Global Research

We have to admit that the US public relations apparatus played a good stint at leaving Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó’s visit with president Trump last in what seemed an afterthought. When many thought that Trump had snubbed him in Davos and Miami, Washington gave him its full attention, normally reserved for real presidents, following the recent international trip that Guaidó took to muster abroad the political support that he cannot get in his own country.

As a special guest at the State of the Union speech Trump praised Guaidó as a “very brave man” and “the true and legitimate president of Venezuela”. He avoided altogether the use of the extra label “interim”, never mind the fact that Guaidó was never elected and that recently lost the title of speaker in the Venezuelan National Assembly.

Both Republicans and Democrats gave Guaidó a standing ovation, which must be interpreted as a sign of the common goal of the two parties on US foreign policy.

Guaidó met with several people of the US political bureaucracy that would give him a reason to brag at home about his popularity and his cause; the cause being to overthrow Nicolas Maduro to the pleasure of the regime change proponents.

Source: Presidencia Venezuela

Based on his own posts on his Twitter account Guaidó has met with a number of US personalities in Washington. Aside from the obvious photo-ops with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi he met with US envoy for Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, and a number of mostly Congresspeople from the Democratic Party. Additional meetings were held with OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro, as well as with Inter-American Development Bank and USAID heads. Standing next to Guaidó, USAID Mark Green felt he had to remark that all of the organisation’s funding goes to Venezuelan NGOs and not to the opposition leader. Explanation not needed. We all know where USAID money comes from and how it’s used. There were also face-to-face meetings with president Trump and vice-president Mike Pence but there have been no joint statements or media conferences.

The extent of Guaidó’s message has been underwhelming and predictable, limited to a repetition of accusations of the Maduro government as being a “dictatorship, “drug trafficking” and “promoter of international terrorism”. He used precisely the standard language of the US Hybrid War script as explained by analyst Andrew Korybko:

“The US then wages information warfare against the targeted government in order to delegitimize it by usually portraying the authorities as part of a ‘dictatorship’ that is ‘attacking innocent civilians for no reason’”.

He also repeated self-praising catch phrases in the typical US-style as “lover of liberty and a free world”, and the “need to re-establish democracy” in Venezuela, exposing the incongruence with his past as a violent guarimbero (rioter) on the streets of Caracas.

What is quite significant is that, at least at the time of this writing, there have been no plans of a visit by Guaidó to the UN in New York, just a short distance from Washington. However, it is quite understandable. A Venezuelan opposition attempt last September to receive the desired recognition at the UN was frustrated.

Further, the UN currently recognises the Maduro government and its representatives. The UN has been under pressure by the US to recognise Guaidó and withdraw the credentials of the legitimate Venezuelan envoy. Secretary General Antonio Guterres has made it very clear that the recognition of the government of a member State is the function of the General Assembly and not of any individual State. However, this is an option that will not be considered by Washington given that its claim of 50+ governments recognising Guaidó is countered by at least 120 governments of the non-aligned Movement that have explicitly recognised the legitimate government of Nicolas Maduro.

Concluding thoughts

Clearly Guaidó has a political vision of Venezuela as the US backyard. He has proven that much with his visit to Washington. This is a tragic attitude that feeds into the on going Hybrid War approach towards Venezuela. At present, his photo-ops with foreign dignitaries is working against him in the eyes of those Venezuelans who aspire for a sovereign and independent Venezuela as an organic member of a multipolar world. He seems to forget that he needs the support of Venezuelans in Venezuela if he wants to be president of the country by democratic means and not by means of a Bolivian-style coup.

The current Maduro government has been given a strong anti-imperialist mandate by the engaged political majority in Venezuela through a widely accepted fair election in 2018. This is a primary component towards building Hugo Chavez’s Socialism of the 21st Century. The goal has not changed and the project is on course. Washington’s relentless determination to destroy the project confirms the unipolar and imperial view of the US in the hemisphere.

Now Guaidó must return to Venezuela. He might have to sneak back in via Colombia by land-crossing as he did when he left. It is not clear what the Venezuelan government will do following his leaving the country against a travel ban. Elliott Abrams has already “warned” the Maduro government in case any action should be taken against Guaidó.

Given the deep divisions within the Venezuelan opposition, upon his return to Venezuela Guaidó must confront that reality and he should not fear the actions of the Maduro government, rather the actions of his own opposition “allies”.

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Nino Pagliccia is an activist and freelance writer based in Vancouver. He is a retired researcher from the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is a Venezuelan-Canadian who follows and writes about international relations with a focus on the Americas. He is the editor of the book “Cuba Solidarity in Canada – Five Decades of People-to-People Foreign Relations” (2014). He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from France24

The PR department of the Turkish Defense Ministry dealt a crushing blow to forces of the Assad regime that had once again treacherously attacked innocent Turkish personnel in the province of Idlib. At least 5 Turkish soldiers were killed and 5 others were injured in the attack.

On February 10, the Turkish statement targeted 115 ‘regime targets’, ‘neutralized’ 101 ‘regime personnel’, ‘destroyed’ 3 tanks, 2 artillery positions and ‘hit’ a helicopter. After the February 3 Syrian strike on Erdogan forces, Ankara said that the Turkish military had stricken over 50 ‘regime’ targets ‘neutralizing’ at least 76 pro-government fighters. Therefore, the scale of decisive claims demonstrated a successful growth.

Late on February 10, unidentified warplanes struck a large convoy of Turkish military equipment in the Base 46 area, near the town of Atarib. These strikes became another heavy setback of Assad forces and their allies. The convoy belonged not to the Turkish Army, but to Idlib rebel groups. The Assadists missed. Furthermore, photos of the burned Turkish military equipment, a M60T battle tank and several other vehicles, released on the same day also appeared to be old. They were made west of Saraqib after the February 3 incident.

As to the villages of al-Qanati, Kafr Halab, Khirbat Jazraya and Miznaz, which were captured by Syrian government forces from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, this was just a tactical retreat. The Turkish military operation in Idlib continues successfully.

Turkey’s presidential spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, said that Assad attacks on Turkish troops and Syrian civilians were aimed at sabotaging the Syrian political process. He added that Ankara would provide a tough response to these actions. Kalin added that the Sochi agreements were violated and Russia should bear responsibility for this. Apparently, it is Moscow supporting al-Qaeda-affiliated militants and sabotaging anti-terrorist operations in Idlib.

Until then, Turkish troops likely should register a trade union to defend their rights or at least get some benefits for their regular deployments near positions of al-Qaeda-like groups, just under the Syrian Army fire. Otherwise, the anonymous club of victims of the Assad aggression in the Turkish Army could become far too big.

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On January 28th, United States President Donald Trump accompanied by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and top advisor/son-in-law Jared Kushner unveiled the much anticipated so-called “Deal of the Century” also referred to as the “Mideast Peace Plan”. The deal greenlighted the annexation of Palestinian land, subjugation of Palestinians, and apartheid in Israel. Israeli politicians couldn’t wait to pounce on the opportunity to steal vast areas of occupied land along the Jordan valley. They did little to hide their enthusiasm as they announced that a vote on annexation would take place a few days later.

What became clear +even before the ink had dried is that behind the scam of the century was the normalization of Israel’s apartheid in Palestine. The deal was praised by Israel as the opportunity of a lifetime and outright rejected by Palestinian politicians including President Mahmoud Abbas.

Just days after the deal was announced, plans were made to vote on annexing parts of the West Bank, which are sites of Israeli settlements, and seen by a number of countries as illegal Israeli occupation that defies international law and United Nations Charters, but then that vote was postponed. Almost two weeks later as word spread that another vote might be on the horizon ahead of the March 2nd election, Washington decided to halt Netanyahu’s progress just temporarily causing him to backtrack on his plan for immediate annexation of the West bank. Netanyahu mentioned on Saturday that mapping of the region was underway.

David Friedman, the Trump administration’s Ambassador to Israel is not only one of the masterminds behind the annexation plan but has historically supported illegal colonial settlements.  On Sunday, he tweeted warning Israeli politicians against taking any unilateral steps which could endanger the Plan and American recognition. Of course, Israeli Prime Minister took the cue very seriously and knowing that the US’s blessing is of utmost importance stressed to both his fans and critics that they have waited for this opportunity since 1967 and won’t jeopardize things by being impatient.

Friedman tweeted the following on Sunday February 9th, “President Trump’s Vision for Peace is the product of more than three years of close consultations among the President, PM Netanyahu and their respective senior staff. As we have stated, the application of Israeli law to the territory which the Plan provides to be part of Israel is subject to the completion of a mapping process by a joint Israeli-American committee.”  He added “Any unilateral action in advance of the completion of the committee process endangers the Plan & American recognition.”

As if it wasn’t already crystal-clear that the steal of the century was never ever a legitimate deal between Israeli’s and Palestinians nor a deal that Palestinians would ever be able to consider let alone agree to, Friedman’s tweet drives home the message loud and clear. Palestinians were neither consulted, nor will they be part of the mapping process.

Amidst widespread condemnation and what many countries consider a violation of international law, steps are being taken to pave the way for the annexation of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land captured during the 1967 war.  Netanyahu’s focus right now is on winning a fourth consecutive term in office and taking drastic measures could help win him the election. It’s probably also a good distraction from the series of corruption charges he is facing.

Palestinian authorities have adamantly rejected Washington’s supposed peace plan and are against any unilateral steps being taken whether it’s now or after the election that violate the 1967 Palestinian map borders. Israel tries to appeal to the masses by citing security, biblical, and historic ties to the land on which their settlements are built and Palestinians refuse to accept the theft of more of their ancestral lands.

Many Israeli’s on Twitter didn’t appreciate Friedman’s tweets; some were saying that the United States shouldn’t interfere in Israel’s internal affairs. The irony of how Israel has hijacked US Middle Eastern policies seems to go over their heads. They certainly appreciate how Trump and Kushner’s biased pro-Israeli “Deal of the Century” greenlights the subjugation of Palestinians and the illegal annexation of Palestinian-claimed land but they don’t want Washington involved in implementation or to set any guidelines on how quickly they can expand their reign of terror over Palestinians and their land.

The only reason why Israel is able to continue to override international law and make unilateral declarations of statehood and persist with its terror campaigns at the hands of its Jewish militias, all while ethnically cleansing and massacring countless Palestinians is because of its relationship with Washington and many nations around the world turning a blind eye. Due to a lack of defined borders and the absence of accountability, Israel plans to annex East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights of Syria, and soon swathes of land in the West Bank.

The bottom line is peace cannot be achieved without justice and the recognition of Palestinian human and political rights, solely by Israeli authorities and political figures. Mutual recognition, Palestinian freedom of movement and Palestinian right of return, borders, security, water rights, control of Jerusalem are all part of the decades long conflict. A democratic state can only exist in historical Palestine if Muslims, Jews, Christians, etc. live in harmony with equal rights.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Sarah Abed is an independent journalist and analyst.

Featured image: Official White House Photo by Shealah D. Craighead

The uprising across Canada in support of Wet’suwet’en First Nation land defenders shows no sign of stopping. As of February 11, ports, bridges, rail lines, highways and roads have been blockaded across much of the country by solidarity protesters, who have also occupied the offices of politicians and at least one bank.

These actions were prompted by the RCMP’s invasion of Wet’suwet’en territory on February 5, after which they began arresting Indigenous members opposed to the 670 kilometers (416-mile), $6.2 billion Coastal GasLink pipeline being constructed on their unceded territory in B.C.

The Wet’suwet’en have never signed a treaty and in 1997 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that they hold “Aboriginal title” to the land on which the pipeline is being built.

The Coastal GasLink pipeline will carry fracked natural gas from northeastern B.C. to Kitimat, B.C., where a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal is being built by LNG Canada – a partnership of Shell, Petronas, PetroChina, Mitsubishi, and Korean Gas.

While protesters have rightly condemned the RCMP actions, they (and the corporate media) have largely overlooked the role of a major player in this whole debacle: Wall Street titan Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., better known as KKR.

Mega-Rich Titan

On December 26, 2019 KKR announced the signing of a “definitive agreement” to acquire – along with Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo) – a 65 percent equity interest in the Coastal GasLink Pipeline Project from TC Energy.

Only days later, on December 31, a B.C. Supreme Court judge extended an injunction to stop Wet’suwet’en members from blocking access to Coastal GasLink’s work camp. The injunction will reportedly be operative until the pipeline project is completed.

KKR is mega-rich, even by Wall Street standards. It has US$208 billion in assets under management and US$153 billion in fee-paying assets under management. [1] AIMCo has $108.2 billion in assets that it manages on behalf of 31 Alberta pension, endowment and government funds. [2]

KKR is what is now called a “private equity” firm – a rebranding of what used to be called “leveraged buyout firms,” which pump money into struggling companies and then re-sell them for major profits. In 2014, KKR opened an office in Calgary with a $2 billion fund to find Canadian energy investments, especially in unconventional oil and gas projects.

In its December 26, 2019 press release, KKR’s Brandon Freiman stated that “Coastal GasLink represents our third investment in infrastructure supporting Canada’s natural gas industry.”

When contacted, KKR’s media office told me that the “other projects Brandon was referring to in his quote are Veresen Midstream and SemCams Midstream.”

Buying Up Midstream

In oil-industry parlance, midstream refers to the equipment and pipelines that transport oil and gas from “upstream” production facilities to the “downstream” users such as refineries or LNG terminals.

Shortly after KKR set up its Calgary office, in December 2014 Encana Corp. sold its natural gas pipeline and processing assets in Western Canada’s Montney region to Veresen Inc. and KKR for $412 million. The deal allowed Encana to concentrate on drilling and fracking (“upstream”), while Veresen Midstream LP handles transportation and expansion of infrastructure. The assets sold in this deal “comprise those in the Dawson, B.C. area operated by Encana independently and in a partnership it has with Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp.” [3] At about the same time, the partnership committed to invest $5 billion of new midstream expansion in the Montney region.

By October 2015, that expansion included Veresen’s announcement of approval of the $860 million Sunrise Gas Plant, which can process 400 million cubic feet per day. Located near Dawson Creek, the Sunrise Gas Plant has been described as “the largest gas plant to be commissioned in western Canada in the last 30 years,” with Veresen Midstream’s President and CEO David Fitzpatrick stating that his company’s “footprint in the Montney will grow substantially.” [4]

KKR also entered into a joint venture with Energy Transfer on SemCams Midstream, which owns and operates six gas processing plants and 700 miles of natural gas pipelines in the Montney and Duvernay areas of Western Canada.

You may recall that Energy Transfer is the company involved in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests of 2016, when NoDAPL indigenous protesters from the Standing Rock reservation in the U.S. were met with severe corporate and state-supported opposition.

So KKR not only has a primary position in the midstream natural gas industry of Western Canada, it also has scandalously partnered with a company well-versed in stopping indigenous protests.

Greenwashing

Equally odious, in 2007 KKR teamed up with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) on something called the Green Portfolio Program through which participating companies could “develop eco-beneficial products and services and develop ways to grow revenue through environmental improvements.” [5]

That decade-long greenwashing effort has especially been useful for KKR’s financial investment in fracking. In 2012, Forbes magazine (not known for its radical environmentalism) singled out KKR in a piece called “Guess Who’s Fueling the Fracking Boom?”, revealing how KKR has been pumping money into expanded fracking by upstream drillers, and then flipping the companies in sales deals that bring billions in profits to KKR. [6]

Perhaps not surprisingly, KKR Global Institute’s Chair is David Petraeus, the former Director of the CIA, who has wholeheartedly endorsed fracking. [7]

In the KKR Global Institute’s latest report (issued on January 15, 2020), the company touts itself for partnering “with companies that mitigate climate change, enhance resilient development [and] protect water quality … As a result, ‘doing well by doing good’ remains a growing investment theme in KKR in 2020.” [8]

LNG Canada in Kitimat, where the Coastal GasLink pipeline will bring the fracked natural gas, has claimed that it will be the lowest carbon-emitting LNG plant in the world, and that LNG exports will substitute for dirtier fuels like coal. But critics such as the Pembina Institute and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives have seriously questioned this notion of LNG as a so-called “bridge fuel” to a low-carbon future, especially because of the methane leaks implicit in upstream, midstream and downstream processes. In terms of the climate emergency, methane is dozens of times more polluting than CO2.

Indeed, The Georgia Straight recently highlighted a statement by Stanford University professor Mark Z. Jacobson about methane leaks from an ExxonMobil fracking site: “Next time some paid liar in the fossil fuel industry insists fracked gas is helping solve the climate crisis, remind them a single @exxonmobil fracking site ‘leaked more methane in 20 days than all but 3 European nations over an entire year’.” [9]

Paid Liars

Wall Street’s KKR private equity titan appears to be packed with some very well-paid liars, who croon about “doing well by doing good” while invading Wet’suwet’en territory with their Coastal GasLink project and watching while the RCMP carry out the arrests. It’s time the focus should be placed on them.

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Joyce Nelson is the author of seven books. She can be reached through www.joycenelson.ca

Notes

[1] Charlie Smith, “Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs reject ruling by B.C. Supreme Court judge to extend Coastal GasLink Pipeline injunction,” The Georgia Straight, December 31, 2019.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Jeffrey Jones, “Encana sells midstream assets to Veresen, KKR,” The Globe and Mail, December 23, 2014.

[4] Veresen Inc. press release, “Veresen Announces Approval of the $860 Million Sunrise Gas Plant,” October 6, 2015.

[5] Elizabeth Seeger, “Environmental Innovation: A Journey with No Destination,” kkr.com, December 21, 2016.

[6] Halah Touryalal, “Guess Who’s Fueling the Fracking Boom?” Forbes, October 3, 2012.

[7] Steve Horn, “Revealed: Gen. David Petraeus’ Course Syllabus Features ‘Frackademia’ Readings,” Huffington Post, July 19, 2013.

[8] Henry H. McVey, “Play Your Game: Insights Global Macro Trends,” KKR Global Institute, January 2020.

[9] Quoted in Charlie Smith, “TC Energy agrees to sell 65 percent interest in Coastal GasLink pipeline project to KKR and AIMCo,” The Georgia Straight, December 26, 2019.

Featured image: Police officers stand on the road after clearing the intersection of protesters that were blocking an entrance to the port during a demonstration in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs opposed to construction of a natural gas pipeline across their traditional territories, in Vancouver, on Monday February 10, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

The Iranian revolution, which took place 41 years ago this week, was not the only seismic event to shake the Gulf and the Middle East that year.

In November 1979, Juhayman al-Otaibi, a former corporal in the Saudi National Guard, seized the Ka’aba in Mecca with a Salafi armed group proclaiming the arrival of al-Mahdi, the redeemer of Islam whose appearance, according to the hadith (Prophet’s sayings), heralds the Day of Judgment, and calling for the overthrow of the House of Saud.

A traumatic event

As Al Jazeera TV channel reported recently, al-Otaibi was dislodged from the Grand Mosque with extreme bloodshed and only with the use of French mercenaries. The channel uncovered French defence ministry documents entitled “Mecca Mission” which revealed the kingdom’s thanks for the liberation of the mosque.

Contradicting the official Saudi account that the operation resulted in the deaths of only 300, of whom 26 were pilgrims, the French commander Paul Barrell was horrified by the massacre that unfolded. He said 5000 were killed, 3000 of them pilgrims who were there at the time of the seizure.

The kingdom’s current, self-styled moderniser Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman dates the kingdom’s swerve toward state-sponsored ultraconservative Wahabbism to that traumatic event. Khaled, the Saudi king at the time, did indeed respond to the attack by implementing a stricter version of Islamic law and giving scholars and religious police more power.

However, the House of Saud’s dependence on conservative religious scholars for their legitimacy predates by far that attack as the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, whose killing Mohammed bin Salman ordered, never tired of saying.

Different paths 

Both the revolution and the mosque attack had profound effects on the course Iran and Saudi Arabia would take over the next four decades. With the Islamic Revolution, which was a real revolution, not initially exclusively Islamic, the US lost the Shah of Iran, its number one policeman in the region. All its military bases, and radar stations monitoring the Soviet Union from its vulnerable southern flank, disappeared in a stroke.

In shaking off the Shah and with him the western yoke, Iran became a truly independent nation. Iran’s independence was forged with extreme suffering. In an eight year war against Iraq, launched a year later, it lost an estimated 750,000 lives repelling Saddam Hussein’s invasion of the oil-producing province of Khuzestan and the capture of Khorramshahr.

Saddam was backed, it is all too often forgotten, by the US following a visit by US President Ronald Reagan’s envoy Donald Rumsfeld, and financed by Saudi Arabia.

A chlorine plant, Fallujah 2, which, the US was later to say, formed an essential part of Saddam’s chemical warfare arsenal, was built by Britain in 1985. That is when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister.

As The Guardian’s David Leigh reported:

“Senior (UK) officials recorded in writing that Saddam Hussein was actively gassing his opponents and that there was a ‘strong possibility’ that the chlorine plant was intended by the Iraqis to make mustard gas. At the time, Saddam was known to be gassing Iranian troops in their thousands in the Iran-Iraq war.”

Saudi Arabia, however, went the opposite way. From the use of US pilots to bomb the Grand Mosque in Mecca, and French mercenaries to liberate it, the kingdom has become ever more dependent on foreign troops and nationals for its security.

According to the orthodox understanding of Islam, non-Muslims are banned from the most sacred place, the Ka’aba in Mecca. And yet the al-Saud were so helpless, they swept this religious injunction under the carpet to regain control over their own kingdom. The year 1979 did not lead to any rethink in the kingdom to be more independent and in charge of its own destiny.

Ever since, history has repeated itself. When Iranian-built drones and cruise missiles attacked two key Aramco facilities last year, Saudi Arabia could not defend itself. The biggest weapons’ buying spree, which the crown prince had just undertaken in Trump’s America, was of no use.

The guarded secrets

The degree to which Saudi Arabia depends on foreign powers for its strategic defence is a state secret in the country and beyond.

Saudi dependency on foreign military support keeps on deepening. The number of British technicians keeping Saudi jets flying in Yemen is a secret as are the Pakistani pilots flying them.

Just occasionally, the true extent of British military support for the Saudi kingdom is let slip, as when an advert appeared in July last year for a project manager for the Saudi Arabia National Guard Communications Project (SANGCOM).

The existence of SANGCOM is known. Britain and Saudi Arabia signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) 40 years ago, but its budget and its extent was a closely guarded secret, until the advert blurted it out. “The UK MOD SANGCOM Project Team is responsible for the delivery of a £2bn programme to modernise the Saudi Arabian National Guard’s communications network.”

Iran, in contrast, under near continuous sanctions and isolation from the western banking system, has developed the embryo of a nuclear industry, its own economy, its own arms industry, its own expeditionary force, al-Quds brigade of the Revolutionary Guards, and, as at least 100 US soldiers diagnosed with traumatic brain injury found out, its own ballistic missiles accurate within 25 metres.

No lessons learned

There are no signs that Saudi Arabia has learned the lessons of its dependence on foreign powers to protect it in the last 40 years. Rather, following the experience of the Aramco attack, the conclusions the kingdom has reached push it further into Israel’s arms, which is increasingly playing the role of US surrogate around the Arab world.

It is through Israel that both Sudan and Morocco are seeking favours from Washington, the former for sanctions relief, the latter for trying to get the US to adopt its position on the Western Sahara.

Israel’s role as the DC portal for its new-found Sunni Arab allies is not cost free. The price of the service it provides, apart from its own arms and cyber warfare contracts, is membership of a new Sunni Arab club: the creation of a regional military alliance against Iran.

The alliance against Tehran

The assemblance of a Sunni military alliance is, I believe, the central strategic purpose of Trump’s deal of the century, and the reason why efforts, which I first revealed over a year ago, are continuing to stage a Camp David style handshake between Mohammed bin Salman and the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Thus it was that the assassination of Qassem Soleimani – a targeted killing which previous US presidents had vetoed – was the culmination of a series of strikes against Iranian-backed militias, which started with the use of Israeli drones against the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMUs) in Iraq, launched from Kurdish controlled bases in Northern Syria.

Soleimani’s killing has prompted a series of bellicose speeches in Washington framing Iran as the disrupter in chief not just to regional stability but of the world economy too.

Former British prime minister Tony Blair, whose views on the Middle East continue to be listened to by the think tanks of DC with a respect he has long since lost at home, told the Council on Foreign Relations:

 “Were it not the arm of the Iranian state, there is little doubt that it [the IRGC] would be treated in the same way as al-Qaida or any of the other myriad of Sunni terrorists non-state actors. That’s why we advocate that countries follow the example of the United States and designate it as such.”

He went on:

“The internal IRGC documents which we analyzed are explicit. The organization is committed to ideological political training of recruits. They proclaim an existential threat to Shiism from Sunni Arabs, Zionists, Western actors. They mandate on religious grounds the expansion of the revolution to other nations. They authorize the killing of Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians, and pressure to make them give up their devious beliefs. And they share the same litany of extremist views on social issues, including the status of women, hostility to gay people, and the sanctity of their image of Islamic society.”

MP and former Tory defence minister Liam Fox continued the attempt to portray Iran as a global problem in a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He said:

“Iran is now replacing the Arab Israeli conflict as the primary cause of instability in the Middle East.”

Preserving hegemony

This claim neatly establishes the link between the intentioned demise of the Palestinian cause, with the disappearance of any possibility of a functioning Palestinian state, and the rise of a new universal foe that western military alliances so desperately need for their own survival.

There is huge disquiet in the Arab world at the creation of an ideologically based western jihad against Iran. That disquiet is not just felt in the Arab street, but among elites as well. The malign influence of the Saudi-Israeli alliance against Tehran is felt keenly across the still-to-be shattered Arab world, in Iraq, Jordan and Egypt.

European governments sit on the sidelines watching the JCPOA (the Iran nuclear deal), the single most effective way of ensuring that the reformists in Iran survive, crumble under the unremitting hostility of this new party of war.

This fresh neo-conservative push to engineer an all out confrontation with Iran has to be stopped before untold destruction is wreaked in the name of preserving western hegemony over this region at any price – dictatorship, apartheid, the destruction of a Palestinian homeland.

The only way peace and sanity will return to this region is by regional co-operation between neighbours, who are unimpeded by, and free from, outside interference.

Independent decision-making is key to the restoration of trust and neighbourly relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran – which is exactly why the US and Israel are working so hard to stop them.

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David Hearst is the editor in chief of Middle East Eye. He left The Guardian as its chief foreign leader writer. In a career spanning 29 years, he covered the Brighton bomb, the miner’s strike, the loyalist backlash in the wake of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in Northern Ireland, the first conflicts in the breakup of the former Yugoslavia in Slovenia and Croatia, the end of the Soviet Union, Chechnya, and the bushfire wars that accompanied it. He charted Boris Yeltsin’s moral and physical decline and the conditions which created the rise of Putin. After Ireland, he was appointed Europe correspondent for Guardian Europe, then joined the Moscow bureau in 1992, before becoming bureau chief in 1994. He left Russia in 1997 to join the foreign desk, became European editor and then associate foreign editor. He joined The Guardian from The Scotsman, where he worked as education correspondent.

The Philippines officially announced the ending of the National Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the United States. The denial of the U.S. military’s presence will give China a chance to expand militarization of the South China Sea and severely weaken the U.S. positioning in Southeast Asia. The VFA, signed in 1998, established the legal status for U.S. warships, aircraft and soldiers to be stationed in the Philippines.

Philippine Secretary of State Teddy Locsin Jr. signed and sent to the US Government the same day an affirmation of Manila’s official cancellation of the agreement, saying on Twitter:

“The Deputy Chief of Mission of the Embassy of the United States has received the notice of termination of the Visiting Forces Agreement. As a legal courtesy there will be no further factual announcements following this self-explanatory development.”

According to presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo, the agreement termination will take effect 180 days from today, adding that

“It’s time we take care of ourselves. We will strengthen our defenses ourselves and not rely on any other country.”

Since Duterte came to power in 2016, he has repeatedly referred to severing ties with the U.S. while pursuing closer ties with non-traditional allies like Russia and China. The leader openly expressed his frustration with Washington when several U.S. officials made comments about his war on drugs. The discord was heightened when the U.S. Senate passed a resolution intended to punish Filipino officials involved in the drug war. Washington also was critical of the arrest of Senator Leila De Lima, a human rights activist and critic of the Duterte administration, who herself was arrested for drug-related allegations.

Senator Ronald Dela Rosa, who led the police force from 2016 to 2018, said the U.S. Embassy did not explain why his visa was cancelled but thought it was related to those murdered under his supervision. Duterte ordered an end to the military treaty after the U.S. cancelled the visas of Dela Rosa, who also took part in leading the war on drugs in the Philippines.

The cancellation of the VFA will benefit China mostly. The VFA has helped prevent China from strengthening construction and militarization of the West Coast Shoal since 2016. China urgently prepared to renovate and militarize this area before the decision of the International Court of Arbitration on the South China Sea sovereignty dispute was issued in July 2016. It was the VFA that prevented the conversion of Scarborough Shoal into a Chinese artificial island. The presence of the U.S. military’s A-10 Warthogs and F/A-18 fighters caused China to abandon the Scarborough idea.

Despite this, China completed construction structures on seven reefs and the Spratly Islands. The acquisition of Scarborough Shoal will give them greater control over the disputed waters in the South China Sea. The Chinese side took control of Scarborough from the Philippines in a tension between the two ships in 2012. Since then, China has maintained a military presence in the shoal with numerous maritime forces and coast guard vessels. It was China’s occupation of Scarborough that prompted the Philippine government to bring the matter to international court.

China asserts that Beijing has sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea, including the continental shelves of countries that share the same sovereignty claims on strategic maritime routes in the South China Sea, despite the Court’s ruling. The 2016 Permanent Arbitration denied and nullified all of China’s claims. After China conducted reclamation in the Spratlys and conducted illegal militarization, the U.S. became clear about the real danger posed by Beijing in the region against other regional states.

The three major Chinese artificial islands are just reef and outposts, almost impossible to attack.

The Philippines’ loss of the VFA will give China a chance to carry out its long-term goal. When the VFA is cancelled, China can completely eliminate other countries from the South China Sea militarily if it can deploy troops, build outposts and conduct militarization at all the locations of all these military bases.

Philippine Foreign Minister Teodoro Locsin Jr. earlier also emphasized that the regular presence of U.S. military forces prevented China from taking drastic actions in waters to the west of the Philippines. Does this now mean that Duterte will continue his path moving closer to China? There are still the major issues of dividing the South China Sea equitably that prevents a full alliance between Beijing and Manila despite Duterte’s hostility to Washington. However, Duterte’s move has ensured that the Philippines has certainly opened the way for the South China Sea to be redrawn.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.

Is it health care?

Is it jobs?

Is it national security?

Is it global warming?

Or is it none of those but instead much deeper?

I shall here argue the latter.

To win is not merely to defeat “the enemy.” America now has lots of experience with winning battles, only to lose wars.

And, politically, Democrats in 2008 won the battle against the Republicans by placing Barack Obama into the White House. And what did he actually do? The first thing he did is immediately to terminate his campaigning for a public option as being part of his health-care plan, and the second thing he did was to appoint Wall Streeters to bail out Wall Street and also to virtually terminate prosecuting financial crimes.

Democrats won the battle, but lost the war.

In 2016, Democrats nominated the neoconservative Hillary Clinton in order to move the Party even farther to the right, only to find themselves winning California by the astronomical margin of 4,269,978 votes more than Trump received, and losing all other 49 states by the still-substantial margin of 1,405,002 votes to Hillary.

She would have become the President of the U.S. who was massively chosen by Californians, but losing to the entire rest of the nation. Democrats think that that would have been ‘democracy’? (Democrats predominantly don’t understand why the Constitution was written the way it is, and propose that ‘democracy’ would mean eliminating the Electoral College and going straight for a single nationwide popular-vote majority to appoint the U.S. President, which would have meant that America would have become ruled for four years by California’s choice — the very same state that had chosen the far-right original, Ronald Reagan, to lead it during 1967-74, and so we had President Reagan from 1980 to 1988. Partisan thinking tends to make suckers of voters, and conservatism always wins in that way, even if the Democratic Party’s version, called “liberalism” — the mixture of conservatism and progressivism — to distinguish it against progressivism, is the winner, against progressivism; against real democracy, which is neither conservative nor liberal, both of which are elitist.)

Right now, the “win at any cost” candidates are Bloomberg, Buttigieg, and Biden. They are the unapologetic Republicrats in this race to get the Democratic Party’s nomination. Elizabeth Warren is the sometimes-apologetic, sometimes unapologetic, Republicratic candidate. And Bernie Sanders is the unapologetic progressive in it. Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders in 2016 will worry “But will he beat Trump?” Regardless of whether they vote for Bloomberg or Buttigieg or Biden or Warren, they will choose to “lose the war”. They won’t even fight to win it, actually — that’s the reason why they will be voting for those candidates, as they did for Hillary in 2016.

The top issue for Democratic voters is whether they are in this to win the battle, or “to win the war” (quoting now contrasting reader-comments at one popular Democratic Party site on February 11th):

“In 2016 Bloomberg spent 12 million to help incumbent GOP Senator Pat Toomey. His opponent was Katie McGinty, who lost by a very narrow margin. If she had won, Brett Kavanaugh wouldn’t be on the Supreme Court. Take a look at Toomey’s right-wing policies and weep.” Alexandro Rocca, at Huffington Post.

But there’s also this, from a capitulationist, to win-at-any-cost (win the battle even though it will greatly increase the likelihood of losing the war):

“If Bloomberg can beat Trump, I’m all in.  Keeping my eye on the real goal, here.  What good is winning a debate if you lose the election?” Gregory Ramos at Huffington Post

Here is another way to put this same matter, of decision for Democratic Party voters:

The top issue for Democratic voters is actually whether the post-9/11, post police-state, totalitarian billionaires-controlled U.S. Government, needs to be replaced (a second American “revolution,” now, to restore at least the incomplete democracy that pre-existed 9/11), or, instead, needs to become ‘more bipartisan’? Though the phrasing here is different, the choice here is actually the same: either capitulate now (be ‘bipartisan’ in order to ‘defeat Trump’), or never stop fighting until we win the war to actually restore democracy to America.

And THAT is The Top Issue for Democratic Voters.

Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 because of the millions of stay-at-home Obama voters and even some Trump-over-Hillary Obama voters who refused to vote for the neocon and blatant Wall-Street-shill Hillary. It could happen again, and only the personal identity of the neocon and shill would be different. (As for Democrats who don’t understand what a neocon or shill even is, they’d do both the Party and the nation a favor by entirely avoiding to vote, at all, and letting the Party’s progressives take over the Party, so as to win the war, to restore democracy to America and advance it further in the progressive direction.)

This is a warning to the capitulationist ‘Democrats’, but it doesn’t originate from me; it originates from us (as that last link shows).

Joe Biden’s campaign self-destructed on February 11th, in his town hall at New Hampshire’s Mercer University, but do the ‘moderate Democrats’ now want to hand their mantle over to a late-comer to the contest such as Michael Bloomberg, who is untested by the prior year’s campaigning and now trying to buy his way through to the nomination by fooling enough people to vote against Bernie Sanders, with the help of the obviously corrupt DNC?

Or maybe the previous Wall Street favorite, Pete Buttigieg? Why don’t the ‘moderate Democrats’ just give up and quit trying to keep BOTH Parties in Wall Street’s grip? Do they really think that billionaires should control the U.S. Government? Or, will that now be The Top Issue, for Democratic Voters?

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Throughout nine years of preemptive US war in Syria, Turkey supported ISIS other jihadists, pretending otherwise.

Earlier in the war, Ankara colluded with ISIS in transporting, refining and selling stolen Syrian oil – Erdogan and other regime officials profiting hugely.

Evidence supplied by Kurdish sources in northern Syria showed “detailed invoices used by IS to calculate daily revenues from their oil fields and refineries, as well as the amount of oil extracted there,” adding:

“All the documents had Islamic State’s symbol at the top.” They showed ISIS “kept very professional records of their oil business.”

Syrians forced against their will to aid ISIS’ oil trade said “extracted oil was delivered to an oil refinery, where it was converted into gasoline, gas and other petroleum products.”

“Then the refined product was sold. (I)ntermediaries from Raqqa and Allepo arrived to pick up the oil and often mentioned Turkey.”

According to a captured ISIS jihadist at the time, “the reason why it was so easy for him to cross the Turkish border and join IS was, in part, due to the fact that Turkey also benefitted.”

Ankara let anti-Syria jihadists move freely cross-border between both countries, giving them safe haven in Turkey.

The Erdogan regime continues supporting these elements, using them to advance its revanchist aims in northern Syria.

The same goes for the US, NATO, Israel and the Saudis — on the side of the devil in stark contrast to Russia and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, aiding Damascus combat this scourge.

In response to significant advances on the ground in Idlib by Syrian forces, Turkey beefed up its illegal cross-border presence.

According to Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen television, the Erdogan regime sent scores of tanks, armored vehicles, other military equipment, and accompanying troops into northern Syria — to aid jihadists against Syrian forces.

On Monday, five Turkish soldiers were reported killed, others wounded by Syrian strikes on jihadists’ positions.

Southfront reported that al-Nusra terrorists in Idlib attacked Syrian forces, “supported by Turkish rocket and artillery strikes.” Retaliation by government troops resulted in Turkish casualties.

Ankara and jihadists its supports are aggressors, Syrian forces involved in defending their homeland, combatting the scourge of terrorist invaders supported by the US and Turkey.

Claims by the Erdogan regime of delivering “devastating blows” to Syria’s army in Idlib are dubious, no evidence presented to support them.

Besides significant earlier advances, government troops liberated the following villages on Monday: al-Qanati, Kafr Halab, Khirbat Jazraya and Miznaz — despite Turkish support for routed jihadists.

In talks with their Turkish counterparts, Russian diplomats are trying to keep things from developing into more serious clashes.

Ceasefires don’t work. Whenever declared, US/Turkish supported jihadists breach them straightaway — armed with heavy weapons supplied by these and other countries.

Greatly aided by Russian airpower, Damascus is determined to eliminate jihadists in Idlib, their last remaining stronghold in the country.

According to AMN News on Tuesday, government troops “surround(ed) a strategic Turkish…observation” post in Saraqib, Idlib — a former major jihadist stronghold in the country liberated last week.

A Syrian soldier was quoted saying: “All the observation points are completely surrounded by the Syrian Arab Army.”

“The Turks tried to withdraw from Tell Toqan towards Tavtanaz and Bab Al-hawa.”

AMN News said Syrian forces began “encircling Turkish observation posts (in) August 2019 (after) recaptur(ing)” jihadist-held areas.

Following Saraqib’s liberation, Turkey began beefing up its military presence in Idlib to aid jihadists combat government forces.

Last week, Russia’s UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia noted during a special Security Council session on Syria that whenever government forces achieve significant advances, these sessions are called for by the US and/or its imperial allies — urging ceasefire to halt Syrian liberating efforts, noting:

These “meetings are convened at the moment when terrorists in Syria are under threat, and the Syrian government reinstalls control over its national territory.”

“Let me remind that those are terrorists recognized as such by the Security Council.”

“We talk about sovereign territory of Syria and about militants that it is the right and duty of any government to fight with.”

“In December 2019 (and) January 2020, (US/Turkish supported jihadists) launched over 1,400 attacks” on  government forces and residential areas, “us(ing) tanks, machine guns, mortar and artillery bombardments” — weapons supplied by the US, other Western countries and Turkey.

Nebenzia quoted Pompeo saying: The Trump regime “condemns the continued, unjustifiable, and ruthless assaults on the people of Idlib by (Syria), Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah.”

“Let me clarify,” said Nebenzia. “Idlib is not a country. It is Syria’s governorate…Syrian nationals” held hostage by terrorists as human shields.

Iranian military advisors are in Syria, not frontline combat troops.

The US, Britain, France, Turkey, Israel, the Saudis, and their allies actively support anti-Syria jihadists.

Government troops, Russia, and Hezbollah forces are committed to defeating them.

Preserving and protecting Syrian sovereignty and territorial integrity depends on liberating Idlib and areas controlled by US and Turkish occupiers.

Enemies of peace and stability, their presence in Syria represents a flagrant UN Charter breach — what establishment media never explain, supporting what demands denunciation.

