Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent warm greetings to African leaders, business people and participants early October, signaling that everything is set for the first Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi, southern coastal city of Russia.

The message reads, in part:

“Today, the countries of Africa are well on their way towards social, economic, scientific and technological development, and are playing a significant role in international affairs. They are strengthening mutually beneficial integration processes within the African Union and other regional and sub regional organizations across the continent.”

In recent years, the traditionally friendly ties of partnership between Russia and Africa have gained new momentum, both at a bilateral level and in various multilateral formats. In addition to preserving past experience of successful cooperation, have also managed to make significant new steps forward.

Trade and investment are growing dynamically, and new joint projects are under way in extractive industries, agriculture, healthcare, and education. Russian companies are ready to offer their scientific and technological developments to their African partners, and share their experience of upgrading energy, transport and communications infrastructures, according to President Putin.

It is, broadly, expected that the Summit will help identify new areas and forms of cooperation, put forward promote collaboration between Russia and Africa to a qualitatively new level and further contribute enormously to the development of bilateral relations between Russia and Africa.

According to the Organizing Committee, some 50 African heads of state have already confirmed their participation. It will feature more than 200 CEOs, ministers of key industries, and representatives of the expert community from Russia and Africa. The events will be attended by more than 3,000 representatives of African businesses.

The main event are the plenary session “Russia-Africa: Uncovering the Potential for Cooperation” during which the Presidents of Russia, Vladimir Putin, and Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, are expected to speak. A final declaration of the Summit titled “For Peace, Security, and Development” has been prepared and it includes items on the global and regional agendas that are important for Russia as well as comprehensive proposals on diverse ways to develop the full scope of future Russian-African relations.

In addition, at least 23 intergovernmental and interagency agreements and other agreements between African and Russian companies will be signed on the sidelines.

Under the theme “Russia and Africa: Uncovering the Potential for Cooperation” here are the key areas the Summit will discuss:

The Role of Media in Russian-African Relations

The African continent is becoming ever more important in today’s international order. Russian-African relations are adding an additional dimension to developments, especially with the boost provided by rapidly expanding links across a vast range of areas.

The media can, and indeed must be a decisive factor in building effective ties. Africa is frequently portrayed in the media as suffering from numerous intergovernmental, religious, and ethnic conflicts; political and economic instability; and an array of demographic and social problems. Knowledge of today’s Russia and the steps being taken by its political leaders to tackle global challenges is also given little space in the continent’s media landscape.

Contribution of Nuclear Technologies in the Development of Africa

Today, African countries face major challenges. Rapid population growth and the worsening energy crisis are constraining economic growth on the continent. The poor transport infrastructure, access of the population to health services, low level of education and food supply insecurity are severely hampering Africa’s efforts to improve the quality of life in the region. It is clear that to solve these problems a large-scale development programme is required, including a strategy based on achieving the UN sustainable development goals. Nuclear technologies can become a driver for socio-economic development and a comprehensive solution to the systemic continent-wide problems.

Humanitarian cooperation: Development Goals and Corporate Social Responsibility

Humanitarian partnership between Russia and African countries is becoming increasingly important. It is an area covering the development of human capital (education and culture), social programmes, healthcare, and access to essential benefits supporting people’s lives and national development in countries across the continent.

Current Objectives in Developing the Housing Construction Market on the African Continent

Access to housing is one of the most pressing issues facing most African countries. Modern housing and a comprehensive approach to spatial planning can help ensure sustainable urban development and socioeconomic growth. We must now determine the needs of the housing construction market in African countries and identify joint solutions and ways of working together to achieve the most effective results in the shortest possible time. Practical steps aimed at identifying, supporting, and implementing joint projects are vital to such partnerships.

Investing in Africa

In 2050, Africa’s total GDP will reach $29 tn, exceeding the combined GDP of US and Euro zone in 2012. Pan-African and national growth strategies as well as global thinktanks’ forecasts highlight the following growth areas and potential key drivers of the continent’s rise in the medium and long term: commodities; infrastructure (utilities and roads) and industrialization; demography; education; expanding middle class; access to financial services. These factors will define the continent’s investment outlook: future investment climate, current investments and their diversification. They have potential either to bolster or hamper the capital inflows.

Economic Sovereignty for Africa: Problems and Solutions

In order to fulfil their development objectives and meet the needs of their citizens, countries in Africa are compelled to turn to foreign sources of financing. However, these mainly take the form of credit from international financial institutions and direct loans whereby the creditor imposes socioeconomic and political requirements which limit a country’s sovereignty. Sovereign bonds and other forms of borrowing on the capital market account for just a small proportion of African debt, but some countries on the continent are still unable to access this form of financing. As a result, more than USD 100 billion of borrowing potential is going untapped. More than USD 200 billion of existing debt could be refinanced under less stringent conditions.

Russia and Africa: Energy for Development and Cooperation

Africa today has a population of over one billion people, huge resource potential and a platform for development. The continent has the potential to become one of the world’s largest economies and most populated regions by 2050 through organic growth and reform. Creating a foundation for growth at the very outset and using the continent’s mineral wealth in the most effective way possible requires the right energy policy.

Transport Infrastructure on the African Continent: Opportunities to Implement Joint Projects

The transport sector in Africa possesses excellent potential for development. The continent’s railways offer great promise, as do joint ventures. Several African nations have prioritized the development of their transport infrastructures, particularly given transport’s ability to spur growth in key industries. The expansion of transport links brings with it additional jobs and expertise, and improves quality of life for the local population. Russia is able to offer technology and expertise at the very forefront of construction, planning, engineering, and equipment supplies. However, there remain a number of barriers to the market, as well as a lack of financing and country specific risks.

Financing as an Essential Instrument of Economic Growth in Africa

The African continent has enormous economic potential and is actively integrating into the system of international economic relations. Prospects for Russia to increase its trade with African countries are directly linked to the diversification of its merchandise exports. However, this is only a realistic aim if international financing channels are put in place to facilitate growth in trade. Given the interest in Russia and Africa increasing economic cooperation, new solutions need to be found to implement ambitious trade projects.

Russian–African Collaboration in the Diamond Industry

The diamond mining industry is key to the economies of several African countries, accounting for a significant portion of income from exports. Today, diamond mining faces a number of industry-wide challenges, attempts to tackle which will determine its future.

The Future of the African Continent: Sovereignty and Traditional Values as Crucial Elements of a Development Strategy

In an era of globalization, protecting national values and priorities is a pressing concern. Economic and political sovereignty are the foundation of development in a polycentric world, and African countries are no exception. The African Union’s strategic framework Agenda 2063 highlights the importance of preserving African values and Pan-Africanism.

Collaboration in Industry: Potential Areas of Growth

The development of high-tech and export-oriented industries in the Russian manufacturing sector has laid the groundwork for expanding areas of collaboration and launching ambitious long-term projects. What needs to be done to bring about a substantial improvement in collaboration between Russia and Africa? Which areas of cooperation are of most interest to Russian businesses and African nations? What projects and forms of Russian-African partnership are in need of financial support from parties such as Afreximbank?

Doing Business in Africa: Challenges and Opportunities

Today, Africa is one of the most promising and fastest-growing regions of the world, with leading powers actively competing with one another. However, the continent should not be viewed as a single, monolithic market. Its economy varies from place to place in terms of type, scale, and structure. Africa today is a place of great political, cultural, ethnic, and religious diversity. As a result, each country has a unique business culture, requiring an individual approach from any company wishing to enter its market.

Biosecurity: Current Projects and Opportunities for Cooperation

Global threats in today’s interconnected world, such as epidemics of infectious diseases, have a huge impact on the development of African nations. Robust healthcare systems and the ability to react to these threats can boost prosperity and help countries to thrive. Over the past few years, the African continent has had to tackle outbreaks of dangerous infectious diseases affecting thousands of lives and costing national economies millions of dollars. Russia has a great deal of experience in reacting to health threats, and today is implementing large-scale projects in countries around the world.

Digital Transformation as a Driver of State Development

Today, digitalization is a major driver of state development. Effective e-government simplifies communication between people and the state, and helps create an effective system for departments to interact with one another. As a result, people gain quicker access to government services. In turn, this leads to greater user satisfaction, and substantial monetary savings.

The Eurasian Economic Union and Africa: Trends and Opportunities to Develop Integrated Processes and Collaborate

Over the past few decades, economic integration processes have become an overarching trend in regional development throughout the world. They have helped member states to successfully embed themselves in the global economy and minimize the risk of crises occurring in various industries. Economic integration provides a new perspective on crucial projects related to infrastructure, logistics, energy, trade, agricultural and industrial development, digitalization, migration policy, and employment.

It offers additional opportunities to form common approaches to issues concerning the environment, renewable energy, and other factors determining scientific and technological progress. In view of the substantial expertise that regional associations offer, the next logical step is to foster dialogue between them and exchange experience at the forefront of integration, with the aim of optimizing economic integration processes and collaborating on the widest possible range of issues.

Technological Sovereignty and Security in a Digital World: Solutions to Tomorrow’s Challenges

Africa’s fast-growing commercial sector is making rapid inroads in the virtual space. African companies are overcoming problems related to communication and financial infrastructure and choosing to immediately build their business online, implementing modern mobile solutions as they do so. However, the cyber security measures used by these fast-growing companies cannot keep up with their rapid development, leaving the companies vulnerable to cyber criminals.

In terms of governmental information systems, a monopolization of global IT markets by a handful of major Western corporations could result in financial losses in Africa, threatening citizens’ personal safety and Africa’s sovereignty at large. Russian companies are global leaders in digital security and are capable of protecting African businesses from cyber threats while ensuring digital sovereignty for African states. Success can be guaranteed through building partnerships between African and Russian companies and training up an IT security workforce in each country.

Using Minerals in Africa for the Benefit of Its Peoples

There is a long history of Soviet and Russian specialists participating in and supporting the systemic geological study of a number of countries in the African continent. Their work on natural resource bases has done a great deal to aid mineral extraction. These countries now have the opportunity to leverage modern means of geological research and exploration, and in doing so, continue the comprehensive study of subsoil resources. This could lead to new and globally unique sites being developed, both on land and the continental shelf.

Business Associations in Russia and Africa: A Starting Point for Long-Term Business Partnership

A major barrier hindering greater cooperation between the Russian and African business communities is a lack of awareness regarding the current state of markets, along with trade and investment opportunities. There is also an insufficient level of trust towards potential partners. These issues can be solved through establishing an effective system of communication between public business associations in Russia and African nations. These organizations can both serve the interests of entrepreneurs, and also guarantee their reliability and integrity.

Russia and Africa: Science, Education, and Innovation for Economic Development

The accelerated development of both Russia’s and Africa’s economic potential is inextricably linked to scientific output and the improvement of general education and professional training. The 21st century has heralded the rise of the knowledge economy. Scientific research and development results in new products and industries, and is able to make a vital contribution to tackling current social and economic challenges facing our countries. The Soviet Union made an invaluable contribution to developing the scientific and educational potential of a number of African countries.

A Safe Africa

Illegal migration, contraband, and criminal activity are all too frequent problems facing the African continent. The biggest threat of all though is terrorism. Experts agree that to ensure a country’s national security, a set of measures needs to be taken, along with preventative action to combat possible threats. The biggest vulnerabilities in this regard include weak border control, unprotected industrial facilities, and large urban areas where it becomes easy to disappear into a crowd. An effective set of measures has been developed in Russia to counter terrorism, curtail illegal activity, and provide dependable protection for citizens. Russian organizations and companies are ready and able to share their experience with African partners.

Drivers of Growth in National Healthcare Systems

National healthcare systems are simply unable to cope economically with the burden of disease in Africa. Particular attention is given to infectious diseases; however, there is a growing need to fight against cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes. What’s more, the high cost of medicines and services, together with a shortage of vital modern equipment, is hindering access to medical care in African countries.

The lack of medical personnel is a particularly pressing problem. Cutting-edge technologies, such as mobile phones, blockchain, 3D printing, UAVs, and others clearly need to be applied as drivers of growth in this area. If used correctly, they could significantly improve the quality of medical services while cutting costs. The high number of people in Africa suffering from chronic diseases and requiring remotely administered care and treatment will spur the development of telemedicine.

New Forms of Cooperation between Russia and Africa: Opportunities for Special Economic Zones Based on the Project to Establish a Russian Industrial Zone in Egypt

A new model for the development of production lines is based on closing the gap between production and delivery to the end consumer, minimising logistical and technical expenses and facilitating projects with a social dimension to successfully develop the local economy. Based on this logic, creating and facilitating conditions conducive to competitive production, including the production of quality hi-tech products, can be done most effectively through the use of points of entry.

Such points draw on the advantages of special (free) economic zones, which provide additional competitive advantages when gaining access to local markets. The project to create a Russian Industrial Zone – devised and implemented at the interface between governments, state development institutions and business communities – is a unique step toward ensuring state investment and implementing the industrial zone mechanism to support access to foreign markets for relevant companies.

Digitalization in the Mining Industry: New Opportunities, Robots, Artificial Intelligence

Africa is a world leader in volume of reserves and the extraction of many valuable raw materials and fuels, over 90% of which is then exported. The mining industry forms the basis of many countries’ industrial capacity and exports and accounts for around 75% of all foreign investments. Traditional field development methods are becoming increasingly expensive. Productivity is dropping due to high maintenance costs, unreliable equipment, reactive troubleshooting, low capacity factors, and incidents related to safety violations.

Russian Geological Exploration in Africa: Looking to the Past and to the Future

Africa is exceptionally rich in mineral reserves, although these have not yet been studied comprehensively. Compared with other continents, it boasts the largest ore reserves of manganese, chromite, bauxite, gold, platinum, cobalt, diamond, and phosphorite. It also has substantial oil, natural gas, graphite and asbestos reserves. Russian companies, for their part, have a wealth of experience leading exploratory work and are interested in working on the African continent.

Creating a New Quality of Life in Africa

Africa has the fastest-growing population in the world. Over 50% of people living in Africa are under the age of 26. At the same time, the quality of life in the African continent is one of the lowest in the world.

Women in Russian-African Relations: Gender Balance in Politics, the Economy and the Social Sector

Developing female entrepreneurship and leadership is currently of interest in every region of the world and is discussed at platforms of leading international organisations and associations. According to forecasts, women’s full involvement in the economy will allow global GDP to reach 28 trillion dollars by 2025, which is equal to that of the Chinese and US economies combined. On average, a woman in Europe currently earns 15% less than a man working in the same position. This gender gap is even more pronounced in Africa and Asia. In 2019, Russia presented an integrated systemic development model entitled ‘Women and the economy’ at UNIDO, which was formed on the basis of best practice in Russia and beyond.

The Contribution to Global Sustainable Development Made by Young People in Russia and Africa

It is crucial that young people play a role in international cooperation and efforts to build an environment allowing young leaders and entrepreneurs to be fully involved in efforts to tackling global challenges. These aims also tally with the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Collaboration between young people in Russia and Africa can be strengthened by exchanging best practices and working together on specific projects. Leadership and startup communities play a particularly important role in establishing partnerships, as these are the most effective mechanisms for enacting a structural shift in the socioeconomic sphere.

Oil and Gas Projects in Africa: Implementation Prospects

The African continent’s oil reserves are estimated at 129.2 billion barrels, or 7.5% of global reserves, and it produces 8.2 million barrels per day, representing 8.6% of global production. There is significant potential for the continent to increase production and monetize reserves. At the same time, Russian companies currently have a limited presence in the region. Broadening Russian-African cooperation could boost competition and efficiency in field development, and provide an additional stimulus for efforts to localize equipment and strengthen technological partnership.

Sustainable Partnership in Agriculture: Institutions, Tools, and Guarantees

The steady development of African countries in the last few years, together with growing populations and income levels are all factors helping to boost agricultural production. However, a deficit of modern technology, lack of land suitable for farming, and a shortage of qualified personnel mean that the needs of the African market have not been fully met.

Russia’s unique geographic conditions, together with its vast land and water resources, provide the country with enormous agricultural potential. In the past few years, Russian companies have taken active steps to increase exports of agricultural products and food. Indeed, Russia is already one of the ten largest food suppliers to Africa. However, a range of barriers related to infrastructure is currently hindering effective trade. Removing these could help collaboration reach an entirely new level.

The Roscongress Foundation, a socially oriented non-financial development institution, is the organiser of the events, and the Russian Export Center and Afreximbank are the co-organisers of this first Russia-Africa Summit.

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Kester Kenn Klomegah writes frequently on Russia, Africa and BRICS. He is the author of the Geopolitical Handbook titled “Putin’s African Dream and The New Dawn: Challenges and Emerging Opportunities” devoted to the first Russia-Africa Summit 2019.

Uneasy Damascus/Kurdish Alliance

October 17th, 2019 by Stephen Lendman

Throughout most of Obama’s war, now Trump’s, against Syrian sovereign independence and territorial integrity, Kurdish YPG fighters and their politicians allied with US imperial aims for their own self-interest — including support for jihadists used as Pentagon/CIA proxy foot soldiers.

Kurdish betrayal complicates rapprochement with Damascus. Trust must be earned. Kurds have lots of proving to do.

For now, an uneasy alliance was formed against a common Turkish foe. Southfront said agreed on terms between both sides haven’t been revealed — each side with its “own version of events,” adding:

For Kurdish politicians and fighters, it’s for “the defense sphere only,” a political agreement to be discussed “in the coming days.”

Russia is acting as “guarantor” of terms agreed on, Moscow alone able “to prevent the further Turkish incursion into northeastern Syria.”

If things go as planned, Syrian forces will be deployed along areas bordering Turkey to “guarantee” Syrian Arab Republic territorial integrity — what Russia called for throughout years of war, along with preserving the country’s sovereignty.

“(A)reas captured by” Turkish and proxy fighters will remain active conflict theaters until “liberated,” said Southfront.

According to Damascus, oil-producing areas east of the Euphrates river must be returned to government control.

Assad may grant concessions to Kurds short of an autonomous state within the Syrian Arab Republic — maybe something along the lines of the US federal system.

Under the US 10th Amendment,

“powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Something like the above might work for both sides. As for Turkish cross-border aggression, Erdogan wants to seize and control as much Syrian territory as possible, part of his revanchist agenda.

Syrian Arab Army forces aim to preserve and protect the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity against all illegal foreign occupiers.

Syrian troops entered and control strategic Manbij, its surrounding areas, Kobani, Raqqa, Tabqa, Ayn Isa, and areas near Tell Tamr, Kurdish YPG fighters operating alongside them.

Russian military police are deployed between their forces and Erdogan’s to prevent both sides from clashing — a key objective.

US troops still illegally occupy southern Syrian territory. Its special forces and CIA elements may be operating covertly anywhere in the country.

Pentagon-led terror-bombing remains a constant threat, along with continued arming and training of ISIS and other jihadists on its regional bases.

On Wednesday, Erdogan claimed Turkish forces control about 1,000 sq. km of northern Syrian territory.

On Thursday, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that Ras al-Ayn civilians in harm’s way of Turkish aggression were hospitalized with “severe burns” believed to be from (banned) “chemical substances,” adding:

“(S)ources (reported that) the Turkish regime used the internationally-banned (white) phosphorus in shelling residential neighborhoods in Ras al-Ayn city.”

US-dominated NATO and Israel use chemical, biological, radiological, and other banned terror weapons against adversaries time and again, accountability never forthcoming.

In response to Trump’s letter to Erdogan discussed in a same-day article, Turkish media reported that it was “rejected…and thrown away,” an unnamed Ankara source saying:

“The straightest answer to this letter is the Operation Peace Spring, which began on October 9,” adding:

“Trump understood such proposals were not valid. (He) has seen that he cannot make Erdogan do anything with the mediation offer.”

Erdogan and Trump will meet next month in Washington. On October 22, the Turkish president will meet with Vladimir Putin in Sochi, Syria the topic of discussion for both meetings.

On Thursday morning in Ankara, Trump’s national security advisor Robert O’Brien and special presidential envoy James Jeffrey met with Turkish foreign minister Cavusoglu — reportedly only for “45 minutes…no further details…given” on how talks went, according to Turkish media.

On Wednesday, Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said

“(n)either sanction threats nor condemnations can deter us from our rightful cause (sic),” adding:

So-called “Operation Peace Spring will continue without slowing down until it reaches its aims.”

There’s nothing “rightful” about aggression, the highest of high crimes by one state against another.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Liberty Nation

Gaza

Treating drug-resistant infections in Gaza under the blockade

Medicin Sans Frontieres 2 Sept. 2019-More than 7,400 Palestinians have been injured by live ammunition during protests in Gaza.  About half of those suffering from open fractures, in which the bone is broken near the wound.  More than 1,000 of them have developed bone infections; these serious and complex wounds require months – if not years – of dressing, surgery, and physiotherapy. Infections prevent recovery and many of them are resistant to antibiotics.  To prevent the spread of resistant bacteria, those with resistant infections have to be isolated in a single room for six weeks. Everyone entering the room must wear protective clothing and clean their hands. MSF has developed the first lab in Gaza that is able to analyze bone samples.

Palestinian protester injured by Israeli sniper fire dies in hospital

Peoples Dispatch 2 Sept. 2019-A Palestinian protester shot by Israeli security forces during the weekly Great March of Return protests in August, succumbed to his injuries at the Gaza European Hospital. According to sources, he was shot by an Israeli army sharpshooter in the southern part of the Gaza strip. More than 6,000 Palestinians participated in the August protests.

17-year old Ali al-Ashqar killed at Gaza protest

Electronic Intifada 30 Sept. 2019-Ali al-Ashqar, age 17, a young participant of the Great March of Return, threw one stone on September 6 while standing 80 meters from the separation wall in Gaza. He was immediately shot by an Israeli sniper who prevented medics from reaching him before he bled to death.

Gaza children’s mental health rapidly deteriorating

Norwegian Refugee Council 25 March 2019-A study conducted by the Norwegian Refugee Council found that 68 percent of schoolchildren in areas close to the Israeli perimeter fence has clear indications of psycho-social distress. The majority said they were most severely affected by the sounds of nearby explosions and media images of conflict in Gaza.  One year since the start of mass protests along the perimeter fence with Israel, children have reported witnessing violence first hand, as well as knowing people who have been injured, killed or lost their homes. Fifty-four percent said they had no hope for a brighter future. Eighty-one percent of children struggle academically due to conflict-related stress.

Qatar Red Crescent backs healthcare sector in Gaza

The Gulf Times 1 Sept. 2019-Qatar Red Crescent is implementing a mega project to enhance the health sector in Gaza, by providing medical expertise and training to staff.  The multifaceted project involves hiring consultants in pulmonology, internal medicine, cardiothoracic surgery, neonatology, and urology.  Other capacity-building components of the program include MA in Mental Health at the Al Quds University (Abu Dis campus) and Diploma in Anesthesia and Intensive Care at the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG). Read more: The Peninsula

Unclaimed rockets sent across Gaza’s frontier prompt Israeli authorities to cut electrical power in sweltering summer heat

Middle East Eye 26 August 2019-The impact of power cuts is felt in almost every aspect of the life of Gaza’s residents. Food can no longer be kept in the fridge, staying at home is unbearable due to the heat, and even the simple task of visiting relatives would have to depend on the highly unreliable electricity schedule. Businesses, schools, and hospitals are disrupted and the majority of people cannot afford a generator.

West Bank

Another fatal attack on a Palestinian woman occurred near a checkpoint in Ramallah on September 28

Electronic Intifada 18 Sept. 2019-Israeli forces shot 28-year-old Alaa Wahdan in the legs and prevented Palestinian Red Crescent personnel from providing timely medical treatment.

The murder of a young Palestinian woman by her family has sparked widespread protests against misogyny, honor killings, and the Israeli occupation

+972 Magazine 23 Sept. 2019-One consequence of the murder of Israa Gharib has been a campaign for a new law against gender violence in the West Bank.

Israeli raids office of Palestinian prisoner rights group

Middle East Eye Sept. 19 2019-“Addameer sees this raid as a part of ongoing and systematic attacks against the Palestinian civil society organization,” said the Palestinian prisoner rights group Addameer in a statement published by Middle East Eye. “Addameer reassures that those constant raids will not stand in the face of any duties the organization has for Palestinian political prisoners.”

Constant fires of trash and waste, much if it acquired from Israel, is contaminating fields where sheep once grazed in the southern West Bank

The New York Times 12 Sept. 2019-In villages in the Hebron area an estimated 80% of households rely directly or indirectly on handling electronic waste to survive. On the villages’ outskirts and along the separation wall — where Israeli and Palestinian security is largely absent — the burning of cables, useless e-waste scraps and trash have blackened the soil and saturated once fertile pastures with what Dr. Garb calls a “witches’ brew” of contaminants.

UN High Commissioner should immediately release Settlement Business Database

Human rights Watch 23 Sept. 2019-Almost 4 years have passed since the UN Human Rights Council approved without opposition resolution 31/36 mandating the establishment of a database of businesses that are engaged in certain, specific activities in the occupied Palestinian territory that are either explicitly linked to Israeli settlements or form part of processes that “enable and support the establishment, expansion and maintenance of Israeli residential communities beyond the Green Line. HRW has requested that the High Commissioner release the data before the end of the current session.

Israeli Supreme Court will hear arguments against deportation of Human Rights Watch’s Israel and Palestine Director, accused of promoting boycott

NPR 23 Sept. 2019-The Israeli Supreme Court will hear HRW’s appeal of a deportation order against its Israel and Palestine Director, Omar Shakir. Israel has caricatured HRW’s call on companies to stop doing business in settlements in order to avoid contributing to rights abuses, as “promoting boycotts,” and sought to deport Shakir from the country. HRW argues that these are attempts to stifle criticism and should be a concern for all who care about democracy, human rights and freedom of expression in Israel. Amnesty International recently joined the appeal, citing potential ramifications for them and other rights groups. Read more: Haaretz

Israel’s fiscal standoff impacts environment and health of Palestinians.

Down to Earth 11 Sept. 2019-180 Palestinian communities in the West Bank (more than 20 percent) lack access to good quality water, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and UN Conference on Trade and Development ((UNCTAD). Among those living in East Jerusalem, only 44 percent are formally connected to the water network. The oPt is also facing serious public health risks with Israel dumping large amounts of hazardous waste including sewage sludge, infectious medical waste, used oils, solvents, metals, and electronic waste and batteries.  The shortage of electricity, destruction, and disrepair of the sanitation infrastructure has severely affected the environment in Gaza. More than 100 million liters of untreated sewage is discharged into the Mediterranean Sea daily, causing extensive contamination of beaches — four times higher than the international environmental standards — and also impacting the fishing economy.

UN Report on fiscal crisis in Palestinian economy

UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process 23 Sept. 2019-A newly published United Nations report highlighted the urgency to resolve the continuing fiscal crisis faced by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and to support the Palestinian economy. It called for increased attention to Gaza’s health system. According to the report, an evolving health crisis in Gaza is caused, in part, by limited electricity supply to healthcare centers and hospitals, dual-use restrictions on medical equipment and a shortage of medicines and disposables.  The report called for the Palestinian Ministry of Health’s full cooperation with this effort. “To move away from humanitarian assistance, fundamental improvements to health care infrastructure, including increased electricity supply, access to clean water, upgrading of medical equipment and establishing a transparent and effective supply chain for medicines and other essential goods are key,” the report added. Read more: MENAFN, Emirates News Agency

Update on Palestinian prisoner hunger strike

Electronic Intifada 25 Sept. 2019-Some 140 Palestinian prisoners have been rejecting food for more than two weeks after Israel failed to cease jamming their phone reception, and to install public telephones, preventing them from communicating with the outside world, which Israel had agreed to do following a previous hunger strike. Some 460 are being held in “administrative detention”, under which Israel can imprison individuals without charge or trial and detainees are not allowed to see the evidence against them.

Ten-minute video by BBC gives a thorough overview of Palestinian childhood detention by the Israeli military

BBC 28 Aug. 2019-Many interviews with experts and several children themselves. This is a concise and excellent resource–pass it on to your MOC to urge them to sign onto HR 2407–Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act.

Israel

Israel’s highest court ruled in September that Israel can legally hold the bodies of ‘slain terrorists’ for leverage in negotiations with the Palestinians

Electronic Intifada 19 Sept. 2019-The remains of more than a dozen recently killed Palestinians are being held for such purposes.

Palestinian prisoner Bassam al-Sayih, 46, died at the Yitzhak Shamir Medical Center in Tel Aviv

PCHR 9 Sept. 2019-He was suffering from bone cancer when he was arrested and imprisoned by Israeli occupation forces on 8 October 2015 on suspicion of involvement with the killing of two Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. Over the subsequent four years, he was not granted a trial, never sentenced, and his medical condition neglected, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. His death was “due to torture, medical negligence and stalling in giving him the medical care he needed,” prisoners rights group Addameer His is the third death within Israeli prisons in 2019.

United States

Harvard president expresses concerns about obstacles facing foreign scholars, interview on ‘All Things Considered’

NPR 3 Sept. 2019-Ismail Ajjawi, a Palestinian who was due at Harvard this fall as an incoming freshman, was denied entry to the U.S., had his visa canceled, and was sent home to Lebanon.  He was allowed to come back in time for the start of classes at Harvard following meetings between Harvard’s president, Larry Bacow, Congress members, and the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security.   Mr. Bacow sat down with NPR to discuss his concerns about immigration and visa obstacles faced by other international students and faculty.

The contested whiteness of Arab identity in the US: implications for health disparities research

Sarah Abboud, Perla Chebli, Em Rabelais, Am J Public Health, published online ahead of print, September 19, 2019: e1–e4. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2019.305285

American Journal of Public Health Oct. 2 2019-In this commentary, the authors make the case that individuals of Arab descent in the United States are classified as White in the U.S. (but do not benefit from white privilege), and are not recognized as a minority group.  This is a form of structural violence that leaves them invisible, their needs unaddressed, and their health status impacted. Health disparities due to social exclusion, stigma, and discrimination are experienced by this group.  The authors call on the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) at the National Institutes of Health to acknowledge the undocumented health inequities that Arabs experience in the U.S. and to ensure their inclusion in the NIMHD’s new multi-domain health disparities research framework.International

Protests ahead of London arms fair to ‘Stop Arming Israel’

The People’s Dispatch 4 Sept. 2019-In early September, hundreds of people protested outside the venue which hosted the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair in London. The protesters, from the War on Want, demanded an end to the sale of weapons to Israel, due to its occupation of Palestine and other grave crimes. The DSEI fair is supported by the UK government. The executive director of War on Want said that the British government is “rolling out the red carpet for human rights violating regimes to buy the weapons of death.”

According to the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) the British government approved the sale of weapons and military equipment worth USD 17.8 million to Israel in 2018. In May 2018, just four days after Israeli forces massacred 68 Palestinians during the Great March of Return protests in Gaza, a deal for the sale of military training equipment to Israel worth USD 125,000 was approved.

Focus On: International Aid to Palestine, with pieces by Samer Abdelnour, Sam Bahour, Nora Lester Murad, Alaa Tartir, Jeremy Wildeman 

Al-Shabaka 4 Sept. 2019-The analysts argue that development cannot be understood as a mere technocratic, apolitical, and neutral process. Rather, it must be recognized as operating within relations of colonial dominance and rearticulated as linked to the struggle for rights, resistance, and emancipation.

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The legal battle over the extradition of Mun Chol-Myong to the United States continues, as Malaysian courts postpone judgment until the end of October. Mun is a 54-year-old citizen of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea who has lived in Malaysia since 2008.

He was arrested at the behest of the United States in May and charged with four counts of money laundering, two counts of conspiracy to launder money, and violating sanctions against the DPRK.

Although Malaysia approved the US extradition request, Mun filed a legal objection. He is currently being held without bail.

The charges stem from his work with Sinsar Trading Pte. Ltd., a Singapore-based company where he worked as a development officer.

Many compare his situation with that of three people in Singapore who were arrested for violating UN sanctions by sending perfume, wine, and watches to the DPRK. Unlike Mun, however, the US did not seek their extradition.

Jagjit Singh, Mun’s lawyer, denied the accusations and said recently that the US was using his client for political purposes in order to gain leverage over the DPRK. The case shows that the extent of the US’s bullying knows virtually no limits, and that there is no escaping the reach of the US government.

Further, it demonstrates the backward priorities of the US government.

This is clear when we contrast their approach to Mun with their approach to the billionaire Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma. Beginning in 1995 the Sacklers manufactured, promoted, and sold the deadly opiod, OxyContin.

Through aggressive marketing, bribery, and misinformation, the Sacklers are larely responsible for initiating the deadly opioid crisis in the US, which has taken tens of thousands of lives. Yet the Sacklers all remain free and remain billionaires.

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Dr. Derek Ford is Associate Professor, DePauw University.

Mumia Abu-Jamal Just One Step from Freedom

October 17th, 2019 by Noelle Hanrahan

From the minute Mumia picked up a microphone and a pen at the age of 14, Philadelphia’s notoriously racist police department has been seeking to silence him.  Just look at the FBI files- documenting that the Philadelphia PD Civil Disobedience Unit Red Squad trailed him — and the Police Chief Frank Rizzo targeted him — feeding his name to the FBI to put him on the “security index.”  Mumia was literally covering community events and rallies, and writing for the Black Panther Party Paper, all this while he was still in his teens!

During the 1995 PCRA hearings, 13 yrs after Mumia’s questionable murder conviction, a Philadelphia police officer was heard by a NY Times reporter outside the courtroom saying “we should have executed him that night.”

Remember: it was Philly cops who shot Mumia.  The Philly cops who brutally beat him at the scene, in the police wagon, and on the floor of the Jefferson Hospital emergency room entrance.

Joe McGill, the prosecutor on Mumia’s case, and Ed Rendell, the District Attorney at the time, worked closely with the police to frame and convict Mumia for the Dec. 9th 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.

In 2020, a new hearing in Philadelphia Common Pleas could be, and should be, free from bias.  Everyone knows that Mumia’s trial judge in 1981-1982 was s stone cold racist.   A current sitting homicide judge on the Common Pleas Court bench has commented that Albert Sabo was “the most racist and sexist judge I have ever met.”

Here is information that has been suppressed and buried for decades and now could be available for the first time during a new trial.

  • Did DA Joe McGill pay off witnesses with favors and cash?
  • Did McGill allow the cabbie with a suspended license to keep driving? Photos of the crime scene by the Philadelphia Bulletin prove the cab driver’s car was literally not at the scene.
  • Did Joe McGill illegally remove Black jurors because of their race?
  • Did Joe McGill track and fix the outstanding cases of other key witnesses?
  • Did the DA’s office for 37 yrs withhold and suppress critical information from Mumia’s criminal defense team?
  • Did judge Albert Sabo state “I am going to help them fry the n*****” in front of Judge Richard Klein and court clerk Terry Maurer Carter?
  • Did Alfonso Giordano Philadelphia Police Commander– the highest ranking officer on the scene of officer Faulkner’s murder on Dec. 9th 1981 falsely state that Mumia confessed while he was beating him in the police van?  At the time Giordano was under federal scrutiny for running gambling, extortion and payoffs and thus not used as a trial witness. He testified at pretrial hearings but was not “available” at trial.  He retired the day after Mumia was found guilty, with full pay. Soon thereafter he pleaded guilty to tax evasion for the bribes taken from illegal gambling in East Division, 29 officers were convicted in just that scandal alone.

A few months ago, I got a chance to speak with Maureen Faulkner.  I asked her:

What did she think was going to happen next in Mumia’s case? 

She replied:

“You have to go to Prison Radio’s website and listen. Judith Ritter, Mumia’s lawyer really thinks they have a chance.”   

Maureen, paused, and continued. She had to admit:

“We are in a really hard spot.  There is not much we can do, the way it is going…We have to fight to keep Mumia in prison as long as possible.” 

Finally the tides are turning. Justice is palpable.

While Maureen Faulkner, widow of Daniel Faulkner, is being put forward as the face of the opposition in recent court proceedings, the real players behind the scenes are the Fraternal Order of Police.  And they are worried. There is a lot of self-interest on the part of the 6500-member Philadelphia Police Union in toppling Larry Krasner, the popular new DA with an anti-corruption agenda.

Early this fall, in a groundbreaking development, Krasner filed a brief in Superior Court (see sidebar) agreeing that a new evidentiary hearing should be held in Mumia’s case by the Philadelphia Common Pleas court.  “The Commonwealth does not oppose defendant’s motion for a remand to the PCRA court for defendant to present newly-discovered evidence.”

This PCRA hearing would evaluate the evidence found in the six previously undisclosed banker boxes from Storage Room 17, that Larry Krasner found after taking office and turned over to the defense.   Maureen Faulkner tried to file an objection to the seeking removal of Krasner’s office. But just last week, her pro se application to intervention in the Superior Court Appeal was denied.

10-4-19 FOP breakfast Rally for Maureen, John “Jack” O’Neil, Esq.  Staff attorney for the IBEW Electrical Workers Union.  He is volunteering to assist Maureen.  He also ran against Krassner and placed a distant sixth.   Note that the “trades unions” in Philadelphia  share with the FOP a notoriously racist history.  The motto of both the IBEW and Lodge 5 – could easily be “protect upper middle class white jobs, at the expense of people of color.”  Note Krasner has identified and gone after a key lynch pin to the problem of mass incarceration: “police overtime” which is fed by the churning of false arrests in poor communities.  (see the 39th District scandal, and others).  

Fast forward to October of 2019, “Mumia Abu-Jamal is just one step away from Freedom”,  Maureen announced at her press conference at the DA’s office at 3 Penn Square in Philadelphia.

Things are changing. Grassroots organizing popularly elected a progressive District Attorney Larry Krassner who is willing to hold the police and former district attorneys accountable.  It has been 37 years, and we are closer to justice than we have been since the 1995 PCRA hearing. The courts may be slow to follow, but there is no way to go back. We are on the path to freedom.

You have been there, making it happen, each and every single step.  Thank you.

We all must remember that the Philadelphia police have been violent and racist and corrupt for decades. They have a lot to lose if Mumia wins — because when Mumia wins, the forces that support Black dignity and freedom are winning.

Let us not misunderstand the depth of racism – throughout the police department in Philadelphia.  Here is a picture of the brand new (this month) acting Police Chief Christine Coulter.  Here she is wearing an LAPD t-shirt mocking the beating of Rodney King.  “LAPD “We treat you like a King”. She did not resign when this photo surfaced.

John McNesby, the FOP Lodge 5 President, is deeply invested in continuing the brutal power that the Philly police department enjoyed in the past.   At the FOP Lodge Five Event in April he tells his brother officers: “Krasner is going after cops instead of keeping this city safe…We have so many officers on the do-not-call list, we could invade Cuba”.   This was a riff on the line by former Mayor and Police Chief Frank Rizzo that “We could invade Cuba and win”. The “do not call list” includes officers designated by the DA’s office as not available to testify at trial because they have been caught by the courts “test-a-lying” or they have been indicted.

The scandals regarding police corruption are splashed across the Philadelphia Inquirer’s front page each and every single week.  This week another African-American man was exonerated after proving police falsification of evidence. Willie Veasy’s return to his family after 27 years of bondage was the 10th so far this year.

Mumia Abu-Jamal will follow Willie Veasey out of imprisonment. But only because thousands of you have stood by him and committed to this fight for justice. We still have work to do, we still need every one of you to make sure that justice is done and Mumia comes home.

Join all of us. It is time to move this forward towards justice and freedom and bring Mumia home.

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Read the first part of this series here.

The elements of a new international financial crisis are in place. Although we do not know when it will break out, it is unavoidable, and its impact on world economy will be as significant as the 1880s-90s, 1930s-40s and more recent 2008-09 meltdowns. Worse, far fewer of the global capacities of the latter period – rapid lowering of interest rates, printing of money to buy up state debt (‘Quantitative Easing’), and sufficient fiscal space for bailouts – are available to global crisis managers. And most troubling, many more of the proto-fascistic political characteristics reminiscent of the 1930s are looming, especially in the new contextualisations of the Global South.

The contributing economic factors include:

  • sharply increased private debts of corporations;
  • speculative bubbles in financial asset prices: stock markets, debt security prices, and in some countries, the real estate sector (at the end of December 2018, a major stock market crash almost broke out in the United States and the contagion effect was immediate, an additional signal that a major crash will have as great a global impact as did 2008-09’s);
  • the major banks remain extremely fragile, with share values falling in the United States and Europe since the second half of 2018;
  • the US real estate market has become fragile again, overall global prices up by 50% since 2012, with lev- els in excess of those reached just before the crisis that began in 2005-2006;
  • Quantitative Easing policies in Europe and their return in the US (as the Federal Reserveeases interest rates in mid-2019 under pressure from President Donald Trump, running for re-election) represent further factors that have the effect of pushing ‘risk on’ funding into South African securities, but at the expense of further rapid outflows when ‘risk off’ sentiments dominate.

Total Debt (Corporate, Household, Government) in the World Economy, 2012-19

Source: Institute of International Finance 2019

Economic growth in the most industrialized “old” countries remains weak. Especially in Europe after low growth in 2017, the year 2018 ended with stagnation and in the case of Germany, a fall in industrial production in the 4th quarter. German authorities lowered their growth forecasts for 2019 to 1% (while in 2016-2017 the annual growth rate exceeded 2%). In the euro zone, growth in the third quarter of 2018 was only 0.2%, the lowest in 4 years. In Japan, growth over the year through period April 2018 – March 2019 was around 0.9%, also down on 2017. The US economy is also in a slowdown phase; the IMF forecasts growth of 2.5% in 2019 compared to 2.9% in 2018. In other words, the North continues to suffer sustained stagnation.

Moreover, Chinese growth is still slowing, as discussed below, as are the economies of the other BRICS, except for India, which is growing at just over 7% annually. Russia is experiencing very weak growth, of the order of 1.2% in 2018 and a forecast of 1.3% for 2019. South Africa was in recession in the first half of 2018, and again in 2019 was likely to fall into a technical recession thanks to -3.2% GDP growth rate in the first quarter. Brazil, which experienced a severe recession in 2015-2016, has regained some growth, but it is very low, at just over 1% in 2018, and out of desperation, the Bolsonaro government authorised a large interest rate cut in mid-2019.

Other so-called emerging countries are also suffering profound economic crises, especially Turkey, Argentina and Venezuela. The symptoms include devaluation of the currency, great difficulties in repaying public and private external debt, and rising joblessness; these are also the kinds of conditions that generate political instability, which all three countries have suffered in different ways in recent years.

To complete the set of gloomy indicators, we will consider the African continent in more detail below, where South Africa’s comparative advantage rests in exporting automobiles, construction and mining services, banking, cellular phones and other consumer goods through Johannesburg-based retail networks (in one case, Massmart, controlled from the US via Walmart). As discussed later, economic conditions are even worse for imports and FDI profit repatriation in Africa than in the rest of the world, as a result of structural exploitation, over-reliance on primary export orientation, and a new debt crisis.

The above remarks relate to the geographical categories within the world community of nations. When we expand our perspective to look at marginalised and oppressed peoples, along the lines of class and other categories, the picture appears even gloomier as a result of neo-fascistic tendencies in many parts of the world. All over the world, economic austerity and political offensives against workers, marginalised and oppressed peoples continue and worsen.

Women are the hardest hit, together with people of colour, indigenous peoples, migrants and young workers. In many instances, women will suffer multiple oppresions if these categorisations are inclusive (for example, young migrant women workers). In the case of all the above groups the offensive is partly a result of the position of these groups in the labour market, for example in historically worse paid jobs. In the case of women and also disabled workers, the impact of the offensive against public services also has a disproportionate impact. Women, who even in times of boom continued to have the major responsibility for caring for children, sick people and elderly people, are adversely affected by cuts in those services, resulting in them often being forced into even more marginal employment or out of the labour market all together. Disabled people who relied on the availability of certain services to work or live independently are similarly impacted.

