount of disinformation, a Rabobank analyst, among others, came up with four plausible Covid-19 scenarios. He now reckons it’s getting “ugly” and the fourth scenario – the “unthinkable” – is not far-fetched anymore.

This implies a global economic crisis of, yes, unthinkable magnitude.

To a great extent it will all depend on how fast China – the inescapable crucial link in the global just-in-time supply chain – gets back to a new normal, offsetting interminable weeks of serial lockdowns.

Despised, discriminated against, demonized 24/7 by the “system leader,” China has gone full Nietzsche – about to prove that whatever does not kill you makes you stronger when it comes to a “people’s war” against Covid-19. On the US front, there’s scant hope that the gleaming Black “helicopter money” Hawk will crash down for good. The ultimate Black Swan will have the last word.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The UK government led by Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings have taken a rather Laissez–faire attitude towards the coronavirus CoVid-19. They came under attack for not taking it seriously and not being visible. It wasn’t until March 3rd that suddenly No10 Downing Street realised they needed to contain the negative stories emerging about their administration and then seemingly sprang into action.

Do they know something that will prove differently to what is currently happening in Italy and elsewhere? Or is there something else that is driving their behaviour?

Is it possible that the last ten years of Conservative rule has delivered a lot of death and misery? Maybe they don’t want to draw attention to their miserable record more widely and protect a failing ideology, along with some other influences that they have to respond to.

Preventable deaths

We should not forget that more than 130,000 deaths in the UK (since 2012) could have been prevented (preventable deaths) if improvements in public health policy had not stalled as a direct result of austerity cuts. This is not some sort of ‘leftie’ political point-scoring fantasy, this is according to an analysis by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) last year. And as the IPPR concludes – despite promises made during the NHS’s 70th birthday celebrations to prioritise prevention, the UK is now halfway down a table of OECD countries on its record for tackling preventable diseases.

Excess winter deaths

In the winter of 2017/18, one of the warmest on record, 50,100 died in what is termed as ‘excess winter deaths.’ The government admitted that “The number of excess winter deaths in 2017 to 2018 was the highest recorded since winter 1975 to 1976.” During that time the number of daily deaths exceeded the daily five-year average for all days except just one day – the 25 March.

These excess deaths are expected. It is a term used to describe an increase of deaths compared to the rest of the year but in this year (not forgetting the additional 22,500 EWD the following year), the extreme numbers were largely blamed at the time on elderly poverty, escalating energy prices and the continued NHS crisis that during the winter intensifies.

These excess winter deaths, just like the aforementioned 130,000 of ‘preventable deaths’ add significantly to the corresponding fall in life expectancy in the UK. Life expectancy declines have only occurred in two Western countries, the USA and the UK. There is no need to comment much on the horror story of American ‘health-care’ – it’s an abysmal failure. However, the latter is blamed by scientists, researchers and experts, in part, on the worsening obesity, dementia and diabetes problem but just as firmly on austerity and cuts in NHS spending.

Increased homeless deaths

Last year, a record number of homeless people died, on the streets of Britain, in the biggest increase in deaths since reporting began. For one three month period, a homeless person was dying on the streets of our country every nineteen hours. Homelessness is the pinnacle of political social policy failure. It demonstrates that everything is failing – the housing crisis is just one part of a system with cracks, pitfalls and traps surrounding our most vulnerable.

And…

A lengthy report from the Disability News Service (DNS) describes how a malignant government operates without empathy towards our most vulnerable:

“fellow health experts from the Universities of Liverpool and Oxford were able to show in a study that, for every 10,000 IB (Incapacity Benefit) claimants in England who were reassessed for ESA between 2010 and 2013, there were an additional six suicides, 2,700 cases of self-reported mental health problems, and an increase of more than 7,000 in the number of anti-depressant prescriptions.

In all, across England as a whole, the reassessment process from 2010 to 2013 was “associated with” an extra 590 suicides, 279,000 additional cases of self-reported mental health problems, and a further 725,000 anti-depressant prescriptions.”

The DNS went as far as to say – “The results of a five-year investigation by Disability News Service (DNS) provide strong and clear evidence that senior civil servants and the two ministers responsible for those decisions – Iain Duncan Smith and Chris Grayling – should face a criminal investigation for alleged misconduct in public office.”

Money and power

Then there’s the problem the government have found themselves in when it comes to the very people who fund their existence. We don’t really know who they are. It’s all about dark-money political actors – bankers, hedge-funds, vulture funds, oligarchs, opportunists, tech owners, geopolitical foreign state influence and so on. But what we do know is this. CoVid-19 had caused substantial losses on stock exchanges – (and therefore company/executive wealth) by yesterday.

• US: – $1,248bn
• UK: – $409bn
• Italy: – $307bn
• Japan: – $284bn
• France: – $151bn
• Germany: – £144bn
• India: – $123bn
• China: – $108bn
• Spain: – $95bn
• Australia: – $86bnSaudi: – $33bn
• TOTAL: $2,988bn

$398 for every citizen or 4.4% of all wealth ON EARTH.

(Numbers vary hour by hour, day by day as some governments more to protect company wealth)

In this calculation, Britain was the second-highest loser on overall, worldwide stock exchanges. It will be interesting what measures are announced in the budget going to protecting business versus the amount being spent to protect people.

So perhaps the reason why Boris Johnson is attempting to ‘keep calm’ and for the country to perhaps ‘take it on the chin’ as he implied in an interview a couple of days ago, is that their ideology means more to them than people’s lives. Shielding their shady backers from the fallout is more important than people’s lives and protecting the wealth of their own is more important than people’s lives.

