After a recent anti-NATO conference in Florence, we spoke with Michel Chossudovsky about the alliance’s problems. ‘NATO’s unspoken aim has been to implement a de facto “military occupation” of Western Europe, in all but name.’
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On April 7, the Anti-NATO International Conference on the 70th Anniversary of NATO was held in Florence, with more than 600 participants from Italy and Europe. The keynote speaker was Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, the director of Global Research, a Canadian research center on globalization, which co-sponsored the conference along with the No War No NATO Committee and other Italian NGOs.
Chossudovsky is one of the leading international experts in economics and geopolitics, a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica and the author of 11 books, his writings have been published in over 20 languages.
Manlio Dinucci: What has been achieved at the Florence conference?
Michel Chossudovsky: It was a very successful event, with the participation of highly qualified speakers from the US, Europe and Russia. There were presentations on NATO’s history. Its crimes against humanity were highlighted and carefully documented. At the end of the conference, we published the Florence Declaration, which calls for an exit from the war system.
Manlio Dinucci: In your introductory address, you said that the North Atlantic Alliance was not an alliance at all.
Michel Chossudovsky: Under the guise of a multinational military alliance, the Pentagon is dominating NATO’s decision-making mechanism. The US controls NATO’s command structures, which are integrated into those of the US. The Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR) is always an American general named by Washington. The NATO Secretary-General, currently Jens Stoltenberg, is essentially a bureaucrat who deals with public relations. He has no decision-making role.
Manlio Dinucci: Another issue you have raised is that of the US military bases in Italy and other European countries, including Eastern Europe, despite the Warsaw Pact having collapsed in 1991 and despite the promise made to Gorbachev that there would be no NATO enlargement towards the East. Why are they there?
Michel Chossudovsky: NATO’s unspoken aim—a prominent topic of our debate in Florence—has been to implement a de facto “military occupation” of Western Europe, in all but name. Not only does the United States continue to “occupy” the former “Axis countries” of the Second World War (Italy and Germany), but under the guise of the NATO flag, it has installed military bases in all of Western Europe, and, later on, in Eastern Europe as well, in the wake of the Cold War, and in the Balkans, in the wake of the NATO war against Yugoslavia (Serbia-Montenegro).
Manlio Dinucci: What has changed when it comes to a possible use of nuclear weapons?
Michel Chossudovsky: Immediately after the Cold War, a new nuclear doctrine was formulated, focused on the preemptive use of nuclear weapons, meaning a nuclear first strike as a means of self-defense. As part of the US-NATO interventions, framed as peacekeeping actions, a new generation of “low yield” and “more usable” nuclear weapons has been developed, which have been mischaracterized as “harmless to civilians.” US policy makers consider these to be “pacifying bombs.” The agreements of the Cold War, which put up certain restrictions against such weapons, have been abandoned. When it comes to the use of nuclear weapons, the concept of “Mutual Assured Destruction” has been abandoned in favor of the doctrine of preemptive nuclear war.
Manlio Dinucci: Earlier in Trump’s presidency, he had called NATO ”obsolete”—now, however, it has been embraced again by the White House. What is the relationship between the arms race and the economic crisis?
Michel Chossudovsky: War and globalization go hand in hand. The process of militarization calls for the imposition of macro-economic restructuring in the target countries. It demands military spending to sustain the war economy, to the detriment of the civilian economy. This leads to economic destabilization and a loss of power for national institutions.
As an example: recently, President Trump has proposed large cuts in health, education and social infrastructure spending, while calling for a large increase in the Pentagon’s budget. Early in his administration, President Trump approved an increase in spending for the military nuclear program—an initiative launched by Obama—from $1 trillion to $1.2 trillion, under the pretext that it would help keep the world safe.
Throughout the European Union, the increase in military spending, coupled with austerity measures, is leading towards the end of the “welfare state” as we have known it. Now, under US pressure, NATO is committed to increasing its military spending, and Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg recently said that this is the right thing to do in order to “keep [our] population safe.” Military interventions come together with concomitant acts of economic sabotage and financial manipulation.
The final aim is the taking over of resources, human and material, and of political institutions. The acts of war are taking place to support a process of complete economic conquest. The US’s hegemonic project is that of transforming sovereign countries and independent international institutions into structures that are receptive towards infiltration. One of the tools for achieving this is the imposition of highly restrictive constraints on indebted countries. That, together with the imposition of deadly macroeconomic reforms, is leading to the impoverishment of a large proportion of the global population.
Manlio Dinucci: What is the role of the media in all this—and what should it be doing instead?
Michel Chossudovsky: Without media disinformation and propaganda, the US-NATO military agenda would collapse like a house of cards. However, the impending dangers of a new war using the most modern weaponry and the danger of the use of nuclear weapons are not being treated as front page news. Outright war is depicted as a peace-making initiative.
War criminals are portrayed as peacemakers. War becomes peace. The lie becomes the truth, The truth is twisted into its opposite. When the lie becomes the truth, there is no turning backwards.
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This article was originally published on Il Manifesto. Translated by Pete Kimberley.
Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Torture is a longstanding US policy, notably by the CIA and its henchmen.
The policy continues at secret global black sites under its new director Gina Haspel — earlier involved in running an offshore black site, notorious for torture during interrogations.
CIA human experiments began in the early 1950s, including sensory-deprivation ones – developing unlawful interrogation methods amounting to torture.
In his book titled “A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror,” Alfred McCoy discussed a half-century of Langley efforts to develop torture techniques – no matter how heinous, immoral, illegal, or ineffective.
It’s well known that victims in severe pain say whatever interrogators want to hear to stop it.
The UN Convention against Torture is clear and unequivocal — banning the practice at all times, under all conditions, with no allowed exceptions.
The US Constitution’s 8th Amendment bans “cruel and unusual punishments” — clearly what torture is all about.
Seton Hall University School of Law’s Center for Policy and Research’s report on “How America Tortures” documents the lawless practice by the US — prepared under the direction of Law Professor Mark Denbeaux.
He’s “one of Seton Hall’s most senior faculty members…the Director of the Seton Hall Law School Center for Policy and Research…best known for its dissemination of the internationally recognized series of reports on (US torture and abuse at) the Guantanamo Bay” torture prison, still operating with no intention of closing it.
Information was provided by US victims, including Abu Zubaydah, a falsely accused al-Qaeda member, an individual with no involvement in or pre-knowledge of 9/11 events — the mother of all US false flags, wrongfully blamed on bin Laden and “crazed Arabs.”
Abducted in March 2002, unlawfully held at Guantanamo to this day uncharged and untried, Zubaydah and others endured sleep deprivation, waterboarding, painful stress positions, prolonged isolation, sensory deprivation and/or overload, severe beatings, electric shocks, induced hypothermia, and other measures that can cause irreversible physical and psychological harm, including psychoses.
He was confined in a box “so small (that) he had to double up his limbs in the fetal position” and stay that way, according to the ICRC.
He was also shackled naked by his wrists over his head so his toes barely touched the floor. Hooded and painfully handcuffed, his head was smashed against a wall — torture methods used against him depicted in drawings.
According to Seton Hall’s report, “virtually no attention has been paid to the specific details of the techniques that were used in America’s name and too little investigation has gone into the specific uses that the CIA made of these techniques,” adding:
“This report presents the specific details of what the torture memos permitted and most importantly, how the techniques were implemented and applied.”
In an accompanying press release, Denbaugh said the following:
“In many ways…illustrations of Abu Zubaydah are a testament to the triumph of the human will.”
“He was subjected to treatment so egregious that the CIA sought and received official governmental assurances that their prisoner would ‘remain in isolation and incommunicado for the remainder of his life.’ ”
“The CIA even arranged for his cremation in the event he died, assuring what they hoped would be his silence even beyond the grave. But with this report, he is silent no more.”
According to Seton Hall Law Center for Policy & Research Fellow Niki Waters, one of the report’s co-authors:
“What was officially approved was bad enough, but what we found was worse,” adding:
“The lack of clarity and seemingly purposeful ambiguity in defining what was allowed and what was not allowed during interrogations led to gross abuse.”
“The government failed to account for persistent and unapproved techniques alongside those that were approved. But willful blindness isn’t really much of a defense, is it?”
A Final Comment
Most Americans no longer believe the 9/11 whitewash commission’s official account of what happened.
A week after 9/11, congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) declared open-ended war on invented enemies – on the phony pretext of combating forces “responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States” — legitimizing illegal naked aggression, smashing one nonbelligerent nation after another.
Bush/Cheney’s Military Order Number 1 let the regime usurp authority to capture, kidnap or otherwise arrest and indefinitely hold non-citizens (later citizens as well) at home or abroad, uncharged and untried, if accused of involvement in international terrorism – denying them due process and judicial fairness.
Obama further institutionalized indefinite detentions and military commission injustice, violating America’s Fifth Amendment protections.
Trump continues what his predecessors began, waging endless wars of aggression and by other means, along with other hostile actions at home and abroad.
State-sponsored 9/11 and its aftermath made the US and other Western societies unsafe and unfit to live in. Full-blown tyranny may be another major false flag away.
US rage for unchallenged dominance makes nuclear war against manufactured enemies by accident of design an ominous possibility.
Both right wings of the US war party threaten everyone everywhere.
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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
Last week’s Africa Envoys’ Conference in Islamabad saw Pakistani diplomats brainstorming the best ways for their country to pivot to the eponymous continent, with the key takeaways being to prioritize military diplomacy and entrepreneurial engagement along what could prospectively be described as S-CPEC+.
Pakistan’s “Pivot To Africa”
Pakistan is getting ready to expand its influence in Africa following last week’s Africa Envoys Conference in Islamabad. According to PakTribune, Prime Minister Imran Khan (PMIK) told his country’s dignitaries that the “promotion of relations with countries in Africa would be the new focus of Pakistan’s foreign policy operations”, with the outlet adding that he “regretted that ties with African countries did not get priority in Pakistan’s external relations in the past because of lack of innovation and creativity in running the foreign policy.” PMIK emphasized the need for “robust engagement with Africa”, citing his country’s Chinese and Turkish partners as examples to learn from. Pakistan Observer reported on the insight shared by one of the conference’s participants, Pakistani Ambassador to Morocco Hamid Asghar Khan, who said that Pakistan should concentrate on improving political, socio-cultural, economic, and military relations with African countries. Ambassador Hamid also made some proposals for bringing this about, such as opening up new diplomatic missions, tasking them with promoting Pakistan’s soft image and products, holding topical conferences, and engaging in military diplomacy.
The author published a piece back in May of this year in The Nation, one of Pakistan’s leading newspapers, urging the same as soon as possible, arguing that “CPEC Is The Perfect Opportunity For Pakistan To Pivot To Africa“. The article explained how CPEC, the flagship project of China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), will improve Chinese-African trade and thus facilitate the expansion of Pakistan’s ties with the continent’s many countries if Islamabad has the political will and vision needed to seize the initiative, which is finally the case after last week’s conference. It was preceded by one of the author’s related pieces published by CGTN just days prior about how “CPEC+ Is The Key To Achieving Regional Integration Goals“, which proposed the expansion of CPEC along several geographic vectors, including the southern one directed towards Africa that was described as S-CPEC+. This vision strategically frames the future of Pakistani-African relations and thus provides decision makers with a better understanding of their many opportunities. The country should take advantage of the Chinese-African trade traversing CPEC and traveling across the Afro-Asian (“Indian”) Ocean in order to explore new markets for its own exports, and this could be aided through the creative practice of military diplomacy.
“Democratic Security”
To elaborate, most African governments require some degree of external security assistance, whether through training, arms exports, or the direct deployment of foreign military personnel (be they advisors, special forces, or otherwise). While eschewing the last-mentioned need, which is unnecessarily risky unless carried out under the aegis of a UN peacekeeping mission and oftentimes abused by countries like the US and France to infringe on their “partners'” sovereignty, Pakistan can work on selling more weapons there and very easily share its world-class experience in “Democratic Security” with any interested African countries. This concept refers to the effective efforts undertaken by the Pakistan Armed Forces over the years to counter Color Revolution and Unconventional Warfare (mostly terrorism in this case) threats, which collectively form the two pillars of modern-day HybridWar. Pakistan could institutionalize its “Democratic Security” knowledge-sharing services by including them as required courses for the foreign military students who attend its National Defence University (NDU), to say nothing of establishing a new department or even a think tank focused exclusively on this cutting-edge science which could then position Pakistan as a world leader in this respect.
From Military Ties To Economic Deals
This isn’t just for reasons of simple prestige either, but has an extremely practical use since it could imbue the African and other foreign students with a deeper understanding of Hybrid War dynamics which in turn would enable them to better thwart these threats through the more confident employment of “Democratic Security” strategies customized for their specific situations (which could also be included in the proposed coursework). Those countries’ military representatives need to ensure basic security like all others (though usually with comparatively less capabilities), as well as combat separatist and terrorist threats (sometimes one and the same) on top of protecting BRI projects, so they certainly have their work cut out for them and therefore urgently need as much high-quality experience-sharing as they can get. This would in principle satisfy the security requirements of S-CPEC+, which could also in turn build the trust needed between Pakistan and its state-level partners to have them actively support Islamabad’s efforts to improve trade ties between them as a step towards eventually reaching a strategic partnership that would also dovetail perfectly with China’s vision of forging what it regularly describes as a “community of shared destiny” (made possible in this case by CPEC).
The “Gwadar Gathering”
Entrepreneurial engagement can occur even without being preceded by military diplomacy or running in parallel with it, but it’s the strategic military ties fostered through the proposed “Democratic Security” training to Pakistan’s African partners that could encourage those states to actively get involved in this process by organizing trade and investment fairs, as well as assisting Pakistani businessmen in all respects so as to improve their ease of doing business there. On the other side of the coin, Pakistan should definitely host its own trade-related functions that include Africa, such as the yearly “Gwadar Gathering” that the author proposed in his January 2017 analysis about “CPEC And The 21st-Century Convergence Of Civilizations” and later shared with NDU during an event that he was invited to a few months later to share his thoughts on “Pakistan In The 21st-Century — Perception Management“. As PMIK spoke about last week, Pakistan can learn a lot from the experiences of its Chinese and Turkish partners in this respect, and it’s not unforeseeable that they might also participate in these proposed events in a leading capacity. Without growing economic engagement, Pakistan’s security ties with Africa will never lead to the creation of strategic partnerships with its many countries.
Towards The Official Promulgation Of S-CPEC+
Pakistan has already acquired the hard-earned experience that can easily enable to to more than effectively practice military diplomacy with Africa, especially if it institutionalizes what it’s learned over the years about “Democratic Security” and creates customized courses for NDU’s African students (and others) to enroll in as part of their studies. On the economic front, PMIK’s advisor on finance, Mr. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, spoke last month about how Pakistan is impressively opening up its economy to foreign investors, which coincides with global credit ratings agency Moody’s recently upgrading the country’s outlook and placing it above neighboring India, which was downgraded despite its vigorous attempts over the past few years to position itself as the leading destination for foreign investment in the region. Therefore, all that’s needed in order to take Pakistan’s “Pivot to Africa” to the next level is to conceptualize it in a catchy way that encapsulates its vision of engagement, ergo the author’s proposal for referring to it as S-CPEC+. Considering that Mr. Shaikh officially spoke about CPEC+ late last month in what the author believes might have been the government’s first use of this term, it’s sensible then to build upon this vision by framing Pakistan’s African strategy as S-CPEC+.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Following House Intelligence Committee sham hearings, Judiciary Committee Dems began their own on Wednesday, the witch-hunt to continue days longer in the run-up to the yearend holiday break.
Wednesday’s hearing featured four law professors — three supporting the Ukrainegate scam, one opposed.
Witch-hunt supporters included Harvard Law School’s Noah Feldman, Stanford Law School’s Pamela Karlan, and University of North Carolina Law School’s Michael Gerhardt.
Testimony by George Washington University Law School’s Jonathan Turley stuck to the rule of law with plenty of hard facts backing his judgment.
The others, enlisted by undemocratic Dems, falsely claimed charges against Trump rise to the level of impeachable offenses.
Karlan said the US must keep (Obama’s installed coup d’etat regime in Ukraine with a new leader strong) “so they fight the Russians there and we don’t have to fight them here” — her remark sounding like a Pentagon press release about a Russian threat that doesn’t exist.
According to Gerhadt’s disinformation:
“If what we’re talking about is not impeachable, then nothing is impeachable (sic). This is precisely the misconduct that the framers created the Constitution, including impeachment, to protect against (sic).”
Feldman falsely claimed Trump’s dealings with Ukrainian President Zelensky “constitute high crimes and misdemeanors impeachable under the Constitution.”
Ignored were Zelensky’s remarks, saying:
“I never talked to (Trump) from the position of a quid pro quo. That’s not my thing. I don’t want us to look like beggars.”
He denied that he and Trump ever discussed withholding US aid to Ukraine for political favors.
The unredacted transcript of Trump’s conversation with Zelensky revealed no blackmail threat, no quid pro quo, no conspiracy.
Trump should be held accountable for real offenses, not politicized invented ones because of an election he won that he was supposed to lose.
“I have spent decades writing about impeachment and presidential powers as an academic and as a legal commentator.”
“I am not a supporter of President Trump. I voted against him in 2016, and I have previously voted for Presidents Clinton and Obama…I have been highly critical of President Trump, his policies, and his rhetoric…”
“Today, my only concern is the integrity and coherence of the constitutional standard and process of impeachment.”
“I am concerned about lowering impeachment standards to fit a paucity of evidence and an abundance of anger.”
“If the House proceeds solely on the Ukrainian allegations, this impeachment would stand out among modern impeachments as the shortest proceeding, with the thinnest evidentiary record, and the narrowest grounds ever used to impeach a president.”
“I previously wrote that the current incomplete record is insufficient to sustain an impeachment case…”
“The problem is not simply that the record does not contain direct evidence of the president stating a quid pro quo, as chairman Schiff has suggested.”
“The problem is that the House has not bothered to subpoena the key witnesses who would have such direct knowledge. This alone sets a dangerous precedent.”
“This misuse of impeachment has been plain during the Trump administration.”
“Despite my disagreement with many of President Trump’s policies and statements, impeachment was never intended to be used as a mid-term corrective option for a divisive or unpopular leader.”
The Dems’ case against Trump lacks “clear criminal act and would be the first such case in history if the House proceeds without further evidence.”
Accusing Trump of bribery “is undermined by the fact that (he) released the aid (to Ukraine) without the alleged pre-conditions.”
No evidence “establishes a plausible case of criminal obstruction (of justice) or a viable impeachable offense.”
“There is no evidence that President Trump acted with the corrupt intent required for obstruction of justice on the record created by the House Intelligence Committee.”
“If the House moves forward with this impeachment basis, it would be repeating the very same abusive tactics used against President Andrew Johnson.”
“(T)he House literally manufactured a crime upon which to impeach Johnson in the Tenure in Office Act. This was a clearly unconstitutional act…”
“The obstruction allegation is also undermined by the fact that many officials opted to testify, despite the orders from the president that they should decline.”
“(W)e have never impeached a president solely or even largely on the basis of a non-criminal abuse of power allegation.”
“Abuses of power tend to be even less defined and more debatable as a basis for impeachment than some of the crimes already mentioned.”
“(T)here needs to be clear and unequivocal proof of a quid pro quo. That is why I have been critical of how this impeachment has unfolded.”
“The current record does not establish a quid pro quo…Presidents often put pressure on other countries” to serve US interests.
By that standard, virtually all Trump’s predecessors should have been impeached and removed from office.
“Trump (can) point to three direct conversations on the record. His call with President Zelensky does not state a quid pro quo.”
Censure is an option in lieu of impeachment, Turley explained, adding:
“I have been a long critic of censure as a part of impeachment inquiries…Censure has no constitutional foundation or significance.”
Turley concluded saying: “(B)efore we cut down the trees so carefully planted by the framers, I hope you consider what you will do when the wind blows again…perhaps for a (Dem) president.”
“Where will you stand then ‘the laws all being flat?’ ”
Turley’s testimony was exhaustive and scholarly, with numerous historical references, his printed text exceeding 50 pages.
He opposes impeaching Trump based on charges claimed by Dems with no credible evidence backing them.
A Final Comment
On Thursday, House Speaker Pelosi instructed the Judiciary Committee to draft articles of impeachment against Trump.
Falsely claiming the “facts are uncontested,” she accused him of “abus(ing) his power for his own personal political benefit at the expense of our national security” — an untrue statement based on his dealings with Ukrainian President Zelinsky.
Claiming “(o)ur democracy is what is at stake” is false. Only the illusion of democracy in America exists, the real thing absent throughout the country’s history.
In her remarks, Pelosi omitted a timetable. Nor did she indicate what she wants Trump charged with.
What’s going on is a politicized scam, a shameful spectacle, Dems hoping to gain a political advantage in November 2020 elections.
The gamble could backfire given plenty of ammunition Republicans can use if a Senate trial is held.
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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.”
Just over a decade ago, the prototype of an unmanned aircraft that would become the Bayraktar TB2 took off for its maiden flight at Sinop Airport on the Black Sea. There were few signs then that the mid-sized, twin-boom aircraft would become Turkey’s first indigenously produced armed drone and the backbone of its unmanned air force. At the time, domestic drone manufacturers struggled against technical difficulties and foreign competition. Ten years on, however, the situation is radically different: Ankara’s drone program has morphed into a successful industry that’s already exporting products. It’s also a potent military force that’s further straining the NATO alliance.
Turkey is wielding its new arsenal in a military campaign against Kurdish fighters in Syria, part of a long-standing conflict that has taken on new significance since US President Donald Trump announced a controversial decision to withdraw troops from northern Syria this fall, opening up allied Syrian Kurds to Turkish attacks. The president of France, another NATO ally of Turkey’s, recently accused Turkey of “fighting against those who fight with us.” Turkey’s drones have enabled a conflict in an already volatile region; more worrisome, Ankara’s successful drone program is an example that several other countries hope to emulate.
Drones have proliferated to militaries around the world at a dramatic rate. According to TheDroneDatabook, a study of military drone capabilities I published with the Center for the Study of the Drone in September, at least 95 countries have a military drone program. These programs are growing in size and complexity. Nearly 60 countries have activated at least 267 units to operate drones. Like many other countries, Turkey has prioritized the development of a domestic industry in order to reduce its dependency on systems made by the United States and Israel, the traditional drone-production powerhouses.
Building a domestic drone program. Ten years ago, Turkey still relied heavily on foreign-made drones. The military operated a handful of aging US General Atomics Gnat 750s it purchased in 1995, as well as several Israeli-made IAI Herons, which were introduced in 2010. But, in an early sign of Turkey’s keen interest in bolstering its own production capabilities, the country introduced the domestically-produced Bayraktar Mini, a handheld reconnaissance drone, in 2007.
Some of Turkey’s early efforts to develop domestic drones did not go smoothly. Ankara awarded Turkish Aerospace Industries a contract in 2004 to develop the Anka, a medium-altitude long-endurance drone. The Anka made its first flight in 2010, but reportedly crashed within 15 minutes. As Turkey was working on its domestic program, the country was also finding it harder to acquire foreign-made aircraft. Ankara’s efforts to import US-made Predators and, later, Reapers eventually stalled out amid congressional opposition.
In the past two years, Turkey’s drone program has ballooned. From the end of 2017 to today, the military’s inventory of Bayraktar TB2s more than doubled from around 38 to 94, about half of which are believed to be armed. Turkey’s fleet of Ankas, which have become another of the country’s mainstays, has grown to around 30. The two aircraft models are now in service with at least six military and security organizations: the Army, Air Force, Navy, Gendarmerie (national military police), the National Intelligence Organization, and the General Directorate of Security (national civilian police).
Turkish drone developers have achieved important technical milestones in recent years. In August 2018, the Anka carried out Turkey’s first satellite-controlled airstrike and in December, an Anka completed its first flight with a domestically-produced engine, a critical step towards creating a sustainable domestic manufacturing base. In 2019, both the Bayraktar TB2 and the Anka have broken their previous endurance records, with each flying longer than 24 hours. Two large drone producers, Baykar Makina and Turkish Aerospace Industries, have both unveiled new large unmanned aircraft, the Akinci and the Aksungur, respectively. Given the recent progress of Turkey’s drone program, it’s not surprising that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently committed $105.5 million in funding to support the continued development of the Bayraktar TB2.
To accommodate Turkey’s growing unmanned fleet, Ankara has been rapidly building out a network of drone outposts at airports in the southeast of the country, along the Syrian border, as well as on the Aegean and Mediterranean coastline. Since 2018, Turkey appears to have constructed drone facilities—aircraft hangars and shelters, aircraft aprons and taxiways, and communication towers—at seven airports, bringing the total number of drone bases to at least nine. These facilities are essential because the majority of Turkish Bayraktar TB2s and Ankas have an operational range limited to about 100 miles. (Only the Anka-S, a satellite-enabled variant of the Anka, is currently capable of flying beyond line of sight.)
Turkey worked to develop military drones like the Anka during a time when the country faced difficulties acquiring US-made aircraft like Predator drones. Credit: N13s013 (cropped). (Creative Commons)
Turkish drones on the battlefield. One key factor behind Turkey’s efforts to develop drones and related infrastructure is Ankara’s ongoing fight against Kurdish organizations such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. As of June, Turkey’s Bayraktar TB2s have accumulated more than 100,000 operational flight hours in a little under four years, an indication of how important drones are to Turkish military officials. According to media reports, Turkish drones have participated in airstrikes against Kurdish organizations in at least 11 provinces in southeast Turkey. They’ve also been used in at least five cross-border operations into Syria and Iraq, targeting members of Kurdish organizations since 2016, including in Turkey’s recent military incursion into Syria dubbed Operation Peace Spring.
And these drones may not be targeting only fighters, as Turkey claims. Turkey’s Human Rights Association has documented several drone strikes in which it says that civilians have been killed. Amid Turkey’s ongoing invasion of northern Syria, the head of a Syrian Kurdish organization said that Turkish drones have continued to strike Kurdish military and civilian targets, despite a ceasefire. Kurdish fighters in Syria have been working alongside the United States in a campaign against the Islamic State.
Turkey’s other main drone operations are in the east, along its Aegean and Mediterranean coasts. These operations have also caused friction. Greek officials have reported that Turkish drones have repeatedly flown over Greek islands in the Aegean. In 2018, Greek F-16 fighters intercepted a Turkish drone over Rhodes. This year, Turkish Navy drones have accompanied Turkish gas drilling ships into territorial waters claimed by Cyprus. Cypriot officials said in September that Turkish drones had interfered with commercial aircraft landing at Paphos Airport.
Armed drones for sale. As Turkey’s drone program matures, Ankara has been eyeing opportunities to gain a foothold in the competitive global market for military drones; it has exported the Bayraktar TB2 to Qatar and Ukraine and is reportedly courting sales to Indonesia and Tunisia. In Libya, Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones have reportedly been used by the UN-recognized Government of National Accord against the forces of Libyan National Army leader General Khalifa Haftar, who has his own supply of Chinese-made drones.
Turkey is not alone in its efforts to develop, acquire, and deploy unmanned aircraft. According to the Databook, the number of countries with military drones has increased by an estimated 58 percent between 2009 and 2019. Today, at least 31 countries operate heavy-class drones like the Bayraktar TB2 and Anka, up from 16 in 2009.
Ten years on from that first flight of the Bayraktar TB2 at Sinop Airport, Turkey has come to exemplify the significant trends in and consequences of military drone proliferation. It has a growing and increasingly diverse inventory of systems and has integrated these aircraft into the operations of multiple military and security organizations. Turkey’s drones are proving capable weapons on domestic and foreign battlefields alike, and the country has invested deeply in developing new drones, partly, at least, with a view to exporting them.
This example will likely be replicated by other countries in the next decade.
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Dan Gettinger founded the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College. He is the author of The Drone Databook, a comprehensive survey of military drone activities around the world.
Featured image: Turkey’s military drone program has ballooned in the past few years. It has a fleet of about 94 Bayraktar TB2 drones. Credit: Bayhaluk (cropped). (Creative Commons)
When U.S. President Donald Trump cancels a NATO press conference because the other NATO leaders are mocking him, you know that something is wrong. At the historic NATO Summit to commemorate 70 years of NATO earlier this week, the Alliance remembers how “brain dead”, as described by French President Emmanuel Macron, that the organization has become. This disastrous summit will be remembered in history as the beginning of the end for NATO as there was plenty of hostilities and controversies that were not even close to being resolved.
Theoretically the great loser of the summit was Turkey, with its magnificent and failed bluff. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan‘s threat to block the Alliance’s decision to “protect” the Baltic states and Poland “from possible Russian aggression” if NATO did not recognize the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria as a terrorist organization had resulted to nothing. The fact that NATO members have even refused to discuss the YPG, with the exception of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, as they carry out their provocative action to send forces to the Baltic is tantamount to a massive personal disappointment for Erdoğan.
But those who hastened to talk about Turkey’s international isolation have not noticed a slight laughter from the American president that changed everything. During a stormy joint press conference with his French counterpart, Trump appeared to offer an impressive friendly gesture to Erdogan, even though the Turkish leader bought the Russian S-400 missiles that received the scorn of Trump. In a complete reversal of roles, Macron wondered how a NATO member state could supply Russian missile defense systems while Trump just laughed it off. Trump has claimed incorrectly that he is not solely responsible for the Turkish purchase of the S-400 as his predecessor Barack Obama refused to sell the Patriot systems to Turkey.
Trump’s friendly attitude towards Erdoğan seems to once again disprove analysts who have predicted a complete split in U.S.-Turkish relations. It is now clear that the temporary withdrawal of U.S. forces from North Syria, which gave the “green light” for the Turkish invasion, is expressing a new page in Trump’s relations with the Turkish President.
However, one of the most interesting clashes between NATO leaders has provided material to journalists who covered the Summit, as there are clear and unprecedented gaps between Europe and the U.S. In a joint statement, NATO leaders appeared to agree that Russia’s supposed offensive actions pose a threat to Euro-Atlantic security and that China’s growing influence supposedly poses new challenges for the Alliance. However, both of these issues actually had dividing opinions, rather than united.
“The greatest danger,” said Emmanuel Macron, “is not a Russian invasion of the Baltic states, but terrorism, that is, the danger we face from the South and to which NATO has no answer,” adding “Is it the purpose of the Atlantic Alliance to identify one or the other [Russia or China] as our enemies?”
He had recently stated that he did not see China as a major threat to member countries of the Alliance. The French president may have seemed like a lonely knight within NATO, but in reality, he was still expressing the ideas of several European countries that were reacting silently to Washington’s attempt to drag Europe into an open confrontation with Moscow and Beijing. Countries such as Italy and Greece, which have opened their doors to Chinese investment in infrastructure such as 5G mobile networks and port developments, have no desire to see NATO become an opposition force to the Beijing.
But that is exactly what the Secretary General of the Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, wants to do on behalf of Washington. In recent statements, he made clear that not only Beijing’s increased defense spending is a concern, but even China’s foremost in economic and technological development.
Stoltenberg showed concern and in his own words said China is a leader in the development of new technologies, from 5G networks to facial recognition technology and from quantum computers to large data processing.
Stoltenberg said the alliance needed to start taking “into account that China is coming closer to us.”
“We see them in the Arctic, we see them in Africa, we see them investing heavily in European infrastructure and of course investing in cyberspace,” Stoltenberg said of China, adding that this was not “about moving NATO into the South China Sea.”
If the NATO Anniversary Summit reveals anything, it is that Washington wants to turn the Alliance into a weapon against Beijing.
“A challenge from China could be just the thing to pull NATO together” said a CNN analyst. Europe, however, is unlikely to fall into U.S. fearmongering about Russia and China. And if it does not, then this just leads to the question about what the purpose of NATO is.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.
On Thursday, hundreds of thousands of French workers, youths and others protested over former Rothschild banker/French President Macron’s pension reform scheme that’s all about further eroding social justice by slashing vital benefits.
Most rail, other public transportation, and many flights shut down on day one of the largest French mass action against neoliberal harshness in the last generation — what’s going on to continue for days, perhaps much longer over anti-Macron public anger.
Scores of demonstrations nationwide by students, teachers, firefighters, industrial, transportation, healthcare, energy, public sector, and other workers largely ground France to a halt.
Schools shut down. Police unions warned of symbolically closing certain stations in support of the strike action.
Macron wants a socially unjust/one size fits all uniform pension system, replacing individual ones that provide equitable benefits for retired workers.
He wants the legal retirement age raised from 62 to 64. He wants social justice in France more greatly eroded than already, part of a longterm plan in the country and West to eliminate it altogether.
His scheme is the most extremist change to France’s cherished pension system since its post-WW II creation. It’s all about greatly cutting benefits, leaving retirees far worse off than today.
France’s official single-digit poverty rate is the lowest in the West, far below other Western countries. Retirement reform is Macron’s latest scheme to erode social justice.
Earlier he slashed unemployment benefits and made it easier for companies to lay off or fire workers, while largely keeping wages for public workers stagnant and eroding universal healthcare benefits.
Nationwide strike action began before Macron released details of his scheme — to be debated in parliament and voted on next year.
A November Viavoice for Liberation poll found 89% of respondents believe France is experiencing a “social crisis.”
According to sociologist Steward Chau,
“we’re in a climate of real social tension today, which goes beyond pensions…(S)ocial crisis…hang(s) over this strike action.”
Mass protests begun Wednesday escalated anti-austerity Yellow Vest demonstrations begun over a year ago.
Actions yesterday blocked major thoroughfares, along with shutting down most public transportation and fuel depots.
At least one opinion poll showed around 70% support for the mass action, its strongest backing among individuals aged 18 – 34.
In 1995, large-scale nationwide protests shut down public transport for three weeks, forcing a government neoliberal policy reversal at the time.
What began Thursday goes beyond opposition to Macron’s pension reform scheme. It’s against years of forced-fed austerity, wealth and power interests benefitting by eroding social justice — the same thing going on throughout the West and elsewhere.
Public anger over repression, social inequality, and related issues a fueled other mass protests in Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Haiti, Honduras, Iraq, Algeria, Albania, Gaza, and elsewhere.
So far, they’re absent in the US where people power is badly needed.
Daily events should scare everyone. Peace in our time no longer exists, social justice in the country heading for the dustbin of history if things aren’t reversed by mass actions.
Ordinary people have power when they use it. Change requires longterm struggle.
Abolitionists ended slavery. Civil and labor rights were won. They’re lost because energy waned.
Former Supreme Court Justice William Douglas (1898 – 1980) once said:
“Power concedes nothing without a demand.”
Academic Frances Fox Piven earlier stressed that “(o)rdinary people have power when they rise up in anger and hope, defy the rules…disrupt (state) institutions (and) propel new issues to the center of political debate.”
When governments fail their people, the way things are today in the West and elsewhere globally, they forfeit their right to rule.
Civil disobedience becomes an essential tool for change, popular revolution the only solution.
Martin Luther King said “non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.” He championed “creative protest,” believing passivity is no option in the face of injustice.
Henry David Thoreau argued that no one is obligated to surrender their conscience to injustice. What’s fundamentally wrong should be challenged for change.
It’s the only thing that works. Entrenched power yields nothing unless pushed.
Long ago labor organizing in the US, taking to the streets, sustaining strikes, boycotts, and other work stoppages, battling monied interests, putting rank-and-file lives on the line for equitable treatment won important worker rights.
When energy waned and union bosses sold out to management, virtually everything gained was lost, organized labor today a shadow of its long ago peak strength.
Sustaining mass actions against social injustice in France is the only way for positive change.
If things wane in the coming days or weeks, all will be lost, the way things turned out in the West many times before.
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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.”
The current hearing will examine allegations that US troops and intelligence operatives tortured, raped and abused Afghan prisoners between 2003 and 2004.
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The International Criminal Court (ICC)opened a three-day hearing in the The Hague, Netherlands on Wednesday at which prosecutors and Afghan torture victims are attempting to convince the court to overturn a previous decision to refuse to investigate war crimes committed by Taliban, Afghan government and US forces.
(Un)Folding Under Pressure
In April, the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber II announced it would not grant a request by ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to open an investigation of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including deliberate attacks on civilians and child soldier conscription by Taliban militants, torture and sexual violence by members of Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) and torture of prisoners held in US military and secret Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) prisons in Afghanistan, Poland, Romania and Lithuania. The decision was condemned by human rights advocates, many of whom accused the ICC of bowing to intense pressure from the Donald Trump administration after it barred Bensouda, a Gambian national, from entering the United States. The administration threatened further retaliation, including travel bans and economic sanctions, against the ICC.
President Donald Trump hailed the ICC’s April decision as “a major international victory,” while asserting that “the United States holds American citizens to the highest legal and ethical standards.” Critics countered by noting the president’s repeated pardoning of US war criminals, as well as America’s overall general impunity from war crimes accountability, as proof of the need for more robust international war crimes investigations and prosecution.
However, the United States is not a member of the ICC, despite having signed the Rome Statute establishing the court. Jay Sekulow, a member of Trump’s personal legal team, argued Wednesday at the ICC that this means court prosecutors had no legal basis upon which to build a case against US personnel. Sekulow also argued that under the “complementarity principle,” the ICC’s jurisdiction is limited to scenarios in which nations are unwilling or unable to prosecute war crimes.
“We have a very comprehensive system of military justice,” Sekulow insisted, even in the face of Trump’s recent war crimes pardons.
Tortured to Death
The current hearing will examine allegations that US troops and intelligence operatives tortured, raped and abused Afghan prisoners between 2003 and 2004. In December 2014 the US Senate released a 480-page summary of a previously classified 6,000-page report detailing how dozens of innocent individuals were wrongfully detained by the military and CIA due to mistaken identity and faulty intelligence, how these and other detainees were subjected to horrific and even deadly torture and abuse, and how the brutality and scope of the program were hidden from the Justice Department and even high-ranking members of the Bush administration, including President George W. Bush.
By 2006, at least 100 prisoners had died in US custody in Afghanistan and Iraq, most of them violently, according to government data. The most well-publicized detainee death happened at the notorious “Salt Pit,” a CIA black site, or secret prison, in Afghanistan, where Gul Rahman died of hypothermia after being severely beaten, stripped naked and chained to a wall in near-freezing temperatures. Abuse of prisoners, who were often kidnapped from third countries in a practice known as extraordinary rendition, was rampant at black sites around the world, including Detention Center Green in Thailand, which current CIA Director Gina Haspel ran in late 2002. Black site prisoners were hung by chains from ceilings for days on end, stuffed into boxes, deprived of sleep, shackled naked in near-freezing temperatures and subjected to mock executions. Prior to Haspel’s arrival, CIA torturers at Detention Center Green subjected cooperative prisoner Abu Zubaydah to the interrupted drowning torture known as waterboarding 83 times in a month. Haspel also played a key role in the destruction of videotaped CIA torture sessions.
Scores of friendly nations as well as some of the world’s most notorious dictators, including Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the late Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and the mullahs of Iran, cooperated with the CIA’s rendition program. The US also outsourced torture by sending abductees to these and other countries for interrogation knowing they would be abused, as well as by allowing agents from some of the world’s worst human rights violators, including China, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia and Libya, to interrogate and even abuse detainees inside Guantánamo.
No Accountability
Despite numerous campaign promises to investigate Bush-era abuses and early executive orders banning torture and (unsuccessfully) closing GITMO, former president Barack Obama attempted to undermine publication of the Senate torture report. More importantly, not only did he fail to prosecute any of the Bush torturers, his administration actively shielded them from any accountability for their crimes. Furthermore, the administration prosecuted and jailed former CIA agent John Kiriakou for blowing the whistle on torture.
In December 2017 United Nations special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer warned that the US continued to torture detainees—some of them imprisoned for the better part of two decades without any charge or trial — in its military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. However, the Trump administration, led by a president who campaigned on a promise to “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding,” has been a staunch apologist for torture and the war criminals who practice it. Trump has also followed through on promises to commit other war crimes, including one to “bomb this shit”out of Islamic State militants and “take out their families.” Civilian casualties from US bombing, drone strikes and ground raids subsequently soared in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Somalia.
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Brett Wilkins is a San Francisco-based freelance author and editor-at-large for US news at Digital Journal. His work, which focuses on issues of war and peace and human rights, is archived at www.brettwilkins.com.
Featured image: By 2006, at least 100 prisoners had died in US custody in Afghanistan and Iraq, most of them violently, according to government data. (Photo: US torture Image by Witness Against Torture)
In the UK, we have a simple take on the US healthcare system as a for-profit, private system that fleeces its customers and fails the poor.
But here’s the secret: the US has its own ‘mini NHS’. Smaller than the UK’s system, but still a government funded, (mostly) publicly-run system that serves people according to their need. It’s called the Veterans Health Administration (VHA).
Optum and UnitedHealth are familiar names to anyone who has been following the silent takeover of the NHS by private healthcare firms in recent years, though aspects of their involvement are fully exposed here for the first time.
Health privatisation, US-style – sounds familiar?
But first, it’s worth a closer look at what’s been happening to the US’s own ‘mini-NHS’ – because there are some remarkable parallels with what’s happening on this side of the Atlantic.
The Veterans Administration has a budget of $70billion with which it provides healthcare for some nine million US military veterans. It has experienced serious capacity issues in the past, but a study last year found the quality of care it provides is the same, or significantly better than the private sector.
Donald Trump pictured with US healthcare executives in 2017, including (second from right) the then CEO of UnitedHealth Group | Twitter
Regardless, Trump passed a law last year that allows extensive latitude for a significant proportion of this care to be outsourced to private healthcare corporations.
The President’s plan is backed by a small cabal of right-wing politicians and lobby groups on a crusade to talk down the care the Veterans Health Administration provides – and then to ‘fix’ it, through pushing veteran patients towards private providers. Trump began by replacing senior Veterans Administration officials that stood in the way and reportedly allowed his close political associates and donors to influence the reforms. All the while running a PR campaign, led by officials and their Koch-backed advisors, denying that funnelling billions of taxpayer dollars to private healthcare providers amounts to privatisation. On being appointed, Trump’s new VA secretary told senators: “I will oppose efforts to privatize the VA.”
Democrat Congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezsays the real beneficiaries of Trump’s reforms are “pharmaceutical companies, insurance corporations and, ultimately… a for-profit health-care industry that does not put people or veterans first.” If he really wanted to “fix the VA so badly,” she added at a packed rally earlier this year, “let’s start hiring, and fill up some of those 49,000 [staff] vacancies.”
All of this will sound eerily familiar to campaigners defending the National Health Service against privatisation: from chronic understaffing to legislative reform in the face of massive opposition, and all the while strenuously denying that the changes amount to privatisation at all.
We’re told one thing about NHS privatisation – health firm investors are told another
“There is no privatisation of the NHS on my watch,” Matt Hancockassured MPs earlier this year. Boris Johnson has since echoed his words: “We are absolutely resolved. There will be no sale of the NHS, no privatisation.”
Look at the message US private healthcare firms are giving their investors, however, and a different story emerges.
“We’ve been planting seeds and I would say that we’re strong with the NHS,” US healthcare executive, Larry Renfrotold investors in 2016. Renfro was then chief executive of Optum – the very same US company that’s recently been awarded huge contracts to take over the US’s ‘mini NHS’.
“We’re strong with [the regulator] NHS improvement. We are getting stronger with the Minister of Health, as well as the Secretary of Health,” Renfro said.
His colleague and Optum’s Executive Vice President, Jeffrey Berkowitz, spoke of the years Optum had spent building a “very strong foundation of work on the ground with the Department of Health”.
Investors and financial analysts were told this, but not the British public.
Official records show only that Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt,held an ‘introductory’ meeting with Optum in March 2017 and that health minister Philip Dunne visited Optum in Boston and again, a couple of weeks later in London.
It is only because Renfro told investors that a health minister is “as we sit here today, with us… on tour”, that we know that Lord Prior, now chair of NHS England, also visited Optum at its headquarters in Minneapolis in October 2016.
Donald Trump, the private healthcare execs, and NHS senior officials
This was one of many visits in recent years made by politicians and senior health officials to Optum’s various US offices. This includes officials from NHS Digital – guardians of NHS patient data – whose head of data was given a tour of Optum’s capabilities at its Washington office in January 2018. As an Optum lobbyist said in 2014, the trips, some of which it paid for, are part of its efforts to “develop and mature” its relationship with the NHS.
It is also only through documents released under Freedom of Information law that we know that Ed Smith, the chair of the NHS’s powerful regulator NHS Improvement, held a series of ‘working dinners’ with UnitedHealth Group CEO, Stephen Hemsley – first in September 2016 and again in January the following year. Another ‘working dinner’ took place with Renfro in March 2017. The documents don’t reveal what these men discussed.
In February of that year, Hemsley visited the White House to meet Donald Trump [photos from the meeting: second right and slightly hidden here; leaning forward hands on table behind Mike Pence here]. The President tweeted:
“Great meeting with CEOs of leading U.S. health insurance companies who provide great healthcare to the American people.”
Once declared the highest paid CEO in the US, Stephen Hemsley is now executive chair of UnitedHealth Group. He earned a reported $65m last year. Fortune described him as the “corporate chief who’s arguably created more wealth for shareholders… than any sitting CEO”.