This offensive operates on different levels:

  • repressive policies, including the tightening of immigration rules, attacks on abortion and contraception services, the abuse of indigenous lands for the extraction of extreme fossil fuel or biofuels against the wishes of those communities, etc;
  • the emboldening of the extreme right through hate offensives against those groups, including murders in indigenous communities in Brazil by ranchers, official Islamaphobia and anti-semitism, growth of ‘militant’ mobilisations against abortion clinics, increasing violent attacks against LGB and particularly trans people, and mass shootings;
  • diminishing support for the most marginalised sections of working people, in part by an aggrieved working class failing to provide solidarity when feminism, anti-racism, LGBTIQ liberation, immigrant rights are labeled as merely ‘identity’ politics, especially when this entails blaming the loss of jobs and services on migrants, women.

Apart from a very minority category of workers whose wages are very high – which makes them prone to allying with big business – almost all categories of waged workers are targeted by economic austerity. These include sectors that had historically succeeded in winning important rights, whether in the industrial sector, in public services, in the financial sector (banking, insurance) and in the commercial sector. Examples include:

  • the new precariousness of working conditions and contracts;
  • the facilitation of dismissals in part through technological change;
  • stagnation or a fall in the purchasing power of wage-workers and popular sectors in general;
  • increased retirement ages, with stagnation or fall in pensions;
  • decreased access to and quality of public services;
  • the reduction in the number of employees protected by collective agreements;
  • attacks on the rights of union members and the rights to organise and strike;
  • increased indebtedness of working class households all over the world (through consumer loans, mortgage debts, student debts, tax debts, microcredit for survival – and women represent more than 80% of the 120 million people who use such high-priced services worldwide – and rising peasant debts not only in countries like India where the phenomenon has taken on dramatic proportions but also in northern countries.

Source: Branko Milanovic

  • precarious work, especially the increase in part-time work by women in services (cleaning, catering, personal care);
  • destruction of public services such as public transport, childcare and healthcare, resulting in an increased unpaid workload for mothers; women’s pensions are structurally very low because of the years not worked (because of the need for care for small children at home);
  • discriminatory measures in the unemployment system include less income for “non-head of households,” who are mostly women;
  • sexual harassment of women in many sectors and in precarious employment (male power in hiring women, which were unveiled in #MeToo);
  • decline in access to abortion and contraception rights, in the United States at both local (city) and state levels; closure of family planning centres; non-reimbursement for contraception, lack of sexual education in schools; rise of anti-abortion religious groups in both the US and Latin America with the extreme example of Brazil (Poland and Ireland represent contrary forces given victories in reproductive rights mobilisations);
  • the rise of fundamentalism in India, Bangladesh, with more frequent public punishment of “adulterous” women or young women with non-approved sexual contact; but also revolt of young women against the extremely harsh family regime, e. g. Saudi Arabia;
  • calls for women to have more children in Turkey, Hungary, Poland, for nationalist reasons;
  • the Russian Federation’s Duma, under pressure from the authorities and the Orthodox Church, decriminalized domestic violence in 2017;
  • countries where 40% of serious crimes, primarily against women but also against children, occur in the family environment;
  • growth of the sex industry worldwide includes sale of women in Libya, slavery of immigrant women, growing pornography in prostitution, amongst other aspects;
  • ongoing inequality of women farmers even in small family farms, as Via Campesina regularly reports;
  • violence against women, including femicide, domestic violence, harassment of women on the streets;
  • in Italy, under pressure from lobbies of very virulent separated fathers, portrayed as as “masculinists”, fundamentalist components of the Catholic Church and a government formed by a coalition between an extreme right-wing party and the Five Stars movement, a project was launched to reform family law to make divorce much more difficult; and
  • in Argentina, in August 2018, parliament rejected the bill that legalized abortion.

All of these social processes combine home-based patriarchal power and a wider attack on the rights of women and the LGBTIQ movement by an authoritarian state. Globally, authoritarian forms of government are being strengthened without, so far, taking the form of military dictatorships. In spite of winning electoral contests, the new rightwing leaders are curtailing fundamental democratic freedoms. The means of the repressive forces have greatly increased, which allows for an increased intrusion into the lives of individuals and organisations. The use of preventive arrests is spreading, even in the “old” bourgeois democracies. Legislative and judicial powers are being reduced in many places to the benefit of executive power.

There is, of course, political resistance to all these trends. The various forms of attacks on workers’ rights, women’s rights, the rights of migrants, and on all categories of the oppressed and oppressed fortunately provoke many struggles all over the world. Feminist mobilisations are the most encouraging, but there are many others. Labour struggles are less important than before in a number of countries, but they are progressing in others such as China and Bangladesh. The new forms of organisation or mobilisation that partly respond to the loss of political weight of the organized workers movement are developing and making it possible to build new blocks of the working classes: there are similarities between the mobilisations of the Argentine piqueteros (2001-2003) and those of the Yellow Vests in France (2018-2019), as well as the 2011 movements of the ‘Arab Spring’ and the Occupiers, or the mobilisations in Greece (2011-15), Turkey (2013), Mexico against the increase in gasoline prices (2017), and those of Nicaragua (2018), Haiti (2018-2019), the Moroccan Rif (2018), Puerto Rico (2019), Hong Kong (2019) and many other places, including 18 African countries, as we see below. There are also regular mobilisations among school children in parts of the world; we are witnessing increasing mobilisation on the issue of climate, the environment and common goods.

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This article was originally published on CADTM.

Eric Toussaint is a historian and political scientist who completed his Ph.D. at the universities of Paris VIII and Liège, is the spokesperson of the CADTM International, and sits on the Scientific Council of ATTAC France. 

Patrick Bond is professor of political economy at the Wits University School of Governance in Johannesburg and co-editor of BRICS: An anti-capitalist critique (published by Haymarket, Pluto, Jacana and Aakar).

Source

Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Policy Paper #1/2 on South Africa’s Special Economic Zones in Global Context September 2019 By Eric Toussaint, Ishmael Lesufi, Lisa Thompson and Patrick Bond

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

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“Our proposal is for the terrorists to lay down their arms, leave their equipment, destroy the traps they have created, and leave the safe zone we designated, as of tonight,” Turkish President Erdogan said. “If this is done, our Operation Peace Spring will end by itself.”

Erdogan of Turkey has stated he will not order a ceasefire in Syria, even though his NATO partners have asked for it.  Pres. Trump has sent VP Pence to Ankara today to ask for a ceasefire, and to explain the consequences should Erdogan refuse.

Turkey began ‘Operation Spring Peace’ one week ago with the stated goal to eliminate Kurdish terrorists from the border region and to create a ‘safe-zone’ in northeast Syria for Syrian refugees currently in Turkey to return to.  Trump inadvertently gave the green-light to Erdogan in a phone call, after which Trump ordered the US troops in the area to withdraw.  Trump has explained his withdraw order was not a stamp of approval on Turkey’s military incursion into Syria but instead was done to keep the US troops safe.

Once Turkey began the military attack, first by airstrikes and then using ground troops, the international community, including American critics of Trump, began an outcry based on humanitarian concerns of a possible bloodbath of the Kurdish population.  Additionally, the US military and legislators have expressed dismay and regret at having left behind a valuable ally in the fight against ISIS: the Kurdish militia Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who were to be the target of the Turkish invasion into Syria.

The Kurds are a minority in Syria, and while they do have towns and villages in the northeastern corner of Syria, they are still a minority there. During the Syrian conflict which began in 2011, the Kurds of Afrin saw an opportunity to benefit from aligning themselves with the Obama backed Free Syrian Army’ (FSA), who were Syrian mercenaries supported by Obama and the US Congress.  The FSA was openly Jihadist, following the political ideology of Radical Islam, with the final goal of ‘regime change’ to pave the way for an Islamic government in Syria.  Obama and his right hand in Syria, Republican Senator John McCain, were not themselves adherents of Radical Islam, but used the assets on hand for ‘boots-on-the-ground’, knowing that the US Congress would never approve of a regime change’ project in Syria.  Getting US troops to invade Syria was too complicated, and the Jihadists were local assets that only required funding and weapons, which was done covertly through a CIA program, and then later McCain lobbied the US Congress for funding.  Trump pulled the plug on the CIA funding of the FSA, which had by then become Al Qaeda after the FSA failed to find support among the Syrian population, and was forced to recruit Jihadists from around the world, who came pouring in through Turkey.

The Kurds were fighting the Syrian government to establish a Kurdish ‘state’.  The FSA was fighting to establish an Islamic ‘state’ in Damascus, while the Kurds took advantage of the chaos throughout the country to take their piece of the pie: the northeastern section, which they began to call ‘Rojava’, and later they termed the Autonomous Administration of North East Syria (NES).   Their political ideology was extreme socialism and secular.  The majority of Kurds are Sunni Muslims, as were the FSA; however, we have seen in the Kurdish city of Kobani hundreds of the Sunni have changed their religion to American Evangelical Christianity, which is linked to the support of Israel.  A female, former Muslim, convert to the church in Kobani commented, “I don’t mind leaving Islam, but I want to continue to wear my headscarf.”

In 2014 the ISIS attacked Kobani and the Kurds fought back, and eventually became the US ally in the fight to defeat ISIS. The US military used the assets on hand to fight ISIS, and eventually, in a small village in northeast Syria, they were declared defeated in 2019.  It was the SDF who fought alongside the US troops to defeat ISIS, with the US having lost 5 soldiers, compared to about 11,000 Kurds. Many cautioned the SDF and their political wing in NES that the US would eventually abandon them, as they had done with the FSA. The Kurds had confidence their Rojava would remain, and they remained loyal to the US promises and support.

Posters of Abdullah Ocalan are plastered everywhere in Kobani, and throughout NES.  He is the imprisoned leader of the PKK, an internationally recognized terrorist group, responsible for 40,000 deaths in Turkey for over 30 years. The Kurds in Syria claim they are SDF and YPG and are not connected to PKK; however, you will see SDF soldiers with PKK patches on their uniforms, and with the posters of Ocalan everywhere, it is obvious that the Kurds are PKK, and the PKK are Kurds.  This did not bother the US Pentagon, because they had to use the assets on hand to defeat ISIS.

Erdogan continuously complained to the US about their support of Kurdish ‘terrorists’ in northeast Syria, even long after ISIS was defeated.  To Turkey, the SDF is the PKK and had set up a ‘state’, NES, on the Turkish border, and this was unacceptable and reason enough to invade Syria to neutralize the threat to Turkey’s national security.  Now, the Turkish ground troops are face-to-face with the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) at Manbij. The land is Syrian, the SAA are all Syrians, as it is mandatory military service in Syria for all males over 18 who are not enrolled in a University.  The SDF has recently agreed with Damascus to align with the SAA to repel the invasion of Turkey. However, the ground troops used by Turkey to invade Syria are not Turkish: they areSyrians who were formerly terrorists, who survived the battles against the Kurds and the US, and escaped to Turkey through Idlib, and fell into the open arms of the Turkish military, who saved them for the invasion of northeast Syria as they were the assets on hand.

Russian security forces are patrolling Manbij and are tasked with keeping the SAA and the former ISIS mercenaries employed by Erdogan from clashing.  The place is a tinder-box ready to blow. In a phone call between Russia and Turkey today, an invitation for Erdogan to meet Putin in Moscow was accepted.

“Everything related to the destiny and future of Syria is a one hundred percent Syrian issue, and the unity of Syrian territory is self-evident and not up for debate or discussion,” President Bashar al-Assad stated in his speech on August 2017.

After more than 8 years of war, the Syrian President’s promise is poised to be fulfilled for the Syrian people.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a Middle East observer. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have reached a groundbreaking deal with the Assad government.

This happened on October 13 evening after the US-led coalition expectedly abandoned their ‘local partners’ in face of Turkey’s Operation Peace Spring and an ‘accident Turkish shelling’ of a US military garrison near Kobani. Turkey is a NATO member state and a key US ally in the eastern Mediterranean. Ankara considers the SDF to be a terrorist group linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. So, it was hard to expect that the US would really fight the Turks on behalf of the Syrian Kurds.

Units of the Syrian Army already deployed in Manbij, Tabqah, Tabqah Dam, Ain Issa and other key areas in eastern Aleppo, western al-Hasakah and southern Raqqah. Russia, which was the main mediator between the SDF and Damascus, also sent its military police to Manbij. Official details of the agreement are yet to be revealed and all the sides involved in the northeastern Syria standoff seem to have own versions of events.

Watch the video here.

The SDF and affiliated Kurdish political organizations say that the deal with the Assad government was a least-evil solution and it was related to the defense sphere only. A political agreement still has to be reached and the sides are going to start negotiations in the coming days. SDF sources see Russia as a guarantor of the agreement and the only power that is able to prevent the further Turkish incursion into northeastern Syria. According to this version, the Syrian Army will be deployed along the Turkish border and its presence there will guarantee Syrian territorial integrity. The areas captured by the Turkish military and pro-Turkish groups will remain a zone of military actions until their liberation. They name the liberation of the Turkish-controlled region of Afrin as one of the points of the agreement. Sources close to Damascus say that the SDF will have to hand over to the government the control of oil fields on the eastern bank of the Euphrates.

In the political sphere, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), the only real military political power within the SDF, will seek to get recognition of their self-proclaimed Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria by Damascus. The format of this recognition and a possible Kurdish autonomy will depend on the course of negotiations and the development of the Turkish offensive.

The Syrian government has not released official comments on the deal with the SDF so far. The Syrian Army is also not hurrying up to start a fully-fledged war with Turkey on behalf of the SDF. In these conditions, the best strategy is to block directions of possible Turkish-led advance rather than engage the Turkish Army and Turkish proxies in an open battle. This turns the Turkish advance in northern Syrian into a race against time, whose main goal is to capture as much area as possible, while the Syrian Army has not come. The situation in Manbij is a demonstration of this approach:

On October 14, the Syrian National Army, a coalition of Turkish-backed armed groups, officially announced the start of advance on Manbij. However, no real advance happened, because the Syrian Army and the Russians came.

The Turkish behavior demonstrates that Anakra knows the rules of this game. On October 15, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the operation was ongoing successfully and Turkish forces ‘liberated’ 1,000km2. Erdogan added that his country aims to clear northern Syria of ‘terrorists’ (i.e. Kurdish armed groups) stretching from Manbij to the Iraqi-Turkish border. Nonetheless, this is just an official rhetoric that should not fully comply with the real actions. Turkey will likely gain control of the area between Tell Abyad and Ras al-Ayn, and the M4 highway south of these towns. What really matters is who will get control of the city of Ayn al-Arab (Kobani). In the current conditions, Ayn al-Arab is the only area, where clashes between the Syrian Army and Turkish-led forces can start if they reach it simultaneously. The fate of the town will likely be determined by some kind of behind the scenes deal among Ankara, Moscow and Damascus. At the same time, all the sides will continue to employ their formal rhetoric as if such a deal has never existed.

In own turn, US President Donald Trump used the Turkish operation to deliver his repeatedly delayed promise to withdraw American troops from the war-torn country, at least formally. US forces indeed abandoned their military garrisons in northern Syria about 1,000 personnel are withdrawing. However, the reduced contingent of about 150 troops will remain in place in the al-Tanf area as a part of Trump’s anti-Iranian strategy in the region. The US does not want the Damascus-Baghdad highway to be used by Iran to supply its allies in Syria and Lebanon. Additionally, the US-Israeli bloc uses the al-Tanf base to project its power on the Syrian-Iraqi border and monitor supposed Iranian operations in the area.

Another factor behind the US move is the need to improve its relations with Turkey. US military support to Kurdish armed groups in Syria used to be a factor of constant tension in the relations between Washington and Ankara. Now, it is removed. A new round of anti-Turkish sanctions announced by President Trump is mostly a formal move aimed at the US internal audience.

Meanwhile, the United States and Russia blocked attempts of the UN Security Council to condemn Turkey’s military action in northeastern Syria. If this was really a part of some unpublicized coordination, key powers involved in the conflict may be on the edge of reaching a long-expected wide political deal on settling the conflict in Syria.

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Will Iran be the Next to Withdraw from Syria?

October 17th, 2019 by Andrew Korybko

The smoothness with which the US’ “sudden” withdrawal played out and the Pentagon’s decision not to militantly enforce the so-called “deconfliction line” along the Euphrates River after the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) triumphantly crossed it en route to protecting their new Kurdish “allies” strongly suggest that these were premeditated decisions indirectly coordinated with Russia in advance as part of the “New Detente” whereby Moscow’s reciprocal “compromise” would be in “convincing” Damascus to request Iran’s dignified but “phased withdrawal” next on the “face-saving” basis that its anti-terrorist assistance is no longer required.

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Alt-Media is cheering the Syrian Arab Army’s (SAA) restoration of sovereignty over parts of the formerly US-occupied Northeast following America’s “sudden” withdrawal earlier this week, rightly believing that the kinetic phase of the nearly nine-year-long war is finally drawing to a close but prematurely celebrating what they’re convinced is the indisputably maximalist victory of President Assad over his foes without any “compromises” at all. It’s “politically incorrect” to question the narrative that this is supposedly the result of “5D chess grandmaster” Putin’s rapid judo-like response to the seemingly unforeseeable US-Turkish split over the YPG Kurds, but the “inconvenient truth” is that the smoothness with which the US’ departure from the region took place and the Pentagon’s decision not to militantly enforce the so-called “deconfliction line” along the Euphrates River after the SAA triumphantly crossed it like it unlike how it previously responded with disproportionately deadly force the last time this was attempted in February 2018 during the Disaster at Deir ez-Zor strongly suggest that these were premeditated decisions indirectly coordinated with Russia in advance as part of the “New Detente“.

Before explaining exactly why that may be and what quid pro quo it would entail on the Russian side, it’s important to clarify an “unpopular fact” that’s been largely suppressed by the Alt-Media Community since Turkey’s “Operation Peace Spring” was launched last week, which is that Russia — unlike most of the world except for the global pivot state of Pakistan — is actually in support of Ankara’s anti-terrorist actions. Lavrov reassured his country’s strategic partner at the beginning of September that its plans to jointly create a so-called ‘safe zone’ with the US were “absolutely legal” so long as they respected Syria’s territorial integrity, the latter point of which Turkey was reminded by Putin’s spokesman Peskov right after the operation began and to which Ankara agreed. Russia’s top diplomat later acknowledged that the Russian and Turkish still “maintain regular contact with each other”, which Peskov reaffirmed earlier this week after the news broke about the US’ planned withdrawal. Russian UN Representative Nebenzya even went as far as to blame the US-led coalition for Turkey’s invasion, boldly asserting that “this operation is the result of demographic engineering that some of the coalition partners did in the northeast of Syria”, while Peskov proclaimed that “We respect Turkey’s right to take measures for ensuring its security, but we expect the operation to be proportionate to the…tasks of ensuring security.”

Given these objectively existing, easily verifiable, and official statements of support for “Operation Peace Spring” by Russia, there should be no question about its position towards this campaign, thus meaning that the heavily propagated “interpretation” that Russia’s mediation of the SAA-YPG talks was somehow detrimental to Turkey’s interests is wrong. It’s true that Turkey would have preferred to have its proxies control the so-called “safe zone” instead of the SAA, but the latter are regarded by Ankara as the “lesser evil” compared to the YPG. Moreover, the argument can be made that Damascus’ restoration of sovereignty over the northern border with Turkey and the SAA’s new “alliance” with the YPG makes the Syrian government legally responsible for the actions of that armed group in the areas under its control, meaning that the Adana Agreement that Anakra based its three conventional military interventions on would be indisputably legal in any follow-up actions, thus conforming to its international interests as well as Russia’s. The author still believes that Trump sprung a trap on Turkey by purposely failing to fulfill its agreed-upon responsibility to keep the YPG away from the border in order to provoke Erdogan’s promised response in that scenario, but the outcome isn’t as bad for Ankara as it otherwise would could have been had Moscow not mediated the SAA-YPG agreement and thus prevented its strategic partner from getting stuck in a quagmire due to “mission creep”.

Back to Russia’s reciprocal “compromise” that it probably made in exchange for the preplanned US withdrawal that was just undertaken in response to the manufactured “sudden” pretext that America itself provoked from Turkey, Moscow will most likely seek to “convince” Damascus to request Iran’s dignified but “phased withdrawal” next on the “face-saving” basis that its anti-terrorist assistance is no longer required. The reason for this prediction is that Russia never made it a secret that it wants Iran to withdraw after the kinetic phase of the conflict ends, something that Tehran always said it would do if asked, whether it ever expected Damascus to actually do so or not. Putin reminded the world about this in his recent interview with Arab media (official Kremlin transcript here, key highlights here) before his trip to the Gulf when he said that “if Syria’s new legitimate government chooses to say that they have no more need for Russia’s military presence, this will be just as true for Russia. Right now, we are discussing this openly with all our partners, including Iran and Turkey. We spoke about it with our American partners many times. And I will be as open with you as I have been with my counterparts: Syria must be free from other states’ military presence.” Importantly, he also revealed that he spoke about the situation in Syria with both the Saudi and Emirati leaderships during his visits there.

These frank admissions, especially the one about the conversations that he’s had with his “partners” about their military withdrawal from Syria, convincingly makes it seem as though a large degree of the latest developments were agreed to ahead of time between the US, Russia, and possibly even Syria itself, although Moscow’s Astana “allies” in Ankara and Tehran were likely left in the dark about this the entire time. The US is already in the process of smoothly leaving Syria (not anxiously scrambling like have some misportrayed the withdrawal as being), but it didn’t militantly enforce the “deconfliction line” along the Euphrates River after the SAA crossed it in response to the YPG’s request because Washington must have already agreed with Moscow in advance to allow this to happen in exchange for Russia “convincing” Syria to subsequently request Iran’s dignified but “phased withdrawal” as well on the “face-saving” pretext that its anti-terrorist assistance is no longer required after Assad fulfilled his promise to liberate “every square inch” of Syria (except for Idlib that’s under Turkish control per the Damascus-approved Astana peace process). It’ll of course remain to be seen whether Iran really does end up leaving Syria, but if Putin secretly got Saudi Arabia and the UAE to agree to reinstate Syria to the Arab League if this happens and then contribute to its reconstruction soon thereafter (seeing as how he said in his latest interview that “it is time to get Syria back into the Arab family, to re-instate it in the Arab League”), then Damascus might have the financial incentive to finally do what’s been asked of it before Russia once again gives a wink and a nod to “Israel” to turn up the pressure in pursuit of this outcome.

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This article was also 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.

Featured image is from The Arab American News

U.S., NATO, Turkey Out of Syria!

October 17th, 2019 by Sara Flounders

The conflict within the U.S. ruling class about the Turkish invasion of northern Syria has created some confusion about events there. The latest new development — an alliance of Kurdish-based forces with the Syrian national army to defend the border from the Turkish army — may increase that confusion. To clarify the situation as best as possible, we need to state some basic positions and underline some basic facts.

First of all, U.S. imperialism never had, never has and never will have any legitimate “humanitarian” reason to station troops anywhere in Syria. Washington places troops in areas for strategic advantage and/or for economic domination. The reason U.S. troops have been in Syria and elsewhere in the region is for U.S. oil monopolies to control and exploit the natural resources — mainly fossil fuels, oil and gas — so the capitalist owners of these companies can get richer.

For the last eight years, U.S. arms and political influence, and those of other NATO countries, have fed a brutal war that has torn apart Syria, causing the death of hundreds of thousands of Syrian people. This war has also made as many as 10 million Syrians refugees, many within Syria or in neighboring countries and some in Europe. The U.S. goal was to remove the sovereign Syrian government and replace it with a puppet of Western imperialist powers.

In Libya, for example, in 2011 the imperialists succeeded in removing a legitimate government and replaced it with an unstable horror.

Nothing good has come or will come from the presence of U.S. troops, nor from political domination by U.S. imperialism. No one should believe that the racist, misogynist and xenophobic U.S. president has somehow become a peacemaker. Apparently as an electoral strategy, he has ordered the removal of a handful of U.S. troops from northern Syria. Simultaneously the Pentagon is sending 1,800 troops to the Saudi Arabian monarchy to defend the oil fields and continue the genocidal war in Yemen.

Turkey’s war crimes

Second, by sending troops to and arming puppet groups in northern Syria, the reactionary regime of President Recep Erdogan in Ankara, Turkey, is committing a war crime. This invasion is naked aggression against Turkey’s neighbor, Syria, the latest of many crimes committed against Syria in the last eight years. This aggression will cause additional suffering to the people of northeastern Syria, who are mainly Kurdish, but whose makeup reflects the many ethnic and religious groups that inhabit the whole of Syria.

Erdogan persecutes Turkey’s own Kurdish population, who are estimated to be 14 to 20 million of Turkey’s 80 million people. The Ankara regime has been using its army, especially in the Kurdish regions, in an attempt to crush the Kurdish people’s movement. Erdogan’s government persecutes opposition political parties and journalists throughout Turkey as it oppresses Turkey’s working class.

That Erdogan has taken some steps in the recent past that put him at odds with either the U.S. or the European Union — buying arms from Russia, participating in conferences with Russia and Iran to settle the war in Syria — should mislead no one into thinking the Turkish president represents any progressive tendency worldwide. Thieves, even those in the same gang, can have a falling out.

We do not at this time know the specifics of the agreement between the Kurdish-based fighters in northern Syria and the legitimate Syrian government, nor can we foresee how it will play out. We applaud, however, any alliance that confronts a local hegemonic power like Turkey and, even more importantly, excludes the imperialist regimes of Europe and the United States, who are the primary oppressors of humanity worldwide.

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This article was originally published on Workers World.

Sara Flounders has traveled twice to Syria in solidarity delegations during the U.S. war against that country. She is co-director of the International Action Center and helps coordinate the United National Antiwar Coalition, the Hands Off Syria Campaign, and the Coalition Against U.S. Foreign Military Bases. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Planet Has Been Heating Up for Almost Two Centuries

October 17th, 2019 by Shane Quinn

First published by Global Research on September 4, 2018

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The Irish scientist John Tyndall, one of the most distinguished physicists in modern history, provided evidence in 1861 that human-generated gases such as carbon dioxide and ethylene transmit enormous volumes of heat. Tyndall wrote of “the astonishment with which I saw the foregoing effects” of gases capable of trapping heat then released into the earth’s atmosphere, remaining there.

While Tyndall was unearthing these discoveries in the early 1860s, the Industrial Age had already taken off 100 years before. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain around 1760, was one of the defining moments in human history: the gradual shift away from “old-fashioned” manual devices towards machines and fossil fuel powered engines. It heralded the era of mass burning of coal, later gas and oil, which continues apace to current times. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution almost 260 years ago, global carbon emissions have increased by over 260%.

Indeed, it was recently discovered that the planet has in fact been warming for about 180 years, dating to the 1830s, due to human exploitation of fossil fuels. A decade before this, in the 1820s, an eminent French physicist Joseph Fourier – a scientific adviser and companion of Napoleon – had already deduced that something unforeseen was occurring within the globe’s atmosphere. Fourier, noting the earth’s distance from the sun, calculated that our world should have been much colder than it was in reality.

He concluded that the planet’s atmosphere had the ability to trap great volumes of heat, in a similar manner to a human-designed greenhouse. Fourier was christened as the discoverer of the “greenhouse effect”, a term coined later for the atmosphere’s absorption of largely human-engineered carbon emissions. The warning signs regarding the climate were being written from a very early stage. Even before Fourier was outlining his groundbreaking analysis, famous Industrial Revolution inventions had for years been spewing out carbon emissions – such as the steamboat (created 1787) and steam locomotive (created 1804), run through heavy consumption of coal.

Image result for Svante Arrhenius

Come the end of the 19th century Sweden’s renowned physicist, Svante Arrhenius (image on the right), was the first person to estimate the impact of carbon dioxide upon the planet. In early 1896 Arrhenius noted that the burning of fossil fuels, like coal, contribute significantly to world carbon emission levels, therefore leading to a heating globe. With regard rising greenhouse gases, Arrhenius wrote that the results would be felt “nearly the same over the whole earth”, but that “the effect will be less there [in the Southern hemisphere] than in the Northern Hemisphere”. He accurately estimated that, “if the quantity in carbonic acid [carbon dioxide] increases… the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression”.

Arrhenius further compiled the world’s total coal production levels in the late 19th century, which he wrote were a seemingly massive “500 millions of tons per annum” (global coal production has recently been around 7,000 million tons each year). Arrhenius’ work was publicly available from 1896 onwards: That year his paper was published first in German, then quickly reprinted in English with the long-established London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science.

It may have been clear to anyone who read Arrhenius’ findings that the world would continue heating, yet full-steam-ahead policies were continued by business industries. Some of the technological advancements were heavily reliant upon extraction and burning of fossil fuels.

Image result for Karl Benz

A decade before, in 1885, the German engineer Karl Benz (image on the left) had developed the petrol (gasoline) powered automobile, one of the most significant creations in the human world. Yet, if truth be told, also among the most harmful. The reality is that cars, along with other vehicles like trucks, are today the largest contributors to carbon emissions in America. The US is the world’s second largest greenhouse gas emitter, but in overall history the country is by far the largest carbon producer, with the highest per capita emission rates today among the major powers.

Along with other policies, Donald Trump‘s business-led administration is currently dismantling emission regulations on vehicles, as efforts to curb such gases are impacting profits. One can again only marvel at the corporate desire to burn up the planet as quickly as possible.

There are over 260 million vehicles in America and more than a billion around the world, releasing gigantic quantities of carbon dioxide into the environment each year. The transformation to electric vehicles has been painfully limited (three million in use globally). Electric cars are far less lucrative to fossil fuel reliant corporations like Volkswagen and Nissan – who have gone so far as to falsify emission levels in their recent models, such is their dedication to profits.

As the 19th century moved into the 20th, emerging were further evidence-supported works regarding a heating planet. In 1938 the English inventor and engineer, Guy Stewart Callendar, believed that almost all the carbon dioxide produced by fossil fuel consumption remained within the earth’s atmosphere. Callendar provided evidence that greenhouse emissions were behind the gradual rise in temperatures of recent decades, and would continue into the future.

In the late 1950s, warnings of a warming world were becoming increasingly pointed, for example with regard the work of American scientists Roger Revelle and Hans Suess. Their 1957 study highlighted that

“human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past, nor be reproduced in the future. Within a few centuries, we are returning to the atmosphere and oceans the concentrated organic carbon stored in sedimentary rocks over hundreds of millions of years”.

The Revelle-Suess paper warned that,

“Rapid changes in the amount of carbon dioxide produced by volcanoes… or as, in our case, in the rate of combustion of fossil fuels, may therefore cause considerable departures from average conditions”.

They further noted,

“In contemplating the probably large increase of CO2 production by fossil fuel combustion in coming decades, we conclude that a total increase of 20% to 40% in atmospheric CO2 can be anticipated”.

The implications of which are being increasingly felt around the world today.

As we may see, the consequences of a changing climate were becoming more pointed by at least 1957. Yet, once again, such scientific findings – with increasingly blunt language being used – were overlooked or ignored by elite figures and mainstream commentators. Governments followed suit. The public, as a result, remained unaware of the looming planetary crisis, with business-as-usual policies continuing unhindered.

In 1961 another American scientist, Charles Keeling, produced evidence-based data demonstrating that global emissions were undoubtedly rising, due to fossil fuel consumption. His graph, the “Keeling Curve”, has revealed rapidly increasing emissions in the elapsing five decades, a far steeper climb than the 130-year warming period prior to his study.

Keeling’s work even prompted America’s National Science Foundation to issue public warnings about global warming in 1963, which were presented to America’s new leader Lyndon B. Johnson late that year. In November 1965, president Johnson admitted that “our affluence spews out vast quantities of wastes… Pollution now is one of the most pervasive problems of our society”. It was a commendable statement that would be anathema to Trump for instance, but words without weight behind them. Indeed, Johnson failed to mention that the planet itself was warming.

Had Johnson seriously acted upon the scientific analyses forwarded to him, much of the threat enveloping the earth today could have been reduced. It instead appears that other things were more important, such as escalating America’s war on the other side of the world against Vietnam. Indeed, successive US presidents to the present day have either been unwilling, or uninterested, in seriously tackling climate change. Were America to have taken an early stand against this issue much of the world may have followed suit.

In the early 1970s John Sawyer, an English meteorologist, even predicted with accuracy the planet’s rate of heating by the year 2000. Sawyer’s work was published in a long-running scientific publication called Nature, yet as with the above works, it failed to penetrate the mainstream conscience, quickly entering obscurity.

In 2008, about 180 years after Fourier discovered the greenhouse effect, slightly more than half of Americans and Britons still did not believe that climate change was occurring due to human activity. It was a particularly telling poll result, considering America and Britain supposedly possess two of the most advanced educational systems in the world.

To the present day, large swathes of elite power shun alerting public attention towards climate change. This planet-threatening issue continues receiving scant coverage in the mainstream media, and government leaders avoid discussing it publicly, particularly those governing the rich states responsible for emitting the highest emissions. Addressing climate change goes against many of the requirements of capitalist societies. In America, Britain and across the world, big business interests dictate much of government and media policy, while controlling increasing numbers of universities.

This disregard for the environment is captured perfectly by the Republican Party in the US. It is hardly a traditional party, but a corporate-controlled organization intent on greatly enriching its core base. Last November, it was reported that less than a third of Republican Party voters believe humans are causing climate change. About 75% of Republican voters are comprised of white Christians, among them significant numbers of evangelicals.

During the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries almost all the candidates were climate change deniers. This included the eventual victor Trump who, since assuming the presidency, has pursued savage environmental policies that will inflict further harm on the earth. Trump’s climate actions have received remarkably little criticism from power centers, though much condemnation arrives his way for being an alleged “Russian stooge”, amid other unsubstantiated claims.

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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.

Why Withdrawing US Troops from Northern Syria Is Good

October 17th, 2019 by Rick Sterling

The foreign policy elite is in an uproar. They claim “we have abandoned our allies”. They question “how can America be trusted?” They say the decision to withdraw from northern Syria was a “gift”  to Russia, Iran, and Assad…. even ISIS. It is true that the policy of US/NATO interventionism is failing. But that has been true since the invasion of Iraq or earlier.  After the disastrous invasions and attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, and the 8 year undeclared war on Syria,  isn’t it time to  question the foreign policy elite? 

If one believes in restoring international law and the UN Charter,  it is GOOD that US military forces have been withdrawn from  northern Syria. Here are some facts and history which explain why.

Basic fact: It’s not our country and US troops were never authorized by the sovereign government. Whether or not Washington likes Damascus is irrelevant. Under international law those troops have no right to be there. Even the overflights of Syria by the US air coalition violate international agreements. It’s up to  Syrians to defend their country against invading Turkey. If they choose to get support from another country, that is their right.

Another fact: President Obama was correct when he said that “putting boots on the ground” in Syria would be a “profound mistake”.  Later he said,  “We have a very specific objective, one that will not lead into boots on the ground or anything like that.” But the hawks prevailed.  There were not only “boots on the ground”, there was a shifting rationale why they had to be there.

The US and allies have done all they could, short of direct invasion, to overthrow the Syrian government. They have spent tens of BILLIONS of dollars in weapons, training, equipment, recruitment, etc.. This is in violation of international law. More than one hundred thousand Syrians have died defending their country against a foreign sponsored army of mercenaries and foreign fighters.

An astonishing fact: The US encouraged the emergence of the Islamic State. Why? Because it put pressure on Damascus and because it justified the entry of the US. While the US carpet bombed Raqqa, it looked the other way as hundreds of trucks conveyed oil from eastern Syria into Turkey to fund the Islamic State. The US air coalition attacked the Syrian Arab Army in the midst of a critical battle against ISIS near Deir Ezzor. In a secretly recorded conversation in New York with Syrian “activists”, John Kerry admitted they were watching ISIS and hoping to use it to pressure Damascus. In other words, US foreign policy was duplicitous and used terrorism as a tool. This is well documented in the book “The Management of Savagery”.

After the US backed “Free Syrian Army” failed, the US looked for another means to destabilize Syria. They started to fund  the Syrian Kurdish militias known as the Peoples Protection Unit (YPG /YPJ). They gave the militias a new name, Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and encouraged the secessionist tendency. Meanwhile in Turkey, which has the largest Kurdish community,  most Kurds want to have their rights within Turkey and have formed a political party (Peoples Democratic Party – HDP) which unites progressives of all ethnicities.  In the 2015 Turkish election this party emerged as the third most popular party and stopped Erdogan’s election domination.  Currently the HDP is campaigning against Turkey’s invasion of Syria. As of 13 October the Syrian Kurdish militias have come to an agreement to work with Damascus to combat the Turkish invasion. The agreement specifies that the Syrian Arab Army will control and defend the entire area from Jarablus on the Euphrates River to the far eastern border with Iraq.

Advocates of US intervention claim that the Kurds were fighting and dying “for us”. That is not true. They were defending their own community.  To the extent that they accepted and welcomed US air support, equipment, weaponry, etc. it was for their own benefit. There were two parties trying to use each other.

Whenever the US attacks or occupies a country it needs a rationalization. In 1991 there were false claims about incubators being stolen by Iraqi troops in Kuwait. In 2003 there were false claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In 2011 there were false claims of civilians being threatened by Libyan troops in Benghazi. All these claims were subsequently found to be exaggerated or entirely false.

One of the main justifications for continuing US presence in Syria is “keeping our word” and not “abandoning” the Kurdish forces. This is a favorite rationalization for war.  In Cuba, the CIA trained Cuban exiles that attacked Playa Giron “were counting on us”. Fortunately, JFK resisted the pressure and said “No”.  In Vietnam, the US continued the war for a decade because we could not let down our “ally”, the government of Saigon. Millions of Vietnamese were killed plus 55,000 US troops because we could not “abandon” a government that in reality was a proxy.

In the Democratic Debates (15 October) Joe Biden said that the  withdrawal of US troops from northern Syria was “the most shameful thing any president has done in modern history in terms of foreign policy.” This is absurd. Over one million died in Iraq including 4500 and at least 100,000 severely injured US soldiers. Joe Biden was an influential supporter of the 2003 Iraq invasion. Later, as Vice President, he supported the overthrow of the Libyan government. The country is still in chaos with tens of thousands dead.  These two countries were devastated by US actions. It is evidence of shameless unaccountability in media and politics that Joe Biden is a serious candidate for President after he destroyed so many lives at a cost of trillions.  In the same Democratic debates Tulsi Gabbard was honest and accurate as she said that the plight of the Kurds in northern Syria is “yet another consequence of the regime change war we’ve been waging in Syria”.

Despite the howls of indignation and disinformation,  withdrawing US troops from northern Syria is a step in the right direction.

 

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Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist who has visited Syria several times since 2014. He lives in the SF Bay Area and can be reached at [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

When Time Stands Still

October 17th, 2019 by Edward Curtin

The intimate human experience of time standing still is universal, although rare.  When we undergo it, we are stunned.  Silence seems to enclose us. It is the correlative to the more common experience of time passing at different speeds, sometimes slowly, sometimes fast, despite clocks.  These universal experiences do not accord with the teleology that underlies the modern world with its scientific principle that leads to entropic death triumphant. They are therefore, as John Berger, the English writer and art critic, writes,

“dismissed as subjective, because time, according to the nineteenth-century view, is objective, incontestable and indifferent; to its indifference there are no limits.” 

As a result of living within this scientific and technical presupposition that the background ticking of the clock is the only truth and time is a one-way street, we are now living inside a hopeless mind-frame of a scientific theocracy that says all will end in entropy.  This is nihilism; for at the end of this clock time is nothingness, the infinite void.  This is the unstated “future,” but a future that is also now, a noxious injection that surreptitiously poisons people at the well of their lives where cracks in the consensual reality open and other truths fly in, or as Emily Dickinson said,

“’Hope’ is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul/And sings the tune without the words/And never stops – at all”.

The one-dimensional finality of the view of time as death triumphant is the nihilistic future Nietzsche said was coming, and it is here.  And being here, it tries to reduce any experience that transports us beyond time to personal lunacy and worthy only of dismissal. It reduces human subjectivity and transcendent joy and despondent suffering to the ravings of a madman. Facts are facts says this unstated premise, and if you don’t get that, you are a joker and will be rendered invisible.

In the new movie “Joker,” the suffering Arthur Fleck, the eponymous Joker, is abandoned by a cruel American society whose capitalist order cares not a whit for its regular people, and in a penultimate scene when Arthur is appearing on a late night television show where the snide and condescending host mocks him and his attempt at comedy, Joker says to the host:

Comedy is subjective, Murray. Isn’t that what they say? All of you, the system that knows so much, you decide what’s right or wrong. The same way that you decide what’s funny or not.

In that quote lies our current fate, the dark night that has descended on our world since Nietzsche issued his warning. The system that knows and controls so much decides human truth and what is good and evil, always of course, deciding in its own favor, even to suggest that all is woe and all hope is gone while heading to the bank with its ill-begotten lucre.

No wonder all the media, mainstream and alternative, are today filled with headlines and titles screaming about our impending extinction, doomsday, and the apocalypse. The end days are near.  Just as our fictitious “telling of time” with advanced technology has sped up since the simplest clock and speed has devoured space, so too have all the admonitions to prepare for the end of the world, as if you could.  Just pack your suitcase and you’re off.  These warning are often accompanied by assertions that humans, having contaminated the planet, don’t deserve to survive; that humans are vermin; and that, anyway, it’s too little too late, we don’t have time.  Extinction will be arriving shortly, even if we protest its arrival.  It’s hopeless, so don’t have children, or, if you have them already, teach them that “life is a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing.”  A one-way trip to dusty death where the trains run on time and the last stop is Nowhere.

Such political commentary, while often based on obvious problems caused by systemic structures of capitalist exploitation and technological hubris, implicitly rejects millennia of human experience and the testimony of the world’s great art and spiritual experience.  It rests upon a metaphysical assumption disguised as science that brackets out any word to the contrary.  It is the triumph of technical reason over the revelation of hope that is rooted in love, sexuality, and the human body, not abstractions.

“Our totalitarianism begins with our teleology,” writes Berger in his brilliant essay, “That Which Is Held.”

He adds:

What is ahistorical is the need to hope.  And the act of hoping is inseparable from the energy of love, from that which ‘holds,’ from that which is art’s constant example.

Such as the painting of a plaid suitcase by a little-known artist that hangs in my mental museum.  My father once went on vacation, and when he arrived at his destination and opened this suitcase, he found that it is was empty.  He had forgotten to pack and was overcome with joy at the realization. He wanted for nothing.  This was his masterpiece, created when he wasn’t looking.

Just yesterday, I was being thought by these thoughts as I took an early morning walk by the neighboring lake.  A group of geese, like battleships on the sea, greeted me with their honking, and as I dawdled along, they dove to show me their white asses, as if they were college boys out on a drunken lark, mooning anyone who passed.  It seemed as if I were being mocked for allowing these thoughts to drift into my mind, guests that I did not summon but came uninvited.  Many days I feel as though I am visited by words and images that transport me into reveries of time lost and time found and time beyond time. Rilke captures a bit of this with these words:

O longing for places that were not

Cherished enough in that fleeting hour

How I long to make good from far

The forgotten gesture, the additional act.

Who, among us, has not heard such words whispering into our silences?

Then I stopped by a swampy area at the end of the lake and took a look through the gently swaying bushes. A blue heron stood stock still on the far side, as if it were a statue or a silhouetted profile on an ancient Greek vase.  I froze and watched intently, lost in the sight of the bird’s eerie stillness.  For an instant I was that blue heron.  Its immobility and my stop-time staring seemed to fuse us in the way one is transported into a cataleptic state when watching dust motes in a flash of sunlight or unexpectedly seeing the full moon hanging on the world’s edge when stepping outdoors with night coming on.  It seems at these moments that a crack opens in the conventional reality machine that runs the world and one shivers with an erotic happiness that transcends description. Berger calls these “enclaves of the beyond.”