The Conservative party is in no position to take an approach of concern, as it has a record of implementing social policies that during the course of a decade have killed far more than CoVid-19 is ever likely to do. They are, in effect protecting this truly awful record.

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Featured image is from TP

Britain’s national press consistently portrays Britain as a supporter of noble objectives such as human rights and democracy. The extraordinary extent to which the public is being misinformed about the UK’s foreign and military policies is revealed in new statistical research by Declassified UK.

The research suggests that the public is being bombarded by views supporting the priorities of policy-makers. It also finds that there is only a very small space in the British press for critical, independent analysis and key facts about UK foreign policy.

The research, which analyses the UK national print media and does not include broadcasters such as the BBC, suggests that there is little divergence between the liberal and conservative press.

This is the first of a two-part analysis of UK national press coverage of British foreign policy.

Disappearing foreign policies

Key British foreign policies, particularly in the Middle East, are being routinely under- or un-reported in the UK national press.

The Egyptian regime under Abdel Fattah al-Sisi took power in a 2013 coup, which killed hundreds of people and has become increasingly repressive, jailing tens of thousands of opponents as well as journalists. During this period, the UK government has deepened military, trade and investment with the regime, in effect acting as an apologist for it.

Yet a search for press articles in the two years ending in December 2019 finds none covering the full range of UK cooperation with the Sisi regime. A handful of articles (less than a dozen, mainly in the Independent and Guardian) occasionally mention an aspect of UK support for the regime. But this number is very low given 1,018 articles mentioning Sisi during the same period, Egypt’s long historical relationship to the UK and the fact that the UK is the largest investor in Egypt.

The lack of press reporting is especially striking given that the government has itself been consistently announcing its support, especially in military relations, for the Sisi regime.

The UK has also deepened its military cooperation with Israel in recent years, a highly controversial policy while it continues serious human rights abuses and illegal settlement building in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Britain’s Royal Navy has conducted exercises with the Israeli navy and provides military training to Israeli officers.

Yet no articles could be found in the UK national press in the last five years mentioning either of these policies, despite being covered in some Israeli media and in the UK outlet, the Jewish Chronicle.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported on “a time of unprecedented British-Israeli military cooperation”. Yet when the Israeli air force completed its first-ever deployment of fighter jets to Britain in September 2019, which was widely reported by the Israeli press and the MOD, there was no coverage in the UK national press that could be found. Neither was there coverage in the press of the UK’s admission in parliament in July 2018 that the UK was providing military training to Israel.

Similar silence prevails in other key British relationships, such as Oman, an authoritarian state which is one of the UK’s closest allies in the Middle East. Sultan Qaboos, who died in January 2020, had been installed by covert UK forces in a 1970 palace coup. His death was mourned by British officials and the press alike.

Analysis by Declassified showed that British journalists emphasised the alleged popularity of Qaboos and repeated sympathetic lines from British officials who went to extraordinary lengths to praise the dead dictator and support his unelected successor, his cousin Haitham.

A search for articles on Oman in the five years until December 2019 reveals only around half a dozen mentioning UK military training, with none revealing the extent of UK military and other support for the regime. This is despite over 900 articles mentioning Oman.

Files revealed by Edward Snowden show that the British intelligence agency, GCHQ has a network of three spy bases in Oman, codenamed Timpani, Guitar and Clarinet. These stations process vast quantities of emails, telephone calls and web traffic, which are then shared with the US National Security Agency.

The existence of these bases was first revealed by the Independent in 2013, which, however, did not give their code names or say they were located in Oman. Details of the Snowden release were written up by investigative reporter Duncan Campbell in The Register.

Since then, however, the UK national press has never named these bases. Only two articles could be found (in the Express and Times, written by the same author), mentioning that GCHQ has “three bases” in Oman.

Saudi silence

Many aspects of UK relations with Saudi Arabia have also gone under-investigated by the press, despite the special relations between the two countries. Saudi Arabia is by far the UK’s closest military and arms relationship, but various components of this barely exist in the mainstream media.

In September 2019, Declassified UK revealed details of a £2-billion UK programme in Saudi Arabia – the Saudi Arabia National Guard Communications Project (known as Sangcom) – which has operated since 1978. The programme implicates the UK in the defence of the House of Saud and in the war in Yemen, where the National Guard is also active.

Sangcom has been specifically mentioned twice in the press in the past five years (in the Times andFinancial Times), and only 11 times in the past 20 years. There have been some reports of the bribery scandal surrounding the programme, which was publicised by whistleblower Ian Foxley, but very little has been written on the military support project itself.

Declassified UK also revealed how soldiers in the British Military Mission (BMM) in Saudi Arabia are embedded in the country’s National Guard and commanded by the Saudi military while providing training on “internal security”. The BMM has been specifically mentioned once in the British press in the past five years (in an obituary in the Telegraph).

Both Declassified investigations were undertaken using open source information. The paucity of coverage highlights a lack of interest on the part of journalists to expose key aspects of UK foreign policy. Neither of the stories was picked up by the mainstream media in the UK.

Inconvenient truths 

Inconvenient truths are regularly downplayed or buried. Six years ago, the US media organisation The Intercept revealed files from Snowden on a secret British GCHQ unit called the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), showing how it attempts to inject false material onto the internet. This online covert action can involve “false flag operations” (falsely attributing published material to someone else), and “fake victim blog posts” (seeking to destroy the reputation of an individual by pretending to be his/her victim).

JTRIG has been specifically mentioned less than a dozen times in the national press since the Snowden revelations, all brief mentions in articles on other subjects, with only a few mentions since 2016. This is in sharp contrast to the vast attention paid to Russian covert programmes.