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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.

Less than 150 miles from China’s south-eastern coast lies Taiwan, a mountainous and volcanic island which is about a third the size of Cuba. Yet with 23 million people, Taiwan has twice the population of its Caribbean counterpart. From the 1950s until the present moment, Taiwan has been a crucial piece in the Pentagon’s chess game of hemming China in along its coast, and limiting Beijing’s oxygen supply.

China constitutes America’s principal rival in the international arena today. Washington has increasingly surrounded its Chinese adversary with bases, troops and territories controlled by the United States in east Asia and the Pacific – such as the US client allies of Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, along with other islands dominated by US military power like Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and indeed Taiwan.

Despite strained relations with the Philippines under their unpredictable and brutal leader Rodrigo Duterte (1), Washington retains a considerable foothold on Filipino soil, with annual military exercises involving well over a thousand US marines having taken place as recently as October 2019.

To Beijing, Taiwan is of high importance. Its close proximity to the Chinese mainland is similar again to that of Cuba in relation to America. It is normal that a major power like China is concerned regarding what unfolds inside or near its boundaries. Taiwan is a relatively prosperous and diverse area, one which the Chinese government would wish dearly to have under its auspices, therefore dislodging it from US control. In January 2019, president Xi Jinping said that Taiwan “must and will be reunited” with China, but such an outcome seems a slim possibility in the foreseeable future.

Taiwan is positioned within 500 miles of two of China’s most affluent and influential places, Shanghai and Hong Kong, both of which are situated in south-eastern China.

The Financial Times erroneously describes Taiwan as a “de facto independent island” (2). For over 60 years, Washington has utilised Taiwan as a proxy region dating to the two-term presidency of General Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961). Between 1957 and 1958, the Eisenhower administration began shipping MGM-1 Matador cruise missiles to Taiwan in great secrecy, soon furnished with nuclear warheads, all virtually unknown to the Taiwanese and Chinese populaces.

From January 1958, these Matador missiles on Taiwan were being armed with Mark 5 nuclear bombs with a destructive force ranging from 6 to 120 kilotons, up to eight times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic weapon.

By the end of Eisenhower’s tenure in 1961, there were around a dozen Matador nuclear-armed missiles on Taiwan, within reach not only of Shanghai and Hong Kong but also Guangzhou, a city then with over a million inhabitants, and which is today China’s fifth most populated urban centre. Hong Kong would surely not have been on the target list, as at the time it was a British dependency; but Guangzhou, like Shanghai, is positioned less than 500 miles from Taiwan.

The range of a Matador cruise missile consisted of a maximum 600 miles, and it was a weapon which flew at almost the speed of sound, meaning – in the event of a planned US nuclear assault – Shanghai and Guangzhou would presumably have been among the first Chinese cities to face destruction, due to the ongoing presence of nuclear missiles in Taiwan.

The Matador was the first American surface-to-surface cruise missile ever built. US nuclear weapons pointed towards China remained on Taiwanese soil for over 15 years, through the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations, before they were at last removed in 1975. (3)

President Eisenhower, as early as December 1954, had dispatched the planet’s largest ship to the Taiwan Strait, the U.S.S. Midway, America’s 300-plus metre long, nuclear-armed aircraft carrier – as a response to a conflict which broke out between US-backed groups and Beijing’s forces, called “the First Taiwan Strait crisis” (September 1954 to May 1955), also known as the First Quemoy crisis, among other names. This was all occurring astride China’s south-eastern frontiers, and nowhere near US shorelines.

During the skirmishes, in which nearly a thousand Chinese were killed, the Eisenhower government threatened to attack China with nuclear bombs as “a last resort”. This was communicated to Mao Zedong in separate statements and moves.

In the opinion of Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, these nuclear threats upon China led to “the negotiated resolution of the crisis” (4). As tensions were rising, on 12 September 1954 the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, a senior military body advising the president, recommended the nuclear option against China. (5)

The Chinese nation was previously the subject of US nuclear attack warnings, as Eisenhower sent secret atomic threats to Beijing in order “to maintain a settlement in Korea in 1953”, at the Korean War’s conclusion. (6)

In the mid-1950s, China lacked a primary deterrent to US nuclear strikes, as Beijing did not develop atomic weapons until October 1964. US government threats to unleash nuclear warfare on China during the First Taiwan Strait Crisis, may have been the spark that finally ignited Mao Zedong’s decision, in January 1955, to begin his country’s nuclear weapons program, with China facing possible annihilation.

Even then, the CIA knew six months in advance – by April 1964 – that the Chinese were soon to test their first atomic bomb, thanks to the spy activities carried out by a CIA-trained Tibetan guerrilla, unnamed; who decades later was interviewed by US journalist Thomas Laird, corroborating the story. CIA sources highlight that this Tibetan guerrilla’s covert operations comprised “some of the most valuable intelligence of the entire Cold War”. (7)

Sailing around Taiwanese shores, the U.S.S. Midway was carrying Mark 8 nuclear bombs, one of which has a yield of 25 to 30 kilotons, more powerful than either the Hiroshima (15 kilotons) or Nagasaki bombs (21 kilotons).

The U.S.S. Midway had a prior history of holding stashes of nuclear weapons aboard; and in late 1952, she was cruising through Mediterranean waters with Mark 7 nuclear bombs on her deck, ranging in firepower from 8 kilotons to 61 kilotons.

Across the decades, successive US governments have sold tens of billions worth of military hardware to Taiwan. In 1993 for instance, president Bill Clinton dispatched 200 Patriot missiles and related equipment to Taiwan (8). This on its own was a serious provocation of Beijing, and one can imagine the reaction were the Chinese government to send sophisticated missile systems to Cuba. It is merely the tip of the iceberg, however.

During two terms in office ending in 2001, Clinton sold an array of war materiel to Taiwan, including torpedoes, other missile types, helicopters, tanks and warships, worth billions of dollars.

In more recent times, selling of arms to Taiwan under president Barack Obama was considerable too, including 60 Black Hawk helicopters at a total price of $3 billion in 2010. Another 114 Patriot missile systems were shipped there by the Obama administration, costing almost $3 billion. Obama furthermore sold Taiwan high-tech guided missiles, Assault Amphibious Vehicles (AAVs), Browning Machine Guns, along with the continuation of a pilot training program and logistics support to Taiwanese forces, among other things.

Supplies of US military equipment to Taiwan are increasing under president Donald Trump. His cabinet has sold 66 F-16 fighter aircraft to the island, at a significant $8 billion. Trump has moreover sent tanks to Taiwan, along with a collection of expensive missiles and torpedoes accompanied with spare parts for other equipment. Taiwan was also compelled in recent months to buy billions of dollars worth of US beef, corn and soybeans. This is the “de facto independent island” that the Financial Times informs its readers about.

Taiwan continues to be governed by a US-friendly outfit, led by Tsai Ing-wen, who received much of her third level education in New York and London. President Tsai pursues close relations with the Americans, and late last year she called for a “bilateral trade agreement” between Taiwan and America. She has met numerous US officials, including John McCain, who she can be seen smiling with in images shot during the summer of 2016.

Reacting to McCain’s death 18 months ago, president Tsai described him as “a friend and a fighter” who “forever strived for a more peaceful and prosperous world”. In reality, McCain was “a notorious warmonger and lobbyist” that “always defended the interests of the international arms dealers”, as noted by the Brazilian historian Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira. (9)

Of the US Matador missile itself, which was in service from 1952 to 1962, its creation was made possible through work done by figures like Wernher von Braun, a Prussian-born rocket engineer and former SS Major. Von Braun was an ingenious but unscrupulous scientist flown covertly to the United States on 20 September 1945, accompanied with eventually another 1,600 other Nazi scientists, engineers and technicians (“Operation Paperclip”), some of whom had been high-ranking members of the Nazi Party.

Von Braun was in the past summoned by Hitler for discussions on repeated occasions, and (in civilian clothing) he was photographed in Hitler’s presence as early as the spring of 1934, along with many other German technicians and military personnel (10). Von Braun was later in the company of and photographed multiple times with US presidents Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

During talks with Hitler in early 1943 Von Braun informed the dictator that, in the near future, rockets would be able to fly into outer space and also to the moon. It was an opinion which Hitler agreed with, when he said afterwards of his meeting with Von Braun that,

“This young scholar has produced a rocket that upsets all known ballistic laws… We will have Von Braun to thank for the uncovering of many great secrets”. (11)

During the second half of World War II, Von Braun performed a central role in developing the V-1 flying bomb (which killed over 6,000 Londoners), and that was the world’s first cruise missile, of which the US Matador’s design was based on.

Von Braun likewise had a leading part in formulating the V-2 rocket, mankind’s first long-range guided ballistic missile, which up to early 1945 had killed almost 3,000 London residents. By the time Von Braun was relocated to America, one could argue that the blood of thousands of British civilians was partly on his hands, along with that of his colleagues. The first victims in London of the V-2 rocket, for example, were a three-year-old girl and a 63-year-old woman who were killed on 8 September 1944. US government officials had classed Von Braun as “a potential security threat” in the early days. (12)

It should be noted that much of the landmark technology on display in the human world over the past seven decades, from ballistic and cruise missiles to jet aircraft, can be traced to the work of former Nazi scientists such as Von Braun, Arthur Rudolph and Kurt Debus, with the Wehrmacht providing key assistance through figures like Walter Dornberger.

Rudolph (a Nazi Party member since 1931) and Debus (a Nazi Party and SS member), both rocket scientists, were reported to be “ardent Nazis”, and many of these men were acquainted personally with Hitler. The Nazi leader took an active interest in scientific and technological developments, particularly after the defeat at Stalingrad.

As with Von Braun – Rudolph, Rebus and Dornberger were secreted to the United States after the war, in order to recommence the work they had begun under Hitler.

Dornberger, a German Major-General, was already speaking of “space travel” in early October 1942, long before the
Americans were aware that such exploration could be possible. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was not established until July 1958.

In April 1961 the Soviets launched the first human being into space, Yuri Gagarin; and eight years later American astronauts landed on the moon, in the latter case largely because of Von Braun’s expertise. According to the CIA website, altogether 120 former Nazi scientists, engineers and technicians – led by Von Braun – developed the Saturn V launch vehicle, which carried all Apollo Lunar missions, beginning with Apollo 11 in July 1969, culminating in Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon. (13)

It is unlikely that much of these uncomfortable realities receive mention in Western state-approved history books and school texts. Big budget Hollywood films glorifying US space travel have, in similar fashion, airbrushed from history Von Braun and other former Nazi scientists whose discoveries were undeniably pivotal.

The first jet-powered airplane in the world was the Messerschmitt Me-262, with test flights beginning in April 1941, before its introduction three years later. Hitler was directly involved in operational plans for the Me-262, and he initially wanted it to be used as a ground attack or bomber aircraft.

After 1945, both the United States and Soviet Russia copied the Nazis’ jet aircraft designs from downed Me-262 aircraft they captured (14). At war’s end, 300 train-car loads of V-2 rocket parts were shipped to America. It was piracy, on a grand scale.

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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 Marjorie Cohn, “Tribunal Declares Trump and Duterte Guilty Of Crimes Against Humanity”, Truthout, 15 March 2019, https://truthout.org/articles/tribunal-declares-trump-and-duterte-guilty-of-crimes-against-humanity/

2 Kathrin Hille, Tom Mitchell, “Taiwan election result leaves China’s Xi Jinping with few options”, Financial Times, 12 January 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/82df5ac6-3506-11ea-a6d3-9a26f8c3cba4

3 Robert S. Norris, William M. Arkin, William Burr, “Where they were [US nuclear weapons]”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 1999, https://www.archives.gov/files/declassification/pidb/meetings/where-they-were.pdf

4 Daniel Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine, (Bloomsbury Publishing; UK ed. edition, 7 Dec. 2017)

5 Bruce A. Elleman, High Seas Buffer: The Taiwan Patrol Force, 1950-1979, (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 7 Aug. 2012) p. 39

6 Daniel Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine, (Bloomsbury Publishing; UK ed. edition, 7 Dec. 2017)

7 Thomas Laird, Into Tibet, The CIA’s First Atomic Spy and His Secret Expedition to Lhasa (Grove Press; First Trade Paper edition, 13 Mar. 2003) preface, XV

8 Tyler Marshall, “Taiwan Test-Fires 3 U.S. Patriot Missiles”, Los Angeles Times, 21 June 2001, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-jun-21-mn-12882-story.html

9 Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The World Disorder: US Hegemony, Proxy Wars, Terrorism and Humanitarian Catastrophes (Springer; 1st ed. 2019 edition, 4 Feb. 2019) p. 202

10 Wernher von Braun, “Im Dienste von Nazis und NASA”, BR24 Nachrichten, 19 January 2018, https://www.br.de/themen/wissen/wernher-von-braun-nationalsozialismus-v1-v2-rakete-hitler-nasa-nazis-apollo-104~_v-img__16__9__xl_-d31c35f8186ebeb80b0cd843a7c267a0e0c81647.jpg?version=b786d

11 Otto Skorzeny, My Commando Operations – The Memoirs of Hitler’s Most Daring Commando, (Schiffer Publishing, Ltd., January 1 1995), p. 168

12 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, US Coverup of Nazi Scientists, April 1985, p. 19

13 Jay Watkins, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), “Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program to Bring Nazi Scientists to America”, 6 October 2014 https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol-58-no-3/operation-paperclip-the-secret-intelligence-program-to-bring-nazi-scientists-to-america.html

14 David Nye, “6 things the US stole from the Nazis”, Business Insider, 6 May 2015, http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rN7tV3N_AsEJ:https://www.businessinsider.com/6-things-us-stole-from-germans-during-wwii-2015-5&hl=en&gl=ie&strip=1&vwsrc=0

Turkish backed terrorists, following Radical Islam, which is a political ideology, have shot down a Syrian military helicopter in Idlib on Tuesday.  The battlefield of Idlib sits poised for imminent war. President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad would pay a “very heavy price” for attacking Turkish troops, as he threatened war against Syria after five Turkish soldiers were killed on Monday and an additional eight earlier. 

The situation rose to a fever pitch on Monday as the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) attacked an observation post manned by the Turkish Army in Taftanaz, northeast of Idlib. The SAA is on a mission to clear the Idlib province of all Al Qaeda linked terrorists, which are backed by Erdogan, and others. In addition to the terrorists who occupy Idlib, Turkey has sent into Idlib large numbers of Turkish soldiers, as well as Syrian armed militias living in Turkey, such as the Syrian National Army (SNA) and the Syrian Liberation Front (SLF). Turkey is an invasion force, while the SAA fights to defend their country.

Witnesses on the border reported large convoys of Turkish military hardware, troops, and armored vehicles crossing into Syria in an almost continuous procession.

The terrorists and their Turkish backers have insisted on using the civilians as a bargaining chip in the battles.  Turkey, the UN, and most of the international community warn of a humanitarian disaster if the civilians are driven north from Idlib during battles to regain control of Idlib, the last remaining area in Syria under terrorist control.  For weeks, the Syrian Red Crescent ambulances, food trucks, and green buses sat empty and waiting along the humanitarian corridor of exit from Idlib, and an only small number came out and told of being threatened by the terrorists and generally prevented from escaping their occupation to safe areas in Syria.

The Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria was Jibhat al Nusra, and when they entered the cluttered Syrian battlefield in 2013, they were soon recognized as the fiercest and most violent of all the armed fighting groups. The Free Syrian Army (FSA), backed by the USA had failed to garner civilian support of their Jihad for “Regime Change”, and failed to recruit Syrian civilians to take up arms and join their ranks. After Jibhat al Nusra arrived, the FSA either joined their ranks or deserted the cause and migrated to Germany in the summer of 2015 exodus.

The US and others designated Jibhat al Nusra as a terrorist organization, which made supporting them an illegal act and punishable. Jibhat al Nusra then re-branded as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and is supported by Turkey and other countries.  HTS has worked with ISIS in certain instances in the past.

Idlib is the last terrorist occupied area in Syria, and the only region to have been under their control since 2012. Designated as a de-escalation zone in 2017, terrorists who refused to lay down their arms in battle zones across Syria were given the option of peacefully leaving on Green Buses to Idlib.

The civilians trapped in Idlib are in many cases, there by choice. The Green Buses offered as an alternative to resuming their past lives across Syria, was offered to armed terrorists and their immediate family, extended family, and others who share the Muslim Brotherhood dogma, which seeks to establish an Islamic ‘utopia’ in Syria.  Some of these civilians are Syrian and some are Chinese citizens, who were imported personally by Erdogan, as his secret “Turkic” weapon.  They are ethnic Uyghurs from China, who are a member of the Jihadist group Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP).

The original Idlib residents are scattered: some to Europe, some to Turkey, some to Latakia and the safety of the coast. Those homeowners, landowners and business owners of Idlib who are living as refugees, or displaced persons, are following events in Idlib and hoping to return one day and take up their rightful possessions, and begin anew.

Leila has been living in Latakia since 2012, and cleaning houses to support her family.  Her husband had been a farmer in Idlib, but when the terrorists arrived they began planting land mines in farmland, and civilians were killed while farming. Leila and her family left Idlib and have never gone back.

“Our land and olive trees are waiting for us. Our house was probably used by the terrorists, but we hope we can reclaim it one day,” she said.

In 2018 an agreement was reached between Turkey and Russia, and Turkey promised to remove all Al Qaeda terrorists, and to move all unarmed civilians to safe areas, thus separating the innocent, from the guilty.  Russia promised to assist the SAA in fighting terrorists, which is part of the global war on terror.

However, Turkey never fulfilled their promise to the agreement, which made the situation unsustainable. In early 2019 Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov commented on the Turkish-Russian agreement about Idlib, and the disturbing news that some Western countries wanted to preserve Idlib as a safe-haven for terrorists.

“There’s been news that some Western countries wish to do precisely that. They want this enclave where Jabhat al-Nusra (terrorist group outlawed in Russia) controls more than 90% of the territory to become a participant in the future political process,” Lavrov stated at a news conference. “It is clear that there can be no talks with terrorists. Our Western counterparts have repeatedly demonstrated double standards, so I cannot rule out that the information I’ve mentioned is well-founded.”

A Russian delegation headed by Sergey Vershinin, deputy minister of foreign affairs in charge of Syrian affairs, and Alexander Lavrentiev, the special envoy of the Russian presidency to Syria, met with Turkish officials in Ankara recently on two occasions but failed to agree.

The Turkish are waiting for a visit from James Jeffrey, the US special representative for Syria, on Wednesday before announcing a plan to reclaim territories the Syrian government has taken over since December last year.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said earlier that the Russian and Turkish militaries had again attempted to declare a ceasefire, but terrorists just stepped up their attacks. In response, the Syrian army launched a counterattack against the terrorists

Turkey set up 12 observation posts in Idlib province after an agreement with Russia in 2018; however, recently three of the observation posts were surrounded by SAA. Turkey invaded Syria and insisted on establishing military outposts, which were supposed to be observation towers, to facilitate their promised plan to separate terrorists from unarmed civilians.  This ruse was effectively used by Turkey to dig-in and defend the terrorists, who follow the same Muslim Brotherhood ideology as does President Erdogan, and his AK Party.

Turkey hosts 3.6 million Syrian refugees and insists it cannot take in any more.

“Russia and Assad are still pushing ahead with this offensive despite the fact Ankara has reiterated its red lines because they underestimate how vital stability in Idlib is for Turkey. Keeping the border shut is a huge national security concern,” said Dareen Khalifa, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group.

In late 2019 the Syrian government announced a strategic goal to recapture and secure the M4 highway, linking the international Port of Latakia, with Aleppo, the economic hub of Syria, and to accomplish the same with the M5 highway, linking Aleppo, Damascus, and Jordan. This goal is an economic imperative for Syria which is still manufacturing goods, and growing agricultural products used domestically and for export.  The battle to clear Idlib of terrorists is crucial to the economic recovery of Syria. On February 8 the SAA captured the strategic town of Saraqeb, which is located at the junction of M4 and M5.

The terrorists in Idlib are well supplied, trained and have seemingly unlimited weapons and munitions. They have been attacking residential areas in Kessab, Latakia, Mahardeh, Hama, and western Aleppoconsistently since 2012. The unarmed civilians who are killed, maimed and live in constant fear of a missile attack emanating from Idlib are the real victims.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a political commentator.

Featured image is from Mideast Discourse

Historically the greatest economic depressions have started with unexpected events on the periphery of major financial markets. That was the case in May 1931 with the surprise collapse of the Austrian Creditanstalt Bank in Vienna which brought the entire fragile banking system of postwar Germany down with it, triggering the Great Depression in the United States as major US banks were rocked to their foundations. Will it be again an unanticipated event outside the financial markets, namely the China 2029 Novel Coronavirus and its effects on world trade and especially on US-China trade that triggers a new economic depression?

Until around January 20 when the news broke about the coronavirus exploding in China’s Wuhan and surrounding cities, global financial markets and especially in the US were optimistic that the combined actions of the Federal Reserve to pump in more liquidity and of the Trump Administration to do all possible in an election year would keep the economy positive. Stocks continued their artificial climb as Fed liquidity fueled the fires of the most overvalued stock market in US history for January.

However since then, as official China infection numbers soar daily and the deaths attributed to the corona virus climb, it is beginning to sink in that the world’s major manufacturing center and source of a huge part of the global industrial supply chains, China, could face catastrophic economic consequences from the health emergency and resulting cordon sanitaire closings of cities involving at this point more than 77 million citizens and the manufacturing that is linked to it. That in turn could drag the entire world, most especially the USA, into a severe economic downturn at a time it is ill-prepared.

US Economy Already Fragile

What is usually downplayed in major media is the fact that the world’s largest economy, the United States, was already showing alarming signs of economic decline before the China virus shock.

One of the most alarming declines in the past months before January was the sector that many believed was the lead of an American energy renaissance, namely the once-booming shale oil and gas sector. Over the past decade, to the surprise of much of the world, the USA emerged as the world’s largest producer of oil, passing both Russia and Saudi Arabia. At the beginning of January US oil production stood at 13 million barrels a day. The vast share of that rise was due to unconventional shale oil wells, most in Texas.

The US shale energy industry has pinned its hopes on the recent US-China trade deal in which China agreed to buy an extra US$18.5 billion of energy products in 2020. This is double the US$9.1 billion of U.S. imports in 2017, plus an extra US$33.9 billion in 2021. These quotas would represent a doubling this year of China’s previous record monthly imports from the U.S. of crude oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG), and coal, and a tripling of it next year.

This was all before the eruption of the coronavirus and the ensuing travel bans to China by major airlines as well as the closing of large numbers of factories in China. Now oil prices are falling sharply on expectation that the world’s largest oil importer, China, will import significantly less oil in the coming months as the economy is hit by fallout from the virus epidemic. As of end January Chinese oil demand has dropped by about 3 million barrels a day, or 20% of total consumption and the price for the US West Texas Intermediate oil is below $50. This is the greatest oil demand shock since the 2008 financial crisis.

In January, US West Texas Intermediary oil prices fell 15%, the worst January fall since 1991. As daily reports of rising casualties from the China virus appear that gets even worse. Prices continued to fall despite the January cutoff of 1 million barrels of oil daily from Libya’s civil war. As damage from the China epidemic continues to grow, global oil demand will continue to fall. That spells catastrophe for the fragile US shale oil industry, despite an emergency OPEC decision to cut production.

Already in December 2019 before news of the China virus, the number of US shale oil company bankruptcy filings was rising significantly as prices continued to hover below profitability. According to the industry monitor, Baker Hughes, the number of active oil and gas drilling rigs in the US has fallen by 265 from this time a year ago, down to 790 rigs. Many US oil and gas companies are desperately holding on in anticipation of a new export boom to China. While even that was optimistic, the latest developments could turn nightmarish for the US shale producers who face rising costs and declining well productivity.

USA Transportation in Crisis

Unlike the stock market which can rise as companies use Fed liquidity to simply buy back their own shares rather than invest in new plant and equipment, the real economy depends on the movement of freight goods across the economy. In the USA truck transport is major. Here indicators have not been positive well before the China virus events. This past December one of America’s largest trucker groups, Celadon of Indiana, filed for bankruptcy protection, the largest trucking bankruptcy in US history with over 3,000 drivers. In the first three quarters of 2019, nearly 800 truck carriers failed, more than double the failures in 2018, according to Broughton Capital, a transportation industry data firm.

And the decline in US shipments of goods was not only in trucking. It was across the board. According to the trade group, Cass Index for Freight Shipments, in January, year-on-year, total volume of goods shipped by rail, barge, air and land in the US dropped by 7.9%. That was the 13^th monthly year-year decline and the sharpest fall since the financial crisis in November 2009. It doesn’t include bulk commodities like grain but includes such things as autos, auto parts. Rail freight was down 9.2%. One major reason for the declines is the weakness in US manufacturing. Jobs are not moving back to the US from China despite recent claims, at least not in any significant numbers. Instead the ISM Purchasing Managers Index for December dropped 0.9 percentage points from November to 47.2%. It was the fifth month in a row of contraction, and the fastest contraction since June 2009. Employment, new orders, new export orders, production, backlog of orders, and inventories were all contracting.

On top of this is the weak state of US farmers following severe weather damage in 2019 and cut off of exports to China as a result of the trade war. The much-touted Phase 1 US-China trade deal in December calls for China to import some $50 billion of US farm products which, if true, would give a major boost to US farmers. In 2017 the US exported $19 billion in agriculture products including soybeans and corn to China. Now, as the coronavirus spreads across China, the likelihood of realizing the farm export boost fades by the day. Already Beijing has hinted it will ask a reconsideration of the new trade agreement because of the virus impacts. In 2019 US farm bankruptcies were 24% higher than 2018 amid one of the worst crises since the 1980’s. Loss of the large China export market in 2020 will be a devastating blow to thousands of farmers barely able to survive.

All this in and of itself does not create an economic catastrophe. However the unexpected shock of the greatest crisis in recent history disrupting the supply chains from the center of world manufacture, China, will have untold consequences on US corporations like Boeing, GM, Apple and countless others if the crisis continues to grow, which, unfortunately, it shows every sign of doing.

For millions of ordinary Americans the rising stock market from the past ten years of ultra-low interest rates has been the main source for their retirement savings. Now with stock markets worldwide in steep selling over fear of the impact of the coronavirus on the world economy, the selloff could turn very quickly into panic liquidation wiping out savings of millions of Americans. With only 41% of American families with even $1000 in savings against an emergency, the impact could be severe.

The difference with the economics of this crisis, unlike those even twenty years ago, is the dramatic impact of globalization of the world economy, with China receiving the lion’s share of manufacturing out-sourcing from the West, especially the US. The major South Korean carmakers Hyundai and Kia just announced suspension of production in Korea because their vital China component supply chain remains shut because of the coronavirus. German industry has become strongly reliant on China exports from auto parts to machine tools, all now in limbo. France, Italy and other EU economies stand also to be hard hit.

Stephen Innes at AxiCorp warns that “any economic shock to China’s colossal industrial and consumption engines will spread rapidly to other countries through the increased trade and financial linkages associated with globalization.” And few countries are more vulnerable to such shocks than the United States. Even with the 2003 SARS crisis in China and Hong Kong the degree of globalization to China was orders of magnitude smaller.

With the total debt of the world economy at a record high, and that of the US as well, the unexpected China health catastrophe could have an economic impact few could have imagined just weeks ago. We have no accurate report of how much Chinese manufacturing is closed to date or for how long and the global supply chain disruption is just beginning. This has the potential to shake the world yet financial markets blissfully ignore all.

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NEO

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

Two weeks ago, I set out with three of my colleagues from the High Atlas Foundation (HAF, Marrakech) to the village of Gourrama in the Moroccan Middle Atlas Mountains. Our journey, from sunrise to sunset, took us across rugged terrains and through communities of all sizes. I reveled in the beauty, both natural and created, that flashed by my window as we drove. Each of the passing images aroused in me the innocent excitement one feels at seeing a place for the first time, if even just for a moment.

Solitary concrete buildings partitioned the flowing green fields we slipped through. Washed in fading emeralds, reds, pinks, and oranges, in profile, they appeared as stooped faces, their heavy-set brows animated by the soulful eyes of lit windows. They, witnesses to the passing lives and journeys of all, were solemn and resolute in their observation. Other constructions lay further back from the road, their glossy tin roofs peeking out from the verdant seas beside which they stood. The space between these oases of life and color did not feel hollow or maligned. It existed alongside the same expansiveness with which the blue sky above stretched up, out, and around us, without limit.

Upon arrival in Gourrama, we met with local representatives to drop off several hundred walnut and almond saplings at surrounding agricultural associations. These were only a fraction of the thousands of fruit trees we had carried with us, tightly packed in the back of our vehicle beside our luggage. One such representative, Tarik Sadki, head of the local association, gave us a tour of the property where we would be staying. Among the many buildings of mud brick and reinforced straw we walked through, one room, in particular, was a source of pride for Tarik. Here, he had curated a museum space over the past 20 years, dedicated to the preservation of the region’s history dating back a millennium, containing dozens of Amazigh, Arab, and French artifacts, from ancient tools and weapons to contemporary pieces of artwork.

This first morning in Gourrama, we distributed trees to 32 local farming families. Men, old and young alike, arrived wearing customary earth-toned djellabas to stave off the morning’s chill and protect their eyes from the rising sun. Excitedly, they hoisted their sapling bundles onto the backs of waiting donkeys, with visible pride and purpose.

In the late morning, we drove to a nearby town for further tree dissemination. There, I asked a handful of farmers about the effects of climate change on their livelihoods. In response, one man named Mustafa said that he has noticed a precipitous drop in rainfall, leading to reduced land quality. This dearth of rain, he revealed, has also impeded communal efforts to expand cultivation range, stabilize income fluctuations, and sustain local apiaries and flocks. One solution that he and others have found for this issue has been to build dams and canals to divert water from rivers to their fields. Moreover, during a dry year, he explained, farmers must plant more drought-resistant staples of barley and corn, even when these crops do not provide enough self-sustaining income.

Similarly, another farmer named Hasan recounted that, since a 2008 flood, all of the almond trees have been dying in the region. Because of this difficult reality, farmers seek more environmentally resilient varieties of trees that will flower later in the season, during a time of greater rainfall. Unrelated to climate change, Hasan expressed that a lack of fundamental agricultural training has also been responsible for diminishing yields. He believes that these farming practices, wherein people plant their trees and leave them without care, are a consequence of this deficient education.

At midday, after all farmers had received their trees, we led a discussion on communal wants and needs for the future. Through this conversation, we learned that rural Moroccan farmers often struggle to find the “right” domestic market for their products, toiling to make enough money, even in plentiful years. The majority of their crops are exported raw to European countries, to be processed and sold at high prices for the benefit of large corporations, instead of for their original growers. Moroccans want to access the international organic market, but rarely can because they lack adequate resources to effectively plant, grow, harvest, process, and distribute their produce. Some farmers have taken this challenge head-on, successfully managing the “seed to sale” value chain themselves. In this regard, a few in Gourrama have made moderate gains processing local olives into olive oil.

Beyond this, the group discussion brought forth two final issues: the inadequacy of young children’s school facilities and sweeping rural joblessness. Employment outside the field of agriculture is difficult to come by in this area, and the only occasional jobs available are in animal husbandry and beekeeping. Subsequently, we emphasized that HAF will remain a part of their entire development process, from the distribution of seeds to the certification, processing, and sale of produce, assisted by the USAID Farmer-to-Farmer program. To conclude, we completed a ceremonial tree planting, fertilizing the saplings, freshly laid to rest, with the traditional practice of spreading ash on the topsoil to deliver vital nutrients to the tree roots.

Following a typical late Moroccan lunch, we traveled to a 20-hectare communal farm on an immense plain bordered by low, rolling mountains. It seemed an impossibility, with the wind whipping through our scant jackets and clawing roughly against our flushed cheeks, that anything could flourish amongst such tumult. Yet, we learned, adversity and perseverance, like that which we had seen throughout our visit, was acutely woven into the very essence of the place we stood. This project was created by the local agricultural cooperative with a government land grant, providing jobs for unemployed individuals lacking viable professional prospects, and keeping them from succumbing to the tide of rural emigration.

Ingenuity in the face of hardship is commonplace within this community and the thousands of others in the High and Middle Atlas Mountains. Climate change is just the latest challenge they face. Oftentimes, people find themselves returning to tradition when they encounter problems of modern creation. On our last day in Gourrama, we came upon a small stand-alone corn processing facility where hydropower is used to churn grain into flour. This generational self-sustaining practice has yielded years of profit for the community. Its industrious design and the myriad of aforementioned examples serve as remembrances that, despite an ever-changing world, those who work in symbiosis with their environment will have their dedication reflected and returned.

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Nicolas Pantelick is a student from the United States on a gap year before university, who is interning with the High Atlas Foundation in Marrakech, Morocco.

Featured image: Photo by Giovane Cunha, Middle Atlas Mountains of Morocco, 2020

Pensioners in the Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are more exposed to the risk of poverty than pensioners in other European Union (EU) countries, according to Eurostat data for 2018 that was published only last week. The average EU figure was 15% but 54% of citizens over 65 in Estonia are at risk of poverty, with the figure at 50% in Latvia and 41% in Lithuania.

In addition, the difference between third and fourth place on the list is large, with the next country Bulgaria sitting at 30%. The lowest rates were recorded in Slovakia (6%), France (8%), surprisingly Greece (9%), and Denmark, Luxembourg and Hungary (10%). The Eurostat data also found that between 2010 and 2018, women retired were at 3-4% more risk of poverty than men. Two years ago, the largest gender gap was in Lithuania (18%), Estonia (17%), Bulgaria (15%), Czech Republic (13%), and Latvia and Romania (11%), while in Spain, Malta and Italy, men aged 65 and over were at the highest risk of poverty. The Baltic States are regularly featured at the top of EU lists looking at in living standards. In February last year, Eurostat ranked Lithuania in the top five countries with the highest risk of poverty – not that neighboring Latvia and Estonia performed much better.

In Latvia, retirement age has increased, the minimum pensions will be calculated on a certain basis, and residents will be able to inherit their second pillar pension capital – this is the kind of change that the Latvian population will face in 2020. The retirement age in Latvia has been increased once more by three months. Persons over the age of 63 and 9 months are now eligible to retire if their insurance record is at least 15 years.

People with a minimum insurance record of 30 years can retire early – by two years. Earlier this year, people aged 61 and 9 months will have early retirement rights. As a reminder, starting in 2014, the retirement age in Latvia began to be raised by three months each year until it reaches 65 in 2025. The minimum pension will now be calculated on the basis of a calculation approved by the government and is expected to be €80. However, this is unlikely to improve living standards as it is still a paltry sum.

From this year, Latvian residents will be able to inherit their second pillar pension capital. This choice can be made by people who have not yet received an old-age pension by determining how their pension capital will be used in the event of death before retirement. Nearly 1.3 million members of the second pillar have now the choice between three options. You can leave your savings in an inheritance, add them to another person’s second pillar capital or transfer them to a special state pension budget.

Things have become so desperate that the Latvian Pensioners’ Federation asked the government to grant a new relief – allowing early retirement for people who have raised children five years earlier. Activists believe it will provide significant support for parents and can have a positive impact on demographics that is rapidly declining mostly due to emigration to richer Western EU states.

However, much of the economic struggles in the Baltic states are for two main reasons:

The Neoliberalization of the economy after the collapse of the Soviet Union to adhere to EU regulations.

Hostile relations with Russia that prevent fruitful economic growth in the Baltics.

As much as 19.8% of Lithuanian, 16.2% of Latvian and 11.4% of Estonian exports were directed to Russia in 2013. Despite this huge economic relationship, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were some of the first states to call for tougher EU sanctions against Moscow when it reunited with Crimea in 2014. According to United Nations estimates, by 2050 Latvia’s population could shrink by 22%, Lithuania by 17% and Estonia by 13% because of high emigration and aging populations.

With the younger generation fleeing to the West for an increased wage because opportunities are not available at home and elderly poverty is increasing, the continued hostile relations that Baltic states have with Russia need to be reversed quickly. This will be a difficult task as the Baltic states have prioritized and in recent years accelerated efforts to break their dependence on Russia, especially in fields of energy and transportation.

However, despite these breaks, the EU has failed to be an adequate replacement in the Baltics quest of “de-Russification,” that has seen poverty increase and the younger and educated generation flee to the West. Despite these realities, the Baltic states have continued to willingly follow NATO demands to be part of a wider strategy to pressurize Russia’s Baltic Kaliningrad region. Russia can be a major market for Baltic made products and Russia in turn can offer cheap energy sources, but despite these advantages, the Baltic states are willing to depopulate their countries and see poverty increase to serve EU and NATO interests.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

After years of debate, Ontario Power Generation has dropped a plan to store nuclear waste underground near Lake Huron.

The Canadian energy firm said it would not move forward with plans to develop a permanent nuclear waste disposal site in the town of Kincardine, Ontario, where it also operates the Bruce Nuclear nuclear plant. The proposed storage facility would have been 2,200 feet below grade and less than a mile from Lake Huron. 

The decision came after a resounding ratification vote by members of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation on the issue. Of the 1,232 ballots cast, nearly 86 percent voted against the proposed project.

Ontario Power Generation had committed to the Saugeen Ojibway Nation in 2013 that it would not build the so-called deep geologic repository (DGR) facility without the support of the tribes.

“OPG will explore other options and will engage with key stakeholders to develop an alternate site-selection process,” OPG CEO and President Ken Hartwick said in a statement.

“We were not consulted when the nuclear industry was established in our Territory,” the Saugeen Ojibway Nation wrote in a statement. “Over the past forty years, nuclear power generation in Anishnaabekiing has had many impacts on our communities, and our Land and Waters, including the production and accumulation of nuclear waste.”

Collectively, the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation and the Chippewas of Saugeen First Nation are referred to as the Saugeen Ojibway Nation.

“This vote is a historic milestone and momentous victory for our People,” said Chief Lester Anoquot of the Chippewas of Saugeen First Nation. “As Anishinaabe, we didn’t ask for this waste to be created and stored in our Territory, but here it is.  We have a responsibility to our Mother Earth to protect both her and our Lands and Waters.

“We must work diligently to find a new solution for the waste,” Chief Anoquot said.

The decision by OPG to scuttle the nuclear waste facility was met with cheers from tribes and politicians, including U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.), who has worked on the issue since joining Congress in 2013.

“Today’s announcement is a huge victory for protecting our environment and our economy that relies on the Great Lakes,” Kildee said in a statement.

The proposal to store millions of tons of nuclear waste in Kincardine “never made sense,” Kildee said.

“Nuclear waste remains radioactive for thousands of years, and burying it next to the Great Lakes would have threatened our economy and clean drinking water for over 40 million people. Surely in the vast land mass that comprises Canada, there has to be a better place to permanently store nuclear waste than on the shores of the Great Lakes,” he said.

Aaron Payment, chairperson of the Michigan’s Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, cheered the decision in a statement issued yesterday.

“The Sault Tribe, along with the rest of the tribes in Michigan, is pleased to see Ontario Power Generation give up on this terrible idea to build a nuclear waste storage site on the shores of the Great Lakes,” Payment said. “Since 2017, the tribes in Michigan have supported our relatives in the Saugeen Ojibway Nation in their concerns over this proposal. In addition, any threat to the Lake Huron fishery that is posed by disposal of nuclear waste so close to the Great Lakes is of deep concern to us all.”

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The National Coalition for Palestine (NC4P), Muslim Judicial Council (MJC) and BDS South Africa welcome the speech delivered by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the African Union (AU) Summit in Addis Ababa.

President Ramaphosa, echoing other African officials, said:

“It [the Trump US-Israel deal] brought to mind the chronicled history that we as South Africans went through. The apartheid regime once imposed the Bantustan system on the people of South Africa without consulting them and with all the oppressive elements which that plan had…it sounds like this [Trump] plan has been consulted without all the people that matter and it sounds like a Bantustan type of construct.”

