Global Research

The Democratic National Committee’s scapegoating began early in 2016, months before wall building, climate change denying, health care abolishing, tax dodging, spewing demagogue Donald Trump surprised everyone including himself by taking the White House. First Wikileaks elected Trump by releasing 19,252 DNC emails plus attachments on the eve of the Democratic Party Convention. Then Russia did it. Russia helped Wikileaks do it. Then Jill Stein and the Green Party did it. They all did it together.

Of course the Green Party does it every presidential election year, but in 2016, we doubled down to elect the most fearsome Republican Godzilla yet. (Because he shares our core values: ecological wisdom, social justice, grassroots democracy, and nonviolence.) Jill Stein even had her picture taken during her citizen diplomacy trip to Russia, just as Vlad the Impaler had stopped by her banquet table.

And now, according to Hillary Clinton, the Green Party is scheming to do it again by grooming Hawaii’s Democratic House Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, author of the stillborn Stop Arming Terrorists Act, to accept the Green Party presidential nomination—but only if Jill Stein, our dastardly 2012 and 2016 candidate, stands down. We did it, Russia did it, Wikileaks did it, and we’re all going to do it again. Wikileaks is still afloat on the Internet even as its founder Julian Assange is tortured in Belmarsh Prison, according to UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melsner.

One thing the DNC lynch mob and its corporate media would like us to forget is that one of their own, John Kerry, did it in 2004. The Greens couldn’t do it that year because our candidate, David Cobb, chose to campaign only in the “safe states” to avoid the opprobrium we’d been subjected to ever since Bush stole Florida and the Dems blamed our 2000 candidate, Ralph Nader.

Kerry knew that George Bush and the Republican Party stole the 2004 election from him in Ohio after his voters reported that their votes appeared as Bush votes even though they pulled the lever for Kerry, and after people in majority Democratic districts stood in long lines in thunderstorms and torrential rain waiting to vote (or went home) while majority district Republicans voted easily. Kerry’s patrician memoir “Every Day Is Extra” includes this comic description of another concern:

“Some on the team were bothered by the fact that many voting machines came from a private company, Diebold, owned by two Nebraska brothers who were the chairs of the Bush campaign for president.

“I wonder how many countries have elections in which the machines are privately owned and controlled, where the coding for the tallying cannot be inspected or verified because it is ‘proprietary information.’”

Kerry also wrote that he anticipated fraud but hoped for such a clear outcome that he wouldn’t need to contest. When that bubble burst he chose not to expose the rot at the core of our so-called democracy, although, of course, he didn’t put it that way.

As soon as he and his team realized Bush had stolen it again, he wrote, they went into deep deliberations about what to do. His vice presidential candidate, John Edwards, thought they should contest, but both knew that they might win their way past several appeals courts only to lose in the Supreme Court, as Al Gore had.

Why not tell Americans, and the rest of the world, the truth?

Because, Kerry wrote, he was “deeply concerned about a nation at war, with the world looking at us, coming out of a second consecutive election, where we would be sitting in limbo, wondering for the next six weeks or more who the president would be.”

But why should anyone have been surprised by that? In 2003, John Kerry had voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq, and during his campaign, he stood by his vote. Discussing national security, he said:

“ . . . we must launch and lead a new era of alliances for the post-9/11 world. America must always be the world’s paramount military power. But we can magnify our power through alliances.”

Nevertheless, people were surprised and aghast. Kerry wasn’t as crude as Bush. He wasn’t so obviously sadistic and sociopathic, so many had somehow imagined that his election would end the horrors we were inflicting on the Iraqi people and the soldiers coming home in coffins or physically and psychically mangled for life. On election eve, November 2, I had gone to see some political theater where everyone was eager to learn that the nightmare was over. Then we exited the theater space to a reception area with televisions mounted on the walls and learned that it wasn’t.

The next morning George Bush told a press conference that he had earned a lot of political capital, and he was going to use it. Five days later, on November 7, the Second Siege of Fallujah began. I stayed up much of the night listening to the BBC’s on-the-ground reporters. One described women and children trudging out of Fallujah before the battle began until some of the women turned around and ran back to shoulder surface-to-air missiles alongside their men. Then the bombs came thundering down and innocent Iraqis were blown to bits. I wondered how many bodies would even be identifiable.

Everyone of good conscience was horrified by the Iraq War, but why did anyone think John Kerry might end it? Bill Clinton took office in 1993, two years after the Soviet Union collapsed, when some of us still hoped for a peace dividend that would turn swords into ploughshares, but he never delivered. During his eight years in the White House, he:

• constantly bombed a “no-fly zone” over Iraq;
• caused hundreds of thousands of deaths by imposing brutal sanctions on Iraq;
• bombed a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan;
• bombed Iraq to distract from his impeachment for sordid sexual behavior with an 18-yr.-old White House intern;
• destroyed Yugoslavia with a merciless bombing campaign;

and oversaw covert operations that left millions dead in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as mining moguls from Hope, Arkansas and beyond moved in.
(Then and now, most Americans understand Congo’s ongoing agony as “ethnic conflict” if they give it any thought at all.)

Some may have also remembered John Kerry as the young veteran who campaigned passionately against the Vietnam War and even testified to Congress about its ills. But those days were long gone, and his memoir suggests that he used widespread opposition to the war as a springboard for his political career.

John Kerry wouldn’t have stopped the war, and in the end, he decided not even to let Americans know that the presidency had been stolen again and not by the Greens. We hadn’t even campaigned in the swing state of Ohio. There were no safe scapegoats in sight and, in John Kerry’s mind, the United States’ national prestige in the world was at stake. How could he justify his claim that “America must always be the world’s paramount military power” if we couldn’t even hold an honest presidential election?  In his memoir he wrote:

“The decision was mine. I didn’t want to put the country through that again. It would be selfish and irresponsible. I knew some would be angry. People had a right to know that their votes were counted properly. They were correct to be incensed. But I decided I would continue that fight in a way that didn’t put our nation into banana republic status.”

It was already a bit late for that, but no one as richly rewarded by the status quo as John Kerry would want to risk rocking the boat till it ran aground or tipped over.

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For the average American, bills that are introduced into state legislatures, especially those with bipartisan support, generally become the law of the state. But how often does the average citizen of any state review the bills in different committees or the laws passed and signed by the governors that have a direct impact upon their lives? We would imagine very few. What does it mean when a bill in California, for example, that mandates a change in an existing environmental law that protects citizens and in turn permits and protects corporations to pollute the environment, water and air with impunity? Then that same bill shows up in other states across the nation. How does that happen? One past example are bills to ban GMO labeling that were virtually the same in California, Oregon, Colorado and elsewhere. The same is true for hydro-fracking and pipeline installations, roll backs on environmental protections, public funds for charter schools, increasing the private prison system, gun rights, keeping drug costs high, etc. These are only a few examples of thousands of laws that are in place because one trade organization that represents many of the world’s largest corporations and industries has fully captured the policy narrative in many of our state legislatures. 

Today, many of us in the environmental movement consider the greatest danger to human health and the environment is going to be the full roll out of 5G technology.  This is article exposes one of the largest organizations in American that is paving the way to make 5G a reality: the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

The name ALEC should be a household word synonymous with corporate interests over the welfare of the public. The organization was created out of a gathering of radicalized conservative activists in Chicago in 1973. Having dreamt for a Barry Goldwater savior, conservatives got Nixon instead. The group was founded by Paul Weyrich, who had just founded the Heritage Foundation, and Lou Barnett who helped Ronald Reagan’s 1968 failed campaign for the presidency. Nevertheless, Reagan’s legacy continues to impact the organization. Its structure of “task forces” to bring elected politicians together with the leaders of private industry to draft policies for a large variety of issues — including medicine, telecommunications, regulatory policy, education, civil and criminal justice, commerce, homeland security, taxation law and energy and agriculture — has been modeled after Reagan’s national Task Force on Federalism.

Greenpeace’s Connor Gibson has described ALEC as “a one stop shopping outlet for large companies seeking state legislators to move their agenda through statehouses coast-to-coast.” And it is a “pay-to-play service” for corporations. After a whistleblower inside ALEC provided all of ALEC’s “model” bills drafted in private meetings between legislators and corporate lobbyists to the Center for Media and Democracy, we now know how and why ALEC has been so covertly successful for these past two decades.

Although the name ALEC and the Koch Brothers are frequently sounded in the same breath, Koch Industries did not join the Council until 1993. Since then, the Koch’s virtually hijacked the organization in addition to becoming its largest and most important funder. In tough times, the Kochs have been the first bail out the Council. Over the years, the Koch’s and their network of companies, foundations and organizations, such as Americans for Prosperity and Stand Together, have come to dominate the Council and steer its ideological aims.

Charles Koch’s and ALEC’s underlying philosophy about national and state governance is that the heads of private industry are far more qualified to lead the country than career politicians. Consequently the Council’s legislative infrastructure is based upon leaders of large mega-corporations colluding with elected officials to advise and construct policies, which are termed “model legislation,” before state Senates and Houses. The greater public good represented by the leaders of civil society are completely absent from the conversation. The titans of industry run the show. Benefits to private corporate interests, revenues and stock prices are all that matters. This is ALEC’s definition for economic progress.  It is Neoliberal capitalism on steroids.

ALEC claims that its membership is “comprised of nearly one-third of the country’s state legislators and stakeholders from across the policy spectrum.”  About 80 percent of these are members of the GOP. There are also about 270 industry and trade associations, conservative foundations and many of the nation’s largest mega-corporations represented. Therefore ALEC events and networks have become a paradise for large corporations to gain direct access to state legislators. PR Watch reveals that “even though many states prohibit corporations and lobbyists from influencing legislators through gifts and favors, ALEC has provided a way for special interests to sidestep these laws.” It has done so skillfully and unhampered for several decades. According to the Capital Research Center, a right-wing think tank that functions as a quasi “fusion center” to gather information on unions, environmental and liberal activist organizations for ALEC and the Heritage Foundation, about a 1,500 bills based upon ALEC’s “model legislation” are introduced to state legislative bodies annually and about 20 percent become law. We are therefore looking about 7,500 laws that were incubated in ALEC secret gatherings. And according to a Brookings Institute investigation, about 90 percent of these bills are introduced in state legislatures by Republicans. According to Brookings report, “ALEC’s Influence Over Lawmaking in State Legislatures”:

“What ALEC does during its closed-door meetings is largely a mystery…  Not only are their meetings private, but so too are their legislative successes and failures.  Specifically, we do not know where ALEC’s model bills inspired the introduction and passage of new legislation.”

Therefore it is no surprise to find ALEC’s fingerprints all over the aggressive push to roll out 5G technology across the nation.

One of the more frequent fears of the 5G rollout is that small cell antenna systems will be installed throughout cities and towns in heavily populated areas. Instead of soaring cell towers removed from these areas, millions of microwave antennas will adorn power poles, streetlights and roof tops. Although these are publicly owned installations, the city councils and the public have no say in the matter. Private industry has been given carte blanche control over collocating these devices at its perusal. In the words of an ALEC member at CTIA, a national trade group representing the 5G corporate giants, “it sounds super sexy and we hope that it is.” For the rest of us, there will be no means to avoid these cells’ microwave pulses day or night. Yet it was ALEC back in early 2016 who drafted legislation to “streamline” this infrastructure in violation of zoning laws.

Last year Comcast became the latest large corporation to drop its ALEC membership after the SEC demanded the company reveal its lobbying figures and following shareholder complaints about the company’s excessive secret lobbying activities, including opposition to state internet neutrality laws.  In fact, there has been a large exodus of mega-companies leaving the ALEC family.  Since 2011, when the Center for Media and Democracy initiated its campaign to pressure corporations to leave ALEC, Comcast is the 116th firm to have done so. Others include Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Merck, Wells Fargo, Pepsi, and Coca Cola, Shell, BP, Exxon, Amgen, Visa, Sprint and T-Mobile.   Telecom giants AT&T, Cox Communications  and Verizon quit ALEC after a human rights campaign was launched against the Council for David Horowitz’s racist keynote hate speech against women, Blacks and Muslims at ALEC’s annual convention in New Orleans. Horowitz is a right-wing ideologue and the CEO of the David Horowitz Freedom Center that has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “driving force of the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-Black movements.” Trump’s White Supremacist adviser Stephen Miller, who has been accused of advising Trump to separate immigrant children from their families, is a Horowitz “protege.”

Nevertheless, some of the most powerful telecommunication trade associations have retained membership:  CTIA (The Wireless Association), Charter Communications, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA), and the Satellite Broadcasting and Communications Association. The departure of the large telecom companies listed above may be more of a ruse than a reflection of corporate conscience. They are still well represented in ALEC by the industry associations. AT&T, Cellpoint, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon are all members of CTIA and the NCTA, two of the largest associations promoting the Internet of Things that are publicly lobbying for ALEC telecommunication “model legislation.” And they continue to send lobbyists representing their commercial and policy interests to ALEC meetings through other channels.

The Wireless Infrastructure Association (WIA), in collaboration with ALEC, has been developing “model” state legislation already adopted by several states including California, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Tennessee, New Jersey and Michigan. In Hawaii, WIA has managed to amend state land use regulations to permit wireless facility installation on agricultural lands in complete denial of EMF’s adverse impact on the environment, insect, and animal life. In Nevada, installation will proceed regardless of a municipality’s consideration of RF’s health impacts. In Florida local jurisdictions are limited to make demands for information from the telecom industry’s installations that may pose undisclosed risks. In short, ALEC is busily clearing the field for rapid 5G installation by removing state and local regulatory barriers that may create bottlenecks for deployment.

Despite ALEC’s woes and setbacks, the arrival of Trump in the White House has made up for its loss of corporate membership.  No other administration since the Council’s founding has been so packed with ALEC representatives, estimated at half of his cabinet appointees. ALEC’s 45th year celebration was held at Trump’s International Hotel in DC, a mile from the White House. ALEC’s CEO Lisa Nelson expressed her elation that the administration “does have the potential to be an ALEC administration. It is full of the people and ideas we’ve advanced since 1973. Now is our time. And ALEC is ready.” It was through ALEC channels that Brett Kavanaugh reached the Supreme Court bench. Trump’s former EPA head Scott Pruitt was earlier the chair of an ALEC task force. And Mike Pence was a loyal lobbyist for ALEC policies as Indiana’s governor and continues to be so as Vice President. Nikki Haley, Rick Perry, Betsy DeVos, agriculture secretary Sonny Purdue, Ben Carson, Kellyanne Conway, Labor Secretary Alex Acosta and the head of Health and Human Services Alex Azar are all ALEC alumni or insiders.

Trump’s Chairman of the FCC which is responsible for federal funding the 5G roll out,  Ajit Pai is a former Verizon attorney and a long time ALEC associate. Back in 2013, Pai spoke before ALEC’s Communications and Technology Task Force to commend state efforts to roll back regulations in order to permit the Internet Protocol (IP) Transition — Washington’s term for the internet technological revolution — to unfold freely without obstacles from state and city governments. A wolf in sheep’s wool, Pai is a committed free market globalist who favors solutions coming from market competition in the absence of government regulations. Therefore it came as no surprise that Pai appointed ALEC’s director of the Telecommunication’s Task Force, Jonathan Hausenschild, to the FCC’s new Broadband Development Advisory Council last April. Reporting for TechDirt, Karl Bode noted that ALEC has already helped “the broadband industry pass blatantly protectionist bills in more than 21 states that hamstrung or simply banned towns or cities from building their own networks, even in areas when private industry refuses to.” Despite ALEC’s libertarian rhetoric of favoring net neutrality, Hausenschild has lobbied heavily in opposition to net neutrality protections, which is ALEC’s real goal.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Barr has traveled the country touting ALEC’s “model legislation” for 5G. Before Indiana’s Senate, Barr promised that “5G will create jobs, improve education and promote safety. But to upgrade our networks, we must upgrade our regulations.” The Trump definition for “upgrade” means to trash altogether.

In its “Resolution Opposing State and Local Mandates Requiring Warning Labels on Wireless Devices and Packaging,” ALEC acknowledges the FCC’s safety limits for public exposure to EMF radiating devices (1.6 watts per kilogram body weight).  Despite acknowledging the health risks “based on the weight of scientific research,” it still “opposes all state and local legislation and regulations that would require either health-related warning labeling, including but not limited to specific absorption rate levels, on wireless devices and packaging, or mandate disclosure of any health-related information about wireless devices at the point-of-sale.”

As with its denial of anthropogenic climate change — a direct indictment against many of its most prominent corporate members in the fossil fuel industry — ALEC only cites cherry-picked scientific conclusions, largely outdated and some over a decade old, that negate any evidence of EMF’s adverse effects to human health and the environment. For ALEC, the 10,000-plus scientifically reviewed studies confirming EMF’s relationship with cancer, Alzheimer’s, endocrinal dysfunction, etc. don’t exist.

Other “model” policies ALEC is peddling to state bureaucrats to advance the 5G roll out, which it has succeeded to implement in many states, include:

• Demands that states provide certainty for 5G deployment to proceed unimpeded by local and public jurisdiction.
• Permit the telecommunications industry with free access to “public rights-of-ways” to assure full small cell antennae rollout
• Limit or prohibit local municipalities from charging private telecom companies fees as a source of revenue. ALEC argues municipality fees reduce corporate’ funds “to further build out their networks, reaching unserved and underserved areas.”
• Foster fast-tracking of 5G deployment to reduce time to conduct thorough reviews of the benefits and risks to local communities.
• Prohibit “regulations or procedures for RF [radio frequency] strength or the adequacy of service quality” as a pre-requisite for wireless installment and operation.
• ALEC’s core principles are small government and free markets for private interests. Cities and towns providing municipal publicly funded broadband services therefore compete with the private sector, drain the industry’s revenues and should be forbidden. Therefore ALEC’s “Municipal Telecommunications Private Industry Safeguard Act” creates obstacles for local governments to create public broadband access.
• ALEC’s “Wireless Communications Tower Siting Act” allows existing public structures — buildings, utility powers, water towers — to be freely available to the telecom industry for installing small cell devices rather than rely upon the need to build new structures.
• ALEC’s “Telecommunications Deregulation Policy Statement” would create barriers for states to pass laws that would regulate the cost and quality of service provided by private telecom companies. The statement also proposes to greatly reduce states’ and municipalities’ abilities to tax 5G providers.
• Telecommunications and internet providers “should not be held civilly or criminally liable for content they either host or transmit.” In addition, the companies cannot be held responsible for monitoring illegal content nor “be compelled to provide any private client information data without due process.”

ALEC’s 5G platform represents just one body of bills that reveal its mission to shape the nation into the image of a corporation. The same is true for other areas where the Council pushes aside the public’s demands for a democratic voice in favor of private industrial interests. Despite, the large telecommunication companies leaving ALEC, it remains their best ally in state legislatures. And clearly after three years of Trump in the White House and the administration’s downsizing of the federal government and shredding regulatory protections, ALEC’s dream of running the government is becoming true.

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Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.

Dr. Gary Null is the host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including The War on Health, Poverty Inc and Silent Epidemic.

«At its root, capitalism not only meant slavery and white supremacy but also the ethos of the gangster. » Gerald Horne

The film ‘Joker’ presents a contemporary phenomenon present in several countries, but which can only be understood in its complexity through the history of the origins of the USA.

African-American historian Gerald Horne argues in the book ‘The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America’ that the U.S. independence movement was born, on the one hand, from the fear of the wealthy classes in the colony of a growing abolitionist movement in the metropolis, England, which could put an end  to the basis of their wealth – the slaves. On the other hand, England also hindered the advance of the settlers to the west, which was to remain indigenous territory. For Horne, the war for U.S. independence was partly a ‘counter-revolution’ led by the ‘founding fathers’ with the aim of preserving their right to enslave other peoples, mainly Africans, and to continue to expand the young nation to the west, stealing more land from the indigenous peoples where more slave labor would be deployed.

In another book, ‘The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy and Capitalism in 17th Century North America and the Caribbean’, Horne summarized this process:

«Then finally, in 1776, they pulled off the ultimate coup and exhibited their novel display of patriotism by ousting London altogether from the mainland colonies south of Canada, while convincing the deluded and otherwise naive (to this very day) that this naked grab for land, slaves and profit was somehow a great leap forward for humanity.»

In this context occurred another process of fundamental relevance for today: the birth of U.S. military power. The U.S. army originated in the war for independence against the British, which was also a war against the vast majority of African slaves who allied themselves with the British – which promised their freedom – and against the many indigenous peoples who also allied with the British – aware of what would follow for them once the new republic became independent. And indeed, soon after the victory against the British and the established peace, the newly created U.S. army engaged in its new task: the genocidal war against indigenous peoples to secure the territorial expansion of the new republic.

In the book ‘The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607-1814’ author John Grenier argues that the U.S. armed forces were forged in the genocidal wars against American indigenous peoples, when virtually every means of destruction was allowed, all brutality was possible, and there was no distinction between civilian and combatant populations.

One of the methods used by the U.S. armed forces against indigenous peoples was the destruction of their plantations and food reserves, leading to defeat by famine, a method widely used and perfected decades later by the U.S. in the Vietnam war, making the U.S. perhaps the only country in the world to specialize in the war against the Vegetable Kingdom.  In fact, an unbroken historical line leads from wars against indigenous peoples to the war in Vietnam. The most recent economic embargoes against Cuba and Venezuela are just another form of this method, the objectives remain the same – to cause hunger, to punish civilian populations in order to subdue them – and have been used since the beginnings of US military power.

The extermination of indigenous peoples was so central to politics at the time that participating in military campaigns against indigenous peoples was practically a prerequisite for becoming a candidate for the presidency of the New Republic. Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, is perhaps the one who best represents what this new country really was. Jackson was a wealthy planter and slaveowner, leading troops during the War against the Creek people, which led to the conquest of many lands now belonging to the states of Alabama and Georgia. He also led the US troops in the war against the Seminole people. In the presidency, Jackson continued his crusade against the indigenous people. There is an interesting episode in the well-known TV series ‘House of Cards’ in which Indian representatives visit the White House. As part of the preparations for the visit, White House staff remove the portrait of Andrew Jackson from a wall, apparently in order not to offend the Indians – a rare moment of lucidity in such media. And it was Andrew Jackson’s followers who founded the U.S. Democratic Party…

In order to guarantee a ‘single front’ between the settlers against the indigenous peoples, on the one hand, and to ensure the practice of slavery on the other, the British forged an illusory ‘alliance’ beyond the social classes, between the ‘whites’ – white supremacy – that legitimated and allowed the exploitation, theft or extermination of all those who were not so endowed. According to Gerald Horne, this militarized identity politics that was ‘whiteness’’ was at the root of the colonial occupations as early as 1676, leading to the creation of a ‘white man ‘s’ country, a first ‘apartheid’ state, an example to be followed by South Africa. Violence against indigenous peoples and the violence inherent in the slave economy became common, ‘normal’ elements in the US white mentality to this day. Gerald Horne argues that one of the last expressions of ‘white supremacy’ in the mainstream U.S. politics was the election of Donald Trump, as a part of the electorate « (…) could not overcome the poisonous snare of white supremacy. That is, the seeds of the fiasco of an election in November 2016 in the United States, where the less affluent of European descent, including more than half of the women of this group, found their tribune in a vulgar billionaire, has roots in the cross-class coalition  that spearheaded colonial settlement in the seventeen century at the  expense of the indigenous and enslaved Africans.»

This history and its consequences are very much still present in the Joker. Arthur Fleck, the character in the film, is just one of the millions of poor white men abandoned by the system, and it is not by chance that, in the film, practically everyone who comes into real, emotional contact with Arthur Fleck, is African-American, including the only woman he cares about. In this way, the film places white Arthur Fleck in the middle of a poor Afro-American community, that is, according to the myth of white supremacy, completely out of his ‘natural’ place. The social worker who allows him to get the medicine he needs is Afro-American and, when she informs him about the closure of the social centre – another result of the austerity policies of neoliberalism – she comments: ‘They don’t give a shit about people like you. Or like me.’ – They’, in this case, being a clear reference to the powerful, to the 1%. There is a permanent possibility of a haven for Arthur Fleck within the African-American community, as the social worker recognizes by placing the two as victims of the same system. But Arthur Fleck is unable to see or understand his situation in the broader context that would open him up to the dimension of solidarity with the African American community and others and, as I see it, it is his ‘whiteness’ that blinds him to this possibility. Instead, following the illusions of his adoptive mother that became his as well, he tries hard to be accepted again by the successful white community. The ‘alliance’ beyond the social classes that connects whites in the myth of white supremacy is still sufficiently strong in Arthur Fleck’s unconscious to take him to Thomas Wayne seeking the ‘recognition’ of his ‘natural right’ to belong to Wayne’s successful white community, a way of updating the ‘alliance’ of white supremacy, just as so many impoverished and marginalized whites voted for Donald Trump did. To reinforce the image of unity of this white community, the dialogue   with Thomas Wayne takes place in a theatre full of white people celebrating the success of their social class. Thomas Wayne does not recognize his “fatherhood” – the symbolism here is clear – of Arthur Fleck and, even worse, violently refuses any contact with him, thus revealing the lie of the white ‘alliance’, the myth of racial supremacy as a bond between whites beyond social classes.

Thomas Wayne’s punch shows that such an alliance never existed.

But there is a gesture of solidarity shown in the film that really belongs to the ‘white alliance’: knowing that Arthur Fleck suffered an aggression in the street, one of his co-workers offers him a weapon to defend himself – the gesture of solidarity par excellence of the ‘white alliance’. The neo-fascist Bolsonaro is his campaign for the presidency in Brazil did exactly the same, just in a much bigger scale.  he promised to put weapons more easily within reach of everyone, especially his supporters, who promptly rewarded this ‘solidarity’ by helping to elect him.

The moment when the myth of the ‘white alliance’ really explodes in the film is the sequence of the fight in the subway. Three well dressed and visibly successful white youths harass a woman sexually – feeling perfectly right in doing so, the “normal” behaviour of the white heterosexual male, in the U.S. as in Brazil. Arthur Fleck, with his nervous laughter, hinders the three young men who turn against him. Arthur Fleck is obviously poor, a clown, of a social class much inferior to that of the three young yuppies who start to assault him violently – betraying the ‘white alliance’ like Thomas Wayne – but Arthur Fleck has a weapon and, for the first time, gives way to his years of accumulated frustration and repressed anger – and kills his aggressors. For Arthur Fleck this moment is liberating and from then on, he feels stronger but also “goes crazy”, the symbolism used, I believe, to show the emotional price paid by Arthur Fleck for betraying his part in the white ‘alliance’. His oppressive violence was directed against white people, not against Latinos, black or indigenous immigrants – the ‘normal’ targets of white supremacist violence.

The “white” liberal public conscience, represented in the film by the character of Robert de Niro , Murray Franklin, an idol for whom Arthur Fleck also aims to be somehow recognized, condemns the murder of the three ‘promising young people’, because in this case the solidarity of the white ‘alliance’ really exists – as CLASS solidarity – the three were ‘successful’, obviously members of the dominant class. Three poor whites like Arthur Fleck murdered in the subway would certainly have no press attention, it was the social class of the three murdered that awakened, on the one hand, the sympathy of the Murray Franklins, and, on the other hand, the popular revolt that is the background of the film. Arthur Fleck repeatedly declares himself without any political awareness or political objective. The Arthur Flecks of real life hardly vote, but if they do, they vote for Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro. The Arthur Flecks’ revolt is limited to spreading violence, ‘paying back’, creating chaos, it has no political content, it does not aim to change the system, the Arthur Flecks do not even have the slightest idea how the system really works, they only feel unjustly frustrated by something they can only react to with violence. Arthur Fleck is the potential fascist, what unites them, in the U.S. as in Brazil, is still the mystique of the white supremacy, the feeling of belonging to the dominant class, a kind of ‘natural right’ to be privileged, to have prestige and power. 

For the capitalist system, the Arthur Flecks have an enormous importance, because they not only elect the Donald Trumps and the Jair Bolsonaros, allowing the international oligarchy of the capital to continue through them to dominate the world; but even more, the Arthur Flecks have the fundamental role of depoliticize society, of preventing public consciousness to focus on real issues. And it is through violence, intimidation, the attack on institutions, culture and everything that threatens their ‘white’ identity that the Arthur Flecks fulfil this role. The Thomas Waynes smile, the 1% rejoice at such stupidity so easily manipulated in their favour. And Thomas Wayne is not only a Gotham City type, there are many Thomas Wayne all over the world, as many in Brazil and Argentina as in Europe. All of them breeding the “Batmen” eager to fight “corruption” in the name of the Capital.

But ‘Joker’ also shows, even if only obliquely, the possibility of redemption for Arthur Fleck. What if Arthur Fleck managed to get out of his emotional prison, out of his whiteness ‘poisoning’ – to use the expression of Gerald Horne – and sought help and refuge in the African-American community? African-Americans have a long history of political consciousness and struggle, they have faced the violence of white supremacy from the beginning, they know what it means, they know its extent and also its main weaknesses. Above all, African-Americans know very well that the struggle is political. The greatest nightmare, the greatest threat to the U.S. oligarchical political system is precisely the solidarity union between the Arthur Flecks and the Afro-American community, witth the consequent politicization that this union implies. The system, the international financial oligarchy, may well coexist with chaotic violence, with brief outbreaks of destruction and social conflict – in fact, this violence is even useful for the system and for the oligarchy, among other reasons because it can be used as a pretext for more repression and violence on the part of reactionary forces. But what the system cannot support is rebellion WITH POLITICAL CONTENT – as we see now in Chile, Argentina or Ecuador.

The Joker portraits  the ending of white supremacy because even the Arthur Flecks are already realizing that “whiteness”, this ‘solidarity alliance’ among “whites” , which for so long has fed them until it became the foundation of their own being, is nothing but a lie woven by the 1% – mostly whites – to better exploit all the others.

And meanwhile in Latin America, Argentina, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, and Venezuela, the political consciousness of the people has long since overcome the myth of white supremacy and “whiteness” loyalty to the oppressors and subservience to the international capital. There is a plural humanity, rich and proud of its many colours, genders and ways of being that increasingly assumes political control over its own destiny. It is this humanity that, with much clarity, determination and joy, is defeating fascism and the myths that support it.                                                                                  

Sky News, doing what it does best—dispense war propaganda—broadcast this know-nothing report soon after “Iran” attacked the Green Zone in Baghdad this evening. 

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Two rockets have been fired into the Green Zone in Baghdad, Iraq causing sirens to go off at the US Embassy.

Our Middle East Correspondent @Stone_SkyNews says there is no suggestion that they are from Iran.

Read the latest here: https://t.co/KycdXHNE3l pic.twitter.com/PWAKa9tggP

— Sky News (@SkyNews) January 8, 2020

This fellow fails to name the group allegedly responsible—Kata’ib Hezbollah, depicted as a zombified Iranian proxy. (On the other hand, this attack may be a false flag to drive the war narrative forward and keep the heat on Iran. Point is, we really don’t know.)

Kata’ib Hezbollah is a Shia paramilitary organization formed when George Bush and his neocon handlers invaded Iraq in 2003. It was specifically organized to resist Dick Cheney’s illegal and brutal invasion. It’s leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, was murdered along with Iranian major general Qasem Soleimani on January 3. 

Additionally, the chattering teleprompter readers and newspaper scribblers say almost nothing in regard to the Preamble to the 1899 Hague Convention II on Land War (specifically the Martens Clause) or the 1977 Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts.  Article 1, Paragraph 4 refers to armed conflicts “in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes.”

Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was killed specifically for his resistance to US occupation in addition to his relationship with Iran, which was natural considering he was a Shia Muslim, as are most Iraqis, and there are strong religious and cultural ties between what are now Iraqi and Iranian Shias. 

But we are not allowed to hear any of that from the war media. Instead, we are told Iran is responsible for the deaths of US soldiers illegally occupying Iraq. Forgotten is that fact both Sunni and Shia Iraqis have resisted US occupation for well over a decade. In the United States of Lies, this resistance is depicted as terrorism. 

Soleimani was murdered because he planned to talk with the Saudis about deescalating tension in the Middle East. Trump’s high-tech Mafia hit on Soleimani was also designed to please the Israelis. They have waged an assassination campaign against Palestinian activists for more than sixty years. Additionally, they have murdered a number of Iranian nuclear scientists and Lebanese Hezbollah leaders and activists (most notoriously Sayyed Abbas Musawi in 1992). It is safe to say the double hit in Baghdad was coordinated with the Israelis. 

Donald Trump is the most outspoken pro-Zionist president in US history. The Zionist agenda, most urgently advocated by Bibi Netanyahu these many years, calls for the destruction of Iran on par with the destruction of Iraq and similar criminal acts in Afghanistan,  Syria, and Libya by Bush, Obama, and Trump. Iranian nukes serve as a pretext, however flimsy, to realize the Israeli agenda of political control in neighboring states and the further annexation of land in the Golan and the West Bank (and no doubt beyond; the Israelis have coveted Lebanon’s water resources for decades, i.e., Operation Litani). 

Donald Trump’s Kabuki theater of Fire and Fury must drive the neocons and Israelis up a wall, though. It was a different story under Bush. The neocons simply told a bunch of less than plausible lies, the media did the propagandizing and mesmerizing in preparation for the mass murder to follow, and it was off to the races. 

It can be said we were a somewhat different people in the first couple of years after 9/11. Now most people distracted, they’re inured to war, it has become part of the cultural fabric, it is endlessly portrayed as service to the nation in defense of freedom and liberty—and it’s all bullshit. 

Here’s what the corporate media never tells you. 

The killing of US soldiers in occupied Iraq is legal self-defense and resistance to alien occupation. Iran is not firing ineffective Katyusha rockets into the occupation Green Zone, Iraqis are. Iran is certainly provoking and assisting and can you really blame them? Brother and sister Shias just over the border are long-term occupied by alien invaders and the invaders keep making threats against Iran. 

Reality is irrelevant for the reality TV president. Reality dictates people invaded and occupied will resist, often with devastating result. The most radical Zionists in Israel do not and never have planned to make peace with the Arabs and Muslims around them. They have worked for many decades to undermine Arab nationalism, engage in false-flag deception, assassinate opponents in Mafia fashion, and prevent the barbarians from coming together, to paraphrase the late globalist Zbigniew Brzezinski. 

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Kurt Nimmo writes on his blog, Another Day in the Empire, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

The following report by Press TV is yet to be confirmed.

The AFP said it had received a copy of the letter late Monday and verified its authenticity with both US and Iraqi officials, the agency added.

This occurred prior to the Iran bombing of US military bases on January 8.