While the British press frequently highlights UN reports about torture or imprisonment of journalists in foreign countries, it tends to publish fewer UN concerns about similar conduct closer to home. The UN’s special rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, recently wrote to the UK government calling for officials to be investigated for possible “criminal conduct” in their stance towards WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, who, he has repeatedly said, is being subjected to “psychological torture” by the UK. Melzer added that UK policy “severely undermines the credibility of [its] commitment to the prohibition of torture … as well as to the rule of law more generally”.

No UK press outlet has covered Melzer’s assertion of possible UK criminal activity.

A slide produced by the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), a unit of Britain’s signals intelligence agency GCHQ. Its existence and controversial operations were revealed in Edward Snowden’s leaks, but Declassified found JTRIG has been mentioned fewer than a dozen times in the national press since.

Cutting the UK from the Yemen war 

Britain’s role in the devastating war in Yemen, which began in 2015, has also been notably under-reported. In the first two years of the conflict, few articles mentioned the British role, despite much evidence on this in the public domain, notably from answers by ministers to parliamentary questions.

Since then, many articles have covered UK arms exports to Saudi Arabia, with some noting British training of Saudi pilots and British officers’ presence in Saudi war operations rooms. Yet the UK’s military role goes deeper, with Britain storing and issuing bombs for Saudi aircraft and maintaining warplanes at key operating bases.

“The Saudi bosses absolutely depend on BAE Systems,” John Deverell, a former MOD official and defence attaché to Saudi Arabia and Yemen, told freelance journalist Arron Merat, writing in the Guardian. “They couldn’t do it without us.”

Yet, such articles are rare. For example, no articles could be found mentioning the UK role in supporting the “safe storage and issue of weapons”, for Saudi aircraft, as the government revealed in parliament in June 2018.

Very few articles describe the Yemen conflict for what it is given the extent of the UK’s military role — a British war. The term “British war in Yemen” (or variant search terms such as “Britain’s war in Yemen”), yields no search results in the text of any article in the past five years. The closest results are one article in the Independent headlined: “The government has finally admitted that Britain is at war in Yemen” (written not by a journalist, but by opposition MP, Diane Abbott), and two in the Guardian titled: “Britain is at war with Yemen”  and “Britain is behind the slaughter in Yemen”.

The most significant piece of research published on the extensive UK role in the war in Yemen is a report of April 2018 by independent investigators Mike Lewis and Katharine Templar.  Widely covered in alternative media, the report has been mentioned just once in the UK national press (in the Guardian, in the same article noted above).

The report revealed that UK support to Saudi Arabia involves about 7,000 employees of arms firms, civil servants and seconded military personnel. It also provided evidence of UK military commitments to Saudi Arabia that have never been disclosed to the public or parliament.

The national press generally promotes the line that Britain has simply been supporting the “Saudi-led coalition”, which mirrors the government’s false claim that it is “not a party” to the war – an assertion likely made for legal reasons to avoid being held complicit in war crimes.

Misreporting Syria  

Britain’s role in the war in Syria has been distinctly under-reported and mis-reported and has overwhelmingly followed the priorities of British governments. While the press has widely reported UK military operations against Islamic State in Syria, its covert operations against the Assad regime have received much less attention.

Evidence suggests that Britain began covert operations in Syria in late 2011 or early 2012. The Times and Telegraph have reported sporadically on this involvement in the war. However, the mantra repeated in the Guardian and its sister paper, the Observer is that Britain has “failed to act” in Syria. An Observereditorial in August 2019 was entitled “the west’s shameful failure to act” and described “Western governments’ neglect of the eight-year war”.

Similarly,in 2019, Guardian columnist Simon Tisdall wrote, “The US has largely stood aside from Syria, confining itself to anti-ISIS [Islamic State] counter-terrorism operations and occasional missile strikes. So too, for the most part, have Britain and Europe.”

However, veteran US journalist Seymour Hersh had already revealed that in early 2012, a secret “rat line” of shipments began to supply weapons to Syrian opposition groups, in which MI6 was closely involved. This “rat line” has been mentioned only six times in the British press since 2012 – according to the research – all in the Independent and Guardian. The low figure is noteworthy given that over 150,000 articles have mentioned Syria in the same period.

In July 2014, BBC TV’s Newsnight reported that the UK sold components to Syria in the 1980s which could have been used to make the deadly nerve agent, sarin. Since then, there have been 985 press articles mentioning “Syria and sarin” which, it is alleged, has been used by the regime to attack targets. But the UK exports have been mentioned in only seven articles (ie. less than 1% of the total coverage), according to the research, the last one being in April 2017.

When the US and UK governments accused the Bashar al-Assad regime of using chemical weapons in Douma, near Damascus, in April 2018, the UK press largely accepted the claims with certainty –as though the fake story of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had never occurred. The press has maintained its position even as evidence has mounted throwing doubt on the claims, which has also been largely unreported.

In October 2019, WikiLeaks published evidence from a whistleblower at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), showing that the international body had suppressed evidence suggesting that the Syrian government had not mounted the Douma attack. It quoted former OPCW director Jose Bustani saying that “the convincing evidence of irregular behaviour in the OPCW investigation of the alleged Douma chemical attack confirms doubts and suspicions I already had”.

Bustani’s comments have been mentioned in only one press outlet – the Mail on Sunday, by journalist Peter Hitchens.  

Benevolent Britain 

The national press routinely conveys the view that Britain is a supporter of noble objectives such as human rights, democracy and overseas development in its foreign policy. Almost no articles suggest that Britain might generally oppose these principles.

The press largely reflects the view of the Conservative Party, outlined in its 2019 election manifesto: “we view our country as a force for good … From helping to end the slave trade to tackling modern slavery, the UK has long been a beacon of freedom and human rights”.