When I finally shook myself loose from being the heron, I walked on by myself but with many voices whispering in my ears.  Kris Kristofferson, whom I had recently seen in a documentary on country music, was singing “Me and Bobby McGee,” which took me back to a night years ago when a woman I knew played the song over and over for me as she drank wine in her low-cut dress, coming on to me, even as my then wife sat with us.

There is an infinite sadness in this memory, the loneliness of her yearning, not just for sex but for love, for a relationship, for tenderness, for “that which is held,” and while I remember the night vividly, I sadly can’t remember her name and she slips into the penumbra of the dreamy past. But vividly alive, present.  She walks with me as I head down the road, where the sign reads: Rough Road Ahead.  The words live:

Then somewhere near Salinas, Lord, I let her slip away/She was lookin’ for the love I hope she’ll find.

Just a moment of time out of mind.  A moment the time-keepers can’t imagine.

We know it.  We live it. We use and are used by our memories and forgetteries in equal measure, thinking we control the flow of life, which we don’t.

There is an experience that lovers, writers, singers, and athletes have. Everyone has it at least once in a lifetime, or so I hope. It is called by some “being in the zone,” by others “being unconscious,” by others “ecstasy” and “inspiration”; in all cases it transcends clocks and the underlying bias of our age.  It is hope incarnate. It is time out of mind. By discounting it, we embrace hopelessness, nihilism.

Living in the age of abstractions, we tend to abandon the body, the earth, and the chance that we might redeem this sordid era.  By remembering that hope lies in the shadows, in the unexpected places and faces that flash through our times even when we are induced to believe we are only dreaming, we have a chance. But only if we reject the belief that entropy is time’s arrow.  Therein lies the real danger that will result in our forgetting of how instantly time can stand still in the ultimate sense, as it did for the Japanese victims of America’s murderous rage on August 6, 1945.  Galway Kinnell, in his poem “The Fundamental Project of Technology” reminds us to remember:

The children go away. By nature they do. And by memory,
in scorched uniforms, holding tiny crushed lunch tins.
All the ecstasy-groans of each night call them back, satori
their ghostliness back into the ashes, in the momentary shrines,
the thankfulness of arms, from which they will go
again and again, until the day flashes and no one lives
to look back and say, a flash, a white flash sparkled.

Where was the lightning before it flashed?  To us it wasn’t.  Its flashing was it.  It was its act. But the nuclear weapons that we once used and are now preparing to use already exist and if they flash again all time will be extinguished and we will be gone with it.

The road ahead is rough indeed.  A despairing teleology will not save us.  We need to see it for the trap that it is.

Rhythm, melody, and movement: from these life is born and sustained.  They are also integral to art – music, writing, painting, sculpture, dance, etc. – even when they are apparently absent, as with my distorted perception of the seemingly immobile heron. They lie at the heart of spiritual experience, as breath is the inspiration that carries us along.

As I walk up the hill past the lake and my respiration increases, I see Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture, “Tall Walking Figure” in my mind’s eye. Its immobility implies movement, just as the ticking of the turning clock down through the ages has implied the earth’s solid resistance to time’s final victory, as the seasons turn and renew themselves timelessly.  Movement and stasis, time and the timeless. Such paradoxical inclusiveness pertains to still-life painting as well.  While seemingly immobile, and defined by some as dead life encompassed by the presence of the absence of movement and change, the essence of all living things, such paintings come to life in the encounter with the living.  Relationship is all. To grasp the paradoxical nature of art – and life – one must approach them as an artist and see the wholeness in broken pieces.  “Everything is broken,” Bob Dylan sings, “take a deep breath, feel like you’re choking.”

It seems that way.  But I am enjoying my walking reveries and so will let John Berger have the final word:

There is no question of looking away from the modern world and its practices.  There is no question of a Pre-Raphaelite flight back to the Middle Ages.  It is rather that Dante advances toward us. And in the specific purgatory of the modern world, created and maintained by corporate capitalism, every injustice is grounded in that unilinear view of time, for which the only relation conceivable is that between cause and effect.  In contrast to this, in defiance of this, the ‘single synchronic act’ is that of loving.

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Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

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The decades-long struggle by tens of thousands of Israelis against being uprooted from their homes – some for the second or third time – should be proof enough that Israel is not the western-style liberal democracy it claims to be.

Last week 36,000 Bedouin – all of them Israeli citizens – discovered that their state is about to make them refugees in their own country, driving them into holding camps. These Israelis, it seems, are the wrong kind.

Their treatment has painful echoes of the past. In 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were expelled by the Israeli army outside the borders of the newly declared Jewish state established on their homeland – what the Palestinians call their Nakba, or catastrophe.

Israel is regularly criticised for its belligerent occupation, its relentless expansion of illegal settlements on Palestinian land and its repeated and savage military attacks, especially on Gaza.

On rare occasions, analysts also notice Israel’s systematic discrimination against the 1.8 million Palestinians whose ancestors survived the Nakba and live inside Israel, ostensibly as citizens.

But each of these abuses is dealt with in isolation, as though unrelated, rather than as different facets of an overarching project. A pattern is discernible, one driven by an ideology that dehumanises Palestinians everywhere Israel encounters them.

That ideology has a name. Zionism provides the thread that connects the past – the Nakba – with Israel’s current ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, the destruction of Gaza, and the state’s concerted efforts to drive Palestinian citizens of Israel out of what is left of their historic lands and into ghettoes.

The logic of Zionism, even if its more naive supporters fail to grasp it, is to replace Palestinians with Jews – what Israel officially terms Judaisation.

The Palestinians’ suffering is not some unfortunate side effect of conflict. It is the very aim of Zionism: to incentivise Palestinians still in place to leave “voluntarily”, to escape further suffocation and misery.

The starkest example of this people replacement strategy is Israel’s long-standing treatment of 250,000 Bedouin who formally have citizenship.

The Bedouin are the poorest group in Israel, living in isolated communities mainly in the vast, semi-arid area of the Negev, the country’s south. Largely out of view, Israel has had a relatively free hand in its efforts to “replace” them.

That was why, for a decade after it had supposedly finished its 1948 ethnic cleansing operations and won recognition in western capitals, Israel continued secretly expelling thousands of Bedouin outside its borders, despite their claim on citizenship.

Meanwhile, other Bedouin in Israel were forced off their ancestral lands to be driven either into confined holding areas or state-planned townships that became the most deprived communities in Israel.

It is hard to cast the Bedouin, simple farmers and pastoralists, as a security threat, as was done with the Palestinians under occupation.

But Israel has a much broader definition of security than simple physical safety. Its security is premised on the maintenance of an absolute demographic dominance by Jews.

The Bedouin may be peaceable but their numbers pose a major demographic threat and their pastoral way of life obstructs the fate intended for them – penning them up tightly inside ghettoes.

Most of the Bedouin have title deeds to their lands that long predate Israel’s creation. But Israel has refused to honour these claims and many tens of thousands have been criminalised by the state, their villages denied legal recognition.

For decades they have been forced to live in tin shacks or tents because the authorities refuse to approve proper homes and they are denied public services like schools, water and electricity.

The Bedouin have one option if they wish to live within the law: they must abandon their ancestral lands and their way of life to relocate to one of the poor townships.

Many of the Bedouin have resisted, clinging on to their historic lands despite the dire conditions imposed on them.

One such unrecognised village, Al Araqib, has been used to set an example. Israeli forces have demolished the makeshift homes there more than 160 times in less than a decade. In August, an Israeli court approved the state billing six of the villagers $370,000 (Dh1.6 million) for the repeated evictions.

Al Araqib’s 70-year-old leader, Sheikh Sayah Abu Madhim, recently spent months in jail after his conviction for trespassing, even though his tent is a stone’s throw from the cemetery where his ancestors are buried.

Now the Israel authorities are losing patience with the Bedouin.

Last January, plans were unveiled for the urgent and forcible eviction of nearly 40,000 Bedouin from their homes in unrecognised villages under the guise of “economic development” projects. It will be the largest expulsion in decades.

“Development”, like “security”, has a different connotation in Israel. It really means Jewish development, or Judaisation – not development for Palestinians.

The projects include a new highway, a high-voltage power line, a weapons testing facility, a military live-fire zone and a phosphate mine.

It was revealed last week that the families would be forced into displacement centres in the townships, living in temporary accommodation for years as their ultimate fate is decided. Already these sites are being compared to the refugee camps established for Palestinians in the wake of the Nakba.

The barely concealed aim is to impose on the Bedouin such awful conditions that they will eventually agree to be confined for good in the townships on Israel’s terms.

Six leading United Nations human rights experts sent a letter to Israel in the summer protesting the grave violations of the Bedouin families’ rights in international law and arguing that alternative approaches were possible.

Adalah, a legal group for Palestinians in Israel, notes that Israel has been forcibly evicting the Bedouin over seven decades, treating them not as human beings but as pawns in its never-ending battle to replace them with Jewish settlers.

The Bedouin’s living space has endlessly shrunk and their way of life has been crushed.

This contrasts starkly with the rapid expansion of Jewish towns and single-family farming ranches on the land from which the Bedouin are being evicted.

It is hard not to conclude that what is taking place is an administrative version of the ethnic cleansing Israeli officials conduct more flagrantly in the occupied territories on so-called security grounds.

These interminable expulsions look less like a necessary, considered policy and more like an ugly, ideological nervous tic.

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A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

United States and Venezuela: A Historical Background

October 17th, 2019 by Prof. James Petras

First published on Global Research on May 18, 2019.

“Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world and they own it and we want it” — (Anonymous Trump official)

Introduction

US hostility and efforts to overthrow the Venezuelan government forms parts of a long and inglorious history of US intervention in Latin America going back to the second decade of the 19th century.

In 1823 US President Monroe declared, in his name, the ‘Monroe Doctrine” – the US right to keep Europeans out of the region, but the right of the US to intervene in pursuit of its economic, political and military interests.

We will proceed to outline the historical phases of US political and military intervention on behalf of US corporate and banking interests in the region and the Latin American political and social movements which opposed it.

The first period runs from the late 19th century to the 1930’s, and includes Marine invasions , the installation of US client dictatorships and the resistance of popular revolutions led by several revolutionary leaders in El Salvador, (Farabundo Marti), Nicaragua, (Augusto Sandino), Cuba (Jose Marti) and Mexico [Lazaro Cárdenas].

We will then discuss the Post-WWII US interventions, the overthrow of popular governments and the repression of social movements, including Guatemala (1954), Chile coup (1973), US invasion of the Dominican Republic (1965), Grenada (1982),and Panama (1989).

We will then exam US efforts to overthrow the Venezuela government (1998 to the present).

US Policy to Latin America: Democracy, Dictatorship and Social Movements

US General Smedley Butler summarized his 33 years in the military as a ‘muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers . . . I helped Mexico safe for American oil interest in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for National City Bank to collect revenue . . . I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the . . . House of Brown Brothers in 1902 – 1912. I brought a light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interest in 2016. I helped make Honduras right for American fruit companies in 1903 . . . looking back on it, I could have given Al Capone a few hints’!

During the first 40 years of the 20th century the US invaded Cuba , converted it into a quasi-colony and repudiated its hero of independence Jose Marti; it provided advisers and military support to El Salvador’s dictator, assassinated its revolutionary leader Farabundo Marti and murdered 30,000 landless peasants seeking land reform. The US intervened in Nicaragua, fought against its patriotic leader Augusto Sandino and installed a dictatorial dynasty led by the Somoza regime until it was overthrown in 1979. The US intervened in Cuba to install a military dictatorship in 1933 to suppress an uprising of sugar workers. Between 1952 – 1958 Washington armed the Batista dictatorship to destroy the revolutionary July 26 Movement led by Fidel Castro. In the late 1930s the US threatened to invade Mexico when President Lazaro Cardenas nationalized the US oil companies and redistributed land to millions of landless peasants.

With the defeat of fascism (1941-45), there was an upsurge of social democratic governments in Latin America. But the US objected. In 1954 the US overthrew the elected Guatemala president Jacobo Arbenz for expropriating the banana plantations of United Fruit Company. It backed a military coup in Brazil in 1964; the military remained in power for 20 years. In 1963 the US overthrew the Dominican Republic’s democratically elected government of Juan Bosch and invaded in 1965 to prevent a popular uprising. In 1973 the US supported a military coup overthrowing democratic socialist president Salvador Allende and backed the military regime of General Augusto Pinochet for nearly 20 years.

Subsequently, the US intervened and occupied Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989.

US propped up rightwing regimes throughout the region which backed US banking and corporate oligarchs which exploited resources, workers and peasants.

But by the early 1990’s powerful social movements led by workers, peasants, middle class public employees/doctors and teachers challenged the alliance of domestic and US elite rulers. In Brazil the 300,000 strong rural workers movement (MST) succeeded in expropriating large fallow estates; in Bolivia indigenous miners and peasants including coca farmers overthrew the oligarchy. In Argentina general strikes and mass movements of unemployed workers overthrew corrupt rulers allied with City Bank. The success of the popular nationalist and populist movements led to democratic elections won by progressive and leftist Presidents throughout Latin America, especially Venezuela.

Venezuela: Democratic Election, Social Reforms and the Election of President Chavez

In 1989 the US backed President of Venezuela imposed austerity programs that provoked popular demonstrations which led to the government ordering the police and military to repress the demonstrators: several thousand were killed and wounded. Hugo Chavez, a military official, rebelled and supported the popular uprising. He was captured, arrested, later freed and ran for presidential office.. He was elected by a wide margin in 1999 on a program of social reforms, economic nationalism, an end of corruption and political independence.

Washington began a hostile campaign to pressure President Chavez to accept Washington’s (President Bush) global war agenda in Afghanistan and around the world. Chavez refused to submit. He declared, “You don’t fight terror with terror”. By late 2001 the US Ambassador met with the business elite and a sector of the military to oust President elect Chavez via a coup in April 2002. The coup lasted 24 hours ..Over a million people, mostly slum dwellers, marched to the Presidential palace, backed by military loyalists .They defeated the coup and restored President Chavez to power. He proceeded to win a dozen democratic elections and referendums over the following decade.

President Chavez succeeded in large part because of his comprehensive program of socio-economic reforms favoring the workers, unemployed and middle class.

Over 2 million houses and apartments were built and distributed free to the popular classes; hundreds of clinics and hospitals provided free health care in the populer neighborhoods; universities, training schools and medical centers for low income students were built with free tuition.

Thousands in neighborhood community centers and ‘local collectives’ discussed and voted on social and political issues – including criticism and recall of local politicians, even elected Chavez’ officials.

Between 1998 and 2012, President Chavez won four straight Presidential elections, several congressional majorities and two national referendums, garnering between 56% and over 60% of the popular vote. After Chavez died President Maduro won elections in 2013 and 2018 but by a narrower margin. Democracy flourished, elections were free and open to all parties.

As a result of the inability of US backed candidates to win elections, Washington resorted to violent street riots, and appealed to the military to revolt and reverse the electoral results. The US applied sanctions beginning with President Obama and deepen with President Trump. The US seized billions of dollars in Venezuelan assets, and oil refineries in the US. The US selected a (non-elected) new President (Guaido) who was directed to subvert the military to revolt and seize power.

They failed: about one hundred soldiers out of 267,000 and a few thousand rightwing supporters heeded the call. The “opposition” revolt was a failure.

US failures were predictable as the mass of voter defended their socio-economic gains; their control of local power; their dignity and respect. Over 80% of the population including the majority of the opposition – rejected a US invasion.

US sanctions contributed to hyper-inflation and the death of 40,000 Venezuelan citizens due to the scarcity of medical products.

Conclusion

The US and the CIA followed in the footsteps of the past century seeking to overthrow the Venezuelan government and seize control of its oil and mineral resources. As in the past the US sought to impose a submissive dictatorship which would repress the popular movements and subvert the democratic electoral processes. Washington sought to impose a electoral apparatus which would ensure the election of submissive rulers as it did in the past and as it has done in recent times in Paraguay, Brazil and Honduras.

So far Washington has failed, in great part because of the peoples’ defense of their historical gains. Most poor and working people are aware that a US invasion and occupation will lead to mass killing and the destruction of sovereignty and dignity.

The people are aware of US aggression as well as the mistakes of the government. They are demanding corrections and rectifications .The government of President Maduro favors a dialogue with the non-violent opposition; Venezuelans are developing economic ties with Russia, China, Iran, Turkey, Bolivia, Mexico and other independent countries.

Latin America has experienced decades of US exploitation and domination; but it has also created a history of successful popular resistance including revolutions in Mexico, Bolivia and Cuba; successful social movements and voting outcomes in recent years in Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador and Venezuela.

President Trump and his murderous cohort of Pompeo, Bolton and Abrams have declared war against the Venezuelan people but they have thus far been defeated.

The struggle continues.

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Award winning author Prof. James Petras is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

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On both sides of the political aisle, workforce-training reforms are being touted as the be-all, end-all of America’s public education system.

Right-wing “school choice” proponents, such as President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, push corporate charter school programs with workforce-training curriculums.

Left-wing “community schooling” advocates, such as Democratic Presidential candidates Joe Biden and Julián Castro, push “lifelong-learning” programs with school-to-work curriculums. Both “conservatives” and “liberals” concur: the purpose of public education is workforce development.

It’s nice to know that, in this divisive era of Trump outrage, America’s political representatives can still reach across the aisle to agree on something. Too bad this bipartisan movement will reduce the US schooling system to a corporate-government bureaucracy that deploys Big Data to train students to fill labor quotas prescribed by workforce-planning algorithms.

Career-Aptitude Pigeonholes

In this new age of rapidly advancing technologies that are automating “low-skill” jobs, many parents are understandably concerned that their children’s schooling will fail to prepare them to survive in a hi-tech future where the economy is driven by computers. However, parents should be skeptical of hyped-up “career pathways” curriculums that train students in hi-tech skills prescribed for job placement in the fields of “Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics” (STEM). While this polytechnical training might offer quick shortcuts to hi-tech jobs, such vocational tech-training pigeonholes the student into a predetermined job with limited upward mobility.

Such “cradle-to-career” training is based on three of the “six basic functions” of schooling systematized by Harvard Professor of Education, Alexander Inglis, who believed that public schools are instruments of Statecraft and social engineering. In “Against School,” Inglis’s authoritarian “principles of education” are paraphrased by the renowned New York State Teacher of the Year (1991), John Taylor Gatto:

  1. The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student’s proper social role. . . .
  2. The differentiating function. Once their social role has been “diagnosed,” children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits—and not one step further. . . .
  3. The propaedeutic function. The social system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.

By pipelining students directly from the classroom to the jobsite, career-pathways curriculums diagnose each student’s social role by consigning him or her to a job caste that is directed by Big Business partnering with publicly funded school-to-work programs. Furthermore, to efficiently determine each student’s socioeconomic role, the cradle-to-career “conveyor belt” differentiates the student body into a hierarchy of managers and wage slaves who are trained with minimal job competences so that the chain of economic command is not destabilized by social ambitions.

Simply put, career-pathways do not teach students how to choose their own careers and social roles; rather, they teach students job-specific skills for limited employment openings which are predetermined by the market projections of the politically connected corporations that partner with government-funded schools.

Psychometric Learning Analytics for “Personalized” Job Training

Rather than applaud school-to-work curriculums that train students to keep up with the evolution of a hi-tech economy, perhaps schoolboards should be disconcerted about the encroachment of the Big Tech economy on schools and learning. With growing popularity, Big Data is becoming an integral component of career-pathways training through “adaptive-learning” computers that literally reduce students to numbers. By data-mining a student’s responses to digital lessons, adaptive-learning software (such as Dreambox, Alta, and Brightspace Leap™) can tabulate student-learning algorithms which diagnose students as mentally “fit” or “unfit” for certain jobs. The result is a psychometrical “bell curve” system that pathologizes a student’s workforce “competences” based on his or her “cognitive-behavioral” algorithms.

Such data-mining of student psychometrics might be an efficient way to distribute job placement through workforce-schooling programs. Nonetheless, acclaimed education theorist Alfie Kohn documents that the psychological conditioning methods of schooling advocated by “economists and a diehard group of orthodox behaviorists (who have restyled themselves ‘behavior analysts’)” usually “backfire” and “undermine the very thing we’re trying to promote.” Indeed, workforce-schooling psychometrics are “undermined” when “personalized” student-learning profiles “backfire” by socially engineering the student body into a workforce caste hierarchy with limited job opportunities that restrict upward mobility.

A Post-Humanism?

If parents are worried that their children may get run over by the hi-speed, hi-tech automation economy on the horizons, their attempts to reform education so that students can “compete” with the new computerized economy may actually exacerbate the problem. Rather than encourage school-to-work curriculums that train students to “interface” with a techno-automated workforce, perhaps it is more important to teach the humanities of philosophy, history, and the arts so that the next generations can make humane decisions which ensure that technological evolution serves the inalienable rights of human dignity and conscience.

We are at a crossroads here: the “career pathways” to a technocratic economy, or the “classical way” to a moral economy based on the “categorical-imperative” values of human dignity and conscience. I am not saying that technological advancement cannot progress alongside the preservation of human values. But in a computer-automated economy driven by Big Data, algorithms must be programmed with certain values; and without the preservation of humane values in the minds of students, there will be nothing to ensure that human morality is programmed into the algorithms that plan the workforces of the future. If we amputate the arts and humanities from the “new education,” which worships the supposed infallibility of data, what will it profit our children to gain the world of hi-tech jobs only to lose their humanity?

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John Klyczek has an MA in English and has taught college rhetoric and research argumentation for over seven years. His literary scholarship concentrates on the history of global eugenics and Aldous Huxley’s dystopic novel, Brave New World. He is the author of School World Order: The Technocratic Globalization of Corporatized Education (TrineDay Books); and he is a contributor to the Centre for Research on Globalization, OpEdNews, the Intrepid Report, the Dissident Voice, Blacklisted News, the Activist Post, News With Views, The Saker, and Natural News. His website is https://www.schoolworldorder.info/

The Environmental Protection Agency today released two scientific analyses of paraquat that detail the weed killer’s lethal risks to humans and wildlife but discount its strong links to Parkinson’s disease.

The agency opened a 60-day comment period on the assessments, which are part of a reapproval review for the pesticide. Paraquat is banned across much of the world but used widely and in growing amounts in the United States. By law all pesticides must be reapproved by the EPA every 15 years.

“A pesticide this toxic has no place near our food or the people who help to grow and harvest it,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The EPA should follow the lead of nearly every other major agricultural country in the world and ban this dangerous stuff for good.”

The EPA’s analysis discounted considerable evidence that paraquat has been shown to more than double the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease in farmworkers and others suffering occupational exposure.

A separate environmental analysis estimated that approved uses of the pesticide could expose small mammals like chipmunks and bats to more than 600 times the levels known to cause reproductive harm. The analysis found that small songbirds are potentially being exposed to more than 50 times the concentration known to cause death.

Paraquat is one of only two pesticides still used in the United States that is either banned or being phased out in the European Union, China and Brazil. From 1990 to 2014 there have been 27 deaths and more than 200 incidents of harmful exposure involving paraquat in the United States. There has also been at least one death from paraquat ingestion in the United States each year since 2012.

Despite this paraquat use in the United States is higher than it’s been in the past 25 years, with use rising nearly 200 percent since 2009. The increase has been triggered by its use on superweeds that have developed resistance to glyphosate, commonly sold as Bayer’s Roundup.

U.S. farmers currently use more than 8 million pounds of paraquat each year, including on peanuts, citrus, wheat, soy, corn, almonds, artichokes, garlic, pears, strawberries, grapes and sweet potatoes.

“It only takes a teaspoon of paraquat to kill a person, so it’s clear 8 million pounds of this stuff is doing extreme harm to our health and the environment,” said Donley.

In July U.S. Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) introduced legislation to ban paraquat.

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You cannot get away from it, at least in print or in Google land. African swine fever is doing its rounds, cutting through the swine population of Asia with remorseless dedication.  Since its deadly debut in China last year, it has done away with some 25 percent of the globe’s pig population.  The symptoms are dramatic and lethal (mortality rates range from 95 to 100 percent), with the infected animal haemorrhaging and perishing between a period of five to fifteen days.  This decline has sparked all manner of comment: a feared deprivation of pork dishes, a spark of hope in exports of pork untouched by the disease and alternative meat supplies, and the more serious issue of food security.

In China itself, the decline of pork is causing a strain of desperation, though it is always marked by reassurance and stiff-upper lip confidence.  Pork supplies, both domestically and internationally, had been seen to be something of an essential in Chinese food security.  In September, the country’s pig population, numbering some 440 million animals, had shrunk by 41.1 percent.  While figures coming out of various Chinese ministries should be viewed with a healthy dose of scepticism, the numbers from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs have caused a stir.  Such contractions are perpetuating and will continue to perpetuate a loss in the global consumption of protein.

On Monday, China’s Premier, Li Keqiang did something uncharacteristic for the politburo: he ventured to a roadside stall to test the vox populi on the subject of rising pork prices.  Not that the episode lacked its fair share of choreographic sense.  The owner was suitably stoic; it simply would not do to panic.  “Our prices have also risen a bit accordingly.  The effect on business hasn’t been too big.”  Bravely dishonest for party and country, perhaps?

The disastrous wasting of domestic herds, one that sees no ebbing, has caused a spike in imports in pork.  The PRC saw some 1.3 million tonnes coming into the country in the first three quarters this year.

Other countries are also showing a certain fear in the face of rumour and speculation.  In Europe, the fever is being held at bay, though pork consumers are seeing prices rise.  But in Asian countries, the response is graver, and slightly panicked.  South Korea, for instance, is mobilising snipers and civilians in an effort to shore up its border with North Korea.  Drones equipped with thermal vision will also be deployed.  All of this is in aid of one thing: targeting infected pigs near the line of civilian control.  The South China Morning Post is positively apocalyptic. “The intensified measures aim to exterminate feral pigs in areas including Incheon, Seoul, Goseong and Bukhan River.”

As far as North Korea is concerned, the concern is that the fever is doing its worst, though official figures suggest the opposite.  The North Korean agriculture ministry claimed in a May 30 report to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) that animal deaths had been modest, with only 22 recorded on a cooperative farm some 260km north of Pyongyang.

For those in the Asia-Pacific region as yet untouched by ASF, nerves are catching.  Countries like Australia have demonstrated that terror characteristic of island mentalities: Be wary of what you import and what you let in.  Biosecurity is a tic of the Australian policy mindset, though it does not come without its ironies: the Australian scientific and agricultural sector has been arguably more devastating and disastrous for the country’s ecology than any malicious or accidental introduction.

Be that as it may, Australia’s $5 billion pork industry is nothing to sneeze at, keeping something in the order of 36,000 people busy.  But off Australian shores, the fear is that the fever is making its marauding march, with news that East Timor had become the tenth Asian nation to be added to the list.  Customs officials are proving edgier than usual, and the federal Agricultural Minister Bridget McKenzie is getting a tad judgmental.

“People are still disregarding our biosecurity laws.  We can send them home, we can slap significant fines on them and I’ll be encouraging our biosecurity officials to be doing exactly that with those offenders.”

On Saturday, a Vietnamese woman was sent packing after arriving at Sydney Airport with quail, squid and raw pork.  The unfortunate had her visa cancelled, the result of amendments made in April.  As the Department of Agriculture described it,

“International visitors who are believed to have contravened particular provisions of the Biosecurity Act 2015 can have their visitor visa cancelled for up to three years.”

The biosecurity and vet gate keepers have their eye on one aspect of Australia’s pig population.  The 2.5 million domestic population might well be one thing, but imagine, fears Chief Veterinary Officer Dr Mark Schipp, the prospect of 15 million feral pigs being infected.  (This figure, it should be said, varies – another estimate puts the number at 24 million.)  But where crisis presents itself, there are salivating opportunities.  Australian Pork Limited chief executive Margo Andrae is one who is drooling at the prospect that Australia can “increase production and prices to fill gaps that other markets can’t supply.”

What then, to do?  From a thriving epidemic, ASF has become an enthusiastic pandemic. It is cutting through protein consumption and posing a risk to food supply, but as yet, there are no cures nor vaccines.  The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has also noted that the disease’s impact is complicated by “the range of pig production systems coexisting in the different countries.”  Such instances, if they do at least conjure up a world without pork, may well encourage a world less reliant on the staple.  But till then, individuals such as Dr Hirofumi Kugita of the OIE are punting for the border control and biosecurity obsessives.

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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]

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Farage, the Brexit Party – and the Con-trick

October 16th, 2019 by True Publica

On May 16th 2016, over a month before the 2016 EU referendum, Nigel Farage said – “In a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business by a long way. If the Remain campaign win two-thirds to one-third that ends it.”

On the night of the EU referendum itself, Sky News reported that they had an exclusive –

We now expect that the United Kingdom will remain part of the European Union. It’s 52 per cent Remain, 48 per cent Leave.

At 10:52 p.m., the pound rose above $1.50 and reached its highest mark in six months. What no-one knew except for a privileged few, was that the pollsters had sold hedge funds critical, advance information, including data that would have been illegal for them to give the public. Within hours of the actual result, Sterling had crashed to $1.32 making hundreds of millions in short bet profits against billions laid down for an unexpected Leave result. Farage is also allegedly in that privileged few. The crisis has since seen even greater speculator profits being made as the Brexit chaos unfolded.

The result that followed in the early hours stunned many and amazingly it turned out to be 52/48 for Leave.

Nigel Farage celebrated that morning by saying:

We have fought against the multinationals, we have fought against the big merchant banks, we have fought against big politics, we have fought against lies, corruption and deceit, and today honesty, decency and belief in nation, I think now is going to win. And we will have done it without having to fight, without a single bullet being fired. We’d have done it by damned hard work on the ground.”

Farage stood accused of falsely conceding on the night of the referendum sending the pound to soar (as confidence grew of a Remain result) and then crash (with the actual result). Like all insider dealing, proof for a conviction is, at best, hard to obtain. The ‘Brexit Big Short‘ as it has become known within the banking and hedge-fund industry is legendary. And just like the massive scandal of bailing out the banks and making the poorest pay for it under the guise of austerity, itself, nothing more than the retaliatory mask of a class-war – the Brexit Big Short demonstrates that some are inoculated from the biggest of crimes.

A lot has happened since June 2016. We have seen a significant move to hard right-wing politics within the Conservatives with Farage now leading the Brexit Party in anticipation of a snap election.

For all of Farage’s finger-pointing that the EU was corrupt and anti-democratic and against the ordinary people of Britain, it is interesting to see where he now stands aside from the sweet-talking rhetoric of ‘sunny uplands’.

The Brexit Party chairman himself, Richard Tice, is now facing calls to “urgently” address concerns about his family’s links to offshore tax havens, after an investigation by openDemocracy this week that reveals that two offshore firms own large shareholdings in his family’s business.

“The Brexit Party MEP has also been urged to stand down from the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, which oversees EU tax policy, until the matter is fully investigated.”

Tice, a co-founder of Arron Banks’s Leave.EU, says he has no knowledge of who runs two offshore companies that have held shares for over 25 years in his family business, Sunley Family Limited, and which now own a combined 42% stake. Of course, Tice denies any financial interests of the offshore companies.

Accusations of money laundering, fraud, fake news, cash-for-access, disinformation and electoral manipulation through social media have been rife with the hub of the Leave campaign. The names synonymous with this villainous and unprincipled lot roll off the tongue with ease – the IEA, Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, Aggregate IG, ERG, Bannon, Legatum, TaxPayers Alliance and many individuals with nothing more on their minds than making their fortunes out of the mess they created.

Byline Times has published some home-truths about Nigel Farage’s party of the ‘common people’ by simply looking at its candidates a little more closely.

“Out of these 20 profiled candidates, 18 are company directors, 8 are bankers, 5 work in derivatives and hedge funds, ranking them among a metropolitan and business elite which the Brexit Party rhetoric repeatedly condemns. Many of these candidates are involved with hedge funds or derivatives, sectors of the financial industry were the ones who profited from the Brexit turmoil, by betting on Sterling’s collapse and downturns in British firms. These organisations are known to oppose EU attempts to regulate the hedge fund industry.”

And as Byline also mentions, two of the candidates are directors of Leave Means Leave, the organisation promoting a hard  (WTO) Brexit.  Another is a director of the Leave group Veterans for Britain which received donations from Arron Banks and from Leave.eu.   Others have links to far-right groups which are already fomenting tensions, such as the American right-wing youth group, Turning Point; the website Westmonster, and UK organisations such as the TaxPayers’ Alliance (with all of its dodgy, undisclosed and ‘opaque’ funding).

Turning Point is a very nasty right-wing American outfit that spits its bile out – “With numerous right-wing and religious links to Donald Trump. The scandal-hit group has been plagued by incidents of racism and allegations of illegal campaign spending since its launch.”  Sounds familiar, doesn’t it.

We should not forget who Farage is dallying with either. It only emerged a few months ago that he discussed the idea of fronting a global alliance of populist and far-right politicians being put together by the controversial former White House strategist Steve Bannon. Farage is even on camera as saying he would be keen to take the role of forming a group based around populism and “economic nationalism” that would align themselves with some of the worst authoritarians in politics today.

These people – Farage, Tice, Banks, et al – are the very public face of what’s gone wrong in Britain. It’s a con, a lie – one huge deception that somehow they are the representatives of the 17.4 million that voted to leave the EU.

No-one voted in the EU referendum for the Britain of today. In the 1980s – 86 per cent of the adult population were proud to be British. Today, no less than 90 per cent of the adult population feels that Brexit represents little more than a national humiliation and 45 per cent of Britain’s young (18-24) are no longer proud of their home nation. Another 34 per cent say they no longer care one way or the other and 10 per cent are actively embarrassed to call themselves English. That is what Brexit has brought us.

As Jonathan Lis, Deputy Director of the think tank British Influence quite rightly puts it because this is exactly what has happened:

What was billed as a way for people to take back control of democracy has become a systematic attack on every institution which underpins it.”

And the very people doing that damage are Farage, Tice, Banks and so on.

The Brexit being offered today does not look remotely like anything sold to the public. And don’t think that people can’t operate such huge con-games. From the Parmalat boss who stole 800 million euros before Europe’s largest bankruptcy to Enron, the world’s biggest fraud, con-artists have managed to hoodwink even the most privileged and powerful – let alone ‘ordinary people.’

As Farage himself quite rightly said in 2012, reiterated in 2014 and 2016 –

I think frankly when it comes to chaos you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

He is right on that.

On some level, I feel sure that Nigel Farage really did and maybe still does believe in leaving the EU to take back national sovereignty – but I also feel that not even he expected his wet dream to become reality, and as they say – “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Farage and his fellow hedge-fund banker boy travellers also know that Brexit is a con trick.

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Winners and Losers in the Turkish Attack on Kurds in Syria

October 16th, 2019 by Elijah J. Magnier

President Donald Trump has given the orders to begin a “deliberate withdrawal” of his troops and end the occupation of north-east Syria (NES). This is accelerating the race between the Turkish and the Syrian forces to control NES.

Turkey is in a rush to establish its 30-35km wide safe zone on the borders with Syria in the US-occupied north-east territory, currently under the control of the Syrian Kurdish separatists. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is aware of the pressure his US ally, President Donald Trump is under for approving this operation, an operation which has made Trump even more unpopular among the US and western élites.

Trump took it upon himself to unilaterally take control of an area in Syria bigger than Switzerland. Uninvited by the central government, he had established over a dozen military and air bases in the country and kept them there notwithstanding the defeat of ISIS. Trump has now agreed to pull back some US troops, allowing Turkey and its Syrian proxies to move into this part of Syrian territory. The US President and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin blocked an EU-drafted resolution condemning the Turkish offensive. Now, the winners in this operation are much more numerous than the losers and it would be a mistake to suppose that only Turkey is gaining from this operation. All winners have their own objectives and perspectives to assess how they can benefit from the Turkish invasion.

By deciding to pull out 1,000 men from NES, Trump is reshuffling the cards, moving the burden away from his administration and dropping it into the hands of Russia, Turkey and Syria (and their allies). There is a serious need for Russia to move fast and bring concerned players around the table to organise a situation that could turn more chaotic and lead to even more confrontation.

The biggest losers are the Kurds: the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)- which were classified as terrorist organisations by the US (since 1997), by the European Union (since 2002), and by NATO, Turkey, and some other countries.

The Kurds in the Levant

The Kurds are now in south-east Turkey, north-east Syria, the north of Iraq, north-west Iran, and south-west Armenia. With an estimated population of 30 million, they may be the largest stateless minority in the world. More than half of the Kurds live in Turkey; it is thus less than accurate to call the Turkish attack on Syrian Kurds “ethnic cleansing”.

The 1923 Lausanne Peace treaty with the Republic of Turkey denied the Kurds the realisation of their dream for an independent “Kurdistan” state of their own. The Kurds staged many rebellions but all failed to achieve their aspirations for a state. These include the Sheikh Said rebellion (1925), the Ararat (1930) revolution led by the Armenian Ziylan Bey, one of the most famous rebels of the mountains (the Iraqi Mustafa Barzani crossed the borders to join the rebellion), and the Sayid Riza 1937-1938 Kurdish-Alevi Dersim genocide (known today as Tenceli). The latter operation was carried out under the orders of Turkish President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and is recognised by President Erdogan as a “massacre”.

In 1974, Abdullah Ocalan formed a Maoist proletarian movement, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and focussed on Turkish targets within the country. Thus far at least 40,000 people have been killed in this conflict without the Kurds achieving their goal of a state. Ocalan and some 3,000 PKK militants are festering in jail. The US, the EU and many other countries categorize the PKK as a terrorist group. “The PKK is on the terror list of the EU and delisting it is not on the cards,” said EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini last March.

When the war in Syria began in 2011, the Syrian Kurds were neutral but provided many besieged Syrian cities with much-needed supplies. But everything changed on September 2014 when the “Islamic State” (IS, ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) attacked the Kurdish town of Ayn al-Arab, known to the Kurds as Kobane.

Although Turkey refused (in order to avoid a domestic uprising) to allow Turkish Kurds to cross the borders to help their Syrian brothers, it opened the borders for Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga to walk in just when the city was about to fall. The Peshmerga had the task of providing laser designators to guide US jets against ISIS targets. The town was destroyed but ISIS failed to occupy it and withdrew in January 2015.

In October 2015 the US-led coalition formed, trained and armed the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) under Kurdish command and alongside local Arab militias. The Kurds hoped their dream would finally materialise since the prospect of dividing Iraq and Syria now seemed realistic. A Kurdish state seemed attainable, and the name of “Rojava” (Rojavayê Kurdistanê‎), one of the four parts of Greater Kurdistan, was chosen. This territory extends from the city of Afrin in the north-west to al-Hasaka in the north-east.

In August 2016, Turkey inserted its own troops into Syria with the help of Syrian proxies and captured the border town of Jarablus. This disturbed the Kurds’ plans. Almost two years later, Turkey conquered the Kurdish city of Afrin, curtailing the map of Rojava and displacing tens of thousands of Kurds.

The Kurds preferred to hand Afrin to Turkey rather than allow the Syrian army to defend the city. Intensive negotiations were held between Kurdish leaders and the Syrian government in Damascus, the Russian military base of Hmaymeem, and other locations. The Kurds refused to hand over the billions of dollars they had accumulated from Syrian agriculture and refused to join Syria’s National Defence Forces. They wanted both full autonomy and at the same time, they wanted the Syrian Army to serve as their border guards. They preferred to fight and lose the battle rather than handing Syrian territory back to Syrian government control. The Kurds opted for Turkish occupation. This has proved to be their first major mistake.

In September 2015, when Russia was persuaded to move its air force into Syria, coordination with the US was necessary to avoid clashes. Any area east of the Euphrates River was considered subject to US operations and control. The west of the river was controlled by Russian forces. After defeating ISIS, the Syrian army tried, with its allies, to cross the Euphrates in order to eliminate ISIS from the oil and gas-rich wells north of Deir-ezzour before the arrival of US-backed forces. The Syrian troops were decimated by US forces. Over 200 men were killed, showing that the US was not ready to give up what it considered its “zone of influence,” with its considerable accompanying material advantages.

Clearly, the US had the intention of staying and occupying an area that represents slightly less than the third of Syria, an area particularly rich in agriculture and in energy resources.

Then Kurdish Iraqi leader Masoud Barzani’s hasty and failed attempt to declare his independent state in Iraq finally put an end to the Kurdish dream of uniting Rojava with Iraqi Kurdistan.

With the arrival of Donald Trump, the newly appointed President came a promise to bring the US forces home from the Middle East. Trump described north-east Syria as “a land of death and sand ”. He intended to pull out unless the area could bring him revenues. Arab states who were heavily involved in the war in Syria, financing jihadists and rebels, had lost their appetite to supply monies and arms. They were no longer ready to pay Trump for keeping his troops there.

Trump stated that the Syrian Kurds “were not great fighters” and needed his jets to clear the way before attacking ISIS. Thus he minimised their role and their losses in defeating ISIS in the capital of the “Caliphate” in Raqqah.

The Kurds never imagined the US would betray them, despite their previous experience in 1975. That was their second big mistake. Kurdish military leaders tried, to no avail, to convince Kurdish political leaders to open a serious dialogue with Damascus. But in fact the Kurds suspended negotiations and once again seemed to prefer facing a Turkish attack rather than working with the Syrian government. They put their hopes in the support of the international community and the mainstream media. The media and public personalities have indeed offered the Kurds abundant verbal support. But that will certainly not be enough to stop the Turkish attack that is now advancing rapidly in the designated area.

Trump looks on the Kurds as mercenaries he has bought and paid for. Since their services are no longer required, he is now ready to withdraw US forces to win favour with Turkey. The Kurds are expendable now that their manpower is not needed by Trump.

The Kurds, however, insisted for years on acting as human shields for Trump’s soldiers in al-Hasaka and Qamishli. And they believe that social media together with a media campaign can reverse Trump’s decision. But they are now left with no allies on the ground, and not even the mountains will protect them. Their wrong choices – in surrendering territory that did not belong to them- have made them today’s biggest losers. The US short notice announcement of a sudden withdrawal gave a cold shower to the Kurds who have now asked Damascus to move in to protect them from the Turkish advance. It was certainly high time to wake up to what is, at this stage, the only available option.

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This week, the annual meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund will again be held in Washington, DC, with back-slapping now that the Bretton Woods twins have reached age 75 (they were founded at a New Hampshire hotel in 1944). And with more passion than in recent years, there will be protests, especially climate activists on Friday at noon with a strong set of messages, to “end all funding for fossil fuels!”

One voice will be especially loud: Trevor Ngwane’s. A leading activist from Soweto, he was last at a Washington protest in April 2000, amidst 30,000 demonstrators. That week, he co-starred – along with World Bank board chairperson Trevor Manuel – in a documentary, Two Trevors Go to Washington. (Regrettably, young Trevor Noah was still in a Johannesburg high school and not in that particular film; but with his attitude, would have fit in just fine on that picket line.)

The latter Trevor was South Africa’s finance minister from 1996-2009 and in the process, turned the economy into a neoliberal wasteland, as manufacturing fell from 24 to 13 percent of national output and commodity export-dependency rose. On the ground, Manuel’s policies ensured the apartheid era’s world-leading inequality worsened, along with poverty. The main unemployment rate nearly doubled from 16 to 29 percent, and foreign debt soared from $25 billion to $70 billion during his reign – and is now $180 billion. Manuel was always treated with the greatest regard inside the Bank and IMF.

