Global Research

The fake news allegations that Russia “meddled” in Bolivia’s recent election in order to help (“former”) President Morales win and the more recent claims late last month that its soldiers are supposedly “waiting for his return” in order to presumably help restore him to power are nothing more than provocations designed to manufacture the “plausible pretext” for the coup “authorities” to renege on their country’s previously agreed-upon deals with Moscow unless the latter possibly concedes to renegotiating “better” (lopsided) terms, but even then, some of the most strategic projects might still be canceled under heavy US pressure.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is both brain dead and divided as it holds latest annual meeting in London, with nothing but uncertainty surrounding its future and many questioning whether it can even remain functional in its present form.

Throughout its history, Earth has experienced five mass extinction events. See, for example, ‘Timeline Of Mass Extinction Events On Earth’. It is now experiencing the sixth.

1. The Ordovician-Silurian Extinction, which occurred about 439 million years ago, wiped out 86% of life on Earth at the time. Most scientists believe that this mass extinction was precipitated by glaciation and falling sea levels (possibly a result of the Appalachian mountain range forming), catastrophically impacting animal life which lived largely in the ocean at the time.
2. The Late Devonian Extinction happened about 364 million years ago and destroyed 75% of species on Earth. Possibly spread over hundreds of thousands of years, a sequence of events that depleted the oceans of oxygen and volcanic ash that cooled the Earth’s surface are believed to have driven the extinctions. It was to be 10 million years before vertebrates again appeared on land. ‘If the late Devonian extinction had not occurred, humans might not exist today.’
3. The Permian-Triassic extinction, which occurred 251 million years ago, is considered the worst in all history because around 96% of species were lost. ‘The Great Dying’ was precipitated by an enormous volcanic eruption ‘that filled the air with carbon dioxide which fed different kinds of bacteria that began emitting large amounts of methane. The Earth warmed, and the oceans became acidic.’ Life today descended from the 4% of surviving species.
4. The Triassic-Jurassic extinction happened between 214 million and 199 million years ago and, as in other mass extinctions, it is believed there were several phases of species loss. The blame has been placed on an asteroid impact, climate disruption and flood basalt eruptions. This extinction laid the path that allowed for the evolution of dinosaurs which later survived for about 135 million years.
5. The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, best known of ‘the Big 5’ mass extinctions, occurred 65 million years ago, ending 76% of life on Earth including the dinosaurs. A combination of volcanic activity, asteroid impact, and climate disruption are blamed. This extinction period allowed for the evolution of mammals on land and sharks in the sea.
6. The sixth mass extinction event in Earth’s history is the one that is being experienced now. Unlike earlier mass extinctions, which helped to pave the way for the evolution of Homo sapiens, the precipitating cause of this extinction event is Homo sapiens itself and, moreover, Homo sapiens is slated to be one of the species that becomes extinct.

Let me explain why this is so by touching on the diverse range of forces driving the extinctions, concepts such as ‘co-extinction’, ‘localized extinctions’ and ‘extinction cascades’, the ways in which extinction impacts are often ‘hidden’ in the short term, thus masking the true extent of the destruction, and the implications of all this for life on Earth, including Homo sapiens, in the near term.

But before I do this, consider this excerpt from the book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind written by Yuval Noah Harari, commenting on the expansion of ancient humans out of Africa:

‘If we combine the mass extinctions in Australia and America, and add the smaller-scale extinctions that took place as Homo sapiens spread over Afro-Asia – such as the extinction of all other human species – and the extinctions that occurred when ancient foragers settled remote islands such as Cuba, the inevitable conclusion is that the first wave of Sapiens colonisation was one of the biggest and swiftest ecological disasters to befall the animal kingdom. Hardest hit were the large furry creatures. At the time of the Cognitive Revolution [which Harari argues occurred during the period between 70,000 and 30,000 years ago and probably involved an internal restructuring of the Sapiens brain to facilitate learning, remembering, imagining and communicating while also, in the case of the earlier date, coinciding with the time when Sapiens bands started leaving Africa for the second time], the planet was home to about 200 genera of large terrestrial mammals weighing over fifty kilograms. At the time of the Agricultural Revolution [about 12,000 years ago], only about a hundred remained. Homo sapiens drove to extinction about half of the planet’s big beasts long before humans invented the wheel, writing or iron tools.

‘This ecological tragedy was restaged in miniature countless times after the Agricultural Revolution’ with mammoths, for example, vanishing from the Eurasian and North American landmasses by 10,000 years ago as Homo sapiens spread. Despite this, mammoths thrived until just 4,000 years ago on a few remote Arctic islands, most conspicuously Wrangel, then suddenly disappeared with the arrival of humans.

While there has been some debate about the full extent of the human impact compared to, say, climate and environmental changes including ice age peaks – see, for example, ‘What killed off the giant beasts – climate change or man?’ and ‘What Killed the Great Beasts of North America?’ – the archeological record provides compelling evidence of the role of Homo sapiens as, in Harari’s words, ‘an ecological serial killer’. There is further well-documented evidence in Professor Tim Flannery’s The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People an excerpt of which in relation to New Zealand, where the megafauna survived until Maoris arrived just 800 years ago and then rapidly vanished, can be read here: ‘The Future Eaters’.

And the onslaught has never ended as the inexorable encroachment of Homo sapiens to the remotest corners of the Earth (including virtually all of the thousands of islands of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans) has inevitably led to the extinction of myriad local species including birds, insects and snails. In fact, following the Industrial Revolution about 270 years ago which enabled the development of killing technologies on a scale unheard of previously, the human assault on life on Earth has accelerated so effectively that 200 species of life are now driven to extinction daily.

Whatever other claims they might make about themselves, human beings are truly the masters of death.

So where do we stand today?

According to one recent report, the Earth is experiencing what could be described as ‘just the tip of an enormous extinction iceberg’. See ‘Co-extinctions annihilate planetary life during extreme environmental change’. ‘Just the tip?’, you might ask.

Extinction-causing Behaviours

The primary human behaviours that are modifying Earth’s biosphere, with catastrophic outcomes for many species, are readily apparent and well-described in the scientific literature: destruction of habitat (such as oceans, rainforests, grasslands, wetlands, mangroves, lakes and coral reefs) whether through military violence, radioactive contamination, industrial activities (including ecosystem destruction to build cities, roads and railroads but a vast range of other activities besides), chemical poisoning or other means; over-exploitation; biotic invasion and the effects of environmental modification, including climatic conditions, leading to temperature rise, more frequent droughts, ocean acidification and other impacts which so alter a locality’s environmental conditions that tolerance limits for inhabiting species are breached causing localized extinctions. Unfortunately, however,  there are other, more complicated, mechanisms that can exacerbate species loss.

‘In particular, it is becoming increasingly evident how biotic interactions, in addition to permitting the emergence and maintenance of diversity, also build up complex networks through which the loss of one species can make more species disappear (a process known as ‘co-extinction’), and possibly bring entire systems to an unexpected, sudden regime shift, or even total collapse.’ In simple language, a species cannot survive without the resources (the other species) on which it depends for survival and the accelerating loss of species now threatens ‘total collapse’ of ‘entire systems’.

This is because resource and consumer interactions in natural systems (such as food webs) are organized in various hierarchical levels of complexity (including trophic levels), so the removal of resources can result in the cascading (bottom-up) extinction of several higher-level consumers.

Summarizing the findings of several studies based on simulated or real-world data, Dr. Giovanni Strona and Professor Corey J. A. Bradshaw explain why ‘we should expect most events of species loss to cause co-extinctions, as corroborated by the worrisome, unnatural rate at which populations and species are now disappearing, and which goes far beyond what one expects as a simple consequence of human endeavour. In fact, even the most resilient species will inevitably fall victim to the synergies among extinction drivers as extreme stresses drive biological communities to collapse. Furthermore, co-extinctions are often triggered well before the complete loss of an entire species, so that even oscillations in the population size of a species could result in the local disappearance of other species depending on the first. This makes it difficult to be optimistic about the future of species diversity in the ongoing trajectory of global change, let alone in the case of additional external, planetary-scale catastrophes.’

In an attempt to emphasize the importance of this phenomenon, Strona and Bradshaw note that ‘As our understanding of the importance of ecological interactions in shaping ecosystem identity advances, it is becoming clearer how the disappearance of consumers following the depletion of their resources – a process known as “co-extinction” – is more likely the major driver of biodiversity loss’ [emphasis added] and that ‘ecological dependencies amplify the direct effects of environmental change on the collapse of planetary diversity by up to ten times.’ See ‘Co-extinctions annihilate planetary life during extreme environmental change’.

In their own recently published scientific study ‘Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines’ the authors Professors Gerardo Ceballos, Paul R. Ehrlich and Rodolfo Dirzo document another frequently ignored element in understanding the accelerating nature of species extinctions.

‘Earth’s sixth mass extinction is more severe than perceived when looking exclusively at species extinctions…. That conclusion is based on analyses of the numbers and degrees of range contraction … using a sample of 27,600 vertebrate species, and on a more detailed analysis documenting the population extinctions between 1900 and 2015 in 177 mammal species.’ Their research found that the rate of population loss in terrestrial vertebrates is ‘extremely high’, even in ‘species of low concern’.

In their sample, comprising nearly half of known vertebrate species, 32% (8,851 out of 27,600) are decreasing; that is, they have decreased in population size and range. In the 177 mammals for which they had detailed data, all had lost 30% or more of their geographic ranges and more than 40% of the species had experienced severe population declines. Their data revealed that ‘beyond global species extinctions Earth is experiencing a huge episode of population declines and extirpations, which will have negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilization. We describe this as a “biological annihilation” to highlight the current magnitude of Earth’s ongoing sixth major extinction event.’

Illustrating the damage done by dramatically reducing the historic geographic range of a species, consider the lion. Panthera leo ‘was historically distributed over most of Africa, southern Europe, and the Middle East, all the way to northwestern India. It is now confined to scattered populations in sub-Saharan Africa and a remnant population in the Gir forest of India. The vast majority of lion populations are gone.’

Why is this happening? Ceballos, Ehrlich and Dirzo tell us: ‘In the last few decades, habitat loss, overexploitation, invasive organisms, pollution, toxification, and more recently climate disruption, as well as the interactions among these factors, have led to the catastrophic declines in both the numbers and sizes of populations of both common and rare vertebrate species.’

Further, however, the authors warn ‘But the true extent of this mass extinction has been underestimated, because of the emphasis on species extinction.’ This underestimate can be traced to overlooking the accelerating extinction of local populations of a species.

‘Population extinctions today are orders of magnitude more frequent than species extinctions. Population extinctions, however, are a prelude to species extinctions, so Earth’s sixth mass extinction episode has proceeded further than most assume.’ Moreover, and importantly from a narrow human perspective, the massive loss of local populations is already damaging the services ecosystems provide to civilization (which, of course, are given no value by government and corporate economists and accountants).

As Ceballos, Ehrlich and Dirzo remind us: ‘When considering this frightening assault on the foundations of human civilization, one must never forget that Earth’s capacity to support life, including human life, has been shaped by life itself.’ When public mention is made of the extinction crisis, it usually focuses on a few (probably iconic) animal species known to have gone extinct, while projecting many more in future. However, a glance at their maps presents a much more realistic picture: as much as 50% of the number of animal individuals that once shared Earth with us are already gone, as are billions of local populations.

Furthermore, they claim that their analysis is conservative given the increasing trajectories of those factors that drive extinction together with their synergistic impacts. ‘Future losses easily may amount to a further rapid defaunation of the globe and comparable losses in the diversity of plants, including the local (and eventually global) defaunation-driven coextinction of plants.’

They conclude with the chilling observation: ‘Thus, we emphasize that the sixth mass extinction is already here and the window for effective action is very short.’

Another recent study examined ‘Experimental Evidence for the Population-Dynamic Mechanisms Underlying Extinction Cascades of Carnivores’, and was undertaken by Dr. Dirk Sanders, Rachel Kehoe & Professor F.J. Frank van Veen who sought to understand ‘extinction cascades’. Noting that ‘Species extinction rates due to human activities are high’, they investigated and documented how ‘initial extinctions can trigger cascades of secondary extinctions, leading to further erosion of biodiversity.’ This occurs because the diversity of consumer species is maintained due to the positive indirect effects that these species have on each other by reducing competition among their respective resource species. That is, the loss of one carnivore species can lead to increased competition among prey, leading to extinctions of those carnivore species dependent on prey that loses this competition.

Another way of explaining this was offered by Dr. Jose M. Montoya:

‘Species do not go extinct one at a time. Instead… ecosystems change in a kind of chain reaction, just like in bowling. The impact of the ball knocks down one or two pins, but they hit other pins and this ultimately determines your score. Likewise, when in an ecosystem one species goes extinct many others may follow even if they are not directly affected by the initial disturbance. The complex combination of direct and indirect effects resulting from species interactions determines the fate of the remaining species. To predict the conditions under which extinctions beget further extinctions is a major scientific and societal challenge under the current biodiversity crisis…. Sanders and colleagues… show how and why initial extinctions of predators trigger cascades of secondary extinctions of the remaining predators.’ See ‘Ecology: Dynamics of Indirect Extinction’.

To fully grasp the extent of the crisis in our biosphere, we must look well beyond Earth’s climate: There are a great many variables adversely impacting life on Earth, many of which individually pose the threat of human extinction and which, synergistically, now virtually guarantee it absent an immediate and profound response. As reported in the recent Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services researched and published by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) – the scientific body which assesses the state of biodiversity and the ecosystem services this provides to society – ‘Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history. The IPBES Global Assessmentranks, for the first time at this scale, the 5 direct drivers of change in nature with the largest global impact. So what are the culprits behind nature’s destruction?’ Number 1. on the IPBES list is ‘Changes in land and sea use, like turning intact tropical forests into agricultural land’ but, as noted, there are four others. According to this report: one million species of life on Earth are threatened with extinction.

And in their latest assessment of 100,000 species, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) concluded that not one species had improved prospects of averting extinction since their previous ‘Red List’ report. See ‘News Release’ and ‘From over 100,000 species assessments in IUCN update, zero improvements’.

Of course, separately from the systemic extinction drivers noted above, including the unmentioned destruction of Earth’s oceans through its absorption of carbon dioxide, pollution with everything from pesticides to plastic, and chronic overfishing which is pushing many ocean species to, or over, the brink of extinction as well, humans also engage in yet other activities that drive the rush to extinction. Hunting wildlife to kill it for trophies or pet food – see ‘Killing Elephants “for Pet Food” Condemned’ – and trafficking wildlife: a $10-20 billion-a-year industry involving illegal wildlife products such as jewelry, traditional ‘medicine’, clothing, furniture, and souvenirs, as well as exotic pets – see ‘Stop Wildlife Trafficking’ and ‘China must lead global effort against tiger trade’ – play vital roles as well.

In summary, the tragedy of human existence is that the Cognitive Revolution gave Homo sapiens the capacity to plan, organize and conduct an endless sequence of systematic massacres all over the planet but, assuming that we have the genetic capacity to do so, our parenting and education models since that time have ensured that we have been denied the emotional and intellectual capacities to fight, strategically, for our own survival. And the time we have left is now incredibly short.

So what can we do?

Given that the ongoing, systematic industrial-scale destruction of Earth’s wildlife has its origin in evolutionary events that took place some 70,000 years ago but which probably had psychological origins prior to this, it is clearly a crisis that is not about to be resolved quickly or easily.

‘Why the mention of psychology here?’ you might ask. Well, while many other factors have obviously played a part – for example, abundance of a species in a particular context might mean that the issue of killing its individual members for food does not even arise, at least initially – it is clear that, given the well-documented multifaceted crisis in which human beings now find themselves, only a grotesquely insufficient effort is being put into averting the now imminent extinction of our own species which critically requires us to dramatically stem (and soon halt) the tide of wildlife extinctions, among many other necessary responses. See, for example, ‘Human Extinction by 2026? A Last Ditch Strategy to Fight for Human Survival’ and ‘Doomsday by 2021?’

It is psychologically dysfunctional, to put it mildly, to participate in or condone by our silence and inaction, activities that will precipitate our own extinction, whether these are driven by the insane global elite – see ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ – or by our own dysfunctional overconsumption. See ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’.

For that reason, after 70,000 years, we must finally ask ‘Why?’ so that we can address the fundamental drivers of our extinction-threatening behaviour as well the several vital symptoms that arise from those drivers. Let me explain what I mean.

The fundamental question is this: Why are humans behaving in a way that will precipitate our own extinction in the near term? Surely, this is neither sensible nor even sane. And anyone capable of emotional engagement and rational thinking who seriously considers this behaviour must realize this. So why is it happening?

Fundamentally it is because our parenting and education models since the Cognitive Revolution 70,000 years ago have failed utterly to produce people of conscience, people who are emotionally functional and capable of critical analysis, people who care and who can plan and respond to crises (or even problems) strategically. Despite this profound social shortcoming, some individuals have nevertheless emerged who have one or more of these qualities and they are inevitably ‘condemned’ to sound the alarm, in one way or another, and to try to mobilize an appropriate response to whatever crisis or problem confronts them at the time.

But, as is utterly obvious from the state of our world, those with these capacities have been rare and, more to the point, they have had few people with whom to work. This is graphically illustrated by the current failure to respond strategically to the ongoing climate catastrophe (with most effort focused on lobbying elite-controlled governments and international organizations), the elite-driven perpetual (and ongoing threat of nuclear) war as well as the other issues, such as the use of geoengineering and the deployment of 5G, that threaten human survival. See ‘The Global Climate Movement is Failing: Why?’, ‘The War to End War 100 Years On: An Evaluation and Reorientation of our Resistance to War’ and ‘Why Activists Fail’.

Given the preoccupation of modern society with producing submissively obedient students, workers, soldiers, citizens (that is, taxpayers and voters) and consumers, the last thing society wants is powerful individuals who are each capable of searching their conscience, feeling their emotional response to events, thinking critically and behaving strategically in response. Hence our parenting and education models use a ruthless combination of visible, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence to ensure that our children become terrified, self-hating and powerless individuals like virtually all of the adults around them.

This multifaceted violence ensures that the adult who emerges from childhood and adolescence is suppressing awareness of an enormous amount of fear, pain and anger (among many other feelings) and must live in delusion to remain unaware of these suppressed feelings. This, in turn, ensures that, as part of their delusion, people develop a strong sense that what they are doing already is functional and working (no matter how dysfunctional and ineffective it may actually be) while unconsciously suppressing awareness of any evidence that contradicts their delusion. See ‘Why Violence?’, ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’,‘Do We Want School or Education?’ and ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’.

So if we are going to address the fundamental driver of both the destruction of Earth’s wildlife and the biosphere generally, we must address this cause. For those adults powerful enough to do this, there is an explanation in ‘Putting Feelings First’. And for those adults committed to facilitating children’s efforts to realize their potential and become self-aware (rather than delusional), see ‘My Promise to Children’ and ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

Beyond this cause, however, we must also resist, strategically, the insane elite-controlled governments and corporations that are a key symptom of this crisis – see ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ – by manufacturing and marketing a vast range of wildlife (and life)-destroying products ranging from weapons (conventional and nuclear) and fossil fuels to products made by the destruction of habitat (including oceans, rainforests, grasslands, wetlands, mangroves, lakes and coral reefs) and the chemical poisoning of agricultural land (to grow the food that most people eat) while also using geoengineering and deploying 5G technology worldwide. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy.

But we can also undermine this destruction, for example, by refusing to buy the products provided by the elite’s corporations (with the complicity of governments) that fight wars (to enrich weapons corporations) to steal fossil fuels (to enrich energy, aircraft and vehicle-manufacturing corporations) or those corporations that make profits by destroying habitats or producing poisoned food, for example. We can do this by systematically reducing and altering our consumption pattern and becoming more locally self-reliant as outlined in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’ or, even more simply, by committing to The Earth Pledge (below).

In a nutshell, for example, if we do not travel by car or aircraft, NATO governments will have much less incentive to invade and occupy resource-rich countries to steal their resources and corporations will gain zero profit from destroying wildlife habitat as they endlessly seek to extract the resources necessary to manufacture and fuel these commodities thus saving vast numbers of animals (and many other life forms besides) and easing pressure on the biosphere generally.

You can also consider joining those working to end violence in all contexts by signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

The Earth Pledge 

Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:

1. I will listen deeply to children (see explanation above)
2. I will not travel by plane
3. I will not travel by car
4. I will not eat meat and fish
5. I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food
6. I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
7. I will not buy rainforest timber
8. I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
9. I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
10. I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
11. I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
12. I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
13. I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.

Conclusion

Perhaps the key point to be learned from the evidence cited above is that just as we have triggered a series of self-reinforcing feedback loops that ‘lock in’ an ongoing deterioration of Earth’s climate which we are now virtually powerless to halt (if we were even trying to do so), we have also precipitated a biodiversity crisis that is self-reinforcing because the loss of each and every species has an impact on those species that are dependent on it, precipitating chains of events that make further extinctions inevitable. This is one of the ‘negative synergies’, for example, contributing to the Amazon rainforest’s rapid approach to the tipping point at which it will collapse. See ‘Amazon Tipping Point’.

Hence, we are approaching the final act of a tragedy that had its origins in the Cognitive Revolution some 70,000 years ago and which we have not been able to contain in any way. The earlier acts of this tragedy were the countless species of plants, birds, animals, fish, amphibians, insects and reptiles that Homo sapiens has driven to extinction.

Now, in the final act, we will drive to extinction 200 species today. 200 species tomorrow. 200 species the day after….

Until, one day very soon now, unless you and those you know are willing to commit yourselves wholly to the effort to avert this outcome, the human assault on life on Earth will reach its inevitable conclusion: the extinction of Homo sapiens.

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Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is [email protected] and his website is here.

So far, groups in the following countries have announced that they are organizing events on January 25, 2020 as part of the Global Day of Protest against 5G:

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Australia
Austria
Canada
Croatia
Czech Republic
Denmark
France

Germany
Ireland
Italy
Japan
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Serbia
South Africa
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
United Kingdom
United States

If you are organizing an event in a country that is not on that list, please contact Dorotea at [email protected].

Current List of Companies Planning 5G Satellites

As of today, the following companies are planning to launch, or are already launching, 5G satellites into low orbit around the Earth:

SpaceX, based in the United States, has plans for 42,000 satellites, has already launched 120, intends to launch 60 at a time twice a month during 2020, and is developing a larger rocket that can launch 120 at a time. As soon as 420 satellites are in orbit, it plans to turn them on. That could be as early as February 2020.

OneWeb, based in the United Kingdom, has plans for 5,260 satellites and intends to launch 30 at a time every three to four weeks beginning in January 2020. As soon as 300 satellites are in orbit, in late 2020, it plans to turn them on.

Telesat, based in Canada, has plans for 512 satellites, and intends to begin service in 2021.

Amazon has plans for 3,236 satellites and intends to begin service as soon as 578 are in orbit.

Facebook has plans for thousands of satellites but has not disclosed its plans to the public.

Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency, has plans for 640 satellites, to be deployed between 2022 and 2026.

Aerospace Science and Industry Corp., a Chinese state-owned company, has plans for 156 satellites, to be in place by 2022.

The above companies will broadcast only 5G and will sell user devices that will be mounted on homes and vehicles and will function as small cells. Another company, Lynk, has plans for “several thousand” satellites that will communicate directly with cell phones and will broadcast not only 5G, but also 2G, 3G and 4G. Lynk intends to begin service in 2023.

In addition to these satellite plans, Loon, a subsidiary of Google, has a contract to provide Internet to remote areas of the Amazon rainforest in Peru from stratospheric balloons.

China Already Has Nationwide 5G and Is Developing 6G

Two countries already have nationwide 5G, China and South Korea. And the insanity continues to escalate: China is already developing 6G. On November 7, CNBC reported that 37 universities, research institutes, and enterprises will be involved in developing 6G technology in China. 6G will use even higher frequencies than 5G, and will send even greater tsunamis of data all over this fragile world. And other countries are rushing to compete as well. The University of Oulu in Finland has a 6G research institute. On September 29, 2019, Rohde and Schwarz demonstrated a prototype system operating at 300 GHz at a workshop in Paris. And in the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission is planning to open up frequencies up to 3 THz (3,000 GHz) for research purposes.

Change Begins with Us

Today, the world’s immortal forests are being turned into laser paper for the world’s computers. The world’s great oceans are filling up with microplastics, into which our shampoo bottles and grocery bags, by the disposable billions, are breaking down. Highways, ever wider and faster, are being bulldozed through mountains and across fjords, and invading the last great roadless areas on Earth. And billions of handheld devices are blanketing the Earth with lethal radiation. As Rachel Carson warned, not just the songs of birds, but the croakings of frogs and the buzzings of insects are growing rapidly fainter all over the Earth.

And it is not because we humans have become magically more aggressive towards the Earth since I was born. We were on this Earth for hundreds of thousands of years without doing damage to it. It is our new technology that is aggressive. It is a mistake to think that because IT is so powerful, that WE are so powerful. We aren’t. The truth is exactly the opposite. We are as delicate and vulnerable as the insects, birds and frogs, and we live or die as they do.

The most aggressive piece of technology yet invented is the cell phone. The question we have got to confront is, do we want to survive? Which do we want more: our phones or our planet? Consider:

• Radio frequency radiation is the first pollutant in history that is being deliberatelyspread over every square inch of the Earth, with the goal of leaving no place unpolluted.
• In order for your cell phone to work, the entire wireless infrastructure, including all the cell towers, has to be there, all over the planet.
• A cell phone is not safer than a cell tower. The technology is the same. The radiation is the same. Your biggest source of exposure is your phone, not the towers.

Everyone wants cell phones. No one wants cell towers. Unless this changes, 5G will not be stopped and life on Earth will end. 5G is only more of what we already have, that has already decimated the world’s insect, amphibian and bird populations, and that has caused the present epidemics of cancer, diabetes and heart disease.[1] That is why 5G is not just a threat but an opportunity. The only way we will stop 5G is if we throw away our cell phones. And if we can give up this catastrophic piece of human progress, then it becomes possible to deal rationally with the others—the others that are causing climate change, global deforestation, and the terminal pollution of our soils, oceans and atmosphere.

It is up to us.

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The idea of mobility as a human right has come to be synonymous with private transport. For decades, the car has come first: what right does any government have to encroach on the freedom and autonomy of individual motorists? Labour governments have done little to challenge this notion since mass car ownership took off in the 1960s, and it’s only now, embracing the challenge of achieving zero carbon emissions as soon as is practicable, that Labour has recommitted itself to decent public transport.

Its 2019 manifesto states that ‘Labour will build a sustainable, affordable, accessible and integrated transport system, founded on the principle that transport is an essential public service.’ While it may be an essential service for millions of people – whether or not they have a car at home – public transport has been treated as the cranks’ option since 2010 by a Conservative government that has built more roads than at any point since the early 1990s while permitting the desecration of the bus network. 

Relative to this country’s wealth and population density, public transport cannot afford to get worse. Three thousand bus routes have been lost since 2010 as local authority subsidies to services dropped by 45 per cent. The number of miles travelled by bus fell by nearly five per cent between 2017 and 2018 alone, while car and van traffic, which started falling after the 2008 crash, has risen steadily since 2010. 

Meanwhile, Northern, the second-largest railway franchise holder in the UK, operates most local rail services in northern England but has only got 45.4% of them to run on time in the last month. Plans to electrify major rail routes to west Wales and Cornwall, and through the Peak District to Manchester, have all been cancelled or put on indefinite hold by the Tories. For local travellers in Wales, the south-west of England and most of the north, this has meant another decade spent travelling on clapped-out, unreliable diesel trains. 

Rather than commit to electrification – as Labour does in its manifesto – the Tories have persisted with the introduction of expensive ‘bi-mode’ trains which can switch between electric and diesel, giving hapless former transport secretary Chris Grayling a further excuse to keep much of the rail network west and south of Cardiff trapped in the 19^th century. 

The glaring geographical exception to this rule is London, where Crossrail 2 has been signed off before Crossrail 1 is even finished and Transport for London has been not only allowed, but encouraged, to maintain a policy of low fares and high regulation. If Labour win on 12^th December, the special favours granted to London transport will be extended to the rest of the country. Local authorities will be encouraged to apply to run their own bus services for the first time since deregulation in 1986, and those that do will be rewarded with a subsidy allowing under-26s to travel for free.

Once young adults, as well as children, disabled people and the elderly, can travel by bus for free, most of the constituencies disproportionately reliant on public transport will enjoy a service that is free at the point of use. With Labour offering free broadband, free tuition, free dentistry, the only thing missing from Labour’s pivot towards universal basic services is free public transport for all. 

As already discussed in the pages of Tribune, 100 cities around the world already offer free urban public transport on the grounds that mobility is a right and that the provision of transport should be a basic offering of urban life, like bin collections. This is a key point. For the green revolution to be truly embedded in the daily life of everyone, we need cheap or free zero-emission collective transport. It is the very least we should be afforded in a country as rich as ours. 

By reimagining public transport as a service that enables relationships to be maintained and nurtured, that allows us to get to work in a comfortable and dignified manner, that gives us the chance to relax and enjoy our surroundings rather than be hurtled through them while nestled in someone’s armpit, Labour is offering the chance to reimagine everyday life as a source of enjoyment and nourishment, as opposed to one of stress and endurance. 

If we do not win, we face not so much the further active destruction of the network, but a continued cruel indifference to it. The Tories like to pretend that no one notices or suffers when a bus route is axed. For many people it can mean the difference between a social, independent life and a life of isolation and reliance. 

Labour’s manifesto commitments on transport represent the beginning, rather than the culmination, of a socially just and environmentally sustainable policy. Rather than imagining a car-free future, it imagines electric cars to be the future. It timidly encourages people to ‘leave their car at home’ and take better, cheaper, nicer buses and trains, rather than telling them they won’t need one any more. Fifty years of car domination can’t be overcome in a single term. Yet, as with the offer of free fibre broadband, the promise of better public transport has transformative potential to improve the quality of everyday life. We can’t afford for it to get any worse.

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Lynsey Hanley is a freelance writer and the author of Estates: an Intimate History and Respectable: Crossing the Class Divide.

Featured image is from Tribune

Trade between the European Union (EU) and the Islamic Republic of Iran has dropped roughly 74.92% percent this year from January to September compared to last year during the same timeframe, due to US-imposed sanctions, according to the European statistical office. The top three trading partners in the European bloc were Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. Analysts at the European Council on Foreign Relations have described the US’s secondary sanctions as abuse of its global financial dominance.

Iran’s commodities exports have fallen 94% and imports have declined 51.15%. Before the sanctions, the EU was Iran’s main trading partner, but now China and the United Arab Emirates have risen to the first and second slots respectively.

While most discussions regarding Iran and EU trade relations center on oil, a crucial indicator of Europe-Iran trade relations lies in European technology and the billions of dollars’ worth of European parts, machinery, and transport equipment exports, which play an important role in Iran’s industrial sector and economy.

In May 2018, the United States unilaterally withdrew from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) complaining that the deal didn’t curb Iran’s nuclear capabilities but Europeans and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have repeatedly confirmed that the nuclear deal was working and that Iran was in compliance.  Since then the remaining five world powers who signed the nuclear deal with Iran, namely the UK, France, Russia, China, and Germany have tried to keep the nuclear deal alive by urging the United States to return to the deal and lift the harsh sanctions.

Immediately after leaving the nuclear deal, the United States reinstated crippling sanctions under its “maximum pressure campaign” with the goal of bringing about “regime change” while reducing Iran’s oil exports to zero.

Iran patiently waited for over a year for the United States to either return to the deal or for European nations to ease their suffering. France advocated for a $15 billion dollar line of credit and an EU Instrument for Supporting Trade Exchanges commonly referred to as INSTEX, became “operational” in June of this year, but hasn’t offered Iran any relief yet.

INSTEX was created to circumvent Washington’s sanctions as a payment channel with the UK, France, and Germany to help Iran continue to trade. The exchange of goods is allowed without requiring direct transfers of money, serving as a diplomatic shield. Good intentions aside, it’s been useless.

Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland, Denmark and Belgium announced on November 29th that they are in the process of becoming shareholders in INSTEX, in order to support the JCPOA and the economic parts of it and facilitate legitimate trade between Europe and Iran. A joint statement of support for the preservation and full implementation of the JCPOA was made. They reiterated that the nuclear agreement was unanimously endorsed by the UN Security Council and is an instrumental tool for global non-proliferation and stability in the region.

Unfortunately, neither the line of credit nor INSTEX have been properly implemented yet. With no relief in sight and economic conditions worsening, Iran started to scale back on its commitments under the JCPOA, thus far it has taken four such steps and has vowed to continue to scale back its obligations every sixty days, until there’s a solution.

For almost three decades the United States was Iran’s main military and economic partner and played an important role in its infrastructure and industry modernization, from 1950 until 1978. All of that ended when the US-backed Shah of Iran Mohammed Reza Pahlevi was forced to step down during the Iranian Revolution in 1979. And that’s when the United States cut economic and diplomatic ties, froze billions of dollars of assets, and banned Iranian imports.

Iran is the world’s third largest consumer of natural gas after the United States and Russia, and a major oil exporter since 1913.Iran’s economy is dominated by oil and gas production, ownership of 10% of the world’s proven oil reserves and 15% of its gas reserves have earned Iran recognition as an energy superpower. This of course puts a huge target on its back for US imperialism and intervention.

Since mid-2018 US sanctions have been placed on Iran’s oil sales, banking transactions, metals trading, petrochemicals, shipping etc. and as a result, Tehran was forced to raise oil prices on November 15th by fifty percent and impose a strict rationing system. Soon after, protests erupted and at least eight people linked to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were arrested by Iranian security agents.

Although trade has significantly decreased, Washington’s destructive attempts to kill economic relations between Iran and the European Union have fallen short. If successful, Washington would have benefited from increasing its own oil and commodities trade, at the expense of others.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Sarah Abed is an independent journalist and analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

On December 2, the 25th two-week long United Nations climate conference begins in Madrid, Spain. The stated task of the conference, referred to as COP 25 (Conference Of Parties), is to make sure there are plans to meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. The goals of that agreement, which are nonbinding, are:

1. Reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent by 2030;
2. Achieve a net zero global carbon footprint by 2050; and
3. Stabilize the global temperature increase at 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

Last week, prominent scientists issued a warning that significant changes related to the climate crisis are already happening and could create a cascading effect that locks in catastrophic levels of temperature and sea-level rise. They view the pledges made by countries to take climate action as insufficient and leading to a three degrees Celsius temperature rise by the end of the century.