The secrecy of these trans-Atlantic meetings matters. It has allowed the UK government to tell one story to the public, while quietly inviting a giant, for-profit US corporation, bent on overseas expansion, to embed itself in our NHS.
Optum’s parent company, UnitedHealth Group, which reported earnings in 2018 of over $220 billion, is opposed to efforts in the US to introduce a universal, public health system like the NHS. Its current CEO said Medicare for All, as the proposals are known, would “destabilize” the American healthcare system. It goes without saying, they would also eliminate its industry.
Healthcare markets – why are we looking to US firms to help shape our healthcare?
Optum specialises in using data and algorithms to predict and make decisions about who gets what care, something it has honed in America’s private health insurance system, where the more insurers cut costs and ration care, the more money they make. Optum’s algorithm was also recently found to show dramatic biases against black patients.
“Nationally, there are various things going on with data and information and digital that we are actually working with them [the UK] very, very closely right now,” Renfro told investors in April 2017. The health secretary and a “subset of the NHS board” were due to visit, he added: “So things seem to be breaking a lose [sic] right now.”
All of which adds up to quite a different picture to the one used by the Conservatives to sell the reforms to the public in 2010. Health secretary Andrew Lansley’s pitch back then was that his changes were about handing GPs control of the NHS budget to spend locally as they saw fit.
Optum had been involved in discussions from the start in 2010, as revealed in Lansley’s diary (which was released only after a court ruling). Four years later and documents released under FOI showed Optum in prime position to pick up some of the first wave of contracts. In April 2017 – by which time the NHS had been divided into 44 regional areas, each with a plan for reforming its region – Renfo updated investors on “what we’re doing in the UK” and Optum’s UK “44 market strategy”.
“So in February, we won our first business…. with one of those [regions]…. that’s where you’re going to manage with an ACO process. And so we’re tying in everything we do in the States into that win that we just received.” According to Renfro, it was “very, very close” to picking up another two regions and the firm had moved people over to the UK to manage the projects.
Since then, it has been hired by NHS England to “accelerate” these reforms across the country. In the West Midlands, for example, Optum has advised the region’s GPs, hospitals and local councils on their plans. With its partner, PwC, it provided a 12 week programme of training for senior health officials across Birmingham, Solihull, Coventry, Warwickshire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire. It has also gone into partnership with GP “super-practice”, Modality.
Yeovil Hospital, which has led the reforms in Somerset, said:
“The ACO model born in the US market is new to the UK, and as such we have partnered with globally experienced Optum who are guiding our journey into this new world.”
At the same time, Optum has been on a hiring spree across the country of former NHS staff to undertake the work, led by former NHS England directors who have also passed through the revolving door. Ultimately, though, the man steering these reforms is Simon Stevens, CEO of NHS England. He previously, spent a decade at the top of UnitedHealth Group as Executive Vice President and president of its expanding global health businesses.
The health secretary will still deny that privatisation is occurring on his watch. And Boris Johnson will continue to insist that the NHS is not for sale. Meanwhile, the seeds that Optum has been planting for a decade under the Tories are beginning to bear fruit.
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Ukrainian fascists who previously fought in a US-backed neo-Nazi militia joined the anti-China protests in Hong Kong, sharing their tactics and showing off their tattoos.
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Neo-Nazis from Ukraine have flown to Hong Kong to participate in the anti-Chinese insurgency, which has been widely praised by Western corporate media and portrayed as a peaceful pro-democracy movement.
Numerous delegations of far-right groups from across the world have traveled to Hong Kong to join the violent insurgency against Beijing, in which secessionists have attacked police with bowsand arrows, shot gasoline bombs out of catapults, and burned numerous people alive.
With their flamboyant waving of US and British colonial flags and tendency to belt out the American national anthem on megaphones, anti-China separatists in Hong Kong have made themselves a magnet for the US far-right. Staff of the website InfoWars, right-wing social media personality Paul Joseph Watson, and the ultra-conservative group Patriot Prayer are among those who have made pilgrimages to the protests.
The latest collection of extreme-right activists to reinforce the ranks of the Hong Kong separatists are from Ukraine. They call themselves Gonor and have tattoos on their upper torsos with undeniable symbols of white supremacy and neo-Nazism.
These extremists previously fought in a notoriously brutal neo-Nazi militia called the Azov Battalion, in Ukraine’s war against pro-Russian militants.
The Azov Battalion is an explicitly fascist paramilitary group that organizes around neo-Nazi ideology. After a Western-backed 2014 coup against Ukraine’s democratically elected government, Azov was incorporated into the Ukrainian national guard. It has received support from the US government, which has armed and advised the neo-Nazis in their fight against Moscow.
While Western governments and corporate media outlets portray China as an authoritarian regime that treats Hong Kong like a colony, these violent Ukrainian fascists took advantage of the region’s autonomy to gain entry through its borders. It is unlikely they would have been admitted to mainland China, or to the Western European countries that routinely refuse visas to political extremists.
The presence of Ukrainian regime-change activists in the Hong Kong protests is further evidence of the alliances that anti-Chinese activists in Hong Kong are building with other right-wing, US-backed movements around the world, sharing tactics to weaken and destabilize countries targeted by NATO.
Ukrainian fascists join Hong Kong insurgency
On December 1, the far-right activist Serhii Filimonov posted photos on Facebook showing himself and three Ukrainian friends upon their arrival in Hong Kong. The images were accompanied by the anti-Beijing’s unofficial slogan: “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong!!”
Stand With Hong Kong is also the name of a Western-backed organization that has been lobbying the governments of the US, Britain, Germany, Canada, and Australia to impose sanctions and take punitive action against China.
In a video they posted on social media, the Ukrainian white supremacists revealed that they had obtained a press pass, misleadingly portraying themselves as journalists.
Joining Filimonov on the trip to Hong Kong was a notorious extreme-right Ukrainian activist who goes by the name Maliar. Maliar is popular on Instagram, under the name xgadzillax, where he has more than 23,000 followers. (Maliar has a distinctive scaron the left side of the neck, which makes him easy to recognize in photos.)
Besides the swastikas inked into his skull, Maliar had the Nazi symbols tattooed on his right leg, next to an algiz rune, another common white supremacist emblem.
Several photos show that at least two of the Ukrainian fascists in Hong Kong have tattoos reading “Victory or Valhalla,” the title of a compilation of writings by the notorious American white supremacist David Lane, whose neo-fascist terrorist group The Order murdered a liberal Jewish radio host and planned more assassinations of left-wing Jews.
Lane, who was convicted to 190 years in a US prison for numerous crimes, created the most famous white supremacist slogan, known as the 14 Words — which inspired the name of another Ukrainian neo-Nazi group called C14.
Filimonov, who also has a large following on Instagram, where he uses the name Sunperuna, published a photo showing the phrase “Victory or Valahalla” emblazoned on his chest.
The book “Victory or Valhalla” is dedicated to “Aryankind.” In its pages, its author says he is committed to preventing the “imminent extinction facing the White Race” and the “Judeo-American/Judeo-Christian murder of the White race.” The screed is replete with homages to Nazis, and the back cover shows a photo of Lane’s body in his coffin, wrapped in a Confederate flag.
These Ukrainian fascists were such fans of the book that they permanently tattooed its title on their bodies.
Maliar, the other member of Gonor who joined the Hong Kong protests, has “Victory or Valhalla” inscribed conspicuously on his neck.
Journalist Morgan Artyukhina identified another member of the far-right Ukrainian contingent in Hong Kong as Serhii Sternenko. Artyukhina noted that Sternenko is a former leader of the Ukrainian fascist group Right Sector, which burned down a trade union building in Odessa during the 2014 coup, killing 42 people.
Neo-Nazis take campus
On December 2, the Ukrainian fascist visitors posted photos of themselves on the campus of Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), a site of violent protests.
PolyU has been a crucial base of operation for the separatist uprising. A total of 3,989 petrol bombs, 1,339 pieces of explosives, and 601 bottles of corrosive liquid were recovered at the school, as of December 2, according to reports.
Serhii Filimonov (the first on the left in the photo above) has faced legal troubles in the past, appearing in court for allegedly brawling with police.
The photos Filimonov posts on social media make two things abundantly clear: He is a Nazi and wants as many people as possible to see him shirtless while bearing heavyweapons.
Other members of Gonor have published photos on Instagram holding guns.
A video posted on Instagram in 2015 shows Maliar and a friend in a “White Rebel” Confederate flag t-shirt surrounded by guns and tasers.
Gonor’s symbol draws on many of the same far-right ultra-nationalist themes, with three white knives centered on a black flag.
Gonor’s Telegram channel offers members a front row seat to an orgy of violence. It has published dozens of videos of Hong Kong insurgents, heroizing them for shooting arrows and carrying out brutal attacks on state security forces.
Both Filimonov and Maliar previously fought in the US-backed neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. Maliar has posted photos on Instagram showing the two armed and in military uniform, wearing Azov patches.
Ukrainian regime-changers build networks with Hong Kong secessionists
Despite all of this publicly available evidence demonstrating the open fascism of the Ukrainian hooligans in Hong Kong, the Kiev-based Free Hong Kong Center published a statement on Facebook defending and whitewashing Gonor.
The organization confirmed that the extremists did indeed fight with Azov “during the first period of the war” against pro-Russian separatists, but claimed that they have been unaffiliated since 2015.
The Free Hong Kong Center described the neo-fascists as “activists of the Revolution of Dignity and as well as veterans of the defending war with Russia.” Absurdly, the center declared that they “assured us they are really against nazism and another kind of alt-right ideology.”
“A lot of people were disappointed by the tattoos of these guys,” the Free Hong Kong Center conceded. But they insisted “that all symbols are from Slavic paganism.”
The Free Hong Kong Center is a project of an NGO called the Liberal Democratic League of Ukraine. In addition to building links with anti-Beijing forces in Hong Kong, the project says its mission is to “counter Chinese threats to Ukraine.”
The main coordinator of the Free Hong Kong Center is a Ukrainian activist named Arthur Kharytonov, who is also the president of the Liberal Democratic League of Ukraine. Kharytonov was deeply involved in the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine, which led to the 2014 US-backed coup. He then set up the league in 2015.
Kharytonov and his organization have been frequently amplified in US government-funded Ukrainian media outlets such as Hromadske. In these softball interviews with a highly sympathetic press, Kharytonov likens the anti-Russia protests in Ukraine to the anti-China protests in Hong Kong, and calls for closer bonds between them.
On 6th year anniversary of #Euromaidan revolution, Ukrainians showed solidarity with protesters in Hong Kong. We invited main coordinator of Kyiv-based Free Hong Kong Center, Arthur Kharytonov to draw parallels between the events in #Ukraine & #HongKong.https://t.co/MMJkPLmeQC
Kharytonov and these Western government-backed organizations are part of a growing network of Ukrainian regime-change activists who are organizing with secessionists in Hong Kong, holding and sharing insurgency tactics.
As the US and NATO-led unipolar hegemonic order that has dominated the world since the end of the Cold War begins to crumble, and as a rising China and Russia seek to restore a multipolar global system, Washington and European nations are constructing a latticework of movements to undermine their adversaries on their frontiers.
This global network is marketed as the advance guard of global liberalism, but as events from Ukraine to Hong Kong have revealed, fascism is festering at its base.
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Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.
Thoreau got it right: ‘Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.’ (Thoreau, ‘Walden’, Penguin, 1983, p.68)
The same is certainly true of propaganda. We can laugh now at McCarthyite paranoia warning of Soviet tentacles threatening every aspect of Western life during the Cold War. In the 1940s and 1950s, Hollywood produced dozens of anti-communist films with titles like ‘I Married A Communist’ and ‘I Was A Communist For The FBI’. Large-circulation magazines were titled, ‘Communists Are After Your Child.’ Even children’s comics declared:
‘Beware, commies, spies, traitors, and foreign agents! Captain America, with all loyal, free men behind him, is looking for you.’ (Quoted, Howard Zinn, ‘A People’s History of the United States,’ Harper Colophon, 1990, p.428)
We can guess how future generations will view the current propaganda blitz depicting Jeremy Corbyn as a threat to Britain’s Jews. Not since 2002-2003, when sanctions-stricken Iraq, willing to allow months of no-notice UN weapons inspections, was said to be a ‘clear and present danger’ to the nuclear-packing US-UK, has the truth been so completely and shamefully distorted.
The level of madness is breathtaking, even by ‘mainstream’ standards. In July, the Sunday Telegraph columnist Simon Heffer claimed on LBC radio that Corbyn ‘wants to reopen Auschwitz’. When the interviewer responded that it was completely unacceptable to suggest that Corbyn was capable of such a thing, Heffer replied:
‘I’m sure, in 1933, they had similar conversations in Germany: “the Fuehrer’s never going to do that”.’
Jeremy Hunt, then Foreign Secretary, commented in July:
‘When I went to Auschwitz I rather complacently said to myself, “thank goodness we don’t have to worry about that kind of thing happening in the UK” and now I find myself faced with the leader of the Labour Party who has opened the door to antisemitism in a way that is truly frightening.’
Noam Chomsky summed up the shameful nature of these remarks:
‘The way charges of anti-Semitism are being used in Britain to undermine the Corbyn-led Labour Party is not only a disgrace, but also – to put it simply – an insult to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust…’.
In the i newspaper, former Independent editor Simon Kelner focused on the way Corbyn had ‘mispronounced’ the name of the sexual criminal Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Andrew’s former friend, in a TV debate: ‘He called him “Ep–Schtine”,’ Kelner noted.
Along with ITV political editor Robert Peston (see below), Kelner did not only dispense with the usual affectation of journalistic impartiality, he emphasised his subjectivity in lending weight to an attack on Corbyn:
‘My reaction was a visceral one: it’s not something I can explain easily, or even rationally, but a Jewish person does know when there is something that sounds wrong, or perjorative [sic], or even threatening. It was as if he was saying: “Are you aware this man is Jewish?”’
The idea, then, is that Corbyn – who has been subjected to relentless, highly damaging attacks on this issue for years, and who has done everything he can to distance himself from anti-semitism, taking a very tough line on the suspension of allies like Ken Livingstone and Chris Williamson from the Labour Party – was emphasising Epstein’s Jewishness in a deliberate – or, worse – unconscious effort to smear Jews. Of course, only a truly crazed racist would be unable to resist such a patently self-destructive impulse on national TV. And yet, the outgoing Speaker of the House of Commons, former Conservative MP, John Bercow, who is Jewish, said during an interview with British GQ magazine last month:
‘I myself have never experienced anti-semitism from a member of the Labour Party, point one. And point two, though there is a big issue and it has to be addressed, I do not myself believe Jeremy Corbyn is anti-semitic.
‘I’ve known him for the 22 years I’ve been in Parliament. Even, actually, when I was a right-winger we got on pretty well… I’ve never detected so much as a whiff of anti-semitism [from him].’
Our search of the ProQuest media database found no mention of Bercow’s comment in any UK national newspaper.
Remarkably, in July 2018, The Jewish Chronicle, Jewish News and Jewish Telegraph produced similar front pages and a joint editorial warning against ‘the existential threat to Jewish life in this country that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government’.
Gideon Levy, an Israeli journalist and author who writes a weekly column for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, commented on the smears last week:
‘The Jewish establishment in Britain and the Israeli propaganda machine have taken out a contract on the leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn. The contract was taken out a long time ago, and it was clear that the closer Corbyn came to being elected prime minister, the harsher the conflict would get.’
This echoed the view of Professor Norman Finkelstein, whose mother survived the Warsaw Ghetto and the Majdanek concentration camp, and whose father was a survivor of both the Warsaw Ghetto and the Auschwitz concentration camp. Finkelstein said:
‘If Corbyn loses, a lot of people in the Labour Party are going to blame it on those Jews who fabricated this whole anti-semitism witch-hunt hysteria. And that will be a problem, which… you know what the bigger problem there is? It’s true! Jews were the spearhead of this campaign to stop Corbyn. And so, there’s going to be a lot of anger within the Labour Party – that’s not anti-semitism, that’s factually based.’
Finkelstein added:
‘The British elites could not have gotten away with calling Corbyn an anti-semite unless they had the support, the visible support, of all the leading Jewish organisations. You have to remember that during the summer, all three major British publications, for the first time in British Jewish history, they all took out a common editorial denouncing Corbyn as an anti-semite and saying that we’re now standing on the verge of another Holocaust. They are the enablers of this concerted conspiracy by the whole of British elite society to destroy Jeremy Corbyn.’
As Levy observed, the campaign reached its climax in an article last week in The Times by Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis. Mirvis suggested that Corbyn should be ‘considered unfit for office’, adding:
‘I ask every person to vote with their conscience. Be in no doubt, the very soul of our nation is at stake.’
‘The Chief Rabbi’s intervention in the general election is without precedent. I find it heartbreaking, as a Jew, that the rabbi who by convention is seen as the figurehead of the Jewish community, feels compelled to write this about Labour and its leader. I am not… making any kind of political statement here.’
‘What kind of journalistic neutrality is it for ITV’s political editor to use the fact that he is Jewish to support as sincere and even “heartbreaking” a bitterly disputed claim attacking the Labour Party in this way? In what universe is this impartial, objective journalism?’
The BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg tweeted on the chief rabbi’s criticism an astonishing 23 times in 24 hours. Kuenssberg retweeted the following comment (screenshot here) from chat show host Piers Morgan in response to Labour shadow international development secretary Barry Gardiner’s refusal to field further questions on anti-semitism:
‘Wow. The breathtaking arrogance of this chump telling journalists what questions to ask. They should all ignore him & pummel Corbyn about anti-Semitism.’
Small glimpses of sanity were occasionally visible on social media. Glen Oglaza, former senior reporter at ITN and ex-political correspondent for Sky News, commented:
‘Don’t want to get involved in the #Labour #anti-semitism row, but worth pointing out that the #ChiefRabbi is a lifelong Conservative supporter and, in his own words, a “lifelong friend of Boris Johnson” Nuff said’
It was indeed ‘nuff said’. But, in fact, it was almost never said by corporate journalists.
Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept was typically forthright in responding to Mirvis:
‘This is utter bullshit.
‘The British Conservative Party is rife with anti-semitism, while there’s no evidence Corbyn is.
‘If you want the Tories to win, just say so. It’s incredibly dangerous to keep exploiting anti-semitism for naked political and ideological ends like this’
In 2014, during ‘Operation Protective Edge’ – the Israeli attack on Gaza in which 2,251 Palestinians were killed, including 299 women and 551 children – Mirvis wrote:
‘There is no “cycle of violence” in Gaza. There is Hamas trying to annihilate Israel, and Israel trying to defend itself…’
With hundreds of civilians lying dead, he added:
‘Israel has no desire to kill or injure civilians in Gaza. They are potential partners in peace whose death only serves the interests of Hamas’s PR war.’
And:
‘To measure the morality of war by the military might of each party, the number of deaths or the amount of suffering on each side is not merely misguided; it plays into the hands of a ruthless and calculating aggressor.’
‘As opposed to the horrid Corbyn, Mirvis sees nothing wrong with the continued occupation; he does not identify with the struggle for Palestinian freedom, and he doesn’t sense the similarity between the South Africa of his childhood, Har Etzion of his youth and Israel of 2019. That is the real reason that he rejects Corbyn. The Jews of Britain also want a prime minister who supports Israel – that is, supports the occupation. A prime minister who is critical of Israel is to them an exemplar of the new anti-Semitism.’
In contrast to the blanket coverage of the chief rabbi’s comments – it was the lead story on the BBC News website for half a day – there was only token notice given to the Muslim Council of Britain’s warning of ‘denial, dismissal and deceit’ of ‘endemic, institutional’ Islamophobia within the Conservative Party.
There was also virtual BBC silence in response to the blistering attack on Boris Johnson’s racial slurs by Stormzy, the British rap artist who was a huge success at this year’s Glastonbury Festival. In an Instagram post that has been ‘liked’ almost 300,000 times, Stormzy noted:
‘I think Boris Johnson is a sinister man with a long record of lying and policies that have absolutely no regard for the people that our government should be committed to helping and empowering. I also believe it is criminally dangerous to give the most powerful role in the country to a man who has said that the sight of a “bunch of black kids” makes him “turn a hair”, compared women in burqas to letterboxes and referred to blacks [sic] people as “picaninnies” with “watermelon smiles”. I think it’s extremely dangerous to have a man with those views as the sole leader of our country.’
He added:
‘I will be voting for Jeremy Corbyn… for me, he is the first man in a position of power who is committed to giving the power back to the people and helping those who need a helping hand from the government the most.’
A commenter said (forwarded to us via email, 27 November 2019):
‘I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but the BBC are seriously compromised in this election.
‘Yesterday, arguably *the* most influential black person in the UK, Stormzy, launched a blistering attack on Johnson, calling him “sinister” and deploring his history of racism. This has been shared tens of thousands of times on social media. In the same post, he applauded Jeremy Corbyn as a figure of trust.
‘The BBC have not covered this at all.’
In a letter to the Guardian, Professor Des Freedman of Goldsmiths, University of London, commented:
‘Rigorous academic research shows that, in the first three weeks of the election campaign, coverage of Labour in the press has been overwhelmingly negative, with the Conservatives receiving consistently positive coverage… The most powerful sections of the UK media are simply not prepared to let citizens freely make up their own minds on Labour policies, nor to scrutinise Conservative claims systematically.’
The Evidence – The Real Threat To Human Life
Our ProQuest database search of newspaper articles for ‘Corbyn’ and ‘anti-semitism’ shows how intensively the issue has been used to attack Corbyn prior to the looming election on December 12:
September = 337 hits
October = 222 hits
November = 1,620 hits
While opinions in effect declaring Corbyn a Nazi are widely reported, opinions defending Corbyn by the likes of John Bercow, Gideon Levy, Norman Finkelstein, Glenn Greenwald, Noam Chomsky, Jonathan Cook, Michael Rosen and others reach a comparatively small audience on social media but are simply ignored by the establishment press reaching millions.
Exactly mirroring the fake claims justifying the 2003 Iraq war – also universally presented as serious and fact-based – it turns out that claims of an epidemic of anti-semitism within the Labour Party are completely bogus. Israel-based former Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook summarised a recent survey published in The Economist:
‘It showed that those identifying as “very left-wing” – the section of the public that supports Corbyn – were among the least likely to express antisemitic attitudes. Those identifying as “very right-wing”, on the other hand – those likely to support Boris “piccaninnies” Johnson – were three and a half times more likely to express hostile attitudes towards Jews. Other surveys show even worse racism among Conservatives towards more obviously non-white minorities, such as Muslims and black people. That, after all, is the very reason Boris “letterbox-looking Muslim women” Johnson now heads the Tory party.’
Other surveys have strongly supported these conclusions, including an October 2016 reportby the Commons home affairs committee and a September 2017 report by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and a Labour Party report discussed here in February 2019.
In 2002-2003, credible evidence from former UN weapons inspectors arguing that Iraq had been ‘fundamentally disarmed’ of 90-95% of its weapons of mass destruction by December 1998 was almost completely ignored by the corporate press – it just didn’t fit the establishment narrative. The same is true of the above highly credible and consistent reports – they are simply not part of the discussion.
If we are serious about offering a moral calculus, then we should, of course, include the fact that Johnson would certainly support Trump in any future racist wars against Iran, Venezuela, or North Korea, whereas Corbyn would not. Does it matter to journalists, to the public, that we might elect a leader who would make it more difficult for the US to kill, injure and displace hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people? How does that concern rank alongside Brexit, the fact that Johnson is a jovial fellow, or the fake claims of anti-semitism? We need only glance at Johnson’s track-record for evidence of the threat.
Since November 1, ProQuest finds 24 newspaper mentions containing the words ‘Boris Johnson’ and ‘Yemen’. Only one of them, in the Independent, focused on Johnson’s destructive role in the conflict:
‘The government has signed off nearly £2bn worth of arms sales to repressive regimes in the two years since the 2017 election, official figures show.’
These regimes include Saudi Arabia, ‘which has been widely condemned by the international community for its offensive in Yemen’ and ‘benefited from £719m in UK licences for bombs, missiles, fighter jets, sniper rifles, ammunition’.
Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade said:
‘As foreign secretary, Boris Johnson played a central role in supporting the terrible Saudi-led bombardment of Yemen, which has created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. Tens of thousands of people have been killed, but the arms companies only see it as a business opportunity.’
In 2017, defending the US-UK destruction of Libya in 2011, Johnson crassly commented that the Libyan city Sirte could be the new Dubai, adding, ‘all they have to do is clear the dead bodies away’. Johnson also voted for the devastating 2003 Iraq war.
‘Labour is pledging to put human rights and international law at the heart of foreign policy, in keeping with one of Jeremy Corbyn’s longest held passions. As well as attacking “failed military interventions”, the manifesto promises a War Powers Act to give parliament a legal veto on military action.’
And:
‘Arms sales to Saudi Arabia would be suspended immediately after criticism of the country’s role in the civil war in Yemen.’
But even these horrors are trivial – we don’t use the word lightly – compared to Johnson’s Trump-like stance on climate collapse. Johnson, a notorious climate denier, has ‘Almost always voted against measures to prevent climate change.’ In 2015, Johnson wrote an article in the Telegraph titled: ‘I can’t stand this December heat, but it has nothing to do with global warming’. Johnson endorsed the completely discredited view that ‘it is all about sun spots’.
The reality is very different. Professor Tim Lenton at the University of Exeter, lead author of a recent article in Nature warning of ‘existential threat to civilisation’, said last week:
‘We might already have crossed the threshold for a cascade of interrelated tipping points. The simple version is the schoolkids [striking for climate action] are right: we are seeing potentially irreversible changes in the climate system under way, or very close.’
Phil Williamson at the University of East Anglia, concurred:
‘The prognosis by Tim Lenton and colleagues is, unfortunately, fully plausible: that we might have already lost control of the Earth’s climate.’
Most recently, Johnson refused even to participate in a Channel 4 leaders’ debate on climate change, instead sending his father and MP Michael Gove, who were turned away. BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg tweeted a defence and a humorous discussion on this no-show, but no criticism. We can only wonder at her response, and that of the rest of the establishment press, if Corbyn had refused to participate in a debate on a key area of vulnerability, instead sending his dad.
If we can see beyond the propaganda, it is quite obvious that it is Johnson who offers, and who has already offered, a very serious threat to human life, not Corbyn. Voting for Johnson will likely have deadly consequences, not just for the traditional victims of US-UK firepower, but for all of us as the last hopes of averting climate collapse rapidly slip away.
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Israeli occupation has denied permission for British lawmaker, Philippa Whitford, who is a doctor, from entering Gaza to offer help for patients of breast cancer.
Over the past two and half years[1], I have been working with Medical Aid for Palestine (MAP) to improve the provision of services and treatment for breast cancer patients in Palestine.
Last year, I travelled out with the specific aim of setting up a project to enable experienced professionals in breast cancer care to provide teaching and training to local Palestinian clinicians working with breast cancer patients.
Since my last visit, I have managed to recruit a team of specialists from all over Scotland to join the project, which will help improve breast cancer care – prevention, diagnosis and treatment – for women in Gaza and the West Bank.
Tragically, many Palestinian women are denied permits to travel from Gaza to Jerusalem to access radiotherapy so it is important to be able to access as much treatment as possible near their home.
The plan this year was to travel out with the whole team in September but, frustratingly, I was denied a visa. Moreover, two others did not receive their visas in time.
However, I travelled, but I had to completely change my schedule and work the entire time from a base in Jerusalem.
Nonetheless, I am still able to see significant improvements since my visit last year, which is fantastic given that local clinicians are working under very difficult circumstances, particularly in Gaza. Hopefully, things will continue to progress.
In October, I raised the issue of my visa being denied in Parliament with the Foreign Office Minister. To see my question click here
Following this, Commonspace asked to interview me about how this affected my trip, my past work in Gaza, my thoughts on the current situation and what needs to be done to resolve it, and what our project hopes to achieve.
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The UN General Assembly yesterday officially asked Israel to leave the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.
The request was made after the resolution was adopted after 91 UN member states voted in favour, nine rejected and 65 abstained.
The resolution stipulates that Israel leaves all the Syrian Golan Heights occupied in June 1967, stating this is an implementation of the UN Security Council’s resolution.
Regarding the Israeli decision to annex the Golan Heights made on 4 December 1981, the UN said this was “null and void”.
On 15 November 2018, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution asking Israel to stop exploiting the natural resources in the Palestinian territories, including the occupied East Jerusalem and Syrian Golan Heights.
In March the US announced that it was time to back Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
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Featured image: Israel’s Merkava Tank in the Golan Heights. (By ChameleonsEye /Shutterstock)
The vilification of the leader of the UK Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, as an antisemite has intensified in the run up to the December 12 election in Britain. What makes this especially troubling, not to say bizarre, is that since he first became a member of parliament in 1983 Corbyn has been the most consistent campaigner against all forms of racism.
In fact, while still a local councillor in London in 1977 Corbyn had already organized a defense of the Jewish population of Wood Green from a neo-Nazi march. A recent compilation of the number of early day motions he advanced in Parliament to defend Jewish people, alongside other public stances he took to tackle antisemitism – to denounce Holocaust deniers, to commemorate Jewish resistance to fascism, to pressure the police to do more to protect synagogues against vandalism – came to well over 50. And he did all this not only in support of Jewish communities in the UK but also in Iran, Turkey, France, Russia and Eastern Europe. Indeed, the recently retired Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, himself Jewish, unreservedly expressed his belief that Corbyn was in no way antisemitic, having in their 22 years in Parliament together “never detected so much as a whiff of anti-semitism” about him.
Smear Campaign
Indeed, there is no way that the antisemitic charge can be made any sense of except as a means of deflecting Corbyn’s support of Palestinian rights against actions by Israeli governments. The smear campaign has mainly involved pointing to intemperate language of others who spoke beside Corbyn at meetings about this over the decades. Scraping the barrel for anything he said himself, one comment Corbyn made about pro-Israeli government hecklers at one meeting not getting his “English irony” has been highlighted.
Given the weak reed this provides for the personal attack on Corbyn, attention has been focused on his allegedly not having done enough to weed out “institutionalized” antisemitism in his party, even though a parliamentary committee report on Antisemitism in the UK found “no reliable, empirical evidence to support the notion that there is a higher prevalence of antisemitic attitudes within the Labour Party than any other political party.”
To be sure, there are instances of antisemitic tropes (mainly on the ‘rich Jews’ theme) in some Labour-related social media circles, but much less than in parties of the right. In any case, Corbyn has done more to address this than any previous leader of any party.
Under his leadership, Labour grew to over 500,000 members; yet of some 1100 complaints of antisemitism the party received between April 2018 and January 2019 almost half were found to have nothing to do with the party, while another quarter were lacking in any basic evidence.
In Corbyn’s Own Words
In his leaders’ speech to the 2018 Labour conference, Corbyn spoke directly
“to all in the Jewish community: This party, this movement, will always be implacable campaigners against antisemitism and racism in all its forms. We are your ally. And the next Labour government will guarantee whatever support necessary to ensure the security of Jewish community centres and places of worship, as we will for any other community experiencing hateful behaviour and physical attacks. We will work with Jewish communities to eradicate antisemitism, both from our party and wider society. And with your help I will fight for that with every breath I possess.”
Later in the speech, when dealing with Labour’s foreign policy, he added:
“And let me next say a few words about the ongoing denial of justice and rights to the Palestinian people. Our Party is united in condemning the shooting of hundreds of unarmed demonstrators in Gaza by Israeli forces and the passing of Israel’s discriminatory Nation-State Law. The continuing occupation, the expansion of illegal settlements and the imprisonment of Palestinian children are an outrage. We support a two-state solution to the conflict with a secure Israel and a viable and secure Palestinian state.”
Rather than being traduced, Corbyn deserves to be praised for making it so clear that principled support for Palestinian rights does not preclude principled opposition to antisemitism.
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December 6th, 2019 by Center For Biological Diversity
The Trump administration today announced it will reauthorize use of sodium cyanide in wildlife-killing devices called M-44s. These “cyanide bombs” received approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency despite inhumanely and indiscriminately killing thousands of animals every year. They have also injured people.
“This appalling decision leaves cyanide traps lurking in the wild to threaten people, pets and imperiled animals,” said Collette Adkins, carnivore conservation director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The EPA imposed a few minor restrictions, but these deadly devices have just wreaked too much havoc to remain in use. To truly protect humans and wildlife from these poisonous contraptions, we need a nationwide ban.”
The EPA allows use of the devices by Wildlife Services, the animal-killing program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The EPA also authorizes M-44 use by state agencies in South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, New Mexico and Texas.
A federal court recently approved a ban on M-44 use by Wildlife Services across more than 10 million acres of public land in Wyoming. The Wyoming ban is as part of an agreement resulting from a lawsuit brought by the Center and other wildlife advocacy groups.
In August the EPA issued an interim decision renewing sodium cyanide registration. Then a week later, it withdrew that interim decision for more discussions with Wildlife Services. Today’s announcement reauthorizes use of the devices.
More than 99.9 percent of people commenting on the proposal asked the EPA to ban M-44s, according to analysis from the Center for Biological Diversity and Western Environmental Law Center.
In response to concerns raised by wildlife-advocacy groups and others, EPA added some modest restrictions. For example, the devices cannot be placed within 300 feet of a public road or pathway, increased from 100 feet. Two elevated warning signs must be placed within 15 feet of each device, decreased from 25 feet. And no devices can be placed within 600 feet of a residence unless the landowner gives permission.
None of the restrictions will prevent killing of nontarget wildlife, however.
“While it is encouraging that the EPA is taking at least some minimal action to protect the public from deadly M-44s, updating a few use restrictions –– nearly impossible to enforce and commonly ignored –– fails to meaningfully address the problem,” said Kelly Nokes, Shared Earth wildlife attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center. “EPA is blatantly ignoring its fundamental duty to protect the public, our pets and native wildlife from the cruel, lethal impacts of cyanide bombs lurking on our public lands. We will continue to hold our federal government accountable to the law, and will continue our fight for a ban on M-44s once and for all.”
“Tightening up use restrictions is turning a blind eye to the reality of M-44s,” said Brooks Fahy, executive director of Predator Defense. “In my 25 years working with M-44 victims I’ve learned that Wildlife Services’ agents frequently do not follow the use restrictions. And warning signs will not prevent more dogs, wild animals and potentially children from being killed. They cannot read them. M-44s are a safety menace and must be banned.”
“USDA’s rampant, well-documented noncompliance with existing use restrictions has made clear that additional restrictions will not adequately protect the public, pets and wildlife from these deadly cyanide bombs,” said Carson Barylak, campaigns manager at the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).
According to Wildlife Services’ own data, M-44s killed 6,579 animals, mostly coyotes and foxes, in 2018, down from 13,232 animals in 2017. Of these, more than 200 deaths were nontarget animals, including a bear, foxes, opossums, raccoons and skunks. These numbers are likely a significant undercount of the true death toll, as Wildlife Services is notorious for poor data collection and an entrenched “shoot, shovel, shut up” mentality.
Background
M-44 devices spray deadly sodium cyanide into the mouths of unsuspecting coyotes, foxes and other carnivores lured by smelly bait. Anything or anyone that pulls on the baited device can be killed or severely injured by the deadly spray.
In response to a 2017 lawsuit brought by the Center and its allies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed to analyze impacts of M-44s on endangered wildlife by the end of 2021. Another 2017 lawsuit by the wildlife advocates prompted Wildlife Services in Colorado to temporarily halt the use of M-44s while it completes a new environmental analysis on its wildlife-killing program.
Last year the EPA denied a 2017 petition authored by the Center for Biological Diversity and WildEarth Guardians that asked for a nationwide ban on M-44s.
M-44s temporarily blinded a child and killed three family dogs in two incidents in Idaho and Wyoming in 2017. A wolf was also accidentally killed by an M-44 set in Oregon that year. In response, Idaho instituted an ongoing moratorium on M-44 use on public lands, and Oregon this year passed legislation banning them in the state.
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Featured image: Dead wolf or coyote near POISON sign in New Mexico in 2016. Image available for media use. This image was gathered through a FOIA request by the Center for Biological Diversity and is public domain. Image is available for media use.
The nations of Southeast Asia have united in efforts to prevent a US-backed coup aimed at fellow-Southeast Asian state Cambodia.
Through a combination of travel bans and detentions across the region in late October and early November, Southeast Asia may have thwarted attempts by Washington-backed opposition front, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), from “returning” from its US and European exile to Cambodia where it sought to stir up unrest and sow instability.
The US seeks to disrupt, divide and even destroy the growing list of nations in Asia building ties with Beijing at the expense of Washington’s fading primacy over the Asia-Pacific region.
With multiple US wars raging across the globe, Washington’s ongoing trade war with China and Russophobic hysteria paralysing America’s domestic political landscape, the rarely-mentioned nation of Cambodia and its political affairs couldn’t be further from the global public’s attention.
Using this obscurity as cover, the US began low-key preparations ahead of what the US had hoped would end in much more widely reported protests, instability and, if other nations suffering US regime change efforts is anything to go by, extensive violence.
While these preparations were promoted by Western media organisations operating in Southeast Asia, they collectively omitted mention of US involvement or the much wider implications of the US organising what was essentially a coup attempt in Cambodia.
Preparations included moving CNRP members from their US and European homes-in-exile to neighbouring Southeast Asian states. There, Western media organisations and US-European funded fronts posing as rights organisations conducted conferences and published articles promoting their planned “return” to Cambodia.
Had the US succeeded in triggering chaos in Cambodia, it would have fed synergistically into ongoing US-fomented instability in Hong Kong, China as well as opened the door to other US-funded groups across Southeast Asia eager to engage in political unrest.
Thai political opposition party “Future Forward,” for example, appears to have been planning unrest timed to coincide with CNRP’s return to Cambodia.
Asia Unites Against US Coup Attempt
However, these preparations appear to have been in vain.
In late October Thailand had denied CNRP deputy leader Mu Sochua entry into their territory where she had sought to then travel onward into Cambodia.
The deputy leader of Cambodia’s opposition party has been denied entry to Thailand, casting doubt on party leader Sam Rainsy’s pledge to return from exile in Paris in early November. Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) Vice-President Mu Sochua was denied entry in Bangkok on October 20 and sent back to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. From there, she headed to the United States, where she is also a citizen.
The article also notes that:
CNRP President Kem Sokha was arrested for treason in September 2017, and Sochua fled the country the following month. By November the party was dissolved entirely, allowing long-time Prime Minister Hun Sen to claim all 125 parliament seats in last year’s election.
Souchua would eventually be detained in Malaysia as she attempted to proceed onward to Cambodia.
Thailand would next bar CNRP leader Sam Rainsy from his attempted return to Cambodia via Thai territory. Both Thailand and Malaysia cited the principles of non-interference and an unwillingness to abet the political destabilisation of a fellow ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) member state.
Thailand would not allow entry to Cambodian opposition founder Sam Rainsy, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said on Wednesday, after the self-exiled dissident said he planned to return to Cambodia via Bangkok.
The article would also claim:
Hun Sen has accused the opposition of fomenting a coup, and his government has arrested at least 48 activists with Sam Rainsy’s banned opposition party this year. The party’s last leader remains under house arrest on treason charges.
Missing from Al Jazeera, AP and Reuters’ reports and that of every other report from the Western media regarding Cambodia’s opposition CNRP is the fact that “the party’s last leader,” Kem Sokha, himself had openly admitted that he was conspiring with the US government to overthrow the current Cambodian government making him an obvious traitor by any and every definition of the word.
Cambodia’s Opposition Serves Washington’s War on China
“…the USA that has assisted me, they asked me to take the model from Yugoslavia, Serbia, where they can changed the dictator Slobodan Milosevic,” he continues, referring to the former Serbian and Yugoslavian leader who resigned amid popular protests following disputed elections, and died while on trial for war crimes.
“You know Milosevic had a huge numbers of tanks. But they changed things by using this strategy, and they take this experience for me to implement in Cambodia. But no one knew about this.”
“However, since we are now reaching at this stage, today I must tell you about this strategy. We will have more to continue and we will succeed.”
Kem Sokha would elaborate further, claiming:
“I do not do anything at my own will. Their experts, professors at universities in Washington, DC, Montreal, Canada, hired by the Americans in order to advise me on the strategy to change the dictator leader in Cambodia.”
As previously reported, Kem Sokha’s daughter, Kem Monovithya, has also openly worked with the US for years seeking the overthrow of the Cambodian government.
When Cambodia began its crackdown on both CNRP and the US-funded organisations supporting it, the US threatened sanctions and other punitive measures. Kem Monovithya would play a central role in promoting these punitive measures in Washington.
…in Washington, a panel of “witnesses” convened by the House Foreign Affairs Committee – including Kem Sokha’s daughter, Kem Monovithya – called for additional action in response to the political crackdown. In a statement, Monovithya urged targeted financial sanctions against government officials responsible for undermining democracy. She also called on the US to suspend “any and all assistance for the central Cambodian Government”, while “continuing democracy assistance programs for civil society, particularly those engaged in election-related matters”.
Kem Sokha, a former Cambodian senator and official, heads the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, which is supported by U.S. government funds. The center has held public forums to hear complaints about conditions in Cambodia.
Regarding Kem Monovithya herself, the Washington Post would note:
Monovitha Kem, a business school graduate and aspiring lawyer, said she would lobby U.S. and international institutions to fight Hun Sen’s decision.
“I would like to see the charges dropped not just for my father, but for all other activists,” she said in an interview Monday. “I hope they will amend the defamation law.”
Monovitha Kem has met with officials at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the International Republican Institute, the U.S. Agency for International Development and major human rights groups.
The National Democratic Institute (NDI) and International Republican Institute (IRI) are both subsidiaries of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which, together with the US government itself, have supported myriad organisations engaged in subversive activities within Cambodia for years.
This includes Licadho, which is funded by both the UK government and the US via USAID. It also includes Radio Free Asia and Voice of America, both of which are funded by the US government and overseen by the Broadcasting Board of Governors chaired by US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo himself.
There is also the Cambodian Center for Independent Media, funded by NED subsidiaries Freedom House and IRI as well as the British Embassy and convicted financial criminal George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.
Decades of US Meddling Coming to an End?
Decades of US meddling in Cambodia’s politics, including the creation of Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha’s opposition CNRP and organisations created and funded by the US government to support it, along with plans to overthrow the current Cambodian government to install CNRP into power, represents in reality political meddling many times worse than even the most imaginative accusations made against Russia or China in regards to their supposed meddling in US and European politics.
However, with Southeast Asia’s recent and united stand against US designs against Cambodia, we may be witnessing the beginning of the end of US meddling in Southeast Asia all together. But US meddling worldwide, including across Asia, is so extensive, embedded in local media, academia and politics, that it will take years more to fully uproot it from the region.
While the malign influence of Wall Street, Washington, London and Brussels persists well beyond its borders continuing a legacy of colonialism that exploited and suppressed Southeast Asia for centuries, the foiling of an attempted US-backed coup in Cambodia owed to a united stand by regional nations offers promising hope that this malign influence is now finally in terminal decline.
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Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
It continues to be very difficult for we US Americans to acknowledge that our political system and its capitalist economy is deeply corrupt and fixed, that we find it easier to always distract ourselves by demonizing others.
In some ways, it is irrelevant whether the Clinton and Podesta emails were leaked or hacked, as the Democrats created the hoax of Russiagate to avoid severe self-examination of their own corruption and deceptive practices.
The Democrats have ignored working people’s needs for at least 40 years as it became corporate. And the large amount of disenfranchisement among US voters due to Jim Crow revitalization, and excluding many felons for life, eliminate many citizens from voting.
Then to understand that our entire political system is one big financial scheme preserving an oligarchy of plutocrats, how can we even call ourselves a republic. We have never been a democracy. We are addicted to materialism. It is our stubborn belief in our validity as a nation, certainly as compared to others, that I believe preempts our capacity for the kind of popular revolt we need to be a nation with integrity and a true commitment to justice. This requires a nonviolent revolution that we have yet experienced, though the radical changes in the late 1960s threatened the system as never before with a break out of real democracy.
But how can we possibly ever believe what the US or its agencies say?
The basic principle is lying.
Since WWII, the US has militarily intervened in dozens of countries nearly 400 times, covertly thousands of times. It has attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders, attempted to suppress popular movements in 20 countries, dropped bombs on at least 30 countries, and has grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries and, according to a political science professor at Carnegie Mellon Univ, has attempted influence other country presidential elections 81 times between 1946 and 2000. Would the US ever willingly admit these interventionist deeds? And we have no real, genuine free, investigative press, just a corporate one spewing the capitalist, US exceptional rhetoric. What is it we are believing in here in the USA?
Our official policy is Full Spectrum Dominance, to be militarily superior in all sea spaces, air spaces, and ground spaces, as well as outer space, cyber space, and mental space between our ears. Currently the US has special ops forces in 150 countries, and is dropping bombs and missiles on at least 7 countries. We preserve a capitalist, class society with now the largest disparity between rich and poor in the industrial world, and one of the worst disparities among all countries. Our capitalist neoliberal interests now cover every corner of the globe such that there is no safe place in the world from US intervention, often conniving, spewing deceit, and acting diabolically beyond most of our comprehension. And it is not possible now for US policy to possess any concern for human beings elsewhere, though we attempt to fool the public by manipulating scenarios with staged photos, while uttering the most ridiculous, self-serving, non-factual rhetoric to justify “humanitarian intervention.” We want control of everything.