An example of the kinds of dubious deals Manuel and his successor Pravin Gordhan arranged with international financiers was the Medupi coal-fired power-plant, which at 4800MW is the largest under construction on earth today. There was widespread corruption on the project by Hitachi – which in 2015 was prosecuted and fined $19 million under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for bribing South Africa’s ruling party – and many other contractors. This was all well known by World Bank president Robert Zoellick, who nevertheless arranged his institution’s largest-ever project loan for Medupi: $3.75 billion.

But it’s a kind of “Odious Debt,” one so awful that Medupi is the reason in late 2017, 16 months before Donald Trump named him World Bank President, David Malpass admitted South Africa was the exemplary case of fraudulent relations with the lender. Correctly, he insulted Bank loan officers while testifying to the U.S. Congress:

“They’re often corrupt in their lending practices, and they don’t get the benefit to the actual people in the countries. They get the benefit to the people who fly in on a first-class airplane ticket to give advice to the government officials in the country, that flow of money is large, but not so much the actual benefit to normal people within poor countries.”

This description perfectly fits Medupi and a sister power plant (Kusile), which are driving Eskom’s finances to the brink, due to eight-year production delays, incompetent design and massive cost over-runs, in turn threatening South Africa’s credit-worthiness, as well as security of power supply. (On October 16, power was turned off in a “Stage 2 load-shedding” disruption due to a broken conveyor belt at Medupi.) Even in their half-built state, the climate implications from CO2 emissions and the consumption of scarce water for cooling the reactors are horrendous.

But merely in financial terms, even leading bourgeois representatives from Anglo American Corporation’s main think tank now contemplate just shutting the two white-elephant plants and walking away. Progressive writers in South Africa’s main ezines – Kevin Bloom in Daily Maverick and Jonathan Cannard in the Mail&Guardian – argue the Bank should be compelled to face lender liability, and write off the debt.

Instead, refusing to learn, the Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) subsidiary has just made a $2 million investment in another South African fossil-dependent project: a major new gas terminal on the coast; its partner,Transnet, is one of the most corrupt institutions in Africa. The arrogance is stunning given that the IFC lost its U.S. diplomatic immunity in a Supreme Court case just six months ago.

As local environmental justice, community-feminist and anti-poverty activists contemplate how to punish the World Bank for its proclivity to finance one absurd project after the other, all the while churning out neoliberal research,South Africa appears as a microcosm of what’s gone wrong with Bretton Woods pro-corporate neoliberal malgovernance, more generally, these last 75 years.

The multilateral cul-de-sac

Multilateralism has surfed the up-swells and down the troughs of globalisation. In the latter case, the League of Nations faded away during the 1930s as a relevant force for peace, once the waves of Great Depression ripped Western economic interests apart. Today, multilateralism also seems to have entered the final, life-support stage of its 21st-century crisis, in part because of the overwhelming power of multinational corporations, and in part because of fast-rising reactionary nationalisms.

As the 2019 G7 summit confirmed, the world cannot contend with the bully-boy ascendance of Donald Trump and other right-wing critics of ‘globalism’ (an anti-Semitic smear), who spew ever more toxic nativist-populist hatred while ignoring their countries’ historic responsibilities to solve problems that their corporations mainly created. As a result, concluded the founder of world-systems theory, the late Immanuel Wallerstein, the 2018 G7 meeting was simply farcical:

“Trump may have done us all the favour of destroying this last major remnant of the era of Western domination of the world-system.” 

Even at the G20, which is the economic grouping responsible for three quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions and hence the site where addressing climate catastrophe is most urgent, the 2017-19 hosts in Hamburg, Buenos Aires and Osaka were cowed by Trump.

As a result, the world’s most important climate, trade and financial arrangements are increasingly ineffectual and discredited. Notwithstanding a decade-old network of five ‘middle powers’ (better termed ‘subimperialists’), the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) bloc, the South is much less capable of giving the world’s oppressed a chance to make inputs and win long-overdue concessions.

Those expecting progressive change through the BRICS’ collective financial and trade statecraft are disappointed, especially as the world spins out of control economically. “BRICS should be much stronger by now,” one of its founders, former Brazilian president Lula da Silva told Asia Times recently.

“I imagined a more aggressive BRICS, more proactive and more creative.”

Instead, global-scale neoliberalism remains dominant. The ill-conceived United Nations (UN) collaboration deal with the plutocratic Davos World Economic Forum in June 2019 followed persistent ‘bluewashing’ concerns about the UN’s discredited Global Compact with some of the world’s least ethical firms, growing corporate manipulation of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, and sabotage of multilateral environmental and human rights governance.

Another sign of ever-worsening degeneracy is personal. Thanks to unashamed cronyism, all the major multilateral economic organisations with the exception of the near-impotent World Trade Organisation (WTO) are run by Westerners: the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Bank for International Settlements and the United Nations itself.

The only exception, Brazilian WTO leader Roberto Carvalho de Azevêdo, has notoriously pandered to the West, although to be fair, he is now openly expressing frustration as Trump ratchets up protectionism and as US trade representative Robert Lighthizer obstructs appointments to his crucial Appellate Body.

“The dispute resolution mechanism is in crisis,” according to neoliberal Peterson Institute scholars, a paralysis which “runs the risk of returning the world trading system to a power-based free-for-all, allowing big players to act unilaterally and use retaliation to get their way.”

That is exactly how Trump and Xi Jinping are handling their trade dispute.

Meanwhile, Bolsonaro is following Trump’s anti-multilateral lead, quickly renouncing ‘special and differential treatment’ provisions for poor and middle-income countries at the WTO – although it is sacred to other BRICS members, especially India. But Brasilia’s divorce began much earlier, complains Third World Network’s Ravi Kanth, because although the developing-country bloc inside the WTO now “exists on paper, it remains paralysed after Azevêdo became director-general in September 2013.”

Bolsonaro also cancelled Brazil’s hosting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) summitlater this year, forcing its move to Chile. Deploying bogus anti-colonial rhetoric, he turned his nose up at the G20’s tokenistic $20 million grant to control the Amazon’s conflagration. Moreover, Bolsonaro could well wreck the BRICSwhen he hosts the other four leaders in November.

In any case, the BRICS have already failed miserably when attempting to reform global finance, for example by complaining about – but failing to contest – the IMF and Bank leaders, chosen by Europeans and the US in the 2011, 2012, 2015, 2016 and 2019 ‘elections.’ At the same time, four of the BRICS bought expensive voting-power increases in the IMF (e.g. China rising 37 per cent), but at the expense of countries like Nigeria and Venezuela (which in 2015 both lost 41 per cent of their votes, while even South Africa’s IMF ‘voice’ softened by 21 per cent).

The BRICS’ supposed alternative to the IMF, the Contingent Reserve Arrangement, was founded in 2014 with a notional $100 billion. It actually gives Washington even more power, by leveraging most of its loans on the condition that the borrower accept an IMF structural adjustment program. The BRICS New Development Bank’s first five years of lending confirm that it is as rife with corruption, non-consultation, climate damage and inappropriate currency denominations as the World Bank, and even more unfriendly to gender equity.

Likewise, there is no BRICS alternative to Western domination in trade or climate multilateralism. At the WTO, the BRICS were fatally divided, leading to the 2015 destruction of food sovereignty options during the Nairobi summit. And as for climate, the Brazil-South Africa-India-China (BASIC) leaders’ close alignment with Barack Obama at the Copenhagen UNFCCC summit in 2009 held firm through the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.

But that won’t solve our existential crisis, for the BASIC countries are absolute CO2 emitters at levels even higher than the West (and in South Africa’s case higher per capita than any country in Western Europe). So Paris’ fatal weaknesses suit them fine.

More recently, new causes of global governance illegitimacy appear similar to the centrifugal forces tearing Europe apart. The political commitments of climate-denialist, ‘paleo-conservative’ xenophobes like Trump are different to other Washington philosophies imposed on the world, including the 1980s-90s’ Reagan-Bush-Clinton era of neoliberalism (stretching with Thatcher and Blair into Britain and Kohl and Schroeder into Europe), George W. Bush’s 2000s neoconservatism and Obama’s 2010s fusion of these two US-centric ideologies.

With just a couple of exceptions (discussed below), an earlier generation of global-scale social-democratic hopes – fostered by serious multilateralists from 1970s traditions, e.g. Willy Brandt and Gro Harlem Brundtland – were dashed by the early 1980s, thanks to the role the Bretton Woods Institutions played in fracturing the world’s progressive potentials on behalf of international financiers. The poorest countries went through a ‘lost’ decade or more of austerity. The 1995-2002 middle-income countries’ rolling crises meant local elites allowed the same inappropriate neoliberal regime to be imposed by Washington even more deeply and dangerously in Mexico, East Asia, Russia, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina and Turkey.

Then it was the turn of the West’s ‘labour aristocracy,’ a core group of working-class people dethroned, for they lost their once-solid manufacturing jobs to machines and overseas outsourcing, and were reduced to taking underpaid and under-valued service-based jobs and relying upon fast-degenerating public services. In 2008-09 they too witnessed a replay of brutal 1980s-90s Bretton Woods power plays, once their elites agreed upon a multilateral ‘solution’ to the world financial meltdown: a coordinated central bank bailout for the largest Western financial institutions.

This generosity was confirmed by the 2010s’ official prioritisation – by the IMF, European Central Bank and European Union (EU) – of the Frankfurt, New York, London, Paris and Rome bankers’ interests, which were near-fatally exposed to Greece and other peripheral European borrowers. By 2016, neo-fascist political parties were thriving there, while the most resentful within the British and U.S. working classes chose xenophobic backlash in the form of Brexit and Trump.

Self-destructive IMF and World Bank ideology and financing

The crucial break point for multilateral potential was the 1980s world debt crisis, during which neoliberal ideology stretched the Third World so far that the likes of Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere and Cuba’s Fidel Castro even proposed a ‘debtors’ cartel’ – but could not find a sufficient critical mass of other brave leaders even in a Latin America suffering sustained IMF rioting, to the relief of international elites.

At one point in 1983, World Bank president William Clausen quite bluntly explained the balance of forces: “We must ask ourselves: How much pressure can these nations be expected to bear? How far can the poorest peoples be pushed into further reducing their meagre standards of living? How resilient are the political systems and institutions in these countries in the face of steadily worsening conditions?”

Clausen’s power came from the 1979-80 ‘Volcker Shock’: soaring interest rates catalysed by US Federal Reserve chair Paul Volcker’s decision to restore the Dollar’s power, in turn causing the Third World Debt Crisis. Clausen and all his successors abused that power to impose the Washington Consensus’s ten policy commandments. The term came from John Williamson of that city’s Institute of International Finance, representing the world’s major banks:

1. Budget deficits … should be small enough to be financed without recourse to the inflation tax.
2. Public expenditure should be redirected from politically sensitive areas that receive more resources than their economic return can justify…

3. Tax reform… so as to broaden the tax base and cut marginal tax rates.
4. Financial liberalisation, involving an ultimate objective of market-determined interest rates.
5. A unified exchange rate at a level sufficiently competitive to induce a rapid growth in non-traditional exports.
6. Quantitative trade restrictions to be rapidly replaced by tariffs, which would be progressively reduced until a uniform low rate of 10 to 20 per cent was achieved.
7. Abolition of barriers impeding the entry of foreign direct investment.
8. Privatisation of state enterprises.
9. Abolition of regulations that impede the entry of new firms or restrict competition.
10. The provision of secure property rights…

Needless to say, the victims were mainly women, youth, the elderly and people of colour. The IMF’s flows of annual loans that, thanks to conditionality, locked these policies into place, were initially less than $15 billion before the Volcker Shock, then soared to $40 billion by the late 1980s, jumped as high as $100 billion by the early 2000s, and exceeded $140 billion by the early 2010s (see Fig 1). The World Bank had similar bursts.

Fig 1. IMF loans, 1970-2015

Source: Reinhart and Trebesch, 2015, p.24.

Added to the neoliberal agenda were trillions worth of ‘illicit financial flows’ manoeuvred into offshore financial centres, leaving governments with rising budget deficits and their social sectors experiencing permanent cost-cutting pressures. IMF economists Jonathan Ostry, Prakash Loungani, and Davide Furceri admitted in 2016 that as a result,

“The increase in inequality engendered by financial openness and austerity might itself undercut growth, the very thing that the neoliberal agenda is intent on boosting. There is now strong evidence that inequality can significantly lower both the level and the durability of growth.”

But notwithstanding that admission, most subsequent Article IV consultations offered advice that amplified inequality, Oxfam researchers discovered.

The IMF also made a similar confession about its role in patriarchy, namely that “some policies recommended by staff… may… exacerbate gender inequality” – but again, when it came to a correction, the IMF “missed the forest for the policy trees,” explains Emma Bürgisser of the Bretton Woods Project.

“Almost every macroeconomic policy the IMF regularly prescribes carries harmful gendered impacts, including labour flexibilisation, privatisation, regressive taxation, trade liberalisation and targeting social protection and pensions.”

Activists try to undo destruction

In turn the predatory debt, precarious work and privatisation of so many aspects of life experienced by the world’s citizenries calls forth two kinds of responses: appeals to global governance to sort out problems national states have shied away from, and popular revolt. There are both good and bad versions of these top-down and bottom-up responses, as we have seen, with cases such as the Montreal Protocol and Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria as top-down successes, but the latter owes more to bottom-up pressures.

Since the urgency of the situation required a global response, the 1987 Montreal Protocol was supported by even the reactionary Ronald Reagan administration. It committed national states to ensure their corporations (e.g. Dow Chemical and General Electric) stop producing and emitting CFCs within nine years. The ban worked and the problem is receding (aside from recent Chinese corporate cheating on hydro-CFCs).

At present, a Montreal Protocol-type ban on Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions is presumed unthinkable, notwithstanding the impending eco-social catastrophe. A solution as forceful as the Montreal Protocol is needed for GHGs, but the weakness of multilateralism and the pro-corporate balance of forces makes it unlikely within the UNFCCC – unless the world’s rising youth and other climate activists ramp up the civil disobedience and divestment advocacy that is now beginning to worry fossil fuel financiers.

In that spirit, there was one other more recent multilateral solution to a world crisis, AIDS, which shows how to shift the balance of forces not through elites’ top-down meetings of minds (although within the World Health Organisation and UN AIDS, there were a few bureaucratic allies) – but instead, bottom-up, through militant activism.

Because of groups like South Africa’s Treatment Action Campaign (led by visionaries Zackie Achmat and Vuyiseka Dubula), the US AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (‘ActUp’) and the health NGO Medicins sans Frontiers, a persuasive case emerged in the 1990s – and gained confirmation in 2001 – to exempt copyrighted AIDS medicines within the WTO’s Trade Related Intellectual Property System. Generics were permitted, not made in the US and Germany, but instead in many Southern countries. This resulted in more than a decade’s rise in life expectancy, in South and North alike.

Anti-neoliberal protests help shift the balance of forces, including many millions in the Third World who objected to structural adjustment, or “IMF Riots.” In the main study of these protests, David Seddon and John Walton in 1994 remarked on how not just poor and working-class people, but larger coalitions of society rose up: “Once mass discontent is made evident by these coalitions, political parties may take up the anti-austerity cause in successful bids for national office (e.g. Peru, Dominican Republic). In several countries, austerity protests initiated political crises that sooner (e.g. Sudan, Turkey) or later (e.g. Philippines, Haiti, Poland) toppled the national government.”

Since then, there have been scores more countries – especially in Africa – whose unpatriotic leaders were tossed out of power or drew sustained dissent as they imposed the BWIs’ logic.

Solidarity activism in the North is vital, such as demonstrations at IMF and Bank official events. Major protests included the 1988 Berlin Annual Meetings (which attracted tens of thousands of protestors), the 2000 Spring Meetings in Washington (30,000) and 2000 Prague Annual Meetings (50,000), as well as even the Oslo 2002 Bank research conference on development economics (10,000). One of the main activist challenges to Bretton Woods power was the early 2000s “World Bank bonds boycott” which – at the peak of the global justice movement’s mobilisations – compelled cities as large and financially potent as San Francisco to divest from Bank securities. (Trevor Ngwane and another South African, the poet Dennis Brutus, joined then-U.S. Representative Bernie Sanders to launch the boycott in 2000.)

This led to a ‘fix it or nix it’ debate, in which reforms of the Bank and IMF were so slow that TransNational Institute scholar Susan George fumed in 2000,

“These institutions have had their chance. Anytime anyone asks, ‘And what would you put in its place?’ I am tempted to respond, ‘And what would you put in the place of cancer?’” Added Kenyan activist Njoki Njehu, the leading Washington protest organiser at the Bank/Fund Spring Meetings that year, “The IMF and the World Bank increase poverty. The consensus is that the IMF and World Bank cannot be reformed. They have to be abolished.”

It’s a debate that needs kick-starting once again. The 75th anniversary is a good time to ask whether such out-dated ideologies and their enforcers deserve to be retired, not (as the right-wing populist protectionists argue) so as to close the door on global governance, but to open it much wider in a way that serves people and planet, not multinational corporate profits. At the same time, by posing the question of abolition, we should also recall instances where impressive reforms were won at the multilateral scale.  

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A version of this article was originally published in Bretton Woods Project Observer, October 2019.

Patrick Bond teaches political economy at Wits University in Johannesburg: [email protected] 

Featured image is from Atlanta Black Star

Selected Articles: 15 Days to Brexit?

October 16th, 2019 by Global Research News

Global Research, like many independent voices all over the globe, is feeling the effects of online measures set up to curtail access to our website, and by consequence, hinder our finances. We sail on despite the unpredictable currents and unfavourable forecasts. We can’t steer this ship alone however, we need your help!

We would be greatly indebted to you for any donation large or small. Can you contribute to help us meet our monthly running costs? Make no mistake, we intend to be here for years to come, but for the time being we ask for your help to stay afloat as we ride the storm out. Here’s how you can help:

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Scotland Edges Closer to Independence Amid Brexit Chaos

By Johanna Ross, October 16, 2019

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced on Sunday that she would be setting a date for a second referendum on Scottish independence within ‘a matter of weeks’. Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show she said that she would seek a section 30 order this year, after the latest poll on Scottish independence revealed support is now as high as 50 percent – a five-point increase in the same poll carried out last year.

$35 Billion: UK Faces Huge Loss from Electric Vehicle Adoption

By Jon LeSage, October 15, 2019

The government faces other hits on tax revenue. The UK will be seeing a drop of about 20 billion pounds a year ($24.5 billion) from the government’s new policy of freezing tax duties to help people struggling with the cost of living, the IFS said. There’s also concern that another 1 billion pounds ($1.229 billion) could be lost if Prime Minister Boris Johnson follows through on his commitment to cut duties by 2 pence per liter of fuel.

Johnson’s Queen’s Speech – ‘Pre-election Propaganda’ It Can’t Deliver

By True Publica, October 15, 2019

Trashed in lightning speed this year, the only thing that most people were concerned about in the Queen’s speech was if there was any news on Brexit. As we already know – Johnson’s Brexit plan, to Leave on October 31st, leaves the UK economy £50bn worse off and every household in the country about £2,000 worse off to pay for it. It’s not as if the experts haven’t hit their calculators hard enough in the last few weeks and told them so. They even said that the best scenario possible was a hit to the economy of £16 billion.

Brexit, Environmental Law and the Level Playing Field

By Molly Scott Cato MEP, October 15, 2019

Given that the inspiration for Brexit amongst many corporate interests was precisely ripping up the ‘red tape’ that has protected our countryside, waterways, and natural habitats for decades, to have no route to independent legal redress would be a source of considerable concern.

The Dangers of a US-UK Trade Deal as TTIP in EU Re-emerges: Leaked Government Paper

By True Publica, October 09, 2019

The warnings given to government about Brexit have come thick and fast, especially in the last 12 months where time has allowed more in-depth analysis of the likely effects of Brexit – deal or no-deal. These warnings have come from the most respected organisations and institutions in Britain such as the – Confederation of British Industry, Department for International Trade, Bank of England, The Office for Budget responsibility, and Centre of Economic Performance. Then there have been industry sectors such as financial services, motor, agricultural and even the UK Warehousing Association that have issued warnings of the scale of problems that various forms of Brexit brings.

British Unions Vote to Boycott Israel

By Glen Davies, October 09, 2019

The motion affirmed the collective rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to return to their homes, called for a stop to the British arms trade with Israel, and reaffirmed the union movement’s call to boycott companies complicit with the Israeli settlement industry.

Brexit: Boris Johnson Moves to Scrap Environment and GMO Safeguards to Get Deal with Trump

By GMWatch, October 08, 2019

The Minister heading up the Department for International Trade, Liz Truss, is known to have had “off the record” meetings about weakening UK regulations with some of the right-wing US pressure groups that have driven Trump’s radical programme of deregulation.  And last week at a Conservative party conference fringe event, Truss said that while she is “proud” of Britain’s high environmental standards, she wants to take “a much more free-market approach”. Since then she has tweeted that scrapping EU protections is “vital for giving us the freedom and flexibility to strike new trade deals and become more competitive”.

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In Krutaya Balka, a village north of Donetsk which is routinely attacked by Ukrainian forces with shelling and heavy machine gun fire, I meet a man standing outside his home, where he lives with his wife, roughly 600 metres from the front line.

To my question about where his home has been damaged he laughs, “Many times. Which house hasn’t been? The roof, the wall… from mortar fire and heavy machine gun fire.”

His replies are in line with the others I’ve spoken with: things got worse after Zelensky became president; the attacks are daily; where would he leave to? He is in favour of joining Russia.

“We should go to Ukraine, which damaged my house? I’m Russian, this is Russian land. Everyone who knows history knows this. Of course I want to join Russia! In earlier times, before the war, I didn’t care either way. But after all Ukraine did what it has done, absolutely I want to be a part of Russia. I can’t imagine being back in Ukraine. Anyway, most of the people here would be killed as ‘separatists’. A known Ukrainian politician (Boris Filatov) said: ‘At the beginning, give them what they want, later hang them.’

I ask if he has anything to say to a Western audience. At first he says there’s no point, people already know, the West gives money to Ukraine…

“The snipers use US rifles, if they gave less money it would be better.”

But later in our conversation he adds:

“Going back to the question of a message to the West…You remember WW2. Why do you support Nazis if you remember WW2? Why do you now support Nazis. Openly Nazis. They wear swastikas. Why is Europe silent? Everyone comes here and agrees with me, but nothing changes. OSCE shouts, but when they are under fire, they are silent, they don’t say that Ukraine attacks them.”

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Featured image is from Stars and Stripes

Singer and rap artist M.I.A. visited Julian Assange at Belmarsh Prison on Saturday, calling for his freedom. The WikiLeaks publisher and journalist faces extradition to the United States under the Espionage Act, with charges that carry a 175-year prison term.

M.I.A.’s visit followed a brief court hearing Friday at Westminster Magistrates Court. Assange appeared via remote video-link to hear Judge Tam Ikram confirm his remand at the maximum-security prison while a US extradition request is heard. He will appear in court again on October 21.

Speaking at a press conference outside Belmarsh late Saturday afternoon, M.I.A.—Sri Lankan-born Mathangi ‘Maya’ Arulpragasam—condemned Assange’s tormentors, indicting the US and UK governments, the courts and the corporate media. M.I.A. is a long-time friend and supporter of Assange.

M.I.A. speaking to reporters outside Belmarsh Prison

Asked about Assange’s condition, she replied, “I think when you know there are people outside who are criminals, and you are inside for advocating peace, while people that profit from war are outside, and celebrated and given Nobel peace prizes, that hurts. I think that’s hard for anyone.”

Former US President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel prize in 2009, as his administration escalated US military operations across the globe, including a drone assassination program he personally supervised.

M.I.A. explained that she and Julian had discussed conditions “for everyone” inside the prison “and the concept of freedom and what that really means.”

A WSWS reporter asked M.I.A. to comment on the UK government’s assertion that it “does not participate in or condone the use of torture.” The UK government last week rejected UN Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer’s findings (published May 31) that Assange is the victim of unprecedented state persecution and “psychological torture.”

She responded,

“I’ve been trying to get a yoga book to him for a month now and I come here every week trying to hand it in and it’s been impossible… To me that’s a very extreme method they are using where you’re denying even reading books. I wasn’t able to take in sketchbooks where he could write thoughts or draw and I haven’t been able to take puzzles which might help stimulate the mind.

“I first thought that maybe all prisoners were treated like that, where they’re not able to have some sort of dignity and own the space between their ears and have that mental freedom… I can sympathise with people who feel that he’s been treated unfairly… I think there is an element of discrimination.”

Asked for her opinion on media coverage of Assange, M.I.A. said,

“I think there should be more, given that now we know the truth and that the debate is about extradition to the US. It’s no longer about all the other things people have accused him of. Now it’s about truth—and that’s something people have to uphold and fight for especially in these years.”

M.I.A. replied forthrightly to a question about bogus sexual misconduct allegations against Assange in Sweden:

“It’s now really about extraditing Julian to the US. I wish there was more emphasis given to that truth and people really making a statement about that.

“The basic bottom line is he’s in there because he exposed some war crimes and he just campaigned for peace. This cannot be the example. We can’t make that an example to society where we penalise people for that and not a single person has been convicted for the financial crisis of 2008. Nobody has been convicted for the war crimes before then of the Bush era, no one’s been convicted from the Obama era and everything the Democrats did. Nothing has happened legally, so why trust the legal system, that hasn’t come through on any of those things?”

M.I.A.’s press conference was boycotted by the major news networks and the BBC, despite having been widely advertised. Only Sputnik and Ruptly published live footage. A Press Association report was picked up by the Independent and the Belfast Telegraph, while the Daily Mail carried a report that recycled false and defamatory statements about Assange. Its headline set the tone, “Singer MIA becomes Julian Assange’s latest celebrity supporter…”

M.I.A. has defended Assange for years and is herself an outspoken opponent of imperialist war and oppression. In November 2013, she opened her concert in New York City with a 10-minute address from Assange, via video livestream. Assange used his appearance to champion the cause of whistle-blower Edward Snowden. He warned of the dangers of the National Security Agency’s spying operations and urged M.I.A’s fans to become politically aware and active in seeking to change the world for the better.

On Saturday, M.I.A. explained,

“I support Julian because I think someone like this is valuable to society because of his knowledge about so many different things.

“I try not to be prejudiced in a time where things change and evolve at such a fast rate. People’s values are changing, people’s beliefs are changing, the political climate is changing, the social climate is changing, the financial situation is changing—and throughout all of this change, we’re so constricting this man.”

M.I.A. concluded her press conference by urging attendance at an event for Assange being staged with fellow rap artist Lowkey outside the UK Home Office on November 5. The free event follows last month’s live performance outside the same building by Pink Floyd singer Roger Waters that saw hundreds gather to show their support for the WikiLeaks founder.

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U.S. Sanctions Could Push Turkey to Leave NATO

October 16th, 2019 by Paul Antonopoulos

The administration of the Kurdish-controlled regions in north-eastern Syria announced on Sunday that they had reached an agreement with the central Syrian government in Damascus to deploy Syrian troops along areas of the border region with Turkey to help repel the Turkish aggression.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan legitimized Turkey’s operations in Syria because of so-called security concerns, particularly from the Islamic State and the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Syrian branch of the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). However, with the YPG finally allowing Syrian troops to enter their controlled areas, what options does Erdoğan have left?

Turkish officials have endlessly said that the establishment of a “safe zone” that penetrates 30km into Syria is for the purpose of expelling the YPG from this region and to facilitate the return of Syrian refugees. With the Syrian Army soon to control the area with the withdrawal of the YPG, Erdoğan’s “safe zone” has now been achieved, thus illegitimating his operation once Syrian government control has been established.

Turkey assured that its operation was only against terrorism and not territorial expansionism with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu stating in an interview that

“Russia is concerned about some sensitive issues, such as territorial integrity and the unity of the country. We are also worried. If we look at all the joint statements of Turkey, Russia and Iran, we emphasize it.”

Although Turkish leaders assure that the purpose of the operation is not for annexation, this has not eased the belief among Syrians that Turkey plans to permanently occupy the area, as they remember the illegal 1939 Turkish annexation of Hatay and the invasion of neighboring Cyprus in 1974, with the status of the occupied Turkish-controlled northern regions of the island remaining doggedly unresolved by Ankara.

Therefore, with patient diplomacy with the political branches of the YPG, the Syrian government has trapped Erdoğan into leaving all Syrian territory since terrorism cannot be cited as a reason, a reason they heavily focused on. If Turkey does not withdraw from the occupied territories, it will surely become an international issue involving all major countries.

Such a situation will not be easy for Washington. In fact, the major factor for Ankara’s split from the U.S. is because of the American support for the YPG, despite contradictorily recognizing the PKK as a terrorist organization. Although Ankara is a NATO member, Turkey has been strengthening relations with Russia, a source of American anger against its supposed NATO ally.

U.S. President Donald Trump threatened the complete destruction of the Turkish economy last week if Ankara exceeded its operation targets. With the U.S. putting a direct threat against Turkey, it is unlikely for Ankara to submit to Washington’s demands, which will inevitably create another source of division between Ankara and Washington.

This is especially crucial as Çavuşoğlu boldly stated that

“We are not afraid to remain isolated if the truth is on our side, since we are destined to fight terrorism.”

It would suggest that if Turkey is willing to be isolated over fighting the YPG, then it would be willing to be isolated for the goal of territorial expansionism, a suggestion that can be legitimized if the Turkish military does not withdraw after Syrian government administration is achieved in the border region.

For its part, Moscow understands Turkey’s concerns about its safety but advocates that Ankara respect its agreements with Damascus. With Russian and Turkish relations strengthening in the economic, military and diplomatic fields, Erdoğan’s next move can also affect the image of Russia, who is also a close ally of Syria, having defended the country from terrorism since September 2015.

As Russia has consistently adhered to international norms and laws, and strongly advocates that all states should follow such norms and laws, any refusal of the Turkish military and its proxies to withdraw from Syrian territory could be a source of resentment from Moscow. Russia has invested heavily into flourishing its relations with Turkey after its Black Sea neighbour downed a Russian jet in Syria, leading to the murder of the pilot by Turkish-backed forces.

However, any chance for Washington to reconcile with Ankara is all but over with the imposition of sanctions on Monday. These measures have been considered ineffective by Republican senator Lindsey Graham and Democrat Chris van Hollen who want wider sanctions against Turkey and to cut military support, despite being NATO allies. This is in a supposed effort to stop Turkey’s widespread human rights abuses and the release of ISIS terrorists.

Therefore, Erdoğan’s next decision towards Syria will heavily impact the future of not only the region, but his relations with the U.S. and Russia. With murmurings existing for years now whether Turkey should leave the NATO alliance, these sanctions against Turkey, a country already in a deep economic crisis, will only bring this question to the forefront of debate.

Although the U.S. cites human right abuses as the reason for the sanctions, an allegation that cannot be taken seriously considering their own long list of war crimes, it is likely Trump is ‘punishing’ Erdoğan for his insistence and defiance in buying the Russian S-400 system. This means that the souring relations between Washington and Ankara provides the perfect moment for Russian President Vladimir Putin to consolidate his country’s relations with Turkey.

Turkey has the second largest military in NATO, but more importantly has sovereignty over the imperative waterways of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles that gives Russia access to the Mediterranean from its Black Sea ports. Whether Putin will be able to convince Turkey, a fellow Eurasian country and Black Sea neighbour of Russia’s, to leave the NATO alliance is to be seen. But, if he can convince Turkey to leave, this would not only be a powerful military blow to NATO, but a strategic one as they will lose any challenge they could pose against Russia in the Black Sea.

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Paul Antonopoulos is director of the Multipolarity research centre.

Featured image is from InfoRos

President Lenin Moreno betrayed ordinary Ecuadorians by abandoning his pledge to continue progressive policies of his predecessor Rafeal Correa.

Instead he instituted force-fed austerity, enforced with police state harshness, and sold Julian Assange to the US and UK for a loan shark of last resort $4.2 billion IMF loan — requiring corporate-friendly policies at the expense of beneficial social justice continuity, abandoned by his regime.

Days of police state violence against legitimate protesters from early October through Sunday left at least 10 dead, around 2,000 injured, and over 1,000 arrested — ignited by a Moreno decree to end longstanding fuel subsidies, doubling prices overnight in deference to an IMF diktat.

Following weekend talks with indigenous and other protest leaders, he cancelled his unacceptable order, saying:

“With this agreement, the mobilizations…across Ecuador are terminated, and we commit ourselves to restoring peace in the country.”

It all depends on fulfilling his campaign pledges, requiring much more than reinstating fuel subsidies.

As long as neoliberal harshness continues, mass outrage could erupt again any time ahead.

Moreno surrendered to IMF financial terrorism. It obligates borrower nations to sell their soul for blood money.

It assures debt bondage, requiring new loans to service old ones, structural adjustment harshness against millions most vulnerable, and policies favoring Western and internal monied interests at the expense of governance for everyone equitably.

Nations in bed with the predatory IMF are required to let bankers and other dominant corporate interests strip mine their material wealth and resources, tolerate no democratic values, abandon social justice, and exploit working class people as serfs.

An elite few benefit at the expense of most others, entrapped nations controlled by Western monied interests, their sovereign independence lost to a higher power.

IMF diktats mandate no public sphere, unrestrained corporate empowerment, elimination of social spending, and earmarking state resources for predatory profit-making, national security and internal control.

It’s war by other means on ordinary people in affected countries, transformed into dystopian backwaters, Western and internal privileged interests benefitting from exploitive harshness.

IMF debt bondage assures mass unemployment, underemployment, and impoverishment, loss of essential to life social services, and economic decline.

Years after agreeing to onerous terms for IMF loans, borrower nations are worse off, deeper in debt, their ordinary people paying the biggest price.

Yet Article I of the IMF Articles of Agreement states the following:

Its loans to nations are intended to “facilitate the expansion and balanced growth of international trade, and to contribute thereby to the promotion and maintenance of high levels of employment and real income and to the development of the productive resources of all members as primary objectives of economic policy.”

There’s more, claiming IMF policies are to “give confidence to members by making the general resources of the Fund temporarily available to them under adequate safeguards, thus providing them with opportunity to correct maladjustments in their balance of payments without resorting to measures destructive of national or international prosperity.”

Claiming loans aim to “promot(e) and maint(ain) high levels of employment and real income and to the development of the productive resources of all members as primary objectives of economic policy” is mass deception.

So is saying “(i)n difficult economic times, (the IMF) helps countries…protect the most vulnerable in a crisis.”

Its agenda is polar opposite, force-feeding deprivation on vulnerable millions so privileged interests can benefit from their immiseration.

It works the same way everywhere under IMF mandates, including mass impoverishment, public wealth transferred to private hands, out-of-control corruption and cronyism, and nations transformed into dystopian shells to benefit monied interests exclusively.

What’s ahead for Ecuador after Moreno reinstated fuel subsidies remains to be seen.

He capitulated to Western interests. Ordinary Ecuadorians want him replaced by equitable rule — not likely coming while he’s in office.

As long as neoliberal harshness continues, mass outrage could erupt again any time.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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The so-called US Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019 was unanimously adopted by House and Senate committees.

On Tuesday, House members unanimously passed the measure, Senate adoption virtually certain, perhaps by unanimous voice vote.

The measure ignored made-in-the-USA color revolution-style violence and chaos, ongoing in Hong Kong for months, US officials actively collaborating with its leaders.

The measure falsely calls demonstrations “peaceful.” It turned truth on its head, claiming the bill “support(s) the democratic aspirations of the people of Hong Kong” — a notion US officials tolerate nowhere, especially not domestically.

It calls for imposing “punitive measures against government officials in Hong Kong or mainland China who are responsible for suppressing basic freedoms in Hong Kong (sic).”

A second unanimously adopted House measure, the so-called Hong Kong Act, bars US exports of military and crowd-control items to city authorities.

A third measure recognizes US/Hong Kong relations, denouncing Beijing’s “interference” in its affairs, along with supporting ongoing (violent, chaotic) protests — ignoring US dirty hands all over them.

A fourth bill commended Canada for detaining Huawei’s chief financial officer Sabrina Meng Wanzhou — following her unlawful arrest in Vancouver last December.

The unacceptable measures are the latest examples of how the US illegally meddles in the internal affairs of other nations, a flagrant breach of international and constitutional law.

In response, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang denounced the measures, saying they’ll

“not only harm the interests of China and the China-US relations, but also severely undermine the interests of the United States,” adding:

“Hong Kong belongs to China and its affairs are purely China’s domestic affairs that brook no foreign interference.”

“We advise the US side to get a clear understanding of the situation, rein in on the brink of the precipice immediately, and cease to promote the subsequent deliberation of the act and interfere in Hong Kong affairs and China’s internal affairs immediately.”

Beijing intends “strong countermeasures to firmly safeguard its sovereignty, safety and developmental interests” if US anti-China bills are adopted by the Senate and signed into law by Trump.

Geng noted that US House members ignored “serious crimes such as arson, damaging shops and violent assaults” committed by protesters.

On Wednesday, China’s official People’s Daily broadsheet slammed passage of unacceptable House measures, accusing the US of “stir(ring) the pot and…fan(ing) the flames of (violent) protests…providing oxygen to the worst political and militant elements within the protest movement.”

Hong Kong official Junius Ho Kwan-yiu denounced Washington’s double-standard and flagrant interference in the city’s affairs.

Academic Tian Feilong said US legislation has no international legal standing, examples of unacceptable US hegemonic actions.

“US politicians want…to keep (the anti-China) fire burning.” They want US-orchestrated violence and chaos in Hong Kong continued, Tian adding:

When Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam “tries to solve economic problems, and especially when those violent radical protesters and rioters are losing support, the US moves to provide more support to anti-government forces by passing (legislation).”

Without it and other US pot-stirring, the turmoil (might) die out” as protester energy wanes, signs appearing before House members acted on Wednesday, the Senate likely to follow in short order.

On Tuesday, China’s Global Times said

“(r)ioters…use(d) knives and a home-made explosive device in their attacks on police officers during last weekend’s illegal assembly, which further angered ordinary Hong Kong people.”

Unacceptable US legislation will likely encourage more of the same — commonplace tactics during illegal US color revolution attempts against sovereign states.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Millions Hungry and Food Insecure in the US

October 16th, 2019 by Stephen Lendman

Poverty, unemployment, underemployment, hunger, food insecurity, and overall deprivation affect million of households in the world’s richest country USA.

Why? It’s because both right wings of its war party devote most of the nation’s discretionary income for militarism, maintaining the Pentagon’s global empire of bases, and endless aggression in multiple theaters — along with bailouts for and handouts to corporate America.

In the new millennium alone, countless trillions of dollars went for the above interests, combined with tax cuts for the rich, while food stamps and other social justice programs are fast eroding to help pay for them as the national debt soars by over $1 trillion annually.

Most US households with one or more working members have little or no savings — leaving them vulnerable to hunger and homelessness from one or more missed paychecks.

According to Feeding America, 79% of US households the organization aids rely on “inexpensive unhealthy food to feed their families,” 84% of households with children functioning this way.

The vast majority of Feeding America (FA) client households face unacceptable choices — 69% forced at times to choose between food and utilities, 66% between food and medical care, 31% between food and education.

Force-fed neoliberal harshness by Republicans and undemocratic Dems contributed to 58% of FA’s client households having one or more members with high blood pressure, 33% affected by diabetes — these numbers much higher among households with seniors, 77% and 47% respectively.

Nearly half of FA client households have one or members in “fair or poor health.”

Because of unemployment or poverty wages, one in six FA client households “experienced a foreclosure or eviction in the past five years.”

The vast majority of FA client households are food insecure (84%) — without access to sufficient, affordable, nutritious food, at times going hungry.

According to the US Department of Agriculture in 2018, food insecurity affects 37 million Americans, including over 11 million children — the numbers likely way understated.

Feeding America explained that impoverished households and others above the poverty line experience food insecurity for inadequate ability to buy what’s needed, adding:

“Food insecurity does not exist in isolation, as low-income families are affected by multiple, overlapping issues like lack of affordable housing, social isolation, chronic or acute health problems, high medical costs, and low wages.”

“Taken together, these issues are important social determinants of health” and well-being — fast deteriorating in the United States of I Don’t Care, the world’s richest country with the greatest wealth disparity among developed nations.

The state of the nation is shameful, serving its privileged class exclusively, exploiting most others to benefit its well-off members.

Food insecurity and hunger impact virtually “every community in the United States,” said FA.

Do Something.org discussed “11 facts about hunger in the US,” saying the following:

Around 40 million Americans experience hunger annually.

At least 15 million US households endure food insecurity.

Hunger is caused by poverty and inadequate financial resources, a nationwide problem.

Around 45 million Americans rely on food stamps, an eroding program providing inadequate help.

“1 in 6 American children may not know where their next meal is coming from.”

“22 million children in America rely on the free or reduced-price lunch they receive at school, but as many as 3 million children still aren’t getting the breakfast they need.”

Food insecure children are at greater risk to develop physical and emotional health issues. They perform poorly academically and in physical activities.

Food insecurity affects both urban and rural areas nationwide.

People of color (Blacks and Latinos) are disproportionately affected by hunger and food insecurity.

The states with the highest rates of food insecurity are Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, New Mexico, Arkansas, Kentucky, Maine, and Oklahoma.

“(H)ouseholds with children ha(ve) a substantially higher rate of food insecurity” and hunger, said Do Something.org.

US Census data show around half of US households are impoverished or bordering it — a permanent underclass in the world’s richest country, young children and the elderly most affected.

Poverty, homelessness, hunger, food insecurity, unaffordable healthcare, and overall deprivation affect countless millions of Americans.

It’s the shame of the nation — a let ‘em eat cake society, uncaring about the vast majority of its citizens.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

It is a strange experience witnessing The Donald fumble his way through foreign policy, which he knows almost nothing about.

In the awkward press conference below, Trump stumbles his way through history. His explanation for abandoning the Kurds? They didn’t help “us” win the Second World War.  

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Undoubtedly, there were Kurds fighting during that completely avoidable carnage that killed more than 70 million people, 25 million of that debated number in Russia alone. Trump does not know if soldiers of Kurdish ancestry died at Normandy. The stable ignoramus is famous for not doing his homework and talking off the top of his coiffured head. 

Moreover, the United States did not single-handedly “win” the Second World War—that achievement should be credited to Stalin and the Soviet Union. Ditto Syria. It was Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah that beat back the CIA and Saudi Arabia’s murderous jihadi proxies, not Trump and his neocons. 

Abel Cohen writes: 

America shouldn’t mythologize a war against the Nazis we didn’t wage until the last minute. Like Truman said: “If Germany is winning the war, we ought to help Russia; if Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and in that way let them kill as many as possible.” America waited as long as it could to join the war—and ended it by firing the first shots of the next one.

Truman’s final homicidal act was to drop two atomic bombs on Japan, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and traumatizing millions of others. He then inaugurated the Cold War, founded the national security state, and set the stage for the military-industrial complex which, incidentally, Trump mentioned during his press conference. Since taking office, Trump has acted as salesman-of-the-month for the MIC, selling death merchandise far and wide. This is just about the only growth industry in a crumbling America. 

The Kurds probably knew Trump would betray and leave them at the mercy—and, if news reports are accurate, mercy is in short supply—of Turkey with its resurgent form of Sunni Islam exploited by President Tayyip Erdogan. 

“Uniting around our common Islamic identity is the only way to solve the Kurdish problem,” a leader of Justice and Development party told The Economist. “Islam bound us in Ottoman times and during the war of independence, why not today?”

Left out of the discussion is the fact two-thirds of Kurds follow the Shafi‘i madhhab, which distinguishes them from Arabs and Turks in the region who are primarily Hanafi. In Islam, like any religion, divergent sects rarely make peace. For example, consider the death count attributed to the Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Europe (instrumentally, the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, responsible for more than 30,000 dead in France).

Erdogan’s solution to the “Kurdish problem” is to invade Syria and Iraq and kill as many Kurds as possible. 