Mentions of the term “Britain’s reputation” in press articles highlight how journalists regard the UK. Some 500 articles mention the term in the past five years. Recent editorials note “Britain’s reputation as a positive global influence” (Independent), “Britain’s reputation as a beacon of liberty and liberal values” (Daily Mail) and “Britain’s reputation for honest government” (Financial Times).

Rachel Sylvester in the Times notes “Britain’s reputation as a force for stability in the world” while Tim Stanley writes in the Telegraph of “Britain’s reputation as a force for human rights”. A Mail on Sundayarticle refers positively to “Britain’s reputation across the Middle East and Africa”. Numerous recent articles also refer to Brexit damaging “Britain’s reputation” in the world, which is always assumed to be positive.

Our research finds very few mentions in the past five years of major negatives concerning “Britain’s reputation” in the world. A rare exception is “Britain’s reputation as a haven for dirty money”, mentionedin the Financial Times in 2018.

No articles could be found specifying a “British reputation” for violating international law or the UN, promoting wars or supporting human rights abusing regimes.

Britain has values. We can’t cosy up to a nation that scorns them | Zoe Williams https://t.co/b1blkUhhDX

— The Guardian (@guardian) January 30, 2017

Champion of human rights 

When ministers’ claim they support human rights in their foreign policy, they are rarely challenged in the press. Articles on UK arms exports to repressive regimes are fairly common and often highlight contradictions with upholding human rights. However, they regularly take for granted that the UK otherwise supports human rights in those countries and elsewhere.

Press articles regularly assert that the UK supplies arms to regimes “despite” repression and human rights abuses. Yet UK policy in various countries is focused on maintaining favoured regimes in power and on enabling them to counter opposition.

In the Gulf, for example, promoting “internal security”– a euphemism for ongoing repression – has long been a key feature of British support for states such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. The UK’s export of surveillance technology to repressive regimes, the provision of military training and its regular failure to censure states, or change policy, over human rights abuses, can all help regimes to repress opponents.

Press articles rarely intimate that British policy is about supporting repression of pro-democracy activists or movements. As a rough indicator, the research finds no articles mentioning the phrase “Britain’s support for repression” (or variants of this term) in the past five years.

The UK is also widely seen in the press as a champion of global development, echoing government claims. A Guardian editorial in 2016 noted, for example, “One of the things modern Britons can be proudest of is their country’s achievements in international development”.

By contrast, almost no articles could be found suggesting the UK might oppose international development or be a significant contributor to global poverty. One rare exception in the Guardian in 2016, written by Jason Hickel of Goldsmiths, University of London, was sub-headlined: “we need to stop pretending that the United States, France and Britain are benevolent champions of the poor”.

Britain’s large aid programme, which supports some worthy projects, is significantly designed to promote UK foreign policy goals and British business interests. The government has openly stated that aid promotes the UK’s “influence in the world” and to “deliver influence in Africa” as well as helping to “further UK strategic interests”. UK aid also promotes British commercial interests by pressing for the privatisation of education in developing countries and by funding projects supporting pro-British repressive regimes.

Moreover, various broader UK policies undermine global development. The UK’s network of tax havens, involving the British Virgin Islands and Cayman Islands, for example, is responsible for over one third of global tax avoidance – amounting to about £115-billion a year, eight times larger than its aid budget. In addition, many UK companies, notably in the mining and extractives sectors, are involved in human rights abuses or environmental damage overseas.

While stories on these examples are sometimes covered in the press (though often are not), they almost never disturb the generally promoted view that the UK champions global development.  

Storming of British Embassy in Iran: This rabid rogue state could tip the world into a new dark age http://t.co/VdJ9HQlt

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) December 1, 2011

Rogue states  

The term “rules-based international order” has entered the political lexicon in recent years and refers to international relations that are supposedly upheld by international law and accepted standards. The term is mentioned in 339 press articles in the last five years. The UK is invariably seen as a supporter of this order while those seen by the UK government as opponents, such as Russia and Iran, are conveyed in the press as the challengers.

An Observer editorial in July 2019 noted “the international rules-based order that post-war Britain has spent decades building and nurturing”. The Times defence correspondent Lucy Fisher contrasts Britain with “other nations less inclined towards a rules-based international order”.

Yet the UK is as much a violator of international rules as any official enemy. Declassified recently documented 17 British policies violating domestic or international law and the UN. This did not include UK policies in the recent past, such as the military interventions in Iraq and Libya.

Nowhere in the national press is the UK regarded as a “rogue state” in its foreign policy, the research finds. A search for the term “rogue state” in press articles over the past three years reveals a large number of mentions – 1,023 – regularly referring to North Korea, Iran and Russia, even with the occasional mention of the US under Donald Trump. The UK is not mentioned, however, apart from one article mentioning prime minister Boris Johnson as a “one-man rogue state”. Neither are allies such as Israel or Saudi Arabia termed rogue states.

An editorial in the Daily Telegraph notes, “The drone attacks on Saudi Arabian oil facilities have been blamed by America on Iran, confirming the country’s rapid descent into the ranks of rogue states”. To Telegraph editors, the US administration labelling Iran a rogue state is “confirmation” that this is true.

While serving to regularly misinform the public, the reach of the national press remains enormous. Alternative media are proliferating but monthly website visitor numbers to the national press are far larger: 310-million for the Guardian, 304-million for the Mail and 88-million for the Independent. These compare to 1-million visits per month for the Canary, the alternative digital news site in the UK with the most visitors.