It is this reality that is spurring people around the world to take action in the growing global climate emergency movement. Many people are asking what they can do about the climate crisis.

Too little, too late

Each new climate report is direr. The climate crisis is here now. Oceans are heating up and acidifying as they absorb carbon dioxide. This is slowing ocean circulation and killing coral reefs. Ocean circulation impacts the weather – slowing is already changing weather patterns and worsening storms. Coral reefs are necessary for providing habitat and protecting coastlines.

According to a recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, ice is melting at an unprecedented pace and sea-level rise is accelerating. This is leading to more frequent and chronic flooding. The world has already warmed to 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels causing droughts and frequent wildfires.

Of great concern is the fact that these changes are not isolated. They feed into and feed off of each other causing a cascading impact that is leading us to a point of no return, at least for thousands of years. For example, as the land thaws, stored methane is being released. Methane is the most potent greenhouse gas in the short term causing more warming and more thawing. The prominent scientists cited above explain this:

“…as science advances, we must admit that we have underestimated the risks of unleashing irreversible changes, where the planet self-amplifies global warming. This is what we are seeing already at 1°C global warming…”

Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are failing. Levels are rising even though we need at least a 7.6 percent reduction each year to reach the Paris Agreement goals. Growing energy demand is the biggest culprit. Colder winters and warmer summers mean more energy used to heat and cool our homes and other buildings. In the United States, gas consumption increased by ten percent in 2018 after years of decline. The increase in renewables is not even meeting new energy demands, let alone replacing polluting forms of energy production.

Even though the United Nations admits that not enough is being done to address the climate crisis and that there is no time to waste, it does not wield its power to make sure that effective actions are taken. Instead, as we wrote in 2014, the UN is dominated by global finance and corporations and their subservient governments pushing financial schemes and green technology to enrich themselves even when those projects don’t solve the problem.

In this year’s meeting, the major focus will be the rules for the newest form of a global carbon trading market mandated by the Paris Agreement. Carbon trading has been in existence since the Kyoto Protocol and has not reduced carbon emissions. California’s cap and trade system, one of the largest in the world, is being copied by other countries, but ProPublica found that carbon emissions in California have risen by 3.5 percent under the program as it allows big polluters to purchase credits and even increase their emissions.

There have already been mass protests around the world leading up to the COP meetings. In expectation of more protests at the meetings in Spain, more than 5,000 police have been called out. Thousands of anti-capitalist activists, environmental defenders, and concerned citizens are arriving from all over the world to demand that countries take concrete measures to halt global climate change. The police are on high alert throughout the COP meetings until December 14.

This is the last year that the United States will participate in the United Nations COP meetings as Trump formally withdraws from the Paris Agreement. What are activists in the US to do?

Climate Demonstrators in Cologne on November 29, 2019, before the UN climate summit. Source DPA

Action for the climate

The United States is the second-largest total GHG emitter in the world and the third-largest per-capita GHG emitter behind Saudi Arabia and Australia. The US is the largest producer of new fossil fuels. People in the US have a critical responsibility and role to play in the solution to the climate crisis.

There are lots of discussions going on right now about what people need to be doing and the answer is that we need to be using all the tools available. We cannot count on institutions such as the United Nations, governments and corporations to take appropriate actions without outside pressure. We need to organize resistance and build the solutions in our communities.

A core requirement of effective social movements is to have a clear vision of what they are working to achieve. To be transformational, this vision must embody not only the goal (for example, reducing GHG emissions) but also the structure of the system that will achieve that goal. Two major components of that structure are the ways decisions will be made and how the system will be financed. For more information on social transformation, visit the Popular Resistance School.

Currently, it is the powerholders who make and profit from the decisions. A new system, such as the Green New Deal, could be structured in a way that puts those who are most impacted by the decisions in control and could be financed in a way that reduces the wealth divide. The Ecosocialist Green New Deal, developed by Howie Hawkins, a candidate running for the Green Party presidential nomination, is the strongest proposal. It has the fastest timeline, includes a transition to a peace economy with 75 percent cuts to the military, an Economic Bill of Rights and a Green Economy Reconstruction Program. It would transform multiple sectors of the economy to put in place a clean energy economy by 2030 as well as transitioning to public or worker-controlled ownership.

The next requirements are a strategy to achieve the vision and tactics to serve that strategy. There are a broad range of actions to take and a number of roles to play. Here is a partial list of current actions:

1. Pushing agencies to address the climate crisis in their policies – When the Trump administration announced it would allow more oil and gas drilling on federal lands, advocacy groups came together and sued the Bureau of Land Management to make sure GHG emissions are assessed in considering oil and gas leases. A court recently sided with the groups and hundreds of thousands of acres of leases are being suspended. Another example is the Beyond Extreme Energy campaign to transform the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which grants permits for energy projects, to the Federal Renewable Energy Commission.
2. Direct action to prevent new fossil fuel infrastructure – Major campaigns to stop pipelines, fracking and new oil and gas infrastructure are going on across the country. Oil and gas corporations cite this resistance as their biggest obstacle. Last week, activists in Wingdale, NY shut down construction of the Cricket Valley Fracked Gas Power Plant. They are pressuring Governor Cuomo to shut it down for good. And in Clearbrook, Minnesota, activists blocked construction of the Line 3 Pipeline. You don’t have to lock down or climb a tripod to participate. There are many roles required for direct actions such as media support, legal observers, jail support and more.
3. Driving disinvestment in dirty energy – Students, faculty and supporters took action last week to disrupt the Harvard-Yale football game with a message to their schools to divest from fossil fuels and cancel Puerto Rico’s debt. This was one action in an ongoing divestment campaign. The European Investment Bank took a positive step recently by promising to phase out investment in dirty energy over the next two years. Though it is promising to be the first climate bank, activists will still need to watchdog what the bank supports to make sure it is not investing in more false solutions.
4. Protecting the right to protest – We know our actions are having an impact when the state tries to criminalize them. A new law was signed by the governor of Wisconsin making it a felony to protest fossil fuel infrastructure. This is the tenth state to pass such a law. In South Dakota, their anti-protest law was successfully fought in the courts this year.
5. Pressuring lawmakers (and candidates) – During the Extinction Rebellion Global Hunger Strike, which started Nov. 20, a group of activists sat-in House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s office calling for her to hold a public meeting with them. Two of them continued their hunger strike through this weekend. The Sunrise Movement has organized actions targeting lawmakers, candidates and the Democratic Party throughout the year. They, along with Fridays for Future, will target lawmakers with a climate strike on December 6.
6. Constructive programs to build alternatives – There are many programs to build positive alternatives from developing regenerative agriculture to a resurgence of small farmers and urban gardens to expanded public transportation, walkable communities, and bike lanes, to incentives for clean energy installation and the formation of worker-owned cooperative green businesses. Recently a new law was passed requiring new roofsin Brooklyn, NY to either have solar panels or greenery. Visit the CREATE section of Popular Resistance for more information.

These are a few examples of many activities for the climate that are being organized. Here are a few final thoughts and observations. First, while changing our personal habits to reduce consumption and emissions is important for transitioning to the world we are working to create, we must remember that the drivers of the crisis are systemic and require systemic solutions. Second, activists often struggle with the issue of activism versus electoral politics. Our view is that in the manipulated US election system, we can’t elect our way out of these crises. Throughout history, it has been mass popular movements that have forced powerholders to either make necessary changes or to lose their power. Electoral politics is a useful tool when it is used to raise awareness for our issues and expose the failings of the current political system but the major focus of our work must be movement building.

Perhaps one of the most exciting developments is the rise of anti-capitalist protests around the world against neoliberalism, a model that drives privatization of land, water, services and more. We can’t solve the climate crisis using capitalist economic models because capitalism is fundamentally about extracting profits at all costs and is based on the overconsumption of a consumer-oriented economy.

Another promising development is the work to make connections between the many crises we face. We cannot solve the climate crisis in isolation because it requires a major restructuring of our entire society. This is the opportunity the climate crisis provides. Over the next decade, with a clear vision of where we want to go, we can shape the world to be one that respects self-determination, human rights and sustainability. That will only come about through organization, planning, and action to create a mass movement.

The seeds of that mass movement are growing. The opportunity has never been so great and the stakes have never been so high.

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

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

Last weekend, the province of Idlib once again turned into the main hot point in Syria.

On November 30, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Turkish-backed National Front for Liberation and several foreign Jihadi groups, including the Turkistan Islamic Party and Ajnad al-Kavkaz launched a major attack on positions of the Syrian Army in southeastern Idlib.

The advance started with an ambush of an army unit near Tell Dam. 6 soldiers were reportedly killed and 5 others were captured. Then, militants attacked and captured the villages of Sarjah, Ejaz, Rasm al-Ward and Istablat. Pro-militant sources claimed that at least 2 units of army military equipment were destroyed there.

Photos and videos from the ground showed that in many cases terrorists used Turkish-supplied weapons, like HY-12 mortars and HAR-66 anti-tank weapons.

The Syrian Air Force and the Russian Aerospace Forces responded with intense airstrikes on militants’ columns and facilities, as well as provided close air support to soldiers defending their positions. As always pro-militant sources claimed that airstrikes hit civilian targets only.

On December 1, the Syrian Army launched a counter-attack recapturing Ejaz. Government troops also re-entered Sarjah and several areas around it. The situation is developing.

The recent escalation in southern Idlib may lead to resumption of large-scale hostilities and lead to a new ground offensive of the Syrian Army in the region. Greater Idlib will remain the zone of instability as long as groups like Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its allies operate there. So, this threat should be eliminated.

The National Front for Liberation is a Turkish-backed coalition of militant groups, and a part of the Turkish-controlled fraction known as the Syrian National Army. The Syrian National Army is the main proxy force of Turkey in northeastern Syria. Therefore, the Ankara government bears at least a partial responsibility for hostile actions of its proxies.

At the same time, the situation became relatively stable in northeastern Syria. Over the past days, there have been no intense fighting between Turkish-led forces and the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces.

On November 30, the Russian Military Police established an observation point in the border town of Amuda in northern al-Hasakah. The point is located in a large building that has been reportedly used by the Kurdish Women’s Protection Units as a military academy.

Under the Turkish-Russian agreement on northeastern Syria, Kurdish units have to be withdrawn from a 30km zone near the Turkish border and the ceasefire has to be established in the area. Russian forces likely create these observation posts to monitor the ceasefire and propel a political dialogue between the Kurdish leadership and the Assad government.

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“It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government.”—Thomas Paine

While Congress subjects the nation to its impeachment-flavored brand of bread-and-circus politics, our civil liberties continue to die a slow, painful death by a thousand cuts.

Case in point: while Americans have been fixated on the carefully orchestrated impeachment drama that continues to monopolize headlines, Congress passed and President Trump signed into law legislation extending three key provisions of the USA Patriot Act, which had been set to expire on December 15, 2019.

Once again, to no one’s surprise, the bureaucrats on both sides of the aisle—Democrats and Republicans alike—prioritized political grandstanding over principle and their oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution.

As Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) predicted:

Today, while everyone is distracted by the impeachment drama, Congress will vote to extend warrantless data collection provisions of the #PatriotAct, by hiding this language on page 25 of the Continuing Resolution (CR) that temporarily funds the government. To sneak this through, Congress will first vote to suspend the rule which otherwise gives us (and the people) 72 hours to consider a bill. The scam here is that Democrats are alleging abuse of Presidential power, while simultaneously reauthorizing warrantless power to spy on citizens that no President should have… in a bill that continues to fund EVERYTHING the President does… and waiving their own rules to do it. I predict Democrats will vote on a party line to suspend the 72 hour rule. But after the rule is suspended, I suspect many Republicans will join most Democrats to pass the CR with the Patriot Act extension embedded in it.

Massie was right: Republicans and Democrats have no problem joining forces in order to maintain their joint stranglehold on power.

The legislation passed the Senate with a bipartisan 74-to-20 vote. It squeaked through the House of Representatives with a 231-192 margin. And it was signed by President Trump—who earlier this year floated the idea of making the government’s surveillance powers permanent—with nary a protest from anyone about its impact on the rights of the American people.

Spending bill or not, it didn’t have to shake down this way, even with the threat of yet another government shutdown looming.

Congress could have voted to separate the Patriot Act extension from the funding bill, as suggested by Rep. Justin Amash, but that didn’t fly. Instead as journalist Norman Solomon writes for Salon, “The cave-in was another bow to normalizing the U.S. government’s mass surveillance powers.”

That, right there, is the key to all of this: normalizing the U.S. government’s mass surveillance powers.

In the 18 years since the USA Patriot Act—a massive 342-page wish list of expanded powers for the FBI and CIA—was rammed through Congress in the wake of the so-called 9/11 terror attacks, it has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse.

The Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments—the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments—and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well.

The Patriot Act also redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience are now considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.

The Patriot Act justified broader domestic surveillance, the logic being that if government agents knew more about each American, they could distinguish the terrorists from law-abiding citizens—no doubt a reflexive impulse shared by small-town police and federal agents alike.

This, according to Washington Post reporter Robert O’Harrow, Jr., was a fantasy that “had been brewing in the law enforcement world for a long time.” And 9/11 provided the government with the perfect excuse for conducting far-reaching surveillance and collecting mountains of information on even the most law-abiding citizen.

Federal agents and police officers are now authorized to conduct covert black bag “sneak-and-peak” searches of homes and offices while you are away and confiscate your personal property without first notifying you of their intent or their presence.

The law also granted the FBI the right to come to your place of employment, demand your personal records and question your supervisors and fellow employees, all without notifying you; allowed the government access to your medical records, school records and practically every personal record about you; and allowed the government to secretly demand to see records of books or magazines you’ve checked out in any public library and Internet sites you’ve visited (at least 545 libraries received such demands in the first year following passage of the Patriot Act).

In the name of fighting terrorism, government officials are now permitted to monitor religious and political institutions with no suspicion of criminal wrongdoing; prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government has subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation; monitor conversations between attorneys and clients; search and seize Americans’ papers and effects without showing probable cause; and jail Americans indefinitely without a trial, among other things.

The federal government also made liberal use of its new powers, especially through the use (and abuse) of the nefarious national security letters, which allow the FBI to demand personal customer records from Internet Service Providers, financial institutions and credit companies at the mere say-so of the government agent in charge of a local FBI office and without prior court approval.

In fact, since 9/11, we’ve been spied on by surveillance cameras, eavesdropped on by government agents, had our belongings searched, our phones tapped, our mail opened, our email monitored, our opinions questioned, our purchases scrutinized (under the USA Patriot Act, banks are required to analyze your transactions for any patterns that raise suspicion and to see if you are connected to any objectionable people), and our activities watched.

We’re also being subjected to invasive patdowns and whole-body scans of our persons and seizures of our electronic devices in the nation’s airports. We can’t even purchase certain cold medicines at the pharmacy anymore without it being reported to the government and our names being placed on a watch list.

It’s only getting worse, folks.

Largely due to the continuous noise from television news’ talking heads, most Americans have been lulled into thinking that the pressing issues are voting in the next election, but the real issue is simply this: the freedoms in the Bill of Rights are being eviscerated.

The Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded to such an extent that what we are left with today is but a shadow of the robust document adopted more than two centuries ago. Most of the damage has been inflicted upon the Bill of Rights—the first ten amendments to the Constitution—which historically served as the bulwark from government abuse.

Set against a backdrop of government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches and the like—all sanctioned by Congress, the White House and the courts—a recitation of the Bill of Rights would understandably sound more like a eulogy to freedoms lost than an affirmation of rights we truly possess.

We can pretend that the Constitution, which was written to hold the government accountable, is still our governing document. However, the reality we must come to terms with is that in the America we live in today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.

What once were considered inalienable, fundamental “rights”  are now mere privileges to be taken away on a government bureaucrat’s say-so.

To those who have been paying attention, this should come as no real surprise.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the Constitution has been on life support for some time now, and is drawing its final breaths.

The American government, never a staunch advocate of civil liberties, has been writing its own orders for some time now. Indeed, as the McCarthy era and the wiretapping of Martin Luther King Jr. and others illustrates, the government’s amassing of power, especially in relation to its ability to spy on Americans, predates the passage of the Patriot Act in 2001.

What the Patriot Act and its subsequent incarnations did was legitimize what had previously been covert and frowned upon as a violation of Americans’ long-cherished privacy rights.

After all, the history of governments is that they inevitably overreach.

Thus, enabled by a paper tiger Congress, the president and other agencies of the federal government have repeatedly laid claim to a host of powers, among them the ability to use the military as a police force, spy on Americans and detain individuals without granting them access to an attorney or the courts. And as the government’s powers have grown, unchecked, the American people have gradually become used to these relentless intrusions into their lives.

In turn, the American people have become the proverbial boiling frogs, so desensitized to the government’s steady encroachments on their rights that civil liberties abuses have become par for the course.

Yet as long as government agencies are allowed to make a mockery of the very laws intended to limit their reach, curtail their activities, and guard against the very abuses to which we are being subjected on a daily basis, our individual freedoms will continue to be eviscerated so that the government’s powers can be expanded, the Constitution be damned.

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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].

The impunity with which the US aggresses Hong Kong is insane. Equally or more insane is western media coverage of what is going on in Hong Kong. Not one word on how the incredible “pro-democracy” vote of the rather unimportant District Council Elections was achieved. Of the 18 District Councils, 452 of 479 seats (71%) went to “pro-democracy” candidates. Such an extreme anti-Beijing vote could only be obtained by massive western propaganda at the cost of millions of dollars, targeted with algorithms, developed on the principles of the now (apparently) defunct Cambridge Analytica. And this with 70% of eligible voters going to the polls.

None of this practically non-realistic result was analyzed by the west and reported on. In reality, the vast majority of Hong Kongers is sick and tired of the western inspired violence, but are very much proud of being Chinese citizens. They were told by the propagandists that voting for ‘democracy’ candidates was the way to bring peace. And Peace is what everyone wants. After all, integrated into China in 1997, they have enjoyed much more freedom than under British colonialism, where they were not even allowed to vote for their district councils.

The absurdity does not stop here. The US Congress has recently passed legislation that would allow the US monitoring ‘democracy’ and human rights in Hong Kong, the so called “Human Rights and Democracy Act”, with the caveat of imposing sanctions, if Beijing would transgress on the US imposed rules. Can you imagine? Can anyone imagine this all-overarching arrogance?

The US Congress passing legislation to control another foreign territory? And the west goes along with it. It may happen soon in Europe too that the US dictates what sovereign nations are allowed to do and not to do. It is already happening. The US prohibits Europe to do business with whom they want – i.e. Iran, if not, they are being punished. No comments. It’s just the new normal. In the case of Hong Kong, Beijing has protested, called the US Ambassador twice to discuss the matter – to no avail.

It gets even more ludicrous. Madame Michelle Bachelet, High Commissioner of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, has published in the Saturday issue of the South China Morning Post an article seeking full and “independent and impartial judge-led investigation” into police conduct at protests as part of confidence-building measures. The statement in itself already takes sides, as it does in no way address the foreign-inspired violence of protesters, who, for example, are using a university campus to build Molotov-type bombs and other incendiary devices.  The Chinese Government immediately rebuked the article accusing Ms. Bachelet of further inflaming ‘radical violence’.

In a statement issued on Sunday, Chen Yaou, spokesman for China’s permanent mission to the UN, launched a scathing attack on what he called an “erroneous article” by Michelle Bachelet. Chen emphasized that China “strongly opposed” Bachelet’s article, saying she had interfered in the internal affairs of China and would only encourage protesters to use more radical violence. Mr. Chen added that

“the protesters were seeking to create chaos in the Hong Kong SAR (Special Administrative Region), paralyze the HK SAR government and seize the administrative power of the Hong Kong SAR with the aim of rendering the ‘one country, two systems’ principle defunct.”

Cheng also said that his government stands fully behind Ms. Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive.

Despite the overwhelming pro-democracy vote on 24 November 2019, protests continue. Thousands took to the streets on Saturday afternoon assembling before the United States Consulate in Central, to “express gratitude” for passing the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. They were waving US flags, chanting the Star-Spangled Banner and are asking for more support. They pledge not to let go until all their demands are met.

Essentially, they want total independence from Beijing and become a US colony. They should look at Puerto Rico, what it means to be a US colony, what Washington has in store for its colonies. Or closer to their own history, they should look at their UK colonial past – and remember their state of oppression, the almost zero rights they had then.

What does this all mean for Hong Kong? At the time of the UK handover to China in 1997, Hong Kong contributed about 18% to China’s GDP. Already before the protests began some 6 months ago, it had shrunk to a mere 3%. Within the last few months HK’s economic output has further declined, as key financial institutions want stability and therefore are leaving Hong Kong for safer venues, i.e. Singapore, and, indeed, for Shanghai which is rapidly becoming the financial hub of the east.

The real purpose of the 50-year special status of Hong Kong that the UK (and US) negotiated with Beijing, was to keep this unregulated eastern financial paradise alive for western oligarchs’ often illicit and tax-evading financial transactions of which the western – UK and US – bankers and financiers were the key beneficiaries and profiteers. These US-inspired violent protests are meant to destabilize the Government of Beijing – which is, of course, a pipedream – when in fact, they are slowly committing suicide. Washington and London are disabling Hong Kong of her west-serving money-laundering capacity.

And if it comes really down to the level of intolerant crime and violence against the majority of HK citizens by this foreign-inspired and funded disruption of SAR, Beijing could in less than 24 hours put an end to it. So simple. The west could just gape, but say nothing, because it is in Beijing’s full right to restore law and order in their territories.

Now, let’s look again at the US arrogance to pass legislation to control a foreign territory. Could anyone imagine the logical opposite? China passes legislation to ban any foreign interference in their territories with the threat of sanctions. These could include outright import bans for certain US goods, for example agricultural produce, or stopping crucial exports to the US (iPhones, computers, other US-outsourced manufactured-in-China goods), barring certain US citizens from entering China – or, god forbid, building a military base in Venezuela and / or Mexico; Mexico being the latest Latin American country being harassed by the US for Mexico’s left-leaning government.

It is only by equals facing equals that maybe, just maybe can achieve harmonious and peaceful coexistence. This applies politically as much as it does economically – and in economics, China is the unspoken front-runner with a strong and stable currency backed by her economic output and by gold, versus an entire not only US, but western economy based on fiat money.

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Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. After working for over 30 years with the World Bank he penned Implosion, an economic thriller, based on his first-hand experience. Exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.” He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image: More than a million Hong Kongers joined marches in June to oppose a China extradition law. But some say the US is quickly backing the protests. Photo: Don Ng/ EyePress

The Rohingya refugees have, for decades now, been fleeing their homeland, the Rakhine province in Myanmar. Mostly through Yangon’s inaction, elements of the military and members of the majority Buddhist population were left to run rampage amongst this helpless Muslim minority. Made stateless by Yangon in 1982, left totally vulnerable to the frightful violence of rape, mass killings — some burnt alive in their own homes — they fled, in 2017, to Bangladesh, some 700,000 of them. There have been waves of genocidal killings of Rohingyas in Myanmar beginning in 1978.

In September 2019 a UN-appointed independent International Fact-Finding Mission in a report insists that “hundreds of thousands of ethnic Rohingya who remain in Myanmar may face greater threat of genocide than ever, amid Government attempts to erase their identity and remove them from the country”. However. Myanmar has rejected the findings of the report saying that the mission was never approved by Yangon and they have, in turn, begun their own investigations.

In 2017, when boatloads of starving Rohingyas drifted to the shores of Malaysia and Indonesia dying of hunger with many lost at sea, Turkey protested the exodus.  Malaysia and Indonesia, too, protested but Myanmar is a fellow ASEAN member. ASEAN holds dear its principle of non-interference and, therefore, they were silenced. Instead both Indonesia and Malaysia took in the refugees. In a recent speech at the UN the Malaysian prime minister, Dr Mahathir Mohammad, remarked on the world’s silence with regard the Rohingya tragedy.

Despite the media silence, the UN has assured itself enough to announce in November, for the International Criminal Court (ICC) based in The Hague to begin preliminary investigations. The investigation began in Bangladesh, a signatory to the ICC, where most of the Rohingya refugees are living in overcrowded conditions in Cox Bazaar, reputedly the world’s largest refugee settlement. It is assumed, here, that under the UN’s auspices the investigation will be even more thorough.

And too, on 11 November, Gambia, Africa’s smallest country, has filed a lawsuit, at the UN’s top court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing Myanmar of genocide against Rohingya Muslims, on the principle of “universal jurisdiction”, a legal concept enshrined in many countries.  The principle is built on the premise that war crimes and crimes against humanity are too horrific to ignore and can, therefore, be tried in any country. This is an expensive endeavour which can cost millions, if not billions of dollars and Gambia is poor. But Gambia is a majority Muslim nation and a member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). It is this grouping that is behind Gambia. While the outcome is uncertain — although the facts as established by the UN’s “Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar” would favour Gambia’s position — Myanmar has made it known that it will appear before the court, its team headed by Aung San Suu Kyi herself, leader of the civilian government. This seeming defiance suggests that Yangon may have something up its sleeve.

Closely, on the heels of this legal action, comes another lawsuit, this time naming names, including the Nobel Peace Laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, for crimes against Rohingya Muslims. The case is filed in Argentina, again under the principle of “universal jurisdiction”.

The action is led by an Argentinian lawyer Tomas Ojea, once a UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Myanmar between 2008 and 2014. Ojea is a first- hand witness to the suffering of the Rohingyas. Two Argentine human rights groups are supporting the lawsuit.

Do these imminent cases suggest that the Rohingyas can now hope to return to their homes? An agreement reached between Bangladesh and Myanmar to allow a return of the refugees to their homeland could not be implemented because there have beenfew to no takers.  The victims remain untrusting of their tormentors. The Rohingyas seek, instead, for guarantees for a pathway to citizenship, land entitlement and compensation, and want their safety secured. In short, they seek justice in Myanmar. Can the trust between the government and the people be re-established after such a heinous betrayal?

Observers are agreed that while Yangon is willing to negotiate and sign agreements, on the ground no promises made are fulfilled. For example, the agreement which allows the Rohingyas to return from Bangladesh is hollow given the official policy towards the Rohingyas still in the country. They are kept in internment camps deprivedof their basic human rights. According to a UN Report, those fleeing are shot to death, including children. Children have no access to education and health-care in these camps and worse, their restricted movement means food is not liberally available and access to clean water limited. They are at the mercy of the Myanmar authorities.

Can the UN end this humanitarian crisis now that the tragedy is squarely on the lap of this supranational organisation intended to prevent genocides and other crimes against humanity? The example of Palestine tells us to temper our optimism. Proof of Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, if not genocide, is everywhere even as I write Gaza is being bombed mercilessly. US vetoes in the UN Security Council in support of Israeli aggression have only demonstrated the UN’s impotence. Geopolitics has become a massive obstacle to justice in the contemporary world. And, the ICJ can only issue advisory opinions. Will geopolitics again foil the ham-fisted, if not arm-twisted, attempts of the UN?

In September 2017, the Faculty of Law of Malaysia’s University of Malaya, together with a couple of non-government organisations (NGO) including JUST, hosted a 5-day session of the Rome based Permanent People’s Tribunal on “State Crimes Allegedly Committed in Myanmar against the Rohingyas, Kachins and Other Groups”. Evidence presented shows thousands of Rohingyas have lost their lives and hundreds of thousands displaced. Again evidence is aplenty but if in seven decades the genocide of the Palestinians has been allowed to play out in public, can we expect any better for the Rohingyas?

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Askiah Adam is Executive Director of the International Movement for a JUST World (JUST).

The impending trial in Nigeria of Omoleye Sowore on charges including treason is promising to stir a hornet’s nest. Sowore, a high-profile media publisher, was arrested in August of this year because he called for a revolution after the February elections which he claimed were not credible. Himself a contestant,

Sowore’s seven-count indictment also includes the charge of harassing President Muhammadu Buhari, the former military ruler who secured a second term in office. Speculation is brewing as to what the strategy of the defence team will be: should it adopt one that aggressively asserts that Nigeria is indeed in need of revolutionary change? Or will it argue that Sowore’s words were mere rhetoric. The charge that Sowore was harassing Buhari, an ex-military strongman now elderly and frail adds a personal dimension; revealing an animus towards the defendant which has seen him being held in defiance of a court’s grant of bail. It should also bring into focus and public debate the irony of Buhari having been the leader of a military regime that overthrew a constitutionally elected government, an act of treason, that led to a hardline government which purposely operated beyond the rule of law. 

Nigeria’s political history is replete with treason trials. The trial, during the First Republic, of Chief Obafemi Awolowo and other members of the now defunct Action Group party in the 1960s was the first of its kind and led to convictions for treasonable felony. In 1982, a businessman named Zanna Bukar Mandara was found guilty of conspiring to overthrow the civilian administration of President Shehu Shagari, the man whose government Buhari would depose. Unlike Awolowo, Sowore is not being accused of attempting to import weapons into the country to seize power. Neither, as was the case with Mandara is Sowore being accused of soliciting the help of members of the Nigeria armed forces to aid in a takeover of the government. The trials of military men for abortive enterprises such as occured in 1976, 1986 and 1990 were of course noted for their secrecy, as well as the executions by firing squad that followed. Sowore is not going to be put on trial for his life, but can expect a stiff sentence like those incurred by his civilian predecessors: Awolowo was sentenced to a 10-year term of imprisonment and Mandara to 15.

So how should Sowore and his defence team approach the trial? A strategy which indicts the political system and its leaders would be a risky one, but one which could generate widespread sympathy from the masses. In 1953, Fidel Castro’s four-hour speech in court when defending himself after the failed attack on Moncada Barracks ended with the famous words “La historia me absolvera”. And Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings, a young Ghanaian airman arrested after an abortive coup in May 1979 put on a defiant performance at his court martial where his powerful criticism of the military regime generated such sympathy from the public and empathy from the ranks of the military that an uprising of junior members of the armed forces sprung him from his prison cell and overthrew the ruling junta.

Sowore possesses none of the oratorical skills of a Castro or Rawlings. And he does not have a substantive political movement behind him or armed supporters who could threaten the Nigerian state.

But the yearning for a Nigerian revolution is not a misplaced one. Plummeting living standards, mass unemployment among the young, including graduates, poor roads and the rationing of electricity supplies continue to consign minerally and human resource-rich Nigeria to the status of a failed state.

Further than this is the irony of the present Nigerian government prosecuting a citizen for treason when the man at its helm, Muhammadu Buhari was himself an accessory, an instigator and a beneficiary of treason at various points in history. It was Buhari himself who overthrew the democratically elected government of Shehu Shagari and brought to an end the Second Republic. Section 1(2) Chapter I and Part I of the 1979 constitution provided that “The Federal Republic of Nigeria shall not be governed, nor shall any person or group of persons take control of the Government of Nigeria or any part thereof, except in accordance with the provisions of this constitution.” Under that constitution, the role of the armed forces was prescribed as “defending Nigeria from external aggression”, “suppressing insurrection and acting in aid of civil authorities to restore order when called upon to do so by the President, but subject to such conditions as may be prescribed by an Act of the National Assembly”.

The action on New Year’s Eve in 1983 was in contravention of the constitution.

Buhari had earlier shown contempt for constituted authority when as the Commanding Officer of the 3rd Division, he had cut off food and fuel supplies to neighbouring Chad during a border dispute that also saw him pursue Chadian intruders deep into Chadian territory. His entrance into Chadian territory had been in express contravention of Shagari’s order not to do so.

If an analogy is made with the uprising of junior officers of the Ghana armed forces in 1979, then Buhari’s actions in overthrowing a constitutionally elected government were tantamount to a capital offence, for which he should have ended on the gallows. In Ghana, a number of senior military officers, including three former heads of state, who had served in three military regimes were executed by order of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council for breaching Ghana’s Criminal Code of 1960, the Armed Forces Act (1962) and the Superior Order Rule attendant to the Armed Forces Regulation.

Certainly under the Criminal Code existing at the time of the Buhari-led coup, the combination of actions inherent within a coup d’etat: conspiracy to overthrow the government (s.41), incitement to mutiny (s.44b), causing disaffection among members of the armed forces (s.46a) and concealment of treason (s.40) warranted the death penalty (s.49a).

It would be remiss not to mention Buhari’s role in the tragic fate of a young Nigerian army officer named Daniel Bamidele. In October 1983, Bamidele heard rumours of a coup plot against President Shagari and promptly reported this to his commanding officer, the then Major General Buhari. Unbeknownst to Bamidele, Buhari was at the heart of the plot and a week later was detained at a military barracks under the auspices of the Directorate of Military Intelligence. He was released towards the end of November in a state of bewilderment until on News Year’s Day, he learnt that Buhari had emerged as Nigeria’s military head of state.

Bamidele was earmarked for retirement in the early part of 1984, but Buhari, whose consent was needed to confirm the laying off of those officers who were on the list, crossed out Bamidele’s name. In 1986, Bamidele was arrested by the regime led by General Ibrahim Babangida -the man who overthrew Buhari in a palace coup- for concealing his knowledge of an alleged coup plot. Given his previous experience, he had remained silent when criticisms were voiced by fellow officers of the policies of the Babangida regime.

He was executed by firing squad in March of that year.

Buhari, steeped in treason, did try to effect a revolution of sorts in Nigeria as a military rule. He won praise, not only for insisting in an attempt to chart a course which was independent from foreign control, but also one which aimed to change the negative habits of Nigerians. This came through the “War on Indiscipline” spearheaded by his co-ruler Major General Tunde Idiagbon.

But his rule, initially well-received for its anti-corruption stance, was mired by breaches in civil rights. Then as now, the Nigerian character in so far as pertains to discipline is still lacking. Nigeria’s social and economic problems have arguably worsened. Today, the insecurity caused by kidnapping gangs, the Boko Haram insurgency, as well as clashes between Fulani Herdsmen and farming communities around the country has endured despite Buhari’s consecutive election pledges to bring order to the country. The economy is stagnating, and just as was the case during his time as a military leader, his respect for human rights has come under question given the brutal suppression of a now proscribed Shi’ite group and pro-secessionist movements among ethnic igbos.