The alleged letter of withdrawal was by US Military in Baghdad. It was an initiative of Brigadier General William Seely, who oversees US Task Force Iraq. Was the letter  endorsed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Pentagon, The State Department and the White House?

US Defense Secretary Mark Esper later denied that the US military had announced preparation for “movement out of Iraq,” and the Pentagon claimed that an unsigned draft version of the letter had been sent by mistake.

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Has Washington decided upon US Military Withdrawal? 

Amid confusion over a reported US letter to Iraq announcing the steps its military would take to move out of Iraq, Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi confirms that Baghdad has actually received “signed and translated” copies from the US Army concerning the withdrawal.

In a televised cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Abdul Mahdi clearly refuted all US claims that the letter had been sent by mistake or it had been inauthentic.

On Sunday, the Iraqi Parliament voted unanimously in favor of a bill demanding the withdrawal of all foreign military forces led by the United States from the country.

The vote came only two days after US airstrikes assassinated senior Iranian commander Lt. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, and the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) anti-terror group, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in the Iraqi capital.

Earlier, various news agencies reported that Brigadier General William Seely, who oversees US Task Force Iraq, had sent a letter to the head of Iraq’s Joint Operations Command on Monday, suggesting potential withdrawal of the forces belonging to a US-led coalition, which has been operating in Iraq since 2014 under the pretext of fighting Daesh.

‘Signed and translated’

US Defense Secretary Mark Esper later denied that the US military had announced preparation for “movement out of Iraq,” and the Pentagon claimed that an unsigned draft version of the letter had been sent by mistake.

Abdel Mahdi, however, said he had received signed and translated copies at 8:00 p.m. local time (1700 GMT, January 5) on Monday (January 6).

The letter discussed “redeploying with an aim to withdraw from the country. The expressions were very clear,” he said. “It was an official letter written in such a manner,” the premier told ministers.

“It’s not a piece of paper that fell off the printer or reached us by coincidence,” he added. The letters only contained a translation mistake that the US military corrected and provided Baghdad with new versions, Abdul Mahdi noted.

The AFP said it had received a copy of the letter late Monday and verified its authenticity with both US and Iraqi officials, the agency added.

In it, Seely informed his Iraqi counterparts that American troops were preparing to leave Iraq. Seely wrote the US-led coalition would “be re-positioning forces in the coming days and weeks to prepare for onward movement.”

“In order to conduct this task, Coalition Forces are required to take certain measures to ensure that the movement out of Iraq is conducted in a safe and efficient manner,” said the letter.

It said helicopters would be travelling in and around Baghdad’s heavily-fortified Green Zone, where the US Embassy is located as part of the preparations.

The AFP, meanwhile, said its reporters could hear helicopters flying low over Baghdad throughout the night on Monday as well as Tuesday.

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Readers are asking my take on the Iranian retaliation and Trump’s response.  I think a deal might have been arranged between Washington and Tehran via a third party. The Iranian attack resulted in no US casualties.  Thus, it serves  both Iran’s purpose of retaliating and Trump’s purpose of interpreting the Iranian retaliation to be, in effect, a stand down.  

Possibly Trump will apply “crippling sanctions” as a cover for withdrawal from most of the Middle East.  Iran wants the US out, and Trump’s original intention was to withdraw before Russiagate forced him to stay. Thus, both Trump and Iran have a common interest in US withdrawal. Although the Iranian missiles killed no one, they did demonstrate to Israel that the Iranian missiles have pin point accuracy.  As Israel is a small land area, the accuracy of Iranian missiles possibly has changed Israel’s mind about provoking a war.  If Israel also stands down, perhaps the crisis is over.

On the other hand, the neoconservatives will be unhappy.  They see chaos in Iran as a way of spreading instability into the Russian Federation.  The military/security complex will be unhappy as US withdrawal would downsize their profits. US oil interests will be unhappy to lose the Iraqi oil.  

Trump is in a better position now to stand up to these powerful interests. The war scare has introduced a sobering element. Republican senators have urged Trump to de-escalate. Russia, China, and Turkey have spoken against any escalation. The Barr-Durham investigation of the role of the military/security complex and Obama regime in orchestrating the “Russiagate” hoax brings a sense of vulnerability to the CIA, FBI, and Obama Justice (sic) Department.  Therefore, Trump possibly can turn the situation to the advantage of his original aim to withdraw from the Middle East and restore normal relations with Russia.

Trump’s appalling decisions and explanations are largely a product of the vulnerable position he has been put in by three years of CIA, FBI, and Democratic Party efforts to remove him from the presidency.  Now that vulnerability has shifted to his opponents, unless they physically assassinate him, Trump may yet prevail with his peace agenda.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog, Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Iran’s symbolic missile strike against two US bases in Iraq was a soft power victory for the Islamic Republic despite not causing any casualties, though the US undoubtedly achieved a military victory by assassinating Maj. Gen. Soleimani in Baghdad last week, with this superficial “tit-for-tat” outcome being used by both sides to de-escalate tensions away from a destructive conventional war.

When U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, he certainly had not expected that Iran would respond in the way it did by bombarding two U.S. military bases in Iraqi territory. It is likely that his advisers had convinced him that no country in the world had the courage to attack the U.S. so blatantly as no one else had since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II. The Iranians did of course, as was expected by those who understand the ideology of the Islamic Republic that has a deeply ingrained martyrdom complex that stretches back to 680AD when Imam Ali Ibn al-Husayn was killed in Karbala, Iraq.

Trump has claimed that there were no American casualties while Iran has claimed there were at least 80. With the Erbil and Ain al-Assad bases bombarded and several U.S. aircrafts, drones and helicopters destroyed, it is unlikely that there were no U.S. casualties – however there is no way in knowing at this time whether there were 80. We can expect Washington to keep the true number of casualties a secret, in complete opposition to Iran who openly celebrate their martyrs.

The Ain al-Assad military base is the largest and most equipped U.S. base in the region, and one of a few U.S. special bases around the world, at the size of about half of Lebanon. The fact that the Americans have deployed their most sophisticated radar systems in Iraq, many of which have been destroyed, demonstrates the ineffectiveness of the Patriot missile defense system. This was despite U.S. forces in the region being put on high alert. This will only be in Russia’s favors as it continues to lure the S-400 system to potential buyers.

Not only did the attack on the Ain al-Assad military base expose the ineffectiveness of the Patriot system, Iran also targeted the Erbil base in Iraqi Kurdistan. This base was a center to try and encourage the Iraqi Kurds to rebel against the central government in order to put pressure on the central Iraqi government. The attack on the Erbil base was a warning that even a U.S. withdrawal into Kurdistan does not make them any less safe.

It was expected by most commentators that Iran’s retaliation for the martyrdom of Soleimani would be in the form of utilizing its regional paramilitary allies on U.S. positions. By directly attacking U.S. forces brazenly and openly, Tehran has demonstrated that the U.S. are not safe in any part of the region. However, Iran had no choice but to retaliate as it would demonstrate the country’s leadership only had empty rhetoric in defending itself. The U.S. would certainly be more inclined to carry out further attacks against Iran and its allies if Tehran did not respond.

If there is a war going on in Iraq between the U.S. and Iran, it probably will not be limited to one country and will engulf the whole region, and potentially, across the world. Washington cannot be counted on to abide by international laws and regulations. The countries in the region, particularly the Gulf States, should also bear in mind that the presence of U.S. bases on their land will not only fail to provide security, but will also endanger their national security as all states who assist the U.S. in any aggression against Iran will become legitimate targets, as Tehran has already warned.

Rather, the murder of Soleimani has only united Iranians, including those who have been protesting across the country since November, blaming the government for the increased fuel prices and difficult economic situation, ignoring the crippling U.S. enforced sanctions. The major demands of the Iranian people are now for the expulsion of the U.S. military from the region, something that the Islamic Republic’s leadership has loudly and clearly demanded as well.

Now that Iran has made its first response to the U.S. so directly, Trump for now is refusing to respond militarily and will impose greater sanctions against Iran. However, Iran has already made the demand that the U.S. withdraws from the region. To achieve this without directly provoking Trump again, Iran is likely to employ the militias it backs in Syria and Iraq to target U.S. military installations. With any Israeli involvement in this war effort, Iran can use Hezbollah and various Palestinian militias to pressurize the Jewish state internally and externally.

Therefore, since Iran has already promised to expel the U.S. from the region, the next phase of the anti-U.S. war effort will be asymmetrical warfare by Iran. If Iran engages in asymmetrical warfare, the return of dead and wounded American soldiers will severely hamper Trump’s re-election campaign this year as he originally ran on the ticket of criticizing wars in West Asia when he was competing for the presidency against Hillary Clinton years earlier. The Iranian leadership are now in control of the future of the West Asia and have demonstrated they are willing to retaliate against the U.S. who is seeking to maintain the unipolar hegemonic world order that emerged with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Iran has once again shown that the 21st century is not one of unipolarity that Washington hopes to maintain, but rather multipolar with several strong middle and Great Powers.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

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Throughout the post-WW II era, permanent war and military Keynesianism has been and remains official US policy — under both right wings of the one-party state.

Endless wars against invented enemies are glorified in the name of peace, what the Pentagon calls a “long war,” what Dick Cheney once said won’t end in our lifetime.

In his book titled “Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace,” Gore Vidal said: “(O)ur rulers…made sure that we are never to be told the truth about anything that our government has done to other people, not to mention our own.”

Seymour Melman explained that “every major aspect of American life is…shaped by our Permanent War Economy” — peace and stability anathema notions to bipartisan US policymakers.

Militarism, endless wars of aggression, and corporate handouts come at the expense of unmet human needs.

Anti-nuclear activist/physician Helen Caldicott stressed that the US “addiction (to wars) in (the) nuclear age, (could) destroy all life on earth, creating the final epidemic of the human race.”

Trump is captive to dark forces controlling him, a geopolitical know-nothing businessman/TV personality transformed into a warrior president, escalating inherited wars, risking new ones.

Endless wars serve US imperial aims. World peace and stability defeat them — what was likely explained to Trump straightaway after taking office.

Hostility toward Iran without letup continues on his watch — war by other means through economic terrorism and other hostile actions, short of all-out hot war US policymakers know can’t be won.

Trump’s anti-Iran agenda has nothing to do with preventing the country from developing nuclear weapons it abhors, doesn’t have, never sought, and wants eliminated everywhere — while ignoring nuclear armed and dangerous Israel.

No criticism of its apartheid viciousness or terror-bombing of Syrian sites is mentioned by US policymakers or establishment media, nothing said about the menace it poses — in contrast to regional peace and stability advocate Iran.

US hostility toward the Islamic Republic has everything to do with wanting it returned to US vassal state status, gaining control over its vast hydrocarbon resources, and eliminating Israel’s main regional rival.

Trump turned truth on its head, saying the US “is ready to embrace peace with all who seek it (sic)” — while waging endless aggressive wars in multiple theaters, along with war by other means on Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Russia, China, Cuba, and other countries the US doesn’t control.

Iran’s UN envoy Majid Takht Ravanchi responded to Trump’s hollow claim, saying:

“(P)artnership with the United States is meaningless as long as the country persists with its policy of ‘escalation and animosity.’ ”

The Trump regime continues hot war and by other means against nations the US doesn’t control.

It abandoned the landmark INF Treaty and JCOPA nuclear deal — based on Big Lies and deception.

It’s economic terrorism on Iran, Venezuela, and other countries is all about crushing their economies and immiserating their people.

Unlawful US sanctions are weapons of war by other means. Trump falsely accused Iran of “support(ing) terrorism” — a US, NATO, Israeli, Saudi specialty, what Iran actively combats, General Soleimani key in defeating US-supported ISIS jihadists in Iraq and Syria, likely why he was assassinated.

For now, Trump stepped back from the brink of all-out hot war on Iran — while continuing unlawful hostile actions against the country and others.

What’s ahead is likely to be more of the same. The US is a belligerent state waging endless war on humanity at home and abroad.

Trump continues the hostile agenda he inherited — abandoning peace, stability, equity, justice, the rule of law, and other democratic values like most of his predecessors.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Evan Vucci/AP/Shutterstock

Days after the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, new and important information is coming to light from a speech given by the Iraqi prime minister. The story behind Soleimani’s assassination seems to go much deeper than what has thus far been reported, involving Saudi Arabia and China as well the U.S. dollar’s role as the global reserve currency.

The Iraqi prime minister, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, has revealed details of his interactions with Trump in the weeks leading up to Soleimani’s assassination in a speech to the Iraqi parliament. He tried to explain several times on live television how Washington had been browbeating him and other Iraqi members of parliament to toe the American line, even threatening to engage in false-flag sniper shootings of both protesters and security personnel in order to inflame the situation, recalling similar modi operandi seen in Cairo in 2009, Libya in 2011, and Maidan in 2014. The purpose of such cynicism was to throw Iraq into chaos.

Here is the reconstruction of the story:

[Speaker of the Council of Representatives of Iraq] Halbousi attended the parliamentary session while almost none of the Sunni members did. This was because the Americans had learned that Abdul-Mehdi was planning to reveal sensitive secrets in the session and sent Halbousi to prevent this. Halbousi cut Abdul-Mehdi off at the commencement of his speech and then asked for the live airing of the session to be stopped. After this, Halbousi together with other members, sat next to Abdul-Mehdi, speaking openly with him but without it being recorded. This is what was discussed in that session that was not broadcast: 

Abdul-Mehdi spoke angrily about how the Americans had ruined the country and now refused to complete infrastructure and electricity grid projects unless they were promised 50% of oil revenues, which Abdul-Mehdi refused.

The complete (translated) words of Abdul-Mahdi’s speech to parliament:

This is why I visited China and signed an important agreement with them to undertake the construction instead. Upon my return, Trump called me to ask me to reject this agreement. When I refused, he threatened to unleash huge demonstrations against me that would end my premiership.

Huge demonstrations against me duly materialized and Trump called again to threaten that if I did not comply with his demands, then he would have Marine snipers on tall buildings target protesters and security personnel alike in order to pressure me.

I refused again and handed in my resignation. To this day the Americans insist on us rescinding our deal with the Chinese.

After this, when our Minister of Defense publicly stated that a third party was targeting both protestors and security personnel alike (just as Trump had threatened he would do), I received a new call from Trump threatening to kill both me and the Minister of Defense if we kept on talking about this “third party”.

Nobody imagined that the threat was to be applied to General Soleimani, but it was difficult for Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi to reveal the weekslong backstory behind the terrorist attack.

I was supposed to meet him [Soleimani] later in the morning when he was killed. He came to deliver a message from Iran in response to the message we had delivered to the Iranians from the Saudis.

We can surmise, judging by Saudi Arabia’s reaction, that some kind of negotiation was going on between Tehran and Riyadh:

The Kingdom’s statement regarding the events in Iraq stresses the Kingdom’s view of the importance of de-escalation to save the countries of the region and their people from the risks of any escalation.

Above all, the Saudi Royal family wanted to let people know immediately that they had not been informed of the U.S. operation:

The kingdom of Saudi Arabia was not consulted regarding the U.S. strike. In light of the rapid developments, the Kingdom stresses the importance of exercising restraint to guard against all acts that may lead to escalation, with severe consequences.

And to emphasize his reluctance for war, Mohammad bin Salman sent a delegation to the United States. Liz Sly, the Washington Post Beirut bureau chief, tweated:

Saudi Arabia is sending a delegation to Washington to urge restraint with Iran on behalf of [Persian] Gulf states. The message will be: ‘Please spare us the pain of going through another war’.

What clearly emerges is that the success of the operation against Soleimani had nothing to do with the intelligence gathering of the U.S. or Israel. It was known to all and sundry that Soleimani was heading to Baghdad in a diplomatic capacity that acknowledged Iraq’s efforts to mediate a solution to the regional crisis with Saudi Arabia.

It would seem that the Saudis, Iranians and Iraqis were well on the way towards averting a regional conflict involving Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Riyadh’s reaction to the American strike evinced no public joy or celebration. Qatar, while not seeing eye to eye with Riyadh on many issues, also immediately expressed solidarity with Tehran, hosting a meeting at a senior government level with Mohammad Zarif Jarif, the Iranian foreign minister. Even Turkey and Egypt, when commenting on the asassination, employed moderating language.

This could reflect a fear of being on the receiving end of Iran’s retaliation. Qatar, the country from which the drone that killed Soleimani took off, is only a stone’s throw away from Iran, situated on the other side of the Strait of Hormuz. Riyadh and Tel Aviv, Tehran’s regional enemies, both know that a military conflict with Iran would mean the end of the Saudi royal family.

When the words of the Iraqi prime minister are linked back to the geopolitical and energy agreements in the region, then the worrying picture starts to emerge of a desperate U.S. lashing out at a world turning its back on a unipolar world order in favor of the emerging multipolar about which I have long written.

The US, now considering itself a net energy exporter as a result of the shale-oil revolution (on which the jury is still out), no longer needs to import oil from the Middle East. However, this does not mean that oil can now be traded in any other currency other than the U.S. dollar.

The petrodollar is what ensures that the U.S. dollar retains its status as the global reserve currency, granting the U.S. a monopolistic position from which it derives enormous benefits from playing the role of regional hegemon.

This privileged position of holding the global reserve currency also ensures that the U.S. can easily fund its war machine by virtue of the fact that much of the world is obliged to buy its treasury bonds that it is simply able to conjure out of thin air. To threaten this comfortable arrangement is to threaten Washington’s global power.

Even so, the geopolitical and economic trend is inexorably towards a multipolar world order, with China increasingly playing a leading role, especially in the Middle East and South America.

Venezuela, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Qatar and Saudi Arabia together make up the overwhelming majority of oil and gas reserves in the world. The first three have an elevated relationship with Beijing and are very much in the multipolar camp, something that China and Russia are keen to further consolidate in order to ensure the future growth for the Eurasian supercontinent without war and conflict.

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, is pro-US but could gravitate towards the Sino-Russian camp both militarily and in terms of energy. The same process is going on with Iraq and Qatar thanks to Washington’s numerous strategic errors in the region starting from Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011 and Syria and Yemen in recent years.

The agreement between Iraq and China is a prime example of how Beijing intends to use the Iraq-Iran-Syria troika to revive the Middle East and and link it to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative.

While Doha and Riyadh would be the first to suffer economically from such an agreement, Beijing’s economic power is such that, with its win-win approach, there is room for everyone.

Saudi Arabia provides China with most of its oil and Qatar, together with the Russian Federation, supply China with most of its LNG needs, which lines up with Xi Jinping’s 2030 vision that aims to greatly reduce polluting emissions.

The U.S. is absent in this picture, with little ability to influence events or offer any appealing economic alternatives.

Washington would like to prevent any Eurasian integration by unleashing chaos and destruction in the region, and killing Soleimani served this purpose.  The U.S. cannot contemplate the idea of the dollar losing its status as the global reserve currency. Trump is engaging in a desperate gamble that could have disastrous consequences.

The region, in a worst-case scenario, could be engulfed in a devastating war involving multiple countries. Oil refineries could be destroyed all across the region, a quarter of the world’s oil transit could be blocked, oil prices would skyrocket ($200-$300 a barrel) and dozens of countries would be plunged into a global financial crisis. The blame would be laid squarely at Trump’s feet, ending his chances for re-election.

To try and keep everyone in line, Washington is left to resort to terrorism, lies and unspecified threats of visiting destruction on friends and enemies alike.

Trump has evidently been convinced by someone that the U.S. can do without the Middle East, that it can do without allies in the region, and that nobody would ever dare to sell oil in any other currency than the U.S. dollar.

Soleimani’s death is the result of a convergence of U.S. and Israeli interests. With no other way of halting Eurasian integration, Washington can only throw the region into chaos by targeting countries like Iran, Iraq and Syria that are central to the Eurasian project. While Israel has never had the ability or audacity to carry out such an assassination itself, the importance of the Israel Lobby to Trump’s electoral success would have influenced his decision, all the more so in an election year .

Trump believed his drone attack could solve all his problems by frightening his opponents, winning the support of his voters (by equating Soleimani’s assassination to Osama bin Laden’s), and sending a warning to Arab countries of the dangers of deepening their ties with China.

The assassination of Soleimani is the U.S. lashing out at its steady loss of influence in the region. The Iraqi attempt to mediate a lasting peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia has been scuppered by the U.S. and Israel’s determination to prevent peace in the region and instead increase chaos and instability.

Washington has not achieved its hegemonic status through a preference for diplomacy and calm dialogue, and Trump has no intention of departing from this approach.

Washington’s friends and enemies alike must acknowledge this reality and implement the countermeasures necessary to contain the madness.

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Trump’s remarks this morning show that his Iran policy remains as blinkered and reckless as ever. Following the Iranian retaliation last night that caused no casualties, the president does not appear to be escalating the conflict further for the moment. Then again, there would have been no conflict at all were it not for the president’s excessive and illegal actions over the last week. Trump’s remarks were representative of his Iran policy: dishonest and blinkered.

The speech began with his bizarre statement that “Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon,” but then there is currently no danger that Iran will develop a nuclear weapon. The main reason for that is still the JCPOA that he has worked overtime to destroy. This first line sets tone for the propaganda that follows. The president’s Iran policy is founded on a lie that one of the most successful nonproliferation agreements of all time is “defective,” and that misinforms and warps everything else. It is not possible for a policy to be effective or sound when it is based on such a ridiculous falsehood.

Trump’s justification for assassinating Soleimani leans heavily on describing him as a terrorist, but this ignores that he was a state actor serving in a branch of the Iranian military. This erases the very important distinction between targeting non-state terrorists and members of another country’s military, and choosing to ignore that distinction is what so dangerously escalated tensions with Iran over the last few days. The president doesn’t even attempt to offer a legal justification for what he did, because it was plainly illegal and the president obviously couldn’t care less about the law in any case.

The same bankrupt policy of economic warfare and collective punishment that brought the U.S. and Iran to this point remains unchanged. Trump reiterates his support for this failed policy again in the speech:

As we continue to evaluate options in response to Iranian aggression, the United States will immediately impose additional punishing economic sanctions on the Iranian regime. These powerful sanctions will remain until Iran changes its behavior.

Trump has piled on so many sanctions already that there is little more strangling of the Iranian economy to be done, but the insistence on adding even more sanctions in the wake of the last two weeks proves that the president and his administration are incapable of learning from their failures. It should be obvious to everyone now that the only changes in Iranian behavior over the last eighteen months have been to respond more forcefully to U.S. provocations and economic warfare. When Trump says that sanctions will remain until Iran “changes its behavior,” he is saying that the sanctions will remain in place forever. The unrealistic and maximalist goals that have defined Trump’s Iran policy remain an insurmountable obstacle to any constructive diplomacy, and the president shows no sign of altering them. The suggestion that there are additional “options” under consideration is a worrisome sign that the situation could deteriorate again very quickly.

The speech was full of the usual lies and inaccuracies that we hear about the nuclear deal. Trump refers to the mythical $150 billion that Iran was supposedly “given,” but in reality sanctions relief provided a much smaller amount of Iran’s money and most of that money was not used to support its regional activities. Trump’s preoccupation with the money that came with sanctions relief is a reminder that he and other Iran hawks are reflexively opposed to giving Iran any sanctions relief, and that is how we can be certain that their interest in a so-called “better deal” is just so much hot air. If someone is angry about sanctions relief as part of the nuclear deal, he doesn’t want any agreement at all.

He asserts that Iran is responsible for “creating hell” in Yemen, which is a particularly galling line coming from a president who has eagerly supported the Saudi coalition’s destructive war there and who has resisted every effort to end U.S. support for the wrecking and starvation of Yemen. Trump also claimed that “Iran’s hostilities substantially increased after the foolish Iran nuclear deal was signed in 2013.” He gets the date of the agreement wrong, and he misrepresents the record. The JCPOA was concluded in 2015, and over the next several years there was no notable increase in Iran’s activities. All of the Iranian actions Trump cites came after he reneged on the agreement, and they happened in direct response to the economic war that he has been waging. “Maximum pressure” has generated predictable resistance, and then Trump dishonestly claims that Iran’s response to sanctions was a result of the earlier deal that he violated.

Trump declares that Iran “must abandon its nuclear ambitions,” but Iran has no such ambitions to abandon. The president’s mindless hostility to the JCPOA has led him to undermine and damage a highly successful nonproliferation agreement and create a crisis with Iran out of a delusional belief shared with other Iran hawks that severely restricting Iran’s nuclear program amounts to assisting them in obtaining a nuclear weapon. Trump has wreaked havoc on the Iranian economy, sabotaged the JCPOA, and taken the U.S. to the brink of war more than once in pursuit of an irrational fixation with “solving” a problem that had already been successfully managed. Once again, none of this had to happen, and all of it stems from the president’s choice to trash a successful agreement and attack the Iranian people with sanctions.

The president’s rhetoric about “making a deal” is obviously hollow, and there is no reason to take it any more seriously now than we have in the past. Following last week’s attack and the political backlash inside Iran against it, the prospect of negotiating with the U.S. under this president is more radioactive than ever. European governments have no incentive to ditch the JCPOA now, and last week’s attack gives Russia and China another reason to offer political and economic support to Iran. His appeal to the Iranian people is likewise empty. The economic war, the travel ban, and his threats against Iranian culture all prove that he has nothing but contempt for the Iranian people and their country.

The president committed a reckless and illegal act of war last week. We are fortunate that both governments have refrained from further escalation so far, but the potential for miscalculation and conflict remains great. The president made an extremely dangerous decision in violation of the Constitution. He has to be held accountable and put in check, and if he isn’t there will be nothing to prevent him from ordering more illegal attacks in the future.

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

Featured image is from The Daily Dot

Once upon a time there was a Constitution of the United States. In Article II, Section 2 it stipulated that only the U.S. Congress has the power to declare war, which means the American president has to go to the legislative body and make a case for going to war against an enemy or enemies. If there is a vote in favor of war, the president is empowered as commander-in-chief to direct the available resources against the enemy.

There is also something called international law. Under international law there are situations in which a head of state or head of government can use military force defensively or even preemptively if there is a substantial threat that is imminent. But normally, a country has to go through a procedure similar to that in the U.S. Constitution, which means making a case that the war is justified before declaring war. The Nuremberg Tribunals ruled that starting a war of aggression is the ultimate crime.

The president has already declared that he needs no approval from Congress or from anyone else to initiate further military operations against Iran in the Middle East, even if the action taken is “disproportionate.” Meanwhile he, the State Department and the Pentagon are all stating, without presenting any evidence at all to the public, that Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani was planning attacks that would kill “hundreds of Americans” as a casus belli justifying his assassination. The White House is also asserting that the killing was done to “stop a war,” which makes no sense even coming from the addled tweet-conditioned brain of Donald J. Trump. And if one still harbors suspicions that Trump might actually be of sound mind, it is possible to listen to him on the day after the assassination while speaking to a gathering of his supporters at an evangelical church in Florida. He told the cheering crowd that “God is on our side” and that Soleimani “…was planning a very major attack, and we got him.” The audience went wild in approval, chanting “four more years.”

Such chest beating moments of pretend strong leadership coming from president bone spurs as well as similar justifications for an assassination that will be surfacing over the next few days simply do not pass the smell test. Take the window dressing away from the Pentagon and media propaganda and all one has left is that the United States illegally and openly killed a senior official from a country with which it is not at war and did so without the consent of the third country where the assassination took place with which the U.S. is also not at war. The assassination was not in reality based on any imminent threat and is therefore illegal under international law and is undeniably an unconstitutional act of war directed against both Iran and Iraq.

What is particularly bizarre about Trump-think on this issue is that the assassination was carried out right in the open in a country with which the United States has had of late a friendly relationship and which allows American soldiers to be based on its soil. Judging from the crowds of protesters gathered in Baghdad to protest the killing, that somewhat comfortable arrangement is about to end. And it will also end American involvement in neighboring Syria, which will be unsustainable without a presence in Iraq. That is the only good news to come out of the assassination.

To be sure nations at war will try and sometimes succeed to assassinate enemy leaders, and the intelligence services of various countries also have been known to kill foreign politicians who are considered to be threatening. America’s best friend Israel leads the world in that statistic. But spy agencies work their mischief on a basis of plausible denial, which means that the countries that carry out assassinations make every effort to obscure their role and permit deniability.

The difference in what the White House has done now is that another page has been turned in the process of the United States going completely rogue. It all started when George W. Bush warned that “you’re either with us or against us.” Barack Obama subsequently labored over his Tuesday morning kill lists, which included American citizens, and the Trump White House has now expanded that license, asserting that it can act with complete impunity and out in the open to kill anyone at any time anywhere without due process or any actual demonstrated cause or accountability.

Donald Trump should be aware that there is considerable downside to the tiger than he has let out of its cage. What will he do if “enemies” all over the world decide to copy the Trump example and kill American diplomats, soldiers and tourists because they oppose U.S. policies. And what about if they up the ante a little bit and kill senior Ambassadors, Congressmen, and even succeed in killing a presidential cabinet member or two. Trump in his foolishness has invited reciprocity and has even granted those who do the killing a certain immunity if they are claiming that they are doing it to stop something worse, i.e. war.

Finally, if the target of the assassination had been anyone but an Iranian, Israel’s enemy, one can count on there being hell to pay with Congress and the media over Trump’s having gone completely off the rails. Assassinating a foreign leader as a new United States government policy has to be an impeachable offense. Forget about obstruction of justice and collusion with foreigners: assassination is the real deal and if it does not constitute a high crime, it is hard for one to imagine what does. By all means let’s impeach Trump based on what he has actually done, not on speculation over what he might have connived at.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has repeatedly justified the U.S. “extreme pressure” directed against Tehran, demanding that Islamic Republic take steps to become a “normal country.” The real question should be, “When will the United States of America become normal?”

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Just after midnight local time today, Iranian ballistic missiles “Fateh 313” hit two military bases in Iraq that host a significant concentration of US forces, along with other allies. The Iranian direct hit was the retaliation for the US assassination of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds brigade Sardar Qassem Soleimani and his companions, killed by a US drone at Baghdad airport last week. The Iranian retaliation carries several strategic messages to the Middle East for this year 2020 and for many years to come. What are these messages? What will come of Iran’s open attack on the most powerful country in the world?

A high-ranking Iranian official contacted the Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi after midnight to inform him that Iran had decided to retaliate for the assassination of its General. Iran said it would hit a concentration of US forces in Iraq, without hitting any Iraqi forces.

Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi – according to well-informed sources in Baghdad – answered that “this act may carry devastating results on the Middle East: Iraq refuses to become the theatre for a US-Iran war”. The Iranian official replied: “Those who began this cycle of violence are the US, not Iran; the decision has been taken.”

Prime Minister Abdel Mahdi informed the US forces of the Iranian decision. US declared a state of emergency and alerted all US bases in Iraq and the region in advance of the attack.

Iran bombed the most significant US military base in Iraq, Ayn al-Assad, where just in the last two days, the US command had gathered the largest number of forces. Many US bases, particularly in Shia controlled areas and around Baghdad, were evacuated in the last days for security reason towards Ayn al-Assad, a base that holds anti-nuclear shelters. Ayn al-Assad is located in the desert of al-Anbar, close to the Iraqi-Syrian borders. This is the same base from which the drones which assassinated Sardar Soleimani and his companions at Baghdad airport took off. Iran also bombed another US base in Erbil, Kurdistan.

Iran copied the style used by the Americans in communicating its decision. On the 30th of December 2019, US Defence Secretary Mark Esper contacted Prime Minister Abdel Mahdi and informed him – without asking his permission – of the US intention to bomb Iraqi Forces (Popular Mobilisation Force – PMF). Five Iraqi security forces bases on the Iraqi-Syrian borders were destroyed, killing and wounding 79 PMF, federal police and Iraqi army officers.

Esper gave little time (half an hour) to the Prime Minister to inform his forces. Iran gave Mr Abdel Mahdi half an hour before bombing US forces and launching between 16 modernised multi-warhead “Fateh 313” missiles against al-Anbar and Erbil bases.

Iraq has lost its sovereignty in the middle of the Iran-US battle. It can recover the control of its country only when the US forces leave Iraq as the Iraqi parliament has decided it. The decision came as a response to the assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani, who was serving as an envoy in a diplomatic capacity. Soleimani was officially invited by the Iraqi government in 2014 when Iraq asked Iran to send 100 Iranian advisors to Iraq to fight ISIS. He had Iraqi immunity and led the Iranian intelligence cell in Baghdad, not far from the US embassy, in coordination with Russian, Syrian and Iraqi officials. He was a diplomat carrying a diplomatic passport and was asked to meetthe Prime Minister of Iraq the following day at 08:30 am to receive a message from Saudi Arabia. Prime Minister Abdel Mahdi agreed to play a mediation role between Iran and Saudi Arabia and was the go-between following Iran’s peace initiative to the Arab leaders. Soleimani arrived in Iraq following a request from President Trump to calm down the tension with Iran. It was a multi-task trip.

Iran did use its precision missiles when bombing ISIS and the separatist Kurds in Kurdistan on the 8th of September last year when its missiles reached their desired target. Last night, Iran used its precision ballistic missiles with significant warheads on targets designed to avoid casualties and send a clear message to President Donald Trump. There were few if any victims. The US did not share information on casualties.

The Iranians did not use missiles from underground silos only but also overtly deployed its solid-fuel missiles against the two US operating bases in Iraq. Iran gave space for de-escalation because, without de-escalation, war will no doubt light up the entire Middle East.

President Trump cornered the Iranian regime so that it had to respond to the US assassination of its General. Its state outlet claimed “80 US servicemen were killed”, a message that gratified domestic opinion and the Iranian nationalism manifested by millions of crowds honouring Sardar Soleimani. It also served to gather public support behind the regime in case of US retaliation necessitating further Iranian retaliation that could lead to war.

The Iranian message is also directed to the US Democrats to use against the US President who had promised that his soldiers would not be in danger during his tenure. Instead, he is risking the lives of thousands of soldiers in one hit or confrontation with Iran and its allies in the Middle East.

Iran selected to also target the US base in Erbil to send a clear message. According to Iranian officials, it intended for the US to understand that in case its command decides to leave Iraq and gather in Erbil, its presence in Kurdistan is not far from its missiles and that US soldiers won’t be safe anywhere in Iraq.

Iran’s bombing is revealing that the US interception missiles were inactive in Ain al-Assad and that another significant attack with precision missiles could create a massacre if that were the intention behind the hit.