Trump’s response is to move US troops—illegally in Syria in violation of its national sovereignty—out of harm’s way, which is, of course, the sensible thing to do, never mind the ranting criticism of neocons and their Republican and Democrat fellow travelers. 

However, it is impossible to hold this president to anything. He changes with the wind, following the weathervane of his outsized ego. 

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

Featured image is from The Bullet

On October 14, units of the Syrian Army started entering areas controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northeastern Syria.

The terms and conditions of the deal made by the SDF and Damascus are yet to be revealed, but government troops already deployed in Tabqah, Tabqah Airport, Tabqah Dam, Ayn Issa and Tal Tamir, and in the Manbij area. Syrian Army troops also moved towards the border town of Kobani. However, the situation there remains unclear. According to pro-Kurdish sources, US troops deployed there have attempted to prevent Syrian troops from entering the town by blocking the Qaraqozak bridge.

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper officially stated that the US did not sign up to fight the Turks for the SDF. Nonetheless, this does not mean that Washington would help the SDF in implementation of its deal with Damascus.

Watch the video here.

The US is not planning to fully withdraw its troops from the country. According to Esper, the US military presence will remain in Syria, especially in al-Tanf. Additionally, there is no timeline for the announced withdrawal of 1,000 troops.

Turkey reacted to the Damascus-SDF deal by increasing its military efforts against the SDF around Tell Abyad and Ras al-Ain. Furthermore, Turkish-led forces launched an advance towards Ain Assa and Manbij, where they clashes with detachments of the Syrian Army. According to pro-Turkish sources, Turkish-backed militants captured a T-55 battle tank belonging to the Syrian Army near Manbij.

The military situation in northeastern Syria may escalate even further if the Turkish Armed Forces and Turkish-backed militants continue their advance into the areas where the Syrian Army is already deployed. At the same time, Ankara’s attempts to capture Manbij will likely only strengthen the military and political cooperation between the SDF and Damascus.

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Scotland Edges Closer to Independence Amid Brexit Chaos

October 16th, 2019 by Johanna Ross

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced on Sunday that she would be setting a date for a second referendum on Scottish independence within ‘a matter of weeks’. Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show she said that she would seek a section 30 order this year, after the latest poll on Scottish independence revealed support is now as high as 50 percent – a five-point increase in the same poll carried out last year.

Momentum for a second vote on Scottish independence has been building steadily since the Brexit vote in June 2016, as Scots voted to remain in the European Union, in contrast to the nationwide result that the UK should leave. Since then the governing party in Scotland, the SNP, has argued that Scottish interests in relation to the country’s future relationship with the EU have been ignored by Westminster. Not just that, but Scots feel betrayed. During the run up to the independence referendum in 2014, they were told by the Unionists that if Scotland was to leave the UK, then its future in the EU could not be guaranteed. Just a few years later Scotland is being taken out of the EU against its own will.

Feelings of resentment at how Scotland was being treated during the Brexit negotiations were exacerbated by the appointment of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister in July, as he is widely disliked north of the border and seen to be embody elitist Conservative values which clash with those held by many Scots. His visit to Edinburgh not long after he had secured the post spoke volumes: not only did he not interact with any of the locals, but he made a point of exiting the First Minister’s residence through the back door so as to avoid any heckling from the crowd of protestors outside. As Martin Kettle wrote in The Guardian back then,

‘Johnson is a man who doesn’t care about Scotland, at the head of a movement that doesn’t care about Scotland either’.

Indeed, it almost seems that Scottish independence is a price Johnson is willing to pay to achieve his ‘come what may’ Brexit as there has been no real acknowledgement from him of the impending constitutional crisis that Scottish independence would represent. In a bid to ensure that Brexit goes ahead, Scotland has been left at the wayside, and very much feels it. To add insult to injury, it’s not clear at this stage whether Boris Johnson will allow a second referendum on independence. Already there have been signals that he won’t, having said that he would refuse to grant permission to the Scottish government – the section 30 order it is seeking – to hold another such vote.

Refusing to hold another vote could backfire on the UK government however. Nationalists are losing patience, with more and more independence supporters taking to the streets at weekend rallies to demand a second referendum. For many it is long overdue and they blame Nicola Sturgeon for not calling one earlier. If Johnson were now to deny it, it would only add fuel to the fire in what is already a volatile situation. Protests until now have been peaceful and positive, but who knows what could happen if Westminster were to obstruct a second vote. Scotland could end up embarking on a similar path to the Catalonians.

In what is becoming an increasingly precarious situation, some analysts have gone as far to draw comparisons with the collapse of former Yugoslavia. What may have been considered impossible just a few years ago cannot be ruled out now. Brexit has tested the boundaries and pushed the UK’s legal and political systems to the limit.  The rules of the game, though unwritten, were always understood and adhered to in the past. Now the fact that the UK does not have a written constitution is being exploited in a way like never before.

And feelings of discontent are not reserved to Scotland alone. Indeed, it is now being suggested that along with the secession of Scotland could come that of Wales. In Wales the rise of nationalism has been arguably even more dramatic.  Previous polls conducted around the time of the Scottish independence vote showed support for Welsh independence at no more than 3 percent. Recent polls show this has skyrocketed to as much as 40 percent, with Brexit being a primary factor. What is even more interesting is the distribution of Remain and Leave voters across Wales. Research has shown that the areas in support of remaining in the EU are dominated by native Welsh, whereas those in favour of Brexit are largely ethnic English. Such a division has the potential to deepen as native Welsh blame their fate on English settlers.

As the final attempts to achieve a Brexit deal are being made this week, Boris Johnson would be wise to take into account the repercussions for the UK constitution of leaving the EU without a withdrawal agreement. All the signs show however that this is one Prime Minister for whom EU withdrawal must happen, whatever the cost may be to the 300 year old Union. And his heavy-handed approach to Brexit may well be repeated when it comes to Scottish Nationalism. The battle for independence it seems has only just begun.

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Johanna Ross is a journalist.

Featured image is from Jane Barlow/PA Wire

Are We Blocking Out the Sun?

October 16th, 2019 by F. William Engdahl

Climate change is real. However, serious scientific evidence is pointing to a very different causality than most discuss. Climate is a huge subject, an immensely complex one. There is controversy around whether we must implement drastic new taxes on fuels or other measures to reduce or “capture” CO2 to reduce Man-Made Global Warming. So far however, there are strong indications we are ignoring what might be a far greater factor in our climate and in increasing occurrence of severe weather around the world, from hurricanes to volcanic eruptions to earthquakes to severe cold, severe warm and severe rainfall. One causal factor being ignored in all the discussion is what influence solar activity has on our climate. We might well be ignoring this to our peril.

Sunspots and solar minimum

Pretty much everything in nature moves in some form of cycle, whether it is the Earth around the Sun or the moon around the Earth. Those cycles have been known for ages to influence the ocean tides or growing seasons. What is less known is the fact that there are cycles to solar eruptions, giant electromagnetic storms often called sunspots. It has been measured over time that solar cycles have short cycles of approximately 11 years.

According to the US NASA,

“The solar cycle is the cycle that the Sun’s magnetic field goes through approximately every 11 years…The solar cycle affects activity on the surface of the Sun, such as sunspots which are caused by the Sun’s magnetic fields.”

These shorter 11 year cycles take place within longer cycles of around 90 to 100 years, 200 years or longer.

Astrophysicists measure such cycles from the number of sunspots daily by year. It takes eleven years to proceed from minimum solar eruption year to a peak and down to the next minimum–think sine waves. That means the number of solar eruptions is at a minimum before beginning the next cycle of 11 year rise and fall. The relevant point for us on earth is that those giant solar eruptions, as well as the relative absence of same, have huge impact on our earth and on climate. The sunspot activity has been noted and measured for about 350 years.

What is less well understood but empirically measured are the larger longer wave cycles of sunspot rise and decline. In 2019 we are at the apparent bottom of what is called Cycle 24. If the present spotless pattern continues to year-end 2019 it could be perhaps the deepest Solar Minimum of a century. Notable here is that the peak number of sunspots has been declining with each cycle since Cycle 22 that began in around 1986. Some scientists predict that Cycle 25 in 2020 will begin a series of even more unusually low sunspot activity lasting perhaps into 2055 or even longer. If so, it will have significant influence on our climate and weather.

The year 2019 will be marked as solar minimum year, before Cycle 25 begins, to run until about 2030. What is notable about this is the fact that NASA’s forecast for the next solar Cycle 25 predicts that it will be the weakest of the last 200 yearsThat means weakest sunspot activity since early 1800. Notably, that period is known to astrophysicists as the Dalton Minimum, lasting from about 1790 to about 1820. It is referred to as a Grand Solar Minimum, the low of a 200 year cycle atop the 11 year cycles. Notable during the Dalton Minimum era were significant volcanic eruptions, the most notable of the past centuries being the highly explosive 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, the largest in known history. Scientists have postulated a link between the eruption of huge volumes of volcanic ash high above the atmosphere and cloud creation that blocks the sun, leading to cooler oceans. Notably 1816 became known as the “year without a summer” due to the impact of Tambora on North American and European weather. In the Northern Hemisphere, crops failed and livestock died, resulting in the worst famine of the century. 

The point to be noted is that the frequency and intensity of sunspot activity has proven profound influence on Earth weather, atmosphere, ocean temperature, Gulf Stream flows and more. It is also notable that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control dismisses such solar influence as not significant. That is a huge mistake by all serious evidence.

While governments and the UN have funneled billions of dollars to computer modelers to create various models of CO2 and other greenhouse gases since the 1970s, far too little attention has been given to the effect of our sun on earth climate. The ancient Inca or Maya cultures had a better respect for the energy and influence of the sun than we seem to have. At a minimum, in the interest of science, if not survival, we need to remedy this.

2019: Solar Cycle 24 Minimum

This year 2019 has been notable in its low sunspot occurrence. The sun continues to be very quiet. As of October 11, the sun has been without sunspots on 207 days so far during 2019 or 73% of the time, the highest percentage since 2008. One feature of such decreasing solar activity is the weakening of the ambient solar wind and its magnetic field. That allows more cosmic rays to penetrate the earth. Intensification of cosmic rays affects Earth’s cloud cover and climate.

Some scientists have correlated volcanic and earthquake activity with increased periods of galactic cosmic ray penetration. For most of 2019 as just one example, the Shiveluch (Kamchatka) volcano in Russia has been regularly ejecting huge volumes of volcanic ash particulates into the stratosphere as high as 70,000 feet and cooling the planet. Other volcanic eruptions or earthquakes during recent months have taken place from Chile, Japan, Philippines, Indonesia, Puerto Rico and Washington State and California to name a few.

According to Prof. Masayuki Hyodo of the Research Center for Inland Seas, Kobe University, “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has discussed the impact of cloud cover on climate in their evaluations, but this phenomenon has never been considered in climate predictions due to the insufficient physical understanding of it.” He stresses, “When galactic cosmic rays increase, so do low clouds, and when cosmic rays decrease clouds do as well, so climate warming may be caused by an opposite-umbrella effect.” Galactic cosmic ray penetration decreases during periods of high sunspot eruptions.

Likely Effects on Climate

If astrophysicists’ predictions are accurate, and we soon will know, we are in for a long series of extreme weather events and climate changes globally over the coming decades until perhaps 2055, owing to the onset of what is being called a new Grand Solar Minimum beginning around 2020, the conjuncture of an 11-year series of declines in sunspot numbers with longer wave 100 year or longer cycles. If this is so, the extreme weather events from volcanoes, ultra-severe cold waves across the Midwest USA growing regions, severe heat in other places, volcanoes and earthquakes, could be a pre-taste of what is coming. Along with that could come shortened growing seasons around the world and harvest failures.

Among the issues scientists believe we likely will experience during this period of an emerging Grand Solar Minimum, if accurate, will be a further slowing of the Atlantic Conveyor or Gulf Stream, a dramatic decline in the Total Solar Irradiance, or solar power incident on the Earth’s upper atmosphere over the coming decades.

One of the most respected astrophysicists studying solar cycles is Professor Valentina Zharkova, an astrophysicist who teaches mathematics at Northumbria University in the UK. Zharkova was one of only 2 scientists out of 150 who accurately predicted that Solar Cycle 24 would be weaker than Cycle 23. At a conference of the Global Warming Policy Foundation in October, 2018, Zharkova presented findings that suggest in 2020 a “Super Grand Solar Minimum” period could begin. Until now her models have run at a 93-97% accuracy. Grand Solar Minimums are prolonged periods of reduced solar activity, and in the past have gone hand-in-hand with times of global cooling.

Whether Prof Zharkova is right or not is not the issue, so much as the fact that we tend to block the possible influences of the sun on Earth climate at all. Increasing evidence from independent scientists such as Zharkova suggest that we need to invest far more resources into understanding better our sun and its effects on our climate long-term if we are to avoid major climate catastrophe in coming years. Climate Change is real, but far more complex than we are imagining.

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

Featured image is from NEO


seeds_2.jpg

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl
ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2
Year: 2007
Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

 

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

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

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

Mommy, am I gonna die?”— 4-year-old Ava Ellis after being inadvertently shot in the leg by a police officer who was aiming for the girl’s boxer-terrier dog, Patches

“‘Am I going to get shot again.’”—2-year-old survivor of a police shooting that left his three siblings, ages 1, 4 and 5, with a bullet in the brain, a fractured skull and gun wounds to the face

Children learn what they live.

As family counselor Dorothy Law Nolte wisely observed,

“If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn. If children live with hostility, they learn to fight. If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive.”

And if children live with terror, trauma and violence—forced to watch helplessly as their loved ones are executed by police officers who shoot first and ask questions later—will they in turn learn to terrorize, traumatize and inflict violence on the world around them?

I’m not willing to risk it. Are you?

It’s difficult enough raising a child in a world ravaged by war, disease, poverty and hate, but when you add the toxic stress of the police state into the mix, it becomes near impossible to protect children from the growing unease that some of the monsters of our age come dressed in government uniforms.

Case in point: in Hugo, Oklahoma, plain clothes police officers opened fire on a pickup truck parked in front of a food bank, heedless of the damage such a hail of bullets—26 shots were fired—could have on those in the vicinity. Three of the four children inside the parked vehicle were shot: a 4-year-old girl was shot in the head and ended up with a bullet in the brain; a 5-year-old boy received a skull fracture; and a 1-year-old girl had deep cuts on her face from gunfire or shattered window glass. Only the 2-year-old was spared any physical harm, although the terror will likely linger for a long time.

“They are terrified to go anywhere or hear anything,” the family attorney said. “The two-year-old keeps asking about ‘Am I going to get shot again.’”

The reason for the use of such excessive force?

Police were searching for a suspect in a weeks-old robbery of a pizza parlor that netted $400.

While the two officers involved in the shooting are pulling paid leave at taxpayer expense, the children’s mother is struggling to figure out how to care for her wounded family and pay the medical expenses, including the cost to transport each child in a separate medical helicopter to a nearby hospital: $75,000 for one child’s transport alone.

This may be the worst use of excessive force on innocent children to date. Unfortunately, it is one of many in a steady stream of cases that speak to the need for police to de-escalate their tactics and stop resorting to excessive force when less lethal means are available to them.

For instance, in Cleveland, police shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice who was seen playing on a playground with a pellet gun. Surveillance footage shows police shooting the boy two seconds after getting out of a moving patrol car. Incredibly, the shooting was deemed “reasonable” and “justified” by two law enforcement experts who concluded that the police use of force “did not violate Tamir’s constitutional rights.”

Screenshot from Reason

In Detroit, 7-year-old Aiyana Jones was killed after a Detroit SWAT team launched a flash-bang grenade into her family’s apartment, broke through the door and opened fire, hitting the little girl who was asleep on the living room couch. The cops were in the wrong apartment.

In Georgia, a SWAT team launched a flash-bang grenade into the house in which Baby Bou Bou, his three sisters and his parents were staying. The grenade landed in the 2-year-old’s crib, burning a hole in his chest and leaving the child with scarring that a lifetime of surgeries will not be able to easily undo.

Also in Georgia, 10-year-old Dakota Corbitt was shot by a police officer who aimed for an inquisitive dog, missed, and hit the young boy instead.

In Ohio, police shot 4-year-old Ava Ellis in the leg, shattering the bone, after being dispatched to assist the girl’s mother, who had cut her arm and was in need of a paramedic. Cops claimed that the family pet charged the officer who was approaching the house, causing him to fire his gun and accidentally hit the little girl.

In California, 13-year-old Andy Lopez Cruz was shot 7 times in 10 seconds by a police officer who mistook the boy’s toy gun for an assault rifle. Christopher Roupe, 17, was shot and killed after opening the door to a police officer. The officer, mistaking the remote control in Roupe’s hand for a gun, shot him in the chest.

These children are more than grim statistics on a police blotter. They are the heartbreaking casualties of the government’s endless, deadly wars on terror, on drugs, and on the American people themselves.

Then you have the growing number of incidents involving children who are forced to watch helplessly as trigger-happy police open fire on loved ones and community members alike.

In Texas, an 8-year-old boy watched as police—dispatched to do a welfare check on a home with its windows open—shot and killed his aunt through her bedroom window while she was playing video games with him.

In Minnesota, a 4-year-old girl watched from the backseat of a car as cops shot and killed her mother’s boyfriend, Philando Castile, a school cafeteria supervisor, during a routine traffic stop merely because Castile disclosed that he had a gun in his possession, for which he had a lawful conceal-and-carry permit. That’s all it took for police to shoot Castile four times as he was reaching for his license and registration.

In Arizona, a 7-year-old girl watched panic-stricken as a state trooper pointed his gun at her and her father during a traffic stop and reportedly threatened to shoot her father in the back (twice) based on the mistaken belief that they were driving a stolen rental car.

In Oklahoma, a 5-year-old boy watched as a police officer used a high-powered rifle to shoot his dog Opie multiple times in his family’s backyard while other children were also present. The police officer was mistakenly attempting to deliver a warrant on a 10-year-old case for someone who hadn’t lived at that address in a decade.

A Minnesota SWAT team actually burst into one family’s house, shot the family’s dog, handcuffed the children and forced them to “sit next to the carcass of their dead and bloody pet for more than an hour.” They later claimed it was the wrong house.

More than 80% of American communities have their own SWAT teams, with more than 80,000 of these paramilitary raids are carried out every year. That translates to more than 200 SWAT team raids every day in which police crash through doors, damage private property, terrorize adults and children alike, kill family pets, assault or shoot anyone that is perceived as threatening—and all in the pursuit of someone merely suspected of a crime, usually some small amount of drugs.

A child doesn’t even have to be directly exposed to a police shooting to learn the police state’s lessons in compliance and terror, which are being meted out with every SWAT team raid, roadside strip search, and school drill.

Indeed, there can be no avoiding the hands-on lessons being taught in the schools about the role of police in our lives, ranging from active shooter drills and school-wide lockdowns to incidents in which children engaging in typically childlike behavior are suspended (for shooting an imaginary “arrow” at a fellow classmate), handcuffed (for being disruptive at school), arrested (for throwing water balloons as part of a school prank), and even tasered (for not obeying instructions).

For example, a middle school in Washington State went on lockdown after a student brought a toy gun to class. A Boston high school went into lockdown for four hours after a bullet was discovered in a classroom. A North Carolina elementary school locked down and called in police after a fifth grader reported seeing an unfamiliar man in the school (it turned out to be a parent).

Cops have even gone so far as to fire blanks during school active shooter drills around the country. Teachers at one elementary school in Indiana were actually shot “execution style” with plastic pellets. Students at a high school in Florida were so terrified after administrators tricked them into believing that a shooter drill was, in fact, an actual attack that some of them began texting their parents “goodbye.”

Better safe than sorry is the rationale offered to those who worry that these drills are terrorizing and traumatizing young children. As journalist Dahlia Lithwick points out:

“I don’t recall any serious national public dialogue about lockdown protocols or how they became the norm. It seems simply to have begun, modeling itself on the lockdowns that occur during prison riots, and then spread until school lockdowns and lockdown drills are as common for our children as fire drills, and as routine as duck-and-cover drills were in the 1950s.”

These drills have, indeed, become routine.

As the New York Times reports:

“Most states have passed laws requiring schools to devise safety plans, and several states, including Michigan, Kentucky and North Dakota, specifically require lockdown drills. Some drills are as simple as a principal making an announcement and students sitting quietly in a darkened classroom. At other schools, police officers and school officials playact a shooting, stalking through the halls like gunmen and testing whether doors have been locked.”

Police officers at a Florida middle school carried out an active shooter drill in an effort to educate students about how to respond in the event of an actual shooting crisis. Two armed officers, guns loaded and drawn, burst into classrooms, terrorizing the students and placing the school into lockdown mode.

What is particularly chilling is how effective these lessons in compliance are in indoctrinating young people to accept their role in the police state, either as criminals or prison guards.

If these exercises are intended to instill fear, paranoia and compliance into young people, they’re working.

As Joe Pinsker writes for The Atlantic:

These lockdowns can be scarring, causing some kids to cry and wet themselves. Others have written letters bidding their family goodbye or drafted wills that specify what to do with their belongings. And 57 percent of teens worry that a shooting will happen at their school, according to a Pew Research Center survey from last year. Though many children are no strangers to violence in their homes and communities, the pervasiveness of lockdowns and school-shooting drills in the U.S. has created a culture of fear that touches nearly every child across the country.

Sociologist Alice Goffman understands how far-reaching the impact of such “exercises” can be on young people. For six years, Goffman lived in a low-income urban neighborhood, documenting the impact such an environment—a microcosm of the police state—has on its residents. Her account of neighborhood children playing cops and robbers speaks volumes about how constant exposure to pat downs, strip searches, surveillance and arrests can result in a populace that meekly allows itself to be prodded, poked and stripped.

As journalist Malcolm Gladwell writing for the New Yorker reports:

Goffman sometimes saw young children playing the age-old game of cops and robbers in the street, only the child acting the part of the robber wouldn’t even bother to run away: I saw children give up running and simply stick their hands behind their back, as if in handcuffs; push their body up against a car without being asked; or lie flat on the ground and put their hands over their head. The children yelled, “I’m going to lock you up! I’m going to lock you up, and you ain’t never coming home!” I once saw a six-year-old pull another child’s pants down to do a “cavity search.”

Clearly, our children are getting the message, but it’s not the message that was intended by those who fomented a revolution and wrote our founding documents. Their philosophy was that the police work for us, and “we the people” are the masters, and they are to be our servants.

Now that philosophy has been turned on its head, fueled by our fears (some legitimate, some hyped along by the government and its media mouthpieces) about the terrors and terrorists that lurk among us.

What are we to tell our nation’s children about the role of police in their lives?

Do we parrot the government line that police officers are community helpers who are to be trusted and obeyed at all times? Do we caution them to steer clear of a police officer, warning them that any interactions could have disastrous consequences? Or is there some happy medium between the two that, while being neither fairy tale nor horror story, can serve as a cautionary tale for young people who will encounter police at virtually every turn?

Certainly, it’s getting harder by the day to insist that we live in a nation that values freedom and which is governed by the rule of law.

Yet unless something changes and soon, there will soon be nothing left to teach young people about freedom as we have known it beyond remembered stories of the “good old days.”

For starters, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, it’s time to take a hard look at the greatest perpetrators of violence in our culture—the U.S. government and its agents—and do something about it: de-militarize the police, prohibit the Pentagon from distributing military weapons to domestic police agencies, train the police in de-escalation techniques, stop insulating police officers from charges of misconduct and wrongdoing, and require police to take precautionary steps before engaging in violence in the presence of young people.

We must stop the carnage.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

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

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If Great Britain keeps its commitment to switch over its vehicles to electric by 2050, the government will see a whopping loss of 28 billion pounds ($35 billion) paid by motorists driving traditional gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles.

That comes from a study released Friday by London-based Institute for Fiscal Studies examining the impact of the UK’s net-zero greenhouse gas emissions law adopted in June and signed by previous Prime Minister Theresa May. England became the first G7 country to set the goal of reaching zero net emissions by 2050.

Fuel duties on petrol-powered vehicles make up almost 4 percent of total government receipts — and all of that will disappear unless urgent action is taken, according to think tank IFS’ study. The government may need to take a new approach to taxing motorists as all-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles become the norm, the study advises.

The UK’s mission to switch over to EVs and renewable energy by 2050 represents “a huge long-run fiscal challenge” for the government, according to the study.

The government faces other hits on tax revenue. The UK will be seeing a drop of about 20 billion pounds a year ($24.5 billion) from the government’s new policy of freezing tax duties to help people struggling with the cost of living, the IFS said. There’s also concern that another 1 billion pounds ($1.229 billion) could be lost if Prime Minister Boris Johnson follows through on his commitment to cut duties by 2 pence per liter of fuel.

“The government should set out its long-term plan for taxing driving, before it finds itself with virtually no revenues from driving and no way to correct for the costs -– most importantly congestion –- that driving imposes on others,” said Rebekah Stroud, an IFS economist who co-authored the report.

Duty on unleaded gasoline and diesel has remained frozen at 57.95 pence per liter since 2011, accounting for 1.3 percent of England’s GDP. The fuel recently has been costing 126.9 pence per liter, of which 57.95 pence is duty — about 45 percent of the total fuel cost.

The think tank recommends implementing taxes on EVs soon, as car owners are becoming used to avoiding these duties on their fuel. New motoring taxes should reflect distance driven and vary according to when and where the trips take place in the vehicle. A flat-rate tax per mile driven could be another taxation model used, according to the study.

Prime Minister Johnson used his platform at the Conservative Party conference last week to advocate for continuing support in the net-zero emissions mandate by mid-century. Johnson has a strategy to be put into place advocating investments made in EV production, energy reduction in all new homes, and the planting of one million trees to combat climate change.

The Tory party has a much larger policy question to address first — what to do about Brexit. The UK is due to leave the European Union at the end of this month.

The new prime minister isn’t interested in hearing arguments made by protesters warning of imminent disaster from climate change. Thousands of climate change protestors blocked London’s roads and bridges on Oct. 8 to launch a two-week long demonstration. That led to the Metro police arresting 280 activists.

Johnson was perturbed to see tents pitched just yards away from the front door at No. 10. He labelled them “uncooperative crusties and protesters.”

He had more to say about them, branding them “importunate nose-ringed climate change protesters.”

Electric vehicle sales have been gaining traction in England, with September sales reaching 12,883 — which is 97.7 percent more than a year ago and the best month ever on record. Battery electric vehicles are seeing more of the gain — at 25,097 this year, up 122 percent year-over-year. At 22,773 units sold this year, plug-in hybrids were down 29.2 percent year-over-year.

The Tesla Model 3 has been shining in the UK market, with over 2,000 deliveries in August. It was the top-selling model of any kind in London for the second month in a row as of the end of September.

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Jon LeSage is a California-based journalist covering clean vehicles, alternative energy, and economic and regulatory trends shaping the automotive, transportation, and mobility sectors.

Trump OK’s Sanctions on Turkey

October 15th, 2019 by Stephen Lendman

Trump, House and Senate officials threatened sanctions on Turkey for its cross-border offensive in Syria.

On Monday, Trump OK’d their imposition by the US Treasury — despite green lighting Turkish aggression before launched, withdrawing US troops from northeast Syrian areas Ankara is attacking.

Separately, his UN envoy vetoed a Security Council resolution and rejected a next-day statement, condemning Turkish aggression.

He betrayed Kurdish YPG fighters — used by the Pentagon and CIA as proxy foot soldiers against Damascus.

Now they’re allying with government forces to try preventing Turkish troops from seizing more Syrian territory in areas bordering both countries.

Erdogan wants as much as he can control, notably Syrian oil-producing areas he long coveted.

Most likely, Kurdish fighters will be integrated into the Syrian Arab Army against the common Turkish foe, Damascus gaining control over US heavy weapons and equipment supplied them.

Pentagon, UK, and French forces in northern Syria, along with private military contractors (PMCs), are being moved to neighboring Iraqi and perhaps Jordanian areas bordering Syria.

Overall, the US is increasing its regional military footprint by deploying thousands of troops and heavy weapons to Saudi Arabia, elevating the risk of further hostilities in a part of the world already boiling from US aggression in multiple theaters.

Congressional sanctions were threatened on Turkey, not imposed so far. Rhetoric isn’t policy.

Trump said he’ll “soon be issuing an Executive Order authorizing the imposition of sanctions against current and former officials of the Government of Turkey and any persons contributing to Turkey’s destabilizing actions in northeast Syria.” More below on his Monday remarks.

On the same day, the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on Turkey’s war and energy and natural resources ministries, including their leadership.

Treasury Secretary Mnuchin said further sanctions may follow “as necessary.” Secondary sanctions may be imposed on “persons that engage in certain transactions with persons designated today.”

“(A)ny foreign financial institution that knowingly facilitates any significant financial transactions for or on behalf of the persons designated today could be subject to US correspondent or payable through account sanctions.”

“(T)oday’s action does not (intend to) disrupt Turkey’s ability to meet its energy needs.”

Assets and property of sanctioned Turkish officials in the US, if any, are “blocked.”

Trump ordered tariffs on Turkish steel imports raised to 50%, their level last spring before reducing them, a slap on the wrist action.

He’s suspending talks with Ankara on a “$100 billion dollar trade deal” — a temporary measure unless the bilateral breach widens further.

He accused Turkey of “serious human rights abuses, obstructing a ceasefire, preventing displaced persons from returning home, forcibly repatriating refugees, or threatening the peace, security, or stability in Syria.”

He ignored these and countless other hostile US actions against the Syrian Arab Republic — launched by Obama, escalated on DJT’s watch.

Notably they include mass slaughter and destruction in Raqqa, terror-bombing vital infrastructure, causing hundreds of thousands of Syrian deaths since 2011, the severest refugee crisis since WW II, and other high crimes of war and against humanity.

Turkish aggression in northern Syria is minor by comparison to the US rape and destruction of one country after another in the Middle East and elsewhere.

All forms of aggression are the highest of high crimes, far exceeding others — especially when entire populations of targeted countries are affected, notably in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, along with all-out US economic terrorism against Iran and Venezuela, war by other means.

Trump falsely claimed he’s “worked tirelessly to preserve the safety and security of the United States and its citizens.” Endless US wars with more likely threaten everyone everywhere.

He turned truth on its head, claiming the US and allies “liberated 100 percent of ISIS’ ruthless territorial caliphate.”

He’s a geopolitical know-nothing, aware only of what his handlers tell him and Fox News rubbish, his favorite TV channel.

He may not know that the US created ISIS, al-Qaeda, its al-Nusra offshoot, and likeminded jihadist groups, using them as imperial foot soldiers, training them on Pentagon bases, arming, funding and directing them, the CIA involved in what’s going on.

Saying “Turkey must…prioritize the protection of civilians” ignores their rape and slaughter by US, NATO, and Israeli forces in all their wars of aggression.

His other high-minded rhetoric belies US-led Western/Israeli contempt for ordinary people domestically and abroad.

Turkish aggression isn’t “precipitating a humanitarian crisis” in Syria. It’s escalating what the Obama regime began, continued by Trump.

Nor will Ankara’s actions facilitate an ISIS resurgence, what the US has full control over, their fighters used where the Pentagon and CIA want them deployed.

Trump said US forces withdrawn from northern Syria will “remain in the region,” including in southern Syrian territory bordering Iraq and Jordan.

“I am fully prepared to swiftly destroy Turkey’s economy if Turkish leaders continue down this dangerous and destructive path,” he roared — what he clearly won’t do short of a rupture in bilateral relations, possible ahead, but hasn’t occurred.

The Trump regime has done more to encourage Turkish aggression than oppose it.

Betraying Kurdish YPG fighters is further proof US ruling authorities can never be trusted — time and again abandoning allies to other priorities.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Founded in 1946 as a fledgling enterprise, today’s NBA is big business.

Winning is all about big bucks for management and players, along with growing valuation of NBA franchises, on average worth nearly $2 billion.

The most highly valued are NY Knicks and LA Lakers worth $4 billion and $3.7 billion respectively, nine franchises worth over $2 billion.”

All franchises combined are threefold more valuable than five years ago — their last season’s revenue around $8 billion, yet half of what NFL teams earn.

Television is the NBA’s most significant revenue generator, $24 billion alone from ESPN and TNT, more from local contracts, followed by merchandising, ticket sales, sponsorships, concessions, and other revenue sources.

The NBA was the first professional league to earn a significant amount of its revenues from merchandising, marquee players cashing in big on their own prominence.

In the past decade, average franchise valuations tripled. Post-WW II, major league baseball was most popular. Today its popularity is third after pro football and basketball.

NBA popularity is global. Decades earlier, nearly all players were American. Today around one-fourth are nationals of 37 other countries.

According to Forbes, NBA revenues generated outside the US are growing at double-digit rates annually.

The league doesn’t disclose amounts by countries. It did indicate $150 million came from China in 2012, likely much more last season.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the “Houston Rockets were China’s team” — before general manager Daryl Morey’s unacceptable tweet (now deleted), expressing support for months of violent Hong Kong protests saying: “Fight for freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.”

Perhaps Morey doesn’t know that US dirty hands all over what’s going on in the city, violence and disruption targeting Beijing, aiming to weaken and destabilize the country — how the US operates against all nations it doesn’t control.

Morey’s offense was compounded by NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s defense of his free expression right. An NBA statement said the following:

“We recognize that the views expressed by Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey have deeply offended many of our friends and fans in China, which is regrettable.”

“(T)he values of the league support individuals…sharing their views on matters important to them.”

“We have great respect for the history and culture of China and hope that sports and the NBA can be used as a unifying force to bridge cultural divides and bring people together.”

Morey’s damage control remarks haven’t softened outrage in China so far, tweeting:

“I did not intend my tweet to cause any offense to Rockets fans and friends of mine in China. I was merely voicing one thought, based on one interpretation, of one complicated event. I have had a lot of opportunity since that tweet to hear and consider other perspectives.”

“I have always appreciated the significant support our Chinese fans and sponsors have provided and I would hope that those who are upset will know that offending or misunderstanding them was not my intention. My tweets are my own and in no way represent the Rockets or the NBA.”

China accounts for around 10% of league revenues, its market potential estimated to reach 20% by 2030, why the NBA and team owners are greatly concerned about the fallout from Morey’s offensive tweet.

A second Adam Silver statement fueled more backlash, saying:

“The NBA will not put itself in a position of regulating what players, employees and team owners say or will not say. We simply could not operate that way.”

“I do know there are consequences from freedom of speech. We will have to live with those consequences. For those who question our motivation, this is about far more than growing our business.”

China is justifiably furious over remarks by Morey and Silver. A statement by its Houston consulate expressed “strong dissatisfaction,” adding:

“Anybody with conscience would support the efforts made by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region to safeguard Hong Kong’s social stability.”

Beijing cancelled broadcasts of NBA pre-season games. Sponsors began cutting ties with the Rockets, what could affect other teams, perhaps the entire league.

Li-Ling Sportswear suspended ties to the NBA. The Chinese Basketball Association canceled planned exhibition games with NBA G League affiliates of both the Rockets and Dallas Mavericks.

Regular season Houston Rockets games won’t be televised in China — last season reaching an audience exceeding 600 million viewers for all NBA games.

Tencent Sports suspended live telecasts, last season reaching nearly 500 million viewers.

As of Friday, 11 NBA Chinese partners suspended ties to the league.

CTrip, China’s largest online travel website “dropped all NBA-related tickets and travel products” from its platform, a statement said.

Mengniu Dairy, Dicos fast foods, Changhong Electric, Master Kong beverages, eHi Car (rental) Services, appliance maker Meiling, financial services firm Xiaoying Technology, Luckin Coffee, and other Chinese firms suspended ties to the NBA.

Chinese social media users called for boycotting league events. Media access for visiting NBA teams playing exhibition games was cancelled.

On October 7, Bloomberg News headlined: NBA China Woes Threaten Billions of Dollars, Decades’ Work,” saying:

Efforts since the 1980s to build league ties to China are “in jeopardy,” saying NBA games “drew 800 million total viewers in China last year.”

League games are big business, China the NBA’s second most important market after the US.

Trump’s war on China by other means over major unresolved structural issues, including scores of its enterprises blacklisted, complicates things further.

Morey’s tweet landed the Houston rockets “in China’s doghouse,” said the WSJ. The fallout impacted the entire league.

Yahoo Sports said several teams are planning “for a scenario in which the cap for the 2020-21 season could drop between 10 and 15 percent due to the current situation between the NBA and China.”

An open letter by hardline congressional members called on NBA officials to suspend ties to China until “government-controlled broadcasters and government-controlled commercial sponsors end their boycott of the NBA activities and the selective treatment of the Houston Rockets.”

For now, it’s unclear how or when what’s going on will be resolved.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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This coming October 22nd will mark 7 years since the Global Research News Hour radio program made its debut not only on the Global Research website but also on the public airwaves as a community radio program.

To date, we have continued to broadcast the show on a weekly basis, inviting expert speakers to highlight many of the important topics that get under-addressed or by-passed completely in other fora. These include probing analysis into 5G technology and its health risks, the very real threat of nuclear war as a danger to human and all life, climate disruption and the environmental movement, ISIS and the White Helmets, US-NATO involvement in the wars on Syria, Iraq and Yemen, the role of foundation-funded non-profits in reinforcing propaganda narratives, ‘responsibility to protect’ as an imperial construct, and much, much more.

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Christianity in its present form came into being after the eleventh century “Great Schism”(1054 AD) between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Church. Before that, it used to be an exclusively Byzantine affair and most of Western Europe followed pagan customs. The reason why Catholic historians fabricated the history of ancient Roman civilization was to dissociate Christianity from its Byzantine heritage.

The theory that Christianity spread into Europe, and also in Russia, from the Byzantine Empire is validated by the fact that early Middle Ages – from 5th to 10th century, when the Byzantine Empire reached its zenith and a split occurred between the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic churches in 1054 – are referred to as Dark Ages, whereas the period between 8th century BC and 6th century AD is rather ironically called Classical Antiquity.

There appears to be clear historical bias because in descending order, as we go back in time, the reliability of information reduces proportionally. Thus, the 11th century recorded history of the Roman Catholic Church is comparatively credible, whereas Before Christ folklore transmitted mainly through oral traditions of fabulists is simply implausible.

Historically, on Christmas Day 800 AD, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, forming the political and religious foundations of Christendom and establishing in earnest the French monarchy’s longstanding historical association with the Roman Catholic Church.

Thus, ninth century appears to be a watershed moment of increasing proselytization of Europe to Christianity, which obviously had its impact in Britain and Germany later. After that, the influence of the Byzantine Empire, lasting from 4th to 15th centuries, waned and a rival power center emerged in the form of Roman Catholic Church patronized by kings of Franks and Lombards in Italy.

Evidently, Christianization of Eastern Europe and Russia is attributed to the Byzantine Empire and Western Europe to the Holy Roman Empire. Thus, the history of ancient Romans, whose empire purportedly fell in 476 AD to Germanic tribes, is nothing more than folklore and the history of the Roman Catholic Church in earnest began after the coronation of Charlemagne as the Holy Roman Emperor.

The title of Holy Roman Emperor remained with the Carolingian family of Charlemagne, the ruler of Franks, up to 840, and then it passed on to Germans when Otto I was declared Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope in 962. Thus, the Frankish Empire constituted the Holy Roman Empire during the early 9th century, and then the title was assumed by the Germanic Empire for the next eight centuries.

The Germanic decentralized phase of the Holy Roman Empire never reached the glory of the Frankish Empire under Charlemagne and his successor Louis the Pious. They adopted Latin as the official language of the Empire to forge a political identity distinct from the Byzantine Greeks.

Carolingians jointly ruled over Franks and Lombards in Italy, thus the Roman Catholic Church was under their suzerainty, which at the time was nothing more than a diocese of the Eastern Orthodox Church. During the period of the Byzantine Papacy from 6th to 8th centuries, the title of the Pope was equivalent to the bishop of Rome.

Although according to oral traditions, the Roman Catholic Church was founded by the apostles of Jesus, St. Peter and Paul, and was recognized by Byzantine Emperor Constantine, it’s not proved by credible history and many secular historians doubt the assertion.

In the medieval era, the theological creed of the Eastern Orthodox Church was vilified as Arian heresy by the Roman Catholic Church to establish a monopoly over Christian faith in Western Europe. Arius was a theologian of the Antioch school in Hatay province of modern Turkey in 270 AD. Most of the Germanic tribes who in the following centuries invaded the Roman Empire had adopted Christianity in its Arian form, which later transformed into German Protestantism.

It is generally claimed that Byzantine Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity and reorganized the Empire from 324 to 337 AD. Moreover, it is also alleged, albeit mistakenly, that under the reign of Heraclius (610–641), three centuries later, the Empire adopted Greek for official use in place of Latin.

Fact of the matter, however, is the Byzantine Empire wasn’t a monolith, as it had myriad dynasties of usurpers from Macedonia, Armenia etc. which spoke several East European dialects, but Latin was never introduced into the Byzantine Empire. In fact, the Byzantine Empire appears to be a continuation of Alexander’s Hellenistic Empire, as both had their arch-foes in the ancient kingdoms of Persia – Achaemenids and Sassanids.

The Justinian dynasty is generally regarded as the Golden Age of the Byzantine Empire that lasted from 518 to 602 AD. During the reign of Justinian I (527–565), the Empire reached its greatest extent after reconquering much of the western Mediterranean coast, North Africa, Italy, and Rome itself, which it held for two more centuries.

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism.

Last Friday a 155 mm artillery shell landed 300 metres from a US command post near the Syrian bordering city of Ayn al-Arab (known by the Syrian Kurds as “Kobane”) during an ongoing operation carried out by Turkey – a NATO and a US ally. This operation aimed to dislodge, at a distance of 30-35 kilometres from the border, the US-backed Kurdish militants known as the YPG, the Syrian branch of the US-EU-NATO designated terrorist group, the “Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The Turkish troops backed by Syrian proxies had rapidly advanced in the first week of the military operation into US-occupied Syrian territory, cutting the main roads and attempting to isolate their enemies.

These two swift events were enough to ring the alarm bells and straightaway pushed the US administration to announce, via the Secretary of Defence Mark Esper, the withdrawal of approximately 1,000 US troops from north-east Syria (NES). The killing of any US soldier in Syria would effectively have been a nail in the coffin of the US President Donald Trump’s electoral campaign in 2020. France and Britain, who maintain Special Forces in NES, will follow the US forces out of Syria.

The Syrian forces were given orders to deploy in NES following a deal between Russia and Turkey, and between Russia and the Syrian officials, to guarantee the safety of the separatist Syrian Kurds.

The Syrian President Bashar al-Assad agreed to guarantee the safety of the Kurds as long as these become part of the National Security Forces. No other conditions were put forward by the Kurds, who have lost momentum with the sudden US withdrawal. Damascus promised there will be no revenge or resentment measures towards the Kurds who have, for years, acted as human shields to protect the US occupation forces which remained in Syria notwithstanding the defeat of ISIS.

Screenshot 2019-10-14 at 21.05.10

The Russian-Kurdish deal consists of the deployment of the Syrian army on all borders with Turkey and the return of all sources of energy (gas and oil) to the Syrian government-controlled forces. These sources of energy are vital to the Syrian government, which has been suffering under heavy US-EU sanctions. Any delivery of oil was blocked, except the crude oil from Iran, whose supertanker managed to breach the siege.

The initial agreement between the Kurds and Damascus (via Russia) consists in the ending of the self-administration of NES, the integration of the Syrian Kurds under the command of the Syrian Army, and the pursuit and destruction of all ISIS forces.

A US withdrawal from the al-Tanaf border crossing between Iraq and Syria is also expected when a solution is found for the 64,000 refugees at the Rukhba camp.