Given these conditions, Nigeria is certainly ripe for revolution. But the permutations of Sowore’s perceived revolution such as transferring Nigeria’s leadership to a younger generation, the redistribution of national wealth and the tackling of corruption, while laudable, fall short of the sort of revolution which offers Nigeria a salvation from the bondage of the past. Genuine change can only come from a reformation of the mind and culture of its people; something hardly addressed in a substantive manner by Nigerian intellectuals and politicians.

There are no indications that his counsel, Femi Falana, a presumed heir to the legacies of radical lawyers Gani Fawehinmi and Tunji Braithwaite, will proceed with a bold strategy of justifying the grounds for a Nigerian revolution. It seems unlikely that this will be the case. And if so, it would be less a case of a shortcoming on the part of the defendant and his lawyer than it is of the Nigerian public, a long-suffering and insouciant species forever content to complain, but perennially inactive at combating the incompetence, the corruption and the brutality of its political representatives.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Adeyinka Makinde.

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Featured image is from the author

The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs slammed the regime of Donald Trump for its attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries after the US State Department issued a statement to interfere in the works of the Syrian Constitution Committees deliberations in Geneva.

A spokesperson for the ministry said to the Syrian official news agency SANA ‘the dialogue is a Syrian-Syrian one and no one has the right to interfere in it or support any party under any pretext.’

The spokesperson outlined that the role of the United Nations represented by its special envoy Geir Pederson is limited to facilitating the committees’ discussions only and does not interfere in the contents.

Earlier, the US State Department issued a statement accusing the Syrian delegation to the Geneva talks to discuss amendments to the Syrian constitution of impeding the talks by placing obstacles.

Trump Regime’s State Dept statement

The Syrian delegation asked the Turkish delegation to set the principles on Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity before discussing less important details in the constitution, the delegation sent by the Turkish regime of the madman Erdogan rejected to set such a principle. Erdogan Regime Delegation threw a tantrum, refused to even enter the meeting hall, and issued its rejection via media, violating the agreed-upon Code of Conduct, similar to Erdogan-the-Guarantor consistent breach of the de-escalation zones in Syria.

Observers following the talks referred their rejections to the conflict of interest it would cause with their sponsor carrying out an illegal incursion of northern Syria.

The condemnation by the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was expected, firstly, it’s a blatant attempt by the US to achieve in politics and diplomatic pressure what it failed by sponsoring terrorist groups in Syria and by direct invasion, secondly, it’s the same US regime that its officials have been crying non-stop for the past 3 years over alleged Russian interference in their own ‘democratical’ system claiming that some accounts from Russia bought Facebook ads worth of around US$ 3000(!) which placed Donald Trump as the president of the USA!

It’s the same regime that spent hundreds of billions of dollars directly and through its regional slaves to topple yet another legitimate government in the region and this time in Syria, and replace the elected officials with planted puppets.

The author of this post is trying to feel sorry for the US citizens and taxpayers whose government is dealing with double-face around the world, but to be honest, I’m failing to feel sorry. It’s been endless times their government interfered in every other country around the world and they spent hundreds of millions of dollars of their hard-earned tax money on investigations of alleged Russian interference worth of 3000 dollars. No one can be that simple, that dumb, and that naive for that long period of time and for those countless times their government on behalf of them and using their resources have committed such crimes and violations of international law abroad, it’s like the US citizens themselves support these heinous acts.

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All images in this article are from Syria News unless otherwise stated

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The December 3-4 summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in London resembles a family reunion after the acrimony over the issue of military spending by America’s European allies. 

The trend is up for defence spending across European Allies and Canada. Over $100 billion is expected to be added to the member states’ defence budgets by end-2020.

More importantly, the trend at the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting at Brussels on November 19-20, in the run-up to the London summit, showed that despite growing differences within the alliance, member states closed ranks around three priority items in the US global agenda — escalation of the aggressive policy toward Russia, militarisation of space and countering China’s rise. 

The NATO will follow Washington’s lead to establish a space command by officially regarding space as “a new operational domain”. According to NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg, this decision “can allow NATO planners to make a request for allies to provide capabilities and services, such as satellite communications and data imagery.” 

Stoltenberg said,

“Space is also essential to the alliance’s deterrence and defence, including the ability to navigate, to gather intelligence, and to detect missile launches. Around 2,000 satellites orbit the Earth. And around half of them are owned by NATO countries.” 

Equally, Washington has been urging the NATO to officially identify China’s rise as a long-term challenge. According to media reports, the Brussels meeting acceded to the US demand and decided to officially begin military surveillance of China. 

The US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hit out at China after the Brussels meeting:

“Finally, our alliance must address the current and potential long-term threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party.  Seventy years ago, the founding nations of NATO came together for the cause of freedom and democracy.  We cannot ignore the fundamental differences and beliefs in the – between our countries and those of the Chinese Communist Party.” 

So far so good. However, it remains to be seen if Washington’s grand design to draw NATO into its “Indo-Pacific strategy” (read containment of China) will gain traction. Clearly, the US intends to have a say in the European allies’ growing business and economic relations with China to delimit Chinese influence in Europe. The US campaign to block 5G technology from China met with rebuff from several European countries. 

On the other hand, the European project has unravelled and the Franco-German axis that was its anchor sheet has become shaky. The rift between Paris and Berlin works to Washington’s advantage but, paradoxically, also hobbles the western alliance system. 

The French President Emmanuel Macron annoyed Germany by his recent calls for better relations with Russia “to prevent the world from going up in a conflagration”; his brutally frank remarks about NATO being “brain dead” and the US policy on Russia being “governmental, political and historical hysteria”; and his repeated emphasis on a European military policy independent of the US. 

The congruence of interests between Berlin and Washington vis-a-vis Macron manifested itself in the NATO’s endorsement of the US-led escalation against Russia and China, with France rather isolated. However, this congruence will be put to test very soon at the summit meeting of the Normandy format over Ukraine, which France is hosting on December 9, following the NATO’s London summit. France is helping Russia to negotiate a deal with Ukraine. 

The recent phone calls between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky underscored the growing interest in Moscow and Kiev at the leadership level to improve relations between the two countries. 

In the final analysis, the Franco-German relations are of pivotal importance to not only Europe’s strategic future but the western alliance system as such. If anyone was in doubt, the French veto in October means sudden death for the proposal on European Union accession of the Balkan state of North Macedonia, which NATO is inducting as its newest member. Berlin and Washington are livid, but a veto is a veto. 

With NATO being set up by Washington for a confrontationist posture, Russia and China won’t let their guard down. Addressing a meeting of the Russian Federation Security Council on November 22, Putin said,

“There are many uncertainty factors… competition and rivalry are growing stringer and morphing into new forms… The leading countries are actively developing their offensive weapons… the so-called ‘nuclear club’ is receiving new members, as we all know. We are also seriously concerned about the NATO infrastructure approaching our borders, as well as the attempts to militarise outer space.” 

Putin stressed,

“In these conditions, it is important to make adequate and accurate forecasts, analyse the possible changes in the global situation, and to use the forecasts and conclusions to develop our military potential.” 

The US-led military build-up against Russia and China will be on display in two big exercises next year codenamed ‘Defender 2020 in Europe’ and ‘Defender 2020 in the Pacific’. 

Significantly, only four days before Putin made the above remarks, Chinese President Xi Jinping told him at a meeting in Brasilia on the sidelines of the BRICS summit that “the ongoing complex and profound changes in the current international situation with rising instability and uncertainty urge China and Russia to establish closer strategic coordination to jointly uphold the basic norms governing international relations, oppose unilateralism, bullying and interference in other countries’ affairs, safeguard the respective sovereignty and security, and create a fair and just international environment.” 

Putin responded by saying that

“Russia and China have important consensus and common interests in maintaining global strategic security and stability. Under the current situation, the two sides should continue to maintain close strategic communication and firmly support each other in safeguarding sovereignty, security, and development rights.” (Chinese MFA) 

The Russian response is also visible on the ground. The share of modern weapons and equipment in the Russian Army and Navy has reached an impressive level of 70 percent. The first pilot batch of next-generation T-14 Armata tanks will arrive for the Russian troops in late 2019 – early 2020. 

On November 26, Russian Defence Ministry stated that Moscow’s breakthrough Avangard missile system with the hypersonic boost-glide vehicle will be deployed on combat duty with the Strategic Missile Force in December. 

For the first time, the electronic warfare systems at Russia’s military base in Tajikistan will be reinforced with the latest Pole-21 jamming station that can counter cruise missiles, drones and guided air bombs and precision weapon guidance systems. Moscow is guarding against the US and NATO presence in Afghanistan. 

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Featured image: Moscow’s breakthrough Avangard missile system with the hypersonic boost-glide vehicle will be deployed on combat duty with the Strategic Missile Force in December 2019 (Source: Indian Punchline)

As an integral part of its ongoing propaganda, Israel, along with its fervent supporters and legions of paid and anonymous agents, zealously repeats and disseminates – in the media, on university campuses, in blogs and comment sections, at conferences and more – the same old, tired Zionist myths. 

Propaganda guides and tool kits, such as the “global language dictionary”, offer ready-made arguments and counter-arguments to sell Israel to journalists and critics. Such talking points come with tips on what tone and rhetorical tactics to use, what words and formulas “work”, and how to discuss “sensitive” issues, such as Israel’s illegal colonisation and annexation of Palestinian land, Jewish settlements and the killing of civilians.

All of which are now set to get worse since US President Donald Trump has both rewarded and emboldened Israel by recognising its illegal and brutal colonisation (its “settlements”). By the same token he has offered yet another spectacular demonstration of the complete contempt of the United States for the rule of international law.

Setting such an example will only send the message to all the despots, autocrats and tyrants of various stripes around the globe that not only it is ok to steal, colonise, and brutalise weak and defenceless populations, but that you may even be rewarded by the West for adopting the “law of the jungle”.

Disinformation machine

The media is saturated with uplifting news about the “Israeli economic miracle”, its wealth and high living standards, and its thriving startup and high-tech industry. But have you ever heard from a mainstream Western media outlet or politician that a fifth of Israelis live below the poverty line, that people are forced to look through rubbish for food to avoid starving, or that Israel has (according to the Jerusalem Post) the highest poverty rate in the developed world?

The answer is most likely not, and we should ask ourselves why. Other lies propagated by Israel’s disinformation machine include origin myths, the most famous being the romantic theme of Palestine as “a land without a people for a people without a land”, which strangely persists, despite its historical absurdity. Israel relies a lot on ignorance and gullibility.

This magnificent interactive photographic collection of pre-1948 Palestine is enough to pulverise that revisionist lie, which seeks to eliminate the very notion of the existence of Palestinians on the land before it was taken from them by Western colonial powers to be given to Jewish emigrants from Europe and elsewhere. Palestinians were made to pay for a Holocaust that Europe had committed, and in which they themselves played no part.

Besides the pathetic nature of such PR operations to counter critics and improve Israel’s disastrous global image, its effectiveness is more than a little uncertain.

When news and images of Israel’s killing and mutilation of Palestinian children, deliberate bombing of schools, and indiscriminate use of white phosphorus on entire neighbourhoods circulate around the world, it is hard to convincingly portray such a predatory, violent and terrorist rogue state as noble, democratic, peaceful or gentle.

 “The Only Democracy” in the Region

By far the most common Zionist myth is the notion that Israel is the “only democracy” in the region – one that some even describe as a liberal, egalitarian, Western-style democracy. This grotesque, self-serving fairytale perpetuates the fallacy of a similarity of regimes, of a common destiny, and of a natural alliance between Israel and Western nations. Racist propaganda often pits this against the inevitably “barbaric”, backward and undemocratic Arab states and Muslim-majority societies.

This misleading description echoes the larger, even more sinister – but equally fallacious – Huntingtonian “clash of civilizations” discourse, which is itself the cultural reformulation in civilisational terms of the old ideologies of racial differences.

Repeating a lie multiple times does not make it true, although Israel’s agents clearly think it does. Israel is no democracy, and certainly not a “liberal, egalitarian” state. Two cold, hard facts can easily debunk this myth.

Firstly, there is the acquisition of Israeli nationality and citizenship through religion. The Law of Return allows any Jew, anywhere in the world, to emigrate to Israel and obtain full Israeli citizenship, whether or not they have ever set foot there or have any relatives living there. A privileged, royal path to citizenship is reserved exclusively for Jews, while being denied to members of other religions. Religious discrimination is thus institutionalised as official policy.

Archaic marriage laws

Just imagine for a minute how “democratic” countries such as France, Germany, Britain or the United States would be if they decided that from now on, Christians from all over the world – but only Christians – could freely emigrate and settle there, and unlike members of any other religion, or even atheists, they would automatically be granted citizenship upon arrival.

This would amount to discarding their most fundamental and basic democratic principles, including their cherished secularism – but such institutionalised religious discrimination is exactly what Israel practices.

Secondly, there is the issue of marriage. Given the massive pro-Israeli propaganda machine, coupled with the silent complicity of our Western media and governments, many people might be unaware that in Israel, only religious authorities are allowed to officiate marriages. Civil, non-religious marriages are not permitted.

Even worse, inter-religious, mixed marriages are also forbidden by law, forcing inter-religious couples to marry abroad. When they return, the non-Jewish partner often receives second-class citizen treatment by the state.

Again, let’s imagine what would happen to the French, British, German or US democracies if we were to apply such archaic principles. Rather unthinkably for those of us living in actual democracies, the Israeli state manages to make those already backward practices even harsher, levying a two-year prison sentence on couples who get married by a religious authority not accredited by the state.

Despite all this, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his PR minions continually explain to us – with a straight face – how democratic, egalitarian, tolerant, open and enlightened the state of Israel has always been, and how it grants all of its citizens equal rights.

Institutionalised apartheid

Israel was already a profoundly racist, unegalitarian, undemocratic, ethno-religious state before the nation-state law was passed last year. Now, it is even worse.

Conceived of from the start as an ethno-religious “Jewish state” – a description it has finally openly acknowledged through the nation-state law – just as other countries thought of themselves as “white states” (South Africa, the segregationist US), it is not surprising that Israel quickly instituted a veritable apartheid system.

This reality is easily visible to anyone on the ground, and has been abundantly documented for decades by the media, all major human rights organisations, UN-mandated independent teams on the ground, Palestinian and Israeli activists, NGOs and academics, who explain how Israel’s apartheid regime constantly invents new, creative ways to perpetuate and consolidate itself.

Jewish Holocaust survivors and their descendants have themselves denounced Israel as a structurally segregationist, and even fascist, apartheid state. One can safely assume that when you have survived Auschwitz, as did Professor Hajo Meyer, you can recognise fascism in action – particularly in your own country.

ANC veterans who spent their own lives fighting apartheid in South Africa have also declared that what they saw in Israel was in some respects worse than what they confronted at home. Even US President Jimmy Carter wrote an entire book on Israel’s apartheid, explaining how Palestinians were caged in an open-air prison worse than what the South Africans had to face.

Legalised discrimination

Israel’s discrimination against its Arab citizens, among others, is thus not just a societal, economic or cultural phenomenon. Every country has a share of that. In Israel’s case, discrimination is institutionalised, inscribed in its justice system as well.

“Israeli law includes numerous provisions that explicitly assert and institutionalise a principle of inequality between Jews and Arabs,” notes Arab-Israeli professor and politician Yousef Jabareen.

“To cite only one example, the Israeli flag, with its Star of David, represents only the Jewish majority of the country. But this differential treatment is certainly not limited to the realm of the symbolic. It exists in all domains of life: the definition of the state and its symbols, but also immigration laws, citizenship, political participation, access to land, culture, religion, budgetary policies, etc.”

Similar to the Law of Return, the “settlements” in the occupied West Bank – often direct breaches of Israeli law itself and major violations of international law – are exclusively reserved for Jews.

Israel invests considerable resources there on infrastructure and social services, but non-Jews are not allowed to live in the settlements – even though they are often built on confiscated land privately owned by Palestinians.

These settlers live among a population of more than three million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, who live under an all-pervasive, brutal military occupation. Another two million Palestinians live under siege and ongoing military terror in Gaza. None have a right to vote in Israeli elections.

Again, imagine the outcry if Britain or the US started invading territories outside of their internationally recognised borders, illegally annexed the land and resources, and then began creating Christian-only settlements in those areas.

The dozens of Israeli laws that explicitly discriminate against Arab citizens and Palestinians in the occupied territories are well documented. They can be accessed through the Adalah searchable database, and they apply to all aspects of Palestinian life: citizenship, education, political and economic rights, residency, language, culture, religion, and so on.

Hyper-violent colonialism

Even access to water, the most fundamental and life-sustaining resource, is the object of differential treatment by Israel, which has never hesitated to confiscate water or to use it as a war weapon to collectively punish entire populations.

Since the nation-state law has been adopted, Israel’s already systemic discrimination has become even worse, with new laws being passed to further entrench and expand inequality.

In addition to all of this evidence that Israel is no democracy, the state has also become globally infamous for its relentless, illegal, supremacist, hyper-violent colonialism; its annexation of land at gunpoint; its terroristic military; and its armies of fanatic Jewish “settlers”, who are little more than international rogues and land thieves.

During its half-century of illegal occupation and annexation, which is now doomed to get even worse, Israel has wilfully and knowingly violated almost every major international law convention, treaty and UN resolution, including the Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter, the 1947 Partition Plan, the Camp David and Oslo accords, and so on.

Such lawless behaviour has given Israel the distinct honour of being among the countries that for decades have been, and continue to be, regularly condemned by all major human rights organisations out there, and by the UN itself.

Distinctly Israeli terror

It is difficult to find a worse rogue state than Israel. From its very inception, writ with ethnic cleansing, Israel has made the collective punishment of defenceless civilian populations, the killing of entire families, the deliberate mutilation of children, the bombing of schools and hospitals, and other barbaric atrocities as distinctly, recognisably Israeli as challah, hamin and gefilte fish.

Even Israeli soldiers themselves – thousands of them, often elite soldiers regrouped in veteran organisations such as Breaking the Silence – are exposing and documenting Israel’s systematic and deliberate targeting of defenceless Palestinians. As much as the ANC veterans know apartheid, and Holocaust survivors know fascism, when they see it, these brave soldiers surely know what they are talking about, as they were once a part of it.

But they, too, are probably just “antisemites” or “self-hating Jews”; instead of them, maybe we ought to believe the likes of Netanyahu, who continues to claim that Israel is the region’s “only democracy”?

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Dr Alain Gabon is an associate professor of French based in the United States and the head of the French Department at Wesleyan College in Virginia. He has written numerous papers and articles on contemporary France and on Islam in Europe and throughout the world.

If the truth about the war on Syria was known and accepted by broad-based Western populations, then there would be no war on Syria.

If the truth were known and accepted there would be no terrorism in Syria.

If the truth were known and accepted Syria would still rank as one of the top five (1) safest countries in the world.

If the truth were known Christians and Muslims and everyone would be safe. Christians and Muslims in Syria would never have been slaughtered had the truth been known and accepted.

If the truth were known and accepted there would be no economic blockades that cause death and disaster and terrorism with intent.

But the truth is not known and accepted by broad-based Western populations because we have been smothered by blankets of suffocating, criminal war propaganda for years. Our tax dollars pay for the indoctrination. Just like our tax dollars pay for NATO and its globalizing tentacles of death and destruction that are literally imperilling the world.

So,why is the Truth not known and accepted by broad-based Western populations?

Renowned author Michel Collon demonstrates the characteristics of war propaganda that deny us the right to know.

First, the real interests that push for war must be hidden. Privileged access to and control of resources, including oil pipelines, must not be mentioned.

Second, history must be erased. People musn’t be aware of the longstanding imperial efforts to divide, weaken, and colonize Syria. They must not know that the war on Syria was planned well in advance by imperial powers.

Third, the leader of the country must be demonized. People must never know that elected President Assad has always been popular, even according to a NATO poll,(2) and that the invading terrorists were never accepted nor welcomed by the vast majority of Syrians.

People must not know that it is the aggressors, the US and allies, who have and use Weapons of Mass Destruction, not only in Syria, but in Iraq, and every other country that they invade. Depleted Uranium impacts present and future generations. Babies in Vietnam are still being born with deformities thanks to that war and the US deployment of Agent Orange.

Perceptions must be fabricated in such a way that the Western aggressors are seen as defending “victims”.

The entire Western-perpetrated war has created a country full of victims. The real intention of war is to kill and harm and maim and destroy. Destabilize means to destroy. The notion that it is humanitarian is beyond ridicule, but this is the perception that must be embedded in Western populations.

Finally, alternate viewpoints must be suppressed.

Warmongers must monopolize the discussion.

People must not know that the White Helmets (3) are terrorists, that they fabricate fake chemical weapons incidents, that they create false flags, that they engage in involuntary organ harvesting. People must not know the truth.

The Truth, widely accepted, would deliver Peace. The Truth must be erased.

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. Visit the author’s website at https://www.marktaliano.net where this article was originally published.

Notes

(1) RealClear World and Gallup, “Top 5 Most Personally Safe Countries.” 27 October, 2010.
(https://www.realclearworld.com/lists/top_5_personal_safety_countries/syria.html ) Accessed 29 November, 2019.

(2) “NATO reveals 70% of Syrians support Bashar al-Assad.” VOLTAIRE NETWORK, 6 JUNE 2013.
(https://www.voltairenet.org/article178779.html?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=9aadf28a533396ad5ebd8ea7ca0a80c110a39911-1575044240-0-AcCxkjY1iKAL5NA2qz5mxkDPrbY9fDr9uiK-odHiFQ01P-8l4JYuoleZQj9dlRvM3HRs3TNXjKyWcZmlN4NGjFA2n16YX2SdkQbTontqN7KTVaPMLcFqOMTiU62qjylvbxHrnWXqq5UhElws7LUS6w0oCbTHG2tg58lqh7RURlz3Cib5oIITDojuE1dNzl5f1wPpLolOH7-iujj3YA_aZxxL9Z4jg3SJgDmvrv2z42Ho8nwWg1e6ltQa1fR7zaSyUVgIblwQGpUZRZUlsT0gNgRRVXDt2ydXMyFQ59ENiYZ_ ) Accessed 29 November, 2019.

(3) Mark Taliano, “Video: Who are The White Helmets? Fake News and Staged Rescues. Canada’s beloved ‘humanitarian heroes’, the White Helmets.” Global Research, 26 December, 2018.
( https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-who-are-the-white-helmets-fake-news-and-staged-rescues/5663906) Accessed 29 November, 2019.

Featured image is from the author

Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

Voices from Syria 

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Author: Mark Taliano

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Over the past few months I have been asked by various groups and individuals to provide an update on the refugee situation on Samos.

Until now I have not responded to these requests for the simple reason I have nothing new to add to earlier blog articles. For as far as the refugees here are concerned it is still the same old shit.

Of course there have been changes over time the most notable being the EU/Turkey pact of 2016. Before the pact, refugees on the whole were held for months, sometimes just a few days, before being allowed to move off the islands. Now it can be years. But whether it has been just for a few days or 3 years the refugees have never been welcomed or embraced by the authorities. This is perpetually demonstrated by the penal like design and construction of the camp, its appalling accommodation, its unspeakable food, lack of basic medical facilities, wholly inadequate toilets and showers, the refusal to open empty schools and hotels to offer decent spaces for people to live,…..the list goes on¹. Its been like this for so long now that it’s almost normalised. And there is no end in sight. All of the latest proposals from the recently elected conservative (New Democracy) government promise more repression and more detention. It is always hard to predict in Greece what will actually be implemented but on Samos at least the Government is now building a new camp located on the site of an old slaughter house in the middle of nowhere which will not only be closed, but will also contain a prison for holding those identified for deportation.

So there is simply nothing to update on this basic reality except to say that the main responsible agencies have become masters of consistency in the reproduction of shit. The seemingly endless publication of critical reports which highlight many of these issues on Samos and elsewhere have not made one iota of difference. Water off a duck’s back.

In the meantime the refugees continue to arrive. 600 last week which makes a mockery of the government’s periodic ‘decongestion’ efforts of periodically shipping ferry loads of refugees to the mainland. Turkey has long recognised that the massive numbers of refugees living in Turkey (3 million plus) and its awareness that the EU is desperate that they should stay there and not move onto Europe gives them a powerful weapon. Currently there is little doubt that the recent increase in refugees arriving on the frontier islands is an attempt by the Turkish government to force the EU to stop harassing Turkey over its oil and gas explorations around Cyprus. To that end, Turkey is now making life very difficult for refugees especially those living in Istanbul with forced deportations especially back to Syria and Afghanistan. This is the context of the current increase in numbers seeking to escape from Turkey. Refugees are little more than a pawn in this conflict used mercilessly to extract concessions from one side or the other.

On Samos, as with the other frontier islands, it has now become widely seen as a ‘bad thing’ for refugees to be detained for so long on the islands. But on Samos at least the reality is more paradoxical. Today increasing numbers of refugees on Samos would prefer to stay here rather than be moved to the mainland. Many know that camps such as Nea Kavala in northern Greece – an isolated former airfield- are far worse than Samos. It is hard to forget David’s reaction when he arrived from Samos to the Nea Kavala camp. Total shock! He told me that he along with the 300 refugees who were moved there from Samos just walked around in a daze at what they found. Many wanted to come back to Samos where at least they had easy access to the town and its facilities and some much needed services provided by volunteer groups and NGOs. But most importantly, because of their extended stay on Samos this is where they have established networks of friends and in the ‘jungle’ surrounding the Hotspot, they have built shelters and homes some of which are breathtaking in their comfort. No one in their right mind would dispute that the camp and the surrounding jungle is a hell hole. But it is also much more. It is also a place of homes and of people (including thousands of children) making a life. To ignore this as many do leads to a fundamental mistake in failing to acknowledge the extent of refugee well-being falls on their shoulders and their humanity. This week Younis a young Palestinian from Gaza was telling me how much he enjoyed visiting his friends in the jungle and spending the evening laughing and eating sitting around an open fire. In parts of the jungle the refugees are developing clusters of around 10 shelters with each cluster having its own shower and toilet!

Part of the Jungle

Last week over 600 new refugees arrived on Samos. Included in that number was Juno from the Congo, traveling alone. Once finished with the initial processing he and the others in his boat were taken to the camp. They were told to find somewhere to sleep in the jungle. He was given no tent, no blanket and no money for at least 2 weeks. All he was told was where the Africans have their tents. This is now the common experience for new arrivals, especially single men and women. Families with children usually fare better. If it wasn’t for the solidarity and self-organisation of the refugees Juno would have found himself in danger. Within days of his arrival he like hundreds before him were hauling wood and polythene into the jungle where at a small cost he had his shelter made. There is a thriving shelter building business now in the camp!

So there we have it. Despite the shit and their abandonment the great majority of refugees irrespective of origin are engaged in that elemental human activity of making a home drawing on whatever materials they can afford or scrounge.

But the skills, the talents, the ingenuity and the extraordinary resilience of the refugees as a whole is not applauded and not even noticed in most cases. Although in an Open TV broadcast in late November 2019, the reporter Zizi Mousios observed “ what is happening in Samos is something unprecedented,we started in Leros, we went to Kos , here [on Samos] we have a favela” (My Samos Blog, 29^th November 2019).

Since the autumn we have had a new mayor (Giorgos Stantzos) in Samos town. He is making a lot of noise about the camp and refugees. He wants the lot out. “There is no way that Samos, which doesn’t have a mosque, will accept a Muslim village” (The Samos Uprising, Ekathimareni Nov 28^th 2019). Amongst his latest announcements he has expressed concern about the high number of ‘unauthorised’ structures that the refugees have built in the jungle, and the creation of ‘neighbourhoods’ there. The fact these shelters allow the refugees to survive is utterly ignored. That we are not burying bodies every week is almost entirely due to the refugees. Amidst the anger, the tensions and conflicts which are ever present realities of refugee life on Samos there is also a deep resource of solidarity and care which in the end is far more significant.

In stark contrast to the authorities, the refugees have been and are busy still preparing for the heavy winter rains which started a few days ago. I can’t speak of the other frontier islands but Samos has monsoon like weather, especially in January and February, but also earlier like now when it can rain torrential for days at a time. To my knowledge, never in the past 13 years have the authorities done anything significant to help the refugees get through this season. Adherence to the deterrent doctrine which so self-evidently fails to halt the movement of refugees, is as strong as ever. So nothing, nothing at all is or should be done to improve conditions and services for refugees as to do so would attract even more. And flowing from the same deterrence doctrine resources which should and could be directed towards refugee welfare are flowing with ever greater rapidity into border hardening, surveillance, and militarisation:

“The European military and security industry through their successful lobbying has succeeded in framing migration as a security threat rather than a humanitarian challenge. This has turned on a seemingly limitless tap of public funding for militarising our borders yet prevented the policies and investments we need to respond humanely to refugees and to tackle the root causes of forced migration.”

Available data shows at least €900 million has been spent on land walls and fences, €676.4 million on maritime operations (2006 to 2017) and €999.4m on its virtual walls (2000-2019). In addition, companies have benefited from the €1.7 billion budget of the European Commission’s External Borders Fund (2007-2013) and the €2.76 billion Internal Security Fund – Borders (2014-2020). In the next EU budget cycle (2021–2027), the European Commission has earmarked €8.02 billion to its Integrated Border Management Fund (2021-2027) and €11.27 billion to its coastguard agency Frontex.  (TNI, November 2019)

Here on Samos, the much heralded Zeppelin airship has come and gone (no explanation given for its departure) but now we are more likely to see patrol boats and warships from our beaches than fishing boats; we now have to negotiate our departures through intensively policed ports with their accompanying plain clothes officers sidling up to you in the queue to board the ferry asking for your papers, as well as the armoured ninja turtle police crawling around and on top of the lorries seeking out those refugees trying to escape from Samos. This impacts on all of our lives. We can see the growth in police numbers in Samos town as well as their modern paramilitary vehicles on our streets and the coach loads of riot police sitting day in and day out on the roads around the camp.

Welcome to Samos!

For the refugees these changes have made their journeys from Turkey to Samos more difficult and hazardous. It is common place now to hear that refugees have made 5, 6, 7 or more attempts to cross. According to the Aegean Boat Report between November 11^th and November 17^th 2019 a “total of 164 boats started their trip towards the Greek Islands, carrying a total of 6097 people. However, 91 boats were stopped by TCG/police, and 2444 people arrived on the Greek Islands. So far this year 2849 boats have been stopped by The Turkish Coast Guard and Police.” (See this). But for the moment at least the patrol boats operating out of Samos are still rescuing refugees who have made it into Greek waters and bringing them to the island. Ten years ago this was not the case and the Samos coastguards were notorious for their push-backs.

This is what I witness on Samos this little Greek island that finds itself on the frontier of Europe. This tiny spot on the map has and continues to be a gateway into Europe for tens of thousands of refugees. It is for the great majority their first taste of Europe. And what a taste they get! Over the years it takes to become a ‘legal’ human being again, they are treated like SHIT. If they were horses, or dogs, those responsible for their cruel treatment would be hauled in front of the courts.

But tiny as it is, Samos along with all the frontier islands must not be ignored for these are some of the places where a terrifying politics of cruelty has taken root and is flourishing, virtually unopposed. Sometimes the press will fleetingly remind a wider world of Samos if there is something sensational to report, usually deaths at sea. But as with mushrooms the policies, practices and doctrines that are being played out on Samos and elsewhere along the frontier flourish better in darkness. This is what it feels like.

And it is dismaying and disheartening that such elemental cruelties are allowed to continue year on year. The consequences, many yet waiting to be revealed for both the refugees as well as the people of Europe are certain to be dire. It would seem that others are now recognising this. Dr Christos Christou, International President, Médecins Sans Frontières has just published an open letter to ‘European Leaders’. Returning from the Greek frontier islands, he wrote:

“The situation is comparable with what we see after natural disasters or in war zones in other parts of the world. It is outrageous to see these conditions in Europe – a supposedly safe continent – and to know that they are the result of deliberate political choices. (my emphasis)

Rather than acknowledging the human cost of your approach, you continue to call for a more forceful implementation of the EU Turkey deal. You even consider more brutal measures, like the Greek government’s recently announced plans to convert the hotspots into mass detention centres, and to accelerate deportations.

Stop this madness.….

As MSF, we can’t accept this blatant dehumanisation. No matter what assistance we provide to our patients, afterwards we have to send them back to the conditions which are making them ill, conditions that you have deliberately created. ….

As a medical doctor representing a humanitarian organisation, I am outraged to see how you have justified and normalised this suffering, as if it were an acceptable price to pay to keep as many people as possible out of Europe.

No political reasoning can justify measures that deliberately and consciously inflict harm – and we have repeatedly warned you these policies do. Stop ignoring it, stop pretending that they don’t.“(November 27 2019, see this)

The entire approach of the authorities responsible both in Greece and the EU has led to the creation of a mega business with powerful vested interests which has much to gain and is unlikely to be shifted. It is naive to think otherwise. The growing grass root mobilisations around the world against global annihilation are fueled by the understanding that the greed and avarice of the powerful will drive us to extinction. And it is the very same values that frame the cruelties unleashed on the refugees. Any chance of a future for humanity rests not in the citadels of existing power. This is where MSF and other NGOs get it wrong, time and again, for none of their critical reports or statements over the years have had any impact on power and their policies Change will only come from the ‘bottom’ and only when we realise more widely that virtually all the major challenges facing humanity – environmental destruction, wars, massive inequalities and poverty and the flows of people forced to move as a consequence are deeply inter-connected. They draw their power from the same well.

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This article was originally published on Samos Chronicles.

The UK-based Independent online newspaper recently published an article about a potential link between air pollution from vehicles and glaucoma. It stated that according to a new study air pollution is linked to the eye condition that causes blindness.

The report explained that researchers had looked at vision tests carried out on more than 111,000 people across Britain between 2006 and 2010 and cross-referenced results against levels of air pollution in their neighbourhoods. Those living in areas with higher amounts of fine particulate matter were at least 6% more likely to have glaucoma than those in the least polluted areas.

Glaucoma affects half a million people in the UK and can cause blindness if left untreated. However, the study cited by The Independent, published in Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, was unable to prove that air pollution was a trigger.

Following the article, environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason put together a 20-page report on glyphosate and has sent it out to key public health officials and media outlets, including The Independent’s editor. In her report, she states that the European Chemicals Agency classifies glyphosate as a substance that causes serious eye damage and is toxic to aquatic life with long lasting effects. But she claims that the media still remains silent on the matter. Even in UK towns and cities, glyphosate-based Roundup herbicide is still being sprayed on weeds and super-weeds which have become Roundup-resistant.