This is the second response to the assassination of Sardar Soleimani. The first came from the Iraqi parliament whose resolution calls for the withdrawal of all foreign forces from the country. The second came from President Hassan Rouhani who said: “You have managed to cut the hands of Qassem Soleimani (the hit dismembered the Iranian General), we shall cut your legs (force you out) from the Middle East.”

This is far from being the last Iranian hit against US forces in the Middle East. But if President Trump decides to refrain from retaliating, Iran will no longer hit the US forces directly and announce its responsibility. Iran and its allies are not expected to stop harassing the US forces if they stay in Iraq.

Another message was sent to Israel: the newly appointed commander of the IRGC-Quds Brigade Ismail Qaani met with all Palestinian groups in Tehran. According to a well-informed source, Iran promised “unlimited support to all Palestinian groups so that they reach their objective”. Indeed, Iran announced, “Israel is in partnership with the US in the assassination of Sardar Soleimani”.

The time when the US can hit without being hit back seems over. Since Pearl Harbour, this is the first time a country claims its responsibility for hitting US targets. This grave and complicated situation can end if there is a total withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. This step, already officially requested by the Iraqi parliament, can spare US servicemen’s lives.

The US is capable of using only the sky of Iraq, avoiding any land transport. But it is swimming in a severely hostile society in Iraq where every single soldier, officer or diplomat is a potential target. Following the hostile announcement of several groups in Iraq, it is clear there is no longer any safe place for US forces in the country. The assassination of Sardar Soleimani closed all roads of this US administration to all possible negotiation with Iran. Russia and China are waiting just behind the door to move in and fill the vacuum.

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Trump’s assassination of Iran’s general and senior diplomat, Soleimani, was a clear provocation by the US, designed to produce a further escalated military response by Iran. That did not happen. Iran did not take the bait. It responded minimally and appears to have done so in a way to avoid US deaths or even major US asset destruction.

If Iran had escalated militarily, which it was capable of doing, it would have fallen into Trump’s trap. Trump was prepared to unleash a greater military response on Iran. He would have had his ‘war’, i.e. his great distraction from his pending impeachment trial, as well as a major boost to his political base in the current election year.

Trump’s Baiting Iran To Escalate

Had Iran taken the bait, Trump would also have been able to bypass the War Powers Act before militarily escalating. The Act allows an unlimited and immediate US attack on an adversary that has attacked US forces. Up to now, Trump has had to explain to Congress, especially the US House of Representatives, why he had assassinated Soleimani in the first place. That was clearly an ‘act or war’ according to international law. And Trump had bypassed Congress before doing so, which the Act and prior precedents have required. A major Iran counterattack on the US would have put the issue of Trump’s bypassing the Act by assassinating Soleimani without discussing with Congress to bed. The new escalation and conflict would have become the center of debate in the US–not the assassination and how Congress was bypassed and ignored.

Iran’s missile launch yesterday against two Iraqi bases, one of which reportedly had no US forces, was clearly a measured and minimal response. It appears the missile launch may have been purposely designed to do minimal damage even to US military assets. That no photos of any damage have been released by the US suggests there wasn’t much. And no US forces were killed. Either Iran’s missiles and targeting are worthless; or Iran purposely intended minimal, or even no, effective damage.

Without physical evidence of extensive damage, and no American deaths from the missiles, it was, and remains, difficult for Trump to escalate military action further thereafter. Moreover, Iran’s statement after the launch that it had “concluded” its response made it further difficult for Trump to escalate a US military response after the launch.

Trump therefore trotted out before the cameras and declared a ‘victory’ in the exchange: a successful assassination in exchange for a dozen missiles that largely missed their targets and did no damage. In other words, Iran had done little in response to the US assassinating it leading general. Trump got to look tough to his political base at home after engaging in a foreign policy adventure, as the 2020 election takes off.

But the Trump/US/Neocon assault on Iran is not over. As neocon John Bolton has recently tweeted, the US was planning to assassinate Soleimani for some months now and had its plan ready to go. It just now pulled the trigger. Trump and the US were escalating the conflict steadily throughout December, as the US launched attacks on Iranian militia bases in Iraq, provoking the desired response of the militias assault on the US embassy in Baghdad. Trump in turn escalated the confrontation by assassinating Soleimani. Time will reveal what happened between the period of the US successful provocation of the militias and the subsequent assassination.

As the 2020 election year in the US continues, Trump will almost certainly replay this Iran provocation card again. It’s proved successful thus far. Iran is in a box: if it responds minimally, Trump declares a short term victory and looks good to his base in the election year; if it responds in kind militarily, Trump gets an even bigger distraction–both from the impeachment and all the growing concerns about his personal instability coming to the fore in the election season. A major war with Iran will rally support by the American people and push all other issues and Trump policy failures to the background. Trump will therefore undoubtedly resort once more to a major provocation, or even several, before the election.

Iran knows it is Trump’s foreign policy punching bag. It has been since Trump came to office. More blows against Iran are yet to come in this election year.

Iran’s Response: Past and Future

Iran has responded minimally to date. No doubt it will publicize and declare domestically that its missiles did great damage and more is to come to drive the US out of the middle east. But that’s for domestic consumption. Iran’s strategy is to wait out the Trump presidency. And to continue to use its refusal to escalate as evidence to the Europeans that it is the sane party in the US-Iran confrontation.Why? Iran wants Europe to continue to trade with it, to buy its oil. More importantly, it wants Europe to implement what it had suggested with regard to establishing a more independent international payments system.

The current system is called SWIFT, and is controlled by the US and US banks. With SWIFT the US can see who is complying with its sanctions on Iran (or sanctions on any other country). SWIFT is a key institution for US imperialism globally–along with the dollar, the global trading currency, US control of the IMF, dominance of the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, influencing global money flows and interest rates, and so on. Europe and Iran had been discussing setting up an independent international payments system, called INSTEX. The Europeans have been balking, however. Trump has been threatening them with sanctions should they do so. (Or should they install 5G wireless systems by China’s Huawei company. Or should they go forward with new Russian gas pipelines in the Baltic sea. And so on.)

In the 21st century, especially since 2008-09, the USA has been acting increasingly aggressive against allies and adversaries alike as US global economic hegemony begins to weaken. Thus we see tariffs as a more frequent foreign policy tool, economic sanctions imposed by the US increasingly the rule, US actions to destroy adversary economies’ currencies (e.g. Venezuela) as central to US goals of regime change, US direct assistance to indigenous capitalists to overturn democratic governments (Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia), and use of the SWIFT as a means to enforce sanctions and deny dollar access to targeted adversaries.

Should Europe and Iran establish an alternate INSTEX payment system it would mark a major blow to the US global economic empire and hegemony. Such an alternative payments system would likely be joined quickly by Russia, China, and others.

Iran therefore is keeping an eye on a possible agreement with Europe on such an alternative payment system that would enable it to avoid US sanctions. The US would then have no alternative but to blockade Iranian shipments physically. And that would be another act of war by Trump per international law.

Iran had much to lose, in other words, by escalating the conflict militarily with the US. And it didn’t fall for the Trump-Neocon provocation. Not yet. Its minimal response in recent days has made it impossible for Trump to escalate further, in turn, and unleash a greater US military conflict with Iran. Trump may have gained a propaganda victory in the election year with his base, but Trump’s inability to escalate still further means he won’t get his big distraction from his upcoming impeachment trial. Nor will he be able now to bypass the War Powers Act or smother the charge he has already ignored the Act’s limits by unilaterally assassinating a foreign government representative without consulting Congress first.

Iran will continue to avoid an all out war with the US, which Trump’s neocon advisers would prefer to see before the US November 2020 election. Iran leaves the door open to the Europeans. That door would have closed had it, Iran, escalated the conflict.

Trump and the neocons running US foreign policy had to acknowledge today the limits on any further US escalation, given Iran’s minimal response. Had the Trump decided to ratchet up the conflict military in reply to Iran’s minimal response, he would have reaffirmed himself to the world as the aggressor. Political concern about Trump bypassing the War Powers Act would have increased. He would have appeared even more ‘out of control’ to US allies and US voters. Trump has therefore declared a ‘victory’ by assassinating Soleimani and getting away with it. And since it ‘worked’, Trump will no doubt attempt it all again.

If Trump really wanted to renegotiate a new deal with Iran, this would have been an opportunity. He could have declared he was removing some sanctions as a offer to start negotiations. Instead, he ‘doubled down’, as he said, imposing new sanctions on Iran. Trump does not want a new deal with Iran. He never did. Trump has always planned to use Iran and a possible attack on it as his foreign policy punching bag for re-election. So he will keep on ‘punching’ as the 2020 election year progresses.

Every time Iran does not escalate, Trump can declare a partial victory and look tough on foreign policy to his base. And should Iran finally escalate in turn, then Trump has his excuse to intensify his military response.

Trump and his advisers see escalating the confrontation with Iran as a win-win situation. That’s why the provocations will continue. US provocations of Iran will not stop with the Soleimani assassination. They have only just begun.

The year ahead will tell whether Iran has the will to successfully wait out Trump until the US election, or whether US further provocations will result in Iran’s eventually responding more aggressively in kind in turn–i.e. whether Iran takes Trump’s bait and falls into the trap the US has set. This writer’s guess is they will find a way to wait him out, regardless of US efforts to continue to escalate the confrontation.

Provoking Iran is all about the US 2020 election. Trump is in the tradition of a long line of US Presidents (or would be-presidents), facing election or domestic troubles, who choose their own careers over War and the death of others: from Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam), to George H.W. Bush (Panama, 1st Gulf War), Bill Clinton (Bosnia), George W. Bush (Iraq war), and Hillary Clinton (Libya). None of these countries constituted a strategic threat to the USA. But all of them a convenient target to help them advance their political careers.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Jack Rasmus.

Dr. Rasmus is author of the just published book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump’, Clarity Press, January 2020, available at discount on this blog, and on Amazon and other sources as of January 15, 2020. He hosts the Alternative Visions radio show on the progressive radio network. His website is: http://kyklosproductions.com. His twitter handle @drjackrasmus.

Featured image is from the American Herald Tribune.

As long as tens of thousands of US combat troops, heavy weapons, and its jihadist proxies remain active in Middle East (ME) countries, a perpetual state of war will exist —  peace, stability and security to be unattainable.

That’s the reality of where things stand in the region, why Iran, its allies, and the Arab street’s main geopolitical goal is freeing the Middle East from the hostile US presence.

That’s what Iranian President Hassan Rouhani meant by the Islamic Republic’s “ultimate revenge,” calling for it to be delivered by “the nations of the region.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif stressed the same goal, saying the following:

“The Islamic Republic had to show a military reaction to the US government’s measure and it did, but this is not the end game.”

“The end will be the withdrawal of the US which does not need military action, and it is the result of the Americans’ move and the result of support they showed in this arrogant and stupid move,” adding:

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has declared that if the US makes a mistake, it will definitely be given a response.”

So far a “slap in the face alone,” it displayed Iran’s military capability to penetrate US air defenses at a key regional base, striking targets with pinpoint accuracy.

Satellite images showed considerable damage to multiple Ein Al-Assad airbase sites, reportedly struck by 15 high-velocity Fateh-313 and Qiam missiles — Qiam missiles reportedly equipped with radar jamming systems and fragmentation warheads.

An IRGC statement said that despite the Americans being on high alert, Iranian missiles penetrated Pentagon air defenses, no missiles intercepted and destroyed — no claim otherwise by Trump or the US military.

The purpose of Iran’s retaliation was at least twofold — striking the US in response to General Soleimani’s assassination, a Trump region act of war, along with displaying IRGC military capability to hit US targets with pinpoint accuracy, likely anywhere in the region.

According to one analyst, it appears Iran intended to damage or destroy structures on US bases targeted to weaken their military capability, while trying to avoid or minimize deaths and injuries.

In his Wednesday morning remarks, Trump said nothing about striking back militarily in response to Iran’s missile attack on US bases in Iraq — sticking to his usual anti-Islamic Republic rhetoric, indicating more (unlawful) sanctions to come.

There’s almost nothing left to impose them on besides Iranian officials, symbolic alone when targeting them.

Iran is likely more powerful militarily than any nation the US (preemptively) attacked in the post-WW II era.

It’s able to hit back hard against the US and its regional allies if attacked, what US intelligence and Pentagon officials likely explained to Trump, getting him to back off from greater Middle East war.

Already bogged down in three unwinnable quagmires (in Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen), it’s hard imagining that Pentagon commanders want a 4th one against a nation able to inflict considerable damage to US regional facilities and large numbers of casualties to US troops.

Al-out war with Iran would also likely make Trump a one-term president. Bodybags returning home in large numbers could doom his reelection prospects.

Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson withdrew from consideration for second terms because of the unpopular wars they waged in northeast and southeast Asia respectively.

Trump continues war on Iran by other means with no letup — short of turning it hot following Soleimani’s assassination, an act of war with no hot war follow-through so far.

The threat of US war on Iran by accident or design remains — even though Trump stepped back from the brink Wednesday.

With hardliners Netanyahu, Pompeo, and others likely pushing for added toughness on Iran, anything ahead is possible.

Trump’s top priority is getting reelected. Most likely, he’ll avoid doing whatever hurts his chances — but as he says time and again:

“We’ll see what happens.”

Given US rage for dominating other nations, anything ahead is possible.

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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.

New Year happens to be one of these rare moments in the news business when we pause to reflect on the greater context of the endless stories spouted out on a daily basis by an ever-growing variety of media platforms. And 2019 was one year which deserves more than a moment’s reflection. For it was an iconic year that saw more than ever the label ‘post-truth era’ used to describe the time in which we are living.

Nothing signified this more than the arrest of former Wikileaks editor Julian Assange, a man incarcerated for years inside the Ecuadorian embassy – his only crime to have published footage and documents exposing unlawful killings and torture committed by the US military. The collusion between the governments of Ecuador, the UK, and the US in orchestrating his illegal arrest – given his right to Asylum – really shines light on the gaping holes in western democracy. When journalism is attacked in this way, we should all be concerned.  As we speak, Assange is slowly dying in Britain’s most secure prison, Belmarsh, along with some of the country’s most notorious criminals. His treatment has been condemned by the UN as his basic human rights are continually being violated. This, I repeat, a man, whose only crime was to expose the crimes of others. But where are the mainstream journalists leaping to his defence?

2019 had started with another story which received little or no coverage in the mainstream press however; that of the UK’s Integrity Initiative scheme. This story clearly demonstrated the restrictions posed on journalists working in the UK at present, with the revelation that the British government was funding a covert propaganda campaign against Russia, involving journalists and academics across the globe. It highlighted that many of the anti-Russian articles and media appearances in the mainstream media were in fact ordered and paid for, in part, by the UK Foreign Office. The exposure of the leaked documents detailing this initiative ruffled more than a few establishment feathers, to the extent that my photograph, along with my colleagues’ was printed in The Times as part of a targeted smear story aimed at counteracting what was none other than basic fact. Once again, journalists had crossed the line in terms of revealing the truth about what the powers that be, are up to.

The mainstream media plays a fundamental role in this era of post-truth, as was never more apparent in the way it aided and abetted the government this year in its strategy to undermine the opposition led by Jeremy Corbyn prior to the election.  In much the same way as the Zinoviev letter was used to prevent a socialist government from coming to power in 1924, the media has led a concerted campaign to accuse the Labour leader and his party of anti-semitism, incredibly without providing a shred of evidence. But the hammering home of the message that Corbyn was anti-semitic paid off for his opponents; it coloured the December election campaign and was one of the main questions put to Labour MPs in countless negative interviews. Many prominent Jews spoke out against Labour’s unfair treatment, as did the Jewish Voice for Labour movement. Sadly, their pleas fell on deaf ears. Not surprising, according to Professor David Miller at the University of Bristol, whom I interviewed back in July 2019 and for whom this catalogue of smears against Corbyn was clear evidence of establishment bias.

As a result the effective nature of the campaign, Corbyn’s radical policies to improve people’s lives, didn’t get a look in. And despite the fact that Boris Johnson’s government was also facing allegations of Islamophobia, this received no real traction in the press. But Johnson, and his team, led by close advisor Dominic Cummings, know exactly how to play the media. Cummings, one of the key individuals behind Brexit, led a successful campaign for Britain to leave the EU back in 2016. Recently he helped Johnson to win the December general election also, with his catchy ‘Get Brexit Done’ slogan. But such victories have not been without their fare share of lies. Award-winning journalist Peter Oborne has researched the nature of the relationship between No.10 and the media since Johnson came to power, accusing British journalists of becoming part of the Prime Minister’s ‘fake news machine’. He has charged the mainstream media, from The Times to the BBC, of ‘peddling Downing Street’s lies and smears’ and even runs a website entitled ‘The lies, falsehoods and misrepresentations of the Boris Johnson government’. And Oborne himself is not even a socialist. He just believes in the truth.

2019 showed that never before has the survival of independent media been so important. If we have no objective media, then the truth itself is at stake.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Over the past two days, millions of people have marched in cities throughout Iran and Iraq to condemn the killing of Qassem Suleimani. The response to the assassination contradicts the narrative constructed by the Trump administration, the Democratic Party and the media to legitimize an illegal act of war.

Within hours of the assassination, the vast American propaganda machine began churning out the latest update of its never-ending “bad man” theory of politics. Yet another anti-American evil-doer had received his just desserts.

Trump’s inane and sadistic chortlings have found their inevitable chorus. In statements echoed hundreds of times on TV networks, Margaret Brennan, the host of CBS’s “Face the Nation,” declared, “Qassem Suleimani directed mass murder” and “killed thousands of people in the region.” This script was incorporated into the responses of countless politicians, including Trump’s supposed opponents in the Democratic Party.

Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren intoned, “Suleimani was a murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands.” Former Vice President Joe Biden added, “He deserved to be brought to justice for his crimes against American troops and thousands of innocents throughout the region.”

While reservations and concerns have been expressed about the tactical consequences of the action, and over Trump’s failure to consult with the appropriate security-cleared congressional leaders and provide proof that the US was confronted with any sort of imminent danger, there has been no protest against the brazen criminality of the murder, let alone any denunciation of the targeting of Suleimani.

The underlying moral legitimization of the assassination is the critical element of the political narrative that is left unchallenged.

The reason for this is that to present with any degree of honesty the life of Major General Qassem Suleimani would require acknowledging the politically criminal and morally filthy role that the United States and successive presidential administrations have played in subverting the interests of the people of Iran and the entire Middle East for upwards of 70 years.

First, some basic facts. Qassem Suleimani was not a terrorist or a murderer. He was a senior military officer and a political leader, traveling to Iraq in an official capacity as a diplomatic representative of a state of 82 million people.

He had just arrived in Iraq to meet with the Iraqi prime minister to discuss peace talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia. “I was supposed to meet Suleimani at the morning the day he was killed, he came to deliver me a message,” Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi told the country’s parliament Sunday.

Abdul-Mahdi said Trump had personally thanked him for his diplomatic efforts, giving the impression that Suleimani was not threatened with harm. And yet, within hours, the Iranian general was dead, in what Abdul-Mahdi condemned as a grave violation of Iraqi sovereignty.

Suleimani was born into a farming family on March 11, 1957. With his father facing bankruptcy and imprisonment for failing to meet payments on a loan from the government, Suleimani went to work on construction sites at the age of 13 to help pay his family’s debts.

In 1953, four years before Suleimani was born, the United States overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran and installed the dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in one of the most notorious coups ever organized by the Central Intelligence Agency. After removing the nationalist leader Mohammed Mossadegh from power, the United States insisted upon and instigated a reign of terror against the Communist (Tudeh) Party, which had a mass following.

Countless thousands of Iranian workers, intellectuals and youth were consigned to the prisons and torture chambers of the SAVAK secret police.

SAVAK was implicated, according to the Federation of American scientists, in “the torture and execution of thousands of political prisoners.” Its methods, according to the FAS, included “electric shock, whipping, beating, inserting broken glass and pouring boiling water into the rectum, tying weights to the testicles, and the extraction of teeth and nails.”

Iran, allied with Israel, served as America’s “gendarme of the Persian Gulf.” Under the so-called “Nixon Doctrine,” the United States funneled vast quantities of arms to the Shah’s regime, which was seen, with Saudi Arabia, as being one of the “twin pillars” of US domination over the Middle East. US arms transfers to Iran increased from $103.6 million in 1970 to $552.7 million in 1972. The United States was confident that the Shah’s terror regime was impregnable.

In December 1977, President Jimmy Carter personally toasted the Shah with the following words: “Iran is an island of stability in one of the most troubled areas of the world.”

This was the Iran in which Suleimani grew up and came of age.

But in the course of 1978, a massive popular movement swept across the country. The Shah’s attempt to hang onto power with mass killings, egged on by the United States, failed. The key role in the destruction of the Shah’s regime was played by the working class, particularly through strikes that crippled the critical oil sector of the Iranian economy.

Due to the betrayals of the Stalinist Tudeh party, the leadership of the revolution passed into the hands of the clerical nationalists under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. But there was no question that the revolution was fueled by hatred of the neo-colonial suppression of Iran by the United States. Following the overthrow of the Shah and the Ayatollah Khomeini’s accession to power on February 11, 1979, the 22-year-old Suleimani joined the Revolutionary Guard.

In September 1980 the United States, allying itself with the regime of Saddam Hussein, encouraged Iraq to attack Iran, producing a devastating eight-year war that led to over one million deaths. Tens of thousands of Iranians were killed, including through Iraq’s widespread use of chemical weapons deployed with the assistance of the United States. It was during that war that Suleimani emerged as a significant military figure.

Determined to prevent the defeat of Iraq, the Reagan administration provided Iraq with weapons, logistical support and critical information. But its most infamous intervention against Iran came on July 3, 1988. The United States Navy, deliberately targeting a civilian aircraft, shot down Iran Air Flight 655, killing all 290 people on board, including 66 children. The war came to an end one month later.

The politics of Qassem Suleimani was that of a bourgeois nationalist. But as a military officer, he was engaged in the defense of an historically oppressed country. Suleimani’s “ruthlessness” in the conduct of his responsibilities as a military officer was, one can assume, a response to his experiences in war and countering the continuous threats emanating from the United States and Israel.

The same media mouthpieces that condemn Suleimani as a murderer are silent on the crimes committed by the United States since its initial invasion of Iraq in 1991, including brutal sanctions under the Clinton administration that killed hundreds of thousands.

Following the second invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US has been implicated in innumerable war crimes, from the sadistic torture and rape of inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison, to the massacre in Fallujah, to the mass slaughter in the so-called anti-ISIS campaign in Mosul in 2017, which included the rampage by Navy Seal Edward Gallagher, who stabbed a wounded teenager to death and posed with his corpse as if he were a slaughtered animal.

In 2017, Trump casually observed, “We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent?” Two years later, Trump tweeted in October 2019 that “millions of people have died” as a result of US wars in the Middle East launched under “false & now disproven premise, WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION.”

But as far as the US media is concerned, the violent actions of the US military are to be celebrated, as when it lionized Trump’s former defense secretary James Mattis, the butcher of Fallujah, known as “Mad Dog,” and laughed off his statement that “it’s fun to shoot” people.

The media helped set the stage for Trump’s act of murder. The New York Times, the Washington Post and other major US newspapers have repeatedly justified extrajudicial killings.

There is a poem by Rudyard Kipling, which famously concludes: “We are not ruled by murderers, but only—by their friends.”

Were he alive today, the poet would be compelled to change the final line to conform with the current reality:

“The American people are ruled by murderers, whose killings are sanctioned by their friends.”

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“Don’t let Obama play the Iran card in order to start a war in order to get elected. —Be careful Republicans! Donald Trump (1946- ), 45th American president and hotel and casino owner, (statement made in a tweet, on Mon., Oct. 22, 2012)

“You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” – Jacques Abbadie (1654-1727), French Protestant, in1684. (N.B.: Often wrongly attributedto Abraham Lincoln)

“Politically speaking, tribal nationalism always insists that its own people is surrounded by ‘a world of enemies’, ‘one against all’, that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man.“  – Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), in 1951.

“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.“ – Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), in 1951.

I have long suspected that Donald Trump would do anything to save his political skin, and I mean anything, including murder and assassination — if threatened with impeachment, — and even commit an act of war against a foreign country. — Well, as I feared, he just did that against Iran.

Such is the level of public morality in the United States these days. It is pretty low. The cynical ‘wag-the-dog’ scheme is alive and well in the United States and it is used by unscrupulous politicians when they are in political trouble. Some people fall for it all the time.

Over the years, the United States government has waged a very aggressive campaign against Iran:

1- Indeed, the current U.S. President has used very threatening language against Iran and its population of 80 million. The list of Mr. Trump’s menacing statements is very long:

In 2012, while still a private citizen, he declared that the United States “could blow them away to the Stone Age!” Similarly, on September 5, 2013, he made another outlandish comment, saying that “maybe we should knock the hell out of Iran and their nuclear capabilities!” And, as recently as Sunday, January 5, Donald Trump declared on Twitter that he was ready to destroy 52 Iranian cultural sites, a deed that could constitute a war crime, etc., etc.

2- Let us add to the picture the cascade of severe economic and financial sanctions that the U.S. government has imposed on Iran. These sanctions, described by President Trump as “the toughest sanctions ever against a country”, have ranged from an embargo on Iranian exports of oil, steel, aluminum, etc. up to a complete ban to any country on using the U.S. dollar in its commercial transactions with Iran. It goes without saying that such sanctions have had devastating effects on the Iranian economy.

In 1955, however, the United States signed a friendship treaty with Iran. Since that treaty has never been terminated, the fifteen judges of the International Court of Justice, located in The Hague, unanimously decided, on October 3, 2018, that the trade sanctions imposed by the United States on Iran constituted a violation of the treaty. However, the Trump’s administration has ignored the court’s decision.

3- May 8, 2018 is also a fateful date because it marks another provocation against Iran and an insult to several other countries. This is indeed the date when U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the United States was withdrawing from the Iran nuclear Deal, an agreement signed on Nov. 24, 2013, by Iran and the six countries of China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States and Germany, and whose main purpose was to stabilize the Middle East. This ominous decision has opened a Pandora’s Box of disasters to come. But Donald Trump wanted to please his rich Zionist donors and build for himself the image of a strong man, and … damn the consequences!

4- Of course, the biggest provocation yet of Donald Trump has been to do what no previous American president had done before, i.e. to give an order to assassinate a highly ranked Iranian general, and a member of the Iranian government. This was done seemingly in coordination with the Israeli government.

Indeed, the ordering of the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, andalso of Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, with a U.S. drone strike on the Baghdad airport, on January 2, 2020, has been labeled ‘an act of war’ and, as it should have been expected, it has inflamed the entire Middle East.

Perhaps in doing so, American politician Trump has attempted to transform himself into a ‘wartime commander in chief’. He may have believed that such a development would benefit him personally in his trial for impeachment in the U.S. Senate and during the coming 2020 presidential election.

That political ploy worked well for George W. Bush in 2003, with the invasion of Iraq, an illegal and costly war of aggression, and which the U.S. is still saddled with, 17 years later. Now, it is well known that the Iraq war was based on big lies, i.e. about nonexistent weapons of mass destructions (WMD) in Iraq.

Since 2018, and with his military decision at the start of this year, Trump hopes to repeat the same 2003 Bush-Cheney scam, and he aims at reaping the same political and monetary benefits from warmongers among the American electorate.

Conclusion

It remains to be seen how far the military brinkmanship between the two countries will go. It also remains to be seen whether the American people and the U.S. Congress will follow Donald Trump in his risky gamble against Iran.

His declaration of January 8 was empty of content and it hardly inspires optimism for the future.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay.

International economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles”, of the book “The New American Empire”, and the recent book, in French “La régression tranquille du Québec, 1980-2018“. Please visit Dr. Tremblay’s site: http://rodriguetremblay100.blogspot.com/

“It is most unlikely Trump will escalate at this point, and this could provide him with the opportunity to leave the Middle East except for the Gulf States. Trump wants to get out,” a U.S. intelligence source says.

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President Donald Trump will de-escalate the crisis with Iran when he speaks to the nation at 11 a.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, a U.S. intelligence source has told me.

Last night Iran retaliated for the assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani with missile strikes on two U.S. military bases in Iraq. So far there have been no casualties reported. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said that the ballistic missile strikes launched from Iran completed Tehran’s military action.

Iran took & concluded proportionate measures in self-defense under Article 51 of UN Charter targeting base from which cowardly armed attack against our citizens & senior officials were launched.

We do not seek escalation or war, but will defend ourselves against any aggression.

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) January 8, 2020

It is now up to Trump to determine whether the crisis will continue.

A top U.S. intel source sent me this analysis in response to a detailed question:

“It is most unlikely Trump will escalate at this point, and this could provide him with the opportunity to leave the Middle East except for the Gulf States. Trump wants to get out. The fact that Israel would be hit next by Iran [as promised, among others, by the IRGC as well as Hezbollah’s secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah] will probably cause them to pull back, and not order Trump to bomb Iran itself.

“DEBKA-Mossad acknowledged that Iran’s offensive missiles cannot be defended against. Its secret is that it hugs the ground going underneath the radar screens.” [the source is referring to the Hoveizeh cruise missile, with a range of 1,350 km, already tested by Tehran.]

“What is amazing is that Iraq has allowed US troops into their country at all after seeing over a million of their people murdered by the US if we include the 500,000 dead children [during the 1990s, as acknowledged by Madeleine Albright]. The royals in the U. A. E. told me that this is because Iraq is more corrupt that Nigeria.

“The key question here is what happened to the Patriot Missile Defense for these bases who were on high alert assuming this is not similar to Trump’s missiles hitting empty buildings in Syria after the chemical false flag operation. I saw no report that any defense missile was working, which to me is very significant.”

Judd Deere, the deputy press secretary of the White House, confirmed on Tuesday night what I had learned earlier from another source. The White House said Trump, in a phone call, thanked Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani for “Qatar’s partnership with the United States”, and they discussed Iraq and Iran.

According to my source, who is very close to the Qatari royal family, Trump actually sent a message to Tehran via the emir. The message has two layers. Trump promised sanctions would be cancelled if there were no retaliation from Tehran (something that Trump simply wouldn’t have the means to assure, considering the opposition from Capitol Hill) ; and there would be de-escalation if Tehran came up with a “proportional” response.

Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif described the Iranian missile strikes as a “proportional response”.

That may explain why Trump did not go on TV on Tuesday night in the U.S. to announce total war – as much as neocons may have been wanting it.

Details are still sparse, but there’s ultra-high level, back room diplomacy going on especially between Iran and Russia, with China discreet, but on full alert.

There’s consensus among the Axis of Resistance that China has a major role to play, especially in the Levant, where Beijing is seen in some quarters as a possible future partner ultimately replacing U.S. hegemony.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has just been to Syria and Turkey this week. And according to Russian sources, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is making clear to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Russia’s stance that there should be no escalation.

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This article was originally published on Consortiumnews.

Pepe Escobar, a veteran Brazilian journalist, is the correspondent-at-large for Hong Kong-based Asia Times.  His latest book is “2030.” Follow him on Facebook.

The rhetoric of the Democratic “progressives” only gives cover to the ongoing criminality of the U.S. state and its commitment to permanent war – with congressional approval.

In the cynical spectacle that is called politics in the United States, the latest insult to the intelligence of the people is the Democrats who are posturing as anti-war champions in reaction to the Trump Administration’s assassination of Qassem Soleimani and the possibility of further attacks on Iran.

We are supposed to buy that the Democrats are concerned about war with Iran. The same Democrats who opposed de-escalation with North Korea; who blocked any attempt to remove U.S. occupation forces from South Korea; who continue to champion the NATO white supremacist structure; who were silent on Obama’s war on Yemen; who supported the assault on Libya; who were unmoved by the over 40,000 people who reportedly have died from U.S.-imposed sanctions on Venezuela; and who gave the Trump Administration another obscene increase in military spending.

It is common knowledge that there has always been a bipartisan antipathy to Iran, not because of anything that Iran has done to the U.S., but because of the geopolitics of the so-called Middle East in which the U.S. has sought to dominate. The Democrats had some of the loudest voices supporting confrontation with Iran up until the Obama-Rohani nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that Trump abrogated. That is what makes the Anti-war posture of the Democrats – even the progressive ones – so incredible.

Therefore, since it is clear that the Democrats didn’t have any less of an appetite for war and global U.S. dominance than the Republicans, how should we understand this newly discovered “anti-warism”?

The Opposition is anti-Trump, not Anti-war!

Nancy Pelosi correctly understood that the politics of impeachment was a dead-end that would only result in satisfying the Democratic base but held out very little prospects for the longer-term strategy of defeating Trump in November 2020. She understood that politically the Democrats had gotten all they could from the Russiagate silliness when they reclaimed the majority in the House of Representatives.  But an essential element of the Democratic party messaging leading up to the mid-term vote in 2018 was the implication that with a Democratic majority in the House the primary item on the party’s agenda would be the impeachment of Donald Trump.  When that majority was achieved, Pelosi and the party establishment found themselves under tremendous pressure to find a way to impeachment. All their eggs for impeachment were in the Mueller report basket that had been held until after the mid-term election.

Unfortunately for the Democrats, the report, like Mueller himself, was a flop.  The report failed to ignite a groundswell of impeachment fever beyond the increasingly irrational demands from the liberal base of the party.  However, one of the unforeseen results of the 2018 mid-term for Pelosi and centrist Democrats was the emergence of a group of “progressives” who wouldn’t let the impeachment ploy fade away.

Consequently, Ukraine-gate became the issue for the foregone conclusion that there would be an impeachment. Pelosi and House leadership delivered on impeachment knowing that there would be no removal by the Senate. They could, however, claim that they met their supposed Constitutional duty, but importantly, their political imperative to impeach.  The second act of this diversionary drama was scheduled to begin when the Congress came back into session in January – that is, before the current crisis with the possibility of war with Iran.

War with Iran: Everyone wins!

Pelosi wins because she delivered on impeachment and can now switch tactics and allow the progressives to take the lead with the new messaging that Trump’s recklessness and unfitness for office is now threatening the possibility of a new war. The hawks in the U.S. foreign policy community win. Those elements have always wanted a conflict with Iran and believed that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to limit Iran’s nuclear capacity was a mistake.