The AU Chairperson and President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, is accurately reflecting the sentiment of South Africa and Africa. We are confident that 2020 will see greater strides from South Africa and Africa for the Palestinian struggle and for the BDS boycott of Israel. We hope that as our parliament opens for the new year that it will be a leading voice in the boycott of Israel. We hope that 2020 will bring an end to Israel’s Apartheid regime and the ushering in of peace and justice for all the people who live in Palestine-Israel.

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The US government has sanctioned Venezuela’s state-owned airline CONVIASA, claiming it is being used to “shuttle corrupt officials.”

While already subject to previous US unilateral coercive measures, the latest sanctions add the airline and 40 of its planes to the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control’s Specially Designated Nationals List so as “to ensure strengthened compliance.”

The move incorporates the airline into Washington’s executive order 13884, which applied a wide-reaching embargo on the country in August last year.

It paves the way for punitive measures to be taken against any US or non-US citizen or firm dealing with the airline, possibly affecting plane maintenance, refuelling, insurance, and a host of other operations. Passengers may also be sanctioned under the measure.Passengers may also be sanctioned under the measure.

Unveiling the measure Friday, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters that

“The illegitimate Maduro regime relies on CONVIASA to shuttle corrupt regime officials around the world to fuel support for its anti-democratic efforts.”

The sanctions were met with a defiant response from Caracas, with a range of government officials joining CONVIASA workers in rejecting the sanctions.

Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza described the sanctions regime as “the diplomacy of the absurd” and promised to “raise our protest to international organisms.”

Likewise, Venezuelan Economy Vice President Tareck El Aissami assured the firm’s 2000 workers that their jobs were safe on Saturday.

“Nothing will stop us, nothing will demoralise us, to the contrary, we will continue to grow in the spirit of struggle, and now CONVIASA will become an ambassador for Bolivarian peace in the skies of the world,” he told reporters.

El Aissami stressed that apart from affecting passengers, the measure will also hurt a range of social programs, including the Return to the Homeland program which has provided free flights for a reported 20,000 Venezuelan immigrants to return to the country, and the Miracle Mission which brings patients from across the region to Venezuela for free ophthalmological surgery.

Venezuelan social movements and progressive parties organised a march on Monday to reject the latest sanctions and support the nationalised company.

The Venezuelan Consortium of Aeronautical Industries and Air Services (CONVIASA) was created in 2004 to replace the national airline VIASA which was liquidated in 1997. It currently offers a multitude of domestic routes, as well as international destinations including Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Bolivia, with plans to open routes to the Middle East and Europe in 2020. With several foreign airlines ceasing to fly to Venezuela in recent years, CONVIASA has become the only one serving a number of Latin America destinations.

The airline had already felt the bite of US sanctions, denouncing last September that the threat of secondary sanctions caused Peruvian authorities to block the refuelling of one of its planes used in the Return to the Homeland program.

US unilateral coercive measures against Venezuela targeted a number of specific industries in 2019, including oil, gold, and the banking sector. They were expanded to a wide-reaching embargo in August.

The August embargo also authorised secondary sanctions to be applied against third parties dealing with the Caracas government. Despite Washington refraining from applying this measure so far, US Special Envoy for Venezuela Elliott Abrams raised the threat once again of action last week.

Vice President Tareck El Aissami addresses a press conference alongside the president of the state-run CONVIASA airline and representatives of the workforce. (MINCI)

Speaking in a press conference on Thursday, Abrams specifically highlighted Russia’s involvement in Venezuela, warning that

“The Russians may soon find that their continued support of Maduro will no longer be cost-free,” while pledging to “demonstrate the seriousness of our intentions in Venezuela.”

Likewise, an anonymous senior White House official was quoted by Reuters warning Russian, Spanish, Indian and US oil giants Rosneft, Repsol, Reliance and Chevron to “tread cautiously.”

The companies continue to play significant roles in Venezuela’s oil industry, with Rosneft reported to currently be purchasing around 60 percent of the output, much of which is rerouted to other markets, including the US. Repsol and Reliance have also increased their dealings with state oil company PDVSA in recent months, reportedly exchanging crude for fuel and diluents so as to avoid sanctions. For its part, Chevron is involved in a joint oil venture and has been granted successive sanctions waivers by the US Treasury Department.

The threat of secondary sanctions coincided with a visit to Venezuela by Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who described Washington’s sanctions regime as “illegitimate” and “outrageous.”

“We have agreed to deepen our economic, commercial and investment cooperation [with Venezuela] in several areas despite the illegitimate sanctions,” he told reporters Friday, adding that “It is outrageous that unilateral actions by the United States affect social and humanitarian projects.”

Caracas and Moscow have strengthened ties in recent months, with bilateral agreements signed on a host of areas, including agriculture, industry, mining and defense.

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For a long time, scientists have known that certain types of fungi are attracted to radiation, and can actually help to break down and neutralize radiation in certain environments. The radioactive site of the abandoned Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant has acted as a real-life laboratory in many ways over the years, giving researchers a look into the physical impact that radiation has on plant and animal life.

In 1991, while a team of researchers was searching the Chernobyl area remotely with robots, they noticed black-spotted fungi growing on the walls of one of the nuclear reactors. They also observed that the fungi appeared to be breaking down radioactive graphite from the core itself. The fungi also seemed to be growing towards the source of the radiation, as if it was attracted to it.

Follow up research in 2007, at the University of Saskatchewan found that different types of fungi are attracted to radiation. A team led by Professor Ekaterina Dadachova observed that some types of fungi grew more rapidly when exposed to radiation.

The three species that were tested were Cladosporium sphaerospermum, Cryptococcus neoformans and Wangiella dermatitidis, all of which grew faster when exposed to radiation. The scientists believe that since these species had large amounts of the pigment melanin, it allows them to absorb things like radiation and convert it into chemical energy for growth.

Another follow-up study, in which eight species collected from the Chernobyl area were sent to the International Space Station (ISS) began in 2016, but has yet to be published. Scientists are eagerly awaiting the results of the study, considering that the samples are being exposed to between 40 and 80 times more radiation than they would here on Earth. If this study is successful, experts hope that the knowledge gained can be used to produce drugs that could protect astronauts from radiation on long-term missions. It has also been suggested that the results of this study could lead to the development of fungi-based cancer treatments.

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John Vibes is an author and journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture, and focuses solutions-oriented approaches to social problems. He is also a host of The Free Your Mind Conference and The Free Thought Project Podcast.

Featured image is from Iryna Denysova

Trump proved he’s more a deal breaker than maker, abandoning international obligations instead of observing them — notably the landmark JCPOA and INF Treaty, based on Big Lies.

Is New START next to go? It’s the only remaining arms control treaty remaining between Russia and the US.

According to nuclear expert Helen Caldicott, Russia and the US have around 94% of the world’s nuclear arsenal between them, adding:

“(W)e are closer to nuclear war now, (early in) the twenty-first century than we’ve ever been before, even during the height of the Cold War” — because of US rage for dominating other nations by whatever it takes to achieve its objectives.

The nuclear threat is real. Ignoring it is like “sleepwalking to armageddon,” Caldicott stressed.

Trump believes “because they exist, nuclear weapons ought to be used,” especially tactical nukes in US war theaters.

Ghostwriter of Trump’s Art of the Deal book Tony Schwartz said today he’d title the book The Sociopath, tweeting:

“Trump is totally willing to blow up the world to protect his fragile sense of self. Please God don’t give this man the nuclear codes.”

Before his 2016 election, Schwartz was quoted, saying

“I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes, there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.”

New START expires on February 5, 2021. If not renewed, it’s gone. Trump falsely called it a “bad deal.”

He never read it or knows anything more about it than what hardline regime officials told him, notably Bolton when serving as national security advisor.

Article XIV of the treaty lets both presidents extend it up to another five years by mutual consent.

Trump’s national security team declined to negotiate with Russia on strategic weapons issues.

Reportedly Trump wants a new deal that includes China, one that covers tactical nukes.

With a few hundred nuclear warheads in its arsenal, around 100 able to be mounted on intercontinental ballistic missiles, Beijing repeatedly expressed no interest in an arms control treaty with the US and Russia.

Last November, China’s Foreign Ministry arms control department director Fu Cong said nuclear talks are unrealistic unless “the US agrees to reduce its arsenal to China’s level, or agrees for China to raise its arsenal to the US level.”

Nuclear arms control begins with the US and Russia because of the dominant size and sophistication of their arsenals.

New START replaced START I (1999) that expired in December 2009.

The 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) also ended when New Start became effective.

It limits deployed strategic nuclear warheads and bombs to 1,550, about 30% fewer than the SORT limit, nearly 75% below START I’s 6,000 allowed.

Deployed ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and nuclear-capable heavy bombers are limited to 700.

Deployed and non-deployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers, and bombers are limited to 800 — about 50% fewer than START I permitted.

New START doesn’t limit non-deployed ICBMs and SLBMs, but monitors their numbers and locations.

They must be located away from deployment sites and appropriately labeled for easy identification.

On-site monitoring and verification were agreed on to assure both countries remain in compliance with their obligations.

If New START isn’t renewed and expires next February, limits on the world’s largest nuclear arsenals no longer will exist for the first time in nearly half a century.

Bush/Cheney’s December 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) asserted Washington’s preemptive right to unilaterally declare and wage future wars with first-strike nuclear weapons.

Obama’s 2010 and 2015 National Security Strategies pledged US first-strike use of these weapons against any adversary, nuclear armed or not.

Obama approved a $1 trillion program to upgrade America’s nuclear arsenal over the next 30 years, assuring other nuclear powers will follow suit.

Trump said America “must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability…”

As long as these weapons exist, they’ll likely be used again with devastating results.

The only way to prevent nuclear war is by eliminating these weapons entirely, the world community uniting on this most vital of all issues to save life on earth from possible extinction.

US imperial madness poses an unparalleled nuclear threat, the only nation ever to use them, likely willing to use them again.

Today’s thermonukes can destroy entire cities and surrounding areas with no place to hide.

If agreement isn’t reached to eliminate them and end wars, they’ll eliminate us one day if used in enough numbers.

A Final Comment

Last December, former Joint Chief chairman Admiral Mike Mullen said the following in testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee:

New START “contributes substantially to US national security by providing limits, robust verification, and predictability about Russian strategic forces.”

We have “high confidence” Russia is complying with the treaty. “Without the treaty and its verification provisions, we’d be flying blind.”

“It is strongly in the US national interests to extend New START for five years so that the United States and Russia can continue to realize the mutual benefits and stability it provides.”

Last July, US Strategic Command deputy head Admiral David Kiete said New START’s verification scheme provides “great insight” into Russia’s arsenal.

“If we were to lose that for any reason in the future, we would have to go look for other ways to fill in the gaps for the things we get from those verifications.”

Virtually all key US allies expressed support for extending New START for another five years.

Most congressional members support extension. Polls show the vast majority of Americans support it.

In early December, Putin said “Russia is ready to extend the New START treaty immediately, before the year’s end and without any preconditions.”

Trump has final say in the US. His opposition that’s influenced by hardliners surrounding him likely means New START will be abandoned with him as president.

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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.

Important article first published on Global Research in February 2019

The Orinoco Belt: “oil-in-place” is estimated to be up to 1.4 trillion barrels, of which 70% might be extracted using the most advanced technologies.

“Let’s place 1 trillion barrels of oil in context. 

Global oil consumption is currently 35 billion barrels a year. Thus, the Orinoco Belt alone could satisfy 100% of global demand for almost 30 years!

As for the Orinoco field’s dollar value. World oil prices are currently hovering near $60 … do the math.”

And these oil reserves belong to the People of Venezuela. 

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Heavy Oil and Tar Sands

While much is heard of “fracking” these days; steam-injection may in the long run prove to be the petroleum industry game-changer. Steam aids in harvesting heavy oils from sprawling oil-rich sand and clay formations where the oil is too viscous to be worked by conventional pumps. 

Initially, all heavy oil (Alberta) was extracted via open-pit mines wherein giant shovels heaved mounds of oil-saturated sand onto giant dump-trucks for transit to separating vats filled with hot water. This method has largely given way to steam-injection. In Alberta’s oilsands, where much of this technology originated, heavy oil is now 80% extracted via steam; 20% via mining.

The simplest form of steam injection uses a single well. A hole is drilled down to a heavy oil deposit; then steam is pumped down the hole, sometimes for months. Eventually a blob of oil concentrates near the well’s bottom of sufficient viscosity to enable pumping to the surface.

Circa 1978 SAGD (Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage) emerged. With SAGD two lengthy perforated pipes are drilled into place horizontally through the deposit; one pipe a few metres above the other. Both pipes emit steam until a teardrop shaped oil bubble envelopes the lower pipe. Then the top pipe continues to emit steam while the lower pipe goes into reverse; drawing oil to the surface. In 2017 Alberta’s oilsands yielded 2.7 million barrels a day; mostly via SAGD.

Three additional innovations are coming to the fore.

Solvent-Assisted SAGD adds designer chemicals (solvents) to the steam-injection process to accelerate the loosening up the oil.

DHSG (Downhole Steam Generation) lowers small but mighty steam generation tools (furnaces) deep into the well. DHSG allows for greater heat conservation and improved fuel economy.

Miniature nuclear reactors are ready for commercial application. Toshiba has developed a prototype reactor specifically for heavy oil extraction. This 5 MW electricity generator simultaneously serves as the furnace for a 900 Celsius steam injection boiler. The reactor promises to replace the elaborate and expensive natural gas infrastructure presently required by oil-field steam injection facilities. Toshiba’s prototype needs refueling every 30 years.

Venezuela’s Orinoco Oil Belt

The world’s fourth largest river, the Orinoco, rises in the Parima Mountains along the Venezuelan-Brazilian border. The Orinoco engraves a 2,000 kilometre north-easterly arc through Columbia and Venezuela before discharging into the Atlantic Ocean off Venezuela’s coast. The Orinoco Heavy Oil Belt stretches 600 kilometres along the north bank of the Orinoco River’s easterly dash to the sea. The Belt is 70 kilometers wide.

United States Geological Service’s (USGS) Estimate of Recoverable Oil Reserves of the Orinoco Oil Belt (2009) is the go-to source regarding the Orinoco reservoir’s size. After describing how this oil-saturated bed of sandstone ended up 150 to 1500 metres below the surface of the East Orinoco Basin; the authors’ estimate “oil-in-place” to be up to 1.4 trillion barrels.

The Belt’s “technically recoverable” oil is estimated to be as much as 652 billion barrels. (see USGS below) Elsewhere, however, the report speculates that by fully exploiting SAGD, and other recovery enhancement processes, 70% of the oil-in-place might be extracted. Moreover, the report relies on studies published between 2001 and 2008 hence does not contemplate: Solvent-Assisted SAGD; Downhole Steam Generation; let alone the application of nuclear power. Tackling the Orinoco Belt with these technologies will yield a trillion barrels.

USGS Report p. 1

The report does not discuss production costs. Canadian oilsands companies continued to produce in 2018 even after transportation bottlenecks tanked prices to $20 a barrel. These facilities, however, would not have been built had investors known this might be the price of their wares. The business press guesstimates the current breakeven price for an Alberta oilsands project to be around $35 a barrel.

While the Orinoco Belt is not as large as Alberta’s oilsands it has three advantages:

a) its oil is not as heavy;

b) its climate is far hotter; and

c) it’s much closer to a coast.

The Orinoco Belt sits at 9 degrees latitude and its entire span is a few hundred kilometres from Atlantic shores. Orinoco Belt production costs will be noticeably lower than Alberta’s oilsands.

Let’s place 1 trillion barrels of oil in context.

Global oil consumption is currently 35 billion barrels a year. Thus, the Orinoco Belt alone could satisfy 100% of global demand for almost 30 years!

As for the Orinoco field’s dollar value. World oil prices are currently hovering near $60 …do the math.

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Featured image is from Radio Rebelde

Shishir Upadhyaya, a former Indian naval intelligence officer and one of RT’s newest columnists, is incorrect in recently writing that the latest Russian-Indian oil deal is an “unpleasant surprise for Washington” since it’s actually an “unpleasant surprise” for Tehran because the Islamic Republic is powerless to stop two of its closest economic partners from taking advantage of the US’ unilateral anti-Iranian sanctions to strengthen their energy ties with one another at its expense, which in no way goes against America’s “Indo-Pacific” strategy but actually complements this grand strategic vision in its own way.

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First published on February 10, 2019

Michel Chossudovsky talks to Bonnie Faulkner on Guns and Butter.

We discuss the economic and political crisis in Venezuela, its history as an oil proxy nation since the discovery of oil in 1918, through successive dictatorships, coups d’etats, a fake nationalization of the oil industry, the Chavista movement and destabilization through financial warfare, with a special emphasis on Michel Chossudovsky’s personal experience there conducting a study on poverty in 1975 as Advisor to the Venezuelan Minister of Planning.

In the period prior to the Bolivarian Revolution, extending into the 1990s, the levels of poverty were abysmally high.

TRANSCRIPT

 This is Guns and Butter

Michel Chossudovsky: I think concretely also we understood that poverty was not the result of a scarcity of resources, because this was an oil-producing economy, but all the oil revenues were going into private hands. Of course, the big-oil U.S. was behind it. But what we understood was that it was the governments which were responsible for poverty.

I’m Bonnie Faulkner. Today on Guns and Butter, Michel Chossudovsky. Today’s show: Venezuela: From Oil Proxy to the Bolivarian Movement and Sabotage. Michel Chossudovsky is an economist and the Founder, Director and Editor of the Center for Research on Globalization, based in Montreal, Quebec. He is the author of 11 books including The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, War and Globalization: The Truth Behind September Eleventh and America’s War on Terrorism. Today we discuss the economic and political crisis in Venezuela, its history as an oil proxy nation since the discovery of oil in 1918, through successive dictatorships, the Chavista movement and destabilization, with a special emphasis on Michel Chossudovsky’s personal experience there conducting a study on poverty as Advisor to the Minister of Planning.

Bonnie Faulkner: Michel Chossudovsky, welcome.

Michel Chossudovsky: I’m delighted again to be on Guns and Butter.

Bonnie Faulkner: The president of Venezuela’s National Assembly since February 5th, Juan Guaidó, declared that he has temporarily assumed presidential powers, promising to hold free elections and end Nicolas Maduro’s “dictatorship.” President Trump announced that the U.S. would recognize Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president of Venezuela. According to The Wall Street Journal, Vice President Mike Pence called Guaidó the night before his announcement and pledged that the Trump administration would support him. Trump refused to rule out military action. In your recent article, Regime Change and Speakers of the Legislature: Nancy Pelosi vs. Juan Guaidó, Self-proclaimed President of Venezuela, you intimate that Trump’s declaration might constitute a dangerous precedent for him. Why?

Michel Chossudovsky: Well, ironically, the position of Speaker of the National Assembly of Venezuela, which is held by Juan Guaidó, is in some regards comparable to that of the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and, of course, the leader of the majority party, the Democrats, which is currently held by Nancy Pelosi. There are certain differences from the constitutional standpoint, but what President Trump has intimated in declaring that the Speaker of the National Assembly of Venezuela is the interim president of Venezuela is tantamount to saying, “Hey, Donald Trump, what about Nancy Pelosi?” Somebody might intimate, either a U.S. politician including perhaps even President Maduro of Venezuela, “We would like Nancy Pelosi to be the President of the United States, and then, of course, we’ll go to the UN Security Council to have it endorsed.”

That illustrates the ridicule of political discourse but also the shear fantasy of U.S. foreign policy, that they should provide legitimacy to a Speaker of the House because they don’t like the President. Well, I don’t like the president of the United States of America and a lot of people don’t like him, but do we want to have Nancy Pelosi as our interim president? That, in fact, is something which could evolve in the current context of confrontation between President Trump and the Democratic Party, which now controls the U.S. House of Representatives.

Bonnie Faulkner: It looks like the Democrats in Congress are also threatening President Maduro. The House Foreign Affairs Committee has tweeted out, “We refuse to recognize the legitimacy of Maduro’s presidency. That’s why members are joining to introduce legislation to support the people of Venezuela and hold the illegitimate president accountable for the crisis he created.” So this is a bipartisan effort to unseat Maduro.

Michel Chossudovsky: Precisely. It is a novelty in relation to regime change. We have military coups in Venezuela going back to the early 20th century – a whole bunch of military coups. We have color revolutions, which instigate protest movements. That is already ongoing in Venezuela. Then we have this new formula of intimating that we don’t like the President; have him replaced by the Speaker of the House. And that’s, of course, a very dangerous discourse because, as I mentioned, it could backlash onto President Trump himself.

Bonnie Faulkner: Venezuela’s crisis came before the UN Security Council on Saturday, but they took no action because there was no agreement. Russia and China backed Maduro but France, Britain, Spain and Germany said they would recognize Juan Guaidó as president unless Venezuela calls a new presidential election within eight days. So here we have European nations demanding that Venezuela hold another election. Did Nicolas Maduro win the presidency of Venezuela democratically or not?

Michel Chossudovsky: He won the presidency of Venezuela democratically with a large majority. Conversely, France’s President Macron also won the presidential election with a rather feeble majority and nobody is questioning Macron’s presidency. Well, in fact, some people are because we have the Yellow Vest movement throughout France. That doesn’t seem to be making the headlines anymore and people are endorsing President Macron.

Well, there are several issues. These European leaders don’t have the support of their respective populations. In Venezuela support for President Maduro is divided, but that’s I think something that happens in a large number of countries. It’s not any different. The opposition is controlling the National Assembly but nonetheless, President Maduro gets a majority of support of the Venezuelan population.

The fact of the matter is that all these leaders in Europe are, first of all, caving in to U.S. foreign policy; they are essentially behaving as U.S. proxies. At the same time, their behavior and management of the republics that they represent, not including the United Kingdom, which is also in a big mess – well, one might say, how can they get away with this? Under a constitutional democracy, how is it that they could actually support the United States in calling for the Speaker of the National Assembly of Venezuela to become president of the country? It’s an absurd proposition, and that this would then get to the United Nations Security Council is even more absurd.

What should get to the United Nations Security Council is the mode of interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign country through the financing of opposition groups, the financing of terrorists and so on who are involved in triggering the protest movement and so on. It’s an evolving situation. It has certain features resembling in fact the Euromaidan in Ukraine. And, of course, the end objective is to unseat the president.

Now, he has very strong grassroots support because the Bolivarian Revolution has indeed led to major changes in the country, major achievements, under very contradictory circumstances as well as divisions within the Bolivarian movement.

I have been going back and forth to Venezuela for a very long period since I started very early in my career when I became Advisor to the Minister of Planning in the Carlos Andrés Pérez government of the mid-‘70s. I know the country inside-out.

It’s a very complex process, and I think people have to understand first of all that Venezuela has the largest oil reserves worldwide – more than Saudi Arabia – both traditional crude as well as tar sands, which are extensive but also very easy to manage and produce compared to those of Canada, for instance. What is at stake there is the battle for oil.

Historically, Venezuela has been an oil economy from its inception in 1918 when oil was discovered in the Maracaibo Bay. Then you had a whole series of military dictators.

The most prominent was, of course, Juan Vicente Gómez, who was really a proxy of the United States and big oil.

So big oil has controlled this country from the early 20th century and it was only in the ‘90s with the Bolivarian Revolution that they actually started to repeal this control of big oil with the government of Chávez, which essentially started to implement some major changes and shifts in the nature of state management, but under very contradictory circumstances, which I guess we’ll be discussing.

Bonnie Faulkner: How did you first get involved in Venezuela? Did you first go there in 1975, and under what auspices?

Michel Chossudovsky: Actually, one of my close friends when I was studying at the University of Manchester in economics was a person named Gumersindo Rodriguez. Now, Gumersindo Rodriguez was a bit older than I. He was active in the MIR, Movimiento Izquierda Revolucionaria, which was a leftist faction of the Democratic Action Party, Acción Democratica. He had close links to one of the prominent presidents, which was Romulo Betancourt, (left) but at the same time he was – to some extent the MIR were considered as renegades.

He went off to study in the UK and then when he returned and a new Acción Democratica government was formed he became Minister of Planning. And then he called me up and we met in New York. He said, “Would you like to come down, etc., to Caracas to work for the Planning Ministry as my Advisor?” I accepted and I went down in mid-1975 during the school break at the University of Ottawa.

Initially he wanted me to write his speeches, so I started writing his speeches. After a while I said, “Listen, Gumersindo, I would like to do something more substantive and set up a research group on poverty in this country, which is a serious issue.” So he said, “Okay, Michel. Go ahead. Set up the group. You have all the resources you need.”

I set up a group of about half-a-dozen people with consultants at the university and so on. I was a young researcher. It was a very challenging project. Very carefully we looked at concepts of what defines the standard of living, in other words, nutrition, education, health, employment, income distribution, the environment, the access to running water, the levels of malnutrition. We defined what was called a minimum family income, and this was supported with very careful analysis at the statistical level. I had a professor in nutrition at the university who advised me on various aspects.

This report was done in three months. It was a big push. I had to go back to Ottawa to the university in September where I was teaching economics, so we managed to finish the first draft of the report in a matter of months. We came up with incredible results, that the abysmal levels of poverty, largely basing our analysis on national statistics, the various surveys which were available, household budget surveys, the census data and also the input of a large number of intellectuals and so on. But not so much field work because simply we didn’t really have the time to do that. But we came up with results.

I think concretely also we understood that poverty was not the result of a scarcity of resources, because this was an oil-producing economy, but all the oil revenues were going into private hands. Of course, the big-oil U.S. was behind it. But what we understood was that it was the governments which were responsible for poverty because they weren’t recycling the oil revenues to a societal project. They weren’t using the oil revenues to finance education, health and so on, and the levels of unemployment were exceedingly high and so on.

Now, this is the background of poverty which prevailed when the Bolivarian Revolution occurred. I should mention that much of our data was based on the 1970s, but the 1980s were far worse, because then you had what was called El Caracazo in 1989, which was a process of economic and social collapse. It was instigated by the IMF. It led to hyperinflation, so it was a sort of classical neo-liberal intervention with strong economic medicine [shock therapy] where the prices of consumer goods went sky high. That happened in 1989.

Now, what I think is very important to underscore is that Venezuela in the 1970s and ‘80s was a very poor country with a lot of resources, namely oil, and that oil went into private hands. That was despite the fact that the oil industry was nationalized in 1975. Now, I should mention that when I arrived at the Ministry of Planning in 1975, that coincided more or less with the nationalization of the oil industry. But it was a fake nationalization.

Bonnie Faulkner: How do you mean a fake nationalization?

Michel Chossudovsky: Well, legally it was nationalization, but it was ultimately understood that the big oil companies were complicit in this nationalization and that they would get all the benefits and so on. And then also when it was nationalized, of course, there were payments to the oil companies. It was implemented by the government of Carlos Andrés Pérez and there was no question of actually saying, “Well, we’ve got the oil; what are we going to do with it?” The pattern of appropriation continued, the corruption within the state apparatus and so on.

Ironically, I was asked to draft a text which was to be used for the nationalization speech, which was a very important document, because it defined, what are you doing to do with the oil. I drafted an analysis of this, essentially saying the following: that the oil revenues would be recycled to a societal project alleviating poverty. It was explained conceptually that the oil money now belongs to the country and not to the oil companies, and consequently this is the avenue that we choose.

There was a drafting committee and they contacted me. I knew all these people; they were on the same floor in the Ministry of Planning building. But then the nationalization speech was read and published, and it was simply political rhetoric. It didn’t have any substantive perspective as to how these oil revenues would be used to improve the livelihood of the Venezuelan people, and that is something which Chavez actually formulated many years later. The Bolivarian Revolution said, yes, the oil is going to improve the conditions of the Venezuelan population and particularly the people who are below the poverty line.

Now, I should mention and that’s so important, we undertook an estimate of undernourishment, people who do not meet minimum calorie requirements, and we arrived at figures in excess of 70% of the Venezuelan population. That was part of the report which I submitted to the government at the time. I contacted my friend [medical doctor] at the university who specialized in nutrition and said, “This seems to be horrendously high.” His response, “No. You’re absolutely on. Your estimates are on the whole conservative.” He had focused also on the impacts on child malnutrition and so on. We had estimates of that as well from secondary sources.

That was the picture which existed in the mid-70s in Venezuela, an exceedingly poor country with tremendous wealth. That tremendous wealth, of course, was being appropriated and the elites in Venezuela were, of course, complicit in the role of the oil companies and the United States. The Rockefellers were involved. I knew about this because I was also very close to the Minister of Planning.

Now, what happened to our report? That’s very important. We submitted the report. I went back to Canada and my colleagues submitted the report to the minister. In fact, what happened is the moment I had instructed my colleague to have copies made of the report and to circulate this report within the ministries. Immediately upon having the photocopied 20 or 30 copies of the report the driver of the Minister of Planning – he [the Minister] was a very powerful figure – came in and confiscated everything. They confiscated everything. Then the team was dismissed and then when I returned to Caracas in early ’76 I still had an office but I was all by myself and, in fact, I had absolutely no functions or activities assigned to me. My team had been dispersed. They were still there, we still spoke, but we were not working as a team anymore.

What has happened is, first, that report was confiscated by the Minister of Planning and then it was shelved by the Council of Ministers of the Carlos Andrés Pérez government. The Council of Ministers reviewed it and said, “No, we don’t want it.”

The reasons they didn’t want it wasn’t the figures on poverty; it was how we analyzed the role of the state.

The  state creates poverty.

Mind you, we have the same thing in the United States of America. The state creates poverty. Why? Because it spends more than $700 billion on so-called defense.

So we have that logic, but it was very clear that that kind of analysis could not go public. It couldn’t go public. It was only a couple of years later that I took the report and I brought it out as a book. It was published in 1978 and it became an immediate best seller. The first edition was sold out in nine days. It was adopted at the colleges and universities and high schools across Venezuela because it broke a myth. It broke the myth of what they call La Venezuela Miliónaria, that this was a rich country, sort of the Latin Saudi Arabia so to speak. But the social realities were otherwise.

Now when we look at what is happening in Venezuela today and where the U.S. policymakers say, “We want to come to the rescue of the people who have been impoverished,” this is a nonsensical statement. The history of Venezuela was a history of poverty right until Chavez becamec president. They retained that level of poverty and exclusion. Not to say that there aren’t very serious contradictions within the Bolivarian movement; that’s another issue.

I think that we have to assess what Venezuela was historically, starting with the dictatorships throughout – the last dictatorship was repealed in 1958. That was the dictatorship of Pérez Jiménez (left). But then you have a sort of bipartisan framework between what was called Acción Democratica, Democratic Action, and Copei, which were the Christian Democrats. It was a bipartisan structure very similar to that of the United States, going from one to the other and largely serving the interests of the elites rather than the broader population.

Bonnie Faulkner: You have said that Venezuela in 1918, basically, when oil was discovered, it became an oil colony. What was Venezuela like before oil was discovered? Do you have any idea?

Michel Chossudovsky: It was essentially an agrarian society, which was dominated by landlords. There were regional powers. What in Latin America are called los caudillos. In other words, these were essentially landlords and leaders in various regions of Venezuela, and it was largely an agrarian society producing coffee and cacao.

In fact, they would say, if somebody becomes a big landlord or a Caudillo, they would call him a Gran Cacao, which indicated that cacao (cocoa) was a – you could say that Venezuela was a cash crop economy, exporting coffee and cocoa to the Western markets, very similar to what we have in Central America, for instance.

Of course, it still had the legacy of Simon Bolivar in Caracas, an urban society which goes back to the Spanish colony, but it didn’t really have any particular momentum in terms of wealth formation until the emergence of oil in 1918. That is when U.S. big oil became involved in Venezuela, and it was essentially an oil colony of the United States, and a very important oil colony of the United States due to geography as well, because it’s not in the Middle East; it’s right there, very close to the United States.

So that was really ultimately the transition and that’s where, first of all, we saw more of the centralization of political power within the country and the development of an elite which were serving the interests of the oil companies.

Bonnie Faulkner: But then even before oil was discovered in 1918, Venezuela was still controlled by the elites. Was there crushing poverty then, as well?

Michel Chossudovsky: Well, there was certainly crushing poverty during that period, but what I’m suggesting there is that that crushing poverty was not alleviated with the discovery of oil. What happened is that the discovery of oil first of all created conditions of displacement of the agrarian economy. Agricultural production started to decline dramatically, and oil became essentially the sole industry in the country. There has been, or there was during the Bolivarian period under Chavez, concern that the rural economy had been more or less abandoned, and that was also the consequences of big oil.

Bonnie Faulkner: So then in 1992, Hugo Chavéz stages a coup d’état. Could you talk about Venezuela under Hugo Chavéz? Now, you’ve met him personally, haven’t you?

Michel Chossudovsky: Yes, I met him personally, rather briefly, when I attended the sessions of the Latin American Parliament. I think what was striking was that, first of all, he acknowledged the report which was published as a book entitled in Spanish, La Miseria en Venezuela, and he also intimated he would like me to get involved in an update of that – well, it wouldn’t be an update – a contemporary review of poverty, so that we could actually compare poverty in the 1970s to poverty in the early 2000s.

That proposal was discussed but it never really got off the ground. Had I been involved in doing a new poverty analysis, it would, of course, have been done in a very, very different way to what we did in the 1970s. But I still think that the analysis has to be made. The historical levels of poverty are there, and I had the opportunity of undertaking the study and releasing that information to the broader public in Venezuela.

As I mentioned, that destroyed a myth, the narrative that Venezuela in relation to other countries in Latin America was a rich country. It wasn’t a rich country. It was a country with tremendous wealth and a poor population with serious social divisions and high levels of inequality. That is what U.S. Foreign policy wants to restore. They want to restore Venezuela as a subordinate country with a poor population and elites that are aligned with the United States. That is the nature of the crisis which is ongoing today in Venezuela.

Bonnie Faulkner: Well, now, how would you assess the effect that Hugo Chavéz and his government had on Venezuela?

Michel Chossudovsky: This is a very complex process, because when Chavéz arrived to power initially, his first presidency was in 1999, and he became President in 1999 and then he continued again in 2007 until his death in 2013. The nature of the Venezuelan state apparatus was such that it was very difficult to start implementing reforms within the state apparatus. I knew that from the very beginning when I put together the team of people. I had a representative from the Ministry of Health and it turned out that she was sustaining essentially an elitist vision of health, and eventually I asked her to withdraw from the research group.

What Hugo Chavéz inherited was a structure of government which was very much still centered on the previous periods and required tremendous reform. You couldn’t simply go in and start instructing the officials to do this and that. There had to be a major reform of the state apparatus.

Now, what he did instead was to create projects which were parallel to the state system. Those were called the Misiones. They had also sort of grassroots. So there was a gradual process of reform of the state apparatus and at the same time there were activities which were grassroots which took place outside the realm let’s say of ministerial politics. They were geared towards literacy, education, health. They had tremendous support also from the Cuban doctors. In some regards, these were very successful undertakings.

I should mention from my own understanding is that there were serious divisions within the Bolivarian movement and I think also mistakes from the point of view as far as Chavez is concerned. From my standpoint, one of the biggest mistakes was to have, at an earlier period created, a United Socialist Party rather than a coalition. In other words, the intent of Chavéz was to create a political party which would be the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, of which he was also the leader, rather than create a coalition of parties which would gather different segments of Venezuelan society. So the thing became very polarized.

I should say there were divisions within the Chavista movement. There was also corruption within the Chavista movement. It was very difficult for the state to disassociate itself with the Venezuelan lobby groups, which were the rich families of Venezuela. But nonetheless, the results of this process were historically significant because first of all, the oil industry was already nationalized – well, it was nationalized by Carlos Andrés Pérez – but it was never really applied as a national process. And what Chavéz did was essentially to render this nationalization of petroleum as an active and key component in the recycling of revenue into the financing of social projects rather than into private hands. And that, of course, was ongoing. And the country had the resources to undertake these projects.

So that is the background. I should mention that – and that’s a separate issue – that there were already attempts to destabilize Chavéz from the presidency right from the outset, and it came as a result of the National Endowment for Democracy and its various actions in Venezuela in support of so-called opposition groups. I recall, again, and I should mention it, that in the 2012 elections, which Chavéz won, there was an attempt by various foundations, the NED but also Germany’s Hanns Seidel Foundation to support the opposition candidate. So there was direct interference in the electoral process.

Bonnie Faulkner: Were you saying that one of the ways that Hugo Chavéz tried to implement reform was not through reforming the government itself, but by creating a sort of a parallel structure. Is that what you were saying?

Michel Chossudovsky: Yes, that was certainly what occurred. Reforms were taking place within the state apparatus and the parallel structures were also there, and they were eventually linked up. But at the outset it was very difficult for the new government to come in and introduce major reforms in the state apparatus.

They then had a process of constitutional reform, which Chavéz implemented, and they created a constitutional assembly, which was the object of controversy. We’re dealing with a very complex process, because throughout his presidency up to his death there were conspiracies to destabilize the government, and there were people within the government who were playing a dirty game. I think that was clear. In fact, even to some extent Chavéz let that happen. There were contracts allocated with the Ministry of Public Works and so on. There were various cases of corruption within the Bolivarian government and there were serious problems regarding the structure of the state apparatus.

But it’s not to say that this was not known. But at the same time there was a grassroots movement. There was a process of democratization at the grassroots. I think that what was achieved was remarkable within a relatively short period of time. The historical levels of poverty were alleviated.

Bonnie Faulkner: It sounds like corruption played a very big part in Venezuela before Hugo Chavéz’s coup d’état and after his coup d’état when he got in charge. Many people are claiming that Venezuela’s economic collapse presently is linked to its socialist policies. What are Venezuela’s socialist policies and what do you make of this claim?

Michel Chossudovsky: I think that’s a little bit of a misnomer because, first of all, Venezuela was not a socialist economy. It was essentially a capitalist economy. What happened is that the government nationalized certain key industries. It created what were called the Communal Councils, it had the Misiones, which were largely focusing on issues of housing, healthcare and so on, but the economy was essentially a capitalist economy, a market economy. If you go to Caracas you see it. I think there was a socialist process which had been implemented but by no means was this a full-fledged socialist economy.

I think if we compare it to other Latin American countries, Venezuela in a sense would divorce itself from the so-called Washington consensus, namely the economic and social policies imposed by the Bretton Woods Institutions, e.g., World Bank, International Monetary Fund. It had its own structure for participatory democracy which were in some regards quite successful, particularly the Misiones.

In fact, the failures that we’re now seeing, rising consumer prices, hyperinflation, those are engineered. They’re engineered by manipulations of the foreign exchange market. We know this kind of mechanism because it’s what characterized the last months of the Chilean government of Salvador Allende in 1973 (left), where persistently the national currency was under attack leading to hyperinflation and so on and so forth. We might say that it’s part of the IMF, World Bank, Federal Reserve “remedy,” or action. It’s very easy for Wall Street to destabilize currencies. It’s been applied in many, many countries.

I recall when I was in Peru in the early ‘90s when President Alberto Fujimori came to power that in a single day the price of fuel went up 30 times, and that was following the IMF measures. Well, in the case of Venezuela, the manipulation is ongoing. The exchange rate is manipulated, and it is triggering poverty. There’s no question about it, that these acts of sabotage and financial warfare are creating abysmal poverty.

But that was not the result of a government policy; it was the result of intervention in the currency markets by speculators, and this is something which is well known and understood. If you want to destroy a country, you destroy its currency.

I should mention that I’ve had meetings with people at the Central Bank – not recently, but when I went to Venezuela some seven or eight years ago, I had those meetings at the Central Bank. The Central Bank of Venezuela did not really implement significant changes in the management of monetary policy which would avert this kind of action. But what I can say quite rightly is that if there’s poverty today in Venezuela it is not due to the Bolivarian Revolution; it is due to the fact that there are measures of sabotage and financial warfare which have been introduced with the view to undermining the Bolivarian missions in health, housing and so on simply by manipulating the currency markets, and that generates hyperinflation.

Bonnie Faulkner: How exactly does Wall Street attack a nation’s currency? What about the currency in Venezuela? Is it what you have referred to as a dollarized economy or not?

Michel Chossudovsky: I think it is a dollarized economy. That even prevailed before Chavez arrived to power. In other words, there’s a dual currency system. There’s the bolivar on the one hand, the national currency, and the dollar, and there’s a black market. And when there’s a black market which is unregulated – they never really manage to regulate the black market – when it’s unregulated well that’s what happens. People save in dollars because the national currency is very unstable and so on.