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Mark Curtis is the co-founder and editor of Declassified UK, an historian and author of five books on UK foreign policy. He tweets at: @markcurtis30

Research covered the period to the end of 2019 using the media search tool, Factiva. It analysed the “mainstream” UK-wide print media (dailies and Sundays), over different time scales, usually two or five years, as specified in the article. Media search engines cannot be guaranteed to work perfectly so additional research was sometimes undertaken.

Turkey’s ongoing fighting in northern Syria’s Idlib governorate was – from the beginning of recent escalations – clearly a continuation of Washington’s wider now 9 year-long proxy war against Damascus.

Whatever gains Turkey had made in terms of reducing its role in Washington’s proxy war and repairing ties with Syria’s allies Russia and Iran – were clearly less important to Ankara amid these recent weeks of renewed aggression than whatever Washington has either promised Anakara or threatened it with.

And precisely because Turkey’s aggression in Idlib is merely one part of the much wider proxy war Washington continues to wage against Damascus – it was predicted that others involved in the proxy war would coordinate with Turkey elsewhere in Syria.

Israeli Airstrikes

In recent weeks Israel has continued carrying out attacks in Syrian territory.

Recent news has covered Israeli attacks on military targets in Homs – right at the edge of where Turkey’s aggression trails off.

Chinese news site Xinhua in its March 5, 2020 article, “Syrian air defenses intercept Israeli missiles in central, southern regions,” would report:

Syrian air defenses intercepted Israeli missiles in the central province of Homs and the southern Quneitra province after midnight Thursday, state news agency SANA reported.

The missiles were fired from Israeli warplanes over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and from Lebanese airspace, said the report, without providing details on the targets.

The attack is the latest in a string of missile strikes carried out by Israel.

Despite Israel and Turkey often posing as being at odds with one another over political, religious, or ideological issues – both nations have coordinated violence against Syria since 2011 as per US designs aimed at overthrowing the Syrian government – described in detail within US policy papers.

US Designs to Use Turkey and Israel as Proxies Revealed as Early as 1983

Ignoring the West’s ongoing propaganda surrounding the Syrian conflict and simply looking at US policy papers over the years – it is clear that not only has Washington sought to overthrow the Syrian government for decades – it has sought to do so using the same tricks.

A 1983 document– part of a deluge of declassified papers released to the public – signed by former CIA officer Graham Fuller titled, “Bringing Real Muscle to Bear Against Syria”, states (their emphasis):

Syria at present has a hammerlock on US interests both in Lebanon and in the Gulf — through closure of Iraq’s pipeline thereby threatening Iraqi internationalization of the [Iran-Iraq] war. The US should consider sharply escalating the pressures against Assad [Sr.] through covertly orchestrating simultaneous military threats against Syria from three border states hostile to Syria: Iraq, Israel and Turkey. 

The report also states:

If Israel were to increase tensions against Syria simultaneously with an Iraqi initiative, the pressures on Assad would escalate rapidly. A Turkish move would psychologically press him further. 

In 2012 – illustrating how these plans were never taken off the table and merely updated amid the more recent 2011 US proxy war against Syria – the US corporate-funded policy think tank – the Brookings Institution – would publish a paper titled, “Saving Syria: Assessing Options for Regime Change” (PDF), stating explicitly:

Some voices in Washington and Jerusalem are exploring whether Israel could contribute to coercing Syrian elites to remove Asad. 

The report continues by explaining (emphasis added):

Israel could posture forces on or near the Golan Heights and, in so doing, might divert regime forces from suppressing the opposition. This posture may conjure fears in the Asad regime of a multi-front war, particularly if Turkey is willing to do the same on its border and if the Syrian opposition is being fed a steady diet of arms and training. Such a mobilization could perhaps persuade Syria’s military leadership to oust Asad in order to preserve itself. 

This attempt to create a “multi-front war” amid the current Syrian conflict is a process that continues openly to this very day with news of Turkey and Israel engaged in now direct military aggression against the Syrian government aimed at dividing Syrian forces and reversing Syrian gains on the battlefield.

Trouble had also briefly erupted along the Syrian-Jordanian border where for years the US had – just as it did along the Syrian-Turkish border – funded, armed, trained, and equipped terrorists before sending them into Syria to fight.

The US Lurks Behind the Scenes 

Despite attempt by Washington to portray itself as withdrawing from multiple theaters of military aggression, occupation, and confrontation around the globe there is little actual evidence it is doing so. Instead it appears to merely be attempting to hide its hand by deferring increasingly to proxies.

Its relative quietness regarding Syria was recently broken when US representatives were seen visiting the Turkish-Syrian border and even meeting with Al Qaeda-affiliates – the so-called “White Helmets.”

The Washington Post in its article, “US officials visit Turkey’s border with Syria, emphasize support for NATO ally,” would report:

Three top US officials toured Turkey’s border with Syria on Tuesday, even briefly crossing into Syrian territory, in a concerted effort to underscore one point: The United States is throwing its full support behind its NATO ally in its new fight against the Syrian government and its Russian backers.

As always – the Washington Post spins obvious facts – and in this case – attempts to portray the US as merely backing Turkey in its fighting in northern Syria rather than being the primary sponsor and impetus driving Turkey’s ongoing aggression and the Syrian conflict as a whole.

In addition to this very public display of official support for Turkey and its terrorist proxies – the Western media has collectively renewed its familiar propaganda war against Syria and its allies through the use of its various “humanitarian” rackets including fronts like “Human Rights Watch” and even pushing bias reports through the UN.

Coupled with Turkey’s own use of refugees as a political weapon – once again attempts are underway to cite “humanitarian concerns” to fish for public support and legal justification for even further escalations against Syria.