Mason implores The Independent and other mainstream media outlets to write with honesty about the use and harmful effects of glyphosate-based weedicides and other agrochemicals. She quotes the UN expert on Toxics, Baskut Tuncak, who in 2017 urged the EU to put children’s health before pesticides. Children form the most vulnerable part of the population as pesticides can adversely affect their development.

Offering insight into the incidence of cataracts in England, Mason notes that annual rates of admission for cataract surgery rose 10‐fold from 1968 to 2004: from 62 episodes per 100,000 population to 637. A 2016 study by the WHO also confirmed that the incidence of cataracts had greatly increased: in ‘A global assessment of the burden of disease from environmental risks’ it says that cataracts are the leading cause of blindness worldwide. Globally, cataracts are responsible for 51% of blindness. An estimated 20 million individuals suffer from this degenerative eye disease.

Mason discusses long waiting lists for cataracts in England. Because the NHS cannot cope with the pressure, private companies are cashing in. The growing demand for cataract operations is forcing the NHS to send increasing numbers of patients to be treated privately.

In Wales, where Mason resides, 35,000 patients are at risk of going blind from macular degeneration and glaucoma while on the NHS waiting list. All the municipal councils in Wales use glyphosate-based herbicides. Glyphosate now accounts for about 50% of all herbicide use in the US. About 75% of glyphosate use has occurred since 2006, with the global glyphosate market projected to reach $11.74 billion by 2023.

Figures for the use of glyphosate in the UK show a similar trend, which Mason has documented in her many reports. And let us not forget at this point that the current Conservative government regards Brexit as an ideal opportunity to usher in crops that have been genetically engineered to withstand the application of glyphosate or similar chemicals. The agrochemicals sector stands in the wings salivating at the prospect. This has nothing to do with boosting yields or ‘feeding the world’ as Boris Johnson asserts (claims which fail to stand up to scrutiny) but has everything to do with facilitating industry ambitions.

Never in history has a chemical been used so pervasively. Glyphosate is in our air, water, plants, animals, grains, vegetables and meats. It’s in beer and wine, children’s breakfast cereal and snack bars and mother’s breast milk. It’s even in our vaccines.

Of course, the power of the pesticides companies has been well noted. In 2017, global agrochemical corporations were severely criticised by UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Hilal Elver. A report presented to the UN human rights council accused them of the “systematic denial of harms”, “aggressive, unethical marketing tactics” and heavy lobbying of governments which has “obstructed reforms and paralysed global pesticide restrictions.”

The report authored by Hilal Elver and Baskut Tuncak says pesticides have “catastrophic impacts on the environment, human health and society as a whole”, including an estimated 200,000 deaths a year from acute poisoning. Its authors said:

“It is time to create a global process to transition toward safer and healthier food and agricultural production.”

Hilal Elver says:

“Using more pesticides is nothing to do with getting rid of hunger.  According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), we are able to feed nine billion people today. Production is definitely increasing, but the problem is poverty, inequality and distribution.”

Elver said many of the pesticides are used on commodity crops, such as palm oil and soy, not the food needed by the world’s hungry people:

“The corporations are not dealing with world hunger; they are dealing with more agricultural activity on large scales.”

Mason notes that chronic exposure to pesticides has been linked to a range of diseases and conditions and that certain pesticides can persist in the environment for decades and pose a threat to the entire ecological system on which food production depends. The excessive use of pesticides contaminates soil and water sources, causing loss of biodiversity and destroying the natural enemies of pests. The impact of such overuse also imposes staggering costs on national economies. Moreover, the use of neonicotinoid pesticides is particularly worrying because they are linked to a systematic collapse in the number of bees around the world. Some 71% of crop species are bee pollinated. 

Mason goes on to describe the various lawsuits in the US against Bayer (which bought Monsanto) and the tactics used by Monsanto to conceal glyphosate-based Roundup’s carcinogenicity, including capturing regulatory agencies, corrupting public officials, bribing scientists and engaging in scientific fraud to delay its day of reckoning.

Following the court decision to award in favour of Dewayne Johnson, attorney Robert Kennedy Jr said the following at the post-trial press conference:

“… you not only see many people injured, but you also see a subversion of democracy. You see the corruption of public officials, the capture of agencies that are supposed to protect us all from pollution. The agencies become captured by the industries they are supposed to regulate. The corruption of science, the falsification of science, and we saw all those things happen here. This is a company (Monsanto) that used all of the plays in the playbook developed over 60 years by the tobacco industry to escape the consequences of killing one of every five of its customers… Monsanto… has used those strategies…”

There is now also a good deal of scientific evidence linking glyphosate to obesity, depression, Alzheimer’s, ADHD, autism, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, kidney disease, inflammatory bowel disease and brain, breast and prostate cancer, miscarriage, birth defects and declining sperm counts. Strong science suggests glyphosate is the culprit in the exploding epidemics of celiac disease, colitis, gluten sensitivities, diabetes and non-alcoholic liver cancer which, for the first time, is attacking children as young as 10. Researchers also peg glyphosate as a potent endocrine disruptor, which interferes with sexual development in children.

The compound is also a chelator that removes important minerals from the body, including iron, magnesium, zinc, selenium and molybdenum. Roundup disrupts the microbiome destroying beneficial bacteria in the human gut and triggering brain inflammation and other ill effects.

Neurotransmitter changes in the brain have been detected due to exposure to glyphosate. This is why, according to Mason, there are so many mental health and psychiatric disorders, depression, suicides, anxiety and violence among children and adults. It is even found in popular breakfast cereals marketed for UK children.

And this says nothing about the cocktail of pesticides sprayed on crops. The Soil Association and PAN UK have indicated that exposure to mixtures of pesticides commonly found in UK food, water and soil may be harming the health of both humans and wildlife. A quarter of all food and over a third of fruit and vegetables consumed in the UK contain pesticide cocktails, with some items containing traces of up to 14 different pesticides.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Environment has identified the rights threatened by environmental harm, including the rights to life, health, food and water and has mapped obligations to protect against such harm from private actors. In effect, where pesticides are concerned, the public are being denied the right to a healthy environment.

But it’s not just the powerful pesticides lobby that is to blame here. Rosemary Mason says the British public (and indeed people across the world) have a right to information. However, she concludes that the public have been denied this because mainstream media outlets have on the whole for too long opted to remain silent on the pesticides issue.

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This article touches on just a few of the points in Rosemary Mason’s report. Readers can access the full text of ‘Glyphosatecauses serious eye damage’ on the academia.edu site.

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

Featured image is from Beyond Pesticides

The new generation of wireless technology, 5G, is fraught with controversy.  Researchers and scientists worldwide are deeply concerned.  Beverly Rubik, a renowned expert in biophysics, will discuss the issues and how we can protect ourselves.

5G is Federally Mandated but its health impacts are untested.  Fortunately, a Federal Court has vacated portions of the FCC order that attempt to circumvent environmental review.  As of August 9, 2019, all applications to install and operate 4G and 5G systems NATIONWIDE are INCOMPLETE and must include this review.

The 5th generation of wireless, with frequencies in the gigahertz range, is now being rolled out.  5G antennas will be installed every 200 to 1000 feet in our neighborhoods, and a total of 20,00 5G satelites will soon circle the glove in low orbit.  This roll out is federally mandated, overriding local government jurisdiction.  The perils of this technology include:

• paucity of research on health impacts and inadequate safety standards.
• 5G’s threat to children, pregnant woman, and those with electrosensitivity
• already existing evidence that wireless radiation is a causal factor in cancer

In this presentation, learn what 5G is and what you can do:

• discover how 5G greatly differs from earlier generations of wireless
• find out about the evidence for 5G’s health and environmental effects
• get a comprehensive update on the political and regulatory issues
• learn practical ways to protect yourself and your loved ones

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Beverly Rubik earned her Ph.D. in biophysics at the University of California in Berkeley, and has conducted research for nearly 40 years on the energy field of the life (the biofield).  She is an internationally renowned expert on the biofield and energy medicine and the author of over 90 scientific papers and two books.  She has conducted research on the effects of 4G on human exposure and the blood and was a featured expert interviewed in the recent 5G Crisis Summit (www.theSummit.com).  Dr. Rubik is founder and president of the Institute for Frontier Science, a 501c3 nonprofit laboratory in Emeryville, CA.  She is an adjunct faculty member in the College of Integrative Health Studies at Saybrook University in Pasadena.

Bloomberg says he wants to stop Donald Trump but he’s really running to stop Bernie Sanders.

“Bloomberg targeted black people for political gain with whites and he created great suffering in the process.”

In 2002 Michael Bloomberg was sworn in as mayor of New York City. In that same year the men known as the Central Park Five had their sentences vacated. They all served between 6 and 13 years in prison for a rape they did not commit. They sued New York City for the wrongful convictions but the Bloomberg administration refused to pay. They had to wait until he left office in 2014 to receive their $40 million settlement.

Michael Bloomberg recently announced that he will seek the Democratic Party nomination for president in 2020. Unlike late comers such as Deval Patrick he actually has a chance to win the nomination or to play a role in choosing someone else. His weapon is not in any of his policy provisions but in his bank account. Bloomberg has an estimated net worth of $55 billion, a figure which makes him among the richest people on the planet. Like the old joke about the 900 pound gorilla he can do whatever he wants, including prevent a progressive from getting the nomination.

Bloomberg says he is “Running for president to stop Donald Trump and rebuild America.” In reality he is running to stop Bernie Sanders because he knows that given a level playing field Sanders would emerge triumphant. Bloomberg’s strategy is to skip the early states and focus on Super Tuesday in March. This plan is a sign that he is more interested in being a spoiler than in actually being president himself.

“His weapon is not in any of his policy provisions but in his bank account.”

Bloomberg’s impact on New York will be felt for years to come. He described New York as “a luxury product” and he acted accordingly by accelerating the displacement of black people through gentrification. In order to make sure that black New Yorkers got the memo and quickly left town he instituted the notorious stop and frisk police program.

At the height of stop and frisk terrorism nearly 700,000 people, nearly all of them black and Latino, were stopped without probable cause. Men, women and even children were stopped, and sometimes arrested. Arrest records can have a lasting negative impact, especially on the lives of black people. Any interaction with police, no matter how minor the cause, carries a risk of harm or even death.

Most police departments have quotas for parking tickets, but the NYPD had quotas for arrests during the Bloomberg era. Individual cops risked being reprimanded or penalized themselves if they didn’t make arrests as often as possible. This legacy of unleashing the modern day slave patrol is enough reason to make Bloomberg unacceptable as a presidential candidate.

“The NYPD had quotas for arrests during the Bloomberg era.”

Bloomberg never backed down from his position while in office. He even said that white people were stopped too often and black people not enough. He has changed his tune of late and now offers a disingenuous apology for the policy he defended as mayor.

There are many reasons to oppose a Bloomberg presidential campaign. Billionaire rule has damaged New York, the nation and the entire world. The word “oligarch” is an insult when applied to other nations like Russia, but an American oligarch has announced his intention to buy the presidency for himself or someone else and opposition has been quite muted.

Michael Bloomberg was the worst mayor for black New Yorkers. While Rudy Guiliani and his overt appeals to racism drew ire, Bloomberg’s approach of buying off opposition allowed him to get away with doing far worse. Al Sharpton was among those who took Bloomberg’s hush money. The National Action Network was a recipient of Bloomberg’s philanthropy and Rev. Sharpton was silent while every black person in town was a potential target for police abuse.

“Bloomberg said white people were stopped too often and black people not enough.”

Donald Trump’s role in inflaming white public opinion in the Central Park case is well known. He paid for newspaper ads calling for the death penalty. Even when his targets were exonerated he stood by his original statement. It is important to remember the role he played in inciting a judicial lynch mob.

But Bloomberg’s equally disgraceful behavior is largely unknown. No one in New York City media then or now wants to anger the rich guy. The fact that financial compensation was withheld received little or no attention. He may have better manners, but he targeted black people for political gain with whites and he created great suffering in the process.

The corporate media always follow orders from the ruling elites. They were instructed to promote Joe Biden as being more electable but his campaign has been a gigantic embarrassment. Other “centrist” Democrats wring their hands because they can’t agree on a candidate while Bloomberg has decided that if he wants this thing done right he had better do it himself.

No one knows if Bloomberg is more electable than Trump. Everyone knows that his wealth gives him a huge advantage and he can decide who will or won’t be the Democratic Party nominee. His presence in the race is decidedly undemocratic and should be denounced.

If Bloomberg is true to form he will have black staffers to provide a friendly public face. He will find respected people to endorse him and explain away his offenses. But his candidacy should be a line in the sand and anyone who supports him should be deemed equally unacceptable.

Black Bloomberg supporters will be outing themselves as traitors and Uncle Toms. It is important to know one’s enemy. That is a silver lining in this cloud.

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Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com . Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

Featured image is from BAR

Judge José de la Mata of Spain’s High Court, the Audiencia Nacional, had been facing a good deal of stonewalling on the part of his British colleagues.  He is overseeing an investigation into the surveillance activities of a Spanish security firm aimed at WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, during his stay at the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

De la Mata had issued a European Investigation Order (EIO) in September seeking the assistance of British authorities in trying to interview Assange on the matter. This involved allegations that David Morales, owner of the security outfit UC Global SL, “invaded the privacy of Assange and his lawyers by placing microphones inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London without consent from the affected parties.”  Morales, for his part, was indicted in October on privacy violations, bribery and money laundering.

While EIO requests are generally regarded as mundane and automatic, the United Kingdom Central Authority was not so sure.  De la Mata’s requests, specifically to interviewing Assange by videoconference, were initially blocked.  The initial response, signed by Rashid Begun, claimed that “these types of interview are only done by the police”.  The justice, Begun stated curtly, had also lacked clarity in his description of events, and the appropriate elaboration on what jurisdiction was being invoked.

It took an irritated De la Mata to retort in a subsequent letter that, “In this case, Julian Assange is a witness, not an accused party”, a point that enabled him to be interviewed by videoconference.  He also reiterated that “all the events and crimes under investigation” had been clearly stated.

The question of jurisdictional bar was also given short shrift.  As the alleged crimes by UC Global had taken place on Spanish territory; given that the microphones deployed against Assange had been purchased in Spain; and given that information obtained in London was uploaded to servers in UC Global SL’s headquarters in Jerez de la Frontera, a clear nexus was established.

The UK Central Authority has had a change of heart.  On December 20, Assange is set to be transferred from his current maximum security abode, Belmarsh, to Westminster Magistrates Court to answer questions that will be posed by De la Mata.

To date, the evidence on Morales and the conduct of his organisation is bulking and burgeoning.  It is said that the company refurbished the security equipment of the London Ecuadorean embassy in 2017, during which Morales installed surveillance cameras equipped with microphone facilities.  While Ecuadorean embassy officials sought to reassure Assange that no recordings of his private conversations with journalists or legal officials were taking place, the opposite proved true.

An unconvinced Assange sought to counter such measures with his own methods.  He spoke to guests in the women’s bathroom.  He deployed a “squelch box” designed to emit sounds of disruption.  These were treated as the measures of a crank rather than those of justifiable concern.

The stance taken by Ecuador has not shifted, despite claims by Morales that any recordings of Assange were done at the behest of the Ecuadorean secret service.  Instead, Ecuador’s President Lenín Moreno has used the unconvincing argument that Assange, not Ecuador, posed the espionage threat.  “It is unfortunate that, from our territory and with the permission of authorities of the previous government, facilities have been provided within the Ecuadorean embassy in London to interfere in the processes of other states.”  The embassy, he argued, had been converted into a makeshift “centre for spying”.

German broadcasters NDR and WDR have also viewed documents discussing a boastful Morales keen to praise his employees for playing “in the first league…  We are now working for the dark side.”   The dark side, it transpires, were those “American friends”, members of the “US Secret Service” that Morales was more than happy to feed samples to.  NDR has added its name to those filing charges against UC Global for allegations that its own journalists were spied upon in visiting the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

The allegations have the potential to furnish a case Assange’s lawyers are hoping to make: that attaining a fair trial in the United States should he be extradited to face 18 charges mostly relating to espionage would be nigh impossible.  The link between UC Global, the US intelligence services, and the breach of attorney-client privilege, is the sort of heady mix bound to sabotage any quaint notions of due process.  The publisher is well and truly damned.

Not that this convinces such legal commentators as Amy Jeffress, former US Department attaché at the US embassy in London.  The appropriate standard here, she surmises, is whether extradition accords with the guarantees of the UK Human Rights Act.  Privacy may well be protected, but it is duly balanced, if not ditched, by the imperatives of combating crime and national security.

US outlets have been gingerly moderating the Spanish angle in the Assange affair.  The New York Times, for instance, concedes that, “After President Trump took office in 2017, the CIA began espionage aimed at Mr Assange, WikiLeaks and their ties to Russian intelligence, and the Justice Department began building case against him.”  A cautionary note, however, is struck: it remained “unclear whether it was the Americans who were behind bugging the embassy.”

Such reservation has infuriated journalists of Stefania Maurizi’s ilk, those who have long praised the work of WikiLeaks and paid visits to Assange in the Ecuadorean embassy.

“Appalling,” she tweeted, “how the NY Times minimise the spying activities against all of us inside the embassy: my phones were secretly unscrewed, all my electronic equipment secretly accessed.”

These proceedings constitute the running down of the clock on the extradition process that promises to internationalise the US effort in punishing the publication of national security information.  In the meantime, a sinking feeling is being registered by physicians concerned that Assange may not be able to withstand the trauma the legal process is evidently inflicting on him.  As medical authorities from eight states have noted, “The medical situation is urgent”, so much so, in fact, that there was little time to lose.  The efforts of De la Mata, at the very least, offer a temporary and much needed roadblock, if not total reprieve.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  Email: [email protected]

Featured image is from 21st Century Wire

Almost as a nighttime fog, hatred rapidly traverses the neighborhoods of the traditional urban middle-class of Bolivia. Their eyes fill with anger. They do not yell, they spit. They do not raise demands, they impose. Their chants are not of hope of brotherhood. They are of disdain and discrimination against the Indians. They hop on their motorcycles, get into their trucks, gather in their fraternities of private universities, and they go out to hunt the rebellious Indians that dared to take power from them.

In the case of Santa Cruz, they organize motorized hordes with sticks in hand to punish the Indians, those that they call ‘collas’, who live in peripheral neighborhoods and in the markets. They chant “the collas must be killed,” and if on the way, they come across a woman wearing a pollera [traditional skirt worn by Indigenous and mestizo women] they hit her, threaten her and demand that she leave their territory.

In Cochabamba, they organize convoys to impose their racial supremacy in the southern zone, where the underprivileged classes live, and charge – as if it were a were a cavalry contingent – at thousands of defenseless peasant women that march asking for peace. They carry baseball bats, chains, gas grenades. Some carry firearms. The woman is their preferred victim. They grab a female mayor of a peasant population, humiliate her, drag her through the street. They hit her, urinate on her when she falls to the ground, cut her hair, threaten to lynch her, and when they realize that they are being filmed, they decide to throw red paint on her symbolizing what they will do with her blood.

In La Paz, they are suspicious of their employees and do not speak when they bring food to the table. Deep down, they fear them, but they also look down on them. Later, when they are on the streets shouting, they insult Evo and with him, all of these Indians that dared to build intercultural democracy with equality. When they are many, they tear down the Wiphala, the Indigenous symbol, they spit on it, they step on it, they cut it, they burn it. It is a visceral hatred that they unload on this symbol of the Indians that they wish they could extinguish from the earth along with all those that are represented by it.

Racial hatred is the political language of this traditional middle class. Academic titles, trips and faith serve for nothing because in the end, what is important is purity of ancestry. Deep down, the imagined lineage is stronger and seems to stick to the spontaneous language of the skin that hates, of the visceral gestures and of their corrupt morals.

Everything exploded on Sunday [October] 20, when Evo Morales won the election with 10% more than the runner-up, but no longer with the immense advantage of before nor with 51% of the votes. It was the sign that the regressive, huddled forces were waiting for – the timid liberal opposition candidate, the ultra-conservative political forces, the OAS [Organization of American States], and the indescribable traditional middle class. Evo had won again but he no longer had 60% of the electorate. He was weaker and they had to go after him.The loser did not recognize his defeat. The OAS spoke of “clean elections” but of a weak victory and asked for a second round, counseling to go against the constitution that states that if a candidate wins more than 40% of the votes and has more than 10% over the runner-up, they are elected. And then the middle class launched its hunt of the Indians. On the night of Monday, October 21, they burned 5 of the 9 electoral offices, including the ballots. In Santa Cruz, a civic strike brought together the inhabitants of the central zones of the city, following which the strike branched out to the residential zones of La Paz and Cochabamba. And this unleashed terror.

Paramilitary groups began to besiege institutions, burn trade union offices, set fire to the residences of candidates and political leaders of the governing party [Movement Towards Socialism]. Even the private home of the president was looted. In other places, families, including children, were kidnapped and threatened with being whipped and burned if their parent, who was a minister or union leader, did not resign. An endless night of the long knives had been unleashed, and fascism peeked out.

The people’s forces comprising workers, miners, peasants, Indigenous people and urban dwellers resisted the civic coup and began to retake territorial control of the cities. But just as the balance of the correlation of forces was shifting in their favor, the police mutiny occurred.

The police had for weeks shown great indolence and ineptitude in protecting the common people while they were being attacked and persecuted by fascist groups. But from Friday [November 8], many of them displayed an extraordinary ability to attack, detain, torture and kill working-class protesters. When it came to dealing with the children of the middle class, they apparently did not have the capacity. But when it came to repressing rebellious Indians, the deployment, violence and the arrogance was monumental.

The same happened with the armed forces. During all of our time in government, we never allowed them to repress civil mobilizations, not even during the first civic coup d’état in 2008. And now, in the midst of the convulsion and without us having asked them anything, they told us that they did not have anti-riot capacities, that they only had 8 bullets per member and that a presidential decree was necessary for them to be on the streets in even a protective capacity. However, they had no hesitation in seeking the resignation of president Evo, in violation of the constitution. They did whatever was possible to attempt to kidnap him while he was traveling to and was in Chapare. And then, when the coup was consolidated, they went to the streets to shoot thousands of bullets, to militarize the cities and assassinate peasants. And all of this without any presidential decree. In order to protect the Indian, they needed a decree. To repress and kill Indians, it was enough to obey what the racial and classist hatred decreed. And now, in only 5 days, there are more than 18 dead and 120 injured with live bullets. Of course, nearly all of them are Indigenous.

The question we must respond to is, how did the traditional middle class incubate so much hatred and resentment towards the people, leading them to embrace racialized fascism centered on the Indian as the enemy? What did they do to irradiate their class frustrations to the police and armed forces and become the social base of this process of becoming fascist, of this state regression and moral degeneration.

The answer is the rejection of equality, which is to say, the rejection of the fundamentals of a substantial democracy.

The last 14 years of the government of the social movements were characterized by the process of leveling of the social classes, the sharp reduction in extreme poverty (from 35% to 15%), the broadening of rights for all (universal access to healthcare, to education and to social protection), the Indianization of the State (more than 50% of functionaries in public administration must be Indigenous, new national narrative around the Indigenous sector) and the reduction of economic inequality (the difference of income between the richest and the poorest fell from 130 to 45). All this meant the systematic democratization of wealth, access to public goods, opportunities and state power. The economy has grown from 9 billion dollars to 42 billion dollars, widening the market and internal savings, which has allowed many people to have their own homes and improve their work activity.

Thus, in a decade, the percentage of people of the so-called “middle class” in terms of income, went from 35% to 60%. The largest part of them came from the working-class and Indigneous sectors. It was essentially a process of democratization of the social goods through the construction of material equality. But this inevitably has caused a rapid devaluation of the economic, educational and political capital held by the traditional middle class. In the past, a notable last name, the monopoly over ‘legitimate’ knowledge, and their family relationships allowed the traditional middle class to access posts in public administration, obtain loans and bids for projects or scholarships. Today, the number of people that fight for the same post or opportunity has not only doubled – reducing the possibilities to access these goods by half – but, additionally, the ‘up-and-coming’, the new middle class with Indigenous, working class origins, has a combination of new capital (Indigenous language, trade union links) of greater value and state recognition to fight for the available public goods.

As such, it is about a collapse of what was a characteristic of a colonial society: ethnicity as capital, basically, the imagined foundation of the historical superiority of the middle class above the subaltern classes because in Bolivia, social class is only comprehensible and is visualized under the form of racial hierarchies. That the sons of this class have been the shock force of the reactionary insurgency is the violent cry of a new generation that sees how the inheritance of the last name and skin fades in the face of the democratization of goods. Although they raise the flag of democracy that is understood as a vote, in reality, they have risen up against democracy that is understood as the leveling of social classes and distribution of wealth. This is why we see the overflowing of hatred, the outpouring of violence – because racial supremacy is something that is not rationalized. It lives as a primary impulse of the body, as a tattoo of the colonial history in the skin. As such, fascism is not only the expression of a failed radical transformation of values, but paradoxically in post-colonial societies, the success of a material democratization.

With this in mind, it is not surprising that while nearly 20 Indigenous people have been shot dead, those that murder them and order their murder narrate how they are acting to safeguard democracy. But in reality, they know what they have done is to protect the privilege of caste and last name.

Racial hatred can only destroy. It is not a horizon for the future. It is nothing more than a primitive vengeance of a class historically and morally declining that shows that a coup-supporter is crouched behind every mediocre liberal.

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Published on CELAG. English translation by Zoe PC.

Featured image: Indigenous woman have been most targeted by the racially-driven violence during this civic-military coup d’état. Photo: Redfish

During November, at least 373 people were killed and 3,136 were wounded. Mass graves gave up 73 bodies as well. October saw 433 deaths and thousands more wounded.

Protests continued last month, but the Iraqi government ceased giving official casualty reports in October. In November, at least 203 dead and 3,026 were wounded, according to media reports. According to Dr. Ali Albayati, a member of Iraq’s High Commission for Human Rights, the casualty numbers for the protests are likely 409 dead and 17,745 injured. These figures are from October 1 to about November 30. It is unclear how accurate they are. Many of the wounded avoid seeking medical help in hospitals to avoid being arrested.

As for non-protest violence, it is likely being underreported as well. Altogether, at least 170 were killed, and 110 were wounded. Also, 76 bodies were found in mass graves.

Of those figures, 19 civilians, 21 security personnel, and 83 militants were killed. Another 66 civilians, 35 security personnel, and one militant were wounded. Five Italian security personnel working with the Coalition were also wounded.

In the conflict between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.), at least 42 guerrillas were killed, and two were wounded. Turkish strikes also killed five civilians, and wounded another.

Finally, at least 70 victims of the Anfal Genocide were found in a mass grave. The graves dates from the 1980s. Six people were found in an Islamic State grave.

At least seven people were killed, and 84 more wounded in recent violence:

Protest News:

In Baghdad, at least one demonstrator was shot dead, and 10 others were wounded.

A protester was shot dead in Najaf.

Parliament has accepted Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi’s offer of resignation. Also, a police officer was sentenced to death for killing a protester.

Although Sunnis have been wary of protesting, several gatherings were held in Sunni cities, such as Mosul, to mourn the casualties that occurred in southern Iraqi towns and Baghdad. Sunnis are afraid that the Shi’ite-led government in Baghdad will brand them terrorists for protesting. Demonstrators also blocked a highway between Baghdad and Kirkuk in a show of support.

Violence unrelated to protests:

Near Baquba, a roadside bomb killed a militiaman and wounded three more.

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Margaret Griffis is a journalist from Miami Beach, Florida and has been covering Iraqi casualties for Antiwar.com since 2006.

Featured image is from South Front

Almost two and a half years after the United States dropped the “mother of all bombs” onto a Daesh hideout in eastern Afghanistan, locals say they have been afflicted by “many diseases” and agricultural lands are not yielding crops.

TOLOnews reporter Abdulhaq Omeri interviewed residents of Mohmand Dara village, in the Achin district in the eastern province of Nangarhar.

Omeri witnessed many children and teenagers suffering from skin problems and listened to many residents speak of the bomb’s lasting effects.

In April 2017, US Forces dropped a GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) on a Daesh stronghold of caves and tunnels in eastern Nangarhar province.

The bomb, nicknamed the “mother of all bombs” is one of the most powerful conventional (non-nuclear) weapons in the US arsenal, according to the US Department of Defense.

MOAB is a concussive bomb, meaning it detonates above ground rather than penetrating hardened defenses.

Anyone within 300 meters will be vaporized, experts say, while those in a one kilometer radius outside ground zero will be left deaf.

Nangarhar residents said the bomb has had a lasting effect on the area.

“The ‘mother of all bombs’ was dropped here,” said Pacha Shinwari, a local resident. “You can see that the stones can be broken easily, the plants are dry, the trees are dry, the nearby houses are all destroyed–40 or 50 of them.”

“The government evacuated the people (before the bomb was dropped), but when we came back, we saw that the houses were destroyed,” local resident Mohammadullah said.

Some teenagers are suffering from skin problems following the bomb explosion.

“Many diseases have emerged in this area after the bomb was used. Most of them have skin problems such as acne and skin irritations,” local resident Jam Roz said.

“The agricultural yields are not the same as in the past. The harvests are lesser than in the past,” said Aminullah, another resident.

Medical doctors and analysts interviewed by TOLOnews said the use of such bombs leaves an impact on areas where it is dropped.

“There are some concerns about the emergence of diseases after the use of the mother of all bombs in Achin, but so far the public health directorate has not recorded any disease that is related to the bomb,” said Zahir Adil, a spokesman for Nangarhar’s Directorate of Public Health.

“This bomb has three effects. First, it impacts the eyes. People will feel irritation in their eyes. Second, it impacts the inner organisms of the people who breathe the air where it has been used. It also impacts pregnant women and newborn babies… Afghanistan is a laboratory now. Third, it has an impact on lungs,” military affairs analyst Atiqullah Amarkhil said.

President Ashraf Ghani’s advisor and state minister for Human Rights and International Relations, Sima Samar, confirmed that the use of the MOAB in Nangarhar has had long-term effects on residents of Mohmand Dara village.

“It inevitably impacted the health of the Afghan people, especially in areas where explosives are used a lot, including the ‘mother of all bombs,’ which has left its mark on the lives of Afghans,” Samar said.

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Featured image is from Tolo News

The following article was written in response to a question asked by Ms. Sheila Khalid, a Ph.D. student working on the topic “Pakistan-Russia Relations in the Post-9/11 Era” at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, as part of her academic research.

If you have turned on a TV or read the news during the past few months, you have probably heard of the widespread fires that wrought havoc on the Amazon rainforest this year. Fires occur in the rainforest every year, but the past 11 months saw the number of fires increase by more than 70% when compared with 2018, indicating a major acceleration in land clearing by the country’s logging and farming industries.

The smoke from the fires rose high into the atmosphere and could be seen from space. Some regions of Brazil became covered in thick smoke that closed airports and darkened city skies.

As the rainforest burns, it releases enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and larger particles of so-called “black carbon” (smoke and soot). The phrase “enormous amounts” hardly does the numbers justice – in any given year, the burning of forests and grasslands in South America emits a whopping 800,000 tonnes of black carbon into the atmosphere.

This truly astounding amount is almost double the black carbon produced by all combined energy use in Europe over 12 months. Not only does this absurd amount of smoke cause health issuesand contribute to global warming but, as a growing number of scientific studies are showing, it also more directly contributes to the melting of glaciers.

In a new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, a team of researchers has outlined how smoke from fires in the Amazon in 2010 made glaciers in the Andes melt more quickly.

South America: the Andes mountains run along the western edge of the Amazon basin (centre). AridOcean / shutterstock

When fires in the Amazon emit black carbon during the peak burning season (August to October), winds carry these clouds of smoke to Andean glaciers, which can sit higher than 5,000 metres above sea level.

Despite being invisible to the naked eye, black carbon particles affect the ability of the snow to reflect incoming sunlight, a phenomenon known as “albedo”. Similar to how a dark-coloured car will heat up more quickly in direct sunlight when compared with a light-coloured one, glaciers covered by black carbon particles will absorb more heat, and thus melt faster.

By using a computer simulation of how particles move through the atmosphere, known as HYSPLIT, the team was able to show that smoke plumes from the Amazon are carried by winds to the Andes, where they fall as an invisible mist across glaciers. Altogether, they found that fires in the Amazon in 2010 caused a 4.5% increase in water runoff from Zongo Glacier in Bolivia.

The Zongo glacier is found on the slopes of Huayna Potosi, one of Bolivia’s highest mountains. Ryan Michael Wilson / shutterstock

Crucially, the authors also found that the effect of black carbon depends on the amount of dust covering a glacier – if the amount of dust is higher, then the glacier will already be absorbing most of the heat that might have been absorbed by the black carbon. Land clearing is one of the reasons that dust levels over South America doubled during the 20th century.

Glaciers are some of the most important natural resources on the planet. Himalayan glaciers provide drinking water for 240m people, and 1.9 billion rely on them for food. In South America, glaciers are crucial for water supply – in some towns, including Huaraz in Peru, more than 85% of drinking water comes from glaciers during times of drought. However, these truly vital sources of water are increasingly under threat as the planet feels the effects of global warming. Glaciers in the Andes have been receding rapidly for the last 50 years.

The tropical belt of South America is predicted to become more dry and arid as the climate changes. A drier climate means more dust, and more fires. It also means more droughts, which make towns more reliant on glaciers for water.

Unfortunately, as the above study shows, the fires assisted by dry conditions help to make these vital sources of water vanish more quickly. The role of black carbon in glacier melting is an exceedingly complex process – currently, the climate models used to predict the future melting of glaciers in the Andes do not incorporate black carbon. As the authors of this new study show, this is likely causing the rate of glacial melt to be underestimated in many current assessments.

With communities reliant on glaciers for water, and these same glaciers likely to melt faster as the climate warms, work examining complex forces like black carbon and albedo changes is needed more now than ever before.

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Matthew Harris is PhD Researcher, Climate Science, Keele University.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro founded a new political party in November as he faces a noisy divorce with the Social Liberal Party (PSL). Since the beginning of his political career as a councillor in Rio de Janeiro in 1989, Bolsonaro has been a member of another seven political parties, in addition to PSL. To compete in the presidential elections, he joined the PSL, along with his sons Eduardo and Flavio.