Liberals win. Even though the more rational ones knew Trump was not going to be removed by the Senate, the developing crisis with Iran allows them to exploit the issue of a possible war with Iran to drive home the idea that Trump is a threat to global peace and should not be trusted with a second term. Trump wins. Iran shifted the focus from the impeachment trial in the Senate and the possibility, as remote as that might have been, that “new” information might flip the requisite number of Republican senators to vote with Democrats to remove him.  Moreover, if the situation with Iran doesn’t escalate out of control, he can claim this as another victory for a muscle assertion of U.S. power and strong leadership. The U.S. state wins with the possibility that Iran will be obliterated and with it Chinese interests harmed with the cut-off of oil but also with the disruption of shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

The only elements that don’t win are the working class soldiers of the U.S. military who will be put in harm’s way for yet another war of choice, and the many thousands of innocents in Iran who may have their lives snuffed out by this crazed rogue state. But cares about either of those elements?

There is a growing war-weariness that Trump understood and tapped into during his campaign . Trump never claimed to be anti-war or pro-peace. However, being an anti-globalist, “pro-American,” white nationalist, he understood the sentiments and orientation of his base who had grown tired of sending their sons and, now daughters, off on multiple deployments to fight for what they saw as an elite agenda of never ending wars for the “liberal bankers” (his base understood that coded reference).

That same war-weariness existed in the working class base of Democrat Party voters, with some 79% of Democrats  supporting a general roll-back in U.S. foreign commitments, but the pro-imperialist elitists in the party could not recognize that position and speak to it from a progressive perspective.

Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Ro Khanna, Barbara Lee, and even the queen of pandering Elizabeth Warren and a few others on the liberal-left of the Democratic Party have started to understand the growing importance of U.S. foreign policy issues to the public and specifically the issue of war, even if the corporate press, party establishment, and most of the candidates running for that party’s nomination haven’t given much attention to those subjects.

The progressives are not taking comprehensive anti-war positions and certainly have not embraced anti-imperialist positions.  Their positions have not deviated that far from the party establishment that continues to take the morally dubious and legally unsupportable position that somehow the U.S. has a right to murder the general of a nation that the U.S. was not at war with if only Trump had consulted with Congress and had thought through all of the consequences of a possible war with Iran.

That is why this party is not the party that is capable of resisting U.S. imperialism.  The rhetoric of the progressives only gives cover to the ongoing criminality of the U.S. state and its commitment to permanent war – with Congressional approval!

The role of these progressives is to keep the people on the Democratic Party plantation.  The only countervailing force to U.S. gangsterism are the independently organized working class, nationally oppressed and all marginalized and exploited and oppressed people. This past weekend we saw the beginning of that resistance with demonstrations in close to 80 cities across the country in opposition to the possibility of war with Iran.

As the Black Alliance for Peace stated:

“The Trump Administration along with the democrats are united in their objective interests, despite the impeachment charade, to support white power in the form of their imperialist agenda. But they need us – the people – as the cannon fodder and the passive supporters.”

Obama was the ultimate sheep dog that not only kelp progressives and even radicals on the Democrat Party plantation but gave a new respectability to U.S. imperialist criminality.  We will not fall for that again, not from the “squad,” Sanders or anyone else.

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This article was originally published on Black Agenda Report.

Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC). He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch. He was recently awarded the US Peace Memorial 2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shirm award for uncompromised integrity in journalism. 

Every day of 2019 we have provided you with articles that report, break down and analyze the pressing issues of our times by authors from all over the globe. We have kept access to the site free of charge so as to get the articles to as many people as possible. Global Research also remains fully independent by not accepting money from public or private foundations. As the internet becomes a less friendly space for independent media, we have seen our revenue from advertising and book sales drop dramatically over the past year.

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Iran Takes 5th and Final JCPOA Rollback Step

By Stephen Lendman, January 08, 2020

It took years of negotiations to conclude the landmark JCPOA nuclear deal in 2015 between Iran and P5+1 countries (Russia, China, UK, France and Germany + the EU).

Adopted unanimously by Security Council Resolution 2231, the agreement became binding international law.

In May 2018, the Trump regime unlawfully pullout out, a mortal blow to the deal based on what followed.

Come Home, America: Stop Policing the Globe and Put an End to Wars-Without-End

By John W. Whitehead, January 08, 2020

The U.S. military reportedly has more than 1.3 million men and women on active duty, with more than 200,000 of them stationed overseas in nearly every country in the world. Those numbers are likely significantly higher in keeping with the Pentagon’s policy of not fully disclosing where and how many troops are deployed for the sake of “operational security and denying the enemy any advantage.” As investigative journalist David Vine explains, “Although few Americans realize it, the United States likely has more bases in foreign lands than any other people, nation, or empire in history.”

Iran’s Hero Has Fallen, and Now the World Is an Even More Dangerous Place

By Andre Vltchek, January 08, 2020

It appears that all boundaries have been crossed. Washington and its NATO allies have lost all restraint, shame and decency. They actually never had much of those, but now they have almost none.

Everything appears to be primitive, as in a badly directed mafia film. If the rulers of the West do not like some country? In that case they simply attack it, starve and destroy it. As brutal as that. No U.N. Security Council mediations, no arguments, and no pretending that there should be some legal process.

No Shame, No Honor, No Heart

By Renee Parsons, January 08, 2020

The entire world now knows, as reported by the NY Times, that President Donald Trump personally “opted for the most extreme” option as he ordered the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qaseem Souleimani. In an article entitled “As Tensions with Iran Escalated, Trump Opts for the Most Extreme Measure,” the Times reported that “Top Pentagon military officials were ‘flabbergasted’ at Trump’s decision” even as the level of ‘imminent’ attacks on US personnel was speculative and unconfirmed. Other options identified were strikes on Iranian ships or missile facilities or against Iranian-backed militia groups in Iraq.

Video: Trump Calls Upon Iran: “We Should Work Together”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, January 08, 2020

US military facilities in the Middle East are vulnerable, including USCENTOM’s forward base at the al Udeid US Air Force base in Qatar which is de facto located in enemy territory. Since 2017, Qatar has become a staunch ally of Iran.

Military analysts now admit that in the case of a conflict with Iran  The Al-Udeid base in Qatar would be an immediate target. “The base’s defence system is said to be ill-equipped to defend itself against the low-flying cruise missiles and drones…” Al Udeid is America’s largest US Airforce base in the Middle East.

On the Brink of War?

By Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, January 07, 2020

While the Trump administration has tried to justify the killing of Qassem Sulaimani in terms of his role in combating the American military presence in West Asia, it is indisputably true that he was also instrumental in the defeat of Al-Qaeda and Daesh and their affiliates in both Iraq and Syria — groups which the US leadership formally regarded as “terrorists.”   If Qassem had an iconic stature in Iran and certain other countries in the region it was because of his success against terrorists inasmuch as his resistance to the Americans whom he saw as occupiers.

Financial N-Option Will Settle Trump’s Oil War

By Pepe Escobar, January 07, 2020

The bombshell facts were delivered by caretaker Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, during an extraordinary, historic parliamentary session in Baghdad on Sunday.

Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani had flown into Baghdad on a normal carrier flight, carrying a diplomatic passport. He had been sent by Tehran to deliver, in person, a reply to a message from Riyadh on de-escalation across the Middle East. Those negotiations had been requested by the Trump administration.

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In India, the ‘development’ paradigm is premised on moving farmers out of agriculture and into the cities to work in construction, manufacturing or the service sector, despite these sectors not creating anything like the number of jobs required. The aim is to displace the existing labour-intensive system of food and agriculture with one dominated by a few transnational corporate agri-food giants which will then control the sector. Agriculture is to be wholly commercialised with large-scale, mechanised (monocrop) enterprises replacing family-run farms that help sustain hundreds of millions of rural livelihoods while feeding the urban masses.

Renowned journalist P Sainath encapsulates what is taking place when he says that the agrarian crisis can be explained in just five words: hijack of agriculture by corporations. He notes the process by which it is being done in five words too: predatory commercialisation of the countryside. And he takes five works to describe the outcome: biggest displacement in our history.

Why would anyone sanction this and set out to run down what is effectively a productive system of agriculture that feeds people, sustains livelihoods and produces sufficient buffer stocks?

Part of the answer comes down to India being the largest recipient of World Bank loans in the history of that institution and acting on its directives. Part of it results from the corporate-driven US-Indo Knowledge Agreement on Agriculture. On both counts, it means India’s rulers are facilitating the needs of Western capital and all it entails: an inherently predatory economic model based on endless profit growth, crises of overproduction and overaccumulation and market saturation and a need to constantly seek out, create and expand into new, untapped (foreign) markets to maintain profitability.

And as a market for proprietary seeds, chemical inputs and agricultural technology and machinery, India is vast. The potential market for herbicide growth alone for instance is huge: sales could reach USD 800 million by 2019 with scope for even greater expansion. And with restrictions on GMOs in place in Europe and elsewhere, India is again regarded as a massive potential market. And it’s the same for Western food processers and retailers too; the entire sector will be captured from seed to plate.

Saving capitalism

Or course, this trend predates the current administration, but it is as if Modi was especially groomed to accelerate the role of foreign capital in India. Describing itself as a major global communications, stakeholder engagement and business strategy company, APCO Worldwide is a lobby agency with firm links to the Wall Street/corporate US establishment and facilitates its global agenda. Modi turned to APCO to help transform his image and turn him into electable pro-corporate PM material. It also helped him get the message out that what he achieved in Gujarat as Chief Minister was a miracle of economic neoliberalism, although the actual reality is quite different.

A few years ago, APCO stated that India’s resilience in weathering the global downturn and financial crisis has made governments, policy makers, economists, corporate houses and fund managers believe that the country can play a significant role in the recovery of global capitalism.

Decoded, this means capital moving into regions and nations and displacing indigenous systems of production and consumption. Where agriculture is concerned, this hides behind emotive and seemingly altruistic rhetoric about ‘helping farmers’ and the need to ‘feed a burgeoning population’ (regardless of the fact this is exactly what India’s farmers have been doing).

Modi has been on board with this aim and has proudly stated that India is now one of the most ‘business friendly’ countries in the world. What he really means is that India is in compliance with World Bank directives on ‘ease of doing business’ and ‘enabling the business of agriculture’ by facilitating further privatisation of public enterprises, environment-destroying policies and forcing working people to take part in a race to the bottom based on ‘free’ market fundamentalism.

APCO has described India as a trillion-dollar market. It talks about positioning international funds and facilitating corporations’ ability to exploit markets, sell products and secure profit. None of this is a recipe for national sovereignty, let alone food security. For instance, renowned agronomist MS Swaminathan has stated: “Independent foreign policy is only possible with food security. Therefore, food has more than just eating implications. It protects national sovereignty, national rights and national prestige.”

Despite such warnings, India’s agrarian base is being uprooted. When agri-food corporations say they need to expand the use of GMOs or other technologies or invest in India under the guise of feeding the world or ‘modernising’ the sector, they’re really talking about capturing the market that’s still controlled by peasant agriculture or small-scale enterprises. To get those markets they first need to displace the peasantry and local independent producers.

Politicians are clever at using poor management, bad administration and overblown or inept enterprises as an excuse for privatisation and deregulation. Margaret Thatcher was an expert at this: if something does not work correctly because of bad management, privatise it; underinvest in something, make it seem like a basket case and sell it; pump up a sector with public funds to turn it into a profitable, efficient enterprise then sell it off to the private sector. The tactics take many forms.

And Indian agriculture has witnessed gross underinvestment over the years, whereby it is now wrongly depicted as a basket case and underperforming and ripe for a sell off to those very interests who had a stake in its underinvestment.

Historian Michael Perelman has detailed the processes that whipped the English peasantry into a workforce ‘willing’ to accept factory wage labour. Peasants were forced to leave their land and go to work for below-subsistence wages in dangerous factories being set up by a new, rich class of industrial capitalists. Perelman describes the policies through which peasants were forced out of agriculture, not least by the barring of access to common land. A largely self-reliant population was starved of its productive means.

Today, we hear seemingly benign terms like ‘foreign direct investment’ and making India ‘business friendly’, but behind the rhetoric lies the hard-nosed approach of modern-day capitalism that is no less brutal for Indian farmers than early industrial capitalism was for English peasants. The intention is for India’s displaced cultivators to be retrained to work as cheap labour in the West’s offshored plants. India is to be a fully incorporated subsidiary of global capitalism, with its agri-food sector restructured for the needs of global supply chains and a reserve army of labour that effectively serves to beat workers and unions in the West into submission.

India’s spurt of high GDP growth was partly fuelled on the back of cheap food and the subsequent impoverishment of farmers: the gap between farmers’ income and the rest of the population has widened enormously. While underperforming corporations receive massive handouts and have loans written off, the lack of a secure income, exposure to international market prices and cheap imports contribute to farmers’ misery of not being able to cover the costs of production.

As independent cultivators are bankrupted, the aim is that land will eventually be amalgamated to facilitate large-scale industrial cultivation. Those who remain in farming will be absorbed into corporate supply chains and squeezed as they work on contracts dictated by large agribusiness and chain retailers.

The long-term plan is for an urbanised India with a fraction of the population left in farming working on contracts for large suppliers and Wal-Mart-type supermarkets that offer highly processed, denutrified, genetically altered food contaminated with chemicals and grown in increasingly degraded soils according to an unsustainable model of agriculture that is less climate/drought resistant, less diverse and unable to achieve food security. This would be disastrous for farmers, public health and local livelihoods.

The 2009 International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development report recommended agroecology to maintain and increase the productivity of global agriculture. The recent UN High Level Panel of Experts report concludes that agroecology provides greatly improved food security and nutritional, gender, environmental and yield benefits compared to industrial agriculture. Both reports note the vital importance of smallholder farming.

India needs to adopt a rural-centric approach to development and resist being incorporated further into the globalised food regime dominated by Western agri-food conglomerates. It must move away from a narrowly defined notion of food security and embrace the concept of food sovereignty. This notion of food security has been designed and enacted by Western corporations that have promoted large-scale, industrialised corporate farming based on specialised production, land concentration and trade liberalisation. This has led to the widespread dispossession of small producers and global ecological degradation.

What we have witnessed is an international system of chemical-dependent, agro-export mono-cropping and big infrastructure projects linked to loans, sovereign debt repayment and World Bank/IMF directives, the outcomes of which have included a displacement of the peasantry, the consolidation of global agri-food oligopolies and the transformation of many countries into food deficit regions.

Across the world, we have seen a change in farming practices towards mechanised industrial-scale chemical-intensive monocropping and the undermining or eradication of rural economies, traditions and cultures. We see the ‘structural adjustment’ of regional agriculture, spiralling input costs for farmers who have become dependent on proprietary seeds and technologies and the destruction of food self-sufficiency.

In effect, we see a globalised ‘stuffed and starved’ food regime that benefits the rich countries at the expense of the poor. Given the ecological devastation, water resource depletion (and pollution), soil degradation and the dependency relations that form part of this system, global food security has been undermined.

Whether it involves the transformation of Africa from a net exporting food continent to a net importer or the devastating impacts of soy cultivation in Argentina, localised, traditional methods of food production have given way to global supply chains dominated by policies which favour agri-food giants, resulting in the imposition of a model of agriculture that subjugates remaining farmers and regions to the needs and profit margins of these companies.

Food sovereignty

On the other hand, food sovereignty encompasses the right to healthy and culturally appropriate food and the right of people to define their own food and agriculture systems. ‘Culturally appropriate’ is a nod to the foods people have traditionally produced and eaten as well as the associated socially embedded practices which underpin community and a sense of communality. But it goes beyond that.

People have a deep microbiological connection to soils, processing and fermentation processes which affect the gut microbiome – the up to six pounds of bacteria, viruses and microbes akin to human soil. And as with actual soil, the microbiome can become degraded according to what we ingest (or fail to ingest). Many nerve endings from major organs are located in the gut and the microbiome effectively nourishes them. There is ongoing research taking place into how the microbiome is disrupted by the modern globalised food production/processing system and the chemical bombardment it is subjected to.

Capitalism colonises (and degrades) all aspects of life but is colonising the very essence of our being – even on a physiological level. With their agrochemicals and food additives, powerful companies are attacking this ‘soil’ and with it the human body. As soon as we stopped eating locally-grown, traditionally-processed food, cultivated in healthy soils and began eating food subjected to chemical-laden cultivation and processing activities, we began to change ourselves. Along with cultural traditions surrounding food production and the seasons, we also lost our deep-rooted microbiological connection with our localities. We traded it in for corporate chemicals and seeds and global food chains dominated by the likes of Monsanto (now Bayer), Nestle and Cargill.

Aside from affecting the functioning of major organs, neurotransmitters in the gut affect our moods and thinking. Alterations in the composition of the gut microbiome have been implicated in a wide range of neurological and psychiatric conditions, including autism, chronic pain, depression and Parkinson’s Disease.

Science writer and neurobiologist Mo Costandi has discussed gut bacteria and their balance and importance in brain development. Gut microbes controls the maturation and function of microglia, the immune cells that eliminate unwanted synapses in the brain; age-related changes to gut microbe composition might regulate myelination and synaptic pruning in adolescence and could, therefore, contribute to cognitive development. Upset those changes and there are going to be serious implications for children and adolescents.

In addition, UK-based environmentalist Rosemary Mason notes that increasing levels of obesity are associated with low bacterial richness in the gut. Indeed, it has been noted that tribes not exposed to the modern food system have richer microbiomes. Mason lays the blame squarely at the door of agrochemicals, not least the use of the world’s most widely used herbicide, glyphosate, a strong chelator of essential minerals, such as cobalt, zinc, manganese, calcium, molybdenum and sulphate. Mason argues that it also kills off beneficial gut bacteria and allows toxic bacteria.

To ensure genuine food security (and good health), India must transition to a notion of food sovereignty based on optimal self-sufficiency, agroecological principles and local ownership and stewardship of common resources – land, water, soil, seeds, etc. Agroecology outperforms the prevailing resource-depleting, fossil-fuel dependent industrial food system in terms of diversity of food output, nutrition per acre, soil health and efficient water use.

Moreover, it is important to note that such a system would not be reliant on oil or natural gas. Virtually all of the processes in the modern food system are now dependent on finite fossil fuels, from the manufacture of fertilisers and pesticides to all stages of food production, including planting, irrigation, harvesting, processing, distribution, shipping and packaging. The industrial food supply system is one of the biggest consumers of fossil fuels.

A food system so heavily reliant on fossil fuel is fragile to say the least, especially given the geopolitical machinations that affect the supply and price of oil. Consider the UK, for instance, which has to import 40% of its food; and much of the rest depends on oil to produce it, which also has to be imported.

The scaling up of agroecology has the potential to more effectively tackle hunger, malnutrition, environmental degradation and climate change. By creating securely paid labour-intensive agricultural work, it can also address the interrelated links between labour offshoring by rich countries and the removal of rural populations elsewhere who end up in sweat shops to carry out the outsourced jobs.

The principles of agroecology include self-reliance and localisation. This model does not rely on shipping food over long distances, corporate owned or controlled seeds or proprietary inputs. It is potentially more climate resilient, profitable for farmers and can make a significant contribution to carbon storage (and draw down carbon from the atmosphere), water conservation, soil quality and nutrient-dense diets.

However, this represents a challenge to international capital: low input, agroecological models of food production and notions of independence and local self-reliance do not provide opportunities to global agribusiness or international funds to exploit markets, sell their products and cash in on APCO’s vision of a multi-billion-dollar corporate hijack of India.

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Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.

It took years of negotiations to conclude the landmark JCPOA nuclear deal in 2015 between Iran and P5+1 countries (Russia, China, UK, France and Germany + the EU).

Adopted unanimously by Security Council Resolution 2231, the agreement became binding international law.

In May 2018, the Trump regime unlawfully pullout out, a mortal blow to the deal based on what followed.

Britain, France, Germany and Brussels breached the JCPOA by failing to fulfill their mandated obligations, effectively killing it by siding with hostile US policies toward Iran.

In response, Tehran incrementally rolled back its voluntary commitments as permitted under Articles 26 and 36 — on Sunday taking a 5th and final step, a statement saying:

“The Islamic Republic of Iran, in the fifth step in reducing its commitments, discards the last key component of its operational limitations in the JCPOA, which is the limit on the number of centrifuges,” the level of uranium enrichment, the stockpile of nuclear fuel, as well as nuclear research and development.

Henceforth, Tehran’s legitimate nuclear program will be developed according to its internal needs.

Cooperation with IAEA monitors will continue unhindered as before.

If unlawful US sanctions are lifted and Europe comes into compliance with its mandated obligations, Iran will again adhere to its voluntary commitments under the deal.

On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif announced the news, tweeting:

“As 5th & final REMEDIAL step under paragraph 36 of JCPOA, there will no longer be any restriction on number of centrifuges.”

“This step is within JCPOA & all 5 steps are reversible upon EFFECTIVE implementation of reciprocal obligations.”

“Iran’s full cooperation w/IAEA will continue.”

Unless reversed which appears highly unlikely, Europe’s failure to fulfill its mandated obligations effectively killed the deal — as things now stand.

Trump’s assassination of Iranian Quds Force commander General Qassem Soleimani, along with failure by Europe and the UN to condemn what happened, further assured Iran taking its final step.

Last Friday, German government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer said the following in response to Soleimani’s assassination:

“The American action was a reaction to a series of military provocations for which Iran is responsible (sic),” adding:

“We also see with great concern Iran’s activities in the region (sic). We stand before a dangerous escalation” — against Iran, not by its ruling authorities, she failed to stress.

Iran responded strongly to her remarks, Foreign Ministry spokesman Seyed Abbas Mousavi, saying the following:

“The Islamic Republic of Iran regards the German government’s stances in support of brutal and unilateral US actions which are against international law as complicity in these actions, and Iran reminds the German government of General Soleimani’s key role in fighting the terrorism of Daesh, whose continued existence would have endangered the lives of countless number of people even in Europe.”

Britain’s Boris Johnson also stands with the Trump regime against Iran. According to the London-based Sun broadsheet:

Senior UK war ministry officials support US actions against Iran.

“If things unravel quickly, the UK will always stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the US,” the Sun reported, adding:

Royal navy “hunter-killer…submarines (are) within range of Iran,” the broadsheet quoted a UK military source.

The London Independent said foreign secretary Dominic Raab “backed Donald Trump’s ‘right’ to assassinate (Soleimani, falsely calling what happened) a right of self-defense.”

Press TV reported that “preparation for potential (UK) military action against Iran contradicts Raab’s claim that the UK seeks regional “de-escalation.”

Britain’s Tony Blair partnered with Bush/Cheney’s 2003 aggression against Iraq.

Mark Twain long ago noted that history doesn’t repeat but it rhymes.

Right-wing London Guardian editors criticized PM Boris Johnson for “go(ing) from (Trump regime) poodle to lapdog,” adding:

Britain “will not (benefit) from (allying with) Trump’s Iranian misadventure.”

Trump “lacks the imagination to see the issues involved in the Middle East. The killing of the Iranian general is just another example of the failure of his ‘maximum pressure campaign’ on Iran.”

Allying with Trump against Iran shows neither the US or Britain can be trusted.

After speaking with Trump on Sunday, French President Macron expressed “solidarity” with the US and West while criticizing Middle East “destabilizing activities” — referring to Soleimani’s assassination by the Trump regime.

France’s Europe minister Amelie de Montchalin expressed concern about “a more dangerous world” in the wake of what happened, calling for “stability and deescalation.”

As millions of Iranians in Tehran and nationwide mourn Soleimani on Monday, Iran’s Expediency Discernment Council secretary/former IRGC chief Mohsen Rezaei warned that if the Trump regime strikes Iranian territory militarily, Tehran’s response “will completely level Haifa and (other) key Israeli targets,” adding:

“The whole world should know that that the Americans will be removed from the region soon.”

On Sunday, Iraqi PM Mahdi said “specialists from various agencies (in the country) are drafting a document on further legal and procedural actions to implement the parliament’s decision to” expel US and other foreign troops from its territory.

Regional tensions are more greatly heightened than any time since the run-up to Bush/Cheney’s 2003 aggression on Iraq.

The danger of anything happening ahead by accident or design is ominously real.

A Final Comment

Following the Trump regime’s assassination of Iranian General Soleimani, will other key IRGC commanders be targeted for elimination by the US?

Will hardliners surrounding DJT urge more hostile actions against Iran, pushing the envelope toward toward greater confrontation?

Will similar actions be taken against Iraq after its parliament passed legislation to expel US and allied forces from the country?

Will the US escalate ongoing Middle East wars? Is another regional one likely?

These are hugely dangerous times because of hostile US actions in the Middle East and elsewhere.

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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.

“Let us resolve that never again will we send the precious young blood of this country to die trying to prop up a corrupt military dictatorship abroad. This is also the time to turn away from excessive preoccupation overseas to the rebuilding of our own nation. America must be restored to a proper role in the world. But we can do that only through the recovery of confidence in ourselves…. together we will call America home to the ideals that nourished us from the beginning. From secrecy and deception in high places; come home, America. From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation; come home, America.”—George S. McGovern, former Senator and presidential candidate

I agree wholeheartedly with George S. McGovern, a former Senator and presidential candidate who opposed the Vietnam War, about one thing: I’m sick of old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.

It’s time to bring our troops home.

Bring them home from Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Bring them home from Germany, South Korea and Japan. Bring them home from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Oman. Bring them home from Niger, Chad and Mali. Bring them home from Turkey, the Philippines, and northern Australia.

That’s not what’s going to happen, of course.

The U.S. military reportedly has more than 1.3 million men and women on active duty, with more than 200,000 of them stationed overseas in nearly every country in the world. Those numbers are likely significantly higher in keeping with the Pentagon’s policy of not fully disclosing where and how many troops are deployed for the sake of “operational security and denying the enemy any advantage.” As investigative journalist David Vine explains, “Although few Americans realize it, the United States likely has more bases in foreign lands than any other people, nation, or empire in history.”

Don’t fall for the propaganda, though: America’s military forces aren’t being deployed abroad to protect our freedoms here at home. Rather, they’re being used to guard oil fields, build foreign infrastructure and protect the financial interests of the corporate elite. In fact, the United States military spends about $81 billion a year just to protect oil supplies around the world.

The reach of America’s military empire includes close to 800 bases in as many as 160 countries, operated at a cost of more than $156 billion annually. As Vine reports, “Even US military resorts and recreation areas in places like the Bavarian Alps and Seoul, South Korea, are bases of a kind. Worldwide, the military runs more than 170 golf courses.”

This is how a military empire occupies the globe.

Already, American military servicepeople are being deployed to far-flung places in the Middle East and elsewhere in anticipation of the war drums being sounded over Iran.

This Iran crisis, salivated over by the neocons since prior to the Iraq War and manufactured by war hawks who want to jumpstart the next world war, has been a long time coming.

Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton: they all have done their part to ensure that the military industrial complex can continue to get rich at taxpayer expense.

Take President Trump, for instance.

Despite numerous campaign promises to stop America’s “endless wars,” once elected, Trump has done a complete about-face, deploying greater numbers of troops to the Middle East, ramping up the war rhetoric, and padding the pockets of defense contractors. Indeed, Trump is even refusing to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq in the face of a request from the Iraqi government for us to leave.

Obama was no different: he also pledged—if elected—to bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan and reduce America’s oversized, and overly costly, military footprint in the world. Of course, that didn’t happen.

Yet while the rationale may keep changing for why American military forces are policing the globe, these wars abroad (in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen and now Iran) aren’t making America—or the rest of the world—any safer, are certainly not making America great again, and are undeniably digging the U.S. deeper into debt.

War spending is bankrupting America.

Although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world’s population, America boasts almost 50% of the world’s total military expenditure, spending more on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined.

In fact, the Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety.

The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth.

Since 2001, the U.S. government has spent more than $4.7 trillion waging its endless wars.

Having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $32 million per hour.

In fact, the U.S. government has spent more money every five seconds in Iraq than the average American earns in a year.

Future wars and military exercises waged around the globe are expected to push the total bill upwards of $12 trillion by 2053.

Talk about fiscally irresponsible: the U.S. government is spending money it doesn’t have on a military empire it can’t afford.

As investigative journalist Uri Friedman puts it, for more than 15 years now, the United States has been fighting terrorism with a credit card, “essentially bankrolling the wars with debt, in the form of purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds by U.S.-based entities like pension funds and state and local governments, and by countries like China and Japan.”

War is not cheap, but it becomes outrageously costly when you factor in government incompetence, fraud, and greedy contractors. Indeed, a leading accounting firm concluded that one of the Pentagon’s largest agencies “can’t account for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of spending.”

Unfortunately, the outlook isn’t much better for the spending that can be tracked.

A government audit found that defense contractor Boeing has been massively overcharging taxpayers for mundane parts, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in overspending. As the report noted, the American taxpayer paid:

$71 for a metal pin that should cost just 4 cents; $644.75 for a small gear smaller than a dime that sells for $12.51: more than a 5,100 percent increase in price. $1,678.61 for another tiny part, also smaller than a dime, that could have been bought within DoD for $7.71: a 21,000 percent increase. $71.01 for a straight, thin metal pin that DoD had on hand, unused by the tens of thousands, for 4 cents: an increase of over 177,000 percent.

That price gouging has become an accepted form of corruption within the American military empire is a sad statement on how little control “we the people” have over our runaway government.

Mind you, this isn’t just corrupt behavior. It’s deadly, downright immoral behavior.

Americans have thus far allowed themselves to be spoon-fed a steady diet of pro-war propaganda that keeps them content to wave flags with patriotic fervor and less inclined to look too closely at the mounting body counts, the ruined lives, the ravaged countries, the blowback arising from ill-advised targeted-drone killings and bombing campaigns in foreign lands, or the transformation of our own homeland into a warzone.

That needs to change.

The U.S. government is not making the world any safer. It’s making the world more dangerous. It is estimated that the U.S. military drops a bomb somewhere in the world every 12 minutes. Since 9/11, the United States government has directly contributed to the deaths of around 500,000 human beings. Every one of those deaths was paid for with taxpayer funds.

The U.S. government is not making America any safer. It’s exposing American citizens to alarming levels of blowback, a CIA term referring to the unintended consequences of the U.S. government’s international activities. Chalmers Johnson, a former CIA consultant, repeatedly warned that America’s use of its military to gain power over the global economy would result in devastating blowback.

The 9/11 attacks were blowback. The Boston Marathon Bombing was blowback. The attempted Times Square bomber was blowback. The Fort Hood shooter, a major in the U.S. Army, was blowback.

The assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani by a U.S. military drone strike will, I fear, spur yet more blowback against the American people.

The war hawks’ militarization of America—bringing home the spoils of war (the military tanks, grenade launchers, Kevlar helmets, assault rifles, gas masks, ammunition, battering rams, night vision binoculars, etc.) and handing them over to local police, thereby turning America into a battlefield—is also blowback.

James Madison was right: “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” As Madison explained, “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes… known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”

We are seeing this play out before our eyes.

The government is destabilizing the economy, destroying the national infrastructure through neglect and a lack of resources, and turning taxpayer dollars into blood money with its endless wars, drone strikes and mounting death tolls.

Clearly, our national priorities are in desperate need of an overhauling.

At the height of its power, even the mighty Roman Empire could not stare down a collapsing economy and a burgeoning military. Prolonged periods of war and false economic prosperity largely led to its demise. As historian Chalmers Johnson predicts:

The fate of previous democratic empires suggests that such a conflict is unsustainable and will be resolved in one of two ways. Rome attempted to keep its empire and lost its democracy. Britain chose to remain democratic and in the process let go its empire. Intentionally or not, the people of the United States already are well embarked upon the course of non-democratic empire.

This is the “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex” that President Dwight Eisenhower warned us more than 50 years ago not to let endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

Eisenhower, who served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, was alarmed by the rise of the profit-driven war machine that emerged following the war—one that, in order to perpetuate itself, would have to keep waging war.

We failed to heed his warning.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, there’s not much time left before we reach the zero hour.

It’s time to stop policing the globe, end these wars-without-end, and bring the troops home before it’s too late.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

They say he came from a humble background, and worked himself up the ranks, becoming, as many believe, the second most powerful man in Iran. They say he had the chance to become the next Supreme Leader of the country.

Whenever I visit Iran, I am told how much he is loved by his people. He became the symbol of resistance against the West; the symbol of the strength and dignity of the nation which was attacked, colonized and starved by several Western capitals.

And now, Iran’s Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani is no more. And the U.S. Commander-in-Chief, Donald Trump, is proudly claiming responsibility for his demise.

The statement from the Pentagon came promptly, and it was clear:

“At the direction of the president, the US military has taken decisive defensive action to protect US personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani… This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans. The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and interests wherever they are around the world.”

Defensive action…

Almost immediately, RT and others asked me to analyze.

I could not help but to define what was done at the airport outside Baghdad, Iraq, as a vulgar and brutal extra-judicial killing.

*

For the last two months, I have been flying all over the world, writing about (and filming) all those horrors that the Empire unleashed against the people with different cultures, living in various parts of the world.

The Middle East, China, Latin America.

It appears that all boundaries have been crossed. Washington and its NATO allies have lost all restraint, shame and decency. They actually never had much of those, but now they have almost none.

Everything appears to be primitive, as in a badly directed mafia film. If the rulers of the West do not like some country? In that case they simply attack it, starve and destroy it. As brutal as that. No U.N. Security Council mediations, no arguments, and no pretending that there should be some legal process.

It has been happening to Hong Kong, To Bolivia, Venezuela and West Papua. It has also been happening to Iran, as well as China and Russia, although those countries have proven to be much tougher to eliminate, than Washington’s planners originally thought.

The same applies to individuals: people get murdered without second thought, some quickly, some very slowly and painfully. Julian Assange is one of them, being slowly tortured to death, in front of the entire world, despite legal and medical experts protesting and demanding his release.

The killing of Qasem Soleimani and others in Baghdad, was quick and totally unexpected.

The facial expressions of U.S. officials were absolutely shocking: as if mafia bosses were caught in a corner of some filthy den by a bunch of amateur journalists. Unapologetically, they grinned at the lenses, suggesting: “So what? What are you going to do now? Challenge us? Us? We’ll break your legs, or something…”

And nobody, absolutely nobody really dares to challenge them! Not yet. Not at this moment.

It is one tested, bulletproof game. You destroy an entire country, or you kill a person, and then you show your piece; your well-maintained revolver, or two. You expose your guns and ugly row of teeth. You say, or you suggest without pronouncing it: “You have a wife, and two daughters back home, don’t you? You don’t want anything to happen to them, right?”

It is on that level, now. It is not any better than that, don’t you see?

If you defend yourself – you die; your family dies. Or your family members get violated. Or both.

You like it? You don’t like it? You absolutely detested it? Who cares! The Empire has guns. It is all it has. The ability to kill and to rape. It has become dumb, degenerate. It produces hardly anything of value. But it has millions of weapons, as well as a monstrous propaganda machine.