Now we want a new cold war, threatening hot war with Russia, led by the Democrats. It is all about demonizing others “out there” to avoid honestly addressing the demons in our own history, our own oligarchic structures, and imperial policies. I just don’t understand how we can be so concerned about Putin, or Nicaragua, or Syria, etc., when our system is so globally destructive and undemocratic and unfair at home. Will we support an international movement to intervene into the affairs of the US because our policies are totally endangering all life on the planet. We seem not yet to able to organize a popular nonviolent revolution at home to arrest our own criminally corrupt system and the dangerous policies it imposes, while enriching a small few as war making is now the most lucrative path to obscene profits. Will we wake up? Or just continue to point fingers elsewhere and become extinct with no dignity whatsoever?
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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, S. Brian Willson.
S. Brian Willson, Vietnam war veteran, renowned peace activist, human rights lawyer and award winning author, Managua, Nicaragua, Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
We are fascinated by space. Rockets and space shuttles are the stuff of our dreams. But the dream is rapidly turning to nightmare and we may justifiably wonder where it is taking us. Strangely, questioning the merits of space activities seems shocking, excruciating, outrageous. How can that be so if the spark of human genius is to be found uniquely in space activities? Perhaps we need to move beyond or debunk the myth of space. Without engaging in nihilism or provoking bitter controversy, we need to conjure another relationship with the idea of space.
Although far removed from the fairly abstract concerns of cosmology or astrophysics, the issue of borders has arisen with the conquest of space. Not in the sense that borders have been pushed back, for that is not the case, but rather in terms of their having finally disappeared from the Earth’s surface. It is quite striking that many astronauts have commented on how artifical our state borders seemed when they looked at the Earth from space, which makes them sound almost naïve given how obvious that is. It was strange to hear how astonished they were by the idea of national borders being invisible from space.
Rockets have not made the universe accessible to us. After all, the distance between the International Space Station and the Earth is comparable to that between the peel of an orange and its flesh. As for the the distance between the Earth and the Moon, compared to our galaxy it amounts to only a tenth of the thickness of a hair compared to the Earth … And our galaxy itself is nothing but a tiny “molecule” in the cosmic fluid. It would be quite ludicrous to take our limited forays into space as representing real access to the deep universe.
The frontier that has disappeared is not the one that separates us from interstellar space, for that indisputably remains. Rather it is the arbitrary boundaries of our countries, our states, our nations, the physical non-existence of which paradoxically astonished the various astronauts who have had the opportunity to observe the Earth from space. We seem to have so deeply internalised the idea of these fictional walls that their absence from the real landscape is seriously disturbing. We had forgotten the superficiality and obsolescence of this drab grid imposed on reality. The fact that highly-trained, ‑educated and ‑qualified men can be astounded by the continuity of land is deeply significant.
Especially since almost no one is affected by borders. Of course, they can be lethal. Refugees die at closed borders, as we are all too tragically reminded in the news. This brutal violence is all too real. But for most living creatures borders do not exist. Billions upon billions of them belonging to millions of species cross borders every day without any idea of their existence or the slightest pause for thought. None are aware of borders, not birds or bees, earthworms, mice, trees (which move from generation to generation) or microbes. Our partitioning of the world seems almost ridiculous in its arrogant stupidity, although we once believed it to be justified and virtually immutable.
But beyond just the simple issue of borders, space poses an eminently symbolic question. The human and financial resources expended on space activities exceed their meagre scientific interest. The endeavour is almost exclusively symbolic, but what does it symbolise?
Apollo 11 (Source: nasa.gov)
The Apollo missions held a certain fascination for people. A genuine spirit of adventure infused the pioneers of space. The first spacewalks were greeted with deference, even reverence. The encounter with the otherworldliness of the lunar surface was imbued with solemnity. Despite the fierce patriotism that inspired the process, which was aimed at catching up with the Russians, when the astronauts returned to Earth they were celebrated not so much as American heroes but as true ambassadors of humanity. Something powerfully moving was taking place, something that resonated with people.
The symbolism was soon eroded, however, as later Apollo missions revealed a significant shift in attitudes. The astronauts behaved like cowboys, made jokes that verged on bad taste, played tricks on the mechanics, and relaxed in macho style. Some of the magic was already gone.
Today, an American company boasts about its feat of putting an automobile into orbit, while Donald Trump seems to wish to restart a frenetic lunar programme simply to challenge the Chinese … What sense is there in launching a lunar programme when life on Earth is dying? Not to mention that a few billionaires – themselves largely responsible for devastating our planet – are beginning to consider migrating to space when the Earth becomes unlivable. Of course they will not succeed, but the picture is not just ugly, it is intolerable, especially since those planning to flee are those most responsible for the shipwreck.
The possibility of building a space hotel for the super-rich was recently floated. Tens of thousands of satellites are set to be deployed – severely damaging the prospects for any astronomy worthy of the name – in pursuit of facilitating access to the Internet from the remotest corners of the globe. All this is taking place under the aegis of a man who wants to play Rambo and boasts of marketing a flamethrower and who is right now unveiling a semi-armoured, futuristic-looking pickup to entertain Californians in need of 2-ton gadgets (it also touts the wonders of a laser window-cleaning technology that is bringing tears to the eyes of Silicon Valley).
Rightly or wrongly, space flight has been associated with the notion of free-market heroism. The symbolism seems to me to have changed radically. To my mind, it has become a semiotics of arrogance. It has become a game of sterile domination and a factory churning out fictional heroes devoid of any scientific, ethical or aesthetic aim, devoid of any epistemic elegance.
As we are being threatened by a major ecological crisis that requires us to rapidly recover a sense of moderation for our very survival, how can it make any sense to rush mindlessly into a satellite constellation operated by a private company, which will exponentially increase the use of energy-devouring digital technologies?
Animal populations are collapsing, wilderness areas are disappearing before our very eyes, temperatures are skyrocketing, pollution is poisoning the air, water and soils … the Earth is ailing and needs our care and love. It is under major attack: a massive extinction that is tantamount to deliberate extermination. How incredibly cynical of us to want to “conquer” space when we are right now devastating our own world before we have ever really understood it. We know virtually nothing about the wonders that surround us, including the complex symbiotic relationships among trees, subtle insect behaviours and the emotions of small mammals. Are we destined to destroy every last bit of this fragile magnificence emanating from billions of years of uninterrupted evolution and instead set our sights on the drab and lifeless ochres of the surface of Mars?
Of course, the quest for knowledge must go on. There is no question of environmental awareness calling a halt to the adventure of human knowledge. Quite the contrary. We must acknowledge that some satellites help us understand climate change or answer astrophysical questions. But the conquest of space as it stands – especially manned flights – has little to do with the gentle and patient humility involved in real discovery of the world around us. The quest to conquer space now seems more like the cravings of an insatiable demiurge.
Like a final nihilistic erection, the immense phallic structures of the rockets signal the bankruptcy of humanity become blind and arrogant, bereft of awareness of the here and now as we lust after a never-neverland elsewhere. Humanity‘s craving for desacralization monstrously defiles a quest that might once have been noble.
The Western world’s inability to reflect on its own values is staggering when, in addition to wreaking neocolonial havoc, they lead to its own extermination.
For me, the heroes of the world of today are the Indians who fight for the survival of the forests, the refugees who fight for the survival of their families, the animals that fight for the survival of their packs or herds in a devastated world. The astronaut has lost his glamour – he has unwittingly become a stereotyped, prefabricated and sanitized representation of the deadly hubris of our warped society. The planet that we need to learn to explore – and not conquer – is our own. Time is running out and the revolution we need is far more root and branch than just another mundane invention of a new technology or a superpowered engine: we need to rediscover what it is to love.
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This article was originally published in French, translated into English by Claire Edwards.
Trump regime economic terrorism on Venezuela includes multiple rounds of illegal sanctions and an embargo — war by other means.
Nations and media supporting hostile US actions against the Bolivarian Republic and other countries are complicit in its crimes against humanity.
These actions have nothing to do with promoting democracy the US deplores, nothing to do with protecting national security, everything to do with seeking control over other nations, their resources and populations — Venezuela a prime target because of its world’s largest oil reserves.
US war on the Bolivarian Republic by other means aims to install pro-Western puppet rule, replacing its model social democracy, the threat of a good example since established in 1999.
Nations engaging in legitimate political, economic, financial, and trade relations with Venezuela and other countries it wants isolated face harsh US recrimination.
Blacklisting 29 Venezuelan officials by the Trump regime was the latest shoe to drop.
Abandoning the rule of law in deference to US imperial interests, 15 so-called Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR) countries banned President Nicolas Maduro, Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, and others in his government from traveling within their borders.
Along with the US, anti-democratic TIAR countries include Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Trinidad and Tobago.
They falsely designated regional peace, equity and justice champion Bolivarian officials “a threat to the preservation of peace and security on the continent.”
The Washington-based/US-controlled Organization of American States (OAS) overseas TIAR.
Like NATO’s collective defense Article 5, TIAR states that “an armed attack by any State against an American State will be considered an attack against all American States.”
Venezuelan Defense Minister Padrino earlier called the treaty “an instrument of domination and interventionism that goes against the independence and sovereignty of the people, a product of the already obsolete imperialist doctrines that have done so much damage to Latin America.”
Months earlier, Venezuelan Law Professor Pablo Aure tweeted: TIAR “will be the instrument that allows the entry of a foreign military coalition” against the Bolivarian Republic.
In September, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Arreaza said
“(w)e are ready to protect ourselves. We are ready to react. We will let no one trample sacred Venezuelan soil. We will respond and hope that never happens.”
Only 16 of TIAR’s original 35 member states remain part of the treaty. In 2014, Latin American and Caribbean countries proclaimed their region a zone of peace — not as long as they surrender their sovereign interests to a higher power in Washington.
Since social democracy replaced fascist rule in Venezuela, the Clintons, Bush/Cheney, Obama and Trump targeted the country for regime change, wanting control over its world’s largest oil reserves under pro-Western puppet rule.
For over 20 years, establishment media cheerled the imperial aim, waging all-out propaganda war on Venezuela, notably the NYT — currently blaming Nicolas Maduro for Trump regime economic terrorism on the country.
Its latest hit piece ignored US war on the country by other means, its illegal sanctions and other forms of state terror, its rage to gain another imperial trophy and plunder its resources.
It blamed US high crimes against humanity, greatly escalated by Trump regime hardliners, on “misrule (sic),” falsely adding:
“Years of corrupt, incompetent and autocratic rule have left Venezuelans hungry and children dying for want of basic medical care (sic).”
Blaming victims of imperial crimes is longstanding US policy. Supportive establishment media operate the same way, notably the Times.
It never met a sovereign independent government unwilling to sell its soul to Washington it didn’t want forcefully toppled and transformed into US client state status.
Trump regime viciousness bears full responsibility for hard times in Venezuela, what the scourge of imperialism is all about — supported by the Times instead of denouncing it.
The record of the self-styled newspaper of record mocks what journalism the way it should be is all about — comforting the afflicted, touching the right nerves, featuring the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, especially when ugly.
A Final Comment
A new Meganalisis poll showed US-designated Guaido’s support is less than 10%. Only 11% “trust and support” the opposition-controlled National Assembly.
On December 3, Reuters reported that crowds turning out to hear Guaido are a small fraction of earlier in the year numbers, adding:
“(S)ome of his (National Assembly supporters are) jostling for…new leadership…Maduro’s grip on power seems to be strengthening.” Guaido “missed his moment.”
According to Caracas-based political analyst Dimitris Pantoulas, “(t)he political reality we have had in Venezuela for the last 10 months has finished.”
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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.”
Shortly after several social-democratic opposition members of the Parliament of Canada, a number of national and local unions, and members of the left-wing Quebec Solidaire party in Quebec’s National Assembly, took a position against the coup in Bolivia, another Canadian union issued a press release.
The release by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), representing 54,000 workers, is dated November 20 and titled: “CUPW condemns Bolivian coup.”
“CUPW [the Canadian Union of Postal Workers] is appalled to see international actors including Canada, the UK and the U.S.A. condoning a coup d’état in Bolivia, enacted by a group of military, police and right-wing politicians.
“Socialist Evo Morales was Bolivia’s first indigenous president. His social policies pulled many people out of poverty and leave a legacy of indigenous empowerment and improvements for the Bolivian working class. Bolivia adopted a new secular constitution in 2009 under his administration.
“Right-wing forces and the military refused to acknowledge Morales’ October 2019 re-election – by a resounding majority on the first-round ballot – and forced his resignation. He has been in exile [in Mexico] since.
“Though election ‘irregularities’ were alleged, there’s been no evidence of election fraud put forward.”
After mentioning the racist and classist nature of the violence resulting from the coup, the CUPW goes on to express its solidarity with Bolivian trade unions and social movements. It concludes:
“CUPW holds very dear the right to peoples’ self-determination and will never accept an undemocratic, violent coup against the clear and overwhelming democratic will of the people.”
While opposition to the coup grows in Canada, neither the Canadian government nor the capitalist media, which always support the so-called “opposition” (i.e., whoever the U.S. favors), as they have done in Venezuela, apparently have nothing to say.
Yet the workers and peoples of Canada are determined. No power anywhere in the world can make the people turn their anti-imperialist movement into an appendage of the Trudeau government’s foreign policy in Latin America and the Caribbean.
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This article was originally published in Spanish in Trabajadores, Newspaper of the Cuban Trade Union Central.
Africa now contains 1.3 billion inhabitants, almost twice that of Europe’s population, and the number of African people continues expanding rapidly in what comprises the world’s second biggest continent.
Following five centuries of pillage and exploitation by Western imperial powers, Africa is today riddled with poverty and social injustice. Africa remains a sought after land mass for the world’s strongest states. One of the reasons for this is that two African nations, Libya in the north and Nigeria further south, contain the world’s 9th and 10th largest oil reserves respectively.
Among the motives behind the March 2011 United States-NATO military assault on Libya, was to reinstate control over that country’s oil sources, which under Muammar Gaddafi was becoming increasingly uncertain. Seven months later, on 20 October 2011, Gaddafi was viciously murdered by NATO-backed forces. His son Mutassim Gaddafi, the former National Security Advisor of Libya, was also killed that same day in a premeditated and cold-blooded fashion.
The 69-year-old Gaddafi’s unseemly death was generally applauded in the West. Norway’s then prime minister Jens Stoltenberg, and the current NATO Secretary General, described Gaddafi’s liquidation as “a turning point for Libya”. Indeed, it was a turning point, as Libya was splintered apart into warring factions, with the nation since descending into chaos and ruin. Britain’s prime minister at the time, David Cameron, said upon hearing of Gaddafi’s death that Libya would have “an even greater chance, after this news, of building themselves a strong and democratic future”.
On the international scene condemnation of Gaddafi’s murder was a rare thing, and came from those such as Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez – with the Cuban leader noting that his killing was something “which violates the most elementary principles of Islamic rules” while Chavez denounced it as “another outrage”.
NATO chiefs were satisfied, however, as it removed an obstacle to US control over Libya’s oil sources, a country which also has an extensive coastline along the Mediterranean Sea. One of the primary tasks of NATO is to safeguard access to raw materials and strategic localities. In June 2007 NATO’s then Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said to a gathering of members in Brussels that “NATO troops have to guard pipelines that transport oil and gas that is directed to the West”. Another of NATO’s functions is “to protect sea routes used by tankers and other ‘crucial infrastructure’ of the energy system”.
A separate reason behind the US-led attack on Libya was to stem the tide of Arab Spring revolts, which first broke out in Tunisia during December 2010. Tunisia borders Libya to the west, with protests in the following weeks spreading to other nearby states like Egypt. Contrary to misrepresentations in Western media, the Arab Spring was looked upon with much concern by First World leaders.
As has been known for decades along the corridors of power in Washington and London, nationalist movements or popular uprisings – and not communism or terrorism – has constituted the biggest threat to Western hegemony and control over foreign resources. The purported spectre of communism was used as a smokescreen by leaders to frighten the public and keep them in line. It has seldom ever been desirable for imperial states to promote real democratic ideals abroad, which is incompatible with their core interests regarding oil and gas, along with control over other mineral reserves.
George Kennan, the famous American planner and historian, outlined in a top secret document dated 24 February 1948 that, “We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction” including “unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization”. Two years later, in 1950, Kennan recognised that the imperative need was for the “protection of our raw materials”. These views remain relevant right up to today.
Following the intervention against Libya, US predominance over this north African country has largely been restored. In June 2019 Ahmed Maiteeq, the Libyan deputy prime minister, called the US “our main ally”, while Libya is in the midst of a destructive civil war ongoing for over five years.
The African continent contains about 30% of the world’s remaining mineral resources, ranging from diamonds and copper to gold and silver. Parts of Africa are also rich in lithium, a natural element which has become increasingly sought after. For example, lithium is an essential material used to power batteries for electric cars, and there are great levels of this substance in countries like Mali, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo).
Mainly because of vested interests embedded in fossil fuel production, the electric car industry has been painfully slow to emerge. Petrol and diesel-fuelled vehicles account for almost 20% of world carbon emissions. With growing pressure upon governments to tackle climate change, the number of electric cars globally will surely multiply in the years to come, thereby increasing the demand for lithium.
Since 2009, Africa’s largest trading partner has been none other than China, which overtook the US that year. At the start of this century, Beijing’s trade levels with Africa stood at just $10 billion. By 2014 it had risen to $220 billion, before declining somewhat to $170 billion in 2017.
Beijing’s financial dealings with Africa are indeed a recent phenomenon, and trade exchanges provide China with only limited sway on the African continent. As a consequence, reports of China “taking over Africa” are very likely overstated and unrealistic.
China possesses just one army base overseas, which was opened in August 2017 and is located in the east African country of Djibouti. While China seeks influence abroad mainly through its financial and industrial initiatives, Washington focuses primarily on means of force. The Pentagon today controls 36 military bases in Africa, most of which are located along the continent’s strategically vital regions, in central and eastern Africa.
There are now about 7,000 US troops stationed on African soil, as part of US Africa Command (AFRICOM) – something which is barely known among the American public. US congressmen, like Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have expressed surprise on learning the true extent of US militarism in little known African countries like Niger. In 2008, the year that AFRICOM began its operations, Washington had only 2,600 soldiers in Africa. This year alone, two new US bases have opened for business, one in landlocked Niger and the other in Somalia, the latter situated in the Horn of Africa.
The Horn of Africa, on the continent’s far east, is one of the most prized territories in Africa. It juts out into the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea, providing a field of air and naval operations in important regions. Furthermore, situated just a few hundred miles north-eastwards of the Horn of Africa lies oil rich Saudi Arabia, which can be reached by crossing the Red Sea.
Unsurprisingly, Washington has implemented an enlarging military presence in Horn of Africa countries like Somalia, where 500 American soldiers are today based, compared to just 50 US soldiers present in Somalia three years ago.
Moving upwards past Somalia, the Americans can deploy aircraft or utilise their navy to reach the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf waters. These rich seas are linked together in one way or another, and guarantee Washington power over resources.
Since president Donald Trump assumed office nearly three years ago, the US military has conducted dozens of air strikes in Somalia against “extremists”; inevitably, civilians are killed in these attacks, which are sometimes carried out indiscriminately or based on faulty intelligence reports.
The US footprint in Somalia is still a fraction compared to its status in neighbouring Djibouti, also in the Horn of Africa – where 4,000 American military personnel reside in Djibouti City, at Camp Lemonnier, the “crown in the jewel” of US bases in Africa. The Pentagon pays more than $60 million annually for its military’s use of the Camp Lemonnier base, and has a contract to continue leasing it until 2034.
Washington’s interest in Djibouti is at least partly due to the strategic significance of this tiny east African nation. Directly off Djibouti’s northern coast lies the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. In 2018, 6.2 million barrels of crude oil and refined petroleum were each day shipped through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and the numbers have been steadily increasing. This Strait now accounts for almost 10% of total seaborne oil shipped globally.
Powerful concerns are at stake here, as a sizable amount of these resources are sent to America, along with Europe and Asia. The Strait is a link between the Horn of Africa and Middle East, which furthermore connects the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea.
Meanwhile, a growing proportion of US operations in Africa relates to drone attacks, in which an unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) targets below persons, buildings, installations, etc. Drones are armed with weapons like Hellfire missiles, which have been modified over the years.
Since 2011, the Pentagon has carried out around 600 drone strikes in Libya, and rising levels of these attacks have been witnessed in Somalia too. Drone warfare has proven to be a particularly harmful military action and, as has been documented, each drone assault can produce more extremists than will conceivably be killed. US drone attacks have terrorised civilian inhabitants around Africa and the Middle East, playing a role in radicalising communities and imbuing them with hostile attitudes towards America.
The Pentagon also has drones in flight above other African nations like Chad, Cameroon and Niger. Washington boasts a considerable foothold in Niger, where at least 800 US troops are stationed. It has been reported that American soldiers are active in Niger to help train local armies in the fight against Boko Haram, a terrorist organisation which in March 2015 pledged allegiance to Islamic State (ISIS). However, in one way or another, Washington’s foreign policies over the past 40 years have been a pivotal factor in the disturbing rise of terrorist groups in the Eastern hemisphere.
Niger and its American squadrons are positioned in an important area too: to the south lies neighbour and US ally Nigeria, rich in oil and gas and Africa’s most populous country. Boko Haram’s headquarters are located in north-eastern Nigeria, and this Jihadist group are also active in nearby states such as Chad and Cameroon.
The Trump administration’s supposed bid to wipe out Boko Haram by force of arms has been dismissed by Washington-based think tanks, like the Center for International Policy (CIP). William Hartung, a director at CIP and an experienced American military analyst, recently rebuked the Pentagon for its “overly militarized approach” in Africa, which he feels “has been a dismal failure”.
Hartung says that attempts “to eradicate terrorism by force may be exacerbating the problem, provoking a terrorist backlash and serving as a recruiting tool for extremist groups”.
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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
It is supremely ironic that Pentagon officials take an oath to support and defend the Constitution because they intentionally destroyed the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution when they set up their “judicial” system at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In fact, the very reason the Pentagon established its system in Cuba, rather than the United States, was to circumvent and avoid the provisions of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Prior to the 9/11 attacks, whenever someone was charged with terrorism or any other criminal offense, U.S. officials would secure a grand-jury indictment and then prosecute him in a U.S. District Court. The accused in the federal court system is guaranteed certain procedural protections, many of which were carved out during centuries of resistance by British citizens to the tyranny of their own government. Our American ancestors demanded that many of those procedural protections be expressly enshrined in the Bill of Rights so that everyone would know that federal officials would have to abide by them whenever they charged people with federal crimes.
Examples of procedural guarantees include no cruel and unusual punishments, the right to confront adverse witnesses, the right to counsel, the right to due process of law, the right of trial by jury, the right to be presumed innocent, the right to remain silent, the right of speedy trial, the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, the right to be free of coerced confessions, and the right to counsel.
After 9/11, the Pentagon established its own “judicial” system at Gitmo to try terrorism cases, as an alternative to the federal judicial system in the United States. Yet, one searches in vain for any authority in the Constitution for the Pentagon to do that. When one reads the Constitution, the intent of the Framers is clear: one judicial system — the federal system — for trying all cases involving the commission of federal offenses.
Contrary to what some people maintain, terrorism is not an act of war. It is a federal criminal offense. That’s why it’s listed in the U.S. Code, which enumerates federal criminal offenses. It’s also why terrorism cases have long been tried in federal district court. It’s also why the Pentagon is prosecuting terrorism defendants in its “judicial” system in Cuba.
The establishment of the Pentagon’s system now enables federal officials the option of sending people who are accused of terrorism into two different systems — one run by the federal courts and the other run by the Pentagon. Thus, if two different people are charged with participating in the same terrorism offense, one can be sent into the federal court system and the other can be sent into the Pentagon’s system.
The choice makes all the difference in the world to people who are accused of terrorism because the two systems are total opposites. The Pentagon’s system has destroyed the procedural guarantees that the federal court system still protects. There is no trial by jury in the Pentagon’s system; trial is by military tribunal. Torture and other cruel and unusual punishments are meted out in the Pentagon’s system, oftentimes before conviction. Confessions can be coerced and are admissible into evidence. Hearsay evidence is admissible, which nullifies the right to confront adverse witnesses. Defendants are presumed guilty and treated accordingly. There is no right of speedy trial; some people have languished in the Pentagon’s system for more than a decade without trial. In the beginning, the Pentagon wasn’t even going to allow its prisoners have lawyers, but the Supreme Court put the quietus to that plan by ordering otherwise. Even then, the Pentagon has secretly monitored communications between attorney and client, a severe violation of the attorney-client privilege that is sacred in the federal court system.
Again, this was all by design. The U.S. military has long been a conservative organization, and conservatives have long poo-pooed the procedural protections in the Bill of Rights as nothing more than ludicrous constitutional “technicalities” intended to let guilty people go free. After 9/11, the Pentagon decided that it was going to show how an ideal “judicial” system would operate, one in which such constitutional “technicalities” could be ignored.
In the process, America ended up adopting a “judicial” system that is very similar to those in totalitarian regimes. After more than 200 years of Bill of Rights protection, the fear generated by the 9/11 attacks enabled the Pentagon to figure how a way to successfully circumvent those protections. In the name of keeping us “safe” from “the terrorists,” the result has been a destruction of critically important parts of the Bill of Rights.
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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews atLewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.
The US House of Representatives marked a milestone today as it decided to report out articles of impeachment on Trump. But there’s a bigger picture to consider. The impeachment represents a new stage in the political ‘food fight’ between the two wings of the political-economic elite in the USA. It also represents a further escalation in the crisis and decline of American Democracy–a decline that’s been going on since at least the early 1990s, when Newt Gingrich and the radical right took over the House and declared publicly their strategy was to create a dysfunctional US government. In retrospect, Gingrich has certainly succeeded.
But it’s not just since Newt. US Democracy has been in decline on a number of fronts since the 1970s, which corresponds with the rise of Neoliberal economic policies. Late stage Neoliberalism today is in crisis. Since the 2008 crash political elites and policy makers have been attempting to restore it to its pre-2008 momentum but have failed. Obama failed. Trump’s regime should be viewed as an attempt to restore it in a new, virulent aggressive Neoliberalism 2.0 form. Trump has been only partially successful to date as well, and will likely fail as well regardless of the 2020 election outcome.
A new crisis is around the corner in 2020, driven by accelerating fundamental changes in the nature of capitalism itself. At least three forces will further exacerbate the internal contradictions within the neoliberal policy regime. They include the deepening of Artificial Intelligence technologies that will further devastate and already rapidly changing labor market, eliminating or reducing tens of millions of simple decision making jobs. It will radically transform as well product markets and distribution systems of 21st century capitalism. It will change the nature of money itself. All these trends are already underway and will continue to intensify in the years immediately ahead. Neoliberal capitalism will also not be able to resolve the climate crisis, also accelerating. Third, it has already generated a level of unsustainable corporate, financial, household and government debt which inevitably must lead to financial markets imploding the next decade.
As these basic material forces generate a long term crisis, contradictions within the neoliberal policy regime continue to intensify as well. The four elements of Neoliberal policy–or Neoliberalism in practice–are Fiscal, Monetary, Industrial and External (trade, money capital flows, currency exchange rates, and the twin deficits). What’s been happening since 2008 is that the advancement of neoliberal policy in one or more of these four elements negates the restoration or advancement in one or more of the other three. The contradictions within Neoliberalism are intensifying, in other words, just as more fundamental technological and capitalist system changes are developing as well. The outcome next decade will likely be a major global economic crisis, the dimensions of which will make the 2008-09 event pale in comparison.
In order to advance, deepen, and expand Neoliberalism has had to limit and eliminate elements of Democracy. Neoliberalism and Democracy, even in the limited American form of Democracy, are essentially incompatible. The historical record since the 1980s confirms this. On a number of levels, as Neoliberal policies have advanced, Democracy has atrophied. This is not by accident nor a mere correlation.
Moreover, the decline of Democracy has accelerated since the 1990s, and especially so after 2000. It is evident in the collapse of any semblance of campaign finance reform, in the transformation of the two political parties into vehicles increasingly of corporate and investor wealth subsidization, in the assertion of the Supreme Court to interfere with electoral processes and to legally enable corporate-investor political influence, in the spread of voter suppression by various means (i.e. a new Jim Crow also endorsed by the Supreme Court), widespread gerrymandering, a greater role played by the electoral college to prevent popular sovereignty, passage of special courts in free trade treaties that negate popular sovereignty, attacks on civil liberties (patriot act, NDAA spying and surveillance, etc.) and guarantees of the Bill of Rights, a transformation of the so-called ‘fourth estate’ of media-press into vehicles of ideology, a transformation of the two political parties into institutions more tightly controlled by money interests–the list is long and growing (and deepening). With the crisis of 2008-09 the process of Democracy decline in America has been accelerating.
And that process has reached a new milestone with the articles of impeachment of Trump forthcoming. For the behavior of Trump has clearly violated numerous provisions of the US constitution. What we have under Trump is an assault on Representative government and the formal institutions of Democracy, as limited as they may already be.
Make no mistake, however. This development reflected in Trump’s regime is not an isolated, individual event. Trump’s attack on Democracy is just the latest stage of the assault on Democracy that has been gaining momentum under Neoliberalism since the 1980s, accelerating after 2000 under George W. Bush, and intensifying in the post-2008 period even further.
And it’s going to get worse in 2020 in the run up to the 2020 November election. It is not alarmist to project that the 2020 election will be close. Trump probably has an electoral college advantage, even if he loses the popular vote by even more than he did in 2016. Behind him is a sycophant Republican party and a base of at least 30% of the population that would vote for him regardless of any crime he might commit. He has his ideological bullhorn in Fox News, Breitbart, and Twitter and he will use it, increasingly aggressively. Should he lose the election, chances are more than even he will refuse to acknowledge that loss. Should he win it narrowly, he will likely turn vindictively against those who opposed him. He is a ‘down and dirty’ street fighter, weaned on the corrupt and questionable practices of New York commercial property speculators. In short, there will likely be a constitutional crisis circa the November 2020 election, the likes of which are comparable only to the 1850s American political debacle. (Trump himself has said if not elected there will be a ‘civil war’ again in the USA).
American Democracy and the US system is about to enter a period of instability it has not witnessed since the early 1930s. Hold onto your seats, folks, the real show hasn’t even yet begun!
The following passages summarize my views on the deepening contradictions of Neoliberalism and its fundamental incompatibility with Democracy in the era of Trump. It is an excerpt from the concluding chapter, ‘Neoliberalism v. Democracy’ in my recently published book, The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy From Reagan to Trump, Clarity press, January 2020). It illustrates how Trump’s regime reflects an intensifying assault on Democracy in America, the latest stage of that incompatibility of a new aggressive, virulent form of Trump Neoliberalism with Democracy in America as we’ve known it.
Trump’s Assault on Democratic Government, Chapter 10, The Scourge of Neoliberalism, by Dr. Jack Rasmus
As Neoliberalism has become more aggressive under Trump, so too have the attacks on democracy and democratic government.
After three years in power, and with the House of Representatives and much of the mainstream media challenging him after the November 2018 elections, the President is clearly drifting toward usurping the authority and, in some cases, even the functions allocated by the US Constitution to Congress—specifically to the US House of Representatives—toward a view he is above the law and unimpeachable. Toward a view that his presidency is more than a ‘co-equal’ branch of government. Toward a view he can and should govern when necessary by bypassing Congress. Toward a view the Constitution means he can force states to abandon their rights to govern. And toward a view the president can publicly attack, vilify, insult, coerce, and threaten opponents, critics, and whomever he chooses.
That drift includes the expansion of Executive branch rule-making at the expense of Congress and the legislative branch; the broadening use of ‘national security’ declarations by the president to bypass Congressional authority; and the refusal to recognize US House authority as it exercises its Constitutional responsibility to undertake investigations of corruption in the executive branch.
Usurpation of Legislative Authority
Presidential rule making by Executive Order has been long embedded in the US political system. In the past, however, Executive Orders by presidents have been issued where the president clearly has authority to issue such, or else in cases where Congress has not passed specific legislation—such as Obama’s EOs enabling children born in or brought to the US by non-citizen immigrant parents to have deferment from deportation . EOs have not been typically issued, however, that directly change the intent or the funding authorization of legislation passed by Congress. Not so in the case of Trump.
Passing laws requires their accompanying funding authorization. The monies allocated to a program by Congress are required to be spent on that specific program. However, under the cover of invoking a national emergency, Trump recently unilaterally transferred money allocated by Congress and authorized by the US House for defense spending to fund his border wall. This creates a dangerous precedent. Might Trump now divert authorized spending by Congress to other programs? This is clearly a constitutional issue now. Trump is in effect governing by ‘national security decree’ in direct challenge to Congressional legislative authority. The much heralded ‘separation of powers’ in US government has been undermined to a degree.
Drift Toward Tyranny
In addition to expanding Executive rule-making at the expense of Congress and the legislative branch, and his refusal to cooperate with Congressional subpoena and investigation rights under the Constitution, worrisome signs keep arising that indicate Trump also considers himself personally ‘above the law’.
The US political system has always given the President authority to pardon individuals, which is usually undertaken at the end of their term in office. It’s a curious and decidedly un-democratic practice that has been increasingly institutionalized in recent decades under Neoliberalism, by both Republican and Democrat presidents and governors. A hallmark of American political ideology proclaims to the public that ‘no one is above the law’. Yet, some are, as executive pardons have become increasingly commonplace. But these are presidential (and governor) executive pardons of others. No president to date has publicly suggested that he himself might be above the law or has the right to ‘self pardon’. But Trump has.
The process of usurping legislative authority, to fund his preferred programs at the expense of Congress, may have just begun, but the drift by Trump toward an imperial presidency in domestic legislation may well expand as his confrontation with Congress grows. Second, his suggestion of the right to assume power of self-pardon smacks of Tyranny. These trends—toward usurpation and tyranny—represent decided undemocratic principles that the president feels comfortable with.
Although in early form, the trends suggest a view by Trump that the presidency is an institution ‘more equal’ than the other branches of government. It has long been obvious that, in foreign affairs, the presidency since the 1960s—and even before—has been becoming more ‘imperial’. Presidents go to war without obtaining a war declaration by Congress, as was clearly intended by the US Constitution—token limits by the 1970s era ‘war powers act’ notwithstanding. The Trump presidency may reflect an extension of this imperial attitude to domestic US politics, i.e the emergence of what might be called the imperial presidency in domestic affairs.
Redefining Separation of Powers
The Trump presidency’s disregard for Constitutional norms in its relationship with Congress, and in particular the US House of Representatives, has recently become evident as well in Trump’s outright refusal to allow executive branch employees to testify to Congress, subpoenas notwithstanding. This stonewalling is but another example of the Trump presidency’s view that the Executive and Legislative branches are perhaps not ‘co-equal’ under the Constitution. Constitutional authority clearly provides the US House with investigative powers. Trump’s refusal to cooperate with that Congressional authority represents yet another reinterpretation of Constitutional separation of powers.
Reinterpreting the Supremacy Clause
Trump’s offensive against California’s auto emissions rule exemplifies his reinterpretation of the Constitution’s ‘supremacy clause’ and states’ rights. It has long been accepted that state laws cannot provide less than a similar federal law. For example, states cannot pass a minimum wage lower than the federal minimum wage. But they can pass legislation providing more than the federal minimum wage. Trump’s attack on California emissions in effect means the state cannot pass tougher emission standards than the federal standards, which are far less stringent. If that becomes a legal precedent, states logically could not pass legislation that is either less than or greater than the federal requirements. It’s a violation of the federalism principle in the Constitution.
Assuming the Power of the Purse
Trump’s trade wars represent yet another example of Executive powers expansion. The trade wars have generated tens of billions in additional tariff revenues for the executive branch. These funds have been used in part by the president to issue direct subsidies to US farm interests in the amount of $28 billion over the past year. A constitutional argument can be made that payment of subsidies in such amount should be authorized only by legislation raised and authorized by the US House. The Constitution’s intent gave the US House the authority of ‘power of the purse’ to raise and authorize spending of revenues—and not the Executive.
Disregarding Democratic Norms & Practices
Other disturbing examples abound of the Trump presidency disregard for accepted democratic norms and practices.
Never before has a president so blatantly attacked the press and media that criticized him. Or vilified political opponents as ‘traitors’ and ‘criminals’; or publicly demanded candidates be ‘arrested and locked up’; or incited popular mobilizations against protestors and his critics; or launched purges within his own bureaucracy (in particular the intelligence agencies) and political party; or declared if Congress were to try to impeach him it would mean a new civil war in the country. These are not just the verbal railings of an aberrant personality who by chance attained the highest office of US government.
These are actions that reflect a calculated and fundamental disregard for even the limited form of democracy that still prevails in US government institutions today. They are views that reflect a belief that Executive powers of the president should and must be expanded—even if at the expense of the authority of legislative branch of government (Congress or states); even if it at the expense of the legitimacy of the press and ‘fourth estate’; even if it deepens the polarization of US society and incites citizen to citizen violence. Trump believes it is all necessary in order to implement his policies and programs—and this is what we must keep foremost in mind—it’s a Neoliberal program.
The key question for assessing the future of Neoliberalism is whether Trump is a product of the evolution of Neoliberalism and its impact on political institutions and practices—or whether the Trump presidency is an aberration outside that evolution? Trump: Inevitable or Aberration
Is a Trump-like political figure the inevitable consequence of the need to introduce post 2008-09 a more aggressive, virulent form of Neoliberalism? Would an alternative president have to have moved in the same anti-democracy direction to get his/her agenda passed in the era of deepening domestic and global opposition to Neoliberalism? Perhaps that alternative president might have been less crude, less brash, less apt to ‘shoot from the hip’ on policy and political initiative—less likely to engage in early morning social media excesses; and indeed therefore have been even more clever and effective.
But one should make no mistake. Trump is not a lone wolf who slipped into the US presidency by accident or ineptitude of his opponents. Neoliberalism required a more aggressive restored form following the crisis it faced in the wake of the 2008-09 crash. Certain moneyed interests were in 2016, and are still, behind Trump. And if it wasn’t him, it would have been another chosen to shake up the old political establishment that was beginning to lose control over growing discontent at home and growing capitalist competition abroad.
The problem with Trump in the end has been his style, which has made it impossible for him to unite US business interests, and the traditional political elites, behind him in an effort to jointly restore the Neoliberal policy regime. Instead, he has precipitated an internecine political fight within the ruling class in America—i.e. a classic post-crisis political ‘food fight’ between two wings of the American economic and political elite.
A similar post-crisis split and internecine ruling class conflict has been occurring globally elsewhere as well—not just in Trump’s America. In the UK (Brexit), in France (the National Front), Germany (the rise of Afd), in several eastern European countries (Hungary, Austria, Poland), in various countries in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador), and in Asia in India and Philippines. All are trying to come to terms with slowing economies and an emerging global recession, as Neoliberal policies failed globally after 2008-09, giving rise to right wing autocrats and anti-democratic politicians. And in virtually all cases, including the US, in attempting to re-establish Neoliberalism on firmer ground, democracy, democratic norms, and institutions have been the victims.
The Trump era represents only the deepening of anti-democracy trends in the US that have been evolving since the introduction of Neoliberal policies circa 1980. In the Neoliberal era the two mainstream political parties became more oligarchic in their programs and representation. Money deepened its hold on government and politics steadily over the decades. Electoral processes became more the purview of the rich and powerful. Gerrymandering and voter suppression became more the norm than the exception. Popular sovereignty and representative government for all, more a fiction than fact. Public wants and needs that can only be fulfilled by government have been increasingly ignored, in favor of interests and requests of tens of thousands of paid lobbyists. And citizens’ civil liberties and rights have been increasingly limited, circumscribed, and surveilled.
The correlation between the rise and expansion of Neoliberalism and the decline of democracy in the US is irrefutable. Whether the correlation also represents a direct causation depends on whether each milestone event associated with the expansion of Neoliberalism occurs in tandem with, or in consequence of, an event marking a further deterioration of democracy.
And here the evidence and examples abound: the transformation of the political parties in the 1980s and early 1990s and rise Neoliberal tax and monetary policy. The radical right takeover of the US House in 1994 and advent of free trade. Gore v. Bush, the selection of the president by the judiciary in 2000 and still more tax cuts, war spending, the end of campaign finance reform, the Patriot and NDAA Acts and the attacks on civil liberties and democratic rights, and free trade treaties with their capitalist courts and negation of representative government. Thereafter, Obama followed by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United and related decisions, widespread gerrymandering, intensifying voter suppression, more war spending, more business tax cuts, more deficits, more free money to investors and bankers, more attacks on unions, more wage compression. And now Trump.
It’s more than just a ‘smoking gun’. It’s certainly not just coincidental that democracy in America has been in decline—and on so many fronts—during the era of Neoliberalism. Nor is it coincidental that under Trump the decline of democracy in America has intensified, and has begun to assume an attack on the prevailing constitutional form of government itself.
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Jack Rasmus is author of the just published book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump’, Clarity press, January 2020. (The book is available at discount from his blog, jackrasmus.com, and his website, http://kyklosproductions.com, where reviews of the book are also available.
Featured image: Trump reinstate sanctions against Iran (White House photo by Shealah Craighead)
Is a deal in the works for Netanyahu to step down as prime minister in return for a presidential pardon — with the aim of avoiding a third election next year? More on this below.
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Netanyahu faces prosecution for bribery, fraud and breach of trust.
Israeli attorney general Avichai Mendelblit said he “damaged the image of the public service and public trust in it (by abusing his office), knowingly “taking a bribe as a public servant in exchange for actions related to (his) position.”
Charges against him are over arranging favorable news site coverage and accepting lavish gifts in return for political favors.
He remains prime minister because his Likud party and Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party failed to cobble together a majority 61-seat ruling coalition after elections in April and September.
An unprecedented third one looms next year without deadlock resolution. Netanyahu vowed to stay in office despite charges against him. Israeli law only requires a sitting prime minister to step down if convicted.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin accused political leaders of preferring “to go crazy” rather than agree on coalition rule.
If impasse is unresolved by December 11, a third election will be called for next year, late February the earliest possible date, according to a Knesset legal official.
On Tuesday, Netanyahu’s latest meeting with challenger Benny Gantz failed to resolve differences, Gantz reportedly saying he distrusts the prime minister more than ever.
Israel’s Channel 13 said Netanyahu seeks a deal to let him remain prime minister for another three to six months in return for Gantz’s Blue and White party getting key ministries.
Gantz reportedly rejected the offer and earlier ones because Netanyahu can’t be trusted to fulfill promises made. Reportedly he said: “I believe him less today.”
On Wednesday, Netanyahu said he’s “ready for (new) elections,” adding: “They’re not moving one millimeter. One nano-meter, they’re not moving.”
“We made all kinds of proposals, with all kinds of ways to make sure that this unity government will be stable, but they are simply refusing.”
Gantz responded saying: Netanyahu “has been digging in his heels and has not been offering anything new,” adding:
“That is not how you conduct negotiations. He needs to look me — and Israeli citizens — in the eye and say what he thinks and wants instead of shirking responsibility.”
According to the Jerusalem Post (JP), Israeli President Rivlin “will consider pardoning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in exchange for the PM retiring from political life and confessing to the crimes of which he is accused, Channel 12 reported Wednesday night.”
Earlier he rejected a plea bargain or pardon. So far, he hasn’t responded to the latest offer. According to the JP, his former lawyer Jacob Weinroth failed to convince him to take a similar deal earlier.
In June 2018, the JP said Mendelblit supports the above deal. No formal offers have been reported so far.
At the same time, Rivlin has been exerting heavy pressure on Netanyahu and Gantz to avoid a third election — the outcome likely to be similar to April and September results if held, leaving impasse unresolved.
As things now stand, the best chance, maybe the only one, to resolve things and be able to form a new government is for Netanyahu to resign.
It remains to be seen if he’ll accept Rivlin’s reported offer — stepping down, admitting guilt, and accepting public humiliation in return for avoiding prosecution, likely conviction and imprisonment.
Charges against him omit his highest of high crimes of war, against humanity, and slow-motion genocide against long-suffering Palestinians.
For over a decade, Gazans have been harmed most of all under suffocating medieval siege, an entire population held hostage for political reasons.
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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.”
The Mainstream Media is pushing forth the weaponized narrative that the Iranian government is carrying out a cover-up of mass killings that supposedly occurred during its recent unrest, though this is nothing more than an infowar conspiracy designed to make the majority of the non-violent citizens that participated in the large-scale protests suspicious of the state as well as further discredit the country’s international reputation.
Amnesty International scandalously cited unpublished and vaguely described “credible reports” to claim that over 200 people were killed during Iran’s recent unrest, adding that “the real figure is likely to be higher”. This accusation is part and parcel of the renewed Hybrid War on Iran that’s seeking to capitalize on the failed Color Revolution attempt from last month when tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest the government’s decision to decrease fuel subsidies in order to fund a cash payment plan to the country’s most needy families. It should be said that the majority of the people who participated in these large-scale protests didn’t engage in acts of violence, but their presence at these events inadvertently served as cover for a select cadre of professional provocateurs and foreign intelligence agents to carry out attacks against law enforcement officers and public property by exploiting those people as human shields behind which to hide.