The relationship has come to a messy end now. Bolsonaro was recorded stating that PSL President Luciano Bivar would be “burned out” while telling a supporter to “forget about the PSL”; his son Eduardo was embroiled in a battle for the PSL presidency in the House of Representatives; and, the party was hit by a candidacy scandal involving embezzlement and the Minister of Tourism, Marcelo Álvaro Antônio.

The launch of Bolsonaro’s new party, Alliance for Brazil, was held at the Royal Tulip Hotel in Brasilia on November 21. To be formally able to run an election, there is still a long way to go. It is necessary first to fulfil obligations established by the electoral legislation and to collect 500,000 signatures in Brazil, something that he is expected to do with ease.

The initial ideology of the Alliance already allows us to visualize the fundamentals of the new political party. The text provides an insight into the new party, and of course, it certainly has not divorced from the reactionary Bolsonaro that we have become accustomed with. The party “demands” the  members to “defend life from conception,” “guarantee of access to weapons,” “defense of the family as an essential core of society,” “combat any ideology that seeks the eroticization of children,” “combat attempts to legalize illicit drugs,” and to “fight communism Globalism,” among other things.

Of course, he never offered a solution to the severe economic crisis in Brazil. What helped him be elected was to distract Brazilians over the struggle of identity politics rather than the ailing economy. It appears he will run on the very same platform, despite the massive 11.8% unemployment rate and the informal employment rate reaching a record high of 41.3%, which represents 38.6 million Brazilians.

Essentially, Bolsonaro’s new party is an attempt to repeat the National Renewal Alliance, the official party of the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985. The target audience of Bolsonaro’s party is effectively Brazilians with the same reactionary ideology whose counterparts in Bolivia forced the coup of Evo Morales and have continued to serve U.S. interests in Venezuela against President Nicolás Maduro.

The first clues that Bolsonaro is wanting a return of the dictatorship era is his push for changes in the rules of the Law and Order Guarantee operations to ensure an “exclusionary of illegality” for security forces that serves to prevent violent protests. The exclusion of illegality is an old campaign promise from Bolsonaro but was recently barred by the House of Representatives working group that analyzes the anti-crime package presented by Justice Minister Sergio Moro. Effectively Bolsonaro is attempting to militarize security forces in Brazil under the guise of preventing violent protests, despite Brazilian protests being overwhelmingly peaceful and usual have a party/samba vibe to it.

The Federal Prosecutor’s Office for Citizens’ Rights of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (MPF) classifies the presidential proposal as “blatantly unconstitutional and unparalleled, even compared to the institutional acts of the military dictatorship.” The illicit exclusionist is an attempt to tarnish and eliminate the Brazilian Constitution, which has excelled in fighting inequality. Bolsonaro’s push for changes in the law allows police to freely kill without impunity, as has recently occurred in neighboring Bolivia.

Despite the possible problems that may arise from the point of view of representation, Bolsonaro will probably lead deputies, senators, mayors, councillors and other politicians from other parties to join his cause. As Bolsonaro is president, he will be able to attract these politicians and vast resources to his new political party. The fate of the PSL party fund, a very rich fund at that, remains open. Politicians who follow Bolsonaro and are allies of the Alliance want to bring their resources to the new party. This is crucial to the future and survival of the party of the initiative. The dispute over the appeals will likely be judicialized. Another legal point that must be considered is that politicians who leave their respective political parties may lose their mandate.

Although the Alliance does not have a sound economic plan and rather allows “the market” to dictate it, Brazilians in their hundreds of thousands, if not millions, are likely to become members of this new political party. With Bolsonaro nearing one year into his mandate, he has done nothing to alleviate poverty, corruption and suffering in Brazil. However, he has been successful in distracting much of the population with identity politics under the guise of defending Christian values. With this thinking permeating in Brazil, it is likely that his new party will be highly successful, despite the clear threat of Bolsonaro wanting a return to the years of Brazil’s dictatorship.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from Antonio Scorza / Shutterstock

The three smartest words that Donald Trump uttered during his presidential campaign are “NATO is obsolete.” His adversary, Hillary Clinton, retorted that NATO was “the strongest military alliance in the history of the world.” Now that Trump has been in power, the White House parrots the same worn line that NATO is “the most successful Alliance in history, guaranteeing the security, prosperity, and freedom of its members.” But Trump was right the first time around: Rather than being a strong alliance with a clear purpose, this 70-year-old organization that is meeting in London on December 4 is a stale military holdover from the Cold War days that should have gracefully retired many years ago.

NATO was originally founded by the United States and 11 other Western nations as an attempt to curb the rise of communism in 1949. Six years later, Communist nations founded the Warsaw Pact and through these two multilateral institutions, the entire globe became a Cold War battleground. When the USSR collapsed in 1991, the Warsaw Pact disbanded but NATO expanded, growing from its original 12 members to 29 member countries. North Macedonia, set to join next year, will bring the number to 30. NATO has also expanded well beyond the North Atlantic, adding a partnership with Colombia in 2017. Donald Trump recently suggested that Brazil could one day become a full member.

NATO’s post-Cold War expansion toward Russia’s borders, despite earlier promises not to move eastward, has led to rising tensions between Western powers and Russia, including multiple close calls between military forces. It has also contributed to a new arms race, including upgrades in nuclear arsenals, and the largest NATO “war games” since the Cold War.

While claiming to “preserve peace,” NATO has a history of bombing civilians and committing war crimes. In 1999, NATO engaged in military operations without UN approval in Yugoslavia. Its illegal airstrikes during the Kosovo War left hundreds of civilians dead. And far from the “North Atlantic,” NATO joined the United States in invading Afghanistan in 2001, where it is still bogged down two decades later. In 2011, NATO forces illegally invaded Libya, creating a failed state that caused masses of people to flee. Rather than take responsibility for these refugees, NATO countries have turned back desperate migrants on the Mediterranean Sea, letting thousands die.

In London, NATO wants to show it is ready to fight new wars. It will showcase its readiness initiative – the ability to deploy 30 battalions by land, 30 air squadrons and 30 naval vessels in just 30 days, and to confront future threats from China and Russia, including with hypersonic missiles and cyberwarfare. But far from being a lean, mean war machine, NATO is actually riddled with divisions and contradictions. Here are some of them:

• French President Emmanuel Macron questions the U.S. commitment to fight for Europe, has called NATO “brain dead” and has proposed a European Army under the nuclear umbrella of France.

• Turkey has enraged NATO members with its incursion into Syria to attack the Kurds, who have been Western allies in the fight against ISIS. And Turkey has threatened to veto a Baltic defense plan until allies support its controversial incursion into Syria. Turkey has also infuriated NATO members, especially Trump, by purchasing Russia’s S-400 missile system.

• Trump wants NATO to push back against China’s growing influence, including the use of Chinese companies for the construction of 5G mobile networks–something many NATO countries are unwilling to do.

• Is Russia really NATO’s adversary? France’s Macron has reached out to Russia, inviting Putin to discuss ways in which the European Union can put the Crimean invasion behind it. Donald Trump has publicly attacked Germany over its Nord Stream 2 project to pipe in Russian gas, but a recent German poll saw 66 percent wanting closer ties with Russia.

• The UK has bigger problems. Britain has been convulsed over the Brexit conflict and is holding contentious national election on December 12. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, knowing that Trump is wildly unpopular, is reluctant to be seen as close to him. Also, Johnson’s major contender, Jeremy Corbyn, is a reluctant supporter of NATO. While his Labour Party is committed to NATO, over his career as an anti-war champion, Corbyn has called NATO “a danger to world peace and a danger to world security.” The last time Britain hosted NATO leaders in 2014, Corbyn told an anti-NATO rally that the end of the Cold War “should have been the time for NATO to shut up shop, give up, go home and go away.”

• A further complication is Scotland, which is home to a very unpopular Trident nuclear submarine base as part of NATO’s nuclear deterrent. A new Labour government would need the support of the Scottish National Party. But its leader, Nicola Sturgeon, insists that a precondition for her party’s support is a commitment to close the base.

• Europeans can’t stand Trump (a recent poll found he is trusted by only 4 percent of Europeans!) and their leaders can’t rely on him. Allied leaders learn of presidential decisions that affect their interests via Twitter. The lack of coordination was clear in October, when Trump ignored NATO allies when he ordered U.S. special forces out of northern Syria, where they had been operating alongside French and British commandos against Islamic State militants.

• The US unreliability has led the European Commission to draw up plans for a European “defense union” that will coordinate military spending and procurement. The next step may be to coordinate military actions separate from NATO. The Pentagon has complained about EU countries purchasing military equipment from each other instead of from the United States, and has called this defense union “a dramatic reversal of the last three decades of increased integration of the transatlantic defence sector.”

• Do Americans really want to go to war for Estonia? Article 5 of the Treaty states that an attack against one member “shall be considered an attack against them all,” meaning that the treaty obligates the US to go to war on behalf of 28 nations–something most likely opposed by war-weary Americans who want a less aggressive foreign policy that focuses on peace, diplomacy, and economic engagement instead of military force.

An additional major bone of contention is who will pay for NATO. The last time NATO leaders met, President Trump derailed the agenda by berating NATO countries for not paying their fair share and at the London meeting, Trump is expected to announce symbolic US cuts to NATO’s operations budget.

Trump’s main concern is that member states step up to the NATO target of spending 2 percent of their gross domestic products on defense by 2024, a goal that is unpopular among Europeans, who prefer that their taxdollars to go for nonmilitary items. Nevertheless, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg will brag that Europe and Canada have added $100 billion to their military budgets since 2016–something Donald Trump will take credit for–and that more NATO officials are meeting the 2 percent goal, even though a 2019 NATO report shows only seven members have done so: the U.S., Greece, Estonia, the UK, Romania, Poland and Latvia.

In an age where people around the world want to avoid war and to focus instead on the climate chaos that threatens future life on earth, NATO is an anachronism. It now accounts for about three-quarters of military spending and weapons dealing around the globe. Instead of preventing war, it promotes militarism, exacerbates global tensions and makes war more likely. This Cold War relic shouldn’t be reconfigured to maintain U.S. domination in Europe, or to mobilize against Russia or China, or to launch new wars in space. It should not be expanded, but disbanded. Seventy years of militarism is more than enough.

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Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

Featured image is from the author

The Brazilian Bar Association for Human Rights and the Arns Commission on Wednesday denounced President Jair Bolsonaro formally for “crimes against humanity” and incitement to genocide of the Amazon indigenous peoples.

This complaint was filed before the International Criminal Court in The Hague, an institution created in 2002 that has already tried several war criminals.

Among other things, human rights lawyers indicated that the Brazilian president did not act promptly to stop “environmental crimes” in the Amazon basin.

Within this globally important ecosystem, deforestation has grown by 29.5 percent due to the clearing of forests and premeditated fires in which far-right militias would have participated.

“In Brazil, we don’t find an efficient way to prosecute Bolsonaro,” explained Jose Carlos Dias, the director of the Arns Commission, which was created in honor of the late Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns who protected hundreds of Argentineans, Uruguayans, and Chileans activists during the dictatorships.

#BolsonaroAssassino @IntClinTrials @mbachelet @UN @UNHumanRights @ONUBrasil @OEA_oficial @UNICEF @ONU_derechos @washingtonpost @guardian @lemondefr @EmmanuelMacron @lemondefr @elmundoes @elpais_america @BBCWorld @nytimes @NicolasMaduro @PresidenciaCuba #BolsonaroCriminoso pic.twitter.com/4gAIuYWaE5

— Lula Presidente Jean Wyllys exilado político (@Gustavoucranian) November 29, 2019

“The Amazon burns. However, whoever puts out the fire is imprisoned.” The meme at the bottom contains two press clippings that say, “‘I want those bums of the Landless Movement killed,’ Bolsonaro says.” “‘Two members of the Landless Movement are shot dead by two hooded men in a camp,’ the Military Police says.”

Meanwhile, far-right President on Friday accused the U.S. actor Leonardo DiCaprio of paying money to promote fires in the Amazon.

“Leonardo Dicaprio is a cool guy, isn’t he? Giving money to set the Amazon on fire,” Bolsonaro told his supporters who were gathered in front of the government headquarters.

The far-right president thus resumed his attacks against human rights defenders and environmental activists whom he accuses of being responsible for this year’s fires in the Amazon.

Once again, however, he did not offer any proof of his accusations. He just spoke wryly about them.

“They take a picture and send it to an NGO. Then the NGO spreads it and contacts Leonardo DiCaprio, and he makes a US$500,000 donation to that NGO. Leonardo DiCaprio, you are collaborating with the fires in the Amazon,” Bolsonaro said.

The Brazilian president’s comments follow a police raid against two environmental organizations that work in the Amazonian state of Para.

“Several volunteer firefighters were arrested and later released. Local police say they are being investigated for allegedly igniting fires to obtain funding,” Central Maine reported.

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Former Tory MP Nick Boles described Boris Johnson as a “compulsive liar” who has betrayed “every single person he has ever had any dealings with” in a candid interview in the Evening Standard today.

The ex-minister, who resigned the Conservative whip in April in frustration at the party’s Brexit policy, said he would be voting Lib Dem at the election on December 12.

He attacked the prime minister as a man with an “all-consuming ego utterly without conscience”.

“A compulsive liar who has betrayed every single person he has ever had any dealings with: every woman who has ever loved him, every member of his family, every friend, every colleague, every employee, every constituent,” he said.

A lifetime of support for terrorists

Boles, who is stepping down as the MP for Grantham and Stamford, also took a swipe at Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, saying he’s had   “a lifetime of support for terrorists, murderers and racist thugs”.

“If Labour wins a majority next month, the public will vote to install an anti-Semite in No 10 Downing Street,” he said.

Boles, who served as a minister in David Cameron’s government, said he would be voting Lib Dem as he trusted Jo Swinson to “pursue the closest possible relationship with the European Union after Brexit”.

Splitting the Brexit vote

It came as Nigel Farage has abandoned plans for the Brexit Party to contest more than 600 candidates in the Election.

Speaking to supporters in Hartlepool he said the party would not stand in the 317 seats won by the Conservatives in the last election in 2017.

He said he had taken the decision because he feared that if they had run it would have led to a hung parliament with significant gains for the Liberal Democrats.

The move is a significant boost for Johnson amid warnings by Conservative ministers that they risked splitting the Brexit vote.

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Jack Peat is a business and economics journalist and the founder of The London Economic (TLE).He has contributed articles to The Sunday Telegraph, BBC News and writes for The Big Issue on a weekly basis.Jack read History at the University of Wales, Bangor and has a Masters in Journalism from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Featured image is from The London Economic

Hundreds packed the St Pancras New Church in Euston Thursday night for a meeting demanding freedom for imprisoned WikiLeaks founder and journalist Julian Assange.

The largest meeting held in London to date reflects growing opposition to plans by the US government to extradite and imprison Assange for exposing war crimes, illegal mass surveillance and state corruption.

Headlined “Free the Truth,” speakers included UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer, former UK ambassador Craig Murray and veteran investigative journalist John Pilger.

An accompanying art exhibition featured paintings, drawings and sculpture, while the meeting opened with a piano recital of “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda”—a favourite of Assange. The meeting was organised by academics Deepa Driver and Iain Munro, with the support of the Julian Assange Defence Committee.

Rap artist Lowkey began by quoting the words of jailed Chartist leader Ernest Jones:

“Because I tried to extend your liberties, mine were curtailed. Because I tried to rear the temple of freedom for you all, I was thrown into the cell of a felon’s jail… Because I tried to give voice to truth, I was condemned to silence.”

These words, Lowkey explained, were taken from an article by Karl Marx written in 1852 for the New York Herald Tribune. Marx was then a political refugee in London.

“Julian Assange is not being punished for anything he has done wrong. He is being punished for everything he has done right,” Lowkey said to applause. The brutal treatment of Assange was a “slow motion crucifixion… what they are trying to crucify is the truth.”

Condemning the mainstream media’s vilification of Assange, Lowkey said its journalists were just “stenographers.”

“Those who have joined in this demonization of Julian Assange are like turkeys voting for Christmas. How much profit did you generate off of Julian’s three million cables that WikiLeaks revealed?… Today Julian Assange, tomorrow you.”

Fidel Narvaez (image on the right), former Ecuadorian counsel at the Ecuadorian Embassy, said that Assange was “along with Chelsea Manning, the most important political prisoner in the world today.”

The allegations against Assange in Sweden had never been credible and the investigation had been “opened and shut more times than a fridge door.” Assange was being “denied the chance to adequately prepare his defence against the fiercest persecution of a journalist so far this century, which is a powerful reason to demand due process for Julian Assange.”

Narvaez said, “Julian’s case is also a precedent for the institution of political asylum, because he, along with Edward Snowden, was the most important political asylee in the world.” His treatment was an attack on a small country, Ecuador, by some of the most powerful nations in the world.

“Ecuador had every sovereign right to determine whether Julian Assange was being politically persecuted in 2012. In order to protect him from the odious persecution of a Grand Jury…that can open a secret investigation against you and indict you on secret charges that will only be revealed once you are arrested. That is what happened to Julian Assange this April.”

“This Grand Jury wants to sentence a journalist to 175 years in prison for publishing truthful information about war crimes,” he said. For years the world’s media had attacked the warnings made by Assange about the existence of a Grand Jury “as paranoia…an excuse to hide from Swedish justice.”

The United Nations had ruled that Assange was being subject to arbitrary detention and the UK should free him and provide compensation. Lenin Moreno’s government had “committed the crime of delivering a political refugee to those who persecuted him.” This had broken the “sacred principle of asylum.”

Lisa Longstaff (image on the left) from Women Against Rape addressed the meeting.

“The pursuit of Julian Assange is not about rape. It’s the US government weaponising and distorting rape in order to punish him for the WikiLeaks exposés of war crimes, rape and torture.”

“In 2010 and 2012, we pointed to the unusual zeal with which Julian Assange was being pursued. It’s unlike any other rape investigation we’ve seen anywhere… In his case the judicial process was corrupted from the beginning.”

“Evidence emerged that the UK ordered Sweden not to drop the case sooner,” Longstaff explained, “so it’s clearly politically motivated.”

Longstaff said,

“Rape and sexual allegations have been used to pursue a political agenda from the start, intent on actually hiding rape, hiding torture and hiding murder committed by the state. They are the rapists, they are the racists, they are the murderers.”

Professor Nils Melzer (image on the right) was given a prolonged standing ovation. He explained that his mandate as UN Special Rapporteur on Torture was to report to states when their actions contravened international law. He had assumed that signatories to international law would “act in good faith.”

“In my investigation I found that this isn’t about the law…because if it was about the law, then Julian Assange would not be sitting in extradition detention, accused of espionage for having exposed serious misconduct on the part of states, including war crimes.”

Assange, he explained, would not have been sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for a bail violation for seeking and receiving political asylum, or had his asylum terminated and his citizenship withdrawn by Ecuador without explanation, or been portrayed as a suspected rapist by Sweden for more than nine years with no charges ever brought.

He would have been granted the right to prepare his defence and would not be detained in a high security prison, “under oppressive conditions of isolation and surveillance” and facing extradition for a political offence in contravention of UK law, “to a country where he will be exposed to a politicised trial, with secret evidence, behind closed doors, facing draconian punishments that is unlawful under US law and the First Amendment and sentencing to a supermax prison for the rest of his life.”

Assange’s persecution, he stressed, “is about setting an example, about scaring other journalists away, of instilling fear, preventing others from following the example of Julian Assange and of WikiLeaks, and to show to the world what happens when you expose the misconduct of the power of a state.”

During his May 9 visit with Assange at Belmarsh Prison, he had “found typical evidence of someone who has been exposed to a prolonged period of psychological torture,” Melzer explained. “Psychological torture is not ‘torture lite.’ Psychological torture aims to wreck and destroy the person’s personality and identity…to make them break.”

“We were able during our medical examination to confirm that this ill treatment had already had neurological consequences. If that is not stopped, it can end up having irreversible consequences on the cardiovascular system and the neurological system. This is extremely serious… Today I am extremely concerned for his life.”

Melzer had written to the UK, Sweden, the US and Ecuador to present his conclusions and ask them to take urgent measures to alleviate the pressure on Julian Assange and protect his human rights. All refused to do so:

“If they no longer engage with the institutions that they have created to report their compliance with human rights, then I only see a very dark future for us and our human rights and for the rights of our children.”

Clinical psychologist Lissa Johnson (image on the left) spoke on behalf of more than 60 medical doctors who have issued an open letter calling for Assange’s urgent transfer from Belmarsh Prison to a tertiary care hospital:

“If the UK government fails to heed their advice there will be very serious consequences, including that Julian Assange may die in prison.”

Johnson cited the findings of medical experts led by Nils Melzer who examined Assange inside Belmarsh on May 9:

“Julian does show signs typical for someone exposed for a prolonged time to psychological torture… the doctors know that is very serious physically for Julian’s life and survival.”

Pointing to the public’s response to worldwide media coverage of the doctors’ open letter, she observed,

“There’s a lot more public support for Julian than the media’s censorship and antagonism toward him suggests.”

“While institutions are failing us, while authorities are failing us, while the courts are failing us, here’s a group of people who took a matter of weeks to get this letter together. I think that’s where the pressure and the change is going to come.”

Former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray (image on the right), began his remarks by pointing to the meeting’s magnificent venue. At the rear of the church were monuments erected to honour those families—the Burnleys of Barbados, the Beale family of Canton, the Page family of Bombay—who gave funds to build the church and who were doubtless involved in the slavery and opium trade.

“This building is like the British Establishment itself—on the surface it is beautiful, solid and harmonious, but inside it is rotten and corrupt to the core,” he said.

“We are seeing illegality in the treatment of Julian Assange. The abuses of process by the British justice system throughout the last decade have been absolutely astonishing,” Murray recounted. “There is no legality, there is no justice.”

“It is not only that he is the victim of torture. It’s not only that his life is at stake. It is not only that we need to save him from this dreadful injustice. We also want to save him because the world needs Julian Assange as a symbol of resistance!”

Historian, author and journalist Mark Curtis (image on the left) told the audience, “Julian has support all over the world.” He suggested actions that people could take to fight for Assange’s freedom, beginning with information available on the defend.wikileaks.org website. “Obviously there’s no point in relying on the establishment media, not unless you want to brainwash yourself.”

Curtis attacked the “propaganda tropes” employed by the media against Assange—that he is a “rapist,” a “Russian asset,” a “supporter of Trump”—singling out the Guardian’s November 2018 fabrication that Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort had met Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy.

He called for mass pressure on human rights organisations to actively defend Assange, pointing to Amnesty International’s refusal to designate Assange a “prisoner of conscience.” He called on MPs to follow the lead of former Labour MP Chris Williamson who has campaigned publicly in Assange’s defence.

The audience gave a loud ovation for the twice-suspended Labour MP, who was present, and who quit the party this month after it refused to endorse him as candidate for Derby North. Curtis explained that just four MPs had signed an early day motion moved by Williamson in defence of Assange. (Neither Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn nor Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott signed that motion).

“These are the people who are meant to represent us and hold the executive to account. I know I’m confusing the UK with a democracy… In our system, which we clearly see in this case, the law has been stitched-up, the media is a platform for the elite and the political class is an appendage of the executive. That’s why we, as ordinary people, need to take action on these issues.”

He urged the audience to become involved in grassroots organisations such as the Julian Assange Defence Committee and to take part in events being organised in the weeks ahead, “culminating in a global day of protest in February when the extradition hearing will be held.”

The final speaker, Australian journalist John Pilger, told the audience he had visited Assange in Belmarsh Prison earlier that day. He described his visit with Julian and the draconian security regime inside the prison for visitors and inmates. A transcript of Pilger’s report is posted separately.

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All images in this article are from WSWS

On November 11, 2019, following the violent, racist, US-led coup in Bolivia against Evo Morales — which was supported from the outset by Canada’s Justin Trudeau government —  I posted an appeal (in English, French, and Spanish) on YouTube denouncing the green light given by Trudeau on October 29 to Donald Trump’s plan. Just a few hours after the coup was consummated, Trudeau declared his support for it.

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What right does Canada have to elect the government of Bolivia, to intervene in that country’s internal affairs?

The YouTube appeal was especially directed at New Democratic Party (NDP) MPs, who were elected with the support of the trade unions. “I’m appealing to the unions and the workers of Canada to put pressure on the NDP to take a stand against the Trudeau government, which is supporting this racist attack against Evo Morales.”

The appeal was also directed at the Bloc Québécois, which won more Quebec seats in Canada’s Parliament then Trudeau’s own Liberal Party.

“We the people of Quebec and Canada, along with our Indigenous brothers and sisters in Canada cannot turn our back on the Indigenous people of Bolivia. Especially when some in Bolivia are burning the Wiphala flag, which is not only the symbol of the original peoples of Bolivia but the emblem of the whole region.”

“How would we feel if somebody somewhere decided to burn the Quebec or the Canadian flag? We must defend the people of Bolivia and take a strong position against Justin Trudeau’s interventionist, pro-imperialist policy,” I concluded.

Further to these and other appeals and comments on the social networks, responses started coming in. The first one of note appeared on the Facebook page of Natalia d’Agnese, an activist with Quebec’s left-wing Québec Solidaire party. She wrote: “Totally agree. The Canadian government is supporting a coup by a far-right, evangelistic, racist component of the opposition. Some Latin American countries have begun taking positions, including Mexico, Uruguay, the Argentine senate and its new president, and others.”

Next up was Alexandre Boulerice, Deputy Leader of the NDP, the party’s Quebec lieutenant, and a member of the Canadian Parliament since the 2011 elections: “In Bolivia, the Wiphala — the flag of the Indigenous peoples — was attacked after Evo Morales’s departure”; “I am angry at the coup d’état against @evoespueblo and worried about the changes affecting the #Indigenous people and the @socialists. #democracy #Bolivia #NDP (@Lobs)”

The Durham Region Labour Council (@DurhamRegionLC), representing the members of many affiliated unions of this Ontario city, announced: “We will be submitting an emergency resolution to be discussed at the @OFLabour convention in a few weeks to denounce @cafreeland’s support of a coup in Bolivia. #ElMundoConEvo #GolpeDeEstadoBolivia”

Canada’s largest union, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), with over 680,000 members throughout the country, published a statement of its “concern about the developing situation in Bolivia, which has led to a coup.

“CUPE calls on the Government of Canada to recognize and respect the sovereignty of the Bolivian people to determine their own political future, without military or foreign interference. We further call on the Liberals to stop taking their foreign policy cues from some of the world’s most right-wing governments.

“We extend our solidarity and support to the Bolivian people who will be most affected by the social or economic instability that accompanies this attack on their democratic rights.”

The situation concerning this Latin American country is developing minute by minute. It is too early to draw conclusions; however, the initial reaction proves what has been stated in previous articles about Latin America: that a large majority of Canadians oppose US imperialism and its allies.

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This article was originally published in Spanish in Trabajadores, Newspaper of the Cuban Trade Union Central.

Arnold August is a Canadian journalist and lecturer, the author of Democracy in Cuba and the 1997–98 Elections, Cuba and Its Neighbours: Democracy in Motion and Cuba–U.S. Relations: Obama and Beyond. He collaborates with many web sites, television and radio broadcasts based in Latin America, Europe, North America and the Middle East. Twitter  Facebook, His trilingual website:  www.arnoldaugust.com.

Featured image is from Peoples Dispatch

Firs published on GR on November 25, 2017

He was born and raised in a little town just outside of Licata, Sicily. By the time he was 18, the young man was accepted into university in Tunisia, a far more scholastically advanced place than the Sicily of the early 1900s.

Upon graduating, he decided to do what many young Italians chose to do, and he emigrated to the United States.

He met and married a pretty young Neapolitan girl in New York City, and they settled down to raise a family. She could only bear one child, a son, in 1915.

Meanwhile, her husband could not get his Tunisian university degree to count for anything here, so he found whatever work he could. They even saved and opened a small neighborhood candy store on Ave. S in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. The depression hit, and the business failed.

Their son, a gifted student, had just been accepted at Brooklyn College, a very difficult school to get into at that time. By the end of his second semester, as the depression worsened, he had to drop out and seek employment to help the family. They all worked: mother in a factory, the son as a messenger and dad secured a skilled job as a machinist.

Yet, the pay was low for all concerned, and many nights they would eat broccoli rabe sandwiches for dinner.

Mulberry Street, Little Italy, New York City, Early 1900s

The 1930s were a rough time for all who labored…. Or sought work. The ranks of the unemployed were so great that companies offered wages as low as possible to prospective employees.

The smell of strife filled the factories and warehouses and offices throughout NYC. Strikes were as common as a rain shower. Many picket lines became battlegrounds as violent as the battle charges of WW1. The police and the company hired thugs took few prisoners…. And the strikers gave back as good as they got. Tough times.

The Sicilian went out on strike with his co- workers, and he battled on those picket lines with his powerfully built body. One day, during a vicious exchange with the police and hired goons, the Sicilian was arrested for assault. He called home to his wife: ‘I need to make bail! ‘She didn’t have the money in their savings drawer to get him out. So, she and her son went throughout the neighborhood begging for any sort of handout to get her husband, the only man she ever loved, back home to her. Finally, after a day of humbling and humiliating pleas, she raised the money. Her husband was free…. For now. When he returned to his job at the machine shop, the foreman told him the bad news:

You’re fired, and you will never work in this trade again. You’re blacklisted!

By the turn of the new decade, the Sicilian had spent three years doing odd jobs for lousy per diem pay. He had tried, unsuccessfully, to get on Home Relief (welfare) and the waiting list was very long. His wife and son were working full time to keep them in their apartment. He became more and more despondent each day.

On December 1, 1940, bitter cold and cloudy, the wife had just returned home from a long shift of factory work. She was tired, and her legs were rubbery from standing for ten hours. She needed a nice warm bath to take the chill out of her, and perhaps cheer up her tired face. As she opened the bathroom door, she could sense something was not right. The shower curtains were pushed outside of the tub. When she walked closer, she saw what no human being should have to see. The gun had fallen outside the tub. He had made sure that no blood would spill onto the bathroom floor. He was always so tidy that way. My grandfather, Pietro Farruggio, was dead!

Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn , NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 300 of his work posted on sites like Consortium News, Information Clearing House, Global Research Centre for Globalization, Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Counterpunch, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust., whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, ‘ It’s the Empire… Stupid’ with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected] )

The EU Instrument for Supporting Trade Exchanges (INSTEX) with Iran became operational in June — a smoke and mirrors scheme to bypass dollar transactions, unrelated to restoring normal European trade with Iran.

It’s an illusory financial transactions mechanism, pretending to reinstate normal trade with Iran — not fulfilled since announced in January.

What’s supposed to be an oil for goods mechanism is only for what the Trump regime hasn’t sanctioned, failing to cover exports of Iranian oil, gas, petrochemicals, and other products.

It also falls woefully short of facilitating Iranian imports of food, medicines, and medical equipment.

Establishing it created the phony appearance of Brussels wanting normal trade relations with Iran. Reality is polar opposite.

European countries operate as US colonies, following its diktats, especially regarding relations with nations on its target list for regime change like Iran.

JCPOA signatories Britain, France, Germany and the EU failed to fulfill their mandated JCPOA obligations, going along with the Trump regime’s aim to kill the deal — while pretending to want it saved.

On November 29, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden issued a joint statement, saying the following:

They “attach the utmost importance to the preservation and full implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran’s nuclear program by all parties involved (sic),” adding:

“The nuclear agreement was unanimously endorsed by the UN Security Council and is a key instrument for the global non-proliferation regime and a major contribution to stability in the region.”

“In light of the continuous European support for the agreement (sic) and the ongoing efforts to implement the economic part of it (sic), and to facilitate legitimate trade between Europe and Iran (sic), we are now in the process of becoming shareholders of the Instrument in Support of…INSTEX.”

Fact: The above named countries, other European ones, and Canada breached the JCPOA by failing to abide by its provisions.

Since the Trump regime illegally abandoned the agreement, breaching international and US constitutional law, European countries and Canada severed normal economic, financial, and trade relations with Iran.

Nations joining INSTEX changed nothing. They remain in breach of their international obligations by failing to observe JCPOA provisions.

Unless and until they change policy, they remain complicit with Trump regime economic terrorism on Iran for its opposition to US aggression, support for Palestinian rights, and unwillingness to sell its soul to the imperial state at the right price.

Weeks earlier, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said the following:

“For the past five months, Europe has been trying to give us credit in return for the sale of the Iranian crude oil to make the country stay in the JCPOA, but it has not been able to do even this little job because it is not even allowed by its master to spend its own money for its own security.”

Its member states refuse to exercise their sovereign rights in dealings with Iran unless a higher power in Washington permits it.

On Saturday, Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission spokesman Hossein Naqavi Hosseini said European JCPOA signatories have been in breach of the deal since the Trump regime illegally abandoned it.

Iran’s legitimate incremental pullback of its voluntary JCPOA commitments failed to encourage its European signatories “to fulfill (their) obligations.”

On Saturday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Gholam Hossein Dehqani said “inhumane (US) sanctions have negatively impacted the supply of medicines and treatment for more than 70,000 victims of chemical weapons in our country and have in fact hindered the treatment of chemical attacks victims.”

In response to six more European nations joining INSTEX, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Seyyed Abbas Araqchi  said the following:

“The more European countries join the INSTEX mechanism as the shareholders, the better, but the effectiveness of the mechanism is another matter,” adding:

He doubts Europe will take practical steps to restore normal trade relations with Tehran.

The JCPOA is in “intensive care,” he stressed, Europe failing to save it by following hostile US policies toward Iran.

Tehran joined the JCPOA to restore normal economic, financial, and trade relations with Europe. Without normalization, the deal is meaningless.

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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.

Hundreds of letters are pouring into the office of  Polish Minister of Health, Lukaz Szumowski, from Polish citizens and people all over the world, responding to Mr Szumowski’s proposition to exponentially raise the officially recognised limit for cell phone emissions.

Under the proposed change, new emission levels will be aligned with the introduction of 5G high frequency microwave pulsed radiation technology, with the acute dangers to the health and welfare of people, animals, insects and plant life, that 5G has been revealed to transmit.

The irony of a Minister of Health subjecting his own constituency to a barrage of highly toxic microwaves, has not been lost on those commenting from abroad. Many cite their fondness for the unspoilt nature of the Country and the fact that this could soon be reversed, with tourists reacting  unfavourably should the Government introduce toxic 5G radiation telecommunications’ systems.