I think there were failures on the part of the Central Bank of Venezuela to ultimately come to terms with this issue. One of the reasons for that is that many of the people who were there, whom I knew, were of the old guard. They’re trained in monetary policy and macroeconomics and there was a need for some very careful reforms within the monetary system and mechanisms to protect the currency. That was fundamental.

Now, there’s also another element which played a role and that was the collapse of the oil market. That’s clear. The fact that the oil prices are exceedingly low backlashes on oil-producing countries, but that also affected other countries.

Bonnie Faulkner: And that oil collapse was manipulated, correct?

Michel Chossudovsky: The oil market collapse was manipulated, yes. I think the oil collapse was manipulated. There are mechanisms – I don’t want to get into that because it’s rather technical – but there are mechanisms of pushing prices of commodities up or down through speculative actions on the commodity exchanges. It’s well known and understood. There are ways of pushing currencies up and down through speculative actions. We know that from the 1997 Asian crisis, how the South Korean won collapsed. Those mechanisms are there. In economic jargon we call that naked short selling. When you introduce a naked short selling operation against a currency, it collapses, but there are ways for governments to actually avoid this short selling of their currencies. They have to regulate the currency market and unfortunately, in Venezuela that did not take place. Some proposals were put forth but they were never effective in protecting the currency.

Bonnie Faulkner: I’ve read that Venezuela is in debt to the tune of 60 billion. Does that debt have to be repaid in dollars?

Michel Chossudovsky: I presume that is a dollar debt, yes. It’s an external debt.

Bonnie Faulkner: How would they earn the dollars – by selling the oil?

Michel Chossudovsky: They’d sell the oil. I remind you that 60 billion dollars of external debt is not unduly high when you have oil revenues, but I expect that that debt was also accumulated with the collapse of the oil market. But, of course, yes, there are debt servicing obligations to repay that debt – of course, if there are problems of debt repayment then the creditors can implement measures which are detrimental to the Venezuelan economy and they’re doing it. There are a whole series of acts of sabotage. Just recently we see that the Bank of England has said, no, you can’t repatriate the gold that you’ve deposited in the Bank of England. They had gold deposited in the Bank of England which belongs to Venezuela and the response of the Bank of England said no, you can’t have it back. That’s another act of sabotage.

Bonnie Faulkner: It looks like Citgo, Venezuela’s main foreign energy asset, could be a target of the overthrow of Maduro, with the money from oil exports being sent to Guaidó instead of the Maduro government. I read that John Bolton was setting that out as a priority.

Michel Chossudovsky: Yeah, well, this is something which could have devastating consequences. But I don’t see it. First of all, there are institutional mechanisms as to how Guaidó would actually take control of these revenues. He’s not a government; he’s an individual. But what I think that what they’re doing now is to engineer mechanisms which will further destabilize the Venezuelan economy and also trigger some form of regime change.

Now, there’s another thing I’d like to mention, which I think is very important. What has been the response to this crisis? I saw recently a statement by a number of progressive authors and it essentially says that there should be mediation or negotiation between both sides. I think that that is something which is rather much misunderstood. There cannot be mediation between the government of Venezuela and a proxy for U.S. intelligence, which is Guaidó. In other words, what is being proposed is essentially to have a negotiated settlement between both sides, between the interim president, Juan Guaidó and the President of Venezuela, Maduro. In fact, Maduro has fallen for that proposal and has had I think some discussions with Guaidó or said he’s open to having conversations with him.

I think it should be obvious that this proposal is redundant and contradictory, because the leader of the National Assembly Juan Guaidó is a U.S. proxy. He’s an instrument of a foreign government who will then be negotiating on behalf of Washington.

Now, there’s always been negotiations within the Bolivarian process with opposition groups. They’ve always negotiated and discussed. But here, we’re dealing with something which is quite specific. You can’t negotiate with Juan Guaidó. He’s a U.S. proxy. And you can’t negotiate with the U.S. government. Well, there are internal divisions within Venezuela, but the President of Venezuela cannot negotiate with individuals who are committed to overthrowing the constitutionally elected President and replacing him with the Speaker of the House.

I think in Western countries we have to certainly take a stance and simply reject this opening by our governments, which are supporting the Speaker of the House and portraying him as an interim president of Venezuela. That’s the stance that we have to take.

There are certainly avenues of debate and negotiation within Venezuela, but it is very difficult for that to occur with a country which is under attack, which is the result of sabotage, financial warfare in the currency markets, threats to confiscate the revenues occurring from their oil exports, freezing the gold reserves in the Bank of England or freezing the accounts of assets overseas and so on. That is what has to stop and then there may be a period of transition where the country can restore its activities of normal government.

Bonnie Faulkner: Michel Chossudovsky, thank you.

Michel Chossudovsky: Thank you. Delighted to be on the program. Our thoughts today are with the people of Venezuela.

I’ve been speaking with Michel Chossudovsky. Today’s show has been: Venezuela: From Oil Proxy to the Bolivarian Movement and Sabotage.

Professor Michel Chossudovsky is the Founder, Director and Editor of the Center for Research on Globalization, based in Montreal, Quebec.

The Global Research website, globalresearch.ca, publishes news articles, commentary, background research and analysis.

Michel Chossudovsky is the author of eleven books including The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order and War and Globalization: The Truth Behind September Eleventh. Visit globalresearch.ca.

Guns and Butter is produced by Bonnie Faulkner, Yarrow Mahko and Tony Rango. Visit us at gunsandbutter.org to listen to past programs, comment on shows, or join our email list to receive our newsletter that includes recent shows and updates. Email us at [email protected].

Follow us on Twitter @gandbradio 

First published on January 25, 2019

The Latin American nation of Venezuela faces dangerous destabilization with the United States and its allies having recognized opposition figure Juan Guaido as “president” and declaring actual Venezuelan president – Nicolas Maduro – no longer recognized.

In response, President Maduro has demanded US diplomatic personnel to leave the country.

Protests and counter-protests have reportedly taken to the streets as both sides attempt to seize the psychological and political initiative.

Why Venezuela? 

According to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – the impetus for Washington’s sudden interest in Venezuela is the suffering of the Venezuelan people.

Reuters in their article titled, “Pompeo calls on Venezuela’s Maduro to step down, urges support from military,” would claim:

In a statement, Pompeo said Washington would support opposition leader Juan Guaido as he establishes a transitional government and prepares the country for elections. 

“The Venezuelan people have suffered long enough under Nicolas Maduro’s disastrous dictatorship,” Pompeo said. “We call on Maduro to step aside in favor of a legitimate leader reflecting the will of the Venezuelan people.”  

In truth, Washington’s motivation is the fact that according to The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) – Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves on Earth – more than Saudi Arabia and accounting for nearly a quarter of all OPEC production.

The US doesn’t necessarily need this oil in terms of energy – but in terms of maintaining a US-led unipolar international order – controlling or crippling nations with large amounts of hydrocarbons prevents the emergence of a multipolar world nations across the developing world seek, led by reemerging global power – Russia – and newly emerging global power – China.

A Venezuela governed by a stable political order able to produce wealth from its massive oil reserves – and dedicated to a multipolar alternative to Washington’s current international order is intolerable for Wall Street and Washington and explains the vast amount of time, energy, money, and resources the US has invested in destabilizing and overthrowing first President Hugo Chavez – with a coup attempt in 2002 – and now President Maduro.

US Meddling in Venezuela

Even the Western media has admitted that the US has long meddled in Venezuela’s internal affairs by funding the opposition.

The UK Independent in a recent article titled, “Venezuela military chief declares loyalty to Maduro and warns US not to intervene,” would admit (emphasis added):

The US has a long history of interfering with democratically elected governments in Latin America and in Venezuela it has sought to weaken the elected governments of both Mr Maduro and Mr Chavez. 

Some of the effort has been in distributing funds to opposition groups through organisations such as the National Endowment for Democracy, while some has been in the form of simple propaganda. 

Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, said that for the past 20 years it had been US policy to seek a change of government in Caracas. Mr Trump’s recognition of Mr Guaido was the most obvious effort to undermine the government.

The US National Endowment for Democracy’s (NED) own current webpage admits to extensively interfering in every imaginable aspect of Venezuela’s internal political affairs with funds directed at:

• Building Strategic Capacity for Local Democratic Actors
• Cohesive Strategic Communications
• Defending Human Rights Victims
• Developing Tools for Agile Communication
• Empowering Citizens through Local and National Policy Dialogue
• Facilitating Humanitarian Aid Relief
• Formulating a Comprehensive Public Policy Reform Package
• Fostering Scenario Planning and Strategic Analysis
• Fostering Small Business Enterprise in Defense of Democracy and Free Markets
• Improving Democratic Governance in Venezuela
• Improving Local Democratic Governance
• Leadership Empowerment and Socio-Political Participation
• Monitoring Human Rights Conditions
• Monitoring the Human Rights Situation
• Promoting Access to Justice and Public Services
• Promoting Checks and Balances
• Promoting Citizen Journalism
• Promoting Citizen Participation and Freedom of Expression
• Promoting Democratic Governance
• Promoting Democratic Values
• Promoting Dialogue and Reconciliation
• Promoting Freedom of Association
• Promoting Freedom of Expression and Access to Information
• Promoting Human Rights
• Promoting Independent Journalism
• Promoting Political Engagement and Advocacy
• Promoting the Rule of Law

At one point during US regime change efforts, NED-funded front, Sumate, would even organize a recall referendum against President Chavez – which he won. The Washington Post in a 2006 article titled, “Chavez Government Probes U.S. Funding,” would admit:

[Sumate] organized a recall referendum in 2004 that Chavez won and also is a vociferous critic of the government and the electoral system.

The article also admits that:

USAID which hired the Maryland-based company Development Alternatives Inc. to administer the grants has declined to identify many Venezuelan recipients, saying they could be intimidated or prosecuted.

While the nature of the US government’s extensive meddling in Venezuela remains intentionally covert – admissions surrounding Sumate’s activities illustrate how even entire referendums are organized through the use of US money and guided by US directives.

Maria Corina Machado, founder of Sumate, an alleged Venezuelan election monitoring group, funded by the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED), meeting with US President George Bush who presided over the failed 2002 coup attempt seeking to oust President Hugo Chavez.

NED and other organizations operating in parallel – including convicted financial criminal George Soros’ Open Society Foundations – seek to entirely overwrite Venezuelan institutions, governance, and law, replacing it with an obedient US-sponsored client regime and system of administration.

US support is not confined to broad efforts to build up the opposition – but also specific efforts to aid senior opposition leaders.

A leaked 2004 US State Department document titled, “Status of Capriles and Sumate Cases,” made it clear that NED funding was ongoing even then, and that the US State Department was required to provide aid to NED-funded front Sumate being prosecuted for the very obvious treason they were engaged in. It also illustrated US State Department support for senior opposition leader Henrique Capriles Radonski.

Capriles – along with Leopoldo Lopez – served as mentors to current opposition leader Juan Guaido who is now openly being offered some $20 million by the US State Department in aid.

US Efforts to Cripple Venezuela’s Economy 

Reuters in an article titled, “Pompeo urges regional bloc to support Venezuela’s Guaido,” would claim:

[Pompeo] pledged $20 million towards humanitarian aid for Venezuela, where economic collapse, hyperinflation, and food and medicine shortages have sparked an exodus of millions of people.

The paradoxical nature of this supposed aid is that the United States had deliberately caused this economic collapse, hyperinflation, and food and medicine shortages in the first place – specifically to undermine and destabilize first President Chavez’ government and now Maduro’s.

The US Treasury Department aimed sanctions specifically at (PDF) Venezuela’s central bank and Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PdVSA) – Venezuela’s state-owned oil and gas company to restrict financing and to block transfers – while the US and allied OPEC members acted in concert to lower global oil prices – not only to cripple Venezuela’s oil-based economy – but those of other US adversaries including Iran and Russia.

While the Western media repeatedly claims US sanctions have been reserved for Venezuelan officials only, the Washington Post itself would admit in an article titled, “Venezuela’s oil gives Maduro little leverage against the United States,” that (emphasis added):

“Seventy-five percent of cash-generating oil exports are coming here,” said Scott Modell, the managing director of Rapidan Energy and a former CIA officer in Latin America. Though Venezuela exports considerable amounts of crude oil to major diplomatic allies like Russia and China, almost all of the profits are used to service preexisting debts. “They don’t get cash for that, and they are desperate for cash,” Modell said. 

The article also stated:

Citgo’s ownership has long been a source of tension between the United States and Venezuela. In August 2017, the Trump administration signed an executive order that blocked the repatriation of dividends, and sanctions on Venezuelan officials have placed Citgo in an increasingly fraught position. 

Just under half of PDVSA’s shares in the company were used as collateral for a $1.5 billion loan the Venezuelan government took out from Russian energy giant Rosneft in 2016. Foreign creditors have suggested they may try to acquire parts of Citgo to service their debts. 

Modell said that there is debate in the United States about whether the U.S. government could seize the company itself. Some opposed this, arguing that Citgo should be an asset available for a post-Maduro Venezuela that could help provide a “petroeconomic recovery” for the ailing country. 

It is clear that significant efforts have been made to cripple Venezuela’s ability to profit from its oil with even the US media and those it interviews admitting the US is unsure of just how far to go – realizing that once the damaging sanctions are reversed, remaining, intact infrastructure will allow Venezuela to “provide a “petroeconomic recover” for the ailing country.”

In other instances of economic warfare, large sums of Venezuelan gold have been withheld in the UK which refuses to return it to the Venezuelan government, The Times reports.

Efforts within Venezuela through US-funded opposition groups, focus on hording certain essential goods creating artificial shortages while armed gangs hired by wealthy business and land owners ravage state-backed farmers and industries to further exasperate prices, supply, and demand.

A Washington Post article titled, “Venezuela’s paradox: People are hungry, but farmers can’t feed them,” refers to the armed gangs merely as “criminals” but links to Venezuela Analysis which gives a fuller but contradictory version of events.

Venezuela Analysis’ article, “Venezuelan Farmers on Disputed Land Say They Have No Intention of Vacating,” depicts efforts by farmers to use land reclaimed from wealthy owners to produce agricultural goods, but who are targeted by hired mercenaries, attacked and driven off. In other cases, wealthy oligarchs are able to secure concessions from courts to consolidate control over farmlands used to produce food.

The Venezuelan government has been increasingly resorting to price controls and emergency measures to compensate in the face of overwhelming economic warfare but with varied success.

Economic destabilization is a key component in US regime change efforts – witnessed in all of Washington’s past and current confrontations including against Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, North Korea, and Russia for an array of alleged offenses centered around “human rights” and fabricated threats to US national security.

Conversely – nations like Saudi Arabia whom even former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted is “providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region,” and undeniably among the worst human rights abusers on Earth – has escaped not only sanctions, but even the most basic condemnation for its serial violations of international law and rights abuses.

This stark contrast helps illustrate the true, politically-motivated nature of US sanctions arrayed against targeted nations with but the thinnest rhetorical veneer applied to obtain public support.

Where even powerful nations like Russia and China must work for years to create alternatives to US-dollar domination across global finances – a nation like Venezuela already destabilized from decades of US-fomented chaos stands to suffer greatly in the face of sanctions and economic warfare – now coupled with another overt US-backed coup attempt.

Imperialism, Not “Socialism”  

Venezuela sits on an ocean of proven oil reserves. It has been openly slated for regime change by the US and has been for years with documented evidence proving the current opposition vying for power is funded by Washington, for Washington’s, not Venezuela’s benefit.

Sanctions and economic warfare have been aimed at Venezuela just as the US has done with the numerous other nations it has overthrown, invaded, and otherwise destroyed – or those that it is trying to overthrow and destroy.

There is no missing puzzle piece that makes Venezuela an exception to what is another textbook case of US-backed regime change.

Attempts to claim Venezuela’s crisis was precipitated by “socialism” – even if one is able to ignore the voluminous amounts of evidence proving US subversion has instead – still doesn’t add up.

China is also socialist – communist in fact – with a high degree of central planning and nationalized industry. It possesses the largest high-speed rail network on Earth, has a space program with the ability to launch people into orbit, and has the world’s second largest economy.

Conversely, the US hasn’t a single mile of high-speed rail, currently pays the Russian Federation to launch its astronauts into orbit, and has thoroughly squandered its place as largest global economy in pursuit of aspirations toward unrealized global domination.

There is clearly more that contributes to a nation’s success or failure than being “socialist” or “capitalist” – whatever either term even really means. For Venezuela, its failures are a direct and clear result of US imperialism. And only through exposing and rolling back US meddling, can Venezuela’s fortunes be reversed.

*

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

This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Land Destroyer Report.

Tony Cartalucci is 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.

All images in this article are from the author unless otherwise stated

This was originally published in 2018.

In World history, there are many actors who deserved a title of “Butcher” but there are only two persons whom the Western historians, journalists or political analysts pasted this label as the official mark of their participation in world history – General Ratko Mladić (the “Butcher of Bosnia”) and Slobodan Milošević (the “Balkan Butcher”). In the following paragraphs it is going to be noticed more candidates for the title of “Butcher” as a small contribution to the proper interpretation and understanding of global history.

The Three Men of Slashing

This year it is the 73rd anniversary of the end of the WWII – the bloodiest and most horrible war ever fought in the human history. The war that caused creation of the UNO in 1945 in order to protect world from similar events in the future – a pan-global political-security organization which first issued legal act was a Charter of the UN which inspired the 1948 Geneva Conventions’ definition of genocide.

The Nüremberg and Tokyo Trials were organized as “The Last Battles” for justice as the first ever global trials for the war criminals and mass murderers including and the top-hierarchy statesmen and politicians. However, 73 years after WWII the crucial moral question still needs a satisfactory answer:

Have all the WWII war criminals faced justice at the Nüremberg and Tokyo Trials? Or at least those who did not escape from public life after the war.

Here we will present only one of those cases from WWII which has to be characterized as the genocide followed by the personalities directly responsible for it: The 1945 Dresden Massacre.

At the Old Market in the east German city of Dresden, following allied bombings 13 February 1945

The 1945 Dresden Raid was surely one of the most destructive air-raids during WWII as well as in the history of massive military destructions and the war crimes against humanity too.[1]

The main and most destructive air-raid was during the night of February 13^th−14^th, by the British Bomber Command when 805 bomber military crafts attacked the city of Dresden which up to that time was protected from similar attacks primarily for two reasons:

1. The city was of an extreme pan-European cultural and historical importance as one of the most beautiful “open-air museum” places in Europe and probably the city with the most beautiful Baroque architectural inheritance in the world.[2]
2. The lack of the city’s geostrategic, economic and military importance.

The main air raid was followed by three more similar raids in daylight but now by the U.S. 8^th Air Force. The Allied (in fact, the U.K.−U.S.) Supreme Commander-In-Chief the U.S. a five-star General Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890−1969) was anxious to link the Allied forces with the very advancing Soviet Red Army in the South Germany. For that reason, Dresden was suddenly considered of strategic importance as a communication center, at least according to Eisenhower.

However, at that time Dresden was known as a city that was overcrowded by up to 500,000 German refugees from the east. For the U.K.−U.S. Supreme Command Headquarters it was clear that any massive air-bombing of the city would result in a massive loss of life, a human catastrophe. That was not primarily only on Eisenhower’s conscience to decide to launch massive airstrikes on Dresden or not as we have not to forget that Eisenhower was only a military commander (a strateg in Greek) but not a politician.

Undoubtedly, the Dresden question in January−February 1945 was of a political and human nature not only of military one. Therefore, together with the Supreme Commander-In-Chief of the Allied Forces a direct moral and human responsibility for the 1945 Dresden Massacre was on the British PM Winston Churchill (1874−1965) and the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882−1945) too.

These three men, however, finally agreed that inevitably very high casualties in Dresden might in the end, nevertheless, help to shorten the war, that from a technical point of view was true. During one night and one day of the raids there were over 30,000 buildings destroyed and the numbers of those who were killed in the bombing and the ensuing firestorm are still in dispute among the historians as the estimations go up to 140,000. Here it has to be noticed that if this highest estimation number is going to be true it means that during the 1945 Dresden Massacre were killed more people than in Hiroshima case from August 1945 (around 100,000 that was one third out of total Hiroshima’s pre-bombing population).

The “Bomber Harris” and the “Atomic Harry”

One person with direct responsibility for transforming Dresden into the open-air crematorium, as the city was bombed by forbidden flammable bombs for massive destructions (Saddam Hussein was attacked in 2003 by the NATO’s alliance under the alleged and finally false accusation to possess exactly such weapons – WMD) is the “Bomber Harris” – a commander of the British Royal Air-Forces during the Dresden Raid. The “Bomber Harris” was in fact Arthur Travers Harris (1892−1984; image on the left), a Head of the British Bomber Command in 1942−1945. He was born in Cheltenham, joined the British Royal Flying Corps in 1915, before fighting as a solder in the South-West Africa. He became a Commander of the Fifth Group from 1939 till 1942 when he became the Head of this Group (Bomber Command). The point is that it was exactly Arthur Travers Harris who stubbornly required and defending the massive area bombing of Germany under the idea that such practice will bring the total destruction of Germany (including and civil settlements) that would finally force Germany to surrender without involving of the Allied forces into the full-scale overland military invasion. The crucial point is that this “Bomber Harry’s” strategy received a full support by the British PM Winston Churchill who, therefore, became a politician who blessed and legitimized massive aerial massacres in the legal form of genocide as it was described in the post-WWII Charter of the UNO and other international documents on protection of human rights (for instance, the 1949 Geneva Conventions). Nevertheless, there were the “Bomber Harry”, Dwight Eisenhower, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill who transformed the bombing of selected targets as transport systems, industrial areas or oil refineries into the massive aerial destruction of the whole urban settlements with transforming them into the open-air crematoriums like it was done for the first time in history with Dresden – a city with a rare historical heritage (today the pre-war Dresden would be on the UNESCO list of protected places of the world’s heritage) but flattened during one night and one day.[3]

This successful practice became very soon followed by the Allied forces in the cases of other German cities,[4] like Würtzburg – a tightly packed medieval housing city that exploded in a firestorm in March 1945 in one night with 90% of destroyed city-space which had no strategic importance.[5] However, a strategic bombing of the urban settlements in the WWII reached its peak by destructions of  Hiroshima and Nagasaki under the order by the U.S. President (Democrat) Harry Truman – the “Atomic Harry” (1884−1972) who authorized the dropping of the atomic bombs over these two Japanese cities in order to end the war against Japan without further loss of the U.S. military troops, insisting on unconditional surrender of Japan.[6]

“The Last Battle for Justice” and the “Butchers of Dresden”

Surely, one of the most obvious results of the WWII was “its unparalleled destructiveness. It was most visible in the devastated cities of Germany and Japan, where mass air bombing, one of the major innovations of the Second World War, proved much more costly to life and buildings than had been the bombing of Spanish cities in the Spanish civil war”.[7] For that and other reasons, we believe that many Allied military and civil top decision-making personalities from the WWII had to face justice at the Nüremberg and Tokyo Trials together with Hitler, Eichmann, Pavelić and many others. However, it is old truth that the winners are writing history and re-writing historiography. Therefore, instead to see Dwight Eisenhower, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), Harry Truman or Arthur Travers Harris at the Nüremberg and Tokyo Trials’ courtrooms as indicted on such charges as crimes against humanity and genocide as were the German Nazi defendants, who included the NSDAP’s officials and high-ranking military officers along with the German industrialists, lawmen and doctors, we are even 73 years after the WWII reading and learning politically whitewashed and embellished biographies of those war criminals who destroyed Dresden, Hiroshima or Nagasaki as national heroes, freedom fighters and democracy protectors.[8] For instance, in any official biography of Winston Churchill is not written that he is responsible for the ethnic cleansing of the German civilians in 1945 but we know that the British PM clearly promised to the Poles to get after the war ethnically cleansed territory from the Germans.[9]

If the Nüremberg Trial, 1945−1949 was “The Last Battle” for justice,[10] then it was incomplete. Moreover, two the most ardent killers of Dresden – Churchill and Eisenhower were granted after the war by the second premiership and double-term presidentship, respectively, in their countries.

There were many (Western) butchers in world history but only small fish (from the Balkans) are officially marked by such label.

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This article was originally published by Oriental Review.

Vladislav B. Satirovic is Founder & Director of the Private Research Centre “The Global Politics” (www.global-politics.eu), Ovsishte, Serbia. Personal web platform: www.global-politics.eu/sotirovic. Contact: [email protected]

Notes

[1] On this issue, see more in [L. B. Kennett, A History of Strategic Bombing: From the First Hot-AirBaloons to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Scribner, 1982].

[2] On Dresden’s history and architecture, see [W. Hädecke, Dresden: Eine Geschichte von Glanz, Katastrophe und Aufbruch, Carl Hanser Verlag, München−Vien, 2006; J. Vetter (ed.), Beautiful Dresden, Ljubljana: MKT Print, 2007].

[3] On the case of firebombing of Dresden, see more in [P. Addison, J. A. Crang (eds.), Firestorm. The Bombing of Dresden, 1945, Ivan R. Dee, 2006; M. D. Bruhl, Firestorm: Allied Airpower and the Destruction of Dresden, New York: Random House, 2006; D. Irving, Apocalypse 1945: The Destruction of Dresden, Focal Point Publications, 2007; F. Taylor, Dresden. Tuesday, February 13, 1945, HarpenCollins e-books, 2009; Charler River Editors, The Firebombing of Dresden: The History and Legacy of the Allies’ Most Controversial Attack on Germany, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014].

[4] On this issue, see more in [J. Friedrich, The Bombing of Germany 1940−1945, New York: Columbia University Press, 2006; R. S. Hansen, Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942−1945, New York: Penguin Group/New American Library, 2009].

[5] On Würtzburg’s case, see [H. Knell, To Destroy a City: Strategic Bombing and its Human Consequences in World War II, Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press/Pireus Books Group, 2003].

[6] On this issue, see more in [C. C. Crane, Bombs, Cities, & Civilians: American Airpower Strategy in World War II, Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1993; A. C. Grayling, Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan, New York: Walker & Company, 2007].

[7] J. M. Roberts, The New Penguin History of the World, Fourth Edition, London: Allien Lane an imprint of the Penguin Press, 2002, p. 965.

[8] See, for instance [R. Dallek, Harry S. Truman, New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 2008; J. E. Smith, FDR, New York: Random House, 2008; S. E. Ambrose, The Supreme Commander: The War Years of Dwight D. Eisenhover, New York: Anchor Books A Division of Random House, Inc., 2012; A. D. Donald, Citizen Soldier: A Life of Harry S. Truman, New York: Basic Books, 2012; W. Manchester, P. Reid, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940−1965, New York: Penguin Random House Company, 2013; B. Johnson, The Churchil Factor: How One Man Made History, London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 2014; B. Harper, Roosevelt, New York City, Inc., 2014; P. Johnson, Eisenhower: A Life, New York: Viking/Penguin Group, 2014].

[9] T. Snyder, Kruvinos Žemės. Europa tarp Hitlerio ir Stalino, Vilnius: Tyto alba, 2011, p. 348 (original title: T. Snyder, Bloodlands. Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, New York: Basic Books, 2010).

[10] D. Irving, Nuremberg: The Last Battle, World War II Books, 1996.

All images in this article are from the author.

The Israeli government blockade on Palestinian agricultural exports through Jordan on Sunday illustrates the Apartheid character of Israeli rule over the Palestinians. Palestinian trucks loaded with produce were stopped by quickly-erected Israeli blast walls and forbidden to head into Jordan.

The Palestine-Jordan trade in commodities such as vegetables, fruits, olives, olive oil, and dates is worth some $100 million a year.

The step was ordered by Israeli minister of defense Naftali Bennett, who in that capacity is the chief of the Occupation Army ruling Palestine. His rationale is that the Palestinians on Feb. 2 ceased importing goods from Israel, so this measure is payback.

The argument fails on a number of grounds, however. Most important, the Palestinian West Bank is under Israeli military occupation, and therefore is governed by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Hague Regulations of 1907.

Here is what Geneva says, and although the situations envisaged are not exactly the same we are facing today, the sort of thing being prohibited is clear:

Art. 51:

“Every such person shall, so far as possible, be kept in his usual place of employment. Workers shall be paid a fair wage and the work shall be proportionate to their physical and intellectual capacities. The legislation in force in the occupied country concerning working conditions, and safeguards as regards, in particular, such matters as wages, hours of work, equipment, preliminary training and compensation for occupational accidents and diseases, shall be applicable to the protected persons assigned to the work referred to in this Article.”

Art. 52

All measures aiming at creating unemployment or at restricting the opportunities offered to workers in an occupied territory, in order to induce them to work for the Occupying Power, are prohibited.Art.

Art. 53. Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.

By blockading Palestinian exports through Jordan, Bennett as the Occupying authority is preventing the occupied population from earning a fair wage and creating unemployment for the purpose of coercing occupied civilians into doing his political will. Inasmuch as the produce will rot if not exported, he is also destroying their personal property.

These are all violations of international law, and since the International Criminal Court is now looking into whether Israeli officials are guilty of war crimes, Apartheid and other crimes specified in the 2002 Rome statute, the ICC should definitely look into Bennett.

In fact, the Rome Statute (8.2.a) defines as a war crime the grave violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Further, 7.1.j and 7.2.h specify the crime of Apartheid as a “crime against humanity.” 7.2.h defines it this way:

“The crime of apartheid” means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime…”

Not letting Palestinians export their produce through Jordan is definitely an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by the Israelis over the Palestinians, and this blockade is being enacted with the intention of maintaining this regime.

Bennett has been among those outraged that anyone would boycott Israel for its human rights abuses, but now he is imposing a boycott on the Palestinians, forcibly preventing them from doing business with Jordan.

Which brings us to another issue. The Palestinians are within their rights not to buy from Israel. But Bennett is imposing a third party blockade on the Palestinians. This measure is not proportionate and it can only be implemented because Israel has all the power and the Palestinians are powerless and under Bennett’s jackboot.

That Israel can at will stop Palestinian-Jordanian trade demonstrates conclusively that Palestine is not a free agent but is rather an Occupied territory, and that all the power rests in the hands of the Occupation military, which is to say in Bennett’s hands.

Why, we might ask, were the Geneva Conventions adopted by the world community in 1949? They were aimed at prohibiting the excesses of the Axis during World War II.

For instance, during the German occupation of the Ukraine in WW II, 6 to 7 million persons died, mostly of hunger, because of German policy. Cormac Ó Gráda writes, “brutal requisitioning in Nazi-occupied areas resulted in about 4 million deaths.” About 3 million of these, he estimates, were in Ukraine alone, amounting to 8% of the Ukrainian population.

It is bad to contravene the Geneva Conventions because if all United Nations members did that, we’d be back to the German occupation of the Ukraine on a global scale. Israel is guilty of massive violations of international law in the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza, and this block on their exports is one more. The Kushner Apartheid Plan would not end any of these abuses but would cement them forever in place.

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In January, the Israeli daily newspaper, Haaretz, ran an article, “Secret Israeli Document Reveals Plan to Keep Arabs Off Their Lands.” I found the piece unsettling for several reasons.

Given the headline, at first I thought the story was going to be about Israel’s policies in the West Bank where Israel’s military administration has, since the beginning of the occupation, set aside large areas of the territories as “closed” to Palestinians, presumably for reasons of “security”. Other areas were designated “green spaces”, which, while appearing to be an environmental designation, simply meant that Palestinians could not build on or otherwise make use of these lands.

Over time, both the “closed” and the “green spaces” gave way to settlements, since that had been Israel’s intention in the first place. For example, the massive Israeli settlement called Har Homa was built on a hill of Palestinian-owned land between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, called Jabal Abul Ghnaim. Early on, Israel zoned the jabal “a green space”. Their concern was not to keep it “green;” it was to keep Palestinian owners from using the land until Israel was ready to build a Jewish-only settlement on that same location.

As I began to read the Haaretz story, however, I realised that it was not about Israel’s current practices in the territories occupied in 1967. Rather, it was about the Israeli defence establishment’s decades-long effort to bury or suppress documentation of the very same land-grab practices that the Israelis had implemented during the first few years of their state.

Haaretz, to its credit, has been running quite a few of these historical pieces exposing the outrageous policies Israel used to “ethnically cleanse” Palestinians from their land in order to insure that the new state was “more Jewish and less Arab”. As I have read each of these articles, I must say that my reactions have ranged from anger to indignation to vindication.

I have felt angry and indignant because 40 years ago, when I first wrote about these same practices in a little book titled, “Palestinians: The Invisible Victims”, I was denounced by major pro-Israel and American Jewish organisations for my anti-Israel views. Back then, these mainstream groups were operating in much the same way as today’s shadowy Canary Mission or Campus Watch. They created defamatory and threatening background briefs on Arab American writers and activists. And they would use these briefs to pressure colleges, radio, and TV programmes to disinvite us. They accused us distorting history, fabricating lies, and being motivated by an anti-Jewish animus. Of course, we were doing none of the above. We were merely reporting on the history of what Israel had done and was still doing to remove Palestinians from their lands and to deny them their rights.

When I now read the very same history in an Israeli newspaper, I cannot help think of the price so many Arab American intellectuals and activists were forced to pay for simply telling the truth. So, yes, I am angry and indignant. At the same time, I feel somewhat vindicated that despite the heavy-handed efforts of major American Jewish groups to silence our voices, the truth is finally coming out.

One final aspect of the article that I found intriguing was the effort expended and the means used by Israeli authorities to bury the historical record that would prove the grave injustices they committed in establishing their state. According to the Haaretz article, this record includes evidence of “the looting and destruction of Arab villages during the Independence War [and]…evidence of acts of expulsion and testimony about camps set up for captives”.

What the article makes clear is that the “cover up” was not only designed to hide the truth, but to provide Israeli propagandists the opportunity to disingenuously “question” whether these thing even happened or to simply deny that they happened at all and then discredit those who said otherwise. As one official quoted in the article says about the imperative of hiding any documentation of what Israel had done to the Palestinians, “if someone writes that the horse is black, if the horse is not outside the barn, then he cannot ever prove that it is really black”. The lesson: if you hide the records or destroy, no historian can prove it ever happened.

The Israeli plan in a nutshell: first, whitewash history denying all the claims made about the repressive policies put in place; then denounce anyone who refuses to accept this fictional account of “history”; and finally, hide from the public as much of the real history is possible, so that it becomes difficult to counter the “whitewashed” fictive historical narrative.

In the end, what is especially disturbing about this Israeli practice, is that it is still their modus operandi. They continue to dispossess Palestinians of their lands using the same tactics which they used to “Judaise the Galilee”. In the early 1950’s, Israelis used the Emergency Defence Regulations they inherited from the British to declare any Palestinian area “closed”. They did so “as a means to control the “state’s lands…until their permanent status could be regularised and …Jewish settlement could begin in formerly Arab areas”.

This is exactly what the Israelis have done throughout the West Bank with “closed” and “green zones”. And precisely what the Trump “peace plan” has done is formalise, in Israel’s favour, “the permanent status” of the seized Palestinian lands.

For decades, Israel’s apologists hid their intent and the evidence of their crimes. The truth is now coming out. And yes, those of us who have been telling this story can feel vindicated. But we can also feel angry and indignant, and deeply concerned about the future.

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The writer is president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute.

The Allied destruction of Dresden wasn’t the biggest or deadliest aerial bombardment of a German city during World War II. But it is by far the most infamous, largely due to Kurt Vonnegut’s anti-war masterpiece Slaughterhouse-Five. February 13 marks the 75th anniversary of what Vonnegut, who survived the bombing as a prisoner-of-war, called “carnage unfathomable.”

Butcher Harris and British Terror Bombing

By early 1945 the once-unstoppable German army was in retreat on all fronts. Its desperate last-ditch counteroffensives against the rapidly advancing Allied forces in the west—the Battle of the Bulge and Operation Baseplate—had failed, while in the east the Red Army rolled into German territory during the first Silesian Offensive. The time was right, British commanders argued, for large-scale aerial attacks on cities in eastern Germany that would aid the Soviet offensive and crush German morale.

Long before this time the British had implemented a policy of what they called “terror bombing,” or the total deliberate destruction of German cities, as a method of breaking the will of the German people to continue fighting. Waves of Royal Air Force (RAF) warplanes bombed densely populated cities under cover of night, abandoning any pretense of precision targeting and causing widespread, indiscriminate death and destruction. The chief of the RAF Bomber Command, Arthur “Bomber” Harris, declared his desire to visit “the horrors of fire” on the German people. Once Harris was pulled over by a British police officer for speeding in his black Bentley. “You could have killed someone,” the constable admonished him. “Young man,” the commander retorted, “I kill thousands of people every night.”

He wasn’t lying. Although the British government insisted that it was never its policy to target civilians, the truth was something altogether different. As Harris said after Luftwaffe bombers blitzed British cities, since the Germans had “sown the wind” they should “reap the whirlwind.” In 1943, Harris wrote that “the aim is the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers and the disruption of civilized life throughout Germany” while “downplaying the obliteration of German cities and their inhabitants.”

“Bomber” was indeed a fitting nickname for Harris, but his men had another one for him — “Butcher.” He lived up to the moniker. Around 50 German cities were subjected to horrific aerial bombardment, often with incendiary bombs designed to spark massive firestorms and maximize death, destruction and terror. In July 1943, some 45,000 civilians including 21,000 women and 8,000 children died during more than a week of relentless bombing in Hamburg. In February 1945 hundreds of Lancaster bombers leveled Pforzheim, killing nearly a third of the population. The list went on and on.

‘Fire, Only Fire’

Harris and other RAF commanders proposed simultaneous attacks on Berlin, Chemnitz, Dresden and Leipzig in the winter of 1945. Dresden, Germany’s seventh-largest city, was the largest urban area in the Third Reich that hadn’t yet been bombed. It had been spared from Allied attack because it was an important cultural city — known as the Jewel Box for its celebrated architecture — with relatively few significant military targets. It was a city of refuge, with 19 hospitals and more than a million refugees fleeing the horrors of the Red Army advance encamped there. They were drawn by Dresden’s reputation as a safe haven from the flames of war that had engulfed most of the rest of Germany, a reputation reinforced by the presence of some 25,000 Allied prisoners of war held in and around the city.

View from Dresden city hall after the February 13-15, 1945 Allied bombing. (Photo: Deutsch Fotohek/Wikimedia Commons)

The first RAF warplanes approached the city after 9:30 p.m. on February 13. Some 200,000 incendiary bombs along with 500 tons of high-explosive munitions including two-ton “blockbuster” bombs were dropped during the initial raids, sparking thousands of fires that could be seen from 500 miles (800 km) away in the air. The heat generated by the inferno melted human flesh, turning many victims into piles of goop. Men, women, children, the sick, the elderly, refugees and Allied POWs and even the animals in the city zoo — all were incinerated together. The 2700º Fahrenheit (1480° C) firestorm sucked all the oxygen from the air; many thousands suffocated to death. Lothar Metzger, who was nine years old at the time, later recalled:

 About 9:30 p.m. the alarm was given. We children knew that sound and… hurried downstairs into our cellar… My older sister and I carried my baby twin sisters, my mother carried a little suitcase and the bottles with milk for our babies. On the radio we heard with great horror the news: “Attention, a great air raid will come over our town!” … Some minutes later we heard a horrible noise — the bombers. There were nonstop explosions. Our cellar was filled with fire and smoke and was damaged, the lights went out and wounded people shouted dreadfully. In great fear we struggled to leave this cellar…

We did not recognize our street any more. Fire, only fire wherever we looked… It was beyond belief, worse than the blackest nightmare. So many people were horribly burnt and injured. It became more and more difficult to breathe… Inconceivable panic. Dead and dying people were trampled upon… cremated adults shrunk to the size of small children, pieces of arms and legs, dead people, whole families burnt to death, burning people ran to and fro, burnt coaches filled with civilian refugees, dead rescuers and soldiers, many were calling and looking for their children and families, and fire everywhere, everywhere fire, and all the time the hot wind of the firestorm threw people back into the burning houses they were trying to escape from… The twins had disappeared… we never saw my two baby sisters again.