As the author wrote at the time, “Iran’s Protests Are Grassroots, Not Foreign-Driven, And That’s The Real Problem“, while also later warning in an exclusive interview with Iran’s “Young Journalists Club” that Iran is being victimized by a US HybridWar. These two analyses might initially seem mutually exclusive but they aren’t. Legitimate grievances served to spontaneously bring a critical mass of protesters into the streets, during which time the vast majority of the participants were unwittingly turned into human shields by Hybrid War “sleeper cells” that were waiting for an opportunistic moment to carry out anti-state terrorist activities such as the ones that were previously described. The Iranian authorities ultimately prevailed in restoring law and order, though it’s presumed that some of the most radical provocateurs might have been injured or even killed throughout the course of these security operations, which could naturally occur in any country facing similar unrest.
The US and its regional allies who support the forces responsible for the recent violence desperately wanted to film, selectively edit, and then propagate decontextualized footage of those individuals clashing with the state so that they could then present this as so-called “evidence” that Iran is “killing unarmed protesters”, hoping that this infowar conspiracy would make the majority of the non-violent citizens that participated in the protests suspicious of the state as well as further discredit the country’s international reputation. That plan failed, so now the back-up one is to still make this claim regardless of any fabricated “evidence” and strongly hint that the reason that there isn’t any is because Iran cut off the internet during its “crackdown”. While criticized by some at the time, it was actually a very wise move for the state to do so in order to offset the exact same scenario that was just described, though it unwittingly fed into the US’ back-up infowar narrative.
Even so, that doesn’t mean that it was the wrong thing to do since the benefits of preventing further provocations during that very sensitive time far outweigh the “costs” of having Iran’s adversaries conspiratorially claim without any fabricated “evidence” that the security forces “killed hundreds of innocent protesters”. In terms of the bigger picture, it’s much better to decisively nip the Color Revolution unrest in the bud and deal with unsubstantiated claims from self-interested international forces than to be too afraid of being criticized for cutting off the internet and then having to face the consequences of those same actors fabricating “evidence” to back up their preplanned provocative claims that “hundreds of innocent protesters were killed”. Considering all of this, there isn’t any credence to the West’s accusations that Iran is carrying out a cover-up of mass killings during its recent unrest as these claims are nothing more than an infowar conspiracy.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
After eight years of work, the World Health Organization (WHO) is reopening its review of the health effects of RF radiation for a summary report intended to serve as a benchmark for its more than 150 member countries. The report will be used as a guide to respond to widespread concerns over the new world of 5G.
The WHO issued a public call in October for detailed literature reviews on ten types of RF–health impacts from cancer to fertility to electrohypersensitivity. Some see the move as a sign that the health agency is interested in opinions beyond those of its long-time partner, the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP). They hope that the WHO is finally ready to recognize evidence of low-level effects, in particular the link between cell phones and cancer. Others are far from convinced.
The skeptics see the new reviews as little more than a ruse. They fear that the WHO is only going through the motions and will in the end stick with ICNIRP’s long-held position that there are no RF effects other than those caused by heating.
Tight Schedule for the Systematic Reviews
The RF report, formally known as an Environmental Health Criteria (EHC) monograph, was last updated in 1993, more than 25 years ago. The WHO Radiation Program, based in Geneva, started working on a revision in 2012 with a target completion date of 2016. Eleven chapters of the draft report were released for review in 2014, and work on a second draft got under way soon after public comments were received. After that the process stalled, and the RF EHC was stuck in limbo.
Then, in early October —after a long public silence— the WHO issued the call for those ten “systematic reviews.” Systematic review is a term of art —you can read about it in a WHO handbook that presents a step-by-step formula on how to develop a health guideline, such as an EHC. The short version is that a systematic review takes a lot of work. As someone who has completed a number of them put it, “It’s not a trivial matter.” Even responding to a call for a systematic review is not easy, he said.
Each team must include at least two individuals, and “geographical diversity” is encouraged. Teams for systematic reviews can have up to six members, sometimes more, according to the WHO handbook.
The WHO set a very tight schedule. Responses to the call for all ten reviews are due today, November 4. Applicants had less than a month to complete the paperwork —that is, if they heard about it right away. The call was not published anywhere or posted on the Internet. Rather, Emilie van Deventer, the team leader of the WHO radiation program, sent a notice to her mailing list. Though the call is dated September, no one I spoke to received it before October 8. Many heard about it second hand, as did I.
Van Deventer left out some of those best-placed to raise awareness of the call. Dariusz Leszczynski, a now-retired professor in Helsinki who was a member of the IARC RF–cancer assessment in 2011 and who runs a blog for the EMF/RF community, wasn’t on her list. “I learned of it by coincidence, surfing the Internet,” he told me. Leszczynski posted the WHO announcement on October 9 and was one of the first to publicize it. (He is not responding to the call.)
Also ignored was Joel Moskowitz, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who writes another widely followed blog, Electromagnetic Radiation Safety. He, like Leszczynski, has been critical of ICNIRP’s thermal-only outlook.
“It’s very surprising that they set such a short deadline; it would discourage good, very busy people from participating,” said one long-time researcher, who may submit a proposal. “You can’t put an international team together overnight.”
(A ground rule: With a few exceptions, those interviewed about the WHO call asked for anonymity so that they could speak frankly without jeopardizing their chances of being selected.)
A Fast Pace, But No Money
The pace does not ease up after the November 4 deadline. WHO officials have less than a month to evaluate the applications and make their selections. Work on the ten reviews must begin no later than December 2, and completed manuscripts submitted to an open-access, peer-reviewed journal within twelve months.
One more thing: There’s practically no money for the reviewers. WHO states that “only a small contribution towards the operating costs” will be available. In an e-mail exchange, van Deventer would not disclose the budget, saying only that there would likely not be enough money “to cover the total amount needed for a systematic review.”
According to the WHO handbook, members of a systematic review team “should have no financial or non-financial conflict of interest.” All applicants must submit a detailed declaration of interests, including income from employment, grants, consulting and investments.
The call states that each declaration “will be assessed for conflict of interests.” No one, apparently, will be automatically disqualified based on apparent conflicts, as was the case for IARC’s RF review in 2011 (more here; IARC is an agency of the WHO).
Who Picks? Why the Rush?
Most everyone I contacted was wondering, who will select the “winners”? When I posed the question to van Deventer, she replied the “WHO Secretariat,” adding that “rigorous internal processes” would be followed.
Even after they are picked, the identity of the winners will not be immediately revealed. Van Deventer said that she is not planning to announce the selections when the decisions are made. At the latest, we may not know who is preparing the reviews until they appear in print.
The other question on peoples’ minds was, “Why the big rush?” After all, work on the RF EHC began back in 2012; another month or two to give applicants more time would hardly make a difference.
In fact, EMF managers at the WHO knew years ago that systematic reviews would be required. That was part of new procedures for writing such documents, as set out in the WHO handbook. All van Deventer had to do was issue the call. She laid out what had to be done at an EMF Project advisory committee meeting in Geneva in late June 2017. She estimated that 15 reviews would be needed at a cost of $10-15,000 each. And, crucially, they “must be commissioned externally.” Even then, however, she did not have any money to pay for the reviews.
Over the last year, van Deventer has regularly briefed the International Telecommunications Union on the RF EHC. The ITU, which is also part of the UN, is a public-private partnership with many government and corporate members. In each talk, van Deventer said that the WHO would go ahead to “review, revise and update the 2014 draft.” In May of this year, she told the ITU that she would commission eight systematic reviews (see slide[1] below); the list was later expanded to ten.
Slide No.25, E. van Deventer presentation to the ITU, most likely on May 20, 2019[1]
A few days earlier at the same ITU meeting, the Mobile and Wireless Forum, a trade association formerly known as the Mobile Manufacturers Forum, was invited to give a presentation on “Preparing for 5G: Research Relating to RF Exposure.”
E-mail traffic, shared with Microwave News, shows that van Deventer’s briefings were well circulated among ITU’s corporate members who follow the health question.
If van Deventer knew years ago that systematic reviews were needed, why did she wait until now to issue the call and then allow less than a month for replies? I asked her but she did not answer. I also asked the WHO press office to explain the rush. No one there replied or even acknowledged the request.
Also, why were telecom managers better briefed on the pending reviews than those in the health sciences who would be doing them?
Is the Call Rigged To Favor ICNIRP?
The lack of advance notice and the fast deadline have led some to question whether the WHO engineered the schedule to help ICNIRP stay in control.
“I suspect that at least some have already been pre-selected to do the reviews,” said one European observer. “Even though it might seem to be an open and balanced approach,” commented another seasoned veteran, “I’m not convinced that in the end they won’t choose ICNIRP and Co.”
ICNIRP members would be well prepared to respond to the calls. They have recently finished their own literature reviews to update ICNIRP’s exposure guidelines, issued in 1998.
“The RF guidelines are now in press and publication is expected before the end of the year,” Eric van Rongen, the chairman of ICNIRP, told me in an e-mail exchange. In a presentation last April in Paris, van Rongen revealed that the exposure guidelines would continue to be based exclusively on thermal effects. There is “no evidence that RF EMF causes such diseases as cancer,” he said. Van Rongen is with the Health Council of the Netherlands.
Two important reviews by ICNIRP members have recently been published: one on epidemiological studies and the other on the NTP and Ramazzini animal studies. As von Rongen reaffirmed, neither indicates any movement towards accepting even the possibility of a RF–cancer risk.
WHO and ICNIRP’s Long, Intimate Association
From the very beginning, the WHO EMF Project and ICNIRP have been intertwined. This is not surprising since Michael Repacholi, an Australian biophysicist turned bureaucrat, was instrumental in setting up both organizations, ICNIRP in 1992 and the EMF Project four years later. (His bio is here, there’s a lot more below.)
From the very beginning, the EMF Project relied on ICNIRP for its scientific expertise, or in UN-speak, to serve as its scientific secretariat. In 2005, seven years before work on revising the RF EHC began, the WHO commissioned ICNIRP to do a review of the RF health literature, and Repacholi announced that the review would “serve as an input” for the RF EHC. It was completed in 2008.
Rick Saunders and van Rongen, then an ICNIRP member and advisor, respectively, were asked to help the WHO guide the EHC “to its completion.”
Work on the RF EHC formally began at a meeting in Geneva in January 2012. The EHC would be based in part on ICNIRP’s literature review, according to the EMF Project’s 2012-2013 annual report. A “core group” was established to help develop the EHC. Five of its six members[2] had close ties to ICNIRP. Van Rongen, who by then had joined the Commission, was in the core group. (He became the chairman of ICNIRP in May 2016.)
That core group, with the help of a couple dozen advisers, drafted the 11 chapters that were released for public comment in 2014.
A Contentious Meeting in Geneva
The draft got a stormy reception. There were 686 comments in all, and a good many criticized the WHO for discounting low-level, non-thermal effects. The WHO has not released the comments, preventing a count of pros and cons.
Later, in a widely circulated letter sent to Maria Neira, the WHO executive in charge, Oleg Grigoriev, the chairman of the Russian national non-ionizing radiation committee, complained that the core group that drafted the report was “not balanced and [did] not represent the point of view of [a] majority [of the] scientific community studying [the] effects of RF.” He and others were disappointed that the WHO had failed to go beyond the heat-only dogma embraced by ICNIRP.
On March 3, 2017, at about the same time that Grigoriev’s letter landed on Neira’s desk in Geneva, she and van Deventer hosted a five-member delegation from the European Cancer and Environment Research Institute. They were there to deliver the same message: The RF EHC should include low-level effects.
The meeting did not go well. Neira rebuffed their overture and rejected any type of collaboration. She went on to tell them that they should not expect any future meetings, according to a brief account by Sweden’s Lennart Hardell, a member of the ECERI delegation.[3]
Neira did not respond to a request for comment.
The five researchers went home and laid out their case in a paper that was published in the journal Environmental Pollution last year. This is their bottom line:
“It is urgent that national and international bodies, particularly the WHO, take this significant public health hazard seriously and make appropriate recommendations for protective measures to reduce exposures.”
After that, little more was said about the RF EHC document —at least in public— as van Deventer and others looked for a way to comply with the new WHO rules that required systematic reviews, compounded by an added protocol for working with non-government organizations (NGOs, for instance, ICNIRP). WHO’s Engagement with Non-State Actors, better known as FENSA, was issued in 2016.
These changes were raised at that same EMF Project advisory committee meeting held in June 2017, close to four months after Neira met with the non-thermalists. Van Deventer explained to the group that, “FENSA potentially makes co-publication of the [RF EHC monograph] with ICNIRP problematic.” She went on to explain:
″A[nother] question concerned cooperation with ICNIRP in the development of the EHC. The WHO Guideline Development process would permit this provided the required processes were followed. However, it is not clear whether this is possible with the introduction of the new FENSA.”
The minutes of the meeting show that an attendee, who is not named, warned: “There may be dangers in aligning WHO with ICNIRP and cooperating with them will not make the guidelines better.”
With van Deventer no longer responding to my e-mails, I turned to van Rongen. He told me that there had been discussion of the constraints of the new WHO rules for developing guidelines and working with NGOs, and then he added,
“[There] was concern on the personal involvement of several members of the Core Group who are also members of the Main Commission of ICNIRP (myself, Maria Feychting, Gunnhild Oftedal) and several other experts who are assisting the Core Group and who are either Commission members or members of the Scientific Expert Group of ICNIRP.”
Investigate Europe on WHO & ICNIRP
Last March, the WHO was pressured from a different direction: An international team of journalists, working under the banner “Investigate Europe,” published a series of articles in newspapers across the continent on the national and multinational groups that set EMF/RF policy. They focused on the WHO EMF Project and ICNIRP.
Investigate Europe put together an interactive graphic showing six key organizations (in green, with WHO and ICNIRP at the center, below) and their links to important players and sources of industry funding. Some of the journalists referred to ICNIRP as a “cartel.”
In an overview article, titled “How Much Is Safe?,” the team described how allegations of one-sidedness had “ravaged” the core group of ICNIRP insiders who drafted the chapters of the EHC report that were released in 2014.
When the journalists turned to the WHO for comment last December, a spokesperson “assured” them that the agency would put together a larger panel to “evaluate” the work of the original core group. The new participants would include “a broad spectrum of opinions and expertise,” according to the WHO.
The press office was referring to a Task Group that would take the draft chapters and complete the RF EHC. Despite years of being on the brink of appointing members, van Deventer has yet to assemble the group. Van Rongen told me that she has recently identified someone to chair it but he was not at liberty to reveal who it is.
WHO, ICNIRP & Michael Repacholi
Much of the suspicion over WHO’s handling of the RF EHC can be traced back to Michael Repacholi and his legacy of cronyism and favoritism to industry.
Repacholi, the former head of both the EMF Project and ICNIRP, was a leading player in the writing of WHO EHC reports on EMFs, at both high and low frequencies, for close to 30 years.
Back in 1981, while working for Health and Welfare Canada, he was on the committee that issued the first RF EHC (#16). An update (#137) came out in 1993 with Repacholi, who by then was back home in Australia, serving as the chairman of the panel. Three years later, he was in Geneva to open and run the EMF Project, where he stayed until he retired in 2007. Before he left, Repacholi shepherded an EHC report (#238) on ELF (power frequency) EMFs through the WHO bureaucracy.
Financial disclosure was never a priority for Repacholi, and details of the WHO Project’s budget and funding were closely held. Even when the cell phone industry admitted that it was making annual, six-figure contributions to the WHO EMF project, Repacholi kept it all very hazy.
ICNIRP’s finances are no more transparent.
Repacholi retired from the WHO in 2006 and immediately became an industry consultant. On his first outing he was accused of misrepresenting the as-yet unreleased ELF EHC report for the benefit of his corporate clients. (See our story, his response and our reply.)
Later, stating that he wanted to “set the record straight,” Repacholi revealed that half of the WHO EMF Project funding had come from industry.
Taking money from Motorola and industry trade associations, among others, violated WHO rules. Repacholi found a work-around by passing —laundering— the money through the Royal Adelaide Hospital in Australia, where he had been chief scientist from 1983 to 1991. The WHO turned a blind eye and cashed the checks. Industry was rewarded with a seat at the WHO table.
One of the ironies of Repacholi’s career is that, in the mid-1990s, he led one of the first animal studies to link cell phone radiation to cancer. In stunning disregard for public health, Repacholi kept the results secret for two years, telling only Telstra, the Australian telecom giant that paid for the study. (Our write-up is here.) There have been two attempts to repeat the experiment, but both were botched, and his finding stands.
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Notes
1. Van Deventer’s May 20, 2019, presentation is no longer publicly accessible. Note that it is dated September 17, 2018, on the title slide. This was most likely an error; one of her other slides (No.44) is from a news report published in mid-April 2019. Her slides from an October 10, 2018, presentation to the ITU are here.
2. The members of the core group: Maria Feychting (Sweden), Simon Mann (U.K.), Gunnhild Oftedal (Norway), Maria Rosaria Scarfi (Italy), Eric van Rongen (The Netherlands) and Denis Zmirou (France). See slide No.12, in Emilie van Deventer’s presentation at an ICNIRP Workshop in Cape Town, South Africa, May 2016. Van Deventer was also part of the group.
3. The other four members of the delegation: Dominique Belpomme (France), Igor Belyaev (Slovak Republic), Ernesto Burgio (Italy) and David Carpenter (U.S.).
Celebration of Memorial Day in the US, originally Decoration Day, commenced shortly after the conclusion of the Civil War. This is a national holiday to remember the people who died while serving in the armed forces. The day traditionally includes decorating graves of the fallen with flowers.
As a Viet Nam veteran, I know the kinds of pain and suffering incurred by over three million US soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen, 58,313 of whom paid the ultimate price whose names are on The Vietnam Wall in Washington, DC. The Oregon Vietnam Memorial Wall alone, located here in Portland, contains 803 names on its walls.
The function of a memorial is to preserve memory. On this US Memorial Day, May 30, 2016, I want to preserve the memory of all aspects of the US war waged against the Southeast Asian people in Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia – what we call the Viet Nam War – as well as the tragic impacts it had on our own people and culture. My own healing and recovery requires me to honestly describe the war and understand how it has impacted me psychically, spiritually, and politically.
Likewise, the same remembrance needs to be practiced for both our soldiers and the victims in all the other countries affected by US wars and aggression. For example, the US incurred nearly 7,000 soldier deaths while causing as many as one million in Afghanistan and Iraq alone, a ratio of 1:143.
It is important to identify very concretely the pain and suffering we caused the Vietnamese – a people who only wanted to be independent from foreign occupiers, whether Chinese, France, Japan, or the United States of America. As honorably, and in some cases heroically, our military served and fought in Southeast Asia, we were nonetheless serving as cannon fodder, in effect mercenaries for reasons other than what we were told. When I came to understand the true nature of the war, I felt betrayed by my government, by my religion, by my cultural conditioning into “American Exceptionalism,” which did a terrible disservice to my own humanity, my own life’s journey. Thus, telling the truth as I uncover it is necessary for recovering my own dignity.
I am staggered by the amount of firepower the US used, and the incredible death and destruction it caused on an innocent people. Here are some statistics:
Seventy-five percent of South Viet Nam was considered a free-fire zone (i.e., genocidal zones)
Over 6 million Southeast Asians killed
Over 64,000 US and Allied soldiers killed
Over 1,600 US soldiers, and 300,000 Vietnamese soldiers remain missing
Thousands of amputees, paraplegics, blind, deaf, and other maimings created
13,000 of 21,000 of Vietnamese villages, or 62 percent, severely damaged or destroyed, mostly by bombing
Nearly 950 churches and pagodas destroyed by bombing
350 hospitals and 1,500 maternity wards destroyed by bombing
Nearly 3,000 high schools and universities destroyed by bombing
Over 15,000 bridges destroyed by bombing
10 million cubic meters of dikes destroyed by bombing
Over 3,700 US fixed-wing aircraft lost
36,125,000 US helicopter sorties during the war; over 10,000 helicopters were lost or severely damaged
26 million bomb craters created, the majority from B-52s (a B-52 bomb crater could be 20 feet deep, and 40 feet across)
39 million acres of land in Indochina (or 91 percent of the land area of South Viet Nam) were littered with fragments of bombs and shells, equivalent to 244,000 (160 acre) farms, or an area the size of all New England except Connecticut
21 million gallons (80 million liters) of extremely poisonous chemicals (herbicides) were applied in 20,000 chemical spraying missions between 1961 and 1970 in the most intensive use of chemical warfare in human history, with as many as 4.8 million Vietnamese living in nearly 3,200 villages directly sprayed by the chemicals
24 percent, or 16,100 square miles, of South Viet Nam was sprayed, an area larger than the states of Connecticut, Vermont, and Rhode Island combined, killing tropical forest, food crops, and inland forests
Over 500,000 Vietnamese have died from chronic conditions related to chemical spraying with an estimated 650,000 still suffering from such conditions; 500,000 children have been born with Agent Orange-induced birth defects, now including third generation offspring
Nearly 375,000 tons of fireballing napalm was dropped on villages
Huge Rome Plows (made in Rome, Georgia), 20-ton earthmoving D7E Caterpillar tractors, fitted with a nearly 2.5-ton curved 11-foot wide attached blade protected by 14 additional tons of armor plate, scraped clean between 700,000 and 750,000 acres (1,200 square miles), an area equivalent to Rhode Island, leaving bare earth, rocks, and smashed trees
As many as 36,000,000 total tons of ordance expended from aerial and naval bombing, artillery, and ground combat firepower. On an average day US artillery expended 10,000 rounds costing $1 million per day; 150,000-300,000 tons of UXO remain scattered around Southeast Asia: 40,000 have been killed in Viet Nam since the end of the war in 1975, and nearly 70,000 injured; 20,000 Laotians have been killed or injured since the end of the war
13.7 billion gallons of fuel were consumed by US forces during the war
If there was space for all 6,000,000 names of Southeast Asian dead on the Vietnam Wall in Washington, DC, it would be over 9 sobering miles long, or nearly 100 times its current 493 foot length
I am not able to memorialize our sacrificed US soldiers without also remembering the death and destroyed civilian infrastructure we caused in our illegal invasion and occupation of Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia. It has been 47 years since I carried out my duties in Viet Nam. My “service” included being an eyewitness to the aftermath of bombings from the air of undefended fishing villages where virtually all the inhabitants were massacred, the vast majority being small children. In that experience, I felt complicit in a diabolical crime against humanity. This experience led me to deeply grasping that I am not worth more than any other human being, and they are not worth less than me.
Recently I spent more than three weeks in Viet Nam, my first trip back since involuntarily being sent there in 1969. I was struck by the multitudes of children suffering from birth defects, most caused presumably by the US chemical spraying some 50 years ago. I experienced deep angst knowing that the US is directly responsible for this genetic damage now being passed on from one generation to the next. I am ashamed that the US government has never acknowledged responsibility or paid reparations. I found myself apologizing to the people for the crimes of my country.
When we only memorialize US soldiers while ignoring the victims of our aggression, we in effect are memorializing war. I cannot do that. War is insane, and our country continues to perpetuate its insanity on others, having been constantly at war since at least 1991. We fail our duties as citizens if we remain silent rather than calling our US wars for what they are – criminal and deceitful aggressions violating international and US law to assure control of geostrategic resources, deemed necessary to further our insatiable American Way Of Life (AWOL).
Memorial Day for me requires remembering ALL of the deaths and devastation of our wars, and it should remind all of us of the need to end the madness. If we want to end war, we must begin to directly address our out-of-control capitalist political economy that knows no limits to profits for a few at the expense of the many, including our soldiers.
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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, S. Brian Willson.
S. Brian Willson, as a 1st lieutenant, served as commander of a US Air Force combat security police unit in Viet Nam’s Mekong Delta in 1969. He is a trained lawyer who has been an anti-war, peace and justice activist for more than forty years. His psychohistorical memoir, “Blood On The Tracks: The Life and Times of S. Brian Willson” was published in 2011 by PM Press. His book “Don’t Thank Me For My Service: My Viet Nam Awakening to the Long History of US Lies” was published in 2018 by Clarity Press. A documentary was produced in 2016, “Paying the Price For Peace: The Story of S. Brian Willson (and Others in the Peace Movement) by Bo Boudart Productions. A long time member of Veterans For Peace, he currently resides in Nicaragua.
In July 2019 (updated in September 2019), the French Public Health Agency “Santé Publique France“, together with the Francim cancer registries, the Hospices Civils de Lyon and the Institut National du Cancer, published national estimates of cancer incidence and mortality in metropolitan France between 1990 and 2018. These are based on the modeling of observed incidence data (new cases) until 2015 by cancer registries, supplemented by projections until 2018.
Volume 1 of the report is devoted to solid tumors (27 tumors and 22 subtypes). Between 1990 and 2018, the overall incidence rate of solid tumors remained relatively stable in men and continued to increase in women. At the same time, the annual number of new cases of glioblastoma with histological confirmation (one of the most aggressive types of brain cancer) has increased fourfold and more for both sexes.
In 30 years, the number of glioblastomas multiplied by 4, affecting all ages
Santé Publique France estimates that there will be 3,481 new cases of these glioblastomas in metropolitan France in 2018, 58% of them in men. There were only 823 in 1990.
Age trends show an increase in incidence regardless of age and gender between 1990 and 2018.
According to Santé Publique France, similar observations are observed in the United States where an increase in the incidence of glioblastoma was also observed in the years 1980-1990 in connection with diagnostic progress. In addition, an Australian study reports an increasing incidence of histological confirmed glioblastoma over the period 2000-2008.
Exposure to waves is one of the possible factors
In conclusion of its analysis, Santé Publique France considers that the extrinsic factors that may play a role in increasing the incidence of glioblastoma could be:
“brain radiation therapy and possibly intense and prolonged exposure to pesticides (farmers)[14]. The latest epidemiological studies and animal experiments would support the carcinogenic role of exposure to electromagnetic fields[15]”
Absolute duty to protect children and young people
For Dr Annie Sasco, cancer epidemiologist, former Director of Research Unit at IARC-WHO:
“The evolution of incidence and mortality rates of central nervous system tumors as a whole and especially glioblastoma over the past 30 years is of particular concern. Of course, diagnostic behaviours have evolved and play a role, especially for older people. Nevertheless, there is a real increase, even among the youngest, for whom it is likely that diagnostic modalities have changed less than among the elderly and which may therefore be linked to environmental factors and primarily to the use of mobile or wireless phones. Informing the public should make it possible not to continue on this upward trajectory, especially among young people, with an absolute duty to protect children by not allowing them to use a cellular phone and in general by protecting them from exposure to electromagnetic fields“.
Urgency for public authorities to act in the face of tens of thousands of deaths
For Dr. Marc Arazi, President of Phonegate Alert:
“Over the last 2 decades, nearly 50,000 people have been affected in France by this extremely aggressive brain tumor, which has a very high mortality rate. It was also during this period that mobile telephony exploded and industrialists knowingly overexposed us to the waves of our mobile phones. This industrial and health scandal has a name, the “Phonegate”! Public authorities can no longer deny the evidence and must urgently protect the health of tens of millions of users.
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Right-wing groups like the Heritage Foundation have previously recommended revoking the mineral withdrawal area, which would again allow dangerous uranium mining around Grand Canyon National Park. Meanwhile, the White House Nuclear Fuel Working Group — a working group reviewing how to support the uranium and nuclear energy industry — missed another deadline for delivering its recommendations to the administration, prolonging a decision on whether the Trump administration will revoke the Grand Canyon Mining Withdrawal Area.
“Should the Trump administration opt to side with the extreme measures recommended by an industry-funded think tank like the Heritage Foundation, the future of one of America’s most cherished national parks will be at risk,” said Jayson O’Neill, Deputy Director of Western Values Project. “Our public lands, waterways and national parks are far too important to allow industry-backed groups to dictate policy, but that has been the hallmark of the Trump presidency.”
The Heritage Foundation’s recommendations include the so-called restoration of the 1984 Arizona Wilderness Act. This would repeal a 2012 Obama-era decision that halted mineral mining on over 1 million acres of wilderness and public lands around the Grand Canyon National Park. Repealing the mineral mining withdrawal area would grossly over-benefit uranium mining corporations by allowing access to uranium deposits on formally federally-protected public lands.
Heritage’s recommends also go as far as suggesting the administration repeal the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) — a 50-year-old environmental law that ensures federal agencies consider the potential environmental consequences of any large-scale project they take on. The Trump administration has a history of repealing conservation and environmental protections, with presently 85 rules being challenged or rolled back.
It would be unsurprising if the Trump administration and Interior Secretary Bernhardt opted to follow Heritage’s recommendations in siding with uranium mining corporations. The Trump administration is stacked with former Heritage alumni and at least four current appointees with connections to the group work at the Interior Department.
Additionally, allowing further access to mineral mining corporations around the Grand Canyon would potentially benefit one of Bernhardt’s former lobbying clients: Ur-Energy USA Inc. The mining corporation, along with Energy Fuels Inc., petitioned the Trump administration in January 2018, to impose import quotas on uranium by filing a ‘Section 232’ probe.
Background
The Trump administration inexplicably included uranium on the ‘critical minerals’ list even though it failed to meet the criteria of the original executive order. This move signaled a threat to the 20-year moratorium on new uranium and other hard-rock mining claims in the Grand Canyon’s watershed.
Previously, Sec. Bernhardt has shown a pattern of siding with mining corporations, already proposing a dangerous rule that would allow the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to rent public lands to non-energy mineral extractive corporations at a cheaper price and cut royalty rates on public lands — a boon for the former mega-lobbyist’s clients. The proposed rule raised questions, once again, about the Secretary’s ties to industrial mining corporations and his allegiances to his former clients.
Bernhardt provided ‘legal services’ for Ur-Energy USA Inc. from 2009 to 2012. Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Andrew Wheeler, another ex-lobbyist, previously represented Energy Fuels Inc. where he successfully lobbied the Trump administration to illegally reduce the size of the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah because of its proximity to the corporation’s uranium mine and processing facility.
The Trump administration’s Forest Service recommended that the Grand Canyon Withdrawal Area be lifted “as part of the Trump administration’s broader effort to sweep away regulations impeding development.” The Department of Commerce also released sweeping recommendations on ‘critical minerals’ that call for the deregulation of mining and an expedited permitting process for industrial-scale development on federal public lands.
The Koch Brothers have funded both the Heritage Foundation and other industry front groups that opposed a ban on uranium mining in the Grand Canyon. Acting Interior Solicitor Daniel Jorjani was a former ‘key Koch employee’ and became one of their ‘highest paid employees.’
The Charles Koch Foundation gave $300,000 to the Heritage Foundation in 2013. “Other major contributions during 2013 went to free market-oriented think tanks, research groups and educational organizations. Among them are the American Enterprise Institute ($910,000); Liberty Source, known now as Strata ($653,000); the Bill of Rights Institute ($350,000) and the Heritage Foundation($300,000).” [The Center For Public Integrity, 10/30/15]
Koch-Funded Donors Trust also gives money to the Heritage Foundation. “Donors Trust is not the source of the money it hands out. Some 200 right-of-center funders who’ve given at least $10,000 fill the group’s coffers. Charities bankrolled by Charles and David Koch, the DeVoses, and the Bradleys, among other conservative benefactors, have given to Donors Trust.” [Mother Jones, 02/13/13]
Donors Trust has given to the Heritage Foundation, among other conservative organizations. “And other recipients of Donors Trust money include the Heritage Foundation, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the NRA’s Freedom Action Foundation, the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Federalist Society, and the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, chaired (PDF) by none other than David Koch.” [Mother Jones, 02/13/13]
Charles And David Koch funded the Arizona-based Prosper Inc. and Prosper Foundation Inc. “A dark money group backed by Charles and David Koch is behind a well-funded effort to undermine protections at the Grand Canyon and overturn the Antiquities Act, the law President Teddy Roosevelt used to permanently protect the area in 1908. If successful, the campaign could stop a permanent ban on uranium mining near the canyon’s rim, despite support for such a ban by a vast majority of Arizonans. […] The Koch brothers’ anti-park effort is being run through the Arizona-based Prosper Inc. and its sister organization the Prosper Foundation Inc., which share a physical address, a logo, a staff, and a founder — Kirk Adams. Adams served as Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives from 2009 to 2011, ran a failed attempt for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012, and is currently the Chief of Staff to Arizona Governor Doug Ducey.” [ThinkProgress, 03/02/16]
Prosper co-authored a report with The Arizona Chamber Of Commerce Foundation calling protecting the lands around the Grand Canyon a “monumental mistake.” Earlier this year, Prosper co-authored a report with the Arizona Chamber of Commerce Foundation, which declared that protecting the public lands around the Grand Canyon National Park as a national monument would be a ’monumental mistake’ that represents ‘unwarranted and unwanted federal overreach’ and would ‘undermine’ the state of Arizona.” [ThinkProgress, 03/02/16]
The report is part of an “organized campaign” to allow uranium mining in the lands around the Grand Canyon. “The joint Prosper/Arizona Chamber of Commerce effort is part of an organized campaign to enable uranium mining on public lands next to the Grand Canyon. The campaign opposes the creation of the Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument, which would permanently ban uranium mining in the area. A broad-based coalition, which includes Arizona’s Native American tribes, small businesses, and conservation groups, have asked President Obama to use the Antiquities Act to protect the 1.7 million-acre gateway to the Grand Canyon and permanently prohibit new uranium mines on the canyon’s rim.” [ThinkProgress, 03/02/16]
Prosper Inc.’s website only touted two major issues, one of which included defeating the Grand Canyon Monument. “Adams’ group and its sister organization, Prosper Inc., are touted as ‘social welfare that supports and defends free-market principles,’ but according to Prosper Inc.’s website, it only has two big issues: Defeating the Grand Canyon Monument and drumming up support for Proposition 123, Ducey’s proposal to raise money for public education by dipping into the state’s land trust fund.” [Phoenix New Times, 04/18/16]
Prosper received more than 80% of its total budget from an organization led by a consultant with “deep ties” to the Koch Brothers. “Interested in learning more about the Prosper Foundation, [Greg] Zimmerman [of the Center for Western Priorities looked through its 990 tax forms, which not-for-profit groups must file with the Internal Revenue Service. He found that between 2013 and 2014, the foundation received more than $1.5m – or 83% of its total budget – from a political-advocacy organization called American Encore.” [The Guardian, 04/21/16]
American Encore is led by Sean Noble, “A political consultant who has deep ties to the Koch Brothers.” “Sean Noble, a political consultant who has deep ties to the Koch brothers, leads American Encore. The organization is formerly known as the Center to Protect Patient Rights. It changed its name in 2014.” [The Guardian, 04/21/16]
Money was being funneled to the Prosper Foundation so it could continue opposing the Grand Canyon National Monument Plan. “Zimmerman discovered that a donor from the Koch brothers’ funding network was funneling money into the Prosper Foundation, so the group could continue its on-the-ground campaign to block the Grand Canyon national monument plan.” [The Guardian, 04/21/16]
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In the past six months, the US has been playing up the idea of threats posed by Iran, and has been steadily announcing new deployments into the Middle East, mostly to Saudi Arabia and the vicinity, and very publicly aimed at Iran.
Deployments raising the threat level seems to be very much the point, as recent comments from generals have repeatedly indicated that they don’t believe the many deployments have acted as any sort of deterrent, and they don’t appear to be presenting these new deployments that way either. Instead of deterring, the deployments are said to “counter” Iranian capabilities, seemingly on the assumption that the war is only a matter of time.
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The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.
In the following interview, Valentine reflects on a variety of issues including the Phoenix Program, plausible deniability, paramilitary wars, drug trafficking, sabotage, blackmail, propaganda, Operation GLADIO, class interests of the CIA establishment, Trump, the Mueller Report and the Bidens.
Heidi Boghosian: In 1947, Congress passed the National Security Act, which led to the formation of the National Security Council and, under its direction, the CIA. Its original mandate was to collect and analyze strategic information for use in war. Though shrouded in secrecy, many CIA activities such as covert military and cybersecurity operations have drawn considerable public scrutiny and criticism. In 1948, the Security Council approved a secret directive NSC 10.2, authorizing the CIA to carry out an array of covert operations. This essentially allowed the CIA to become a paramilitary organization.
Before he died, George F. Kennan, the diplomat and Cold War strategist who sponsored the directive, said that, “in light of latter history, it was the greatest mistake I ever made.” Since NSC 10.2 authorized violation of international law, it also established an official policy of lying to cover up the law breaking.
We speak today with Douglas Valentine, author of The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World. Mr. Valentine’s rare access to CIA officials has resulted in portions of his research materials being archived at the National Security Archive, Texas Tech University’s Vietnam Center and John Jay College. He has written three books on CIA operations, including the Phoenix Program:America’s Use of Terror in Vietnam, which documented the CIA’s elaborate system of population surveillance, control, entrapment, imprisonment, torture, and assassination in Vietnam. His new book describes how many of these practices remain operational today. Doug Valentine, welcome to Law and Disorder.
Douglas Valentine: Thank you very much for having me.
Heidi Boghosian: Doug, how did you come to get such unparalleled access to top level CIA agents, including director Bill Colby?
Douglas Valentine: Well, I’m not really sure of the answer. I was a nobody. I hadn’t gone to the Columbia Journalism School. In fact, I was a college dropout. I had written a book about my father and his experiences in World War II and I wanted to write a book about the Vietnam war. And so, I sent this book that I wrote about my father called the Hotel Tacloban: The Explosive True Story of One American’s Journey to Hell in a Japanese POW Camp to Colby. And he read it! And based on him reading this book I wrote about my father, he agreed to do an interview with me about the CIA’s Phoenix program.
But I really just stumbled into it. And I think that the reasons that Colby talked to me and then introduced me to a lot of other CIA officers are complex, and I think a lot of it has to do with the psychology of the country at the time. That was in 1984, and what was known as the generation gap. I’m not exactly sure why, but I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I just had the audacity to approach Colby and ask him to help me write a book about the Phoenix program, which nobody else had done at that time.
Michael Steven Smith: Doug, the book that you wrote, the Phoenix Program: America’s Use of Terror in Vietnam, is considered by many the definitive study of the CIA’s secretive counterinsurgency program during the war in Vietnam. One CIA officer named Lucien Conein called it “the greatest blackmail scheme ever invented.” What do you think he meant by that?
Douglas Valentine: Well, it meant that the Phoenix program was targeted against civilians, the civilians who managed the insurgency in South Vietnam, not soldiers, not even guerrillas or terrorists. But these were civilians who were working undercover in political positions, generally speaking. We managed the insurgency in South Vietnam and their names could be put on blacklists. And once their name was on a list—once somebody had been informed about them, and once they were a member of a list a that was called the Vietcong infrastructure, the insurgency—the CIA and its forces could go out and kidnap them, put them in interrogation centers, kill them along with their families, and do anything they wanted to try and suppress them. And the problem was that lots of innocent civilians got their names put on these blacklists. In fact, one of the ways that the CIA and its forces, the South Vietnamese Special Police and its mercenary army, one of the ways that they got people to inform on the members of the Vietcong insurgency was by threatening to put their names on blacklists. So therefore, it became a blackmail scheme.
So, if you were just an average citizen and you did not support the government of South Vietnam, you could find your name on a blacklist and your whole family could be wiped out. So, it became a way of not just attacking the members of this Vietcong infrastructure, but a way of population control, a way of terrorizing everybody in South Vietnam and bringing them all into line following government policies. And the minute you stepped out of line, you could find your name on a blacklist.
Michael Steven Smith: A common theme is the CIA’s ability to deceive and propagandize the American public through its impenetrable government-sanctioned shield of official secrecy and plausible deniability. Can you give us some examples of this please, Doug?
Douglas Valentine: Plausible deniability? Well, first of all, one of the CIA officers that William Colby referred me to directly was a man named Tom Donahue, a veteran CIA officer. He had run the CIA’s covert action branch in South Vietnam from 1964 to 1966 and later went on to join what was called the Vietnam Task Force. He was a very senior officer. Colby arranged for me to have an interview with him, and in that interview, Donahue told me that the CIA never launched a covert action program unless it met two criteria. The first was that it had to have some intelligence potential; it had to have some value to the CIA. And the second thing—it had to be deniable. The CIA does not launch any kind of program at all unless it’s deniable. And it does this in a thousand different ways.
[T]he most common way of the CIA launching a covert action program that is deniable is by attributing it to another agency.
I spent hours talking to Donahue about all the different ways that they do it. But the most common way of the CIA launching a covert action program that is deniable is by attributing it to another agency; they say, the State Department is doing this; or they say the military is doing this; or they say a nongovernmental organization like Amnesty International is doing this; or they say another country is doing it. For example, they might say that the secret services of the government of Ukraine are conducting a particular operation when, actually, it’s the CIA that’s conducting the operation and controlling the Ukraine’s security forces and paying their salaries and directing them where to go.
[T]he most important things that are happening and shaping our democracy are the CIA’s covert actions, which are all deniable and never reported on.
So, there’s just a million different ways that the CIA creates multiple deniability for it. And of course, every step of the way they have the help of the American media, which is in a partnership with the CIA, the major newspapers and TV organizations, every report about the CIA. And you know, we’re supposed to live in a democracy, and the media—especially investigative reporters—are supposed to be out there looking out for our interests and telling us what’s really happening. But of course, they don’t do that. And what’s really happening, the most important things that are happening and shaping our democracy are the CIA’s covert actions, which are all deniable and never reported on. So, mere civilians in the United States really never know what’s going on.
Heidi Boghosian: Doug, in your book, The CIA as Organized Crime:How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, you lay out some of the most egregious acts of the agency. What do you think are one or two of the worst?
Douglas Valentine: Oh, you know, that’s so hard to say, but it’s certainly conducting paramilitary wars in foreign countries. For example, in Laos, the CIA organized an entire army of mountain tribes. They were mistakenly called the Meo by the Americans [pronounced Mayo] (which was equivalent to saying the N-word), when they were actually the Hmong [pronounced Mung].
Laos was supposed to be a country that was neutral, but the CIA organized an entire secret army of just this tribe of Hmong natives. Most of the soldiers were children, young boys, 14, 15, 16 years old. And they sent thousands and thousands of these young boys to their deaths trying to stop the Vietcong from coming down the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos. They just used this mountain tribe as expendable cannon fodder. And they do this sort of thing all over the world all the time. They’ve done it in Iraq, they’ve done it in Afghanistan, they do it in numerous countries throughout Africa, where they just organize militias and secret armies.
And nobody ever reports how tens of thousands of these people [are sent] to their deaths. There’s never a price to pay for it. So, for me—of all of the many, many things they do, including torture as blackmail, even infiltrating various agencies—you have the U.S. government using them for its own purposes, conducting secret wars and sacrificing young foreign citizens. That really strikes me as the worst.
Heidi Boghosian: How does the CIA dominate branches of the U.S. government, like the Drug Enforcement Administration and the State Department?
Douglas Valentine: Under what’s called national security—that little security law, you know—there is a clause that was included in the National Security Directive of December 19, 1947, which gives the CIA the right—for the president to direct the CIA to do whatever is necessary in the interests of national security. Therefore, they can infiltrate any agency of the government and assign office positions in that agency—for example, the Drug Enforcement Administration—to CIA officers so that CIA officers could make sure that the foreign operations that the DEA is conducting, or the foreign operations that U.S. Customs or even the FBI, certainly the military, are conducting, are not infiltrated by foreign agents—or in case of the DEA—that actual drug traffickers that are working for the CIA aren’t arrested, and allows the CIA to control the drug business around the world, which is really important for the United States, and has been since before the CIA was created, when the United States was supporting the nationalist Chinese in China in the 1930s, the way the nationalist Chinese supported themselves was through opium revenues.
President Harry S. Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947, which created the Central Intelligence Agency.
Truman later wrote: “I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven, if I had known it would become the American Gestapo.” [Credit: Wikimedia.com]
And so, the United States government allowed Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang government to traffic narcotics so they could support themselves. And you know, the United States government does that with various governments around the world even today, such as in Afghanistan, where the people who support the United States and its operations against the Taliban are often drug trafficking warlords—who again, in exchange for lucrative contracts, contracting contracts, the right to build airports or construction contracts, ante up young soldiers and, in return, you know, are sent to their deaths by the scores, by the hundreds, by the thousands. In exchange, these warlords are allowed to traffic narcotics. That’s basically how the CIA does business around the world. And it’s not just through the DEA, but through nearly every United States agency that operates overseas. They all are subservient to the CIA—the CIA has what’s called cognizance over their operations and, basically, complete control.
Michael Steven Smith: Doug, what influence has the CIA’s activities had on social and political movements abroad and in the United States?
Basically, the essence of [the CIA’s] mandate is to—through sabotage and propaganda—control political and social movements in foreign countries…It’s been standard practice and…the driving principle since after World War II.
Douglas Valentine: Sure. This is one of the primary covert operations of the CIA. Basically, the essence of its mandate is to—through sabotage and propaganda—control political and social movements in foreign countries. And they do this set up for a variety of ways. It’s been standard practice and sort of the driving principle since after World War II.