In their rush to get 5G telecommunications networks rolled-out, the Polish government has cut the time available for public reaction to just two weeks, thereby restricting any potential consultation process to an unworkable sham. 

The Coalition for a 5G Free Poland and and the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside are calling for a ban of 5G microwave transmissions based on the evidence of thousands of doctors and scientists worldwide – that 5G represents a serious threat to human, animal, insect and environmental health. 

Leading Swedish microwave expert Professor Ole Johanssen, stated the following in his letter to Mr Szumowski: 

“Deploying 5G in addition to existing technologies, for sure, will increase the exposure of Poland’s population. But beyond the additional layer of electromagnetic pollution it will constitute, there is strong suspicion that 5G, because of its technological specificities (frequencies, modulations, pulsations, narrowly focused and directional beams, densification of the antenna networks), will present even more serious health and environmental risks than existing technologies.”

From John Weigel, journalist, writer and researcher, Ireland:

“Essentially, your government has known for 46 years about the dangers of electromagnetic radiation. If you fail to protect the people of Poland, how can you call yourself a patriot by giving the freedom of Poland to a corporate technological oligarchy? If you deploy 5G, you are betraying all those who struggled and lost their lives for Polish freedom.”

People are rising-up in all corners of the planet to stop 5G and related microwave technologies from being forced upon them, by governments operating according to the profit motive of powerful corporate telecom networks, whose sole ambition is to increase their domination of the global market place at any cost to the health and welfare of humanity at large.

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Julian Rose, President, International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside

Featured image is from Demonstrators at the anti-5G protest in Bern on Friday. (© Keystone / Peter Klaunzer)

The persecution of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning is all about waging war on truth-telling.

Chelsea Manning remains imprisoned for invoking her constitutional right to remain silent — for refusing to testify against Assange.

Her First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eight Amendment rights were violated.

Since her ordeal began in 2010, she was imprisoned for courageously revealing US high crimes of war and against humanity in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Subjecting her to unreasonable searches and seizures violated her Fourth Amendment rights.

Her Fifth Amendment rights of due process, protection from self-incrimination, and possible double jeopardy were violated.

So was her Sixth Amendment right of a public trial represented by counsel, an impartial jury, and evidence explaining charges against her.

Subjecting her to cruel and unusual punishments, including the threat to her freedom and well-being by demanding she testify before a grand jury in secret without counsel violated her Fifth, Sixth, and Eight Amendment rights.

Instead of being a shield against oppressive, arbitrary authority, the US grand jury system is a sword against fundamental constitutional rights because of its manipulative practices, prosecutors doing whatever it takes to get indictments.

Wrongfully imprisoned in London at the behest of the Trump regime, Assange faces extradition to the US for the “crime” of truth-telling journalism the way it’s supposed to be — putting other independent journalists at risk in the West and elsewhere.

Weeks earlier, Assange’s father John Shipton said his son is “subjected to every kind of torment” imaginable by UK authorities in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison.

His physical and emotional health fast-deteriorating, he’s being slowly assassinated.

“The only people who are breaking the law are the UK government and the Crown Prosecution Service,” said Shipton — in cahoots with the Trump regime, adding:

The intensity of his mistreatment increased since forcefully dragged from London’s Ecuadorian embassy in April.

UN special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer earlier said

“(i)n 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution, I have never seen a group of (so-called) democratic states ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonize and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law.”

We’re all Julian Assange. His fate is ours. At stake is the fate of speech, media and academic freedoms. Losing them jeopardizes all other fundamental rights.

What’s happening to Assange and Chelsea Manning puts everyone publicly expressing views that differ from the official narrative at risk — fascism triumphing over freedom, the rule of law rendered null and void.

Candidate Trump said “I love WikiLeaks.” Calling its site “amazing,” he added “I love reading those WikiLeaks.”

As president, he called Assange “disgraceful,” adding he deserves the “death penalty.” Following his April arrest, DJT turned truth on its head, saying “I know nothing about Wikileaks. It’s not my thing.”

Exposing government wrongdoing, truth-telling journalism, dissent, doing the right things despite risk of great personal harm are the highest forms of patriotism.

When whistleblowers and journalists are criminalized for exposing government wrongdoing on the phony pretext of protecting national security or other fabricated reasons, fundamental freedoms no longer exist.

Thomas Jefferson once said speech “cannot be limited without being lost” — the fundamental right upheld by Supreme Court rulings.

WikiLeaks earlier published an open letter to Trump, saying the following:

“We are journalists, activists and citizens from the United States and around the world who care about press freedom and are writing to you in response to the latest threat of prosecution against WikiLeaks for its journalistic work.”

“We ask you to immediately close the grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks and drop any charges against Julian Assange and other Wikileaks staff members…”

“This threat to WikiLeaks escalates a long-running war of attrition against the great virtue of the United States — free speech.”

Obama “prosecuted more whistleblowers than all (former US) presidents combined and opened a grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks that had no precedent.”

“It now appears the US is preparing to take the next step — prosecuting publishers who provide the ‘currency’ of free speech, to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson.”

Wrongful “charges (against Assange), including conspiracy, theft of government property and violating the Espionage Act” were fabricated to frame him.

“A threat to WikiLeaks’ work — which is publishing information protected under the First Amendment — is a threat to all free journalism. If the DOJ is able to convict a publisher for its journalistic work, all free journalism can be criminalized.”

“We call on you as president of the United States to close the Grand Jury investigation into WikiLeaks and drop” all charges against Assange and WikiLeaks.

“It was a free and robust press that provided you with a platform on which to run for president.”

“Defending a truly free press requires freedom from fear and favor and the support of journalists and citizens everywhere; for the kind of threat now facing WikiLeaks — and all publishers and journalists — is a step into the darkness.”

At a November 24 UK launch of the book titled “In Defense of Julian Assange,” John Pilger said the following:

Assange’s revelations represent “(a)ll the people whose lives were devastated in Iraq, the people whose lives were devastated in Afghanistan, and Yemen, all over the world that WikiLeaks had told us so much about.”

His unjust persecution is all about robbing people of their freedom and other fundamental rights.

“If they can come for Julian they can come for the rest of us, unless we stand up, speak, make sure our voices are heard,” Pilger stressed.

Assange is a political prisoner, “guilty” of truth-telling investigative journalism the way it’s supposed to be.

In 2015, life-sized bronze statutes of Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden were unveiled in Berlin’s Alexanderplatz.

Their sculptor Davide Dormino said he wanted to “represent three contemporary heroes who have lost their freedom for the truth,” adding: “Their work is reminder of “how important it is to know the truth.”

On Thursday at a large gathering in London for Assange, Australian journalist Kerry O’Brien warned that he’s unjustly “mouldering in a British prison awaiting extradition to the United States.”

Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance head Paul Murphy slammed Western media for failing to support Assange, siding with his persecutors.

Historian, former UK ambassador, human rights activist Craig Murray explained that “(d)espite the lack of coverage or biased coverage in mainstream media, there is now an understanding that Julian is being extradited to the United States for nothing except for publishing the truth,” adding:

He believes “we will see one of the largest campaigns (in support of Assange) of our time” next year.

UN special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer warned that “(i)f Assange gets extradited to the United States and if he gets punished for exposing the truth, then essentially what’s happening is that telling the truth becomes a crime,” adding:

“He’s going to be sentenced by the same judge that sentences all of these whistleblowers in a closed court in East Virginia, and he’ll disappear in a high security prison in inhumane conditions for the rest of his life…if he makes it that far.”

Assange faces either longterm US gulag hell imprisonment or death before arrival from UK brutal mistreatment designed to kill him.

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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 TruePublica

Launched cross-border on October 9, east of the Euphrates River, Turkish aggression is all about President Erdogan’s aim to annex northern Syrian territory.

So-called “Operation Peace Spring” has nothing to do with peace, nothing to do with protecting Turkey from cross-border attacks, nothing to do with combatting ISIS and likeminded terrorist groups Ankara supports.

Clashes continue between Ankara-backed terrorists and Syrian forces, no ceasefire as falsely declared by Turkey on October 22.

Turkish forces continue ground and air attacks after the artificially declared ceasefire. According to Kurdish YPG commander Mazloum Abdi, Erdogan wants northern Syria ethnically cleansed of Kurds.

A London Independent report said Turkish-backed jihadists in northern Syria are involved in “summary executions, mutilation of corpses, threats against Kurds and widespread looting,” adding:

What’s going on “resulted in a mass exodus of Kurds and religious minorities from” from their home areas.

Displaced Kurdish civilian Muhammad Amin said “(t)hey  are shooting Kurdish people where they find them.”

An Arab resident told a Kurdish neighbor: “When they come, they will kill you. There were two Christian families in our village who left for the same reason.”

Since Turkish aggression began, there’s been widespread killings, confiscation, and looting of Kurdish property.

Kurds remaining in harm’s way or trying to return home after displaced risk death.

A Kurdish woman said “(s)ome Arab neighbours called us to tell us the fighters have looted our house and taken it as a headquarters. They have taken our land and our equipment too. They have taken everything.”

Following Turkey’s Operation Olive Branch aggression in March 2018, a Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry (COI) said the following:

“(A)rbitrary arrests and detentions (by Turkish forces) became pervasive throughout Afrin District (Aleppo).”

There were “credible allegations of torture and ill-treatment, often targeting individuals of Kurdish origin, including activists openly critical of armed groups and those perceived to be so.”

Well over 100,000 Kurds remain displaced from areas attacked by Kurdish forces last year, ethnic cleansing ongoing during Turkey’s current aggression.

In late October, Erdogan called Syrian territory bordering Turkey “not suitable for the lifestyle of the Kurds” — code language for wanting them displaced and dispossessed of their property.

According to World Peace Foundation research director Bridget Conley, the ongoing “Turkish incursion into northern Syria demonstrates clear hallmarks of ethnic cleansing,” adding:

“Turkish government statements indicated an intent to displace the Kurdish population and replace it with Syrian Arabs, and pursued this policy with repression and human rights abuses.”

Displaced Aliya al-Ahmed said “I don’t know how to tell you, but I will try to describe it. It’s like they sent us down the well and cut the rope.”

On November 26, Turkey’s National Security Council said Operation Peace Spring “will continue until it reaches its goals…”

According to Southfront, “(t)he Turkish side seeks to continue its military operation in Syria’s northeast and clear it from the Kurds, most of whom it describes as terrorists or terrorist sympathizers,” adding:

Erdogan aims to resettle “radical” Arabs hostile to Assad in northern Syrian territory controlled by his regime.

He’s playing the Russian and US cards simultaneously to serve his own revanchist interests.

He threatens peace and stability in northern Syria, using a nonexistent Kurdish threat to advance his aims, employing jihadist fighters to pursue them.

Time and again, Erdogan proved he’s an unreliable ally. Damascus has two enemies to deal with — US and Turkish occupation of its territory.

Endless war continues in parts of the country as long as this situation remains unresolved.

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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.

Α letter signed by 60 intellectuals from 15 countries was delivered to Lambeth Palace calling on His Grace, Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, to use his moral influence to end the unjustified imprisonment of Julian Assange in Belmarsh Prison.

Signatories include, among others, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire, Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, film-maker Oliver Stone, human rights defender Francis Boyle, former chair of the Human Rights Committee of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly Dick Marty, the Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis, the popular German Bundestag member Sahra Wagenknecht, the ex-editor of Le Monde Diplomatique Alain Gresh, William R. Polk, descendent of the 11th President of the United States and former President of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs, Manolis Glezos, named by Charles de Gaulle “the first Resistant in Europe”.

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To the Most Reverend Justin Welby,

Archbishop of Canterbury

We the undersigned respectfully call on the moral authorities of the United Kingdom to use their influence to obtain immediately release of Julian Assange, citizen of Australia, from Belmarsh prison where he is being unjustly and cruelly incarcerated.

Julian Assange is not charged with any crime or even misdemeanor in Britain, and has fully served his sentence for his single offense: jumping bail to avoid extradition to the United States via Sweden.  He was not and is not charged for any crime in Sweden.  The sole charges against him originate in the United States, on purely political grounds, aimed at punishing Julian Assange for publication of accurate information provided by informed sources.  This is a regular practice of all mainstream media, which now shamefully fail to speak out in defense of Mr. Assange, even when they published exactly the same information that he did.

It is quite clear that in their current treatment of Julian Assange, the United Kingdom is debasing itself as a mere instrument of political repression exercised by the United States.

Your Grace,

The current imprisonment of Julian Assange is a blot on the nation’s judicial system, a disgrace to British decency.  This scandal may be largely hidden today but will surely emerge in history unless measures are taken immediately by the highest representatives of the British people to correct this major injustice.

We ask you to respectfully transmit this message to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II.

We appeal to your sense of justice and of national honor to uphold the best traditions of British democracy and respect for human rights by calling for the immediate freeing of Julian Assange.

With great concern,

Tariq Ali, author, editor, filmmaker, UK.
Mary Beaudoin, Women Against Military Madness, Minnesota, USA.
Francis Boyle , law professor, Board of Directors, Amnesty International USA (1988-92)
Paolo Borgognone, scholar, author, Italy.
Jean Bricmont, mathematical physicist, author, Belgium.
Peter Brock, mainstream reporter, media critic, journalist, Pulitzer Prize finalist, USA.
Scott Burchill, senior lecturer in International Relations, Deakin University, Australia.
Al Burke, editor, Nordic News Network, Sweden.
Franco Cavalli, former President of the International Union Against Cancer, Geneva.
Noam Chomsky, linguist, author, activist, USA.
Michel Chossudovsky, author, economist, director of Global Research, Canada.
Neil Clark, journalist, broadcaster and author, UK.
Andrew Cockburn, author, Harper’s Magazine editor, Washington DC, USA.
Michel Collon, publisher, director of Investig’Action, Bruxelles.
Francis Combes, poet, publisher, Paris, France.
Sevim Dagdelen, journalist, Member of the German Bundestag.
Manlio Dinucci, journalist, author, Rome, Italy.
Bruno Drweski, historian, France.
Björn Eklund, publisher, Sweden.
Daniel Ellsberg, former military analyst, public discloser of Pentagon Papers, author, USA.
Norman G. Finkelstein, political scientist, author, USA.
Julie Franck, Laboratoire de Psycholinguistique, University of Geneva, Switzerland.
Julio Cesar Gambina, economist, President of the Fundación de Investigaciones Sociales y Políticas, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Manolis Glezos, leading WWII resister, former Member of European Parliament, age 97, Greece.
Alain Gresh, journalist, author, former editor of Le Monde diplomatique, Paris, France.
Katharine Harwood Gün, celebrated British truth revealer (whistleblower).
Chris Hedges, journalist, author, USA.
Diana Johnstone, journalist, author, Paris, France.
John C. Kiriakou, former CIA Officer, whistleblower, USA.
Dimitrios Konstantakopoulos, journalist, writer, expert on East-West relations and arms control, director of DefendDemocracy.press, Greece.
Tamara Kunanayakam, former Ambassador of Sri Lanka to Cuba, to the United Nations Office in Geneva and to the Holy See.
Annie Lacroix-Riz, historian, France.
John Laughland, historian, author, UK.
Joe Lauria, veteran foreign correspondent, Editor-in-Chief of Consortium News, USA.
Annie Machon, former MI5 intelligence agent, truth revealer (whistleblower).
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Northern Ireland.
Cynthia McKinney, Former Congresswoman, activist, author, USA.
Dick Marty, jurist, former Senator and former Chair of the Committee on Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Switzerland.
Albrecht Müller, economist, author, director of NachDenkSeiten website, Germany.
Moritz Müller, journalist, Germany.
Jan Oberg, peace researcher, founder director of The Transnational Foundation (TFF), Sweden.
Jean-Pierre Page, former head of the international department of the French General Confederation of Labor (CGT), France.
Dragan Pavlovic, professor of anesthesiology and intensive care medicine, Serbia.
John Pilger, journalist, author, filmmaker, Australia.
William R. Polk, Professor of History emeritus University of Chicago, former President Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs, USA.
Jesselyn Radack, human rights attorney, USA.
Raúl Roa Kourí, playwright, former Cuban Ambassador to the United Nations and to the Vatican, Cuba.
Paul Craig Roberts, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, USA.
Coleen Rowley, retired FBI agent/division legal counsel; 9-11 whistleblower, USA.
Rick Rozoff, editor, Stop NATO, USA.
Robert Scheer, journalist, commentator, California.
Eugene Schulman, stockbroker, bibliophile, Geneva, Swizerland.
Norman Solomon, director, Roots Action, USA.
George Szamuely, journalist, New York.
Matthew Stevenson, travel writer, Switzerland.
Oliver Stone, filmmaker, USA.
Mikis Theodorakis, composer, Greece.
Jeannie Toschi Marazzani Visconti, journalist, author, Milan, Italy.
Antonio Tujan, IBON Foundation founder, Manilla, Philippines; Chair international Reality of Aid Network.
Sahra Wagenknecht, economist, Member of German Bundestag.
John Walsh, physiologist, essayist, California.
Daniel Warner, independent scholar, Switzerland.

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George H. Walker Bush: The Bush Family and the Mexican Drug Cartel

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, December 01, 2019

Donald Trump has offered to intervene in Mexico “to go after the Drug Cartels” following “the brutal killing of an American family in Mexico”. The Mexican president has turned down Trump’s generous offer.

In a recent interview, President Trump  confirmed that his administration is now considering categorizing the Mexican drug cartels as “terrorist organizations” similar to Al Qaeda.  The unspoken truth: The Mexican Drug Cartels have been protected by US intelligence.

Bolivia Coup, Masterminded in Washington: Post-Coup Update, Rigged Elections?

By Eric Zuesse, December 01, 2019

With every passing day, it becomes clearer that the military coup in Bolivia on November 10th was masterminded in Washington DC. This reality will create yet a new difficulty in relations between the U.S. regime and Mexico to its direct south, because the Mexican Government, under progressive President Lopez Obrador, took the courageous and very meaningful step of providing refuge to the U.S.-couped Bolivian President Evo Morales and therefore posed overtly a resistance to the U.S. dictatorship.

Trump Designating Drug Cartels as Terrorist Organizations Is Aimed Against Mexican President

By Paul Antonopoulos, December 01, 2019

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a patriotic socialist, in his first year of government rejected a war against the powerful narcotic cartels. However, he now faces a dilemma in the face of Washington’s intentions to label the cartels as “terrorist” organizations. Obrador instead of taking the fight to the cartels, had chosen to focus his efforts on implementing his strategy, based on persuasion rather than confrontation, despite the high political cost.

Iraqis Rise Up Against 16 Years of ‘Made in the USA’ Corruption

By Nicolas J. S. Davies, December 01, 2019

As Americans sat down to Thanksgiving dinner, Iraqis were mourning 40 protesters killed by police and soldiers on Thursday in Baghdad, Najaf and Nasiriyah. Nearly 400 protesters have been killed since hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets at the beginning of October. Human rights groups have described the crisis in Iraq as a “bloodbath,” Prime Minister Abdul-Mahdi has announced he will resign, and Sweden has opened an investigation against Iraqi Defense Minister Najah Al-Shammari, who is a Swedish citizen, for crimes against humanity.

The Short Road: Democracy to Fascism

By Larry Romanoff, November 30, 2019

Fascism is a political ideology fundamentally authoritarian in character, with a strong nationalism and an essentially belligerent militaristic outlook. Fascism carries primarily a corporate perspective as opposed to a socialist view, directed to satisfying the needs, values and objectives of finance and corporations, organising both the economy and the political system according to this agenda.

A fascist government actively suppresses any objection to its ideology and typically will crush any movement which opposes it. In keeping with their belligerent nature, fascist governments generally view violence and war as stimulants to national spirit and vitality.

Is The Nuclear “Green”? “CO2- And Climate Neutral”?

By Prof. Claudia von Werlhof, November 30, 2019

On the 28th of November 2019 the European Parliament in Brussels voted in favor of nuclear energy, because it is defined as CO2- and climate-neutral.

This happened when a resolution proposal for the coming UN Climate Conference in Madrid had to be approved (1). The leader of the Green Parties in the EP, Ska Keller, voted in favor, whereas a majority of the Greens did not, because the nuclear question is the most basic one for green politics, historically speaking. It seems however that this is going to change and a division of the green parties over the issue seems to be inevitable.

China’s African Swine Fever (ASF) “Spreading Globally”?

By F. William Engdahl, November 30, 2019

The China Agriculture Ministry issued a report in August that the size of China’s live pig herd had declined by a very precise 38.7% from August 2018. Industry sources suspect underreporting and put the actual number at more like 50%. In any event it is huge, and has impacted the politically sensitive measure of China food price inflation over the past year. Pork is a mainstay of the Chinese diet for meat protein and considered a national security issue. Most pigs in China are raised by small-scale farmers who face ruin now. According to reports inside China this has led many desperate small farmers to try to hide the presence of ASF in their herds, to slaughter and sell, to avoid financial ruin.

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With every passing day, it becomes clearer that the military coup in Bolivia on November 10th was masterminded in Washington DC. This reality will create yet a new difficulty in relations between the U.S. regime and Mexico to its direct south, because the Mexican Government, under progressive President Lopez Obrador, took the courageous and very meaningful step of providing refuge to the U.S.-couped Bolivian President Evo Morales and therefore posed overtly a resistance to the U.S. dictatorship.

Unlike the U.S. itself, which has abandoned the substance of democracy while adhering to its fascist Supreme Court’s interpretations (distortions) of the original intent of the democratic American Founding Fathers in their U.S. Constitution, Bolivia’s imposed regime isn’t even nominally legitimate in any democratic sense – as it has abandoned that country’s Constitution, ever since it grabbed power there.

Bolivian Coup Not a Coup in Corporate Media

One of the first indications that this was another U.S. coup was that on November 10th, the New York Times, which along with the Washington Post is one of the regime’s two main mouthpieces, refused to call it a “coup” at all, though it obviously was.

Headlining on November 10th with the anodyne “Bolivian Leader Evo Morales Steps Down”, the Times lied and alleged that “Mr. Morales was once widely popular” — as if there were any objective measures, such as polls, which indicated that he no longer was. Their concept of ‘democracy’ was like that of fascists everywhere: violent mob actions against a democratically elected Government.

“Angry mobs attacked election buildings around the country, setting some on fire.” Far-right mobs are democracy to “journalists” such as at the New York Times.

The next day, November 11th, that fascist “news”-paper headlined an editorial “Evo Morales Is Gone. Bolivia’s Problems Aren’t.” Here is how they expressed their contempt for democracy:

“When a leader resorts to brazenly abusing the power and institutions put in his care by the electorate, as President Evo Morales did in Bolivia, it is he who sheds his legitimacy, and forcing him out often becomes the only remaining option. That is what the Bolivians have done.”

“Bolivians” — meaning there that extreme-rightist minority of Bolivia’s electorate. The NYT even had the gall to say contemptuously: “Predictably, Mr. Morales’s left-wing allies across Latin America, including President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, President-elect Alberto Fernández of Argentina and President Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba, joined by the British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, cried ‘coup’.”

Britain’s BBC, on November 11th, was considerably more circumspect in their anti-democratic propaganda: for example, in this video, at 13:00, the BBC asks “Why are so many of the people out there on the streets now then do you think [demonstrating against Morales]?” Yet, the respondent didn’t say that this is the way practically every CIA coup is done. So, the desired implication was left with gullible viewers, that this was an expression of democracy instead of the expression of a fascist mob.

Foreign and Alternative Media Report Bolivian Coup Reality

It was left to governments which are resisting U.S. rule to express more honestly the situation in Bolivia, as the Turkish Government’s more honest propaganda-organ, the newspaper Yeni Safak, did finally on November 17th with “Bolivia’s Morales was overthrown by a Western coup just like Iran’s Mosaddeg”.

Their columnist Abdullah Muradoğlu wrote:

“There are indications that the U.S. was involved in the ousting of Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales, in a military coup. Secret talks between American senators and Morales’ opponents were brought up before the elections on Oct. 20. The talks, which were leaked to the public, discussed action plans to destabilize Bolivia if Morales won the elections. It was stated that the Evangelical Church would support the coup attempt. The fact that Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, known as “Tropical Trump”, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are passionate Evangelicals, points to the ideological link to the Evangelical architects of the Bolivian coup.

“Bolivia has abundant resources of tin, copper, silver, gold, tungsten, petroleum and uranium, as well as large quantities of lithium. Lithium is a strategic mine for space technology. Morales became the target of a pro-U.S. military coup, and policies aimed at allocating the country’s resources to the poor rather than a small group played an important role in his demise.”

But it wasn’t only foreign news media but also a very few honest alternative news media outlets which were reporting the realities. For example, on November 11th, The Gray Zone headlined, “Bolivia coup led by Christian fascist paramilitary leader and millionaire – with foreign support”. The next day, on November 12th, Moon of Alabama’s anonymous blogger bannered, “Lessons To Learn From The Coup In Bolivia” and summarized the popular democratically elected and re-elected overthrown leader Evo Morales’s enormously successful record of leadership – during his twelve years in office Evo Morales achieved quite a lot of good things:

• Illiteracy rates: 2006 13.0%, 2018 2.4%
• Unemployment rates: 2006 9.2%, 2018 4.1%
• Moderate poverty rates: 2006 60.6%, 2018 34.6%
• Extreme poverty rates: 2006 38.2%, 2018 15.2%

It’s no wonder, then, that Morales is so popular in Bolivia.

Then, further about the fascist character of the U.S.-imposed regime, Mint Press News headlined on November 18th, “Media Silent as Bolivia’s New Right-Wing Gov’t Massacres Indigenous Protesters”.

On November 19th, Peoples Dispatch bannered, “Hatred of the Indian. By Álvaro García Linera”, and presented a statement by Linera, who was Morales’s Bolivian Vice President. He opened:

“Almost as a nighttime fog, hatred rapidly traverses the neighborhoods of the traditional urban middle-class of Bolivia. Their eyes fill with anger. They do not yell, they spit. They do not raise demands, they impose. Their chants are not of hope of brotherhood. They are of disdain and discrimination against the Indians. They hop on their motorcycles, get into their trucks, gather in their fraternities of private universities, and they go out to hunt the rebellious Indians that dared to take power from them.

“In the case of Santa Cruz, they organize motorized hordes with sticks in hand to punish the Indians, those that they call ‘collas’, who live in peripheral neighborhoods and in the markets. They chant “the collas must be killed,” and if on the way, they come across a woman wearing a pollera [traditional skirt worn by Indigenous and mestizo women] they hit her, threaten her and demand that she leave their territory. In Cochabamba, they organize convoys to impose their racial supremacy in the southern zone, where the underprivileged classes live, and charge – as if it were a were a cavalry contingent – at thousands of defenseless peasant women that march asking for peace. They carry baseball bats, chains, gas grenades. Some carry firearms.”

On November 26th, the Libya 360 blog headlined, “Bolivia: they are killing us, comrades!” and reported:

“We are receiving audios all the time, from different parts of Bolivia: Cochabamba, El Alto, Senkata, La Paz… They bring desperate cries from women, from communities that resist with dignity, under the murderous bullets of the military, police, and fascist groups armed by the oligarchies with the support of Trump, Macri, and Bolsonaro. They also bring voices that denounce, voices that analyze, voices that organize, voices that are in resistance. There are weeping voices that are remade in slogans. The united peoples will never be defeated!

“The racist, fascist, patriarchal, colonial, capitalist coup d’etat seeks to put an end to all these voices, silence them, erase them, make them inaudible. The communicational fence seeks to crush and isolate the words of the people. The conservative, capitalist restoration, goes for lithium, goes for the jungle, goes for bad examples.

“The voices continue to arrive. New spaces of communication are generated. The social and family networks, the community radio stations, the home videos made from cell phones are functioning by the thousands. It is heartbreaking to hear bullets. To see their journey through the flesh, invading the bodies that rise from all humiliations. It generates anger, impotence, indignation, rage.”

On the same day, that same blog bannered, “The People Will Not Allow the Coup in Bolivia, says Venezuelan Ambassador”. This opened:

“One of the first ‘promises’ made by the self-proclaimed, de-facto government of opposition senator Jeanine Áñez was to “hunt down” ex-minister Juan Ramón Quintana, Raúl García Linera – brother of vice-president Álvaro García Linera -, as well as the Cuban and Venezuelan people that live in Bolivia.

“The threat was publicly declared by the interior minister Arturo Murillo, designated by Áñez.

“Later on, the communications minister of the de facto government, Roxana Lizárraga, accused Cuban and Venezuelan diplomats of being responsible for the violence unleashed in the country.

“The statements came after an attack on the Venezuelan diplomatic office in La Paz on November 11. Armed paramilitaries surrounded the embassy with explosives and threatened to invade the building.

“However, the aggression did not begin with the coup. According to Crisbeylee González, who served as the Venezuelan ambassador in Bolivia for more than 10 years, since 2008, the embassy has suffered threats from the organizations in opposition to Evo Morales and Álvaro García Linera.

“During the days of tension, Crisbeylee, who is also a personal friend of Morales, decided to protect her team and she returned to her country.

“On November 17, the Venezuelan diplomatic staff, made up of 13 functionaries and their family members, flew with the Venezuelan state company Conviasa from La Paz to Caracas.

Upon returning to her country, the ambassador spoke to Brasil de Fato and denounced the terror she suffered in the last couple of days:

Brasil de Fato: “How did you all take the news that you would have to leave the country? Was there any hostility before the coup?”

Crisbeylee González: “For a while now, the opposition has talked about a “Chavista bunker” referring to the Venezuelan embassy, where we would supposedly be “ideologically orienting” the Bolivian people’s movements and youth. They even talked about us supposedly exerting pressure on Evo so that he would not abandon the socialist, Bolivarian proposal.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a patriotic socialist, in his first year of government rejected a war against the powerful narcotic cartels. However, he now faces a dilemma in the face of Washington’s intentions to label the cartels as “terrorist” organizations. Obrador instead of taking the fight to the cartels, had chosen to focus his efforts on implementing his strategy, based on persuasion rather than confrontation, despite the high political cost.

On November 26, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he intends to designate international drug cartels as terrorist organizations. This is highly problematic as the decision could give Trump, at least within the U.S. political structure, the legal tools to fight the narcotic cartels within Mexican territory without the Latin American country’s permission. Obrador must now consider the cost of his relations with the U.S., a policy that has been based on mutual respect, despite some differences and México’s increasing relations with China and Russia.

The Mexican president said that he is open to seek concerted action, but stressed that he accepts “cooperation yes, intervention no.” For his part, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard proposed a “national unity diplomacy to defend sovereignty.”

Trump’s announcement was forced by a request from the Mexican-American family LeBarón, the victims of the dreadful slaughter of nine of its family members, three women and six children, on November 4 by a narcotic cartel. The incident occurred after an ambush in a remote mountainous region of the Mexican state of Sonora on the U.S. border where the family had been living for several decades. The leaders of the Mormon fundamentalist family demanded Washington to fight against the narcotic cartels with the same mechanisms used to “justify” the illegal invasions and interventions in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, as these groups kill thousands every year through murder, assassinations and drug deaths.

But the murder of the LeBarón family members is just one of the multiple cases of killings in México during the first year of Obrador’s government, who is attempting to resolve the issue with the cartels through peaceful means. According to official figures, Obrador inherited a country where more than 32,000 were killed or missing.

The cost of this security strategy has been to generate a citizen perception of radicalization of violence that puts it at stake. The actions of the government to strengthen the justice system, create a National Guard integrated with the military, social measures to prevent drug use and deter young people from joining criminal gangs should produce results, but will Trump wait?

Trump has added to this internal pressure as he has essentially asked Obrador to let the U.S clear the area of criminal cartels. However, one should question why he does not focus on drug trafficking within his own country, like that structured and organized by the CIA? The president of the Mexican Senate and member of the movement that brought López Obrador to power, Mónica Fernández, said Trump needs to respect Mexican sovereignty.

“We are not going to participate or tolerate any kind of interference,” she warned.

Foreign Minister Ebrard argued that qualifying the cartels as terrorist groups “lacks sustenance” and would not contribute to solving the violence. However, lobbying with the White House resulted in a “high-level meeting soon.”

The LeBarón family published a letter thanking Trump for his intention to fight drug trafficking and rejected accusations for calling for a “foreign intervention,” something that has brought the wrath of the majority of Mexicans, who accused them of being traitors.

As explained by Japan Times, any hint of U.S. intervention, military or otherwise, is an instant insult to national pride in México, which still resents losing more than half of its territory to the United States in 1848 after the Mexican-American War — just one on a long list of grievances.

“México’s national history is constructed upon the reference point of an expanding, domineering, imposing, imperious United States,” explained Carlos Rodriguez Ulloa of Mexican security think tank CASEDE.

The question then is, why has Trump decided to label the Mexican cartels as a terrorist organization instead of criminal/mafia organization?

Obrador, who completes his first year as president on December 1, has been a leading patriotic socialist figure in Latin America, vehemently defending Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, while opposing the coup in Bolivia. He can be considered a leading figure in the return of the Pink Tide to Latin America that was briefly interrupted by the Blue Tide/Conservative Wave.

Therefore, with outrage in the U.S. against the shocking slaughter of LeBarón family members, Trump has created a justification within the public’s eyes to intervene freely in México under the guise of fighting terrorists. As seen in Syria and Afghanistan, anytime the U.S. “fights against” terrorists, it just exacerbates the violence and instability. As Obrador is a threat to U.S. hegemony in Latin America and is strengthening his country’s ties with Russia and China, he is at great risk of being deposed, just as Evo Morales was recently in Bolivia.

It remains to be seen how the international community will respond to any U.S. intervention in México, but it can be expected that it will receive widespread condemnation, especially from Russia and China who consistently maintain a policy of non-interference, unless with permission from the sovereign government, just as Russia’s intervention in Syria demonstrates. Rather, the cartels designation as a terrorist organization is a means for the U.S. to pressure Obrador against his efforts of bringing sovereignty and independent decision making across Latin America. We can only wait and see how far Trump will escalate the situation in México.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

As Americans sat down to Thanksgiving dinner, Iraqis were mourning 40 protesters killed by police and soldiers on Thursday in Baghdad, Najaf and Nasiriyah. Nearly 400 protesters have been killed since hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets at the beginning of October. Human rights groups have described the crisis in Iraq as a “bloodbath,” Prime Minister Abdul-Mahdi has announced he will resign, and Sweden has opened an investigation against Iraqi Defense Minister Najah Al-Shammari, who is a Swedish citizen, for crimes against humanity.