All motivation and benefits offered to the US to maintain occupation forces in Syria have ceased: the “Iranian danger” is no longer on the table following the re-opening of al-Qaem border crossing. Therefore, to maintain US forces on the borders when no more “adverse” forces will remain in the country will needlessly cost Trump more money and engage responsibility uselessly.

Clearly the motive to keep US forces in Syria until a new constitution is agreed no longer interests or concerns the US. Trump is leaving this problem to Russia and Turkey to sort out (with the support of Iran!) with President Assad.

Imposing sanctions on Syria is meaningless now and preventing the Arabs’ rapprochement no longer holds any justification. All Arab countries – with the exception of Qatar – expressed solidarity with President Assad and condemned the Turkish invasion. The return of the Arabs will construct a robust base for the reconstruction of Syria. The Syrian market is attractive to Arab countries, and this commercial contact will bring also their influence back to the Levant. President Assad doesn’t mind closing the pages of war and starting a new and positive relationship with the Middle Eastern countries, and he will allow these to enjoy some influence, as was the case before 2011.

Sanctions on Iran have lost their meaning and purpose when al-Tanaf regains its activity, with al-Qaem. Iranian goods will find their way into the Syrian market and vice versa. The Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus-Lebanon road is expected to regain strength and significance.

Screenshot 2019-10-15 at 05.52.55

Trump announced his withdrawal without informing his allies. The US-EU partnership on the ground has fallen apart. US credibility is at its lowest level following its attitude towards the Kurds who had defended the Trump forces in exchange for a State, “Rojava”.

The US sanctions on Turkey were simple words without foundation. Trump threatened to impose sanctions on Turkey if it crossed the red line, beyond 35 kilometres- only to call for a total withdrawal two days later.

The US elite’s attempt to demonise Russia has fallen apart: Moscow is the saviour of the Kurds, betrayed by the US. The supporters of the Kurds were fanatically supporting the Kurds and asking to avoid their extermination by Turkey: now they can no longer turn their guns and pens against Russia. Here comes Russia, with Assad moving in to save them.

The Kremlin is gaining ground in the Middle East, perfecting its diplomacy in a very complicated area of the world:  the US is running away from it. Moscow took in its arms these same Kurds who had chosen to stay for years in US arms. President Vladimir Putin has skilfully managed to establish a good relationship with both Iran and Saudi Arabia, with Assad and Israel, with Hezbollah, and with the Syrian rebels: even with Turkey.

There are many winners in Syria today, and these include Trump- who is running away to avoid human casualties (as he promised in his campaign). The Kurds are the only real losers as they have lost 11,000 people for a State they only dreamt would materialise one day. Although they bet disastrously on the wrong (American) horse, in the end, they saved their lives by switching mentors.

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A recent journal article about GM mosquitoes has caused quite a stir. It showed that some of the male mosquitoes that Oxitec Ltd released experimentally in Brazil had successfully interbred with the local mosquito population, and that their hybrid offspring were now spreading and propagating beyond the release area. This despite Oxitec claiming its mosquitoes had a lethal gene that made them “self-limiting“.

The paper came under immediate attack. No surprise there, you might think, as many studies drawing attention to problems with GMOs have come under ferocious attack following publication. Often this involves demands for retraction and the deluging of journal editors with irate correspondence – campaigns of attack for which there is good evidence of corporate orchestration.

But this time there’s a difference because the attacks by Oxitec, the company behind the GM mosquitoes, have since been joined by one of the paper’s co-authors, biochemist Margareth Capurro from the University of São Paulo in Brazil.

Indeed, according to an article for Science, Dissent splits authors of provocative transgenic mosquito study, Capurro isn’t just complaining about the paper – she and “several co-authors have reportedly requested that it be retracted”.

So who are the paper’s authors and why are they apparently at war with each other? The study was conducted by a Yale University team led by population geneticist Jeffrey Powell, who collaborated with Brazilian researchers to collect and analyze DNA from mosquitoes before, during, and after the release of Oxitec’s GM mosquitoes. Powell’s collaborators included Capurro and colleagues at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, and these appear to be the authors demanding the retraction.

It’s worth mentioning though that these Brazilian co-authors are not as independent of Oxitec as one might assume. Capurro and her colleagues had an agreement with Oxitec to monitor the effects of the Brazilian release. Indeed, Capurro seems to have been collaborating with Oxitec for years. She is the coordinator for the evaluation of all the field releases of Oxitec GM mosquitoes in Brazil. And she has co-authored papers with multiple Oxitec affiliates.

It is also worth noting that Capurro is the “principal investigator” for a completely separate project, not involving Oxitec, to produce transgenic mosquitoes. A press release notes that the project Capurro is leading “has already inspired the creation of several biofactories to produce transgenic insects around the world.” In other words, Capurro’s research centres almost entirely on projects that are completely dependent on public acceptance of GM mosquito releases.

So what are Capurro’s reasons for objecting to her own paper? Although she only seems to have engaged with the journal Science about this through her lawyer, she has spoken “exclusively” and in some detail about why she wants a retraction to the Brazilian science publication Questão de Ciência (A Question of Science).

Here Capurro distances herself from the paper by placing the blame for its contentious content entirely on the lead author, Jeffrey Powell, claiming “not to have been part of – and least of all approved – the final version of the manuscript”. This is somewhat surprising as the submission process normally demands an assertion from the submitting author that all co-authors have seen and approved the final manuscript.

Capurro’s main complaint about the published paper is that there is nothing unexpected about its results, even though the study shows that many offspring of the GM mosquitoes survived and are spreading and propagating. According to the paper, between 10-60 percent of the mosquitoes in the region concerned inherited parts of the genome of the mosquitoes released in the trials. These findings are also confirmed in neighbouring regions where no such trials were conducted.

Capurro doesn’t dispute these findings but argues instead that “it was already known that up to 4% of the males escaped the lethal gene and developed into adults. Some degree of mating with the local population with healthy offspring was completely anticipated and poses no surprise.” In other words, nothing to see here – no reason for concern. This was all entirely to be expected.

Except this is not what Oxitec has been telling the world. Take for instance this statement on their website explaining “Our Science” and specifically their lethal gene: “The self-limiting gene is at the heart of our method of insect control. When our male insects are released and reproduce with wild females, *all* of their offspring inherit a copy of this gene” (our emphasis).

Similarly, as Christophe Boëte, who works on host-parasite interactions with a particular focus on vector-borne diseases, has pointed out, even in the scientific literature the Oxitec mosquito (OX513A) has been presented as “sterile”. He gives the example of a paper by Lacroix et al, which in its title describes the OX513A mosquito as a “Genetically Engineered Sterile Male Aedes aegypti” and in its text describes it as “an engineered ‘genetically sterile’ (OX513A)” strain.

If this is how Oxitec’s mosquitoes have been described in the scientific literature, then it seems plausible that people living in the areas where these field releases have been taking place have also been given the impression that Oxitec’s mosquitoes are incapable of successfully reproducing.

And there is clear evidence that this is indeed the case in a paper published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. It reports on the findings of a survey into local residents’ “awareness and support” for the field release of Oxitec’s OX513A mosquito in two places in Florida. The authors write that because these male mosquitoes’ mating “results in death of offspring in the larval or pupal stage of gestation… outreach activities in the area preceding the survey referred to the mosquitoes as ‘sterile.’”

So local residents were given the impression Oxitec’s GM mosquitoes could NOT produce viable offspring. Indeed, because of this, the survey team themselves included the word “sterile” in the survey that they did with local residents, “because this term had been used in community awareness activities and should have been familiar to those who had heard of the proposed release”.

If this was the impression given to the communities in Florida, then there is little reason to think that the communities in Brazil will have been provided with more accurate information. We know this because after the Powell et al paper was published, the views of a former Brazilian regulator who had written a detailed report on the concerns the project raised were reported in the Brazilian press.

In his report Dr José Maria Gusman Ferraz had called on his fellow regulators to suspend the release of Oxitec’s GM mosquitoes until further health and environmental impact studies had been undertaken. And Dr Ferraz specifically noted Oxitec’s failure to make clear the survival rate of their mosquitoes, and the lack of studies on their mating with local mosquito populations. He accused Oxitec of reducing local people to mere guinea pigs who were neither properly informed nor meaningfully consulted about the risks involved.

And Oxitec may not be the only ones failing to properly inform and consult people affected by GM mosquito releases. Just in the last week, the UK’s Telegraph newspaper ran the headline ‘We don’t want to be guinea pigs’: how one African community is fighting genetically modified mosquitoes. The article about a Target Malaria project in Burkina Faso reported how “several villagers anonymously told the Telegraph they had not been made aware of any risks associated with the experiment. ‘They didn’t tell us about the risks, only the advantages,’ a farmer said.”

A film made in Burkina Faso about the Target Malaria project also argues that the project does not have proper consent from the affected communities for its experiment, and it includes interviews with local people who say that they have not been properly informed. These concerns around consultation and consent have also been raised by a group of 43 civil society organisations from Africa and around the world.

The issue of informed consent in relation to such projects is also raised in a recent article by a group of experts specifically interested in fostering public engagement on the environmental release of genetically modified organisms intended to alter wild species. They point to the “unknown risks” involved in GM mosquito releases and directly accuse Oxitec of failing both to adequately assess and properly consult on those risks:

“Given that ‘around 5 per cent or less’ of the GM mosquito population was expected to survive, shouldn’t Oxitec have made plans to assess the risk of gene transfer to wild populations during their initial trials? And shouldn’t the Brazilian government have required such an assessment as part of the regulatory approval process, given their awareness of the risk?

“Instead, with approval from Brazilian authorities, Oxitec released nearly half a million GM mosquitoes every week into shared environments in Jacobina over a two-year period from 2013 to 2015. This was done without the benefit of adequate risk assessment and without proper public consultation.”

But like Oxitec, Dr Capurro argues that neither the survival nor the gene transfer are of any concern. They say the genes transferred by the Oxitec mosquitoes to their surviving offspring are not transgenic. They also claim that as OX513A mosquitoes are a laboratory strain, their offspring will be less fit for survival in the wild, and both attack the Powell et al paper’s claim that the offspring may instead have “hybrid vigour” as mere speculation. But their claims about the impact of gene transfer to wild populations are equally speculative. They’re based on assumptions, not evidence.

Despite this, Oxitec has filed a complaint about the paper with the journal, Scientific Reports. On 17 September, the journal added an editor’s note to the study, promising “a further editorial response” to criticisms raised about the conclusions.

Powell told Science magazine that he stands by the validity of the paper’s data and analysis. He said the paper clearly states that the effects of DNA spread from the Oxitec strain aren’t known and it raises some possible consequences without claiming that they’ve been proven. And indeed, the wording of the paper does seem to be far more cautious than Powell’s critics imply, e.g. “Thus, Jacobina Ae. aegypti are now a mix of three populations. It is *unclear* how this *may* affect disease transmission or affect other efforts to control these dangerous vectors” (our emphases).

We suspect that if the GM mosquito developers’ interests were not involved, objections to Powell et al’s paper would have been far less strident. We are particularly baffled by the extremity of the demands for retraction of the paper, rather than the more proportionate and customary approach, which is to request the journal to publish a correction or clarification. No one has produced any evidence that the Powell paper meets any of the proper criteria for the retraction of a study. These are unreliable findings (involving misconduct or honest error), redundant publication, plagiarism, and unethical research.

The criteria for retraction do not include “failure to further qualify an already qualified hypothetical statement” or “upsetting a GMO developer company and those affiliated with it”. So if the paper does end up being retracted, someone is going to have to come up with some creative reasoning as to why.

In the meantime, the concerns are unlikely to go away about how adequately the uncertainties around these GMO releases are being explored and disclosed, and the extent to which those affected by these experimental releases are being involved in the decision-making about them.

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Once again, the left is rising in Latin America as people revolt against authoritarian regimes, many of whom were put in place by US-supported coups. These regimes have taken International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans and are under the thumb of international finance, which is against the interests of people.

After the embattled President of Ecuador claimed that President Nicolas Maduro was the cause of the massive protests against him, Maduro made clear what was occurring in Latin America, saying:

“We have two models: the IMF model which privatizes everything and takes away the people’s rights to health, education and work; and the humanist-progressive model which is emerging in Latin America and has the Bolivarian Revolution at the forefront.”

Maduro’s clear understanding of the conflict is why it has been so important for the US to remove him. His success in defeating ongoing US coup attempts is a model guiding Latin America to a future independent of US domination.

Ecuadorians celebrate the repeal of Decree 883. From Twitter.

Ecuador in Rebellion Against IMF and the US Puppet Moreno

On October 4, Moreno proclaimed the end of a 40-year policy of fuel and petrol subsidies, which had traditionally benefited his country’s working-class population. He also announced a 20 percent decrease in the salary of public employees and initiated plans to privatize pensions. He removed workplace and job security safeguards. Decree 883, known as ‘The Package’, was a series of neoliberal policies demanded by the IMF in return for a $4.2 billion dollar loan. It was preceded by policies for the wealthy including reducing their taxes.

The IMF loan was part of Moreno serving as a puppet and bowing to multiple US demands. Ecuador promised to settle a long dispute with Chevron whose oil drilling and pipelines have polluted the country. Tens of billions of dollars in restitution from Chevron are at stake but Moreno said he is willing to give them up. In fact, the IMF loan is strange in that it was dependent on Ecuador paying external debt obligations, i.e. it was not new funds for Ecuador but new debt to subsidize paying back Wall Street.

In making the announcement, Moreno called the people “Zánganos,” or Drone Bees leading to the uprising of the Drone Bees. The mass protests were called by the Popular Front, a group of unions, and the Unified Workers Federation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE). Students and social movements joined protests throughout the nation in Loja, Guayaquil, Cuenca, Ambato, and Riobamba, among other cites as well as Quito, the capital. Moreno claimed without any evidence that the uprising was financed by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Correa.

Protests in Ecuador were relentless with no end in sight. They grew when 20,000 indigenous people marched into Quito. Police responded with violence, tear gas, and mass arrests. An October 4 video circulated on social mediashowed nonviolent protesters killed in the street by the police as well as other police violence. On October 5, Moreno declared a 60-day state of Emergency. Sometimes police had to retreat in the face of mass protests. On October 7, Moreno fled the capital to hide in the Navy base 260 miles away in the conservative stronghold of Guayaquil.

As we wrote this newsletter, unrest in Ecuador was escalating. On Saturday, the nation was put on military lockdown. Law enforcement attacked protesters with pellets and tear gas in the immediate vicinity of the  National Assembly. By Sunday, Moreno decreed a 3:00 pm curfew, which people defied. Then, facing an emergency session in the National Assembly, Moreno backed down. Protesters celebrated when Moreno’s government announced that Decree 883 had been repealed after eleven days of popular mobilizations.

Peter Koenig describes a root cause of the problems:

“Since January 2000, Ecuador’s economy is 100% dollarized, compliments of the IMF (entirely controlled by the US Treasury, by force of an absolute veto). The other two fully dollarized Latin American countries are El Salvador and Panama.”

The US and IMF used the economic crises of the 1990s to dollarize Ecuador’s economy and gain full control over the nation’s riches as Ecuador is the second-largest oil economy in South America. This led to unaffordable goods for Ecuadorians, social unrest and a series of unstable governments until President Correa, who served from 2007 to 17, was elected.

A Center for Economic and Policy Research 2017 report found under Correa Ecuador did well with an average annual GDP growth of 1.5%  compared to 0.6% average for the previous 26 years; a decline of 38% in poverty with extreme poverty reduced by 47%; and a decline in inequality with the Gini coefficient falling substantially. Correa doubled social spending from 4.3% in 2006 to 8.6% in 2016; tripling education spending from 0.7% to 2.1%; and, increasing public investments from 4% of GDP in 2006 to 10% in 2016.

Correa served two terms. A third term would have required a constitutional amendment. Rather than running, Correa endorsed Lenin Moreno who had served as his vice president from 2007-13. He was expected to continue Correa’s policies but instead reversed them.

Moreno was unpopular before announcing ‘The Package’ due to structural poverty increasing from 23.1 percent in June 2017 to 25.5 percent in June 2019 with projections of 30 percent by the end of the year. Injustices like the imprisonment of the popular former Vice President Jorge Glas on dubious charges and his continuous political witch hunt against Rafael Correa and other leaders of the Citizens’ Revolution Party added to his unpopularity. In addition, he has been engulfed in a personal corruption crisis involving an offshore Shell corporation INA, which cast Moreno’s presidency in doubt.

Moreno’s forcible and illegal ejection of Julian Assange from the London embassy in return for payoffs from the US and UK resulted in a national strike in Ecuador in July. This, along with the arrest of Ola Bini, who is being prosecuted falsely as a conspirator with Wikileaks, was unpopular with Ecuadorians.

Will repeal of ‘The Package’ end the protests and the threat to Moreno’s presidency? As we write, the answer to these questions are unclear. The people won a major victory, but the Moreno/IMF infection remains.

Rally in Argentina. By Enfoque Rojo.

Latin Americans Rising Against the Right and US Domination

Latin American countries are rejecting neoliberalism and US domination using multiple strategies to achieve change.

This month the deepening anti-capitalist movement in Bolivia is set to strengthen with the probable re-election of Evo Morales on October 20. Argentina is expected to remove right-wing President Mauricio Macri on October 27 and replace him with Alberto Fernandez. And, Mexico put in place its first progressive, left-of-center government with the election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) on July 1, 2018. Elections are also upcoming in Uruguay on October 27 and in Peru in January. Venezuela may have National Assembly elections in January as well.

Bolivia’s Evo Morales has a 13-point lead in polls as his governing party Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) looks to re-election for a third Morales term that will last until 2025. Morales has 38.8 percent, just 1.2 percent short of the 40 percent required for a first-round victory in the upcoming elections. The survey also indicated majority support for the nationalization of gas and strategic industries, 51 percent say that public ownership is positive for the economy. On social programs, 61.7 percent say they are essential for providing dignity to those of low incomes.

Morales has launched a large reforestation plan and put in place a model healthcare program. He is under attack from the United States and segments of Bolivia. Morales leads an independent, sovereign Bolivia that has rejected US dominance, decolonized and displaced neoliberalism. A recent color revolution attempt by the wealthy, with the support of the US and western powers, failed.

Argentina’s first round of voting on August 11 resulted in Fernandez, running with former president Cristina Kirchner, finishing 15 percent ahead of Macri. The surprising landslide brought into question Macri’s ability to govern between now and the election. As a result, the IMF put a $5.4 billion dollar loan on hold part of the $56.3 billion stand-by agreement signed in mid-2018. Fernandez opposed the loan, which required sharp budget cuts affecting public services at a time of increasing poverty.

Under Macri, the economy has gone into crisis with poverty increasing to a record 36.4 percent, a recession accompanied by a 47 percent inflation rate in 2018 and an inflation rate of 25.1 percent during the first seven months of this year. Argentina’s unemployment is at the highest level in 14 years. Poverty was at 19.7 percent when Kirchner left office in 2015. Fernandez has put forward an anti-hunger plan, not dependent on the IMF. Three weeks before the election, thousands of people rallied in Buenos Aires as the Workers Left Front sent a message of opposition to neoliberalism and austerity to the two major political parties.

In Mexico, AMLO won a landslide 53 percent of the vote on July 31 ending decades of right-wing rule. People were fed up with the corruption, impunity, and violence — decades of loss of rights, pillaging and destruction of the nation’s wealth and public enterprises. At his inauguration, AMLO decried 36 years of neoliberalism and public and private corruption, promised a “peaceful and radical” transition with “indigenous people as its priority,” in a government “for the good of all, first the poor.” His fight against neoliberalism is challenged by NAFTA II (or the USMCA), as AMLO is careful not to confront Trump on this. On border policy, AMLO offered migrants home in Mexico and urged investment in Central America.

The Zapatistas have conflicted with AMLO over the exploitation of resources and the use of the military in policing, demanding its autonomy based on indigenous principles but he has sought diplomacy with them. AMLO has also faced massive strikes of tens of thousands of autoworkers, workers at US companies in Mexico and wildcat strikes at the border. AMLO has been a counterweight to US aggression in Latin America standing with Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba.

Peru is in the midst of a crisis. President, Martin Vizcarra, who came into office after a corruption scandal removed his predecessor, dissolved the Congress, a move supported by the left, because it is controlled by far-right politician Keiko Fujimori and was preventing Vizcarra’s anti-corruption campaign. Congress ignored the president’s order and voted to remove him from office instead. The vice president resigned rather than take over and Vizcarra remains in office with the support of the military. He has now called for new congressional elections to be held on January 26. Vizcarra is a conservative battling the oligarchic right. The left, which has been divided, is coalescing around the Popular National Assembly and allying with social movements. The movements want an end to neoliberal policies, a Constituent Assembly to draft a new Constitution and to break with Washington’s domination.

In Central America, Honduras has been in revolt against the coup government of Juan Orlando Hernandez (JOH), which for ten years has put in place neoliberalism, repression, and violence. Protests have been ongoing since his coup and fraudulent re-election. This summer, protests intensified with a national strike over austerity and privatization measures required by an IMF loan, leading to a 66-day uprising. The US has trained Honduran police to use repressive measures in an attempt to stop the protests, but their actions feed more protests.

Many have fled Honduras to escape the corruption and violence in caravans. Now, a coalition of civil groups is urging the president’s departure over a scandal ignited by accusations of large-scale drug trafficking to the United States being litigated against the president’s brother Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernandez. In the trial, several witnesses have declared JOH’s campaign was financed with drug money, and that he took millions in bribes from various Mexican drug lords, including the infamous Joaquin “El-Chapo” Guzman. The Liberal Party joined in calling for his resignation and protests have intensified. The trial may be the end of this cocaine-fueled presidency.

Brazil’s election of Bolsonaro has been marred by scandal now that the corruption of Operation Car Wash has been exposed. Private conversations between the prosecutors and then-judge Sergio Moro, now Super Minister of Justice, show that former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was the “victim of a conspiracy” to prevent him from running against Bolsonaro.  In the secret exchanges, Moro admitted that the corruption case was designed to frame him. Lula has said the US is behind the conspiracy.

Calls to free Lula are increasing and the Supreme Court will be reviewing the case. Lula is demanding his record be cleared and refused a panicked offer from prosecutors that he be freed from jail and put under house arrest. Bolsonaro is also under attack for the Amazon fires, for an increase in police killings, for genocide against the Indigenous and for attacks on public education. Former President Michel Temer acknowledged that the impeachment of former president Dilma Rousseff, the Worker’s Party leader, was a coup d’etat.

Nicaragua survived a 2018  US coup attempt and the revolution continues to thrive after 40 years of independence from US domination after US-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza fled. People were very confused about what happened in the 2018 coup attempt as media misinformation was prevalent. A group of us joined produced a reader to help people understand the reality of Nicaragua. Peace is coming back to Nicaragua, even though continued pressure from the US is expected in the form of new illegal sanctions.

Venezuela, which we have reported on intensively for years, has also survived ongoing coup attempts that continue to escalate in the post-John Bolton era of the Trump administration most recently with a threat of warthrough the Organization of American States (OAS). They are prepared for a military attack and have created new alliances to overcome the US economic war. This week, Russia announced it was investing $16.5 billion in Venezuela by the end of 2019.

Russia has provided anti-missile defense systems, is keeping  Navy ships in Venezuela to deter a US blockade and has helped gather intelligence on US actions. With their help, Venezuela has uncovered terrorist plots coming from Colombia and involving  US-puppet Juan Guiado’s team. Guaido has faltered and failed time and again, and now is being investigated for ties to Colombian drug traffickers and corruption.

The non-aligned movement of 120 nations met in Caracas this summer and expressed support for Venezuelan sovereignty.  Venezuela has been a lynchpin for left movements in Latin America. When oil prices were high, it shared its wealth not only with poorest Venezuelans but with other countries seeking to challenge US and oligarch domination. Even in the midst of an escalating economic war with the United States, they continue to provide housing, food, and essentials to their people.

Protesters in Haiti. Twitter.

Caribbean Resistance

In the Caribbean, Cuba is challenged by the US economic war but continues its revolution. Mass protests in Haiti threaten the survival of the government and Puerto Rico’s revolt removed a governor.

Cuba, despite the increasing US economic war, continues to be a bulwark against US imperialism, standing with governments like Venezuela and Nicaragua when they are under attack. Cuba completed a successful transition to a new president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, and voted on a new constitution developed using a participatory process involving 9 million people through 133,000 citizen meetings. The constitution includes “universal and free health, education, sports and recreation, culture and respect for human dignity.”Cuba is currently facing major economic challenges as the US is blocking their access to oil. Russia and Venezuela are helping Cuba overcome this oil blockade.

Haiti has been in protest since April calling for an end to neoliberal US domination and the resignation of Jovenel Moise. The president has not spoken in public since the beginning of this latest round of protests and this week he named a commission of seven politicians to lead discussions for a solution to end the crisis.

In Puerto Rico, a colony of the United States, massive protests led to Governor Ricardo A. Rosselló resigning on July 22, 2019. People also want the corrupt legislature cleaned out, the Fiscal Control Board, created by Obama, ended and the debt to be audited. Former political prisoner, Luis Rosa, said three things are needed: “decolonization, an end to our colonial status through a constitutional assembly; health care, free for all Puerto Rican citizens; and free public education up through the university level.”

Stephen Sefton wrote a country-by-country review of Latin America and the Caribbean in June describing the decline of the United States in the region and how changes were coming to many nations. He predicted that we are seeing “the last throw of the dice for the US to retain its accustomed power and influence against the relentless fundamental drive for emancipation by the region’s impoverished majority.”

Rafael Correa said, “Neoliberalism is what failed, not socialism of the 21st century, on the contrary, socialism of the 21st century is what has us firmly on our feet, withstanding all of these difficulties.” This hemisphere is a key battleground in the conflict between neoliberalism v Socialism and US dominance v. independence. People are demanding democracy from the bottom up and a fair economy that meets their needs.

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

Trump Wants to End the “Stupid Wars”?

October 15th, 2019 by Philip Giraldi

The discussion, if one might even call it that, regarding the apparent President Donald Trump decision to withdraw at least some American soldiers from Syria has predictably developed along partisan, ideologically fueled lines. Trump has inevitably muddied the waters by engaging in his usual confusing explanations coupled with piles of invective heaped upon critics. The decision reportedly came after a telephone call with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but what exactly was agreed upon and who else might have been present in the room to report back to the intelligence community remains uncertain. Trump clearly believed that he had obtained some assurances regarding limits to any proposed Turkish military action from Erdogan, who almost immediately launched air attacks followed by ground troop incursions against the former U.S. supported Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

It should be observed that the Syrian incursion by the American military, which was initiated by President Barack Obama and his band of lady hawks during the so-called “Arab Spring” of 2011, was illegal from the gitgo. Syria did not threaten the United States, quite the contrary. Damascus had supported U.S. intelligence operations after 9/11 and it was Washington that soured the relationship beginning with the Syria Accountability Act of 2003, which later was followed by the Syrian War Crimes Accountability Act of 2015, both of which were, at least to a certain extent, driven by the interests of Israel.

When American soldiers first arrived in Syria the U.S. War Powers act was ignored, making the incursion illegal. Nor was there any mandate authorizing military intervention emanating from any supra-national agency like the United Nations. The excuse for the intervention was plausibly enough to destroy ISIS, but the reality was much more complex, with U.S. forces in addition seeking to limit Iranian and Russian presence in Syria while also bringing about regime change. The objectives were from the start unattainable as Iran and Russia were supporting the Syrian Army in doing most of the hard fighting against ISIS while the regime of President Bashar al-Assad was not threatened by a so-called democratic alternative which only existed in the minds of Samantha Powers and Susan Rice.

Unwilling to see large numbers of Americans coming home in caskets, the United States inevitably began to search for proxies to carry out the fighting on the ground and wound up willy-nilly arming, training and otherwise supporting terrorists, to include the al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra. The Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces eventually became the principal tool of the U.S. military, but it must be observed that the Kurds in all likelihood had no illusions about the staying power of their American patrons. They were fighting Syrian forces as well as ISIS because they were seeking to carve out their own homeland of Kurdistan from the ruins of the Syrian state. Their expansion into northern Syria, aided by the U.S., was at the expense of the local population, which was overwhelmingly not Kurdish. Their occupation of that area was not reported honestly in the U.S. media, but other sources suggest that their behavior was often brutal.

So the lament about abandoning one’s Kurdish allies has a kernel of truth, but the Senator Lindsey Graham response, to include sanctioning Turkey, should be considered to be little more than a dangerous misstep that would lead to acquiring a new and more powerful enemy. And, of course, the argument in favor of leaving the Kurds to their fate found its most ridiculous expression from the mouth of Donald Trump himself, who, up until recently had praised the Kurds as friends who had “fought and died for us.” Trump is now observing that “they [the Kurds] didn’t help us in the Second World War, they didn’t help us with Normandy.” As President Trump did not serve his country in Vietnam due to alleged bone spurs and his father Fred likewise did not serve in the military, the comment is particularly ironic. Trump’s surname was changed from the original German Drumpf and if there were any Drumpfs present at Normandy they were undoubtedly on the German side.

Trump’s wild responses to criticism do indeed constitute the principal reason why a sound policy to, as he put it, to stop the “stupid, endless wars” should be raising so many flags. His telephone conversation with Erdogan almost immediately produced a warning to the Turks that the United States would “destroy” or even “obliterate the Turkish economy,” presumably if the creation of a buffer zone inside northern Syria would prove to be “off limits” in the opinion of the White House. Trump elaborated that “Turkey has committed to protecting civilians, protecting religious minorities, including Christians, and ensuring no humanitarian crisis takes place—and we will hold them to this commitment,” a pledge that will surely be impossible to honor as the first two days of the Turkish offensive killed over 100, including sixteen Kurdish militiamen.

And the Turks will indeed do what they can to eliminate the Kurdish military capability along its border with Syria, even if it includes creation of a demilitarized zone or perhaps something more than that. It is for them a vital national interest that is completely supported by the Turkish people. Whoever was advising Trump surely did not understand the Turkish mindset regarding the Kurdish threat, which they regard as existential.

By way of background, Turkey has been engaged in suppressing a bloody insurgency, fighting the Kurdish terrorist group the PKK for over thirty years. The Kurds on the Syrian side of the border, the SDF, are undeniably affiliated with the PKK on the Turkish side. The Turkish Army, which is one of the most powerful in NATO, will do whatever is necessary to crush them. Trump should have realized that before he started talking.

And then there is the fact that Turkey is a NATO partner in good standing. Article 5 of the NATO agreement stipulates that if an alliance member is threatened, other members must support it in its defense. Turkey has not made that claim, but it is completely plausible that it should do so.

Is there a way out? There have been some suggestions that the Kurds could make nice with the Damascus government and rely on the protection of the Syrian Army to deter the Turks, an option that they have already begun to exercise. Well maybe, but one has to recall that the Kurds have been trying to defeat that very government up until now and al-Assad may not want to play ball unless there are substantial Kurdish concessions. Or the Turks might be willing to escalate their own offensive to take on the inferior Syrian Army and the Kurds together. Erdogan is just crazy enough to do that.

Finally, there is one other important issue that should be observed. Donald Trump’s actual record on ending useless wars is not consistent with his actions. He has sent more soldiers to no good purpose in support of America’s longest war in Afghanistan, has special ops forces in numerous countries in Asia and Africa, has threatened regime change in Venezuela, continues to support Saudi Arabia and Israel’s bloody attacks on their neighbors and has exited to from treaties and agreements with Russia and Iran that made armed conflict less likely. And he has five thousand American soldiers sitting as hostages in Iraq, a country that the United States basically destroyed as a cohesive political entity and which is now experiencing a wave of rioting that has reportedly killed hundreds. Trump is also assassinating more foreigners using drones based mostly on profile targeting than all of his predecessors. These are not the actions of a president who seriously wants to end wars even if one does not consider the economic warfare that is currently taking place through the use of sanctions that is reportedly killing tens of thousands.

So should one take Donald Trump seriously when he says he wants to end the pointless wars? Perhaps not, but even giving him the benefit of the doubt, he should be judged by his actions, not by his words and, apart from the withdrawal of a handful of soldiers from the actual front lines in Syria, nothing has changed. It is quite possible that nothing will change.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

In Pictures: What If Palestine Had Its Own Currency?

October 15th, 2019 by Maha Hussaini

Designer Jehad Naji, 29, pictured here with his wife Haneen Abu Samhadana, had the idea of designing a currency for Palestine after a British journalist asked him about which currency to use during a visit to Gaza.

Naji had to explain to him that there was none and that Palestinians have to use the Israeli shekel (Sanad Abu Latifa)

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A NATO por trás do ataque turco à Síria

October 15th, 2019 by Manlio Dinucci

A Alemanha, a França, a Itália e outros países que, em trajes de membros da União Europeia, condenam a Turquia pelo ataque à Síria, são, juntamente com a Turquia,  membros da NATO, a qual, quando já estava em curso o ataque, reiterou o seu apoio a Ancara. Fê-lo oficialmente, o Secretário Geral da NATO, Jean Stoltenberg, encontrando-se em 11 de Outubro na Turquia, com o Presidente Erdoğan e com o Ministro dos Negócios Estrangeiros, Çavuşoğlu.

“A Turquia está na primeira linha, nesta região muito volátil, nenhum outro Aliado sofreu mais ataques terroristas do que a Turquia, ninguém está mais exposto à violência e à turbulência proveniente do Médio Oriente”, disse Stoltenberg, reconhecendo que a Turquia tem preocupações “legítimas” com a sua própria segurança”. Depois de, diplomaticamente, tê-lo aconselhado a “agir com moderação”, Stoltenberg salientou que a Turquia é “um Aliado valoroso da NATO, importante para a nossa defesa colectiva”, e que a NATO está “fortemente empenhada em defender a sua segurança”. Para esse fim – especificou – a NATO aumentou a sua presença aérea e naval na Turquia e investiu mais de 5 biliões de dólares em bases e infraestruturas militares. Além do mais, colocou um comando importante (não mencionado por Stoltenberg): o LandCom, responsável pela coordenação de todas as forças terrestres da Aliança.

Stoltenberg evidênciou a importância dos “sistemas de defesa antimísseis” inseridos pela NATO para “proteger a fronteira sul da Turquia”, fornecidos em rotação pelos Aliados. A este respeito, o Ministro dos Negócios Estrangeiros, Çavuşoğlu agradeceu, em particular, à Itália. Desde Junho de 2016, a Itália instalou na província turca do sudeste, em Kahramanmaraş, o “sistema de defesa aérea” Samp-T, produzido em conjunto com a França. Uma unidade Samp-T compreende um veículo de comando e controlo e seis veículos lançadores, cada um armado com oito mísseis. Situados perto da Síria, eles podem abater qualquer avião no espaço aéreo sírio. Portanto, a sua função, é tudo menos defensiva. Em Julho passado, a Câmara e o Senado, com base na decisão das comissões estrangeiras conjuntas, deliberaram prolongar, até 31 de Dezembro, a presença da unidade de mísseis italiana na Turquia. Stoltenberg também informou que estão em curso negociações entre a Itália e a França, produtores conjuntos do sistema de mísseis Samp-T e a Turquia, que deseja comprá-lo. Neste ponto, com base no decreto anunciado pelo Ministro dos Negócios Estrangeiros, Di Maio, para bloquear a exportação de armas para a Turquia, a Itália deveria retirar imediatamente o sistema de mísseis Samp-T do território turco e comprometer-se a não vendê-lo à Turquia.

Continua, assim,  o trágico teatro da política, enquanto na Síria o sangue continua a jorrar. Os que hoje ficam horrorizados com os novos massacres e pedem para bloquear a exportação de armas para a Turquia, são os mesmos que voltaram a cabeça quando o próprio New York Times publicou uma investigação detalhada sobre a rede da CIA, através da qual chegavam à Turquia, também da Croácia, rios de armas para a guerra camuflada na Síria (il manifesto, 27 de Março de 2013 e Réseau Voltaire). Depois de ter demolido a Federação Jugoslava e a Líbia, a NATO tentou a mesma operação na Síria. A força do choque era constituída por um exército agressivo de grupos islâmicos (até há pouco rotulados por Washington como terroristas) provenientes do Afeganistão, da Bósnia, da Chechénia, da Líbia e de outros países. Eles afluíam às províncias turcas de Adana e Hatai, na fronteira com a Síria, onde a CIA tinha aberto centros de formação militar. O comando das operações estava a bordo de navios da NATO, no porto de Alessandretta. Tudo isto é suprimido e a Turquia é apresentada pelo Secretário Geral da NATO como o Aliado “mais exposto à violência e à turbulência do Médio Oriente”.

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo original em italiano :

La Nato dietro l’attacco turco in Siria

Tradutora: Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos

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La Nato dietro l’attacco turco in Siria

October 15th, 2019 by Manlio Dinucci

Germania, Francia, Italia e altri paesi, che in veste di membri della Ue condannano la Turchia per l’attacco in Siria, sono insieme alla Turchia membri della Nato, la quale, mentre era già in corso l’attacco,  ha ribadito il suo sostegno ad Ankara. Lo ha fatto ufficialmente il segretario generale della Nato Jean Stoltenberg, incontrando l’11 ottobre  in Turchia il presidente Erdoğan e il ministro degli esteri Çavuşoğlu.

«La Turchia è in prima linea in questa regione molto volatile, nessun altro Alleato ha subito più attacchi terroristici della Turchia, nessun altro è più esposto alla violenza e alla turbolenza  proveniente dal Medioriente», ha esordito Stoltenberg, riconoscendo che la Turchia ha «legittime preoccupazioni per la propria sicurezza». Dopo averle diplomaticamente consigliato di «agire con moderazione», Stoltenberg ha sottolineato che la Turchia è «un forte Alleato Nato, importante per la nostra difesa collettiva», e che la Nato è «fortemente impegnata a difendere la sua sicurezza». A tal fine – ha specificato – la Nato ha accresciuto la sua presenza aerea e navale in Turchia e vi ha investito oltre 5 miliardi di dollari in basi e infrastrutture militari. Oltre a queste, vi ha dislocato un importante comando (non ricordato da Stoltenberg): il LandCom, responsabile del coordinamento di tutte le forze terrestri dell’Alleanza.

Stoltenberg ha evidenziato l’importanza dei «sistemi di difesa missilistica» dispiegati dalla Nato per «proteggere il confine meridionale della Turchia», forniti a rotazione dagli Alleati. A tale proposito il ministro degli esteri Çavuşoğlu ha ringraziato in particolare l’Italia. E’ dal giugno 2016 che l’Italia ha dispiegato nella provincia turca sudorientale di Kahramanmaraş  il «sistema di difesa aerea» Samp-T, coprodotto con la Francia. Una unità Samp-T comprende un veicolo di comando e controllo e sei veicoli lanciatori armati ciascuno di otto missili. Situati a ridosso della Siria, essi possono abbattere qualsiasi velivolo all’interno dello spazio aereo siriano. La loro funzione, quindi, è tutt’altro che difensiva. Lo scorso luglio la Camera e il Senato, in base a quanto deciso dalle commissioni estere congiunte, hanno deliberato di estendere fino al 31 dicembre la presenza dell’unità missilistica italiana in Turchia. Stoltenberg ha inoltre informato che sono in corso colloqui tra Italia e Francia, coproduttrici del sistema missilistico Samp-T, e la Turchia che lo vuole acquistare. A questo punto, in base al decreto annunciato dal ministro degli Esteri Di Maio di bloccare l’export di armamenti verso la Turchia, l’Italia dovrebbe ritirare immediatamente il sistema missilistico Samp-T dal territorio turco e impegnarsi a non venderlo alla Turchia.

Continua così il tragico teatrino della politica, mentre in Siria continua a scorrere sangue. Coloro che oggi inorridiscono di fronte alle nuove stragi e chiedono di bloccare l’export di armi alla Turchia, sono gli stessi che voltavano la testa dall’altra parte quando lo stesso New York Times pubblicava una dettagliata inchiesta sulla rete Cia attraverso cui arrivavano in Turchia, anche dalla Croazia, fiumi di armi per la guerra coperta in Siria (il manifesto, 27 marzo 2013). Dopo aver demolito la Federazione Jugoslava e la Libia, la Nato tentava la stessa operazione in Siria. La forza d’urto era costituita da una raccogliticcia armata di gruppi islamici (fino a poco prima bollati da Washington come terroristi) provenienti da Afghanistan, Bosnia, Cecenia, Libia e altri paesi. Essi affluivano nelle province turche di Adana e Hatai, confinante con la Siria, dove la Cia aveva aperto centri di formazione militare. Il comando delle operazioni era a bordo di navi Nato nel porto di Alessandretta. Tutto questo viene cancellato e la Turchia viene presentata dal segretario generale della Nato come l’Alleato «più esposto alla violenza e alla turbolenza  proveniente dal Medioriente».

Manlio Dinucci

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The US and Russian military officers met late last night in Al Farat, a small village north of Manbij, northeast of Aleppo, according to media ‘Al Mayadeen’. 

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The purpose of the meeting was to coordinate military movements in the area. As a result, the US military removed equipment from Manbij to an unknown location.   According to eyewitnesses, who reported to the Russian media ‘Sputnik’, 4 US military vehicles left Manbij traveling toward Al Golan Bridge, which connects Manbij with Ayn al Arab (Kobane). Analysts believe this paves the way for a major Syrian Arab Army (SAA) incursion into Manbij, accompanied by Russian security forces to prevent the city’s fall to the Turkish army inits military campaign, dubbed ‘Operation Peace Spring’.

The proposed military operation will consist of the SAA, and the Russian security forces moving into Manbij with heavy military equipment, to secure the city and establish control after the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the US pulled out. Sources have informed ‘Sputnik’, the city is empty of all Kurdish associated with the SDF, and those remaining are Syrian Arab citizens, who are eagerly awaiting the SAA and the Russians to enter Manbij and declare its liberation from occupation by the SDF, and the Kurdish state known as ‘Rojava’.

The Turkish military has adapted their operation, as a result of the US-Russian meeting last night, and will avoid Manbij and neighboring Tel Refat. The SAA received reinforcements at Al Araimah, between Manbij and Al Bab which is under occupation by the Turkish backed Free Syrian Army (FSA), a Syrian mercenary militia who are the ground forces used by Turkey to invade northeastern Syria. Russian Security Forces are patrolling the outskirts of Manbij.

Manbij had a population of nearly 100,000 before 2011, and the population was largely Arab, with Kurdish, Circassian and Chechen minorities.  Manbij was captured by the Kurdish militia, SDF in summer 2016 from the ISIS occupiers, with the help of the US military. Prior to the planned offensive to oust ISIS from Manbij, the US had asked the Turkish to participate; however, Turkey refused because the US has partnered with the Kurdish militia SDF, which is closely aligned with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), and the PKK, who is an internationally recognized terrorist group, responsible for about 40,000 deaths in Turkey spanning 30 years.  The US decided to rely on the SDF alone, and the operation was successful. After Manbij was cleared of ISIS the Kurds began displacing non-Kurds, and settling Kurdish families there, and instituting a non-Syrian governmental structure called ‘Rojava’, which is the name the Kurds have given their ‘autonomous administrative state in northeast Syria’ (NES), with its headquarters in Qamishli.

“Our allies had guaranteed us protection … but suddenly and without warning, they abandoned us in an unjust decision to withdraw their troops from the Turkish border,” the SDF said in a statement.

The SDF and YPG had fought alongside the US military to defeat ISIS from Syria; however, in a surprising betrayal US Pres. Trump suddenly ordered his troops to withdraw, which effectively gave Turkish Pres. Erdogan the green-light to begin an ethnic-cleansing operation against the Kurds in northeast Syria, with the ultimate goal of changing the population into Syrian Arabs, after his proposed ‘safe-zone’ settles Syrian refugees in Turkey there, most of which are Pro-Erdogan and Pro-Muslim Brotherhood.