Washington’s Unwinnable Proxy War 

This most recent outburst of aggression from the US and its various proxies comes at a time where nearly all of Syria’s territory has been retaken by the Syrian government. Syria’s allies – Russia and Iran – have established deeply entrenched positions in Syria that all but total war will fail to dislodge.

Israeli airstrikes – however damaging they are on a temporary and tactical level – are futile on a strategic level. Airstrikes alone will not win the proxy war against Syria without a significant ground force able to exploit them. That ground force in the form of terrorists armed and backed by the West have been all but eliminated across Syrian territory.

Likewise – despite Turkey’s large military – it would need to confront and contain Russian airpower to gain the advantage needed to reverse its – and its proxies’ losses – in northern Syria.

The conflict will continue to drag on and perhaps in the process Damascus and its allies may be willing to make concessions to accelerate the conclusion of hostilities – but whether make these concessions or not – hostilities will inevitably conclude – and do so to Damascus and its allies’ advantage.

Israel’s political isolation within the region and around the globe is – at the moment – all but irreversible – thus its apathy toward the damage its ongoing aggression in Syria is having on its international standings leaves few surprised.

Turkey – however – is giving up a potential opportunity to realign itself amid America’s decline and the emergence of multipolarism. While it still seems possible that Turkey can reverse the damage it is doing to its ties with the rest of the world – that window is undoubtedly closing.

Turkey will have to decide if it wants to end the Syrian conflict side-by-side Israel and – in particular – the US – which is in irreversible decline globally – or end it aligned with the conflict’s victors – including Syria’s allies Russia and Iran.

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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.

Featured image is from NEO

The Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) presented a new legal recourse to qualify ex-president Evo Morales as a candidate for the first senatorship in Cochabamba, informed political secretary Froilan Fulguera on Tuesday.

In statements to Radio Fides, Fulguera said that the appeal was submitted to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), which he hopes will analyze and give viability “for brother Juan Evo Morales to continue in the elections.”

At the same time, he called on the TSE to work impartially and stated that his political organization would support “the right to choose and be chosen.”

The MAS delegate to the TSE, Nelvin Siñani, had already said that the “intermittent residence” figure envisaged in a 2018 constitutional ruling would be used, reported Correo del Sur.

Siñani said that the party will be firm and demand that Morales be a candidate and will not abandon this cause “under any circumstances.”

The political secretary of MAS considers that the absence of the former president in Bolivia is due to the danger to his life after being forced to resign from the presidency on November 10 due to a civilian-military coup d’état.

On social networks, Morales condemned the TSE decision as a coup against democracy, whose final objective is the outlawing of MAS.

The general elections in Bolivia will be held on May 3, and the MAS candidates Luis Arce and David Choquehuanca, respectively, are the favorites for the presidency and vice-presidency.

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On major policy issues, Biden’s agenda resembles Trump’s with a party label difference — both unacceptable, demanding rejection.

Throughout his time in public office, Biden one-sidedly supported and continues supporting privileged interests at the expense of the public welfare — notably against world peace and social justice, ideas he rejects.

The world’s richest country USA is the only developed one without some form of universal healthcare.

It’s the only equitable system for all its citizens and residents — everyone in, no one left out.

If adopted in the US, eliminating middlemen insurers that extract their pound of flesh while treating no one in need of healthcare, around $500 – $600 billion could be saved annually.

According to an Annals of Internal Medicine study, bureaucratic costs of delivering healthcare in the US cost $812 billion in 2017.

The study estimated that if US costs were cut to per capita Canadian levels, $600 billion annually could be saved.

Americans spend nearly $850 per person a year on insurers’ overhead compared to less than $150 per person in Canada.

Hospital administration costs in the US exceed $900 per capita annually v. less than $200 in Canada.

Weeks earlier, Biden defied reality, falsely claiming universal healthcare in the US will “cost $30 trillion over 10 years…some say…$40 trillion.”

If properly administered with public interests in mind over corporate ones, trillions of dollars less, not more, will be spent in the next decade.

Biden is a longtime shill for Big Pharma, insurers, and large hospital chains. His son Hunter once worked as a drug company lobbyist.

As US senator and vice president, he did nothing to make drug prices affordable for ordinary Americans.

His rhetoric and support for corporate interests are world’s apart.

According to Federal Election Commission filings, Big Pharma, insurers, financial organizations, billionaires, and other monied interests contributed large sums to Biden’s campaign — buying influence the way the debauched US system works.

Along with pocketbook issues overall, affordable healthcare is prioritized by most Americans.

Because of exorbitant insurance premiums and drug prices, it’s increasingly unaffordable for millions of Americans.

They pay double or more what healthcare costs in other developed nations.

Biden suggested that if Congress enacts Medicare for all legislation with him as president, he’ll likely balk at signing it into law.

Given his ties to large insurers and Big Pharma, he’d no doubt veto the measure — wanting them served, not ordinary Americans he’s been dismissive toward throughout his public life.

On March 9, Physicians for a National Health Program president Dr. Adam Gaffney explained that throughout US history, major policy changes took time — coming only after groundwork laid for ending slavery, women’s suffrage, civil and human rights, Medicare, Medicare, and other significant programs.

No one can tell when “pivotal change” is possible, he stressed. It’s well known that wishing and waiting don’t work.

Opposition to Medicare for all “neglects the moral urgency of reform(ing)” a dysfunctional system, a fundamental human right based on the ability to pay.

Tens of thousands of Americans suffer and die annually from major illnesses for lack of resources to pay high costs.

“Medicare for all is uniquely designed to” accomplish what other proposed US healthcare options fail at, said Gaffney — “achiev(ing) a universal improvement of coverage,” a minimum level playing field for everyone, no one needing treatment denied it.

Gaffney: “Rising copays and deductibles are causing more and more patients to go without needed care, or to face harsh financial consequences when they do.”