The following morning, a wave of more than 300 United States Army Air Force Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers pounded the survivors with over 700 tons of explosives. On February 15, US warplanes bombed the city’s southeastern suburbs, as well as the nearby towns of Meissen and Prina. By the time it was all over, some 25,000 men, women and children were dead and nearly 90 percent of the homes in central Dresden were obliterated. Many of the targets that could have been considered of military interest — a few factories, the railway system — remained relatively unscathed. Nazi military trains were chugging through the city again within three days of the bombing.

‘Are We Beasts?’

British and American officials insisted Dresden was chosen as a target because of its industrial and transportation infrastructure. This is only partially true. On the eve of the bombing, the Red Army was a mere 80 miles (130 km) from Dresden and the US and Britain, knowing that Europe would be carved up between themselves and the Soviets after the war, wanted to impress Stalin with a massive show of force. An RAF memo to airmen the night of the attack explained that “the intentions of the attack are to hit the enemy where he will feel it most” and “to show the Russians when they arrive what Bomber Command can do.” A few months later, the United States would wage the world’s first and only nuclear war, obliterating two Japanese cities and killing hundreds of thousands of their people, in what was partly yet another bid to shock and awe the Soviets.

The Dresden bombing shocked the world’s conscience. Churchill, not known for outpourings of compassion, was appalled by the savagery of the attack, calling it “an act of terror and wanton destruction.” After seeing photographs of the devastated city, the prime minister asked, “Are we beasts? Are we taking this too far?” In a top secret memo dated March 28, 1945, he wrote:

It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land.

Others defended the bombing. “Butcher” Harris acknowledged that “the destruction of so large and splendid a city at this late stage of the war was considered unnecessary even by a good many people who admit that our earlier attacks were fully justified.” However, he asserted that terror bombing would “shorten the war and preserve the lives of Allied soldiers.” Harris infamously added: “I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British grenadier.”

As many as 600,000 German civilians were killed by Allied bombing over the course of the war. Many of these victims died during the war’s final months, when Germany’s defeat was certain and such slaughter served no valid military purpose. And while the Nazis may have started the air war by bombing British cities, killing 14,000 civilians during the Blitz, the whirlwind they reaped—to paraphrase Harris—was so grossly disproportionate that it would forever stain the Allies’ self-righteous claims of having waged the “last good war.”

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

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Brett Wilkins is a San Francisco-based freelance author and editor-at-large for US news at Digital Journal. His work, which focuses on issues of war and peace and human rights, is archived at www.brettwilkins.com.

Featured image: View from Dresden city hall after the February 13-15, 1945 Allied bombing. (Photo: Deutsch Fotohek/Wikimedia Commons)

Once upon a time Gerry Adams, the leader of Ireland’s nationalist party, Sinn Fein, could not be heard speaking on the BBC. He was branded a terrorist and his voice was dubbed. How times have changed. Now his party, led by Mary Lou McDonald, has stormed to victory in the Irish elections. Having won the largest percentage of the vote at 24%, Sinn Fein has ended the decades long domination of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail in what was effectively a two-party political system.

McDonald now seeks to form a government with other left-wing Irish parties and  although she doesn’t expect to form a coalition with Fine Gael or Fianna Fail, she would still participate in talks with representatives of the parties:

“I also have consistently said that I will talk to and listen to everybody, I think that is what grown-ups do and that is what democracy demands.”

Fianna Fail’s leader, Michael Martin, said however that there were ‘significant incompatibilities’ to working with Sinn Fein. His party, along with Fine Gael have cited Sinn Fein’s previous links to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) – the paramilitary group – as a reason for not working with them. However Mary Lou McDonald has said it is “not sustainable” for either party leader to rule out talks with Sinn Fein. Given the sizeable chunk of the Irish population that voted for her party, you can see she has a fair point.

The Taioseach, Leo Varadkar, has now been forced to admit that Ireland has a three-party system.  It may be a marginal win, and one which will force Sinn Fein into a coalition, but it is nevertheless a highly significant turn of events. Although the party won due to its left-wing domestic agenda and promises to combat poverty and rising homelessness, it cannot be ignored that this win is part of a broader, Europe-wide trend. Nationalism is on the rise across Europe, call it populism if you will, but people are increasingly voting for parties which put the nation state first over further European integration. Centrist parties are failing to compete with those offering a nationalist, eurosceptic agenda.

People don’t like to be dictated to. The arguably authoritarian decision by state broadcaster RTE not to include Mary Lou Mcdonald in their leaders’ debate quite possibly only generated more support for her party. It was reported that prior to the election Sinn Fein sent the broadcaster a legal letter asking it to reverse its decision. The Irish establishment will now have to catch up with the reality that Sinn Fein is now an equal player in the political landscape, and a force to be reckoned with.

The nationalist vibe in the air has now awoken the idea of Irish unity. A poll conducted earlier in 2019 demonstrated that two thirds of Irish people are now supportive of Irish reunification. Of 3000 people questioned, 65% said they were in favour of northern and southern Ireland becoming one nation again. Brexit, which has brought with it a surge in English nationalism, along with a Westminster government increasingly detached from the reality of the everyday struggles of working people, has encouraged more people north and south of the Irish border to rethink their stance on a topic few dared to broach in the past due to the violent conflict between nationalists and unionists. Under the Good Friday Agreement, it is indeed possible for Northern Ireland to secede the United Kingdom if a referendum result were to decide this.

Sinn Fein’s stance on the EU is not entirely clear-cut, but the win could be interpreted as a victory for Euroscepticism. The party is against further European integration, campaigned for a ‘No’ vote in the Irish referendum on joining the European Economic Community in 1972 and criticised the proposal of a European Constitution in 2002.  Although it did support Britain remaining in the EU in the run-up to the 2016 EU referendum, it has criticised the European Union in the past for its policies of neoliberalism. When it comes to post-Brexit trade talks with the UK, the new Irish government with Sinn Fein at the helm is likely to take a tougher stance.

In addition, it’s likely that under Mary Lou McDonald’s leadership, we will see a referendum on Irish unity. If the outcome is for unification, it will put more pressure on a UK government  currently facing a real threat from growing Scottish nationalism. As Irish and Scottish nationalist movements gain popularity, the United Kingdom cannot be taken for granted any longer. As elections continue to demonstrate, the status quo is under threat and it’s becoming increasingly possible that we will see the dissolution of the United Kingdom within our lifetimes.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Kudos to the 1941 W.C. Fields comedy film “Never Give a Sucker an Even Break” for the inspiration. Well, this certainly does fit with what is transpiring now in our American Empire.

This writer lives in an area I have always labeled as Death Valley USA, this Daytona Beach area. For the most part it is a place of low political and cultural sophistication. As with most areas of low repute there are lots of us who are ‘exceptions to this rule’.

Yet, so many of those who live here or visit here are what old W.C. Fields would call “Suckers”. The month of February is NASCAR month in Daytona.

We have that infamous Daytona 500 race that draws lots of Trump and rightwing loving folks to our doorstep. Of course, we have our own natives with  lots of Northern transplants in the mix singing the mantra of ‘Making America Great Again’.

In addition to those infamous Trump stickers on the many SUVs and pickup trucks, we have the seemingly countless license plates celebrating either the Marines or Army (not too many Navy or Air Force ones though). Do any of these people realize that, contrary to the right wing rhetoric,

WE ARE NOT AT WAR!? The last time we were really ‘At War’ was December 1941. All the rest of them were propaganda spins that, sadly, so many suckers kept falling for. Well, the Bush SR. and Bush Jr/Cheney gangs got away with this fraud, and theen Mr. ‘Hope and Change’ signed on, and of course Mr. President with the orange hair and tan continues the magic trick.

So, many of the aforementioned NASCAR fans and gung ho license plate carrying warriors are getting that fat tax break. You know, perhaps $ 900 a year, while the super rich and corporate hacks get upwards of tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars each! Meanwhile, the right wing will continue to cut away at Medicaid and even Medicare

So, that white haired senior citizen who was driving an old pickup truck in front of me  with his ‘Marines’ license plate and Trump sticker had better beware. Why? Well, he looks like he may be in line for going into a Nursing home in the not too distant future. With those Medicaid cuts happening he may not even be able to get placed in one!

Or, until that day comes, he will most likely have to go deeper into his pockets for medications, because his Medicare will be stricter on what is covered, etc.

What really both angers and saddens this writer is the whole topic of what the empire’s stooges (in both major parties) like to call ‘Defense Spending’. No, it is simply ‘Military Spending’ and it has been slowly bankrupting our nation to the tune of over 50% of our federal taxes.

Now, those Trump loving and Gung HO Marines & Army lovers applaud the fact that Trump and the Swamp, along with the majority of Democrats in Congress, just increased the spending!

So, while our towns and cities are teetering on insolvency, along with our states, more money is NOT going to help them fiscally. Instead, it is going to subsidize the 1000+ foreign bases, overkill weapons systems and overall deployment of our military personnel to places they have NO business (and had NO business) being in!

Our cherished ‘Safety Net’ is being torn apart with this insanity and the suckers still think THEY are the patriots!

The real patriots are we folks who do NOT wish to send our young soldiers to all those places overseas to either kill or be killed for strictly the purposes of this Military Industrial Empire!

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Originally written in February 2018, but sadly, fits even better today.

Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn, NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 400 of his work posted on sites like Global Research, Greanville Post, Off Guardian, Consortium News, Information Clearing House, Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust, whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid’ with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected]

Leaving aside the content of the spectacular, embellished account that became Spartacus, Kirk Douglas, whose life ticked over into a century and a few years, left his own distinct mark on US cultural politics.  At the very least, he managed to fashion a spear to direct through the Hollywood blacklist, an infamous compilation of the supposedly unpatriotic naughties in the film business who had sympathies, proven or otherwise, with communism.  The justified question, however, is how significant his role actually was.  Celebrities and thespians often assume a heft they do not have, a significance they lack.

What was certain was that Hollywood was pullulating with its own host of Red Baiters and the sort that Gore Vidal called American Sissies, all keen to do their bit for the House Un-American Activities Committee.  John Wayne, an old John Bircher, tended to take the lead in that regard, seeing the film industry as a patriotic preserve that did not need any Commie contaminant.   

Douglas recalled the chilling effect of the Cold War as it iced writers and actors in a 2015 interview.  His co-star in Detective Story (1951), Lee Grant, was refused work for twelve years after refusing “to testify against her husband before the House Un-American Activities Committee.”

The case of Dalton Trumbo’s ostracising was one that particularly exercised Douglas.  HUAC had eyed him as a notable enough threat (he had been a member of the Communist Party in the 1940s) to require scrubbing from the industry.  He went into pseudonymous territory, scripting Roman Holiday and The Brave One, winning an Oscar for the latter under the name Robert Rich. Along with nine other writers and directors, he made up the Hollywood Ten, jailed for contempt of Congress in 1950 for refusing to collude in the collective hysteria of political cleansing. 

When the time came for the release of Spartacus, Douglas, having assumed the role of both protagonist of the film and its direction, insisted that Trumbo’s name appear in the credits.  The act was both testament to the exaggerated quality of protest inherent in film, and the strength of illusions in the Dream Factory.  The masquerade,” concluded Douglas, “was over.”  Despite being told that placing Trumbo in prime position on the credits would terminate his career, “the blacklist was broken.” 

Thespians are in the business of stretching the record, and while Douglas, in his own way, made an impression, it was hardly a protest of profound radicalism.  Sizeable pebbles were fashioned, but they remained pebbles.  There was room for some daring.  Besides, Otto Preminger, who directed Exodus, was saddled with a less than negligible contribution against the ban, a point noted in the New York Times, opining in a January 20, 1960 piece that his acknowledgment of Trumbo’s role was “the first open defiance by a producer-director of Hollywood’s ‘blacklist’.”  Exodus was released in December; Spartacus had already been showing since October.

Trumbo’s widow, Cleo, certainly felt that the compass was out of kilter on the point of contributions.  In 1991, when the Writers Guild of America invited her to attend its annual awards dinner, she feared witnessing the presentation of the Robert F. Meltzer Award to Kirk Douglas as the sole saboteur of the blacklist.  At the invitation, she wrote back with a degree of curtness: “It is important to remember it was Otto Preminger who first announced that Dalton Trumbo’s name would appear on his film, Exodus…  This observation is not meant to diminish Mr Douglas’ actions, for what he did required courage, but merely to put them in perspective”. 

Cleo went on to suggest that, had her husband still been living to witness this, he would have thought “it unconscionable that Otto Preminger would be ignored and only Kirk Douglas honoured by the Guild for his contribution to destroy the blacklist.  I am also certain that he would not attend a ceremony which sanctioned such a distortion of actual events.”  She did not attend the event. 

As she subsequently reiterated in 2002 in a note to the Los Angeles Times, having expressed being “deeply disturbed” by a letter from Jack Valenti, long-time president of the Motion Picture Association of America, it was all a question of balanced agency; “no single person can be credited with breaking the blacklist”.  More, she argued, should be attributed to the daring of the scribes themselves.  “For more than 12 years these men and women continued to write without credit at a fraction of what they had earned before.” They wrote polemics pleading their cause, issued pamphlets, filed lawsuits.  “By the time Trumbo’s name appeared on Spartacus and Exodus the ground had been well prepared by the ceaseless efforts of blacklisted writers.” 

In 2012, Trumbo’s daughter Mitzi also weighed in with a corrective in Salon, assembling her mother’s previously directed barbs in an attempt to take some of the polish and shine off Douglas’ claims.  One point of irritation stood out: the bombastic assertions made by Douglas in his book I am Spartacus! Making a Film, Breaking the Blacklist, leaving a record that “has not only inflated his role” but left “incidents that did not happen.”  Mitzi went to work on Douglas, claiming that Trumbo did not lunch with Douglas at the Universal studio commissary, nor attend a screening in disguise.  Nor did that doyen of British cinema, Laurence Olivier, ever dine at the Trumbo household. “He has also asserted a brand-new claim,” she wrote sourly, “that he, not my father, wrote the iconic ‘I am Spartacus’ scene from the film.”   

Memories are imperfect repositories, but there is something to be said about those of actors being particularly susceptible.  The actor, after all, is essentially a dissimulator of reality.  Posterity supplies the siren call, and the inventive pen follows.  In the case of Douglas, his role in overturning a sordid episode in US cinematic history was not inconsiderable, but nor was it earth shattering.

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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]

Russia’s Greater Eurasian Partnership envisages the supercontinent peacefully coming together in the shared interests of peace, stability, and development, brought about by Moscow’s “balancing” strategy in recent years which was first practiced in the Mideast region, one of the most important areas of the world for the success of this hemispheric construct.

It’s hard to walk across the University of Toronto (U of T) campus without your eye catching the grand, pale-bricked building that sits parallel to the greenery of Queen’s Park. It is even harder to find a U of T student who has not witnessed or participated in a protest on the front lawn of the same building. The Ontario Legislative Building is home to our province’s Legislative Assembly and it hosts the government that has repeatedly told teachers, students, and parents that primary and secondary education warrants cuts to funding instead of investments.

In March 2019, the Doug Ford government announced a series of cuts to education across the province. Outrage broke out across Ontario, leaving educators, parents, and students concerned for the future of Ontario’s plan in education. The Ford government has cut programs and services, capped wages, increased classroom sizes, introduced mandatory e-learning, and plans to eliminate thousands of teaching positions while it cuts support programs for the most vulnerable students across the province. After months of failed negotiations and bargaining between Ontario’s teachers’ unions and the government, education unions across Ontario stepped forward with overwhelming numbers of support from their members in favour of strike action. During December and beginning the week of January 20th, a series of walkouts took place among elementary and secondary schools across Ontario.

Hurting the Education System

Teachers and education workers are furious at the provincial government’s announced cuts and have good reason to be. The implementation of the Ford government’s changes will cause harm to our province’s education system and will substantially injure students’ potential in the classroom. The Ford government is looking toward education as a solution to fix the provincial budget, but fails to recognize that it will be operating at the detriment of students. Under the proposed cuts, class size averages in Grades 9 through 12 are expected to increase to a maximum of 28 students. Even if the government actually follows through on its proposal to reduce average sizes to 25 – something by no means certain – teachers’ and education workers’ efforts to provide engaging learning conditions and adequate support for individual student needs will still be hobbled. The increase in class sizes, ultimately means the loss of teaching positions across the province, leaving thousands of teachers unemployed.

In advance of this, the government plans to cap teachers’ wage increases to 1 per cent, removing the right for education workers to negotiate their pay without interference. This speaks to how little the Ford government values the work of educators in the public sector. Moving forward, the proposed withdrawal of services for students with special needs and mental health needs chokes off student potential while jeopardizing their future success. The provincial government claims this plan is set to “build an education system for success.” It sounds like quite the opposite.

After more than two decades, every teachers’ union in the province will take part in job action involving work-to-rule and rotating strikes. This means elementary and secondary students will be out of school for an indeterminate number of days, leaving parents of young children scrambling to find childcare. While writing this, I can’t help but think what kind of message this sends to our society. How do students feel, knowing that their education is being jeopardized due to the provincial government’s inability to listen to their needs? How do parents feel, knowing that their government has left their children home for the day? How do teachers and education workers feel, knowing that their career is unworthy of government advocacy?

Teachers Stand United

With no agreement on the negotiating table the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario’s (ETFO) 83,000 members are walking the picket lines twice a week. In a recent press release, ETFO president Sam Hammond said, “We have no choice but to commence rotating strikes,” as a way of “forcing the government to get serious about negotiations and the future of public education.”

This week, alone ETFO members will stage rotating strikes every day across the province with one province-wide walkout on Tuesday. Secondary school educators belonging to Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (OSSTF) will be striking at 9 boards across the province on Thursday. English Catholic teachers across the province are stepping up their work-to-rule, refusing extra work beyond scheduled teaching and supervision duties. Twelve thousand members of the Association des Enseignants Franco-Ontariens (AEFO) will walk off the job this coming Thursday.

Concerned parents and guardians with young children have taken matters into their own hands to resist the Ford government’s cuts to public education – organizations such as Ontario Parent Action Network demonstrate their fellowship with educators across Ontario by setting up solidarity camps for parents who may have trouble finding accommodations for childcare when school is closed. As tensions continue to rise across the province, strike action remains the only viable way to pressure a tentative agreement, even if it means compromising taxpayer’s daily schedules.

As a student with generations of educators in my family, I have come to understand, first-hand, the implications of cuts to education and the repercussions of voting for a government which fails to see education as an imperative and worthy part of our province’s future. The Ford government’s changes to education are unwanted guests, and we will not stand for it. Ontario’s education does not need cuts. It needs a government that is willing to invest in encouraging the minds of tomorrow and a premier who is brave enough to lead our education system forward, not sabotage it.

For further information and updates on the Ontario Teachers’ Strikes, visit knowmore.ca.

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Trump Budget Gives Top Priority to New Generation of Nuclear Weapons

By Patrick Martin, February 11, 2020

The most ominous feature of the new budget document issued Monday by the Trump administration is the prominent place given to the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons, including so-called low-yield weapons, smaller than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which are widely regarded as more likely to actually be used in combat.

The document calls for nearly $50 billion to be devoted to nuclear modernization, including $29 billion from the Pentagon budget, and $19.8 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a unit of the Department of Energy which operates the actual production of nuclear warheads, as well as some of the primary research.

Democrats Ignore Trump’s Real Violations

By Rep. Ron Paul, February 11, 2020

Why do the Democrats keep swinging and missing at Trump? They can’t make a good case for abuse of power because they don’t really oppose Trump’s most egregious abuses of power. Congress, with a few exceptions, strongly supports the President flouting the Constitution when it comes to overseas aggression and shoveling more money into the military-industrial complex.

Keep War, Environmental Degradation and Profit Out of Space

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, February 11, 2020

The 21st Century nuclear arms and developing outer space arms races, which began under Obama and are increasing under Trump, are going to be something the world has never seen before. They are a bonanza for weapons makers, the Pentagon budget and capitalists in space. They will create a less secure world, a greater wealth divide, a tattered safety net and new, more dangerous forms of war.

The Siren Call of a ‘System Leader’

By Pepe Escobar, February 11, 2020

A considerable spectrum of the liberal West takes the American interpretation of what civilization consists of to be something like an immutable law of nature. But what if this interpretation is on the verge of an irreparable breakdown?

Michael Vlahos has argued that the US is not a mere nation-state but a “system leader” – “a civilizational power like Rome, Byzantium, and the Ottoman Empire.” And, we should add, China – which he did not mention. The system leader is “a universalistic identity framework tied to a state. This vantage is helpful because the United States clearly owns this identity framework today.”

Recession Engineered by the Creditors: Seven Years of Demanding the Impossible in Greece

By Yiannis Mouzakis, February 11, 2020

In a recent presentation of his book, Laid Low, which examines the International Monetary Fund’s role in the eurozone crisis, author and journalist Paul Blustein disclosed a memo dated May 4, 2010, from the IMF’s then head of research Olivier Blanchard, to Poul Thomsen, who headed the Greek mission at the time.

In his missive, Blanchard warned that the cumulative fiscal adjustment of 16 percentage points being demanded of Greece in such a short period of time and with such a high level of frontloading had never been achieved before.

Coronavirus Is Becoming a Western Excuse for Sinophobia and “China-Bashing”

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, February 10, 2020

Coronavirus is, undoubtedly, one of the greatest epidemic tragedies of our times. Hundreds of dead people and thousands of ill ones are the proof of it. For any person with good faith and interested in the well-being of people, it is a reason of preoccupation and compassion towards the victims. However, this good intention with people does not seem to be observed in some western countries.

The misinformation transmitted by western media is causing in common people a big confusion, making them think that every Chinese is infected by the mortal virus, which is creating a great wave of hate against everyone and everything that belongs to China. Clearly, this epidemic is being used by western potencies as a mean of hybrid war.

O Presidente turco, Tayyip Erdogan, disse num discurso, em 5 de Fevereiro, ao Partido Islâmico do AKP que, se as tropas sírias ou os aviões russos atacarem a Al Qaeda, na província de Idlib, na Síria, a Turquia estará em guerra contra a Síria e contra a Rússia. Se isso acontecer, a Turquia, como membro da aliança da NATO, poderá convocar forças americanas e aliadas para se juntarem à guerra da Turquia contra a Síria e contra a Rússia, naquela parte da Síria.

Aqui está uma reportagem sobre este assunto, da Rede Voltaire da Síria:

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https://www.voltairenet.org/article209153.html

A Turquia ameaça a Síria e indirectamente a Rússia

Ao intervir, em 5 de Fevereiro de 2020, perante o grupo parlamentar do AKP, o Presidente turco, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, declarou: 

[Na versão original francesa da Rede Voltaire: Erdoğan a désigné sous l’expression « éléments amis » les membres des milices turkmènes formant l’« Armée nationale syrienne » (Jaych al-Watani as-Suri) et ceux d’Al-Qaeda ayant fait alliance avec des groupes locaux pour former l’Organisation de Libération du Levant (Hayat Tahrir al-Cham).]

“Todo e qualquer ataque, seja terrestre ou aéreo, contra as nossas tropas ou contra os elementos amigos com os quais trabalhamos, receberá uma resposta sem nenhum aviso, seja qual for a sua origem. Ninguém se pode opor a que exerçamos o nosso direito de fazê-lo, dada a incapacidade de garantir a segurança das nossas tropas em Idlib.”

A Turquia, cujo exército invadiu o norte da Síria, fez eliminar pelos “elementos amigos” quatro oficiais russos do FSB em Aleppo, em 1 de Fevereiro e envolveu-se num confronto mortal, em 2 e 3 de Fevereiro, com o exército sírio em Idleb. Recebeu o apoio dos Estados Unidos, em 4 de Fevereiro, dia em que o Presidente turco intensificou as provocações contra a Rússia, na Ucrânia.

O Presidente Erdoğan designa como “elementos amigos”, as milícias turquemenas ligadas aos Lobos Cinzentos e aos jihadistas da Al-Qaeda.

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A organização Lobos Cinzentos da Turquia é fascista, nacionalista, da extrema-direita e xenófoba, defendendo uma Turquia que seja, apenas, por e para os turcos étnicos e expulsando todos os outros. Estão afiliadas a esse grupo, na Síria, as Brigadas Turcomanas da Síria. É uma organização etnicamente terrorista. A Al-Qaeda e sua afiliada síria al-Nusra ou Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, são organizações terroristas extremistas sunitas muçulmanas. Os Estados Unidos têm apoiado a Al-Qaeda na Síria, a fim de derrubar e substituir o governo secular da Síria por um governo fundamentalista-sunita; e, portanto, se a Turquia convidar os Estados Unidos de volta à Síria para defender a Al Qaeda, na Síria, e os fascistas aliados dos turcos, na Síria, os Estados Unidos estariam do lado da Al-Qaeda e também do lado dos fascistas turcos, na província de Idlib, na Síria, contra a Rússia e contra a Síria.

A declaração de Erdogan, em 5 de Fevereiro também pode ser vista e ouvida num vídeo do TRT World da Turquia, intitulado “Erdogan adverte as forças do regime sírio para se retirarem das ocupações de Idlib”, que é acompanhado pela tradução em inglês, aqui:

Tradutora : Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos 

Fonte da tradução :

https://nowarnonato.blogspot.com/2020/02/eric-zuesse-turkey-threatens.html

The most ominous feature of the new budget document issued Monday by the Trump administration is the prominent place given to the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons, including so-called low-yield weapons, smaller than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which are widely regarded as more likely to actually be used in combat.

The document calls for nearly $50 billion to be devoted to nuclear modernization, including $29 billion from the Pentagon budget, and $19.8 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a unit of the Department of Energy which operates the actual production of nuclear warheads, as well as some of the primary research.

The Trump budget would slash spending on diplomacy and foreign aid while sharply increasing funding for nuclear weapons, a clear indication of the policy direction being given from the White House in the wake of Trump’s acquittal last week in the impeachment trial before the Senate. The debacle of the Democratic effort to impeach Trump over foreign policy differences—while ignoring his real and ongoing crimes against the working class and democratic rights—has only emboldened the White House to press ahead with its program of militarism, austerity and attacks on immigrants.

The budget provides the largest amount for the Pentagon’s research and development budget in 70 years, since the period when US imperialism was engaged in the initial research on the hydrogen bomb and the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Nuclear weapons modernization funds rose by 18 percent compared to last year’s budget.

The modernization program, which was given initial approval under the Obama administration, will last 30 years and cost more than a trillion dollars, split between the three components of the US nuclear triad: ground-based missiles, submarine-launched missiles, and nuclear bombs delivered by long-distance bombers.

An important aspect of the modernization program is the improvement of the delivery systems, including a new generation of nuclear-powered submarines (the Columbia Class) and making the stealth F-35 jet fighter, the most expensive weapons system ever built, capable of carrying nuclear bombs. That configuration would be ideal for a prospective nuclear “Pearl Harbor” sneak attack on Russia or China, since the warplanes are nearly invisible to radar.

According to one defense industry publication, there had been serious infighting between the NNSA and the White House Office of Management and Budget over the huge figure for nuclear modernization, a conflict won by the NNSA after Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman James Imhofe (R-Okla) intervened on its behalf.

Senate Democrats like Jack Reed of Rhode Island lost the battle over funding priorities, as the Navy canceled one nuclear submarine—to be built in Groton, Connecticut, and Quonset Point, Rhode Island—as a “pay for” to accommodate the additional spending on nuclear warheads.

NNSA chief Lisa Gordon-Hagerty said that there were five major warhead modernization programs being funded: the B61-12 Life Extension Program, the W80-4 Life Extension Program, the W88 Alteration 370, the W87-1 Modification Program and the W93 warhead program. She cited the need to increase production of plutonium “pits,” the key component of a nuclear explosive device, to 80 per year by 2030.

The budget announcement follows the Pentagon’s confirmation that it has deployed a new low-yield variant of the W76-1 nuclear warhead used on the Trident missile. The deployment of the W76-2 came on the submarine USS Tennessee, operating from the Kings Bay Submarine Base in Georgia. The escalation of US preparations for nuclear war was first reported by the Federation of American Scientists, which warned that the action would bring forward the danger of a nuclear weapon actually being used.

Building the W76-2 was a direct consequence of the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, which accompanied the more general overhaul of Pentagon military doctrine, elevating “great power” conflict with Russia and China to first place in US war preparations, displacing the so-called “war on terror.”

In terms of the overall military budget, while the Pentagon receives a year-to-year increase of 0.3 percent, that figure is misleading on at least two counts. At $740.5 billion, the proposed Fiscal Year 2021 Defense Department budget would be the largest amount ever spent by the US government on war buildup and dwarfs the spending of all the rivals of US imperialism combined.

Moreover, the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) fund, a component of the budget that pays for ongoing combat operations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and other locations where US troops, ships and drones are engaged in combat, is open-ended.

While the White House is seeking $69 billion for OCO, this figure assumes a significant drawdown in US troop strength in Afghanistan. If those troops remain in Afghanistan, or are redeployed to another war zone, the Pentagon will seek a supplemental appropriation that would be swiftly rubber-stamped both by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives and the Republican-controlled Senate.

The release of the Fiscal Year 2021 budget has been accompanied by media commentaries and declarations by leading congressional Democrats that the budget is merely a “wish list” devised for political purposes to appeal to Trump’s right-wing base, and that as a practical matter it is “dead on arrival.”

This may be true for the massive cuts in domestic programs like Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps, which come to some $2 trillion over ten years. Neither capitalist party is likely to enact such cuts in the nine months before the November 3 election. But the document is nonetheless significant as a blueprint for the social counterrevolution which Trump proposes to carry out if he is reelected—and to which the Democrats have no principled objections, despite their posture of dismay.

Among the cuts proposed—all over a ten-year period—are $465 billion from Medicare reimbursements to hospitals and doctors, which will undermine the ability of the elderly to get care; $292 billion from Medicaid, which pays for health care for the poor and disabled, and from food stamps; and $70 billion from Social Security disability payments.

House Budget Committee Chair John Yarmuth (D-Ky), issued a statement denouncing the Trump budget as “destructive and irrational,” pointing out that it “includes destructive changes to Medicaid, SNAP, Social Security, and other assistance programs that help Americans make ends meet—all while extending his tax cuts for millionaires and wealthy corporations.”

The fact is, however, that the Democrats have never rescinded Republican tax cuts or restored Republican budget cuts, despite their posturing to the contrary. There is a longstanding division of labor in the capitalist two-party system, in which the Republican propose gigantic cuts in social spending which the Democrats “fight” ferociously, eventually reaching a bipartisan agreement that incorporates substantial cuts and sets the stage for the next round in a never-ending onslaught on what remains of the welfare state.

While this pretended conflict takes place in relation to domestic social spending, the two parties usually cooperate openly on increasing spending for the military-intelligence apparatus. This means that while the domestic cuts proposed by Trump may be deferred until after the election, the military buildup will gain overwhelming bipartisan support, and the plans elaborated in the budget document deserve careful scrutiny.

One significant element is the buildup in ground troops available for the invasion and occupation of foreign territory, or for the suppression of domestic unrest. The Army seeks a significant manpower increase, to 485,900 regular troops, reinforced by 336,500 in the Army National Guard and 189,800 in the Army Reserves. This would bring the total ground force to over one million soldiers—1,012,200 in all.

New weaponry for these soldiers will include hypersonic weapons, laser-based antiaircraft weapons (the Directed Energy Mobile Short-Range Air Defense System), and the Indirect Fire Protection Capability, described as “a mobile capability to defend against unmanned aircraft systems, cruise missiles, rockets, artillery and mortars.”

There is at least $6 billion to modernize key weapons systems, including the Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle, the Stryker armored vehicle, the M1 Abrams tank and the Paladin howitzer, and $3.5 billion in aviation procurement, including 36 UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters and 50 AH-64E Apache attack helicopters.

It is also worth noting, in relation to the overall budget numbers, that the federal budget deficit will hit $1 trillion this year and is likely to soar far beyond that figure next year. While the White House budget office projects the deficit at just below $1 trillion in FY 2021, this assumes completely unrealistic economic successes: Gross Domestic Product rising at over 3 percent, and interest rates remaining at near-zero levels, so that federal debt can be refinanced cheaply.

When these figures inevitably prove too optimistic, and the deficit soars, there will then be a clamor from the political establishment and the media that social spending must be slashed even more because “there is no money.” In the meantime, the incomes and wealth of the financial aristocracy will continue to rise exponentially.

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This week the latest Democratic Party attempt to remove President Trump from office – impeachment over Trump allegedly holding up an arms deal to Ukraine – flopped. Just like “Russiagate” and the Mueller investigation, and a number of other attempts to overturn the 2016 election.

We’ve had three years of accusations and investigations with untold millions of dollars spent in a never-ending Democratic Party effort to remove President Trump from office.

Why do the Democrats keep swinging and missing at Trump? They can’t make a good case for abuse of power because they don’t really oppose Trump’s most egregious abuses of power. Congress, with a few exceptions, strongly supports the President flouting the Constitution when it comes to overseas aggression and shoveling more money into the military-industrial complex.

In April, 2018, President Trump fired 100 Tomahawk missiles into Syria allegedly as punishment for a Syrian government chemical attack in Douma. Though the US was not under imminent threat of attack from Syria, Trump didn’t wait for a Congressional declaration of war on Syria or even an authorization for a missile strike. In fact, he didn’t even wait for an investigation of the event to find out what actually happened! He just decided to send a hundred missiles – at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars – into Syria.

We are now finding out from whistleblowers on the UN team that investigated the alleged attack that the report blaming the Syrian government was falsified and that the whole “attack” was nothing but a false flag operation.

Is such unauthorized aggression against a country with which we are not at war not worth investigating as a potential “high crime” or “misdemeanor”?

Last month, President Trump authorized the assassination of a top Iranian General, Qassim Soleimani, and a top Iraqi military officer inside Iraqi territory while Soleimani was on a diplomatic mission. Trump and his Administration tried to claim that the attack was essential because of an “imminent threat” of a Soleimani attack on US troops in the region.

We found out shortly afterward that they lied about the “imminent threat.” The assassination was not “urgent” – it was planned back in June. Trump then claimed it didn’t matter whether there was an imminent threat: Soleimani was a bad guy so he deserved to be assassinated.

But the attack was an act of war on Iran without Congressional declaration or authorization for war. Is that not perhaps a “high crime” or “misdemeanor”?

We are finding out that, contrary to Trump claims, Soleimani was not even behind the December attack on US troops in Iraq. New evidence suggests it was actually an ISIS operation attempting to goad the US into moving against Iraq’s Shia militias.

Fantasies about Trump being an agent of Putin or trying to get Ukraine to help him win the election are presented as urgent reasons Trump must be removed from office. Real-life violations of the Constitution and reckless militarism that may get us embroiled in another Middle East war are shrugged off as “business as usual” by both Democrats and Republicans in Washington.

Democrats won’t move against Trump for what may be real “high crimes” and “misdemeanors” because they support his overseas aggression. They just wish they were the ones pulling the trigger.

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During the last few days, Turkey deployed approximately 1,000 units of military equipment, including self-propelled howitzers, M06T and Leopard 2A4 battle tanks, in the Syrian province of Idlib. According to local sources, the number of Turkish troops and special forces personnel in the province is now between 2,500 and 3,000.

The Turkish leadership assures the international community that this is a solely defensive move. Ankara says this was needed to combat the terrorism and protect its troops from the aggression of the Assad regime that blatantly violated the Idlib de-escalation by attacking peaceful al-Qaeda militants.

Additionally, the Turkish Army set up several positions east and southeast of Idlib city. It seems like brave Erdogan forces ready to protect the stronghold of their comrades from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham at the expense of their life. However, a few Turkish troops apparently lost in the woods and missed the Syrian Army advance in western Idlib and southwestern Aleppo.

Pro-government forces captured over a dozen of villages along the M5 highway, including the key rebel base of Al-Eis, and encircled another Turkish observation point accidentally located just at positions of al-Qaeda-linked militants. In western Aleppo, the Syrians took control of Tal Kalariyah and Kalariyah, and advanced on Rashideen 4. If the Damascus government wants to fully reopen the M5 highway, which runs from the border with Jordan to Aleppo, it needs to secure Rashideen 4, Khan Asal and several less important points in the same area.

Such news are horrible to the ears of the Turkish leadership. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other top officials act like they see every inch of territory lost by terrorists to the Syrian Army as grievous loss of their imaginary Neo-Ottoman Empire.

The Syrian Air Force celebrated the Ankara negotiations with over 120 airstrikes on various positions of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other ‘moderate Al-Qaeda’ groups in the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo. Russian airstrikes were also reported.

While Turkey aggressively increasing its military presence near Idlib city and working to convince leaders of local groups to not hurry up with fleeing the area, Syria and its allies are using the window of opportunities to clear from terrorists as much area as it’s possible.

On February 10, ‘al-Qaeda freedom fighters’ launched a powerful attack on positions of pro-government forces near Saraqib. Militants publicly employed Turkish-supplied military equipment and weapons. The attack itself was also supported by Turkish artillery strikes. Turkish troops were filmed close with near the frontline. They directed the attack of their brothers in arms on the Syrian Army. At least 5 Turkish personnel were reportedly killed in the retaliatory strikes by the Syrian Army.

The battle for Idlib is ongoing.

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Hollywood ‘s Oscars awards ceremony is nigh. Two anti-Syria propaganda-documentaries are short-listed in this year’s competition. We use the occasion to offer a photo tutorial on Hollywood enchantment techniques — choreography, cinematography, SFX, CGI, moulage artisanship, rules of award-winning scripts — and how they are applied to incite NATO news audiences to engage in the first rule of Hollywood screenplays: Suspension of disbelief.

Though Hollywood has functioned as press liaison for US-based wars of aggression since after WWII, though propaganda is as old as history, never have Hollywood techniques been used, deftly so, to target a single country, before Syria, beginning in 2011.

The documentary/fraudumentary has its origin in a charming, pre-code, movie. The 1935 Ladies Crave Excitement finds the report-protagonist’s breaking news story is thwarted when ‘the bad guys’ steal his film, and his editor fires him. An idea is hatched to re-create the scene, on film. The dramatization of the newsbecomes a money-making hit, and a genre is born.

Several pre-code movies centered on newspaper offices. The worst insult to call reporters was “stenographer.”

Another pre-code movie showed astonishing prescience, when applied to Syria, NATO media, and Hollywood enchantment: The witty script of It Pays to Advertise claims that virtually anything can be marketed to the public, because fifty percent of people are sheep.

This pre-code delight used superb humor to poke fun about how advertisers could market virtually anything to get that 50% sheeple to open their wallets. Such marketing has been used to get those sheeple to buy war criminal propaganda, to open their wallets to fraud charities claimed to help Syria.

The marketing of Hollywood anti-Syria propaganda is impressively seen in the following AFP photograph, which was viralized on various social media. The backstory involves two gods of Olympus, who came down with puppets, to bring good cheer to traumatized Syrian children. The viralization showed that “it pays to advertise.” Hearts and souls were moved to tears, at the sight of the gods – humanitarians bringing smiles to the faces of these poor children, even if just for a too short respite.

Hollywood salesmanship: Heart-warming, gut-wrenching photo of the probably Last Puppeteers of Idlib, making children happy. Upon closer look, though, are some children CGI’ed in, like the boy’s shoulder and head that seem to emerge from rock, in this uncomfortable-looking quarry.

Poor children; those rocks and boulders look so very uncomfortable. Why were they brought so far from the apartments and other buildings, which probably have upholstered chairs in them? It looks like quite a hike.

Would a puppet show for children without the Hollywood bathos of rubble and ruin, been able to market any two minute hate against the Syrian government, against the conscripted soldiers defending their country against armed, invading, pathogens?

It pays to advertise. CGI brings down those costs, too.

How many sheeple thought this price was a bargain?

The criminal words of NATO stenographers are reinforced by every Hollywood magic trick. All special effects (FX, computer generated imagery, moulage, generic make up) are used, separately or in combination, depending on deserved outcome and how many seconds or fractions thereof, the audience will be permitted.

The ISIS giants with the reputed Christian Coptics kidnapped while pilgrimaging to a secret place in the al Qaeda land mass called Libya, is an example of very bad CGI.