If I can just give a little background. After World War II, the communists had really formed the underground forces of resistance against the Nazis in France and Italy and in a couple of other European nations. And so immediately after World War II, communist parties became politically influential—and I’ll just focus on France and Italy—and they, all of a sudden, were in control of the governments. But the CIA could not fight wars against France and Italy. So, they developed a program called “courting the compatible left.” In order to get France and Italy away from communism, they supported the Social Democrats, people who weren’t hardcore communists, but people who were willing to work with capitalism, accept American aid and work with the Americans. And so, the CIA resorted to very subtle ways of luring hardcore communists away from communism into its social democratic movement. And this began to bloom and blossom all across the world as a standard operating procedure. When the communists were intractable, then they would do such things as hire Corsican gangsters, which they did in Marseille right after World War II to break up communist strikes.
Sicilian Mafia leaders [Credit: pininterest.ca]
But, generally speaking, they tried to do this through subtle forms of propaganda, blackmail, bribery, sabotage and methods like that. There’s a pretty good book about that…[The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters by Frances Stonor Saunders]…It’s about how the CIA waged cultural war in the 1950s and 1960s that a lot of Americans played, people like Gloria Steinem and other intellectuals in the United States, who actually helped the CIA in this effort to lure people out of the Communist Party into a social democratic movement.
Heidi Boghosian: Doug, let’s talk about the class origins of the CIA. Who does it really represent in the United States of America? Is it the establishment?
Douglas Valentine: Well, certainly the CIA is not a social services organization. Its mandate does not state that it should help poor people in the United States. It’s mandated to protect the national security of the United States. And by definition, that means the people who actually own the industrial infrastructure, the banking system…the individuals who own the United States, the millionaires and billionaires. The people who through big corporations employ many thousands of Americans. That’s what’s meant by national security: supporting those corporations and the people that actually are the Wall Street investment bankers, that faction of the United States. And when the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—the predecessor of the CIA—was formed in 1942 by President Roosevelt, the person he went to was a man named William Donovan, who had been a World War I veteran and was a U.S. attorney in Buffalo and elsewhere.
And Donovan went to all the elite people from the Ivy League colleges, from industry, and those individuals were all given the management positions in the OSS. And when the CIA was created, all those people from the upper crust—the OSS was often called the Oh So Social—it was the Foxtrot crowd from Georgetown. All those people went in and took over all the management positions. That does not mean that the CIA does not hire people from all ethnicities…[they hired] translators who speak unusual languages…somebody from Jacksonville, Florida, who plays football or some guy from Texas who’s a football player…[that does not mean they] can’t get into the CIA and into its paramilitary division.
What it means is that all the important decisions that all the management in the executive positions are filled by people from the upper class and they know perfectly well that the job is to protect the interests of the major corporations and banking institutions. And like I said, the people who actually own America, that’s what national security is.
Heidi Boghosian: And what is the CIA’s relationship with Trump? Is it independent from him?
Douglas Valentine: Well, I don’t exactly know. It’s been theorized that when Trump was in financial trouble, and that he needed an influx of capital, he went to Deutsche Bank and massive loans were forthcoming to him. The CIA may have had some hand in that; that the money that was coming to him was from Russian oligarchs who were basically mafia characters in the Soviet Union, that had just collapsed. And the CIA wanted to, again, control political and social movements. Like, in Russia, [the CIA] gravitated towards the wealthiest people and it tried to establish wealthy people in Russia who were beholden to it. The CIA and United States government may have arranged for some of these Russian oligarchs to launder their ill-gotten money to Donald Trump through Deutsche Bank. Trump being a greedy guy, who never thinks beyond the minute, may have been unwitting as to the source of where this money was coming from.
Somebody might’ve said to him, “Donald, why don’t you go to Deutsche Bank? I think you can get a deal there,” and just being a greedy guy who lives in the moment, he did it and the money was forthcoming and so he could have been an unwitting recipient of dirty money. That’s a theory that’s floating around. And if it’s true, then the Mueller investigation or any other kind of investigation that was ever launched in the United States would never reveal it because no investigation is ever allowed to reveal the CIA’s hand.
[S]ecrecy dominates our society; secrecy dominates our culture. It dominates the world and especially it dominates us through the secret of how we’re dominated and none of that is ever revealed. And if it was to be revealed, and we were all to understand how the CIA operates and how it actually controls the information that we receive, then there would be a total upheaval in American society.
So, in a sense, Trump would be a protected person forever. If anybody read the Mueller report, you’ll see that the CIA is never mentioned. There’s a reason for that. You know, these things come to us. People say that, you know, Attorney General William Barr scripted it or somebody else scripted it, but you just never read about it. You don’t read about the CIA in the New York Times either. I mean you just don’t read about it. And it’s because secrecy dominates our society; secrecy dominates our culture. It dominates the world and especially it dominates us through the secret of how we’re dominated and none of that is ever revealed. And if it was to be revealed, and we were all to understand how the CIA operates and how it actually controls the information that we receive, then there would be a total upheaval in American society. It just never happens.
Michael Steven Smith: Okay. We’re coming to the end of our allotted time, Doug Valentine. But before we let you go, there is a story breaking now that Heidi and I have been discussing about Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, and Trump trying to get Hunter Biden investigated for his position on an energy corporation in the Ukraine. And that’s led to a call for impeachment and investigation. What’s your take on this story as it’s unfolding?
Douglas Valentine: Well, I actually mentioned Hunter in a passage in my book The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World. And you know, Hunter Biden was certainly not the only American to prosper as a result of 20 years of CIA covert operations to pull Ukraine away from the Russian orbit. And once that happened, hundreds of American business people just poured into Ukraine and assumed positions in many corporations. [U.S.-born Natalie] Jaresko….the day that she obtained Ukraine citizenship, she became head of the Ukraine Treasury Department. No, I mean, and this is not America! So, if you started investigating Hunter Biden, then you’ve got to investigate a hundred or a thousand other American business people and political figures who are what I call in my books super-predators who basically operate the way the Mafia does.
You know, they take over governments by twenty years of CIA subversion; blackmailing people and countries, setting them up, overloading them with loans from the IMF or something like that. And then when they can’t pay off their loans, they swoop in like vultures and take over their country and they take over their corporations. And so, what Hunter Biden did, and what I stress in my book: This is just business as usual. The only value it has is, in this war of words that’s being waged between the Republicans and the Democrats, nothing of the CIA’s involvement in setting up these kinds of takeovers in foreign countries is ever, ever going to be revealed.
[W]e’re subjected to the spectacle of Republicans and Democrats smearing each other, [with] the investigative reporters never getting to the root cause…that America is an imperial nation that is subverting and overtaking foreign governments on a daily basis around the world.
We have this sort of stasis, between the Republicans and the Democrats, where we’re subjected to the spectacle of Republicans and Democrats smearing each other, [with] the investigative reporters never getting to the root cause of all this: namely, the fact that America is an imperial nation that is subverting and overtaking foreign governments on a daily basis around the world. And so, we are subjected to this spectacle and that’s all we ever see. And the powers that be are perfectly happy for us to be enthralled by this, what I call the anvil chorus: one side hammering the other with smear tactics, ad infinitum. And in the meantime, nobody ever really knows what’s going on because everything that’s really important is secret and covered up.
Heidi Boghosian: Doug. Unfortunately, we have come to the end of our time. How can listeners read more about what you’ve done and your body of work on the CIA is really magnificent? Do you have a website?
Douglas Valentine: Yes, I do. You can go to douglasvalentine.com which lists all my books. Plus, if you go to Google and you punch in my name, I am usually the first Doug Valentine that comes up. Google has all my books listed and at this point there’s like seven or eight of them—I can’t remember anymore.
Heidi Boghosian: Thank you so much for being on with us today and we hope to stay in touch as future political developments unravel.
Douglas Valentine: Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity.
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Douglas Valentine is an investigator and author with a rare and tenacious approach toward research. His writing results in uniquely incisive and revealing books on the dark side of U.S. intelligence activities and the National Security State. His latest book, The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, draws parallels between CIA operations in Vietnam—as exposed in his well-known 1990 book, The Phoenix Program: America’s Use of Terror in Vietnam—and recent/current operations in Afghanistan, El Salvador, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.
Heidi Boghosian, a lawyer, is the executive director of the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute. Previously she was the executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, a progressive bar association established in 1937, where she oversaw the legal defense of people targeted by government. She co-hosts the weekly civil liberties radio show Law and Disorder with Michael Steven Smith, that airs on Pacifica Radio’s WBAI, New York, and is broadcast on more than 100 other stations.
Michael Steven Smith is an author, speaker, and New York City attorney with the firm Michael Steven Smith and Associates. His firm has for twenty years successfully represented victims in suits against insurance companies in cases of medical malpractice and other accidents. He has authored or edited five books including Notebook of a Sixties Lawyer: An Unrepentant Memoir and Selected Writings, Lawyers You’ll Like: Putting Human Rights First, and Che Guevara and the FBI (with Michael Ratner).
Note from The Grayzone’s editor: This article was updated on November 29 with more information about US sanctions against Nicaragua.
After presiding over a far-right coup in Bolivia, the US dubbed Nicaragua a “national security threat” and announced new sanctions, while Trump designated drug cartels in Mexico as “terrorists” and refused to rule out military intervention.
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One successful coup against a democratically elected socialist president is not enough, it seems.
Washington dubbed Nicaragua a threat to US national security, and announced that it will be expanding its suffocating sanctions on the tiny Central American nation.
Trump is also turning up the heat on Mexico, baselessly linking the country to terrorism and even hinting at potential military intervention. The moves come as the country’s left-leaning President Andrés Manuel López Obrador warns of right-wing attempts at a coup.
As Washington’s rightist allies in Colombia, Brazil, Chile, and Ecuador are desperately beating back massive grassroots uprisings against neoliberal austerity policies and yawning inequality gaps, the United States is ramping up its aggression against the region’s few remaining progressive governments.
These moves have led left-wing forces in Latin America to warn of a 21st-century revival of Operation Condor, the Cold War era campaign of violent subterfuge and US support for right-wing dictatorships across the region.
Trump admin declares Nicaragua a ‘national security threat’
A day after the US-backed far-right coup in Bolivia, the White House released a statement applauding the military putsch and making it clear that two countries were next on Washington’s target list: “These events send a strong signal to the illegitimate regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua,” Trump declared.
On November 25, the Trump White House then quietly issued a statement characterizing Nicaragua as an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
This prolonged for an additional year an executive order Trump had signed in 2018 declaring a state of “national emergency” on the Central American country.
Trump’s 2018 declaration came after a failed violent right-wing coup attempt in Nicaragua. The US government has funded and supported many of the opposition groups that sought to topple elected Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, and cheered them on as they sought to overthrow him.
The 2018 national security threat designation was quickly followed by economic warfare. In December the US Congress approved the NICA Act without any opposition. This legislation gave Trump the authority to impose sanctions on Nicaragua, and prevents international financial institutions from doing business with Managua.
Trump’s new 2019 statement spewed outlandish propaganda against Nicaragua, referring to its democratically elected government — which for decades has been targeted for overthrow by Washington — as a supposedly violent and corrupt “regime.”
This executive order is similar to one made by President Barack Obama in 2015, which designated Venezuela as a threat to US national security.
Both orders were used to justify the unilateral imposition of suffocating economic sanctions. And Trump’s renewal of the order paves the way for an escalated economic attack on Nicaragua.
The extension received negligible coverage in mainstream English-language corporate media, but right-wing Spanish-language outlets in Latin America heavily amplified it.
And opposition activists are gleefully cheering on the intensification of Washington’s hybrid warfare against Managua.
More aggressive US sanctions against Nicaragua
Voice of America (VOA), the US government’s main foreign broadcasting service, noted that the extension of the executive order will be followed with more economic attacks.
Washington’s ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), Carlos Trujillo, told VOA, “The pressure against Nicaragua is going to continue.”
The OAS representative added that Trump will be announcing new sanctions against the Nicaraguan government in the coming weeks.
VOA stated clearly that
“Nicaragua, along with Cuba and Venezuela, is one of the Latin American countries whose government Trump has made a priority to put diplomatic and economic pressure on to bring about regime change.”
This is not just rhetoric. The US Department of the Treasury updated the Nicaragua-related sanctions section of its website as recently as November 8.
And in September, the Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control announced a “more comprehensive set of regulations,” strengthening the existing sanctions on Nicaragua.
Voice of America’s report quoted several right-wing Nicaraguans who openly called for more US pressure against their country.
Bianca Jagger, a celebrity opposition activist formerly married to Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, called on the US to impose sanctions on Nicaragua’s military in particular.
“The Nicaraguan military has not been touched because they [US officials] are hoping that the military will like act the military in Bolivia,” Jagger said, referring to the military officials who violently overthrew Bolivia’s democratically elected president.
Many of these military leaders had been trained at the US government’s School of the Americas, a notorious base of subversion dating back to Operation Condor. Latin American media has been filled in recent days with reports that Bolivian soldiers were paid $50,000 and generals were paid up to $1 million to carry out the putsch.
VOA added that “in the case of the Central American government [of Nicaragua], the effect that sanctions can have can be greater because it is a more economically vulnerable country.”
VOA quoted Roberto Courtney, a prominent exiled right-wing activist and executive director of the opposition group Ethics and Transparency, which monitors elections in Nicaragua and is supported by the US government’s regime-change arm, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Courtney, who claims to be a human rights activist, salivated over the prospects of US economic war on his country, telling VOA, “There is a bit of a difference [between Nicaragua and Bolivia] … the economic vulnerability makes it more likely that the sanctions will have an effect.”
Courtney, who was described by VOA as an “expert on the electoral process,” added, “If there is a stick, there must also be a carrot.” He said the OAS could help apply diplomatic and political pressure against Nicaragua’s government.
These unilateral American sanctions are illegal under international law, and considered an act of war. Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, has characterized US economic warfare “financial terrorism,” explaining that it disproportionately targets civilians in order to turn them against their government.
Top right-wing Nicaraguan opposition groups applauded Trump for extending the executive order and for pledging new sanctions against their country.
Estados Unidos amplió por un año más la vigencia de la Declaración de Emergencia Nacional con respecto a la Situación en Nicaragua. https://t.co/Xq8m8UWVfr
The Nicaraguan Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy, an opposition front group that brings together numerous opposition groups, several of which are also funded by the US government’s NED, welcomed the order.
Trump dubs drug cartels in Mexico “terrorists,” refuses to rule out drone strikes
While the US targeting of Nicaragua and Venezuela’s governments is nothing new, Donald Trump is setting his sights on a longtime US ally in Mexico.
In 2018, Mexican voters made history when they elected Andrés Manuel López Obrador as president in a landslide. López Obrador, who is often referred to by his initials AMLO, is Mexico’s first left-wing president in more than five decades. He ran on a progressive campaign pledging to boost social spending, cut poverty, combat corruption, and even decriminalize drugs.
AMLO is wildly popular in Mexico. In February, he had a record-breaking 86 percent approval rating. And he has earned this widespread support by pledging to combat neoliberal capitalist orthodoxy.
“The neoliberal economic model has been a disaster, a calamity for the public life of the country,” AMLO has declared. “The child of neoliberalism is corruption.”
When he unveiled his multibillion-dollar National Development Plan, López Obrador announced the end to “the long night of neoliberalism.”
AMLO’s left-wing policies have caused shockwaves in Washington, which has long relied on neoliberal Mexican leaders ensuring a steady cheap exploitable labor base and maintaining a reliable market for US goods and open borders for US capital and corporations.
On November 27 — a day after declaring Nicaragua a “national security threat” — Trump announced that the US government will be designating Mexican drug cartels as “terrorist organizations.”
Such a designation could pave the way for direct US military intervention in Mexico.
Trump revealed this new policy in an interview with right-wing Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. “Are you going to designate those cartels in Mexico as terror groups and start hitting them with drones and things like that?” O’Reilly asked.
The US president refused to rule out drone strikes or other military action against drug cartels in Mexico.
President @realDonaldTrump tells me he is 90 days into the process of designating Mexican drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations – which would give US forces more leverage in taking them out. pic.twitter.com/ewSJMkt6rr
Trump’s announcement seemed to surprise the Mexican government, which immediately called for a meeting with the US State Department.
The designation was particularly ironic considering some top drug cartel leaders in Mexico have long-standing ties to the US government. The leaders of the notoriously brutal cartel the Zetas, for instance, were originally trained in counter-insurgency tactics by the US military.
Throughout the Cold War, the US government armed, trained, and funded right-wing death squads throughout Latin America, many of which were involved in drug trafficking. The CIA also used drug money to fund far-right counter-insurgency paramilitary groups in Central America.
These tactics were also employed in the Middle East and South Asia. The United States armed, trained, and funded far-right Islamist extremists in Afghanistan in the 1980s in order to fight the Soviet Union. These same US-backed Salafi-jihadists then founded al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
This strategy was later repeated in the US wars on Libya and Syria. ISIS commander Omar al-Shishani, to take one example, had been trained by the US military and enjoyed direct support from Washington when he was fighting against Russia.
The Barack Obama administration also oversaw a campaign called Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious, in which the US government helped send thousands of guns to cartels in Mexico.
Mexican journalist Alina Duarte explained that, with the Trump administration’s designation of cartels as terrorists, “They are creating the idea that Mexico represents a threat to their national security.”
“Should we start talking about the possibility of a coup against Lopez Obrador in Mexico?” Duarte asked.
She noted that the US corporate media has embarked on an increasingly ferocious campaign to demonize AMLO, portraying the democratically elected president as a power-hungry aspiring dictator who is supposedly wrecking Mexico’s economy.
Duarte discussed the issue of US interference in Mexican politics in an interview with The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton, on their podcast Moderate Rebels:
Now, a whisper campaign over fears that the right-wing opposition may try to overthrow President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is spreading across Mexico.
AMLO himself has publicly addressed the rumors, making it clear that he will not tolerate any discussion of coups.
“How wrong the conservatives and their hawks are,” López Obrador tweeted on November 2. Referencing the 1913 assassination of progressive President Francisco Madero, who had been a leader of the Mexican Revolution, AMLO wrote, “Now is different.”
“Another coup d’état will now be allowed,” he declared.
Ahora es distinto. Aunque son otras realidades y no debe caerse en la simplicidad de las comparaciones, la transformación que encabezo cuenta con el respaldo de una mayoría libre y consciente, justa y amante de la legalidad y de la paz, que no permitiría otro golpe de Estado.
In recent months, as fears of a coup intensify, López Obrador has swung even further to the left, directly challenging the US government and asserting an independent foreign policy that contrasts starkly to the subservience of his predecessors.
AMLO’s government has rejected US efforts to delegitimize Venezuela’s leftist government, throwing a wrench in Washington’s efforts to impose right-wing activist Juan Guaidó as coup leader.
AMLO has welcomed Ecuador’s ousted socialist leader Rafael Correa and hosted Argentina’s left-leaning Alberto Fernández for his first foreign trip after winning the presidency.
In October, López Obrador even welcomed Cuban President Díaz-Canel to Mexico for a historic visit.
Trump’s Operation Condor 2.0
For Washington, an independent and left-wing Mexico is intolerable.
In a speech for right-wing, MAGA hat-wearing Venezuelans in Miami, Florida in February, Trump ranted against socialism for nearly an hour, threatened the remaining leftist countries in Latin America with regime change.
“The days of socialism and communism are numbered not only in Venezuela, but in Nicaragua and in Cuba as well,” he declared, adding that socialism would never be allowed to take root in heart of capitalism in the United States.
While Trump has claimed he seeks to withdraw from wars in the Middle East (when he is not occupying its oil fields), he has ramped up aggressive US intervention in Latin America.
During the height of the Cold War, Operation Condor thousands of dissidents were murdered, and hundreds of thousands more were disappeared, tortured, or imprisoned with the assistance of the US intelligence apparatus.
Today, as Latin America is increasingly viewed through the lens of a new Cold War, Operation Condor is being reignited with new mechanisms of sabotage and subversion in play. The mayhem has only begun.
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Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.
Producers: Gregory Allen Howard, Debra Martin Chase, Daniela Taplin Lundberg
Screenplay: Gregory Allen Howard, Kasi Lemmons
Starring: Cynthia Erivo as Harriet Tubman along with Leslie Odom Jr., Joe Alwyn and Janelle Monáe
Since the conclusion of the Civil War some 154 years ago, the existential consciousness and human culture of enslaved Africans has been a source of contested debate within academia, literature and popular artistic representations.
This is why a film such as “Harriet” is so important in contributing to the notion that African people were the principal agents of their own liberation during the antebellum period in United States history.
The story portrays the family life, religious beliefs and collective courage of a people who were systematically subjected to a dehumanization process for nearly 250 years. Harriet was born into slavery in 1822 at Dorchester County, Maryland and experienced the brutality, separations and extreme exploitation inherent within the system.
Opposition to slavery was not merely a moral issue. The abolitionist movement threatened the very foundation of the economic system of the U.S. during its first 90 years of historical development.
In its early phase, slavery was not confined to the Southern regions of the country. It thrived in the Northeast under Dutch, British and later American rule.
With specific reference to Maryland, the number of enslaved people grew from 1642, when the first recorded importation of Africans arrived at St. Mary’s City then under British colonialism, through the beginning of the 19th century after the U.S. independence from the Crown. The cultivation of tobacco was the principal agricultural crop which fueled the spread of the plantation economy.
During the course of the 19th century the number of Africans held in bondage decreased. At its peak in 1810, the U.S. census records 111,502 enslaved people. By 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, the number had been reduced to 87,189.
Many Africans were granted freedom through manumission while others escaped from the plantations. The declining significance of tobacco production played an important role in the decline of the demand for enslaved African labor. At the same time, many Africans were sold by plantation owners into the Deep South.
The Woman Called Moses
This film depicts the horrors of plantation life in the mid-to-late 19th century in Maryland. Born Araminta Ross, Harriet Tubman, as she was later known, escaped bondage in 1849 fleeing to the state of Pennsylvania where slavery had been abolished after the American War of Independence.
Tubman was beaten viciously as a child enduring the hostility of white plantation owners. As a youth she was hit in the head with a metal object by a slave master seeking to inflict pain on another African person. From that time onwards she experienced seizures, probably the result of a closed-head injury from the assault suffered as a child.
Her outlook was highly religious in character. It is reported she had become a Methodist and often had visions of escaping and helping others towards liberation.
After leaving the plantation in 1849 and settling in Philadelphia, a vibrant center of abolitionist activity through the Anti-Slavery Society as well as other independent African organizations and churches, she returned to Maryland on numerous occasions to transport her relatives and friends out of the state to freedom. Some 70 people were liberated under her direct guidance along trails, waterways and safe houses which became known as the Underground Railroad.
Maryland, although a state heavily reliant upon slave labor for its economic viability, was deeply divided over secession from the Union after 1860. The state remained within the Union due to the efforts of leading politicians working in conjunction with the-then President Abraham Lincoln. By 1860, approximately half of the people of African descent in Maryland were considered free from slavery.
The status of Africans whether free or enslaved was highly unstable. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which emboldened Planters and their agents to pursue Africans for recapture in non-slaveholding states, intensified the resistance among abolitionists to the system of involuntary servitude. Since there was a risk of re-enslavement in many northern states, thousands of Africans migrated to Ontario in neighboring Canada, including Tubman who lived in St. Catharines with other members of her family.
When Lincoln issued the Confiscation Act and the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, these measures did not apply to Maryland since the leadership of the state had not seceded. During the war, Tubman joined the Union military initially as a nurse and cook, then eventually becoming a scout for the defense forces on expeditions into the Confederate South.
One of her most notable achievements during the War was her leadership role in the Union Army’s raid at Combahee Ferry in South Carolina on June 1-2, 1863 which resulted in the liberation of 700 Africans. After the war, Tubman moved to a home she had purchased earlier in Auburn, New York in 1859. She provided care for her ageing parents and continued to be involved in emancipatory work related to the struggle for racial equality and women’s rights.
The Portrayal of Harriet
Cynthia Onyedinmanasu Chinasaokwu Erivo starred as Harriet Tubman in the film. Erivo, a Black British national of Nigerian ancestry, was an ideal choice for the part since the majority of Africans kidnapped into slavery and brought to North America originated in West Africa.
Erivo was born in 1987 in Stockwell, South London to parents who were from the West African state of Nigeria. She attended a Catholic Girl’s School and later the University of East London.
Her initial studies were in the field of psychology. However, she soon switched her major to the theater and transferred to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
The young actor’s first appearances were in roles on British television programs such as “Chewing Gum” and “The Tunnel.” Moving to the stage she worked in the production “Marine Parade” by Simon Stephens at the Brighton Festival.
Later in a musical production she appeared in John Adams’ and June Jordan’s “I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky” at Theatre Royal Stratford East. Eventually in 2013, Erivo played the role of Celie Harris in the Menier Chocolate Factory production of “The Color Purple.” This was the role which Whoopi Goldberg played in the award-winning film from the 1980s. Erivo had earlier portrayed Sister Mary Clarence/Deloris Van Cartier in a British version of the stage musical “Sister Act,” in which Goldberg had starred in the film during the 1990s.
By 2018, Erivo was chosen for the lead role in “Harriet.” The film was shot from October 2018 to January 2019. It was released on November 1, 2019. Since its opening, the $17 million production had earned nearly $40 million in box office sales in its first month.
Additional projects for Erivo includes “Chaos Walking,” based on Patrick Ness’ trilogy novels, with an anticipated release in 2020. Earlier in January 2019, Erivo appeared in the Home Box Office (HBO) series version of Stephen King’s novel “The Outsider.” She portrayed the character of investigator Holly Gibney in the production.
As it relates to audio work, Erivo co-produced and was the lead voice actor in the scripted thriller podcast Carrier from the broadcasting firm Qcode Media. Erivo worked as the series leading role of Raylene ‘Ray’ Watts, a truck driver who is transporting a trailer with mysterious and unknown contents.
Consequently, as a result of her work in “Harriet” and other productions, there is an undoubtedly promising career ahead for this young woman.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
We are cruising on a pristine, 380 km-long four-lane superhighway from Almaty to Khorgos – finished in 2016 for $1.25 billion, 85% of the cost covered by a World Bank loan. And then, suddenly, riding parallel to us, there’s the real superstar of New Silk Road connectivity.
Meet Yuxinou, the container cargo train plying back and forth along the 11,000 km-long railway corridor connecting Chongqin in Sichuan province via Xinjiang and Kazakhstan to Russia, Belarus, Poland and finally Duisburg in the Ruhr valley. And all that in a mere 13 days.
Along the way, the Yuxinou stops in, among other places, Almaty, Bishkek, Tashkent, Tehran, Istanbul, Moscow and Rotterdam: a who’s who of Eurasian cities. It carries laptops, BMWs, spare parts, clothes, machinery, international post packages, chemical products, medicine and medical instruments – all manner of goods, made in China and made in Europe. And all that for only 20% of air freight cost.
This operation platform is called Yuxinou (Chongqing) Logistics Co., Ltd., a joint venture among the railways of China, Russia, Kazakhstan and Germany and the Chongqin municipal government, which is quite proud of its “seamless integration of multinational railway logistics” – complete with a fast custom clearance procedure called “single declaration and inspection on entire journey.”
The key Yuxinou crossroads is the intersection between Alashankou, on the Chinese side of the Kasakh border, and Khorgos, a special economic zone in Kazakhstan. The whole project may be in its infancy. After all, the Belt and Road Initiative is still, according to Beijing’s detailed timetable, in the planning stage.
So Khorgos may still be far from metastasizing into the new Dubai, as the hype claimed a few years ago. But watching Khorgos in action is a fascinating experience, unparalleled in its usefulness for gauging Belt & Road’s potential. As much as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the northern part of which I traveled a year ago, this is one of the jewels in Belt & Road’s crown.
Hitting the malls
There are actually three places to take care of border-crossing buisness at Khorgos. I arrived, via the superhighway, at the exclusive crossing for container trucks. Then I visited the border crossing used by Kazakhs and Central Asians from everywhere, leading to a collection of duty-free mega shopping malls officially called the International Center for Boundary Cooperation (ICBC). Then there’s the train station in Altynkol, where Yoxinou stops as do the Urumqi-Almaty cargo/passenger trains. The actual SEZ – many buildings still under construction – is in the periphery of Khorgos.
The timetable at Altynkol station, featuring the Almaty-Urumqi trains. Photo: Pepe Escobar / Asia Times
The ICBC – 5.3 square kilometers housing five multi-story shopping malls with over 2,000 shops – is a sort of neutral no man’s land. If you’re Kazakh or Chinese, no visa is needed. But people from all over Central Asia also come – by bus, eager to take advantage of unlimited Made in China bargains.
The bus stop at Khorgos, before crossing to the Chinese mega mall. Photo: Pepe Escobar
The brand new Kazakh customs station. Photo: Pepe Escobar
The procedure is quite straightforward. Customers arrive usually in the early morning at a huge bus parking lot. They walk a short distance toward the very modern Kazakh customs building (on the day I visited, because of the bitter cold, it was virtually empty). Then they take a shuttle bus to the Chinese border, cross it with little or no bureaucracy (although the Central Asians, other than Kazakhs, do need visas), and hit the malls.
Porter carrying the loot from shoppers at the Chinese megamall. Photo: Pepe Escobar
They come back at the end of the day fully loaded – excellent business for an army of packagers and porters. Then they board their buses returning to all points Kazakhstan and other “stans”. On busy days, especially in summer, there may be as many as 8,000 shoppers hitting the ICBC.
China’s top connectivity access to Central Asia and West Asia markets, and farther on down the road to Europe, is via Kazakhstan, which counts China as its second-largest trading partner. At the same time, it’s essential to consider that Khorgos is smack on the Xinjiang border, which implies maximum Chinese security alert.
Image on the right: The Yuxinou at Altynkol station, in Khorgos. Photo: Pepe Escobar
Yet there’s nothing Orwellian about Khorgos. The CCP apparatus in far away Urumqi seems to understand pragmatically that the whole deal is all about a mega-mall, and not conducive to Uighur separatist shenanigans. And on top of it the really heavy business transits via Yuxinou. In the near future, it’s bound to evolve towards high-speed rail.
In terms of road traffic, container trucks conduct a hefty business at Khorgos – certainly more substantial than in other border crossings I visited, in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
There are two China-Kyrgyzstan border crossings. The more established one, at Torugart, leads straight to the capital Bishkek and then Tashkent in Uzbekistan. The road was repaved with loans from the Export-Import Bank of China and the Asian Development Bank.
The ADB also provided the financing for an alternative route from Bishkek to Osh, along with an $850 million loan from the EXIM Bank. This road is quite something, cutting through Kyrgyz mountains and passes and eliminating at least 220 km of travel in comparison with the ancient road. China Road and Bridge Cooperation was in charge of the construction, including a 3.3 km-long tunnel.
But it’s still a tricky road; on the last mountain pass before the final dash towards Bishkek, my driver Alex and I spent hours negotiating a cornucopia of lorries gone sideways in the snow and a myriad of clueless drivers stuck without tire chains.
China & the ‘stans
The other China-Kyrgyz border crossing is at the Irkeshtam pass, It used to be the main southern branch of the ancient Silk Road, coming straight from Kashgar. The road was resurfaced in 2013, adding to a connectivity integration net linking Kyrgyzstan, Xinjiang and the Karakoram Highway in Pakistan. I crossed a steady convoy of Chinese container trucks coming from Irkeshtam.
There’s only one China-Tajikistan border crossing, at the top of the Kulma pass, 4,363 meters high. The actual Chinese border is 14 km away from the Tajik border, very close to the Karakoram Highway: another instance of close connectivity. This road was opened in 2004 and also follows the ancient Silk Road.
The whole road between the Kulma pass and the Tajik capital Dushanbe, which includes the legendary Pamir Highway (the subject of an upcoming two-part special), is still a (slow) work in progress. It’s funded by a $254 million loan from China’s EXIM Bank with work by China Road and Bridge Cooperation.
Just outside Dushanbe, as I was leaving for the Pamir Highway, I saw a multi-level road intersection built with a loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and another from the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank.
What I saw was in fact history in the making; this was the AIIB’s first-ever development loan. There will be many others, as the connectivity between China and its neighboring ‘stans hits overdrive.
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This article was originally published on Asia Times.
Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: The train called Yuxinou, hauling cargo between Germany and Chongqin, seen from the Almaty-Khorgos superhighway. Photo: Pepe Escobar / Asia Times
In its most recent report to the UN Security Council, the UN Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) blandly recounted “progress” in service to their mission, but what is their mission? Up until 2013, MONUSCO had no combat mandate; they were somehow expected to keep the peace amidst a war for Congo’s resources without one. In 2013, however, as the M23 militia was ravaging North and South Kivu Provinces, the UN Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) reported that M23 answered to the command of Rwandan Defense Minister James Kabarebe, who of course answered to Rwandan President Paul Kagame himself. There were competing factions within M23, and some of its officers answered to high-level officials in Uganda, who of course answered to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
This made Rwanda and Uganda’s wars of aggression so obvious that the UN Security Council finally felt obliged to do what the UN Charter compels them to: organize a UN military intervention to stop the Rwandan and Ugandan militias.
The UN Force Intervention Brigade, composed of Tanzanian, South African, and Malawian troops, was the first UN Peacekeeping mission with an explicit combat mandate, and they did indeed chase M23 back into Rwanda and Uganda.
Then the press reported that M23 had “surrendered” to Kagame and Museveni. That was more or less like reporting that the Confederate Army had fled South to surrender to General Robert E. Lee, but the world that had been horrified by M23’s atrocities applauded their defeat and turned its attention elsewhere.
Museveni, one of the aggressors, presided over a so-called peace conference in Uganda’s capital Kampala, which produced an agreement giving M23 everything it had asked for at the outset of the war. But who bothered to read or understand the agreement? Others no doubt did, but I’m the only one I know of who bothered to report what it said—on Pacifica Radio and in the San Francisco Bay View Newspaper, which the powerful players feel free to ignore, even if they were slightly discomfited.
The aggressors are not named
Violence has continued in the DRC’s Kivu Provinces. According to the Congo Research Group based at New York University, at least 99 Congolese civilians have been massacred since November 5 in North Kivu’s Beni Territory alone. UN Peacekeepers have failed to protect them from marauding militias, and protesters have taken to the streets in Beni, Goma, and Butembo to say that the peacekeepers are part of the problem and demand that they leave. In Beni they burned down most of at least one UN military base, and one protester has been reported killed, five wounded.
Smoke from the United Nations compound rises in Beni, Democratic Republic of Congo, Monday, Nov. 25, 2019. Angry residents of this eastern Congo city burned the town hall and stormed the UN peacekeeping mission, known as MONUSCO, after Allied Democratic Forces rebels killed eight people and kidnapped nine overnight. (AP Photo/Al-hadji Kudra Maliro)
With 18,000 troops, the UN Peacekeeping Mission in Congo is the largest in the world, and it has been in Congo for 20 years without protecting the people or the peace. A young protester in Beni told Aljazeera, “The UN is supposed to keep us safe, to keep peace in North Kivu, but we’ve never seen the peace. So we are so angry we don’t want them to stay here in North Kivu.”
Congolese Swiss historian Bénédicte Kumbi Njoko also spoke to Aljazeera:
“If we think about the UN and its presence, we need to go back to almost 59 years that the UN has been working in the Congo because there were problems in the country. And I think that if we take that into perspective, we can of course question the utility of this organization, because what we have seen the last 20 years now is that people are still dying and this war that is happening in the Congo has caused already more than 8 million deaths, so maybe the response that the UN is giving to that situation is not an appropriate one.”
South African mining researcher and community organizer David Van Wyk agreed.
“Sadly,” he said, “it’s one more failed intervention. The UN has failed the Congolese people from the very first day of the Congo’s independence 59 years ago.”
“Rebels,” “rebellions,” and “rebel groups”
Kumbi told me that she had asked Aljazeera why, like the rest of the international press, they describe the militias killing the Congolese people as “rebel groups” when they are in fact gangs—Rwandan, Ugandan, and Congolese—fighting over Congolese territory and resource riches.They are not Congolese nationals fighting for power or social justice as the term “rebel groups” implies. They are fighting at the country’s easternmost edges, on its borders with Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi. The war-torn Kivu Provinces couldn’t be farther from Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, which is on its western border with the Republic of Congo and near its Atlantic coast. So they are not trying to overthrow the existing government as any self-respecting rebels would.
Her question, Kumbi said, did not make it into Aljazeera’s final cut. It is essentially the same question that she demanded an answer to at a UN conference in Geneva back in 2013, where—until the gendarmes dragged her out—she interrupted then UN Secretary General Ban-Ki-Moon with this scream:
“What about people of the Congo? Please! What about people of the Congo??? You don’t say anything about that! There’s been killed eight million people and you say you’re making fictitious peace and you’re telling us that this is peace when aggressors are not named! Rwanda is responsible for what is going wrong in the peace in Congo. And nobody says something about that! Burundi! Uganda! You should say that! We are sick and tired of hearing every time people just being so ‘peaceful’ with Africa. You should let Africa in peace!”
So long as the UN Security Council and the international press blame the war on non-existent “rebels” and “rebel groups” carrying out non-existent “rebellions,” the Congolese holocaust will go on. NGOs and UN agencies will continue to call for millions of dollars to help with the humanitarian crisis, comparing it to Syria, Yemen, and Iraq, and the displaced population already numbering four million will continue to rise. Neither the UNSC nor anyone else is going to defeat “rebels” or end a war they refuse to name.
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On November 19, the Detroit City Council voted down a bond proposal advanced by corporate-imposed Mayor Mike Duggan ostensibly designed to eliminate blighted residential properties in this overwhelmingly impoverished African American municipality.
The latest bond initiative came to the city’s legislative body in the aftermath of the release of scathing reports by several municipal entities related to the inefficient and corrupt conduct of the administration.
Most significantly, the Auditor General published a report on the city’s demolition program which was filled with rules violations, fiscal waste and environmentally compromised practices. This audit had been commissioned by Council President Brenda Jones some four years ago.
Testimony before the City Council in a public session on November 12 revealed that the Duggan administration had refused to provide documents related to the demolition program. In response to the Auditor General’s findings, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) on behalf of the Mayor, sought to discredit the conclusions.
Nonetheless, the data utilized in the AG report came from several city departments managing the projects which have been mired by cost overruns, a blatant disregard for the health and safety of the communities impacted as well as a general level of impunity in dealing with the City Council, the corporate press and residents of the city. Numerous community organizations appeared before the City Council for two straight weeks speaking out against the bond initiative. On the eve of the final vote, over 500 people jammed the Erma Henderson Auditorium at the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center (CAYMC) during a public hearing to condemn the Duggan policy demanding that City Council reject the scheme.
“The sweeping audit revealed the Detroit Building Authority— along with one or more city departments in some instances: failed to properly provide oversight and administer contracts; did not fully comply with some local and state laws; didn’t monitor to ensure that demolition contractors met requirements. Auditor General Mark Lockridge also blasted the city for having ‘inconsistent and unreliable’ demolition data, as well as poor record keeping that made it difficult to perform the audit. ‘A perception that public officials are using the procurement system to reward themselves, their friends, or supporters, poisons the public’s confidence in government and shakes its faith in the bureaucratic process,’ he wrote.”
Federal Hardest Hit Funds Redirected and Expropriated
The AG’s findings mainly related to the city’s own demolition program. Far worse, the reported $250 million in Federal Hardest Hit Funds (FHHF) which were granted to the city initially to address the horrendous problems of mortgage and later property tax foreclosures, have instead become a source of widespread mismanagement as well and therefore subject to scrutiny by United States law-enforcement officials and 14th District Congresswoman Brenda Lawrence.
Figures provided by the Duggan administration claims that over 19,000 vacant homes have been demolished since 2014. Of that number the majority, some 14,000, utilized FHHF allocations to tear down the structures. Private contractors hired by the Duggan administration demolished homes allowing asbestos, lead and other harmful materials to remain in the soil. Bricks and other housing debris were often left on the land where the structures were removed.
Congresswoman Lawrence was quoted in the November 14 issue of the Free Press saying:
“I want those sites tested and documented. And if they are contaminated, lets remediate it. … We cannot have contaminated soil that we use federal dollars for in a community. I was very involved in the details of Flint and one of the things we discovered is that there were cries or complaints or concerns about an issue happening in the community and for months there was no response from government, I am not going to have my record reflect that I did not respond. … We must act.”
After the failure of the state to enforce the utilization of the FHHF monies in a proper fashion under both Democratic and Republican administrations between 2010-2014, the contrived declaration of a financial emergency, the illegal placing of an Emergency Manager (EM) over the city in early 2013 along with the filing of bankruptcy by the state-appointed EM during that summer, set the stage for the injection of the federal funds into the Detroit Land Bank Authority (DLBA). Attempts by the Moratorium NOW! Coalition and other community organizations to have the FHHF resources put to practical and much needed use in stabilizing communities was rejected by the administration while the City Council, the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA) and the federal government accepted the false notions that massive demolition would somehow foster development. In fact a recent study indicated that blight has worsened since the advent of the corporate-imposed Duggan regime. (See this)
Since 2014, the DLBA has been given unwarranted authority to survey, target, confiscate, resale and demolish homes throughout the city. The DLBA has been cited for several violations of basic best practices. The offices of the “quasi-governmental agency” established by the Michigan State Legislature has wasted hundreds of millions in federal funds which could have provided much needed relief for Detroit residents suffering from over-assessed property taxes, predatory mortgages, utility and water shutoffs.
In essence, the policies enacted by the bank-led “development” strategy in Detroit have in effect created more abandonment, dislocations and underdevelopment of communities. The city remains one of poorest major municipalities in the U.S. The nationality character of Detroit, being approximately 80% African American, provides a glaring example of the convergence between race and class oppression under capitalism.
The Need for a Broad-based Citywide Coalition to Reverse the Bank-led Strategy
Despite the determination of the Duggan administration to force the city residents into more indebtedness through the floating of General Obligation Bonds (GOBs) for demolitions, an alliance of community organizations were successful in defeating this plot which in all likelihood would provide more opportunities for patronage, profiteering, theft and environmental degradation. Such an alliance could be extended to meaningfully address the overall crises impacting the city now facing a renewed challenge as a direct result of the stalled prestige business complexes which have been showcased as examples of Detroit’s resurgence.
Many of the announced “development projects” over the last five years have failed to materialize. The much-championed “District Detroit” which began with the publicly-funded to the tune of over $300 million construction of Little Caesars Arena (LCA), had been deceptively sold to the City Council during the state-engineered bankruptcy as the first stage of the rebuilding of dozens of blocks of blighted and vacant areas formerly known as the Cass Corridor. Today, most of the land surrounding the LCA sports arena consists of parking lots and uninhabited buildings.
The “Hudson’s site project” established by billionaire Dan Gilbert along Woodward Avenue downtown has yet to begin construction. The Republican-dominated Michigan state legislature granted huge tax abatements and the capture of personal income taxes designed to be recycled back into the Gilbert financial empire. Gilbert, who suffered a stroke over six months ago, remains out of the public view. Meanwhile, the impatience of the majority African American residents and other progressive forces is impacting the corporate media and the City Council.
A Detroit Inspector General’s (IG) report recently condemned the Duggan administration for the deliberate destruction of e-mails (public documents) related to a non-profit corporation which is run by a physician which the Mayor has a personal relationship. Municipal employees and resources were mobilized to assist the “Make-Your-Date” non-profit ostensibly geared towards curbing the high infant mortality rate in the city.
Yet it is quite obvious that the program was far less than legitimate prompting the IG to call for disciplinary actions by the administration. The administration refused to implement any corrective measures. Several weeks ago the Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel conducted a raid on the Information Technology (IT) division of the city in an ongoing investigation related to the ordering of e-mails deletions by high-ranking administration officials.
At a recent Moratorium NOW! Coalition meeting, members emphasized the need for the convening of a people’s Town Hall gathering independent of the City Council. This teach-in or conference would analyze the current situation in Detroit in light of the economic stagnation and the continuing problems of poverty, racism, financial exploitation, corruption and administrative impunity.
There is a need to reevaluate the entire municipal bond issuance process in light of the experiences in the city over the last two decades. Detroit residents have approved numerous bond initiatives where the funds have been redirected towards debt service payments to financial institutions. This phenomenon created the conditions for the illegal appointment of EMs in both the public school district and municipal government as a whole.
Municipal bonds supposedly designed to construct and refurbish school buildings have resulted in the structures being closed and razed. Payments on these bonds are set to continue for another twenty years. The same scenario holds true for the prestige projects littering downtown and midtown. Tax captures from funds which should be utilized for education and municipal services are funneled to the Detroit Downtown Development Authority (DDA) and the Neighborhood Strategic Fund (NSF).
The banks which were instrumental in the destruction of the city through racist predatory lending have announced the allocation of millions to the NSF. However, these programs have not resulted in genuine development. Certain areas such as the Livernois business district on the northwest side have been plunged into an economic crisis due to a lack of adequate construction planning. The same problems exist as well along Woodward Avenue in the New Center area.
Community organizations equipped with an analysis of the contemporary crises of capitalism will come to the realization that only socialist-oriented planning and development strategies provide any hope for a sustainable future. A nationwide effort is required for such an approach to municipal governance to be successful.