*

Now, seriously: what can Iran do? What can a nation with thousands of years of culture do?

Can it defend itself? Honestly, if you think it can, then say it: how?

If it retaliates, it could be erased from the face of the earth. If it doesn’t do anything, it will lose face, self-respect, as well as the purpose to continue with its struggle for true independence and its unique form of socialism.

For years and decades, Iran has been a thorn in the eye of the West. Its allies have fought against Western-injected terrorism in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Iranian ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah, has been defending the country against Israeli invasions, while providing social support to poor and needy citizens. Iran has been giving jobs and temporary shelter to many Afghan citizens, particularly those from Herat, people who have absolutely nothing left after the horrendous U.S./NATO occupation of the country. I worked in Afghanistan, and I saw tremendous lines in front of the Iranian consulate in Herat. Iran has even been deeply involved in Latin America, helping, building social housing in Venezuela, Evo’s Bolivia, and elsewhere.

And now, recently, it began moving closer and closer to two of Washington’s arch enemies: China and Russia.

Therefore, it has been decided in the annals of Washington and the Pentagon: Iran has to be stopped; destroyed. At any price. Meaning, any price which would have to be paid by the Iranian citizens.

*

I am convinced that this madness has to be stopped.

For Iran’s sake.

But also, because, if Iran is ruined, destroyed like Iraq, Libya or Afghanistan, someone will be next. First, most likely, Venezuela, and then Cuba. But then, perhaps, most likely, Russia or China, or both.

The Empire will not stop by itself.

If not opposed, it will get more and more emboldened.

It is a tremendous mistake to let it literally ‘get away with a murder’.

Today, a brave Iranian General has been murdered. Washington is smiling provocatively, cynically.

It is sending vibes to all corners of the world: “Stay on your couches in front of television sets. Be petrified. Do nothing. Or else!”

Yes, the world is scared. There are reasons to be scared. But the world simply has to act. These brutal, cowardly acts of degeneracy and fundamentalism/fanaticism committed by the Empire have to be stopped, sooner or later, in the name of our human race. Otherwise, soon, there will be no humanity left!

*

[First published by NEO – New Eastern Outlook – a journal of the Russian Academy of Sciences, under the same title]

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”, “China and Ecological Civilization” 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 Latin America, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website, his Twitter and his Patreon. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The entire world now knows, as reported by the NY Times, that President Donald Trump personally “opted for the most extreme” option as he ordered the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qaseem Souleimani. In an article entitled “As Tensions with Iran Escalated, Trump Opts for the Most Extreme Measure,” the Times reported that “Top Pentagon military officials were ‘flabbergasted’ at Trump’s decision” even as the level of ‘imminent’ attacks on US personnel was speculative and unconfirmed. Other options identified were strikes on Iranian ships or missile facilities or against Iranian-backed militia groups in Iraq.

It was further reported that “When Mr. Trump chose the option of killing General Suleimani, top military officials, flabbergasted, were immediately alarmed about the prospect of Iranian retaliatory strikes on American troops in the region. It is unclear if General Milley or Mr. Esper pushed back on the president’s decision.” VP Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, however, each representing the Prince of Peace, argued for a hawkish response to “Iranian aggression.”

It is true that Iran has been a thorn in the US side since 1953 when the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Mossadegh who refused to recognize the Empire’s right to steal Iranian petroleum as he nationalized the country’s energy sector. Iran has never been a military threat to America and, like every other middle east country, neither is it willing to kneel to the American Empire.

Thin skinned and defensive, Trump cannot stop bragging as he exhibits no glimmer of empathy or understanding of the gravity that his decision has wreaked upon his own country and the world. He seems incompetent to grasp that his bombastic speech only serves to deepen the crisis. In response to Iran’s “forceful; revenge” promise, Trump tweeted

“….targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats! “

In announcing the strike, Trump said

“We successfully executed a flawless precision strike that killed the Number One terrorist anywhere in the world. Soliemani was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and American personnel but we caught him in the act and terminated him.”

And then

“We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war. We do not seek regime change. However Iran’s aggression in the region must end and it must end now. If Americans anywhere are threatened, we have all of those targets already fully identified, and I am ready and prepared to take whatever action is necessary.”

The rationale for Soleimani’s death is based on accusations as the world’s number one terrorist and being responsible for hundreds of American deaths in pursuit of Iranian aggression. Any claim of aggression by middle eastern countries glosses over the fact that they are defending their homelands in opposition to US military invasions. It is the US who are the aggressors by invading a country 6,000 miles away to steal their natural resources and to fight on behalf of creating Israeli hegemony throughout the Middle East.

Does any Middle East country have the right of self defense when a foreign army invades their sovereign soil and what does it say when the world’s leading purveyors of war, death and destruction point the finger to those fighting to defend their homeland? The truth is that every country where the US has initiated conflict is no military threat to the US – until they are invaded as they respond to protect their home turf.

Operating under the delusion that the US is still a respected world leader, Trump’s barbaric pre emptive assassination on Soleimani has all the markings of an Israeli ‘quick and decisive’ hit used to liquidate the opposition. There is no longer any pretense that the candidate who promised no new interventionist wars never meant to include any conflicts that might benefit Israel. It is elementary that every conflict in the Middle East benefits Israel.

As he talked the talk about no new war to get elected, he has not walked the walk as his speech on Sunday to the VFW National Conference proved. While on one hand, Trump has revealed a frightening bloodthirsty side of his character with his chosen method of assassination 48 hours after the assassination, he told the veterans:

“I withdrew the US from a horrible one sided nuclear deal and Iran is not the same country any more; that I can say. We’ll see what happens but we’re ready to make a real deal; not a deal that was done by the previous administration which was a disaster “

What on earth is he saying? Has he totally lost his mind? Does he seriously believe that the Iranians will sit down to negotiate a new nuclear deal with him or any other American president?

And then…

Trump began with a quote representing two hundred year old thinking by President George Washington that ‘the best way to preserve the peace is to be prepared for war.’ My thinking is always on military and military strength. We are now undertaking the greatest rebuilding of the US military in its history. We have secured $700 billion for defense and $716 billion next year. We’re ordering 147 F35 Lightening fighters. We make the best military equipment in the world and remember this = jobs. We’re ordering 239 Apache and Black Hawk helicopters, 19 major Naval vessels and nearly 8,000 Humvees and humbees used by our great soldiers…all made right here in the USA and we’re adding nearly 30,000 new soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines. America is a peace loving nation. We do not seek conflict but if conflict is forced upon us, we will defend ourselves and if we must, we will fight and do nothing but win.

Trump is living in a merciless world of deep denial which is in preference to human compassion. He is woefully uninformed about the last time the US “won” a war which was WWII in 1945. He apparently cares nothing about the cost overruns and history of F35 defects nor does the $4 – $7 trillion already spent on Middle East wars appear to keep him up nights.

The truth is, since 2016, Trump has proven to be just another mediocre American President to be neutered by Israel, the IC and the neocons, many of whom he brought into his administration. He has ceded his authority to the likes of Pompeo and Pence and has proven to be easily manipulated, unable to analyze when he is being played, including by his own family. While others make excuses that he is being lied to, it is time for him to take adult responsibility for his decisions. With an inappropriately verbose personality, Trump has proven to have no backbone. We now know that he also has no honor, no courage and no heart as he joins GW and Obama in the ranks of the Presidential War Criminals Club.

Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and President of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with Friends of the Earth and staff member in the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

As if Boeing needed any more bad news.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) conducted an internal audit in December of the Boeing 737 Max and found wiring issues could potentially cause a “catastrophic” short circuit at the rear of the plane and lead to a crash, a senior engineer at Boeing and three people familiar with the matter told The New York Times.

Boeing is examining if two wiring harnesses at the rear of the plane are too close together that would result in an electric short that would cause the plane’s tail to malfunction in flight, said one of the sources.

Of course, Boeing told The Times that the fix is relatively simple. Spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Sunday the “identified issue is part of a rigorous process, and we are working with the FAA to perform the appropriate analysis. It would be premature to speculate as to whether this analysis will lead to any design changes.”

It was unclear, however, if simple also means cheap, and some have speculated that a full-blown recall could cost tens ofd billions.

An FAA statement Sunday said investigators are “re-analyzing certain findings from a recent review of the proposed modifications to the Boeing 737 MAX.” The agency will “ensure that all safety-related issues identified during this process are addressed.”

The FAA said the wiring harnesses are too close together, located at the rear of the plane, would cause the motors that control the stabilizer, a horizontal fin on a plane’s tail, to malfunction (short circuit) and could lead to a potentially “catastrophic” crash.

Max engines have also become another focus for FAA investigators.

RE: Boeing 737 Max

Anyone who missed this post back in March should read throughly. The issue with the 737 Max is not a software issue, it’s a design issue. Boeing got desperate when Airbus released the NEO, so they too wanted a big engine. Merry Christmas $ba.d$ba https://t.co/3I8z0p6ljn

— Nicholas Ramos (@NickVRamos) December 25, 2019

All of these issues, of course, are separate from the MCAS software that was likely the cause of two separate Max crashes, killing 346 people.  New Max issues could delay the ungrounding even further. There is no clear timeline of when the planes will return to the air.

Meanwhile, confirming that things are going from bad to worse, the WSJ reported that Boeing is mulling raising more debt to “improve finances”, read fund buybacks, as costs related to the grounding of its 737 MAX are raising. The paper reports that Boeing is also considering cutting CAPEX, freezing acquisitions and cutting on R&D to save cash. In total, analysts expect Boeing to raise as much as $5BN in additional debt to help cover expenditures that could rise to $15BN in 1H 2020. It was not clear if all of this new money, or just most of it, would to repurchasing BA shares.

On January 8, President Trump spoke from the White House following the Iran missile attack against two US military bases in Iraq in the night of January 8.

While US and Iraqi sources said “there were no known casualties” (CNN) (which is doubtful)  Iranian sources (Fars News) point to 80 US servicemen killed.

More than a dozen missiles were fired. According to the Guardian:

Al-Asad airbase in Iraq’s Anbar province was hit 17 times, including by two ballistic missiles that failed to detonate, according to the Iraqi government. A further five missiles were targeted at a base in the northern city of Erbil in the assault, which began at about 1.30am local time on Wednesday (10.30pm GMT).

The following Video was released by Iran TV

The number of casualties remains to be established.   Reports also suggest that Iran “intentionally missed areas with Americans”.  According to NPR, the strikes were very precise. Moreover, it would appear that the US air defense system did not prevent the missiles from reaching their targets.

Karako says he believes the strike deliberately avoided areas that house personnel. Given the apparent precision of the missiles used: “If they wanted a bunch of casualties they could have done something different,” he says.

Trump in his speech said that there were no casualties.

“No Americans were harmed in last night’s attack by the Iranian regime. We suffered no casualties. All of our soldiers are safe and only minimal damage was sustained at our military bases.”

Is that a facing-saving statement?

It should be noted that the Iraqi authorities were informed by Iran regarding the attacks. And according to reports Iraqi officials advised the US military, giving them time to evacuate military personnel.

According to both Iranian (as well as Western sources), the attack also caused severe damage to a number of drones, helicopters and military equipment. An NPR report points to substantial damage:

Satellite photographs taken by the commercial company Planet Labs for the Middlebury Institute of International Studies showed what appeared to be at least five destroyed structures at Al Asad. David Schmerler, an analyst at the Middlebury Institute, told NPR: “Some of the locations struck look like the missiles hit dead centre.” (indicating that part of the military facilities had been destroyed, emphasis added)

The NPR report confirms through satellite images extensive damage, pointing also to failures in the defence system

The Ayn al-Asad airbase. Source: Bing Maps

Retaliation: Punitive Bombings

Trump in his speech did not mention any form of retaliation or punitive bombing following Iran’s missile strike.

New economic sanctions are envisaged:  “the United States will immediately impose additional punishing economic sanctions”. 

VIDEO. See full transcript below

Tehran reports that the 15 missiles which hit the US Ayn al-Assad military base were not intercepted by the US Army’s radar system, which (if confirmed) reflects a weakness on the part of the US defense system.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg.

The unspoken truth is that several of America’s military installations in the Middle East are “sitting ducks”. And this is recognised by US military analysts.

US military facilities in the Middle East are vulnerable, including USCENTOM’s forward base at the al Udeid US Air Force base in Qatar which is de facto located in enemy territory. Since 2017, Qatar has become a staunch ally of Iran.

Military analysts now admit that in the case of a conflict with Iran  The Al-Udeid base in Qatar would be an immediate target. “The base’s defence system is said to be ill-equipped to defend itself against the low-flying cruise missiles and drones…” Al Udeid is America’s largest US Airforce base in the Middle East.

Following the assassination of General Suleimani and Trump’s announcement that the US would bomb 52 targets inside Iran, Tehran stated that it was considering as well as identifying  “100 targets … in the region for America and its allies”. (see below map of US military bases in the Middle East)

Strikes on these 100 targets are contemplated in the case of US retaliation in the form of punitive bombings ordered by President Trump.

This 100 targets announcement no doubt had a bearing on Trump’s January 8  White House speech.

President Donald Trump placed emphasis on America’s achievements in combating ISIS (without of course acknowledging that ISIS was a creation of the US, funded by Washington and its allies).

At the end of his White House speech he stated that ISIS is also an enemy of Iran. And that “We should Work Together”.

Tens of thousands of ISIS fighters have been killed or captured during my administration. ISIS is a natural enemy of Iran. The destruction of ISIS is good for Iran and we should work together on this and other shared priorities.

Finally to the people and leaders of Iran, we want you to have a future, and a great future, one that you deserve, one of prosperity at home in harmony with the nations of the world.

.

The United States is ready to embrace peace with all who seek it.

Does this constitute a turning point in Middle East Geopolitics?

A complete withdrawal of US troops from Iraq?

.Not a word on Israel in Trump’s speech.

TRANSCRIPT OF PRESIDENT TRUMP’S SPEECH

Source: White House

As long as I am President of the United States, Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.

Good morning. I’m pleased to inform you: The American people should be extremely grateful and happy no Americans were harmed in last night’s attack by the Iranian regime. We suffered no casualties, all of our soldiers are safe, and only minimal damage was sustained at our military bases. 

Our great American forces are prepared for anything. Iran appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned and a very good thing for the world.

No American or Iraqi lives were lost because of the precautions taken, the dispersal of forces, and an early warning system that worked very well. I salute the incredible skill and courage of America’s men and women in uniform.

For far too long — all the way back to 1979, to be exact — nations have tolerated Iran’s destructive and destabilizing behavior in the Middle East and beyond. Those days are over. Iran has been the leading sponsor of terrorism, and their pursuit of nuclear weapons threatens the civilized world. We will never let that happen.

Last week, we took decisive action to stop a ruthless terrorist from threatening American lives. At my direction, the United States military eliminated the world’s top terrorist, Qasem Soleimani. As the head of the Quds Force, Soleimani was personally responsible for some of the absolutely worst atrocities.

He trained terrorist armies, including Hezbollah, launching terrorist strikes against civilian targets. He fueled bloody civil wars all across the region. He viciously wounded and murdered thousands of U.S. troops, including the planting of roadside bombs that maim and dismember their victims.

Soleimani directed the recent attacks on U.S. personnel in Iraq that badly wounded four service members and killed one American, and he orchestrated the violent assault on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. In recent days, he was planning new attacks on American targets, but we stopped him.

Soleimani’s hands were drenched in both American and Iranian blood. He should have been terminated long ago. By removing Soleimani, we have sent a powerful message to terrorists: If you value your own life, you will not threaten the lives of our people.

As we continue to evaluate options in response to Iranian aggression, the United States will immediately impose additional punishing economic sanctions on the Iranian regime. These powerful sanctions will remain until Iran changes its behavior.

In recent months alone, Iran has seized ships in international waters, fired an unprovoked strike on Saudi Arabia, and shot down two U.S. drones.

Iran’s hostilities substantially increased after the foolish Iran nuclear deal was signed in 2013, and they were given $150 billion, not to mention $1.8 billion in cash. Instead of saying “thank you” to the United States, they chanted “death to America.” In fact, they chanted “death to America” the day the agreement was signed.

Then, Iran went on a terror spree, funded by the money from the deal, and created hell in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The missiles fired last night at us and our allies were paid for with the funds made available by the last administration. The regime also greatly tightened the reins on their own country, even recently killing 1,500 people at the many protests that are taking place all throughout Iran.

The very defective JCPOA expires shortly anyway, and gives Iran a clear and quick path to nuclear breakout. Iran must abandon its nuclear ambitions and end its support for terrorism. The time has come for the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia, and China to recognize this reality.

They must now break away from the remnants of the Iran deal -– or JCPOA –- and we must all work together toward making a deal with Iran that makes the world a safer and more peaceful place. We must also make a deal that allows Iran to thrive and prosper, and take advantage of its enormous untapped potential. Iran can be a great country.

Peace and stability cannot prevail in the Middle East as long as Iran continues to foment violence, unrest, hatred, and war. The civilized world must send a clear and unified message to the Iranian regime: Your campaign of terror, murder, mayhem will not be tolerated any longer. It will not be allowed to go forward.

Today, I am going to ask NATO to become much more involved in the Middle East process. Over the last three years, under my leadership, our economy is stronger than ever before and America has achieved energy independence. These historic accompliments [accomplishments] changed our strategic priorities. These are accomplishments that nobody thought were possible. And options in the Middle East became available. We are now the number-one producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world. We are independent, and we do not need Middle East oil.

The American military has been completely rebuilt under my administration, at a cost of $2.5 trillion. U.S. Armed Forces are stronger than ever before. Our missiles are big, powerful, accurate, lethal, and fast. Under construction are many hypersonic missiles.

The fact that we have this great military and equipment, however, does not mean we have to use it. We do not want to use it. American strength, both military and economic, is the best deterrent.

Three months ago, after destroying 100 percent of ISIS and its territorial caliphate, we killed the savage leader of ISIS, al-Baghdadi, who was responsible for so much death, including the mass beheadings of Christians, Muslims, and all who stood in his way. He was a monster. Al-Baghdadi was trying again to rebuild the ISIS caliphate, and failed.

Tens of thousands of ISIS fighters have been killed or captured during my administration. ISIS is a natural enemy of Iran. The destruction of ISIS is good for Iran, and we should work together on this and other shared priorities.

Finally, to the people and leaders of Iran: We want you to have a future and a great future — one that you deserve, one of prosperity at home, and harmony with the nations of the world. The United States is ready to embrace peace with all who seek it.

Finally, to the people and leaders of Iran: We want you to have a future and a great future — one that you deserve, one of prosperity at home, and harmony with the nations of the world. The United States is ready to embrace peace with all who seek it.

I want to thank you, and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you

Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Muhammad Hussein Baqeri confirmed today that any new evil American action will face a more resolute response.

In a statement today, Baqeri said that the operation targeting the American base of Ain Al-Assad early in the morning confirms the military capabilities of the Iranian armed forces.

For his part, Spokesman for the Iranian government Ali Rabei said that Iran “does not seek war ,  but any other American aggression will face a more severe response.”

“At least 80 American soldiers were killed when the Islamic Revolutionary Guards targeted the American base of Ain Al-Asad”, Fars News Agency quoted.

[The number of casualties remains to be established, Western reports indicate other figures]

The source added that the attack caused severe damage to a number of drones, helicopters and many military equipment at the base, pointing out that 15 missiles hit Ain al-Assad base and none of them were intercepted by the US Army’s radar system.

He pointed out that 100 targets have been identified in the region for America and its allies, and they are under monitoring and observation.

Spokesman for the Guardian Council Abbas Ali Kadkhadai said that the missile attack carried out by the forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Forces on the bases of the American army in Iraq is a legitimate defense against the American aggression, adding that these operations are approved by the UN Charter as well as by international laws.

For his part, spokesperson for the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of the Islamic Shura Council  Sayyid Hussain Naqawi Hosseini  said that the missile attack is a response to American crimes. “We warned allied countries of America in the region not to allow their lands to be used to strike Iran, as our response will be in accordance with the UN Charter.”

“America’s allegations about its force and the inability of anyone to penetrate it were shattered by Iran’s retaliation”, Naqawi Hosseini.

Is Trump yet ruing the day he lent his ear to the siren songs of the Iran-obsessed neocons? One can almost imagine the president, sitting in the makeshift situation room at Mar-a-Lago just a few days ago surrounded by the likes of Sen. Lindsey Graham, Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence, Defense Secretary Esper, and his Pentagon advisors who breathlessly present him an “opportunity” to kick the Iranian leadership in the face and also dismantle an operation in the works to attack US military and civilian personnel in the region.

All he had to do was sign off on the assassination of Gen. Qassim Soleimani, a man he likely had never heard of a couple of years ago but who, he was told, was “responsible for killing hundreds of Americans” in Iraq.

“Soleimani did 9/11!” – Pence helpfully yet insanely chimed in.

“You’re not a wimp like Obama, who refused to assassinate this terrorist,” he was probably told. “You’re decisive, a real leader. This one blow will change the entire calculus of the Middle East,” they likely told him. “If you take out Soleimani, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.”

(Actually, that last one was from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress in 2002 where he promised the US that “If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.” Brilliant forecasting, Bibi.)

As could be expected, the cover story cooked up by the neocons and signed off on by Trump started taking water the moment it was put to sea.

Soleimani was not traveling like a man plotting a complicated, multi-country assault on US troops in the region. No false mustaches or James Bond maneuvers – he was flying commercial and openly disembarked at the terminal of Baghdad International Airport. He was publicly met and greeted by an Iraqi delegation and traveled relatively unguarded from the airport.

Until a US drone vaporized him and his entire entourage – which included a senior Iraqi military officer.

The furious Iraqi acting-Prime Minister Mahdi immediately condemned the attack in the strongest terms, openly calling for the expulsion of the US forces – who remain in Iraq ostensibly to fight an ISIS that has long been defeated but, de facto, to keep the beachhead clear for a US attack on Iran.

Arguing for the expulsion of the US in a special parliamentary session held on January 5th, Mahdi spilled the truth about Soleimani’s mission in Iraq. It was not to plot the killing of US troops: it was to deliver a response from Iran to a peace overture from the Saudis, the result of talks that were being facilitated by Iraq.

And the US side knew about the mission and had, according to press reports, encouraged Iraq to facilitate the Iran/Saudi talks.

Did the US neocons and Pentagon warhawks like Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mike Milley knowingly exploit what they anticipated would be relatively lax security for a peace mission between Iran and Saudi Arabia to assassinate Gen. Soleimani (with collateral damage being Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units)?

And, to drill a little deeper, which US “allies” would want to blow up any chance of peace between Saudi Arabia and Iran? Factions within Saudi Arabia, where a fierce power struggle rages below the surface? No doubt. In Israel, where Netanyahu continues fighting for his political life (and freedom) with his entire political career built around mayhem and destruction? Sure. It’s not like Trump has ever been able to say “no” to the endless demands of either Bibi or his Saudi counterpart in crime MBS.

Who knows, maybe Trump knew all along and was in on it. Make war on a peace mission.

Whatever the case, as always happens the neocons have steered things completely off the rails. The cover story is in tatters, and the Iraqi democracy – for which we’ve been ostensibly fighting for 16 years with a loss of US life in the thousands and of Iraqi life in the millions – voted on Sunday that US forces must leave Iraq.

We destroyed Iraq to “give them democracy,” but they had the nerve to exercise that democracy to ask us to leave!

Iran could not believe its luck in the aftermath of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, when it soon became clear that Iraq would fall into their hands. Likewise, it appears that the longstanding fervent wish of the Iranian leadership – the end of the US occupation of Iraq (and Syria) – will soon be fulfilled thanks to Trump’s listening to the always toxic advice of the neocon warmongers.

Can Trump recover from this near-fatal mistake? It is possible. But with Trump’s Twitter finger threatening Iraq with “big big” sanctions and an even bigger bill to cover the cost of our invasion and destruction of their country, it appears that his ability to learn from his mistakes is limited. A bit less time on Twitter and a lot less time with the people who hate his guts – Pompeo, Pence, Graham, etc. – might help.

Meanwhile…will Iran avenge Soleimani’s murder directly, or using asymmetrical means?

Trump said of his decision to assassinate a top official from a country with which we are not technically at war, “We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war.” But it doesn’t work that way. When you kill another country’s top military leadership you have definitely started a war.

What remains to be seen is how it will play out.

DECLARAÇÃO CONJUNTA DE PRINCÍPIOS ACORDADOS PARA NEGOCIAÇÕES DE DESARMAMENTO

Os Estados Unidos e a URSS concordaram recomendar os seguintes princípios, como base para futuras negociações multilaterais sobre desarmamento e exortaram outros Estados a cooperarem na obtenção de um acordo antecipado sobre desarmamento geral e completo num mundo pacífico, de acordo com estes princípios:

DESARMAMENTO SEGURO E SOLUÇÃO PACÍFICA DOS LITÍGIOS… GUERRA, NUNCA MAIS.

O objectivo das negociações é alcançar um acordo sobre um programa que assegure:

Que esse desarmamento seja geral e completo e a guerra não seja mais um instrumento para resolver problemas internacionais, e

Que esse desarmamento seja acompanhado pelo estabelecimento de procedimentos transparentes para a solução pacífica de discórdias e medidas efectivas para a manutenção da paz, de acordo com os princípios da Carta das Nações Unidas.

RETENÇÃO DE FORÇAS NÃO NUCLEARES PARA GARANTIR A ORDEM NACIONAL E UMA FORÇA DE PAZ DA ONU

O programa para o desarmamento geral e completo responsabilizar-se-á para que os Estados tenham à sua disposição apenas os armamentos, forças, instalações e estabelecimentos não nucleares que forem considerados necessários para manter a ordem interna de cada Estado e para proteger a segurança pessoal dos cidadãos; e que os Estados deverão apoiar e fornecer mão-de-obra para uma força de paz das Nações Unidas.

TODAS AS FORÇAS MILITARES, BASES, DEPÓSITOS DE ARMAS E DESPESAS MILITARES SERÃO CANCELADAS

Para esse fim, o programa de desarmamento geral e completo deve conter as disposições necessárias, em relação à estrutura militar de cada nação para:

O desmantelamento das forças armadas, o desmantelamento dos estabelecimentos militares, incluindo bases, a cessação da produção de armamentos, bem como a sua eliminação ou conversão para usos pacíficos;

A eliminação de todos os depósitos de armas nucleares, químicas, bacteriológicas e outras armas de destruição em massa, e a cessação da produção de tais armas;

A eliminação de todos os meios de transporte de armas de destruição em massa;

A abolição das organizações e instituições destinadas a organizar os esforços militares dos Estados, a cessação do treino militar e o encerramento de todas as instituições de treino militar; e

O cancelamento das despesas militares.

EXECUÇÃO POR ETAPAS COM DATAS ESTABELECIDAS, COM CUMPRIMENTO E VERIFICAÇÃO ACORDADAS PARA CADA FASE

O programa de desarmamento deve ser concretizado numa sequência acordada por etapas, até à sua conclusão, com cada medida e etapa executadas dentro de prazos especificados. A transição para uma etapa subsequente no processo de desarmamento, deve ocorrer após uma revisão das medidas de execução incluídas na etapa anterior e uma decisão de que todas essas medidas foram efectivadas e verificadas e que quaisquer critérios adicionais de verificação necessários para medidas no próximo estágio, quando apropriados, estejam prontos para funcionar.

EQUILÍBRIO EQUITATIVO EM CADA ESTÁGIO, SEM VANTAGENS PARA QUALQUER ESTADO E COM SEGURANÇA PARA TODOS.

Todas as medidas de desarmamento geral e completo devem ser equilibradas, de modo que, em nenhuma fase da concretização do Tratado, qualquer Estado ou grupo de Estados, obtenha vantagem militar e que a segurança seja garantida igualmente para todos.

CONTROLO RIGOROSO PARA GARANTIR O CUMPRIMENTO DE TODAS AS PARTES E A CRIAÇÃO DE UMA ORGANIZAÇÃO INTERNACIONAL DE DESARMAMENTO, COM INSPECTORES QUE TENHAM ACESSO SEM RESTRIÇÕES EM TODA A PARTE, SEM QUE HAJA PROIBIÇÃO PARA VERIFICAÇÃO COMPLETA

Todas as medidas de desarmamento devem ser efectivadas, do começo ao fim, sob controlo internacional rigoroso e eficaz, a fim de fornecer uma garantia permanente de que todas as partes estão a cumprir as suas obrigações. Durante e após a realização do desarmamento geral e completo, deve ser exercido um controlo total. A natureza e a extensão de cada controlo depende dos requisitos para verificação das medidas de desarmamento que estão a ser executadas em cada etapa. Deve ser criada no âmbito das Nações Unidas, uma organização internacional de desarmamento, que inclua todas as partes do acordo, para concretizar o controlo e a inspecção do desarmamento. Esta organização internacional de desarmamento e os seus inspectores devem ter acesso ilimitado, sem qualquer proibição, a todos os locais, consoante seja necessário para fins de verificação efectiva.

O PROCESSO DE DESARMAMENTO DEVE SER ACOMPANHADO POR MEDIDAS PARA MANTER A PAZ E UMA FORÇA DE PAZ DAS NAÇÕES UNIDAS SUFICIENTEMENTE FORTE PARA DETERMINAR OU SUPRIMIR QUALQUER AMEAÇA OU USO DE ARMAS, EM VIOLAÇÃO DA CARTA DAS NAÇÕES UNIDAS.

O progresso no desarmamento deve ser acompanhado por medidas para fortalecer as instituições, a fim de manter a paz e a solução de conflitos internacionais por meios pacíficos. Durante e após a efectivação do programa de desarmamento geral e completo, devem ser tomadas, de acordo com os princípios da Carta das Nações Unidas, as medidas necessárias para manter a paz e a segurança internacionais, incluindo as obrigações dos Estados de colocar à disposição das Nações Unidas, a mão-de-obra acordada, necessária para que uma força de paz internacional esteja equipada com os tipos de armamentos acordados. Os acordos para o uso dessa força devem assegurar que as Nações Unidas possam, efectivamente, impedir, suprimir e ameaçar ou usar armas, que transgridam os propósitos e princípios das Nações Unidas.

OS ESTADOS DEVEM EMPENHAR-SE NUM ACORDO MAIS ALARGADO, O MAIS CEDO POSSÍVEL, CONTINUANDO A TENTAR CONSEGUIR MAIS ACORDOS LIMITADOS QUE FACILITARÃO E FORMARÃO PARTE DO PROGRAMA GERAL DO DESARMAMENTO GERAL, COMPLETO E SEGURO, NUM MUNDO PACÍFICO

Os Estados participantes nas negociações devem procurar alcançar e concretizar o acordo, o mais amplo possível, na data mais próxima possível. Os esforços devem continuar sem interrupção até que seja alcançado um acordo sobre o programa total e devem ser empreendidos esforços para garantir um rápido acordo e a execução das medidas de desarmamento, sem prejudicar o progresso do acordo sobre o programa total e de maneira que essas medidas facilitem e façam parte desse programa.

*****

Em 20 de Setembro de 1961, na cidade de Belgrado, os Estados Unidos e a União Soviética assinaram os Acordos McCloy-Zorin. Este acordo notável, que exige “Que Não Haja Mais Guerra”, estabeleceu as directrizes não só para o desarmamento nuclear, mas também para o desarmamento completo e geral de todas as nações do mundo. Se for encontrada vontade política para concretizá-lo, as ideias contidas nestes Acordos ainda podem ser usadas para atingir este objectivo.

Valerian Alexandrovich Zorin (russo: Валериан Александрович Зорин; 1 de Janeiro de 1902 – 14 de Janeiro de 1986) foi o diplomata soviético mais recordado por seu famoso confronto com Adlai Stevenson, em 25 de Outubro de 1962, durante a crise de mísseis cubanos.

Vida e carreira

Zorin nasceu em Novocherkassk. Depois de ingressar no Partido Comunista Soviético, em 1922, Zorin ocupou uma posição administrativa na Comissão da Cidade de Moscovo e na Comissão Central do Komsomol, até 1932. Em 1935, formou-se no Instituto Comunista de Educação (Высший коммунистический институт просвещн). De 1935 a 1941, Zorin trabalhou em várias tarefas do Partido e como professor. De 1941 a 1944, trabalhou no Comissariado do Povo para os Negócios Estrangeiros. De 1945 a 1947, Zorin exerceu o cargo de Embaixador Soviético na Checoslováquia. Em 1948, ajudou a organizar o golpe de Estado checoslovaco. De 1947 a 1955 e, novamente, de 1956 a 1965, foi Ministro Adjunto dos Negócios Estrangeiros da União Soviética. Ao mesmo tempo, ocupou outros cargos, incluindo o de representante soviético permanente no Conselho de Segurança da ONU, de 1952 a 1953. De 1955 a 1956, Zorin foi o primeiro Embaixador soviético na República Federal da Alemanha. De 1956 a 1965, representou, novamente, a União Soviética no Conselho de Segurança da ONU, que levou ao seu famoso confronto com Adlai Stevenson, em 25 de Outubro de 1962, durante a Crise dos Mísseis em Cuba.

Após o assassinato de John F. Kennedy, em 1963, Zorin divulgou uma declaração controversa sobre as possíveis causas do assassinato do Presidente, pondo de lado a crença de que Kennedy havia sido morto por um fanático esquerdista, Lee Harvey Oswald e, em vez disso, especulou que poderia ter sido um crime resultante das visões progressistas de Kennedy sobre os direitos civis e sobre a “gentalha” da América do Sul.

De 1965 a 1971, Zorin exerceu o cargo de Embaixador Soviético, em França. Em 1971, tornou-se Embaixador em missões especiais, no Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros da União Soviética. No 22º e 23º Congresso do PCUS, em 1961 e 1966, Zorin foi eleito para a Comissão Central do PCUS.

John Jay McCloy (31 de Março de 1895 – 11 de Março de 1989) advogado, diplomata, banqueiro e consultor presidencial americano. Exerceu o cargo de Secretário Assistente da Guerra durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial, sob o comando de Henry Stimson, ajudando a lidar com questões como a  sabotagem alemã, tensões políticas na Campanha do Norte de África e opôs-se aos bombardeios atómicos de Hiroshima e Nagasaki. Após a guerra, ocupou os cargos de presidente do Banco Mundial, Alto Comissário dos EUA para a Alemanha, presidente do Chase Manhattan Bank, presidente do Conselho dos Negócios Estrangeiros, membro da Comissão Warren e destacado conselheiro de todos os presidentes dos Estados Unidos, de Franklin D. Roosevelt a Ronald Reagan.