“Underinsurance is, today, as much a problem as uninsurance — and, according to estimates from the Commonwealth Fund, is growing most rapidly among those with employer-sponsored coverage.”

“(T)he vast majority of (Americans would) benefit from” universal coverage.

Failing to go all-out on this vital issue will virtually assure continuation of the unacceptable status quo in our lifetimes.

Activists for equity and justice can’t let that happen.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Tuesday results in six states for Dems largely replicated Biden’s pre-scripted week ago Super Tuesday triumph over Sanders.

As the saying goes, there never was any doubt. The race to be Dem standard bearer in November against Trump appears all over except for the formal anointment — perhaps coming well before July convention proceedings with Sanders conceding the inevitable to Biden in the weeks ahead.

Biden named Dem standard bearer is coming as pre-ordained by powerful monied interests.

It was baked in the cake from the get-go — dirty business as usual triumphing over even modest positive changes.

Each US election cycle, things are manipulated to prevent an outbreak of peace, equity, justice, and democracy the way it should be.

Republicans and Dems are two sides of the same coin on major issues.

There’s nary a difference between them on military Keynesianism, a permanent state of war on invented enemies, corporate favoritism over the public welfare, and cracking down hard against governance of, by, and for everyone equitably.

Trump and Biden are political twins, both figures on the wrong side of virtually everything just societies cherish — neither fit for public office at any level.

They both represent how an overnight emailer described Biden, calling him “a supreme example of everything wrong with America.”

Judge politicians by their records, not their rhetoric and promises, exercises in mass deception time and again.

Biden and Trump are classic examples. Both figures serve powerful interests exclusively at the expense of what benefits most people.

Scrutiny of their records reveals the true measure of what they stand for — notably their opposition to governance serving everyone equitably, why both demand public rejection, not support.

On mini-Super Tuesday March 10, Biden won Michigan, Missouri, Idaho, and Mississippi.

With most votes counted in Washington state, Sanders and Biden are virtually tied, the Vermont senator taking North Dakota.

As things now stand, Biden has a near-insurmountable 823 – 663 delegate count lead ahead of Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania primaries where the former vice president leads in pre-election polls.

Sanders is ahead in New York by a wide margin that could narrow considerably by April 28, date of the NY primary election.

According to a post-Super Tuesday Quinnipiac University national poll released Monday (conducted from March 5 – 8), Biden leads Sanders by 19 points — a 54 – 35% margin.

An astonishing 77% of Dem and Dem-leaning respondents viewed him favorably, only 13% seeing him as unfavorable — showing the power of propaganda works.

Most voting-age Americans have little or no knowledge of Biden’s record in office as US senator and vice president.

Awareness of his opposition to peace, the public welfare, and racist policies would have made it virtually impossible for him to be favored over other Dems.

According to Quinnipiac University poll analyst Tim Malloy, it “looks very much like the Biden resurgence could be a fatal blow to” Sanders.

For US voters, pocket book issues heavily influence who they’ll support in November.

If the economy is sound, incumbent US presidents are favored to win over opponents, how races usually turn out.

If there’s a US recession in 2020, incumbents are more vulnerable to be defeated.

The current state of the US economy is weak. According to Shadowstats economist John Williams, Fed “loss of systemic control (was) brought to a head by the (emergence of COVID-19 and) collapsing oil prices.”

Recession looms or already began. Downward revisions of economic data are likely ahead, especially in a weakening consumer sector.

If conditions deteriorate further between now and November, Trump could be a one-term president.

For the vast majority of Americans, it matters little which right wing of the one-party state controls the White House and/or Congress.

Dirty business as usual continues as always without missing a beat.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The United States has raised the coronavirus (COVID-19) alert for Italy to level 3 (“avoid nonessential travel”), bringing it to 4 (“do not travel”) for [the northern regions of] Lombardy and Veneto — the same as for China. American Airlines and Delta Air Lines suspended all flights between New York and Milan. U.S. citizens going to Germany, Poland and other European countries, at alert level 2, must “take increased precautions.”

However, one category of U.S. citizens is exempted from these rules: the 20,000 soldiers beginning to arrive from the United States in European ports and airports for the Defender Europe 20 exercise, the largest U.S. troop deployment in Europe in the last 25 years. Including those already present, about 30,000 U.S. troops will participate in April and May, flanked by 7,000 troops from 17 NATO member and partner countries, including Italy.

The first armored unit arrived from the port of Savannah, Ga., to that of Bremerhaven in Germany. Altogether 20,000 pieces of military equipment arrived from the USA in six European ports (in Belgium, Holland, Germany, Latvia, Estonia). Another 13,000 pieces are supplied by the U.S. Army in Europe from prepositioned depots, mainly in Germany, Holland and Belgium. These operations, reports the U.S. Army in Europe, “require the participation of tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians from many nations.”

At the same time, the bulk of the contingent of 20,000 soldiers arrives from the U.S. in seven European airports. Among these are 6,000 National Guard coming from 15 states: Arizona, Florida, Montana, New York, Virginia and others.

At the beginning of the exercise in April, reports the U.S. Army in Europe, the 30,000 U.S. soldiers “will spread through the European region” to “protect Europe from any potential threat,” with clear reference to the “Russian threat.”

Gen. Tod Wolters — who commands the United States forces in Europe and at the same time those of NATO as Allied Supreme Commander in Europe — assures everyone that “the European Union, NATO and the European Command of the United States have worked together to improve the infrastructure.” This will allow military convoys to move quickly along 2,500 miles of transit routes.