The problems of urban restructuring and displacement are part and parcel of the global character of capitalism and imperialism. Consequently, local organizing must take into consideration the necessity for revolutionary transformation of the conditions under which the working class and oppressed live and work.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
The most insidious and pervasive form of modern warfare by Wall Street and the Pentagon, acting in coordination, is passing largely unnoticed and unchallenged. This calculated attack is rolling back decades of progress in health care, sanitation, housing, essential infrastructure and industrial development all around the world.
Almost every developing country attempting any level of social programs for its population is being targeted.
U.S. imperialism and its junior partners have refined economic strangulation into a devastating weapon. Sanctions in the hands of the dominant military and economic powers now cause more deaths than bombs or guns. This weapon is stunting the growth of millions of youth and driving desperate migrations, dislocating tens of millions.
‘A crime against humanity’
Sanctions and economic blockades against Venezuela, Cuba and Iran are well known. But the devastating impacts of U.S. sanctions on occupied Palestine — or on already impoverished countries such as Mali, Central African Republic, Guinea-Bissau, Kyrgyzstan, Fiji, Nicaragua and Laos — are not even on the radar screen of human rights groups.
Most sanctions are intentionally hidden; they don’t generate even a line of news. Some sanctions are quickly passed after a sudden news article about an alleged atrocity. The civilians who will suffer have nothing to do with whatever crime the corporate media use as an excuse. What are never mentioned are the economic or political concessions the U.S. government or corporations are seeking.
Sanctions cannot be posed as an alternative to war. They are in fact the most brutal form of warfare, deliberately targeting the most defenseless civilians — youth, the elderly, sick and disabled people. In a period of human history when hunger and disease are scientifically solvable, depriving hundreds of millions from getting basic necessities is a crime against humanity.
International law and conventions, including the Geneva and Nuremberg Conventions, United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, explicitly prohibit the targeting of defenseless civilians, especially in times of war.
Sanctions draw condemnation
Modern industrial society is built on a fragile web of essential technology. If pumps and sewage lines, elevators and generators can’t function due to lack of simple spare parts, entire cities can be overwhelmed by swamps. If farmers are denied seed, fertilizer, field equipment and storage facilities, and if food, medicine and essential equipment are deliberately denied, an entire country is at risk.
The Venezuelan ambassador to the United Nations, Samuel Moncada, spoke to the XVIII Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement held in Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26. Addressing the 120 countries represented, he denounced the imposition of arbitrary measures, called “sanctions” by the U.S., as “economic terrorism which affects a third of humanity with more than 8,000 measures in 39 countries.”
This terrorism, he said, constitutes a “threat to the entire system of international relations and is the greatest violation of human rights in the world.” (tinyurl.com/uwlm99r)
The Group of 77 and China, an international body based at the U.N. and representing 134 developing countries, called upon “the international community to condemn and reject the imposition of the use of such measures as a means of political and economic coercion against developing countries.”
The Group explained:
“The criminal, anti-human policy of targeting defenseless populations, which is in clear violation of United Nations Charter and international law, has now become the new weapon of choice for these powerful states since they are faced with strong opposition from the majority of their own population to the endless wars of occupation that they are already involved in.”
The power of banks
The mechanism and the ability of one country or one vote to destroy a country on the other side of the world are not well understood.
International capital uses the dollar system. All international transactions go through U.S. banks. These banks are in a position to block money transfers for the smallest transaction and to confiscate billions of dollars held by targeted governments and individuals. They are also in a position to demand that every other bank accept sudden restrictions imposed from Washington or face sanctions themselves.
This is similar to how the U.S. Navy can claim the authority to intercept ships and interrupt trade anywhere, or the U.S. Army can target people with drones and invade countries without even asking for a declaration of war.
Sometimes a corporate media outlet, a U.S.-funded “human rights” group or a financial institution issues charges, often unsubstantiated, of human rights violations, or political repression, drug trafficking, terrorist funding, money laundering, cyber-security infractions, corruption or non-compliance with an international financial institution. These charges become the opening wedge for a demand for sanctions as punishment.
Sanctions can be imposed through a U.S. Congressional resolution or Presidential declaration or be authorized by a U.S. government agency, such as the departments of the Treasury, Commerce, State or Defense. The U.S. might apply pressure to get support from the European Union, the U.N. Security Council or one of countless U.S.-established regional security organizations, such as the Organization of American States.
A U.S. corporate body that wants a more favorable trade deal is able to influence numerous agencies or politicians to act on its behalf. Deep-state secret agencies, military contractors, nongovernmental organizations funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, and numerous corporate-funded foundations maneuver to create economic dislocation and pressure resource-rich countries.
Even sanctions that appear mild and limited can have a devastating impact. U.S. officials will claim that some sanctions are only military sanctions, needed to block weapons sales. But under the category of possible “dual use,” the bans include chlorine needed to purify water, pesticides, fertilizers, medical equipment, simple batteries and spare parts of any kind.
Another subterfuge is sanctions that supposedly apply only to government officials or specific agencies. But in fact any and every transaction they carry out can be blocked while endless inquiries are held. Anonymous bank officials can freeze all transactions in progress and scrutinize all accounts a country holds. Any form of sanctions, even against individuals, raises the cost and risk level for credit and loans.
There are more than 6,300 names on the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List of individuals sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the U.S. Treasury Department.
The OFAC describes its role this way:
“OFAC administers a number of different sanctions programs. The sanctions can be either comprehensive or selective, using the blocking of assets and trade restrictions to accomplish foreign policy and national security goals.”
There is also a Financial Action Task Force list and an International Traffic in Arms Regulations list.
The sanctions weapon has become so extensive that there is now a whole body of law to guide U.S. corporations and banks in navigating sales, credit and loans. It is intended to be opaque, murky and open to interpretation, payoffs and subterfuge. There seems to be no single online site that lists all the different countries and individuals under U.S. sanctions.
Once a country is sanctioned, it must then “negotiate” with various U.S. agencies that demand austerity measures, elections that meet Western approval, cuts in social programs, and other political and economic concessions to get sanctions lifted.
Sanctions are an essential part of U.S. regime change operations, designed in the most cynical way to exact maximum human cost. Sudden hyperinflation, economic disruption and unexpected shortages are then hypocritically blamed on the government in office in the sanctioned country. Officials are labeled inept or corrupt.
Agencies carefully monitor the internal crisis they are creating to determine the optimum time to impose regime change or manufacture a color revolution. The State Department and U.S. covert agencies fund numerous NGOs and social organizations that instigate dissent. These tactics have been used in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran, Syria, Libya, Zimbabwe, Sudan and many other countries.
A weapon of imperialism in decline
Gone are the days of Marshall Plan-type promises of rebuilding, trade, loans and infrastructure development. They are not even offered in this period of capitalist decay. The sanctions weapon is now such a pervasive instrument that hardly a week goes by without new sanctions, even on past allies.
In October the U.S. threatened harsh sanctions on Turkey, a 70-year member of the U.S.-commanded NATO military alliance.
On Nov. 27, Trump suddenly announced, by presidential decree, harsher sanctions on Nicaragua, calling it a “National Security Threat.” He also declared Mexico a “terrorist” threat and refused to rule out military intervention. Both countries have democratically elected governments.
Other sanctions sail through the U.S. Congress without a roll call vote — just a cheer and a unanimous voice vote, such as the sanctions on Hong Kong in support of U.S.-funded protests.
Why Wall Street can’t be sanctioned
Is there any possibility that the U.S. could be sanctioned for its endless wars under the same provisions by which it has asserted the right to wreak havoc on other countries?
The Chief Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, in November 2017 asked the Hague-based ICC to open formal investigations of war crimes committed by the Taliban, the Haqqani network, Afghan forces, and the U.S. military and the CIA.
The very idea of the U.S. being charged with war crimes led then White House National Security Advisor John Bolton to threaten judges and other ICC officials with arrest and sanction if they even considered any charge against U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
“If the court comes after us, Israel or other U.S. allies, we will not sit quietly,” Bolton said. He noted that the U.S. “is prepared to slap financial sanctions and criminal charges on officials of the court if they proceed against any U.S. personnel. … We will ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the United States. We will sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system, and we will prosecute them in the U.S. criminal system. … We will do the same for any company or state that assists an ICC investigation of Americans.” (The Guardian, Sept. 10, 2018)
Bolton also cited a recent move by Palestinian leaders to have Israeli officials prosecuted at the ICC for human rights violations. The ICC judges got the message. They ruled that despite “a reasonable basis” to consider war crimes committed in Afghanistan, there was little chance of a successful prosecution. An investigation “would not serve the interests of justice.”
Chief Prosecutor Bensouda, for proposing an even-handed inquiry, had her U.S. visa revoked by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Sanctions are a weapon in the capitalist world order used by the most powerful countries against those that are weaker and developing. One hundred years ago, in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson advocated sanctions as a quiet but lethal weapon that exerts pressure no nation in the modernworld can withstand.
Sanctions demonstrate how capitalist laws protect the right of eight multibillionaires to own more than the population of half the world.
U.N. sanctions demanded by Washington
The U.S., with the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet and 800 military bases, claims — while engaged in wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya — that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran are the greatest threats to world peace.
In the U.N. Security Council, the U.S. succeeded in winning harsh new sanctions against Iran and the DPRK by threatening, on the eve of “war games,” that the U.S. would escalate hostilities to an open military attack.
This threat proved sufficient to get other Security Council members to fall in line and either vote for sanctions or abstain.
These strong-arm tactics have succeeded again and again. During the Korean War, when the U.S. military was saturation-bombing Korea, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Warren Austin held up a submachine gun in the Security Council to demand expanded authority in the war from that body.
Throughout the 1990s the U.S. government used sanctions on Iraq as a horrendous social experiment to calculate how to drastically lower caloric intake, destroy crop output and ruin water purification. The impact of these sanctions were widely publicized — as a threat to other countries.
Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, when asked about the half a million children who died as a result of U.S. sanctions on Iraq, replied, “We think the price is worth it.”
The sanctions imposed by the U.S. against Iran are book-length, spanning 40 years since the Iranian Revolution. The blockade and sanctions on Cuba have continued for 60 years.
Sanctions Kill campaign
It is an enormous political challenge to break the media silence and expose this crime. We need to put a human face on the suffering.
Targeted countries cannot be left to struggle by themselves in isolation — there must be full solidarity with their efforts. The sheer number of countries being starved into compliance via U.S.-imposed sanctions must be dragged into the light of day. And one step in challenging the injustice of capitalist property relations is to attack the criminal role of the banks.
The effort to rally world opinion against sanctions as a war crime is beginning with a call for International Days of Action Against Sanctions & Economic War on March 13-15, 2020. Its slogans are “Sanctions Kill! Sanctions Are War! End Sanctions Now!”
These coordinated international demonstrations are a crucial first step. Research and testimony; resolutions by unions, student groups, cultural workers and community organizations; social media campaigns; and bringing medical supplies and international relief to sanctioned countries can all play a role. Every kind of political campaign to expose the international crime of sanctions is a crucial contribution.
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Medical doctors who wrote to UK Home Secretary Priti Patel last month calling for urgent action to protect the life of imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange have today issued a further urgent appeal.
Despite worldwide media coverage of their open letter, more than 80 medical doctors have received no response from the UK government. Their letter was sent on November 22. The doctors are now calling on the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice to intervene.
“We reiterate our grave concern that Mr Assange could die of deliberate medical negligence in a British prison and demand an urgent response from the UK Government”, the doctors write.
Their second open letter has been sent to the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice the Rt Hon Robert Buckland QC.
“In our open letter, we urged the UK Government to change course immediately and transfer Mr Assange from Belmarsh Prison to a university teaching hospital for appropriate expert medical assessment and care. So far, we have received no substantive reply from the UK Government, nor has receipt of our letter been acknowledged.
“In our opinion, the UK Government’s conduct in this matter is irresponsible, incompatible with medical ethics and unworthy of a democratic society bound by the rule of law.”
The full text of the doctors’ open letter to the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice is HERE. The letter was also sent to the Home Secretary.
Dr Bob Gill General Medical Practitioner MBChB MRCGP (UK)
“The continued detention of Julian Assange in his reported physical and psychological state is inhumane and a flagrant neglect of his right to access essential medical care. These shameful actions are those of a repressive dictatorship not a democracy and must be reversed.”
Dr Sue Wareham OAM MBBS General Medical Practitioner (retired) (Australia)
“The Australian government’s failure to speak out to protect an Australian citizen whose life is at risk is utterly shameful, as is the UK government’s failure to respond to the recent urgent open letter regarding Julian Assange’s health. Nations that call themselves civilised are keeping a man incarcerated, deprived of adequate health care, at risk of death, for the “crime” of publishing material that shed light on alleged war crimes. The Australian government should, at the very least, insist that Assange receive the health care he needs.”
Dr Richard House Chartered Psychologist, former psychotherapist and senior university lecturer (UK)
“The disgraceful treatment of Julian Assange should become a General Election issue, and the current government and Home Secretary held robustly to account for what appears to be deliberately inflicted suffering.”
Dr Victoria Abdelnur MD Specialist in Integrative Trauma Therapy (Germany and Argentina)
“The global medical community is watching, we know he needs urgent proper health care, and if he does not receive it soon, it will be crystal clear we are governed by criminals. The popular backlash will have astronomic proportions.”
Dr Stephen Frost BSc MBChB Specialist in Diagnostic Radiology (UK and Sweden)
“How and why did it ever come about that five states–the UK, the US, Australia, Sweden and Ecuador—seemingly deliberately and cruelly conspired against one human being? We agree with the assessment of Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, that Julian Assange has been ‘psychologically tortured’ in the centre of London of all places.
“The torture must stop now, and Mr Assange must be provided with immediate access to the health care which he so obviously needs before it is too late. That doctors should have to write open letters to the UK government to demand appropriate health care for a victim of torture is beyond belief.”
The full text of the November 22 open letter and list of signatories can be found here.
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Madrid COP 25. The climate emergency is presented as “the defining and most urgent issue of our time, and it cannot be avoided without a global shift away from fossil-fuel dependency.”
Our message to climate activists:
ASK YOURSELF WHY IS BIG OIL GENEROUSLY FUNDING THE CLIMATE PROTEST MOVEMENT?
WHY IS THE EU SUPPORTING NUCLEAR ENERGY AS A SOLUTION TO THE CLIMATE CRISIS?
WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE “GREEN NEW DEAL”, A MULTIBILLION DOLLAR OPERATION? FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL
WHY ARE ENVIRONMENTAL MODIFICATION TECHNIQUES FOR MILITARY USE NOT PART OF THE CLIMATE DEBATE?
First published in September 2019
#FridaysForFuture:
4500 climate strikes in over 100 countries. Several million protesters demand that governments around the World “take action” on the devastating environmental impacts of climate change.
Many of the climate activists point to the destructive impacts of global capitalism on their lives.
“Capitalism = death (or extinction)”.
“Cancel Capitalism.”
People’s lives are destroyed. Politicians are coopted by the corporate giants including Big Oil. The economic, environmental and social structures are undermined. The outcome is a process of Worldwide impoverishment.
The oil giants were indelibly under fire. In New York City, climate activists confronted “Big Oil”:
The unspoken truth is that Big Oil funds the campaign against Big Oil. Sounds contradictory?
Climate activists have been lied to.
The Climate Movement (New Green Deal) is funded by major charities and corporate foundations including the National Endowment for Democracy, Soros Open Society Foundations, the Rockefeller Brothers Trust, Shell Foundation, BP, Goldman Sachs, among others.
Whereas “Big Oil” is held responsible for the devastating impacts of the fossil fuel industry, the architect of Big Oil, namely the Rockefeller family is the major protagonist of the Green New Deal:
“Beginning in the 1980s, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund became leading advocates of the global warming agenda. … In their Sustainable Development Program Review, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund boasts of being one of the first major global warming activists, citing its strong advocacy for both the 1988 formation of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the 1992 establishment of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.” (The Energy & Environmental Legal Institute published in 2016).
Debate on the world’s climate is of crucial importance.
But who controls that debate? Major capitalist foundations ultimately call the shots?
There is an obvious contradictory relationship. The protest movement is funded by corporate foundations.
Prince Charles, … along with the Bank of England and City of London finance have promoted “green financial instruments,” led by Green Bonds, to redirect pension plans and mutual funds towards green projects. A key player in the linking of world financial institutions with the Green Agenda is outgoing Bank of England head Mark Carney. In December 2015, the Bank for International Settlements’ Financial Stability Board (FSB), chaired then by Carney, created the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD), to advise “investors, lenders and insurance about climate related risks.” That was certainly a bizarre focus for world central bankers.
And the Protest movement including the Extinction Rebellion provide a justification for investing in Green Bonds:
The omnipresent Wall Street bank, Goldman Sachs, … has just unveiled the first global index of top-ranking environmental stocks, done along with the London-based CDP, formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project. The CDP, notably, is financed by investors such as HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, American International Group, and State Street Corp.
The new index, called CDP Environment EW and CDP Eurozone EW, aims to lure investment funds, state pension systems such as the CalPERS (the California Public Employees’ Retirement System) and CalSTRS (the California State Teachers’ Retirement System) with a combined $600+ billion in assets, to invest in their carefully chosen targets.
A cursory review suggests that the key climate organizations are invariably funded by corporate capital (including the Oil giants):
Climate Action has links with a number of financial partners with a view to promoting “Green investments” in what is described as the “global sustainability industry.”
The Climate Institute at climate.org, is a major research entity funded by Ford Motor Company Fund, GE Foundation, Goldman Sachs, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Shell Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, among others.
While climate activists express their concern regarding the nefarious impacts of global capitalism on climate, including those pertaining to militarization (and defense spending), the scientific analysis of climate under the auspices of the IPCC largely focusses on a single variable: Carbon Dioxide (CO2), i.e. the impact of increased emissions of CO2 derived from fossil fuels (including fracking) on average global temperature.
Depletion of the ozone layer is what triggers global warming. The ozone layer is in the Earth’s stratosphere. “Ozone is constantly being produced and destroyed naturally. This ozone layer filters out ultra-violet (UV) rays from the Sun and protects life on Earth.”
Greenhouse gas emissions affecting the ozone layer largely consist of water vapor (50%), carbon dioxide (CO2) (20%) and clouds (25%). The remaining greenhouse gases (5%) is made up of small aerosol particles, methane (CH4) and nitrous oxides (N2O) (both a greenhouse gas as well as an “ozone destroyer” with devastating impacts on climate). (approximate figures provided by NASA for 2011).
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the key UN body “for assessing the science related to climate change”.
The focus of the IPCC is to estimate the additional CO2 greenhouse gas generated by fossil fuel extraction. It is assumed that the increase in greenhouse gas emissions from Planet Earth results solely from CO2 emissions tied to fossil fuel extraction (including fracking).
Note: The CO2 emissions resulting from fossil fuel extraction constitute a very small percentage of total CO2 emissions (estimated at 20% of total greenhouse gas emissions), i.e a very small percentage of the 20%.
The current IPCC climate debate focus consists of the following:
-Rising CO2 emissions (from fossile fuels) constitute the sole cause of global warming, attributable to the depletion of the ozone layer.
-To reduce the depletion of the ozone layer requires a reduction in fossil fuel extraction, which constitutes the major cause of rising CO2 emissions.
“an understanding of the impacts of 1.5°C global warming above pre-industrial levels and related global emission pathways in the context of strengthening the response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty.”
Most of the results in this IPCC study are based on model simulations of likely impacts comparing a 2.0 C increase in average global temperature to the 1.5°C global warming above pre-industrial levels.
These include impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems, species loss and extinctions (plants, insects and vertebrates), impacts on oceans and waterways, as well as social impacts including poverty.
The report distinguishes between terrestrial, freshwater and coastal ecosystems. It examines the impacts of global warming on ocean temperatures. It also addresses “associated increases in ocean acidity and decreases in ocean oxygen levels”and the impacts on marine life and biodiversity. The social impacts on (e.g. on fishing communities) are also acknowledged.
On land, impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems, including species loss and extinction, are projected to be lower at 1.5°C of global warming compared to 2°C. Similarly, “limiting global warming to 1.5°C is projected to reduce risks to marine biodiversity, fisheries, and ecosystems, and their functions and services to humans”
Critique: Single Variable Analysis
There are many other complex factors which directly or indirectly affect climate and environmental structures including the ozone layer, which have been excluded from the IPCC model simulations.
The quantitative results of the IPCC are deterministic to say the least. According to MIT Professor Richard S Lindzen:
“Now here is the currently popular narrative concerning this system. The climate, a complex multifactor system, can be summarized in just one variable, the globally averaged temperature change, and is primarily controlled by the 1-2% perturbation in the energy budget due to a single variable – carbon dioxide – among many variables of comparable importance.
This is an extraordinary pair of claims based on reasoning that borders on magical thinking. It is, however, the narrative that has been widely accepted, even among many sceptics.”
They omit variables which affect climate. With the exception of fossil fuel, they do not address the impacts of government policy on climate, nor do they address how US led wars as well as the multi-trillion dollar war economy threatens Planet Earth.
It is the art of omission:
A single highly relevant variable carbon-dioxide (CO2) “Explains Everything”. (ceteris paribus).
With all other variables excluded, through omission, CO2 “Explains nothing”.
CO2 emissions cannot reasonably explain the complexities of climate change.
By centering solely on CO2, the Climate debate has excluded “everything else”.
The climatic and environmental crisis in different regions of the World are identified. The underlying causality is the single variable approach: CO2 emissions from fossil fuel extraction.
And the IPCC’s stylized results are then used to justify the Green New Deal multibillion corporate bonanza.
A whole series of important processes including biodiversity, animal life, poverty, species loss, etc have been explained by the IPCC solely referring to the impact of the the increase in CO2 emissions on global warming, nothing else.
Measurement: Biased and Flawed Global Temperature Readings
There are serious problems in estimating CO2 emissions (from fossil fuel) as well average global temperature.
Global warming cannot be identified and explained by a single global temperature. There are numerous regional temperatures which describe climatic conditions. A global (weighted) average temperatures established from major geographical readings does not provide an understanding of the complexities of climate.
Moreover, there is evidence that the Global Average Temperature is manipulated. This temperature has a direct bearing on gains and losses in multibillion dollar Carbon Trade transactions:
When future generations look back on the global-warming scare of the past 30 years, nothing will shock them more than the extent to which the official temperature records – on which the entire panic ultimately rested – were systematically “adjusted” to show the Earth as having warmed much more than the actual data justified. (Telegraph, 7 February, 2015)
This belief has rested on … official data records. … the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), … the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction, UK Met Office. [as well] as … measurements made by satellites, compiled by Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) (The Telegraph, 24 January 2015)
The Impact of Radioactivity on Climate
Are increased CO2 emissions from fossil fuel the only cause of climate change and environmental degradation?
In this article, we focus briefly on the impacts on the Ozone Layer resulting from the explosion of nuclear bombs, an issue which has not been addressed by the New Green Deal, as well as radiation from nuclear power plants. We also focus on Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD) and the “militarization of the climate”.
Radiation from Nuclear Power Plants (Fukushima)
The dumping of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean constitutes a potential trigger to a process of global radioactive contamination.
In this regard, since 2011, amply documented, marine life as well as species loss has been affected by the release of radioactive plutonium into the Pacific Ocean following the Fukushima-Daichi disaster.
Radioactive elements have not only been detected in the food chain in Japan, radioactive rain water has been recorded in California.
“The main man-made contribution to the exposure of the world’s population [to radiation] has come from the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, from 1945 to 1980. Each nuclear test resulted in unrestrained release into the environment of substantial quantities of radioactive materials, which were widely dispersed in the atmosphere and deposited everywhere on the Earth’s surface.”
The above report highlights the impacts of radiation on living cells as well on the concurrent incidence of leukaemia, cancer of the thyroid, lung and breast cancer.
What would be the impact of the explosion of nuclear weapons on the World’s climate?
The issue of nuclear winter was first addressed in a 1983 study by R.P. Turco, O.B. Toon, T.P. Ackerman, J.B. Pollack, and Carl Sagan (referred to as TTAPS) “Global Atmospheric Consequences of Nuclear War”
The publication of the TTAPS study at the height of the Cold War unleashed a concern on the devastating impacts of nuclear war including its climatic impacts.
The extreme cold, high radiation levels, and the widespread destruction of industrial, medical, and transportation infrastructures along with food supplies and crops would trigger a massive death toll from starvation, exposure, and disease.
The TTAPS study concluded: “…the possibility of the extinction of Homo Sapiens cannot be excluded.”
It also created an awareness among US foreign policy-makers, which today is totally absent. Trump does not have the foggiest idea regarding the impacts of a nuclear war.
According to Atomic Archive.com which essentially summarizes the concepts of the TTAP study (p. 22) “When a nuclear weapon explodes in the air, the surrounding air is subjected to great heat, followed by relatively rapid cooling.”
These conditions are ideal for the production of tremendous amounts of nitric oxides. These oxides are carried into the upper atmosphere, where they reduce the concentration of protective ozone. Ozone is necessary to block harmful ultraviolet radiation from reaching the Earth’s surface.
Oxides of nitrogen form a catalytic cycle to reduce the protective ozone layer.
The nitric oxides produced by the weapons could reduce the ozone levels in the Northern Hemisphere by as much as 30 to 70 percent. Such a depletion might produce changes in the Earth’s climate, and would allow more ultraviolet radiation from the sun through the atmosphere to the surface of the Earth, where it could produce dangerous burns and a variety of potentially dangerous ecological effects.
It has been estimated that as much as 5,000 tons of nitric oxide is produced for each megaton of nuclear explosive power. See Atomic Archive
The 2008 Simulation of Nuclear Conflict. Impacts on Ozone Layer
In a major 2008 study by Michael Mills et al entitled Massive global ozone loss predicted following regional nuclear conflict (Academy of Sciences of the United States) a simulation was conducted (largely based on the concepts outlined in the TTPS 1983 study) of a nuclear conflict involving 100 Hiroshima sized bombs. The simulation confirmed that the nuclear explosions “could produce long-term damage to the ozone layer, enabling higher than “extreme” levels of ultraviolet radiation to reach the Earth’s surface, (see GSN, March 16, 2010).
Increased levels of UV radiation from the sun could persist for years, possibly with a drastic impact on humans and the environment, even thousands of miles from the area of the nuclear conflict. …
“A regional nuclear exchange of 100 15-kiloton weapons … would produce unprecedented low-ozone columns over populated areas in conjunction with the coldest surface temperatures experienced in the last 1,000 years, and would likely result in a global nuclear famine,” …
The research by Mills and colleagues was the first to address the possibility that a nuclear explosion could lead to increased ultraviolet radiation levels on Earth, according to a NCAR press release issued during the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference. NTI
In the 1980s, using simple climate models, we discovered that global nuclear arsenals, if used on cities and industrial areas, could produce a nuclear winter and lead to global famine.
Smoke from the fires would last for years in the upper atmosphere, blocking sunlight, and making it cold, dark and dry at the Earth’s surface. It would also destroy ozone, enhancing ultraviolet radiation reaching the surface.
While the immediate effects of nuclear strikes might kill hundreds of thousands, the numbers that would die from starvation in the years that followed could run into billions.
In the real sense of the word, nuclear war could potentially lead to a process of Human Extinction:
A very large nuclear war would be a calamity of indescribable proportions and absolutely unpredictable consequences, with the uncertainties tending toward the worse. . . . All-out nuclear war would mean the destruction of contemporary civilization, throw man back centuries, cause the deaths of hundreds of millions or billions of people, and, with a certain degree of probability, would cause man to be destroyed as a biological species . . . Andrei Sakharov, Foreign Affairs, Summer 1983
Those concerns have largely been excluded from the Climate Debate and the Extinction Rebellion.
The Extinction Rebellion Protest Movement has its eyes riveted on the rising emissions of Carbon Dioxide (from fossil fuel), heralded as “the most dangerous and prevalent greenhouse gas”.
All other variables are excluded. Scientific lies by omission.
The use of CFCs was banned under the Montreal Protocol. A June 2016 study however confirms that the Montreal Protocol failed to fully resolve the CFC ban:
“when countries began phasing out CFCs, manufacturers replaced them with hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). HFCs don’t deplete ozone, but they are potent greenhouse gases, which contribute to global warming. The challenge going forward, then, will be to develop new alternatives to HFCs — and to have the world adopt them, once again.”
Methyl bromide (MeBr) is used increasingly as a biocidal fumigant, primarily in agricultural soils prior to planting of crops. This usage carries potential for stratospheric ozone reduction due to Br atom catalysis, depending on how much MeBr escapes from fumigated soils to the atmosphere.
The IPCC simulations neglect the fact that HFC as well as MeBr constitute a threat to the ozone layer.
A recent UN report nonetheless confirms that despite the IPCC alarm bell, “Earth’s protective ozone layer is finally healing from damage caused by aerosol sprays and coolants, a new United Nations report said.”
The ozone layer had been thinning since the late 1970s. Scientist raised the alarm and ozone-depleting chemicals were phased out worldwide.
As a result, the upper ozone layer above the Northern Hemisphere should be completely repaired in the 2030s and the gaping Antarctic ozone hole should disappear in the 2060s, according to a scientific assessment released Monday at a conference in Quito, Ecuador. The Southern Hemisphere lags a bit and its ozone layer should be healed by mid-century. (AP November 2018)
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This report on ozone layer repair not only contradicts IPCC CO2 fossil fuel hype, it also suggests that the CO2 single variable analysis and projections are flawed.
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Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD)
The militarization of climate is rarely mentioned in the Climate Debate. “In 1977, an international Convention was ratified by the UN General Assembly which banned ‘military or other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects.'”
It defined ‘environmental modification techniques’ as ‘any technique for changing –through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes – the dynamics, composition or structure of the earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or of outer space.’
While the substance of the 1977 Convention was reasserted in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) signed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, debate on weather modification for military use has become a scientific taboo.
Military analysts are mute on the subject. Meteorologists are not investigating the matter and environmentalists are focused on greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Neither is the possibility of climatic or environmental manipulations as part of a military and intelligence agenda, while tacitly acknowledged, part of the broader debate on climate change under UN auspices. (Michel Chossudovsky, The Ecologist, 2007)
The US possesses a vast arsenal of electromagnetic weapons which are capable of disrupting climate through environmental modification techniques (ENMOD). (See the author’s earlier writings)
The impacts of ENMOD techniques for military use were documented by CBC TV in the early 1990s. The report acknowledged that the HAARP facility in Alaska (now closed down or transferred to another location) under the auspices of the US Air Force had the ability of triggering typhoons, earthquakes, floods and droughts:
“Directed energy is such a powerful technology it could be used to heat the ionosphere to turn weather into a weapon of war. Imagine using a flood to destroy a city or tornadoes to decimate an approaching army in the desert. The military has spent a huge amount of time on weather modification as a concept for battle environments. If an electromagnetic pulse went off over a city, basically all the electronic things in your home would wink and go out, and they would be permanently destroyed.”
the US Military Would eventually “Own the Weather”.
Required Capability: Why Would We Want to Mess with the Weather? [title of Chapter 2, following Introduction]
According to Gen Gordon Sullivan, former Army chief of staff, “As we leap technology into the 21st century, we will be able to see the enemy day or night, in any weather— and go after him relentlessly.” global, precise, real-time, robust, systematic weather-modification capability would provide war-fighting CINCs with a powerful force multiplier to achieve military objectives. Since weather will be common to all possible futures, a weather-modification capability would be universally applicable and have utility across the entire spectrum of conflict. The capability of influencing the weather even on a small scale could change it from a force degrader to a force multiplier.
Advanced techniques of climatic warfare including environmental modification techniques:
“offer(s) the war fighter a wide range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary”, capabilities, it says, extend to the triggering of floods, hurricanes, droughts and earthquakes:
‘Weather modification will become a part of domestic and international security and could be done unilaterally… It could have offensive and defensive applications and even be used for deterrence purposes. The ability to generate precipitation, fog and storms on earth or to modify space weather… and the production of artificial weather all are a part of an integrated set of [military] technologies.” (emphasis added) US Air Force document AF 2025 Final Report
Climate instability is an important concern. But it cannot be analyzed in isolation. It is an extremely complex process.
While there is a significant grassroots movement of young activists, the CO2 Climate Consensus has distracted millions of people from an understanding of the broader and ongoing threats to human life on Planet Earth. In turn, the climate debate has excluded the fact amply documented that climate can be used to serve military objectives.
These climate strikes are taking place at a time of crisis, largely marked by US threats to wage war on Iran. The use of tactical nuclear weapons against Iran is contemplated.
Activists are often misled by those who fund the campaign including Rockefeller et al, as well as by the organizers and the public relations operatives involving Hollywood celebrities, et al.
The underlying science methodology is in many regard flawed.
In a bitter irony, the movement against capitalism is funded by capitalism. It’s called “manufactured dissent”.
Global warfare
Global warfare using advanced weapons systems coupled with deliberate acts of destruction, sabotage and destabilization of sovereign countries constitutes the most serious threat to the survival of humanity.
The globalization of war is coupled with the derogation of civil rights, the surveillance State, neoliberal IMF-World Bank macroeconomic reforms applied Worldwide which trigger mass poverty, unemployment and environmental destruction. This global policy framework (controlled by powerful financial interests) repeals workers’ rights, destroys family farming, undermines the Welfare state leading to the privatization health and education, etc.
What is required is a broad protest movement which encompasses these interrelated dimensions. The underlying causes of this Worldwide Crisis must be understood. It is not caused by a single variable (aka CO2 emissions).
The Extinction Debate and Nuclear War
Nine countries including US, Russia, France, China, UK, Israel, Pakistan, India, North Korea together possess nearly 14,000 nuclear weapons. (2017 data) The US and Russia have 6185 and 6500 respectively.
According to ICAN, “The United States and Russia maintain roughly 1,800 of their nuclear weapons on high-alert status – ready to be launched within minutes of a warning.”
Today’s nuclear bombs (with the exception of the so-called mini-nukes) are significantly more powerful in terms of explosive capacity than a Hiroshima bomb.
The B61.11 “mini-nuke” (categorized as a “low yield” “more usable” nuclear bomb) has an explosive capacity between one third and twelve times a Hiroshima bomb.
People should understand. There are enough nuclear bombs to destroy life on planet Earth several times over. Surely this should be part of the Extinction Debate.
While one can conceptualize the loss of life and destruction resulting from previous wars including Iraq and Afghanistan, it is impossible to fully comprehend the devastation which might result from a Third World War, using “new technologies” and advanced weapons, until it occurs and becomes a reality. The international community has endorsed nuclear war in the name of world peace. “Making the world safer” is the justification for launching a military operation which could potentially result in a nuclear holocaust. (Michel Chossudovsky, 2011)
War rather than CO2 emissions is the greatest threat to humanity. Oops, according to the media, nuclear weapons are a means to achieving World peace.
Trump has a 1.2 trillion dollar nuclear weapons program, initially set up by Obama.
While this multibillion dollar project is intended “to make the world safer”, these (expensive) nuclear weapons are categorized as “more usable” “humanitarian bombs”, “safe for the surrounding population”, according to scientific opinion on contract to the Pentagon.
US-NATO and their allies are involved in illegal acts of war. Nuclear war is on the drawing-board of the Pentagon.
But these wars are no longer illegal: they are part of the “responsibility to protect” (R2P). These are “humanitarian wars” or “counter-terrorism” ops despite the fact that millions of people have been killed and entire nations have been destroyed. It’s called “collateral damage”.
Needless to say, there are powerful financial interests behind the globalization of war. and without extensive media propaganda, they could not have a leg to stand on.
War is good for business. And luckily for the Military Industrial Complex, the antiwar movement is dead.
The Ritual of Rebellion Prevails.
University of Manchester sociologist Max Gluckman (1911-1975) in his writings showed how ritualized forms of rebellion by those who protest against those in power “through a controlled expression of hostility to authority” ultimately leads to the reinforcement of the established structures of authority.
Is that not what is happening today?
The movement against capitalism is funded and supported by capitalism.
The antiwar movement is dead. There are no protests directed against global warfare and the use of nuclear weapons on a first strike basis.
What’s More Dangerous, CO2 or Nuclear War?
“The Globalization of War” & “Towards a World War III Scenario”: Two books by Michel Chossudovsky at a discounted price!
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Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War
by Michel Chossudovsky
The US has embarked on a military adventure, “a long war”, which threatens the future of humanity. US-NATO weapons of mass destruction are portrayed as instruments of peace. Mini-nukes are said to be “harmless to the surrounding civilian population”. Pre-emptive nuclear war is portrayed as a “humanitarian undertaking”.
While one can conceptualize the loss of life and destruction resulting from previous wars including Iraq and Afghanistan, it is impossible to fully comprehend the devastation which might result from a Third World War, using “new technologies” and advanced weapons, until it occurs and becomes a reality. The international community has endorsed nuclear war in the name of world peace. “Making the world safer” is the justification for launching a military operation which could potentially result in a nuclear holocaust.
The object of this book is to forcefully reverse the tide of war, challenge the war criminals in high office and the powerful corporate lobby groups which support them.
The 2016 Oxfam Davos Report which the mass media have ignored arrestingly shows that 62 individuals – 388 in 2010 – now own more wealth than 50% of the world’s population. More shockingly, it reports from its uncontested public sources that this share of wealth by half of the world’s people has collapsed by over 40% in just the last five years.
Yet the big lies persist even here that “the progress has been made in tackling world poverty” and “extreme poverty has been halved since 1990”.
Reversing Undeniable Fact as Ultimate Justification
Unbelievably, the endlessly repeated assertion of the form that ‘the poor are being lifted out of poverty in ever greater numbers’ continues on untouched despite the hard evidence that, in fact, the poorer half of humanity has lost almost half of their wealth in just the last five years.
This big lie is significant in its implications. For not only is a pervasive claim about the success of globalization undeniably falsified while no-one notices it. Basic market theory and dogma collapses as a result. What is daily claimed as an infallible benefit of the global market is shown to be the opposite of reality. What does it mean for “trickle-down theory” when, in truth, the trickle down goes up in hundreds of billions of dollars to the rich from the already poor and destitute?
What can we say now of the tirelessly proclaimed doctrine that the global market brings “more wealth for all” when, in fact, unimpeachable business evidence shows the opposite reality on the ground and across the world. For the poor have undeniably lost almost half their share of global wealth while the richest have multiplied theirs at the same time.
The evidence proves, in short, that the main moral and economic claims justifying the global market are very big lies becoming bigger all the time.
Worse than delusional, the lived reality of impoverishment of billions of people is reversed, the victims are continually proclaimed to be doing better under the system that increasingly deprives them of what little they have, and a trillion dollars worth of loss to the poorer half of humanity ends up in the pockets of the rich within only five years.
While the ever bigger lies go on justifying the global system that eats the poor alive as “poverty amelioration”, ever more of the same policies of accumulation by dispossession justify still more stripping of the majority as more “austerity”, more “welfare cuts”, and more “labor flexibility” – in a word, more starvation and depredation of people’s lives and life conditions as “more freedom and prosperity for all”.
The Statistical Shell Game that Masks the Life-Devouring Reality
As World Bank, IMF and like figures claim to show the uplifting of the poor out of poverty across the world, media of record like The Guardian and the New York Times report the claims with headlines to show all is well and getter for the poor and the majority as they are in fact grindingly reduced in their actual lives, work and life security. Thus the very big lies are instituted as given facts which economists and social scientists propagate without a blink.
In fact, these alleged great gains for the poor out of poverty and absolute poverty alike are based on income gains of less than a cup of coffee a day, an observation that is so well blocked from view that readers may now be seeing it for the first time. Thus the hypnotic thrall of the big lies are sustained, while no other life support system is. I have had economists and interviewers of high note respond angrily when this delusion is pointed out, as if I was letting down the poor rather than exposing the big lies. In this way, we find that the masking falsehoods have gone so deep into expert and public assumption that the real-life world can no longer be engaged. These big lies then work in the background to the non-stop big lies that precede endless foreign conflicts and wars to “defend the free world”
No-one appears to observe that the income gains ’lifting the poor out of poverty’ typically refer to emigrants from the countryside into polluted cities, insecure and dehumanized life conditions for those who formerly had at least a family dwelling, clean air and water and living horizons. In short, the standard $1.50 +/- measure of uplift out of poverty and extreme poverty is inhumanly absurd, but triumphally used as proof that the system is serving the least too.
The Counter-Revolution against Social Evolution that Engineers Deepening Recession
Throughout the unseen redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich (now buried in much talk of “inequality”), ever more “market reforms” are enforced as “enhanced competition”, “liberalized de-regulation”, “reduced welfare costs” and “austerity programs to correct excesses”. The “excessive entitlements” of the system are all projected on the victims so that the truly insane entitlements of the richest to multiply their fortunes with no committed life function, value or coordinate but still more money-demand for them is somehow not noticed. This is yet another level of normalized big lies forming the ruling thought system.
In fact beneath the pervasive propaganda conditioning citizens to believe in the private money shell game devouring the world, the poorer half of humanity has been deprived of one trillion dollars of wealth while the 62 richest people have gained almost twice as much for themselves by the operations of this global disorder. Yet the Davos Report further emphasizes that still another US $760 billion goes annually to non-producing investors by immense transnational tax evasion with impunity across the world. Again the borderless money-capital freedom of ‘globalization’ vastly enriches the richest, while simultaneously doubling down on deprivation of the poor as ‘poverty reduction’.
Here the system is programmed in effect to strip the funding of all public sectors and institutions which have evolved to serve the common life interest. Public services and infrastructures too are perpetually driven towards bankruptcy not only by never-ending defunding, cutbacks, privatizations, and corporate lobby control of public policies and subsidies, but by ever-soaring public tax evasion near one trillion dollars annually about which governments and trade treaties have done nothing to correct yet.
Thus governments which could invest in sustaining humanity’s social and ecological life support systems from growing deterioration and collapse are now systematically bankrupted or debt enslaved along with most citizens. In consequence without governments knowing why, the world economy slips into ever deeper recession from the collapse of economic demand at the public and majority levels.
Eating the World Alive as Global Competition
The new law of human evolution is that are required to compete for more money and commodities for themselves as “necessary to survive”, with the borderless system de-regulated and structured to increasingly impoverish the great majority while multiplying the wealth of the rich. The facts are now long in. Corporate globalization is not only out of control. It is eating the world alive at all levels towards cumulative collapse of organic, social and ecological life organization. Global competition means, in fact, the majority’s life means and security keep falling as the environment is looted and polluted on ever larger scales of depredation. Yet only “more growth” of this system is imagined as a solution. The system is clinically insane
While the common life-ground is blinkered out a-priori by the ruling value system, those deprived and left behind disappear into multi-level big lies proclaiming the opposite. This is why the facts are not reported. This is why claimed actions to stop the world bleeding blinker out the system disorder causing them. This is why even progressives assume economic falsehoods as if they were true. Like a cancer system at the macro level, this exponentially multiplying private money-sequence system has only one set-point – to blindly grow itself while masking the life-devouring disorder as “enhancing people’s well-being”.
John McMurtry is University Professor Emeritus at the University of Guelph and elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His work has been translated from Latin America through Europe to Japan, and he is the author/editor of UNESCO’s three-volume Philosophy and World Problems, as well as more recently, The Cancer Stage of Capitalism; From Crisis to Cure.
Realiza-se em Londres, em 4 de Dezembro, o Conselho Atlântico Norte dos Chefes de Estado e de Governo, que celebra o 70º aniversário da NATO, definida pelo Secretário Geral, Jens Stoltenberg, como “a aliança mais bem sucedida da História”.
Um “sucesso” inegável. Desde a demolição através da guerra, da Federação Jugoslava, em 1999, a NATO alargou de 16 para 29 países (30 se agora incluir a Macedónia do Norte), expandindo-se para Leste, muito próxima da Rússia. “Pela primeira vez na nossa História – sublinha Stoltenberg – temos tropas prontas para combate no Leste da nossa Aliança”. Mas a Organização do Tratado do Atlântico Norte foi além, estendendo as suas operações bélicas desde as montanhas afegãs e através dos desertos africanos e do Médio Oriente.
Agora a Grande Aliança ambiciona mais. Na Cimeira de Londres – anuncia, antecipadamente, Stoltenberg – os dirigentes dos 29 países membros “reconhecerão o Espaço como o nosso quinto campo operativo”, que se junta ao terrestre, ao marítimo, ao aéreo e ao ciberespaço. “O Espaço é essencial para o sucesso das nossas operações”, sublinha o Secretário Geral, deixando perceber que a NATO desenvolverá um programa espacial militar. Obviamente, não fornece detalhes, mas informa que a NATO assinou um primeiro contrato de 1 bilião de dólares para modernizar os seus 14 aviões AWACS. Eles não são simples aviões radares, mas centros de comando voadores, produzidos pela Boeing americana, para a gestão da batalha através de sistemas espaciais.
Certamente quase nenhum dos líderes europeus (para a Itália, o Primeiro Ministro Conte) que, em 4 de Dezembro, “reconhecerão o Espaço como o nosso quinto campo de operativo”, conhece o programa espacial militar da NATO, preparado pelo Pentágono e pelos altos comandos militares europeus subordinados, juntamente com as principais indústrias aeroespaciais. Muito menos sabem os Parlamentos, como o italiano, que aceitam qualquer decisão da NATO, sob comando USA, sem se preocupar com suas implicações político-militares e económicas.