The author has been unable to find any Christian sites in Libya, to which the pious might be impelled to pay homage soon after the country was made into al Qaeda hell.

To read complete article on Syria News click here

The 21st Century nuclear arms and developing outer space arms races, which began under Obama and are increasing under Trump, are going to be something the world has never seen before. They are a bonanza for weapons makers, the Pentagon budget and capitalists in space. They will create a less secure world, a greater wealth divide, a tattered safety net and new, more dangerous forms of war.

Last week, the United States increased the risk of nuclear war by deploying “low yield” nukes. While this sounds friendlier than planet-killing “thermonuclear missiles,” it is a step toward the US preparing for a “limited” nuclear war. The US has been withdrawing from nuclear weapons treaties and the risk of nuclear war is now counted in seconds rather than minutes. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds to midnight given that nuclear weapons are on hair-trigger alert.

The US is escalating the arms race because it sees its hegemonic military and economic power weakening. Rather than respond by seeking to work with other nations in a peaceful approach with a foreign policy based on diplomacy, it is seeking continued domination by escalating a new, more dangerous arms race.  This will be the most expensive arms race in history. China and Russia, as well as other nations, will not allow the United States to upgrade nuclear weapons and dominate outer space militarily without responding.

This is a quixotic effort to hold onto unipolar power when the rest of the world is seeking a multi-polar world where large governments and small governments have influence in the direction of global policies.

The US Space Force 

The new US Space Force is the first new military service in more than 70 years since the establishment of the US Air Force in 1947. General John Raymond is the first general of the space force and the newest member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The creation of the Space Force received bi-partisan support with 188 Democrats voting yes in the House and overwhelming Democratic support in the Senate in the passage of the newest National Defense Authorization Act.

The Space Force is turning the heavens into a war zone. This sixth branch of the US Armed Forces is being put in place in violation of a 1967 treaty signed by virtually all nations on earth. The Outer Space Treaty, formally the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, is a treaty that is the basis of international space law.

The treaty prohibits the placing of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction in space. It limits the use of the Moon and all other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes only and establishes that space shall be free for exploration and use by all nations and that no nation may claim sovereignty of outer space or any celestial body. It treats space as a global commons.

The US falsely claims that it needs the Space Force because Russia and China are developing weapons in space. In fact, China and Russia are seeking to expand the treaty to include a prohibition of all weapons in space. The  US has been fighting the proposed Prevention of Armas Race in Outer Space (PAROS) treaty in the United Nations that would update the 1967 treaty.

If the US proceeds with an Outer Space Force, it will destroy the vision of keeping space for peace. In response to the US’ plans to militarize space, which have been developing since President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative or Star Wars, other countries have said they will be expanding their weapons arsenals in order to defend themselves.

The weapons industry is already taking resources from urgent environmental and human needs. The world spends nearly $3 trillion a year on military expenditures, with the US driving 79% of the globe’s weapons trade according to the State Department’s World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers report. The US exported four times more arms around the globe than the next nine countries combined, $143 billion annually. The new 21st Century arms race being propelled by the United States will increase this spending on weapons.

Controlling Access to Space for US Corporate Interests

The Vision for 2020 Report, by the United States Space Command begins with: “US Space Command —  dominating the space dimensions of military operations to protect US interests and investments. Integrating Space Forces into warfighting capabilities from across the full spectrum of conflict.” The motto of the US Space Command is “the US must be the master of space.” The slogan appears on the patch on their uniforms as well as over the entryway to the Space Command Headquarters in Colorado Springs, CO.

In a 1989 book, Military Space Forces for the Next 50 Years, Congress said the US must control the pathway so we can control access for corporations, and governments. By dominating space, rather than being a global commons controlled by all the nations of the world, it will be controlled by the United States with tremendous profits for US corporations.

Dominating space militarily is about protecting the profits from mining the resources of outer space. Corporations are developing for the purpose of mining asteroids and the moon for platinum-group metals, which are rare on Earth but are extremely important in the manufacture of electronics and other high-tech goods. The potential is barely understood, the resources in just the inner solar system are nearly infinite compared with those on Earth. Just one large metallic asteroid such as 16 Psyche is thought to contain enough metals to last humans for millions of years at current consumption rates. The potential is massive. Planetary Resources has compiled a database—Asterank—of over 600,000 asteroids that might represent mining targets.

Issues in Science and Technology reports there are a wide variety of space resources “that include solar power beamed from space, minerals, metals, gases, rare earth elements, helium 3 (as a fuel for nuclear fusion power generation), and materials for space manufacturing (the fabrication of goods in space). Yet ordinary water is the focus of most serious near-term development efforts. Water, when split into its constituents, hydrogen and oxygen, provides the most efficient chemical rocket propellants known. Water is also necessary for human settlement.”

The privatization of space travel is developing hand in glove with the militarization of space. Much of the research and development for space exploration has been paid for by the US taxpayer, but private corporations will profit. Issues in Science and Technology reports that government investment in mining infrastructure provides a tipping point to attract private investment. Space resources will be developed through public-private partnerships, which often means the taxpayer pays the costs while private corporations profit. They report that “in November 2018, NASA awarded nine Commercial Lunar Payload Services contracts to industry for the development of lunar transportation and delivery-related capabilities.”

International governance is not keeping up with the economic development plans of the US and other nations. There is no international authority that provides an oversight function for the exploitation of space resources. Some countries including Russia and Belgium have urged the restriction of commercial development until such time as a binding international legal framework is developed. However, the US is moving forward with laws that create property rights for commercial development, and now is rushing forward with a space military force. New policies and laws, as well as international governance, are urgently needed, but the US is blocking progress in these areas while moving forward to dominate space.

From, the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, Bruce Gagnon, Organizing Notes

What We Can Do

Bruce Gagnon of Global Network Against Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space told us on Clearing The FOG Radio that the Achilles Heel of this is the tremendous cost. The cost is so large that we cannot imagine the breadth of it. The Pentagon describes this as the largest industrial project in world history. One rocket launch costs hundreds of millions of dollars.

Gagnon tells us that Space News said the funding source for outer space weapons and development will be entitlement programs — Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid as well as what remains of the safety net. Popular movements must demand funding for social needs, fixing environmental degradation and responding to the climate crisis instead of funding for space wars. Updating and expanding the Outer Space Treaty also needs to be an issue that is raised by movements as it will impact every issue we are working on.

Our goal must be that no country, corporation or individual can control the global commons of space. We must keep the bad seeds of war and environmental degradation for corporate profit out of space. To achieve these goals the people must educate and organize to challenge the profit interests of the aerospace industry, weapons industry and those who seek to profit from exploiting space resources. That will be the focus of the No War 2020 conference in Ottawa this May.

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

Featured image is from Popular Resistance

A recent BBC News article asked the quite pertinent question of whether U.S. politics is “beyond repair”. The points that the writer Nick Bryant makes regarding political “hyperpartisanship”, what he terms “the degradation of debate” and the corruption of both major political parties on the electoral front are quite valid, but fail to get to the heart of the matter. This is because it does not address deeper issues that link America’s social, political and economic malaise to the need for profound reform of America’s rigged economic system, its flawed electoral laws and its prevailing foreign policy.

America’s Economic System

The United States is a heavily indebted country. As of February 2020, the debt of the federal government stands at just over $23 trillion. It is a state of affairs which is often discussed at great length and one in which the country’s politicians and economists direct a great deal of blame at specific targets. Yet, no American politician of prominence ever addresses the role of usury at the heart of an economic system which is geared towards the facilitation of enduring and frequently unpayable debt.

Under a capitalist system, which some have termed state-sponsored usury; an unremarked but ever present conflict persists between labour and usury. And while usury is persistently triumphant, the inescapable truth is that labour is the only source of value. America needs to reject usury as the basis of money supply.

Unfortunately, there are few eminent intellectuals who are calling for such a profound change, which would logically begin with the abolition of the Federal Reserve System. The Federal Reserve was created in 1913 to take away control of the supply of money from America’s elected officials and privatise the supply of money and credit. As a result, it functions to serve the interests of the monied classes and not the public interest.

And while its heads are appointed by Washington, the oligarchs of Wall Street possess an effective power of veto. While its official aims are to promote “price stability” and “full employment”, a closer analysis of its modus operandi and its record in these areas reveals that attaining these objectives always involves subordinating the wider public interest to the interests of the financiers. Indeed, Alan Greenspan, the one-time head of the Federal Reserve, once stated that he believed full employment to be incompatible with the ideal of price stability. The body was responsible for using American taxpayer’s money to fund a bailout of ‘too-big-to-fail’ financial organisations, many of who operated in a criminally negligent manner while many Americans had to endure the humiliation of property foreclosures, denuded pensions and unemployment. In the final analysis, it exists to promote the interests of the minuscule creditor class at the expense of the majority debtor class.

In his book Killing the Host, Michael Hudson, a distinguished professor of economics, argued the case for re-regulating the whole of the financial system. This would require a revolutionary tax policy geared towards preventing the financial sector from extracting economic surplus and capitalizing on debt obligations paying interest to that sector.

The ending of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union is often hailed as the historical triumph of laissez faire economics. Yet, contentious debate about the merits of the Austrian School of Economics in relation to the Keynesian School, or of capitalist versus socialist models ignore the crucial issue of usury which saddles most of the population with debt.

Those in America who argue for neo-liberalism also ignore the fact that it has created as many ills in society as its proponents claim socialism creates. Only a small fraction of the society thrive in a system that is rigged in favour of oligarchs and corporations who often pay a lower tax rate than the average working man. It creates the conditions through which the parasitical and exploitative role of hedge-fund speculators can thrive. The neo-liberal ideology also creates the sort of casino banking culture that brought the United States to the brink of economic collapse in the late 2000s, as well as the sort of vulture capitalism which wrecks small American communities, the island of Puerto Rico and nation states such as Argentina and the Congo.

America’s Electoral Funding Laws

The development of the laws governing the funding of America’s elections, beginning with the 1976 case of Buckley versus Valeo culminated in the Citizens United versus Federal Electoral Commission case of 2010 has effectively given unrestricted power to the oligarchs who control America’s political class.

The decision in Buckley involved striking down certain provisions of the Federal Election Campaign Act (1974), which removed limits to the amount of money which could be spent on campaigns, although limits remained in regard to the contributions of individuals. The Citizens United case went further. In overturning sections of the Campaign Reform Act (2002), it removed limits to expenditures made by non-profit and for-profit corporations. And in 2014, McCutcheon versus Federal Election Commission added to this by removing the biennial aggregate limit on individual contributions to national party and federal candidate committees.

Former President Jimmy Carter once bluntly stated what the implications are:

It violates the essence of what made America a great nation in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members. So now we’ve just seen a subversion of our political system as a major pay-off to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favours for themselves after the election is over. … At the present time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in Congress has a great deal more to sell.

The law ensures that both Democratic and Republican parties are under the thrall of the rich and super-powerful lobbies such as the military industry, the Israel lobby and Wall Street interests. It also means that little or no scrutiny is directed, for instance, at the activities of sponsors such as Paul Singer, the second largest donor to the Republican Party in 2016 who funded a super-PAC that supports Republican senators.

It has also had implications in regard to the calibrating of the foreign policy of the United States. For instance, the financial contribution made to the election campaign of Donald Trump by the billionaire and self-avowed ‘Israel-Firster’ Sheldon Adelson, was explicitly related to changes in foreign policy. Adelson demanded that Trump recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He also expected Trump to renege on the nuclear agreement painstakingly reached between Iran and other nations. All of this has only succeeded in dangerously ratcheting up tensions in the Middle East.

For some, U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is controlled by a triumvirate of oligarchs: Sheldon Adelson, Bernard Marcus and Paul Singer; a cynical but understandable analysis of the situation.

American Foreign Policy

Few among the American populace appear to be aware of the fundamentally unchanging nature of U.S. foreign policy. American militarism expressed through a perpetual interventionist policy of regime change has added considerably to its national debt and undermined its moral authority among the global community of nations. While regime change policies have a basis in the application of ‘American Exceptionalism’, as well as the influence of the neoconservative ideology, the unbending trajectory of foreign policy owes a great deal to the machinations of a hidden government of the sort expounded by the 19^th century English constitutionalist Walter Bagehot.

While the term ‘Deep State’ has entered the lexicon of everyday language, it is rarely clearly defined and specifically linked to the conduct of America’s foreign policy, which Professor Michael J. Glennon of Tufts University posits has a great deal to do with an unaccountable entity that wields a great deal of power in the governance of a nation.

Glennon’s argument is that what he terms the ‘Trumanite’ institutions composed of ex-military and security officials run national security policies at the expense of the ‘Madisonian’ institutions; that is, the separated organs of state which function to constitutionally check the power of each other and who are accountable to the electorate.

This assessment partly explains why no politician of note has ever addressed retired U.S. General Wesley Clark’s assertion that American foreign policy was “hijacked” by “some hard-nosed people” in the wake of the terror attacks of September 11th 2001. They have failed to address the war agenda revealed in numerous position papers published by neoconservative think tanks in the 1990s and 2000s which called for the destruction of a number of states perceived as being opposed to the interests of the United States. Uncoincidentally, most were enemies of the State of Israel.

While visiting the Pentagon during the period following the September 11 attacks, Clark was shown a plan of action which proposed the destruction of seven countries over a five-year period, starting with Iraq and ending with Iran. What is remarkable about Clark’s revelation is that all the countries on that list have been targeted since that time by a series of overt and covert military actions carried out by different administrations. Glennon’s allusion to the ascendancy of Trumanite institutions goes some way in explaining the unchanging national security policy of the administrations led by George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

The result of the implementation of the agenda has been an enduring engagement in Afghanistan, invaded in 2001 under the guise of a police action, but which has turned out to be America’s longest war; the respective destructive wars against Arab secular governments of Iraq, Libya and Syria, as well as the imposition of sanctions and persistent threats of war made against Iran.

The other salient expression of the new militarism developed in the aftermath of the ending of the Cold War is the designation of Russia as an enemy state. Here, the twin doctrines expressed respectively by Paul Wolfowitz and Zbigniew Brzeziński, have been crucial. The Wolfowitz Doctrine sought to formalise American hegemony by sanctioning the overthrow of governments resistant to the dictates of American interests and accepting such course of actions even when riding roughshod over multilateral agreements. The Brzeziński Doctrine incorporated a resolve to militarily intimidate and ideally balkanise Russia for it to be used as a source of the energy needs of the West. Both doctrines endorsed the view that in the light of dissolution of the Soviet Union, no power should be allowed to rise and challenge American supremacy over the globe.

This led to the expansion of NATO in contravention of an agreement reached between the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union that a condition for the reunification of Germany would be that NATO should not expand one inch eastwards. It has also resulted in the unilateral abrogation by the United States of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty in July 2002 by George W. Bush and Donald Trump’s renunciation of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty in August 2019.

A concomitant to this prevailing policy has been the orchestrated demonisation of Vladimir Putin -once compared to Adolf Hitler by Hillary Clinton- whose foreign policy decisions in relation to military engagements in Georgia, Ukraine and Syria have all been reactive to U.S. foreign policy objectives of destabilisation.

The United States, which has not won a war since World War II, constantly risks igniting a Third World War by these actions, which are stimulated by the Military Industry which thrives on the existence of conflicts. It bullies smaller nations through the threat of or imposition of sanctions and hypocritically, it has fought a succession of proxy wars through Islamist fanatics professing the ideology of the group which it holds responsible for instigating the 9/11 attacks.

Conclusion

Few Americans appear to be cognisant of the relative powerlessness of the office of the presidency. It is occupied by a person who may espouse and administer policies which appeal to their ‘Liberal’ or ‘Conservative’ constituents in the typically fractious discourse that permeates America’s ‘Culture Wars’, but who cannot address the fundamental issues affecting America’s decline.

Unless these issues relating to usurious economics, the control of politicians by oligarchs and the pernicious rationales governing foreign policy begin to be seriously addressed by America’s political and intellectual classes, the malaise, characterised by unending wars, extraordinary sovereign debt and increasing social polarisation, looks certain to bring about the collapse of the American Republic.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Adeyinka Makinde.

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

A considerable spectrum of the liberal West takes the American interpretation of what civilization consists of to be something like an immutable law of nature. But what if this interpretation is on the verge of an irreparable breakdown?

Michael Vlahos has argued that the US is not a mere nation-state but a “system leader” – “a civilizational power like Rome, Byzantium, and the Ottoman Empire.” And, we should add, China – which he did not mention. The system leader is “a universalistic identity framework tied to a state. This vantage is helpful because the United States clearly owns this identity framework today.”

Intel stalwart Alastair Crooke, in a searing essay, digs deeper into how this “civilizational vision” was “forcefully unfurled across the globe” as the inevitable, American manifest destiny: not only politically – including all the accouterments of Western individualism and neo-liberalism, but coupled with “the metaphysics of Judeo-Christianity, too”.

Crooke also notes how deeply ingrained the notion that victory in the Cold War “spectacularly affirmed” the superiority of the US civilizational vision among the US elite.

Well, the post-modern tragedy – from the point of view of US elites – is that soon this may not be the case anymore. The vicious civil war engulfing Washington for the past three years – with the whole world as stunned spectators – has just accelerated the malaise.

Remember Pax Mongolica

It’s sobering to consider that Pax Americana may be destined to a shorter historical existence than Pax Mongolica – established after Genghis Khan, the head of a nomad nation, went about conquering the world.

Genghis first invested in a trade offensive to take over the Silk Roads, crushing the Kara-Kitais in Eastern Turkestan, conquering Islamic Khorezm, and annexing Bukhara, Samarkand, Bactria, Khorasan and Afghanistan. The Mongols reached the outskirts of Vienna in 1241 and the Adriatic Sea one year after.

The superpower of the time extended from the Pacific to the Adriatic. We can barely imagine the shock for Western Christendom. Pope Gregory X was itching to know who these conquerors of the world were, and could be Christianized?

In parallel, only a victory by the Egyptian Mamluks in Galilee in 1260 saved Islam from being annexed to Pax Mongolica.

Pax Mongolica – a single, organized, efficient, tolerant power – coincided historically with the Golden Age of the Silk Roads. Kublai Khan – who lorded over Marco Polo – wanted to be more Chinese than the Chinese themselves. He wanted to prove that nomad conquerors turned sedentary could learn the rules of administration, commerce, literature and even navigation.

Yet when Kublai Khan died, the empire fragmented into rival khanates. Islam profited. Everything changed. A century later, the Mongols from China, Persia, Russia and Central Asia had nothing to do with their ancestors on horseback.

A jump cut to the young 21st century shows that the initiative, historically, is once again on the side of China, across the Heartland and lining up the Rimland. World-changing, game-changing enterprises don’t originate in the West anymore – as has been the case from the 16th century up to the late 20th century.

For all the vicious wishful thinking that coronavirus will derail the “Chinese century”, which will actually be the Eurasian Century, and amid the myopic tsunami of New Silk Roads demonization, it’s always easy to forget that implementation of myriad projects has not even started.

It should be in 2021 that all those corridors and axes of continental development pick up speed across Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, Central Asia, Southwest Asia, Russia and Europe, in parallel with the Maritime Silk Road configuring a true Eurasian string of pearls from Dalian to Piraeus, Trieste, Venice, Genoa, Hamburg and Rotterdam.

For the first time in two millennia, China is able to combine the dynamism of political and economic expansion both on the continental and maritime realms, something that the state did not experience since the short expeditionary stretch led by Admiral Zheng He in the Indian Ocean in the early 15th century. Eurasia, in the recent past, was under Western and Soviet colonization. Now it’s going all-out multipolar – a series of complex, evolving permutations led by Russia-China-Iran-Turkey-India-Pakistan-Kazakhstan.

Every player has no illusions about the “system leader” obsessions: to prevent Eurasia from uniting under one power – or coalition such as the Russia-China strategic partnership; ensure that Europe remains under US hegemony; prevent Southwest Asia – or the “Greater Middle East” – from being linked to Eurasian powers; and prevent by all means that Russia-China have unimpeded access to maritime lanes and trade corridors.

The message from Iran

In the meantime, a sneaking suspicion creeps in – that Iran’s game plan, in an echo of Donbass in 2014, may be about sucking US neocons into a trademark Russian cauldron in case the regime-change obsession is turbocharged.

There is a serious possibility that under maximum pressure Tehran might eventually abandon the JCPOA for good, as well as the NPT, thus openly inviting a US attack.

As it stands, Tehran has sent two very clear messages. The accuracy of the missile attack on the US Ayn Al-Asad base in Iraq, replying to the targeted assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani, means that any branch of the vast US network of bases is now vulnerable.

And the fog of non-denial denials surrounding the downing of the CIA Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN) – essentially an aerial spook shop – in Ghazni, Afghanistan also carries a message.

CIA icon Mike d’Andrea, known as ‘Ayatollah Mike’, The Undertaker, the Dark Prince, or all of the above, may or may not have been on board. Irrespective of the fact that no US government source will ever confirm or deny that Ayatollah Mike is dead or alive, or even that he exists at all, the message remains the same: your soldiers and spooks are also vulnerable.

Since Pearl Harbor, no nation has dared to stare down the system leader so blatantly, as Iran did in Iraq. Vlahos mentioned something I saw for myself in 2003, how “young American soldiers referred to Iraqis as ‘Indians’, as though Mesopotamia were the Wild West”. Mesopotamia was one the crucial cradles of civilization as we know it. Well, in the end, that $2 trillion spent to bomb Iraq into democracy did no favors to the civilizational vision of the ‘system leader’.

The Sirens and La Dolce Vita

Now let’s add aesthetics to our “civilizational” politics. Every time I visit Venice – which in itself is a living metaphor for both the flimsiness of empires and the Decline of the West – I retrace selected steps in The Cantos, Ezra Pound’s epic masterpiece.

Last December, after many years, I went back to the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, also known as “The jewel box”, which plays a starring role in The Cantos. As I arrived I told the custodian signora that I had come for “The Sirens”. With a knowing smirk, she lighted my way along the nave to the central staircase. And there they were, sculpted on pillars on both sides of a balcony: “Crystal columns, acanthus, sirens in the pillar head”, as we read in Canto 20.

These sirens were sculpted by Tullio and Antonio Lombardo, sons of Pietro Lombardo, Venetian masters of the late 15th and early 16th century – “and Tullio Romano carved the sirens, as the old custode says: so that since then no one has been able to carve them for the jewel box, Santa Maria dei Miracoli”, as we read in Canto 76.

Well, Pound misnamed the creator of the sirens, but, that’s not the point. The point is how Pound saw the sirens as the epitome of a strong culture – “the perception of a whole age, of whole congeries and sequence of causes, went into an assemblage of detail, whereof it would be impossible to speak in terms of magnitude”, as Pound wrote in Guide to Kulchur.

As much as his beloved masterpieces by Giovanni Bellini and Piero della Francesca, Pound fully grasped how these sirens were the antithesis of usura – or the “art” of lending money at exorbitant interest rates, which not only deprives a culture of the best of art, as Pound describes it, but is also one of the pillars for the total financialization and marketization of life itself, a process that Pound brilliantly foresaw, when he wrote in Hugh Selwyn Mauberley that, “all things are a flowing, Sage Heracleitus says; But a tawdry cheapness, shall reign throughout our days.”

La Dolce Vita will turn 60 in 2020. Much as Pound’s sirens, Fellini’s now mythological tour de force in Rome is like a black and white celluloid palimpsest of a bygone era, the birth of the Swingin’ Sixties. Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) and Maddalena (Anouk Aimee), impossibly cool and chic, are like the Last Woman and the Last Man before the deluge of “tawdry cheapness”. In the end, Fellini shows us Marcello despairing at the ugliness and, yes, cheapness intruding in his beautiful mini-universe – the lineaments of the trash culture fabricated and sold by the ‘system leader’ about to engulf us all.

Pound was a human, all too human American maverick of unbridled classical genius. The ‘system leader’ misinterpreted him; treated him as a traitor; caged him in Pisa; and dispatched him to a mental hospital in the US. I still wonder whether he may have seen and appreciated La Dolce Vita during the 1960s, before he died in Venice in 1972. After all, there was a little cinema within walking distance of the house in Calle Querini where he lived with Olga Rudge.

“Marcello!” We’re still haunted by Anita Ekberg’s iconic siren call, half-immersed in the Fontana di Trevi. Today, still hostages of the crumbling civilizational vision of the ‘system leader’, at best we barely muster, as TS Eliot memorably wrote, a “backward half-look, over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.”

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) and Maddalena (Anouk Aimee) in La Dolce Vita, impossibly cool and chic, are like the Last Woman and the Last Man before the deluge of ‘tawdry cheapness.’

In a recent presentation of his book, Laid Low, which examines the International Monetary Fund’s role in the eurozone crisis, author and journalist Paul Blustein disclosed a memo dated May 4, 2010, from the IMF’s then head of research Olivier Blanchard, to Poul Thomsen, who headed the Greek mission at the time.

In his missive, Blanchard warned that the cumulative fiscal adjustment of 16 percentage points being demanded of Greece in such a short period of time and with such a high level of frontloading had never been achieved before.

.@PaulBlustein: in 2010,@ojblanchard1 warned austerity cld go awry,even if done to plan. DSK broached debt restructuring: Trichet said "no!" pic.twitter.com/1cFFPsKszf

— Trineesh Biswas (@TrineeshB) January 31, 2017

According to Blanchard, not only was the task unprecedented, but Greece was being asked to achieve the impossible in unfavourable external circumstances, when everyone was barely recovering from the 2008 global financial crisis and without any other policy levers (low interest rates or exchange rate adjustment).

Blanchard foresaw what became a reality only about a year later: Even with “perfect policy implementation” the programme will be thrown off track rather quickly and the recession will be deeper and longer than expected, he warned.

Blanchard’s scepticism and warnings were ignored. Instead, political limitations took hold of the decision-making process and domestic-focussed calculations pushed Greece into trying to achieve the impossible.

This week, the former IMF chief economist admitted on Twitter that although he was not the one that leaked the memo he was not unhappy that the truth has been revealed because “it is seven years and still there is no clear/realistic plan” for Greece.

I did not leak, but am not too unhappy that it did leak :). 7 years already, and still no clear/realistic plan. https://t.co/8mCzO3TYvL

— Olivier Blanchard (@ojblanchard1) February 14, 2017

Athens is currently under pressure to adopt another 2 percent of GDP in new fiscal measures, which relate to the tax-free threshold and pension spending. Since 2010, Greece has adopted revenue-raising measures and spending cuts that are equivalent to more than a third of its economy and more than double what Blanchard had described as unprecedented almost seven years ago.

The Greek economy has been burdened with 35.6 billion euros in all sorts of taxes on income, consumption, duties, stamps, corporate taxation and increases in social security contributions. When totting all this up, it is remarkable that the economy still manages to function.

During the same period, the state has also found savings of 37.4 billion euros from cutting salaries, pensions, benefits and operational expenses. Discretionary spending is now so lean that even the IMF argues that in certain areas it needs to increase if Greece is to meet the minimum requirements in the provision of public services.

When this misery started, Greece had to correct a primary deficit of 24 billion euros. But the painful fiscal adjustment Greeks have had to endure had turned out to be three times as much.

The IMF’s Thomsen, now the director of its European Department, recently argued that Greece doesn’t need any more austerity but brave policy implementation. Somehow, though, the discussion has ended up being about finding another 3.5 billion euros in taxes and cuts to pension spending. Bravery is nowhere to be seen.

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Featured image is from Panayotis Tzamaros/Fosphotos

This was originally published in March 2019.

Venezuela’s blackout is the latest in the US siege on the country.

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The Russian government rejected on Monday the U.S. threats to impose new sanctions against several Russian companies for their cooperation with Venezuela in the oil sector.

Last week, the United States special representative for Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, warned Russia that its support for Venezuela will cost them econmically as Washington is looking to sanction them.

“We classify this practice as harmful, we believe that many countries suffer because of this practice, we consider it contrary to international law,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov told reporters Monday in regards to Washington’s plans.

“The United States, especially, and several other countries, unfortunately use these trade and other restrictions very frequently against third world countries, which are illegal under international law.”

Peskov added that

“they use this practice more and more often in recent times to ensure their own interests in international commercial and economic affairs.”

Also, spokesman Peskov stressed that Russia categorically opposes this practice.

On the other hand, in Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang, in a media briefing session offered online, said China is against any foreign interference in the internal affairs of Venezuela and against the application of unilateral sanctions.

The United States imposed sanctions on the airline Conviasa, the largest airline in Venezuela.

The Treasury Department published on its website that the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) included 40 aircraft of this airline in the list of specially designated nationals and blocked persons (SDN).

“China’s position on the problem of Venezuela is clear and remains unchanged. We stand against any foreign interference in the internal affairs of Venezuela and against unilateral sanctions,” said the diplomat.

Since 2019, the United States in particular, and some other countries due to pressure from Washington, began applying new sanctions to Caracas, which seriously affected its economy, people’s lives and Venezuela’s relations with other nations, Geng Shuang recalled.

“We urge other countries to take into account the humanitarian reality of Venezuela, stop imposing uniteral and extraterritorial sanctions, and work to create necessary conditions that will lead to the stability of their economic growth,” said Geng.

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O Parlamento grego ratificou o “Acordo de Cooperação para Defesa Mútua”, que concede aos Estados Unidos o uso de todas as bases militares gregas. Elas servirão às forças armadas USA não só para armazenar armamentos, reabastecer-se e treinar, mas também para operações de “resposta às emergências”, ou seja, para missões de ataque.

Particularmente importante, é a base aérea de Larissa, onde a Força Aérea dos EUA já instalou drones MQ-9 Reaper, e a de Stefanovikio, onde o Exército dos EUA já introduziu helicópteros Apache e Black Hawk.

O Acordo foi definido pelo Ministro da Defesa grego, Nikos Panagiotopoulos, “vantajoso para os nossos interesses nacionais, pois aumenta a importância da Grécia na planificação USA”. Importância que a Grécia tem já há algum tempo: basta recordar o golpe de Estado sangrento dos coronéis, organizado em 1967, no âmbito da operação Stay-Behind dirigida pela CIA, seguida em Itália pela temporada de massacres iniciada com a Piazza Fontana, em 1969.

Naquele mesmo ano, instalou-se na Grécia, em Souda Bay, na ilha de Creta, um Destacamento Naval USA proveniente da base de Sigonella, na Sicília, às ordens do Comando USA de Nápoles. Hoje, Souda Bay é uma das mais importantes bases aeronavais USA/NATO no Mediterrâneo, usada nas guerras no Médio Oriente e no Norte de África. Em Souda Bay, o Pentágono investirá outros 6 milhões de euros, que se juntarão aos 12 que investirá em Larissa, anuncia Panagiotopoulos, apresentando-o como um grande negócio para a Grécia.

No entanto, o Primeiro Ministro Kyriakos Mitsotakis indica com precisão que Atenas já assinou com o Pentágono, um  acordo para o reforço da sua frota de F-16, que custará à Grécia 1,5 bilião de dólares e que também está interessada em comprar aos USA, drones e caças F-35.

A Grécia também se destaca por ser na NATO, depois da Bulgária, o aliado europeu que destina há muito tempo, a maior percentagem do PIB (2,3%) para a despesa militar.

O Acordo também garante aos Estados Unidos “o uso ilimitado do porto de Alexandroupolis”. Está localizado no mar Egeu, perto do Estreito de Dardanelos que, ligando no território turco, o Mediterrâneo e o Mar Negro, constitui uma rota fundamental de trânsito marítimo, sobretudo para a Rússia. Além do mais, a vizinha Trácia Oriental (a pequena parte europeia da Turquia) é o ponto em que chega da Rússia através do Mar Negro, o gasoduto TurkStream.

O “investimento estratégico”, que Washington já está  a efectuar nas infraestruturas portuárias, visa fazer de Alexandroupolis uma das bases militares USA mais importantes da região, capaz de bloquear o acesso dos navios russos ao Mediterrâneo e, ao mesmo tempo, neutralizar a China, que pretende fazer do Pireu, um porto de escala importante da Nova Rota da Seda.

“Estamos a trabalhar com outros parceiros democráticos da região para repelir protagonistas malignos, como a Rússia e a China, acima de tudo a Rússia, que usa a energia como instrumento da sua influência malévola”, declara o Embaixador dos EUA em Atenas, Geoffrey Pyatt, salientando que “Alexandroupolis desempenha um papel crucial para a segurança energética e para a estabilidade da Europa”.

Nesse âmbito, insere-se o “Acordo de Cooperação para a Defesa Mútua” com os USA, que o Parlamento grego ratificou com 175 votos a favor, do centro-direita ao governo (Nova Democracia e outros) e 33 contra (Partido Comunista e outros), enquanto 80 declararam “presente”, de acordo com a fórmula do Congresso USA, equivalente à abstenção, em uso no Parlamento grego. O Syriza, a “Coligação da Esquerda Radical” liderada por Alex Tsipras, absteve-se. Partido este, que esteve primeiro no Governo, agora está na oposição, num país que depois de ser forçado a vender a própria economia, agora vende não só as suas bases militares, mas o pouco que resta da sua soberania.

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo original em italiano :

Grecia, svendita di basi militari agli Stati uniti

ilmanifesto.it

Tradutora: Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos 

Il Parlamento greco ha ratificato l’«Accordo di cooperazione per la reciproca difesa», che concede agli Stati uniti l’uso di tutte le basi militari greche. Esse serviranno alle forze armate Usa non solo per stoccare armamenti, rifornirsi e addestrarsi, ma anche per operazioni di «risposta all’emergenza», ossia per missioni di attacco.

Particolarmente importante la base aerea di Larissa, dove la US Air Force ha già schierato droni MQ-9 Reaper, e quella di Stefanovikio, dove lo US Army ha già schierato elicotteri Apache e Black Hawk.

L’Accordo è stato definito dal ministro greco della Difesa, Nikos Panagiotopoulos, «vantaggioso per i nostri interessi nazionali, poiché accresce l’importanza della Grecia nella pianificazione Usa». Importanza che la Grecia ha da tempo: basti ricordare il sanguinoso colpo di stato dei colonnelli, organizzato nel 1967 nel quadro dell’operazione Stay-Behind diretta dalla Cia, cui seguì in Italia la stagione delle stragi iniziata con quella di Piazza Fontana nel 1969.

In quello stesso anno si installò in Grecia, a Souda Bay nell’isola di Creta, un Distaccamento navale Usa proveniente dalla base di Sigonella in Sicilia, agli ordini del Comando Usa di Napoli. Oggi Souda Bay è una delle più importanti basi aeronavali Usa/Nato nel Mediterraneo, impiegata nelle guerre in Medioriente e Nordafrica.  A Souda Bay il Pentagono investirà altri 6 milioni di euro, che si aggiungeranno ai 12 che investirà a Larissa, annuncia Panagiotopoulos, presentandolo come un grande affare per la Grecia.

Il primo ministro Kyriakos Mitsotakis precisa però che Atene ha già firmato col Pentagono un accordo per il potenziamento della sua flotta di F-16, che costerà alla Grecia 1,5 miliardi di dollari, e che è interessata ad acquistare dagli Usa anche droni e caccia F-35.

La Grecia si distingue inoltre per essere nella Nato, dopo la Bulgaria, l’alleato europeo che destina da tempo alla spesa militare la più alta percentuale del Pil (il 2,3%).

L’Accordo garantisce agli Stati uniti anche «l’uso illimitato del porto di Alessandropoli». Esso è situato sull’Egeo a ridosso dello Stretto dei Dardanelli che, collegando in territorio turco il Mediterraneo e il Mar Nero, costituisce una fondamentale via di transito marittima soprattutto per la Russia. Inoltre la limitrofa Tracia Orientale (la piccola parte europea della Turchia) è il punto in cui arriva dalla Russia, attraverso il Mar Nero, il gasdotto TurkStream.

L’«investimento strategico», che Washington sta già effettuando nelle infrastrutture portuali, mira a fare di Alessandropoli una delle più importanti basi militari Usa nella regione, in grado di bloccare l’accesso delle navi russe al Mediterraneo e, allo stesso tempo, contrastare la Cina che intende fare del Pireo un importante scalo della Nuova Via della Seta.

«Stiamo lavorando con altri partner democratici nella regione per respingere malefici attori come la Russia e la Cina, anzitutto la Russia che usa l’energia quale strumento della sua malefica influenza», dichiara l’ambasciatore Usa ad Atene Geoffrey Pyatt, sottolineando che «Alessandropoli ha un ruolo cruciale per la sicurezza energetica e la stabilità dell’Europa».

In tale quadro si inserisce l’«Accordo di cooperazione per la reciproca difesa» con gli Usa, che il Parlamento greco ha ratificato con 175 voti favorevoli del centro-destra al governo (Nuova Democrazia e altri) e 33 contrari (Partito Comunista e altri), mentre 80  hanno dichiarato «presente» secondo la formula del Congresso Usa, equivalente all’astensione, in uso nel Parlamento greco. Ad astenersi è stata Syriza, la «Coalizione della Sinistra Radicale» guidata da Alex Tsipras. Partito prima di governo, ora all’opposizione, in un paese che, dopo essere stato costretto a svendere la propria economia, ora svende non solo le sue basi militari ma quel poco che resta della sua sovranità.

Manlio Dinucci

In a “bombshell” revelation that calls into question one of the Trump administration’s stated justificiations for assassinating Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani—a move that nearly sparked a region-wide military conflict—Iraqi intelligence officials told the New York Times that they believe ISIS, not an Iran-linked militia, was likely responsible for the Dec. 27 rocket attack that killed an American contractor at an air base near Kirkuk, Iraq.

The Times reported Thursday that “Iraqi military and intelligence officials have raised doubts about who fired the rockets… saying they believe it is unlikely that the militia the United States blamed for the attack” was responsible.

“All the indications are that it was Daesh,” Brigadier General Ahmed Adnan, the Iraqi chief of intelligence for the federal police at the K-1 air base, told the Times, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS. “We know Daesh’s movements.”

The Trump administration has not released a single piece of evidence showing that the Iraqi militia Khataib Hezbollah, which has ties to Iran, was responsible for the attack on K-1. The group has denied carrying out the attack.

The U.S. responded to the rocket attack days later with deadly airstrikes on Khataib Hezbollah targets in Iraq and Syria, setting off a dangerous escalatory spiral that brought Iran and the U.S. to the brink of war.

On Jan. 2, the U.S. assassinated Soleimani with a drone strike in Baghdad ordered by President Donald Trump. Following the assassination, which was widely condemned as an act of war, the U.S. Department of Defense issued a statement claiming without evidence that Soleimani “orchestrated attacks on coalition bases in Iraq over the last several months—including the attack on December 27th—culminating in the death and wounding of additional American and Iraqi personnel.”

But Iraqi officials told the Times that “based on circumstantial evidence and long experience in the area where the attack took place,” there is good reason to be skeptical about U.S. claims that Khataib Hezbollah was behind it.

As the Times reported:

The rockets were launched from a Sunni Muslim part of Kirkuk Province notorious for attacks by the Islamic State, a Sunni terrorist group, which would have made the area hostile territory for a Shiite militia like Khataib Hezbollah.

Khataib Hezbollah has not had a presence in Kirkuk Province since 2014.

The Islamic State, however, had carried out three attacks relatively close to the base in the 10 days before the attack on K-1. Iraqi intelligence officials sent reports to the Americans in November and December warning that ISIS intended to target K-1, an Iraqi air base in Kirkuk Province that is also used by American forces…

These facts all point to the Islamic State, Iraqi officials say.

“We as Iraqi forces cannot even come to this area unless we have a large force because it is not secure,” Brig. Gen. Adnan said of the area from which the rocket attack was launched. “How could it be that someone who doesn’t know the area could come here and find that firing position and launch an attack?”

In response to the Times report, Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, tweeted:

“Al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. on 9/11 and we went to war with Iraq. If this report is true, ISIS attacked the U.S. and we nearly went to war with Iran.”

This is huge: Iraqi military & intelligence officials say it’s highly unlikely that a rocket attack that killed an Iraqi-American contractor in early January—& led to an escalation cycle that almost started a war—was carried out by an Iran-allied militia.https://t.co/XPafTaqtjd

— Sina Toossi (@SinaToossi) February 6, 2020

The US almost started WWIII based on questionable evidence.