Tens of thousands of soldiers will cross borders to conduct exercises in 10 countries. In Poland, 16,000 U.S. soldiers will arrive in 12 training areas with about 2,500 vehicles. U.S. paratroopers of the 173rd Brigade stationed in Veneto and Italians in the Lightning Brigade stationed in Tuscany will go to Latvia for a joint launch exercise.

Defender Europe 20 is being conducted to “increase the ability to rapidly deploy a large combat force from the United States to Europe.” It is therefore carried out with timescales and procedures that make it virtually impossible to subject tens of thousands of soldiers to COVID-19 health regulations and prevent them from coming into contact with the inhabitants during rest periods.

In addition, the U.S. Army in the Europe Rock Band will hold a series of free concerts in Germany, Poland and Lithuania that will attract large audiences.

The 30,000 U.S. soldiers, who “will spread through the European region,” are in fact exempted from the preventive COVID-19 regulations that apply to civilians. The assurance given by the U.S. Army in Europe that “we are monitoring the Coronavirus [COVID-19]” and that “our forces are in good health” is enough.

At the same time, the environmental impact of a military exercise of this magnitude is ignored. U.S. Abrams tanks will participate, weighing 70 tons, with depleted uranium shells. Each tank consumes 400 liters of fuel per 100 km, producing heavy pollution to deliver maximum power.

In this situation, what are EU and national authorities doing, what is the World Health Organization doing? They put the mask on over their eyes, as well as over their mouth and nose.

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This was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

This week, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), Saudi Arabia’s 34-year-old de facto ruler, was on a tear. He arrested members of his own royal family and initiated an oil price war with Russia that has sent the price of oil—and the world’s stock markets—plummeting. Behind the headlines, however, another critical event will take place in Saudi Arabia starting March 18: women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul, who was arrested almost two years ago for advocating the right to drive, is due in court. The diabolical MBS wants the world to believe he is the Arab world’s liberal reformer and took credit for eventually granting women the right to drive, but he is also the one who had al-Hathloul and nine other women thrown in prison, charging them as foreign agents and spies. The imprisonment of these peaceful women activists exposes the brutal nature of MBS’s regime and the duplicity of the Western democracies that continue to support him.

Loujain al-Hathloul gained notoriety in 2013 for campaigning against the driving ban when she posted videos of herself driving as an act of civil disobedience. She was first arrested in December 2014 when she attempted to drive from the United Arab Emirates to Saudi Arabia and spent 73 days in prison at that time. Al-Hathloul has also been an outspoken advocate for an end to the male guardianship system that treats women as no more than children throughout their entire lives.

On May 15, 2018, a group of armed men from the state security agency raided Loujain’s family’s house and arrested her. For the first three months of her detention, she was held incommunicado with no access to her family or a lawyer. According to the communication she was later able to have with her family, during those three months, she was beaten, waterboarded, given electric shocks, sexually harassed, and threatened with rape and murder.

Loujain languished in a Saudi prison for almost a year before the public prosecutor’s office finally announced that it had concluded its investigation and alleged that Loujain was involved in activities that “aim to undermine the Kingdom’s security, stability, and national unity.” She was accused of contacting “enemy groups”—a reference to cooperation with the United Nations and human rights groups such as Amnesty International.

Loujain’s initial hearing was in March 2019, but she was not allowed access to a lawyer or to hear the charges prior to the hearing. Her family members were permitted to attend, but the court was closed to both diplomats and journalists.

According to her family, in August 2019, Al-Hathloul was offered her freedom in exchange for denying, on video, that she was subjected to torture. She refused. For her incredible bravery and determination to fight for women’s rights, eight members of US Congress have nominated Al-Hathloul for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The case of Al-Hathloul and the other women’s rights activists on trial in Saudi Arabia is a tremendous embarrassment for MBS, who has been putting an enormous effort into convincing his Western allies that he is a reformer and that Saudi Arabia is becoming more liberal. But behind the facade of new musical concerts and theme parks, the Crown Prince has overseen a vast crackdown on all forms of opposition and dissent. In November 2018, the CIA concluded that MBS was the one who ordered the gruesome assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. MBS is also responsible for dragging Saudi Arabia into an internal conflict in Yemen, where constant Saudi bombings have decimated what was already a poor country.

The fact that MBS lifted the driving ban and simultaneously put in prison those who had campaigned and suffered for such reforms makes clear his actual motive: to silence dissent and prevent these women’s voices from being heard. Loujain’s sister Lina al-Hathloul says that the regime arrested these women’s rights activists “so that they make the [Saudi] people understand that change only comes top down. And the people should not even try to make the changes.” This sentiment was echoed by Suzanne Nossel, the head of PEN America.“These gutsy women have challenged one of the world’s most notoriously misogynist governments, inspiring the world with their demand to drive, to govern their own lives, and to liberate all Saudi women from a form of medieval bondage that has no place in the 21st century,” she said.

“The very existence of this sham trial pulls the veil off of the authorities’ so-called push for reforms in the Kingdom,” said Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty International’s Middle East Research Director. “How can they initiate change in the country when the very women who fought for these reforms are still being punished for it?”

The bogus trial against Loujan al-Hathloul taking place this week should compel governments around the world to put more pressure on the Saudis and demand Al Houthloul’s immediate and unconditional release. Her imprisonment — as well as MBS’s arrest of royal family members and Saudi’s brutal war in Yemen — should be particularly embarrassing to the world community in light of the G20 meeting scheduled to take place in Saudi Arabia in November. How can the world’s leaders pretend that it is acceptable to meet in a country that imprisons and tortures peaceful women activists and bombs civilians in Yemen? It isn’t.

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Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the US-Saudi Connection.

Ariel Gold is the national co-director of CODEPINK and runs the organization’s Middle East Program.