On November 26, Kurdish rebels from the so-called Afrin Liberation Forces announced that their forces had eliminated 5 Turkish-backed militants and injured 6 others in an attack near Tuweys in northern Aleppo. The killed and injured militants were reportedly belonging to the al-Waqqas Brigade, which is involved in Turkey’s Operation Peace Spring as a part of the Syrian National Army.

On November 27, Kurdish rebels launched at least 6 rockets at the Turkish-occupied town of Azaz. The shelling reportedly hit a prison run by Turkish proxies injuring at least 3 people.

On November 27 and 28, clashes between the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces and Turkish-led forces were ongoing near the village of Abduki in northern Raqqa. According to pro-Kurdish sources, the Syrian National Army advanced on their positions backed up by the Turkish Army. However, the attack was repelled.

Additionally, 2 Turkish soldiers were killed in a mortar attack that targeted their position in the vicinity of the town of Akcakale on the Syrian border, according to the Turkish Defense Ministry.

19 people were killed and 45 others were injured in a car bomb explosion in the Turkish-occupied town of Tell Halaf on November 26. The explosion took place at the town’s main market, which was crowded by civilians and Turkish-backed militants. Turkish sources immediately accused Kurdish armed groups of being behind the attack.

On November 26, unidentified warplanes carried out a series of airstrikes on oil tankers and facilities belonging to Turkish-backed militant groups north and northeast of Al-Bab, and near Jarabulus. On November 27, the Syrian army took responsibility for the attack and announced that it will take measures to put an end to oil smuggling from the eastern bank of the Euphrates to Turkey. Oil looted by US forces at the Syrian oil fields are being smuggled with help of the SDF/YPG leadership to Turkey through northern Aleppo and Iraq’s Kurdistan Region. It is unlikely that Damascus even with help from Iran and Russia will be able to kill this business in the near future. Nonetheless, efforts in this field could create some obstacles for the sides involved.

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According to a report by NewsHub, a so-called “offshoot of the CIA” was involved in engineering the protest movement in Hong Kong. The report which quotes French author Maxime Vivas states that the Washington based National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has been “pulling the strings” since the outbreak of the riots in June:  

…French writer Maxime Vivas said the interference from the US has played an indispensable role in exacerbating the situation in Hong Kong.

In the streets of downtown Hong Kong, a dwindling number of protesters carry on in vain. They hold a city and region hostage in attempts to carry out yet another US-funded and directed “color revolution.” The ruse, however, has been fully exposed with each and every leader of the so-called “Occupy Central” or “Umbrella Movement” being tied to the US State Department’s now familiar network of political subversion. Stalled and unable to materialize the momentum needed to replicate the success of foreign-backed subversion elsewhere, the US is now attempting to disavow any role in fostering the unrest in the first place.

The US NED website now has a page dedicated to disavowing evidence it is behind “Occupy Central.” Titled, “The National Endowment for Democracy and support for democracy in Hong Kong,” NED claims…

What is happening in Hong Kong is not actually a people’s uprising for democracy, but a tool for anti-China rhetoric and “Great Power Conflict.” Many Hong Kong protesters are pro-capitalist and racist in nature, referring to mainland Chinese as locusts, and are calling for the United States to intervene. Many of the same tactics employed by Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, and Ukrainian regime change operations are re-appearing in Hong Kong.

The sad reality about the United States of America is that in a matter of a few hundreds years it managed to rewrite its own history into a mythological fantasy.

The concepts of liberty, freedom and free enterprise in the “land of the free, home of the brave” are a mere spin. The US was founded and became prosperous based on two original sins: firstly, on the mass murder of Native Americans and theft of their land by European colonialists; secondly, on slavery.

This grim reality is far removed from the fairy tale version of a nation that views itself in its collective consciousness as a virtuous universal agent for good and progress. The most recent version of this mythology was expressed by Ronald Reagan when he said that “America is a shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere.”

In rewriting its own history about Thanksgiving, white America tells a Disney-like fairytale about the English pilgrims and their struggle to survive in a new and harsh environment. The pilgrims found help from the friendly and extremely generous Native-American tribe, the Wampanoag Indians, in 1621. Unfortunately for Native Americans, the European settlers’ gratitude was short-lived. By 1637, Massachusetts governor John Winthrop ordered the massacre of thousands of Pequot Indian men, women and children. This event marked the start of a Native-American genocide that would take slightly more than 200 years to complete, and of course to achieve its ultimate goal, which was to take the land from Native Americans and systematically plunder their resources. The genocide begun in 1637 marks the beginning of the conquest of the entire continent until most Native Americans were exterminated, a few were assimilated into white society, and the rest were put in reservations to dwindle and die.

When Christopher Columbus “discovered” the Americas in 1492, on his quest for gold and silver, the Native population, which he erroneously called Indians, numbered an estimated 15 million who lived north of current day Mexico. It was, by all considerations, a thriving civilization. Three hundred and fifty years later, the Native American population north of Mexico would be reduced to fewer than a million. This genocide was brought upon the Natives by systematic mass murder and also by disease, notably smallpox, spread by the European colonists.

Columbus and his successors’ proto-capitalist propensity for greed was foreign to Native Americans. They viewed the land as tribal collective ownership, not as a property that could be owned by individuals. “Columbus and his successors were not coming to an empty wilderness, but into a world which, in some places, was as densely populated as Europe, and where the culture was complex, where human relations were more egalitarian than in Europe, and where the relations between men, women, children and nature were more beautifully worked out than perhaps in any other places in the world.” wrote Howard Zinn in his masterful A People’s History of the United States.

In many ways, the US’ celebration of Thanksgiving is analogous to setting aside a day in Germany to celebrate the Holocaust. Thanksgiving is the American Holocaust. The original crimes of genocide and slavery are not limited to US early history but have found an extension in the policies of modern-day US. The systematic assault on other nations and cultures still goes on under various pretenses or outright lies. United States wars of empire are going on today more than ever before. These wars have left millions of people dead across the world in the course of American history, and they are still fought for the same reasons behind the Native American genocide and slavery: namely, to expand the wealth of the US elite.

Defenders of Thanksgiving will say that whatever the original murky meaning of the holiday, it has become a rare chance to spend time with family and show appreciation for what one has. For most Americans today, however, it is hard to be thankful. As matter of fact, unless you belong to the 2 percent who represent the US ruling class you should not be thankful at all. How can you be appreciative for what you have if you have lost your house to foreclosure, don’t have a job and can’t feed your family? How can you be appreciative if you are a homeless veteran? How can you be appreciative when you are poor or sick in a society without social justice? On this Thanksgiving day, rich celebrities and politicians will make a parody of what should be real charity by feeding countless poor and homeless. This will ease their conscience, at least for a while. Charity, however, should not be a substitute for social justice. Just to ruin some people’s appetites before they attack that golden turkey: keep in mind that today we are celebrating a genocide.

This article was originally published by News Junkie Post.

All images in this article are from the author.

Silêncio de tumba no arco institucional italiano, sempre loquaz sobre o Papa, sobre as palavras proferidas por Francisco, em 24 de Novembro, em Hiroshima e Nagasaki: “O uso da energia atómica para fins de guerra é hoje, mais do que nunca, um crime. É imoral a posse de armas atómicas ”.

Palavras embaraçosas para os nossos expoentes máximos institucionais que, como os anteriores, são responsáveis pelo facto de que a Itália, um país não nuclear, hospede e esteja preparada para usar armas nucleares americanas, violando o Tratado de Não Proliferação ao qual aderiu, que proíbe aos Estados militarmente não nucleares, receber armas nucleares e controlá-las directa ou indirectamente. Responsabilidade ainda mais grave porque a Itália, como membro da NATO, recusou-se a aderir ao Tratado sobre a Proibição de Armas Nucleares, votado pela grande maioria da Assembleia Geral da ONU: que obriga os Estados signatários a não produzir nem possuir armas nucleares, não usá-las ou ameaçar usá-las, não transferi-las ou recebê-las directa ou indirectamente, com o objectivo da sua eliminação total.

EMBARAÇOSA para os governantes, a pergunta que o Papa Francisco faz, de Hiroshima: “Como podemos falar sobre paz enquanto construímos novas e formidáveis armas de guerra?” Em Itália, as bombas nucleares actualmente estimadas, são cerca de 70, todas do modelo B61, mas estão para ser instaladas no território italiano, as novas e mais mortíferas bombas nucleares USA B61-12 (número ainda desconhecido) no lugar das actuais B-61. A B61-12 possui uma ogiva nuclear com quatro opções de potência seleccionável: no momento do lançamento, é escolhida a potência de explosão, dependendo do alvo a  atingir. Ao contrário da B61, lançada na vertical sobre o alvo, a B61-12 é lançada a distância e guiada por um sistema de satélite. Tem, também, a capacidade de penetrar no subsolo, mesmo através de betão armado, explodindo em profundidade para destruir os bunkers dos centros de comando e estruturas subterrâneas, de modo a “decapitar” o país inimigo, num ‘first strike’ nuclear.

IGUALMENTE EMBARAÇOSA é a outra pergunta do Papa: “Como podemos propor a paz se usamos continuamente a intimidação bélica nuclear como recurso  legítimo para a resolução dos conflitos?” A Itália, como membro da NATO, apoiou a decisão de Trump de cancelar o Tratado INF que, assinado em 1987 pelos Presidentes Gorbachev e Reagan, tinha permitido a eliminação de todos os mísseis nucleares de alcance intermédio com base no solo, distribuidos na Europa, incluindo aqueles instalados em Comiso. Os USA estão a desenvolver novos mísseis nucleares de alcance intermédio, tanto de cruzeiro como balísticos (estes capazes de atingir alvos poucos minutos após o lançamento), a serem distribuídos na Europa, certamente também em Itália, contra a Rússia e na Ásia, contra a China. A Rússia advertiu que, se forem disseminados na Europa, apontará os seus mísseis nucleares para os territórios nos quais serão instaladas.

AS POTÊNCIAS NUCLEARES possuem um total de cerca de 15.000 ogivas nucleares. Mais de 90% pertencem aos Estados Unidos e à Rússia: cada um dos dois países possui cerca de 7 mil. Os outros países que possuem ogivas nucleares são: França (300), China (270), Grã-Bretanha (215), Paquistão (120-130), Índia (110-120), Israel (80), Coreia do Norte (10- 20). Cinco outros países – Itália, Alemanha, Bélgica, Holanda e Turquia – têm em conjunto, cerca de 150 ogivas nucleares americanas instaladas nos seus territórios. A corrida armamentista está a ocorrer agora, não em quantidade, mas em qualidade: ou seja, no tipo de plataformas de lançamento e nas capacidades ofensivas das ogivas nucleares.

Um submarino americano da classe Ohio é capaz de lançar, em menos de um minuto, 24 mísseis balísticos Trident armados com 120 a 190 ogivas nucleares, cujo poder explosivo é mais do dobro de todos os explosivos não nucleares, usados na Segunda Guerra Mundial. O novo míssil balístico intercontinental russo, Sarmat, com um alcance de 18.000 km, é capaz de transportar de 10 a 16 ogivas nucleares que, ao reentrar na atmosfera em velocidade hipersónica (mais de 5 vezes a do som), manobram para escapar aos mísseis interceptores.

E quando o Papa Francisco afirma que o uso da energia nuclear para fins de guerra é “um crime não apenas contra o Homem e sua dignidade, mas contra qualquer possibilidade de futuro na nossa casa comum”, que põe em perigo o futuro da Terra, aqui não devem calar-se os que estão empenhados na defesa do meio ambiente: porque a ameaça mais grave para o ambiente da vida no planeta é a guerra nuclear e é prioritário, o objectivo da eliminação completa das armas atómicas.

Falta ver até que ponto o aviso lançado pelo Papa Francisco, a partir de Hiroshima, é recebido na própria Igreja e em geral entre os católicos. Não é a primeira vez que ele lança esse alerta, mas sua voz, para usar uma frase do Evangelho, assemelha-se à de “alguém que grita no deserto”. Neste ponto, surge espontaneamente uma proposta laica: Se falta a consciência, que se revele, ao menos, o instinto de sobrevivência.

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo original em italiano :

Le imbarazzanti parole di Papa Francesco da Hiroshima: «L’atomica immorale e criminale».

il manifesto, 26 de Novembro de 2019

Tradutora : Luisa Vasconcellos

On the 28th of November 2019 the European Parliament in Brussels voted in favor of nuclear energy, because it is defined as CO2- and climate-neutral.

This happened when a resolution proposal for the coming UN Climate Conference in Madrid had to be approved (1). The leader of the Green Parties in the EP, Ska Keller, voted in favor, whereas a majority of the Greens did not, because the nuclear question is the most basic one for green politics, historically speaking. It seems however that this is going to change and a division of the green parties over the issue seems to be inevitable.

This decision was taken on the same day as the declaration about a „European climate emergency“ which was accompanied by another decision about a trillions of € budget for the climate in relation to a „Green New Deal“ and „digitization“ as the major issues of the new European Commission under Ursula von der Leyen who had her very first day as the new President of this Commission in the EP.

What does all this mean? At this point some questions have to be asked:

Since its beginnings in World War II the nuclear question has, first of all, always to do with the military. So, is the military behind the CO2-climate change-theses?

Is the „Green New Deal“ that propagates the change toward a new „green“ civilization globally, related to the interests of the military?

So, are the Green parties who are just now coming to power in Europe and are propagating the same Green New Deal, themselves related to the military, as well?

Do green voters and party members know about these potential relationships?

What is „green“ about that Deal, the military, digitization and nuclear energy?

What does it mean for the credibility of the CO2-thesis that the military joins the chorus of the UN and its IPCC, and at the same time uses its own technologies to manipulate and weaponize the weather, worldwide and for decades, already?

Do the youth movement of Fridays for Future, Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion never mention the military and nuclear weapons, readioactivity, uranium mining and nuclear waste as dangers for the Planet, including its climate, because they are led from above?

If nuclear energy is declared „good for the climate“, what does it mean that in fact it is deadly for living beings, nature and the Planet? That it is destroying the protective ozone layer, for instance?

Will the nuclear industry now have access to the billions of € that are supposed to save the earth from a supposed climate catastrophe?

It is urgent to know the answer to these questions, because it would thoroughly clear up the widespread confusion about the climate, about all things allegedly „green“, and about CO2 which is in fact needed for real green life processes. And we may come up to understand that we are being led by the nose for a reason, and that what is nowadays called „green“ has very little to do with nature and life.

After all, the new „green“ seems to be olive-green!

Prof. Claudia von Werlhof, Planetary Movement for Mother Earth, Austria, Research associate, Centre for Reserch on Globalization (CRG)

Notes

1. Spiegel online, 30.11.2019, Markus Becker: Klima-Resolution im EU-Parlament. Grüne Kernspaltung, Die Achse des Guten, 29.11.2019, Max Roland: „Änderungsantrag 38“: Das EU-Parlament ist für Atomkraft

Europe is concerned about the Lebanese political crisis and its potential spillover consequences in case of a civil confrontation. Even if the European states do not have differing strategic objectives in Lebanon from the US, a civil war will affect Europe directly, as refugees will be flocking from the neighbouring continent. 

Reaching an agreement over a new government to prevent further unrest is proving difficult. Sources in Beirut believe it may take several months to form a new government, as was the case in forming the last government. Some wonder if it might not be better to wait for the results of the US elections before forming a new government. Or perhaps a new government will only emerge after a major security event, like the assassination of the late Prime Minister Rafic Hariri which triggered a political tsunami in the country. All indications on the ground point to the prospect of a civilian confrontation arising from the absence of a robust central government that can take in hand the security of the country. Can Lebanon avoid a civil confrontation?

The closure of the main roads and the “deliberate” incompetence and inaction of the security forces – due to US requests to tolerate the closure of main axes linking Lebanon with the capital – is no longer a surprising behaviour.

The main roads now closed have been carefully selected: closed are the roads linking the south of Lebanon to Beirut and linking Baalbek and the road to Damascus with the capital Beirut. These areas are mainly inhabited and used by Shia. The roads are being blocked mainly in certain sectarian areas controlled by Sunni supporters of the caretaker Sunni Prime Minister Saad Hariri and his Druse ally Walid Joumblat. The closure of other roads in the Christian dominated Dbayeh by the pro-US Christian leader Samir Geagea, leader of the “Lebanese Forces”, and in Tripoli seem to be kind of diversions of attention from the main goal: challenging Hezbollah.

Sources in Beirut believe the objective is to exasperate the Shia who represent the society that protects Hezbollah. The goal is to force the organisation into the streets. Hezbollah is aware of this and is trying to avoid responding to provocations. The closure of these roads is an invitation to Hezbollah to take the situation in hand and direct its weapon against other Lebanese citizens, as indeed happened on the 5^th of May 2008.

In 2008, Druse minister Marwan Hamadé – directed by Walid Joumblat – and pro-US Prime Minister Fouad Siniora asked Hezbollah to cut its fibreoptic private communication system linking all corners of the country. Israel never ceased to monitor the Hezbollah cable that, due to its high-security system and regular control, had managed to neutralise all Israeli tapping devices attached to it by Israeli Special forces during their infiltration to Lebanon for this exact purpose. An effort was made by the Lebanese government in May 2008 to cut the cable to break through Hezbollah’s high-security system, the key to its command and control in time of peace and especially in time of war. This insistent attempt – despite repeated warnings – provoked two days later a demonstration of force by Hezbollah occupying the entire capital in a few hours with no serious victims. Lebanese pro-US armed mercenaries who gathered and hid in Beirut to trigger a civil war on this day, anticipating Hezbollah’s possible reaction, were neutralised in no time despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent on their supposed readiness for war against Hezbollah in the streets of Beirut.

Today, the goal is to see Hezbollah controlling the streets and arming anti-government Syrians and Lebanese. The goal is to take the Lebanon issue to the United Nations. The aim is not to see Hezbollah defeated by the initial clashes; the firepower, training and military organisation of Hezbollah cannot be defeated by enthusiastic mercenaries and locals. Their aim is to deprive Hezbollah of its legitimacy and pay a heavy price for its “unforgivable” victories in Syria and Iraq and its support to the Palestinians and the Yemeni.

Lebanon’s financial problems are not the primary issue. In Congressional testimony, the former US Under Secretary of State and Ambassador to Lebanon, Jeffery Feltman, told the US Congress that “Lebanon’s entire external debt (around $35 billion) is in line with the estimates of what Saudi Arabia is bleeding every year in pursuing a war in Yemen ($25-$40 billion).”

Regional and international financial support to Lebanon will be injected with one purpose: to trigger a civil war in the hope of defeating Hezbollah in the long term. This might also save Israel from a severe political crisis by provoking a war against Lebanon rather than an internal conflict among Israelis, as seems possible after two failed attempts to form a government.

Most Lebanese are aware of the sensitive and critical situation in the country. Most fear a civil war, particularly in view of the behaviour of the Lebanese Army and other security forces who are now standing idle and yet refusing to keep all roads open. These actions by the security forces are greatly contributing to the possibility of an internal conflict.

Sincere protestors with only a domestic agenda have managed to achieve miracles by crossing all sectarian boundaries and carrying one flag: an end to corruption and associated poverty and the return of stolen capital to Lebanon. Protestors are asking the judiciary system to assume its responsibility and for the country to head towards a secular ruling system. But sectarian elements and foreign intervention are managing to divert attention from the real national demands that have been overwhelming the Lebanese since decades.

The foreign intervention is not relying on the justified demands of protestors in its confrontation with Hezbollah. It is relying on sectarian Lebanese who want to contribute to the fall of Hezbollah from the inside. This is not surprising because Lebanon is a platform where the US, EU, and Saudis are strongly present and active against the Axis of Resistance led by Iran. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Hussein Salame warned in his most recent speech that these countries risk “crossing the line”.

Since the “Islamic Revolution” in 1979 Iran has not initiated a military or preventive war on its neighbours, but has limited its action to defending itself and in building its “Axis of Resistance”. Recently, Iran proposed – to no avail – a HOPE (Hormuz Peace Endeavor) to its neighbours, seeking a commitment to the security of the Middle East separately from any US intervention.

Iran defeated the mainstream international community when it helped prevent the fall of the government in Damascus after years of war. It has effectively supported Hezbollah and the Palestinians against Israel, favoured ally of the US; Iran stood next to Iraq and prevented a hostile government reaching power; Iran has also supported the defence of Yemen against Saudi Arabia’s useless and destructive war. Iran’s enemies are numerous and have not given up. They tried but failed to achieve their objectives in 2006 in Lebanon, in 2011 in Syria, in 2014 in Iraq and in 2015 in Yemen. Today a new approach is being implemented to defeat Iran’s allies: the weaponization of domestic unrests, motivated by legitimate anti-corruption demands for reform, at the cost of “incinerating” entire countries, i.e. Lebanon and Iraq.

Protestors have failed to offer a feasible plan themselves and caretaker Prime Minister Hariri is trying to punch above his parliamentary weight by seeking to remove political opponents who control more than half of the parliament. Lebanon has reached a crossroads where an exchange of fire is no longer excluded. The conflict has already claimed lives. Thanks to manipulation, Lebanon seems to be headed towards self-destruction.

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Bolivian President Evo Morales was overthrown in a U.S.-backed military coup d’état earlier this month after Bolivian army generals appeared on television demanding his resignation. As Morales fled to Mexico, the army appointed right-wing Senator Jeanine Añez as his successor. Añez, a Christian conservative who has described Bolivia’s indigenous majority as “satanic”, arrived at the presidential palace holding an oversized Bible, declaring that Christianity was re-entering the government. She immediately announced she would “take all measures necessary” to “pacify” the indigenous resistance to her takeover. 

This included pre-exonerating the country’s notorious security services of all future crimes in their “re-establishment of order,” leading to massacres of dozens of mostly indigenous people.

The New York Times, the United States’ most influential newspaper, immediately applauded the events, its editorial board refusing to use the word “coup” to describe the overthrow, claiming instead that Morales had “resigned,” leaving a “vacuum of power” into which Añez was forced to move. The Times presented the deposed president as an “arrogant” and “increasingly autocratic” populist tyrant “brazenly abusing” power, “stuffing” the Supreme Court with his loyalists, “crushing any institution” standing in his way, and presiding over a “highly fishy” vote.

This, for democratic-minded Bolivians, was “the last straw” and forcing him out “became the only remaining option,” the Times extolled. It expressed relief that the country was now in the hands of “more responsible leaders” and stated emphatically that the whole situation was his fault; “There can be little doubt who was responsible for the chaos: newly resigned president Evo Morales,” the editorial board stated in the first paragraph of one article.

The Times, according to Professor Ian Hudson of the University of Manitoba, co-author of “Gatekeeper: 60 Years of Economics According to the New York Times,” remains America’s most influential news outlet in shaping public opinion.

“Despite the changing media landscape and the financial troubles of old school journalism models – including the New York Times – it remains the agenda setter. Social media often use or respond to Times stories. It is still probably the single most referenced news outlet in the U.S. Other websites, like Yahoo get more hits, but they do not report or create their own stories. The New York Times still ranks as the top investigative and opinion setting news organization” he told MintPress News.

The first draft of history

Newsrooms across America are sent advanced copies of the Times’ front page so they will know what is “important news” and adjust their own coverage accordingly. In this way its influence extends well beyond its nearly 5 million subscribers, its output becoming the first draft of history. Yet, when it comes to U.S. intervention, the Times offers its “consistent support” for American actions around the world, Hudson says, claiming that the latest Bolivia example “very much followed this trend.” Indeed, there has rarely been an effort at regime change that the paper did not fully endorse, including the following six examples.

Iran 1953

In 1953, the CIA engineered a coup against the administration of Mohammad Mossadegh, installing the Shah as an autocrat in his place. Mossadegh, a secular liberal reformer, had angered Western governments by nationalizing Iran’s oil industry, arguing that the country’s resources should be owned by and used to benefit the people of Iran. The Shah presided over decades of terror and human rights abuses, finally being overthrown in the revolution of 1979.

The front page of the New York Times on August 20, 1953. Photo | @OnThisDayNYT

The Times expressed a “deep sense of relief,” many felt that Mossadegh, a “fanatical power-hungry man” and a Kremlin stooge who had “wrecked the economy” in his “bid for dictatorship” had been deposed. The editorial board gave a warning to others who might try to nationalize industries owned by American corporations: “Underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism,” it wrote, two days after Mossadegh’s ouster.

Brazil 1964

Like Mossadegh, Brazilian President Joao Goulart was far from a communist; the center-left reformer who had been in power since 1961 modeled himself after John F. Kennedy. He was overthrown in a U.S.-supported military coup d’état that brought about over twenty years of fascist dictatorship that saw tens of thousands of people arrested and tortured.

Two days after the event, the Times’ editorial board announced, “We do not lament the passing of a leader who had proved so incompetent and so irresponsible.” As with Bolivia, it refused to use the word “coup,” instead claiming that Goulart, who “had almost no supporters,” was deposed in “another peaceful revolution.”

One month later, a report entitled “Brazil relieved by Goulart’s Fall” claimed there was “no outcry or even concern” over the events, but instead a “widespread feeling of deep relief and optimism” in the country. It stated that all of Brazil had “written off” the “extremist” and “far leftist” “regime” and supported the “revolt” against him. In particularly Orwellian fashion, it claimed that the “nation appears to have been yearning” for a “political clean up” of “extremists,” applauding the widespread imprisonment of officials in the Goulart administration on the grounds that they were “communists.”

Chile 1973

The overthrow of the democratically-elected Chilean socialist Salvador Allende in 1973 and his replacement with the fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet is one of the most well-known and infamous events in CIA history. The fallout from Pinochet’s economic mismanagement and reign of terror continues to this day and provides the backdrop for the enormous anti-government protest movement currently engulfing the country.

As soon as Allende was elected, the Times began a campaign to demonize the new leader, claiming that Chile’s “free institutions” likely would not survive the “sharp turn to the left” he was proposing. The day after the coup, when Pinochet’s forces bombed the presidential palace and forced Allende to commit suicide, the Times editorial board blamed the President for his own downfall, just as it did with Morales and with Mossadegh, claiming:

No Chilean party or faction can escape some responsibility…but a heavy share must be assigned to the unfortunate Dr. Allende himself. Even when the dangers of polarization had become unmistakably evident, he persisted in pushing a program of pervasive socialism for which he had no popular mandate.

The front page of the New York Times on September 12, 1973. Photo | @OnThisDayNYT

It also pre-determined that the very obvious involvement of the U.S. government, conducting a campaign of economic war against Chile, in order to “make the economy scream” in the words of President Nixon and Henry Kissinger to the CIA, was non-existent. The board advised that “It is essential that Washington meticulously keep hands off the present crisis…There must be no grounds whatsoever for even a suspicion of outside intervention.”

Venezuela 2002 and 2019

In April 2002, the U.S. government bankrolled and supported a coup attempt against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. In a consistent pattern, the Times editorial board came out to heartily endorse proceedings, again deliberately refraining from using the word coup. Two days after the event it noted:

 With yesterday’s resignation of President Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator. Mr. Chavez, a ruinous demagogue, stepped down after the military intervened and handed power to a respected business leader, Pedro Carmona.”

And like with other coups, the Times immediately treated the idea of U.S. involvement as utterly impossible, adding, “Rightly, his removal was a purely Venezuelan affair.”

What was unique about this event was that the coup was dramatically overturned by hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, who convinced military units loyal to Chavez to retake the presidential palace. Since then, successive U.S. governments have dedicated significant resources to regime change in Venezuela. The Times also applauded self-declared President Juan Guaidó’s attempt to gain power earlier this year, presenting him as a man of the people,claiming he was “cheered on by thousands of supporters in the streets and a growing number of governments, including the United States.”

But as Guaidó’s attempt collapsed under the weight of its own unpopularity, the Timesexpressed its anger that Maduro, a corrupt Russian agent, who pushed Venezuela “to utter ruin,” remained in power. “It would be a great relief for Venezuela to be rid” of Maduro, the editorial board mused, “the sooner the armed forces evict the thieves” the better, it said, disappointed that, for once, it could not celebrate a successful U.S. coup.

Manufacturing consent

Studying the Times’ coverage of U.S.-orchestrated coup attempts, it becomes clear that there is a checklist of talking points it employs time and again to justify events.

1.   Blame all economic and political problems on the government; ignore the effect of any U.S. sanctions.
2.   Constantly present the targeted leader as a tyrannical autocrat crushing dissent, no matter what the reality is.
3.   Insist that the leader is actually a Russian plant controlled by the Kremlin.
4.   Refrain from using the word “coup”. Prefer instead words like “uprising”, “revolt” or “transition”.
5.   Express ridicule at the idea that the U.S. could be involved in the affair.
6.   Depict the new U.S.-backed rulers as democratically-minded and downplay any violence they commit in establishing their rule.
7.   Blame the deposed leaders for their own overthrow.

To be sure, the New York Times is not the only major media outlet guilty of reflexively supporting every U.S. action around the world. The Economist and the Washington Post both came out to support the coup in Bolivia, as they had done before with Venezuela. But the Times’ position as “the paper of record” sets it apart in terms of importance.

This position makes it a crucial weapon in the propaganda war waged on the American people in order to manufacture consent for regime change abroad.

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Alan MacLeod is a MintPress Staff Writer as well as an academic and writer for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. His book, Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting was published in April.

Featured image: Graphic by Claudio Cabrera

November in Ukraine has been marked by the adoption of the so called ‘land reform’, in accordance of the demands made by the IMF amongst other international financial organizations. The reform opens the way for the mass privatization of Ukraine’s agricultural lands. The IMF has been making these demands for many years but assorted Ukrainian presidents have tried to postpone such an unpopular decision. Recent polls show that the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians of all political persuasions are opposed to land privatization, from far-right to far-left.

After an intensive period of deindustrialization, which has taken place in recent years, agricultural land remain the only asset with any value in Ukraine but even so, it may be bought for very little. A remarkable fact is that one of the deputies from the ruling party ‘Servant of the people,’ Nikita Poturayev, while pressing his colleagues at the Parliament to vote for the bill on land reform, claimed [1] that this would be ‘settling scores with maniac V. Lenin’, i.e. the purpose of the bill was to abolish the land nationalization carried out following the October revolution.

Ukraine’s fertile soil up for grabs

It has long been known that Ukraine’s soil is very fertile. Indeed, during WW2 the invading Nazis made a point of appropriating quantities of it; forcing POWs to collect the top soil and load it onto trains en route to Germany. Now these same lands could fall into the hands of international agro-holdings.

Ukrainian political expert Ruslan Bortnik says that the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky and his team came to power under an obligation to sell out the agricultural land of Ukraine to foreign companies. Those who buy these lands, according to Bortnik, will only be thinking about making the quickest possible buck. “Foreign companies are already operating on Ukrainian soil [renting land],” said Bortnik,

“But they are competing with large Ukrainian agricultural holdings. They do not dominate. If the adopted land market model is launched, then only large foreign companies will remain in our market… Let’s be honest – we are not a sovereign country. At least our government is under external control. And this is a part of the obligations of this government. This is the condition under which they came to power. They are paying the debts through privatization.” [2]

Ukrainian farmers who still are landowners, formally at least – they just can’t sell it – are the same people who are unable to pay their gas and electricity bills, especially after the recent raising of energy prices – another IMF demand. Obviously, their financial desperation will mean that many will have to sell their land at a low price, certainly well below the market value. Meanwhile, Ukraine remains the poorest country on the continent of Europe and Ukrainian agricultural land remains the cheapest. Moreover, the lands may be bought up as repaying large loans collected by the Kiev government following the Euromaidan coup in 2014.

This scheme of buying up Ukraine’s land is connected with the ongoing corruption scandal in the US: the one related to Joe Biden and the gas company ‘Burisma’. At the end of November, Ukrainian MPs (non-factional people’s deputy Andrey Derkach; a deputy from the Batkivshchyna Party Aleksey Kucherenko; and a deputy from the ruling Servant of the People party, Aleksandr Dubinsky) revealed it at the press-conference [3].

The point here is that the former Minister of Ecology of Ukraine Nikolay Zlochevsky, an owner of  “Burisma” gas company, in 2014 introduced a number of Western politicians to the board of directors of his company, which helped him to avoid accusations of corruption. Hunter Biden, son of former US Vice President Joe Biden, received monthly large payments for his “consultancy services”. As a result Ukraine’s General prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was investigating the corruption schemes of the company, was forced – under pressure – to resign by Joe Biden, who even boasted about it in the US media.

Ukrainian MPs have now claimed at a press-conference that the money used to bribe the son of the former Vice President of the United States was in fact stolen. “Biden received money, the source of which is not the successful activity of Burisma, brilliant business moves, or recommendations. It is the money of the citizens of Ukraine. It was obtained by criminal means,” said the MP Andrey Derkach. The ultimate goal of all this fraud, in which the Bidens were deeply involved, will be the bankruptcy of Ukraine in 2020-2021, through the formation of a pyramid of public debt.

Laundering scheme to withdraw money from Ukraine

According to Ukrainian deputies, this was a part of a bigger laundering scheme to withdraw money from Ukraine via Latvian banks and the fund ‘Franklin Templeton Investments,’ which is close to the United States Democratic Party. The founder of the foundation, John Templeton Jr.,  was one of the main sponsors of the campaign of former US President Barack Obama.

For the most part, it was in the region of $7.4 billion of stolen Ukraine’s public money, from which only a “small share” was used to bribe Western politicians, like Hunter Biden. The deputies have stressed that, according to the investigation of Ukraine’s general prosecution, the withdrawn and laundered money was then invested back into Ukraine. In particular through the Franklin Templeton Investments, the money was used to buy domestic government bonds (DGB), issued by Kiev at high interest rate.

The principle of this scheme is that with the assistance of American funds, the laundered money was legalised and invested in government bonds at 6-8% in dollars and 15-17% in Ukrainian currency (hryvnia). This is leading to enormous growth in the Ukrainian public debt and eventually the bankruptcy of the country’s economy.

Eventual bankruptcy of the economy

Ukrainian prosecutor Konstantin Kulik recently stated [4] in an interview that Ukraine takes IMF loans to pay out on these debt obligations (DGB). As deputy Aleksandr Dubinsky stressed at the press conference, 40% of the current public budget goes towards the payment of the public debt of Ukraine, including the repayment of DGB at inflated interest rates.

According to him, bankruptcy on the debts could happen by the end of 2020 or 2021.