After all of the violence in the Middle East following the attack on US bases, #Iraqi officials are now questioning the US's claim that the #Iran-backed militia Khataib Hezbollah are to blame. https://t.co/lqC8b15Gxq

— CODEPINK (@codepink) February 6, 2020

U.S. officials insisted to the Times that they have “solid evidence” showing that Khataib Hezbollah carried out the attack, but they have not released any of this evidence to the public or to Iraqi officials.

“We have requested the American side to share with us any information, any evidence, but they have not sent us any information,” Lt. Gen. Muhammad al-Bayati, chief of staff for former Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, told the Times.

Ilan Goldenberg, Middle East security director at the Center for a New American Security think tank, tweeted that the U.S. Congress “must ask questions about this and get the intel.”

Responsible Statecraft managing editor Benjamin Armbruster agreed.

“Congress needs to investigate ASAP,” Armbruster tweeted.

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Imagine you live next to a coal-fired power plant. Near the power plant, you may have seen heavy machinery dumping loads of greyish substance into an open pit or a pond. You learn that the greyish stuff is called coal ash, a substance that’s chockful of toxic heavy metals such as arsenic, lead, and selenium – all of which are cancer-causing agents – and that 140 million tons of coal ash is produced in the US every year. You may notice that serious health issues are arising in your community, so you can’t help but wonder: is there a connection between your community’s health problems and the dumping of this coal ash? Is this stuff getting into your drinking water?

And then you hear that the Trump administration is planning on rolling back a rule requiring that coal utilities prevent the nasty waste products from entering groundwater, the same water that you drink. The last thing you want is to have this gunk in your drinking water, which you fear will occur or worsen under the rule’s rollback.

If you are affected by this situation, chances are that you are in a low-income bracket, are a person of color, or are from an Indigenous group, and you know far too many examples of the government failing to address or even listen to your concerns, even when legally obligated to. Is there a way to tell government officials your story such that they will sincerely consider it when they deliberate on the policy?

“Virtual hearings” have a lot of problematic features

Here’s the thing, we have a process in place that is designed to collect evidence and testimonials from the public, including from members of impacted communities, when a federal agency is proposing a new rule or modifying an existing rule. But this process, called public hearings, was recently upended by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for two different proposed rollbacks related to the pollution generated by coal-fired power plants.

Called “virtual hearings,” the EPA required participants who wanted to comment to use the internet to join an audio-only webinar. In a move that former EPA officials say has never occurred before during prior administrations, these “virtual hearings” were the only public hearing that took place; no in-person public hearing was held. Instead, the agency completely eschewed face-to-face contact with the public and required that participants speak into the black void of a phone or a computer’s microphone system to provide their comment.

Even the EPA’s justification for providing virtual-only hearings to E&E News – that the EPA’s Office of Water’s 2019 guidance encourages the use of online technology to facilitate public meetings and hearing – seems to back up how out-of-the-norm these virtual hearings are. The guidance warns that a fully online public hearing is the most “substantive” change the agency can make, and suggests that the EPA should first conduct an in-person hearing with a survey to determine if the public would even be receptive to a later online public hearing (there’s no evidence that a survey was or will be conducted by the EPA in this case). Additionally, there may be a double standard here, as the EPA met in-person with coal utilities on the coal ash rule and gave the industry folks advice on where they would like to see more public input.

The internet-only public hearings occurred for two proposed rules, one that delays the deadline for companies to close coal ash ponds and another that rolls back the 2015 coal ash rule designed to curb heavy metals and other pollutants released from coal-fired power plants into nearby waterways. Coal ash has had an enormous impact on frontline communities – communities that live near numerous pollution sources like coal-fired power plants – as a result of the coal ash leaching into nearby drinking water sources. Earthjustice released an analysis showing that 91 percent of coal-fired power plants are contaminating the groundwater with coal ash in an amount that exceeds federal safety standards.

What we lose when there are no in-person hearings

While a virtual hearing may be useful for individuals who cannot attend a public hearing, they cannot serve as a substitute for an in-person hearing. Eighty-seven public interest groups, including NRDC, Earthjustice, Sierra Club, and NAACP, wrote a letter to the EPA specifically requesting an in-person meeting for both of the coal ash actions. The 87 groups explained that an in-person hearing provides the public with the opportunity to bring visual aids, such as maps, photos, and contaminated water and soil, to enhance their points, and speakers can bring their family members and members of impacted communities to serve as form of support. Additionally, they point out that agency officials benefit from conducting in-person hearings, as there is an immeasurable and irreplaceable value in seeing speakers and hearing their testimonies directly, which may be filled with emotion and urgency that cannot be conveyed in a phone call. Betsy Southerland, a former staffer in EPA’s Office of Water who helped write the 2015 coal ash rule, also stated how beneficial in-person testimonies are to agency officials, “You can see the reaction to the audience when you are doing your presentations. Otherwise, in virtual hearings, you and the public can feel like you’re just talking into the void.”

Virtual hearings appear to limit access for certain individuals, particularly the elderly and members of disenfranchised communities. According to one 92-year-old participant of a virtual hearing, it was a challenge to participate since they were less comfortable with using a computer. Additionally, many members of marginalized communities have difficulty in gaining access to the internet and often use their libraries for internet access, a location which is not known for being conducive for speaking out loud to provide personal testimony to government officials.

Underserved communities deserve better than this

Aside from written public comments submitted via the internet or mail, public hearings are the only opportunity that the public has to weigh in on proposed federal rules and have a say in the decisions that our federal agencies are making. Therefore, it is vitally important that the EPA conduct public hearings in a way that does not alienate people who wish to engage in this important process of civic virtue, particularly people from marginalized communities. And considering that the Trump administration’s EPA has been previously accused of disenfranchising impacted communities by not holding public hearings in their state or local areas, it is all the more important that the EPA not use technology in a way that adds additional barriers to ability of the public to provide comments to agency officials in an effective manner.

There are ways that technology can democratize how we interact with government officials – such as by having web-streaming services of an in-person hearing – and there are ways that technology can perpetuate injustices. Virtual-only hearings should never be the policy of the EPA in how they solicit comments since doing so further adds to the already immense body of evidence showing that the Trump administration is willing to dismantle the ability of marginalized communities to play a role in the policymaking process when they advocate for environmental and health policies that are overwhelming supported by scientific evidence. And that is a chilling thought.

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Anita Desikan is a research analyst for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Featured image is from UCS

Russia’s condemnation of the “Israeli Air Force’s” recklessness in once again hiding behind a civilian aircraft to deter anti-air fire by the Syrian Arab Army during their latest bombing operation against Damascus isn’t contradictory to the principles of the unofficial Russian-“Israeli” alliance but simply proves that some limits naturally exist to Moscow’s cooperation with Tel Aviv in the Arab Republic, as is normal for any set of partners anywhere in the world, though this incident is being misportrayed by some “wishful thinkers” in the Alt-Media Community as supposed proof that Russia is “against Israel” as much as Iran is.

At the Toronto Hearings in 2011, Professor Niels Harrit described a new discovery related to the World Trade Center (WTC) dust. That new discovery was the presence of carbon nanotubes in the residues of nanothermite ignition. The importance of these results relates to the health of 9/11 first responders, whose fatal illnesses have remained largely a mystery to the medical profession.

Professor Harrit’s presentation in Toronto is available online in its entirety. Here is the shorter segment related to the finding of carbon nanotubes (CNTs).

As Harrit describes, the ignition residues he used were from experiments that I performed in my garage. Nanothermite was prepared using a formulation documented by researchers at a national laboratory and ignition was achieved simply by heating the nanothermite on a hot plate to the appropriate temperature. Here are video highlights of the process.

Harrit’s CNT results were duplicated by an independent commercial laboratory. The independent laboratory identified CNTs in the nanothermite ignition residues using Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) and comparison to reference CNT data. See the image below for an excerpt of the report on the sample submitted.

In 2010, researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine reported the presence of high levels of carbon nanotubes in the lungs of WTC first responders as well as in WTC dust samples. They wrote, “The finding of CNT in both WTC dust and lung tissues is unexpected and requires further study.”

CNT formation requires three basic components: a very high temperature, a source of carbon, and the presence of certain metals. In particular, formation of the single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) found in the lungs of first responders requires the metals to be present. All of these requirements are met in the ignition of nanothermite. As Harrit stated in his presentation, it is the ideal environment for production of these CNTs.

Unfortunately, until medical professionals are willing to look at the evidence for the presence of thermitic materials at the WTC, which is extensive and compelling, the cause of 9/11 first responder illnesses will remain a tragic mystery.

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In her most recent book, La Non-épuration en France de 1943 aux années 1950 (“France’s Non-Purge from 1943 to the 1950s”), historian Annie Lacroix-Riz challenges a view of the Liberation of the country in 1944-1945 – and its aftermath – that has been trending recently in a historiography increasingly dominated by the right wing of the political spectrum (“droitisée”). This vision is highly critical of the Resistance and, conversely, rather indulgent with respect to collaboration. It is claimed, for instance, that the Resistance was generally ineffective, so that France owed its liberation almost exclusively to the efforts of the Americans and other Western Allies – the latter seconded by de Gaulle’s “Free French” forces – who landed in Normandy in June, 1944. Furthermore, we are told that the Resistance seized upon the opportunity presented by the liberation to commit all sorts of atrocities, including murder and the public shaving of the heads of innocent young women who had committed “horizontal collaboration,” that is, had love affairs with German soldiers. This “wild purge” (épuration sauvage) of the collaborators supposedly amounted to a “terreur communiste,” orchestrated by the communists, real or fake members of the Resistance, in an attempt to achieve sinister revolutionary objectives.

Except for the most blatant cases, the collaborators are now presented by the “dominant historiography” as mostly decent, respectable, well-meaning and “upstanding citizens” (gens très bien, an expression borrowed from the title of a novel by Alexandre Jardin), victims of coercion by the Germans, powerless and therefore innocent “subordinates” (subalternes), caught helplessly between the Nazi Scylla and the Charybdis of the Resistance, and often themselves involved in secret acts of resistance. Some collaborators were fanatics, of course, and did commit crimes, but they were mostly lower-class villains, best exemplified by members of the Vichy regime’s infamous paramilitary organization, the Milice.

In 1944-1945, the French provisional government, led by General de Gaulle, eventually managed to restore “law and order.” This, supposedly, is how in France, after years of economic and political troubles, military defeat, German occupation, and the turmoil of the Liberation, a law-abiding state, a Gaullist État de droit, was born. Even so, an inevitable purge of real and imaginary collaborators took place, which claimed many innocent victims, especially in the higher ranks of the state bureaucracy, the crème de la crèmeof business, and the nation’s elite in general.

Lacroix-Riz demolishes this revisionist interpretation in her new opus, which is thoroughly researched and documented and also full of names of personalities obscure as well as important, making it a somewhat challenging read for those who are not familiar with the history of France in the Second World War. In her earlier books, such as Le choix de la défaite and De Munich à Vichy, she first explained how, in the spring of 1940, France’s political, military, and economic elite had delivered the country to the Nazis in order to be able to install a fascist regime; such an authoritarian system of government was expected to be more sensitive to its needs and wants than the pre-war system of the “Third Republic,” deemed overly indulgent towards the working class, especially under the “Popular Front” government of 1936-1937. And she followed up with other meticulously researched studies (Industriels et banquiers français sous l’Occupation and Les élites françaises, 1940-1944. De la collaboration avec l’Allemagne à l’alliance américaine) that show how that elite had prospered under the auspices of Marshal Pétain’s Vichy regime, collaborated eagerly with the Germans, and fought tooth and nail against a Resistance that was mostly working-class, communist-dominated, and bent on introducing radical, even revolutionary changes after the war.  Now she demonstrates that the Liberation was not accompanied by a thorough purge of the collaborators but, au contraire, that the “gens très bien” of France’s elite of state and business managed to avoid atoning for their collaborationist sins, and that much of the Vichy system that had served them so well from 1940 to 1944 remained in place – arguably until the present time.

Let us start with the so-called “wild purge,” the alleged victimization of innocent folks by communist partisans, or communists posing as partisans, presumably in an attempt to eliminate opponents and rivals in preparation for a revolutionary coup d’état. Lacroix-Rix demonstrates that assassinations and summary executions did take place, but mostly in the context of the bitter fighting that erupted already before the landings in Normandy and the liberation of Paris. Contrary to the theory of its military inefficiency, the Resistance disrupted the enemy’s preparations for a defense against allied landings that were to come in Normandy, and caused heavy casualties, as German authorities themselves admitted. And most of the atrocities perpetrated in the context of that form of warfare were not the work of the partisans but of the Nazis and of collaborators, especially the Milice, for example the execution of hostages and the infamous massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane. The Resistance fighters, on the other hand, did not target innocent victims but went after German soldiers and particularly odious collaborators, often men whose punishment (including execution) had repeatedly been called for in radio broadcasts by de Gaulle’s Free French in England. As for the women whose heads were shaved, many if not most of them were guilty of more heinous activities than mere “horizontal collaboration,” for example betrayal of members of the Resistance.

There was no épuration sauvage before or during the Liberation, and the allegedly major purge that was to follow the Liberation itself turned out to be a charade. The elite of the French state as well as the private sector had profited handsomely from collaboration and had good reason to fear an advent to power of its enemies in the Resistance. But in the wake of the Liberation, the radicals of the Resistance did not come to power; the elite received little or no punishment for its collaborationist sins; its cherished capitalist social-economic order remained intact (in spite of some reforms); and the elite itself retained most of its power and privileges. For this undeserved blessing, they had to thank the Americans liberators of the once grande Nation, as well as Charles de Gaulle, the general who aspired to make France great again.

De Gaulle was a genuine patriot, but a conservative man, much devoted to France’s established social and economic order. As for the Americans, destined to succeed the Germans as the masters of Europe, or at least of the western half of the continent, they were determined to make “free enterprise” triumph throughout Europe and to bring the continent into Uncle Sam’s political and economic orbit. This meant preventing all but purely cosmetic political and social-economic changes – regardless of the wishes and aspirations of those who had resisted the Nazis and other fascists, and of the people in general. It also meant forgiveness, protection, and support for collaborators with anti-communist credentials, which is exactly what members of the elite in France had been. In fact, the American authorities had nothing against the Vichy regime and initially hoped to see it subsist after the Germans were chased out of France, either under Pétain or some other Vichy personality, such as Weygand or Darlan, if necessary after a purge of its most rabid pro-German elements and the application of a veneer of democratic varnish. After all, the Vichy system had essentially functioned as the political superstructure of France’s capitalist social-economic system, a system Washington purported to save from the clutches of its left-wing enemies in the Resistance. Conversely, after German setbacks on the Eastern Front, and particularly after the Battle of Stalingrad, countless Vichy collaborators saw the writing on the wall and expected salvation in the form of an “American future” for France or, as Lacroix-Riz likes to put it, by switching from a German to an American “tutor.” Following a liberation by the Americans, they could expect their collaborationist sins and even crimes to be forgiven and forgotten, while the revolutionary or even simply progressive aspirations of the Resistance would be doomed to remain a pipe dream.

The leaders in Washington had no use for de Gaulle; like the Vichyites, they considered him a front for the communists, someone who, if he came to power, would pave the way for a “Bolshevik” takeover, as Kerensky had preceded Lenin during the 1917 Russian Revolution. But gradually they came to realize, as Churchill had already done before them, that it would be impossible to foist a personality associated with Vichy on the French people, and that a government led by de Gaulle happened to be the only alternative to one set up by the communist-dominated, radical reform-minded Resistance. They needed the general to neutralize the communists at the end of the hostilities. De Gaulle himself managed to appease Washington by promising to respect the social-economic status quo; and to guarantee his commitment, countless Vichy collaborators who enjoyed the favours of the Americans were integrated into his Free French movement and even given leading positions. De Gaulle thus morphed into “a right-wing leader,” acceptable to the French elite as well as the Americans, poised to succeed the Germans as “protectors” of the interests of that elite. This is the context in which de Gaulle was rushed to Paris at the time of the city’s liberation in late August 1944. The idea was to prevent the communist-dominated Resistance from attempting to establish a provisional government in the capital. The Americans arranged for de Gaulle to strut down the Champs Elysees as the saviour that patriotic France had been awaiting for four long years. And on October 23, 1944, Washington finally made it official and recognized him as leader of the provisional government of liberated France.

Under the auspices of de Gaulle, France replaced the Vichy system with a new, democratic political superstructure, the “Fourth Republic.” (That system was to be replaced by a more authoritarian, American-style presidential system, the “Fifth Republic,” in 1958.) And the working class, which had suffered so much under the Vichy regime, was treated to a package of benefits including higher wages, paid holidays, health and unemployment insurance, generous pension plans, and other social services; in short, a modest kind of “welfare state.” All these measures benefited from widespread support from wage-earning plebeians, but were resented by the patricians of the elite, and especially by the employers, the patronat. But the elite appreciated that these reforms appeased the working class, thus taking the wind out of the revolutionary sails of the communists, even though these found themselves at the height of their prestige because of their leading role within the Resistance and their association with the Soviet Union, then still widely credited in France as the vanquisher of Nazi Germany.

The women and men of the Resistance were officially elevated to hero status, with monuments erected and streets named in their honor. Conversely, collaborators were officially “purged,” and its most infamous representatives were punished; some of them – for example the sinister Pierre Laval – even received the death penalty, and leading economic collaborators, such as the car manufacturer Renault, were nationalized. But with his provisional government full of recycled Vichyites and Uncle Sam looking over his shoulder, de Gaulle ensured that only the most high-profile bigwigs of the Vichy regime were punished or purged. Many if not most of the collaborationist banks and corporations owed their salvation to an American connection, for example Ford’s French subsidiary. Death sentences were frequently commuted, and Nazi occupation officials (such as Klaus Barbie) and collaborators who had committed major crimes were spirited out of the country to a new life in South or even North America by France’s new American overlords, who appreciated the anti-communist zeal of these men. Countless collaborators got off the hook because they managed to produce fake “Resistance certificates” or suddenly developed diseases that caused their trials to be postponed and eventually dropped. Local officials guilty of working with and for the Germans escaped retribution by being transferred to a city where their collaborationist past was unknown, e.g. from Bordeaux to Dijon. And most of those who were found guilty received only a very light punishment, a mere slap on the wrist. All of this was possible because de Gaulle’s government, and its Ministry of Justice in particular, teemed with unrepented former Vichyites; unsurprisingly, they were what Lacroix-Riz calls “a club of passionate opponents of a purge” (un club d’anti-épurateurs passionnés).

While France’s elite had to put up again, as before 1940, with the inconveniences of a democratic parliamentary system, in which plebeians were allowed to provide some input, it managed to remain firmly in control of the post-war French state’s non-elected centres of power, such as the army, the judiciary, and the high ranks of the bureaucracy and the police, centres which it had always monopolized. Vichy generals, for example, mostly known to have been enemies of the Resistance who had conveniently converted to Gaullism, retained control over the armed forces, and countless officials who had been diligent servants of Pétain or the German occupation authorities remained in office and were able to pursue prestigious careers and benefit from promotions and honours. Annie Lacroix-Riz concludes that the supposedly “law-abiding state” of de Gaulle “sabotaged the purge of the [collaborationist] high-ranking officials, thus . . . allowing the survival of a Vichy-hegemony over the French judicial system” – and, one might add, the survival of a Vichy-style system in general.

In 1944-1945, the French elite did not atone for its collaborationist sins, and it was lucky that the revolutionary threat to its capitalist social-economic order, embodied by the Resistance, could be exorcised through the introduction of a system of social security. The bitter wartime class conflict between France’s patricians and plebeians, reflected in the dichotomy of collaboration-resistance, was thus not really terminated, but merely yielded a truce. And that truce was essentially “Gaullist,” since it was concluded under the auspices of a personality who was conservative enough for the taste of the French elite and its new American “tutors,” but whose sterling patriotism endeared him to the Resistance and its constituency.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the disappearance of the communist threat, however, the French elite ceased to see the need to maintain the system of social services it had only adopted reluctantly. The task of dismantling the French “welfare state,” undertaken under the auspices of pro-American presidents such as Sarkozy and now Macron, was facilitated by the de facto adoption by the European Union of neoliberalism, an ideology advocating a return to unfettered laissez-faire capitalism à l’américaine. Thus was restarted the class warfare that had pitted collaboration against the Resistance during World War II. It is in this context that French historiography became increasingly dominated by a revisionism that is critical of the Resistance and indulgent with respect to collaboration and even fascism itself. Annie Lacroix-Riz’s book provides a much-needed antidote to this falsification of history. Let us hope that other historians will follow her example and investigate to what extent fascists and collaborators have been rehabilitated, and the anti-fascist Resistance been denigrated, by revisionist historiography – and by right-wing politicians – in other European countries, for instance Italy and Belgium.

A final remark is in order. Macron seeks to destroy a welfare state that was introduced in the wake of the Liberation to avoid revolutionary changes advocated by the communist-led Resistance. He is playing with fire. Indeed, by attempting to liquidate social services that limit, but do not prevent, capital accumulation and are thus essentially only a nuisance to the established social-economic order, he is removing a major obstacle to revolution, a genuine existential threat to that order. His offensive has triggered massive resistance, that of the “Yellow Vests.” This motley crew is admittedly not led by a communist vanguard like the wartime Resistance, but certainly seems to have a revolutionary potential. The conflict between a president who represents the French elite and its American tutors and is in many ways the heir to Pétain, and, on the other hand, the gilets jaunes who represent the disgruntled, restless plebeian masses yearning for change, heirs to the wartime partisans, may yet cause France to experience something it escaped at the time of the Liberation: a revolution – and a real, rather than a fake, épuration.

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Dr. Jacques Pauwels is a renowned historian and political scientist. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image: Women accused of collaboration in Paris, summer 1944 (Bundesarchiv photo 146-1971-041-10 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Coronavirus is, undoubtedly, one of the greatest epidemic tragedies of our times. Hundreds of dead people and thousands of ill ones are the proof of it. For any person with good faith and interested in the well-being of people, it is a reason of preoccupation and compassion towards the victims. However, this good intention with people does not seem to be observed in some western countries.

The misinformation transmitted by western media is causing in common people a big confusion, making them think that every Chinese is infected by the mortal virus, which is creating a great wave of hate against everyone and everything that belongs to China. Clearly, this epidemic is being used by western potencies as a mean of hybrid war.

As while the virus causes more victims, sinophobic sentiments grow up all around the world. In Asian countries, an anti-Chinese racism is becoming stronger day after day, as we can see in Japan, where the Twitter hashtag “#ChineseDontComeToJapan” is one of the top Internet trends. Also, in Vietnam, Hong Kong – which, remembering, is a part of China – and South Korea, private corporations are sharing anti-China propaganda, saying that Chinese clients are not welcome there.

In Europe – a continent that claims Humans Rights, political correctness and democracy as supreme values – hate against China can also be witnessed, as we see, for example, in France, where journals are spreading lies about China and coronavirus, helping to create the myth of a “yellow threat”. Also, in Britain, The Herald Sun published an issue with the infamous headline “Chinese Virus Pand-monium”, and, in Germany, Der Spiegel published an issue with “Coronavirus. Made in China” as title.

In the American continent, the same anti-China racist sentiments are being fomented by media. In a Canadian school in Toronto, children who visited China were impeded to go to the school by the students’ furious families. In Brazil, a young student who is descendent of a Japanese family was insulted by an elder woman who confused her with a Chinese. During the racist criminal attack, the girl was publicly compared with pork in Rio de Janeiro’s metro.

Clearly, there is another epidemic problem in Chinese horizon that is the use of fake news and misinformation as instruments to foment hate against China, growing a scenario of racist aggressions towards Chinese people, culture, customs, traditions and politics. It is also a case of hybrid war, or, in other terms, a living proof that non-military means can also be used in warfare.

As an example of misinformation being shared irrationally in social networks to attack China, we have messages with pictures and videos that were supposedly took in China, showing some scenarios that seem shocking to non-Chinese people, as the eating of dog, cat, snake and bat meat. There is a myth circulating in the West that the consumption of these animals is absolutely common in China, being their meat easily found as food anywhere, which is, of course, a big and malicious lie.

These exotic animals are also rarely consumed in China. Dog and cat meat eating is a practice in extinction, being currently restricted to a few rural districts. Also, these other animals’ meat sound also exotic to any common Chinese person. The major part of the pictures and videos shared in Internet were not took in China, but in other Asian countries, where it is possible to find bat, snake and dog or cat meat more easily.

It is necessary to pay attention on the fact that spreading these lies is no an accident, but a well-organized project. There are several interests in creating a global atmosphere of hate against China, as well as against every country that fights for a multipolar world. Xenophobe is, at least in this case, not a personal repulsive sentiment, but a weapon – a very dangerous one.

Above all, we can see how the western potencies act maliciously in sense to cause damage to every country that represents a “threat” to US hegemonic plans.

China, becoming the greatest world potency, is a reason of fear to the western axis. Cowardly, the enemies of China react spreading lies and fomenting hate. In contrary, China must act against these attacks with the same energy that is being used against coronavirus just because both are real threats and questions of national security.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Lucas Leiroz, Research Fellow in International Law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

The Sultan of Oman – Qaboos bin Said Al Said – passed away at the age of 79. He was the longest serving monarch in the Gulf. Within 24 hours, an envelope with his will got opened, and the new ruler was announced and sworn in before the governing family council.

His name is Haitham bin Tariq Al Said, and he is a former Minister of Heritage and Culture of the Sultanate of Oman, as well as a cousin of the late Sultan.

I was given this news before it hit the wires, in Tokyo, by my friend, Dr Hamed Alhamami, Director of UNESCO Regional Bureau for the Arab States and Representative to Lebanon and Syria. We know each other well, from my “Lebanon years”, and now he came to Japan for just a few days, in order to forge a closer co-operation with the Japanese government and to seal support for Yemen and Syria.

Dr. Alhamani, an Omani himself, is a good friend of the new ruler.

We were just ready to depart together for Nikko, an ancient World Heritage Site north of Tokyo, when I noticed that he had tears in his eyes. He explained:

“Our ruler died in Oman, after years of terminal illness. He was the most important person in my country. He changed everything there. When I was a child, we could not even afford a pair of shoes. Now, the citizens of Oman are enjoying free education, medical care and each 20-year-old person, either a woman or a man, has the right to receive from the state, 600 square meters of land.”

While visiting Oman, which is, at least on paper, not as wealthy as Saudi Arabia or Bahrain, I did not witness any misery as in the above-mentioned countries. It is a nation tolerant towards the Shi’a, a friend of Syria and Iran, as well as both parts of the bitterly divided Yemen. It is a “unique”, different Gulf state, respected by all Arab countries, having no disputes with its neighbors.

Throughout the bitter war in Syria, a war ignited by the West and its allies in the Gulf, Oman has been maintaining its diplomatic presence in Damascus. It has also been sending regular flights to Yemen, bringing the injured and ill people to Muscat, so they can be treated by the best medical facilities in the country, of course for free. The relationship between Muscat and Teheran is also good, even now, when the White House is igniting military conflict in the region.

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Oman has been maintaining very good relationship, with both Beijing and Tokyo.

Dr. Alhamami came to Japan to strengthen collaboration between UNESCO – Arab Region, and Japan, particularly to support the education sector in both Syria and Yemen.

And so, it happened that during his visit to Japan, Oman’s monarch died, and the new one took the reins of power.

During the train journey, Hamed explained to me, in detail:

“The former Sultan built the nation with a focus on the people, lifting the country out of poverty and modernizing and developing it with educated, healthy people. Education all the way to the highest level is free and students are even paid a monthly stipend of up to US$300.” 

Health care is also free. There are centers that attend to primary care, and for more complex cases, patients are referred to hospitals.”

Dr Hamed Alhamami used to work in the education sector of Oman:

“For education, the former Sultan was particularly hands-on. When I was the director general of curriculum at the Education Ministry, I used to get his hand-written notes with comments on the textbooks…”

Sounds like socialism, Arab-style? Yes, perhaps, except that it is not called like this in the Middle East, even when it actually is.

As the old, beautiful local train was climbing up towards the mountains and the ancient city of Nikko, itself a UNESCO protected world heritage site, Hamed could not stop counting the great achievements of his former monarch:

“And you know, for the poor students, things improved dramatically, too. They could be enrolled in private universities at government expense and would still be eligible for a government stipend.”

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And now? Sultan Qaboos did not have children. And so, Haitham bin Tariq Al Said was handpicked before the old monarch passed away.

Oman and its ruler have been, especially recently, obsessed with culture; local, Arab and foreign. A new lavish opera house in Muscat, and new elegant museums, were clear proof of it. The choice of Haitham bin Tariq was therefore logical.

Culture and harmony, in the turbulent sea of the region. The Middle East is on fire, but Oman appears to be calm, at least for now.

I asked Hamed, what he predicts will happen now, in the near future?

He replied without much hesitation:

“Externally, the former Sultan enforced a non-interference foreign policy. The country maintained good relationships with all other states in the area. He paid very close attention to Palestine, Yemen and Syria, providing countries and peoples with both material support and policy advice. I expect the country to closely follow the path laid out by the former Sultan.”

And something close to the spirit of UNESCO:

“The new Sultan is a former Minister of Culture and Heritage and was instrumental in signing the co-operation with Syria for its cultural restoration work.”

Oman, perhaps the most stable country in the Gulf, just lost its esteemed ruler who governed for half a century. But it gained another enlightened monarch. It appears that admirable continuity has been quietly ensured.

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Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Five of his latest books are “China Belt and Road Initiative: Connecting Countries, Saving Millions of Lives”, “China and Ecological Cavillation”with John B. Cobb, Jr., Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter. His Patreon. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

After months of the DNC’s daily water boarding of the American public with their manufactured jurisprudence know as The Impeachment, these same political wizards of electioneering have in one day, Monday, galvanized the person they most detest. This week’s political disaster in Iowa rocketed Bernie Sanders into pronounced Trumpian front runner status and thus exposed the DNC – yet again- for what it really is:A cabal of status quo elitists no different than the RNC puppets they purport to oppose.

Just four years ago the undeniable documentary revelations of the rigging of the 2016 primaries by the DNC to support their chosen arch-capitalist, Hillary Clinton, was exposed in a tidal wave of factual information released by Wiki Leaks. This proved that the DNC- Wasserman-Shultz, Brazile, Podesta, etc., al, were controlling, right down to the debate questions, everything about the campaign coverage and DNC support. Everything had been scripted to allow for their anointed “Queen of Corruption” to be stuffed up the ass of the American voter without challenge. To do so, they had, then, to defeat Bernie, and this they did.

This DNC corruption was so noxious that even rabid Clinton disciple Seth Rich decided to pull a too convenient Vince Foster before his own conscience exploded. Beyond these ultimately self-destructive Wiki Leaks revelations, anyone also paying attention to the thrown 2016 primary election in California would have noticed that the plot to steal the nation’s biggest delegate count was a DNC top-to-bottom hit job. This election fraud forever took the wind out of the sails of the Sanders campaign within a few weeks of the convention. So, this choice never made it to the voters.

Again? 

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To review in brief: This past Monday, Feb 3, 2020, just mere hours after the launch of the 2020 version of a national US election, and with forty-nine state primaries to go, the potential voter was treated to an inaugural prime-time example that strongly indicated that DNC corruption continues unabated. Although reported in far better detail by others, the allegations of Monday night turned the heads of many an already disgusted voter.

In doing so, the DNC also put a fork in each and every one of the other candidates by implicitly lumping them in as co-defendants of these treasonous allegations.

Ten hours later, and in the days to follow, the other half of voting America- no matter how much media counter spin- knew that there was only one candidate that was not involved in the mess in Iowa, and that is Sanders.

A new app created quickly by-you just can’t make this stuff up– a shadowy company called “Shadow, Inc.”was rushed into design specially to take the place of the traditional phone-in results method as done for generations. Depending on point of view this App went conspicuously or suspiciously wrong resulting in these past days of DNC damage control.

The App was designed and implemented by Shadow with direct involvement by state party officials and the DNC and their app was altering results as they were entered. The discovery of the election fraud began when Black Hawk County supervisor Chris Schwartz shared the election results in his county on Facebook as the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) tallies were slowly tabulated for each of the caucuses.

Sanders’ supporters quickly highlighted the fact that the IDP’s reported numbers for Black Hawk County were different from those reported by Schwartz, with votes taken from Sanders and given to minor fringe candidates Deval Patrick and Tom Steyer. Then, the IDP suddenly announced that it would be making “a minor correction to the last batch of results.” These changes includedBlack Hawk County which gave Sanders back some votes however the totals were still different.

Pause for concern continued to rise when interviews with caucus officials revealed that the app had, days before, already been widely reported as having problems. Reportedly, precinct captains from across Iowa realized days before the caucuses that the app was not working properly. Complaints were provided to county party leadership. Phone in as a back-up option was reason not to worry at the time.

Only about one-fourth of the nearly 1700 precinct chairs were able to successfully download the app, however. All this advanced billing of the pending disaster fell on deaf ears at the State party and DNC level, setting the whole mess up for additional unnecessary embarrassment when the phone bank back-up- normally in the past used for tabulations without incident- was so poorly staffed and trained that precinct captains who tried to call in their results were thwarted for hours if not disconnected after waiting forever on the line.

As reported by CNN and The New York Post as of Thursday the DNC, not the IDP, began “running the show” in managing damage control of the Iowa caucus scandal. This scandal will certainly be of great importance in all the primaries to come since in the mind of the corruption weary voter this whole saga at the very least smells real bad. But to many what this all shows is that once again this 2020 Democratic presidential primary is actively being rigged by the same committee which orchestrated the last Democratic presidential primary scandal; against the same candidate: Bernie Sanders.

On Thursday Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez- the same Tom Perez who was caught the week before underhandedly approving a very tidy and unapproved severance package for himself– called on the Iowa Democratic Party to “immediately begin a re-canvass” of the state. Perez issued his statement knowing that Sanders was about to hold a press conference in New Hampshire, where he is campaigning for the February 11 primary, in order to announce actual victory subsequently to the final results. Conspicuously, Sanders did not provide any criticism of the Iowa Democratic Party for delaying the report of the results for many days.

It was quickly revealed that the app’s creators, Shadow, is linked to the DNC, Hillary Clinton, Barrack Obama and other vociferously anti-Sanders disciples by no more than two degrees of separation. Buttigieg’s campaign paid Shadow $42,500 for what they termed “software rights and subscriptions”but claimed no role in the app used by the Iowa Democratic Party. This admission was naturally perceived as seed money provided for the crime. Buttigieg nailed himself further to the cross of democratic heresy with his too-eager squeal of victory on Monday night. Considering the reality of the true caucus totals this was seen as an admission of guilt.

With all but one of nearly 1,800 precincts tallied, Sanders leads Buttigieg by 43,671 to 37,557 votes, with Senator Elizabeth Warren in third place with 32,553. Sanders had 24.8 per cent of the vote compared to 21.3 per cent for Buttigieg. Biden and Klobuchar are now justly relegated to the outhouse of history.

Sanders- by 3.5% in a field of three- is a tidy victory for Sanders.

In the way of the Iowa caucuses, Sanders had a smaller lead in the second round, after those backing “unviable candidates” (those with less than 15 per cent support) were allowed to switch their votes. Buttigieg’s lead in “state delegate equivalents” arises from the overrepresentation of rural areas, where he ran stronger in the apportioning of delegates.

However, Sanders overcame Buttigieg’s narrow lead in delegates thanks to votes in some satellite caucuses, which were held outside normal hours or outside the state to accommodate voters unable to attend the regular caucuses that began at 7 p.m. on Monday. As example, in two results reported on Thursday, one satellite caucus for night-shift workers at a food processing plant in Ottumwa, and the other for students and workers at Drake University in Des Moines, Sanders collected nine “state delegate equivalents” compared to zero for Buttigieg.

The figures showed the gap between Buttigieg and Sanders, in terms of “state delegate equivalents,” narrowing to near nonexistence. That did not stop the bulk of the corporate ABB media from continuing to present Buttigieg as the “surprise” victor in Iowa and Sanders as the second-place finisher, even claiming that Sanders’ comfortable lead in the polls ahead of the New Hampshire primary was in danger.

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With the app and its creators, its users and its benefactors all seemingly caught red-handed, and without a Russian in sight, this debacle of election fraud is all too obvious and undeniable to many a budding 2020 voter who remains in hope of a personal choice in the matter.  Only one viable candidate was not implicitly caught in this web of DNC self-destruction.

The DNC, once again proving ignorant of the First Rule of Holes and the applied sage wisdom of  Lincoln this past week has shown that Perez & Co. believe they can indeed “fool all the people all the time.” The DNC ‘s furious attempts to paddle through this shit storm has instead revealed to many a democratic party voter that the party asking for their vote is now so full of it that their eyes, as of Monday night,  have turned brown.

Buttigieg too anxiously tied himself to these allegations by declaring himself, in Juan Guaido-like fashion, to be the victor too early. This did not help his cause either since he did so at the height of the debacle when the results were not nearly official. About thirty-three seconds later it was revealed that Buttigieg himself had one way or the other tossed in forty-two large with Shadow, Inc. Of course, the plucky little mayor excused the matter away, but once again, in the mind of the voter, this was enough to throw feathers at the tar firmly stuck to Buttigieg’s front running face.

Like 2016, the DNC’s ongoing ABB plot (Anybody But Bernie) is more than election-rigging of the highest order. This coup to deny the American voter a choice in this election is pure democratic treason. As considered in a previous article, the DNC is no longer an opposition party. It is a mouthpiece for ongoing failure.

Political Kharma often provides the fuel for farce, however, so Monday night in Iowa amusingly blew-up in the faces of the whole DNC leadership. As hour by hour the allegations of- and connections to- DNC meddling poured in, the one candidate who was not tainted by this was Bernie. With approx half the country’s voters already enraptured by the Marmalade Messiah’s siren’s song and gleefully predisposed to their one upcoming POTUS vote, the other half is waking up to many truths about their democratic Turd Sandwich options that the DNC is shoveling repeatedly in their direction.

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After Monday and on to the convention, the new primary election concerns here in Iowa will firmly displace all other democrat’s concerns nationally: That the DNC and all their offerings do not have the voter’s interests at heart. While this revelation is too long overdue, it will carry on in the minds of the voter for months, primary upon primary.

In that time, only one candidate will be the singular outsider. Thanks to Monday, Sanders is no longer just a perceived Democrat: He is now an independent.

Immediately that night and in these few days following, Sanders and his socialist rhetoric have been thus galvanized. His campaign, by standing out from the DNC pack, has become the one political being that the DNC has proved to the voter time and again that it is not: an opposition.

At this point, already no other candidate can or will be able to feature himself as the true opposition candidate. All save Sanders punted that forever on Monday night. As such, the persona known as “Bernie,” has at the same time moved far beyond purported campaign leadership as the necessary “socialist.” The DNC has made him more than that. Bernie Sanders is now the biggest threat the DNC has faced since LBJ three generations ago… a populist!

Coincidently, this is just what- in the minds of the other half of US voters-America now needs.

As is reflected in dozens of worldwide political examples, America too is rightfully hungry, if not desperate, for true opposition leadership. Sanders is now the perceived outsider, the dark horse, the pale rider and the one hope for change. Stir in a healthy dose of his socialist programs mantra with Monday’s inquisition and Sanders will post-Iowa see a meteoric rise in the polls. His campaign is now the political anathema that scares the American political status quo on both sides of the political aisle right down to their soulless capitalist greedy little hearts. As such, Bernie’s shtick is Catnip to the millions of outraged disenfranchised voters who just won’t stomach a vote for the RNC’s Giant Douche; instead preferring to stay at home.

These dark minions and the voters at large should too well remember the meteoric and completely unpredictable rise to power of the last American populist. One, who his party also tried desperately to minimize and vilify using all its resources. One who offered himself, too, as an outsider that therefore could be trusted to provide opposition to the status quo of both corrupt parties. A man who said he would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with hispeople while marching on to a victory for truth, justice and the American way.

Long term election memory is not required in this quiz since the very last populist to rise to power against his own party and seize the nomination was…..Donald J. Trump.