The Syrian refugees in Turkey are predominately people who were aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood sponsored ‘Arab Spring’ and left Syria because they were opposed to the secular Syrian government.  The FSA was a jihadist militia that had the support of Pres. Obama, NATO and the EU in a bid for ‘regime change’. However, their mission failed after 8 years of war, 500,000 dead, and 10 million displaced.  Turkey was one of the key actors in the US-NATO-EU plan, and was not only the transit point of the international terrorists traveling to fight in Syria, and the safe-haven for Syrian refugees, but was a Muslim Brotherhood governed country, as the AKP party and its leader, Pres. Erdogan was transforming a secular Turkey into an Islamist State.

“Let them have their borders, but I do not think our soldiers should be there for the next 15 years guarding a border between Turkey and Syria when we cannot guard our own borders,” Trump said while addressing the Values Voters Summit’s Faith, Family, and Freedom Gala dinner on Saturday.

While this speech was being delivered, 100,000 Kurdish civilians were fleeing their homes to shelter in schools at Hasseka, south of the battle-zone. Recently, Russian military officials landed in Hasseka airport to negotiate with the SDF in hopes of reconciling the Kurdish autonomous region, NES, with the Syrian central government in Damascus.

Today, US Defense Secretary Mark Esper, in an interview aired on ‘Face the Nation’ said,

“We also have learned in the last 24 hours that ….. the SDF, are looking to cut a deal if you will with the Syrians and the Russians to- to counter-attack against the Turks in the north.” He added, “We got to see how this plays out. But again we’ve got to take this one step at a time. It’s a very fluid situation it’s changing by the hour.”

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a Middle East Observer.

Featured image is from Mideast Discourse

Syrian Ministry of Education managed to restore and rehabilitate 1554 schools and set the plans to rehabilitate 1000 other schools achieving 90% of the current plan thus far. 10,000 teaching jobs to be added in a month from now.

In a review presented during a debate called for by members of the Syrian Parliament, Minister of Education Mr. Imad Azab answered a host of inquiries put forward by the MPs some of which pressing about the situation of education and schools in Hasakah province living under the Erdogan regime’s aggression.

Syrian minister of education in front of Parliament

Mr. Azab (image on the right) explained his ministry’s efforts in the fields of restoring and rehabilitating the schools and facilities, the situation of teachers, their salaries, allowances, and compensations, and the ministry’s plan to increase the payouts.

The minister revealed the preparations for a contest to recruit 10,000 teachers in less than a month. These jobs will be covering all the provinces in the country.

Despite the continuous War of Terror and the Economic Terror through draconian sanctions waged by the USA and its NATO stooges directly and indirectly by sponsoring hundreds of thousands of terrorists, Syria is rehabilitating its education sector.

fares tweet on aleppo bombed school

Syria - Homs - Schools - Education - Sanctions - Regime Change - Terror

US efforts to turn Syria into a fail state to join the trail of countries and nations it destroyed throughout its criminal history are not being achieved only thanks to the incredible resilience of the Syrian people throughout the past 8.5 years.

One of the sectors systematically targeted by the USA in Syria was the education sector in all its education levels, including the organized destruction of schools and the assassination of teachers and university professors. NATO terrorists turned many schools into headquarters for their groups, prisons for locals for torturing and slaughtering their victims in it, and also in many cases used the playground of the schools as mass-graveyards for their victims and their own terrorists killed in battles.

This sector was also one of the resilient sectors that kept operating under all circumstances to the point teachers’ salaries were paid even in areas under terrorist control by the Syrian state.

Syria - Homs - Schools - Education - Sanctions - Regime Change - Terror

moti-kahana

Members of the Syrian Parliament are known, to the Syrian people which is important, to be very aggressive when questioning the Syrian cabinet on all topics and achieving in conducting their role in legislation, suggestions, inquiries, and monitoring the conduct of the executive branch of the state.

Syrian Parliament - Damascus

Syrian Parliament – Damascus

Syria prides itself on offering top education standards for free and almost free from pre-school all the way up to Ph.D. in all topics and fully covered scholarships abroad, even during the current crisis. Syrian graduates outperform their peers whenever and wherever given the chance to excel.

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The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is opening up to the world. It used to be absolutely impossible to get a visa to enter, unless you were a religious pilgrim (therefore officially a Muslim), NATO military personnel, or a businessman or woman, invited by a local company or by the Saudi government. Even if you secured approval, visas were outrageously expensive, costing several hundreds of dollars. The only loophole was a “transit visa” for those who were going to drive from Oman or Bahrain, to Jordan.

Tourism was not recognized as a reason to visit the KSA. There were simply no tourist visas issued. Full stop.

Then, suddenly, everything changed, at the very end of September 2019. The Saudi government introduced e-visas, for 49 nation nationalities, including the USA, Canada, all nationals of the European Union, as well as the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China (including Hong Kong and Macau).

Everything has been streamlined. The formerly brutal international airports of Riyadh (the capital), Jeddah and Dammam, received incredible facelifts. Now, friendly ladies (still in hijab), speaking perfect English, are processing first-time visitors, taking their fingerprints, photographing them, then welcoming them to Saudi Arabia. There are rating buttons on the walls of the immigration booths: “How are we serving you?” From excellent, to terrible. Riyadh Airport is now clean, well illuminated, and pleasant.

All over the capital city, foreign women are now walking with fully exposed hair: at the airport, in all major hotels of Riyadh, office buildings, even inside the luxury malls.

The Royal Family is sending a clear message to the world: things are rapidly changing: Saudi Arabia is not what it used to be a few years ago. Women can now drive, foreigners (some, at least from the rich countries) can enter the country, and the dress-code for women is getting more and more relaxed.

Words like “the arts” and “culture” have been reintroduced into the local lexicon, after being nearly extinct for decades.

Saudi Arabia has a wide range of problems. They include corruption, the increasing dissatisfaction of the middle classes, the great desperation of the poor, vulnerability of oil prices, cross-border retaliatory attacks by the Houthis in Yemen, the imminent defeat of the Saudi extremist allies in Syria, the prolonged conflict with Qatar, as well as a still undiversified economy based on the export of oil.

After cutting the journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, into pieces, precisely one year ago, the KSA suddenly drew strong criticism from all corners of the world.

The continuous killing of tens of thousands of innocent Yemeni civilians has evoked wrath in progressive circles worldwide.

The rulers in Riyadh had to re-think many issues. They calculated, and came to the conclusion that the best way to act would be to open up the country, and basically demonstrate to the would that the Kingdom is “not as bad” as many would like to believe.

The risk is great. Could this strategy really work? Or would it backfire?

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Politics aside, Saudi Arabia is a “specific place”, and definitely not to everyone’s liking.

To give it credit where it is due, it counts on some stunning vistas, on endless deserts, dunes and oases producing dates and delicious fruits. It is dotted with castles and forts, and of course, as the cradle of Islam, it has some of the most incredible historic sites.

A few years ago, the National Museum in Beijing, China, exhibited thousands of historic objects and images from the KSA. To those of us who visited, it was a tremendous discovery.

Unfortunately, what can be shown in China, could not always be allowed in Riyadh, Jeddah, Macca and Medina.

For decades, the Saudi extremist Wahhabism has been fighting against everything that is not perceived as holy: music, films, non-religious books, even the images of animals.

This religious extremism has been exported to all corners of the world. Paradoxically and bizarrely, it has been intertwined with Western, particularly North American, “culture”. Extreme capitalism has been thriving all over the Kingdom. More oil, more kitsch.

Tremendous Muslim monuments had been dwarfed by lavish malls, badly designed and overpriced hotels, car culture and cheap US eateries such as Big M, Dunkin Donuts and Pizza Hut.

There is hardly any city planning, or connectivity in the major cities like Dammam, Jeddah and Riyadh, even when compared with the neighboring Dubai, Doha or Muscat.

According to The Independent:

“The destruction of sites associated with early Islam is an ongoing phenomenon that has occurred mainly in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia, particularly around the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The demolition has focused on mosques, burial sites, homes and historical locations associated with the Islamic prophet Muhammad and many of the founding personalities of early Islamic history.”

Vulgar luxury malls and 5-star hotels for the super-rich pilgrims are now literally encircling the holiest site in Macca.

But it is not only religious sites that are being ruined.

During this recent visit, I drove to the At-Turaif District in ad-Dir’iyah, some 20 kilometers from Riyadh, once a stunning World Heritage site designated by UNESCO. This location of the first Saudi Dynasty was “undergoing renovation”. Read: entire areas of traditional houses and ancient streets, squares and courtyards have been “rearranged”; destroyed. A modern mall has been erected. I was told that soon, more areas will give way to the fake buildings. Al-Turaif District has already been nicknamed the “Beverly Hills of Saudi Arabia.”

What’s next, nobody knows. But one thing is certain: if the rulers of Saudi Arabia want to attract visitors from the West, Russia, China or Japan, in order to diversify its economy, they’d have to offer a bit more than clogged roads, shopping malls, broken sidewalks and kitschy hotels and restaurants.

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Saudi Arabia is extremely rich (although not as rich as Qatar), at least on paper. But it is full of absolute misery, from slums to beggars whose arms were amputated at a young age, so they could evoke the pity of motorists, and generate higher incomes for the mafias that are pimping them.

In many luxury malls, there are sexy, almost pornographic lingerie stores for the upper class wives, while outside, millions of manual workers, mainly from the sub-Continent, Africa and the Philippines, are living in destitution, not unlike that which they left behind in their native lands.

Politically, Saudi Arabia is, together with Israel, the closest ally of the United States.

And it shows. In those proverbial 5-star hotels that cost in Riyadh, double what they do even in Qatar, stereotypical Western ‘development-types’ are lecturing locals, openly, arrogantly and without any shame.

Visa restrictions have been eased, but mass tourism in the KSA is still hard to imagine. The country is not ready for culture-oriented types, for history connoisseurs, or for people on average budgets.

There is no way of walking here. There is no public transportation to speak of, yet. Even getting a taxi can be an ordeal, as everything is designed for private cars.

The prices are outrageous and the quality of services very, very low. Crime rates high.

It will take some time to convince foreigners to come.

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NNM2But an attempt to bring the world into KSA is there. Changes are in the air.

The National Museum in Riyadh opened its doors. The building is magnificent, although exhibitions are, to put it mildly, very poor. The new National Library is stunning, although the selection of books is very limited. Research centers mainly highlight the activities of the Royal Family. A new mass rapid system is being constructed, but no one knows exactly when it will become operational.

I am interested in this complex country. I want to come back, and understand more; for years I am writing about Wahhabism and the deadly alliance with the UK, and then the US. And, honestly, I have always been fascinated with the deserts and with the people who inhabit them.

Considering my strong criticism of the KSA foreign policy, including my frequent appearances on the Iranian Press TV, I was a bit worried about this visit, but I was holding an “official”, not “e” visa, and in the end, nothing bad happened. The people that I met were kind and open with me. Now, I am writing this short essay on board Sri Lankan Airlines, bound for Colombo, alive and well.

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Diversification could prove to be extremely positive for the people of Saudi Arabia. Both Russia and China are now making important inroads, and soon, there will be substantial investment from both countries, in the Saudi oil industry, as well as tourism and other sectors. Chinese and Russian people are curious and daring. They will come. Many will. Saudis know it.

At the National Museum in Riyadh, a receptionist asked where I was from, in English. I answered, “I am Russian”. He hesitated for just a few seconds, then smiled and uttered: “Privet! Kak dela?” (“Greetings, how are you doing?”) Perhaps he had to learn those few words of greeting in all world languages. Or perhaps not. Maybe he was studying Russian.

The rulers of the KSA are very secretive people. No one really knows which direction the country is going to evolve in the next few years. Could the KSA one day become “neutral”? I don’t know.

But one thing is certain: something is moving, brewing and evolving. KSA is not the same country as it was five years ago. In the future, perhaps five years from now, it may become unrecognizable.

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Andre Vltchek is philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He’s a creator of Vltchek’s World in Word and Images, and a writer that penned a number of books, including China and Ecological Civilization. He writes especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Selected Articles: Trump Imposes Sanctions on Turkey

October 15th, 2019 by Global Research News

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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If, like us, this is a future you wish to avoid, please help sustain Global Research’s activities by making a donation or taking out a membership now!

Click to donate or click here to become a member of Global Research.

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Lessons from Ukraine: Shift Foreign Aid to U.S. Desperate Domestic Aid Programs

By Dr. Barbara G. Ellis, October 15, 201

If anything, the Trump-Ukraine impeachment issue reveals to the American public that ever since 1961 when the Foreign Assistance Act  was passed, perhaps nearly trillions of our tax dollars have been used by decades  of administrations as a primary tool to dictate foreign policy to resource-rich, poverty-ridden countries. Or those considered geographically strategic. Humanitarian and developmental aid have always been a cynical cosmetic cover.

The United States Is Unlikely to Desire Conflict with a Formidable Iran

By Shane Quinn, October 15, 2019

Iran and Iraq contain the fourth and fifth largest proven oil reserves in the world respectively. Control of these two countries would place a power like the United States in a particularly strong global position. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former US National Security Advisor, noted after the Iraq invasion that command over the Middle East would allow the White House to have “politically critical leverage on the European and Asian economies that are also dependent on energy exports from the region”.

Kurds Face Stark Options after US Pullback from Northern Syria

By Pepe Escobar, October 15, 2019

Trump’s tweet bisects the surreal geopolitical spectacle of Turkey attacking a 120-kilometer-long stretch of Syrian territory east of the Euphrates to essentially expel Syrian Kurds. Even after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogancleared with Trump the terms of the Orwellian-named “Operation Peace Spring,” Ankara may now face the risk of US economic sanctions.

UN General Assembly 2019: Venezuela, Russia, China Denounce Violations of International Treaties and Distortions of UN Charter

By Carla Stea, October 15, 2019

Having failed to force regime change on Venezuela, using the most drastic methods, the latest US connivance attempts to manipulate the United Nations Credentials Committee to evict the legitimate Maduro government of Venezuela from the United Nations, and usurp its place with their puppet, Juan Guaido and his gang.  This newest “ingenious” ploy failed, however, as the majority of UN member states support the Maduro government, despite the bombardment by an obsequious major Western media disinformation campaign.

Trump Imposes Sanctions on Turkey in Response to Ankara’s “Operation Peace Spring” in Syria

By Sarah Abed, October 15, 2019

On Monday, after a weekend of bloody chaos in northeastern Syrian brought on by Turkey’s cross border military incursion “Operation Peace Spring” which included airstrikes, ISIS prison breaks, and a continuation of the exodus we’ve seen over the past few days of over a hundred thousand civilians fleeing their homes, President Trump signed an Executive Order authorizing sanctions against current and former Turkish government officials and anyone who is contributing to Turkey’s actions in destabilizing northeast Syria.

Civil Rights Are on the Chopping Block in New Supreme Court Term

By Prof. Marjorie Cohn, October 15, 2019

This term, the Supreme Court will decide whether people can be fired for being transgender or LGBQ, if people brought to the U.S. as children can be deported, whether states can impose restrictions on abortion that disproportionately harm poor women, how firm the separation between church and state is, the scope of the Second Amendment and whether criminal defendants can be convicted by less-than-unanimous juries.

The Eurozone In Crisis? New President of the European Central Bank (ECB) has a Criminal Record. Christine Lagarde

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 14, 2019

What media reports fail to mention is that Lagarde is a corrupt official involved in financial fraud. She has a criminal record.

Is the Eurozone in danger? Financial fraud is embedded at the highest levels of political and economic decision-making. A senior official in high office with a criminal record can easily be manipulated. Indelibly this will affect the way she manages the ECB, with potential impacts on the very fabric of monetary policy.

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Amid all the media and pundit outrage since Turkey’s President Erdogan launched his so-called ‘Operation Peace Spring’ into northeast Syria last week, vowing to wipe out Syrian Kurdish forces who’ve long held the border areas, what’s been largely missing is acknowledgement of the uncomfortable fact that NATO ally Turkey has long hosted a major portion of America’s nuclear Cold War-era arsenal stored across Europe

And as Erdogan threatens to “open the doors and send 3.6 million migrants” to Europe while under increased international criticism for the rapidly rising civilian death toll in Syria, The New York Times reports the following bombshell Monday: some 50 US tactical nukes are “now essentially Erdogan’s hostages”.

The Times cites growing alarm by top State and Energy Dept. officials over what the publication likens as a “disastrous” and confusing break from US policy in northern Syria, given not only further expected destabilization in the region, but worsening and unpredictable ties with Erdogan’s Turkey, given Trump is now preparing to sign into effect severe sanctions with the aim of attempting to “limit” his military incursion.

According to the report:

And over the weekend, State and Energy Department officials were quietly reviewing plans for evacuating roughly 50 tactical nuclear weapons that the United States had long stored, under American control, at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, about 250 miles from the Syrian border, according to two American officials.

Turkey is among a handful of European NATO allies which play host to the extensive US nuclear arsenal on European soil  a remnant and continuation of the historic Cold War build-up — when Washington was locked in battle to deter Soviet expansion in Europe, which also allowed US allies to not have to pursue their own nukes.

The further irony in all this is that Incirlik Air Base is precisely where during the opening years of the war in Syria, US intelligence and military officials teamed up with their Turkish counterparts to wage proxy war against Assad, which involved fueling the jihadist insurgency which birthed the very groups now slaughtering Syrian Kurds and Christians in the country’s northeast.

B61-12 guided nuclear bomb (Screengrab from a US Air Force video)

The NYT report continues:

Those weapons, one senior official said, were now essentially Erdogan’s hostages. To fly them out of Incirlik would be to mark the de facto end of the Turkish-American alliance. To keep them there, though, is to perpetuate a nuclear vulnerability that should have been eliminated years ago.

It’s believed that across Europe the US has some 150 US nuclear weapons at various bases, “specifically B61 gravity bombs,” according to a leaked NATO report which gained widespread media coverage earlier this year.

Via Statista: “The B61 is a low to intermediate-yield strategic and tactical thermonuclear gravity bomb which deatures a two-stage radiation implosion design. It is capable of being deployed on a range of aircraft such as the F-15E, F-16 and Tornado. It can be released at speeds up to Mach 2 and dropped as low as 50 feet where it features a 31 second delay to allow the delivery aircraft to escape the blast radius.”

After it appears US special forces stationed in the northern Syria town of Kobane came under Turkish artillery fire last Friday, Jeffrey Lewis of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies observed, “I think this is a first — a country with U.S. nuclear weapons stationed in it literally firing artillery at US forces,” as cited in the Times report.

This also as Erdogan threatened last week, not for the first time: “Hey EU, wake up. I say it again: if you try to frame our operation there as an invasion, our task is simple: we will open the doors and send 3.6 million migrants to you,” he said.

We noted previously how Erdogan is feeling emboldened vis-a-vis Europe, especially given the EU’s Monday decision not to impose a Europe-wide arms embargo at the urging of France and Germany, which one top Turkish official called “a joke”.

The fact is Erdogan has all the leverage, again in the form of millions or refugees he’s threatened to flood Europe’s borders with.

And now, add to this the ultimate leverage of hosting some 50 US/NATO tactical nukes. Erdogan will indeed hold these weapons “hostage” if it comes down to it.

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Trump’s Bankrupt Syria Policy: Civilians Will Pay the Price

October 15th, 2019 by Vassilis K. Fouskas

The Trump administration decision to allow Turkey to have a free ride in Rojava, North-East Syria opens the door for new disasters for all, especially the civilians on the ground. More, it confirms the decline of US power in the Middle East and globally.

Marred by the openings of an impeachment process at home backed by senior democratic and republican elites, on 6th October 2019 Trump’s White House declared that the US troops would be withdrawing from northern Syria, and will no longer be in the immediate area ahead of a Turkish military operation. It also added that the US will not support or be involved in the operations, and that Turkey now would be responsible for the fate of all captured Islamic State fighters (totaling 12000 men and 70000 women and children) during the last two years, currently held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Defence Forces (SDF), a group of Kurdish and Arab militias. Trump justified his decision by saying that the US deployment of troops in northern Syria was simply too costly.

“The Kurds fought with us, but were paid massive amounts of money and equipment to do so (…). They have been fighting Turkey for decades. I held off this fight for almost 3 years, but it is time for us to get out of these ridiculous Endless Wars, many of them tribal, and bring our soldiers home (…). Turkey, Europe, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Russia and the Kurds will now have to figure the situation out”, Trump added.

This was followed by a characteristic twitter warning to Turkey:

“As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!). They must, with Europe and others, watch over… ….the captured ISIS fighters and families. The U.S. has done far more than anyone could have ever expected, including the capture of 100% of the ISIS Caliphate. It is time now for others in the region, some of great wealth, to protect their own territory. THE USA IS GREAT!” [Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump, 7 October 2019].

Turkey, however, through its Vice-President, Fuat Oktay, said that

“Ankara is the one who would determine our own path and set our own limits.”

In his tweets, Trump declared that it is now Turkey’s responsibility to look after ISIS prisoners. But Ankara may have other plans and ideas and, as experience teaches us, the logic of the actual warfare leads military planners to change plans and, at times, even move beyond the endorsed political framework of action.

The decision of the US is simply saying that the US troops will not stand in the way of the planned Turkish operations against the Kurdish controlled area, approximately one-third of Syrian territory in the northeast of the country. An autonomous administration, under the control of the Kurdish-led SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces), controls this region, North and East Syria, described as Rojava. The region gained its de facto autonomy in 2012, taking advantage of the Syrian forces partial withdrawal from Kurdish areas. It is home to Kurdish, Arab, and Assyrian populations, alongside smaller numbers of Turkmens, Armenians, Yazidis and Circassians.

Donald Trump announced the intention of withdrawing the US troops from the region in December 2018, claiming that since the IS (Islamic State) was close to complete defeat there was no reason for the US troops to stay there any longer. Following this, the US administration came to an agreement with Turkey to establish a 10-15 km wide safe zone, so called peace corridor, along the Turkish-Syrian border in northern Syria. As a result, in August 2019, some of the Kurdish forces removed their posts and left this zone to the joint control of American and Turkish troops.

It seems that this was not enough to satisfy the security concerns of the Turkish side. Turkey has openly and continuously criticised the US for supporting the Kurdish militia, YPG (Kurdish People’s Protection Units), which Turkey considers a terrorist entity, an extension of the militant Kurdish political movement in Turkey, PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), with which the Turkish forces have been at war for more than 30 years. On 24 September, Turkey’s president Tayyip Erdogan told the UN General Assembly that Turkey has a detailed plan for this region: to set up a safe zone along 480 km (300 miles) of border and reaching 32 km deep inside Syria, from the Euphrates River in the west to the border with Iraq in the east, essential to ensure border security for Turkey (see map).

Under the plan, up to 2 million Syrian refugees, currently living in Turkey, would be settled in the safe zone, with international support. If implemented, the project could halve the number of Syrian refugees sheltering in Turkey from Syria’s eight-year long conflict, and drive the Syrian Kurdish militia, YPG, away from the border. The Turkish plan, as explained by Erdogan, includes establishing 140 villages, 10 towns, altogether building more than 200,000 homes, and a university. If materialised, this plan will seriously alter the demographic balance of the region by driving out much of the Kurdish population and replacing them with Turkey-friendly Syrian refugees, most of whom are Arabs. It would also signify partition of Syria and de facto extension of Turkish sovereignty beyond its 1923 internationally recognised borders.

Yet, this plan is unlikely to come to fruition, not least because re-settling Arab refugees in a predominately Kurdish area would most likely cause further conflict. This recent situation “could push the Kurds into seeking an arrangement with the Assad regime in Damascus. The Kurdish leadership has long been in talks with Damascus to ensure a level of Kurdish autonomy in north eastern Syria in the event of a US pullout”, ”, reported in the Guardian on 7 October.

So far, public opinion and mainstream media in the West are more interested in speculating answers to the question “Who is the likely winner of a Turkish offensive in northern Syria?”. “Bashar al-Assad is the real winner”, writes Dana Nawzar Jaf in the NewStatesman, and The Asia Times actually report along the same lines. Further, CNBC asserts that “Trump’s handing northern Syria to Turkey is a ‘gift to Russia, Iran, and ISIS’”, an opinion shared by many other media outlets and commentators. Others argue that Erdogan tricked Trump and is now having his plan implemented, which is effectively the defeat of the Kurds and the prevention of a Kurdish enclave-administration in Syria, which would inspire Kurds in Turkey to secede. We rate this type of speculation from being unsatisfactory and inaccurate to being deeply misleading.

First of all, northern Syria is not just a military zone occupied by fighters; it is home to between 500,000 and 1 million Kurdish and approximately 1.5 million Arab civilians, Assyrians and Yezidis, many of whom are refugees escaped from the war-zones of Syria and Iraq. The 2014 population estimate of Rojava was 4.6 million people. Sandwiched between the Turkish army, Turkey-supported Free Syrian Army and the Kurdish-Arab SDF militias are these large number of civilians, who are now faced with the risk of losing their homes, lands and lives. Many of them have just recently escaped from other areas of Syria and Iraq where heavy fighting directly threatened them. This is the unfortunate fate of the millions of civilians who happen to be born in this geographical area, in those Middle Eastern countries, most of whom have in recent years experienced foreign occupation, violent wars and civil wars.

But is Trump’s move anti-Russian? During the Cold War, in an effort to disentangle Turkey from Soviet influence – Turkey has always been Washington’s bastion in the Middle East and geo-politically far more important than Greece, another NATO ally – the US gave many advantages to the Turkish military – see for example the case of Cyprus, an issue unresolved to the present day. Today, and since the downing of the Russian warplane by Turkish fire, Turkey and Russia re-discovered friendship and Erdogan made everything in his powers to criticise the US and find a modus vivendi with Putin over Assad’s Syria. But, at best, this is not the main reason why Trump’s security team took this important decision.

Trump’s decision and the creation of a massive power-vacuum in Syria will open the door to further disasters for all concerned – primarily the civilian, the poor and the deprived. However, US considerations run deep into the country’s socio-economic decline and fading economic and political standing abroad. The first two Gulf Wars – Operation Desert Storm of 1990 to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait and the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq – killed hundreds of thousands, uprooted millions, and unsettled the Greater Middle East, and led to still ongoing chaos and bloodshed. This cost the US administration trillions of dollars that can no longer be fully recovered from America’s “exorbitant privilege”, namely the position of the dollar in global markets as a reserve currency that gives the ability to the US to borrow its own currency in order to re-finance its debt obligations. These defeats are much worse than Vietnam’s, when first the US experienced a serious balance of payments problem and its industry a fall in profitability.

ISIS and the Syrian crisis have their roots in America’s failed occupation of Iraq, which deprived the Iraqi Sunnis of any power, previously the dominant faction under Saddam’s regime. The Caliphate was the direct result of the decline of US neo-imperialism, rather than an exhibition of its strength. Iran came out to be the winner of America’s occupation of Iraq. US power in the Middle East is on the wane, and together the recycling of petrodollars that buttressed US international economic strategy thwarting the bankruptcy of the US. But the global financial crisis, the “fracking revolution” and the assertive economic posture of China in international political economy, coupled with the debt America’s neo-imperial wars created from the end of the Soviet Union onwards, defined America’s inability to recover both economically and politically. This is the deeper meaning of Trump’s decision to let the “Turks, the Russians, the Kurds and the rest” sort it out in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.

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Russia and Africa Still Behind the Curtains

October 15th, 2019 by Kester Kenn Klomegah

After several years of consistently constructive criticisms, Russian authorities have finally put on the agenda the topic of media cooperation for further panel discussions during the first Russia-Africa Summit on October 23-24 in Sochi, southern coastal city of Russia.

The Russia-Africa Summit programme, released last month, explicitly notes that Russian-African relations are lending an additional dimension to developments, especially with the boost provided by rapidly expanding links across a vast range of areas. The media can and indeed must be a decisive factor in building effective ties.

It further says that Africa is frequently portrayed in the media as suffering from numerous intergovernmental, religious, and ethnic conflicts, political and economic instability; and an array of demographic and social problems. Knowledge of today’s Russia and the steps being taken by its political leaders to tackle global challenges is also given little space in the continent’s media landscape.

What issues are currently being encountered in the formation of the modern media landscape? What role does the media play in Russia-African relations? What are the prospects for collaboration in the information sphere? What needs to be done to develop a Russian media agenda in Africa? What is the role and place of Russia in the information space of Africa today?

Experts from the think-tank Valdai Discussion Club, academic researchers from the Institute for African Studies and independent policy observers have suggested that authorities use Russia’s media resources available to support its foreign policy, promote its positive image, disseminate useful information about its current achievements and emerging economic opportunities, especially for the African public.

Russian media resources, which are largely far from eminent in Africa, include Rossiya Sevogdnya (RIA Novosti, Voice of Russia and Russia Today), Itar-Tass News Agency and Interfax Information Service.

Instead of prioritizing media cooperation with Africa, high-ranking Russian officials most often talk about the spread of anti-Russian propaganda by western and European media in Africa. The Federation Council and the State Duma enacted legislations that banned foreign NGOs to operate in Russia. Consequently, there are absolutely no African NGOs in the Russian Federation.

In November 2018, the State Duma, the lower house of parliamentarians, called for an increased Russian media presence in African countries, while Russia itself has blocked Africa from having media representation in the Russian Federation, according to media investigations.

Vyacheslav Volodin, the Chairman of the State Duma, recently invited Ambassadors of African countries in the Russian Federation, to brainstorm for fresh views and ideas on the current Russia-African relations, adding that “it is necessary to take certain steps together for the Russian media to work on the African continent”.

“You know that the Russian media provide broadcasting in various languages, they work in many countries, although it is certainly impossible to compare this presence with the presence of the media of the United States, United Kingdom and Germany,” he said.

Experts say that neither Russia has an African media face nor Africa has a Russian media face. Thus, in the absence of suitable alternative sources, African political leaders and corporate business directors depend on western media reports about developments in Russia. While the Foreign Ministry has accredited media from Latin America, the United States, Europe and Asian countries, none have been accredited from sub-Saharan Africa.

“Soft power has never been a strong side of Russian policy in the post-Soviet era. Russian media write very little about Africa, economic and political dynamics in different parts of the continent,” says Fyodor Lukyanov, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal Russia in Global Affairs and Chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, one of the oldest Russian NGOs.

He is of the view that media and NGOs should make big efforts to increase the level of mutual knowledge, which can stimulate interest in each other and lead to increased economic interaction between Russia and Africa.

Fyodor Lukyanov has been the Research Director of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club since 2015.

As far back as in 2014, Olga Kulkova, Research Fellow at the Centre for Studies of Russian-African Relations, noted that “in the global struggle for Africa, Russia is sadly far from outpacing its competitors”. In terms of stringency of strategic outlook and activity, Russia is seriously lagging behind China, the U.S., EU, India and Brazil, she added.

Kulkova said:

“Africa needs broader coverage in Russian media. Leading Russian media agencies should release more topical news items and quality analytical articles about the continent, and on-the-spot TV reports in order to adequately collaborate with African partners and attract Russian business to Africa.”

Since the Soviet collapse in December 1991, the question of media representation both ways has attracted unprecedented concern from African academics and diplomats. Dr Igho Natufe, a Canadian-Nigerian professor and an author of the book titled Russian Foreign Policy in Search of Lost Influence that was published 2015, says that in order to improve overall relationship, Russia has to review its policy strategies and one surest way to do so is to employ the soft power in dealing with Africa.

Natufe argues that Russian authorities have to acknowledge that the media has a huge role to play, thus frequent exchange of visits by Russian and African journalists as well as regular publications of economic and business reports could help create public business awareness, deepen public knowledge and further raise to an appreciable levels the relationship between the two countries.

In separate interviews, Zimbabwe’s Ambassador to Russia, Major General (rtd) Nicholas Mike Sango and many African diplomats have unreservedly advocated for Africa media representation in Russia and further for a wide range of cultural cooperation between Russia and Africa.

“There is a dearth of information about the country. Russia-Africa issues are reported by third parties and often not in good light. Is this not a moment that Russia has coverage on Africa by being permanently present in the continent? Even the strongest foreign policies, if not sold out by the media, will definitely not succeed,” said Major General (rtd) Nicholas Mike Sango.

“Indeed, Africa’s media should equally find space to operate in Russia. Because of limited resources, Russia should equally make it easier for African journalists to operate on its territory. Frequent Russia-Africa forums should lay the necessary foundation for deeper and holistic Russia-Africa political, cultural and economic cooperation for mutual benefit of the peoples of the two friendly institutions,” suggested Nicholas Mike Sango.

Bunn Nagara, a Senior Fellow of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, member of the Valdai Discussion Club, also observed that

“Russian businesses face a number of challenges. First, there is little information available internationally about the opportunities and possibilities for partnerships between Russian and foreign businesses.”

“Foreign news still dominated by European and Western news agencies that have a different focus and agenda. Thus, Russia often seen only politically and negatively. Without sufficient information available about prospective business cooperation and partnerships, many foreign businesses will stay away,” the expert said.

“Russia is a large country that is in both Europe and Asia. It spans both major continents, so it can do much to bring Asian and European business linkages together and build on them. Better public relations and improved information dissemination are very important. To do this, it needs to do more in spreading more and better information about its achievements, the progress so far, its future plans, and the opportunities available,” Bunn Nagara said.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, while addressing the Russia-Africa Economic forum in July also added his voice for strengthening cooperation in all fronts.

“We must take advantage of all things without fail. It is also important that we implement as many projects as possible, that encompass new venues and, of course, new countries,” he said.

Medvedev further stressed:

“It is also important to have a sincere desire. Russia and African countries now have this sincere desire. We simply need to know each other better and be more open to one another. I am sure all of us will succeed if we work this way. Even if some things seem impossible, this situation persists only until it has been accomplished. It was Nelson Mandela who made this absolutely true statement.”

In July, President Vladimir Putin took part in third day of the International Parliamentarian Forum where he addressed parliamentarians for making it necessary to attend this forum and discuss the multifaceted issues of inter-parliamentary cooperation based on trust and constructive approaches.

There at the forum attended by speakers and members from African parliaments, he assertively emphasized that “the modern world needs an open and free exchange of views, confidence building and search for mutual understanding.”

In practice, there has to be a well functioning system and in the spirit of reciprocity to achieve this significant call for an open and free exchange of views, especially in recent years when the traditionally friendly ties of partnerships have gained new momentum and efforts are being made to raise it to qualitatively new levels between Russia and Africa.

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Kester Kenn Klomegah writes frequently on Russia, Africa, and BRICS. He is the author of the book titled “Putin’s African Dream and The New Dawn: Challenges and Emerging Opportunities” devoted to the first Russia-Africa Summit 2019.

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In the Jungle or in the Zoo? The Zoos of the Ultra-Rich

October 15th, 2019 by Christian Savestre

As he was preparing to return from his exile in the United States, the Czech filmmaker Milos Forman declared, “I live in the jungle and I am preparing to return to the zoo.” This metaphor allowed him to contrast the liberty of the West (the jungle) with the isolating security of the communist Eastern Bloc (the zoo).

And what if, after forty years of uninterrupted neoliberalism, the jungle has become the zoo, and the zoo has become the jungle? It’s an inverted zoo in the heart of which an infamous minority enjoys exorbitant privileges in complete security, to the detriment of all others who are assigned to inhabit the jungle where life is a battle of all against all inflicted by the inhabitants of the zoo. A visit to the zoo of the rich and the ultra-rich (so little examined by the dominant media) will clarify much for us. A visit to the jungle is not necessary, as the economic and social reality has produced the familiar violence and other devastating effects on a day-to-day basis.

What do we find in the zoos of the ultra-rich?

  1. Let’s start with a brief look. The world of the rich is very unequal. In this world too, the growth of inequality of wealth is on display. You doubt this? To give you an idea, learn at first how to use the terminology, in “globish”, of these privileged ones who are separated among themselves into three classes:

The HNWI (High Net Worth Individuals): those who have more than $1 million of net active assets, with debt obligations deducted, and not counting the value of their principal residence, collectible objects and consumable objects that last less than three years.

The UHNWI (Ultra High Net Worth Individuals): Those who have more than $30 million in net active assets (as per the defining terms above).

The billionaires: Those who have more than $1billion in net active assets (as per the defining terms above).

Between 2013 and 2018, the number of HNWI, the millionaires, increased 13% to reach a total of 19.6 million people. During the same period, the number of UHNWI, the ultra-rich, increased 18% to reach 198,342 individuals. As for billionaires, their number increased by 55% and reached 2,229 individuals, of which 26 billionaires have close to $1.4 trillion ($1,400 billion), as much as what is owned by the poorest half of the world’s people. Wealth is continually concentrating, even among the wealthy. In the world of the rich, the millionaire is quickly becoming considered as poor. The zoo of the rich, ultra-rich and billionaires includes a total of 19.8 million people, or 0.26% of the world population. The jungle of everyone else is home to 7.6 billion people.

  1. The world of the rich has good prospects for the period between 2019 and 2023. The number of millionaires will increase by 19% to reach 23.4 million people. The ultra-rich will see their numbers increase by 22% and thus total 241,053 people. Billionaires will see an increase of 21% to reach a total of 2,696. So there is danger ahead, many of them worry. Are we going to see growing inequality among the wealthy?
  1. The ultra-rich know how to avoid major crises. In 2002, they were spared from damage during the popping of the internet bubble and even increased their wealth by 3.6% when the NASDAQ fell by 32%. The subprime crisis in 2007/08 did not affect them as much as one would believe. Capable of reacting quickly thanks to the evolution of financial management (the famous agility promoted by the powerful, and notably by the banker-president, Emmanuel Macron), they were able to at least escape the collapse of the stock market by moving their wealth into fixed income assets or converting their assets to cash, or in speculating on the collapse of the markets. Keep in mind that the rich keep 35.4% of their active assets in cash, which amounts to $600 to $900 billion. The rest are divided thus: 33% in personal holding companies, 25% in stocks and other investments, 6% in real estate and luxury goods (yachts, airplanes, cars, art, jewels).
  1. The ultra-rich anticipate the risk of a collapse occurring because of the present low rate of returns and the probable end of “quantitative easing”.[1] They diversify their investment strategies and are in search of specific opportunities. Nothing, absolutely nothing, escapes their attention, even those that might be considered atypical, such as the cannabis business, for example. Collectible objects also constitute an alternative source of investment. Whiskey is one such example. Direct flights from Beijing to Edinburgh have become a thing. The sales of whiskey in China and India have increased 40%, and the sale price of one collectors’ bottle of whiskey broke a record in 2018 at 1.2 million pounds sterling.
  1. The media tell us constantly that the markets are anxious whenever there is a little fluctuation in the stock market that is difficult to explain or when there is a social movement that they consider to be vulgarly populist. It seems there is nothing to this, which is admitted even by precisely those who are the principal actors. In effect, the surveys done on the ultra-rich show that they are completely confidant that their fortunes will continue to grow in the years to come. This shows the high level of confidence they have about the control they exercise over the wealth produced in the world. In the face of those who predict the next financial crisis will make the last one in 2007/2008 look Lilliputian, the managers of these fortunes remark that nothing is less certain but there are always countries that escape damage. They cite Australia as an example which has not known a crisis since the beginning of the 1990s. Confronted with the possibility of a recession that will spread in the United Kingdom because of Brexit, they see an opportunity (for investors who have the privilege of investing for the long-term) to speculate on values in the United Kingdom which have dropped because of Brexit. Populist movements, as they are called, don’t concern them, either, whether they have leaders or not: In effect, if such movements persisted in a country like France, for example, the ultra-rich have already identified a zone in which they could readily take refuge and invest. They are called “S zones” for “stability locations”: Singapore, Scandinavia and Switzerland. Even the change of energy policies of states in the face of a little power exerted by the petrol states is no concern for them. To the contrary, this change constitutes an opportunity to invest in shale gas in the United States, or in the exploitation of cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo etc…
  1. The dominant media tell us Brexit is going to create major chaos. This is not at all the opinion of the ultra-rich. Despite the publication of multiple economic studies, each more catastrophic in its conclusions than the last one, the ultra-rich consider London will remain as the world capital of global wealth, ahead of its sole rival, New York, whether it is a matter of a hard Brexit or a negotiated deal, or no Brexit at all. It must be said that this is a particularly authoritative view because London is the city that has the highest number of the ultra-rich (4,944). If, in any case, Brexit produces some harmful effects, the ultra-rich already have access to opportunities offered by what they call “the New Vikings” or the “New Hanseatic League” made up of eight northern European countries which together could usefully replace, if necessary, the role played by the UK in balancing France and Germany.[2] For them, these countries, notably Sweden, Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands, present all the characteristics which they are fond of: strongly founded liberal values, political stability and “safe-haven” qualities. These are literally qualities that make them places of refuge, as is understood by the initiated.
  1. The ultra-rich are particularly confident about the fact that they will always find states where governments will be sufficiently welcoming, encouraging them to come shelter a part of or all of their fortunes. The example of Italy is frequently cited. For a forfeiture of  €100,000, wealthy tax evaders will be able to transform themselves into “migrants” of fortune and taste again the charms of the dolce vita. Certainly, some welcoming countries like Singapore, Australia and New Zealand might set up some obstacles to certain markets such as real estate, but this should not discourage those with large fortunes who never lack means, all the more so since the “second passports” market is often a major opportunity.
  2. The ultra-rich are perpetual migrants. Is this a paradox? What to make of this great world voyage by the rich and ultra-rich? Do they run any risks? Do they have total security? Does their isolated world rule the world? Is the wall of money unbreakable? Are there not predators hiding at the gates of their sheltered world? Are they sheltered from everything, including the crises they create?! Nothing for the jungle and all for the zoo, including its primary function of safeguarding the species kept there. The jungle has really become the zoo, and the zoo has become the jungle. What’s more, the zoo has subjugated the jungle.

In a video supplement to this essay, Christian Savestre summed up the points above and added that the ultra-rich have subjugated the people of the jungle in two ways: debt and tax evasion. Furthermore, they have now discovered a third: convincing the inhabitants of the jungle that the ultra-rich should be in charge of managing the climate crisis.

Transcript of the video by Christian Savestre, 2019/06, follows.

The world of the ultra-rich is a zoo! Why? Think of a zoo: there aren’t many animals, and they live in complete security! For the ultra-rich, it’s the same: there aren’t that many of them.

First of all, what are the ultra-rich? They are people who have a minimum of 30 million dollars of fortune, aside from their principal residence. How many of them are there in the world? There are 19.8 million. And how many other people are there? 7.6 billion! So the proportion is 0.26%—about  the same proportion, no doubt a bit more—but it’s the proportion of animals that are in zoos to those animals that are in the jungle. And the ultra-rich live in complete security in the zoo. Why? Because of a peculiar thing about the zoo of the ultra-rich. They have taken control of the jungle. They take no risks! They impose all the risks on others!

To guarantee that they take no risks, they have put two ropes around the necks of all the of the people of the jungle: the rope of tax evasion—we’ve been talking about it for several weeks– and also the rope of debt. We’ll speak about it later. And proving that they assume no risks is extremely simple. Let’s take four examples.

First example: crises of the past—economic crises that they caused. But they emerged from them in good shape. Future economic crises, caused by the bubbles that they have created but that have not yet burst. They are going to manage them completely. They have already diversified their investments. Third point: political crises. No problem. They’re on it. Fourth point: The ecological crisis. It’s a fantastic business opportunity!

So, they have to be careful. They have to be sure that in the media there are no discordant voices. So they bought them all. So, the first point: Crises of the past. Look at the crisis of 2002, the internet bubble. No problem. They increased their fortunes 3.2% while the Nasdaq index crashed 32%. So that proves they know how to manage.
The crisis of 2007-2008: It was they who provoked it. “Too big to fail,” as they said of the banks. “Too big to jail,” for those who managed them. Furthermore, protection from all risks: it is countries, and thus citizens, that saved the banks. But citizens, what did they get in exchange? They didn’t become owners of banks!