And this scheme is connected with land privatization, as adopted by Kiev in November in accordance with the IMF demand. “DGBs are a financial instrument by which the state owes all its property when paying off the DGB. And if the land market is opened, the state will have no other valuable property, with the exception of land,” said Dubinsky, demanding the suspension of debt payments to international creditors.

As a result of this unpopular land reform and the widespread violations of labour rights, Ukraine’s trade-unions called a general strike [5] for November 14 and began preparations. For the first time in the history of independent Ukraine, a strike committee was formed at the all-national level. This committee was joined by trade unions, individual entrepreneurs, small businesses, agricultural producers and farmers.

Management fires workers, pays themselves millions in bonuses

On November 14, Ukrainian railroad workers protested [6] in front of the Presidential office in Kiev against the announced plans to fire some 50% of railroad personnel. The workers demanded the railroad management should resign instead. The deputy head of the railroad trade-union, Alexander Mushenok, recently said [7] that currently “only 20 workers are employed where 60 workers are needed.” At the same time the workers claim that the top-level management of the company are paying themselves millions in bonuses. One of the IMF demands requires that the Kiev authorities privatize the railroad system as well. In practice, this means that the few profitable routes will be privatized by western companies, while the majority of non-profitable routes – to poorly developed provinces – will remain state-owned, making the railway transport even less profitable.

The entire course of privatization, as promoted by the IMF, can be summarized by the principle ‘privatization of profits, nationalization of losses.” And the new Kiev government is far too dependent to protest against the imposition of this policy; however, this will effectively mean that this government will lose its credibility and trustworthiness among the people.

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Notes

[1] https://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2019/11/13/7231816/

[2] https://www.politnavigator.net/ehkspert-obyasnil-kakie-inostrancy-kupyat-ukrainskuyu-zemlyu-i-chto-oni-s-nejj-sdelayut.html

[3] https://interfax.com.ua/news/press-conference/625821.html

[4] https://apostrophe.ua/article/politics/2019-11-20/myi-berem-dengi-mvf-dlya-togo-chtobyi-vyiplachivat-dengi-figurantam-obschaka-yanukovicha—prokuror-kulik/29279

[5] https://strana.ua/news/233632-v-ukraine-anonsirovali-zabastovku.html?fbclid=IwAR2wEBfMiIoSbW6dAHi1xE-d77f0CR1ByPXMnx07AksAcgBUjnUz9X_lV_E

[6] http://www.dsnews.ua/society/zheleznodorozhniki-ustroili-miting-pod-ofisom-zelenskogo-14112019112400

[7] https://ukraina.ru/exclusive/20191112/1025632228.html

The worst outbreak of fatal African Swine Fever disease ever has devastated the world’s largest pig population, that of China, over the past months. Now it is spreading to neighboring states and even threatens the United States pig herds. The political and human impact could be far worse than imagined as a de facto pandemic disease situation spreads. Globalization of agribusiness is not helping matters.

On August 3, 2018 a case of African Swine Fever (ASF) was confirmed in China’s Liaoning Province. Since then despite various measures to contain the deadly disease it has spread across China where as of November, 2019 in little more than a year, nearly half of China’s huge pig population has either died or been eliminated in a desperate effort to contain the disease. ASF is not deadly to humans but is 100% fatal to any pig that is infected. There is no known treatment to cure it. It can be spread by direct contact with an infected pig, body fluids, contact with equipment or clothing and via certain tick species.

The China Agriculture Ministry issued a report in August that the size of China’s live pig herd had declined by a very precise 38.7% from August 2018. Industry sources suspect underreporting and put the actual number at more like 50%. In any event it is huge, and has impacted the politically sensitive measure of China food price inflation over the past year. Pork is a mainstay of the Chinese diet for meat protein and considered a national security issue. Most pigs in China are raised by small-scale farmers who face ruin now. According to reports inside China this has led many desperate small farmers to try to hide the presence of ASF in their herds, to slaughter and sell, to avoid financial ruin.

The disease is especially dangerous. According to experts it’s hard to kill. One report notes, “It lives in feces for 11 days and blood for 15 weeks. It lives in salted meat for 182 days, dried meat for almost a year, and frozen meat for three years. The Chinese love to take meat snacks with them when they travel. Rules can be bent in Asia.”

Even more alarming are reports that disposal of infected China pig carcasses is not safe. Rather than treating the infected dead pigs as biohazard and burying them far from the farm site the proper way burning them and treat the site as hazardous waste for a year or more, covering the site with lime, it has been documented that often small farmers bury the pigs next to the barn with no burning. That risks renewed outbreak of the disease.

China had the world’s largest pig population at the beginning of 2018 with a population that was 440 million strong, out of a global population estimated at 769 million pigs. Now it could be down half of that, a major shock to world meat protein supplies.

The speed of the spread of the disease across all China has clearly overtaxed the system there. However despite assurances, the spread has not been contained inside China.

Spreading globally

The ASF disease is spreading outside China as well. The Wall Street Journal noted, “In recent months, customs officials in Japan, Taiwan and Australia have found infected meat in other food products carried by tourists. And the disease has since been confirmed in herds in Vietnam, Mongolia and Cambodia.” The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that all provinces in Vietnam have reported ASF outbreaks and that more than 5,880,000 pigs have been culled since the first case was discovered in February.

According to the FAO, as of November 21 significant African Swine Fever cases among pig populations in The Philippines, Laos and Timor Leste have also been documented. And wild boars carrying the disease have been detected at the border region in Russia with Mongolia. In several instances ASF virus gene was detected in pork products confiscated at Incheon Airport in Seoul South Korea brought by passengers from Shenyang City, China, an indication of how difficult containment is.

Isolated cases have also been detected in EU countries including Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary which are acting swiftly to contain spread. It has also been documented in Moldavia, Belarus and Ukraine. Most recently, cases of the ASF have been detected in Poland not far from the German border. In early November African Swine Fever was found in 20 wild boar in Poland’s western Lubusz province near the Oder River, some 80 kilometers east of Germany, the European Union’s biggest hog producer.

An alarming case was discovered over several weeks in March of a Chinese ship container at a port in Newark, New Jersey where Federal agents seized 1 million pounds of pork smuggled from China, the largest-ever U.S. seizure of agricultural products. The pork was hidden in containers of ramen noodles and laundry detergent. Authorities took it to determine if it was contaminated with ASF.

There are many unanswered questions at this point about African Swine Fever pandemic spread. What is clear is that this is far more dangerous than we have so far been led to believe. In October, according to a new report by Henry Kamens, seven dead wild boar washed ashore in Denmark, a major pig producer country, and were disposed of without even being tested for ASF.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”  He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

Silenzio di tomba nell’arco istituzionale italiano, sempre loquace sul papa, sulle parole pronunciate da Francesco il 24 novembre a Hiroshima e a Nagasaki: «L’uso dell’energia atomica per fini di guerra è, oggi più che mai, un crimine. È immorale il possesso delle armi atomiche».

Parole imbarazzanti per i nostri massimi esponenti istituzionali che, come i precedenti, sono responsabili del fatto che l’Italia, paese non-nucleare, invece ospiti e sia preparata a usare atomiche statunitensi, violando il Trattato di non-proliferazione a cui ha aderito, che proibisce agli Stati militarmente non-nucleari di ricevere armi nucleari e di averne il controllo direttamente o indirettamente. Responsabilità ancora più grave perché l’Italia, come membro Nato, si è rifiutata di aderire al Trattato sulla proibizione delle armi nucleari votato a grande maggioranza dall’Assemblea generale dell’Onu: che impegna gli Stati firmatari a non produrre né possedere atomiche, a non usarle né a minacciare di usarle, a non trasferirle né a riceverle direttamente o indirettamente, con l’obiettivo della loro totale eliminazione.

IMBARAZZANTE per i governanti la domanda che papa Francesco fa da Hiroshima: «Come possiamo parlare di pace mentre costruiamo nuove e formidabili armi di guerra?». In Italia le bombe nucleari attualmente stimate sono in circa 70, tutte del modello B61, ma stanno per essere schierate sul territorio italiano le nuove e più micidiali bombe nucleari Usa B61-12 ( in numero ancora sconosciuto) al posto delle attuali B-61. La B61-12 ha una testata nucleare con quattro opzioni di potenza selezionabili: al momento del lancio, viene scelta la potenza dell’esplosione a seconda dell’obiettivo da colpire. A differenza della B61 sganciata in verticale sull’obiettivo, la B61-12 viene lanciata a distanza e guidata da un sistema satellitare. Ha inoltre la capacità di penetrare nel sottosuolo, anche attraverso il cemento armato, esplodendo in profondità per distruggere i bunker dei centri di comando e strutture sotterranee, così da «decapitare» il paese nemico in un first strike nucleare.

ALTRETTANTO imbarazzante è l’altra domanda del papa: «Come possiamo proporre la pace se usiamo continuamente l’intimidazione bellica nucleare come ricorso legittimo per la risoluzione dei conflitti?». L’Italia, quale membro della Nato, ha avallato la decisione di Trump di cancellare il Trattato Inf che, firmato nel 1987 dai presidenti Gorbaciov e Reagan, aveva permesso di eliminare tutti i missili nucleari a gittata intermedia con base a terra schierati in Europa, compresi quelli installati a Comiso. Gli Usa mettono a punto nuovi missili nucleari a raggio intermedio con base a terra, sia da crociera che balistici (questi capaci di colpire gli obiettivi in pochi minuti dal lancio), da schierare in Europa, di certo anche in Italia, contro la Russia e in Asia contro la Cina. La Russia ha avvertito che, se verranno schierati in Europa, punterà i suoi missili nucleari sui territori in cui saranno installati.

LE POTENZE nucleari posseggono complessivamente circa 15.000 testate nucleari. Oltre il 90% ri appartiene a Stati Uniti e Russia: ciascuno dei due paesi ne possiede circa 7 mila. Gli altri paesi in possesso di testate nucleari sono Francia (300), Cina (270), Gran Bretagna (215), Pakistan (120-130), India (110-120), Israele (80), Corea del Nord (10-20). Altri cinque paesi – Italia, Germania Belgio, Olanda e Turchia – hanno insieme circa 150 testate nucleari statunitensi dispiegate sul proprio territorio. La corsa agli armamenti si svolge ormai però non sulla quantità ma sulla qualità: ossia sul tipo di piattaforme di lancio e sulle capacità offensive delle testate nucleari.

E QUANDO papa Francesco afferma che l’uso dell’energia nucleare per fini di guerra è «un crimine non solo contro l’uomo e la sua dignità, ma contro ogni possibilità di futuro nella nostra casa comune», che mette in pericolo il futuro della Terra, ecco che non dovrebbe tacere chi è impegnato nella difesa dell’ambiente: perché la più grave minaccia per l’ambiente di vita sul pianeta è la guerra nucleare, ed è prioritario l’obiettivo della completa eliminazione delle atomiche.

Sarà ora recepito l’avvertimento di papa Francesco nella Chiesa e tra i cattolici – che in Giappone sono in prima fila contro ogni riarmo e riforma della Costituzione di pace? 

Manlio Dinucci

il manifesto, 26 novembre 2019

Lorenzo Guerini (Pd), ministro della Difesa del governo Conte II, ha comunicato alle commissioni parlamentari il passaggio alla fase 2 del programma di acquisto degli F-35 della statunitense Lockheed Martin. Passaggio preparato dal governo Conte I: il vicepremier Salvini (Lega) sottolineava lo scorso marzo che «ogni ipotesi di rallentamento o ravvedimento del programma di acquisto degli F-35 sarebbe un danno per l’economia italiana»; il sottosegretario agli Esteri Di Stefano (M5S) richiedeva una «revisione profonda degli accordi» ma aggiungeva che, «se abbiamo delle commesse da pagare, certamente non passeremo alla storia per aver tradito un accordo fatto con aziende private: c’è un’intera filiera che va rispettata». Lo scorso maggio il governo Conte I autorizzava «la realizzazione e la consegna di 28 caccia F-35 entro il 2022 (i velivoli sinora consegnati sono 13), i cui contratti sono stati completamente finanziati», ovviamente con denaro pubblico.

Lo scorso ottobre, nei colloqui riservati col governo Conte II a Roma, il segretario di stato Usa Mike Pompeo richiedeva all’Italia di sbloccare l’ordine per un ulteriore acquisto. Subito il ministro della Difesa Guerini lo assicurava, in una intervista al Corriere della Sera,  che  «l’Italia è un paese affidabile e credibile rispetto agli impegni internazionali: contribuire al programma F-35 è un segno tangibile della nostra affidabilità». Pochi giorni dopo, nella conferenza stampa a Washington col presidente Mattarella, il presidente Trump annunciava esultante: «L’Italia ha appena acquistato 90 nuovissimi F-35. Il programma va molto bene».

L’Italia conferma quindi l’impegno ad acquistarne 90, con una spesa prevista in circa 14 miliardi di euro. Ad essa  si aggiunge quella inquantificabile per il continuo aggiornamento del software del caccia. L’Italia non è solo acquirente ma fabbricante dell’F-35, quale partner di secondo livello. La Leonardo – la maggiore industria militare italiana, di cui il Ministero dell’economia e delle finanze è il principale azionista con circa il 30% – è fortemente integrata nel complesso militare-industriale Usa. E’ stata per questo scelta per gestire lo stabilimento Faco di Cameri (Piemonte), da cui escono i caccia destinati all’Italia e all’Olanda. La Leonardo produce anche le ali complete per aerei assemblati negli Usa, utilizzando materiali prodotti negli stabilimenti di Foggia (Puglia), Nola (Campania) e Venegono (Lombardia).

L’occupazione alla Faco è di circa un migliaio, di cui molti precari, appena un sesto di quella preventivata. Le spese per la realizzazione dello stabilimento Faco e l’acquisto dei caccia sono superiori all’importo dei contratti stipulati da aziende italiane per la produzione dell’F-35. Dal punto di vista economico, contrariamente a quanto sostiene il governo, la partecipazione al programma dell’F-35 è fallimentare per le casse pubbliche.

Il ministro Guerini ha avviato la fase 2 del programma sugli F-35 «senza una valutazione di merito e in assenza di un’informativa, in contrasto con le indicazioni del Parlamento», denuncia il deputato di LeU Palazzotto, chiedendo che il ministro spieghi «su che basi ha autonomamente assunto questa decisione». Nella sua «spiegazione» il ministro non dirà mai la vera ragione per cui ha assunto tale decisione, non autonomamente ma su mandato dell’establishment italiano.

La partecipazione al programma dell’F-35 rinsalda l’ancoraggio politico e strategico dell’Italia agli Stati uniti, integrando ancor più il complesso militare industriale italiano nel gigantesco complesso militare-industriale Usa. La decisione di partecipare al programma è quindi una scelta politica, fatta su base bipartisan. Lo conferma il fatto che la Lega, avversaria del Pd, plaude al ministro Pd: «Prendiamo atto con soddisfazione che sugli F-35 il ministro Guerini ha annunciato l’avvio della fase 2», dichiarano unanimi i parlamentari leghisti. Le maggiori forze politiche, in contrasto l’una con l’altra, si ricompattano al seguito degli Stati uniti, «l’alleato privilegiato» che tra poco schiererà in Italia, insieme agli F-35, le nuove bombe nucleari B61-12 progettate in particolare per questi caccia di quinta generazione.

Manlio Dinucci

First published in December 2017

Financial expert and investment advisor Catherine Austin Fitts says the U.S. Government runs on massive criminal activity. Fitts explains,

“The U.S. economy is deeply dependent on criminal cash flows.  We’re the global leader in money laundering.  If we stopped doing that, the economy would be in for a major, major change. . . . The preference for most Americans is to keep that system going as long as it works for them.  So, it you are a public official, you are between a rock and a hard place.  If you press the red button and stop the illegal cash flows, then all hell breaks loose. . . . The U.S. Government has been run as a criminal enterprise, and I have documented and proved that on multiple occasions.  The swamp that exists in Washington is from sea to shining sea.  It’s not just in Washington.  It’s in every county and every state house in the country.  If we are going to change and clean ourselves of enormous financial dependencies on criminal activities, we are talking about a very big change, and it’s not just in Washington.”

So, in the big picture, where are we now?

Why are so many top people in politics and Hollywood being taken down?

Fitts says,

“These people are expensive.  This is a fundamental re-engineering. . . . We are watching purges, but these purges are knocking out the expensive people, people we no longer need from the financial coup d’état period, and you are bringing in a new wave of people or you are just downsizing.  So, we see sex purges in Hollywood and in various forms of media and entertainment. . . . You have various purges going on because the reality is the world needs to move on.  This money needs to be reinvested, and you can’t afford a bunch of egotistical maniacs who were good at stealing money.  You can’t use them to build the future, and you can’t afford them. . . . There is a huge amount of money that is floating around in fixed income and derivative markets, and now you’ve got to bring it down into the hard economy and hard assets.  How do you do that?  You need to switch the caliber of the people for management and reinvestment of the money.  You have to do it in a way that doesn’t kick off hyperinflation.”

So, what are the rich doing with their money?   Fitts says,

“Gold is what it has always been and that is a real store of value.  I am a gold girl.  If you look at the smart money and central banks around the world . . . the smart money is buying gold, and the smart money is buying land.  If you read the land report, that’s the top holders of land in the United States.  Their holdings have doubled since 2008.  I see tremendous amounts of money moving into hard assets.”

Catherine Austin Fitts, who was also an Assistant Housing Secretary in the first Bush Administration, talks about the Mueller/Trump investigation that she says is twisting in the wind and also the gun control and why Americans need firearms now more than ever. Fitts also says a large market correction will probably happen in 2018.

Complete Interview of Catherine Austin Fitts by Greg Hunter

First published on February 5, 2019

As the US strives to overthrow the democratic and independent Venezuelan government, the historical record regarding the short, middle and long-term consequences are mixed.

We will proceed to examine the consequences and impact of US intervention in Venezuela over the past half century.

We will then turn to examine the success and failure of US ‘regime changes’ throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

Venezuela: Results and Perspectives 1950-2019

During the post WWII decade, the US, working through the CIA and the Pentagon, brought to power authoritarian client regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, Peru, Chile, Guatemala, Brazil and several other countries.

In the case of Venezuela, the US backed a near decade long military dictatorship (Perez Jimenez ) roughly between 1951-58. The dictatorship was overthrown in 1958 and replaced by a left-center coalition during a brief interim period. Subsequently, the US reshuffled its policy, and embraced and promoted center-right regimes led by social and christian democrats which alternated rule for nearly forty years.

In the 1990’s US client regimes riddled with corruption and facing a deepening socio-economic crises were voted out of power and replaced by the independent, anti-imperialist government led by President Chavez.

Image on the right: Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in 2005 (Source: Public Domain)

The free and democratic election of President Chavez withstood and defeated several US led ‘regime changes’ over the following two decades.

Following the election of President Maduro, under US direction,Washington mounted the political machinery for a new regime change. Washington launched, in full throttle, a coup by the winter of 2019.

The record of US intervention in Venezuela is mixed: a middle term military coup lasted less than a decade; US directed electoral regimes were in power for forty years; its replacement by an elected anti-imperialist populist government has been in power for nearly 20 years. A virulent US directed coup is underfoot today.

The Venezuela experience with ‘regime change’ speaks to US capacity to consummate long-term control if it can reshuffle its power base from a military dictatorship into an electoral regime, financed through the pillage of oil, backed by a reliable military and ‘legitimated’ by alternating client political parties which accept submission to Washington.

US client regimes are ruled by oligarchic elites, with little entrepreneurial capacity, living off of state rents (oil revenues).

Tied closely to the US, the ruling elites are unable to secure popular loyalty. Client regimes depend on the military strength of the Pentagon — but that is also their weakness.

Regime Change in Regional-Historical Perspective

Puppet-building is an essential strategic goal of the US imperial state.

The results vary over time depending on the capacity of independent governments to succeed in nation-building.

US long-term puppet-building has been most successful in small nations with vulnerable economies.

Image below: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, the advocate of the 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état that installed the right-wing dictatorship (Source: Public Domain)

The US directed coup in Guatemala has lasted over sixty-years – from 1954 -2019. Major popular indigenous insurgencies have been repressed via US military advisers and aid.

Similar successful US puppet-building has occurred in Panama, Grenada, Dominican Republic and Haiti. Being small and poor and having weak military forces, the US is willing to directly invade and occupy the countries quickly and at small cost in military lives and economic costs.

In the above countries Washington succeeded in imposing and maintaining puppet regimes for prolonged periods of time.

The US has directed military coups over the past half century with contradictory results.

In the case of Honduras, the Pentagon was able to overturn a progressive liberal democratic government of very short duration. The Honduran army was under US direction, and elected President Manual Zelaya depended on an unarmed electoral popular majority.Following the successful coup the Honduran puppet-regime remained under US rule for the next decade and likely beyond.

Chile has been under US tutelage for the better part of the 20th century with a brief respite during a Popular Front government between 1937-41 and a democratc socialist government between 1970-73. The US military directed coup in 1973 imposed the Pinochet dictatorship which lasted for seventeen years. It was followed by an electoral regime which continued the Pinochet-US neo-liberal agenda, including the reversal of all the popular national and social reforms. In a word, Chile remained within the US political orbit for the better part of a half-century.

Chile’s democratic-socialist regime (1970-73) never armed its people nor established overseas economic linkage to sustain an independent foreign policy.

It is not surprising that in recent times Chile followed US commands calling for the overthrow of Venezuela’s President Maduro.

Contradictory Puppet-Building

Several US coups were reversed, for the longer or shorter duration.

The classical case of a successful defeat of a client regime is Cuba which overthrew a ten-year old US client, the Batista dictatorship, and proceeded to successfully resist a CIA directed invasion and economic blockade for the better part of a half century (up to the present day).

Cuba’s defeat of puppet restorationist policy was a result of the Castro leadership’s decision to arm the people, expropriate and take control of hostile US and multinational corporations and establish strategic overseas allies – USSR , China and more recently Venezuela.

In contrast, a US military backed military coup in Brazil (1964) endured for over two decades, before electoral politics were partially restored under elite leadership.

Twenty years of failed neo-liberal economic policies led to the election of the social reformist Workers Party (WP) which proceeded to implement extensive anti-poverty programs within the context of neo-liberal policies.

After a decade and a half of social reforms and a relatively independent foreign policy, the WP succumbed to a downturn of the commodity dependent economy and a hostile state (namely judiciary and military) and was replaced by a pair of far-right US client regimes which functioned under Wall Street and Pentagon direction.

The US frequently intervened in Bolivia, backing military coups and client regimes against short-term national populist regimes (1954, 1970 and 2001).

In 2005 a popular uprising led to free elections and the election of Evo Morales, the leader of the coca farmers movements. Between 2005 – 2019 (the present period) President Morales led a moderate left-of-center anti imperialist government.

Unsuccessful efforts by the US to overthrow the Morales government were a result of several factors: Morales organized and mobilized a coalition of peasants and workers (especially miners and coca farmers). He secured the loyalty of the military, expelled US Trojan Horse “aid agencies’ and extended control over oil and gas and promoted ties with agro business.

The combination of an independent foreign policy, a mixed economy , high growth and moderate reforms neutralized US puppet-building.

Not so the case in Argentina. Following a bloody coup (1976) in which the US backed military murdered 30,000 citizens, the military was defeated by the British army in the Malvinas war and withdrew after seven years in power.

The post military puppet regime ruled and plundered for a decade before collapsing in 2001. They were overthrown by a popular insurrection. However, the radical left lacking cohesion was replaced by center-left (Kirchner-Fernandez) regimes which ruled for the better part of a decade (2003 – 15).

The progressive social welfare – neo-liberal regimes entered in crises and were ousted by a US backed puppet regime (Macri) in 2015 which proceeded to reverse reforms, privatize the economy and subordinate the state to US bankers and speculators.

After two years in power, the puppet regime faltered, the economy spiraled downward and another cycle of repression and mass protest emerged. The US puppet regime’s rule is tenuous, the populace fills the streets, while the Pentagon sharpens its knives and prepares puppets to replace their current client regime.

Conclusion

The US has not succeeded in consolidating regime changes among the large countries with mass organizations and military supporters.

Washington has succeeded in overthrowing popular – national regimes in Brazil, and Argentina. However, over time puppet regimes have been reversed.

While the US resorts to largely a single ‘track’ (military coups and invasions) in overwhelming smaller and more vulnerable popular governments, it relies on ‘multiple tracks’ strategy with regard to large and more formidable countries.

In the former cases, usually a call to the military or the dispatch of the marines is enough to snuff an electoral democracy.

In the latter case, the US relies on a multi-proxy strategy which includes a mass media blitz, labeling democrats as dictatorships, extremists, corrupt, security threats, etc.

As the tension mounts, regional client and European states are organized to back the local puppets.

Phony “Presidents” are crowned by the US President whose index finger counters the vote of millions of voters. Street demonstrations and violence paid and organized by the CIA destabilize the economy; business elites boycott and paralyze production and distribution… Millions are spent in bribing judges and military officials.

If the regime change can be accomplished by local military satraps, the US refrains from direct military intervention.

Regime changes among larger and wealthier countries have between one or two decades duration. However, the switch to an electoral puppet regime may consolidate imperial power over a longer period – as was the case of Chile.

Where there is powerful popular support for a democratic regime, the US will provide the ideological and military support for a large-scale massacre, as was the case in Argentina.

The coming showdown in Venezuela will be a case of a bloody regime change as the US will have to murder hundreds of thousands to destroy the millions who have life-long and deep commitments to their social gains , their loyalty to the nation and their dignity.

In contrast the bourgeoisie, and their followers among political traitors, will seek revenge and resort to the vilest forms of violence in order to strip the poor of their social advances and their memories of freedom and dignity.

It is no wonder that the Venezuela masses are girding for a prolonged and decisive struggle: everything can be won or lost in this final confrontation with the Empire and its puppets.

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Award winning author Prof. James Petras is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image is from Images.com/Corbis

The Trump administration has pledged to continue economic sanctions against Venezuela in its ongoing bid to oust the Maduro government.

Speaking at a press conference at the State Department Wednesday, Special Envoy for Venezuela Elliott Abrams defended US regime change policy, which he said would “continue.”

“There’s no change… What is next is, I would say, a continuation of the current policy,” he said in response to questions about the status of US efforts more than ten months after recognizing opposition politician Juan Guaido as “interim president” of Venezuela.

Guaido proclaimed himself head of state in January and has gone on to lead several unsuccessful efforts to topple Maduro, including a failed military putsch in April.

Trump immediately backed Guaido’s “interim presidency,” handing the Venezuela file to Abrams, a veteran cold warrior infamous for his role in the Iran/Contra scandal, the Reagan administration’s Central America policy, and the Iraq War.

Asked about the efficacy of US sanctions, Abrams assured reporters that the measures are cutting off vital funds for the Venezuelan government. However, he acknowledged that he “would like to see, obviously, the sanctions work better,” adding that “there are plans to reinforce the effort.” He did not offer further details.

“The gravy train days that they had 10 years ago are over,” he announced, referring to the period when Venezuela had the highest minimum wage in Latin America and among the lowest levels of inequality.

Abrams went on to deny that US sanctions are negatively impacting Venezuela’s economy, citing a paper authored by former Guaido Inter-American Development Bank envoy Ricardo Hausmann claiming, “the bulk of the deterioration of living standards occurred long before sanctions were enacted in 2017.” Hausmann was a key architect of neoliberal policies in Venezuela in the 1980s and 1990s and has been a longtime government opponent.

The conclusions of Hausmann’s study have been disputed by the DC-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, which published its own report in April finding sanctions responsible for at least 40,000 deaths since 2017. The study likewise claims that sanctions amount to “collective punishment,” blocking any possibility of economic recovery in the Caribbean nation.

Washington has dramatically ramped up its sanctions regime since January, imposing an oil embargo which has since been escalated to a sweeping banon dealings with Caracas under threat of secondary sanctions.

Abrams likewise rebuffed reporters’ concerns about Guaido’s “lack of momentum,” suggesting that “hundreds of thousands… went to the streets on November 16.” The claim was scrutinized by journalists who pointed out that viral video footage purported to be from the protests was in fact taken in January.

Questioned repeatedly about allegations of the Maduro government “intervening” in regional protests, the White House envoy accused Caracas and Havana of acting to “promote more strife everywhere.”

“There is evidence beginning to build of an effort by the regimes in Cuba and Venezuela to exacerbate problems in South America,” he added.

In recent weeks, the region has been rocked by massive anti-neoliberal protests that have shaken right-wing governments in Ecuador, Haiti, Chile, and Colombia. Government spokespeople have frequently attributed the uprisings to “meddling” by Caracas, while the Organization of American States has branded them a “destabilization strategy” by the “Bolivarian and Cuban dictatorships.”

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The disgusting burning of a Quran in Norway last week was a rabidly Islamophobic act of hatred that highlighted one of the West’s two liberalism problems, with the first being that the aforementioned stunt is supposedly protected by the principle of “free speech” while the other is that many Western governments are reluctant to encourage the assimilation and integration of civilizationally dissimilar (and largely illegal) immigrants, which partially contributed to radicalizing some already extremist-inclined domestic political forces.

I set out at dawn. Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh is in the flat hinterland of south east London, a ribbon of walls and wire with no horizon. At what is called the visitors centre, I surrendered my passport, wallet, credit cards, medical cards, money, phone, keys, comb, pen, paper.

I need two pairs of glasses. I had to choose which pair stayed behind. I left my reading glasses. From here on, I couldn’t read, just as Julian couldn’t read for the first few weeks of his incarceration. His glasses were sent to him, but inexplicably took months to arrive.

There are large TV screens in the visitors centre. The TV is always on, it seems, and the volume turned up. Game shows, commercials for cars and pizzas and funeral packages, even TED talks, they seem perfect for a prison: like visual valium.

I joined a queue of sad, anxious people, mostly poor women and children, and grandmothers. At the first desk, I was fingerprinted, if that is still the word for biometric testing.

“Both hands, press down!” I was told. A file on me appeared on the screen.

I could now cross to the main gate, which is set in the walls of the prison. The last time I was at Belmarsh to see Julian, it was raining hard. My umbrella wasn’t allowed beyond the visitors centre. I had the choice of getting drenched, or running like hell. Grandmothers have the same choice.

At the second desk, an official behind the wire, said, “What’s that?”

“My watch,” I replied guiltily.

“Take it back,” she said. 

So I ran back through the rain, returning just in time to be biometrically tested again. This was followed by a full body scan and a full body search. Soles of feet; mouth open.

At each stop, our silent, obedient group shuffled into what is known as a sealed space, squeezed behind a yellow line. Pity the claustrophobic; one woman squeezed her eyes shut.

We were then ordered into another holding area, again with iron doors shutting loudly in front of us and behind us.

“Stand behind the yellow line!” said a disembodied voice.

Another electronic door slid partly open; we hesitated wisely. It shuddered and shut and opened again. Another holding area, another desk, another chorus of, “Show your finger!”

Then we were in a long room with squares on the floor where we were told to stand, one at a time. Two men with sniffer dogs arrived and worked us, front and back.

The dogs sniffed our arses and slobbered on my hand. Then more doors opened, with a new order to “hold out your wrist!” 

A laser branding was our ticket into a large room, where the prisoners sat waiting in silence, opposite empty chairs. On the far side of the room was Julian, wearing a yellow arm band over his prison clothes.

As a remand prisoner he is entitled to wear his own clothes, but when the thugs dragged him out of the Ecuadorean embassy last April, they prevented him bringing a small bag of belongings. His clothes would follow, they said, but like his reading glasses, they were mysteriously lost.

For 22 hours a day, Julian is confined in “healthcare”. It’s not really a prison hospital, but a place where he can be isolated, medicated and spied on. They spy on him every 30 minutes: eyes through the door. They would call this “suicide watch”.

In the adjoining cells are convicted murderers, and further along is a mentally ill man who screams through the night. “This is my One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” he said. “Therapy” is an occasional game of Monopoly. His one assured social gathering is the weekly service in the chapel. The priest, a kind man, has become a friend. The other day, a prisoner was attacked in the chapel; a fist smashed his head from behind while hymns were being sung.

When we greet each other, I can feel his ribs. His arm has no muscle. He has lost perhaps 10 to 15 kilos since April. When I first saw him here in May, what was most shocking was how much older he looked.

“I think I’m going out of my mind,” he said then.

I said to him, “No you’re not. Look how you frighten them, how powerful you are.” Julian’s intellect, resilience and wicked sense of humor – all unknown to the low life who defame him — are, I believe, protecting him.  He is wounded badly, but he is not going out of his mind.

We chat with his hand over his mouth so as not to be overheard. There are cameras above us. In the Ecuadorean embassy, we used to chat by writing notes to each other and shielding them from the cameras above us. Wherever Big Brother is, he is clearly frightened.

On the walls are happy-clappy slogans exhorting the prisoners to “keep on keeping on” and “be happy, be hopeful and laugh often”.

The only exercise he has is on a small bitumen patch, overlooked by high walls with more happy-clappy advice to enjoy ‘the blades of grass beneath your feet’. There is no grass.

He is still denied a laptop and software with which to prepare his case against extradition. He still cannot call his American lawyer, or his family in Australia.

The incessant pettiness of Belmarsh sticks to you like sweat. If you lean too close to the prisoner, a guard tells you to sit back. If you take the lid off your coffee cup, a guard orders you to replace it. You are allowed to bring in £10 to spend at a small café run by volunteers. “I’d like something healthy,” said Julian, who devoured a sandwich.

Across the room, a prisoner and a woman visiting him were having a row: what might be called a ‘domestic’. A guard intervened and the prisoner told him to “fuck off”.

This was the signal for a posse of guards, mostly large, overweight men and women eager to pounce on him and hold him to the floor, then frog march him out.  A sense of violent satisfaction hung in the stale air.

Now the guards shouted at the rest of us that it was time to go. With the women and children and grandmothers, I began the long journey through the maze of sealed areas and yellow lines and biometric stops to the main gate. As I left the visitor’s room, I looked back, as I always do. Julian sat alone, his fist clenched and held high.

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John Pilger is an Australian-British journalist and filmmaker based in London. Pilger’s Web site is: www.johnpilger.com. In 2017, the British Library announced a John Pilger Archive of all his written and filmed work. The British Film Institute includes his 1979 film, “Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia,” among the 10 most important documentaries of the 20^th century. Some of his previous contributions to Consortium News can be found here. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Medium

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