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Exactly four years ago, Trump was a laughing stock of all media that far preferred the status quo candidates of Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio and their ilk of other RNC monsters. But this was not to be. In the face of these media winds, Trump’s “populism” although more akin to Goebbels than Roosevelt or Johnson, shifted in Trump’s favor as soon as the RNC powers realized that Trump’s populism would overpower their political machine and its propaganda at the convention. One look at a Fox News clip from then and present shows how completely these winds have shifted in just those four years. If not those few months.

A populist, applied to the Sanders campaign, is offered as far more than a socialist. Although America has good reason to gravitate to socialism by modern-day necessity, Americans are bred from birth to inherently detest such Russian folly. However, the mantle of the populist covers much more because the populist offers more: he/she/it offers representation. Honest representation. Opposition? Here, as history has proven- fools always rush in.

The promise of the populist: that they are indeed personally looking out for each and every voter while bucking the system in their favor, and their promise to do so when elected, is an allure that Sanders has been suddenly awarded by default and the DNC. Sanders talks in the language of the austerity ridden, oligarch trodden American. There are vast sums of statistics to bolster this, and Sanders has already made far greater detailed use of these than his counterparts to highlight his prima face socialist allegations. With the populist able to seize and hold the political moral high ground over the other discredited candidates, the voter hence chooses the populist, not because of his socialist offerings, but because of a pure desire for self-preservation via opposition. And the voter’s self-derived belief in one man.

Now that the DNC has shown its true colors-red-Sanders has become that true blue populist. To take on the mantle of the populist the candidate must be perceived as utterly different, anti-establishment and the new vanguard of real upcoming change. This was the case with Trump in 2016. And Obama 2008.  On Monday night, the DNC gave this same populist perception and more to one and only one democratic candidate, Bernie Sanders.

Will Sanders have the guts to use this new arsenal of political cannon fodder? One word might best be used to begin that examination: California.

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Of course, the campaign perception that is “Bernie Sanders” as he now appears in the quadrennial democratic performance of democracy meekly titled, “2020,” belies the requested faith of the voter. Under equal examination, Sanders is a political shill of no different proportions than “Dirty Joe” Biden, “Me, Cherokee” Warren,“Mighty Mouse” Buttigieg or the Marmalade Messiah himself. But, all political miscreants know that the voter has long ago been proven to be politically dull as a butter knife and as mentally malleable as play-dough, so it is only the image, not the man himself, that they offer to the lemming-like voters.

With this recently enhanced image Sanders now effectively takes a clear path to the DNC convention finish line on the outside rail while the remainder of the pack bump and grind to reestablish – if not separate- themselves from the pack of associated traitors who were too close to this likely election-rigging to wash off the mud.

Sanders is, however, the candidate free to offer his outsider’s populist and increasingly socialist platform to the public without the heavy baggage of his opponents. His brand of socialism will develop all the more flavor for it. The outraged voter has not forgotten the 2016 DNC treason: a suddenly revealed collective treason that can easily be blamed for Trump suddenly prevailing over the thus acknowledged criminal H.R. Clinton as POTUS in the final few weeks. After Monday, these same voters again have no doubt as to the worth of their vote applied to any democratic candidate other than Sanders.

In a sign of the momentum to come to the Sanders campaign announced that it had raised $25 million from more than 648,000 donors in January, the best fundraising month of the campaign, with an average donation of $18, most of it on-line. These included 219,000 first-time donors. A campaign statement declared, “Working-class Americans giving $18 at a time are putting our campaign in a strong position to compete in states all over the map.” Yeah, whatever… but these are Howard Dean type numbers and a strong sign of the times applied to from now until July. If Sanders doesn’t accidentally “pull a Dean” before the convention, its going to be one hot time in Milwaukee.

If Bernie does grow a pair and effectively rides the tidal wave of support that the DNC has unwittingly provided him, he will enter the July 13-16, 2020 convention in Wisconsin as the clear established front runner…with an established platform. He can easily remain the outsider, the independent and the perceived opposition candidate even as the DNC has shifted gears to give Bloomberg his money’s worth; allowing him to buy his way onto the debate stage.

The already agonized voter watched by the minute for four days as their candidates fell on the sword now known as Iowa. Their implied suicide left Sanders to gallop off towards New Hampshire where the point spread for this Tuesday is rising quickly and predictably in his favor.

Sanders and his American socialism, however, will not get the wholesale trade winds of the corporately controlled media to shift behind him as Trump managed to do. With the conventional media dying a quick death in similar DNC fashion as being part of the systemic problems facing the voter, and with Sanders running a Howard Dean style quest for support and grassroots contributions, Sanders, regardless of media bias, is now set up to make the convention a real must-see event, a disaster for the DNC established order and –even better- provide the spectacle of a real slugfest of duplicitous political power to the American voter.

Will the DNC have the brass to steal the nomination from the frontrunner on national television?

Will Bernie show his true colors…again?

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But lest the voter delude themselves with this supposed opportunity for populist change, the voter must remain tempered.

For when thus ultimately prevailing in November Sanders will be assaulted, bludgeoned, horse-whipped and thrashed into a bloody semi-coherent political pulp by the full weight of the RNC– and the DNC– and the strong arm thugs of the US media, in a manner that will make the Nixon v. McGovern debacle look like a simple pocket frisk.

Upon the ashes of this carnage, the American voter will understand the singular most primal American political truism, one that guaranteed beforehand Sanders’ presidential demise. The one uniquely American endemic figment of the imagination that, in 2020, will again reign supreme in the minds of the voters when they enter the private secrecy of the polling booth.

In America, to the voter, forever, “S” will always equal “C.”

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Brett Redmayne-Titley has published over 180 in-depth articles over the past ten years for news agencies worldwide. Many have been translated and republished. On-scene reporting from important current events has led to his many multi-part exposes on such topics as the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, NATO summit, Keystone XL Pipeline, Porter Ranch Methane blow-out, Hizbullah in Lebanon, Erdogan’s Turkey and many more. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Prior articles can be viewed at his archive: www.watchingromeburn.uk. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

2020 HB 4615

• Introduced and referred to House Judiciary Committee on January 30, 2020

ICNL analysis:

Would heighten the penalties for protests near oil and gas pipelines and other infrastructure. Under the bill, knowingly trespassing on property containing a critical infrastructure facility is punishable by a year in jail and a $500 fine. Criminal trespass on critical infrastructure property with intent to “vandalize, deface, tamper with equipment, or impede or inhibit operations” of the facility is a felony punishable by up to three years in prison and a $1,000 fine. Actually vandalizing, defacing, or tampering with the facility–regardless of actual damage–is a felony punishable by 5 years in prison and a $2,000 fine. An individual convicted of any of the offenses, and any entity that “compensates, provides consideration to or remunerates” a person for committing the offenses, is also civilly liable for any damage sustained. An organization or person found to have “conspired” to commit any of the offenses–regardless of whether they were committed–is subject to a criminal fine. The bill newly defines “critical infrastructure facility” under West Virginia law to include a range of oil, gas, electric, water, telecommunications, and railroad facilities that are fenced off or posted with signs indicating that entry is prohibited.

Industry Lobbying

The state of West Virginia does not require lobbyists or companies to disclose positions taken on specific legislation.

A list of registered lobbyists [PDF download] as of January 30, 2020 includes several lobbyists for companies and groups that have supported similar bills in other states, including the following companies.

• American Petroleum Institute (API)
• American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM)
• Dominion Energy
• Dow Chemical
• Enbridge
• ExxonMobil
• Marathon Petroleum
• TransCanada

This list is not confirmation of lobbying for HB 4615.

Campaign Finance Data

Eight of the nine co-sponsors of HB 4615 have received a collective $48,050 in campaign contributions from oil, gas, electric utility and railroad interests.

See Full Report: State Bills to Criminalize Peaceful Protest of Oil & Gas “Critical Infrastructure”

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On Wednesday, a neo-fascist party helped form a regional government in Germany for the first time since the end of Nazi rule.

Despite the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) receiving just five percent of the vote in the regional election in the state of Thuringia, Thomas Kemmerich was officially appointed to the position of Thuringia’s minister president, the equivalent of a governor in the United States.

This was made possible by an alliance between the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the neo-fascist Alternative for Germany (AfD), who joined forces to prevent the Left Party from forming a government, despite the fact that the Left Party received the highest vote in the election.

The announcement marked the first time since the end of the Nazi Third Reich that an establishment party had worked with the fascists to form a government. It represents a shattering of the pledges by the major parties not to cooperate with the neo-fascists of the AfD.

This is a historic turning point. It makes clear that the ruling class is once again relying on fascist forces to implement its policies of militarism, dictatorship and austerity.

All the attempts of leading politicians to distance themselves from the events in Thuringia, and the subsequent resignation of the new state premier, cannot hide a fundamental reality: 75 years after the end of Nazi rule in Germany, the maxim of the German bourgeoisie is no longer “Never again,” but “Onward to new wars and crimes.”

This reality was made clear in an interview that Bundestag (federal parliament) President Wolfgang Schäuble conducted last weekend with the newspapers of the Funke media group and the French newspaper Ouest-France.

This interview, in which Schäuble advocated German rearmament and participation in foreign wars, appeared just one week after German officials held public commemorations of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp.

Asked whether Germany must again risk soldiers’ lives in war, Schäuble replied,

“We cannot leave everything to the French and Americans. The lessons of Auschwitz cannot be an argument for not becoming involved in the long term.”

The immediate issue was the preparation of combat operations in Africa and the Middle East.

“We cannot duck away. If Europe is to play a stronger role, we must do our part,” Schäuble said.

He raised the possibility of German participation in the civil war in Mali as well as “action in Libya with German soldiers.” The recent Libya conference in Berlin, in which the European powers plotted a new scramble for Africa, had been “a great success for the chancellor,” he said, and it was “undisputed that we must continue to get involved there and, in case of doubt, also take on unpleasant tasks.”

No one should have any illusions about the far-reaching significance of such statements: 75 years after the fall of the Third Reich, the German ruling class is again willing to pursue its geostrategic and economic interests through war. When asked whether Germany was “too weak” for interventions abroad, Schäuble replied, “We cannot continuously pass on the moral costs to others.”

Schäuble had previously expressed similar sentiments in his foreign policy keynote speech on “Germany’s role in the globalized world” last October. In that speech he declared that “staying out is not an option, at least not a viable foreign policy strategy.”

“We Europeans must do more for our own security—and that also means for the security of the world around us,” he said. This included “the readiness to use military force.” This “also has a moral price,” he said, adding, “And carrying this burden is a great challenge, especially for the Germans.”

The last time Germany carried the “burden” of aggressive great power politics and enforced its interests with military might the most terrible crimes in the history of mankind followed. In the Second World War, unleashed by Nazi Germany, the “moral price” was six million murdered Jews, 27 million victims of the war of extermination against the Soviet Union and several tens of millions more dead throughout Europe and in Germany.

Schäuble’s barely concealed calls for new wars and imperialist crimes express the mood of the entire ruling class. In a recent interview with the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper, Herfried Münkler, now emeritus professor at Humboldt University and a foreign policy adviser to the German government, rejoiced, saying, “I am delighted when, for example, the German chancellor talks about ‘strategic autonomy’ or Ms. von der Leyen [the former defence minister and current president of the European Commission] talks about the ‘language of power.’”

The professor added, in his cynical and arrogant manner, “When I started long ago to emphasize power as a factor that will play a role in the future, it was not easy to make this idea stick. It was said, how terrible and cruel. We have our values after all. Those candy suckers thought that everything would proceed by itself. Supported by a latent theological faith in God’s work in the form of humanitarian values in the world, it was somehow forgotten that these are also questions of power.”

Münkler has repeatedly made clear in the past what he means by “questions of power” and “candy sucking.” In countless interviews he has called for the acquisition and deployment of combat drones and lamented the “post-heroic society” whose population is no longer prepared to pay the price for the imperialist appetites of the ruling class. In a conversation with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Münkler went so far as to describe the poison gas used in World War I as a “humane” weapon.

Then there is the case of Münkler’s colleague, the right-wing extremist Professor Jörg Baberowski (who declared, “Hitler was not vicious”), who is publicly defended by the German government and who recently physically attacked a left-wing student at his university.

During a panel discussion at the German Historical Museum in 2014, Baberowski declared, “And if you are not prepared to take hostages, burn villages and hang people and spread fear and terror, as the terrorists do, if you are not prepared to do so, you will not win such an argument, then you should leave it alone.”

That such criminal language can be used by a German academic who enjoys the support of dominant sections of the state is a testament to the fact that German rearmament and preparations for new wars are accompanied by the legitimization of the criminal and barbarous violence for which the Nazis were notorious.

The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party) and its youth and student organization, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), will fight to mobilize the growing opposition among workers and youth to the danger of militarism and fascism on the basis of an international socialist program. This time, the reckoning with Nazism must occur before the German ruling class has the opportunity to instigate new crimes and catastrophies.

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US Vice President Mike Pence has been slammed by experts for peddling the “crazy conspiracy theory” that Iranian General Qassem Soleimani was behind the 9/11 attacks.

In a Twitter thread attempting to justify the assassination of Iranian Commander Qassem Soleimani, Pence tweeted that military official had “assisted in the clandestine travel of 10 of the 12 terrorists who carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.”

Assisted in the clandestine travel to Afghanistan of 10 of the 12 terrorists who carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

— Mike Pence (@Mike_Pence) January 3, 2020

However Twitter users were quick to point out that the 9/11 Commission concluded that there was no evidence of Iranian involvement or prior knowledge of the attack, with no mention of Soleimani in the 600 page official report.

CNN’s security analyst Peter Bergen said that “pretty much everything in that tweet is not correct”, and called it a “crazy conspiracy theory”.

MSNBC’s “First Look” host Ayman Mohyeldin said: “It is a low point in American politics when you’re exploiting 9/11 to achieve a policy objective that is totally manipulated and let’s be clear, Mike Pence’s tweet is factually wrong.”

He pointed out that the hijackers travelled through Iran to exploit their policy of not stamping the passports of Saudi nationals.

He continued: “To come around now and to say Iran was somehow complicit in 9/11 is the same as saying the United Arab Emirates government or the Saudi Arabian government were also complicit in 9/11, of which this administration has categorically rejected.”

He went on to describe Pence’s claims as a “deliberate and misleading lie.”

The September 11 attacks, which destroyed the World Trade Centre in New York and saw a plane flown into the US Defence headquarters the Pentagon in 2001, were orchestrated by terror group Al-Qaeda and carried about by 19 hijackers, 15 of which were Saudi nationals.

Tensions in the region have continued to rise after US President Donald Trump claimed he has 52 Iranian sites of cultural heritage targeted and has threatened to destroy them if Iran dares to retaliate, a tactic which is considered a war crime.

Yesterday, Iraq complained to the United Nations against the attack which took place on its soil and voted to kick US troops out of the country. Trump threatened sanctions if such action is taken.

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Menace on the Menu in Post-EU Britain

By Colin Todhunter, February 10, 2020

PM Boris Johnson is planning to do a trade deal with the US that could see the gutting of food and environment standards. However, Johnson recently suggested that the UK will be “governed by science, not mumbo-jumbo” on food imports. He has called for an end to “hysterical” fears about US food coming to the UK as part of a post-Brexit trade deal.

Gas Wars in the Mediterranean

By Mike Whitney, February 10, 2020

The unexpected alliance between Turkey and Libya is a geopolitical earthquake that changes the balance of power in the eastern Mediterranean and across the Middle East. Turkey’s audacious move has enraged its rivals in the region and cleared the way for a dramatic escalation in the 9 year-long Libyan civil war. It has also forced leaders in Europe and Washington to decide how they will counter Turkey’s plan to defend the U.N-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA), and to extend its maritime borders from Europe to Africa basically creating “a water corridor through the eastern Mediterranean linking the coasts of Turkey and Libya.” 

The United States: A “Destroyer Of Nations”

By Daniel Kovalik, February 09, 2020

In the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 – an invasion which many Iraqis believe left their country in the worst condition it has been since the Mongol invasion of 1258 — there was much discussion in the media about the Bush Administration’s goal for “nation-building” in that country.   Of course, if there ever were such a goal, it was quickly abandoned, and one hardly ever hears the term “nation-building” discussed as a U.S. foreign policy objective anymore.

China – Western China Bashing – vs. Western Biowarfare?

By Peter Koenig, February 09, 2020

On 29 January WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that there was no reason to declare the outbreak of the coronavirus 2019-nCoV in China a pandemic risk. On 30 January, he declared the virus an international emergency, but made clear that there was no reason for countries to issue travel-advisories against travelling to China. Let me speculate – the ‘international emergency’ was declared at the request of Washington, and the comment against the travel-advisory was an addition by Dr. Tedros himself, as he realized that there was indeed no reason for panic, that China is doing wonders in stemming the virus from spreading and in detecting the virus early on.

By What Right Does Canada and Its Gendarmerie Invade Wet’suwet’en Territory?

By Kim Petersen, February 09, 2020

In the nineteenth century, Gilbert Sproat, a colonial official, wrote an account of his time among the Nuu Chah Nulth people on the west coast of Vancouver Island. He noted that the original inhabitants have “known every inch of the west coast for thousands of years.”¹

Despite this acknowledgment of long-term habitation, the mindset of settler-colonialists toward the Original Peoples was condescending.

Mexico’s President AMLO Shows How It’s Done

By Ellen Brown, February 09, 2020

While U.S. advocates and local politicians struggle to get their first public banks chartered, Mexico’s new president has begun construction on 2,700 branches of a government-owned bank to be completed in 2021, when it will be the largest bank in the country. At a press conference on Jan. 6, he said the neoliberal model had failed; private banks were not serving the poor and people outside the cities, so the government had to step in.

Why Nancy Pelosi is “A National Disgrace”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, February 07, 2020

Nancy Pelosi tears up Trump’s State of the Union Address.

“I thought it was a terrible thing,” said Trump. “It’s illegal what she did. She broke the law.”

On one thing I agree with Donald Trump:

Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi is a “National Disgrace”.

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The Trump regime never tires of trumpeting the myth of American ‘energy independence’. The foreign policy establishment in Washington sees America’s emergence as the worlds largest oil exporter as giving a huge boost to the achievement of U.S. geo-political goals. In his testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee Kenneth Medlock, Senior Director of the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University’s James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy, stated:

“Nevertheless, the growth in US oil production is transforming the status quo and shifting the geopolitical balance. This highlights the importance of the so-called ‘shale revolution’ in achieving US geopolitical and foreign policy aims.”

In recent years we have seen how the U.S. has weaponized its huge production of oil and gas to attack its geo-political rivals.

President Trump’s abandonment of the Iran nuclear deal and reimposition of sanctions on Tehran was based on the premise that the drop in Iranian oil exports would be made up for by U.S. shale oil production. Thus keeping down any inflationary pressures on the global oil market.

Trump’s strategy may have failed to totally stop Iranian oil exports, but the sanctions are inflicting significant economic damage and great suffering on the people, triggering mass protests in Tehran and other cities.

Trump has also used America’s record gas production as a carrot and stick with which to try and undermine Russian exports to Europe. At the recent Davos summit Trump dangled the carrot of cheap American gas to his European allies:

“With an abundance of American natural gas now available, our European allies no longer have to be vulnerable to unfriendly energy suppliers either. We urge our friends in Europe to use America’s vast supply and achieve true energy security. With U.S. companies and researchers leading the way, we are on the threshold of virtually unlimited reserves of energy, including from traditional fuels, LNG [liquefied natural gas], clean coal, next-generation nuclear power, and gas hydrate technologies.”

Trump has also used the stick to force Europe away from Russian gas supplies. Under the terms of the misnamed ‘Protecting Europe’s Energy Security Act of 2019, a sanctions law ironically written by oil and gas rich Texas Senator Ted Cruz,’ the U.S. has threatened EU countries with sanctions if they participate in helping with the construction of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic sea.

Ironically, the pipeline has almost been completed and the American sanctions are a case of too little too late.

We could go and look at other cases such as Venezuela where the U.S. has used its position as the world’s top oil producer to try and destroy that nation’s economy.

The record production of oil and gas has fuelled the hubris that underpins the manoeuvres of the American empire as it seeks to undermine and/or destroy its geo-political rivals.

This belief that the Shale Revolution will continue for decades into the future giving the American empire even greater power is based on a fundamentally flawed set of assumptions.

Shale Revolution based on fantasy thinking regarding geology

The prospect of the United States becoming a net exporter of oil or ‘energy independent’ has fuelled fantasy thinking amongst the geo-political strategists of the American empire. Both presidents Obama and Trump have enthusiastically trumpeted this belief.

The myth of American energy independence, thus ending its reliance on oil from the volatile Middle East, is based on Alice in Wonderland forecasts for shale oil and gas production from the highly influential U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA).

The EIA 2020 forecast is for shale oil production to peak in 2022 at 14 million barrels per day and continue at that level until 2050. The vast majority of this oil production is expected to come from the shale oil pays in just 3 states: Texas, New Mexico and North Dakota. The bulk of this oil production is expected to come from the world’s largest oil field in the Permian basin that runs across Texas and New Mexico.

Let us put to one side the EIA’s failure to factor in the impacts of recessions, environmental disasters and its highly unrealistic assumption that energy consumption in America will only grow by 0.3% a year until 2050.

A growing body of evidence suggests that the EIA is basing its forecasts on very unrealistic assumptions regarding the geology of American shale plays.

The highly respected Desmog news has warned since 2018 that forecasts for shale oil production were highly unrealistic, makes the humorous observation that ‘Rocks don’t care if CEOs promise oil’ and that the EIA, ‘can’t make oil appear where there isn’t any.’

More and more evidence is emerging that the shale oil plays maybe nearing peak production which will be followed by decline.

Last November IHS Markit, which has 5,000 analysts providing economic data to over 50,000 customers worldwide, produced a report that predicted that U.S. shale oil production is headed for a ‘Major Slowdown’.

According to Raoul LeBlanc, vice president for North American uncoventionals, IHS Markit, shale oil production will peak by 2020 and that by 2021 U.S. oil production growth will have halted:

“Going from nearly 2 million barrels per day annual growth in 2018, an all-time global record, to essentially no growth by 2021 makes it pretty clear that this is a new era of moderation for shale producers. This is a dramatic shift after several years where annual growth of more than one million barrels per day was the norm.”

The problem oil companies face is that the decline rate of shale oil wells are frighteningly rapid at a rate of 70% in the first year and 30% in the second year of operation. This means they have to keep pumping and drilling new wells like mad to just to keep up production levels.

The Journal of Petroleum Technology has pointed that this poses major problems for the U.S. shale industry:

“These high late-stage decline rates represent a clear challenge for current reserves and ultimate recovery estimates from wells that were expected to produce economically for 30 or more years.’’

This is in sharp contrast to conventional oil wells which have an average decline rate of 6.7% and have much longer lives. Most of the world’s giant oil fields were discovered in the first half of the 20^th century yet are still producing over 50% of global oil supply.

The IHS Markit report has found that the base decline rates of more than 150,00 producing oil wells in the Permian basin rose from 34% in 2018 to 40% in 2019.

According to Raoul LeBlanc:

“Base decline is the volume that oil and gas producers need to add from new wells just to stay where they are—it is the speed of the treadmill. Because of the large increases of recent years, the base decline production rate for the Permian Basin has increased dramatically, and we expect those declines to continue to accelerate. As a result, it is going to be challenging, especially for some companies with cash constraints, just to keep production flat.”

Further cold water on the EIA’s super optimistic forecasts for American shale oil production comes from Mark Papa, a closely followed pioneer of the shale industry and CEO of independent oil and gas company Centennial Resource Development.

At a gathering of oil industry executives in 2018 Papa warned that there was a growing shortage of tier 1 acreage i.e. oil wells with the highly productive sweet spots. Papa stated that the U.S. shale industry faces a major challenge posed by the geology of shale plays:

“There are good geological spots in shale plays and weaker geological spots, and a lot of the good geological spots have already been drilled.

“My theory is that you’ve got basically resource exhaustion that is beginning to take place. It’s no secret that you’ve only got three shale oil plays in the U.S. of any consequence. The rest of them don’t amount to a hill of beans.”

Papa further warned that the American shale industry will face major changes in the 2020s as most oil plays face rapid depletion rates and that OPEC oil will become more important as the decade progresses. He believes that the second and third biggest oil plays: the Eagle Ford in Texas and Baaken in North Dakota have already peaked forcing drillers to move to far less productive acreage.

Permian Basin which contains the highest producing plays in America is flat lining

Of greater concern are the reports warning that the Permian basin, the jewel in the crown of America’s fracking industry, is approaching peak production.

In 2018 Paul Kibsgaard CEO of Schlumberger, one of the oil industry’s largest service provider, warned, “We are already starting to see a similar reduction in unit well productivity to that already seen in the Eagle Ford, suggesting that the Permian growth potential could be lower than earlier expected.”

This is supported by Javier Blas, chief energy correspondent for Bloomberg News who recently tweeted that oil production in both the Permian and Baaken are slowing down:

David Hughes, a scientist who worked for 32 years with the Canadian Geological Survey, has carried out an exhaustive analysis of the EIA claims for U.S. shale production up to 2050. His 177 page report SHALE REALITY CHECK 2019 Drilling into the U.S. Government’s Optimistic Forecasts for Shale Gas & Tight Oil Production Through 2050 concludes that EIA forecasts through 2050 are,’extremely optimistic for the most part, and are therefore highly unlikely to be realized.’

In the chapter of his report on the Permian basin Hughes notes that:

“… in Reeves County, which was the top producing county in the Permian Basin as of April 2019, well productivity appears to have flat-lined in 2018. Reeves County has seen the most horizontal wells drilled since 2011 of any county, and the flat-lining of productivity gains suggests sweet spots there may be reaching their limits and over-drilling may be taking its toll. … Over-drilling will not increase ultimate recovery, although it may allow resources to be recovered sooner.’’

Hughes examines the top 3 plays in the Permian basin (Spraberry, Wolfcamp and Bone Spring) in forensic detail. His analysis of the Spraberry play which is the highest producing play in the Permian basin reveals how the EIA forecast for shale oil production up-to 2050 is totally unrealistic and impossible to achieve.

Spraberry Play in the Permian Basin

The Spraberry play contains over 44,922 wells. To achieve the EIA forecasted levels of production it would have to achieve well densities of 8.1 per square mile which seems highly unrealistic as spacing wells too close together has the effect of lowering production.

Even worse it appears the EIA is engaging in wilful deception in its forecasts of shale oil production. How else do you explain the EIA forecasting that the Spraberry play will achieve its massive production levels up until 2050 by a 225% overshoot of its own estimates of proven resources plus unproven reserves!

Hughes points out:

“Even if … 100% of the EIA’s proven reserve plus unproven resource estimates could be recovered by 2050, 8.33 billion barrels are missing to meet the EIA production forecast. – The EIA’s reference case production forecast is not consistent with its own estimates of proven reserves plus unproven resources—6.65 billion barrels are available from its estimates, whereas its production forecast requires recovery of 14.98 billion barrels over 2017–2050.’’

This begs the question where are the 8.33 billion barrels of missing oil to come from? It would appear that they exist nowhere but in the imaginations of EIA officials.

Hughes conclusion is rather damning for the Shale Revolution narrative

The key findings of his report seriously undermine the whole energy independence narrative of the Washington establishment and should give the geo-political opponents of the U.S. some encouragement.

“Well productivity has increased in most plays through focusing on sweet spots and due to longer horizontal laterals and increased volumes of water and proppant, as well as more fracking stages. The limits of technology and exploiting sweet spots are becoming evident, however, as in some plays new wells are exhibiting lower productivities.’’

For the U.S. shale industry to meet EIA forecasts Hughes estimates that the fracking industry would have to increase production not just from the big 3 plays (Permian, Eagle Ford and Baaken) that produce 85% of American oil but also from the older plays that are already in decline. To meet the EIA forecasts, ‘1,892,854 additional wells would be needed by 2050 to meet the forecast, at an overall cost of $13 trillion.’

Hughes concludes that the:

“shale revolution” has sparked calls for “American energy dominance’’ despite the fact that the U.S. is projected to be a net oil importer through 2050, even given EIA forecasts. Although the “shale revolution” has provided a reprieve from what just 15 years ago was thought to be a terminal decline in oil and gas production in the U.S., this reprieve is temporary, and the U.S. would be well advised to plan for much-reduced shale oil and gas production in the long term based on this analysis of play fundamentals.’’

Consequences

The peak and subsequent decline of shale oil production will have an impact upon the American economy and its massive trade deficit. Once again it will become more heavily dependent on oil production from overseas increasing the costs for industry and consumers.

If American shale oil production goes into decline during the 2020s it will weaken the influence of Washington over oil markets and reduce its ability to destroy the exports of major oil producers such as Iran and Venezuela. Washington will not be able to so easily contain the inflationary pressures on oil prices from taking out the oil production of such major producers.

Oil production from countries that Washington designates as enemies, such as Russia, Iran and Venezuela, will increase in importance on the global market as U.S. shale oil production starts to decline. This will give greater power and influence to OPEC and Russia when it comes to determining oil prices through production cuts/increases.

As the shale industry declines it will add greater impetus to American efforts to control the oil producing countries of the Middle East. Nations from Iraq to Saudi Arabia are developing trade and infrastructure relations with China which the United States takes strong exception to.

Take for example, the recent bombshell admission by Iraq’s caretaker Prime Minister that Trump threatened him with assassination if Iraq proceeds with an oil for infrastructure project with China. In the first phase of this deal Iraq will send 100,00 barrels of oil to China in return for a $10 billion credit. China would finish the building of the country’s electricity grid and other major infrastructure projects including its vital oil and gas sector.

According to Al-Monitor, the Iraqi PM’s financial adviser revealed on 23 December that the, ‘’most important provision in the China-Iraq agreement is to open an account for Iraq in Chinese banks to deposit oil funds. With that, Iraq can gradually do without its US accounts, according to parliamentary blocs that want to expel US forces from the country.’’

The United States sees such economic ties as mortal threats to the entire Petro-dollar system as Iraq would be able to bypass the American control of its oil trade which is denominated in U.S. dollars which are held in account with the Federal Reserve bank in New York.

The Petro-dollar system set up by Kissinger in the 1970s underpins the American control of the global trading system and allows it to maintain a massively over bloated military the scale of which the world has not seen since World War 2.

The American empire’s policy of regime change towards oil rich countries that do no support Washington’s agenda will see no let up. Indeed, it is liable to be stepped up.

As U.S. shale oil production declines it will seek to maintain control over the regions oil production. China’s desire for growing amounts of Middle Eastern oil will intensify this clash for resources, influence and power in the region. Thus leading to greater geo-political and economic conflict.

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I have written several times about the continuing NATO preparations for an attack on Russia, a second Operation Barbarossa, the code name for the Nazi invasion of the USSR in 1941. Circumstances prompt me to write about it again, for as of the last week in January the Americans and their gang of lieutenant nations in NATO have commenced the biggest military exercises in 25 years to take place in Europe. The code name for this operation is Defender-Europe 20 but we can interpret that as Attack-Russia 20; in effect a preparation for an attack on Russia comparable to the Nazi invasion in 1941 that killed 27 million Soviet citizens, wounded countless more and destroyed everything west of the Urals and led ultimately to the crushing of the Nazis that launched the attack.

For the past several years the US has been building up bases in Eastern Europe, building up their logistics systems, prepositioning vast amounts of munitions and weapons of every type and calibre, securing convoy routes from the USA across the Atlantic and across Europe right up to Russia’s borders for the rapid movement of military equipment and formations, installing nuclear capable missile systems in key locations from Poland to Romania, increasing intelligence flights in the Baltic, particularly with regard to the Russian base at Kaliningrad and the approaches to St. Petersburg, and the Black Sea, Crimea and Ukraine as well around the Russian bases at Vladivostok, all the while, in their propaganda talking about false flag operations they could use to blame Russia and provide the pretext for their attack. Kaliningrad has been mentioned several times by US generals and officials as one possible scene for staging a false flag operation for this purpose. But the number of scenarios they could use is limited only by their imagination and capabilities.

These conventional military exercises are complemented by the withdrawal of the United States from several nuclear arms treaties to give the US a free hand to develop and deploy nuclear weapons which, according to their National Defence Strategy, they will use whenever and wherever they see fit, without limitation or restrictions, including the intention to launch a nuclear first strike. The clear targets are Russia and China. The “pivot to the Pacific” that the Americans began some years ago is a part of these preparations, and while this applies pressure against China it also threatens Russia.

But the new exercises are raising alarms in Moscow and Minsk The Belarusian Minister of Defence, Andrei Rakov, noted that:

 “NATO’s military contingent deployed in the countries neighbouring Belarus during the Atlantic Resolve and Enhanced Forward Presence has been increased by 13 times in the past six years, from 550 to more than 7,000 troops, and the number of hardware units has grown fivefold and that the Defender-Europe 20 exercises to be organized on the territories of ten states, including Poland and the Baltic republics that border Belarus involve about 37,000 troops, with 20,000 of them from the United States.”

He also said that “the number of NATO drills near the Belarusian border and the number of personnel involved in these drills had more than doubled in the past five years. Defence spending has increased as well. In the past five years, Poland’s military budget soared by 30%, that of Lithuania — by 2.5 times, and Latvia’s — threefold.”

In such conditions, he underscored,

“Belarus is forced to take response measures. We are forced to react to the scale-up of military activities in Europe, including in close proximity to our border. Our response will not necessarily be tit-for-tat. We were ready for such development of the military political situation that is why our reaction has a planned character,” he noted. “Thus, in the past three years, the Belarusian military have increased the number of exercises by more than 20% and the number of snap combat readiness checks have doubled.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry on January 17 stated that,

“NATO’s military drills on the eastern flank of NATO are increasingly more reminiscent of purposeful preparations for a large-scale military conflict” and, “NATO countries are constantly building up their military presence close to our borders, working to improve the operational efficiency of redeploying forces to the eastern flank. The intensity of the drills whose scenarios are increasingly more reminiscent of preparations for a large-scale military conflict is increasing. The systematic development of the European segment of the US/NATO missile defence system continues.”

On February 4th Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated,

“Russia will react to the US military exercise in Europe Defender 2020 due in March, but it will do so in a way that will rule out unnecessary risks. Naturally, we will react. We cannot ignore processes that arouse very great concerns. But we will react in a way that will not create unnecessary risks.”

However it is certain the United States and its armed gang in NATO will do everything they can do take risks that could kill us all. For the Defender-Europe 20 exercises are on a vast scale, involving according to a US Army fact sheet, four Army prepositioned weapons and ammunition and other logistics sites in three European countries, transport materiel four thousand kilometres across twelve convoy routes, involve nine thousand US troops already in Europe, seven thousand National Guard soldiers, use 14 major ports and airfields, major elements of the US Navy, major elements of US Air Force units from the US, Europe and Africa, the deployment of 20,000 Army and Marine US soldiers from the US to Europe, twenty thousand pieces of equipment to be moved from the US to Europe including trucks, tanks, and artillery pieces, all having the objective, the US claims of

“increase strategic readiness and interoperability by exercising the U.S. military’s ability to rapidly deploy a large combat-credible force and equipment from the United States to Europe; and alongside its allies and partners, quickly respond to a potential crisis.”

And, they add,

“The joint, multinational training exercise is scheduled to take place from April to May 2020, with personnel and equipment movements occurring from February through July 2020. The exercise supports objectives defined by NATO to build readiness within the alliance and deter potential adversaries.”

The last sentence in the US Army Europe statement reveals the strategic objective of the exercises, to build readiness for war on Russia. There is no other interpretation possible.

On February 26, 2016 the Atlantic Council, the preeminent NATO think tank, issued a report on the state of readiness of the NATO alliance to fight and win a war with Russia. The focus of the report was on the Baltic States. The report is called “Alliance at Risk.”

It has the sub-heading “Strengthening European Defense in an Age of Turbulence and Competition.” Layer upon layer of distortion, half-truths, lies and fantasies obscure the fact that it is the NATO countries that have caused the turbulence from the Middle East to Ukraine. NATO is responsible for nothing according to this report, except “protecting the peace.” Russia is the supreme aggressor state, intent on undermining the security of Europe, even intent on attacking Europe, an “existential threat” that NATO must prepare to repel.

It states a series of lies at page 6 that,

“The Russian invasion of Crimea, its support for separatists, and its invasion of eastern Ukraine have effectively ripped up the post-Cold War settlement of Europe. President Vladimir Putin has shattered any thoughts of a strategic partnership with NATO; instead, Russia is now a de facto strategic adversary. Even more dangerously, the threat is potentially existential, because Putin has constructed an international dynamic that could put Russia on a collision course with NATO. At the center of this collision would be the significant Russian-speaking populations in the Baltic States, whose interests are used by the Kremlin to justify Russia’s aggressive actions in the region. Under Article 5 of NATO’s Washington Treaty, any military move by Putin on the Baltic states would trigger war, potentially on a nuclear scale, because the Russians integrate nuclear weapons into every aspect of their military thinking.”

Lies, because none of this is true and it is the NATO war alliance that threatens the peace and incorporates nuclear weapons into all their military thinking and planning.

This supports warnings made the past two years of a move by NATO in the Baltic states which will be justified by false flag hybrid war operations conducted by NATO, as I have stated several times in other essays. This is emphasized by the recommendation in the report that “to deter any Russian encroachment into the Baltic States, NATO should establish a permanent presence in the region… to prevent a Russian coup de main operation …”

The document also uses language that indicates that the NATO powers do not recognize Russian sovereignty over Kaliningrad that was established at the end of the second world war, claiming that Russia “has ripped up” the post-Cold War settlement of Europe, whatever that means to them, because as far as we know the Cold War was supposed to end with the withdrawal of the Red Army from Eastern Europe in exchange for a commitment by USA that NATO would not move east. Instead the NATO powers, with the treachery that is their custom, moved quickly into those territories and began conducting regular and expanding military exercises threatening Russia directly. 

Once again, the NATO powers are preparing the ground for an incident involving Kaliningrad, home base of their Baltic Fleet and guardian of the approaches to St. Petersburg and what the Guardian stated is “emerging as a critical square on the east European chessboard in Vladimir Putin’s efforts to push back assertively against NATO expansion.”

The situation has become so critical that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved their Doomsday Clock 20 seconds closer to midnight last week citing as a primary reason the immediate danger of nuclear war between the United States and Russia. They stated, “Civilization-ending nuclear war—whether started by design, blunder, or simple miscommunication—is a genuine possibility. But even they, a US organisation, lied about the true state of affairs and blamed Russia as much as the US for the situation the US and its allies have created.

As for international law, it is nowhere to be seen. The preparations for war by NATO are a violation of the UN Charter and the fundamental principles of international law contained in it. They are war crimes under the Nuremburg Principles and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, because they are part of the conspiracy to commit, and preparations for, a war of aggression against Russia, and, since the use of nuclear weapons is a certainty if war breaks out, genocide of the entire human population.

The UN cannot act to prevent this because the Security Council, neutered by its own structure cannot act. The ICC continues to be an irrelevancy. And since, in the absence of a world government with policing powers, international law relies on a shared sense of morality, ethics and humanity to be effective, the total negation of morality by the leadership of the United States and the NATO countries has led to a breakdown of international law. Thugs, gangsters and pirates recognise no laws, and we live in a world where these are the people that are now in power in the west.

And so Russia reacts to defend itself, preparations for war intensify, and any hope we have of the American people delivering us from the criminals they keep raising to power, of us doing the same in the other NATO countries, of calling for peace as the World Peace Council does, giving peace a chance, as Lennon said, is buried deeper and deeper under layers of lies and propaganda and we are left with little but despair unless the people, the mass of people release the power latent in them and confront those in power and replace them with leaders dedicated not only to the welfare of their people, but also dedicated to peace, peace now and peace forever. I joined the Canadian Peace Congress to try to do that. I urge all of you to wake up to the danger, join peace groups wherever you are, do whatever you can, but block the road to war.

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Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

Featured image is from NEO

The US has deployed “low-yield” nuclear missiles on submarines, saying it’s to discourage nuclear conflict with Russia. The move is based on a “Russian strategy” made up in Washington and will only bring mass annihilation closer.