A NATO é lançada no Espaço no prosseguimento do novo Comando Espacial criado pelo Pentágono, em Agosto passado, com o objectivo, declarado pelo Presidente Trump, de “garantir que o domínio americano do Espaço nunca seja ameaçado”. Trump então anunciou o estabelecimento subsequente da Força Espacial dos Estados Unidos, com a tarefa de “defender os interesses vitais americanos no Espaço, o próximo campo de batalha da guerra”. A Rússia e a China acusam os EUA de abrir o caminho para a militarização do Espaço, alertando que têm capacidade para responder. Tudo isso aumenta o perigo de guerra nuclear.
Mesmo que o programa espacial militar da NATO ainda não seja conhecido, uma coisa é certa: será extremamente caro. Na Cimeira, Trump pressionará os aliados europeus para que aumentem as suas despesas militares para 2% ou mais, do PIB. Até agora, fizeram-no oito países: Bulgária (que elevou para 3,25%, um pouco abaixo de 3,42%, dos EUA), Grécia, Grã-Bretanha, Estónia, Roménia, Lituânia, Letónia e Polónia. Os outros, apesar de permanecerem abaixo de 2%, estão empenhados em aumentá-la. Impulsionada pela enorme despesa USA – 730 biliões de dólares em 2019, 10 vezes superior à da Rússia – a despesa militar anual da NATO, segundo dados oficiais, ultrapassa 1 trilião de dólares. Na realidade, é superior à indicado pela NATO, pois que não inclui vários elementos de natureza militar: por exemplo, o das armas nucleares dos EUA, inscrita no orçamento, não do Pentágono, mas do Departamento de Energia.
A despesa militar italiana, que subiu de 13º para 11º lugar no mundo, importa, em termos reais, em cerca de 25 biliões de euros por ano, sempre a aumentar. Em Junho passado, o Governo Conte I adicionou 7,2 biliões de euros, também fornecidos pelo Ministério do Desenvolvimento Económico para a compra de sistemas de armas. Em Outubro, na reunião com o Secretário Geral da NATO, o governo do Conte II prometeu aumentá-la constantemente em cerca de 7 biliões de euros por ano a partir de 2020 (La Stampa, 11de Outubro de 2019).
For months Western media outlets have been retailing stories about riots in Hong Kong. With lip-smacking relish there have been such reports as “On October 1, China’s National Day, the first live round to hit a protester was fired by riot police pursued by protesters in the distant suburb of Tsuen Wan.” Unfortunately for the anti-China zealots in the US and Europe there were no deaths of rioting students, except one “who fell from a parking garage during a police dispersal operation… escalating tensions between police and the public that have been increasingly strained over the months of worsening violence.” The two incidents in which rioters were shot by policemen made Western headlines.
On October 15 the US House of Representatives voted unanimously for a Bill that “addresses Hong Kong’s status under US law and imposes sanctions on those responsible for human rights violations in Hong Kong” and on November 16 the Senate moved “to expedite passage of a bill that would open a path to sanctions against those seen to be eroding freedoms in the Chinese territory.”
(On November 29 the BBC reported that when Hong Kong police entered the Polytechnic University “they found 3,989 petrol bombs; 1,339 explosive items; 601 bottles of corrosive liquids; and 573 weapons” but there will be no criticism by Congress about this arsenal. US legislators apparently consider that petrol bombs intended to incinerate policemen do not violate human rights, providing they are thrown by those in mobs rioting against China.)
US domestic legislation criticising China is gross interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation, but Washington’s finest are curiously selective about the countries they want to punish. Given the size of the majority votes in both Houses, President Trump had no option but to sign the bill into law on November 27, thereby further complicating US-China relations and failing to benefit one single US citizen.
In the same period as the Hong Kong riots there was continued chaos in Iraq, not only involving the usual barbaric violence of car bombs and drive-by shootings, but extending to slaughter of civilian demonstrators by military forces. On November 25 it was reported that “Thirteen anti-government protesters have been killed by Iraqi security forces in one of the worst days of clashes in the country’s south. Demonstrators outraged by rampant government corruption and poor services burned tires and blocked main road arteries. Seven protesters were killed in the southern province of Basra when Iraqi authorities used live fire and tear gas to disperse them, security and hospital officials said.”
Strangely, there wasn’t a word of protest about the Iraq carnage from any of those in Washington who are so supportive of human rights, although US legislators had been extremely vocal about the Hong Kong riots, with, for example, Republican Senator Marco Rubio declaring on November 19 that the anti-China Bill “is an important step in holding accountable those Chinese and Hong Kong government officials responsible for Hong Kong’s eroding autonomy and human rights violations.” He was echoed by Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer who berated President Xi and told him that “You cannot be a great leader and you cannot be a great country when you oppose freedom, when you are so brutal to the people of Hong Kong, young and old, who are protesting.”
Then on November 27, the day Trump signed the anti-China Bill into law, the US military issued a statement that “Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley met with Iraqi Joint Headquarters Chief of Staff General Othman Al-Ghanimi today in Baghdad, Iraq. The senior leaders discussed the vital strategic partnership between the US and Iraq and the current security environment throughout the Middle East. The partnership between the United States and Iraq is a crucial element to peace and security in the Middle East region.”
While the Generals were discussing security, Reuters reported that Iraqi forces “shot dead more demonstrators. In the holy city of Karbala they used live ammunition against protesters, killing two overnight. Two more were killed in clashes near Ahrar Bridge in Baghdad. Near Basra one protester died of wounds from gunfire, police and medics said, bringing the toll since unrest broke out on October 1 to 344 people dead nationwide.”
Rioting in Iraq began on the same day that in Hong Kong the “first live round to hit a protester was fired by riot police pursued by protesters,” which gave rise to heated anti-China diatribes in the US Congress. But the two most senior military commanders of the US and Iraq had nothing to say publicly about the hundreds of Iraqis killed by soldiers of their own national armed forces.
US forces invaded Iraq in March 2003 with the stated aims of “disarming the country of weapons of mass destruction, ending Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism and freeing the Iraqi people from his repressive regime.” As we know — and many of us wrote at the time — there were no weapons of mass destruction and Saddam did not support terrorism, although there is no doubt his regime was oppressive, and often brutally so. However, the main long-term objective, according to GW Bush, was to “help you to build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free… we believe the Iraqi people are deserving and capable of human liberty. And when the dictator has departed, they can set an example to all the Middle East of a vital and peaceful and self-governing nation.”
But now it is evident that “millions lack access to adequate healthcare, education, clean water and electricity, with much of the country’s infrastructure in tatters.” The thousands who have taken to the streets in protests were subjected to “poverty, rampant corruption, unemployment and crumbling public services.” The country is a heaving shambles, thanks to the Bush war, but a Congressional delegation that visited in early November could only “express their support for the efforts made by the Iraqi government to respond to the legitimate demands of the Iraqi people.” When Vice-President Pence visited US troops at a base in Iraq on November 23 he didn’t meet any Iraqis and merely spoke on the phone with the prime minister who “assured me that they were working to avoid violence or the kind of oppression we see taking place even as we speak in Iran. He pledged to me that they would work to protect and respect peaceful protesters as part of the democratic process here in Iraq.”
There has been no criticism from the White House or Congress concerning the killing of hundreds of Iraqi civilians by their own government’s troops. There were no threats of sanctions and no legislation enacted on the basis of countering the “erosion of freedoms” — nothing except expressions of support for the Iraqi government whose prime minister has now resigned.
There is the smell of death in the streets of Iraq — but the stink of hypocrisy in Washington.
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Brian Cloughley is a British and Australian armies’ veteran, former deputy head of the UN military mission in Kashmir and Australian defense attaché in Pakistan.
Tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean are rapidly rising after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met with a Libyan official of the internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA), based in the Libyan capital of Tripoli, in Ankara last week. They agreed on their own Economic Exclusive Zone that penetrates into Greek and Cypriot waters, in violation of the United Nations Convention Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) that favors Cypriot and Greek claims, a major reason why Turkey is only one of 15 UN members, out of 193, that has not signed it. Although Turkey claims it is acting within international law to enter the oil and gas-rich Greek and Cypriot waters, it never references which international law. This leads to the simple question of why Turkey has not signed UNCLOS if international law supposedly favors their claim?
The Turkish-GNA provocation against Greece comes as only last month Pakistan and Turkey conducted naval exercises where Pakistan violated Greek and Cypriot air and maritime space several times and harassed Cypriot merchant ships. This demonstrates that Turkey is bolstering its alliances to force its complete hegemony over the Eastern Mediterranean. This is to expand their maritime space in violation of international law to exploit the rich deposits of gas and oil in the region.
However, Turkey has once again defied international law, remembering the illegal invasion of northern Cyprus and Syria among many. This has now opened up a new quagmire that Erdoğan has probably not expected. With the NATO destruction of Libya in 2011, in which both Greece and Turkey took a minor part in, the country has been plagued by tribalism, feudalism and Islamic radicalism, with two major forces emerging from the mess – the GNA in coalition with the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Libyan National Army (LNA) led by General Khalifa Haftar and based in eastern Libya. This is unsurprising since Turkey has a long history of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.
Erdoğan has opened up a pandora’s box in Libya that will now surely backfire on him and see the dismantlement of the GNA. The GNA is now becoming increasingly isolated since Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt have sworn to back General Haftar with weapons and money. It is expected with the arrival of new funds and weapons, Haftar will continue his assault to take Tripoli that he began in March. One major reason for this new support for the LNA is that Greece, Cyprus and Egypt are in a strategic regional alliance to protect their respective EEZ against Turkish aggression.
Haftar has also controversially announced that he wants relations with Israel. His desires for relations with Israel, a rarity among Muslim-majority countries, will surely bring Haftar more international recognition and legitimacy as a “reward,”, especially crucial as the majority of the world recognizes the Tripoli government.
A delegation of U.S. diplomats recently asked Haftar to halt military operations, citing that it will supposedly allow Russia’s military invasion of Libya. Haftar refused. Haftar’s Secretary of State said that the United States is completely wrong, as Libya has become a huge arena for settling accounts among regional powers – and this is true if we consider that the Saudis, Emirates and Egyptians are backing the LNA, while the Turks and Qataris backs the GNA.
Rather than being in compliance with international law, Erdoğan signed with the GNA an illegal agreement to carve out the Eastern Mediterranean for its own plans. Greece has given the GNA time until today to retract their deal with Turkey. Although Greece on the international scene is a minor player, it does wield significant influence in the Eastern Mediterranean and will use NATO and EU mechanisms to convince member states to retract their recognition of the GNA, which will only further isolate Turkey as it has attempted to build an alliance to counter the Greek-Cypriot-Egyptian military partnership.
In a rare occurrence, both the U.S. and Russia have criticized Turkey’s aggression and escalation in the Eastern Mediterranean, with the US State Department describing the Turkish and GNA move as “unhelpful” and “provocative.”
It is unlikely this will make a difference as it is expected that the GNA will adamantly refuse to renounce its agreement with Turkey, which will push Greece to back the LNA and encourage NATO and EU members to do the same. At the very minimum, the Saudi-Emirati-Egyptian tripartite has used Turkey’s aggression in the Eastern Mediterranean as an excuse to back the LNA, providing him with the money, weapons, intelligence and other resources to overcome the Turkish-backed GNA.
With Saif Gaddafi, the second son of Muammar Gaddafi, also announcing his support for Haftar, there is every potential that the internationally recognized GNA will have a multitude of pressure from NATO, the EU, the Saudi-Emirati-Egyptian alliance, and from Haftar and Gaddafi supporters. Erdoğan’s desperate pursuit for regional hegemony was first received with applause domestically, but it appears he has now opened a pandora’s box in Libya that is now likely to backfire on him.
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Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.
Make no mistake. What’s going on is one of the most disturbing political spectacles in US history — one right wing of the one-party state trying to defrock the other wing’s leader for politicized reasons, not legitimate ones.
Daily theater in Washington is unrelated to removing Trump from office because the GOP-controlled Senate opposes the scam.
What’s happening is all about Dems wanting Trump delegitimized and weakened for winning an election he was supposed to lose.
They aim to gain a political advantage in November 2020, hoping to win the White House and Senate, while retaining House control.
The longer the sham drags on with no tangible results, the more it may benefit Trump and Republicans at the expense of Dems, notably because a GOP-controlled Senate impeachment trial, if held, will politicize proceedings to its advantage.
With that outcome in mind, Dems mat cut their losses by abandoning impeachment in favor of meaningless censure and endless Trump bashing as part of their campaign strategy in the run-up to November 2020 elections.
Without credible evidence, it accuses DJT of obstruction of justice by witness intimidation and tampering, soliciting foreign interference to benefit his reelection campaign, withholding military aid to Ukraine for political reasons, undermining the integrity of the US presidential election process, and endangering national security.
Short of specifically recommending articles of impeachment, the report calls for “mov(ing) forward with an impeachment inquiry,” adding:
“No other president has flouted the Constitution and power of Congress to conduct oversight to this extent (sic).”
“If left unanswered, President Trump’s ongoing effort to thwart Congress’ impeachment power risks doing grave harm to the institution of Congress, the balance of power between our branches of government, and the Constitutional order that the President and every ember of Congress have sworn to protect and defend (sic).”
Late Tuesday, the House Intelligence Committee approved the report along party lines. It moves to the Judiciary Committee for its consideration, hearings to begin Wednesday, followed by members drafting articles of impeachment if things go this far.
Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said the following:
“At the end of a one-sided sham process, Chairman Schiff and the (Dems) utterly failed to produce any evidence of wrongdoing by President Trump,” adding:
“This report reflects nothing more than their frustrations. (It) reads like the ramblings of a basement blogger straining to prove something where there is no evidence.”
The GOP House Intelligence Committee responded to the Dems with its own report, stressing no evidence that corroborates charges by Dems , “no quid pro quo, bribery, extortion, or abuse of power,” adding:
The impeachment inquiry “is an orchestrated campaign to upend our political system.”
It’s “trying to impeach a duly elected president based on the accusations and assumptions of unelected bureaucrats who disagreed with President Trump’s policy initiatives and processes.”
Polls show the nation is largely divided on removing Trump from office by impeachment.
On Tuesday, the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) said
“(p)olls released before Thanksgiving showed, broadly, that the preceding weeks of televised testimony failed to increase public support for removing Trump from office via impeachment,” adding:
“(I)mpeachment numbers (are) divided…down the middle…”(I)mpeachment is more a political process than a judicial one.”
A Quinnipiac poll noted that a small but significant number of Americans remain undecided on the issue.
Unless bombshell information comes out, highly unlikely but possible, the impeachment scam is going nowhere. It laid an egg.
Based on what’s gone on so far, it may end up hurting Dems and helping Trump’s reelection campaign.
There’s overwhelming just cause to remove him for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the same true for most of his predecessors, the vast majority of current and earlier congressional members, as well as most bureaucrats involved in foreign policy.
Dems aren’t going anywhere near his real offenses because they share guilt in crimes of war, against humanity, breach of the public trust, and other constitutional violations.
That’s the elephant in the room unaddressed issue, what dirty business in Washington is all about, its criminal class bipartisan.
The world’s leading human rights abuser is responsible for more harm to more people over a longer duration globally than any other nation in world history.
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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.”
The Russian Armed Forces put into action an ambitious program to modernize and expand the strategic bomber fleet.
In March 2018, Russia announced that it would completely overhaul its entire Tu-160 long-range strategic bomber fleet by 2030. According to Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov, the entire fleet of Tu-160 bombers will be replaced with the newer Tu-160M2 version, in addition to heavy upgrades of all operational aircraft. All on-board radio-electronic equipment and engines will be replaced.
Serial production of the Tu-160M2 will begin in 2023 and the plan is for it to remain a state of the art warplane for the next 40 years. The Russian Aerospace Forces intend to purchase no less than 50 such aircraft.
The first such warplane is to be delivered in 2021, with 3 more in 2023. Afterwards serial production will continue with 3 Tu-160M2s being produced per year.
The Tupolev Tu-160 (NATO codename: Blackjack) is a long range, supersonic, variable geometry wing, strategic bomber -designed to penetrate sophisticated air defense systems at low altitude and supersonic speed. It is the Soviet counterpart to the US Air Force B-1B Lancer strategic bomber.
Armament (typically nuclear short range and long-range cruise missiles) is carried inside two weapons bays located at the middle of the fuselage.
The Tu-160M2 is a further development of the Tu-160 strategic bomber with state-of-the-art sensors and weapons.
In all, the Tu-160M2 is a highly upgraded version featuring detection reduction coatings, new more powerful and efficient engines giving it greater operational range, new avionics, electronics, glass cockpit, communications & control systems, a number of weapons, as well as improved thrust and unrefueled range. It will also be equipped with a new defensive system protecting it from missiles.
It will boast four new Kuznetsov NK-32 engines. The Kuznetsov NK-32 is an afterburning, three-spool, low bypass, turbofan jet engine, the largest and most powerful engine ever fitted on a combat aircraft. In maximum afterburner it produces 245 kN of thrust (55,000 lbf).
It is expected that the Tu-160M2 will be armed with long-range standoff cruise missiles, including the Kh-101/Kh-102 (nuclear variant) air-launched cruise missile and the Kh-55 subsonic air-launched cruise missile.
The maiden flight of the first Tu-160M2 took place in January 2018.
The initial contract, signed on January 25, 2018, is for the production of 10 Tu-160M2s and the modernization of all other Tu-160s in the Russian Aerospace Forces by 2030.
The contract with United Aircraft Corporation’s Tupolev, for the first 10 warplanes, stands at 160 billion rubles (nearly $2.8 bn) and stipulates that the first Tu-160M2 should be delivered by 2023. Delivery of the final bomber in the first buy, according to the contract, is slated for 2027. Relaunching production itself required an investment of 37 billion rubles ($577 mil.).
The plan is for another 40 units of the Tu-160M2 to be delivered under future contracts yet to be signed.
In the meantime, the Russian Aerospace Forces operate 10 Soviet-era Tu-160s, and 7 modernized Tu-160M1s, commissioned in 2018. The Tu-160 was first introduced into service in 1987 and was the last supersonic strategic bomber to enter service with the Soviet military.
The Tu-95 is the oldest strategic bomber in service with the Russian Aerospace Forces. There are 48 of the Tu-95MSs and 12 of the modernized Tu-95MSMs.
The Russian Aerospace Forces also operate Tu-22M strategic bombers which are much smaller than the Tu-160 and Tu-95. All 63 Tu-22s in service underwent modernization. Sixty-one were modernized to the Tu-22M3 variant, 1 to the Tu-22M3M and the last one was turned into a Tu-22MR, which is currently being overhauled.
The current fleet of strategic bombers in the Russian Aerospace Forces numbers 140 warplanes. The Soviet strategic bomber fleet was much larger. As of 1982, the USSR had 110 Tu-95s, 140 Tu-22s, 70 Tu-22Ms, 75 M4s, and 425 Tu-16s.
Currently, the US operates three types of strategic bombers – the B-1B, the B-2, and the B-52. The US Air Force has 62 B-1Bs, out of which, according to data from August 2019, only 6 were fully operational, with the others being grounded or undergoing maintenance. They have been in service since 1985.
The longest serving bomber in the US Air Force is the B-52A which was commissioned back in 1955. The existing fleet was upgraded to the B-52H Stratofortress, commissioned in 1961. It is planned for this warplane to be operated until 2050. As of June 2019, there were 58 B-52 bombers in operation, with 18 more in reserve.
The B-2 is the only stealth bomber in operation anywhere in the world. It was commissioned in 1993. Thef US Air Force operates 20 such warplanes. There is also the B-21 Raider stealth bomber in development by Northrop Grumman. The first test aircraft is being built in Northrop Grumman’s Palmdale, California, facility and has yet to make its maiden flight. The optimistic forecast is that the first bomber should enter service by 2025.
As of the end of 2019, the US and Russia operate comparable fleets of strategic bombers, with the US being technically ahead of Russia if we focus only on dry figures and do not question the forecast of expected progress for the B-21 Raider program.
At the same time, a challenge for the US Air Force is that its assets are dispersed all around the world in preparation for possible conflicts with a wide range of possible adversaries, including Russia, China and Iran. In turn, strategic bombers of the Russian Aerospace Forces’ are mainly needed to deter the United States. This factor negates the numerical advantage of the US strategic bomber fleet.
As of early 2013, Russia had only 16 Tu-160 strategic bombers. Now, it has 17. Seven of them underwent deep modernization. If the Tu-160M2 program succeeds, and if Russia procures 50 Tu-160M2 bombers by 2030, that will not only put Russia on par with the US, it might put it ahead. All this depends on progression of the US’s B-21 development and modernization of its strategic bombers.
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The ongoing proceedings against Australian citizen Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, presently held in Belmarsh Prison near London, display a grave erosion of time-honoured principles of human rights, the rule of law, and the democratic freedom to gather and share information. We would like to join the extraordinary line of earlier protests in the case.
Fifteen years ago, the world was shocked by serious circumventions of the right to due process and fair trial when, as part of the U.S. war on terror, the CIA ignored local authority to abduct people in secret flights from European jurisdictions to third countries where they were subjected to torture and violent interrogation. Among those voicing protests was the London-based International Bar Association; see its report, Extraordinary Renditions, January 2009 (www.ibanet.org). The world should stand firm against such attempts to exercise superior, worldwide jurisdiction and to interfere in, influence or undermine the protection of human rights in other countries.
However, since WikiLeaks released evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US has for nine years punished Julian Assange and deprived him of his freedom. To avoid extradition to the United States, Assange was compelled to seek asylum in the London embassy of Ecuador in August 2012. In April 2019, Ecuador — in violation of international asylum laws — handed Assange over to British police, and his private legal defence documents over to U.S. agents.
After exposing extensive U.S. abuse and power projection as a threat to international law and order, Assange himself experienced the full thrust of the same forces. Extortion of other countries to make them and their judicial systems bend the law is to undermine and violate human rights treaties. Countries must not allow the diplomacy and intelligence power culture to contaminate and corrupt the fair administration of justice in accordance with law.
Great nations like Sweden, Ecuador, and Britain have servilely complied with U.S. wishes, as documented in two 2019 reports by Nils Meltzer, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Among other things, Melzer concludes that,
“In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of 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.”
The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights/Working Group on Arbitrary Detention had already in 2015, and again in 2018, demanded the release of Assange from arbitrary and illegal detention. Britain is obliged to respect the CCPR rights and the rulings of the U.N./WGAD.
Assange is in precarious health and without the tools, time or strength for a proper defence of his rights. The prospects of a fair trial have been undermined in many ways. From 2017 onward, the Ecuadorian Embassy let a Spanish firm named Undercover Global send real time video and sound transmissions of Assange directly to the CIA, violating even the lawyer-client privilege by eavesdropping on his meetings with lawyers (El País 26 Sept. 2019).
Britain should follow the proud example of Iceland. That small nation firmly defended its sovereignty against a U.S. attempt in 2011 to exercise undue jurisdiction, when it expelled a huge team of FBI detectives that had entered the country and had started to investigate WikiLeaks and Assange without permission of the Icelandic government. The treatment of Julian Assange is below the dignity of the great nation that gave the world the Magna Carta in 1215 and the Habeas Corpus. To defend its national sovereignty and obey its own laws, the present British government must set Assange free immediately.
Signed by:
Hans-Christof von Sponeck (Germany)
Marjorie Cohn, (U.S.A.)
Richard Falk (U.S.A.)
Martha L. Schmidt (U.S.A.)
Mads Andenaes (Norway)
Terje Einarsen (Norway)
Fredrik S. Heffermehl (Norway)
Aslak Syse (Norway)
Kenji Urata (Japan)
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Fredrik S. Heffermehl, cand. jur, LLM NYU, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network and ex-Vice President of the International Peace Bureau. He is the author of The Nobel Peace Prize, What Nobel Really Wanted (Praeger, 2010 – expanded versions in Chinese, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish and [2014] Russian). [email protected] – http://www.nobelwill.org.
There is little doubt that Sayyed Moqtada al-Sadr controls the streets in Iraq and can make peaceful protests violent when he chooses. Notwithstanding the presence of several smaller players and those genuinely asking for serious reforms, Sayyed Moqtada can move the street in the direction he wants. However, the strategic objectives of Sayyed Moqtada are unknown to all politicians in Iraq, and perhaps outside Mesopotamia as well. Whoever wins a large number of MPs and the largest number of ministers has been always had the capacity to ask for the resignation of the government and its Prime Minister. He was the first to ask, from within the parliament, for Iran to leave Iraq- despite the fact that the “Islamic Republic” has been Moqtada’s best refuge ever since 2005 when he sensed his life was in danger and the US was planning to assassinate him. Sayyed Moqtada is at this moment in Iran, a country he returns to quite frequently. What does Sayyed Moqtada want?
Well-informed sources in Najaf say that those who burned down the Iranian consulate are followers of the current MP Adnan al-Zurfi. Although Al-Zurfi – who was first appointed by Paul Bremer as Najaf governor – denied his involvement. Najaf sources confirm that his followers burned the consulate twice in Najaf and proceeded to the shrine of Sayyed Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, at Sahat al-Ishreen square, where they also burned down the library.
Sheikh Jalaleddine al-Sagheer, one of the closest assistants of the late Sayyed Mohammad Baqer, sent his men known as “Saraya al-Aqeeda” to protect the shrine, known as “Shaheed al-Mihrab”. Sayyed al-Hakim was assassinated in 2003 along with 75 others by a car bomb stationed outside the Imam Ali shrine by Mohammad Yassin Jarrad, the brother-in-law of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Sayyed Moqtada’s supporters present in the streets refused to protect the shrine. The antagonism reflects an old feud between the al-Sadr and al-Hakim families in Najaf.
Not only is there little link between the library of the shrine and the protestors demands to reform the governance system and fight political corruption, but young protestors who dominated the streets of Najaf were evidently unaware that the late Sayyed Mohammad Baqer was the uncle and not the father of Sayyed Ammar al-Hakim.
There is no doubt that Sayyed Moqtada is capable of holding the protestors back. He and his men will not hesitate to engage a Shia-Shia battle, well aware that other Shia groups are not ready for such a battle. Indeed, in 2005, Sayyed Moqtada burned over 100 offices and institutions belonging to Majlis al-A’la and BADR all over southern Iraq, following an attack on his father’s office in Najaf. In 2016, Moqtada’s men burned down many offices belonging to several political and military Shia groups, including Hashd al-Shaabi offices, knowing there would be no reaction from the other side, even if they had superiority in firepower over Moqtada’s men.
Sayyed Moqtada confronted US and Iraqi armies in Najaf in 2004 following his occupation of the holy city. He left, along with his lieutenants and what remained of his men, following the intervention of the Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Sistani.
Sayyed Moqtada relies on his father’s reputation and the human assets he has inherited. He also relies on the restraint of other Shia groups and their unwillingness to engage in any inter-Shia conflict.
He is often wrongly cited as a king maker, even if he is not capable of selecting a Prime Minister, a President or a Speaker without the agreement of other major Shia and non-Shia groups. Other groups likewise cannot select top leaders without coordinating with Sayyed Moqtada. It goes both ways. So far, Sayyed Moqtada has enjoyed the support of a large group of MPs within the Parliament. The forthcoming election may bring surprises to all main political parties, including the Sadrists.
Moqtada never passes up an opportunity to show his determination in protecting what he believes are his achievements. Over a year ago, during the last elections, the High Commission of the election in Iraq declared that over 12 MPs had won illegally, and sought a re-count. During the night, the offices of the High Commission containing all ballots were burned down. The commission then declared that it had records of all papers on electronic servers. That same day, the offices containing the servers were also burned. The results could not be altered and Sayyed Moqtada kept his 53 MPs, the largest group within the Parliament.
During Sayyed Moqtada’s last visit to Iran four months ago, he declared to the media his intention to remove Prime Minister Adel Abdil Mahdi from power. The Iranians asked him to remain silent or leave so that it would not appear that his decision was in harmony with Iran’s wishes. Sayyed Moqtada choose the latter course and left the country.
Nevertheless, Iraqi political leaders consider Moqtada’s presence in Iran less problematic for Iraq than his presence in Mesopotamia. Moqtada is today back in Iran. His presence in Iran represents a source of security to the Sadrist leader, accused of the killing of Wissam al El’yawi and his brother Issam, the commander of the pro-Iranian AsaebAhlal-haq whose tribe has sworn vengeance.
Sayyed Moqtada doesn’t want any role in the forthcoming election of the new Prime Minister. Instead he will likely call for the prime minister’s resignation a couple of months after he takes office, his usual practice. The political parties will force the Sadrist leader to participate in the choice of the new PM and share responsibility with the major political parties, called “whales”, widely accused of corruption.
Moqtada denied his responsibility for the burning down of the Iranian consulate in Najaf saying “I refuse to attack diplomatic missions. I even did not attack the US embassy because diplomats are our guests”.
Al-Sadr said he was giving the government “one year to reform the system and fight corruption”.But after only a few months of Abdel Mahdi in power, he asked his people to demonstrate in Baghdad and pushed them towards the “green zone”, Moqtada’s favourite place for demonstrations. He is a master of the streets but doesn’t have political plans or strategic objectives. He represents the opposition in a parliament, and a cabinet where he has the majority.
Sayyed Moqtada confronted the Marjaiya in Najaf – aware of how the Sadrist leader behaves with leaders in power when he has contributed in their election – by practically rejecting a private demand of the Grand Ayatollah at the beginning of the year to allow PM Abdel Mahdi to work without calling for his resignation. Sayyed Sistani recently criticised Moqtada, without naming him, and other political parties who refused to collaborate with Abdel Mahdi to facilitate fast reforms.
Sayyed Moqtada is not the only one who lacks statesmanlike qualities. Most Iraqi political leaders show little self-control and few achievements. This is why Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Sistani has the power he has. But what will happen when the elderly leader is no longer on the scene? What will become of Iraq?
Iraq is one of the most important countries in the Middle East with very rich resources. Terrorism is still present and the US-Israeli plan to partition is still on the table whenever the opportunity presents itself. The inhabitants and leaders of Mesopotamia, who are doing very little to achieve stability in their country, should remember the long-term goals of Iraq’s enemies and, instead, work on smoothing their internal differences.
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‘A plot against the whole country’ declared Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as he brandished a wad of leaked documents last week which he said proves that the UK National Health Service would indeed be ‘on the table’ when it came to US trade talks. Corbyn said the NHS was ‘up for sale’ if the Conservatives were to win the December election whereas Labour would ‘never let Donald Trump get his hands on our NHS’. Arguably it was a strategic move on Corbyn’s part to counter the previous day’s disastrous interview with the infamous Andrew Neil, but regardless its motivation, the exposure of the dossier was a blow to the Conservatives who have also recently lost their significant lead against Labour in the polls – down to just nine points.
The accusations that Boris Johnson is not telling the whole truth over Trump and the NHS come at a time when the UK Prime Minister is facing questions over his record on lying. He had repeatedly denied that the NHS would be included in any trade discussions with the Trump administration, and had previously issued a version of the 451 page document, but with many pages blacked out. However the Labour leader said that, as a result of the leak, Johnson’s denials of such a deal with Trump were now ‘left in tatters’.
The Tory party has dismissed the documents as being significant, claiming they were simply readouts from meetings of the UK-US trade and investment working group (which reportedly took place from July 2017 till a couple of months ago). They attacked Corbyn by saying he was trying to divert attention from the issue of anti-semitism in his party. However there are some serious implications from the leaked papers which cannot be ignored.
Firstly, there is the issue of patenting, which could have a considerable impact on the pricing of medicines. Jeremy Corbyn indicated that discussions regarding a lengthening of patents had already been concluded between the sides, which would mean more expensive drugs. He gave the example of Humira, a drug used to treat Crohn’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis: ‘It costs our NHS £1,409 a packet. In the US, the same packet costs £8,115. Get the difference: £1,409 in our NHS, £8,115 in the USA,’ Corbyn said. Furthermore, he went on to explain that one of the reasons for US drug prices being so high in comparison to the UK, was that there was a patent regime ‘rigged for the big pharmaceutical companies.’
BBC journalist Andrew Neil attempted to suggest in an interview with Shadow International Trade Secretary, Barry Gardiner, that drug patents did not in fact amount to the ‘sale of the NHS’ and that there was ‘no evidence in the documents whatsoever’ that the NHS was included in the trade deal negotiations. However Gardiner hit back, stating that it was “A ridiculous and naive thing for you to say, and you are too smart a journalist for me to allow you to get away with it”. Gardiner went further to say that although it was not explicitly mentioned in the documents, the implication was made by the references to pharmaceutical services – which of course the Labour party want to bring strictly under government control if they are elected to power.
A second take-away from the documents, according to Jeremy Corbyn, is that the US prefers a No Deal Brexit.
“There would be all to play for in a no-deal situation but UK commitment to the customs union and single market would make a US-UK [free trade agreement] a non-starter,” they read.
The Conservatives have made light of this however, saying that it was ‘simply fact’ that it wouldn’t be possible to strike a free-trade deal with Trump if the UK were to remain in the single market and customs union.
But with lie upon lie being exposed by journalists and commentators, it’s now proving increasingly difficult to trust a word uttered by the Conservative leader and his party at present. The mantra seems to be ‘Say whatever with as much confidence and bluster as possible, and people will believe you.’ Take for example several of Johnson’s key lines: ‘Get Brexit Done’, ‘20,000 more police officers’ and ‘50,000 more nurses’. They may sound fantastic, but once you dig a bit deeper you realise it’s not worth taking them at face value. Firstly, ‘Get Brexit done’ we’ve heard before – Johnson promised to have the UK leave the EU October 31st ‘come what may’ – but did not deliver it. How is one to therefore to believe he will deliver on this now? As for the 20,000 new police officers – this is extremely misleading as the Conservative party was responsible for taking around 21,000 police off the streets in recent years. And the ‘50,000 more nurses’ myth has been doing the rounds on social media of late as journalists have taken on key Conservatives ministers over the fact that 19,000 of the 50,000 are in fact nurses currently working in the NHS. So the figure is far from accurate.
But will such falsehoods be enough to dissuade a disgruntled British electorate from voting for Boris Johnson? With just over a week to go before the election, everything’s to play for…
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Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Unmanned aerial systems (UASs) or drones, both armed and unarmed, have altered how states and insurgents conduct warfare in the Middle East. The widespread proliferation of these weapons, combined with the range of capabilities they confer and their potential to alter the logic of escalation between states, may cause significant inter-state conflict to occur.
An increase in proliferation
Since the Cold War, the US has attempted to stop the spread of unmanned systems by pursuing a limited export policy. However, states in the Middle East have responded by either producing their own (Israel, Turkey and Iran) or by importing them (Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the UAE). Perhaps the most troubling development is yet to come; in November the US Defense Secretary, Mark Esper warned that China was beginning to export drones with fully autonomous offensive capabilities. Although China’s policy has been described as ‘ask no questions’, it is constrained by its desire to avoid arming non-state actors and therefore legitimising separatist movements.
Further, declining costs of commercial drones, combined with some DIY ingenuity has meant that groups such as ISIS and the Houthis rebels have been able to field aerial support, a capability that insurgent-type groups have lacked in the past. ISIS allegedly use UASs as light bombers and as reconnaissance aircraft to help coordinate devastating suicide attacks, whilst the Houthis (with Iranian assistance) have used drones as aerial improvised explosive devices (IEDs) for targeted assassination missions.
Evolving capacity, multiplying impact
One emerging capability of drone operators is ‘swarming’, where multiple systems are used to achieve a shared objective. A crude version of this, in conjunction with cruise missiles, was utilised during the attack on Aramco’s Abqaiq and Khurais oil facilities on September 14 (crude because true swarming requires that the individual systems alter their behaviour based on communication with one another and there is little evidence that this occurred). As a result of the attack, production of 5% of the global oil supply was temporarily halted and, the global price rose by 15%. Although Houthi rebels initially claimed credit, a consensus that Iran was responsible has emerged. The attack was successful, despite the Saudi Aramco sites enjoying protection from the Kingdom’s US ally, in the form of Patriot PAC-2 surface-to-air missile batteries but which proved entirely ineffective.
The Centre for the Study of the Drone recently found that the number of systems and products claiming to protect against UASs had risen from just 10 in 2015 to 235 by 2018. Perhaps not surprisingly, the counter-drone industry (at least in the civilian world) has been described as “peddling snake oil.” Given that very few sites are of such strategic importance in the Middle East (recall the impact on the global oil supply), this swarm technology may prove extremely effective in crippling key national infrastructure and military installations across the region, especially in lieu of a “silver bullet” solution to countering drones.
Likelihood of conflict escalation
In the immediate aftermath of the Aramco attack, Jens Stoltenberg, the head of NATO, expressed his deep concern that tensions would increase and accused Iran of “destabilising the whole region.” Nevertheless, the attack, perhaps surprisingly, did not lead to a military response.
In 2015, a wargame entitled ‘Game of Drones’ held in Washington DC concluded that that the presence of UASs in contested space had the effect of “lowering the threshold for military action in some circumstances because the perceived risk was lower.” However, this relies on the belief that your adversary will not treat the engagement of a manned system in the same way they would a drone in the same scenario. Even as advances in surveillance technology means UASs can reveal more of the battlefield, a new “fog of war” is introduced. This ambiguity, reflected in President Trump’s initial decision to launch counter-strikes against an Iranian attack, and then quickly to cancel, could lead to an escalation via two mechanisms.
First, a state could be baited into engaging a UAS, which is then used as a legitimising pretext to launch further strikes. Indeed, it has been suggested that “baiting” has been a significant facet of the Trump administration’s policy towards Tehran. The second mechanism is via miscalculation. Given the right set of conditions (perhaps a hawkish domestic base), repeated attacks on unmanned systems may compel one side to escalate, despite reluctance on both sides.
The emergence of autonomous and swarm drone technology across a range of actors, combined with an unclear logic of how targeting unmanned systems affect inter-state relations could, therefore, trigger conflict. The primary risk is that heightened short term tensions over drones lead to a conflict before longer-term issues can be solved. As these systems develop technologically and operationally – the emergence of autonomous systems will complicate the matter – close attention to the mechanisms involved in precipitating conflict in the Middle East must be made.
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The inauguration of the Power of Siberia project to transport gas from Russia to China will strengthen Russia’s position as the world’s first gas exporter and boost economic relations between the two countries in an unprecedented way.
Thanks to the US politicians getting busy with their inner fights over who won the presidency and later over who is more corrupt with power in a newly controlled country (Ukraine), the excessive use of sanctions, and the anti-‘free trade’ war, other global superpowers are solidifying their positions and leaping ahead in steady growth.
The annual list of the most common causes of death in the United States, compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), informs public awareness and national research priorities each year. The list is created using death certificates filled out by physicians, funeral directors, medical examiners, and coroners. However, a major limitation of the death certificate is that it relies on assigning an International Classification of Disease (ICD) code to the cause of death.[1] As a result, causes of death not associated with an ICD code, such as human and system factors, are not captured. The science of safety has matured to describe how communication breakdowns, diagnostic errors, poor judgment, and inadequate skill can directly result in patient harm and death. We analyzed the scientific literature on medical error to identify its contribution to US deaths in relation to causes listed by the CDC.[2]
Be that as it may, Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, with an ever dwindling number of peace prizes and awards to her name for questionable responses to the plight of the Rohingya Muslim minority, has a plan. She intends to personally plead the case of her country against charges of genocide being made in the International Court of Justice. As the Ministry of the Interior has claimed, the argument against state brutality against the Rohingya has arisen due to ignorance about “the complexities of the issue and the narratives of the people of Myanmar.”
In 2013 after years of careful preparation, a Swedish real estate company, Vasakronan, issued the first corporate “Green Bond.” They were followed by others including Apple, SNCF and the major French bank Credit Agricole. In November 2013 Elon Musk’s problem-riddled Tesla Energy issued the first solar asset-backed security. Today according to something called the Climate Bonds Initiative, more than $500 billion in such Green Bonds are outstanding. The creators of the bond idea state their aim is to win over a major share of the $45 trillion of assets under management globally which have made nominal commitment to invest in “climate friendly” projects.
The broader issue of environmental modification techniques (ENMOD) must be addressed and carefully analyzed. It should also be understood that the instruments of weather warfare are part of the US arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and their proposed use by the US military against “enemies” constitutes not only a crime against humanity but to put it mildly a threat to planet earth.
In this essay I am providing the reader with direct quotes from a publicly available 1996 US Air Force document on the use of environmental modification techniques which indelibly provide evidence that the threats are real and must be addressed.
As Lebanon’s massive, countrywide, anti-government demonstrations continue, the vacuum provides time for those ardent, long suffering protesters to create the most responsive anti-austerity government in the Middle East. If any populace in that region could do it, it’s Lebanon’s well-educated, smart younger generations who predominate in the uprising.
In late November, House and Senate members unanimously passed the so-called Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act (HKHRDA) of 2019.
Trump signed the measure into law, along with a companion bill, restricting exports of US crowd control devices to Hong Kong police.
The measures are all about US war on China by other means, wanting the country weakened, contained and isolated — politically, economically, financially and technologically. They’re unrelated to supporting democracy and human rights.
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Three Russian military police officers received light injuries when an improvised explosive device went off near their armored vehicle in northeastern Syria, the Russian Defense Ministry reported on December 2. The incident happened when the Russian Military Police were fulfilling a reconnaissance task along the route for a joint Russian-Turkish patrol mission in about 1.5 km to the west of the village of Koran.
The IED attack became the most recent in a long series of provocations against Turkish and Russian patrols in northeastern Syria. Previously, radicals affiliated with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces were trying to block patrols, and even throwing stones and petrol bombs at them.
These attacks were temporarily halted after on November 20 SDF security forces Asayish publicly apologized for the “unfortunate” incident with throwing of petrol bombs and promised to work to prevent such cases in the future. Nonetheless, it seems that the radical pro-US faction within the Kurdish leadership is too strong and provocations will continue.
If such actions lead to real casualties among the Russian personnel, this may force Moscow to reconsider its approach towards containing Turkish military actions against Kurdish armed groups in northeastern Syria.
Russian and Turkish forces conduct patrol missions under the October 22 memorandum signed in Sochi between Russia and Turkey. Units of the Russian Military Police coordinate their actions with Syrian border service and the Turkish Army. The goal of the effort is to provide assistance in ensuring security of citizens and maintaining order, as well as controlling the implementation of a memorandum on withdrawing Kurdish armed groups and their weapons some 30 km from the border.
Clashes between the Syrian Army and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham-led forces continued near Rasm al-Ward and Istablat in southeastern Idlib. These villages remain a de-facto no man’s land amid intense artillery duels and air strikes. Pro-government sources claim that militants suffered large casualties. However, they as well as pro-militant sources provided little evidence to confirm these claims.
Syrian and Russian airstrikes also hit fortifications and weapon depots belonging to militants near Kafr Nabl, Maarat Al-Numan, and Kafr Sijnah.
The Syrian Army is currently deploying reinforcements near the frontline in southern Idlib. This may indicate that government forces are planning to respond to militants’ recent attacks with own ground operation.
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Si svolge a Londra, il 4 dicembre, il Consiglio Nord Atlantico dei capi di stato e di governo che celebra il 70° anniversario della Nato, definita dal segretario generale Jens Stoltenberg «l’alleanza di maggiore successo nella storia».
Un«successo» innegabile. Da quando ha demolito con la guerra la Federazione Jugoslava nel 1999, la Nato si è allargata da 16 a 29 paesi (30 se ora ingloba la Macedonia), espandendosi ad Est a ridosso della Russia. «Per la prima volta nella nostra storia – sottolinea Stoltenberg– abbiamo truppe pronte al combattimento nell’Est della nostra Alleanza». Ma l’Organizzazione del Trattato del Nord Atlantico è andata oltre, estendendole sue operazioni belliche fin sulle montagne afghane e attraverso i deserti africani e mediorientali.
Ora la Grande Alleanza mira più in alto. Al Summit di Londra – preannuncia Stoltenberg– i leader dei 29 paesi membri «riconosceranno lo spazio quale nostro quinto campo operativo», che si aggiunge a quelli terrestre, marittimo, aereo e ciberspaziale. «Lo spazio è essenziale per il successo delle nostre operazioni», sottolinea il segretario generale lasciando intendere che la Nato svilupperà un programma militare spaziale. Non fornisce ovviamente dettagli, informando però che la Nato ha firmato un primo contratto da 1 miliardo di dollari per modernizzare i suoi 14 aerei Awacs. Essi non sono semplici aerei-radar ma centri di comando volanti, prodotti dalla statunitense Boeing, per la gestione della battaglia attraverso i sistemi spaziali.
Certamente quasi nessuno dei leader europei (per l’Italia il premier Conte), che il 4 dicembre «riconosceranno lo spazio quale nostro quinto campo operativo», conosce il programma militare spaziale della Nato, preparato dal Pentagono e da ristretti vertici militari europei insieme alle maggiori industrie aerospaziali. Tantomeno lo conoscono i parlamenti che, come quello italiano, accettano a scatola chiusa qualsiasi decisione della Nato sotto comando Usa, senza preoccuparsi delle sue implicazioni politico-militari ed economiche.