Future crises? The bubbles they have obviously created will burst. They know it. But they are prepared. They vary their investments. And we have to keep in mind that 35% of their fortune is in cash! So cash, the essential medium of capital—it circulates. And so it’s a matter of investing in something a bit alternative. There’s no problem. They already invest a lot in cannabis. Lots of people know it. Cannabis is a great investment. When you look at the journals of the ultra-rich, you can’t escape it. You have to go to all the investment seminars concerned with cannabis! Whisky, it’s the same. Chinese are drinking more and more of it. Go. Let’s invest in whisky! So they always have a way to save themselves. Future bubbles: they will manage fine. What’s more, there is something in particular that we should be aware of: that they get through every difficulty, including the ones that they create.

Political crises. Let’s take Brexit. Brexit disturbs only bad economists. Bad economists tell us what? “It will be a catastrophe!” But the ultra-rich say, “Ah, no. Not at all!” London? No problem. It will still be the top city in the world! Otherwise, Brexit or no Brexit, they don’t care. It’s the top city in the world for the ultra-rich. And far behind is New York! So there are no problems! And they have reserves. Yes, you don’t think about it, but Brexit will last such a long time that there will be, as they say, a depreciation of values that drop so far that there must later be a rebound. So the ultra-rich buy these assets at low value, and when values rise again, their fortunes will explode upward. That’s what a capitalist does. He didn’t work, but he gets a big payday.

Now, the Yellow Vests protest, it’s true, has lasted a bit too long. The ultra-rich say to themselves anyway that Macron could have been a little more efficient—he who boasts so much about efficiency. But frankly, what do the ultra-rich finally say to each other? They say a bit like Chirac said vulgarly: “It touched some a bit, but it didn’t make others move. In any case, if the movement really took off and Macron were weakened a little, they already have a solution ready. You don’t know about the three “S”s: “Safety locations.” But they know about it.

What are the three “S”s? Scandinavia, Switzerland and Singapore. These are the places you should go when you are ultra-rich and there is a bit of a threat in the place where you have some money. So that’s an example that shows how they are always one step ahead because they are very, very mobile. Furthermore, about 30% of them are ready to move within a year. It is at least quite impressive!

The ecological crisis? No worries. They’re on it. There are a few billionaires, two of them well-known—especially the founder of Virgin. I forget his name. He’ll forgive me. They have created what they call “Team B”. So what’s that, Team B? Well, it’s Team B because it’s not Team A. So what was Team A? It was the management of capitalism, where profits were the priority. Now, they explain that Team B is very different. It’s another game. Now they can no longer found the management of enterprises on profit. They have to be ‘founded on the well-being of the people and of the planet.’ This will work. They explain that this will work. There’s no problem. But, obviously, to do this they will have a lock on the media. There must not be any discordant voices creating too much of an echo. So they found the solution. They bought all the mainstream media. All of them! The billionaires own the media!

There are only about 2,600 real billionaires in the world. Next to them, the ultra-rich are sort of poor. And so they control the media, and it’s necessary to put out some propaganda. So what do you hear? You hear, “The markets are anxious.” Every time there is a slight disturbance in society, the markets are anxious. In fact, they are not at all anxious. They are very confident about the evolution of their fortunes. They all declare that in the next five years, their fortunes will increase considerably. Moreover, the number of the ultra-rich will increase by about 25%. You can read that in specialist journals. So, one must pretend to be anxious. The ultra-rich can’t laugh out loud when large job terminations are announced, and not small ones but thousands, tens of thousands of job losses. In fact, they’re laughing inside. You can see it in stock markets. At that moment they have no way to camouflage themselves. The stock markets are hot when layoffs are announced. So the conclusion of all this is what? Yes, power over the jungle has been taken by the zoo.

And the people of the jungle are already subdued by two ropes—I remind you: those of tax evasion and debt. And now we see they are in the process of putting another rope around our necks: the climate! Because if you let them manage the climate crisis, that is really a third rope that we have around our necks.

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Translated by Dennis Riches and first posted on his blog, Lit by Imagination

Sources

The Wealth Report 2019. 13th Edition. Knight Frank.

MGM Research. Global UHNWI. Population Analysis 2019. Global Billionaire Population Analysis 2019. Global Millionaire Population Analysis 2019.

Wealth-X. Applied Wealth Intelligence. High Net Worth Handbook 2019.

Family Office. Magazine & Events.

Foss, Family Office Advisory.

PwC Global Family Business Survey 2019.

PWM. Professional Wealth Management (Financial Times Specialist). A Guide to Global Citizenship. The 2018 CBI Index.

Notes

[1] Quantitative easing is a “non-conventional” monetary policy consisting of a central bank buying back a massive amount of debts from financial institutions, notably treasury bonds and corporate bonds, and in some cases asset-backed securities such as mortgage-backed securities.

[2] The New Hanseatic League was created in February, 2018 by the ministers of finance of the following countries: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, and Sweden. In a joint declaration they declared “the shared views and values” for what is a form of economic and monetary union. The name alludes to the old Hanseatic League, a military and commercial alliance of Northern Europe dissolved in the 16th century.

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If anything, the Trump-Ukraine impeachment issue reveals to the American public that ever since 1961 when the Foreign Assistance Act  was passed, perhaps nearly trillions of our tax dollars have been used by decades  of administrations as a primary tool to dictate foreign policy to resource-rich, poverty-ridden countries. Or those considered geographically strategic. Humanitarian and developmental aid have always been a cynical cosmetic cover. 

The real objective—imposed by the State Department’s USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) program since 1961—has been to help U.S. corporations  exploit and profit off those nations like European colonizers of old. A bonus is obtaining cheap labor, railroads, ports—and free protection by U.S. armed forces instead of paying for security as is done at home offices.

To ensure cooperative obedience from recipient countries for all this, as Consortium News’s Joe Lauria  noted, it’s been “routine” to conduct such policy “with bribes, threats, and blackmail.”

USAID’s very name suggests an agency devoted solely to furnishing basic needs such as food, shelter, clothing, schools, and healthcare to dozens of needy nations.

So perhaps the current Ukrainian situation has shocked many Americans to learn that some $391 million ($115,000,000  in military aid) of their taxes for FY2019 were delayed to force that government to provide corruptive evidence against Trump presidential rival Joe Biden.

Others aren’t surprised, however, nor do they ever expect such Mafia-like extortion to end any time soon.

For instance, Congressional appropriations to DOS from the FY2020 budget rest on demands—major and minor— to several Balkan countries, Burma, Columbia, Egypt, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Iraq, Libya, Mexico, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Venezuela.

Following Trump’s budget recommendations, the Senate appropriations committee terminated funding to the United Nations Human Rights Council on grounds of bias against Israel and the UN Relief and Works Agency. UNRWA receives a third of survival funding for five million Palestinians, descendants of nearly a million refugees ousted from Israel’s founding in 1948.

When money is not withheld, billions have been siphoned off for years by recipient government officials to third parties, seemingly trimming distribution of goods and services to the needy. After all, the House and Senate appropriations committees deciding DOS allocations just cited routine corruption  in nearly a dozen countries, bolstered by a lack of accounting transparency.

DOS also was scolded repeatedly by House members for tardiness  in reporting to Congress about how that aid was  spent.

But neither committee questioned how $10 million dollars to the World Meteorological Organization constituted humanitarian aid. Nor why their Senate counterpart could approve $360 million for the National Endowment for Democracy, much less $675,000 for the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. Or why both committees gave $4.5 million to the Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Moreover, for all the talk about fostering stable and peaceful governments with our tax dollars, why did both groups agree to give $45 million for the U.S Institute of Peace, yet allocate $2.1 billion to a dozen third-world countries for the Military (weaponry) Financing program ?

And $28.7 million to the overseas-based International Military Education and Training program—(shades of the  infamous U.S. Army School of the Americas)?

Both also seemed to wink at the Pentagon’s hiding its appropriation of nearly $8 billion in the DOS budget to protect its OCO/GWOT forces (Overseas Contingency Operations/Global War on Terrorism) from cuts or sequesters. Indeed, because all three military programs are operating out of DOS, it only confirms that our armed forces have been free-hires for U.S. business interests since 1793 when Tripoli pirates preyed on commercial vessels. As future president John Adams  then argued, businesses, not taxpayers, should cover their own security as they do even at branch offices. Or hire Blackwater. Eric Prince is looking for clients.

Now, in normal times few Americans would object to spending $9 billion on global healthcare —clean water and nutrition to malaria and HIV/AIDS—or $3.5 million for eye glasses. But today the U.S. is about to face significant hard times predicted to equal even the 1930s Great Depression.

A host of economic pundits are certain of that oncoming crash. Two-thirds of chief financial officers in a recent Duke University  poll are expecting it as soon as late next year.

Obviously, foreign aid even now is a luxury American taxpayers can no longer afford. Rising domestic needs for food, shelter, clothing, schools and healthcare—coupled with rising unrest from nationwide strikes and other kinds of street militancy—over economic conditions suggest that the U.S. might well need aid from other countries.

This may not be a joke if nothing changes.

Consider that both the Trump Administration and Congress passed (Senate: 67-28 ; House: 284-149) an eye-popping $2.7 trillion  FY2020-21 budget into law last August.

Spread over 10 years, even the annual cuts of some $301.3 billion shown below for major domestic programs will devastate most recipients:

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders  said it best even before the proposed bill was sent to Congress:

The Trump budget is breathtaking in its degree of cruelty and filled with broken promises…. This is a budget for the military industrial complex, for corporate CEOs, for Wall Street and for the billionaire class. …We don’t need billions of dollars for a wall that no one wants. We need a budget that works for all Americans, not just Donald Trump and his billionaire friends at Mar-A-Lago.

Keeping most voters in the dark about the upcoming drastic domestic cuts affecting them all before the 2020 election seems to have been the plan of both Trump and a majority in Congress.

Both pessimists and realists view such cuts as planned genocide, considering the just-released two-year study from the GAO (General Accountability Office). Its bottom line: Being poor and without lifelines like Social Security/Medicare for those over 65—and those other safety-net programs—guarantee an early death.

And as presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren has declared for years is that all it takes for today’s well-off millions to become poor tomorrow are job losses, or bankruptcies from medical bills, divorce, rent increases, or overextended borrowing either from banks or credit cards.

In other words, a national crash as bad as 2008 will make paupers out of most of the public and in desperate need of these services targeted for the axe. Homelessness, soup kitchens, and suicidal despair will be rampant.

And Trump’s idea for ending homelessness—past, present, and future—are internment camps even now being discussed by his aides and Los Angeles officials. He’s certainly aware that President Franklin Roosevelt set up the WWII Japanese interment camps by an Executive Order (EO). Given that 553,000 of the nation’s homeless last December probably have increased by thousands more, he’ll undoubtedly again demand the Pentagon use the armed forces for free labor to build those tented, electrified-fenced camps.

The first tangible sign of this grim scenario began in 2017 with the Trump administration’s tax cuts for the rich and corporations expected to be covered by these significant slashes to domestic funding.

Just recently it’s been his plan to stop free school lunches for 500,000 children whose families use food stamps. Then, following that list of cuts above, it was saving $4.5 billion in food stamps themselves over the next five years. That will increase starvation for 20 percent of already destitute families, seniors, and disabled out of the 40 million dependent on this program.

Several days ago, astonishingly amid cheers and applause at Florida’s The Villages retirement community (median age: 70.9; mean household income: $77,180)—Trump signed an EO to throw 20.4 million Medicare Advantage participants from federal coverage and back into the prohibitively expensive maw of private insurance companies.

In past, insurers implementing the program for the government have overcharged it annually by $10 billion. And when caught (like UnitedHealth), they refused to reimburse the Treasury.

Trump’s EO permits insurers not only will delay and deny coverage to thousands of the elderly poor, but rigorously enforce rules about preexisting conditions and charge high deductibles, copays, and ruinous annual increases of premiums.

It’s true that even if all genuine foreign-aid spending were lifted from the DOS’ allocation of nearly $56 billion, it would only partly replace that annual $301.3 billion for domestic programs. But at least it would be a trigger for humanitarian organizations and beneficiaries to start agitating for other federal sources. They are fully capable of goading action from Congressional budget hawks and GAO into extraordinary scrutiny of other federal departments and agencies to ferret out bloat and boondoggles and weigh whether they have greater priority over upcoming domestic needs.

However, all is not lost.

Three solutions to this staggering domestic shortfall are possible if an enraged public threatens to vote against Congressional incumbents in 2020 approving those inhumane budget cuts. Or to vote for those exercising Congressional powers to halt them.

One device is Congressional rescinding line-items after appropriation bills have become law. They’ve used this “rescission” tool for decades and numerous times (273 in 1995)  and on large sums ($24.6 billion in 1992) either to cut or add amounts following “second-thoughts” about original allocations.

Another device is “reprogramming” allocations from one federal department to another. The Pentagon has repeatedly done it in moving its OCO/GWOT funds to the State Department. That long-time precedent means that Congress can move significant cuts in DOS’s foreign aid programs—and those from otherfederal departments and agencies—to fill the remaining domestic hole.

An additional solution was just offered by CounterPunch writer Chuck Collins. He strongly endorsed the surtax on the rich plans urged by Bernie Sanders  and Elizabeth Warren:

As a nation, we will need to raise trillions to protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and to address urgent priorities such as health care, climate change, child care, higher education, opioid addiction, and more.

Tragic as it will be for foreign countries to be denied U.S. humanitarian aid after decades of receiving it, the coming economic dilemma means looking elsewhere for such help: non-profit agencies, philanthropists, private institutions, the United Nations, the European Union, and the like. In America from now on, charity finally must begin at home.

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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, Beirut Daily Star, Mideast Magazine), Ellis also has been a long-time journalism professor (Oregon State University/Louisiana’s McNeese State University) and a nominee for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in history (The Moving Appeal). She is a contributor to Truthout, Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, and Global Research, as well as being a long-time political and environmental activist—including canvassing for Medicare-for-All.

The failure of the American-led occupation of Iraq has surely not been forgotten in Washington. Against by all accounts a much depleted enemy in Baghdad, America’s military and civilian branches were unable to maintain authority in an Iraqi state already devastated by years of Western sanctions prior to the March 2003 invasion.

As the Pentagon finally completed its withdrawal from Iraq in December 2011, they had failed to attain their objectives and, most worryingly, Iraq was developing closer relations with Iran; which had more than a touch of irony to it, and was a disastrous scenario for those in the US capital.

When examining the Middle East nations of Iran or Iraq, it may be important to note that these neighbours are both laden with natural minerals, while they are furthermore located in strategically crucial territories: Among the most important in the world in fact.

Resource-plenty Central Asia lies to the north of Iran and Iraq, with its sprawling, largely uninhabited grasslands and mountains. Situated to the east are Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, further important states, two of which are nuclear-armed. To the south is Saudi Arabia, the biggest oil producer on the planet, and a US ally for the past 75 years.

Iran and Iraq contain the fourth and fifth largest proven oil reserves in the world respectively. Control of these two countries would place a power like the United States in a particularly strong global position. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former US National Security Advisor, noted after the Iraq invasion that command over the Middle East would allow the White House to have “politically critical leverage on the European and Asian economies that are also dependent on energy exports from the region”.

Iran itself lies astride the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz. The Persian Gulf constitutes the earth’s biggest source of petroleum – while the Gulf is also home to the world’s largest offshore oilfield, Safaniya, which was discovered in 1951 and is controlled by Saudi Arabia.

The Persian Gulf nations, which further include Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE, contain almost 66% of the planet’s entire crude oil reserves, and over a third of our globe’s natural gas sources; ensuring that these areas have been sought after by imperial planners for generations. There are almost 40,000 American soldiers stationed in the above four Persian Gulf states, along with an array of high-tech US machinery and weaponry. In recent months, America has also increased its military presence in Persian Gulf waters, sending a message to Tehran.

The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow and shallow body of water straddling southern Iran, is likewise of extreme importance. Almost 25% of the world’s oil supplies are shipped through this channel. The Strait has been the scene of escalating tensions between Iran and the Western powers of Britain and America. Tehran has threatened to close the Strait to foreign shipping in the unwanted event of military confrontation with America.

The Strait of Hormuz is controlled by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, which by itself provides Tehran with a measure of clout in international affairs. US personnel are permanently stationed within 300 to 400 miles of the Strait of Hormuz: For example in the shape of the famous United States Fifth Fleet, which is based in nearby Bahrain to the west and has an extensive history dating to 1944, as Japanese war veterans may remember.

Vice Admiral Jim Malloy, current commander of the US Fifth Fleet, said in May 2019 that he is “not restricted in any way” towards sending his carrier strike group, USS Abraham Lincoln, through the Strait of Hormuz if required. “I’m not challenged in any way, to operate her anywhere in the Middle East”, Malloy said during a telephone interview.

Iran is a country much criticised in the West, by political and media figures. Yet the fact is, rarely mentioned, that Iran has not been forgiven for removing itself from US control when in early 1979 the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was overthrown by a popular uprising.

The Shah himself, a brutal autocrat, was given dictatorial powers in August 1953 by a US-British designed coup d’etat, which ousted Iran’s democratically elected leader, Mohammad Mossadegh. Prime minister Mossadegh had nationalised Iran’s oil reserves in March 1951, setting off alarm bells in London and Washington.

The Shah’s family history was already that of a chequered one. His father Reza Shah Pahlavi, who died in 1944, enjoyed warm relations with Hitler, and the Nazi leader even dispatched a signed portrait to him in March 1936, separately describing the Iranians as “pure Aryans”. Summarising the links between the Shah’s father and the Nazis, in early August 1941 Hitler had said, “If there is anyone who is praying for the success of our arms, it must be the Shah of Persia. As soon as we drop in on him, he’ll have nothing more to fear from England”.

Meanwhile, in the post-1979 years, Tehran has continuously pursued policies independent of Washington. Iran is therefore classed as a threat to “stability” and “regional security”.

Iran is clearly something of a challenge to US hegemony in the Middle East. Iranian leaders have indeed developed a closer partnership with Iraq, as one could expect from bordering countries that are religiously (Shi’ite) and culturally linked. The Iranians have involved themselves in the wars in Yemen and Syria, acting against the interests of Western powers.

Across the Persian Gulf, growing Iranian influence could even result in a full-blown revolt in the east of Saudi Arabia (the Eastern Province) – where lies most of Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves, and in which there has been a history of social unrest. The Eastern Province is home to millions of Saudis of Shi’ite faith, who have been repressed by the despotic nature of the Saudi regime, whose branch of Islam is that of the Sunni faith.

Iranian society remains a somewhat suppressed one, but is appreciably less so than it was under the Shah’s reign. Human rights violations by comparison to Iran are significantly worse in Saudi Arabia.

One of the core reasons behind the invasion of Iraq was not as professed in disarming “weapons of mass destruction”; but rather its aim was to institute an American-friendly government that would allow Washington leverage over Iraq’s great oil wells.

In early April 2003, less than three weeks after the US intervention against Iraq began, America’s National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said in a press conference,

“But I would just caution that Iraq is not East Timor, or Kosovo, or Afghanistan. Iraq is unique”.

Iraq is a major prize, but the US occupation fell to pieces as the country descended into virtual civil war, with sectarian bitterness greatly increasing due to the actions of foreign troops. Following 2003, the Shi’ite majority came to the fore in Iraq, which perfectly suited Shi’ite-dominated Iran to the east. The war in Iraq cost the US government up to $2 trillion dollars, much of it in vain.

Once Saddam Hussein fled Baghdad in the opening days of April 2003, the George W. Bush administration had little inkling of the difficulties that lay ahead. A mere few weeks after the invasion began president Bush said that, “In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed”. Yet it was only the beginning.

Due to emerging popular unrest among the Iraqi population against the occupying powers, Western multinational corporations were unable to invest in Iraq – despite the Bush administration promising in November 2007 that their government was “encouraging the flow of foreign investments to Iraq, especially American investments”. In the face of increasing Iraqi resistance, a couple of months later the Pentagon had to abandon even this central hope.

Considering the difficulties that America experienced in Iraq, a potential war with Iran would be much more arduous. In terms of landmass, Iran is almost four times times larger than Iraq, and it also has a far bigger population now containing over 80 million people.

Iran is also one of the world’s most mountainous countries, with a varying climate ranging from freezing cold in the winter to baking hot in the summer. These factors bring with it a unique set of challenges for any leading power attempting to tackle Iran. The Iranian military is also larger, has superior morale and is better equipped than that which faced America in Iraq.

Iran furthermore has friends in lofty places, such as with regard to China and Russia. Iran’s largest trading partner is the rising China. Approximately 100 major Chinese companies are embedded in Iran’s economy, especially pertaining to the latter’s natural resources and transportation districts.

Amid the decline of Western business in Iran due to growing US financial measures, Chinese corporations have been exploiting Iran’s oil and gas fields. China is defying American sanctions against Iran by continuing to import oil from the Middle East state, and last month China promised to invest almost $300 billion in Tehran’s oil, gas and petrochemical divisions. Iran is also a member of the ambitious Chinese-led programs, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Tehran has developed lasting ties with Russia too, forming a military understanding with the Kremlin in Syria during recent years, by providing crucial support to president Bashar al-Assad – and working alongside Moscow in restricting US influence in Central Asia and inevitably the Middle East. Russia has for years been an important trading partner of Iran, and investments between the countries is rising again, having grown by almost 25% for the first seven months of 2019, reaching well over a billion dollars.

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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.

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President Putin gave an extensive interview to Arab media before departing for Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but it’s useful to highlight some of the most relevant parts in case interested observers don’t have the time to watch it in full or skim through the transcript since the Russian leader powerfully refutes the Alt-Media narrative that his country is supposedly “allied” with the Resistance against the GCC and “Israel”.

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President Putin’s extensive interview that he gave to Arab media before departing for the Gulf is extremely informative in that it authoritatively reveals the true nature of Russia’s foreign policy towards the region, which debunks many of the Alt-Media Community’s dogmas such as the popular one that Moscow is supposedly “allied” with the Resistance against the GCC and “Israel“. It’s therefore of the utmost importance that as many people became aware of what he said as possible, hence the need to highlight some key parts of his interview in case interested observers don’t have the time to watch it in full or skim through the transcript on the official Kremlin website. What follows is bullet point summaries of the main ideas that the Russian leader was trying to convey, after which relevant quotes are referenced in order to support the above-mentioned claim:

Russia Isn’t A Partisan Player In Regional Affairs, But A “Balancing” Force That Refuses To Take Sides:

“Russia will never be friends with one country against another. We build bilateral relations that rely on positive trends generated by our contacts; we do not build alliances against anyone…we will do everything in our power to create the right conditions for positive change.

Still, Russia Doesn’t Believe That Its Envisaged Role Entails “Mediating” Between Rival Parties:

“The role of mediator is not a rewarding one. I believe that our partners in Iran and Saudi Arabia do not need any mediation. Since we maintain very friendly relations with all the countries in the region, including Iran and the Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, we could certainly help relay some messages between the parties, so they could hear each other’s position. But since I personally know the leaders of these countries, I am perfectly sure that they have no need for any advice or mediation.”

So “Balanced” Are Russia’s Policies, That It’s Even Pursuing Military Cooperation With The “Friendly” Saudis:

In Soviet times, relations between Saudi Arabia and the Soviet Union were at a rather low level. In recent years, the quality of our relations has changed dramatically. We consider Saudi Arabia a friendly nation…We are fostering a partnership in the trust-based, sensitive area of military and defence cooperation. We have been negotiating for a long time.”

This Might Be A Quid-Pro-Quo For Saudi Arabia’s Support Of The Russian-Led Syrian Peace Process:

“I would like to emphasise the positive role Saudi Arabia has played in resolving the Syrian crisis. We are working especially closely with Turkey and Iran, as you all know. But I believe that without Saudi Arabia’s contribution towards a Syrian settlement, it would have been impossible to achieve a positive trend…it would have been impossible without support from Saudi Arabia, and we all understand that.”

Speaking Of Syria, Putin Believes That Damascus “Is Responsible For What Is Going On There”:

“As for Syria, we came to Syria to support the legitimate government, and I would like to emphasise the word ‘legitimate.’ It does not mean that they do not have internal problems; I am ready to talk about it in detail later. It does not mean that the current leadership is not responsible for what is going on there. They are…”

Syrians Aren’t Just “Syrian”, They’re Divided By Religion And Sect, And Damascus Must Protect Each Equally:

“The very first step along this path is to work on the country’s Constitution, whether by amending the existing Constitution or drafting a new one. In either case, it must protect the interests of all the ethnic and religious groups. People need to know that they live in their own country and that it protects them by law. This must be equally true for Sunnis and Shia, for Alawites and Christians, because Syria has always been a state with many religions, and it could pride itself on this.”

Russia “Shares The Concerns Of The UAE And Saudi Arabia” About Iran:

“I just want to underscore that it is only natural that a big country like Iran, which has existed on its territory for thousands of years has its own interests. Persians and Iranians have lived here for centuries. And we should respect those interests. Of course, it is debatable what is legitimate and what is not, which interests are legitimate and which cross the line. However, you need to have dialogue to understand each other, to puzzle out all the nuances, intricacies and issues. Without dialogue, you cannot solve any problem. That is why I think I can share the concerns of the UAE and Saudi Arabia, but in the case of bilateral issues, it is up to them to resolve them.”

Iran “Should Follow Both The Letter And Spirit” Of The JCPOA Even Though It’s “Unfair”:

“What we are seeing is not quite productive. Not to mention that it is just unfair to blame Iran for failing to deliver on some commitments. It is counter-productive because when a person or a country is treated so unfairly, they start acting in a way different manner, not the way existing agreements require. When one party does not abide by its obligations, why would the other still honour them? Nevertheless, I believe that Iran should follow both the letter and spirit of the agreement.”

Iran’s Missile Program “Can And Should Be Part Of The Discussion Too”, But Don’t Link It With The JCPOA:

“As for the missile programme, I suppose the issue can and should be part of the discussion too. In Russia, there is a saying, and I think Muslims would understand the meaning as well: ‘You should know the difference between God’s gift and fried eggs [dollars to doughnuts].’ These are two different matters. The missile programme is one thing, and the nuclear programme is something different. It does not imply that the missile programme should not be part of the conversation, especially since it raises certain concerns. There is a place for discussion, but let us not mix apples and oranges here; otherwise, all the progress that has been made could be totally lost.”

Russia Will Support The “Deal Of The Century” Once It Knows What’s In It And If It Really Brings Peace:

“Now on the ‘deal of the century’. We will support any deal that will bring peace but we need to know what it is about. The US has been pretty vague about the details of the deal. Washington has kept in the dark the global and domestic public, the Middle East, and Palestine.”

After All, Russia “Cares About What Is Happening” In Israel Since It “Is Almost A Russian-Speaking Country”:

“Incidentally, we have very good relations with Israel as well. Almost 1.5 million Israelis come from the former Soviet Union. Israel is almost a Russian-speaking country. The Russian language is often heard in shops everywhere. We do care about what is happening in Israel.”

Russia & “Israel” Truly Want Peace Because It’ll Stop Desperate Palestinians From Committing “Terrorism”:

“We are deeply committed primarily because we believe that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is key to resolving many other regional issues. Unless it is resolved, it will continue to feed radicalism and terrorism, among other things. When people feel they have no legal ways to uphold their rights, they take up arms. In this sense, I feel the Israelis are also interested in a long-term, ultimate solution, not just the Palestinians.”

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As can be seen from the key excerpts shared above, Russia certainly isn’t “allied” with the Resistance like some influential Alt-Media figureheads make it seem, but is if anything extremely critical of the Resistance’s Iranian leader and fellow Syrian member, while being very sympathetic towards their “Israeli” and GCC rivals as part of Moscow’s latest iteration of its regional “balancing” strategy.

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This article was also 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.

Featured image is from OneWorld

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One of the things to admire about our 93-year-old Queen is that she manages to use the same non-committal tone and language regardless of the drivel she is required to read out by her duplicitous government. By any stretch of the imagination, it was little more than a piece of pre-election propaganda by Boris Johnson and, as they say, a legislative agenda the government has no intention to pursue, no majority to pass, and no capacity whatsoever to deliver. The Queen would have known all this in advance but has no choice but to keep up appearances – and she would not have been amused.

Trashed in lightning speed this year, the only thing that most people were concerned about in the Queen’s speech was if there was any news on Brexit. As we already know – Johnson’s Brexit plan, to Leave on October 31st, leaves the UK economy £50bn worse off and every household in the country about £2,000 worse off to pay for it. It’s not as if the experts haven’t hit their calculators hard enough in the last few weeks and told them so. They even said that the best scenario possible was a hit to the economy of £16 billion.

Academics at King’s College London said the current plan that is the subject of intense negotiations between UK and EU officials would be worse for the UK economy than Theresa May’s deal – and that was deemed to be the worst deal of all deals ever – so it was rejected three times over – including by Johnson and his acolytes.

This speech also confirms the end of the union. For Scotland, this is more ammunition to call for independence. War has been declared – Ian Blackford, the SNP leader at Westminster:

“Boris Johnson’s toxic Tory agenda would be devastating for Scotland – ripping us out of the EU, single market and customs union against our will, destroying jobs, and inflicting lasting harm on living standards, public services and the economy.

The Tory leader’s time is up. The SNP will do everything we can over the coming days to bring this failed Tory government to an end – and prevent it imposing its tired, damaging policies, including by opposing this hijacked Queen’s Speech if it ever comes to a vote.”

With reference to Brexit, DUP Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson, when asked about Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg saying is willing to “eat his own words” and back a customs plan he once branded “completely cretinous”, responded:

Whatever appetite he has for his own words or whatever, we will not be eating our own words. Our position is clear, the government knows what our position is and we will not be dining from a different menu.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s former ambassador to the UN, warned that the UK’s position on the world stage had been damaged by Brexit.  “We’ve fallen back in international esteem and we’ve lost an awful lot of ground.”

But here we are all the same.

It true Trumpian populist style – Boris Johnson promised in late July to make the United Kingdom ‘the greatest place on earth’ by leaving the European Union on Oct 31st. We’ll see if we leave but there are no chances of becoming remotely like a great nation again with words and nothing concrete to back it up. For a start, the money is on the United Kingdom breaking up – because the hedge-funds will be aiming their profits at that next. If Scotland’s bid for independence is successful – and it will be, Britain loses a very large chunk of its territory, waters and with the latest oil find – wealth. 

In the surreal world of Brexit Britain, we have to consider the machinations of the driving force behind the Conservative party strategy – keeping their funders happy. If not, there’s no chance at all that they would win the expected snap general election. The reality is that a crazed techno-freak in the guise of Dominic Cummings is playing to the tune of the hedge-funds.

In August, Cummings even bragged to Tories about raising money from “billionaire hedge fund managers” for this election campaign. His ego really does get the better of everything.

It was widely reported that pro-Brexit politicians and investors, including Crispin OdeyJacob Rees-Mogg, and Nigel Farage, allegedly profited in various ways from Brexit, including short-selling. And this continues to this day. It’s easy, isn’t it? Make a negative announcement and Sterling falls – make a positive announcement and the opposite occurs.

It is plausibly speculated that these and other investors stand to make huge profits from these currency fluctuations, and the big prize, is of course, from a no-deal Brexit.

Donors for Boris Johnson included individuals from companies like Melbury Capital, Montanaro Investment Managers, Perella Weinberg, RK Capital, SRM Global, and Christofferson, Robb & Co – and more. Does anyone really think that they are happy to throw money at a political party that will not transform their investment into handsome returns?

The funding of a ruling government by what can only be described as disaster capitalists raises some pretty serious questions.

Just for starters, would Eurosceptic Tory MPs have been empowered to trigger the Brexit referendum in the first place without help from their banker and hedge fund donors?

And where is this leading? There’s a trajectory that surely even the most ardent of Leave voters must be able to see by now. There is no good news on the horizon, it just gets worse and worse by the day and Britain could easily now stumble from crises to crises that make the poor more vulnerable, the middle class less able to manage and the rich hedge fund owners even richer.

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Brexit, Environmental Law and the Level Playing Field

October 15th, 2019 by Molly Scott Cato MEP

When the idea of the level playing field emerged from the Brexit talks many environmentalists breathed a sigh of relief.

As Barnier presented this agreement to us in the European Parliament, I remember realising that even if we were to go ahead with Brexit, the inclination of the Brexit regulation burners to trash social and environmental standards would be restrained.

Theresa May agreed to this condition as part of the withdrawal negotiated agreement, but very worryingly Boris Johnson has eliminated it from the proposals he presented to Brussels last week.

Species

It’s a typical piece of Brussels jargon but in simple terms the level playing field means that our future relationship with the EU will be based on the understanding that our environmental standards can only build on those of the EU and not undercut them.

It skilfully eliminates the possibility of Singapore on Thames.

In terms of the environment this really matters. It’s been frequently repeated that 80 percent of our environmental law comes from the EU.

Although the Withdrawal Act translated this into British law, without the level playing field there is nothing to stop GM enthusiast Owen Paterson persuading his friend Theresa Villiers to allow genetically modified crops into Britain.

Or any of the Tories pro-development paymasters removing protections of species under the Habitats Directive and then letting development rip up protected sites.

Damage

There is much talk amongst pro-environment Tories like Zac Goldsmith about the provisions of the Environment Bill that appeared to disappear when prorogation happened. Now it has a new lease of life as a centrepiece of the Queen’s speech.

However, vague long-term plans to deliver environmental improvements, ‘enabling’ local authorities and ‘promoting’ resource efficiency amount to little when compared with the European law it intends to replace.

The proposed Bill seeks to establish new long term domestic environmental governance ‘based on environmental principles’.

But notably absent when it comes to principles is the precautionary principle. This is the basis on which genetically modified organisms are kept out of the European market, for example, as we simply don’t know what harm they might cause and so it is safer to wait until we do.

This principle is problematic in terms of a future trade deal with the US, where the environmental protection works on the principle of waiting for damage to occur and then taking retrospective legal action à la Erin Brockovich.

Inspiration

Given that the corporations who cause environmental destruction are rich and powerful and citizens are not, I know which legal regime I would rather be living under.

Finally, we come to the very important issue of monitoring and enforcement. The budgets of both the Environment Agency and Defra have been slashed under the Conservative government, so who would be able to protect citizens if legal protections on the environment are not upheld?

As European citizens we have access to the European Court of Justice, and in the repeated legal action on air pollution, ClientEarth has shown how effective such cases can be.

The proposed replacement in a British regime would be an Office for Environmental Protection, effectively a part of government even if at arm’s-length. There is no proposal for a separate court or any system of independent arbitration other than judicial review.

Given that the inspiration for Brexit amongst many corporate interests was precisely ripping up the ‘red tape’ that has protected our countryside, waterways, and natural habitats for decades, to have no route to independent legal redress would be a source of considerable concern.

Standards

Indeed, Johnson seemed to confirm exactly this point in his statement about the Queen’s Speech heralding leaving the EU as “a defining opportunity… to tear away bureaucratic red tape”.

As the Brexit rollercoaster rolls on, moving from hope and despair about a deal on an hourly basis, we should not be distracted from the real reasons why any Brexit is worse for the environment than continuing as a member of the EU.

The loss of the level playing field will be a serious blow to those of us who depend on European law to protect our natural places and the other species we share them with.

As an MEP I will be voting on any withdrawal agreement, and rest assured, I and a vast majority of my fellow MEPs will not vote for a deal that does not include the level playing field on environmental standards.

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Molly Scott Cato is a Green MEP for the South West of England. 

A Coalition of Support: Parliamentarians for Julian Assange

October 15th, 2019 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

Australian politicians, and the consular staff of the country, are rarely that engaged on the subject of protecting their citizens.  In a couple of notorious cases, Australian authorities demonstrated, not only an indifference, but a consciously venal approach to its citizens in overseas theatres.  

Mamdouh Ahmed Habib (image below), a dual Australian-Egyptian national, was detained in Pakistan in October 2001 and subsequently sent to Guantánamo Bay via Bagram in Afghanistan and Egypt.  His subsequent detention till 2005 in a chapter of that sinisterly framed Global War on Terror was without charge and heavy with speculation.  In April 2002, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation formed the view that Habib had not been involved in the planning of future terrorist attacks, a point deemed insufficient in securing his early release.  On his release, he initiated federal court proceedings against the Australian government over their complicity in the matter.  The case was settled in 2010.

Mamdouh Habib.jpg

The squalid affair is worth nothing for the essential connivance of Australian officials in the ongoing detention of Habib.  Even intelligence assessments within the intelligence fraternity pointing to his innocence were dismissed.  In a joint media statement from the Attorney-General and the Minister for Foreign Affairs on January 11, 2005, the standard line was reiterated:

“it remained the strong view of the United States that, based on information available to it, Mr Habib had prior knowledge of the terrorist attacks on or before 11 September 2001.” 

What the US suspected, went.

In a wordy and not particularly illuminating report on the case by the Australian Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, it was “found that communication to the Habib family in respect of Mr Habib’s welfare was not adequate and recommends that an apology be made.”  Stress was made that Australian intelligence officials were not directly involved in his rendering to Guantánamo Bay, though it was noted that “ASIO should have made active enquiries about how Mr Habib would be treated in Egypt before providing information which may have been used in his questioning in Egypt.”

An even more notable case of crude, dismissive abandonment can be found in the plight of David Hicks (image below), another Australian who found himself facing an array of charges brought forth by the “war” on terror.  His role in US legal history in fighting that dubious category of “unlawful combatant” and military commissions is assured, but what stood out in the case was an abject refusal on the part of Prime Minister John Howard and his foreign minister Alexander Downer to engage in anything resembling assistance.

David Hicks.jpg

In May 2003, with rumours thick that some detainees from Guantánamo Bay were being released, Downer was quick to scratch Hicks from the list.

“After all, remember David Hicks was somebody who was allegedly involved with both al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the Taliban being the political articulation of the view of al-Qaeda.” 

When pressed by ABC Radio on Australian contributory negligence, Downer merely swatted the allegation, insisting on cryptic and inchoate legal categories. 

“He’s being held though, let me just make this clear, he’s being held as an unlawful combatant, as somebody who was detained initially by the Northern Alliance and subsequently by the United States”. 

Amnesty secretary general Irene Khan, in an open letter to Australian prime minister John Howard, made the case that Hicks had been abandoned.  Even after the finding by the US Supreme Court that specifically established military commissions were unconstitutional, the Australian government remained approving of that most curious of aberrations. 

“They have not taken any effort to ensure that he gets a fair trial.”

In every sense, the Australian response to Julian Assange’s detention, both during his time in the Ecuadorean embassy and in Belmarsh, betrays an unhealthy tendency to regard the controversial citizen as a menace best distanced.  Let another country deal with him, and if that country be the United States, all the better.

In recent days, a sense of momentum is gathering suggesting that Australia’s political classes might be tiring of this view.  Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce has been shooting off his mouth for reasons more constructive than usual. 

“Whether you like a person or not, they should be afforded the proper rights and protections and the process of justice, as determined by an Australian parliament, not another nation’s parliament.”

Grounds for extradition to the United States from the UK, argued Joyce, had not been made out.

“If a person is residing in Australia and commits a crime in another country, I don’t believe that is a position for extradition.” 

Independent Tasmanian MP Andrew Wilkie is also mucking in, hoping to cobble together a coalition of supporters in the Australian parliament to support Assange’s return to Australia. 

“The only party I’m having to work extra hard on getting members of the group is Labor.” 

The more traditional front, however, is being maintained by the Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg.

“He [Assange] ultimately will face the justice for what he’s been alleged to have done, but that is a legal process that will run its course.” 

Rather weakly, Frydenberg made a lukewarm concession: that “we will continue, as a government, to provide him with the appropriate consular services.”

If there was a time to fight legal eccentricity and viciousness, it is now.  Just as Hicks and Habib faced complicity and a range of stretched and flexible legal categories, Assange faces that most elastic of instruments designed to stifle publishing and whistleblowing: the US Espionage Act of 1917.  Should he be extradited from the United Kingdom and face the imperial goon squad in Washington, we will be spectators to that most depraved of state acts: the criminalisation of publishing.  Australia’s parliamentarians, never the sharpest tools in the political box, are starting to stir with that realisation.

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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]

The defense of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is steadily collapsing under pressure from the Turkish Armed Forces and Turkish-backed militant groups, branded as the National Syrian Army.

Since the start of Operation Peace Spring, Turkey-led forces have captured 42 settlements from the SDF. Most of them were abandoned by Kurdish fighters after a series of artillery and air strikes by the Turkish military. The most intense clashes took place in the towns of Ras al-Ayn and Tell Abyad, and on the chunk of the M4 highway between Aywah and Sahi Ruwaydat.

Turkish forces started a storm of Ras al-Ayn in the evening of October 11. On October 12, the Turkish Defense Ministry announced that its forces got a full control of the town. On the same day, a powerful SDF counterattack forces Turkish-backed militants to withdraw to the southern part of Ras al-Ayn. On October 13, an intense fighting there continued, with the town remaining contested. By October 14, Turkey-led forces had established control of most of it.

Watch the video here.

Another area of heavy clashes was Tell Abyad. The Turkish military and the NSA advanced on the town of October 12 and captured its center on October 13. The success in the area was predetermined by previous advances of Turkey-led forces that besieged the town from the eastern and western directions.

On October 12 and 13, forward units of the NSA were working to cut off the M4 highway stretching along the Syrian-Turkish border. According to photos and videos released online, when Turkish-backed militants first reached the highway they captured and executed a number of civilians, including Hevrin Khalaf, the head of the SDF-linked political party – the Future Syria Party. The SDF tried to push Turkish-backed forces back, but failed to do so.

The shape of the current Turkish military efforts demonstrate that at the first phase of the advance Ankara seeks to capture the border area between Ras al-Ayn and Tell Abyad, and reach the M4. After this, they will likely push towards Kobani and Manbij.

The Turkish Armed Forces already deployed Leopard 2A4 battle tanks on the eastern bank of the Euphrates and floating bridge equipment near the Sajur river, north of Manbij.

According to Ankara, about 500 members of Kurdish armed groups have been neutralized since the start of the operation. At the same time, Turkish sources admit that 6 Turkish soldiers and up to 2 dozens NSA members were killed. Pro-SDF media outlets report about tens destroyed Turkish armored vehicles and dozens of surrendered NSA members. Proofs are barely provided by both sides.

785 ISIS-linked persons fled the SDF-run Ain Issa camp after SDF members had withdrawn from the area. The SDF accused Turkey for the incident and claimed that the prisoners fled thanks to help from ‘Turkish mercenaries’. Meanwhile, Ankara already declared that it’s ready to take responsibility for detention centers with ISIS members and their relatives in northeastern Syria after it takes control of them.

Washington is not going to assist the SDF in repelling the Turkish offensive despite SDF loud statements about their role in the war on ISIS and the US strategy in the region. Defense Secretary Mark Esper told CBS News on October 13 that the US is “preparing to evacuate” about 1,000 troops from northern Syria “as safely and quickly as possible”. The withdrawal of US troops is another sign that the Turkish operation against the SDF was in fact coordinated with and approved by the Trump administration.

The last chance of the SDF to keep control of their remaining areas along the Syrian-Turkish border is to get help from the Syrian Army and Russia. If this is not done anytime soon, the real SDF resistance to the Turkish advance will likely remain only in the few Kurdish-populated areas of northeastern Syria.

On October 13 evening, the SDF announced that it had reached an agreement with the Assad government, and the Syrian Army will enter a large part of its areas, including Manbij and Kobani, and help the Kurdish-led group to limit the further offensive of Turkish forces. The implementation of this agreement may become a turning point in relations between Damascus and the SDF.

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