Final da guerra com o Japão

McCloy tentou convencer o Presidente Truman de que não era aconselhável uma invasão do Japão. Em meados de 1945, o Imperador japonês começou a procurar maneiras de livrar-se da guerra, chegando a pedir à União Soviética que mediasse uma paz entre os Estados Unidos e o Japão. Através de interceptações criptografadas, McCloy sabia que o Imperador estava preparado para se render, se lhe fossem dadas garantias para preservar a monarquia japonesa. Assim sendo, aconselhou Truman a oferecer termos de rendição que oferecessem essa garantia associada à ameaça implícita de usar a bomba atómica contra o Japão. McCloy argumentou que, ao fazê-lo, permitiria aos Estados Unidos reivindicar um terreno moral elevado, no caso de um bombardeio ser necessário para impedir uma invasão do continente japonês. Enquanto viajava de barco para a Conferência de Potsdam, o Secretário de Estado, James Byrnes, convenceu Truman a ignorar o conselho de McCloy. Truman ordenou que as bombas atómicas fossem lançadas assim que estivessem prontas.

Leitura complementar:

As bombas Atómicas no Japão Foram Destinadas a Terminar a Guerra e a salvar vidas?  Por Larry Romanoff

Tradutora: Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos 

Email: [email protected]

CEOs of major U.S. military contractors stand to reap huge windfalls from the escalation of conflict with Iran. This was evident in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. assassination of a top Iranian military official last week. As soon as the news reached financial markets, these companies’ share prices spiked, inflating the value of their executives’ stock-based pay.

I took a look at how the CEOs at the top five Pentagon contractors were affected by this surge, using the most recent SEC information on their stock holdings.

Northrop Grumman executives saw the biggest increase in the value of their stocks after the U.S. airstrike that killed Qasem Suleimani on January 2. Shares in the B-2 bomber maker rose 5.43 percent by the end of trading the following day.

Wesley Bush, who turned Northrop Grumman’s reins over to Kathy Warden last year, held 251,947 shares of company stock in various trusts as of his final SEC Form 4 filing in May 2019. (Companies must submit these reports when top executives and directors buy and sell company stock.) Assuming Bush is still sitting on that stockpile, he saw the value grow by $4.9 million to a total of $94.5 million last Friday.

New Northrop Grumman CEO Warden saw the 92,894 shares she’d accumulated as the firm’s COO expand in value by more than $2.7 million in just one day of post-assassination trading.

Lockheed Martin, whose Hellfire missiles were reportedly used in the attack at the Baghdad airport, saw a 3.6 percent increase in price per share on January 3. Marillyn Hewson, CEO of the world’s largest weapon maker, may be kicking herself for selling off a considerable chunk of stock last year when it was trading at around $307. Nevertheless, by the time Lockheed shares reached $413 at the closing bell, her remaining stash had increased in value by about $646,000.

What about the manufacturer of the MQ-9 Reaper that carried the Hellfire missiles? That would be General Atomics. Despite raking in $2.8 billion in taxpayer-funded contracts in 2018, the drone maker is not required to disclose executive compensation information because it is a privately held corporation.

We do know General Atomics CEO Neal Blue is worth an estimated $4.1 billion—and he’s a major investor in oil production, a sector that also stands to profit from conflict with a major oil-producing country like Iran.

*Resigned 12/22/19. **Resigned 1/1/19 while staying on as chairman until 7/19. New CEO Kathy Warden accumulated 92,894 shares in her previous position as Northrop Grumman COO.

Suleimani’s killing also inflated the value of General Dynamics CEO Phebe Novakovic’s fortune. As the weapon maker’s share price rose about 1 percentage point on January 3, the former CIA official saw her stock holdings increase by more than $1.2 million.

Raytheon CEO Thomas Kennedy saw a single-day increase in his stock of more than half a million dollars, as the missile and bomb manufacturer’s share price increased nearly 1.5 percent. Boeing stock remained flat on Friday. But Dennis Muilenberg, recently ousted as CEO over the 737 aircraft scandal, appears to be well-positioned to benefit from any continued upward drift of the defense sector.

As of his final Form 4 report, Muilenburg was sitting on stock worth about $47.7 million. In his yet to be finalized exit package, the disgraced former executive could also pocket huge sums of currently unvested stock grants.

Hopefully sanity will soon prevail and the terrifyingly high tensions between the Trump administration and Iran will de-escalate. But even if the military stock surge of this past Friday turns out to be a market blip, it’s a sobering reminder of who stands to gain the most from a war that could put millions of lives at risk.

We can put an end to dangerous war profiteering by denying federal contracts to corporations that pay their top executives excessively. In 2008, John McCain, then a Republican presidential candidate, proposed capping CEO pay at companies receiving taxpayer bailouts at no more than $400,000 (the salary of the U.S. president). That notion should be extended to companies that receive massive taxpayer-funded contracts.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, for instance, has a plan to deny federal contracts to companies that pay CEOs more than 150 times what their typical worker makes.

As long as we allow the top executives of our privatized war economy to reap unlimited rewards, the profit motive for war in Iran—or anywhere—will persist.

At face value, the Financial Times’ article, “Laos’s Belt and Road project sparks questions over China ambitions,” reads like a politically-motivated attack on infrastructure development in Asia. Because it is.

The article’s subheading, “High-speed train line in one of Asia’s poorest countries may benefit Beijing more than locals,” alone contradicts the correlation between the development of infrastructure and the alleviation of poverty. It also reveals the article as indeed, a politically-motivated attack on China and Asian development couched behind flimsy concerns over the nation of Laos and its people.

The article reports:

 Near Bom Or, a village of dirt streets and shacks in northern Laos, Chinese construction crews have cut a tunnel through a mountainside to carry high-speed trains along a 400km rail line across the country, a section of a planned route from Kunming in south-west China to Singapore.

The tunnel is part of a $6.7bn project through the rugged countryside around Luang Prabang, the ancient capital of Laos, one of the highest profile being built under China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

The article also claims:

Beijing has used the programme to build roads, ports and power stations in some of the world’s poorest countries. But critics have raised concerns about the social and environmental impact of the projects, saying that many of them are white elephants that have left states heavily indebted to Beijing.

The project in Laos, one of Asia’s poorest countries which has no independent media and limited civil society groups, has been carried out with little public consultation.

Of course, by “independent media” and “civil society groups,” Financial Times means fronts funded by and for US and European interests.

The construction of massive infrastructure projects always incurs debt. The construction of nation-spanning or region-spanning mass transportation systems always displace locals living in their proposed paths and locals will always protest having to move from their homes. These are problems that mega-projects throughout history have always faced and are not unique to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

While these issues are noteworthy, the fact that the Financial Times (and other Western media outlets) omit the obvious benefits for Laos exposes the lopsided narrative of political propaganda dressed up as journalism.

Landlocked Laos is Finally Being Unlocked 

Anyone who has previously set foot in Laos would have immediately seen and felt its isolation from the rest of the world and the impact it had on Laos’ economic prospects.

A little more than a decade ago, those travelling through Laos would have noticed a severe lack of modern highways and a complete lack of rail.

To move from one part of the country to another, tourists, cargo and business people would have to travel through narrow, winding mountain roads. To travel from Laos’ northern border with China to its capital near Laos’ border with Thailand required around 3 days of travel only if team driving was used and no stops were taken for sleep.

The isolation of Laos because of its geographical location, mountainous terrain and lack of transportation infrastructure was an obvious obstacle for economic progress. The obvious solution was developing transportation infrastructure.

Now that China is working with Laos to do just that, it has been met by concerted and constant condemnation from the West.

With the completion of Chinese-built highways alone, an influx of business and tourism has predictably followed. The movement of tourists and products is expected to expand even more with the completion of high-speed rail (expected to be completed in 2021).

The Financial Times even admits:

One likely source of business will be Chinese tourists visiting Laos, whose numbers have roughly doubled from 400,000 in 2014 to 800,000 last year.

“It is Chinese tourists and products in, and raw materials out,” said Nadège Rolland, an expert on BRI with the National Bureau of Asian Research, a US think-tank. “But eventually the BRI is about much more than infrastructure — it is policy co-ordination that will align the claimed needs of the region with those of Beijing.”

Not only will transportation infrastructure in Laos connect it with China, Chinese as well as Thai projects seek to extend road and rail projects being built in Laos into Thailand and onward to Malaysia and Singapore.

Laos will go from a mostly isolated, underdeveloped nation, to a key corridor linking China to 3 of the top 5 largest economies in Southeast Asia. Its location will go from hindering its development to being central to its future development, wealth and trade.

China is indeed benefiting by transforming Laos into a corridor it can reach the rest of Southeast Asia through. But it is connecting Laos, its people and economy with the rest of Southeast Asia as well.

Villagers in the path of these projects may or may not be receiving adequate compensation. Laos may be taking on additional debt. Environmental issues may or may not be receiving adequate attention. But there is no doubt that unlocking Laos as a terminally landlocked and isolated nation will improve the net wealth of it and its people.

“Humanitarian Concerns” Mask Hegemonic Ambitions: Bombs vs. Bridges  

The concept of cities and nations strategically located to facilitate transportation and trade being key to their historical wealth and success are concepts we are taught in elementary history and social studies classes. Why then are these same basic concepts escaping the attention of Western journalists while writing article after article condemning Beijing and Vientiane’s determination to link the country with its neighbours through modern, high-speed transportation links?

The notion that high-speed rail is something only developed nations need, rather than a means to drive development is a baseless argument presented and promoted not by the people of Laos or supported by the facts surrounding ongoing development there, but by the editorial boards of Western publications like the Financial Times.

Attempts by the West to feign concern over “human rights” or “environmental” concerns in regards to infrastructure projects in Laos also fall far short of credibility. The US and other Western powers are not in any way genuinely concerned with the nation of Laos or its people.

To prove it, the US alone left more than 80 million unexploded bomblets (10 each for every man, woman and child living in Laos) littering Laos during the Vietnam War. Since then, some 20,000 people have died and many more maimed by them.

Washington’s token support to clean up its unexploded weapons is, for all intents and purposes, meaningless. The current rate of disposal the US funds means that Laos’ countryside will finally be safe not in the next several years or decades, but several centuries from now. Rather than protesting desperately needed transportation infrastructure, if the US was genuinely concerned about Laos it would start by removing its own unexploded ordnance still killing and maiming Laotians to this day.

Not only does Washington fail to invest in actual areas of concern for the people of Laos (including fulfilling obligations regarding its own unexploded ordnance littering the nation), it is hiding behind disingenuous concerns to impede projects essential for addressing their best interests, including infrastructure and economic development.
Supposed “concerns” expressed by the Western media and the interests in Washington, London and Brussels they represent, are not about helping the people of Laos or protecting the environment, they are about preventing Laos from forever finally and fully escaping out from under the spectre of American and European colonialism past and present.

These “concerns” also mask what is in reality an attempt by the West to impede competitors like China from displacing what the US itself claims is its own “primacy” over Asia. China’s drive to develop infrastructure and economic progress in neighbouring nations will also directly undermine US “primacy” over Asia.

Thus, Western “humanitarian” and “environmental” concerns are merely hiding a genuine desire to eliminate competition and maintain regional hegemony.

An independent Asia built on healthy competition, collaboration and the primacy of national sovereignty is an Asia where Washington’s and its partners’ current approach to international relations cannot exist.

Luckily for Asia, it appears it is moving forward with an approach toward development that has displaced the West’s divisive and disruptive presence in the region. Meanwhile, the West, instead of attempting to compete with China on equally constructive terms, is doubling down on the very approach that has precipitated its regional and global decline to begin with.

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

In Toronto and across Canada, homelessness has reached proportions that no rational and just society would tolerate and it constitutes an emergency situation. The Trump Administration, seeing levels of destitution in California that are producing social dislocation, is preparing for a brutal crackdown on the homeless. We would do well to understand how close we are in Toronto to a comparable situation. The political agenda of austerity and social cutbacks is getting worse, the extreme commodification of housing continues to drive up rents and forces people onto the streets and, globally, conditions of economic downturn are unfolding. As more and more people are rendered homeless, the kind of incarceration option that Trump favours will undoubtedly enter into the plans of the more centrist representatives of the neoliberal order.

If we are to avoid, in the next period, a dramatic intensification of homelessness, a public health tragedy and the adoption of draconian measures against those thrown onto the streets, it is obvious that significant action must be forced out of governments at every level. Wages and social benefits must be raised to levels that enable people to meet the costs of rent and, in place of the farce of ‘affordable housing’ the poor can’t afford, social housing must be built on a scale that meets the need that exists.

At present, some important struggles are underway to win concrete gains in the provision of housing. The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) is campaigning for the creation of social housing at a location in Toronto’s Downtown East. In the face of determined and sustained community pressure, Vancouver City Council has voted to expropriate two badly neglected hotels in order to create viable housing in the Downtown Eastside. As significant as initiatives like this are, it is clear that we need to move on a much wider front and win much more substantial gains, if we are to seriously address the mounting crisis.

The Housing is There

Within an enormously wealthy G7 country like Canada, it is obvious that large scale and growing homelessness reflects, not a lack of resources, but a set of societal priorities and political choices. The UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, Leilani Farha, has called for an emphasis on housing as a human right, rather than as a commodity. If we think in those terms, we must certainly challenge the oversupply of upscale housing that a developer led approach leads to. However, even with the distorted priorities that have governed the creation of the present housing stock, there are ways to we could act to meet the needs of those who are homeless and the many more who are precariously perched on the edge of destitution.

The Daily Hive suggested last August that there are 66,000 empty homes in Toronto, with housing speculation as a major cause of this. This estimate actually includes short term rentals but, if even a quarter of this figure represented empty properties that could provide housing, we are looking at a shameful misuse of a vital social resource. The City of Toronto’s latest figures on the homeless shelter system, gathered on December 30, show 7,301 people in the official shelters and another 704 in the substandard back up system. There were homes for all them to sleep in that night but they sat empty.

When it comes, specifically, to the condos in Toronto, there is further strong evidence that people sleep on the streets and, sometimes, die on them, while perfectly decent housing sits vacant. Jaco Joubert, a designer who is concerned about the issue of housing inequality, set up an elaborate system of photographing condos. He took regular photos of fifteen buildings throughout the night for a week and, then, repeated this several months later. With this methodology, he obtained a plausible estimate of the number of units that were unlit and unoccupied. He calculated that, on average, the buildings had 5.6% of their units standing empty. Between 2008 and 2018 alone, 206,392 condo units started construction in Toronto. If 5.6% of those were sitting empty there would be 11,557 vacant homes that could easily house Toronto’s shelter population twice over. It is time to think about a campaign in this city to seriously challenge this massive injustice by demanding that empty condos be used to house the homeless.

A Campaign to Take Housing

The concept of squatters’ rights has never made the kind of gains in Canada that were achieved in a number of European countries. Still, in my work with OCAP, I’ve had some involvement with trying to take over empty properties to provide housing. In some cases, the actions pressured the authorities into creating housing on the sites. In the case of the Pope Squat, the property was held for some months. However, after several of these actions, it was clear that the police would not allow us to hold the properties and that, without a base of active support much larger than we had, squat actions were not viable for the foreseeable future.

I don’t preclude the notion of some symbolic short term housing takeovers to build momentum but, fundamentally, a campaign of action challenging the scandal of empty condos needs to do more than make a point. In the 1930s, the unemployed movements of the day, took action to try and block evictions. By no means did they always succeed but the ongoing resistance made a difference. The landlords and the authorities that served their interests had to reckon with that resistance and the rights of property, exercised at the expense of the impoverished, faced a real challenge. At the moment, speculators can buy up condos in Toronto and leave them sitting empty at will. That could be changed and these parasites forced to reckon with the ever present possibility that homeless people and their allies might challenge their greedy and disgusting squandering of a vital social resource.

Such a campaign would need a core of activists with a much larger base of support. Public meetings could be held to make the case for opening the empty condos. Local committees could be formed to begin to target particular condo developments. The demands of the campaign could be put before the various levels of government and condominium corporations by way of formal deputations and public protests. The idea would be to build an active base large enough that, when action was taken around empty condos, enough supporters would be ready to turn out to transform the initiative into a mass action.

Whether or not it actually proved possible to get homeless people housed directly in empty condos, if such an effort were taken up on large scale and a sustained basis, the pressure on the authorities to provide alternatives would be considerable. In both individual actions and, in the course of the campaign generally, the issue would be ‘If it’s not here, then where is the housing for these people?’ Housing that sits empty so that speculators can enrich themselves, while pushing up housing prices, is an ugly Achilles Heel of the neoliberal city that we would be targeting in a direct and compelling way. With this approach we could create a crisis for big property owners and their political enablers out of which concessions on housing could be won that were significant enough to address the unfolding disaster of homelessness in Toronto.

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Are we on the brink of a Third World War? There are signs that demand that we ask this question. Three clusters of signs compel us to probe a question that could well determine the future of our civilisation.

One, the nature of the event itself — the reckless assassination of the Iranian general, Qassem Sulaimani, on the orders of the president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, on 3^rd January 2020 at Baghdad airport — and the fears it has generated of a full-scale war between the two countries and other actors.

Two, the events that have preceded and followed the 3^rd of January murder that portend the danger of a much bigger conflict  in the world’s most tumultuous region.

Three, the tussle for power and influence in West Asia between various actors and their protectors and allies which only needs a trigger to set the entire region ablaze.

The Assassination

While the Trump administration has tried to justify the killing of Qassem Sulaimani in terms of his role in combating the American military presence in West Asia, it is indisputably true that he was also instrumental in the defeat of Al-Qaeda and Daesh and their affiliates in both Iraq and Syria — groups which the US leadership formally regarded as “terrorists.”   If Qassem had an iconic stature in Iran and certain other countries in the region it was because of his success against terrorists inasmuch as his resistance to the Americans whom he saw as occupiers.

In any case, it is doubtful if it was Qassem’s position against the US presence that was the primary factor in his assassination. Isn’t it possible that Trump was hoping that the assassination of a major figure from Iran — since Iran has been depicted as a demon in the US media — would lessen the adverse impact of his impending impeachment?  Besides, if he is perceived as a tough leader willing to eliminate a foreign opponent, wouldn’t it boost his chances of re-election in the presidential polls at the end of this year?

The Context.

Qassem’s killing should be seen in the context of deteriorating US-Iran relations since Trump withdrew from the Iran plus six nation nuclear agreement in 2018. He intensified his pressure upon Iran in a multitude of ways. Sanctions were increased manifold. Drone surveillance over Iranian territory became more pronounced. A US drone which had allegedly violated Iranian air-space was shot down by Iran on 20^th January 2019. A tit-for-tat pattern in US-Iran confrontation developed often on Iraqi soil. The US for instance attacked a militia base in Iraq on 29^th December 2019 which prompted pro-Iranian Iraqis to retaliate by occupying the US embassy in Baghdad on the 31^st of December. Tit-for-tat confrontation arising from the targeting of Iran by the US has heightened the danger of an all-out war.

Tussle for Power

Perhaps a greater danger stems from the tussle for power within West Asia itself. Saudi Arabia, because of its immense oil wealth and its revered status as the land that situates Mekkah and Medina, has for a long while regarded itself as the leader of the Muslim world. The Islamic Revolution in Iran of 1979 was perceived as a challenge to its status partly because it had overthrown a monarchical structure and rejected US hegemony over the region. Besides, the vast majority of Iranians are Shia in contrast to Saudi Arabia’s adherence to Wahabi teachings. The uneasiness between the two states did not create any severe friction until the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003 which led eventually to the rise of the majority Shia population through the ballot-box. The empowerment of the Shia in Iraq, and their links to Shia Iran were interpreted by the Saudi elite as a threat to their position. Soon, they also witnessed the strengthening of the minority Shia component of Syria largely because of a war imposed upon the land through the machinations of some regional actors backed by the US and its allies. It is because of these reasons — and not the military manoeuvres of Qassem Sulaimani alone —– that the Shias and Iran have become more influential in West Asia.

The increasing influence of Iran has also incensed Israel. Since the 1979 Revolution when the Iranian leadership stated unequivocally its commitment to the liberation of the Palestinian people, Israel has been antagonistic towards Iran. It has worked closely with the US elite to undermine Iran on a variety of fronts. It is their common enmity towards Iran that has now helped to forge a bond between the Israeli and Saudi elites.

It is this struggle for power, Saudi and Israeli elites on one side, and Iran and some of its allies on the other, which has exacerbated the potential for a huge conflict in the region.  Needless to say, the US role in this power struggle, as protector and defender of Israel and Saudi Arabia against Iran has heightened the danger of war as never before.

Apart from these three clusters of signs, there are other factors which may also point in the direction of a possible war. They are related to the global economy and global political power. The irreversible shift in global power from the US and the West to China and certain other actors is causing much consternation in Washington DC and London among other capitals. It signals the end of the epoch of Western dominance. Is a world war a way of preventing that change from taking place?

While the danger of a world war is real, we must also recognise that people everywhere do not want a war. A lot of governments have condemned the brazen assassination of Qassem as a gross violation of international law. In fact, some members of the US House of Representatives and the US Senate regard the authorisation of the murder by the US president as a stark transgression of US law.

For critics of US foreign policy outside the US in particular, Trump’s abuse of power is characteristic of a government which more often than not has behaved as if established law and civilised norms do not apply to it. US ‘exceptionalism’ is one of the main reasons why the global movement against hegemony has become so much stronger in the last three decades. 

They know as others do that war, a creature of hegemony, is a terrible scourge. It is not just a question of millions dying. Much of civilisation as we know it will also be eliminated especially since one of the protagonists is convinced that destroying cultural sites in a war is legitimate.

Iran which had suffered so much from a war imposed upon it in the eighties and has not initiated a war for the last 250 years is opposed to a military confrontation with the US. This is why avenging Qassem’s death for the Iranian leadership does not mean starting a war. It is a rational leadership which will focus upon driving the US military forces out of West Asia through politics and diplomacy. 

If it succeeds in achieving this, it would have transformed the region and the world for the well-being of human beings everywhere.              

Dr Chandra Muzaffar is the president of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

The 1933 Marx brothers film Duck Soup was meant to be a satirical look at Benito Mussolini, ruler of Italy. In the film the mythical country of Freedonia , ruled by the effervescent Rufus T. Firefly ( played by Groucho), due to an insult by the ambassador of rival nation Sylvania, declares war. Laughs abound. Well, in our own nation of ‘ Free markets’, ‘ Free enterprise’ and ‘ Free use of war’ whenever it pleases us, we are led by another Firefly, who is as comedic as he is dangerous to peace.

Of course, the major difference with movie’s Freedonia and our own is like night and day. In the film the leader, Firefly, had full control of every decision needed to be made. In our Freemerika, Mr. Trump, regardless of the image he portrays as an absolute ruler, has to dance to the tune of the Military Industrial Empire, just like ALL our previous presidents. Folks, sorry to say, but presidents are not so much harnessed by our Constitution or Congress ( or even the Supreme Court) but by the wizards who the empire picks to advise him. They decide the ‘ when and if’ of such dramatic actions like the other day’s drone missile murder in Iraq of the Iranian general. Unlike when Groucho decides he was insulted by Trentino, the Sylvanian ambassador, and declares ‘ This means war!’, Mr. Trump gave the order for the assassination… but ONLY after those behind the curtain advised him.

To believe that our presidents have carte blanche to do the heinous deeds is foolish at best. LBJ’s use of the Gulf of Tonkin phony incident to gung ho in Vietnam was not just one man making that call.

Or Nixon’s Christmas carpet bombing of Hanoi, Bush Sr.’s attack on Iraq in 1991 , his son’s ditto against Iraq in 2003, Obama’s use of NATO to destroy Libya in 2011, or this latest arrogance by Trump, were all machinations by this empire’s wizards who advised them. When the late Senator Robert Byrd stood before a near empty Senate chamber in 2003 to warn of this craziness, that told it all! We are not led by Rufus T. Firefly, rather a Cabal that most in this government do not even realize who in the hell these people are!

Of course, the embedded mainstream media does the usual job of demonizing who the empire chooses to be our enemies. As with this recent illegal act by our government of crossing into another nation’s sovereignty to do the deed, now they all tell us how deadly this Iranian general was. Yet, how many of the news outlets ever mentioned this guy for what they now tell us he was, for all these years? Well, here is the kicker. I do not know what this man was responsible for , regarding acts of insurgency against US forces in Iraq. Maybe he did aid in the attacks on US personnel. Maybe he also was there to neutralize the fanatical ISIS terrorists who were killing US and Iraqi personnel in Iraq and Syria. What I do know is that, in the first place, we had no business ever invading and occupying Iraq… period! Thus, the rest of this Duck Soup becomes postscript.

Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, World News Trust and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 300 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘ It’s the Empire… Stupid ‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected]

President Trump ordering the killing of Qassem Soleimani is troubling on several fronts. The assassination has been treated as an act of war in Iran, uniting disparate political factions after a brutal crackdown on protesters in November. Now, U.S. forces are on a state of high alert across the region, with many anticipating potential Iranian counter reprisals that risk further deepening the escalation spiral from which there could be no escape.

But there’s another troubling aspect to this decision — Congress was left in the dark, and the administration appears to be lying about the intelligence they used to justify the strike. 

The official administration line — that this disrupted an imminent attack, saving lives— was somewhat dubious from the start. Soleimani was a commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, and thus gave orders to associates to carry out various operations. Killing him would be unlikely to stop an imminent attack, as many observers have pointed out. As former intelligence analyst Jon Bateman said, killing Soleimani “would be neither necessary nor sufficient to disrupt the operational progression of an imminent plot. What it might do instead is shock Iran’s decision calculus.” If anything, killing a senior Iranian military commander could guarantee the action it is purported to have forestalled.Moreover, while Congressional leaders were kept out of the loop about the strike, Trump had reportedly been boasting about it for days to guests at Mar-a-Lago. As reported by The Daily Beast, Trump told several different guests at Mar-a-Lago in the days leading up to the strike that he was “working on a ‘big’ response to the Iranian regime that they would be hearing or reading about very ‘soon,’” with Trump claiming that he’d been in touch with his national security team “gaming out options for an aggressive action that could quickly materialize.”

If true, it would beggar belief that there was a specific and imminent threat emerging from Iran that could be eliminated with Soleimani’s death. Instead, this was a calculated provocation and reckless ratcheting up of tension that Trump couldn’t wait to crow about.

Subsequent reporting confirms that the strike was contemplated for days, calling into question the administration’s narrative and its legality. According to the Los Angeles Times, President Trump surprised his national security team when he chose a strike on Soleimani from a list of follow-on actions after clashes with Iraqi Shiite militias that left one civilian contractor dead as well as dozens of militia members. The decision was “spurred on in part by Iran hawks among his advisors,” and set off a furious effort to locate Soleimani and carry out the order. 

Similarly, The Washington Post reports that the decision to strike was made Sunday, with officials reminding Trump that he had not responded to earlier provocations including Iran’s downing of a U.S. drone, egging on the reckless decision. Trump was reportedly swayed by their arguments, as he was “frustrated that the details of his internal deliberations had leaked out and felt he looked weak,” according to officials.

Lastly, the actual evidence behind the intelligence appears to be “razor thin,” according to two U.S. officials who have been briefed. As reported by the New York Times’ Rukmini Callimanchi, the intelligence includes Soleimani’s travel pattern, a purported conversation with the Supreme Leader, and heightened hostilities between the U.S. and Iran. Or, as one intelligence official described, it is “hardly evidence of an imminent attack that could kill hundreds,” with the administration’s conclusion being an “illogical leap.”

Add it all up, and you have an administration that ignored Congress while planning an assassination of a foreign general that risks a disastrous war without any plausible argument that doing so was authorized by Congress. This is an administration that has lied over matters big  and small, and thinks it can get away with lying Americans into war while repeating the George W. Bush playbook that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Hence, the warnings of an imminent terror threat that doesn’t appear to have existed as well as the bizarre lie from Vice President Mike Pence attempting to link Soleimani to the September 11 attacks. And, just like the George W. Bush administration had delusions about what would come after the invasion of Iraq, many members of Trump’s team are apparently deluded about what comes next. As one senior State Department official claimed, they don’t expect additional retaliation from Iran because the U.S. is “speaking in a language the regime understands.”

The American people don’t want a war with Iran. Avoiding such a disaster will require Congress to step up, cut through the administration’s lies, and pass legislation that reins the administration in and removes American forces from hostilities against Iran. Failing to do so will only empower a reckless administration that appears to be lying us into a war.

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The assassination by the United States of Qassem Suleimani, a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps general and commander of the Quds Force, an Iranian paramilitary force specializing in covert operations on foreign soil, has sent shock waves through the Middle East and around the globe.

The Trump administration has justified its action, citing unspecified intelligence that indicated Suleimani was in the process of finalizing plans for attacks on U.S. personnel and interests in the region, claiming that Suleimani’s death “saved American lives.” This narrative has been challenged by Lebanese officials familiar with Suleimani’s itinerary, noting that the Iranian general had been in Beirut on diplomatic business, and had travelled to Baghdad via a commercial air flight, where he had been diplomatically cleared to enter. These officials claim Suleimani was killed while riding in a convoy on his way from Baghdad International Airport into the city of Baghdad.

In any event, Suleimani’s death resonates in a region already on edge because of existing tensions between the U.S. and Iran. The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, has announced three days of mourning for Suleimani, an indication of his status as national hero. Khamenei also vowed revenge on those who perpetrated the attack. Concern over imminent Iranian retaliation has prompted the State Department to order all American citizens to leave Iraq, and for U.S. forces in the region to be placed on the highest level of alert. Hundreds of American soldiers have been flown into the region as reinforcements, with thousands more standing by if needed.

For many analysts and observers, Iran and the U.S. are on the cusp of a major confrontation. While such an outcome is possible, the reality is that the Iranian policy of asymmetrical response to American aggression that had been put in place by Qassem Suleimani when he was alive is still in place today. While emotions run high in the streets of Iranian cities, with angry crowds demanding action, the Iranian leadership, of which Suleimani was a trusted insider, recognizes that any precipitous action on its part only plays into the hands of the United States. In seeking revenge for the assassination of Qassem Suleimani, Iran will most likely play the long game, putting into action the old maxim that revenge is a dish best served cold.

In many ways, the United States has already written the script regarding major aspects of an Iranian response. The diplomatic missions Suleimani may have been undertaking at the time of his death centered on gaining regional support for pressuring the United States to withdraw from both Syria and Iraq. Of the two, Iraq was, and is, the highest priority, if for no other reason that there can be no sustained U.S. military presence in Syria without the existence of a major U.S. military presence in Iraq. Suleimani had been working with sympathetic members of the Iraqi Parliament to gain support for legislation that would end Iraq’s support for U.S. military forces operating on Iraqi soil. Such legislation was viewed by the United States as a direct threat to its interests in both Iraq and the region.

The U.S. had been engaged in a diplomatic tug of war with Iran to sway Iraqi politicians regarding such a vote. However, this effort was dealt a major blow when Washington conducted a bombing attack Sunday which targeted Khaitab Hezbollah along the border with Syria, killing scores of Iraqis. The justification for these attacks was retaliation for a series of rocket attacks on an American military base that had killed one civilian contractor and wounded several American soldiers. The U.S. blamed Iranian-backed Khaitab Hezbollah (no relation to the Lebanese Hezbollah group), for the attacks.

There are several problems with this narrative, first and foremost being that the bases bombed were reportedly more than 500 kilometers removed from the military base where the civilian contractor had been killed. The Iraqi units housed at the bombed facilities, including Khaitab Hezbollah, were engaged, reportedly, in active combat operations against ISIS remnants operating in both Iraq and Syria. This calls into question whether they would be involved in an attack against an American target. In fact, given the recent resurgence of ISIS, it is entirely possible that ISIS was responsible for the attack on the U.S. base, creating a scenario where the U.S. served as the de facto air force for ISIS by striking Iraqi forces engaged in anti-ISIS combat operations.

ISIS has emerged as a major feature in the Iranian thinking regarding how best to strike back at the US for Suleimani’s death. The Iranian government has gone out of its way to announce that, in the wake of Suleimani’s assassination, that Washington would be held fully responsible for any resurgence of ISIS in the region. Given the reality that Iran has been at the forefront of the war against ISIS, and that Iranian-backed Iraqi militias such as Khaitab Hezbollah have played a critical role in defeating ISIS on the ground, there is no doubt that Iran has the ability to take its foot off of the neck of a prostrate ISIS and facilitate their resurgence in areas under U.S. control.

Such an outcome would serve two purposes. First, U.S. forces would more than likely suffer casualties in the renewed fighting, especially since their primary proxy force, the Syrian Kurds, have been diminished in the aftermath of Turkey’s incursion late last year in northern Syria. More importantly, however, is the political cost that will be paid by President Trump, forced to explain away a resurgent ISIS during an election year after going on record that ISIS had been completely defeated.

But the real blow to American prestige would be for the Iraqi government to sever relations with the American military. The U.S. bombing of the Iraqi bases severely stressed U.S.-Iraqi relations, with the Iraqi government protesting the attacks as a violation of their sovereignty. One of the ways the Iraqi government gave voice to its displeasure was by facilitating access by protestors affiliated with Khaitab Hezbollah to gain access to the highly secure Green Zone in downtown Baghdad where the U.S. Embassy is situated, where they set fire to some buildings and destroyed property before eventually dispersing. While commentators and politicians have described the actions targeting the US Embassy as an “attack,” it was a carefully choreographed bit of theater designed to ease passions that had built up as a result of the U.S. attack.

Getting the Iraqi Parliament to formally reject the U.S. military presence on Iraqi soil has long been a strategic objective of Iran. As such, Iran would be best served by avoiding direct conflict with the US, and letting events take their expected course.

If Iraq votes to expel American forces, the Trump administration will be tied up trying to cope with how to manage that new reality. Add to that the problems that will come in confronting a resurgent ISIS, and it becomes clear that by simply doing nothing, Iran will have already gained the strategic upper hand in a post-Suleimani world. The Trump administration will find it hard to sustain the deployment of thousands of troops in the Middle East if there is no Iranian provocation to respond to. Over time, the American presence will lessen. Security will lapse. And, when the time is right, Iran will strike, most probably by proxy, but in a manner designed to inflict as much pain as possible.

Trump started this fight by recklessly ordering the assassination of a senior Iranian government official. The Trump administration now seeks to shape events in the region to best support a direct confrontation with Iran. Such an outcome is not in Iran’s best interests. Instead, they will erode Trump’s political base by embarrassing him in Iraq and with ISIS. Iran will respond, that much can be assured. But the time and place will be of their choosing, when the U.S. expects it least.

Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of several books, most recently, Deal of the Century: How Iran Blocked the West’s Road to War (2018).

It was not the US decision to fire missiles against the IRGC commander Brigadier General Qassem Soleimani that killed the Iranian officer and his companions in Baghdad. Yes, of course, the order that was given to launch missiles from the two drones (which destroyed the two cars carrying Sardar Soleimani and his companion the Iraqi commander in al-Hashd al-Shaabi Jamal Jaafar Al-Tamimi aka Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes and burned their bodies in the vehicle) came from US command and control.

However, the reason President Donald Trump made this decision derives from the weakness of the “axis of resistance”, which has completely retreated from the level of performance that Iran believed it was capable of after decades of work to strengthen this “axis”.

A close companion of Major General Qassim Soleimani, to whom he spoke hours before boarding the plane that took him from Damascus to Baghdad, told me:

“The nobleman died. Palestine above all has lost Hajj Qassem (Soleimani). He was the “King” of the Axis of the Resistance and its leader. He was assassinated and this is exactly what he was hoping to reach in this life (Martyrdom). However, this axis will live and will not die. No doubt, the Axis of the Resistance needs to review its policy and regenerate itself to correct its path. This was what Hajj Qassim was complaining about and planning to work on and strategizing about in his last hours. ”

The US struck Iran at the heart of its pride by killing Major General Soleimani. But the “axis of the Resistance” killed him before that. This is how:

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assassinated the deputy head of the Military Council (the highest authority in the Lebanese Hezbollah, which is headed by its Secretary-General, Hassan Nasrallah), Hajj Imad Mughniyah in Damascus, Syria, Hezbollah could not avenge him until today.

When Trump gave Netanyahu Jerusalem as the “capital of Israel”, the “Axis of the Resistance” did not move except by holding television symposia and conferences verbally rejecting the decision.

When President Trump offered the occupied Syrian Golan Heights to Israel and the “Axis of Resistance” did not react, the US President Donald Trump and his team understood that they were opposed by no effective deterrent. The inaction of the Resistance axis emboldened Trump to do what he wants.

And when Israel bombed hundreds of Syrian and Iranian targets in Syria, the “Axis of the Resistance” justified its lack of retaliation by the typical sentence: “We do not want to be dragged along by the timing of the engagement imposed by the enemy,” as a senior official in this axis told me.

In Iraq shortly before his death, Major General Soleimani was complaining about the weakening of the Iraqi ranks within this “Axis of the Resistance”, represented by the Al-Bina’ (Construction) Alliance and other groups close to this alliance like Al-Hikma of Ammar al-Hakim and Haidar al-Abadi, formerly close to Iran, that have gone over to the US side.

In Iraq, Major General Soleimani was very patient and never lost his temper. He was trying to reconcile the Iraqis, both his allies and those who had chosen the US camp and disagreed with him. He used to hug those who shouted at him to lower tensions and continue dialogue to avoid spoiling the meeting. Anyone who raised his voice during discussions soon found that it was Soleimani who calmed everyone down.

Hajj Qassem Soleimani was unable to reach a consensus on the new Prime Minister’s name among those he deemed to be allies in the same coalition. He asked Iraqi leaders to select the names and went through all of these asking questions about the acceptability of these names to the political groups, to the Marjaiya, to protestors in the street and whether the suggested names were not provocative or challenging to the US. Notwithstanding the animosity between Iran and the US, Soleimani encouraged the selection of a personality that would not be boycotted by the US. Soleimani believed the US capable of damaging Iraq and understood the importance of maintaining a good relationship with the US for the stability of the country.

Soleimani was shocked by the dissension among Iraqi Shia and believed that the “axis of resistance” needed a new vision as it was faltering. In the final hours before his death, Major General Soleimani was ruminating on the profound antagonisms between Iraqis of the same camp.

When the Iraqi street began to move against the government, the line rejecting American hegemony was fragmented because it was part of the authority that ruled and governed Iraq. To make matters worse, Sayyed Muqtada al-Sadr directed his arrows against his partners in government, as though the street demonstrations did not target him, the politician controlling the largest number of Iraqi deputies, ministers and state officials, who had participated in the government for more than ten years.

Major General Soleimani admonished Moqtada Al-Sadr for his stances, which contributed to undermining the Iraqi ranks because the Sadrist leader did not offer an alternative solution or practical project other than the chaos. Moqtada has his own men, the feared Saraya al-Salam, present in the street.

When US Defense Secretary Mark Esper called Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi on December 28 and informed him of America’s intentions of hitting Iraqi security targets inside Iraq, including the PMU, Soleimani was very disappointed by Abdul-Mahdi’s failure to effectively oppose Esper. Abdul-Mahdi merely told Esper that the proposed US action was dangerous. Soleimani knew that the US would not have hit Iraqi targets had Abdul-Mahdi dared to oppose the US decision. The targeted areas were a common Iranian-Iraqi operational stage to monitor and control ISIS movements on the borders with Syria and Iraq. The US would have reversed its decision had the Iraqi Prime Minister threatened the US with retaliation in the event that Iraqi forces were bombed and killed. After all, the US had no legal right to attack any objective in Iraq without the agreement of the Iraqi government. This decision was the moment when Iraq has lost its sovereignty and the US took control of the country.

This effective US control is another reason why President Trump gave the green light to kill Major General Soleimani. The Iraqi front had demonstrated its weakness and also, it was necessary to select a strong Iraqi leader with the guts to stand to the US arrogance and unlawful actions.

Iran has never controlled Iraq, as most analysts mistakenly believe and speculate. For years, the US has worked hard in the corridors of the Iraqi political leadership lobby for its own interests. The most energetic of its agents was US Presidential envoy Brett McGurk, who clearly realised the difficulties of navigating inside Iraqi leaders’ corridors during the search for a prime minister of Iraq before the appointment of Adel Abdel Mahdi, the selection of President Barham Saleh and other governments in the past. Major General Soleimani and McGurk shared an understanding of these difficulties. Both understood the nature of the Iraqi political quagmire.

Soleimani did not give orders to fire missiles at US bases or attack the US Embassy. If it was in his hands to destroy them with accurate missiles and to remove the entire embassy from its place without repercussions, he would not have hesitated. But the Iraqis have their own opinions, methods, modus operandi and selection of targets and missile calibres; they never relied on Soleimani for such decisions.

Iranian involvement in Iraqi affairs was never welcomed by the Marjaiya in Najaf, even if it agreed to receive Soleimani on a few occasions. They clashed over the reelection of Nuri al-Maliki, Soleimani’s preferred candidate, to the point that the Marjaiya wrote a letter making its refusal of al-Maliki explicit. This led to the selection of Abadi as prime minister.

Soleimani’s views contradicted the perception of the Marjaiya, that had to write a clear message, firstly, to reject the re-election of Nori al-Maliki to a third session, despite Soleimani’s insistence.

All of the above is related to the stage that followed the 2011 departure of US forces from Iraq under President Obama. Prior to that, Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis was the link between the Iraqis and Iran: he had the decision-making power, the vision, the support of various groups, and effectively served as the representative of Soleimani, who did not interfere in the details. These Iraqi groups met with Soleimani often in Iran; Soleimani rarely travelled to Iraq during the period of heavy US military presence.

Soleimani, although he was the leader of the “Axis of the Resistance”, was sometimes called “the king” in some circles because his name evokes Solomon. According to sources within the “Axis of the Resistance”, he “never dictated his own policy but left a margin of movement and decision to all leaders of the axis without exception. Therefore, he was considered the link between this axis and the supreme leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei. Soleimani was able to contact Sayyed Khamenei at any time and directly without mediation. The Leader of the revolution considered Soleimani as his son.

According to sources, in Syria, Soleimani “never hesitated to jump inside a truck, ride an ordinary car, take the first helicopter, or travel on a transport or cargo plane as needed. He did not take any security precautions but used his phone (which he called a companion spy) freely because he believed that when the decision came to assassinate him, he would follow his destiny.  He looked forward to becoming a martyr because he had already lived long.”

Was the leader of the “resistance axis” managing and running it?

Sayyed Ali Khamenei told Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah: “You are an Arab and the Arabs accept you more than they accept Iran”. Sayyed Nasrallah directed and managed the axis of Lebanon, Syria and Yemen and had an important role in Iraq. Hajj Soleimani was the liaison between the axis of the resistance and Iran and he was the financial and logistical officer. According to my source, “He was a friend of all leaders and officials of all ranks. He was humble and looked after everyone he had to deal with”.

The “Axis of Resistance” indirectly allowed the killing of Qassem Soleimani. If Israel and the US could know Sayyed Nasrallah’s whereabouts, they would not hesitate a moment to assassinate him. They may be aware: the reaction may be limited to burning flags and holding conferences and manifesting in front of an embassy. Of course, this kind of reaction does not deter President Trump who wants to be re-elected with the support of Israel and US public opinion. He wants to present himself as a warrior and determined leader who loves battle and killing.

Iran invested 40 years building the “Axis of the Resistance”. It cannot remain idle, faced with the assassination of the Leader of this axis. Would a suitable price be the US exit from Iraq and condemnation in the Security Council? Would that, together with withdrawal from the nuclear deal, be enough for Iran to avenge its General? Will the ensuing battle be confined to the Iraqi stage? Will it be used for the victory of certain Iraqi political players?

The assassination of its leader represents the supreme test for the Axis of Resistance. All sides, friend and foe, are awaiting its response.

Proofread by:   C.G.B. and Maurice Brasher

Dear Friends for Peace,

The Canadian Peace Congress condemns the murders of Iranian General Soleimani and others in the motorcade leaving Baghdad International Airport on January 3rd, 2020 as an act of war by the United States against Iraq and Iran.

This American criminal action is an act of aggression, a violation of the UN Charter and every norm of international law. It places the entire world at risk of a generalised war. The excuses offered by the United States government for this barbarity reflect their hypocrisy, their complete lack of morality, their contempt for law, their contempt for civilized behavior.

We must remember that the US forces in Iraq are invading and occupying forces that destroyed Iraq in the years since their invasion of 2003. The invasion began with the murders of thousands of people in the “shock and awe” campaign on the very first day, continued with their show trial and murder of President Hussein and continues to the present, along with their invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and their invasion and occupation of Syria. Millions have died as a result.

The untold suffering caused by the illegal US economic embargo on Iran, in violation of the UN Charter and the Rome Statute concerning collective punishment of civilian populations, is well known and is also an act of war.

This is not the first assassination of Iranian citizens by the United States. The Americans, with Israeli help, have carried out multiple assassinations of Iranian scientists and officials in the past and have repeatedly threatened to kill the country’s leadership.

These are the actions of criminals. Therefore, we call on the International Criminal Court to condemn the American actions as a war crime even if it has no jurisdiction over them and we call on the SecurityCouncil to refer the matter to the ICC, thereby giving the ICC the jurisdiction it needs to file war crimes charges against Donald Trump and all the officials involved.

We condemn the support given to the American action by the Canadian government, which makes it complicit in this crime. We call on the people of Canada to engage in mass protests against this crime and demand that the Government of Canada condemn the American action as the crime it is, as the grave danger to world peace that it is.

We also call on the Canadian government to withdraw all its forces in Iraq, which are in violation of the UN Charter and the National Defence Act.

Peace can only come from international cooperation, diplomacy and adherence to international law. It does not come from acts of war and murder.
We call on the USA to abandon its aggressive policies towards Iran and hope that Iran can find a way to avoid a general war even in the face of these grave provocations by the United States.

On Behalf of the Executive of the Canadian Peace Congress,

Laura Savinkoff, Christopher Black
Vice-President Director

With another 3,000 US troops preparing to deploy to the Middle East and six Boeing B-52 Stratofortress nuclear-capable bombers headed to a major US military base at Deigo Garcia, 52 stealth fighter jets conducted a Combat Power Exercise Monday amid escalating tensions between the US and Iran. 

Also known as the Elephant Walk exercise, 52 Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters carrying missiles and bombs were taxiing down a runway at Hill Air Force base in Utah on Monday.

Elephant walks are generally conducted right before a minimum interval takeoff (MITO), a technique used by the US Air Force (USAF) to scramble all jets to take off at twelve- and fifteen-second intervals.

“The exercise, which was planned for months, demonstrated their ability to employ a large force of F-35As – testing readiness in the areas of personnel accountability, aircraft generation, ground operations, flight operations, and combat capability against air and ground targets. A little more than four years after receiving their first combat-coded F-35A Lightning II aircraft, Hill’s fighter wings have achieved full warfighting capability,” said the 388th Fighter Wing in a Facebook post.

From troop deployments to a show of force with B-52 bombers and stealth fighters, the Trump administration is sending a clear message to Iran.

Meanwhile, Iranian state media channels on Monday began “answering” US threats, broadcasting military “shows of force” against the United States to its population:

عاجل : التلفزيون الإيراني بث قبل قليل نشيد الحرب الإيرانية – العراقية في إشارة إلى حالة الحرب التي قد تشهدها المنطقة بعد مقتل سليماني . هذا النشيد ومترجم إلى اللغة العربية. pic.twitter.com/2NnNxYDOKW

— محمد مجيد الأحوازي (@MohamadAhwaze) January 6, 2020

President Trump has already threatened an all-out attack on 52 sites inside Iran. The threat of war has never been greater, the world has dove into uncharted waters in the last week. All eyes on possible retaliation strike by Iran.

The bombshell facts were delivered by caretaker Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, during an extraordinary, historic parliamentary session in Baghdad on Sunday.

Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani had flown into Baghdad on a normal carrier flight, carrying a diplomatic passport. He had been sent by Tehran to deliver, in person, a reply to a message from Riyadh on de-escalation across the Middle East. Those negotiations had been requested by the Trump administration.

So Baghdad was officially mediating between Tehran and Riyadh, at the behest of Trump. And Soleimani was a messenger. Adil Abdul-Mahdi was supposed to meet Soleimani at 8:30 am, Baghdad time, last Friday. But a few hours before the appointed time, Soleimani died as the object of a targeted assassination at Baghdad airport.

Let that sink in – for the annals of 21^st century diplomacy. Once again: it does not matter whether the assassination order was issued by President Trump, the US Deep State or the usual suspects – or  when. After all, the Pentagon had Soleimani on its sights for a long time, but always refused to go for the final hit, fearing devastating consequences.

Now, the fact is that the United States government – on foreign soil, as a guest nation – has assassinated a diplomatic envoy who was on an official mission that had been requested by the United States government itself.

Baghdad will formally denounce this behavior to the United Nations. However, it would be idle to expect UN outrage about the US killing of a diplomatic envoy. International law was dead even before 2003’s Shock and Awe.

Mahdi Army is back

Under these circumstances, it’s no wonder the Iraqi Parliament approved a non-binding resolution asking the Iraqi government to expel foreign troops by cancelling a request for military assistance from the US.

Translation: Yankee go home.

Predictably, Yankee will refuse the demand. Trump: “If they do ask us to leave, if we don’t do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever. It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame.”

US troops already are set to remain in Syria illegally – to “take care of the oil.” Iraq, with its extraordinary energy reserves, is an even more serious case. Leaving Iraq means Trump, US neocons and the Deep State lose control, directly and indirectly, of the oil for good. And, most of all, lose the possibility of endless interfering against the Axis of Resistance – Iran-Iraq-Syria-Hezbollah.

Apart from the Kurds – bought and paid for – Iraqis all across the political spectrum are tuned in to public opinion: this occupation is over. That includes Muqtada al-Sadr, who reactivated the Mahdi Army and wants the US embassy shut down for good.

As I saw it live at the time, the Mahdi Army was the Pentagon’s nemesis, especially around 2003-04. The only reason the Mahdi Army were appeased was because Washington offered Sadr Saddam Hussein, the man who killed his father, for summary execution without trial. For all his political inconsistencies, Sadr is immensely popular in Iraq.

Soleimani pysop

Hezbollah’s secretary-general Sayyed Nasrallah, in a very detailed speech, goes to the jugular on the meaning of Soleimani’s assassination.

Nasrallah tells how the US identified the strategic role of Soleimani in every battlefield – Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iran. He tells how Israel saw Soleimani as an “existential threat” but “dared not to kill him. They could have killed him in Syria, where his movements were public.”

So the decision to assassinate Soleimani in public, as Nasrallah reads it, was a psyop. And the “fair retribution” is “ending the American military presence in our region.” All US military personnel will be kept on their toes, watching their backs, full time. This has nothing to do with American citizens: “I’m not talking about picking on them, and picking on them is forbidden to us.”

With a single stroke, the assassination of Soleimani has managed to unite not only Iraqis but Iranians, and in fact the whole Axis of Resistance. On myriad levels, Soleimani could be described as the 21^st century Persian Che Guevara: the Americans have made sure he’s  metastasizing into the Muslim Resistance Che.

Oil war

No tsunami of pedestrian US mainstream media PR will be able to disguise a massive strategic blunder – not to mention yet another blatantly illegal targeted assassination.

Yet this might as well have been a purposeful blunder. Killing Soleimani does prove that Trump, the Deep State and the usual suspects all agree on the essentials: there can be no entente cordiale between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Divide and rule remains the norm.

Michael Hudson sheds light on what is in effect a protracted “democratic” oil war: “The assassination was intended to escalate America’s presence in Iraq to keep control of the region’s oil reserves, and to back Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi troops (Isis, Al Qaeda in Iraq, Al Nusra and other divisions of what are actually America’s foreign legion) to support U.S. control of Near Eastern oil as a buttress of the US dollar. That remains the key to understanding this policy, and why it is in the process of escalating, not dying down.”

Neither Trump nor the Deep State could not fail to notice that Soleimani was the key strategic asset for Iraq to eventually assert control of its oil wealth, while progressively defeating the Wahhabi/Salafist/jihadi galaxy. So he had to go.

‘Nuclear option’

For all the rumble surrounding Iraqi commitment to expel US troops and the Iranian pledge to react to the Soleimani assassination at a time of its choosing, there’s no way to make the imperial masters listen without a financial hit.

Enter the world derivatives market, which every major player knows is a financial WMD.

The derivatives are used to drain a trillion dollars a year out of the market in manipulated profits. These profits, of course, are protected under the “too big to prosecute” doctrine.

It’s all obviously parasitic and illegal. The beauty is it can be turned into a nuclear option against the imperial masters.

I’ve written extensively about it. New York connections told me the columns all landed on Trump’s desk. Obviously he does not read anything – but the message was there, and also delivered in person.

This past Friday, two American, mid-range, traditional funds bit the dust because they were leveraging in derivatives linked to oil prices.

If Tehran ever decided to shut down the Strait of Hormuz – call it the nuclear option – that would trigger a world depression as trillions of dollars of derivatives imploded.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) counts about $600 billion in total derivatives. Not really. Swiss sources say there are at least 1.2 quadrillion with some placing it at 2.5 quadrillion. That would imply a derivatives market 28 times the world’s GDP.

On Hormuz, the shortage of 22% of the world oil supply simply could not be papered over. It would detonate a collapse and cause a market crash infinitely worse than 1933 Weimar Germany.

The Pentagon gamed every possible scenario of a war on Iran – and the results are grim. Sound generals – yes, there are some – know the US Navy would not be able to keep the Strait of Hormuz open:  it would have to leave immediately or, as sitting ducks, face total annihilation.

So Trump threatening to destroy 52 Iranian sites – including priceless cultural heritage – is a bluff. Worse: this is the stuff of bragging by an ISIS-worthy barbarian. The Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas. ISIS nearly destroyed Palmyra. Trump Bakr al-Mar-a-Lago wants to join in as the destroyer of Persian culture.

Once in a while, people ask me: “Why did you accept the US citizenship, many years ago?” “After all,” they say, “now you are one of the most vocal critics of the United States, and of the West in general.”

Perhaps I never explained, or I did, some time ago, and now it is forgotten. So, let me try again, now that the world is facing destruction, and an unpronounced but real “new cold war” is ruining millions of lives.

First of all, let me clarify: I am a novelist. That’s what I am, essentially, no matter what other stuff of mine you are reading, and no matter what films of mine you are watching.

Really, seriously, you did not know? Of course, you did! Journalists do not write like this.

As a novelist, since my childhood, I was in love with the literature that used to be written in the United States. I am talking about North America about which people hardly know much, now.

The America of Huckleberry Finn, of Captain John Yossarian from “Catch 22”, or Robert Jordan from “For Whom the Bell Tolls”.

Commercialism, Western propaganda and so-called political correctness, made that country of daring, rebellion, dreams, and yes – depth – almost disappear from the ‘cultural radar’, all over the world. Selfishness, narcissism and lately, the inability to even listen to others, has made American culture basically ruin itself, and in the process, to ruin its literature, its society and what was positive about its very essence.

Also, it has managed to destroy the image of itself, all over the world.

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“My America” was actually a country which we knew, loved and cherished in Leningrad and Prague, perhaps even much more than in Chicago or Atlanta. A country of giants such as Faulkner and Hemingway, Nathanael West, Steinbeck, Dreiser, Heller, Tennessee Williams, and Eugene O’Neill.

This America is now thoroughly unknown in the neo-colonies, from Jakarta to Guatemala, and from Nairobi to Riyadh.

The America that is renowned nowadays is that of the cheapest pop, of Hollywood blockbusters, sitcoms, junk food and junk clothing. An America of a pathetic narrative, of dumb slang, predictable humor and feel-good rubbish.

Yet, it was that deep, unknown, and mysterious America full of powerful and often dark narratives, as well as of brave voices, with which I fell, decades ago, deeply in love.

I fell in love with it, got enormously inspired by it, but when it changed and lost most of its strength, when it gained the excessive amount of aggressiveness and ignorance, I had no choice but to leave it behind.

I always loved Faulkner, but suddenly there was no figure of his magnitude.

I loved Hemingway, but he has been smeared by the mainstream critics, clearly because he fully supported the Cuban Revolution and despised imperialism. In the end, he got essentially murdered by the U.S. regime.

I loved the naughtiness, madness, aggressive anti-establishment humor of Joseph Heller. Yes, his books used to be bestsellers, although they were trashing everything from U.S. militarism, to the U.S. corporate culture. In his era, and when I was a child, his novels sold like hot potatoes. In the United States, there are no writers like him, now. Nobody dares to write as he did. Writers are silenced by “political correctness”, by self-censorship, and by the desire to please increasingly oppressive publishers. Intuitively, they know what is expected from them. They play the game. It is huge business. Like journalism, and, as in academia.

Now, in the United States, as well as in the United Kingdom and Germany, there are numerous literary awards, which reward mediocrity, but there are hardly any literary giants.

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North American writers were well ahead of their time. At least some of them were.

Recently, when I was visiting my friends at the “Left Word” publishing house in New Delhi, India, I was surprised to find a Mark Twain book about the crimes against humanity committed by King Leopold II of Belgium, in Congo! Part of the Belgian establishment is still denying these crimes, to this day. A hundred years ago, Mark Twain rose in defense of a destroyed African nation.

Hemingway clearly understood the enormity of Mark Twain, as he also understood Africa. In his “Green Hills of Africa”, he wrote, in fact he smashed America with one powerful thought:

“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. If you read it you must stop where the Nigger Jim is stolen from the boys. That is the real end. The rest is just cheating. But it’s the best book we’ve had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.”

Hemingway also clearly understood his times. Quoted in Look in May of 1954, he said:

“There is nothing wrong with Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin that a .577 solid would not cure”. 

Now, wouldn’t you love the literature of a country, which dares to drop such verbal bombs? These days, such a statement would land you in the Guantanamo camp. Of course, Hemingway, according to several declassified FBI files, was given an overdose of electric shocks, at a mental clinic, when he was seeking help for depression; something that later drove him to suicide. But he dared, and others dared, as well.

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I spent time in the deep south of the country, when I was young. I used to drive around, tempting fate with my New York license plates. I listened to countless stories in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Texas. It was all depressing, as it was all enormously powerful.

The United States is a segregated country. If they tell you it is not, they lie. It was, when I lived there, and it still is, now. They hit you with political correctness in order to shut you up, so you don’t say it, write it, or even hear how deeply it is divided.

But in the past, you could park yourself in a bar, somewhere in Louisiana, and take it all in. It was dangerous, unsettling, but it was true life, and if you were young, and had guts, it was the best school for writing fiction: the stories, the people, all raw, exposed, painful, and in a very twisted way, beautiful.

Paris was an escape for many. If you were born an American, and you were black, you just couldn’t live in the United States. It would crush you, humiliate you, kill you. Unless you were chasing awards, and were willing to soften things up, like Toni Morrison did at some point. But if you were like Richard Wright, one of the very best, one of the greatest, and the author of Black Boyand Native Son, you simply had to go: say it all and leave in total desperation.

I became an American, because I read Twain and Hemingway and Faulkner. And then, after I read and understood, I mean truly understood Native Son, I couldn’t, anymore; I couldn’t even live in the country. Native Sonand Another Countryby James Baldwin, broke me into pieces. I read and cried, drank myself silly, vomited, and felt as if being hit in my abdomen. It was tremendous, precise, fatal. It was the end of America: it exposed the true America, and it put a cross on top of it; a funeral cross.

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Why am I writing all this now?

It is because America (or as they always correct it south of the border – The United States – because America is everything, from Canada to the austral tip of Argentina and Chile), with all its horror that it has spread to all corners of the world, should be and has to be understood.

Not because “it deserves to be understood”, but because the countries that were horrendously hit by it, deserve to know, what is it, that has been tormenting them, for years and decades?

But this deep, perverse, fatal United States, so well described by its tremendous writers of the past, is now totally unknown in Africa, Asia, the Middle East. Perhaps it is, to some extent, in Latin America and Europe, but almost nowhere else.

What is exported are primitive beats and computer-generated images, falsely described as films. It is that toxic food, sold in chain eateries. It is the plastic cartoon production of soulless movies for children, as well as theme parks which are destroying the imagination and ability to dream.

There is a reason for all of this.

The great literature, music and cinema of the United States, have become indigestible in the United States itself, and in the colonies. The great arts of the U.S. are actually “dangerous”, as they unveil the collapse of the country, its rotten roots, hypocrisy, arrogance and aggressiveness.

The greater the writers, the more decisive, more horrifying is their description of the Empire.

In John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, a woman who lost her child during the Great Depression, gives her breast, still full of milk, to a man, a stranger who is dying from hunger. She does it on the road. She is a mother. He is her child, a fellow American. That moment is as big as life itself; it feels like those endless open spaces of her country.

That is the America that I wanted to know. The America of which I still managed to catch a glimpse of, before it disappeared like a mirage.

But this is not America that the Western regime wants us to know.

In Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, an American high school teacher, Robert Jordan, is waiting, rifle in his hand, for the advance of fascist troops in Spain. The love of his life, Maria, a brave Spanish woman, had her head shaved; had been gang-raped. And Robert Jordan is there, to fight and to die for a socialist Spain. As Hemingway was ready to live and to die for Cuba, no matter what the Western regime has been telling us about him.

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The thing is, if you live elsewhere, outside the United States, the chances are that you will know nothing about the real United States. You will know close to zero about the writers who stood by it, were defending its people, and were constantly confronting it, when the country turned into an empire and began behaving like a monster.

Even those writers that you know, will be fed to you in a small dose. If it is William Styron, chances are that you will be directed to his Sophia’s Choice, but not to Set This House on Fire, a novel about the deep south and its monstrous racism.

Now, frankly, the great US literature is dead. The enormous North American novel has been choked, murdered. With it died my love for American letters.

Stories are gone. People talk; they talk a lot, but I hardly hear powerful stories. Our planet is being ruined, and dozens of nations have their governments overthrown by the Empire. But where are the stories?

I want to hear stories from the occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, from the Rust Belt, from inner cities! I want to read tremendous novels exposing these topics.

Historians look back, into the past. Revolutionary writers are preoccupied with the future. I definitely belong to the second category.

I am endlessly grateful to American literature. But it is gone. I come to its tombstones, and I mourn. But after laying down some flowers in front of great names, I know that it is time to move on.

There is not one single giant of letters presently working in the United States. Full stop. Culturally, the country has collapsed. It is exporting garbage all over the world, lowering the standards of our humanity, awarding mediocrity at home and in all corners of the globe. It has choked criticism, and now it glorifies nihilism and passivity.

This is not the America that I loved and admired. That is why I do not live there, anymore, for many years. That is why I cannot create there!

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

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”,“China and Ecological Civilization”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 Latin America, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website, his Twitter and his Patreon. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

For the first time in the history of Iran, a red flag was raised over the Holy Dome of Jamkaran Mosque in the holy city of Qom both symbolizing blood spilled unjustly and serving as a call to avenge a person who is killed. “Those who want to avenge the blood of Hussein,” read the words of the war flag. This was done in honor of General Qassem Suleimani, who, along with several other Iranian and Iraqi commanders, was assassinated in US strikes on Baghdad. The red flag was not even raised during the Iran-Iraq war (September 22, 1980 – August 20, 1988), the longest and bloodiest conflict in the history of modern Iran, known in it as the Holy Defense.

The raised flag demonstrates both the Iranian resolve to respond to the act of state terrorism committed by the United States and the significance of the personality of Soleimani for the state and nation. The general, once described by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as a “living martyr of the revolution”, was the most effective battlefield commander of the modern world and one of the key people behind the defeat of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. In March 2019, Soleimani was awarded the Order of Zulfaqar, Iran’s highest military order.

During his life Suleimani was a living legend overseeing operations abroad, achieving key military diplomatic victories and spreading Tehran’s influence around the Middle East. After his death he has become an icon of the resistance both in Iran and in a large part of the Arab world. His assassination drastically increased the likelihood of an open military conflict between the US and Iran, a conflict which could easily set the entire region on fire.

Born to an impoverished family in 1957, Soleimani joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) after the Iranian revolution in 1979. He rose to prominence commanding troops during the Iran-Iraq War. After the war, Soleimani largely disappeared from public view until 2011, when he took over the IRGC’s expeditionary Qods Force and was promoted to Major General by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Over the course of his career, he developed close ties with Kurdish groups in Iraq, assisted Hezbollah in Lebanon and led Iranian military operations assisting Syrian and Iraqi troops in battles against terrorists, primarily ISIS. Soleimani was frequently pictured on key frontlines from Iraq’s Mosul to Syria’s Aleppo. For example, in 2014, he helped to forge the defense of Baghdad against encroaching ISIS terrorists. In 2015  he assisted the Iraqi government in operations to retake the oil-rich city of Tikrit from ISIS. In 2017 the General took personal command of the battle against ISIS in Syria’s Bukamal. The success of the Syrian-Iranian-Russian coalition in the Syrian war can to a great extent be attributed to actions of the Qods Force leader and the Russian military power backing him. In Yemen, Soleimani’s Qods Force successfully helped local resistance forces to break the plans of the invading coalition led by Saudi Arabia. Thus, Ansar Allah (also known as the Houthis) kept Yemen’s capital in their hands, spread the war onto the territory of Saudi Arabia and de-facto achieved a military victory in a conflict with a numerically superior and technologically advanced enemy. Iranian media repeatedly reported on assassination plots against the commander by the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia. The outcome of the conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen undermined the positions of these powers in the region, thus creating a vacuum which Iran proceeded to fill.

The role of Soleimani for the Iranian nation can be compared to that of Soviet ‘Marshal of Victory’ Georgy Zhukov in 1945, taking into account the difference in scale of the wars and victories, as well as the different geography and historical period. Soleimani’s popularity was such that there was speculation that he might run for president. In 2016, a poll showed that 76% of Iranians held a favorable view of him, with more than half reporting a “very favorable” opinion. He denied the rumors, saying he hoped to remain a soldier until the end of his life.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for three days of mourning, saying Soleimani’s death will double the motivation of the resistance against the US and Israel. Khamenei emphasized that harsh revenge awaits the “criminals” who killed Soleimani. Hundreds of thousands of people rallied in Iraq and Iran mourning his death and condemning the US aggression, which is viewed by many as a declaration of war.

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At this time, it is up to Israel whether or not war occurs between the US and Iran.  Israel very much wants this war as a means of putting Iran and Syria into chaos, thus leaving Hezbollah isolated and unsupplied.  Then Israel can succeed in occupying southern Lebanon.

The American neoconservatives want Iran in chaos, because then the chaos can be exported into the Muslim regions of the Russian Federation with the purpose of causing sufficient internal turmoil to remove Russia as a constraint on US unilateralism.

Israel and the Neocons have Trump where they want him.  Trump’s outrageous and reckless murder of Qasem Soleimani has provoked serious Iranian threats against the US to which Trump has replied with threats.  Although there is some indication that Trump has realized his mistake and is trying to calm the situation, a calmed situation is not what Israel and the neoconservatives want.  

Polls of the American public indicate that anti-Iranian propaganda has succeeced.  All Israel or the neoconservatives, who are well placed, need to do is to conduct a false flag attack on some American entity, military base, personnel or ship, and blame it on Iran.  The American press will demand Iranian blood and so will most of Trump’s constituency.  As Trump has already committed himself to a response, he will have to deliver.

All wars have unknown and unintended consequences.  As a result of Putin’s caution, Iran lacks sufficient air defense to prevent saturation bombing of the country.  Washington would send in jihadists rather than its own soldiers, and the jihadist assignment would be to carry turmoil into Russia.

If it looked like Iran was prevailing in the conflict with the US, Trump would save the day for himself by nuking Iran.  Indeed, some of the American rightwing are already calling for nuking Iran.  

Rather than speculate on the consequences, I ask, “why risk them?”

A defensive alliance between Russia, Iran, and China, and any others inclined to join, would tie Israel’s hands and prevent the outbreak of war.  Neither Trump nor Natanyahu are going to go to war with Russia, China, and Iran.

The reason US and Israeli aggression continue unabated is that no defense alliance has formed against them.  

As an attack on Iran is an attack on Russia, forming a defensive alliance is a way to prevent the attack, perhaps the only way.  An alliance would simply be a formalization of the implied, de facto alliance that already exists.  It would actually reduce the threat against Iran and Russia and is the surest way of stabilizing the dangerous situation.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog, Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Iraq’s parliament met on Sunday and passed a resolution asking all 5,200 US troops to be expelled.  After hearing of the Iraqi decision, US President Trump refused the request, balking at the democratic process of an elected body of a sovereign nation, and insisted,  “We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it,” referring to a US air force base in Iraq, one of 12 US military facilities there.  US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, “We are confident the Iraqi people will want the U.S. to remain.” He also disregarded the democratic process in Iraq, in which the parliament represents the ‘Iraqi people’.

Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mehdi attended the special session and urged lawmakers to take action to end the presence of foreign troops, which has been debated for years, by the Iraqi people and their representatives, who feel the US military presence is unwelcome and is an occupation force. The legality of the resolution rests on the charge that the US military has breached the original agreement of 2014, to enter Iraq to fight ISIS, by 2 attacks which killed Iraqi soldiers and a top Iraqi military official, among others.

“The government commits to revoke its request for assistance from the international coalition fighting Islamic State due to the end of military operations in Iraq and the achievement of victory,” and “The Iraqi government must work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace or water for any reason.” the resolution read. “We want the government to end US presence in Iraq,” said 24-year-old Ahmed Hassan, adding, “That’s the least Iraq can do right now.”

Iraq declared victory over ISIS in December 2017, and that should have ended the Iraq-US agreement of 2014 which saw US military presence requested to fight ISIS, alongside Iraqi forces and militias.  The US military presence was seen as a ‘guest who overstays their welcome’, which fueled anti-American sentiments in a country which suffered a past US invasion in 2003, and devastating occupation, which Iraq has never recovered from.

Riyad Muhammad Ali Al Masoudi, an Iraqi MO said,

“We do not want to create a political or security void in this regard. What do we really want, is to preserve the Iraqi sovereignty and political future of the country. We hope this agreement will serve in the interests of Iraq, and will not be used against Iraq.”

Timeline of recent events:

December 27: a US civilian contractor was killed, and 4 US soldiers injured in an unclaimed attack on Kirkuk in the Kurdish region of Iraq.

December 29: the US attacked 3 Iraqi militia bases killing 24 Iraqi soldiers, and injuring dozens more in 5 airstrikes.

December 30:  Iraqi PM Mehdi says Iraq must review their relationship with the US because of the killing of Iraqi soldiers.

December 31: the US embassy in Baghdad came under heavy attack because of the killing of Iraqi soldiers.

January 3: Iranian Major-General Qasim Soleimani and Iraqi commander, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, of the Popular Mobilization Forces, were assassinated near Baghdad’s international airport, as they arrived from Damascus,  in drone-strike ordered by Trump.

January 5: the Iraqi Parliament passes a resolution to evict the US troops.

Calls for unity among the resistance

Since the US killings of soldiers and their commanders, a rare show of unity is called for by rival political leaders in Iraq. Iraqi cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, sent a letter to parliament, which listed demands including cancellation of the US-Iraqi agreement, the closure of the US embassy, the expulsion of US troops, and the prohibition of communicating with the US.  “Finally, I call specifically on the Iraqi resistance groups and the groups outside Iraq more generally to meet immediately and announce the formation of the International Resistance Legions.”, said Sadr, who leads the largest bloc in parliament.

Why they hate us

Lesley Stahl, of the US TV program “60 Minutes” interviewed Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and speaking of US sanctions against Iraq she asked, “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And – and you know, is the price worth it?” Madeleine Albright answered, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.”

From 2003 to 2006 approximately 655,000 Iraqis had been killed as a result of the US invasion, according to ‘The Lancet’ study.

History of the occupation

The US invaded Iraq in 2003, and shortly after the fall of Baghdad, one Iraqi said, “We thank the Americans for getting rid of Saddam’s regime, but now Iraq must be run by Iraqis.” The US refused to heed the call for Iraqi freedom and democracy.  President Bush declared ‘mission accomplished’ in May 2003, but refused to bring the troops home.  By 2007, polls showed 78 % of Iraqis opposed the US occupation, and at one time the poll surged to 92 %.  Although the US eventually left, the redeployment to Iraq in 2014 has morphed into a new occupation.

China lends hand

“We belong to Asia, and we want to be part of its rise,” Iraqi PM Mahdi said on a visit to Beijing. Iraq is suffering from infrastructure failures that have never been repaired since the US invasion and destruction.  Iraq and China signed 8 agreements on Mahdi’s visit, for projects including roads, rail networks, houses, ports, hospitals, schools, water dams, energy, and transport. The project will start with a $10 billion line of credit, to be paid from oil exported to China.

Iraq-Syria border opens for business

Iraq reopened its Qaim border-crossing with Syria in September after eight years of closure and completes the Tehran to Beirut road.  Qaim and the Syrian side of Bou Kamal were both freed from ISIS occupation by militias of both nations, as well as the Syrian Arab Army.

Iraq experts were wary when the border connecting Baghdad to Damascus was opened, and after the China-Iraq deals were signed they wondered when the US would take action to stop progress and to keep Iraq in the chaos which is the US strategic plan and cements the US troops in Iraq and Syria.  Now, those same experts are wondering if the next step in Iraq will be to pull off a coup, replacing the defiant PM Mahdi with an Ahmed Chalabi clone.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a political commentator. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

«O Irão não respeita os acordos nucleares» (Il Tempo), «O Irão retira-se dos acordos nucleares: um passo em direcção à bomba atómica» (Corriere della Sera), «O Irão prepara bombas atómicas: adeus ao acordo sobre o nuclear »(Libero): é assim apresentada por quase toda a comunicação mediática a decisão do Irão – após o assassinato do General Soleimani ordenado pelo Presidente Trump – de não aceitar mais os limites para o enriquecimento de urânio, estabelecidos pelo acordo assinado em 2015 com o Grupo 5 + 1, ou seja, os cinco membros permanentes do Conselho de Segurança da ONU (Estados Unidos, França, Reino Unido, Rússia, China) e a Alemanha. Portanto, não há dúvida, segundo estes meios de divulgação de “informação”, sobre qual é a ameaça nuclear no Médio Oriente. Esquecem-se que foi o Presidente Trump, em 2018, que fez com que os EUA se retirassem do acordo definido por Israel  como “a rendição do Ocidente ao Eixo do Mal, liderado pelo Irão”. Silenciam o facto de que existe apenas uma única potência nuclear no Médio Oriente, Israel, que não está sujeita a nenhum controlo, visto que não adere ao Tratado de Não-Proliferação, assinado pelo Irão.

O arsenal israelita, envolto numa espessa capa de segredo e de silêncio, é estimado em  80-400 ogivas nucleares, além de plutónio suficiente para construir outras centenas. Israel também produz, seguramente, trítio, o gás radioactivo com o qual fabrica armas nucleares de nova geração. Entre estas, mini-bombas nucleares e bombas de neutrões que, provocando menor contaminação radioactiva, seriam as mais adequadas contra alvos não muito distantes de Israel. As ogivas nucleares israelitas estão prontas para serem lançadas em mísseis balísticos que, com o Jericó 3, atingem de 8 a 9 mil km de alcance. A Alemanha forneceu a Israel (sob a forma de um presente ou a preços promocionais) quatro submarinos Dolphin modificados para o lançamento de mísseis nucleares Popeye Turbo, com um alcance de cerca de 1.500 km. Silenciosos e capazes de permanecer imersos durante uma semana, atravessam o Mediterrâneo Oriental, o Mar Vermelho e o Golfo Pérsico, prontos 24 sobre 24 horas, para o ataque nuclear.

Os Estados Unidos, que já forneceram mais de 350 caça-bombardeiros F-16 e F-15 a Israel, estão a fornecer-lhe pelo menos 75 caças F-35, também com dupla capacidade nuclear e convencional. Uma primeira entrega de F-35 israelitas entrou em operação em Dezembro de 2017. As Israel Aerospace Industries produzem componentes de asas que tornam o F-35 invisível aos radares. Graças a essa tecnologia, que também será aplicada nos F-35 italianos, Israel potencia a capacidade de ataque das suas forças nucleares.

Israel – que tem apontadas contra o Irão 200 armas nucleares, como especificou o antigo Secretário de Estado dos EUA, Colin Powell, em 2015 – está decidido a manter o monopólio da Bomba no Médio Oriente, impedindo o Irão de desenvolver um programa nuclear civil, que poderia permitir-lhe um dia fabricar armas nucleares, capacidade  essa que hoje é possuída no mundo por dezenas de países. No ciclo de utilização do urânio, não há uma linha divisória clara entre o uso civil e o uso militar do material físsil. Para bloquear o programa nuclear iraniano, Israel está determinado a usar todos os meios. O assassinato de quatro cientistas nucleares iranianos entre 2010 e 2012 é, provavelmente, obra do Mossad.

As forças nucleares israelitas estão integradas no sistema electrónico da NATO, como parte do “Programa de Cooperação Individual” com Israel, um país que, embora não seja membro da Aliança, tem uma missão permanente no quartel general da NATO, em Bruxelas. Segundo o plano testado no exercício USA-Israel Juniper Cobra 2018, as forças USA e NATO viriam da Europa (sobretudo das bases em Itália) para apoiar Israel numa guerra contra o Irão. Ela poderia iniciar-se com um ataque israelita às instalações nucleares iranianas, como o que foi efectuado em 1981 contra o reactor iraquiano de Osiraq. O Gerusalem Post (3 de Janeiro) confirma que Israel possui bombas não nucleares anti-bunker, utilizáveis ​​especialmente com os F-35, capazes de atingir a instalação nuclear subterrânea em Fordow. O Irão, no entanto, apesar de estar livre de armas nucleares, possui uma capacidade de resposta militar que a Jugoslávia, o Iraque ou a Líbia não possuíam no momento do ataque USA/NATO. Nesse caso, Israel poderia usar uma arma nuclear pondo em movimento uma reacção em cadeia de consequências imprevisíveis.

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo original em italiano :

Qual è la vera minaccia nucleare in Medio Oriente

il manifesto, 7 de Janeiro 2020

Tradutora : Luisa Vasconcellos

«L’Iran non rispetta gli accordi sul nucleare» (Il Tempo), «L’Iran si ritira dagli accordi nucleari: un passo verso la bomba atomica» (Corriere della Sera), «L’Iran prepara le bombe atomiche: addio all’accordo sul nucleare» (Libero): così viene presentata da quasi tutti i media la decisione dell’Iran, dopo l’assassinio del generale Soleimani ordinato dal presidente Trump, di non accettare più i limiti per l’arricchimento dell’uranio previsti dall’accordo stipulato nel 2015 con il Gruppo 5+1, ossia i cinque membri permanenti del Consiglio di Sicurezza dell’Onu (Stati Uniti, Francia, Regno Unito, Russia, Cina) più la Germania. Non vi è quindi dubbio, secondo questi organi di «informazione», su quale sia la minaccia nucleare in Medio Oriente. Dimenticano che è stato il presidente Trump, nel 2018, a far ritirare gli Usa dall’accordo, che Israele aveva definito «la resa dell’Occidente all’asse del male guidato dall’Iran». Tacciono sul fatto che vi è in Medio Oriente un’unica potenza nucleare, Israele, la quale non è sottoposta ad alcun controllo poiché non aderisce al Trattato di non-proliferazione, sottoscritto invece dall’Iran.

L’arsenale israeliano, avvolto da una fitta cappa di segreto e omertà, viene stimato in 80-400 testate nucleari, più abbastanza plutonio da costruirne altre centinaia. Israele produce sicuramente anche trizio, gas radioattivo con cui fabbrica armi nucleari di nuova generazione. Tra queste mini-nukes e bombe neutroniche che, provocando minore contaminazione radioattiva, sarebbero le più adatte contro obiettivi non tanto distanti da Israele. Le testate nucleari israeliane sono pronte al lancio su missili balistici che, con il Jericho 3, raggiungono 8-9 mila km di gittata. La Germania ha fornito a Israele (sotto forma di dono o a prezzi scontati) quattro sottomarini Dolphin modificati per il lancio di missili nucleari Popeye Turbo, con raggio di circa 1.500 km. Silenziosi e capaci di restare in immersione per una settimana, incrociano nel Mediterraneo Orientale, Mar Rosso e Golfo Persico, pronti ventiquattro’ore su ventiquattro all’attacco nucleare.

Gli Stati uniti, che hanno già fornito a Israele oltre 350 cacciabombardieri F-16 e F-15, gli stanno fornendo almeno 75 caccia F-35, anch’essi a duplice capacità nucleare e convenzionale. Una prima squadra di F-35 israeliani è divenuta operativa nel dicembre 2017. Le Israel Aerospace Industries producono componenti delle ali che rendono gli F-35 invisibili ai radar. Grazie a tale tecnologia, che sarà applicata anche agli F-35 italiani, Israele potenzia le capacità di attacco delle sue forze nucleari.

Israele – che tiene puntate contro l’Iran 200 armi nucleari, come ha specificato l’ex segretario di stato Usa Colin Powell nel 2015 – è deciso a mantenere il monopolio della Bomba in Medio Oriente, impedendo all’Iran di sviluppare un programma nucleare civile che potrebbe permettergli un giorno di fabbricare armi nucleari, capacità posseduta oggi nel mondo da decine di paesi. Nel ciclo di sfruttamento dell’uranio non esiste una netta linea di demarcazione tra uso civile e uso militare del materiale fissile. Per bloccare il programma nucleare iraniano Israele è deciso a usare ogni mezzo. L’assassinio di quattro scienziati nucleari iraniani, tra il 2010 e il 2012, è con tutta probabilità opera del Mossad.

Le forze nucleari israeliane sono integrate nel sistema elettronico Nato, nel quadro del «Programma di cooperazione individuale» con Israele, paese che, pur non essendo membro della Alleanza, ha una missione permanente al quartier generale della Nato a Bruxelles. Secondo il piano testato nella esercitazione Usa-Israele Juniper Cobra 2018, forze Usa e Nato arriverebbero dall’Europa (soprattutto dalle basi in Italia) per sostenere Israele in una guerra contro l’Iran. Essa potrebbe iniziare con un attacco israeliano agli impianti nucleari iraniani, tipo quello effettuato nel 1981 contro l’impianto iracheno di Osiraq. Il Gerusalem Post (3 gennaio) conferma che Israele possiede bombe non-nucleari anti-bunker, usabili soprattutto con gli F-35, in grado di colpire l’impianto nucleare sotterraneo iraniano di Fordow. L’Iran però, pur essendo privo di armi nucleari, ha una capacità militare di risposta che non possedevano la Jugoslavia, l’Iraq o la Libia al momento dell’attacco Usa/Nato. In tal caso Israele potrebbe far uso di un’arma nucleare mettendo in moto una reazione a catena dagli esiti imprevedibili.

Manlio Dinucci

il manifesto, 7 gennaio 2020

America’s hegemonic military agenda in the Middle East has reached a dangerous threshold.

The assassination of  IRGC General Soleimani ordered by the President of the United States on January 3, 2020 is tantamount to an Act of War against Iran.

President Donald Trump accused Soleimani  of “plotting imminent and sinister attacks”: “We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war…. we caught him in the act and terminated him.”

US Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper described it as a “decisive defensive action” while confirming that the operation ordered by POTUS had been carried out by the Pentagon. “The game has changed” said Esper.  

What the media has failed to acknowledge is General Soleimani’s central role in countering ISIS-Daesh and Al Qaeda terrorists in both Iraq and Syria. 

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC) under the helm of General Soleimani consisted in waging a real counter-terrorism campaign against ISIS-Daesh mercenaries, who from the outset were funded, trained and recruited by the US and its allies.

Trump’s action plan to “stop a war” consists in “protecting” America’s ISIS and Al Qaeda affiliated foot-soldiers.

US Extrajudicial Assassinations

While the assassination of General Soleimani constitutes a criminal act on the part of President Trump,  the US practice of extrajudicial assassinations of foreign politicians has a long history.

What distinguishes the assassination of General Soleimani from previous extrajudicial killings, is that the president of the US has formally announced that he gave the order.

This sets a dangerous precedent. It was “overt” rather than “covert”, i.e. a covert operation by the CIA or by a US sponsored Al Qaeda affiliate acting on behalf of Washington.

It is important to note that it was not Trump but in fact Obama who formalized (“legalized”) the practice of extra-judicial assassination (ordered by the president):

And if the president [Obama] can kill anyone, including US citizens, without judicial review, what power does he not have? Any but the most formal distinction between democracy and presidential dictatorship is swept away. (Joseph Kishore, wsws.org, October 31, 2012)

Trump’s Response: More Troops to the Middle East

While the Pentagon announced that it is “sending thousands of additional troops to the Middle East”, a unanimous vote in Iraq’s parliament was reached demanding the immediate withdrawal of all US forces.

The legislation requires the Iraqi government to “end any foreign presence on Iraqi soil and prevent the use of Iraqi airspace, soil and water for any reason”.

Note: Death to  America: refers to the US Government, Not the American People

Backflash: A Digression. The Obama Air Raids (2014-2017)

Concurrently the Iraqi parliament suspended the corrupt 2014 agreement with the Obama administration which invited the US to lead a fake counterterrorism operation directed against the Islamic State (ISIS-Daesh), made up of mercenaries who are funded, trained and recruited by US-NATO, with the support of Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The decision of the Iraqi parliament is in this regard fundamental. This operation was used by the Obama administration as a pretext to justify a third phase of the Iraq War (1991, 2003, 2014). Initiated in June 2014 by Obama under the disguise of a counterterrorism operation, a new phase of killing and destruction was launched.

Why was the US Air Force unable to wipe out the Islamic State which at the outset was largely equipped with conventional small arms not to mention state of the art Toyota pickup trucks?

From the very outset, Nobel Peace Laureate Barack Obama’s air campaign was NOT directed at ISIS.  The evidence confirms that the Islamic State was not the target. Quite the opposite. The air raids were intended to destroy the economic infrastructure of Iraq and Syria.

Look at the following image which describes the Islamic State convoy of pickup trucks entering Iraq fromn Syria and crossing a 200 km span of open desert which separates the two countries.

This convoy entered Iraq in June 2014.

What would have been required from a military standpoint to wipe out an ISIS convoy with no effective anti-aircraft capabilities?

Without an understanding of military issues, common sense prevails. 

If they had wanted to eliminate the Islamic State brigades, they could have “carpet” bombed their convoys of Toyota pickup trucks when they crossed the desert from Syria into Iraq in June 2014. 

The  Syro-Arabian Desert is open territory (see map right). With state of the art jet fighter aircraft (F15, F22 Raptor, F16) it would have been  –from a military standpoint–  “a piece of cake”, a rapid and expedient surgical operation, which would have decimated the Islamic State convoys in a matter of hours.

But if that had happened, they would not have been able to implement their “Responsibility to Protect” (P2R) bombing campaign over a three year period (2014-2017).

Instead what we witnessed were drawn out relentless air raids and bombings which culminated with the so-called liberation of Mosul (February 2017) and Raqqa (October 2017) by the US led coalition.

And we were led to believe that the Islamic State had the upper hand and could not be defeated by a powerful US led military coalition of 19 countries.

The people of Iraq and Syria were the targets. Obama’s bombing raids were intent upon destroying the civilian infrastructure of Iraq and Syria.

ISIS-Daesh were never the target of US aggression. Quite the opposite. They were protected by the Western military alliance.

US Troop Withdrawal: Yankee Go Home (2020)

While a major US troop withdrawal is unlikely in the foreseeable future,  “America’s War on Terrorism” is in jeopardy. Nobody believes that America is going after the terrorists.

In Iraq and Syria, everybody knows that all Al Qaeda, ISIS-Daesh affiliated entities are supported by US-NATO.

The “Yankee Go Home” process has commenced.  The US is not only being ousted from Iraq and Syria, its strategic presence in the broader Middle East is also threatened. And these two processes are intimately related.

In turn, several of America’s former allies including Turkey, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Egypt have normalized their relations with Iran.

Trump’s Punitive Bombings. Will They be Carried Out?

In recent developments, Trump has warned that if Tehran responds to the assassination of General Soleimani, he will “target 52 Iranian sites” intimating that they would be “HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD.”

Donald Trump wants to hit back. But he has a serious logistical problem on his hands of which he may not even be aware of.

Normally a punitive operation of this nature directed against Iran would be entrusted to USCENTCOM’s forward headquarters in the Middle East located at the Al Udeid Air Force base in Qatar.

“CENTCOM controls US forces based across the Middle East and some of Central Asia – in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s main headquarters are located in Tampa Florida but it runs its daily combat operations from Al-Udeid air base “

With 11,000 US military personnel, the al-Udeid Air Force base close to Doha is “one of the U.S. military’s most enduring and most strategically positioned operations on the planet”   (Washington Times). It has led and coordinated several major Middle East war theaters including Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003). It was also involved in Syria.

But there is a problem: The forward base of USCENTCOM at the al-Udeid Air Force base is in Qatar. And since June 2017 Qatar has been “sleeping with the enemy”. Qatar has become a staunch ally of Iran.

What both the media, as well as foreign policy and military analysts fail to acknowledge is that US CENTCOM’s Forward Base headquarters at the al-Udeid military base de facto “lies in enemy territory”. And it would seem that POTUS is totally unaware of this situation.

Barely a few months ago, (October 2019), The Pentagon took the decision NOT to move USCENTCOM’s forward base at Al Udeid to another location in the Middle East.

“Qatar has always been an exceptional partner, and this base from which we are operating is a great base, and CENTCOM has no intention of moving anywhere,” said CENTCOM’s deputy commander, Chance Saltzman.

Sloppy intelligence, flawed military planning? Qatar is not an “exceptional partner”. Since June 2017 Qatar has become a de facto ally of Iran.

More recently, they have been discussing the establishment of Iran-Qatar bilateral military ties.

Having decided that Al Udeid (located in enemy territory) could not be moved to another location in the Middle East, the Pentagon then envisaged a scenario of moving Al Udeid air and space operations to South Carolina: “to 7,000 miles away in South Carolina”. It was a simulation. “The temporary switch” lasted only 24 hours.

Lessons Learnt: You cannot effectively “wage war” in the Middle East without a “Forward Base” in the Middle East. This “South Carolina Test” borders on ridicule.

Are US military planners desperate?

Since May 2017, following the break up of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) the Pentagon has NOT BEEN ABLE TO MOVE USCENTCOM FORWARD BASE (including its air force striking capabilities) OUT OF ENEMY TERRITORY (QATAR) to a “friendly location” (e.g. Saudi Arabia, Israel) in the broader Middle East region.

Military analysts now admit that in the case of a conflict with Iran, Al-Udeid would be an immediate target. “The base’s defence system is said to be ill-equipped to defend itself against the low-flying cruise missiles and drones…”

Mr. President: How on earth can you launch your punitive bombings on Iran from the territory of a close ally of Iran? 

From a strategic point of view it does not make sense. And this is but the tip of the iceberg.

While the bombing and missile attacks can be dispatched from other US military bases in the Middle East (see diagram below) as well as from Diego Garcia, US aircraft carriers, submarines, etc, the regional USCENTCOM Forward Base at Al-Udeid, Qatar, plays a key role in the command structure in liaison with USCENTCOM headquarters in Tampa, Florida, and US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) at the Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska.

Source: Statista 

While Qatar and the US have a longstanding bilateral cooperation agreement pertaining to the al-Udeid Air Force base, Qatar has military cooperation agreements not only with Iran but also with Hamas and Hezbollah, all of which are “enemies” of the USA:

The challenge for Washington is that while Qatar hosts al-Udeid, it’s also friendly with the Gaza-based Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), it is close to the Hezbollah’s leadership … [Qatar also] has cozy relations with Iran. Indeed, if Qatar didn’t host America’s largest air base in the Middle East, it would be under pressure from the U.S. to cease much of this behavior.”

And to top it off, Qatar is also friends with Russia. A military technical cooperation agreement pertaining  to air defense was signed with Moscow, immediately following Qatar’s rift with Saudi Arabia in June 2017.

Turkey’s Incirlik Air Force Base 

“A sleeping with the enemy situation” also prevails with regard to Turkey’s Incirlik Air Force base which was established in the 1950s by the US Air Force. Incirlik has played a strategic role in all US-NATO led operations in the Middle East.

With about five thousand airmen, the US Air Force is now hosted in a country (aka Turkey) which is an ally of both Russia and Iran. Turkey and Iran are neighbouring states with friendly relations. In contrast, US and Turkish supported rebels are fighting one another in Northern Syria.

In mid-December 2019, Turkey’s foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu  dropped a bombshell, intimating  “that the United States could be barred from using two strategic air bases [Incirlik and Kurecik] in retaliation to possible US sanctions against his country” regarding Turkey’s purchase of the Russian S-400 missile defence system.

America’s Conventional Warfare Capabilities

For several reasons, US hegemony in the Middle East has been weakened in part as a result of the evolving structure of military alliances.

America’s command capabilities have been weakened. Two of the region’s largest strategic Air Forces bases, namely Incirlik (Turkey) and Al-Udeid (Qatar) are no longer under the control of the Pentagon.

While war against Iran remains on the drawing board of the Pentagon, under present conditions, an all out Blitzkrieg (conventional theater war) involving the simultaneous deployment of ground, air and naval  forces is an impossibility.

While the US does not have the ability to carry out such a project, various forms of “limited warfare” have been contemplated including targeted missile attacks, so-called “bloody nose operations” (including the use of tactical nuclear weapons), as well as acts of political destabilization and color revolutions (which are already ongoing) as well as economic sanctions, manipulations of financial markets and neoliberal macroeconomic reforms (imposed via the IMF and the World Bank(.

The Nuclear Option against Iran

And it is precisely because of US weaknesses in the realm of conventional warfare that a nuclear option could be envisaged.  Such an option would inevitably lead to escalation.

Ignorance and stupidity are factors in the decision making process. According to foreign policy analyst Edward Curtin “Crazy people do crazy things”. 

Who are the crazy people in key decision-making positions?

Trump foreign policy advisers: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, national security adviser Robert O’Brien and Brian Hook, (Special Representative for Iran and Advisor to Pompeo), could “advise” President Trump to authorize  a “bloody nose operation” against Iran using tactical (B61 bunker buster) nuclear weapons, which the Pentagon has categorized as “harmless to civilians because the explosion is underground”.

The bloody nose operation” as designated by the Pentagon, conveys the idea of a military op (using a low yield “more usable” tactical nuclear weapon) which allegedly “creates minimum damage”. It’s a lie: the tactical nuclear weapon has an explosive capacity between one third and 12 times a Hiroshima bomb.

According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (July 2019):

Tensions between the United States and Iran are spiraling toward a military confrontation that carries a real possibility that the United States will use nuclear weapons. Iran’s assortment of asymmetrical capabilities—all constructed to be effective against the United States—nearly assures such a confrontation. The current US nuclear posture leaves the Trump administration at least open to the use of tactical nuclear weapons in conventional theaters. Some in the current administration may well think it to be in the best interest of the United States to seek a quick and decisive victory in the oil hub of the Persian Gulf—and to do so by using its nuclear arsenal.

We believe there is a heightened possibility of a US-Iran war triggering a US nuclear strike…

Of significance, the use of tactical nukes does not require the authorization of the Commander in Chief. That authorization pertains solely to so-called strategic nuclear weapons.

Despite the warnings of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, present circumstances do not favor the conduct of a  US “bloody nose” tactical nuclear weapons’ operation.

The US Air Force’s tactical nuclear weapons arsenal is stored and deployed in five non-nuclear European countries including Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Turkey at military bases under national command.  

According to Hans Kristensen and Matt Korda (Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 2019 report), the US possesses an estimated 230 tactical nuclear weapons of which 180 are deployed in the five non-nuclear European countries. Some 50 B61 bunker buster bombs with nuclear warheads (gravity bombs) are stored and deployed at the Incirlik air force base which is under Turkey’s jurisdiction. (see table above)

Conclusion:

• A US president committed to war crimes.
• A failing  “War on Terrorism” narrative,
• Weakened military command structures,
• Failing alliances,
• Sleeping with the enemy,
• Unpredictable foreign policy analysts,
• Deception and mistakes.

At this juncture: The US’ most powerful weapon remains dollarization, neoliberal economic reforms and the ability to manipulate financial markets.

President Donald Trump has signed the National Defense Authorization Act for 2020 that establishes a Space Force as the sixth branch of the U.S. armed forces — despite the landmark Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which designated space as a global commons to be used for peaceful purposes.

The treaty was put together by the United States, the former Soviet Union and Britain, and since has been signed by many nations. Craig Eisendrath, a U.S. State Department officer involved in its creation, has said that “we sought to de-weaponize space before it got weaponized … to keep war out of space.”

It prohibits the placement of any weapons of mass destruction in space. Although the Trump administration has said a Space Force is necessary because Russia and China are moving into space militarily, Russia, China and Canada have led for decades in pushing for an expansion of the treaty. They’ve advocated for the UN’s Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space resolution, which would affirm a ban on weapons in space. The United States has opposed the PAROS resolution and has effectively vetoed it at the UN.

At the defense authorization act signing Dec. 20, Trump said forming a Space Force marked “a big moment.” He said: “Space. Going to be a lot of things happening in space. Because space is the world’s newest warfighting domain.”

Trump’s advocacy for a Space Force started as a joke. National Public Radio’s Claudia Grisales related that in March 2018 “Trump riffed on an idea he called ‘Space Force’ before a crowd of Marines in San Diego. It drew laughs.” Subsequently, he noted: “I said, ‘Maybe we need a new force, we’ll call it the Space Force.’ And I was not really serious. Then I said, ‘What a great idea, maybe we’ll have to do that.’ ”

I’ve investigated the possibility of space becoming a war arena since President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” in the 1980s. This has included writing a book, “Weapons in Space,” and writing and narrating three TV documentaries. I’ve been to Russia several times, and I’ve been to China. What these nations want is the PAROS initiative and not to waste their national treasuries on weapons in space.

I recall sitting with Chinese diplomats after I spoke at a UN conference on the threat of weaponization of space. They stressed how they need to feed, educate, house and provide health care to their people. My speech was followed by the Chinese UN ambassador who said his nation sought to keep space for peace.

But if we move ahead with a Space Force, China and Russia, and other countries, will respond in kind. China and Russia won’t accept “American dominance” of space, and there would be an arms race in space.

The Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space protested in Florida  against space weaponization. Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell participated. He said, “Any war in space would be the one and only.” Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Maine-based Global Network, said Mitchell warned at the protest that in the event of war “activity on Earth below would immediately shut down — cell phones, ATM machines, cable TV, traffic lights, weather prediction and more — all hooked up to satellites, would be lost. Modern society would go dark.”

China has said that a U.S. Space Force would be a “direct threat” to peace. Its foreign ministry recently said the world should “adopt a cautious and responsible attitude to prevent outer space from beginning a new battlefield and work together to maintain lasting peace and tranquility in outer space.”

War in space would be calamitous.

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This article was originally published on Newsday.

Karl Grossman is a professor of journalism at the SUNY College at Old Westbury. He is author of “Weapons in Space” and writer and narrator of the TV documentary “Nukes in Space: The Nuclearization and Weaponization of the Heavens.”

Featured image is from Windover Way Photography

Vladimir Putin is the most impressive leader on the world stage.  He survived and arose from a Russia corrupted by Washington and Israel during the Yeltsin years and reestablished Russia as a world power.  He dealt successfully with American/Israeli aggression against South Ossetia and against Ukraine, incorporating at Crimea’s request the Russian province back into Mother Russia.  He has tolerated endless insults and provocations from Washington and its empire without responding in kind.  He is conciliatory and a peacemaker from a position of strength.

He knows that the American empire based as it is on arrogance and lies is failing economically, socially, politically, and militarily.  He understands that war serves no Russian interest.  

Washington’s murder of Qasem Soleimani, a great Iranian leader, indeed, one of the rare leaders in world history, has dimmed Trump’s leadership and placed the limelight on Putin. The stage is set for Putin and Russia to assume the leadership of the world.  

Washington’s murder of Soleimani is a criminal act that could start World War 3 just as the Serbian murder of the Austrian Archduke set World War 1 in motion.  Only Putin and Russia with China’s help can stop this war that Washington has set in motion.

Putin understood that the Washington/Israeli intended destabilization of Syria was aimed at Russia.  Without warning Russia intervened, defeated the Washington financed and armed proxy forces, and restored stability to Syria. 

Defeated, Washington and Israel have decided to bypass Syria and take the attack on Russia directly to Iran.  The destabilization of Iran serves both Washington and Israel.  For Israel Iran’s demise stops support for Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that has twice defeated Israel’s army and prevented Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon.  For Washington Iran’s demise allows CIA-supported jihadists to bring instability into the Russian Federation.

Unless Putin submits to American and Israeli will, he has no choice but to block any Washington/Israeli attack on Iran.  

The easiest and cleanest way for Putin to do this is to announce that Iran is under Russia’s protection.  This protection should be formalized in a mutual defense treaty between Russia, China, and Iran, with perhaps India and Turkey as members. This is hard for Putin to do, because incompetent historians have convinced Putin that alliances are the cause of war.  But an alliance such as this would prevent war.  Not even the insane criminal Netanyahu and the crazed American neoconservatives would, even when completely drunk or deluded, declare war on Iran, Russia,  China, and if included in the alliance India and Turkey.  It would mean the death of America, Israel and any European country sufficiently stupid to participate.

If Putin is unable to free himself from the influence of incompetent historians, who in effect are serving Washington, not Russian, interests, he has other options.  He can calm down Iran by giving Iran the best Russian air defense systems with Russian crews to train the Iranians and whose presence serve as a warning to Washington and Israel that an attack on Russian forces is an attack on Russia.

This done, Putin  can then, not offer, but insist on mediating.  This is Putin’s role as there is no other with the power, influence and objectivity to mediate.  

Putin’s job is not so much to rescue Iran as to get Trump out of a losing war that would destroy Trump. Putin could set his own price.  For example, Putin’s price can be the revival of the INF/START treaty, the anti-ballistic missile treaty, the removal of NATO from Russian borders.  In effect, Putin is positioned to demand whatever he wants.

Iranian missiles can sink any American vessels anywhere near Iran.  Chinese missiles can sink any American fleets anywhere near China.  Russian missiles can sink American fleets anywhere in the world.  The ability of Washington to project power in the Middle East now that everyone, Shia and Sunni and Washington’s former proxies such as ISIS, hates Americans with a passion is zero.  The State Department has had to order Americans out of the Middle East.  How does Washingon count as a force in the Middle East when no American is safe there? 

Of course Washington is stupid in its arrogance, and Putin, China, and Iran must take this into consideration.  A stupid government is capable of bringing ruin not only on itself but on others.

So there are risks for Putin.  But there are also risks for Putin failing to take charge.  If Washington and Israel attack Iran, which Israel will try to provoke by some false flag event as sinking an American warship and blaming Iran, Russia will be at war anyway.  Better for the initiative to be in Putin’s hands.  And better for the world and life on Earth for Russia to be in charge.

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Putin’s Hour Is At Hand was published in the Russian press Monday morning, January 6, 2020.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog, Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.