La Nato viene lanciata nello spazio sulla scia del nuovo Comando spaziale creato dal Pentagono lo scorso agosto con lo scopo, dichiarato dal presidente Trump, di «assicurare che il dominio americano nello spazio non sia mai minacciato». Trump ha quindi annunciato la successiva costituzione della Forza Spaziale degli Stati uniti, con il compito di «difendere i vitali interessi americani nello spazio, il prossimo campo di combattimento della guerra». Russia e Cina accusano gli Usa di aprire così la via alla militarizzazione dello spazio, avvertendo di avere la capacità di rispondere. Tutto ciò accresce il pericolo di guerra nucleare.
Anche se non si conosce ancora il programma militare spaziale della Nato, una cosa è certa: esso sarà estremamente costoso. Al Summit Trump premerà sugli alleati europei perché portino la loro spesa militare al 2% o più del pil. Finora lo hanno fatto 8 paesi: Bulgaria (che l’ha portata al 3,25%, poco al di sotto del 3,42% degli Usa), Grecia, Gran Bretagna, Estonia, Romania, Lituania, Lettonia e Polonia. Gli altri, pur rimanendo al di sotto del 2%, sono impegnati ad aumentarla. Trainata dall’enorme spesa Usa– 730 miliardi di dollari nel 2019, oltre 10 volte quella russa – la spesa militare annua della Nato, secondo i dati ufficiali, supera i 1.000 miliardi di dollari. In realtà è più alta di quella indicata dalla Nato, poiché non comprende varie voci di carattere militare: ad esempio quella delle armi nucleari Usa, iscritta nel bilancio non del Pentagono ma del Dipartimento dell’Energia.
La spesa militare italiana, salita dal 13° all’11° posto mondiale, ammonta in termini reali a circa 25 miliardi di euro annui in aumento. Lo scorso giugno il governo Conte I vi ha aggiunto7,2 miliardi di euro, forniti anche dal Ministero per lo sviluppo economico per l’acquisto di sistemi d’arma.In ottobre, nell’incontro col Segretario generale della Nato, il governo Conte II si è impegnatoad aumentarla stabilmente di circa 7 miliardi di euro annui a partire dal 2020 (La Stampa, 11 ottobre 2019).
Al Summit di Londra saranno richiesti all’Italia altri miliardi in denaro pubblico per finanziare le operazioni militari della Nato nello spazio, mentre non si trovano i soldi per mantenere in sicurezza e ricostruire i viadotti che crollano.
The inauguration of the Power of Siberia project to transport gas from Russia to China will strengthen Russia’s position as the world’s first gas exporter and boost economic relations between the two countries in an unprecedented way.
Thanks to the US politicians getting busy with their inner fights over who won the presidency and later over who is more corrupt with power in a newly controlled country (Ukraine), the excessive use of sanctions, and the anti-‘free trade’ war, other global superpowers are solidifying their positions and leaping ahead in steady growth.
Destroying Syria by the US-led War of Terror was partly because the Syrian President Bashar Assad rejected to isolate Russia and Iran by severing the relations with them and by allowing a Qatari gas pipeline through Syria to Europe which would have starved both the Russian and Iranian nations.
Toppling the Ukrainian state, destroying the country’s economy, and installing puppets there by the US was in part to control the Russia – West Europ gas pipeline.
From here comes the added importance of this project that would supply the Chinese economy with flowing energy source for the coming 3 decades, provide the Russian economy with a considerable steady income for the coming 3 decades, and hurting further the US dollar as this ‘energy’ project uses the currencies of both nations and not the currency that controlled the energy production and trade for at least half a century.
Oddly enough it didn’t seem to be of concern to the US politicians and usual Pentagon propagandists to start with demonizing it and then analyzing their losses from creating enemies around the globe instead of engaging positively with the world, especially the established civilizations.
The following report by the Lebanese Al-Mayadeen news channel sheds some light on the global event:
It is a historic event according to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the opening of the Power of Siberia pipeline between Russia and China will bring about a change in the world’s energy projects, not just between the two countries.
The inauguration, with the participation of the two heads of state on both sides of the border, was accelerated after the completion of the first phase of the project ahead of schedule, a phase, costing an estimated $ 20 billion out of $ 400 billion, the total cost of the Power of Siberia project.
This huge 30-year project was agreed between Moscow and Beijing via Russia’s Gazprom and China National Oil and Gas Company in 2014, it is the largest project to transport gas from eastern Russia to China, 4,500 kilometers of pipelines produced with a new and innovative technologies are supposed to transport 38 billion cubic meters of Russian gas annually to China, this puts Russia at the forefront of natural gas providers for this country, which is the fastest-growing economy in the world today.
The Power of Siberia is one of 40 strategic economic agreements between the two countries over the past five years to enhance their cooperation in various fields, the level of cooperation in military production between them has risen in an unprecedented way, Russian and Chinese banks have given financial guarantees for trade using the currencies of the two countries amounting to tens of billions of dollars, the trade between the two neighbors, which share about 4,000 kilometers borders, jumped to $ 100 billion last year alone, this figure is expected to double over the next year.
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“2.6 million people die annually in low-and middle-income countries from medical errors, and that most of those deaths are related to misdiagnosis and administration of pharmaceutical products…Medication errors alone cost an estimated $42 billion (US dollars) annually. Unsafe surgical care procedures cause complications in up to 25% of patients resulting in 1 million deaths during or immediately after surgery annually…Four out of every ten patients are harmed during primary and ambulatory health care. The most detrimental errors are related to diagnosis, prescription and the use of medicines.” — The World Health Organization
Below is a medical online article that concluded that medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the US. The study, published in 2016 in the British Medical Journal, was authored by researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The authors calculated that medical errors accounted for > 250,000 deaths every year in the US, which made iatrogenic (= physician, drug or vaccine-caused) deaths the third leading cause of death in the US, surpassed only by #1 heart disease (647,457) and #2 cancer (599,108) (2018 CDC data).
It is important to note that medical errors and adverse effects from prescription drugs that have caused deaths or illnesses are rarely listed by physicians on death certificates or in rankings of causes of death or illnesses. The online article calls for better reporting by physicians.
Also be aware that the study – as has been the case of ALL such studies of causes of death, acute illnesses, chronic illnesses or adverse drug effects – did NOT evaluate vaccine-induced deaths or injuries, mainly because virtually every physician, in every country (where powerful, for-profit pharmaceutical/vaccine corporations control the practice of medicine, most medical school curricula and most major media outlets), consistently fails – or refuses to acknowledge – even the most obvious vaccine injuries or deaths as worthy of being reportable diseases or worthy of being listed in their differential diagnostic impressions, discharge diagnoses or death certifications.
Dr. Gary G. Kohls, December 4, 2019
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Medical Error: The Third Leading Cause of Death in the US
By Martin A Makary and Michael Daniel
British Medical Journal, May 2016
The annual list of the most common causes of death in the United States, compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), informs public awareness and national research priorities each year. The list is created using death certificates filled out by physicians, funeral directors, medical examiners, and coroners. However, a major limitation of the death certificate is that it relies on assigning an International Classification of Disease (ICD) code to the cause of death.[1] As a result, causes of death not associated with an ICD code, such as human and system factors, are not captured. The science of safety has matured to describe how communication breakdowns, diagnostic errors, poor judgment, and inadequate skill can directly result in patient harm and death. We analyzed the scientific literature on medical error to identify its contribution to US deaths in relation to causes listed by the CDC.[2]
Death from medical care itself
Medical error has been defined as an unintended act (either of omission or commission) or one that does not achieve its intended outcome,[3] the failure of a planned action to be completed as intended (an error of execution), the use of a wrong plan to achieve an aim (an error of planning),[4] or a deviation from the process of care that may or may not cause harm to the patient.[5] Patient harm from medical error can occur at the individual or system level. The taxonomy of errors is expanding to better categorize preventable factors and events.[6] We focus on preventable lethal events to highlight the scale of potential for improvement.
The role of error can be complex. While many errors are non-consequential, an error can end the life of someone with a long life expectancy or accelerate an imminent death. The case in the box shows how error can contribute to death. Moving away from a requirement that only reasons for death with an ICD code can be used on death certificates could better inform healthcare research and awareness priorities.
How big is the problem?
The most commonly cited estimate of annual deaths from medical error in the US—a 1999 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report[7]—is limited and outdated. The report describes an incidence of 44 000-98 000 deaths annually.[7] This conclusion was not based on primary research conducted by the institute but on the 1984 Harvard Medical Practice Study and the 1992 Utah and Colorado Study.[8][9] But as early as 1993, Leape, a chief investigator in the 1984 Harvard study, published an article arguing that the study’s estimate was too low, contending that 78% rather than 51% of the 180 000 iatrogenic deaths were preventable (some argue that all iatrogenic deaths are preventable).[10] This higher incidence (about 140 400 deaths due to error) has been supported by subsequent studies which suggest that the 1999 IOM report underestimates the magnitude of the problem. A 2004 report of inpatient deaths associated with the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research Patient Safety Indicators in the Medicare population estimated that 575 000 deaths were caused by medical error between 2000 and 2002, which is about 195 000 deaths a year (table 1).[11] Similarly, the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General examining the health records of hospital inpatients in 2008, reported 180 000 deaths due to medical error a year among Medicare beneficiaries alone.[12] Using similar methods, Classen et al described a rate of 1.13%.[13] If this rate is applied to all registered US hospital admissions in 2013[15] it translates to over 400 000 deaths a year, more than four times the IOM estimate.
Similarly, Landrigan et al reported that 0.6% of hospital admissions in a group of North Carolina hospitals over six years (2002-07) resulted in lethal adverse events and conservatively estimated that 63% were due to medical errors.[14] Extrapolated nationally, this would translate into 134 581 inpatient deaths a year from poor inpatient care. Of note, none of the studies captured deaths outside inpatient care—those resulting from errors in care at home or in nursing homes and in outpatient care such as ambulatory surgery centers.
A literature review by James estimated preventable adverse events using a weighted analysis and described an incidence range of 210 000-400 000 deaths a year associated with medical errors among hospital patients.[16] We calculated a mean rate of death from medical error of 251 454 a year using the studies reported since the 1999 IOM report and extrapolating to the total number of US hospital admissions in 2013. We believe this understates the true incidence of death due to medical error because the studies cited rely on errors extractable in documented health records and include only inpatient deaths. Although the assumptions made in extrapolating study data to the broader US population may limit the accuracy of our figure, the absence of national data highlights the need for systematic measurement of the problem. Comparing our estimate to CDC rankings suggests that medical error is the third most common cause of death in the US (fig 1).[2]
Better data
Human error is inevitable. Although we cannot eliminate human error, we can better measure the problem to design safer systems mitigating its frequency, visibility, and consequences. Strategies to reduce death from medical care should include three steps: making errors more visible when they occur so their effects can be intercepted; having remedies at hand to rescue patients [17]; and making errors less frequent by following principles that take human limitations into account (fig 2). This multitier approach necessitates guidance from reliable data.
Currently, deaths caused by errors are unmeasured and discussions about prevention occur in limited and confidential forums, such as a hospital’s internal root cause analysis committee or a department’s morbidity and mortality conference. These forums review only a fraction of detected adverse events and the lessons learnt are not disseminated beyond the institution or department.
There are several possible strategies to estimate accurate national statistics for death due to medical error. Instead of simply requiring cause of death, death certificates could contain an extra field asking whether a preventable complication stemming from the patient’s medical care contributed to the death. An early experience asking physicians to comment on the potential preventability of inpatient deaths immediately after they occurred resulted in an 89% response rate.[18] Another strategy would be for hospitals to carry out a rapid and efficient independent investigation into deaths to determine the potential contribution of error. A root cause analysis approach would enable local learning while using medicolegal protections to maintain anonymity. Standardized data collection and reporting processes are needed to build up an accurate national picture of the problem. Measuring the consequences of medical care on patient outcomes is an important prerequisite to creating a culture of learning from our mistakes, thereby advancing the science of safety and moving us closer towards the Institute of Medicine’s goal of creating learning health systems.[19]
Health priorities
We have estimated that medical error is the third biggest cause of death in the US and therefore requires greater attention. Medical error leading to patient death is under-recognized in many other countries, including the UK and Canada.[20][21] According to WHO, 117 countries code their mortality statistics using the ICD system as the primary indicator of health status.[22] The ICD-10 coding system has limited ability to capture most types of medical error. At best, there are only a few codes where the role of error can be inferred, such as the code for anticoagulation causing adverse effects and the code for overdose events. When a medical error results in death, both the physiological cause of the death and the related problem with delivery of care should be captured.
To achieve more reliable healthcare systems, the science of improving safety should benefit from sharing data nationally and internationally, in the same way as clinicians share research and innovation about coronary artery disease, melanoma, and influenza. Sound scientific methods, beginning with an assessment of the problem, are critical to approaching any health threat to patients. The problem of medical error should not be exempt from this scientific approach. More appropriate recognition of the role of medical error in patient death could heighten awareness and guide both collaborations and capital investments in research and prevention.
Contributors and sources: MM is the developer of the operating room checklist, the precursor to the WHO surgery checklist. He is a surgical oncologist at Johns Hopkins and author of Unaccountable, a book about transparency in healthcare. MD is the Rodda patient safety research fellow at Johns Hopkins and is focused on health services research. This article arose from discussions about the paucity of funding available to support quality and safety research relative to other causes of death. Competing interests: We have read and understood BMJ policy on declaration of interests and declare that we have no competing interests. Provenance and peer review: Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
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Martin A Makary is a professor, Michael Daniel is a research fellow, Department of Surgery, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore
Notes
1 Moriyama IM, Loy RM, Robb-Smith AHT, et al. History of the statistical classification of diseases and causes of death. National Center for Health Statistics, 2011.
2 Deaths: final data for 2013. National vital statistics report. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/ leading-causes-of-death.htm.
4 Reason J. Human error. Cambridge University Press, 1990. doi:10.1017/ CBO9781139062367.
5 Reason JT. Understanding adverse events: the human factor. In: Vincent C, ed. Clinical risk management: enhancing patient safety. BMJ, 2001:9-30.
6 Grober ED, Bohnen JM. Defining medical error. Can J Surg 2005;48:39-44.pmid:15757035.
7 Kohn LT, Corrigan JM, Donaldson MS. To err is human: building a safer health system. National Academies Press, 1999.
8 Brennan TA, Leape LL, Laird NM, et al. Incidence of adverse events and negligence in hospitalized patients. Results of the Harvard Medical Practice Study I. N Engl J Med, 1991;324:370-6. doi:10.1056/NEJM199102073240604 pmid:1987460.
9 Thomas EJ, Studdert DM, Newhouse JP, et al. Costs of medical injuries in Utah and Colorado. Inquiry 1999;36:255-64.pmid:10570659.
10 Leape LL, Lawthers AG, Brennan TA, Johnson WG. Preventing medical injury. Qual Rev Bull 1993;19:144-9.pmid:8332330.
11 HealthGrades quality study: patient safety in American hospitals. 2004. http://www.providersedge.com/ehdocs/ehr_articles/Patient_Safety_in_American_Hospitals-2004.pdf.
12 Department of Health and Human Services. Adverse events in hospitals: national incidence among Medicare beneficiaries. 2010. http://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-06-09-00090.pdf.
13 Classen D, Resar R, Griffin F, et al. Global “trigger tool” shows that adverse events in hospitals may be ten times greater than previously measured. Health Aff 2011;30:581-9doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2011.0190.
14 Landrigan CP, Parry GJ, Bones CB, Hackbarth AD, Goldmann DA, Sharek PJ. Temporal trends in rates of patient harm resulting from medical care. N Engl J Med2010;363:2124-34. doi:10.1056/NEJMsa1004404 pmid:21105794.
15 American Hospital Association. Fast facts on US hospitals. 2015.http://www.aha.org/ research/rc/stat-studies/fast-facts.shtml.
16 James JTA. A new, evidence-based estimate of patient harms associated with hospital care. J Patient Saf 2013;9:122-8. doi:10.1097/PTS.0b013e3182948a69 pmid:23860193.
17 Ghaferi AA, Birkmeyer JD, Dimick JB. Complications, failure to rescue, and mortality with major inpatient surgery in Medicare patients. Ann Surg 2009;250:1029-34. doi:10.1097/SLA.0b013e3181bef697 pmid:19953723.
18 Provenzano A, Rohan S, Trevejo E, Burdick E, Lipsitz S, Kachalia A. Evaluating inpatient mortality: a new electronic review process that gathers information from front-line providers. BMJ Qual Saf 2015;24:31-7. doi:10.1136/bmjqs-2014-003120 pmid:25332203.
19 Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. Continuous improvement and innovation in health and health care. Round table on value and science-driven health care. National Academies Press, 2011.
20 Office for National Statistics’ Death Certification Advisory Group. Guidance for doctors completing medical certificates of cause of death in England and Wales. 2010.
21 Statistics Canada. Canadian vital statistics, death database and population estimates. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/hlth36a-eng.htm.
22 World Health Organization. International classification of diseases.http://www.who.int/ classifications/icd/en/.
Leaders currently in office rarely make an appearance before either the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court. International law remains affixed to the notion that heads-of-state are, at least for the duration of their time in office, safe from prosecution. Matters change once the time in office expires.
Be that as it may, Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, with an ever dwindling number of peace prizes and awards to her name for questionable responses to the plight of the Rohingya Muslim minority, has a plan. She intends to personally plead the case of her country against charges of genocide being made in the International Court of Justice. As the Ministry of the Interior has claimed, the argument against state brutality against the Rohingya has arisen due to ignorance about “the complexities of the issue and the narratives of the people of Myanmar.”
The case itself is drawn from the well of universal jurisdiction, a concept that Henry Kissinger finds so troubling to the freedom of flexible statecraft. The former US secretary of state, in 2001, warned that subjecting international relations to judicial procedures came with risks.
“The danger lies in pushing the effort to extremes that risk substituting the tyranny of judges for that of governments; historically, the dictatorship of the virtuous has often led to inquisitions and even witch-hunts.”
Kissinger ignores a lingering point stretching back to Roman law that universal jurisdiction, or at least the rhetoric of it, can be exercised against certain crimes that might revolt the tender conscience humanity. Piracy, for instance, might be punished as an extra-territorial offence, though it should not be confused as being on all fours with international criminal law. “I need not tell you the heinousness of this offence,” came the pre-deliberation address to the jury in the piracy trial of Capt William Kidd in 1701. “Pirates are called ‘Hostes humani generis’ the enemies of the people.”
In this instance, the threat to Myanmar’s authority does not come from an internal action, but from the West African country of The Gambia as a representative of the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Last month, a 46-page application was submitted by the Muslim-majority state to the ICJ, alleging the commission by Myanmar’s authorities of mass murder, rape and the destruction of communities living within Rakhine State, ostensibly as part of a “clearing” program. “The genocidal acts committed during these operations were intended to destroy the Rohingya as a group… by the use of mass murder, rape and other forms of sexual violence, as well as the systematic destruction by fire of their villages, often with inhabitants locked inside burning houses.”
Some 720,000 Rohingya were forced to flee to Bangladesh in light of these operations, and the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, established by the UN Human Rights Council, revealed nothing in the way of redeeming evidence on the part of government authorities. Its August 2018 report made special mention of the predations of the security forces in Rakhine State, though also noted the actions of armed ethnic groups in Kahin and Shan States. More detailed findings were published the following month.
The Mission, having designated the Rohingya to be a protected group, satisfied itself that acts of genocide had been committed. “Perpetrators have killed Rohingya, caused serious bodily and mental harm to Rohingya, deliberately inflicted conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Rohingya, and imposed measures intended to prevent births to Rohingya.”
Enough, then, to go on in terms of mounting a legal action, albeit in slightly different circumstances. The instance of this case is irregular, given that the ICJ usually undertakes such hearings after consulting the findings of other tribunals, be it the International Criminal Court or those of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
The decision by Suu Kyi to take the matter on personally in both roles as state counsellor and foreign minister is garnering mixed reviews. In Myanmar, propaganda units have been mobilised. Support for the decision is being encouraged in the days leading up to the December 10-12 hearings through planned rallies being organised by the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) in Yangon, Mandalay, Monywa, and Mawlamyine.
Numerous armed groups have expressed their approval. Nyi Rang, external relations official for the United Wa State Army (UWSA) is one. “We are proud and supporting her taking responsibility and travelling to face the trial.” Colonel Khun Okkar, chairman of the Pa-O National Liberation Organisation (PNLO) is another.
“We need to show our solidarity with the government which is trying to prove that the offences cannot be classified as genocide.”
This position, it should be said, is not universally shared within Myanmar itself. This stands to reason: not all ethnic armed organisations within the state are rooting for a government deemed the handmaiden of military brutality. The Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and the Arakan Army (AA) suggest that claims of genocide are not only plausible but historical, having taken place over seven decades of civil war. According to a sombre spokesman for the AA, “She [Aung San Suu Kyi] should not be defending war criminals who try to hide behind the term ‘the charge of the nation’.”
The prosecutor of the ICC has also opened up a preliminary investigation into the matter, an action approved by the Pre-Trial Chamber III of the ICC, though the action is limited by the fact that Myanmar is not a signatory to the court’s statute. That said, the three-judge panel reasoned that an investigation could take place as long as part of the alleged criminal conduct occurred in the territory of a State Party. Myanmar may well not be a State Party, but Bangladesh most certainly is.
The Gambia case promises to revisit the at times contentious basis as to how universal jurisdiction is invoked, despite the acceptance by such organisations as Amnesty International that most UN Member States “can exercise universal jurisdiction over one or more crimes under international law, either as such crimes or as ordinary crimes under national law.”
The sight of Suu Kyi, defending the actions of the military against what security forces deem legitimate counterinsurgency operations, is going to paint a bleak picture indeed. From the giddy summit of peace prizes and romanticised positions against tyranny, the civilian leader of Myanmar has become a powerful exponent of a certain brand of blood soaked Realpolitik, state brutality sanitised and reasoned.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]
As Lebanon’s massive, countrywide, anti-government demonstrations continue, the vacuum provides time for those ardent, long suffering protesters to create the most responsive anti-austerity government in the Middle East. If any populace in that region could do it, it’s Lebanon’s well-educated, smart younger generations who predominate in the uprising.
However, most of those of us who have newspapered in Beirut tend to agree with long-time (43 years) Middle East correspondent Robert Fiskwho observed that it had a classic, fatal flaw:
Bring down the regime, the government, the masters of deceit, the cancerous centres of power: that is their only cry. The Lebanese protestors, in their hundreds of thousands, are demanding a new constitution, an end to the confessional system of government—and to abject poverty. They are absolutely right; but then they stop. It’s as if the revolutionaries of Beirut, Baghdad and Algiers are too pure to dip their fingers in the glue of political power, their goodness too heavenly to be contaminated by the dirt of politics, their demands too spiritual to be touched by the everyday hard work of future governance that they believe their courage alone will ensure victory. This is nonsense. Without leadership, they will be overwhelmed. The elites and kings who govern the Arab world have sharp claws.
As a former Beirut Daily Star editorial-page editor/writer, I read an archival interview of Krim Belkacem, one of the Algerian revolution’s leaders. Asked about post-war plans for education, healthcare, agriculture, infrastructure, etc., he said: “A revolution never reveals such plans before winning lest it divide and lose the people—and the fight.”
The truth is, as Fisk writes, that most revolutionaries have no such plans beyond overthrowing a regime lest it divide their numbers. True, most revolutions “eat their young” by internal squabbling over leadership once the last shot is fired, as Algeria’s independence leader Ahmed Ben-Bella learned in exile—and Belkacem’s assassination in Frankfort—despite seven years of unified warfare against the French.
Now, most repressive rulers today get out the weaponry—rubber bullets, water cannons, concussion bombs, and live ammunition to clear the streets. In Beirut, luckiy, restraint seems to rule. Aside from police shortages to handle such massive numbers, a standoff response does saves costs on personnel, weapons, jailings, and lawsuits over deaths and injuries. And police absenteeism because family members are among the demonstrators.
In Lebanon, it was long-standing, dire public needs that eventually exploded October 17 into a massive countrywide demonstration triggered by a $6 monthly charge for the internet’s free Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. It affected almost everyone and became the last straw of austerity policies. The basics demanded by all party loyalists, thousands of refugees, those in 18 religious sects were legion: 24-hour electricity, clean tap water, garbage collections, unclogging sewers, ending blatant corruption, and failure to collect taxes from corporations and the rich.
So far, it’s unlikely that the civil-society group doing a “Paul Revere” warning with a WhatsApp protest message were long-term planners. But the result was thousands hopefully and obediently waiting on promising words from the Prime Minister. His previous non-actions showed immediate redress was unlikely for these basic and common grievances.
Unfortunately, it never takes the Old Guard long to regroup and creep back into power in the guise of a caretaker government which then puts in power their candidates who will re-impose the same policies that led to an uprising in the first place.
How different it could be, as prime minister candidates emerge, if a demonstration group would confront them with a manifesto containing the people’s demands. If demonstrators could set off the uprising by mobile phones almost instantly, they ought to be able to quickly check out the picket signs expressing people’s chief demands. Then, help their preference for a prime minister hunt up prospective cabinet ministers willing to quickly fulfill those demands—and provide him or her with a nonsectarian “B-Team, a “brain trust” of expert advisers for all sectors of government. Such specialists would enable the new government to “hit the floor running” to answer those demands the moment their prime minister is chosen.
The new government should include eagle-eyed policy monitors—especially the enforcers—particularly for the country’s banking system at the start.
Success lies in rapid and effective action on behalf of ordinary citizens to retain public confidence. The Lebanese “window” is currently wide open for a long-needed, non-partisan government drawn from those demonstrators to execute fast-moving transitions from the past.
Perhaps one of the best examples in modern history of a B-Team quickly implementing programs pulling a nation out of economic destitution and despair is still U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “brain-trust ” during the 1930s Great Depression. “FDR’s B-Team was drawn from economics, law, politics, government, universities, labor, healthcare, science, and social programs.
In FDR’s “First Hundred Days,” they unrolled bold “New Deal” programs despite howling opposition from both parties in Congress and the colossal power of corporations and the “banksters.” Most of those major programs were generated by dozens of FDR’s proclamations and executive orders because Congress was too paralyzed by the Depression to disobey party leadership.
Three days after FDR’s inauguration in March 1933, the B-Team’s first major plan—tackling the financial industry’s depredations—his eight-day bank “holiday” proclamation closed all banks. The night before reopenings, Roosevelt gave his first radio Fireside Chat to Americans, reassuring them that their deposits were safe.
In those “First Hundred Days,” the B-Team launched a staggering number of programs, agencies, and pushed tough regulatory laws , either benefitting or protecting the 99%: deposit insurance, banning bank ties to the stock market, policing Wall Street, regulating workplace practices, subsidizing staple crops, and providing low-cost loans to buy homes.
What followed was a public works program for millions of unemployed. More than 3.5 million were building dozens of dams and the Tennessee Valley Authority to furnish cheap and reliable power and flood control. Improved highways and new bridges served motorists and truckers. Repairs were made to schools and hospitals and new ones were built and staffed. Millions of jobless young men were doing conservation improvements for waterways, fisheries, and agricultural wastelands. By FDR’s second term, his B-Team had inaugurated the Social Security program and given unions protections for wages, hours, and collective bargaining.
The cost for FDR’s New Deal was $500 billion (in today’s dollars), primed both with temporary public debt and hiking income taxes on the wealthy—and enforcing collections—so that by 1940 those earning $60,000 had a 47% rate and those above $5 million, 75%. Their outrage was just as great as the well-off would be in today’s Lebanon if fresh leadership put such teeth into new tax laws.
Treasury revenues spiked because paychecks were spent on food, housing, goods and services. In turn, retail and wholesale profits were banked—and taxed—providing increased lending funds for business and mortgages—and subsequent federal and state revenues from those taxes.
It could be argued that what worked in a near-bankrupt U.S. in the 1930s won’t work in today’s Lebanon. But if a quarter of Lebanon’s population brought about the government’s fall, it’s possible that the slate could be wiped clean of policies from the country’s ususal hidebound, negligent, corrupt, and incompetent administrations.
For example, just to pass Lebanon’s 2019 budget took 37 cabinet and parliamentary meetings. And confronted with a national debt of $85 billion and a credit rating of junk-bond status—and threatening rumbles from the 99%— government officials sped to Paris last year vowing “serious reforms” if CEDRE(Conference for Economic Development and Reform) could coble $11 billion together in loans and grants from its donors.
The purpose, the delegation claimed, was to cover 127 infrastructure projects in three payment phases. Wise to Lebanon’s ways, however, CEDRE’s loan conditions included a clamp-down on corruption, submitting the 2020 budget, filling vacancies in key regulatory offices, and a donor-monitoring committee. The loan would be cancelled if the committee found irregularities even in one project. CEDRE’s growing doubts about credibility and a charge of “sloppy” documentation means funds have yet to be released.
This needs to change. And only those demonstrators can make it possible.
Foreign Policy’s Sune Haugbolle pointed out the country was at Ground Zero for total collapse:
With Lebanon’s credit ratings hitting junk status, unemployment rampant, and environmental degradation reaching cataclysmic levels, the floor under the sectarian system has caved in. The sheer corruption, incompetence, and social injustice of the political class have destroyed the social contract. What remains now is to rebuild it based on a new legal and political order.
To do that would require an FDR-type leader and a B-Team to immediately underpin that new order. Experts would have to be hired to fix electrical utilities, garbage collections and disposal, water systems and the like. Enforcers would have to get tough about collecting taxes from the rich and powerful—perhaps a bank holiday to prevent their sending money abroad. That alone could help finance repairs and rebuilding the country’s crumbling infrastructure. Corruption finally would have to be addressed and stringently punished.
As for a bank holiday, Lebanon’s private institutions are suspected of being “overstocked with cash” and of earning billions stored abroad from 30 years of high interests charged on government bonds. If the previous regime demanded $3.3 billion from those private banks for the 2020 budget, it would seem a new government could force a few billion more to cover the nation’s resurrection.
Recruiting government talent for a B-Team and labor for such public-works projects should be easy. Most Lebanon’s universities have department chairs able to single out past and present talent for a B-Team capable to handle such monumental undertakings—banking to agriculture—to resurrect the country. High school faculties also know promising and dedicated students willing and able to intern with these experts. Working together, they would learn that shared professional skills rise far above and beyond sect, race, gender, and class.
Obviously, such a cabinet staff would have to be cooperative, tough, and altruistic millennials and those under 25. They would have to be willing to work at minimum wages at the outset, a cost well worth replacing those “elders” responsible for nearly destroying the country. And it’s possible. Those millions demonstrating throughout Lebanon were able to temporarily set aside centuries of enmity caused by tribal, cultural, sect, and social divisions. They were united in mutual demands of near-deaf governments.
A heavy proportion of the Beirut protesters were chiefly the millennials— students and workers —who packed Martyrs Square and side streets perhaps reaching to my former neighborhood in the Ras Beirut district. And unlike the usual ferocious Middle Eastern demonstrations, Beirutis proved to be nonsectarian in chants (“Revolution, “Thieves! Thieves!” ), and singing and dancing in joyous displays of warm, communal response. In one instance, men stopped shouting and raising clenched fists to calm a terrified toddler in a car with “Baby Shark,” a globally popular children’s song.
That sea of thousands, waving Lebanese flags reflects unity and promise for permanently changing the country after years of quiet desperation from rigid, uncaring, caste-ridden, and corrupt governments.
It’s not too late for new, forward-looking political leaders to round up a prime minister candidate and a B-Team helping to meet Lebanon’s critical challenges. The time indeed has come for a drastic change for the people in that benighted country. It can only come from those demonstrators. Now.
As the tough old adage should remind them: “It’s time to either put up or shut up.”
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Barbara G. Ellis, Ph.D., is the principal of a Portland (OR) writing/pr firm. A veteran professional writer and editor (LIFE magazine, Washington, D.C. Evening Star, Beirut Daily Star, Mideast Magazine), she also was a journalism professor (Oregon State University/Louisiana’s McNeese State University). Author of dozens of articles for magazines and online websites, and screenplays, she was a nominee for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in history (The Moving Appeal). Today, she contributes to Truthout and Counterpunch, and has contributed to DissidentVoice, Global Research, and OpEdNews, as well as being a political and environmental activist.
In late November, House and Senate members unanimously passed the so-called Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act (HKHRDA) of 2019.
Trump signed the measure into law, along with a companion bill, restricting exports of US crowd control devices to Hong Kong police.
The measures are all about US war on China by other means, wanting the country weakened, contained and isolated — politically, economically, financially and technologically. They’re unrelated to supporting democracy and human rights.
On Monday, spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry, Hua Chunying, said Beijing will suspend US requests for its warships and aircraft to visit Hong Kong.
It’s imposing sanctions on US organizations funded by Washington and/or by corporate and other donors — ones involved in supporting and otherwise manipulating months of Hong Kong violence, vandalism and chaos, in cahoots with the CIA.
Targeted groups include the National Endowment for Democracy that’s mandated to combat it wherever it exists, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the International Republican Institute, Freedom House, and Human Rights Watch.
According to Sourcewatch, HRW earlier removed prominent international jurist/academic Richard Falk from one of its human rights committees for his vocal criticism of Israeli high crimes.
Along with Amnesty International, HRW is hostile to governments on the US target list for regime change — notably Russia, China, Iran, Syria, and Venezuela, among others.
Law Professor Francis Boyle earlier said
“if you are dealing with a human rights situation in a country that is at odds with the United States or Britain, it gets an awful lot of attention, resources (and) publicity” from these and similar organizations.
When it comes to US, UK, or other Western human rights abuses, “it’s like pulling teeth to get them to do something on the situation — because Washington and its allies aren’t on “the official enemies list.”
According to China’s Global Times, if the US “continues to provoke on Hong Kong, it is expected that (Beijing) will take follow-up actions.”
Under China’s “one country, two systems” policy, its authorities won’t permit the US or other countries to try exerting a sphere of influence over the city.
Measures announced on Monday are a shot across the bow, the first time Beijing imposed sanctions on US organizations, a show of strength against Washington’s dirty hands all over months of manipulated protests in Hong Kong.
The city is Chinese territory. Its authorities won’t tolerate foreign efforts to undermine its sovereignty.
According to Beijing’s official People’s Daily broadsheet, hostile US legislation “seriously violated the international law and the basic norm of international relations, and interferes with China’s domestic affairs,” adding:
Sanctions imposed show “the country’s firm resolution on the Hong Kong issue.”
Organizations like the ones sanctioned are involved in “grubby business in the name of justice. They offer capital and supplies for rioters, and control the protests behind the scene. Releasing malicious promotional materials, they are fanning confrontation, calling black white, and conducting political infiltration.”
“(T)hey are…notorious for their misdeeds in (US) ‘color revolutions’ across the world.”
“(A)ny attempt(s) against the Chinese, including (in) Hong Kong…will be countered resolutely.”
A Final Comment
On Sunday, the South China Morning Post said a US trade deal with China “must include US tariff(s) rollback,” along with scrapping Trump’s vow to impose further tariffs on $156 billion worth of Chinese imports if an agreement isn’t reached by December 15, adding:
“Trade experts and people close to the White House said last month…that signing of a phase one agreement may not take place until the new year as China pressed for more extensive rollbacks of tariffs.”
An unnamed US source said what both sides agreed on “was just the principle that the issues need to be solved through different stages,” adding:
“But when they got to (phase one details (alone), and how to implement them, the two sides were again not able to reach a consensus.”
In early November, both sides agreed on a limited phase one deal in principle, largely involving large-scale Chinese purchases of US agricultural products, the Trump regime reciprocating by rolling back unacceptable tariffs on Chinese imports.
Both countries are especially world’s apart on major structural issues that won’t likely be resolved no matter how many more rounds of talks are held.
The US wants China’s economic, industrial and technological development undermined.
Washington wants all nations worldwide subordinating their sovereign rights to its interests — clearly what Chinese authorities won’t tolerate.
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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.”
A future without independent media leaves us with an upside down reality where according to the corporate media “NATO deserves a Nobel Peace Prize”, and where “nuclear weapons and wars make us safer”.
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Of the 29 NATO member states, 22 have already ratified the accession protocol of North Macedonia into the anti-Russian alliance. The ratification process will likely be completed before the end of NATO’s summit taking place in London this week, which will make North Macedonia the newest country in military alliance.
NATO’s London Summit on December 3 and 4, 2019 displays the deep political crisis of the 70-year-old alliance: Only a dinner and a short meeting, no statement to be issued, quarrels among the leading military members, accusations, substantial differences on Syria and many other issues, the deepest-ever Transatlantic conflict and the usual issues of burden-sharing.
The backdrop against which this summit is taking place is one of uncertainty surrounding the organization’s future and many questioning whether it can even remain functional in its present form. The reasons for this existential crisis are many, but can be simplified as Trump’s demand that all member states finally pay the 2% of their GDP on defense that they’d mandated to, Turkey’s “autonomous” actions in Syria, some Central & Eastern European members’ supposed concerns about Russia, and France’s desire to present itself as the visionary of both an EU Army and a reformed NATO. Add to that the heavy American pressure being put upon the bloc’s members to curtail their economic relations with China and it’s clear that NATO is at a crossroads like never before.
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 three smartest words that Donald Trumputtered 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.
Without Turkey’s formal approval NATO will have a difficult time expediting its defense plan for Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. Because the two issues are not directly related, some believe Turkey is holding Europeans hostage until they comply with their demands. Not only is Turkey the only Islamic member of NATO but it has the second largest military in NATO granting NATO access to Georgia and Azerbaijan, which makes one wonder, who needs the other more, NATO or Turkey?
On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union carried out its first experimental nuclear explosion. A few months earlier, on April 4, 1949, when Washington knew that the Soviet Union was about to have the nuclear bombs and was about to start the nuclear arms race, the United States created NATO. During the Cold War, the Alliance under US command included 16 countries: United States, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, France, German Federal Republic, Great Britain, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Turkey. Through this alliance, the United States maintained its dominance over European allies, using Europe as the front line against the Soviet Union.
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Of the 29 NATO member states, 22 have already ratified the accession protocol of North Macedonia into the anti-Russian alliance. The ratification process will likely be completed before the end of NATO’s summit taking place in London this week, which will make North Macedonia the newest country in military alliance.
This now appears even more likely since U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave his endorsement, saying on Twitter:
“Pleased to announce the United States deposited its ratification of North Macedonia’s NATO Accession Protocol. One step closer to welcoming North Macedonia as NATO’s 30th Ally!”
This will make North Macedonia the fourth country out of the six successor states of Yugoslavia to become a NATO member, following Slovenia, Croatia and Montenegro. With Bosnia effectively a NATO satellite, this leaves Serbia as the bulwark of anti-NATO and pro-Russia sentiment in the region, especially as the other fellow Balkan countries, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania, are also NATO members.
The confusing Macedonia question was a key priority for Russia’s Balkan policy – North Macedonia is an overwhelmingly Orthodox and Slavic country that had the potential to become another pro-Russia state in the Balkans, alongside neighboring Serbia. However, North Macedonia since its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991 pursued a pro-Western policy and joined the NATO program Partnership for Peace as early as 1995 and became a European Union candidate a decade later.
This had not discouraged Russian efforts to push North Macedonia out of the NATO sphere of influence. The governments in Athens and Skopje have competed over the name Macedonia since North Macedonia became independent from Yugoslavia, as Greece’s northern region is also confusingly called Macedonia. Effectively, as North Macedonia was continuously vetoed by Greece from joining NATO and the EU because of the name dispute, Russian efforts to radicalize Macedonian identity was encouraged. The strategy to radicalize Macedonian identity to be more anti-Western and pro-Russian was an effort to avoid a situation like the Prespa Agreement that brought a finalization to the Macedonian name dispute in 2018, opening the way for North Macedonia to join NATO and the EU, without a Greek veto.
The Prespa Agreement, named after a lake that traverses the borders of Greece, North Macedonia and Albania, defined exactly what was meant by “Macedonia” and “Macedonian.” For Greece, according to the agreement, these terms denote an area and people of Greece’s northern region, who continue the legacy of the Ancient Macedonian Hellenic civilization, history and culture, as well as the legacy of Alexander the Great. In reference to North Macedonia, these terms denote the modern territory of North Macedonia, Slavic language and Slavic people with their own history and culture unrelated to the Ancient Macedonians. The agreement also stipulates the removal of North Macedonian irredentist efforts against Greek territory and to align them with UNESCO and Council of Europe’s standards.
The radicalization of an independent Macedonian identity was in the hope that North Macedonians would reject the name change, despite the scholarly and historical consensus that the Ancient Macedonians were Greek. This hoped North Macedonian denunciation of the West was on the basis that resolving the name dispute goes against North Macedonian nationalist doctrine as any name change must support the historical reality that the Ancient Macedonians were Hellenes. This was a bad calculation that encouraged the North Macedonians to concentrate their efforts and resources on historical revisionism on not only Hellenic legacy, but also Bulgarian and Serbian, as historical figures like King Samuel of Bulgaria, Ilyo Voyvoda, Aleksandar Turundzhev, Yane Sandanski, Hristo Batandzhiev and many others are claimed by both North Macedonia and Bulgaria, and the unrecognized and schismatic Macedonian Orthodox Church separated in an ugly divorce from the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1967.
This historical revisionism meant ignoring serious ambitions for a Greater Albania that expands into the western territories of North Macedonia. Ignoring efforts for Albanian expansionism, something that has been partially achieved with the Albanian control of Kosovo, has undermined North Macedonian security and opened the gates for it to become a major puppet of NATO to preserve their territorial integrity. As argued in a previous article, because the overwhelming majority of Albanians want a Greater Albania, it is unlikely to be achieved with Washington’s backing in Greece, Montenegro and North Macedonia as they do not pose a threat to U.S. hegemony in the Balkans, but rather serve it, by resisting Russian influence in the region.
As long as Skopje remains loyal to globalist agendas, the U.S. will not back Albanian expansionism in the country. However, the U.S. can certainly use the Albanian minority as a destabilizing force, as seen with Kosovo’s illegal declaration of independence and the 2001 Albanian uprising in North Macedonia. In addition to Washington having the option to use the Albanians as a destabilizing factor, the Albanians themselves may formant instability without U.S. backing as 53% of the approximately 500,000 Albanians in North Macedonia believe in a Greater Albania.
With Russian influencers failing to invigorate anti-NATO sentiment in North Macedonia, there comes the reality that the Balkan country, confident after the finalization of the name dispute, can now march into the hands of its new NATO puppet masters. It is for this reason that a senior Russian Foreign Ministry official said that:
“Russia’s position regarding the expansion of NATO is well known: it is a destructive process that undermines confidence and stability in Europe, leads to increased antagonism.”
According to the official, it is not a military threat that North Macedonia would pose to Russia but a set of risks to European security that “must be guaranteed by totally different methods, instead of involving this [Balkan] country in military planning of the Alliance and in an anti-Russian policy.”
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.
Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city and the region’s economic power horse is getting back on its feet again, despite all the efforts by the US and its NATO stooges and terrorists.
It’s moving forward slowly but steadily, with over 600 establishments resuming work at the once-thriving Aleppo Industrial City at Sheikh Najjar, which Turkey’s madman Erdogan and his anti-Islamic Muslim Brotherhood criminalslooted to its skeleton and then destroyed like all other areas infested by followers of these two cults.
The following report by SANA from the Aleppo Industrial City at Sheikh Najjar reveals the latest updates there:
The English transcript of the above video
Investment in the Sheikh Najjar industrial city in Aleppo is growing steadily in light of providing the necessary requirements for the industry in terms of infrastructure services and the facilities granted for the reconstruction of facilities affected by terrorism, and building new blocks and supplying them with production lines.
Hazem Ajan – Director of Sheikh Najjar Industrial City: After the city completed most of its service projects for production facilities and delivered basic services of electricity and water to the production workshops in the industrial city we moved on with our plans to strategic projects in the city like the Exhibition City that provides basic promotion of the city’s products in particular and local products in general, because it was selected as an exhibition city at the level of Aleppo province.
The project of labor housing has also started on an area of 258 hectares in coordination with the Public Housing Establishment, we are currently coordinating with the Union of Artisans in the first handicraft area, which provides about 500 artisans plots.
600 industrial establishments currently operating took off in the Industrial City, 50% of them are textile establishments, followed by engineering industries with about 150 establishments and the rest is distributed to the chemical and food industries.
Hussam Salahia – Owner of a textile facility: After the liberation of the industrial city we returned and renewed our work and now produce bathrobes and dyeing yarns, our yarns industry is national product.
Anas Dabbagh – owner of a facility for engineering industries and heaters: We were working before the war and despite the crisis and the damage done to us where the factory was sabotaged, we re-repaired and worked and continue to work. We produce everything related to heaters, we provide the needs for the local market and we export to Lebanon and other countries.
Omar Oso – Owner of Food Industries Establishment: We manufacture tahini and halawa in addition to jam. Production stages start with sesame, we add sugar to make halawah.
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Syria is under unprecedented draconian sanctions by the USA and a host of countries under its control, these sanctions are imposed to punish the Syrian people for not accepting the US hegemony like its other slaves around the world and to impede the rebuilding of the country after almost 9 years of the US-led War of Terror.
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